Chapter V

Now I am
All right....
My God ...
I do feel lazy!

No. 8. IF HENRY JAMES HAD WRITTEN THE CHURCH CATECHISM

_Q._ What is your name?

_A._ It may possibly be conceived as standing in a relation of contiguity to a certain--shall we say?--somewhat complicatedly rectilinear design--to put it colloquially, a symbol--employed by such of the races of mankind as follow the Roman usage to denote a sort of suppressed explosion, or, rather, a confused hum “produced” when the upper and the nether lip are brought with some firmness--or even, as one might phrase it, “snap”--together, and a continuous sound is compelled for egress to flow through a less harmonious though undeniably more prominent organ. Or, on the other hand, its relation to that so interesting figure may be something even closer than one of mere contiguity, however proximate, something in the nature of coincidence, of body and soul identity even: in a word, it may be, or, more exactly, may be represented by, that symbol itself.

_Q._ Who gave you that name?

_A._ Which?

_Q._ Oh no, _not_ the other one, the quite inevitably discursive family “label.”

_A._ You mean my....

_Q._ Well yes, not that all so shared, and as it were almost--if one may forgivably say it--may one?--“vulgarized”--your, as they call it, “surname.”

_A._ Oh, _not_ that one?

_Q._ No....

_A._ The other?

_Q._ Yes--that other--that more exquisitely personal, the more (dare one?) _appropriated_, the one of which, I had thought, we touched, even grasped, the skirts when our interlocution, or to put it quite brutally, when we began our conversation.

_A._ You refer....

_Q._ I am, dear lady, all ears.

_A._ To, in fact, my--since we are both to be so frank--Christian name?

_Q._ Oh, but you are great!

_A._ Not _great_, not, I mean, really, in the sense that you mean....

_Q._ _I_ mean?

_A._ The other sense, you know.

_Q._ Yes, I apprehend you, but it wasn’t that one I meant.

_A._ Then what in the world was it?

_Q._ Take it from another point of view, wasn’t frankness to be, always, our splendid object?

_A._ Explicitly,

_Q._ Wasn’t it?

_A._ Oh no, I wouldn’t doubt it; I wouldn’t, really wouldn’t, let you down.

_Q._ Not even gently?

_A._ The other way, I meant.

_Q._ Divine clarity! And who gave it you?

_A._ The Deluge!

_Q._ He was it, or she?

_A._ Oh, never he, as he would himself say, never on your life.

_Q._ And she?

_A._ She would, as she always will, bet her boots not!

_Q._ Not, surely it wasn’t, they?

_A._ They!

_Q._ They!

_A._ Oh, certainly they! Who could have stopped them. Not miserable I, so pitifully, so hopelessly, so microscopically, futilely small! They were all there, and there was I. And they did it, oh, quite finally did it.

_Q._ Who?

_Etc._

No. 9. IF LORD BYRON HAD WRITTEN “THE PASSING OF ARTHUR”

So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the western sea,
Till, when the bell for evening service tolled,
Each side had swiped the other utterly;
And, looking round, Sir Bedivere the bold
Said, “Sire, there’s no one left but you and me;
I’m game to lay a million to a fiver
That, save for us, there is not one survivor.”

“Quite likely,” answered Arthur, “and I’m sure
That I have been so hammered by these swine
To-morrow’s sun will find us yet one fewer.
I prithee take me to yon lonely shrine
Where I may rest and die. There is no cure
For men with sixty-seven wounds like mine.”
So Bedivere did very firmly grapple
His arm, and led him to the Baptist Chapel.

There he lay down, and by him burned like flame
His sword Excalibur: its massy hilt
Crusted with blazing gems that never came
From mortal mines; its blade, inlaid and gilt
And graved with many a necromantic name,
Still dabbled with the blood the king had spilt.
Which touching, Arthur said, “Sir Bedivere,
Please take this brand and throw him in the mere.”

Bold Bedivere sprang back like one distraught,
Or like a snail when tapped upon the shell,
Was _this_ the peerless prince for whom he’d fought,
A man who’d drop his cheque-book down a well?
Surely he must have dreamt the words, he thought.
Had the king spoken? Was it possible
To give so lunatic a proposal credit?...
And yet the king undoubtedly had said it.

He said it again in accents full serene:
“Go to the lake and throw this weapon in it,
And then come back and tell me what you’ve seen.
The business should not take you half a minute.
Off now. I say precisely what I mean.”
“Right, sire!” But, _sotto voce_, “What a sin it
Would be, what criminal improvidence
To waste an _arme blanche_ of such excellence!”

But Arthur’s voice broke through his meditation,
“Why this delay? I thought I said at once?”
“Yes, sire,” said he, and, with a salutation
Walked off reflecting, “How this fighting blunts
One’s wits. In any other situation
I should have guessed--’twere obvious to a dunce
That this all comes from Merlin’s precious offices,
Why could he not confine himself to prophecies?”

Bearing the brand, across the rocks he went
And now and then a hot impatient word
Witnessed the stress of inner argument.
“Curse it,” he mused, “a really sumptuous sword
Is just the very one accoutrement
I never have been able to afford;
This beautiful, this incomparable Excalibur
Would nicely suit a warrior of my calibre.”

“Could anything be madder than to hurl in
This stupid lake a sword as good as new,
Merely because that hoary humbug Merlin
Suggested that would be the thing to do?
A bigger liar never came from Berlin,
I _won’t_ be baulked by guff and bugaboo;
The old impostor’s lake may call in vain for it,
I’ll stick it in a hole and come again for it.”

