II. 1908–1911   
3. Success   
     
I THINK if you had loved me when I wanted;      
  If I’d looked up one day, and seen your eyes,      
And found my wild sick blasphemous prayer granted,      
  And your brown face, that’s full of pity and wise,      
Flushed suddenly; the white godhead in new fear           5   
  Intolerably so struggling, and so shamed;      
Most holy and far, if you’d come all too near,      
  If earth had seen Earth’s lordliest wild limbs tamed,      
Shaken, and trapped, and shivering, for My touch—      
  Myself should I have slain? or that foul you?          10   
But this the strange gods, who had given so much,      
  To have seen and known you, this they might not do.      
One last shame’s spared me, one black word’s unspoken;      
  And I’m alone; and you have not awoken.

II. 1908–1911   
4. Dust   
     
WHEN the white flame in us in gone,      
  And we that lost the world’s delight      
Stiffen in darkness, left alone      
  To crumble in our separate night;      
     
When your swift hair is quiet in death,           5   
  And through the lips corruption thrust      
Has stilled the labour of my breath—      
  When we are dust, when we are dust!—      
     
Not dead, not undesirous yet,      
  Still sentient, still unsatisfied,          10   
We’ll ride the air, and shine, and flit,      
  Around the places where we died,      
     
And dance as dust before the sun,      
  And light of foot, and unconfined,      
Hurry from road to road, and run          15   
  About the errands of the wind.      
     
And every mote, on earth or air,      
  Will speed and gleam, down later days,      
And like a secret pilgrim fare      
  By eager and invisible ways,          20   
     
Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,      
  Till, beyond thinking, out of view,      
One mote of all the dust that’s I      
  Shall meet one atom that was you.      
     
Then in some garden hushed from wind,          25   
  Warm in a sunset’s afterglow,      
The lovers in the flowers will find      
  A sweet and strange unquiet grow      
     
Upon the peace; and, past desiring,      
  So high a beauty in the air,          30   
And such a light, and such a quiring,      
  And such a radiant ecstasy there,      
     
They’ll know not if it’s fire, or dew,      
  Or out of earth, or in the height,      
Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,          35   
  Or two that pass, in light, to light,      
     
Out of the garden, higher, higher.…      
  But in that instant they shall learn      
The shattering ecstasy of our fire,      
  And the weak passionless hearts will burn          40   
     
And faint in that amazing glow,      
  Until the darkness close above;      
And they will know—poor fools, they’ll know!—      
  One moment, what it is to love.

II. 1908–1911   
5. Kindliness   
     
WHEN love has changed to kindliness—      
Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press      
So tight that Time’s an old god’s dream      
Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff      
Seven million years were not enough           5   
To think on after, make it seem      
Less than the breath of children playing,      
A blasphemy scarce worth the saying,      
A sorry jest, “When love has grown      
To kindliness—to kindliness!”…          10   
And yet—the best that either’s known      
Will change, and wither, and be less,      
At last, than comfort, or its own      
Remembrance. And when some caress      
Tendered in habit (once a flame          15   
All heaven sang out to) wakes the shame      
Unworded, in the steady eyes      
We’ll have,—that day, what shall we do?      
Being so noble, kill the two      
Who’ve reached their second-best? Being wise,          20   
Break cleanly off, and get away.      
Follow down other windier skies      
New lures, alone? Or shall we stay,      
Since this is all we’ve known, content      
In the lean twilight of such day,          25   
And not remember, not lament?      
That time when all is over, and      
Hand never flinches, brushing hand;      
And blood lies quiet, for all you’re near;      
And it’s but spoken words we hear,          30   
Where trumpets sang; when the mere skies      
Are stranger and nobler than your eyes;      
And flesh is flesh, was flame before;      
And infinite hungers leap no more      
In the chance swaying of your dress;          35   
And love has changed to kindliness.

   
II. 1908–1911   
6. Mummia   
     
AS those of old drank mummia      
  To fire their limbs of lead,      
Making dead kings from Africa      
  Stand pandar to their bed;      
     
Drunk on the dead, and medicined           5   
  With spiced imperial dust,      
In a short night they reeled to find      
  Ten centuries of lust.      
     
So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme,      
  Stuffed love’s infinity,          10   
And sucked all lovers of all time      
  To rarify ecstasy.      
     
