Chapter X

The glamour of the soul hath come upon me,
And as the twilight comes upon the roses,
Walking silently among them,
So have the thoughts of my heart
Gone out slowly in the twilight
Toward my beloved,
Toward the crimson rose, the fairest.

Aux Belles de Londres

I am aweary with the utter and beautiful weariness
And with the ultimate wisdom and with things terrene,
I am aweary with your smiles and your laughter,
And the sun and the winds again
Reclaim their booty and the heart o' me.

Francesca

You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hands,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.

I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
In ordinary places.
I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,
Or as a dandelion seed-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again,
Alone.

Greek Epigram

Day and night are never weary,
Nor yet is God of creating
For day and night their torch-bearers
The aube and the crepuscule.

So, when I weary of praising the dawn and the sun-set,
Let me be no more counted among the immortals;
But number me amid the wearying ones,
Let me be a man as the herd,
And as the slave that is given in barter.

Christophori Columbi Tumulus

From the Latin of Hipolytus Capilupus, Early Cent XVI.

Genoan, glory of Italy, Columbus thou sure light,
Alas the urn takes even thee so soon out-blown.
Its little space

Doth hold thee, whom Oceanus had not the might
Within his folds to hold, altho' his broad embrace
Doth hold all lands.

Bark-borne beyond his bound'ries unto Hind thou wast
Where scarce Fame's volant self the way had cast.

Plotinus

As one that would draw through the node of things,
Back sweeping to the vortex of the cone,
Cloistered about with memories, alone
In chaos, while the waiting silence sings:

Obliviate of cycles' wanderings
I was an atom on creation's throne
And knew all nothing my unconquered own.
God! Should I be the hand upon the strings?!

But I was lonely as a lonely child.
I cried amid the void and heard no cry,
And then for utter loneliness, made I
New thoughts as crescent images of _me_.
And with them was my essence reconciled
While fear went forth from mine eternity.

On His Own Face in a Glass

O strange face there in the glass!
O ribald company, O saintly host,
O sorrow-swept my fool,
What answer? O ye myriad
That strive and play and pass,
Jest, challenge, counterlie?
I? I? I?
And ye?

Histrion

No man hath dared to write this thing as yet,
And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great
At times pass through us,
And we are melted into them, and are not
Save reflexions of their souls.
Thus am I Dante for a space and am
One François Villon, ballad-lord and thief
Or am such holy ones I may not write,
Lest blasphemy be writ against my name;
This for an instant and the flame is gone.

'Tis as in midmost us there glows a sphere
Translucent, molten gold, that is the "I"
And into this some form projects itself:
Christus, or John, or eke the Florentine;
And as the clear space is not if a form's
Imposed thereon,
So cease we from all being for the time,
And these, the Masters of the Soul, live on.

The Eyes

Rest Master, for we be a-weary, weary
And would feel the fingers of the wind
Upon these lids that lie over us
Sodden and lead-heavy.

Rest brother, for lo! the dawn is without!
The yellow flame paleth
And the wax runs low.

Free us, for without be goodly colours,
Green of the wood-moss and flower colours,
And coolness beneath the trees.

Free us, for we perish
In this ever-flowing monotony
Of ugly print marks, black
Upon white parchment.

Free us, for there is one
Whose smile more availeth
Than all the age-old knowledge of thy books:
And we would look thereon.

Defiance

Ye blood-red spears-men of the dawn's array
That drive my dusk-clad knights of dream away,
Hold! For I will not yield.

My moated soul shall dream in your despite
A refuge for the vanquished hosts of night
That _can_ not yield.

Song

Love thou thy dream
All base love scorning,
Love thou the wind
And here take warning
That dreams alone can truly be,
For 'tis in dream I come to thee.

Nel Biancheggiar

Blue-Grey, and white, and white-of-rose,
The flowers of the West's fore-dawn unclose.
I feel the dusky softness whirr
Of colour, as upon a dulcimer
"Her" dreaming fingers lay between the tunes,
As when the living music swoons
But dies not quite, because for love of us
--knowing our state
How that 'tis troublous--
It wills not die to leave us desolate.

Nils Lykke

Beautiful, infinite memories
That are a-plucking at my heart,
Why will you be ever calling and a-calling,
And a-murmuring in the dark there?
And a-reaching out your long hands
Between me and my beloved?

