All the Poems
Page 11
Though my smile be never so friendly,
I offend wherever I go.
Yes, here in the land of the living,
Though a marriage be fairly sprung,
And the heart be loving and giving,
In the end it is sure to go wrong.
Then take me to the valley of asphalt,
And turn me to a river of stone,
That no tree may shift to my sighing,
Or breezes convey my moan.
The Fool
A couple of women is one too many,
Oh, how I wish I could do without any!
Old Ghosts
‘By one half as much power as the Roman Centurion.’
DE QUINCEY
I can call up old ghosts, and they will come,
But my art limps,— I cannot send them home.
Death in the Rose Garden
God in Heaven, forgive my death, it lies
Not on any hand, but mine, but mine!
No More People
Passing at my pleasure’s pace
Among each moping angel face,
Above the sun on the lily-bright air
I fly my aeroplane here and there.
The heaven-born plod the heavens over,
But I, the son of mischief’s lover,
Let the engine carry me. The angels, wing sore,
Look glum, I guess wish they were earth-born more and more.
But sometimes I have a feeling that my busy clatter
Has a mocking echo.
Than earth-born engine-borne, heaven-born wing-borne is better?
Do they look sideways because they know
That they will live to see the day when there are no more people?
All right. All right.
(I drop my bomb upon a church steeple.)
Hast Du dich verirrt?
My child, my child, watch how he goes,
The man in Party coloured clothes.
Satin-Clad
Satin-clad, with many a pearl,
Is this rich and wretched girl.
Does she weep? Her tears are crystal,
And she counts them as they fall.
Unpopular, lonely and loving
Unpopular, lonely and loving,
Elinor need not trouble,
For if she were not so loving,
She would not be so miserable.
‘Ceci est digne de gens sans Dieu’
(Allen)
These hands so well articulated
By brother’s lifeblood are contaminated
And still he walks, and still the shadows fall,
He clasps them. There is nothing there at all.
When the Sparrow Flies
When the sparrow flies to the delicate branch
He seems to be a heavy one alighting there,
It is March, and the fine twigs dance
As the boisterous sparrow plunges masterfully.
Fly again to my heart oh my beloved,
My heart flies too high when you are absent.
Voices against England in the Night
‘England, you had better go,
There is nothing else that you ought to do,
You lump of survival value, you are too slow.
England, you have been here too long,
And the songs you sing now are the songs you sung
On an earlier day. Now they are wrong.
And as you sing the sliver slips from your lips,
And the governing garment sits ridiculously on your hips.
It is a pity that you are still too cunning to make slips.’
Dr Goebbels, that is the point,
You are a few years too soon with your jaunt,
Time and the moment is not yet England’s daunt.
Yes, dreaming Germany with your Urge and Night,
You must go down before English and American might.
It is well, it is well, cries the peace kite.
Perhaps England our darling will recover her lost thought
We must think sensibly about our victory and not be distraught,
Perhaps America will have an idea, and perhaps not.
But they cried: Could not England, once the world’s best,
Put off her governing garment and be better dressed
In a shroud, a shroud? O history turn thy pages fast!
‘N’est-ce pas assez de ne me point haïr?’
Stand off, Mother, let me go!
The clock upon the shelf is slow
There wants but half a moment
E’er I am celled and barred in thy heart’s convent.
Mother, if mother-love enclosure be,
It were enough, my dear, not quite to hate me.
The Failed Spirit
To those who are isolate
War comes promising respite
Making what seems to be up to the moment the most successful endeavour
Against the fort of the failed spirit that is alone for ever.
Spurious failed spirit, adamantine wasture,
Crop, spirit, crop thy stony pasture.
The Sliding Mountain
The terrors of the scenery,
The black rocks of the sliding mountain,
Are hid from the man of family
Who lives beneath the fountain.
His name is Domesticity,
He’s married to an ivy tree,
And the little children laugh and scream,
For they do not know what these things mean.
The Recluse
My soul within the shades of night,
Like a languid plant with a fungoid blight,
Shone out in unearthly damp a bright white light;
Pashy the ground underfoot where I trod,
Musing as I passed of the nature of God,
But on my reverent reveries and fruitful plod
Of tear-strewn steps, like a wrathful rod
Fell the touch of a girl, young in years and officious,
Who broke at once at a touch my chain of delicious
Melancholy. Away flew every ecstasy.
