Baffled, aghast with hate, mouse-poor,
He glares and clatters the brass knob.
Through his heart it slid sure:
He bowed, he fell with never a sob.
Again she stabbed, now sits secure,
Praying (as she has always prayed)
For great Victoria’s Majesty,
Droning prayer for God’s aid
To succour long dead Royalty,
The Consort Prince, Queen Adelaide….
She falls asleep, the clocks chime two;
Old Becker sinks to unquiet rest.
Loud and sad the cats mew.
Lead weighs cruelly on his breast,
His bones are tufted with mildew.
Whipperginny
(1923)
WHIPPERGINNY
(‘A card game, obsolete.’ – Standard Dictionary.)
To cards we have recourse
When Time with cruelty runs,
To courtly Bridge for stress of love,
To Nap for noise of guns.
On fairy earth we tread,
No present problems vex
Where man’s four humours fade to suits,
With red and black for sex.
Where phantom gains accrue
By tricks instead of cash,
Where pasteboard federacies of Powers
In battles-royal clash.
Then read the antique word
That hangs above this page
As type of mirth-abstracted joy,
Calm terror, noiseless rage,
A realm of ideal thought,
Obscured by veils of Time,
Cipher remote enough to stand
As namesake for my rhyme,
A game to play apart
When all but crushed with care;
Let right and left, your jealous hands,
The lists of love prepare.
THE BEDPOST
Sleepy Betsy from her pillow
Sees the post and ball
Of her sister’s wooden bedstead
Shadowed on the wall.
Now this grave young warrior standing
With uncovered head
Tells her stories of old battle
As she lies in bed:
How the Emperor and the Farmer,
Fighting knee to knee,
Broke their swords but whirled their scabbards
Till they gained the sea.
How the ruler of that shore
Foully broke his oath,
Gave them beds in his sea cave,
Then stabbed them both.
How the daughters of the Emperor,
Diving boldly through,
Caught and killed their father’s murderer
Old Cro-bar-cru.
How the Farmer’s sturdy sons
Fought the Giant Gog,
Threw him into Stony Cataract
In the land of Og.
Will and Abel were their names,
Though they went by others:
He could tell ten thousand stories
Of these lusty brothers.
How the Emperor’s elder daughter
Fell in love with Will
And went with him to the Court of Venus
Over Hoo Hill;
How Gog’s wife encountered Abel
Whom she hated most,
Stole away his arms and helmet,
Turned him to a post.
As a post he shall stay rooted
For yet many years,
Until a maiden shall release him
With pitying tears.
But Betsy likes the bloodier stories,
Clang and clash of fight,
And Abel wanes with the spent candle –
‘sweetheart, good-night!’
A LOVER SINCE CHILDHOOD
Tangled in thought am I,
Stumble in speech do I?
Do I blunder and blush for the reason why?
Wander aloof do I,
Lean over gates and sigh,
Making friends with the bee and the butterfly?
If thus and thus I do,
Dazed by the thought of you,
Walking my sorrowful way in the early dew,
My heart cut through and through
In this despair for you,
Starved for a word or look will my hope renew;
Give then a thought for me
Walking so miserably,
Wanting relief in the friendship of flower or tree;
Do but remember, we
Swallow your pride, let us be as we used to be.
SONG OF CONTRARIETY
Far away is close at hand,
Close joined is far away,
Love shall come at your command
Yet will not stay.
At summons of your dream-despair
She might not disobey,
But slid close down beside you there,
And complaisant lay.
Yet now her flesh and blood consent
In the hours of day,
Joy and passion both are spent,
Twining clean away.
Is the person empty air,
Is the spectre clay,
That love, lent substance by despair,
Wanes and leaves you lonely there
On the bridal day?
LOVE IN BARRENNESS
Below the ridge a raven flew
And we heard the lost curlew
Mourning out of sight below.
Mountain tops were touched with snow;
Even the long dividing plain
Showed no wealth of sheep or grain,
But fields of boulders lay like corn
And raven’s croak was shepherd’s horn
Where slow cloud-shadow strayed across
A pasture of thin heath and moss.
The North Wind rose: I saw him press
With lusty force against your dress,
Moulding your body’s inward grace
And streaming off from your set face;
So now no longer flesh and blood
But poised in marble flight you stood.
O wingless Victory, loved of men,
Who could withstand your beauty then?
