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Title: An Indian Ass Author: Harold Acton Release date: February 19, 2022 [eBook #67441] Language: English Original publication: United Kingdom: Duckworth, 1925 Credits: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INDIAN ASS *** AN INDIAN ASS _By the same author_ AQUARIUM AN INDIAN ASS BY HAROLD ACTON “Ha ha! ha ha! this world doth pass Most merrily, I’ll be sworn; For many an honest Indian ass Goes for an Unicorn. Ty hye! ty hye! O sweet delight! He tickles this age that can Call Tullia’s ape a marmosyte And Leda’s goose a swan.” [Illustration] DUCKWORTH 3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C. _First published in 1925_ _All rights reserved_ Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London CONTENTS PAGE LAMENT FOR ADONIS 7 WHEN FRIGATES FROM LONG VOYAGES 13 CAPRICCIO ESPAGNOL 15 TRÉPAK 18 THE INVESTITURE OF A SPINSTER HOB-GOBLIN 20 THE WERE-WOLF 21 HILARITY 22 THE GODS 26 AS DMITRI KARAMAZOFF SANG ON THE WAY TO CHAOS 27 IN THE TRAIN DE LUXE 31 THE PRODIGAL SON 33 VENTILATION 38 AFTER 40 GREEN GROW THE RUSHES, O 43 WORDS 44 GREENNESS UNSECRETED 46 BACK STREETS 48 WERTHER-INTROSPECTION 49 ON THE THEME OF OPHELIA’S MADNESS 51 THESE CONSOLATIONS 53 IN THE MONTH OF ATHYR 55 DISCOVERIES 56 OLD WOMAN 57 COLD JOINTS I 59 COLD JOINTS II 60 COLD JOINTS III 61 INVOCATION 63 LAME LADY 64 CONVERSATIONS AND CRUMBLING 66 INTERMEZZO 69 THREE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH I THE GIBBET 71 II SAINT 73 III HÉRODIADE 74 _Lament for Adonis_ Now fogs enfold the sea And berries fall from eaves, The cat’s eyes glitter green into the dark. The sloping hills of myrrh, The trees with tender anise overweighed, The pointed flag-leaves stir Only to weep again, Only to sob and mourn Adonis dead. Throughout this dolorous night of cloudy jade Even the hornless dragon of the sea, The green and golden sequined basilisk, The water-scorpion and the python-king Like sad eclipses trail about the land. The crane, the ibis and the mango-bird, The jungle-fowl, the heron and the roc, The badger and three-footed tortoise join In pouring out their eyes. O Cypris violet-stoled, O wrapped in purple woof Arise and beat your azure-veined breasts! Small jewelled nipples, bleed! For I have seen you make that curved mouth A bed of balsam, bed of crisp lush flowers, Whose poor crushed frozen lips compactly closed Lie, flakes of ice, where once were flakes of fire, Their loveliness a thing of agony. The moon has slanted off, and querulous ghosts Hover along the brink of treacherous voids And leap into this night of blinded eyes (Blind now to pleasure’s lapping ecstasies); This peacock-throated night whose stifling cries Shudder and crack: ’tis Misery who calls “Woe” to the black solemnities of sky For loveliest Adonis--he is dead. Low on the hills he lies, the lovely bleeding one, His throat aflash with faint stunned strands of light. Low on the hills he lies and breathes his life away And from his thigh of milk-white agate gashed, Slit by the cruel tusk, The ruby blood drips down his skin of snow. Beneath his brows stars set in crystal deep (Once memories, hungers glinted in their pools), Are glazed dim, opaque and lustreless, The blue orbs burn no more beneath translucent lids. His locks are wet with the clear drops of night, The rose has fled his lip: the very kiss hangs dead, The kiss that Cypris never will forego. And when the bitter white wind breaks the morn, His gathered hounds bay gloom about his corpse, The green-haired Nereids of the marsh make moan, Frail flowers dabble pollened cheeks with tears, From vavicel to calyx petals weep.... Long spiral tufts of drooping galingale, The shadowy deer-grass and the swallow-wort Sob through their bat’s wing tissues tremulous, The poplars weeping amber in the vales, The orchises and sandal-trees, lament. But Aphrodite with unbraided hair And tragic thorn-pierced feet so delicate, Calls through the woodlands and again, again. O, more than music’s many stringèd charms, His lulling name reverberates afar Where faint sails clasp the ribbands of the sea. But round his navel leaps the thick dark blood, His chest is lapped in scarlet from the thighs, Now purpled are those limbs afore as white As veils of snow unflecked by merest breeze. Cypris was fair: whilst her Adonis lived The light would melt her body into song, But with Adonis has her beauty died, Died as a vaporous melody on a lute. “Woe, woe, for Cypris!” all the mountains call, The oak-trees answer: “For Adonis, woe!” For Aphrodite all the rivers weep, The wells bewail Adonis on the hills. Echo resounds “Ai, ai ... Adonis dead ... Most beautiful Adonis ... he is dead.” As Venus saw the wasting limbs, the wound Gashed in the whiteness of her loved one’s thighs, She clasped him to her, moaning supply warm Against his chilled inertness: “Farewell, Adonis; once, as I was telling Deluding tales of happiness, the morrow, When I had thought that joy had come for dwelling, Came sorrow. “The almoner of death, the silent creeper, Has snared my love, and I shall see him never, I, manacled in miseries, a weeper For ever. “A widowed goddess with her beauty setting Like a gold sun to rise no longer, never, Whose love, with Acheron, is fast forgetting Her for ever.” For each blood drop the Paphian sheds a tear, And tears and blood on earth are turned to flowers: The ruby blood brings forth the pursy rose, The tears bring forth the air-white wind-flower, For loveliest Adonis--he is dead. No seemly couch, this lonely bed of leaves For dead Adonis: beautiful in death As one that stumbles on a slumber, falls On downy-wingèd doze of braided air. Your bed let him possess, O Cytherea, Lay him to sleep on couch of twisted gold, The couch that yearns for wan Adonis’ limbs. Cast on him drooping eyes of jasmine-flowers, Nay, all the flowers have faded in his death, As keen swift lovely murmurs drowned on breeze. Sprinkle his limbs with bakkaris and myrrh, Nay, perished all the perfumes in his death, All flushed soft legendary scents dissolve-- Disquieting erotic memories. The torches on the lintel all are quenched And Hymenæus rends the bridal crown. No more the song is “Hymen”: a new song The Graces grieve like mournful Autumn boughs, The toneless sound that means a broken heart: “Woe, for Adonis, son of Cinyrus!” To him the Muses chant their starry music, And painted insects floating motionless At their weird sound, unconscious of the day, Bright feathered wings hung in the gloom of thought Mimic the melancholy atmosphere And dry words start and rattle in the throat, Shudder in sorrow; but he does not heed. The bending vault of stars, Of cool green quiet stars, Where clouds but catch the palest tinge of day, Is tangled with the sea; The moonlight tossed and thrown by jostling waves Refrain from dirges, cease, O Cypris, your lament. Again you must bewail another year! _When Frigates from Long Voyages_ ... When frigates from long voyages Drift into harbour, then I see Whirled momentary mirages Of inspissated greenery-- Mazed mangroves casting their aerial roots, And diamond water-shoots Embroidering the air. And in the drowsy hanging-gardens there Roam slowly-swaying elephants; The fulgurant phœnix with her sycophants, Those trailing-plumèd birds of paradise, Sits on a