The stream goes fast.When this that is the present is the past,'Twill be as all the other pasts have been,A failing hill, a daily dimming scene,A far strange port with foreign life astirThe ship has left behind, the voyagerWill never return to; no, nor see again,Though with a heart full of longing he may strainBack to project himself, and once more countThe boats, the whitened walls that climbed the mount,Mark the cathedral's roof, the gathered spires,The vanes, the windows red with sunset's fires,The gap of the market-place, and watch againThe coloured groups of women, and the menLounging at ease along the low stone wallThat fringed the harbour; and there beyond it allHigh pastures morning and evening scattered with smallSpecks that were grazing sheep.... It is all gone,It is all blurred that once so brightly shone;He cannot now with the old clearness seeThe rust upon one ringbolt of the quay.
And yesterday is dead, and you are dead.Your duplicate that hovered in my headThins like blown wreathing smoke, your features growTo interrupted outlines, and all will goUnless I fight dispersal with my will...So I shall do it ... but too conscious stillThat, when we walked together, had I knownHow soon your journey was to end alone,I should not, now that you have gone from view,Be gathering derelict odds and ends of you;But in the intense lucidity of painYour likeness would have burnt into my brain.I did not know; lovable and unique,As volatile as a bubble and as weak,You sat with me, and my eyes registeredThis thing and that, and sluggishly I heardYour voice, remembering here and there a word.
So in my mind there's not much left of you,And that disintegrates; but while a fewPatches of memory's mirror still are brightNor your reflected image there has quiteFaded and slipped away, it will be wellTo search for each surviving syllableOf voice and body and soul. And some I'll findRight to my hand, and some tangled and blindAmong the obscure weeds that fill the mind.A pause....I plunge my thought's hooked resolute clawsDeep in the turbid past. Like drowned things in the jawsOf grappling-irons, your features to the vergeOf conscious knowledge one by one emerge.Can I not make these scattered things unite? ...I knit my brows and clench my eyelids tightAnd focus to a point.... Streams of dark pinkish lightConvolve; and now spasmodically there flitClear pictures of you as you used to sit:—The way you crossed your legs stretched in your chair,Elbow at rest and tumbler in the air,Jesting on books and politics and worse,And still good company when most perverse.Capricious friend!Here in this room not long before the end,Here in this very room six months agoYou poised your foot and joked and chuckled so.Beyond the window shook the ash-tree bough,You saw books, pictures, as I see them now,The sofa then was blue, the telephoneListened upon the desk, and softly shoneEven as now the fire-irons in the grate,And the little brass pendulum swung, a seal of fateStamping the minutes; and the curtains on window and doorJust moved in the air; and on the dark boards of the floorThese same discreetly-coloured rugs were lying...And then you never had a thought of dying.
You are not here, and all the things in the roomWatch me alone in the gradual growing gloom.The you that thought and felt are I know not where,The you that sat and drank in that arm-chairWill never sit there again.For months you have lainUnder a graveyard's greenIn some place abroad where I've never been.Perhaps there is a stone over you,Or only the wood and the earth and the grass cover you.But it doesn't much matter; for dead and decayed you lieLike a million million others who felt they would never die,Like Alexander and Helen the beautiful,And the last collier hanged for murdering his trull;All done with and buried in an equal bed.
Yes, you are dead like all the other dead.You are not here, but I am here alone.And evening falls, fusing tree, water and stoneInto a violet cloth, and the frail ash-tree hissesWith a soft sharpness like a fall of mounded grain.And a steamer softly puffing along the river passes,Drawing a file of barges; and silence falls again.And a bell tones; and the evening darkens; and in sparse rankThe greenish lights well out along the other bank.I have no force left now; the sights and sounds impingeUpon me unresisted, like raindrops on the mould.And, striving not against my melancholy mood,Limp as a door that hangs upon one failing hinge,Limp, with slack marrowless arms and thighs, I sit and broodOn death and death and death. And quiet, thin and cold,Following of this one friend the hopeless, helpless ghost,The weak appealing wraiths of notable men of oldWho died, pass through the air; and then, host after host,Innumerable, overwhelming, without form,Rolling across the sky in awful silent storm,The myriads of the undifferentiated deadWhom none recorded, or of whom the record faded.O spectacle appallingly sublime!I see the universe one long disastrous strife,And in the staggering abysses of backward and forward timeDeath chasing hard upon the heels of creating life.And I, I see myself as one of a heap of stonesWetted a moment to life as the flying wave goes over,Onward and never returning, leaving no mark behind.There's nothing to hope for. Blank cessation numbs my mind,And I feel my heart thumping gloomy against its cover,My heavy belly hanging from my bones.
