Sadness and Melancholy

Untitled


When his heart is growing bitter and his hair is growing grey,
And he hears the debt-collector knocking several times a day,
And the shrill voice of the Missus, blame, reiterate, accuse—
Then the poet who was famous feels inclined to damn the muse— .....


When he hears a sudden rapping—rapping at his chamber door,
Then he knows it's no good trying to write poems any more,
Then he bursts from out his chamber and he grabs his battered hat,
And he cadges Two Bob somewhere and gets beered up on his pat.

The Pavement Stones :A Song of the Unemployed

WHEN first I came to town, resolved
To fight my way alone,
No prouder foot than mine e’er trod
Upon the pavement stone;
But I am one in thousands,
And why should I repine?
The pavement stones have broken springs
In stronger feet than mine.


I brought to aid me all the hope
And energy of youth;
And in my heart I felt the strength
Of plain bucolic truth:
The independence nourished
Amid the hills and trees—
But, ah! the city hath a cure
For qualities like these.


I wonder oft how e’er I made
The efforts that I made,
For after three long weary years
I taught myself a trade.
And two more years and I was free
With strength and hope elate,
For “he that hath a trade,” they say,
“Hath also an estate.”


I tramped the streets and looked for work
And begged for work in vain,
Until I recked not, though I ne’er
Might touch my tools again.
I tramped the streets despairing;
My cheeks grew white and thin;
I felt the pavement wearing through
The leather, sock, and skin.


The bitter war goes on between
The idlers and the drones,
Until the hearts of men grow cold
And hard as pavement stones;
But I am one amid the crowd,
Then why should I repine?
The pavement stones have broken springs
In stronger feet than mine.

The Babies of Walloon

He was lengthsman on the railway, and his station scarce deserved
That “pre-eminence in sorrow” of the Majesty he served,
But as dear to him and precious were the gifts reclaimed so soon—
Were the workman’s little daughters who were buried near Walloon.


Speak their names in tones that linger, just as though you held them dear;
There are eyes to which the mention of those names will bring a tear.
Little Kate and Bridget, straying in an autumn afternoon,
Were attracted by the lilies in the water of Walloon.


All is dark to us. The angels sing perhaps in Paradise
Of the younger sister’s danger, and the elder’s sacrifice;
But the facts were hidden from us, when the soft light from the moon
Glistened on the water-lilies o’er the Babies at Walloon.


Ah! the children love the lilies, while we elders are inclined
To the flowers that have poison for the body and the mind.
Better for the “strongly human” to have done with life as soon,
Better perish for a lily like the Babies of Walloon.


For they gather flowers early on the river far away,
Where the everlasting lilies keep their purity for aye,
And while summer brings our lilies to the run and the lagoon
May our children keep the legend of the Babies of Walloon.

My Father-in-Law and I

MY father-in-law is a careworn man,
And a silent man is he;
But he summons a smile as well as he can
Whenever he meets with me.
The sign we make with a silent shake
That speaks of the days gone by—
Like men who meet at a funeral—
My father-in-law and I.


My father-in-law is a sober man
(And a virtuous man, I think);
But we spare a shilling whenever we can,
And we both drop in for a drink.
Our pints they fill, and we say, “Ah, well!”
With the sound of the world-old sigh—
Like the drink that comes after a funeral—
My father-in-law and I.


My father-in-law is a kindly man—
A domestic man is he.
He tries to look cheerful as well as he can
Whenever he meets with me.
But we stand and think till the second drink
In a silence that might imply
That we’d both get over a funeral,
My father-in-law and I.

I am the Autumnal Sun

Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature
-- not his Father but his Mother stirs
within him, and he becomes immortal with her
immortality. From time to time she claims
kindredship with us, and some globule
from her veins steals up into our own.


I am the autumnal sun,
With autumn gales my race is run;
When will the hazel put forth its flowers,
Or the grape ripen under my bowers?
When will the harvest or the hunter's moon
Turn my midnight into mid-noon?
I am all sere and yellow,
And to my core mellow.
The mast is dropping within my woods,
The winter is lurking within my moods,
And the rustling of the withered leaf
Is the constant music of my grief...

The Crazy Woman

I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.


I'll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I'll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.


And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May."


Anonymous submission.

A Sunset of the City

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.


