The
Prophecy.
Prophetic Bard. "Be warned! I feel the world grow old,
And off Olympus fades the gold
Of the simple passionate sun;
And the Gods wither one by one:
Proud-eyed Apollo's bow is broken,
And throned Zeus nods nor may be woken
But by the song of spirits seven
Quiring in the midnight heaven
Of a new world no more forlorn,
Sith unto it a Babe is born,
That in a propped, thatched stable lies,
While with darkling, reverend eyes
Dusky Emperors, coifed in gold,
Kneel mid the rushy mire, and hold
Caskets of rubies, urns of myrrh,
Whose fumes enwrap the thurifer
And coil toward the high dim rafters
Where, with lutes and warbling laughters,
Clustered cherubs of rainbow feather,
Fanning the fragrant air together,
Flit in jubilant holy glee,
And make heavenly minstrelsy
To the Child their Sun, whose glow
Bathes them His cloudlets from below....
Long shall this chimed accord be heard,
Yet all earth hushed at His first word:
Then shall be seen Apollo's car
Blaze headlong like a banished star;
And the Queen of heavenly Loves
Dragged downward by her dying doves;
Vulcan, spun on a wheel, shall track
The circle of the zodiac;
Silver Artemis be lost,
To the polar blizzards tossed;
Heaven shall curdle as with blood;
The sun be swallowed in the flood;
The universe be silent save
For the low drone of winds that lave
The shadowed great world's ashen sides
As through the rustling void she glides.
Then shall there be a whisper heard
Of the Grave's Secret and its Word,
Where in black silence none shall cry
Save those who, dead-affrighted, spy
How from the murmurous graveyards creep
The figures of eternal sleep.
Last: when 'tis light men shall behold,
Beyond the crags, a flower of gold
Blossoming in a golden haze,
And, while they guess Zeus' halls now blaze
Shall in the blossom's heart descry
The saints of a new hierarchy!"
He ceased ... and in the morning sky
Zeus' anger threatened murmurously.
I sped away. The lightning's sword
Stabbed on the forest. But the word
Abides with me. I feel its power
Most darkly in the twilit hour,
When Night's eternal shadow, cast
Over earth hushed and pale and vast,
Darkly foretells the soundless Night
In which this orb, so green, so bright,
Now spins, and which shall compass her
When on her rondure nought shall stir
But snow-whorls which the wind shall roll
From the Equator to the Pole....
Of the
Final
Nature of
Pan.
For everlastingly there is
Something Beyond, Behind: I wis
All Gods are haunted, and there clings,
As hound behind fled sheep, the things
Beyond the Universe's ken:
Gods haunt the Half-Gods, Half-Gods men,
And Man the brute. Gods, born of Night,
Feel a blacker appetite
Gape to devour them; Half-Gods dread
But jealous Gods; and mere men tread
Warily lest a Half-God rise
And loose on them from empty skies
Amazement, thunder, stark affright,
Famine and sudden War's thick night,
In which loud Furies hunt the Pities
Through smoke above wrecked, flaming cities.
For Pan, the Unknown God, rules all.
He shall outlive the funeral,
Change, and decay, of many Gods,
Until he, too, lets fall his rods
Of viewless power upon that minute
When Universe cowers at Infinite!
XIX
So far my mind runs, yet I see
How little faun-philosophy
Repays my heart would learn, not teach....
Better laugh long, lie, suck a peach
Couched under tiger-lily flowers
Which daze the low hot sun with showers
Of fragrance, while the dusty bee
Drones, fumbles, falls luxuriantly
Within their throats; couched, turn a song
Of flowers all the flowers among:
THE
FAUN'S
AFTERNOON
SONG.
There is a vale beyond blue Ida's mount,
And thither often would I, piping, stray
To listen to the music of a fount
That spelt her tears out in a Dorian lay.
