The Three Hills, and Other Poems Part 4

I

When I was a boy there was a friend of mine, We thought ourselves warriors and grown folk swine, Stupid old animals who never understood And never had an impulse and said "you must be good."

We slank like stoats and fled like foxes, We put cigarettes in the pillar-boxes, Lighted cigarettes and letters all aflame-- O the surprise when the postman came!

We stole eggs and apples and made fine hay In people's houses when people were away, We broke street lamps and away we ran, Then I was a boy but now I am a man.

Now I am a man and don't have any fun, I hardly ever shout and I never never run, And I don't care if he's dead that friend of mine, For then I was a boy and now I am a swine.

II

We met again the other night With people; you were quite polite, Shook my hand and spoke awhile Of common things with cautious smile; Paid the usual debt men owe To fellows whom they used to know.

But, when our eyes met full, yours dropped, And sudden, resolute, you stopped, Moving with hurried syllables To make remarks to some one else.

I caught them not, to me they said: "Let the dead past bury its dead, Things were very different then, Boys are fools and men are men."

Several times the other night You did your best to be polite; When in the conversation's round You heard my tongue's familiar sound You bent in eager pose my way To hear what I had got to say; Trying, you thought with some success, To hide the chasm's nakedness.

But on your eyes hard films there lay; No mock-interest, no pretence Could veil your blank indifference; And if thoughts came recalling things Far-off, far-off, from those old springs When underneath the moon and sun Our separate pulses beat as one, Vagrant tender thoughts that asked Admittance found the portal masked; You spurned them; when I'd said my say, With laugh and nod you turned away To toss your friends some easy jest That smote my brow and stabbed my breast.

Foolish though it be and vain I am not master of my pain, And when I said good-night to you I hoped we should not meet again, And wondered how the soul I knew Could change so much; have I changed too?

III

There was a man whom I knew well Whose choice it was to live in h.e.l.l; Reason there was why that was so But what it was I do not know.

He had a room high in a tower, And sat there drinking hour by hour, Drinking, drinking all alone With candles and a wall of stone.

Now and then he sobered down, And stayed a night with me in town.

If he found me with a crowd, He shrank and did not speak aloud.

He sat in a corner silently, And others of the company Would note his curious face and eye, His twitching face and timid eye.

When they saw the eye he had They thought perhaps that he was mad.

I knew he was clear and sane But had a horror in his brain.

He had much money and one friend And drank quite grimly to the end.

Why he chose to die in h.e.l.l I did not ask, he did not tell.

LINES

When London was a little town Lean by the river's marge, The poet paced it with a frown, He thought it very large.

He loved bright s.h.i.+p and pointing steeple And bridge with houses loaded And priests and many-coloured people ...

But ah, they were not woaded!

Not all the walls could shed the spell Of meres and marshes green, Nor any chaffering merchant tell The beauty that had been:

The crying birds at fall of night, The fisher in his coracle, And grim on Ludgate's windy height, An oak-tree and an oracle.

Sick for the past his hair he rent And dropt a tear in season; If he had cause for his lament We have much better reason.

For now the fields and paths he knew Are coffined all with bricks, The lucid silver stream he knew Runs slimy as the Styx;

North and south and east and west, Far as the eye can travel, Earth with a sombre web is drest That nothing can unravel.

And we must wear as black a frown, Wail with as keen a woe That London was a little town Five hundred years ago.

Yet even this place of steamy stir, This pit of belch and swallow, With chrism of gold and gossamer The elements can hallow.

I have a room in Chancery Lane, High in a world of wires, Whence fall the roofs a ragged plain Wooded with many spires.

There in the dawns of summer days I stand in adoration, While London's robed in rainbow haze And gold illumination.

The wizard breezes waft the rays Shot by the waking sun, A myriad chimneys softly blaze, A myriad shadows run.

Round the wide rim in radiant mist The gentle suburbs quiver, And nearer lies the s.h.i.+ning twist Of Thames, a holy river

Left and right my vision drifts, By yonder towers I linger, Where Westminster's cathedral lifts Its belled Byzantine finger,

And here against my perched home Where hold wise converse daily The loftier and the lesser dome, St. Paul's and the Old Bailey.

ECHOES

There is a far unfading city Where bright immortal people are; Remote from hollow shame and pity, Their portals frame no guiding star But blightless pleasure's moteless rays That follow their footsteps as they dance Long lutanied measures through a maze Of flower-like song and dalliance.

There always glows the vernal sun, There happy birds for ever sing, There faint perfumed breezes run Through branches of eternal spring; There faces browned and fruit and milk And blue-winged words and rose-bloomed kisses In galleys gowned with gold and silk Shake on a lake of dainty blisses.

Coyness is not, nor bear they thought Save of a s.h.i.+ning gracious flow, All natural joys are temperate sought, For calm desire there they know, A fire promiscuous, languorous, kind; They scorn all fiercer l.u.s.ts and quarrels, Nor blow about on anger's wind, Nor burn with love, nor rust with morals.

Folk in the far unfading city, Burning with l.u.s.ts my senses are, I am torn with love and shame and pity, Be to my heart a guiding star Wise youths and maidens in the sun, With eyes that charm and lips that sing, And gentle arms that rippling run, Shed on my heart your endless spring!

THE FUGITIVE

Flying his hair and his eyes averse, Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.

How could we clear his charms rehea.r.s.e?