Part 1
Of this first American edition of _Gipsy-Night and Other Poems_, with a special proof of the _Lithograph Portrait_ by _Pamela Bianco_, sixty-three copies, each signed by both author and artist, have been issued, of which thirty are for sale in America and twenty-four in England.
Number 46
Richard Hughes
Gipsy-Night and Other Poems
GIPSY-NIGHT
_and_ Other Poems
_by_
_Richard Hughes_
_Chicago_ WILL RANSOM _1922_
_Copyright 1922 by Will Ransom_
Some of these pieces have appeared in England in _The Athenæum_, _London Mercury_, _Spectator_, _Saturday Westminster Gazette_, _Oxford Review_, _Free Oxford_, _Oxford Outlook_, _Poetry Review_, and _Oxford Poetry_; and in America in _The Dial_, the _New York Evening Post Literary Review_, _The Bookman_, and _Poetry_.
The Author offers the usual acknowledgments.
CONTENTS
_Portrait of the Author by Pamela Bianco_ _Frontispiece_
_Preface_ _7_
_Gipsy-Night_ _9_
_The Horse Trough_ _11_
_Martha_ _12_
_Gratitude_ _15_
_Vagrancy_ _17_
_Storm_ _20_
_Tramp_ _23_
_Epitaph_ _26_
_Glaucopis_ _27_
_Poets, Painters, Puddings_ _28_
_Isaac Ball_ _30_
_Dirge_ _32_
_The Singing Furies_ _34_
_The Ruin_ _36_
_Judy_ _38_
_Winter_ _40_
_The Moonlit Journey_ _41_
_A Song of the Walking Road_ _42_
_The Sermon_ _44_
_The Rolling Saint_ _45_
_Weald_ _48_
_The Jumping Bean_ _50_
_Old Cat Care_ _52_
_Cottager is given the Bird_ _53_
_A Man_ _55_
_Moon-struck_ _56_
_Enigma_ _58_
_Lament for Gaza_ _59_
_The Image_ _60_
_Felo de Se_ _61_
_The Birds-nester_ _63_
Preface
_Probably the most important contribution to modern poetical theory is Mr. Robert Graves' book_ On English Poetry. _He grounds it upon Man as a Neurotic Animal. Poetry is to the poet, he argues, what dreams are to the ordinary man: a symbolical way, that is, of resolving those complexes which deadlock of emotion has produced. If this book meets with the success it deserves, it is probable that there will be a great deal of psycho-analytical criticism afloat, that the symbolic test will become the sole criterion of distinguishing the true from the fake poem; until some sort of 'Metamorphic' school arise, who defeat this by consciously faking their symbolism. I do not wish to oppose this thesis, but only to suggest that though true, it is only a partial truth: and that to make it the sole criterion of poetry would be damning: that as well as being a neurotic animal, Man is a Communicative Animal, and a Pattern-making Animal: that poetry cannot be traced simply to a sort of automatic psycho-therapy, but that these and many other causes are co-responsible. Indeed, though many of these poems may still prove poems within the meaning of Mr. Graves' Act, I should be sorry that they should be read with no other purpose than indecently to detect my neuroses._
_R. H._
_North Wales, 1922_
Gipsy-Night
When the feet of the rain tread a dance on the roofs, And the wind slides through the rocks and the trees, And Dobbin has stabled his hoofs In the warm bracken-litter, noisy about his knees; And when there is no moon, and the sodden clouds slip over; Whenever there is no moon, and the rain drips cold, And folk with a shilling of money are bedded in houses, And pools of water glitter on Farmer's mould; Then pity Sally's girls, with the rain in their blouses: Martha and Johnnie, who have no money: The small naked puppies who whimper against the bitches, The small sopping children who creep to the ditches.
But when the moon is run like a red fox Cover to cover behind the skies; And the breezes crack in the trees on the rocks, Or stoop to flutter about the eyes Of one who dreams in the scent of pines At ease: Then would you not go foot it with Sarah's Girls In and out the trees? Or listen across the fire To old Tinker-Johnnie, and Martha his Rawnee, In jagged Wales, or in orchard Worcestershire?