And why will you be ever a-casting
The black shadow of your beauty
On the white face of my beloved
And a-glinting in the pools of her eyes?

A Song of the Virgin Mother

_In the play "Los Pastores de Belen."_

From the Spanish of Lope de Vega.

As ye go through these palm-trees
O holy angel;
Sith sleepeth my child here
Still ye the branches.

O Bethlehem palm-trees
That move to the anger
Of winds in their fury,
Tempestuous voices,
Make ye no clamour,
Run ye less swiftly,
Sith sleepeth the child here
Still ye your branches.

He the divine child
Is here a-wearied
Of weeping the earth-pain,
Here for his rest would he
Cease from his mourning,
Only a little while,
Sith sleepeth this child here
Stay ye the branches.

Cold be the fierce winds,
Treacherous round him.
Ye see that I have not
Wherewith to guard him,
O angels, divine ones
That pass us a-flying,
Sith sleepeth my child here
Stay ye the branches.

Planh for the Young English King

_That is, Prince Henry Plantagenet, elder brother to
Richard "Coeur de Lion."_

From the Provençal of Bertrans de Born "Si tuit li dol elh
plor elh marrimen."

If all the grief and woe and bitterness,
All dolour, ill and every evil chance
That ever came upon this grieving world
Were set together they would seem but light
Against the death of the young English King.
Worth lieth riven and Youth dolorous,
The world o'ershadowed, soiled and overcast,
Void of all joy and full of ire and sadness.

Grieving and sad and full of bitterness
Are left in teen the liegemen courteous,
The joglars supple and the troubadours.
O'er much hath ta'en Sir Death that deadly warrior
In taking from them the young English King,
Who made the freest hand seem covetous.
'Las! Never was nor will be in this world
The balance for this loss in ire and sadness!

O skilful Death and full of bitterness,
Well mayst thou boast that thou the best chevalier
That any folk e'er had, hast from us taken;
Sith nothing is that unto worth pertaineth
But had its life in the young English King,
And better were it, should God grant his pleasure
That he should live than many a Irving dastard
That doth but wound the good with ire and sadness.

From this faint world, how full of bitterness
Love takes his way and holds his joy deceitful,
Sith no thing is but turneth unto anguish
And each to-day 'vails less than yestere'en,
Let each man visage this young English King
That was most valiant mid all worthiest men!
Gone is his body fine and amorous,
Whence have we grief, discord and deepest sadness.

Him, whom it pleased for our great bitterness
To come to earth to draw us from misventure,
Who drank of death for our salvacioun,
Him do we pray as to a Lord most righteous
And humble eke, that the young English King
He please to pardon, as true pardon is,
And bid go in with honoured companions
There where there is no grief, nor shall be sadness.

Alba Innominata

From the Provençal.

In a garden where the whitethorn spreads her leaves
My lady hath her love lain close beside her,
Till the warder cries the dawn--Ah dawn that grieves!
Ah God! Ah God! That dawn should come so soon!

"Please God that night, dear night should never cease,
Nor that my love should parted be from me,
Nor watch cry 'Dawn'--Ah dawn that slayeth peace!
Ah God! Ah God! That dawn should come so soon!

"Fair friend and sweet, thy lips! Our lips again!
Lo, in the meadow there the birds give song!
Ours be the love and Jealousy's the pain!
Ah God! Ah God! That dawn should come so soon!

"Sweet friend and fair take we our joy again
Down in the garden, where the birds are loud,
Till the warder's reed astrain
Cry God! Ah God! That dawn should come so soon!

"Of that sweet wind that comes from Far-Away
Have I drunk deep of my Beloved's breath,
Yea! of my Love's that is so dear and gay.
Ah God! Ah God! That dawn should come so soon!"

_Envoi_.

Fair is this damsel and right courteous,
And many watch her beauty's gracious way.
Her heart toward love is no wise traitorous.
Ah God! Ah God! That dawns should come so soon!

Planh

_It is of the white thoughts that he saw in the Forest_.

White Poppy, heavy with dreams,
O White Poppy, who art wiser than love,
Though I am hungry for their lips
When I see them a-hiding
And a-passing out and in through the shadows
--There in the pine wood it is,
And they are white, White Poppy,
They are white like the clouds in the forest of the sky
Ere the stars arise to their hunting.

