Part 8 (2/2)

The pillared halls of sleep echoed my ghostly tread.

Yet when their secret chambers I essayed My spirit sank, dismayed, Waking in fear to find the new-born vision fled.

Once indeed--but then my spirit bloomed in leafy rapture-- I loved; and once I looked death in the eyes: So, suddenly made wise, Spoke of such beauty as I may never recapture....

Whither, O divine mistress, must I then follow thee?

Is it only in love ... say, is it only in death That the spirit blossometh, And words that may match my vision shall come to me?”

It is because of these simple short poems that I like Mr Brett-Young's work: in his more ambitious and longer poems like _Thamar_ he leaves me untouched. He cannot convey in words the mysterious mingled effect that the combined colour, music and movement of the Russian ballet produces on the mind.

Let him remain content with the soft, sweet simplicity of Prothalamion and we shall love him the more:

”When the evening came my love said to me: Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool, The garden of black h.e.l.lebore and rosemary, Where wild woodruff spills in a milky pool.

Low we pa.s.sed in the twilight, for the wavering heat Of day had waned, and round that shaded plot Of secret beauty the thickets cl.u.s.tered sweet; Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips spake not.

Between that old garden and seas of lazy foam Gloomy and beautiful alleys of trees arise With spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome, So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but the skies.

Veiled with soft air, drench'd in the roses' musk Or the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove; No stars burned in their deeps, but through the dusk I saw my love's eyes, and they were brimmed with love.

No star their secret ravished, no wasting moon Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours: Only the soft, unseeing heaven of June, The ghosts of great trees, and the sleeping flowers.

For doves that crooned in the leafy noonday now Were silent; the night-jar sought his secret covers, Nor even a mild sea-whisper moved a creaking bough-- Was ever a silence deeper made for lovers?

Was ever a moment meeter made for love?

Beautiful are your closed lips beneath my kiss; And all your yielding sweetness beautiful-- Oh, never in all the world was such a night as this!”

III

THE POEMS OF IRIS TREE

Iris Tree is worth reading for her vivacity, her hatred of shams, her intellectual fireworks, her simple love of the beautiful, her youthful rebellion, her sense of colour, her harmony, her humour, but most of all for this:

”Many things I'd find to charm you, Books and scarves and silken socks, All the seven rainbow colours, Black and white with 'broidered clocks.

Then a stick of polished whalebone And a coat of tawny fur, And a row of gleaming bottles Filled with rose-water and myrrh.

Rarest brandy of the 'fifties, Old liqueurs in leather kegs, Golden Sauterne, copper sherry And a nest of plovers' eggs.

Toys of tortoise-sh.e.l.l and jasper, Little boxes cut in jade; Handkerchiefs of finest cambric, Damask cloths and dim brocade, Six musicians of the Magyar, Madness making harmony; And a bed austere and narrow With a quilt from Barbary.

You shall have a bath of amber, A Venetian looking-gla.s.s, And a crimson-chested parrot On a lawn of terraced gra.s.s.

Then a small Tanagra statue Found anew in ruins old, Or an azure plate from Persia, Or my hair in plaits of gold; Or my scalp that like an Indian You shall carry for a purse, Or my spilt blood in a goblet ...

Or a volume of my verse.”

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