Helen’s the hair shuts out from me      
  Verona’s livid skies;      
Gypsy the lips I press; and see          15   
  Two Antonys in your eyes.      
     
The unheard invisible lovely dead      
  Lie with us in this place,      
And ghostly hands above my head      
  Close face to straining face;          20   
     
Their blood is wine along our limbs;      
  Their whispering voices wreathe      
Savage forgotten drowsy hymns      
  Under the names we breathe;      
     
Woven from their tomb, and one with it,          25   
  The night wherein we press;      
Their thousand pitchy pyres have lit      
  Your flaming nakedness.      
     
For the uttermost years have cried and clung      
  To kiss your mouth to mine;          30   
And hair long dust was caught, was flung,      
  Hand shaken to hand divine,      
     
And Life has fired, and Death not shaded,      
  All Time’s uncounted bliss,      
And the height o’ the world has flamed and faded,          35   
  Love, that our love be this!

II. 1908–1911   
7. The Fish   
     
IN a cool curving world he lies      
And ripples with dark ecstasies.      
The kind luxurious lapse and steal      
Shapes all his universe to feel      
And know and be; the clinging stream           5   
Closes his memory, glooms his dream,      
Who lips the roots o’ the shore, and glides      
Superb on unreturning tides.      
Those silent waters weave for him      
A fluctuant mutable world and dim,          10   
Where wavering masses bulge and gape      
Mysterious, and shape to shape      
Dies momently through whorl and hollow,      
And form and line and solid follow      
Solid and line and form to dream          15   
Fantastic down the eternal stream;      
An obscure world, a shifting world,      
Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled,      
Or serpentine, or driving arrows,      
Or serene slidings, or March narrows.          20   
There slipping wave and shore are one,      
And weed and mud. No ray of sun,      
But glow to glow fades down the deep      
(As dream to unknown dream in sleep);      
Shaken translucency illumes          25   
The hyaline of drifting glooms;      
The strange soft-handed depth subdues      
Drowned colour there, but black to hues,      
As death to living, decomposes—      
Red darkness of the heart of roses,          30   
Blue brilliant from dead starless skies,      
And gold that lies behind the eyes,      
The unknown unnameable sightless white      
That is the essential flame of night,      
Lustreless purple, hooded green,          35   
The myriad hues that lie between      
Darkness and darkness!…      
     
  And all’s one.      
Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun,      
The world he rests in, world he knows,          40   
Perpetual curving. Only—grows      
An eddy in that ordered falling,      
A knowledge from the gloom, a calling      
Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud—      
The dark fire leaps along his blood;          45   
Dateless and deathless, blind and still,      
The intricate impulse works its will;      
His woven world drops back; and he,      
Sans providence, sans memory,      
Unconscious and directly driven,          50   
Fades to some dank sufficient heaven.      
     
O world of lips, O world of laughter,      
Where hope is fleet and thought flies after,      
Of lights in the clear night, of cries      
That drift along the wave and rise          55   
Thin to the glittering stars above,      
You know the hands, the eyes of love!      
The strife of limbs, the sightless clinging,      
The infinite distance, and the singing      
Blown by the wind, a flame of sound,          60   
The gleam, the flowers, and vast around      
The horizon, and the heights above—      
You know the sigh, the song of love!      
     
But there the night is close, and there      
Darkness is cold and strange and bare;          65   
And the seered deeps are whisperless;      
And rhythm is all deliciousness;      
And joy is in the throbbing tide,      
Whose intricate fingers beat and glide      
In felt bewildering harmonies          70   
Of trembling touch; and music is      
The exquisite knocking of the blood.      
Space is no more, under the mud;      
His bliss is older than the sun.      
Silent and straight the waters run.          75   
The lights, the cries, the willows dim,      
And the dark tide are one with him.

