Bereft

In the black winter morning

No light will be struck near my eyes

While the clock in the stairway is warning

For five, when he used to rise.

Leave the door unbarred,

The clock unwound,

Make my lone bed hard -

Would 'twere underground!

When the summer dawns clearly,

And the appletree-tops seem alight,

Who will undraw the curtain and cheerly

Call out that the morning is bright?

When I tarry at market

No form will cross Durnover Lea

In the gathering darkness, to hark at

Grey's Bridge for the pit-pat o' me.

When the supper crock's steaming,

And the time is the time of his tread,

I shall sit by the fire and wait dreaming

In a silence as of the dead.

Leave the door unbarred,

The clock unwound,

Make my lone bed hard -

Would 'twere underground!

-o0o-

The new poetry blog
My Poetry Digest
is now online
mypoetrydigest.blogspot.com

-o0o-

The Dream is - Which?

I am laughing by the brook with her,

Splashed in its tumbling stir;

And then it is a blankness looms

As if I walked not there,

Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms,

And treading a lonely stair.

With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes

We sit where none espies;

Till a harsh change comes edging in

As no such scene were there,

But winter, and I were bent and thin,

And cinder-grey my hair.

We dance in heys around the hall,

Weightless as thistleball;

And then a curtain drops between,

As if I danced not there,

But wandered through a mounded green

To find her, I knew where.

-o0o-

At a Country Fair

At a bygone Western country fair

I saw a giant led by a dwarf

With a red string like a long thin scarf;

How much he was the stronger there

The giant seemed unaware.

And then I saw that the giant was blind,

And the dwarf a shrewd-eyed little thing;

The giant, mild, timid, obeyed the string

As if he had no independent mind,

Or will of any kind.

Wherever the dwarf decided to go

At his heels the other trotted meekly,

(Perhaps - I know not - reproaching weakly)

Like one Fate bade that it must be so,

Whether he wished or no.

Various sights in various climes

I have seen, and more I may see yet,

But that sight never shall I forget,

And have thought it the sorriest of pantomimes,

If once, a hundred times!

-o0o-

The new blog
The Paul Verlaine Poetry Page
is now online
thepaulverlainepoetrypage.blogspot.com

-o=0=o-

The Voice of Things

Forty Augusts - aye, and several more - ago,

   When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,

The waves huzza'd like a multitude below

   In the sway of an all-including joy

      Without cloy.

Blankly I walked there a double decade after,

   When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,

And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter

   At the lot of men, and all the vapoury

      Things that be.

Wheeling change has set me again standing where

   Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;

But they supplicate now - like a congregation there

   Who murmur the Confession - I outside,

   Prayer denied.

The new blog

The Paul Verlaine Poetry Page

is now online

thepaulverlainepoetrypage.blogspot.com

-o0o-

The Little Old Table

Creak, little wood thing, creak,

When I touch you with elbow or knee;

That is the way you speak

Of one who gave you to me!

You, little table, she brought -

Brought me with her own hand,

As she looked at me with a thought

That I did not understand.

Whoever owns it anon,

And hears it, will never know

What a history hangs upon

This creak from long ago.

-o0o-

At an Inn

When we as strangers sought

Their catering care,

Veiled smiles bespoke their thought

Of what we were.

They warmed as they opined

Us more than friends -

That we had all resigned

For love's dear ends.

And that swift sympathy

With living love

Which quicks the world - maybe

The spheres above,

Made them our ministers,

Moved them to say,

"Ah, God, that bliss like theirs

Would flush our day!"

And we were left alone

As Love's own pair;

Yet never the love-light shone

Between us there!

But that which chilled the breath

Of afternoon,

And palsied unto death

The pane-fly's tune.

The kiss their zeal foretold,

And now deemed come,

Came not: within his hold

Love lingered numb.

Why cast he on our port

A bloom not ours?

Why shaped us for his sport

In after-hours?

