Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 134
To purge text of him! Bread? give me — Scotticè — scones!
VII
Think, what use, when youth’s saddle galls bay’s back or roan’s,
To seek chords on love’s keys to strike, other than his chords?
There’s an error joy winks at and grief half condones,
Or life’s counterpoint grates the C major of discords —
’Tis man’s choice ‘twixt sluts rose-crowned and queens age dethrones.
VIII
I for instance might groan as a bag-pipe groans,
Give the flesh of my heart for sharp sorrows to flagellate,
Grief might grind my cheeks down, age make sticks of my bones,
(Though a queen drowned in tears must be worth more than Madge elate)[1]
Rose might turn burdock, and pine-apples cones;
IX
My skin might change to a pitiful crone’s,
My lips to a lizard’s, my hair to weed,
My features, in fact, to a series of loans;
Thus much is conceded; now, you, concede
You would hardly salute me by choice, John Jones?
[Footnote 1: First edition: —
And my face bear his brand — mine, that once bore Love’s badge elate!]
THE POET AND THE WOODLOUSE
Said a poet to a woodlouse— “Thou art certainly my brother;
I discern in thee the markings of the fingers of the Whole;
And I recognize, in spite of all the terrene smut and smother,
In the colours shaded off thee, the suggestions of a soul.
“Yea,” the poet said, “I smell thee by some passive divination,
I am satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house;
What had happened I conjecture, in a blank and rhythmic passion,
Had the æons thought of making thee a man, and me a louse.
“The broad lives of upper planets, their absorption and digestion,
Food and famine, health and sickness, I can scrutinize and test;
Through a shiver of the senses comes a resonance of question,
And by proof of balanced answer I decide that I am best.”
“Man, the fleshly marvel, alway feels a certain kind of awe stick
To the skirts of contemplation, cramped with nympholeptic weight:
Feels his faint sense charred and branded by the touch of solar caustic,
On the forehead of his spirit feels the footprint of a Fate.”
“Notwithstanding which, O poet,” spake the woodlouse, very blandly,
“I am likewise the created, — I the equipoise of thee;
I the particle, the atom, I behold on either hand lie
The inane of measured ages that were embryos of me.
“I am fed with intimations, I am clothed with consequences,
And the air I breathe is coloured with apocalyptic blush:
Ripest-budded odours blossom out of dim chaotic stenches,
And the Soul plants spirit-lilies in sick leagues of human slush.
“I am thrilled half cosmically through by cryptophantic surgings,
Till the rhythmic hills roar silent through a spongious kind of blee:
And earth’s soul yawns disembowelled of her pancreatic organs,
Like a madrepore if mesmerized, in rapt catalepsy.
“And I sacrifice, a Levite — and I palpitate, a poet; —
Can I close dead ears against the rush and resonance of things?
Symbols in me breathe and flicker up the heights of the heroic;
Earth’s worst spawn, you said, and cursed me? look! approve me! I have wings.
“Ah, men’s poets! men’s conventions crust you round and swathe you mist-like,
And the world’s wheels grind your spirits down the dust ye overtrod:
We stand sinlessly stark-naked in effulgence of the Christlight,
And our polecat chokes not cherubs; and our skunk smells sweet to God.
“For He grasps the pale Created by some thousand vital handles,
Till a Godshine, bluely winnowed through the sieve of thunderstorms,
Shimmers up the non-existent round the churning feet of angels;
And the atoms of that glory may be seraphs, being worms.
“Friends, your nature underlies us and your pulses overplay us;
Ye, with social sores unbandaged, can ye sing right and steer wrong?
For the transient cosmic, rooted in imperishable chaos,
Must be kneaded into drastics as material for a song.
“Eyes once purged from homebred vapours through humanitarian passion
See that monochrome a despot through a democratic prism;
Hands that rip the soul up, reeking from divine evisceration,
Not with priestlike oil anoint him, but a stronger-smelling chrism.
“Pass, O poet, retransfigured! God, the psychometric rhapsode,
Fills with fiery rhythms the silence, stings the dark with stars that blink;
All eternities hang round him like an old man’s clothes collapsèd,
While he makes his mundane music — AND HE WILL NOT STOP, I THINK.”
THE PERSON OF THE HOUSE
IDYL CCCLXVI
THE ACCOMPANIMENTS
1. THE MONTHLY NURSE
2. THE CAUDLE
3. THE SENTENCES
THE KID
1. THE MONTHLY NURSE
The sickly airs had died of damp;
Through huddling leaves the holy chime
Flagged; I, expecting Mrs. Gamp,
Thought— “Will the woman come in time?”
Upstairs I knew the matron bed
Held her whose name confirms all joy
To me; and tremblingly I said,
“Ah! will it be a girl or boy?”
