Part 5

It’s the Spring. A sprightliness feeble and squalid Wakes in the ward, and I sicken, Impotent, winter at heart.

XXIII MUSIC

DOWN the quiet eve, Thro’ my window with the sunset Pipes to me a distant organ Foolish ditties;

And, as when you change Pictures in a magic lantern, Books, beds, bottles, floor, and ceiling Fade and vanish,

And I’m well once more . . . August flares adust and torrid, But my heart is full of April Sap and sweetness.

In the quiet eve I am loitering, longing, dreaming . . . Dreaming, and a distant organ Pipes me ditties.

I can see the shop, I can smell the sprinkled pavement, Where she serves—her chestnut chignon Thrills my senses!

O, the sight and scent, Wistful eve and perfumed pavement! In the distance pipes an organ . . . The sensation

Comes to me anew, And my spirit for a moment Thro’ the music breathes the blessèd Airs of London.

XXIV SUICIDE

STARING corpselike at the ceiling, See his harsh, unrazored features, Ghastly brown against the pillow, And his throat—so strangely bandaged!

Lack of work and lack of victuals, A debauch of smuggled whisky, And his children in the workhouse Made the world so black a riddle

That he plunged for a solution; And, although his knife was edgeless, He was sinking fast towards one, When they came, and found, and saved him.

Stupid now with shame and sorrow, In the night I hear him sobbing. But sometimes he talks a little. He has told me all his troubles.

In his broad face, tanned and bloodless, White and wild his eyeballs glisten; And his smile, occult and tragic, Yet so slavish, makes you shudder!

XXV APPARITION

THIN-LEGGED, thin-chested, slight unspeakably, Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face— Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race, Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea, The brown eyes radiant with vivacity— There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace Of passion and impudence and energy. Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, Most vain, most generous, sternly critical, Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, And something of the Shorter-Catechist.

XXVI ANTEROTICS

LAUGHS the happy April morn Thro’ my grimy, little window, And a shaft of sunshine pushes Thro’ the shadows in the square.

Dogs are tracing thro’ the grass, Crows are cawing round the chimneys, In and out among the washing Goes the West at hide-and-seek.

Loud and cheerful clangs the bell. Here the nurses troop to breakfast. Handsome, ugly, all are women . . . O, the Spring—the Spring—the Spring!

XXVII NOCTURN

AT the barren heart of midnight, When the shadow shuts and opens As the loud flames pulse and flutter, I can hear a cistern leaking.

Dripping, dropping, in a rhythm, Rough, unequal, half-melodious, Like the measures aped from nature In the infancy of music;

Like the buzzing of an insect, Still, irrational, persistent . . . I must listen, listen, listen In a passion of attention;

Till it taps upon my heartstrings, And my very life goes dripping, Dropping, dripping, drip-drip-dropping, In the drip-drop of the cistern.

XXVIII DISCHARGED

CARRY me out Into the wind and the sunshine, Into the beautiful world.