The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Pier-Glass
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Pier-Glass
Author: Robert Graves
Release date: December 31, 2014 [eBook #47824]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries (https://archive.org/details/toronto)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PIER-GLASS ***
The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pier-Glass, by Robert Graves
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See https://archive.org/details/pierglass00gravuoft |
The book cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
THE PIER-GLASS
THE PIER-GLASS
BY ROBERT GRAVES
LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
This myrrour I tote in, quasi diaphanum
Vel quasi speculum, in aenigmate....
Speke Parot, John Skelton.
THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH, ENGLAND
TO
NANCY NICHOLSON
NOTE
Most of the pieces here included have appeared serially in The London Mercury, The Athenæum, The Spectator, The Nation, The New Statesman, To-day, The Century Magazine and other periodicals, English and American.
Robert Graves.
Boar's Hill,
Oxford.
CONTENTS
- The Stake, 11
- The Troll's Nosegay, 12
- The Pier-glass, 13
- The Finding of Love, 15
- Reproach, 17
- The Magical Picture, 18
- Distant Smoke, 21
- Morning Phœnix, 23
- Catherine Drury, 24
- Raising the Stone, 25
- The Treasure Box, 26
- The Kiss, 28
- Lost Love, 29
- Fox's Dingle, 30
- The Gnat, 31
- The Patchwork Bonnet, 34
- Kit Logan and Lady Helen, 35
- Down, 36
- Saul of Tarsus, 38
- Storm: at the Farm Window, 39
- Black Horse Lane, 40
- Return, 42
- Incubus, 44
- The Hills of May, 45
- The Coronation Murder, 49
THE STAKE
Naseboro' held him guilty,
Crowther took his part,
Who lies at the cross-roads,
A stake through his heart.
Spring calls, and the stake answers
Throwing out shoots;
The towns debate what life is this
Sprung from such roots.
Naseboro' says "A Upas Tree";
"A Rose," says Crowther;
But April's here to declare it
Neither one nor other.
Neither ill nor very fair,
Rose nor Upas,
But an honest oak-tree,
As its parent was.
A green-tufted oak-tree
On the green wold,
Careless as the dead heart
That the roots enfold.
THE TROLL'S NOSEGAY
A simple nosegay! was that much to ask?
(Winter still gloomed, with scarce a bud yet showing).
He loved her ill, if he resigned the task.
"Somewhere," she cried, "there must be blossom blowing."
It seems my lady wept and the troll swore
By Heaven he hated tears: he'd cure her spleen;
Where she had begged one flower, he'd shower fourscore,
A haystack bunch to amaze a China Queen.
Cold fog-drawn Lily, pale mist-magic Rose
He conjured, and in a glassy cauldron set
With elvish unsubstantial Mignonette
And such vague bloom as wandering dreams enclose.
But she?
Awed,
Charmed to tears,
Distracted,
Yet—
Even yet, perhaps, a trifle piqued—who knows?
THE PIER-GLASS
(To T. E. Lawrence, who helped me with it)
Lost manor where I walk continually
A ghost, while yet in woman's flesh and blood.
Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingers
And gliding steadfast down your corridors
I come by nightly custom to this room,
And even on sultry afternoons I come
Drawn by a thread of time-sunk memory.
Empty, unless for a huge bed of state
Shrouded with rusty curtains drooped awry
(A puppet theatre where malignant fancy
Peoples the wings with fear). At my right hand
A ravelled bell-pull hangs in readiness
To summon me from attic glooms above
Service of elder ghosts; here at my left
A sullen pier-glass cracked from side to side
Scorns to present the face as do new mirrors
With a lying flush, but shows it melancholy
And pale, as faces grow that look in mirrors.
Is here no life, nothing but the thin shadow
And blank foreboding, never a wainscote rat
Rasping a crust? Or at the window pane
No fly, no bluebottle, no starveling spider?
The windows frame a prospect of cold skies
Half-merged with sea, as at the first creation,
Abstract, confusing welter. Face about,
Peer rather in the glass once more, take note
Of self, the grey lips and long hair dishevelled,
Sleep-staring eyes. Ah, mirror, for Christ's love
Give me one token that there still abides
Remote, beyond this island mystery
So be it only this side Hope, somewhere,
In streams, on sun-warm mountain pasturage,
True life, natural breath; not this phantasma.
