Classic Poem

And so I come back to this funny old town
Where professors argue each other down
And every one is in seven movements
For every kind of Modern Improvements;
And there isn't a moment of real ease,
But students come from the seven seas
And we boast a professor of Neo-Chinese —
A thing to astonish the upland heather —
And more than the universities
Of all High Germany put together
Can show the like of.
The upland heather
It stretches for miles and miles and miles
Wine-purple and brooding and ancient and blasted,
An endless trackless, heather forest.
And so, between whiles,
When my mind's all reeling with Modern Movements
And my eyes are weary, my head at its sorest
And the best of beer has lost its zest,
I go up there to get a rest
And think of the dead. . . .
For it's nothing but dead and dead and dying
Dead faiths, dead loves, lost friends and the flying,
Fleet minutes that change and ruin our shows,
And the dead leaves flitter and autumn goes,
And the dead leaves flitter down thick to the ground,
And pomps go down and queens go down
And time flows on, and flows and flows.

But don't mistake me, the leaves are wet
And most of their copper splendour is rotten
Like most of the dead — and still and forgotten,
And I don't feel a spark of regret
Not a spark. . . .

I am sitting up here on a sort of a mound
And the dull red sun has just done sinking
And it's grown by this woodside fully dark
And I'm just thinking. . . .
And the valley lands and the forests and tillage
Are wrapped in mist. There's the lights of a village,
Of one — of three — of four! —
Four I can count from this high old mound. . .
In Tilly's time you could count eighteen. . .
You know of Tilly? A general
Who ravaged this land. There was Prince Eugene,
And Marshal Saxe and Wallenstein,
And God knows who . . . They are dead men all
With tombs in cathedrals here and there,
Just food for tourists. It's rather funny,
They ravaged these cornfields and burned the hamlets,
They drove off the cattle and took the honey,
And clocks and coin and chests and camlets:
Reduced the numbers to four from eighteen;
You can see four glimmers of light thro' the gloom.
But as for Marshal Wallenstein,
No doubt he's somewhere in some old tomb
With a marble pillow beneath his head.
He was shot. Or he wasn't. Anyhow he's dead!
And I'm sitting here on an old, smashed mound.
And the wood-leaves are flittering down to the ground.
And I'm sitting here and just thinking and wondering,
Clear thoughts and pictures, dull thoughts and blundering.
It's all one. But I wonder . . . I wonder. . .

And under
The earth of the barrow there's something moving
Or no — not moving. Yes, shoving, shoving,
Through the thick, dark earth — a fox or a mole.
Phui! But it's dark! I can't grasp the whole
Of my argument — No. I'm not dropping to sleep!
(I can hear the leaves in the dark, cold wood!
That's a boar by his rustling!) " From good to good ,
And good to better you say we go. "
(There's an owl overhead.) " You say that's so? "
My American friend of the rue de la Paix?
" Grow better and better from day to day. "
Well, well I had a friend that's not a friend to-day;
Well, well, I had a love who's resting in the clay
Of a suburban cemetery. " Friend ,
My Yankee friend . " (He's mighty heavy and tusky,
Judged by his rustlings, that old boar in the wood)
" From good to good!
Have you found a better bay than old Sandusky?
Or I a better friend than the one that's left me? "
" No Argument? — Well I'm not arguing
I came out here to think " —
Now what's that thing
That's coursing o'er dead leaves. It's not a boar!
Some sort of woman! A Geheimrath's cook
Come out to meet her lover of the Ninth —
An Uhlan Regiment! You know the Uhlans,
Who charged at Mars La Tour; that's on their colours.

But that little wretch.
Whoever heard such kissing! Sighs now! Groans!
In the copper darkness of these wet, high forests.
Well, well, that's no affair of mine to-night.
I came out here though, yes, I'd an engagement
With Major Hahn to give him his revenge —
What was it? At roulette? But I'd a headache!
I came out here to think about that Queen!
The Chinese one — the one I saw in Paris.
To-night's the thirtieth. . . the thirty-first.
Why, yes, it's All Souls' Eve. That's why I'm morbid
With thoughts of All the Dead. . . That Chinese Queen
She never kissed her lover. But a queer,
A queer, queer look came out on her rice white face!
I never knew such longing was in the world,
Though not a feature stirred in her! No kisses!
But there she wavered just behind his back
With her slanting eyes. No moth about a flame,
No seabird in the storm round a lighthouse glare
Was e'er so lured to the ruin and wreck of love.
And he knelt there with such a queer, queer face
A queer, queer smile, and his uplifted hands
He prayed as we pray to a Queen in dragon silk;
His hands rubbed palm on palm. And so she swayed
And swayed just like a purple butterfly
Above the open jaws of a coral snake.

But she
Should have been dead nine thousand years and more,
Says our Chinese professor. For such acting
Was proper to the days and time of TSüang:
It's hopelessly demoded, dead and gone!
To-day we have — Chinese chiropodists
Who smile like toads at Paris mannequins
In the sacred name of Progress. Well, well, well!
I'm not regretting it — No vain regrets!
What's that. . . .