cactus thorn. And gleaming in the ruby-veinèd morn Lie pools of liquid amber for the indolent crocodile To flounder in and dolorously smile. Spick diving gannets, speckled pelicans, Flutter with feather-footed ptarmigans. Orange-liveried marmosets Climb slender cypress minarets. Strange garrisons Of emerald-mailed chameleons, And peacocks, fans outspread as gonfalons, Shrill-voiced as amazons; Coiled dinosaurs that lap the hydromel From many a mauve-lipped shell.... The unicorns are neighing from afar, Where hills of cinnabar Loom high Like venomous Borgia-philtres on the sky. _Capriccio Espagnol_ “Y entre puente y otro puente Zaragoza es my tierra.” Of blood blown-dry brown velvet, baldaquins, Words guttural--then soft as dulcimers: Of rays of rapid light through fishes’ fins Prisoned in tanks profound where nothing stirs; Of nights that ooze weird sounds, and starry eyes On lattice fixed and bulging balconies:-- Of these my brain built castles rapidly, And tolled metallic like a beaten bell Of hard green copper; straggling aimlessly Over ravine and granite citadel Were cities unpremeditated, dry, As draughts of space inhaled from scorching sky. Through these Cathedrals rose like cachalots Twisted of height and gloom and sudden glow. Their glossy floors reflect the crimson clots Of vestment swirling, swishing to and fro-- And when the beadle taps his ponderous mace Faint echoes rustle from the Altar’s lace. Within the town: feeble electric light Among the dusty foliage of the trees, Like gentle cheeks against the steely night, With boughs of thick smooth silver; jubilees Of saints are frequent--in their thoughtfulness The citizens will give their saint a dress. They lift her from the gilded canopy, Studded in far Peru, on which she stands, Sumptuous, realistic, in each eye A gaping jewel; sprouting from her hands Are paper flowers--in their thoughtfulness They give their saint a new magenta dress. The ceremony done, and people doff Their piety: serrated streets resound With gossip, vacuous laughter, idle scoff. Like strips of tape the scattered crowds confound, Mantillas and a rout of dusky hair, Stray thoughts jerk off and clatter in the air.... Austere this land, and yet it utters flesh: The longing ache of contact, lids like song And lips like speech melodious: a mesh For Don Juans and sanguine passions; strong This earth of sprinkled blood, the seed of gold, Whose tainted glitters dazzle young and old! Jagged umber ridges freaked with lines of snow, Bitumen lakes, austere as faded fire, And vague waste lands where gypsies squatting low Croon winged abandoned musics that expire Like bruised sweet herbs, gushed madness, agonies Of lances hurled at pulseless arteries. Like vapours anchored to a mountain’s thigh Legioned, remote and abstract, yet withal Evocative of an infinity-- Beauty becoming metaphysical-- This Phœnix-land breeds new birds in the brain From ash, for I have never been to Spain. _Trépak_ The trees sprawl up like trumpets in the night, Great ghosts of once-viridian: but now, Fibred with brittle tufts of massy snow, They creak with burdened whiteness, for the bright Blue-prismed stalactites like wounds of light Are pendulous from their pagoda-boughs. And when a wind whirs in among the trees, As some Silenus fumbling frantic hands Into a cleft of honey, they cast off A whittling dust of little hispid stars. The moon is hungry. Lo! the moon has thinned To finger-nail’s fine fringe; she is forlorn With thought of Spring’s flown hollow spells of joy, When the now-passionless statue of her mind Was tremulous with passion, nescient lips Stammered lush ingenuities of love. Then Summer crackled like a yawn of fire: The big-lipped consummation of desire. A starved, lean-ribbed dog with rheumy eyes Yelps up at her, his poor thin thread of voice Nigh snaps, and trails its note into a growl, Then tumbles, frozen stark, amongst the snow. The barbèd minutes shiver chillily In wait for something. Ho! who’s this, a man? In this torn catafalque of barren boughs? A patriarchal bearded brittle-bones Daft, dazed with drink, shuffles his slipshod feet Scattering sprays of crisply sparkling snow. Death clanks his rusty mail and flaps his wings And ogling, draws the man into a dance: “No more the malady of life unlived With no grand-opera effects; no more Heroic sunsets, agonies of rose To wear you faint; no more the whirlpool’s mist Of good and evil. It shall be revealed There is no meaning, no significance In all this clamour, in this viscous trail Of sentimental sanatoriums. Those frowning stoic caryatides, Who contemplate in decorous solitude This elegant Golgotha of futile birth, Are fraudulent mountebanks; unmanicured, Life’s pointed nails grapple and tear your flanks Without a murmur trembling from your lips, O broken vessel sprayed with broken light, Come to oblivion’s arms; sepulchral night, Inchoate truth await you--they are kind. Close your red lashless eyelids. Death is fair....” _The Investiture of a Spinster Hob-Goblin_ Oh have you heard the chaunt of snails Tilting upon a big brown leaf, And held the insect world in fief And pared the devil’s gilded nails? And have you parlied with the rose, And seen the ballet of the bats And watched the sloths, our acrobats, Performing at our antic-shows? And have you drunk the tears of stars, And bathed in bubbles of the moon, And heard the gay grasshoppers croon, Who use their bodies as guitars? Then, if you’ve seen the phœnix land Or if a satyr’s beard you’ve sawn, And filed the eye-brows of a faun, We will admit you to our band. The hedonistic unicorns, Who drive our chariots through the sky, Will lead you to our empery Of languid dappled damson dawns. _The Were-Wolf_ All in the hush of a green night, He left the downy marriage-bed In a chill sweat, his face chalk-white, His voice spoke hoarsely of the dead. The young wife, wakened by his howls, Clutched bed-post dumb with fright, surprise; Like lepers huddled under cowls, Red films lay on her husband’s eyes. “I am become a wolf,” he said, “And I will to the churchyard-site To throttle graves, to raise the dead. Strange flesh will be my fare to-night!” And barking at the slice of moon He scampered nimbly on all fours. She never saw him more; one noon She spied the imprint of wolf’s claws. _Hilarity_ Come, let us sing the world’s hilarity, Now that a silence overspreads the hills, Each crevice, muscle, wimpling in a haze, Blue-ragged fustian of twilight: come And crack the sky with laughter, mounting shrill, Let it dissolve the æther, let it break In bubbles, circles ever-bosoming, As when a trout has troubled a still pool. Scatter it like a hungry pack of hounds, Worry and tear and grind it into strips, Ravish and tread on it, then let it be To crawl before us like the ooze of oil, A worm of shame, a mean and squamous thing. Hysteria, guide us! Let our laughter heave, Swell shriek on shriek, till it engender fear Like peacocks in abandoned palaces Whose sharp and melancholy discords ring And rinse like lightning through the vaulted roofs At sunset hour, when skies are smeared with blood. Come, drown the viol’s pallid amber notes, Submerge the fevered pluckings at the lute, Let no soft rippling cadences be spilled, But beat a riot out upon the drums. Fescennine gongs shall kindle us to blaze, And thus our