 Other World by F. S. Flint Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo To R. A. He is sitting beneath the cherry tree in bloom, and the thought to the ripe cherries in his mouth and his eyes love the tall daisies in the grass and his children playing in the meadow. The light strikes truly through the lenses of his eyes, and a fair image falls upon the retina. The wind brings him many odours, earth, grasses, trees, flowers, and the oak wood burning in the fireplaces. His ears catch the rustle and song of many things, and the taste of the cherries is subtle in his mouth. He knows by their touch the things that frame his life. This is he who am I, without my cares and weaknesses. The channels of his soul are not clogged, his life flows freely, and my heart aches at the thought of the millions of miles of space, the millions of millions of miles that lie between us. He is there, I know. I am there. Since every combination exists, he must be there. I must be there. I must be happy somewhere. And yet he is so far away that I am sure no light from the star that lights and warms him can reach me, even though it travel the unimaginable number of miles a second that prove the kinship of light and electricity. So my physics master taught me. There are charlatans, these physicists. There is room in space for every combination. He is there. And he lifts his head and gazes at the cherry blossom, and at the sky that must be blue for me to care for it, with a scud of white clouds over it, and a warm sun shining through it, and he gazes carefree. For he knows that, just as yesterday, tomorrow there will be no call upon him, no invisible gnawing bondage. He knows, I say. But I mean that I know. He knows that tomorrow will be like today and yesterday, full of work that is a pain, a pleasure, and an enlargement, with a brain and heart working together with the hands. Whatever I imagine, or you imagine, exist. I can see the lilac in great wishes about my house, and the labyrinems with their rain of gold, the chestnuts and hawthorns, and bloom of red and white. These are trees and blossoms that must be there. There are other worlds I know where I walk in not such pleasant places, many that are worse than this on which I write my dream, many that are hells where I suffer in greater agony of body and spirit than I have known or shall know. But there is also this one world where I am leaving the cherry tree and bloom that will bear in due season, to go back to my work after my morning meditation, that is more a satisfaction, a feeding of the senses, sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing, than the probing and the solving of a problem. If the five pathways of my soul are free and clean swept, as they are, for the swift feet of sensation, thought as giants, and its words are songs and images. These I carry with me to the long room that is mine, where my books are in their clean white cases, in the wide oaken table that bears my papers, a firm and solid table whose strength is a friendly pleasure, with its drawers that slide so smoothly in and out that you think always of its maker as a brother. On my walls I have placed, there there now, pictures and drawings by my friends, which have not so much the shape of what they see about them as the form of their souls, the curves and lines, the colors, the call to mind, their talk, their actions, and the intimate, wordless conversations by which you love them. I have a chair designed and carved for me by the carpenter who lives in the house behind the ash trees, where the road turns at right angles to go through the village, the carpenter whose garden is full of verses that clamber up and over the walls and a roof of his house. He comes to me sometimes of an evening and talks of the stars, the constellations, that light, the nocturnal dreams of this faraway world. And he proves to me, taking them star by star and building them petal by petal, that they form on the whole black dome the shape of a cluster of verses. Sometimes in return I read to him some of my poems and he laughs in a queer way with his hand on his chin and his beard and his eyes on the roses he has brought me, that stand near the lamp on my table. This is the room where I write my poems, where I become conscious through them of what my wife and children and friends, my orchard, the meadows, the trees, the grasses, the flowers, the roads, the hills, and the sea mean to me. And I put it into words and rhythms that explain nothing, but that open the mind and the heart to a new sunshine and new perfumes. I had just gone out to look at the night. Beyond there, oh, how far beyond is the star I speak of, is the man I know to be myself. But yet, how different. The pollard plain trees are wretched in the damp and darkness and mud. The air bites raleigh on your ribs, and the sky is full of menace. Must I tell you of each moment of my day for you to know why I have chosen this one world of all the Marriads? How, in the morning, as the sunshine enters my bedroom, dream after dream falls for me, and I awake to the greater dream of this full life. And my brain is rich with words and visions, and my heart is eager with emotions that have grown there in the night from the seed of yesterday. Through the open inner door I hear, in the next room, the rustling and the stirring of my mate, the mother of my children. And she hears me too, I know, but we do not speak. Is there a need to? She knows the meaning of my silence, and she will not jar the full cup of my morning treasures. It is all, and yet, how much, if I see her golden head in the mirror of her room. And she turns, and seeing me watching, smiles to the mirror. For her smile seems to overwrite with the blue of her eyes, and to fill with tenderness the world I bear within me. All that field of tall grasses that is singing, with the hum of bees and the buttercups and clover, and the music of the morning wind sifting its notes through the innumerable earth-held strings. My children, too, have learned to love my strange ways. I hear their voices, and they hear me, as I pass down to my walk in the orchard beneath the plum trees. But their door does not open. Not till I have caught all the words and the rhythms with which my heart and brain are busy shall I see them. The plum trees are in bloom, and the air smells sweet with Hawthorne. If I stop and lean on my gate, I can see a mile away the blue-brown hills, beyond wide meadows, flowering hedges, cornland, and the words come to my pencil unsought, the beginning and the end, perhaps, with a phrase or two and full knowledge of the rest. Images, a rhythm, a complete passage, the outline, with some parts roughed in of my poem. A song is artless as the thrushes on the plum tree. Tomorrow I shall wake up tired and heavy-minded, with a bitter mouth and bleared eyes, sluggishly, reluctantly, I shall pull myself from my bed. I shall thrust on my shabby clothes, and wash my face in hands. Put on a collar and tie, a coat and waist coat, all in haste. Drink a cup of hot tea, eat a few moth-wheels of bread and butter. Then, with a hurried kiss to wife and children, run down the stairs into the miserable street. All I meet are shabby, all go one way. Drawn on by the same beggar, I