OTHER VERSE.

SOMETIMES when I think of love I think of Mimi singing in Boheme, Just as the tune across the footlights came When we were young, my dear, at Covent Garden! Poor music, but before the senses harden Puccini’s made for boys and girls to wear Spite of sham passion and a poitrinaire. For if they looked and didn’t find the key At least they found the hearts of you and me. That sort of love age thinks of with a smile How innocent it was of truth and guile, How young perhaps and yet how half-divine And how imperishably yours and mine. You will not wonder nor will you reprove My thoughts of Mimi when I think of love.

SOMETIMES when I think of love I see a boat upon a river, And the rushes suddenly shiver, Because of a perilous foot that treads The reeds and the flowers into their beds. Because of a music that shakes and begins A different music and conscious of sins A tune was old at the birth of the river A tune is asleep in the blood for ever Asleep in the blood and loving and hating The time and the hour for which it is waiting. Puccini yields to a sob in the throat A hand round the heart as note answers note With the music that wrenches and melts and grips The hands hot on hands, the lips close on lips Cruelly volleying clearer and stronger Till we are a boy and a girl no longer. And we struggle in vain as long as we can Hating and loving and welcoming Pan, And you are a woman and I am a man. And you will not wonder and cannot reprove If I hear Pan’s pipes when I think of love.

SOMETIMES when I think of love I hear a heavy voice repeat “There’s a good doctor up the street.” And either it seems I am hard at hearing Or stupid perhaps or terribly fearing. For its late of a winter night and raining With cry of wind; or is something complaining? One lamp in the street and a leafless tree And a thing is moving that frightens me, With fingers that hover about my nape A shape like a hand and yet not a shape. Now all that we had in the past is over Each lover’s alone, the love from the lover. No comforting hand for me in the gloom, No voice of mine in the darkened room. Where is the music and where are the songs? For love has crept off ashamed of his wrongs. Poor love has gone off to rail at passion, And he will not wait for the night to fashion Out of pain and fear and anguish and danger, A lover strange with his love a stranger, And yet, as they were at the opera Incredibly close and familiar, Incredibly close as once on the river When each is a gift and each is a giver. Incredibly close and all they have hoarded Of life and of love in this moment rewarded. Rewarded! Has love in the darkness heard Of the little lost shadow, the small lost third? Love is returning—to find them alone, And if love be a sinner, who casts a stone? Shattered and beaten and blindingly sure Of love and themselves and strong to endure He finds them, by pain more lastingly crowned Than ever by joy and by laughter were bound Happier lovers and lovers untaunted By the shameful cries these lovers have haunted. If this be their love, who out of the pit Being a devil challenges it? In heaven assayed, in hell-fire priced Who casts the first stone? Not I, says Christ. You will not wonder nor will you reprove If I think of this, when I think of love.

SOMETIMES when I think of love I remember how you stooped down from heaven, Because they had told you I was unforgiven, To take half of the storm, and share the stripe An angel in hell with her guttersnipe. I am thinking then of your lighted face And your hands and the way your fingers lace As you sit quietly reading a book. Perhaps I move and you suddenly look Across the room and the soul in your eyes Is bright as it looks with the old surprise Changing for ever, for ever the same And you break my heart as you speak my name. You must not wonder, you will not reprove If sometimes I dare not think of love.

SO old, so changed, and odd Even as God, I am, so odd and old, That I am bitter cold In heart and limb Like him. I might in heaven be, Even as He. So lonely and so rare Beyond the utmost prayer My spirit weighs, Dead days. Or I might work in hell His miracle. Changing from joy to tears, To quiet all the years, With icy rod, Like God. I might immortal be Even as He. Saying, as heaven saith, What Victory, Oh death, What sting can save, Oh grave? As I, alone and dumb, What doth not come Ever, He waits to see And surely, waiting, he Must pray ah pray! to die Even as I.

