Eyes wide for wisdom, calm for joy or pain,Bright hair alloyed with silver, scarcely gold.And gracious lips flower pressed like buds to holdThe guarded heart against excess of rain.Hands spirit tipped through which a genius playsWith paints and clays,And strings in many keys—Clothed in an aura of thought as soundless as a floodOf sun-shine where there is no breeze.So is it light in spite of rhythm of blood,Or turn of head, or hands that move, unite—Wind cannot dim or agitate the light.From Plato's idea stepping, wholly wroughtFrom Plato's dream, made manifest in hair,Eyes, lips and hands and voice,As if the stored up thoughtFrom the earth sphereHad given down the being of your choiceConjured by the dream long sought.
For you have moved in madness, rapture, wrathIn and out of the pathDrawn by the dream of a face.You have been watched, as star-men watch a starThat leaves its way, returns and leaves its way,Until the exploring watchers find, can traceA hidden star beyond their sight, whose swayDraws the erratic star so long observed—So have you wandered, swerved.
Always pursued and lost,Sometimes half found, half-faced,Such years we wasteWith the almost:The lips flower pressed like buds to holdGuarded the heart of the flower,But over them eyes not hued as the Dream foretold.Or to find the lips too rich and the dowerOf eyes all gaietyWhere wisdom scarce can be.Or to find the eyes, but to find offenceIn fingers where the senseFalters with colors, strings,Not touching with closed eyes, out of an immanenceOf flame and wings.Or to find the light, but to find it set behindAn eye which is not your dream, nor the shadow thereof,As it were your lamp in a stranger's window.And so almost to findIn the great weariness of love.
Now this is the tragedy:If the Idea did not moveSomewhere in the realm of Love,Clothing itself in flesh at last for you to see,You could scarcely follow the gleam.And the tragedy is when Life has made you over,And denied you, and dulled your dream,And you no longer count the cost,Nor the past lament,You are sitting oblivious of your discontentBeside the Almost—And then the face appearsEvoked from the Idea by your dead desire,And blinds and burns you like fire.And you sit there without tears,Though thinking it has come to kill you, or mock your youthWith its half of the truth.
A beach as yellow as goldDaisied with tents for a lovely mile.And a sea that edges and walls the sand with blue,Matching the heaven without a seam,Save for the threads of foam that holdWith stitches the canopy rare as the tileOf old Damascus. And O the windWhich roars to the roaring water brightenedBy the beating wings of the sun!And here I walk, not seeking the Dream,As men walk absent of heart or mindWho have no wish for a sorrow lightenedSince all things now seem lost or won.And here it is that your face appears!Like a star brushed out from leaves by a breezeWhen day's in the sky, though evening nears.You are here by a tent with your little brood,And I approach in a quiet moodAnd see you, know that the DestiniesHave surrendered you at last.Voice, lips and hands and the light of the eyes.
And I who have asked so much discoverThat you find in me the man and loverYou have divined and visualized,In quiet day dreams. And what is strangeYour boy of eight is subtly guisedIn fleeting looks that half resembleSomething in me. Two souls may rangeMid this earth's billion souls for life,And hide their hunger or dissemble.For there are two at least created,Endowed with alien powers that draw,And kindred powers that by some lawBind souls as like as sister, brother.There are two at least who are for each other.If we are such, it is not fatedYou are for him, howe'er belatedThe time's for us.
And yet is not the time gone by?Your garden has been planted, dear.And mine with weeds is over-grown.Oh yes! 'tis only late July!We can replant, ere frosts appear,Gather the blossoms we have sown.And I have preached that hearts should seizeThe hour that brings realities. ...Yes, I admit it all, we crushUnder our feet the world's contempt.But when I raise the cup, it's blushReveals the snake's eyes, there's a hushWhile a hand writes upon the wall:Life cannot be re-made, exemptFrom life that has been, something's goneOut of the soil, in life updrawnTo growths that vine, and tangle, crawl,Withered in part, or gone to seed.'Tis not the same, though you have freedThe soil from what was grown. ...
