The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leda, by Aldous Huxley This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Leda Author: Aldous Huxley Release Date: July 20, 2015 [EBook #49493] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEDA *** Produced by Marcia Brooks, Cindy Beyer and the online Project Gutenberg team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net BY THE SAME AUTHOR LIMBO L E D A BY ALDOUS HUXLEY NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY All rights reserved B C O N TE N TS LEDA 1 THE BIRTH OF GOD 19 ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH 21 SYMPATHY 22 MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM 23 FROM THE PILLAR 24 JONAH 25 VARIATIONS ON A THEME 26 A MELODY BY SCARLATTI 27 A SUNSET 28 LIFE AND ART 30 FIRST PHILOSOPHER’S SONG 31 SECOND PHILOSOPHER’S SONG 32 FIFTH PHILOSOPHERS SONG 33 NINTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG 34 MORNING SCENE 36 VERREY’S 37 FRASCATI’S 38 FATIGUE 39 THE MERRY-GO-ROUND 40 BACK STREETS 41 LAST THINGS 42 GOTHIC 43 EVENING PARTY 44 BEAUTY 45 SOLES OCCIDERE ET REDIRE POSSUNT 55 L E D A LEDA ROWN and bright as an agate, mountain-cool, Eurotas singing slips from pool to pool; Down rocky gullies; through the cavernous pines And chestnut groves; down where the terraced vines And gardens overhang; through valleys grey With olive trees, into a soundless bay Of the Ægean. Silent and asleep Lie those pools now: but where they dream most deep, Men sometimes see ripples of shining hair And the young grace of bodies pale and bare, Shimmering far down—the ghosts these mirrors hold Of all the beauty they beheld of old, White limbs and heavenly eyes and the hair’s river of gold, For once these banks were peopled: Spartan girls Loosed here their maiden girdles and their curls, And stooping o’er the level water stole His darling mirror from the sun through whole Rapturous hours of gazing. The first star Of all this milky constellation, far Lovelier than any nymph of wood or green, Was she whom Tyndarus had made his queen For her sheer beauty and subtly moving grace— Leda, the fairest of our mortal race. Hymen had lit his torches but one week About her bed (and still o’er her young cheek Passed rosy shadows of those thoughts that sped Across her mind, still virgin, still unwed, For all her body was her own no more), When Leda with her maidens to the shore Of bright Eurotas came, to escape the heat Of summer noon in waters coolly sweet. By a brown pool which opened smooth and clear Below the wrinkled water of a weir They sat them down under an old fir-tree To rest: and to the laughing melody Of their sweet speech the river’s rippling bore A liquid burden, while the sun did pour Pure colour out of heaven upon the earth. The meadows seethed with the incessant mirth Of grasshoppers, seen only when they flew Their curves of scarlet or sudden dazzling blue. Within the fir-tree’s round of unpierced shade The maidens sat with laughter and talk, or played, Gravely intent, their game of knuckle-bones; Or tossed from hand to hand the old dry cones Littered about the tree. And one did sing A ballad of some far-off Spartan king, Who took a wife, but left her, well-away! Slain by his foes upon their wedding-day. “That was a piteous story,” Leda sighed, “To be a widow ere she was a bride.” “Better,” said one, “to live a virgin life Alone, and never know the name of wife And bear the ugly burden of a child And have great pain by it. Let me live wild, A bird untamed by man!” “Nay,” cried another, “I would be wife, if I should not be mother. Cypris I honour; let the vulgar pay Their gross vows to Lucina when they pray. Our finer spirits would be blunted quite By bestial teeming; but Love’s rare delight Wings the rapt soul towards Olympus’ height.” “Delight?” cried Leda. “Love to me has brought Nothing but pain and a world of shameful thought. When they say love is sweet, the poets lie; ’Tis but a trick to catch poor maidens by. What are their boasted pleasures? I am queen To the most royal king the world has seen; Therefore I should, if any woman might, Know at its full that exquisite delight. Yet these few days since I was made a wife Have held more bitterness than all my life, While I was yet a child.” The great bright tears Slipped through her lashes. “Oh, my childish years! Years that were all my