The Project Gutenberg eBook, Bread and Circuses, by Helen Parry Eden
BREAD AND CIRCUSES
BY
HELEN PARRY EDEN
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIV
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
| ERRATA |
| Page | 4, |
line | 11, |
for | “about” |
read | “above.” |
| ” | 15, |
” | 5, |
for | “who” |
read | “Who.” |
| ” | 55, |
” | 11, |
for | “saw I” |
read | “saw that I.” |
| ” | 87, |
” | 15, |
for | “Close” |
read | “close.” |
TO
THE MEMORY OF MY SISTER
JOAN ABBOTT PARRY
THESE, AND MUCH MORE
[Pg vii]
Of the verses
contained in this book, the greater part have already appeared,
notably in the Westminster Gazette, The Englishwoman, The Daily
Chronicle, The Catholic Messenger, The Pall Mall Magazine, T.P.’s
Magazine, and Punch. To the proprietors of Punch I am especially
indebted for leave to reprint thirteen numbers of which they own the
copyright.
H. P. E.
[Pg viii]
[Pg ix]
| | PAGE |
| The Brook along the Romsey Road |
3 |
| The Poet and the Wood-louse |
5 |
| “Jam Hiems Transiit” |
7 |
| “Vox Clamantis” |
8 |
| Sorrow |
9 |
| The Mulberry |
10 |
| The Window-sill |
11 |
| The Angelus-bell |
12 |
| The Apple-man from Awbridge |
13 |
| Of Dulcibel |
15 |
| The Lady Pheasant |
16 |
| Time’s Tyranness |
17 |
| The Ginger Cat |
19 |
| Μονοχρόνος Ἡδόνη |
21 |
| A Song in a Lane |
22 |
| Cries of London |
23 |
| The Third Birthday |
25 |
| One-eyed Jocko |
26 |
| A Suburban Night’s Entertainment |
27 |
| “A Purpose of Amendment” |
30 |
| Helena to Hermia |
31 |
| “Effany” |
32
[Pg x] |
| The Ark |
34 |
| An Upland Station |
36 |
| The Worshippers |
38 |
| Lines to a Journalist, on his Praising a Noble Lord |
|
| Recently Created |
39 |
| The Belgian Pinafore |
41 |
| The Wind |
43 |
| To Betsey-Jane, on her Desiring to go |
|
| incontinently to Heaven |
45 |
| In Bethlehem Town |
46 |
| The Moon |
48 |
| A Lady of Fashion on the Death of her Dog |
49 |
| To a Little Girl |
51 |
| Lines written for D. E. in a copy of |
|
| “The Child’s Garden of Verses” |
52 |
| Epistle to Thomas Black, Cat to the Soane Museum |
53 |
| For My Mother, with a New Button-box |
56 |
| A Child before the Crib |
57 |
| To Mass at Dawn |
59 |
| The Nuns’ Chapel |
60 |
| The Snare |
61 |
| A House in a Wood |
63 |
| The Confessional |
65 |
| Epitaph on a Child, run over and Killed by |
[Pg xi] |
| a Motor-car in the street |
67 |
| The Water-meads of Mottisfont |
70 |
| The Senior Mistress of Blyth |
72 |
| The First Party |
75 |
| Souvenir of Michael Drayton |
77 |
| “Four-paws” |
79 |
| “Four-paws” in London |
81 |
| To my Sister Dorothy, with a Paste Brooch |
83 |
| Sestina, to D. E. |
84 |
| Lullaby for a Little Girl |
86 |
| Rondeau of Sarum Close |
87 |
| The Knobby-green |
88 |
| The Carcanet |
89 |
| To a Town Crier |
90 |
| The Tale of Jocko, a Story for a Child |
91 |
| The Wag-tail |
98 |
| High Tide at Battersea |
100 |
| To my Daughter, who tells me she can Dress Herself |
101 |
| The Baby Goat |
103 |
| Bournemouth to Poole: |
|
| (1) Bournemouth |
105 |
| (2) Poole Harbour |
105 |
| The Japanese Duckling |
107 |
| The Privet Hedge |
108 |
| The Vegetarian’s Daughter |
109[Pg xii] |
| Honey Meadow |
110 |
| An Elegy, for Father Anselm, of the Order of Reformed |
|
| Cistercians, Guest-master and Parish Priest |
112 |
| The Regret |
117 |
| First Snow |
118 |
| To a Child Returning Home upon a Windy Day |
119 |
| The Death of Sir Matho |
120 |
| The Petals |
124 |
| Post-Communion |
126 |
| Index to First Lines |
127 |
[Pg 1]
[Pg 2]
[Pg 3]
THE BROOK ALONG THE
ROMSEY ROAD
The brook along the Romsey road
With cresses fringed about,
Holds waving fins and streaming weeds
And bubbles bright as crystal beads
And root-bound reaches whither speeds
Startled the shadowy trout.
As southward runs the Romsey road
The sunny wind blows harsh
With yellow shale and whirling sands
That sting the faces and the hands
Of us who leave the wooded lands
Of pleasant Michelmarsh.
Where southward runs the Romsey road
Southward lagged Betsey-Jane
Clutching my hand, and still the grit
Lay rough between our fingers, it
Smarted on Betsey’s face and knit
Her little brows with pain.
[Pg 4]
A bend was in the Romsey road,
Shut off by elms the wind
Was stilled, below a bridge the brook
Came dimpling forth, and Betsey shook
Her fingers free and ran to look,—
I held her frock behind.
On the far shore a wag-tail dipped
His beak,—we gazed below,
And Betsey was content to stand
And see the trout and hold my hand,
And watch them wave above the sand
Until we turned to go.
The brook along the Romsey road
With cresses fringed about
Ran all day long in Betsey’s head,
She played at wag-tails while she fed,
And even as she went to bed
She babbled of the trout.
[Pg 5]
THE POET AND THE
WOOD-LOUSE
A portly Wood-louse, full of cares,
Transacted eminent affairs
Along a parapet where pears
Unripened fell
And vines embellished the sweet airs
With muscatel.
Day after day beheld him run
His scales a-twinkle in the sun
About his business never done;
Night’s slender span he
Spent in the home his wealth had won—
A red-brick cranny.
Thus, as his Sense of Right directed,
He lived both honoured and respected,
Cherished his children and protected
His duteous wife,
And nought of diffidence deflected
His useful life.
One mid-day, hastening to his Club,
He spied beside a water-tub
The owner of each plant and shrub
A humble Bard
Who turned upon the conscious grub
A mild regard.
[Pg 6]
“Eh?” quoth the Wood-louse, “Can it be
A Higher Power looks down to see
My praiseworthy activity
And notes me plying
My Daily Task?—Not strange, dear me,
But gratifying!”
To whom the Bard: “I still divest
My orchard of the Insect Pest,
That you are such is manifest,
Prepare to die.—
And yet, how sweetly does your crest
Reflect the sky!
“Go then forgiven, (for what ails
Your naughty life this fact avails
To pardon) mirror in your scales
Celestial blue,
Till the sun sets and the light fails
The skies and you.”
May all we proud and bustling parties
Whose lot in forum, street and mart is
Stand in conspectu Deitatis
And save our face,
Reflecting where our scaly heart is
Some skyey grace.
[Pg 7]
“JAM HIEMS TRANSIIT”
When the wind blows without the garden walls
Where from high vantage of the budding boughs
The wanton starling claps his wing and brawls
And finches to their half-erected house
Trail silver straws; when on the sand-pit verges
The young lambs leap, when clouds on sunny tiles
Pass and re-pass, then the young Spring emerges
From Winter’s fingers panoplied with smiles.
So some bright demoiselle but late returning
To her old home with new-acquirèd graces
Learnt in some strait academy and burning
To kindle wonderment in homely faces
Smileth, while she who taught her all her arts,
The dark duenna, with a sigh departs.
[Pg 8]
“VOX CLAMANTIS”
How late in the wet twilight doth that bird
Prolong his ditty; from what darkling thorn,
Dim elder wand or blackest box unstirred
By drip of rain, is the dear descant borne?
So late it is, two seeming candles shine
Athwart blue panes in the extremest hedge,
Ev’n the child’s bunch of daisies close their eyne
In their horn goblet on the window ledge.
Sad is the night, doth it so smell of spring
And wake such ardours in thy pelted breast?
Aye, thou wert ever one to stay and sing
Of surgent East to the declining West:—
And now thou’rt gone, the last of a bright breed,
Draw-to the curtains, it is night indeed.
[Pg 9]
SORROW
Of Sorrow, ’tis as Saints have said—
That his ill-savoured lamp shall shed
A light to Heaven, when, blown about
By the world’s vain and windy rout,
The candles of delight burn out.
Then usher Sorrow to thy board,
Give him such fare as may afford
Thy single habitation—best
To meet him half-way in his quest,
The importunate and sad-eyed guest.
Yet somewhat should he give who took
Thy hospitality, for look,
His is no random vagrancy,
Beneath his rags what hints there be
Of a celestial livery.
Sweet Sorrow, play a grateful part,
Break me the marble of my heart
And of its fragments pave a street
Where, to my bliss, myself may meet
One hastening with piercèd feet.
[Pg 10]
THE MULBERRY
Within our garden walls you see
A huge old-fashioned mulberry
Whose purple fruit in summer falls
Into the shade below the walls.
Its blackened trunk grows grim and hard
From the harsh gravel of the yard,
Its crest beholds the winds go by
And scans the milky evening sky.
And like this tree my soul makes mirth,
(Though rooted deep in blackened earth)
For it shall grow till it hath sight
(The walls o’er-topped) of endless light.
[Pg 11]
THE WINDOW-SILL
The fuchsias dangle on their stem,
The baby girl looks up at them,
The light comes through the muslin frill
Upon the painted window-sill.
She cannot see the world outside
Where men in snorting motors ride,
Each speeding from his far abode
To town, along the Fulham Road.
[Pg 12]
THE ANGELUS-BELL
My night-dress hangs on fire-guard rail
And my cup of milk on the table stands,
The day goes down like a distant sail
And leaves me undressed in my Mother’s hands.
She has washed me clean of the long day’s grime
And the pillow is cool for my sleepy head,
For the Angelus-bell with its three-fold chime
Has tolled the sun and myself to bed.
[Pg 13]
THE APPLE-MAN FROM
AWBRIDGE
While I stand upon the pavement and I dress the dusty stall,
Where they sell the travelled apples, I bethink me most of all
How the Quarentines are ripening in Michelmarsh again
And the Apple-man from Awbridge comes a-clinking up the lane.
Sweet and slim the Ladies’ Fingers fall around you as you pass,
And the Hollycores are mellow by the pig-hole in the grass,
’Tis but green they look, you pluck them, and you list the ratt’ling core—
And the Apple-man from Awbridge comes a-chaffering at the door.
Then the first baked batch of Profits, ’twas a treat my mother planned,
Drew them foaming from the oven with the dishcloth round her hand,
She who poured the amber cider to the pewter’s polished brink
And the Apple-man from Awbridge wet the bargain with a drink.
[Pg 14]
For he buys them by the bushel and he buys them on the trees
And he sends them from the orchard plot to places such as these;
And there’s money in your pocket and a hollow at your heart
When the Apple-man from Awbridge comes a-loading of his cart.
And maybe the nameless apples on the stall in Fulham Road
Once were piled behind his pony in that fresh and fragrant load
And maybe it was my mother pulled the Ladies’ Fingers down;
And the Apple-man from Awbridge turned them over to the town.
