Early Writings Read online

  The scorched laurel lay in the fire-dust;

  The moon still declined to descend out of heaven,

  But the black ominous owl hoot was audible.

  And one raft bears our fates

  on the veiled lake toward Avernus46

  Sails spread on cerulean waters, I would shed tears

  for two;

  I shall live, if she continue in life,

  If she dies, I shall go with her.

  Great Zeus, save the woman,

  or she will sit before your feet in a veil,

  and tell out the long list of her troubles.

  2

  Persephone and Dis, Dis, have mercy upon her,47

  There are enough women in hell,

  quite enough beautiful women,

  lope, and Tyro, and Pasiphae, and the formal girls of Achaia,

  And out of Troad, and from the Campania,48

  Death has his tooth in the lot,

  Avernus lusts for the lot of them,

  Beauty is not eternal, no man has perennial fortune,

  Slow foot, or swift foot, death delays but for a season.

  3

  My light, light of my eyes,

  you are escaped from great peril,

  Go back to Great Dian’s dances bearing suitable gifts,

  Pay up your vow of night watches

  to Dian goddess of virgins,

  And unto me also pay debt:

  The ten nights of your company you have

  promised me.

  X

  Light, light of my eyes, at an exceeding late hour I was

  wandering,

  And intoxicated,

  and no servant was leading me,

  And a minute crowd of small boys came from opposite,

  I do not know what boys,

  And I am afraid of numerical estimate,

  And some of them shook little torches,

  and others held onto arrows,

  And the rest laid their chains upon me,

  and they were naked, the lot of them,

  And one of the lot was given to lust.

  “That incensed female has consigned him to our pleasure.”

  So spoke. And the noose was over my neck.

  And another said “Get him plumb in the middle!

  Shove along there, shove along!”

  And another broke in upon this:

  “He thinks that we are not gods.”

  “And she has been waiting for the scoundrel,

  and in a new Sidonian night cap,49

  And with more than Arabian odours,

  God knows where he has been.

  She could scarcely keep her eyes open

  enter that much for his bail.

  Get along now!”

  We were coming near to the house,

  and they gave another yank to my cloak,

  And it was morning, and I wanted to see if she was alone, and

  resting,

  And Cynthia was alone in her bed.

  I was stupefied.

  I had never seen her looking so beautiful,

  No, not when she was tunick’d in purple.

  Such aspect was presented to me, me recently emerged from

  my visions,

  You will observe that pure form has its value.

  “You are a very early inspector of mistresses.

  Do you think I have adopted your habits?”

  There were upon the bed no signs of a voluptuous

  encounter,

  No signs of a second incumbent.

  She continued:

  “No incubus has crushed his body against me,

  Though spirits are celebrated for adultery.

  And I am going to the temple of Vesta...”

  and so on.

  Since that day I have had no pleasant nights.

  XI

  I

  The harsh acts of your levity!

  Many and many.

  I am hung here, a scare-crow for lovers.

  2

  Escape! There is, O Idiot, no escape,

  Flee if you like into Tanais,

  desire will follow you thither,

  Though you heave into the air upon the gilded Pegasean back,

  Though you had the feathery sandals of Perseus50

  To lift you up through split air,

  The high tracks of Hermes would not afford you shelter.

  Amor stands upon you, Love drives upon lovers,

  a heavy mass on free necks.

  It is our eyes you flee, not the city,

  You do nothing, you plot inane schemes against me,

  Languidly you stretch out the snare

  with which I am already familiar,

  And yet again, and newly rumour strikes on my ears.

  Rumours of you throughout the city,

  and no good rumour among them.

  “You should not believe hostile tongues.

  Beauty is slander’s cock-shy.

  All lovely women have known this.”

  “Your glory is not outblotted by venom,

  Phoebus our witness, your hands are unspotted.”

  A foreign lover brought down Helen’s kingdom

  and she was led back, living, home;

  The Cytherean brought low by Mars’ lechery51

  reigns in respectable heavens, ...

  Oh, oh, and enough of this,

  by dew-spread caverns,

  The Muses clinging to the mossy ridges;

  to the ledge of the rocks:

  Zeus’ clever rapes, in the old days,

  combusted Semele’s, of lo strayed.

