Part 9

I shall not hear your trentals, Nor eat your arval bread; For the kin of you will surely do Their duty by the dead.

Their little dull greasy eyes will water; They'll paw you, and gulp afresh. They'll sniffle and weep, and their thoughts will creep Like flies on the cold flesh.

They will put pence on your grey eyes, Bind up your fallen chin, And lay you straight, the fools that loved you Because they were your kin.

They will praise all the bad about you, And hush the good away, And wonder how they'll do without you, And then they'll go away.

But quieter than one sleeping, And stranger than of old, You will not stir for weeping, You will not mind the cold;

But through the night the lips will laugh not, The hands will be in place, And at length the hair be lying still About the quiet face.

With snuffle and sniff and handkerchief, And dim and decorous mirth, With ham and sherry, they'll meet to bury The lordliest lass of earth.

The little dead hearts will tramp ungrieving Behind lone-riding you, The heart so high, the heart so living, Heart that they never knew.

I shall not hear your trentals, Nor eat your arval bread, Nor with smug breath tell lies of death To the unanswering dead.

With snuffle and sniff and handkerchief, The folk who loved you not Will bury you, and go wondering Back home. And you will rot.

But laughing and half-way up to heaven, With wind and hill and star, I yet shall keep, before I sleep, Your Ambarvalia.

Dead Men's Love

There was a damned successful Poet; There was a Woman like the Sun. And they were dead. They did not know it. They did not know their time was done. They did not know his hymns Were silence; and her limbs, That had served Love so well, Dust, and a filthy smell.

And so one day, as ever of old, Hands out, they hurried, knee to knee; On fire to cling and kiss and hold And, in the other's eyes, to see Each his own tiny face, And in that long embrace Feel lip and breast grow warm To breast and lip and arm.

So knee to knee they sped again, And laugh to laugh they ran, I'm told, Across the streets of Hell . . . And then They suddenly felt the wind blow cold, And knew, so closely pressed, Chill air on lip and breast, And, with a sick surprise, The emptiness of eyes.

Town and Country

Here, where love's stuff is body, arm and side Are stabbing-sweet 'gainst chair and lamp and wall. In every touch more intimate meanings hide; And flaming brains are the white heart of all.

Here, million pulses to one centre beat: Closed in by men's vast friendliness, alone, Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet On the sheer point where sense with knowing's one.

Here the green-purple clanging royal night, And the straight lines and silent walls of town, And roar, and glare, and dust, and myriad white Undying passers, pinnacle and crown

Intensest heavens between close-lying faces By the lamp's airless fierce ecstatic fire; And we've found love in little hidden places, Under great shades, between the mist and mire.

Stay! though the woods are quiet, and you've heard Night creep along the hedges. Never go Where tangled foliage shrouds the crying bird, And the remote winds sigh, and waters flow!

Lest -- as our words fall dumb on windless noons, Or hearts grow hushed and solitary, beneath Unheeding stars and unfamiliar moons, Or boughs bend over, close and quiet as death, --

Unconscious and unpassionate and still, Cloud-like we lean and stare as bright leaves stare, And gradually along the stranger hill Our unwalled loves thin out on vacuous air,

And suddenly there's no meaning in our kiss, And your lit upward face grows, where we lie, Lonelier and dreadfuller than sunlight is, And dumb and mad and eyeless like the sky.

Paralysis

For moveless limbs no pity I crave, That never were swift! Still all I prize, Laughter and thought and friends, I have; No fool to heave luxurious sighs For the woods and hills that I never knew. The more excellent way's yet mine! And you

Flower-laden come to the clean white cell, And we talk as ever -- am I not the same? With our hearts we love, immutable, You without pity, I without shame. We talk as of old; as of old you go Out under the sky, and laughing, I know,

Flit through the streets, your heart all me; Till you gain the world beyond the town. Then -- I fade from your heart, quietly; And your fleet steps quicken. The strong down Smiles you welcome there; the woods that love you Close lovely and conquering arms above you.