Part 2

In club and messroom let them sit At skirmish of ingenious wit; Deriding Love, yet not with hearts Accorded to those healthier parts Of grim self-mockery, but with mean And burrowing search for things unclean, Pretended deafness, twisted sense, Sharp innuendoes rising thence, And affectation of prude-shame That shrinks from using the short name. We are not envious of their sour Disintegrations of Love’s power, Their swift analysis of the stabs Devised by virgins and by drabs (Powder or lace or scent) to excite A none-too-jaded appetite. They never guess of Love as we Have found the amazing Art to be, Pursuit of dazzling flame, or flight From web-hung blackness of night, With laughter only to express Care overborne by carelessness; They never bridge from small to great, From nod or glance to ideal Fate, From clouded forehead or slow sigh To doubt and agony looming by, From shining gaze and hair flung free To infinity and to eternity-- They sneer and poke a treacherous joke With scorn for our rusticity.

UNICORN AND THE WHITE DOE

‘Alone Through forests evergreen, By legend known, By no eye seen, Unmated Unbaited Untrembling between The shifting shadows The sudden echoes, Deathless I go Unheard, unseen,’ Says the White Doe.

Unicorn with bursting heart Breath of love has drawn On his desolate crags apart At rumour of dawn,

Has volleyed forth his pride Twenty thousand years mute, Tossed his horn from side to side Lunged with his foot.

‘Like a storm of sand I run Breaking the desert’s boundaries, I go in hiding from the sun In thick shade of trees

Straight was the track I took Across the plains, but here with briar And mire the tangled alleys crook Baulking my desire.

Ho, there! what glinted white? (A bough still shakes) What was it darted from my sight Through the forest brakes?

Where are you fled from me? I pursue, you fade; I run, you hide from me In the dark glade.

Towering straight the trees grow, The grass grows thick. Where you are, I do not know, You fly so quick.’

‘Seek me not here Lodged among mortal deer,’ Says the White Doe, ‘Keeping one place Held by the ties of space,’ Says the White Doe. ‘I Equally In air Above your bare Hill crest, your basalt lair, Mirage reflected drink At the clear pool’s brink With tigers at play In the glare of day Blithely I stray, Under shadow of myrtle With Phoenix and his Turtle For all time true, With Gryphons at grass Under the Upas, Sipping warm dew That falls hourly new, I, unattainable Complete, incomprehensible No mate for you. In sun’s beam Or star-gleam, No mate for you No mate for you,’ Says the White Doe.

SULLEN MOODS

Love, do not count your labour lost Though I turn sullen, grim, retired Even at your side; my thought is crossed With fancies by old longings fired.

And when I answer you, some days Vaguely and wildly, do not fear That my love goes forbidden ways Hating the laws that bind it here.

If I speak gruffly, this mood is Mere indignation at my own Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties; I forget the gentler tone.

‘You,’ now that you have come to be My one beginning, prime and end, I count at last as wholly ‘me,’ Lover no longer nor yet friend.

Friendship is flattery, though close hid; Must I then flatter my own mind? And must (which laws of shame forbid) Blind love of you make self-love blind?

Do not repay me my own coin, The sharp rebuke, the frown, the groan; But stir my memory to disjoin Your emanation from my own.

Help me to see you as before When overwhelmed and dead, almost, I stumbled on that secret door Which saves the live man from the ghost.

Be once again the distant light, Promise of glory, not yet known In full perfection--wasted quite When on my imperfection thrown.

HENRY AND MARY

Henry was a worthy king, Mary was his queen, He gave to her a snowdrop Upon a stalk of green.

Then all for his kindness And all for his care She gave him a new-laid egg In the garden there.

Love, can you sing? I cannot sing. Or story-tell? Not one I know. Then let us play at queen and king, As down the garden walks we go.

ON THE RIDGE

Below the ridge a raven flew, And we heard the lost curlew Mourning out of sight below Mountain tops were touched with snow; Even the long dividing plain Showed no wealth of sheep or grain, But fields of boulders lay like corn And raven’s croak was shepherd’s horn To slow cloud shadow strayed across A pasture of thin heath and moss. The North Wind rose; I saw him press With lusty force against your dress, Moulding your body’s inward grace, And streaming off from your set face, So now no longer flesh and blood But poised in marble thought you stood; O wingless Victory, loved of men, Who could withstand your triumph then?

A LOVER SINCE CHILDHOOD

Tangled in thought am I, Stumble in speech do I? Do I blunder and blush for the reason why? Wander aloof do I, Lean over gates and sigh, Making friends with the bee and the butterfly?

If thus and thus I do Dazed by the thought of you, Walking my sorrowful way in the early dew, My heart pierced through and through By this despair of you, Starved for a word or a look will my hope renew.

Give then a thought for me Walking so miserably, Wanting relief in the friendship or flower or tree, Do but remember, we Once could in love agree Swallow your pride, let us be as we used to be.

ROSALEEN GRAVES

NIGHT-SOUNDS

Faintly through my window come Sounds of things unheard by day, Things that nightly speak and play, But by day again go dumb.

