The Penguin Book of English Verse

by Paul Keegan

  Hurroo! Hurroo!

  You haven’t an arm and you haven’t a leg,

  Hurroo! Hurroo!

  You haven’t an arm and you haven’t a leg,

  You’re an eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg:

  You’ll have to be put in a bowl to beg,

  Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye!

  ‘I’m happy for to see you home,

  Hurroo! Hurroo!

  I’m happy for to see you home,

  Hurroo! Hurroo!

  I’m happy for to see you home,

  All from the island of Sulloon,

  So low in flesh, so high in bone,

  Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye!

  ‘But sad as it is to see you so,

  Hurroo! Hurroo!

  But sad as it is to see you so,

  Hurroo! Hurroo!

  But sad as it is to see you so,

  And to think of you now as an object of woe,

  Your Peggy’ll still keep ye on as her beau.

  Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye!

  With drums and guns and guns and drums,

  The enemy nearly slew ye,

  My darling dear, you look so queer,

  Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye!

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON To Mrs Will H. Low

  Even in the bluest noonday of July,

  There could not run the smallest breath of wind

  But all the quarter sounded like a wood;

  And in the chequered silence and above

  The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois,

  Suburban ashes shivered into song.

  A patter and a chatter and a chirp

  And a long dying hiss – it was as though

  Starched old brocaded dames through all the house

  Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky

  Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain.

  Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks

  Of the near Autumn, how the smitten ash

  Trembles and augurs floods! O not too long

  In these inconstant latitudes delay,

  O not too late from the unbeloved north

  Trim your escape! For soon shall this low roof

  Resound indeed with rain, soon shall your eyes

  Search the foul garden, search the darkened rooms,

  Nor find one jewel but the blazing log.

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  My house, I say. But hark to the sunny doves

  That make my roof the arena of their loves,

  That gyre about the gable all day long

  And fill the chimneys with their murmurous song:

  Our house, they say; and mine, the cat declares

  And spreads his golden fleece upon the chairs;

  And mine the dog, and rises stiff with wrath

  If any alien foot profane the path.

  So too the buck that trimmed my terraces,

  Our whilome gardener, called the garden his;

  Who now, deposed, surveys my plain abode

  And his late kingdom, only from the road.

  MAY KENDALL Lay of the Trilobite

  A mountain’s giddy height I sought,

  Because I could not find

  Sufficient vague and mighty thought

  To fill my mighty mind;

  And as I wandered ill at ease,

  There chanced upon my sight

  A native of Silurian seas,

  An ancient Trilobite.

  So calm, so peacefully he lay,

  I watched him even with tears:

  I thought of Monads far away

  In the forgotten years.

  How wonderful it seemed and right,

  The providential plan,

  That he should be a Trilobite,

  And I should be a Man!

  And then, quite natural and free

  Out of his rocky bed,

  That Trilobite he spoke to me,

  And this is what he said:

  ‘I don’t know how the thing was done,

  Although I cannot doubt it;

  But Huxley – he if anyone

  Can tell you all about it;

  ‘How all your faiths are ghosts ard dreams,

  How in the silent sea

  Your ancestors were Monotremes –

  Whatever these may be;

  How you evolved your shining lights

  Of wisdom and perfection

  From Jelly-fish and Trilobites

  By Natural Selection.

  ‘You’ve Kant to make your brains go round,

  Hegel you have to clear them,

  You’ve Mr. Browning to confound,

  And Mr. Punch to cheer them!

  The native of an alien land

  You call a man and brother,

  And greet with hymn-book in one hand

  And pistol in the other!

  ‘You’ve Politics to make you fight

  As if you were possessed:

  You’ve cannon and you’ve dynamite

  To give the nations rest:

  The side that makes the loudest din

  Is surest to be right,

  And oh, a pretty fix you’re in!’

  Remarked the Trilobite.

  ‘But gentle, stupid, free from woe

  I lived among my nation,

  I didn’t care – I didn’t know

  That I was a Crustacean.1

  I didn’t grumble, didn’t steal,

  I never took to rhyme:

  Salt water was my frugal meal,

  And carbonate of lime.’

  Reluctantly I turned away,

  No other word he said;

  An ancient Trilobite, he lay

  Within his rocky bed.

  I did not answer him, for that

  Would have annoyed my pride:

  I merely bowed, and raised my hat,

  But in my heart I cried: –

  ‘I wish our brains were not so good,

  I wish our skulls were thicker,

  I wish that Evolution could

  Have stopped a little quicker;

  For oh, it was a happy plight,

  Of liberty and ease,

  To be a simple Trilobite

  In the Silurian seas!

  1888A. MARY F. ROBINSON Neurasthenia

  I watch the happier people of the house

  Come in and out, and talk, and go their ways;

  I sit and gaze at them; I cannot rouse

  My heavy mind to share their busy days.

  I watch them glide, like skaters on a stream,

  Across the brilliant surface of the world.

  But I am underneath: they do not dream

  How deep below the eddying flood is whirl’d.

  They cannot come to me, nor I to them;

  But, if a mightier arm could reach and save,

  Should I forget the tide I had to stem?

