The Project Gutenberg eBook of The silver net

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Title: The silver net

Poems

Author: Louis Vintras

Release date: October 25, 2025 [eBook #77120]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Unicorn, 1903

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Terry Jeffress, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SILVER NET ***

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Book cover

[i]

THE SILVER NET

[iii]

To
HILDA.

[iv]

Hope is a net of silver thread
Cast in the swirling stream of life,
Where prey with scales of gold and red  
Is ever hidden, ever rife;
Put oft upon the rocky bed,
The net is rended in the strife.
Thus ’tis we often toil in vain,
Yet never weary of our dream;
And looking fondly in the stream,
We mend our net and try again.

[v]

THE SILVER NET

POEMS BY LOUIS VINTRAS

decorative dots

LONDON · AT THE UNICORN

VII CECIL COURT · MCMIII

[vii]

CONTENTS.

PAGE
I. Vision 1
II. Alone 2
III. Betrothal 4
IV. ‘... AND THERE WAS NO MORE SEA’ 5
V. Aspirations 6
VI. In the Heart of a Rose 8
VII. A Stranger 9
VIII. Evolution 11
IX. Nocturne 12
X. The City of Anguish 13
XI. Magdalene 14
XII. Fable 15
XIII. Confession 18
XIV. The Mystic Garden 19
XV. The Ring 22
XVI. Ishtar 23
XVII. Illusion 25
XVIII. The Idol 26
XIX. Tintagel 27
XX. But in her eyes there is no light 29
XXI. Roses Two 30
XXII. At your Feet 36
XXIII. Proposal 37
XXIV. [viii] A River Impression 38
XXV. Triumph 39
XXVI. Violets 41
XXVII. Eroteme 42
XXVIII. The Eye 43
XXIX. Shadows 46
XXX. The Palace of Desires 47
XXXI. Lineage 50
XXXII. The Earth Regained 51
XXXIII. Envoi 52

[1]

VISION

Great ships, with spreading wings of dazzling white,
I see for ever passing in the night,
Bearing away dead souls
Of men and women, whom I meet each day
Still living in the clay.

[2]

ALONE

Evening made a violet darkness in the thickness of the wood,
All was silent, all was still;
And the man of many pleasures felt upon him steal a mood
That was stronger than his will.
In the sky each glowing star assumed a different coloured flame,
But the flames they gave no light.
He was cold at heart and weary and a numbing sense of shame
Made him fearful of the night.
Though alone, he felt that hidden in the bushes and the trees
Many eyes were watching him.
When he tried to move he wavered, and he fell upon his knees,
And his sight with tears was dim.
While he knelt, he knew not how long, in the grass a blue-bell glowed,
Glowed with light amid the dew.
[3]
As he watched with straining eyes, from which the tears no longer flowed,
The blue flower grew and grew;
Vaguely human in its outline, half a flower, half a child,
High now as his kneeling self,
And the flower-child bent to him with an impulse strange and wild,
And he felt the little elf
Kiss his lips and heard it softly, softly call him by his name,
In a voice unearthly, sad.
‘I’m your child and I was born of your first love and born in shame;
I am dead and she is mad.’
Something like a shudder shook the stately trees, the plants, the weeds,
As the man rose up again—
In the mystery of this wood the leaves, the blossoms were the deeds,
Living deeds of mortal men.
Pale, he seized the fancy-creature savagely, and hurled it down,
Trampled it into the earth.
Then he heard a woman sobbing and the rustle of a gown....
And he laughed—just sound, no mirth.

[4]

BETROTHAL

The steamer glided like a car of silver o’er the sea;
Above the dying worlds revolved their dark and crumbling wrecks,
Dead as the groping shadows of our shipmates on the decks—
All dead save you and me.
And yet amid this lie two fates were sealed, two souls set free;
Hands met and lips touched lips in rapturous spite of death and night,
And lo! at once each ghost, each world was touched with life and light,
Kindled by you and me.

[5]

‘AND THERE WAS NO MORE SEA’

Revelation, xxi. 1.

The white-crested wave swirls by in the night
With many a shriek and a moan!
’Tis the soul of a thief in its whirlpool plight—
Not water, but flesh and bone.
And this soul is torn and rent by the reef,
And the frantic waves they fight
For the milk-white blood this soul of a thief
Sheds on the rocks each night.
And sinners laugh at the pangs and doles
Foretold in Holy Writ,
But the beautiful waves are dead men’s souls
And the sea is the bottomless pit.

