  COMPLAINT OF A TADPOLE CONFINED IN A JAM-JARWhat reveries of far-off days These withered plaques of duck-weed raise! The creeping wretches, the crowded pond, A death in life, no Culture, no Beyond. Light and No-light in dull routine; Thought and No-thought two shades of green. The fair ideals all creatures need Smothered beneath the inferior weed. For highest aspirations stop With breathing, at the water’s top. O Fairy Metamorphosis For Being to become What Is. Here ceaseless radiance fills my sphere, The Lamp my Moon, all night, bright, near. And clustering on the crystal wall Great strawberries iconistical. No strife to propagate the kind But leisure to improve the mind; Till curious sensations range About the tail and hint at change. The weed with flowers stars the sky And monstrous forms go dimly by. Tail fades! The vestiges of gills Swell with rare Æther from the hills. Now Time reared up in rocky crests Where flaming fowl involve their nests, Across the rippled Stream of Space Throws shadows that obscure this place; But in the valleys pipers play:
‘Over the hills and far away.’ REGRET FOR THE DEPOPULATION OF RURAL DISTRICTSI have seen villages grow suddenly From dust and stand upright in the air With comfortable homes grouped round a spire; And in the fields strong women bending Down to coarse toil to nourish unborn women. But in the gardens, languid with flowers’ fragrance Girls linger on close lawns for unknown happenings, Tearing a petal in long shining fingers. So waiting whilst pear blossom apple blossom And white plum blossom are fallen down to earth, And the white moon fallen. Then a heap of dust That once was named, loved and familiar Lies unsubstantial in the eternal sunlight. Whence faint thoughts Stirring far down in twilight consciousness Move dark-boughed yew-trees over graves and stars. COMPLAINT AFTER PSYCHO-ANALYSISNow my days are all undone, Spirit sunken, girls forgone, I will weave in other mesh Than fading bone and flesh. Into cold deserted mind Drag the relics of the blind; And raise from wives none other sees Substantial families. Hunt through woods of maidenhair Tangled in the shining air The forms of ecstasies achieved, Not then believed. O Unicorns and jewelled Birds And trampling dappled moonlight herds, In icy glades now slain With arrows bright as pain. Leap, Moon, from the berg’s pale womb! Frail Bride, out of Earth’s tomb! The stars are ashen cold Beneath their gold. DESIREAs the white sails of ships across the ocean, The last sounds fade when the sun has declined. I am alone. There is no motion Rippling the clear waters in the mind. Only now the madrepores’ frail tentacles Sway languidly before they fall asleep; And waiting in their dark pinnacles The virgin medusae watch and weep. Moving darkly among the forests of weed Ancient memories drag their crinkled shells To glades where crimson tree-trunks bleed Thickly, and hushed are the faint sea-bells. Out of that silent depth loveless arising Undine sheds on the water her shining hair, Softly calleth her soul, devising A fragrance of music in the air. TRENCH POETSI knew a man, he was my chum, But he grew blacker every day, And would not brush the flies away, Nor blanch however fierce the hum Of passing shells. I used to read, To rouse him, random things from Donne, Like ‘Get with child a mandrake-root,’ But you can tell he was far gone, For he lay gaping, mackerel-eyed, And stiff and senseless as a post, Even when that old poet cried, ‘I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost.’ I tried the Elegies one day; But he, because he heard me say, ‘What needst thou have more covering than a man?’ Grinned nastily, and so I knew The worms had got his brains at last. There was one thing that I might do To starve the worms; I racked my head For healthy things and quoted Maud. His grin got worse, and I could see He laughed at passion’s purity. He stank so badly, though we were great chums I had to leave him; then rats ate his thumbs. WINTER PROPHECIESCities with tall and graceful spires I know Mirrored in pools and rivers silver bright, That wither if the softest wind should blow And by a stone are blotted out of sight. Frailer they are than curvÈd leaves of snow Fluttering down from the dark trees of night Slowly, and then unutterably slow, And ceasing as most quietly comes the light. Water is carved like fern and stone takes on The flush of life when flesh lies quiet as stone; Whilst sinister and clownish, bright and wan, With solemn affectations the old Moon Spins dooms and weirds and meltings of the bone And universal silence to be soon. |
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