THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS
I
As dreamers through their dreams surmise
The stealthy passage of the night,
We half-remember smoky skies
And city streets and hurrying flight,
Another world from this clear height
Whereon our starry altars rise.
Beneath our towering waste of stone
The fragile ships creep to and fro,
By tempest riven and overthrown,
The toys of these same tides that flow
Against our pillars far below
With faint, insistent monotone.
The snarling winds against our rocks
Hurl breakers in a fleecy mass,
Like wolves that chase stampeding flocks
Over the brink of a crevasse,
While thunders down the Alpine pass
The deluge of the equinox.
Lost in that stormy atmosphere,
Men chart their seas and trudge their roads;
Inviolate, we scorn to hear
Their shouted warning that forebodes
An end to these fair episodes
Of life beneath our tranquil sky;
Having sought only peace, then why
Should we go down to death with fear?
Pomfret, 1920
II
The thinkers light their lamps in rows
From street to street, and then
The night creeps up behind, and blows
Them quickly out again.
While Age limps groping toward his home,
Hearing the feet of youth
From dark to dark that sadly roam
The suburbs of the Truth.
Paris, 1919
III
I pass my days in ghostly presences,
And when the wind at night is mute,
Far down the valley I can hear a flute
And a strange voice, not knowing what it says.
And sometimes in the interim of days,
I hear a fountain in obscure abodes,
Singing with none but me to hear, the lays
That would do pleasure to the ears of gods.
And faces pass, but haply they are dreams,
Dreams of a mind set free that gilds
The solitude with awful light and builds
Temples and lovers, goblins and triremes.
Give me a chair and liberate the sun,
And glancing motes to twinkle down its bars,
That I may sit above oblivion,
And weave myself a universe of stars.
Rome, 1918
IV
Each mote that staggers down the sun
Repeats an ancient monotone
That minds me of the time when I
Put out the candles one by one,
And left no splendour on the face
Of Him who found His resting-place
Upon the Cross; and then I went
Out on the desert's empty space,
And heard the wind in monotone
Blow grains of sand against a stone,
Until I sang aloud, to break
The fear of wandering alone.
There is no fear left in my soul,
But when, to-day, an aureole
Of sunlight gathered on your hair,
And winking motes fled here and there,
Like notes of music in the air,
Suddenly I felt the wind
Wake on the desert as I stole
Out of that desecrated shrine,
And then I wondered if you sinned
As part of me, or if the whole
Dark sacrilege were mine.
Cambridge, 1917
V
He is a priest;
He feeds the dead;
He sings the feast;
He veils his head;
The words are dread
In morning mist,
But the wine is red
In the Eucharist.
Red as the east
With sunlight spread
Like a bleeding beast
On a purple bed.
O Someone fled
From an April tryst,
Were your lips fed
In the Eucharist?
I, at least,
When the voice of lead
Sank down and ceased,
Knew the things he said.
That the god who bled,
And the god we kissed,
Shall never wed
In the Eucharist.
Spring, give the bread
We sought and missed,
And wine unshed
In the Eucharist.
Paris, 1919
VI
Through hissing snow, through rain, through many hundred Mays,
Contorted in Promethean jest, the gargoyles sit,
And watch the crowds pursue the charted ways,
Whose source is birth, whose end they only know.
Charms borrowed from the loveliest of hells,
And from the earth, a rhapsody of wit,
They hear the sacramental bells
Chime through the towers, and they smile.
Smile on the insects in the square below,
Smile on the stars that kiss the infinite,
And, when the clouds hang low, they gaily spout
Grey water on the heads of the devout
That gather, whispering, in the sabbath street.
O gargoyles! was the vinegar and bile
So bitter? Was the eucharist so sweet?
Paris, 1919
VII
Gods dine on prayer and sacred song,
And go to sleep between;
The gods have slumbered long;
The gods are getting lean.
