Sand hot to haunches:
Sun beating eyes down,
Yet they peer under lashes
At the hill’s crown:
See how the hill slants
Up the sky half way;
Over the top tall clouds
Poke, gold and grey.
Down: see a green field
Tipped on its short edge,
Its upper rim straggled round
By a black hedge.
Birds clatter numberless,
And the breeze tells
That bean-flower somewhere
Has ousted the blue-bells:
Birds clatter numberless:
In the muffled wood
Big feet move slowly:
Mean no good.
Winter
Snow wind-whipt to ice
Under a hard sun:
Stream-runnels curdled hoar
Crackle, cannot run.
Robin stark dead on twig,
Song stiffened in it:
Fluffed feathers may not warm
Bone-thin linnet:
Big-eyed rabbit, lost,
Scrabbles the snow,
Searching for long-dead grass
With frost-bit toe:
Mad-tired on the road
Old Kelly goes;
Through crookt fingers snuffs the air
Knife-cold in his nose.
Hunger-weak, snow-dazzled,
Old Thomas Kelly
Thrusts his bit hands, for warmth
’Twixt waistcoat and belly.
The Moonlit Journey
Unguarded stands the shuttered sky:
The creeping Thief of Night
With tool and hook begins to ply
His careful picking: he would pry
And filch her coffered light.
The soundless tapping of his bar
Pricks out each sudden star.
The soundless tapping of his bar
Lets out the wealthy Moon:
The frozen Bright goes arching far
On buttresses of lucid spar
And lights the road to Cloun;
And all the pouring of her riches
Floats on the silent ditches.
The crescent road is ivory
Between the silver water:
But squat and black and creeping, see,
Blank as the shadow of a tree,
Old Robert and his daughter
Toil on: and fearful, each descries
Moon-gleams in other’s eyes.
A Song of the Walking Road
The World is all orange-round:
The sea smells salt between:
The strong hills climb on their own backs,
Coloured and damascene,
Cloud-flecked and sunny-green;
Knotted and straining up,
Up, with still hands and cold:
Grip at the slipping sky,
Yet cannot hold:
Round twists old Earth, and round ...
Stillness not yet found.
Plains like a flat dish, too,
Shudder and spin:
Roads in a pattern crawl
Scratched with a pin
Across the fields’ dim shagreen:
—Dusty their load:
But over the craggy hills
Wanders the Walking Road!
Broad as the hill’s broad,
Rough as the world’s rough, too:
Long as the Age is long,
Ancient and true,
Swinging, and broad, and long:
—Craggy, strong.
Gods sit like milestones
On the edge of the Road, by the Moon’s sill;
Man has feet, feet that swing, pound the high hill
Above and above, until
He stumble and widely spill
His dusty bones.
Round twists old Earth, and round ...
Stillness not yet found.
The Sermon
(Wales, 1920)
Like gript stick
Still I sit:
Eyes fixed on far small eyes,
Full of it:
On the old, broad face,
The hung chin;
Heavy arms, surplice
Worn through and worn thin.
Probe I the hid mind
Under the gross flesh:
Clutch at poetic words,
Follow their mesh
Scarce heaving breath.
Clutch, marvel, wonder,
Till the words end.
Stilled is the muttered thunder:
The hard, few people wake,
Gather their books and go ...
—Whether their hearts could break
How can I know?
The Rolling Saint
Under the crags of Teiriwch,
The door-sills of the Sun,
Where God has left the bony earth
Just as it was begun;
Where clouds sail past like argosies
Breasting the crested hills
With mainsail and foretopsail
That the thin breeze fills;
With ballast of round thunder,
And anchored with the rain;
With a long shadow sounding
The deep, far plain:
Where rocks are broken playthings
By petulant gods hurled,
And Heaven sits a-straddle
The roof-ridge of the World:
—Under the crags of Teiriwch
Is a round pile of stones,
Large stones, small stones,
—White as old bones;
Some from high places
Or from the lake’s shore;
And every man that passes
Adds one more—
The years it has been growing
Verge on a hundred score.
For in the Cave of Teiriwch
That scarce holds a sheep,
Where plovers and rock-conies
And wild things sleep,
A woman lived for ninety years
On bilberries and moss
And lizards and small creeping things,
And carved herself a cross:
But wild hill robbers
Found the ancient saint
And dragged her to the sunlight,
Making no complaint.
Too old was she for weeping,
Too shrivelled and too dry:
She crouched and mumle-mumled
And mumled to the sky.
No breath had she for wailing,
Her cheeks were paper-thin:
She was, for all her holiness,
As ugly as sin.
They cramped her in a barrel
—All but her bobbing head
—And rolled her down from Teiriwch
Until she was dead:
They took her out and buried her
—Just broken bits of bone
And rags and skin, and over her
Set one small stone:
But if you pass her sepulchre
And add not one thereto
The ghost of that old murdered Saint
Will roll in front of you
The whole night through.
