East, a pretended trooper, stepping in,
Glanced round the room, shortly discerning West,
Who sat dejected at a corner table.
East moved by curiosity or compassion
Pulled out his cards, offering West the cut,
And West, disguised as a travelling ballad-man,
Took and cut; they played together then
For half an hour or more; then went their ways.
Never believe such credulous annalists
As tell you, West for sign of recognition,
Greatness to greatness, wit to dexterous wit,
With sleight of magic most extraordinary
Alters the Duty of his Ace of Spades,
Making three-pence, three-halfpence; East, it’s said,
For a fantastic sly acknowledgement,
While his grave eyes betoken no surprise,
Makes magic too; presto, the Knave of Hearts
Nims the Queen’s rose and cocks it in his cap
Furtively, so that only West remarks it.
But such was not the fact; contrariwise,
When Proteus meets with Proteus, each annuls
The variability of the other’s mind;
Single they stand, casting their mutable cloaks.
So for this present chance, I take my oath
That leaning across and watching the cards close
I caught no hint of prestidigitation.
Never believe approved biographers
Who’ll show a sequence of the games then played,
Explaining that the minds of these two princes
Were of such subtlety and such nimbleness
That Whipperginny on the fall of a card
Changed to Bézique or Cribbage or Piquet,
Euchre or Écarté, then back once more,
Each comprehending with no signal shown
The opposing fancies of the other’s mind.
It’s said, spectators of this play grew dazed,
They turned away, thinking the gamesters drunk,
But I, who sat there watching, keeping score,
Say they observed the rules of but one game
The whole bout, playing neither well nor ill
But slowly, with their thoughts in other channels,
Serene and passionless like wooden men.
Neither believe those elegant essayists
Who reconstruct the princes’ conversation
From grotesque fabrics of their own vain brains.
I only know that East gave West a nod,
Asking him careless questions about trade;
West gave the latest rumours from the front,
Raising of sieges, plots and pillages.
He told a camp-fire yarn to amuse the soldiers,
Whereat they all laughed emptily (East laughed too).
He sang a few staves of the latest catch,
And pulling out his roll of rhymes, unfurled it –
Ballads and songs, measured by the yard-rule.
But do not trust the elegant essayists
Who’d have you swallow all they care to tell
Of the riddling speech in painful double entendre
That West and East juggled across the cards,
So intricate, so exquisitely resolved
In polished antithetical periods
That by comparison, as you must believe,
Solomon himself faced with the Queen of Sheba,
And Bishop Such preaching before the King,
Joined in one person would have seemed mere trash.
I give my testimony beyond refutal,
Nailing the lie for all who ask the facts.
Pay no heed to those vagabond dramatists
Who, to present this meeting on the stage,
Would make my Prince, stealthily drawing out
A golden quill and stabbing his arm for blood,
Scratch on a vellum slip some hasty sentence
And pass it under the table; which West signs
With his blood, so the treaty’s made between them
All unobserved and two far nations wedded
While enemy soldiers loll, yawning, around.
I was there myself, I say, seeing everything.
Truly, this is what passed, that East regarding
West with a steady look and knowing him well,
For an instant let the heavy soldier-mask,
His best protection, a dull cast of face,
Light up with joy, and his eyes shoot out mirth.
West then knew East, checked, and misdealt the cards.
Nothing at all was said, on went the game.
But East bought from West’s bag of ballads, after,
Two sombre histories, and some songs for dancing.
Also distrust those allegorical
Painters who treating of this famous scene
Are used to splash the skies with lurching Cupids,
Goddesses with loose hair, and broad-cheeked Zephyrs;
They burnish up the soldiers’ breastplate steel,
Rusted with languor of their long campaign,
To twinkling high-lights of unmixed white paint,
Giving them buskins and tall plumes to wear,
While hard by, in a wanton imagery,
Aquatic Triton thunders on his conch
And Satyrs gape from behind neighbouring trees.
I who was there, sweating in my shirt-sleeves,
Felt no divinity brooding in that mess,
For human splendour gave the gods rebuff.
Do not believe them, seem they never so wise,
Credibly posted with all new research,
Those elegant essayists, vagabond dramatists,
Authentic and approved biographers,
Solemn annalists, allegorical
Painters, each one misleading or misled.