Heaven is but the hourOf the planting of the flower.But heaven is the blossom to be,Of the one Reality.And heaven cannot undo the once sown ground.But heaven is love in the pursuing,And in the memory of having found. ...The rocks in the river make light and soundAnd show that the waters search and move.And what is time but an infinite wholeRevealed by the breaks in thought, desire?To put it away is to know one's soul.Love is music unheard and fireToo rare for eyes; between hurt beatsThe heart detects it, sees how pureIts essence is, through heart defeats.—You are the silence making sureThe sound with which it has to cope,My sorrow and as well my hope.
You dull Goliaths clothed in coats of blue,Strained and half bursted by the swell of flesh,Topped by Gorilla heads. You Marmoset,Trained scoundrel, taught to question and ensnare,I hate you, hate your laws and hate your courts.Hands off, give me a chair, now let me be.I'll tell you more than you can think to ask me.I love this woman, but what is love to you?What is it to your laws or courts? I love her.She loves me, if you'd know. I entered her room—She stood before me naked, shrank a little,Cried out a little, calmed her sudden cryWhen she saw amiable passion in my eyes—She loves me, if you'd know. I saw in her eyesMore in those moments than whole hours of talkFrom witness stands exculpate could make clearMy innocence.But if I did a crimeMy excuse is hunger, hunger for more life.Oh what a world, where beauty, rapture, loveAre walled in and locked up like coal or foodAnd only may be had by purchasersFrom whose fat fingers slip the unheeded gold.Oh what a world where beauty lies in waste,While power and freedom skulk with famished lipsToo tightly pressed for curses.So do men,Save for the thousandth man, deny themselvesAnd live in meagreness to make sure a lifeOf meagreness by hearth stones long since stale;And live in ways, companionships as fixedAs the geared figures of the Strassburg clock.You wonder at war? Why war lets loose desires,Emotions long repressed. Would you stop war?Then let men live. The moral equivalentOf war is freedom. Art does not suffice—Religion is not life, but life is living.And painted cherries to the hungry thrushIs art to life. The artist lived his work.You cannot live his life who love his work.You are the thrush that pecks at painted cherriesWho hope to live through art. Beer-soaked Goliaths,The story's coming of her nakednessBe patient for a time.All this I learnedWhile painting pictures no one ever bought,Till hunger drove me to this servile workAs butler in her father's house, with timeOn certain days to walk the galleriesAnd look at pictures, marbles. For I sawI was not living while I painted pictures.I was not living working for a crust,I was not living walking galleries:All this was but vicarious life which feltThrough gazing at the thing the artist made,In memory of the life he lived himself:As we preserve the fragrance of a flowerBy drawing off its essence in a bottle,Where color, fluttering leaves, are thrown awayTo get the inner passion of the flowerExtracted to a bottle that a queenMay act the flower's part.Say what you will,Make laws to strangle life, shout from your pulpits,Your desks of editors, your woolsack benchesWhere judges sit, that this dull hypocrite,You call the State, has fashioned life aright—The secret is abroad, from eye to eyeThe secret passes from poor eyes that winkIn boredom, in fatigue, in furious strengthRoped down or barred, that what the human heartDreams of and hopes for till the aspiring flameFlaps in the guttered candle and goes out,Is love for body and for spirit, loveTo satisfy their hunger. Yet what is it,This earth, this life, what is it but a meadowWhere spirits are left free a little whileWithin a little space, so long as strength,Flesh, blood increases to the day of useAs roasts or stews wherewith this witless beast,Society may feed himself and keepHis olden shape and power?Fools go cropThe herbs they turn you to, and starve yourselfFor what you want, and count it righteousness,No less you covet love. Poor shadows sighing,Across the curtain racing! Mangled soulsPecking so feebly at the painted cherries,Inhaling from a bottle what was livedThese summers gone! You know, and scarce denyThat what we men desire are horses, dogs,Loves, women, insurrections, travel, change,Thrill in the wreck and rapture for the change,And re-adjusted order.As I turnedFrom painting and from art, yet found myselfFull of all lusts while bound to menial workWhere my eyes daily rested on this womanA thought came to me like a little