am one way. Drawn on by the same magnet, urged by the same demon. We are the respectable, and behind us, though we do not see him, driving us with his goat, his hunger, the first law of our land. He meshes us, he regiments us, he drills us to obey his time. For him we hurry through the dust or the mud through the cold or heat to the slave-pens. For him we shove at each other at the tram-cars, crowd elbow in the tubes through which we are hurled, packed and swaying. For him we sell our soul's freedom, obey men we do not respect, do trivial things that mean nothing to us, and only have meaning as part of the whole machine that we serve. Oh, irony, irony, that we should be jailer and jailed in a prison of our own making that we might destroy tomorrow. It is not labor that kills, but the lack of faith in the laborer. Tomorrow I shall pass the best hours of my day, pent up with people who do not speak the language I seek, and who would not understand it if it were found. I shall write on papers, according to rules, words that might fit my language if they were free, but they are debased and chipped and worn and crushed, and they answer words that are driven together by use, and not joined by mastery, a slave language of counters. I shall come home through the darkened streets, tired and brooding over the lost hours, and loathing the weakness that led me to waste my strength in argument that started from no point of worth, and was borne on by no sustenance, a mere frittering of words and known phrases, a reaction against boredom and dullness, and the killing of life hour by hour on a chair before a table of dusty papers and formulas invented to ensure uniformity, the wonder being that so many find themselves so well of it all, and see no wrong, and ask only for promotion. How I hate myself in these moments, tear at my weakness with the claws of my mind, and gasp out loud in the streets the thoughts that rend me, as I stalk along overtaking all who are before me, the darkness and drabness around me suiting my mood and crushing me further still into myself, and I become a black ferment on half born thoughts and stillborn desires and unborn emotions curdled with hates and raging and nigh to tears. One word of love and understanding would turn my poison into wine, but do you find love and understanding in the city? Seventeen years have I passed there, and have not found them. But you are luckier, perhaps, than I, who have always been a stranger within the walls and between them, knowing the hatred of crowds, the sneers of passers, the jeers and the laughter of the clipped and maimed and castrated. Their poor, docked lives have held no beauty, their lamps have been choked, and the guttering wick has stunk their souls out, whether they wear gold chains and good leather and cloth, or a greasy cap and torn shoddy. But on the star the light of whose sun has not yet reached the earth and may never reach it, I come into breakfast clean of body and rich of mind and hungry with a morning air. My boy sits before a bowl of purple wild pansies, and my girl has a slender green jar of red poppies whose hairy stalks spring from a blue cluster of speedwells. They have been out in the fields barefoot in the long wet grass, the metal foxtails brushing their legs with a silky touch, and they shook the jewels from the heart of the clover as they passed and sang with the birds. They have seen the robins still on her nest in the ivy-hedge, looking at them from her ivy-leaf door with the stubborn, half-frightened eyes, and they have gone on and gathered more than the poppies and pansies and speedwells, more than the prim-growsies and violets from the banks of the stream for their mother. They lie in a bowl before her, and she serves them bread and butter and honey. They have taken something too of the heart of the season into their hearts. Its leaves and grasses will always be green there. Its blossoms will always be bright. Its birds will always be singing their morning song. But more than all these, the intimate sense of a presence will always be with them. Oh, my wife, you sit there, happy in your service, giving to each as we need them, fruit and milk and eggs and bread and butter and honey. Can I ever love you enough for your understanding and your forbearance? Can I ever repay you for your loving kindness, oh, my golden-hearted, oh, my young ashtray, my lilac blossom, my golden wheat field? You have entrusted to me a treasure of many memories, and I have not been careful of them. I have opened the store and given them out to my friends, all those who would accept them, and they have grown in beauty as I touched them, and the frail bloom of them that might have perished in darkness, fallen to dust, has become a wonderful, indestructible word, and you have forgiven me. But when I love you and you love me, the glow still fused in our love. Their warmth is about us, and the chairs and tables, the pictures and sculptures, the books and bookcases, all the pleasant things that furnishing comfort our lives, love through us and in us. Oh, my heart yearns to you, and a great breath swells my chest. See, I will leave my chair, and with my hand on the door latch, I will turn and smile at your eyes that watch me trustfully. I will go and gather a rose for you, a white rose flushed with red, and tinged with a gold of sunburn, a rose with a firm heart and a lovely curve of petals. And from the tree, as I come to it, a nightingale will fly away. And when I return with it my hand and offer it to you silently, your eyes will thank me, and you will smell it, and you will gaze at the violets and primbraces the children have gathered, and your hand will seek mine almost timidly and caress it. And now in the afternoon, when the children are at their school three meadows away, hidden by hedges and a row of Lombardi poplars, and the mother is teaching them and their playmates, I sit dreaming out of Ronda in the shade. The warm sun falls on the crow feet and buttercups in the field before me. The golden flowers nod and wave and kiss as a light warm wind passes over them. The leaves are singing and faintly behind their monotone I hear the singing of children. Mournfully a cuckoo calls cuckoo. A blackbird scuttles from a spinny and I sit in a dream and drink my coffee and smoke my cigarette. At the gate of the garden in front of the house swings open and crashes back. A well-known footstep comes up the path. A well-known voice calls my name. Frankie, come out you stodge. Is that you, Dickie? Sit down, will you? Take a cigarette and try to live as you were meant to. Don't be vigorous after lunch. Zenay, Frankie. Fatubo, Dickie. C'est à tout. Éte-l'en et vousz quénant les joueurs. Corlion, oh pot-ceau. We laugh at each other. Come down by veil water to the cliff-walk, round to Westhaven and back by the riverside. Good, I'm with you. I'll get my stick and meet you at the gate. We swing out into the road bare-headed, three astries and flower and a labyrinum raining with gold greet us. Over the hill we go and down into the valley by the side of the river that roars like the sea over its stones. The silver oaks climb up the hill from the water's edge and are lost high up in a mist of gray silver of trunk and twig