A rumour, scarcely yet to be reckoned sound,
But a pulse quicker or slower, then I know
My plea is granted; death prevails not yet.
For bees have swarmed behind in a close place
Pent up between this glass and the outer wall.
The combs are founded, the queen rules her court,
Bee-serjeants posted at the entrance chink
Are sampling each returning honey-cargo
With scrutinizing mouth and commentary,
Slow approbation, quick dissatisfaction.
Disquieting rhythm, that leads me home at last
From labyrinthine wandering. This new mood
Of judgment orders me my present duty,
To face again a problem strongly solved
In life gone by, but now again proposed
Out of due time for fresh deliberation.
Did not my answer please the Master's ear?
Yet, I'll stay obstinate. How went the question,
A paltry question set on the elements
Of love and the wronged lover's obligation?
Kill or forgive? Still does the bed ooze blood?
Let it drip down till every floor-plank rot!
Yet shall I answer, challenging the judgment:—
"Kill, strike the blow again, spite what shall come."
"Kill, strike, again, again," the bees in chorus hum.
THE FINDING OF LOVE
Before this generous time
Of Love in morning prime,
He had long season stood
Bound in a nightmare mood
Of dense murk, rarely lit
By Jack-o'-Lanthorn's flit
And straightway smothered spark
Of beasts' eyes in the dark,
Mourning with sense adrift,
Tears rolling swift.
With o, for Sun to blaze
Drying the cobweb-maze
Dew-sagged upon the corn,
With o, for flowering thorn,
For fly and butterfly,
For pigeons in the sky,
For robin and thrush,
For the long bulrush,
For cherry under the leaf,
For an end to grief,
For joy in steadfastness.
Then through his distress
And clouded vision came
An unknown gradual flame
By silent hands controlled,
Pale at first and cold,
Like wizard's lily-bloom
Conjured from the gloom,
Like torch of glow-worm seen
Through grasses shining green
By children half in fright,
Or Christmas candlelight
Flung on the outer snow,
Or tinsel stars that show
Their evening glory
With sheen of fairy story.
No more, no more,
Forget that went before!
Not a wrack remains
Of all his former pains.
Here's Love a drench of light,
A Sun dazzling the sight,
Well started on his race
Towards the Zenith space
Where fixed and sure
He shall endure,
Holding peace secure.
Now with his blaze
He dries the cobweb maze
Dew-sagging on the corn,
He brings the flowering thorn,
The fly and butterfly,
And pigeons in the sky,
The robin and the thrush,
And the long bulrush,
And cherry under the leaf,
Earth in a silken dress,
With end to grief,
With love in steadfastness.
REPROACH
Your grieving moonlight face looks down
Through the forest of my fears,
Crowned with a spiny bramble-crown,
Dew-dropped with evening tears.
Why do you spell "untrue, unkind,"
Reproachful eyes plaguing my sleep?
I am not guilty in my mind
Of aught would make you weep.
Untrue? but how, what broken oath?
Unkind? I know not even your name.
Unkind, untrue, you charge me both,
Scalding my heart with shame.
The black trees shudder, dropping snow,
The stars tumble and spin.
Speak, speak, or how may a child know
His ancestral sin?
THE MAGICAL PICTURE
Glinting on the roadway
A broken mirror lay:
Then what did the child say
Who found it there?
He cried there was a goblin
Looking out as he looked in—
Wild eyes and speckled skin,
Black, bristling hair!
He brought it to his father
Who being a simple sailor
Swore, "This is a true wonder,
Deny it who can!
Plain enough to me, for one,
It's a portrait aptly done
Of Admiral, the great Lord Nelson
When a young man."
The sailor's wife perceiving
Her husband had some pretty thing
At which he was peering,
Seized it from his hand.
Then tears started and ran free,
"Jack, you have deceived me,
I love you no more," said she,
"So understand!"
"But, Mary," says the sailor,
"This is a famous treasure,
Admiral Nelson's picture
Taken in youth."
"Viper and fox," she cries,
"To trick me with such lies,
Who is this wench with the bold eyes?
Tell the full truth!"
Up rides the parish priest
Mounted on a fat beast.
Grief and anger have not ceased
Between those two;
Little Tom still weeps for fear;
He has seen Hobgoblin, near,
Great white teeth and foul leer
That pierced him through.
Now the old priest lifts his glove
Bidding all for God's love
To stand and not to move,
Lest blood be shed.
