seen
Them passing, or have seen their wings
Spread their pavilions o'er our twin delight.
Yea I have seen them when the purple light
Hid all her garden from my drowsy eyes.



A PROLOGUE


SCENE—IN THE AIR

The Lords of the Air:

What light hath passed us in the silent ways?

The Spirits of Fire:

We are sustainèd, strengthened suddenly.

The Spirits of Water:

Lo, how the utmost deeps are clarified!

The Spirits Terrene:

What might is this more potent than the spring?
Lo, how the night
Which wrapped us round with its most heavy cloths
Opens and breathes with some strange-fashioned brighness!


IN HEAVEN

Christ, the eternal Spirit in Heaven speaketh thus,
over the child of Mary:

O star, move forth and write upon the skies,
"This child is born in ways miraculous."
* * * * *
O windy spirits, that are born in Heaven,
Go down and bid the powers of Earth and Air
Protect his ways until the Time shall come.
* * * * *
O Mother, if the dark of things to be
Wrap round thy heart with cloudy apprehensions,
Eat of thy present corn, the aftermath
Hath its appointed end in whirling light.
Eat of thy present corn, thou so hast share
In mightier portents than Augustus hath.
* * * * *
In every moment all to be is born,
Thou art the moment and need'st fear no scorn.

Echo of the Angels singing "Exultasti":

Silence is born of many peaceful things,
Thus is the starlight woven into strings
Whereon the Powers of peace make sweet accord.
Rejoice, O Earth, thy Lord
Hath chosen Him his holy resting-place.

Lo, how the winged sign
Flutters above that hallowed chrysalis.


IN THE AIR

The invisible Spirit of the Star answers them:

Bend in your singing, gracious potencies,
Bend low above your ivory bows and gold!
That which ye know but dimly hath been wrought
High in the luminous courts and azure ways:
Bend in your praise;
For though your subtle thought
Sees but in part the source of mysteries,
Yet are ye bidden in your songs, sing this:

"Gloria! gloria in excelsis
Pax in terra nunc natast."

Angels continuing in song:

Shepherds and kings, with lambs and frankincense
Go and atone for mankind's ignorance:
Make ye soft savour from your ruddy myrrh.
Lo, how God's son is turned God's almoner.
Give ye this little
Ere he give ye all.


ON EARTH

One of the Magi:

How the deep-voicèd night turns councillor!
And how, for end, our starry meditations
Admit us to his board!

A Shepherd:

Sir, we be humble and perceive ye are
Men of great power and authority,
And yet we too have heard.



DIANA IN EPHESUS

(Lucina dolentibus:)


"Behold the deed! Behold the act supreme!
With mine own hands have I prepared my doom,
Truth shall grow great eclipsing other truth,
And men forget me in the aging years."

Explicit.



MAESTRO DI TOCAR

(W.R.)


You, who are touched not by our mortal ways
Nor girded with the stricture of our bands,
Have but to loose the magic from your hands
And all men's hearts that glimmer for a day,
And all our loves that are so swift to flame
Rise in that space of sound and melt away.



ARIA


My love is a deep flame
that hides beneath the waters.

—My love is gay and kind,
My love is hard to find
as the flame beneath the waters.

The fingers of the wind
meet hers
With a frail
swift greeting.
My love is gay
and kind
and hard
of meeting,
As the flame beneath the waters
hard of meeting.



L'ART


When brightest colours seem but dull in hue
And noblest arts are shown mechanical,
When study serves but to heap clue on clue
That no great line hath been or ever shall,
But hath a savour like some second stew
Of many pot-lots with a smack of all.
'Twas one man's field, another's hops the brew,
Twas vagrant accident not fate's fore-call.
Horace, that thing of thine is overhauled,
And "Wood notes wild" weaves a concocted sonnet.
Here aery Shelley on the text hath called,
And here, Great Scott, the Murex, Keats comes on it.
And all the lot howl, "Sweet Simplicity!"
'Tis Art to hide our theft exquisitely.



SONG IN THE MANNER OF HOUSMAN


O Woe, woe,
People are born and die,
We also shall be dead pretty soon
Therefore let us act as if we were
dead already.

The bird sits on the hawthorn tree
But he dies also, presently.
Some lads get hung, and some get shot.
Woeful is this human lot.
Woe! woe, etcetera....

London is a woeful place,
Shropshire is much pleasanter.
Then let us smile a little space
Upon fond nature's morbid grace.
Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera....



TRANSLATIONS FROM HEINE


VON "DIE HEIMKEHR"


I

Is your hate, then, of such measure?
Do you, truly, so detest me?
Through all the world will I complain
Of how you have addressed me.

O ye lips that are ungrateful,
Hath it never once distressed you,
That you can say such awful things
Of any one who ever kissed you?


II

So thou hast forgotten fully
That I so long held thy heart wholly,
Thy little heart, so sweet and false and small
That there's no thing more sweet or false at all.

Love and lay thou hast forgotten fully,
And my heart worked at them unduly.
I know not if the love or if the lay were better stuff,
But I know now, they both were good enough.


III

Tell me where thy lovely love is,
Whom thou once did sing so sweetly,
When the fairy flames enshrouded
Thee, and held thy heart completely.

All the flames are dead and sped now
And my heart is cold and sere;
Behold this book, the urn of ashes,
'Tis my true love's sepulchre.


IV

I dreamt that I was God Himself
Whom heavenly joy immerses,
And all the angels sat about
And praised my verses.