Below in the dark streetThere is a tap of feet,I rise and angrily meditateHow often I have let of lateThis thought of death come over me.How often I will sit and backward traceThe deathly history of the human race,The ripples of men who chattered and were still,Known and unknown, older and older, untilBefore man's birth I fall, shivering and aghastThrough a hole in the bottom of the remotest past;Till painfully my spirit throwsHer giddiness off; and then as soonAs I recover and try to think again,Life seems like death; and all my body growsIcily cold, and all my brainCold as the jagged craters of the moon....And I wonder is it not strange that IWho thus have heard eternity's black laughAnd felt its freezing breath,Should sometimes shut it out from memorySo as to play quite prettily with death,And turn an easy epitaph?
I can hear a voice whispering in my brain:"Why this is the old futility again!Criminal! day by dayYour own life is ebbing swiftly away.And what have you done with it,Except to become a maudlin hypocrite?"Yes, I know, I know;One should not think of death or the dead overmuch; but one's mind's made soThat at certain times the roads of thought all lead to death,And false reasoning clouds one's soul as a window with breathIs clouded in winter's air,And all the faith one may haveLies useless and dead as a body in the grave.
I heard a voice that cried, "Make way for those who died!"And all the coloured crowd like ghosts at morning fled;And down the waiting road, rank after rank there strode,In mute and measured march a hundred thousand dead.
A hundred thousand dead, with firm and noiseless tread,All shadowy-grey yet solid, with faces grey and ghast,And by the house they went, and all their brows were bentStraight forward; and they passed, and passed, and passed, and passed.
But O there came a place, and O there came a face,That clenched my heart to see it, and sudden turned my way;And in the Face that turned I saw two eyes that burned,Never-forgotten eyes, and they had things to say.
Like desolate stars they shone one moment, and were gone,And I sank down and put my arms across my head,And felt them moving past, nor looked to see the last,In steady silent march, our hundred thousand dead.
With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why do I lie awake,Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling my heart's fierce acheThat beats one response to the brain's many questionings, and in solitude bears the weightOf all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and the senseless pressure of fate?
Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that so certainly it recurs?In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it here that a song first stirs?Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory, there will spring of a sudden, some time,Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, the thin-blown shape of a rhyme?
The lily of Malud is born in secret mud.It is breathed like a word in a little dark ravineWhere no bird was ever heard and no beast was ever seen,And the leaves are never stirred by the panther's velvet sheen.
It blooms once a year in summer moonlight,In a valley of dark fear full of pale moonlight:It blooms once a year, and dies in a night,And its petals disappear with the dawn's first light;And when that night has come, black small-breasted maids,With ecstatic terror dumb, steal fawn-like through the shadesTo watch, hour by hour, the unfolding of the flower.
When the world is full of night, and the moon reigns aloneAnd drowns in silver light the known and the unknown,When each hut is a mound, half blue silver and half black,And casts upon the ground the hard shadow of its back,When the winds are out of hearing and the tree-tops never shake,When the grass in the clearing is silent but awake'Neath a moon-paven sky: all the village is asleepAnd the babes that nightly cry dream deep:From the doors the maidens creep,Tiptoe over dreaming curs, soft, so soft, that not one stirs,And stand curved and a-quiver, like bathers by a river,Looking at the forest wall, groups of slender naked girls,Whose black bodies shine like pearls where the moonbeams fall.They have waked, they knew not why, at a summons from the night,They have stolen fearfully from the dark to the light,Stepping over sleeping men, who have moved and slept again:And they know not why they go to the forest, but they know,As their moth-feet pass to the shore of the grassAnd the forest's dreadful brink, that their tender spirits shrink:They would flee, but cannot turn, for their eyelids burnWith frenzy, and each maid, ere she leaves the moonlit space,If she sees another's face is thrilled and afraid.