fumes, well ballasted, will steer Towards the placid stars and make them reel. Our lives are cratered with great pocks and scabs, Meticulously morselled into pangs, Birth-scream, death-rattle, straggling years between, Of childhood and uneasy puberty, Of adolescence and maturity, Resolve tormented into slow decay, Crabbed, agued, rheumatic, cough our lives away. And some, less fortunate, cough up their blood. Then let us sing the world’s hilarity! With plunging pistons let our laughter press, Lumbering in massed squadrons, vitriol To blister the anæmic orb of moon. And there are many hours before the dawn. The hilewort, nightshade, agrimony-wand Surrender to the fingers of the breeze, Lay bare their throats, let loose their floating hair. Some luckless women bear their children blind And some hare-lipped and others lunatick With soft and fumbling brains and shifting eyes, Who dandle curly flowers, their lolling tongues Clicking and moist with unrestrained saliva. Perhaps ’twere better that they were born blind, Never to see the ugliness of man, The mirrors of his noisome, clammy thoughts, Like night-grown fungi pushing on the air, But hold sweet music palpable, and sounds, Tones, undertones: a paradise of hues, And glowing forms in silk embroideries. The silence, too, will seem a rhythmic motion, A saraband for snow-white feet to tread, And not a tortured cripple crouching low Amongst the blotting shadows of his soul, To nurse his agony with evil oaths, The blight-scarred sickly vapours of remorse, Sputtered and writhing from his twisted lips. Were a revolver fired with loud report, The only music welcome to our ears, The poor blind man would tremble, clutch a chair.... Day after day the limbs of man are gnawed And flayed by every manner of disease, Eaten of lice, they seem the spawn of slugs, And cancer slowly scrabbles at their vitals. The small-pox ploughs their faces into ruts And scurvy furrows, strange deformities Distend and hunch them into monstrous shapes, Like shadows gripping at realities, To scrape a livid grave amongst the slime. Some calcined ashen white with leprosy Will scream for terror at their dreadful hands, The touch of which would seem to cause decay The roots they tear, the pappy fruit they pluck, And prowling beasts will turn in haste and flee Before their weary footsteps through the night. Our quickened hearts have grated on themselves, We groin with lappered morphews of the mind, Our wanton mirth has frozen into sorrow, And we had thought to fashion of our joy Round crackling pearls to pelt our wine-drenched loves. But we were to have sung hilarity! Our clowns are turned into tragedians, And Pierrot’s chalk-white face is crinkled up With bitter weeping; roguish Harlequin, His apple cheeks all wet and blobbed with tears, Wanders the streets of Bergamo alone. And floating through the utter silences, Our sobs well hugely, spasms echoing To jeer and mock at us, abortive fools, Who came to sing the world’s hilarity. _The Gods_ Lightning zigzags and again Comets reel like tipsy girls, Bulbous clouds let down the rain, Little silver chains of pearls. Through the frenzied city beats A bourdon-drumming, heavy, low. In long and apoplectic streets The gods are passing to and fro. I watch them walk among the crowds, Their beards a-glittering with stars, Until they merge into the clouds Among the chimney’s fat cigars. While lovers in their foolishness Lisp out the night with hopes and fears, Whilst into void and emptiness Time clatters off and disappears. _As Dmitri Karamazoff sang on the way to Chaos_ Eight days without a sun: but I am calm And cultivate my tulips fixedly, I watch them flick their flighty freckled tongues Mocking and sweetly monstrous blares of time. (We weep to see you haste away so soon!) The gas is near extinct upon the plush, Like the last birds its flares have ebbed away. Blue witness of the Second Empire, gas!-- In cabriolets we echoed through the night And caracoled with busselled courtesans-- You lit the boulevards and avenues, While Paul Verlaine, a candle in his hand, Would totter up to bed and watch the moon _Comme un point sur un i_--so orotund.... Through fumes and crapulous velleities. But now the batteries like headaches beat Against the temples of humanity; A network of pure electricity Installed for quick transmission through the world Pours a perpetual electric day. Men plough their fields by searchlights from the skies, By searchlights blatant, geometrical, As fingers from each god-like aeroplane Pointed to each created mass of flesh Accusing and forewarning. O empresses of jade who slumber on your cushions, Who slumber delicately on your cushions! If we were moulded of a subtle stone Instead of being merely flesh and bone, We’d imitate your cool and elegant curves. To chill green jade our hot and shattered nerves Would clot or petrify or fossilize-- And moss to moist the finnèd lids of eyes, Lush velvet soaking on the irises Looped round with tiredness and its swollen reds Would grow about our damask four-post beds. We would be green, an ecstasy of green! As small sea-violets, virgin forest’s green, Where trees like coral sponges dab the air, And through each weft you hear a piece of wind, A tiny concertina-push of sound And then an inrush, sobbing gently inward. Why do we drown in customs, why become Lost dying flames and strangers to the skies Whose beams with clouds like wingèd chariots fly? Why do we climb the towers which break our knees, Horrible towers from which, when we look down We wish to hurl ourselves? O, then the ant-like herd below would feel A gentle spray of entrails--they’d recoil!-- Perhaps one woman faints: we do not care, The worm has not become our paramour, The worm has not yet pierced our winding-sheets. Then why not, like Empedocles, Lower our limbs into volcano-craters, And make the world believe that mighty God Translated us into His company On dolphins’ backs across a nectar lake, To share the glory of His attributes, His love like myrrh and incense and the fruits That dangle from exotic herbs and trees All gold and ripe as from Hesperides? An architect of ruin onion-eyed Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry Has cast the die of quick finality Among the cheese-mites in this gap of time. Through Chaos: murmurs, stumblings, hordes that rend The fabric which is called reality. The light, which was a sluice of molten gold, The crystal winds, disperse in empty air. The deep red empty holes which were our eyes Sense only burstings of electric globes. Louder the heat, like vitriol, wounds our ears Burning with dull blue thunder. And then--a tune upon the piccolo, One of the musical Unemployed, I know, Or some stray angel with pink sugar wings Trying to see the cheerful side of things! _In the Train de Luxe_ “It is dangerous to lean out of the window.” No doubt, when meteors shoot athwart the night. No doubt, no doubt; and yet it haunts the sight. I read, re-read this ponderous advice In French and English; play a game of dice With mental clouds through cannonades of hours, With foamless islands legioned with lush flow’rs, Prismatic juicy glades bee-pasturing. “In case of danger you must pull the ring.” A girl arranges a mellifluous grin: Eternal teas and afternoons begin To lurk within the forests of the mind With