As we seemed we were not

That day afar,

And now we seem not what

We aching are.

O severing sea and land,

O laws of men,

Ere death, once let us stand

As we stood then! 

-o0o-

Two new blogs starting this weekend

The Paul Verlaine Poetry Page 

begins on Saturday 28th July

thepaulverlainepoetrypage.blogspot.com

and

My Poetry Digest

begins on Monday 30th July

mypoetrydigest.blogspot.com

-o0o-

Neutral Tones

We stood by a pond that winter day, 
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, 
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod; 
- They had fallen from an ash, and were grey. 

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove 
Over tedious riddles of years ago; 
And some words played between us to and fro 
On which lost the more by our love. 

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing 
Alive enough to have strength to die; 
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby 
Like an ominous bird a-wing -

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, 
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me 
Your face, and the God cursed sun, and a tree, 
And a pond edged with greyish leaves. 

-o0o-

A Practical Woman

“O who’ll get me a healthy child -

I should prefer a son -

Seven have I had in thirteen years,

Sickly every one!

“Three mope about as feeble shapes;

Weak; white; they’ll be no good.

One came deformed; an idiot next;

And two are crass as wood.

“I purpose one not only sound

In flesh, but bright in mind;

And duly for producing him

A means I’ve now to find.”

She went away. She disappeared,

Years, years. Then back she came;

In her hand was a blooming boy

Mentally and in frame.

“I found a father at last who’d suit

The purpose in my head,

And used him till he’s done his job,”

Was all thereon she said.  

-o0o-

Faintheart in a Railway Train

At nine in the morning there passed a church,

At ten there passed me by the sea,

At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,

At two a forest of oak and birch,

And then, on a platform, she.

A radiant stranger, who saw not me,

I said, “Get out to her do I dare?”

But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,

And the wheels moved on. O could it but be

That I had alighted there! 

-o0o-

At the Altar Rail

"My bride is not coming, alas!" says the groom,

And the telegram shakes in his hand. "I own

It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room

When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,

And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,

And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.

"Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife - 

'Twas foolish perhaps! - to forsake the ways

Of the flaring town for a farmer's life.

She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:

"It's sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest,

But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.

What I really am you have never gleaned;

I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned."

-o0o-

I am the One

I am the one whom ringdoves see

Through chinks in boughs

When they do not rouse

In sudden dread,

But stay on cooing, as if they said:

‘Oh; it's only he.’

I am the passer when up-eared hares,

Stirred as they eat

The new-sprung wheat,

Their munch resume

As if they thought; ‘He is one for whom

Nobody cares.’

Wet-eyed mourners glance at me

As in train they pass

Along the grass

To a hollowed spot,

And think: ‘No matter; he quizzes not

Our misery.’

I hear above: ‘We stars must lend

No fierce regard

To his gaze, so hard

Bent on us thus,—

Must scathe him not. He is one with us

Beginning and end.’

-o0o-

In the Restaurant

"But hear. If you stay, and the child be born,

It will pass as your husband's with the rest,

While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn

Will be gleaming at us from east to west;

And the child will come as a life despised;

I feel an elopement is ill-advised!"

"O you realize not what it is, my dear,

To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms

Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here,

And nightly take him into my arms!

Come to the child no name or fame,

Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame."

-o0o-

At the Draper's

"I stood at the back of the shop, my dear,

But you did not perceive me.

Well, when they deliver what you were shown

I shall know nothing of it, believe me!"

And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said,

"O, I didn't see you come in there -

Why couldn't you speak?" "Well, I didn't. I left

That you should not notice I'd been there.

You were viewing some lovely things. "Soon required

For a widow, of latest fashion;"

And I knew 'twould upset you to meet the man

Who had to be cold and ashen

And screwed in a box before they could dress you

"In the latest new note in mourning,"

As they defined it. So, not to distress you,

I left you to your adorning."