[Pg 15]
OF DULCIBEL
When by the fire-light Dulcibel
Stirs the red ash with lively grace,
Is it the glow of Heaven or Hell
That mantles in her rosy face?
They know, Who for despair and joy
All fateful loveliness have blent,
Who do both comfort and destroy
With the indifferent element.
[Pg 16]
THE LADY PHEASANT
Whom meet we, Betsey, in the wood?
The Lady Pheasant and her Brood;
So stand we still, to let them pass
On oak-leaves through the tasselled grass.
Down dappled aisles of hazel shade
They disappear along the glade,
My Lady in her rusty gown,
Ten children clad in useful brown.
But one fledged laggard stops to eat
The plantain seeds at Betsey’s feet,
Who plucks my fingers: “Mother, come
We’ll pick him up and take him home!”
The nestling joins the hidden nine
Deep in the copse; and I lift mine
And bear her home along the lane,—
“I want him!” still pouts Betsey-Jane.
[Pg 17]
TIME’S TYRANNESS
How few alack,
There be along the track
Of life which hear not at their back
(Though small birds sing
And blessèd belfries ring)
The creaking of Time’s iron wing;
And, in mad flight
From an untempted might,
Trample the lovely fields of light,
Nor for a space
Pause in their fearful race
To look their tyrant in the face.—
In you alone,
Dear child, there ever shone
Divine deliberation.
And now in weed
And grass you bid Time speed
Away in dandelion seed,
Till your bright hair,
For the down mingled there,
His very greyness looks to wear.
[Pg 18]
Ah happy she
Whose gentle hours be
Told by such kind chronometry!
For now Time saith,
Who smiling listeneth,
“Lo, a child flouts me with a breath!”
And so, to assuage
Sweetly a feignèd rage,
He dims your hair with mimic age.
[Pg 19]
THE GINGER CAT
’Tis the old wife at Rickling, she
Has lost her ginger cat, ’twas he
Who used to share the Master’s tea
Beside the settle,
Or on his corduroy-clad knee
Out-purr the kettle;
Who followed when she pinned a-row
Her flapping gowns of indigo
And watched the apple-petals blow,
With stealthy rapture
Rehearsing in a mimic show
Some mouse’s capture.
At dew-fall, with uncovered head,
What tidings have the old wife led
Hither where oak and hazel shed
Their shadow deeper?
—They say the ginger cat is dead,
Shot by the Keeper.
Through coverts dim her searches lie
(Howe’er so hardly sorrows try
The burden of uncertainty
To bear were harder)
To where things dangle when they die—
The Keeper’s larder.
[Pg 20]
A bough the larder hangs upon—
Rats, and decaying hedge-hogs grown
Shapeless, and owls their features gone,—
A grisly freight,
And many a weasel skeleton
With hairless pate,
And trophy of cats’ tails arrayed,
Tabby and white and black displayed,
The adornment of the still green glade—
More gay for that
Of him who in the morning strayed,
The ginger cat.
She knows it, and she cuts it down;
Then warm beneath her folded gown
Bestows the severed brush’s brown
And orange bands—
So soft of fur, the tears fall down
Upon her hands.
The copse-wood parts, ’tis she who goes,
Whom shades obscure and star-light shows,
Treading between the hazel rows
The fallen sticks,
Home, where the careless fire-light glows
Along the bricks.
[Pg 21]
Μονοχρόνος Ἡδόνη.
Pull out my couch across the fire,
Let the flames warm me through,
Though the pain gnaw my back away
There shall be pleasure too!
Search out the desolate garden walks—
What though the year be spent—
There shall be marigolds enough
For the bowl we bought in Ghent:
Fire shall bring out their acrid scents
For a walled garden’s sweets,
With the melody of Flemish bells
And the angles of Flemish streets.
Fire and blossom and dreamful shapes
And I, while the long pain stays,
Ward off the shot of the savage hours
On my rampart of yesterdays.
[Pg 22]
A SONG IN A LANE
When the Wind comes up the lane
And you go down—
The elms their spacious branches swing,
The hidden hedgelings sing and sing,
The nettle draws aside his sting
And kindly weeds their shadows fling
Across your sunny gown;—
When the Wind comes up the lane
And you go down.
When the Wind comes up the lane
And you go down—
Your tresses, for a gusty space,
Discover all your merry face
And the Wind drops with pinioned grace
To kiss the small white forehead place
Above your summer brown;—
When the Wind comes up the lane
And you go down.
[Pg 23]
CRIES OF LONDON
What dusky branches fret the yellow sky,
Betsey, beyond our urban balcony
How darkly looms the street;
And from below how many a note assails
Your unaccustomed ears where London wails
About your little feet.
Here, princess of a sombre citadel,
You stand, the muffin-man with twilight bell
Preludes your early tea
And where the milk-man on melodious ways
Slowly meanders, you incline to praise
His clear delivery;
How pitiful you scan the vagabond
Who cries his ferns as though each arid frond
Sprang from his arid heart,
And list the lamentable sweep complain
Urging in wrath against the slanting rain
The sable of his cart.
These for your little ears, so lately blest
With cluck of painted poultry on the nest
And rooks’ loquacious flight,
Who, when the pear-blossom was hardly blown,
Answered the cuckoo’s folly with your own
And chid the owls at night.
[Pg 24]
Dear, I could thank you for your brave content—
But, ah, beware, when spring is gone and spent,
Lest summer’s dusty stir
Lead gypsies Londonwards from scented loam
Of Mitcham and the furrows nearer home
With song of “Lavender!”
Then close your casement, shun the outer air,
Let no sublime virago mount the stair
And bring the rustic South,
Lest some quick memory of all before
And the great silver bush beside the door,
Deject your happy mouth.
[Pg 25]
THE THIRD BIRTHDAY
Three candles had her cake,
Which now are burnt away;
We wreathed it for her sake
With currant-leaves and bay
And the last graces
Of Michaelmas Daisies
Pluckt on a misty day.
Curled (as she cut her cake)
In mine her fingers lay;
Purple the petals brake,
Bruised was the scented bay;
Like a yellow moth
On the white white cloth
One currant-leaf flew away.
Three candles lit her state;
Dimmed is their golden reign—
Leaves on an empty plate,
Petals and tallow-stain;
Nor will she
Nor the candles three
Ever be three again.
[Pg 26]
ONE-EYED JOCKO
The Baby slumbers through the night
With One-eyed Jocko close to her,
She clasps his fluffy limbs so tight
Beside her cheek, her breathings stir
His agèd fur.
When Mother, with the shaded light
Held from the sleepy pillow, stays
To smooth the counterpane, this sight
Of Friendship’s sweet nocturnal ways
Arrests her gaze.
Yet in the nursery by day
Jocko doth all neglected lie
Prone on the hearth-rug, while away
The Baby stalks, unheeded by
His vacant eye.
[Pg 27]
A SUBURBAN NIGHT’S
ENTERTAINMENT
With a full house of other folks
I pass the night at Sevenoaks;
And, for the air is still outside,
Push the new-painted lattice wide
Where night’s blue decent quilt is drawn
Over the shrubs and tennis-lawn
Up to the very star-lit face
Of the dim unacquainted place.
A yellow street-lamp, hid to me,
Haloes a dusky-headed tree,
And, by a hedge-row screened from sight,
Paves the still road with tranquil light,
Save where the path gold-parapetted
Lies by a shade of leaves o’erfretted;
Leaves dangle dark above the fence,
Their shadowy forms sole evidence
Of their sweet-breath’d nocturnal sleeping
And leaves out-face the light which leaping
A war with monstrous gloom to wage
Spangles a den of foliage.
A second lamp that burns in sight
Fronts shops fast closèd for the night
Whose white façades are all as mild
As eye-lids of a sleeping child
Which in their mute mendacity
The bustle of the day belie.
[Pg 28]
Among the darkling trees set back,
With many a swarthy chimney-stack,
The great, rich houses of the place
Lie all unlit, while the slow pace
Of night goes on and still lets be
Their dark inert felicity.
Here is all still, save when again
The shuddering cries of the hid train,
Deep in the cutting no one sees,
Muffled below the heavy trees,
Waken the sleeping shrubberies;
And, with red speed and scudding spark,
Disperse the arboreal-scented dark.
Were’t not for these, there is no doubt
But some fair daemon long cast out
(The authentic goddess of the place
Who far too long hath screened her face
And beauty in some beechen bole
Gigantic in the woods of Knole)
Would choose this night for her returning,
The lawns with silent footfall spurning;
And such mis-shapen woodland gods
As work-men with their laden hods
Scattered, when Progress came with Pride
And bound in brick the country-side
And Sevenoaks was edified.
To-night the wan demesne out-spread
By star-light waits her wonted tread;—
Fair! (for the dripping herb is so
Fragrant and dark) forget to know
[Pg 29]
That the dim grass, your sweet resort,
Is branded for a tennis-court,
Where silent conies scrambled through
The grey-clumped fox-gloves drenched with dew
In the old days so dear to you.
O pardon and forget it all,
The long insulting interval,
Know all a dream, believe them gone,
The urban race, nor having done
Hurt to your oaks nor stained your streams;
So stay, until the windy gleams
Of dawn the occult sweet minstrels wake.
Then through the gloaming by-ways take
Your way bent-headed whence you stole
Last night, the covert ferns of Knole,
Ere the first yawning maid unbars
The door and drives away the stars;
Lest haply from the northern sky
Smite on your ear the long-drawn sigh
(There where the silence was most deep)
Of London turning in her sleep.
[Pg 30]
“A PURPOSE OF AMENDMENT”
He who a mangold-patch doth hoe,
Sweating beneath a sturdy sun,
Clearing each weed-disguisèd row
Till day-light and the task be done,
Standeth to view his labour’s scene—
Where now, within the hedge-row’s girth,
The little plants untrammelled green
Stripes the brown fabric of the earth.
So when the absolution’s said
Behind the grille, and I may go,
And all the flowers of sin are dead,
And all the stems of sin laid low,
And I am come to Mary’s shrine
To lay my hopes within her hand—
Ah, in how fair and green a line
The seedling resolutions stand.
[Pg 31]
HELENA TO HERMIA
(FOR WINIFRED MORGAN-BROWN)
Throw up the cinders, let the night wear through
And all the dear accustomed things be said
Ere up the sleepy stair-case I and you
Take our warm ways to bed.
Then let us loose our hands’ reluctant hold
Lest the uneasy dawn behind dim groves
Stir the still leaves and any hint of cold
Blow on our loves.
[Pg 32]
“EFFANY”
When elm-buds turn from red to green
And growing lambs more staidly graze
And brighter nettle-tops are seen
Along the hedge-rows’ rambling ways;
When leaves unclose where late the hail
Rustled in naked hawthorn twig,
April comes laughing up the vale
And Effany comes round to dig.
Aloof among her nursery toys
From her high casement Betsey sees
His vellum-coloured corduroys
Stirring behind the apple-trees,
Clutching her trowel she descends,
With unimagined projects big,
For Effany and she are friends,
And she helps Effany to dig.
Deep in the flowering currant-rows
The robin twitters gentle mirth
Where Effany with Betsey goes
Triumphant o’er the new-turned earth;
And the wind wanders out and in
As doubting which it loves the best—
The grizzly stubble round his chin,
Or her be-ruffled golden crest.