Uncouth owls, with shuddering cry, Flap great wings in horrid grief Flap and swoop on journeys brief, Hooting long and miserably.

Lurching in unsteady flight Comes a lean bat, singing shrill, Stumbles on my window sill, And staggers off into the night.

Wild duck, waking on the marsh, Din against my sleepy senses; Like the wind on creaking fences Comes their croaking, faint and harsh.

There’s a little bush I hear Muttering, frightened, half-asleep; Now a leafy voice, more deep, Rustles vague comfort, soothes its fear.

Water flows not as by day. A new tone through its voice has crept. Streams that in daylight laughed and leapt And had humorous things to say,

Speak so gravely now, and mutter Of things secret, scarcely guessed, Winds’ and Waters’ veiled unrest, Griefs too big for man to utter.

Of the days before man came The days when man shall be no more, And Earth again be ruled by Four, Air and Water, Earth and Flame.

Now a sudden silence falls; Until like rocking, silver boats Come the curlew’s ripply notes How far the curious music calls!

And sweet twitters whisper clearly From the tree tops dimly seen Piping from the shadowy green That the dawn is here, or nearly.

‘A STRONGER THAN HE SHALL COME UPON HIM...’

And then he was seized by one who was stronger than he, Seized and tamed and bound and forced to obey; From the swinging choice of evil or good he was free; Good was no longer; evil had vanished away He left to another the gain or loss of the day.

Was he driven or drawn? What matter? He was content. He yielded him, body and soul, to the whirl of War As one yields to the high sea-wind, and is buffered, bent To his will, when, shouting, he stamps in over the shore Triumphant, driving all things like dust before.

Can aught but a rock stand firm, or question his might Who tosses the leaves and clouds from a hand so strong? The trees and grasses bow in awe of his might, And men in the mountains, hearing his giant-song, Yield, and are hurried--whirled--hounded along.

Thus he yielded to War, who was stronger than he-- No time to think--no time to ponder and weigh-- He was swept like a straw on the wind--and yet he knew himself free Was it freedom or bondage, this? In truth, it were hard to say; But, slave or king, he bowed his head to obey.

COLOUR

Flowers, thick as stars, lay Splashed about the roadway-- Flowers nodding up and down, Gold, lilac, fern-brown, Colour in which to drown. The Channel was a dark blue streak, With pools rosy like the cheek Of a girl too shy to speak, And coloured clouds went tossing past, Warm and windy, Vivid and quaint, Faint and eager and vast.

Colour, thick as dust, lay Spattered about the highway-- Colour so bright that one would think White, blue, cherry-pink Were made to clutch and drink, Colour that made one stop and say, ‘Earth, are you Heaven to-day?’ Colour that made one pray. Lumps of colour, liquid and cool, Cool and near, Clear and gay Tumbled about my way.

BERTRAM HIGGINS (B.N.C.)

WHITE MAGIC

You came, but still, with heart full-given to gladness, I paused, as one stands stricken ere he falls; Not yet my fumblings swept their bounds, clogged sense its Weakling walls.

Quaint spaceless musings held me--idiot Mind was Gaped and gilled like a fish to suck through slow Tentative pores swift sweetness of strange waters’ Ebb and flow.

Yet how could I praise in darkness?--Life, like a sodded Seed, moved in drought-sleep and cleft its clay Freshly it seemed, though each sap-season spired its Stalks into day:

Till now (ah, deft magician!) your wand hovers Over all Spirit--over those lost grey fields Where one frail flower, with burning stem, glad, gradual Petals yields;

And whose past pitiful bitter blooms live only In the flushed mockery of remembering lovers.

RICHARD HUGHES

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. And 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 paean 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 SERMON

(_Wales_ 1920).

Like grippt stick Still I sit: Eyes fixed on far small eyes, Full of it: On the old, broad face, The hung chin; Heavy arms, surplice Worn through and worn thin. Probe I the hid mind Under the gross flesh: Clutch at poetic words, Follow their mesh Scarce heaving breath. Clutch, marvel, wonder, Till the words end.

Stilled is the muttered thunder: The hard, few people wake, Gather their books and go-- Whether their hearts could break How can I know?

TRAMP

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 With 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: Brain and Body come to grips.

Deadly each hates the other As treacherous blood-brother: No sight, no sound shows How the struggle goes.

They sink at last faint in the wet gutter; So many words to sing that the tongue cannot utter.

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 Gypsy 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 rang his head, and he grew merry And whistled from the Boar to Wrye-brook ferry, And chaffed with Ferryman when the hawser creakt Or slipping bilge showed where the planks leakt: 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--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 water-- (Being old and mean, had none of his own to give, So passed on Tammas’; glad to see her live): And how 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. Yet 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 lowsy tricks.

No children sniffled, and no dog cried When full of oaths and smells, he died.

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 halfway: 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 beanflower somewhere Has ousted the bluebells.

Birds clatter numberless: In the muffled wood Big feet move slowly: Mean no good.

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 turf 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.

