Look! We Have Come Through!

                           I

     COME, my little one, closer up against me,
     Creep right up, with your round head pushed in
        my breast.

     How I love all of you! Do you feel me wrap
        you
     Up with myself and my warmth, like a flame
        round the wick?

     And how I am not at all, except a flame that
        mounts off you.
     Where I touch you, I flame into being;—but is it
        me, or you?

     That round head pushed in my chest, like a nut
        in its socket,
     And I the swift bracts that sheathe it: those
        breasts, those thighs and knees,

     Those shoulders so warm and smooth: I feel
        that I
     Am a sunlight upon them, that shines them into
        being.

     But how lovely to be you! Creep closer in, that
        I am more.
     I spread over you! How lovely, your round head,
        your arms,

     Your breasts, your knees and feet! I feel that we
     Are a bonfire of oneness, me flame flung leaping
        round you,
     You the core of the fire, crept into me.

                           II

     AND oh, my little one, you whom I enfold,
     How quaveringly I depend on you, to keep me
        alive,
     Like a flame on a wick!

     I, the man who enfolds you and holds you close,
     How my soul cleaves to your bosom as I clasp you,
     The very quick of my being!

     Suppose you didn't want me! I should sink down
     Like a light that has no sustenance
     And sinks low.

     Cherish me, my tiny one, cherish me who enfold
        you.
     Nourish me, and endue me, I am only of you,
     I am your issue.

     How full and big like a robust, happy flame
     When I enfold you, and you creep into me,
     And my life is fierce at its quick
     Where it comes off you!

                           III

     MY little one, my big one,
     My bird, my brown sparrow in my breast.
     My squirrel clutching in to me;
     My pigeon, my little one, so warm
     So close, breathing so still.

     My little one, my big one,
     I, who am so fierce and strong, enfolding you,
     If you start away from my breast, and leave me,
     How suddenly I shall go down into nothing
     Like a flame that falls of a sudden.

     And you will be before me, tall and towering,
     And I shall be wavering uncertain
     Like a sunken flame that grasps for support.

                           IV

     BUT now I am full and strong and certain
     With you there firm at the core of me
     Keeping me.

     How sure I feel, how warm and strong and happy
     For the future! How sure the future is within me;
     I am like a seed with a perfect flower enclosed.

     I wonder what it will be,
     What will come forth of us.
     What flower, my love?

     No matter, I am so happy,
     I feel like a firm, rich, healthy root,
     Rejoicing in what is to come.

     How I depend on you utterly
     My little one, my big one!
     How everything that will be, will not be of me,
     Nor of either of us,
     But of both of us.

                           V

     AND think, there will something come forth from
        us.
     We two, folded so small together,
     There will something come forth from us.
     Children, acts, utterance
     Perhaps only happiness.

     Perhaps only happiness will come forth from us.
     Old sorrow, and new happiness.
     Only that one newness.

     But that is all I want.
     And I am sure of that.
     We are sure of that.

                           VI

     AND yet all the while you are you, you are not me.
     And I am I, I am never you.
     How awfully distinct and far off from each other's
        being we are!

     Yet I am glad.
     I am so glad there is always you beyond my scope,
     Something that stands over,
     Something I shall never be,
     That I shall always wonder over, and wait for,
     Look for like the breath of life as long as I live,
     Still waiting for you, however old you are, and I
        am,
     I shall always wonder over you, and look for you.

     And you will always be with me.
     I shall never cease to be filled with newness,
     Having you near me.

     THE listless beauty of the hour
     When snow fell on the apple trees
     And the wood-ash gathered in the fire
     And we faced our first miseries.

     Then the sweeping sunshine of noon
     When the mountains like chariot cars
     Were ranked to blue battle—and you and I
     Counted our scars.

     And then in a strange, grey hour
     We lay mouth to mouth, with your face
     Under mine like a star on the lake,
     And I covered the earth, and all space.

     The silent, drifting hours
     Of morn after morn
     And night drifting up to the night
     Yet no pathway worn.

     Your life, and mine, my love
     Passing on and on, the hate
     Fusing closer and closer with love
     Till at length they mate.

