Sitting on the top of the ‘bus,I bite my pipe and look at the sky.Over my shoulder the smoke streams outAnd my life with it.“Conservation of energy,” you say.But I burn, I tell you, I burn;And the smoke of me streams outIn a vanishing skein of grey.Crash and bump … my poor bruised body!I am […]

I am getting on well with this anecdote,When suddenly I recallThe many times I have told it of old,And all the worked-up phrases, and the dying fallOf voice, well timed in the crisis, the noteOf mock-heroic ingeniously struck–The whole thing sticks in my throat,And my face all tingles and pricks with shameFor myself and my […]

Failing sometimes to understandWhy there are folk whose flesh should seemLike carrion puffed with noisome steam,Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it,Fly-blown to the touch of a hand;Why there are men without any legs,Whizzing along on little trolliesWith long long arms like apes’:Failing to see why God the TopiaristShould train and carve and twistMen’s […]

We judge by appearance merely:If I can’t think strangely, I can at least look queerly.So I grew the hair so long on my headThat my mother wouldn’t know me,Till a woman in a night-club said,As I was passing by,“Hullo, here comes Salome …” I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass,And, oh Salome; there I was–Positively […]

While I have been fumbling over booksAnd thinking about God and the Devil and all,Other young men have been battling with the daysAnd others have been kissing the beautiful women.They have brazen faces like battering-rams.But I who think about books and such–I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling,And the women palsy me with fear.But […]

Books and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine;And magic words lay ripening in my soulTill their much-whispered music turned a wineWhose subtlest power was all in my control. These things were mine, and they were real for meAs lips and darling eyes and a warm breast:For I could love a phrase, a melody,Like a […]

I have run where festival was loudWith drum and brass among the crowdOf panic revellers, whose criesAffront the quiet of the skies;Whose dancing lights contract the deepInfinity of night and sleepTo a narrow turmoil of troubled fire.And I have found my heart’s desireIn beechen caverns that autumn fillsWith the blue shadowiness of distant hills;Whose luminous […]

The eyes of the portraits on the wallLook at me, follow me,Stare incessantly:I take it their glance means nothing at all?–Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all … Out in the gardens by the lakeThe sleeping peacocks suddenly wake;Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn,Each of them sounds his mournful horn:Shrill peals that waver and crack […]

Evenings in trains,When the little black twittering ghostsAlong the brims of cuttings,Against the luminous sky,Interrupt with their hurrying rumour every thoughtSave that one is young and setting,Headlong westering,And there is no recapture.

(From the French of Stephane Mallarme.) I would immortalize these nymphs: so brightTheir sunlit colouring, so airy light,It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream?My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seemA subtle tracery of branches grownThe tree’s true self–proving that I have knownNo triumph, but the shadow of a rose.But think. These nymphs, their […]

(From the French of Rimbaud). When the child’s forehead, full of torments red,Cries out for sleep and its pale host of dreams,His two big sisters come unto his bed,Having long fingers, tipped with silvery gleams. They set him at a casement, open wideOn seas of flowers that stir in the blue airs,And through his curls, […]

I “Miss Spence will be down directly, sir. ” “Thank you,” said Mr. Hutton, without turning round. Janet Spence’s parlourmaid was so ugly—ugly on purpose, it always seemed to him, malignantly, criminally ugly—that he could not bear to look at her more than was necessary. The door closed. Left to himself, Mr. Hutton got up […]