Part 3

The day was death. A chalk road, pale in dust, Accused with leprous finger the long moors. The drab, damp air so blanketed the town No doddered oak swung leathern leaf. The chimneys Pushed oddling pillars at the loose-hung sky. May, pansy, lilac, dense as the night steam Of lowland swamps, fettered the sodden air, And, through the haze, along the ragstone houses, Blood-lichens dulled to a rotten-apple brown. Behind close doors pale women drooped and dragged In customary toils. They dusted shelves Or changed from chair to chair dull, cotton cushions: Soon, vacantly, they bore them back and wiped With languid arms the black, unspotted shelves. Such mind’s own symbols of despair they went That never movement shook a face to grief-- At first they looked no more than cheerless women, But dug deep in the plaster of their flesh Those eyes were year-dead, underpouched with blue. A word would sear the silence of a week. Of a sudden, turning a byeway corner, a cripple, Bloodless with age, lumbered along the road. The motes of dust whirled at his iron-shod crutches And quickly settled. A dog whined. The old Cripple looked round and saw no man, but gave A cruel, crackling chuckle, swung a yard, And stopped to look about and laugh again. ‘That,’ said a girl in a flat voice, ‘is God.’ She turned and slid the table-cover straight. Her mother could not answer, but she thought ‘It must be Beggar Joe, gone lately mad.’ He lumbered along the road and turned a corner. His tapping faded and the day was death.

LOST LANDS

When from this alien multitude of man These, kind or kindred, speak in approbation Of what I strove to write, for all my pleasure I feel my gross dismerit and fall shamed.

Set no regard on me: not I can pierce Clogged air and homely falsehood in prophetic Dream or sudden awakening. Sinewed phrases, There are my petty troublings of weak sight.

Shame took me once, and shame has tracked me since: My friend spoke of a man who lives bewildered, Even in London striding over mountains, Through populous roads companioning the dead.

Stars move around him and the dew falls grey; Thin firs pry through the mist. Old fables quicken-- Undine laughs by the waters, vague, uneasy: Maiden Mary sings to the sleepy Child.

Then I remembered boyhood, in whose hours Thistles were knights, old men were murderous, daytime Intractable as dream. I knew that either Hid with coarse walls imaginable worlds.

Now I am dulled, habitual now with known Earth. Never shall other-country pathways Bring me, familiar, through amazing valleys Fire-white with blossom, dark with ancient boughs.

FRANK PREWETT

Come girl, and embrace, And ask no more I wed thee; Know then you are sweet of face, Soft-limbed and fashioned lovingly;-- Must you go marketing your charms In cunning woman-like, And filled with old wives’ tales’ alarms? I tell you, girl, come embrace; What reck we of churchling and priest With hands on paunch and chubby face; Behold, we are life’s pitiful least, And we perish at the first smell Of death, whither heaves earth To spurn us cringing into hell. Come girl, and embrace; Nay, cry not, poor wretch, nor plead, But haste, for life strikes a swift pace And I burn with envious greed: Know you not, fool, we are the mock, Of gods, time, clothes, and priests? But come, there is no time for talk.

I went out into the fields In my anguish of mind, And sought comfort of the trees For they looked to be kind.

‘Alas!’ cried they, ‘who have peace?-- We are prey that is caught, The sun warms us, the blast chills, And we understand not.’

On rolled the world with fools’ noise, But I strode in tears’ wrack; Would God, fools, I too were fool, Or had light that I lack.

I held the fields all day, I, a madman, too; My spirit called aloud To sift the false from true.

The troubled sun turned black, Earth heaved to and fro, Whene’er I spurned the flowers Lifting heads to grow.

Trees reached their hands to stay, Whistled birds to me, ‘Spurn one, thou spurnest all, Brother, let things be.

For not their heads alone Bleed, but the stars fade And all things grieve, for we One fabric are made.’

The heavens and earth do meet And all things are true, So trample ye no flowers Lest skies lose their blue.

Comrade, why do you weep? Is it sorrow for a friend Who fell, rifle in hand, His proud stand at an end?

The harsh thunder-lipped guns Roll his dirge deep and slow, Where he makes his dreamless bed, Head to head with a foe.

The sweet lark beats on high, For the joy of those who sleep In quiet embrace of earth. Comrade, why do you weep?

The winds caress the trees, Woman to man is led, And I too have my love, Though she comes not to bed.

Beyond the heat of flesh, Which has its place and day, We hold our keen delights In spirit, earth away.

Mount me on high, O soul, Expand me my desires, So shall I clasp in love Even the heavenly fires!

EDGELL RICKWORD

COMPLAINT OF A TADPOLE CONFINED IN A JAM-JAR

What reveries of far-off days These withered plaques of duck-weed raise!

The creeping wretches, the crowded pond, A death in life, no Culture, no Beyond.

Light and No-light in dull routine; Thought and No-thought two shades of green.

The fair ideals all creatures need Smothered beneath the inferior weed.

For highest aspirations stop With breathing, at the water’s top.

O Fairy Metamorphosis For Being to become What Is.

Here ceaseless radiance fills my sphere, The Lamp my Moon, all night, bright, near.

And clustering on the crystal wall Great strawberries iconistical.

No strife to propagate the kind But leisure to improve the mind;

Till curious sensations range About the tail and hint at change.

The weed with flowers stars the sky And monstrous forms go dimly by.

Tail fades! The vestiges of gills Swell with rare æther from the hills.

Now Time reared up in rocky crests Where flaming fowl involve their nests,

Across the rippled Stream of Space Throws shadows that obscure this place;

But in the valleys pipers play: ‘Over the hills and far away.’

REGRET FOR THE DEPOPULATION OF RURAL DISTRICTS

I have seen villages grow suddenly From dust and stand upright in the air With comfortable homes grouped round a spire; And in the fields strong women bending Down to coarse toil to nourish unborn women. But in the gardens, languid with flowers’ fragrance Girls linger on close lawns for unknown happenings, Tearing a petal in long shining fingers. So waiting whilst pear blossom apple blossom And white plum blossom are fallen down to earth, And the white moon fallen. Then a heap of dust That once was named, loved and familiar Lies unsubstantial in the eternal sunlight. Whence faint thoughts Stirring far down in twilight consciousness Move dark-boughed yew-trees over graves and stars.

COMPLAINT AFTER PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

Now my days are all undone, Spirit sunken, girls forgone, I will weave in other mesh Than fading bone and flesh.

Into cold deserted mind Drag the relics of the blind; And raise from wives none other sees Substantial families.

Hunt through woods of maidenhair Tangled in the shining air The forms of ecstasies achieved, Not then believed.

O Unicorns and jewelled Birds And trampling dappled moonlight herds, In icy glades now slain With arrows bright as pain.

Leap, Moon, from the berg’s pale womb! Frail Bride, out of Earth’s tomb! The stars are ashen cold Beneath their gold.

DESIRE

As the white sails of ships across the ocean, The last sounds fade when the sun has declined. I am alone. There is no motion Rippling the clear waters in the mind.

Only now the madrepores’ frail tentacles Sway languidly before they fall asleep; And waiting in their dark pinnacles The virgin medusae watch and weep.

Moving darkly among the forests of weed Ancient memories drag their crinkled shells To glades where crimson tree-trunks bleed Thickly, and hushed are the faint sea-bells.

Out of that silent depth loveless arising Undine sheds on the water her shining hair, Softly calleth her soul, devising A fragrance of music in the air.

TRENCH POETS

I knew a man, he was my chum, But he grew blacker every day, And would not brush the flies away, Nor blanch however fierce the hum Of passing shells. I used to read, To rouse him, random things from Donne, Like ‘Get with child a mandrake-root,’ But you can tell he was far gone, For he lay gaping, mackerel-eyed, And stiff and senseless as a post, Even when that old poet cried, ‘I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost.’

I tried the Elegies one day; But he, because he heard me say, ‘What needst thou have more covering than a man?’ Grinned nastily, and so I knew The worms had got his brains at last. There was one thing that I might do To starve the worms; I racked my head For healthy things and quoted _Maud_. His grin got worse, and I could see He laughed at passion’s purity.

He stank so badly, though we were great chums I had to leave him; then rats ate his thumbs.

WINTER PROPHECIES

Cities with tall and graceful spires I know Mirrored in pools and rivers silver bright, That wither if the softest wind should blow And by a stone are blotted out of sight. Frailer they are than curvèd leaves of snow Fluttering down from the dark trees of night Slowly, and then unutterably slow, And ceasing as most quietly comes the light.

Water is carved like fern and stone takes on The flush of life when flesh lies quiet as stone; Whilst sinister and clownish, bright and wan, With solemn affectations the old Moon Spins dooms and weirds and meltings of the bone And universal silence to be soon.

Transcriber’s Notes

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Page 2: “fourm” was printed that way.

Pages 53-57: The poems of Frank Prewett are untitled except in the Table of Contents, so two consecutive blank lines are the only visible boundaries between them in some versions of this eBook.