[Pg 33]
His coat, lined with carnation red,
Hangs in the plum-tree’s forkèd boughs,
Till sun is low and the day sped
And Betsey called into the house—
He scrapes his spade, her trowel she,
She looks and lingers loath to start
With little earth-bound feet to tea,
He takes his coat down to depart.
Half musing on the little maid
He trudges towards the coming night,
Stooping beneath his shouldered spade,
To where across the curtained light
With leaves upon its fiery fold
His wife’s thin shadow falls alone—
For she and Effany are old
And all their little ones are gone.
[Pg 34]
THE ARK
Vainly, my Betsey, to the weeping day
You sing the rhyme that drives the rain away;
And from your window mourn the patient trees
Buffeted by the peevish Hyades.
Come, let us shut the lattice, do you slide
From your old Ark the gaudy-painted side
And let the enlargèd captives walk about;
For though a deluge be at work without,
Secure within we’ve no concern for that,
And all the nursery is Ararat.
Not on the rug,—a space of oaken boards
A firmer footing for the crew affords:
Softly, my Betsey, lest your fervour harm
The extreme frailness of a leg or arm—
Poor limbs, so often and so rudely tossed
And rattled down, no wonder some be lost
Beyond the aid of glue! What skill did cram
Into the hold vermilion-hatted Ham
And Shem with the green top-knot and the slim
Contours of Japheth, Noah (somewhat grim
With buttons) and his consort after him!
The wives are at the bottom, dear, but now
Come the black pig and terra-cotta cow,
Three foxes, this a purple collar round
His rigid neck proclaims the faithful hound;
The birds are not so nice, tradition fails
To account for such a quantity of quails,
[Pg 35]
But the old weary crow that flew and flew
Away from Noah has come back for you.
Where is the dove? For if my memory speak
The truth there was a dove and in his beak
The olive leaves he plucked upon the day
When, as you know, the waters ebbed away;
Who perched on Noah’s window with pink feet,
And without whom no Ark is thought complete.
Where is the missing dove? For now I see,
Standing or prone the whole menagerie,
And the rain’s stopped without and all above
Beams the benignant sky; and still no dove,
Of the same beautiful fact the feathered proof!
Why here—upon the ripples of the roof—
Here is your truant painted, to abide
When Shem and Ham are scattered far and wide,
And all the beasts are broke, to brood with furled
Pacific wings over the new-washed world.
[Pg 36]
AN UPLAND STATION
O the trucks that leave Southampton bring a smell of twine and tar,
And fishy like the asphalt ways that front the glittering bar,
And they steam into the station where the laurel bushes are;
And the trucks be wet and slippery as sea-weed on the rocks
With their cumbrous coils of cordage from the ships beside the docks,
And they creak along the platform like the clank of ogres’ locks.
What send we to Southampton for our upland valley’s freight?
Comes a band of armoured milk-cans through the level-crossing’s gate
And cabbages with leaves a-curl and sprouting through the crate.
And ducklings in a wicker coop and gilly-flowers to fall,
Dusty-petalled in a bucket under some Southampton stall,
And sons who sail for ’Meriky and bid good-bye to all.
[Pg 37]
Then it’s “Forward for Southampton!” They are gone and we turn back,
Past the river and the orchard and the warm dishevelled stack,
And again the silent barriers are swung across the track;
Again the platform is at peace, the idle metals shine,
And the tendrils are untroubled on the station-master’s vine,
And the sun is on the laurels and the sparrows on the line.
[Pg 38]
THE WORSHIPPERS
When the young Spring in Betsey’s fingers sets
The first white violets,
And she hath reared them in her soft brown fist,
Ev’n to my stooping mouth till they be kist:—
Shall I allow my kiss more fainly lingers
Among her baby fingers,
Where (for all pride of perfume that they shed),
The very violets be out-violetted?
Great is her portion whose auriferous mines
Yield new-coin’d celandines,
Her dowry hoarded in the hedge-row’s heart
Till the March wind hath blown the buds apart;
For her delight these gay-wrought tassels be
By name Dog’s Mercury,
For her delight I scour from wood to wood,
Lured by one lode-star with her Babyhood.
Dare I avow then, Betsey, that your grove
Hath not mine only love?
Have we not quit a brave and bustling world
For catkins and the cuckoo-pint uncurl’d?
So, while your wind-blown cheek to mine you press,
I know you’ll never guess
Whereto my woodland incense I prefer—
And that I worship you, dear worshipper.
[Pg 39]
LINES TO A JOURNALIST, ON HIS
PRAISING A NOBLE LORD
RECENTLY CREATED
[“Finally it is proof of his faith in his race and
his country that he owns twenty thousand acres in England and fifteen
thousand in Scotland; and he has no terrors even of Mr. Lloyd George’s budgets.”]
Permit, Dear Sir, that the judicious grieve
Hearing you thus old Mammon’s faith profess
And the career of commerce interweave
With terms of more than standard unctuousness;
For (you yourself have said it) what reward
Hope you enrolled among the sworn defenders
Of one who, while you tender your regard,
Remains impassive and regards his tenders?
True he has great possessions, well they might
Stagger your brain and sway your understanding,
His English leagues—while English paupers fight
To hang their washing on a London landing;
Also (’tis as you say) while they the facts
Deplore of governmental tolls, his rest
Is still secure, nor any Georgian Acts
Rouse panic terror in that sturdy breast.
[Pg 40]
And yet, and yet, Dear Sir, it would not do
For all of us to kiss the feet that Fate
Has set upon our necks although (with you)
We own they are superlatively great;—
Here is a rule to save the like mistakes
And sift the patriots from the money-makers,
These take an interest in their country’s aches,
And those an interest on their country’s acres.
[Pg 41]
THE BELGIAN PINAFORE
’Twas bought in Bruges, the shop was poor,
One read “Au Bébé” flourished o’er
The ancient lintel; to that door
No English guinea
Had ever come nor travelled gold
Gladdened her gaze, that woman old,
Who tottered from the gloom and sold
The Belgian “pinny.”
I mind me choosing in the place
A cap with frills of little lace;
“That too,” I said, “shall come to grace
My Small and Sweet.”
Prim in her pinafore arrayed
I pictured Betsey while I strayed
Where, all the time, the proud bells played
Above the street.
Now, Betsey, on the roguish back
That stalks around the sunny stack
The turkey’s truculence or the track
Of stable cats
The Belgian “pinny” flaunts its hue,
Still the same stripe of white and blue
As when ’twas dyed, no doubt for you,
In Flemish vats.
[Pg 42]
Still of its old lost life it tells
And alien provenance, there are spells
And glamour of the Town of Bells
About it shed;
And when my Belgian Betsey climbs
My knee I’ve heard a hundred times
The clash and ripple of the chimes
Around her head.
As though the child herself did play
Without some white estaminet
Shuttered and silent where, all day
In sun and shower,
Two little lions with stone grins
Hold ’scutcheons under paws and chins
And their divine appellant dins
The honoured hour.
[Pg 43]
THE WIND
The sun sank, and the wind uprist whose note
Piped on amid the stubble melodies
Of such appeal as ’scape the limber throat
Of robin singing under saffron skies;—
Then did he breathe like winding of a horn,
Whereat some sable flock of clouds affrighted
Huddled across their rosy pasturage
Behind the troubled leaves,—
Larger he loomed, a traveller benighted,
Hinting of menace and insurgent rage
Around the placid twilight of our eaves.
The sun was gone; beneath the steady stars
That watched the spectral anticks of the oak
The plumèd elm-tops met in savage wars,
The smitten pools in argent splinters broke;
While, as a labourer among the boughs
Cudgels a harvest from the branches crooked,
Within the orchard fence one plied a flail
That woke the sleeping house,
Till from the shivered lattice faces looked
Whitely, because the apples fell like hail.
The sun uprose, serenely gold and fair,
And Morning in a little ruffled pond
Scanned her sweet face and prinkt her yellow hair.
Around her mirror lapped the leaves, beyond
[Pg 44]
Jetsam of mast and acorn hid the strand,
Thick in the orchard was the wreckage piled
Of twig and fruit, the pitifullest noise
Of sobbing filled the land:—
The wind was sleeping sadly as a child
Littered about by all its broken toys.
[Pg 45]
TO BETSEY-JANE,
ON HER DESIRING TO GO
INCONTINENTLY TO HEAVEN
My Betsey-Jane it would not do,
For what would Heaven make of you,
A little honey-loving bear,
Among the Blessèd Babies there?
Nor do you dwell with us in vain
Who tumble and get up again
And try, with bruisèd knees, to smile—
Sweet, you are blessèd all the while
And we in you: so wait, they’ll come
To take your hand and fetch you home,
In Heavenly leaves to play at tents
With all the Holy Innocents.
[Pg 46]
IN BETHLEHEM TOWN
In Bethlehem Town by lantern light
Installèd is our King to-night
Who for us men shall come to weep
Our sins alone while very deep
In shade of leaves His comrades sleep.
To-night we rise with Thee to pray,
O parve Jesu Domine.
In Bethlehem Town the shepherds spread
Their fairest fleeces for Thy head
Which for us men with buffets broke
Shall stain the mockery of Thy cloak
For the rude scorn of sinful folk.
No scorn know we who sing and say,
O parve Jesu Domine.
In Bethlehem Town soft linens wrap
Thy limbs upon Thy Mother’s lap
Which for us men shall soon be bound
Fast to the pillar whilst around
The plying scourges fall and wound.
Alas, our sins be sharp as they,
O parve Jesu Domine.
In Bethlehem Town Thou scarce couldst hold
The three Kings’ gift of myrrh and gold
[Pg 47]
Who for us men shall come to groan
Beneath a guerdon not Thine own,
Thy most dispiteous cross, alone.
Now Simon’s part be ours to play,
O parve Jesu Domine.
In Bethlehem Town Thy Mother’s knee
Bore Bliss Itself in bearing Thee
Who for us men with arms outspanned
The Cross shall bear while she doth stand
With pardon at Thy piercèd hand.
So may we stand with her alway,
O parve Jesu Domine.
[Pg 48]
THE MOON
Playthings my Betsey hath, the snail’s cast shell,
Pebbles and small unripened pears, she dotes
On gentle things with furred or feathered coats,
A bunch of keys, a little brazen bell;
But none of these enticements please so well,
Nor pouring tea nor sailing paper boats,
As the rare moon that of an evening floats
In anchorages inaccessible.
On frost-bound nights a portly yellow moon
She kissed her hand to him before she slept,
The slim white stripling of an afternoon
In summer, still she longed for him and wept
Seeking to coax him down an elder wand,
For once, that she might hold him in her hand.
[Pg 49]
A LADY OF FASHION ON
THE DEATH OF HER DOG
“Amongst the many others that were present that
Cup Day were ... Mr. and Mrs. W.—— L.—— (the latter by the way has just
lost a dear dog in London).”—The Lady.
I am not lightly moved, my grief was dumb
At Great-Aunt Cohen’s death, nor did I whine
When Uncle Monty did at last succumb,
Aged close on sixty-nine.
Dear are my friends, and yet my heart still light is,
Undimmed the eyes that see our set depart,
Snatched from the Season by appendicitis
Or something quite as smart.
But when my Chin-Chin drew his latest breath
On Marie’s out-spread apron, slow and wheezily,
I simply sniffed, I could not take his death
So Pekineasily.
All day at Goodwood, where I planned to go,
Superb in pink and Coronation-blue,
I mourned, until my husband sought to know
What good would mourning do?
