V. Sackville-West

“ And men with wine and laughter flushed were sleeping all around the fire,
Till one alone sat on erect, his ready gun across his knees,
The sentry of the night elect, guardian of sleeping destinies.
The water-bullocks lay as dead; the dogs drew near with noiseless tread,
And huddled in a loose-limbed heap beside the fire, and through their sleep
They twitched at some remembered hunt; the merchant in his sheepskin rolled
Within the tent saw dreams of gold; the camels with uneasy grunt
And quake of their distorted backs slept on with loathing by their packs. ”

“ We came as strangers, came to learn and look,
To hear their music, drink the wine they gave.
Now let us hence again; the happy brook
Shall quench our thirst, our music be the wave.
Come! they are feasting, let us steal away.
Beyond the doors the night awaits us, sweet.
To-morrow we shall see the break of day,
And goat-herds’ pipes shall lead our roaming feet.
TO EVE IN TEARS
YOU laughed, and all the fountains of the East
Leapt up to Heaven with their diamond rain
To hang in light, and when your laughter ceased
Dropped shivered arrows to the ground again. ”

“ Men shovelled back the melting snow, and skins and Khelim rugs were flung—
And unforgotten were the needs of water-bullocks standing by
Whose brows are stained with orange dye, whose horns are looped with turquoise beads.
The pariah dogs that slink and prowl secured their meat with furtive growl,
And one by one the camels bent complaining to their warty knees
And grumbled at the men that went to loose their girths and give them ease.
The merchant brooded silently on avaricious visions bright
And listened to the revelry his men were making in the night. ”

“ Of some stray passing goat-herd down the street
Pipes idly, or the strident gay guitar
Befriends the lover’s whisper at the window;
For you sat playing, and your fingers roamed
To Russia, where the simple is the blessed,
And woke both melancholy pomp and folly,
And passed again to fantasy that is
Homeless, and shies away from thoughts of home.
I read; you played; we had no need of speech.
They came, noisy and shrill, well-meaning; they
Spoke to us first of wealth and then of love,
The love of others, negligently shrewd
And empty in their chatter. ”

“ My thought in your thought embraced, my eyes and your eyes
Levelly meeting without the quick faltering of disguise.
But all is a harshness and rack where in vain
We strive through the grossness of flesh to discover our souls again,
And the closer we clasp one another, the further apart remain. ”

“ And slumbrous waters pool a slumbrous world,
—Then, and then only, have I thought how sweet
Old age might sink upon a windy youth,
Quiet beneath the riding-light of truth,
Weathered through storms, and gracious in retreat. ”

“ A merchant with his caravan and Eastern barter in his bales.
He rode ahead, he rode apart, the city of Irkutsk his goal,
Upon his lean Circassian foal, and after came the lumbering cart
With creaking wheel, deliberate spoke, and water-bullocks in the yoke;
And after these in single string the boorish camels following,
Slouching with high unwieldy packs like howdahs piled upon their backs;
With slaver hanging from their lips and hatred worming in their brain
They slouched beneath their drivers’ whips across the white and mournful plain. ”

“ He cloaked his faith with laughter, but his faith
Was certain, as his confidence was gay,
And laughing went he, till on his last day
His hands stretched out to life were clasped by death.
FALLEN YOUTH
O redolent things most dear to Youth on earth,
Friendship of other men; the hunter’s horn;
The strong fatigue of practised limbs; the mirth
Of little birds in coppices and corn;
Work’s satisfaction; leisure’s bland delight ”

“ Like orient sheen on sulky pearls, like hills remotely amethyst,
Like colours on Phœnician glass, like plumage on the ‘fisher’s wing,
Like music on the breath of spring, they saw the vision lift and pass,
Till only white unbroken snow stretched out before the caravan,
And the bewildered heart of man truth from delusion could not know. ”

“ Rich as the sunset, swift as cormorants’ wings
That sweep the waters,—youth, whose destiny
Sails like a ship upon a virgin sea.
2nd Spirit.
WHOSE heart is as a glowing forge at night
Wherein the blacksmith, gleaming with his sweat
Like some gigantic negro in the light
Of angry fires that touch his limbs of jet,
Strikes at the clanging anvil of his thought.
3rd Spirit.
SING to him, sing! till he be so distraught,
So drunken and enraptured,
That all his heart be captured.
Folly (to Adventure) .
GIPSY, what have you in your pack
Bound with old thongs across your back? ”

