Poems Read online

  —PASCAL

  The Bible says Sennacherib’s campaign was spoiled

  By angels: in Herodotus it says, by mice—

  Innumerably nibbling all one night they toiled

  To eat his bowstrings piecemeal as warm wind eats ice.

  But muscular archangels, I suggest, employed

  Seven little jaws at labour on each slender string,

  And by their aid, weak masters though they be, destroyed

  The smiling-lipped Assyrian, cruel-bearded king.

  No stranger that omnipotence should choose to need

  Small helps than great—no stranger if His action lingers

  Till men have prayed, and suffers their weak prayers indeed

  To move as very muscles His delaying fingers,

  Who, in His longanimity and love for our

  Small dignities, enfeebles, for a time, His power.

  THE PHOENIX

  The Phoenix flew into my garden and stood perched upon

  A sycamore; the feathered flame with dazzling eyes

  Lit up the whole lawn like a bonfire on midsummer’s eve.

  I ran out, slipping on the grass, reeling beneath

  The news I bore: ‘The Sole Bird is not fabulous! Look! Look!’

  The dark girl, passing in the road, heard me. Her eyes

  Lit up (I saw her features flood-lit in those golden rays)

  So that I called, or else the Bird called, and we went

  Over the wet lawn—shadows for our train—towards the Wonder.

  Then, looking round, I saw her eyes . . . could it be true?

  Was I deceived? . . . oh, say I was deceived . . . I thought her eyes

  Had all along been fixed on me, not on the Bird.

  Thrice-honoured Lady, make not of your spoon your meat, for silver

  (How much less, tin or wood?) contains no nourishment.

  I will be all things, any thing, to you, save only that.

  Break not our hearts by telling me you never saw

  The Phoenix, that my trumpery silhouette, thrusting between,

  Made an eclipse. For I had dreamed that I had caught

  For His own beak a silver, shining fish such as He loves,

  And, having little of my own to offer Him,

  Was building much on this miraculous draught. If the line breaks,

  Oh with what empty hands you send me back to Him!

  THE NATIVITY

  Among the oxen (like an ox I’m slow)

  I see a glory in the stable grow

  Which, with the ox’s dullness might at length

  Give me an ox’s strength.

  Among the asses (stubborn I as they)

  I see my Saviour where I looked for hay;

  So may my beastlike folly learn at least

  The patience of a beast.

  Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)

  I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;

  Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence

  Some woolly innocence!

  PRAYER

  Master, they say that when I seem

  To be in speech with you,

  Since you make no replies, it’s all a dream

  —One talker aping two.

  They are half right, but not as they

  Imagine; rather, I

  Seek in myself the things I meant to say,

  And lo! the wells are dry.

  Then, seeing me empty, you forsake

  The Listener’s rôle, and through

  My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake

  The thoughts I never knew.

  And thus you neither need reply

  Nor can; thus, while we seem

  Two talking, thou art One forever, and I

  No dreamer, but thy dream.

  LOVE’S AS WARM AS TEARS

  Love’s as warm as tears,

  Love is tears:

  Pressure within the brain,

  Tension at the throat,

  Deluge, weeks of rain,

  Haystacks afloat,

  Featureless seas between

  Hedges, where once was green.

  Love’s as fierce as fire,

  Love is fire:

  All sorts—infernal heat

  Clinkered with greed and pride,

  Lyric desire, sharp-sweet,

  Laughing, even when denied,

  And that empyreal flame

  Whence all loves came.

  Love’s as fresh as spring,

  Love is spring:

  Bird-song hung in the air,

  Cool smells in a wood,

  Whispering ‘Dare! Dare!’

  To sap, to blood,

  Telling ‘Ease, safety, rest,

  Are good; not best.’

  Love’s as hard as nails,

  Love is nails:

  Blunt, thick, hammered through

  The medial nerves of One

  Who, having made us, knew

  The thing He had done,

  Seeing (with all that is)

  Our cross, and His.

  NO BEAUTY WE COULD DESIRE

  Yes, you are always everywhere. But I,

  Hunting in such immeasurable forests,

  Could never bring the noble Hart to bay.

  The scent was too perplexing for my hounds;

  Nowhere sometimes, then again everywhere.

  Other scents, too, seemed to them almost the same.

  Therefore I turn my back on the unapproachable

  Stars and horizons and all musical sounds,

  Poetry itself, and the winding stair of thought.

