Toward the Gulf

     Eyes wide for wisdom, calm for joy or pain,
     Bright hair alloyed with silver, scarcely gold.
     And gracious lips flower pressed like buds to hold
     The guarded heart against excess of rain.
     Hands spirit tipped through which a genius plays
     With paints and clays,
     And strings in many keys—
     Clothed in an aura of thought as soundless as a flood
     Of sun-shine where there is no breeze.
     So is it light in spite of rhythm of blood,
     Or turn of head, or hands that move, unite—
     Wind cannot dim or agitate the light.
     From Plato's idea stepping, wholly wrought
     From Plato's dream, made manifest in hair,
     Eyes, lips and hands and voice,
     As if the stored up thought
     From the earth sphere
     Had given down the being of your choice
     Conjured by the dream long sought.

     For you have moved in madness, rapture, wrath
     In and out of the path
     Drawn by the dream of a face.
     You have been watched, as star-men watch a star
     That leaves its way, returns and leaves its way,
     Until the exploring watchers find, can trace
     A hidden star beyond their sight, whose sway
     Draws the erratic star so long observed—
     So have you wandered, swerved.

     Always pursued and lost,
     Sometimes half found, half-faced,
     Such years we waste
     With the almost:
     The lips flower pressed like buds to hold
     Guarded the heart of the flower,
     But over them eyes not hued as the Dream foretold.
     Or to find the lips too rich and the dower
     Of eyes all gaiety
     Where wisdom scarce can be.
     Or to find the eyes, but to find offence
     In fingers where the sense
     Falters with colors, strings,
     Not touching with closed eyes, out of an immanence
     Of flame and wings.
     Or to find the light, but to find it set behind
     An eye which is not your dream, nor the shadow thereof,
     As it were your lamp in a stranger's window.
     And so almost to find
     In the great weariness of love.

     Now this is the tragedy:
     If the Idea did not move
     Somewhere in the realm of Love,
     Clothing itself in flesh at last for you to see,
     You could scarcely follow the gleam.
     And the tragedy is when Life has made you over,
     And denied you, and dulled your dream,
     And you no longer count the cost,
     Nor the past lament,
     You are sitting oblivious of your discontent
     Beside the Almost—
     And then the face appears
     Evoked from the Idea by your dead desire,
     And blinds and burns you like fire.
     And you sit there without tears,
     Though thinking it has come to kill you, or mock your youth
     With its half of the truth.

     A beach as yellow as gold
     Daisied with tents for a lovely mile.
     And a sea that edges and walls the sand with blue,
     Matching the heaven without a seam,
     Save for the threads of foam that hold
     With stitches the canopy rare as the tile
     Of old Damascus. And O the wind
     Which roars to the roaring water brightened
     By the beating wings of the sun!
     And here I walk, not seeking the Dream,
     As men walk absent of heart or mind
     Who have no wish for a sorrow lightened
     Since all things now seem lost or won.
     And here it is that your face appears!
     Like a star brushed out from leaves by a breeze
     When day's in the sky, though evening nears.
     You are here by a tent with your little brood,
     And I approach in a quiet mood
     And see you, know that the Destinies
     Have surrendered you at last.
     Voice, lips and hands and the light of the eyes.

     And I who have asked so much discover
     That you find in me the man and lover
     You have divined and visualized,
     In quiet day dreams. And what is strange
     Your boy of eight is subtly guised
     In fleeting looks that half resemble
     Something in me. Two souls may range
     Mid this earth's billion souls for life,
     And hide their hunger or dissemble.
     For there are two at least created,
     Endowed with alien powers that draw,
     And kindred powers that by some law
     Bind souls as like as sister, brother.
     There are two at least who are for each other.
     If we are such, it is not fated
     You are for him, howe'er belated
     The time's for us.

     And yet is not the time gone by?
     Your garden has been planted, dear.
     And mine with weeds is over-grown.
     Oh yes! 'tis only late July!
     We can replant, ere frosts appear,
     Gather the blossoms we have sown.
     And I have preached that hearts should seize
     The hour that brings realities. ...

     Yes, I admit it all, we crush
     Under our feet the world's contempt.
     But when I raise the cup, it's blush
     Reveals the snake's eyes, there's a hush
     While a hand writes upon the wall:
     Life cannot be re-made, exempt
     From life that has been, something's gone
     Out of the soil, in life updrawn
     To growths that vine, and tangle, crawl,
     Withered in part, or gone to seed.
     'Tis not the same, though you have freed
     The soil from what was grown. ...

     Heaven is but the hour
     Of the planting of the flower.
     But heaven is the blossom to be,
     Of the one Reality.
     And heaven cannot undo the once sown ground.
     But heaven is love in the pursuing,
     And in the memory of having found. ...