[6]

ASPIRATIONS

O human dreams unrealisable!
Fire-tinged, gemmated, luring, damning dreams,
Born but to shame the everlasting soul,
Caged in its flesh-bound dungeon! Dreams of beauty,
Growing to sinhood, fruits of seed-thoughts,
Fallen in times primordial from the Godhead,
Sweet with almighty innocence, divine
With ignorance of nakedness and form,
To germinate on life’s warm flesh and live
In many purple passions! Such your dreams,
O man, from Genesis to Revelation!
The harlot and the harlequin are types
Of your desires; her love is like his garb,
Motley and false. Then sweep your pantheons
Clean of these cobwebs. In the crystal disc,
By which the hag Philosophy slumbers,
Behold the play.
The nubile maiden seeks
Mad stars that dance at night in lonely wells.
[7]
A withered pope mumbling his benediction,
Urbi et orbi, is absorbed the while
With thoughts of Rome eternal, his by right,
Now lost to God and him, because the king’s.
And so the peaceful blessing wavers, dies
E’er it has even drifted o’er the town—
Alas! then, for the world.
A graceful girl,
Royal with the pageantry of silk and ermine,
Cursed with the name of Highness, brow ablaze
With diamonds, cutting deep into the skin,
Passes with dewy lips and swooning eyes,
Some stalwart soldier of her bodyguard.
The young man slowly dying in a ward,
Sees, with the envious smile of bankrupt life,
The pretty nurse who hovers round his bed
With all life’s restless rustle in her skirts.
O, who shall ever sing, O tortured man,
The Babylons of your imagination,
The castles built on clouds, the women loved
In thought, the frantic thirst for beauteous life,
Your wild despairs at every wreck, as Death
Draws ever near to cool your red-hot soul
For an eternity of peace!

[8]

IN THE HEART OF A ROSE

As I strolled through the close, in the heart of a rose,
I espied of a woman the figure divine,
In a rose, ruby stained, as a chalice with wine.
And the opening rose did her beauty disclose;
Her red lips she upraised to my lips, wove her arms
Round my neck, bound me fast with her spells and her charms.
And this woman I chose from the heart of the rose,
Chose to share all my dreamland of love and of power,
Stole my soul and imprisoned my soul in the flower.

[9]

A STRANGER

‘Yes, I was Desdemona yesterday,’
She said to me a-sudden as we stood beside
An antique vase of porphyry,
Gazing upon the swaying crowd below.
‘Arms nervous, eastern eyes which flashed fierce fires,
The coruscation of estival nights
Glowing amid the all-encircling dark,
These made my joy;
The coiling hatred of the devil-snake,
My pain.
I saw the twitching of Othello’s hands,
And died at twenty past eleven.
To-morrow, in Verona, at a mask,
I meet love’s arch-type glorified beyond
Mere human manhood to Apollo’s self;
And I, this magnificent lover’s love,
Shall be a maiden in her fourteenth year
For just three hours.
’Tis thus I live, and hate, and love, and die
Night after night,
[10]
In a superb and shameless prostitution,
Leaving self in my wardrobe, a disguise
Worn only in the daylight of the world
To hide these many souls.
Ghosts, born in gardens where the poet treads,
Resolve themselves into my being:
Alone, I merely stand in this death carnival
Which you call life—a stranger.’

[11]

EVOLUTION

She rests among the roses red and gay,
Wrapt in the golden mantle of her hair,
While in her eyes—two mirrors blue and fair—
All girlhood’s winsome charms and wonders play.
Love to the shimmering sunbeams spreads his wings,
And speeding through the skies with laughing eyes,
Comes to the rosy bower where beauty sighs,
Presses his lips upon her lips and sings.
O symbol towering o’er our downward strife,
In Heaven born, like Heaven immutable,
Gift of the dreamy spheres to grosser earth,
Wherein is shadowed forth to-morrow’s birth,
The unknown made to man attainable—
Love opening with a kiss the book of life!

[12]

NOCTURNE

The big, cold moon, and the red glow-lights by the lines,
The panting steam, and the luggage cars
Wending their fugue-like course through a wood of pines,
And around the immutable stars....

[13]

THE CITY OF ANGUISH

About the city clouds eternal hang
And pallid shadows wander through the mist,
Who to the moaning tempest eager list.
The night is eerie with the mournful clang
Of bells funereal. There is no name
Written upon this city’s crumbling walls,
And those who live within its cheerless halls
Are forlorn lovers of the goddess Fame.
Tread gently, stranger, in this hallowed place,
And if among the crowd perchance you meet
Some long-forgotten and once-cherished face,
Say not a word, extend no hand to greet
Your friend, grant him at least oblivion’s grace,
For pity’s sake be silent and retreat.

[14]

MAGDALENE

Now she lay on the white marble flags, and her hair
Made a soft cloud of gold, through the cloud here and there
Peeped the warm, rosy skin. And her eyes were as dreams
Dreamt in youth by a god, while her kiss-craving lips,
Red with love, haunted men. In her pallid despair
She had come from her palace, she knelt at my feet
And her tears as they fell burnt my flesh. Then she spoke—
Whispered sins music made like a nun’s clinking beads.
Magdalene, Magdalene, glowing shame of the world!
Just a touch of my lips on her brow crimson tinged,
And her head like a child’s lay at rest on my breast.
Lullaby, Magdalene, yours my kiss and my song.

