The Giant Book of Poetry

by William H. Roetzheim, Editor

  So fair a fancy few would weave

  in these years! Yet, I feel,

  if someone said on Christmas Eve,

  “Come; see the oxen kneel,

  In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

  our childhood used to know,”

  I should go with him in the gloom,

  hoping it might be so.

  The Ruined Maid1

  “O’Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!

  Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?

  And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?”

  “O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?” said she.

  “You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,

  tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;

  and now you’ve gay bracelets and bright feathers three!”

  “Yes: that’s how we dress when we’re ruined,” said she.

  “At home in the barton you said ’thee’ and ’thou,’

  and ’thik oon,’ and ’theäs oon,” and ’t’other’; but now

  your talking quite fits ’ee for high compa-ny!”—

  “Some polish is gained with one’s ruin,” said she.

  “Your hands were like paws then,

  your face blue and bleak

  but now I’m bewitched by your delicate cheek,

  and your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!”

  “We never do work when we’re ruined,” said she.

  “You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,

  and you’d sigh, and you’d sock; but at present you seem

  to know not of megrims or melancho-ly!”

  “True. One’s pretty lively when ruined,” said she.

  “I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,

  and a delicate face, and could strut about Town!”

  “My dear - a raw country girl, such as you be,

  cannot quite expect that. You ain’t ruined,” said she.

  Sidney Lanier (1842 – 1881)

  The Revenge of Hamish1

  It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck

  in the bracken lay;

  and all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man,

  awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran

  down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken

  and passed that way.

  Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril;

  she was the daintiest doe;

  in the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern

  she reared, and rounded her ears in turn.

  Then the buck leapt up, and his head

  as a king’s to a crown did go

  full high in the breeze,

  and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer;

  and the two slim does long lazily stretching arose,

  for their day-dream slowlier came to a close,

  till they woke and were still,

  breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear.

  Then Alan the huntsman

  sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by,

  the does and the ten-tined buck

  made a marvelous bound,

  the hounds swept after with never a sound,

  but Alan loud winded his horn in sign

  that the quarry was nigh.

  For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy

  to the hunt had waxed wild,

  and he cursed at old Alan

  till Alan fared off with the hounds

  for to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds:

  “I will kill a red deer,” quoth Maclean,

  “in the sight of the wife and the child.”

  So gaily he paced with the wife and the child

  to his chosen stand;

  but he hurried tall Hamish the henchman ahead:

  “Go turn,”—Cried Maclean—

  “if the deer seek to cross to the burn,

  do thou turn them to me:

  nor fail, lest thy back be red as thy hand.”

  Now hard-fortuned Hamish,

  half blown of his breath with the height of the hill,

  was white in the face

  when the ten-tined buck and the does

  drew leaping to burn-ward; huskily rose

  his shouts, and his nether lip twitched,

  and his legs were o’er-weak for his will.

  So the deer darted lightly by Hamish

  and bounded away to the burn.

  But Maclean never bating

  his watch tarried waiting below

  still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go

  all the space of an hour; then he went,

  and his face was greenish and stern,

  and his eye sat back in the socket,

  and shrunken the eyeballs shone,

  as withdrawn from a vision

  of deeds it were shame to see.

  “Now, now, grim henchman, what is’t with thee?”

  Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon

  the wind hath upblown.

  “Three does and a ten-tined buck made out,”

  spoke Hamish, full mild,

  “and I ran for to turn,

  but my breath it was blown, and they passed;

  I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast.”

  Cried Maclean: “Now a ten-tined buck

  in the sight of the wife and the child

  I had killed if the gluttonous kern

  had not wrought me a snail’s own wrong!”

  Then he sounded,

  and down came kinsmen and clansmen all:

  “Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall,

  and reckon no stroke if the blood follow not

  at the bite of thong!”

  So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes;

  at the last he smiled.

  “Now I’ll to the burn,” quoth Maclean, “for it still may be,

  if a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me,

  I shall kill me the ten-tined buck

  for a gift to the wife and the child!”

  Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that;

  and over the hill

  sped Maclean with an outward wrath

  for an inward shame;

  and that place of the lashing full Quiet became;

  and the wife and the child stood sad;

  and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

  But look! red Hamish has risen;

  quick about and about turns he.

  “There is none betwixt me and the crag-top!”

  he screams under breath.

  Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death,

  he snatches the child from the mother,

  and clambers the crag toward the sea.

  Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb,

  and her heart goes dead for a space,

  till the motherhood, mistress of death,

  shrieks, shrieks through the glen,

  and that place of the lashing is live with men,

  and Maclean, and the gillie that told him,

  dash up in a desperate race.

  Not a breath’s time for asking; an eye-glance reveals

  all the tale untold.

  They follow mad Hamish

  afar up the crag toward the sea,

  and the lady cries: “Clansmen, run for a fee!—

  yon castle and lands to the two first hands

  that shall hook him and hold

  fast Hamish back from the brink!”—

  and ever she flies up the steep,

  and the clansmen pant, and they sweat,

  and they jostle and strain.

  But, mother, ’tis vain; but, father, ’tis vain;

  stern Hamish stands bold on the brink,

  and dangles the child o’er the deep.

  Now a faintness falls on the men that run,

  and they all stand still.

  And the wife prays Hamish as if
he were God,

  on her knees,

  crying: “Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please

  for to spare him!” and Hamish

  still dangles the child, with a wavering will.

  On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream,

  and a gibe, and a song,

  cries: “So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all,

  ten blows on Maclean’s bare back shall fall,

  and ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not

  at the bite of the thong!”

  Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip

  that his tooth was red,

  breathed short for a space,

  said: “Nay, but it never shall be!

  Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!”

  But the wife: “Can Hamish go fish

  us the child from the sea, if dead?

  Say yea!—Let them lash ME, Hamish?”—“Nay!”—

  “Husband, the lashing will heal;

  but, oh, who will heal me

  the bonny sweet bairn in his grave?

  Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave?

  Quick! Love! I will bare thee—so—kneel!”

  Then Maclean ’gan slowly to kneel

  with never a word, till presently downward

  he jerked to the earth.

  Then the henchman—he that smote Hamish—

  would tremble and lag;

  “Strike, hard!” quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag;

  then he struck him, and “One!” sang Hamish,

  and danced with the child in his mirth.

  And no man spake beside Hamish;

  he counted each stroke with a song.

  When the last stroke fell, then he moved him a pace

  down the height,

  and he held forth the child in the heartaching sight

  of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave,

  as repenting a wrong.

  And there as the motherly arms stretched out

  with the thanksgiving prayer—

  and there as the mother crept up

  with a fearful swift pace,

  till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie’s face—

  in a flash fierce Hamish turned round

  and lifted the child in the air,

  and sprang with the child in his arms

  from the horrible height in the sea,

  shrill screeching, “Revenge!” in the wind-rush;

  and pallid Maclean,

  age-feeble with anger and impotent pain,

  crawled up on the crag, and lay flat,

  and locked hold of dead roots of a tree—

  and gazed hungrily o’er, and the blood from his back

  drip-dripped in the brine,

  and a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he flew,

  and the mother stared white on the waste of blue,

  and the wind drove a cloud to seaward,

  and the sun began to shine.

  The Waving of the Corn1

  Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet kindly wheeled

  thy plough to ring this solitary tree

  with clover, whose round plat, reserved a-field,

  in cool green radius twice my length may be—

  scanting the corn thy furrows else might yield,

  to pleasure August, bees, fair thoughts, and me,

  that here come oft together—daily I,

  stretched prone in summer’s mortal ecstasy,

  do stir with thanks to thee, as stirs this morn

  with waving of the corn.

  Unseen, the farmer’s boy from round the hill

  whistles a snatch that seeks his soul unsought,

  and fills some time with tune, howbeit shrill;

  the cricket tells straight on his simple thought—

  nay, ’tis the cricket’s way of being still;

  the peddler bee drones in, and gossips naught;

  far down the wood, a one-desiring dove

  times me the beating of the heart of love:

  and these be all the sounds that mix, each morn,

  with waving of the corn.

