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Cockpit of Idols
by
Muriel Stuart
[1918]
To You, And All That We Remember
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METHUEN & CO. LTD., 36 ESSEX STREET W.C., LONDON
FOREWORD
I WISH to thank Mr. Austin Harrison for his courtesy
in allowing me to reprint the following poems that have
appeared in The English Review: "It's Rose-Time Here . . .",
"Bluebell Night," "The Centaur's First Love," "Indictment,"
and also for his kindness in publishing in 1915 a long
poem by an unknown author.
1918
- IT'S rose-time here . . .
- How could the Spring
- Be the same merry thing ?
- How could she sparkle April's posy-ring
- Upon the finger of this widowed year ?
- How could she bring
- Her gauds so pitilessly near ?
- How could she bear
- To lead the pomp of May,
- The primings and the promises of June
- So near, so soon,
- In the old happy way ?
- How could she dare
- To prick the eyes of Grief
- With mockeries of returning bud and leaf ?
- How could she wear
- Such coloured broideries
- Beside the tattered garments of despair ?
- Tenting the hills with April's canopies,
- Setting the tulips' spears . . .
- How could she keep her tourneys through such tears ?
- She did not care . . .
- The roses are as beautiful this year.
- The lily never doffed
- One golden plume, nor did the May renounce
- One thrilling splendour, nor wear one pearl less.
- She has not grieved even a little space
- For those who loved her once
- For those whom surely she must once have loved.
- It's rose-time here . . .
- While over there
- Where all the roses of the world have blown
- The blood is not yet dried upon their hair,
- Their eyes have scarcely filmed against the moon,
- The sun has not yet utterly gone out;
- Almost the stained grass still
- Is conscious of their breath
- Those heavenly roses, torn and tossed about
- On the vast plains of Death.
- It's rose-time here . . .
- (How I shall always hate the Spring
- For being such a calm, untroubled thing.)
- While over there
- Where there're no children left to pull
- The few scared, ragged flowers,
- All that was ours, and, God, how beautiful!
- All, all, that once was ours
- Lies faceless, mouthless, mire in mire,
- So lost to all sweet semblance of desire
- That we in those fields seeking desperately
- One face long-lost to Love, one face that lies
- Only upon the breast of Memory
- Would never know it even though we stood
- Upon its breast, or crushed its dreadful eyes,
- Would never find it even the very blood
- Is stamped into the horror of the mud:
- Something that mad men trample under foot
- In the narrow trench for these things are not men
- Things shapeless, sodden, mute
- Beneath the monstrous limber of the guns;
- Those things that loved us once . . .
- Those that were ours, but never ours again.
- It's rose-time here . . .
- Muriel Stuart
- I HUNTED her down the morning,
- Fleet hoof and bosom bare,
- She fled me in swift scorning,
- With her great, golden mane of hair
- Firing the hot, dry, quivering air.
- Down broad, bleached plain, up sunburnt hill
- She led me, and I followed still.
- She leapt the rock, I caught the gleam
- Of glistening haunches in the stream;
- Her little murderous hoofs she drove
- Through reed and flower, her hair alone
- With long gold fingers urged me on
- Till I was mad and blind with Love,
- With sun and sleep and sharp desire
- That make the first hours keen as fire,
- And crashing through the blinding light,
- Fiercer than flame, swifter than flight,
- I hunted her down the morning.
- I loved the beast in her, the hide
- Sweating and sleek, the heaving side,
- I burned to stifle savagely
- The human mouth that taunted me
- From the wild-woman face above;
- As on the Isle of Awful Love
- Pasiphae and the Bull of Crete
- Tasted strange lips and found them sweet;
- I heard, as they heard, for Love's song,
- The sound of hoofs the whole night long.
- I hunted her down the morning!
- She leapt with neighing shrill;
- No stream too deep, too high no hill
- To master such bright scorning:
- Till where the reeds grew thick and tall
- I saw her stumble, sway and fall.
- But, from her eyes as I drew near
- Leapt fear, and something more than fear:
- She did not stir, she did not move,
- She knew the ancient Sport of Love,
- She knew me at the side of her.
- From great gold mane to trembling hoof,
- The sleek, the tawny hide of her,--
- All the predestined sweets thereof--
- Are mine to crush or choke or kill . . .
- Kisses grew quicker, closer still,
- Lip to lip, hoof to hoof we lay . . .
- The broad bright morning burnt away,
- The stream went mocking in our ear,
- We did not see, we did not hear,
- We did not care, we did not move;
- What power could stay the Centaur's Love?
