Classic Poem

to Osbert Sitwell

I

When we come to that dark house,
Never sound of wave shall rouse
The bird that sings within the blood
Of those who sleep in that deep wood:
For in that house the shadows now
Seem cast by some dark unknown bough.
The gardener plays his old bagpipe
To make the melons" gold seeds ripe;
The music swoons with a sad sound —
" Keep, my lad, to the good safe ground!
For once, long since, there was a felon
With guineas gold as the seeds of a melon,
And he would sail for a far strand
To seek a waking, clearer land —
A land whose name is only heard
In the strange singing of a bird.
The sea was sharper than green grass,
The sailors would not let him pass,
For the sea was wroth and rose at him
Like the turreted walls of Jerusalem,
Or like the towers and gables seen
Within a deep-boughed garden green.
And the sailors bound and threw him down
Among those wrathful towers to drown.
And oh, far best," the gardener said,
" Like fruits to lie in your kind bed —
To sleep as snug as in the grave
In your kind bed, and shun the wave,
Nor ever sigh for a strange land
And songs no heart can understand."

I hunted with the country gentlemen
Who, seeing Psyche fly, thought her a hen

And aimed at her; the mocking winged one
Laughed at their wingless state, their crooked gun.

Then on the water — green and jewelled leaves
Hiding ripe fruitage — every sportsman grieves,

Sitting and grumbling in their flat boat edged
With the soft feathers of the foam, scarce fledged.

But I will seek again the palace in the wood,
Where never bird shall rouse our sleepy blood

Within the bear-dark forests, far beyond
This hopeless hunting, or Time's sleepy bond.
...

The gardener was old as tongues of nightingales
That in the wide leaves tell a thousand Grecian tales

And sleep in golden nets of summer light.
" Sweet fig," he called me, and would stay the flight

Of plums that seemed Jove's golden-feathered rain.
Then birds like Fortunatus moved again

Among the boughs with silent feathered feet —
Spraying down dew like jewels amid the sweet

Green darkness; figs, each like a purse of gold,
Grow among leaves like rippled water green and cold.

" Beneath those laden boughs," the gardener sighs,
" Dreaming in endlessness, forgotten beauty lies.

Long since, a wandering and airy nymph
She seemed, when the bright ladies of the court
Came like the sylvan equipage Dian
Leads in her hunting through the deepest woods
And the Dodonian leaves of summer; only now
We see them smile, an echo through dim leaves."

Thus spoke the ancient man, wrinkled like old moonlight
Beneath dark boughs. Time dreamed away to night,
And while I heard the leaves like silver cymbals ring
He told me this old tale of Beauty's mournful christening: —

Oh, the pomp that passed those doors;
Trains still sweep the empty floors,
Pelongs, bulchauls, pallampores,

Soundless now as any breeze
Of amber and of orangeries
That sweeps from isles in Indian seas;

While in the floating and mysterious leaves
A silver sound like some forgotten music grieves.

The fairies all received an invitation,
Ordered their sedan-chairs with great elation,

Their richest rains, their plumes, and their bright trumps,
Like silver fruits that from dark branches grow in clumps.

The fays descend from each dark palanquin
With fanfares and with lute sounds, walk within

The shade; there, smiling dim as satyr-broods
Horned as moons, that haunt our deepest woods,

Are country gentlemen, so countrified
That in their rustic grace they try to hide

Their fingers sprouting into leaves; we see
Them sweet as cherries growing from a tree —

All fire and snow; they grow and never move,
Each in the grace of his Pan-haunted grove.

" Her mouth," the first fay said, " as fair shall be
As any gentle ripe red strawberry

That grows among the thickest silver leaves;
Her locks shall be as blond as these — the eve's

Great winds of beauty, fleeces from those flocks
That Dian tends in her deep woods, those locks

Shall seem." The second fairy said,
" Blessings like dew fall on her lovely head!

For lovely as the cherubim's soft breath,
Or Leda's love, whose cold melodious death

Is heavenly music to the sad world lost,
Her skin shall be as fair as silver frost."

But now within the dark shade of a deep-dreaming tree
A darker shade and panoply we see;

Drowning the soft sound of the plashing lute,
A great fanfare is heard, like unripe silver fruit.

" Who is this now who comes?" Dark words reply and swoon
Through all the high cold arbors of the moon:

" The slighted Laidronette, the unbidden fay,
Princess of the Pagodas. . . . Shades, make way."

The sedan-chair that hides her shade is mellow
As the trees' great fruit-jewels glittering yellow,

And round it the old turbaned ladies flock
Like apes that try to pluck an apricock.

The little fawning airs are trembling wan;
And silver as fair Leda's love, the swan,

The moonlight seems; the apricocks have turned to amber,
Cold as from the bright nymph Thetis' chamber,

And far away, the fountains sigh forlorn
As waving rustling sheaves of silver corn.

The wicked fay descended, mopping, mowing
In her wide-hooped petticoat, her water-flowing

Brightly-perfumed silks. . . . " Ah, ha, I see
You have remembered all the fays but me!"

(She whipped her panthers, golden as the shade
Of afternoon in some deep forest glade.)

" I am very cross because I am old
And my tales are told
And my flames jewel-cold.

I will make your bright birds scream,
I will darken your jewelled dream,
I will spoil your thickest cream.

I will turn the cream sour,
I will darken the bower,
I will look through the darkest shadows and lour —

And sleep as dark as the shade of a tree
Shall cover you. . . . Don't answer me!

For if the Princess prick her finger
Upon a spindle, then she shall be lost

As a child wandering in a glade of thorn,
With sleep like roses blowing soft, forlorn,
Upon each bough. This, madam, is the cost
Of your dark rudeness. But I will not linger."

And with a dark dream's pomp and panoply,
She swept out with her train; the soft sounds die
Of plumaged revelry bright as her train
Of courtiers; and all was night again.

Then through the deepest shades went Laidronette,
Princess of the Pagodas; in a pet
She left the domes, like rich and turbaned fruits
In the great gardens, and she left the lutes;

Back to her palace in her great sedan
She floats; worlds turn to snow before her fan.
She sweeps through the dark woods to her vast palace
Where now, at last, she can unleash her malice.

There in her room, an amber orange burned
On the Hesperides' dark trees and spurned
By that gold-peruked conqueror the Sun
(An Alexander whence plumed rivers run,

Fearing nis fierceness), Ethiopian shapes
The heat had kissed, with lips like burning grapes,
Unwigged her for the night, while her apes beg
That she will leave uncurtained that Roc's egg,

Her head, a mount of diamonds bald and big
In the ostrich feathers that compose her wig.
Her dwarfs as round as oranges of amber
Among the tall trees of the shadow clamber,

And in Night's deep domain she monstrous lies
With every little wicked dream that flies
And crawls; with old Bacchantes black with wine,
Whose very hair has changed into a vine,

And ancient satyrs whose wry wig of roses
Nothing but little rotting shames discloses;
They lie where shadows, cold as the night breeze,
Seem cast by rocks, and never by kind trees.

