Poems, 1916-1918 Part 6

'When that fierce age,' they'll say, 'went up in flame He lived ... or died, seeing those bright deeds done Whereby our sweet and settled peace was won, Yet offereth slender dreams, not deeds, to Fame.'

Then say: 'Out of the heart the mouth speaketh, And mine was as the hearts of other men Whom those dark days impa.s.sioned; yet it seeketh To paint the sombre woes that held us then, No more than the cloud-rending levin's light Seeks to illumine the sad skies of night.'

INVOCATION

Whither, O, my sweet mistress, must I follow thee?

For when I hear thy distant footfall nearing, And wait on thy appearing, Lo! my lips are silent: no words come to me.

Once I waylaid thee in green forest covers, Hoping that spring might free my lips with gentle fingers; Alas! her presence lingers No longer than on the plain the shadow of brown kestrel hovers.

Through windless ways of the night my spirit followed after;-- Cold and remote were they, and there, possessed By a strange unworldly rest, Awaiting thy still voice heard only starry laughter.

The pillared halls of sleep echoed my ghostly tread.

Yet when their secret chambers I essayed My spirit sank, dismayed, Waking in fear to find the new-born vision fled.

Once indeed--but then my spirit bloomed in leafy rapture-- I loved; and once I looked death in the eyes: So, suddenly made wise, Spoke of such beauty as I may never recapture....

Whither, O, divine mistress, must I then follow thee?

Is it only in love ... say, is it only in death That the spirit blossometh, And words that may match my vision shall come to me?

THAMAR

(_To Thamar Karsavina_)

Once in the sombre light of the throng'd courts of night, In a dream-haunted land only inhabited By the unhappy dead, came one who, anxious eyed, Clung to my idle hand with clenched fingers weak And gazed into my eyes as he had wrongs to speak.

Silent he stood and wan, more pallid than the leaves Of an aspen blown under a wind that grieves.

Then I: 'O haggard one, say from what ghostly zone Of thwarted destinies or torment hast thou come?

Tell me thy race and name!' And he, with veiled face: 'I have neither name nor race, but I have travelled far, A timeless avatar of never-ending dooms, Out of those tyrannous glooms where, like a tired star In stormy darkness, looms the castle of Thamar...

Once in a lonely dawn my eager spirit fared By ways that no men dared unto a desert land, Where, on a sullen strand, a mouldering city, vast As towered Babylon, stood in the dreamy sand-- Older a million years: Babel was builded on That broken city's tears; dust of her crumbled past Rose from the rapid wheels of Babel's charioteers In whorled clouds above those s.h.i.+ning thoroughfares Where Babel's millions tread on her unheeding dead.

Forth from an eastern gate where the lips of Asia wait Parch'd with an ancient thirst that no aeons can abate, Pa.s.sed I, predestinate, to a thorn'd desert's drought, Where the rivers of the south, flowing in a cloudy spate, Spend at last their splendid strength in a sea of molten gla.s.s Seething with the brazen might of a white sun dipped at length Like a baked stone, burning hot, plunged in a hissing pot.

Out of that solemn portal over the tawny waste, Without stay, without haste, nor the joy of any mortal Glance of eye or clasp of hand, desolate, in a burning land, Lonely days and nights I travelled and the changing seasons squandered Friendless, endlessly, I wandered nor my woven fate unravelled; Drawn to a hidden goal, sore, forlorn with waiting, Seeking I knew not what, yet unhesitating Struggled my hapless soul...

There, in a thousand springs, Slow, beneath frozen snow, where the blind earth lay cringing, Have I seen the steppe unfold uncounted blossomings, Where salty pools shone fair in a quivering blue air That s.h.i.+vered every fringing reed-bed with cool delight, And fanned the mazy flight of slow-wing'd egrets white Beating and wheeling bright against the sun astare; But I could not hear their wings for they were ghostly things Sent by the powers of night to mock my sufferings And rain upon the bitter waterpools their drops aglitter.