  Oh how the bird flew from Trojan rafters,

  Ida52 has lain with a shepherd, she has slept between sheep.

  Even there, no escape

  Not the Hyrcanian seaboard, not in seeking the shore of Eos.53

  All things are forgiven for one night of your games....

  Though you walk in the Via Sacra,54 with a peacock’s tail for

  a fan.

  XII

  Who, who will be the next man to entrust his girl to a friend?

  Love interferes with fidelities;

  The gods have brought shame on their relatives;

  Each man wants the pomegranate for himself;

  Amiable and harmonious people are pushed incontinent into

  duels,

  A Trojan and adulterous person came to Menelaus under the

  rites of hospitium,

  And there was a case in Colchis,55 Jason and that woman in

  Colchis;

  And besides, Lynceus,56

  you were drunk.

  Could you endure such promiscuity?

  She was not renowned for fidelity;

  But to jab a knife in my vitals, to have passed on a swig of

  poison,

  Preferable, my dear boy, my dear Lynceus,

  Comrade, comrade of my life, of my purse, of my person;

  But in one bed, in one bed alone, my dear Lynceus,

  I deprecate your attendance;

  I would ask a like boon of Jove.

  And you write of Achelöus, who contended with Hercules,

  You write of Adrastus’ horses and the funeral rites of Achenor,

  And you will not leave off imitating Aeschylus.

  Though you make a hash of Antimachus,57

  You think you are going to do Homer.

  And still a girl scorns the gods,

  Of all these young women

  not one has enquired the cause of the world,

  Nor the modus of lunar eclipses

  Nor whether there be any patch left of us

  After we cross the infernal ripples,

  nor if the thunder fall from predestination;

  Nor anything else of importance.

  Upon the Actian marshes58 Virgil is Phoebus’ chief of police,

  He can tabulate Caesar’s great ships.

  He thrills to Ilian arms,

  He shakes the Trojan wea
pons of Aeneas,

  And casts stores on Lavinian beaches.59

  Make way, ye Roman authors,

  clear the street, O ye Greeks,

  For a much larger Iliad is in the course of construction

  (and to Imperial order)

  Clear the streets, O ye Greeks!

  And you also follow him “neath Phrygian pine shade:”

  Thyrsis and Daphnis60 upon whittled reeds,

  And how ten sins can corrupt young maidens;

  Kids for a bribe and pressed udders,

  Happy selling poor loves for cheap apples.

  Tityrus61 might have sung the same vixen;

  Corydon tempted Alexis,

  Head farmers do likewise, and lying weary amid their oats

  They get praise from tolerant Hamadryads,62

  Go on, to Ascraeus’63 prescription, the ancient,

  respected, Wordsworthian:

  “A flat field for rushes, grapes grow on the slope.”

  And behold me, small fortune left in my house.

  Me, who had no general for a grandfather!

  I shall triumph among young ladies of indeterminate character,

  My talent acclaimed in their banquets,

  I shall be honoured with yesterday’s wreaths.

  And the god strikes to the marrow.

  Like a trained and performing tortoise,

  I would make verse in your fashion, if she should command it,

  With her husband asking a remission of sentence,

  And even this infamy would not attract

  numerous readers

  Were there an erudite or violent passion,

  For the nobleness of the populace brooks nothing below its

  own altitude.

  One must have resonance, resonance and sonority ... like a

  goose.

  Varro sang Jason’s expedition,

  Varro, of his great passion Leucadia,64

  There is song in the parchment; Catullus the highly

  indecorous,

  Of Lesbia, known above Helen;

  And in the dyed pages of Calvus,

  Calvus mourning Quintilia,65

  And but now Gallus had sung of Lycoris.66

  Fair, fairest Lycoris—

  The waters of Styx poured over the wound:

  And now Propertius of Cynthia, taking his stand among these.

  HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY

  (Contacts and Life)

  “Vocal œstus in umbram”1

  —Nemesianus, Ec. IV.

  E. P. ODE POUR L’ELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE2

  For three years, out of key with his time,

  He strove to resuscitate the dead art

  Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime”

  In the old sense. Wrong from the start—

  No, hardly, but seeing he had been born

  In a half savage country, out of date;

  Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;

  Capaneus;3 trout for factitious bait;

  “Iδµεν γαρ τoi πανθ’, δ’σ’ ενi Tρoíη4

  Caught in the unstopped ear;

  Giving the rocks small lee-way

  The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.

