Exchanged for flesh and temper, a dry FaustWhose devil barters with digestion, has he paid dearFor dipping his fingers in the Roc’s valley?Who knows? It’s certain that he owns a rage,A face like shark-skin, full of Yellow Jack,And that unreckoning tyranny of ageThat calls for turtles’ eggs in Twickenham.Sometimes, by moonlight, in a barge he’ll…
Gravely in warm plaster turning; the hedges are dark.The trees come suddenly to flower with moonlight,The water-gardens to glassy fire, and the night, the night,Breaks in a rain of stars. O, now the statues wake,Poise on their leaden stems, and dive into the lake—And the old Gardener, who has grown old with raking,Bends by his…
Lacking the monument,Heroic stone;Nor is it an obscuring parasol,The pad of customary gloves and criesAnd a black leather mourning-carriageHung between death and the beholder’s eyes.This little bin of cancelled fleshStrode the earth once,Rubbed against men—But that’s all done.A gentle elegy, a tear or two,May charm the grave-diggers, no doubt,But nothing can count to these incongrous…
Pull up the blind, blink out – all sounds are drugged;the slow blowing of passengers asleep;engines yawning; water in heavy drips;Black, sinister travellers, lumbering up the station,one moment in the window, hooked over bags;hurrying, unknown faces – boxes with strange labels –all groping clumsily to mysterious ends,out of the gaslight, dragged by private Fates,their echoes…
TRANSPORTS of filed nerves; a wistful cough;One sensual hairbrush reluctantly concludesThe Great Harry’s excruciations and beatitudes,Delicately and gravely putting things on and off.Shouting through shirts, dipping out liquid flowers,All the accoutrements and mysteries,The awful engines of the toilet—presses, trees,And huge voluptuous bootjacks, for two shuddering hours.But in the glass navel of his dressing-room,Nests of diminishing…
Music and candleshineFill the dim chambers . . . .‘Fans toss and ladies pace,Flutes of cold metal blow,Maidens like winds of laceTease the dark passages . . . .‘Run, you fat kitchen-boys,Pasties in pyramidsRise while your masters poiseFlagons with silver lids . . . .‘Ha! Let the platters fume,Jars wink and bottles drip,Staining with smoke…
No longer, but with clouds of crystal swimming,I’ll not forget, nor men can lose, though wordsDissolve with music, gradually dimming.So let them die; whatever the mind loses,Water remains, cables and bells remain,Night comes, the sailors burn their riding-lamps,And strangers, pitching on our graves their camps,Will break through branches to the surf again.Darkness comes down. The…
With mouths of air; my speech is the dog-speechOf yours, the Roman tongue—but mine is tiedBy harsher bridles, dumb with breath and bone.Vainly it mocks the dingo strings, the stops,The pear-tree flying in the flute, with dropsOf music, quenched and scattered by your own.So serving-men, who run all night with wine,And whet their ears, and…
If you’ll do me the honour of a dungeon—Anything but this tyranny of sinews.Lashed with a hundred ropes of nerve and boneI lie, poor helpless Gulliver,In a twopenny dock for the want of a penny,Tied up with stuff too cheap, and strings too many.One chain is usually sufficient for a cur.Hair over hair, I pick…
Looking at you through keyholes.But come! At least you might try to beEven, let us say, a Graceful ZeroOr an Eminent Molecule, gorgeously employed.Have you not played Hamlet’s father in the wingsLong enough, listening to poets groan,Seeking a false catharsisIn flesh not yours, through doors ajarIn the houses of dead kings,In the gods’ tombs, in…