     The rocks in the river make light and sound
     And show that the waters search and move.
     And what is time but an infinite whole
     Revealed by the breaks in thought, desire?
     To put it away is to know one's soul.
     Love is music unheard and fire
     Too rare for eyes; between hurt beats
     The heart detects it, sees how pure
     Its essence is, through heart defeats.—
     You are the silence making sure
     The sound with which it has to cope,
     My sorrow and as well my hope.

     You dull Goliaths clothed in coats of blue,
     Strained and half bursted by the swell of flesh,
     Topped by Gorilla heads. You Marmoset,
     Trained scoundrel, taught to question and ensnare,
     I hate you, hate your laws and hate your courts.
     Hands off, give me a chair, now let me be.
     I'll tell you more than you can think to ask me.
     I love this woman, but what is love to you?
     What is it to your laws or courts? I love her.
     She loves me, if you'd know. I entered her room—
     She stood before me naked, shrank a little,
     Cried out a little, calmed her sudden cry
     When she saw amiable passion in my eyes—
     She loves me, if you'd know. I saw in her eyes
     More in those moments than whole hours of talk
     From witness stands exculpate could make clear
     My innocence.

                           But if I did a crime
     My excuse is hunger, hunger for more life.
     Oh what a world, where beauty, rapture, love
     Are walled in and locked up like coal or food
     And only may be had by purchasers
     From whose fat fingers slip the unheeded gold.
     Oh what a world where beauty lies in waste,
     While power and freedom skulk with famished lips
     Too tightly pressed for curses.

                                          So do men,
     Save for the thousandth man, deny themselves
     And live in meagreness to make sure a life
     Of meagreness by hearth stones long since stale;
     And live in ways, companionships as fixed
     As the geared figures of the Strassburg clock.
     You wonder at war? Why war lets loose desires,
     Emotions long repressed. Would you stop war?
     Then let men live. The moral equivalent
     Of war is freedom. Art does not suffice—
     Religion is not life, but life is living.
     And painted cherries to the hungry thrush
     Is art to life. The artist lived his work.
     You cannot live his life who love his work.
     You are the thrush that pecks at painted cherries
     Who hope to live through art. Beer-soaked Goliaths,
     The story's coming of her nakedness
     Be patient for a time.

                                     All this I learned
     While painting pictures no one ever bought,
     Till hunger drove me to this servile work
     As butler in her father's house, with time
     On certain days to walk the galleries
     And look at pictures, marbles. For I saw
     I was not living while I painted pictures.
     I was not living working for a crust,
     I was not living walking galleries:
     All this was but vicarious life which felt
     Through gazing at the thing the artist made,
     In memory of the life he lived himself:
     As we preserve the fragrance of a flower
     By drawing off its essence in a bottle,
     Where color, fluttering leaves, are thrown away
     To get the inner passion of the flower
     Extracted to a bottle that a queen
     May act the flower's part.

                                      Say what you will,
     Make laws to strangle life, shout from your pulpits,
     Your desks of editors, your woolsack benches
     Where judges sit, that this dull hypocrite,
     You call the State, has fashioned life aright—
     The secret is abroad, from eye to eye
     The secret passes from poor eyes that wink
     In boredom, in fatigue, in furious strength
     Roped down or barred, that what the human heart
     Dreams of and hopes for till the aspiring flame
     Flaps in the guttered candle and goes out,
     Is love for body and for spirit, love
     To satisfy their hunger. Yet what is it,
     This earth, this life, what is it but a meadow
     Where spirits are left free a little while
     Within a little space, so long as strength,
     Flesh, blood increases to the day of use
     As roasts or stews wherewith this witless beast,
     Society may feed himself and keep
     His olden shape and power?

                                        Fools go crop
     The herbs they turn you to, and starve yourself
     For what you want, and count it righteousness,
     No less you covet love. Poor shadows sighing,
     Across the curtain racing! Mangled souls
     Pecking so feebly at the painted cherries,
     Inhaling from a bottle what was lived
     These summers gone! You know, and scarce deny
     That what we men desire are horses, dogs,
     Loves, women, insurrections, travel, change,
     Thrill in the wreck and rapture for the change,
     And re-adjusted order.

