ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Last night we had a thunderstorm in style. | |
The wild lightning streaked the airs, | |
As though my God fell down a pair of stairs. | |
The thunder boomed and bounded all the while; | |
All cried and sat by water-side and stile – | |
To mop our brow had been our chief of cares. | |
I lay in bed with a Voltairean smile, | |
The terror of good, simple guilty pairs, | |
And made this rondeau in ironic style, | |
Last night we had a thunderstorm in style. | |
Our God the Father fell down-stairs, | |
The stark blue lightning went its flight, the while, | |
The very rain you might have heard a mile – | |
The strenuous faithful buckled to their prayers. |
1882 WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
Everything passes and vanishes; | |
Everything leaves its trace; | |
And often you see in a footstep | |
What you could not see in a face. |
1884 AMY LEVY Epitaph
(On a Commonplace Person Who Died in Bed) | |
This is the end of him, here he lies: | |
The dust in his throat, the worm in his eyes, | |
The mould in his mouth, the turf on his breast; | |
This is the end of him, this is best. | |
He will never lie on his couch awake, | |
Wide-eyed, tearless, till dim daybreak. | |
Never again will he smile and smile | |
When his heart is breaking all the while. | |
He will never stretch out his hands in vain | |
Groping and groping – never again. | |
Never ask for bread, get a stone instead, | |
Never pretend that the stone is bread. | |
Never sway and sway ’twixt the false and true, | |
Weighing and noting the long hours through. | |
Never ache and ache with the chok’d-up sighs; | |
This is the end of him, here he lies. |
1885 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON To E. FitzGerald
Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange, | |
Where once I tarried for a while, | |
Glance at the wheeling Orb of change, | |
And greet it with a kindly smile; | |
Whom yet I see as there you sit | |
Beneath your sheltering garden-tree, | |
And while your doves about you flit, | |
And plant on shoulder, hand and knee, | |
Or on your head their rosy feet, | |
As if they knew your diet spares | |
Whatever moved in that full sheet | |
Let down to Peter at his prayers; | |
Who live on milk and meal and grass; | |
And once for ten long weeks I tried | |
Your table of Pythagoras, | |
And seemed at first ‘a thing enskied’ | |
(As Shakespeare has it) airy-light | |
To float above the ways of men, | |
Then fell from that half-spiritual height | |
Chilled, till I tasted flesh again | |
One night when earth was winter-black, | |
And all the heavens flashed in frost; | |
And on me, half-asleep, came back | |
That wholesome heat the blood had lost, | |
And set me climbing icy capes | |
And glaciers, over which there rolled | |
To meet me long-armed vines with grapes | |
Of Eshcol hugeness; for the cold | |
Without, and warmth within me, wrought | |
To mould the dream, but none can say | |
That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought, | |
Who reads your golden Eastern lay, | |
Than which I know no version done | |
In English more divinely well; | |
A planet equal to the sun | |
Which cast it, that large infidel | |
Your Omar; and your Omar drew | |
Full-handed plaudits from our best | |
In modern letters, and from two, | |
Old friends outvaluing all the rest, | |
Two voices heard on earth no more; | |
But we old friends are still alive, | |
And I am nearing seventy-four, | |
While you have touched at seventy-five, | |
And so I send a birthday line | |
Of greeting; and my son, who dipt | |
In some forgotten book of mine | |
With sallow scraps of manuscript, | |
And dating many a year ago, | |
Has hit on this, which you will take | |
My Fitz, and welcome, as I know | |
Less for its own than for the sake | |
Of one recalling gracious times, | |
When, in our younger London days, | |
You found some merit in my rhymes, | |
And I more pleasure in your praise. |
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves
Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, | |
Evening strains to be tíme’s vást, | |
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, | |
Waste; her earliest stars, earlstars, | |
Fire-féaturing heaven. For earth | |
Tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; | |
Disremembering, dismémbering | |
With: Óur évening is over us; óur night | |
Only the beakleaved boughs dragonish | |
Ever so black on it. Óur tale, O óur oracle! | |
Off hér once skéined stained véined variety | |
Now her all in twó flocks, twó folds – black, white; | |
But thése two; wáre of a world where bút these | |