vividness that cuts it like a wind. And while my nostrils draw the vital air, They quiver to discern the sweat of hair In awkward crevices! _Signal d’Alarme_ Recalls the fact that I am safe from harm. I count, re-count each pendulum and beat. Pardie! the train has swollen in the heat; Freighted with smuts he heaves his metal breasts, Nor heeds the broad and burning moon’s behests. (The moon is lingering and luminous. Mired in a wrinkling silk diaphanous She floats a supple pose upon the air And whispers invitations.) “I don’t care!” The train replies; although his body glows, He is austere as tempest-sifted snows, Pursuing moral dumb-bell exercise To muscle-burst criterion; he defies Flesh and its shuddering spurts of harlotry. Pavilioned on hills of chastity, “I do not care a damn,” the train replies. _The Prodigal Son_ The young man yawned with feigned inconsequence Of manner; boredom exquisite; a fence To hide the quick explosions in his soul. He sucked at his surroundings, and the whole Grim agony of his dull youth returned, The blue fins of his sullen eyelids burned, He could have mouthed a curse, an oath obscene: For horror at the glib familiar scene A clayey lump stuck blistered in his throat. Chrysallic faces, garlic, myosote, And rows of beans and artichokes, a field Interminably patterned, jigged and reeled Along the corridors of memory. “Is childhood happy? dismal fallacy! And yet I am not one of those who think That lilies smell not, orange-flowers stink.” Here had the best hours coolly leaked away Like driblets from a tap, a disarray Of tumbled hispid stars; a clean dry sleep Of stunted senses, where he could not weep For ignorance. And ever shone the moon; The warm sky twinkled like a chopped lagoon. “This world is but a foggy circumstance,” He thought, “where timid mortals must advance To claim their rights and drain what cup of joy It has to offer, now no longer boy I’ll cease to play the rôle of Tantalus, But leave this place, discharge a blunderbuss Against my present drawling mode of life. I’m still too young to bear the plague of wife, And though ’tis true, when all fine things be said, I’m welcome to a partner for my bed, To kiss a gaping throat of flaccid silk; I fear her plump white breasts would hold no milk To suckle babes on, after I had done With kissing at her nipples; one by one Each new-born babe would wither up and die.” He picked his teeth and fetched a windy sigh, Informed his father of his bold resolve, Who told him of the cost it would involve: So, settling up accounts, he bade farewell To all the damned of his domestic hell. Oh _wagon-lits_ and tickets bought from Cook’s, Surpassing all the fairy-tales in books! Warm exhalations, streets with spicy smells And oh, the Poe-like harmonies of bells! Venice and Ruskin and _The Deadly Lamps_, The pulsing cafés and patchouli’d vamps With sticky flowers in their copper hair, The languid music throbbing on the air! The Watteau _fêtes galantes_, the bistre-brown Sombrero’d poets, yet without a crown To purchase food; the graceful unwashed hands And flung-proud gestures of these Southern lands! The tiny shiny shoes with pointed tips And carmine-rouged pursed petulance of lips! But all the while the young man’s pockets burned, And all the while he piteously yearned For lucre; many azure nights he’d lain With shirt-front soaked and squelching in champagne And pleasures, money, all are volatile, For after belching Pol-Roger the bile Will wreak revenge. And thus it came about That when his full supply had given out, The harlots would no longer share his bed; Since he could pay no cash, they, laughing, said: “One sucks the orange, throws away the peel.” The young man’s vanity forbade him kneel As penitent before his father’s glare, Before the well-staged patronising stare Of his familiar family--poor things-- How they would love to clip his phœnix-wings! So he became a labourer and slept In musty garrets where the grey mice crept, With cobwebs and the gibbering of bats And scuttling cockroaches, and lice, and rats Who dragged their heavy bellies on the floor Thud, thud and thud; the creaking of the door In twilight cavernous, the broken pane Through which the hiss and crackle of the rain Would slant in rivulets across the planks, The thunder tramped, the lightning played his pranks Like a young leopard prancing from the skies Divinely, whilst the tough wind slapped its thighs. Through dismal days he sweated at the plough. And half a crust beneath an apple-bough Became his nourishment, and so he thinned In figure-line; the sweltering east wind And thick-flamed sun had bronzed his body quite.... And often through the oozing hours of night He’d sing a sparkling catch of better times-- No longer pedant à propos of rhymes, He’d hum or whistle: “Gosh, she looks immense, You never met a girl like sweet Hortense,” With genuine emotion in his throat. But soon he was reduced to pawning coat And hat; dismissed for superflux of dreams Or bathing on hot afternoons in streams When there was corn to reap, or hay to store In soporific barns; and all the more He dreamt of silken harlots, velvet wine. A tender farmer let him tend the swine. With weighty flanks well caked in slime, a sow Grunted and suckled farrow, whilst a cow Lowed like a mellow snore; a mastiff whined To demonstrate sheer vacancy of mind. “Shall I arise and go? ’tis not too late To gain an entrance to my father’s gate.” The young man shook his head and muttered “No, Nor shall arise, nor to my father go.” He had acquired a preference to dine On scraps amongst the confidential swine. _Ventilation_ Open the window! now that breezes play Over the wrinkled hills; the sweltering day Fused by the wedge-shaped engines of the sun With heat intensive, split as flowers spun Of glass to myriad particles minute With spot-like swiftness, hovers chilled and mute. Now that no far voice cleaves the air or blurs, No plash, no fall of oars, no rumour stirs, And life itself has long outbreathed its lungs-- (Or so it seems, for no dim amorous tongues Trouble the foliage, and the moon is full, Unflecked by wind-froth); all seems sorrowful With beauty exanimate, a beauty dead, A subterranean silence where vague dread Puckers the brooding soul until it weeps Terrible heavy tears. The garden sleeps.... Sleeps as the desolate magnificence Of Angkor with its grave mute eloquence Where blistering suns, invectives of the wind Hurl vainly; frenzied storms undisciplined Beat, plunge inanely at the steadfast walls. And no sad throat of nightingale enthralls The quickly-pulsing heart with turbulent song. So massive has the stillness grown, so strong A blood-vessel would burst, a muscle snap, A sane malt mind would rave, grow weak as pap.... Oh aching ears, have you too heard the lips Of silence utter some apocalypse To slake the agony of my desires, To scatter them like ashes of the pyres Of calcined and cremated limbs? but hark In the faint failing distances what spark Of flashed sound quivers? hold your breath, what flush Of fluid moan? The sluice is opened; rush And avalanche of panic-writhing cries. Some soul in anguish is it? vague surmise As of some tragedy--I shudder, shake With fear.... It is the peacocks by the lake! _After_ The sky is very blue to-day, And the soft turf yields To each well-fitting shoe; so