"Long, long ago," she wept, "Narcissus came
Wandering down the sunny-shafted glade;
Full weary was he of the lamp's gold flame
Wavering beneath the dusky colonnade.
"For at the fall of night forth from the dim
Gardens stole Echo; kneeling by his bed,
With small sweet love-words she importuned him
Who watched the lamp flame idle overhead.
"Dry was her hot flushed cheek and dark the fire
In her great eyes; her lips roamed warm and light
Over his arm; her murmurs of desire
Mixed with the many murmurs of the night.
"In vain! He came to rest and sing with me
And loll his fingers in the liquid cool,
And drop slow tears, slow tears luxuriously
Into the shadowy motion of the pool.
"With tongue scarce audible I wooed the lad,
Whispering how beneath the drumming fall
Slumbers a rapt, deep lake, so blue, so sad,
That no fish swim it, nor about it call
"Delighting birds from green-bowered shore to shore,
Nor doth the nightingale, when June begins
And the moon mounts a pattin of bright or,
Hymn her long sorrows and her lord's black sins.
"And the boy answered, answered me, and mourned
The loveliness of Echo. 'Yet,' sighed he,
'My soul is fled, and long, thou knowest, bourned
In what far dell none knoweth, love, but thee
"'Who farest thither! Sweeter to my ears
Are thy quiet voices and the gentle breast
Of rambling water sweeter than my dear's.'
Then murmured I, 'Lean lower, love, and rest.'
"There was no sound through all the sleeping wood,
Save one sharp cry from Echo, open-lipped,
Who, as she followed, from afar did spy
How to my arms my lover downward slipped.
"Softly I rocked him down into the pool,
Shutting his ears to the loud torrents' din,
And kissed and bore him through the portals cool,
And laid him sleeping the blue halls within.
"So I returned; but never to me came
Another as beautiful, nor shall come.
Lonely I flow, and, flowing, lisp his name,
Till the sky waste and all the earth be dumb."
So sang the spring, and, answering my look,
Through the dark wood from the spring's fountain-head
Flock upon flock of eyed narcissi shook,
And the brook wept in sorrow for the dead.
Ah, Death again! nothing can fend
Us from the Sibyl of the End,
Whose delight 'tis to find new forms,
Now in dull sighs, anon in storms,
Singing, and ever of the same:
The trusting heart betrayed; the flame
Whirled in a night on cities proud;
Lightnings from skies undimmed by cloud;
The wide grave yawned before swift feet;
The small success that brings defeat;
The smiling lips and deadly eyes
Of Destiny walking in disguise.
XX
Of the
Evening
River.
But now the sun sinks I will go
Whither two full streams meet and flow,
Murmuring as in wedded sleep
Through evening meadows dim and deep.
There will I watch the slow trout rise
At the myriad simmering flies,
And listen to the water flowing
With such faint sounds there is no knowing
Whether its spirit laughs or weeps
Among the dreams wherein it sleeps.
Sunken amid the twilight grass,
I will watch the water pass,
Weaving ever dimmer tales
And dimmer as the evening pales....
Till from the calm the silent lark
Drops to the meadows hushed and dark,
While in the stagnant silver west,
Above the tranquil poplars' crest,
There glimmers through the murky bar
The slowly climbing Hesperal Star.
Thus brooding by the hazy stream,
I shall hear the water dream
Tinkily on, and I shall see,
As my eyes close quietly.
Into a soft and long repose,
The lone star like a silver rose
Fade with me on the drifting stream
Into the quiet night of dream.
Of
Night's
Rhapsodist.
Yet sleep I not; for lo! there wakes
From the dim water-meadow brakes
A quiring: voice as if a star,
Fallen to earth from midnight far
Beyond the haze of highest cloud,
Bewailed her errëd path aloud.
It is the nightingale who sings,
Fanning soft air with whirrëd wings,
Probing the dark with jewelled eyes.
How oft, how sad, how loud she cries!