                                       As I turned
     From painting and from art, yet found myself
     Full of all lusts while bound to menial work
     Where my eyes daily rested on this woman
     A thought came to me like a little spark
     One sees far down the darkness of a cave,
     Which grows into a flame, a blinding light
     As one approaches it, so did this thought
     Both burn and blind me: For I loved this woman,
     I wanted her, why should I lose this woman?
     What was there to oppose possession? Will?
     Her will, you say? I am not sure, but then
     Which will is better, mine or hers? Which will
     Deserves achievement? Which has rights above
     The other? I desire her, her desire
     Is not toward me, which of these two desires
     Shall triumph? Why not mine for me and hers
     For her, at least the stronger must prevail,
     And wreck itself or bend all else before it.
     That millionaire who wooed her, tried in vain
     To overwhelm her will with gold, and I
     With passion, boldness would have overwhelmed it,
     And what's the difference?

                                       But as I said
     I walked the galleries. When I stood in the yard
     Bare armed, bare throated at my work, she came
     And gazed upon me from her window. I
     Could feel the exhausting influence of her eyes.
     Then in a concentration which was blindness
     To all else, so bewilderment of mind,
     I'd go to see Watteau's Antiope
     Where he sketched Zeus in hunger, drawing back
     The veil that hid her sleeping nakedness.
     There was Correggio's too, on whom a satyr
     Smiled for his amorous wonder. A Semele,
     Done by an unknown hand, a thing of lightning
     Moved through by Zeus who seized her as the flames
     Consumed her ravished beauty.

                                        So I looked,
     And trembled, then returned perhaps to find
     Her eyes upon me conscious, calm, elate,
     And radiate with lashes of surprise,
     Delight as when a star is still but shines.
     And on this night somehow our natures worked
     To climaxes. For first she dressed for dinner
     To show more back and bosom than before.
     And as I served her, her down-looking eyes
     Were more than glances. Then she dropped her napkin.
     Before I could begin to bend she leaned
     And let me see—oh yes, she let me see
     The white foam of her little breasts caressing
     The scarlet flame of silk, a swooning shore
     Of bright carnations. It was from such foam
     That Venus rose. And as I stooped and gave
     The napkin to her she pushed out a foot,
     And then I coughed for breath grown short, and she
     Concealed a smile—and you, you jailers laugh
     Coarse-mouthed, and mock my hunger.

                                            I go on,
     Observe how courage, boldness mark my steps!
     At nine o'clock she climbs to her boudoir.
     I finding errands in the hallway hear
     The desultory taking up of books,
     And through her open door, see her at last
     Cast off her dinner gown and to the bath
     Step like a ray of moonlight. Then she snaps
     The light on where the onyx tub and walls
     Dazzle the air. I enter then her room
     And stand against the closed door, do not pry
     Upon her in the bath. Give her the chance
     To fly me, fight me standing face to face.
     I hear her flounder in the water, hear
     Hands slap and slip with water breast and arms;
     Hear little sighs and shudders and the roughness
     Of crash towels on her back, when in a minute
     She stands with back toward me in the doorway,
     A sea-shell glory, pink and white to hair
     Sun-lit, a lily crowned with powdered gold.
     She turned toward her dresser then and shook
     White dust of talcum on her arms, and looked
     So lovingly upon her tense straight breasts,
     Touching them under with soft tapering hands
     To blue eyes deepening like a brazier flame
     Turned by a sudden gust. Who gives her these,
     The thought ran through me, for her joy alone
     And not for mine?

                        So I stood there like Zeus
     Coming in thunder to Semele, like
     The diety of Watteau. Correggio
     Had never painted me a satyr there
     Drinking her beauty in, so worshipful,
     My will subdued in worship of her beauty
     To obey her will.

                       And then she turned and saw me,
     And faced me in her nakedness, nor tried
     To hide it from me, faced me immovable
     A Mona Lisa smile upon her lips.
     And let me plead my cause, make known my love,
     Speak out my torture, wearing still the smile.
     Let me approach her till I almost touched
     The whiteness of her bosom. Then it seemed
     That smile of hers not wilting me she clapped
     Hands over eyes and said: "I am afraid—
     Oh no, it cannot be—what would they say?"
     Then rushing in the bathroom, quick she slammed
     The door and shrieked: "You scoundrel, go—you beast."
     My dream went up like paper charred and whirled
     Above a hearth. Thrilling I stood alone
     Amid her room and saw my life, our life
     Embodied in this woman lately there
     Lying and cowardly. And as I turned
     To leave the room, her father and the gardener
     Pounced on me, threw me down a flight of stairs
     And turned me over, stunned, to you the law
     Here with these others who have stolen coal
     To keep them warm, as I have stolen beauty
     To keep from freezing in this arid country
     Of winter winds on which the dust of custom
     Rides like a fog.

                       Now do your worst to me!

