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?
RIPOSTES OF EZRA POUND
Gird on thy star, We'll have this out with fate
TO
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
CONTENTS
SILET
IN EXITUM CUIUSDAM
APPARUIT
THE TOMB AT AKR ÇAAR
PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME
N.Y.
A GIRL
"PHASELLUS ILLE"
AN OBJECT
QUIES
THE SEAFARER
ECHOES: I.
ECHOES: II.
AN IMMORALITY
DIEU! QU'IL LA FAIT
SALVE PONTIFEX
DORIA [Greek]
THE NEEDLE
SUB MARE
PLUNGE
A VIRGINAL
PAN IS DEAD
THE PICTURE
OF JACOPO DEL SELLAIO
THE RETURN
EFFECTS OF MUSIC UPON A COMPANY OF PEOPLE
I. DEUX MOVEMENTS
II. FROM A THING BY SCHUMANN
THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF T.E. HULME
PREFATORY NOTE
AUTUMN
MANA ABODA
ABOVE THE DOCK
THE EMBANKMENT
CONVERSION
RIPOSTES
SILET
When I behold how black, immortal ink
Drips from my deathless pen--ah, well-away!
Why should we stop at all for what I think?
There is enough in what I chance to say.
It is enough that we once came together;
What is the use of setting it to rime?
When it is autumn do we get spring weather,
Or gather may of harsh northwindish time?
It is enough that we once came together;
What if the wind have turned against the rain?
It is enough that we once came together;
Time has seen this, and will not turn again;
And who are we, who know that last intent,
To plague to-morrow with a testament!
IN EXITUM CUIUSDAM
_On a certain one's departure_
"Time's bitter flood"! Oh, that's all very well,
But where's the old friend hasn't fallen off,
Or slacked his hand-grip when you first gripped fame?
I know your circle and can fairly tell
What you have kept and what you've left behind:
I know my circle and know very well
How many faces I'd have out of mind.
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 æther
parted before thee.
Swift at courage thou in the shell of gold, casting
a-loose the cloak of the body, camest
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?
THE TOMB AT AKR ÇAAR
"I am thy soul, Nikoptis. I have watched
These five millennia, and thy dead eyes
Moved not, nor ever answer my desire,
And thy light limbs, wherethrough I leapt aflame,
Burn not with me nor any saffron thing.
See, the light grass sprang up to pillow thee,
And kissed thee with a myriad grassy tongues;
But not thou me.
I have read out the gold upon the wall,
And wearied out my thought upon the signs.
And there is no new thing in all this place.
I have been kind. See, I have left the jars sealed,
Lest thou shouldst wake and whimper for thy wine.
And all thy robes I have kept smooth on thee.
O thou unmindful! How should I forget!
--Even the river many days ago,
The river, thou wast over young.
And three souls came upon Thee--
And I came.
And I flowed in upon thee, beat them off;
I have been intimate with thee, known thy ways.
Have I not touched thy palms and finger-tips,
Flowed in, and through thee and about thy heels?
How 'came I in'? Was I not thee and Thee?
And no sun comes to rest me in this place,
And I am torn against the jagged dark,
And no light beats upon me, and you say
No word, day after day.
Oh! I could get me out, despite the marks
And all their crafty work upon the door,
Out through the glass-green fields....
* * * * *
Yet it is quiet here:
I do not go."
PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME
Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
Great minds have sought you--lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
One average mind--with one thought less, each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:
Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
That never fits a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that's quite your own.
Yet this is you.
N.Y.
My City, my beloved, my white!
Ah, slender,
Listen! Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee a soul.
Delicately upon the reed, attend me!
_Now do I know that I am mad,_
_For here are a million people surly with traffic;_
_This is no maid._
_Neither could I play upon any reed if I had one._
My City, my beloved,
Thou art a maid with no breasts,
Thou art slender as a silver reed.
Listen to me, attend me!
And I will breathe into thee a soul,
And thou shalt live for ever.
