Wilfrid Wilson Gibson Contents / Contents, p. 2 Santorin (A Legend of the Ægean) 'Who are you, Sea Lady, And where in the seas are we? I have too long been steering By the flashes in your eyes. Why drops the moonlight through my heart, And why so quietly Go the great engines of my boat As if their souls were free?' 'Oh ask me not, bold sailor; Is not your ship a magic ship That sails without a sail: Are not these isles the Isles of Greece And dust upon the sea? But answer me three questions And give me answers three. What is your ship?" 'A British.' 'And where may Britain be?' 'Oh it lies north, dear lady; It is a small country.' 'Yet you will know my lover, Though you live far away: And you will whisper where he has gone, That lily boy to look upon And whiter than the spray.' 'How should I know your lover, Lady of the sea?' 'Alexander, Alexander, The King of the World was he.' 'Weep not for him, dear lady, But come aboard my ship. So many years ago he died, He's dead as dead can be.' 'O base and brutal sailor To lie this lie to me. His mother was the foam-foot Star-sparkling Aphrodite; His father was Adonis Who lives away in Lebanon, In stony Lebanon, where blooms His red anemone. But where is Alexander, The soldier Alexander, My golden love of olden days The King of the world and me?' She sank into the moonlight And the sea was only sea. Contents / Contents, p. 2 Yasmin A Ghazel How splendid in the morning glows the lily: with what grace he throws His supplication to the rose: do roses nod the head, Yasmin? But when the silver dove descends I find the little flower of friends Whose very name that sweetly ends I say when I have said, Yasmin. The morning light is clear and cold: I dare not in that light behold A whiter light, a deeper gold, a glory too far shed, Yasmin. But when the deep red eye of day is level with the lone highway, And some to Mecca turn to pray, and I toward thy bed, Yasmin; Or when the wind beneath the moon is drifting like a soul aswoon, And harping planets talk love's tune with milky wings outspread, Yasmin, Shower down thy love, O burning bright! For one night or the other night Will come the Gardener in white, and gathered flowers are dead, Yasmin. Contents / Contents, p. 2 The Gates of Damascus Four great gates has the city of Damascus, And four Grand Wardens, on their spears reclining, All day long stand like tall stone men And sleep on the towers when the moon is shining. This is the song of the East Gate Warden When he locks the great gate and smokes in his garden . Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster's Cavern, Fort of Fear, The Portal of Bagdad am I, the Doorway of Diarbekir. The Persian dawn with new desires may net the flushing mountain spires, But my gaunt buttress still rejects the suppliance of those mellow fires. Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird? Pass not beneath! Men say there blows in stony deserts still a rose But with no scarlet to her leaf — and from whose heart no perfume flows. Wilt thou bloom red where she buds pale, thy sister rose? Wilt thou not fail When noonday flashes like a flail? Leave, nightingale, the Caravan! Pass then, pass all! Bagdad! ye cry, and down the billows of blue sky Ye beat the bell that beats to hell, and who shall thrust ye back? Not I. The Sun who flashes through the head and paints the shadows green and red — The Sun shall eat thy fleshless dead, O Caravan, O Caravan! And one who licks his lips for thirst with fevered eyes shall face in fear The palms that wave, the streams that burst, his last mirage, O Caravan! And one — the bird-voiced Singing-man — shall fall behind thee, Caravan! And God shall meet him in the night, and he shall sing as best he can. And one the Bedouin shall slay, and one, sand-stricken on the way, Go dark and blind; and one shall say — 'How lonely is the Caravan!' Pass out beneath, O Caravan, Doom's Caravan, Death's Caravan! I had not told ye, fools, so much, save that I heard your Singing-man. This was sung by the West Gate's keeper When heaven's hollow dome grew deeper . I am the gate toward the sea: O sailor men, pass out from me! I hear you high on Lebanon, singing the marvels of the sea. The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea, The snow-besprinkled wine of earth, the white-and-blue-flower foaming sea. Beyond the sea are towns with towers, carved with lions and lily flowers, And not a soul in all those lonely streets to while away the hours. Beyond the towns, an isle where, bound, a naked giant bites the ground: The shadow of a monstrous wing looms on his back: and still no sound. Beyond the isle a rock that screams like madmen shouting in their dreams, From whose dark issues night and day blood crashes in a thousand