The Horse Trough
Clouds of children round the trough Splash and clatter in the sun: Their clouted shoes are mostly off, And some are quarrelling, and one Cools half her face, nose downward bubbling, Wetting her clo'es and never troubling; Bobble, bobble, bobble there Till bubbles like young earthquakes heave The orange island of her hair, And tidal waves run up her sleeve; Another's tanned as brown as bistre; Another ducks his little sister, And all are mixed in such a crowd And tell their separate joys so loud That who can be this silent one, This dimpled, pensive, baby one? --She sits the sunny steps so still For hours, trying hard to kill One fly at least of those that buzz So cannily ... And then she does.
Martha (Gipsies on Tilberstowe: 1917)
Small child with the pinched face, Why do you stare With screwed-up eyes under a shock Of dull carrot hair? --Child in the long, torn frock, Crouched in the warm dust: Why do you stare, as if Stare you must?
* * * * *
Fairies in gossamer, Hero and warrior, Queens in their cherry gowns, Wizards and witches: Dream you of such as these? Palaces? Orange-trees? Dream you of swords and crowns, Child of the ditches?
_Still in the warm dust Sits she and stares; as if Stare she must, Pale eyes that see through: Soon I must stare too:_
Soon through the fierce glare Loom things that are not there: Out of the blind Past Savages grim: Negroes and muleteers, Saxons and wanderers Tall as a ship's mast, Spectral and dim.
_Stirring the race's dust, Stares she as stare she must._
_Fade they: but still the glare Shimmers her copper hair._
Eight years of penury, Whining and beggary, Famine and cursing, Hunger and sharp theft: Death comes to such as these Under the sobbing trees. The cold stars nursing Those that are left.
_Angel and devil peers Through those pale eyes of hers,_
Child of the Wide Earth, Born at the World's birth, Grave with the World's pain, Mirthless and tearless: Widowed from babyhood, Child without childhood, Stained with an earthy stain, Loveless and fearless:
My God is overhead: Yours must be cold. Or dead.
--Child with the pinched face Why do you stare With so much knowledge under your shock Of wild matted hair?
Gratitude
_Eternal gratitude_--a long, thin word: When meant, oftenest left unheard: When light on the tongue, light in the purse too; Of curious metallurgy: when coined true It glitters not, is neither large nor small: More worth than rubies--less, times, than a ball. Not gift, nor willed: yet through its wide range Buys what it buys exact, and leaves no change.
Old Gurney had it, won on a hot day With ale, from glib-voiced Gipsy by the way. He held it lightly: for 'twas a rum start To find a hedgeling who had still a heart: So put it down for twist of a beggar's tongue ... _He_ had not felt the heat: how the dust stung A face June-roasted: _he_ saw not the look Aslant the gift-mug; how the hand shook ... Yet the words filled his head, and he grew merry And whistled from the Boar to Wrye-brook ferry, And chaffed with Ferryman when the hawser creaked, Or slipping bilge showed where the planks leaked; --Lent hand himself, till doubly hard the barge Butted its nose in mud of the farther marge. When Gurney leapt to shore, he found--dismay!
He had no tuppence--(Tuppence was to pay To sulky Ferryman).--'Naught have I,' says he, 'Naught but the gratitude of Tammas Lee Given one hour.'--Sulky Charon grinned: 'Done,' said he, 'done: I take it--all of it, mind.' 'Done,' cries Jan Gurney. Down the road he went, But by the ford left all his merriment.
This is the tale of midday chaffering: How Charon took, and Gurney lost the thing: How Ferryman gave it for his youngest daughter To a tall lad who saved her out of the water-- (Being old and mean, had none of his own to give, So passed on Tammas', glad to see her live): How the young farmer paid his quarter's rent With that one coin, when all else was spent, And how Squire kept it for some goldless debt ... For aught I know, it wanders current yet.
But Tammas was no angel in disguise: He stole Squire's chickens--often: he told lies, Robbed Charon's garden, burnt young Farmer's ricks And played the village many lousy tricks.
No children sniffled, and no dog cried, When full of oaths and smells, he died.
