Hugh Selwyn Mauberley | Page 2

never told in the old days,?hysterias, trench confessions,?laughter out of dead bellies.
V.
THERE died a myriad,?And of the best, among them,?For an old bitch gone in the teeth,?For a botched civilization,
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,?Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
For two gross of broken statues,?For a few thousand battered books.
YEUX GLAUQUES
GLADSTONE was still respected,?When John Ruskin produced?"Kings Treasuries"; Swinburne?And Rossetti still abused.
Foetid Buchanan lifted up his voice?When that faun's head of hers?Became a pastime for?Painters and adulterers.
The Burne-Jones cartons?Have preserved her eyes;?Still, at the Tate, they teach?Cophetua to rhapsodize;
Thin like brook-water,?With a vacant gaze.?The English Rubaiyat was still-born?In those days.
The thin, clear gaze, the same?Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin'd fac?Questing and passive ....?"Ah, poor Jenny's case"...
Bewildered that a world?Shows no surprise?At her last maquero's?Adulteries.
"SIENA MI FE', DISFECEMI MAREMMA"
AMONG the pickled foetuses and bottled bones,?Engaged in perfecting the catalogue,?I found the last scion of the?Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.
For two hours he talked of Gallifet;?Of Dowson; of the Rhymers' Club;?Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died?By falling from a high stool in a pub . . .
But showed no trace of alcohol?At the autopsy, privately performed--?Tissue preserved--the pure mind?Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed.
Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels;?Headlam for uplift; Image impartially imbued?With raptures for Bacchus, Terpsichore and the Church.?So spoke the author of "The Dorian Mood",
M. Verog, out of step with the decade,?Detached from his contemporaries,?Neglected by the young,?Because of these reveries.
BRENNBAUM.
THE sky-like limpid eyes,?The circular infant's face,?The stiffness from spats to collar?Never relaxing into grace;
The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years,?Showed only when the daylight fell?Level across the face?Of Brennbaum "The Impeccable".
MR. NIXON
IN the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht?Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer?Dangers of delay. "Consider
"Carefully the reviewer.
"I was as poor as you are;?"When I began I got, of course,?"Advance on royalties, fifty at first", said Mr. Nixon,?"Follow me, and take a column,?"Even if you have to work free.
"Butter reviewers. From fifty to three hundred?"I rose in eighteen months;?"The hardest nut I had to crack?"Was Dr. Dundas.
"I never mentioned a man but with the view?"Of selling my own works.?"The tip's a good one, as for literature?"It gives no man a sinecure."
And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece.?And give up verse, my boy,?There's nothing in it.
? * *
Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me:?Don't kick against the pricks,?Accept opinion. The "Nineties" tried your game?And died, there's nothing in it.
X.
BENEATH the sagging roof?The stylist has taken shelter,?Unpaid, uncelebrated,?At last from the world's welter
Nature receives him,?With a placid and uneducated mistress?He exercises his talents?And the soil meets his distress.
The haven from sophistications and contentions?Leaks through its thatch;?He offers succulent cooking;?The door has a creaking latch.
XI.
"CONSERVATRIX of Milésien"?Habits of mind and feeling,?Possibly. But in Ealing?With the most bank-clerkly of Englishmen?
No, "Milésien" is an exaggeration.?No instinct has survived in her?Older than those her grandmother?Told her would fit her station.
XII.
"DAPHNE with her thighs in bark?Stretches toward me her leafy hands",--?Subjectively. In the stuffed-satin drawing-room?I await The Lady Valentine's commands,
Knowing my coat has never been?Of precisely the fashion?To stimulate, in her,?A durable passion;
Doubtful, somewhat, of the value?Of well-gowned approbation?Of literary effort,?But never of The Lady Valentine's vocation:
Poetry, her border of ideas,?The edge, uncertain, but a means of blending?With other strata?Where the lower and higher have ending;
A hook to catch the Lady Jane's attention,?A modulation toward the theatre,?Also, in the case of revolution,?A possible friend and comforter.
? * *
Conduct, on the other hand, the soul?"Which the highest cultures have nourished"?To Fleet St. where?Dr. Johnson flourished;
Beside this thoroughfare?The sale of half-hose has?Long since superseded the cultivation?Of Pierian roses.
ENVOI (1919)
GO, dumb-born book,?Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes;?Hadst thou but song?As thou hast subjects known,?Then were there cause in thee that should condone?Even my faults that heavy upon me lie?And build her glories their longevity.
Tell her that sheds?Such treasure in the air,?Recking naught else but that her graces give?Life to the moment,?I would bid them live?As roses might, in magic amber laid,?Red overwrought with orange and all made?One substance and one colour?Braving time.
Tell her that goes?With song upon her lips?But sings not out the song, nor knows?The maker of it, some other mouth,?May be as fair as hers,?Might, in new ages, gain her worshippers,?When our two dusts with Waller's shall be laid,?Siftings on siftings in oblivion,?Till change hath broken down?All things save Beauty alone.
1920
(MAUBERLEY)
I.
TURNED from the "eau-forte?Par Jaquemart"?To the strait head?Of Mcssalina:
"His true Penelope?Was Flaubert",?And his tool?The engraver's
Firmness,?Not the full smile,?His art, but an art?In profile;
Colourless?Pier Francesca,?Pisanello lacking the skill?To forge Achaia.
II.
_"Qu'est ce qu'ils savent de l'amour, et?gu'est ce qu'ils peuvent comprendre??S'ils ne comprennent pas la poèsie,?s'ils ne sentent pas la musique, qu'est ce?qu'ils peuvent comprendre de cette passion?en comparaison avec laquelle la rose?est grossière et le parfum des violettes un?tonnerre?"_ CAID ALI
FOR three years, diabolus in the scale,?He drank ambrosia,?All passes, ANANGKE