  His true Penelope was Flaubert,

  He fished by obstinate isles;

  Observed the elegance of Circe’s hair

  Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.

  Unaffected by “the march of events,”

  He passed from men’s memory in l’an trentuniesme

  De son eage;5 the case presents

  No adjunct to the Muses’ diadem.

  II

  The age demanded an image

  Of its accelerated grimace,

  Something for the modern stage,

  Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;6

  Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries

  Of the inward gaze;

  Better mendacities

  Than the classics in paraphrase!

  The “age demanded” chiefly a mould in plaster,

  Made with no loss of time,

  A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster

  Or the “sculpture” of rhyme.

  III

  The tea-rose tea-gown, etc.

  Supplants the mousseline of Cos,

  The pianola “replaces”

  Sappho’s barbitos.7

  Christ follows Dionysus,

  Phallic and ambrosial

  Made way for macerations;

  Caliban casts out Ariel.

  All things are a flowing,

  Sage Heracleitus says;

  But a tawdry cheapness

  Shall outlast our days.

  Even the Christian beauty

  Defects—after Samothrace;8

  We see τòκαλóν9

  Decreed in the market place.

  Faun’s flesh is not to us,

  Nor the saint’s vision.

  We have the press for wafer;

  Franchise for circumcision.

  All men, in law, are equals.

  Free of Pisistratus,10

  We choose a knave or an eunuch

  To rule over us.

  O bright Apollo,

  τíν’ ανδρα, τíν’ ηρωα, τíνα θεòν,11

  What god, man, or hero

  Shall I place a tin wreath upon!

  IV

  These fought in any case,

  and some believing,

  pro domo,12 in any case ...

  Some quick to arm,

  some for adventure,

  some from fear of weakness,

  some from fear of censure,

  some for love of slaughter, in imagination,

  learning later ...

  some in fear, learning love of slaughter;

  Died some, pro patria,

  non “dulce” non “et decor” ... 13

  walked eye-deep in hell

  believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving

  came home, home to a lie,

  home to many deceits,

  home to old lies and new infamy;

  usury14 age-old and age-thick

  and liars in public places.

  Daring as never before, wastage as never before.

  Young blood and high blood,

  fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

  fortitude as never before

  frankness as never before,

  disillusions as never told in the old days,

  hysterias, trench confessions,

  laughter out of dead bellies.

  V

  There died a myriad,

  And of the best, among them,

  For an old bitch gone in the teeth,

  For a botched civilization,

  Charm, smiling at the good mouth,

  Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,

  For two gross of broken statues,

  For a few thousand battered books.

  YEUX GLAUQUES15

  Gladstone was still respected,

  When John Ruskin produced

  “Kings’ Treasures”;16 Swinburne

  And Rossetti still abused.

  Fœtid Buchanan lifted up his voice

  When that faun’s head of hers

  Became a pastime for

  Painters and adulterers.

  The Burne-Jones cartons

  Have preserved her eyes;

  Still, at the Tate, they teach

  Cophetua17 to rhapsodize;

  Thin like brook-water,

  With a vacant gaze.

  The English Rubaiyat was still-born

  In those days.

  The thin, clear gaze, the same

  Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin’d face,

  Questing and passive....

  “Ah, poor Jenny’s case” ...

  Bewildered that a world

  Shows no surprise

  At her last maquero’s18

  Adulteries.

  “SIE
NA MI FE’; DISFECEMI MAREMMA”19

  Among the pickled foetuses and bottled bones,

  Engaged in perfecting the catalogue,

  I found the last scion of the

  Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.20

  For two hours he talked of Gallifet;21

  Of Dowson; of the Rhymers’ Club;22

  Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died

  By falling from a high stool in a pub ...

  But showed no trace of alcohol

  At the autopsy, privately performed—

  Tissue preserved—the pure mind

  Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed.

  Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels;

  Headlam for uplift; Image impartially imbued23

  With raptures for Bacchus, Terpsichore24 and the Church.

  So spoke the author of “The Dorian Mood,”

  M. Verog, out of step with the decade,

  Detached from his contemporaries,

  Neglected by the young,

  Because of these reveries.

  BRENNBAUM25