Isaac Rosenberg: Verses about Nature

So thy soul's meekness shrinks,
Too loth to show her face-
Why should she shun the world ?
It is a holy place.

Concealed to itself
If the flower kept its scent,
Of itself amorous,
Less rich its ornament.

Use-utmost in each kind-
Is beauty, truth in one,
While soul rays light to soul
In one God-linked sun.

Fierce wrath of Solomon,
Where sleepest thou ?
0 see, The fabric which thou won
Earth and ocean to give thee-
0 look at the red skies.

Or hath the sun plunged down ?
What is this molten gold-
These thundering fires blown
Through heaven, where the smoke rolled ?
Again the great king dies.

His dreams go out in smoke.
His days he let not pass
And sculptured here are broke,
Are charred as the burnt grass,
Gone as his mouth's last sighs.

Your ' Youth ' has fallen from its shelf,
And you have fallen, you yourself.
They knocked a soldier on the head,
I mourn the poet who fell dead.
And yet I think it was by chance,
By oversight you died in France.
You were so poor an outward man,
So small against your spirit's span,
That Nature, being tired awhile,
Saw but your outward human pile;
And Nature, who would never let
A sun with light still in it set,
Before you even reached your sky,
In inadvertence let you die.

Crazed shadows, from no golden body
That I can see, embrace me warm ;
All is purple and closed
Round by night's arm.

A brilliance wings from dark-lit voices,
Wild lost voices of shadows white
See the long houses lean
To the weird flight.

Star amorous things that wake at sleep-time
(Because the sun spreads wide like a tree
With no good fruit for them)
Thrill secrecy.

Pale horses ride before the morning,
The secret roots of the sun to tread,
With hoofs shod with venom
And ageless dread;

To breathe on burning emerald grasses
And opalescent dews of the day,
And poison at the core
What smiles may stray.

She stood-a hill-ensceptred Queen,
The glory streaming from her ;
While Heaven flashed her rays between,
And shed eternal summer.

The gates of morning opened wide
On sunny dome and steeple;
Noon gleamed upon the mountain-side
'Thronged with a happy people ;

And twilight's drowsy, half closed eyes
Beheld that virgin splendour
Whose orbs were as her darkening skies,
And as her spirit, tender.

Girt with that strength, first-horn of right,
Held fast by deeds of honour,
I ler robe she wove with rays more bright
Than Heaven could rain upon her.

Where is that light-that citadel
That robe with woof of glory ?
She lost her virtue and she fell,
And only left her story.

Ah, Koelue!
Had you embalmed your beauty, so
It could not backward go,
Or change in any way,
What were the use, if on my eyes
The embalming spices were not laid
To keep us fixed,
Two amorous sculptures passioned endlessly?
What were the use, if my sight grew,
And its far branches were cloud-hung,
You small at the roots, like grass,
While the new lips my spirit would kiss
Were not red lips of flesh,
But the huge kiss of power?
Where yesterday soft hair through my fingers fell,
A shaggy mane would entwine,
And no slim form work fire to my thighs,
But human Life's inarticulate mass
Throb the pulse of a thing
Whose mountain flanks awry
Beg my mastery -- mine!
Ah! I will ride the dizzy beast of the world
My road -- my way!

And all her soft dark hair
Breathed for him like a prayer,
And her white lost face
Was prisoned to sonie far place.
Love was not denied-
Love's ends would hide,
And Hower and fruit and tree
Were under its sea.
Yea, its abundance knelt
Where the nerves felt
The springs of feeling flow
And made pain grow !
There seemed no root or sky,
But a pent infinity
Where apparitions dim
Sculptured each whim
In dame and wandering mist
Of kisses to be kist.

LADY, YOU ARE MY GOD

Lady, you are my God-
Lady, you are my Heaven.

If I am your God
Labour for your Heaven.

Lady, you are my God,
And shall not love win Heaven ?

If love made me God
Deeds must win my Heaven.

If my love made you God,
What more can 1 for Heaven ?

IN THE WORKSHOP

Dim watery lights gleaming on gibbering faces,
Faces speechful, barren of soul and sordid,
Huddled and chewing a jest, lewd and gabbled
insidious:
Laughter, born of its dung, flashes and floods like sunlight,
Filling the room with a sense of a soul lethargic and kindly,
Touches my soul with a pathos, a hint of a wide desolation.

II
I saw the face of God to-day,
I heard the music of His smile,
And yet I was not far away,
And yet in Paradise the while.

I lay upon the sparkling grass,
And God's own mouth was kissing me,
And there was nothing that did pass
But blazed with divinity.

Divine-divine-upon my eyes,
Upon mine hair-divine--divine,
The fervour of the golden skies,
The ardent gaze of God on mine.

III
Then snake I to the tree, '
Were ye your own desire
What is it ye would be?'

Answered the tree to me,
'I am my own desire,
I am what 1 would be.

' If you were your desire
Would you lie under me,
And see me as you see?'

'I am my own desire
While I lie under you,
And that which I would be
Desire will sing to you.'

IV
I wander-I wander-0 will she wander here
Where'er my footsteps carry me I know that she is near,
A jewelled lamp within her hand and jewels in her hair ;
I lost her in a vision once and seek her everywhere.

My spirit whispers she is near, I look at you and you :
Surely she has not passed me, I sleeping as she flew.
I wander-I wander, and yet she is not here,
Although my spirit whispers to me that she is near.

Space beats the ruddy freedom of their limbs,
Their naked dances with man's spirit naked
By the root side of the tree of life
(The under side of things
And shut from earth's profoundest eyes).

I saw in prophetic gleams
These mighty daughters in their dances
Beckon each soul aghast from its crimson corpse
To mix in their glittering dances :
I heard the mighty daughters' giant sighs
In sleepless passion for the sons of valour
And envy of the days fo flesh,
Barring their love with mortal boughs across-
The mortal boughs, the mortal tree of life.
The old bark burnt with iron wars
They blow to a live flame
To char the young green clays
And reach the occult soul; they have no softer lure,
No softer lure than the savage ways of death.

We were satisfied of our lords the moon and the sun
To take our wage of sleep and bread and warmth-
These maidens came-these strong everliving Amazons,
And in an easy might their wrists
Of night's sway and noon's sway the sceptres brake,
Clouding the wild, the soft lustres of our eyes.

Clouding the wild lustres, the clinging tender lights ;
Driving the darkness into the flame of clay
With the Amazonian wind of them
Over our corroding faces
That must be broken-broken for evermore,
So the soul can leap out
Into their huge embraces,
Though there are human faces
Best sculptures of Deity,
And sinews lusted after
By the Archangels tall,
Even these must leap to the love-heat of these maidens
From the flame of terrene days,
Leaving grey ashes to the wind-to the wind.

One (whose great lifted face,
Where wisdom's strength and beauty's strength
And the thewed strength of large beasts
Moved and merged, gloomed and lit)
Was speaking, surely, as the earth-men's earth fell away ;
Whose new hearing drank the sound
Where pictures, lutes, and mountains mixed
With the loosed spirit of a thought, Essenced to language thus

'My sisters force their males
From the doomed earth, from the doomed glee
And hankering of hearts.
Frail hands gleam up through the human quagmire, and lips of ash
Seem to wail, as in sad faded paintings
Far-sunken and strange.
My sisters have their males
Clean of the dust of old days
That clings about those white hands
And yearns in those voices sad :
But these shall not see them,
Or think of them in any days or years ;
They are my sisters' lovers in other days and years.'