Most holy Satyr,_American Poetry, 1922: A Miscellany

like a goat,

with horns and hooves

to match thy coat

of russet brown,

I make leaf-circlets

and a crown of honey-flowers

for thy throat;

where the amber petals

drip to ivory,

I cut and slip

each stiffened petal

in the rift

of carven petal:

honey horn

has wed the bright

virgin petal of the white

flower cluster: lip to lip

let them whisper,

let them lilt, quivering:

Most holy Satyr,

like a goat,

hear this our song,

accept our leaves,

love-offering,

return our hymn;

like echo fling

a sweet song,

answering note for note.

LAIS

Let her who walks in Paphos

take the glass,

let Paphos take the mirror

and the work of frosted fruit,

gold apples set

with silver apple-leaf,

white leaf of silver

wrought with vein of gilt.

Let Paphos lift the mirror;

let her look

into the polished center of the disk.

Let Paphos take the mirror:

did she press

flowerlet of flame-flower

to the lustrous white

of the white forehead?

did the dark veins beat

a deeper purple

than the wine-deep tint

of the dark flower?

Did she deck black hair,

one evening, with the winter-white

flower of the winter-berry?

Did she look (reft of her lover)

at a face gone white

under the chaplet

of white virgin-breath?

Lais, exultant, tyrannizing Greece,

Lais who kept her lovers in the porch,

lover on lover waiting

(but to creep

where the robe brushed the threshold

where still sleeps Lais),

so she creeps, Lais,

to lay her mirror at the feet

of her who reigns in Paphos.

Lais has left her mirror,

for she sees no longer in its depth

the Lais' self

that laughed exultant,

tyrannizing Greece.

Lais has left her mirror,

for she weeps no longer,

finding in its depth

a face, but other

than dark flame and white

feature of perfect marble.

_Lais has left her mirror_

(so one wrote)

_to her who reigns in Paphos;

Lais who laughed a tyrant over Greece,

Lais who turned the lovers from the porch,

that swarm for whom now

Lais has no use;

Lais is now no lover of the glass,

seeing no more the face as once it was,

wishing to see that face and finding this._

HELIODORA

He and I sought together,

over the spattered table,

rhymes and flowers,

gifts for a name.

He said, among others,

I will bring

(and the phrase was just and good,

but not as good as mine)

"the narcissus that loves the rain."

We strove for a name,

while the light of the lamps burnt thin

and the outer dawn came in,

a ghost, the last at the feast

or the first,

to sit within

with the two that remained

to quibble in flowers and verse

over a girl's name.

He said, "the rain loving,"

I said, "the narcissus, drunk,

drunk with the rain."

Yet I had lost

for he said,

"the rose, the lover's gift,

is loved of love,"

he said it,

"loved of love;"

I waited, even as he spoke,

to see the room filled with a light,

as when in winter

the embers catch in a wind

when a room is dank:

so it would be filled, I thought,

our room with a light

when he said

(and he said it first)

"the rose, the lover's delight,

is loved of love,"

but the light was the same.

Then he caught,

seeing the fire in my eyes,

my fire, my fever, perhaps,

for he leaned

with the purple wine

stained in his sleeve,

and said this:

"Did you ever think

a girl's mouth

caught in a kiss

is a lily that laughs?"

I had not.

I saw it now

as men must see it forever afterwards;

no poet could write again,

"the red-lily,

a girl's laugh caught in a kiss;"

it was his to pour in the vat

from which all poets dip and quaff,

for poets are brothers in this.

So I saw the fire in his eyes,

it was almost my fire

(he was younger)

I saw the face so white;

my heart beat,

it was almost my phrase,

I said, "surprise the muses,

take them by surprise;

it is late,

rather it is dawn-rise,

those ladies sleep, the nine,

our own king's mistresses."

A name to rhyme,

flowers to bring to a name,

what was one girl faint and shy,

with eyes like the myrtle

(I said: "her underlids

are rather like myrtle"),

to vie with the nine?

Let him take the name,

he had the rhymes,

"the rose, loved of love,"

"the lily, a mouth that laughs,"

he had the gift,

"the scented crocus,

the purple hyacinth,"

what was one girl to the nine?

He said:

"I will make her a wreath;"

he said:

"I will write it thus:

_'I will bring you the lily that laughs,

I will twine

with soft narcissus, the myrtle,

sweet crocus, white violet,

the purple hyacinth and, last,

the rose, loved of love,

that these may drip on your hair

the less soft flowers,

may mingle sweet with the sweet

of Heliodora's locks,

myrrh-curled.'_"

(He wrote myrrh-curled,

I think, the first.)

