Chapter V: Book IV: The Garden of Epicurus

I

As dreamers through their dreams surmise The stealthy passage of the night, We half-remember smoky skies And city streets and hurrying flight, Another world from this clear height Whereon our starry altars rise.

Beneath our towering waste of stone The fragile ships creep to and fro, By tempest riven and overthrown, The toys of these same tides that flow Against our pillars far below With faint, insistent monotone.

The snarling winds against our rocks Hurl breakers in a fleecy mass, Like wolves that chase stampeding flocks Over the brink of a crevasse, While thunders down the Alpine pass The deluge of the equinox.

Lost in that stormy atmosphere, Men chart their seas and trudge their roads; Inviolate, we scorn to hear Their shouted warning that forebodes

An end to these fair episodes Of life beneath our tranquil sky; Having sought only peace, then why Should we go down to death with fear?

Pomfret, 1920

II

The thinkers light their lamps in rows
From street to street, and then
The night creeps up behind, and blows
Them quickly out again.

While Age limps groping toward his home,
Hearing the feet of youth
From dark to dark that sadly roam
The suburbs of the Truth.

Paris, 1919

III

I pass my days in ghostly presences, And when the wind at night is mute, Far down the valley I can hear a flute And a strange voice, not knowing what it says.

And sometimes in the interim of days, I hear a fountain in obscure abodes, Singing with none but me to hear, the lays That would do pleasure to the ears of gods.

And faces pass, but haply they are dreams, Dreams of a mind set free that gilds The solitude with awful light and builds Temples and lovers, goblins and triremes.

Give me a chair and liberate the sun, And glancing motes to twinkle down its bars, That I may sit above oblivion, And weave myself a universe of stars.

Rome, 1918

IV

Each mote that staggers down the sun Repeats an ancient monotone That minds me of the time when I Put out the candles one by one,

And left no splendour on the face Of Him who found His resting-place Upon the Cross; and then I went Out on the desert's empty space,

And heard the wind in monotone Blow grains of sand against a stone, Until I sang aloud, to break The fear of wandering alone.

There is no fear left in my soul, But when, to-day, an aureole Of sunlight gathered on your hair, And winking motes fled here and there, Like notes of music in the air, Suddenly I felt the wind Wake on the desert as I stole Out of that desecrated shrine, And then I wondered if you sinned As part of me, or if the whole Dark sacrilege were mine.

Cambridge, 1917

V

He is a priest; He feeds the dead; He sings the feast; He veils his head; The words are dread In morning mist, But the wine is red In the Eucharist.

Red as the east With sunlight spread Like a bleeding beast On a purple bed. O Someone fled From an April tryst, Were your lips fed In the Eucharist?

I, at least, When the voice of lead Sank down and ceased, Knew the things he said. That the god who bled, And the god we kissed, Shall never wed In the Eucharist.

Spring, give the bread We sought and missed, And wine unshed In the Eucharist.

Paris, 1919

VI

Through hissing snow, through rain, through many hundred Mays, Contorted in Promethean jest, the gargoyles sit, And watch the crowds pursue the charted ways, Whose source is birth, whose end they only know. Charms borrowed from the loveliest of hells, And from the earth, a rhapsody of wit, They hear the sacramental bells Chime through the towers, and they smile. Smile on the insects in the square below, Smile on the stars that kiss the infinite, And, when the clouds hang low, they gaily spout Grey water on the heads of the devout That gather, whispering, in the sabbath street. O gargoyles! was the vinegar and bile So bitter? Was the eucharist so sweet?

Paris, 1919

VII

Gods dine on prayer and sacred song, And go to sleep between; The gods have slumbered long; The gods are getting lean.

Sheffield, 1917

VIII

A smile will turn away green eyes That laughter could not touch, The dangers of those subtleties, The stealthy, clever hand, Should not affright you overmuch If you but understand How Judas, clad in Oxford grey,-- Could walk abroad on Easter Day.

Paris, 1919

IX

Two Kings there were, one Good, one Bad; The first was mournfulness itself, The second, happy as a lad,-- And both are dust upon a shelf.

Sheffield, 1917

X

I see that Hermes unawares, Has left his footprints on the path; See here, he fell, and in his wrath He pulled out several golden hairs Against the brambles. Guard them well, The hairs of gods are valuable.

Paris, 1919

XI

Semiramis, the whore of Babylon, Bade me go walking with her. I obeyed. Philosophy, I thought, is not afraid Of any woman underneath the sun. Far up the hills she led me, where one ledge Thrust out a slender finger to the sky, Dizzy and swaying as an eagle's cry; Semiramis stepped to the farthest edge.

And there she danced, whirling upon her toes, The triumph of a flame was in her face, Faster and faster as the mad wind blows, She whirled, and slipped, and dashed down into space.... Next day I saw her smiling in the sun, Semiramis, the Queen of Babylon.

Paris, 1919

XII

Bring hemlock, black as Cretan cheese, And mix a sacramental brew; A worthy drink for Socrates, Why not for you?

Sheffield, 1917

XIII

Walking through the town last night, I learned the lore of second sight, And saw through all those solid walls, Imbecile and troglodyte.

The vicious apes of either sex Grinned and mouthed and stretched their necks, Their little lusts skipped back and forth, Not very pretty or complex.

Each has five senses; every sense Is like a false gate in a fence, They think the gates are bona fide, Such is their only innocence.

And think themselves extremely wise When any sense records its lies, They mumble what they feel or hear, Unmindful still of Paradise.

When I walked through the town last night In vain they drew their curtains tight, Through walls of brick I plainly saw The imbecile, the troglodyte.

Paris, 1919

XIV

The change of many tides has swung the flow Of those green weeds that cling like filthy fur Upon the timbers of this voyager That sank in the clear water long ago. Whence did she sail? the sands of ages blur The answer to the secret, and as though They mocked and knew, sleek fishes, to and fro, Trail their grey carrion shadows over her. Coffer of all life gives and hides away, It matters not if London or if Tyre Sped you to sea on some remoter day; Beneath your decks immutable desire And hope and hate and envy still conspire, While all the gaping faces nod and sway.

Brussels, 1919

XV

Piero di Cosimo, Your unicorns and afterglow, Your black leaves cut against the sky, Black crosses where the young gods die, Black horizons where the sea And clouds contend perpetually, And hanging low, The menace of the night:--

They called you madman. Were they right, Piero di Cosimo?

Pomfret, 1919

XVI

I would know what can not be known; I would reach beyond my sphere, And question the stars in their courses, And the dead of many a year. I would tame the infinite forces That bend me down like the grain, Peace would I give to the fields where the young men died, Peace to the sea where the ships of battle ride, And light again to the eyes of the beautiful slain.

This would I do, but today against the sky, They who were building a cross grinned as I passed them by.

Pomfret, 1919

XVII

The yellow bird is singing by the pond, And all about him stars have burst in bloom, A colonnade stands pallidly beyond, And beneath that a solitary tomb. Who lies within that tomb I do not know, The yellow bird intones his threnody In notes as colourless as driven snow, Clashing with the green hush and out of key.

O cease, your endless song is out of tune, Where all these old forgotten things are sleeping,-- Give back to silence's eternal keeping The windless pond, the hanging colonnade, Lest in the wane of the long afternoon, The Dead awake, unhappy and afraid.

Bordeaux, 1917