     You and your landscape! There it lies
     Stripped, resuming its disguise,
     Clothed in dreams, made bare again,
     Symbol infinite of pain,
     Rapture, magic, mystery
     Of vanished days and days to be.
     There's its sea of tidal grass
     Over which the south winds pass,
     And the sun-set's Tuscan gold
     Which the distant windows hold
     For an instant like a sphere
     Bursting ere it disappear.
     There's the dark green woods which throve
     In the spell of Leese's Grove.
     And the winding of the road;
     And the hill o'er which the sky
     Stretched its pallied vacancy
     Ere the dawn or evening glowed.
     And the wonder of the town
     Somewhere from the hill-top down
     Nestling under hills and woods
     And the meadow's solitudes.

     And your paper knight of old
     Secrets of the landscape told.
     And the hedge-rows where the pond
     Took the blue of heavens beyond
     The hastening clouds of gusty March.
     There you saw their wrinkled arch
     Where the East wind cracks his whips
     Round the little pond and clips
     Main-sails from your toppled ships. ...

     Landscape that in youth you knew
     Past and present, earth and you!
     All the legends and the tales
     Of the uplands, of the vales;
     Sounds of cattle and the cries
     Of ploughmen and of travelers
     Were its soul's interpreters.
     And here the lame were always lame.
     Always gray the gray of head.
     And the dead were always dead
     Ere the landscape had become
     Your cradle, as it was their tomb.

     And when the thunder storms would waken
     Of the dream your soul was not forsaken:
     In the room where the dormer windows look—
     There were your knight and the tattered book.
     With colors of the forest green
     Gabled roofs and the demesne
     Of faery kingdoms and faery time
     Storied in pre-natal rhyme. ...
     Past the orchards, in the plain
     The cattle fed on in the rain.
     And the storm-beaten horseman sped
     Rain blinded and with bended head.
     And John the ploughman comes and goes
     In labor wet, with steaming clothes.
     This is your landscape, but you see
     Not terror and not destiny
     Behind its loved, maternal face,
     Its power to change, or fade, replace
     Its wonder with a deeper dream,
     Unfolding to a vaster theme.
     From time eternal was this earth?
     No less this landscape with your birth
     Arose, nor leaves you, nor decay
     Finds till the twilight of your day.
     It bore you, moulds you to its plan.
     It ends with you as it began,
     But bears the seed of future years
     Of higher raptures, dumber tears.

     For soon you lose the landscape through
     Absence, sorrow, eyes grown true
     To the naked limbs which show
     Buds that never more may blow.
     Now you know the lame were straight
     Ere you knew them, and the fate
     Of the old is yet to die.
     Now you know the dead who lie
     In the graves you saw where first
     The landscape on your vision burst,
     Were not always dead, and now
     Shadows rest upon the brow
     Of the souls as young as you.
     Some are gone, though years are few
     Since you roamed with them the hills.
     So the landscape changes, wills
     All the changes, did it try
     Its promises to justify?...

     For you return and find it bare:
     There is no heaven of golden air.
     Your eyes around the horizon rove,
     A clump of trees is Leese's Grove.
     And what's the hedgerow, what's the pond?
     A wallow where the vagabond
     Beast will not drink, and where the arch
     Of heaven in the days of March
     Refrains to look. A blinding rain
     Beats the once gilded window pane.
     John, the poor wretch, is gone, but bread
     Tempts other feet that path to tread
     Between the barn and house, and brave
     The March rain and the winds that rave. ...
     O, landscape I am one who stands
     Returned with pale and broken hands
     Glad for the day that I have known,
     And finds the deserted doorway strown
     With shoulder blade and spinal bone.
     And you who nourished me and bred
     I find the spirit from you fled.
     You gave me dreams,'twas at your breast
     My soul's beginning rose and pressed
     My steps afar at last and shaped
     A world elusive, which escaped
     Whatever love or thought could find
     Beyond the tireless wings of mind.
     Yet grown by you, and feeding on
     Your strength as mother, you are gone
     When I return from living, trace
     My steps to see how I began,
     And deeply search your mother face
     To know your inner self, the place
     For which you bore me, sent me forth
     To wander, south or east or north. ...
     Now the familiar landscape lies
     With breathless breast and hollow eyes.
     It knows me not, as I know not
     Its secret, spirit, all forgot
     Its kindred look is, as I stand
     A stranger in an unknown land.

     Are we not earth-born, formed of dust
     Which seeks again its love and trust
     In an old landscape, after change
     In hearts grown weary, wrecked and strange?
     What though we struggled to emerge
     Dividual, footed for the urge
     Of further self-discoveries, though
     In the mid-years we cease to know,
     Through disenchanted eyes, the spell
     That clothed it like a miracle—
     Yet at the last our steps return
     Its deeper mysteries to learn.
     It has been always us, it must
     Clasp to itself our kindred dust.
     We cannot free ourselves from it.
     Near or afar we must submit
     To what is in us, what was grown
     Out of the landscape's soil, the known
     And unknown powers of soil and soul.
     As bodies yield to the control
     Of the earth's center, and so bend
     In age, so hearts toward the end
     Bend down with lips so long athirst
     To waters which were known at first—
     The little spring at Leese's Grove
     Was your first love, is your last love!