sparkOne sees far down the darkness of a cave,Which grows into a flame, a blinding lightAs one approaches it, so did this thoughtBoth burn and blind me: For I loved this woman,I wanted her, why should I lose this woman?What was there to oppose possession? Will?Her will, you say? I am not sure, but thenWhich will is better, mine or hers? Which willDeserves achievement? Which has rights aboveThe other? I desire her, her desireIs not toward me, which of these two desiresShall triumph? Why not mine for me and hersFor her, at least the stronger must prevail,And wreck itself or bend all else before it.That millionaire who wooed her, tried in vainTo overwhelm her will with gold, and IWith passion, boldness would have overwhelmed it,And what's the difference?But as I saidI walked the galleries. When I stood in the yardBare armed, bare throated at my work, she cameAnd gazed upon me from her window. ICould feel the exhausting influence of her eyes.Then in a concentration which was blindnessTo all else, so bewilderment of mind,I'd go to see Watteau's AntiopeWhere he sketched Zeus in hunger, drawing backThe veil that hid her sleeping nakedness.There was Correggio's too, on whom a satyrSmiled for his amorous wonder. A Semele,Done by an unknown hand, a thing of lightningMoved through by Zeus who seized her as the flamesConsumed her ravished beauty.So I looked,And trembled, then returned perhaps to findHer eyes upon me conscious, calm, elate,And radiate with lashes of surprise,Delight as when a star is still but shines.And on this night somehow our natures workedTo climaxes. For first she dressed for dinnerTo show more back and bosom than before.And as I served her, her down-looking eyesWere more than glances. Then she dropped her napkin.Before I could begin to bend she leanedAnd let me see—oh yes, she let me seeThe white foam of her little breasts caressingThe scarlet flame of silk, a swooning shoreOf bright carnations. It was from such foamThat Venus rose. And as I stooped and gaveThe napkin to her she pushed out a foot,And then I coughed for breath grown short, and sheConcealed a smile—and you, you jailers laughCoarse-mouthed, and mock my hunger.I go on,Observe how courage, boldness mark my steps!At nine o'clock she climbs to her boudoir.I finding errands in the hallway hearThe desultory taking up of books,And through her open door, see her at lastCast off her dinner gown and to the bathStep like a ray of moonlight. Then she snapsThe light on where the onyx tub and wallsDazzle the air. I enter then her roomAnd stand against the closed door, do not pryUpon her in the bath. Give her the chanceTo fly me, fight me standing face to face.I hear her flounder in the water, hearHands slap and slip with water breast and arms;Hear little sighs and shudders and the roughnessOf crash towels on her back, when in a minuteShe stands with back toward me in the doorway,A sea-shell glory, pink and white to hairSun-lit, a lily crowned with powdered gold.She turned toward her dresser then and shookWhite dust of talcum on her arms, and lookedSo lovingly upon her tense straight breasts,Touching them under with soft tapering handsTo blue eyes deepening like a brazier flameTurned by a sudden gust. Who gives her these,The thought ran through me, for her joy aloneAnd not for mine?So I stood there like ZeusComing in thunder to Semele, likeThe diety of Watteau. CorreggioHad never painted me a satyr thereDrinking her beauty in, so worshipful,My will subdued in worship of her beautyTo obey her will.And then she turned and saw me,And faced me in her nakedness, nor triedTo hide it from me, faced me immovableA Mona Lisa smile upon her lips.And let me plead my cause, make known my love,Speak out my torture, wearing still the smile.Let me approach her till I almost touchedThe whiteness of her bosom. Then it seemedThat smile of hers not wilting me she clappedHands over eyes and said: "I am afraid—Oh no, it cannot be—what would they say?"Then rushing in the bathroom, quick she slammedThe door and shrieked: "You scoundrel, go—you beast."My dream went up like paper charred and whirledAbove a hearth. Thrilling I stood aloneAmid her room and saw my life, our lifeEmbodied in this woman lately thereLying and cowardly. And as I turnedTo leave the room, her father and the gardenerPounced on me, threw me down a flight of stairsAnd turned me over, stunned, to you the lawHere with these others who have stolen coalTo keep them warm, as I have stolen beautyTo keep from freezing in this arid countryOf winter winds on which the dust of customRides like a fog.Now do your worst to me!