- The glorious chase was all for this,
- More fleet the flight, more fierce the kiss;
- She knew how doubly sweet would be
- Her last surrender, and to me
- How swift the vengeance on her scorning . . .
- And now I lie and laugh with her,
- She will not fly, I shall not stir
- To hunt her down the morning!
- Muriel Stuart
- WHEN I sit down to read at night
- I hear a thousand voices call--
- The painted cups, the mirror bright,
- The crazy pattern on the wall;
- Terrible sounds of woe and strife
- Make thunder through this quiet room,--
- Women who gave the mill their life,
- And men who shuddered at the loom,--
- The noise the snarling hammer made
- In maddened ears, the foundry's roar,--
- The woe that stitched this rich brocade,
- That beat this brass, that hewed this door.
- How can I read while round me swarm
- Creatures that wept and strove and died
- To make this room, rich, safe and warm,
- To keep the weather-beasts outside?
- How can I rest while in the gloom
- From mine and garret, den and pit,
- They pass, who built in blood this room,
- And with their tears so furnished it!
- Muriel Stuart
- THROUGH reeling night and crumbling day
- You pace the Haunted House of Pain,
- The Thing that marked you for its prey
- Follows you, hides and springs again.
- To blinding window, sinking floor,
- Drunken with ether, torn with knife,
- Crazy and blind you lurch once more
- Into the hideousness of Life.
- And nothing beautiful nor strong,
- Nor kind, nor fierce, nor vain, nor pure,
- Concerns you,--only this,--how long,
- How much, how well, you may endure.
- The fiery brain that dreamed and planned,
- The kissing lips', the restless feet,
- Lie knotted like a dead man's hand,
- And writhe beneath the twisted sheet.
- Till to a life that but revolved
- Round a dim night-light's settling blue
- Comes Death, and lays aside, unsolved,
- The foolish riddle that was You!
- Muriel Stuart
- HERE thou art safe as roses in the bud,--
- Safe from the wind that will not spare the rose;
- Here thou art: daily and divinely fed
- On holy wine and bread
- That none deny--my body and my blood--
- I housle thee, myself the sacrament.
- And I am great with thee, as souls with God.
- Lie close, in Love's first, safest house lie close,
- Blind, breathless, undesirous, and content,
- Hearing my blood sing o'er thee, like a lute,
- Feeling my flesh as daisies feel the earth
- Over them, round them, warm and very still . . .
- Oh thou art so impatient of thy birth!
- As in her blind hood gropes the daffodil.
- As in the pale flower leaps the rebellious fruit.
- Lie still beneath this most unquietest heart,
- For thou a calmer pillow shalt not know
- Upon this side of sunset, nor shalt go
- So careless of the steely hearts of men.
- Thou hast the peace that men desire in vain--
- The quiet men lose and cannot find again;
- After, thou shalt not find such sweet repose.
- Starlight and moonshine will not say thee ' Nay,'
- Nor the sun question thy divinest right--
- The Password of the Portals of the Day,
- The Freedom of the City of the Night;
- The orphaned lily, the unfathered rose
- Shall not disdain thy gold, unharming hair,
- But men shall claim thee their eternal prey,
- Hunt thee to Death, and hound thee to Despair,
- Mark thee, and set thee loose, to take again
- As they hunt each forlorn, defenceless thing,--
- As I am hounded by the hate of men.
- For us there is no pardon, pity none
- Of all cold hearts beneath the pitying sun,--
- Of all cold lips above the pardoning seas.
- Behold us, foes of all Love's enemies,
- With every hand against the hand of Love,
- And we, the slaves of Love's swift tourneying,
- Paying the slow and bitter price thereof.
- Lie still awhile; thy beauty builds my shame!--
- The shame thou dost so innocently bring:
- At thy beseeching blood my blood grows tame,
- Thy body makes my own most wearisome,
- And with thy kindling lips my lips become
- Colder; within me something daily dies.
- Yet, oh most sweet, I do not quarrel thee,
- For more desired thou art than chastity;
- Closer thou art than eyelids over eyes,
- Than kissing lips or clasping hands can be;
- As flame with flame, as tide with tide thou art;
- Nearer, much nearer, than myself to me:
- I carry Heaven beneath my labouring heart.
- But thou wilt lie no longer than Love lay,
- Thou wilt weary of my body even as he;
- And I again with body and blood shall pay
- To the last farthing's ruthless penalty
- The nights with Love, the days, the hours with thee.
