Part 4

And if it be no evil prayer to breathe, Oh, let no stranger saint or seraphim Wait there to lead up to the judgment seat, My timid soul with weeping eyes and dim.

But let them come, those dear and lovely ghosts, In all their human guise and lustihood, To stand upon that shore and call me home, Waving their joyful hands as once they stood-- As once they stood!

ARTHUR SYMONS

TANAGRA

To Cavalieri dancing

Tell me, Tanagra, who made Out of clay so sweet a thing? Are you the immortal shade Of a man's imagining? In your incarnation meet All things fair and all things fleet.

Arrow from Diana's bow, Atalanta's feet of fire, Some one made you long ago, Made you out of his desire. Waken from the sleep of clay And rise and dance the world away.

GIOVANNI MALATESTA AT RIMINI

Giovanni Malatesta, the lame old man, Walking one night, as he was used, being old, Upon the grey seashore at Rimini, And thinking dimly of those two whom love Led to one death, and his less happy soul For which Cain waited, heard a seagull scream, Twice, like Francesca; for he struck but twice. At that, rage thrust down pity; for it seemed As if those windy bodies with the sea's Unfriended heart within them for a voice Had turned to mock him, and he called them friends, And he had found a wild peace hearing them Cry senseless cries, halloing to the wind. He turned his back upon the sea; he saw The ragged teeth of the sharp Apennines Shut on the sea; his shadow in the moon Ploughed up a furrow with an iron staff In the hard sand, and thrust a long lean chin Outward and downward, and thrust out a foot, And leaned to follow after. As he saw His crooked knee go forward under him And after it the long straight iron staff, "The staff," he thought, "is Paolo: like that staff And like that knee we walked between the sun, And her unmerciful eyes"; and the old man, Thinking of God, and how God ruled the world, And gave to one man beauty for a snare And a warped body to another man, Not less than he in soul, not less than he In hunger and capacity for joy, Forgot Francesca's evil and his wrong, His anger, his revenge, that memory, Wondering at man's forgiveness of the old Divine injustice, wondering at himself: Giovanni Malatesta judging God.

LA MELINITE: MOULIN ROUGE

Olivier Metra's Waltz of Roses Sheds in a rhythmic shower The very petals of the flower; And all is roses, The rouge of petals in a shower.

Down the long hall the dance returning Rounds the full circle, rounds The perfect rose of lights and sounds, The rose returning Into the circle of its rounds.

Alone, apart, one dancer watches Her mirrored, morbid grace; Before the mirror, face to face, Alone she watches Her morbid, vague, ambiguous grace.

Before the mirror's dance of shadows She dances in a dream, And she and they together seem A dance of shadows, Alike the shadows of a dream.

The orange-rosy lamps are trembling Between the robes that turn; In ruddy flowers of flame that burn The lights are trembling: The shadows and the dancers turn.

And, enigmatically smiling, In the mysterious night, She dances for her own delight, A shadow smiling Back to a shadow in the night.

EVELYN UNDERHILL

IMMANENCE

I come in the little things, Saith the Lord: Not borne on morning wings Of majesty, but I have set My Feet Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod. There do I dwell, in weakness and in power; Not broken or divided, saith our God! In your strait garden plot I come to flower: About your porch My Vine Meek, fruitful, doth entwine; Waits, at the threshold, Love's appointed hour.

I come in the little things, Saith the Lord: Yea! on the glancing wings Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet Your hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes That peep from out the brake, I stand confest. On every nest Where feathery Patience is content to brood And leaves her pleasure for the high emprise Of motherhood-- There doth my Godhead rest.

I come in the little things, Saith the Lord: My starry wings I do forsake, Love's highway of humility to take; Meekly I fit my stature to your need. In beggar's part About your gates I shall not cease to plead-- As man, to speak with man-- Till by such art I shall achieve My Immemorial Plan, Pass the low lintel of the human heart.

INTROVERSION

What do you seek within, O Soul, my Brother? What do you seek within? I seek a life that shall never die, Some haven to win From mortality.

What do you find within, O Soul, my Brother? What do you find within? I find great quiet where no noises come. Without, the world's din: Silence in my home.

Whom do you find within, O Soul, my Brother? Whom do you find within? I find a friend that in secret came: His scarred hands within He shields a faint flame.

What would you do within, O Soul, my Brother? What would you do within? Bar door and window that none may see: That alone we may be (Alone! face to face, In that flame-lit place!) When first we begin To speak one with another.

ICHTHUS

Threatening the sky, Foreign and wild the sea, Yet all the fleet of fishers are afloat; They lie Sails furled Each frail and tossing boat, And cast their little nets into an unknown world. The countless, darting splendours that they miss, The rare and vital magic of the main, The which for all their care They never shall ensnare-- All this Perchance in dreams they know; Yet are content And count the night well spent If so The indrawn net contain The matter of their daily nourishment.

The unseizable sea, The circumambient grace of Deity, Where live and move Unnumbered presences of power and love, Slips through our finest net: We draw it up all wet, A-shimmer with the dew-drops of that deep. And yet For all their toil the fishers may not keep The instant living freshness of the wave; Its passing benediction cannot give The mystic meat they crave That they may live.

But on some stormy night We, venturing far from home, And casting our poor trammel to the tide, Perhaps shall feel it come Back to the vessel's side, So easy and so light A child might lift, Yet hiding in its mesh the one desired gift; That living food Which man for ever seeks to snatch from out the flood.

MRS MARGARET L. WOODS

SONGS

I've heard, I've heard The long low note of a bird, The nightingale fluting her heart's one word.

I know, I know Pink carnations heaped with snow. Summer and winter alike they blow.

