When I know that there must ever be deceiving,

  Deceiving

  Of the mournful constant heart, that while she’s

  weaving

  Her woes, her lover woos and sings within another

  wood.

  Oh, boisterous the cuckoo shouts, forestalling,

  Stalling

  A progress down the intricate enthralling

  By-paths where the wanton-headed flowers doff

  their hood.

  And like a laughter leads me onward, heaving,

  Heaving

  A sigh among the shadows, thus retrieving

  A decent short regret for that which once was very

  good.

  LOVE STORM

  MANY roses in the wind

  Are tapping at the window-sash.

  A hawk is in the sky; his wings

  Slowly begin to plash.

  The roses with the west wind rapping

  Are torn away, and a splash

  Of red goes down the billowing air.

  Still hangs the hawk, with the whole sky moving

  Past him — only a wing-beat proving

  The will that holds him there.

  The daisies in the grass are bending,

  The hawk has dropped, the wind is spending

  All the roses, and unending

  Rustle of leaves washes out the rending

  Cry of a bird.

  A red rose goes on the wind. — Ascending

  The hawk his wind-swept way is wending

  Easily down the sky. The daisies, sending

  Strange white signals, seem intending

  To show the place whence the scream was heard.

  But, oh, my heart, what birds are piping!

  A silver wind is hastily wiping

  The face of the youngest rose.

  And oh, my heart, cease apprehending!

  The hawk is gone, a rose is tapping

  The window-sash as the west-wind blows.

  Knock, knock, ‘tis no more than a red rose rapping,

  And fear is a plash of wings.

  What, then, if a scarlet rose goes flapping

  Down the bright-grey ruin of things!

  PARLIAMENT HILL IN THE EVENING

  THE houses fade in a melt of mist

  Blotching the thick, soiled air

  With reddish places that still resist

  The Night’s slow care.

  The hopeless, wintry twilight fades,

  The city corrodes out of sight

  As the body corrodes when death invades

  That citadel of delight.

  Now verdigris smoulderings softly spread

  Through the shroud of the town, as slow

  Night-lights hither and thither shed

  Their ghastly glow.

  PICCADILLY CIRCUS AT NIGHT

  Street-Walkers.

  WHEN into the night the yellow light is roused like

  dust above the towns,

  Or like a mist the moon has kissed from off a pool in

  the midst of the downs,

  Our faces flower for a little hour pale and uncertain

  along the street,

  Daisies that waken all mistaken white-spread in ex —

  pectancy to meet

  The luminous mist which the poor things wist was

  dawn arriving across the sky,

  When dawn is far behind the star the dust-lit town

  has driven so high.

  All the birds are folded in a silent ball of sleep,

  All the flowers are faded from the asphalt isle in

  the sea,

  Only we hard-faced creatures go round and round,

  and keep

  The shores of this innermost ocean alive and

  illusory.

  Wanton sparrows that twittered when morning

  looked in at their eyes

  And the Cyprian’s pavement-roses are gone, and

  now it is we

  Flowers of illusion who shine in our gauds, make a

  Paradise

  On the shores of this ceaseless ocean, gay birds of

  the town-dark sea.

  TARANTELLA

  SAD as he sits on the white sea-stone

  And the suave sea chuckles, and turns to the moon,

  And the moon significant smiles at the cliffs and

  the boulders.

  He sits like a shade by the flood alone

  While I dance a tarantella on the rocks, and the

  croon

  Of my mockery mocks at him over the waves’

  bright shoulders.

  What can I do but dance alone,

  Dance to the sliding sea and the moon,

  For the moon on my breast and the air on my limbs

  and the foam on my feet?

  For surely this earnest man has none

  Of the night in his soul, and none of the tune

  Of the waters within him; only the world’s old

  wisdom to bleat.

  I wish a wild sea-fellow would come down the

  glittering shingle,

  A soulless neckar, with winking seas in his eyes

  And falling waves in his arms, and the lost soul’s kiss

  On his lips: I long to be soulless, I tingle

  To touch the sea in the last surprise

  Of fiery coldness, to be gone in a lost soul’s bliss.

  IN CHURCH

  IN the choir the boys are singing the hymn.

  The morning light on their lips

  Moves in silver-moist flashes, in musical trim.

  Sudden outside the high window, one crow

  Hangs in the air

  And lights on a withered oak-tree’s top of woe.

