Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Glow the two tawny lanterns on the hedge,
Gleam the ungainly boughs the window blurs,
And Betsey nodding on the seat’s soft edge
Holds to her heart those pompon’d shoes of hers;
Till in my arms, most spent of revellers,
I lift her slumb’ring whom nor lifting grieves
Nor sudden stay nor the cold night wind stirs,
Borne up the path through fragrance of box-leaves,
Up to her drowsy cot under dependent eaves.

SOUVENIR OF MICHAEL DRAYTON

I

Scarce hath the crookèd scythe
Duly been whetted
When all the mowers blithe
(By the storm letted,
Crouching the shed beneath
At the field’s margent)
See the first fallen swathe
Pelted with argent.
White mist the valley blurs,
White the horizon,
Since the cloud skirmishers
Sent their first spies on.
Haste away,
Waters grey,
Spare of your shedding,
Till we bestow our hay
Safe in the steading.

II

Gild, sun, the pendent leaves
Silverly dripping,
Call the swifts from the eaves
Screaming and dipping,
Raise the green docks that be
To the ground beaten,
All the washed earth we see
Comfort and sweeten;
Till at soft interval
On the small flowers,
Drops from the thatch-ends fall—
Spent are the showers.
Haste away,
Waters grey,
Spare of your shedding,
Till we bestow our hay
Safe in the steading.

III

Soon may the whisp’ring blade
Bow the grey grasses,
Lo, the lush edge unfrayed
Where the scythe passes!
All with a stately speed
Shorn and soft whistle
Muted on nought of weed,
Burdock nor thistle.—
Grace hath possessed the sky,
Hope hath o’er-spanned it,
Parteth he hurriedly,
Storm, the black bandit.
Haste away,
Waters grey,
Spare of your shedding,
Till we bestow our hay
Safe in the steading.

“FOUR-PAWS”

Four-paws, the kitten from the farm,
Is come to live with Betsey-Jane,
Leaving the stack-yard for the warm
Flower-compassed cottage in the lane,
To wash his idle face and play
Among chintz cushions all the day.

Under the shadow of her hair
He lies, who loves him nor desists
To praise his whiskers and compare
The tabby bracelets on his wrists,—
Omelet at lunch and milk at tea
Suit Betsey-Jane and so fares he.

Happy beneath her golden hand
He purrs contentedly nor hears
His Mother mourning through the land,
The old grey cat with tattered ears
And humble tail and heavy paw
Who brought him up among the straw.

Never by day she ventures nigh,
But when the dusk grows dim and deep
And moths flit out of the strange sky
And Betsey has been long asleep—
Out of the dark she comes and brings
Her dark maternal offerings;—

Some field-mouse or a throstle caught
Near netted fruit or in the corn,
Or rat, for this her darling sought
In the old barn where he was born;
And all lest on his dainty bed
Four-paws were faint or under-fed.

Only between the twilight hours
Under the window-panes she walks
Shrewdly among the scented flowers
Nor snaps the soft nasturtium stalks,
Uttering still her plaintive cries
And Four-paws, from the house, replies,

Leaps from his cushion to the floor,
Down the brick passage scantly lit,
Waits wailing at the outer door
Till one arise and open it—
Then from the swinging lantern’s light
Runs to his Mother in the night.

“FOUR-PAWS” IN LONDON

Four-paws, we know the sun is white
At dawn in Hampshire when the night
Deserts those frozen miles,
When robin creaks from wintry bush
And early milk-boy’s breeches brush
The hoar-frost from the stiles;

Yet shall you never hear him more
Insistent at our cottage door
Nor of his spoils partake,
Alas, poor puss who stir and yawn
Uneasy in the London dawn
And, in a flat, awake.

Four-paws, forgive us! When apprised
Of our departure you devised,
No doubt, some darling plan
Of exodus that should surpass
His who removed last Michaelmas—
Your friend the dairy-man:—

A mightier waggon on the road
You pictured and so vast a load
That all should turn and look,—
Betsey precarious on the shaft,
Master and Mistress fore and aft,
The carter and the cook,

Nurse, with her knitting, in mid-air,
Carpets in bales, your favourite chair
And (the progressive path
With added glory to invest)
Our Four-paws couchant on the crest
Of an inverted bath.

