They scarred the hillside here to build a town;
Gaunt above slag and cinder, and despising
The paint-splashed cabins, gray and muddy brown,
The tipple looms-vast, black, uncompromising.
All day the wagons lumber past; the wide
Squat wheels hub deep; the horses strained and still;
The headlong rain pours down all day to hide
The blackened stumps, the ulcerated hill.
O Beauty! All my life I loved you fiercely;
And even in this sordid place, where rain
Drips desolately from all the eaves, and scarcely
A leaf sprouts, and the earth is wracked with pain,
Beauty is pounding, hammering through my brain.
I'm glad you made me live again;
And woke the blood within my veins,
Just as the sap at April rains
Starts upward in the tree.
I'm glad you struck the spark again
And fanned it into leaping fire:
I thought all semblance of desire
Had long since died in me.
I don't expect you'll understand
Just what it means to watch Life go-
To watch your pulse beat running low-
Ah, that is bitter learning!
I don't suppose you'll understand
How Life could be all irony,
And Death could play a melody
To set your heart strings yearning.
But I had watched these things so long
Before you came to walk my way;
I scarce believed, to hear you say,
That fire ever came from ash.
And I had felt these things so long,
That when you promised you would bring
Me once again the light of Spring,
I smiled and thought your promise rash.
But I am glad that I was wrong,
Since you fulfilled the vow you made.
Before I faced Death unafraid
Because I thought it was my lot.
And I am glad that I was wrong.
I still look unafraid at Death-
But there is vigor in my breath.
I thought I was half dead-
THE LORD CHANCELLOR PREPARES HIS
My Lords, this is a clear unmuddied case
A clear unmuddied case! If ever stream
Of pure judicial reasoning bore down
More silt and wreckage of the heart's unease
Than this thin rill! But let the sarcasm stand;
It serves at least to thrust me on the cause
Full running, in a careless jogging start,
Ahead of fox and beagles, horn uplift,
Toot-tootling at full breath, as one who knows
Before the hunt's up where the brush will fall.
My Lords, this is a clear unmuddied case.
The plaintiff is a lady of the Court,
A maid of honor to Her Majesty and known
By beauty's rumor far as Tyne and Tweed.
By beauty's rumor-there I've found myself
With just the breath of satire; not one tone
Of all the tones her beauty struck in me,
Leaving me jangling like a belfry bell
Under a thrust of thunder.
The courts of equity to have relief
Against defendant, in that he has made
A full heroic picture of herself,
Likest Diana, with the curved moon's arc
Crowning her head, and in her hand a spear;
No adjective beside to qualify
Ah, there's another touch
To throw them off the scent. They'll nudge and say
"My lord is mellow": they will never dream
How that still beauty on the canvas caught,
Caught and held fast, as in the brain sometimes
A gesture of the soul is caught and held,—
How that still beauty stopped my mouth with awe,
And left my poor brain gaping. Like a tree,
A birch tree, shining in a windy place
Where blown and shattered leaves of sunlight fall,
And grasses ripple and the flooding blue
Seems to engulf the world; or like a wave
That tips with foam and flowering in the sea,
Drives on before the wind, a curve of sound
And failing flame of water, such intents
This phrase of mine obscures:
Beside to qualify the fact of her.
The paint once dried, defendant made demand
For sums, excess of reason, which, refused,
The painter had his shameless painting set
Within the windows of a coffee house,
That all who paid might see and all who saw,
Knowing her face,-it was a replica
Most exquisite exact, her counsel saith,-
Might stand and stare. To this so-stated bill
Defendant has demurred.
My Lords, here is no ground for equity.
It is established from the earliest days
That save a man be injured in his purse,
Or in his lands, or in his common right,
He may not plead the Chancellor for aid.
And here what right is injured? Are there fees
And rents and profits in a replica?
Is beauty such a thing as this grave court,
Accustomed to the solid weight of trade,
Apt to divide with cold appraising eye
The estates of merchants, and maintain the scales
Against the shrewd in barter, long enured
To holding lands and livings in its trusts-
Is beauty such a value as we know?
Shall we weigh symmetry in sterling's worth?
Shall equity protect a woman's throat
Against the painter's interest in his paint?
The bill should be dismissed.
That's very well. I see them nod and bow
And echo what I've said; I see- -I see-
Nay nothing but a beauty such as time
In all its ebb and flow against this earth
Has never yet tossed, like a tinted shell,
High on the echoing beaches that look out
Toward the faint lights of the voyaging stars.
I shall make offering in a new basket of marsh-grass
Curved like a conch-shell, sharp with salt echoes,
Two long handles like looped arms.
Untamed things shall I bring to the god of gardens,
Plum-blossom, sweet-olive and thyme,
Tang of small figs, gone wild in deserted gardens,
Most subtle of trees as the serpent is subtlest of beasts,
Slouched on the heat-soaked walls
I shall lay them under the weary, appraising eyes,
The cynical, musical fingers
That rest on the goat-thighs.
Let me give him, O Pan,
All in the way of love—
The new, keen edge of difference,
The wonder of being together,
And the wild taste of immemorial marsh-grass.
When the lover is gone and only the comrade remains,
Pan, have mercy!
Teach me to talk like a man!
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