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, |
vaulty, voluminous,… stupendous(1918)
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. | |
What hours, O what black hours we have spent | |
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went! | |
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay. |
With witness I speak this. But where I say | |
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament | |
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent | |
To dearest him that lives alas! away. |
I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree | |
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; | |
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse. |
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see | |
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be | |
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse. |
(1918)
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI from A Trip to Paris and Belgium 1886
1 | |
A constant keeping-past of shaken trees, | |
And a bewildered glitter of loose road; | |
Banks of bright growth, with single blades atop | |
Against white sky; and wires – a constant chain – | |
That seem to draw the clouds along with them | |
(Things which one stoops against the light to see | |
Through the low window; shaking by at rest, | |
Or fierce like water as the swiftness grows); | |
And, seen through fences or a bridge far off, | |
Trees that in moving keep their intervals | |
Still one ’twixt bar and bar; and then at times | |
Long reaches of green level, where one cow, | |
Feeding among her fellows that feed on, | |
Lifts her slow neck, and gazes for the sound. |
(… ) |
Brick walls we pass between, passed so at once | |
That for the suddenness I cannot know | |
Or what, or where begun, or where at end. | |
Sometimes a Station in grey quiet; whence, | |
With a short gathered champing of pent sound, | |
We are let out upon the air again. | |
Now nearly darkness; knees and arms and sides | |
Feel the least touch, and close about the face | |
A wind of noise that is along like God. | |
Pauses of water soon, at intervals, | |
That has the sky in it; – the reflexes | |
O’ the trees move towards the bank as we go by, | |
Leaving the water’s surface plain. I now | |
Lie back and close my eyes a space; for they | |
Smart from the open forwardness of thought | |
Fronting the wind – |
– I did not scribble more, | |
Be certain, after this; but yawned, and read, | |
And nearly dozed a little, I believe; | |
Till, stretching up against the carriage-back, | |
I was roused altogether, and looked out | |
To where, upon the desolate verge of light, | |
Yearned, pale and vast, the iron-coloured sea. |
(…) |
XVI | |
We are upon the Scheldt. We know we move | |
Because there is a floating at our eyes | |
Whatso they seek; and because all the things | |
Which on our outset were distinct and large | |
Are smaller and much weaker and quite grey, | |
And at last gone from us. No motion else. |
We are upon the road. The thin swift moon | |
Runs with the running clouds that are the sky, | |
And with the running water runs – at whiles | |
Weak ’neath the film and heavy growth of reeds. | |
The country swims with motion. Time itself | |
Is consciously beside us, and perceived. | |
Our speed is such the sparks our engine leaves | |
Are burning after the whole train has passed. | |
The darkness is a tumult. We tear on, | |
The roll behind us and the cry before, | |
Constantly, in a lull of intense speed | |
And thunder. Any other sound is known | |
Merely by sight. The shrubs, the trees your eye | |
Scans for their growth, are far along in haze. | |
The sky has lost its clouds, and lies away | |
Oppressively at calm: the moon has failed: | |
Our speed has set the wind against us. Now | |
Our engine’s heat is fiercer, and flings up | |
Great glares alongside. Wind and steam and speed | |
And clamour and the night. We are in Ghent. |
ANONYMOUS Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye 1887
While going the road to sweet Athy, | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
While going the road to sweet Athy, | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
While going the road to sweet Athy, | |
A stick in my hand and a drop in my eye, | |
A doleful damsel I heard cry: | |
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye! | |
With drums and guns and guns and drums, | |
The enemy nearly slew ye! | |
My darling dear, you look so queer, | |
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye! |
‘Where are your eyes that looked so mild? | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