You and your landscape! There it liesStripped, resuming its disguise,Clothed in dreams, made bare again,Symbol infinite of pain,Rapture, magic, mysteryOf vanished days and days to be.There's its sea of tidal grassOver which the south winds pass,And the sun-set's Tuscan goldWhich the distant windows holdFor an instant like a sphereBursting ere it disappear.There's the dark green woods which throveIn the spell of Leese's Grove.And the winding of the road;And the hill o'er which the skyStretched its pallied vacancyEre the dawn or evening glowed.And the wonder of the townSomewhere from the hill-top downNestling under hills and woodsAnd the meadow's solitudes.
And your paper knight of oldSecrets of the landscape told.And the hedge-rows where the pondTook the blue of heavens beyondThe hastening clouds of gusty March.There you saw their wrinkled archWhere the East wind cracks his whipsRound the little pond and clipsMain-sails from your toppled ships. ...Landscape that in youth you knewPast and present, earth and you!All the legends and the talesOf the uplands, of the vales;Sounds of cattle and the criesOf ploughmen and of travelersWere its soul's interpreters.And here the lame were always lame.Always gray the gray of head.And the dead were always deadEre the landscape had becomeYour cradle, as it was their tomb.
And when the thunder storms would wakenOf the dream your soul was not forsaken:In the room where the dormer windows look—There were your knight and the tattered book.With colors of the forest greenGabled roofs and the demesneOf faery kingdoms and faery timeStoried in pre-natal rhyme. ...Past the orchards, in the plainThe cattle fed on in the rain.And the storm-beaten horseman spedRain blinded and with bended head.And John the ploughman comes and goesIn labor wet, with steaming clothes.This is your landscape, but you seeNot terror and not destinyBehind its loved, maternal face,Its power to change, or fade, replaceIts wonder with a deeper dream,Unfolding to a vaster theme.From time eternal was this earth?No less this landscape with your birthArose, nor leaves you, nor decayFinds till the twilight of your day.It bore you, moulds you to its plan.It ends with you as it began,But bears the seed of future yearsOf higher raptures, dumber tears.
For soon you lose the landscape throughAbsence, sorrow, eyes grown trueTo the naked limbs which showBuds that never more may blow.Now you know the lame were straightEre you knew them, and the fateOf the old is yet to die.Now you know the dead who lieIn the graves you saw where firstThe landscape on your vision burst,Were not always dead, and nowShadows rest upon the browOf the souls as young as you.Some are gone, though years are fewSince you roamed with them the hills.So the landscape changes, willsAll the changes, did it tryIts promises to justify?...
For you return and find it bare:There is no heaven of golden air.Your eyes around the horizon rove,A clump of trees is Leese's Grove.And what's the hedgerow, what's the pond?A wallow where the vagabondBeast will not drink, and where the archOf heaven in the days of MarchRefrains to look. A blinding rainBeats the once gilded window pane.John, the poor wretch, is gone, but breadTempts other feet that path to treadBetween the barn and house, and braveThe March rain and the winds that rave. ...O, landscape I am one who standsReturned with pale and broken handsGlad for the day that I have known,And finds the deserted doorway strownWith shoulder blade and spinal bone.And you who nourished me and bredI find the spirit from you fled.You gave me dreams,'twas at your breastMy soul's beginning rose and pressedMy steps afar at last and shapedA world elusive, which escapedWhatever love or thought could findBeyond the tireless wings of mind.Yet grown by you, and feeding onYour strength as mother, you are goneWhen I return from living, traceMy steps to see how I began,And deeply search your mother faceTo know your inner self, the placeFor which you bore me, sent me forthTo wander, south or east or north. ...Now the familiar landscape liesWith breathless breast and hollow eyes.It knows me not, as I know notIts secret, spirit, all forgotIts kindred look is, as I standA stranger in an unknown land.
Are we not earth-born, formed of dustWhich seeks again its love and trustIn an old landscape, after changeIn hearts grown weary, wrecked and strange?What though we struggled to emergeDividual, footed for the urgeOf further self-discoveries, thoughIn the mid-years we cease to know,Through disenchanted eyes, the spellThat clothed it like a miracle—Yet at the last our steps returnIts deeper mysteries to learn.It has been always us, it mustClasp to itself our kindred dust.We cannot free ourselves from it.Near or afar we must submitTo what is in us, what was grownOut of the landscape's soil, the knownAnd unknown powers of soil and soul.As bodies yield to the controlOf the earth's center, and so bendIn age, so hearts toward the endBend down with lips so long athirstTo waters which were known at first—The little spring at Leese's GroveWas your first love, is your last love!