Vagrancy
When the slow year creeps hay-ward, and the skies Are warming in the summer's mild surprise, And the still breeze disturbs each leafy frond Like hungry fishes dimpling in a pond, It is a pleasant thing to dream at ease On sun-warmed thyme, not far from beechen trees.
A robin flashing in a rowan-tree, A wanton robin, spills his melody As if he had such store of golden tones That they were no more worth to him than stones: The sunny lizards dream upon the ledges: Linnets titter in and out the hedges, Or swoop among the freckled butterflies.
Down to a beechen hollow winds the track And tunnels past my twilit bivouac: Two spiring wisps of smoke go singly up And scarcely tremble in the leafy air.
--There are more shadows in this loamy cup Than God could count: and oh, but it is fair: The kindly green and rounded trunks, that meet Under the soil with twinings of their feet And in the sky with twinings of their arms: The yellow stools: the still ungathered charms Of berry, woodland herb, and bryony, And mid-wood's changeling child, Anemone.
* * * * *
Quiet as a grave beneath a spire I lie and watch the pointed climbing fire, I lie and watch the smoky weather-cock That climbs too high, and bends to the breeze's shock, And breaks, and dances off across the skies Gay as a flurry of blue butterflies.
But presently the evening shadows in, Heralded by the night-jar's solitary din And the quick bat's squeak among the trees; --Who sudden rises, darting across the air To weave her filmy web in the Sun's bright hair That slowly sinks dejected on his knees ...
Now is he vanished: the bewildered skies Flame out a desperate and last surmise; Then yield to Night, their sudden conqueror.
From pole to pole the shadow of the world Creeps over heaven, till itself is lit By the very many stars that wake in it:
Sleep, like a messenger of great import, Lays quiet and compelling hands athwart The easy idlenesses of my mind. --There is a breeze above me, and around: There is a fire before me, and behind: But Sleep doth hold me, and I hear no sound.
In the far West the clouds are mustering, Without hurry, noise, or blustering: And soon as Body's nightly Sentinel Himself doth nod, I open furtive eyes ...
With darkling hook the Farmer of the Skies Goes reaping stars: they flicker, one by one, Nodding a little; tumble--and are gone.
Storm: to the Theme of Polyphemus
Mortal I stand upon the lifeless hills That jut their cragged bones against the sky: I crawl upon their naked ebony, And toil across the scars of Titan ills Dealt by the weaponing of gods and devils: I climb their uppermost deserted levels, And see how Heaven glowers his one eye Blood-red and black-browed in the sullen sky, While all his face is livid as a corpse And wicked as a snake's: see how he warps His sultry beam across the misted sea, As if he grudged its darkling ministry.
He looks so covetous, I think he hides --Jetsam of the slow ethereal tides-- Some cursed and battered Sailor of the Spheres: All night he ravens on him and his peers, But with the day he straddles monstrously Across the earth in churlish shepherdry, A-hungered for his hideous nightly feast.
But storms are gathering in the whitened East: The day grows darker still, and suddenly That lone and crafty Prisoner of the Sky Plunges his murky torch in Heaven's Eye: The blinded, screaming tempest trumpets out His windy agonies: Oh, he will spout His boiling rains upon the soggy air And heave great rocking planets: he will tear And snatch the screeching comets by the hair To fling them all about him in the sea, And blast the wretch's fatal Odyssey!
The great convulsions of the Deity Rumble in agony across the sky: His thunders rattle in and out the peaks: His lightnings jab at every word He speaks: --At every heavenly curse the cloud is split And daggered lightnings crackle out of it.
Like a steep shower of snakes the hissing rain Flickers its tongues upon the muddied plain, Writhing and twisting on the gutted rocks That tremble at the heavy thunder-shocks: Soon from the hub on Heaven's axel-tree The frozen hail flies spinning, and the sea Is lashed beneath me to a howling smoke As if the frozen fires of hell had woke And cracked their icy flames in the face of Heaven.
Withered and crouching and scarce breathing even, And battered as a gnat upon a wall I cling and gasp--climb to my feet, and fall, And crawl at last beneath a lidded stone, Careless if all the earth's foundations groan And strain in the heaving of this devilry, Careless at last whether I live or die.