A GIRL
The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast--
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.
Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child--_so_ high--you are,
And all this is folly to the world.
"PHASELLUS ILLE"
This _papier-mâché_, which you see, my friends,
Saith 'twas the worthiest of editors.
Its mind was made up in "the seventies,"
Nor hath it ever since changed that concoction.
It works to represent that school of thought
Which brought the hair-cloth chair to such perfection,
Nor will the horrid threats of Bernard Shaw
Shake up the stagnant pool of its convictions;
Nay, should the deathless voice of all the world
Speak once again for its sole stimulation,
'Twould not move it one jot from left to right.
Come Beauty barefoot from the Cyclades,
She'd find a model for St Anthony
In this thing's sure _decorum_ and behaviour.
AN OBJECT
This thing, that hath a code and not a core,
Hath set acquaintance where might be affections,
And nothing now
Disturbeth his reflections.
QUIES
This is another of our ancient loves.
Pass and be silent, Rullus, for the day
Hath lacked a something since this lady passed;
Hath lacked a something. 'Twas but marginal.
THE SEAFARER
(_From the early Anglo-Saxon text_)
May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,
Known on my keel many a care's hold,
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head
While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,
My feet were by frost benumbed.
Chill its chains are; chafing sighs
Hew my heart round and hunger begot
Mere-weary mood. Lest man know not
That he on dry land loveliest liveth,
List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea,
Weathered the winter, wretched outcast
Deprived of my kinsmen;
Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-scur flew,
There I heard naught save the harsh sea
And ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries,
Did for my games the gannet's clamour,
Sea-fowls' loudness was for me laughter,
The mews' singing all my mead-drink.
Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern
In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed
With spray on his pinion.
Not any protector
May make merry man faring needy.
This he little believes, who aye in winsome life
Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business,
Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft
Must bide above brine.
Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north,
Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then
Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now
The heart's thought that I on high streams
The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone.
Moaneth alway my mind's lust
That I fare forth, that I afar hence
Seek out a foreign fastness.
For this there's no mood-lofty man over earth's midst,
Not though he be given his good, but will have in his youth greed;
Nor his deed to the daring, nor his king to the faithful
But shall have his sorrow for sea-fare
Whatever his lord will.
He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-having
Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight
Nor any whit else save the wave's slash,
Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth on the water.
Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries,
Fields to fairness, land fares brisker,
All this admonisheth man eager of mood,
The heart turns to travel so that he then thinks
On flood-ways to be far departing.
Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying,
He singeth summerward, bodeth sorrow,
The bitter heart's blood. Burgher knows not--
He the prosperous man--what some perform
Where wandering them widest draweth.
So that but now my heart burst from my breast-lock,
My mood 'mid the mere-flood,
Over the whale's acre, would wander wide.
On earth's shelter cometh oft to me,
Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer,
Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly,
O'er tracks of ocean; seeing that anyhow
My lord deems to me this dead life
On loan and on land, I believe not
That any earth-weal eternal standeth
Save there be somewhat calamitous
That, ere a man's tide go, turn it to twain.
Disease or oldness or sword-hate
Beats out the breath from doom-gripped body.
And for this, every earl whatever, for those speaking after--
Laud of the living, boasteth some last word,
That he will work ere he pass onward,
Frame on the fair earth 'gainst foes his malice,
Daring ado,...
So that all men shall honour him after
And his laud beyond them remain 'mid the English,
Aye, for ever, a lasting life's-blast,
Delight mid the doughty.
Days little durable,
And all arrogance of earthen riches,
There come now no kings nor Cæsars
Nor gold-giving lords like those gone.
Howe'er in mirth most magnified,
Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest,
Drear all this excellence, delights undurable!
Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth.
Tomb hideth trouble. The blade is layed low.
Earthly glory ageth and seareth.