   
II. 1908–1911   
8. Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body   
     
HOW can we find? how can we rest? how can      
We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man?      
We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate,      
Forget the moment ere the moment slips,      
Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips,           5   
Who want, and know not what we want, and cry      
With crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by.      
Love’s for completeness! No perfection grows      
’Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose,      
And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied          10   
Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied.      
Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape,      
Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape,      
Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed,      
Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost          15   
By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways      
From sanity and from wholeness and from grace.      
How can love triumph, how can solace be,      
Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee?      
Could we but fill to harmony, and dwell          20   
Simple as our thought and as perfectible,      
Rise disentangled from humanity      
Strange whole and new into simplicity,      
Grow to a radiant round love, and bear      
Unfluctuant passion for some perfect sphere,          25   
Love moon to moon unquestioning, and be      
Like the star Lunisequa, steadfastly      
Following the round clear orb of her delight,      
Patiently ever, through the eternal night!

II. 1908–1911   
9. Flight   
     
VOICES out of the shade that cried,      
  And long noon in the hot calm places,      
And children’s play by the wayside,      
  And country eyes, and quiet faces—      
  All these were round my steady paces.           5   
     
Those that I could have loved went by me;      
  Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;      
I heard the whisper of water nigh me,      
  Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone      
  In the green and gold. And I went on.          10   
     
For if my echoing footfall slept,      
  Soon a far whispering there’d be      
Of a little lonely wind that crept      
  From tree to tree, and distantly      
  Followed me, followed me.…          15   
     
But the blue vaporous end of day      
  Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite,      
Where between pine-woods dipped the way.      
  I turned, slipped in and out of sight.      
  I trod as quiet as the night.          20   
     
The pine-boles kept perpetual hush;      
  And in the boughs wind never swirled.      
I found a flowering lowly bush,      
  And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled,      
  Hidden at rest from all the world.          25   
     
Safe! I was safe, and glad, I knew!      
  Yet—with cold heart and cold wet brows      
I lay. And the dark fell.… There grew      
  Meward a sound of shaken boughs;      
  And ceased, above my intricate house;          30   
     
And silence, silence, silence found me.…      
  I felt the unfaltering movement creep      
Among the leaves. They shed around me      
  Calm clouds of scent, that I did weep;      
  And stroked my face. I fell asleep.          35

II. 1908–1911   
10. The Hill   
     
BREATHLESS, we flung us on the windy hill,      
  Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.      
  You said, “Through glory and ecstasy we pass;      
Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,      
When we are old, are old.…” “And when we die           5   
  All’s over that is ours; and life burns on      
Through other lovers, other lips,” said I,      
—“Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!”      
     
“We are Earth’s best, that learnt her lesson here.      
  Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!” we said;           10   
  “We shall go down with unreluctant tread      
Rose-crowned into the darkness!”… Proud we were,      
And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.      
—And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

II. 1908–1911   
11. The One Before the Last   
     
I DREAMT I was in love again      
  With the One Before the Last,      
And smiled to greet the pleasant pain      
  Of that innocent young past.      
     
But I jumped to feel how sharp had been           5   
  The pain when it did live,      
How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten      
  Were Hell in Nineteen-five.      
     
The boy’s woe was as keen and clear,      
  The boy’s love just as true,          10   
And the One Before the Last, my dear,      
  Hurt quite as much as you.      
     
Sickly I pondered how the lover      
  Wrongs the unanswering tomb,      
And sentimentalizes over          15   
  What earned a better doom.      
     
Gently he tombs the poor dim last time,      
  Strews pinkish dust above,      
And sighs, “The dear dead boyish pastime!      
  But this—ah, God!—is Love!”          20   
     
—Better oblivion hide dead true loves,      
  Better the night enfold,      
Than men, to eke the praise of new loves,      
  Should lie about the old!      
     
Oh! bitter thoughts I had in plenty.          25   
  But here’s the worst of it—      
I shall forget, in Nineteen-twenty,      
You ever hurt abit!

II. 1908–1911   
12. The Jolly Company   
     
THE STARS, a jolly company,      
  I envied, straying late and lonely;      
And cried upon their revelry:      
  “O white companionship! You only      
In love, in faith unbroken dwell,           5   
Friends radiant and inseparable!”      
     
Light-heart and glad they seemed to me      
  And merry comrades (even so      
God out of Heaven may laugh to see      
  The happy crowds; and never know          10   
That in his lone obscure distress      
Each walketh in a wilderness).      
     
But I, remembering, pitied well      
  And loved them, who, with lonely light,      
In empty infinite spaces dwell,          15   
  Disconsolate. For, all the night,      
I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,      
Star to faint star, across the sky.