The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 Read online

  CRY what shall I cry?

  All flesh is grass: comprehending

  The Companions of the Bath, the Knights of the British Empire, the Cavaliers,

  O Cavaliers! of the Legion of Honour,

  The Order of the Black Eagle (1st and 2nd class),

  And the Order of the Rising Sun.

  Cry cry what shall I cry?

  The first thing to do is to form the committees:

  The consultative councils, the standing committees, select committees and sub-committees.

  One secretary will do for several committees.

  What shall I cry?

  Arthur Edward Cyril Parker is appointed telephone operator

  At a salary of one pound ten a week rising by annual increments of five shillings

  To two pounds ten a week; with a bonus of thirty shillings at Christmas

  And one week’s leave a year.

  A committee has been appointed to nominate a commission of engineers

  To consider the Water Supply.

  A commission is appointed

  For Public Works, chiefly the question of rebuilding the fortifications.

  A commission is appointed

  To confer with a Volscian commission

  About perpetual peace: the fletchers and javelin-makers and smiths

  Have appointed a joint committee to protest against the reduction of orders.

  Meanwhile the guards shake dice on the marches

  And the frogs (O Mantuan) croak in the marshes.

  Fireflies flare against the faint sheet lightning

  What shall I cry?

  Mother mother

  Here is the row of family portraits, dingy busts, all looking remarkably Roman,

  Remarkably like each other, lit up successively by the flare

  Of a sweaty torchbearer, yawning.

  O hidden under the … Hidden under the … Where the dove’s foot rested and locked for a moment,

  A still moment, repose of noon, set under the upper branches of noon’s widest tree

  Under the breast feather stirred by the small wind after noon

  There the cyclamen spreads its wings, there the clematis droops over the lintel

  O mother (not among these busts, all correctly inscribed)

  I a tired head among these heads

  Necks strong to bear them

  Noses strong to break the wind

  Mother

  May we not be some time, almost now, together,

  If the mactations, immolations, oblations, impetrations,

  Are now observed

  May we not be

  O hidden

  Hidden in the stillness of noon, in the silent croaking night.

  Come with the sweep of the little bat’s wing, with the small flare of the firefly or lightning bug,

  ‘Rising and falling, crowned with dust’, the small creatures,

  The small creatures chirp thinly through the dust, through the night.

  O mother

  What shall I cry?

  We demand a committee, a representative committee, a committee of investigation

  RESIGN RESIGN RESIGN

  MINOR POEMS

  Eyes that last I saw in tears

  Eyes that last I saw in tears

  Through division

  Here in death’s dream kingdom

  The golden vision reappears

  I see the eyes but not the tears

  This is my affliction.

  This is my affliction

  Eyes I shall not see again

  Eyes of decision

  Eyes I shall not see unless

  At the door of death’s other kingdom

  Where, as in this,

  The eyes outlast a little while

  A little while outlast the tears

  And hold us in derision.

  The wind sprang up at four o’clock

  The wind sprang up at four o’clock

  The wind sprang up and broke the bells

  Swinging between life and death

  Here, in death’s dream kingdom

  The waking echo of confusing strife

  Is it a dream or something else

  When the surface of the blackened river

  Is a face that sweats with tears?

  I saw across the blackened river

  The camp fire shake with alien spears.

  Here, across death’s other river

  The Tartar horsemen shake their spears.

  Five-Finger Exercises

  I. Lines to a Persian Cat

  The songsters of the air repair

  To the green fields of Russell Square.

  Beneath the trees there is no ease

  For the dull brain, the sharp desires

  And the quick eyes of Woolly Bear.

  There is no relief but in grief.

  O when will the creaking heart cease?

  When will the broken chair give ease?

  Why will the summer day delay?

  When will Time flow away?

  II. Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier

  In a brown field stood a tree

  And the tree was crookt and dry.

  In a black sky, from a green cloud

  Natural forces shriek’d aloud,

  Screamed, rattled, muttered endlessly.

  Little dog was safe and warm

  Under a cretonne eiderdown,

  Yet the field was cracked and brown

  And the tree was cramped and dry.

  Pollicle dogs and cats all must

  Jellicle cats and dogs all must

  Like undertakers, come to dust.

  Here a little dog I pause

  Heaving up my prior paws,

  Pause, and sleep endlessly.

  III. Lines to a Duck in the Park

  The long light shakes across the lake,

  The forces of the morning quake,

  The dawn is slant across the lawn,

  Here is no eft or mortal snake

  But only sluggish duck and drake.

  I have seen the morning shine,

  I have had the Bread and Wine,

  Let the feathered mortals take

  That which is their mortal due,

  Pinching bread and finger too.

  Easier had than squirming worm;

  For I know, and so should you

  That soon the enquiring worm shall try

  Our well-preserved complacency.

  IV. Lines to Ralph Hodgson Esqre.

  How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!

  (Everyone wants to know him)

  With his musical sound

  And his Baskerville Hound

  Which, just at a word from his master

  Will follow you faster and faster

  And tear you limb from limb.

