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Poems
My breath runs in a subtle rhythmic stream; It fills my members with a might divine: I have drunk the Infinite like a giant's wine. Time is my drama or my pageant dream. Now are my illumined cells joy's flaming scheme And changed my thrilled and branching nerves to fine Channels of rapture opal and hyaline For the influx of the Unknown and the Supreme.
I am no more a vassal of the flesh, A slave to Nature and her leaden rule; I am caught no more in the senses' narrow mesh. My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight, My body is God's happy living tool, My spirit a vast sun of deathless light.
All is abolished but the mute Alone. The mind from thought released, the heart from grief Grow inexistent now beyond belief; There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown. The city, a shadow picture without tone, Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief Flow, a cinema's vacant shapes; like a reef Foundering in shoreless gulfs the world is done.
Only the illimitable Permanent Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still, Replaces all, — what once was I, in It A silent unnamed emptiness content Either to fade in the Unknowable Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.
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An irised multitude of hills and seas, And glint of brooks in the green wilderness, And trackless stars, and miracled symphonies Of hues that float in ethers shadowless,
A dance of fireflies in the fretted gloom, In a pale midnight the moon's silver flare, Fire-importunities of scarlet bloom And bright suddenness of wings in a golden air,
Strange bird and animal forms like memories cast On the rapt silence of unearthly woods, Calm faces of the gods on backgrounds vast Bringing the marvel of the infinitudes,
Through glimmering veils of wonder and delight World after world bursts on the awakened sight.
As some bright archangel in vision flies Plunged in dream-caught spirit immensities, Past the long green crests of the seas of life, Past the orange skies of the mystic mind Flew my thought self-lost in the vasts of God. Sleepless wide great glimmering wings of wind Bore the gold-red seeking of feet that trod Space and Time's mute vanishing ends. The face Lustred, pale-blue-lined of the hippogriff, Eremite, sole, daring the bourneless ways, Over world-bare summits of timeless being Gleamed; the deep twilights of the world-abyss Failed below. Sun-realms of supernal seeing,
Page – 562 Crimson-white mooned oceans of pauseless bliss Drew its vague heart-yearning with voices sweet. Hungering large-souled to surprise the unconned Secrets white-fire-veiled of the last Beyond, Crossing power-swept silences rapture-stunned, Climbing high far ethers eternal-sunned, Thought the great-winged wanderer paraclete Disappeared slow-singing a flame-word rune. Self was left, lone, limitless, nude, immune.
A gold moon-raft floats and swings slowly And it casts a fire of pale holy blue light On the dragon tail aglow of the faint night That glimmers far, — swimming, The illumined shoals of stars skimming, Overspreading earth and drowning the heart in sight With the ocean depths and breadths of the Infinite.
A gold moon-ship sails or drifts ever In our spirit's skies and halts never, blue-keeled, And it throws its white-blue fire on this grey field, Night's dragon loop, — speeding, The illumined star-thought sloops leading To the Dawn, their harbour home, to the Light unsealed, To the sun-face Infinite, the Untimed revealed.
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Rose of God, vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven, Rose of Bliss, fire-sweet, seven-tinged with the ecstasies seven! Leap up in our heart of humanhood, O miracle, O flame, Passion-flower of the Nameless, bud of the mystical Name.
Rose of God, great wisdom-bloom on the summits of being, Rose of Light, immaculate core of the ultimate seeing! Live in the mind of our earthhood; O golden Mystery, flower, Sun on the head of the Timeless, guest of the marvellous Hour.
Rose of God, damask force of Infinity, red icon of might, Rose of Power with thy diamond halo piercing the night! Ablaze in the will of the mortal, design the wonder of thy plan, Image of Immortality, outbreak of the Godhead in man.
Rose of God, smitten purple with the incarnate divine Desire, Rose of Life, crowded with petals, colour's lyre! Transform the body of the mortal like a sweet and magical rhyme; Bridge our earthhood and heavenhood, make deathless the children of Time.
Rose of God like a blush of rapture on Eternity's face, Rose of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace! Arise from the heart of the yearning that sobs in Nature's abyss: Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life Beatitude's kiss.
Page – 564 NOTE
In some of these poems, as in others of the Six Poems, a
quantitative metrical system has been used which seems to have
puzzled some critics, apparently because it does not follow the laws
of quantity obtaining in the ancient classical languages. But those
laws are quite alien to the rhythm and sound-structure of the
English tongue; the attempt to observe them has always ended in
deserved and inevitable failure. Another system has been followed
here which is in agreement with the native rhythm of English speech.
There what determines the metrical length or brevity of syllables is
weight, the weight of the voice emphasis or the dwelling of the
voice upon the sound. Where there is that emphasis or that dwelling
of the voice, the syllable may be considered metrically long; where
both are absent there will be, normally, a recognisable shortness
which can only be cured by some aid of consonant weight or other
lengthening circumstance. All stressed syllables are metrically long
in English and cannot be otherwise, however short the vowel may be,
for they dominate the verse movement; this is a fact which is
ignored in the traditional account of English quantity and which
many experimenters in quantitative verse have chosen to disregard
with disastrous consequences, — all their genius or
skill in metrical technique could not save them from failure. On the
other hand, a long-vowel syllable can be regarded as metrically long
even if there is no stress upon it. In the quantitative system used
in these poems this possibility is converted into a law: metrical
length is obligatory for all such natural syllabic longs, while a
short-vowel syllable unstressed is normally short for metrical
purposes unless it is very heavily weighted with consonants. But the
mere occurrence of two or more consonants after a short vowel does
not by itself make the syllable long as it necessarily does in
Greek, Latin or Sanskrit.