Yet, when these lakes accursed tortured my aching thirst, The green reeds fell to dust, the cool pools to a crust Of frozen salt crystallised to taunt my broken lips, To cheat my staring eyes, as a vision of great s.h.i.+ps With moving towers of sail, p.o.o.ps throng'd with grinning crowds And a wind in their shrouds, bears down upon the pale Wasted castaway afloat with the salt in his throat And a feeble wild desire to be quenched of his fire In the green gloom beneath.

So, again and again, Hath a phantom city thrust to the visionary vault Of inviolate cobalt, dome and dreaming minaret Mosque and gleaming water-tower hazy in a fountain's jet Or a market's rising dust; and my lips have cried aloud To see them tremble there, though I knew within my heart They were chiselled out of cloud or carven of thin air; And my fingers clenched my hand, for I wondered if this land Of my stony pilgrimage were a glimmering mirage, And I myself no more than a phantom of the sand.

'But beyond these fading slender cities, many leagues away, Strange brooding mountains lay heaped, crowding range on range In a changing cloudy splendour; and beyond, in lakes of light, As eastward still I staggered, there swam into my sight, More vast and h.o.a.r and haggard, shoulders of ice and snow Bounding the heavens low of burnished bra.s.s, whereunder The hot plains of Cathay perpetually slumber: Where tawny millions breed in cities without number, Whither, a hill-born thunder, rolling on Tartary With torrents and barb'd lightning, swelleth the yellow river To a tumult of whitening foam and confused might That drowns in a single night many a mud-made city; And cities of boats, and frail cities of lath and reed, Are whirled away without pity or set afloat in a pale, Swirling, shallow sea ... and their names seem lost for ever Till a stranger nomad race drive their herds to the sad place Where old sorrows lie forgotten, and raise upon the rotten Level waste another brood to await another flood.

'But I never might attain to this melancholy plain For the mountains rose between; stark in my path they lay Between me and Cathay, through moving mist half-seen.

And I knew that they were real, for their drooping folds of cloud Enwrapped me in a shroud, and the air that fell at night From their frozen summits white slid like an ice-blue steel Into my living breast and stilled the heart within As the chill of an old sin that robs a man of rest, Killing all delight in the silence of the night And brooding black above till the heart dare not move But lieth cold and numb ... and the dawn will not come.

'Yet to me a dawn came, new-kindled in cold flame, Flinging the imminence of those inviolate snows On the forest lawns below in a shadow more immense Than their eternal vastness; and a new hope beyond reason, Flamed in my heart's dark season, dazzled my pallid eyes, Till, when the hot sun soared above the uttermost height, A draught of keen delight into my body was poured, For all that frozen fastness lay flowered with the spring: Her starry blossoms broke beneath my bruised feet, And their beauty was so sweet to me I kissed them where they lay; Yea, I bent my weary hips and kissed them with dry lips, Tenderly, only dreading lest their petals delicate Should be broken by my treading, for I lived, I lived again, And my heart would have been broken by a living creature's pain, So I kissed them for a token of my joy in their new birth, And I kissed the gentle earth. Slowly the shadows crept To the bases of the crags, and I slept....

'Once, in another life, had I remembered sleep, When tired children creep on to their mother's knees, And there a dreamless peace more quietly descendeth Than gentle evening endeth or ring-doves fold their wings, Before the nightjar spins or the nightingale begins; When the brooding hedgerow trees where they nest lie awake And breathe so soft they shake not a single shuddering leaf Lest the silence should break.

'Other sleep have I known, Deeper, beyond belief, when straining limbs relax After hot human toil in yellow harvest fields Where the panting earth yields a smell of baked soil, And the dust of dry stubbles blows over the whitening Shocks of lank grain and bundles of flax, And men fling themselves down forgetting their troubles, Unheedful of the song that the landrail weaves along Misty woodlands, or lightning that the pale sky laves Like phosph.o.r.escent waves was.h.i.+ng summer seas: And, more beautiful than these, that sleep of dazed wonder When love has torn asunder the veils of the sky And raptured lovers lie faint in each other's arms Beneath a heaven strewn with myriad starry swarms, Where planets float like lonely gold-flowered nenuphars In pools of the sky; yet, when they wake, they turn From those burning galaxies seeking heaven only In each other's eyes, and sigh, and sleep again; For while they sleep they seem to forget the world's pain, And when they wake, they dream....

