LITMIR.BIZ

      ’Tis All Souls’ Night and the great Christ Church bell,

      And many a lesser bell, sound through the room,

      For it is now midnight;

      And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel

      Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come,

      For it is a ghost’s right,

      His element is so fine

      Being sharpened by his death,

      To drink from the wine-breath

      While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

      I need some mind that, if the cannon sound

      From every quarter of the world, can stay

      Wound in mind’s pondering,

      As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;

      Because I have a marvellous thing to say,

      A certain marvellous thing

      None but the living mock,

      Though not for sober ear;

      It may be all that hear

      Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

      H – ’s the first I call. He loved strange thought

      And knew that sweet extremity of pride

      That’s called platonic love,

      And that to such a pitch of passion wrought

      Nothing could bring him, when his lady died,

      Anodyne for his love.

      Words were but wasted breath;

      One dear hope had he:

      The inclemency

      Of that or the next winter would be death.

      Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell

      Whether of her or God he thought the most,

      But think that his mind’s eye,

      When upward turned, on one sole image fell,

      And that a slight companionable ghost,

      Wild with divinity,

      Had so lit up the whole

      Immense miraculous house,

      The Bible promised us,

      It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.

      On Florence Emery I call the next,

      Who finding the first wrinkles on a face

      Admired and beautiful,

      And knowing that the future would be vexed

      With ’minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,

      Preferred to teach a school,

      Away from neighbour or friend

      Among dark skins, and there

      Permit foul years to wear

      Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.

      Before that end much had she ravelled out

      From a discourse in figurative speech

      By some learned Indian

      On the soul’s journey. How it is whirled about,

      Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,

      Until it plunged into the sun;

      And there free and yet fast,

      Being both Chance and Choice,

      Forget its broken toys

      And sink into its own delight at last.

      And I call up MacGregor from the grave,

      For in my first hard springtime we were friends,

      Although of late estranged.

      I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,

      And told him so, but friendship never ends;

      And what if mind seem changed,

      And it seem changed with the mind,

      When thoughts rise up unbid

      On generous things that he did

      And I grow half contented to be blind.

      He had much industry at setting out,

      Much boisterous courage, before loneliness

      Had driven him crazed;

      For meditations upon unknown thought

      Make human intercourse grow less and less;

      They are neither paid nor praised.

      But he’d object to the host,

      The glass because my glass;

      A ghost-lover he was

      And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.

      But names are nothing. What matter who it be,

      So that his elements have grown so fine

      The fume of muscatel

      Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy

      No living man can drink from the whole wine.

      I have mummy truths to tell

      Whereat the living mock,

      Though not for sober ear,

      For maybe all that hear

      Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

      Such thought – such thought have I that hold it tight

      Till meditation master all its parts,

      Nothing can stay my glance

      Until that glance run in the world’s despite

      To where the damned have howled away their hearts,

      And where the blessed dance;

      Such thought, that in it bound

      I need no other thing

      Wound in mind’s wandering,

      As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.

      Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,

      Even where the horrible green parrots call and swing.

      My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.

      I knew that horse play, knew it for a murderous thing.

      What wholesome sun has ripened is wholesome food to eat

      And that alone, yet I being driven half insane

      Because of some green wing, gathered old mummy wheat

      In the mad abstract dark and ground it grain by grain

      And after baked it slowly in an oven; but now

      I bring full flavoured wine out of a barrel found

      Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew

      When Alexander’s empire past, they slept so sound.

      Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep;

      I have loved you better than my soul for all my words,

      And there is none so fit to keep a watch and keep

      Unwearied eyes upon those horrible green birds.

      Many ingenious lovely things are gone