Forty-Two Poems Part 9

And round around him surged the dead With soft and l.u.s.trous eyes.

"Why came you here, old friend?" they said: "Unwise . . . unwise . . . unwise!

"You should have left to the prince your son Spurs and saddle and rein: Your bright and morning days are done; You ride not out again."

"I came to greet my friends who fell Sword-scattered from my side; And when I've drunk the wine of h.e.l.l I'll out again and ride!"

But Charon rose and caught his hair In fingers sharp and long.

"Loose me, old ferryman: play fair: Try if my arm be strong."

Thrice drave he hard on Charon's breast, And struck him thrice to ground, Till stranger ghosts came out o' the west And sat like stars around.

And thrice old Charon rose up high And seized him as before.

"Loose me! a broken man am I, And fight with you no more.''

"Zacho, arise, my home is near; I pray you walk with me: I've hung my tent so full of fear You well may shake to see.

"Home to my home come they who fight, Who fight but not to win: Without, my tent is black as night, And red as fire within.

"Though winds blow cold and I grow old, My tent is fast and fair: The pegs are dead men's stout right arms, The cords, their golden hair."

PAVLOVNA IN LONDON

I listened to the hunger-hearted clown, Sadder than he: I heard a woman sing, - A tall dark woman in a scarlet gown - And saw those golden toys the jugglers fling.

I found a tawdry room and there sat I, There angled for each murmur soft and strange, The pavement-cries from darkness and below: I watched the drinkers laugh, the lovers sigh, And thought how little all the world would change If clowns were audience, and we the Show.

What starry music are they playing now?

What dancing in this dreary theatre?

Who is she with the moon upon her brow, And who the fire-foot G.o.d that follows her? - Follows among those unbelieved-in trees Back-shadowing in their parody of light Across the little cardboard bal.u.s.trade; And we, like that poor Faun who pipes and flees, Adore their beauty, hate it for too bright, And tremble, half in rapture, half afraid.

Play on, O furtive and heartbroken Faun!

What is your thin dull pipe for such as they?

I know you blinded by the least white dawn, And dare you face their quick and quivering Day?

Dare you, like us, weak but undaunted men, Reliant on some deathless spark in you Turn your dull eyes to what the G.o.ds desire, Touch the light finger of your G.o.ddess; then After a second's flash of gold and blue, Drunken with that divinity, expire?

O dance, Diana, dance, Endymion, Till calm ancestral shadows lay their hands Gently across mine eyes: in days long gone Have I not danced with G.o.ds in garden lands?

I too a wild unsighted atom borne Deep in the heart of some heroic boy Span in the dance ten thousand years ago, And while his young eyes glittered in the morn Something of me felt something of his joy, And longed to rule a body, and to know.

Singer long dead and sweeter-lipped than I, In whose proud line the soul-dark phrases burn, Would you could praise their pa.s.sionate symmetry, Who loved the colder shapes, the Attic urn.

But your far song, my faint one, what are they, And what their dance and faery thoughts and ours, Or night abloom with splendid stars and pale?

'Tis an old story that sweet flowers decay, And dreams, the n.o.blest, die as soon as flowers, And dancers, all the world of them, must fail.

THE SENTIMENTALIST

There lies a photograph of you Deep in a box of broken things.

This was the face I loved and knew Five years ago, when life had wings;

Five years ago, when through a town Of bright and soft and shadowy bowers We walked and talked and trailed our gown Regardless of the cinctured hours.

The precepts that we held I kept; Proudly my ways with you I went: We lived our dreams while others slept, And did not shrink from sentiment.

Now I go East and you stay West And when between us Europe lies I shall forget what I loved best Away from lips and hands and eyes.

But we were G.o.ds then: we were they Who laughed at fools, believed in friends, And drank to all that golden day Before us, which this poem ends.

DON JUAN IN h.e.l.l (from Baudelaire.)

The night Don Juan came to pay his fees To Charon, by the caverned water's sh.o.r.e, A beggar, proud-eyed as Antisthenes, Stretched out his knotted fingers on the oar.

Mournful, with drooping b.r.e.a.s.t.s and robes unsewn The shapes of women swayed in ebon skies, Trailing behind him with a restless moan Like cattle herded for a sacrifice.

Here, grinning for his wage, stood Sganarelle, And here Don Luis pointed, bent and dim, To show the dead who lined the holes of h.e.l.l, This was that impious son who mocked at him.

The hollow-eyed, the chaste Elvira came, Trembling and veiled, to view her traitor spouse.

Was it one last bright smile she thought to claim, Such as made sweet the morning of his vows?

A great stone man rose like a tower on board, Stood at the helm and cleft the flood profound: But the calm hero, leaning on his sword, Gazed back, and would not offer one look round.

THE BALLAD OF ISKANDER

Aflatun and Aristu and King Iskander Are Plato, Aristotle, Alexander.

Sultan Iskander sat him down On his golden throne, in his golden crown, And shouted, "Wine and flute-girls three, And the Captain, ho! of my ships at sea."

He drank his bowl of wine; he kept The flute-girls dancing till they wept, Praised and kissed their painted lips, And turned to the Captain of All his Ships

And cried, "O Lord of my Ships that go From the Persian Gulf to the Pits of Snow, Inquire for men unknown to man!"

Said Sultan Iskander of Yoonistan.

"Daroosh is dead, and I am King Of Everywhere and Everything: Yet leagues and leagues away for sure The lion-hearted dream of war.

"Admiral, I command you sail!

Take you a ship of silver mail, And fifty sailors, young and bold, And stack provision deep in the hold,