  From here to where the louder passions dwell,

  green leagues of hilly separation roll:

  trade ends where yon far clover ridges swell.

  Ye terrible Towns, ne’er claim the trembling soul

  that, craftless all to buy or hoard or sell,

  from out your deadly complex quarrel stole

  to company with large amiable trees,

  suck honey summer with unjealous bees,

  and take Time’s strokes as softly as this morn

  takes waving of the corn.

  To Nannette Falk-Auerbach1

  Oft as I hear thee, wrapt in heavenly art,

  the massive message of Beethoven tell

  with thy ten fingers to the people’s heart

  as if ten tongues told news of heaven and hell,—

  gazing on thee, I mark that not alone,

  ah, not alone, thou sittest: there, by thee,

  beethoven’s self, dear living lord of tone,

  doth stand and smile upon thy mastery.

  Full fain and fatherly his great eyes glow:

  he says, “From Heaven, my child, I heard thee call

  (for, where an artist plays, the sky is low):

  yea, since my lonesome life did lack love’s all,

  in death, God gives me thee: thus, quit of pain,

  daughter, Nannette! in thee I live again.”

  Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)

  Binsey Poplars2

  felled 1879

  My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

  quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

  all felled, felled, are all felled;

  of a fresh and following folded rank

  not spared, not one

  that dandled a sandaled

  shadow that swam or sank

  on meadow and river and wind-wandering

  weed-winding bank.

  O if we but knew what we do

  when we delve or hew—

  hack and rack the growing green!

  Since country is so tender

  to touch, her being só slender,

  that, like this sleek and seeing ball

  but a prick will make no eye at all,

  where we, even where we mean

  to mend her we end her,

  when we hew or delve:

  after-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

  Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

  strokes of havoc únselve

  the sweet especial scene,

  rural scene, a rural scene,

  sweet especial rural scene.

  Carrion Comfort1

  Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

  not untwist—slack they may be—

  these last strands of man

  in me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

  can something, hope, wish day come,

  not choose not to be.

  But ah, but O thou terrible,

  why wouldst thou rude on me

  thy wring-world right foot rock?

  lay a lion limb against me? scan

  with darksome devouring eyes

  my bruisèd bones? and fan,

  O in turns of tempest, me heaped there;

  me frantic to avoid thee

  and flee?

  Why? That my chaff might fly;

  my grain lie, sheer and clear.

  Nay in all that toil, that coil,

  since (seems) I kissed the rod,

  hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength,

  stole joy, would laugh, chéer.

  Cheer whom though? The hero

  whose heaven-handling flung me,

  fóot tród

  me? or me that fought him?

  O which one? is it each one? That night,

  that
year

  of now done darkness I wretch

  lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

  Spring and Fall1

  Márgarét, are you gríeving

  over Goldengrove unleaving?

  Leaves, like the things of man, you

  with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

  Áh! ás the heart grows older

  it will come to such sights colder

  by & by, nor spare a sigh

  though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

  and yet you wíll weep & know why.

  Now no matter, child, the name:

  sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

  Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

  what héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:

  it is the blight man was born for,

  it is Margaret you mourn for.

  The Windhover1

  To Christ our Lord

  I caught this morning morning’s minion,

  kingdom of daylight’s dauphin,

  dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

  of the rolling level underneath him

  steady air, and striding

  high there, how he rung

  upon the rein of a wimpling wing

  in his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing

  as a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend:

  the hurl and gliding

  rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

  stirred for a bird,—the achieve of;

  the mastery of the thing!

  Brute beauty and valor and act,

  oh, air, pride, plume, here

  buckle! and the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

  times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

  shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

  fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion

  Edward Rowland Sill (1847 – 1881)

  Five Lives2

  Five mites of monads dwelt in a round drop

  that twinkled on a leaf by a pool in the sun.

  To the naked eye they lived invisible;

  specks, for a world of whom the empty shell

  of a mustard-seed had been a hollow sky.

  One was a meditative monad, called a sage;

  and, shrinking all his mind within, he thought:

  “Tradition, handed down for hours and hours,