Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. | Page 5

while he stayed.
His eyes were
sad as fishes that swim up
And stare upon an element not theirs

Through a thin skin of shrewish water, then
Turn on a languid fin,
and dip down, down,
Into unplumbed, vast, oozy deeps of dream.

His stomach was his master, and proclaimed it;
And never were such
meagre puppets made
The slaves of such a tyrant, as his thoughts

Of that obese epitome of ills.
Trussed up he sat, the mockery of
himself;
And when upon the wan green of his eye
I marked the
gathering lustre of a tear,
Thought I myself must weep, until I caught

A grey, smug smile of satisfaction smirch
His pallid features at his
misery.
And laugh did I, to see the little snares
He had set for pests
to vex him: his great feet
Prisoned in greater boots; so narrow a stool

To seat such elephantine parts as his;
Ay, and the book he read, a
Hebrew Bible;
And, to incite a gross and backward wit,
An old,
crabbed, wormed, Greek dictionary; and
A foxy Ovid bound in
dappled calf.
GOLIATH
Still as a mountain with dark pines and sun
He stood between the
armies, and his shout
Rolled from the empyrean above the host:

"Bid any little flea ye have come forth,
And wince at death upon my
finger-nail!"
He turned his large-boned face; and all his steel

Tossed into beams the lustre of the noon;
And all the shaggy horror
of his locks
Rustled like locusts in a field of corn.
The meagre pupil
of his shameless eye
Moved like a cormorant over a glassy sea.
He
stretched his limbs, and laughed into the air,
To feel the groaning
sinews of his breast,
And the long gush of his swollen arteries pause:

And, nodding, wheeled, towering in all his height.
Then, like a
wind that hushes, gazed and saw
Down, down, far down upon the
untroubled green
A shepherd-boy that swung a little sling.
Goliath
shut his lids to drive that mote,
Which vexed the eastern azure of his

eye,
Out of his vision; and stared down again.
Yet stood the youth
there, ruddy in the flare
Of his vast shield, nor spake, nor quailed,
gazed up,
As one might scan a mountain to be scaled.
Then, as it
were, a voice unearthly still
Cried in the cavern of his bristling ear,

"His name is Death!" ... And, like the flush
That dyes Sahara to its
lifeless verge,
His brows' bright brass flamed into sudden crimson;

And his great spear leapt upward, lightning-like,
Shaking a dreadful
thunder in the air;
Spun betwixt earth and sky, bright as a berg
That
hoards the sunlight in a myriad spires,
Crashed: and struck echo
through an army's heart.
Then paused Goliath, and stared down again.

And fleet-foot Fear from rolling orbs perceived
Steadfast,
unharmed, a stooping shepherd-boy
Frowning upon the target of his
face.
And wrath tossed suddenly up once more his hand;
And a
deep groan grieved all his strength in him.
He breathed; and, lost in
dazzling darkness, prayed--
Besought his reins, his gloating gods, his
youth:
And turned to smite what he no more could see.
Then sped
the singing pebble-messenger,
The chosen of the Lord from Israel's
brooks,
Fleet to its mark, and hollowed a light path
Down to the
appalling Babel of his brain.
And like the smoke of dreaming
Souffrière
Dust rose in cloud, spread wide, slow silted down
Softly
all softly on his armour's blaze.

CHARACTERS FROM SHAKESPEARE

FALSTAFF
'Twas in a tavern that with old age stooped
And leaned rheumatic
rafters o'er his head--
A blowzed, prodigious man, which talked, and
stared,
And rolled, as if with purpose, a small eye
Like a sweet
Cupid in a cask of wine.
I could not view his fatness for his soul,

Which peeped like harmless lightnings and was gone;

As haps to

voyagers of the summer air.
And when he laughed, Time trickled
down those beams,
As in a glass; and when in self-defence
He
puffed that paunch, and wagged that huge, Greek head,
Nosed like a
Punchinello, then it seemed
An hundred widows swept in his small
voice,
Now tenor, and now bass of drummy war.
He smiled,
compact of loam, this orchard man;
Mused like a midnight, webbed
with moonbeam snares
Of flitting Love; woke--and a King he stood,

Whom all the world hath in sheer jest refused
For helpless
laughter's sake. And then, forfend!
Bacchus and Jove reared vast
Olympus there;
And Pan leaned leering from Promethean eyes.

"Lord!" sighed his aspect, weeping o'er the jest,
"What simple mouse
brought such a mountain forth?"
MACBETH
Rose, like dim battlements, the hills and reared
Steep crags into the
fading primrose sky;
But in the desolate valleys fell small rain,

Mingled with drifting cloud. I saw one come,
Like the fierce passion
of that vacant place,
His face turned glittering to the evening sky;

His eyes, like grey despair, fixed satelessly
On the still, rainy turrets
of the storm;
And all his armour in a haze of blue.
He held no
sword, bare was his hand and clenched,
As if to hide the
inextinguishable blood
Murder had painted there. And his wild mouth

Seemed spouting echoes of deluded thoughts.
Around his head,
like vipers all distort,
His locks shook, heavy-laden, at each stride.

If fire may burn invisible to the eye;
O, if despair strive everlastingly;

Then haunted here the