own, too sadly few, When I was happy—and yet never knew How happy till to-day!” Her maidens came About her as she wept, whispering her name, Leda, sweet Leda, with a hundred dear Caressing words to soothe her heavy cheer. At last she started up with a fierce pride Upon her face. “I am a queen,” she cried, “But had forgotten it a while; and you, Wenches of mine, you were forgetful too. Undress me. We would bathe ourself.” So proud A queen she stood, that all her maidens bowed In trembling fear and scarcely dared approach To do her bidding. But at last the brooch Pinned at her shoulder is undone, the wide Girdle of silk beneath her breasts untied; The tunic falls about her feet, and she Steps from the crocus folds of drapery, Dazzlingly naked, into the warm sun. God-like she stood; then broke into a run, Leaping and laughing in the light, as though Life through her veins coursed with so swift a flow Of generous blood and fire that to remain Too long in statued queenliness were pain To that quick soul, avid of speed and joy. She ran, easily bounding, like a boy, Narrow of haunch and slim and firm of breast. Lovelier she seemed in motion than at rest, If that might be, when she was never less, Moving or still, than perfect loveliness. At last, with cheeks afire and heaving flank, She checked her race, and on the river’s bank Stood looking down at her own echoed shape And at the fish that, aimlessly agape, Hung midway up their heaven of flawless glass, Like angels waiting for eternity to pass. Leda drew breath and plunged; her gasping cry Splashed up; the water circled brokenly Out from that pearly shudder of dipped limbs; The glittering pool laughed up its flowery brims, And everything, save the poor fish, rejoiced: Their idiot contemplation of the Moist, The Cold, the Watery, was in a trice Ended when Leda broke their crystal paradise. Jove in his high Olympian chamber lay Hugely supine, striving to charm away In sleep the long, intolerable noon. But heedless Morpheus still withheld his boon, And Jove upon his silk-pavilioned bed Tossed wrathful and awake. His fevered head Swarmed with a thousand fancies, which forecast Delights to be, or savoured pleasures past. Closing his eyes, he saw his eagle swift, Headlong as his own thunder, stoop and lift On pinions upward labouring the prize Of beauty ravished for the envious skies. He saw again that bright, adulterous pair, Trapped by the limping husband unaware, Fast in each other’s arms, and faster in the snare— And laughed remembering. Sometimes his thought Went wandering over the earth and sought Familiar places—temples by the sea, Cities and islands; here a sacred tree And there a cavern of shy nymphs. He rolled About his bed, in many a rich fold Crumpling his Babylonian coverlet, And yawned and stretched. The smell of his own sweat Brought back to mind his Libyan desert-fane Of mottled granite, with its endless train Of pilgrim camels, reeking towards the sky Ammonian incense to his hornèd deity; The while their masters worshipped, offering Huge teeth of ivory, while some would bring Their Ethiop wives—sleek wineskins of black silk, Jellied and huge from drinking asses’ milk Through years of tropical idleness, to pray For offspring (whom he ever sent away With prayers unanswered, lest their ebon race Might breed and blacken the earth’s comely face). Noon pressed on him a hotter, heavier weight. O Love in Idleness! how celibate He felt! Libido like a nemesis Scourged him with itching memories of bliss. The satin of imagined skin was sleek And supply warm against his lips and cheek, And deep within soft hair’s dishevelled dusk His eyelids fluttered; like a flowery musk The scent of a young body seemed to float Faintly about him, close and yet remote— For perfume and the essence of music dwell In other worlds among the asphodel Of unembodied life. Then all had flown; His dream had melted. In his bed, alone, Jove sweating lay and moaned, and longed in vain To still the pulses of his burning pain. In sheer despair at last he leapt from bed, Opened the window and thrust forth his head Into Olympian ether. One fierce frown Rifted the clouds, and he was looking down Into a gulf of azure calm; the rack Seethed round about, tempestuously black; But the god’s eye could hold its angry thunders back. There lay the world, down through the chasméd blue, Stretched out from