THE little houses in the street And the warm blinds at night, Outside the copper on his beat And the moon so white, so white. They know what we shall never know, See what we cannot see, The steady lamplit ways that go To the quiet cemetery. They have not any fear at all Of life and of its end. They hear church bells, their children call, Their wife and death their friend. But for us the moon is white, so white It drowns us and it stings, And we must fly throughout the night Because of dangerous things.

LET’S be done with talking, Words are half a snare, That fools use for stalking What was never there. Let’s be done with weeping, Tears are but a sign That a doom is creeping On what was divine. Why be broken-hearted? Time to break the heart If we should be parted And not care we part. Dear, the wind is over In the world outside. I was once your lover, You were once my bride. Let’s go out together. In the quiet air, We may find each other Waiting as we were.

MY friend Pierrot your sleeves are far too long. Look! I can hardly find at all your hands. And all your cotton tunic is cut wrong, And what your eyes mean no one understands. Ah yes, Pierrette, my sleeves are far too long. Ah yes, Pierrette, you cannot find my hands, But better so than Pierrot did you wrong By telling you what no one understands. My friend Pierrot you fear to take the light, Look! I can hardly see at all your face. And what I see, Pierrot is very white. Are you afraid? Ashamed? or in disgrace? Ah yes, Pierrette, I dare not take the light. Ah yes, Pierrette, you cannot see my face. My candle died with love, and in the night Oh! Harlequin, Pierrette, is my disgrace. My friend Pierrot it seems that things go ill With you. Look! I can hardly hear your word, And the dark shadow round grows darker still, And a new voice which is not yours is heard. Ah yes, Pierrette, it seems that things go ill. Ah yes, Pierrette, you cannot hear my word. And the dark shadow which grows darker still Is death, Pierrette, of which you have not heard.

ONLY a glance it was, Only a word! What a romance it was All but absurd! All but absurd, you see, Yes but not quite. There’s one more word you see “Death” we must write! She had the knack of it —Less than a kiss, And for the lack of it Look he is this. O what a king he was (Drowned in a pool), What a brave thing he was O what a fool! While all the rest of us Struggle to fame, Here is the best of us Dead with his shame. Shame? Oh I wonder now. What do you say? If you should blunder now Choose me your way! If you’d thrown hope away; Well would you care Through life to grope a way? Or would you dare Take up the lot of it Life, love and fame, Make a clean shot of it Into the flame? Ah it was brave of him Let them cry “shame.” Life made no slave of him! But you’ll exclaim, Was she worth trying for? He thought her so. Was she worth dying for? Yes, and then no. “No,” for a wiser man. “No,” for a less. But the heart cries “Amen,” When he says “yes.” There in the pool he was Just a dead thing. O what a fool he was, O what a king!

TELL me, dead lover, you who broke my heart (O dead indeed, since love himself is dead). Need I remember that we came to part, May I forget to whom and why you fled? Tell me, dead lover, since the grave is strong, And those who sleep are cured of joy and pain, And now no love may reach you, do I wrong If I begin to love you all again? And see, dead lover, since the shadows fall And nothing now is false and nothing true. Might I not dream (you would not know at all) That I, O love, was loved once more by you. And since, dead lover, death defeats your pride, And ere it dreamed of pride my love awoke, O let me think, it was because you died, And not because you left me, my heart broke.

FENRIS the wolf, and Jörmungand the snake In the slime and the swamp remorseless wait. For not the years nor human hopes can break Valhalla’s sentence thus pronounced by Fate. “These gods that are the children of men’s dreams— Virtue and honour, courage and the songs Men sing about their hearthstones—stolen gleams In the poor heart unbroken by its wrongs, “These gods, of man’s refusal of the beast The half pathetic, wholly fleeting sign Who in that tenderness are gods the least Where human weakness finds them most divine, “These pitiful gods, fabric of mankind’s tears A dream of what all human hearts have wanted The vision at the end of all the years The holy ghost that half the world has haunted, “These gods are mortal as the heart that shaped them And in that hour when mankind’s heart must break These gods who only by that heart escaped them Fall to the wolf and Jörmungand the snake.” Fate pauses, but from Hela’s halls is heard A voice is young when all the gods are dead. Balder the beautiful has one more word The word that even Fate must leave unsaid. “True they depart the half-gods, and the snake And Fenris come. But in the heart’s defection I, Balder, bound in Hell for that heart’s sake I am the life and I the resurrection. “I, love, being loosed, will take my harp up—so— Singing what all the world at last will learn ‘The devils come because the half-gods go But in the end the gods, the gods return.’”