When those we knew in youth have creptUnder the landscape, which has keptNothing we saw with youthful eyes;Ere God is formed in the empty skies,I wonder not our steps are pressedToward the mystery of their rest.That is the hope at bud which kneelsWhere ancestors the tomb conceals.Age no less than youth would leanUpon some love. For what is seenNo more of father, mother, friend,For hands of flesh lost, eyes grown blindIn death, a something which assures,Comforts, allays our fears, endures.Just as the landscape and our homeIn childhood made of heaven's dome,And all the farthest ways of earthA place as sheltered as the hearth.
Is it not written at the last dayHeaven and earth shall roll away?Yes, as my landscape passed through death,Lay like a corpse, and with new breathBecame instinct with fire and light—So shall it roll up in my sight,Pass from the realm of finite sense,Become a thing of spirit, whenceI shall pass too, its child in faithOf dreams it gave me, which nor deathNor change can wreck, but still revealIn change a Something vast, more realThan sunsets, meadows, green-wood trees,Or even faery presences.A Something which the earth and airTransmutes but keeps them what they were;Clear films of beauty grown more thinAs we approach and enter in.Until we reach the scene that madeOur landscape just a thing of shade.
Well, then, another drink! Ben Jonson knows,So do you, Michael Drayton, that to-morrowI reach my fifty-second year. But hark ye,To-morrow lacks two days of being a month—Here is a secret—since I made my will.Heigh ho! that's done too! I wonder why I did it?That I should make a will! Yet it may beThat then and jump at this most crescent hourHeaven inspired the deed.As a mad younkerI knew an aged man in WarwickshireWho used to say, "Ah, mercy me," for sadnessOf change, or passing time, or secret thoughts.If it was spring he sighed it, if 'twas fall,With drifting leaves, he looked upon the rainAnd with doleful suspiration keptThis habit of his grief. And on a timeAs he stood looking at the flying clouds,I loitering near, expectant, heard him say it,Inquired, "Why do you say 'Ah, mercy me,'Now that it's April?" So he hobbled offAnd left me empty there.Now here am I!Oh, it is strange to find myself this age,And rustling like a peascod, though unshelled,And, like this aged man of Warwickshire,Slaved by a mood which must have breath—"Tra-la!That's what I say instead of "Ah, mercy me."For look you, Ben, I catch myself with "Tra-la"The moment I break sleep to see the day.At work, alone, vexed, laughing, mad or gladI say, "Tra-la" unknowing. Oft at tableI say, "Tra-la." And 'tother day, poor AnneLooked long at me and said, "You say, 'Tra-la'Sometimes when you're asleep; why do you so?"Then I bethought me of that aged manWho used to say, "Ah, mercy me," but answered:"Perhaps I am so happy when awakeThe song crops out in slumber—who can say?"And Anne arose, began to keel the pot,But was she answered, Ben? Who know a woman?To-morrow is my birthday. If I die,Slip out of this with Bacchus for a guide,What soul would interdict the poppied way?Heroes may look the Monster down, a childCan wilt a lion, who is cowed to seeSuch bland unreckoning of his strength—but I,Having so greatly lived, would sink awayUnknowing my departure. I have diedA thousand times, and with a valiant soulHave drunk the cup, but why? In such a deathTo-morrow shines and there's a place to lean.But in this death that has no bottom to it,No bank beyond, no place to step, the soulGrows sick, and like a falling dream we shrinkFrom that inane which gulfs us, without placeFor us to stand and see it.Yet, dear Ben,This thing must be; that's what we live to knowOut of long dreaming, saying that we know it.As yeasty heroes in their braggart teensSpout learnedly of war, who never sawA cannon aimed. You drink too much to-day,Or get a scratch while turning Lucy's stile,And like a beast you sicken. Like a beastThey cart you off. What matter if your thoughtOutsoared the Phoenix? Like a beast you rot.Methinks that something wants our flesh, as weHunger for flesh of beasts. But still to-morrow,To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrowCreeps in this petty pace—O, Michael Drayton,Some end must be. But 'twixt the fear of ceasingAnd weariness of going on we lieUpon these thorns!These several springs I findNo new birth in the Spring. And yet in LondonI used to cry, "O, would I were in Stratford;It's April and