Now like little phantom fawns they thread the outer lawnsWhere the boles of giant trees stand about in twos and threes,Till the forest grows more dense and the darkness more intense,And they only sometimes see in a lone moon-rayA dead and spongy trunk in the earth half-sunk,Or the roots of a tree with fungus grey,Or a drift of muddy leaves, or a banded snake that heaves.
And the towering unseen roof grows more intricate, and soonIt is featureless and proof to the lost forgotten moon.But they could not look above as with blind-drawn feet they moveOnwards on the scarce-felt path, with quick and desperate breath,For their circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head,Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape,And at every step they fear in their very midst to hearA lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore....And when things swish or fall, they shiver but dare not call.
O what is it leads the way that they do not stray?What unimagined arm keeps their bodies from harm?What presence concealed lifts their little feet that yieldOver dry ground and wet till their straining eyes are metWith a thinning of the darkness?And the foremost faintly cries in awed surprise:And they one by one emerge from the gloom to the vergeOf a small sunken vale full of moonlight pale.And they hang along the bank, clinging to the branches dank,A shadowy festoon out of sight of the moon;And they see in front of them, rising from the mudA single straight stem and a single pallid budIn that little lake of light from the moon's calm height.
A stem, a ghostly bud, on the moon-swept mudThat shimmers like a pond; and over there beyondThe guardian forest high, menacing and strange,Invades the empty sky with its wild black range.
And they watch hour by hour that small lonely flowerIn that deep forest place that hunter never found.
It shines without sound, as a star in space.
And the silence all around that solitary placeIs like silence in a dream; till a sudden flashing gleamDown their dark faces flies; and their lips fall apartAnd their glimmering great eyes with excitement dartAnd their fingers, clutching the branches they were touching,Shake and arouse hissing leaves on the boughs.
And they whisper aswoon: Did it move in the moon?O it moved as it grew!It is moving, opening, with calm and gradual will,And their bodies where they cling are shadowed and stillAnd with marvel they mark that the mud now is darkFor the unfolding flower, like a goddess in her power,Challenges the moon with a light of her own,That lovelily grows as the petals unclose,Wider, more wide with an awful inward pride,Till the heart of it breaks, and stilled is their breath,For the radiance it makes is as wonderful as death.
The morning's crimson stain tinges their ashen browsAs they part the last boughs and slowly step againOn to the village grass, and chill and languid passInto the huts to sleep.Brief slumber, yet so deepThat, when they wake to day, darkness and splendour seemBroken and far away, a faint miraculous dream;And when those maidens rise they are as they ever wereSave only for a rare shade of trouble in their eyes.And the surly thick-lipped men, as they sit about their hutsMaking drums out of guts, grunting gruffly now and then,Carving sticks of ivory, stretching shields of wrinkled skin,Smoothing sinister and thin squatting gods of ebony,Chip and grunt and do not see.But each mother, silently,Longer than her wont stays shut in the dimness of her hut,For she feels a brooding cloud of memory in the air,A lingering thing there that makes her sit bowedWith hollow shining eyes, as the night-fire dies,And stare softly at the ember, and try to rememberSomething sorrowful and far, something sweet and vaguely seenLike an early evening star when the sky is pale green:A quiet silver tower that climbed in an hour,Or a ghost like a flower, or a flower like a queen:Something holy in the past that came and did not last.
But she knows not what it was.
Now very quietly, and rather mournfully,In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires,And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to himKeep but in memory their borrowed fires.
And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied,From that faint exquisite celestial strand,And turn and see again the only dwelling-placeIn this wide wilderness of darkening land.
The house, that house, O now what change has come to it,Its crude red-brick façade, its roof of slate;What imperceptible swift hand has given itA new, a wonderful, a queenly state?
No hand has altered it, that parallelogram,So inharmonious, so ill arranged;That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was;No, it is not that any line has changed.
Only that loneliness is now accentuateAnd, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave,This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again,And all man's energies seem very brave.
And this mean edifice, which some dull architectBuilt for an ignorant earth-turning hind,Takes on the quality of that magnificentUnshakable dauntlessness of human kind.
Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be,Yet imperturbable that house will rest,Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny,Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast.
Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniacMay howl their menaces, and hail descend;Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly,Not even scornfully, and wait the end.
