Complete Works of James Joyce

by Unknown

Ah, l’étoile de l’allumette!

  Il me plait bien d’observer

  A voice that sings

  A translation of Paul Verlaine’s “Chanson d’automne”

  A voice that sings

  Like viol strings

  Through the wane

  Of the pale year

  Lulleth me here

  With its strain.

  My soul is faint

  At the bell’s plaint,

  Ringing deep;

  I think upon

  A day bygone

  And I weep.

  Away! Away!

  I must obey

  This drear wind,

  Like a dead leaf

  In aimless grief

  Drifting blind.

  Scalding tears shall not avail

  Scalding tears shall not avail,

  Love shall be to us for aye

  An heart-breaking tale.

  Ah, how fast your warm heart beats

  Fluttering upon my breast.

  Lay aside your deep unrest;

  We have eaten all the sweets;

  The golden fruit falls from the tree

  Yea, for this love of mine

  Yea, for this love of mine

  I have given all I had;

  For she was passing fair,

  And I was passing mad.

  All flesh, it is said,

  Shall wither as the grass;

  The fuel for the oven

  Shall be consumed, alas!

  We will leave the village behind

  We will leave the village behind,

  Merrily, you and I,

  Tramp it smart and sing to the wind,

  With the Rommany Rye.

  Gladly above

  Gladly above,

  The lover listens

  In deepest love.

  After the tribulation of dark strife

  After the tribulation of dark strife,

  And all the ills of the earth, crying for my release.

  Why is the truth so hidden and the land of dreams so far,

  That the feet of the climber fail on the upward way;

  Although in the purple distance burns a red-gold star,

  There are briers on the mountain and the weary feet have bled.

  The homesteads and the fireglow bid him stay:

  And the burden of his body is like a burden of lead.

  Told sublimely in the language

  Told sublimely in the language

  Which the shining angels knew.

  Tearless choirs of joyful servants,

  Sounding cymbals, brazen shawms,

  Distant hymns of myriad planets,

  Heavenly maze of full-voiced psalms.

  Only, when the heart is peaceful,

  When the soul is moved to love,

  May we hearken to those voices

  Starry singing from above.

  Love that I can give you, lady

  Love that I can give you, lady

  Ah, that they haven’t, lady

  Lady witchin’, lady mine.

  O, you say that I torment you

  With my verses, lady mine

  Faith! the best I had I sent you,

  Don’t be laughin’, lady mine,

  I am foolish to be hopin’

  That you left your window open,

  Wind thine arms round me

  ... Wind thine arms round me, woman of sorcery,

  While the lascivious music murmurs afar:

  I will close mine eyes, and dream as I dance with thee,

  And pass away from the world where my sorrows are.

  Faster and faster! strike the harps in the hall!

  Woman, I fear that this dance is the dance of death!

  Faster! — ah, I am faint. . . and, ah, I fall.

  The distant music mournfully murmureth.

  Where none murmureth

  Where none murmureth,

  Let all grieving cease

  And fade as a breath,

  And come the final peace

  Which men call death.

  Joy and sorrow

  Pass away and be fled,

  Welcome the morrow

  Lord, thou knowest my misery

  Lord, thou knowest my misery,

  See the gifts which I have brought,

  Sunshine on a dying face

  Stricken flowers, seldom sought.

  See the pale moon, the sunless dawn

  Of my fainting feebleness;

  But only shed thy dew on me

  And I shall teem in fruitfulness.

  Thunders and sweeps along

  Thunders and sweeps along

  The roadway. The rain is strong

  And the tide of it lays all pain.

  I am in no idle passion

  That my threadbare coat is torn,

  And quaint of fashion.

  My humour is devil-may-care,

  As the labourer’s song upborne

  On the quiet air.

  Though there is no resurrection from the past

  Though there is no resurrection from the past,

  It matters not, for one pure thing I see,

  On which no stain, no shadow has been cast.

  I see the image of my love unclouded,

  Like a white maiden in some hidden place,

  In a bright cloak, woven of my hopes, enshrouded,

  And looking at me with a smiling face.

  I do not care for an honourable mention

  And I have sat amid the turbulent crowd

  And I have sat amid the turbulent crowd,

  And have assisted at their boisterous play;

  I have unbent myself and shouted loud,

  And been as blatant and as coarse as they.

  I have consorted with vulgarity

  And am indelibly marked with its fell kiss,

  Meanly I lived upon casual charity

  Eagerly drinking of the dregs of bliss.

