Early Writings

  L’ART, 1910

  Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,

  Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.

  ANCIENT MUSIC

  Winter is icummen in,

  Lhude sing Goddamm,

  Raineth drop and staineth slop,

  And how the wind doth ramm!

  Sing: Goddamm.

  Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,

  An ague hath my ham.

  Freezeth river, turneth liver,

  Damn you, sing: Goddamm.

  Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm,

  So ’gainst the winter’s balm.

  Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm,

  Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

  Note:—This is not folk music, but Dr. Ker writes that the tune is to be found under the Latin words of a very ancient canon.

  PROVINCIA DESERTA

  At Rochecoart,

  Where the hills part

  in three ways,

  And three valleys, full of winding roads,

  Fork out to south and north,

  There is a place of trees . . . gray with lichen.

  I have walked there

  thinking of old days.

  At Chalais

  is a pleached arbour;

  Old pensioners and old protected women

  Have the right there—

  it is charity.

  I have crept over old rafters,

  peering down

  Over the Dronne,

  over a stream full of lilies.

  Eastward the road lies,

  Aubeterre is eastward,

  With a garrulous old man at the inn.

  I know the roads in that place:

  Mareuil to the north-east,

  La Tour,

  There are three keeps near Mareuil,

  And an old woman,

  glad to hear Arnaut,

  Glad to lend one dry clothing.

  I have walked

  into Perigord,

  I have seen the torch-flames, high-leaping,

  Painting the front of that church;

  Heard, under the dark, whirling laughter.

  I have looked back over the stream

  and seen the high building,

  Seen the long minarets, the white shafts.

  I have gone in Ribeyrac

  and in Sarlat,

  I have climbed rickety stairs, heard talk of Croy,

  Walked over En Bertran’s old layout,

  Have seen Narbonne, and Cahors and Chalus,

  Have seen Excideuil, carefully fashioned.

  I have said:

  “Here such a one walked.

  Here Cœur-de-Lion was slain.

  Here was good singing.

  Here one man hastened his step.

  Here one lay panting.”

  I have looked south from Hautefort,

  thinking of Montaignac, southward.

  I have lain in Rocafixada,

  level with sunset,

  Have seen the copper come down

  tingeing the mountains,

  I have seen the fields, pale, clear as an emerald,

  Sharp peaks, high spurs, distant castles.

  I have said: “The old roads have lain here.

  Men have gone by such and such valleys

  Where the great halls were closer together.”

  I have seen Foix on its rock, seen Toulouse, and

  Arles greatly altered,

  I have seen the ruined “Dorata.”

  I have said:

  “Riquier! Guido.”

  I have thought of the second Troy,

  Some little prized place in Auvergnat:

  Two men tossing a coin, one keeping a castle,

  One set on the highway to sing.

  He sang a woman.

  Auvergne rose to the song;

  The Dauphin backed him.

  “The castle to Austors!”

  “Pieire kept the singing—

  A fair man and a pleasant.”

  He won the lady,

  Stole her away for himself, kept her against armed

  force:

  So ends that story.

  That age is gone;

  Pieire de Maensac is gone.

  I have walked over these roads;

  I have thought of them living.

  VILLANELLE: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HOUR

  I had over-prepared the event,

  that much was ominous.

  With middle-ageing care

  I had laid out just the right books.

  I had almost turned down the pages.

  Beauty is so rare a thing.

  So few drink of my fountain.

  So much barren regret,

  So many hours wasted!

  And now I watch, from the window,

  the rain, the wandering busses.

  “Their little cosmos is shaken”—

  the air is alive with that fact.

  In their parts of the city

  they are played on by diverse forces.

  How do I know?

  Oh, I know well enough.

  For them there is something afoot.

  As for me;

  I had over-prepared the event—

  Beauty is so rare a thing

  So few drink of my fountain.

  Two friends: a breath of the forest . . .

  Friends? Are people less friends

  because one has just, at last, found them?

  Twice they promised to come.

  “Between the night and morning?”

  Beauty would drink of my mind.

  Youth would awhile forget

  my youth is gone from me.

  II

  (“Speak up! You have danced so stiffly?

  Someone admired your works,

  And said so frankly.

  “Did you talk like a fool,

  The first night?

  The second evening?”

  “But they promised again:

  ٬To-morrow at tea-time’.”)

  III

  Now the third day is here—

  no word from either;

  No word from her nor him,

  Only another man’s note:

  “Dear Pound, I am leaving England.”