[Pg 50]
“Fool,” I replied, “grief courts these sad ovations,
And many press my sable-suèded hand,
Noting the blackest of Lucile’s creations,
Inquire, and understand:
And he who lies among the plane-trees shady,
May rest in peace below the fallen leaf,
For one, the Correspondent of ‘The Lady,’
Shares and respects my grief.”
[Pg 51]
TO A LITTLE GIRL
You taught me ways of gracefulness and fashions of address,
The mode of plucking pansies and the art of sowing cress,
And how to handle puppies, with propitiatory pats
For mother dogs, and little acts of courtesy to cats.
O connoisseur of pebbles, coloured leaves and trickling rills,
Whom seasons fit as do the sheaths that wrap the daffodils,
Whose eyes’ divine expectancy foretells some starry goal,
You taught me here docility—and how to save my soul.
[Pg 52]
LINES WRITTEN FOR D. E.
IN A COPY OF
“THE CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES”
You that have fenced about my storm-swept ways
With a green hedge-row of your hard-won bays
And set the flints with flowers such as start
Deep in the dear Child’s Garden of your heart—
Take this small gift from her to whom ’tis life
To be your Dearest Debtor and your Wife.
[Pg 53]
EPISTLE TO THOMAS BLACK,
CAT TO THE SOANE MUSEUM
Pardon, Dear Sir, if with intrusive pen
I would remind you that we met last week;
Not that you showed me any favour then
Nor that I have forgot the infernal cheek
You tendered to your fellow-citizen,
Veiling your yellow eyes, where black and sleek
You graced the hearth-rug in the glittering gloom
Of Sir John Soane’s be-mirrored breakfast-room.
Which snub to soften, an official leant
Hinting, behind his tactful fingers, that
It was but seldom that you quite unbent
Being almost a Statutory cat;
If not retained by Act of Parliament
(As is your noble shrine) at least you sat,
Kept up by twenty shillings and tradition,
As part and parcel of the exhibition.
For when (he added in an undertone)
Each Reynolds, Fuseli, and Bartolozzi,
Hogarth and Lawrence were bequeathed by Soane
With Roman marbles and Athenian pots, he
Begrudged to leave them lifeless and alone,
So, having ranged them in appropriate spots, he
Said—“There shall be a Cat,” and, in effect, you’re
His last word in Domestic Architecture.
[Pg 54]
Thus far Authority. Now, might I ask it,—
How came you, Thomas, by this lofty station
From kitten-hood and the maternal basket?
Was there, perchance, some stiff examination
Such as tests candidates whose pleasant task it
Is to advance the cause of education,
In places advertised, you often see ’em,
On outside pages of the Athenæum?
Or how were you appointed? Was it Fate or
The cat before, some mid-Victorian mouser,
Left you the seat Death bade him abdicate or
Did hirelings kidnap you like Kaspar Hauser?
Did rich relations canvass the Curator
And the Trustees on your behalf? Allow, Sir,
Some little light to play upon the mystery
Of Thomas Black his entrance into History.
O happy he for whom does not exist
Our later London—that superb disaster,
Who in his Georgian hermitage has missed
Our schemes of girders overlaid with plaster,
Who has not met a Post-Impressionist
Nor heard a maniac acclaimed a master,
But sits with those who draw their weekly salary
Soothed by dim models of the Dulwich Gallery.
For, be their outlook dull, at least ’tis clean.
Not so the cat’s whose whole existence spent is
[Pg 55]
In some half-lighted haunt of the obscene—
The studio of that modern idle ’prentice
Who thinks he has the trick of Hogarth’s spleen
(Of course he’s twice the draughtsman) if his bent is
To paint that vice with intimate elation
Which Hogarth limned, apart, with detestation.
All this you’re spared; and so you might have paid
Some courtesy to those, a very few,
Who come withdrawn from that exterior shade
To spend an hour with sanity and you,—
And, when you saw that I had gladly stayed,
Not closed your eye-lids and our interview
But told me what the contents of each case meant
And let me come with you to see the basement.
Yet, after all, you know your part, doze on;
You are no common cat, you rather seem,
If not the incarnation of Sir John,
To be at least the creature of his dream;
Visitors enter, sign their names, are gone—
You stay, the centre of his classic scheme.
Blink not an ear for me—t’were not expedient—
But let me rest, Dear Sir, your most obedient.
[Pg 56]
FOR MY MOTHER, WITH
A NEW BUTTON-BOX
When I was small, great joy it was to see
Your button-box: the deathless comedy
Of blowing on the lid enacted, wide
It flew, I scanned the treasure-trove tongue-tied,
Cassim in caves of Haberdashery!
The small pearl “glove” evoked essential glee,
The large white linen was an ecstasy
And each gilt hook was covetously eyed
When I was small.
Lost are the clothes whereon those buttons be—
But not the love that planned the stitchery,
The button-baby is herself a bride—
But sends you this with love, and writes inside
“You are far dearer than you were to me
When I was small.”
[Pg 57]
A CHILD BEFORE THE CRIB
We came on Christmas Day
Within the church to pray
And lit by candle-ray
I Mary saw
And Joseph and the mild
Ox and that little Child
With open arms who smiled
Amid the straw.
Behind a press of folk
We knelt and no one spoke,
Our Lady in her cloak
Made not less noise,
With folded fingers, than
Each silent kneeling man,
And sweet small girls who can
Be still, and boys.
But for that Babe divine,
His cot compared to mine,
There in the candle-shine
Was poor and hard.
Yet did He never cry,
Laid on such stems of rye
As we see blowing by
The stable yard.
[Pg 58]
And I who lie and wail,
Pent by the polished rail
Of my white cot while pale
The night-light gleams,
Who spurn my sheets and stain
The patchwork counterpane
With tears, then sink again
Into my dreams,
Must mind me of His lot
Whose mother poor had got
No whitely pillowed cot
To ease His head,
But was at pains to shake
The straws up for His sake
And did a manger make
Into His bed.
Sweet Jesus let me wear
My swaddling-bands of care
Smiling, and still forbear
To be so nice;
That thus I may behold
Thy True Face, being old,
Where straws are turned to gold
In Paradise.
[Pg 59]
TO MASS AT DAWN
“EX UMBRIS ET IMAGINIBUS IN VERITATEM”
On the high frosty fields afoot at dawn
I start:—with rarest mist the vale below
Brims like a milky cup, the elm-tops show
As floating islets, not a sound is borne
Up from the river, shadowy on the lawn
Two monstrous pheasants fight and strangely low
The white sun peers between a spectral row
Of quicksets spanned by spider-webs untorn.
And the return:—the high sun over-head,
The fair sleek fallows spread before my sight,
The garrulous clear waters in their bed
Of greenest sedge, the multitudinous flight
Of little wings—O miracle of light—
The self-same track, with all the shadows fled.
[Pg 60]
THE NUNS’ CHAPEL
Now night hath fallen on the little town,
Lights glimmer from each ancient window-pane,
On darkling chimney-cowl and weather-vane
The buoyant moon looks equitably down;
The portico’s be-shadowed columns frown
At the market’s verge, and the long lights again
Stream from the inn,—I to the convent lane
Pass betwixt looming walls and ilex brown.
The little door’s ajar, the moon in the porch
Gleams on the water-stoup, “In Nomine
Patris et Filii....” God’s rosy light
Plays on its swinging chain, the auguster torch
Of prayer hath burnt to fragrance here all day
Whose ashes lie about His feet to-night.
[Pg 61]
THE SNARE
Dear, the delightful world I see
Holdeth its attributes for thee,
Nor on my heart doth earth intrude
Save to thy grace it hath some rude
Inadequate similitude.
So lilac leaves the showers bespatter,
The dropping acorns’ elfin patter—
These are but echoes of thy feet,
Naked or shod, how fair and fleet
On oaken board or paven street.
The burnish of thy hair is far
Dearer to me than sunsets are—
When, from sheer Compton looking west,
Such gilded after-glows invest
The twilight on the Vale of Test.
Grey mirrors to the blue of the skies
Are the fringed candours of your eyes—
So hoof-prints in the grassy lane,
Goblets full-brimmed of Heaven, contain
Celestial leavings of the rain.
But vain the wordy nets I make
To trap the look of thee and take
Thy graces by the wings which be
So sturdy as to flutter free
[Pg 62]
Yet shall the broke words cast away
Serve for thy monument which say—
“Behold us, all too weak a gin
Too slack a toil to fetter in
The shadows on her childish chin.”
[Pg 63]
A HOUSE IN A WOOD
So ’tis your will to have a cell,
My Betsey, of your own and dwell
Here where the sun for ever shines
That glances off the holly spines—
A clearing where the trunks are few
Here shall be built a house for you,
The little walls of beechen stakes,
Wattled with twigs from hazel brakes,
Tiled with white oak-chips that lie round
The fallen giants on the ground;
Under your little feet shall be
A ground-work of wild strawberry
With gadding stem, a pleasant wort
Alike for carpet and dessert.
Here Betsey, in the lucid shade,
Come, let us twine a green stockade,
With slender saplings all about,
And a small window to look out,
So that you may be “Not at Home”
If any mortal callers come.
Then shall arrive to make you mirth
The four wise peoples of the earth:
The thrifty ants who run around
To fill their store-rooms underground,
The rabbit-folk, a feeble race,
From out their rocky sleeping place,
The grasshoppers who have no king
Yet come in companies to sing,
[Pg 64]
The lizard slim who shyly stands
Swaying upon his slender hands—
I’ll give them all your new address.
For me, my little anchoress,
I’ll never stir the bracken by
Your house; the brown wood butterfly,
Passing you like the sunshine’s fleck
That gilds the nape of your warm neck,
Shall still report me how you do
And bring me all the news of you,
And tell me (where I sit alone)
How gay you are and how you’re grown
A fox-glove’s span in the soft weather.
No? Then we’ll wander home together.
[Pg 65]
THE CONFESSIONAL
My Sorrow diligent would sweep
That dingy room infest
With dust (thereby I mean my soul)
Because she hath a Guest
Who doth require that self-same room
Be garnished for His rest.
And Sorrow (who had washed His feet
Where He before had been)
Took the long broom of Memory
And swept the corners clean,
Till in the midst of the fair floor
The sum of dust was seen.
It lay there, settled by her tears,
That fell the while she swept—
Light fluffs of grey and earthy dregs;
And over these she wept,
For all were come since last her Guest
Within the room had slept.
And, for nor broom nor tears had power
To lift the clods of ill,
She called one servant of her Guest
Who came with right good will,
For, by his sweet Lord’s bidding, he
Waiteth on Sorrow still;
[Pg 66]
Who, seeing she had done her part
As far as in her lay
And had intent to keep the place
More cleanly from that day,
Did with his Master’s dust-pan come
And take the dust away.
She thankèd him, and Him who sent
Such succour, and she spread
Fair sheets of Thankfulness and Love
Upon her Master’s bed,
Then on the new-scoured threshold stood
And listened for His tread.
[Pg 67]
EPITAPH ON A CHILD
RUN OVER AND KILLED BY A
MOTOR-CAR IN THE STREET
Here lies A. B. who, four years from her birth,
Found there was nowhere left to play on earth.
Strange, for her mother’s child had ever grown
In the quaint precincts of a country town,
Yet was she one whose small predestined feet
Learnt nor forgot to walk upon the street.
