Complete Works of Aldous Huxley

Home > Literature > Complete Works of Aldous Huxley > Page 428
Complete Works of Aldous Huxley Page 428

by Aldous Huxley


  Out of the chaos of his sundered parts.

  Unmoved, nay pitying, they view the grins

  And lewd grimaces of the folk that jeer ...

  The vulgar herd, gross monster at the best,

  Obscenum Mobile, the uttermost sphere,

  Alas, too much the mover of the rest,

  Though they turn sungates to its widdershins ...

  And in some half a million years perhaps

  God may at last be made ... a new, true Pan,

  An Isis templed in the soul of man,

  An Aphrodite with her thousand paps

  Streaming eternal wisdom.

  Yes, and man’s vessel, all pavilioned out

  With silk and flags in the fair wind astream,

  Shall make the port at last, with a great shout

  Ringing from all her decks, and rocking there shall dream

  For ever, and dream true ... calm in those roads

  As lovers’ souls at evening, when they swim

  Between the despairing sunset and the dim

  Blue memories of mountains lost to sight

  But, like half fancied, half remembered episodes

  Of childhood, guessed at through the veils of night.

  And the worn sailors at the mast who heard

  The first far bells and knew the sound for home,

  Who marked the land-weeds and the sand-stained foam

  And through the storm-blast saw a wildered bird

  Seek refuge at the mast-head ... these at last

  Shall earn due praise when all the hubbub’s past;

  And Cuckoo-Landers not a few shall prove.

  She.

  You have fast closed the temple gates;

  You stand without in the noon-tides glow,

  But the innermost darkness, where God waits,

  You do not know, you cannot know.

  The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems

  CONTENTS

  THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH

  I. UNDER THE TREES.

  VI. IN THE HAY-LOFT.

  VIII. MOUNTAINS.

  X. IN THE LITTLE ROOM.

  XVII. IN THE PARK.

  XX. SELF-TORMENT.

  XXII. THE QUARRY IN THE WOOD.

  SONG OF POPLARS

  THE REEF

  WINTER DREAM

  THE FLOWERS

  THE ELMS

  OUT OF THE WINDOW

  INSPIRATION

  SUMMER STILLNESS

  ANNIVERSARIES

  ITALY

  THE ALIEN

  A LITTLE MEMORY

  WAKING

  BY THE FIRE

  VALEDICTORY

  LOVE SONG

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  REVELATION

  MINOAN PORCELAIN

  THE DECAMERON

  IN UNCERTAINTY TO A LADY

  CRAPULOUS IMPRESSION (To J.S.)

  THE LIFE THEORETIC

  COMPLAINT OF A POET MANQUÉ

  SOCIAL AMENITIES

  TOPIARY

  ON THE BUS

  POINTS AND LINES

  PANIC

  RETURN FROM BUSINESS

  STANZAS

  POEM

  SCENES OF THE MIND

  L’APRÈS-MIDI D’UN FAUNE

  THE LOUSE-HUNTERS

  THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH

  I. UNDER THE TREES.

  There had been phantoms, pale-remembered shapes

  Of this and this occasion, sisterly

  In their resemblances, each effigy

  Crowned with the same bright hair above the nape’s

  White rounded firmness, and each body alert

  With such swift loveliness, that very rest

  Seemed a poised movement: ... phantoms that impressed

  But a faint influence and could bless or hurt

  No more than dreams. And these ghost things were she;

  For formless still, without identity,

  Not one she seemed, not clear, but many and dim.

  One face among the legions of the street,

  Indifferent mystery, she was for him

  Something still uncreated, incomplete.

  II.

  Bright windy sunshine and the shadow of cloud

  Quicken the heavy summer to new birth

  Of life and motion on the drowsing earth;

  The huge elms stir, till all the air is loud

  With their awakening from the muffled sleep

  Of long hot days. And on the wavering line

  That marks the alternate ebb of shade and shine,

  Under the trees, a little group is deep

  In laughing talk. The shadow as it flows

  Across them dims the lustre of a rose,

  Quenches the bright clear gold of hair, the green

  Of a girl’s dress, and life seems faint. The light

  Swings back, and in the rose a fire is seen,

  Gold hair’s aflame and green grows emerald bright.

  III.

  She leans, and there is laughter in the face

  She turns towards him; and it seems a door

  Suddenly opened on some desolate place

  With a burst of light and music. What before

  Was hidden shines in loveliness revealed.

  Now first he sees her beautiful, and knows

  That he must love her; and the doom is sealed

  Of all his happiness and all the woes

  That shall be born of pregnant years hereafter.

  The swift poise of a head, a flutter of laughter —

  And love flows in on him, its vastness pent

  Within his narrow life: the pain it brings,

  Boundless; for love is infinite discontent

  With the poor lonely life of transient things.

  IV.

  Men see their god, an immanence divine,

  Smile through the curve of flesh or moulded clay,

  In bare ploughed lands that go sloping away

  To meet the sky in one clean exquisite line.

