Am now your wife.”
IV
“‘Twas I whose fingers did draw up the young
Plant of your body: to me you looked e’er sprung
The secret of the moon within your eyes!
My mouth you met before your fine red mouth
Was set to song — and never your song denies
My love, till you went south.”
“‘Twas I who placed the bloom of manhood on
Your youthful smoothness: I fleeced where fleece
was none
Your fervent limbs with flickers and tendrils of new
Knowledge; I set your heart to its stronger beat;
I put my strength upon you, and I threw
My life at your feet.”
“But I whom the years had reared to be your bride,
Who for years was sun for your shivering, shade for
your sweat,
Who for one strange year was as a bride to you — you
set me aside
With all the old, sweet things of our youth; — and
never yet
Have I ceased to grieve that I was not great enough
To defeat your baser stuff.”
V
“But you are given back again to me
Who have kept intact for you your virginity.
Who for the rest of life walk out of care,
Indifferent here of myself, since I am gone
Where you are gone, and you and I out there
Walk now as one.”
“Your widow am I, and only I. I dream
God bows his head and grants me this supreme
Pure look of your last dead face, whence now is gone
The mobility, the panther’s gambolling,
And all your being is given to me, so none
Can mock my struggling.”
“And now at last I kiss your perfect face,
Perfecting now our unfinished, first embrace.
Your young hushed look that then saw God ablaze
In every bush, is given you back, and we
Are met at length to finish our rest of days
In a unity.”
HEIMWEH
FAR-OFF the lily-statues stand white-ranked in the
garden at home.
Would God they were shattered quickly, the cattle
would tread them out in the loam.
I wish the elder trees in flower could suddenly heave,
and burst
The walls of the house, and nettles puff out from
the hearth at which I was nursed.
It stands so still in the hush composed of trees and
inviolate peace,
The home of my fathers, the place that is mine, my
fate and my old increase.
And now that the skies are falling, the world is
spouting in fountains of dirt,
I would give my soul for the homestead to fall with
me, go with me, both in one hurt.
DEBACLE
THE trees in trouble because of autumn,
And scarlet berries falling from the bush,
And all the myriad houseless seeds
Loosing hold in the wind’s insistent push
Moan softly with autumnal parturition,
Poor, obscure fruits extruded out of light
Into the world of shadow, carried down
Between the bitter knees of the after-night.
Bushed in an uncouth ardour, coiled at core
With a knot of life that only bliss can unravel,
Fall all the fruits most bitterly into earth
Bitterly into corrosion bitterly travel.
What is it internecine that is locked,
By very fierceness into a quiescence
Within the rage? We shall not know till it burst
Out of corrosion into new florescence.
Nay, but how tortured is the frightful seed
The spark intense within it, all without
Mordant corrosion gnashing and champing hard
For ruin on the naked small redoubt.
Bitter, to fold the issue, and make no sally;
To have the mystery, but not go forth;
To bear, but retaliate nothing, given to save
The spark in storms of corrosion, as seeds from
the north.
The sharper, more horrid the pressure, the harder
the heart
That saves the blue grain of eternal fire
Within its quick, committed to hold and wait
And suffer unheeding, only forbidden to expire.
NARCISSUS
WHERE the minnows trace
A glinting web quick hid in the gloom of the brook,
When I think of the place
And remember the small lad lying intent to look
Through the shadowy face
At the little fish thread-threading the watery nook —
It seems to me
The woman you are should be nixie, there is a pool
Where we ought to be.
You undine-clear and pearly, soullessly cool
And waterly
The pool for my limbs to fathom, my soul’s last
school.
Narcissus
Ventured so long ago in the deeps of reflection.
Illyssus
Broke the bounds and beyond! — Dim recollection
Of fishes
Soundlessly moving in heaven’s other direction!
Be
Undine towards the waters, moving back;
For me
A pool! Put off the soul you’ve got, oh lack
Your human self immortal; take the watery track.
AUTUMN SUNSHINE
THE sun sets out the autumn crocuses
And fills them up a pouring measure
Of death-producing wine, till treasure
Runs waste down their chalices.
All, all Persephone’s pale cups of mould
Are on the board, are over-filled;
The portion to the gods is spilled;
Now, mortals all, take hold!