[15]

FABLE

They met beside a babbling stream,
Old Death, young Love;
Dawn threw its ochre-tinted gleam
Through the leaves above.
‘Father, you look as sad as life,’
Said Love to Death.
‘Boy, keep your taunts for human strife,
Nor waste your breath.’
He dipped his scythe in the crystal tide,
Shook off the spray:
‘If youth for work has too much pride,
Go on your way.’
Love bit the end of a blade of grass
And bending low:
‘To-day you meet a pretty lass,
Dear Death, I trow.’
The Mower chuckled: ‘She is fair,
Fair as a flower.
I shall be rich with golden hair
Before an hour.’
[16]
‘Some girl whose lot it was to pine,
Drowned in a pool,
Leaving her pale-faced babe to whine
And grow ... a fool.’
‘No forlorn girl, no treacherous smiles
Of a passing churl;
Her mother baffled all your wiles
And kept the girl,
Stainless for me to bear above
In the month of May,’
Made answer Death to the stripling Love
In the dawn of day.
‘Each mortal mother and mortal Eve
They play our game,
And we might sleep from morn till eve
’Twould be the same.
Your tale, good sir, is very sad
But hardly new.’
Old Death sat down beside the lad:
‘The tale is true,
The house is near, around the door
Vine branches creep....’
But ere the Wanderer could say more
He fell asleep.
So now the saucy imp was blithe;
Holding his breath,
The sable cloak and glittering scythe
He took from Death
[17]
And laugh gaily skipped away,
Upon his quest.
He pushed the door with vine leaves gay,
The ghostly guest;
The mother led him to the room
With curtains blue,
Where the girl was waiting for her doom
And left the two.
He sat him down beside the lass
And took her hand,
She smiled and thought that in the glass
Would stop the sand.
But he kissed her lips, the pretty lad,
He kissed her eyes....
When came the Mower grim and sad
To claim his prize—
Having at last from his trance awoke—
He found instead
His scythe wrapt in his sable cloak
On the silken bed.

[18]

CONFESSION

‘I love,’ she said, ‘a child of Eve, I love to love;
Loving, beloved, my heart content, I soar above
All other hopes in life and all the fears of death.
‘I love, my beauty and my innocence I give
To my beloved, and laugh, and am content to live,
And sing my passion with the nightingales and thrushes.
‘I love, I love. Have all your human dogmas power
Closer to bind my thoughts to him! God gave the flower
Its perfume, and the bird its song, and me my love.’

[19]

THE MYSTIC GARDEN

Many coloured suns diffused their gorgeous rainbows through the air
O’er a garden strange and fair,
Trees and flowers on every side extended far and far away,
Like vast armies in array.
As I walked within this garden where the earth was mixed with bone,
My foot stumbled o’er a stone
And the stone in twain was cloven, and a lurid flame was kindled,
Which arising slowly mingled
With the suns which were revolving in the glory of their noon,
Through the skies of burning June.
On I strolled and saw a lily which was whiter than the snow;
Kissed the lily bending low.
[20]
As my lips devoutly touched it, lo! it vanished into space;
Rose a woman’s haloed face,
Where the lily had been basking in the multicoloured day—
Just a vision gold and grey—
And I knew it was the Virgin by the pity in her eyes,
Azure-tinted from the skies.
While I gazed upon the visage, while I wondered at its pain,
’Twas a flower once again.
Then I turned me from the lily to a fragrant brier tree,
Bloom-bespattered, fair to see,
Culled a rose, and in its place beheld the thorn-crowned Saviour’s head,
The sad brow bedewed with red,
With the lips so kind and pallid, parted in their constant prayer.
Then upon the perfumed air
Played his voice: ‘When death, the angel, touches human clay, as you
Touched the rose, then God anew,
Free, arises from the dust of mortal man, as I arose
From the humble brier rose,
[21]
As my Mother from the lily, as the Spirit from the stone,
The first woman from the bone.’
And the vision slowly faded and I fell upon my knees
’Mid the flowers and the trees,
Crossed my hands and bent my forehead, doing reverence all the day
To the God within my clay.

[22]

THE RING

But a tiny ring of gold,
Just a link;
Wear it and your heart is sold,
Strange to think.
’Till it glitters on your hand
You are free....
Shall I cast it on the sand,
In the sea?
Which was Judas’ greater sin,
Kiss or gold?
Love must end where sales begin,
I am told.
We will have no ring, no kiss
To deceive—
When you hear the serpent hiss,
Think of Eve.

