The wiles of the Earthbound (Ah, the fine young man,

  The hot young man whose kisses tasted sweet

  To our new postulant!) Madam, I beg you!

  You have mistaken the room; no, next door sleeps

  A lusty bagman, he’s the man to embrace you

  And welcome you with every brisk refinement

  Of passion. But while you rumple his sheets,

  The innocent and unhappy eyes of Rachel

  Bewilder me – Oh then in spite of Faith

  I am cast down – You nuns, but if I needed,

  As I no longer need, I’d challenge you

  To contest of hard praying, one against all.

  I could wrest Rachel back even to this bed

  To-night. But Faith, and Prayer that’s born of Faith

  Find her slow mind impediment to their power,

  So I resign her – Agatha, do your worst.

  The wisest course of Love? Yes, maidenhead.

  For me? Love’s Sacrifice? It was not love.

  The Broken Heart? Not mine. I’ll say no more

  Than mere goodbye. Go, get you to your nunnery,

  And out the candle! Darkness absolute

  Surrounds me, sleepy mother of good children

  Who drowse and drowse and cry not for the sun,

  Content and wisest of their generation.

  I AM THE STAR OF MORNING

  I am the Star of Morning poised between

  The dead night and the coming of the sun,

  Yet neither relic of the dark nor pointing

  The angry day to come. My virtue is

  My own, a mild light, an enduring courage;

  And the remembering ancient tribe of birds

  Sing blithest at my showing; only Man

  Sleeps on and stirs rebellious in his sleep.

  Lucifer, Lucifer, am I, millstone-crushed

  Between conflicting powers of doubleness,

  By envious Night lost in her myriad more

  Counterfeit glints, in day-time quite overwhelmed

  By tyrant blazing of the warrior sun.

  Yet some, my prophets who at midnight held me

  Fixedly framed in their observant glass,

  By daylight also, sinking well-shafts deep

  For water and for coolness of pure thought,

  Gaze up and far above them see me shining,

  Me, single natured, without gender, one,

  The only spark of Godhead unresolved.

  Mock Beggar Hall

  (1924)

  DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS

  King George, still powder-grimed from Dettingen,

  Called in thick tones: ‘My Lord, fetch ink and pen.

  I’ll write a threatening note in my own hand.

  This Chinese potentate must understand

  That Britons have a boundless fame to brag.

  No insult shall defile our glorious flag.

  Two Bristol ships at Hankow fetching tea,

  Boarded and robbed, at wharfside as they lay,

  Of a costly cargo? Ha, Sir! Let me boast

  My fleet stands ready to bombard your coast.

  If meek apologies be not forthcoming

  My fusiliers must through Pekin go drumming.

  You shall eat dirt, d’ye hear, you knavish fellow,

  Or we must tan your hide a deeper yellow.

  Ten ships shall yearly visit your chief ports

  With mirrors, beads, and clothing of all sorts,

  Carrying decorum to your savage parts

  With civilization, learning and the arts.

  But if so much as a rattle’s robbed or broke

  Your Chinese territory flies up in smoke.

  You then, beware! Signed, GEORGIUS REX. So, so.

  Our Foreign Minister sends this. Take it, go!’

  The Foreign Minister, reading the piece through,

  Swore by his wig, why, this would never do.

  ‘Our Sovereign trips on all the finer points

  Of English speech, confuses, blurs, disjoints.

  To send this note, ’s blood, it were most unwise.

  Suppose it intercepted by French spies?

  “La langue du roi…” (I hear their mocking tone)

  “Dunce-cap instead of crown, dunce-stool for throne!”

  Why, even in China, men would laugh to read

  This halting, odd, mis-spelt, improbable screed.

  But stay! Our Sovereign we would surely please,

  Translating him his Note into Chinese.

  Li-Chung will do’t, then there can be no call

  To pawn our honour with the original.’

  Li-Chung, the Bond Street tea-man with meek eyes

  Performed the service, showing no surprise,

  Though inwardly enraged and jealous for

  The sacred majesty of his Emperor…

  How faithful his translation, who can say?

  George signed it readily, and it reached Cathay.

  The Emperor from his Summer terraces

  Claps hands for ink and sable paint-brushes

  And writes with care a special declaration

  To the Loyal Governor of the British Nation,

  Commiserating with that luckless one

  By seas exiled from his Imperial Sun

  On such outcast and pariah-like condition:

  ‘We note the abject tone of your petition

  And sorry excuses for your impudence

  In thus soliciting our Magnificence,

  Then, though we cannot in the atlas hit on

  A Chinese province (or sub-province) Britain,

  We graciously will none the less allow

  Ten yearly junks to harbour at Hankow

  With skins, blubber, oil or suchlike pelting stuff –

  Indeed five junk-loads would be quite enough.

  Formal permission signed, YOUR GOD. So, so.

  Our Foreign Minister sends this. Take it! Go!’

  The Foreign Minister, reading the piece through,

  Swore by his pigtail, this would never do.

  ‘Our Emperor neglects the niceties,

  Indeed the major rules, of Court Chinese.

  Our iron-helmed Manchu God in battle’s shock

  Or warrior council sits as firm as rock,

  But as for drafting edict, Note or letter…

  My six-year-old could do as well, aye, better.

  Can I permit my Sovereign’s reputation

  To sink even in a heathen’s estimation?

  I’ll tactfully propose it more correct

  To send this note in British dialect.

