Of admirals dead; out of thy smothering caves
Where colour is not, up, to where the waves
Turn emerald and the edge of ocean-cold
Is yielding,10 and the fish go slashed with gold,
Up!, ’gainst thy nature, up!, put on again
Colour and form and be to waking men290
Things visible. Heave all! Softly . . . it rears
Its dripping head. What, Lords? At last? Your ears
Remember now that song, those giant words,
Louder than woods that thundered, scattering birds
Like leaves along the sky, and whose the throats
Louder than cedars there whipt flat as oats . . .
Birds tumbled . . . the sky dipped . . .’
The Queen’s voice broke.
Heavily, in that moment, like the stroke
Of an axe11 falling, came the sight and sense300
Of those about her: the long room, packed dense,
Her voice yet stirring echoes in the corners,
Dull, puzzled eyes, the patient smile of scorners,
Face behind unintelligible face,
Arms nudging and heads whispering in each place
Save where she looked. Then twice she made endeavour,
Grasped the great moment’s virtue: gone forever:
Struggling to speak. Then (curses on the frame
Of woman!) her breast shook, and scalding came
Tears of deep rage. Bit thro’ the lip, clench hand,310
—All’s vain. And now she saw the Archbishop stand
Beside her, whispering, ‘Daughter . . . come away.’
Heard the King’s voice, ‘The Queen’s not well12 to-day.’
CANTO II
They dine at ten to three1 in Drum;
At four the full decanters come
And, heavy with dark liquor, pass
Down the long tables polished smooth as glass,
In dark red rooms where the piled curtains sweep
Wine-coloured carpets ankle deep.
(Outside, the thrush sings: unobserved, the flowers
Drop petals through those silent2 hours.)
The King, too tired to drink his wine in state,
Was with the Chancellor tête-à-tête.10
The Chancellor who with punctual sip
Raised his full glass to bloodless lip
A moment later than his master
In perfect time, now slow, now faster.
The tiptoe servants from the room
Stole reverently as from a tomb;
The door closed softly as the settling wing
Of pigeons in a wood. The King
Threw off his wig and wiped his glistening head
And, ‘Where’s she now?’ he said.20
‘The Queen, Sir? Since we left the Council board
I think she’s mewed up somewhere with my lord
Archbishop.’
‘With old Daddy? Likely enough . . .
Do you suppose, now, he believes that stuff?’
‘Daddy believe her? Oh Lord, Sir, not he!
Least of us all, Sir; less than you and me.’
‘Why, as for that—fill up, fill both the glasses.
Steenie, your health! you understand . . . what passes
Between us—mum’s the word. We two together30
Have come through many a storm and change of weather.
In confidence, now; tell me what you made
This morning of our loving wife’s tirade?’
‘Me, Sir? I think the Queen . . . has startled Drum
Excessively. She’ll have her following; some
Will doubtless—’
‘I’m not asking what she’ll do
To others, man, but what she’s done to you.
Your glass is empty.’
‘Well Sir, if you must.40
Thank you. No more! Your Majesty . . . I trust
I may be pardoned if I hesitate;
The failure of our plan . . . the whole debate
Turned upside down . . . has thrown me in such doubt,
I looked to your advice to lead us out.’
‘At least, you haven’t passed it with a sneer
Like Daddy. You perceive there’s . . . something . . . here?’
‘Oh, not like Daddy, Sir. I’m humbler far.
These churchmen, in the bulk—’
‘Why, there you are!50
That’s what I say. For if there were such things,
Some secret stairs and undiscovered wings
In the world’s house, dark vacancies between
The rooms we know—behind the public scene
Some inner stage . . . if such things could be so,
The man who wears a mitre’s paid to know
Or to invent it, eh? Of all men living
He’s the least right to pass without misgiving.’
‘Oh very true. I see, Sir. After all,
We might in sleep be more than we recall60
On waking?’
‘Easy enough to talk at large
And laugh at her: but who’ll refute the charge?
Like a puffed candle-flame at half past ten
My world goes out: at nine, perhaps, again
I find it . . .’
‘Yes indeed. And in between
No one can tell us where or what we’ve been.’
‘Ah! There’s the stickler, eh? We understand,
You and I, Steenie. Fill your glass. Your hand!70
We don’t remember.’
‘Yet . . . there’s times, at waking,
One feels one has just failed in overtaking
Something . . . you can’t say what . . . already, as your eyes
First catch it, shuffling on its day’s disguise.’
‘I know, Steenie. Like on the hills, if one
White cotton-tail has flashed, the mischief’s done;
Where you saw nothing, now you see the ground
Alive with rabbits half a mile around,
And all betrayed by one. So one queer thought80
Peeps from the edge of sleep, and there you’ve caught
The implication of a thousand others,
And then . . . you’re wide awake. Common sense smothers
The trail of the fugitives.’
