Leda Aldous Huxley 4

Leda Aldous Huxley 4

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.