      THE CEARNE

SONG OF A MAN WHO HAS
     COME THROUGH
     NOT I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
     A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
     If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry
        me!
     If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a
        winged gift!
     If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am
        borrowed
     By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through
        the chaos of the world
     Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade
        inserted;
     If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a
        wedge
     Driven by invisible blows,
     The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder,
        we shall find the Hesperides.

     Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
     I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
     Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

        What is the knocking?
        What is the knocking at the door in the night?
        It is somebody wants to do us harm.

        No, no, it is the three strange angels.
        Admit them, admit them.

     I DON'T care whether I am beautiful to you
             You other women.
     Nothing of me that you see is my own;
     A man balances, bone unto bone
     Balances, everything thrown
             In the scale, you other women.

     You may look and say to yourselves, I do
             Not show like the rest.
     My face may not please you, nor my stature; yet
        if you knew
     How happy I am, how my heart in the wind rings
        true
     Like a bell that is chiming, each stroke as a stroke
        falls due,
             You other women:

     You would draw your mirror towards you, you
        would wish
             To be different.
     There's the beauty you cannot see, myself and
        him
     Balanced in glorious equilibrium,
     The swinging beauty of equilibrium,
             You other women.

     There's this other beauty, the way of the stars
             You straggling women.
     If you knew how I swerve in peace, in the equi-
        poise
     With the man, if you knew how my flesh enjoys
     The swinging bliss no shattering ever destroys
             You other women:

     You would envy me, you would think me wonder-
        ful
             Beyond compare;
     You would weep to be lapsing on such harmony
     As carries me, you would wonder aloud that he
     Who is so strange should correspond with me
             Everywhere.

     You see he is different, he is dangerous,
             Without pity or love.
     And yet how his separate being liberates me
     And gives me peace! You cannot see
     How the stars are moving in surety
             Exquisite, high above.

     We move without knowing, we sleep, and we
        travel on,
             You other women.
     And this is beauty to me, to be lifted and gone
     In a motion human inhuman, two and one
     Encompassed, and many reduced to none,
             You other women.

      KENSINGTON

     THE great gold apples of night
     Hang from the street's long bough
              Dripping their light
     On the faces that drift below,
     On the faces that drift and blow
     Down the night-time, out of sight
              In the wind's sad sough.

     The ripeness of these apples of night
     Distilling over me
              Makes sickening the white
     Ghost-flux of faces that hie
     Them endlessly, endlessly by
     Without meaning or reason why
              They ever should be.

     GOLD, with an innermost speck
     Of silver, singing afloat
         Beneath the night,
     Like balls of thistle-down
     Wandering up and down
     Over the whispering town
         Seeking where to alight!

     Slowly, above the street
     Above the ebb of feet
         Drifting in flight;
     Still, in the purple distance
     The gold of their strange persistence
     As they cross and part and meet
         And pass out of sight!

     The seed-ball of the sun
     Is broken at last, and done
         Is the orb of day.
     Now to the separate ends
     Seed after day-seed wends
         A separate way.

     No sun will ever rise
     Again on the wonted skies
         In the midst of the spheres.
     The globe of the day, over-ripe,
     Is shattered at last beneath the stripe
     Of the wind, and its oneness veers
         Out myriad-wise.

     Seed after seed after seed
     Drifts over the town, in its need
         To sink and have done;
     To settle at last in the dark,
     To bury its weary spark
         Where the end is begun.

     Darkness, and depth of sleep,
     Nothing to know or to weep
         Where the seed sinks in
     To the earth of the under-night
     Where all is silent, quite
     Still, and the darknesses steep
         Out all the sin.

     "SHE SAID AS WELL TO ME"
     SHE said as well to me: "Why are you ashamed?
     That little bit of your chest that shows between
     the gap of your shirt, why cover it up?
     Why shouldn't your legs and your good strong
        thighs
     be rough and hairy?—I'm glad they are like
        that.
     You are shy, you silly, you silly shy thing.
     Men are the shyest creatures, they never will come
     out of their covers. Like any snake
     slipping into its bed of dead leaves, you hurry into
        your clothes.
     And I love you so! Straight and clean and all of a
        piece is the body of a man,
     such an instrument, a spade, like a spear, or an
        oar,
     such a joy to me—"
     So she laid her hands and pressed them down my
        sides,
     so that I began to wonder over myself, and what I
        was.

