Complete Works of Aldous Huxley

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by Aldous Huxley

The days pass by, empty of thought and will:

  His thought grows stagnant at its very springs,

  With every channel on the world of things

  Dammed up, and thus, by its long standing still,

  Poisons itself and sickens to decay.

  All his high love for her, his fair desire,

  Loses its light; and a dull rancorous fire,

  Burning darkness and bitterness that prey

  Upon his heart are left. His spirit burns

  Sometimes with hatred, or the hatred turns

  To a fierce lust for her, more cruel than hate,

  Till he is weary wrestling with its force:

  And evermore she haunts him, early and late,

  As pitilessly as an old remorse.

  XXI.

  Streets and the solitude of country places

  Were once his friends. But as a man born blind,

  Opening his eyes from lovely dreams, might find

  The world a desert and men’s larval faces

  So hateful, he would wish to seek again

  The darkness and his old chimeric sight

  Of beauties inward — so, that fresh delight,

  Vision of bright fields and angelic men,

  That love which made him all the world, is gone.

  Hating and hated now, he stands alone,

  An island-point, measureless gulfs apart

  From other lives, from the old happiness

  Of being more than self, when heart to heart

  Gave all, yet grew the greater, not the less.

  XXII. THE QUARRY IN THE WOOD.

  Swiftly deliberate, he seeks the place.

  A small wind stirs, the copse is bright in the sun:

  Like quicksilver the shine and shadow run

  Across the leaves. A bramble whips his face,

  The tears spring fast, and through the rainbow mist

  He sees a world that wavers like the flame

  Of a blown candle. Tears of pain and shame,

  And lips that once had laughed and sung and kissed

  Trembling in the passion of his sobbing breath!

  The world a candle shuddering to its death,

  And life a darkness, blind and utterly void

  Of any love or goodness: all deceit,

  This friendship and this God: all shams destroyed,

  And truth seen now.

  Earth fails beneath his feet.

  SONG OF POPLARS

  Shepherd, to yon tall poplars tune your flute:

  Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill,

  The slow blue rumour of the hill;

  Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold,

  And the great sky be mute.

  Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold

  Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind,

  In airy leafage of the mind,

  Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales

  That fade not nor grow old.

  “Poplars and fountains and you cypress spires

  Springing in dark and rusty flame,

  Seek you aught that hath a name?

  Or say, say: Are you all an upward agony

  Of undefined desires?

  “Say, are you happy in the golden march

  Of sunlight all across the day?

  Or do you watch the uncertain way

  That leads the withering moon on cloudy stairs

  Over the heaven’s wide arch?

  “Is it towards sorrow or towards joy you lift

  The sharpness of your trembling spears?

  Or do you seek, through the grey tears

  That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blue,

  A deeper, calmer rift?”

  So; I have tuned my music to the trees,

  And there were voices, dim below

  Their shrillness, voices swelling slow

  In the blue murmur of hills, and a golden cry

  And then vast silences.

  THE REEF

  My green aquarium of phantom fish,

  Goggling in on me through the misty panes;

  My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains;

  My few clear quiet autumn days — I wish

  I could leave all, clearness and mistiness;

  Sodden or goldenly crystal, all too still.

  Yes, and I too rot with the leaves that fill

  The hollows in the woods; I am grown less

  Than human, listless, aimless as the green

  Idiot fishes of my aquarium,

  Who loiter down their dim tunnels and come

  And look at me and drift away, nought seen

  Or understood, but only glazedly

  Reflected. Upwards, upwards through the shadows,

  Through the lush sponginess of deep-sea meadows

  Where hare-lipped monsters batten, let me ply

  Winged fins, bursting this matrix dark to find

  Jewels and movement, mintage of sunlight

  Scattered largely by the profuse wind,

  And gulfs of blue brightness, too deep for sight.

