Infinite peace is hanging in the air,Infinite peace is resting on mine eyes,That just an hour ago learnt how to bearSeeing your body's flaming harmonies.The grey clouds flecked with orange are and gold,Birds unto rest are falling, falling, falling,And all the earth goes slowly into night,Steadily turning from the harshly brightSunset. And now the wind is growing coldAnd in my heart a hidden voice is calling.
Say, is our sense of beauty mixed with earthWhen lip on lip and breast on breast we cling,When ecstasy brings short bright sobs to birthAnd all our pulses, both our bodies sing?When through the haze that gathers on my sightI see your eyelids, know the eyes behindSee me and half not see me, when our bloodGoes roaring like a deep tremendous flood,Calm and terrific in unhasty might,Is then our inner sight sealed up and blind?
Or could it be that when our blood was colderAnd side by side we sat with lips dispartedI saw the perfect line of your resting shoulder,Your mouth, your peaceful throat with fuller-hearted,More splendid joy? Ah poignant joys all these!And rest can stab the heart as well as passion.Yea, I have known sobs choke my heart to seeYour honey-coloured hair move languorously,Ruffled, not by my hands, but by the breeze,And I have prayed the rough air for compassion.
Yea, I have knelt to the unpiteous airAnd knelt to gods I knew not, to removeThe viewless hands whose sight I could not bearOut of the wind-blown head of her I love.Ecstasy enters me and cannot speak,Seizes my hands and smites my fainting eyesAnd sends through all my veins a dim despairOf never apprehending all so fairAnd I have stood, unnerved and numb and weak,Watching your breathing bosom fall and rise.
Ah no! This joy is empty, incomplete,And sullied with a sense of too much longing,Where thoughts and fancies, sweet and bitter-sweet,And old regrets and new-born hopes come thronging.Man can see beauty for a moment's spaceAnd live, having seen her with an unfilmed eye,If all his body and all his soul in oneInstant are tuned by passion to unisonAnd I can image in your kissing faceThe eternal meaning of the earth and sky.
Because the days are long for you and me,I make this song to lighten their slow time,So that the weary waiting fruitful beOr blossomed only by my limping rhyme.The days are very longAnd may not shortened be by any chimeOf measured words or any fleeting song.Yet let us gather blossoms while we waitAnd sing brave tunes against the face of fate.
Day after day goes by: the exquisiteProcession of the variable year,Summer, a sheaf with flowers bound up in it,And autumn, tender till the frosts appearAnd dry the humid skies;And winter following on, aloof, austere,Clad in the garments of a frore sunrise;And spring again. May not too many a springMake both our voices tremble as we sing!
The days are empty, empty, and the nightsAre cold and void; there is no single gleamAcross the space unpeopled of delights,Save only now and then some thin-blood dream,Some stray of summer weather;The tedious hours like slow-foot laggarts seem,When you and I, my love, are not togetherAnd when I hold you in my arms at lastThe minutes go like April cloudlets past.
And yet no hidden charm, no desperate spellCan make these minutes longer, those less long:No force there is that yearning can impelAgainst the callous years which do us wrong.No words, no whispered rune,No witchery and no Thessalian songCan make that far-off, misty day more soon.The bravest tune, the most courageous rhymeFall broken from the bastions of time.
A long and dusty road it is to tread;Few are the wayside flowers and far apartAnd are no sooner plucked than withered,When yearning heart is torn from yearning heart.A weary road it isAnd yet far off I see clear waters startAnd clean sweet grass and tangled traceriesOf whispering leaves, that laugh to see us come,And there one day ... one day shall be our home.
The day will come. O dearest, do not doubt!It is not born as yet but I shall seeSome day the fearless sunrise flashing outAnd know the night will give you up to me.O heart, my heart, be glad,Because the time will come at last when weShall leave all grief and unlearn all things sadAnd know the joy than which none sweeter isAnd I shall sing a happier song than this.
