Poems, 1908-1919

THE FECKENHAM MEN “Old woman by the hedgerow In gown of withered black, With beads and pins and buttons And ribbons in your pack— How many miles do you go? To Dumbleton and back?” “To Dumbleton and back, sir, And round by Cotsall Hill, I count the miles at morning, At night I count them still, A Jill without a Jack, sir, I travel with a will.” “It’s little men are paying For such as you can do, You with the grey dust in your hair And sharp nails in your shoe, The young folks go a-Maying, But what is May to you?” “I care not what they pay me While I can hear the call Of cattle on the hillside, And watch the blossoms fall In a churchyard where maybe There’s company for all.” THE FECKENHAM MEN The jolly men at Feckenham Don’t count their goods as common men, Their heads are full of silly dreams From half-past ten to half-past ten, They’ll tell you why the stars are bright, And some sheep black and some sheep white. The jolly men at Feckenham Draw wages of the sun and rain, And count as good as golden coin The blossoms on the window-pane, And Lord! they love a sinewy tale Told over pots of foaming ale. Now here’s a tale of Feckenham Told to me by a Feckenham man, Who, being only eighty years, Ran always when the red fox ran, And looked upon the earth with eyes As quiet as unclouded skies. These jolly men of Feckenham One day when summer strode in power Went down, it seems, among their lands And saw their bean fields all in flower— “Wheat-ricks,” they said, “be good to see; What would a rick of blossoms be?” So straight they brought the sickles out And worked all day till day was done, And builded them a good square rick Of scented bloom beneath the sun. And was not this I tell to you A fiery-hearted thing to do? THE TRAVELLER When March was master of furrow and fold, And the skies kept cloudy festival And the daffodil pods were tipped with gold And a passion was in the plover’s call, A spare old man went hobbling by With a broken pipe and a tapping stick, And he mumbled—“Blossom before I die, Be quick, you little brown buds, be quick. “I ’ve weathered the world for a count of years— Good old years of shining fire— And death and the devil bring no fears, And I ’ve fed the flame of my last desire; I ’m ready to go, but I ’d pass the gate On the edge of the world with an old heart sick If I missed the blossoms. I may not wait— The gate is open—be quick, be quick.” IN LADY STREET All day long the traffic goes In Lady Street by dingy rows Of sloven houses, tattered shops— Fried fish, old clothes and fortune-tellers— Tall trams on silver-shining rails, With grinding wheels and swaying tops, And lorries with their corded bales, And screeching cars. “Buy, buy!” the sellers Of rags and bones and sickening meat Cry all day long in Lady Street. And when the sunshine has its way In Lady Street, then all the grey Dull desolation grows in state More dull and grey and desolate, And the sun is a shamefast thing, A lord not comely-housed, a god Seeing what gods must blush to see, A song where it is ill to sing, And each gold ray despiteously Lies like a gold ironic rod. Yet one grey man in Lady Street Looks for the sun. He never bent Life to his will, his travelling feet Have scaled no cloudy continent, Nor has the sickle-hand been strong. He lives in Lady Street; a bed, Four cobwebbed walls. But all day long A time is singing in his head Of youth in Gloucester lanes. He hears The wind among the barley-blades, The tapping of the woodpeckers On the smooth beeches, thistle-spades Slicing the sinewy roots; he sees The hooded filberts in the copse Beyond the loaded orchard trees, The netted avenues of hops; He smells the honeysuckle thrown Along the hedge. He lives alone, Alone—yet not alone, for sweet Are Gloucester lanes in Lady Street. Aye, Gloucester lanes. For down below The cobwebbed room this grey man plies A trade, a coloured trade. A show Of many-coloured merchandise Is in his shop. Brown filberts there, And apples red with Gloucester air, And cauliflowers he keeps, and round Smooth marrows grown on Gloucester ground, Fat cabbages and yellow plums, And gaudy brave chrysanthemums. And times a glossy pheasant lies Among his store, not Tyrian dyes More rich than are the neck-feathers; And times a prize of violets, Or dewy mushrooms satin-skinned And times an unfamiliar wind Robbed of its woodland favour stirs Gay daffodils this grey man sets Among his treasure. All day long In Lady Street the traffic goes By dingy houses, desolate rows Of shops that stare like hopeless eyes. Day long the sellers cry their cries, The fortune-tellers tell no wrong Of lives that know not any right, And drift, that has not even the will To drift, toils through the day until The wage of sleep is won at night. But this grey man heeds not at all The hell of Lady Street. His stall Of many-coloured merchandise He makes a shining paradise, As all day long chrysanthemums He sells, and red and yellow plums And cauliflowers. In that one spot Of Lady Street the sun is not Ashamed to shine and send a rare Shower of colour through the air; The grey man says the sun is sweet On Gloucester lanes in Lady Street. ANTHONY