Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 811
Never a word of him again.... But dance,
Choose a new mate for Lalagé’s soft side
This night. Yes there, above his lips that lied.
[They begin to disperse.
A YOUNG GIRL.
I would he had kissed me ere he died.
THE OLD MAN (shaking his head misgivingly, to
another old man).
You heard?
[They all go away over the plain in groups of two
and three; the poplars and the ruined temple have
disappeared into the last light: the white garments
have blue and purple shadows and the evening star
shakes out brilliant rays in the dusky sky.
THE VOICE OF A YOUNG GIRL (singing in the distance).
When he conies from seawards,
When he comes from townwards,
My love sings to me words
That my heart likes well.
[The night wind sweeps down; the watch-fires at the
foot of the hills spring up as if they had been replenished and waver along the wind. It reaches the
cairn of stones and runs with a sifting sound
among the dry grasses around. It continues through the night.
A MASQUE OF THE TIMES O’ DAY
(A FRAGMENT)
The Persons of the Masque:
The DAWN that shall wear a saffron gown, and in her hair daffodils.
HIGH NOON that shall wear a golden dress and necklets of amber.
EVENTIDE that shall be habited in grey and have glow-worms on her brow.
NIGHT that shall be dressed in black with a coronal of stars and the crescent moon.
The Scene shall be a hilltop, high in air, with the blue sky painted fair on the backcloths. There shall be a great gilt framework Sphere of the Universe, set with jewels for the stars, and with the Signs of the Zodiac. It shall revolve slowly, and within shall sit the DAWN, HIGH NOON and others. In its centre there shall be a great Globe of the Earth with the lands and the seas fairly marked. Round about it shall go one score and four men bearing the four-and-twenty torches of the Hours. Without, shall stand a Man and a Woman. A Chorus habited like a reverend old man shalt enter and shall tell how that the Times of Day, being weary of long contentions for the Dominion of the earth, have set this Man and this Woman to choose which of these four shall have sole Empire. The Music shall sound, and when it shall have ceased, the DAWN shall step forth from the Sphere as it revolves and shall say:
I AM the Dawn, beloved by those that watch.
Then HIGH NOON:
I am the Noon, beloved by those that toil.
Then Eventide.
I am the Eve, beloved by those that tire.
Then THE NIGHT:
I am the Night beloved by them that love.
Then shall those four dance together until the DAWN
stands forth from among them and sings:
I am the Dawn, beloved by those that watch,
I come a-creeping, I come a-stealing
Over eastern mountains, over dewy lawns,
Pale, golden, slender, pale and very tender,
Unto you who’ve watched the night through hoping for the dawn’s
Rise to usher Hope back.
A dance again, and then HIGH NOON shall sing:
I am High Noon, beloved by those that toil.
I bring your resting times, ring your midday feasting chimes,
Pan’s hour that brings you panting to the hedgerows,
Dalliance in the river rushes,
In the shadows and deep hushes,
Over bee-filled beds of potherbs, over bird-filled,
quivering woodlands,
Blessed rest in summer days, surcease ‘neath the
Summer haze.
A dance again, and in her turn the EVENTIDE shall sing:
I am the Eve, beloved by those that tire.
All along the sunken lanes
And across the parching plains
I set dewy winds a-blowing,
Bring the cattle byrewards, lowing;
Bring the bats out, lure the owls out, lure the twilight
beasts and fowls out;
Bid a broadening path of moonbeams hunt the
homing smacks from seaward,
Flitting past the harbour lanthorns, trailing in a
flight to leeward;
Set the harbour tumult rounding up the misty windings of the mountains;
Set my tiny horns a-sounding by the rillets, by the
woodland fountains...
Tiny, tiny gnat-horns sounding in an intermitting cadence,
Cry, “Stroll homewards men and maidens,
Done is done and over’s over,
Leave the wheatfields, quit the clover,
Masters, hired ones, all you tired ones,
Troop along the dog-rose lanes, troop across the misty plains,
Done is done... is done, and over’s over.”
The Night shall step forward and shall catch at the arm
of the Eve. Then shall NIGHT say:
(To the Eve) Enough, enough,
You steal too many of my silent hours...
(To the Alan and the Woman) I am the Night beloved
by them that love
As you do love.
I am that Night
That was in the beginning, I am she
That shall be the end... You come from me
And hasten back to me, and all the rest
Is shadow.
What’s the Dawn?
The shadow of a dream... And what High Noon?
A vague unrest, a shadow on your slumbers...
And ling’ring Eve has shadows in her hair,
The shadows of a shadow...She’s a thief
That steals my attributes, and is beloved
Because she is my shadow.