And, soothed, my fluttering doubts began
To sift the pleasantness of things;
Developing the unshapen man,
An eagle baffled of his wings;
Considering, next, how fair the state
And large the license that sublimes
A nineteenth-century female fate —
Sweet cause that thralls my liberal rhymes!
And Chastities and colder Shames,
Decorums mute and marvellous,
And fair Behaviour that reclaims
All fancies grown erroneous,
Moved round me musing, till my choice
Faltered. A female in a wig
Stood by me, and a drouthy voice
Announced her — Mrs. Betsy Prig.
2. THE CAUDLE
Sweet Love that sways the reeling years,
The crown and chief of certitudes,
For whose calm eyes and modest ears
Time writes the rule and text of prudes —
That, surpliced, stoops a nuptial head,
Nor chooses to live blindly free,
But, with all pulses quieted,
Plays tunes of domesticity —
That Love I sing of and have sung
And mean to sing till Death yawn sheer,
He rules the music of my tongue,
Stills it or quickens, there or here.
I say but this: as we went up
I heard the Monthly give a sniff
And “if the big dog makes the pup— “
She murmured — then repeated “if!”
The caudle on a slab was placed;
She snuffed it, snorting loud and long;
I fled — I would not stop to taste —
And dreamed all night of things gone wrong.
3. THE SENTENCES
I
Abortive Love is half a sin;
But Love’s abortions dearer far
Than wheels without an axle-pin
Or life without a married star.
II
My rules are hard to understand
For him whom sensual rules depress;
A bandbox in a midwife’s ha
nd
May hold a costlier bridal dress.
III
“I like her not; in fact I loathe;
Bugs hath she brought from London beds.”
Friend! wouldst thou rather bear their growth
Or have a baby with two heads?
IDYL CCCLXVI
THE KID
My spirit, in the doorway’s pause,
Fluttered with fancies in my breast;
Obsequious to all decent laws,
I felt exceedingly distressed.
I knew it rude to enter there
With Mrs. V. in such a state;
And, ‘neath a magisterial air,
Felt actually indelicate.
I knew the nurse began to grin;
I turned to greet my Love. Said she —
“Confound your modesty, come in!
— What shall we call the darling, V.?”
(There are so many charming names!
Girls’ — Peg, Moll, Doll, Fan, Kate, Blanche, Bab:
Boys’ — Mahershahal-hashbaz, James,
Luke, Nick, Dick, Mark, Aminadab.)
Lo, as the acorn to the oak,
As well-heads to the river’s height,
As to the chicken the moist yolk,
As to high noon the day’s first white —
Such is the baby to the man.
There, straddling one red arm and leg,
Lay my last work, in length a span,
Half hatched, and conscious of the egg.
A creditable child, I hoped;
And half a score of joys to be
Through sunny lengths of prospect sloped
Smooth to the bland futurity.
O, fate surpassing other dooms,
O, hope above all wrecks of time!
O, light that fills all vanquished glooms,
O, silent song o’ermastering rhyme!
I covered either little foot,
I drew the strings about its waist;
Pink as the unshell’d inner fruit,
But barely decent, hardly chaste,
Its nudity had startled me;
But when the petticoats were on,
“I know,” I said; “its name shall be
Paul Cyril Athanasius John.”
“Why,” said my wife, “the child’s a girl.”
My brain swooned, sick with failing sense;
With all perception in a whirl,
How could I tell the difference?
“Nay,” smiled the nurse, “the child’s a boy.”
And all my soul was soothed to hear
That so it was: then startled Joy
Mocked Sorrow with a doubtful tear.
And I was glad as one who sees
For sensual optics things unmeet:
As purity makes passion freeze,
So faith warns science off her beat.
Blessed are they that have not seen,
And yet, not seeing, have believed:
To walk by faith, as preached the Dean,
And not by sight, have I achieved.
Let love, that does not look, believe;
Let knowledge, that believes not, look:
Truth pins her trust on falsehood’s sleeve,
While reason blunders by the book.
Then Mrs. Prig addressed me thus;
“Sir, if you’ll be advised by me,
You’ll leave the blessed babe to us;
It’s my belief he wants his tea.”
LAST WORDS OF A SEVENTH-RATE POET
Bill, I feel far from quite right — if not further: already the pill
Seems, if I may say so, to bubble inside me. A poet’s heart, Bill,
Is a sort of a thing that is made of the tenderest young bloom on a fruit.
You may pass me the mixture at once, if you please — and I’ll thank you to boot
For that poem — and then for the julep. This really is damnable stuff!
(Not the poem, of course.) Do you snivel, old friend? well, it’s nasty enough,
But I think I can stand it — I think so — ay, Bill, and I could were it worse.
But I’ll tell you a thing that I can’t and I won’t. ’Tis the old, old curse —
The gall of the gold-fruited Eden, the lure of the angels that fell.
