T. E. Hulme

“ How hast thou set the fire
A-tremble in men's veins; O lip curved high
To mind me of some urn of full delight,
O throat girt round of old with swift desire,
O palms of Love, that in your wonted ways
Not once but many a day
Felt hands turn ice a-sudden, touching ye,
That ye were once! of all the grace ye had
That which remaineth now
Shameful, most sad
Finds 'neath this rock fit mould, fit resting place!
And still when fate recalleth,
Even that semblance that appears amongst us
Is like to heaven's most 'live imagining.
All, all our life's eternal mystery! ”

“ O thou afar?
Yet she was near me,
that eternal deep.
O it is passing strange that love
Can blow two ways across one soul.
* * * * *
And I was Aengus for a thousand years,
And she, the ever-living, moved with me
And strove amid the waves, and
would not go.
IV
ELEGIA
"Far buon tempo e trionfare"
"I have put my days and dreams out of mind'
For all their hurry and their weary fret
Availed me little. But another kind
Of leaf that's fast in some more sombre wind,
Is man on life, and all our tenuous courses
Wind and unwind as vainly. ”

“ The age-old, age-old fare to fairer fair
And I fare forth into more bitter air;
Though mocked I go, yet shall her beauty live
Till rimes unrime and Truth shall truth unlearn."
SONNET: CHI È QUESTA?
Who is she coming, that the roses bend
Their shameless heads to do her passing honour?
Who is she coming with a light upon her
Not born of suns that with the day's end end?
Say is it Love who hath chosen the nobler part?
Say is it Love, that was divinity,
Who hath left his godhead that his home might be
The shameless rose of her unclouded heart? ”

“ Fairer than petals on May morning blown
Through apple-orchards where the sun hath shed
His brighter petals down to make them fair;
Fairer than these the Poppy-crowned One flees,
And Joy goes weeping in her scarlet train.
III
The faint damp wind that, ere the even, blows
Piling the west with many a tawny sheaf,
Then when the last glad wavering hours are mown
Sigheth and dies because the day is sped;
This wind is like her and the listless air
Wherewith she goeth by beneath the trees,
The trees that mock her with their scarlet stain.
IV
Love that is born of Time and comes and goes! ”

“ Deaf doors and dungeons where no truth is bought?
Who calls me idle? I have thought of her.
Who calls me idle? By God's truth I've seen
The arrowy sunlight in her golden snares.
Let him among you all stand summonser
Who hath done better things! Let whoso hath been
With worthier works concerned, display his wares!
BALLATETTA
The light became her grace and dwelt among
Blind eyes and shadows that are formed as men
Lo, how the light doth melt us into song:
The broken sunlight for a healm she beareth
Who hath my heart in jurisdiction. ”

“ Thou art a maid with no breasts,
Thou art slender as a silver reed.
Listen to me, attend me!
And I will breathe into thee a soul,
And thou shalt live for ever.
A GIRL
The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast—
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.
Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child—so high—you are,
And all this is folly to the world. ”

“ Whom thou lovest,
In darkness, even at that time
That she being returned to her husband
Shall be queen and a maiden no longer,
Wherein thou being neither old nor young
Standing on the verge of the sea
Shalt pass from being sand,
O High Priest of Iacchus,
And becoming wave
Shalt encircle all sands,
Being transmuted through all
The girdling of the sea.
O High Priest of Iacchus,
Breathe thou upon us!
Note.—This apostrophe was written three years
before Swinburne's death.
Δώρια
Be in me as the eternal moods of the bleak wind, and not
As transient things are—gaiety of flowers. ”

“ The fingers of the wind
meet hers
With a frail
swift greeting.
My love is gay
and kind
and hard
of meeting,
As the flame beneath the waters
hard of meeting.
L'ART
When brightest colours seem but dull in hue
And noblest arts are shown mechanical,
When study serves but to heap clue on clue
That no great line hath been or ever shall,
But hath a savour like some second stew
Of many pot-lots with a smack of all.
'Twas one man's field, another's hops the brew,
Twas vagrant accident not fate's fore-call. ”