-o0o-

An August Midnight

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,

And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:

On this scene enter - winged, horned, and spined -

A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;

While 'mid my page there idly stands

A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

Thus meet we five, in this still place,

At this point of time, at this point in space.

- My guests besmear my new-penned line,

Or bang at the lamp and fall supine.

"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?

They know Earth-secrets that know not I. 

-o0o-

At a Watering Place

They sit and smoke on the esplanade,

The man and his friend, and regard the bay

Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,

Smile sallowly in the decline of day.

And saunterers pass with laugh and jest -

A handsome couple among the rest.

‘That smart proud pair,’ says the man to his friend,

‘Are to marry next week. . . . How little he thinks

That dozens of days and nights on end

I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links

Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm. . . .

Well, bliss is in ignorance: what's the harm!’

-o0o-

In the Moonlight

 “O lonely workman, standing there 

In a dream, why do you stare and stare 

At her grave, as no other grave there were? 

“If your great gaunt eyes so importune 

              Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,         

Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!” 

“Why, fool, it is what I would rather see 

Than all the living folk there be; 

But alas, there is no such joy for me!” 

“Ah - she was one you loved, no doubt,         

  Through good and evil, through rain and drought, 

  And when she passed, all your sun went out?” 

“Nay: she was the woman I did not love, 

 Whom all the others were ranked above, 

Whom during her life I thought nothing of.”     

-o0o-

In the Nuptial Chamber

"O that mastering tune?" And up in the bed

Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;

"And why?" asks the man she had that day wed,

With a start, as the band plays on outside.

"It's the townsfolks' cheery compliment

Because of our marriage, my Innocent."

"O but you don't know! 'Tis the passionate air

To which my old Love waltzed with me,

And I swore as we spun that none should share

My home, my kisses, till death, save he!

And he dominates me and thrills me through,

And it's he I embrace while embracing you!"

-o0o-

The Self-Unseeing

Here is the ancient floor, 

Footworn and hollowed and thin, 

Here was the former door 

Where the dead feet walked in. 

She sat here in her chair, 

Smiling into the fire; 

He who played stood there, 

Bowing it higher and higher. 

Childlike, I danced in a dream; 

Blessings emblazoned that day; 

Everything glowed with a gleam; 

Yet we were looking away! 

-o0o-

The Interloper

"And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home."

There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise,

And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;

I view them talking in quiet glee

As they drop down towards the puffins' lair

By the roughest of ways;

But another with the three rides on, I see,

Whom I like not to be there!

No: it's not anybody you think of. Next

A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream

Where two sit happy and half in the dark:

They read, helped out by a frail-wick'd gleam,

Some rhythmic text;

But one sits with them whom they don't mark,

One I'm wishing could not be there.

No: not whom you knew and name. And now

I discern gay diners in a mansion-place,

And the guests dropping wit - pert, prim, or choice,

And the hostess's tender and laughing face,

And the host's bland brow;

I cannot help hearing a hollow voice,

And I'd fain not hear it there.

No: it's not from the stranger you met once. Ah,

Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds;

People on a lawn - quite a crowd of them. Yes,

And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads;

And they say, "Hurrah!"

To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless,

Who ought not to be there.

Nay: it's not the pale Form your imagings raise,

That waits on us all at a destined time,

It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed,

O that it were such a shape sublime;

In these latter days!

It is that under which best lives corrode;

Would, would it could not be there!

-o0o-

At Rushy-pond

On the frigid face of the heath-hemmed pond 

There shaped the half-grown moon: 

Winged whiffs from the north with a husky croon 

Blew over and beyond. 

And the wind flapped the moon in its float on the pool, 

And stretched it to oval form; 

Then corkscrewed it like a wriggling worm; 

Then wanned it weariful. 

And I cared not for conning the sky above 

Where hung the substant thing, 

For my thought was earthward sojourning 

On the scene I had vision of. 

Since there it was once, in a secret year, 

I had called a woman to me 

From across this water, ardently - 

And practised to keep her near; 

Till the last weak love-words had been said, 

And ended was her time, 

And blurred the bloomage of her prime, 

And white the earlier red. 

And the troubled orb in the pond's sad shine 

Was her very wraith, as scanned 

When she withdrew thence, mirrored, and 

Her days dropped out of mine.

-o0o-

I found her out there

I found her out there

On a slope few see,

That falls westwardly

To the sharp-edged air,

Where the ocean breaks

On the purple strand,

And the hurricane shakes

The solid land.

I brought her here,

And have laid her to rest

In a noiseless nest

No sea beats near.

She will never be stirred

In her loamy cell

By the waves long heard

And loved so well.

So she does not sleep

By those haunted heights

The Atlantic smites

And the blind gales sweep,

Whence she often would gaze

At Dundagel's far head,

While the dipping blaze

Dyed her face fire-red;

And would sigh at the tale

Of sunk Lyonnesse,

While a wind-tugged tress

Flapped her cheek like a flail;

Or listen at whiles

With a thought-bound brow

To the murmuring miles

She is far from now.

Yet her shade, maybe,

Will glide underground

Till it catch the sound

Of that western sea

As it swells and sobs

Where she once domiciled,

And joy in its throbs

With the heart of a child. 

-o0o-

Afterwards

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, 

And the May month flaps its glad green leaves

like wings, 

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the

neighbours say, 

"He was a man who used to notice such things"?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's

soundless blink, 

The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades

to alight 

Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer

may think, 

"To him this must have been a familiar sight." 

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, 

When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, 

One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, 

But he could do little for them; and now he is gone." 

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door, 

Watching the full-starred heavens that

winter sees, 

Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,

"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"? 

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom, 

And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, 

Till they rise again, as they were a new

bell's boom, 

"He hears it not now, but used to notice

such things"?

-o0o-

A Wife in London

I - The Tragedy 

She sits in the tawny vapour 

   That the City lanes have uprolled, 

   Behind whose webby fold on fold 

Like a waning taper 

   The street-lamp glimmers cold. 

A messenger's knock cracks smartly, 

   Flashed news is in her hand 

   Of meaning it dazes to understand 

Though shaped so shortly: 

   He - has fallen - in the far South Land . . . 

II - The Irony 

'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker, 

   The postman nears and goes: 

   A letter is brought whose lines disclose 

By the firelight flicker 

   His hand, whom the worm now knows: 

Fresh - firm - penned in highest feather - 

   Page-full of his hoped return, 

   And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn 

In the summer weather, 

   And of new love that they would learn.

-o0o-

The Beauty

O do not praise my beauty more,

In such word-wild degree,

And say I am one all eyes adore;

For these things harass me!

But do for ever softly say:

"From now unto the end

Come weal, come wanzing, come what may,

Dear, I will be your friend."

I hate my beauty in the glass:

My beauty is not I:

I wear it: none cares whether, alas,

Its wearer live or die!

The inner I O care for, then,

Yea, me and what I am,

And shall be at the gray hour when

My cheek begins to clam.

-o0o-

John and Jane

I

He sees the world as a boisterous place

Where all things bear a laughing face,

And humorous scenes go hourly on,

Does John.

II

They find the world a pleasant place

Where all is ecstasy and grace,

Where a light has risen that cannot wane,

Do John and Jane.

III

They see as a palace their cottage-place,

Containing a pearl of the human race,

A hero, maybe, hereafter styled,

Do John and Jane with a baby-child.

IV

They rate the world as a gruesome place,

Where fair looks fade to a skull's grimace, -

As a pilgrimage they would fain get done -

Do John and Jane with their worthless son.

John and Jane

Joys of Memory

When the spring comes round, and a certain day

Looks out from the brume by the eastern copsetrees

And says, Remember,

I begin again, as if it were new,

A day of like date I once lived through,

Whiling it hour by hour away;

So shall I do till my December,

When spring comes round.

