Complete Poems

by Cecil Day-Lewis

  No man before or since tuned music’s tongue

  To depths of tenderness

  Or heights of grandeur like to his.

  Deafness, a fog chilling and thickening, clung

  About his ears while he

  Climbed on to immortality.

  Then, at the end, from absolute silence sprang

  The last quartets, his music’s apogee.

  Hear the adagio

  Of the A minor – how life’s low

  Drudge and drone breaks into ecstasy,

  Lark-tongued a violin soaring

  On hopes ineffable, aspiring

  To its pure essence – love’s epiphany.

  1 On December 16th, 1970, during the Royal Philharmonic Society’s 1970–71 season, a Beethoven bicentenary concert took place in which his Missa Solemnis was performed by soloists and the New Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus under Carlo Maria Giulini. On page three of the anniversary programme appeared the tribute to Beethoven.

  St. Paul’s – Old and New1

  A famous photograph comes to mind – your dome

  Breasting hurricane waves of smoke and flame

  Thirty one years ago.

  You who rose up, a phoenix, after one

  Fire of London, braved another then –

  War’s crash and undertow.

  Weather, war, traffic, age have weakened you.

  High time is it for us now to renew

  The fabric of Wren’s dream,

  Shielding as best we may the solid grace,

  And aerial soarings of his masterpiece

  From envious, nibbling time.

  Here was no matter of just making good

  A stately pile of stone, lead, glass and wood,

  But active piety

  Towards them by whose quickness time was outpaced –

  Donne, Nelson, Churchill, all who this way passed

  To immortality.

  No less we honour each mute generation,

  Which kept this place alive by their devotion,

  Then, as obscurely, died:

  Whose worshipping – high ceremonials

  And humble prayers alike – upheld St. Paul’s,

  Our city’s, nation’s pride.

  City and nation, rich and poor who joined

  To swell this fund, have passed the halfway point.

  Now look we to the hour

  Your bells shall utter, peal on jubilant peal,

  A song of restoration, and reveal

  Wren’s vision made secure.

  1 On November 8th, 1971, an evening of renaissance entertainment was held at the Mansion House in the City of London as a tribute to the outgoing Lord Mayor for his inspiring leadership in the Save St. Paul’s appeal. It was attended by the Queen Mother. As well as renaissance music for voice and instruments there was a poetry recital given by Jill Balcon which included the poem specially written for the occasion. The poem appeared in the Daily Telegraph on the morning of the entertainment.

  Hymn for Shakespeare’s Birthday1

  The Word was the beginning,

  Spirit’s and Reason’s sire –

  Sent the chartered planets spinning

  Down their tracks of fire.

  After that fiery birth

  What endless aeons throng

  Before this green and troubled earth

  Can grow to her full song!

  The all-creative Word

  Surveying earth’s huge span

  From every maker there preferred

  One man to speak for Man –

  Gifted with art beyond

  The best who’d worn the bays,

  Sure pilot still on the profound

  Heart’s uncharted ways.

  This man, whose vision ranged

  Life’s whole from bliss to woe,

  Perceived how love, warped or estranged,

  Will bring the highest low.

  Today his birthday fell.

  But he is born once more

  Each time we come beneath his spell

  And to his genius soar.

  1 Mr. Sam Wanamaker, as Executive Director of the Globe Playhouse Trust, planned a Gala Birthday Concert in Southwark Cathedral as one of the first among a series of events to be held during the week beginning 23rd April, 1972. He invited a number of distinguished poets and composers to contribute. The Poet Laureate’s Hymn was set to music by Sir Lennox Berkeley for chorus and organ and was sung by the Exultate Singers. CDL was, by then, too ill to leave his room, so the poem was read by JB.

  Another Day1

  Through the hand’s skill gradually

  The head learnt its identity.

  The shaping hand was touched and led

  By the poem in the head.

  Head and hand each went its own

  Way, yet in strange unison.

  Certainly the pair had set

  Out by different routes; and yet

  Their destination was the same.

  A demon, jealous of the fame

  That crowns the hard creative game,

  BLEW – and turned back to brutish clay

  The breathing replica of Day.

  But Day survived and K. contrived

  To keep her head and bring Day’s head

  To life again another day.

  1 In May 1970 we were staying with the late Kathleen and Johannes Schwarzenberg in their Tuscan villa (celebrated in The Whispering Roots). In the Cortile. our hostess was modelling CDL’s head in clay, preparatory to casting it. A storm blew up and completely wrecked the head. Undaunted, the sculptor started again from scratch, successfully. The finished head is still there, and she captured completely C.’s expression when composing.

  A Short Dirge for St. Trinian’s1

  Where are the girls of yesteryear? How strange

  To think they’re scattered East, South, West and North –

  Those pale Medusas of the Upper Fourth,

  Those Marihuanas of the Moated Grange.