  Should I, like these, ignore the abysmal wave?

  Yes! in the radiant air how could I know

  How black it is, how fast it is, below?

  W. E. HENLEY from In Hospital

  II Waiting

  A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion),

  Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight;

  Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware;

  Scissors and lint and apothecary’s jars.

  Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from,

  Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted:

  Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach,

  While at their ease two dressers do their chores.

  One has a probe – it feels to me a crowbar.

  A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone.

  A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers.

  Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.

  III Interior

  The gaunt brown walls

  Look infinite in their decent meanness.

  There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle,

  The f
ulsome fire.

  The atmosphere

  Suggests the trail of a ghostly druggist.

  Dressings and lint on the long, lean table –

  Whom are they for?

  The patients yawn,

  Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin.

  A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles.

  It’s grim and strange.

  Far footfalls clank.

  The bad burn waits with his head unbandaged.

  My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral…

  O, a gruesome world!

  AMY LEVY A Ballade of Religion and Marriage1889

  Swept into limbo is the host

  Of heavenly angels, row on row;

  The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,

  Pale and defeated, rise and go.

  The great Jehovah is laid low,

  Vanished his burning bush and rod –

  Say, are we doomed to deeper woe?

  Shall marriage go the way of God?

  Monogamous, still at our post,

  Reluctantly we undergo

  Domestic round of boiled and roast,

  Yet deem the whole proceeding slow.

  Daily the secret murmurs grow;

  We are no more content to plod

  Along the beaten paths – and so

  Marriage must go the way of God.

  Soon, before all men, each shall toast

  The seven strings unto his bow,

  Like beacon fires along the coast,

  The flames of love shall glance and glow.

  Nor let nor hindrance man shall know,

  From natal bath to funeral sod;

  Perennial shall his pleasures flow

  When marriage goes the way of God.

  Grant, in a million years at most,

  Folk shall be neither pairs nor odd –

  Alas! we sha’n’t be there to boast

  ‘Marriage has gone the way of God!’

  (1915)

  W. B. YEATS Down by the Salley Gardens

  Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;

  She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

  She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

  But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

  In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

  And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

  She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

  But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

  1891WILLIAM MORRIS Pomona

  I am the ancient Apple-Queen,

  As once I was so am I now.

  For evermore a hope unseen,

  Betwixt the blossom and the bough.

  Ah, where’s the river’s hidden Gold!

  And where the windy grave of Troy?

  Yet come I as I came of old,

  From out the heart of Summer’s joy.

  RUDYARD KIPLING Danny Deever 1892

  ‘What are the bugles blowin’ for?’ said Files-on-Parade.

  ‘To turn you out, to turn you out,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.

  ‘What makes you look so white, so white?’ said Files-on-Parade.

  ‘I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.

  For they’re hangin’ Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play,

  The regiment’s in ’ollow square – they’re hangin’ him to-day;

  They’ve taken of his buttons off an’ cut his stripes away,

  An’ they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

  ‘What makes the rear-rank breathe so ‘ard?’ said Files-on-Parade.

  ‘It’s bitter cold, it’s bitter cold,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.

  ‘What makes that front-rank man fall down?’ said Files-on-Parade.

  ‘A touch o’ sun, a touch o’ sun,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.

  They are hangin’ Danny Deever, they are marchin’ of ’im round,

  They ’ave ’alted Danny Deever by ’is coffin on the ground;

  An’ ’e’ll swing in ’arf a minute for a sneakin’ shootin’ hound –

  O they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’!

  ‘’Is cot was right-’and cot to mine,’ said Files-on-Parade.

  ‘’E’s sleepin’ out an’ far to-night,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.

  ‘I’ve drunk ’is beer a score o’ times,’ said Files-on-Parade.

  ‘’E’s drinkin’ bitter beer alone,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.

  They are hangin’ Danny Deever, you must mark ’im to ’is place,

  For ’e shot a comrade sleepin’ – you must look ’im in the face;

  Nine ’undred of ’is county an’ the Regiment’s disgrace,

  While they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

  ‘What’s that so black agin the sun?’ said Files-on-Parade.

  ‘It’s Danny fightin’ ’ard for life,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.

  ‘What’s that that whimpers over’ead?’ said Files-on-Parade.

  ‘It’s Danny’s soul that’s passin’ now,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.

  For they’re done with Danny Deever, you can ’ear the quickstep play,

  The regiment’s in column, an’ they’re marchin’ us away;

  Ho! the young recruits are shakin’, an’ they’ll want their beer to-day,

  After hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’!

  RUDYARD KIPLING Mandalay

  By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea,

  There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me;

  For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:

  ‘Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!’

  Come you back to Mandalay,

  Where the old Flotilla lay:

  Can’t you ’ear their paddles chunkin’ from Rangoon to Mandalay?

  On the road to Mandalay,

  Where the flyin’-fishes play,

  An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ’crost the Bay!

  ‘Er petticoat was yaller an’ ’er little cap was green,

  An’ ’er name was Supi-yaw-lat – jes’ the same as Theebaw’s Queen,

  An’ I seed her first a-smokin’ of a whackin’ white cheroot,