Alas, what difference disgraced
Our flight! An obscure van replaced
The customary wain;
And you, with many a mournful cry,
Fettered by Betsey in the fly
And hampered in the train.

And now you’re here. Well, it may be
The sun _does_ rise in Battersea
Although to-day be dark,
Life is not shorn of loves and hates
While there are sparrows on the slates
And keepers in the Park:

And you yourself will come to learn
The ways of London and in turn
Assume your cockney cares,
Like other folk who live in flats,
Chasing your purely abstract rats
Upon the concrete stairs.

TO MY SISTER DOROTHY, WITH A PASTE BROOCH

Time, cunning smith, hath set you in my heart
Like stones in silver none may wrest apart;
Not counterfeit as these our loves shall stay
When sullen-footed Time hath paced away.

SESTINA

TO D. E.

I saw myself encircled in the grey
Of your grey eyes, Dear Love, as in a glass;
In place of lurking glooms I come their way
As idle ghosts through magic mirrors pass
Or shifty clouds bewilder a spring day
Or windy shadows dusk the summer grass.

And as swift sickles lop the hedge-row grass,
As ghosts scent out the dawn with faces grey
And flee before the stirring feet of day,
As magic shivers in a splintered glass,
So all the shaken pictures of me pass
Even with the moving of your head away.

Yet would your head be ever turned my way,
Only our peace is fugitive as grass:—
Beyond the clapping lintels footsteps pass,
Shake the snared joy from quiet’s cobweb grey—
O who drinks silence from a jolted glass,
Who deals in stillness on a market-day?

Our joys go begging for a gentle day,
They are swayed as weed-stems in a water-way,
Hurt as blind lips that drain a broken glass,
Blown down by breath as petals flung on grass,
Thinned as gold hair dull sorrow braids with grey,
Lopped short as willow-tufts where cattle pass.

This noisy horde of minutes never pass,
This patchwork crew;—they throng us day by day,
Hint of silk linings to their cloaks of grey,
Cleave out strong-elbowed their ungentle way,
Bruise the poor joy as legions tread the grass,
Or as wet fingers rub a moaning glass.

There is no day ringed round with seas of glass,
No island day, where like-faced minutes pass
Fingered on gathered mouth through breathless grass
With close-girt garment lest the bloom of day
Be brushed or pollen spilt along their way,—
Or lest my face be shook from your eyes’ grey.

O dear grey eyes, though ruder minutes pass
And dusk the glass, your heart is turned my way
Wherein all day my face springs up like grass.

LULLABY FOR A LITTLE GIRL

Now candle-flames disperse the rout
Of shadows and their giant wars;
And though the roof of night without
Be spanned with dusk and set with stars,
’Tis lullaby,
The elm-tops cry,
And lullaby, the leaves that pass
In stealth across the window-glass.

The comb shall sleek your drooping head
And through the darling tangles go
And all your night attire is spread
Before the fire to face the glow,
And lullaby,
The cinders sigh,
For ev’ry rosy palace gone,
Fall’n in their dwarfish Ilion.

Now rest, your prayers said aright
And timely supped your milky bowl,
Your little body all as white
And sweet as your unsoilèd soul;
And lullaby,
Her melody,
Who from the quilted bedside goes,
A-tiptoe, when your eye-lids close.

RONDEAU OF SARUM CLOSE

In Sarum Close, when she had said her say,
He stood bare-headed where dim vapours lay
Heavy on vacant lawn, athwart the stone
Of that great pile that stands unsought, alone,—
Himself as still and derelict as they.
Here, when morn’s gleaming hand had rolled away
From the green plot of this their week-old play
Her misty curtain, each to each was shown,
In Sarum Close.

Void the discoloured fane before him lay,
Void the dark-sodded precincts,—far away
One closed a window, night’s appeal had grown
Perchance too urgent, even as his own
Had seemed to her whose friendship did with day
In Sarum close.

THE KNOBBY-GREEN

O thou who ’neath the umbrageous trees
That line the Avenue Louise
Did’st spread in Belgian sun and breeze
Thy buds about,
I come to weep thy destinies
My Brussels Sprout:

Who, on this drear December day,
Rearest above mine Essex clay
Thy wand of buds as green as they
Who spend their Yule
Hearing remoter church-bells play
In St. Gudule.