V

The mutilated choir boys
When I begin to sing
Complain about the awful noise
And call my voice too thick a thing.

When light their voices lift them up,
Bright notes against the ear,
Through trills and runs like crystal,
Ring delicate and clear.

They sing of Love that's grown desirous,
Of Love, and joy that is Love's inmost part,
And all the ladies swim through tears
Toward such a work of art.


VI

This delightful young man
Should not lack for honourers,
He propitiates me with oysters,
With Rhine wine and liqueurs.

How his coat and pants adorn him!
Yet his ties are more adorning,
In these he daily comes to ask me:
Are you feeling well this morning?

He speaks of my extended fame,
My wit, charm, definitions,
And is diligent to serve me,
Is detailed in his provisions.

In evening company he sets his face
In most spirituel positions,
And declaims before the ladies
My god-like compositions.

O what comfort is it for me
To find him such, when the days bring
No comfort, at my time of life when
All good things go vanishing.


TRANSLATOR TO TRANSLATED

O Harry Heine, curses be,
I live too late to sup with thee!
Who can demolish at such polished ease
Philistia's pomp and Art's pomposities!


VII

SONG FROM DIE HARZREISE

I am the Princess Ilza
In Ilsenstein I fare,
Come with me to that castle
And we'll be happy there.

Thy head will I cover over
With my waves' clarity
Till thou forget thy sorrow,
O wounded sorrowfully.

Thou wilt in my white arms there,
Nay, on my breast thou must
Forget and rest and dream there
For thine old legend-lust.

My lips and my heart are thine there
As they were his and mine.
His? Why the good King Harry's,
And he is dead lang syne.

Dead men stay alway dead men,
Life is the live man's part,
And I am fair and golden
With joy breathless at heart.

If my heart stay below there,
My crystal halls ring clear
To the dance of lords and ladies
In all their splendid gear.

The silken trains go rustling,
The spur-clinks sound between,
The dark dwarfs blow and bow there
Small horn and violin.

Yet shall my white arms hold thee,
That bound King Harry about.
Ah, I covered his ears with them
When the trumpet rang out.



UND DRANG

Nay, dwells he in cloudy rumour alone?
BINYON.


I

I am worn faint,
The winds of good and evil
Blind me with dust
And burn me with the cold,
There is no comfort being over-man;
Yet are we come more near
The great oblivions and the labouring night,
Inchoate truth and the sepulchral forces.


II

Confusion, clamour, 'mid the many voices
Is there a meaning, a significance?

That life apart from all life gives and takes,
This life, apart from all life's bitter and life's sweet,
Is good.

Ye see me and ye say: exceeding sweet
Life's gifts, his youth, his art,
And his too soon acclaim.

I also knew exceeding bitterness,
Saw good things altered and old friends fare forth,
And what I loved in me hath died too soon,
Yea I have seen the "gray above the green";
Gay have I lived in life;
Though life hath lain
Strange hands upon me and hath torn my sides,
Yet I believe.
* * * * *
Life is most cruel where she is most wise.


III

The will to live goes from me.
I have lain
Dull and out-worn
with some strange, subtle sickness.
Who shall say
That love is not the very root of this,
O thou afar?

Yet she was near me,
that eternal deep.
O it is passing strange that love
Can blow two ways across one soul.
* * * * *
And I was Aengus for a thousand years,
And she, the ever-living, moved with me
And strove amid the waves, and
would not go.


IV

ELEGIA

"Far buon tempo e trionfare"


"I have put my days and dreams out of mind'
For all their hurry and their weary fret
Availed me little. But another kind
Of leaf that's fast in some more sombre wind,
Is man on life, and all our tenuous courses
Wind and unwind as vainly.
* * * * *
I have lived long, and died,
Yea I have been dead, right often,
And have seen one thing:
The sun, while he is high, doth light our wrong
And none can break the darkness with a song.

To-day's the cup. To-morrow is not ours:
Nay, by our strongest bands we bind her not,
Nor all our fears and our anxieties
Turn her one leaf or hold her scimitar.

The deed blots out the thought
And many thoughts, the vision;
And right's a compass with as many poles
As there are points in her circumference,
'Tis vain to seek to steer all courses even,
And all things save sheer right are vain enough.
The blade were vain to grow save toward the sun,
And vain th' attempt to hold her green forever.

All things in season and no thing o'er long!
Love and desire and gain and good forgetting,
Thou canst not stay the wheel, hold none too long!


V

How our modernity,
Nerve-wracked and broken, turns
Against time's way and all the way of things,
Crying with weak and egoistic cries!
* * * * *
All things are given over,
Only the restless will
Surges amid the stars
Seeking new moods of life,
New permutations.
* * * * *
See, and the very sense of what we know
Dodges and hides as in a sombre curtain
Bright threads leap forth, and hide, and leave no pattern.


VI

I thought I had put Love by for a time
And I was glad, for to me his fair face
Is like Pain's face.
A little light,
The lowered curtain and the theatre!
And o'er the frail talk of the inter-act
Something that broke the jest! A little light,
The gold, and half the profile!
The whole face
Was nothing like you, yet that image cut
Sheer through the moment.


VIb

I have gone seeking for you in the twilight,
Here in the flurry of Fifth Avenue,
Here where they pass between their teas and teas.
Is it such madness? though you could not be
Ever in all that crowd, no gown
Of all their subtle sorts could be your gown.

Yet I am fed with faces,