Which, Being Interpreted, Is as May Be, or Otherwise

Underneath the dim, criss-crossing beams
Grown edgeless with the litter of decay,
Where spiders hung their everlasting webs
To wave, tier upon tier, across the gloom
Whenever any little cranny wind
Whined in on them and tumbled up the dust
Upon the flaking beams and on the floor
Startling the nosing rats to sudden cold,
Old Neron sat, cuddling his withered bones.
Above his head, the great Cathedral bells
Scattered their hallelujahs round the sky
On Sundays, holy days, and festivals;
But Neron took no note of them, his ears
Were inadvertent to such happenings
As cry themselves with bells. He sat unmoved,
Scuffing his naked feet in the thick dust
Poured from the mouldering beams by the bells' jar,
Sorting his pleasure from old heaps of thoughts.
Below his garret, stairs and stairs below,
Men skinned their fingers tugging at the ropes
That swung the clappers of the chiming bells.
No kith nor kin to Neron, these; his bones
Were liker to the shafts and traceries
And gargoyled gutters shining on the town
In twitched and twisted angles. Neron paid
No least attention to them, nor the church
Which harboured him; and yet it was a jewel,
A very rose of Gothic merriment,
Blooming symbolic beasts on every arch
And sprouting columns like a Summer wood.
All up and down were flights of spiral stairs,
Contrived within the hollow core of walls,
Leading to chambers of hewn stone, and lofts
Where slits for windows pierced the granite blocks
More than an arm's length to reach open air,
And distant so far down that sums of steps
Ran into figures to affright the mind,
God lived upon an altar bright with lights
Where snivelling priests might wish him well-a-day.
Now Neron was a man preoccupied
With the huge spectacle of impotence
Swarming upon an ether-floating planet
Which only people called astronomers
Paused to take any heed of. Other men
Hurried and worried over this and that,
And passed from birth to death in one short eye-wink
Of aching agitation. Fools, parlous fools,
To aged Neron, but a stupendous jest
Fit for the crumpling of old bones in laughter.
Sneering was a capable sort of sport
If one had learnt the trick of balancing
On an impalpable circumference
To whirl a quite detached and sharpened vision
Over inanities a decent planet
Might be ashamed to carry. Neron took
His younger self as motto; every phase
Which others linger in had once been his,
But in the end he had flung clear of all.
They served him in the way of illustration.
He built them up like blocks to knock them down
And chuckle at the noise they made in falling.
These visions of himself were warlock dreams
Conjured up with a wand-stroke from the air
And swept away as easily upon
The imperious order of another gesture.
This pastime lifted Neron to a god,
Or something similar, if only language
Had found a word for it. But superstition
Held words too rigid in a certain groove
For any purpose Neron had for them;
Giving a thing no name exacts obedience
To any chasing colour or humour one
May need to clap to it, and he, at least,
Swam high above convention in his thoughts.
Under the criss-cross beams and chiming bells
Old Neron sat, cheating himself with dreams,
Spreading them out before him, one by one,
As dowagers tap down their playing cards
With claw-like hands in games of solitaire.
His frozen eyes gleamed at them as they came
Out of the darkness from an eldritch past
Which seemed no longer his, yet tasted sweet
In far-off recollection. Childhood first—
But what was childhood? A small, fragile thing
Of gay mishaps, and silly, bootless joys,
An eagerness of folly over tops,
Or kites which tugged and sharply broke their strings
Leaving a heartache Neron chirped to think
No greatest misery could give him now.
Youth bettered this. His jellied blood became
Less solid pondering upon the heat
Which burns youth into powder; his old bones
Were brittle, maybe, but not to that fire,
And yet its simulacrum was most fit
To muse upon and glow vicariously,
Warming safe fingers at a painted flame.
And Neron felt a queasy sort of pride
In mocking his old wounds with jibes that pricked
To a delicious flood of memory.
The hurt outgrown was tonic to his years.
He plied his ridicule so lustily
His body shook and rattled where he sat.
But manhood, flattering itself with windy praise,
Hugging the spiky guerdon of a name
With letters to it, gratified beyond
Desire by the cheap grace of epithet—
What monument of satire was this!
What exquisite lampooning!—O, the mirth
Of stars and ribbons viewed from the vast height
Of Neron's imperturbability!
To chip a quondam purpose to a grin
Was sport to make him hug his pointed knees
And rock for very glee, until his thighs
Were bruised with teetering upon the floor
Whose only cushion was the heaped-up dust.
How good to lick the sauce from all those years
And leave them icy bare and shivering,
With no illusion for their nakedness,
Turned playthings for a man of doting age
Who had no other joy but these, and sleep.
A little sift of daylight wandered in
Where one of the roof-tiles had blown away
And rain and sun had rotted through the wood.
This wisp of light was company to Neron.