- And when at last thy fashioning is o'er,
- When flesh from flesh, when soul from soul, goes free,
- When Love's poor house can give thee nothing more,
- And thou break through the wearying bonds thereof,
- I will seek pardon of thee on my knees,
- And thou ask pity of God, or stones, or trees,
- But not of men--we will ask naught of these--
- I, the loving, and thou the seal of Love.
- Muriel Stuart
- I, GOD'S young priest, went to His House to pray.
- In the dim church the warm deep-bosomed air
- Swelled on remembered music, whose last note
- Yearned in the organ's throat;
- Great columns carved in fountain-fall of stone
- Upheld the dizzy roof on might of spray.
- Beneath the pavement bare
- Slumbered the dead, serenely separate,
- Too still for praise or prayer,
- Too wise for love or hate;
- With no more haste to finish or begin,
- With no more need to tarry or pursue
- Where nothing more is finished or begun.
- The nave stood plunged in purple to the chin,
- And all the windows stared a solemn blue
- Pricked with the golden needles of the sun.
- But I thought not on Beauty, but on Sin--
- On all the nameless evils dared and done,
- For me the dark worm tunnelled in the bud
- The moth despoiled the tapestries of rich years,
- For me each Dawn was but a vision of tears,
- And every night a winking bowl of blood.
- A gentle Christ above the altar stared
- At His mean feast prepared,
- And near the carven Rood
- The Maid the Mother stood.
- I kneeled before her, I who had wept and prayed
- Each day and night of my remembering years,
- Whose youth profane and passionate was laid
- Beneath the cloisters' celibate still shade,
- And dedicated at the Font of Tears.
- But as I kneeled the grim walls seemed to fade
- Into wet woodlands, and wide, happy leas
- Where lovers with kissed lips and mazy hair
- Went dancing to the stately sound of trees.
- Love blew his rapturous bubbles in the air,
- And suddenly for the first wild time I knew
- The strange sweet pang that the hid violet knows
- When first she dreams of blooming, and how the rose
- Shivers beneath the sharp, baptismal dew.
- I heard the song the thrush one morn would sing,
- And knew then what the dumb reed wept to say
- Ere Pan had kissed her mouth, I felt that day
- The shameless, sweet, unshatterable Spring!
- And suddenly the whole world shook with song--
- Music of brooks and birds, of bees and showers;
- To the grey fields carolled the rosy flowers;
- The grass's husky, hesitating tongue
- Murmured and ceased; from the remotest sea
- Rose, as a tune that hidden minstrels play,
- The water's lyric, the wind's lutany.
- Oh! voices, voices, bringing to mine ears
- Your tender torture! Oh! sweet hurt of Spring
- Shed all along my veins. Oh! flying fire
- Of passion, of woe, of wildness, of desire;
- The Hound of Love was on the Heel of Youth,
- Beauty came wiling, wooing, whispering,
- And wounded me upon the breast and mouth
- With secret wounds--with kisses sharp as spears,
- Sudden as flame, and bright and thick as tears,
- Yet breathing peace withal, as when one bowers
- His head upon some dew-begotten dell,
- And feels his eyelids cold against cold flowers.
- How could I pray? Could such lips shape a sigh?
- What chalice had this hour to lend to tears?
- Only the cuckoo's song was in my cars,
- My dumb voice quickened only to one cry:
- "Barest thou listen, Mother-Maid, to me,
- Thou who hast listened all these empty years
- To the slow fall of tears,--
- To coward penitence that scarce hath lain
- Upon thy breast but hears Sin's whistle shrill,
- And cries for her old bedfellow again?
- Hath any paused to offer on his knee
- A word of love since one for Love's own sake
- Gave thee swift, crowded hours of ecstasy,
- Whose voice above all prayers thou nearest still?
- Thou wert a woman to him, thou didst make
- Each summer mystery plain;
- Were not thy clinging hands the wind's un-rest?
- Was not thy spread hair thunder on his breast?
- Was not thy face the rose, thy tears the rain?
- Here kneeleth one who loves thee even as he!"
- The day reeled past me, haggarding the night,
- Then stayed her breath,
- Waiting for an immediate doom to fall
- On one whom none may succour or requite,--
- Doom neither prayer nor pity hindereth.
- The loosened ivy cringed against the wall,
- The dusk about me drew
- A closer noose of gloom; the silence wept;
- The lights upon the altar lapsed and leapt
- In gusts of gold and blue.