Sheffield, 1917
VIII
A smile will turn away green eyes
That laughter could not touch,
The dangers of those subtleties,
The stealthy, clever hand,
Should not affright you overmuch
If you but understand
How Judas, clad in Oxford grey,--
Could walk abroad on Easter Day.
Paris, 1919
IX
Two Kings there were, one Good, one Bad;
The first was mournfulness itself,
The second, happy as a lad,--
And both are dust upon a shelf.
Sheffield, 1917
X
I see that Hermes unawares,
Has left his footprints on the path;
See here, he fell, and in his wrath
He pulled out several golden hairs
Against the brambles. Guard them well,
The hairs of gods are valuable.
Paris, 1919
XI
Semiramis, the whore of Babylon,
Bade me go walking with her. I obeyed.
Philosophy, I thought, is not afraid
Of any woman underneath the sun.
Far up the hills she led me, where one ledge
Thrust out a slender finger to the sky,
Dizzy and swaying as an eagle's cry;
Semiramis stepped to the farthest edge.
And there she danced, whirling upon her toes,
The triumph of a flame was in her face,
Faster and faster as the mad wind blows,
She whirled, and slipped, and dashed down into space....
Next day I saw her smiling in the sun,
Semiramis, the Queen of Babylon.
Paris, 1919
XII
Bring hemlock, black as Cretan cheese,
And mix a sacramental brew;
A worthy drink for Socrates,
Why not for you?
Sheffield, 1917
XIII
Walking through the town last night,
I learned the lore of second sight,
And saw through all those solid walls,
Imbecile and troglodyte.
The vicious apes of either sex
Grinned and mouthed and stretched their necks,
Their little lusts skipped back and forth,
Not very pretty or complex.
Each has five senses; every sense
Is like a false gate in a fence,
They think the gates are bona fide,
Such is their only innocence.
And think themselves extremely wise
When any sense records its lies,
They mumble what they feel or hear,
Unmindful still of Paradise.
When I walked through the town last night
In vain they drew their curtains tight,
Through walls of brick I plainly saw
The imbecile, the troglodyte.
Paris, 1919
XIV
The change of many tides has swung the flow
Of those green weeds that cling like filthy fur
Upon the timbers of this voyager
That sank in the clear water long ago.
Whence did she sail? the sands of ages blur
The answer to the secret, and as though
They mocked and knew, sleek fishes, to and fro,
Trail their grey carrion shadows over her.
Coffer of all life gives and hides away,
It matters not if London or if Tyre
Sped you to sea on some remoter day;
Beneath your decks immutable desire
And hope and hate and envy still conspire,
While all the gaping faces nod and sway.
Brussels, 1919
XV
Piero di Cosimo,
Your unicorns and afterglow,
Your black leaves cut against the sky,
Black crosses where the young gods die,
Black horizons where the sea
And clouds contend perpetually,
And hanging low,
The menace of the night:--
They called you madman. Were they right,
Piero di Cosimo?
Pomfret, 1919
XVI
I would know what can not be known;
I would reach beyond my sphere,
And question the stars in their courses,
And the dead of many a year.
I would tame the infinite forces
That bend me down like the grain,
Peace would I give to the fields where the young men died,
Peace to the sea where the ships of battle ride,
And light again to the eyes of the beautiful slain.
This would I do, but today against the sky,
They who were building a cross grinned as I passed them by.
Pomfret, 1919
XVII
The yellow bird is singing by the pond,
And all about him stars have burst in bloom,
A colonnade stands pallidly beyond,
And beneath that a solitary tomb.
Who lies within that tomb I do not know,
The yellow bird intones his threnody
In notes as colourless as driven snow,
Clashing with the green hush and out of key.
O cease, your endless song is out of tune,
Where all these old forgotten things are sleeping,--
Give back to silence's eternal keeping
The windless pond, the hanging colonnade,
Lest in the wane of the long afternoon,
The Dead awake, unhappy and afraid.
Bordeaux, 1917