The time is now, the wine-cup full and full
Of lambent heaven, a pledging-cup;
Let now all mortal men take up
The drink, and a long, strong pull.
Out of the hell-queen’s cup, the heaven’s pale wine —
Drink then, invisible heroes, drink.
Lips to the vessels, never shrink,
Throats to the heavens incline.
And take within the wine the god’s great oath
By heaven and earth and hellish stream
To break this sick and nauseous dream
We writhe and lust in, both.
Swear, in the pale wine poured from the cups of the
queen
Of hell, to wake and be free
From this nightmare we writhe in,
Break out of this foul has-been.
ON THAT DAY
ON that day
I shall put roses on roses, and cover your grave
With multitude of white roses: and since you were
brave
One bright red ray.
So people, passing under
The ash-trees of the valley-road, will raise
Their eyes and look at the grave on the hill, in
wonder,
Wondering mount, and put the flowers asunder
To see whose praise
Is blazoned here so white and so bloodily red.
Then they will say: “‘Tis long since she is dead,
Who has remembered her after many days?”
And standing there
They will consider how you went your ways
Unnoticed among them, a still queen lost in the
maze
Of this earthly affair.
A queen, they’ll say,
Has slept unnoticed on a forgotten hill.
Sleeps on unkno
wn, unnoticed there, until
Dawns my insurgent day.
BAY: A BOOK OF POEMS
CONTENTS
GUARDS!
EVOLUTIONS OF SOLDIERS
THE LITTLE TOWN AT EVENING
LAST HOURS
TOWN
AFTER THE OPERA
GOING BACK
ON THE MARCH
BOMBARDMENT
WINTER-LULL
THE ATTACK
OBSEQUIAL ODE
SHADES
BREAD UPON THE WATERS.
RUINATION
RONDEAU OF A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR.
TOMMIES IN THE TRAIN
WAR-BABY
NOSTALGIA
GUARDS!
A Review in Hyde Park 1913.
The Crowd Watches.
WHERE the trees rise like cliffs, proud and
blue-tinted in the distance,
Between the cliffs of the trees, on the grey —
green park
Rests a still line of soldiers, red motionless range of
guards
Smouldering with darkened busbies beneath the bay —
onets’ slant rain.
Colossal in nearness a blue police sits still on his horse
Guarding the path; his hand relaxed at his thigh,
And skyward his face is immobile, eyelids aslant
In tedium, and mouth relaxed as if smiling — ineffable
tedium!
So! So! Gaily a general canters across the space,
With white plumes blinking under the evening grey
sky.
And suddenly, as if the ground moved
The red range heaves in slow, magnetic reply.
EVOLUTIONS OF SOLDIERS
The red range heaves and compulsory sways, ah see!
in the flush of a march
Softly-impulsive advancing as water towards a weir
from the arch
Of shadow emerging as blood emerges from inward
shades of our night
Encroaching towards a crisis, a meeting, a spasm and
throb of delight.
The wave of soldiers, the coming wave, the throbbing
red breast of approach
Upon us; dark eyes as here beneath the busbies glit —
tering, dark threats that broach
Our beached vessel; darkened rencontre inhuman, and
closed warm lips, and dark
Mouth-hair of soldiers passing above us, over the wreck
of our bark.
And so, it is ebb-time, they turn, the eyes beneath the
busbies are gone.
But the blood has suspended its timbre, the heart from
out of oblivion
Knows but the retreat of the burning shoulders, the
red-swift waves of the sweet
Fire horizontal declining and ebbing, the twilit ebb of
retreat.
THE LITTLE TOWN AT EVENING
THE chime of the bells, and the church clock
striking eight
Solemnly and distinctly cries down the babel
of children still playing in the hay.
The church draws nearer upon us, gentle and great
In shadow, covering us up with her grey.
Like drowsy children the houses fall asleep
Under the fleece of shadow, as in between
Tall and dark the church moves, anxious to keep
Their sleeping, cover them soft unseen.
Hardly a murmur comes from the sleeping brood,
I wish the church had covered me up with the rest
In the home-place. Why is it she should exclude
Me so distinctly from sleeping with those I love best?
