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The Radiant Dark

Should I long that dark were fair? Say, o song.
Lacks my love aught that I should long?
Dark the night with breath all flow'rs
And tender broken voice that fills
With ravishment the list'ning hours.
Whis'prings, wooings,
Liquid ripples, and soft ring-dove cooings,
in low-toned rhythm that love's aching stills.

Dark the night, yet is she bright,
For in her dark she brings the mystic star,
Trembling yet strong as is the voice of love
From some unknown afar.
O radiant dark, o darkly foster'd ray,
Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow day.
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    Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen

    I.
    Many ingenious lovely things are gone
    That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
    protected from the circle of the moon
    That pitches common things about. There stood
    Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
    An ancient image made of olive wood - -
    And gone are Phidias'famous ivories
    And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.

    We too had many pretty toys when young:
    a law indifferent to blame or praise,
    To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
    Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
    Public opinion ripening for so long
    We thought it would outlive all future days.
    O what fine thought we had because we thought
    That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

    All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
    And a great army but a showy thing;
    What matter that no cannon had been turned
    Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king
    Thought that unless a little powder burned
    The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting
    And yet it lack all glory; and perchance
    The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.

    Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
    Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
    Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
    To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
    The night can sweat with terror as before
    We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
    And planned to bring the world under a rule,
    Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

    He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned
    Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant
    From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand,
    Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent
    On master-work of intellect or hand,
    No honour leave its mighty monument,
    Has but one comfort left: all triumph would
    But break upon his ghostly solitude.

    But is there any comfort to be found?
    Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
    What more is there to say? That country round
    None dared admit, if Such a thought were his,
    Incendiary or bigot could be found
    To burn that stump on the Acropolis,
    Or break in bits the famous ivories
    Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.

    II.
    When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound
    a shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,
    It seemed that a dragon of air
    Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round
    Or hurried them off on its own furious path;
    So the platonic Year
    Whirls out new right and wrong,
    Whirls in the old instead;
    All men are dancers and their tread
    Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.

    III.
    Some moralist or mythological poet
    Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
    I am satisfied with that,
    Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
    Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,
    An image of its state;
    The wings half spread for flight,
    The breast thrust out in pride
    Whether to play, or to ride
    Those winds that clamour of approaching night.

    A man in his own secret meditation
    Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made
    In art or politics;
    Some Platonist affirms that in the station
    Where we should cast off body and trade
    The ancient habit sticks,
    And that if our works could
    But vanish with our breath
    That were a lucky death,
    For triumph can but mar our solitude.

    The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:
    That image can bring wildness, bring a rage
    To end all things, to end
    What my laborious life imagined, even
    The half-imagined, the half-written page;
    o but we dreamed to mend
    Whatever mischief seemed
    To afflict mankind, but now
    That winds of winter blow
    Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

    IV.
    We, who seven years ago
    Talked of honour and of truth,
    Shriek with pleasure if we show
    The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.

    V.
    Come let us mock at the great
    That had such burdens on the mind
    And toiled so hard and late
    To leave some monument behind,
    Nor thought of the levelling wind.

    Come let us mock at the wise;
    With all those calendars whereon
    They fixed old aching eyes,
    They never saw how seasons run,
    And now but gape at the sun.

    Come let us mock at the good
    That fancied goodness might be gay,
    And sick of solitude
    Might proclaim a holiday:
    Wind shrieked -  - and where are they?

    Mock mockers after that
    That would not lift a hand maybe
    To help good, wise or great
    To bar that foul storm out, for we
    Traffic in mockery.

    VI.
    Violence upon the roads: violence of horses;
    Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded
    On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,
    But wearied running round and round in their courses
    All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:
    Herodias'daughters have returned again,
    a sudden blast of dusty wind and after
    Thunder of feet, tumult of images,
    Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;
    And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter
    All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,
    According to the wind, for all are blind.
    But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon
    There lurches past, his great eyes without thought
    Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,
    That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
    To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
    Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.
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      A Challenge To The Dark

      Shot in the eye
      shot in the brain
      shot in the ****
      shot like a flower in the dance

      amazing how death wins hands down
      amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of life

      amazing how laughter has been drowned out
      amazing how viciousness is such a constant

      I must soon declare my own war on their war
      I must hold to my last piece of ground
      I must protect the small space I have made that has allowed me life

      my life not their death
      my death not their death...
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        The Third Of February, 1852

        My lords, we heard you speak: you told us all
        That England's honest censure went too far,
        That our free press should cease to brawl,
        Not sting the fiery Frenchman into war.
        It was our ancient privilege, my Lords,
        To fling whate'er we felt, not fearing, into words.
        We love not this French God, the child of hell,
        Wild War, who breaks the converse of the wise;
        But though we love kind Peace so well,
        We dare not even by silence sanction lies.
        It might be safe our censures to withdraw,
        And yet, my Lords, not well; there is a higher law.

        As long as we remain, we must speak free,
        Thò all the storm of Eurpoe on us break.
        No little German state are we,
        But the one voice in Europe; we must speak,
        That if to-night our greatness were struck dead,
        There might be left some record of the things we said.

        If you be fearful, then must we be bold.
        Our Britain cannot salve a tyrant o'er.
        Better the waste Atlantic roll'd
        On her and us and ours for evermore.
        What? Have we fought for Freedom from our prime,
        At last to dodge and palter with a public crime?

        Shall we fear him? Our own we never fear'd.
        From our first Charles by force we wrung our claims.
        Prick'd by the Papal spur, we rear'd,
        We flung the burthen of the second James.
        I say, we never fear'd! And as for these,
        We broke them on the land, we drove them on the seas.

        And you, my Lords, you make the people muse
        In doubt if you be of our Barons'breed
        Were those your sires who fought at Lewes?
        Is this the manly strain of Runnymede?
        O fallen nobility that, overawed,
        Would lisp in honey'd whispers of this monstrous fraud!

        We feel, at least, that silence here were sin,
        Not ours the fault if we have feeble hosts
        If easy patrons of their kin
        Have left the last free race with naked coasts!
        They knew the precious things they had to guard;
        For us, we will not spare the tyrant one hard word.

        Thò niggard throats of Manchester may bawl,
        What England was, shall her true sons forget?
        We are not cotton-spinners all,
        But some love England and her honor yet.
        And these in our Thermopylæ shall stand,
        And hold against the world this honor of the land.
        "
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          A Dream Of Fair Woman

          At length I saw a lady within call,
          Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there;
          a daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
          And most divinely fair.
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            A Prayer For My Daughter

            All hatred driven hence,
            The soul recovers radical innocence
            And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
            Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
            And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
            She can, though every face should scowl
            And every windy quarter howl
            Or every bellows burst, be happy still.
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              Merlin And The Gleam

              O young Mariner,
              You from the haven
              Under the sea-cliff,
              You that are watching
              The gray Magician
              With eyes of wonder,
              I am Merlin,
              And I am dying,
              I am Merlin
              Who follow The Gleam.
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