     She said to me: "What an instrument, your
        body!
     single and perfectly distinct from everything else!
     What a tool in the hands of the Lord!
     Only God could have brought it to its shape.
     It feels as if his handgrasp, wearing you
     had polished you and hollowed you,
     hollowed this groove in your sides, grasped you
        under the breasts
     and brought you to the very quick of your form,
     subtler than an old, soft-worn fiddle-bow.

     "When I was a child, I loved my father's riding-
        whip
     that he used so often.
     I loved to handle it, it seemed like a near part of
        him.
     So I did his pens, and the jasper seal on his desk.
     Something seemed to surge through me when I
        touched them.

     "So it is with you, but here
     The joy I feel!
     God knows what I feel, but it is joy!
     Look, you are clean and fine and singled out!
     I admire you so, you are beautiful: this clean
        sweep of your sides, this firmness, this hard
        mould!
     I would die rather than have it injured with one
        scar.
     I wish I could grip you like the fist of the Lord,
        and have you—"

     So she said, and I wondered,
     feeling trammelled and hurt.
     It did not make me free.

     Now I say to her: "No tool, no instrument, no
        God!
     Don't touch me and appreciate me.
     It is an infamy.
     You would think twice before you touched a
        weasel on a fence
     as it lifts its straight white throat.
     Your hand would not be so flig and easy.
     Nor the adder we saw asleep with her head on her
        shoulder,
     curled up in the sunshine like a princess;
     when she lifted her head in delicate, startled
        wonder
     you did not stretch forward to caress her
     though she looked rarely beautiful
     and a miracle as she glided delicately away, with
        such dignity.
     And the young bull in the field, with his wrinkled,
        sad face,
     you are afraid if he rises to his feet,
     though he is all wistful and pathetic, like a mono-
        lith, arrested, static.

     "Is there nothing in me to make you hesitate?
     I tell you there is all these.
     And why should you overlook them in me?—"

                              I

     AND so I cross into another world
     shyly and in homage linger for an invitation
     from this unknown that I would trespass on.

     I am very glad, and all alone in the world,
     all alone, and very glad, in a new world
     where I am disembarked at last.

     I could cry with joy, because I am in the new world,
         just ventured in.
     I could cry with joy, and quite freely, there is
         nobody to know.

     And whosoever the unknown people of this un-
         known world may be
     they will never understand my weeping for joy
         to be adventuring among them
     because it will still be a gesture of the old world I
         am making
     which they will not understand, because it is
         quite, quite foreign to them.

                              II

     I WAS so weary of the world
     I was so sick of it
     everything was tainted with myself,
     skies, trees, flowers, birds, water,
     people, houses, streets, vehicles, machines,
     nations, armies, war, peace-talking,
     work, recreation, governing, anarchy,
     it was all tainted with myself, I knew it all to start
        with
     because it was all myself.

     When I gathered flowers, I knew it was myself
        plucking my own flowering.
     When I went in a train, I knew it was myself
        travelling by my own invention.
     When I heard the cannon of the war, I listened
        with my own ears to my own destruction.
     When I saw the torn dead, I knew it was my own
        torn dead body.
     It was all me, I had done it all in my own flesh.

                              III

     I SHALL never forget the maniacal horror of it all
        in the end
     when everything was me, I knew it all already, I
        anticipated it all in my soul
     because I was the author and the result
     I was the God and the creation at once;
     creator, I looked at my creation;
     created, I looked at myself, the creator:
     it was a maniacal horror in the end.

     I was a lover, I kissed the woman I loved,
     and God of horror, I was kissing also myself.
     I was a father and a begetter of children,
     and oh, oh horror, I was begetting and conceiving
     in my own body.