One thing is true, that of all sights I have seen
In any quarter of this world of men,
By night, by day, in court, field, tavern, or barn,
That was the noblest, East encountering West,
Their silent understanding and restraint,
Meeting and parting like the Kings they were
With plain indifference to all circumstance;
Saying no good-bye, no handclasp and no tears,
But letting speech between them fade away,
In casual murmurs and half compliments,
East sauntering out for fresh intelligence,
And West shuffling away, not looking back;
Though each knew well that this chance meeting stood
For turning movement of world history.
And I? I trembled, knowing these things must be.
THE SEWING BASKET
(Accompanying a wedding present from Jenny Nicholson to Winifred Roberts)
To Winifred
The day she’s wed
(Having no gold) I send instead
This sewing basket,
And lovingly
Demand that she,
If ever wanting help from me,
Will surely ask it.
Which being gravely said,
Now to go straight ahead
With a cutting of string,
An unwrapping of paper,
With a haberdasher’s flourish,
The airs of a draper,
To review
And search this basket through.
Here’s one place full
Of coloured wool,
And various yarn
With which to darn;
A sampler, too,
I’ve worked for you,
Lettered from A to Z,
The text of which
In small cross-stitch
Is ‘Love to Winifred’.
Here’s a rag-doll wherein
To thrust the casual pin.
His name in Benjamin
For his ingenuous face;
Be sure I’ve not forgotten
Black thread or crochet cotton;
While Brussels lace
Has found a place
Behind the needle-case.
(But the case for the scissors?
Empty, as you see;
Love must never be sundered
Between you and me.)
Winifred Roberts,
Think of me, do,
When the friends I am sending
Are working for you.
The song of the thimble
Is, ‘Oh, forget her not.’
Says the tape-measure,
‘Absent but never forgot.’
Benjamin’s song
He sings all day long
Though his voice is not strong:
He hoarsely holloas
More or less as follows: –
‘Button boxes
Never have locks-es,
For the keys would soon disappear.
But here’s a linen button
With a smut on,
And a big bone button
With a cut on,
A pearly and a fancy
Of small significancy,
And the badges of a Fireman and a Fusilier.’
Which song he’ll alternate
With sounds like a Turkish hubble-bubble
Smoked at a furious rate,
The words are scarcely intelligible: –
(Prestissimo)
‘Needles and ribbons and packets of pins,
Prints and chintz and odd bod-a-kins,
They’d never mind whether
You laid ’em together
Or one from the other in pockets and tins.
‘For packets of pins and ribbons and needles
Or odd bod-a-kins and chintz and prints,
Being birds of a feather,
Would huddle together
Like minnows on billows or pennies in mints.’
He’ll learn to sing more prettily
When you take him out to Italy
On your honeymoon,
(Oh come back soon!)
To Florence or to Rome,
The prima donnas’ home,
To Padua or to Genoa
Where tenors all sing tra-la-la….
Good-bye, Winifred,
Bless your heart, Ben.
Come back happy
And safe agen.
AGAINST CLOCK AND COMPASSES
‘Beauty dwindles into shadow,
Beauty dies, preferred by Fate,
Past the rescue of bold thought.
Sentries drowsed,’ they say, ‘at Beauty’s gate.’
‘Time duteous to his hour-glass,
Time with unerring sickle
Garners to a land remote
Where your vows of true love are proved fickle.’
‘Love chill upon her forehead
Love fading from her cheek,
Love dulled in either eye,
With voice of love,’ they say, ‘no more to speak.’
I deny to Time his terror;
Come-and-go prevails not here;
Spring is constant, loveless winter
Looms, but elsewhere, for he comes not near.
I deny to Space the sorrow;
No leagues measure love from me;
Turning boldly from her arms,
Into her arms I shall come certainly.
Time and Space, folly’s wonder,
Three-card shufflers, magic-men!
True love is, that none shall say
It ever was, or ever flowers again.
THE AVENGERS
Who grafted quince on Western may?
Sharon’s mild rose on Northern briar?
In loathing since that Gospel day
The two saps flame, the tree’s on fire.
The briar-rose weeps for injured right,
May sprouts up red to choke the quince.
With angry throb of equal spite
Our wood leaps maddened ever since.
Then mistletoe, of gods not least,
Kindler of warfare since the Flood,
Against green things of South and East
Voices the vengeance of our blood.
Crusading ivy Southward breaks
And sucks your lordly palms upon,
Our island oak the water takes
To war with cedared Lebanon.
Our slender ash-twigs feathered fly
Against your vines; bold buttercup
Pours down his legions; malt of rye
Inflames and burns your lentils up….
For bloom of quince yet caps the may,
The briar is held by Sharon’s rose,
Monsters of thought through earth we stray,
And how remission comes, God knows.