2

Next dawn, the ancient chamberlain
Came like someone who has lain

For years beneath the deepest water. . . .
He called the housekeeper's young daughter,

Where she sat in her bedgown,
Smoothing the dusky dawn's owl-down,

Until she leaned out through the wet
Leaves in her pale sarcenet.

" Forget the dawn is still owl-dark,
Forget the wet leaves . . . you must hark:

Owing to the fairy's malice,
No spindles must be in the palace."

In their dark leaf-hid bower the maidens chatter like a bird
Awakening: " Phoebe, Audrey, have you heard?

Oh, the dark panic here this very night,
The slighted fairy's anger and our good queen's fright,

And all our spindles banished! It would seem
That we have naught to do all day but dream!"

When the dew seemed like trembling silver leaves,
Cross Poll Troy looked out through the palace eaves. . . .

" Knot up your butter-yellow satin hair,
You lazy queans. . . . Come quick! come down the stair!

Anne, Anne,
Come draw the milk!
The cream must be as thick as silk
And yellow as the ripest sheen
Of apricock or nectarine.
Beneath the great leaves of that tree
Wicked Goat-foot I can see!
He'll steal the milk and steal the cream
While you lie in a lazy dream.
Fie, the lazy birds, the shames!
Phoebe, you must light the flames;
They will spring like greenest leaves
Growing round your bower's dim eaves.
Oh, the foliage shrill and green
In the fire! you lazy quean,
Dream not of your heart's desire —
Phoebe, come and light the fire!"

3

Then through the broad green leaves the gardener came
With a basket filled with honeyed fruits of dawn
Plucked from the thickest leaves. They heard him sing
As he walked where that pillared avenue
Of tall clear-fruited ripe trees grew
(For so the Palace seemed); and sweet
His song fled, soft as wind and fleet:

" Now the dawn lights seem
Ripe yellow fruits in a dream
Among the great green leaves
Of dawn and rustling sheaves.

The vast sun's rays like sheaves of wheat
Are gold and dry,
All bound together, growing yet —
An early offering. I

Heard the old King's lullabies
That his nurse, the South Wind, sighs,
As she heaps the honeycombs
Where he lies; the fruit-ripe domes

All around him, clear and sweet. . . .
And now the old King's cockscomb crown
Is nodding, falls a-down, a-down. . . .
Till the golden sheaves of the sun shall be mown
He will lie in the palace above the wheat.

The dew all tastes of ripening leaves;
Dawn's tendril fingers heap
The yellow honeyed fruits whose clear
Sounds flow into his sleep.

Those yellow fruits and honeycomb . . .
" Lulla-lullaby, "
Shrilled the dew on the broad leaves —
" Time itself must die —
( — must die). "

Now in the palace the maidens knead
And bake the little loaves of the bread,
Gold as the sun; they sighing said,
" When will the sun begin to seed
And waken the old Dead —
( — cold Dead)? "

4

Do, do,
Princess, do,
The fairy Chatte Blanche rocks you slow.
Like baskets of white fruit or pearls
Are the fairy's tumbling curls —
Or lattices of roses white
Where through the snows like doves take flight.
Do, do,
Princess, do,
How furred and white is the fallen snow.

Do, do,
Princess, do,
Like singing blackbirds are the eyes
Of the fairy old and wise.
A honeyed tune, the crystal drops
Of rain that falls, and never stops,
From flowers as white as seraphim's
Breath no winter ever dims. . . .
Do, do,
Princess, do,
Like birds that peck fruit sweet and shrill
With painted bill,
Flies down the snow.

The angels came with footsteps light,
They brushed her hair to make it bright,
They taught her to be sweet and wise
With kisses faint as butterflies,

They said, " When you go up to heaven
The nursery clock shall ne'er strike seven.
Your boudoir shall be of white satin,
You shall not say your prayers in Latin —

But you shall dance a minuet
On heaven's floors; frizzed mignonette
Shall seem your curls, of heaven's flowers
Most fair; and you shall sit in bowers

Of honeysuckle sweet as those pink fires
Whereby the angels dry their locks upon the light's gold wires."

And when the Queen called for her child, they brought
Only her image, formed to please the Court. . . .

An old man with a gardener's hat and red
Poll-parrot nose brought her a tiny bed

Whereon lies folded a small poppet rose
That in her dark leaves like a little babe lies close.

For after Laidronette's wild rage was spent,
The chamberlain to the child's nursery went

And sped her far away, like the East Wind,
To worlds of snow, far from the fairy's mind.

And there the Princess stayed till she was weaned
From milk of doves; then o'er the snow, bright-preened

By its sharp bill, the wind, the chamberlain,
Whisked the Princess back to the Court again.

5

But the Dowager Queen shook her old head:
" The rose, the peach, and the quince-flower red
And the strawberry flower in the snows are dead.
If none of the rose-tribe can survive
The snow, then how can our poppet live?"

And in her gown of quilted satin,
As red as quince-flowers, she reads Latin
Missals to the peaches that grow
Gilded with suns, then fade like snow;

They lie in the nets of dew at leisure.
And this is now her only pleasure —
This and her parrot long ago
Dead — but none dared tell her so,

And therefore the bird was stuffed and restored
To lifeless immortality; bored
It seemed, but yet it remained her own;
And she never knew the bird's soul had flown.

And so indeed seemed Destiny —
A bird fine-feathered, fair to see
In spite of its condor-wings, fierce beak,
And hooded eyes. . . . Grown old and weak,

Imprisoned now in a gilded cage
In her powder-closet, far from the rage
Of winter, it can only sing
Roulades, and preen its bright clipped wing

Upon her perfumed dressing table
In a cage with a foolish bell-hung gable,
Beneath the portrait of dead Queen Anne
(Whose life was the sweet air blown from a fan),

'Midst brightly perfumed water-flowing
Eighteenth-century silks where growing
Strawberry flowers of the frail frost
Upon the diamond-panes are lost.

6

At Easter when red lacquer buds sound far slow
Quarter-tones for the old dead Mikado,

Through avenues of lime trees, where the wind
Sounds like a chapeau chinois, shrill, unkind —

The Dowager Queen, a curling Korin wave
That flows forever past a coral cave,

With Dido, Queen of Carthage, slowly drives
(Her griffin dog that has a thousand lives)

Upon the flat-pearled and fantastic shore
Where curled and turbaned waves sigh, " Never more."

And she is sunk beneath a clear still lake
Of sleep — so frail with age she cannot wake. . . .

A strange horizon and a soundless sea
Must separate wise age from you and me —

They watch life's movements ripening like fruit
And sigh, knowing the gnarled and twisted root.

