Complete Works of Isaac Rosenberg
Page 6
Your nestling speech had tangled more;
But when I started up at last
I shook the fetters to the floor.
THE NUN
So thy soul’s meekness shrinks,
Too loth to show her face —
Why should she shun the world?
It is a holy place.
Concealed to itself
If the flower kept its scent,
Of itself amorous,
Less rich its ornament.
Use — utmost in each kind —
Is beauty, truth in one,
While soul rays light to soul
In one God-linked sun.
WE ARE SAD WITH A VAGUE SWEET SORROW
We are sad with a vague sweet sorrow
Whose touch is a scent of sighs;
A flower that weeps to a flower
The old tale that beauty dies.
Our smiles are full of a longing,
For we saw the gold flash of the years.
They passed, and we know where they came from,
The deep — deep well of tears.
1912
PEACE
Where the dreamy mountains brood
Ever in their ancient mood
Would I go and dream with them
Till I graft me on their stem.
With fierce energy I aspire
To be that the Gods desire
As the dreamy mountains are
And no God can break or mar.
Soon the world shall fade and be
One with still eternity
As the dreamy hills that lie
Silent to the passing sky.
1912
FLEET STREET
From north and south, from east and west,
Here in one shrieking vortex meet
These streams of life, made manifest
Along the shaking quivering street.
5 Its pulse and heart that throbs and glows
As if strife were its repose.
I shut my ear to such rude sounds
As reach a harsh discordant note,
Till, melting into what surrounds,
10 My soul doth with the current float,
And from the turmoil and the strife
Wakes all the melody of life.
The stony buildings blindly stare
Unconscious of the crime within,
15 While man returns his fellow’s glare
The secrets of his soul to win.
And each man passes from his place,
None heed. A shadow leaves such trace.
THE GARDEN OF JOY
In honey essenced bliss of sleep’s deceit
My sense lay drowned, and my soul’s eyes saw clear,
Unstranged to wonder, made familiar
By instant seeing. Eden’s garden sweet,
5 Shedding upon mine eyelids odorous heat
Of the light fingered golden atmosphere
Shaken through boughs whose whispering I could hear.
Beneath, within the covert’s cool retreat
Of the spread boughs stood shapes who swayed the boughs,
10 And bright fruit fell, laughing to leave green house;
While gleeful children dabbled with the sun
Caught the strange fruit, then ran with smiles of love
To earth, whose peoples as they ate thereof
Soft sank into the garden, one by one.
15 They lie within the garden, outside Time.
The ripened fulness of their soul’s desire
Glad on their tranquil faces. No fanged fire
Of hot insatiate pleasure, no pulsed chime
To summon to tusked orgy of earth’s slime,
20 Flickers the throne of rapture’s flushed empire
That glows, mild rays of the divine attire
Upon each face, sun of this day-spring clime.
They seem forever wondering — listening
Unto some tale of marvel, music told,
25 That the flowers weep in jewelled glistening
With envy of the joy that they must hold,
While in the dewy mirrors lady Spring
Trims herself by their smiles, their happy mould.
1912
THE POET
The trouble of the universe is on his wonder travelled eyes.
Ah, vain for him the starry quest, the spirit’s wistful sacrifice.
For though the glory of the heavens celestially in glimpses seen
Illumines his rapt gazing, still the senses shut him in.
No fellowship of suffering to meet his tear bewildered ways,
Alone he bears the burden of alienated days.
He is a part of paradise that all the earth has pressed between,
And when he calls unto the stars of paradise with heaven sweet songs
To his divided self he calls and sings the story of earth’s wrongs.
Himself he has himself betrayed, and deemed the earth a path of heaven,
And wandered down its sunless days, and too late knew himself bereaven.
For swiftly sin and suffering and earth-born laughter meshed his ways,
And caught him in a cage of earth, but heaven can hear his dewy lays.
1912
MY SONGS
Deep into the great heart of things
My mood passed, as my life became
One with the mighty whisperings
That breathe the pure ineffable name.
A pulse of all the life that stirs
Through still deep shade and wavering light,
The flowing of the wash of years
From out the starry infinite.
And flowing through my soul, the skies
And all the winds and all the trees
Mixed with its stream of light, to rise
And flow out in these melodies.
TO NATURE
Beneath the eternal wandering skies
O wilt thou rest awhile by me,
Immortal mother of mystery,
And breathe on my blind eyes!
Or is it that thou standest nigh,
And while I know that I am blind
I live, until thou passest by,
To leave me dead behind.