So, having safely stowed away the sword
And marked the place with several large stones,
Sir Bedivere returned to his liege lord
And, with a studious frankness in his tones,
Stated that he had dropped it overboard;
But Arthur only greeted him with groans:
“My Bedivere,” he said, “I may be dying,
But even dead I’d spot such barefaced lying.”

“It’s rather rough upon a dying man
That his last dying orders should be flouted.
Time was when if you’d thus deranged my plan
I should have said, ‘Regard yourself as outed,
I’ll find some other gentleman who can.’
Now I must take what comes, that’s all about it....
My strength is failing fast, its very cold here.
Come, pull yourself together, be a soldier.”

“Once more I must insist you are to lift
Excalibur and hurl him in the mere.
Don’t hang about now. You had better shift
For all you’re worth, or when you come back here
The chances are you’ll find your master stiffed.”
Whereat the agonized Sir Bedivere,
His “Yes, Sire,” broken by a noisy sob,
Went off once more on his distasteful job.

But as he walked the inner voice did say:
“I quite agree with ‘Render unto Cæsar,’
But nothing’s said of throwing things away
When a man’s king’s an old delirious geezer,
You don’t meet swords like this one every day.
Jewels and filigree as fine as these are
Should surely be preserved in a museum
That our posterity may come and see ’em.”

“A work of Art’s a thing one holds in trust,
One has no right to throw it in a lake,
Such Vandalism would arouse disgust
In every Englishman who claims to take
An interest in Art. Oh no, I must
Delude my monarch for my country’s sake;
Obedience in such a case, in fact,
Were patently an anti-social act.”

“It is not pleasant to deceive my king,
I had much rather humour his caprice
But, if I tell him I have thrown the thing,
And, thinking that the truth, he dies in peace,
Surely the poets of our race will sing
(Unless they are the most pedantic geese)
The praises of the knight who lied to save
This precious weapon from a watery grave.”

He reached the margin of the lake and there
Until a decent interval had passed
Lingered, the sword once more safe in its lair.
Then to his anxious monarch hurried fast,
And, putting on a still more candid air,
Assured the king the brand had gone at last.
But Arthur, not deceived by any means,
Icily said: “Tell that to the marines.”

“Sir Bedivere, this conduct won’t enhance
Your reputation as a man of honour.
If you had dared to lead me such a dance
A week ago, you would have been a goner,
Listen to me! I give you one more chance;
And, if you fail again, I swear upon our
Old oath of fealty to the Table Round
I shall jump up and fell you to the ground.”

So that sad soul went off alone once more.
Rebellion frowned no longer on his face;
His spirit was broken; when he reached the shore
He wormed the sword out of its hiding-place,
Excalibur, that man’s eye should see no more,
And, fearing still a further lapse from grace,
Shut his eyes tight against that matchless jewel
And, desperately hissing, “This is cruel,”

Swung it far back; and then, with mighty sweep,
Hove it to southward as he had been bade.
And, as it fell, an arm did suddenly leap
Out of the moonlit wave, in samite clad,
And grasped the sword and drew it to the deep.
And all was still; and Bedivere, who had
No nerve at all left now, exclaimed, “My Hat!
I’ll never want another job like that!”

Thus Bedivere at last performed his vow.
And Arthur, when the warrior bore in sight,
Read his success upon his gloomy brow.
“Done it at last,” he murmured, “_that’s_ all right.
Well, Bedivere, and what has happened now?”
Demanded he; and the disconsolate knight
In a harsh bitter voice replied, “Oh, damn it all,
I saw a mystic arm, clothed in white samite all.”

“Quite right,” said Arthur, “better late than never.
Now, if you please, you’ll take me for a ride.
Put me upon your back and then endeavour
To run top-speed unto the waterside.
Come, stir your stumps, you must be pretty clever,
Or otherwise I fear I shall have died
Before you’ve landed me upon the jetty,
And then the programme’s spoilt: which were a pity.”

What followed after this (although my trade is
Romantic verse) is quite beyond my lay.
For automobile barges, full of ladies
Singing and weeping, never came my way.
Though, for that matter, I was once in Cadiz--
--But never mind. It will suffice to say
That in his final act our old friend Malory
Was obviously playing to the gallery.

No. 10. IF SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE HAD WRITTEN
“LITTLE DROPS OF WATER”

Child, I am wondering.
Last night I was watching the silver moon rising over the sea,
And in her light the colour of the sea was pale, and the colour of
the grasses was dark and sweet as the champak.
I heard the ducks crying over the waters by the shore.
I heard from the khitmatgar, threading like pearls on the darkness,
the soft notes of the cummerbund.
Child, I am wondering.

Child, I smelt the flowers,
The golden flowers ... hiding in crowds like fairies at my feet,
And as I smelt them the endless smile of the infinite broke over me,
and I knew that they and you and I were one.

They and you and I, the cowherds and the cows, the jewels and the
potter’s wheel, the mothers and the light in baby’s eyes.
For the sempstress when she takes one stitch may make nine
unnecessary;
And the smooth and shining stone that rolls and rolls like the great
river may gain no moss,
And it is extraordinary what a lot you can do with a platitude when
you dress it up in Blank Prose.
Child, I smelt the flowers.

PRINTED AT
KNIGHT’S, WEST NORWOOD

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Possible mention of Tarquin.

[2] Conceivably Horatius.

[3] Our mother, inviolate ever since, save for one only occasion.

[4] Lars Porsena in poet’s mind.