Oh, people building castles on the sand,
And taking one another by the hand,

What do you find within each other's eyes? —
What wisdom unknown of the lonely wise? —

The promise of what spring, the certainty
Of what eternal life to come — what lie?

Only the sound of Time's small muffled drum,
The sound of footsteps that will never come,

And little marches all beribboned gay
That lead down the lime avenues away

To the dark grave . . . we for a little weep,
Then pray a little, sinking into sleep.

How far is this wise age from the bright youth
Of Princess Cydalise, a warm wind from the south?

7

In the great nursery where the poppet maids
Seem small round fruits that grow in leafy glades,

The Princess grew in beauty till she seemed
That gentle maid of whom Endymion dreamed.

And in those evenings when the lovely moon
Shone through the smiling woods of deepest June,

Then through the curtains she would play " Bo-Peep"
With fleecy lamb-tailed clouds when she should sleep.

Sometimes the moon would sing her ancient songs
Of lovely ladies and forgotten wrongs;

And once she whispered that within the wood
An ancient satyr, wiser than the brood

From which he sprang, within a cloudy cave
Teaches philosophies both old and grave.

The Princess said " With my light step I will be gone
To peep within that far cave — but alone!"

Yet in the darkness her gazelle-light footsteps ran
Far from the cave of that wise satyr-man.

8

In the great gardens, after bright spring rain,
We find sweet innocence come once again,
White periwinkles, little pensionnaires
With muslin gowns and shy and candid airs,

That under saint-blue skies, with gold stars sown,
Hide their sweet innocence by spring winds blown,
From zephyr libertines that like Richelieu
And d'Orsay their gold-spangled kisses blew;

And lilies of the valley whose buds blond and tight
Seem curls of little school-children that light
The priests' procession, when on some saint's day
Along the country paths they make their way;

Forget-me-nots, whose eyes of childish blue,
Gold-starred like heaven, speak of love still true;
And all hte flowers that we call " dear heart,"
Who say their prayers like children, then depart

Into the dark. Amid the dew's bright beams
The summer airs, like Weber waltzes, fall
Round the first rose who, flushed with her youth, seems
Like a young Princess dressed for her first ball:

Who knows what beauty ripens from dark mold
After the sad wind and the winter's cold? —
But a small wind sighed, colder than the rose
Blooming in desolation, " No one knows."

9

The Princess was young as the innocent flowers
That bloom and love through the bright spring hours;
Sometimes she crept through locked doors to annoy
The palace housekeeper, cross Mrs. Troy,
Who kept all the whimpering sad ghosts locked
In a cupboard, was grieved and faintly shocked
If the Princess Jehanne, long since dead,
Whose hair was of costly long gold thread,
Would slip her flat body, like a gleaming
Quivering fish in a clear pool dreaming,
Through the deep mesh of a conversation,
Making some ghostly imputation;
Or if she frightened the maids till they wince
By stealing a withered gold-crowned quince
Wherewith they make preserves; in the gloom
She seems, as she glimmers round the room,
Like a lovely milk-white unicorn
In a forestial thicket of thorn.

Life was so still, so clear, that to wake
Under a kingfisher's limpid lake
In the lovely afternoon of a dream
Would not remote or stranger seem.
Everything seemed so clear for a while —
The turn of a head or a deep-seen smile;
Then a smile seen through wide leaves or deep water,
That beauty seemed to the King's daughter;
For a flying shadow passed, then gone
Was the gleam, and the Princess was alone.

How sweet seemed the flowers of spring again —
As pink as Susan and Polly and Jane,
Like country maids so sweet and shy
Who bloom and love and wonder not why:
Now when summer comes it seems the door
To the graves that lie under the trivial floor,
And the gardens hard to touch and shining,
Where no mirage dew lies whining.
And the sweet flowers seem for a fading while
Dear as our first love's youthful smile —
Till they bruise and wound the heart and sense
With their lost and terrible innocence.

10

When each clear raindrop holds for flight
A wingless world all plumage-bright,

Like crystal-clear wistaria
After the storm's hysteria,

The Princess visited the farm
Where all the beasts lie, furred as palm

That on the budding Easter boughs
Among the winds of beauty grows.

The farm-pond, fruitish-soft and ripe,
Was smooth as a daguerreotype:

The farm-maid, Rosa, under flimsy
Muslin skies, an angel's whimsy,

Walked. . . . Her daisy-frilled frock
Was stiff and harder than a rock;

Frills touch her feet, like plants foam down;
Her wooden trellised hair is brown.

The grass is furry as a bear
With heat; the donkey's panniers flare

With fruits whose clear complexions, waxen,
Hide in leaves all hairy-flaxen.

And from the sky, white angels lean
To stroke poor Dobbin's palm-furred skin,

And pluck from the round leaves the pink
Schoolgirlish summer fruits that wink —

Giggle insipidly. On winding
Roads whose dust seems gilded binding

Made for " Paul et Virginie"
(So flimsy-tough those roads are), see

The panniered donkey pass! The ass's
Thoughts, as through the dust he passes,

Where leaves seem parasols of gauze
Shading the striped wooden floors,

Seem like this: " When long ago
I worked for Balaam, never so

Appeared an angel! times are stranger
Now," and, turning to his manger,

He longs — for loads have made him weary —
For gentian stars, all rough and hairy,

And trees that bear white satin streamers
Of lovely flowers to please poor dreamers.

The Princess passed goats, gold as wheat,
With a kind white milky bleat,

Under the wide leaves mild as milk;
The billowing pigs with ears of silk;

Maternal cows with a white horn
As hard and dry as rustling corn —

All the poor shadows cast by our sad earthly dress
Of faults and virtues, wavering childishness!

II

When we were young, how beautiful life seemed! —
The boundless bright horizons that we dreamed,

And the immortal music of the Day and Night,
Leaving the echo of their wonder and their might

Deep in our hearts and minds. How could the dust
Of superstitions taught in schoolrooms, lust

In love's shape, dim our beauty? What dark lie,
Or cruelty's voice, could drown this God-made harmony?

For we knew naught of prison-worlds man built
Around us that we may not know man's guilt —

The endless vistas of the goatish faces
Echoing each other, and the basis

Of clay, the plumeless wings of Destiny,
The vistas leading only to the grave where we must lie.
...

Then all the beauty of the world lay deep
Mirrored within the beauty water-clear
Of flowering boughs; Helen and Deirdre, dreamed
And fading, wakened in that loveliness
Of watery branches. In that dead wild spring
Through the bird's shaken voice we heard God sing.

But age has dimmed our innocent paradise
With a faint shadow, shaken dust within our eyes —
And we are one now with the lonely wise,
Knowing the spring is only the clear mirage
Of an eternal beauty that is not.
Those were the days when the fleet summer seemed
The warmth and infinite loveliness of God,
Who cared for us, within a childish heaven.
We could believe then! Oh, the lips and eyes
That spoke of some far undimmed paradise!
Those were the days. . . .

