Part 2
All things are forgiven for one night of your games.... Though you walk in the Via Sacra, with a peacock’s tail for a fan.
XII
Who, who will be the next man to entrust his girl to a friend? Love interferes with fidelities; The gods have brought shame on their relatives; Each man wants the pomegranate for himself; Amiable and harmonious people are pushed incontinent into duels, A Trojan and adulterous person came to Menelaus under the rites of hospitium, And there was a case in Colchis, Jason and that woman in Colchis; And besides, Lynceus, you were drunk.
Could you endure such promiscuity? She was not renowned for fidelity; But to jab a knife in my vitals, to have passed on a swig of poison, Preferable, my dear boy, my dear Lynceus, Comrade, comrade of my life, of my purse, of my person; But in one bed, in one bed alone, my dear Lynceus I deprecate your attendance; I would ask a like boon of Jove.
And you write of Achelöus, who contended with Hercules, You write of Adrastus’ horses and the funeral rites of Achenor, And you will not leave off imitating Aeschylus. Though you make a hash of Antimachus, You think you are going to do Homer. And still a girl scorns the gods, Of all these young women not one has enquired the cause of the world, Nor the modus of lunar eclipses Nor whether there be any patch left of us After we cross the infernal ripples, nor if the thunder fall from predestination; Nor anything else of importance.
Upon the Actian marshes Virgil is Phoebus’ chief of police, He can tabulate Caesar’s great ships. He thrills to Ilian arms, He shakes the Trojan weapons of Aeneas, And casts stores on Lavinian beaches.
Make way, ye Roman authors, clear the street O ye Greeks, For a much larger Iliad is in the course of construction (and to Imperial order) Clear the streets O ye Greeks!
And you also follow him “neath Phrygian pine shade: Thyrsis and Daphnis upon whittled reeds, And how ten sins can corrupt young maidens; Kids for a bribe and pressed udders, Happy selling poor loves for cheap apples.
Tityrus might have sung the same vixen; Corydon tempted Alexis, Head farmers do likewise, and lying weary amid their oats They get praise from tolerant Hamadryads.”
Go on, to Ascraeus’ prescription, the ancient, respected, Wordsworthian: “A flat field for rushes, grapes grow on the slope.”
And behold me, small fortune left in my house. Me, who had no general for a grandfather! I shall triumph among young ladies of indeterminate character, My talent acclaimed in their banquets, I shall be honoured with yesterday’s wreaths. And the god strikes to the marrow.
Like a trained and performing tortoise, I would make verse in your fashion, if she should command it, With her husband asking a remission of sentence, And even this infamy would not attract numerous readers Were there an erudite or violent passion, For the nobleness of the populace brooks nothing below its own altitude. One must have resonance, resonance and sonority ... like a goose.
Varro sang Jason’s expedition, Varro, of his great passion Leucadia, There is song in the parchment; Catullus the highly indecorous, Of Lesbia, known above Helen; And in the dyed pages of Calvus, Calvus mourning Quintilia, And but now Gallus had sung of Lycoris. Fair, fairest Lycoris-- The waters of Styx poured over the wound: And now Propertius of Cynthia, taking his stand among these.
LANGUE D’OC
_Alba_
_When the nightingale to his mate Sings day-long and night late My love and I keep state In bower, In flower, ’Till the watchman on the tower Cry: “Up! Thou rascal, Rise, I see the white Light And the night Flies.”_
I
_Compleynt of a gentleman who has been waiting outside for some time_
O Plasmatour and true celestial light, Lord powerful, engirdled all with might, Give my good-fellow aid in fools’ despite Who stirs not forth this night, And day comes on.
“Sst! my good fellow, art awake or sleeping? Sleep thou no more. I see the star upleaping That hath the dawn in keeping, And day comes on!
“Hi! Harry, hear me, for I sing aright Sleep not thou now, I hear the bird in flight That plaineth of the going of the night, And day comes on!