they Bring their bananas and sandwiches To munch on the battle-fields. O, why has Nature taken such a sheen, Why does the grass grow green, So cruelly green? O, surely it must wither in the spate Of clashing contumacious worlds of agony and hate! How can the sun keep pace so? why not reel, White steel, Or stagger ankleted with yawning fire Neath the tremendous byre? But the absurd courageous clouds Look on, look on In bustling business crowds, They con A Masse-Mensch imaginary power. They do not cower Before the charabancs’ toot toot a toot And men who bring their sandwiches to boot, And break beer-bottles where men’s souls were torn By invisible billion hands ... where agony was born. There is a lady in an orange gown. (Did not those shrieks hang airily down, Suspended for eternity to hear, A thousand tired stars over a shattered town Not formed enough to speak, but formed enough to shriek And formed enough to make men fear?) Not so. The roses dangle deep asleep, Men play Bo-peep With poor worn-out banalities, Sentimentalities, Tepid-with-languor-lilies And daffodillies. We shall have each wind-melody dictated And by Puccini orchestrated, And from innumerable Noah’s arks Those little gasps of men make little gasp remarks And puff Abdullas in their elegant central parks. A cross ... a cross ... and row on row the same Small cross without a name, Each silhouette so slim And, God, how ghastlily trim! And down beneath the skeletons are piled. ... But now a child Discovering some fraction of a bomb, Adventure-wild, Performs a jig with exquisite aplomb Over, who knows? a corpse or mandrake root (What matters it?) the charabancs toot-toot, The sky’s so very blue to-day And the soft turf yields To each well-fitting shoe: and they Bring their bananas and sandwiches To munch on the battle-fields. _Green grow the Rushes, O_ And do the rushes grow so green Upon this chill All Hallows’ E’en That voices as a lutany Surge through my window-panes to die? For in this room of rot and rust These dark red circles filled with dust, These sodden and lead-heavy eyes Long stunned with muted symphonies, Are racked with the old hunger, hung With memory’s hard ice-flakes, stung By each note-star in crystal set To glint and pierce this lazaret. O, why not let me wallow, bleed, Riot and guzzle in red greed, And leave my doom-gripped body tossed Into an agony of frost? Cruel, marauding throats, begone! Before I hurl my curse upon Your youth, oh loathsome things, to try Torturing me with purity! _Words_ In long prim rows the formal words distend, Stuffed birds with loosely-fitting beaks, they glare With beady eyes pathetically vague Beneath their sober domes of dusty glass. (Pale frigid flute-voiced children promenade To suck the air into their fading lungs, Native to soot: the tortoise-shell effect Of sunsets barred by buildings smug and bare And sleek pat streets of asphalt: gamins drab Whose nightingales the Cockney sparrows are. When furry frost hangs white about the chin, These too will cough a dirge, no doubt, and die!) O words, assert yourselves! from long prim rows Trip out and weave new patterns with the clouds That preen their swan-wings spread upon the air, Then loll like tufts of lilac heavily; Lush coolness, limpid nebulousness; where The dove-tame zephyrs leap in shapely loops To fill the windy trammel of a skirt, Or must we oil you with celebral sweat? When levers, springs and cogs are oiled you’ll come Naked and unembarrassed by the moon. * * * * * The words have answered, lo, the words advance No longer blocked in patterns, dribble out In pleasant drops, with bird-quick flickers trip Into a dissonance or discord: so, Sharp darts of dappled sound to cleave the ear. Some strut, and laughing madly, stridently, These crack their wind-swift fingers, or like ants Waving antennæ, struggle bravely on Beneath their heavy burdens, one or two Twinkle, then flutter off like hueless leaves, Or dart and flash like wagtails on a pool, Some fired with sulphurous glow, and some askew Sway perilously, like a drunkard’s hat. But what are these with puckered, pointed ears That flit among the crowds like strips of tape? They seem to stumble into tragedies. “Oh, we shall twine you merry wreaths,” they say, “Gay wreaths, festoons of entrails for your brow!” Their eyes like little glasses of liqueur Glitter and frighten me: within, without, Words with hot breath hiss subtly venomous, A million droning insects in my ears, A million mottled thrushes in my mind. _Greenness Unsecreted_ In ombre gateways I had loitered, stopped To speak unto my nearest brother, Toad, Within the forest where the cobras propped Green twists on frothy treetops, their abode: “Toad, I salute you! in your chilly eye I see the mignonette of modesty.” He did not answer, crouching like a sin, Steeped in a lethargy too dull to pierce, Centuple wisdom folded in his skin-- He stared with humble stare that was not fierce, And yet within that stare I seemed to know The stare that maddened Hieronymo. I followed then a wedge of thoughtful cranes Who fled across the silence drearily From desolations and eternal rains Across the frozen ridge of Rhodope, The stars grown piteous of my misery Dropped golden tears into the poem-sea. I have since dived, bathed in the poem-sea, In spilt genethliacs of amber wine Mellowed to milk, like turtle-feathers free Floating and flurry on the teasing brine, Below, I saw those youths that died of love And wandered with them in the myrtle grove.[A] And when I rose a slender oaten pipe Made music in the entrails of my ears, Rich bandaliers of fruit grown pulpy-ripe Moistened the membranes and dissolved my fears, I could remember at her day of birth How Flora with her daisies strewed the earth. But man still chased his jet-black butterflies, And looking up, as from a rippled cloud, Shunned me with viscous terror in his eyes, Then fell a-triply sewing at his shroud, Lest I should mar the self-fomenting strife And cultivated void that was his life. [A] These two lines are derived from Pope. _Back-Streets_ Inane perspective stretched behind the street: A wall, a yard, a wall, a yard, a wall, Patterned interminably, patterned neat With intervals of oblongs squat and tall. A full moon dims the stars and here and there Glints on a bulging square of window-pane. Soon clinging sodden moistures glut the air And mists fall heavier than autumn rain. Only one room of all these rooms is lit. Perhaps somebody watches, dreams absurd And sentimental dreams, and from this pit The ponderous bourdon of some heart is stirred. Men live their packed exasperated lives, Callous and unfamiliar, yet each knows, In all these sordid chiaroscuro hives, His neighbour’s pleasures and his neighbour’s woes. Through gutters of stagnations and defeats, Immense black ruins with the beds unmade, Interminable agonising streets, I walk alone, a stranger, and afraid _Werther-Introspection_ “Talk to me somewhat quickly, Or my imagination will carry me To see her in the shameful act of sin.” _Duchess of Malfi._ The morning drums upon the window-pane, The evening drums upon the window-pane, I wait and wait and fumble in my brain.... All night I’ve lain with soul that could not rest. At dusk strange hands were tearing at my heart In a prim polar silence. The stags and does may frolic in the