  Leaving the forests where you are pursued in vain

  —Often a mere white gleam—I turn instead

  To the appointed place where you pursue.

  Not in Nature, not even in Man, but in one

  Particular Man, with a date, so tall, weighing

  So much, talking Aramaic, having learned a trade;

  Not in all food, not in all bread and wine

  (Not, I mean, as my littleness requires)

  But this wine, this bread . . . no beauty we could desire.

  STEPHEN TO LAZARUS

  But was I the first martyr, who

  Gave up no more than life, while you,

  Already free among the dead,

  Your rags stripped off, your fetters shed,

  Surrendered what all other men

  Irrevocably keep, and when

  Your battered ship at anchor lay

  Seemingly safe in the dark bay

  No ripple stirs, obediently

  Put out a second time to sea

  Well knowing that your death (in vain

  Died once) must all be died again?

  FIVE SONNETS

  1

  You think that we who do not shout and shake

  Our fists at God when youth or bravery die

  Have colder blood or hearts less apt to ache

  Than yours who rail. I know you do. Yet why?

  You have what sorrow always long to find,

  Someone to blame, some enemy in chief;

  Anger’s the anaesthetic of the mind,

  It does men good, it fumes away their grief.

  We feel the stroke like you; so far our fate

  Is equal. After that, for us begin

  Half-hopeless labours, learning not to hate,

  And then to want, and then (perhaps) to win

  A high, unearthly comfort, angel’s food,

  That seems at first mockery to flesh and blood.

  2

  There’s a repose, a safety (even a taste

  Of something like revenge?) in fixed despair

  Which we’re forbidden. We have to rise with haste

  And start to climb what seems a crazy stair.

  Our consolation (for we are consoled,

  So much of us, I mean, as may be left

  After the dreadful process has unrolled)

  For one bereavement makes us more bereft.


  It asks for all we have, to the last shred;

  Read Dante, who had known its best and worst—

  He was bereaved and he was comforted

  —No one denies it, comforted—but first

  Down to the frozen centre, up the vast

  Mountain of pain, from world to world, he passed.

  3

  Of this we’re certain; no one who dared knock

  At heaven’s door for earthly comfort found

  Even a door—only smooth, endless rock,

  And save the echo of his cry no sound.

  It’s dangerous to listen; you’ll begin

  To fancy that those echoes (hope can play

  Pitiful tricks) are answers from within;

  Far better to turn, grimly sane, away.

  Heaven cannot thus, Earth cannot ever, give

  The thing we want. We ask what isn’t there

  And by our asking water and make live

  That very part of love which must despair

  And die and go down cold into the earth

  Before there’s talk of springtime and re-birth.

  4

  Pitch your demands heaven-high and they’ll be met.

  Ask for the Morning Star and take (thrown in)

  Your earthly love. Why, yes; but how to set

  One’s foot on the first rung, how to begin?

  The silence of one voice upon our ears

  Beats like the waves; the coloured morning seems

  A lying brag; the face we loved appears

  Fainter each night, or ghastlier, in our dreams.

  ‘That long way round which Dante trod was meant

  For mighty saints and mystics not for me,’

  So Nature cries. Yet if we once assent

  To Nature’s voice, we shall be like the bee

  That booms against the window-pane for hours

  Thinking that way to reach the laden flowers.

  5

  ‘If we could speak to her,’ my doctor said,

  ‘And told her, “Not that way! All, all in vain

  You weary out your wings and bruise your head,”

  Might she not answer, buzzing at the pane,

  “Let queens and mystics and religious bees

  Talk of such inconceivables as glass;

  The blunt lay worker flies at what she sees,

  Look there—ahead, ahead—the flowers, the grass!”

  We catch her in a handkerchief (who knows

  What rage she feels, what terror, what despair?)

  And shake her out—and gaily out she goes

  Where quivering flowers stand thick in summer air,

  To drink their hearts. But left to her own will

  She would have died upon the window-sill.’

  EVENSONG

  Now that night is creeping

  O’er our travail’d senses,

  To Thy care unsleeping

  We commit our sleep.

  Nature for a season

  Conquers our defences,

  But th’ eternal Reason

  Watch and ward will keep.

  All the soul we render

  Back to Thee completely,

  Trusting Thou wilt tend her

  Through the deathlike hours,

  And all night remake her

  To Thy likeness sweetly,

  Then with dawn awake her

  And give back her powers.

  Slumber’s less uncertain

  Brother soon will bind us

  —Darker falls the curtain,

  Stifling-close ’tis drawn:

  But amidst that prison

  Still Thy voice can find us,

  And, as Thou hast risen,

  Raise us in Thy dawn.

  THE APOLOGIST’S EVENING PRAYER

  From all my lame defeats and oh! much more

  From all the victories that I seemed to score;

  From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf

  At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;

  From all my proofs of Thy divinity,

  Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

  Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead

  Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.

  From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,

  O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.

  Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,

  Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

  FOOTNOTE TO ALL PRAYERS

  He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow

  When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,

  And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart

  Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.

  Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme

  Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,

  And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address

  The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless

  Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert

  Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;

  And all men are idolators, crying unheard

  To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

  Take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in Thy great,

  Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

  AFTER PRAYERS, LIE COLD

  Arise my body, my small body, we have striven

  Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven.

  Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go,

  White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow,

  Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light,

  And be alone, hush’d mortal, in the sacred night,

  —A meadow whipt flat with the rain, a cup

  Emptied and clean, a garment washed and folded up,

  Faded in colour, thinned almost to raggedness

  By dirt and by the washing of that dirtiness.

  Be not too quickly warm again. Lie cold; consent

  To weariness’ and pardon’s watery element.

  Drink up the bitter water, breathe the chilly death;

  Soon enough comes the riot of our blood and breath.

  PART V

  A FAREWELL TO SHADOWLANDS

  EPIGRAMS AND EPITAPHS

  1

  Lady, to this fair breast I know but one

  Fair rival; to the heart beneath it, none.

  2

  Have you not seen that in our days

  Of any whose story, song, or art

  Delights us, our sincerest praise

  Means, when all’s said, ‘You break my heart’?

  3

  I woke from a fool’s dream, to find all spent

  Except one little sixpence, worn and bent.

  The same day, in the nick of time, I found

  The market where my sixpence buys a pound.

  Sirs, tell me was the bargain good or bad?

  The price was cheap. The price was all I had.

  4

  Strange that a trick of light and shade could look

  So like a living form that, first, I gave

  The shadow mind and meaning: then, mistook

  His will for mine; and, last, became his slave.

  5

  If we had remembered earlier our Father’s house

  Where we grew together, and that old kindness,

  You would not now be dying, oh my sister, my spouse,

  Pierced with my sword in the battle’s heat and the blindness.

  6

  Save yourself. Run and leave me. I must go back.

  Though we have escaped the sentry and are past the wall,

  Though returning means mockery and the whip and the rack,

  Yet their sending is too strong; I must turn at their call.

  Save yourself. Leave me. I must go back.

  7

  . . . Spirit? Who names her lies.


  Who cares for a bodiless ghost without any eyes

  Or feet to run with at all, or ear for the call

  Of the rushing rain, and the crack of the opening skies?

  But I’d have a body, a bird’s fleet body that flies.

  8

  All things (e.g. a camel’s journey through

  A needle’s eye) are possible, it’s true.

  But picture how the camel feels, squeezed out

  In one long bloody thread from tail to snout.

  9

  Lady, a better sculptor far

  Chiselled those curves you smudge and mar,

  And God did more than lipstick can

  To justify your mouth to man.

  10

  Erected by her sorrowing brothers

  In memory of Martha Clay.

  Here lies one who lived for others;

  Now she has peace. And so have they.

  11

  She was beautifully, delicately made,

  So small, so unafraid,

  Till the bomb came.

  Bombs are the same,

  Beautifully, delicately made.

  12

  No; the world will not break,

  Time will not stop.

  Do not for the dregs mistake

  The first bitter drop.

  When first the collar galls

  Tired horses know

  Stable’s not near. Still falls

  The whip. There’s far to go.

  13

  Here lies one kind of speech

  That in the unerring hour when each

  Idle syllable must be

  Weighed upon the balance, she,

  Though puzzled and ashamed, I think,

  To watch the scales of thousands sink,

  Will see with her old woodland air

  (That startled, yet unflinching stare,

  Half elf, half squirrel, all surprise)

  Hers quiver and demurely rise.

  14

  From end to end of the bright airy ward,

  From end to end of each delirious day,

  The wireless gibbered, hammered, squealed and roared;

  That was the pain no drugs could drive away.

  I asked for an hour of silence—half an hour—

  Ten minutes—to die sane. It wasn’t granted.

  Why should one Prig, one High-brow, have the power

  To stop what all those honest fellows wanted?