     When those we knew in youth have crept
     Under the landscape, which has kept
     Nothing we saw with youthful eyes;
     Ere God is formed in the empty skies,
     I wonder not our steps are pressed
     Toward the mystery of their rest.
     That is the hope at bud which kneels
     Where ancestors the tomb conceals.
     Age no less than youth would lean
     Upon some love. For what is seen
     No more of father, mother, friend,
     For hands of flesh lost, eyes grown blind
     In death, a something which assures,
     Comforts, allays our fears, endures.
     Just as the landscape and our home
     In childhood made of heaven's dome,
     And all the farthest ways of earth
     A place as sheltered as the hearth.

     Is it not written at the last day
     Heaven and earth shall roll away?
     Yes, as my landscape passed through death,
     Lay like a corpse, and with new breath
     Became instinct with fire and light—
     So shall it roll up in my sight,
     Pass from the realm of finite sense,
     Become a thing of spirit, whence
     I shall pass too, its child in faith
     Of dreams it gave me, which nor death
     Nor change can wreck, but still reveal
     In change a Something vast, more real
     Than sunsets, meadows, green-wood trees,
     Or even faery presences.
     A Something which the earth and air
     Transmutes but keeps them what they were;
     Clear films of beauty grown more thin
     As we approach and enter in.
     Until we reach the scene that made
     Our landscape just a thing of shade.

     Well, then, another drink! Ben Jonson knows,
     So do you, Michael Drayton, that to-morrow
     I reach my fifty-second year. But hark ye,
     To-morrow lacks two days of being a month—
     Here is a secret—since I made my will.
     Heigh ho! that's done too! I wonder why I did it?
     That I should make a will! Yet it may be
     That then and jump at this most crescent hour
     Heaven inspired the deed.

                                            As a mad younker
     I knew an aged man in Warwickshire
     Who used to say, "Ah, mercy me," for sadness
     Of change, or passing time, or secret thoughts.
     If it was spring he sighed it, if 'twas fall,
     With drifting leaves, he looked upon the rain
     And with doleful suspiration kept
     This habit of his grief. And on a time
     As he stood looking at the flying clouds,
     I loitering near, expectant, heard him say it,
     Inquired, "Why do you say 'Ah, mercy me,'
     Now that it's April?" So he hobbled off
     And left me empty there.

                                          Now here am I!
     Oh, it is strange to find myself this age,
     And rustling like a peascod, though unshelled,
     And, like this aged man of Warwickshire,
     Slaved by a mood which must have breath—"Tra-la!
     That's what I say instead of "Ah, mercy me."
     For look you, Ben, I catch myself with "Tra-la"
     The moment I break sleep to see the day.
     At work, alone, vexed, laughing, mad or glad
     I say, "Tra-la" unknowing. Oft at table
     I say, "Tra-la." And 'tother day, poor Anne
     Looked long at me and said, "You say, 'Tra-la'
     Sometimes when you're asleep; why do you so?"
     Then I bethought me of that aged man
     Who used to say, "Ah, mercy me," but answered:
     "Perhaps I am so happy when awake
     The song crops out in slumber—who can say?"
     And Anne arose, began to keel the pot,
     But was she answered, Ben? Who know a woman?

     To-morrow is my birthday. If I die,
     Slip out of this with Bacchus for a guide,
     What soul would interdict the poppied way?
     Heroes may look the Monster down, a child
     Can wilt a lion, who is cowed to see
     Such bland unreckoning of his strength—but I,
     Having so greatly lived, would sink away
     Unknowing my departure. I have died
     A thousand times, and with a valiant soul
     Have drunk the cup, but why? In such a death
     To-morrow shines and there's a place to lean.
     But in this death that has no bottom to it,
     No bank beyond, no place to step, the soul
     Grows sick, and like a falling dream we shrink
     From that inane which gulfs us, without place
     For us to stand and see it.

                                      Yet, dear Ben,
     This thing must be; that's what we live to know
     Out of long dreaming, saying that we know it.
     As yeasty heroes in their braggart teens
     Spout learnedly of war, who never saw
     A cannon aimed. You drink too much to-day,
     Or get a scratch while turning Lucy's stile,
     And like a beast you sicken. Like a beast
     They cart you off. What matter if your thought
     Outsoared the Phoenix? Like a beast you rot.
     Methinks that something wants our flesh, as we
     Hunger for flesh of beasts. But still to-morrow,
     To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
     Creeps in this petty pace—O, Michael Drayton,
     Some end must be. But 'twixt the fear of ceasing
     And weariness of going on we lie
     Upon these thorns!

