Form: a quarterly of the arts (1.1916/1917)

and Harold Massingham

Under a tunnelled arch I see

On flank and haunch the chestnut gleam

Of horses in a lamplit steam;

And the dead world moves for me once more
With beauty for its living core.

A. L. HUXLEY

TWO REALITIES

WAGGON passed with scarlet
wheels

And a yellow body, shining new.
“Splendid!” said I. “How fine it
feels

To be alive, when beauty peels

The grimy husk from life.” And you

Said, “Splendid!” and I thought you’d seen
That waggon blazing down the street;

But I looked and saw that your gaze had been
On a child that was kicking an obscene,

Brown ordure with his feet.

Our souls are elephants, thought I,

Remote behind a prisoning grill,

With trunks thrust out to peer and pry
And pounce upon reality;

And each at his own sweet will

Seizes the bun that he likes best
And passes over all the rest.

A. L. HUXLEY

BIBLYSIUM

WE sleep beneath the eternal morn,

Or wake, whene’er the title-page
The herald of our loves and joys
Blows his enchanting horn.

Like mottled calf, among the trees
With leaves well-margined, splash the rays
O’ the sun, the first edition
Of this our Paradise.

No envious night can lower upon
Th’ Initials swaying in the breeze,

The quarto browsing on the turf,

The budding colophon.

The woodcuts flute their simple lay
In cloistered peace, unmindful where
Prowl tusky, huge and pachyderm
The incunabula.

Aldus with anchor hooks lobbestere
And salts his catch with Pickering,

And ale into the beaker pours
The gentle Elzevir;

Old Stephan culls the plumpest fruit,

Plantin will brew us savory herbs,

And Baskerville with opiate flowers
Entwine his psalming lute.

No storms we fear, no cares we know,

Recline we on the folioge

And crown us with the octavo bays

’Neath the duodecimo.

HAROLD MASSINGHAM

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