“ Till thou forget thy sorrow,
O wounded sorrowfully.
Thou wilt in my white arms there,
Nay, on my breast thou must
Forget and rest and dream there
For thine old legend-lust.
My lips and my heart are thine there
As they were his and mine.
His? Why the good King Harry's,
And he is dead lang syne.
Dead men stay alway dead men,
Life is the live man's part,
And I am fair and golden
With joy breathless at heart. ”

“ LA MENTE
"O Thou mocked heart that cowerest by the door
And durst not honour hope with welcoming,
How shall one bid thee for her honour sing,
When song would but show forth thy sorrow's store?
What things are gold and ivory unto thee?
Go forth, thou pauper fool! Are these for naught?
Is heaven in lotus leaves? What hast thou wrought,
Or brought, or sought, wherewith to pay the fee?"
IL CUORE
"If naught I give, naught do I take return. ”

“ Though dark the way, a golden glamour falleth.
II
The censer sways
And glowing coals some art have
To free what frankincense before held fast
Till all the summer of the eastern farms
Doth dim the sense, and dream up through the light,
As memory, by new-born love corrected—
With savour such as only new love knoweth—
Through swift dim ways the hidden pasts recalleth.
III
On barren days,
At hours when I, apart, have
Bent low in thought of the great charm thou hast,
Behold with music's many-stringed charms
The silence groweth thou. O rare delight! ”

“ He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-having
Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight
Nor any whit else save the wave's slash,
Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth on the water.
Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries,
Fields to fairness, land fares brisker,
All this admonisheth man eager of mood,
The heart turns to travel so that he then thinks
On flood-ways to be far departing. ”

“ Sapphire Benacus, in thy mists and thee
Nature herself's turned metaphysical,
Who can look on that blue and not believe?
Thou hooded opal, thou eternal pearl,
O thou dark secret with a shimmering floor,
Through all thy various mood I know thee mine;
If I have merged my soul, or utterly
Am solved and bound in, through aught here on earth,
There canst thou find me, O thou anxious thou,
Who call'st about my gates for some lost me ”

“ How many faces I'd have out of mind.
APPARUIT
Golden rose the house, in the portal I saw
thee, a marvel, carven in subtle stuff, a portent.
Life died down in the lamp and flickered,
caught at the wonder.
Crimson, frosty with dew, the roses bend where
thou afar moving in the glamorous sun
drinkst in life of earth, of the air, the tissue
golden about thee.
Green the ways, the breath of the fields is thine there,
open lies the land, yet the steely going
darkly hast thou dared and the dreaded æther
parted before thee. ”

“ This he little believes, who aye in winsome life
Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business,
Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft
Must bide above brine.
Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north,
Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then
Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now
The heart's thought that I on high streams
The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone.
Moaneth alway my mind's lust
That I fare forth, that I afar hence
Seek out a foreign fastness.
For this there's no mood-lofty man over earth's midst,
Not though he be given his good, but will have in his youth greed ”

“ Withdrawn within the cavern of his wings,
Grave with the joy of thoughts beneficent,
And finely wrought and durable and clear,
If so his eyes showed forth the mind's content,
So sate the first to whom remembrance clings,
Tissued like bat's wings did his wings appear,
Not of that shadowy colouring and drear,
But as thin shells, pale saffron, luminous;
Alone, unlonely, whose calm glances shed
Friend's love to strangers though no word were said,
Pensive his godly state he keepeth thus. ”

“ And find'st in Rome no thing thou canst call Roman;
Arches worn old and palaces made common,
Rome's name alone within these walls keeps home.
Behold how pride and ruin can befall
One who hath set the whole world 'neath her laws,
All-conquering, now conquered, because
She is Time's prey and Time consumeth all.
Rome that art Rome's one sole last monument,
Rome that alone hast conquered Rome the town,
Tiber alone, transient and seaward bent,
Remains of Rome. O world, thou unconstant mime!
That which stands firm in thee Time batters down,
And that which fleeteth doth outrun swift time. ”

“ They died and the greed of your flame consumes them.
Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm,
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness.
So many thousand fair are gone down to Avernus,
Ye might let one remain above with us. ”