the larks are singing now.The flags are green along the Avon river;O, would I were a rambler in the fields.This poor machine is racing to its wreck.This grist of thought is endless, this old sorrowSprouts, winds and crawls in London's darkness. ComeBack to your landscape! Peradventure waitsSome woman there who will make new the earth,And crown the spring with fire."So back I come.And the springs march before me, say, "BeholdHere are we, and what would you, can you use us?What good is air if lungs are out, or springsWhen the mind's flown so far away no spring,Nor loveliness of earth can call it back?I tell you what it is: in early youthThe life is in the loins; by thirty yearsIt travels through the stomach to the lungs,And then we strut and crow. By forty yearsThe fruit is swelling while the leaves are fresh.By fifty years you're ripe, begin to rot.At fifty-two, or fifty-five or sixtyThe life is in the seed—what's spring to you?Puff! Puff! You are so winged and light you fly.For every passing zephyr, are blown off,And drifting, God knows where, cry out "tra-la,""Ah, mercy me," as it may happen you.Puff! Puff! away you go!Another drink?Why, you may drown the earth with ale and IWill drain it like a sea. The more I drinkThe better I see that this is April time. ...Ben! There is one Voice which says to everything:"Dream what you will, I'll make you bear your seed.And, having borne, the sickle comes among yeAnd takes your stalk." The rich and sappy greensOf spring or June show life within the loins,And all the world is fair, for now the plantCan drink the level cup of flame where heavenIs poured full by the sun. But when the blossomFlutters its colors, then it takes the cupAnd waves the stalk aside. And having drunkThe stalk to penury, then slumber comesWith dreams of spring stored in the imprisoned germ,An old life and a new life all in one,A thing of memory and of prophecy,Of reminiscence, longing, hope and fear.What has been ours is taken, what was oursBecomes entailed on our seed in the spring,Fees in possession and enjoyment too. ...The thing is sex, Ben. It is that which livesAnd dies in us, makes April and unmakes,And leaves a man like me at fifty-two,Finished but living, on the pinnacleBetwixt a death and birth, the earth consumedAnd heaven rolled up to eyes whose troubled glancesWould shape again to something better—what?Give me a woman, Ben, and I will pickOut of this April, by this larger artOf fifty-two, such songs as we have heard,Both you and I, when weltering in the cloudsOf that eternity which comes in sleep,Or in the viewless spinning of the soulWhen most intense. The woman is somewhere,And that's what tortures, when I think this fieldSo often gleaned could blossom once againIf I could find her.Well, as to my plays:I have not written out what I would write.They have a thousand buds of finer flowering.And over "Hamlet" hangs a teasing spiritAs fine to that as sense is fine to flesh.Good friends, my soul beats up its prisoned wingsAgainst the ceiling of a vaster whorlAnd would break through and enter. But, fair friends,What strength in place of sex shall steady me?What is the motive of this higher mount?What process in the making of myself—The very fire, as it were, of my growth—Shall furnish forth these writings by the way,As incident, expression of the natureRelumed for adding branches, twigs and leaves?...Suppose I'd make a tragedy of this,Focus my fancied "Dante" to this theme,And leave my halfwrit "Sappho," which at bestIs just another delving in the mineThat gave me "Cleopatra" and the Sonnets?If you have genius, write my tragedy,And call it "Shakespeare, Gentleman of Stratford,"Who lost his soul amid a thousand souls,And had to live without it, yet live with itAs wretched as the souls whose lives he lived.Here is a play for you: Poor William Shakespeare,This moment growing drunk, the famous authorOf certain sugared sonnets and some plays,With this machine too much to him, which startedSome years ago, now cries him nay and runsEven when the house shakes and complains, "I fall,You shake me down, my timbers break apart.Why, if an engine must go on like thisThe building should be stronger."Or to mix,And by the mixing, unmix metaphors,No mortal man has blood enough for brainsAnd stomach too, when the brain is never doneWith thinking and creating.For you see,I pluck a flower, cut off a dragon's head—Choose twixt these figures—lo, a dozen buds,A dozen heads