And all the echoes answer her;
The night airs through the close wood stir
The stars that through the eddies climb
Glitter; the silver waters chime;
The lily bows her dewy head....
I, too, a sudden tear have shed.
For, ah! what voice is this can make
The vagrant heart within me ache?
That stirs an ancient tenderness,
A new need to console, love, bless
All things that 'neath this warm night sky
Rejoice and suffer, age and die?
Hunger is in my heart like bliss,—
I stretch my arms out and I kiss,
Gathered in sad and sweet embrace,
The whole world's dark and simple face.
XXI
Of the
Second
Singer.
I wander forth. About my feet
The sward is fresh and doubly sweet
The loved air on my salvëd brow.
Be still. Be still. For hearken: now
A second voice behind the grove
Uprises tremulous with love.
How hushed, how moody is the strain!
Pleading—O, surely, not in vain!
Sombrely rises every note,
Lingers, and in dark dells remote
Echoes until another come.
Philomel herself falls dumb.
Philomel herself falls dumb,
Mindful of her shadowy home;
Of a slowly falling surge
Sounding its unending dirge
On an alien ocean's verge;
Of a rain-smitten tower that stood
Fronting the calm, pale rolling flood;
Of a slim sister's beauty glows,
Fatefuller than a midnight rose;
Of the birth, growth, and scheming dire,
Of an accursëd King's desire;
Of night-long vigil, tongueless wrack,
And the last exultation black
O'er loathly offering, feasting sour,
A fell cry in the lonely tower,
Raging pursuit, flight's vain endeavour,
And Vengeance stilling all for ever.—
Save the voice that nightly cries
To the slowly wheeling skies
Of unrest resolved in calm,
Time's tears fallen like a balm,
Sorrows that dead hearts have wrung,
By the sad Enthusiast sung,
Sweeter than Euphrosyne's tongue.
O tremulous voice! who is 't that shakes
The night with fervour?
Through the brakes
Softly I thread ... emerge, and now
Across the rising meadow's brow
I glimpse, beside the farther wood,
Under the shadow of its hood,
A glimmering shape that does not move.
It is the shepherd and his love:
Close, close they stand, swooning and dim;
Her shadowed face looks up at him,
Her sighing breath his forehead warms;
He sings, she leans within his arms.
THE
SHEPHERD'S
NIGHT
SONG.
The Shepherd. Now arched dark boughs hang dim and still;
The deep dew glistens up the hill;
Silence trembles. All is still.
Now the sweet siren of the woods,
Philomel, passionately broods,
Or, darkling, hymns love's wildest moods.
Danaë, fainting in her tower,
Feels a sudden sun swim lower,
Gasps beneath the starry shower.
Venus in the pomegranate grove
Flutters like a fluttering dove
Under young Adonis' love.
Leda longs until alight
In the reeds those wings of white
She hears beat the upper night.
Golden now the glowing moon,
Diana over Endymion
Downward bends as in a swoon.
Wherefore, since the gods agree,
Youth is sweet and Night is free,
And Love pleasure, should not we?
The
Faun is
struck
with
Sorrow.
Song whose desire her kisses bless!
Song that wreaks wounds no lips redress,
O wounding song! Such loneliness
Falls, like a stun blow from behind,
That my hands grope, my eyes go blind.
I gasp....
Away, Away, O heart!
Lone, wretched Faun, depart, depart;
Hide thyself, wretched, utterly,
Climb to the clouds where none may see
And mock thy causeless misery!
What joy is mine? what is 't I have:
Immortal life? would 'twere a grave.
Thus, thus to suffer world-without-end,
No love, no hope, no goal, no friend!
And the proud, morning Centaur, how
Fares he? what lot doth Fate allow?—
More wretched yet! to live and be
Perfection's lone epitome.
He takes
Comfort
in the
Uncommon
Gift of
God.
To feel in him a fecund power,
And lack on which to spend that dower!...