She might not ramble where the farmer spanned
With consecrated quickset all his land
To fill her pinafore when mushrooms swell;
Nor dare she scale the lovely citadel
Of brambles in the lane, for their sweet prize
Was spoilt with dust that dimmed the children’s eyes
When local gods dispersed the timid crowd
And went before in pillars of grey cloud.
Nor might a bigger child frequent the edge
Of the pebbled stream to plait the flowering sedge,
For aught of native life was kept without
The chosen haunt of Dives and his trout;
His pheasants held the coppice and its nuts,
Where bearded men played peep behind their butts
And wolvish keepers prowling through the woods
Had a short way with all Red Riding Hoods.
[Pg 68]
No blade of wholesome grass shot through the hard
And greasy flagstones of the narrow yard
At home, nor might the children ever play
Through the allotments where, a mile away,
The civic cabbages congested stood,
Reluctant tenants of a stony rood.
One playground, one alone, for such as she,
Had planned a grave adult humanity,
There where grey asphalt hid the ruder ground
And serried spikes begirt the place around;
At the one end, of yellow brick and slate,
Was reared a sort of female Traitors’ Gate,
At t’other end the piety of a nation
Had raised a shrine of tin to sanitation.
This, thanks to man, was all the children’s share
And Nature was allowed to tender air.
Hence did it chance (as now and then it may)
The Powers that Be decreed a holiday.
And reckless childhood, whom it ever galls
To sit within the compass of four walls,
Loosed from its wonted pen conspired to run
At random through the town beneath the sun,
Rashly disporting in the common street
Its rude hands and unnecessary feet.
That day, so many a hooting corner crost,
The marvel is that one alone was lost,
She to whom poverty no tomb assigns
But a low mound and these unworthy lines.—
Mourn not at all that Her whose burnished wing
Flies on the blissful errands of her King,
[Pg 69]
Whom (by a heavenly law too young to err,
Accounted on the earth a Trespasser)
He hath resumèd and her footfall white
Enfranchised of the liberties of light:
But for all those who play the part of Fate
To engineer this poor and mirthless state
Weep,—and for all who loved that childish hair
And saw it stained with Tragedy—one prayer.
[Pg 70]
THE WATER-MEADS OF MOTTISFONT
On the painted bridge at Mottisfont above the Test I’ve stood
Where the dab-chick from a rushy raft directs her little brood,
Where fringed with sedge and willow-weed the waters spread about
And linger in pellucid glooms the sleepy spotted trout.
I’ve seen the tawny tumult of the headlong Highland spate,
And the ebb round Hair-brush Island (which the map calls Chiswick Ait)
Where the withy bristles shimmer and the purple mud-banks gleam
And the lights come out by Thornycroft’s and glisten in the stream.
’Twere good to be at Abergeirch: the little brook again
Greets the brine among the shingle on the beetling coast of Lleyn,—
O the shallows on the sand-banks where the dozing flat-fish lie
And the heather surging inland till it breaks against the sky!
[Pg 71]
But the chalky scaurs of Compton hold the shadows; and between
Lie the water-meads of Mottisfont enamelled with such green
As discolours all I’ve looked upon in valleys far apart—
For the water-meads of Mottisfont lie nearest to my heart.
[Pg 72]
THE SENIOR MISTRESS OF BLYTH
[“Blyth Secondary School.—The
Governors of the above School invite applications for the post of
Senior Mistress. Candidates must be Graduates in Honours of a British
University and must be well qualified in Mathematics, Latin, and
English. Ability to teach Art will be a recommendation.”—Advertisement
in The Spectator.]
It is told of the painter Da Vinci,
Being once unemployed for a span,
At the menace of poverty’s pinch he
Sought work at the Court of Milan.
Having shown himself willing and able
To perform on the curious lyre,
He presented the Duke with a table
Of the talents he proffered for hire.
“I can raze you a fortress,” it ran on,
“Quell castles, drain ditches and moats,
Make shapely and competent cannon,
Build aqueducts, bridges and boats;
In peace I can mould for your Courts a
Few models in marble or clay
And paint the illustrious Sforza
With anyone living to-day.”
Leonardo is dead, they asseverate,
He has left no successor behind,
[Pg 73]
For the days of the specialist never rate
At its value the versatile mind.
Is Lord Brougham, then, our latest example?
No, Time, the old churl with his scythe,
Shall spare us a notable sample
In the Senior Mistress of Blyth.
She shall guide Standard Three through Progressions,
Study Statics and Surds with the Fourth,
She shall dwell on De Quincey’s Confessions,
Donne, Caedmon and Christopher North;
And no class-room shall boast of a quicker row
When her classical pupils rehearse
Their prose, which is modelled on Cicero,
And their more than Horatian verse.
She shall lead them to love Cimabue,
To distinguish with scholarship ripe
’Twixt the texture of Clausen and Clouet,
And the values of Collier and Cuyp.
Nay, all Blyth shall reflect her ability
As its brushes acquire by her aid
Or South Kensington’s pretty facility
Or the terrible strength of the Slade.
Yes, her duties are diverse, and this’ll
Suggest to each candidate why
[Pg 74]
They should read Leonardo’s epistle
Before they sit down to apply;
For his style is itself a credential
Though truly he has not a tithe
Of the qualifications essential
To the Senior Mistress of Blyth.
[Pg 75]
THE FIRST PARTY
Follow, my Betsey-Jane, as best you can,
Clutching your Mother’s fingers in firm hold,
The sable progress of the serving-man,
Nor stumble on your shawl’s imperial fold;
Whose ceremonious pin of jade and gold
Bringeth such rosy awe into your face
As the white frock, the stockings silken-soled
And the white shoes (with pompons) which will grace
The lightness of your feet in this illumined place.
Shawls being shed, descend the ample stair
And greet our Hostess. Now you’re set to see
The Conjurer, nor think to leave your chair
For safer eyrie of your Mother’s knee;—
Still, as his tricks are tedious to Three
And strange the flounce-clad children in their tiers,
Turn your shy back on wiles and wizardry
To hug, for comfort’s sake, two homely bears
And a prepost’rous poodle, white with knitted ears.
For tea, gramercie to a thoughtful choice
And nice derangement of the chairs, your seat
Faces a fair acquaintance known as Joyce;—
What glances under glossy tresses greet
The fellow-connoisseur of cake and sweet
Till the last cracker’s pulled on the last plate.
[Pg 76]
Now sidle through the dancers’ tortuous feet
And come at last, for the time waxes late,
Where in their cloudy breath the shadowy horses wait.
Glow the two tawny lanterns on the hedge,
Gleam the ungainly boughs the window blurs,
And Betsey nodding on the seat’s soft edge
Holds to her heart those pompon’d shoes of hers;
Till in my arms, most spent of revellers,
I lift her slumb’ring whom nor lifting grieves
Nor sudden stay nor the cold night wind stirs,
Borne up the path through fragrance of box-leaves,
Up to her drowsy cot under dependent eaves.
[Pg 77]
SOUVENIR OF MICHAEL DRAYTON
I
Scarce hath the crookèd scythe
Duly been whetted
When all the mowers blithe
(By the storm letted,
Crouching the shed beneath
At the field’s margent)
See the first fallen swathe
Pelted with argent.
White mist the valley blurs,
White the horizon,
Since the cloud skirmishers
Sent their first spies on.
Haste away,
Waters grey,
Spare of your shedding,
Till we bestow our hay
Safe in the steading.
II
Gild, sun, the pendent leaves
Silverly dripping,
Call the swifts from the eaves
Screaming and dipping,
Raise the green docks that be
To the ground beaten,
All the washed earth we see
[Pg 78]
Comfort and sweeten;
Till at soft interval
On the small flowers,
Drops from the thatch-ends fall—
Spent are the showers.
Haste away,
Waters grey,
Spare of your shedding,
Till we bestow our hay
Safe in the steading.
III
Soon may the whisp’ring blade
Bow the grey grasses,
Lo, the lush edge unfrayed
Where the scythe passes!
All with a stately speed
Shorn and soft whistle
Muted on nought of weed,
Burdock nor thistle.—
Grace hath possessed the sky,
Hope hath o’er-spanned it,
Parteth he hurriedly,
Storm, the black bandit.
Haste away,
Waters grey,
Spare of your shedding,
Till we bestow our hay
Safe in the steading.
[Pg 79]
“FOUR-PAWS”
Four-paws, the kitten from the farm,
Is come to live with Betsey-Jane,
Leaving the stack-yard for the warm
Flower-compassed cottage in the lane,
To wash his idle face and play
Among chintz cushions all the day.
Under the shadow of her hair
He lies, who loves him nor desists
To praise his whiskers and compare
The tabby bracelets on his wrists,—
Omelet at lunch and milk at tea
Suit Betsey-Jane and so fares he.
Happy beneath her golden hand
He purrs contentedly nor hears
His Mother mourning through the land,
The old grey cat with tattered ears
And humble tail and heavy paw
Who brought him up among the straw.
Never by day she ventures nigh,
But when the dusk grows dim and deep
And moths flit out of the strange sky
And Betsey has been long asleep—
Out of the dark she comes and brings
Her dark maternal offerings;—
[Pg 80]
Some field-mouse or a throstle caught
Near netted fruit or in the corn,
Or rat, for this her darling sought
In the old barn where he was born;
And all lest on his dainty bed
Four-paws were faint or under-fed.
Only between the twilight hours
Under the window-panes she walks
Shrewdly among the scented flowers
Nor snaps the soft nasturtium stalks,
Uttering still her plaintive cries
And Four-paws, from the house, replies,
Leaps from his cushion to the floor,
Down the brick passage scantly lit,
Waits wailing at the outer door
Till one arise and open it—
Then from the swinging lantern’s light
Runs to his Mother in the night.
[Pg 81]
“FOUR-PAWS” IN LONDON
Four-paws, we know the sun is white
At dawn in Hampshire when the night
Deserts those frozen miles,
When robin creaks from wintry bush
And early milk-boy’s breeches brush
The hoar-frost from the stiles;
Yet shall you never hear him more
Insistent at our cottage door
Nor of his spoils partake,
Alas, poor puss who stir and yawn
Uneasy in the London dawn
And, in a flat, awake.
Four-paws, forgive us! When apprised
Of our departure you devised,
No doubt, some darling plan
Of exodus that should surpass
His who removed last Michaelmas—
Your friend the dairy-man:—
A mightier waggon on the road
You pictured and so vast a load
That all should turn and look,—
Betsey precarious on the shaft,
Master and Mistress fore and aft,
The carter and the cook,
[Pg 82]
Nurse, with her knitting, in mid-air,
Carpets in bales, your favourite chair
And (the progressive path
With added glory to invest)
Our Four-paws couchant on the crest
Of an inverted bath.
Alas, what difference disgraced
Our flight! An obscure van replaced
The customary wain;
And you, with many a mournful cry,
Fettered by Betsey in the fly
And hampered in the train.
And now you’re here. Well, it may be
The sun does rise in Battersea
Although to-day be dark,
Life is not shorn of loves and hates
While there are sparrows on the slates
And keepers in the Park:
And you yourself will come to learn
The ways of London and in turn
Assume your cockney cares,
Like other folk who live in flats,
Chasing your purely abstract rats
Upon the concrete stairs.
[Pg 83]
TO MY SISTER DOROTHY,
A PASTE BROOCH
Time, cunning smith, hath set you in my heart
Like stones in silver none may wrest apart;
Not counterfeit as these our loves shall stay
When sullen-footed Time hath paced away.