  Out of the short-seen dawns of ecstasy

  They draw new beauty, whence new thoughts are born

  And in their turn conceive, as grains of corn

  Germ and create new life and endlessly

  Shall live creating. Out of earthly seeds

  Springs the aerial flower. One spirit proceeds

  Through change, the same in body and in soul —

  The spirit of life and love that triumphs still

  In its slow struggle towards some far-off goal

  Through lust and death and the bitterness of will.

  V.

  One spirit it is that stirs the fathomless deep

  Of human minds, that shakes the elms in storm,

  That sings in passionate music, or on warm

  Still evenings bosoms forth the tufted sleep

  Of thistle-seeds that wait a travelling wind.

  One spirit shapes the subtle rhythms of thought

  And the long thundering seas; the soul is wrought

  Of one stuff with the body — matter and mind

  Woven together in so close a mesh

  That flowers may blossom into a song, that flesh

  May strangely teach the loveliest holiest things

  To watching spirits. Truth is brought to birth

  Not in some vacant heaven: its beauty springs

  From the dear bosom of material earth.

  VI. IN THE HAY-LOFT.

  The darkness in the loft is sweet and warm

  With the stored hay ... darkness intensified

  By one bright shaft that enters through the wide

  Tall doors from under fringes of a storm

  Which makes the doomed sun brighter. On the hay,

  Perched mountain-high they sit, and silently

  Watch the motes dance and look at the dark sky

  And mark how heartbreakingly far away

  And yet how close and clear the distance seems,

  While all at hand is cloud — brightnes
s of dreams

  Unrealisable, yet seen so clear,

  So only just beyond the dark. They wait,

  Scarce knowing what they wait for, half in fear;

  Expectance draws the curtain from their fate.

  VII.

  The silence of the storm weighs heavily

  On their strained spirits: sometimes one will say

  Some trivial thing as though to ward away

  Mysterious powers, that imminently lie

  In wait, with the strong exorcising grace

  Of everyday’s futility. Desire

  Becomes upon a sudden a crystal fire,

  Defined and hard: — If he could kiss her face,

  Could kiss her hair! As if by chance, her hand

  Brushes on his ... Ah, can she understand?

  Or is she pedestalled above the touch

  Of his desire? He wonders: dare he seek

  From her that little, that infinitely much?

  And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek.

  VIII. MOUNTAINS.

  A stronger gust catches the cloud and twists

  A spindle of rifted darkness through its heart,

  A gash in the damp grey, which, thrust apart,

  Reveals black depths a moment. Then the mists

  Shut down again; a white uneasy sea

  Heaves round the climbers and beneath their feet.

  He strains on upwards through the wind and sleet,

  Poised, or swift moving, or laboriously

  Lifting his weight. And if he should let go,

  What would he find down there, down there below

  The curtain of the mist? What would he find

  Beyond the dim and stifling now and here,

  Beneath the unsettled turmoil of his mind?

  Oh, there were nameless depths: he shrank with fear.

  IX.

  The hills more glorious in their coat of snow

  Rise all around him, in the valleys run

  Bright streams, and there are lakes that catch the sun,

  And sunlit fields of emerald far below

  That seem alive with inward light. In smoke

  The far horizons fade; and there is peace

  On everything, a sense of blessed release

  From wilful strife. Like some prophetic cloak

  The spirit of the mountains has descended

  On all the world, and its unrest is ended.

  Even the sea, glimpsed far away, seems still,

  Hushed to a silver peace its storm and strife.

  Mountains of vision, calm above fate and will,

  You hold the promise of the freer life.

  X. IN THE LITTLE ROOM.

  London unfurls its incense-coloured dusk

  Before the panes, rich but a while ago

  With the charred gold and the red ember-glow

  Of dying sunset. Houses quit the husk

  Of secrecy, which, through the day, returns

  A blank to all enquiry: but at nights

  The cheerfulness of fire and lamp invites

  The darkness inward, curious of what burns

  With such a coloured life when all is dead —

  The daylight world outside, with overhead

  White clouds, and where we walk, the blaze

  Of wet and sunlit streets, shops and the stream

  Of glittering traffic — all that the nights erase,

  Colour and speed, surviving but in dream.

  XI.

  Outside the dusk, but in the little room

  All is alive with light, which brightly glints

  On curving cup or the stiff folds of chintz,

  Evoking its own whiteness. Shadows loom,

  Bulging and black, upon the walls, where hang

  Rich coloured plates of beauties that appeal

  Less to the sense of sight than to the feel,

  So moistly satin are their breasts. A pang,

  Almost of pain, runs through him when he sees

  Hanging, a homeless marvel, next to these,

  The silken breastplate of a mandarin,

  Centuries dead, which he had given her.

  Exquisite miracle, when men could spin

  Jay’s wing and belly of the kingfisher!

  XII.