It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.


It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone.
The sweet flowers indrying and dying down,
The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown.


It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes
I am aware there is winter to heed.
There is no warm house
That is fitted with my need.


I am cold in this cold house this house
Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls.
I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs.
I am a woman who hurries through her prayers.


Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my
Desert and my dear relief
Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
And small communion with the master shore.
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
In humming pallor or to leap and die.


Somebody muffed it?? Somebody wanted to joke.

Vitam Impendere Amori

(Vitam Impendere Amori: To Threaten Life for Love)

Love is dead within your arms
Do you remember his encounter
He’s dead you restore the charms
He returns at your encounter

Another spring of springs gone past
I think of all its tenderness
Farewell season done at last
You’ll return as tenderly

****

In the evening light that’s faded
Where our several loves brush by
Your memory lies enchained
Far from our shades that die

O hands bound by memory
Burning like a funeral pyre
Where the last black Phoenix
Perfection comes to respire

Link by link the chain wears thin
Deriding us your memory
Flies ah hear it you who rail
I kneel again at your feet

****

You’ve not surprised my secret yet
Already the cortège moves on
But left to us is the regret
of there being no connivance none

The rose floats at the water’s edge
The maskers have passed by in crowds
It trembles in me like a bell
This heavy secret you ask now

****

Evening falls and in the garden
Women tell their histories
to Night that not without disdain
spills their dark hair’s mysteries

Little children little children
Your wings have flown away
But you rose that defend yourself
Throw your unrivalled scents away


For now’s the hour of petty theft
Of plumes of flowers and of tresses
Gather the fountain jets so free
Of whom the roses are mistresses

****

You descended through the water clear
I drowned my self so in your glance
The soldier passes she leans down
Turns and breaks away a branch

You float on nocturnal waves
The flame is my own heart reversed
Coloured as that comb’s tortoiseshell
The wave that bathes you mirrors well

****
O my abandoned youth is dead
Like a garland faded
Here the season comes again
Of suspicion and disdain

The landscape’s formed of canvasses
A false stream of blood flows down
And under the tree the stars glow fresh
The only passer by’s a clown

The glass in the frame has cracked
An air defined uncertainly
Hovers between sound and thought
Between ‘to be’ and memory

O my abandoned youth is dead
Like a garland faded
Here the season comes again
Of suspicion and disdain

Marizibill


Dans la Haute-Rue à Cologne
Elle allait et venait le soir
Offerte à tous en tout mignonne
Puis buvait lasse des trottoirs
Très tard dans les brasseries borgnes

Elle se mettait sur la paille
Pour un maquereau roux et rose
C'était un juif il sentait l'ail
Et l'avait venant de Formose
Tirée d'un bordel de Changaï

Je connais des gens de toutes sortes
Ils n'égalent pas leurs destins
Indécis comme feuilles mortes
Leurs yeux sont des feux mal éteints
Leurs coeurs bougent comme leurs portes

Les Colchiques

Le pré est vénéneux mais joli en automne
Les vaches y paissant
Lentement s'empoisonnent
Le colchique couleur de cerne et de lilas
Y fleurit tes yeux sont comme cette fleur-la
Violatres comme leur cerne et comme cet automne
Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s'empoisonne

Les enfants de l'école viennent avec fracas
Vêtus de hoquetons et jouant de l'harmonica
Ils cueillent les colchiques qui sont comme des mères
Filles de leurs filles et sont couleur de tes paupières
Qui battent comme les fleurs battent au vent dément

Le gardien du troupeau chante tout doucement
Tandis que lentes et meuglant les vaches abandonnent
Pour toujours ce grand pré mal fleuri par l'automne

Autumn Crocuses

The meadow is poisonous but pretty in the autumn
The cows that graze there are slowly poisoned
Meadow-saffron the colour of lilac and of shadows
Under the eyes grows there your eyes are like those flowers
Mauve as their shadows and mauve as this autumn
And for your eyes' sake my life is slowly poisoned

Children from school come with their commotion
Dressed in smocks and playing the mouth-organ
Picking autumn crocuses which are like their mothers
Daughters of their daughters and the colour of your eyelids
Which flutter like flowers in the mad breeze blown

The cowherd sings softly to himself all alone
While slow moving lowing the cows leave behind them
Forever this great meadow ill flowered by autumn

To Emma

Since now the hour is come at last,
When you must quit your anxious lover;
Since now our dream of bliss is past,
One pang, my girl, and all is over.