woods And leap beyond the stars, for aught I care, Beyond those furbished clots of frigid light, Abstract and sad detached identities, Where they may anguish, fossilize or freeze. All night I’ve lain upon the charming rack You manufactured: I shall not despair, Or coax a courteous isolated tear. But I shall hear my agonizing laughter Echoing far from floor to trembling rafter In brittle carillons like metal bells, And hear my bleached emaciated yells Burgeon in petalled peals, flamboyant, bright As merry moons in petticoats of white To hide their cancer and their leprosy. Then: “Patience, rebel, calm!” the darkness said, “You’ll never choke time’s throat of beaten lead.” I did not heed.... I knew that my heart bled. Near the pellucid lake--ah God, there stirred No animalculus, and an absurd Decorous silence humped its back and purred. _On the Theme of Ophelia’s Madness_ “And will he not come again?” Ophelia wanders out into the rain That makes soft music on her yellow hair. “O, shall I then surrender to despair?” In vain she begs the strutting chanticleer And Tullia’s intellectual marmosyte, King Oberon a-lying on his bier And Leda’s downy swan. Throughout the night She listens to the noise of dead men’s bones, Sad subterranean murmurs drowned in sea-weed, Slow-drifting down jade silences.... --She hopes to screw some answer from their groans! But there’s a seal upon their lipless mouths. “By all the moons that in the peacock’s tail Rival the heaven’s moon, I conjure a reply; has any seen My lover’s sandal-shoon? He wears a fluted cockle-hat, A staff of briar-wood, His hair’s coiled thick in a flaxen mat, And like a river in flood The crisp locks tumble on his poll.” She cried but there came no answer at all Save, God ha’ mercy on his soul! “By molewarp’s brain and by pismire’s gall, Will he whom I love return again?” The pale grey rain For pity’s sake, Breathed her asleep in a lullaby, Till slothful Charon in his barge rowed by And ferried her gently over the Stygian lake. _These Consolations_ I shall console myself by being absurd And sit among the rank, unwholesome dews, And watch each whining pheasant and each bird Guzzle the very-human bearded grain: I shall not weep beneath the dismal yews But to the milk-white turtles tune my pain. Where spiny pines diffuse a noxious shade I’ll wage a series of intestine wars, The listening wolves grow milder in the glade Beneath the incense of the breathing Spring, Whilst every shepherd polishes his sores I’ll languish into life, and living, sing. The women teem their babes; the sative plants Quiver as Cynthia fills her silver horn, The spicy forest and her sycophants, The fiery-pointed organons of sense, Attempt to catch the sound as it is born And, as it dies, the hush is thick and tense. But even so the tensity can vex What I had hoped had blackened into jet, Like raven-feathers in the moon’s reflex, The feeble eyes of our aspiring thoughts, But even so the tensity can fret, And I must grope in unsuspected orts.... I shall console myself with being fed On hollow sapless tales and other slips, And to the pallid nations of the dead I’ll wander, and as soon as I arise A liquid film will glaze upon my lips, Upon my pores, impatient for the skies. _In the Month of Athyr_[B] These ruins seem a womb of cringing air, So thin that the ears tingle, flickering, And every barren plant is withering, Ready to snap, like glass, for sheer despair ... And through the ether mountains loom like bones So hollow you could scrape a melody Sounding like water from them, oozily To this sun-stricken desert-world of groans. The light is cruel: it is hard to read The letters on these stones, but, lo, the words: “_Lord Jesus Christ_” and further “_soul_”; what birds Erased the script with droppings? and what weed Has wrested from these crevices a home? “_In month of Athyr_” ... “_Lucius fell asleep_”.... His age is mentioned: he was young; and deep Beneath the damaged parts, as in a foam Of centuries I see, disfigured, “_tears_.” Then “_tears_” again, “_for us his friends who weep_”.... Lucius was much belovèd, it appears. In grey November ... Lucius fell asleep.... [B] The ancient Egyptian November (derived from a poem by C. P. Cavafy). _Discoveries_ We have discovered many things To suit our moods, to give us wings: More than an Aristotle-tome In crimson splash of a fowl’s comb, In silver-boled unleaving trees Like organ-pipes along the breeze; Sometimes the notes run sharp and false When rooks and twigs join in the valse Of smooth and swaying treetop spun Like yarn across the copper sun.... But there are times when you would cry To hear the trees’ low melody. And we have watched the hemlock spray And smelt dank wafture of decay, The fume from tawny bellied leaves In spirals where the autumn grieves. With froth of flowers we have been rich-- The globuled frog-spawn on the ditch Was mottled with our wonder; vast Moist moans of raping bees’ repast Have sluiced our languid afternoons Like ripples crawling on lagoons. But we have not discovered yet How to erase, how to forget Sheer vividness of solitude, How to obliterate each mood To dim Antarctic memories, Merged icebergs twinkling in chopped seas. _Old Woman_ Gaunt woman with pinched, palsied hands, Cramped fingers once their nimble slaves, Did your poor feet once print the sands With lovely dimpled curves like waves? I’m told men once would march to wars, Your name upon their lips, would kneel Rapt by your eyes that fleered the stars, Where passions leapt like sparks from steel. I’m told snow hawthorn massed in bloom Could not cool whiter than your hands, Or candles crackling up the gloom Of churches in chill twilit lands. Gaunt woman, why so tense your mouth? Is it your blistered heart that speaks? Did colour fluid as the South Light those emaciated cheeks? I’m told your voice once trembled clear And frail withal as linnet’s wings.... And now your voice is but the mere Vague echo of forgotten things. “_Once lovers bruised each blue-veined breast_ _And charred my body as ’twere coal._ _Now I would lay me down to rest._ _May Christ receive my wrinkled soul!_” _Cold Joints_ I In mental constipation shivering, He went into the fields, where he could sing To ease the sobbing of his plangent mind, With desolate, cracked voice, for they were kind. The sky an ashen cup of neutral air; Black specks of surly rooks whirred cawing there And sombre clots of writhing, stunted trees Stretched withered fingers, creaking traceries Of mazed arms multitudinous; their moan A memory that he was not alone. Upon the gravel path small frosted stars Glittered and bleared; the rusty railing-bars Were furred with silver lichen as the down Bristled upon a dead man’s throat; a crown Of Gothic spires through lustrous distance crept. The world and all its wedge-shaped engines slept. Disturbed, he heard the crunch of footsteps fast And looking up, he saw two men that passed. “Good-morning, Mr. Gosling.” “Oh, good-day!” “Bit nippy weather!” then strode on their way With patch-work quilted minds and bowler hats, With Sunday journal, gloves and yellow spats, Into the distance ... while the echoes bear “Bit nippy weather” drifting down the air. II Up, silver man nid-nodding by the hearth! The languid summer has trailed out her days.... For this night leave your bible, leave