The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems Part 3

There is a country in my mind, Lovelier than a poet blind Could dream of, who had never known This world of drought and dust and stone In all its ugliness: a place Full of an all but human grace; Whose dells retain the printed form Of heavenly sleep, and seem yet warm From some pure body newly risen; Where matter is no more a prison, But freedom for the soul to know Its native beauty. For things glow There with an inward truth and are All fire and colour like a star.

And in that land are domes and towers That hang as light and bright as flowers Upon the sky, and seem a birth Rather of air than solid earth.

Sometimes I dream that walking there In the green shade, all unaware At a new turn of the golden glade, I shall see her, and as though afraid Shall halt a moment and almost fall For pa.s.sing faintness, like a man Who feels the sudden spirit of Pan Br.i.m.m.i.n.g his narrow soul with all The illimitable world. And she, Turning her head, will let me see The first sharp dawn of her surprise Turning to welcome in her eyes.

And I shall come and take my lover And looking on her re-discover All her beauty:--her dark hair And the little ears beneath it, where Roses of lucid shadow sleep; Her brooding mouth, and in the deep Wells of her eyes reflected stars ...

Oh, the imperishable things That hands and lips as well as words Shall speak! Oh movement of white wings, Oh wheeling galaxies of birds ...!

THE ALIEN

A petal drifted loose From a great magnolia bloom, Your face hung in the gloom, Floating, white and close.

We seemed alone: but another Bent o'er you with lips of flame, Unknown, without a name, Hated, and yet my brother.

Your one short moan of pain Was an exorcising spell: The devil flew back to h.e.l.l; We were alone again.

A LITTLE MEMORY

White in the moonlight, Wet with dew, We have known the languor Of being two.

We have been weary As children are, When over them, radiant, A stooping star,

Bends their Good-Night, Kissed and smiled:-- Each was mother, Each was child.

Child, from your forehead I kissed the hair, Gently, ah, gently: And you were

Mistress and mother When on your breast I lay so safely And could rest.

WAKING

Darkness had stretched its colour, Deep blue across the pane: No cloud to make night duller, No moon with its tarnish stain; But only here and there a star, One sharp point of frosty fire, Hanging infinitely far In mockery of our life and death And all our small desire.

Now in this hour of waking From under brows of stone, A new pale day is breaking And the deep night is gone.

Sordid now, and mean and small The daylight world is seen again, With only the veils of mist that fall Deaf and m.u.f.fling over all To hide its ugliness and pain.

But to-day this dawn of meanness s.h.i.+nes in my eyes, as when The new world's brightness and cleanness Broke on the first of men.

For the light that shows the huddled things Of this close-pressing earth, s.h.i.+nes also on your face and brings All its dear beauty back to me In a new miracle of birth.

I see you asleep and unpa.s.sioned, White-faced in the dusk of your hair-- Your beauty so fleetingly fas.h.i.+oned That it filled me once with despair To look on its exquisite transience And think that our love and thought and laughter Puff out with the death of our flickering sense, While we pa.s.s ever on and away Towards some blank hereafter.

But now I am happy, knowing That swift time is our friend, And that our love's pa.s.sionate glowing, Though it turn ash in the end, Is a rose of fire that must blossom its way Through temporal stuff, nor else could be More than a nothing. Into day The boundless s.p.a.ces of night contract And in your opening eyes I see Night born in day, in time eternity.

BY THE FIRE

We who are lovers sit by the fire, Cradled warm 'twixt thought and will, Sit and drowse like sleeping dogs In the equipoise of all desire, Sit and listen to the still Small hiss and whisper of green logs That burn away, that burn away With the sound of a far-off falling stream Of threaded water blown to steam, Grey ghost in the mountain world of grey.

Vapours blue as distance rise Between the hissing logs that show A glimpse of rosy heat below; And candles watch with tireless eyes While we sit drowsing here. I know, Dimly, that there exists a world, That there is time perhaps, and s.p.a.ce Other and wider than this place, Where at the fireside drowsily curled We hear the whisper and watch the flame Burn blinkless and inscrutable.

And then I know those other names That through my brain from cell to cell Echo--reverberated shout Of waiters mournful along corridors: But n.o.body carries the orders out, And the names (dear friends, your name and yours) Evoke no sign. But here I sit On the wide hearth, and there are you: That is enough and only true.

The world and the friends that lived in it Are shadows: you alone remain Real in this drowsing room, Full of the whispers of distant rain And candles staring into the gloom.

VALEDICTORY

I had remarked--how sharply one observes When life is disappearing round the curves Of yet another corner, out of sight!-- I had remarked when it was "good luck" and "good night"

And "a good journey to you," on her face Certain enigmas penned in the hieroglyphs Of that half frown and queer fixed smile and trace Of clouded thought in those brown eyes, Always so happily clear of hows and ifs-- My poor bleared mind!--and haunting whys.

There I stood, holding her farewell hand, (Pressing my life and soul and all The world to one good-bye, till, small And smaller pressed, why there I'd stand Dead when they vanished with the sight of her).

And I saw that she had grown aware, Queer puzzled face! of other things Beyond the present and her own young speed, Of yesterday and what new days might breed Monstrously when the future brings A charger with your late-lamented head: Aware of other people's lives and will, Aware, perhaps, aware even of me ...

The joyous hope of it! But still I pitied her; for it was sad to see A G.o.ddess shorn of her divinity.

In the midst of her speed she had made pause, And doubts with all their threat of claws, Outstripped till now by her unconsciousness, Had seized on her; she was proved mortal now.

"Live, only live! For you were meant Never to know a thought's distress, But a long glad astonishment At the world's beauty and your own.

The pity of you, G.o.ddess, grown Perplexed and mortal."

Yet ... yet ... can it be That she is aware, perhaps, even of me?

And life recedes, recedes; the curve is bare, My handkerchief flutters blankly in the air; And the question rumbles in the void: Was she aware, was she after all aware?

LOVE SONG

Dear absurd child--too dear to my cost I've found-- G.o.d made your soul for pleasure, not for use: It cleaves no way, but angled broad obtuse, Impinges with a slabby-bellied sound Full upon life, and on the rind of things Rubs its sleek self and utters purr and snore And all the gamut of satisfied murmurings, Content with that, nor wishes anything more.

A happy infant, daubed to the eyes in juice Of peaches that flush b.l.o.o.d.y at the core, Naked you bask upon a south-sea sh.o.r.e, While o'er your tumbling bosom the hair floats loose.

The wild flowers bloom and die; the heavens go round With the song of wheeling planetary rings: You wriggle in the sun; each moment brings Its freight for you; in all things pleasures abound.

You taste and smile, then this for the next pa.s.s over; And there's no future for you and no past, And when, absurdly, death arrives at last, 'Twill please you awhile to kiss your latest lover.