and bud and along the banks of primrose is never leave us. Oh, the strides and the breaths we take, the jest we make, and our laughter. Our silence is even a greater joy than these and our thoughts then wear the mask that our eyes put on them. Hedge of ivy and cottage garden, brown roads and woods around and above it, but our thoughts are deeper because of the mask and our silence. A brook crosses the road, we stride through it. Everywhere there are primresses along the river, under the hedge, in the garden, up the slopes and the clearings, under the first oak trees, in a small meadow between the road and river, where the road turns to go to the sea and our path to the cliff begins. Up by the pine wood our feet crunch on the gravel, our breathing becomes hard and we stab at the path before us with our sticks, higher and higher we climb till we reach the path around the cliff. Oh, the golden glory of the gorse and the golden brown of last year's bracken which holds in its heart the green curl of the new and then as we round a corner the blue glory of the sea. I have not the heart to go on, as my friend at my side crying his joy of the seagulls, describing a cormorant. Do we climb down these cliffs, catching at the grass for hold, slipping on the granite outcrop, startling a rabbit, rousing the seagulls, to wheel and squeal round their iris far below? Are these the woods of twisted oak saplings, fantastic and silver, through which the path winds? Is the blue that curtains the spaces between the branches the sea? And more than these, am I aware of the noble heart beating near me? Do I see the laughing, generous, truthful eyes? Do I hear the voice that sometimes mocks than jests, than speaks of a poem? My friend said to me as I marched by a side in the night through the mud of Waterloo Road. This is the finest draft that has ever left England. Picked men, all non-commissioned officers, held back for months. And the head of the column, out of sight, away in the darkness, roared out a marching chorus, taken up and humorously turned by the men in the rear. Windows opened, and women's voices cheered on the soldiers, who answered with jest, and offered to kiss them, and the kiss was taken, but not in a way they knew. Through the mud, through the mud they went, and at the bends of the road, the lamp of the column leader burned the blackness of red for a moment. For deep they went, strong young men, jesting and singing and laughing, with broad backs bearing their packs, and broad chest breathing great breaths of the cold, damp air, life at its cleanest, moving swiftly through the half-dead evil and the filth of the sleeping city. And when they arrived at London Bridge, and stood in the gas-lit, frowsy station, the sweat was on their face, and the hall was filled with the smell of healthy men. What was my friend doing there, the singer of beautiful things, the beautiful singer? What was any man of that company, clerk, shopkeeper, laborer, poet, doing each with the other, clothed and loaded alike and marching together, with the thought of each man's heart and brain written off, and their common manhood, trained to move in one direction and to fit one shape? What is war? What are nations? My friend has gone from me. I could not have even him. And yet in those men there was so much kindness, so much humor, and so little desire to kill. You may not believe in my other world, but it is no dream. It can be proved with compass and scales in A plus B, who will integrate space and time and prove that the sum does not contain the quantity I describe, or all the grades of good and evil for every man, forming throughout the myriad universes, a myriad perfect men and perfect minds. If the scale exists, can one note judge of another, or say it is too remote, in the instrument too vast, to exist for any purpose or use or harmony? What are uses and purposes? Can the note hear the song? Therefore, as I sit here, dreaming and writing of that other me, whom I have chosen from the myriad men who bear my nature, he is sitting beneath the cherry tree and bloom, watching the afterglow of sunset and the evening stars. He is sitting in the quiet and peace of the evening and the peace of the winds. The darkness is creeping up behind him from the hills. It is not stir. The first cold shiver of evening has not come. Perhaps in this calm, in the calm of his mind, he thinks of me. End a poem. This recording is in the public domain. Dusk by FS Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo and Eva Davis. Here where the brown leaves fall from Elm and Chestnut and Plain Tree. Here where the brown leaves drift along the paths to the lake, where the waterfall breasts the waves that are ridged by the wind. You spoke of your art and life, of men you had known who betrayed you, men who fell short of friendship, and women who fell short of love. But abiding beyond them, your art held you to life, transformed it, became it, and so you were free. And I told you of all my weakness, my growing strength to resist the appeal to my heart and eyes of sorrowful, beautiful things. In the strength of this utter husk I had permitted to grow and protect me was its pitiful measure. You said, There are cracks in the husk. It grew to your measure, perhaps once, but your heart breaks through it, and soon it will fall away from you. Like a tree, content with its fate, you would not have known it was there if it had grown to remain. The cold wind blew the brown leaves onto the lovers beneath, who crept close together for warmth, and closer still for love. The peacocks perched in the branches, hawked their harsh cry at the golden round moon that loomed over the treetops. And the sound of our feet on the gravel, for a time, was answer enough to the broken mesh of our thoughts. I said, I have wife and children, a girl and a boy, I love them. The gold of their hair is all the gold of my thoughts. The blue of their eyes is all the purity of my vision. The rhythm of their life is more to be watched than the cadences of my poems. And you asked me, Have you taken refuge behind them? Do you not fear to lose your life in saving it for them? Be brave, the water is deep. The waves run high, but you are a swimmer. Strike out. Cold wind blew the brown leaves deeper and deeper into the dusk. The peacocks had hushed their cries. The moon had turned her golden to silver, and between the black lace of two trees, one star shone clearly. Oh night, have I deserved your beauty? End a poem. This recording is in the public domain. Gloom by F. S. Flint, read for LibriVox.org by Nemo. I sat there in the dark of the room and of my mind, thinking of men's treasons and bad faith, sinking into the pit of my own weakness before their strength of cunning. Out over the gardens came the sound of someone playing five finger exercises on the piano. Then I gathered up within me all my powers, until outside of me was nothing. I was all, all stubborn, fighting, sadness, and revulsion. And one came from the garden quietly and stood beside me. She laid her hand on my air. She laid her cheek on my forehead and crested me with it. But all my being rose to my forehead to fight against this outside thing. Something in me became angry and stood like a wall, and would allow no entrance. I hated her. What is the matter with you, dear? she said. Nothing, I answered. I am thinking. She stroked my hair and went away. And I was still gloomy, angry, stubborn. Then I thought she has gone away. She has hurt. She does not know what poison has been working in me. Then I thought, upstairs her child is sleeping. And I felt the presence of the fields we had walked over, the roads we had followed, the flowers we had watched together before it came. She had touched my hair, and only then did I feel it. And I loved her once again. And I came away full of the sweet and bitter juices of life. And I lit the lamp in my room and made this poem. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Love song for a woman I do not love by FS Flint, read for LibriVox.org by Nemo. If I were a rich man, would you smile it to me? Can your bosom that swells your blouse so firmly be bought, in all the smooth warmth of your nakedness? You are straight and beautiful. Your hair is black, and you have slender ankles. I've seen the bloom and color of your face on peaches. I felt the grace of your walk in Grecian statues. And as you go, you look back over your shoulder sideways, coquette. You were born in the age that bore me, and almost I love you, my dark goddess. But if I came to you and said to you, I am rich, I know a suburb, I know a house there, will you have it? It has a red-tiled roof, it has two gardens, it has casement windows with small leaded panes, and white curtains fluttering from them when they are open. It is furnished with old fumed oak and shining silver, and armchair stuffed with hair, with cushions of soft down, and they are covered with bright colored crissons. It has a bedroom smelling of the summer sky, and a kitchen warm with enameled saucepans and polished copper. Would you have it, knowing that on any day I might walk up that street beneath the acaches, open the garden gate, maybe pick a rose from the garden, let myself into the house with my key, and perhaps not finding you in the hall, blue tiles, a mat to hat stand, pass upstairs to the bedroom, and surprise you at your mirror, masked in the scented darkness of your waving hair, with your eyes meeting mine in the mirror, smile welcome, would there be a tense block of silence in the silent house, and a tenser, wordless message from your eyes to mine, and mine to yours in the mirror, stabbing our hearts? But I am not rich, and I do not love you, and I cannot give you the things your heart would prize, I know. In spite of the grace you have captured from the lilies, in the bloom you have taken from the red geraniums, and the curves you have stolen from the lissom ash trees, I may not tempt you. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Children by F. S. Flint, read for LibriVox.org by NEMA. These are my children, one boy, one girl. They have the beauty all children have. They have entered the trap all children enter, the trap that was set by God knows who. These are the flowers of love and spring, the apple blossom and affidils. But they do not know, children and flowers, that the ground beneath them is what it is. The sun and the rain, their laughter and tears are all that they know. I watch them at play, and I know the part I have played myself in luring them here. I, too, was once in the outer forest, and decoyed like them have brought them in to be decoys in their turn, perhaps, to my grandchildren. Will they be mine? And so it goes on, father and son, daughter and mother. But they look at me with their trustful eyes, and they laugh at me in their games and graces. They come and caress me, they love me so. The thoughtless treacherous, eagerly lecherous, nave and husband whom they call father, the man who betrayed them to certain death. And I am their wistful comrade and watchdog. I go with them sometimes into the streets among the crowds, and I share their wonder, a child with my children. And my man's form and my man's strength is their contrite shield, and my heart is a pool of tenderness for them. For they do not know what the earth is yet, nor what the clay can be to the body. When they know, they will no longer be children. But one link, the more in the chain of treason. And so it goes on, father and son, daughter and mother. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Envy by F.S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org. Buy an email. I envy you, I envy you. Amid the rumble and hoot and clatter of London's traffic. Happy pair, your left and right hands drop and find each other, and ring each other. White in the sun from hat to shoes, only the pink of your ankles showing through the white stockings. Straight limbed, firm bosomed, soft in the folds of your blouse. And you, oh youth, with a flush on your cheeks, in your eyes a happy admiration. I envy you. Your hands seek and ring each other. Your limbs attract each other through their clothing. And you would marry if this and that concurred. Foolish, oh foolish. It is not your youth, your straightness, your cleanness, your bloom, I envy. It is your virginity. You would part with it in a burst of joy, and would not know your loss perceiving it. But beauty, do you not feel it upon you? Strive to reach the grape, but do not pluck it. The gesture is all. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. On black bare trees a stale cream moon hangs dead and sours the unborn buds. Two gaunt old hacks, knees bent, heads low, tug, tired and spent, an old horse tram. Damp smoke, rank missed, fills the dark square, and round the bend six bullocks come. A hobbling, dirt grime drover guides their clattering feet, their clattering feet to the slaughterhouse. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Prayer by F.S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. As I walk through the streets I think of the things that are given to my friends. Myths bold Greece and Egypt, Greek flowers, Greek thoughts, in all that incandescence, all that grace which I refuse. If even the orchards of England, its gardens and its woods, its fields and its hills, its rivers and its seas were mine, but they are not. But these are nothing. Give me the flame, O gods, to light these people with, these pavements, this motor traffic, these houses this medley. Give me the vision, and they may live. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. In the Cathedral by F.S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. I have not dipped my hand in the stoop nor bent my knee towards the altar far away at the end of the nave. The crucifix towers dimly above it. Is this my god? The stations of the cross are white on the dull brown brickwork. Poor naked Cathedral. One pillar alone is clothed with green marble. Oh, gloom of the aisles and darkness made darker by the candles burning in corners, hair in there, in front of the images. Why am I moved? Is this the house of my god? The voices of the priests far off near the altar have sound in no meaning as words, but they fill the church with life and peace and resignation. The music of it enters my heart. Oh, god, you need me, I know. Or why am I here? Why am I? You will not cast me off. You cannot. Oh, god, I say it with a humble and desperate heart. I am the least worthy atom of your person, but part of you or nothing at all. And this poor woman, kneeling in her ragged clothes before her saint with the ten-lighted candles, is happier than I. Her worn and battered face is shining with certainty. She is in heaven, and I. My heart is twisted with sobs, and my eyes are weeping. And yet, as I leave the cathedral, I do not dip my hand in the stoop. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The little head-on roars over its stones towards its mouth, between two cliffs mounting up, one with a gray-brown haze of the budding oakwoods, and the line of the path that thwart them, as though cut with a knife. And the other gray with blue shale, and here and there, the gorse in bloom over the dead, brown bracken, that springs again green once more from its nef. The little head-on roars over its stones between its violets, prim-raises, and selen dines to the sea. And friends, what am I doing here beside you in the head-on? Why did I come to you with my heart ache and my cares, falsely to brighten your life with a foil of my darkness? Why did I come to your pine-woods? The little head-on roars over its stones to the sea. My life graded on in its groove, and that groove brought me to you. But see, the little head-on roared over my brain, and for a day washed the mist from it, cleared the clog of it, and the groove is no longer there. Yet I shall leave you. I shall take back my groove with a keener edge to my heartache in a different tune. The little head-on roaring over my brain to the sea. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Hack Knee Marshes by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Neema. The mist creeps up from the long canal over the fields, and the color fades from the smoke in the sky, and fades from the crimson sunset. On the wet grass men and young women playing hush, and their rare shouts break into the silence. Beyond a feathery row of leafless poplars the road lies, and the swift lights of the tram-cars leap in patterns from tree to tree. Suddenly, a roar from ten thousand throats, a hidden army of men, burst the calm of the universe, and the world reels and sinks, and the lights of the tram-cars change into constellations. Plough and Scorpion and Cassiopeia, the change again as the world sinks farther and farther, and the firmament whirls its myriad lamps through the eternal infinite darkness. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Shell von St. Ju by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Neema. The low graves are all grown over with forget-me-nots, and a rich green grass links each with each. Old family vaults, some within railings, stand here and there, crumbling, moss-eaten, with the ivy growing up them, and diagonally across the top projecting slab. And over the vaults lean the great lilac bushes, with their heart-shaped leaves and their purple and white blossom. A wall of ivy shuts off the darkness of the elmwood and the larches. Walk quietly along the mossy paths. The stones of the humble dead are hidden behind the blue manto of their forget-me-nots. And before one grave so hidden, a widow kneels with head bowed, and the crepe falling over her shoulders. The bells for evening church are ringing, and the people come gravely and with red sun-burned faces through the gates and the wall. Pass on. This is the church porch, and within the bell-ringers, men of the village in their Sunday clothes pull their bob-major on the red and white grip of the bell ropes that fly up. And then fall snakily. They stand there, given wholly to the rhythm and swing of their traditional movements. And the people pass between them into the church. But we are too sad and too reverent to enter. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Lunch by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. Frail beauty. Green, golden, incadescent whiteness. Narcissi, daffodils. You've brought me spring and longing, wistfulness, in your radiance. Therefore I sit here among the people dreaming. My heart aches with all the Hawthorne blossom, the bees humming, the light wind upon the poplars, and your warmth and your love and your eyes. They smile and know me. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Tube by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. You look in vain for a sign, for a light in their eyes. No. Stolled they sit, lulled by the roar of the train in the tube. Content with the electric light. Assured, comfortable, warm. Despair. For a moment, yes. This is the mass, inert, unalarmed, undisturbed. And we, the spirit that moves, we love in the mass, and it changes. We sweeten the mass, or the world would stink in the ether. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Trees by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. Elm trees and the leaf the boy me hated long ago, rough and sandy. Poplars and their leaves tender, smooth to the fingers, and a secret in their smell I have forgotten. Oaks and forest glades, heart aching with wonder, fear, their bitter massed. Willows and the scented beetle we put in our handkerchiefs, and the roots of one that spread into a river, nakedness, water and joy. Hawthorne, white and odorous with blossom, framing the quiet fields and swaying flowers and grasses and the hum of bees. Chestnuts, apples and pears, which we pillaged in the autumn of their fruit. Oh, these are the things that are with me now in the town, and I am grateful for this minute of my manhood. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Lilac by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. Oh, Lilac, whiter than swans down. Among your soft green leaves, pure than snow, new fallen on the boughs. The white butterfly fluttering over your fragrance is happy. I watch you from my window and feel on my face and hair the warm wind blowing across London. I have many things to hurt me, youth gone and life and friends uncertain, and no God will take me and turn me into a lilac tree. With a world beneath me for my roots and each springtime, a myriad tender hearts for the winds to fondle, and the startling candor of my blossom for men to love. Some God has done this to you, oh Lilac, and the butterfly does not fear you. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Oak by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. See the grey silver of the oak boughs as they swarm up the hill slope and down towards the sea. The branches twist and twine one over the other, and the trunks, with a growth of saplings, are misshapen and crooked. The Atlantic winds have smoothed them and silvered them, and then have added the beauty time puts upon the work of the silversmith carved centuries ago. But was it for this confusion of bows, this profusion of locking twig, this mingling of leaves, one twisted tree with another, that the acorn fell and took root? Was this the hope in the seed? Must the white sails be spun in vain for the keel? Must the house lack the beam and the roof-tree? I must have space for my branches, a field for my roots, or men will destroy me. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Plain Tree by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. Oh, tardy plain tree! Was not the winter long enough? The April sun has sprayed with green the gray house behind the bows, and burst the first lit golden lamps of the chestnut, its leaves fall limply away from the brown flower buds. He has dressed in pink the black and naked almond tree, bestrune the pavement with red tipped catkins, and sent the sparrows to find his pouting buds on every twig. Accepting yours, oh motley plain tree, whom the motor cars in scorn of your laziness spurn with their dust. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Swan by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. Oh, swan! My eyes watch you through the sallows, wounded by your cruel beauty. Oh, white splendor! You have hurt me. You do not heed us. Our music crashes through the stillness. Our shouts crack in the evening. We gather round your pool. The signets twist their swart heads and their crimson beaks and listen. But you do not heed them. You do not heed us. Your yellow feet move through the clear cold water. Your belly rest upon your belly, soft, cool, caressing. Your beak meets your beak. Your necks repeat the figures two, three, eight, and zero. Oh, twine shape. Oh, triple nature. Bird, fish, and serpent. Do you plunge your head to lose your torment? Does your beauty tire you? The wind moves the leaves to a sweet sound. It bends this edge in the sallows. The tulips sway and the iris. But it brings to you the piece of curled waters where you are no longer. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Evil by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. The mist of the evening is rose in the dying sun, and the street is quiet between its rows of plain trees and the walls of the gardens with the laurel bushes. I walk along in a dream half aware of the empty black of the windows. One window I pass by. It is not empty. Something shows from it. White I feel and round. Something that pulls me back to gaze, still dreaming. To gaze and to wake and stare at a naked woman. Oh, beautiful. Alone in the window sitting. Is there a sign? Does she call me? What is the lure? She does not move. And I crawl to the gate and stop, and open the gate again stopping, and crawl again up the stone steps, fear driving my heart mad up to the door. Door do not open though I beat you with my fist. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Terror by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. Eyes are tired. The lamp burns, and in its circle of light papers and books lie, where chance and life have placed them. Silence sings all around me. My head is bound with a band. Outside in the street, a few footsteps, a clock strikes the hour. I gaze, my eyes close slowly. I doze. But the moment before sleep, a voice calls my name in my ear, and the shock jolts my heart. I want to open my eyes and look, first left, and then right. No one is there. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Houses by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. Evening in quiet. A bird trills in the poplar trees behind the house with a dark green door across the road. Into the sky, the red earthenware and the galvanized iron chimneys thrust their cowls. The hoot of the steamers on the Thames is plain. No wind. The trees merge, green with green. A car whirs by. Footsteps and voices take their pitch in the key of dusk, far off and near, subdued. Solid and square to the world. The houses stand. Their windows, blocked with Venetian blinds. Nothing will move them. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Moments by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. One. When I move, I am accomplishing an act, for doomed. And all the love I bear, all the hate, all the cadences my heart beats to, went through the brute who trapped the mastodon and carved its image on the tusk. Two. I put my arm out to catch yours, so I draw you to me, peer into your eyes, bear downward to your lips, and then I kiss you. Eons and eons ago, before time was, some pebbles stirred the pool to bring about this ripple. This is the end. No. This is the beginning. I hold you. Three. If I sit here longer, listening to the roar of the silence, brooding, a monster will take shape out of the darkness behind the table and swallow me. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Cones by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. The blue mist of after rain fills all the trees. The sunlight guilds the tops of the popular spires far off behind the houses. Here a branch sways, and there a sparrow twitters. The curtain's hem rose embroidered, flutters, and half reveals a burnt red chimney pot. The quiet in the room bears patiently a footfall on the street. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Ogre by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. Through the open window can be seen the poplars at the end of the garden shaking in the wind. A wall of green leaves so high that the sky is shut off. On the white tablecloth a rose in a vase. Center of a sphere of odor contemplates the crumbs and crusts left from a meal. Cups, saucers, plates lie here and there. And a sparrow flies by the open window, stops for a moment, flutters his wings rapidly, and climbs an aerial ladder with his claws that work close into a soft brown gray belly. But behind the tables the face of a man. The bird flies off. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Lament by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. The young men of the world are condemned to death. They've been called up to die for the crime of their fathers. The young men of the world, the growing, the ripening fruit, have been torn from their branches while the memory of the blossom is sweet in women's hearts. They have been cast for a cruel purpose into the mashing press and furnace. The young men of the world look into each other's eyes and read there the same words, not yet, not yet, but soon perhaps, and perhaps certain. The young men of the world no longer possess the road. The road possesses them. They no longer inherit the earth. The earth inherits them. They're no longer the masters of fire. Fire is their master. They serve him. He destroys them. They no longer rule the waters. The genius of the seas has invented a new monster, and they fly from its teeth. They no longer breathe freely. The genius of the air has contrived a new terror that rends them into pieces. The young men of the world are encompassed with death. He is all about them in a circle of fire and bayonets. Weep, weep, o women, and old men break your hearts. And a poem, this recording, is in the public domain. Wartime by F. S. Flint. Red for LibriVox.org by Nemo. If I go out of the door, it will not be to take the road to the left that leads past the bovine quiet of houses, brooding over the cut of their daily content. Even though the tranquility of their gardens is a lure that once was stronger, even though from privet hedge and mottled laurel, the young green peeps and the daffodils, and the yellow and white and purple crocuses laugh from the smooth mold of the garden beds to the upright golden buds of the chestnut trees, I shall not see the almond blossom shaming the suit black boughs. But to the right the road will lead me to greater and greater disquiet, into the swift rattling noise of the motorbuses, and the dust, the tattered paper, the detritus of a city that swirls in the air behind them. I will pass the shops where the prices are judged day by day by the people, and come to the place where five roads meet, with five tram routes, and where, amid the din of the vans, the lorries, the motorbuses, the clangorous tram cars, the news is shouted and soldiers gather off duty. Here I can feel the heat of Europe's fever, and I can make, as each man makes, the beauty of the woman he loves, no spring and no woman's beauty, while that is burning. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Soldiers by FS Flint. Read for LibriVox.org by Nemo. To R.A. Brother, I saw you on a muddy road in France, passed by with your battalion, rifled the slope, full marching order, arms swinging, and I stood at ease, folding my hands over my rifle with my battalion. You passed me by and our eyes met. We had not seen each other since the days we climbed the Devon Hills together. Our eyes met, startled, and, because the order was silence, we dared not speak. Oh, face of my friend, alone distinct of all that company, you went on, you went on into the darkness. And I sit here at my table, holding back my tears with my jaw set to my teeth clenched, knowing I shall not be even so near you as I saw you in my dream. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Zeplins by FS Flint. Read for LibriVox.org by Nemo. The bedroom is darkness. A dim cloud in one direction is the window with its curtains. The leaves of the trees outside rustle on one another. I fall to sleep. How long have I slept? A voice calls, a bell rings. The clamor and the ringing lengthen. I turn, it continues. Not mine the name I hear, and yet there is alarm in it that concerns me. Am I awake? Over my nightdress I huddle my clothes, thrust my bare feet into slippers, and run down the stairs. From a blur of female faces, distraught eyes stand out, and a woman's voice cries. The Zeplins, they are attacking us. Kingsland Road is alight. Stoke-Knowington is burning. Did you not hear the guns? Oh, what shall we do? We make jokes to reassure them. I shiver, chill, excitement, fear. Am I awake? My mind has been washed by sleep and left limp. The trees in the garden's opposite stand out behind the houses, a dark fretwork against the sky, and everywhere stillness. Yet something slinks overhead through the sky. Men will say that they saw it pass, and then a flash, a thud, a roar, a house has been cleft through three stories and burns, and children burn in their beds, and men are burned rescuing them. An old man and woman are burned to death because the staircase has been smashed away. But we do not know this yet. We have only heard explosions, and have seen the glow of fires in the sky quickly gone. We climb upstairs to the top story to see. There is nothing to see. But the silence and stillness are sinister. What has been taken away? What added? Brick and stone have become unreal, and only the primeval trees remain, with the primeval fear behind them and among them. What is that behind the trees? A flame colored circle of light that glows and grows brighter and dimmer by turns. Is it an airship on fire? It burns on, and moves near, slowly. It swings clear of the trees. The moon, end of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Searchlight by FS Flint. Read for LibriVox.org by Nemo. There has been no sound of guns, no roar of exploding bombs, but the darkness has an edge that grits the nerves of the sleeper. He awakens. Nothing disturbs this stillness. Save perhaps the light. Slow flap. Once only of the curtain dim in the darkness. Yet there is something else that drags him from his bed. And he stands in the darkness with his feet cold against the floor and the cold air around his ankles. He does not know why, but he goes to the window and sees a beam of light miles high, dividing the night into two before him. Still, stark and throbbing. The houses and gardens beneath lie under the snow, quiet and tinged with purple. There has been no sound of guns, no roar of exploding bombs, only that watchfulness hidden among the snow-covered houses, and that great beam thrusting back into heaven, the light taken from it. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Hats by FS Flint. Read for LibriVox.org by Nemo. The hollow sound of your hard felt hat as you clap it on your head is echoed over two thousand miles of trenches by a thousand, thousand guns, and thousands of thousands of men have been killed, and still more thousands of thousands of blood have been maimed and have drowned because of that sound. Towns battered and shattered, villages blasted to dust and mud, forest and woods stripped bare, rivers and streams befouled. The earth between and beyond the lines ravaged and sewn with steel, and churned with blood and a stink of decaying men, nations starving, women and children murdered, genius destroyed, minds deformed and twisted, and waste, waste, waste of the earth's fruits, of the earth's riches, awe and obedience to your voice and the sound of your hat is in the same gamut of void and thoughtless and evil sounds. Oh esteemable man, keeper of the seasoned ticket, walker on the pavement, follower of the leader, writer, guardian of the life policy, insured against all harm, fire, burglary, servants accidents, warden and ward of the church, wallflower of the suburbs, primrose of respectability. As you go home beneath your hard felt hat, the tradesmen do you homage, happily, the trees do not know you. You have scoffed at the poet because you are a practical man and does not your house bear you out, have poets such houses, it has a garden in front with a plot of grass and in the middle of that a flower bed, with a rose tree in its midst and other rose trees against the walls and a privet hedge and stocks and delphiniums, flowers in season. The path is irregularly paved for quaintness. There's a rustic porch and a street door with a polished brass letter box and knocker and stained glass panels showing a bird in flowers and an electric bell push but you have a key and you let yourself in to the quiet red tiled hall where the doormat says welcome and the stand receives your umbrella and your coat and your hard felt hat, a drawing room, a dining room because all your fellows have them and a kitchen all clean and neat and because the kitchen is comfortable you have your teeter with your wife and child only one child for are you not practical on the upper floor or a bathroom in three bedrooms let your furniture stand undisturbed I will not describe it a hundred shops in London show off the like in their windows as for your books they are as haphazard and as futile as your pictures but here is your comfort and you are comfortable and on summer evenings and Saturday afternoons you wander out into the garden at the back which is fenced off on three sides from similar gardens and you potter around with garden tools and are happy oh ensured against all harm waiter on the pension at sixty domestic vegetable cultivated flour you have laughed at the poet the unpractical dreamer you have seen life as bookkeeping and accountancy your arithmetic has pleased you your compound interest your