THE POET’S BIRTH
A page, a huntsman, and a priest of God,
Her lovers, met in jealous contrariety,
Equally claiming the sole parenthood
Of him the perfect crown of their variety.
Then, whom to admit, herself she could not tell;
That always was her fate, she loved too well.
‘But, many-fathered little one,’ she said,
‘Whether of high or low, of smooth or rough,
Here is your mother whom you brought to bed.
Acknowledge only me, be this enough,
For such as worship after shall be told
A white dove sired you or a rain of gold.’
THE TECHNIQUE OF PERFECTION
Said hermit monk to hermit monk,
‘Friend, in this island anchorage
Our life has tranquilly been sunk
From pious youth to pious age,
‘In such clear waves of quietness,
Such peace from argument or brawl
That one prime virtue I confess
Has never touched our hearts at all.
‘Forgiveness, friend! who can forgive
But after anger or dissent?
This never-pardoning life we live
May earn God’s blackest punishment.’
His friend, resolved to find a ground
For rough dispute between the two
That mutual pardons might abound,
With cunning from his wallet drew
A curious pebble of the beach
He hoped for sharp unfriendly speech
Or angry snatching at the stone.
But honeyed words his friend outpours,
‘Keep it, dear heart, you surely know
Even were it mine it still were yours,
This trifle that delights you so.’
The owner, acting wrath, cries, ‘Brother,
What’s this? Are my deserts so small
You’d give me trifles?’ But the other
Smiles, ‘Brother, you may take my all.’
He then enraged with one so meek,
So unresponsive to his mood,
Most soundly smites the martyr cheek
And rends the island quietude.
The martyr, who till now has feigned
In third degree of craftiness
That meekness is so deep ingrained
No taunt or slight can make it less,
Spits out the tooth in honest wrath,
‘You hit too hard, old fool,’ cried he.
They grapple on the rocky path
That zigzags downward to the sea.
In rising fury strained and stiff
They lunge across the narrow ground;
They topple headlong from the cliff
And murderously embraced are drowned.
Here Peter sits: two spirits reach
To sound the knocker at his Gate.
They shower forgiveness each on each,
Beaming triumphant and elate.
But oh, their sweats, their secret fears
Lest clod-souled witnesses may rise
To set a tingling at their ears
An
d bar the approach to Paradise!
THE SIBYL
Her hand falls helpless: thought amazements fly
Far overhead, they leave no record mark –
Wild swans urged whistling across dazzled sky,
Or Gabriel hounds* in chorus through the dark
Yet when she prophesies, each spirit swan,
Each spectral hound from memory’s windy zones,
Flies back to inspire one limb-strewn skeleton
Of thousands in her valley of dry bones.
There as those life-restored battalions shout,
Succession flags and Time goes maimed in flight:
From each live gullet twenty swans glide out
With hell-packs loathlier yet to amaze the night.
A CRUSADER
Death, eager always to pretend
Himself my servant in the land of spears,
Humble allegiance at the end
Broke where the homeward track your castle nears:
Let his white steed before my red steed press
And rapt you from me into quietness.
A NEW PORTRAIT OF JUDITH OF BETHULIA
She trod the grasses grey with dew,
She hugged the unlikely head;
Avenging where the warrior Jew
Incontinent had fled.
The bearded lips writhed ever more
At this increase of shame –
Killed by a girl, pretending whore,
Gone scatheless as she came!
His doom yet loathlier that he knew
Hers was no nation-pride,
No high religion snatched and slew
Where he lay stupefied.
Nebuchadnezzar’s duke enticed
To pay a megrim’s fee?
Assyrian valour sacrificed
For a boudoir dignity?
‘Only for this, that some tall knave
Had scorned her welcoming bed,
For this, the assault, the stroke, the grave,’
Groaned Holofernes’ head.
A REVERSAL
The old man in his fast car
Leaves Achilles lagging,
The old man with his long gun
Outshoots Ulysses’ bow,
Nestor in his botched old age
Rivals Ajax bragging,
To Nestor’s honeyed courtship
Could Helen say ‘No’?
Yet, ancient, since you borrow
From youth the strength and speed,
Seducing as an equal
His playmates in the night,
He, robbed, assumes your sceptre,
He overgoes your rede,
And with his brown and lively hairs
Out-prophesies your white.
THE MARTYRED DECADENTS: A SYMPATHETIC SATIRE
We strain our strings thus tight,
Our voices pitch thus high,