‘But if one delves
As deep as that . . .’
‘Speak out: only ourselves
Will hear you.’
‘Why . . . your Majesty has such a way!
I’m in an odd, confessing mood to-day.90
I hardly know . . . it’s strange we’ve never spoken
Of things like that . . . he-he! . . . I think the Queen has broken
Our dams all down—’
‘What’s that?’
‘I said, the Queen
Had opened all the doors: that is, I mean—’
‘That wasn’t what you said.’
‘I said, the Queen
Had broken in the dams.’
‘Oh, very good!100
Excellent . . . dykes in Holland . . . and the flood,
Disnatured for a hundred years, sighs-off the chain,
Easing its heart, and floods the land again.
I’ll tell you what I feel . . . I think I know
How it would feel to be a man of snow
Set in the sunlight . . . yes: that’s how I feel—
Deliciously soft liquefactions steal
Round the stiff corselet where we’ve frozen in
The fluid soul, so long . . . and drops begin
To hollow out warm caves and paths . . . but you,110
You said, if one delved deep—?’
‘Why, if you do,
Well, frankly—in such glances—well, by God!
I’ve fished up things that were extremely odd.’
‘I know the kind (come, drink about) and Daddy
Had reasons to ignore it.’
‘Reasons, had he?
You mean he knows?’
‘He guesses well enough
That back there on the borderland there’s stuff120
Not marked on any map their sermons show
—They keep one eye shut just because they know—
Don’t we all know?
At bottom?—that this World in which we draw
Our salaries, make our bows, and keep the law,
This legible, plain universe we use
For waking business, is a thing men choose
By leaving out . . . well, much; our editing,
(With expurgations) of some larger thing?
Well, then, it stands to reason; go behind130
To the archetypal scrawl, and there you’ll find
. . . Well . . . variant readings, eh? And it won’t do
Being over-dainty there.’
‘That’s very true.
Can’t wear kid gloves.’
‘Once in a way, perhaps,
’s pardonable—wholesome even—to relapse.
You never feel it, yet this keeping hold
Year after year . . . eh? . . . that’s what makes us old.
Now when one was a boy . . . do you remember140
(You’d have been twelve that year) one warm September
Under those laurels, with the keeper’s dog
And the gypsy girl—the day we killed the frog?’
‘Boys will be boys, Sir! By your leave again,
I’ll fill your glass and mine. But now we’re men
How can you reach . . . how does the Queen contrive
To keep the memory of her nights alive
Though we’ve forgotten?’
‘Why—plague on her—she
Goes thither in the body.’150
‘Didn’t we?
I put a bold face on while she was making
Her speech this morning: but a knee-cap aching
And a bruised shin kept running in my head.
The devil!—how should knees get knocks in bed?’
‘That’s sympathetic magic . . . like Saint Francis . . .
Stigmata . . . when the Subtle Body dances
Ten miles away, you feel the palpitations.
. . . Like the wax doll for witches’ incantations.
That fortune-telling man they whipped and branded.160
What was his name?’
‘Oh he was caught red-handed.
The floating lady and the flying tambourine . . .
All done by wires, Sir, Jesseran3 you mean?
Why, if he’s still alive, he’s down below
Under the castle here. They loved him so
The people, and believed him; he was tried
In secret. But beyond all doubt he’s died.
It’s down to water level, under clay,
The dungeons of your father’s father’s day—170
No one could live. The keepers hardly know
The way down; and it’s twenty years ago.’
‘I’ll dig him up, though. For our present game,
Living or dead, he might be much the same.
What?—never stare. I thought you understood.
Help me up, Steenie. So! I’m in the mood
For a frolic. Are those dams all down? Oh brave!
Trol-de-rol-trol! The emalgipated slave . . .
Wouldn’t a lobster, now, feel more than well
If some kind friend unbuttoned ’m from ’s shell!180
That’s how I feel. Hey, Steenie, watch your legs.
Let’s have a song.’
‘This way, Sir. ’Ware the table.
I hold it, Sir, most seriously,
Both treasonous and treasonable,
Privatus homo, subjects such as me,
When Majesty is drunk, in contrariety
To flaunt an illegalical sobriety.’
‘Excellent! Have that in the statute book.
Steenie . . . my old, old friend . . . how beautiful you look.190
We’ll go to the dungeons, eh?’
‘Absolutely deeper.
To the centre of the earth. We’ll wake the sleeper.
Trumpets there!’
‘We’ll sing charms and ride on brooms
We’ll fetch the dead men out of tombs,
We’ll get with child the mountain hags
And ride the cruels of the crags . . .
