Beauty

The Tea Shop

The girl in the tea shop
Is not so beautiful as she was,
The August has worn against her.
She does not get up the stairs so eagerly;
Yes, she also will turn middle-aged,
And the glow of youth that she spread about us
As she brought us our muffins
Will be spread about us no longer.
She also will turn middle-aged.

The Study In Aesthetics

The very small children in patched clothing,
Being smitten with an unusual wisdom,
Stopped in their play as she passed them
And cried up from their cobbles:


Guarda! Ahi, guarda! Ch’ è be’ a!


But three years after this
I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do not
know--
For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes
and thirty-four Catulli;
And there had been a great catch of sardines,
And his elders
Were packing them in the great wooden boxes
For the market in Brescia, and he
Leapt about, snatching at the bright fish
And getting in both of their ways;
And in vain they commanded him to stafermo!
And when they would not let him arrange
The fish in the boxes
He stroked those which were already arranged,
Murmuring for his own satisfaction
This identical phrase:


Ch’ è be’ a


And at this I was mildly abashed.

The New Cake Of Soap

Lo, how it gleams and glistens in the sun
Like the cheek of a Chesterton.

The Garden

En robe de parade. Samain


Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal

Tof a sort of emotional anaemia.


And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.


In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I


Twill commit that indiscretion.

Tame Cat

It rests me to be among beautiful women
Why should one always lie about such matters?
I repeat:
It rests me to converse with beautiful women
Even though we talk nothing but nonsense,


The purring of the invisible antennae
Is both stimulating and delightful.

Pagani’s, November 8

Suddenly discovering in the eyes of the very beautiful
Normande cocotte
The eyes of the very learned British Museum assistant.

Night Litany

O Dieu, purifiez nos cceurs!
Purifiez nos coeurs !


Yea the lines hast thou laid unto me
in pleasant places,
And the beauty of this thy Venice
hast thou shown unto me
Until is its loveliness become unto me
a thing of tears.


O God, what great kindness
have we done in times past
and forgotten it,
That thou givest this wonder unto us,
O God of waters?


O God of the night,
What great sorrow
Cometh unto us,
That thou thus repayest us
Before the time of its coming?


O God of silence,
Purifiez nos coeurs,
Purifiez nos coeurs,
For we have seen
The glory of the shadow of the
likeness of thine handmaid,


Yea, the glory of the shadow
of thy Beauty hath walked
Upon the shadow of the waters
In this thy Venice.
And before the holiness
Of the shadow of thy handmaid
Have I hidden mine eyes,
O God of waters.


O God of silence,
Purifiez nos coeurs,
Purifiez nos coeurs,
O God of waters,
make clean our hearts within us,
For I have seen the
Shadow of this thy Venice
Floating upon the waters,
And thy stars


Have seen this thing, out of their far courses
Have they seen this thing,
O God of waters,
Even as are thy stars



Silent unto us in their far-coursing,
Even so is mine heart
become silent within me.


Purifiez nos coeurs,
O God of the silence,
Purifiez nos coeurs,
O God of waters.

Na Audiart

Though thou well dost wish me ill
Audiart, Audiart,
Where thy bodice laces start
As ivy fingers clutching through
Its crevices,
Audiart, Audiart,
Stately, tall and lovely tender
Who shall render
Audiart, Audiart,
Praises meet unto thy fashion?
Here a word kiss !
Pass I on
Unto Lady ‘Miels-de-Ben’,
Having praised thy girdle's scope
How the stays ply back from it;
I breath no hope
That thou shouldst . . .
Nay no whit
Bespeak thyself for anything.
Just a word in thy praise, girl,
Just for the swirl
Thy satins make upon the stair,
'Cause never a flaw was there
Where thy torse and limbs are met
Though thou hate me, read it set
In rose and gold.
Or when the minstrel, tale half told,
Shall burst to lilting at the praise
'Audiart, Audiart' . .
Bertrans, master of his lays,
Bertrans of Aultaforte thy praise
Sets forth, and though thou hate me well,
Yea though thou wish me ill,
Audiart, Audiart.
Thy loveliness is here writ till,
Audiart,
Oh, till thou come again.
And being bent and wrinkled, in a form
That hath no perfect limning, when the warm
Youth dew is cold
Upon thy hands, and thy old soul
Scorning a new, wry'd casement,
Churlish at seemed misplacement,
Finds the earth as bitter
As now seems it sweet,
Being so young and fair
As then only in dreams,
Being then young and wry'd,
Broken of ancient pride,
Thou shalt then soften,
Knowing, I know not how,
Thou wert once she



Audiart, Audiart
For whose fairness one forgave
Audiart,
Audiart
Que be-m vols mal.

