The Bird-Catcher (4 page)

Is tempered to a brittle spear of glass.

The fountain is crystal-hung; its waters fail.

      Wilted to colourless, frail

Paper the tender flesh of the flowers.

      The Dryads are gone from the tree,

For the leaves are gone, the delicate leafy towers

Dismantled, bared to the iron anatomy

Not even a bird could hide in. But hid within

In the hollow trunk, the knees drawn up to the chin,

Hugging herself each shivering Dryad sleeps,

      And frozen Echo leaps

      From her dream when my footfalls knock

      In a motionless, soundless world

      On a pathway hard as rock.

      No flutter, no song of bird

      Nor bubbling flute is heard,

Nor laughter of green-eyed Satyr. The Satyr, curled

In his ice-hung cave, is shaken with torpid fear;

      For the days of lust are over

      And cold are the loved and the lover

      And the birthday of Christ draws near.

Smooth flows the stream, its shallow banks ice-coated,

      And the pool where the lilies floated

Is glazed with a polished pane as black as flint

      And fringed with a delicate wreath

      Of crystal leaves. But a hint

      Of water moving beneath

Draws my eyes. Pale, pale through the polished glass,

Sweet naked body and wavering hair pass

      Pallid as death, fluid as water.

O ghost of Arethusa, Spring's first daughter,

Beating vain hands against your crystal ceiling!

O hands imploring, O white lips appealing

Stirred and parted by syllables unheard!

See, with a sharp-edged stone I crack the pane.

      The pale lips part again

And the leafless garden thrills to the delicate ring

Of a small, clear call from Naiad or hidden bird,

From water or air, crying, “The Spring! The Spring!”

Still falls the snow. White-thatched are all the groves.

Lost field, sunk roadway, and the buried heather

Lie in unbroken whiteness all together.

This is not snow of any worldly weather,

      
For now the Queen of Loves

Drops to our earth feather on crystal feather

      
Plucked from her team of doves.

Cold in the moonlight cold the hoar-frost shines

On forests lost in snow, a desolation

Like seas of foam in frozen fluctuation.

Those moon-lit fires of frosty scintillation

      
On boughs of frozen pines

Are jewels from the days before Creation

      
Dug from no mortal mines.

Row upon glassy row, from cornice white

Of boughs and thatches, hang the slim and even

Long icicles, like daggers frost-engraven.

Seven on the eaves and on the pine-bough seven

      
These are the swords shall smite

The heart of Mary Mother, Queen of Heaven;

      
For on this winter's night

The hidden Flower of Love wakes from its dreaming,

Breaks the green sheath, uncurls each petal folded;

And silently as dew on green leaves gleaming

The world is shattered and a new world moulded

In Love's own likeness, ere world-weary men

Have taken breath and breathed it out again.

Under the shining helms

Of piled white cloud

A sombre screen of elms

Is set to shroud

The little red-roofed inn

From the midday glare.

Its smoke climbs straight and thin

Through windless air,

And breaks on the sombre boughs

To an azure bloom.

But we, who know the house

And the clean-swept room,

Enter and loudly ask

Huge Mrs. Reece

To draw from the new-tapped cask

A pint apiece

Topped with a creamy crown

And clear and cool

As the trout-stream lagging brown

In its rock-carved pool.

Then, after talk and drink,

We'll rise and go

To the brown stream's trembling brink,

To crouch and throw

A tinselled fly, till the trout

That sulks alone

Is artfully wheedled out

From his shadowy stone.

Laughter, with us, is no great undertaking;

A sudden wave that breaks and dies in breaking.

Laughter, with Mrs. Reece, is much less simple:

It germinates, it spreads, dimple by dimple,

From small beginnings, things of modest girth,

To formidable redundancies of mirth.

Clusters of subterranean chuckles rise,

And presently the circles of her eyes

Close into slits, and all the woman heaves,

As a great elm with all its mounds of leaves

Wallows before the storm. From hidden sources

A mustering of blind volcanic forces

Takes her and shakes her till she sobs and gapes.

Then all that load of bottled mirth escapes

In one wild crow, a lifting of huge hands

And creaking stays, a visage that expands

In scarlet ridge and furrow. Thence collapse,

A hanging head, a feeble hand that flaps

An apron-end to stir an air and waft

A steaming face … and Mrs. Reece has laughed.

Helen, I'd be, if I could have my wish,

A pool among the rocks where small, shy fish

Gleam to and fro, and green and rosy weed

Sways its long fringes. So I should not heed

Your comings and your goings nor each whim

So skilfully contrived to torture him,

Your chosen fool. And still, as now, each day

Your vanity would bring you where I lay

To kneel and on my crystal face below

Gaze self-entranced, as now; and I should grow

Beautiful with your beauty, and you would be

More beautiful for the crystal lights in me.

But when, self-surfeited, you went away

I should not care, nor could the blown sea-spray,

Blurring your image all the winter through,

Vex the pure, passionless water, strictly true

To its own being. Only the weeds would swing

Rosy and green, and the ripples, ring on ring,

Tremble and wink above the gleaming fish.

So would I be, if I could have my wish.