How gardens love it when the gardener’s eye
’s wi’drawn a month, and ten feet high200
The weeds foam round the cottage door . . .
Their dykes are down . . . the tide returns once more.
Liberty! Liberty! as the duchess says
Each night when they undo her stays.
Remember how the iambic goes?
’EΠιλελήσμεθ´ ἡδέως.4
Open the door there! Both! The other wing!
My lordge—The King is drunk; long live the King!’
CANTO III
The dungeon stair interminably round and round
Draws on the King and Chancellor far underground
To his ancestral prison-house. And in the tower
The Queen and the Archbishop in her airy bower
Sit talking; the frail, slender tower that overlooks
Meadows and wheeling windmills and meandering brooks
Five miles towards the mountains of the spacious west.
The mountains swell towards them like a woman’s breast,
Their winding valleys, bountiful like opened hands,
Spread out their green embracement to the lower lands,10
The pines on the peak’d ridges, like the level hair
Of racing nymphs are stretched on the clear western air.
Often she looked towards them and her eyes were brightened,
And her pulse quickened, her brow lightened;
And often at the old man’s voice she turned her head,
And each time more impatiently. ‘My lord,’ she said,
‘If you had laughed me down like all the rest,
Such things may be. Then what we both believe
You’d keep a secret?’—‘Lest I should deceive,’20
Said he, ‘I hold my tongue. Truths may be such
That when they have cooled and hardened at the touch
Of language, they turn errors. So our speech
Fails us, and waking discourse cannot reach
The thing we are in dreams. Alas, my Queen,
What Spirit, while nature sleeps, has done or seen,
If told at morning, fades like fairy wealth,
And in its place the changeling comes by stealth,
The dapper lie, more marketable far
Than truth, the maid. Daughter, I think you are30
Willingly no deceiver. What you meant
To-day was truth; but all that truth was spent
Before you said ten words. What followed after
—All the wild tale you told of storm and laughter
And hunting on the hills—all this . . . (good now
On your salvation, never change your brow,
Soft! Softly! Quench those eyes)
All this, by a plain word, was it not lies?’
‘How lies my lord, when all the talk of Drum
Vouches my wanderings real? Play fairly. Come!40
That I’ve gone there, is known; that I’ve met you
When you were also there, is that not true?’
‘Have I been in that place? (We’ll call it so
Though wrongly) . . . have I? . . . child, I do not know.
Sometimes I think I have. I am uncertain.
Ask me not. If a man could lift the curtain
The half-inch that’s beyond all price—but none
Can tell, being wakened, what the night has done.’
Her scorn leaped quickly at him. ‘If you know
Thus little of the lands to which
I go,50
How can you call my tale of them untrue?
Give me the lie who can! so cannot you.’
‘This is but baby’s talk,’ he said, ‘Indeed
We cannot lift the curtain at our need,
It is immovable, but lights come through.
We know not—we remember that we knew.’
And then he paused, and ruefully he smiled
Fondling his knee with thoughtful hand; and, ‘Child,’
He said, ‘How can it profit us to talk
Much of that region where you say you walk.60
We are not native there: we shall not die
Nor live in elfin country, you and I.
Greatly I fear lest, wilfully refusing
Beauty at hand, you walk dark roads to find it,
Impatient of dear earth because behind it
You dream of phantom worlds, forever losing
What is more wonderful—too strange indeed
For you—too dry a flavour for the greed
Of uncorrected palates; this sweet form
Of day and night, the stillness and the storm,70
Children, the changing year, the growing god
That springs, by labour, out of the turn’d sod.’
‘I have no child,’ she said, ‘What mockery is this,
What jailor’s pittance offered in the prison of earth,
To that unbounded appetite for larger1 bliss
Not born with me, but older than my mortal birth? . . .
When shall I be at home? When shall I find my rest?
My lord, you have lived happy and with cause have blessed
This world’s habitual highway, where you walk at ease;
I walk not, but go naked upon bleeding knees.80
And if this threadbare vanity of days, this lean
And never-ceasing world were all—if I must lose
The air that breathes across it from the land I’ve seen,
About my neck tonight I’d slip the noose
And end the longing. But it is not so;
And you—your words have half revealed—you know,
And will not tell. Oh pity, pity I crave
(This thirst will burn my body in the rotting grave)
Speak to me, father! tell me all the truth, confess!
Give me a plain No or an honest Yes.90
Have you too found the way to such a place,
And in it have we all met face to face?’
‘Peace, peace! Beware!’
‘Of what should I beware?
What is the crucifixion that I would not dare,
To find my home? (When shall my rest be won?)
Why do you turn away: What have I done?’
‘Almost crushed dead, I fear, on your own breast
With hot, rough, greedy hands what you love best.
It will not thus be wooed. You will not find100