“ For other men may touch his hand,
But none the soul below.
SCORN
THEY roll, clan by clan, kin by kin, on wide orderly roads,
Burghers and citizens all, in a stately procession,
Driving before them the wealth of their worldly possession,
Cattle, and horses, and pack-mules with sumptuous loads. ”

“ I am the minstrel of the heavens,
With the birds that rise from land.
I am the hunter of the heavens,
With the night-hounds for my pack,
Lord of unbroken solitudes
That I am the first to track.
Son of the tempest, son of the moonlight,
Son of the silver sky,
Son of the clean untrodden places,
Son of the air am I.
FROM “A MASQUE OF YOUTH” A MOCK-HEROIC POEM FROM “A MASQUE OF YOUTH” ”

“ All coloured in the rising day, amid the snow a jewelled stain,
And in her walls a spacious gate gave entrance to a varied stream
Of folk that went incorporate like figures in a silent dream,
And high above the roofs arose, more coloured for the hueless snows,
The domes of churches, bronze and green, like peacocks in their painted sheen.
The merchant, with a trembling hand extended far, extended wide
Against illusion’s fairyland, at length articulately cried:
“Irkutsk! ”

“ And through the fret of branches grows the dawn.
A SAXON SONG
Tools with the comely names,
Mattock and scythe and spade,
Couth and bitter as flames,
Clean, and bowed in the blade,—
A man and his tools make a man and his trade.
Breadth of the English shires,
Hummock and kame and mead,
Tang of the reeking byres,
Land of the English breed,—
A man and his land make a man and his creed.
Leisurely flocks and herds,
Cool-eyed cattle that come
Mildly to wonted words,
Swine that in orchards roam,—
A man and his beasts make a man and his home. ”

“ And hafts of turquoise-studded jade, and phials rich with scented drugs,
Koràns inscribed on ass’s skin, and bales of silk from Temesvàr,
And silver ear-rings beaten thin, and bargains from the cool bazaar.
He felt the gold already pouched, he crooned to it with horrid love,
As still the camels onward slouched with hatred of the men that drove.
For thirty days the caravan trailed on behind the merchant’s foal,
Through Persia and through Turkestan, the city of Irkutsk their goal ”

“ They wound along the wooded lane
And crossed a streamlet with a leap,
And as I saw them once again
They passed a shepherd and his sheep.
And you might think, I made this song
For joy of song as I strode along
One day between the Kentish shaws,
Slashing at scarlet hips and haws.
But thinking so, you nothing know
Of children taken unawares,
Of tinkers’ tents among the gorse,
The poor lean goat, the hobbled horse,
And painted vans for country fairs. ”

“ I was a child, and splashed my way in laughter
Through drifts of leaves, where underfoot the beechnuts
Split with crisp crackle to my great rejoicing.
Red are the wooded slopes below Shock Tavern,
Red is the bracken on the sandy Furze-field,
Red are the herds of deer by Bo-Pit Meadows,
The tawny deer that nightly through the beechwoods
Roar out their challenge, carrying their antlers
Proudly beneath the antlered moonlit branches. ”

“ Across the snow unbroken, white, and nursing each his private creed,
The merchant his illusive greed, the camels their illusive spite.
CHINOISERIE (Villanelle) . For B. M.
LOTUS flowers clustering
Round your feet in storeys laid,
Splendid daughter of a King.
In a graven vase of Ming
Peaches, apricots of jade,
Lotus flowers clustering,
All their scentless riches bring,
All around your throne displayed,
Costly daughter of a King.
What young prince astonishing
Rides along the inky glade,
Lotus flowers clustering
Round his camel travelling? ”

“ Showed its bare brushwood as I passed to-day.
Where the sun rises, that I know of old;
Knowledge precedes me round the turn of the lane,
And I could take you where the orchids grow
Friendly with cowslips ”