Transitional Poem/Part 1
PART I
"Ira brevis, longa est pietas, recidiva voluptas; Et cum posse perit, mens tamen una manet."Maximian.
1
Now I have come to reasonAnd cast my schoolboy clout,Disorder I see is without,And the mind must sweat a poisonKeener than Thessaly's brew;A pus that, discharged not thence,Gangrenes the vital senseAnd makes disorder true.It is certain we shall attainNo life till we stamp on allLife the tetragonalPure symmetry of brain.
I felt, in my scorningOf common poet's talk,As arrogant as the hawkWhen he mounts above the morning."Behold man's droll appearance,Faith wriggling upon his hooks,Chin-deep in Eternal FluxAngling for reassurance!"I care not if he retorts—"Of all that labour and wiveAnd worship, who would giveA fiddlestick for these thoughts That sluggishly yaw and bend,Fat strings of barges drawnBy a tug they have never seenAnd never will comprehend?"
I sit in a wood and stareUp at untroubled branchesLocked together and staunch asThough girders of the air:And think, the first wind risingWill crack that intricate crownAnd let the daylight down.But there is naught surprisingCan explode the single mind:—Let figs from thistles fallOr stars from their pedestal,This architecture will stand.
2
Come, soul, let us not fightLike cynical ChineeBeneath umbrella, nor wish to tradeUpon neutrality.For the mind must cope withAll elements or none—Bask in dust along with weevils,Or criticise the sun.
Look, where cloud squadrons areStampeded by the wind,A boy's kite sits as calm as MinosIf the string be sound:But if there are no handsTo keep the cable tenseAnd no eyes to mark a flaw in it,What use the differenceBetween a gust that twittersAlong the wainscot at dawnAnd a burly wind playing the zanyIn fields of barleycorn?
The time has gone when weCould sprawl at ease betweenLight and darkness, and deduceOmnipotence from our Mean.For us the gregorianExample of those eyesThat risked hell's blight and heaven's blindingBut dared not compromise.
3
That afternoon we lay on Lillington CommonThe land wallowed around us in the sunlight;But finding all things my strenuous sense includedCiphers new-copied by the indefinite sunlight, I fell once more under the shadow of my Sphinx.The aimlessness of buttercup and beetleSo pestered me, I would have cried surrenderTo the fossil certitudes of Tom, Dick, and Harry,Had I known how or believed that such a surrenderCould fashion aught but a dead Sphinx from the live Sphinx. Later we lit a fire, and the hedge of darkness—Garnished with not a nightingale nor a glow-worm—Sprang up like the beanstalk by which our Jack aspired once.Then, though each star seemed little as a glow-wormPerched on Leviathan's flank, and equally terribleMy tenure of this plateau that sloped on all sidesInto annihilation—yet was I lord ofSomething: for, seeing the fall of a burnt-out faggotMake all the night sag down, I became lord ofLight's interplay—stoker of an old parable.
4
Come up, Methuselah,You doddering superman!Give me an instant realizedAnd I'll outdo your span.
In that one moment of eveningWhen roses are most red I can fold back the firmament,I can put time to bed.
Abraham, stint your tallyOf concubines and cattle!Give place to me—capitalistIn more intrinsic metal.
I have a lover of fleshAnd a lover that is a sprite:To-day I lie down with finite,To-morrow with infinite.
That one is a constantAnd suffers no eclipse,Though I feel sun and moon burningTogether on her lips.
This one is a constant,But she's not kind at all;She raddles her gown with my despairsAnd paints her lip with gall.
My lover of flesh is wild,And willing to kiss again;She is the potency of earthWhen woods exhale the rain.
My lover of air, like ArtemisSpectrally embraced,Shuns the daylight that twists her smileTo mineral distaste.
Twin poles energic, theyStand fast and generateThis spark that crackles in the voidAs between fate and fate.
5
My love is a tower.Standing up in herI parley with planetsAnd the casual wind.Arcturus may grindAgainst our wall:—he whetsA tropic appetite,And decorates our night."What happier placeFor Johnny Head-in-Air,Who never would hearTime mumbling at the base?"
I will not hear, for she'sMy real Antipodes, And our ingrowing lovesShall meet below earth's spineAnd there shall intertwine,Though Babel falls above.Time, we allow, destroysAll aërial toys:But to assail love's heartHe has no strategy,Unless he suck up the seaAnd pull the earth apart.
6
Dismayed by the monstrous credibilityOf all antinomies, I climbed the fellsTo Easedale Tarn. Could I be child againAnd grip those skirts of cloud the matriarch skyDraggled on mere and hillside? . . . ("So the dogReturns to his vomit," you protest. Well onlyThe dog can tell what virtue lies in his vomit.) Sleep on, you fells and profound dales: there's noMaterial wind or rain can insulateThe mind against its own forked speculation,When once that storm sets in: and then the flashThat bleakly enlightens a few sour acres leaves butA more Egyptian darkness whence it came. Mountains are the musicians; they despiseTheir audience: but the wind is a popular preacherAnd takes more from his audience than he gives them.How can I wear the clouds, who feel each mountainYearn from its flinty marrow to abdicateSublimity and globe-trot with the wind? By Easedale Tarn, where I sought a comforter,I found a gospel sterner than repentance.Prophetic earth, you need no lumber of logicWho point your arguments alike with a primroseAnd a sick sheep coughing among the stones:And I have only words; yet must they bothOutsoar the mountain and lap up the wind.
7
Few things can more inflameThis far too combative heartThan the intellectual Quixotes of the agePrattling of abstract art.
No one would deny it—But for a blind man's passionCassandra had been no more than a draggle-skirt,Helen a ten-year fashion.Yet had there not been one hostessEver whose arms waylaid Like the tough bramble a princeling's journey, orAt the least no peasant maidRedressing with rude heatNature's primeval wrong,Epic had slumbered on beneath his blindnessAnd Helen lacked her song.
(So the antique balloonWobbles with no defenceAgainst the void but a grapnel that hops and ploughsThrough the landscape of sense.)
Phrase-making, dress-making—Distinction's hard to find;For thought must play the mannequin, strut in phrase,Or gape with the ruck: and mind,Like body, from covering getsMost adequate display.Yet time trundles this one to the rag-and-bone man,While that other mayReverberate all alongMan's craggy circumstance—Naked enough to keep its dignityThough it eye God askance.