I said:

"they sleep, the nine,"

when he shouted swift and passionate:

"_that_ for the nine!

Above the mountains

the sun is about to wake,

_and to-day white violets

shine beside white lilies

adrift on the mountain side;

to-day the narcissus opens

that loves the rain_."

I watched him to the door,

catching his robe

as the wine-bowl crashed to the floor,

spilling a few wet lees

(ah, his purple hyacinth!);

I saw him out of the door,

I thought:

there will never be a poet,

in all the centuries after this,

who will dare write,

after my friend's verse,

"a girl's mouth

is a lily kissed."

TOWARD THE PIRAEUS

_Slay with your eyes, Greek,

men over the face of the earth,

slay with your eyes, the host,

puny, passionless, weak._

_Break, as the ranks of steel

broke of the Persian host:

craven, we hated them then:

now we would count them Gods

beside these, spawn of the earth._

_Grant us your mantle, Greek;

grant us but one

to fright (as your eyes) with a sword,

men, craven and weak,

grant us but one to strike

one blow for you, passionate Greek._

You would have broken my wings,

but the very fact that you knew

I had wings, set some seal

on my bitter heart, my heart

broke and fluttered and sang.

You would have snared me,

and scattered the strands of my nest;

but the very fact that you saw,

sheltered me, claimed me,

set me apart from the rest.

Of men--of _men_ made you a god,

and me, claimed me, set me apart

and the song in my breast, yours, yours forever--

if I escape your evil heart.

I loved you:

men have writ and women have said

they loved,

but as the Pythoness stands by the altar,

intense and may not move;

till the fumes pass over;

and may not falter nor break,

till the priest has caught the words

that mar or make

a deme or a ravaged town;

so I, though my knees tremble,

my heart break,

must note the rumbling,

heed only the shuddering

down in the fissure beneath the rock

of the temple floor;

must wait and watch

and may not turn nor move,

nor break from my trance to speak

so slight, so sweet,

so simple a word as love.

III

What had you done

had you been true,

I can not think,

I may not know.

What could we do

were I not wise,

what play invent,

what joy devise?

What could we do

if you were great?

(Yet were you lost,

who were there, then,

to circumvent

the tricks of men?)

What can we do,

for curious lies

have filled your heart,

and in my eyes

sorrow has writ

that I am wise.

If I had been a boy,

I would have worshiped your grace,

I would have flung my worship

before your feet,

I would have followed apart,

glad, rent with an ecstasy

to watch you turn

your great head, set on the throat,

thick, dark with its sinews,

burned and wrought

like the olive stalk,

and the noble chin

and the throat.

I would have stood,

and watched and watched

and burned,

and when in the night,

from the many hosts, your slaves,

and warriors and serving men

you had turned

to the purple couch and the flame

of the woman, tall like cypress tree

that flames sudden and swift and free

as with crackle of golden resin

and cones and the locks flung free

like the cypress limbs,

bound, caught and shaken and loosed,

bound, caught and riven and bound

and loosened again,

as in rain of a kingly storm

or wind full from a desert plain.

So, when you had risen

from all the lethargy of love and its heat,

you would have summoned me, me alone,

and found my hands,

beyond all the hands in the world,

cold, cold, cold,

intolerably cold and sweet.

It was not chastity that made me cold nor fear,

only I knew that you, like myself, were sick

of the puny race that crawls and quibbles and lisps

of love and love and lovers and love's deceit.

It was not chastity that made me wild but fear

that my weapon, tempered in different heat,

was over-matched by yours, and your hand

skilled to yield death-blows, might break.

With the slightest turn--no ill-will meant--

my own lesser, yet still somewhat fine-wrought

fiery-tempered, delicate, over-passionate steel.

CONRAD AIKEN

SEVEN TWILIGHTS

The ragged pilgrim, on the road to nowhere,

Waits at the granite milestone. It grows dark.

Willows lean by the water. Pleas of water

Cry through the trees. And on the boles and boughs

Green water-lights make rings, already paling.

Leaves speak everywhere. The willow leaves

Silverly stir on the breath of moving water,

Birch-leaves, beyond them, twinkle, and there on the hill,

And the hills beyond again, and the highest hill,

Serrated pines, in the dusk, grow almost black.