No man at all going the earth's gait,
But age fares against him, his face paleth,
Grey-haired he groaneth, knows gone companions,
Lordly men are to earth o'ergiven,
Nor may he then the flesh-cover, whose life ceaseth,
Nor eat the sweet nor feel the sorry,
Nor stir hand nor think in mid heart,
And though he strew the grave with gold,
His born brothers, their buried bodies
Be an unlikely treasure hoard.
ECHOES
I
GUIDO ORLANDO, SINGING
Befits me praise thine empery,
Lady of Valour,
Past all disproving;
Thou art the flower to me--
Nay, by Love's pallor--
Of all good loving.
Worthy to reap men's praises
Is he who'd gaze upon
Truth's mazes.
In like commend is he,
Who, loving fixedly,
Love so refineth,
Till thou alone art she
In whom love's vested;
As branch hath fairest flower
Where fruit's suggested.
This great joy comes to me,
To me observing
How swiftly thou hast power
To pay my serving.
II[1]
Thou keep'st thy rose-leaf
Till the rose-time will be over,
Think'st thou that Death will kiss thee?
Think'st thou that the Dark House
Will find thee such a lover
As I? Will the new roses miss thee?
Prefer my cloak unto the cloak of dust
'Neath which the last year lies,
For thou shouldst more mistrust
Time than my eyes.
[1] Asclepiades, Julianus Ægyptus.
AN IMMORALITY
Sing we for love and idleness,
Naught else is worth the having.
Though I have been in many a land,
There is naught else in living.
And I would rather have my sweet,
Though rose-leaves die of grieving,
Than do high deeds in Hungary
To pass all men's believing.
DIEU! QU'IL LA FAIT
_From Charles D'Orleans_
_For music_
God! that mad'st her well regard her,
How she is so fair and bonny;
For the great charms that are upon her
Ready are all folk to reward her.
Who could part him from her borders
When spells are alway renewed on her?
God! that mad'st her well regard her,
How she is so fair and bonny.
From here to there to the sea's border,
Dame nor damsel there's not any
Hath of perfect charms so many.
Thoughts of her are of dream's order:
God! that mad'st her well regard her.
SALVE PONTIFEX
(A.C.S.)
One after one they leave thee,
High Priest of Iacchus,
Intoning thy melodies as winds intone
The whisperings of leaves on sunlit days.
And the sands are many
And the seas beyond the sands are one
In ultimate, so we here being many
Are unity; nathless thy compeers,
Knowing thy melody,
Lulled with the wine of thy music
Go seaward silently, leaving thee sentinel
O'er all the mysteries,
High Priest of Iacchus.
For the lines of life lie under thy fingers,
And above the vari-coloured strands
Thine eyes look out unto the infinitude
Of the blue waves of heaven,
And even as Triplex Sisterhood
Thou fingerest the threads knowing neither
Cause nor the ending,
High Priest of Iacchus,
Draw'st forth a multiplicity
Of strands, and, beholding
The colour thereof, raisest thy voice
Towards the sunset,
O High Priest of Iacchus!
And out of the secrets of the inmost mysteries
Thou chantest strange far-sourced canticles:
O High Priest of Iacchus!
Life and the ways of Death her
Twin-born sister, that is life's counterpart,
And of night and the winds of night;
Silent voices ministering to the souls
Of hamadryads that hold council concealèd
In streams and tree-shadowing
Forests on hill slopes,
O High Priest of Iacchus,
All the manifold mystery
Thou makest a wine of song,
And maddest thy following even
With visions of great deeds
And their futility,
O High Priest of Iacchus!
Though thy co-novices are bent to the scythe
Of the magian wind that is voice of Persephone,
Leaving thee solitary, master of initiating
Mænads that come through the
Vine-entangled ways of the forest
Seeking, out of all the world,
Madness of Iacchus,
That being skilled in the secrets of the double cup
They might turn the dead of the world
Into pæans,
O High Priest of Iacchus,
Wreathed with the glory of thy years of creating
Entangled music,
Breathe!