[23]

ISHTAR

The vanity of Art rebuking Nature,
Such she,
Whose whirlpool eyes, where eddying mysteries seethe and clash,
And false red lips
Make loveliness sublime of human clay.
And men forget the altar and their vows
When they have felt the glamour of her gaze,
Or held her hand, or touched her lips.
Ah! listen to the treacherous music, hear
Her voice,
Awakening slumbering echoes in the soul’s abyss,
Her silver song
As she unclasps her girdle with a smile;
And having reaped the evil, scarcely leaves
Enough of whiteness or of righteousness
To robe a bishop or a pope.
[24]
Her laugh has rocked wild cities to their ruin.
The Gods,
When banished from their temples, left this parting bane,
This blue-eyed sin,
This Ishtar—pallid Eponym of lust—
That when we meet her in our squares and streets,
Bartering her beauty, we may yet recall
The graven images of Babylon.

[25]

ILLUSION

The friends throw rice and confetti, wave handkerchiefs, and hail
Love’s triumph, as away the well-appointed brougham hies:
The husband is a man of wealth, and old, and sad, and pale;
The youthful bride has full red lips and mocking violet eyes.

[26]

THE IDOL

I am an idol made of bronze
And sit within a silver shrine,
Attended by a shaven bonze,
In a temple made of serpentine.
I sit thus through the burning day,
Through nights of gold-tipped indigo,
While at my feet the people pray
And lithesome virgins come and go.
But not for me their sidelong glance,
As reverently they wave their hands,
For watching their religious dance
A youthful, blue-eyed shepherd stands.
And I, the idol wrought in bronze,
To be that youth of low degree,
Would sacrifice my shaven bonze,
My temple, my eternity.

[27]

TINTAGEL

I sat within Tintagel’s fabled walls,
Amid the scattered stones of human works
Crumbling upon the granite mount of God,
As life upon the rock Eternity.
And sitting there I heard two voices speak,
The busy Ocean and the slothful Past;
They whispered good King Arthur’s magic name,
The Past was sad, the heartless Ocean laughed.
Poor King, he lived for many happy years
In his illusion, ’till all knowledge came
Soul-stirring to this ruler of mankind,
Who only knew the lying half of man.
One blast of heavenly fire will kill the oak,
One touch of knowledge broke this kingly heart;
And so he donned his armour, took his sword
Excalibur, and put his helmet on,
And fought his way to Heaven, told his God
How wicked men had ridden through his dream,
Played with the devil at his Table-round,
Their souls for stakes. He told of all their sins,
[28]
The treacherous kiss of queenly Guinevere,
Eyes swimming with the sight of Lancelot,
How Merlin hoary with the frost of years,
In Vivien’s lovely arms one day betrayed
His life-long gathered lore of elfin charms,
How Gawain lied, how knightly vows were broken
As readily as lances in a tourney,
And how these reckless Christian paladins
Were thieves of honour, and the peerless dames
All sin and loveliness.
And God was silent.

[29]

BUT IN HER EYES THERE IS NO LIGHT

You see her in a ball-room, at the play,
And in the street you meet her every day,
Pale as the pearls she wears about her neck.
Silent she sits at table by your side,
Smiling she walks with you at eventide,
Pale as the pearls she wears about her neck.
She haunts your thoughts by day, your dreams by night....
But in her wondering eyes there is no light,
No more than in the pearls about her neck.

[30]

ROSES TWO

A Dialogue.

Julie, seventeen.
Auriol, sixteen.
Any place; any time.

Auriol

Julie, I have a secret for your ear.

Julie

What have you, little cousin, with such things
As secrets?

Auriol

Tut, a girl has many thoughts
She knows are better kept....

Julie

Yet longs to tell.

Auriol

Yes, pretty secrets have a double joy,
The keeping and the breaking; and I think
They’re like old Saxe, more valued when they’re broken.

[31]

Julie (eagerly)

Yes, darling, I agree, so....

Auriol

It is hard,
Awfully hard to break. The story runs
Something like this: the giver was a man....

Julie

Giver of what?

Auriol

Ah! do not interrupt;
For if, at once, I told you what he gave
Where would the story be. We’ll call him he—
The abstract always has a secret charm—
The other person ... she, you see, was I....
That is....

Julie

Do not explain.

Auriol

It might mislead.

Julie

I like historians with imagination,
And Truth when she has draped her nakedness.

Auriol

It was last evening ... you remember, dear,
How fine it was last evening, how the stars....

[32]

Julie

Oh! never mind the stars.

Auriol

Poor little things!
And yet they’re very troublesome, I grant,
Prying upon this world of ours, at night,
Just when good people want to say their prayers,
Or gather dewy roses in the garden.

Julie

Sweet, are not afraid to go alone
Rose-gathering, when the fairies are abroad?

Auriol

I did not say I was alone.

Julie

So he...?