your path Of selfish righteousness; delay your praise Of God till He has given you a seat Amongst the flapping angels. (Fire and sleete And candle-light And Christ receive thy soul.) Well, these are facts, even if impolite-- As trite and boring as the price of coal. The lyke-wake dirge comes after; now you live-- Too old for fornication--that is true. But you may love the slender fleeting things, The terrible music of the slipping hours, If sordid Life has nothing else to give. In each clock-tick there is a something new-- Unsatiated sweet imaginings, Pianola dreams or orchidaceous flowers! And though you shiver in a slow decay, You still have guts and marrow, though your limbs Be well-nigh licked of blood, you need not stay For ever by the fire and croon cracked hymns! The children gloze and fleech him all in vain-- The taxi throbs outside. “I hope the rain Won’t spoil the fireworks.” Granpa’s left behind With baby and the adenoided nurse. The maid moves in to draw the window blind. Her lips compressed have never known a curse. Amazed, she sees frail drops are trickling down What she had ever held to be a mask. Half-pitying the old exhausted man So infantine, yet sitting all alone As in blue forest depths a mossy stone, Where toads crouch like the voice in gramophone, She brings him crumpets and a cup of tea. III “He’s got hot lips when he plays jazz.” How trite and obvious; of course he has! Sex blossoms on the lips as well as other parts, If not, he is unworthy of an entrance to our hearts. And you invite spontaneous destruction For splitting chips which form so tiresome an obstruction To our imaginative possibilities. No half-dissembled grey tranquillities Of mental judgment! We want elephants, Tough-grained calamities, to clamber up on; To travel petulantly bump-a-bump, to sup on Champagne and slippery flesh of oysters, And conversational quips and roysters With childishly garrulous termagants. And in their company you’ll find it pays To polish up the petals of a phrase! _Invocation_ Upon this flat, misshapen day My weary sullen thoughts grow grey-- Grey waters, and grey, sunless cliffs, Bleak gaiety of flowers, whiffs Of loneliness, ah loneliness To ever clasp in my caress. And shall I, poor mazed lunatic, When memories come crowding thick, Dangle a silly mandrake-root, Swinging upon Time’s parachute? Can thoughts have colours, colours thoughts, Or do I wander midst the orts Of half-forgotten nightmare-pyres? We poets have exchanged our lyres For heart-strings. We have souls to save From boredom; come then, let’s be brave And sing the baser passions, sing Until the blood jerked up will ring A matins for our lusts and shames, And men will tingle at our names. _Lame Lady_ A poor lame lady limps along Low sloping fields of tender green, She’d love to break into a song Or dance, a figure slim, serene. All nature seems a parquet floor To please the sense, to please the eye, And Lazarus forgets each sore Beneath the thickly-coated sky. The poor lame lady senses whole The shafts of coloured warmth arise, A thirsty solitude of soul Looms in her vague pathetic eyes. The hollow spells of Spring are fleet And quick thoughts clatter through her head.... “An awkward duck with webbèd feet!... Ah! better far to lie a-bed.” In bed her lameness will not leer, For Sleep’s compassionate and kind, And she will dance and sing and hear The crooning of a phantom wind. For then her body’s cage-doors wide Are opened, and the spirit free Flutters, and in a burst of pride Dances before Eternity. _Conversations and Crumbling_ “Well, here we are. I venture to believe We have not met since Venice ... seven years.... My sons were killed, and I was left to grieve With Adelaide and Fanny ... they are dears.” I look around and find two fleshy ears Dangling a pair of ear-rings ... it’s a phase.... But all the same I wish that they’d wear stays. When Regent Street is up I always feel That London Bridge is also falling down, Symbolic hulks of granite, orange peel, And somebody who’s losing half-a-crown.... It is so queer, so queer, to live in town.... And then I see myself and purse my lips “With no more conscience than a snake has hips.”[C] Yes, here am I bathed in a maudlin smile! And here are: you, he, it, and everyone Except the person who’s alone worth while. Calmly I rise with broken threads, I run Stirred by my own intrinsic power to sun Self-consciousness to flesh-burst--I’ve begun With unabated sarcasm to rise In self-opinion, sinking with closed eyes. A subtle crepitation in the air As if the nomad camels would return, As if the burly lion left his lair To have his hair curled daintily. I burn. You do not listen: “there’s so much to learn From scientific data, palimpsest....” I tell you they will crumble with the rest. Before the wolf returns to Regent Street, Before he digs up fashionable tombs, Before the nightingale with music sweet Pierces the Piccadilly catacombs, Before the screech-owl adds to ruin-glooms, The merry robin-redbreast and the wren Will trill their notes in Bayswater again. “The worst of influenza’s over now, But rents are high ... the weather is not cold Considering the month of year, but how The war has broken through our lives! how old”.... Above her grave time soon will rake the mould: Already she is smouldering away, Already she is fettled for decay. Pleasures and vanities, regrets, desires Dumped on a dung-heap where the lilies grow.... And these shall be their own sad funeral-pyres, Destruction totters and his steps are slow. The miles to Babylon? I do not know. But this I know: these folk on gilded chairs Had better kneel and say their hopeless prayers. [C] A line from “Louisville Lou”: a certain fox-trot. _Intermezzo_ That sinister, that sombre poet-waif Presses his brow against the window-pane, (That window-pane of cruel, wicked glass), Watching the sour and curdled flakes of snow. With eyes like pale grey membranes fixed and glazed Ever he stares upon snow-silent fields, And sweating skies that lean towards the earth Like a great toper leaning at a bar. Ever the mournful cries of mountain-apes Echo, re-echo, and abysmally, Ever the sour snow falls. And where’s the moon? It must hang high, oh, somewhere in the heavens. And somewhere, waking in the middle night Soft longing arms spread out in love’s embrace Find nothing, no one; in a dazed despair Grope for a form to clasp, to touch, and then Fall limply back in dismal loneliness. Perpetual Penelopes unspin The webs they spun meticulous at day. Somewhere the honey-throated nightingale Is voiceless for the burden of his love, And somewhere it is good to be alive.... That sinister, that sombre poet-waif So tired to tears and tearless, with those eyes Airily floating in eternal stare, Bartered his soul for void philosophies. But suddenly he flings a weary laugh And walks into the jangling painted world. THREE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH (FOR EDITH SITWELL) I _The Gibbet_ (DERIVED FROM ALOYSIUS BERTRAND) Oh, do I hear the night-raped wind Who screams in travail, do I hear The blunt ropes of the gibbet grind, The hanged man’s writhing sigh so drear? Oh, can it be some cricket’s song Vibrating shrill amongst the weeds And sterile moss? throughout the long Finned languid hours when summer bleeds Outstretched and pallid on a