Look! We Have Come Through! | Page 2

Vast, the God, the Sleep that still grows
richer?Have said that I, this mote in the body of sleep?Must in my transiency pass all through pain,?Must be a dream of grief, must like a crude?Dull meteorite flash only into light?When tearing through the anguish of this life,?Still in full flight extinct, shall I then turn?Poltroon, and beg the silent, outspread God?To alter my one speck of doom, when round me
burns?The whole great conflagration of all life,?Lapped like a body close upon a sleep,?Hiding and covering in the eternal Sleep?Within the immense and toilsome life-time,
heaved?With ache of dreams that body forth the Sleep?
Shall I, less than the least red grain of flesh?Within my body, cry out to the dreaming soul?That slowly labours in a vast travail,?To halt the heart, divert the streaming flow?That carries moons along, and spare the stress?That crushes me to an unseen atom of fire?
When pain and all?And grief are but the same last wonder, Sleep?Rising to dream in me a small keen dream?Of sudden anguish, sudden over and spent--
CROYDON
_DON JUAN_
IT is Isis the mystery?Must be in love with me.
Here this round ball of earth?Where all the mountains sit?Solemn in groups,?And the bright rivers flit?Round them for girth.
Here the trees and troops?Darken the shining grass,?And many people pass?Plundered from heaven,?Many bright people pass,?Plunder from heaven.
What of the mistresses?What the beloved seven??--They were but witnesses,?I was just driven.
Where is there peace for me??Isis the mystery?Must be in love with me.
_THE SEA_
You, you are all unloving, loveless, you;?Restless and lonely, shaken by your own moods,?You are celibate and single, scorning a comrade even,?Threshing your own passions with no woman for
the threshing-floor,?Finishing your dreams for your own sake only,?Playing your great game around the world, alone,?Without playmate, or helpmate, having no one to
cherish,?No one to comfort, and refusing any comforter.
Not like the earth, the spouse all full of increase?Moiled over with the rearing of her many-mouthed
young;?You are single, you are fruitless, phosphorescent,
cold and callous,?Naked of worship, of love or of adornment,?Scorning the panacea even of labour,?Sworn to a high and splendid purposelessness?Of brooding and delighting in the secret of life's
goings,?Sea, only you are free, sophisticated.
You who toil not, you who spin not,?Surely but for you and your like, toiling?Were not worth while, nor spinning worth the
effort!
You who take the moon as in a sieve, and sift?Her flake by flake and spread her meaning out;?You who roll the stars like jewels in your palm,?So that they seem to utter themselves aloud;?You who steep from out the days their colour,?Reveal the universal tint that dyes?Their web; who shadow the sun's great gestures
and expressions?So that he seems a stranger in his passing;?Who voice the dumb night fittingly;?Sea, you shadow of all things, now mock us to
death with your shadowing.
BOURNEMOUTH
_HYMN TO PRIAPUS_
MY love lies underground?With her face upturned to mine,?And her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss?That ended her life and mine.
I dance at the Christmas party?Under the mistletoe?Along with a ripe, slack country lass?Jostling to and fro.
The big, soft country lass,?Like a loose sheaf of wheat?Slipped through my arms on the threshing floor?At my feet.
The warm, soft country lass,?Sweet as an armful of wheat?At threshing-time broken, was broken?For me, and ah, it was sweet!
Now I am going home?Fulfilled and alone,?I see the great Orion standing?Looking down.
He's the star of my first beloved?Love-making.?The witness of all that bitter-sweet?Heart-aching.
Now he sees this as well,?This last commission.?Nor do I get any look?Of admonition.
He can add the reckoning up?I suppose, between now and then,?Having walked himself in the thorny, difficult?Ways of men.
He has done as I have done?No doubt:?Remembered and forgotten?Turn and about.
My love lies underground?With her face upturned to mine,?And her mouth unclosed in the last long kiss?That ended her life and mine.
She fares in the stark immortal?Fields of death;?I in these goodly, frozen?Fields beneath.
Something in me remembers?And will not forget.?The stream of my life in the darkness?Deathward set!
And something in me has forgotten,?Has ceased to care.?Desire comes up, and contentment?Is debonair.
I, who am worn and careful,?How much do I care??How is it I grin then, and chuckle?Over despair?
Grief, grief, I suppose and sufficient?Grief makes us free?To be faithless and faithful together?As we have to be.
_BALLAD OF A WILFUL WOMAN_
FIRST PART
UPON her plodding palfrey?With a heavy child at her breast?And Joseph holding the bridle?They mount to the last hill-crest.
Dissatisfied and weary?She sees the blade of the sea?Dividing earth and heaven?In a glitter of ecstasy.
Sudden a dark-faced stranger?With his back to the sun, holds out?His arms; so she lights from her palfrey?And turns her round about.
She has given the child to Joseph,?Gone down to the flashing shore;?And Joseph, shading his eyes with his hand,?Stands watching evermore.
SECOND PART
THE sea in the stones is singing,?A woman binds her hair?With yellow, frail sea-poppies,?That shine as her fingers stir.
While a naked man comes swiftly?Like a spurt of white foam rent?From the crest