                          These several springs I find
     No new birth in the Spring. And yet in London
     I used to cry, "O, would I were in Stratford;
     It's April and the larks are singing now.
     The flags are green along the Avon river;
     O, would I were a rambler in the fields.
     This poor machine is racing to its wreck.
     This grist of thought is endless, this old sorrow
     Sprouts, winds and crawls in London's darkness. Come
     Back to your landscape! Peradventure waits
     Some woman there who will make new the earth,
     And crown the spring with fire."

                                      So back I come.
     And the springs march before me, say, "Behold
     Here are we, and what would you, can you use us?
     What good is air if lungs are out, or springs
     When the mind's flown so far away no spring,
     Nor loveliness of earth can call it back?
     I tell you what it is: in early youth
     The life is in the loins; by thirty years
     It travels through the stomach to the lungs,
     And then we strut and crow. By forty years
     The fruit is swelling while the leaves are fresh.
     By fifty years you're ripe, begin to rot.
     At fifty-two, or fifty-five or sixty
     The life is in the seed—what's spring to you?
     Puff! Puff! You are so winged and light you fly.
     For every passing zephyr, are blown off,
     And drifting, God knows where, cry out "tra-la,"
     "Ah, mercy me," as it may happen you.
     Puff! Puff! away you go!

                                          Another drink?
     Why, you may drown the earth with ale and I
     Will drain it like a sea. The more I drink
     The better I see that this is April time. ...

     Ben! There is one Voice which says to everything:
     "Dream what you will, I'll make you bear your seed.
     And, having borne, the sickle comes among ye
     And takes your stalk." The rich and sappy greens
     Of spring or June show life within the loins,
     And all the world is fair, for now the plant
     Can drink the level cup of flame where heaven
     Is poured full by the sun. But when the blossom
     Flutters its colors, then it takes the cup
     And waves the stalk aside. And having drunk
     The stalk to penury, then slumber comes
     With dreams of spring stored in the imprisoned germ,
     An old life and a new life all in one,
     A thing of memory and of prophecy,
     Of reminiscence, longing, hope and fear.
     What has been ours is taken, what was ours
     Becomes entailed on our seed in the spring,
     Fees in possession and enjoyment too. ...

     The thing is sex, Ben. It is that which lives
     And dies in us, makes April and unmakes,
     And leaves a man like me at fifty-two,
     Finished but living, on the pinnacle
     Betwixt a death and birth, the earth consumed
     And heaven rolled up to eyes whose troubled glances
     Would shape again to something better—what?
     Give me a woman, Ben, and I will pick
     Out of this April, by this larger art
     Of fifty-two, such songs as we have heard,
     Both you and I, when weltering in the clouds
     Of that eternity which comes in sleep,
     Or in the viewless spinning of the soul
     When most intense. The woman is somewhere,
     And that's what tortures, when I think this field
     So often gleaned could blossom once again
     If I could find her.

                                Well, as to my plays:
     I have not written out what I would write.
     They have a thousand buds of finer flowering.
     And over "Hamlet" hangs a teasing spirit
     As fine to that as sense is fine to flesh.
     Good friends, my soul beats up its prisoned wings
     Against the ceiling of a vaster whorl
     And would break through and enter. But, fair friends,
     What strength in place of sex shall steady me?
     What is the motive of this higher mount?
     What process in the making of myself—
     The very fire, as it were, of my growth—
     Shall furnish forth these writings by the way,
     As incident, expression of the nature
     Relumed for adding branches, twigs and leaves?...

     Suppose I'd make a tragedy of this,
     Focus my fancied "Dante" to this theme,
     And leave my halfwrit "Sappho," which at best
     Is just another delving in the mine
     That gave me "Cleopatra" and the Sonnets?
     If you have genius, write my tragedy,
     And call it "Shakespeare, Gentleman of Stratford,"
     Who lost his soul amid a thousand souls,
     And had to live without it, yet live with it
     As wretched as the souls whose lives he lived.
     Here is a play for you: Poor William Shakespeare,
     This moment growing drunk, the famous author
     Of certain sugared sonnets and some plays,
     With this machine too much to him, which started
     Some years ago, now cries him nay and runs
     Even when the house shakes and complains, "I fall,
     You shake me down, my timbers break apart.
     Why, if an engine must go on like this
     The building should be stronger."

                                       Or to mix,
     And by the mixing, unmix metaphors,
     No mortal man has blood enough for brains
     And stomach too, when the brain is never done
     With thinking and creating.