- From the night's caravan a beggar-wind
- Crept up and listened at the door
- Like some poor outcast creature that hath sinned
- And dareth home no more,
- But listens to old songs round the old hearth,
- Wondering if his forbidden name one saith,
- If one be sad, remembering. Then I heard--
- Lower than pipe of an entranced bird
- That shakes a dewy wing
- On glittering boughs at sunrise, venturing
- Against hushed lips of dawn his perilous flute--
- The stumble soft of unaccustomed speech
- That patience or despair hath long made mute,
- Sad as sea-sounds in most forlornest shells
- Scattered upon a tide-forsaken beach,
- Wherein the murmur of the far sea dwells.
- "I hear thy plea, my wild one! Have thy prayers
- Led thee to me for this?
- And have I so mis-read thy daily vows?
- My silence, hath it seemed a sinful 'Yea'?
- Hast thou but beaten dedicated brows
- Against the feet of Lust, and in my house
- Profaned me, deeming me to be enticed
- By snare of service, and by bait of prayer
- Into Sin's meshes? Wouldst thou father Christ?"
- "Lady, thy children were not all of God;
- Thy gentle feet have trod
- The path of Love, thy bosom well hath known
- Its blossoms and its bowers,
- Thy mouth hath crushed its fruit; oh! thou hast grown
- Into my soul as sun grows into flowers,
- As the sea rolls into the sunset's shell.
- Thou dwellest in me as the Host doth dwell
- Within the Cup, but also dwelleth there
- That other ancient Spirit of the Vine
- Torched on the hills, laughing and quick with wine,
- Pursuing Ariadne as she flies
- Through the dim woods, the fountain of her hair
- Blown backwards in warm gold against the air,
- Its bubbles sparkling at his lips and eyes.
- Thou art the beaker that Bacchantes bring--
- And thine the cup whence Maenades caroused,--
- The vine upon a thousand hill-sides sunned,
- The warm bright grape their amorous bodies bruised!"
- I heard my words rush past me thundering,
- As one who on the lonely mountain hears
- The deep abysses groan their agonies,
- The ridge make sharp her merciless strong spears,
- And hears the awful hammer of the ice
- Break the great crags in shards about his ears!
- But as I kneeled and shuddered, sound of feet
- Sighed in the aisle, and lingered and grew close.
- One kneeled by me an outcast of the street--
- A creature wan as June's last lovely rose
- That, following forsaken summer fades
- Slowly through nights of rain, and days of drouth--
- A graveless ghost, whom sleep in vain persuades,
- Whom mercy may not save, nor pity stir,
- Wearing the harlot's rose on cheek and mouth,
- With all her pitiful hair spilled over her.
- She leaned towards me, a few words stammering--
- Learned lesson of the streets so glibly spoken!--
- The priest in me leaped out and smote her there,
- "Darest thou plead, poor, painted Folly, broken
- Across the knees' of those thou once didst snare?
- Shall Love be borne upon a vulture's wing?
- Shall paper roses bear
- The burden of the Spring?
- Canst thou set all the sunrise in a ring?
- What whip shall scourge the trafficker that sells
- Such shameful wares within the House of God
- Where Holiness hath its august abode,
- Denied the gold by which thou art grown rich?
- Behold above us where God's Mother dwells. . . ."
- Darkness alone stood in the empty niche.
- "Son, for whom died my Son, I have come down!
- I am the terrible answer to thy kiss.
- Behold the graven image overthrown;
- Passion at last brings all its gods to this.
- What ware is sold more shameful than thine own,
- What harlot's house is more profaned than mine,
- Whose priests forswear the solemn vows they made,
- In whose hands broken is indeed the bread,
- And for whose sins shall blush the holy wine?"
- As in some vast and desperate agony,
- On torn lips furrowed by the Plough of Pain,
- A meaningless word within all words be knit,
- Repeated till all sense be gone from it,
- And it mean naught, and beat upon a brain
- Long crazed and without fear, I spake again:
- "Wert thou more faithful to thy God than
- Mary, for Him wert thou inviolate?
- Didst thou for Him all other loves deny,
- Forsworn thy lips, thy body celibate
- To Him who made thy breast His Sanctuary?
- For I have never turned aside to slake
- My thirst on Folly's fruit or Pleasure's wine;
- I think no other woman had been mine
- After thy hair had swept me! For thy sake
- I had been only, and for ever thine.