CRUNDLE Here lies the body of ANTHONY CRUNDLE, Farmer, of this parish, Who died in 1849 at the age of 82. “He delighted in music.” R. I. P. And of SUSAN, For fifty-three years his wife, Who died in 1860, aged 86. Anthony Crundle of Dorrington Wood Played on a piccolo. Lord was he, For seventy years, of sheaves that stood Under the perry and cider tree; Anthony Crundle, R.I.P. And because he prospered with sickle and scythe, With cattle afield and labouring ewe, Anthony was uncommonly blithe, And played of a night to himself and Sue; Anthony Crundle, eighty-two . The earth to till, and a tune to play, And Susan for fifty years and three, And Dorrington Wood at the end of day ... May providence do no worse by me; Anthony Crundle, R.I.P. MAD TOM TATTERMAN “Old man, grey man, good man scavenger, Bearing is it eighty years upon your crumpled back? What is it you gather in the frosty weather, Is there any treasure here to carry in your sack?” . . . . . . . . . . “I’ve a million acres and a thousand head of cattle, And a foaming river where the silver salmon leap; But I’ve left fat valleys to dig in sullen alleys Just because a twisted star rode by me in my sleep. “I’ve a brain is dancing to an old forgotten music Heard when all the world was just a crazy flight of dreams, And don’t you know I scatter in the dirt along the gutter Seeds that little ladies nursed by Babylonian streams? “Mad Tom Tatterman, that is how they call me. Oh, they know so much, so much, all so neatly dressed; I’ve a tale to tell you—come and listen, will you?— One as ragged as the twigs that make a magpie’s nest. “Ragged, oh, but very wise. You and this and that man, All of you are making things that none of you would lack, And so your eyes grow dusty, and so your limbs grow rusty— But mad Tom Tatterman puts nothing in his sack. “Nothing in my sack, sirs, but the Sea of Galilee Was walked for mad Tom Tatterman, and when I go to sleep They’ll know that I have driven through the acres of broad heaven Flocks are whiter than the flocks that all your shepherds keep.” FOR CORIN TO-DAY Old shepherd in your wattle cote, I think a thousand years are done Since first you took your pipe of oat And piped against the risen sun, Until his burning lips of gold Sucked up the drifting scarves of dew And bade you count your flocks from fold And set your hurdle stakes anew. And then as now at noon you ’ld take The shadow of delightful trees, And with good hands of labour break Your barley bread with dairy cheese, And with some lusty shepherd mate Would wind a simple argument, And bear at night beyond your gate A loaded wallet of content. O Corin of the grizzled eye, A thousand years upon your down You’ve seen the ploughing teams go by Above the bells of Avon’s town; And while there’s any wind to blow Through frozen February nights, About your lambing pens will go The glimmer of your lanthorn lights. THE CARVER IN STONE He was a man with wide and patient eyes, Grey, like the drift of twitch-fires blown in June That, without fearing, searched if any wrong Might threaten from your heart. Grey eyes he had Under a brow was drawn because he knew So many seasons to so many pass Of upright service, loyal, unabased Before the world seducing, and so, barren Of good words praising and thought that mated his. He carved in stone. Out of his quiet life He watched as any faithful seaman charged With tidings of the myriad faring sea, And thoughts and premonitions through his mind Sailing as ships from strange and storied lands His hungry spirit held, till all they were Found living witness in the chiselled stone. Slowly out of the dark confusion, spread By life’s innumerable venturings Over his brain, he would triumph into the light Of one clear mood, unblemished of the blind Legions of errant thought that cried about His rapt seclusion: as a pearl unsoiled, Nay, rather washed to lonelier chastity, In gritty mud. And then would come a bird, A flower, or the wind moving upon a flower, A beast at pasture, or a clustered fruit, A peasant face as were the saints of old, The leer of custom, or the bow of the moon Swung in miraculous poise—some stray from the world Of things created by the eternal mind In joy articulate. And his perfect mood Would dwell about the token of God’s mood, Until in bird or flower or moving wind Or flock or shepherd or the troops of heaven It sprang in one fierce moment of desire To visible form. Then would his chisel work among the stone, Persuading it of petal or of limb Or starry curve, till risen anew there sang Shape out of chaos, and again the vision Of one mind single from the world was pressed Upon the daily custom of the sky Or field or the body of man. His people Had many gods for worship. The tiger-god, The owl, the dewlapped bull, the running pard, The camel and the lizard of the slime, The ram with quivering fleece and fluted horn, The crested eagle and the doming bat Were sacred. And the king and his high priests Decreed a temple, wide on columns huge, Should top the cornlands to the sky’s far line. They bade the carvers carve along the walls Images of their gods, each one to carve As he desired, his choice to