I take my holiday then and my rest

Away from the dun life here about me,

Old hours re-greeting

With the quiet sense that bring they must

Such throbs as at first, till I house with dust,

And in the numbness my heartsome zest

For things that were, be past repeating

When spring comes round.

-o0o-

Fetching Her

An hour before the dawn,

         My friend,

You lit your waiting bedside-lamp,

   Your breakfast-fire anon,

And outing into the dark and damp

   You saddled, and set on.

   Thuswise, before the day,

         My friend,

You sought her on her surfy shore,

   To fetch her thence away

Unto your own new-builded door

   For a staunch lifelong stay.

   You said:  "It seems to be,

         My friend,

That I were bringing to my place

   The pure brine breeze, the sea,

The mews - all her old sky and space,

   In bringing her with me!"

  - But time is prompt to expugn,

         My friend,

Such magic-minted conjurings:

   The brought breeze fainted soon,

And then the sense of seamews' wings,

   And the shore's sibilant tune.

   So, it had been more due,

         My friend,

Perhaps, had you not pulled this flower

   From the craggy nook it knew,

And set it in an alien bower;

   But left it where it grew!

-o0o-

Julie-Jane

Sing; how 'a would sing!

How 'a would raise the tune

When we rode in the wagon from harvesting

By the light o' the moon!

Dance; how 'a would dance!

If a fiddlestring did but sound

She would hold out her coats, give a slanting glance,

And go round and round.

Laugh; how 'a would laugh!

Her peony lips would part

As if none such a place for a lover to quaff

At the deeps of a heart.

Julie, O girl of joy,

Soon, soon that lover he came.

Ah, yes; and gave thee a baby-boy,

But never his name . . .

- Tolling for her, as you guess;

And the baby too . . . 'Tis well.

You knew her in maidhood likewise? - Yes,

That's her burial bell.

"I suppose," with a laugh, she said,

"I should blush that I'm not a wife;

But how can it matter, so soon to be dead,

What one does in life!"

When we sat making the mourning

By her death-bed side, said she,

"Dears, how can you keep from your lovers, adorning

In honour of me!"

Bubbling and brightsome eyed!

But now - O never again.

She chose her bearers before she died

From her fancy-men.

-o0o-

Geographical Knowledge

A Memory of Christiana C.

Where Blackmoor was, the road that led

To Bath, she could not show,

Nor point the sky that overspread

Towns ten miles off or so.

But that Calcutta stood this way,

Cape Horn there figured fell,

That here was Boston, here Bombay,

She could declare full well.

Less known to her the track athwart

Froom Mead or Yell'ham Wood

Than how to make some Austral port

In seas of surly mood.

She saw the glint of Guinea's shore

Behind the plum-tree nigh,

Heard old unruly Biscay's roar

In the weir's purl hard by . . .

"My son's a sailor, and he knows

All seas and many lands,

And when he's home he points and shows

Each country where it stands.

"He's now just there - by Gib's high rock -

And when he gets, you see,

To Portsmouth here, behind the clock,

Then he'll come back to me!"

-o0o-

The Ageing House

When the walls were red

        That now are seen

        To be overspread

        With a mouldy green,

        A fresh fair head

        Would often lean

        From the sunny casement

        And scan the scene,

While blithely spoke the wind to the little sycamore tree.

        But storms have raged

        Those walls about,

        And the head has aged

        That once looked out;

        And zest is suaged

        And trust is doubt,

        And slow effacement

        Is rife throughout,

While fiercely girds the wind at the long-limbed sycamore tree!

-o0o-

Beeny Cliff

1

O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, 

And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free-

The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.

I I

The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away

In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say, 

As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.

III

A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain, 

And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain, 

And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.

IV

-Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky, 

And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh, 

And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by? 

V

What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore, 

The woman now is-elsewhere-whom the ambling pony bore, 

And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore. 

-o0o-