Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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And moving to their music in a dance
As immemorial. A numbing trance
Came gradually over her, as though
Flake after downy-feathered flake of snow
Had muffled all her senses, drifting deep
And warm and quiet.
From this all-but sleep
She started into life again; the sky
Was full of a strange tumult suddenly —
Beating of mighty wings and shrill-voiced fear
And the hoarse scream of rapine following near.
In the high windlessness above her flew,
Dazzlingly white on the untroubled blue,
A splendid swan, with outstretched neck and wing
Spread fathom wide, and closely following
An eagle, tawny and black. This god-like pair
Circled and swooped through the calm of upper air,
The eagle striking and the white swan still
‘Scaping as though by happy miracle
The imminent talons. For the twentieth time
The furious hunter stooped, to miss and climb
A mounting spiral into the height again.
He hung there poised, eyeing the grassy plain
Far, far beneath, where the girls’ upturned faces
Were like white flowers that bloom in open places
Among the scarcely budded woods. And they
Breathlessly watched and waited; long he lay,
Becalmed upon that tideless sea of light,
While the great swan with slow and creaking flight
Went slanting down towards safety, where the stream
Shines through the trees below, with glance and gleam
Of blue aerial eyes that seem to give
Sense to the sightless earth and make it live.
The ponderous wings beat on and no pursuit:
Stiff as the painted kite that guards the fruit,
Afloat o’er orchards ripe, the eagle yet
Hung as at anchor, seeming to forget
His uncaught prey, his rage unsatisfied.
Still, quiet, dead . . . and then the quickest-eyed
Had lost him. Like a star unsphered, a stone
Dropped from the vault of heaven, a javelin thrown,
He swooped upon his prey. Down, down he came,
And through his plumes with a noise of wind-blown flame
Loud roared the air. From Leda’s lips a cry
Broke, and she hid her face — she could not see him die,
Her lovely, hapless swan.
Ah, had she heard,
Even as the eagle hurtled past, the word
That treacherous pair exchanged. “Peace,” cried the swan;
“Peace, daughter. All my strength will soon be gone,
Wasted in tedious flying, ere I come
Where my desire hath set its only home.”
“Go,” said the eagle, “I have played my part,
Roused pity for your plight in Leda’s heart
(Pity the mother of voluptuousness).
Go, father Jove; be happy; for success
Attends this moment.”
On the queen’s numbed sense
Fell a glad shout that ended sick suspense,
Bidding her lift once more towards the light
Her eyes, by pity closed against a sight
Of blood and death — her eyes, how happy now
To see the swan still safe, while far below,
Brought by the force of his eluded stroke
So near to earth that with his wings he woke
A gust whose sudden silvery motion stirred
The meadow grass, struggled the sombre bird
Of rage and rapine. Loud his scream and hoarse
With baffled fury as he urged his course
Upwards again on threshing pinions wide.
But the fair swan, not daring to abide
This last assault, dropped with the speed of fear
Towards the river. Like a winged spear,
Outstretching his long neck, rigid and straight,
Aimed at where Leda on the bank did wait
With open arms and kind, uplifted eyes
And voice of tender pity, down he flies.
Nearer, nearer, terribly swift, he sped
Directly at the queen; then widely spread
Resisting wings, and breaking his descent
‘Gainst his own wind, all speed and fury spent,
The great swan fluttered slowly down to rest
And sweet security on Leda’s breast.
Menacingly the eagle wheeled above her;
But Leda, like a noble-hearted lover
Keeping his child-beloved from tyrannous harm,
Stood o’er the swan and, with one slender arm
Imperiously lifted, waved away
The savage foe, still hungry for his prey.
Baffled at last, he mounted out of sight
And the sky was void — save for a single white
Swan’s feather moulted from a harassed wing
That down, down, with a rhythmic balancing
From side to side dropped sleeping on the air.
Down, slowly down over that dazzling pair,
Whose different grace in union was a birth
Of unimagined beauty on the earth:
So lovely that the maidens standing round
Dared scarcely look. Couched on the flowery ground
Young Leda lay, and to her side did press
The swan’s proud-arching opulent loveliness,
Stroking the snow-soft plumage of his breast
With fingers slowly drawn, themselves caressed
By the warm softness where they lingered, loth
To break away. Sometimes against their growth
Ruffling the feathers inlaid like little scales
On his sleek neck, the pointed finger-nails
Rasped on the warm, dry, puckered skin beneath;
And feeling it she shuddered, and her teeth
Grated on edge; for there was something strange
And snake-like in the touch. He, in exchange,
Gave back to her, stretching his eager neck,
For every kiss a little amorous peck;
Rubbing his silver head on her gold tresses,
And with the nip of horny dry caresses
Leaving upon her young white breast and cheek
And arms the red print of his playful beak.