streams. Beyond the rock is Restful Bay, where no wind breathes or ripple stirs, And there on Roman ships, they say, stand rows of metal mariners. Beyond the bay in utmost West old Solomon the Jewish King Sits with his beard upon his breast, and grips and guards his magic ring: And when that ring is stolen, he will rise in outraged majesty, And take the World upon his back, and fling the World beyond the sea. This is the song of the North Gate's master, Who singeth fast, but drinketh faster. I am the gay Aleppo Gate: a dawn, a dawn and thou art there: Eat not thy heart with fear and care, O brother of the beast we hate! Thou hast not many miles to tread, nor other foes than fleas to dread; Homs shall behold thy morning meal, and Hama see thee safe in bed. Take to Aleppo filigrane, and take them paste of apricots, And coffee tables botched with pearl, and little beaten brassware pots: And thou shalt sell thy wares for thrice the Damascene retailers' price, And buy a fat Armenian slave who smelleth odorous and nice. Some men of noble stock were made: some glory in the murder-blade: Some praise a Science or an Art, but I like honourable Trade! Sell them the rotten, buy the ripe! Their heads are weak; their pockets burn. Aleppo men are mighty fools. Salaam Aleikum! Safe return! This is the song of the South Gate Holder, A silver man, but his song is older. I am the Gate that fears no fall: the Mihrab of Damascus wall, The bridge of booming Sinai: the Arch of Allah all in all. O spiritual pilgrim, rise: the night has grown her single horn: The voices of the souls unborn are half adream with Paradise. To Meccah thou hast turned in prayer with aching heart and eyes that burn: Ah, Hajji, whither wilt thou turn when thou art there, when thou art there? God be thy guide from camp to camp: God be thy shade from well to well; God grant beneath the desert stars thou hear the Prophet's camel bell. And God shall make thy body pure, and give thee knowledge to endure This ghost-life's piercing phantom-pain, and bring thee out to Life again. And God shall make thy soul a Glass where eighteen thousand Æons pass, And thou shalt see the gleaming Worlds as men see dew upon the grass. And son of Islam, it may be that thou shalt learn at journey's end Who walks thy garden eve on eve, and bows his head, and calls thee Friend. Contents / Contents, p. 2 The Dying Patriot Day breaks on England down the Kentish hills, Singing in the silence of the meadow-footing rills, Day of my dreams, O day! I saw them march from Dover, long ago, With a silver cross before them, singing low, Monks of Rome from their home where the blue seas break in foam, Augustine with his feet of snow. Noon strikes on England, noon on Oxford town, — Beauty she was statue cold — there's blood upon her gown: Noon of my dreams, O noon! Proud and godly kings had built her, long ago, With her towers and tombs and statues all arow, With her fair and floral air and the love that lingers there, And the streets where the great men go. Evening on the olden, the golden sea of Wales, When the first star shivers and the last wave pales: O evening dreams! There's a house that Britons walked in, long ago, Where now the springs of ocean fall and flow, And the dead robed in red and sea-lilies overhead Sway when the long winds blow. Sleep not, my country: though night is here, afar Your children of the morning are clamorous for war: Fire in the night, O dreams! Though she send you as she sent you, long ago, South to desert, east to ocean, west to snow, West of these out to seas colder than the Hebrides I must go Where the fleet of stars is anchored, and the young Star-captains glow. Contents / Contents, p. 2 Wilfrid Wilson Gibson The Gorse In dream, again within the clean, cold hell Of glazed and aching silence he was trapped; And, closing in, the blank walls of his cell Crushed stifling on him ... when the bracken snapped, Caught in his clutching fingers; and he lay Awake upon his back among the fern, With free eyes travelling the wide blue day, Unhindered, unremembering; while a burn Tinkled and gurgled somewhere out of sight, Unheard of him; till suddenly aware Of its cold music, shivering in the light, He raised himself, and with far-ranging stare Looked all about him: and with dazed eyes wide Saw, still as in a numb, unreal dream, Black figures scouring a far hill-side, With now and then a sunlit rifle's gleam; And knew the hunt was hot upon his track: Yet hardly seemed to mind, somehow, just then ... But kept on wondering why they looked so black On that hot hillside, all those little men Who scurried round like beetles — twelve, all told ... He counted them twice over; and began A third time reckoning them, but could not hold His starved wits to the business, while they ran So brokenly, and always stuck at 'five' ... And 'One, two, three, four, five,' a dozen times He muttered ... 