bier. Oh, can it be some spot-swift fly Who winds his horn round each deaf ear? Some beetle plucking stealthily A morsel of corrupting flesh, A trailing wisp, a bleeding hair, Until his spirit, fed and fresh, Will bid him frisk upon the air? Oh, can it be some spider squat Who sings and sows at half an ell Of satin, for a new cravat To deck his strangled throat in Hell? It is the clock which tinkles down The hour to the crumbling town. It is a hanged man’s carcass spun With crimson by the setting sun. II _Saint_ (AFTER MALLARMÉ) High at a window Of old gilded sandalwood Where once the viol Mingled with dulcimer, Sits the Saint pallid, The missal of parchment Lies open where vespers And complines were chaunted: At monstrance-glazing Grazed by the Angel’s Harp curved by winging Aloft on the twilight For her delicate fingers, On instrument’s plumage She balances soft, A musician of silence. III _Hérodiade_ TRANSLATED FROM MALLARMÉ _Scene_ The Nurse--Hérodiade NURSE. You live, Princess? or do I see your shade? Your fingers at my lips and all their rings Cease to proceed in an unlearned-of age.... HÉRODIADE. Recede. The immaculate blond torrent of my hair Freezes my limbs with horror when it bathes Their solitude, and interlaced with light My hair’s immortal. Me a kiss would murder, Would kill, if beauty were not death, oh woman.... Driven by what allurement, should I know? What morn forgotten by the prophets pours O’er dying distances, these dismal feasts? And you have seen me enter, nurse of winter, The heavy prison built of stone and iron Where aged lions drag the centuries, And fatal, I advanced, with shielded hands, Through desert-perfume of these ancient kings: But have you still beheld my very dread? I stop to dream of exiles, and I strip, As near a pond whose gush of water welcomes, The pallid lilies in me, smitten, charmed My eyes pursue the languor of the wreck Descend, in silence, through my reverie, The lions part my indolence of robe And gaze on feet whose curves would calm the sea. Quiet the shudder of your crumbling flesh, And mimicking the fashions of my hair So fierce that makes you fear their shock of manes, Come, help, as thus you dare no longer see me, Within a mirror nonchalantly combing. NURSE. My child, unless you wish to sample myrrh Gay in its sealèd bottles, would you prove The grave funereal virtue of the essence Ravished from roses’ dim senility? HÉRODIADE. Leave there those perfumes! Nurse, do you not know I hate them, do you wish me then, to feel My languid frame drown in their drunkenness? I crave: my hair of flowers not created To strew oblivion of human anguish, But gold, for ever virgin of the spices, In cruel flashes and in heavy pallor, Will mark the sterile chilliness of metals, Having reflected you, my native jewels, Vases and arms, from solitary childhood. NURSE. Pardon, oh queen, for age eclipsed the plea With which you deign to vindicate my mind Grown sallow as an old or gloomy book.... HÉRODIADE. Enough! before me hold this mirror. Mirror! Cold water frozen hard within your frame By weariness; how often, dream-tormented And searching for my memories, like leaves Beneath the hole profound within your ice, In you I seemed a shadow, but, what horror At dusk when in your fountain I have known The nudity of my dishevelled dream! Nurse, am I beautiful? NURSE. In truth, a star, But this tress tumbles.... HÉRODIADE. Check in your offence Which chills my blood towards its source, and quell This gesture of notorious irreligion: Tell me, in grim emotion what sure demon Throws you this kiss, these perfumes, should I breathe it? And, oh my heart, this hand still sacrilegious, Since I believe you wished to touch me, say They are a day which will not be extinguished Without calamity upon the tower.... Oh day Hérodiade beholds with dread! NURSE. Indeed, a strange day, from which heaven guard you! You wander, lonely shadow, recent passion, Looking within you, premature in terror: Even as an immortal exquisite, And hideously beautiful, my child As.... HÉRODIADE. Were you not about to touch me? NURSE. I would belong to him, for whom the Fates Reserve your secrets. HÉRODIADE. Oh! be silent! NURSE. Sometimes He’ll come, perchance? HÉRODIADE. I pray you, do not listen, Innocent stars! NURSE. How else, ’mid sombre terrors To dream a suppliant, more implacable, That god the treasure of your grace attends! For whom, devoured of agony, you guard The mystery, vain splendour of your being? HÉRODIADE. For me. NURSE. Sad flower seen with atony In water, doleful flower that grows alone, Nor has anxiety but cloudy sound. HÉRODIADE. Go, keep your pity with your irony. NURSE. Expound however: no, ingenuous child, Some day this scorn triumphant will diminish.... HÉRODIADE. But who would touch me, reverenced of lions? Besides, I want no human thing; if, chiselled, You see me with eyes lost in Paradise, ’Tis when I call to mind your milk of yore. NURSE. Oh lamentable victim to its fate! HÉRODIADE. Yes, it is for myself, deserted, that I flower! Gardens of amethyst, you know too well-- Fled without end into the wise abysms Dazzled and dazed; you unawared-of golds Who guard your antique mellowness of light Beneath the sombre slumber of a soil Primordial and primitive; and you Oh stones from which my pure and jewel eyes Borrow their melody of clarity; You, metals, which surrender to my hair A fatal splendour and its massive gait! Woman who speak of mortal, as for you, Created in malignant centuries, Born for the spite of caverns sybilline! According as from calyx of my clothes The white thrill of my nudity emerge, Aroma of the fierce, the savage joys-- Woman who speak of mortal! prophesy That if the tepid azure of the summer, To whom the woman natively unveils, Sees me in starlike shivering chastity, I die! I love the dread of being virgin And I desire to live the terror of my hair-- To sense, inviolate reptile, on my couch At evening, stir within my useless flesh The frigid sparkle of your pallid lucence, O you who die calcined with chastity, White night of icicles and cruel snow! And your lone sister, oh eternal sister, My dream will mount towards you airily: Already as the rare limpidity Of one who dreamt it, in my native-land Monotonous, I think myself alone, And all around me lives in the idolatry That in a mirror’s dozing calm reflects Hérodiade of clear and diamond gaze.... Yea, last of spells! I feel it, I’m alone. NURSE. And will you die then, Madam? HÉRODIADE. Grandmother, no, Be calm: withdrawing, pardon this flint heart, But, if you wish, first close the shutters fast, Seraphic azure smiles within the pane’s Profundity. I loathe the lovely azure. The waters lull themselves and, over there, Do you not know a country where the sky, So sinister, has all the heated looks Of Venus who is burning in the leaves At evening? I’ll thither ... Light these tapers, Mere childishness, you say, whose nimble flames Weep a strange weeping ’mid the empty gold And ... NURSE. Now? HÉRODIADE. Farewell. You lie, oh naked flower of my lips! For I await a thing unheard of yet. Perhaps unconscious of their mystery, Unconscious of your cries, you hurl the sobs Supreme and bruisèd of an infancy Perceiving dimly ’mid its reveries Those frozen gems that separate at last. 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