12

Now that the summer only seems the sad
Mechanical dull action of the light
And shadow playing over a dead world —
Dead as my heart — it seems too long ago
For the remembrance of the beauty and the world we used to know;

When the warm lights of afternoon were mellow
As honeyed yellow pears, the Princess played
At Troy Town in the palace garden, tossed
And through the smiling leaves of summer lost
A round compact gold ball, the smaller image
Of this hard world, grown dry of any love —
Or walked upon the shore, watched the fantastic
Arabesque, the horsemanship of waves.
" Mademoiselle Fantoche, where do they go?"
A faint cold wind replied, " I do not know."

The Princess

" Upon the infinite shore by the sea
The lovely ladies are walking like birds,
Their gowns have the beauty, the feathery
Grace of a bird's soft raiment; remote
Is their grace and their distinction — they float
And peck at their deep and honeyed words
As though they were honeyed fruits; and this
Is ever their life, between sleep and bliss.
Though they are winged for enchanted flight,
They yet remain ever upon the shore
Of Eternity, seeking for nothing more,
Until the cold airs dull their beauty
And the snows of winter load those dazzling
Wings and no bird-throat can sing!

The Governante

" Look not on the infinite wave,
Dream not of the siren cave,
Nor hear the cold wind in the tree
Sigh of worlds we cannot see.

(She sings)

The hot muscatelle
Siesta time fell,
And the Spanish belle
Looked out through her shutters.

Under the eglantine
Thorny and lean
A shadow was playing a mandoline, mutters

Only this: " Wave
Your fan . . . siren cave
Never was cold as the wind from the grave. "

The governante
Came walking andante —
Sailed like a brigantine, black of brow.

And the falconette
Who danced a ballette
Sang on the pretty, the brunette bough:

" The ambassade
Of shadows invade
Death's most ultimate, peaceful shade. . . .
Lovely lady, where are you now? "
...

Come, Madam, you must eat your creamy curd,
Soft as the plumage of a bird —

Break through the jeweled branches' bird-soft gloom
And find Malinn within the cool still room."

13

Where reynard-haired Malinn
Walks by rock and cave,
The Sun, a Chinese mandarin,
Came dripping from the wave.

" Your hair seems like the sunrise
O'er Persia and Cathay —
A rose-red music strange and dim
As th' embalmed smile of seraphim,"

He said to her by the white wave
In the water-pallid day
(A forest of white coral boughs
Seemed the delicate sea-spray).

" In envy of your brighter hair —
Since, Madam, we must quarrel —
I've changed the cold flower-lovely spray
To branches of white coral;

And when, white muslin madam, you
Coquette with the bright wind,
I shall be but thin rose-dust;
He will be cold, unkind."

The flowers that bud like rain and dream
On thin boughs water-clear,
Fade away like a lovely music
Nobody will hear,

And Aeolus and Boreas
Brood among those boughs,
Like hermits haunting the dark caves
None but the wise man knows.

But Malinn's reynard-colored hair;
Amid the world grown sere,
Still seemed the Javanese sunrise
Whose wandering music will surprise
Into cold bird-chattering cries
The Emperor of China
Lying on his bier.

14

The birds, strange flashing glints of another life,
Peck at the fruits of summer that too soon
Will fade into a little gilded dust.
Then underneath the dancing, glancing bough
Came Malinn, with her round cheeks dyed as pink
As the insipid empty-tasting fruits
Of summer giggling through the rounded leaves.

Outside the stillroom was a cherry tree,
And through the dancing shadows she could see
Cross ancient Poll Troy come to do her duty. . . .
She had a cold frost-bitten beauty
Like blue moonlight smooth and cold
As amber; with her trembling old
Hands she tied the boughs aloft
Through the air all creamy soft;
Then on the sill of the woodland dairy,
Moving as quick and light as a fairy,
She put a bowl of the thickest cream
(As thick as chestnut flowers in a dream)
The gossiping naiad of the water,
In her sprigged gown like the housekeeper's daughter,
Giggles outside the stillroom; she
Plucks at the thick-bustled cherry tree.
And Poll is cross; she chases cherried
Country maids like thickest-berried
Cherry trees in their ruched gown
Till they run from the palace, down,
Like the sprigged muslin waterfalls
Of this clear country, to where calls
Pan, with his satyrs on the rocks
Feeding their wave-weary flocks.
The naiad's giggling irritates
Cross Poll Troy till at last she rates
Her through the thick-leaved cherry tree:
" My eyes are dim — I yet can see
You, lazy quean! Go work!" " I can't."
" I say you shall!" " I say I shan't!"
" But when the airs are creamy soft
And candle-flames are quince flowers, oft
Though my heart flutters like a bird,
All dream-dark, though as soft as curd
The moonlight seems still, from my bed
I rise and work, you sleepyhead!
Though I am dim and very old,
I wake the flames all jewel-cold,
The flames that seem, when they soar high,
Like waterfalls of jewels; you sigh,
While I, Miss, churn and make the curd,"
Piped Poll Troy like a small cross bird,
Then shuts the stillroom window, goes, for she
Still hears the naiad giggling through the tree.

But Malinn stays where the deep fire's red flowers
Should be as sweet and red as hawthorn bowers.

(She sings)

" The purring fire has a bear's dull fur,
Its warmth is sticky, dark as a burr. . . .
Come drowse, for now there is no eye
To watch, no voice to ask me why!
All night I hear my animal blood
Cry to my youth, " Come to the wood " . . .
But Darkness lumbers like a bear,
Grumbling, cumbers floor and stair. . . .
And on the eightieth step, I know
That on the moon's green lichen stain
I'll slip . . . and his dark breath will blow
My light out. . . . All will be still again!"
She cried out to the naiad: " I have torn
My flimsy dress upon a thicket's thorn;
The petal of a briar-rose lies forlorn
Upon it." Through the glinting leaves about the dairy
Appeared the cream-smug face of the wicked fairy. . . .
" You've torn your dress, my poppet. . . . I'll come in . . .
I've brought my spindle with me and I'll spin
A dress for you. . . .
Such gray-blue sleeves
Of muslin, like the wind of eves;
It shall have frills that flare like leaves,

The ribbons shall be preened,
Quilled prettily and sheened,

As when the courtier-wind plays with a flock
Of birds for battledore and shuttlecock —
Whose feathers stream like ribbons. I will hide
A jewel within each one: you'll seem a bride

For Ariel or some rich water-god. . . . Come, spin!"
Malinn looked through the leaves. . . . " Ma'am, please come in!"

Far off, the Martha-colored scabious
Grew among dust as dry as old Eusebius,

And underneath the cotton-nightcap trees
Wanders a little cold pig-snouted breeze.

