The Heptalogia | Page 2

cure.
VI
Leaves love last year smelt now feel dead love's tears melt--flies
caught in time's mesh!
Salt are the dews in which new time breeds
new sin, brews blood and
stews flesh;
Next year may see dead more germs than this weeded
and reared them
afresh.
VII
Old times left perish, there's new time to cherish; life just shifts
its tune;
As, when the day dies, earth, half afraid, eyes the growth of
the moon; Love me and save me, take me or waive me; death takes one
so soon!
II
BY THE CLIFF
I

Is it daytime (guess),
You that feed my soul
To excess
With that
light in those eyes
And those curls drawn like a scroll
In that round
grave guise?
No or yes?
II
Oh, the end, I'd say!
Such a foolish thing
(Pure girls' play!)
As a
mere mute heart,
Was it worth a kiss, a ring,
This? for two must
part--
Not to-day.
III
Look, the whole sand crawls,
Hums, a heaving hive,
Scrapes and
scrawls--
Such a buzz and burst!
Here just one thing's not alive,

One that was at first--
But life palls.
IV
Yes, my heart, I know,
Just my heart's stone dead--
Yes, just so.

Sick with heat, those worms
Drop down scorched and overfed--
No
more need of germs!
Let them go.
V
Yes, but you now, look,
You, the rouged stage female
With a crook,

Chalked Arcadian sham,
You that made my soul's sleep's dream
ail--
Your soul fit to damn?
Shut the book.

III
ON THE SANDS
I
There was nothing at all in the case (conceive)
But love; being love,
it was not (understand)
Such a thing as the years let fall (believe)

Like the rope's coil dropt from a fisherman's hand
When the boat's
hauled up--"by your leave!"
II
So--well! How that crab writhes--leg after leg
Drawn, as a worm
draws ring upon ring
Gradually, not gladly! Chicken or egg,
Is it
more than the ransom (say) of a king
(Take my meaning at least) that
I beg?
III
Not so! You were ready to learn, I think,
What the world said! "He
loves you too well (suppose)
For such leanings! These poets, their
love's mere ink--
Like a flower, their flame flashes--a rosebud,
blows--
Then it all drops down at a wink!
IV
"Ah, the instance! A curl of a blossomless vine
The vinedresser
passing it sickens to see
And mutters 'Much hope (under God) of His
wine
From the branch and the bark of a barren tree
Spring reared
not, and winter lets pine--
V
"'His wine that should glorify (saith He) the cup
That a man
beholding (not tasting) might say
"Pour out life at a draught, drain it

dry, drink it up,
Give this one thing, and huddle the rest away--

Save the bitch, and be hanged to the pup!"
VI
"'Let it rot then!' which saying, he leaves it--we'll guess, Feels (if the
sap move at all) thus much--
Yearns, and would blossom, would
quicken no less,
Bud at an eye's glance, flower at a touch--
'Die,
perhaps, would you not, for her?'--'Yes!'
VII
"Note the hitch there! That's piteous--so much being done,
(He'll
think some day, your lover) so little to do!
Such infinite days to wear
out, once begun!
Since the hand its glove holds, and the footsole its
shoe-- Overhead too there's always the sun!"
VIII
Oh, no doubt they had said so, your friends--been profuse
Of good
counsel, wise hints--"where the trap lurks, walk warily-- Squeeze the
fruit to the core ere you count on the juice!
For the graft may fail,
shift, wax, change colour, wane, vary, lie--" You were cautious, God
knows--to what use?
IX
This crab's wiser, it strikes me--no twist but implies life-- Not a curl
but's so fit you could find none fitter--
For the brute from its
brutehood looks up thus and eyes life-- Stoop your soul down and listen,
you'll hear it twitter,
Laughing lightly,--my crab's life's the wise life!
X
Those who've read S. T. Coleridge remember how Sammy sighs
To
his pensive (I think he says) Sara--"most soothing-sweet"-- Crab's
bulk's less (look!) than man's--yet (quoth Cancer) I am my size, And

my bulk's girth contents me! Man's maw (see?) craves two things--
wheat
And flesh likewise--man's gluttonous--damn his eyes!
XI
Crab's content with crab's provender: crab's love, if soothing, Is no
sweeter than pincers are soft--and a new sickle
Cuts no sharper than
crab's claws nip, keen as boar's toothing! Yet crab's love's no less
fervent than bard's, if less musical-- 'Tis a new thing I'd lilt--but a true
thing.
XII
Old songs tell us, of all drinks for Englishmen fighting, ale's Out and
out best: salt water contents crab, it seems to me, Though pugnacious
as sailors, and skilled to steer right in gales That craze pilots, if slow to
sing--"Sleep'st thou? thou dream'st o' me!"
In such love-strains as
mine--or a nightingale's.
XIII
Ah, now, look you--tail foremost, the beast sets seaward--
The sea
draws it, sand sucks it--he's wise, my crab!
From the napkin out
jumps his one talent--good steward,
Just judge! So a man shirks the
smile or the stab,
And sets