Where are your eyes that looked so mild? | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
Where are your eyes that looked so mild | |
When my poor heart you first beguiled? | |
Why did you run from me and the child? | |
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye! |
‘Where are the legs with which you run? | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
Where are the legs with which you run? | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
Where are the legs with which you run, | |
When you went to carry a gun? – | |
Indeed your dancing days are done! | |
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye! |
‘It grieved my heart to see you sail, | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
It grieved my heart to see you sail, | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
It grieved my heart to see you sail, | |
Though from my heart you took leg bail, – | |
Like a cod you’re doubled up head and tail, | |
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye! |
‘You haven’t an arm and you haven’t a leg, | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
You haven’t an arm and you haven’t a leg, | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
You haven’t an arm and you haven’t a leg, | |
You’re an eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg: | |
You’ll have to be put in a bowl to beg, | |
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye! |
‘I’m happy for to see you home, | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
I’m happy for to see you home, | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
I’m happy for to see you home, | |
All from the island of Sulloon, | |
So low in flesh, so high in bone, | |
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye! |
‘But sad as it is to see you so, | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
But sad as it is to see you so, | |
Hurroo! Hurroo! | |
But sad as it is to see you so, | |
And to think of you now as an object of woe, | |
Your Peggy’ll still keep ye on as her beau. | |
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye! | |
With drums and guns and guns and drums, | |
The enemy nearly slew ye, | |
My darling dear, you look so queer, | |
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye! |
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON To Mrs Will H. Low
Even in the bluest noonday of July, | |
There could not run the smallest breath of wind | |
But all the quarter sounded like a wood; | |
And in the chequered silence and above | |
The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois, | |
Suburban ashes shivered into song. | |
A patter and a chatter and a chirp | |
And a long dying hiss – it was as though | |
Starched old brocaded dames through all the house | |
Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky | |
Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain. | |
Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks | |
Of the near Autumn, how the smitten ash | |
Trembles and augurs floods! O not too long | |
In these inconstant latitudes delay, | |
O not too late from the unbeloved north | |
Trim your escape! For soon shall this low roof | |
Resound indeed with rain, soon shall your eyes | |
Search the foul garden, search the darkened rooms, | |
Nor find one jewel but the blazing log. |
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
My house, I say. But hark to the sunny doves | |
That make my roof the arena of their loves, | |
That gyre about the gable all day long | |
And fill the chimneys with their murmurous song: | |
Our house, they say; and mine, the cat declares | |
And spreads his golden fleece upon the chairs; | |
And mine the dog, and rises stiff with wrath | |
If any alien foot profane the path. | |
So too the buck that trimmed my terraces, | |
Our whilome gardener, called the garden his; | |
Who now, deposed, surveys my plain abode | |
And his late kingdom, only from the road. |
MAY KENDALL Lay of the Trilobite
A mountain’s giddy height I sought, | |
Because I could not find | |
Sufficient vague and mighty thought | |
To fill my mighty mind; | |
And as I wandered ill at ease, | |
There chanced upon my sight | |
A native of Silurian seas, | |
An ancient Trilobite. |
So calm, so peacefully he lay, | |
I watched him even with tears: | |
I thought of Monads far away | |
In the forgotten years. | |
How wonderful it seemed and right, | |
The providential plan, | |
That he should be a Trilobite, | |
And I should be a Man! |
And then, quite natural and free | |
Out of his rocky bed, | |
That Trilobite he spoke to me, | |
And this is what he said: | |