Auriol

Was there. (Producing a rose which she has held concealed.)
And see, Julie, the lovely rose
He gave me; but I cannot quite remember
His words. Ah! yes, he said the rose was love’s
Dear symbol, and was made to be a gift
From those who love to those they love, that I
Was Beauty.... Do you catch his meaning, dear?

Julie

I think the gentleman was quite explicit.

[33]

Auriol

One cannot be too careful in such matters.

Julie

Especially with a stranger ... and a man.

Auriol

Lothario is not a stranger.

Julie

Ah!
Lothario indeed. So it was he?

Auriol

Julie, you should say ‘Mr.,’ if you please.

Julie

Traitors their titles forfeit.

Auriol

He is not
A traitor. See how fair his rose has kept:
And symbols die, they say, when vows are broken.

Julie (taking a faded rose from her bosom)

True, this poor rose he gave me, three days since,
Is withered.

Auriol

Are you sure he gave it you?
(Sadly)
These roses look like sisters.

[34]

Julie

Merely cousins.
Yes, he gave it to me. (Sighs.) Three days is all
A man’s love and a rose’s life can last.

Auriol

But he swore that I was his only love.

Julie

That’s what they always say.

Auriol

How do you know?

Julie

My ... brother told me so.

Auriol

It is too bad....
He stole a kiss.

Julie

That’s what they always do.

Auriol

How do you know?

Julie

My brother told me so.

Auriol

I think that men are knaves.

[35]

Julie

May be they are;
Yet, Auriol, ’tis not perhaps their fault,
For women keep the goodness to themselves.
Come, we must not waste time on faded flowers,
Nor lose our tempers on a faded heart.
We’ll give these rosy petals to the wind,

(They throw the flowers away)

Lest it should take our thoughts and toy with them.
When comes Lothario, with honeyed words,
To claim his pledge of you or me, we’ll send
The swain to parley with the mocking wind,
Tell him that since he makes a sport of love,
’Tis wrong to run two hares at once. Now, sweet,
Let’s go and listen to the piping birds
And hear their music, being tired of words.

[36]

AT YOUR FEET

A beggar sat on the Temple’s floor,
Gazing around at the pious crowd
That knelt before the cross of gold,
On high amid the perfumed smoke;
Scanning the marble pillars bright,
The costly silks and glittering gems
Upon the priesthood in the choir,
And all the swaying silver lamps
That carried stars of ruby fire:
‘Dreamers and pharisean fools,
The heavens are only coloured void,
Christ is living at your feet
Beneath each beggar’s loathsome rags.’

[37]

PROPOSAL

Yes, I’m your brother, not by birth
Or any tie of earth:
Your brother—well, we can’t undo the past,—
Because kind mother Nature cast
Two minds into one mould.
Do not scorn, storm or scold,
That you, a girl, and I, a man, should be
Alike, I as it were your travesty,
Of course is very strange.
We’re the same work with here and there some trifling change:
You are de luxe on vellum, in the pride
Of silver clasps; I, in rough hide,
Bound anyhow.
But since ’tis so, then let us bow,
Accept the scheme,
Live, sigh, laugh, hope and dream,
Watch the play—
Grim or gay—
Side by side, you and I,
’Till we die.

[38]

A RIVER IMPRESSION.

White sails, fair women and a silver swan,
Boats gliding to the cadence of the oars,
With here and there the echo of a song,
And white-clad youths, and the majestic stream
In all its state of golden-spangled motion,
Deep as the silent mystery of a dream,
For ever hastening, hastening to the ocean....

[39]

TRIUMPH

I.

Just for a glance from her eyes as they smiled
Mocking and wild,
You would have left all your dreams, all your gold,
You would have sold,
Just for a word or a whisper, your soul
Parted or whole.

II.

Yet a poor price when the devil ... but hush!
Think of the blush,
Rosy as dawn and as shy, on her face....
It was a race
’Twixt you and me: you, so young, nigh a child,
I, man and wild.

III.

Envy of you was my life for a spell,
Now all is well;
Thunders were useless which did not crush you;
Wicked I grew;
Till she was mine, till I lived in the skies
Kissing her eyes.
[40]

IV.

King of her love now I reign and I sing:
Ne’er was a king
Equal to me, when my head on her breast
Softly I rest,
Thinking of you, with a poisoned love-dart
Deep in your heart.

[41]

VIOLETS

Mignon, you love the myrtle and the rose,
The lily, all the flowers which grace the close
Of queenly Nature’s Eden; love them well,
For there are mysteries more than man can tell
Deep-hidden in their perfumed censers, dear,
And music unknown to the human ear
In their harmonious scales of varied hues—
Crimson imperial and eastern blues,
Emerald, and sheeny ors, and glittering steel—
Still more for those who have a soul to feel
The breath of love which is of beauty born.
Bright flowers, bejewelled with the dew of morn,
As you are sweet and pure; and God, I trow,
Took of the new-born violet’s deepest glow
To make the wonder of your tender eyes.