edge to edge unto his view; And in the midst, bright as a summer’s day At breathless noon, the Mediterranean lay; And Ocean round the world’s dim fringes tossed His glaucous waves in mist and distance lost; And Pontus and the livid Caspian Sea Stirred in their nightmare sleep uneasily. And ’twixt the seas rolled the wide fertile land, Dappled with green and tracts of tawny sand, And rich, dark fallows and fields of flowers aglow And the white, changeless silences of snow; While here and there towns, like a living eye Unclosed on earth’s blind face, towards the sky Glanced their bright conscious beauty. Yet the sight Of his fair earth gave him but small delight Now in his restlessness: its beauty could Do nought to quench the fever in his blood. Desire lends sharpness to his searching eyes; Over the world his focused passion flies Quicker than chasing sunlight on a day Of storm and golden April. Far away He sees the tranquil rivers of the East, Mirrors of many a strange barbaric feast, Where un-Hellenic dancing-girls contort Their yellow limbs, and gibbering masks make sport Under the moons of many-coloured light That swing their lantern-fruitage in the night Of overarching trees. To him it seems An alien world, peopled by insane dreams. But these are nothing to the monstrous shapes— Not men so much as bastardy of apes— That meet his eyes in Africa. Between Leaves of grey fungoid pulp and poisonous green, White eyes from black and browless faces stare. Dryads with star-flowers in their woolly hair Dance to the flaccid clapping of their own Black dangling dugs through forests overgrown, Platted with writhing creepers. Horrified, He sees them how they leap and dance, or glide, Glimpse after black glimpse of a satin skin, Among unthinkable flowers, to pause and grin Out through a trellis of suppurating lips, Of mottled tentacles barbed at the tips And bloated hands and wattles and red lobes Of pendulous gristle and enormous probes Of pink and slashed and tasselled flesh . . . He turns Northward his sickened sight. The desert burns All life away. Here in the forkéd shade Of twin-humped towering dromedaries laid, A few gaunt folk are sleeping: fierce they seem Even in sleep, and restless as they dream. He would be fearful of a desert bride As of a brown asp at his sleeping side, Fearful of her white teeth and cunning arts. Further, yet further, to the ultimate parts Of the wide earth he looks, where Britons go Painted among their swamps, and through the snow Huge hairy snuffling beasts pursue their prey— Fierce men, as hairy and as huge as they. Bewildered furrows deepen the Thunderer’s scowl; This world so vast, so variously foul— Who can have made its ugliness? In what Revolting fancy were the Forms begot Of all these monsters? What strange deity— So barbarously not a Greek!—was he Who could mismake such beings in his own Distorted image. Nay, the Greeks alone Were men; in Greece alone were bodies fair, Minds comely. In that all-but-island there, Cleaving the blue sea with its promontories, Lies the world’s hope, the seed of all the glories That are to be; there, too, must surely live She who alone can medicinably give Ease with her beauty to the Thunderer’s pain. Downwards he bends his fiery eyes again, Glaring on Hellas. Like a beam of light, His intent glances touch the mountain height With passing flame and probe the valleys deep, Rift the dense forest and the age-old sleep Of vaulted antres on whose pebbly floor Gallop the loud-hoofed Centaurs; and the roar Of more than human shouting underground Pulses in living palpable waves of sound From wall to wall, until it rumbles out Into the air; and at that hollow shout That seems an utterance of the whole vast hill, The shepherds cease their laughter and are still. Cities asleep under the noonday sky Stir at the passage of his burning eye; And in their huts the startled peasants blink At the swift flash that bursts through every chink Of wattled walls, hearkening in fearful wonder Through lengthened seconds for the crash of thunder— Which follows not: they are the more afraid. Jove seeks amain. Many a country maid, Whose sandalled feet pass down familiar ways Among the olives, but whose spirit strays Through lovelier lands of fancy, suddenly Starts broad awake out of her dream to see A light that is not of the sun, a light Darted by living eyes, consciously