‘I don’t know how the thing was done, | |
Although I cannot doubt it; | |
But Huxley – he if anyone | |
Can tell you all about it; |
‘How all your faiths are ghosts ard dreams, | |
How in the silent sea | |
Your ancestors were Monotremes – | |
Whatever these may be; | |
How you evolved your shining lights | |
Of wisdom and perfection | |
From Jelly-fish and Trilobites | |
By Natural Selection. |
‘You’ve Kant to make your brains go round, | |
Hegel you have to clear them, | |
You’ve Mr. Browning to confound, | |
And Mr. Punch to cheer them! | |
The native of an alien land | |
You call a man and brother, | |
And greet with hymn-book in one hand | |
And pistol in the other! |
‘You’ve Politics to make you fight | |
As if you were possessed: | |
You’ve cannon and you’ve dynamite | |
To give the nations rest: | |
The side that makes the loudest din | |
Is surest to be right, | |
And oh, a pretty fix you’re in!’ | |
Remarked the Trilobite. |
‘But gentle, stupid, free from woe | |
I lived among my nation, | |
I didn’t care – I didn’t know | |
That I was a Crustacean.1 | |
I didn’t grumble, didn’t steal, | |
I never took to rhyme: | |
Salt water was my frugal meal, | |
And carbonate of lime.’ |
Reluctantly I turned away, | |
No other word he said; | |
An ancient Trilobite, he lay | |
Within his rocky bed. | |
I did not answer him, for that | |
Would have annoyed my pride: | |
I merely bowed, and raised my hat, | |
But in my heart I cried: – |
‘I wish our brains were not so good, | |
I wish our skulls were thicker, | |
I wish that Evolution could | |
Have stopped a little quicker; | |
For oh, it was a happy plight, | |
Of liberty and ease, | |
To be a simple Trilobite | |
In the Silurian seas! |
1888 A. MARY F. ROBINSON Neurasthenia
I watch the happier people of the house | |
Come in and out, and talk, and go their ways; | |
I sit and gaze at them; I cannot rouse | |
My heavy mind to share their busy days. |
I watch them glide, like skaters on a stream, | |
Across the brilliant surface of the world. | |
But I am underneath: they do not dream | |
How deep below the eddying flood is whirl’d. |
They cannot come to me, nor I to them; | |
But, if a mightier arm could reach and save, | |
Should I forget the tide I had to stem? | |
Should I, like these, ignore the abysmal wave? |
Yes! in the radiant air how could I know | |
How black it is, how fast it is, below? |
W. E. HENLEY from In Hospital
II Waiting | |
A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion), | |
Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight; | |
Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware; | |
Scissors and lint and apothecary’s jars. |
Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from, | |
Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted: | |
Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach, | |
While at their ease two dressers do their chores. |
One has a probe – it feels to me a crowbar. | |
A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone. | |
A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers. | |
Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame. |
III Interior | |
The gaunt brown walls | |
Look infinite in their decent meanness. | |
There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle, | |
The fulsome fire. |
The atmosphere | |
Suggests the trail of a ghostly druggist. | |
Dressings and lint on the long, lean table – | |
Whom are they for? |
The patients yawn, | |
Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin. | |
A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles. | |
It’s grim and strange. |
Far footfalls clank. | |
The bad burn waits with his head unbandaged. | |
My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral… | |
O, a gruesome world! |
AMY LEVY A Ballade of Religion and Marriage 1889
Swept into limbo is the host | |
Of heavenly angels, row on row; | |
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, | |
Pale and defeated, rise and go. | |
The great Jehovah is laid low, | |
Vanished his burning bush and rod – | |
Say, are we doomed to deeper woe? | |
Shall marriage go the way of God? |
Monogamous, still at our post, | |
Reluctantly we undergo | |
Domestic round of boiled and roast, | |
Yet deem the whole proceeding slow. | |
Daily the secret murmurs grow; | |
We are no more content to plod | |
Along the beaten paths – and so | |
Marriage must go the way of God. |
Soon, before all men, each shall toast | |
The seven strings unto his bow, | |
Like beacon fires along the coast, | |
The flames of love shall glance and glow. | |
Nor let nor hindrance man shall know, | |
From natal bath to funeral sod; | |
