Chimneysmoke

But Mrs. Black, the President,
She said, "Dear me, I always think

Well, poor old Solugubrious,
But neither Brown, Jones, Smith, nor Black

How hoarse and husky in my ear
You have an awful cold, my dear—

When I put in a call to-day
To hear you faintly, sadly, say

I felt (I say) quick sympathy
Will you be sorry too for me

Scuttle, scuttle, little roach—
How you run when I approach:
Up above the pantry shelf.
Hastening to secrete yourself.

Most adventurous of vermin,
How I wish I could determine
How you spend your hours of ease,
Perhaps reclining on the cheese.

Cook has gone, and all is dark—
Then the kitchen is your park:
In the garbage heap that she leaves
Do you browse among the tea leaves?

How delightful to suspect
All the places you have trekked:
Does your long antenna whisk its
Gentle tip across the biscuits?

Do you linger, little soul,
Drowsing in our sugar bowl?
Or, abandonment most utter,
Shake a shimmy on the butter?

Do you chant your simple tunes
Swimming in the baby's prunes?
Then, when dawn comes, do you slink
Homeward to the kitchen sink?

Timid roach, why be so shy?
We are brothers, thou and I.
In the midnight, like yourself,
I explore the pantry shelf!

Rockabye, insect, lie low in thy den,
Father's a cockroach, mother's a hen.
And Betty, the maid, doesn't clean up the sink,
So you shall have plenty to eat and to drink.

Hushabye, insect, behind the mince pies:
If the cook sees you her anger will rise;
She'll scatter poison, as bitter as gall,
Death to poor cockroach, hen, baby and all.

There was a gay henroach, and what do you think,
She lived in a cranny behind the old sink—
Eggshells and grease were the chief of her diet;
She went for a stroll when the kitchen was quiet.

She walked in the pantry and sampled the bread,
But when she came back her old husband was dead:
Long had he lived, for his legs they were fast,
But the kitchen maid caught him and squashed him at last.

I knew a black beetle, who lived down a drain,
And friendly he was though his manners were plain;
When I took a bath he would come up the pipe,
And together we'd wash and together we'd wipe.

Though mother would sometimes protest with a sneer
That my choice of a tub-mate was wanton and queer,
A nicer companion I never have seen:
He bathed every night, so he must have been clean.

Whenever he heard the tap splash in the tub
He'd dash up the drain-pipe and wait for a scrub,
And often, so fond of ablution was he,
I'd find him there floating and waiting for me.

But nurse has done something that seems a great shame:
She saw him there, waiting, prepared for a game:
She turned on the hot and she scalded him sore
And he'll never come bathing with me any more.

C on was a thorn to brother Pro—
Whatever Pro would claim to know

I'd like to have you meet my wife!
I've never seen, in all my life,

Her type is not some bold-face font,
That no typographer could want

A nice proportion of white space
And not a feature in her face

Locked up with all her sweet display
Corrected proof marked stet, O. K.—

She has a fine one-column head,
Her forehead has an extra lead

Her nose, italicized brevier,
Her mouth is set in pearl: her ear

Her cheeks (a pink parenthesis)
And such typography as this

And so, of all typefounder chaps
She is my nonpareil (in caps)

I hope you will not stand aloof
Of her devotion I've a proof—

When fire is kindled on the dogs,
Small embers laid above the logs

Just so the minor poet's part:
The charcoals of his burning heart

O praise me not the country—
The meadows green and cool,
The solemn glow of sunsets, the hidden silver pool!

O praise me not the leisure
Of gardened country seats,
The fountains on the terrace against the summer heats—

O praise me not the country,
Her sycamores and bees,
I had my youthful plenty of sour apple trees!

O praise me not the country,
Her evenings full of stars,
Her yachts upon the water with the wind among their spars—

Here, where enormous shadows creep,
How small he seems, beneath the steep
Lovingly numbered, every one—
John Jones, John Jones's little son.

O sunlight on the Lightning's wings!
Our heartbreaks are but little things
The sum of life, for all men's stones:
He was John Jones, son of John Jones.

On the curb of a city pavement,
In the stench and rolling thunder
There sits my little lady,
And in her arms a baby

She cannot be more than seven;
And hard on the pains of winter
The wail of sickly children
The pangs of puny bodies,

In the deadly blaze of August,
She quiets the peevish urchins

A heaven with marble counters,
And a God in white, so friendly,

Her ragged dress is dearer
Poor little lass, who knows not
And when you are giving millions
Remember my pitiful lady—

A song for England?

Our hearts go by green-cliffed Kinsale
Or where, on Kentish forelands pale
Our hearts go up the Mersey's tide,
The blood that will not be denied

Our hearts now walk a secret round
For we are mixed of island ground,
Our hearts may pace a windy turn
Or watch the lights of London burn,

What is the virtue of that soil
Her ancient courage, patient toil,
A little land, yet loved therein
Rejoicing in her discipline,

Our hearts shall walk a Sherwood track,
We thrill to see the Union Jack
Though all the world be of rich cost
Yet if that island ground were lost

A song for England?
Lo, every word we speak's a song for England.

