The Heptalogia | Page 4

wave's sheen of green, I mean,
With twinkling
wrinkles--eh?
V
Sea sprinkles winkles, tinkles light
Shells' bells--boy's joys that hap
to snap!
It's just sea's fun, breeze done, to spite
God's rods that
scourge her surge, I'd urge--
Not proper, is it--quite?
VI
See, fore and aft, life's craft undone!
Crank plank, split
spritsail--mark, sea's lark!
That grey cold sea's old sprees, begun

When men lay dark i' the ark, no spark,
All water--just God's fun!
VII
Not bright, at best, his jest to these
Seemed--screamed, shrieked,
wreaked on kin for sin!
When for mirth's yell earth's knell seemed
please
Some dumb new grim great whim in him
Made Jews take
chalk for cheese.
VIII
Could God's rods bruise God's Jews? Their jowls
Bobbed, sobbed,
gaped, aped the plaice in face:
None heard, 'tis odds,
his--God's--folk's howls.
Now, how must I apply, to try
This

hookiest-beaked of owls?
IX
Well, I suppose God knows--I don't.
Time's crimes mark dark men's
types, in stripes
Broad as fen's lands men's hands were wont
Leave
grieve unploughed, though proud and loud
With birds' words--No! he
won't!
X
One never should think good impossible.
Eh? say I'd hide this Jew's
oil's cruse--
His shop might hold bright gold, engrossible
By
spy--spring's air takes there no care
To wave the heath-flower's
glossy bell!
XI
But gold bells chime in time there, coined--
Gold! Old Sphinx winks
there--"Read my screed!"
Doctrine Jews learn, use, burn for, joined

(Through new craft's stealth) with health and wealth--
At once all
three purloined!
XII
I rose with dawn, to pawn, no doubt,
(Miss this chance, glance
untried aside?)
John's shirt, my--no! Ay, so--the lout!
Let yet the
door gape, store on floor
And not a soul about?
XIII
Such men lay traps, perhaps--and I'm
Weak--meek--mild--child of
woe, you know!
But theft, I doubt, my lout calls crime.
Shrink?
Think! Love's dawn in pawn--you spawn
Of Jewry! Just in time!
V

OFF THE PIER
I
One last glance at these sands and stones!
Time goes past men, and
lives to his liking,
Steals, and ruins, and sometimes atones.
Why
should he be king, though, and why not I king?
There now, that wind,
like a swarm of sick drones!
II
Is it heaven or mere earth (come!) that moves so and moans? Oh, I
knew, when you loved me, my soul was in flowerage-- Now the frost
comes; from prime, though, I watched through to nones, Read love's
litanies over--his age was not our age!
No more flutes in this world
for me now, dear! trombones.
III
All that youth once denied and made mouths at, age owns.
Facts put
fangs out and bite us; life stings and grows viperous; And time's fugues
are a hubbub of meaningless tones.
Once we followed the piper; now
why not the piper us?
Love, grown grey, plays mere solos; we want
antiphones.
IV
And we sharpen our wits up with passions for hones,
Melt down
loadstars for magnets, use women for whetstones, Learn to bear with
dead calms by remembering cyclones,
Snap strings short with sharp
thumbnails, till silence begets tones, Burn our souls out, shift spirits,
turn skins and change zones;
V
Then the heart, when all's done with, wakes, whimpers, intones Some
lost fragment of tune it thought sweet ere it grew sick; (Is it life that

disclaims this, or death that disowns?)
Mere dead metal, scrawled
bars--ah, one touch, you make music! Love's worth saving, youth
doubts, but experience depones.
VI
In the darkness (right Dickens) of Tom-All-Alone's
Or the Morgue
out in Paris, where tragedy centuples
Life's effects by Death's algebra,
Shakespeare (Malone's)
Might have said sleep was murdered--new
scholiasts have sent you pills To purge text of him! Bread? give
me--Scotticè--scones!
VII
Think, what use, when youth's saddle galls bay's back or roan's, To
seek chords on love's keys to strike, other than his chords? There's an
error joy winks at and grief half condones,
Or life's counterpoint
grates the C major of discords--
'Tis man's choice 'twixt sluts
rose-crowned and queens age dethrones.
VIII
I for instance might groan as a bag-pipe groans,
Give the flesh of my
heart for sharp sorrows to flagellate, Grief might grind my cheeks down,
age make sticks of my bones, (Though a queen drowned in tears must
be worth more than Madge elate)[1] Rose might turn burdock, and
pine-apples cones;
IX
My skin might change to a pitiful crone's,
My lips to a lizard's, my
hair to weed,
My features, in fact, to a series of loans;
Thus much is
conceded; now, you, concede
You would hardly salute me by choice,
John Jones?
[Footnote 1: First edition:--
And my face bear his brand--mine, that
once bore Love's badge elate!]

THE POET AND THE WOODLOUSE
Said a poet to a woodlouse--"Thou art certainly my brother; I discern in
thee the markings of the fingers of the Whole; And I recognize, in spite
of all the terrene smut and smother, In the colours shaded off thee, the
suggestions of a soul.
"Yea," the poet said, "I smell thee by some passive divination, I am
satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house; What had
happened