name his god.... And many came; and he among them, glad Of three leagues’ travel through the singing air Of dawn among the boughs yet bare of green, The eager flight of the spring leading his blood Into swift lofty channels of the air, Proud as an eagle riding to the sun.... An eagle, clean of pinion—there’s his choice. Daylong they worked under the growing roof, One at his leopard, one the staring ram, And he winning his eagle from the stone, Until each man had carved one image out, Arow beyond the portal of the house. They stood arow, the company of gods, Camel and bat, lizard and bull and ram, The pard and owl, dead figures on the wall, Figures of habit driven on the stone By chisels governed by no heat of the brain But drudges of hands that moved by easy rule. Proudly recorded mood was none, no thought Plucked from the dark battalions of the mind And throned in everlasting sight. But one God of them all was witness of belief And large adventure dared. His eagle spread Wide pinions on a cloudless ground of heaven, Glad with the heart’s high courage of that dawn Moving upon the ploughlands newly sown, Dead stone the rest. He looked, and knew it so. Then came the king with priests and counsellors And many chosen of the people, wise With words weary of custom, and eyes askew That watched their neighbour face for any news Of the best way of judgment, till, each sure None would determine with authority, All spoke in prudent praise. One liked the owl Because an owl blinked on the beam of his barn. One, hoarse with crying gospels in the street, Praised most the ram, because the common folk Wore breeches made of ram’s wool. One declared The tiger pleased him best,—the man who carved The tiger-god was halt out of the womb— A man to praise, being so pitiful. And one, whose eyes dwelt in a distant void, With spell and omen pat upon his lips, And a purse for any crystal prophet ripe, A zealot of the mist, gazed at the bull— A lean ill-shapen bull of meagre lines That scarce the steel had graved upon the stone— Saying that here was very mystery And truth, did men but know. And one there was Who praised his eagle, but remembering The lither pinion of the swift, the curve That liked him better of the mirrored swan. And they who carved the tiger-god and ram, The camel and the pard, the owl and bull, And lizard, listened greedily, and made Humble denial of their worthiness, And when the king his royal judgment gave That all had fashioned well, and bade that each Re-shape his chosen god along the walls Till all the temple boasted of their skill, They bowed themselves in token that as this Never had carvers been so fortunate. Only the man with wide and patient eyes Made no denial, neither bowed his head. Already while they spoke his thought had gone Far from his eagle, leaving it for a sign Loyally wrought of one deep breath of life, And played about the image of a toad That crawled among his ivy leaves. A queer Puff-bellied toad, with eyes that always stared Sidelong at heaven and saw no heaven there, Weak-hammed, and with a throttle somehow twisted Beyond full wholesome draughts of air, and skin Of wrinkled lips, the only zest or will The little flashing tongue searching the leaves. And king and priest, chosen and counsellor, Babbling out of their thin and jealous brains, Seemed strangely one; a queer enormous toad Panting under giant leaves of dark, Sunk in the loins, peering into the day. Their judgment wry he counted not for wrong More than the fabled poison of the toad Striking at simple wits; how should their thought Or word in praise or blame come near the peace That shone in seasonable hours above The patience of his spirit’s husbandry? They foolish and not seeing, how should he Spend anger there or fear—great ceremonies Equal for none save great antagonists? The grave indifference of his heart before them Was moved by laughter innocent of hate, Chastising clean of spite, that moulded them Into the antic likeness of his toad Bidding for laughter underneath the leaves. He bowed not, nor disputed, but he saw Those ill-created joyless gods, and loathed, And saw them creeping, creeping round the walls, Death breeding death, wile witnessing to wile, And sickened at the dull iniquity Should be rewarded, and for ever breathe Contagion on the folk gathered in prayer. His truth should not be doomed to march among This falsehood to the ages. He was called, And he must labour there; if so the king Would grant it, where the pillars bore the roof A galleried way of meditation nursed Secluded time, with wall of ready stone In panels for the carver set between The windows—there his chisel should be set,— It was his plea. And the king spoke of him, Scorning, as one lack-fettle, among all these Eager to take the riches of renown; One fearful of the light or knowing nothing Of light’s dimension, a witling who would throw Honour aside and praise spoken aloud All men of heart should covet. Let him go Grubbing out of the sight of these who knew The worth of substance; there was his proper trade. A squat and curious toad indeed.... The eyes, Patient and grey, were dumb as were the lips, That, fixed and