  One bird, one blot, folded and still at the top

  Of the withered tree! — in the grail

  Of crystal heaven falls one full black drop.

  Like a soft full drop of darkness it seems to sway

  In the tender wine

  Of our Sabbath, suffusing our sacred day.

  PIANO

  Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

  Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see

  A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the

  tingling strings

  And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who

  smiles as she sings.

  In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

  Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

  To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter

  outside

  And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano

  our guide.

  So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

  With the great black piano appassionato. The

  glamour

  Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

  Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a

  child for the past.

  EMBANKMENT AT NIGHT, BEFORE THE WAR

  Charity.

  BY the river

  In the black wet night as the furtive rain slinks

  down,

  Dropping and starting from sleep

  Alone on a seat

  A woman crouches.

  I must go back to her.

  I want to give her

  Some money. Her hand slips out of the breast of

  her gown

  Asleep. My fingers creep

  Carefully over the sweet

  Thumb-mound, into the palm’s deep pouches.

  So, the gift!

  God, how she starts!

  And looks at me, and looks in the palm of her hand!

  And again at me!

  I turn and run

  Down the Embankment, run for my life.

  But why? — why?

  Because of my heart’s

  Beating like sobs, I come to myself, and stand

  In the street spilled over splendidly

  With wet, flat lights. What I’ve done

  I know not, my soul is in strife.

  The touch was on the quick. I want to forget.

  PHANTASMAGORIA

  RIGID sleeps the house in darkness, I alone

  Like a thing unwarrantable cross the hall

  And climb the stairs to find the group of doors

  Standing angel-stern and tall.

  I want my own room’s shelter. But what is this

  Throng of startled beings suddenly thrown

  In confusion against my entry? Is it only the trees’

  Large shadows from the outside street lamp blown?

  Phantom to phantom leaning; strange women weep

  Aloud, suddenly on my mind

  Startling a fear unspeakable, as the shuddering wind

  Breaks and sobs in the blind.

  So like to women, tall strange women weeping!

  Why continually do they cross the bed?

  Why does my soul contract with unnatural fear?

  I am listening! Is anything said?

  Ever the long black figures swoop by the bed;

  They seem to be beckoning, rushing away, and

  beckoning.

  Whither then, whither, what is it, say

  What is the reckoning.

  Tall black Bacchae of midnight, why then, why

  Do you rush to assail me?

  Do I intrude on your rites nocturnal?

  What should it avail me?

  Is there some great Iacchos of these slopes

  Suburban dismal?

  Have I profaned some female mystery, orgies

  Black and phantasmal?

  NEXT MORNING

  How have I wandered here to this vaulted room

  In the house of life? — the floor was ruffled with gold

  Last evening, and she who was softly in bloom,

  Glimmered as flowers that in perfume at twilight

  unfold

  For the flush of the night; whereas now the gloom

  Of every dirty, must-besprinkled mould,

  And damp old web of misery’s heirloom

  Deadens this day’s grey-dropping arras-fold.

  And what is this that floats on the undermist

  Of the mirror towards the dusty grate, as if feeling

  Unsightly its way to the warmth? — this thing with

  a list

  To the left? this ghost like a candle swealing?

  Pale-blurred, with two round black drops, as if it

  missed

  Itself among everything else, here hungrily stealing

  Upon me! — my own reflection! — explicit gist

  Of my presence there in the mirror that leans from

  the ceiling!

  Then will somebody square this shade with the

  being I know

  I was last night, when my soul rang clear as a bell

  And happy as rain in summer? Why should it be

  so?

  What is there gone against me, why am I in hell?

  PALIMPSEST OF TWILIGHT

  DARKNESS comes out of the earth

  And swallows dip into the pallor of the west;

  From the hay comes the clamour of children’s

  mirth;

  Wanes the old palimpsest.

  The night-stock oozes scent,

  And a moon-blue moth goes flittering by:

  All that the worldly day has meant

  Wastes like a lie.

  The children have forsaken their play;

  A single star in a veil of light

  Glimmers: litter of day

  Is gone from sight.

  EMBANKMENT AT NIGHT, BEFORE THE WAR

  Outcasts.

  THE night rain, dripping unseen,

  Comes endlessly kissing my face and my hands.

  The river, slipping between

  Lamps, is rayed with golden bands

  Half way down its heaving sides;

  Revealed where it hides.