'Can you catch a fish alive?' Sang mocking echoes of old nursery rhymes Through the strained, tingling hollow of his head. And now, almost remembering, he was stirred To pity them; and wondered if they'd fed Since he had, or if, ever since they'd heard Two nights ago the sudden signal-gun That raised alarm of his escape, they too Had fasted in the wilderness, and run With nothing but the thirsty wind to chew, And nothing in their bellies but a fill Of cold peat-water, till their heads were light ... The crackling of a rifle on the hill Rang in his ears: and stung to headlong flight, He started to his feet; and through the brake He plunged in panic, heedless of the sun That burned his cropped head to a red-hot ache Still racked with crackling echoes of the gun. Then suddenly the sun-enkindled fire Of gorse upon the moor-top caught his eye: And that gold glow held all his heart's desire, As, like a witless, flame-bewildered fly, He blundered towards the league-wide yellow blaze, And tumbled headlong on the spikes of bloom; And rising, bruised and bleeding and adaze, Struggled through clutching spines; the dense, sweet fume Of nutty, acrid scent like poison stealing Through his hot blood; the bristling yellow glare Spiking his eyes with fire, till he went reeling, Stifled and blinded, on — and did not care Though he were taken — wandering round and round, 'Jerusalem the Golden' quavering shrill, Changing his tune to 'Tommy Tiddler's Ground': Till, just a lost child on that dazzling hill, Bewildered in a glittering golden maze Of stinging scented fire, he dropped, quite done, A shrivelling wisp within a world ablaze Beneath a blinding sky, one blaze of sun. Contents / Contents, p. 2 Hoops Scene: The big tent-stable of a travelling circus. On the ground near the entrance GENTLEMAN JOHN, stableman and general odd-job man, lies smoking beside MERRY ANDREW, the clown. GENTLEMAN JOHN is a little hunched man with a sensitive face and dreamy eyes. MERRY ANDREW, who is resting between the afternoon and evening performances, with his clown's hat lying beside him, wears a crimson wig, and a baggy suit of orange-coloured cotton, patterned with purple cats. His face is chalked dead-white, and painted with a set grin, so that it is impossible to see what manner of man he is. In the back-ground are camels and elephants feeding, dimly visible in the steamy dusk of the tent. Gentleman John: And then consider camels: only think Of camels long enough, and you'ld go mad — With all their humps and lumps; their knobbly knees, Splay feet, and straddle legs; their sagging necks, Flat flanks, and scraggy tails, and monstrous teeth. I've not forgotten the first fiend I met: 'Twas in a lane in Smyrna, just a ditch Between the shuttered houses, and so narrow The brute's bulk blocked the road; the huge green stack Of dewy fodder that it slouched beneath Brushing the yellow walls on either hand, And shutting out the strip of burning blue: And I'd to face that vicious bobbing head With evil eyes, slack lips, and nightmare teeth, And duck beneath the snaky, squirming neck, Pranked with its silly string of bright blue beads, That seemed to wriggle every way at once, As though it were a hydra. Allah's beard! But I was scared, and nearly turned and ran: I felt that muzzle take me by the scruff, And heard those murderous teeth crunching my spine, Before I stooped — though I dodged safely under. I've always been afraid of ugliness. I'm such a toad myself, I hate all toads; And the camel is the ugliest toad of all, To my mind; and it's just my devil's luck I've come to this — to be a camel's lackey, To fetch and carry for original sin, For sure enough, the camel's old evil incarnate. Blue beads and amulets to ward off evil! No eye's more evil than a camel's eye. The elephant is quite a comely brute, Compared with Satan camel, — trunk and all, His floppy ears, and his inconsequent tail. He's stolid, but at least a gentleman. It doesn't hurt my pride to valet him, And bring his shaving-water. He's a lord. Only the bluest blood that has come down Through generations from the mastodon Could carry off that tail with dignity, That tail and trunk. He cannot look absurd, For all the monkey tricks you put him through, Your paper hoops and popguns. He just makes His masters look ridiculous, when his pomp's Butchered to make a bumpkin's holiday. He's dignity itself, and proper pride, That stands serenely in a circus-world Of mountebanks and monkeys. He has weight Behind him: æons of primeval power Have shaped that pillared bulk; and he stands sure, Solid, substantial on the world's foundations. And