                              IV

     AT last came death, sufficiency of death,
     and that at last relieved me, I died.
     I buried my beloved; it was good, I buried
        myself and was gone.
     War came, and every hand raised to murder;
     very good, very good, every hand raised to murder!
     Very good, very good, I am a murderer!
     It is good, I can murder and murder, and see
        them fall
     the mutilated, horror-struck youths, a multitude
     one on another, and then in clusters together
     smashed, all oozing with blood, and burned in heaps
     going up in a foetid smoke to get rid of them
     the murdered bodies of youths and men in heaps
     and heaps and heaps and horrible reeking heaps
     till it is almost enough, till I am reduced perhaps;
     thousands and thousands of gaping, hideous foul
        dead
     that are youths and men and me
     being burned with oil, and consumed in corrupt
        thick smoke, that rolls
     and taints and blackens the sky, till at last it is
        dark, dark as night, or death, or hell
     and I am dead, and trodden to nought in the
        smoke-sodden tomb;
     dead and trodden to nought in the sour black
        earth
     of the tomb; dead and trodden to nought, trodden
        to nought.

                              V

     GOD, but it is good to have died and been trodden
        out
     trodden to nought in sour, dead earth
     quite to nought
     absolutely to nothing
     nothing
     nothing
     nothing.

     For when it is quite, quite nothing, then it is
        everything.
     When I am trodden quite out, quite, quite out
     every vestige gone, then I am here
     risen, and setting my foot on another world
     risen, accomplishing a resurrection
     risen, not born again, but risen, body the same as
        before,
     new beyond knowledge of newness, alive beyond
        life
     proud beyond inkling or furthest conception of
        pride
     living where life was never yet dreamed of, nor
        hinted at
     here, in the other world, still terrestrial
     myself, the same as before, yet unaccountably new.

                              VI

     I, IN the sour black tomb, trodden to absolute death
     I put out my hand in the night, one night, and my
        hand
     touched that which was verily not me
     verily it was not me.
     Where I had been was a sudden blaze
     a sudden flaring blaze!
     So I put my hand out further, a little further
     and I felt that which was not I,
     it verily was not I
     it was the unknown.

     Ha, I was a blaze leaping up!
     I was a tiger bursting into sunlight.
     I was greedy, I was mad for the unknown.
     I, new-risen, resurrected, starved from the tomb
     starved from a life of devouring always myself
     now here was I, new-awakened, with my hand
        stretching out
     and touching the unknown, the real unknown,
        the unknown unknown.

     My God, but I can only say
     I touch, I feel the unknown!
     I am the first comer!
     Cortes, Pisarro, Columbus, Cabot, they are noth-
        ing, nothing!
     I am the first comer!
     I am the discoverer!
     I have found the other world!

     The unknown, the unknown!
     I am thrown upon the shore.
     I am covering myself with the sand.
     I am filling my mouth with the earth.
     I am burrowing my body into the soil.
     The unknown, the new world!

                              VII

     IT was the flank of my wife
     I touched with my hand, I clutched with my
        hand
     rising, new-awakened from the tomb!
     It was the flank of my wife
     whom I married years ago
     at whose side I have lain for over a thousand
        nights
     and all that previous while, she was I, she
     was I;
     I touched her, it was I who touched and I who was
        touched.

     Yet rising from the tomb, from the black oblivion
     stretching out my hand, my hand flung like a
        drowned man's hand on a rock,
     I touched her flank and knew I was carried by the
        current in death
     over to the new world, and was climbing out on
        the shore,
     risen, not to the old world, the old, changeless I,
        the old life,
     wakened not to the old knowledge
     but to a new earth, a new I, a new knowledge, a
        new world of time.

     Ah no, I cannot tell you what it is, the new world
     I cannot tell you the mad, astounded rapture of
        its discovery.
     I shall be mad with delight before I have done,
     and whosoever comes after will find me in the
        new world
     a madman in rapture.