  How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!

  Who is worshipped by all waitresses

  (They regard him as something apart)

  While on his palate fine he presses

  The juice of the gooseberry tart.

  How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!

  (Everyone wants to know him).

  He has 999 canaries

  And round his head finches and fairies

  In jubilant rapture skim.

  How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!

  (Everyone wants to meet him).

  V. Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg

  How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!

  With his features of clerical cut,

  And his brow so grim

  And his mouth so prim

  And his conversation, so nicely

  Restricted to What Precisely

  And If and Perhaps and But.

  How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!

  With a bobtail cur

  In a coat of fur

  And a porpentine cat

  And a wopsical hat:

  How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!

  (Whether his mouth be open or shut).

&n
bsp; Landscapes

  *

  I. New Hampshire

  Children’s voices in the orchard

  Between the blossom-and the fruit-time:

  Golden head, crimson head,

  Between the green tip and the root.

  Black wing, brown wing, hover over;

  Twenty years and the spring is over;

  To-day grieves, to-morrow grieves,

  Cover me over, light-in-leaves;

  Golden head, black wing,

  Cling, swing,

  Spring, sing,

  Swing up into the apple-tree.

  II. Virginia

  Red river, red river,

  Slow flow heat is silence

  No will is still as a river

  Still. Will heat move

  Only through the mocking-bird

  Heard once? Still hills

  Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,

  White trees, wait, wait,

  Delay, decay. Living, living,

  Never moving. Ever moving

  Iron thoughts came with me

  And go with me:

  Red river, river, river.

  III. Usk

  Do not suddenly break the branch, or

  Hope to find

  The white hart behind the white well.

  Glance aside, not for lance, do not spell

  Old enchantments. Let them sleep.

  ‘Gently dip, but not too deep’,

  Lift your eyes

  Where the roads dip and where the roads rise

  Seek only there

  Where the grey light meets the green air

  The hermit’s chapel, the pilgrim’s prayer.

  IV. Rannoch, by Glencoe

  Here the crow starves, here the patient stag

  Breeds for the rifle. Between the soft moor

  And the soft sky, scarcely room

  To leap or soar. Substance crumbles, in the thin air

  Moon cold or moon hot. The road winds in

  Listlessness of ancient war,

  Languor of broken steel,

  Clamour of confused wrong, apt

  In silence. Memory is strong

  Beyond the bone. Pride snapped,

  Shadow of pride is long, in the long pass

  No concurrence of bone.

  V. Cape Ann

  O quick quick quick, quick hear the song-sparrow,

  Swamp-sparrow, fox-sparrow, vesper-sparrow

  At dawn and dusk. Follow the dance

  Of the goldfinch at noon. Leave to chance

  The Blackburnian warbler, the shy one. Hail

  With shrill whistle the note of the quail, the bob-white

  Dodging by bay-bush. Follow the feet

  Of the walker, the water-thrush. Follow the flight

  Of the dancing arrow, the purple martin. Greet

  In silence the bullbat. All are delectable. Sweet sweet sweet

  But resign this land at the end, resign it

  To its true owner, the tough one, the sea-gull.

  The palaver is finished.

  Lines for an Old Man

  The tiger in the tiger-pit

  Is not more irritable than I.

  The whipping tail is not more still

  Than when I smell the enemy

  Writhing in the essential blood

  Or dangling from the friendly tree.

  When I lay bare the tooth of wit

  The hissing over the archèd tongue

  Is more affectionate than hate,

  More bitter than the love of youth,

  And inaccessible by the young.

  Reflected from my golden eye

  The dullard knows that he is mad.

  Tell me if I am not glad!

  CHORUSES FROM ‘THE ROCK’ 1934

  I

  The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,

  The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

  O perpetual revolution of configured stars,

  O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,

  O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!

  The endless cycle of idea and action,

  Endless invention, endless experiment,

  Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

  Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

  Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

  All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

  All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

  But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.

  Where is the Life we have lost in living?

  Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

  Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

  The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

  Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

  I journeyed to London, to the timekept City,

  Where the River flows, with foreign flotations.

  There I was told: we have too many churches,

  And too few chop-houses. There I was told:

  Let the vicars retire. Men do not need the Church

  In the place where they work, but where they spend their Sundays.

  In the City, we need no bells:

  Let them waken the suburbs.

  I journeyed to the suburbs, and there I was told:

  We toil for six days, on the seventh we must motor

  To Hindhead, or Maidenhead.

  If the weather is foul we stay at home and read the papers.

  In industrial districts, there I was told

  Of economic laws.

  In the pleasant countryside, there it seemed

  That the country now is only fit for picnics.

  And the Church does not seem to be wanted

  In country or in suburb; and in the town

  Only for important weddings.

  CHORUS LEADER:

  Silence! and preserve respectful distance.

  For I perceive approaching

  The Rock. Who will perhaps answer our doubtings.

  The Rock. The Watcher. The Stranger.

  He who has seen what has happened

  And who sees what is to happen.