Perennial shall his pleasures flow | |
When marriage goes the way of God. |
Grant, in a million years at most, | |
Folk shall be neither pairs nor odd – | |
Alas! we sha’n’t be there to boast | |
‘Marriage has gone the way of God!’ |
(1915)
W. B. YEATS Down by the Salley Gardens
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; | |
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. | |
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; | |
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. |
In a field by the river my love and I did stand, | |
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. | |
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; | |
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears. |
1891 WILLIAM MORRIS Pomona
I am the ancient Apple-Queen, | |
As once I was so am I now. | |
For evermore a hope unseen, | |
Betwixt the blossom and the bough. |
Ah, where’s the river’s hidden Gold! | |
And where the windy grave of Troy? | |
Yet come I as I came of old, | |
From out the heart of Summer’s joy. |
RUDYARD KIPLING Danny Deever 1892
‘What are the bugles blowin’ for?’ said Files-on-Parade. | |
‘To turn you out, to turn you out,’ the Colour-Sergeant said. | |
‘What makes you look so white, so white?’ said Files-on-Parade. | |
‘I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch,’ the Colour-Sergeant said. | |
For they’re hangin’ Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play, | |
The regiment’s in ’ollow square – they’re hangin’ him to-day; | |
They’ve taken of his buttons off an’ cut his stripes away, | |
An’ they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’. |
‘What makes the rear-rank breathe so ‘ard?’ said Files-on-Parade. | |
‘It’s bitter cold, it’s bitter cold,’ the Colour-Sergeant said. | |
‘What makes that front-rank man fall down?’ said Files-on-Parade. | |
‘A touch o’ sun, a touch o’ sun,’ the Colour-Sergeant said. | |
They are hangin’ Danny Deever, they are marchin’ of ’im round, | |
They ’ave ’alted Danny Deever by ’is coffin on the ground; | |
An’ ’e’ll swing in ’arf a minute for a sneakin’ shootin’ hound – | |
O they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’! |
‘’Is cot was right-’and cot to mine,’ said Files-on-Parade. | |
‘’E’s sleepin’ out an’ far to-night,’ the Colour-Sergeant said. | |
‘I’ve drunk ’is beer a score o’ times,’ said Files-on-Parade. | |
‘’E’s drinkin’ bitter beer alone,’ the Colour-Sergeant said. | |
They are hangin’ Danny Deever, you must mark ’im to ’is place, | |
For ’e shot a comrade sleepin’ – you must look ’im in the face; | |
Nine ’undred of ’is county an’ the Regiment’s disgrace, | |
While they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’. |
‘What’s that so black agin the sun?’ said Files-on-Parade. | |
‘It’s Danny fightin’ ’ard for life,’ the Colour-Sergeant said. | |
‘What’s that that whimpers over’ead?’ said Files-on-Parade. | |
‘It’s Danny’s soul that’s passin’ now,’ the Colour-Sergeant said. | |
For they’re done with Danny Deever, you can ’ear the quickstep play, | |
The regiment’s in column, an’ they’re marchin’ us away; | |
Ho! the young recruits are shakin’, an’ they’ll want their beer to-day, | |
After hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’! |
RUDYARD KIPLING Mandalay
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea, | |
There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me; | |
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say: | |
‘Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!’ | |
Come you back to Mandalay, | |
Where the old Flotilla lay: | |
Can’t you ’ear their paddles chunkin’ from Rangoon to Mandalay? | |
On the road to Mandalay, | |
Where the flyin’-fishes play, | |
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ’crost the Bay! |
‘Er petticoat was yaller an’ ’er little cap was green, | |
An’ ’er name was Supi-yaw-lat – jes’ the same as Theebaw’s Queen, | |
An’ I seed her first a-smokin’ of a whackin’ white cheroot, | |
An’ a-wastin’ Christian kisses on an ’eathen idol’s foot: | |
Bloomin’ idol made o’ mud – | |
Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd – | |
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed ’er where she stud! | |
On the road to Mandalay… |
When the mist was on the rice-fields an’ the sun was droppin’ slow, | |
She’d git ’er little banjo an’ she’d sing ‘Kulla-lo-lo!’ | |
With ’er arm upon my shoulder an’ ’er cheek agin my cheek | |
We useter watch the steamers an’ the hathis pilin’ teak. | |
Elephints a-pilin’ teak | |
In the sludgy, squdgy creek, | |
Where the silence ’ung that ’eavy you was ’arf afraid to speak! | |
On the road to Mandalay… |