The time shall be, old Wisdom says, when youShall grow awrinkled and I, indifferent,Shall no more follow the light steps I knewOr trace you, finding out the way you went,By swinging branches and the displaced flowersAmong the thickets. I no more shall stand,With careful pencil through the adoring hoursScratching your grace on paper. My still handNo more shall tremble at the touch of yoursAnd I'll write no more songs and you'll not sing.But this is all a lie, for love enduresAnd we shall closer kiss, rememberingHow budding trees turned barren in the sunThrough this long week, whereof one day's now done.
The time is all so short. One week is muchTo be without your deep and peaceful eyes,Your soft and all-contenting cheek, the touchOf well-caressing hands. O were we wiseWe would not love too strongly, would not bindLife into life so inextricably,That the dumb body suffers with the mindIn a sad partnership this agony.For death will come and swallow up us two,You there, I here, and we shall lie apart,Out of the houses and the woods we knew.Then in the lonely grave, my dust-choked heartOut of the dust will raise, if it can speak,A threnody for this lost, lovely week.
Is there no prophylactic against love?Can I with drugs not dull the ache one night?The rain is heavy and the low clouds moveOver the empty home of our delightAnd find me in it weeping. You are farAnd you are now asleep. The night's so thick,Not even one stooping and compassionate starShines on us both disparted. O be quick,Torturing days and heavy, turn your hoursTo minutes, melt yourselves into one day!... The cold rain falls in swift assailing showers,Darkness is round me and light far away.I'm in our well-known room and you're shut inBy strange unfriendly walls I've never seen.
Lovers that drug themselves for ecstasySeek love too closely in an overdose,When the sweet spasm turns to agonyAnd the quick limbs are still and the eyes close.I too, a fool, desired—to make love strong—Absence and parting but the measure's brimmed,The dose is over-poured, the time's too longAlready, though two nights have hardly dimmedMy lonely eyes with the elusive sleep.O I'll remember, I'll not wish againTo go with ardent limbs into this deepSea of dejection, this dull mere of pain:We'll love our safer loves upon the shoreAnd quest for inexperienced joys no more.
Through the closed curtains comes the early sun,First a pale finger, preluding the hand.Outside more certainly the day's begun,Where bright and brighter still the chestnuts stand,Broad candles lighting up at the first fire.I stir and turn in my uneasy sleepBut in my sorrow sleep's my whole desire.About the still room small lights move and creepSilently, stealthily on wall and chair,Till to strong rays and shining lights they grow,Which with their magic change the waiting airAnd all its sleeping motes to gold and throwA golden radiance on your empty bed,Which wakes me with vain likeness to your head.
To-morrow I shall see you come againBetween the pale trees, through the sullen gate,Out of the dark and secret house of painWhere lie the unhappy and unfortunate.To-morrow you will live with me and love me,Spring will go on again, I'll see the flowersAnd little things, ridiculous things, shall move meTo smiles or tears or verse. The world is oursTo-morrow. Open heaths, tall trees, great skies,With massive clouds that fly and come again,Sweet fields, delicious rivers and the riseAnd fall of swelling land from the swift trainWe'll see together, knowing that all thisIs one great room wherein we two may kiss.
We're at the world's top now. The hills aroundStand proud in order with the valleys deep,The hills with pastures drest, with tall trees crowned,And the low valleys dipt in sunny sleep.A sound brims all the country up, a noiseOf wheels upon the road and labouring beesAnd trodden heather, mixing with the voiceOf small lost winds that die among the trees.And we are prone beneath the flooding sun,So drenched, so soaked in the unceasing light,That colours, sounds and your close presence are one,A texture woven up of all delight,Whose shining threads my hands may not undo,Yet one thread runs the whole bright garment through.
Perhaps you sleep now, fifty miles to the south,While I sit here and dream of you by night.The thick soft blankets drawn about your mouthHave made for you a nest of warm delight;Your short crisp hair is thrown abroad and spilledUpon the pillow's whiteness and your eyesAre quiet and the round soft lids are filledWith sleep.