bright; She sees and feels it like a subtle flame Mantling her limbs with fear and maiden shame And strange desire. Longing and terrified, She hides her face, like a new-wedded bride Who feels rough hands that seize and hold her fast; And swooning falls. The terrible light has passed; She wakes; the sun still shines, the olive trees Tremble to whispering silver in the breeze And all is as it was, save she alone In whose dazed eyes this deathless light has shone: For never, never from this day forth will she In earth’s poor passion find felicity, Or love of mortal man. A god’s desire Has seared her soul; nought but the same strong fire Can kindle the dead ash to life again, And all her years will be a lonely pain. Many a thousand had he looked upon, Thousands of mortals, young and old; but none— Virgin, or young ephebus, or the flower Of womanhood culled in its full-blown hour— Could please the Thunderer’s sight or touch his mind; The longed-for loveliness was yet to find. Had beauty fled, and was there nothing fair Under the moon? The fury of despair Raged in the breast of heaven’s Almighty Lord; He gnashed his foamy teeth and rolled and roared In bull-like agony. Then a great calm Descended on him: cool and healing balm Touched his immortal fury. He had spied Young Leda where she stood, poised on the river-side. Even as she broke the river’s smooth expanse, Leda was conscious of that hungry glance, And knew it for an eye of fearful power That did so hot and thunderously lour, She knew not whence, on her frail nakedness. Jove’s heart held but one thought: he must possess That perfect form or die—possess or die. Unheeded prayers and supplications fly, Thick as a flock of birds, about his ears, And smoke of incense rises; but he hears Nought but the soft falls of that melody Which is the speech of Leda; he can see Nought but that almost spiritual grace Which is her body, and that heavenly face Where gay, sweet thoughts shine through, and eyes are bright With purity and the soul’s inward light. Have her he must: the teasel-fingered burr Sticks not so fast in a wild beast’s tangled fur As that insistent longing in the soul Of mighty Jove. Gods, men, earth, heaven, the whole Vast universe was blotted from his thought And nought remained but Leda’s laughter, nought But Leda’s eyes. Magnified by his lust, She was the whole world now; have her he must, he must . . . His spirit worked; how should he gain his end With most deliciousness? What better friend, What counsellor more subtle could he find Than lovely Aphrodite, ever kind To hapless lovers, ever cunning, too, In all the tortuous ways of love to do And plan the best? To Paphos then! His will And act were one; and straight, invisible, He stood in Paphos, breathing the languid air By Aphrodite’s couch. O heavenly fair She was, and smooth and marvellously young! On Tyrian silk she lay, and purple hung About her bed in folds of fluted light And shadow, dark as wine. Two doves, more white Even than the white hand on the purple lying Like a pale flower wearily dropped, were flying With wings that made an odoriferous stir, Dropping faint dews of bakkaris and myrrh, Musk and the soul of sweet flowers cunningly Ravished from transient petals as they die. Two stripling cupids on her either hand Stood near with winnowing plumes and gently fanned Her hot, love-fevered cheeks and eyelids burning. Another, crouched at the bed’s foot, was turning A mass of scattered parchments—vows or plaints Or glad triumphant thanks which Venus’ saints, Martyrs and heroes, on her altars strewed With bitterest tears or gifts of gratitude. From the pile heaped at Aphrodite’s feet The boy would take a leaf, and in his sweet, Clear voice would read what mortal tongues can tell In stammering verse of those ineffable Pleasures and pains of love, heaven and uttermost hell. Jove hidden stood and heard him read these lines Of votive thanks— Cypris, this little silver lamp to thee I dedicate. It was my fellow-watcher, shared with me Those swift, short hours, when raised above my fate In Sphenura’s white arms I drank Of immortality. “A pretty lamp, and I will have it placed Beside the narrow bed of some too chaste Sister of virgin Artemis, to be A night-long witness of her cruelty. Read me another, boy,” and Venus bent Her ear to listen to this short lament. Cypris, Cypris, I am betrayed! Under