O White Poppy, who art wiser than love,
I am come for peace, yea from the hunting
Am I come to thee for peace.
Out of a new sorrow it is,
That my hunting hath brought me.

White Poppy, heavy with dreams,
Though I am hungry for their lips
When I see them a-hiding
And a-passing out and in through the shadows
--And it is white they are--
But if one should look at me with the old hunger in her eyes,
How will I be answering her eyes?

For I have followed the white folk of the forest.

Aye! It's a long hunting
And it's a deep hunger I have when I see them a-gliding
And a-flickering there, where the trees stand apart.

But oh, it is sorrow and sorrow
When love dies-down in the heart.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Personae

_Choicely Printed at the Chiswick Press on fine paper. Foolscap Octavo, 2s. 6d. net_

SOME EARLY REVIEWS

_The Observer_ says:--"It is something, after all, intangible and indescribable that makes the real poetry. Criticism and praise alike give no idea of it Everyone who pretends to know it when he sees it, should read and keep this little book."

_The Bookman_:--"No new book of poems for years past has had such a freshness of inspiration, such a strongly individual note, or been more alive with undoubtable promise."

_The Daily Chronicle_:--" All his poems are like this, from beginning to end, and in every way, his own, and in a world of his own. For brusque intensity of effect we can hardly compare them to any other work. It is the old miracle that cannot be defined, nothing more than a subtle entanglement of words, so that they rise out of their graves and sing."

From a 3 1/2 page detailed critique, by Mr. Edward Thomas, in _The English Review_.--"He has ... hardly any of the superficial good qualities of modern versifiers;... He has not the current melancholy or resignation or unwillingness to live; nor the kind of feeling for nature that runs to minute description and decorative metaphor. He cannot be usefully compared with any living writers;... full of personality and with such power to express it, that from the first to the last lines of most of his poems he holds us steadily in his own pure, grave, passionate world.... The beauty of it ('In praise of Ysolt') is the beauty of passion, sincerity and intensity, not of beautiful words and images and suggestions;... the thought dominates the words and is greater than they are. Here ('Idyl for Glaucus') the effect is full of human passion and natural magic, without any of the phrases which a reader of modern verse would expect in the treatment of such a subject. This admirable poet...."

_The Oxford Magazine_:--"This is a most exciting book of poems."

_The Evening Standard_:--"A queer little book which will irritate many readers."

_The Morning Post_:--" Mr. Ezra Pound ... immediately compels our admiration by his fearlessness and lack of self-consciousness."

_The Isis_(Oxford):--"This book has about it the breath of the open air,... physically and intellectually the verse seems to reproduce the personality with a brief fulness and adequacy. It is only in flexible, lithe measures, such as those which Coventry Patmore chose in his 'Unknown Eros,' and Mr. Pound chooses here that a fully suitable form for the recital of spiritual experience is to be found. Mr. Pound has a true and invariable feeling for the measures he employs ... this wonderful little book...."

_The Daily Telegraph_:--"A poet with individuality.... Thread of true beauty.... lifts it out of the ruck of those many volumes, the writers or which toe the line of poetic convention, and please for no more than a single reading."

_Mr. Punch_, concerning a certain Mr. Ezekiel Ton:--"By far the newest poet going, whatever other advertisements may say;" and announced as "the most remarkable thing in poetry since Robert Browning," says:--"He has succeeded where all others have failed, in evolving a blend of the imagery of the unfettered west, the vocabulary of Wardour Street, and the sinister abandon of Borgaic Italy."

Mr. Scott-James, in _The Daily News_:--"At first the whole thing may seem to be mere madness and rhetoric, a vain exhibition of force and passion without beauty. But, as we read on, these curious metres of his seem to have a law and order of their own; the brute force of Mr. Pound's imagination seems to impart some quality of infectious beauty to his words.... With Mr. Pound there is no eking out of thin sentiment with a melody or a song. He writes out of an exuberance of incontinently struggling ideas and passionate convictions.... He plunges straight into the heart of his theme, and suggests virility in action combined with fierceness, eagerness, and tenderness.... he has individuality, passion, force, and an acquaintance with things that are profoundly moving." Mr. Scott-James begins his half-column review of Mr. Pound's book with a remark that he would "Like much more space in which to discuss his work," and also notes a certain use of spondee and dactyl which "Comes in strangely and, as we first read it, with the appearance of discord, but afterwards seems to gain a curious and distinctive vigour."