                              VIII

     GREEN streams that flow from the innermost
        continent of the new world,
     what are they?
     Green and illumined and travelling for ever
     dissolved with the mystery of the innermost heart
        of the continent
     mystery beyond knowledge or endurance, so sump-
        tuous
     out of the well-heads of the new world.—
     The other, she too has strange green eyes!
     White sands and fruits unknown and perfumes
        that never
     can blow across the dark seas to our usual
        world!
     And land that beats with a pulse!
     And valleys that draw close in love!
     And strange ways where I fall into oblivion of
        uttermost living!—
     Also she who is the other has strange-mounded
        breasts and strange sheer slopes, and white
        levels.

     Sightless and strong oblivion in utter life takes
        possession of me!
     The unknown, strong current of life supreme
     drowns me and sweeps me away and holds me
        down
     to the sources of mystery, in the depths,
     extinguishes there my risen resurrected life
     and kindles it further at the core of utter mystery.

      GREATHAM

     I HAVE found a place of loneliness
     Lonelier than Lyonesse
     Lovelier than Paradise;

     Full of sweet stillness
     That no noise can transgress
     Never a lamp distress.

     The full moon sank in state.
     I saw her stand and wait
     For her watchers to shut the gate.

     Then I found myself in a wonderland
     All of shadow and of bland
     Silence hard to understand.

     I waited therefore; then I knew
     The presence of the flowers that grew
     Noiseless, their wonder noiseless blew.

     And flashing kingfishers that flew
     In sightless beauty, and the few
     Shadows the passing wild-beast threw.

     And Eve approaching over the ground
     Unheard and subtle, never a sound
     To let me know that I was found.

     Invisible the hands of Eve
     Upon me travelling to reeve
     Me from the matrix, to relieve

     Me from the rest! Ah terribly
     Between the body of life and me
     Her hands slid in and set me free.

     Ah, with a fearful, strange detection
     She found the source of my subjection
     To the All, and severed the connection.

     Delivered helpless and amazed
     From the womb of the All, I am waiting, dazed
     For memory to be erased.

     Then I shall know the Elysium
     That lies outside the monstrous womb
     Of time from out of which I come.

                         I

     A WOMAN has given me strength and affluence.
     Admitted!

     All the rocking wheat of Canada, ripening now,
     has not so much of strength as the body of one
         woman
     sweet in ear, nor so much to give
     though it feed nations.

     Hunger is the very Satan.
     The fear of hunger is Moloch, Belial, the horrible
         God.
     It is a fearful thing to be dominated by the fear of
         hunger.

     Not bread alone, not the belly nor the thirsty
         throat.
     I have never yet been smitten through the belly,
         with the lack of bread,
     no, nor even milk and honey.

     The fear of the want of these things seems to be
         quite left out of me.
     For so much, I thank the good generations of man-
         kind.

                         II

     AND the sweet, constant, balanced heat
     of the suave sensitive body, the hunger for this
     has never seized me and terrified me.
     Here again, man has been good in his legacy to us,
         in these two primary instances.

                         III

     THEN the dumb, aching, bitter, helpless need,
     the pining to be initiated,
     to have access to the knowledge that the great dead
     have opened up for us, to know, to satisfy
     the great and dominant hunger of the mind;
     man's sweetest harvest of the centuries, sweet,
         printed books,
     bright, glancing, exquisite corn of many a stubborn
     glebe in the upturned darkness;
     I thank mankind with passionate heart
     that I just escaped the hunger for these,
     that they were given when I needed them,
     because I am the son of man.

     I have eaten, and drunk, and warmed and clothed
         my body,
     I have been taught the language of understanding,
     I have chosen among the bright and marvellous
         books,
     like any prince, such stores of the world's supply
     were open to me, in the wisdom and goodness of
         man.
     So far, so good.
     Wise, good provision that makes the heart swell
         with love!

                         IV

     BUT then came another hunger
     very deep, and ravening;
     the very body's body crying out
     with a hunger more frightening, more profound
     than stomach or throat or even the mind;
     redder than death, more clamorous.

     The hunger for the woman. Alas,
     it is so deep a Moloch, ruthless and strong,
     'tis like the unutterable name of the dread Lord,
     not to be spoken aloud.
     Yet there it is, the hunger which comes upon us,
     which we must learn to satisfy with pure, real
         satisfaction;
     or perish, there is no alternative.