SONG IN WINTER
The broken spray left hanging
Can hold his dead leaf longer
Into your glum November
Than this live twig tossed shivering
By your East Wind anger.
Unrepentant, hoping Spring,
Flowery hoods of glory hoping,
Carelessly I sing,
With envy none for the broken spray
When the Spring comes, fallen away.
UNICORN AND THE WHITE DOE
Unicorn with burning heart
Breath of love has drawn
On his desolate peak apart
At rumour of dawn,
Has trumpeted his pride
These long years mute,
Tossed his horn from side to side,
Lunged with his foot.
Like a storm of sand has run
Breaking his own boundaries,
Gone in hiding from the sun
Under camphor trees.
Straight was the course he took
Across the plain, but here with briar
And mire the tangled alleys crook,
Baulking desire.
A shoulder glistened white –
The bough still shakes –
A white doe darted out of sight
Through the forest brakes.
Tall and close the camphors grow
The grass grows thick –
Where you are I do not know,
You fly so quick.
Where have you fled from me?
I pursue, you fade,
I hunt, you hide from me
In the chequered glade.
Often from my hot lair
I would watch you drink,
&n
bsp; A mirage of tremulous air,
At the pool’s brink.
Vultures, rocking high in air
By the western gate,
Warned me with discordant cry
You are even such as I:
You have no mate.
SONG: SULLEN MOODS
Love, never count your labour lost
Though I turn sullen or retired
Even at your side; my thought is crossed
With fancies by no evil fired.
And when I answer you, some days,
Vaguely and wildly, never fear
That my love walks forbidden ways,
Snapping the ties that hold it here.
If I speak gruffly, this mood is
Mere indignation at my own
Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties:
I forget the gentler tone.
You, now that you have come to be
My one beginning, prime and end,
I count at last as wholly me,
Lover no longer nor yet friend.
Help me to see you as before
When overwhelmed and dead, almost,
I stumbled on that secret door
Which saves the live man from the ghost.
Be once again the distant light,
Promise of glory, not yet known
In full perfection – wasted quite
When on my imperfection thrown.
ANGRY SAMSON
Are they blind, the lords of Gaza
In their strong towers,
Who declare Samson pillow-smothered
And stripped of his powers?
O stolid Philistines,
Stare now in amaze
At my foxes running in your cornfields
With their tails ablaze,
At swung jaw-bone, at bees swarming
In the stark lion’s hide,
At these, the gates of well-walled Gaza
A-clank to my stride.
CHILDREN OF DARKNESS
We spurred our parents to the kiss,
Though doubtfully they shrank from this –
Day had no courage to pursue
What lusty dark alone might do:
Then were we joined from their caress
In heat of midnight, one from two.
This night-seed knew no discontent:
In certitude our changings went.
Though there were veils about his face,
With forethought, even in that pent place,
Down toward the light his way we bent
To kingdoms of more ample space.
Is Day prime error, that regret
For Darkness roars unstifled yet?
That in this freedom, by faith won,
Only acts of doubt are done?
That unveiled eyes with tears are wet:
We loathe to gaze upon the sun?
RICHARD ROE AND JOHN DOE
Richard Roe wished himself Solomon,
Made cuckold, you should know, by one John Doe:
Solomon’s neck was firm enough to bear
Some score of antlers more than Roe could wear.
Richard Roe wished himself Alexander,
Being robbed of house and land by the same hand:
Ten thousand acres or a principal town
Would have cost Alexander scarce a frown.
Richard Roe wished himself Job the prophet,
Sunk past reclaim in stinking rags and shame –
However ill Job’s plight, his own was worse:
He knew no God to call on or to curse.
He wished himself Job, Solomon, Alexander,
For patience, wisdom, power to overthrow
Misfortune; but with spirit so unmanned
That most of all he wished himself John Doe.
THE DIALECTICIANS
I heard two poets
Down by the sea,
Discussing a burdensome
Relativity.
Thought has a bias,
Direction a bend,
Space its inhibitions,
Time a dead end.
Is whiteness white?
O then, call it black:
Farthest from the truth
Is yet half-way back.
Effect ordains cause,
Head swallowing the tail;
Does whale engulf sprat,
Or sprat assume whale?
Contentions weary,
It giddies to think;
Then swim, poet, swim!
Or drink, poet, drink!
THE LAND OF WHIPPERGINNY
Come closer yet, my honeysuckle, my sweetheart Jinny:
A low sun is gilding the bloom of the wood –
Is it Heaven, or Hell, or the Land of Whipperginny
That holds this fairy lustre, not understood?