governed, hoarded from them all The larger laughter lifting in his heart. Straightway about his gallery he moved, Measured the windows and the virgin stone, Till all was weighed and patterned in his brain. Then first where most the shadow struck the wall, Under the sills, and centre of the base, From floor to sill out of the stone was wooed Memorial folly, as from the chisel leapt His chastening laughter searching priest and king— A huge and wrinkled toad, with legs asplay, And belly loaded, leering with great eyes Busily fixed upon the void. All days His chisel was the first to ring across The temple’s quiet; and at fall of dusk Passing among the carvers homeward, they Would speak of him as mad, or weak against The challenge of the world, and let him go Lonely, as was his will, under the night Of stars or cloud or summer’s folded sun, Through crop and wood and pastureland to sleep. None took the narrow stair as wondering How did his chisel prosper in the stone, Unvisited his labour and forgot. And times when he would lean out of his height And watch the gods growing along the walls, The row of carvers in their linen coats Took in his vision a virtue that alone Carving they had not nor the thing they carved. Knowing the health that flowed about his close Imagining, the daily quiet won From process of his clean and supple craft, Those carvers there, far on the floor below, Would haply be transfigured in his thought Into a gallant company of men Glad of the strict and loyal reckoning That proved in the just presence of the brain Each chisel-stroke. How surely would he prosper In pleasant talk at easy hours with men So fashioned if it might be—and his eyes Would pass again to those dead gods that grew In spreading evil round the temple walls; And, one dead pressure made, the carvers moved Along the wall to mould and mould again The self-same god, their chisels on the stone Tapping in dull precision as before, And he would turn, back to his lonely truth. He carved apace. And first his people’s gods, About the toad, out of their sterile time, Under his hand thrilled and were recreate. The bull, the pard, the camel and the ram, Tiger and owl and bat—all were the signs Visibly made body on the stone Of sightless thought adventuring the host That is mere spirit; these the bloom achieved By secret labour in the flowing wood Of rain and air and wind and continent sun.... His tiger, lithe, immobile in the stone, A swift destruction for a moment leashed, Sprang crying from the jealous stealth of men Opposed in cunning watch, with engines hid Of torment and calamitous desire. His leopard, swift on lean and paltry limbs, Was fear in flight before accusing faith. His bull, with eyes that often in the dusk Would lift from the sweet meadow grass to watch Him homeward passing, bore on massy beam The burden of the patient of the earth. His camel bore the burden of the damned, Being gaunt, with eyes aslant along the nose. He had a friend, who hammered bronze and iron And cupped the moonstone on a silver ring, One constant like himself, would come at night Or bid him as a guest, when they would make Their poets touch a starrier height, or search Together with unparsimonious mind The crowded harbours of mortality. And there were jests, wholesome as harvest ale Of homely habit, bred of hearts that dared Judgment of laughter under the eternal eye: This frolic wisdom was his carven owl. His ram was lordship on the lonely hills, Alert and fleet, content only to know The wind mightily pouring on his fleece, With yesterday and all unrisen suns Poorer than disinherited ghosts. His bat Was ancient envy made a mockery, Cowering below the newer eagle carved Above the arches with wide pinion spread, His faith’s dominion of that happy dawn. And so he wrought the gods upon the wall, Living and crying out of his desire, Out of his patient incorruptible thought, Wrought them in joy was wages to his faith. And other than the gods he made. The stalks Of bluebells heavy with the news of spring, The vine loaded with plenty of the year, And swallows, merely tenderness of thought Bidding the stone to small and fragile flight; Leaves, the thin relics of autumnal boughs, Or massed in June.... All from their native pressure bloomed and sprang Under his shaping hand into a proud And governed image of the central man,— Their moulding, charts of all his travelling. And all were deftly ordered, duly set Between the windows, underneath the sills, And roofward, as a motion rightly planned, Till on the wall, out of the sullen stone, A glory blazed, his vision manifest, His wonder captive. And he was content. And when the builders and the carvers knew Their labour done, and high the temple stood Over the cornlands, king and counsellor And priest and chosen of the people came Among a ceremonial multitude To dedication. And, below the thrones Where king and archpriest ruled above the throng, Highest among the ranked artificers The carvers stood. And when, the temple vowed To holy use, tribute and choral praise Given as was ordained, the king looked down Upon the gathered folk, and bade them see The comely gods fashioned about the walls, And