ALAN PORTER

INTRODUCTION TO A NARRATIVE POEM

The vapour, twining and twitching, seems to throw Black, precipitous boulders to and fro Light as a bandied scoff; and, look, the cliff-- Whose root claws at the midworld fire with stiff Unmolten, adamantine fingers--fails, Lurches. Above, cold and eternal gales Run worrying, shredding, eternal sunlight; snatch At the heather; puff at the flocks of cotton; scratch White scars along the bents. If strangers climb To this plateau that buffets back slow time, They stand awhile impotent, grey with fear, And feel solidity’s foundation stir.

But even here a cottage free from harms Lies havened, hugged and sheltered by the arms Of a narrow, green recess. A few stunt oaks, Elders, and barren apples beard the rocks; But, sleeker than a pool, the lawn beneath Burns white and blue, bewildering the heath. On a low wood-bench, rifted by years of rain, Warped at one end, split far along the grain, A meagre man with a waste, weary smile Reads to a boy and girl, or plays awhile Some quiet, grown-up game. He suddenly bows Head between hands: no more his children rouse Flicker or flame, by question or caress, To break the dead, monotonous, featureless Winter of grief. At last he rises, and, With empty scrutiny, feet that understand No path but falter at random, stumbles out Where tigrish winds whirry and havoc and shout. His back-blown hair, wet, smarting eyes, recall The conscious pang of life; and he must fall Faint on the ground, or whet his courage keen, Clench all his being, prise a path between The loud, inimical flaws. With even might He batters on, to earth’s and air’s despite, In storm and tumult winning peace and light.

Yet, in these roads of quiet, muniment From fury of nature, home from discontent Surely of earth’s mean, trafficking miseries, In this domain of flower and fragrance, this Green plat of smooth, immotionable ground, Why does the panther sorrow skulk around And leap like fear from unsuspected fourm? Weigh this doubt rather--if the embittered swarm Of multitudinous grief thins ever or stays From most unmerited sally; for in what ways A man may tread, and fate how seeming fair, His intimate heart is troubled, and despair Lays present ambush. Many feel the sting Of casual time like bramble-thorns, that bring A not-enduring spasm: in other blood, More sensitive, urging a froward, perilous flood, It racks like tropic ivy, whose embrace Turns travellers maniac; nor shall lapse of days, Nor drug, nor simple, medicine back the mind; They go forgetting all their manhood, find No recollection save the venom of death That whistles about their brain and sears their breath.

Thus almost had it been with him, thus grief Came turbulent, and left him no relief.

SUMMER BATHING

The ruckling pool, torn grey by Pendry Weir, Became Cocytus to my boy time fear. Two haw-trees, pulping fat their close, green fruits Turned cuttlefish below, wagging no roots But narrow tentacles. Old Jacob Fry Tells how he drained this pool one hot July When drought had sucked the white stream thick and slow: Fish, four-foot deep, shone thirty feet below. Leaning to drop a stone, the farmboy whews Bewildered that his confident ear should lose All thud for grounding. Now he fears to stay, And walks by whistling on another day.

Here, when the black bees blundered in the heat Half-drunk, rifling the fine-flurred meadowsweet, I stripped and bathed. At first, numb for delight, I lost all thought but this--Come, you must fight Free from the swirl. But when blank eyes grew clear Like a pit-pattering mouse came fluttered fear. Now here and there slide snakish eels, now voles Bolt hizzing over the brook to round, black holes. These groping roots perhaps will grip my flesh Till I grow tired of screaming: so the mesh Will move, my bones will crackle, I sink down; So to an end. Or in some cave of brown Sluttering scum and broad, plump bladder-weeds Old fiends may sprawling meditate false deeds; One, ware of prey, slip out lean fingers, pluck Unusual meat through water’s rush and ruck.

Yet, braving all, to prove wild fancy vain, I held my breath and sank. The brook, astrain And fierce to be free, spun snarling overhead; Dull roars droned round, cold currents buffeted. Proud of this daring shewn--but doubtful, too, Of tempting fortune far--I battled through To the root-held scroll of turf on the sagging bank, And carefully muscled up. The sheep-field drank The wide-spent, white-spilt sun, the wrapping air Swung flame-like past, and, while I ran, the bare Close-nibbled grass pushed hot against my feet. The yeanlings rose and rushed with timid bleat Full-tilt at the mothering ewe; fed sleek with clover, Three cows, in mild amazement bending over The gap-set palings, rubbed their necks or chewed. But in mid-course I staggered, having trod Firm on a flat and spiny thistle; stayed Nursing my foot, half grinning, half dismayed: Then lay full length, as light-heel time were not; Pale fears, fantastic perils, all forgot.

COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

This grave, moss-grown, marks him who once went free; Now pent--no, portionless; from sharp life lost; Mere mouldered bone-work. His unheeded name

Who, curious, pausing, may decipher? See; Thin gulled by running rain, by chipping frost Frustrated, muffled under a yellow, same,

Fat scurf of lichen, the dim characters Withstand conjecture, aimless and awry. Yet here lies one who, living, peopled earth

With indestructible fancy. Now he hears No nature’s music, who for hours would lie To hear the blue-caps click their quick, small mirth.

MUSEUM