     I thought it was woman, indiscriminate woman,
     mere female adjunct of what I was.
     Ah, that was torment hard enough
     and a thing to be afraid of,
     a threatening, torturing, phallic Moloch.

     A woman fed that hunger in me at last.
     What many women cannot give, one woman can;
     so I have known it.

     She stood before me like riches that were mine.
     Even then, in the dark, I was tortured, ravening,
         unfree,
     Ashamed, and shameful, and vicious.
     A man is so terrified of strong hunger;
     and this terror is the root of all cruelty.
     She loved me, and stood before me, looking to me.
     How could I look, when I was mad? I looked
         sideways, furtively,
     being mad with voracious desire.

                         V

     THIS comes right at last.
     When a man is rich, he loses at last the hunger fear.
     I lost at last the fierceness that fears it will starve.
     I could put my face at last between her breasts
     and know that they were given for ever
     that I should never starve
     never perish;
     I had eaten of the bread that satisfies
     and my body's body was appeased,
     there was peace and richness,
     fulfilment.

     Let them praise desire who will,
     but only fulfilment will do,
     real fulfilment, nothing short.
     It is our ratification
     our heaven, as a matter of fact.
     Immortality, the heaven, is only a projection of
         this strange but actual fulfilment,
     here in the flesh.

     So, another hunger was supplied,
     and for this I have to thank one woman,
     not mankind, for mankind would have prevented
         me;
     but one woman,
     and these are my red-letter thanksgivings.

                         VI

     To be, or not to be, is still the question.
     This ache for being is the ultimate hunger.
     And for myself, I can say "almost, almost, oh,
         very nearly."
     Yet something remains.
     Something shall not always remain.
     For the main already is fulfilment.

     What remains in me, is to be known even as I
         know.
     I know her now: or perhaps, I know my own
         limitation against her.

     Plunging as I have done, over, over the brink
     I have dropped at last headlong into nought,
         plunging upon sheer hard extinction;
     I have come, as it were, not to know,
     died, as it were; ceased from knowing; surpassed
         myself.
     What can I say more, except that I know what it is
     to surpass myself?

     It is a kind of death which is not death.
     It is going a little beyond the bounds.
     How can one speak, where there is a dumbness on
         one's mouth?
     I suppose, ultimately she is all beyond me,
     she is all not-me, ultimately.
     It is that that one comes to.
     A curious agony, and a relief, when I touch that
         which is not me in any sense,
     it wounds me to death with my own not-being;
         definite, inviolable limitation,
     and something beyond, quite beyond, if you
         understand what that means.
     It is the major part of being, this having surpassed
         oneself,
     this having touched the edge of the beyond, and
         perished, yet not perished.

                         VII

     I WANT her though, to take the same from me.
     She touches me as if I were herself, her own.
     She has not realized yet, that fearful thing, that
         I am the other,
     she thinks we are all of one piece.
     It is painfully untrue.

     I want her to touch me at last, ah, on the root and
         quick of my darkness
     and perish on me, as I have perished on her.

     Then, we shall be two and distinct, we shall have
         each our separate being.
     And that will be pure existence, real liberty.
     Till then, we are confused, a mixture, unresolved,
         unextricated one from the other.
     It is in pure, unutterable resolvedness, distinction
         of being, that one is free,
     not in mixing, merging, not in similarity.
     When she has put her hand on my secret, darkest
         sources, the darkest outgoings,
     when it has struck home to her, like a death, "this
         is him!"
     she has no part in it, no part whatever,
     it is the terrible other,
     when she knows the fearful other flesh, ah, dark-
         ness unfathomable and fearful, contiguous and
         concrete,
     when she is slain against me, and lies in a heap
         like one outside the house,
     when she passes away as I have passed away
     being pressed up against the other,
     then I shall be glad, I shall not be confused with
         her,
     I shall be cleared, distinct, single as if burnished
         in silver,
     having no adherence, no adhesion anywhere,
     one clear, burnished, isolated being, unique,
     and she also, pure, isolated, complete,
     two of us, unutterably distinguished, and in
         unutterable conjunction.