- Yea, I had swiftly died upon thy kiss--
- Death flying in straight splendour to such mark--
- Not as a beggar to the house of alms,
- Not in a narrow bed with hasty rite,
- And sudden hush of psalms,
- But as a great white Day goes out at night
- Upon the splendid venture of the Dark!"
- So spake I, and fell weeping, closelier drew
- Until my brow against her feet was laid,
- Fell on my ears, as on shut flowers the dew.
- The swift sad words she said.
- "I, too, was but a weapon in God's hand--
- Human like thee--a weapon and a sign
- Misread of men; in every human breast
- God lays Him down to rest
- Until the earthly cast forth the divine.
- None sainted me: did I at my Son's feet
- With other Marys sit?
- Was my forgotten hair beloved or blessed
- As Magdalen's? Did I not ever stand
- Aside, apart, forgotten and alone?
- What word had Mark or Luke the Evangelist
- For her whom God made Mother of His Son?
- Why shouldst thou worship where they bowed no knee?
- "O Son, O Wild One, thou hast brought even me
- Into thy soul's arena. All men turn
- Their unseen gods to graven images,
- Each man the idol of his choosing leads
- That in the Cockpit of men's brutal creeds
- Each god may bleed and burn,
- Till frailer ones be fallen on their knees,--
- Sweet gods soon broken upon the spears of Youth,
- Soon silenced at the knee of Sophistry,
- Till Earth's eyes with the lust of battle dim,
- Till gaping Hell be bubbled to the brim,
- And Heaven grow grey against a dead god's mouth.
- Yea, Zeus and Christ in the great lists are flung,
- Dagon and Vishnu face to face are thrust,
- Pallas Athene tourneys with the dust;
- God of the North above whose throne were set
- The golden shields, Isis of Egypt sung,
- Meet only where all dying gods have met!
- There shudders the moon-goddess Ashtorcth;
- The Syrian, and the Cyprian, fall on death;
- Olympus, Asgard and Gethsemane,
- Vigil of Paphos and of Olivet!
- And while these gods in the great shambles die,
- Thrust on each other's spears,
- He, nameless and unchallenged, wanders by
- In every tree that peers
- Into the wizard darkness of the hill,
- And in each tarn most deeply contemplates
- The image of His beauty, lingers still
- To twist again the purfled clover's ears,
- World-weary feet He cools
- Where windless noons lie bathing in the pools,
- Or takes His solitude
- Where, in the purple cloak of twilight, waits
- The moon to pierce the solitary wood.
- The God who made the world and found it good
- When the great pageant of six days rolled by,
- Who fired the laughing splendour of the blood,
- Painted the dawn, and laid the starry floors,
- And led the amazed moon across her sky,--
- Who wrestled with the thunder and the night,--
- Who heard the first seas singing up the shores,
- And saw the first fields blush in the first light.
- Deny no more the spirit of delight,
- No more thy brother's image crucify.
- In every home thou hast bid men watch him die,
- And carved the moment of his agony.
- Thou hast given us the Eternal load to bear,
- The burden of the outcast and forlorn,
- Give us the gift of laughter, not of prayer,--
- The joy His Mother had when He was born,
- And bid the wounded brow of Jesus wear
- The rose and not the thorn."
- She ceased. Upon my brow's cold earthliness
- Faltered the stainless petals of her kiss,
- While all the fluttering pinions of the air
- Made ready as if to bear
- An infinite impalpable foot thereon.
- No trump declared her, but the air was sweet
- With crooked croon of doves,--with brooks that run
- Laughter and tears together,--with buds that greet
- With freckled faces the kisses of the sun.
- All saddest things went gathered to her breast,--
- The foundling sorrow, and the grief that goes
- To the lean bosom any hireling bares
- When the heart's house is swept for Pleasure's heirs,
- And Life's broad bed another lover knows.
- My old despairs, old sorrows and old fears
- She took, as from the wide fields' palimpsest
- Sunlight blots out the legend of the snows
- For Spring's green name, while April dries her tears
- To prick the warm bright eyelids of the rose.
- Dawn made a sudden crescent curve of flame
- Above the world, as o'er Endymion
- Arched in a trembling splendour, Dian came,
- The moon behind her, and before the sun,
- The Orient with her thundery hair distraught,
- The dying West still troubled at her feet,
- And the dark world beneath her chained and caught
- In the gold net where Night and Morning meet.
- Never was Spring so longed for as this Spring--
- My Spring so long delayed and come at last--
- A child despaired of, overmuch desired.
- Born in the winter of Love when grown too old
- Has seemed the body and the lips too cold,
- The hands, the. heart too tired
- For further fashioning.
