Poems by William Ernest Henley Part 5

Where the tall grain is ripe Thrust in your sickles!

Stripped and adust In a stubble of empire, Scything and binding The full sheaves of sovranty: Thus, O, thus gloriously, Shall you fulfil yourselves!

Thus, O, thus mightily, Show yourselves sons of mine - Yea, and win grace of me: I am the Sword!

I am the feast-maker: Hark, through a noise Of the screaming of eagles, Hark how the Trumpet, The mistress of mistresses, Calls, silver-throated And stern, where the tables Are spread, and the meal Of the Lord is in hand!

Driving the darkness, Even as the banners And spears of the Morning; Sifting the nations, The slag from the metal, The waste and the weak From the fit and the strong; Fighting the brute, The abysmal Fecundity; Checking the gross, Mult.i.tudinous blunders, The groping, the purblind Excesses in service Of the Womb universal, The absolute drudge; Firing the charactry Carved on the World, The miraculous gem In the seal-ring that burns On the hand of the Master - Yea! and authority Flames through the dim, Unappeasable Grisliness p.r.o.ne down the nethermost Chasms of the Void! - Clear singing, clean slicing; Sweet spoken, soft finis.h.i.+ng; Making death beautiful, Life but a coin To be staked in the pastime Whose playing is more Than the transfer of being; Arch-anarch, chief builder, Prince and evangelist, I am the Will of G.o.d: I am the Sword.

The Sword Singing - The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword Clanging majestical, As from the starry-staired Courts of the primal Supremacy, His high, irresistible song.

ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS -To Elizabeth Robins Pennell

'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits!'--Fantasio.

Once on a time There was a little boy: a master-mage By virtue of a Book Of magic--O, so magical it filled His life with visionary pomps Processional! And Powers Pa.s.sed with him where he pa.s.sed. And Thrones And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed, Thronged in the criss-cross streets, The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields, Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades, Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul Pavilioned jealously, and hid As in the dusk, profound, Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere. -

I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!

A flickering s.n.a.t.c.h of memory that floats Upon the face of a pool of darkness five And thirty dead years deep, Antic in girlish broideries And skirts and silly shoes with straps And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks Plain in the shadow of a church (St. Michael's: in whose brazen call To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed), Sedate for all his haste To be at home; and, nestled in his arm, Inciting still to quiet and solitude, Boarded in sober drab, With small, square, agitating cuts Let in a-top of the double-columned, close, Quakerlike print, a Book! . . .

What but that blessed brief Of what is gallantest and best In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance?

The Book of rocs, Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris, Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars, And ghouls, and genies--O, so huge They might have overed the tall Minster Tower Hands down, as schoolboys take a post!

In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman, Schemselnihar and Sindbad, Scheherezade The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour, Cairo and Serendib and Candahar, And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk - Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms - Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles, The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights!

Old friends I had a-many--kindly and grim Familiars, cronies quaint And goblin! Never a Wood but housed Some morrice of dainty dapperlings. No Brook But had his nunnery Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites, To cabin in his grots, and pace His lilied margents. Every lone Hillside Might open upon Elf-Land. Every Stalk That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs You climbed beyond the clouds, and found The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged And drowsy, from his great oak chair, Among the flitches and pewters at the fire, Called for his Faery Harp. And in it flew, And, perching on the kitchen table, sang Jocund and jubilant, with a sound Of those gay, golden-vowered madrigals The shy thrush at mid-May Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn; Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still, In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring, For Pan's own whistle, savage and rich and lewd, And mocked him call for call!

I could not pa.s.s The half-door where the cobbler sat in view Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun, In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes, Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists And elbows. In the rich June fields, Where the ripe clover drew the bees, And the tall quakers trembled, and the West Wind Lolled his half-holiday away Beside me lolling and lounging through my own, 'Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son On his white horse along the leafy lanes; For at his stirrup linked and ran, Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped From wall to wall above the espaliers, But in the bravest tops That market-town, a town of tops, could show: Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail A banner flaunted in disdain Of human stratagems and s.h.i.+fts: King over All the Catlands, present and past And future, that moustached Artificer of fortunes, Puss-in-Boots!

Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenis.h.i.+ng Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood, And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases - Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part A faery chamber hazily seen And hazily figured--on dark afternoons And windy nights was visiting of the best.

Then, too, the pelt of hoofs Out in the roaring darkness told Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit, Between his h.e.l.l-born Hounds.

