The Wastnesse
Sonnets XXXI—XXXVI
XXXI
the hellish drone of street-trash splits the air
quite far from an English garden rain in
summer snow in late spring an idle street
condensed and partitioned and wandering
loose amongst savage souls The garden is
drained of moisture where once we sat in chairs
adeckd with linen and discoursed flatly
on meagre sums and overt distractions
then at once in media res a face
familière Taken to revisit
gramer-rule of scole-kid ennui languor
flailing mindless with that beauty-harlot
Face asks if i at last give them pardon
—i drift away to my English garden
XXXII
Effervescent darling of my heart’s word,
Fulgent lighthouse of my life’s sole return!
Such fulvous eyes that keep me from the herd,
Speckled sight-tawn that I forever yearn!
Ecstatic maiden, virgo-born and plump,
Yet slight and dainty all the blessèd same;
Sweet contradictions of my lovèd one,
Thou should be hailed for seeming such a way!
So glance at me and thus condemn my fate,
Allow this fool to genuflect thy grace;
Where thou shalt walk, my path is ever-made:
So shall I catalogue thy faerie face!
This ecstasy, it rises from the land;
Ah, such love is as mountain to a man!
XXXIII
Crystalline beauty is but a shell for your mind:
Leonine leader; determined in strength, and kind
In the moment when you saved my loose, fraying strength:
I were to fall apart; you cast a note at length
Which brought me back from failure’s decadent despair:
Tho more apart since heavy hand, you are yet fair
In apprehension; how you are like a goddess!
I deify you in art, you could claim no less
Than the David born of maiden form, marble dress’d:
Yes, in full aspect you signify great virtue,
And shall thus forever bloom as you were meant to:
Ah! If it were so simple, life would be quite dull;
How sad to gain a thing so easily made full,
When true sated love one should longform mull:
I know you have the spark’ling wit for chrysalis
To guide you to a truth-form metamorphosis.
XXXIV
And then, the end: curtain close; we depart
To cast aside those cloaks, to pillage on,
In drunken judgement. How the night does call!
One final bow for the raptured ovation?
Of course! We are at the end, oh, the end!
Do you feel it? Why, it is here, my friend:
No time to construct a dissertation,
No, just a base sonnet before the fall,
And a second to contemplate our all:
Aye — what is a man? Paragon indeed—
We are surely express in our action,
Definite in calculation, our art
Born by woman alone, refined by men,
Bowing to nothing but dust at the end.
XXXV
Embankment’s sweat, in Camden I seek death;
’Twixt Regent’s Park’s old graven oaks I hover,
A shrinking blade that captures terror’s face
In photograph of bloody disarray—
And by the banks I wait alone with glee
To laugh at fallen men, to decry sympathy:
Now watch the sky become a deeper grey
As unknown faces lose their pallor
And turn at once to see the shining star:
It hovers bleak atop Saint Paul’s tower,
Harbinges the tale of my rising power;
My soul becomes a nightmare’s aura—
I am the Scholar of the Sable Joy:
I am the Author of London’s Horror.
XXXVI
Pretty, pretty, pretty. So sweet a girl
I am. Look at me! With my sunflower dress,
And bows in my hair. Pretty, pretty, pretty—
Less than a whirl, a ditty, this city
Bends to my will. So I dance empowered
Upon overgrown windowsill, a prance
For the Lost, for the Dead, for the Crier
Who cries out no more; and I am pretty
In cornflower shawl, to rake quietus
And pet a raggled cat, a cute kitty,
And take it in my arms. Now, to the hill,
Where we may take a final glance of what was:
O, greenest spires of glass and steel I see:
Tho I knew you then, ’tis now that I do most love thee.