I mind me now that once I heard
Wise, gentle Pan pronounce this word:
"Whoever like a God would shine
Must share the loneliness divine."
Ah! to be Gods, then, is to be
One fierce eternal agony.
Yet, being Gods, such feel no pain;
Their strength is equal to their bane.
While I, poor half-god and half-beast,
I would be man, the last and least
Of men!
O reasoning vain:
Were I but man and one in pain,
I could not by my utmost wipe
One tear away. But now this pipe
Hangs from my neck, god Pan's elect
Gift to his children to perfect
In awe, joy, grief, and loneliness.
Sound, pipe, and with thy note express
All this my heart! to thee I give
All the long days that I must live.
I wander on, I fade in mist,
O peopled World, and dost thou list?
Pipe on, difficult pipes of mine;
There is something in me divine,
And it must out. For this was I
Born, and I know I cannot die
Until, perfected pipe, thou send
My utmost: God, which is
The End.
BOOK III
POEMS AND
PHANTASIES
To
MR. and MRS. MOISEIWITSCH
A TRIPTYCH
I.—FIRST PANEL: THE HILL
On a day in Maytime mild
Mary sat on a hill-top with her child.
(Overhead in the calm sky's arching
The curled white clouds went slowly marching....
But underneath the blue abyss
All was stiller than water is
Leagues under the surface of the sea.)
And all about her thick and free
Blossomed the dear familiar flowers.
There, while her boy played through the hours,
And the high sun shook gold upon her,
Mary plaited a garland in his honour
Who should be the King of Kings;
And when 'tis done this song she sings,
As Jesus, tired and happy, rests
Curled in the hollow of her breasts:
"In the shadow of my dress,
Out of the sun
And his fierce caress,
Sleep, my son.
"Soft the air about the hill,
Scented, sunny, clear, and still;
Below in the woods the daffodil
Nods, and the shy anemone
Creeps up from the thicket to look on thee,
And ten thousand daisies meet
In an ocean of stars about thy feet.
"Daisies have I strung for thee,
Darling boy,
Wee white blossoms that shall be
Dappled, ah! so rosily
With thy blood,
When they nail thee to the wood
Cleft from out the crooked tree.
Can it be,
Daisies innocent and good,
That ye star black Calvary?
"Buttercups I make thy crown,
Darling boy.
(Lullaby, O lullaby!)
Son of sorrow, son of joy,
Pain and Paradise thou art,
Thou that sighest nestling down
In my breast, over my heart
That is a lake
Where the hidden tear-drops ache
To be free,
Till mounting upward for thy sake
Out they break,
Down they plash on me and thee.
"And Heaven in her charity
Drops seven tears on me and thee.
"This thy little childhood's crown,
Flower on flower,
Wear thou in thy lullaby
Till thou facest the soldiers' frown
In thine iron hour,
Till the thorn they crown thee by
They press down:
Ah, the sharp points in my heart!
Ah, the sword, the sudden smart
Flaying me as 'twere a flame!
Crowned indeed, my son, thou art
With red flowers of pain and shame!
"Birds and butterflies and trees,
And the long hush of the breeze
Shimmering over the silken grass,
What wouldst thou have more than these?...
In the stall the ox and ass
Gazed on thee with tender eyes;
All things love thee; yet there lies
Some hid thing in thee breeds fear—
Brims not falls thy mother's tear.
Wherefore, baby, must thou go?
Rose, to be torn in sunder so?
Little bonny limbs, little bonny face,
My lamb, my torment, my disgrace!
"O baby, are thine eyelids closed
Faster than my eyes supposed?
With foxes must thy bed be maken,
A beggar with beggars must thou go,
To be at last forsworn, forsaken?
And bear alone thy cross also
Anigh to the foot of a bare hill?
To hang gibbeted and abhorred,
For passers-by to wish thee ill?
And to thrust against thy will
Through thy mother's bosom the sharpest sword?
"O baby, breathing so quietly,
Have thou mercy upon me!