But that’s all shove be’ind me – long ago an’ fur away, | |
An’ there ain’t no ’buses runnin’ from the Bank to Mandalay; | |
An’ I’m learnin’ ’ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells: | |
‘If you’ve ’eard the East a-callin’, you won’t never ’eed naught else.’ | |
No! you won’t ’eed nothin’ else | |
But them spicy garlic smells, | |
An’ the sunshine an’ the palm-trees an’ the tinkly temple-bells; | |
On the road to Mandalay… |
I am sick o’ wastin’ leather on these gritty pavin’-stones, | |
An’ the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones; | |
Tho’ I walks with fifty ’ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand, | |
An’ they talks a lot o’ lovin’, but wot do they understand? | |
Beefy face an’ grubby ’and – | |
Law! wot do they understand? | |
I’ve a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land! | |
On the road to Mandalay… |
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, | |
Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst; | |
For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be – | |
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea; | |
On the road to Mandalay, | |
Where the old Flotilla lay, | |
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay! | |
O the road to Mandalay, | |
Where the flyin’-fishes play, | |
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ’crost the Bay! |
W. B. YEATS The Sorrow of Love
The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves, | |
The full round moon and the star-laden sky, | |
And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves | |
Had hid away earth’s old and weary cry. |
And then you came with those red mournful lips, | |
And with you came the whole of the world’s tears | |
And all the sorrows of her labouring ships, | |
And all burden of her myriad years. |
And now the sparrows warring in the eaves, | |
The crumbling moon, the white stars in the sky, | |
And the loud chanting of the unquiet leaves, | |
Are shaken with earth’s old and weary cry. |
ARTHUR SYMONS At the Cavour
Wine, the red coals, the flaring gas, | |
Bring out a brighter tone in cheeks | |
That learn at home before the glass | |
The flush that eloquently speaks. |
The blue-grey smoke of cigarettes | |
Curls from the lessening ends that glow; | |
The men are thinking of the bets, | |
The women of the debts, they owe. |
Then their eyes meet, and in their eyes | |
The accustomed smile comes up to call, | |
A look half miserably wise, | |
Half heedlessly ironical. |
1894 JOHN DAVIDSON Thirty Bob a Week
I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw, | |
And set the blooming world a-work for me, | |
Like such as cut their teeth – I hope, like you – | |
On the handle of a skeleton gold key; | |
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week: | |
I’m a clerk at thirty bob as you can see. |
But I don’t allow it’s luck and all a toss; | |
There’s no such thing as being starred and crossed; | |
It’s just the power of some to be a boss, | |
And the bally power of others to be bossed: | |
I face the music, sir; you bet I ain’t a cur; | |
Strike me lucky if I don’t believe I’m lost! |
For like a mole I journey in the dark, | |
A-travelling along the underground | |
From my Pillar’d Halls and broad Suburbean Park, | |
To come the daily dull official round; | |
And home again at night with my pipe all alight, | |
A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound. |
And it’s often very cold and very wet, | |
And my missis stitches towels for a hunks; | |
And the Pillar’d Halls is half of it to let – | |
Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks, | |
And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh, | |
When the noisy little kids are in their bunks. |
But you never hear her do a growl or whine, | |
For she’s made of flint and roses, very odd; | |
And I’ve got to cut my meaning rather fine, | |
Or I’d blubber, for I’m made of greens and sod: | |
So p’r’aps we are in Hell for all that I can tell, | |
And lost and damn’d and served up hot to God. |
I ain’t blaspheming, Mr. Silver-tongue; | |
I’m saying things a bit beyond your art: | |
Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung, | |
Thirty bob a week’s the rummiest start! | |
With your science and your books and your the’ries about spooks, | |
Did you ever hear of looking in your heart? |
I didn’t mean your pocket, Mr., no: | |
I mean that having children and a wife, | |
With thirty bob on which to come and go, | |
Isn’t dancing to the tabor and the fife: | |
When it doesn’t make you drink, by Heaven! it makes you think, | |
And notice curious items about life. |
I step into my heart and there I meet | |
A god-almighty devil singing small, | |
Who would like to shout and whistle in the street, | |
And squelch the passers flat against the wall; | |
If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take, | |
He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all. |
And I meet a sort of simpleton beside, | |
The kind that life is always giving beans; | |
With thirty bob a week to keep a bride | |
He fell in love and married in his teens: | |
At thirty bob he stuck; but he knows it isn’t luck: | |
He knows the seas are deeper than tureens. |
And the god-almighty devil and the fool | |
That meet me in the High Street on the strike, | |
When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool, | |
Are my good and evil angels if you like. | |
And both of them together in every kind of weather | |
Ride me like a double-seated bike. |
That’s rough a bit and needs its meaning curled. | |
But I have a high old hot un in my mind – | |
A most engrugious notion of the world, | |
That leaves your lightning ’rithmetic behind: | |
I give it at a glance when I say ‘There ain’t no chance, | |
Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind.’ |
And it’s this way that I make it out to be: | |
No fathers, mothers, countries, climates – none; | |
Not Adam was responsible for me, | |
Nor society, nor systems, nary one: | |
A little sleeping seed, I woke – I did, indeed – | |
A million years before the blooming sun. |
I woke because I thought the time had come; | |
Beyond my will there was no other cause; | |
And everywhere I found myself at home, | |
Because I chose to be the thing I was; | |
And in whatever shape of mollusc or of ape | |
I always went according to the laws. |
I was the love that chose my mother out; | |
I joined two lives and from the union burst; | |
My weakness and my strength without a doubt | |
Are mine alone forever from the first: | |
It’s just the very same with a difference in the name | |
As ‘Thy will be done.’ You say it if you durst! |
They say it daily up and down the land | |
As easy as you take a drink, it’s true; | |
But the difficultest go to understand, | |
And the difficultest job a man can do, | |
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, | |
And feel that that’s the proper thing for you. |
It’s a naked child against a hungry wolf; | |
It’s playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; | |
It’s walking on a string across a gulf | |
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck; | |
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one; | |
And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck. |
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON To S. R. Crockett 1895
On receiving a Dedication | |
Blows the wind today, and the sun and the rain are flying, | |
Blows the wind on the moors today and now, | |
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, | |
My heart remembers how! |
Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places, | |
Standing-stones on the vacant wine-red moor, | |
Hills of sheep, and the howes of the silent vanished races, | |
And winds, austere and pure: |
Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, | |
Hills of home! and to hear again the call; | |
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying, | |
And hear no more at all. |
ALICE MEYNELL Cradle-Song at Twilight
The child not yet is lulled to rest. | |
Too young a nurse; the slender Night | |
So laxly holds him to her breast | |
That throbs with flight. |
He plays with her, and will not sleep. | |
For other playfellows she sighs; | |
An unmaternal fondness keep | |
Her alien eyes. |
ALICE MEYNELL Parentage
‘When Augustus Cæsar legislated against the unmarried citizens of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people.’ |
Ah! no, not these! | |
These, who were childless, are not they who gave | |
So many dead unto the journeying wave, | |
The helpless nurslings of the cradling seas; | |
Not they who doomed by infallible decrees | |
Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave. |
But those who slay | |
Are fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs – | |
The death of innocences and despairs; | |
The dying of the golden and the grey. | |
The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay. | |
And she who slays is she who bears, who bears. |
MAY PROBYN Triolets
Tête-à-Tête | |
Behind her big fan, | |
With its storks and pagoda, | |
What a nook for a man! | |
Behind her big fan | |
My enchantment began, | |
Till my whole heart I showed her | |
Behind her big fan, | |
With its storks and pagoda. |