  No more the shrieks of victims, and no more

  The fiendish chuckle borne along the breeze!

  Gone are the basilisk eyes, the bony knees.

  Mice, and not blood, run down each corridor.

  Now poison ivy twines the dorm where casks

  Were broached and music mistresses were flayed,

  While on the sports ground where the pupils played

  The relatively harmless adder basks.

  Toll for St. Trinian’s, nurse of frightful girls!

  St. Trinian’s, mother of the far too free!

  No age to come (thank God) will ever see

  Such an academy as Dr. Searle’s.

  1 A poem written on the occasion of Ronald Searle’s decision to kill off St. Trinian’s. From Souls in Torment by Ronald Searle, 1953.

  Cat

  Tearaway kitten or staid mother of fifty,

  Persian, Chinchilla, Siamese

  Or backstreet brawler – you all have tiger in your blood

  And eyes opaque as the sacred mysteries.

  The hunter’s instinct sends you pouncing, dallying,

  Formal and wild as a temple dance.

  You take from man what is your due – the fireside saucer,

  And give him his – a purr of tolerance.

  Like poets you wrap your solitude around you

  And catch your meaning unawares:

  With consequential trot or frantic tarantella

  You follow up your top-secret affairs.

  Simpkin, our pretty cat, assumes my lap

  As a princess her rightful throne,

  Pads round and drops asleep there. Each is a familiar

  Warmth to the other, each no less alone.

  Tuscany1

  Tuscany, long endeared to English hearts –

  Vine, olive, maize, glories of song and stone –

  We mourned your dead when chaos broke upon

  That ordered life of husbandry and arts.

  And we lament your treasu
res so defaced.

  All beauty which the vandal floods have blurred,

  All wrecked originals of brush and wood

  Are pages torn for ever out of our living past.

  The muddied inundations fall away

  From cities and man’s heart. He’ll count the score,

  Then put his house to rights and turn once more

  To face the mountainous challenges. Nature may

  Still overwhelm us: but from nature’s hand

  Issues the clay we shape to an immortal end.

  1 This poem was written for Laurence Olivier to read at a gala performance in aid of the Florentine Flood appeal.

  Keats, 1821–19711

  Dying in Rome, mocked by the wraith

  Of fame, lungs burnt out, heart consumed

  With love-longing, could he have dreamed

  His life had not been waste of breath?

  The sanguine youth could yet despair

  That poetry’s great age was passed,

  Her future pinched and overcast –

  All said, all better said, before.

  After much groping a year came

  When genius took his feverish hand,

  Urgently pointing to the ground

  Where he would strike a richest seam.

  That year is gone. Today he lies

  As by a losing race quite drained,

  Heeds not the laurels unattained,

  Comforts a sorrowing friend, and dies.

  Fate took that hard death for its fee,

  Then eased him into immortality.

  1 Written for the 150th anniversary of the death of Keats, and read in Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome, in February 1971, when JB and CDL gave a recital there. My gratitude to the curator, Bathsheba Abse, for sending me a typescript of this.

