Naia and Edward
A Tale in Verse
They were two lovers, long in love, although
They had not told their love; throughout the scene
They danced The Feasters, seeking others’ eyes.
They noticed in the staring ranks below
An old man with the forehead of the wise,
With eyes merry and kind and cuckoo-keen.
They danced the ballet through, the curtain fell.
And when it rose, in answer to the swell
Of shouts and clapping, and the two took hands
Among their fellows, to advance and bow,
They saw this ancient stand, they marked him well,
Amid the midmost block of stalls, and now
Love knotted those two dancers with his strands,
Each felt the other’s love, and looking knew.
Now the house darkened as the throng withdrew,
The dancers scattered to their rooms to change,
But, to the pair, love lit the darkened scene,
Love for each other thrilled the couple through.
They parted, but their loving ran between,
Nought in each soul was to the other strange,
Each inmost spirit held the other there.
And Edward, as he hurried up the stair,
Whispered, “We’ll meet within the green-room, then.”
Their hands just touched, she nodded and was gone.
Within the dressing-room the world seemed bare,
Romance was doffed and daily life put on,
Among tobacco-smoke and jests of men
He dawdled, while his fellows dressed and passed.
Long as they lingered, they were gone at last,
He trod the passage to the ancient room,
Now little used, still hung with faded green,
And portraits of the dancers of the past.
“O Naia, hurry, my beloved Queen,”
He murmured, as he waited in the gloom,
“Oh, Naia, hurry to my spirit’s call.”
Over the house a silence gan to fall,
The music, with black cases in their hands,
Had long since drained their beers and slipped away.
The last white sheet was drawn on the last stall.
Sweepers and firemen had done their day
And all gone home, with most of the blithe bands
Of scene-shifters, whose morrow’s work was set.
The ballerinas’ rooms were still beset
With young admirers bringing sweets and praise,
Their chatter echoed down the corridor,
Some laughing couples passed, some lingered yet;
And now the ballerinas pass the door,
To sup with princes in a festal blaze,
The lights snapped out, the theatre was still.
His spirit like a stricken string did thrill
“There is her footstep... no... O Naia, come...
Not yet... She will be with me in brief while.
This love is such sweet fire it will kill...
That porter at the door is full of guile,
He’ll turn us out and spoil our happidom...”
A light foot sped; Naia was with him there.
He saw great eyes, a dim face and dark hair,
And knew her sweet and eager spirit his
To comrade his through shining days and dull.
“Fearing you would not come has been despair.
What ages it has seemed, my beautiful.”
Then she, “If there be Heaven, it is this.”
The dimness quickened to a rosy glow.
There stood the ancient who had stood below
Cheering the dancers from the middle stalls,
But now grown young and eager as his eyes.
“Beauty,”he said, “is very Life to know.
Come, then, you two, whom Beauty has made wise,
Come, follow, to the Beauty that befalls.”
They followed; none could falter where he drew.
The door fell open as he floated through,
They floated after, down the passage dim,
Down the dark, spiral stairs, whitewashed and damp;
The porter in his office never knew,
Snoring, asleep he stretched beneath his lamp,
His mug of rum and cloves in front of him;
The barred stage-door fell open as they sped.
But little light the flicking gas flame shed
On the still square the while the trio crossed;
Beyond the archway’s gap, white horses stood,
Shaking the bells upon their reins of red,
Each stabbing with the feather of his hood
His green girth’s silver turrets as he tossed.
Indian postilions held them in their place.
A scarlet coach these horses held in trace.
Scarlet, yet glowing as a coral will
Under clear water in a burning sun;
Scarlet yet wrought like frostwork or like lace;
The tossing horses scraped, and strained to run.
“Enter,” the spirit bade them, “fear no ill.”
He held the door, they entered, the steeds surged.
“Since everlasting Beauty holds you merged,”
The spirit said, “my mission is to bring you
There where the fire of the love not dims
And Beauty’s bareness is forever urged
In tireless rhythm that forever swims,
And in their peace the ceaseless fires ring you.”
The Indian postboys made the horse race.
Their hoofs struck flame; the bells on shaft and trace
Chimed, as the lovers saw the streets flit by,
They saw indignant pointsmen turn to stare
And many a mazed and many an angry face.
Now they had left the streets and galloped air,
Between the treetops and the starry sky;
They landed in a pasture winter-bound.