  Free, newly born, on roads of music and air

  Speeding and singing, I shall seek the place

  Where all the shining threads of water race,

  Drawn in green ropes and foamy meshes. There,

  On the red fretted ramparts of a tower

  Of coral rooted in the depths, shall break

  An endless sequence of joy and speed and power:

  Green shall shatter to foam; flake with white flake

  Shall create an instant’s shining constellation

  Upon the blue; and all the air shall be

  Full of a million wings that swift and free

  Laugh in the sun, all power and strong elation.

  Yes, I shall seek that reef, which is beyond

  All isles however magically sleeping

  In tideless seas, uncharted and unconned

  Save by blind eyes; beyond the laughter and weeping

  That brood like a cloud over the lands of men.

  Movement, passion of colour and pure wings,

  Curving to cut like knives — these are the things

  I search for: — passion beyond the ken

  Of our foiled violences, and, more swift

  Than any blow which man aims against time,

  The invulnerable, motion that shall rift

  All dimness with the lightning of a rhyme,

  Or note, or colour. And the body shall be

  Quick as the mind; and will shall find release

  From bondage to brute things; and joyously

  Soul, will and body, in the strength of triune peace,

  Shall live the perfect grace of power unwasted.

  And love consummate, marvellously blending

  Passion and reverence in a single spring

  Of quickening force, till now never yet tasted,

  But ever ceaselessly thirsted for, shall crown

  The new life with its ageless starry fire.

  I go to seek that reef, far down, far down

  Below the edge of everyday’s desire,

  Beyond the magical islands, where of old

  I was content, dreaming, to give the lie

  To misery. They were all strong and bold

  That thither came; and shall I dare to try?

  WINTER DREAM

  OH wind-swept towers,

  Oh endlessly blossoming trees,

  White clouds and lucid eyes,

  And pools in the rocks whose unplumbed blue is pregnant

  With who knows what of subtlety

  And magical curves and limbs —

  White Anadyomene and her shallow breasts

  Mother-of-pearled with light.

  And oh the April, April of straight soft hair,

  Falling smooth as the mountain water and brown;

  The April of little leaves unblinded,

  Of rosy nipples and innocence

  And
the blue languor of weary eyelids.

  Across a huge gulf I fling my voice

  And my desires together:

  Across a huge gulf ... on the other bank

  Crouches April with her hair as smooth and straight and brown

  As falling waters.

  Oh brave curve upwards and outwards.

  Oh despair of the downward tilting —

  Despair still beautiful

  As a great star one has watched all night

  Wheeling down under the hills.

  Silence widens and darkens;

  Voice and desires have dropped out of sight.

  I am all alone, dreaming she would come and kiss me.

  THE FLOWERS

  Day after day,

  At spring’s return,

  I watch my flowers, how they burn

  Their lives away.

  The candle crocus

  And daffodil gold

  Drink fire of the sunshine —

  Quickly cold.

  And the proud tulip —

  How red he glows! —

  Is quenched ere summer

  Can kindle the rose.

  Purple as the innermost

  Core of a sinking flame,

  Deep in the leaves the violets smoulder

  To the dust whence they came.

  Day after day

  At spring’s return,

  I watch my flowers, how they burn

  Their lives away,

  Day after day ...

  THE ELMS

  ine as the dust of plumy fountains blowing

  Across the lanterns of a revelling night,

  The tiny leaves of April’s earliest growing

  Powder the trees — so vaporously light,

  They seem to float, billows of emerald foam

  Blown by the South on its bright airy tide,

  Seeming less trees than things beatified,

  Come from the world of thought which was their home.

  For a while only. Rooted strong and fast,

  Soon will they lift towards the summer sky

  Their mountain-mass of clotted greenery.

  Their immaterial season quickly past,

  They grow opaque, and therefore needs must die,

  Since every earth to earth returns at last.

  OUT OF THE WINDOW

  In the middle of countries, far from hills and sea,

  Are the little places one passes by in trains

  And never stops at; where the skies extend

  Uninterrupted, and the level plains

  Stretch green and yellow and green without an end.