the same wide mantle laid I found them, faithless, shameless pair! Making love with tangled hair. “Alas,” the goddess cried, “nor god, nor man, Nor medicinable balm, nor magic can Cast out the demon jealousy, whose breath Withers the rose of life, save only time and death.” Another sheet he took and read again. Farewell to love, and hail the long, slow pain Of memory that backward turns to joy. O I have danced enough and enough sung; My feet shall be still now and my voice mute; Thine are these withered wreaths, this Lydian flute, Cypris; I once was young. And piêtous Aphrodite wept to think How fadingly upon death’s very brink Beauty and love take hands for one short kiss— And then the wreaths are dust, the bright-eyed bliss Perished, and the flute still. “Read on, read on.” But ere the page could start, a lightning shone Suddenly through the room, and they were ’ware Of some great terrible presence looming there. And it took shape—huge limbs, whose every line A symbol was of power and strength divine, And it was Jove. “Daughter, I come,” said he, “For counsel in a case that touches me Close, to the very life.” And he straightway Told her of all his restlessness that day And of his sight of Leda, and how great Was his desire. And so in close debate Sat the two gods, planning their rape; while she, Who was to be their victim, joyously Laughed like a child in the sudden breathless chill And splashed and swam, forgetting every ill And every fear and all, save only this: That she was young, and it was perfect bliss To be alive where suns so goldenly shine, And bees go drunk with fragrant honey-wine, And the cicadas sing from morn till night, And rivers run so cool and pure and bright . . . Stretched all her length, arms under head, she lay In the deep grass, while the sun kissed away The drops that sleeked her skin. Slender and fine As those old images of the gods that shine With smooth-worn silver, polished through the years By the touching lips of countless worshippers, Her body was; and the sun’s golden heat Clothed her in softest flame from head to feet And was her mantle, that she scarcely knew The conscious sense of nakedness. The blue, Far hills and the faint fringes of the sky Shimmered and pulsed in the heat uneasily, And hidden in the grass, cicadas shrill Dizzied the air with ceaseless noise, until A listener might wonder if they cried In his own head or in the world outside. Sometimes she shut her eyelids, and wrapped round In a red darkness, with the muffled sound And throb of blood beating within her brain, Savoured intensely to the verge of pain Her own young life, hoarded it up behind Her shuttered lids, until, too long confined, It burst them open and her prisoned soul Flew forth and took possession of the whole Exquisite world about her and was made A part of it. Meanwhile her maidens played, Singing an ancient song of death and birth, Seed-time and harvest, old as the grey earth, And moving to their music in a dance As immemorial. A numbing trance Came gradually over her, as though Flake after downy-feathered flake of snow Had muffled all her senses, drifting deep And warm and quiet. From this all-but sleep She started into life again; the sky Was full of a strange tumult suddenly— Beating of mighty wings and shrill-voiced fear And the hoarse scream of rapine following near. In the high windlessness above her flew, Dazzlingly white on the untroubled blue, A splendid swan, with outstretched neck and wing Spread fathom wide, and closely following An eagle, tawny and black. This god-like pair Circled and swooped through the calm of upper air, The eagle striking and the white swan still ’Scaping as though by happy miracle The imminent talons. For the twentieth time The furious hunter stooped, to miss and climb A mounting spiral into the height again. He hung there poised, eyeing the grassy plain Far, far beneath, where the girls’ upturned faces Were like white flowers that bloom in open places Among the scarcely budded woods. And they Breathlessly watched and waited; long he lay, Becalmed upon that tideless sea of light, While the great swan with slow and creaking flight Went slanting down towards safety, where the stream Shines through the trees below, with glance and gleam Of blue aerial eyes that seem to give Sense to the sightless earth and make it live. The ponderous wings beat on