By the eighth milestone on the road to nowhere

He drops his sack, and lights once more the pipe

There often lighted. In the dusk-sharpened sky

A pair of night-hawks windily sweep, or fall,

Booming, toward the trees. Thus had it been

Last year, and the year before, and many years:

Ever the same. "Thus turns the human track

Backward upon itself, I stand once more

By this small stream..." Now the rich sound of leaves,

Turning in air to sway their heavy boughs,

Burns in his heart, sings in his veins, as spring

Flowers in veins of trees; bringing such peace

As comes to seamen when they dream of seas.

"O trees! exquisite dancers in gray twilight!

Witches! fairies! elves! who wait for the moon

To thrust her golden horn, like a golden snail,

Above that mountain--arch your green benediction

Once more over my heart. Muffle the sound of bells,

Mournfully human, that cries from the darkening valley;

Close, with your leaves, about the sound of water:

Take me among your hearts as you take the mist

Among your boughs!" ... Now by the granite milestone,

On the ancient human road that winds to nowhere,

The pilgrim listens, as the night air brings

The murmured echo, perpetual, from the gorge

Of barren rock far down the valley. Now,

Though twilight here, it may be starlight there;

Mist makes elfin lakes in the hollow fields;

The dark wood stands in the mist like a somber island

With one red star above it.... "This I should see,

Should I go on, follow the falling road,--

This I have often seen.... But I shall stay

Here, where the ancient milestone, like a watchman,

Lifts up its figure eight, its one gray knowledge,

Into the twilight; as a watchman lifts

A lantern, which he does not know is out."

Now by the wall of the ancient town I lean

Myself, like ancient wall and dust and sky,

And the purple dusk, grown old, grown old in heart.

Shadows of clouds flow inward from the sea.

The mottled fields grow dark. The golden wall

Grows gray again, turns stone again, the tower,

No longer kindled, darkens against a cloud.

Old is the world, old as the world am I;

The cries of sheep rise upward from the fields,

Forlorn and strange; and wake an ancient echo

In fields my heart has known, but has not seen.

"These fields"--an unknown voice beyond the wall

Murmurs--"were once the province of the sea.

Where now the sheep graze, mermaids were at play,

Sea-horses galloped, and the great jeweled tortoise

Walked slowly, looking upward at the waves,

Bearing upon his back a thousand barnacles,

A white acropolis ..." The ancient tower

Sends out, above the houses and the trees,

And the wide fields below the ancient walls,

A measured phrase of bells. And in the silence

I hear a woman's voice make answer then:

"Well, they are green, although no ship can sail them....

Sky-larks rest in the grass, and start up singing

Before the girl who stoops to pick sea-poppies.

Spiny, the poppies are, and oh how yellow!

And the brown clay is runneled by the rain...."

A moment since, the sheep that crop the grass

Had long blue shadows, and the grass-tips sparkled:

Now all grows old.... O voices strangely speaking,

Voices of man and woman, voices of bells,

Diversely making comment on our time

Which flows and bears us with it into dusk,

Repeat the things you say! Repeat them slowly

Upon this air, make them an incantation

For ancient tower, old wall, the purple twilight,

This dust, and me. But all I hear is silence,

And something that may be leaves or may be sea.

III

When the tree bares, the music of it changes:

Hard and keen is the sound, long and mournful;

Pale are the poplar boughs in the evening light

Above my house, against a slate-cold cloud.

When the house ages and the tenants leave it,

Cricket sings in the tall grass by the threshold;

Spider, by the cold mantel, hangs his web.

Here, in a hundred years from that clear season

When first I came here, bearing lights and music,

To this old ghostly house my ghost will come,--

Pause in the half-light, turn by the poplar, glide

Above tall grasses through the broken door.

Who will say that he saw--or the dusk deceived him--

A mist with hands of mist blow down from the tree

And open the door and enter and close it after?

Who will say that he saw, as midnight struck

Its tremulous golden twelve, a light in the window,

And first heard music, as of an old piano,

Music remote, as if it came from the earth,

Far down; and then, in the quiet, eager voices?

"... Houses grow old and die, houses have ghosts--

Once in a hundred years we return, old house,

And live once more." ... And then the ancient answer,

In a voice not human, but more like creak of boards

Or rattle of panes in the wind--"Not as the owner,

But as a guest you come, to fires not lit

By hands of yours.... Through these long-silent chambers

Move slowly, turn, return, and bring once more

Your lights and music. It will be good to talk."