  And behind the glass of their Grand Express

  Folk yawn away a province through,

  With nothing to think of, nothing to do,

  Nothing even to look at — never a “view”

  In this damned wilderness.

  But I look out of the window and find

  Much to satisfy the mind.

  Mark how the furrows, formed and wheeled

  In a motion orderly and staid,

  Sweep, as we pass, across the field

  Like a drilled army on parade.

  And here’s a market-garden, barred

  With stripe on stripe of varied greens ...

  Bright potatoes, flower starred,

  And the opacous colour of beans.

  Each line deliberately swings

  Towards me, till I see a straight

  Green avenue to the heart of things,

  The glimpse of a sudden opened gate

  Piercing the adverse walls of fate ...

  A moment only, and then, fast, fast,

  The gate swings to, the avenue closes;

  Fate laughs, and once more interposes

  Its barriers.

  The train has passed.

  INSPIRATION

  Noonday upon the Alpine meadows

  Pours its avalanche of Light

  And blazing flowers: the very shadows

  Translucent are and bright.

  It seems a glory that nought surpasses —

  Passion of angels in form and hue —

  When, lo! from the jewelled heaven of the grasses

  Leaps a lightning of sudden blue.

  Dimming the sun-drunk petals,

  Bright even unto pain,

  The grasshopper flashes, settles,

  And then is quenched again.

  SUMMER STILLNESS

  The stars are golden instants in the deep

  Flawless expanse of night: the moon is set:

  The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleep

  Seeming so motionless that I forget

  The hollow booming bridges, where it slides,

  Dark with the sad looks that it bears along,

  Towards a sea whose unreturning tides

  Ravish the sighted ships and the sailors’ song.

  ANNIVERSARIES

  Once more the windless days are here,

  Quiet of autumn, when the year

  Halts and looks backward and draws breath

  Before it plunges into death.

  Silver of mist and gossamers,

  Through-shine of noonday’s glassy gold,

  Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs

  Save one blanched leaf, weary and old,

  That over and over slowly falls

  From the mute elm-trees, hanging on air

  Like tattered flags along the walls

  Of chapels deep in sunlit prayer.

  Once more ... Within its flawless glass

  To-day reflects that other day,

  When, under the bracken, on the grass,

  We who were lovers happily lay

  And hardly spoke, or framed a thought

  That was not one with the calm hills

  And crystal sky. Ourselves were nought,

  Our gusty passions, our burning wills

  Dissolved in boundlessness, and we

  Were almost bodiless, almost free.

  The wind has shattered silver and gold.

  Night after night of sparkling cold,

  Orion lifts his tangled feet

  From where the tossing branches beat

  In a fine surf against the sky.

  So the trance ended, and we grew

  Restless, we knew not how or why;

  And there were sudden gusts that blew

  Our dreaming banners into storm;

  We wore the uncertain crumbling form

  Of a brown swirl of windy leaves,

  A phantom shape that stirs and heaves

  Shuddering from earth, to fall again

  With a dry whisper of withered rain.

  Last, from the dead and shrunken days

  We conjured spring, lighting the blaze

  Of burnished tulips in the dark;

  And from black frost we struck a spark

  Of blue delight and fragrance new,

  A little world of flowers and dew.

  Winter for us was over and done:

  The drought of fluttering leaves had grown

  Emerald shining in the sun,

  As light as glass, as firm as stone.

  Real once more: for we had passed

  Through passion into thought again;

  Shaped our desires and made that fast

  Which was before a cloudy pain;

  Moulded the dimness, fixed, defined

  In a fair statue, strong and free,

  Twin bodies flaming into mind,

  Poised on the brink of ecstasy.

  ITALY

  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;

  Whe
re 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 passing faintness, like a man

  Who feels the sudden spirit of Pan

  Brimming 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 hell;

  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

 

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