Sage titillator of a thousand noses,

Old Hafiz the Perfumer, years ago

Boiled down two gardensful of yellow roses

And skimmed the gold froth from the sumptuous brew;

Then strained it out into a crystal vat

To work and settle during certain moons

As ordered in the thirteenth Caliphate;

Then boiled again and stirred with silver spoons

Till shrunk to half; and so, by slow degrees,

Boiled and laid up and boiled again, till fined

To pure quintessence purged of subtlest lees.

Then, death at hand, he chose with artist's mind

This curious flask embossed with bees and flowers,

And, drop by drop, with trembling hand distilled

The priceless attar, whose insidious powers,

Helen, I place at your command, though chilled

With aching doubts lest you, while up in town,

Shedding its sunny fragrance on the air,

Should trap the dashing Captain Archie Brown

Or twang the heartstrings of some millionaire.

I am the voice in the night, the voice of darkness;

Listen, O shy one, listen, my voice shall find you.

As the rose springs from the earth,

So love blooms from the dark unknown.

Hark to the voice of love that springs in the darkness.

O timid, O craven.

Though you have barred your doors against earth and heaven

You shall not escape me.

See, like a thin blue flame

My voice burns up to your window,

Steals through the fast-closed casement, stirs in the curtains,

Flushes to rose the pale and delicate lamplight.

O fear, O wonder, the bright flame circles about you,

Flashes above you, burns deep down to your heart.

You struggle, you cry, cry out of a heart tormented:

“Ah Terror, ah Death, have mercy!”

O timid and craven heart, it is love that takes you:

Give yourself up to the flame. I am life, not death.

O slim moon veiled in the cloud, shy fawn in the thicket,

Lily hid in the water, come from your hiding.

Why is your hair like silk and your flesh like a flower?

Not for your own delight nor the cold delight of your mirror:

Not for the kisses of death.

I am a cry in the night, a song in the darkness.

O timid, O craven,

Vain, how vain is your hiding.

For the night brims up with my singing, my voice enfolds you,

And how shall you flee when the whole night turns to music?

    As a bird's wing,

Against the soft warm body gathering

Its folded feathers, closes and is still

When the wind-wandering bird has dropped to rest

On the green bough beside her hidden nest;

    So my blind will

Wanders no more, nor beats the empty air,

Nor follows hot-foot to their phantom lair

Beguilement of the ear, lust of the eye

    And all such pageantry

As lures men from fulfilment of desire;

Wanders no more, but entering that small house

Which Love has made his palace, lights the fire,

Bars door and shutter, sets the wine and bread

    Where the tall candles shed

Soft lustre, and stands ready to carouse

With her who is the mistress of the house.

All day the plane-trees have shaken from shadow to sun

Their long depending boughs, and one by one

From early-falling limes the yellow leaves

Have eddied to earth. But still warm noon deceives

Old fears of death. But when with the twilight came

From the dim garden an air like sharp cold flame

And bitter with burnt leaves, I knew once more

That the walls were down between love and the silent, frore

Wastes of eternity. O lean above me,

Screening my eyes with your hair like a dark willow

From the cold glare of death. O you that love me,

Lean with your body's weight, that the cold billow

Not yet may lift me away, though love and light,

Roses and fruit and leaves prepare to-night

With unreturning wings

To launch upon the eternal flux of things.

Beloved, in this world of sense

We have the one omnipotence.

None but we lovers can erase

The foolish laws of time and space

Or gather by their wedded power

Eternity into an hour.

So to the four winds let us cast

Vague future and abysmal past

And, proud of body, leave behind

The fretful ghosts of soul and mind;

Nay even scorn the ageless joys

Of lovely sights and the soft noise

Of waving branches, streams that sing,

And music of the trembling string,

And all sweet scents and tastes that creep

Through brain to spirit. Alone we'll keep

(Since ours is the one certain bliss

To come together in a kiss)

Locked in our frail and narrow clutch

The world-creating sense of touch.

All things are ours because we love.

Not men nor wrathful saints above,

Nor all the long corroding years,

Nor envious death's remorseless shears,

Can ever vanquish or destroy

The sure possession of our joy.

Even God Himself can ne'er retract

His gift of the accomplished fact

Nor cancel by divine decree

Our once-enjoyed eternity.

Then let us keep forever fresh

This warm eternity of flesh,

This only true reality

Of lip-to-lip and knee-to-knee;

Knowing that, whatever years may bring

Of dusty earth or golden wing,

Once having loved, both you and I

Have been immortal ere we die.

The sea is silent to-night. To our inland village,

A mile from the Channel, comes never a sound of the seas.

Windless night is heavy on pasture and tillage,

On houses and herbs and trees.

But suddenly over the silence, lone and far,

Long-drawn, desolate, hovers a deep intoning,

A measureless sadness; and soon, remote as a star,

An answering voice. A multitudinous moaning

Fills the night, and my heart shrinks cold, for I know

That fog has closed on the sea in a blinding smother.

O why do we suffer this craving for another

To split our lives in two? Though my body lies

So safe and warm beneath this low white ceiling,

Dark terrors round me rise;

For my heart is out in the Channel among the wheeling

Wreaths of fog and the deep-tongued desolate cries

Of fog-bound ships; and lying here I am lost

In a darkness denser and stranger

Than any darkness of mist. I am torn and tossed

Upon the horns of a more than bodily danger,

Yes, greater than yours, Beloved, who waken drifting

In your blinded ship that utters its long lament