But I shall watch until sunriseCreeps into chilly clouds and heavy air,Across the lands where you sleep and I wake,And I shall know the sun has seen you there,Unmoving though the winter morning break.Next, you will lift your hands and rub your eyesAnd turn to sleep again but wake and startAnd feel, half dreaming, with a dear surprise,My hand in the sunbeam touching at your heart.
Still must your hands withhold your loveliness?Is your soul jealous of your body still?The fair white limbs beneath the clouding dressAre such hard forms as you alone could fillWith life and sweetness. Such a harmonyIs yours as music and the thought expressedBy the musician: have no rivalryBetween your soul and the shape in which it's drest.Kisses or words, both sensual, which shall beThe burning symbol of the love we bear?My art is words, yours song, but still must weBe mute and songless, seeing how love is fair.Both our known arts being useless, we must turnTo love himself and his old practice learn.
Have I slept and failed to hear you calling?Cry again, belov'd; for sleep is heavy,Curtaining away the golden sunlight,Shutting out the blue sky and the breezes,Sealing up my ears to all you tell me.Cry again! your voice shall pierce the clumsyLeaden folds that sleep has wrapt about me,Cry again! accomplish what the singing,Hours old now on all the trees and bushes,And the wind and sun could not accomplish.Lo! I waste good hours of love and kissesWhile the sun and you have spilt your gloryFreely on me lying unregarding.In the happy islands, where no sunsetStains the waters with a morbid splendour,Where the open skies are blue for ever,I might stay for years and years unsleeping,Living for divinest conversation,Music, colour, scent and sense unceasing,Entering by eye and ear and nostril.Ah, but flesh is flesh and I am mortal!Cry again and do not leave me sleeping.
Along the branches of the laden treeThe ripe fruit smiling hang. The afternoonIs emptied of all things done and things to be.Low in the sky the inconspicuous moonStares enviously upon the mellow earth,That mocks her barren girth.
Ripe blackberries and long green trailing grassAre motionless beneath the heavy light:The happy birds and creeping things that passGo fitfully and stir as if in fright,That they have broken on some mysteryIn bramble or in tree.
This is no hour for beings that are maiden;The spring is virgin, lightly afraid and cold,But now the whole round earth is ripe and ladenAnd stirs beneath her coverlet of goldAnd in her agony a moment calls...A heavy apple falls.
Before the downs in their great horse-shoes rise,I know a village where the Adur runs,Blown by sweet winds and by beneficent sunsVisited and made ripe beneath kind skies.Light and delight are in the children's eyesAnd there the mothers sit, the fortunate ones,Blest in their daughters, happy in their sons,And the old men are beautiful and wise.
There stand the downs, great, close, tall, friendly, still,Linked up by grassy saddles, hill on hill,And steep the village in unending peaceAnd to the north the plains in order lie,Heavy with crops and woods alternatelyAnd lively with low sounds that never cease.
Now would I be in that removèd placeWhere the dim sunlight hardly comes at allAnd branches of the young trees interlaceAnd long swathes of the brambles twine and fall;A space between the hedgerow and a roadNot trod by foot of any known to me,Where now and then a cart with scented loadGoes sleepy down the lane with creaking axle-tree.
And there I'd lie upon the tumbled leaves,Watching a square of the all else hidden sky,And made such songs a drowsy mind believesTo be most perfect music. So would IKeep my face heavenwards and bless eternity,Wherein my heart could be as glad as thisAnd lazily I'd bid all men come hitherAnd in my dreams I'd tell them what they miss,Living in hate and work and all foul weather.
And still my happy dreams would go,Like children in a cowslip fieldChasing rich-winged insects to and froTo see what rare delights they yield....
... O I am tired of working to be cheatedAnd sick of barriers that will not fall,Of ancient prudent words too much repeatedAnd worn-out dreams that come not true at all.I know too well what things they are that ail me;To fight is nothing but to seeThus at the last my own hand fail meIs agony.