he has form, form that's too big a thing To be called beauty. Once, long since, I thought To be a poet, and shape words, and mould A poem like an elephant, huge, sublime, To front oblivion; and because I failed, And all my rhymes were gawky, shambling camels, Or else obscene, blue-buttocked apes, I'm doomed To lackey it for things such as I've made, Till one of them crunches my backbone with his teeth, Or knocks my wind out with a forthright kick Clean in the midriff, crumpling up in death The hunched and stunted body that was me — John, the apostle of the Perfect Form! Jerusalem! I'm talking like a book — As you would say: and a bad book at that, A maundering, kiss-mammy book — The Hunch-back's End Or The Camel-Keeper's Reward — would be its title. I froth and bubble like a new-broached cask. No wonder you look glum, for all your grin. What makes you mope? You've naught to growse about. You've got no hump. Your body's brave and straight — So shapely even that you can afford To trick it in fantastic shapelessness, Knowing that there's a clean-limbed man beneath Preposterous pantaloons and purple cats. I would have been a poet, if I could: But better than shaping poems 'twould have been To have had a comely body and clean limbs Obedient to my bidding. Merry Andrew: I missed a hoop This afternoon. Gentleman John: You missed a hoop? You mean ... Merry Andrew: That I am done, used up, scrapped, on the shelf, Out of the running — only that, no more. Gentleman John: Well, I've been missing hoops my whole life long; Though, when I come to think of it, perhaps There's little consolation to be chewed From crumbs that I can offer. Merry Andrew: I've not missed A hoop since I was six. I'm forty-two. This is the first time that my body's failed me: But 'twill not be the last. And ... Gentleman John: Such is life! You're going to say. You see I've got it pat, Your jaded wheeze. Lord, what a wit I'ld make If I'd a set grin painted on my face. And such is life, I'ld say a hundred times, And each time set the world aroar afresh At my original humour. Missed a hoop! Why, man alive, you've naught to grumble at. I've boggled every hoop since I was six. I'm fifty-five; and I've run round a ring Would make this potty circus seem a pinhole. I wasn't born to sawdust. I'd the world For circus ... Merry Andrew: It's no time for crowing now. I know a gentleman, and take on trust The silver spoon and all. My teeth were cut Upon a horseshoe: and I wasn't born To purple and fine linen — but to sawdust, To sawdust, as you say — brought up on sawdust. I've had to make my daily bread of sawdust: Ay, and my children's, — children's, that's the rub, As Shakespeare says ... Gentleman John: Ah, there you go again! What a rare wit to set the ring aroar — As Shakespeare says! Crowing? A gentleman? Man, didn't you say you'd never missed a hoop? It's only gentlemen who miss no hoops, Clean livers, easy lords of life who take Each obstacle at a leap, who never fail. You are the gentleman. Merry Andrew: Now don't you try Being funny at my expense; or you'll soon find I'm not quite done for yet — not quite snuffed out. There's still a spark of life. You may have words: But I've a fist will be a match for them. Words slaver feebly from a broken jaw. I've always lived straight, as a man must do In my profession, if he'ld keep in fettle: But I'm no gentleman, for I fail to see There's any sport in baiting a poor man Because he's losing grip at forty-two, And sees his livelihood slipping from his grasp — Ay, and his children's bread. Gentleman John: Why, man alive, Who's baiting you? This winded, broken cur, That limps through life, to bait a bull like you! You don't want pity, man! The beaten bull, Even when the dogs are tearing at his gullet, Turns no eye up for pity. I myself, Crippled and hunched and twisted as I am, Would make a brave fend to stand up to you Until you swallowed your words, if you should slobber Your pity over me. A bull! Nay, man, You're nothing but a bear with a sore head. A bee has stung you — you who've lived on honey. Sawdust, forsooth! You've had the sweet of life: You've munched the honeycomb till — Merry Andrew: Ay! talk's cheap. But you've no children. You don't understand. Gentleman John: I have no children: I don't understand! Merry Andrew: It's children make the difference. Gentleman John: Man alive — Alive and kicking, though you're shamming dead — You've hit the truth at last. It's that, just that, Makes all the difference. If you hadn't children, I'ld find it in my heart to pity you, Granted you'ld let me. I don't understand! I've seen you stripped. I've seen your children stripped. You've never seen me naked; but you can guess The misstitched, gnarled, and crooked thing I am. Now, do