“ O mind give place!
What holy mystery e'er was noosed in thought?
Own that thou scan'st her not, nor count it shame!
BALLATA, FRAGMENT
II
Full well thou knowest, song, what grace I mean,
E'en as thou know'st the sunlight I have lost.
Thou knowest the way of it and know'st the sheen
About her brows where the rays are bound and crossed,
E'en as thou knowest joy and know'st joy's bitter cost.
Thou know'st her grace in moving,
Thou dost her skill in loving,
Thou know'st what truth she proveth,
Thou knowest the heart she moveth,
O song where grief assoneth! ”

“ For thou shouldst more mistrust
Time than my eyes.
[1] Asclepiades, Julianus Ægyptus.
AN IMMORALITY
Sing we for love and idleness,
Naught else is worth the having.
Though I have been in many a land,
There is naught else in living.
And I would rather have my sweet,
Though rose-leaves die of grieving,
Than do high deeds in Hungary
To pass all men's believing.
DIEU! QU'IL LA FAIT
From Charles D'Orleans
For music
God! ”

“ Swept from the mind with it in its departure.
Infinite things desired, lofty visions
'Got on desirous thought by natural virtue,
And the wise concord, whence through delicious seas
The arcane spirit of the whole Mankind
Turns hardy pilot ... and if one wrong note
Strike the tympanum,
Instantly
That paradise is hurled to nothingness.
O mortal nature,
If thou art
Frail and so vile in all,
How canst thou reach so high with thy poor sense ”

“ So thou hast forgotten fully
That I so long held thy heart wholly,
Thy little heart, so sweet and false and small
That there's no thing more sweet or false at all.
Love and lay thou hast forgotten fully,
And my heart worked at them unduly. ”

“ Take some faint pity on the heart thou smitest
That hopes in thee, desires, dies, in brief.
Ah little cloud of more than human fashion
Thou settest a flame within my mind's mid space
With thy deathly speech that grieveth ”

“ Wrap round thy heart with cloudy apprehensions,
Eat of thy present corn, the aftermath
Hath its appointed end in whirling light.
Eat of thy present corn, thou so hast share
In mightier portents than Augustus hath.
* * * * *
In every moment all to be is born,
Thou art the moment and need'st fear no scorn. ”

“ Where the sapphire girdle of the sea
Encinctureth the maiden
Persephone, released for the spring,
Look! Breathe upon us
The wonder of the thrice encinctured mystery
Whereby thou being full of years art young,
Loving even this lithe Persephone
That is free for the seasons of plenty ”

“ All her strange glory in its wings of light,
Bring down thy peace upon her way-worn soul.
Oh sheathe that sword of her in some strong case,
The doe-skin scabbard of thy clear Rafael!
Yea let thy angels walk, as I have seen
Them passing, or have seen their wings
Spread their pavilions o'er our twin delight.
Yea I have seen them when the purple light
Hid all her garden from my drowsy eyes.
A PROLOGUE
SCENE—IN THE AIR
The Lords of the Air:
What light hath passed us in the silent ways?
The Spirits of Fire:
We are sustainèd, strengthened suddenly. ”

“ Opens and breathes with some strange-fashioned brighness!
IN HEAVEN
Christ, the eternal Spirit in Heaven speaketh thus,
over the child of Mary:
O star, move forth and write upon the skies,
"This child is born in ways miraculous."
* * * * *
O windy spirits, that are born in Heaven,
Go down and bid the powers of Earth and Air
Protect his ways until the Time shall come. ”

“ THE FLAME
'Tis not a game that plays at mates and mating,
Provençe knew;
'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses,
Provençe knew.
We who are wise beyond your dream of wisdom,
Drink our immortal moments; we "pass through." ”

“ Wherefore, by right, in this Lord's name we greet thee,
Seeing we labour at his labour daily.
Thou, who dost know what way swift words are crossed
O thou, who hast sung till none at song defeat thee,
Grant! ”

“ Thou canst not stay the wheel, hold none too long!
V
How our modernity,
Nerve-wracked and broken, turns
Against time's way and all the way of things,
Crying with weak and egoistic cries!
* * * * *
All things are given over,
Only the restless will
Surges amid the stars
Seeking new moods of life,
New permutations. ”