Now that the evening cometh upon thee,
Breathe upon us, that low-bowed and exultant
Drink wine of Iacchus, that since the conquering
Hath been chiefly containèd in the numbers
Of them that, even as thou, have woven
Wicker baskets for grape clusters
Wherein is concealèd the source of the vintage,
O High Priest of Iacchus,
Breathe thou upon us
Thy magic in parting!
Even as they thy co-novices,
At being mingled with the sea,
While yet thou madest thy canticles
Serving upright before the altar
That is bound about with shadows
Of dead years wherein thy Iacchus
Looked not upon the hills, that being
Uncared for, praised not him in entirety.
O High Priest of Iacchus,
Being now near to the border of the sands
Where the sapphire girdle of the sea
Encinctureth the maiden
Persephone, released for the spring,
Look! Breathe upon us
The wonder of the thrice encinctured mystery
Whereby thou being full of years art young,
Loving even this lithe Persephone
That is free for the seasons of plenty;
Whereby thou being young art old
And shalt stand before this Persephone
Whom thou lovest,
In darkness, even at that time
That she being returned to her husband
Shall be queen and a maiden no longer,
Wherein thou being neither old nor young
Standing on the verge of the sea
Shalt pass from being sand,
O High Priest of Iacchus,
And becoming wave
Shalt encircle all sands,
Being transmuted through all
The girdling of the sea.
O High Priest of Iacchus,
Breathe thou upon us!
_Note._--This apostrophe was written three years
before Swinburne's death.
DORIA [Greek]
Be in me as the eternal moods of the bleak wind, and not
As transient things are--gaiety of flowers.
Have me in the strong loneliness of sunless cliffs
And of grey waters.
Let the gods speak softly of us
In days hereafter,
The shadowy flowers of Orcus
Remember Thee.
THE NEEDLE
Come, or the stellar tide will slip away,
Eastward avoid the hour of its decline,
Now! for the needle trembles in my soul!
Here have we had our vantage, the good hour.
Here we have had our day, your day and mine.
Come now, before this power
That bears us up, shall turn against the pole.
Mock not the flood of stars, the thing's to be.
O Love, come now, this land turns evil slowly.
The waves bore in, soon will they bear away.
The treasure is ours, make we fast land with it.
Move we and take the tide, with its next favour,
Abide
Under some neutral force
Until this course turneth aside.
SUB MARE
It is, and is not, I am sane enough,
Since you have come this place has hovered round me,
This fabrication built of autumn roses,
Then there's a goldish colour, different.
And one gropes in these things as delicate
Algae reach up and out beneath
Pale slow green surgings of the under-wave,
'Mid these things older than the names they have,
These things that are familiars of the god.
PLUNGE
I would bathe myself in strangeness:
These comforts heaped upon me,
smother me!
I burn, I scald so for the new,
New friends, new faces,
Places!
Oh to be out of this,
This that is all I wanted
--save the new.
And you,
Love, you the much, the more desired!
Do I not loathe all walls, streets, stones,
All mire, mist, all fog,
All ways of traffic?
You, I would have flow over me like water,
Oh, but far out of this!
Grass, and low fields, and hills,
And sun,
Oh, sun enough!
Out and alone, among some
Alien people!
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 has a new lightness;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of æther;
As with sweet leaves; as with a 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 tress a likeness of the savour:
As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.
PAN IS DEAD
Pan is dead. Great Pan is dead.
Ah! bow your heads, ye maidens all,
And weave ye him his coronal.
There is no summer in the leaves,
And withered are the sedges;
How shall we weave a coronal,
Or gather floral pledges?
That I may not say, Ladies.
Death was ever a churl.
That I may not say, Ladies.
How should he show a reason,
That he has taken our Lord away
Upon such hollow season?
THE PICTURE[1]
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me,
For here was love, was not to be drowned out,
And here desire, not to be kissed away.
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.
[1] "Venus Reclining," by Jacopo del Sellaio (1442-93).
OF JACOPO DEL SELLAIO
This man knew out the secret ways of love,
No man could paint such things who did not know.