  Under the bridge

  Great electric cars

  Sing through, and each with a floor-light racing

  along at its side.

  Far off, oh, midge after midge

  Drifts over the gulf that bars

  The night with silence, crossing the lamp-touched

  tide.

  At Charing Cross, here, beneath the bridge

  Sleep in a row the outcasts,

  Packed in a line with their heads against the wall.

  Their feet, in a broken ridge

  Stretch out on the way, and a lout casts

  A look as he stands on the edge of this naked stall.

  Beasts that sleep will cover

  Their faces in their flank; so these

  Have huddled rags or limbs on the naked sleep.

  Save, as the tram-cars hover

  Past with the noise of a breeze

  And gleam as of sunshine crossing the low black heap,

  Two naked faces are seen

  Bare and asleep,

  Two pale clots swept and swept by the light of the

  cars.

  Foam-clots showing between

  The long, low tidal-heap,

  The mud-weed opening two pale, shadowless stars.

  Over the pallor of only two faces

  Passes the gallivant beam of the trams;

  Shows in only two sad places

  The white bare bone of our shams.

  A little, bearded man, pale, peaked in sleeping,

  With a face like a chickweed flower.

  And a heavy woman, sleeping still keeping

  Callous and dour.

  Over the pallor of only two places

  Tossed on the low, black, ruffled heap

  Passes the light of the tram as it races

  Out of the deep.

  Eloquent limbs

  In disarray

  Sleep-suave limbs of a youth with long, smooth

  thighs

  Hutched up for warmth; the muddy rims

  Of trousers fray

  On the thin bare shins of a man who uneasily lies.

  The balls of five red toes

  As red and dirty, bare

  Young birds forsaken and left in a nest of mud —

  Newspaper sheets enclose

  Some limbs like parcels, and tear

  When the sleeper stirs or turns on the ebb of the

  flood —

  One heaped mound

  Of a woman’s knees

  As she thrusts them upward under the ruffled skirt —

  And a curious dearth of sound

  In the presence of these

  Wastrels that sleep on the flagstones without any

  hurt.

  Over two shadowless, shameless faces

  Stark on the heap

  Travels the light as it tilts in its paces

  Gone in one leap.

  At the feet of the sleepers, watching,

  Stand those that wait

  For a place to lie down; and still as they stand,

  they sleep,

  Wearily catching

  The flood’s slow gait

  Like men who are drowned, but float erect in the

  deep.

  Oh, the singing mansions,

  Golden-lighted tall

  Trams that pass, blown ruddily down the night!

  The bridge on its stanchions

  Stoops like a pall

  To this human blight.

  On the outer pavement, slowly,

  Theatre people pass,

  Holding aloft their umbrellas that flash and are

  bright

  Like flowers of infernal moly

  Over nocturnal grass

  Wetly bobbing and drifting away on our sight.

  And still by the rotten

  Row of shattered feet,

  Outcasts keep guard.

  Forgotten,

  Forgetting, till fate shall delete

  One from the ward.

  The factories on the Surrey side

  Are beautifully laid in black on a gold-grey sky.

  The river’s invisible tide

  Threads and thrills like ore that is wealth to the eye.

  And great gold midges

  Cross the chasm

  At the bridges

  Above intertwined plasm.

  WINTER IN THE BOULEVARD

  THE frost has settled down upon the trees

  And ruthlessly strangled off the fantasies

  Of leaves that have gone unnoticed, swept like old

  Romantic stories now no more to be told.

  The trees down the boulevard stand naked in

  thought,

  Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught

  In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront

  Implacable winter’s long, cross-questioning brunt.

  Has some hand balanced more leaves in the depths

  of the twigs?

  Some dim little efforts placed in the threads of the

  birch? —

  It is only the sparrows, like dead black leaves on

  the sprigs,

  Sitting huddled against the cerulean, one flesh with

  their perch.

  The clear, cold sky coldly bethinks itself.

  Like vivid thought the air spins bright, and all

  Trees, birds, and earth, arrested in the after-thought

  Awaiting the sentence out from the welkin brought.

  SCHOOL ON THE OUTSKIRTS

  How different, in the middle of snows, the great

  school rises red!

  A red rock silent and shadowless, clung round

  with clusters of shouting lads,

  Some few dark-cleaving the doorway, souls that

  cling as the souls of the dead