The Gaff
OUT, out into the wind-swept cleansing night
Whose purple canopy, the sky, is bright
With the soft splendour of the full round moon
And a thousand stars that mystically croon
Strange melodies upborne on the cooling wind!
Out into the night I plunge, my fevered mind
Hot and drunk.
Out to the night from the stenches
Of a swelt’ring music-hall where leering wenches,
Sickly pale, nudge lustfully in glee the men
That smoke and sweat in their music-den
Like bestial things; where the reeking pit
Vomits out its noise of ribald wit,
The click of glasses in its bar in the rear
Where bloated men swill nauseous beer;
Its drunken babbling, oaths, hysteric glee,
Licentious talk and loathsome waggery;
Where huddled men and women sit in swarms,
All sensual and sweating all, on forms
Above a spittle-littered floor ; and where
Tall men with silent philosophic air
Y-clad in tawdry braided gold, spit out
Tobacco juice and, watching, prowl about!
Out from the garish stage flashed bright with lights
That lure the eyes of the sweating crowd to sights
And things they lust for, women showing legs,
And more (like that fat girl, half nude, that begs
Her languid lover’s ravishing embrace
And smiles hideously in his grinning face);
Full-limbed, tight-laced wantons singing all
Delirious songs of love that shrilly fall
On the gloating herds like balm; voluptuous dancing,
And the winking chorus, ludicrously prancing
On behind, like animated dolls.!
Ugh, enough! this tinsel show appals
My soul. Away this gruesome glare! Away
This carnival of gay indelicacy,
Gross and joyless!
Out I rush to the night
Whose purple covering, the sky, is bright
With the soft splendour of a million stars
And the mystic moon. Out, out, to list to bars
Of delicious music mingled with the scent
Of hidden flowers, that surely ne’er was meant
For man! Out, out, to wash my jaded soul
With cooling airs from the star-wrought purple bowl
Of night, in the vast solemnity
Of silent trees where purple shadows lie
And where, by a rugged ivy’d grot, enriched
With golden withered leaves, a brook bewitched
By the elfish spell of moonbeams babbles on
And mutters of a silent graceful swan
It loves ; and where, upon the whispering grass
Slim fairy dancers laugh and, twinkling, pass!