Then in a gown all frilled with foliage like hell's fires,
And quilled like nests of cockatrices, with the light's gold wires

Sewing it stiff, old Laidronette the fairy
Crept through the window of the woodland dairy.

Butter and cream
Turn hard as a jewel,
The shrill flames scream,
The leaves mutter, " Cruel."

Through the dark jewelled leaves
See the Princess peep
As lovely as eve's
Soft wind of sleep.

She picks up the spindle. " Oh, the curious bliss! . . .
It pricks my finger now. How strange this is —
For I am like that lovely fawn-queen dead
Long since — pierced through the pool-clear heart," she said.

Her room now seems like some pale cave
Haunted by a goatish wave.

Through the curtains — waves of water —
Comes the housekeeper's young daughter,

Where like coral-branches seem
The candles' light, the candles' gleam.

" Does Echo mourn her lost love there?"
Echo is a courtly air

Sighing the name of Cydalise
Beside clear pools of sleep; she sees

Her like a nymph in some deep grot
(Where the wave whispers not),

Like a rose-bush in that cave
Haunted by a goatish wave.

15

Do, do,
Princess, do,
Like a tree that drips with gold you flow.
Soon beneath that peaceful shade
The whole world dreaming will be laid.
Do, do,
Princess, do,
The years like soft winds come and go.

Do, do,
Princess, do,
How river-thick flow your fleeced locks
Like the nymphs' music o'er the rocks. . . .
From satyr-haunted caverns drip
These lovely airs on brow and lip.
Do, do,
Princess, do,
Like a tree that drips with gold you flow.

16

But far from snow-soft sleep, the country Fair
Spangled like planets the bucolic air
Under hot Capricorn, with gold goat-legs,
Rough satyr hands, that in the sunburnt hay
Pulled the long wind-blown hair of Susans, Megs,
And under great trees dark as water lay.

It seemed a low-hung country of the blind —
A sensual touch upon the heart and mind;
Like crazy creaking chalets hanging low
From the dark hairiness of bestial skies
The clouds seem, like a potting-shed where grow
The flower-like planets for the gay flower-show:
Gold-freckled calceolarias,
Marigolds, cinerarias,
African marigolds, coarse-frilled,
And cherries, apricots, all chilled
With dew, for thus the bright stars seemed
To cottage windows where none dreamed.
But country gentlemen, who from their birth,
Like kind red strawberries, root deep in earth
And sleep as in the grave, dream far beyond
The sensual aspects of the hairy sky
That something hides, they have forgotten why!
And so they wander, aiming with their gun
At mocking feathered creatures that have learnt
That movement is but groping into life —
Under rough trees like shepherds' goatish tents.

And only Midsummer's wide country Fair
Seems to them heaven and hell, and earth and air.

The people ride in roundabouts; their hair
Is like the gardens of the Pleiades,
Or the first impulse from which music sprung,
And the dark sound in the smooth growth of trees;
They sparkle like the sea; their love is young
Forever, they are golden as the boy
Who gave an apple smoother than the breeze
To Lady Venus, lovely as the seas;
Their lips are like the gold fires burning Troy.

Like harsh and crackling rags of laughter seems
The music, bright flung as an angel's hair —
Yet awful as the ultimate despair
Of angels and of devils. . . . Something dreams
Within the sound that shrieks both high and low
Like some ventriloquist's bright-painted show
On green grass, shrill as anger, dulled as hate:
It shrieks to the dulled soul, " Too late, too late!"
Sometimes it jangles thin as the sharp wires
Whereon the poor half-human puppets move;
Sometimes it flares in foliage like hell's fires,
Or whispers insincerities for love.
A little hurdy-gurdy waltz sounds hollow
And bright-husked as the hearts of passing people,
Whose talk is only of the growth of plums
And pears: " Life goes, Death never comes,"
They sigh, while the bright music like a wave
Sings of far lands and many a siren cave.

And there are terrible and quick drum-taps
That seem the anguished beat of our own heart
Making an endless battle without hope
Against materialism and the world.
And sometimes terrible lumbering Darkness comes
Breaking the trivial matchboard floors that hide
From us the Dead we dare not look upon:
O childish eyes, O cold and murdered face —
Dead innocence and youth that were our own!

But age has brought a little subtle change
Like the withdrawal caused by the slow dropping
Of cold sad water on some vast stone image:
A slow withdrawal, a sad, gradual change
O'er tragic masks through which strange gods have cried —
Till seen through death-cold rents in saturnine leaves
They seem, almost, to echo in their form
The saturnine cold laughter of the water.
And this, too, is the fate of country masks
Of Comedy, as fresh as smiling fruits
Of summer, seen, vermilion, through deep leaves.

Now from the countrysides where people know
That Destiny is wingless and bemired,
With feathers dirty as a hen's, too tired
To fly — where old pig-snouted Darkness grovels
For life's mired rags among the broken hovels —
The country bumpkins come, with faces round
And pink as summer fruits, with hair as gold,
Sharp-pointed as the summer sun (that old
Bucolic mime, whose laughing pantomime
Is rearing pink fruits from the sharp white rime).
They come from little rooms, each a poor booth
(Seen through the summer leaves, all smiling smooth).
There, for all beauty, is the badly painted
Ancestral portrait of their gray-beard God;
In that poor clownish booth it is so cold
That small airs prick like grass, a wooden sword.

They pass along the country roads as thick
With walls and gardens as a childish heaven,
Where all the flowers seem a pink fleshly heart
And mirage-dews sigh, " We will never part."

And there are young Princesses at each inn,
And poor young people poverty makes wise,
With eyes like maps of the wide summer heaven;
And on the country roads there is a shrine,
As blue and sparkling as the sea-god's wine,
For country gods and goddesses of gardens,
Where every fruit and flower to old songs hardens:
Pomona, tinsel-pink as that bright pear,
The moon — she seems a poor bucolic clown
With dry and gilded foliage for her hair —
Where branches cast a shallow melancholy,
An owl-soft shadow falling over folly.
The pink schoolgirlish fruits hang in bright sheaves
Between the rounded and the Negroid leaves. . . .
And we remember nursery afternoons
When the small music-box of the sweet snow
Gave half-forgotten tunes, and our nurse told
Us tales that fell with the same tinkling notes. . . .
" Once on a time," she said, " and long ago."
Her voice was sweet as the bright-sparkling rime,
The fruits are cold as that sweet music's time —
Yet all those fruits like the bright snow will fade.

The country bumpkins travel to the Fair,
For Night and Day, and Hell and Heaven, seem
Only a clown's booth seen in some bad dream,
Wherefrom we watch the movements of our life
Growing and ripening like summer fruits
And dwindling into dust, a mirage lie:
Hell is no vastness, it has naught to keep
But little rotting souls and a small sleep.
It has the same bright-colored clarity we knew
In nursery afternoons so long ago,
Bright as our childish dreams; but we are old,
This is a different world; the snow lies cold
Upon our heart, though midsummer is here. . . .