"O, O!" cries the urchin,
"I saw the devil grin,
He glared out, as I looked in;
A true death's head!"
Mary weeps, "Ah, Father,
My Jack loves another!
On some voyage he courted her
In a land afar."
This, with cursing, Jack denies:—
"Father, use your own eyes:
It is Lord Nelson in disguise
As a young tar."
When the priest took the glass,
Fresh marvels came to pass
"A saint of glory, by the Mass!
"Where got you this?"
He signed him with the good Sign,
Be sure the relic was divine,
He would fix it in a shrine
For pilgrims to kiss.
There the chapel folk who come
(Honest, some, and lewd, some),
See the saint's eyes and are dumb,
Kneeling on the flags.
Some see the Doubter Thomas,
And some Nathaniel in the glass,
And others whom but old Saint Judas
With his money bags?
DISTANT SMOKE
Seth and the sons of Seth who followed him
Halted in silence: labour, then, was vain.
Fast at the zenith, blazoned in his splendour,
Hung the fierce Sun, wherefore these travelling folk
Stood centred each in his own disc of shade.
The term proposed was ended; now to enjoy
The moment's melancholy; their tears fell shining.
Yesterday early at the dreadful hour,
When life ebbs lowest, when the strand of being
Is slowly bared until discovered show
Weed-mantelled hulks that foundered years ago
At autumn anchorage, then father Adam
Summoned in haste his elder generations
To his death-tent, and gasping spoke to them,
Forthwith defining an immediate journey
Beyond the eastern ridge, in quest for one
Whom he named Cain, brother to Seth, true uncle
To these young spearmen; they should lead him here
For a last benediction at his hands.
First-born yet outlawed! Scarcely they believed
In this strange word of "Cain," in this new man,
Man, yet outside the tents; but Adam swore
And gave them a fair sign of recognition.
There was a brand, he said, a firm red pillar
Parting Cain's brows, and Cain had mighty hands,
Sprouting luxurious hair, red, like his beard.
Moreover Adam said that by huge strength
Himself could stay this ebb of early morning,
Yet three days longer, three days, though no more—
This for the stern desire and long disquietude
That was his love for Cain; whom God had cursed.
Then would he kiss all fatherly and so die—
Kneeling, with eyes abased, they made him promise,
Swore, at the midpoint of their second day,
If unsped in the search of whom he named,
They would come hasting home to Adam's tent.
They touched his bony fingers; forth they went.
Now Seth, shielding his eyes, sees mistily
Breaking the horizon thirty miles away
(A full day's journey) what but a wisp, a feather,
A thin line, half a nothing—distant smoke!
Blown smoke, a signal from that utmost ridge
Of desolation—the camp fire of Cain.
He to restrain his twelve impetuous sons
(He knows the razor-edge of their young spirit)
Dissembles seeing, turns his steps about,
Bids them come follow, but they little heeding,
Scarce noting his commands, fasten their eyes
On smoke, so forfeit Adam's benediction,
Striding forward into the wilderness
With eager thighs, forgetful of their oath,
Adventurous for this monster, a new man,
Their own kin—how accursed?—they haste for
wonder.
MORNING PHOENIX
In my body lives a flame,
Flame that burns me all the day,
When a fierce sun does the same,
I am charred away.
Who could keep a smiling wit,
Roasted so in heart and hide,
Turning on the sun's red spit,
Scorched by love inside?
Caves I long for and cold rocks,
Minnow-peopled country brooks,
Blundering gales of Equinox,
Sunless valley-nooks.
Daily so I might restore
Calcined heart and shrivelled skin,
A morning phoenix with proud roar
Kindled new within.
CATHERINE DRURY
Mother
Edward will not taste his food,
Nor touch his drink,
Flings me answers gruff and rude:
Why, I dare not think.
Sister
Mother, do not try to know
All that moves in Edward's heart,
The fiery gloom he will not show;
You and he who lay so near
Fall wide apart.
Watch your rival, mother dear:
Catherine Drury does not guess
His dark love or your envious fear,
Her own loveliness.
She will laugh, she will play,
Never know the hurt she does:
Edward's heart will melt away,
His head go buzz,
And if he thinks you read his mind,
Better you had been struck stone blind.