- Oh! never had the heart's first celandine
- Unhooded her so slowly from the green,
- Never before had stately shaft and plinth
- Been built so slowly by the hyacinth;
- Never had any captive fled so fast
- From the grim haunted tower of solitude,
- Never had leapt to such shrill trumpet blast
- The prisoned pulse or marched the daunted blood
- I loosed the bonds, I watched the idols fall,
- From the dark shrine I went out, sane and free,
- Creedless and unforbidden to serve and see
- The unknown, only God within us all.
- Men seemed no more the legionaries of lust,
- Women no more their pleasure or their prey,--
- Lost creatures blown from frail, alluring dust,
- And doomed to slow corruption and decay.
- Something so lovely, pitiful and wise,
- Something so infinite crowned the finite whole!
- I saw the unshatterable temple of each soul,
- I heard their laughter as the wind that blows
- Wider the thrilling rose,
- And felt their tears like rain, their sweat like dew.
- I saw God die a thousand deaths and rise
- In triumph from each yawning sepulchre,
- And Summer's hair was gold beneath His feet.
- Then lo ! She passed before me, and I knew
- I might have found, loved, healed and hallowed her
- In every violet-seller by the wall,
- In pavement-saints, Madonnas of the Shawl,
- In Magdalen's hair, in Martha's ministry,
- Wherever women's heads were blessed or bowed;
- I walked with God in every noisy street,
- And saw in every creature that passed by
- Christ go forth too and mingle with the crowd.
- Muriel Stuart
- ON a stall they shiver now,
- Huddled in the dust and rain,--
- A forlorn and tattered row,
- Like the castaways of men.
- A profound green library
- Held them once, serene and close,
- Where a sonnet's lips were dry
- With the blood of some dead rose.
- Dirty hands and furtive eyes
- Touch, profane them where they lie,
- And a ticket shows the price
- Of such immortality!
- Dust is deep on Marlowe's lip,
- Hell holds Dante in these streets,
- Milton takes the gutter's drip,
- Mud is on the breast of Keats.
- All the lovely thoughts men think,
- All their rapture, love and pain,--
- God come down in blood and ink,--
- Sold for sixpence in the rain!
- Muriel Stuart
- WHEN I grow old and my quick blood is chilled,
- And all my thoughts are grey as my grey hair,
- When I am slow and dull, and do not care,
- And all the strife and storm of Life are stilled;
- Then if one carelessly should speak your name
- It will go through my body like swift spears
- To set my fireless bosom in a flame,
- My faded eyelids will be bright with tears;
- And I shall find how far my heart has gone
- From wanting you, how lost and long ago
- That love of ours was: I shall suddenly know
- How old and grey I am . . . and how alone.
- Muriel Stuart
- THE Sins, the Joys, the Sorrows of the Soul
- Sat down to feast, and He was bidden wait
- Upon them, He who wore an aureole
- About His brows, while they washed hands and ate,
- Plucked fruit and spices from the costly plate,
- And drained the black wine from the lordly bowl.
- Twelve guests of God they sat at meat; each guest
- Closest to him he loved; lean Treachery
- Spilled salt and moved Pride's eyelid with a jest,
- Repentance, scarcely daring to reply,
- Sat with wan cheek half-turned from Chastity,
- But Love--Love wept against the Servant's breast.
- Young Hope and Fear clung, dove-like breasts together
- Near Joy and Grief with wild and gentle eyes;
- Courage, a bird that flies in every weather,
- Refused to count his scars for Pity's sighs;
- Lust crouched and tossed red meats and savouries
- To his gaunt hounds that whinnied at their tether.
- With pity infinite the Slave leaned down
- Serving them Folly's wine, and Pleasure's meat,
- And when cups yawned, and broken fruits lay brown
- He, rising, look rough linen and water sweet
- And kneeled and washed those erring Masters' feet,
- And drew their gold and broidered sandals on.
- Joy fled; Love cried: "Lord, serv'st thou such as they?"
- Hope, Fear and Sorrow chorused Pity's sigh;
- But Pride thrust forth his feet, and Lust said: "Yea,"
- Courage was shamed; aghast stood Chastity;
- Repentance with wild hair wept: "Thus did I!"
- And Treachery kissed the Slave and went away.
- By some forgotten, and by some denied,
- By all forsaken, from that banquet-hall
- The Slave went forth, Love weeping at his side,
- And for the Body's sins, for those who fall
- Because of it for Love's sake most of all--
- After their feast the Slave was crucified.
