The Heptalogia | Page 8

and the wind in my ears Was the wail of a poet for failure--you needn't come snivelling tears And spoiling the mixture, confound you, with dropping your tears into that! I know I'm pathetic--I must be--and you soft-hearted and fat, And I'm grateful of course for your kindness--there, don't come hugging
me, now--?But because a fellow's pathetic, you needn't low like a cow.
I should like--on my soul, I should like--to remember--but somehow I can't--?If the lady whose love has reduced me to this was the niece or the aunt. But whichever it was, I feel sure, when I published my lays of last year (You remember their title--The Tramp--only seven-and-sixpence--not dear), I sent her a copy (perhaps her tears fell on the title-page--yes-- I should like to imagine she wept)--and the Bride of Bulgaria (MS.) I forwarded with it. The lyrics, no doubt, she found bitter--and sweet; But the Bride she rejected, you know, with expressions I will not repeat. Well--she did no more than all publishers did. Though my prospects were
marred,?I can pity and pardon them. Blindness, mere blindness! And yet it was hard. For a poet, Bill, is a blossom--a bird--a billow--a breeze-- A kind of creature that moves among men as a wind among trees. And a bard who is also the pet of patricians and dowagers doubly can Express his contempt for canaille in his fables where beasts are
republican.?Yet with all my disdainful forgiveness for men so deficient in _ton_ I cannot but feel it was cruel--I cannot but think it was wrong. I with the heat of my heart still burning against all bars?As the fire of the dawn, so to speak, in the blanched blank brows of
the stars--?I with my tremulous lips made pale by musical breath--?I with the shade in my eyes that was left by the kisses of Death-- (For Death came near me in youth, and touched my face with his face, And put in my lips the songs that belong to a desolate place-- Desolate truly, my heart and my lips, till her kiss filled them up!) I with my soul like wine poured out with my flesh for the cup-- It was hard for me--it was hard--Bill, Bill, you great owl, was it not? For the day creeps in like a Fate: and I think my grand passion is rot: And I dreamily seem to perceive, by the light of a life's dream done, The lotion at six, and the mixture at ten, and the draught before one.
Yes--I feel rather better. Man's life is a mull, at the best; And the patent perturbator pills are like bullets of lead in my chest. When a man's whole spirit is like the lost Pleiad, a blown-out star, Is there comfort in Holloway, Bill? is there hope of salvation in Parr? True, most things work to their end--and an end that the shroud overlaps. Under lace, under silk, under gold, sir, the skirt of a winding-sheet
flaps--?Which explains, if you think of it, Bill, why I can't, though my soul
thereon broodeth,?Quite make out if I loved Lady Tamar as much as I loved Lady Judith. Yet her dress was of violet velvet, her hair was hyacinth-hued, And her ankles--no matter. A face where the music of every mood Was touched by the tremulous fingers of passionate feeling, and made Strange melodies, scornful, but sweeter than strings whereon sorrow has
played?To enrapture the hearing of mirth when his garland of blossom and green Turns to lead on the anguished forehead--"you don't understand what I
mean"??Well, of course I knew you were stupid--you always were stupid at school-- Now don't say you weren't--but I'm hanged if I thought you were quite
such a fool!?You don't see the point of all this? I was talking of sickness and death-- In that poem I made years ago, I said this--"Love, the flower-time
whose breath?Smells sweet through a summer of kisses and perfumes an autumn of tears Is sadder at root than a winter--its hopes heavy-hearted like fears. Though I love your Grace more than I love little Letty, the maid of
the mill,?Yet the heat of your lips when I kiss them" (you see we were intimate,
Bill)?"And the beat of the delicate blood in your eyelids of azure and white Leave the taste of the grave in my mouth and the shadow of death on my
sight.?Fill the cup--twine the chaplet--come into the garden--get out of the
house--?Drink to _me_ with your eyes--there's a banquet behind, where worms
only carouse!?As I said to sweet Katie, who lived by the brook on the land Philip
farmed--?Worms shall graze where my kisses found pasture!" The Duchess, I may
say, was charmed.?It was read to the Duke, and he cried like a child. If you'll give me
a pill,?I'll go on till past midnight. That poem was said to be--Somebody's, Bill. But