And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear, Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall, The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins; For, listening, I could help him play His wonderful game, In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world.

But what were these so near, So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought The run of Ali Baba's Cave Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,'

With gold to measure, peck by peck, In round, brown wooden stoups You borrowed at the chandler's? . . . Or one time Made you Aladdin's friend at school, Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair For all the embrowning scars in their white b.r.e.a.s.t.s Went labouring under some dread ordinance, Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while, Strange Curs that cried as they, Till there was never a Black b.i.t.c.h of all Your consorting but might have gone Spell-driven miserably for crimes Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . .

Or at the ghostliest alt.i.tudes of night, While you lay wondering and acold, Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon Queen Labe, abominable and dear, Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom, Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk), And muttered certain words you could not hear; And there! a living stream, The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flags And cresses, glittered and sang Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness, Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . .

I was--how many a time! - That Second Calendar, Son of a King, On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined, Pausing at one mysterious door, To pry no closer, but content his soul With his kind Forty. Yet I could not rest For idleness and ungovernable Fate.

And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame (That wonder-working word!), Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans, And soaring, soaring on From air to air, came charging to the ground Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds, And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled Flicked at me with his tail, And left me blinded, miserable, distraught (Even as I was in deed, When doctors came, and odious things were done On my poor tortured eyes With lancets; or some evil acid stung And wrung them like hot sand, And desperately from room to room Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way), To get to Bagdad how I might. But there I met with Merry Ladies. O you three - Safie, Amine, Zobeide--when my heart Forgets you all shall be forgot!

And so we supped, we and the rest, On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates, Almonds, pistachios, citrons. And Haroun Laughed out of his lordly beard On Giaffar and Mesrour (I knew the Three For all their Mossoul habits). And outside The Tigris, flowing swift Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars; The vast, blue night Was murmurous with peris' plumes And the leathern wings of genies; words of power Were whispering; and old fishermen, Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to sh.o.r.e Dead loveliness: or a prodigy in scales Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold: Or copper vessels, stopped with lead, Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed, In durance under potent charactry Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .

Then, as the Book was gla.s.sed In Life as in some olden mirror's quaint, Bewildering angles, so would Life Flash light on light back on the Book; and both Were changed. Once in a house decayed From better days, harbouring an errant show (For all its stories of dry-rot Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax, Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes), I wandered; and no living soul Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared Upon them staring--staring. Till at last, Three sets of rafters from the streets, I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room, With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene, Guarding the door: and there, in a bedroom-set, Behind a fence of faded crimson cords, With an aspect of frills And dimities and dishonoured privacy That made you hanker and hesitate to look, A Woman with her litter of Babes--all slain, All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes Staring--still staring; so that I turned and ran As for my neck, but in the street Took breath. The same, it seemed, And yet not all the same, I was to find, As I went up! For afterwards, Whenas I went my round alone - All day alone--in long, stern, silent streets, Where I might stretch my hand and take Whatever I would: still there were Shapes of Stone, Motionless, lifelike, frightening--for the Wrath Had smitten them; but they watched, This by her melons and figs, that by his rings And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze, The Painted Eyes insufferable, Now, of those grisly images; and I Pursued my best-beloved quest, Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear.

So the night fell--with never a lamplighter; And through the Palace of the King I groped among the echoes, and I felt That they were there, Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes, Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far A Voice! And in a little while Two tapers burning! And the Voice, Heard in the wondrous Word of G.o.d, was--whose?

Whose but Zobeide's, The lady of my heart, like me A True Believer, and like me An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .

Or, sailing to the Isles Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew Swiftly . . . and grew. Tearing their beards, The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave s.h.i.+p, Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad, Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's hand, And, turning broadside on, As the most iron would, was haled and sucked Nearer, and nearer yet; And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now That swallowed sea and sky; and then, Anchors and nails and bolts Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang, A noise of fifty st.i.thies, caught at the sides Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay, A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal About the waters; and her crew Pa.s.sed shrieking, one by one; and I was left To drown. All the long night I swam; But in the morning, O, the smiling coast Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike, Skirted with shelving sands! And a great wave Cast me ash.o.r.e; and I was saved alive.