The frost had made an iron of the ground.
Snow, powdered on the meadow, let them see.
Cold in her silence held the winter night.
Sometimes a dead twig fell, no other sound,
Save that a fox barked as he sought his bite.
A horror of endurance held each tree
Unstirring, lest the death should enter in.
Then the three watchers felt a change begin,
The snow died from the grass, a west wind stirred,
In the dark roosts, in thorpes that the night hid,
Cock after cock upthrust his horny chin
Defying Night, as unseen Morning bid.
The foxes took the warning of the bird
And slunk for home; the eastern sky grew pale.
The owls drooped to their den on silent sail.
The light came swift as shadows upon wheat
When in the sun the clearing showers pass.
A multitude drew slowly within hail,
Buds tipped the twigs, and daisies stelled the grass,
A drumming came as though from rabbits’ feet.
The homing foxes turned, and sat, and stared.
Some pageant of the universe prepared,
There in that multitude who nudged and thrust,
In growing colour, waiting for the word.
The light, from rosy, became gold and glared,
The herald cocks flew upward spanged and spurred;
The triumph of their crowing made the dust
Cry “Life, life, life, the soul’s inheritance.”
And thither, tossing Life out of his glance,
Life-giving from the fervour of his frame,
All glowing from the vehemence of being,
Came the great Sun, the leader of the dance,
Whose herald cocks had sent the shadows fleeing;
And at his call the Lady April came,
Green-sandalled April, dancing her delight.
She was all dressed in daisies red and white,
She wore a crownet of the golden horns
Of daffodils that paler gold enrings,
Most gentle was her face, her eyes most bright,
Blue violets made her belt and white her wings,
Her hair bore the sparse stars of the black thorns,
Under her foot the grasses sprang up green.
And after her the maidens of the Queen
Swept as she led them through the dancing drift
Of almond blossom flying after her,
All the dear daughters of the April scene
Swept, flitting upon feet that could not err,
Each lovelier than the last and each more swift,
Each a sweet lady in pale colours clad.
The lady Primrose who makes lovers glad
In the young wood, the lady Sauce-alone,
Fair Daffodil and Asphodel her friend,
Beautiful Brooklime singing sweet and sad,
Bright Marigold who dwells at the pond’s end,
The Violets White and Blue, and (most sweet) Roan,
Proud Lords and Ladies and the Daisy shy.
Dancing they sang that Winter had gone by;
Over their fair heads, crowned with their own flowers,
The pretty birds that sing in the young year
Carolled with little throats turned to the sky.
The dance grew quicker and the light more clear,
And blossom scattered from the air in showers
And whirled about the bright souls as they sped.
May and her flowers followed as they fled,
The Ladies Cuckoo Flower and Wild Cherry,
White Ladies Plum and Pear, pale Lady Broom,
The Lady Apple Blossom, white and red,
Gold Dandelion with her cobweb plume,
Sweet Bean Blossom who makes the bees so merry,
All brought their beauty to the beauty there.
And those who make the earliest Summer fair,
These followed; all the Sisters of the May,
The Hawthorn Spirits, fragrant with rich scent,
With tiny crimson jewels in their hair,
And each one shedding beauty as she went,
Moon-daisy Ladies, and the Hosts of Hay,
Buttercup Ladies, brighter than Kings’ crowns.
So glistering and golden were their gowns
They dazzled sight, and with them Clovers came,
Little White souls, and Pink, with homely head,
And Holy Clover, for Saints’ orisouns,
Earth’s loveliest flower, mingling white with red.
And Jeanne of Dover, too, that brazen dame,
And lively Rattle from where larks alight.
And now the Ladies of the Summer’s might
Entered the whirl, the Wild Rose and the Rose,
The Power of Earth’s Passion filled the dance,
Life in its fulness, in its full delight,
Mingling its destiny with happy chance
All whirled, that Earth in her abundance knows
Between the cuckoo’s coming and his going.
The petals flew about the dance’s flowing,
The birds of Heaven circled them and sang,
Like all the Junes of story were the thrushes,
The skylarks were as many as flakes snowing;
And when the singing faltered into hushes
Ever the murmur of the Summer rang
Now up, now down, in drone, it never stayed.
Scarce was the beauty of the year displayed
Than other moods of Life came dancing fast.