"This is the hour," she said, "of transmutation:

It is the eucharist of the evening, changing

All things to beauty. Now the ancient river,

That all day under the arch was polished jade,

Becomes the ghost of a river, thinly gleaming

Under a silver cloud.... It is not water:

It is that azure stream in which the stars

Bathe at the daybreak, and become immortal...."

"And the moon," said I--not thus to be outdone--

"What of the moon? Over the dusty plane-trees

Which crouch in the dusk above their feeble lanterns,

Each coldly lighted by his tiny faith;

The moon, the waxen moon, now almost full,

Creeps whitely up.... Westward the waves of cloud,

Vermilion, crimson, violet, stream on the air,

Shatter to golden flakes in the icy green

Translucency of twilight.... And the moon

Drinks up their light, and as they fade or darken,

Brightens.... O monstrous miracle of the twilight,

That one should live because the others die!"

"Strange too," she answered, "that upon this azure

Pale-gleaming ghostly stream, impalpable--

So faint, so fine that scarcely it bears up

The petals that the lantern strews upon it,--

These great black barges float like apparitions,

Loom in the silver of it, beat upon it,

Moving upon it as dragons move on air."

"Thus always," then I answered,--looking never

Toward her face, so beautiful and strange

It grew, with feeding on the evening light,--

"The gross is given, by inscrutable God,

Power to beat wide wings upon the subtle.

Thus we ourselves, so fleshly, fallible, mortal,

Stand here, for all our foolishness, transfigured:

Hung over nothing in an arch of light

While one more evening like a wave of silence

Gathers the stars together and goes out."

Now the great wheel of darkness and low clouds

Whirs and whirls in the heavens with dipping rim;

Against the ice-white wall of light in the west

Skeleton trees bow down in a stream of air.

Leaves, black leaves and smoke, are blown on the wind;

Mount upward past my window; swoop again;

In a sharp silence, loudly, loudly falls

The first cold drop, striking a shriveled leaf....

Doom and dusk for the earth! Upward I reach

To draw chill curtains and shut out the dark,

Pausing an instant, with uplifted hand,

To watch, between black ruined portals of cloud,

One star,--the tottering portals fall and crush it.

Here are a thousand books! here is the wisdom

Alembicked out of dust, or out of nothing;

Choose now the weightiest word, most golden page,

Most somberly musicked line; hold up these lanterns,--

These paltry lanterns, wisdoms, philosophies,--

Above your eyes, against this wall of darkness;

And you'll see--what? One hanging strand of cobweb,

A window-sill a half-inch deep in dust ...

Speak out, old wise-men! Now, if ever, we need you.

Cry loudly, lift shrill voices like magicians

Against this baleful dusk, this wail of rain....

But you are nothing! Your pages turn to water

Under my fingers: cold, cold and gleaming,

Arrowy in the darkness, rippling, dripping--

All things are rain.... Myself, this lighted room,

What are we but a murmurous pool of rain?...

The slow arpeggios of it, liquid, sibilant,

Thrill and thrill in the dark. World-deep I lie

Under a sky of rain. Thus lies the sea-shell

Under the rustling twilight of the sea;

No gods remember it, no understanding

Cleaves the long darkness with a sword of light.

Heaven, you say, will be a field in April,

A friendly field, a long green wave of earth,

With one domed cloud above it. There you'll lie

In noon's delight, with bees to flash above you,

Drown amid buttercups that blaze in the wind,

Forgetting all save beauty. There you'll see

With sun-filled eyes your one great dome of cloud

Adding fantastic towers and spires of light,

Ascending, like a ghost, to melt in the blue.

Heaven enough, in truth, if you were there!

Could I be with you I would choose your noon,

Drown amid buttercups, laugh with the intimate grass,

Dream there forever.... But, being older, sadder,

Having not you, nor aught save thought of you,

It is not spring I'll choose, but fading summer;

Not noon I'll choose, but the charmed hour of dusk.

Poppies? A few! And a moon almost as red....

But most I'll choose that subtler dusk that comes

Into the mind--into the heart, you say--

When, as we look bewildered at lovely things,

Striving to give their loveliness a name,

They are forgotten; and other things, remembered,

Flower in the heart with the fragrance we call grief.

VII

In the long silence of the sea, the seaman

Strikes twice his bell of bronze. The short note wavers

And loses itself in the blue realm of water.