* * * * *
So the vast Æschylean tragedy Rolls to its thunderous appointed close: With final mutterings each actor goes: And the huge Heavenly tragedian Tears from his face the massy mask and wan, And shines resplendent on the shattered stage As he has done from age to bewildered age, Giving the lie to all his mimic rage.
Tramp
(The Bath Road, June)
When a brass sun staggers above the sky, When feet cleave to boots, and the tongue's dry, And sharp dust goads the rolling eye, Come thoughts of wine, and dancing thoughts of girls: They shiver their white arms, and the head whirls, And noon light is hid in their dark curls: Noon feet stumble and head swims. Out shines the sun, and the thought dims, And death, for blood, runs in the weak limbs.
To fall on flints in the shade of tall nettles Gives easy sleep as a bed of rose petals, And dust drifting from the highway As light a coverlet as down may. The myriad feet of many-sized flies May not open those tired eyes.
The first wind of night Twitches the coverlet away quite: The first wind and large first rain Flickers the dry pulse to life again. Flickers the lids burning on the eyes: Come sudden flashes of the slipping skies: Hunger, oldest visionary, Hides a devil in a tree, Hints a glory in the clouds, Fills the crooked air with crowds Of ivory sightless demons singing-- Eyes start: straightens back: Limbs stagger and crack: But brain flies, brain soars Up, where the Sky roars Upon the back of cherubim: Brain rockets up to Him. Body gives another twist To the slack waist-band; In agony clenches fist Till the nails bite the hand. Body floats light as air, With rain in its sparse hair.
Brain returns, and would tell The things he has seen well:
Body will not stir his lips: Mind and Body come to grips.
Deadly each hates the other As treacherous blood brother.
No sight, no sound shows How the struggle goes.
I sink at last faint in the wet gutter; So many words to sing that the tongue cannot utter.
Epitaph
Jonathan Barlow loved wet skies, And golden leaves on a rollick wind ... The clouds drip damp on his crumbled eyes, And the storm his roystering dirge hath dinned.
Proud buck rabbits he loved, and the feel Of a finicky nose that sniffed his hand: So now they burrow, and crop their meal; Their fore-paws scatter him up in sand.
He loved old bracken, and now it pushes Affectionate roots between his bones: He runs in the sap of the young spring bushes, --Basks, when a June sun warms the stones.
* * * * *
Jonathan Barlow loved his Connie Better than beasts, or trees, or rain ... But her ears are shut to her Golden-Johnnie, And his tap, tap, tap, at her window-pane.
Glaucopis
John Fane Dingle By Rumney Brook Shot a crop-eared owl, For pigeon mistook:
Caught her by the lax wing. --She, as she dies, Thrills his warm soul through With her deep eyes.
Corpse-eyes are eerie: Tiger-eyes fierce: John Fane Dingle found Owl-eyes worse.
Owl-eyes on night-clouds, Constant as Fate: Owl-eyes in baby's face: On dish and plate:
Owl-eyes, without sound. --Pale of hue John died of no complaint, With owl-eyes too.
Poets, Painters, Puddings
Poets, painters, and puddings; these three Make up the World as it ought to be.
Poets make faces And sudden grimaces: They twit you, and spit you On words: then admit you To heaven or hell By the tales that they tell.
Painters are gay As young rabbits in May: They buy jolly mugs, Bowls, pictures, and jugs: The things round their necks Are lively with checks, (For they like something red As a frame for the head): Or they'll curse you with oaths, That tear holes in your clothes. (With nothing to mend them You'd best not offend them).
Puddings should be Full of currants, for me: Boiled in a pail, Tied in the tail Of an old bleached shirt: So hot that they hurt, So huge that they last From the dim, distant past Until the crack o' doom Lift the roof off the room.
Poets, painters, and puddings; these three Crown the day as it crowned should be.
Isaac Ball
Painting pictures Worth nothing at all In a dark cellar Sits Isaac Ball.
Cobwebs on his butter, Herrings in bed: Stout matted in the hair Of his poor cracked head.
There he paints Men's Thoughts --Or so says he: For in that cellar It's too dark to see.
Isaac knew great men, Poets and peers: Treated crown-princes To stouts and beers;
Some still visit him; Pretend to buy His unpainted pictures-- The Lord knows why.
