The Penguin Book of English Song
Page 64
The bells of San Marie,
Oh, who but sonsie2 seamen
Come in from over sea,
And merrily in the belfries
They rock and sway and hale3,
And send the bells a-jangle,
And down the lusty ale.
It’s pleasant in Holy Mary
To hear the beaten bells
Come booming into music,
Which throbs, and clangs, and swells,
From sunset till the daybreak,
From dawn to afternoon,
In port of Holy Mary
On San Marie lagoon.
Vagabond (1922/1922)
Dunno a heap about the what an’ why,
Can’t say’s I ever knowed.
Heaven to me’s a fair blue stretch of sky,
Earth’s jest a dusty road.
Dunno the names o’ things, nor what they are,
Can’t say’s I ever will.
Dunno about God – He’s jest the noddin’ star
Atop the windy hill.
Dunno about Life – it’s jest a tramp alone
From wakin’-time to doss.
Dunno about Death – it’s jest a quiet stone
All over-grey wi’ moss.
An’ why I live, an’ why the old world spins,
Are things I never knowed;
My mark’s the gypsy fires, the lonely inns,
An’ jest the dusty road.
IVOR GURNEY
The Chief Centurions
[By a bierside] (c. 1916/1979)1
Man is a sacred city, built of marvellous earth.
Life was lived nobly here to give this body birth.
Something was in this brain and in this eager hand.
Death is so dumb and blind, Death cannot understand.
Death drifts the brain with dust and soils the young limbs’ glory.
Death makes women a dream and men a traveller’s story,
Death drives the lovely soul to wander under the sky,
Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.
(Gibbs)
The text that Gurney misremembered in the trenches:
By a bierside
This is a sacred city, built of marvellous earth.
Life was lived nobly there to give such beauty birth.
Beauty was in that heart and in that eager hand.
Death is so blind and dumb, death does not understand.
Death drifts the brain with dust and soils the young limbs’ glory.
Death makes justice a dream and strength a traveller’s story.
Death makes the lovely soul to wander under the sky.
Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.
Poem XXI of Lollingdon Downs [On the downs] (1919/1959)
Up on the downs the red-eyed kestrels hover,
Eyeing the grass.
The field-mouse flits like a shadow into cover
As their shadows pass.
Men are burning the gorse on the down’s shoulder;
A drift of smoke
Glitters with fire and hangs, and the skies smoulder,
And the lungs choke.
Once the tribe did thus on the downs, on these downs burning
Men in the frame,
Crying to the gods of the downs till their brains were turning
And the gods came.
And to-day on the downs, in the wind, the hawks, the grasses,
In blood and air,
Something passes me and cries as it passes,
On the chalk downland bare.
On Eastnor Knoll (1925–6)
Silent are the woods, and the dim green boughs are
Hushed in the twilight: yonder, in the path through
The apple orchard, is a tired plough-boy
Calling the cows home.
A bright white star blinks, the pale moon rounds, but
Still the red, lurid wreckage of the sunset
Smoulders in smoky fire, and burns on
The misty hill-tops.
Ghostly it grows, and darker, the burning
Fades into smoke, and now the gusty oaks are
A silent army of phantoms thronging
A land of shadows.
FREDERICK KEEL: from Three Salt-Water Ballads (1919)
Trade winds1
In the harbour, in the island, in the Spanish Seas,
Are the tiny white houses and the orange-trees,
And day-long, night-long, the cool and pleasant breeze
Of the steady Trade Winds blowing.
There is the red wine, the nutty Spanish ale,
The shuffle of the dancers, the old salt’s tale,
The squeaking fiddle, and the soughing1 in the sail
Of the steady Trade Winds blowing.
And o’ nights there’s fire-flies and the yellow moon,
And in the ghostly palm-trees the sleepy tune
Of the quiet voice calling me, the long low croon
Of the steady Trade Winds blowing.
MURIEL HERBERT
Tewkesbury Road (1919)1
It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where,
Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither nor
why;
Through the grey light drift of the dust, in the keen cool rush of the air,
Under the flying white clouds, and the broad blue lift of the sky;
And to halt at the chattering brook, in the tall green fern at the brink
Where the harebell grows, and the gorse, and the fox-gloves purple and white;
Where the shy-eyed delicate deer troop down to the pools to drink,
When the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night.
O! to feel the warmth of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,
Is a tune for the blood to jig to, a joy past power of words;
And the blessed green comely meadows seem all a-ripple with mirth
At the lilt of the shifting feet, and the dear wild cry of the birds.
(Head)
CHARLES GRIFFES: Two Poems by John Masefield (c.1920)
An old song re-sung
I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing, a-sailing,
With emeralds and rubies and sapphires in her hold;
And a bosun in a blue coat bawling at the railing,
Piping through a silver call that had a chain of gold;
The summer wind was failing and the tall ship rolled.