1912
DON JUAN’S SONG
The moon is in an ecstasy,
It wanes not nor can grow.
The heavens are in a mist of love,
And deepest knowledge know.
5 What things in nature seem to move
Bear love as I bear love?
And bear my pleasures so?
The moon will fade when morning comes,
The heavens will dream no more.
10 In our missed meetings are eyes hard?
What shadows fleck the door
Averted, when we part? What guard
Scents death in each vain word?
What haggard haunts the shore?
15 I bear my love as streams that bear
The sky still flow or shake.
Though deep within too far on high.
Light blossoms kiss and wake
The waters sooner than the sky.
20 And if they kiss and die!
God made them frail to break.
YOU AND I
You and I have met but for an instant;
And no word the gate-lips let from out them.
But the eyes, voice audible — the soul’s lips,
Stirr’d the depths of thought and feeling in me.
5 I have seen you somewhere, some sweet sometime,
Somewhere in a dim-remembered sometime.
Was it in the sleep-spun realm of dreamland?
In sweet woods, a faery flower of fancy?
If our hands touched would it bring us nearer?
10 As our souls touched, eyes’ flame meeting eyes’ flame.
If the lips spake would it lift the curtain
More than our mute bearing unaffected
Told the spirit�
�s secrets eloquently?
Strange! this vast and universal riddle!
15 How perplexing! Manifold the wonder.
You and I, we meet but for an instant,
Pause or pass, reflections in a mirror.
And I see myself and wonder at it.
See myself in you, a double wonder.
20 With my thought held in a richer casket,
Clothed and girt in shape of regal beauty.
Strange! we pause! New waves of life rush blindly,
Madly on the soul’s dumb silent breakers.
And a music strange is new awakened.
25 Fate the minstrel smites or holds the chord back.
Smites — new worlds undreamt of burst upon us.
All our life before was but embryo
Shaping for this birth — this living moment.
LOVE TO BE
When at that happy pause that holds sweet rest
As a hard burden, that it doth belate
And make him seem a laggard at the gate
Of long-wished night, while day rides down the west;
5 I, weighted from my toil, and sore distrest
In body and soul, the scourge of partial fate,
At such sweet pause, to silence consecrate,
Come thoughts swift changing fancy had bedrest
In colours of desire. I thought on her
10 I never yet have seen, my love to be.
I conjured up all glorious shapes that were;
And wondered what far clime, by what sad sea
She roaming? And what spirits minister?
What thoughts, and what vague shadowing of me?
15 By what far ways shall my heart reach to thine?
We, who have never parted — never met,
Nor done to death the joys that shall be yet,
Nor drained the cup of love’s delirious wine.
How shall my craving spirit know for mine
20 Thine, self-same seeking? Will a wild regret
For the lost days — the lonely suns that set,
Be for our love a token and a sign?
Will all the weary nights, the widowed days
That sundered long, all point their hands at thee?
25 Yea! all the stars that have not heard thy praise
Low murmur in thy charmed ear of me?
All pointing to the ending of the ways,
All singing of the love that is to be?
LIKE SOME FAIR SUBTLE POISON
Like some fair subtle poison is the cold white beauty you shed;
Pale flower of the garden I walk in, your scent is an amorous net
To lure my thoughts and pulses, by your useless phantom led
By misty hours and ruins with insatiate longing wet.
To lure my soul with the beauty of some enthralling sin.
To starve my body to hunger for the mystic rapture there.
O cruel; flesh and spirit your robe’s soft stir sucks in,
And your cold unseeing glances, and the fantasies of your hair.
And in the shining hollow of your dream-enhaunted throat
My mournful thoughts now wander and build desire a nest,
But no tender thoughts to crown the fiery dreams that float
Around those sinuous rhythms and dim languors of your breast.
1912
TWILIGHT I.
A murmur of many waters, a moving maze of streams;
A doubtful voice of the silence from the ghosts of the shadows of dreams,
The far adieu of the day as it touches the fingers of night,
Wakes all to the eye and ear but seem wings spread for the soul for flight.
Can we look behind or before us, can we look on the dreams that are done?
The lights gleam dim in the distance, the distance is dimmer when won.
Soon that shall fade dimmer behind us, and when the night before us is here,
Ah! who of us shall wait for the dawn, while the shadows of night disappear?
AS WE LOOK
As they have sung to me,
So shall they sing to you?
One song have they.
Nay, when the old be new,
5 Nay, when the blind shall see,
Then, when the night is day,
Shall this thing be.
