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Read Ebook: Open Water by Stringer Arthur
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Ebook has 93 lines and 8631 words, and 2 pages
ed with wonder, And her eyes were full of pain-- For pure she was, and young, And it was Spring!
THE HOUSE OF LIFE
Quietly I closed the door. Then I said to my soul: "I shall never come back, Back to this haunted room Where Sorrow and I have slept." I turned from that hated door And passed through the House of Life, Through its ghostly rooms and glad And its corridors dim with age. Then lightly I crossed a threshold Where the casements showed the sun And I entered an unknown room,-- And my heart went cold, For about me stood that Chamber of Pain I had thought to see no more!
ULTIMATA
I am possessed of a great sickness And likewise possessed of a great strength, And the ultimate hour has come. I will arise and go unto this woman, And with bent head and my arms about her knees I shall say unto her: "Beloved beyond all words, Others have sought your side, And many have craved your kiss, But none, O body of flesh and bone, Has known a hunger like mine! And though evil befall, or good, This hunger is given to me, And is now made known to you,-- For I must die, Or you must die, Or Desire must die This night!"
THE LIFE ON THE TABLE
In the white-walled room Where the white bed waits Stand banks of meaningless flowers; In the rain-swept street Are a ghost-like row of cabs; And along the corridor-dusk Phantasmal feet repass. Through the warm, still air The odour of ether hangs; And on this slenderest thread Of one thin pulse Hangs and swings The hope of life-- The life of her I love!
YOU BID ME TO SLEEP
You bid me to sleep,-- But why, O Daughter of Beauty, Was beauty thus born in the world? Since out of these shadowy eyes The wonder shall pass! And out of this surging and passionate breast The dream shall depart! And out of these delicate rivers of warmth The fire shall wither and fail! And youth like a bird from your body shall fly! And Time like a fang on your flesh shall feed! And this perilous bosom that pulses with love Shall go down to the dust from which it arose,-- Yet Daughter of Beauty, close, Close to its sumptuous warmth You hold my sorrowing head, And smile with shadowy eyes, And bid me to sleep again!
THE LAST OF SUMMER
The opal afternoon Is cool, and very still. A wash of tawny air, Sea-green that melts to gold, Bathes all the skyline, hill by hill. Out of the black-topped pinelands A black crow calls, And the year seems old! A woman from a doorway sings, And from the valley-slope a sheep-dog barks, And through the umber woods the echo falls. Then silence on the still world lies, And faint and far the birds fly south, And behind the dark pines drops the sun, And a small wind wakes and sighs, And Summer, see, is done!
AT CHARING-CROSS
Alone amid the Rockies I have stood; Alone across the prairie's midnight calm Full often I have fared And faced the hushed infinity of night; Alone I have hung poised Between a quietly heaving sea And quieter sky, Aching with isolation absolute; And in Death's Valley I have walked alone And sought in vain for some appeasing sign Of life or movement, While over-desolate my heart called out For some befriending face Or some assuaging voice! But never on my soul has weighed Such loneliness as this, As here amid the seething London tides I look upon these ghosts that come and go, These swarming restless souls innumerable, Who through their million-footed dirge of unconcern Must know and nurse the thought of kindred ghosts As lonely as themselves, Or else go mad with it!
PRESCIENCE
"The sting of it all," you said, as you stooped low over your roses, "The worst of it is, when I think of Death, That Spring by Spring the Earth shall still be beautiful, And Summer by Summer be lovely again, --And I shall be gone!"
"I would not care, perhaps," you said, watching your roses, "If only 'twere dust and ruin and emptiness left behind! But the thought that Earth and April Year by casual year Shall waken around the old ways, soft and beautiful, Year by year when I am away, --This, this breaks my heart!"
THE STEEL WORKERS
I watched the workers in steel, The Pit-like glow of the furnace, The rivers of molten metal, The tremulous rumble of cranes, The throb of the Thor-like hammers On sullen and resonant anvils! I saw the half-clad workers Twisting earth's iron to their use, Shaping the steel to their thoughts; And, in some way, out of the fury And the fires of mortal passion, It seemed to me, In some way, out of the torture And tumult of inchoate Time, The hammer of sin is shaping The soul of man!
THE CHILDREN
The city is old in sin, And children are not for cities, And, wan-eyed woman, you want them not, You say with a broken laugh. Yet out of each wayward softness of voice, And each fulness of breast, And each flute-throated echo of song, Each flutter of lace and quest of beautiful things, Each coil of entangling hair built into its crown, Each whisper and touch in the silence of night, Each red unreasoning mouth that is lifted to mouth, Each whiteness of brow that is furrowed no more with thought, Each careless soft curve of lips that can never explain, Arises the old and the inappeasable cry! Every girl who leans from a tenement sill And flutters a hand to a youth, Every woman who waits for a man in the dusk, Every harlotous arm flung up to a drunken heel That would trample truth down in the dust, Reaches unknowingly out for its own, And blind to its heritage waits For its child!
