by Stevie Smith
With just such an admiring look as Joan’s met with.
‘Quite captive to the Lady of the Well-Spring’?
What nonsense, it is a thing
French ladies would say
In sophisticated conversation on a warm day.
I do not wish to rescue him, blurts Joan,
The lady lolls, Do you wish to go home?
No, says Joan, I should like to live
Here. Right, says the lady, you are my captive.
The child Joan fully sees the beauty her eye embraces
Do not think of her as one who loses.
The Queen and the Young Princess
Mother, mother, let me go
There are so many things I wish to do.
My child, the time is not yet ripe
You are not yet ready for life.
But what is my life that is come to be?
Much the same, child, as it has been for me.
But Mother you often say you have a headache
Because of the crown you wear for duty’s sake.
So it is, so it is, a headache I have
And that is what you must grow up to carry to the grave.
But in between Mother do you not enjoy the pleasant weather
And to see the bluebottle and the soft feather?
Ah my child, that joy you speak of must be a pleasure
Oh human statue, not the measure
Of animals’, who have no glorious duty
To perform, no headache and so cannot see beauty.
Up, child, up, embrace the headache and the crown
Marred pleasure’s best, shadow makes the sun strong.
A Dream of Comparison
after reading Book Ten of ‘Paradise Lost’
Two ladies walked on the soft green grass
On the bank of a river by the sea
And one was Mary and the other Eve
And they talked philosophically.
‘Oh to be Nothing,’ said Eve, ‘oh for a
Cessation of consciousness
With no more impressions beating in
Of various experiences.’
‘How can Something envisage Nothing?’ said Mary,
‘Where’s your philosophy gone?’
‘Storm back through the gates of Birth,’ cried Eve,
‘Where were you before you were born?’
Mary laughed: ‘I love Life,
I would fight to the death for it,
That’s a feeling you say? I will find
A reason for it.’
They walked by the estuary,
Eve and the Virgin Mary,
And they talked until nightfall,
But the difference between them was radical.
My Hat
Mother said if I wore this hat
I should be certain to get off with the right sort of chap
Well look where I am now, on a desert island
With so far as I can see no one at all on hand
I know what has happened though I suppose Mother wouldn’t see
This hat being so strong has completely run away with me
I had the feeling it was beginning to happen the moment I put it on
What a moment that was as I rose up, I rose up like a flying swan
As strong as a swan too, why see how far my hat has flown me away
It took us a night to come and then a night and a day
And all the time the swan wing in my hat waved beautifully
Ah, I thought, How this hat becomes me.
First the sea was dark but then it was pale blue
And still the wing beat and we flew and we flew
A night and a day and a night, and by the old right way
Between the sun and the moon we flew until morning day.
It is always early morning here on this peculiar island
The green grass grows into the sea on the dipping land
Am I glad I am here? Yes, well, I am,
It’s nice to be rid of Father, Mother and the young man
There’s just one thing causes me a twinge of pain,
If I take my hat off, shall I find myself home again?
So in this early morning land I always wear my hat
Go home, you see, well I wouldn’t run a risk like that.
The Engine Drain
a Fenland memory
It was the mighty Engine Drain, the Engine Drain, the Engine Drain,
Down which the water went, the water went, the mighty waters of the inland sea.
But still in memory I see, the inland sea, the inland sea
That did reflect the summer sky, when it was summer time, of Cambridgeshire.
The sky was blue, the sea was blue, the inland sea, the inland sea,
All blue and flat and blue and flat it lay for all to see.
The trees stood up, the reeds stood too, and were reflected in the mere
As you might call the inland sea, you might have said it was a mere.
And in and out the branches all
The little birds did swoop and swing
Did swoop and swing and call
And oh it was a pretty thing to see them swoop and swing.
Oh ho the inland sea, the inland sea, the mighty mere that moved so prettily.
When winter came the water rose,
And rose and rose and rose and rose
And all about the cottage floors
It flowed and rose and flowed and rose
Till in their beds at night you’d see
Quite half afloat the midnight peasantry
That got their living hardily
And died of ripe old age rheumatically,
Oh it was quite surprising how
They’d live to ripe old age rheumatically.
It was because they early learnt
To put their boots on properly
While still in bed, while still in bed.
They learnt to put their boots on properly
Afloat in bed upon the inland sea.
And now I do remember how
Looking from shallow banks below
You’d see the little water-snakes
A-swimming to and fro,
So many little water-snakes
Careering round about
No man might stand to count them there
Careering in the pretty mere.