For this is truth, and still
Ever throughout be truth
10 While the world sings.
Gladly it sings to youth;
Sadly to age and ill.
To love sweet whisperings
Its songs fulfil.
15 One song the roses sing;
One song the chirping birds.
But whoso hears,
He makes within the words
To his soul murmuring.
20 High hopes or lowly fears
One song shall bring.
One song, one voice, the sky
The star, the moon, the cloud:
One song the trees.
25 But some will see a shroud,
And some will dim descry
Immortal harmonies
That never die.
Each looks with eyes that are
30 But the soul’s curtain hung
Till thought draws clear.
One hears sweet songs, unsung
To some, and dumb the star,
To these while songs are near,
35 Fair things are far.
EVEN NOW YOUR EYES ARE MIXED IN MINE
Even now your eyes are mixed in mine.
I see you not, but surely, he —
This stricken gaze, has looked on thee.
From him your glances shine.
5 Even now I felt your hand in mine.
This breeze that warms my open palm
Has surely kist yours; such thrilled calm
No lull can disentwine.
The words you spoke just now, how sweet!
10 These grasses heard and bend to tell.
The green grows pale your speech to spell,
How its green heart must beat!
I breathe you. Here the air enfolds
Your absent presence, as fire cleaves,
15 Leaving the places warm it leaves.
Such warmth a warm word holds.
Bruised are our words and our full thought
Breaks like dull rain from some rich cloud.
Our pulses leap alive and proud.
20 Colour, not heat, is caught.
PSYCHE’S LAMENT
O! love, my love! once, and not long,
Yet seems it dreams of ancient days,
When nights were passion’s lips of song,
And thou his speech of honied praise.
5 ‘O love, my love’, in murmurs low
Burnt in my ears. Then I was thine.
O! love, my love! ‘twixt weepings now
The empty words are only mine.
O! sweetest love! O! cruel wings,
10 The darkening shadow of thy flight
Is all that dreary daylight brings
Of all that was so sweet at night.
O! sweetest love! once you called sweet,
Through kisses, her forlorn who weeps
15 That wings, too swift to hear their beat,
Of Time, flew with you... How he creeps.
O life, my life! I have no life
Whilst thou who hast my soul art far.
When night is not, while day has strife,
20 What life has the unwakened star?
O! life, my life, upon my brow
My tears like flowers are gathered up.
The fruit that sorrow did not sow
She turns to poison in her cup.
KNOWLEDGE
Within this glass he looks at he is fair.
Godlike his reach and shining in his eyes
The light that is the sun of Paradise.
Yet midst his golden triumph a despair
Lurks like a serpent hidden in his hair
&nb
sp; And says ‘Proud wisdom I am yet more wise’.
But swift before his look the serpent dies,
Before his glory’s grandeur mirrored there.
This to himself, but what to us looks he?
A lank unresting spectre whose grey gaze
A moth by night — a ferret through the days —
A hunger that devours all it can see
And then feeds on himself but never slays
Insatiate with his own misery.
RAPHAEL
Dear, I have done; it shall be done. I know
I can paint on and on, and still paint on.
Another touch, and yet another touch.
Yet wherefore. ’Tis Art’s triumph to know this,
5 Long ere the soul and brain begin to flag,
And dim the first fresh flashes of the soul,
Before achievement, by our own desire
And loathing to desist in what we love,
Is wrought to ruin by much overtoil,
10 To know the very moment of our gain,
And fix the triumph with reluctant pause.
Come from the throne, sweet, kiss me on the cheek;
You have borne bravely, sweet, come, look with me.
Is it not well — think love — the recompense,
15 This binds the unborn ages at our feet.
Thus you shall look, my love, and never change
Throughout all changes. Time’s own conqueror,
While worshippers of climes and time unknown
Lingeringly look in wonder — here — at us.
20 What have we done — in these long hours, my love?
Long — long to you — whose patient labour was
To sit, and sit, a statue, movelessly.
Love we have woven a chain more glorious
Than crowns or Popes — to bind the centuries.
25 You are tired. I should have thought a little.
But you said nothing, sweet, and I forgot,
In rapture of my soul’s imaginings.
You — yes, ’twas thus you looked, ah, look again
That hint of smile — it was like wings for heaven,
30 And gave my spirit play to revel more
In dazzling visions. But ah! it mocked my hand.
There — there — before my eyes and in my brain
Limned perfect — but my fingers traitors were.
Could not translate, and heartsick was the strife.