LAST HOURS
THE cool of an oak’s unchequered shade
Falls on me as I lie in deep grass
Which rushes upward, blade beyond blade,
While higher the darting grass-flowers pass
Piercing the blue with their crocketed spires
And waving flags, and the ragged fires
Of the sorrel’s cresset — a green, brave town
Vegetable, new in renown.
Over the tree’s edge, as over a mountain
Surges the white of the moon,
A cloud comes up like the surge of a fountain,
Pressing round and low at first, but soon
Heaving and piling a round white dome.
How lovely it is to be at home
Like an insect in the grass
Letting life pass.
There’s a scent of clover crept through my hair
From the full resource of some purple dome
Where that lumbering bee, who can hardly bear
His burden above me, never has clomb.
But not even the scent of insouciant flowers
Makes pause the hours.
Down the valley roars a townward train.
I hear it through the grass
Dragging the links of my shortening chain
Southwards, alas!
TOWN
LONDON
Used to wear her lights splendidly,
Flinging her shawl-fringe over the River,
Tassels in abandon.
And up in the sky
A two-eyed clock, like an owl
Solemnly used to approve, chime, chiming,
Approval, goggle-eyed fowl.
There are no gleams on the River,
No goggling clock;
No sound from St. Stephen’s;
No lamp-fringed frock.
Instead,
Darkness, and skin-wrapped
Fleet, hurrying limbs,
Soft-footed dead.
London
Original, wolf-wrapped
In pelts of wolves, all her luminous
Garments gone.
London, with hair
Like a forest darkness, like a marsh
Of rushes, ere the Romans
Broke in her lair.
It is well
That London, lair of sudden
Male and female darknesses
Has broken her spell.
AFTER THE OPERA
DOWN the stone stairs
Girls with their large eyes wide with tragedy
Lift looks of shocked and momentous emotion
up at me.
And I smile.
Ladies
Stepping like birds with their bright and pointed feet
Peer anxiously forth, as if for a boat to carry them out
of the wreckage,
And among the wreck of the theatre crowd
I stand and smile.
They take tragedy so becomingly.
Which pleases me.
But when I meet the weary eyes
The reddened aching eyes of the bar-man with thin
arms,
I am glad to go back to where I came from.
GOING BACK
THE NIGHT turns slowly round,
Swift trains go by in a rush of light;
Slow trains steal past.
This train beats anxiously, outward bound.
But I am not here.
I am away, beyond the scope of this turning;
There, where the pivot is, the axis
Of all this gear.
I, who sit in tears,
I, whose heart is torn with parting;
Who cannot bear to think back to the departure
platform;
My spirit hears
Voices of men
Sound of artillery, aeroplanes, presences,
And more than all, the dead-sure silence,
The pivot again.
There, at the axis
Pain, or love, or grief
Sleep on speed; in dead certainty;
Pure relief.
There, at the pivot
Time sleeps again.
No has-been, no here-after; only the perfected
Silence of men.
ON THE MARCH
WE are out on the open road.
Through the low west window a cold light
flows
On the floor where never my numb feet trode
Before; onward the strange road goes.
Soon the spaces of the western sky
With shutters of sombre cloud will close.
But we’ll still be together, this road and I,
Together, wherever the long road goes.
The wind chases by us, and over the corn
Pale shadows flee from us as if from their foes.
Like a snake we thresh on the long, forlorn
Land, as onward the long road goes.
From the sky, the low, tired moon fades out;
Through the poplars the night-wind blows;
Pale, sleepy phantoms are tossed about
As the wind asks whither the wan road goes.
Away in the distance wakes a lamp.
Inscrutable small lights glitter in rows.
But they come no nearer, and still we tramp
Onward, wherever the strange road goes.
Beat after beat falls sombre and dull.
The wind is unchanging, not one of us knows
What will be in the final lull
When we find the place where this dead road goes.
For something must come, since we pass and pass
Along in the coiled, convulsive throes
Of this marching, along with the invisible grass
That goes wherever this old road goes.
Perhaps we shall come to oblivion.
Perhaps we shall march till our tired toes
Tread over the edge of the pit, and we’re gone
Down the endless slope where the last road goes.
If so, let us forge ahead, straight on
If we’re going to sleep the sleep with those
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 836