out-crop. For every fancy,Play, sonnet, what you will, I write me outWith thinking "Now I'm done," a hundred othersCrowd up for voices, and, like twins unbornKick and turn o'er for entrance to the world.And I, poor fecund creature, who would rest,As 'twere from an importunate husband, flyTo money-lending, farming, mulberry trees,Enclosing Welcombe fields, or idling hoursIn common talk with people like the Combes.All this to get a heartiness, a holdOn earth again, lest Heaven Hercules,Finding me strayed to mid-air, kicking heelsAbove the mountain tops, seize on my scruffAnd bear me off or strangle.Good, my friends,The "Tempest" is as nothing to the voiceThat calls me to performance—what I know not.I've planned an epic of the Asian washWhich slopped the star of Athens and put out,Which should all history analyze, and presentA thousand notables in the guise of life,And show the ancient world and worlds to comeTo the last blade of thought and tiniest seedOf growth to be. With visions such as theseMy spirit turns in restless ecstacy,And this enslaved brain is master sponge,And sucks the blood of body, hands and feet.While my poor spirit, like a butterflyGummed in its shell, beats its bedraggled wings,And cannot rise.I'm cold, both hands and feet.These three days past I have been cold, this hourI am warm in three days. God bless the ale.God did do well to give us anodynes. ...So now you know why I am much alone,And cannot fellow with Augustine Phillips,John Heminge, Richard Burbage, Henry Condell,And do not have them here, dear ancient friends,Who grieve, no doubt, and wonder for changed love.Love is not love which alters when it findsA change of heart, but mine has changed not, onlyI cannot be my old self. I blaspheme:I hunger for broiled fish, but fly the touchOf hands of flesh.I am most passionate,And long am used perplexities of loveTo bemoan and to bewail. And do you wonder,Seeing what I am, what my fate has been?Well, hark you; Anne is sixty now, and I,A crater which erupts, look where she standsIn lava wrinkles, eight years older than I am,As years go, but I am a youth afireWhile she is lean and slippered. It's a FuryWhich takes me sometimes, makes my hands clutch outFor virgins in their teens. O sullen fancy!I want them not, I want the love which springsLike flame which blots the sun, where fuel of bodyIs piled in reckless generosity. ...You are most learned, Ben, Greek and Latin know,And think me nature's child, scarce understandHow much of physic, law, and ancient annalsI have stored up by means of studious zeal.But pass this by, and for the braggart breathEnsuing now say, "Will was in his cups,Potvaliant, boozed, corned, squiffy, obfuscated,Crapulous, inter pocula, or so forth.Good sir, or so, or friend, or gentleman,According to the phrase or the additionOf man and country, on my honor, ShakespeareAt Stratford, on the twenty-second of April,Year sixteen-sixteen of our Lord was merry—Videlicet, was drunk." Well, where was I?—Oh yes, at braggart breath, and now to say it:I believe and say it as I would lightly speakOf the most common thing to sense, outsideMyself to touch or analyze, this mindWhich has been used by Something, as I useA quill for writing, never in this worldIn the most high and palmy days of Greece,Or in this roaring age, has known its peer.No soul as mine has lived, felt, suffered, dreamed,Broke open spirit secrets, followed trailsOf passions curious, countless lives exploredAs I have done. And what are Greek and Latin,The lore of Aristotle, Plato to this?Since I know them by what I am, the essenceFrom which their utterance came, myself a flowerOf every graft and being in myselfThe recapitulation and the complexOf all the great. Were not brains before books?And even geometries in some brainBefore old Gutenberg? O fie, Ben Jonson,If I am nature's child am I not all?Howe'er it be, ascribe this to the ale,And say that reason in me was a fume.But if you honor me, as you have said,As much as any, this side idolatry,Think, Ben, of this: That I, whate'er I beIn your regard, have come to fifty-two,Defeated in my love, who knew too wellThat poets through the love of women turnTo satyrs or to gods, even as womenBy the first touch of passion bloom or rotAs angels or as bawds.Bethink you alsoHow I have felt, seen, known the mystic processWorking in man's soul from the woman soulAs part thereof in essence, spirit and flesh,Even as a malady may be, while this thingIs