you understand? I may have words. But you, man, do you never burn with pride That you've begotten those six limber bodies, Firm flesh, and supple sinew, and lithe limb — Six nimble lads, each like young Absalom, With red blood running lively in his veins, Bone of your bone, your very flesh and blood? It's you don't understand. God, what I'ld give This moment to be you, just as you are, Preposterous pantaloons, and purple cats, And painted leer, and crimson curls, and all — To be you now, with only one missed hoop, If I'd six clean-limbed children of my loins, Born of the ecstasy of life within me, To keep it quick and valiant in the ring When I ... but I ... Man, man, you've missed a hoop; But they'll take every hoop like blooded colts: And 'twill be you in them that leaps through life, And in their children, and their children's children. God! doesn't it make you hold your breath to think There'll always be an Andrew in the ring, The very spit and image of you stripped, While life's old circus lasts? And I ... at least There is no twisted thing of my begetting To keep my shame alive: and that's the most That I've to pride myself upon. But, God, I'm proud, ay, proud as Lucifer, of that. Think what it means, with all the urge and sting, When such a lust of life runs in the veins. You, with your six sons, and your one missed hoop, Put that thought in your pipe and smoke it. Well, And how d'you like the flavour? Something bitter? And burns the tongue a trifle? That's the brand That I must smoke while I've the breath to puff. (Pause.) I've always worshipped the body, all my life — The body, quick with the perfect health which is beauty, Lively, lissom, alert, and taking its way Through the world with the easy gait of the early gods. The only moments I've lived my life to the full And that live again in remembrance unfaded are those When I've seen life compact in some perfect body, The living God made manifest in man: A diver in the Mediterranean, resting, With sleeked black hair, and glistening salt-tanned skin, Gripping the quivering gunwale with tense hands, His torso lifted out of the peacock sea, Like Neptune, carved in amber, come to life: A stark Egyptian on the Nile's edge poised Like a bronze Osiris against the lush, rank green: A fisherman dancing reels, on New Year's Eve, In a hall of shadowy rafters and flickering lights, At St Abbs on the Berwickshire coast, to the skirl of the pipes, The lift of the wave in his heels, the sea in his veins: A Cherokee Indian, as though he were one with his horse, His coppery shoulders agleam, his feathers aflame With the last of the sun, descending a gulch in Alaska; A brawny Cleveland puddler, stripped to the loins, On the cauldron's brink, stirring the molten iron In the white-hot glow, a man of white-hot metal: A Cornish ploughboy driving an easy share Through the grey, light soil of a headland, against a sea Of sapphire, gay in his new white corduroys, Blue-eyed, dark-haired, and whistling a careless tune: Jack Johnson, stripped for the ring, in his swarthy pride Of sleek and rippling muscle ... Merry Andrew: Jack's the boy! Ay, he's the proper figure of a man. But he'll grow fat and flabby and scant of breath. He'll miss his hoop some day. Gentleman John: But what are words To shape the joy of form? The Greeks did best To cut in marble or to cast in bronze Their ecstasy of living. I remember A marvellous Hermes that I saw in Athens, Fished from the very bottom of the deep Where he had lain two thousand years or more, Wrecked with a galleyful of Roman pirates, Among the white bones of his plunderers Whose flesh had fed the fishes as they sank — Serene in cold, imperishable beauty, Biding his time, till he should rise again, Exultant from the wave, for all men's worship, The morning-spring of life, the youth of the world, Shaped in sea-coloured bronze for everlasting. Ay, the Greeks knew: but men have forgotten now. Not easily do we meet beauty walking The world to-day in all the body's pride. That's why I'm here — a stable-boy to camels — For in the circus-ring there's more delight Of seemly bodies, goodly in sheer health, Bodies trained and tuned to the perfect pitch, Eager, blithe, debonair, from head to heel Aglow and alive in every pulse, than elsewhere In this machine-ridden land of grimy, glum Round-shouldered, coughing mechanics. Once I lived In London, in a slum called Paradise, Sickened to see the greasy pavements crawling With puny flabby babies, thick as maggots. Poor brats! I'ld soon go mad if I'd to live In London, with its stunted men and women But little better to look on than myself. Yet, there's an island where the men keep fit — St Kilda's, a stark fastness of high crag: They must keep fit or famish: their main