[42]

EROTEME

We hold that love is a gift divine,
Then why are kisses sold?
O, is there then no earthly shrine
But men defile with gold!
Maiden, your sixteen springs were worth
The jewels of a regal crown....
Why did you hate your humble birth?
Why sin for a silken gown?

[43]

THE EYE

I.

When I was King Shalmaneser,
And wielded the might of Assur
In Nineveh,
Over three thousand years ago,
One day I sat upon my throne
In the hall of the hundred granite bulls,
Alone with my thoughts.
Unnoticed by me, the waning day
Deepened the shadows all around
In the hall of the hundred granite bulls.
It had come to pass that, the day before,
I had caused a man to be done to death,
Whose name was Chelech.
’Twas murder sure enough: for though
I was the king, and his life by right
Belonged to me to spare or take,
Yet it was murder.
For I had him strangled just because
His wife loved him and I loved her.
[44]
And now as I sat upon my throne
In the hall of the hundred granite bulls,
My gaze fell on my shield, which lay
On the flags at my feet,
My shield of toughened bullock hide,
Covered with plates of beaten gold,
Which softly glowed in the growing darkness.
And there in the midst of the shield I saw
A living human eye
Looking at me,
A veiled, unpleasant, sickly eye—
The eye of Chelech.

II.

Now yester evening, as I came
Across the marshes, with my gun
Under my arm, and a brace of ducks
Slung over my shoulder,
A strange thing happened.
You know how dull the weather was:
Clouds grey and saffron hung low down,
Quickening the coming darkness.
Being still some way from home,
I sat me down, beside a pool,
On the fallen trunk of a tree
To fill my pipe.
And sitting there it chanced I gazed
[45]
Into the dark, deep water,
And saw distinctly in the pool
A living eye
Looking at me,
A veiled, unpleasant, sickly eye—
The eye of Chelech:
The man I’d caused to be done to death,
Over three thousand years ago,
When I was King Shalmaneser,
And wielded the might of Assur
In far-famed Nineveh, because
His wife loved him and I loved her.

[46]

SHADOWS

From the towering opal globes, in the street, the crude white light streams down
On him, blue-eyed, on her, with hair like a flaming golden crown:
His cigarette glows to a crimson star as he slowly paces,
While, beside him, the woman smiling, shivers in her silks and laces.

[47]

THE PALACE OF DESIRES

I entered, through a pillared portico,
A stately hall with walls of burnished bronze,
Where twenty different coloured lambent flames
In separate, slender spirals hung aloft,
Shedding a subdued, stellar brilliancy,
Kind, as a discreet caress, to the eyes.
Here maidens danced; while other maidens sang,
Or stirred to sensuous music golden strings
Caught, like a fairy web, ’tween ivory bows.
The graceful cadence of their waving arms
Invited me to follow them. Indeed
’Twas no unpleasant bidding. Thus I reached,
With careless dalliance, a marble court
Ablaze with violet fire; where flowers shone
Like jewels, where perfume-laden fountains played
And birds with human voices sang—each note
A charm-born breath of passionate suggestion.
I halted wondering, for this marvellous place
Was paved with sharp-edged rubies. Yet the birds
Gave forth such dulcet notes, the maidens smiled
So winningly.... I bruised and cut my feet....
Surely the promised joy must be supreme.
[48]
Teeth set, hands clenched, I dragged my steps along,
An icy sweat oozed out of every pore
And clogged my hair; but still I struggled on.
What goal, once won, was ever worth the winning
That has not wrung the life-blood from our being.
At last! At last! The farther end was reached.
Then some mysterious force asunder drew
Two heavy purple curtains. I beheld
A lofty chamber white as virgin snow
And bathed in soft and even whiter light.
Here, on a silk-draped throne of sapphire, lay
Two women naked. Ah! such loveliness
Once to behold were worth a thousand pangs.
Their faces and their figures visions were,
Such as dear youth alone can conjure up
In solitary secrecy of thought.
Their eyes had hues unknown to human sight,
The hues of everlasting rainbows spanning
The far off interspaces of the worlds.
And one was fair, with wondrous woven hair
By godlike fingers spun from that first gleam
Of perfect light, which shooting through the spheres,
Rended of old the primal darkness, changed
The cold revolving orbs to living worlds.
But no less proudly did her sister bear
The regal mantle of her sable tresses,
Which fell about her perfect shoulders, o’er
The curving, marble splendour of her hips.
[49]
Again the guiding maidens urged me on,
Who little wanted urging. Now the ground
Was soothing in its softness. Had there been
Iron flags red hot I would have ventured still:
For they had seen me, and awaiting lay
Upon their throne in rosy nakedness.
Their glorious eyes were heavy-veiled with love;
Their lips were parted, waiting for my lips
To close them with a kiss; their arms outstretched
Offered the havens of their breasts to me.
So I had won, not laboured all in vain.
This was my minute wherein life is crowded.
The wild triumphal ebbing of my blood
Elated me. The magic of success
Gave me back youth with all its strength and dreams.
But then a something quivered ’neath my feet,
So cold and loathsome that I started back
And with misgiving eyes explored the ground.
Ah! me, the soothing softness I had felt,
After the torture of the jewelled pavement,
Was made of human bodies interlaced....
Dead men and women strong, and young, and white
With the weird whiteness of this common grave!
And then I knew I stood at last within
The secret chamber of that fatal palace,
Wrought of the mad desires of men, and paved
With mad despairs, the dread Gehenna where
The two arch-harlots Fame and Fortune dwell.