The system may then be reduced to the following rules:
1. All stressed syllables are regarded as metrically long, as also
all syllables supported on a long vowel.
2. All short-vowel syllables not stressed are regarded as
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short, unless they are heavily weighted with consonants. But on this last point no fixed rule can be given; in each case the ear must be the judge.
3. There are a great number of sounds in English which can be regarded according to circumstances either as longs or as shorts. Here too the ear must decide in each case.
4. English quantity metres cannot be as rigid as the metres of ancient tongues. The rhythm of the language demands a certain variability, free or sparing, without which monotony sets in; accordingly in all English metres modulation is admitted as possible. Even the most regular rhythms do not altogether shut out the substitution of other feet than those fixed in the normal basic arrangement of the line; they admit at least so much as is needed to give the necessary pliancy or variety to the movement. There is sometimes a very free use of such variations; but they ought not to be allowed to break the basic movement or overburden or overlay it. The same rule must apply in quantitative metres; especially in long poems modulations are indispensable.
This system is not only not at discord with the
sound-structure of the language, it accords closely with its natural rhythm; it only regulates and intensifies into metrical pitch and tone the cadence that is already there even in prose, even in daily speech. If we take passages from English literature which were written as prose but with some intensity of rhythm, its movement can be at once detected. E.g.
Cŏnsīdĕr
| thĕ līlĭĕs |
ŏf thĕ
fīēld, | hōw
thēy grōw; | |
thēy tōīl
nŏt, |
nēīthĕr dŏ | thēy
spīn; | | yĕt Ī |
sāy ŭntŏ |
yŏu thăt
ēvěn | Sōlŏmŏn |
ĭn āll
hĭs | glōrў | |
wăs nŏt
ărrāyed | līke
ŭntŏ | ōne
ŏf thēse: | |
or again,
Blēssĕd āre | thĕ
mēēk; | fŏr
thēy shăll |
ĭnhērĭt | thĕ
ēārth | . . . .
Blēssĕd
āre | thĕ
pūre ĭn
hēārt; | fŏr
thēy shăll
sēē | Gōd;
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or again, from
Shakespeare's prose,
Thĭs gōōdly
frāme, | thĕ
ēāth, sēēms
tŏ | mĕ ă
stērīle |
prōmŏntŏrў; |
thĭs
mōst ēxcĕl|lĕnt
cānŏpў, | thĕ
āīr, lōōk
yoŭ, | thĭs
brāve
ō'ērhāng|ĭng
fīrmăměnt, | thĭs
măjēstĭc|ăl rōōf
frēttěd | wĭth
gōlděn fīre |
and so on with a constant recurrence of the same quantitative movement all through; or, yet more strikingly,
Hōw
ārt thōū |
fāllĕn frŏm |
Hēāvěn, Ŏ | Lūcĭfěr, |
sōn ŏf
thĕ mōrnĭng!
This last sentence can be read indeed as a very perfect hexameter. The first of these passages could be easily presented as four lines of free quantitative verse, each independent in its arrangement of feet, but all swaying in a single rhythm. Shakespeare's is most wonderfully balanced in a series of differing four-syllabled, with occasional shorter, feet, as if of deliberate purpose, though it is no intention of the mind but the ear of the poet that has constructed this fine design of rhythmic prose. A free quantitative verse in this kind would be perfectly possible.
A more regular quantitative metre can be of two kinds. There could be lines all with the same metrical arrangement following each other without break or else alternating lines with a different arrangement for each, forming a stanza, — as in the practice of accentual metres. But there could also be an arrangement in strophe and antistrophe as in the Greek chorus.
In "Thought the Paraclete" the first rule is followed; all the lines are on the same model. The metre of this poem has a certain rhythmic similarity to the Latin hendecasyllable which
runs ¯ ¯ |
¯ ˘ ˘ | ¯ ˘ | ¯ ˘ | ˉ ˘ , e.g.
Sōlēs
| ōccĭdĕr(e) | ēt
rĕ|dīrĕ | pōssūnt,
Nōbīs | cūm
sĕmĕl | ōccĭd|īt
brĕ|vīs lūx
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Nōx
ēst | pērpĕtŭ(a) |
ūnă | dōrmĭ|ēndă.*
But here the metre runs
ˉ
˘ | ˉ ˉ | ˉ ˘ ˘ | ˉ ˘ | ˉ ;
a trochee In "Moon of Two Hemispheres" the strophe antistrophe system has been used: the lines of the stanza differ from each other in the nature and order of the feet, no identity or approach to identity is imposed; but each line of the antistrophe follows scrupulously the arrangement of the corresponding line of the strophe. An occasional modulation at most is allowed, e.g. the substitution of a trochee for a spondee. The whole poem, how-ever, in spite of its metrical variations, follows a single general rhythmic movement. "Rose of God", like a previous poem "In Horis Aeternum", is written in pure stress metre. As stress and high accentual pitch usually coincide, it is possible to scan accentual metre on the stress principle and stress metre also can be so written that it can be scanned as accentual verse; but pure stress metre depends entirely on stress ictus. In ordinary poetry stress and natural syllabic quantity enter in as elements of the rhythm, but are not, qua stress and quantity, essential elements of the basic metre: in pure stress metre there is a reversal of these values; quantity and accentual inflexion are subordinate and help to build the rhythm, but stress alone determines the metrical basis. In "Rose of God" each line is composed of six stresses, and the whole poem is built of five stanzas, each containing four such lines; the arrangement of feet varies freely to suit the movement of thought and feeling in each line. Thus,
* Suns may set and come again; For us, when once our brief light has set, There is one perpetual night to be slept. CATULLUS
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