THE NOCTURNE
Remote, in some dim room, On this dark April morning soft with rain, I hear her pensive touch Fall aimless on the keys, And stop, and play again.
And as the music wakens And the shadowy house is still, How all my troubled soul cries out For things I know not of! Ah, keen the quick chords fall, And weighted with regret, Fade through the quiet rooms; And warm as April rain The strange tears fall, And life in some way seems Too deep to bear!
THE WILD GEESE
Over my home-sick head, High in the paling light And touched with the sunset's glow, Soaring and strong and free, The unswerving phalanx sweeps, The honking wild geese go,-- Go with a flurry of wings Home to their norland lakes And the sedge-fringed tarns of peace And the pinelands soft with Spring!
I cannot go as the geese go, But into the steadfast North, The North that is dark and tender, My home-sick spirit wings,-- Wings with a flurry of longing thoughts And nests in the tarns of youth.
THE DAY
Dewy, dewy lawn-slopes, Is this the day she comes? O wild-flower face of Morning, Must you never wake? Silvery, silvery sea-line, Does she come to-day? O murmurous, murmurous birch-leaves, Beneath your whispering shadow She will surely pass; And thrush beneath the black-thorn And white-throat in the pine-top, Sing as you have never sung, For she will surely come!
The lone green of the lawn-slope, The grey light on the sky-line, The mournful stir of birch-leaves, The thin note of the brown thrush, And the call of troubled white-throats Across the afternoon!-- Ah, Summer now is over, And for us the season closed, For she who came an hour ago Has gone again-- Has gone!
THE REVOLT
God knows that I've tinkled and jingled and strummed, That I've piped it and jigged it until I'm fair sick of the game, That I've given them slag and wasted the silver of song, That I've thrown them the tailings and they've taken them up content! But now I want to slough off the bitterness born of it all, I want to throw off the shackles and chains of time, I want to sit down with my soul and talk straight out, I want to make peace with myself, And say what I have to say, While still there is time!
Yea, I will arise and go forth, I have said, To the uplands of truth, to be free as the wind, Rough and unruly and open and turbulent-throated! Yea, I will go forth and fling from my soul The shackles and chains of song!
But, lo, on my wrists are the scars, And here on my ankles the chain-galls, And the cell-pallor, see, on my face! And my throat seems thick with the cell-dust, And for guidance I grope to the walls, And after my moment of light
I want to go back to the Dark, Since the Open still makes me afraid, And silence seems best in the sun, And song in the dusk!
ATAVISM
I feel all primal and savage to-day. I could eat and drink deep and love strong I could fight and exult and boast and be glad! I could tear out the life of a wild thing and laugh at it! I could crush into panting submission the breast of a woman A-stray from her tribe and her smoke-stained tent-door! I could glory in folly and fire and ruin, And race naked-limbed with the wind, And slink on the heels of my foes And dabble their blood on my brows-- For to-day I am sick of it all, This silent and orderly empty life, And I feel all savage again!
MARCH TWILIGHT
Black with a batter of mud Stippled with silvery pools Stands the pavement at the street-end; And the gutter snow is gone From cobble and runnelling curb; And no longer the ramping wind Is rattling the rusty signs; And moted and soft and misty Hangs the sunlight over the cross-streets, And the home-bound crowds of the city Walk in a flood of gold.
And suddenly out of the dusk There comes the ancient question: Can it be that I have lived In earlier worlds unknown? Or is it that somewhere deep In this husk that men call Me Are kennelled a motley kin I never shall know or name,-- Are housed still querulous ghosts That sigh and awaken and move, And sleep once more?
THE ECHO
I am only a note in the chorus, A leaf in the fluttering June, A wave on the deep. These things that I struggle to utter Have all been uttered before. In many another heart The selfsame song was born, The ancient ache endured, The timeless wonder faced, The unanswered question nursed, The resurgent hunger felt, And the eternal failure known!
But glad is the lip of its whisper; The wave, of its life; The leaf, of its lisp; And glad for its hour is my soul For its echo of godlier music, Its fragment of song!
AUTUMN
The thin gold of the sun lies slanting on the hill; In the sorrowful greys and muffled violets of the old orchard A group of girls are quietly gathering apples. Through the mingled gloom and green they scarcely speak at all, And their broken voices rise and fall unutterably sad. There are no birds, And the goldenrod is gone. And a child calls out, far away, across the autumn twilight; And the sad grey of the dusk grows slowly deeper, And all the world seems old!
FACES
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