Out of the loom of the Philosopher's wood
Two figures brushing on the frozen grass.
The Uhlan and the cook. So I cried out:
" So late at night and not yet in the barracks!
Aren't you afraid of ghosts? " . . . " Oh ghosts! oh ghosts, "
I got my answer: " Friend,
In our old home the air's so thick with ghosts
You couldn't breathe if they were an objection! "
And so I said: " Well, well! " to make them pass. . . .

Just a glimmer of light there was across the grass
And on my barrow mound. Upon his head
The gleam of a helmet, and some sort of pelt
About his shoulders and the loom of a spear.
You never know these German regiments,
The oddest uniforms they have; and as for her
Her hair was all across her shoulders and her face,
Woodland embraces bring the hairpins out . . .
" My friend, " I said, " you'd better hurry home
Or else you'll lose your situation! " They
Bickered in laughter and the man just said:
" You're sitting on it! "
So I moved a little,
Apologetically, just as it
It was his table in a restaurant.
So he said calmly, looking down at me:
" They call these mounds the Hunnen Gräber — Graves
Of Huns — a modern, trifling folk!
We've slept in them well on nine thousand years
My wife and I. The dynasty TSüang
Then reigned in China — well, you know their ways
Of courting. But your specialty just now
I understand's not human life but death.
I died with a wolf at my throat, this woman here
With a sword in her stomach. Yes she fell on it
To keep me company in that tumulus.
Millions and millions of dead there lie round here
In the manaeuvre grounds of the Seventeenth.
Oh, yes, I'm up to date, why not, why not?
When they've the Sappers here in garrison
The silly chaps come digging in these mounds
For practice; but they've not got down to us.
The Seventeenth just scutter up and down
At scaling practice and that's rather fun.
There was a sergeant took a chap by the ear
Last year and threw him bodily down the mound;
Then the recruit up with his bayonet
And stuck him through the neck — no end of things
We find for gossip in nine thousand years!
A Mongol people? Yes of course we were
I knew her very well that Queen who loved,
With the rice white face — " Ta-why's " her proper name
And that adultery bred heaps of trouble!
You've heard of Troy? " Tra-hai's " the real name
As Ta-why's Helen. Well, you know all that?
That trouble sent us here, being burnt out
By the King called Ko-ha! And we wandered on
In just ten years of burning towns. This slave
My wife came from Irkutsk way to the east
Where the tundra is — You know the nightingales
Come there in spring, and so they buried us
Finger to finger as the ritual is.
Not know the ritual? Well, a mighty chief
Is buried in a chamber like a room
Walled round with slabs of stone. But mighty lovers
Lie on their backs at both arms' length, so far
That just each little finger touches. Well
That's how they buried us. A hundred years
It took to get accustomed to the change.
We lay just looking up — just as you might
Upwards through quiet water at the stars,
The roots of the grass, and other buryings,
Lying remembering and touching fingers.
Just still and quiet. Then I heard a whisper
Lasting a hundred years or so; " Your lips, "
It said, " Your lips! your lips! your lips! " And then
It might have been five more score years. I felt
Her fingers crawling, crawling, up my wrist.
And always the voice, call, calling; " Give your lips! "
It must have taken me a thousand years
— The Dead are patient — just to know that she
Was calling for my lips. What an embrace!
My God what an embrace was ours through the Earth!
My friend, if you should chance to meet Old Death
That unprogressive tyrant, tell him this,
He execrates my name — but tell him this —
He calls me Radical! Red Socialist,
That sort of thing. But you just tell him this,
The revolutionary leader of his realms
Got his ambition from his dead girl's lips.
Tell him in future he should spare hot lovers,
Though that's too late! We're working through the earth,
By the score, by the million. Half his empire's lost.
How can he fight us? He has but one dart
For every lover of the sons of Ahva!
You call her Eve. This is a vulgar age " . . .
And so beside the woodland in the sheen
And shimmer of the dewlight, crescent moon
And dew wet leaves I heard the cry " Your lips!

Your lips! Your lips. " It shook me where I sat,
It shook me like a trembling, fearful reed,
The call of the dead. A multitudinous
And shadowy host glimmered and gleamed,
Face to face, eye to eye, heads thrown back, and lips
Drinking, drinking from lips, drinking from bosoms
The coldness of the dew — and all a gleam
Translucent, moonstruck as of moving glasses,
Gleams on dead hair, gleams on the white dead shoulders
Upon the backgrounds of black purple woods. . .

There came great rustlings from the copper leaves
And pushing outwards, shouldering, a boar
With seven wives — a monstrous tusky brute.
I rose and rubbed my eyes and all eight fled
Tore down the mountain through the thick of the leaves
Like a mighty wave of the sea that poured itself
Farther and farther down the listening night.
All round me was the clearing, and white mist
Shrouded the frosty tussocks of old grass.
And in the moonlight a wan fingerpost
(I could not read the lower row of words.)
Proclaimed: " Forbidden! " That's High Germany.
Take up your glasses. " Prosit! " to the past,
To all the Dead!