RAISING THE STONE
A shaft of moon from the cloud-hurried sky,
Has coursed the wide dark heath, but nowhere found
One paler patch to illumine—oats nor rye,
Chalk-pit nor waterpool nor sandy ground—
Till, checked by our thronged faces on the mound
(A wedge of whiteness) universally
Strained backward from the task that holds us bound,
It beams on set jaw and hate-maddened eye.
The vast stone lifts, turns, topples, in its fall
Spreads death: but we who live raise a shrill chant
Of joy for sacrifice cleansing us all.
Once more we heave. Erect in earth we plant,
The interpreter of our dumb furious call,
Outraging Heaven, pointing
"I want, I want."
THE TREASURE BOX
Ann in chill moonlight unlocks
Her polished brassbound treasure-box,
Draws a soft breath, prepares to spread
The toys around her on the bed.
She dips for luck: by luck pulls out
A silver pig with ring in snout,
The sort that Christmas puddings yield;
Next comes a painted nursery shield
Boy-carved; and then two yellow gloves,
A Limerick wonder that Ann loves,
Leather so thin and joined so well
The pair fold in a walnut shell;
Here's patchwork that her sister made
With antique silk and flower brocade,
Small faded scraps in memory rich
Joined each to each with feather-stitch;
Here's cherry and forget-me-not
Ribbon bunched in a great knot;
A satin purse with pansies on it;
A Tudor baby's christening bonnet;
Old Mechlin lace minutely knit
(Some woman's eyes went blind for it);
And Spanish broideries that pinch
Three blossomed rosetrees to one inch;
Here are Ann's brooches, simple pins,
A Comet brooch, two Harlequins,
A Posy; here's a great resplendent
Dove-in-bush Italian pendant;
A Chelsea gift-bird; a toy whistle;
A halfpenny stamped with the Scots thistle;
A Breguet watch; a coral string;
Her mother's thin-worn wedding ring;
A straw box full of hard smooth sweets;
A book, the Poems of John Keats;
A chessman; a pink paper rose;
A diary dwindling to its close
Nine months ago; a worsted ball;
A patchbox; a stray match—that's all,
All but a few small treasured scraps
Of paper; things forbid perhaps—
See how slowly Ann unties
The packet where her heartache lies;
Watch her lips move; she slants a letter
Up towards the moon to read it better,
(The moon may master what he can).
R stands for Richard, A for Ann
And L ... at this the old moon blinks
And softly from the window shrinks.
THE KISS
Are you shaken, are you stirred
By a whisper of love,
Spellbound to a word
Does Time cease to move,
Till her calm grey eye
Expands to a sky
And the clouds of her hair
Like storms go by?
Then the lips that you have kissed
Turn to frost and fire,
And a white-steaming mist
Obscures desire:
So back to their birth
Fade water, air, earth,
And the First Power moves
Over void and dearth.
Is that Love? no, but Death,
A passion, a shout,
The deep in-breath,
The breath roaring out,
And once that is flown,
You must lie alone,
Without hope, without life,
Poor flesh, sad bone.
LOST LOVE
His eyes are quickened so with grief,
He can watch a grass or leaf
Every instant grow; he can
Clearly through a flint wall see,
Or watch the startled spirit flee
From the throat of a dead man.
Across two counties he can hear,
And catch your words before you speak.
The woodlouse or the maggot's weak
Clamour rings in his sad ear;
And noise so slight it would surpass
Credence:—drinking sound of grass,
Worm talk, clashing jaws of moth
Chumbling holes in cloth:
The groan of ants who undertake
Gigantic loads for honour's sake,
Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin:
Whir of spiders when they spin,
And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs
Of idle grubs and flies.
This man is quickened so with grief,
He wanders god-like or like thief
Inside and out, below, above,
Without relief seeking lost love.
FOX'S DINGLE
Take now a country mood,
Resolve, distil it:—
Nine Acre swaying alive,
June flowers that fill it,
Spicy sweet-briar bush,
The uneasy wren
Fluttering from ash to birch
And back again,
Milkwort on its low stem,
Spread hawthorn tree,
Sunlight patching the wood,
A hive-bound bee....
Girls riding nim-nim-nim,
Ladies, trot-trot,
Gentlemen hard at gallop,
Shouting, steam-hot.
Now over the rough turf
Bridles go jingle,
And there's a well loved pool,
By Fox's Dingle,
Where Sweetheart, my brown mare,
Old Glory's daughter,
May loll her leathern tongue
In snow-cool water.