With ridiculous intention she drew me to the sun,
My soul’s rich langours decried,
And, e’er I could chide, away did run,
Leaving my soul undone.
Oh too much sun, Oh wretched presumption,
Oh too little wisdom and too much compunction.
‘I could let Tom go – but what about the children?’
Since what you want, not what you ought,
Is the difficult thing to decide,
I advise you, Amelia, to persevere
With Duty for your guide.
Christmas
A child is born, they cry, a child
And he is Noble and not Mild
(It is the child that makes them wild).
The King sits brooding on his throne
He looks around and calls a man:
My men bring me a heavy stone.
My men bring me a purple robe
And bring me whips and iron goad.
They brought them to him where he strode.
My men bring gold and bring incense
And fetch all noble children at once
That I shall never take offence.
The men fetched the noble children away
They lifted them up and cried: Hurray.
The King sat back and clapped their play.
All noble mild children are brought home
To the wicked King who has cast them down
And ground their bones on the heavy stone.
But the child that is Noble and not Mild
He lies in his cot. He is unbeguiled.
He is Noble, he is not Mild,
And he is born to make men wild.
Uncle Torquemada,
does Beppo know about Jesus?
HAROLD’S LEAP (1950)
The Roman Road
a Christian speaks to a Lion in the Arena
&n
bsp; Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,
Sharp Roman road to Paradise,
Come eat me up, I’ll pay thy toll
With all my flesh, and keep my soul.
The Castle
I married the Earl of Egremont,
I never saw him by day,
I had him in bed by night,
And cuddled him tight.
We had two boys, twins,
Tommy and Roly,
Roly was so fat
We called him Roly-poly.
Oh that was a romantic time,
The castle had such a lonely look,
The estate,
Heavy with cockle and spurge,
Lay desolate.
The ocean waves
Lapped in castle caves.
Oh I love the ramshackle castle,
And the room
Where our sons were born.
Oh I love the wild
Parkland,
The mild
Sunshine.
Underneath the wall
Sleeps our pet toad,
There the hollyhocks grow tall.
My children never saw their father,
Do not know,
He sleeps in my arms each night
Till cockcrow.
Oh I love the ramshackle castle,
And the turret room
Where our sons were born.
To Dean Inge Lecturing on Origen
Listen, all of you, listen, all of you,
This way wisdom lies,
To reconcile with the simplicity of God
His contingent pluralities.
Oh, the wise man sat in his chair,
And oh, the people they would not hear,
They said, It is much too deep for us,
As they turned to the Differential Calculus.
Oh, if the people had only heard
Him,
Oh, if that wise man’s word was not blurred,
Not dimmed.
Behind the Knight
Behind the Knight sits hooded Care,
And as he rides she speaks him fair,
She lays her hand in his sable muff,
Ride he never so fast he’ll not cast her off.
The Warden
to the tune of ‘They played in the beautiful garden …’
They played in the beautiful garden
Those children of high degree,
But she sighed as she swam with the Warden
In the depths of the Zuyder Zee.
Oh why did you take me away
From the children I loved so well?
I had other plans in my heart, dear,
For the child of my latest spell.
The Warden has decked her with seaweed,
And shells of an ancient design,
But she sighs as she presses his fingers,
My heart can never be thine.
He sits in the golden chair
With the child he would call his own,
But the beautiful child has expired,
He nurses a sea-green stone.
Harold’s Leap
Harold, are you asleep?
Harold, I remember your leap,
It may have killed you
But it was a brave thing to do.
Two promontories ran high into the sky,
He leapt from one rock to the other
And fell to the sea’s smother.
Harold was always afraid to climb high,
But something urged him on,
He felt he should try.
I would not say that he was wrong,
Although he succeeded in doing nothing but die.
Would you?
Ever after that steep
Place was called Harold’s Leap.
It was a brave thing to do.
A Mother’s Hearse
The love of a mother for her child
Is not necessarily a beautiful thing
It can be compounded of pride and show
And exalt the self above every thing.
Oh why is that child so spoilt and horrible?
His mother has never neglected the trouble
Of giving him his will at every turn
And that is why his eyes do burn.
His eyes do burn with a hungry fire
His fingers clutch at the air and do not tire
He is a persecuting force
And as he grows older he grows worse.
And for his sake the friends are put down
And the happy people do not come round,
In pride and hostility against the world
This family upon itself is now curled.