The clouds sail past in argosies
And cold drips the rain:
The whole world is far and high
Above the tilted plain.
The silent mists float eerily,
And I am here alone:
Dare I pass the place by
And cast not a stone?
Weald
Still is the leaden night:
The film-eyed moon
Spills hardly any light,
But nods to sleep—And soon
Through five broad parishes there is no sound
But the far melancholy wooing
Of evil-minded cats; and the late shoeing
Of some unlucky filly by the ford.
For twenty miles abroad there is no moving,
But for the uncomfortable hooving
Of midnight cows a-row in Parson’s Lag:
—That; and the slow twist of water round a snag.
The silver mist that slumbers in the hollow
Dreams of a breeze, and turns upon its side,
So sleep uneasy: but no breezes follow,
Only the moon blinks slowly thrice, wan-eyed.
—I think this is the most unhappy night
Since hot-cheeked Hecuba wept in the dawn.
—There never was a more unhappy night,
Not that when Hero’s lamp proved unavailing,
Nor that when Bethlehem was filled with wailing ...
... There is no reason for unhappiness,
Save that the saddened stars have hid their faces,
And that dun clouds usurp their brilliant places,
And that the wind lacks even strength to sigh.
And yet, as if outraged by some long tune
A dog cries dolefully, green-eyed in the moon ...
The Jumping-Bean
(A curious bean, with a small maggot in it, who
comes to life and tumbles his dwelling at
the stimulus of warmth)
Sun in a warm streak
Striping the plush:
Catch breath, hold finger tight:
All delight hush.
Dance, small grey thing
Sleek in the warm sun:
Roll around, to this, to that,
—Rare wormy fun!
Alack! Have years in cupboard,
In chill and dark,
Stifled thy discontent?
Snufft thy spark?
Liest thou stark, stiff,
There in thy bed?
Weep then a dirge for him:
Poor Bean’s dead!
Old Cat Care outside the Cottage (1918)
Green-eyed Care
May prowl and glare
And poke his snub, be-whiskered nose:
But Door fits tight
Against the Night:
Through criss-cross cracks no evil goes.
Window is small:
No room at all
For Worry and Money, his shoulder-bones:
Chimney is wide,
But Smoke’s inside
And happy Smoke would smother his moans.
Be-whiskered Care
May prowl out there:
But I never heard
He caught the Blue Bird!
Cottager is given the Bird
(1921)
Sidelong the Bird ran,
Hard-eyed on the turned mould:
Was door—window—wide?
—Then Heart grew kettle-cold.
Might no wind-suckt curtain
Dim that travelling Eye?
Could Door’s thick benediction
Deafen: if he should cry?
Sidelong the Bird crept
Into the stark door:
His yellow, lidless eye!
Foot chill to the stone floor!
... Then Smoke, that slender baby,
To Hearth’s white Niobe-breast
Sank trembling—dead. Oh Bird,
Bird, spare the rest!
He has bidden bats to flit
In Window’s wide mouth:
Starlings to tumble, and mock
Poor Pot’s old rusty drouth:
And a wet canker, nip
Those round-breasted stones
That I hugged to strong walls
With the love of my strained bones.
He bad lank Spider run,
Grow busy, web me out
With dusty trespass stretcht
From mantel to kettle-spout.
Door, Window, Rafter, Chimney,
Grow silent, die:
All are dead: all moulder:
Sole banished mourner I.
See how the Past rustles
Stirring to life again ...
Three whole years left I lockt
Behind that window-pane.
A Man
He is a man in love with grass,
He shivers at a tree:
Thrill of wing in briar-bushes
Wildly at his heart pushes
Like the first, faint hint
A lover is let see.
If he had known a wordless song
As a bird he would sing;
Who took delight in slim rabbits,
Watched their delicate habits,
—Waited, by the briar-bush,
That flutter of wooing.
Why did he break that small wing?
The sun looks hollowly:
Mocking’s where the water goes;
The breeze bitter in his nose:
Mocking eyes wide burning
—Lost, lost is he!
Moon-Struck
Cold shone the moon, with noise
The night went by.
Trees uttered things of woe:
Bent grass dared not grow:
Ah desperate man with haggard eyes
And hands that fence away the skies
On rock and briar stumbling,
Is it fear of the storm’s rumbling,
Of the hissing cold rain,
Or lightning’s tragic pain
Drives you so madly?
See, see the patient moon;
How she her course keeps
Through cloudy shallows and across black deeps,
Now gone, now shines soon:
Where’s cause for fear?
