Poems (Tree)/I Should Like to Say to the World
I SHOULD like to say to the world:I have launched my soul like a ship upon free waters;Beautiful she stands in the docks with proud masts cutting the sky,Perfectly poised, her white sails spreading like wings,Her figurehead a woman with breasts that daunt the spray,Her flag a flutter of coloured exuberance.I should like to see her plunging out of the idle harbourWhere the sulky tide drifts scum, and the sailors wrangle and shout,In a thunder of churning waves ramping before her like dappled stallions,Blossoming behind her a field of etiolate lilies. . . .
But to the mimicking, plotting, miserly, cynical,To the rabble and gabble that dance and kill on the quay,I can only say that my soul is a sleeping gondolaLulled by a jester's mandolin, till night is atinkle with tunesAnd lantern-lights, along the indolent backwaters.
1915