Oh wretched they and wretched the friend
And this will continue without end
And all for a mother’s love it was,
I say it were better a mother’s hearse.
Touch and Go
Man is coming out of the mountains
But his tail is caught in the pass,
Why does he not free himself
Is he not an ass?
Do not be impatient with him
He is bowed with passion and fret
He is not out of the mountains
He is not half out yet.
Look at his sorrowful eyes
His torn cheeks, his brow
He lies with his head in the dust
Is there no one to help him now?
No, there is no one to help him
Let him get on with it
Cry the ancient enemies of man
As they cough and spit.
The enemies of man are like trees
They stand with the sun in their branches
Is there no one to help my creature
Where he languishes?
Ah, the delicate creature
He lies with his head in the rubble
Pray that the moment pass
And the trouble.
Look he moves, that is more than a prayer,
But he is so slow
Will he come out of the mountains?
It is touch and go.
Man is a Spirit
Man is a spirit. This the poor flesh knows,
Yet serves him well for host when the wind blows,
Why should this guest go wrinkling up his nose?
Thought is Superior
Thought is superior to dress and circumstance,
It is thought proud thought that sets the world in a dance.
And what is the greatest thought since the world begun?
The discovery that the earth goes round the sun.
The River God of the River Mimram in Hertfordshire
I may be smelly and I may be old,
Rough in my pebbles, reedy in my pools,
But where my fish float by I bless their swimming
And I like the people to bathe in me, especially women.
But I can drown the fools
Who bathe too close to the weir, contrary to rules,
And they take a long time drowning
As I throw them up now and then in a spirit of clowning.
Hi yih, yippity-yap, merrily I flow,
Oh I may be an old foul river but I have plenty of go.
Once there was a lady who was too bold,
She bathed in me by the tall black cliff where the water runs cold,
So I brought her down here
To be my beautiful dear.
Oh will she stay with me will she stay
This beautiful lady, or will she go away?
She lies in my beautiful deep river bed with many a weed
To hold her, and many a waving reed.
Oh who would guess what a beautiful white face lies there
Waiting for me to smooth and wash away the fear
She looks at me with. Hi yih, do not let her
Go. There is no one on earth who does not forget her
Now. They say I am a foolish old smelly river
But they do not know of my wide or
iginal bed
Where the lady waits, with her golden sleepy head.
If she wishes to go I will not forgive her.
Cool as a Cucumber
Cool as a cucumber calm as a mill pond sound as a bell
Was Mary
When she went to the Wishing Well.
But a fairy came up out of the well
And cursed her up hill and down dale
And cursed her from midnight to morning hail.
And now she gets worse and worse
Ever since she listened to the fairy’s curse
She is nervy grim and bold
Looks over her left shoulder and does not do as she is told.
She is quite unfit for marriage
Of course
Since she listened to the fairy’s curse
She grows worse and worse.
Starts off by herself each day
In a most unusual way
But nobody seems to know which way.
She looks pale, really unhealthy,
And moves so queerly, rather stealthy.
Mary come back to me,
Cried one who loved her.
He is the miller’s son.
And when she heard him she broke into a run.
She has not been seen since then.
If you ask me she’ll not be seen again.
The Orphan Reformed
The orphan is looking for parents
She roams the world over
Looking for parents and cover.
She looks at this pair and that
Cries, Father, Mother,
Likes these, does not like those,
Stays for a time; goes.
Crying, Oh hearts of stone.
But really she is better alone.
Orphan, the people who will not be your parents are not evil,
Not the devil.
But still she cries, Father, Mother
Must I be alone for ever?
Yes you must. Oh wicked orphan, oh rebellion,
Must an orphan not be alone is that your opinion?
At last the orphan is reformed. Now quite
Alone she goes; now she is right.
Now when she cries, Father, Mother, it is only to please.
Now the people do not mind, now they say she is a mild tease.
A Shooting Incident
Man does not live by bread alone
Nor die alone for lack of it
For he may be well fed, and die,
Well housed, well married, still may die.
There is a hunger of the heart
Will slay him, though each day he feast
On bread and wine, and go well dresst,
And such a one was Colonel Yeast.
He was a noble simple man
But all within his heart was black
And as he walked the way along
He cried, alas alack,
And cried and sighed and sighed and cried,
I am a long-delayèd suicide.
It was as though a fiend had swung
Him by the toe when he was young
And swung him so
And to and fro
And swore and said he should be most oppressed