Mauberley


I
Turned from the 'eau-forte
Par Jaquemart'
To the strait head
Of Messalina:


'His true Penelope
Was Flaubert,'
And his tool
The engraver's.


Firmness,
Not the full smile,
His art, but an art
In profile;


Colourless
Pier Francesca,
Pisanello lacking the skill
To forge Achaia.


II
For three years, diabolus in the scale,
He drank ambrosia,
All passes, ANANGKE prevails,
Came end, at last, to that Arcadia.


He had moved amid her phantasmagoria,
Amid her galaxies,
NUKTIS 'AGALMA


Drifted . . . drifted precipitate,
Asking time to be rid of ...
Of his bewilderment; to designate
His new found orchid. . . .


To be certain . . . certain . . .
(Amid aerial flowers) . . . time for arrangements-
Drifted on
To the final estrangement;


Unable in the supervening blankness
To sift TO AGATHON from the chaff
Until he found his sieve . . .
Ultimately, his seismograph:


Given that is his 'fundamental passion',
This urge to convey the relation
Of eye-lid and cheek-bone
By verbal manifestations;
To present the series
Of curious heads in medallion



He had passed, inconscient, full gaze,
The wide-branded irides
And botticellian sprays implied
In their diastasis;


Which ansethesis, noted a year late,
And weighed, revealed his great affect,
(Orchid), mandate
Of Eros, a retrospect.


Mouths biting empty air,
The still stone dogs,
Caught in metamorphosis, were
Left him as epilogues.

Les Millwin

The little Millwins attend the Russian Ballet.
The mauve and greenish souls of the little Millwins
Were seen lying along the upper seats
Like so many unused boas.


The turbulent and undisciplined host of art students-
The rigorous deputation from ‘Slade’-
Was before them.


With arms exalted, with fore-arms
Crossed in great futuristic X's, the art students
Exulted, they beheld the splendours of Cleopatra


And the little Millwins beheld these things;
With their large and anaemic eyes they looked out upon
this configuration.


Let us therefore mention the fact,
For it seems to us worthy of record.

L'Art


Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.

Heather


The black panther treads at my side,
And above my fingers
There float the petal-like flames.


The milk-white girls
Unbend from the holly-trees,
And their snow-white leopard
Watches to follow our trace.

Envoi


Go, dumb-born book,
Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes:
Hadst thou but song
As thou hast subjects known,
Then were there cause in thee that should condone
Even my faults that heavy upon me lie
And build her glories their longevity.
Tell her that sheds
Such treasure in the air,
Recking naught else but that her graces give
Life to the moment,
I would bid them live
As roses might, in magic amber laid,
Red overwrought with orange and all made
One substance and one colour
Braving time.
Tell her that goes
With song upon her lips
But sings not out the song, nor knows
The maker of it, some other mouth,
May be as fair as hers,
Might, in new ages, gain her worshippers,
When our two dusts with Waller's shall be laid,
Siftings on siftings in oblivion,
Till change hath broken down
All things save Beauty alone.

Dance Figure

For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee


Dark-eyed,
O woman of my dreams,
Ivory sandalled,
There is none like thee among the dancers,
None with swift feet.
I have not found thee in the tents,
In the broken darkness.
I have not found thee at the well-head
Among the women with pitchers.
Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark;
Thy face as a river with lights.


White as an almond are thy shoulders;
As new almonds stripped from the husk.
They guard thee not with eunuchs;
Not with bars of copper.


Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest.
A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in
patterns, hast thou gathered about thee,
O Nathat-Ikanaie, 'Tree-at-the-river'.


As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me;
Thy fingers a frosted stream.


Thy maidens are white like pebbles;
Their music about thee!


There is none like thee among the dancers;
None with swift feet.

Ballatetta


The light became her grace and dwelt among
Blind eyes and shadows that are formed as men;
Lo, how the light doth melt us into song:


The broken sunlight for a healm she beareth
Who hath my heart in jurisdiction.
In wild-wood never fawn nor fallow fareth
So silent light; no gossamer is spun
So delicate as she is, when the sun
Drives the clear emeralds from the bended grasses
Lest they should parch too swiftly, where she passes.

Apparuit


Golden rose the house, in the portal I saw
thee, a marvel, carven in subtle stuff, a
portent. Life died down in the lamp and flickered,
caught at the wonder.


Crimson, frosty with dew, the roses bend where
thou afar, moving in the glamorous sun,
drinkst in life of earth, of the air, the tissue
golden about thee.


Green the ways, the breath of the fields is thine there,
open lies the land, yet the steely going
darkly hast thou dared and the dreaded aether
parted before thee.