'But other sleep was mine As I had drunk of wine with bitter hemlock steep'd, Or soused with the heaped milky poppyheads A drowsy Tartar treads where slow waters sweep Over red river beds, and the air is heavy with sleep.

So, when I woke at last, the labouring earth had rolled Eastward under the vast dominion of night, Funereal, forlorn as that unlighted chamber Wherein she first was born, bereft of all starlight, Pale silver of the moon, or the low sun's amber.

'Then to my queen I prayed, grave Ashtoreth, whose shade Hallows the dim abyss of Heliopolis, Where many an olive maid clashed kissing Syrian cymbals, And silver-sounding timbrels s.h.i.+vered through the vale.

O lovely, and O white, under the holy night Is their gleaming wonder, and their brows are pale As the new risen moon, dancing till they swoon In far forests under desolate Lebanon, While the flame of Moloch's pyre reddens the sea-born cloud That overshadows Tyre; so, when I cried aloud, Behold, a torch of fire leapt on the mountain-side!

'O bright, O beautiful! for never kindlier light Fell on the darkened sight of mortal eyes and dull Since that devoted one, whom gloomy Caucasus In icy silence lonely bound to his cruel shoulders, Brought to benighted men in a hollow fennel-stem Sparks of the torrid vapour that burned behind the bars Of evening, broke dawn's rose, or smouldered in the stars, Or lit the glowworm's taper, or wavered over the fen, Or tipped the javelin of the far-ravening levin, Lash of the Lord of Heaven and bitter scourge of sin.

O beautiful, O bright! my tired sinews strained To this torch that flared and waned as a watery planet gloweth And waneth in the night when a calm sea floweth Under a misty sky spread with the tattered veils Of rapid cloud driven over the deeps of heaven By winds that range too high to sweep the languid sails.

On through the frozen night, like a blind moth flying With battered wing and bruised bloom into a light, I dragged my ragged limbs, cared not if I were dying, Knew not if I were dead, where cavernous creva.s.ses, And stony desperate pa.s.ses snared, waylaid my tread: In the roar of broken boulders split from rocky shoulders, In the thunder of snow sliding, or under the appalling Rending of glacier ice or hoa.r.s.e cataracts falling: And I knew not what could save me but the unholy guiding That some demon gave me. Thrice I fell, and thrice In torrents of blue ice-water slipp'd and was toss'd Like a dead leaf, or a ghost Harried by thin bufferings of wind Downward to Tartarus at daybreak, Downward to the regions of the lost....

But the rus.h.i.+ng waters ceased, and the bitter wind fell: How I cannot tell, unless that I had come To the hollow heart of the storm where the wind is dumb; And there my gelid blood thawed, glowed, and grew warm, While a black-hooded form caught at my arm, and stayed And held me as I swayed, until, at last, I saw In a strange unworldly awe, at the gate of light I stood: And I entered, alone....

'Behold a cavern of stone carven, and in the midst A brazier that hissed with tongued flames, leaping Over whitened embers of gummy frankincense, Into a fume of dense and fragrant vapour, creeping Over the roof to spread a milky coverlet Softer than the woof of webby spider's net.

But never spider yet spun a more delicate wonder Than that which hung thereunder, drooping fold on fold, Silks that glowed with fire of tawny Oxus gold, Richer than ever flowed from the eager fancy of man In his vain desire for beauty that endures: And on the floor were spread by many a heaped daiwan Carpets of Kurdistan, cured skins, and water-ewers Encrusted with such gems as emperors of Hind (Swart conquerors, long dead) sought for their diadems.

No other light was there but one torch, flaring Against a square of sky possess'd by the wind, And never another sound but the tongued flames creeping.

'At last, my eyes staring into the clouded gloom, Saw that the caverned room with shadowy forms was strewn In heavy sleep or swoon fallen, who did not move But lay as mortals lie in the sweet release of love.

And stark between them stood huge eunuchs of ebony, Mute, motionless, as they had been carven of black wood.