  In silence and as though expectantly

  She crouches at his feet, while he caresses

  His light-drawn fingers with the touch of tresses

  Sleeked round her head, close-banded lustrously,

  Save where at nape and temple the smooth brown

  Sleaves out into a pale transparent mist

  Of hair and tangled light. So to exist,

  Poised ‘twixt the deep of thought where spirits drown

  Life in a void impalpable nothingness,

  And, on the other side, the pain and stress

  Of clamorous action and the gnawing fire

  Of will, focal upon a point of earth — even thus

  To sit, eternally without desire

  And yet self-known, were happiness for us.

  XIII.

  She turns her head and in a flash of laughter

  Looks up at him: and helplessly he feels

  That life has circled with returning wheels

  Back to a starting-point. Before and after

  Merge in this instant, momently the same:

  For it was thus she leaned and laughing turned

  When, manifest, the spirit of beauty burned

  In her young body with an inward flame,

  And first he knew and loved her. In full tide

  Life halts within him, suddenly stupefied.

  Sight blackness, lightning-struck; but blindly tender

  He draws her up to meet him, and she lies

  Close folded by his arms in glad surrender,

  Smiling, and with drooped head and half closed eyes.

  XIV.

  “I give you all; would that I might give more.”

  He sees the colour dawn across her cheeks

  And die again to white; marks as she speaks

  The trembling of her lips, as though she bore

  Some sudden pain and hardly mastered it.

  Within his arms he feels her shuddering,

  Piteously trembling like some wild wood-thing

  Caught unawares. Compassion infinite

  Mounts up within him. Thus to hold and keep

  And comfort her distressed, lull her to sleep

  And gently kiss her brow and hair and eyes

  Seems love perfected — templed high and white

  Against the calm of golden autumn skies,

  And shining quenchlessly with vestal light.

  XV.

  But passion ambushed by the aerial shrine

  Comes forth to dance, a hoofed obscenity,

  His satyr’s dance, with laughter in his eye,

  And cruelty along the scarlet line

  Of his bright smiling mouth. All uncontrolled,

  Love’s rebel servant, he delights to beat

  The maddening quick dry rhythm of goatish feet

  Even in the sanctuary, and makes bold

  To mime himself the godhead of the place.

  He turns in terror from her trance-calmed face,

  From the white-lidded languor of her eyes,

  From lips that passion never shook before,

  But glad in the promise of her sacrifice:

  “I give you all; would that I might give more.”

  XVI.

  He is afraid, seeing her lie so still,

  So utterly his own; afraid lest she

  Should open wide her eyes and let him see

  The passionate conquest of her virgin will

  Shine there in triumph, starry-bright with tears.

  He thrusts her from him: face and hair and breast,

  Hands he had touched, lips that his lips had pressed,

  Seem things deadly to be desired. He fears

  Lest she should body forth in p
alpable shame

  Those dreams and longings that his blood, aflame

  Through the hot dark of summer nights, had dreamed

  And longed. Must all his love, then, turn to this?

  Was lust the end of what so pure had seemed?

  He must escape, ah God! her touch, her kiss.

  XVII. IN THE PARK.

  Laughing, “To-night,” I said to him, “the Park

  Has turned the garden of a symbolist.

  Those old great trees that rise above the mist,

  Gold with the light of evening, and the dark

  Still water, where the dying sun evokes

  An echoed glory — here I recognize

  Those ancient gardens mirrored by the eyes

  Of poets that hate the world of common folks,

  Like you and me and that thin pious crowd,

  Which yonder sings its hymns, so humbly proud

  Of holiness. The garden of escape

  Lies here; a small green world, and still the bride

  Of quietness, although an imminent rape

  Roars ceaselessly about on every side.”

  XVIII.

  I had forgotten what I had lightly said,

  And without speech, without a thought I went,

  Steeped in that golden quiet, all content

  To drink the transient beauty as it sped

  Out of eternal darkness into time

  To light and burn and know itself a fire;

  Yet doomed — ah, fate of the fulfilled desire! —

  To fade, a meteor, paying for the crime

  Of living glorious in the denser air

  Of our material earth. A strange despair,

  An agony, yet strangely, subtly sweet

  And tender as an unpassionate caress,

  Filled me ... Oh laughter! youth’s conceit

  Grown almost conscious of youth’s feebleness!

  XIX.

  He spoke abrupt across my dream: “Dear Garden,

  A stranger to your magic peace, I stand

  Beyond your walls, lost in a fevered land

  Of stones and fire. Would that the gods would harden

  My soul against its torment, or would blind

  Those yearning glimpses of a life at rest

  In perfect beauty — glimpses at the best

  Through unpassed bars. And here, without, the wind

  Of scattering passion blows: and women pass

  Glitter-eyed down putrid alleys where the glass

  Of some grimed window suddenly parades —

  Ah, sickening heart-beat of desire! — the grace

  Of bare and milk-warm flesh: the vision fades,

  And at the pane shows a blind tortured face.”

  XX. SELF-TORMENT.

 

‹ Prev