*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78243 *** [Illustration] THE SILVER CAT AND OTHER POEMS BY HUMBERT WOLFE COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY THE BOWLING GREEN PRESS. PRINTED IN U.S.A. CONTENTS Invocation The Silver Cat From “Polly Put the Kettle On” Thus Freedom Comes, Thus Peace Spring and Death The Immortal Hour INVOCATION _If in a fallen petal shews the outline of the perfect rose,_ _no less on these a hint may fall of the divine original._ THE SILVER CAT Two orange candles like cat’s eyes glittered. The yellow tapestries were smooth against the dark, and all the room, like a hushed waterfall, plunged softly down between the two, who sat together all night through. She spoke across the darkness “Slow the dark dividing moments go between us, and, before we guess, there is an end of loveliness. What do we gain by sitting still? The distant dawn on daffodil cities, unseen of us, awakes, and even now the mountain-lakes, between that touch of lips and this, change with the sun to topazes. Or slimmer than slim willow-trees, in silver secret, Javanese Srimpis--cold ballet--weave in trance, still, save for sliding hands, their dance unseen by us. By us unseen under red eaves in gold Pekin the yellow dotards, peering, gage the leap of crickets in a cage. Beauty is spilling thus even now through all the world, while I and thou-- we sit in dark, where no winds stir, nor seas, each other’s prisoner. For orange moons in skies of jade, these candles. For the ambuscade of drifting isles on lifting seas we have these quiet tapestries. For distance, and all adventurings, this room, and for the white bird’s wings up, up, and still white wings above--” “For all these things” he answered “Love.” “Tell me of love,” she whispered. Stale jewels--the candle flames grew pale, and sunk. The room a midnight pool with night’s dark shape was beautiful. Pool-charméd he spoke with the grave cold accent that still waters have. “What is the world but a guess and a blending of what was never with that which has an ending? The waves--those crumpled lions--are but a shadow of motion in the green mind, sky’s loamy meadow is with the punctual gold of vision starry, and on her shoulders slim a dream must carry --Atlas--the weight of the world’s loveliness. And Eastern cities, though daffodil, no less oar, and are anchored in the mind. At most built of an air so delicate, so ghost, a whisper of death’s wind, and each one slips her cable for the dark. And these dim ships no port for all their burthen of beauty have, and there is no sea, no landfall in the grave. These are the ensigns of mortality, but love from their bright difference is free. And where he is, what sees and what is seen are one, and he has healed the old chagrin ’twixt the thinker and his thought. And there’s no war between the star that sets and the rising star; for all love’s battles are civil victories, war self-declared, and internecine peace. Is he accused of quiet? But love goes riding to adventure beyond the world, and still he’s chiding the measurable hearts, whose fears would bind him, and the cries of the cowards failing shrill behind him. But love (for you) is only wings that brush the spirit afraid, and a whisper in the hush, that stops the heart on a beat? Yet think of this! When you are old, a pale forgotten kiss will touch your eyelids, where you sit and ponder, and all will be gone from you then, all youth, all wonder --the coloured cities you knew, the amethyst pennons on the lance of dawn, and the white mist unrolling from the world--all will be gone, but the kiss will touch your eyes, where you sit alone.” Thus he. With lips that hardly move “Let in the dawn,” she said, “and love.” He drew the curtains, and at that from where he lay a silver cat rose, stretched his silky paws to yawn at the geraniums of the dawn, whose petals splashed the window. Then curled himself up to sleep again. FROM “POLLY PUT THE KETTLE ON” VII. CODA _Largo, Marcato_ In that dark house at the road-end lives the old fiddler. Some folks say he’s ninety past. Others pretend he’s older. I don’t know. I’ve heard him play. I ask no more. The jasmine-lovely twilight settled to dark. The moon’s grace entered in like a tall girl, and softly, in the shy light ’twixt eve and night, he touched his violin. “The moon was in it first. The shepherd he played, Endymion, whose thirst with that cold star was stayed. ‘Youth, youth,’ the sobbing string called, and love that is still with the moon murmuring in the night, on her hill.... Softly; and louder then he played on colder string how, though they lose love, men forgive the heartbreaking; how they say: it is over, and her beauty is passed, but love is a lover we love to the last.... Then, on a rising chord, failure he played, and ending, when the dream adored is broke, and there’s no mending, save in courage that is more than the dream, and stays when all her witcheries have gone their golden ways. Courage, he played, to face hope changing from little to less, and age, and the heart’s disgrace in her own ugliness. Courage, when nothing is there but the long empty road, and the grey traveller with naught in life but his load. Courage to the road-end, and after, he played, and the last breath crying ’twixt a sob and laughter ‘Death? What is death?’ The moon was in it last, and wings that brush the soul in the dark, and go past with a single beat in the hush.” THUS FREEDOM COMES, THUS PEACE And I shall say to these: “You cannot traffick in peace, and you cannot quote it as priced in the Stock Exchange list. For Christ, (or whatever name is given to the secret kingdom of heaven, in which we are, and have this shadow of life, that shadow of the grave) to those who remain has said: ‘Leave the dead to bury the dead! Rich though they be, you cannot sell or buy their miracle, nor be enriched by it, nor in Jerusalem, sweet with the bugles blowing over them, set up your market place, and have increase--’ Not thus comes peace, nor freedom thus. But slowly, making more holy what is holy, from the guarded pool of the spirit swift, cold, and beautiful, in mists diaphanous his rain a god draws back again. And, as the sun builds with the clouds, of these he builds his city of peace-- those stoneless streets, at whose sweet end friend meets with friend, those star-hung towers, in which the light of the sun with the moon’s light is one, with love as visible and exquisite as the little lamps with which the yew is lit, (so luminously red in the translucent green of that deep air the lanterns of love are seen) and the music of meeting, and the trumpet at the gate sounding: ‘All ye, who enter here, abandon hate.’ Thus freedom comes, thus peace.” I shall say to these. SPRING AND DEATH Time, old and fertile serpent that endures from spring to spring, softly beneath the ground, now at the root of life snake-darkness pours in feathered coils, that choke without a sound winter, the death, that dies each spring to rise on the right hand of May in Paradise. Here in the North the black and haggard beech, as though the nails were driven through the palm, stretches gaunt arms too twisted to beseech even the spear, and death’s atrocious calm, nor dreams she earns by her slow agony the green and drifting kingdom of the tree. But in your South the earth is Magdalene to death, and wins him, leaning from gold sheaves her white, prevailing arms, that out of green lift his pale head against her through the leaves; and death looks upward through her heavy hair finding all colour, song and fragrance there. Wild lavender and pomegranate-tree, cypress and blue grape-hyacinth, and pale wind-flower that we call anemone, you are life’s brief and many-coloured veil, with which death, like a bridegroom, in the South covers his bride, and sinks against her mouth. Death--but there is no death where these things be, and, though the snake may coil his feathered ring, grape-hyacinth and pomegranate-tree! Where is his victory, what is his sting, when even the Judas-blossom, bursting the prison of old dead treasons, whispers “He is risen.” And hark! as though death were the fabled thorn, upon which life, to give her soul release in music, leaned, the nightingale’s high scorn touches the flute of night on moonlit keys, and with the silver star-dust of her breath muffles the wings triumphant over death. THE IMMORTAL HOUR I. SEMI-CHORUS: We have no tears, who are the source of weeping, and what is laughter to us, whose laughter first of laughter woke in the man the sweet unsleeping hunger and thirst? We are the words the poets hear and fail of, we are the note beyond the fiddle’s cry, we for all lovers of beauty are a tale of beauty that passes by. II. SEMI-CHORUS: Cried a ghost-king by night “Divine Augustus, you tread the ends of the world only to find that the long roads of dreams go sweeping past us into a world behind. A fleeting throne, a shadow godhead these are, whose symbol is the axes and the rod,” saying “There is another kingdom, Caesar, a further heaven, God.” I. SEMI-CHORUS: We walk with the wind’s feet, and do not rest, we walk between the leaves in the high meadows, our hair with their green wings of light, our breast stained with the soft green shadows. Fleeter than the heart’s desire, one by one we leave delights that are well spoken of, and far behind us echo, as we run, the tired feet of love. II. SEMI-CHORUS: We are impatient of truth, that is no more than finite stain upon the infinite, a fading seamark on a distant shore and we have gone from it, whose lips, though grave, are not too grave to smile at the heart of man crying in his vext youth: “What is the truth?” and to make answer “Pilate, we are the truth.” PRINTED IN JANUARY, 1928, BY WILLIAM EDWIN RUDGE PUBLISHED BY THE BOWLING GREEN PRESS, NEW YORK AND BY ERNEST BENN, LTD., LONDON 780 COPIES [Illustration: B R] Transcriber’s note: New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78243 ***