17

But in the Court, the little people know
That Sleep is bright as fruit and soft as snow.

The sunlight seems like warm brocade
In the courtyard through the great arcade;

And golden as a Sultan's turban
The ripened medlars hang; the urban

Maids of the ladies at the palace
Talked like birds, with a gentle malice,

And on the wall, light-motes take shapes
Of vines with showers of emerald grapes.

" Queen Venus is a toothless crone
Blackened with age; all night alone

She lies, and no bird ever cries
For the wild starlight of her eyes."

" Once Helen was Prince Paris' doxy;
She meets her lovers now by proxy,

And wrinkled as the gold sea-sand
Are the breasts that once seemed heaven's land."

Look at that little shadow . . . oh, the joy,
As black as any jewelled Negro boy.

O little shade — see, I will call him Zambo!
Look where he silent sits and plays dumbcrambo,

There at the doors, with ghosts . . . and his mentero,
Half in brocaded sunlight, points to Zero!

Black fingers stretched to pluck the fruits of gold
Through the great leaves. . . . I feel a sudden cold

Sweet air from the arcade. . . . Again it goes.
The scented darkness seems as rich as snows,

Like cornucopias with ostrich plumes
And great gold fruits the clouds seem from these glooms."

Down in the great arcade of the courtyard
The fairies' coachmen, tawny as a pard,

Are talking of those feathered July eves
When all these dames desert their country leaves

(Though still as lovely as those moonlight maids
Juno and Dian, haunting their deep glades)

And in their coach, with maids and footmen, drive
Up to the great town houses where they live;

No longer they seem fairies, but we see
Them named as the old Duchess of Bohea,

And Madam Cards, the Marchioness of Gout;
Though they are old, they still enjoy a rout,

And through the dark leaves of the shadow-grove,
As wickedly as ever, eyes still rove

That dealt death from behind a fluttered fan
In Pompeii, Athens, before Time began.

In courtyards stained with the black night like wine,
Strange figures with hair lifted like a vine

Listen. . . . Who is it hearkens at their doors,
In the vast rooms and endless corridors?

It is goat-footed, mincing Death, who presses
His muzzle at the keyhole, hears their dresses

Rustling like rose-leaves. . . . They hit him with their fan,
Through scented moonlight move to their sedan.

When the hot gilded day will reach
A restful close,
A Japanese dwarf forest on the beach,
With dark trees of the shadow, the street grows.
How sand-like quivers the gold light
Under the large black leaves of shadow; mirage-bright
It lies, that dusty gold,
Untouched of any air;
Like Dead Sea fruit carved in cornelian, bold,
The faces of a man and Pleasure's mournful daughter

Show lovely in the light, a moment flare,
Then shadows fall again — dark agates through clear water.

Then these Chinoiseries, old ghosts of red and white
Smooth lacquer, in their palanquins take flight

For tea, and the last esoteric rage
Whose plumes may soften age, that harpy's cage.

Their smile is like Death's trap . . . a little gilded dust
Of valueless beauty from the sun soon must

Brush, for a fading while, each feathered cheek
That paradisal airs will never sleek —

And round them, as they move, the unfading sea, Eternity,
With its cool feathered airs of beauty, sighs of no horizons they can see.

What would these ghosts do, if the truths they know,
That were served up like snow-cold jewelled fruits
And the enfeathered airs of lutes,
Could be their guests in cold reality?
They would be shivering,
Wide-eyed as a Negro king
Seeing the evanescent mirage snow —
They would be silenced by the cold
That is of the spirit, endlessly
Unfabled and untold.

The swan's-breath winter these have known is finer
Fading than the early snows of China,

The poems of Queen Marguerite of Navarre
(Narcissus-petalled, perfumed like a star),

Or the Pleiades' citron-scented poems, fading like the snows,
Perfuming their long fingers till their eyelids close.

The winters these have known have been too kind,
With skies that seemed the bitter gilded rind

Of unattainable fruits; small women go
As white as ermines, and small winds are slow

As tunes upon a lute; the point-lace on the trees
And the pearl-berries of the snow upon dark bushes freeze,

And the snow falls, as sharp and bright, unripe and sour,
As the budding grapes' bright perfume or the sweet grape-flower.

The daughters of the Silence now are dead,
And these Chinoiserie ghosts,
These mummies in dim hosts,
Tread the long mournful avenues instead;
Alarm the soul by their cold interest —
For what can be the purpose of their quest?
When spring begins, in China and Tibet
Through bell'd lime-avenues a springe is set
To catch the softly-smiling wind,
The cherubim to catch and blind
As cruel men blind a singing-bird;
They trap them with the sound of lutes
And the softest smiles of fruits,
That these old ghosts may prove the feathered creatures real to hold,
And make them sing upon a perch of gold
In cages with a foolish bell-hung gable,
Amid the powders on their dressing table;
Till, trapped by our mortality, they die, and their small bones,
Sounding as sweetly as the west wind's tones,
Are sold because they sound like a small music-box;
Their slayers sell for silver the bright plumes in flocks,
To make the pillows for a sleepy head
That never dreams of heaven, but the lonely Dead.

And still they dwindle the bright world down to the gilded glooms
Of dust, these mummies, hieing, harrying fast
The Soul, their quarry, through the deserted tombs —
Or lying, lotus-eaters in a dreamful ease,
Perfuming their cold lips with silence and the past
Beneath the Asian darkness of smooth trees. . . .
Thus spoke the men; then sleep came colder than the rose
Blooming in desolation. . . . No one knows
The end there is to dust — it is the soul that shall survive them at the last.

18

Beneath a wan and sylvan tree,
Whose water-flowing beauty our tired eyes
Can feel from very far, two travelers lie;
And one is swarthy as the summer wind —
A man who traveled from a far country;
The other Soldan in his pomp and panoply
Seems like le Roi Soleil in all his pride
When his gold periwig is floating wide.
They talked together, those dark kings beneath the bough,
And their songs mingled with soft winds that flow.

THE SOLDAN ( Sings )

" When green as a river was the barley,
Green as a river the rye,
I waded deep and began to parley
With a youth whom I heard sigh.
" I seek, " said he, " a lovely lady,
A nymph as bright as a queen,
Like a tree that drips with pearls her shady
Locks of hair were seen;
And all the rivers became her flocks,
Though their wool you cannot shear,
Because of the love of her flowing locks.
The kingly sun like a swain
Came strong, unheeding of her scorn,
Wading in deeps where she has lain,
Sleeping upon her river lawn
And chasing her starry satyr train.
She fled and changed into a tree —
That lovely fair-haired lady. . . .
And now I seek through the sere summer
Where no trees are shady. "
" They say that Daphne never was more fair
With all the shaken pearls of her long hair —
The lovely tree that was Apollo's love,
To whom he brought his richest spoils — than she!
And oh that other Soldan, the hot sun
Burns not with love as I, with my dark pomp,
My helmet thick-plumed as a water-god's,
Whose cornucopia filled with dripping jewels
Is not so rich as treasuries I bear —
Dark spices, nard and spikenard, ambergris. . . .
No maid will change into a tree before my kiss!"