and no pursuit: Stiff as the painted kite that guards the fruit, Afloat o’er orchards ripe, the eagle yet Hung as at anchor, seeming to forget His uncaught prey, his rage unsatisfied. Still, quiet, dead . . . and then the quickest-eyed Had lost him. Like a star unsphered, a stone Dropped from the vault of heaven, a javelin thrown, He swooped upon his prey. Down, down he came, And through his plumes with a noise of wind-blown flame Loud roared the air. From Leda’s lips a cry Broke, and she hid her face—she could not see him die, Her lovely, hapless swan. Ah, had she heard, Even as the eagle hurtled past, the word That treacherous pair exchanged. “Peace,” cried the swan; “Peace, daughter. All my strength will soon be gone, Wasted in tedious flying, ere I come Where my desire hath set its only home.” “Go,” said the eagle, “I have played my part, Roused pity for your plight in Leda’s heart (Pity the mother of voluptuousness). Go, father Jove; be happy; for success Attends this moment.” On the queen’s numbed sense Fell a glad shout that ended sick suspense, Bidding her lift once more towards the light Her eyes, by pity closed against a sight Of blood and death—her eyes, how happy now To see the swan still safe, while far below, Brought by the force of his eluded stroke So near to earth that with his wings he woke A gust whose sudden silvery motion stirred The meadow grass, struggled the sombre bird Of rage and rapine. Loud his scream and hoarse With baffled fury as he urged his course Upwards again on threshing pinions wide. But the fair swan, not daring to abide This last assault, dropped with the speed of fear Towards the river. Like a winged spear, Outstretching his long neck, rigid and straight, Aimed at where Leda on the bank did wait With open arms and kind, uplifted eyes And voice of tender pity, down he flies. Nearer, nearer, terribly swift, he sped Directly at the queen; then widely spread Resisting wings, and breaking his descent ’Gainst his own wind, all speed and fury spent, The great swan fluttered slowly down to rest And sweet security on Leda’s breast. Menacingly the eagle wheeled above her; But Leda, like a noble-hearted lover Keeping his child-beloved from tyrannous harm, Stood o’er the swan and, with one slender arm Imperiously lifted, waved away The savage foe, still hungry for his prey. Baffled at last, he mounted out of sight And the sky was void—save for a single white Swan’s feather moulted from a harassed wing That down, down, with a rhythmic balancing From side to side dropped sleeping on the air. Down, slowly down over that dazzling pair, Whose different grace in union was a birth Of unimagined beauty on the earth: So lovely that the maidens standing round Dared scarcely look. Couched on the flowery ground Young Leda lay, and to her side did press The swan’s proud-arching opulent loveliness, Stroking the snow-soft plumage of his breast With fingers slowly drawn, themselves caressed By the warm softness where they lingered, loth To break away. Sometimes against their growth Ruffling the feathers inlaid like little scales On his sleek neck, the pointed finger-nails Rasped on the warm, dry, puckered skin beneath; And feeling it she shuddered, and her teeth Grated on edge; for there was something strange And snake-like in the touch. He, in exchange, Gave back to her, stretching his eager neck, For every kiss a little amorous peck; Rubbing his silver head on her gold tresses, And with the nip of horny dry caresses Leaving upon her young white breast and cheek And arms the red print of his playful beak. Closer he nestled, mingling with the slim Austerity of virginal flank and limb His curved and florid beauty, till she felt That downy warmth strike through her flesh and melt The bones and marrow of her strength away. One lifted arm bent o’er her brow, she lay With limbs relaxed, scarce breathing, deathly still; Save when a quick, involuntary thrill Shook her sometimes with passing shudderings, As though some hand had plucked the aching strings Of life itself, tense with expectancy. And over her the swan shook slowly free The folded glory of his wings, and made A white-walled tent of soft and luminous shade To be her veil and keep her from the shame Of naked light and the sun’s noonday flame. Hushed lay the earth and the wide, careless sky. Then one sharp sound, that might have been a cry