’Tis the core of the fruit snake-spotted in the hush of the shadows of hell,
Where a lost man sits with his head drawn down, and a weight on his eyes.
You know what I mean, Bill — the tender and delicate mother of lies,
Woman, the devil’s first cousin — no doubt by the female side.
The breath of her mouth still moves in my hair, and I know that she lied,
And I feel her, Bill, sir, inside me — she operates there like a drug.
Were it better to live like a beetle, to wear the cast clothes of a slug,
Be the louse in the locks of the hangman, the mote in the eye of the bat,
Than to live and believe in a woman, who must one day grow aged and fat?
You must see it’s preposterous, Bill, sir. And yet, how the thought of it clings!
I have lived out my time — I have prigged lots of verse — I have kissed (ah, that stings!)
Lips that swore I had cribbed every line that I wrote on them — cribbed — honour bright!
Then I loathed her; but now I forgive her; perhaps after all she was right.
Yet I swear it was shameful — unwomanly, Bill, sir — to say that I fibbed.
Why, the poems were mine, for I bought them in print. Cribbed? of course they were cribbed.
Yet I wouldn’t say, cribbed from the French — Lady Bathsheba thought it was vulgar —
But picked up on the banks of the Don, from the lips of a highly intelligent Bulgar.
I’m aware, Bill, that’s out of all metre — I can’t help it — I’m none of your sort
Who set metres, by Jove, above morals — not exactly. They don’t go to
Court —
As I mentioned one night to that cowslip-faced pet, Lady Rahab Redrabbit
(Whom the Marquis calls Drabby for short). Well, I say, if you want a thing, grab it —
That’s what I did, at least, when I took that danseuse to a swell cabaret,
Where expense was no consideration. A poet, you see, now and then must be gay.
(I declined to give more, I remember, than fifty centeems to the waiter;
For I asked him if that was enough; and the jackanapes answered —
Peut-être.
Ah, it isn’t in you to draw up a menu such as ours was, though humble:
When I told Lady Shoreditch, she thought it a regular grand tout ensemble.)
She danced the heart out of my body — I can see in the glare of the lights,
I can see her again as I saw her that evening, in spangles and tights.
When I spoke to her first, her eye flashed so, I heard — as I fancied — the spark whiz
From her eyelid — I said so next day to that jealous old fool of a Marquis.
She reminded me, Bill, of a lovely volcano, whose entrails are lava —
Or (you know my penchant for original types) of the upas in Java.
In the curve of her sensitive nose was a singular species of dimple,
Where the flush was the mark of an angel’s creased kiss — if it wasn’t a pimple.
Now I’m none of your bashful John Bulls who don’t know a pilau from a puggaree
Nor a chili, by George, from a chopstick. So, sir, I marched into her snuggery,
And proposed a light supper by way of a finish. I treated her, Bill,
To six entrées of ortolans, sprats, maraschino, and oysters. It made her quite ill.
Of which moment of sickness I took some advantage. I held her like this,
And availed myself, sir, of her sneezing, to shut up her lips with a kiss.
The waiters, I saw, were quite struck; and I felt, I may say, entre nous,
Like Don Juan
, Lauzun, Almaviva, Lord Byron, and old Richelieu.
(You’ll observe, Bill, that rhyme’s quite Parisian; a Londoner, sir, would have cited old Q.
People tell me the French in my verses recalls that of Jeames or John Thomas: I
Must maintain it’s as good as the average accent of British diplomacy.)
These are moments that thrill the whole spirit with spasms that excite and exalt.
I stood more than the peer of the great Casanova — you know — de Seingalt.
She was worth, sir, I say it without hesitation, two brace of her sisters.
Ah, why should all honey turn rhubarb — all cherries grow onions — all kisses leave blisters?
Oh, and why should I ask myself questions? I’ve heard such before — once or twice.
Ah, I can’t understand it — but, O, I imagine it strikes me as nice.
There’s a deity shapes us our ends, sir, rough-hew them, my boy, how we will —
As I stated myself in a poem I published last year, you know, Bill —
Where I mentioned that that was the question — to be, or, by Jove, not to be.
Ah, it’s something — you’ll think so hereafter — to wait on a poet like me.
Had I written no more than those verses on that Countess I used to call Pussy —
Yes, Minette or Manon — and — you’ll hardly believe it — she said they were all out of Musset.
Now I don’t say they weren’t — but what then? and I don’t say they were — I’ll bet pounds against pennies on
The subject — I wish I may never die Laureate, if some of them weren’t out of Tennyson.
And I think — I don’t like to be certain, with Death, so to speak, by me, frowning —
But I think there were some — say a dozen, perhaps, or a score — out of
Browning.
And — though God knows his poems are not (as all mine are, sir) perfumed with orris —
Or at least with patchouli — I wouldn’t be sworn there were none out of
Morris.
And it’s possible — only the legend of Circe is quite an old yarn — old