Alas! that pang will be severe,
Which bids us part to meet no more;
Which tears me far from one so dear,
Departing for a distant shore.


Well! we have pass'd some happy hours,
And joy will mingle with our tears;
When thinking on these ancient towers,
We shelter of our infant years;


Where from this Gothic casement's height,
We view's the lake, the park, the dell,
And still, though tears obstruct our sight,
We lingering look a last farewell,


O'er fields through which we used to run,
And spend the hours in childish play;
O'er shades where, when our race was done,
Reposing on my breast you lay;


Whilst I, admiring, too remiss,
Forgot to scare the hovering flies,
Yet envied every fly the kiss
It dared to give your slumbering eyes:


See still the little painted bark,
In which I row'd you o'er the lake;
See there, high waving o'er the park,
The elm I clamber'd for your sake.


These times are past — our joys are gone,
You leave me, leave this happy vale;
These scenes I must retrace alone:
Without thee what will they avail?


Who can conceive, who has not proved,
The anguish of a last embrace?
When, torn from all you fondly loved,
You bid a long adieu to peace.


This is the deepest of our woes,
For this these tears our cheeks bedew;
This is of love the final close,
Oh, God! the fondest, last adieu!

Stanzas To A Hindoo Air

Oh! my lonelylonelylonelyPillow!
Where is my lover? where is my lover?
Is it his bark which my dreary dreams discover?
Farfar
away! and alone along the billow?


Oh! my lonelylonelylonelyPillow!
Why must my head ache where his gentle brow lay?
How the long night flags lovelessly and slowly,
And my head droops over thee like the willow!


Oh! thou, my sad and solitary Pillow!
Send me kind dreams to keep my heart from breaking,
In return for the tears I shed upon thee waking;
Let me not die till he comes back o'er the billow.


Then if thou wiltno
more my lonely Pillow,
In one embrace let these arms again enfold him,
And then expire of the joybut
to behold him!
Oh! my lone bosom!oh!
my lonely Pillow!

Stanzas For Music: There's Not A Joy The World Can Give

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.


Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness
Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess:
The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain
The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.


Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;
It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own;
That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears,
And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears.


Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast,
Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest,
'Tis but as ivyleaves
around the ruined turret wreath—
All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath.


Oh, could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene;
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
So, midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow to me.

Sonnet, To The Same (Genevra)

Thy cheek is pale with thought, but not from woe,
And yet so lovely, that if Mirth could flush
Its rose of whiteness with the brightest blush,
My heart would wish away that ruder glow:
And dazzle not thy deepblue
eyesbut,
oh!
While gazing on them sterner eyes will gush,
And into mine my mother's weakness rush,
Soft as the last drops round heaven's airy bow.
For, through thy long dark lashes low depending,
The soul of melancholy Gentleness
Gleams like a seraph from the sky descending,
Above all pain, yet pitying all distress;
At once such majesty with sweetness blending,
I worship more, but cannot love thee less.

My Soul is Dark

My soul is dark Oh!
quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,
'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.


But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless silence, long;
And now 'tis doomed to know the worst,
And break at once or
yield to song.

Impromptu, In Reply To A Friend

When, from the heart where Sorrow sits,
Her dusky shadow mounts too high,
And o'er the changing aspect flits,
And clouds the brow, or fills the eye;
Heed not that gloom, which soon shall sink:
My thoughts their dungeon know too well;
Back to my breast the wanderers shrink,
And droop within their silent cell.

Nocturnos De La Ventana

1

Alta va la luna.
Bajo corre el viento.

(Mis largas miradas,
exploran el cielo.)

Luna sobre el agua,
Luna bajo el viento.

(Mis cortas miradas,
exploran el suelo.)

Las voces de dos niñas
venían. Sin el esfuerzo,
de la luna del agua,
me fuí a la del cielo.

2

Un brazo de la noche
entra por mi ventana.

Un gran brazo moreno
con pulseras de agua.

Sobre un cristal azul
jugaba al río mi alma.

Los instantes heridos
por el reloj... pasaban.