Closer he nestled, mingling with the slim
Austerity of virginal flank and limb
His curved and florid beauty, till she felt
That downy warmth strike through her flesh and melt
The bones and marrow of her strength away.
One lifted arm bent o’er her brow, she lay
With limbs relaxed, scarce breathing, deathly still;
Save when a quick, involuntary thrill
Shook her sometimes with passing shudderings,
As though some hand had plucked the aching strings
Of life itself, tense with expectancy.
And over her the swan shook slowly free
The folded glory of his wings, and made
A white-walled tent of soft and luminous shade
To be her veil and keep her from the shame
Of naked light and the sun’s noonday flame.
Hushed lay the earth and the wide, careless sky.
Then one sharp sound, that might have been a cry
Of utmost pleasure or of utmost pain,
Broke sobbing forth, and all was still again.
THE BIRTH OF GOD
NIGHT is a void about me; I lie alone;
And water drips, like an idiot clicking his tongue,
Senselessly, ceaselessly, endlessly drips
Into the waiting silence, grown
Emptier for this small inhuman sound.
My love is gone, my love who is tender and young.
O smooth warm body!
O passionate lips!
I have stretched forth hands in the dark and nothing found:
The silence is huge as the sky — I lie alone —
My narrow room, a darkness that knows no bound.
How shall I fill this measureless
Deep void that the taking away
Of a child’s slim beauty has made?
Slender she is and small, but the loneliness
She has left is a night no stars allay,
And I am cold and afraid.
Long, long ago, cut off from the wolfish pack,
From the warm, immediate touch of friends and mate,
Lost and alone, alone in the utter black
Of a forest night, some far-off, beast-like man,
Cowed by the cold indifferent hate
Of the northern silence, crouched in fear,
When through his bleared and suffering mind
A sudden tremor of comfort ran,
And the void was filled by a rushing wind,
And he breathed a sense of something friendly and near,
And in privation the life of God began.
Love, from your loss shall a god be born to fill
The emptiness, where once you were,
With friendly knowledge and more than a lover’s will
To ease despair?
Shall I feed longing with what it hungers after,
Seeing in earth and sea and air
A lover’s smiles, hearing a lover’s laughter,
Feeling love everywhere?
The night drags on. Darkness and silence grow,
And with them my desire has grown,
My bitter need. Alas, I know,
I know that here I lie alone.
ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH
BENEATH the sunlight and blue of all-but Autumn
The grass sleeps goldenly; woodland and distant hill
Shine through the gauzy air in a dust of golden pollen,
And even the glittering leaves are almost still.
Scattered on the grass, like a ragman’s bundles carelessly dropped,
Men sleep outstretched or, sprawling, bask in the sun;
Here glows a woman’s bright dress and here a child is sitting,
And I lie down and am one of the sleepers, one
Like the rest of this tumbled crowd. Do they all, I wonder,
Feel anguish grow with the calm day’s slow decline,
Longing, as I, for a shattering wind, a passion
Of bodily pain to be the soul’s anodyne?
SYMPATHY
THE irony of being two . . . !
Grey eyes, wide open suddenly,
Regard me and enquire; I see a face
Grave and unquiet in tenderness.
Heart-rending question of women — never answered:
“Tell me, tell me, what are you thinking of?”
Oh, the pain and foolishness of love!
What can I do but make my old grimace,
Ending it with a kiss, as I always do?
MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM
DIAPHENIA, drunk with sleep,
Drunk with pleasure, drunk with fatigue,
Feels her Corydon’s fingers creep —
Ring-finger, middle finger, index, thumb —
Strummingly over the smooth sleek drum
Of her thorax.
Meanwhile Händel’s Gigue
Turns in Corydon’s absent mind
To Yakka-Hoola.
She can find
No difference in the thrilling touch
Of one who, now, in everything
Is God-like. “Was there ever such
Passion as ours?”
His pianoing
Gives place to simple arithmetic’s
Simplest constatations: — six
Letters in Gneiss and three in Gnu:
Luncheon to-day cost three and two;
In a year — he couldn’t calculate
Three-sixty-five times thirty-eight,
Figuring with printless fingers on
Her living parchment.
“Corydon!
I faint, faint, faint at your dear touch.
Say, is it possible . . . to love too much?”
