Canzoni & Ripostes Part 15

II

FROM A THING BY SCHUMANN

Breast high, floating and welling Their soul, moving beneath the satin, Plied the gold threads, Pushed at the gauze above it.

The notes beat upon this, Beat and indented it; Rain dropped and came and fell upon this, Hail and snow, My sight gone in the flurry!

And then across the white silken, Bellied up, as a sail bellies to the wind, Over the fluid tenuous, diaphanous, Over this curled a wave, greenish, Mounted and overwhelmed it.

This membrane floating above, And bellied out by the up-pressing soul.

Then came a mer-host, And after them legion of Romans, The usual, dull, theatrical!

THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF T.E. HULME

PREFATORY NOTE

In publis.h.i.+ng his _Complete Poetical Works_ at thirty,[1] Mr Hulme has set an enviable example to many of his contemporaries who have had less to say.

They are reprinted here for good fellows.h.i.+p; for good custom, a custom out of Tuscany and of Provence; and thirdly, for convenience, seeing their smallness of bulk; and for good memory, seeing that they recall certain evenings and meetings of two years gone, dull enough at the time, but rather pleasant to look back upon.

As for the "School of Images," which may or may not have existed, its principles were not so interesting as those of the "inherent dynamists" or of _Les Unanimistes_, yet they were probably sounder than those of a certain French school which attempted to dispense with verbs altogether; or of the Impressionists who brought forth:

"Pink pigs blossoming upon the hillside";

or of the Post-Impressionists who beseech their ladies to let down slate-blue hair over their raspberry-coloured flanks.

_Ardoise_ rimed richly--ah, richly and rarely rimed!--with _framboise_.

As for the future, _Les Imagistes_, the descendants of the forgotten school of 1909, have that in their keeping.

I refrain from publis.h.i.+ng my proposed _Historical Memoir_ of their forerunners, because Mr Hulme has threatened to print the original propaganda.

E.P.

[1] Mr Pound has grossly exaggerated my age.--T.E.H.

AUTUMN

A touch of cold in the Autumn night-- I walked abroad, And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge Like a red-faced farmer.

I did not stop to speak, but nodded, And round about were the wistful stars With white faces like town children.

MANA ABODA

Beauty is the marking-time, the stationary vibration, the feigned ecstasy of an arrested impulse unable to reach its natural end.

Mana Aboda, whose bent form The sky in arched circle is, Seems ever for an unknown grief to mourn.

Yet on a day I heard her cry: "I weary of the roses and the singing poets-- Josephs all, not tall enough to try."

ABOVE THE DOCK

Above the quiet dock in mid night, Tangled in the tall mast's corded height, Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play.

THE EMBANKMENT

(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a cold, bitter night.)

Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy, In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.

Now see I That warmth's the very stuff of poesy.

Oh, G.o.d, make small The old star-eaten blanket of the sky, That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.

CONVERSION

Lighthearted I walked into the valley wood In the time of hyacinths, Till beauty like a scented cloth Cast over, stifled me. I was bound Motionless and faint of breath By loveliness that is her own eunuch.

Now pa.s.s I to the final river Ignominiously, in a sack, without sound, As any peeping Turk to the Bosphorus.

FINISH