Forty-Two Poems [11]
drinkers laugh, the lovers sigh,
And thought how little all the world would change
If clowns were audience, and we the Show.
What starry music are they playing now?
What dancing in this dreary theatre?
Who is she with the moon upon her brow,
And who the fire-foot god that follows her? -
Follows among those unbelieved-in trees
Back-shadowing in their parody of light
Across the little cardboard balustrade;
And we, like that poor Faun who pipes and flees,
Adore their beauty, hate it for too bright,
And tremble, half in rapture, half afraid.
Play on, O furtive and heartbroken Faun!
What is your thin dull pipe for such as they?
I know you blinded by the least white dawn,
And dare you face their quick and quivering Day?
Dare you, like us, weak but undaunted men,
Reliant on some deathless spark in you
Turn your dull eyes to what the gods desire,
Touch the light finger of your goddess; then
After a second's flash of gold and blue,
Drunken with that divinity, expire?
O dance, Diana, dance, Endymion,
Till calm ancestral shadows lay their hands
Gently across mine eyes: in days long gone
Have I not danced with gods in garden lands?
I too a wild unsighted atom borne
Deep in the heart of some heroic boy
Span in the dance ten thousand years ago,
And while his young eyes glittered in the morn
Something of me felt something of his joy,
And longed to rule a body, and to know.
Singer long dead and sweeter-lipped than I,
In whose proud line the soul-dark phrases burn,
Would you could praise their passionate symmetry,
Who loved the colder shapes, the Attic urn.
But your far song, my faint one, what are they,
And what their dance and faery thoughts and ours,
Or night abloom with splendid stars and pale?
'Tis an old story that sweet flowers decay,
And dreams, the noblest, die as soon as flowers,
And dancers, all the world of them, must fail.
THE SENTIMENTALIST
There lies a photograph of you
Deep in a box of broken things.
This was the face I loved and knew
Five years ago, when life had wings;
Five years ago, when through a town
Of bright and soft and shadowy bowers
We walked and talked and trailed our gown
Regardless of the cinctured hours.
The precepts that we held I kept;
Proudly my ways with you I went:
We lived our dreams while others slept,
And did not shrink from sentiment.
Now I go East and you stay West
And when between us Europe lies
I shall forget what I loved best
Away from lips and hands and eyes.
But we were Gods then: we were they
Who laughed at fools, believed in friends,
And drank to all that golden day
Before us, which this poem ends.
DON JUAN IN HELL
(from Baudelaire.)
The night Don Juan came to pay his fees
To Charon, by the caverned water's shore,
A beggar, proud-eyed as Antisthenes,
Stretched out his knotted fingers on the oar.
Mournful, with drooping breasts and robes unsewn
The shapes of women swayed in ebon skies,
Trailing behind him with a restless moan
Like cattle herded for a sacrifice.
Here, grinning for his wage, stood Sganarelle,
And here Don Luis pointed, bent and dim,
To show the dead who lined the holes of Hell,
This was that impious son who mocked at him.
The hollow-eyed, the chaste Elvira came,
Trembling and veiled, to view her traitor spouse.
Was it one last bright smile she thought to claim,
Such as made sweet the morning of his vows?
A great stone man rose like a tower on board,
Stood at the helm and cleft the flood profound:
But the calm hero, leaning on his sword,
Gazed back, and would not offer one look round.
THE BALLAD OF ISKANDER
Aflatun and Aristu and King Iskander
Are Plato, Aristotle, Alexander.
Sultan Iskander sat him down
On his golden throne, in his golden crown,
And shouted, "Wine and flute-girls three,
And the Captain, ho! of my ships at sea."
He drank his bowl of wine; he kept
And thought how little all the world would change
If clowns were audience, and we the Show.
What starry music are they playing now?
What dancing in this dreary theatre?
Who is she with the moon upon her brow,
And who the fire-foot god that follows her? -
Follows among those unbelieved-in trees
Back-shadowing in their parody of light
Across the little cardboard balustrade;
And we, like that poor Faun who pipes and flees,
Adore their beauty, hate it for too bright,
And tremble, half in rapture, half afraid.
Play on, O furtive and heartbroken Faun!
What is your thin dull pipe for such as they?
I know you blinded by the least white dawn,
And dare you face their quick and quivering Day?
Dare you, like us, weak but undaunted men,
Reliant on some deathless spark in you
Turn your dull eyes to what the gods desire,
Touch the light finger of your goddess; then
After a second's flash of gold and blue,
Drunken with that divinity, expire?
O dance, Diana, dance, Endymion,
Till calm ancestral shadows lay their hands
Gently across mine eyes: in days long gone
Have I not danced with gods in garden lands?
I too a wild unsighted atom borne
Deep in the heart of some heroic boy
Span in the dance ten thousand years ago,
And while his young eyes glittered in the morn
Something of me felt something of his joy,
And longed to rule a body, and to know.
Singer long dead and sweeter-lipped than I,
In whose proud line the soul-dark phrases burn,
Would you could praise their passionate symmetry,
Who loved the colder shapes, the Attic urn.
But your far song, my faint one, what are they,
And what their dance and faery thoughts and ours,
Or night abloom with splendid stars and pale?
'Tis an old story that sweet flowers decay,
And dreams, the noblest, die as soon as flowers,
And dancers, all the world of them, must fail.
THE SENTIMENTALIST
There lies a photograph of you
Deep in a box of broken things.
This was the face I loved and knew
Five years ago, when life had wings;
Five years ago, when through a town
Of bright and soft and shadowy bowers
We walked and talked and trailed our gown
Regardless of the cinctured hours.
The precepts that we held I kept;
Proudly my ways with you I went:
We lived our dreams while others slept,
And did not shrink from sentiment.
Now I go East and you stay West
And when between us Europe lies
I shall forget what I loved best
Away from lips and hands and eyes.
But we were Gods then: we were they
Who laughed at fools, believed in friends,
And drank to all that golden day
Before us, which this poem ends.
DON JUAN IN HELL
(from Baudelaire.)
The night Don Juan came to pay his fees
To Charon, by the caverned water's shore,
A beggar, proud-eyed as Antisthenes,
Stretched out his knotted fingers on the oar.
Mournful, with drooping breasts and robes unsewn
The shapes of women swayed in ebon skies,
Trailing behind him with a restless moan
Like cattle herded for a sacrifice.
Here, grinning for his wage, stood Sganarelle,
And here Don Luis pointed, bent and dim,
To show the dead who lined the holes of Hell,
This was that impious son who mocked at him.
The hollow-eyed, the chaste Elvira came,
Trembling and veiled, to view her traitor spouse.
Was it one last bright smile she thought to claim,
Such as made sweet the morning of his vows?
A great stone man rose like a tower on board,
Stood at the helm and cleft the flood profound:
But the calm hero, leaning on his sword,
Gazed back, and would not offer one look round.
THE BALLAD OF ISKANDER
Aflatun and Aristu and King Iskander
Are Plato, Aristotle, Alexander.
Sultan Iskander sat him down
On his golden throne, in his golden crown,
And shouted, "Wine and flute-girls three,
And the Captain, ho! of my ships at sea."
He drank his bowl of wine; he kept