I am Truth,
A darkness, a soft darkness. And in that
Is all that’s worth the seeing. In my arms
Is all that’s worth the having. I’m august
But tender... tender... Oh, you mortal things,
That pass from Night to Night, from womb to womb
I am the best.
She sings.
Over my grasses go, for a little while
I’ll bid my flowers breathe their faint night scents.
For a little while
Go close together, straining lip to lip,
Go close together, straining heart to heart,
For a little while... for all the time you have.
She speaks again.
The soft warm darkness shall hang overhead,
The great white planets wheel from the horizon,
You shall not know the nakedness of shame,
Nor know at all of sorrow on the earth,
The while I hang above you with the face
Of a wan mother, white with light of stars.
She sings again.
Over my grasses go for a little while,
Hearing no sound, seeing no sight of earth,
For a little while
Cling close together, straining lip to lip,
Cling close together, straining breast to breast,
For a little while... for all the time you have...
(She speaks very low, as if to herself.)
And at the last
A wind shall sigh among my whispering grasses,
The planets fail behind a brooding cloud,
Your eyelids shall fall down upon your eyes
And it shall be the end...
She sings as if triumphantly.
Under my grasses lie for the rest of time,
Hearing no sound, thinking no thought of earth,
For the rest of time.
Lie close together, silent, ear to ear,
Lie close together, slumb’ring hand in hand,
For the rest of time, for all the time you have.
Then shall men unseen in the roof of the hall hoist
out of sight the gilt Sphere of the Zodiac, and there
shall be disclosed a great globe of the Earth which had
been hid within the other. Then shall the four Times
of Day Dance a solemn measure round the globe to the
sound of music. There shall be sundry devices. As that,
there shall come a Woman called the Autumn habited
in russet and garlanded with streamers of berries of
the hawthorn. And this Autumn would have the Times
of Day observe a nice distance, equal one from the other,
a?id a flight of the birds called starlings shall be set free.
Then shall a reverend man dressed in furs, and bearing
a heavy burden of thorns cut faggot wise, enter. He shall
be the Winter, and shall dispute with the Autumn as
to the manner of the dance. He shall wish the DAWN and
the EVE to stand nearer HIGH NOON. And he shall
prevail, and a flight of great wood doves shall cross the
hall. And in like manner shall come the Spring and
the Summer each with their due attributes. These last
four shall foin hands and dance round about the limes
of Day. Then shall come men to the number of the cycles
that have passed since the year of our Lord’s birth, and
shall dance a solemn measure round them all. And a
salvo of musquetoons shall be shot off without, beneath
the windows of the hall. And when the dance is ended
The End Piece shall be sung —
What if we say:
“These too shall pass away.”
Whether we say it
Now, or delay it
How we may,
These too shall pass away.
THE WIND’S QUEST
OH, where shall I find rest?”
Sighed the Wind from the west;
“I’ve sought in vain o’er dale and down.
Through tangled woodland, tarn and town.
But found no rest.”
“Rest thou ne’er shalt find..
Answered Love to the Wind;
“For thou and I, and the great grey sea
May never rest till Eternity
Its end shall find.”
Note — These lines, the first I ever wrote, were printed in the Anarchist journal, The Torch, in 1891.
ON HEAVEN
To V., who asked for a plan
for a working Heaven.
I
THAT day the sunlight lay on the farms,
On the morrow the bitter frost that there was!
That night my young love lay in my arms,
The morrow how bitter it was!
And because she is very tall and quaint 5
And golden, like a quattrocento saint,
I desire to write about Heaven;
To tell you the shape and the ways of it,
And the joys and the toil and the maze of it,
For these there must be in Heaven, 10
Even in Heaven!
For God is a good man, God is a kind man,
And God’s a good brother, and God is no blind man,
And God is our father.
I will tell you how this thing began: 15
How I waited in a little town near Lyons many years,
And yet knew nothing of passing time, or of her tears,
But, for nine slow years, lounged away at my table in the shadowy sunlit square
Where the small cafés are.
The Place is small and shaded by great planes, 20
Over a rather human monument
Set up to Louis Dixhuit in the year
Eighteen fourteen; a funny thing with dolphins
About a pyramid of green-dripped, sordid stone.
But the enormous, monumental planes 25
Shade it all in, and in the flecks of sun
Sit market women. There’s a paper shop
Painted all blue, a shipping agency,
Three or four cafés; dank, dark colonnades
Of an eighteen-forty Mairie. I’d no wish 30
To wait for her where it was picturesque,
Or ancient or historic, or to love
Over well any place in the land before she came
And loved it too. I didn’t even go
To Lyons for the opera; Arles for the bulls, 35
Or Avignon for glimpses of the Rhone.