food The Solan goose; and it's a chancy job To swing down a sheer face of slippery granite And drop a noose over the sentinel bird Ere he can squawk to rouse the sleeping flock. They must keep fit — their bodies taut and trim — To have the nerve: and they're like tempered steel, Suppled and fined. But even they've grown slacker Through traffic with the mainland, in these days. A hundred years ago, the custom held That none should take a wife till he had stood, His left heel on the dizziest point of crag, His right leg and both arms stretched in mid air, Above the sea: three hundred feet to drop To death, if he should fail — a Spartan test. But any man who could have failed, would scarce Have earned his livelihood or his children's bread On that bleak rock. Merry Andrew (drowsily): Ay, children — that's it, children! Gentleman John: St Kilda's children had a chance, at least, With none begotten idly of weakling fathers. A Spartan test for fatherhood! Should they miss Their hoop, 'twas death, and childless. You have still Six lives to take unending hoops for you, And you yourself are not done yet ... Merry Andrew (more drowsily): Not yet. And there's much comfort in the thought of children. They're bonnie boys enough; and should do well, If I can but keep going a little while, A little longer till ... Gentleman John: Six strapping sons! And I have naught but camels. (Pause.) Yet, I've seen A vision in this stable that puts to shame Each ecstasy of mortal flesh and blood That's been my eyes' delight. I never breathed A word of it to man or woman yet: I couldn't whisper it now to you, if you looked Like any human thing this side of death. 'Twas on the night I stumbled on the circus. I'd wandered all day, lost among the fells, Over snow-smothered hills, through blinding blizzard, Whipped by a wind that seemed to strip and skin me, Till I was one numb ache of sodden ice. Quite done, and drunk with cold, I'ld soon have dropped Dead in a ditch; when suddenly a lantern Dazzled my eyes. I smelt a queer warm smell; And felt a hot puff in my face; and blundered Out of the flurry of snow and raking wind Dizzily into a glowing Arabian night Of elephants and camels having supper. I thought that I'd gone mad, stark, staring mad; But I was much too sleepy to mind just then — Dropped dead asleep upon a truss of hay; And lay, a log, till — well, I cannot tell How long I lay unconscious. I but know I slept, and wakened, and that 'twas no dream. I heard a rustle in the hay beside me, And opening sleepy eyes, scarce marvelling, I saw her, standing naked in the lamplight, Beneath the huge tent's cavernous canopy, Against the throng of elephants and camels That champed unwondering in the golden dusk, Moon-white Diana, mettled Artemis — Her body, quick and tense as her own bowstring, Her spirit, an arrow barbed and strung for flight — White snowflakes melting on her night-black hair, And on her glistening breasts and supple thighs: Her red lips parted, her keen eyes alive With fierce, far-ranging hungers of the chase Over the hills of morn — The lantern guttered And I was left alone in the outer darkness Among the champing elephants and camels. And I'll be a camel-keeper to the end: Though never again my eyes... (Pause.) So you can sleep, You Merry Andrew, for all you missed your hoop. It's just as well, perhaps. Now I can hold My secret to the end. Ah, here they come! Six lads, between the ages of three and twelve, clad in pink tights covered with silver spangles, tumble into the tent. The Eldest Boy: Daddy, the bell's rung, and — Gentleman John: He's snoozing sound. (to the youngest boy) You just creep quietly, and take tight hold Of the crimson curls, and tug, and you will hear The purple pussies all caterwaul at once. Contents / Contents, p. 2 The Going R.B. He's gone. I do not understand. I only know That as he turned to go And waved his hand, In his young eyes a sudden glory shone, And I was dazzled with a sunset glow, And he was gone. Contents / Contents, p. 2 Ralph Hodgson The Bull See an old unhappy bull, Sick in soul and body both, Slouching in the undergrowth Of the forest beautiful, Banished from the herd he led, Bulls and cows a thousand head. Cranes and gaudy parrots go Up and down the burning sky; Tree-top cats purr drowsily In the dim-day green below; And troops of monkeys, nutting, some, All disputing, go and come; And things abominable sit Picking offal buck or swine, On the mess and over it Burnished flies and beetles shine, And spiders big as bladders lie Under hemlocks ten foot high; And a dotted serpent curled Round and round and round a tree, Yellowing its greenery, Keeps a watch on all the world, All the world and this old bull In the forest beautiful. Bravely by his fall he