Now came the spirits of the year achieved,
The Corn, with the striped Bine-flower on the blade;
Corn for man’s marrow, bristling, heavy-sheaved,
With scarlet Poppies not yet overpast,
Blue Cornflower, and Cockles of King’s gold.
Then came the Spirits of the year grown old,
Spirits of Fruit, the Red and Yellow Apples,
Thrush-speckled Pears, and Plums and Berries good.
And now the sunburnt field seemed touched with cold.
The Beechmast, such as squirrels hoard for food,
Scattered, the trees that high September dapples
Dripped coloured Leaves, scarlet were Hip and Haw.
The dance was thinned to wispings of the straw,
Hard Acorns in their cups and Fir-tree Cones,
The yellow Leaves down-loitered, crinkle-edged.
The Thistle-downs blew by on every flaw.
The Traveller’s Joy with which the lane is hedged
Came gray like mist about the dead Earth’s bones,
The dance was done and all was Death again.
The Thistle-downs were many as the rain,
They wandered in soft clouds; the ancient guide
Said to the Lovers, “Mount these Seeds with me,
For other visions in the night remain,
And other dances wait for you to see.”
They mounted, and the feathery seeds did glide,
Swift, through the swift dark night, and gliding shone.
They came into the land of Avallon,
Where all dead men and women put off Death,
Forgetting dying with its nights of pain,
And finding living with its thwartings gone;
But learning that they still are on the chain,
And seeing in the drawing of a breath
The Life just past, its value to the soul.
Peace waited for those comers to the goal,
Peace, from the knowledge that their loves endured,
And that a righter effort earns forgiving,
Joy, that Death’s coldness does not quench the coal,
But leaves the fire for another living,
For, to each soul, was other life assured,
A Justice putting each one in his room.
Those Lovers saw the wonder of the doom;
The myriad living dancing into Death,
The myriad spirits of the dead reborn,
With glories to rewin or reassume,
By passion stung, by killing sorrow torn,
Yet in a new flesh drawing the old breath,
Death and Life mixed, the dancing of men’s lives.
They saw the swarms from all Earth’s million hives
Eddying their patterns, as a water turns
Round and again, within some hollowed bay
Until it reach the gap where current drives.
So, round and round, these spirits took their way,
Childhood, that has no choice in what it learns,
Strength, that remakes, and Age that must depart.
As, at a horse-race, ere the horses start,
A watcher, looking down the line, will choose
One, upon whom his hopes, sans reason, fix,
And longing for his triumph fills his heart,
So, as they saw these spirits meet and mix,
These watchers longed for one such not to lose,
No, but retrieve, and pushing forward, gain.
They saw his spirit come, with many a stain
From Life’s attempts, out of its broken mould;
Pausing, to muted music, drawing breath,
Remembering the stars, forgetting pain,
Quiet in the immensity of Death,
Then, like a swimmer, coming forward bold,
To try the plunge again against the stream.
Grim music timed his plunge with shriek and scream,
And wailing followed as his dance began,
On feeble feet opposed and overborne,
Childhook malignant, lit with hardly a gleam,
The sorrow and the thwarting and the scorn,
Dealt to the child by woman and by man,
To break his soul and put him from his dance.
The wrongs of dead lives hindered his advance;
The sloths forgotten clung about his feet;
Thwarters, who dull the edge and blind the light,
From thwartings he had rendered, checked his chance;
Old unforgiveness stung him with its spite;
Yet still his spirit reckoned beauty sweet,
And wisdom holy, and for these things strove.
Against his steps the tide of dancers drove,
In the great press, each on his step intent;
The master-pattern thrust him to the side;
Then the bright Helpers the opposers clove,
To colour and to comfort and to guide;
He and the Helper mingled and were blent,
Their pathway glittered when they danced as one.
And in the power of their unison
All in him that was beautiful and wise
Scattered in light and colour from his going,
His Helper’s beauty in his dancing shone;
Old evils melted like the April snowing
Good done of old made gifts from Paradise;
So his soul’s dancing made the pattern fair.
Then, as his power failed, with whitening hair,
And friends departing left him desolate,
They saw new courage come upon his soul;
He did not whimper to what cannot spare,
But of the deathless in him took control,
And in the whirling autumn kept his state
Down to the Death, where all begins anew.
Then, in the dance, those watching Lovers knew
Their Mothers, long since dead, but now reborn,
Dancing new lives below them in the crowd;
They wept to see, they cried upon the two,
“O Mother, darling, if it be allowed,
Grant us one little rose in all this thorn,
One little word, to help us live in joy.”