‘I shudder and shudder
At her bright light:
I fear, I fear,
That she her fixt course follows
So still and white
Through deeps and shallows
With never a tremor:
Naught shall disturb her.
I fear, I fear
What they may be
That secretly bind her:
What hand holds the reins
Of those sightless forces
That govern her courses.
Is it Setebos
Who deals in her command?
Or that unseen Night-Comer
With tender curst hand?
—I shudder, and shudder.’
Poor storm-wisp, wander!
Wind shall not hurt thee,
Rain not appal thee,
Lightning not blast thee;
Thou art worn so frail
Only the moonlight pale
To an ash shall burn thee,
To an invisible Pain.
Ænigma
How can I tell it?
I saw a thing
That I did not find strange
In my visioning.
A flawless tall mirror,
Glass dim and green;
And a tall, dim figure
There was between:
Pale, so pale her face
As veils of thin water;
And her eyes water-pale,
And the moonlight on her;
And she was dying, dying;
She combed her long hair,
And the crimson blood ran
In the fine gold there.
She was dying, dying ...
And in her perfect eye
No terror lurked; nor pity
That she should so die.
Lament for Gaza
You who listen, pity
Gaza, this poor city;
For now the roof rocks,
And the blind god’s hands
Grope at the pillars where he stands:
While Gaza mocks,
While Gaza mocks.
The Image
Dim the light in your faces: be passionless in the room.
Snuffed are the tapers, and bitterly hang on the flowerless air:
See: and this is the Image of her they will lay in the tomb,
Clear, and waxen, and cooled in the mass of her hair.
Quiet the tears in your voices: feel lightly, finger, for finger
In love: then see how like is the Image, but lifelessly fashioned
And sightless, calm, unloving ... Oh who is the Artist? Oh linger
And ponder whither has flitted his Sitter Impassioned.
Felo de Se
If I were stone dead and buried under,
Is there a part of me would still wander,
Shiver, mourn, and cry Alack,
With no body to its back?
When brain grew mealy, turned to dust,
Would lissom Mind, too, suffer rust?
Immortal Soul grow imbecile,
Having no brain to think and feel?
—Or grant it be as priests say,
And growth come on my death-day:
Suppose Growth came: would Certainty?
Or would Mind still a quester be,
Frame deeper mysteries, not find them out,
And wander in a larger Doubt?
—Alas, if to Mind’s petty stir
Death prove so poor a silencer:
Though veins when emptied a few hours
Of this hot blood, might suckle flowers:
From spiritual flames that scorch me
Never, never were I free!
Then back, Death! Till I call thee
Hast come too soon!
... Thou silly worm, gnaw not
Yet thine intricate cocoon.
The Birds-nester
A Memorial, to an Unfortunate Young Man, Expelled
from his University for a Daring Neologism
Critic, that hoary Gull, in air
Whistles, whistles shrilly:
Climbing Youth, beware
Murder and mockery!
That wheeling, hoary gull
Bats on his thin skull,
Claws at his steady eyes,
Whinnies and cries:
Youth flings the gibe back.
Hundreds of wings clack,
Bright eyes encircle, search
For foothold’s fatal lurch.
‘See now he shifts his grip:
Loosen each finger-tip!
Whew, brothers, shall he slip?’
Crack-tendoned, answers Youth
‘I seek for Eggs of Truth.’
Claws clutch his hair,
Beaks prick his eyes—
‘Whistle, Despair, Despair!
With ancient quills prise
Every hand’s—foot’s—hold,
Wedged in the rock’s fold!
Batter and scream, bewilder
This impious babel-buil ...
whew!
Down he is rocketing falling twisting.’
For days and nights
Time’s curly breakers
Winnow him, wash him ...
What is that stirs?
What wing from the heights
Slants to that murdered limb?
Gull’s peering eye bath spotted
Something the sea has rotted.
Secretly to the feast
Dives big gull, less, and least;
For Age never dies:
Age shall pick out his eyes,
Taste them with critick zest,
—Age knows the Best!
—Age shall build his lair
Out of his hair:
Gulp his small splintered bones
To his gizzard, for stones:
Feed on his words
All his young woolly birds.
Say not he died in vain!
All that he cried in pain
Ear-cocked Age hearkens to
Someday. Declares it true
Someday.
What though he fell? The jest
Feathers old Critic’s nest.
By arrangement with the author, and with the gracious permission of his publishers, The Golden Cockerel Press, Waltham Saint Lawrence, Berkshire, England, this edition of Gipsy-Night and Other Poems becomes the third publication issued by The Private Press of Will Ransom: Maker of Books, 14 West Washington Street, Chicago, U. S. A.
Composition and presswork by Will Ransom, assisted by Edmond A. Hunt; binding by Anthony Faifer. Printing finished September 30th, 1922.
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious printer errors were silently corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling was preserved.