And all a universe of nameless messengersFrom unknown distances may whisper fear,And it will imitate immortal permanence,And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear.
It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too,When there is none to watch, no alien eyesTo watch its ugliness assume a majestyFrom this great solitude of evening skies.
So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around,While life remains to it prepared to outfaceWhatever awful unconjectured mysteriesMay hide and wait for it in time and space.
The wind of evening cried along the darkening trees,Along the darkening trees, heavy with ancient pain,Heavy with ancient pain from faded centuries,From faded centuries.... O foolish thought and vain!
O foolish thought and vain to think the wind could know,To think the wind could know the griefs of men who died,The griefs of men who died and mouldered long ago:"And mouldered long ago," the wind of evening cried.
When her eyes' sudden challenge first halted my feet on the path,I stood like a shivering caught fugitive, and strained at my breath,And the Truth in her eyes was the portent of Love and of Death,For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.
O you who have faded because girls were contemptuous and cold,I pitied you; but mine I have won, and her breast I enfoldDespairing, and in agony long for the thing that I hold:For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.
She is fair; and her eyes in her hair are like stars in a stream.She is kind: never vaporous sleep-eddying maid in a dreamLeaning over my darkness-drowned pillow more tender did seem.But her beauty and sweetness are as blasts from the sands of the South.Drink me, palsy me, flay me, bleed my veins, chain my limbs,choke my mouth,And make salt to my lips the wine that should temper my drouth:For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.
Death must come: it were best by a knife in her hand or my own.She'd not strike and I dare not, but here, as I wander alone,Should the wood topple over at a beast flying out like a stoneI shall smile in its face at her image bending down from the sky,And its teeth in my neck will be hers, and its snarls as I dieWill be gentle and sweet to my ears as the voice of the dove:For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.
Quieter than any twilightShed over earth's last deserts,Quiet and vast and shadowlessIs that unfounded keep,Higher than the roof of the night's high chamberDeep as the shaft of sleep.
And solitude will not cry there,Melancholy will not brood there,Hatred, with its sharp corroding pain,And fear will not come there at all:Never will a tear or a heart-ache enterOver that enchanted wall.
But, O, if you find that castle,Draw back your foot from the gateway,Let not its peace invite you,Let not its offerings tempt you.For faded and decayed like a garment,Love to a dust will have fallen,And song and laughter will have gone with sorrow,And hope will have gone with pain;And of all the throbbing heart's high courageNothing will remain.
(W. H. S., Capt. [Acting Major] R.F.A.; killed April12, 1917)
We sha'n't see Willy any more, Mamie,He won't be coming any more:He came back once and again and again,But he won't get leave any more.
We looked from the window and there was his cab,And we ran downstairs like a streak,And he said "Hullo, you bad dog," and you crouched to the floor,Paralysed to hear him speak,
And then let fly at his face and his chestTill I had to hold you down,While he took off his cap and his gloves and his coat.And his bag and his thonged Sam Browne.
We went upstairs to the studio,The three of us, just as of old,And you lay down and I sat and talked to himAs round the room he strolled.
Here in the room where, years agoBefore the old life stopped,He worked all day with his slippers and his pipe,He would pick up the threads he'd dropped,
Fondling all the drawings he had left behind,Glad to find them all still the same,And opening the cupboards to look at his belongings... Every time he came.
But now I know what a dog doesn't know,Though you'll thrust your head on my knee,And try to draw me from the absent-mindednessThat you find so dull in me.
And all your life you will never knowWhat I wouldn't tell you even if I could,That the last time we waved him awayWilly went for good.
But sometimes as you lie on the hearthrugSleeping in the warmth of the stove,Even through your muddled old canine brainShapes from the past may rove.
You'll scarcely remember, even in a dream,How we brought home a silly little pup.With a big square head and little crooked legsThat could scarcely bear him up,
But your tail will tap at the memoryOf a man whose friend you were,Who was always kind though he called you a naughty dogWhen he found you on his chair;
Who'd make you face a reproving fingerAnd solemnly lecture youTill your head hung downwards and you looked very sheepish!And you'll dream of your triumphs too.
Of summer evening chases in the gardenWhen you dodged us all about with a bone:We were three boys, and you were the cleverest,But now we're two alone.