“Come now! Old swenkin! Rise up, from thy bed, I see the signs upon the welkin spread, If thou come not, the cost be on thy head. And day comes on!
“And here I am since going down of sun, And pray to God that is St. Mary’s son, To bring thee safe back, my companion. And day comes on.
“And thou out here beneath the porch of stone Badest me to see that a good watch was done, And now thou’lt none of me, and wilt have none Of song of mine.”
(_Bass voice from within._)
“Wait, my good fellow. For such joy I take With her venust and noblest to my make To hold embraced, and will not her forsake For yammer of the cuckold, Though day break.” (_Girart Bornello._)
II
_Avril_
When the springtime is sweet And the birds repeat Their new song in the leaves, ’Tis meet A man go where he will.
But from where my heart is set No message I get; My heart all wakes and grieves; Defeat Or luck, I must have my fill.
Our love comes out Like the branch that turns about On the top of the hawthorne, With frost and hail at night Suffers despite ’Till the sun come, and the green leaf on the bough.
I remember the young day When we set strife away, And she gave me such gesning, Her love and her ring: God grant I die not by any man’s stroke ’Till I have my hand ’neath her cloak.
I care not for their clamour Who have come between me and my charmer, For I know how words run loose, Big talk and little use. Spoilers of pleasure, We take their measure. (_Guilhem de Peitieu._)
III
_Descant on a Theme by Cerclamon_
When the sweet air goes bitter, And the cold birds twitter Where the leaf falls from the twig, I sough and sing that Love goes out Leaving me no power to hold him.
Of love I have naught Save troubles and sad thought, And nothing is grievous as I desirous, Wanting only what No man can get or has got.
With the noblest that stands in men’s sight, If all the world be in despite I care not a glove. Where my love is, there is a glitter of sun; God give me life, and let my course run ’Till I have her I love To lie with and prove.
I do not live, nor cure me, Nor feel my ache--great as it is, For love will give me no respite, Nor do I know when I turn left or right nor when I go out. For in her is all my delight And all that can save me.
I shake and burn and quiver From love, awake and in swevyn, Such fear I have she deliver me not from pain, Who know not how to ask her; Who can not. Two years, three years I seek And though I fear to speak out, Still she must know it.
If she won’t have me now, Death is my portion, Would I had died that day I came into her sway. God! How softly this kills! When her love look steals on me. Killed me she has, I know not how it was, For I would not look on a woman.
Joy I have none, if she make me not mad Or set me quiet, or bid me chatter. Good is it to me if she flout Or turn me inside out, and about. My ill doth she turn sweet. How swift it is. For I am traist and loose, I am true, or a liar, All vile, or all gentle, Or shaking between, as she desire, I, Cerclamon, sorry and glad, The man whom love had and has ever; Alas! who’er it please or pain, She can me retain.
I am gone from one joy, From one I loved never so much, She by one touch Reft me away; So doth bewilder me I can not say my say nor my desire, And when she looks on me It seems to me I lose all wit and sense.
The noblest girls men love ’Gainst her I prize not as a glove Worn and old. Though the whole world run rack And go dark with cloud, Light is Where she stands, And a clamour loud in my ears.
IV
_Vergier_
In orchard under the hawthorne She has her lover till morn, Till the traist man cry out to warn Them. God how swift the night, And day comes on.
O Plasmatour, that thou end not the night, Nor take my belovéd from my sight, Nor I, nor tower-man, look on daylight, ’Fore God, How swift the night, And day comes on.
“Lovely thou art, to hold me close and kisst, Now cry the birds out, in the meadow mist, Despite the cuckold, do thou as thou list, So swiftly goes the night And day comes on.
“My pretty boy, make we our play again Here in the orchard where the birds complain, ’Till the traist watcher his song unrein, Ah God! How swift the night And day comes on.”
“Out of the wind that blows from her, That dancing and gentle is and Thereby pleasanter, Have I drunk a draught, sweeter than scent of myrrh. Ah God! How swift the night. And day comes on.”
