Philoclea in the Forest, Aldous Huxley


Philoclea in the Forest

I

’TWAS I that leaned to Amoret
With: “What if the briars have tangled Time,
Till, lost in the wood-ways, he quite forget
How plaintive in cities at midnight sounds the chime
Of bells slow-dying from discord to the hush whence they rose and met?
“And in the forest we shall live free,
Free from the bondage that Time has made
To hedge our soul from its liberty;
We shall not fear what is mighty, and unafraid
Shall look wide-eyed at beauty, nor shrink from its majesty.”
But Amoret answered me again:
“We are lost in the forest, you and I;
Lost, lost, not free, though no bonds restrain;
For no spire rises for comfort, no landmark in the sky,
And the long glades as they curve from sight are dark with a nameless pain.
And Time creates what he devours,—
Music that sweetly dreams itself away,
Frail-swung leaves of autumn and the scent of flowers,
And the beauty of that poised moment, when the day
Hangs ’twixt the quiet of darkness and the mirth of the sunlit hours.”

II

MOTTLED and grey and brown they pass,
The wood-moths, wheeling, fluttering;
And we chase and they vanish; and in the grass
Are starry flowers, and the birds sing
Faint broken songs of the dying spring.
And on the beech-hole, smooth and grey,
Some lover of an older day
Has carved in time-blurred lettering
One world only:—“Alas.”

III

LUTES, I forbid you! You must never play,
When shimmeringly, glimpse by glimpse
Seen through the leaves, the silken figures sway
In measured dance. Never at shut of day,
When Time perversely loitering limps
Through endless twilights, should your strings
Whisper of light remembered things
That happened long ago and far away:
Lutes, I forbid you! You must never play....
And you, pale marble statues, far descried
Where vistas open suddenly,
I bid you shew yourselves no more, but hide
Your loveliness, lest too much glorified
By western radiance slantingly
Shot down the glade, you turn from stone
To living gods, immortal grown,
And, ageless, mock my beauty’s fleeting pride,
You pale, relentless statues, far descried....


The end