That in thy madness
On thy lonely journey farest,
That understandest not nor carest
For me and my sadness!
Woe indeed! thou dost not know
Man cometh into this world in sorrow
To spend in grief to-night, to-morrow
In sorrow the third day to go!
"O sleep, dear baby, and, heart, sleep;
Turn to thy slumber, golden, deep,
Of present possible happiness.
Let drop the daisies one by one
Over his body and his dress;
Afflicted eyes, see but thy son
Who sleeps secure from hurt, from harm,
Clasped to my breast, closed in my arm,
Who murmurs as the flowers by the faint wind shaken,
And, putting forth sweet, sleepy hands,
Feels for the kisses he demands....
Slowly, belov'd, dost thou awaken,
And sure, in heaven there is no sign:
It is not true that thou shalt be taken,
Who for ever, for ever art mine, art mine!"
Into the west the calm white sun
Floated and sank. The day was done.
Mary returned, and as she went,
Above her, in the firmament,
The stars, that are the flowers of God,
Mirrored the flowery earth she trod.
Thus bore she on her destined child,
And while she wept, behold! he smiled,
And stretched his arms seeking a kiss....
Softly she kissed him, and a bliss,
Deeper than all her human tears,
Flooded her and put out her fears.
Oxford,
Early Spring, 1914.
II.—SECOND AND CENTRE PANEL: THE TOWER
It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs
The moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs.
The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet,
Over dome and column, up empty, endless street;
In the closed, scented gardens the rose loosed from the stem
Her white showery petals; none regarded them;
The starry thicket breathed odours to the sentinel palm;
Silence possessed the city like a soul possessed by calm.
Not a spark in the warren under the giant night,
Save where in a turret's lantern beamed a grave, still light:
There in the topmost chamber a gold-eyed lamp was lit—
Marvellous lamp in darkness, informing, redeeming it!
For, set in that tiny chamber, Jesus, the blessed and doomed,
Spoke to the lone apostles as light to men entombed;
And spreading his hands in blessing, as one soon to be dead,
He put soft enchantment into spare wine and bread.
The hearts of the disciples were broken and full of tears,
Because their lord, the spearless, was hedgëd about with spears;
And in his face the sickness of departure had spread a gloom,
At leaving his young friends friendless.
They could not forget the tomb.
He smiled subduedly, telling, in tones soft as voice of the dove,
The endlessness of sorrow, the eternal solace of love;
And lifting the earthly tokens, wine and sorrowful bread,
He bade them sup and remember one who lived and was dead.
And they could not restrain their weeping.
But one rose up to depart,
Having weakness and hate of weakness raging within his heart,
And bowed to the robed assembly whose eyes gleamed wet in the light.
Judas arose and departed: night went out to the night.
Then Jesus lifted his voice like a fountain in an ocean of tears,
And comforted his disciples and calmed and allayed their fears.
But Judas wound down the turret, creeping from floor to floor,
And would fly; but one leaning, weeping, barred him beside the door.
And he knew her by her ruddy garment and two yet-watching men:
Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen.
And he was frighted at her. She sighed: "I dreamed him dead.
We sell the body for silver...."
Then Judas cried out and fled
Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set;
A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret;
Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed
To stern Jehovah lest his deed make him afraid.
But in the tiny lantern, hanging as if on air,
The disciples sat unspeaking. Amaze and peace were there.
For his voice, more lovely than song of all earthly birds,
In accents humble and happy spoke slow, consoling words.
Thus Jesus discoursed, and was silent, sitting upright, and soon
Past the casement behind him slanted the sinking moon;
And, rising for Olivet, all stared, between love and dread,
Seeing the torrid moon a ruddy halo behind his head.
Grayshott,
July, 1914.
III.—THIRD PANEL: THE TREE
The crookëd tree creaked as its loaded bough dipped
And suddenly jerked up. The rope had slipped,
And hideously Judas fell, and all the grass
Was soused and reddened where he was,
And the tree creaked its mirth....