When summer comes again,And the long sunsets fade,We shall have to go on playing the feeble game for twoThat since the war we've played.
And though you run expectant as you always doTo the uniforms we meet,You'll never find Willy among all the soldiersIn even the longest street,
Nor in any crowd; yet, strange and bitter thought,Even now were the old words said,If I tried the old trick and said "Where's Willy?"You would quiver and lift your head,
And your brown eyes would look to ask if I were serious,And wait for the word to spring.Sleep undisturbed: I sha'n't say that again,You innocent old thing.
I must sit, not speaking, on the sofa,While you lie asleep on the floor;For he's suffered a thing that dogs couldn't dream of,And he won't be coming here any more.
I am a lake, altered by every wind.The mild South breathes upon me, and I spreadA dance of merry ripples in the sun.The West comes stormily and I am troubled,My waves conflict and black depths show between them.Under the East wind bitter I grow and chill,Slate-coloured, desolate, hopeless. But when blowsA steady wind from the North my motion ceases,I am frozen smooth and hard; my conquered surfaceReturns the skies' cold light without a comment.I make no sound, nor can I; nor can I showWhat depth I have, if any depth, below.
What hues the sunlight had, how rich the shadows were,The blue and tangled shadows dropped from the crusted branchesOf the warped apple-trees upon the orchard grass.
How heavenly pure the blue of two smooth eggs that layLight on the rounded mud that lined the thrush's nest:And what a deep delight the spots that speckled them.
And that small tinkling stream that ran from hedge to hedge,Shadowed over by the trees and glinting in the sunbeams,How clear the water was, how flat the beds of sandWith travelling bubbles mirrored, each one a golden worldTo my enchanted eyes. Then earth was new to me.
But now I walk this earth as it were a lumber room,And sometimes live a week, seeing nothing but mere herbs,Mere stones, mere passing birds: nor look at anythingLong enough to feel its conscious calm assault:The strength of it, the word, the royal heart of it.
Childhood will not return; but have I not the willTo strain my turbid mind that soils all outer things,And, open again to all the miracles of light,To see the world with the eyes of a blind man gaining sight?
All the trees and bushes of the gardenDisplay their bright new green.
But above them all, still bare,The great old acacia stands,His solitary bent black branches starkAgainst the garden and the sky.
It is as though those other thoughtless shrubs,The winter over, hastened to rejoiceAnd clothe themselves in spring's new finery,Heedless of all the iron time behind them.
But he, older and wiser, stronger and sadder of heart,Remembers still the cruel winter, and knowsThat in some months that death will come again;And, for a season, lonelily meditatesAbove his lighter companions' frivolity.
Till some late sunny day when, breaking thought,He'll suddenly yield to the fickle persuasive sun,And over all his rough and writhing boughsAnd tiniest twigsWill spread a pale green mist of feathery leaf,More delicate, more touching than all the verdureOf the younger, slenderer, gracefuller plants around.
And then, when the leaves have grownTill the boughs can scarcely be seen through their crowded plumes,There will softly glimmer, scattered upon him, blooms,Ivory-white in the green, weightlessly hanging.
(To F. S.)
In the smooth grey heaven is poised the pale half moonAnd sheds on the wide grey river a broken reflection.Out from the low church-tower the boats are mooredAfter the heat of the day, and await the dark.
And here, where the side of the road shelves into the riverAt the gap where barges load and horses drink,There are no horses. And the river is fullAnd the water stands by the shore and does not lap.
And a barge lies up for the night this side of the island,The bargeman sits in the bows and smokes his pipeAnd his wife by the cabin stirs. Behind me voices pass.
Calm sky, calm river: and a few calm things reflected.And all as yet keep their colours; the island osiers,The ash-white spots of umbelliferous flowers,And the yellow clay of its bank, the barge's brown sailsThat are furled up the mast and then make a lean triangleTo the end of the hoisted boom, and the high dark slipsWhere they used to build vessels, and now build them no more.
All in the river reflected in quiet colours.Beyond the river sweeps round in a bend, and is vast,A wide grey level under the motionless skyAnd the waxing moon, clean cut in the mole-grey sky.Silence. Time is suspended; that the light failsOne would not know were it not for the moon in the sky,And the broken moon in the water, whose fractures tellOf slow broad ripples that otherwise do not show,Maturing imperceptibly from a pale to a deeper gold,A golden half moon in the sky, and broken gold in the water.