For stern proud psalms from the chapel on the moors
Waver in the night wind, their firm rhythm broken,
Lugubriously twisted to a howling of whores
Or lent an airy glory too strange to be spoken.
Soon the risen Moon will peer down with pity,
Drawing us in secret by an ivory gate
To the fruit-plats and fountains of her silver city
Where lovers need not argue the tokens of fate.
‘THE GENERAL ELIOTT’
He fell in victory’s fierce pursuit,
Holed through and through with shot;
A sabre sweep had hacked him deep
’Twixt neck and shoulder-knot.
The potman cannot well recall,
The ostler never knew,
Whether that day was Malplaquet,
The Boyne, or Waterloo.
But there he hangs, a tavern sign,
With foolish bold regard
For cock and hen and loitering men
And wagons down the yard.
Raised high above the hayseed world
He smokes his china pipe;
And now surveys the orchard ways,
The damsons clustering ripe –
Stares at the churchyard slabs beyond,
Where country neighbours lie:
Their brief renown set lowly down,
But his invades the sky.
He grips a tankard of brown ale
That spills a generous foam:
Often he drinks, they say, and winks
At drunk men lurching home.
No upstart hero may usurp
That honoured swinging seat;
His seasons pass with pipe and glass
Until the tale’s complete –
And paint shall keep his buttons bright
Though all the world’s forgot
Whether he died for England’s pride
By battle or by pot.
A FIGHT TO THE DEATH
Two blind old men in a blind corridor
Fought to the death, by sense of sound or touch.
Doom flailed unseen, an iron hook-hand tore
Flesh from the enemy’s ribs who swung the crutch.
One gasped, ‘she looked on me and smiled, I say’,
So life was battered out, for yea or nay.
MERMAID, DRAGON, FIEND
In my childhood rumours ran
Of a world beyond our door –
Terrors to the life of man
That the highroad held in store.
Of the mermaids’ doleful game
In deep water I heard tell,
Of lofty dragons belching flame,
Of the hornèd fiend of Hell.
Tales like these were too absurd
For my laughter-loving ear:
Soon I mocked at all I heard,
Though with cause indeed for fear.
Now I know the mermaid kin
I find them bound by natural laws:
They have neither tail nor fin,
But are deadlier for that cause.
Dragons have no darting tongues,
Teeth saw-edged, nor rattling scales;
No fire issues from their lungs,
No black poison from their tails:
For they are creatures of dark air,
Unsubstantial tossing forms,
Thunderclaps of man’s despair
In mid-whirl of mental storms.
And there’s a true and only fiend
Worse than prophets prophesy,
Whose full powers to hurt are screened
Lest the race of man should die.
Ever in vain will courage plot
The dragon’s death, in coat of proof;
Or love abjure the mermaid grot;
Or faith denounce the cloven hoof.
Mermaids will not be denied
The last bubbles of our shame,
The dragon flaunts an unpierced hide,
The true fiend governs in God’s name.
CHRISTMAS EVE
On Christmas Eve the brute Creation
Lift up their heads and speak with human voices;
The Ox roars out his song of jubilation
And the Ass rejoices.
They dance for mirth in simple credence
That man from devildom this day was savèd,
That of his froward spirit he has found riddance:
They hymn the Son of David.
Ox and Ass cloistered in stable,
Break bounds to-night and see what shall astound you,
A second Fall, a second death of Abel,
Wars renewed around you.
Cabals of great men against small men,
Mobs, murders, informations, the packed jury,
While Ignorance, the lubber prince of all men,
Glowers with old-time fury.
Excellent beasts, resign your speaking,
Tempted in man’s own choleric tongue to name him,
Hoof-and-horn vengeance have no thought of wreaking,
Let your dumb grief shame him.
THE SNAKE AND THE BULL
Snake Bull, my namesake, man of wrath,
By no expense of knives or cloth,
Only by work of muttered charms
Could draw all woman to his arms;
None whom he summoned might resist
Nor none recall whom once he kissed
And loosed them from his kiss, by whom
This mother-shame had come.
The power of his compelling flame
Was bound in virtue of our name,
But when in secret he taught me
Like him a thief of love to be,
For half his secret I had found
And half explored the wizard ground
Of words, and when giving consent
Out at his heels I went,
Then Fessé, jungle-god, whose shape