Hail, noble alien, I see
Thou bear’st in exile and for me
A neat-curl’d row of progeny,
(Not all unlike
Some purse-proud donor’s family,
By John van Eyck)

For me unmindful of thy place
(Comrade of carpets and of lace)
Who class thee with the vulgar race
Of Beet and Bean,
And call thee—to thy very face—
The Knobby-green.

THE CARCANET

The world’s a quarry for whose spoils
Love, the untiring miner, toils
Early and late, such stones to get
As may be cut devised and set
Into his mistress’ carcanet.

Alack that love can never choose
But bring thee pebbles of no use:—
Glance at the gift and thou shalt see
Each facet in his treasury
Of stones doth but diminish thee.

TO A TOWN CRIER

“Whiffin, proclaim silence!”—_Pickwick_

Whiffin, with all thy faults, I love thee still,
Thee and thine ancient office and the sweet
Metallic peal that quelled the popular heat
When party strife ran high in Eatanswill;
Who now with quavering eloquence would’st fill,
And tidings of a pilfered purse, the street
Maddened with motors and the armoured fleet
Of base mechanical engines out to kill.
Go, thou sole arbiter of Buff and Blue,
Time hath prevailed against thee, yield the floor,
Toll, on bare sufferance, from door to door,
The hooters hold the highway;—as for you,
You voice the missing ha’pence of the poor,
And they the incomes of the well-to-do.

THE TALE OF JOCKO

A STORY FOR A CHILD

I

An old white Jocko, kindly and urbane,
Lived with a little girl called Betsey-Jane,
He was her oldest friend, thin was his hair,
One arm he lacked, but Jocko did not care,
No more did Betsey-Jane;—his eyes were gone,
His figure flat, but all his teeth were on,
Stitched to his mouth, a row of beady pearls
More white than those of many little girls.
All day to please he did his docile best
And only squeaked when Betsey punched his chest;
When bed-time came and Nurse tucked Betsey in,
Warm in her cot he slept beneath her chin.

II

Now Betsey-Jane was rather more than two
And just about as good as I and you;—
She’d learnt to talk, but not learnt when to stop,
Her yellow hair swung round her in a mop,
Round was her face, her eyes were opened wide
And only blinked in sleep or when she cried;
White frocks she had and blue her pinafore
With scarlet stitching at the neck, and more
Delights she had than many girls and boys,—
Father and Mother, Nurse and many toys
To comfort her, but, more than all the rest,
There is no doubt she loved her Jocko best.

III

Yet Jocko’s life was not a life of ease,—
We think to do entirely as we please,
Age teaches otherwise. One evil day
A cat approached the cushion where he lay
And tore away his inoffensive hair
And left him with his leathern skin laid bare,
Silent upon the rug. His Betsey-Jane
Found him with tears and kissed him well again;
But she herself, forgetful of her grief,
Laughed when they dressed him in a handkerchief
Just like a doll, but Jocko did not mind,
He still forgave her for his heart was kind.

IV

Thus did our Jocko play, for Betsey’s sake,
The Grand Domestic Game of Give and Take,
Until her rudeness to her friend was such
As makes men say “This is a straw too much.”
One day he sat, as docile as a lamb,
By Betsey-Jane who, upright in her pram,
Refused to sleep and went from bad to worse,
Kicked off her rug and disobeyed her nurse;
And though her Jocko did not speak his mind
And only stared to see her so unkind,
In Endless Street, some yards from their abode,
She picked him up and flung him in the road.

V

On sped the pram nor did the nurse’s pace
Leave time to miss our hero from his place.
Flat by the curb lay Jocko, still and pale,
Till a rude sparrow plucked him by the tail
And up he sat;—the sparrow hopped around
And eyed him seated sadly on the ground,
Propped up against the parapet and grey
With grime and dust that in the gutter lay.
Then Jocko spoke, he smoothed his sullied fur
With one long trembling paw, and thought of her
And said, all torn betwixt his love and pain,—
“I will go back no more to Betsey-Jane.”