  Index of first lines

  The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

  A boy among the reeds on Severn shore 573

  A chance word, and you sat there at the table 16

  A cornfield, moon-bemused 537

  A famous photograph comes to mind – your dome 729

  A forward child, a sullen boy 341

  A fountain plays no more: those pure cascades 510

  A frost came in the night and stole my world 393

  A hairy ghost, sent packing or appeased 679

  A hill flank overlooking the Axe valley 331

  A mole first, out of riddling passages 129

  A shepherd stands at one end of the arena 542

  A stony stretch. Grey boulders 658

  A word with you, my friends. High summer is scorching up 469

  A world seems to end at the top of this hill 391

  A world of speechless time until man came 723

  Above my table three magnolia flowers 713

  Admit then and be glad 193

  After the light decision 347

  All day beside the shattered tank he’d lain 339

  All day the spirit have we breathed 22

  All is the same still. Earth and heaven locked in 387

  Always, along that path hawthorn and lilac 701

  An elegant, shabby, white-washed house 513, 653

  An inch beyond my groping fingertips 683

  And since, though young, I know 124

  Animal, fish, fowl 727

  Arriving was their passion 508

  As I came to the sea wall that August day 398

  As one who wanders into old workings 113

  Ass 666

  At the far end of a bemusing village 692

  At the head of Lough Carra the royal abbey stands 671

  At her charmed height of summer 623

  At the training depot that first morning 405

  Autumn met me today as I walked over Castle Hill 332

  Back to the countryside 107

  Beauty breaks ground, oh, in strange places 125

  Beauty’s end is in sight 109

  Before a rumour stirred, he fled the country 306

  Behold the swan 304

  Between the hero’s going and the god’s coming 494

  Bicycling around Dublin with the ruddy, anonymous face 664

  Blank walls, dead grates, obliterated pages 678

  Born of my voiceless time, your steps 407

  But think of passion and pain 114

  By the glim of a midwinterish early morning 516

  By a windrowed field she made me stop 554

  Careful of his poetic p’s and q’s 638

  Child running wild in woods of Lissadell 663

  Children, in love with maps and gravings, know 640

  Cold chisels of wind, ice-age-edged 499

  Come, dust, spread thy oblivion above 5

  Come to the orangery. Sit down awhile 461

  Come out in the sun, for a man is born today! 127

  Come out for a while and look from the outside in 517

  Come on, the wind is whirling our summer away 107

  Consider the boy that you were, although you would hardly 358

  Cry to us, murdered village. While your grave 336

  Curtain up on this dear, honoured scene! 721

  Dancing and revelling shouted the earth 21

  Days before a journey 606

  Dear, do not think that I 40

  Did I meet you again? 378

  Did you notice at all as you entered the house? 376

  Do not expect again a phoenix hour 119

  Do you remember, Margaret, how we came 47

  Do you remember that hour? 379

  Do you remember those mornings after the blitzes? 719

  Down hidden causeways of the universe 117

  Down in the lost and April days 348

  Down the night-scented borders of sleep 303

  Dropping the few last days, are drops of lead 125

  Dying in Rome, mocked by the wraith 735

  Eleven o’clock. My house creaks and settles 555

  Enter the dream-house, brothers and sisters, leaving 270

  Eye of the wind, whose bearing in 570

  Faultlessly those antique heroes 578

  Floods and the voluble winds 302

  Florence, father of Michelangelo 452

  For infants time is like a humming shell 321

  For me there is no dismay 328

  For one, the sudden fantastic grimace 273

  For sacrifice, there are certain principles 511

  For those who had the power 197

  For us, born into a world 276

  Freedom is more than a word, more than the base coinage 290

  From all my childhood voyages back to Ireland 608, 655

  From far, she seemed to lie like a stone on the sick horizon 327

  From the unerring chisel at fall of shadow 6

  From where I am sitting, my windowframe 539

  Girl of the musing mouth 374

  Give me your eyes, give me your hands 14

  ‘Goodbye’ – the number of times each day one says it! 571

  Grant us untroubled rest. Our sleep is fretted 583

  Great poet, friend of my later days, you first 709

  Had she lived in perilous days 14

  Half moon of moon-pale sand 668

  Have you seen clouds drifting across a night sky? 344

  He came to her that night, as every night 486

  He goes about it and about 687

  He raged at critic, moralist – all 639

  He said, ‘Do not point your gun’ 269

  Here are the houses: this is the house. No smile 42

  Here is a gallant merry-go-round 686

  Here is green lacquer 32

  Here is nothing singular 54

  Here is the unremembered gate 654

  Here’s Abbey Way; here are the rooms 394

  Hero musician, two hundred years 728

  His
earliest memory, the mood 307

  Horse at pool’s edge drinking its own reflection 704

  How long will you keep this pose of self-confessed 288

  How many children starving, did you say? 722

  How pretty it looks, thought a passer-by 404

  How to retrace the bygone track 705

  Hundreds went down to the ocean bed 397

  I am an arrow, I am a bow 317

  ‘I dreamed love was an angel’ 610

  I have come so far upon my journey 116

  I lingered in that unfriended room 13

  I met an old man in a wood 8

  I remember, as if it were yesterday 342

  I sang as one 183

  I see her against the pearl sky of Dublin 633

  I see you, a child 316

  I thought, ‘Had I this body of my Hope’ 38

  I will remember this night. So long as mind 39

  In the abandoned heaven 271

  In beds of municipal parks the flowers 703

  In a fisherman’s hat and a macintosh 669

  In the foreground, clots of cream-white flowers (meadowsweet?) 538

  In the heart of contemplation 287

  In me two worlds at war 185

  In a shelter one night, when death was taking the air 406

  In a sun-crazed orchard 636

  In this sector when barrage lifts and we 122

  In the white piazza Today is barely awake 445

  In a windless garden 48

  Infirm and grey 267

  Is it birthday weather for you, dear soul? 388

  Is it far to go? 379

  Is it your hope, hope’s hearth, heart’s home, here at the lane’s end? 182

  is never for keeps, never truly assured 689

  Is this what wears you out – having to weigh 288

  It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day 546

  It is I who touch with wonder 11

  It is out at last 364

  It is time to think of you 118

  It mounted up behind his cowardice 617

  It was always so, always 309

  It was an evening late in the year 188

  It was much the same, no doubt 522

  It was not far through the pinewoods 305

  It was there on the hillside, no tall traveller’s story 483

  It would be strange 330

  I’ve heard them lilting at loom and belting 195

  Lark, skylark, spilling your rubbed and round 193

  Let up the curtain 29

  Let us not call it progress: movement certainly 706