[Pg 84]
SESTINA
TO D. E.
I saw myself encircled in the grey
Of your grey eyes, Dear Love, as in a glass;
In place of lurking glooms I come their way
As idle ghosts through magic mirrors pass
Or shifty clouds bewilder a spring day
Or windy shadows dusk the summer grass.
And as swift sickles lop the hedge-row grass,
As ghosts scent out the dawn with faces grey
And flee before the stirring feet of day,
As magic shivers in a splintered glass,
So all the shaken pictures of me pass
Even with the moving of your head away.
Yet would your head be ever turned my way,
Only our peace is fugitive as grass:—
Beyond the clapping lintels footsteps pass,
Shake the snared joy from quiet’s cobweb grey—
O who drinks silence from a jolted glass,
Who deals in stillness on a market-day?
Our joys go begging for a gentle day,
They are swayed as weed-stems in a water-way,
Hurt as blind lips that drain a broken glass,
Blown down by breath as petals flung on grass,
Thinned as gold hair dull sorrow braids with grey,
Lopped short as willow-tufts where cattle pass.
[Pg 85]
This noisy horde of minutes never pass,
This patchwork crew;—they throng us day by day,
Hint of silk linings to their cloaks of grey,
Cleave out strong-elbowed their ungentle way,
Bruise the poor joy as legions tread the grass,
Or as wet fingers rub a moaning glass.
There is no day ringed round with seas of glass,
No island day, where like-faced minutes pass
Fingered on gathered mouth through breathless grass
With close-girt garment lest the bloom of day
Be brushed or pollen spilt along their way,—
Or lest my face be shook from your eyes’ grey.
O dear grey eyes, though ruder minutes pass
And dusk the glass, your heart is turned my way
Wherein all day my face springs up like grass.
[Pg 86]
LULLABY FOR A LITTLE GIRL
Now candle-flames disperse the rout
Of shadows and their giant wars;
And though the roof of night without
Be spanned with dusk and set with stars,
’Tis lullaby,
The elm-tops cry,
And lullaby, the leaves that pass
In stealth across the window-glass.
The comb shall sleek your drooping head
And through the darling tangles go
And all your night attire is spread
Before the fire to face the glow,
And lullaby,
The cinders sigh,
For ev’ry rosy palace gone,
Fall’n in their dwarfish Ilion.
Now rest, your prayers said aright
And timely supped your milky bowl,
Your little body all as white
And sweet as your unsoilèd soul;
And lullaby,
Her melody,
Who from the quilted bedside goes,
A-tiptoe, when your eye-lids close.
[Pg 87]
RONDEAU OF SARUM CLOSE
In Sarum Close, when she had said her say,
He stood bare-headed where dim vapours lay
Heavy on vacant lawn, athwart the stone
Of that great pile that stands unsought, alone,—
Himself as still and derelict as they.
Here, when morn’s gleaming hand had rolled away
From the green plot of this their week-old play
Her misty curtain, each to each was shown,
In Sarum Close.
Void the discoloured fane before him lay,
Void the dark-sodded precincts,—far away
One closed a window, night’s appeal had grown
Perchance too urgent, even as his own
Had seemed to her whose friendship did with day
In Sarum close.
[Pg 88]
THE KNOBBY-GREEN
O thou who ’neath the umbrageous trees
That line the Avenue Louise
Did’st spread in Belgian sun and breeze
Thy buds about,
I come to weep thy destinies
My Brussels Sprout:
Who, on this drear December day,
Rearest above mine Essex clay
Thy wand of buds as green as they
Who spend their Yule
Hearing remoter church-bells play
In St. Gudule.
Hail, noble alien, I see
Thou bear’st in exile and for me
A neat-curl’d row of progeny,
(Not all unlike
Some purse-proud donor’s family,
By John van Eyck)
For me unmindful of thy place
(Comrade of carpets and of lace)
Who class thee with the vulgar race
Of Beet and Bean,
And call thee—to thy very face—
The Knobby-green.
[Pg 89]
THE CARCANET
The world’s a quarry for whose spoils
Love, the untiring miner, toils
Early and late, such stones to get
As may be cut devised and set
Into his mistress’ carcanet.
Alack that love can never choose
But bring thee pebbles of no use:—
Glance at the gift and thou shalt see
Each facet in his treasury
Of stones doth but diminish thee.
[Pg 90]
TO A TOWN CRIER
“Whiffin, proclaim silence!”—Pickwick
Whiffin, with all thy faults, I love thee still,
Thee and thine ancient office and the sweet
Metallic peal that quelled the popular heat
When party strife ran high in Eatanswill;
Who now with quavering eloquence would’st fill,
And tidings of a pilfered purse, the street
Maddened with motors and the armoured fleet
Of base mechanical engines out to kill.
Go, thou sole arbiter of Buff and Blue,
Time hath prevailed against thee, yield the floor,
Toll, on bare sufferance, from door to door,
The hooters hold the highway;—as for you,
You voice the missing ha’pence of the poor,
And they the incomes of the well-to-do.
[Pg 91]
THE TALE OF JOCKO
A STORY FOR A CHILD
I
An old white Jocko, kindly and urbane,
Lived with a little girl called Betsey-Jane,
He was her oldest friend, thin was his hair,
One arm he lacked, but Jocko did not care,
No more did Betsey-Jane;—his eyes were gone,
His figure flat, but all his teeth were on,
Stitched to his mouth, a row of beady pearls
More white than those of many little girls.
All day to please he did his docile best
And only squeaked when Betsey punched his chest;
When bed-time came and Nurse tucked Betsey in,
Warm in her cot he slept beneath her chin.
II
Now Betsey-Jane was rather more than two
And just about as good as I and you;—
She’d learnt to talk, but not learnt when to stop,
Her yellow hair swung round her in a mop,
Round was her face, her eyes were opened wide
And only blinked in sleep or when she cried;
White frocks she had and blue her pinafore
With scarlet stitching at the neck, and more
Delights she had than many girls and boys,—
Father and Mother, Nurse and many toys
To comfort her, but, more than all the rest,
There is no doubt she loved her Jocko best.
[Pg 92]
III
Yet Jocko’s life was not a life of ease,—
We think to do entirely as we please,
Age teaches otherwise. One evil day
A cat approached the cushion where he lay
And tore away his inoffensive hair
And left him with his leathern skin laid bare,
Silent upon the rug. His Betsey-Jane
Found him with tears and kissed him well again;
But she herself, forgetful of her grief,
Laughed when they dressed him in a handkerchief
Just like a doll, but Jocko did not mind,
He still forgave her for his heart was kind.
IV
Thus did our Jocko play, for Betsey’s sake,
The Grand Domestic Game of Give and Take,
Until her rudeness to her friend was such
As makes men say “This is a straw too much.”
One day he sat, as docile as a lamb,
By Betsey-Jane who, upright in her pram,
Refused to sleep and went from bad to worse,
Kicked off her rug and disobeyed her nurse;
And though her Jocko did not speak his mind
And only stared to see her so unkind,
In Endless Street, some yards from their abode,
She picked him up and flung him in the road.
[Pg 93]
V
On sped the pram nor did the nurse’s pace
Leave time to miss our hero from his place.
Flat by the curb lay Jocko, still and pale,
Till a rude sparrow plucked him by the tail
And up he sat;—the sparrow hopped around
And eyed him seated sadly on the ground,
Propped up against the parapet and grey
With grime and dust that in the gutter lay.
Then Jocko spoke, he smoothed his sullied fur
With one long trembling paw, and thought of her
And said, all torn betwixt his love and pain,—
“I will go back no more to Betsey-Jane.”
VI
“I will arise and go beyond the din
Of towns to where the endless woods begin,
There among tangled oaks and lowly ways
Of undergrowth to end my dreary days;
I will seek acorns, beech-nuts, hips and haws
And pluck them down with my prehensile paws;
While the grey rabbits, never shy with me,
From holes around my sandy-rooted tree
Come out to nibble in the gentle rain,—
A calmer life than that with Betsey-Jane.
Long is the way, but I will make a start,
A carrier shall take me in his cart.”
[Pg 94]
VII
This said, he rose, and sought with feeble pace,
For he was stiff and sore, the Market Place;
Where, without horses and their shafts turned down,
Are ranged the carts that come into the town;
Until at dusk, all loaded up, they’re gone.
He found the cart that went to Clarendon.
Beneath it lay a yellow dog who shook
His brazen collar, but his churlish look
Passed off when Jocko hailed the man inside
Who, loading parcels and not looking, cried,—
“We start in Butcher Row, sir, from the Bear.
At four o’clock.” Said Jocko “I’ll be there.”
VIII
All was arranged, and he could do no more
But pass the time until the clock struck four.
He wandered up the Market; far and wide
The burly drovers elbowed him aside,
The sheep regarded him with mild surprise
Behind their hurdles, and the hairy eyes
Of families of little porkers stared
And cart-horses with braided tresses glared
And stamped upon the cobbles. From their shed
The calves looked bluntly round and many a head
Of penned-up fowls peered through a wiry door,—
“Jocko!” they cackled, “we will meet once more!”
[Pg 95]
IX
Out of the Market Place an alley led
To Poultry Cross and old white Jocko sped
Beneath its shelter and surveyed the stalls
Which here sell hobby horse, tops and balls,
And tins for little cakes. One stall was full
Of button-cards and reels and hanks of wool,
Another sold you sage and pansy roots,
And this, red carpet-slippers, hob-nailed boots
And clogs, and hanging on a string by twos
A row of little russet leather shoes;
Tears filled his eyes, he turned to look again,—
“Those shoes,” said he, “are just like Betsey-Jane.”
X
While thus he spake two farmers sauntered past
And turned to stare at Jocko, said the last,—
“I saw that monkey next a Spanish hen,
The little beast has wandered from his pen!”
Jocko is captured by the portly pair,
They lead him, passive, to the Market Square;
Once more the hens their throats exultant crane,—
“Jocko!” they cackle; “Here he is again!”
The farmers stuff our hero, sad and sore,
Into a vacant pen and slam the door:—
Through the grim wires the searching breezes moan
And Jocko sits there shivering alone.
[Pg 96]
XI
The time lagged on; some children through his door
Prodded his fur with sticks, the clock struck four.
Now is the time, but Jocko does not care,
When carriers are starting from the Bear;
Fast in his pen, and all his anger gone,
No longer would he live at Clarendon.
Home was his one desire. “At six,” he said,
“My Betsey-Jane is kissed, and goes to bed,
Her bath-tub by the nursery fire will be,
She will come in and look around for me
And sob all night beneath her counterpane
For her lost Jocko—little Betsey-Jane!”
XII
While Jocko thus lamented, through the crowd
There came a little girl who sobbed aloud
And clutched her Mother’s hand; ’twas Betsey-Jane,
Who all the afternoon had sought in vain
Her Jocko cast away in Endless Street;
Tired are her little gaitered legs, her feet
So weary, each new thought of Jocko brings
New tears to wet her woollen bonnet strings
And drip from each blue tassel to the ground.
She would not look on all the beasts around,
But Jocko saw her coat, and “Betsey-Jane,”
He cried, “Do come and take me home again!”
[Pg 97]
XIII
Alas, they did not hear, his voice was low,
With chill and hunger, Mother turned to go;
But Betsey-Jane looked sadly back and then
Beheld him upright in his distant pen.