Of utmost pleasure or of utmost pain, Broke sobbing forth, and all was still again. THE BIRTH OF GOD NIGHT is a void about me; I lie alone; And water drips, like an idiot clicking his tongue, Senselessly, ceaselessly, endlessly drips Into the waiting silence, grown Emptier for this small inhuman sound. My love is gone, my love who is tender and young. O smooth warm body! O passionate lips! I have stretched forth hands in the dark and nothing found: The silence is huge as the sky—I lie alone— My narrow room, a darkness that knows no bound. How shall I fill this measureless Deep void that the taking away Of a child’s slim beauty has made? Slender she is and small, but the loneliness She has left is a night no stars allay, And I am cold and afraid. Long, long ago, cut off from the wolfish pack, From the warm, immediate touch of friends and mate, Lost and alone, alone in the utter black Of a forest night, some far-off, beast-like man, Cowed by the cold indifferent hate Of the northern silence, crouched in fear, When through his bleared and suffering mind A sudden tremor of comfort ran, And the void was filled by a rushing wind, And he breathed a sense of something friendly and near, And in privation the life of God began. Love, from your loss shall a god be born to fill The emptiness, where once you were, With friendly knowledge and more than a lover’s will To ease despair? Shall I feed longing with what it hungers after, Seeing in earth and sea and air A lover’s smiles, hearing a lover’s laughter, Feeling love everywhere? The night drags on. Darkness and silence grow, And with them my desire has grown, My bitter need. Alas, I know, I know that here I lie alone. ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH BENEATH the sunlight and blue of all-but Autumn The grass sleeps goldenly; woodland and distant hill Shine through the gauzy air in a dust of golden pollen, And even the glittering leaves are almost still. Scattered on the grass, like a ragman’s bundles carelessly dropped, Men sleep outstretched or, sprawling, bask in the sun; Here glows a woman’s bright dress and here a child is sitting, And I lie down and am one of the sleepers, one Like the rest of this tumbled crowd. Do they all, I wonder, Feel anguish grow with the calm day’s slow decline, Longing, as I, for a shattering wind, a passion Of bodily pain to be the soul’s anodyne? SYMPATHY THE irony of being two . . . ! Grey eyes, wide open suddenly, Regard me and enquire; I see a face Grave and unquiet in tenderness. Heart-rending question of women—never answered: “Tell me, tell me, what are you thinking of?” Oh, the pain and foolishness of love! What can I do but make my old grimace, Ending it with a kiss, as I always do? MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM DIAPHENIA, drunk with sleep, Drunk with pleasure, drunk with fatigue, Feels her Corydon’s fingers creep— Ring-finger, middle finger, index, thumb— Strummingly over the smooth sleek drum Of her thorax. Meanwhile Händel’s Gigue Turns in Corydon’s absent mind To Yakka-Hoola. She can find No difference in the thrilling touch Of one who, now, in everything Is God-like. “Was there ever such Passion as ours?” His pianoing Gives place to simple arithmetic’s Simplest constatations:—six Letters in Gneiss and three in Gnu: Luncheon to-day cost three and two; In a year—he couldn’t calculate Three-sixty-five times thirty-eight, Figuring with printless fingers on Her living parchment. “Corydon! I faint, faint, faint at your dear touch. Say, is it possible . . . to love too much?” FROM THE PILLAR SIMEON, the withered stylite, Sat gloomily looking down Upon each roof and skylight In all the seething town. And in every upper chamber, On roofs, where the orange flowers Make weary men remember The perfume of long-dead hours, He saw the wine-drenched riot Of harlots and human beasts, And how celestial quiet Was shattered by their feasts. The steam of fetid vices From a thousand lupanars, Like smoke of sacrifices, Reeked up to the heedless stars. And the saint from his high fastness Of purity apart Cursed them and their unchasteness, And envied them in his heart. JONAH ACREAM of phosphorescent light Floats on the wash that to and fro Slides round his feet—enough to show Many a pendulous stalactite Of naked mucus, whorls and wreaths And huge festoons of mottled tripes And smaller palpitating pipes Through which a yeasty liquor seethes. Seated upon the convex mound Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays And sings his canticles and hymns, Making the hollow vault resound God’s goodness and mysterious ways, Till the great fish spouts music as he swims. VARIATIONS ON A THEME SWAN, Swan, Yesterday you were The whitest of things in this dark winter. To-day the snow has made of your plumes An unwashed pocket handkercher, An unwashed pocket handkercher . . . “Lancashire, to Lancashire!”