keep in honour men whose precious skill Could so adorn the sessions of their worship, Gravely the carvers bowed them to the ground. Only the man with wide and patient eyes Stood not among them; nor did any come To count his labour, where he watched alone Above the coloured throng. He heard, and looked Again upon his work, and knew it good, Smiled on his toad, passed down the stair unseen And sang across the teeming meadows home. ELIZABETH ANN This is the tale of Elizabeth Ann, Who went away with her fancy man. Ann was a girl who hadn’t a gown As fine as the ladies who walk the town. All day long from seven to six Ann was polishing candlesticks, For Bishops and crapulous Millionaires To buy for their altars or bed-chambers. And youth in a year and a year will pass, But there’s never an end of polishing brass. All day long from seven to six— Seventy thousand candlesticks. So frail and lewd Elizabeth Ann Went away with her fancy man. You Bishops and crapulous Millionaires, Give her your charity, give her your prayers. THE COTSWOLD FARMERS Sometimes the ghosts forgotten go Along the hill-top way, And with long scythes of silver mow Meadows of moonlit hay, Until the cocks of Cotswold crow The coming of the day. There’s Tony Turkletob who died When he could drink no more, And Uncle Heritage, the pride Of eighteen-twenty-four, And Ebenezer Barleytide, And others half a score. They fold in phantom pens, and plough Furrows without a share, And one will milk a faery cow, And one will stare and stare, And whistle ghostly tunes that now Are not sung anywhere. The moon goes down on Oakridge lea, The other world’s astir, The Cotswold farmers silently Go back to sepulchre, The sleeping watchdogs wake, and see No ghostly harvester. A MAN’S DAUGHTER There is an old woman who looks each night Out of the wood. She has one tooth, that isn’t too white. She isn’t too good. She came from the north looking for me, About my jewel. Her son, she says, is tall as can be; But, men say, cruel. My girl went northward, holiday making, And a queer man spoke At the woodside once when night was breaking, And her heart broke. For ever since she has pined and pined, A sorry maid; Her fingers are slack as the wool they wind, Or her girdle-braid. So now shall I send her north to wed, Who here may know Only the little house of the dead To ease her woe? Or keep her for fear of that old woman, As a bird quick-eyed, And her tall son who is hardly human, At the woodside? She is my babe and my daughter dear, How well, how well. Her grief to me is a fourfold fear, Tongue cannot tell. And yet I know that far in that wood Are crumbling bones, And a mumble mumble of nothing that’s good, In heathen tones. And I know that frail ghosts flutter and sigh In brambles there, And never a bird or beast to cry— Beware, beware,— While threading the silent thickets go Mother and son, Where scrupulous berries never grow, And airs are none. And her deep eyes peer at eventide Out of the wood, And her tall son waits by the dark woodside For maidenhood. And the little eyes peer, and peer, and peer; And a word is said. And some house knows, for many a year, But years of dread. THE LIFE OF JOHN HERITAGE Born in the Cotswolds in eighteen-forty or so, Bred on a hill-top that seemed the most of the world Until he travelled the valleys, and found what a wonder Of leagues from Gloucester lay to Stroud or Ciceter, John Heritage was a tiler. He split the stone, After the frosts, and learnt the laying of tiles, And was famous about the shire. And he was friendly With Cotswold nature, hearing the hidden rooks In Golden Vale, and the thin bleat of goats, And the rattling harness of Trilly’s teams at plough, And Richard Parker’s scythe for many years, As he went upon his tiling; and the great landmarks, As loops of the Severn seen from Bisley Hill, Were his familiars, something of his religion. And he prospered, as men do. His little wage Yet left a little over his wedded needs, And here a cottage he bought, and there another, About the Cotswolds, built of the royallest stone That’s quarried in England, until he could think of age With an easy mind; and an acre of land was his Where at hay-harvest he worked a little from tiling, Making his rick maturely or damning the wind That scattered the swathes beyond his fork’s controlling. And he trotted ajog to the town on market Thursdays, Driving a stout succession of good black geldings, That cropped his acre some twenty years apiece. And he was an honest neighbour; and so he grew old, And five strong sons, grizzled and middle-aged, Carried him down the hill, and on a stone The mason cut—“John Heritage, who died, Fearing the Lord, at the age of seventy-six.” And I know that some of us shatter our hearts on earth, With mightier aims than ever John Heritage knew, And think such things as never the tiler thought, Because of our pride and our eagerness of mind ... But a life complete is a great nobility, And there’s a wisdom biding in Cotswold stone, While we in our furious intellectual travel Fall in with strange foot-fellows on the road. THOMAS YARNTON OF TARLTON

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