She dropped her Mother’s hand and with a shout
Of “Jocko, Jocko!” ran to get him out;—
Two shame-faced men undid at her commands
His cage and Mother put him in her hands,
She clasped him closely, not a word was said,
And laid her tearful cheek against his head.
XIV
So back to Endless Street and once again
Our Jocko slumbers close to Betsey-Jane,
Clutched in her little fingers’ rosy snare,
Among the sleepy tangles of her hair,
Seen dimly through her cot’s surrounding rail.
And here are morals tied to Jocko’s Tale:—
“Though hurt your feelings never try to roam
For there are many places worse than home.”
And yet another,—“Never slight or spurn
A good old friend, they say a worm will turn;
And such-like stories end in deeper pain
Than that of Jocko and his Betsey-Jane.”
[Pg 98]
THE WAG-TAIL
By brook and bent,
Alert and diligent,
All day my merry wag-tail went,
Soberly clad
She seemed, in feathers sad
Which yet a fair white braiding had;
Nor did she fail
With jerking beak and tail
Quite to dislodge th’ incurious snail,
And thence away
To the pollard where all day
Her brown big-footed babies lay.
—I do desire
No better, nor look higher,
Pied wag-tail, than thy plain attire;
Nor would I roam
Afar, but kindly come
Back to th’ acclaiming mouths at home.
[Pg 99]
Like thee to run
About my works begun
And pluck delights from ev’ry one.
Where (might I do’t)
Living, my only suit,
And dead, my dearest attribute.
[Pg 100]
HIGH TIDE AT BATTERSEA
So now my Thames is fairly on the turn
And plain it is the sum of water seeks
That ocean which the flood so late did spurn
With long reluctance in the little creeks;
Now the great barges tethered to their buoys
(Their gulls still seated in deliberate loads)
Swing round majestical and, with no noise,
Face the hid sea beyond these sullen roads.
Even so my soul which did so long abide
With thoughts so fledged and meditative freighted
Hath veered about and answered to the tide,
Glad, and her faithless station abdicated;—
Lord, ere this lovely ebb shall set for me,
Slip thou my chain and lure me out to sea.
[Pg 101]
TO MY DAUGHTER
WHO TELLS ME SHE CAN DRESS HERSELF
So, dear, have you and Nurse conspired
In secret, and all eyes evaded,
Till you can boast yourself attired
Unwatched, uncounselled and unaided?
Perfect in button, tape and hook,
You’ve learned the knack, you come to tell us,
And while you turn that we may look
I own I am a little jealous
That she has taught you with success
How to assume your frock and shed it,
That you have learnt the art to dress
And Abigail’s is all the credit.
Yet my devotion has its will,
Nor can I lightly yield to Nurse all
The praise, for I have prompted still
A spiritual dress rehearsal;
On your soft hair a helmet placed,
Fastened your breastplate like a bib on,
And tied the Truth about your waist
Where she is proud to tie your ribbon.
[Pg 102]
Each has her task, decorous, sweet,
Fair, to surpass your friends, she made you,
While for your hidden foes’ defeat
I in your Pauline arms arrayed you.
For, though you tire of sash and gown
And fold them up for good, there’s no day
When these, that I have made your own,
Shall be a burden or démodés.
Yet, though the clasps endure, I know
I’ll wish our handiwork were neater
When at celestial gates you show
The well-worn harness to St. Peter.
[Pg 103]
THE BABY GOAT
Four alders guard a bridge of planks
And waveless waters filmed with brown,
A rugged lawn’s uneven banks
Slope gently down,
And there, still chafing at the chain
That girds his slim pathetic throat,
They’ve picketed our friend again—
The Baby Goat.
Treading alone the watered vale,
Betsey and I, beside the marsh
Often we linger to bewail
His durance harsh;
What plaints allure my baby’s feet,
What tethered struggles claim her sighs,
What shrill protestant whinnies greet
Her long good-byes.
Once we repassed the lonely ground
Below the alders where he feeds
And spied his stunted horns girt round
With flow’ring weeds,
Two merry wenches and a child
Caressed his grey ill-fitting coat
And, lolling in the sedge, beguiled
The Baby Goat.
[Pg 104]
Now, for long days companionless,
His soft blunt nose, his agate eyes,
His raised remonstrant brows express
The sad surprise
Wherewith the desolate green waste
O’erloads his heart who at the edge
Of stagnant waters kneels to taste
The thankless sedge.
His Mother is his chiefest lack
Who in some heathy upland place
Tidied his sturdy socks of black
And licked his face;
He turns to see us saunter by
The level highway hand-in-hand—
I think the Baby Goat knows why
We understand.
[Pg 105]
BOURNEMOUTH TO POOLE
I BOURNEMOUTH
Quite given o’er to shameful destinies
Yet may I muse what graces once were thine
Whose little brooks descend the tawny chine
So silver-silent on their gold degrees;
Whose smiles, like hers of Cyprus, from the seas
Have drawn the tremulous mirth wherewith they shine
Under the coif of heaven that doth confine
Thy tender headlands and their tress of trees.
Poor beauty, with thy dowry of bright sand,
Poured out in softness, to chance comers shown,
So fallen;—doth it much import what hand
Cast the rude lot that shred thy purple gown,
Or, on this lovely and reluctant land,
Who stamped this monstrous image of a town?
O valiant reach of land that doth include
The striving sea in such a large embrace!
O valiant homes that overlook the face
Of water by a hundred keels subdued!
Poole, thou art map of thine own fortitude,
[Pg 106]
And, in thy building, eloquent of a race
That singed the beard of Spain and for a lace
Fought on this quay the Georgian excise-brood.
Old, and thy harbour skies more scantly sparred,
Thy constant stones survey the fickle flow
Of Tide and Time; and on thy casements barred
Burns Memory like a crimson afterglow,
Bright as the blood-red hollyhocks that blow
Through the grey timber in this silent yard.
[Pg 107]
THE JAPANESE DUCKLING
The shop-girl in my fingers laid
The Yellow Duckling, Mother paid
A silver coin to set him free
And so he came to live with me.
I kissed his baby feathers sweet,
His callow bill and parchment feet;
And so his love for me began—
My Yellow Duckling from Japan.
And he forgot his native nest,
Forgot the way his plumy breast
Parted the waters as they ran
Amid strange weeds in far Japan.
And he forgot the yellow child
Whose narrow eye-lids on him smiled:—
I kissed him, and he settled down
To live with me in London town.
[Pg 108]
THE PRIVET HEDGE
The common pavement dull and grey
Is strewn with leafy wands to-day,
And sceptres green to the curb’s edge—
For they have cut the privet hedge.
My Baby gathers, bending down,
The branches swept by Mother’s gown
And carries home into the house
Those magical and royal boughs.
But O the milky blossoms sweet
That scented all the sunny street—
Crushed by the Baby’s sandalled tread
They lie behind her, brown and dead.
[Pg 109]
THE VEGETARIAN’S DAUGHTER
She ate her oat-cake by the fire,
Her bath was done and dried her hair,
Her nightgown was her sole attire,
Her towel steamed across a chair.
And as the oat-cake contour grew
Eroded as a tide-worn cape,
She named the jagged residue
After the beast most like its shape.
“This is a pig, a growly bear,
A baa-sheep” (and she bit him)—thus
Her speech flowed on, to my despair
Incredibly carnivorous.
At last, all wreathed in drowsy smiles,
She munched the final gee-gee’s head—
“Ah, Betsey, what would Eustace Miles,
And what would Bernard Shaw have said?”
[Pg 110]
HONEY MEADOW
Here, Betsey, where the sainfoin blows,
Pink and the grass more thickly grows,
Where small brown bees are winging
To clamber up the stooping flowers,
We’ll share the sweet and sunny hours
Made murmurous with their singing.
Dear, it requires no small address
In such a billowy floweriness
For you, so young, to sally:
Yet would you still out-stay the sun
And linger when his light was done
Along the haunted valley.
O small brown fingers, clutched to seize
The biggest blooms, don’t spill the bees;
Imagine what contempt he
Would meet who ventured to arrive
Home, of an evening, at the hive,
With both his pockets empty!
Moreover, if you steal their share,
The bees become too poor to spare
Their sweets nor part with any
Honey at tea-time; so for you
What were for them a cell too few
Would be a sell too many!
[Pg 111]
Or, what were worse for you and me,
They might admire the industry
So thoughtlessly paraded,
And, tired of their brown queen, maintain
That no one needed Betsey-Jane
As urgently as they did.
So should you taste in some far clime
The plunder of eternal thyme
And you would quite forget us,
Our cottage and these English trees,
When you were Queen of Honey Bees
At Hybla or Hymettus.
[Pg 112]
AN ELEGY, FOR FATHER ANSELM, OF THE
ORDER OF REFORMED CISTERCIANS,
GUEST-MASTER AND PARISH PRIEST
“Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes”
You to whose soul a death propitious brings
Its Heaven, who attain a windless bourne
Of sanctity beyond all sufferings,
It is not ours to mourn;
For you, to whom the earth could nothing give,
Who knew no hint of our inspirèd pride,
You could not very well be said to live
Until the day you died.
’Tis upon us—father and kindly friend,
Holy and cheerful host—the unbidden guests
You welcomed and the souls you would amend,
The weight of sorrow rests.
From Sarum in the mesh of her five streams,
Her idle belfries and her glittering vanes,
We are clomb to where the cloud-race dusks and gleams
On turf of upland plains.
Southward the road through juniper and briar
Clambers the down, untrodden and unworn
[Pg 113]
Save where some flock pitted the chalky mire
With little feet at dawn.
Twice in a week the hooded carrier’s lamp,
Flashing on wayside flints and grasses, spills
Its misty radiance where the dews lie damp
Among the untended hills;
Here lies the hamlet ringed with grassy mound
And brambled barrow where, superbly dead,
The dust of pagans turned to holy ground
Beneath your humble tread.
Here we descend at drooping dusk the side
Of the stony down beneath the planted ring
Of beeches where you showed with pastoral pride
The folded lambs in spring;
Here pull at eve the self-same bell that hastened
Your rough-shod feet behind the hollow door—
Yet never see you stand, the chain unfastened,
Your lantern on the floor.
Others will spread the board now you are gone
Here where you smiled and gave your guests to eat,
Learning your menial kingliness from One
Who washed His servants’ feet;
[Pg 114]
Along the slumbering corridor betimes
Others will knock and other footsteps pass
Down the wet lane e’er the thin shivering chimes
Toll for the early mass.
Yet in the chapel’s self no sorrows sing
In the strange priest’s voice, nor any dolour grips
The heart because it is not you who bring
Your Master to its lips.
Here let us leave the things you would not have—
Vain grief and sorrow useless to be shown—
“God’s gift and the Community’s I gave
And nothing of my own,”
You would have said, self-deemed of no more worth
Than the green hands that guard a poppy’s grace,—
Blows the eternal flower and back to earth
Tumbles the withered case.
Nay, but Our Lord hath made renouncement vain,
Himself into those humble hands let fall,
Guerdon of willing poverty and pain,
The greatest gift of all;
To you and all who in that life austere
Mid fields remote your harsher labours ply
Singing His praise, girt round from year to year
With sheep-bells and the sky—
[Pg 115]
This, that to you is larger audience given
Where prayer and praise with sighing pinions shod
Piercing the starry ante-rooms of Heaven
Sway the designs of God:
And now yourself, standing where late hath stood
The echo of your voice, are prayer and praise—
O sweet reward and unsurpassing good
For that small gift of days.