I saw a ship a-steering, a-steering, a-steering,
With roses in red thread worked upon her sails;
With sacks of purple amethysts, the spoils of buccaneering,
Skins1 of musky yellow wine, and silks in bales,
Her merry men were cheering, hauling on the brails2.
I saw a ship a-sinking, a-sinking, a-sinking,
With glittering sea-water splashing on her decks,
With seamen in her spirit-room singing songs and drinking,
Pulling claret bottles down, and knocking off the necks,
The broken glass was chinking as she sank among the wrecks.
(Gardiner)
Sorrow o’ Mydath1
Weary the cry of the wind is, weary the sea,
Weary the heart and the mind and the body o’ me.
Would I were out of it, done with it, would I could be
A white gull crying along the desolate sands!
Outcast, derelict soul in a body accurst,
Standing drenched with the spindrift2, standing athirst,
For the cool green waves of death to arise and burst
In a tide of quiet for me on the desolate sands.
Would that the waves and the long white hair o’ the spray
Would gather in splendid terror and blot me away
To the sunless place o’ the wrecks where the waters sway
Gently, dreamily, quietly over desolate sands!
PETER WARLOCK: from Two True Toper’s Tunes
to Troll with Trulls and Trollops in a Tavern (1921/1922)
Captain Stratton’s Fancy
[Captain Stratton’s Fancy (Rum)]1
Oh some are fond of red wine, and some are fond of white
And some are all for dancing by the pale moonlight;
But rum alone’s the tipple, and the heart’s delight
Of the old bold mate of Henry Morgan2.
Oh some are fond of Spanish wine, and some are fond of French,
And some’ll swallow tay3 and stuff fit only for a wench;
But I’m for right Jamaica till I roll beneath the bench,
Says the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.
Oh some are for the lily, and some are for the rose,
But I am for the sugar-cane that in Jamaica grows;
For it’s that that makes the bonny drink to warm my copper nose,
Says the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.
Oh some are fond of fiddles, and a song well sung,
And some are all for music to lilt upon the tongue;
But mouths were made for tankards, and for sucking at the bung,
Says the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.
[Oh some are fond of dancing, and some are fond of dice,
And some are all for red lips, and pretty lasses’ eyes;
But a right Jamaica puncheon4 is a finer prize
To the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.]
Oh some that’s good and godly ones they hold that it’s a sin
To troll the jolly bowl around, and let the dollars spin;
But I’m for toleration and for drinking at an inn,
Says the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.
[Oh some are sad and wretched folk that go in silken suits,
And there’s a mort of5 wicked rogues that live in good reputes;
So I’m for drinking honestly, and dying in my boots,
Like an old bold mate of Henry Morgan.]
(Gurney)
MARTIN SHAW1
London Town (1923)
Oh London Town’s a fine town, and London sights are rare,
And London ale is right ale, and brisk’s the London air,
And busily goes the world there, but crafty grows the mind,
And London Town of all towns I’m glad to leave behind.
Then hey for croft and hop-yard, and hill, and field, and pond,
With Bredon Hill before me and Malvern Hill beyond,
The hawthorn white i’ the hedgerow, and all the spring’s attire
In the comely land of Teme and Lugg, and Clent, and Clee, and Wyre.
Oh London girls are brave girls, in silk and cloth o’ gold,
And London shops are rare shops, where gallant things are sold,
And bonnily clinks the gold there, but drowsily blinks the eye,
And London Town of all towns I’m glad to hurry by.
Then, hey for covert and woodland, and ash and elm and oak,
Tewkesbury inns, and Malvern roofs, and Worcester chimney smoke,
The apple trees in the orchard, the cattle in the byre,
And all the land from Ludlow town to Bredon church’s spire.
Oh London tunes are new tunes, and London books are wise,
And London plays are rare plays, and fine to country eyes,
Wretchedly fare the most there, and happily fare the few,
And London Town of all towns I’m glad to hurry through.
So hey for the road, the west road, by mill and forge and fold,
Scent of the fern and song of the lark by brook, and field, and wold,
To the comely folk at the hearth-stone and the talk beside the fire,
In the hearty land, where I was bred, my land of heart’s desire.
(German)
REBECCA CLARKE
The seal man (1926)1
And he came by her cabin to the west of the road, calling. There was a strong love came up in her at that, and she put down her sewing on the table, and ‘Mother,’ she says, ‘there’s no lock, and no key, and no bolt, and no door. There’s no iron, nor no stone, nor anything at all will keep me this night from the man I love.’ And she went out into the moonlight to him, there by the bush where the flowers is pretty, beyond the river. And he says to her: ‘You are all the beauty of the world, will you come where I go, over the waves of the sea?’ And she says to him: ‘My treasure and my strength,’ she says, ‘I would follow you on the frozen hills, my feet bleeding.’