came: One he led, a bull of blood Newly come to lustihood, Fought and put his prince to shame, Snuffed and pawed the prostrate head Tameless even while it bled. There they left him, every one, Left him there without a lick, Left him for the birds to pick, Left him there for carrion, Vilely from their bosom cast Wisdom, worth and love at last. When the lion left his lair And roared his beauty through the hills, And the vultures pecked their quills And flew into the middle air, Then this prince no more to reign Came to life and lived again. He snuffed the herd in far retreat, He saw the blood upon the ground, And snuffed the burning airs around Still with beevish odours sweet, While the blood ran down his head And his mouth ran slaver red. Pity him, this fallen chief, All his splendour, all his strength, All his body's breadth and length Dwindled down with shame and grief, Half the bull he was before, Bones and leather, nothing more. See him standing dewlap-deep In the rushes at the lake, Surly, stupid, half asleep, Waiting for his heart to break And the birds to join the flies Feasting at his bloodshot eyes, — Standing with his head hung down In a stupor, dreaming things: Green savannas, jungles brown, Battlefields and bellowings, Bulls undone and lions dead And vultures flapping overhead. Dreaming things: of days he spent With his mother gaunt and lean In the valley warm and green, Full of baby wonderment, Blinking out of silly eyes At a hundred mysteries; Dreaming over once again How he wandered with a throng Of bulls and cows a thousand strong, Wandered on from plain to plain, Up the hill and down the dale, Always at his mother's tail; How he lagged behind the herd, Lagged and tottered, weak of limb, And she turned and ran to him Blaring at the loathly bird Stationed always in the skies, Waiting for the flesh that dies. Dreaming maybe of a day When her drained and drying paps Turned him to the sweets and saps, Richer fountains by the way, And she left the bull she bore And he looked to her no more; And his little frame grew stout, And his little legs grew strong, And the way was not so long; And his little horns came out, And he played at butting trees And boulder-stones and tortoises, Joined a game of knobby skulls With the youngsters of his year, All the other little bulls, Learning both to bruise and bear, Learning how to stand a shock Like a little bull of rock. Dreaming of a day less dim, Dreaming of a time less far, When the faint but certain star Of destiny burned clear for him, And a fierce and wild unrest Broke the quiet of his breast, And the gristles of his youth Hardened in his comely pow, And he came to fighting growth, Beat his bull and won his cow, And flew his tail and trampled off Past the tallest, vain enough, And curved about in splendour full And curved again and snuffed the airs As who should say Come out who dares! And all beheld a bull, a Bull, And knew that here was surely one That backed for no bull, fearing none. And the leader of the herd Looked and saw, and beat the ground, And shook the forest with his sound, Bellowed at the loathly bird Stationed always in the skies, Waiting for the flesh that dies. Dreaming, this old bull forlorn, Surely dreaming of the hour When he came to sultan power, And they owned him master-horn, Chiefest bull of all among Bulls and cows a thousand strong. And in all the tramping herd Not a bull that barred his way, Not a cow that said him nay, Not a bull or cow that erred In the furnace of his look Dared a second, worse rebuke; Not in all the forest wide, Jungle, thicket, pasture, fen, Not another dared him then, Dared him and again defied; Not a sovereign buck or boar Came a second time for more. Not a serpent that survived Once the terrors of his hoof Risked a second time reproof, Came a second time and lived, Not a serpent in its skin Came again for discipline; Not a leopard bright as flame, Flashing fingerhooks of steel, That a wooden tree might feel, Met his fury once and came For a second reprimand, Not a leopard in the land. Not a lion of them all, Not a lion of the hills, Hero of a thousand kills, Dared a second fight and fall, Dared that ram terrific twice, Paid a second time the price ... Pity him, this dupe of dream, Leader of the herd again Only in his daft old brain, Once again the bull supreme And bull enough to bear the part Only in his tameless heart. Pity him that he must wake; Even now the swarm of flies Blackening his bloodshot eyes Bursts and blusters round the lake, Scattered from the feast half-fed, By great shadows overhead. And the dreamer turns away From his visionary herds And his splendid yesterday, Turns to meet the loathly birds Flocking round him from the skies, Waiting for the flesh that dies.