Not even to Beaucaire! I sat about
And played long games of dominoes with the maire,
Or passing commis-voyageurs. And so
I sat and watched the trams come in, and read 40
The Libre Parole and sipped the thin, fresh wine
They call Piquette, and got to know the people,
The kind, southern people….
Until, when the years were over, she came in her swift red car,
Shooting out past a tram; and she slowed and stopped and lighted absently down, 45
A little dazed, in the heart of the town;
And nodded imperceptibly.
With a sideways look at me.
So our days here began.
And the wrinkled old woman who keeps the café, 50
And the man
Who sells the Libre Parole,
And the sleepy gendarme,
And the fat facteur who delivers letters only in the shady,
Pleasanter kind of streets; 55
And the boy I often gave a penny,
And the maire himself, and the little girl who loves toffee
And me because I have given her many sweets;
And the one-eyed, droll
Bookseller of the rue Grand de Provence,— 60
Chancing to be going home to bed,
Smiled with their kindly, fresh benevolence,
Because they knew I had waited for a lady
Who should come in a swift, red, English car,
To the square where the little cafés are. 65
And the old, old woman touched me on the wrist
With a wrinkled finger,
And said: “Why do you linger?—
Too many kisses can never be kissed!
And comfort her—nobody here will think harm— 70
Take her instantly to your arm!
It is a little strange, you know, to your dear,
To be dead!”
But one is English,
Though one be never so much of a ghost; 75
And if most of your life have been spent in the craze to relinquish
What you want most,
You will go on relinquishing,
You will go on vanquishing
Human longings, even 80
In Heaven.
God! You will have forgotten what the rest of the world is on fire for—
The madness of desire for the long and quiet embrace,
The coming nearer of a tear-wet face;
Forgotten the desire to slake 85
The thirst, and the long, slow ache,
And to interlace
Lash with lash, lip with lip, limb with limb, and the fingers of the hand with the hand
And …
You will have forgotten….
But they will all awake; 90
Aye, all of them shall awaken
In this dear place.
And all that then we took
Of all that we might have taken,
Was that one embracing look, 95
Coursing over features, over limbs, between eyes, a making sure, and a long sigh,
Having the tranquillity
Of trees unshaken,
And the softness of sweet tears,
And the clearness of a clear brook 100
To wash away past years.
(For that too is the quality of Heaven,
That you are conscious always of great pain
Only when it is over
And shall not come again. 105
Thank God, thank God, it shall not come again,
Though your eyes be never so wet with the tears
Of many years!)
II
And so she stood a moment by the door
Of the long, red car. Royally she stepped down, 110
Settling on one long foot and leaning back
Amongst her russet furs. And she looked round …
Of course it must be strange to come from England
Straight into Heaven. You must take it in,
Slowly, for a long instant, with some fear … 115
Now that affiche, in orange, on the kiosque:
“Seven Spanish bulls will fight on Sunday next
At Arles, in the arena” … Well, it’s strange
Till you get used to our ways. And, on the Mairie,
The untidy poster telling of the concours 120
De vers de soie, of silkworms. The cocoons
Pile, yellow, all across the little Places
Of ninety townships in the environs
Of Lyons, the city famous for silks.
What if she’s pale? It must be more than strange, 125
After these years, to come out here from England
To a strange place, to the stretched-out arms of me,
A man never fully known, only divined,
Loved, guessed at, pledged to, in your Sussex mud,
Amongst the frost-bound farms by the yeasty sea. 130
Oh, the long look; the long, long searching look!
And how my heart beat!
Well, you see, in England
She had a husband. And four families—
His, hers, mine, and another woman’s too—
Would have gone crazy. And, with all the rest, 135
Eight parents, and the children, seven aunts
And sixteen uncles and a grandmother.
There were, besides, our names, a few real friends,
And the decencies of life. A monstrous heap!
They made a monstrous heap. I’ve lain awake 140
Whole aching nights to tot the figures up!
Heap after heaps, of complications, griefs,
Worries, tongue-clackings, nonsenses and shame
For not making good. You see the coil there was!
And the poor strained fibres of our tortured brains, 145
And the voice that called from depth in her to depth
In me … my God, in the dreadful nights,
Through the roar of the great black winds, through the sound of the sea!
Oh agony! Agony! From out my breast
It called whilst the dark house slept, the stairheads creaked; 150
From within my breast it screamed and made no sound;
And wailed … And made no sound.
And howled like the damned … No sound! No sound!
Only the roar of the wind, the sound of the sea,