WHY d’you write about Frascati’s You who from the balcony leaning ’Neath the lure that was Astarte’s Find a negroid devil grinning. Changed indeed and almost stupid Yielding to analysis Now a Piccadilly cupid Hanging on a painted kiss. Now a toy in two dimensions Operated by a string In your hand, whose interventions Set the object capering. You who at the higher level Know love as he truly is Not the fair Assyrian devil, Not the poor idolatries, Of the savage, not the crazes Say of Shelley, and his set: But you find him (as your phrase is) Palm to palm in quiet sweat. That’s a way, O brother brother A new way for verse to move There’s an older and another Will you listen? way of love. I from that same terrace waiting For the music to begin “Amoureuse” anticipating Watched a boy who blundered in. Slim he was, a little stooping At the shoulders as it seemed, Eyes on which the lids were drooping Seeing only what he dreamed. Where he came was noise and clatter, But the pandemonium Either didn’t seem to matter Where he stood or else grew dumb. And the waltz the band was creaking, Like a cluster, round his head Changed to cry “What’s music seeking Save what he has left unsaid.” And like flowers, bourgeois faces Overtaken by the tune, Pilfered unimagined graces From an unimagined June. And, when once again the Babel Rose, though we had never stirred, There between us at the table At Frascati’s was the third. What’s the good of all this antic You’ll impatiently exclaim, Still incurably romantic Still incurably the same. Only this—that at Frascati’s If one does not wash one’s hands That old magic was Astarte’s Goes, before one understands.

AT full afternoon slowly the branches Stirred as of old and fragrant with flowers Touched with a breath of wind look down and wonder To where—far below—is the delicate water. Here should be peace as was peace and splendour Of hearts’ first stirrings, the eye to the hills Turned, the call of the perilous margins Life just beginning, but life well begun. Here by the well we played (you remember) (Then too the grasses grew at the edges Tempting small hands but tempt now no longer) Here by the well we dreamed after playing. Have you forgotten (or has death no mercy) How bright the days were and how the evening Softer than sleep laid her mysterious Hands on the garden soothing and changing. Here at the well side we loved after dreaming Since we had played by it, since we had dreamed. Here at the well side love that was wakened Sank like a stone, but leaving no ripple. Here are our shapes that play dream love quarrel, Here are our dreams (and if there were dreamers, If we were not like our visions a dream) All is not over—is all then over? Here is the well and the delicate water Far below gleaming, the starred white branches Fragrant with flowers. Here is the noontide, Even the grasses grow at the edges. What then is gone? If we were the dreamers (And not a dream) then all must be over. I an old man cold, fruitless and lonely, Watch by the water, which you cannot see. But if we two are dreams of a dreamer, All is not over, and here together Age falls from me, and from you the mantle Death seemed to cast, and here by the well side Lifted again is the voice of your singing, Golden again are the perilous margins, Sweet are your eyes and young and immortal Our hearts are set to the day and the hills.

NOT I, oh Christ, not I betrayed thee But He was traitor, He who made thee Born of a village carpenter With such immortal longings stir As stretched beyond the world and found In God himself the final wound. Through me thou wast by soldiers taken By Him, by Him on the Cross forsaken.

BE quiet bird Be silent all That e’er were heard And cease to call. Drop perfume rose And flowers white Put off your shows For see ’tis night. Soft creatures slow Begin to pass, And thousands grow From out the grass. With deep low whirr The air is full And through the fir The moon shines cool. There is no pain Sorrow is dead Slow Charles’ wain Wheels overhead. There is no grief All things have ease No bough or leaf Stirs on the trees.