FROM THE PILLAR
SIMEON, the withered stylite,
Sat gloomily looking down
Upon each roof and skylight
In all the seething town.
And in every upper chamber,
On roofs, where the orange flowers
Make weary men remember
The perfume of long-dead hours,
He saw the wine-drenched riot
Of harlots and human beasts,
And how celestial quiet
Was shattered by their feasts.
The steam of fetid vices
From a thousand lupanars,
Like smoke of sacrifices,
Reeked up to the heedless stars.
And the saint from his high fastness
Of purity apart
Cursed them and their unchasteness,
And envied them in his heart.
JONAH
A CREAM of phosphorescent light
Floats on the wash that to and fro
Slides round his feet — enough to show
Many a pendulous stalactite
Of naked mucus, whorls and wreaths
And huge festoons of mottled tripes
And smaller palpitating pipes
Through which a yeasty liquor seethes.
Seated upon the convex mound
Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays
And sings his canticles and hymns,
Making the hollow vault resound
God’s goodness and mysterious ways,
Till the great fish spouts music as he swims.
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
SWAN, Swan,
Yesterday you were
The whitest of things in this dark winter.
To-day the snow has made of your plumes
An unwashed pocket handkercher,
An unwashed pocket handkercher . . .
“Lancashire, to Lancashire!” —
Tune of the antique trains long ago:
Each summer holiday a milestone
Backwards, backwards: —
Tenby, Barmouth, and year by year
All the different hues of the sea,
Blue, green and blue.
But on this river of muddy jade
There swims a yellow swan,
And along the bank the snow lies dazzlingly white.
A MELODY BY SCARLATTI
HOW clear under the trees,
How softly the music flows,
Rippling from one still pool to another
Into the lake of silence.
A SUNSET
OVER against the triumph and the close —
Amber and green and rose —
Of this short day,
The pale ghost of the moon grows living-bright
Once more, as the last light
Ebbs slowly away.
Darkening the fringes of these western glories
The black phantasmagories
Of cloud advance
With noiseless footing — vague and villainous shapes,
Wrapped in their ragged fustian capes,
Of some grotesque romance.
But overhead where, like a pool between
Dark rocks, the sky is green
And clear and deep,
Floats windlessly a cloud, with curving breast
Flushed by the fiery west,
In god-like sleep . . .
And in my mind opens a sudden door
That lets me see once more
A little room
With night beyond the window, chill and damp,
And one green-lighted lamp
Tempering the gloom,
While here within, close to me, touching me
(Even the memory
Of my desire
Shakes me like fear), you sit with scattered hair;
And all your body bare
Before the fire
Is lapped about with rosy flame. . . . But still,
Here on the lonely hill,
I walk alone;
Silvery green is the moon’s lamp overhead,
The cloud sleeps warm and red,
And you are gone.
LIFE AND ART
YOU have sweet flowers for your pleasure;
You laugh with the bountiful earth
In its richness of summer treasure:
Where now are your flowers and your mirth?
Petals and cadenced laughter,
Each in a dying fall,
Droop out of life; and after
Is nothing; they were all.
But we from the death of roses
That three suns perfume and gild
With a kiss, till the fourth discloses
A withered wreath, have distilled
The fulness of one rare phial,
Whose nimble life shall outrun
The circling shadow on the dial,
Outlast the tyrannous sun.
FIRST PHILOSOPHER’S SONG
A POOR degenerate from the ape,
Whose hands are four, whose tail’s a limb,
I contemplate my flaccid shape
And know I may not rival him,
Save with my mind — a nimbler beast
Possessing a thousand sinewy tails,
A thousand hands, with which it scales,
Greedy of luscious truth, the greased
Poles and the coco palms of thought,
Thrids easily through the mangrove maze
Of metaphysics, walks the taut
Frail dangerous liana ways
That link across wide gulfs remote
Analogies between tree and tree;
Outruns the hare, outhops the goat;
Mind fabulous, mind sublime and free!
But oh, the sound of simian mirth!
Mind, issued from the monkey’s womb,
Is still umbilical to earth,
Earth its home and earth its tomb.
SECOND PHILOSOPHER’S SONG
IF, O my Lesbia, I should commit,
Not fornication, dear, but suicide,
My Thames-blown body (Pliny vouches it)
Would drift face upwards on the oily tide
With the other garbage, till it putrefied.
But you, if all your lovers’ frozen hearts
Conspired to send you, desperate, to drown —
Your maiden modesty would float face down,
And men would weep upon your hinder parts.