Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. | Page 6

creature of despair,
Fanning and fanning
flame to lick upon
A soul still childish in a blackened hell.
BANQUO
What dost thou here far from thy native place?
What piercing
influences of heaven have stirred
Thy heart's last mansion
all-corruptible to wake,
To move, and in the sweets of wine and fire


Sit tempting madness with unholy eyes?
Begone, thou shuddering,
pale anomaly!
The dark presses without on yew and thorn;
Stoops
now the owl upon her lonely quest;
The pomp runs high here, and our
beauteous women
Seek no cold witness--O, let murder cry,
Too
shrill for human ear, only to God.
Come not in power to wreak so
wild a vengeance!
Thou knowest not now the limit of man's heart;

He is beyond thy knowledge. Gaze not then,
Horror enthroned lit
with insanest light!
MERCUTIO
Along an avenue of almond-trees
Came three girls chattering of their
sweethearts three.
And lo! Mercutio, with Byronic ease,
Out of his
philosophic eye cast all
A mere flowered twig of thought, whereat--

Three hearts fell still as when an air dies out
And Venus falters
lonely o'er the sea.
But when within the further mist of bloom
His
step and form were hid, the smooth child Ann
Said, "La, and what
eyes he had!" and Lucy said,
"How sad a gentleman!" and Katherine,

"I wonder, now, what mischief he was at."
And these three also
April hid away,
Leaving the Spring faint with Mercutio.
JULIET'S NURSE
In old-world nursery vacant now of children,
With posied walls,
familiar, fair, demure,
And facing southward o'er romantic streets,

Sits yet and gossips winter's dark away
One gloomy, vast, glossy, and
wise, and sly:
And at her side a cherried country cousin.
Her tongue
claps ever like a ram's sweet bell;
There's not a name but calls a tale
to mind--
Some marrowy patty of farce or melodram;
There's not a
soldier but hath babes in view;
There's not on earth what minds not of
the midwife:
"O, widowhood that left me still espoused!"
Beauty
she sighs o'er, and she sighs o'er gold;
Gold will buy all things, even a
sweet husband,

Else only Heaven is left and--farewell youth!
Yet,
strangely, in that money-haunted head,
The sad, gemmed crucifix and

incense blue
Is childhood once again. Her memory
Is like an
ant-hill which a twig disturbs,
But twig stilled never. And to see her
face,
Broad with sleek homely beams; her babied hands,
Ever like
'lighting doves, and her small eyes--
Blue wells a-twinkle, arch and
lewd and pious--
To darken all sudden into Stygian gloom,
And
paint disaster with uplifted whites,
Is life's epitome. She prates and
prates--
A waterbrook of words o'er twelve small pebbles.
And
when she dies--some grey, long, summer evening,
When the bird
shouts of childhood through the dusk,
'Neath night's faint tapers--then
her body shall
Lie stiff with silks of sixty thrifty years.
IAGO
A dark lean face, a narrow, slanting eye,
Whose deeps of blackness
one pale taper's beam
Haunts with a fitting madness of desire;
A
heart whose cinder at the breath of passion
Glows to a momentary
core of heat
Almost beyond indifference to endure:
So parched Iago
frets his life away.
His scorn works ever in a brain whose wit
This
world hath fools too many and gross to seek.
Ever to live incredibly
alone,
Masked, shivering, deadly, with a simple Moor
Of idiot
gravity, and one pale flower
Whose chill would quench in everlasting
peace
His soul's unmeasured flame--O paradox!
Might he but learn
the trick!--to wear her heart
One fragile hour of heedless innocence,

And then, farewell, and the incessant grave.
"O fool! O
villain!"--'tis the shuttlecock
Wit never leaves at rest. It is his fate

To be a needle in a world of hay,
Where honour is the flattery of the
fool;
Sin, a tame bauble; lies, a tiresome jest;
Virtue, a silly,
whitewashed block of wood
For words to fell. Ah! but the secret
lacking,

The secret of the child, the bird, the night,
Faded, flouted,
bespattered, in days so far
Hate cannot bitter them, nor wrath deny;

Else were this Desdemona.... Why!
Woman a harlot is, and life a nest

Fouled by long ages of forked fools. And God--
Iago deals not with
a tale so dull:
To have made the world! Fie on thee, Artisan!

IMOGEN
Even she too dead! all languor on her brow,
All mute humanity's last
simpleness,--
And yet the roses in her cheeks unfallen!
Can death
haunt silence with a silver sound?
Can death, that hushes all music to
a close,
Pluck one sweet wire scarce-audible that trembles,
As if a
little child, called Purity,
Sang heedlessly on of his dear Imogen?

Surely if some young flowers of Spring were put
Into the tender
hollow of her heart,
'Twould faintly answer, trembling in their petals.

Poise but a wild bird's feather, it will stir
On lips that even in
silence wear the badge
Only of truth. Let but a cricket wake,
And
sing of home, and bid her lids unseal
The unspeakable hospitality of
her eyes.
O childless soul--call once her husband's name!
And even
if indeed from these green hills
Of England, far, her spirit flits forlorn,

Back to its youthful mansion it will turn,
Back to the floods of
sorrow these sweet locks
Yet heavy bear in drops; and Night shall see

Unwearying as her stars still Imogen,
Pausing 'twixt death and life
on one hushed word.
POLONIUS
There