_Venust the lady, and none lovelier, For her great beauty, many men look on her, Out of my love will her heart not stir. By God, how swift the night._ _And day comes on._
V
_Canzon_
I only, and who elrische pain support Know out love’s heart o’erborne by overlove, For my desire that is so firm and straight And unchanged since I found her in my sight And unturned since she came within my glance, That far from her my speech springs up aflame; Near her comes not. So press the words to arrest it.
I am blind to others, and their retort I hear not. In her alone, I see, move, Wonder.... And jest not. And the words dilate Not truth; but mouth speaks not the heart outright: I could not walk roads, flats, dales, hills, by chance, To find charm’s sum within one single frame As God hath set in her t’assay and test it.
And I have passed in many a goodly court To find in hers more charm than rumour thereof ... In solely hers. Measure and sense to mate, Youth and beauty learned in all delight, Gentrice did nurse her up, and so advance Her fair beyond all reach of evil fame, To clear her worth, no shadow hath oppresst it.
Her contact flats not out, falls not off short.... Let her, I pray, guess out the sense hereof For never will it stand in open prate Until my inner heart stand in daylight, So that heart pools him when her eyes entrance, As never doth the Rhone, fulled and untame, Pool, where the freshest tumult hurl to crest it.
Flimsy another’s joy, false and distort, No paregale that she springs not above ... Her love-touch by none other mensurate. To have it not? Alas! Though the pains bite Deep, torture is but galzeardy and dance, For in my thought my lust hath touched his aim. God! Shall I get no more! No fact to best it!
No delight I, from now, in dance or sport, Nor will these toys a tinkle of pleasure prove, Compared to her, whom no loud profligate Shall leak abroad how much she makes my right. Is this too much? If she count not mischance What I have said, then no. But if she blame, Then tear ye out the tongue that hath expresst it.
The song begs you: Count not this speech ill chance, But if you count the song worth your acclaim, Arnaut cares lyt who praise or who contest it. (_Arnaut Daniel, a. d. about 1190._)
MOEURS CONTEMPORAINES
I
_Mr. Styrax_ 1
Mr. Hecatomb Styrax, the owner of a large estate and of large muscles, A “blue” and a climber of mountains, has married at the age of 28, He being at that age a virgin, The term “virgo” being made male in mediaeval latinity; His ineptitudes Have driven his wife from one religious excess to another. She has abandoned the vicar For he was lacking in vehemence; She is now the high-priestess Of a modern and ethical cult, And even now Mr. Styrax Does not believe in aesthetics.
2
His brother has taken to gipsies, But the son-in-law of Mr. H. Styrax Objects to perfumed cigarettes. In the parlance of Niccolo Macchiavelli, “Thus things proceed in their circle”; And thus the empire is maintained.
II
_Clara_
At sixteen she was a potential celebrity With a distaste for caresses. She now writes to me from a convent; Her life is obscure and troubled; Her second husband will not divorce her; Her mind is, as ever, uncultivated, And no issue presents itself. She does not desire her children, Or any more children. Her ambition is vague and indefinite, She will neither stay in, nor come out.
III
_Soirée_
Upon learning that the mother wrote verses, And that the father wrote verses, And that the youngest son was in a publisher’s office, And that the friend of the second daughter was undergoing a novel, The young American pilgrim Exclaimed: “This is a darn’d clever bunch!”
IV
_Sketch 48 b._ II
At the age of 27 Its home mail is still opened by its maternal parent And its office mail may be opened by its parent of the opposite gender. It is an officer, and a gentleman, and an architect.
V
“_Nodier raconte ..._”
1
At a friend of my wife’s there is a photograph, A faded, pale, brownish photograph, Of the times when the sleeves were large, Silk, stiff and large above the _lacertus_, That is, the upper arm, And décolleté.... It is a lady, She sits at a harp, Playing,
And by her left foot, in a basket, Is an infant, aged about 14 months, The infant beams at the parent, The parent re-beams at its offspring. The basket is lined with satin, There is a satin-like bow on the harp.
2
And in the home of the novelist There is a satin-like bow on an harp.
You enter and pass hall after hall, Conservatory follows conservatory, Lilies lift their white symbolical cups, Whence their symbolical pollen has been excerpted, Near them I noticed an harp And the blue satin ribbon, And the copy of “Hatha Yoga” And the neat piles of unopened, unopening books,
And she spoke to me of the monarch, And of the purity of her soul.
VI
_Stele_
After years of continence he hurled himself into a sea of six women. Now, quenched as the brand of Meleagar, he lies by the poluphloisboious sea-coast.
παραἀ ΘῘνα Πολοϕλοίσβοιο Θαλἀσσης.
SISTE VIATOR.
VII
_I Vecchii_
They will come no more, The old men with beautiful manners.
Il était comme un tout petit garçon With his blouse full of apples And sticking out all the way round; Blagueur! “Con gli occhi onesti e tardi,”
And he said: “Oh! Abelard,” as if the topic Were much too abstruse for his comprehension, And he talked about “the Great Mary,” And said: “Mr. Pound is shocked at my levity,” When it turned out he meant Mrs. Ward.
And the other was rather like my bust by Gaudier, Or like a real Texas colonel, He said: “Why flay dead horses? “There was once a man called Voltaire.”
And he said they used to cheer Verdi, In Rome, after the opera, And the guards couldn’t stop them,
And that was an anagram for Vittorio Emanuele Re D’ Italia, And the guards couldn’t stop them.
Old men with beautiful manners, Sitting in the Row of a morning; Walking on the Chelsea Embankment.
VIII
_Ritratto_
And she said: “You remember Mr. Lowell, “He was your ambassador here?” And I said: “That was before I arrived.” And she said: “He stomped into my bedroom.... (By that time she had got on to Browning.) “ ... stomped into my bedroom.... “And said: ‘Do I, “‘I ask you, Do I “‘Care too much for society dinners?’ “And I wouldn’t say that he didn’t. “Shelley used to live in this house.”
She was a very old lady, I never saw her again.
HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY
(LIFE AND CONTACTS)
“VOCAT ÆSTUS IN UMBRAM”
_Nemesianus Ec. IV._
ODE POUR L’ELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE
I
For three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime” In the old sense. Wrong from the start--
No, hardly but, seeing he had been born In a half savage country, out of date; Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn; Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;
Ἵδυεν λάρ τοι πάνθ’, ὃς’ ἐνἰ Τροίη Caught in the unstopped ear; Giving the rocks small lee-way The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.
His true Penelope was Flaubert, He fished by obstinate isles; Observed the elegance of Circe’s hair Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.
Unaffected by “the march of events,” He passed from men’s memory in _l’an trentiesme De son eage_; the case presents No adjunct to the Muses’ diadem.
II
The age demanded an image Of its accelerated grimace, Something for the modern stage, Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;
Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries Of the inward gaze; Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase!
The “age demanded” chiefly a mould in plaster, Made with no loss of time, A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster Or the “sculpture” of rhyme.
III
The tea-rose tea-gown, etc. Supplants the mousseline of Cos, The pianola “replaces” Sappho’s barbitos.
Christ follows Dionysus, Phallic and ambrosial Made way for macerations; Caliban casts out Ariel.
All things are a flowing, Sage Heracleitus says; But a tawdry cheapness Shall outlast our days.
Even the Christian beauty Defects--after Samothrace; We see τὀ καλόν Decreed in the market place.
Faun’s flesh is not to us, Nor the saint’s vision. We have the press for wafer; Franchise for circumcision.
All men, in law, are equals. Free of Peisistratus, We choose a knave or an eunuch To rule over us.
O bright Apollo, τίν’ ἀνδρα, τίν’ ήρωά, τίνα θεὀν, Shall I place a tin wreath upon!
IV
These fought in any case, and some believing, pro domo, in any case ...
Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later ...
some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor” ... walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy; usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places.
Daring as never before, wastage as never before. Young blood and high blood, Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;
fortitude as never before
frankness as never before, disillusions as never told in the old days, hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies.
V
There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization,
Charm, smiling at the good mouth, Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,
For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books.
YEUX GLAUQUES
Gladstone was still respected, When John Ruskin produced “Kings’ Treasuries”; Swinburne And Rossetti still abused.
Fœtid Buchanan lifted up his voice When that faun’s head of hers Became a pastime for Painters and adulterers.
The Burne-Jones cartons Have preserved her eyes; Still, at the Tate, they teach Cophetua to rhapsodize;
Thin like brook-water, With a vacant gaze. The English Rubaiyat was still-born In those days.
The thin, clear gaze, the same Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin’d face, Questing and passive.... “Ah, poor Jenny’s case” ...
Bewildered that a world Shows no surprise At her last maquero’s Adulteries.
“SIENA MI FE’; DISFEÇEMI MAREMMA”
Among the pickled fœtuses and bottled bones, Engaged in perfecting the catalogue, I found the last scion of the Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.
For two hours he talked of Gallifet; Of Dowson; of the Rhymers’ Club; Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died By falling from a high stool in a pub ...
But showed no trace of alcohol At the autopsy, privately performed-- Tissue preserved--the pure mind Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed.
Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels; Headlam for uplift; Image impartially imbued With raptures for Bacchus, Terpsichore and the Church. So spoke the author of “The Dorian Mood,”
M. Verog, out of step with the decade, Detached from his contemporaries, Neglected by the young, Because of these reveries.
BRENNBAUM
_The_ sky-like limpid eyes, The circular infant’s face, The stiffness from spats to collar Never relaxing into grace; The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years, Showed only when the daylight fell Level across the face Of Brennbaum “The Impeccable.”
MR NIXON
In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer Dangers of delay. “Consider “Carefully the reviewer.
“I was as poor as you are; “When I began I got, of course, “Advance on royalties, fifty at first,” said Mr. Nixon, “Follow me, and take a column, “Even if you have to work free.
“Butter reviewers. From fifty to three hundred “I rose in eighteen months; “The hardest nut I had to crack “Was Dr. Dundas.
“I never mentioned a man but with the view “Of selling my own works. “The tip’s a good one, as for literature “It gives no man a sinecure.
“And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece. “And give up verse, my boy, “There’s nothing in it.”
* * * * *
Likewise a friend of Bloughram’s once advised me: Don’t kick against the pricks, Accept opinion. The “Nineties” tried your game And died, there’s nothing in it.
X
Beneath the sagging roof The stylist has taken shelter, Unpaid, uncelebrated, At last from the world’s welter
Nature receives him, With a placid and uneducated mistress He exercises his talents And the soil meets his distress.
The haven from sophistications and contentions Leaks through its thatch; He offers succulent cooking; The door has a creaking latch.
XI
“Conservatrix of Milésien” Habits of mind and feeling, Possibly. But in Ealing With the most bank-clerkly of Englishmen?
No, “Milésian” is an exaggeration. No instinct has survived in her Older than those her grandmother Told her would fit her station.
XII
“Daphne with her thighs in bark Stretches toward me her leafy hands,”-- Subjectively. In the stuffed-satin drawing-room I await The Lady Valentine’s commands,
Knowing my coat has never been Of precisely the fashion To stimulate, in her, A durable passion;
Doubtful, somewhat, of the value Of well-gowned approbation Of literary effort, But never of The Lady Valentine’s vocation:
Poetry, her border of ideas, The edge, uncertain, but a means of blending With other strata Where the lower and higher have ending;
A hook to catch the Lady Jane’s attention, A modulation toward the theatre, Also, in the case of revolution, A possible friend and comforter.
* * * * *
Conduct, on the other hand, the soul “Which the highest cultures have nourished” To Fleet St. where Dr. Johnson flourished;