THE MAN FROM A FAR COUNTREE

" But I will be content with some far-lesser maid,
Who feeds her flocks beneath a fair-haired tree
And listens to the wind's song; she shall be
My soldanesse and rule my far countree.

( He sings )

" Rose and Alice,
Oh, the pretty lasses,
With their mouths like a calice
And their hair a golden palace —
Through my heart like a lovely wind they blow.

Though I am black and not comely,
Though I am black as the darkest trees,
I have swarms of gold that will fly like honey-bees,
By the rivers of the sun I will feed my words
Until they skip like those fleeced lambs,
The waterfalls, and the rivers (horned rams);
Then for all my darkness I shall be
The peacefulness of a lovely tree —
A tree wherein the golden birds
Are singing in the darkest branches, O! "

Thus sang those plumed Kings, and the winds that flow
Whispered of lands no waking heart may know.

19

Now from the silk pavilions of the seas
The nymphs sing, gold and cold as orange-trees.

" Through gilded trellises
Of the heat, Dolores,
Inez, Manuccia,
Isabel, Lucia,
Mock Time that flies.
" Lovely bird, will you stay and sing,
Flirting your sheened wing —
Peck with your beak and cling
To our balconies? "
They flirt their fans, flaunting —
" O silence, enchanting
As music! " then slanting
Their eyes,
Like gilded or emerald grapes,
They take mantillas, capes,
Hiding their simian shapes.
Sighs
Each lady, " Our spadille
Is done. . . . Dance the quadrille
From Hell's towers to Seville;
Surprise
Their siesta, " Dolores
Said. Through gilded trellises
Of the heat, spangles
Pelt down through the tangles
Of bell-flowers; each dangles
Her castanets, shutters
Fall while the heat mutters,
With sounds like a mandoline
Or tinkled tambourine. . . .
Ladies, Time dies!"

And petals of the foam, like perfumed orange-blossom,
Pelt the nymphs singing in their bowers — cold as their bosom.

20

In the hot noon — like glowing muscadine
The light seems, and the shade like golden wine —

Beneath the deep shade of the trees' arcade,
All foppish in his dressing-gown's brocade

And turban, comes the great Magnifico,
And hearkens not where the beccafico

Time taps at the lovely sylvan trees.
Now underneath the shadows fallen from these

The queen sits with her court, and through the glade
The light from their silks casts another silver shade.

Home goes the great Magnifico; his dressing-gown
Is changed for water-rustling silks that drown

The shades, and walking proudly as the breeze
Now he advances through the sylph-slim trees.

" Madam, the Soldan and the King of Ethiop's land
Approach as suitors for your daughter's hand."

The day grew water-pale and cool as the long eves. . . .
A lady sang through water-rippling leaves:

" The mauve summer rain
Is falling again —
It soaks through the eaves
And the ladies' sleeves —
It soaks through the leaves

That like silver fish fall
In the rountains, recall
Afternoons when I
Was a child small and shy
In the palace. . . . Fish lie

On the grass with lives darkling
Our laughter falls sparkling
As the mauve raindrops bright
When they fall through the light
With the briefest delight.

The pavilions float
On the lake like a boat. . . .
Mauve rains from trees fall
Like wisteria flowers . . . all
My life is like this
And drifts into nothingness!

The strange ladies sigh
" The autumn is nigh " . . .
The King bows and mutters. . . .
His eyelids seem shutters
Of a palace pavilion
Deserted a million

Echoing years ago.
Oh, but the rain falls slow."
...

But no one heard the great Magnifico
Or this pale song, for underneath the low
Deep bough the queen slept, while the flowers that fall
Seemed Ariadne's starry coronal.

21

In the great room above the orangery
The old queen's dwarfs are drinking their bohea

While the thin flames seem gold and whispering leaves
Of trees in the Hesperides, whose faint sound grieves

So small, they could be hid in a pomander,
Miss Ellen and Sir Pompey Alexander

Seem . . . The tea is gold as evening,
The perfumes in the orangery sing,

And, flashing like exotic-plumaged birds,
The lovely shadows whisper unknown words.

Upon the wall, the portrait of Queen Anne
Frowned at them and waved a languid fan —

Queen Anne, whose white wig glittering in the net
Of gold light seems a florid bergerette,

Sheep-floury underneath the powder. . . .
Her lips' small strawberry said " Louder"

To the shadows' fluttering bird. . . .
But the lovely one scarce heard. . . .

The zephyrs' lips like ruffled roses sleek
Caressingly each faintly upturned cheek;

And now the shutters like blue water
Fall. . . . Where is the king's daughter?

The candle-flames seem orange-flowers
Whose pale light falls in perfumed showers;

But Queen Anne, sleeping on the wall,
Long dead, would answer not at all.

22

The little golden lights like Chinese ladies peep
Through the old queen's curtains, then like sleep

Their gentle footsteps fade again and fail,
And once again the world is ghostly pale.

In the queen's powder-closet, Mrs. Troy
Teases the flames to wake them and annoy. . . .

So pale are those thin ghostly flames that yet
They seem like the old notes of a spinet

That sometimes sounds a courante or gavotte
By Mozart or Scarlatti — sometimes not —

While the pale silken ribbons of the rain,
Knotted, are fluttering down the window-pane.

But suddenly the flames turn green and red
As unripe fruit; their shrilling fills her head

With noises like a painted puppet-show;
And in that music, shrieking high and low,

Dead is the pointed flames' small minuet —
And from the shrilling fire leaps Laidronette.

The ghostly apparition that appeared
Wagged from her chin a cockatrice's beard;

She crouches like a flame, the adder-sting
Of her sharp tongue is ready; hear her sing:
" The candle flames bob
Like strawberries low,
Bobcherry, bobcherry,
See them go
In the hands of the queen's maids
Under the trees
Of the shadow, flickering in the breeze.
Crept a starved and a humble air
From the hovels, grunting with low pig-snout —
Starved thin, creeping
Everywhere, weeping,
It blew the queen's strawberry candle-flames out.

The maids in long checquered gowns,
Hunting for these,
Find but the shadows'
Flickering trees."

The humble ghosts like poppet maids
Walk tiptoe in the shadow glades.

Their mouths seem small red strawberries;
Their naive naiad-titterings freeze

The airs in the long corridors
Where they must hark at hopeless doors.

And Mrs. Troy rose up like a thin shriek
Or pointed flame. . . . " Oh, my poor head is weak!