[50]

LINEAGE

I

A tea-room girl, she carries a tray
Through the day.
Of consciousness there is in her face
Hardly a trace,
Beyond a droop of the lip or lift
Of the brows in thanks for a generous gift.
She is reserved, indifferent, plain;
Yet with a something in her air
Which causes you to look again
At the wealth of her red-bronze hair.

II

Alone in her darkened room at night
Robed in white,
Sitting for hours in a high-backed chair,
Stately and fair,
With flashing eyes and lips proudly curled,
In thought she’s queen of a beautiful world,
Projecting, through a mental prism,
Her dream of power and pride of race—
The outcome of some royal atavism,
Impossible to trace.

[51]

THE EARTH REGAINED

Down, deep down, the damned are delving,
Delving at their prison walls,
Ever delving;
Till at times the walls give way
And the shrieking, hissing spirits,
Through some old volcanic fissure,
Upwards scramble to the light,
Free to walk the earth again,
Loosing in their eager flight
Hell’s liquid fire upon the world.

[52]

ENVOI

Let it linger, linger in your ear,
What I have said:
Let it linger, linger with you, dear,
When I am dead.

Strangeways & Sons, Tower Street, Cambridge Circus, W.C.

Other Works by Louis Vintras.

IN BLACK AND GOLD.

Impressions in Verse.

Crown 8vo.   1s.   (Out of Print.)

THE STAR.—‘Some twelve impressions in verse ... entitled “In Black and Gold,” are remarkable for the cleverness of their subjects.... “At the Music Hall,” in its vivid description of the “music-hall Circe” who, mated to a lord, and gazing on the scene of her former triumphs, hears “the old Bohemian voice of Sin” asking if her marriage is worth one hour of such fame as was hers, is perhaps the best.’

PASSION ROYAL.

A Legendary Romance of Assyria.

Crown 8vo.   6s.   London: Chapman & Hall.

THE ACADEMY.—‘The sumptuousness of Nineveh has touched the writer’s style, and his book is rich in colour.’

THE LITERARY WORLD.—‘The book is a well-conceived and dramatic story.’

THE SCOTSMAN.—‘The tale is really a romance of passion, the archæological interest, carefully wrought up and stimulating as it is, being always subordinate to the human. It is ably written.’

THE PALL MALL GAZETTE.—‘Ninus, the priest-king, when the tale begins, is laying siege to Bactria. The fall of the city, the orgies of blood and lust, all the turmoil and din and wickedness of a great Eastern camp in the hour of victory are well described.... Mr. Vintras has written a very interesting romance, which certainly rewards perusal.’

LADY FOLLY.

London: Hurst & Blackett, Ltd.

Crown 8vo.   6s.

THE BOOKMAN.—‘But it is the villain of the piece, the beautiful and strong-nerved Violet Merveil, who provides the real entertainment. Whether fighting a bishop or fascinating him; whether bent on ruining domestic happiness, or queening it on the stage, or humbly performing her Roman devotions, she is always admirable and admirably attired.’

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.—‘Dr. Louis Vintras ... stands convicted of being a subtle and genial humorist, endowed with a lively imagination, a happy turn for repartee and epigram, and a remarkable faculty for divining or detecting the hidden springs and more recondite motives of hidden action. Dr. Vintras is, moreover, a master of elegant and idiomatic English.... “Lady Folly” is destined to take rank among the conspicuous literary successes of the current season.’

THE ACADEMY.—‘With absorbed interest you follow his course, for the style is brilliant and captivating.... Of smart portraiture and clever dialogue “Lady Folly” is full.’

THE SATURDAY REVIEW.—‘His descriptions are singularly striking.’

A PAGAN SOUL.

London: Hurst & Blackett, Ltd.

Crown 8vo.   6s.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.—‘The book is eminently conversational, and teams with “quip and repartee,” with colloquial lunges and ripostes in carte and tierce, with unforced smartness and “good things” said no less naturally than effectively.’