     Then we shall be free, freer than angels, ah,
         perfect.

                         VIII

     AFTER that, there will only remain that all men
         detach themselves and become unique,
     that we are all detached, moving in freedom more
         than the angels,
     conditioned only by our own pure single being,
     having no laws but the laws of our own being.

     Every human being will then be like a flower,
         untrammelled.
     Every movement will be direct.
     Only to be will be such delight, we cover our faces
         when we think of it
     lest our faces betray us to some untimely fiend.

     Every man himself, and therefore, a surpassing
         singleness of mankind.
     The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer, un-
         dimmed,
     the hen will nestle over her chickens,
     we shall love, we shall hate,
     but it will be like music, sheer utterance,
     issuing straight out of the unknown,
     the lightning and the rainbow appearing in us
         unbidden, unchecked,
     like ambassadors.

        We shall not look before and after.
        We shall be, now.
        We shall know in full.
        We, the mystic NOW.

      ZENNOR

     THE plane leaves
     fall black and wet
     on the lawn;

     The cloud sheaves
     in heaven's fields set
     droop and are drawn

     in falling seeds of rain;
     the seed of heaven
     on my face

     falling—I hear again
     like echoes even
     that softly pace

     Heaven's muffled floor,
     the winds that tread
     out all the grain

     of tears, the store
     harvested
     in the sheaves of pain

     caught up aloft:
     the sheaves of dead
     men that are slain

     now winnowed soft
     on the floor of heaven;
     manna invisible

     of all the pain
     here to us given;
     finely divisible
     falling as rain.

     IT is not long since, here among all these folk
     in London, I should have held myself
     of no account whatever,
     but should have stood aside and made them way
     thinking that they, perhaps,
     had more right than I—for who was I?

     Now I see them just the same, and watch them.
     But of what account do I hold them?

     Especially the young women. I look at them
     as they dart and flash
     before the shops, like wagtails on the edge of a
         pool.

     If I pass them close, or any man,
     like sharp, slim wagtails they flash a little aside
     pretending to avoid us; yet all the time
     calculating.

     They think that we adore them—alas, would it
         were true!

     Probably they think all men adore them,
     howsoever they pass by.

     What is it, that, from their faces fresh as spring,
     such fair, fresh, alert, first-flower faces,
     like lavender crocuses, snowdrops, like Roman
         hyacinths,
     scyllas and yellow-haired hellebore, jonquils, dim
         anemones,
     even the sulphur auriculas,
     flowers that come first from the darkness, and feel
         cold to the touch,
     flowers scentless or pungent, ammoniacal almost;
     what is it, that, from the faces of the fair young
         women
     comes like a pungent scent, a vibration beneath
     that startles me, alarms me, stirs up a repulsion?

     They are the issue of acrid winter, these first-
         flower young women;
     their scent is lacerating and repellant,
     it smells of burning snow, of hot-ache,
     of earth, winter-pressed, strangled in corruption;
     it is the scent of the fiery-cold dregs of corruption,
     when destruction soaks through the mortified,
         decomposing earth,
     and the last fires of dissolution burn in the bosom
         of the ground.

     They are the flowers of ice-vivid mortification,
     thaw-cold, ice-corrupt blossoms,
     with a loveliness I loathe;
     for what kind of ice-rotten, hot-aching heart
         must they need to root in!

     I WISH it were spring in the world.

     Let it be spring!
     Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
     Come, rush of creation!
     Come, life! surge through this mass of mortifica-
        tion!
     Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-
        flowers,
     which are rather last-flowers!
     Come, thaw down their cool portentousness,
        dissolve them:
     snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of
        white and purple crocuses,
     flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption,
        nourished in mortification,
     jets of exquisite finality;
     Come, spring, make havoc of them!

     I trample on the snowdrops, it gives me pleasure
        to tread down the jonquils,
     to destroy the chill Lent lilies;
     for I am sick of them, their faint-bloodedness,
     slow-blooded, icy-fleshed, portentous.

     I want the fine, kindling wine-sap of spring,
     gold, and of inconceivably fine, quintessential
        brightness,
     rare almost as beams, yet overwhelmingly potent,
     strong like the greatest force of world-balancing.