But these I scarcely saw, for, through the flame was seen Another, a queen, with heavy closed eyes White against the skies of that empurpled night In her loveliness she lay, and leaned upon her hand: And my blood leapt at the sight, so that I could not stand But fell upon my knees, pleading, and cried aloud For her white loveliness as Ixion for his cloud: And my cry the silence broke, and the sleepers awoke From their slumber, stirred, and rose every one,--save those Mute eunuchs of ebony, those frowning caryatides.

Slowly she looked at me, and when I cried again In yearning and in pain, she beckoned with her hand.

Then from my knees rose I, and greatly daring, Through the hazy air, past the brazier flaring And the hissing flame, crept, until I came Unto the carven seat, and kissed her white feet; And she smiled, but spake not.

When she smiled the sleepers wavered as the gra.s.s Of a cornfield wavers when the ears are swept By the breath of brown reapers singing as they pa.s.s, Or gra.s.s of woody glades when a wind that has slept Wakens, and invades their moonlit solitude, When the hazels s.h.i.+ver and the birch is blown To a billow of silver, but oaks in the wood Stand firm nor quiver, stand firm as stone: So, amid the sleepers, the black eunuchs stood.

When the sleepers stirred faintly in the heat Of that painted room a silken sound I heard, And a thin music, sweet as the brown nightingale Sings in the jealous shade of a lonely spinney, Stranger far than any music mortal made Fell softer than the dew falleth when stars are pale.

Sweet it was, and clear as light, or as the tears That sad Narcissus wears in the spring of the year On barren mountain ranges where rain falls cool And every lonely pool is sprayed with broken light: So cool, so beautiful, and so divinely strange I doubted if it came from any marshy reed Or hollow fluting stem pluck'd by the hands of men, Unless it were indeed that airy fugitive Syrinx, who cried and ran before the laughing eyes Of goat-footed Pan, and must for ever live A shadowy green reed by an Arcadian river-- But never music made of Ladon's reedy daughter Or singing river-water more sweet than that which stole, Slow as amber honey wells from the honeycomb, Into my weary soul with solace and strange peace.

So, trembling as I lay in a dream more desolate Than is the darkened day of the mid-winter north, I heard the voice of one who sang in a strange tongue, And I know not what he sang save that he sang of love, The while they led me forth unheeding, till we came Unto a chamber lit with one slow-burning flame That yellow horn bedims, and laid me down, and there They soothed my bruised limbs, and combed my tangled hair, And salved my limbs with rarely-mingled unguents pressed By hands of holy ones who dream beneath the suns Of Araby the Blest, and so, when they had bathed My burning eyes with milk of dreamy anodyne And cool'd my throat with wine, In robings of cool silk my broken body they swathed, Sandals of gold they placed upon my feet, and round My sad sun-blistered brows a silver fillet bound-- Decking me with the pride of a bridegroom that goes To the joy of his bride and is lovely in her eyes-- And led me to her side. Then, as a conquering prince, I, who long since had been battered and tost Like a dead leaf or ghost buffeted by wild storms, Came to her white arms, conquering, and was lost, Yet dared not gaze upon the beauty that I dreamed.

So, in my trance, it seemed that a shadowy soft dance Coiled slowly and unwound, swayed, beckoned, and recovered As hooded cobra bound by hollow spells of sound Unto the piper sways; so silently they hovered I only heard the beat of their naked feet, And then, another sound....

A dull throb thrumming, a noise of faint drumming, Threatening, coming nearer, piercing deeper Than a dream lost in the heart of a sleeper Into those deeps where the dark fire gloweth, The secret flame that every man knoweth, Embers that smoulder, fires that none can fan, Terrible, older than the mind of man....

Before he crawled from his swamp and spurned The life of the beast that dark fire burned In the hidden deeps where no dream can come: Only the throbbing of a drum Can wake it from its smouldering-- Sightless, soundless, senseless, dumb-- Dumb as those blind seeds that lie Drown'd in mud, and shuddering, I knew that I was man no more, But a throbbing core of flesh, that knew Nor beauty, nor truth, nor anything But the black sky and the slimy earth: Roots of trees, and fear, and pain, The blank of death, the pangs of birth, An inhuman thing possess'd By the throbbing of a drum: And my lips were strange and numb, But they kissed her white breast....