- Muriel Stuart
- "ÉTAPLES," what does it mean?
- Is it the name of a town?
- Fields where the wild flowers blow,
- A hill where the brooks run down?
Is it a town to us?
A field where the jonquils grow?
Is it a hill where the streams
Run laughing? We do not know.
" Étaples" a strange, vague word
Spelled on the lips of the guns
Where all that' our wild hearts loved
Went through with the regiment once!
- Muriel Stuart
- THE fern and flame had fought and died together,
- From fading frond the failing smoke crept grey,
- The heath drew close her old brown shawl of heather,
- And turned her face away.
- To-day the bee no bell of honey misses,
- The birds are nesting where the bracken lies
- Green, tranquil, deep, quiet as dreams or kisses
- On weary lips and eyes.
- The heath has drawn the blackened threads together,
- My heart has closed her lips upon old pain,
- But somewhere, in my heart and in the heather,
- No bud shall grow again.
- Muriel Stuart
- COME back no more: nothing is left us now:
- Let us forget; let us go back, go soon
- To the old loves we left, and crave the boon
- Of their old kindness, nor remember how
- Your hands burnt in my hands,--how wild, how dear
- Those hours were once, that now forgotten are,
- Let this thing be as far as love is far,
- Yea, let this be as things that never were.
- Though it have altered all that used to be,
- Have changed our earth, and brought strange wave and weed
- Into our fields, and smart and smell of sand
- From waters that have never known the land;
- Though on our tides have burned rich scent and seed
- From gardens that were strangers to the sea.
- Come back no more: what is there but to find
- This rose's flaw in every other rose?
- To taste in all fruit this fruit's bitter rind,
- To breathe these ashes on each wind that blows?
- Was it for this we pledged a thousand vows,
- And by eternal kisses swore our faith
- This deadest of dead things that lies beneath
- The stretched sheet in Life's latched and shuttered house?
- What word is there to bring it? No word more;
- It would not hear though we had words to say,
- Though we had tears to shed, or prayers to pray.
- Leave to this dead its dark, and close this door . . .
- It was not Love that we brought here to die,
- Let us go back, go by.
- Muriel Stuart
- IN women is it Chastity you prize?--
- The unapproachable white purities,--
- The vestal moon forsworn of celibate skies,
- The ice that spurns remote and barren seas?
- Can Chastity cool your kisses, slake your sighs?
- And when, at last, o'ertaken and embraced,
- We give you burning lips, wild words and eyes,
- In your arms lying, would you have us chaste?
- If it were Chastity filled your treasuries,
- Possession would be Prize instead of Prey.
- You would be wise and clean, and we should go
- Free of your lusts and importunities,
- Nor trace the dubious paths we take to-day
- From your first, careless footsteps in the snow.
- Muriel Stuart
- WHEN Earth stands trembling on the brink of June
- Spring reads the writing on the sunset's wall,
- And 'Farewell' on the bright page of the moon,
- While the winds lute a faint memorial.
- She hears Night toll the hour of her farewell,
- And seeks once more a breast whereon to die,--
- In the last wood to yield to Summer's spell,
- That still dreams on with wide and tranquil eye
- When June the mighty huntress rakes the sky
- And sows the world with heat,--still sees its cool
- Green image peering o'er the enchanted pool.
- Past the low track where many a groaning cart
- Has lurched above the beating of Spring's heart
- She fleets, June's arrows falling swift and bright:
- The creening curlew-wind wails, following,
- The old wheel-wounds are filled with flowers to-night.
- Her reels of gold, blue skein and yellow bead,
- Fall from her hand as wild and white she goes,
- The poppy lacking still a golden thread,
- Her needle pricking still the unfinished rose.
- To-night the bluebells die, already wan
- With prescience of her whose death is theirs:
- A sheathing wing the solemn thicket bears,
- Though heedless birds sing on,
- Though through the listening moonlight wanders still
- The wide-lipped water talking in her sleep,
- And far beyond the hill,
- Across the heaven's golden, vast divide,
- The twilight rose nods to the lily moon;
- Too old, too wise to weep,
- They watch where Spring has fallen, and see her swoon
- With the long spear of Summer in her side.
- The lean swift bramble hastens o'er the stones,--
- A gipsy Autumn makes an emperor
- Splendoured in purple, glorious in gold;
- The young wild trees whom she may tend no more
- Forget their cradle-songs in April's house,
- And on Earth's shoulders take a mighty hold,
- Against the sun spread vast pavilions,
- And stun the great storms with huge, thunderous brows.