Then they went down into the sea together, and the moon made a track upon the sea, and they walked down it; it was like a flame before them. There was no fear at all on her; only a great love like the love of the Old Ones, that was stronger than the touch of the fool. She had a little white throat, and little cheeks like flowers, and she went down into the sea with her man, who wasn’t a man at all. She was drowned, of course. It’s like he never thought that she wouldn’t bear the sea like himself. She was drowned, drowned.
EDWARD THOMAS
(1878–1917)
Killed in Action
(EDWARD THOMAS)
Happy the man whose home is still
In Nature’s green and peaceful ways;
To wake and hear the birds so loud,
That scream for joy to see the sun
Is shouldering past a sullen cloud.
And we have known those days, when we
Would wait to hear the cuckoo first;
When you and I, with thoughtful mind,
Would help a bird to hide her nest,
For fear of other hands less kind.
But thou, my friend, art lying dead:
War, with its hell-born childishness,
Has claimed thy life, with many more:
The man that loved this England well,
And never left it once before.
W. H. DAVIES
Of Welsh parentage, Edward Thomas was born in London, educated at St Paul’s School and Lincoln College, Oxford, and spent his most creative years in Steep, near Petersfield. ‘Almost as soon as I could babble, I babbled of green fields,’ he wrote, and by the time he went to St Paul’s, he was reading poetry for pleasure. His first book, The Woodland Life (1897), was dedicated to James Ashcroft Noble, to whose daughter Helen he was secretly engaged (she describes the courtship in As It Was). They married secretly because of her father’s disapproval, and she bore him two children. Having left Oxford with a second-class degree, he eked out a living in London, where they lived in lodgings in Earlsfield. Longing for the countryside, they moved to Kent in 1901, but Thomas grew increasingly melancholy – a mood he inherited from his mother. Helen wrote: ‘Even now poverty, anxiety, physical weakness, disappointments and discouragements are making him bitter, hard and impatient, quick to violent anger, and subject to long fits of depression.’ Although not impoverished, he was reviewing up to fifteen books a week, and writing his own at an obsessive rate: thirty volumes were published between 1897 and 1917, including The Heart of England (1906), The South Country (1909), The Icknield Way (1913) and In Pursuit of Spring (1914), in which he embarked on a quest for the spirit of England. He suffered a breakdown in 1911 and following conversations with Robert Frost tried his hand at poetry. During an astonishing creative burst he wrote all his poems within two years, from December 1914 to December 1916. He experienced great difficulty in finding a publisher, and twenty-seven poems appeared under the pseudonym of Edward Eastaway in An Anthology of New Verse (1917). The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, edited by R. George Thomas, were published in 1978. Thomas also produced editions of Herbert and Marlowe, wrote books on Swinburne and Walter Pater, and enjoyed the friendship of a number of writers, including W. H. Davies, Conrad, Ransome, Frost and de la Mare, who wrote a wonderfully perceptive Foreword to the Faber edition of Thomas’s Collected Poems:
There is nothing precious, elaborate, brilliant, esoteric, obscure in his work. The feeling is never ‘fine’, the thought never curious, or the word far-fetched. Loose-woven, monotonous, unrelieved
, the verse, as verse, may appear to a
careless reader accustomed to the customary. It must be read slowly, as naturally as if it were talk, without much emphasis; it will then surrender himself, his beautiful world, his compassionate and suffering heart, his fine, lucid, grave and sensitive mind. This is not a poetry that will drug or intoxicate, civicize or edify – in the usual meaning of the word, though it rebuilds reality. It ennobles by simplification. Above all, it will reveal what a friend this man was to the friendless and to them of small report, though not always his own serenest friend – to the greening stoat on the gamekeeper’s shed, the weed by the wayside, the wanderer, ‘soldiers and poor unable to rejoice’.
Although Robert Frost had offered to find him work in America, he enlisted in July 1915 from a feeling of patriotism: when asked by a friend what he would be fighting for, he allegedly bent down, scooped up a clod of earth, crumbled it between his fingers and replied: ‘Literally, for this.’ Two months after ‘Lights out’ was written, he set out for France and reached Arras on 9 February 1917, prior to the Easter offensive. While there, he learned that three of his poems had been accepted by Poetry, and on 4 April he read a positive review of his work in The Times Literary Supplement. He was killed on Easter Monday 1917, the first day of the Battle of Arras, at his forward observation post – ‘shot clean through the chest by a pip-squeak (a 77mm shell) the very moment the battle began’, as Major Franklin Lushington told John Moore, one of Thomas’s first biographers.
There are two fascinating memoirs by his wife, Helen Thomas: As It Was (1926) and World Without End (1931). Ivor Gurney had a special affinity with Thomas’s poetry, and set him nineteen times, from ‘Sowing’ (1918) to ‘Out in the dark’ (1925), composed during his asylum years. Michael Pilkington considers that the song cycle Lights Out ‘may well rank as Gurney’s finest work’. He composed it in a mental asylum and was unable to proof-read the songs – hence the inconsistencies with some of Thomas’s words.