So, giving thanks to G.o.d, I dried my clothes, And, faring inland, in a desert place I stumbled on an iron ring - The fellow of fifty built into the Quays: When, scenting a trap-door, I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade Stuck into wood. And then, The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs, Sunk in the naked rock! The cool, clean vault, So neat with niche on niche it might have been Our beer-cellar but for the rows Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars) Full to the wide, squat throats With gold-dust, but a-top A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things I knew for olives! And far, O, far away, The Princess of China languished! Far away Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief Of Eunuchs and the privilege Of going out at night To play--unkenned, majestical, secure - Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped Like Tigris sh.o.r.e for sh.o.r.e! Haply a Ghoul Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon, A thighbone in his fist, and glared At supper with a Lady: she who took Her rice with tweezers grain by grain.

Or you might stumble--there by the iron gates Of the Pump Room--underneath the limes - Upon Bedreddin in his s.h.i.+rt and drawers, Just as the civil Genie laid him down.

Or those red-curtained panes, Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes, Might turn a caravansery's, wherein You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk, And that fair Persian, bathed in tears, You'd not have given away For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous You had that dark and disleaved afternoon Escaped on a roc's claw, Disguised like Sindbad--but in Christmas beef!

And all the blissful while The schoolboy satchel at your hip Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn From over Caspian: yea, the Chief Jewellers Of Tartary and the bazaars, Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind. -

Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart The magian East: thus the child eyes Spelled out the wizard message by the light Of the sober, workaday hours They saw, week in week out, pa.s.s, and still pa.s.s In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind In ancient Severn's arm, Amongst her water-meadows and her docks, Whose floating populace of s.h.i.+ps - Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines, Bluff barques and rake-h.e.l.l fore-and-afters--brought To her very doorsteps and geraniums The scents of the World's End; the calls That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride Like fire on some high errand of the race; The irresistible appeals For comrades.h.i.+p that sound Steadily from the irresistible sea.

Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale, Telling itself anew In terms of living, labouring life, Took on the colours, busked it in the wear Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance, The Angel-Playmate, raining down His golden influences On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did, Walked with me arm in arm, Or left me, as one bediademed with straws And bits of gla.s.s, to gladden at my heart Who had the gift to seek and feel and find His fiery-hearted presence everywhere.

Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things, Sends the same silver dews Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies On some poor collier-hamlet--(mound on mound Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk Sullenly smoking over a row Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings Of hurtling, tipping trams) - As on the amorous nightingales And roses of s.h.i.+raz, or the walls and towers Of Samarcand--the Ineffable--whence you espy The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears, Like listed lightnings.

Samarcand!

That name of names! That star-vaned belvedere Builded against the Chambers of the South!

That outpost on the Infinite!

And behold!

Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide Might overtake you: for one fringe, One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one Floats founded vague In lubberlands delectable--isles of palm And lotus, fortunate mains, far-s.h.i.+mmering seas, The promise of wistful hills - The s.h.i.+ning, s.h.i.+fting Sovranties of Dream.

BRIC-A-BRAC

'The tune of the time.'--HAMLET, concerning OSRIC

BALLADE OF A TOYOKUNI COLOUR-PRINT--To W. A.

Was I a Samurai renowned, Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow?

A histrion angular and profound?

A priest? a porter?--Child, although I have forgotten clean, I know That in the shade of Fujisan, What time the cherry-orchards blow, I loved you once in old j.a.pan.

As here you loiter, flowing-gowned And hugely sashed, with pins a-row Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned, Demure, inviting--even so, When merry maids in Miyako To feel the sweet o' the year began, And green gardens to overflow, I loved you once in old j.a.pan.

Clear s.h.i.+ne the hills; the rice-fields round Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow, A blue ca.n.a.l the lake's blue bound Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo!

Touched with the sundown's spirit and glow, I see you turn, with flirted fan, Against the plum-tree's bloomy snow . . .

I loved you once in old j.a.pan!

Envoy

Dear, 'twas a dozen lives ago; But that I was a lucky man The Toyokuni here will show: I loved you--once--in old j.a.pan.

BALLADE (DOUBLE REFRAIN) OF YOUTH AND AGE--I. M. Thomas Edward Brown (1829-1896)

Spring at her height on a morn at prime, Sails that laugh from a flying squall, Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme - Youth is the sign of them, one and all.

Winter sunsets and leaves that fall, An empty flagon, a folded page, A tumble-down wheel, a tattered ball - These are a type of the world of Age.

Bells that clash in a gaudy chime, Swords that clatter in onsets tall, The words that ring and the fames that climb - Youth is the sign of them, one and all.

Hymnals old in a dusty stall, A bald, blind bird in a crazy cage, The scene of a faded festival - These are a type of the world of Age.