I do not attach much importance to the publication or non publication of my poetry and never have done. Most of it (the published part) appeared five, ten, fifteen or even thirty or more years after they were written. The few recently published in magazines (not all of them new, e.g. the sonnets) owed their fate to Nolini's eagerness and not to my initiative. But the vast bulk of what I have written (long poems mostly) lies on shelf and in drawer, most of it for more than a decade, awaiting either dissolution or an interminable revision or total recasting which at the present rate may well retain them there a decade or two more. But that is my own idiosyncrasy—it cannot be a rule or example for others.
In the silence of the night-time, In the grey and formless eve, When the thought is plagued with loveless Memories that it cannot leave,
When the dawn makes sudden beauty Of a peevish clouded sky, And the rain is sobbing slowly And the wind makes weird reply,
Always comes her face before me And her voice is in my ear, Beautiful and sad and cruel With the azure eyes austere.
Cloudy figure once so luminous With the light and life within When the soul came rippling outwards And the red lips laughed at sin!
Com'st thou with that marble visage From what world instinct with pain Where we pay the price of passion By a law our hearts disdain?
Cast it from thee, O thou goddess! Earning with a smile release From these sad imaginations, Rise into celestial peace.
Travel from the loveless places That our mortal fears create, Where thy natural heavens claim thee And the Gods, thy brothers, wait.
Then descend to me grown radiant, Lighting up terrestrial ground With the feet that brighten heaven When the mighty dance goes round
And the high Gods beating measure Tread the maze that keeps the stars Circling in their luminous orbits Through the eternal thoroughfares.
All below is but confusion Of desires that strive and cry, Some forbidden, some achieving Anguish after ecstasy.
But above our radiant station Is from which by doubt we fell, Reaching only after Heaven And achieving only Hell.
Let the heart be king and master, Let the brain exult and toil; Disbelieve in good and evil, God with Nature reconcile.
Therefore, O rebellious sweetness, Thou tookst arms for joy and love. There achieve them! Take possession Of our radiant seats above.
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