One sea-gull, paired with a shadow, wheels, wheels;

Circles the lonely ship by wave and trough;

Lets down his feet, strikes at the breaking water,

Draws up his golden feet, beats wings, and rises

Over the mast.... Light from a crimson cloud

Crimsons the sluggishly creeping foams of waves;

The seaman, poised in the bow, rises and falls

As the deep forefoot finds a way through waves;

And there below him, steadily gazing westward,

Facing the wind, the sunset, the long cloud,

The goddess of the ship, proud figurehead,

Smiles inscrutably, plunges to crying waters,

Emerges streaming, gleaming, with jewels falling

Fierily from carved wings and golden breasts;

Steadily glides a moment, then swoops again.

Carved by the hand of man, grieved by the wind;

Worn by the tumult of all the tragic seas,

Yet smiling still, unchanging, smiling still

Inscrutably, with calm eyes and golden brow--

What is it that she sees and follows always,

Beyond the molten and ruined west, beyond

The light-rimmed sea, the sky itself? What secret

Gives wisdom to her purpose? Now the cloud

In final conflagration pales and crumbles

Into the darkening waters. Now the stars

Burn softly through the dusk. The seaman strikes

His small lost bell again, watching the west

As she below him watches.... O pale goddess

Whom not the darkness, even, or rain or storm,

Changes; whose great wings are bright with foam,

Whose breasts are cold as the sea, whose eyes forever

Inscrutably take that light whereon they look--

Speak to us! Make us certain, as you are,

That somewhere, beyond wave and wave and wave,

That dreamed-of harbor lies which we would find.

TETELESTAI

How shall we praise the magnificence of the dead,

The great man humbled, the haughty brought to dust?

Is there a horn we should not blow as proudly

For the meanest of us all, who creeps his days,

Guarding his heart from blows, to die obscurely?

I am no king, have laid no kingdoms waste,

Taken no princes captive, led no triumphs

Of weeping women through long walls of trumpets;

Say rather I am no one, or an atom;

Say rather, two great gods in a vault of starlight

Play ponderingly at chess; and at the game's end

One of the pieces, shaken, falls to the floor

And runs to the darkest corner; and that piece

Forgotten there, left motionless, is I....

Say that I have no name, no gifts, no power,

Am only one of millions, mostly silent;

One who came with lips and hands and a heart,

Looked on beauty, and loved it, and then left it.

Say that the fates of time and space obscured me,

Led me a thousand ways to pain, bemused me,

Wrapped me in ugliness; and like great spiders

Dispatched me at their leisure.... Well, what then?

Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust,

The horns of glory blowing above my burial?

Morning and evening opened and closed above me:

Houses were built above me; trees let fall

Yellowing leaves upon me, hands of ghosts,

Rain has showered its arrows of silver upon me

Seeking my heart; winds have roared and tossed me;

Music in long blue waves of sound has borne me

A helpless weed to shores of unthought silence;

Time, above me, within me, crashed its gongs

Of terrible warning, sifting the dust of death;

And here I lie. Blow now your horns of glory

Harshly over my flesh, you trees, you waters!

You stars and suns, Canopus, Deneb, Rigel,

Let me, as I lie down, here in this dust,

Hear, far off, your whispered salutation!

Roar now above my decaying flesh, you winds,

Whirl out your earth-scents over this body, tell me

Of ferns and stagnant pools, wild roses, hillsides!

Anoint me, rain, let crash your silver arrows

On this hard flesh! I am the one who named you,

I lived in you, and now I die in you.

I, your son, your daughter, treader of music,

Lie broken, conquered.... Let me not fall in silence.

III

I, the restless one; the circler of circles;

Herdsman and roper of stars, who could not capture

The secret of self; I who was tyrant to weaklings,

Striker of children; destroyer of women; corrupter

Of innocent dreamers, and laugher at beauty; I,

Too easily brought to tears and weakness by music,

Baffled and broken by love, the helpless beholder

Of the war in my heart of desire with desire, the struggle

Of hatred with love, terror with hunger; I

Who laughed without knowing the cause of my laughter, who grew

Without wishing to grow, a servant to my own body;

Loved without reason the laughter and flesh of a woman,

Enduring such torments to find her! I who at last

Grow weaker, struggle more feebly, relent in my purpose,

Choose for my triumph an easier end, look backward

At earlier conquests; or, caught in the web, cry out

In a sudden and empty despair, "Tetelestai!"

Pity me, now! I, who was arrogant, beg you!

Tell me, as I lie down, that I was courageous.

Blow horns of victory now, as I reel and am vanquished.

Shatter the sky with trumpets above my grave.