Swift at courage thou in the shell of gold, casting
a-loose the cloak of the body, earnest
straight, then shone thine oriel and the stunned light
faded about thee.


Half the graven shoulder, the throat aflash with
strands of light inwoven about it, loveliest
of all things, frail alabaster, ah me!
swift in departing.


Clothed in goldish weft, delicately perfect,
gone as wind ! The cloth of the magical hands!
Thou a slight thing, thou in access of cunning
dar'dst to assume this?

A Virginal

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether;
As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.
No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour,
Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers.
Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches,
As winter's wound with her sleight hand she staunches,
Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:
As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.

Albatre


This lady in the white bath-robe which she calls a
peignoir,
Is, for the time being, the mistress of my friend,
And the delicate white feet of her little white dog
Are not more delicate than she is,
Nor would Gautier himself have despised their contrasts
in whiteness
As she sits in the great chair
Between the two indolent candles.

A Song Of The Degrees

I
Rest me with Chinese colours,
For I think the glass is evil.


II
The wind moves above the wheat-
With a silver crashing,
A thin war of metal.


I have known the golden disc,
I have seen it melting above me.
I have known the stone-bright place,
The hall of clear colours.


III
O glass subtly evil, O confusion of colours !
O light bound and bent in, soul of the captive,
Why am I warned? Why am I sent away?
Why is your glitter full of curious mistrust?
O glass subtle and cunning, O powdery gold!
O filaments of amber, two-faced iridescence!

The Elder's Rebuke

'Listen! When your hair, like mine,
Takes a tint of silver gray;
When your eyes, with dimmer shine,
Watch life's bubbles float away:


When you, young man, have borne like me
The weary weight of sixty-three,
Then shall penance sore be paid
For those hours so wildly squandered;
And the words that now fall dead
On your ear, be deeply pondered—
Pondered and approved at last:
But their virtue will be past!


'Glorious is the prize of Duty,
Though she be 'a serious power';
Treacherous all the lures of Beauty,
Thorny bud and poisonous flower!


'Mirth is but a mad beguiling
Of the golden-gifted time;
Love—a demon-meteor, wiling
Heedless feet to gulfs of crime.


'Those who follow earthly pleasure,
Heavenly knowledge will not lead;
Wisdom hides from them her treasure,
Virtue bids them evil-speed!

'Vainly may their hearts repenting.
Seek for aid in future years;
Wisdom, scorned, knows no relenting;
Virtue is not won by fears.'

Thus spake the ice-blooded elder gray;
The young man scoffed as he turned away,
Turned to the call of a sweet lute's measure,
Waked by the lightsome touch of pleasure:
Had he ne'er met a gentler teacher,
Woe had been wrought by that pitiless preacher.

You'll know it—as you know 'tis Noon

420

You'll know it—as you know 'tis Noon—
By Glory—
As you do the Sun—
By Glory—
As you will in Heaven—
Know God the Father—and the Son.


By intuition, Mightiest Things
Assert themselves—and not by terms—
"I'm Midnight"—need the Midnight say—
"I'm Sunrise"—Need the Majesty?


Omnipotence—had not a Tongue—
His listp—is Lightning—and the Sun—
His Conversation—with the Sea—
"How shall you know"?
Consult your Eye!

Would you like summer? Taste of ours

691

Would you like summer? Taste of ours.
Spices? Buy here!
Ill! We have berries, for the parching!
Weary! Furloughs of down!
Perplexed! Estates of violet trouble ne'er looked on!
Captive! We bring reprieve of roses!
Fainting! Flasks of air!
Even for Death, a fairy medicine.
But, which is it, sir?

Why do I love You, Sir?

"Why do I love" You, Sir?
Because—
The Wind does not require the Grass
To answer—Wherefore when He pass
She cannot keep Her place.


Because He knows—and
Do not You—
And We know not—
Enough for Us
The Wisdom it be so—


The Lightning—never asked an Eye
Wherefore it shut—when He was by—
Because He knows it cannot speak—
And reasons not contained—
—Of Talk—
There be—preferred by Daintier Folk—


The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—
Because He's Sunrise—and I see—
Therefore—Then—
I love Thee—

When we stand on the tops of Things

242

When we stand on the tops of Things-
And like the Trees, look down-
The smoke all cleared away from it-
And Mirrors on the scene-

Just laying light-no soul will wink
Except it have the flaw-
The Sound ones, like the Hills-shall stand-
No Lighting, scares away-

The Perfect, nowhere be afraid-
They bear their dauntless Heads,
Where others, dare not go at Noon,
Protected by their deeds-

The Stars dare shine occasionally
Upon a spotted World-
And Suns, go surer, for their Proof,
As if an Axle, held-