  Gorse-flower makes but sorry dining

  — Gorse-flower makes but sorry dining,

  Mulberries make no winecups full,

  Grass-threads lacing and entwining

  Weave no linen by the waters -

  Said the mother to her daughters.

  The sisters viewed themselves reclining,

  Heeding not, undutiful.

  The first girl wished for spinning,

  And she asked a spindle of gold;

  The second sister wished to weave,

  That I am feeble, that my feet

  That I am feeble, that my feet

  Are weak as young twigs in the wind;

  That this poor heart, which was of old

  So reckless, passionate and proud,

  Shivers at trifles and wanes cold

  Whene’er thy fair face shows a cloud.

  A golden bird in azure skies,

  Late radiant with sunbright wings,

  Is fallen down to earth, and sighs

  The grieving soul. But no grief is thine

  The grieving soul. But no grief is thine

  Who driftest the creeks and shallows among,

  Shaking thy hair of the clinging brine.

  Why is thy garment closer drawn?

  Thine eyes are sad, my sorrowful one,

  Thy tresses are strewn with the woe of dawn,

  The pearly dawn weeping the sun.

  Hast thou no word - to raise - to ease

  Our souls? Well, go, for the faint far cry

  Of the seabirds calls thee over the seas.

  Let us fling to the winds all moping and madness

  Let us fling to the winds all moping and madness,

  Play us a jig in the spirit of gladness

  On the creaky, old squeaky strings of the fiddle.

  The why of the world is an answerless riddle

  Puzzlesome, tiresome, hard to unriddle

  To the seventeen devils with sapient sadness:

  Tra la, tra la.

  Hands that soothe my burning eyes<
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  Hands that soothe my burning eyes

  In the silence of moonrise,

  At the midmost hour of night,

  Trouble me not.

  Fingers soft as rain alight,

  Like flowers borne upon the night

  From the pure deeps of sapphire skies.

  Now a whisper... now a gale

  Now a whisper... now a gale

  List, ah list, how drear it calls!

  There is in it that appals

  As it wanders round the walls,

  Like a forlorn woman, pale.

  List the wind!

  O, queen, do on thy cloak

  O, queen, do on thy cloak

  Of scarlet, passion hue,

  And lift, attending folk,

  A mournful ululu,

  For flame-spun is the cloak.

  Fling out thy voice, O lyre,

  Forth of thy seven strings.

  Requiem eternam dona ei, Domine

  ‘Requiem eternam dona ei, Domine’;

  Silently, sorrowfully I bent down my head,

  For I had hated him - a poor creature of clay:

  And all my envious, bitter, cruel thoughts that came

  Out of the past and stood by the bier whereon he lay

  Pointed their long, lean fingers through the gloom... O Name

  Ineffable, proud Name to whom the cries ascend

  From lost, angelical orders, seraph flame to flame,

  For this end have I hated him - for this poor end?

  Of thy dark life, without a love, without a friend

  Of thy dark life, without a love, without a friend,

  Here is, indeed, an end.

  There are no lips to kiss this foul remains of thee,

  O, dead Unchastity!

  The curse of loneliness broods silent on thee still,

  Doing its utmost will,

  And men shall cast thee justly to thy narrow tomb,

  A sad and bitter doom.

  I intone the high anthem

  I intone the high anthem,

  Partaking in their festival.

  Swing out, swing in, the night is dark,

  Magical hair, alive with glee,

  Winnowing spark after spark,

  Star after star, rapturously.

  Toss and toss, amazing arms;

  Witches, weave upon the floor

  Your subtle-woven web of charms.

  Some are comely and some are sour

  Some are comely and some are sour,

  Some are dark as wintry mould,

  Some are fair as a golden shower.

  To music liquid as a stream

  They move with dazzling symmetry;

  Their flashing limbs blend in a gleam

  Of luminous-swift harmony.

  They wear gold crescents on their heads,

  Hornèd and brilliant as the moon:

  Flower to flower knits

  Flower to flower knits

  Of willing lips and leaves:

  Thy springtide of bliss

  Maketh the breezes sing,

  And blossoms yield their kiss

  Unto amorous thieves.

  But the arrow that flies

  Must fall spent at last;

  In the soft nightfall

  In the soft nightfall

  Hear thy lover call,

  Hearken the guitar!

  Lady, lady fair

  Snatch a cloak in haste,

  Let thy lover taste

  The sweetness of thy hair.

