Part 1
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WHIPPERGINNY
WHIPPERGINNY
BY
ROBERT GRAVES
NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF : MCMXXIII
TO
EDWARD MARSH
_Printed in Great Britain_
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The poems in this volume cover a period of three years, beginning at the New Year of 1920, except for the rhymes “Henry and Mary,” “What did I dream?” and “Mirror, Mirror!” with parts of “An English Wood,” “The Bed Post” and of “Unicorn and the White Doe,” which are bankrupt stock of 1918, the year in which I was writing _Country Sentiment_. _The Pier Glass_, a volume which followed _Country Sentiment_, similarly contains a few pieces continuing the mood of this year, the desire to escape from a painful war neurosis into an Arcadia of amatory fancy, but the prevailing mood of _The Pier Glass_ is aggressive and disciplinary, under the stress of the same neurosis, rather than escapist. _Whipperginny_ for a while continues so, but in most of the later pieces will be found evidences of greater detachment in the poet and the appearance of a new series of problems in religion, psychology and philosophy, no less exacting than their predecessors, but, it may be said, of less emotional intensity. The “Interlude” in the middle of the book was written before the appearance of these less lyrical pieces, but must be read as an apology for the book being now even less homogeneous than before. To those who demand unceasing emotional stress in poetry at whatever cost to the poet--I was one of these myself until recently--I have no apology to offer; but only this proverb from the Chinese, that _the petulant protests of all the lords and ladies of the Imperial Court will weigh little with the whale when, recovering from his painful excretory condition, he need no longer supply the Guild of Honourable Perfumers with their accustomed weight of ambergris_.
ROBERT GRAVES.
_The World’s End,
Islip._
CONTENTS
PAGE
_Whipperginny_ 1
The Bedpost 2
A Lover since Childhood 4
Song of Contrariety 5
The Ridge-Top 6
Song in Winter 7
Unicorn and the White Doe 8
Sullen Moods 11
A False Report 13
Children of Darkness 14
Richard Roe and John Doe 15
The Dialecticians 16
The Lands of Whipperginny 17
“The General Elliott” 18
A Fight to the Death 20
Old Wives’ Tales 21
Christmas Eve 23
The Snake and the Bull 24
The Red Ribbon Dream 27
In Procession 29
Henry and Mary 34
An English Wood 35
Mirror, Mirror! 36
What did I dream? 37
Interlude: On Preserving a Poetical Formula 38
A History of Peace 39
The Rock Below 40
An Idyll of Old Age 42
The Lord Chamberlain tells of a Famous Meeting 44
The Sewing Basket 48
Against Clock and Compasses 51
The Avengers 52
On the Poet’s Birth 53
The Technique of Perfection 54
The Sibyl 56
A Crusader 57
A New Portrait of Judith of Bethulia 58
A Reversal 59
The Martyred Decadents: a Sympathetic Satire 60
Epigrams--
On Christopher Marlowe 62
A Village Conflict 62
Dedicatory 62
To R. Graves, Senior 63
“A Vehicle, to wit, a Bicycle” 63
Motto to a Book of Emblems 63
The Bowl and Rim 64
A Forced Music 66
The Turn of a Page 67
The Manifestation in the Temple 68
To Any Saint 70
A Dewdrop 71
A Valentine 72
_WHIPPERGINNY_
(“A card game, obsolete.”--_Standard Dictionary._)
To cards we have recourse When Time with cruelty runs, To courtly Bridge for stress of love, To Nap for noise of guns.
On fairy earth we tread, No present problems vex Where man’s four humours fade to suits, With red and black for sex.
Where phantom gains accrue By tricks instead of cash, Where pasteboard federacies of Powers In battles-royal clash.
Then read the antique word That hangs above this page As type of mirth-abstracted joy, Calm terror, noiseless rage,
A realm of ideal thought, Obscured by veils of Time, Cipher remote enough to stand As namesake for my rhyme,
A game to play apart When all but crushed with care; Let right and left, your jealous hands, The lists of love prepare.
THE BEDPOST
Sleepy Betsy from her pillow Sees the post and ball Of her sister’s wooden bedstead Shadowed on the wall.
Now this grave young warrior standing With uncovered head Tells her stories of old battle, As she lies in bed.
How the Emperor and the Farmer, Fighting knee to knee, Broke their swords but whirled their scabbards Till they gained the sea.
How the ruler of that shore Foully broke his oath, Gave them beds in his sea cavern, Then stabbed them both.
How the daughters of the Emperor, Diving boldly through, Caught and killed their father’s murderer, Old Cro-bar-cru.
How the Farmer’s sturdy sons Fought the giant Gog, Threw him into Stony Cataract In the land of Og.
Will and Abel were their names, Though they went by others; He could tell ten thousand stories Of these lusty brothers.
How the Emperor’s elder daughter Fell in love with Will, And went with him to the Court of Venus Over Hoo Hill;
How Gog’s wife encountered Abel Whom she hated most, Stole away his arms and helmet, Turned him to a post.