His grey beard is woolly, Eyes brown and wild: Sticky things in his pocket For anybody's child.
Someday he'll win fame, --So Isaac boasts, Lecturing half the night To long-legged ghosts.
Isaac was young once: At sixty-five Still seduces more girls Than any man alive.
Dirge
To those under smoke-blackened tiles, and cavernous echoing arches, In tortuous hid courts, where the roar never ceases Of deep cobbled streets wherein dray upon dray ever marches, The sky is a broken lid, a litter of smashed yellow pieces.
To those under mouldering roofs, where life to an hour is crowded, Life, to a span of the floor, to an inch of the light, And night is all fevrous-hot, a time to be bawded and rowdied, Day is a time of grinding, that looks for rest to the night.
Those who would live, do it quickly, with quick tears, sudden laughter, Quick oaths--terse blasphemous thoughts about God the Creator: Those who would die, do it quickly, with noose from the rafter, Or the black shadowy eddies of Thames, the hurry-hater.
Life is the Master, the keen and grim destroyer of beauty: Death is a quiet and deep reliever, where soul upon soul And wizened and thwarted body on body are loosed from their duty Of living, and sink in a bottomless, edgeless impalpable hole.
Dead, they can see far above them, as if from the depth of a pit, Black on the glare small figures that twist and are shrivelled in it.
The Singing Furies
The yellow sky grows vivid as the sun: The sea glittering, and the hills dun.
The stones quiver. Twenty pounds of lead Fold upon fold, the air laps my head.
Both eyes scorch: tongue stiff and bitter: Flies buzz, but no birds twitter: Slow bullocks stand with stinging feet, And naked fishes scarcely stir for heat.
White as smoke, As jetted steam, dead clouds awoke And quivered on the Western rim. Then the singing started: dim And sibilant as rime-stiff reeds That whistle as the wind leads. The North answered, low and clear; The South whispered hard and sere, And thunder muffled up like drums Beat, whence the East wind comes. The heavy sky that could not weep Is loosened: rain falls steep: And thirty singing furies ride To split the sky from side to side. They sing, and lash the wet-flanked wind: Sing, from Col to Hafod Mynd And fling their voices half a score Of miles along the mounded shore: Whip loud music from a tree, And roll their pæan out to sea Where crowded breakers fling and leap, And strange things throb five fathoms deep.
The sudden tempest roared and died: The singing furies muted ride Down wet and slippery roads to hell: And, silent in their captors' train Two fishers, storm-caught on the main; A shepherd, battered with his flocks; A pit-boy tumbled from the rocks; A dozen back-broke gulls, and hosts Of shadowy, small, pathetic ghosts, --Of mice and leverets caught by flood; Their beauty shrouded in cold mud.
The Ruin
Gone are the coloured princes, gone echo, gone laughter: Drips the blank roof: and the moss creeps after.
Dead is the crumbled chimney: all mellowed to rotting The wall-tints, and the floor-tints, from the spotting Of the rain, from the wind and slow appetite Of patient mould: and of the worms that bite At beauty all their innumerable lives.
--But the sudden nip of knives, The lady aching for her stiffening lord, The passionate-fearful bride And beaded pallor clamped to the torment-board, --Leave they no ghosts, no memories by the stairs? No sheeted glimmer treading floorless ways? No haunting melody of lovers' airs, Nor stealthy chill upon the noon of days? No: for the dead and senseless walls have long forgotten What passionate hearts beneath the grass lie rotten.
Only from roofs and chimneys pleasantly sliding Tumbles the rain in the early hours: Patters its thousand feet on the flowers, Cools its small grey feet in the grasses.
Judy
Sand hot to haunches: Sun beating eyes down, Yet they peer under lashes At the hill's crown:
See how the hill slants Up the sky half way; Over the top tall clouds Poke, gold and grey.
Down: see a green field Tipped on its short edge, Its upper rim straggled round By a black hedge.
Grass bright as new brass: Uneven dark gorse Stuck to its own shadow, _Like Judy that black horse_.
Birds clatter numberless, And the breeze tells That bean-flower somewhere Has ousted the blue-bells: