Poems, 1908-1919
полная версия
Аннотация
Читать онлайн
- -
- 100%
- +
MAD TOM TATTERMAN
“Old man, grey man, good man scavenger,Bearing is it eighty years upon your crumpled back?What is it you gather in the frosty weather,Is there any treasure here to carry in your sack?”.…“I’ve a million acres and a thousand head of cattle,And a foaming river where the silver salmon leap;But I’ve left fat valleys to dig in sullen alleysJust because a twisted star rode by me in my sleep.“I’ve a brain is dancing to an old forgotten musicHeard when all the world was just a crazy flight of dreams,And don’t you know I scatter in the dirt along the gutterSeeds that little ladies nursed by Babylonian streams?“Mad Tom Tatterman, that is how they call me.Oh, they know so much, so much, all so neatly dressed;I’ve a tale to tell you – come and listen, will you? —One as ragged as the twigs that make a magpie’s nest.“Ragged, oh, but very wise. You and this and that man,All of you are making things that none of you would lack,And so your eyes grow dusty, and so your limbs grow rusty —But mad Tom Tatterman puts nothing in his sack.“Nothing in my sack, sirs, but the Sea of GalileeWas walked for mad Tom Tatterman, and when I go to sleepThey’ll know that I have driven through the acres of broad heavenFlocks are whiter than the flocks that all your shepherds keep.”FOR CORIN TO-DAY
Old shepherd in your wattle cote,I think a thousand years are doneSince first you took your pipe of oatAnd piped against the risen sun,Until his burning lips of goldSucked up the drifting scarves of dewAnd bade you count your flocks from foldAnd set your hurdle stakes anew.And then as now at noon you ’ld takeThe shadow of delightful trees,And with good hands of labour breakYour barley bread with dairy cheese,And with some lusty shepherd mateWould wind a simple argument,And bear at night beyond your gateA loaded wallet of content.O Corin of the grizzled eye,A thousand years upon your downYou’ve seen the ploughing teams go byAbove the bells of Avon’s town;And while there’s any wind to blowThrough frozen February nights,About your lambing pens will goThe glimmer of your lanthorn lights.THE CARVER IN STONE
He was a man with wide and patient eyes,Grey, like the drift of twitch-fires blown in JuneThat, without fearing, searched if any wrongMight threaten from your heart. Grey eyes he hadUnder a brow was drawn because he knewSo many seasons to so many passOf upright service, loyal, unabasedBefore the world seducing, and so, barrenOf good words praising and thought that mated his.He carved in stone. Out of his quiet lifeHe watched as any faithful seaman chargedWith tidings of the myriad faring sea,And thoughts and premonitions through his mindSailing as ships from strange and storied landsHis hungry spirit held, till all they wereFound living witness in the chiselled stone.Slowly out of the dark confusion, spreadBy life’s innumerable venturingsOver his brain, he would triumph into the lightOf one clear mood, unblemished of the blindLegions of errant thought that cried aboutHis rapt seclusion: as a pearl unsoiled,Nay, rather washed to lonelier chastity,In gritty mud. And then would come a bird,A flower, or the wind moving upon a flower,A beast at pasture, or a clustered fruit,A peasant face as were the saints of old,The leer of custom, or the bow of the moonSwung in miraculous poise – some stray from the worldOf things created by the eternal mindIn joy articulate. And his perfect moodWould dwell about the token of God’s mood,Until in bird or flower or moving windOr flock or shepherd or the troops of heavenIt sprang in one fierce moment of desireTo visible form.Then would his chisel work among the stone,Persuading it of petal or of limbOr starry curve, till risen anew there sangShape out of chaos, and again the visionOf one mind single from the world was pressedUpon the daily custom of the skyOr field or the body of man.His peopleHad many gods for worship. The tiger-god,The owl, the dewlapped bull, the running pard,The camel and the lizard of the slime,The ram with quivering fleece and fluted horn,The crested eagle and the doming batWere sacred. And the king and his high priestsDecreed a temple, wide on columns huge,Should top the cornlands to the sky’s far line.They bade the carvers carve along the wallsImages of their gods, each one to carveAs he desired, his choice to name his god…And many came; and he among them, gladOf three leagues’ travel through the singing airOf dawn among the boughs yet bare of green,The eager flight of the spring leading his bloodInto swift lofty channels of the air,Proud as an eagle riding to the sun…An eagle, clean of pinion – there’s his choice.Daylong they worked under the growing roof,One at his leopard, one the staring ram,And he winning his eagle from the stone,Until each man had carved one image out,Arow beyond the portal of the house.They stood arow, the company of gods,Camel and bat, lizard and bull and ram,The pard and owl, dead figures on the wall,Figures of habit driven on the stoneBy chisels governed by no heat of the brainBut drudges of hands that moved by easy rule.Proudly recorded mood was none, no thoughtPlucked from the dark battalions of the mindAnd throned in everlasting sight. But oneGod of them all was witness of beliefAnd large adventure dared. His eagle spreadWide pinions on a cloudless ground of heaven,Glad with the heart’s high courage of that dawnMoving upon the ploughlands newly sown,Dead stone the rest. He looked, and knew it so.Then came the king with priests and counsellorsAnd many chosen of the people, wiseWith words weary of custom, and eyes askewThat watched their neighbour face for any newsOf the best way of judgment, till, each sureNone would determine with authority,All spoke in prudent praise. One liked the owlBecause an owl blinked on the beam of his barn.One, hoarse with crying gospels in the street,Praised most the ram, because the common folkWore breeches made of ram’s wool. One declaredThe tiger pleased him best, – the man who carvedThe tiger-god was halt out of the womb —A man to praise, being so pitiful.And one, whose eyes dwelt in a distant void,With spell and omen pat upon his lips,And a purse for any crystal prophet ripe,A zealot of the mist, gazed at the bull —A lean ill-shapen bull of meagre linesThat scarce the steel had graved upon the stone —Saying that here was very mysteryAnd truth, did men but know. And one there wasWho praised his eagle, but rememberingThe lither pinion of the swift, the curveThat liked him better of the mirrored swan.And they who carved the tiger-god and ram,The camel and the pard, the owl and bull,And lizard, listened greedily, and madeHumble denial of their worthiness,And when the king his royal judgment gaveThat all had fashioned well, and bade that eachRe-shape his chosen god along the wallsTill all the temple boasted of their skill,They bowed themselves in token that as thisNever had carvers been so fortunate.Only the man with wide and patient eyesMade no denial, neither bowed his head.Already while they spoke his thought had goneFar from his eagle, leaving it for a signLoyally wrought of one deep breath of life,And played about the image of a toadThat crawled among his ivy leaves. A queerPuff-bellied toad, with eyes that always staredSidelong at heaven and saw no heaven there,Weak-hammed, and with a throttle somehow twistedBeyond full wholesome draughts of air, and skinOf wrinkled lips, the only zest or willThe little flashing tongue searching the leaves.And king and priest, chosen and counsellor,Babbling out of their thin and jealous brains,Seemed strangely one; a queer enormous toadPanting under giant leaves of dark,Sunk in the loins, peering into the day.Their judgment wry he counted not for wrongMore than the fabled poison of the toadStriking at simple wits; how should their thoughtOr word in praise or blame come near the peaceThat shone in seasonable hours aboveThe patience of his spirit’s husbandry?They foolish and not seeing, how should heSpend anger there or fear – great ceremoniesEqual for none save great antagonists?The grave indifference of his heart before themWas moved by laughter innocent of hate,Chastising clean of spite, that moulded themInto the antic likeness of his toadBidding for laughter underneath the leaves.He bowed not, nor disputed, but he sawThose ill-created joyless gods, and loathed,And saw them creeping, creeping round the walls,Death breeding death, wile witnessing to wile,And sickened at the dull iniquityShould be rewarded, and for ever breatheContagion on the folk gathered in prayer.His truth should not be doomed to march amongThis falsehood to the ages. He was called,And he must labour there; if so the kingWould grant it, where the pillars bore the roofA galleried way of meditation nursedSecluded time, with wall of ready stoneIn panels for the carver set betweenThe windows – there his chisel should be set, —It was his plea. And the king spoke of him,Scorning, as one lack-fettle, among all theseEager to take the riches of renown;One fearful of the light or knowing nothingOf light’s dimension, a witling who would throwHonour aside and praise spoken aloudAll men of heart should covet. Let him goGrubbing out of the sight of these who knewThe worth of substance; there was his proper trade.A squat and curious toad indeed… The eyes,Patient and grey, were dumb as were the lips,That, fixed and governed, hoarded from them allThe larger laughter lifting in his heart.Straightway about his gallery he moved,Measured the windows and the virgin stone,Till all was weighed and patterned in his brain.Then first where most the shadow struck the wall,Under the sills, and centre of the base,From floor to sill out of the stone was wooedMemorial folly, as from the chisel leaptHis chastening laughter searching priest and king —A huge and wrinkled toad, with legs asplay,And belly loaded, leering with great eyesBusily fixed upon the void.All daysHis chisel was the first to ring acrossThe temple’s quiet; and at fall of duskPassing among the carvers homeward, theyWould speak of him as mad, or weak againstThe challenge of the world, and let him goLonely, as was his will, under the nightOf stars or cloud or summer’s folded sun,Through crop and wood and pastureland to sleep.None took the narrow stair as wonderingHow did his chisel prosper in the stone,Unvisited his labour and forgot.And times when he would lean out of his heightAnd watch the gods growing along the walls,The row of carvers in their linen coatsTook in his vision a virtue that aloneCarving they had not nor the thing they carved.Knowing the health that flowed about his closeImagining, the daily quiet wonFrom process of his clean and supple craft,Those carvers there, far on the floor below,Would haply be transfigured in his thoughtInto a gallant company of menGlad of the strict and loyal reckoningThat proved in the just presence of the brainEach chisel-stroke. How surely would he prosperIn pleasant talk at easy hours with menSo fashioned if it might be – and his eyesWould pass again to those dead gods that grewIn spreading evil round the temple walls;And, one dead pressure made, the carvers movedAlong the wall to mould and mould againThe self-same god, their chisels on the stoneTapping in dull precision as before,And he would turn, back to his lonely truth.He carved apace. And first his people’s gods,About the toad, out of their sterile time,Under his hand thrilled and were recreate.The bull, the pard, the camel and the ram,Tiger and owl and bat – all were the signsVisibly made body on the stoneOf sightless thought adventuring the hostThat is mere spirit; these the bloom achievedBy secret labour in the flowing woodOf rain and air and wind and continent sun…His tiger, lithe, immobile in the stone,A swift destruction for a moment leashed,Sprang crying from the jealous stealth of menOpposed in cunning watch, with engines hidOf torment and calamitous desire.His leopard, swift on lean and paltry limbs,Was fear in flight before accusing faith.His bull, with eyes that often in the duskWould lift from the sweet meadow grass to watchHim homeward passing, bore on massy beamThe burden of the patient of the earth.His camel bore the burden of the damned,Being gaunt, with eyes aslant along the nose.He had a friend, who hammered bronze and ironAnd cupped the moonstone on a silver ring,One constant like himself, would come at nightOr bid him as a guest, when they would makeTheir poets touch a starrier height, or searchTogether with unparsimonious mindThe crowded harbours of mortality.And there were jests, wholesome as harvest aleOf homely habit, bred of hearts that daredJudgment of laughter under the eternal eye:This frolic wisdom was his carven owl.His ram was lordship on the lonely hills,Alert and fleet, content only to knowThe wind mightily pouring on his fleece,With yesterday and all unrisen sunsPoorer than disinherited ghosts. His batWas ancient envy made a mockery,Cowering below the newer eagle carvedAbove the arches with wide pinion spread,His faith’s dominion of that happy dawn.And so he wrought the gods upon the wall,Living and crying out of his desire,Out of his patient incorruptible thought,Wrought them in joy was wages to his faith.And other than the gods he made. The stalksOf bluebells heavy with the news of spring,The vine loaded with plenty of the year,And swallows, merely tenderness of thoughtBidding the stone to small and fragile flight;Leaves, the thin relics of autumnal boughs,Or massed in June…All from their native pressure bloomed and sprangUnder his shaping hand into a proudAnd governed image of the central man, —Their moulding, charts of all his travelling.And all were deftly ordered, duly setBetween the windows, underneath the sills,And roofward, as a motion rightly planned,Till on the wall, out of the sullen stone,A glory blazed, his vision manifest,His wonder captive. And he was content.And when the builders and the carvers knewTheir labour done, and high the temple stoodOver the cornlands, king and counsellorAnd priest and chosen of the people cameAmong a ceremonial multitudeTo dedication. And, below the thronesWhere king and archpriest ruled above the throng,Highest among the ranked artificersThe carvers stood. And when, the temple vowedTo holy use, tribute and choral praiseGiven as was ordained, the king looked downUpon the gathered folk, and bade them seeThe comely gods fashioned about the walls,And keep in honour men whose precious skillCould so adorn the sessions of their worship,Gravely the carvers bowed them to the ground.Only the man with wide and patient eyesStood not among them; nor did any comeTo count his labour, where he watched aloneAbove the coloured throng. He heard, and lookedAgain upon his work, and knew it good,Smiled on his toad, passed down the stair unseenAnd sang across the teeming meadows home.ELIZABETH ANN
This is the tale of Elizabeth Ann,Who went away with her fancy man.Ann was a girl who hadn’t a gownAs fine as the ladies who walk the town.All day long from seven to sixAnn was polishing candlesticks,For Bishops and crapulous MillionairesTo buy for their altars or bed-chambers.And youth in a year and a year will pass,But there’s never an end of polishing brass.All day long from seven to six —Seventy thousand candlesticks.So frail and lewd Elizabeth AnnWent away with her fancy man.You Bishops and crapulous Millionaires,Give her your charity, give her your prayers.THE COTSWOLD FARMERS
Sometimes the ghosts forgotten goAlong the hill-top way,And with long scythes of silver mowMeadows of moonlit hay,Until the cocks of Cotswold crowThe coming of the day.There’s Tony Turkletob who diedWhen he could drink no more,And Uncle Heritage, the prideOf eighteen-twenty-four,And Ebenezer Barleytide,And others half a score.They fold in phantom pens, and ploughFurrows without a share,And one will milk a faery cow,And one will stare and stare,And whistle ghostly tunes that nowAre not sung anywhere.The moon goes down on Oakridge lea,The other world’s astir,The Cotswold farmers silentlyGo back to sepulchre,The sleeping watchdogs wake, and seeNo ghostly harvester.A MAN’S DAUGHTER
There is an old woman who looks each nightOut of the wood.She has one tooth, that isn’t too white.She isn’t too good.She came from the north looking for me,About my jewel.Her son, she says, is tall as can be;But, men say, cruel.My girl went northward, holiday making,And a queer man spokeAt the woodside once when night was breaking,And her heart broke.For ever since she has pined and pined,A sorry maid;Her fingers are slack as the wool they wind,Or her girdle-braid.So now shall I send her north to wed,Who here may knowOnly the little house of the deadTo ease her woe?Or keep her for fear of that old woman,As a bird quick-eyed,And her tall son who is hardly human,At the woodside?She is my babe and my daughter dear,How well, how well.Her grief to me is a fourfold fear,Tongue cannot tell.And yet I know that far in that woodAre crumbling bones,And a mumble mumble of nothing that’s good,In heathen tones.And I know that frail ghosts flutter and sighIn brambles there,And never a bird or beast to cry —Beware, beware, —While threading the silent thickets goMother and son,Where scrupulous berries never grow,And airs are none.And her deep eyes peer at eventideOut of the wood,And her tall son waits by the dark woodsideFor maidenhood.And the little eyes peer, and peer, and peer;And a word is said.And some house knows, for many a year,But years of dread.THE LIFE OF JOHN HERITAGE
Born in the Cotswolds in eighteen-forty or so,Bred on a hill-top that seemed the most of the worldUntil he travelled the valleys, and found what a wonderOf leagues from Gloucester lay to Stroud or Ciceter,John Heritage was a tiler. He split the stone,After the frosts, and learnt the laying of tiles,And was famous about the shire. And he was friendlyWith Cotswold nature, hearing the hidden rooksIn Golden Vale, and the thin bleat of goats,And the rattling harness of Trilly’s teams at plough,And Richard Parker’s scythe for many years,As he went upon his tiling; and the great landmarks,As loops of the Severn seen from Bisley Hill,Were his familiars, something of his religion.And he prospered, as men do. His little wageYet left a little over his wedded needs,And here a cottage he bought, and there another,About the Cotswolds, built of the royallest stoneThat’s quarried in England, until he could think of ageWith an easy mind; and an acre of land was hisWhere at hay-harvest he worked a little from tiling,Making his rick maturely or damning the windThat scattered the swathes beyond his fork’s controlling.And he trotted ajog to the town on market Thursdays,Driving a stout succession of good black geldings,That cropped his acre some twenty years apiece.And he was an honest neighbour; and so he grew old,And five strong sons, grizzled and middle-aged,Carried him down the hill, and on a stoneThe mason cut – “John Heritage, who died,Fearing the Lord, at the age of seventy-six.”And I know that some of us shatter our hearts on earth,With mightier aims than ever John Heritage knew,And think such things as never the tiler thought,Because of our pride and our eagerness of mind …But a life complete is a great nobility,And there’s a wisdom biding in Cotswold stone,While we in our furious intellectual travelFall in with strange foot-fellows on the road.THOMAS YARNTON OF TARLTON
One of those old men fearing no man,Two hundred broods his eaves have knownSince they cut on a Sapperton churchyard stone —“Thomas Yarnton of Tarlton, Yeoman.”At dusk you can hear the yeomen callingThe cattle still to Sapperton stalls,And still the stroke of the woodman fallsAs Thomas of Tarlton heard it falling.I walked these meadows in seventeen-hundred,Seed of his loins, a dream that stirredBeyond the shape of a yeoman’s word,So faint that but unawares he wondered.And now, from the weeds of his tomb uncomely,I travel again the tracks he made,And walks at my side the yeoman shadeOf Thomas Yarnton of Tarlton dumbly.MRS. WILLOW
Mrs. Thomas Willow seems very glum.Her life, perhaps, is very lonely and hum-drum,Digging up potatoes, cleaning out the weeds,Doing the little for a lone woman’s needs.Who was her husband? How long ago?What does she wonder? What does she know?Why does she listen over the wall,Morning and noon-time and twilight and all,As though unforgotten were some footfall?“Good morning, Mrs. Willow.” “Good morning, sir,”Is all the conversation I can get from her.And her path-stones are white as lilies of the wood,And she washes this and that till she must be very good.She sends no letters, and no one calls,And she doesn’t go whispering beyond her walls;Nothing in her garden is secret, I think —That’s all sun-bright with foxglove and pink,And she doesn’t hover around old cupboards and shelvesAs old people do who have buried themselves;She has no late lamps, and she digs all dayAnd polishes and plants in a common way,But glum she is, and she listens now and thenFor a footfall, a footfall, a footfall again,And whether it’s hope, or whether it’s dread,Or a poor old fancy in her head,I shall never be told; it will never be said.ROUNDELS OF THE YEAR
I caught the changes of the yearIn soft and fragile nets of song,For you to whom my days belong.For you to whom each day is dearOf all the high processional throng,I caught the changes of the yearIn soft and fragile nets of song.And here some sound of beauty, hereSome note of ancient, ageless wrongReshaping as my lips were strong,I caught the changes of the yearIn soft and fragile nets of song,For you to whom my days belong.IThe spring is passing through the landIn web of ghostly green arrayed,And blood is warm in man and maid.The arches of desire have spannedThe barren ways, the debt is paid,The spring is passing through the landIn web of ghostly green arrayed.Sweet scents along the winds are fannedFrom shadowy wood and secret gladeWhere beauty blossoms unafraid,The spring is passing through the landIn web of ghostly green arrayedAnd blood is warm in man and maid.IIProud insolent June with burning lipsHolds riot now from sea to sea,And shod in sovran gold is she.To the full flood of reaping slipsThe seeding-tide by God’s decree,Proud insolent June with burning lipsHolds riot now from sea to sea.And all the goodly fellowshipsOf bird and bloom and beast and treeAre gallant of her company —Proud insolent June with burning lipsHolds riot now from sea to sea,And shod in sovran gold is she.IIIThe loaded sheaves are harvested,The sheep are in the stubbled fold,The tale of labour crowned is told.The wizard of the year has spreadA glory over wood and wold,The loaded sheaves are harvested,The sheep are in the stubbled fold.The yellow apples and the redBear down the boughs, the hazels holdNo more their fruit in cups of gold.The loaded sheaves are harvested,The sheep are in the stubbled fold,The tale of labour crowned is told.IVThe year is lapsing into timeAlong a deep and songless gloom,Unchapleted of leaf or bloom.And mute between the dusk and primeThe diligent earth resets her loom, —The year is lapsing into timeAlong a deep and songless gloom.While o’er the snows the seasons chimeTheir golden hopes to reillumeThe brief eclipse about the tomb,The year is lapsing into timeAlong a deep and songless gloomUnchapleted of leaf or bloom.VNot wise as cunning scholars are,With curious words upon your tongue,Are you for whom my song is sung.But you are wise of cloud and star,And winds and boughs all blossom-hung,Not wise as cunning scholars are,With curious words upon your tongue.Surely, clear child of earth, some farDim Dryad-haunted groves among,Your lips to lips of knowledge clung —Not wise as cunning scholars are,With curious words upon your tongue,Are you for whom my song is sung.LIEGEWOMAN
You may not wear immortal leavesNor yet go laurelled in your days,But he believesWho loves you with most intimate praiseThat none on earth has ever gone,In whom a cleanlier spirit shone.You may be unremembered whenOur chronicles are piled in dust:No matter than —None ever bore a lordlier lustTo know the savour sweet or sourDown to the dregs of every hour.And this your epitaph shall be —“Within life’s house her eager wordsContinuallyLightened as wings of arrowy birds:She was life’s house-fellow, she knewThe passion of him, soul and thew.”LOVERS TO LOVERS
Our love forswornWas very love upon a day,Bitterness now, forlorn,This tattered love once went as proud a wayAs any born.You well have keptYour love from all corrupting things,Your house of love is sweptAnd bright for use; whatso each season bringsYou may acceptIn pride. But we?Our date of love is dead. Our blindBrief moment was to beThe sum, yet was it signed as yours, and signedIndelibly.