As a post he shall be rooted For yet many years, Until a maiden shall release him With a fall of tears.
But Betsy likes the bloodier stories, Clang and clash of fight, And Abel wanes with the spent candle, “Sweetheart, good-night!”
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 cut through and through In this despair for 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 of flower or tree; Do but remember, we Once could in love agree, Swallow your pride, let us be as we used to be.
SONG OF CONTRARIETY
Far away is close at hand, Close joined is far away, Love might come at your command Yet will not stay.
At summons of your dream-despair She could not disobey, But slid close down beside you there And complaisant lay.
Yet now her flesh and blood consent In waking hours of day, Joy and passion both are spent, Fading clean away.
Is the presence empty air, Is the spectre clay, That Love, lent substance by despair, Wanes, and leaves you lonely there On the bridal day?
THE RIDGE-TOP
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?
SONG IN WINTER
The broken spray left hanging Can hold his dead leaf longer Into your glum November Than this live twig tossed shivering By your East Wind anger.
Unrepentant, hoping Spring, Flowery hoods of glory hoping, Carelessly I sing, With envy none for the broken spray When the Spring comes, fallen away.
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 hath 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 desire.
And 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 Phœnix 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 walks forbidden ways, Breaking the ties that hold 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; Remind me, rather, 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.
A FALSE REPORT
Are they blind, the lords of Gaza, That each his fellow urges “Samson the proud is pillow-smothered,” They raise mock dirges?
Philistines and dullards, Turn, look with amaze At my foxes running in your cornfields With their tails ablaze,
At bloody jawbone, at bees flitting From the stark lion’s hide: At these, the gates of well-walled Gaza, Clanking to my stride.
CHILDREN OF DARKNESS
(“In their generation wiser than the children of Light.”)
We spurred our parents to the kiss, Though doubtfully they shrank from this-- Day had no courage to review What lusty dark alone might do-- Then were we joined from their caress In heat of midnight, one from two.
This night-seed knew no discontent, In certitude his changings went; Though there were veils about his face, With forethought, even in that pent place, Down towards the light his way he bent To kingdoms of more ample space.
Was Day prime error, that regret For darkness roars unstifled yet? That in this freedom, by faith won, Only acts of doubt are done? That unveiled eyes with tears are wet, They loathe to gaze upon the sun?
RICHARD ROE AND JOHN DOE
Richard Roe wished himself _Solomon_ Made cuckold, you should know, by one John Doe; _Solomon’s_ neck was firm enough to bear Some score of antlers more than Roe could wear.
Richard Roe wished himself _Alexander_, Being robbed of house and land by the same hand; Ten thousand acres or a principal town Would have cost _Alexander_ scarce a frown.
Richard Roe wished himself _Job_ the prophet, Sunk past reclaim in stinking rags and shame; _Job’s_ plight was utterly bad, his own even worse, He found no God to call on or to curse.
He wished himself _Job_, _Solomon_, _Alexander_, For cunning, patience, power to overthrow His tyrant, but with heart gone so far rotten That most of all he wished himself John Doe.
THE DIALECTICIANS
Thought has a bias, Direction a bend, Space its inhibitions, Time a dead end.
Is whiteness white? O then, call it black: Farthest from the truth Is yet half-way back.
Effect ordains Cause, Head swallowing its tail; Does whale engulf sprat, Or sprat assume whale?
Contentions weary, It giddies all to think; Then kiss, girl, kiss! Or drink, fellow, drink!
THE LANDS OF WHIPPERGINNY
(“Heaven or Hell or the Lands of Whipperginny.”--Nashe’s _Jack Wilton_.)
Come closer yet, sweet honeysuckle, my coney, O my Jinny, With a low sun gilding the bloom of the wood. Be this Heaven, be it Hell, or the Lands of Whipperginny, It lies in a fairy lustre, it savours most good.
Then stern proud psalms from the chapel on the moors Waver in the night wind, their firm rhythm broken, Lugubriously twisted to a howling of whores Or lent an airy glory too strange to be spoken.
“THE GENERAL ELLIOTT”
He fell in victory’s fierce pursuit, Holed through and through with shot, A sabre sweep had hacked him deep ’Twixt neck and shoulder-knot....
The potman cannot well recall, The ostler never knew, Whether his day was Malplaquet, The Boyne, or Waterloo.
But there he hangs for tavern sign, With foolish bold regard For cock and hen and loitering men And wagons down the yard.
Raised high above the hayseed world He smokes his painted pipe, And now surveys the orchard ways, The damsons clustering ripe.
He sees the churchyard slabs beyond, Where country neighbours lie, Their brief renown set lowly down; _His_ name assaults the sky.
He grips the tankard of brown ale That spills a generous foam: Oft-times he drinks, they say, and winks At drunk men lurching home.
No upstart hero may usurp That honoured swinging seat; His seasons pass with pipe and glass Until the tale’s complete.
And paint shall keep his buttons bright Though all the world’s forgot Whether he died for England’s pride By battle, or by pot.
A FIGHT TO THE DEATH
Two blind old men in a blind corridor Fought to the death, by sense of sound or touch. Doom flailed unseen, an iron hook-hand tore Flesh from the enemy’s ribs who swung the crutch. One gasped, “She looked on me and smiled, I say,” So life was battered out, for yea or nay.
OLD WIVES’ TALES
Were the tales they told absurd, Random tags for a child’s ear? Soon I mocked at all I heard, Though with cause indeed for fear.
Of the mermaids’ doleful game In deep water I heard tell, Of lofty dragons blowing flame, Of the hornèd fiend of Hell.
Now I have met the mermaid kin And find them bound by natural laws, They have neither tail nor fin, But are the deadlier for that cause.
Dragons have no darting tongues, Teeth saw-edged nor rattling scales, No fire issues from their lungs, Poison has not slimed their tails.
But they are creatures of dark air, Unsubstantial tossing forms, Thunderclaps of man’s despair In mid whirl of mental storms.
And there’s a true and only fiend Worse than prophets prophesy, Whose full powers to hurt are screened Lest the race of man should die.
Ever in vain may courage plot The dragon’s death with shield and sword, Or love abjure the mermaid grot, Or faith be fixed in one blest word.
Mermaids will not be denied Of our last enduring shame, The dragon flaunts his unpierced hide, The fiend makes laughter with God’s Name.
CHRISTMAS EVE
On Christmas Eve the brute Creation Lift up their heads and speak with human voices; The Ox roars out his song of jubilation And the Ass rejoices.
They dance for mirth in simple credence That man from devildom this day was saved, That of his froward spirit he has found riddance; They hymn the Son of David.
Ox and Ass cloistered in stable, Break bounds to-night and see what shall astound you, A second Fall, a second death of Abel, Wars renewed around you.
Cabals of great men against small men, Mobs, murders, informations, the packed jury, While Ignorance, the lubber prince of all men, Glowers with old-time fury.
Excellent beasts, resign your speaking, Tempted in man’s own choleric tongue to name him. Hoof-and-horn vengeance have no thought of wreaking, Let your dumb grief shame him.
THE SNAKE AND THE BULL
Snake Bull, my namesake, man of wrath, By no expense of knives or cloth, Only by work of muttered charms Could draw all woman to his arms; None whom he summoned might resist Nor none recall whom once he kissed And loosed them from his kiss, by whom This mother-shame had come.
The power of his compelling flame Was bound in virtue of our name, But when in secret he taught me Like him a thief of love to be, For half his secret I had found And half explored the wizard ground Of words, and when giving consent Out at his heels I went.
Then Fessé, jungle-god whose shape Is one part man and three parts ape, Avenger of misuse by man Of lust that by his art began, And master of all mimicries Made tittering laughter in the trees. With girlish whispers, sighs and giggling Set the Bull prancing, the Snake wriggling; Where leaves were broadest and light dim, Fessé ambushed him.
Up through the air I saw him swung To bridal bowers with red flowers hung; He choked for mercy like a maid By his own violent whim betrayed; Blood broke in fountains from his neck, I heard his hugged ribs creak and break, But what the tree-top rites might be How should I stay to see?
In terror of the Ape God’s power I changed my person in that hour, Cast off the livery of my clan, Over unlawful hills I ran, I soiled me with forbidden earth. In nakedness of second birth I scorched away the Snake’s red eyes Tattoed for name about my thighs, And slew the Sacred Bull oppressed With passion on my breast.
The girls of my new tribe are cold, Amazon, scarred, not soft to hold. They seek not men, nor are they sought, Whose children are not theirs, but bought From outlaw tribes who dwell in trees-- Tamed apes suckle these.
The young men of the tribe are such That knife or bow they dare not touch, But in close watching of the skies And reckoning counts they dim their eyes. Closed, each by each, in thoughtful bars They plot the circuits of the stars, And frozen music dulls their need Of drink and man-flesh greed.
They hold that virtue from them slips When eye greets eye or lips touch lips; Down to the knee their broad beards fall And hardly are they men at all. Possessions they have none, nor schools For tribal duties, nor close rules, No gods, no rites, no totem beasts, No friendships, no love feasts.
Now quit, as they, of gong-roused lust, The leap of breasts, the scattering dust, In hermit splendour at my glass I watch the skies’ procession pass, Tracing my figures on the floor Of planets’ paths and comets’ lore; In calm amaze I cloak my will, I gaze, I count, until
Harsh from his House the Bull roars out, Forked lightning leaps his points about, Tattoos his shape upon the sky: Night anger fills the Serpent’s eye With desolating fire for one Who thought the Serpent’s days were done, And girlish titterings from the trees Loosen my firm knees.
THE RED RIBBON DREAM
As I stood by the stair-head in the upper hall The rooms to left and right were locked as before. It was senseless to hammer at an unreal door Painted on the plaster of a ten-foot wall.
There was half-light here, piled darkness beyond Rising up sheer as the mountain of Time, The blank rock-face that no thought can climb, Girdled around with the Slough of Despond.