I've lain, I've lain Under roses' delicate rain, That fall and whisper and fall again.

Come woe, come white Shroud o' the world, black night! I have had love and the sun's light.

THE CHANGELING

When did the Changeling enter in? How did the Devil set him a gin Where the little soul lay like a rabbit Faint and still for a fiend to grab it? I know not.

Where was the fount of our dishonour? Was it a father's buried sin? Brought his mother a curse upon her? I trow not.

So pretty Body and soul, the child began. He carolled and kissed and laughed and ran, A glad creature of Earth and Heaven, And the knowledge of love and the secret of pity, That need our learning, God to him at his birth had given.

One remembers Trifles indeed--the backward-turning Way he would smile from the field at play. Sometimes the Thing that sits by the embers Smiles at me--devil!--the selfsame way. If only early enough one had guessed, Known, suspected, watched him at rest, Noted the Master's sign and fashion, And unbefooled by the heart's compassion, Undeterred by form and feature, Caught the creature, Tried by the test of water and fire, Pierced and pinioned with silver wire, Circled with signs that could control, Battered with spells that tame and torture The demon nature, Till he writhed in his shape, a fiend confest, And vanished-- Then had come back, the poor soul banished, Then had come back the little soul. But now there is nothing to do or to say. Will no one grip him and tear him away, The Thing of Blood that gnaws at my breast?

Perhaps he called me and I was dumb. Unconcerned I sat and heard Little things, Ivy tendrils, a bird's wings, A frightened bird-- Or faint hands at the window-pane? And now he will never come again, The little soul. He is quite lost.

I have summoned him back with incantations Of heart-deep sobs and whispering cries, Of anguished love and travail of prayer, Nothing has answered my despair But long sighs Of pitiful wind in the fir-plantations. Poor little soul! He cannot come. Perchance on a night when trees were tost, The Changeling rode with his cavalcade Among the clouds, that were tossing too, And made the little soul afraid. They hunted him madly, the howling crew, Into the Limbo of the lost, Into the Limbo of the others Who wander crying and calling their mothers.

Now I know The creatures that come to harry and raid How they ride in the airy regions, Dance their rounds on meadow and moor, Gallop under the earth in legions, Hunt and holloa and run their races Over tombs in burial-places.

In the common roads where people go, Masked and mingled with human traces, I have marked, I who know, In the common dust a devil's spoor.

To somebody's gate A Thing is footing it, cares not much Whether he creep through an Emperor's portal And steal the fate Of a Prince, or into a poor man's hutch-- For the grief will be everywhere as great And he'll everywhere spread the smirch of sin-- So long as a taste of our blood he may win, So long as he may become a mortal.

I beseech you, Prince and poor man, to watch the gate. The heart is poisoned where he has fed, The house is ruined that lets him in. Yet I know I shall never teach you. With the voice of the dear and the eyes of the dead He will come to the door, and you'll let him in.

If I could forget Only that ever I had a child, If only upon some mirk midnight, When he stands at the door, all wet and wild, With his owl's feather and dripping hair, I could lie warm and not care, I should rid myself of this Changeling yet.

I carried my woe to the Wise Man yonder, "You sell forgetfulness, they say. How much to pay To forget a son who is my sorrow?"

The Wise Man began to ponder. "Charms have I, many a one, To make a woman forget her lover, A man his wife or a fortune fled, To make the day forget the morrow, The doer forget the deed he has done, But a mighty spell must I borrow To make a woman forget her son, For this I will take a royal fee. Your house," said he, "The storied hangings richly cover, On your banquet table there were six Golden branched candlesticks, And of noble dishes you had a score. The crown you wore I remember, the sparkling crown. All of these, Madam, you shall pay me down. Also the day I give you ease Of golden guineas you pay a hundred."

Laughing I left the Wise Man's door. Has he found such things where a Changeling sits? The home is darkened from roof to floor, The house is naked and ravaged and plundered Where a Changling sits On the hearthstone, warming his shivering fits.

He sits at his ease, for he knows well He can keep his post. He has left me nothing to pay the cost Of snatching my heart from his private Hell.

Yet when all is done and told I am glad the Wise Man in the City Had no pity For me, and for him I had no gold.

Because if I did not remember him, My little child--Ah! What should we have, He and I? Not even a grave With a name of his own by the river's brim. Because if among the poppies gay, On the hill-side, now my eyes are dim, I could not fancy a child at play, And if I should pass by the pool in the quarry And never see him, a darling ghost, Sailing a boat there, I should be sorry-- If in the firelit, lone December I never heard him come scampering post Haste down the stair--if the soul that is lost Came back, and I did not remember.

THE POETRY SOCIETY

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A BOOK TO ENTHUSE OVER

Cornish Catches and Other Verses

By BERNARD MOORE

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_THE TIMES_ says: "There are 'other verses' of a pleasing quality in the latter half of the book; but it is the Cornish Catches occupying the first thirty pages which we linger over with delight; for Mr Moore in his well-chiselled little pieces brings out all the winning beauty of the Western speech. They are all happy...."

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_MANCHESTER CITY NEWS_ in a column headed "A Cornish Singer" says: "He is not only a poet of words but ideas. The dialect poems are particularly characteristic with their alternate sturdiness and wistfulness. Mr Moore is particularly happy in suggesting either a story or character sketch."

A FAMOUS NOVELIST AS POET

Willow's Forge AND OTHER POEMS

By SHEILA KAYE SMITH

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"Miss Kaye Smith is to be congratulated on her first essay into poetry."--_Yorkshire Observer._

* * * * *

The Fame Seeker AND OTHER POEMS

By JANET JEFFREY

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