— Tune of the antique trains long ago: Each summer holiday a milestone Backwards, backwards:— Tenby, Barmouth, and year by year All the different hues of the sea, Blue, green and blue. But on this river of muddy jade There swims a yellow swan, And along the bank the snow lies dazzlingly white. A MELODY BY SCARLATTI HOW clear under the trees, How softly the music flows, Rippling from one still pool to another Into the lake of silence. A SUNSET OVER against the triumph and the close— Amber and green and rose— Of this short day, The pale ghost of the moon grows living-bright Once more, as the last light Ebbs slowly away. Darkening the fringes of these western glories The black phantasmagories Of cloud advance With noiseless footing—vague and villainous shapes, Wrapped in their ragged fustian capes, Of some grotesque romance. But overhead where, like a pool between Dark rocks, the sky is green And clear and deep, Floats windlessly a cloud, with curving breast Flushed by the fiery west, In god-like sleep . . . And in my mind opens a sudden door That lets me see once more A little room With night beyond the window, chill and damp, And one green-lighted lamp Tempering the gloom, While here within, close to me, touching me (Even the memory Of my desire Shakes me like fear), you sit with scattered hair; And all your body bare Before the fire Is lapped about with rosy flame. . . . But still, Here on the lonely hill, I walk alone; Silvery green is the moon’s lamp overhead, The cloud sleeps warm and red, And you are gone. LIFE AND ART YOU have sweet flowers for your pleasure; You laugh with the bountiful earth In its richness of summer treasure: Where now are your flowers and your mirth? Petals and cadenced laughter, Each in a dying fall, Droop out of life; and after Is nothing; they were all. But we from the death of roses That three suns perfume and gild With a kiss, till the fourth discloses A withered wreath, have distilled The fulness of one rare phial, Whose nimble life shall outrun The circling shadow on the dial, Outlast the tyrannous sun. FIRST PHILOSOPHER’S SONG APOOR degenerate from the ape, Whose hands are four, whose tail’s a limb, I contemplate my flaccid shape And know I may not rival him, Save with my mind—a nimbler beast Possessing a thousand sinewy tails, A thousand hands, with which it scales, Greedy of luscious truth, the greased Poles and the coco palms of thought, Thrids easily through the mangrove maze Of metaphysics, walks the taut Frail dangerous liana ways That link across wide gulfs remote Analogies between tree and tree; Outruns the hare, outhops the goat; Mind fabulous, mind sublime and free! But oh, the sound of simian mirth! Mind, issued from the monkey’s womb, Is still umbilical to earth, Earth its home and earth its tomb. SECOND PHILOSOPHER’S SONG IF, O my Lesbia, I should commit, Not fornication, dear, but suicide, My Thames-blown body (Pliny vouches it) Would drift face upwards on the oily tide With the other garbage, till it putrefied. But you, if all your lovers’ frozen hearts Conspired to send you, desperate, to drown— Your maiden modesty would float face down, And men would weep upon your hinder parts. ’Tis the Lord’s doing. Marvellous is the plan By which this best of worlds is wisely planned. One law He made for woman, one for man: We bow the head and do not understand. FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG AMILLION million spermatozoa, All of them alive: Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah Dare hope to survive. And among that billion minus one Might have chanced to be Shakespeare, another Newton, a new Donne— But the One was Me. Shame to have ousted your betters thus, Taking ark while the others remained outside! Better for all of us, froward Homunculus, If you’d quietly died! NINTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG