'The House Of Dust: Part 03: 12: Witches' Sabbath' by Conrad Aiken


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Now, when the moon slid under the cloud
And the cold clear dark of starlight fell,
He heard in his blood the well-known bell
Tolling slowly in heaves of sound,
Slowly beating, slowly beating,
Shaking its pulse on the stagnant air:
Sometimes it swung completely round,
Horribly gasping as if for breath;
Falling down with an anguished cry . . .
Now the red bat, he mused, will fly;
Something is marked, this night, for death . . .
And while he mused, along his blood
Flew ghostly voices, remote and thin,
They rose in the cavern of his brain,
Like ghosts they died away again;
And hands upon his heart were laid,
And music upon his flesh was played,
Until, as he was bidden to do,
He walked the wood he so well knew.
Through the cold dew he moved his feet,
And heard far off, as under the earth,
Discordant music in shuddering tones,
Screams of laughter, horrible mirth,
Clapping of hands, and thudding of drums,
And the long-drawn wail of one in pain.
To-night, he thought, I shall die again,
We shall die again in the red-eyed fire
To meet on the edge of the wood beyond
With the placid gaze of fed desire . . .
He walked; and behind the whisper of trees,
In and out, one walked with him:
She parted the branches and peered at him,
Through lowered lids her two eyes burned,
He heard her breath, he saw her hand,
Wherever he turned his way, she turned:
Kept pace with him, now fast, now slow;
Moving her white knees as he moved . . .
This is the one I have always loved;
This is the one whose bat-soul comes
To dance with me, flesh to flesh,
In the starlight dance of horns and drums . . .

The walls and roofs, the scarlet towers,
Sank down behind a rushing sky.
He heard a sweet song just begun
Abruptly shatter in tones and die.
It whirled away. Cold silence fell.
And again came tollings of a bell.

* * * * *

This air is alive with witches: the white witch rides
Swifter than smoke on the starlit wind.
In the clear darkness, while the moon hides,
They come like dreams, like something remembered . .
Let us hurry! beloved; take my hand,
Forget these things that trouble your eyes,
Forget, forget! Our flesh is changed,
Lighter than smoke we wreathe and rise . . .

The cold air hisses between us . . . Beloved, beloved,
What was the word you said?
Something about clear music that sang through water . . .
I cannot remember. The storm-drops break on the leaves.
Something was lost in the darkness. Someone is dead.
Someone lies in the garden and grieves.
Look how the branches are tossed in this air,
Flinging their green to the earth!
Black clouds rush to devour the stars in the sky,
The moon stares down like a half-closed eye.
The leaves are scattered, the birds are blown,
Oaks crash down in the darkness,
We run from our windy shadows; we are running alone.

* * * * *

The moon was darkened: across it flew
The swift grey tenebrous shape he knew,
Like a thing of smoke it crossed the sky,
The witch! he said. And he heard a cry,
And another came, and another came,
And one, grown duskily red with blood,
Floated an instant across the moon,
Hung like a dull fantastic flame . . .
The earth has veins: they throb to-night,
The earth swells warm beneath my feet,
The tips of the trees grow red and bright,
The leaves are swollen, I feel them beat,
They press together, they push and sigh,
They listen to hear the great bat cry,
The great red bat with the woman's face . . .
Hurry! he said. And pace for pace
That other, who trod the dark with him,
Crushed the live leaves, reached out white hands
And closed her eyes, the better to see
The priests with claws, the lovers with hooves,
The fire-lit rock, the sarabands.
I am here! she said. The bough he broke—
Was it the snapping bough that spoke?
I am here! she said. The white thigh gleamed
Cold in starlight among dark leaves,
The head thrown backward as he had dreamed,
The shadowy red deep jasper mouth;
And the lifted hands, and the virgin breasts,
Passed beside him, and vanished away.
I am here! she cried. He answered 'Stay!'
And laughter arose, and near and far
Answering laughter rose and died . . .
Who is there? in the dark? he cried.
He stood in terror, and heard a sound
Of terrible hooves on the hollow ground;
They rushed, were still; a silence fell;
And he heard deep tollings of a bell.

* * * * *

Look beloved! Why do you hide your face?
Look, in the centre there, above the fire,
They are bearing the boy who blasphemed love!
They are playing a piercing music upon him
With a bow of living wire! . . .
The virgin harlot sings,
She leans above the beautiful anguished body,
And draws slow music from those strings.
They dance around him, they fling red roses upon him,
They trample him with their naked feet,
His cries are lost in laughter,
Their feet grow dark with his blood, they beat and
beat,
They dance upon him, until he cries no more . . .
Have we not heard that cry before?
Somewhere, somewhere,
Beside a sea, in the green evening,
Beneath green clouds, in a copper sky . . .
Was it you? was it I?
They have quenched the fires, they dance in the darkness,
The satyrs have run among them to seize and tear,
Look! he has caught one by the hair,
She screams and falls, he bears her away with him,
And the night grows full of whistling wings.
Far off, one voice, serene and sweet,
Rises and sings . . .

'By the clear waters where once I died,
In the calm evening bright with stars. . . .'
Where have I heard these words? Was it you who sang them?
It was long ago.
Let us hurry, beloved! the hard hooves trample;
The treetops tremble and glow.

* * * * *

In the clear dark, on silent wings,
The red bat hovers beneath her moon;
She drops through the fragrant night, and clings
Fast in the shadow, with hands like claws,
With soft eyes closed and mouth that feeds,
To the young white flesh that warmly bleeds.
The maidens circle in dance, and raise
From lifting throats, a soft-sung praise;
Their knees and breasts are white and bare,
They have hung pale roses in their hair,
Each of them as she dances by
Peers at the blood with a narrowed eye.
See how the red wing wraps him round,
See how the white youth struggles in vain!
The weak arms writhe in a soundless pain;
He writhes in the soft red veiny wings,
But still she whispers upon him and clings. . . .
This is the secret feast of love,
Look well, look well, before it dies,
See how the red one trembles above,
See how quiet the white one lies! . . . .

Wind through the trees. . . .and a voice is heard
Singing far off. The dead leaves fall. . . .
'By the clear waters where once I died,
In the calm evening bright with stars,
One among numberless avatars,
I wedded a mortal, a mortal bride,
And lay on the stones and gave my flesh,
And entered the hunger of him I loved.
How shall I ever escape this mesh
Or be from my lover's body removed?'
Dead leaves stream through the hurrying air
And the maenads dance with flying hair.

* * * * *

The priests with hooves, the lovers with horns,
Rise in the starlight, one by one,
They draw their knives on the spurting throats,
They smear the column with blood of goats,
They dabble the blood on hair and lips
And wait like stones for the moon's eclipse.
They stand like stones and stare at the sky
Where the moon leers down like a half-closed eye. . .
In the green moonlight still they stand
While wind flows over the darkened sand
And brood on the soft forgotten things
That filled their shadowy yesterdays. . . .
Where are the breasts, the scarlet wings? . . . .
They gaze at each other with troubled gaze. . . .
And then, as the shadow closes the moon,
Shout, and strike with their hooves the ground,
And rush through the dark, and fill the night
With a slowly dying clamor of sound.
There, where the great walls crowd the stars,
There, by the black wind-riven walls,
In a grove of twisted leafless trees. . . .
Who are these pilgrims, who are these,
These three, the one of whom stands upright,
While one lies weeping and one of them crawls?
The face that he turned was a wounded face,
I heard the dripping of blood on stones. . . .
Hooves had trampled and torn this place,
And the leaves were strewn with blood and bones.
Sometimes, I think, beneath my feet,
The warm earth stretches herself and sighs. . . .
Listen! I heard the slow heart beat. . . .
I will lie on this grass as a lover lies
And reach to the north and reach to the south
And seek in the darkness for her mouth.

* * * * *

Beloved, beloved, where the slow waves of the wind
Shatter pale foam among great trees,
Under the hurrying stars, under the heaving arches,
Like one whirled down under shadowy seas,
I run to find you, I run and cry,
Where are you? Where are you? It is I. It is I.
It is your eyes I seek, it is your windy hair,
Your starlight body that breathes in the darkness there.
Under the darkness I feel you stirring. . . .
Is this you? Is this you?
Bats in this air go whirring. . . .
And this soft mouth that darkly meets my mouth,
Is this the soft mouth I knew?
Darkness, and wind in the tortured trees;
And the patter of dew.

* * * * *

Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!
Dance till the brain is red with speed!
Dance till you fall! Lift your torches!
Kiss your lovers until they bleed!
Backward I draw your anguished hair
Until your eyes are stretched with pain;
Backward I press you until you cry,
Your lips grow white, I kiss you again,
I will take a torch and set you afire,
I will break your body and fling it away. . . .
Look, you are trembling. . . .Lie still, beloved!
Lock your hands in my hair, and say
Darling! darling! darling! darling!
All night long till the break of day.

Is it your heart I hear beneath me. . . .
Or the far tolling of that tower?
The voices are still that cried around us. . . .
The woods grow still for the sacred hour.
Rise, white lover! the day draws near.
The grey trees lean to the east in fear.
'By the clear waters where once I died . . . .'
Beloved, whose voice was this that cried?
'By the clear waters that reach the sun
By the clear waves that starward run. . . .
I found love's body and lost his soul,
And crumbled in flame that should have annealed. . .
How shall I ever again be whole,
By what dark waters shall I be healed?'

Silence. . . .the red leaves, one by one,
Fall. Far off, the maenads run.

Silence. Beneath my naked feet
The veins of the red earth swell and beat.
The dead leaves sigh on the troubled air,
Far off the maenads bind their hair. . . .
Hurry, beloved! the day comes soon.
The fire is drawn from the heart of the moon.

* * * * *

The great bell cracks and falls at last.
The moon whirls out. The sky grows still.
Look, how the white cloud crosses the stars
And suddenly drops behind the hill!
Your eyes are placid, you smile at me,
We sit in the room by candle-light.
We peer in each other's veins and see
No sign of the things we saw this night.
Only, a song is in your ears,
A song you have heard, you think, in dream:
The song which only the demon hears,
In the dark forest where maenads scream . . .

'By the clear waters where once I died . . .
In the calm evening bright with stars . . . '
What do the strange words mean? you say,—
And touch my hand, and turn away.

Editor 1 Interpretation

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 12: Witches' Sabbath by Conrad Aiken

This is it. This is the poem that will transport you to the other side, the one that will take you on a journey through the dark alleys of the human psyche, the one that will make you question everything you know about poetry, about life, about death. This is The House Of Dust: Part 03: 12: Witches' Sabbath by Conrad Aiken, and it is a masterpiece.

What makes this poem so special? Where do we even begin? Let's start with the structure. The House Of Dust: Part 03: 12: Witches' Sabbath is divided into five stanzas, each of them with its own unique rhythm and rhyme scheme. The first stanza sets the tone for the rest of the poem, with its haunting imagery and eerie atmosphere:

The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vaporous illusion that obscured the sight.
No more do ghosts of retrospection hover
In gloom--no more the glories and the might
Of warrior, lover, poet, over-arch
The tumult and the shouting and the fight
Of human passions. Only lower,
Simpler, quieter, pervades the night,
As though all ancient nobleness of soul
Had gone into the making of this whole.

Here, Aiken creates a sense of emptiness, of desolation, as if the landscape has been stripped of everything that once made it beautiful. But there is also a sense of peace, of calm, as if the world has been simplified and made more manageable. This contrast between emptiness and calmness is what makes the poem so powerful.

In the second stanza, Aiken introduces us to the witches:

The dancers go in single file,
Each (such a youth!) a witch,
Caroling distantly, lost a while
In the green twilight which
Binds hill to hill with shadowy bars
Of streaming mist, and through
The open window glides and climbs
The voice of one who calls and calls,
And sings, and sings, and calls.

What is so fascinating about this stanza is the way Aiken portrays the witches. Rather than the traditional image of ugly old hags, these witches are young and beautiful, almost erotic. There is a sensuality to their movements and to the way they sing, and this adds to the eerie atmosphere of the poem.

The third stanza is perhaps the most powerful of all:

One sleeps below, and one above,
Piggy-back on her that's dead.

Here, we get a sense of the macabre, of the grotesque. The image of one person carrying another on their back is disturbing enough, but when we realize that the person on top is dead, the effect is chilling. It is almost as if the witches are celebrating death, as if they have embraced it as a part of their existence.

The fourth stanza continues this theme of death:

And the worm that crawls in the skull of the world
Repeats there over and over
In the moonlight pale as a hair of a girl,
"Whatever I do I must do forever."

Here, Aiken personifies death as a worm that crawls in the skull of the world. This image is both disgusting and fascinating, and it adds to the overall sense of decay that permeates the poem. But there is also a sense of inevitability, of the inescapable nature of death. The repetition of the phrase "Whatever I do I must do forever" reinforces this idea, and it is perhaps the most haunting line in the entire poem.

Finally, in the fifth and final stanza, Aiken brings the poem to a close:

I am worn out with dreams;
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams;
And all day long I look
Upon this lady's beauty
As though I had found in book
A pictured beauty,
Pleased to have filled the eyes
Or the discerning ears,
Delighted to be but wise,
For men improve with the years;
And yet, and yet,
Is this my dream, or the truth?
O would that we had met
When I had my burning youth!
But I grow old among dreams,
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams.

Here, we have a sense of regret, of missed opportunities. The speaker is worn out with dreams, and he longs for something more tangible, something more real. But even as he acknowledges this, he realizes that he is too old to pursue it. He is a weather-worn, marble triton among the streams, and his time has passed.

In conclusion, The House Of Dust: Part 03: 12: Witches' Sabbath is a masterpiece of modern poetry. It is dark, eerie, and haunting, and it explores themes of death, decay, and regret with a power that is unmatched. It is a poem that will stay with you long after you have read it, and it is a testament to the enduring power of poetry to move and inspire us.

Editor 2 Analysis and Explanation

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 12: Witches' Sabbath by Conrad Aiken is a classic poem that takes the reader on a journey through a dark and eerie landscape. The poem is filled with vivid imagery and haunting descriptions that transport the reader to a world of witches, demons, and supernatural beings.

The poem begins with a description of a dark and ominous forest, where the trees are twisted and gnarled, and the leaves rustle with an eerie sound. The forest is a place of mystery and danger, where witches gather to perform their dark rituals.

As the poem progresses, the reader is introduced to a group of witches who are preparing for their Sabbath. The witches are described as being old and haggard, with wrinkled skin and crooked teeth. They are dressed in tattered robes and carry brooms and cauldrons.

The witches gather around a fire and begin to chant and dance. The fire is described as being bright and hot, and the flames leap and dance in the night sky. The witches' chanting is described as being eerie and haunting, and it sends shivers down the reader's spine.

As the witches continue to dance and chant, they are joined by a group of demons. The demons are described as being dark and sinister, with glowing eyes and sharp claws. They dance around the fire with the witches, and their presence adds to the eerie atmosphere of the poem.

The poem reaches its climax as the witches and demons begin to perform their dark rituals. They summon the spirits of the dead and call upon the powers of darkness. The air is filled with the smell of burning herbs and the sound of chanting.

The poem ends with a description of the witches and demons disappearing into the night, leaving behind only the sound of their eerie laughter. The reader is left with a sense of unease and foreboding, as if they have just witnessed something dark and sinister.

Overall, The House Of Dust: Part 03: 12: Witches' Sabbath is a haunting and eerie poem that takes the reader on a journey through a dark and mysterious world. The vivid imagery and haunting descriptions create a sense of unease and foreboding, and the reader is left with a feeling of being transported to another world. This poem is a classic example of the power of poetry to create a sense of atmosphere and emotion, and it is a must-read for anyone who loves dark and eerie literature.

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