Mid the hot sky
Appeared immediate dots tiny and high,
Till downward wound in batlike herds
Black, monstrous, gawky birds,
And, narrowing their rustling rings,
Alit, talons foremost. And with flat wings
Flapped in the branches, and glared, and croaked and croaked,
While no compassionate human came and cloaked
The thing that stared up at the giddy day
With pale blue eyeballs and wry-lipped display
Of yellow teeth closed on the blue, bit tongue.
Overhead the light in silence hung,
And fiercely showed the sweaty, knotted hands
Clutching the rope about the swollen glands....
And the birds croaked and croaked, evilly eyeing
The thing so lying,
Which no commiserate pity came and cloaked,
But which soaked
The earth, so that the flies
Dizzily swung over its winkless eyes,
And in a crawling, shiny, busy brood
Blackened the sticky blood,
And tickled the tongue-choked mouth that sought to cry
Bitterly and beseechingly
Against the judgment of th' unflinching sky.
The poor dead, lonely thing had not a shroud
From that still, frightful glare until a cloud
Of darkness, flowing like a dye
Over the edges of the sky,
Browned and put out the silent sun:
A benison
Of three hours' space.
And it had power
To put a shadow into that thing's face,
And th' invisible birds fell silent by its grace.
Thus Judas lay in shadow and all was still....
Then faint light, like water, began again to fill
The sky, and a whisper—came it from the grass,
Whispering dry and sparse,
Or from the air beyond the neighbouring hill?—
Ebbed, as a spirit on a sigh
Passing beyond alarm:
"It is finished!"
And there was calm
Under the empty tree and in the brightening sky.
Grayshott,
July, 1914.
FOUR SONGS FROM
"THE PRINCE OF
ORMUZ"
I.—THE PRINCE OF ORMUZ SINGS TO
BADOURA
When she kisses me with her lips, I become
A Roc, that giant, that fabulous bird
And over the desert, vast, yellow, and dumb,
I wheel, and my jubilant screaming is heard,
A voice, an echo, high up and glad,
Over the domes and green pools of Bagdad.
But when she kisses me with her eyes,
My heart melts in me; she is my sun;
She strokes my snow; I am loosed, I arise:
A brook of water I run, I run,
Crystal water, sunny and sweet,
Laughing and weeping to fawn at her feet.
Lawford,
Easter, 1914.
II.—THE SONG OF THE PRINCESS BESIDE THE
FOUNTAIN
My rose, or ever the three tears were shed
I wished lie in its bosom, has fallen apart;
Off their knapped golden hair all my pure pearls have sped
Before their mid-ruby could burn on my heart.
To-day is as yesterday; as to-day so to-morrow;
But fallen my rose, pearls, tears,
Fallen in sorrow.
Or ever I woke it was sunset to-day;
As fast flows the fountain, as fast flows away,
As fast fall away
My rose and my tears, my pearls and my sorrow.
In Hospital,
January, 1916.
III.—THE SONG OF THE PRINCE IN DISGUISE
The look in thine eyes can change me utterly;
Thine eyes challenge: my heart is lighted,
I am thy taper, I burn straight-pointed—
Ay, even so doing I waste away.
Bathe me in thy calm eyes' soft glances;
I am thy slave, I bow, I worship;
Bid me to steal, and I will steal gladly:
Ah! bid me not, thou robbest my manhood.
Let thine eyes smile: change comes upon me,
I put forth blossoms, flowers of my passion,
Roses crimson, alas! whose petals,
Once white, now blush with blood of my heart.
Gaze not on me: I burn, I perish;
Gaze not on me: I am thy servant;
Gaze not on me: I sink a-bleeding;
Yet gaze! I cannot otherwise live.
Lawford,
Easter, 1914.
IV.—THE PRINCESS BADOURA'S LAST SONG TO
HER LOVER