Oh it was merry in that day
To see the water-fowl play
Upon the inland sea,
Chip-chopping in the sea;
Or see them ride the water-race
In winter, till the winds in chase
Drove them ashore. Oh ho the wind upon the mere
It wound the waves in heaps and tossed the spray
That was half froze, upon the darkening day
Whipping the waters up till you might see
A mile away the whitecaps of the inland sea,
The whitecaps of the mere.
Ah me alas the day is past, is past and long ago
And no man living now may say he saw the waters flow,
And all are gone, the Engine Drain
Has took them to the cruel salt sea
And what is left behind?
A fertile flat and farming land,
A profitable farming land
Is what is left behind.
It took some time, as you might guess,
But not so long as you would guess,
A day or two, or two or three,
To take these waters to the sea
To take them to the Wash.
Why was it called the Engine Drain, the Engine Drain, the Engine Drain?
It was because the others were,
The other drains of Cambridgeshire,
Controlled by air, by windmills blowing there,
But oh this Engine was a force, a mighty engineering force,
It took the waters of the mere and brought them to the Wash,
It took them, did the Engine Drain, thes
e waters of the inland sea,
And droppt ’em in the cruel salt sea.
The cruel salt sea.
Saint Anthony and the Rose of Life
a Desert Vision
A dark rose grew in the desert
A red and velvety flower
And opened her petals one by one
In the midnight hour.
Her leaves were a beautiful bright dark green
And this might only be seen
Because the full moon riding high
Threw a delicate beam.
The rose grew in a sand
Of a horrible gray yellow
For the moon that had made the red rose red
Made the sand sallow.
A strapping life heavy and bright
Bulged in the rose and her leaves
And up from the roots of the substantial plant
The bold drops ran like thieves.
Like burly thieves in a shadowy night
In a night of profound shades
They have carried aloft the colours of life
To flaunt in the deathly glades.
Oh rose oh leaves so much alive,
What are you doing here,
And why did you vanish at once away
In the light of a repentant tear?
Anger’s Freeing Power
I had a dream three walls stood up wherein a raven bird
Against the walls did beat himself and was this not absurd?
For sun and rain beat in that cell that had its fourth wall free
And daily blew the summer shower and rain came presently
And all the pretty summer time and all the winter too
That foolish bird did beat himself till he was black and blue
Rouse up, rouse up, my raven bird, fly by the open wall
You make a prison of a place that is not one at all.
I took a raven by the hand, O home, I said, my Raven,
And I will take you by the hand and you shall fly to heaven.
But oh he sobbed and oh he sighed and in a fit he lay
Until two fellow ravens came and stood outside to say:
You wretched bird, conceited lump
You well deserve to pine and thump.
See now a wonder, mark it well
My bird rears up in angry spell,
Oh do I then? he says, and careless flies
O’er flattened wall at once to heaven’s skies.
And in my dream I watched him go
And I was glad, I loved him so,
Yet when I woke my eyes were wet
To think Love had not freed my pet
Anger it was that won him hence
As only Anger taught him sense.
Often my tears fall in a shower
Because of Anger’s freeing power.
Fafnir and the Knights
In the quiet waters
Of the forest pool
Fafnir and the dragon
His tongue will cool
His tongue will cool
And his muzzle dip
Until the soft waters lave
His muzzle tip
Happy single creature
In his coat of mail
With a mild bright eye
And a waving tail
Happy the dragon
In the days expended
Before the time had come for dragons
To be hounded
Delivered in their simplicity
To the Knights of the Advancing Band
Who seeing the simple dragon
Must kill him out of hand
The time has not come yet
But must come soon
Meanwhile happy Fafnir
Take thy rest in the afternoon
Take thy rest
Fafnir while thou mayest
In the green grass
Where thou liest
Happy knowing not
In thy simplicity
That the knights have come
To do away with thee.
When thy body shall be torn
And thy lofty spirit
Broken into pieces
For a knight’s merit
When thy lifeblood shall be spilt
And thy Being mild
In torment and dismay
To death beguiled
Fafnir, I shall say then,
Thou art better dead
For the knights have burnt thy grass
And thou couldst not have fed.
Songe d’Athalie
from Racine
It was a dream and shouldn’t I bother about a dream?
But it goes on, you know, tears me rather.
Of course I try to forget it but it will not let me.