In the water, tranquilly severing, joining, gold:Three or four little plates of gold on the river:A little motion of gold between the dark imagesOf two tall posts that stand in the grey water.
There are voices passing, a murmur of quiet voices,A woman's laugh, and children going home.A whispering couple, leaning over the railings,And, somewhere, a little splash as a dog goes in.
I have always known all this, it has always been,There is no change anywhere, nothing will ever change.
I heard a story, a crazy and tiresome myth.
Listen! behind the twilight a deep low soundLike the constant shutting of very distant doors,
Doors that are letting people over thereOut to some other place beyond the end of the sky.
There was an Indian, who had known no change,Who strayed content along a sunlit beachGathering shells. He heard a sudden strangeCommingled noise; looked up; and gasped for speech.For in the bay, where nothing was before,Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes,With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar,And fluttering coloured signs and clambering crews.
And he, in fear, this naked man alone,His fallen hands forgetting all their shells,His lips gone pale, knelt low behind a stone,And stared, and saw, and did not understand,Columbus's doom-burdened caravelsSlant to the shore, and all their seamen land.
Eyes like flowers and falling hairSeldom seen, nor ever long,Then I did not know you wereDestined subject for a song:Sharing your unconsciousnessOf your double loveliness,Unaware how fair you were,Peaceful eyes and shadowy hair.
Only, now your beauty fallsSweetly on some other place,Lonely reverie recallsMore than anything your face;Any idle hour may findStealing on my captured mind,Faintly merging from the air,Eyes like flowers and falling hair.
There was a time that's goneAnd will not come again,We knew it was a pleasant time,How good we never dreamed.
When, for a whimsy's sake,We'd even play with pain,For everything awaited usAnd life immortal seemed.
It seemed unending thenTo forward-looking eyes,No thought of what postponement meantHung dark across our mirth;
We had years and strength enoughFor any enterprise,Our numerous companionshipWere heirs to all the earth.
But now all memoryIs one ironic truth,We look like strangers at the boysWe were so long ago;
For half of us are dead,And half have lost their youth,And our hearts are scarred by many griefs,That only age should know.
In this house, she said, in this high second storey,In this room where we sit, above the midnight street,There runs a rivulet, narrow but very rapid,Under the still floor and your unconscious feet.
The lamp on the table made a cone of lightThat spread to the base of the walls: above was in gloom.I heard her words with surprise; had I worked here so long,And never divined that secret of the room?
"But how," I asked, "does the water climb so high?""I do not know," she said, "but the thing is there;Pull up the boards while I go and fetch you a rod."She passed, and I heard her creaking descend the stair.
And I rose and rolled the Turkey carpet backFrom the two broad boards by the north wall she had named,And, hearing already the crumple of water, I kneltAnd lifted the first of them up; and the water gleamed,
Bordered with little frosted heaps of ice,And, as she came back with a rod and line that swung,I moved the other board; in the yellow lightThe water trickled frostily, slackly along.
I took the tackle, a stiff black rubber worm,That stuck out its pointed tail from a cumbrous hook,"But there can't be fishing in water like this," I said.And she, with weariness, "There is no ice there. Look."
And I stood there, gazing down at a stream in spate,Holding the rod in my undecided hand...Till it all in a moment grew smooth and still and clear,And along its deep bottom of slaty grey sand
Three scattered little trout, as black as tadpoles,Came waggling slowly along the glass-dark lake,And I swung my arm to drop my pointing worm in,And then I stopped again with a little shake.
For I heard the thin gnat-like voices of the trout—My body felt woolly and sick and astray and cold—Crying with mockery in them: "You are not allowedTo take us, you know, under ten years old."
And the room swam, the calm woman and the yellow lamp,The table, and the dim-glistering walls, and the floor,And the stream sank away, and all whirled dizzily,And I moaned, and the pain at my heart grew more and more.
And I fainted away, utterly miserable.Falling in a place where there was nothing to pass,Knowing all sorrows and the mothers and sisters of sorrows,And the pain of the darkness before anything ever was.