Hearing, they swept towards their girl and boy;
They were all bright and beautiful and young,
All decked with daisies and forget-me-not,
Time had refashioned what it did destroy,
Womanhood’s maytime was again their lot;
A fair hand touched the mortal, once her lad,
The bright lips touched the mortal, once her girl.
The dance tune called; they might not quit the whirl,
But dancing on, they cried, each to her child,
“Know that my love still watches where you go,
It saves you from the harpy and the churl,
Shades you in summer, warms you in the snow,
Is shelter in the tempest and the wild.”
Then they were gone again and the dance sped.
And now the watchers saw the Nations spread
Like a great map, of coloured moving flames
Which danced and died and lightened and fell dark.
Lo, in one Nation was a speck of red
Alive, no quicker than a fire-fly’s spark;
And spirits grim, who have no earthly names,
Blew on it till it spread, and the dance quickened.
And as the hurrying called, man’s spirit sickened,
Guile, greed and evil spread from this one fire,
Until the country glowered like red coal
Raging, and poison from its smokings thickened,
Killing the mercies in the human soul,
And lying grew, and hate, and mad desire
For blood, possessed men until war was there.
Then joy was killed and beauty was stripped bare
And flung into the mud, and life was soiled,
Far as the watchers saw, with reeking lies;
A blackness hid the nations everywhere,
And murder killed the idiot with the wise;
Leaving the toil of man to be retoiled,
By sick and ancient, all the young being dead.
Slowly, they saw the light of courage spread,
Courage and Hope, like candles in the night,
Kindled amidst that map of misery,
Hope, from eternal light forever fed,
Again gave commune with eternity,
Darkness on darkness brightened into light.
Again Time’s golden moment did prepare.
And lo, as swallows rush upon the air,
Spirits of morning came upon those lands,
Bright-winged to comfort every soul who hoped,
Glad eyes they had, that never saw despair,
Glad certainty they had, that never groped,
Glad as bright water after desert sands
Those spirits were, and gladness was their gift.
Beauty they bore that tore the clouds adrift,
Friendship they bore, as word to the new age,
And wisdom for man’s soul to shelter in.
The flowers on their coming followed swift.
The watchers saw another Time begin,
Man’s spirit was set free from his old cage.
“See,” said the guide, “see, where the planet goes.”
Even as a whale across an ocean blows,
Shearing the water from him as he surges,
So there, towards the three, a planet thrust,
Marvellous music from its motion rose,
Sparkles of light streamed from it like a dust,
Through Space it kept the law of the Sun’s urges.
“See,” said their guide, “what Heaven’s dances are.”
They leaped upon that orb and sped afar
Through darkness and through dimness into blaze.
Roaring and glory of the stuffs of suns,
The fire in the whirl of starting star,
The rose of flame from which the planet runs,
The blast of flame from which the comet sprays,
These glared upon them as their planet drove.
And at the planet’s turning-point, she hove
As sparrow-hawk at pause above a field.
All round them glared those joys of beauty and fire,
Brightness on brightness circled, swept and strove,
The Universe was in her bride’s attire,
The King of Heaven tossed his starry shield;
The measureless danced with the infinite.
There was no darkness there, it was all light,
There was no falseness there, it was all true,
No sorrow, all was joy in power supreme;
No hatred and no dying and no night;
The fire of Love, no faintness and no dream
Burned on and on, no limit the dance knew.
“This is the dance of Heaven,” the guide said.
Watching that dance of joy, the man and maid
Caught hand in hand, in tears, that it was given
To them, who had but Love and Youth, to see
Eternal Love, undying Youth displayed,
Romping in fire through eternity.
“Let sorrow happen, we have looked on Heaven.”
The unspoken message ran from heart to heart.
Back to her course the planet swung apart,
Swift, swift the desert of the night she strode,
Out of the light into a darkening air.
There lay the little Earth as in a chart,
The dawn already laying Persia bare,
Euphrates gleaming among sands that glowed,
And cocks in Corinth telling their unrest.
Before the running light they hurried west,
“Beauty through you will comfort mortal pain,”
Their guide said, “And myself will be your friend,
In art’s long struggle to make better best.
Beauty is in you now until the end,
If end it be where we shall meet again,
And I shall show more fully the veiled thought.”
Below, the Alps their morning glory caught;
Now down they drifted from their high estate,
The Earth grew greener as the sky unstelled,
Mist over Channel many wreathings wrought,
Down towards London now their course they held,
Down, past the Tower Bridge and Traitor’s Gate,
And all the lamps in Thames’ reflections still.
And now, as Hampstead cocks uplifted shrill
And morning air came cold and panes grew gray,
They roused, or half-roused, in the green-room dim.
The milkman’s yodel cooed on Martin’s Hill;
Carters in Covent Garden answered him;
The bells in churches near and far away
Struck, and then chimed, for Five; the Lovers woke.
Their vision, not the bond between them, broke.
The beauty seen still shone within their minds,
They trembled still at their companionship
Swimming the starry aether without stroke
Heart within heart, a planet for their ship...
But now the Sun made shadows on the blinds,
They caught each other’s hands, and kissed and sighed.
Then Edward said, “O my beloved bride,
We are each other’s now, through time to come.
What though the body die and fortune fail,
We two shall dance it ever, side by side,
And Life will go with banner and wet sail,
Throughout the lives that lead to happidom,
Each is the other’s now, to bless and share.”
Then Naia said, “We have seen Beauty bare,
We two were chosen to behold such things.
Our dancing must make others see them, too,
Till Beauty happies all folk everywhere.
And I shall dance this ecstasy with you,
O, we shall dance together upon wings,
The locks are burst, the prisoners unbound.”
St. Martin’s bells rang out their happy round,
Along the eave, they watched a kitten creep,
Tiptoe but certain, fuzzy, black and white.
Then, clapsed together, down the stair they wound.
There in the office under unquencht light
The watchman lay unbuttoned and asleep,
Dreaming of all his medals from the war.
They crept, unheard, along the corridor;
Unheard, unnoticed, Edward turned the key;
Then, one by one, the well-oiled bolts slid by.
They opened, and slipped out, and closed the door;
London lay silent under summer sky
With life just stirring like a summer sea.
They trod the Garden market, wicker-piled.
There, as they went, each like a happy child
From Love returned and Paradise revealed,
The flower-women, plenishing their store,
Knowing them come from Heaven, nudged and smiled,
And offered them the flowers that they bore,
Young apple-blossom from a Berkshire field,
The holy clover, dewy still and sealed
As when under the moon out in the wild,
It heard the nightingale three hours before.
Then, in Long Acre, at an open door,
Full in the sun, behold, their ancient guide,
Beckoning them to come across the street.
“Enter my ancient house and jewel-store,”
He said, “young comrades, you must drink and eat,
And choose a jewel;”so they went inside.
All ample was the dwelling, light and wide,
With gem on gem for Queen and Emperor,
Sapphires like moons and sapphires like the sea.
“You are two dancers I have watched,” said he,
“And I, who have but untold wealth and age,
Worship the beauty and the youth you give.
Naia and Edward, will you dance for me?
I wish to remake beauty while I live,
See, I have builded me a perfect stage,
Not opened yet, a still unwritten page,
The home for England’s ballet soon to be.”
He held a door for them to look within.
There, ready for rehearsals to begin,
Were stage and house, all bright with the new paint,
“After your contract ceases,” said the guide,
“Dance for me here, for here are fames to win;
But now for gems for bridegroom and for bride,
Lo, a Queen’s amethyst without a taint,
Blue as the Heaven’s self that robes a saint;
And you, an emerald to cap the pin.
And for you both, these pearls to set the same.”
It was no fantasy of dream that came,
But waking life and fortune flooding full,
As when, after the hours of ebb-tide,
Where the sick smelling river trickles lame
Through mudbanks toothy with the bones of wrecks,
And quicksands where the buried seamen bide,
The tide race bubbling into flecks of wool
Hurries, from out the bright sea beautiful,
The Queen Ship with the cheering on her decks,
Home from the ocean to her City’s side.
It seemed, that all birds of Summer cried
With joy of those two lovers as they went.
Strange faces full of peace gleamed in the air,
Companion spirits floated at their side.
Such very suns of bliss were in each heart
They hungered for the passers-by to share.
For them, the gates of Heaven were all rent;
Their thoughts were music, colour and sweet scent;
And angels, shining where the buses start,
Called blessings on them, groom and lovely bride.
John Masefield