THE GNAT
The shepherd Watkin heard an inner voice
Calling "My creature, ho! be warned, be ready!"
Calling, "The moment comes, therefore be ready!"
And a third time calling, "Creature, be ready!"
This old poor man mistook the call, which sounded
Not for himself, but for his pensioner.
Now (truth or phantasy) the shepherd nourished
Fast in his brain, due earnings of transgression,
A creature like to that avenging fly
Once crept unseen in at King Herod's ear,
Tunnelling gradually inwards, upwards,
Heading for flowery pastures of the brain,
And battened on such grand, presumptuous fare
As grew him brazen claws and brazen hair
And wings of iron mail. Old Watkin felt
A like intruder channelling to and fro.
He cursed his day and sin done in past years,
Repentance choked, pride that outlawed his heart,
So that at night often in thunderous weather
Racked with the pain he'd start
From sleep, incontinently howling, leaping,
Striking his hoar head on the cottage walls,
Stamping his feet, dragging his hair by the roots.
He'd rouse the Gnat to anger, send it buzzing
Like a huge mill, scraping with metal claws
At his midpoint of being; forthwith tumble
With a great cry for Death to stoop and end him.
Now Watkin hears the voice and weeps for bliss,
The voice that warned "Creature, the time is come."
Merciful Death, was it Death, all his desire?
Promised of Heaven, and speedy? O Death, come!
Only for one thought must he make provision,
For honest Prinny, for old bob-tail Prinny.
Another master? Where? These hillside crofters
Were spiteful to their beasts and mercenary.
Prinny to such? No, Prinny too must die.
By his own hand, then? Murder! By what other?
No human hand should touch the sacrifice,
No human hand;
God's hand then, through his temporal minister.
Three times has Watkin in the morning early
When not a soul was rising, left his flock,
Come to the Minister's house through the cold mist,
Clicked at the latch and slowly moved the gate,
Faltered, held back and dared not enter in.
"Not this time, Prinny, we'll not rouse them yet,
To-morrow, surely, for our death is tokened,
My death and your death with small interval.
We meet in fields beyond; be sure of it, Prinny!"
On the next night
The busy Gnat, swollen to giant size,
Pent-up within the skull, knew certainly,
As a bird knows in the egg, his hour was come.
The thrice repeated call had given him summons ...
He must out, crack the shell, out, out!
He strains, claps his wings, arches his back,
Drives in his talons, out! out!
In the white anguish of this travail, Watkin
Hurls off his blankets, tears an axe from the nail
Batters the bed, hews table, splits the floor,
Hears Prinny whine at his feet, leaps, strikes again,
Strikes, yammering.
At that instant with a clatter
Noise of a bursting dam, a toppling wall,
Out flies the new-born creature from his mouth
And humming fearsomely like a huge engine,
Rackets about the room, smites the unseen
Glass of half-open windows, reels, recovers,
Soars out into the meadows, and is gone.
Silence prolonged to an age. Watkin still lives?
The hour of travail by the voice foretold
Brought no last throbbings of the dying Body
In child-birth of the Soul. Watkin still lives.
Labourer Watkin delves in the wet fields.
Did an old shepherd die that night with Prinny,
Die weeping with his head on the outraged corpse?
Oh, he's forgotten. A dead dream, a cloud.
Labourer Watkin delves, drowsily, numbly,
His harsh spade grates among the buried stones.
THE PATCHWORK BONNET
Across the room my silent love I throw,
Where you sit sewing in bed by candlelight,
Your young stern profile and industrious fingers
Displayed against the blind in a shadow show,
To Dinda's grave delight.
The needle dips and pokes, the cheerful thread
Runs after, follow-my-leader down the seam:
The patchwork pieces cry for joy together,
O soon to sit as a crown on Dinda's head,
Fulfilment of their dream.
Snippets and odd ends folded by, forgotten,
With camphor on a top shelf, hard to find,
Now wake to this most happy resurrection,
To Dinda playing toss with a reel of cotton
And staring at the blind.
Dinda in sing-song stretching out one hand
Calls for the playthings; mother does not hear:
Her mind sails far away on a patchwork Ocean,
And all the world must wait till she touches land,
So Dinda cries in fear,
Then Mother turns, laughing like a young fairy,
And Dinda smiles to see her look so kind,
Calls out again for playthings, playthings, playthings,
And now the shadows make an Umbrian "Mary
Adoring," on the blind.