3

Asomo la cabeza
por mi ventana, y veo
cómo quiere cortarla
la cuchilla del viento.

En esta guillotina
invisible, yo he puesto
las cabezas sin ojos
de todos mis deseos.

Y un olor de limón
llenó el instante inmenso,
mientras se convertía
en flor de gasa el viento.


4

Al estanque se le ha muerto
hoy una niña de agua.
Está fuera del estanque,
sobre el suelo amortajada.

De la cabeza a sus muslos
un pez la cruza, llamándola.
El viento le dice “niña”
mas no puede despertarla.

El estanque tiene suelta
su cabellera de algas
y al aire sus grises tetas
estremecidas de ranas.

Dios te salve. Rezaremos
a Nuestra Señora de Agua
por la niña del estanque
muerta bajo las manzanas.

Yo luego pondré a su lado
dos pequeñas calabazas
para que se tenga a flote,
¡ay! sobre la mar salada.

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.

The City Of Choan

The phoenix are at play on their terrace.
The phoenix are gone, the river Hows on alone.
Flowers and grass
Cover over the dark path
where lay the dynastic house of the Go.
The bright cloths and bright caps of Shin
Are now the base of old hills.


The Three Mountains fall through the far heaven,
The isle of White Heron
splits the two streams apart.
Now the high clouds cover the sun
And I can not see Choan afar
And I am sad.

Song in the Manner of Housman

O woe, woe,
People are born and die,
We also shall be dead pretty soon
Therefore let us act as if we were
dead already.


The bird sits on the hawthorn tree
But he dies also, presently.
Some lads get hung, and some get shot.
Woeful is this human lot.
Woe! woe, etcetera . . . .


London is a woeful place,
Shropshire is much pleasanter.
Then let us smile a little space
Upon fond nature's morbid grace.
Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera . . .

Au Jardin

O you away high there,
you that lean
From amber lattices upon the cobalt night,
I am below amid the pine trees,
Amid the little pine trees, hear me!


'The jester walked in the garden.'
Did he so?
Well, there's no use your loving me
That way, Lady;
For I've nothing but songs to give you.


I am set wide upon the world's ways
To say that life is, some way, a gay thing,
But you never string two days upon one wire
But there'll come sorrow of it.
And I loved a love once,
Over beyond the moon there,
I loved a love once,
And, may be, more times,


But she danced like a pink moth in the shrubbery.
Oh, I know you women from the 'other folk',
And it'll all come right,
O' Sundays.


'The jester walked in the garden.'
Did he so?

Arides


The bashful Arides
Has married an ugly wife,
He was bored with his manner of life,
Indifferent and discouraged he thought he might as
Well do this as anything else.


Saying within his heart,’I am no use to myself,
'Let her, if she wants me, take me.'
He went to his doom.

Stars


Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored our Earth to joy,
Have you departed, every one,
And left a desert sky?


All through the night, your glorious eyes
Were gazing down in mine,
And, with a full heart's thankful sighs,
I blessed that watch divine.


I was at peace, and drank your beams
As they were life to me;
And revelled in my changeful dreams,
Like petrel on the sea.


Thought followed thought, star followed star
Through boundless regions on;
While one sweet influence, near and far,
Thrilled through, and proved us one!


Why did the morning dawn to break
So great, so pure a spell;
And scorch with fire the tranquil cheek,
Where your cool radiance fell?


Blood-red, he rose, and arrow-straight,
His fierce beams struck my brow;
The soul of nature sprang, elate,
But mine sank sad and low.


My lids closed down, yet through their veil
I saw him, blazinig, still,
And steep in gold the misty dale,
And flash upon the hill.


I turned me to the pillow, then,
To call back night, and see
Your words of solemn light, again,
Throb with my heart, and me!


It would not do - the pillow glowed,
And glowed both roof and floor;
And birds sang loudly in the wood,
And fresh winds shook the door;


The curtains waved, the wakened flies
Were murmuring round my room,
Imprisoned there, till I should rise,
And give them leave to roam.


O stars, and dreams, and gentle night;
O night and stars, return!



And hide me from the hostile light
That does not warm, but burn;


That drains the blood of suffering men;
Drinks tears, instead of dew;
Let me sleep through his blinding reign,
And only wake with you!