     This is the same that picks up the harvest of wheat
     and rocks it, tons of grain, on the ripening wind;
     the same that dangles the globe-shaped pleiads of
        fruit
     temptingly in mid-air, between a playful thumb and
        finger;
     oh, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, whirls
        the pear-bloom,
     upon us, and apple- and almond- and apricot-
        and quince-blossom,
     storms and cumulus clouds of all imaginable
        blossom
     about our bewildered faces,
     though we do not worship.

     I wish it were spring
     cunningly blowing on the fallen sparks, odds and
        ends of the old, scattered fire,
     and kindling shapely little conflagrations
     curious long-legged foals, and wide-eared calves,
        and naked sparrow-bubs.

     I wish that spring
     would start the thundering traffic of feet
     new feet on the earth, beating with impatience.

     I wish it were spring, thundering
     delicate, tender spring.
     I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of pas-
        sionate, mysterious corruption
     were not yet to come still more from the still-
        flickering discontent.

     Oh, in the spring, the bluebell bows him down for
        very exuberance,
     exulting with secret warm excess,
     bowed down with his inner magnificence!

     Oh, yes, the gush of spring is strong enough
     to toss the globe of earth like a ball on a water-jet
     dancing sportfully;
     as you see a tiny celluloid ball tossing on a squint
        of water
     for men to shoot at, penny-a-time, in a booth at a
        fair.

     The gush of spring is strong enough
     to play with the globe of earth like a ball on a
        fountain;
     At the same time it opens the tiny hands of the
        hazel
     with such infinite patience.

     The power of the rising, golden, all-creative sap
        could take the earth
     and heave it off among the stars, into the in-
        visible;
     the same sets the throstle at sunset on a bough
     singing against the blackbird;
     comes out in the hesitating tremor of the primrose,
     and betrays its candour in the round white straw-
        berry flower,
     is dignified in the foxglove, like a Red-Indian
        brave.

     Ah come, come quickly, spring!
     Come and lift us towards our culmination, we
        myriads;
     we who have never flowered, like patient cactuses.
     Come and lift us to our end, to blossom, bring us
        to our summer
     we who are winter-weary in the winter of the world.
     Come making the chaffinch nests hollow and cosy,
     come and soften the willow buds till they are
        puffed and furred,
     then blow them over with gold.
     Come and cajole the gawky colt's-foot flowers.

     Come quickly, and vindicate us
     against too much death.
     Come quickly, and stir the rotten globe of the
        world from within,
     burst it with germination, with world anew.
     Come now, to us, your adherents, who cannot
        flower from the ice.
     All the world gleams with the lilies of Death the
        Unconquerable,
     but come, give us our turn.
     Enough of the virgins and lilies, of passionate,
        suffocating perfume of corruption,
     no more narcissus perfume, lily harlots, the blades
        of sensation
     piercing the flesh to blossom of death.
     Have done, have done with this shuddering,
        delicious business
     of thrilling ruin in the flesh, of pungent passion,
        of rare, death-edged ecstasy.
     Give us our turn, give us a chance, let our hour
        strike,
     O soon, soon!

     Let the darkness turn violet with rich dawn.
     Let the darkness be warmed, warmed through to a
        ruddy violet,
     incipient purpling towards summer in the world
        of the heart of man.

     Are the violets already here!
     Show me! I tremble so much to hear it, that even
        now
     on the threshold of spring, I fear I shall die.
     Show me the violets that are out.

     Oh, if it be true, and the living darkness of the
        blood of man is purpling with violets,
     if the violets are coming out from under the rack
        of men, winter-rotten and fallen
     we shall have spring.
     Pray not to die on this Pisgah blossoming with
        violets.
     Pray to live through.

     If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness of
        the shadow of man
     it will be spring in the world,
     it will be spring in the world of the living;
     wonderment organising itself, heralding itself with
        the violets,
     stirring of new seasons.

     Ah, do not let me die on the brink of such
        anticipation!
     Worse, let me not deceive myself.

      ZENNOR