- While from Spring's dying hand the jewels fall;
- The hawthorn folds her frail embroidery,
- The drowsy hyacinth puts out her light,
- Gold-throated flowers that lured the pirate bee
- Fade like old dreams across the face of night,
- Of whom stern Day forbids memorial.
- Something of Spring must die in us to-night--
- Something the full-lipped Summer may not know,--
- The sharp, sad rapture, the impetuous flight
- That finds all heavens too near, all heights too low;
- When Dawn seems but a glittering rose to throw
- To a mad world, and from Youth's beakers flow
- The keen, the sparkling Daysprings of Delight!
- But not for ever! All that died to-night
- Has heard one same sweet word, and knows that Change
- Though seeming wild and strange,--
- Seeming to stamp its heel on all delight,
- And giving Beauty only grace to die,
- Shall bring a rich to-morrow; though Spring lie
- Dead as the first faith in Youth's sepulchre,
- She shall return, and glide,--
- A white swan moving on the green Springtide:
- A snowdrop soon shall quicken in her side,
- And round her lips a little sigh shall stir . . .
- While loud December stamps the frozen ways
- Leave her to dreamless nights and deedless days,
- And strew the paling bluebells over her!
- Muriel Stuart
- WHO will remember Heliodore?
- The nightingales, the nightingales
- That sing to-night in vain for thee
- Whose nights no singing shall restore?
- The myrtle that in vain hath shed
- Bloom for thy bridal feet to tread
- That wander dim and sunless vales,
- Far off, too far for Love and me?
- What music hath Persephone,
- What woodland glade, what balmy grove
- To bower sweet birds in lutany?
- What lip or lyre speaks low in Love
- Where grey ghosts after and before
- Weave thee a mournful canopy
- Of hemlock grim and hellebore?
- This is thy maiden company,
- These are thy roses, Heliodore.
- Who will remember Heliodore?
- No rain of Autumn's weaving
- On Twilight's loom with shuttle slow;
- No plaint of sad birds' grieving
- Makes of thy name a deeper woe.
- The earth that holds thee tranced and deep
- In Death's long tyranny of sleep
- Will not remember Heliodore.
- For thou wilt be no more to her
- Than dust of ferns, or shades that stir
- The sands on Lethe's long cold shore,
- Than crumbling bones of beast or bird,
- Than perfume vague of musk or myrrh
- Clinging round lip of shell or sherd;
- Those eyes, that strange gold flame of hair,
- Shall be to her as Helen's were--
- Dust in the dust--she will not care
- If these sweet limbs and lips be those
- Of fawn or flowers or dryad, nor
- Discern thy beauty from the rose,
- Nor thee from lilies, Heliodore.
- Who will remember Heliodore?
- Not this sea, not this shore;
- Not this forgetting wind and tree:
- The dreaming land will wait once more
- The sighing, swift, desirous sea;
- To-morrow's sun will take the moon,
- To-morrow's bloom will burn the bee;
- The days will give the sweet days' boon
- To Midnight's savage empery.
- The silver sails will fret the morn
- For the pale Pleiades' return;
- Atys will woo Aurora's kiss
- In the tall woods: the Dryades
- Will woo their fauns, and Hippocrene
- Will wait the noon to dance between
- The white feet of Melpomene,--
- But not for thine, but not for thee!
- Who will remember Heliodore?
- What if my heart remember thee
- In Thessaly ? What lyre have I
- To tranee Alecto's furious hair?
- What ghost shall see thee gliding by
- To laughter and to love once more--
- To the old mortal days that were? . . .
- I cannot wake thee, Heliodore.
- A day, a year, and I shall be
- As unremembering as they
- Who share thy sweet oblivion.
- Silence and song shall be as one,
- Moonset as sunrise, night as day,
- Rivers as rocks, and stars as stones:
- And the last flower may cease to grow,
- The last bird sing, the last wind blow,--
- I shall not heed, I shall not know
- That thou wert, or that I was, once.
- In vain, in vain shalt thou implore
- Thine old song's rapture, Heliodore.
- Oh ! Love, Love, loved immeasurably!--
- Sweet, only Splendour lived and shed
- Through all my singing, thou shalt see
- How far, how utterly at last
- Art thou from all Remembrance cast
- When Love himself forgetteth thee,
- And these, thy lips, can sing no more,--
- When I am dead as thou art dead,
- Dumb as thy dumb mouth, Heliodore.
- Muriel Stuart
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