Oh dear,
Oh dear,
Whatever shall I do?
In the flames' shrill rout
Laidronette slipped through.
I forget the Latin
For my prayer!
My quilted satin
Is beyond repair!
I must tell the queen
But I dare not be seen!
Oh dear, oh dear,
I tremble with fear,
Like a nectarine bough
When the sun shines through.

How harmless has been my poor life —
Yet when a young girl I had strife!
Out, alas! how I remember
That dawn, when, to light the ember,
I must steal and I must creep
In the kitchen half asleep.
Noises from the sharp green wood
Burnt and bit my satyr blood,
And my cockscomb hair raised ire
In parrot-whistlers in the fire!

Now the ember as it dozes
Seems lattices of bunched roses,
Fuchsias and fat strawberries,
Dahlias, cherries, and one sees
Through those lattices' gold wire
The parrot-whistlers in the fire,
Pecking cherries every one.
" Polly, put the kettle on, "
Scream they; " scratch poor pretty Polly "
(Kettles hissing at their folly!).
From the wood they spring and scream,
Scald the milk, upset the cream. . . .
Oh, the feathers jewel-bright!
Alas! my life was never light."

The shrill flames nodded, beckoned, then lay dead;
Her wig awry, cross Poll Troy nods her head.

The long dark corridors seem shadow-groves
Wherein a little courtier air still roves. . . .

Pale rose-leaves, wet and scented, seems the rain,
Whose bright drops cease, as soft as sleep again.

Her gown seems like a pale and tuneful rose.
...

Hours passed; the soft melodious moonlight grows. . . .
A murmurous sound of far-off Circean seas
And old enchantments and the growth of trees.
...

Across the silver grass the powdered ghosts
Are wandering in dim and scattered hosts

Among the woods and fields, and they forget
Everything but that their love's hand yet
Is touching theirs; the ribbons of the moon are blue
And pink; those ghosts pick bunches from the dew

Of ghostly flowers, all poignant with spring rain,
Smelling of youth that will not come again.

23

The public Scribe, noctambulo,
Where moonlight, cold as blades of grass,
Echoes upon deserted walls,
Turned his dusty folio. . . .
Dry grass that cackles thin in Hell
The spires of fire . . . his nightcap fell. . . .

Doctor Gradus
Mounts Parnassus
On that dusty ass the Law;
His hair is gray
As asses' ears,
The cold wind's bray
He never hears. . . .
O'er donkey's hide-grass the attorney
Still continues on his journey

With the dusty Law's proceedings
Through the old forestial readings
For the Town of Troy
Prince Paris lost when yet a boy.

Il Dottore in the long grass
Culls the simples — cold henbane,
Nettles that make fevers pass,
Wood-spurge that will cure a blain.

He walks where weeds have covered all. . . .
The moon's vast echoes die
Across the plain where weeds, grown tall,
Pearled treasuries of Asia seem,
Sunk in an endless dream.

And the mandarins in Asia,
In the silken palace of the moon,
Are all who are left to drink this physic
That will restore them from a swoon.

24

Night passed, and in that world of leaves
The Dawn came, rustling like corn-sheaves;

And a small wind came like little Boy Blue
Over the cornfield and rustling through
The large leaves. . . . Oh, how very deep
The old queen is sighing in her sleep:

" Alas, blue wind,
Bluebeard unkind,
Why have you blown so far from me,
Through the jewelled blue leaves that sound like the sea,

The lady Margotte,
The goosegirl Gargotte
Agog with curiosity?

They played Troy Town on the palace wall. . . .
Like small grape hyacinths were their curls
And thin as the spring wind were those girls —
But now they never come if I call."

The kingly cock with his red-gold beard,
And his red-gold crown had crowed unheard

While his queens ruffled down
Each feathered gown
Beside the waterfall's crystal town;

The cock, the dawn-fruits, the gold corn,
Sing this aubade, cold, forlorn:

" Jane, Jane,
Forget the pain
In your heart. Go work again.

Light is given that you may
Work till owl-soft dusk of day.

The morning light whines on the floor. . . .
No one e'er will cross the door,

No one ever cares to know
How ragged flowers like you do grow.

Like beaux and belles about the Court
King James the Second held, athwart

The field the sheep run — foolish graces,
Periwigs, long Stuart faces,

While ragged-robin, cockscomb flowers
Cluck beneath the crystal showers.

A far-off huntsman sounds his horn
That sounds like rain, harsh and forlorn;

Pink as his coat, poor robin seems. . . .
Jane, no longer lie in dreams.

The crude pink stalactites of rain
Are sounding from the boughs again.

Each sighs the name of Harriet, Mary,
Susan, Anne, grown cold and wary —

Never your name. Bright and gay,
They used to whisper, " Come away, "

But now thy have forgotten why.
Come, no longer sleeping lie.

Jane, Jane,
Forget the pain
In your heart. Go work again!"

No answer came. No footsteps now will climb
Down from Jane's attic. She forgets the time,
Her wages, plainness, and how none could love
A maid with cockscomb hair, in Sleep's dark grove.

25

And now the brutish forests close around
The beauty sleeping in enchanted ground.

All night the harsh bucolic winds that grunt
Through those green curtains help me in my hunt.

Oh, the swinish hairy beasts
Of the rough wind
(Wild boars tearing through the forests)!
Nothing they will find

But stars like empty wooden nuts,
In leaves green and shrill.
Home they go to their rough sty
The clouds . . . and home go I.

Above the wooden shutters
Of my room at morn,
Like bunches of the country flowers
Seem the fresh dawn hours.

And the young dawn creeps
Tiptoe through my room . . .
Never speaks of one who sleeps
In the forest's gloom.

26

The gardener played his old bagpipe
To make the melons and the peaches ripe. . . .
The threads are mixed in a tartan sound. . . .
" Keep, my lad, to the good safe ground.
For Jonah long since was a felon,
With guineas gold as a grape or melon.
He always said his prayers in Latin
To peaches like red quilted satin;
And he had four and twenty daughters,
As lovely as the thick-fleeced waters
Or the Hesperides' thick-leaved trees —
And they were lovely as the evening breeze.
One Sabbath roamed that godless man
Beneath the great trees sylvan wan
And met an ancient satyr crone,
Cold as the droning wind the drone
Hears when the thickest gold will thrive,
Summer-long, in the combs of the honey-hive.
She said, " You must sail, as I understand,
Across the sea to a Better Land. "
The sea was sharper than green grass,
The sailors would not let him pass,
And the sea was wroth and rose at him
Like the turreted walls of Jerusalem.
Or like the towers and gables seen
In the midst of a deep-boughed garden green.
If my old bagpipe I blew
It would not blow those great towers down.
The sailors took and bound him, threw
Him in among those towers to drown.
And oh, far best," the gardener said,
" Like fruits to lie in your kind bed,
To sleep as snug as in the grave
In your kind bed, and shun the wave,
Nor ever sigh for a strange land
And songs no heart can understand."