VI

“I will arise and go beyond the din
Of towns to where the endless woods begin,
There among tangled oaks and lowly ways
Of undergrowth to end my dreary days;
I will seek acorns, beech-nuts, hips and haws
And pluck them down with my prehensile paws;
While the grey rabbits, never shy with me,
From holes around my sandy-rooted tree
Come out to nibble in the gentle rain,—
A calmer life than that with Betsey-Jane.
Long is the way, but I will make a start,
A carrier shall take me in his cart.”

VII

This said, he rose, and sought with feeble pace,
For he was stiff and sore, the Market Place;
Where, without horses and their shafts turned down,
Are ranged the carts that come into the town;
Until at dusk, all loaded up, they’re gone.
He found the cart that went to Clarendon.
Beneath it lay a yellow dog who shook
His brazen collar, but his churlish look
Passed off when Jocko hailed the man inside
Who, loading parcels and not looking, cried,—
“We start in Butcher Row, sir, from the Bear.
At four o’clock.” Said Jocko “I’ll be there.”

VIII

All was arranged, and he could do no more
But pass the time until the clock struck four.
He wandered up the Market; far and wide
The burly drovers elbowed him aside,
The sheep regarded him with mild surprise
Behind their hurdles, and the hairy eyes
Of families of little porkers stared
And cart-horses with braided tresses glared
And stamped upon the cobbles. From their shed
The calves looked bluntly round and many a head
Of penned-up fowls peered through a wiry door,—
“Jocko!” they cackled, “we will meet once more!”

IX

Out of the Market Place an alley led
To Poultry Cross and old white Jocko sped
Beneath its shelter and surveyed the stalls
Which here sell hobby horse, tops and balls,
And tins for little cakes. One stall was full
Of button-cards and reels and hanks of wool,
Another sold you sage and pansy roots,
And this, red carpet-slippers, hob-nailed boots
And clogs, and hanging on a string by twos
A row of little russet leather shoes;
Tears filled his eyes, he turned to look again,—
“Those shoes,” said he, “are just like Betsey-Jane.”

X

While thus he spake two farmers sauntered past
And turned to stare at Jocko, said the last,—
“I saw that monkey next a Spanish hen,
The little beast has wandered from his pen!”
Jocko is captured by the portly pair,
They lead him, passive, to the Market Square;
Once more the hens their throats exultant crane,—
“Jocko!” they cackle; “Here he is again!”
The farmers stuff our hero, sad and sore,
Into a vacant pen and slam the door:—
Through the grim wires the searching breezes moan
And Jocko sits there shivering alone.

XI

The time lagged on; some children through his door
Prodded his fur with sticks, the clock struck four.
Now is the time, but Jocko does not care,
When carriers are starting from the Bear;
Fast in his pen, and all his anger gone,
No longer would he live at Clarendon.
Home was his one desire. “At six,” he said,
“My Betsey-Jane is kissed, and goes to bed,
Her bath-tub by the nursery fire will be,
She will come in and look around for me
And sob all night beneath her counterpane
For her lost Jocko—little Betsey-Jane!”

XII

While Jocko thus lamented, through the crowd
There came a little girl who sobbed aloud
And clutched her Mother’s hand; ’twas Betsey-Jane,
Who all the afternoon had sought in vain
Her Jocko cast away in Endless Street;
Tired are her little gaitered legs, her feet
So weary, each new thought of Jocko brings
New tears to wet her woollen bonnet strings
And drip from each blue tassel to the ground.
She would not look on all the beasts around,
But Jocko saw her coat, and “Betsey-Jane,”
He cried, “Do come and take me home again!”

XIII

Alas, they did not hear, his voice was low,
With chill and hunger, Mother turned to go;
But Betsey-Jane looked sadly back and then
Beheld him upright in his distant pen.
She dropped her Mother’s hand and with a shout
Of “Jocko, Jocko!” ran to get him out;—
Two shame-faced men undid at her commands
His cage and Mother put him in her hands,
She clasped him closely, not a word was said,
And laid her tearful cheek against his head.