He watched the floor-boards change from dark to glare,
Saw the glow creep upon a cock of dust
And leave it flat in shadow, traced its course
To where the hole's edge snapped it swiftly off,
Striking him blind to the accustomed dusk.
Now Neron had a friend he never met,
A verger who winked at his being there
In the sky-loft where no one ever came,
And left him scraps of broken meat and bread
Upon a step of the third stairway down.
The light was Neron's clock; it lit a crack
Jagged and strange, not like another crack,
So Neron knew the time. With many a curse
And groan he twitched his shaking bones upright
And tottered down the stair to get his meat,
For he must eat to live and dream his dreams.
He hated it, the aching journey down
And up again, he hated even his bones
Whose insolence in so demanding food
Sent him to get it whatever cost
To old, unable feet and quaking knees;
He loathed the verger's charitable dole,
The need of it became an injury.
But Neron still must eat, and so he went
Wearily down the stair to get his food.
It was not easy eating with the rats
Swarming upon him, but Neron long ago
Had crawled about his loft and gathered in
Such bits of bars, and bolts, and wooden blocks
As workmen leave, and sitting there he shied
These craftily into the horde of rats
And kept them from him while he eat his meat.
And afterwards, filled for more cursing, he
Would fumble round and pick his weapons up,
Treasuring them with canny, careful count
Lest one among the number might be missed,
To serve him for another meal to-morrow.
So the days went, one pea-like to another,
The seasons unremarked, the years a loss.
No Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday were, for Neron,
Just when the light was there and when 'twas not,
With dreams and slumber as each chose to come—
This, he would think, was sure philosophy,
Proper to please the minds of dry old men
Outgrown of creeds and fallals, seeing far
Beyond the hazards itching younger folk
With livelier arteries, whose dumb-bell heads
Were crowned with donkey's ears. Old bones are wise
And undisturbed by any hum of flesh;
He knew this with a wizened irony.
Weighing the world and life against his bones,
He tipped the scales down heavily, he thought,
And so was satisfied. His cackling laugh
Piped to the rats and hanging spiders' webs
And smothered in the muffle of decay.
The wine of his conceit was very old
And heady; like a drug, it ran beneath
His skin and flushed his veins so that they stood
Out on him like blue worms. A queer old man,
Building content with each new creaking thought
That jarred across his draughty, shrivelled brain.

One day as he was groping in the dusk,
The dusty dusk through which the light-streak clove
And showed it such for some few broomstick lengths,
His startled fingers closed about a foot,
Two feet, in fact, a pair of human feet,
Palpable to his touch, but cold as snow.
Old Neron cringed from them and hid his eyes.
For might he not be going mad? Yes, mad!
That last cold horror haunting vacant age?
His toothless jaws chattered and slabbered now
For one pale moment, then he looked and saw
Two wooden statues in the golden dusk:
A king with orb and sceptre, and a beard
As black as ink, beside him was his queen,
And both were crowned. The beard held Neron's eyes.
Waist-long and vast, its heaviness of hair
Stamped the king's sullen masculinity
With something of grave terror. Neron felt
An instant loathing, tingled with shrewd fear;
And yet, although he shuddered, a sly spark
Of admiration twinged him like a pain.
This was a terrible and virile king.
But for the queen—old Neron gasped before
Her sudden loveliness. A slender plant
Swung in a wind, crowned by a pyramid
Of fragile, jostling bells, was not more like
Itself than she to it. Her eyes were kind,
But wise withal, and hooded with fatigue.
She drooped in standing, yet remained upright
Wistfully conscious of an effort so.
Her pleated robe of green, or blue, or green,
Pushed out or hollowed as her body pressed
Upon it or withdrew within its folds;
She stood as naked to old Neron's eyes
As though no robe were there. Her small white hands
Held a red fox-glove, charming in its poise;
Her feet, which caught the sliding spray of light,
Appeared to tread on gold. Neron beheld
Them, bitter bearded king, mighty in power,
And gentle queen all weariful repose.
The light moved on and Neron saw no more.
Who were they? Neron plagued his memory
For some stray fact he might have heard of them.
But nothing came. He probed a curious mind
Into the reason for their banishment
To this lost corner whence no one had climbed
For desert lengths of years; he did not know
How long he had himself been there, death-long
He thought, and tallied up his distant dreams
As glittering from the other side of life.
Day after day he pondered why so late
He had encountered them. His wisp of light
Fell always to a line; but this was fact
Which baffled speculation. His own dreams
Fogged to a hueless essence, here was more
To work upon; with such a king and queen
Things had moved gaudily—if that were all.
He guessed the word ill-chosen, half a truth,
And seeking the other half, he wrought them both
Into a tale of tragic circumstance,
Of bargained marriage hurried on through lust,
Of desolate surrender where no hope
Of moving iron wills could have a place,
Of girlhood torn upon the state of queen.
With scraps of ancient myths, and fairy-tales,
And half-remembered tags of history,
Neron made up a story his old dreams
Could nowise counter with. He let them be,
Forsaking his life to consider theirs:
The terrible and unrelenting king,
The queen with a red fox-glove in her hands.
So Neron changed the order of his dreams
And irony became magnificence.
The queen, composed and cool, bent to his will,
Moving with stately graciousness within
The frame of his imaginings. She fringed
His dream with filigrees of excellence,
A lace of buds and scarcely opened flowers
Just touched with morning hoar-frost. But the king
Had his own dreams and would not enter Neron's,
Black dreams peculiar to a bearded king.
They injured Neron in his own esteem,
Chafing him to achieve a greater thing
Than he had yet conceived. His ardour grew
To match himself against the king, and crack
The shell of high omnipotence in two
And gloat upon the scattered empty halves
Lolling lopsided on the dusty floor.
So gradually he wrought a miracle,
Merging himself into the royal dream—
But not as ancient Neron, that old man
Had plumped himself with visions of the queen
Into a proper youth whose sap ran hot
Over his gusty body, ripe for love,
Fresh with the bursting agony of love,
And she a very distant, youthful queen.
As long as he could see them, Neron sat
Before the statues, while the light-streak crawled
From king to queen and left them in the dark.
Bit after bit he added to his dream.
He found the castle where they lived, above
A meadow of fair trees, whose flickering leaves
Chequered the placid water of a moat,
Weed-spotted, sound asleep, beneath the walls,
Except when the portcullis, clanging down,
Shattered its sky and trees to sliding planes
Of colour tipping with the tilt of waves.
Above the angry walls was gleam of grass
Shuttled with gold and white, for on a terrace
A peacock strutted between carven shields
Flanking the angles of a balustrade.
Sometimes, at night, Neron would climb the hill,
And crouching down beside the brooding moat
Gaze at the silent glisten of the roof
And ivy-twinkling walls, and speculate
Which hollow window opened on the room
Where the queen slept, and curse the bearded king
With full-mouthed curses. Then, as dreaming grew,
He saw the queen at work within her bower
Surrounded by her ladies, stitching on
A blue-green tapestry where hunters ran,
And spotted dogs plunged into a blue stream
After an otter. Neron boldly stepped
Into the bower and nodded to the ladies
Who crept away and left him with the queen.
But nothing happened, for that night the king came,
Though Neron luckily escaped before.
He wrenched his wits to find some casual way
When he might urge himself upon her thought
Whose numb inconsequence was salt and flame
Set to the green wound of his smarting flesh.
But the dream halted at this very spot,
He could not push it to a consummation.
He heaved upon it with his new-found strength,
Fully persuaded that he served her cause
By this he had in mind. The dream gave way,
The queen surrendered on the very terrace
Where the white peacock strutted. She whispered Neron
Where she would be at sunset, gave him the key
Of a small turret-chamber. He found her there,
Her slender shadow stretching to the door
To welcome him; and she, beyond her shadow,
Stood waiting in the crimson sunset light,
A slender silver fox-glove flushed with rose.
There was no sound except the golden boom
Of bees among the honeysuckle flowers
Stirring against the wall. For neither spoke,
Being removed past any reach of speech
Into that silent space of holiness
Where flesh creates the everlasting world.
But there the bearded king broke in upon them,
The king whose dream would never enter Neron's.
When Neron saw that thorny face, he leapt
To hide it from the queen. Calling his dream,
He strode upon the king, and the dream followed
Inch by inch after him, close as a shadow.
But Neron's dream was mighty with fulfilment,
It strove with the king's dream, and he and Neron
Stood each beside his dream and urged it forward
With shouts and cries. The battle roared between them.
The king's dream crowded down on Neron's dream
To smother it. But Neron's dream arose,
Flinging the king's dream off, and towered up
Tremendous in its brilliance. Then the king,
To save his dream, threw his black beard upon it,
The heaviness of hair shut out the brilliance,
At which his dream, revived to fearful fury,
Came on at Neron's dream, and the two clashed
With a great noise together, and their bodies
Rang each on each like cymbals in the gloom
Sprung suddenly about them. With the dark,
The king's dream waxed monstrous in shape and stature,
Behemoth treading on a puny earth.
So did it stand and move, a ponderous bulk,
The nimbleness of Neron's dream was nothing.
The king's dream lifted like a rock and drove
The air snarling before it to a height
Past vision, thence it fell on Neron's dream,
Splitting its back from end to end, and Neron
Waggled his palsied hands about and wept.

The verger, coming up with Neron's food,
Found what was left the day before untouched.
But being somewhat slow of wit, indeed
A person of marked unagility
Where thinking was concerned, what speculations
Another might have had, he was without.
So laying the second dole beside the first
He stumped downstairs to dust the chancel rail.
But when, next day, two baskets greeted him,
Both full, he felt enough perplexity
To risk a whistle on it; and the third
Encounter with the baskets, all of the
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