Well it was on an extraordinary dark night at midnight
My mother Queen Jezebel appeared suddenly before me
Looking just as she did the day she died, dressed grandly.
It was her pride you noticed, nothing she had gone through touched that
And she had the look of being most carefully made up
She always made up a lot she didn’t want people to know how old she was.
She spoke: Be warned my daughter, true girl to me, she said,
Do you not suppose the cruel God of the Jews has finished with you,
I am come to weep your falling into his hands, my child,
With these appalling words my mother,
This ghost, leant over me stretching out her hands
And I stretched out my hands too to touch her
But what was it, oh this is horrible, what did I touch?
Nothing but the mangled flesh and the breaking bones
Of a body that the dogs tearing quarrelled over.
The Hostage
You hang at dawn, they said,
You’ve done nothing wrong but at dawn you will be hung.
You’ll pass tonight in this cell
With Father Whatshisname. He’ll look after you well.
There were two truckle beds in the room, on one sat Father W.,
Reclining against a bolster. The lady sat on the other.
I should like you to hear my confession, Father, I’m not of your persuasion
I’m a member of the Church of England, but on this occasion
I should like to talk to you, if you’ll allow, nothing more,
Just a talk, not really a confession, but my heart is sore.
No, it’s not that I have to die, that’s the trouble, I’ve always wanted to
But it seems so despondent you know, ungracious too,
She sighed. Daughter, proceed,
Said the father. I am here at your need.
Even as a child, said the lady, I recall in my pram
Wishing it was over and done with. Oh I am
Already at fault. Wonderful how ‘bright’ they keep,
I’d say of the other children, quite without rancour, then turn again to sleep.
Yet life is so beautiful. Oh the scenery.
Have you ever seen the sun getting up in the greenery
Of a summer day, in Norfolk say,
And the mild farm animals lumbering in the thistles.
Presently the Five-Thirty Milk in the station whistles,
You can hear the clank of the cans. In the wood
Trees drip to the stream, the fish rise up for food,
Shap, the old fly’s caught. Et cetera. Oh it’s busy,
Life bustles in the country, you know; it should be easy.
But I was outside of it, looking, finding no place,
No excuse at all for my distant wandering face.
When I came to London West-Eight, it was much the same
Oh the beautiful faces of others in the falling rain,
In the buses, no fuss there, no question they weren’t at home,
Oh why should it only be I that was sent to roam?
I tell you, Father, I trod out the troughs of despair,
I’d r
ush out of doors in a fit, hurry, anywhere,
Kiss in my mind the darlings, beg them to stop …
Till the wind came up hard and blew my beauties off.
The wind blew hard. I snuffed it up and liked it,
Oh yes I liked it, that was the worst of it.
Of course I never dared form any close acquaintance.
Marriage? Out of the question. Well for instance
It might be infectious, this malaise of mine (an excuse?).
Spread
That? I’d rather be dead.
But will the Lord forgive me? Is it wrong?
Will He forgive me do you think for not minding being hung,
Being glad it will soon be over,
Hoping he isn’t the Ruler, the busy Lover,
Wishing to wake again, if I must at all,
A vegetable leaning against a quiet wall,
Or an old stone, so old it was here before Man,
Or a flash in the fire that split out world from the sun?
I find nothing to instruct me in this in Holy Writ,
Said Father W., only, Remember life not to cling to it.
Well I don’t you know, said the lady, then aware of something comical
Shot him a look that made him feel uncomfortable
Until he remembered she came from the British Isles,
Oh, he said, I’ve heard that’s a place where nobody smiles.
But they do, said the lady, who loved her country, they laugh like anything
There is no one on earth who laughs so much about everything.
Well I see, said the Father, the case is complicated,
I will pray for you, Daughter, as I pray for all created
Meanwhile, since you want to die and have to, you may go on feeling elated.
Away, Melancholy
Away, melancholy
Away with it, let it go.
Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the rivers flow?
Away melancholy.
The ant is busy
He carrieth his meat,
All things hurry
To be eaten or eat
Away, melancholy.
Man, too, hurried,
Eats, couples, buries,
He is an animal also
With a hey ho melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
Man of all creatures
Is superlative
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Raiseth a stone
(Away melancholy)
Into the stone, the god,
Pours what he knows of good
Calling, good, God.
Away melancholy, let it go.
Speak not to me of tears,
Tryanny, pox, wars,
Saying, Can God
Stone of man’s thought, be good?
Say rather it is enough
That the stuffed
Stone of man’s good, growing,