health and growth, and growing draws all life,All goodness, wisdom for its nutriment.Till it become a vision paradisic,And a ladder of fire for climbing, from its topmostRung a place for stepping into heaven. ...This I have know, but had not. Nor have IStood coolly off and seen the woman, usedHer blood upon my palette. No, but heavenCommanded my strength's use to abort and slayWhat grew within me, while I saw the bloodOf love untimely ripped, as 'twere a childKilled i' the womb, a harpy or an angelWith my own blood stained.As a virgin shamedBy the swelling life unlicensed needles it,But empties not her womb of some last shredOf flesh which fouls the alleys of her body,And fills her wholesome nerves with poisoned sleep,And weakness to the last of life, so IFor some shame not unlike, some need of lifeTo rid me of this life I had conceivedDid up and choke it too, and thence begotA fever and a fixed debilityFor killing that begot.Now you see that IHave not grown from a central dream, but grownDespite a wound, and over the wound and usedMy flesh to heal my flesh. My love's a feverWhich longed for that which nursed the malady,And fed on that which still preserved the ill,The uncertain, sickly appetite to please.My reason, the physician to my love,Angry that his prescriptions are not keptHas left me. And as reason is past careI am past cure, with ever more unrestMade frantic-mad, my thoughts as madmen's are,And my discourse at random from the truth,Not knowing what she is, who swore her fairAnd thought her bright, who is as black as hellAnd dark as night.But list, good gentlemen,This love I speak of is not as a cloakWhich one may put away to wear a coat,And doff that for a jacket, like the lovesWe men are wont to have as loves or wives.She is the very one, the soul of souls,And when you put her on you put on light,Or wear the robe of Nessus, poisonous fire,Which if you tear away you tear your life,And if you wear you fall to ashes. So'Tis not her bed-vow broke, I have broke mine,That ruins me; 'tis honest faith quite lost,And broken hope that we could find each other,And that mean more to me and less to her.'Tis that she could take all of me and leave meWithout a sense of loss, without a tear,And make me fool and perjured for the oathThat swore her fair and true. I feel myselfAs like a virgin who her body givesFor love of one whose love she dreams is hers,But wakes to find herself a toy of blood,And dupe of prodigal breath, abandoned quiteFor other conquests. For I gave myself,And shrink for thought thereof, and for the lossOf myself never to myself restored.The urtication of this shame made playsAnd sonnets, as you'll find behind all deedsThat mount to greatness, anger, hate, disgust,But, better, love.To hell with punks and wenches,Drabs, mopsies, doxies, minxes, trulls and queans,Rips, harridans and strumpets, pieces, jades.And likewise to the eternal bonfire lechers,All rakehells, satyrs, goats and placket fumblers,Gibs, breakers-in-at-catch-doors, thunder tubes.I think I have a fever—hell and furies!Or else this ale grows hotter i' the mouth.Ben, if I die before you, let me wasteRichly and freely in the good brown earth,Untrumpeted and by no bust marked out.What good, Ben Jonson, if the world could seeWhat face was mine, who wrote these plays and sonnets?Life, you have hurt me. Since Death has a veilI take the veil and hide, and like great CæsarWho drew his toga round him, I depart.Good friends, let's to the fields—I have a fever.After a little walk, and by your pardon,I think I'll sleep. There is no sweeter thing,Nor fate more blessed than to sleep. Here, world,I pass you like an orange to a child:I can no more with you. Do what you will.What should my care be when I have no powerTo save, guide, mould you? Naughty world you need meAs little as I need you: go your way!Tyrants shall rise and slaughter fill the earth,But I shall sleep. In wars and wars and warsThe ever-replenished youth of earth shall shriekAnd clap their gushing wounds—but I shall sleep,Nor earthy thunder wake me when the cannonShall shake the throne of Tartarus. OratorsShall fulmine over London or AmericaOf rights eternal, parchments, sacred chartersAnd cut each others' throats when reason fails—But I shall sleep. This globe may last and breedThe race of men till Time cries out "How long?"But I shall sleep ten thousand thousand years.I am a dream, Ben, out of a blessed sleep—Let's walk and hear the lark.