  Discarded, broken in two

  Discarded, broken in two.

  Sing to mine ear, O rain,

  Thine ultimate melody;

  That the dearest loss is gain

  In a holier treasury;

  That a passionate cry in the night

  For a woman, hidden and pale,

  The Holy Office

  Myself unto myself will give

  This name Katharsis-Purgative.

  I, who dishevelled ways forsook

  To hold the poets’ grammar-book,

  Bringing to tavern and to brothel

  The mind of witty Aristotle,

  Lest bards in the attempt should err

  Must here be my interpreter:

  Wherefore receive now from my lip

  Peripatetic scholarship.

  To enter heaven, travel hell,

  Be piteous or terrible

  One positively needs the ease,

  Of plenary indulgences.

  For every true-born mysticist

  A Dante is, unprejudiced,

  Who safe at ingle-nook, by proxy,

  Hazards extremes of heterodoxy

  Like him who finds a joy at table,

  Pondering the uncomfortable.

  Ruling one’s life by common sense

  How can one fail to be intense?

  But I must not accounted be

  One of that mumming company —

  With him who hies him to appease

  His giddy dames’ frivolities

  While they console him when he whinges

  With gold-embroidered Celtic fringes —

  Or him who sober all the day

  Mixes a naggin in his play —

  Or him whose conduct ‘seems to own’,

  His preference for a man of ‘tone’ —

  Or him who plays the rugged patch

  To millionaires in Hazelhatch

  But weeping after holy fast

  Confesses all his pagan past —

  Or him who will his hat unfix

  Neither to malt nor crucifix

  But show to all that poor-dressed be

  His high Castilian courtesy —

  Or him who loves his Master dear —

  Or him who drinks his pint in fear -

  Or him who once when snug abed

  Saw Jesus Christ without his head

  And tried so hard to win for us

  The long-lost works of Eschylus.

  But all these men of whom I speak

  Make me the sewer of their clique.

  That they may dream their dreamy dreams

  I carry off their filthy streams

  For I can do those things for them

  Through which I lost my diadem,

  Those things for which Grandmother Church

  Left me severely in the lurch.

  Thus I relieve their timid arses,

  Perform my office of Katharsis.

  My scarlet leaves them white as wool

  Through me they purge a bellyful.

  To sister mummers one and all

  I act as vicar-general

  And for each maiden, shy and nervous,

  I do a similar kind service.

  For I detect without surprise

  That shadowy beauty in her eyes,

  The ‘dare not’ of sweet maidenhood

  That answers my corruptive ‘would’.

  Whenever publicly we meet

  She never seems to think of it;

  At night when close in bed she lies

  And feels my hand between her thighs

  My little love in light attire

  Knows the soft flame that is desire.

  But Mammon places under ban

  The uses of Leviathan

  And that high spirit ever wars

  On Mammon’s countless servitors

  Nor can they ever be exempt

  From his taxation of contempt.

  So distantly I turn to view

  The shamblings of that motley crew,

  Those souls that hate the strength that mine has

  Steeled in the school of old Aquinas.

  Where they have crouched and crawled and prayed

  I stand the self-doomed, unafraid,

  Unfellowed, friendless and alone,

  Indifferent as the herring-bone,

  Firm as the mountain-ridges where

  I flash my antlers on the air.

  Let them continue as is meet

 
To adequate the balance-sheet.

  Though they may labour to the grave

  My spirit shall they never have

  Nor make my soul with theirs at one

  Till the Mahamanvantara be done:

  And though they spurn me from their door

  My soul shall spurn them evermore.

  (1904)

  Gas from a Burner

  Ladies and gents, you are here assembled

  To hear why earth and heaven trembled

  Because of the black and sinister arts

  Of an Irish writer in foreign parts.

  He sent me a book ten years ago.

  I read it a hundred times or so,

  Backwards and forwards, down and up,

  Through both the ends of a telescope.

  I printed it all to the very last word

  But by the mercy of the Lord

  The darkness of my mind was rent

  And I saw the writer’s foul intent.

  But I owe a duty to Ireland:

  I hold her honour in my hand,

  This lovely land that always sent

  Her writers and artists to banishment

  And in a spirit of Irish fun

  Betrayed her own leaders, one by one.

  ’Twas Irish humour, wet and dry,

  Flung quicklime into Parnell’s eye;

  ’Tis Irish brains that save from doom

  The leaky barge of the Bishop of Rome

  For everyone knows the Pope can’t belch