XIV

So back to Endless Street and once again
Our Jocko slumbers close to Betsey-Jane,
Clutched in her little fingers’ rosy snare,
Among the sleepy tangles of her hair,
Seen dimly through her cot’s surrounding rail.
And here are morals tied to Jocko’s Tale:—
“Though hurt your feelings never try to roam
For there are many places worse than home.”
And yet another,—“Never slight or spurn
A good old friend, they say a worm will turn;
And such-like stories end in deeper pain
Than that of Jocko and his Betsey-Jane.”

THE WAG-TAIL

By brook and bent,
Alert and diligent,
All day my merry wag-tail went,

Soberly clad
She seemed, in feathers sad
Which yet a fair white braiding had;

Nor did she fail
With jerking beak and tail
Quite to dislodge th’ incurious snail,

And thence away
To the pollard where all day
Her brown big-footed babies lay.

—I do desire
No better, nor look higher,
Pied wag-tail, than thy plain attire;

Nor would I roam
Afar, but kindly come
Back to th’ acclaiming mouths at home.

Like thee to run
About my works begun
And pluck delights from ev’ry one.

Where (might I do’t)
Living, my only suit,
And dead, my dearest attribute.

HIGH TIDE AT BATTERSEA

So now my Thames is fairly on the turn
And plain it is the sum of water seeks
That ocean which the flood so late did spurn
With long reluctance in the little creeks;
Now the great barges tethered to their buoys
(Their gulls still seated in deliberate loads)
Swing round majestical and, with no noise,
Face the hid sea beyond these sullen roads.
Even so my soul which did so long abide
With thoughts so fledged and meditative freighted
Hath veered about and answered to the tide,
Glad, and her faithless station abdicated;—
Lord, ere this lovely ebb shall set for me,
Slip thou my chain and lure me out to sea.

TO MY DAUGHTER

WHO TELLS ME SHE CAN DRESS HERSELF

So, dear, have you and Nurse conspired
In secret, and all eyes evaded,
Till you can boast yourself attired
Unwatched, uncounselled and unaided?

Perfect in button, tape and hook,
You’ve learned the knack, you come to tell us,
And while you turn that we may look
I own I am a little jealous

That she has taught you with success
How to assume your frock and shed it,
That you have learnt the art to dress
And Abigail’s is all the credit.

Yet my devotion has its will,
Nor can I lightly yield to Nurse all
The praise, for I have prompted still
A spiritual dress rehearsal;

On your soft hair a helmet placed,
Fastened your breastplate like a bib on,
And tied the Truth about your waist
Where she is proud to tie your ribbon.

Each has her task, decorous, sweet,
Fair, to surpass your friends, she made you,
While for your hidden foes’ defeat
I in your Pauline arms arrayed you.

For, though you tire of sash and gown
And fold them up for good, there’s no day
When these, that I have made your own,
Shall be a burden or démodés.

Yet, though the clasps endure, I know
I’ll wish our handiwork were neater
When at celestial gates you show
The well-worn harness to St. Peter.

THE BABY GOAT

Four alders guard a bridge of planks
And waveless waters filmed with brown,
A rugged lawn’s uneven banks
Slope gently down,
And there, still chafing at the chain
That girds his slim pathetic throat,
They’ve picketed our friend again—
The Baby Goat.

Treading alone the watered vale,
Betsey and I, beside the marsh
Often we linger to bewail
His durance harsh;
What plaints allure my baby’s feet,
What tethered struggles claim her sighs,
What shrill protestant whinnies greet
Her long good-byes.

Once we repassed the lonely ground
Below the alders where he feeds
And spied his stunted horns girt round
With flow’ring weeds,
Two merry wenches and a child
Caressed his grey ill-fitting coat
And, lolling in the sedge, beguiled
The Baby Goat.

Now, for long days companionless,
His soft blunt nose, his agate eyes,
His raised remonstrant brows express
The sad surprise
Wherewith the desolate green waste
O’erloads his heart who at the edge
Of stagnant waters kneels to taste
The thankless sedge.

His Mother is his chiefest lack
Who in some heathy upland place
Tidied his sturdy socks of black
And licked his face;
He turns to see us saunter by
The level highway hand-in-hand—
I think the Baby Goat knows why
We understand.

BOURNEMOUTH TO POOLE