Two grave brown eyes, severely bent
A sparkling face, on which are blent
A pencil, purse, and book of checks
Elaine, the shrewdest of her sex,

Sedately, in the big armchair,
Her pencil hovers here and there
What's this? A faintly pensive frown
Ah, does the butcher—heartless clown—

A murrain on the tradesman churl
Just then—a baby's cry—my girl
Then in her purse by stratagem
She'll think she had forgotten them,

O England, England ... that July
How placidly the days went by!

Two years ago (how long it seems)
In that dear England of my dreams
I loved and smoked and laughed amain
And rode to Cambridge in the rain.
A careless godlike life was there!
To spin the roads with Shotover,
To dream while punting on the Cam,
To lie, and never give a damn
For anything but comradeship
And books to read and ale to sip,
And shandygaff at every inn
When The Gorilla rode to Lynn!
O world of wheel and pipe and oar
In those old days before the War.

O poignant echoes of that time!
I hear the Oxford towers chime,
The throbbing of those mellow bells
And all the sweet old English smells—

The Deben water, quick with salt,
The Woodbridge brew-house and the malt;
The Suffolk villages, serene
With lads at cricket on the green,
And Wytham strawberries, so ripe,
And Murray's Mixture in my pipe!

In those dear days, in those dear days,
All pleasant lay the country ways;
The echoes of our stalwart mirth
Went echoing wide around the earth
And in an endless bliss of sun
We lay and watched the river run.
And you by Cam and I by Isis
Were happy with our own devices.

Ah, can we ever know again
Such friends as were those chosen men,
Such men to drink, to bike, to smoke with,
To worship with, or lie and joke with?
Never again, my lads, we'll see
The life we led at twenty-three.
Never again, perhaps, shall I
Go flashing bravely down the High
To see, in that transcendent hour,
The sunset glow on Magdalen Tower.

Dear Rupert Brooke, your words recall
Those endless afternoons, and all
Your Cambridge—which I loved as one
Who was her grandson, not her son.
O ripples where the river slacks
In greening eddies round the "backs";
Where men have dreamed such gallant things
Under the old stone bridge at King's.
Or leaned to feed the silver swans
By the tennis meads at John's.
O Granta's water, cold and fresh,
Kissing the warm and eager flesh
Under the willow's breathing stir—
The bathing pool at Grantchester....
What words can tell, what words can praise
The burly savor of those days!

Dear singing lad, those days are dead
And gone for aye your golden head;
And many other well-loved men
Will never dine in Hall again.
I too have lived remembered hours
In Cambridge; heard the summer showers
Make music on old Heffer's pane
While I was reading Pepys or Taine.
Through Trumpington and Grantchester

I used to roll on Shotover;
At Hauxton Bridge my lamp would light
And sleep in Royston for the night.
Or to Five Miles from Anywhere
I used to scull; and sit and swear
While wasps attacked my bread and jam
Those summer evenings on the Cam.
(O crispy English cottage-loaves
Baked in ovens, not in stoves!
O white unsalted English butter
O satisfaction none can utter!)...

To think that while those joys I knew
In Cambridge, I did not know you.

A well-sharp'd pencil leads one on to write:
When guns are cocked, the shot is guaranteed;
The primed occasion puts the deed in sight:
Who steals a book who knows not how to read?

Seeing a pulpit, who can silence keep?
A maid, who would not dream her ta'en to wife?
Men looking down from some sheer dizzy steep
Have (quite impromptu) leapt, and ended life.

O noble gracious English tongue
Whose fibers we so sadly twist,
For caitiff measures he has sung
Have pardon on the journalist.

For mumbled meter, leaden pun,
For slipshod rhyme, and lazy word,
Have pity on this graceless one—
Thy mercy on Thy servant, Lord!

The metaphors and tropes depart,
Our little clippings fade and bleach:
There is no virtue and no art
Save in straightforward Saxon speech.

Yet not in ignorance or spite,
Nor with Thy noble past forgot
We sinned: indeed we had to write
To keep a fire beneath the pot.

Then grant that in the coming time,
With inky hand and polished sleeve,
In lucid prose or honest rhyme
Some worthy task we may achieve—

Some pinnacled and marbled phrase,
Some lyric, breaking like the sea,
That we may learn, not hoping praise,
The gift of Thy simplicity.

Say this poor fool misfeatured all his days,
And could not mend his ways;
And say he trod
Most heavily upon the corns of God.

But also say that in his clabbered brain
There was the essential pain—
The idiot's vow
To tell his troubled Truth, no matter how.

Unhappy fool, you say, with pitiful air:
Who was he, then, and where?
Ah, you divine
He lives in your heart, as he lives in mine.