  NEAR PERIGORD

  A Perigord, pres del muralh

  Tan que i puosch’ om gitar ab malh.1

  You’d have men’s hearts up from the dust

  And tell their secrets, Messire Cino,2

  Right enough? Then read between the lines of Uc St. Circ,3

  Solve me the riddle, for you know the tale.

  Bertrans, En4 Bertrans, left a fine canzone:5

  “Maent,6 I love you, you have turned me out.

  The voice at Montfort,7 Lady Agnes’ hair,

  Bel Miral’s8 stature, the viscountess’ throat,

  Set all together, are not worthy of you....”

  And all the while you sing out that canzone,

  Think you that Maent lived at Montagnac,

  One at Chalais, another at Malemort

  Hard over Brive—for every lady a castle,

  Each place strong.

  Oh, is it easy enough?

  Tairiran9 held hall in Montagnac,

  His brother-in-law was all there was of power

  In Perigord, and this good union

  Gobbled all the land, and held it later for some hundred years.

  And our En Bertrans was in Altafort,10

  Hub of the wheel, the stirrer-up of strife,

  As caught by Dante11 in the last wallow of hell—

  The headless trunk “that made its head a lamp,”

  For separation wrought out separation,

  And he who set the strife between brother and brother

  And had his way with the old English king,

  Viced in such torture for the “counterpass.”12

  How would you live, with neighbours set about you—

  Poictiers and Brive
, untaken Rochecouart,

  Spread like the finger-tips of one frail hand;

  And you on that great mountain of a palm—

  Not a neat ledge, not Foix13 between its streams,

  But one huge back half-covered up with pine,

  Worked for and snatched from the string-purse of Born—

  The four round towers, four brothers—mostly fools:

  What could he do but play the desperate chess,

  And stir old grudges?

  “Pawn your castles, lords!

  Let the Jews pay.”

  And the great scene—

  (That, maybe, never happened!)

  Beaten at last,

  Before the hard old king:

  “Your son, ah, since he died

  My wit and worth are cobwebs brushed aside

  In the full flare of grief. Do what you will.”

  Take the whole man, and ravel out the story.

  He loved this lady in castle Montagnac?

  The castle flanked him—he had need of it.

  You read to-day, how long the overlords of Perigord,

  The Talleyrands, have held the place; it was no transient

  fiction.

  And Maent failed him? Or saw through the scheme?

  And all his net-like thought of new alliance?

  Chalais is high, a-level with the poplars.

  Its lowest stones just meet the valley tips

  Where the low Dronne is filled with water-lilies.

  And Rochecouart can match it, stronger yet,

  The very spur’s end, built on sheerest cliff,

  And Malemort keeps its close hold on Brive,

  While Born, his own close purse, his rabbit warren,

  His subterranean chamber with a dozen doors,

  A-bristle with antennæ to feel roads,

  To sniff the traffic into Perigord.

  And that hard phalanx, that unbroken line,

  The ten good miles from there to Maent’s castle,

  All of his flank—how could he do without her?

  And all the road to Cahors, to Toulouse?

  What would he do without her?

  “Papiol,

  Go forthright singing—Anhes, Cembelins.

  There is a throat; ah, there are two white hands;

  There is a trellis full of early roses,

  And all my heart is bound about with love.

  Where am I come with compound flatteries—

  What doors are open to fine compliment?”

  And every one half jealous of Maent?

  He wrote the catch to pit their jealousies

  Against her; give her pride in them?

  Take his own speech, make what you will of it—

  And still the knot, the first knot, of Maent?

  Is it a love poem? Did he sing of war?

  Is it an intrigue to run subtly out,

  Born of a jongleur’s tongue, freely to pass

  Up and about and in and out the land,

  Mark him a craftsman and a strategist?

  (St. Leider had done as much at Polhonac,

  Singing a different stave, as closely hidden.)

  Oh, there is precedent, legal tradition,

  To sing one thing when your song means another,

  “Et albirar ab lor bordon—”14

  Foix’ count knew that. What is Sir Bertrans’ singing?

  Maent, Maent, and yet again Maent,

  Or war and broken heaumes15 and politics?

  II

  End fact. Try fiction. Let us say we see

  En Bertrans, a tower-room at Hautefort,

  Sunset, the ribbon-like road lies, in red cross-light,

  Southward toward Montagnac, and he bends at a table

  Scribbling, swearing between his teeth; by his left hand

  Lie little strips of parchment covered over,

  Scratched and erased with al and ochaisos.

  Testing his list of rhymes, a lean man? Bilious?

  With a red straggling beard?

  And the green cat’s-eye lifts toward Montagnac.