THE SATURDAY REVIEW.—‘Louis Vintras ought to write a play. His dialogue and epigrams are excellent.’

Poetry Published at the Unicorn.

THE VINE DRESSER. By T. Sturge Moore. Fcap. 8vo. cloth gilt, 5s. net.

The Times.—‘Mr. Moore has an individual talent and a gift of distinction. The first poem in the book—a recipe for making Coän wine, supposed to have been “sent from Egypt with a fair robe of tissue to a Sicilian vine-dresser, B.C. 276”—is like a cameo with its clear-cut images of sea and Sicily.’

APHRODITE AGAINST ARTEMIS. A Play. By T. Sturge Moore. Small 4to. cloth gilt, 5s. net.

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘There is a growing sense of terror in the scene, that raises the work to a point of high perfection; the gloom of an advancing fate deepens gradually and imperceptibly, and the final picture is grimly painted and expressive. This is a work of great promise, the production of an earnest and sincere artist.’

THE CRIER BY NIGHT. A Play. By Gordon Bottomley. Fcap. 4to. half parchment, 2s. 6d. net.

The Literary World.—‘The best piece of work that so far he has made public.... We hope Mr. Bottomley’s play will be put upon the stage.’

ODES. By Laurence Binyon. With a Woodcut Title-page after William Strang. Crown 8vo. cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. net.

The Athenæum.—‘Mr. Binyon is slowly but surely winning for himself a distinguished place in the ranks of contemporary poetry. He has the right temper; he does not cry aloud in the streets, or make any attempt to catch the veering of the popular taste, but is content to write for the sake of having written, with invariable sincerity of thought, directness of vision, and conscientious craftmanship. The best of these Odes are on the highest level of achievement.’

RUE. By Laurence Housman. Imp. 16mo. cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. net.

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘It is poetry, and not merely accomplished verse.’

JOHN OF DAMASCUS. By Douglas Ainslie. Fcap. 8vo. half bound, 6s. net. Third and greatly enlarged edition.

The Outlook.—‘On the whole it is safe to say that we have not had anything quite so spontaneous, so fresh, so deft, and so promising for a considerable time past.... He rhymes you page upon page of the soundest, frankest, and prettiest stuff, never getting out of breath, never faltering or hesitating, and never tumbling into the sloughs and quagmires that beset the long-winded.’

A SHORT DAY’S WORK. Original Poems, Translations, and Prose Essays. By Monica Peveril Turnbull. With a Portrait. Crown 8vo. cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. net. Third Edition.

The Spectator.—‘A book which can be read through in an hour, but is not likely to be forgotten in a lifetime.’

THE LITTLE CHRISTIAN YEAR. Medium 16mo. vellum gilt, 2s. 6d. net.

The Pall Mall Gazette.—‘Signed everywhere with the sensitive signature of intellectual emotion.’

The Artist’s Library.

Edited by LAURENCE BINYON.

The Volumes of the Artist’s Library are Foolscap Quartos (8½ × 6¾ inches). The Letterpress is on antique laid paper. The Illustrations are all separately printed. The price is 2s. 6d. net each volume, in paper boards, with cloth back, or 3s. 6d. net in buckram, extra gilt.

HOKUSAI. By C. J. Holmes. With Twenty Full-page Plates, including Four Plates printed in Colours. Second Edition.

Le Mercure de France.—‘Ce beau volume est nécessaire à tous les artistes et à tous ceux qui aiment l’art.’

GIOVANNI BELLINI. By Roger E. Fry. With Twenty-three Full-page Plates, including Three Photogravures. Second Edition.

Literature.—‘A model of its kind. It is beautifully printed and bound, and both letter-press and illustrations are exceptionally good.’

ALTDORFER. By T. Sturge Moore. With Twenty-five pages of Illustrations, most of them in tints.

The Saturday Review (in two-column notice).—‘Mr. Sturge Moore is the right sympathetic expounder of this half-childish secluded nature. His own imagination, with its delight in quaint surprises of observation and sharp simplicities of expression, fits him to handle an art that is not for everybody, and at whose gates heavy trespassers should rather be warned by notice-boards than strollers invited by guide-posts.’

GOYA. By Will Rothenstein. With Twenty Full-page Plates, including Three Photogravures and Nine Tinted Prints.

CONSTABLE. By C. J. Holmes. With Twenty-four Full-page Plates.

New Volumes.

VAN DYCK. By Lionel Cust. In Two Volumes.

HUBERT AND JOHN VAN EYCK. By Francis C. Weale. Revised by and based on the researches of W. H. James Weale.

LEONARDO DA VINCI. By Herbert P. Horne.

LITTLE ENGRAVINGS.

Two Volumes of this Series are now ready. Full particulars will be sent on application.

LONDON: AT THE UNICORN, VII. CECIL COURT, W.C.

Transcriber’s Notes