RICHARD ALDINGTON

EROS AND PSYCHE

In an old dull yard near Camden Town, Which echoes with the rattle of cars and 'busses And freight-trains, puffing steam and smoke and dirt To the steaming, sooty sky— There stands an old and grimy statue, A statue of Psyche and her lover, Eros.

A little nearer Camden Town, In a square of ugly sordid shops, Is another statue, facing the Tube, Staring with a heavy, purposeless glare At the red and white shining tiles— A tall stone statue of Cobden. And though no one ever pauses to see What hero it is that faces the Tube, I can understand very well indeed That England must honour its national heroes, Must honour the hero of Free Trade— Or was it the Corn Laws?— That I can understand. But what I shall never understand Is the little group in the dingy yard Under the dingier sky, The Eros and Psyche— Surrounded with pots and terra-cotta busts And urns and broken pillars— Eros, naked, with his wings stretched out Just lighting down to kiss her on the lips.

What are they doing here in Camden Town In the midst of all this clamour and filth? They who should stand in a sun-lit room Hung with deep purple, painted with gods, Paved with white porphyry, Stand for ever embraced By the side of a rustling fountain Over a marble basin Carved with leopards and grapes and young men dancing; Or in a garden leaning above Corinth, Under the ilices and the cypresses, Very white against a very blue sky; Or growing hoary, if they must grow old, With lichens and softly creeping moss. What are they doing here in Camden Town? And who has brought their naked beauty And their young fresh lust to Camden Town, Which settled long ago to toil and sweat and filth, Forgetting—to the greater glory of Free Trade— Young beauty and young love and youthful flesh?

Slowly the rain settles down on them, Slowly the soot eats into them, Slowly the stone grows greyer and dirtier, Till in spite of his spreading wings Her eyes have a rim of soot Half an inch deep, And his wings, the tall god's wings, That should be red and silver Are ocherous brown.

And I peer from a 'bus-top As we splash through the grease and puddles, And I glimpse them, huddled against the wall, Half-hidden under a freight-train's smoke, And I see the limbs that a Greek slave cut In some old Italian town, I see them growing older And sadder And greyer.

AFTER TWO YEARS

She is all so slight And tender and white As a May morning. She walks without hood At dusk. It is good To hear her sing.

It is God's will That I shall love her still As He loves Mary. And night and day I will go forth to pray That she love me.

She is as gold Lovely, and far more cold. Do thou pray with me, For if I win grace To kiss twice her face God has done well to me.

1915

The limbs of gods, Still, veined marble, Rest heavily in sleep Under a saffron twilight.

Not for them battle, Severed limbs, death, and a cry of victory; Not for them strife And a torment of storm.

A vast breast moves slowly, The great thighs shift, The stone eyelids rise; The slow tongue speaks:

“Only a rain of bright dust; In the outer air; A little whisper of wind; Sleep; rest; forget.”

Bright dust of battle! A little whisper of dead souls!

WHITECHAPEL

Noise; Iron hoofs, iron wheels, iron din Of drays and trams and feet passing; Iron Beaten to a vast mad cacophony.

In vain the shrill, far cry Of swallows sweeping by; In vain the silence and green Of meadows Apriline; In vain the clear white rain—

Soot; mud; A nation maddened with labour; Interminable collision of energies— Iron beating upon iron; Smoke whirling upwards, Speechless, impotent.

In vain the shrill, far cry Of kittiwakes that fly Where the sea waves leap green. The meadows Apriline—

Noise, iron, smoke; Iron, iron, iron.

SUNSETS

The white body of the evening Is torn into scarlet, Slashed and gouged and seared Into crimson, And hung ironically With garlands of mist.

And the wind Blowing over London from Flanders Has a bitter taste.

PEOPLE

Why should you try to crush me? Am I so Christ-like?

You beat against me, Immense waves, filthy with refuse. I am the last upright of a smashed break-water, But you shall not crush me Though you bury me in foaming slime And hiss your hatred about me.

You break over me, cover me; I shudder at the contact; Yet I pierce through you And stand up, torn, dripping, shaken, But whole and fierce.

REFLECTIONS

I

Steal out with me Over the moss and the daffodils.

Come to the temple, Hung with sprays from untrimmed hedges.

I bring you a token From the golden-haired revellers, From the mad procession.

Come, Flute girls shall pipe to us— Their beautiful fingers!— They are yellow-throated birds. They send perfumes from dawn-scented garments, Bending above us.

Come, Bind your hair with white poplar, Let your lips be sweet, Wild roses of Paestum.

II

Ghost moths hover over asphodel; Shades, once Laïs' peers Drift past us; The mist is grey.

Far over us The white wave-crests flash in the sun; The sea-girls lie upon hot, weedy rocks.

Now the Maid returns to us With fragrance of the world And of the hours of gods. On earth Apple-trees, weighted with red fruit, Streams, passing through the corn lands, Hear laughter.

We pluck the asphodel, Yet we weave no crowns For we have no vines; No one speaks here; No one kisses.