                                      For you see,
     I pluck a flower, cut off a dragon's head—
     Choose twixt these figures—lo, a dozen buds,
     A dozen heads out-crop. For every fancy,
     Play, sonnet, what you will, I write me out
     With thinking "Now I'm done," a hundred others
     Crowd up for voices, and, like twins unborn
     Kick and turn o'er for entrance to the world.
     And I, poor fecund creature, who would rest,
     As 'twere from an importunate husband, fly
     To money-lending, farming, mulberry trees,
     Enclosing Welcombe fields, or idling hours
     In common talk with people like the Combes.
     All this to get a heartiness, a hold
     On earth again, lest Heaven Hercules,
     Finding me strayed to mid-air, kicking heels
     Above the mountain tops, seize on my scruff
     And bear me off or strangle.

                                  Good, my friends,
     The "Tempest" is as nothing to the voice
     That calls me to performance—what I know not.
     I've planned an epic of the Asian wash
     Which slopped the star of Athens and put out,
     Which should all history analyze, and present
     A thousand notables in the guise of life,
     And show the ancient world and worlds to come
     To the last blade of thought and tiniest seed
     Of growth to be. With visions such as these
     My spirit turns in restless ecstacy,
     And this enslaved brain is master sponge,
     And sucks the blood of body, hands and feet.
     While my poor spirit, like a butterfly
     Gummed in its shell, beats its bedraggled wings,
     And cannot rise.

                         I'm cold, both hands and feet.
     These three days past I have been cold, this hour
     I am warm in three days. God bless the ale.
     God did do well to give us anodynes. ...
     So now you know why I am much alone,
     And cannot fellow with Augustine Phillips,
     John Heminge, Richard Burbage, Henry Condell,
     And do not have them here, dear ancient friends,
     Who grieve, no doubt, and wonder for changed love.
     Love is not love which alters when it finds
     A change of heart, but mine has changed not, only
     I cannot be my old self. I blaspheme:
     I hunger for broiled fish, but fly the touch
     Of hands of flesh.

                        I am most passionate,
     And long am used perplexities of love
     To bemoan and to bewail. And do you wonder,
     Seeing what I am, what my fate has been?
     Well, hark you; Anne is sixty now, and I,
     A crater which erupts, look where she stands
     In lava wrinkles, eight years older than I am,
     As years go, but I am a youth afire
     While she is lean and slippered. It's a Fury
     Which takes me sometimes, makes my hands clutch out
     For virgins in their teens. O sullen fancy!
     I want them not, I want the love which springs
     Like flame which blots the sun, where fuel of body
     Is piled in reckless generosity. ...
     You are most learned, Ben, Greek and Latin know,
     And think me nature's child, scarce understand
     How much of physic, law, and ancient annals
     I have stored up by means of studious zeal.
     But pass this by, and for the braggart breath
     Ensuing now say, "Will was in his cups,
     Potvaliant, boozed, corned, squiffy, obfuscated,
     Crapulous, inter pocula, or so forth.
     Good sir, or so, or friend, or gentleman,
     According to the phrase or the addition
     Of man and country, on my honor, Shakespeare
     At Stratford, on the twenty-second of April,
     Year sixteen-sixteen of our Lord was merry—
     Videlicet, was drunk." Well, where was I?—
     Oh yes, at braggart breath, and now to say it:
     I believe and say it as I would lightly speak
     Of the most common thing to sense, outside
     Myself to touch or analyze, this mind
     Which has been used by Something, as I use
     A quill for writing, never in this world
     In the most high and palmy days of Greece,
     Or in this roaring age, has known its peer.
     No soul as mine has lived, felt, suffered, dreamed,
     Broke open spirit secrets, followed trails
     Of passions curious, countless lives explored
     As I have done. And what are Greek and Latin,
     The lore of Aristotle, Plato to this?
     Since I know them by what I am, the essence
     From which their utterance came, myself a flower
     Of every graft and being in myself
     The recapitulation and the complex
     Of all the great. Were not brains before books?
     And even geometries in some brain
     Before old Gutenberg? O fie, Ben Jonson,
     If I am nature's child am I not all?
     Howe'er it be, ascribe this to the ale,
     And say that reason in me was a fume.
     But if you honor me, as you have said,
     As much as any, this side idolatry,
     Think, Ben, of this: That I, whate'er I be
     In your regard, have come to fifty-two,
     Defeated in my love, who knew too well
     That poets through the love of women turn
     To satyrs or to gods, even as women
     By the first touch of passion bloom or rot
     As angels or as bawds.