Then, being drunk with pride and splendour of love, I cried: '"O spring of all delight, O mooned mystery, O living marvel, white as the dead queen of night, O flower, and O flame ... tell me at least thy name That, from this desolate height, I may proclaim its wonder To the lost lands hereunder before thy beauty dies As fades the fire of dawn upon a peak of snow!"'

Then: "Look," she sighed, "into my eyes, and thou shalt know."

So, with her fingers frail, she pressed my brows, and so, Slowly, at last, she raised my drooping eyelids pale, And in her eyes I gazed.

'Then fear, than love more blind, Caught at my heart and fast in chains of horror bound-- As one who in profound and midnight forest ways Sees in the dark the burning eyes of a tiger barred Or stealthy footed pard blaze in a solemn hate And l.u.s.t of human blood, yet cannot cry, nor turning Flee from the huddled wood, but stands and sees his fate, Or one who in a black night, groping for his track, Clings to the dizzy verge of a cragged precipice, Shrinks from the dim abyss, yet dare not venture back, And no sound hears but the hiss of empty air Swirling past his ears.... So, in a hideous Abandonment of hope, I waited for her kiss.

Then the restless beat of the muttering drum Rose to a frenzied heat; the naked dancers leapt Insolent through the flame, laughing as they came With parted lips; their cries deadened my ears, my eyes Throbbed with the pattering of their rapid feet, And the whirling dust of their dancing swept Into my throat unslaked, dry-parched with love's drought, Until my mouth was pressed upon her burning mouth In a kiss most terrible.... Oh, was it pride, or shame Unending, without name, or ecstasy, or pain Or desperate desire? Alas! I cannot tell, Save that it pierced my trembling soul and body with fire.

For, while her soft lips clove to mine in love, she drove A flaming blade of steel into my breast, and I, Rent with a bitter cry, slid from her side and fell Clutching in dumb despair the dark unbraided hair My pa.s.sion had despoiled; while she, like serpent coiled, Poised for another stroke, terribly, slowly, smiled, Saying: "O stranger, red, red are my lips, and sweet Unto those lips so red are the kisses of the dead: Far hast thou wandered, far, for the kisses of Thamar."

Then a deep silence fell on the frenzy and the laughter; The leaping dancers crept to the shadows where they had slept, And the mute eunuchs stood forth, and hugely bent Above my body, spent in its pool of blood, And hove me with black arms, while the queen followed after With stealthy steps, and eyes that burned into the night Of my dying brain, till, with her hand, she bade Them falter, and they stayed, while, eagerly, she propped My listless head that dropped downward from my shoulders, And slowly raised it up, raised it like a cup Unto her lips again, Then shuddered, trembled, shrunk, as though her mouth had drunk A potion where the fell fire of poison smoulders.

And a darkness came, and I could see no more, But in my ears the roar of lonely torrents swelled And stilled my breath for ever, as though a wave appalling Had broken in my brain, and deep to deep were calling: And I felt my body falling down and down and down Into a blank of death, where dumb waters roll Endlessly, only knowing, that her dagger had stabbed my breast, But her kiss had killed my soul.

And now I know no rest until again I stand Where that lost city's towers rise from the dreamy sand, Until I reach the gate where the lips of Asia wait, Till I cross the desert's drought, and the rivers of the south, And s.h.i.+ver through the night under those summits white That soar above Cathay; until I see the light Flame from those tyrannous glooms where, like a tired star In stormy darkness, looms the castle of Thamar.'

ENVOI

Now that the hour has come, and under the lonely Darkness I stumble at the doors of death, It is not hope, nor faith That here my spirit sustaineth, but love only.

In visions, in love: only there have I clutched at divinity: But the vision fadeth; yet love fades not: and for this I would have you know that your kiss Was more to me than all my hopes of infinity.

Therein you made me divine ... you, who were moon and sun for me, You, for whose beauty I would have forsaken the splendour of the stars And my shadowy avatars Renounced: for there is nothing in the world you have not done for me.

So that when at length all sentient skill hath forsaken me, And the bright world beats vainly on my consciousness, Your beauty s.h.i.+neth no less: And even if I were dead I think your shadow would awaken me.