"Childless women get it,
And men when they retire;
It's as if there had to be some outlet I
For their foiled creative fire."
j
His wife she rang for the servant,
Said: "Don't be so morbid, dear";
He said: "I saw Miss Gee this evening And she's a goner, I fear."
vi
They took Miss Gee to the hospital, She lay there a total wreck,
Lay in the ward for women
With the bedclothes right up to her neck.
f
They laid her on the table,
The students began to laugh;
And Mr. Rose the surgeon He cut Miss Gee in half.
I
Mr. Rose he turned to his students, Said: "Gentlemen, if you please,
We seldom see a sarcoma As far advanced as this."
I
They took her off the table,
They wheeled away Miss Gee
Down to another department
<
Where they study Anatomy. '
They hung her from the ceiling,
Yes, they hung up Miss Gee; And a couple of Oxford Groupers Carefully dissected her knee.
April 1937
Wrapped in a yielding air, beside
The flower's soundless hunger, Close to the tree's clandestine tide, Close to the bird's high fever, Loud in his hope and anger, Erect about his skeleton,
Stands the expressive lover, Stands the deliberate man.
Beneath the hot incurious sun,
Past stronger beasts and fairer He picks his way, a living gun, With gun and lens and bible, A militant enquirer, The friend, the rash, the enemy, The essayist, the able, Able at times to cry.
The friendless and unhated stone Lies everywhere about him, The Brothered-One, the Not-Alone, The brothered and the hated Whose family have taught him To set against the large and dumb, The timeless and the rooted, His money and his time.
For mother's fading hopes become
Dull wives to his dull spirits Soon dulled by nurse's moral thumb, That dullard fond betrayer, And, childish, he inherits, So soon by legal father tricked, The tall and gorgeous tower, Gorgeous but locked, but locked.
I
I
And ruled by dead men never met,
By pious guess deluded, Upon the stool of madness set Or stool of desolation, Sits murderous and clear-headed; Enormous beauties round him move, For grandiose is his vision
And grandiose his love. |
Determined on Time's honest shield The lamb must face the tigress, Their faithful quarrel never healed
Though, faithless, he consider ,
His dream of vaguer ages, Hunter and victim reconciled, The lion and the adder, The adder and the child.
i
Fresh loves betray him, every day
Over his green horizon A fresh deserter rides away,
And miles away birds mutter Of ambush and of treason; To fresh defeats he still must move, To further griefs and greater, And the defeat of grief.
May 1937 i
38
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: "Love has no ending.
"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street.
"I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
"The years shall run like rabbits For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages
And the first love of the world."
But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime:
"0 let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
"In the burrows of the Nightmare Where Justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
"In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day.
"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow; Time breaks the threaded dances And the diver's brilliant bow.
T
"0 plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
r
"The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens j
A lane to the land of the dead.
I
"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer And Jill goes down on her back.
"0 look, look in the mirror, ;
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
"0 stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart." 1
I
It was late, late in the evening, 1
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming And the deep river ran on.
November 1937 I
|
I
r
i
39 Oxford
Nature is so near: the rooks in the college garden Like agile babies still speak the language of feeling; By the tower the river still runs to the sea and will run, And the stones in that tower are utterly Satisfied still with their weight.
And the minerals and creatures, so deeply
in love with their lives Their sin of accidie excludes all others, Challenge the nervous students with a careless beauty, Setting a single error Against their countless faults.
O in these quadrangles where Wisdom honours herself Does the original stone merely echo that praise Shallowly, or utter a bland hymn of comfort, The founder's equivocal blessing On all who worship Success?
Promising to the sharp sword all the glittering prizes, The cars, the hotels, the service, the boisterous bed, Then power to silence outrage with a testament, The widow's tears forgotten, The fatherless unheard.
Whispering to chauffeurs and little girls, to tourists and dons, That Knowledge is conceived in the hot womb of Violence Who in a late hour of apprehension and exhaustion Strains to her weeping breast That blue-eyed darling head.
And is that child happy with his box of lucky books And all the jokes of learning? Birds cannot grieve: Wisdom is a beautiful bird; but to the wise Often, often is it denied To be beautiful or good.
Without are the shops, the works, the whole green county Where a cigarette comforts the guilty and a kiss the weak; There thousands fidget and poke and spend their money: Eros Paidagogos Weeps on his virginal bed.
Ah, if that thoughtless almost natural world Would snatch his sorrow to her loving sensual heart! But he is Eros and must hate what most he loves; And she is of Nature; Nature Can only love herself.
And over the talkative city like any other Weep the non-attached angels. Here too the knowledge of death Is a consuming love: And the natural heart refuses The low unflattering voice That rests not till it find a hearing.
December 1937
40
In Time of War
I
So from the years the gifts were showered; each Ran off with his at once into his life: Bee took the politics that make a hive, Fish swam as fish, peach settled into peach.
And were successful at the first endeavour; The hour of birth their only time at college, They were content with their precocious knowledge, And knew their station and were good for ever.
Till finally there came a childish creature On whom the years could model any feature, And fake with ease a leopard or a dove;
Who by the lightest wind was changed and shaken, And looked for truth and was continually mistaken, And envied his few friends and chose his love.