And now she's gone, who was his Cyprian,
And you are here, who are "The Isles" to me.
And here's the thing that lasts the whole thing out:
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.
THE RETURN
See, they return; ah, see the tentative
Movements, and the slow feet,
The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
Wavering!
See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
and half turn back;
These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"
Inviolable.
Gods of the wingèd shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
sniffing the trace of air!
Haie! Haie!
These were the swift to harry;
These the keen-scented;
These were the souls of blood.
Slow on the leash,
pallid the leash-men.
EFFECTS OF MUSIC UPON A COMPANY OF PEOPLE
I
DEUX MOVEMENTS
1. Temple qui fut.
2. Poissons d'or.
1
A soul curls back,
Their souls like petals,
Thin, long, spiral,
Like those of a chrysanthemum curl
Smoke-like up and back from the
Vavicel, the calyx,
Pale green, pale gold, transparent,
Green of plasma, rose-white,
Spirate like smoke,
Curled,
Vibrating,
Slowly, waving slowly.
O Flower animate!
O calyx!
O crowd of foolish people!
2
The petals!
On the tip of each the figure
Delicate.
See, they dance, step to step.
Flora to festival,
Twine, bend, bow,
Frolic involve ye.
Woven the step,
Woven the tread, the moving.
Ribands they move,
Wave, bow to the centre.
Pause, rise, deepen in colour,
And fold in drowsily.
II
FROM A THING BY SCHUMANN
Breast high, floating and welling
Their soul, moving beneath the satin,
Plied the gold threads,
Pushed at the gauze above it.
The notes beat upon this,
Beat and indented it;
Rain dropped and came and fell upon this,
Hail and snow,
My sight gone in the flurry!
And then across the white silken,
Bellied up, as a sail bellies to the wind,
Over the fluid tenuous, diaphanous,
Over this curled a wave, greenish,
Mounted and overwhelmed it.
This membrane floating above,
And bellied out by the up-pressing soul.
Then came a mer-host,
And after them legion of Romans,
The usual, dull, theatrical!
THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF T.E. HULME
PREFATORY NOTE
In publishing his _Complete Poetical Works_
at thirty,[1] Mr Hulme has set an enviable
example to many of his contemporaries
who have had less to say.
They are reprinted here for good
fellowship; for good custom, a custom
out of Tuscany and of Provence; and
thirdly, for convenience, seeing their smallness
of bulk; and for good memory,
seeing that they recall certain evenings
and meetings of two years gone, dull
enough at the time, but rather pleasant
to look back upon.
As for the "School of Images," which
may or may not have existed, its principles
were not so interesting as those of the
"inherent dynamists" or of _Les Unanimistes_,
yet they were probably sounder
than those of a certain French school
which attempted to dispense with verbs
altogether; or of the Impressionists who
brought forth:
"Pink pigs blossoming upon the hillside";
or of the Post-Impressionists who beseech
their ladies to let down slate-blue hair
over their raspberry-coloured flanks.
_Ardoise_ rimed richly--ah, richly and rarely
rimed!--with _framboise_.
As for the future, _Les Imagistes_, the
descendants of the forgotten school of
1909, have that in their keeping.
I refrain from publishing my proposed
_Historical Memoir_ of their forerunners,
because Mr Hulme has threatened to
print the original propaganda.
E.P.
[1] Mr Pound has grossly exaggerated my age.--T.E.H.
AUTUMN
A touch of cold in the Autumn night--
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.
MANA ABODA
Beauty is the marking-time, the stationary vibration,
the feigned ecstasy of an arrested impulse unable to
reach its natural end.
Mana Aboda, whose bent form
The sky in archèd circle is,
Seems ever for an unknown grief to mourn.
Yet on a day I heard her cry:
"I weary of the roses and the singing poets--
Josephs all, not tall enough to try."
ABOVE THE DOCK
Above the quiet dock in mid night,
Tangled in the tall mast's corded height,
Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away
Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play.
THE EMBANKMENT
(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a
cold, bitter night.)