Poems (Tree)/Zeppelins
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ZEPPELINSMIDNIGHT
SUDDENLY
Shutting our lips upon a jest
As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses,
A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets
Quiver with startled terrors—
How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free!
Now every muscle weakens, every pulse
Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve
Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt. . . .
How sweetly spins the world to noise of music,
How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure!
Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs,
Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams,
To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh
A little longer, oh a little year!
Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection,
And resolutions of new wondrous lives
Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees. . . .
Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground,
The lurid silent people loved by death,
And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings
To drag our body's glory from the light.
Though all the world should fall into their cells
And lie within their larders shelf on shelf—
Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away,
Yet will I be the mistress of the sun!
······
1 A.M.
Look how they struggle in a mist of fire,
Those hunchbacked chimneys and distorted domes—
Now gloat on Hell, the colour seems to roar,
An army fierce upon its own destruction,
A famished monster tearing in its claws
Gigantic foods to glut its lean desire
Digesting all the world! . . .
Look at the eager people open-mouthed
That stand as foolish rabbits hypnotised
By the uncoiling rhythm of a snake,
Their earth adoring senses caught awhile
In the red whirlwind of ascending wings;
Their spirits straining upward upon strings
Like kites and air balloons, but more grotesque,
Lacking the ephemeral beauty of a toy—
Yet for an hour
Dyed with the colour that their drabness fears
They kiss the feet of beauty as she passes
Starwards, tremendous in a coat of fire.
······
3 A.M.
The dawn seems drained of blood so colourless—
Slowly the river moves as though in sleep
While silent barges
Slide from the mist like dreams;
The intricate patterns of the scaffolding
Are drawn against the sky
More delicate than lace.
All the shimmering lights
Have shrunk away from morning
As a blue peacock sheaves his starry tail. . . .
I am alone, most utterly alone,
More lonely than the last man in the world
Straying amid the dust of vanished lives.
More lonely than a spirit stolen from heaven
Who stands beside that nebulous cold river
Dividing sleep from death,
Eternity from time. . . .
Nothing disturbs the white peace of the dawn,
She brings no feverous memories of night
And sheds no tears.
Only two hours ago
Fire walked in crimson armour through the city
Piercing the night's black tent with glittering javelins,
While shrieks and whispered omens flew like bats
Among the silver foliage of the stars. . . .
But rage has left no furrow in the sky,
No wake of sparks across the placid water. . . .
This is the ominous and sacred hour
When priest-like the world kneels
Bowed low toward the empty throne of day—
Soon will the herald trumpet-blast be heard
And the flamingo messengers will come
Flocking from out the burnished cage of sunrise. . . .
This is the hour of nothing,
Colourless and chill
Oblivion's hands are folded on the world,
As sits an idol holding in his fingers
A scentless lotus carven out of stone.
······
4 A.M.
Leaving the dun river with hurried tapping feet
And up the long uncomfortable street
With eyes uninterested yet forced to see and read
The dingy notices once sharp and bright with greed,
Now drear with want, that swear the Queen's Hotel
And Brown's Hotel and King's are doing well
A soldier and a beggar mock me as I go,
The light steals after me, emerging slow
And pale from the dim alleys shadow-crouched.
I hurried by the drunkard as he slouched
From lamp-post unto lamp-post. . . . Then I saw
Caught in the mirror of a tailor's door
My own reflection as I hurried past,
My flaring colours and my face aghast—
The scarlet tassel of my hat that hung
Limp as a spent flame, and my skirt that clung
About my knees and fluttered at the back:
An injured moth, with sulphur stripes and black,
My bag flamboyant as a pillar-box;
My frayed gilt fringe of hair and tarnished locks.
Jagged and crude and swift I seemed to pass
Painted too brightly on. that temperate glass.
. . . An omnibus from sudden corner reels:
Silence lies mangled underneath the wheels.
Shutting our lips upon a jest
As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses,
A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets
Quiver with startled terrors—
How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free!
Now every muscle weakens, every pulse
Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve
Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt. . . .
How sweetly spins the world to noise of music,
How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure!
Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs,
Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams,
To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh
A little longer, oh a little year!
Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection,
And resolutions of new wondrous lives
Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees. . . .
Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground,
The lurid silent people loved by death,
And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings
To drag our body's glory from the light.
Though all the world should fall into their cells
And lie within their larders shelf on shelf—
Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away,
Yet will I be the mistress of the sun!
······
1 A.M.
Look how they struggle in a mist of fire,
Those hunchbacked chimneys and distorted domes—
Now gloat on Hell, the colour seems to roar,
An army fierce upon its own destruction,
A famished monster tearing in its claws
Gigantic foods to glut its lean desire
Digesting all the world! . . .
Look at the eager people open-mouthed
That stand as foolish rabbits hypnotised
By the uncoiling rhythm of a snake,
Their earth adoring senses caught awhile
In the red whirlwind of ascending wings;
Their spirits straining upward upon strings
Like kites and air balloons, but more grotesque,
Lacking the ephemeral beauty of a toy—
Yet for an hour
Dyed with the colour that their drabness fears
They kiss the feet of beauty as she passes
Starwards, tremendous in a coat of fire.
······
3 A.M.
The dawn seems drained of blood so colourless—
Slowly the river moves as though in sleep
While silent barges
Slide from the mist like dreams;
The intricate patterns of the scaffolding
Are drawn against the sky
More delicate than lace.
All the shimmering lights
Have shrunk away from morning
As a blue peacock sheaves his starry tail. . . .
I am alone, most utterly alone,
More lonely than the last man in the world
Straying amid the dust of vanished lives.
More lonely than a spirit stolen from heaven
Who stands beside that nebulous cold river
Dividing sleep from death,
Eternity from time. . . .
Nothing disturbs the white peace of the dawn,
She brings no feverous memories of night
And sheds no tears.
Only two hours ago
Fire walked in crimson armour through the city
Piercing the night's black tent with glittering javelins,
While shrieks and whispered omens flew like bats
Among the silver foliage of the stars. . . .
But rage has left no furrow in the sky,
No wake of sparks across the placid water. . . .
This is the ominous and sacred hour
When priest-like the world kneels
Bowed low toward the empty throne of day—
Soon will the herald trumpet-blast be heard
And the flamingo messengers will come
Flocking from out the burnished cage of sunrise. . . .
This is the hour of nothing,
Colourless and chill
Oblivion's hands are folded on the world,
As sits an idol holding in his fingers
A scentless lotus carven out of stone.
······
4 A.M.
Leaving the dun river with hurried tapping feet
And up the long uncomfortable street
With eyes uninterested yet forced to see and read
The dingy notices once sharp and bright with greed,
Now drear with want, that swear the Queen's Hotel
And Brown's Hotel and King's are doing well
A soldier and a beggar mock me as I go,
The light steals after me, emerging slow
And pale from the dim alleys shadow-crouched.
I hurried by the drunkard as he slouched
From lamp-post unto lamp-post. . . . Then I saw
Caught in the mirror of a tailor's door
My own reflection as I hurried past,
My flaring colours and my face aghast—
The scarlet tassel of my hat that hung
Limp as a spent flame, and my skirt that clung
About my knees and fluttered at the back:
An injured moth, with sulphur stripes and black,
My bag flamboyant as a pillar-box;
My frayed gilt fringe of hair and tarnished locks.
Jagged and crude and swift I seemed to pass
Painted too brightly on. that temperate glass.
. . . An omnibus from sudden corner reels:
Silence lies mangled underneath the wheels.
1915