The buck has couched beyond the burn,
My love she waits at her window
To wash my hands when I return.
"For that I live am I content
(Oh! I have seen my true love's eyes)
To stand wi' Adam in Eden-glade,
And run in the woods o' Paradise!"
'Twas naked sky and nodding grass,
'Twas
running flood and wastrel wind,
Where, checked against the open pass,
The red deer belled to call the hind.
True Thomas laid his harp away,
And louted low at the saddle-side;
He has taken
stirrup and hauden rein,
And set the King on his horse o' pride.
"Sleep ye or wake," True Thomas said,
"That sit so still, that muse so long;
Sleep ye or wake? -- till the latter sleep
I trow ye'll not forget my song.
"I ha' harpit a shadow out o' the sun
To stand before your face and cry;
I ha' armed the earth beneath your heel,
And over your head I ha' dusked the sky.
"I ha' harpit ye up to the
throne o' God,
I ha' harpit your midmost soul in three;
I ha' harpit ye down to the Hinges o' Hell,
And -- ye -- would -- make -- a Knight o' me!"
IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE
In the Neolithic Age
savagewarfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt;
I was
singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.
Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above.
But a rival, of Solutr]/e, told the tribe my style was ~outr]/e~ --
'Neath a tomahawk of diorite he fell.
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart
Of a
mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.
Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my
hunting dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and
theirs was wrong."
But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole
shrine he came,
And he told me in a
vision of the night: --
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!"
. . . . .
Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me
Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;
And I stepped beneath Time's finger, once again a tribal
singer[And a minor poet certified by Tr--ll].
Still they
skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow,
When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;
When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,
And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.
Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle,
squeak, and rage,
Still we pinch and slap and jabber,
scratch and dirk;
Still we let our business slide -- as we dropped the half-dressed hide --
To show a fellow-
savage how to work.
Still the world is
wondrous large, -- seven seas from marge to marge, --
And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu,
And the crimes of Clapham
chaste in Martaban.
Here's my
wisdom for your use, as I
learned it when the moose
And the
reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night: --
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And -- every -- single -- one -- of -- them -- is -- right!
THE STORY OF UNG
Once, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago,
Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow.
Fashioned the form of a tribesman -- gaily he whistled and sung,
Working the snow with his fingers. ~Read ye the Story of Ung!~
Pleased was his tribe with that image -- came in their hundreds to scan --
Handled it, smelt it, and grunted: "Verily, this is a man!
Thus do we carry our lances -- thus is a war-belt slung.
Lo! it is even as we are. Glory and honour to Ung!"
Later he pictured an aurochs -- later he pictured a bear --
Pictured the sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair --
Pictured the
mountainousmammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone --
Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone.
Swift came the tribe to behold them, peering and pushing and still --
Men of the berg-battered beaches, men of the boulder-hatched hill --
Hunters and fishers and trappers,
presently whispering low:
"Yea, they are like -- and it may be -- But how does the Picture-man know?"
"Ung -- hath he slept with the Aurochs -- watched where the Mastodon roam?
Spoke on the ice with the Bow-head -- followed the Sabre-tooth home?
Nay! These are toys of his fancy! If he have cheated us so,
How is there truth in his image -- the man that he fashioned of snow?"
Wroth was that maker of pictures -- hotly he answered the call:
"Hunters and fishers and trappers, children and fools are ye all!
Look at the beasts when ye hunt them!" Swift from the
tumult he broke,
Ran to the cave of his father and told him the shame that they spoke.
And the father of Ung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft,
Maker of pictures aforetime, he leaned on his lance and laughed:
"If they could see as thou seest they would do what thou hast done,
And each man would make him a picture, and -- what would become of my son?
"There would be no pelts of the
reindeer, flung down at thy cave for a gift,
Nor dole of the oily
timber that comes on the Baltic drift;
No store of well-drilled needles, nor ouches of amber pale;
No new-cut tongues of the bison, nor meat of the stranded whale.
"~Thou~ hast not toiled at the
fishing when the sodden trammels freeze,
Nor worked the war-boats
outward through the rush of the rock-staked seas,
Yet they bring thee fish and
plunder -- full meal and an easy bed --
And all for the sake of thy pictures." And Ung held down his head.
"~Thou~ hast not stood to the Aurochs when the red snow reeks of the fight;
Men have no time at the houghing to count his curls aright.
And the heart of the hairy Mammoth, thou sayest, they do not see,
Yet they save it whole from the beaches and broil the best for thee.
"And now do they press to thy pictures, with opened mouth and eye,
And a little gift in the
doorway, and the praise no gift can buy:
But -- sure they have doubted thy pictures, and that is a
grievous stain --
Son that can see so clearly, return them their gifts again!"
And Ung looked down at his deerskins -- their broad shell-tasselled bands --
And Ung drew
downward his mitten and looked at his naked hands;
And he gloved himself and
departed, and he heard his father, behind:
"Son that can see so clearly,
rejoice that thy tribe is blind!"
Straight on the glittering ice-field, by the caves of the lost Dordogne,
Ung, a maker of pictures, fell to his scribing on bone
Even to
mammoth editions. Gaily he whistled and sung,
Blessing his tribe for their
blindness. ~Heed ye the Story of Ung!~
THE THREE-DECKER
"~The three-volume novel is extinct.~"
Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.
It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to
shorten sail;
But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best --
The only certain
packet for the Islands of the Blest.
Fair held the
breeze behind us -- 'twas warm with lovers' prayers.
We'd
stolen wills for ballast and a crew of
missing heirs.
They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed,
And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest.
By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook,
Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took
With maids of
matchless beauty and parentage unguessed,
And a Church of England
parson for the Islands of the Blest.
We asked no social questions -- we pumped no
hidden shame --
We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came:
We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell.
We weren't exactly Yussufs, but -- Zuleika didn't tell.
No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared,
The
villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered.
'Twas
fiddle in the forc's'le -- 'twas garlands on the mast,
For every one got married, and I went
ashore at last.
I left 'em all in couples a-kissing on the decks.
I left the lovers
loving and the parents signing cheques.
In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed,
I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest!
That route is barred to steamers: you'll never lift again
Our purple-painted headlands or the
lordly keeps of Spain.
They're just beyond your skyline, howe'er so far you cruise
In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.
Swing round your aching search-light -- 'twill show no haven's peace.
Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas!
Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep's
unrest --
And you aren't one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest!
But when you're threshing, crippled, with broken
bridge and rail,
At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale,
Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed,
You'll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest.
You'll see her tiering
canvas in sheeted silver spread;
You'll hear the long-drawn
thunder 'neath her leaping figure-head;
While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine
Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a
shrine!
Hull down -- hull down and under -- she dwindles to a speck,
With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck.
All's well -- all's well
aboard her -- she's left you far behind,
With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind.
Her crew are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make?
You're manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming's sake?
Well,
tinker up your engines -- you know your business best --
~She~'s
taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!
AN AMERICAN
The American Spirit speaks:
"If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, my Avatar."
Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve.
His easy unswept
hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.
Calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown,
Or panic-blinded stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;
Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
He dubs his
dreary brethren Kings.
His hands are black with blood -- his heart
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.
But, through the shift of mood and mood,
Mine ancient
humour saves him whole --
The cynic devil in his blood