O for that corner by the hummocked marshes,Visited hardly by the cynic sun,Where nothing clear and nothing bright or harsh is,Where labour and the ache of it are done,Where naught is ended and where naught begun!
A month or twain to live on honeycombIs pleasant—but to eat it for a yearIs simply beastly. Thus the poet spake,Feeling how sticky all his stomach wasWith hivings of ten thousand cheated bees.O wisdom that could shape immortal wordsAnd frame a diet for dyspeptic man!But what of turnips? Come, a lyric nowUpon the luscious roots unsung as yet,(Not roots I know but stalks; still, never mind,Metre and sauce will suit them just as well)Or shall we speak of omelettes? Muse, begin!To feed a fortnight on transmuted eggsWould doubtless be both comforting and cheapBut oh, the nausea on the fourteenth day!I'd rather read a book by Ezra PoundThen choke the seven hundredth omelette down,Just as I'd rather read some F. S. FlintThan live a month or twain on honeycomb.
O Ezra Pound! O omelette of the world!Concocted with strange herbs from dead Provence,Garlic from Italy and spice from Greece,Having suffered a rare Pound-change on the way,How rarely shouldst thou taste, were not the eggsLaid in America and hither broughtToo late. I don't like omelettes made with fowls.Take hence this Pound and put him to the test,Try him with acid, see if he turn blackAs will the best old silver, when enragedAt touching fungi of the baser sort.(Forgive digression. These similitudesEntrance me and I lose myself in them,As schoolboys, picking flowers by the way,Escape the angry usher's vigilanceAnd then, concealed behind a hedge or shed,Produce the awesome pipe or thrice-lit fagAnd make themselves incredibly unwell.)My brain is bubbling and the thoughts will out,But, Ezra Pound! they turn again to thee,As surely as the lode-stone to the PoleOr as the dog to what he hath cast up(A simile of Solomon's, not mine)And your shock head of damp, unwholesome hay,Such as, the cunning farmer oft declares,When stacked, will perish by spontaneous fire,Frequents my dreams and makes them ludicrous.Thou most ridiculous sprite! Thou ponderous fairy!Bourgeois Bohemian! Innocent Verlaine!I read inThe Booksellers' CircularThat, in the University of Pa.(Or Kans. or Col. or Mass, or Tex. or Ont.—A line of normal pattern, Saintsbury)You hold a fellowship in (O merciful gods!)Romanics, which strange word interpretedMeans, I suppose, the Romance languages.Doubtless they read Italian in Pa.And some may speak French fluently in Ont.But German, Ezra! There's the bloody rub,It's not Romance and it is hard to learnAnd Heine, though an easy-going chap,Would doubtless trounce you soundly if he knewThe sorry hash that you have made of him.But no! you're not for immortality,Not even such as that of Freiligrath,Enshrined, together with hisMohrenfurst,In unrelenting amber. I hold you here,In a soap-bubble's iridescent walls,The whimsy of a long midwinter night,And give you immortality enough.Thou sorry brat! Thou transatlantic clown!That seek'st to ape the treadless ArielAnd out-top Shelley in an aeroplane,Take the all-obvious padding from your pantsAnd cut your hair and go to Pa. again(Or Kans. or Col. or Mass, or Tex. or Ont.Or even Oomp. if such a place exist)And take with you the poets you admire,Both Yeats and Flint to charm the folk of Oomp.And write again forMunsey's MagazineOf your good brother Everyone. (Just God!Am even I of his relationship?)So end as you began or even worse:No matter, so 'tis in America.
The lecturer took his place and lookedAt the eager women's faces,Then he cleared his throat and he jetted outA stream of commonplaces.
He fondled Wordsworth and patted ShelleyAnd said with his hand on his heartHe would brook no interference from moralsIn any matter of art.
He finished at last and strode awayOver the naked boards,Erect in his conscious majestyBack to the House of Lords.
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