business more than the earth in the heavens and if your brother suffered you took no heed or read a liberal newspaper and salved your conscience aunt aunt oblivious of the water being boiled in the cauldron but when the time came for your chastisement for the punishment of your apathy your willless ignorance when the atmospheric pressure was just equivalent to the weight of the seventy six centimeter column of mercury the water had exactly reached the hundredth degree of centigrade you felt though you feared it that the time had come that you had something called a collective honor some patriotism and those others too felt the same honorable sentiment and you called for the slaughter that sanctifies honor and the boiling water was poured on us all ants ants friend and brother you have not been killed chance still allows you to wear your bowler hat the helmet of the warrior and its degeneracy the symbol of gracelessness and the hate of beauty the signature of your sameness and innocuousness take off your hat let your hair grow open your eyes look at your neighbor his suffering is your hurt become dangerous let the metaphysical beast whose breath poisons us all fear your understanding and recoil from our bodies his prey and fall back before you and shiver and quake and thirst and starve and die and a poem this recording is in the public domain to a young lady who moved shyly among men of reputed worth by fs flint read for libravox.org buy an email the olive sky shown through the birches lace of hanging leaves the silken air was still London was beautiful a tender thrill of sunset shook throughout the evening's grace under an apple tree I stood a space and watched the birds hop on the lawn until darkness had bent all image to his will when oh upon the wrap sky donned your face be brave o moon lonely among the stars be unrebuted and radiant they will pale and earth will love you for your loveliness my brain beats madly at the golden bars that stay it and my heart would have me scale the moonlit branches where the night winds press and a poem this recording is in the public domain school days by fs flint read for libravox.org buy an email hours of a slow hot afternoon so far away vibrating still when eyes would watch upon the sill of sparrow heedless of the school hours of the book and furtive play pinches past on and then the cane and sobbing or a cheeks proud flame hours living still yet far away yet far away the teacher he only a dim remembrance but the ink stained desk of ruts and cut with many initials I can see hours packed with heat and silence oh the bark more rugged and the tree more course of yet their melody hours of my school days hours of longer go and a poem this recording is in the public domain clear patra after albe some mean by fs flint read for libravox.org buy an email silently gazing from the tower apart the queen whose night black hair is bound with braid feels in the trance of sensors slowly swayed your see oh immense love mount inner heart her eyelids close on dreams and she is laid among her cushions swooning as she rests the heavy gold chains lifted by her breast tell the mute fevered longing of the maid over the monuments float strange farewells the evening soft with shade is full of spells and while the crocodiles far distant weep the queen hands clenched and sobbing to have sinned shutters to feel the civvy's fingers creep among her hair and spend it to the wind and a poem this recording is in the public domain phantasms from louis le codona by fs flint read for libravox.org buy an email the snow falls in the gauzy night and with faint nibbuses a glow a white saint and his angel go drunk with delight drunk with delight the deep moonshine upon them streams and in their shadow following two vile scrapers dance and sing drunk with their dreams drunk with their dreams leaving the mad brown earth too soon where in their bones found time too long two skeletons take up the song drunk with the moon drunk with the moon and a poem this recording is in the public domain the shell from jose maria day radia by fs flint read for libravox.org buy an email through what cold oceans since what ancient year oh pearly shell and fragile who shall say the surge the current and the tide have they world you in their abysses green and drear far from the bitter floods you now have here made a soft bed of golden sand and gray your hope is vain long and despairing a in you the seas great moaning voice we hear sauners to its core my soul is for as from your warl in plaintiff accents poor the sob and sighing of the seas old stir so dull and slow and yet eternal well the far off stormy murmuring beaten swell from the depth of this heart too full of her and a poem this recording is in the public domain from marjousis meal new a a new e by fs flint read for libravox.org buy nemo and eva davis under my kufa veil i bring the flowers and fruits still powdered with the sun's gold showers all the gold of sudan is on thy skin oh well beloved the sunbeams gaily spin thy hair and no Damascus loom could weave a velvet like thine eyes behold at eve when the warm hour of dusk propitiously opens his silky arms i come to thee the light air dances in the limpid night and leaves and waters murmur our delight oh my gazelle of night oh my surprise darkness is dazzled holy with thine eyes ah let me plunge into them and emerge drunk as the bird that revels in the surge come nearer take their roses from my lips then when my body from its chalice slips slowly i shall from head to heel at last be naked but for thee oh unsurpassed oh my beloved behold the secret fruit of my moon flesh thou knowest has the form of the ripe date come thou wilt hear the brute of seas where birds are drunken in the storm end of poem this recording is in the public domain the poor from amil the haddon by fs flint read for libravox.org by nemo and so there are poor hearts poor hearts with lakes of bitter tears in them and they are death pale like the stones of cemeteries and so there are poor backs poor backs heavier with trouble and with burdens than the roofs of the brown casines among the dunes and so there are poor hands poor hands like the leaves upon the roads like the yellow leaves and sad before the door and so there are poor eyes poor eyes humble and good and yet to care worn and sadder than the eyes of beast beneath the storm and so there are poor folk poor folk with tired indulgent gestures who are harried by a gripping dearth along the level planes of earth end of poem this recording is in the public domain o'dolei from Henri Divinier by fs flint read for libravox.org by nemo if i have spoken of my love it is to the slow stream that harkens when i lean above it if i've spoken of my love it is to the wind that laughs and whispers in the leaves if i've spoken of my love it is to the bird that passes singing with the wind if i've spoken the echo heard if i have loved with a great love and sad or joyous wise it was your eyes if i have loved with a great love it was your mouth so grave and sweet it was your mouth if i have loved with a great love it was your warm flesh and your cool fresh hands and it is your shadow that i seek end of poem this recording is in the public domain end of otherworld cadences by fs