Yourself, who now have heard such summoning
And seen such burning clarities alight
As broke the vigilant shepherds’ drowsy ring
On the predestined night,
Who made such haste as theirs who rose and trod
To Bethlehem the dew-encumbered grass,
Trustful to see the showing forth of God
And the Word come to pass;
With how much more than home-spun Israelites’
Poor hungry glimpse of Godhead are you blest
Whom Mary shows for more than mortal nights
The Jewel on her breast.
Yet, as one kneeling churl might chance to think
Of the wan herd behind their wattled bars,
Moving unshepherded with bells that clink
And stir beneath the stars,
[Pg 116]
And, for the thought’s space wishing he were back,
Pray to that Sum of Sweetness for his sheep—
“Take them, O Thou that dost supply our lack,
Into Thy hands to keep,”
So you who in His presence move and live
Recall amid your glad celestial cares
Your chosen office, to your children give
The charity of prayers.
[Pg 117]
THE REGRET
The mallow blooms in late July
Along the dusty track
To Romsey where the waters run
And Norman stones confront the sun—
Ah, Dear, that all our work were done
And we were getting back!
The whinchat in the willow runs
From silver stair to stair,
Cocks his white eyebrow, tunes his throat
And plans his little creaking note
To please the leaves that past him float—
Ah, Dear, that we were there!
Now all the world is carrying hay
And all the world is wise,
And O to trudge it once again
There in the wake of a green wain
That over-tops the rustling lane
Beneath familiar skies!
[Pg 118]
FIRST SNOW
Now Hertha hath, without a doubt,
Got all her winter peltry out;
And, for the weeds dispersèd show
Dark through that field of fallen snow,
We may felicitate in her
The happy choice of minever.
The well beside the rusty shed
Hath screened his pent-house lapt in lead
In candour of Carthusian cowl,
(Soft as the plumage of white owl),
Whose pail, for all the long night’s drouth,
Hath foam about his sable mouth.
How dark my cottage window eyes
Her wonted landscape’s white disguise—
Ho, Sulky-face, thine own brick ledge
Beareth such burden as the hedge,
And thatch, for all the warmth within,
Is bearded like a Capuchin!
[Pg 119]
TO A CHILD RETURNING HOME
UPON A WINDY DAY
Prythee what mad contentments canst thou find,
Rosy-cheeked Betsey, in this blust’rous wind
Loved of thy Babyhood? Without the door
His leaves as running footmen go before
Thy lagging feet who with compliant grace
Smilest, his kisses mantling on thy face.
Go back and bid him use while yet he may
His favour brief and pre-determined day;
Bear with his wooing, nor forbid him now
Lift the light hair from thine untroubled brow,
Whom thou shalt dub a churl, when thou art grown
A woman, but for ruffling of thy gown.
[Pg 120]
THE DEATH OF SIR MATHO
[“Nam quis iniquæ
Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se
Causidici nova cum veniat lectica Mathonis
Plena ipso.”—Juvenal, I. 30.]
When Sir Matho lay a-dying and his feet were growing cold,
For the fire was out and left the place in gloom,
And he could not see the night-light on his cornices of gold
And the nurses that were hired for him some grisly gossip told
As they lingered in the little dressing-room,
There was none to light him candles or to kneel by him and pray
And the youth that fed the fire-dogs had packed up and gone away—
For where’s the sense of waiting on a man whose days are done?
And the faggots lie a-rotting where the brown pheasants run.
As Sir Matho lay a-shivering, for Death crept on apace,
Came an agèd woman in the flickering light;
Like the women of the village, but he didn’t know her face,
[Pg 121]
For his 50-h.p. Panhard used to go at such a pace
That he never knew his cottagers by sight.
He saw her twist her apron in her ugly withered hands
As the poor did who awaited, while he lived, his high commands
And Sir Matho blinked upon her like an old dog in the sun.
And the faggots lie a-rotting where the brown pheasants run.
Then Sir Matho saw she looked on him and waited his desire
And he conjured the poor mis-shapen witch
To bring some logs of cedar and of oak to light his fire,
For he counted on the pity that is never had for hire
And is all the poor possess to give the rich.
But she wrung her hands and cried to him, “Ah, Sir, I’ve done the oil
Wherewith upon a little stove my mess of greens I boil;
And coal is dear, and very dear, and fuel have we none.”
And the faggots lie a-rotting where the brown pheasants run.
[Pg 122]
She knelt her at his couch’s foot, he saw her sorrow rise,
Her tears bestarred his fair embroidered sheet,
She pierced his silken coverlid with pity of her eyes,
Her tenderness descended, like the dews of Paradise
Or grace of shining chrism, upon his feet—
The feet that trod the russet woods and broke the bracken curls;
And crushed the purple whinberries, that grow for little girls,
When the silly foreign feathers fell a-screaming to his gun.
And the faggots lie a-rotting where the brown pheasants run.
And her tears recalled Sir Matho to a Woman ’neath a Tree,
’Twas an old pietà in his hall below
(Bought to pass the time at Christie’s for a song) wherein you see
How a Mother holds the Body of her Son upon her knee,
But her eyes are red for them that dealt the blow.
“This woman has forgiven me, and You forgive,” he cried.
[Pg 123]
“So He may still be merciful.” With that Sir Matho died.
But Satan ceased to blow the fire that he had well begun.
And the faggots lie a-rotting where the brown pheasants run.
[Pg 124]
THE PETALS
Yourself in bed
(My lovely Drowsy-head)
Your garments lie like petals shed
Upon the floor
Whose carpet is strewn o’er
With little things that late you wore.
For the morrow’s wear
I fold them neat and fair
And lay them on the nursery chair;
And round them lie
Airs of the hours that die
With all their stored-up fragrancy.
As a flower might
Give out to the cool night
The warmth it drank in day-long light
So wool and lawn
From your soft skin withdrawn
(Whereon they were assumed at dawn)
Breathe the spent mood,
Lost act and attitude,
Of the small sweetness they endued.
[Pg 125]
Ere all turn cold
No garment that I hold
But shakes a vision from its fold
Of little feet
That vainly would be fleet,
Tangled about with meadow-sweet,
And of bent knees
When Betsey kneeling sees,
In the parched hedge-row, strawberries.
Such things I see
Folding your clothes, which be
Weeds of the dead day’s comedy.
The while I pray
Your part may be alway
So simple and so good to play,
And do desire
Your life may still respire
Such sweetness as your cast attire.
[Pg 126]
POST-COMMUNION
Lord, when to Thine embrace I run
Gathered like waters to the Sun,
Shape me to such celestial mirth
As may go back and glad the earth.
Let Thy rays compass me, and crowd
Into the semblance of a cloud
Mine idle and dispersèd powers;
That I, the casket of Thy showers,
May, for my closeness, coloured be
(Howe’er so faintly) like to Thee,
And when Thou loosest me to go
Diffused into Thy world below,
May I, till drip of words shall cease,
Sing of Refreshment, Light and Peace;
And, poured into the Time’s abyss,
Revive one blossom for Thy bliss.
[Pg 127]
INDEX TO FIRST LINES
| | PAGE |
| The brook along the Romsey road |
3 |
| A portly Wood-louse, full of cares |
5 |
| When the wind blows without the garden walls |
7 |
| How late in the wet twilight doth that bird |
8 |
| Of Sorrow, ’tis as Saints have said |
9 |
| Within our garden walls you see |
10 |
| The fuchsias dangle on their stem |
11 |
| My night-dress hangs on fire-guard rail |
12 |
| While I stand upon the pavement and I dress the dusty stall |
13 |
| When by the fire-light Dulcibel |
15 |
| Whom meet we, Betsey, in the wood? |
16 |
| How few alack |
17 |
| ’Tis the old wife at Rickling, she |
19 |
| Pull out my couch across the fire |
21 |
| When the Wind comes up the lane |
22 |
| What dusky branches fret the yellow sky |
23 |
| Three candles had her cake |
25 |
| The Baby slumbers through the night |
26 |
| With a full house of other folks |
27 |
| He who a mangold-patch doth hoe |
30 |
| Throw up the cinders, let the night wear through |
31
[Pg 128] |
| When elm-buds turn from red to green |
32 |
| Vainly, my Betsey, to the weeping day |
34 |
| O the trucks that leave Southampton bring a smell of twine and tar |
36 |
| When the young Spring in Betsey’s fingers sets |
38 |
| Permit, Dear Sir, that the judicious grieve |
39 |
| ’Twas bought in Bruges, the shop was poor |
41 |
| The sun sank, and the wind uprist whose note |
43 |
| My Betsey-Jane it would not do |
45 |
| In Bethlehem Town by lantern light |
46 |
| Playthings my Betsey hath, the snail’s cast shell |
48 |
| I am not lightly moved, my grief was dumb |
49 |
| You taught me ways of gracefulness and fashions of address |
51 |
| You that have fenced about my storm-swept ways |
52 |
| Pardon, Dear Sir, if with intrusive pen |
53 |
| When I was small, great joy it was to see |
56 |
| We came on Christmas Day |
57 |
| On the high frosty fields afoot at dawn |
59 |
| Now night hath fallen on the little town |
60 |
| Dear, the delightful world I see |
61 |
| So ’tis your will to have a cell |
63 |
| My Sorrow diligent would sweep |
65 |
| Here lies A. B. who, four years from her birth |
67 |
| On the painted bridge at Mottisfont above the Test I’ve stood |
70
[Pg 129] |
| It is told of the painter Da Vinci |
72 |
| Follow, my Betsey-Jane, as best you can |
75 |
| Scarce hath the crookèd scythe |
77 |
| Four-paws, the kitten from the farm |
79 |
| Four-paws, we know the sun is white |
81 |
| Time, cunning smith, hath set you in my heart |
83 |
| I saw myself encircled in the grey |
84 |
| Now candle-flames disperse the rout |
86 |
| In Sarum Close, when she had said her say |
87 |
| O thou who ’neath the umbrageous trees |
88 |
| The world’s a quarry for whose spoils |
89 |
| Whiffin, with all thy faults, I love thee still |
90 |
| An old white Jocko, kindly and urbane |
91 |
| By brook and bent |
98 |
| So now my Thames is fairly on the turn |
100 |
| So, dear, have you and Nurse conspired |
101 |
| Four alders guard a bridge of planks |
103 |
| Quite given o’er to shameful destinies |
105 |
| O valiant reach of land that doth include |
105 |
| The shop-girl in my fingers laid |
107 |
| The common pavement dull and grey |
108 |
| She ate her oat-cake by the fire |
109 |
| Here, Betsey, where the sainfoin blows |
110 |
| You to whose soul a death propitious brings |
112
[Pg 130] |
| The mallow blooms in late July |
117 |
| Now Hertha hath, without a doubt |
118 |
| Prythee what mad contentments canst thou find |
119 |
| When Sir Matho lay a-dying and his feet were growing cold |
120 |
| Yourself in bed |
124 |
| Lord, when to Thine embrace I run |
126 |
SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
“A poem by Mrs. Helen Parry Eden, ‘A Suburban Night’s
Entertainment,’ is in itself good enough to sustain
the Englishwoman’s reputation as a judge of verse.”
“A delightful fable.”
“The most sensational feature of this number.”
The Westminster Gazette.
“A very pretty and finished piece of descriptive verse.”
The Queen.
“A little masterpiece.”
“Jacob Tonson” in The New Age.
Transcriber’s Notes:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Typographical errors have been silently corrected.