  Or take his “magnet” singer setting out,

  Dodging his way past Aubeterre,16 singing at Chalais

  In the vaulted hall,

  Or, by a lichened tree at Rochecouart

  Aimlessly watching a hawk above the valleys,

  Waiting his turn in the mid-summer evening,

  Thinking of Aelis, whom he loved heart and soul . . .

  To find her half alone, Montfort away,

  And a brown, placid, hated woman visiting her,

  Spoiling his visit, with a year before the next one.

  Little enough?

  Or carry him forward. “Go through all the courts,

  My Magnet,” Bertrans had said.

  We came to Ventadour17

  In the mid love court, he sings out the canzon,

  No one hears save Arrimon Luc D’Esparo—

  No one hears aught save the gracious sound of compliments.

  Sir Arrimon counts on his fingers, Montfort,

  Rochecouart, Chalais, the rest, the tactic,

  Malemort, guesses beneath, sends word to Cœur-de-Lion:

  The compact, de Born smoked out, trees felled

  About his castle, cattle driven out!

  Or no one sees it, and En Bertrans prospered?

  And ten years after, or twenty, as you will,

  Arnaut and Richard lodge beneath Chalus:

  The dull round towers encroaching on the field,

  The tents tight drawn, horses at tether

  Further and out of reach, the purple night,

  The crackling of small fires, the bannerets,

  The lazy leopards on the largest banner,

  Stray gleams on hanging mail, an armourer’s torch-flare

  Melting on steel.

  And in the quietest space

  They probe old scandals, say de Born is dead;

  And we’ve the gossip (skipped six hundred years).

  Richard shall die to-morrow-leave him there

  Talking of trobar clus with Daniel.18

  And the “best craftsman” sings out his friend’s song,

  Envies its vigour ... and deplores the technique,

  Dispraises his own skill?—That’s as you will.

  And they discuss the dead man,

  Plantagenet puts the riddle: “Did he love her?”

  And Arnaut parries: “Did he love your sister?

  True, he has praised her, but in some opinion

  He wrote that praise only to show he had

  The favour of your party; had been well received.”

  “You knew the man.”

  “ You knew the man.

  I am an artist, you have tried both métiers.”

  “You were born near him.”

  “Do we know our friends?”

  “Say that he saw the castles, say that he loved Maent!”

  “Say that he loved her, does it solve the riddle?”

  End the discussion, Richard goes out next day

  And gets a quarrel-bolt shot through his vizard,

  Pardons the bowman, dies,19

  Ends our discussion. Arnaut ends

  “In sacred odour”—(that’s apocryphal!)

  And we can leave the talk till Dante writes:

  Surely I saw, and still before my eyes

  Goes on that headless trunk, that bears for light

  Its own head swinging, gripped by the dead hair,

  And like a swinging lamp that says, “Ah me!

  I severed men, my head and heart

  Ye see here severed, my life’s counterpart. ”20

  Or take En Bertrans?

  III

  Ed eran due in uno, ed uno in due;

  Inferno, XXVIII, 12521

  Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezere22

  Poppies and day’s eyes23 in the green émail24

  Rose over us; and we knew all that stream,

  And o
ur two horses had traced out the valleys;

  Knew the low flooded lands squared out with poplars,

  In the young days when the deep sky befriended.

  And great wings beat above us in the twilight,

  And the great wheels in heaven

  Bore us together . . . surging ... and apart ...

  Believing we should meet with lips and hands,

  High, high and sure ... and then the counter-thrust:

  ‘Why do you love me? Will you always love me?

  But I am like the grass, I can not love you.’

  Or, ‘Love, and I love and love you,

  And hate your mind, not you, your soul, your hands.’

  So to this last estrangement, Tairiran!

  There shut up in his castle, Tairiran’s,

  She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands,

  Gone—ah, gone—untouched, unreachable!

  She who could never live save through one person,

  She who could never speak save to one person,

  And all the rest of her a shifting change,

  A broken bundle of mirrors ... !

  L’HOMME MOYEN SENSUELe

  “I hate a dumpy woman”

  —George Gordon, Lord Byron.1

  ’Tis of my country that I would endite,

  In hope to set some misconceptions right.

  My country? I love it well, and those good fellows

  Who, since their wit’s unknown, escape the gallows.

  But you stuffed coats who’re neither tepid nor distinctly

  boreal,

  Pimping, conceited, placid, editorial,

  Could I but speak as ’twere in the “Restoration”

  I would articulate your perdamnation.

  This year perforce I must with circumspection—

  For Mencken states somewhere, in this connection:

  “It is a moral nation we infest.”