                                Bethink you also
     How I have felt, seen, known the mystic process
     Working in man's soul from the woman soul
     As part thereof in essence, spirit and flesh,
     Even as a malady may be, while this thing
     Is health and growth, and growing draws all life,
     All goodness, wisdom for its nutriment.
     Till it become a vision paradisic,
     And a ladder of fire for climbing, from its topmost
     Rung a place for stepping into heaven. ...

     This I have know, but had not. Nor have I
     Stood coolly off and seen the woman, used
     Her blood upon my palette. No, but heaven
     Commanded my strength's use to abort and slay
     What grew within me, while I saw the blood
     Of love untimely ripped, as 'twere a child
     Killed i' the womb, a harpy or an angel
     With my own blood stained.

                                As a virgin shamed
     By the swelling life unlicensed needles it,
     But empties not her womb of some last shred
     Of flesh which fouls the alleys of her body,
     And fills her wholesome nerves with poisoned sleep,
     And weakness to the last of life, so I
     For some shame not unlike, some need of life
     To rid me of this life I had conceived
     Did up and choke it too, and thence begot
     A fever and a fixed debility
     For killing that begot.

                                  Now you see that I
     Have not grown from a central dream, but grown
     Despite a wound, and over the wound and used
     My flesh to heal my flesh. My love's a fever
     Which longed for that which nursed the malady,
     And fed on that which still preserved the ill,
     The uncertain, sickly appetite to please.
     My reason, the physician to my love,
     Angry that his prescriptions are not kept
     Has left me. And as reason is past care
     I am past cure, with ever more unrest
     Made frantic-mad, my thoughts as madmen's are,
     And my discourse at random from the truth,
     Not knowing what she is, who swore her fair
     And thought her bright, who is as black as hell
     And dark as night.

                         But list, good gentlemen,
     This love I speak of is not as a cloak
     Which one may put away to wear a coat,
     And doff that for a jacket, like the loves
     We men are wont to have as loves or wives.
     She is the very one, the soul of souls,
     And when you put her on you put on light,
     Or wear the robe of Nessus, poisonous fire,
     Which if you tear away you tear your life,
     And if you wear you fall to ashes. So
     'Tis not her bed-vow broke, I have broke mine,
     That ruins me; 'tis honest faith quite lost,
     And broken hope that we could find each other,
     And that mean more to me and less to her.
     'Tis that she could take all of me and leave me
     Without a sense of loss, without a tear,
     And make me fool and perjured for the oath
     That swore her fair and true. I feel myself
     As like a virgin who her body gives
     For love of one whose love she dreams is hers,
     But wakes to find herself a toy of blood,
     And dupe of prodigal breath, abandoned quite
     For other conquests. For I gave myself,
     And shrink for thought thereof, and for the loss
     Of myself never to myself restored.
     The urtication of this shame made plays
     And sonnets, as you'll find behind all deeds
     That mount to greatness, anger, hate, disgust,
     But, better, love.

                        To hell with punks and wenches,
     Drabs, mopsies, doxies, minxes, trulls and queans,
     Rips, harridans and strumpets, pieces, jades.
     And likewise to the eternal bonfire lechers,
     All rakehells, satyrs, goats and placket fumblers,
     Gibs, breakers-in-at-catch-doors, thunder tubes.
     I think I have a fever—hell and furies!
     Or else this ale grows hotter i' the mouth.
     Ben, if I die before you, let me waste
     Richly and freely in the good brown earth,
     Untrumpeted and by no bust marked out.
     What good, Ben Jonson, if the world could see
     What face was mine, who wrote these plays and sonnets?
     Life, you have hurt me. Since Death has a veil
     I take the veil and hide, and like great Cæsar
     Who drew his toga round him, I depart.

     Good friends, let's to the fields—I have a fever.
     After a little walk, and by your pardon,
     I think I'll sleep. There is no sweeter thing,
     Nor fate more blessed than to sleep. Here, world,
     I pass you like an orange to a child:
     I can no more with you. Do what you will.
     What should my care be when I have no power
     To save, guide, mould you? Naughty world you need me
     As little as I need you: go your way!
     Tyrants shall rise and slaughter fill the earth,
     But I shall sleep. In wars and wars and wars
     The ever-replenished youth of earth shall shriek
     And clap their gushing wounds—but I shall sleep,
     Nor earthy thunder wake me when the cannon
     Shall shake the throne of Tartarus. Orators
     Shall fulmine over London or America
     Of rights eternal, parchments, sacred charters
     And cut each others' throats when reason fails—
     But I shall sleep. This globe may last and breed
     The race of men till Time cries out "How long?"
     But I shall sleep ten thousand thousand years.
     I am a dream, Ben, out of a blessed sleep—
     Let's walk and hear the lark.