  Ned Gunn the boxing-teacher at Nanking

  Will soon translate the odd fantastic thing.’

  Ned Gunn, a stolid sailor with bold eyes,

  Performed the service, showing no surprise

  Though, loyal to the death, he felt his gorge

  Mount at this insult to victorious George.

  His English version (which he owned was free)

  The Emperor signed, frowned, sent oversea.

  George read the note, puffed out his cheeks, began:

  ‘He takes his medicine like a sensible man,

  Apologizes humbly, swears to behave

  With fawning loyalty of dog or slave,

  Sadly admits his colour far from white

  And trusts this missive is not impolite,

  Longs for our British cargoes rich and strange,

  Has only trash to offer in exchange.

  “May your Red, White and Blue still rule the main

  And countless Dettingens be fought again!

  God Save the King! Kow Tow! Success to barter.”’

  George swore: ‘We must reward him with the Garter.’

  HEMLOCK

  (Fragment of a late-Greek satire, probably Gadarene,

  here for the first time done into English)

  Socrates on the seventh day

  Sneezed and stretched and went his way,

/>   Then stood bare-headed in the sun

  Till seven times seventy days had run.

  An equal count of days from these

  The exiled Alcibiades

  Beheld him in the Chersonese

  Yet spectre-faint: the Master said

  Plainly, that, far from striking dead,

  The hemlock acting inwardly

  Gave him invisibility

  And life prolonged ten thousand years

  With such discerning eyes, with ears

  So tuned by music of the Spheres,

  He could see through brick and stone,

  Could hear the unborn infant groan,

  Could catch the plotting, piece by piece,

  In Persian courts against fair Greece,

  Yea, read the yet unspoken mind

  Of Aethiopes or men of Ind.

  The Athenian Thirty he forgave

  Who thought to end him in his grave

  And ‘Athens’ genius I shall be,’

  He said, ‘While Athens follows me.’

  All this and more did Socrates

  Unfold to Alcibiades,

  Then slowly disappeared from sight,

  Bald head and beard and mantle white.

  But Alcibiades for hate

  Of his own Athenian state

  Until his deathbed gasp concealed

  The wondrous message thus revealed.

  So Socrates walks here to-day,

  In Porch and School and Agorâ

  He watches us, all jealousy,

  While we exchange our sophistry

  Discoursing his philosophy,

  He frowns when we omit his mode

  Dialecticè – truth’s only road –

  He prods us with a touch like ice

  If ever falsely we premise,

  He weeps glad tears of sacred scent

  When we prevail in argument

  Against some un-Greek jack-in-the-box

  Defending a new paradox –

  We kneel to clasp thy phantom knees,

  Mouthpiece of wisdom, Socrates,

  And while we work thy god-like will

  Athens shall be Athens still!

  Scepticos heard this popular

  Figment in the spice-bazaar,

  And good Pisteuon started, shocked

  To see the way his neighbour mocked,

  Grimacing that ‘this Platonism

  Is meshed in sentimentalism,

  Encouraging such absolute

  Value for a dissolute

  Mulberry-nosed philosopher

  (A very Plague of Athens, sir)

  That if his system is to thrive

  They must assume him still alive,

  Spying demoniac, brushing them

  With his unseen garment’s hem.

  Of all religious forms,’ said he,

  ‘I most detest Necrophily.

  Now too the enthusiastic kind

  Will so get Hemlock on their mind,

  They’ll drink small potions on the sly

  And gradually stiffening, die,

  To stalk among us afterwards

  Flaunting invisible rewards.

  A phantom hierarchy, friend,

  That is the logical and only end.’

  FULL MOON

  As I walked out that sultry night,

  I heard the stroke of One.

  The moon, attained to her full height,

  Stood beaming like the sun:

  She exorcized the ghostly wheat

  To mute assent in love’s defeat,

  Whose tryst had now begun.

  The fields lay sick beneath my tread,

  A tedious owlet cried,

  A nightingale above my head

  With this or that replied –

  Like man and wife who nightly keep

  Inconsequent debate in sleep

  As they dream side by side.

  Your phantom wore the moon’s cold mask,

  My phantom wore the same;

  Forgetful of the feverish task

  In hope of which they came,

  Each image held the other’s eyes

  And watched a grey distraction rise

  To cloud the eager flame –

  To cloud the eager flame of love,

  To fog the shining gate;

  They held the tyrannous queen above

  Sole mover of their fate,

  They glared as marble statues glare

  Across the tessellated stair

  Or down the halls of state.

  And now warm earth was Arctic sea,

  Each breath came dagger-keen;

  Two bergs of glinting ice were we,

  The broad moon sailed between;

  There swam the mermaids, tailed and finned,

  And love went by upon the wind

  As though it had not been.

  MYRRHINA

  Ambergris from John Whale’s moans,

  Pearls from Jane Oyster’s groans

  Who knew no beauty:

  Groaning Oyster, moaning Whale,

  Myrrhina thinks a merry tale,

  Confident in her beauty.

  Yet must Myrrhina pay the fee

  If she would wear old misery

  To enhance her beauty,

  Twined at her throat, sweet on her dress

  Exhaling innocent carelessness

  Of all but maiden beauty.

  A pang for every several pang

  That round her neck in clusters hang

  Of seeming beauty,

  Despair for John’s uncouth despair

  Breathed from her dancing yellow hair –

  The Nessus-robe that beauties wear

  Burning away their beauty.

  Now must Myrrhina groaning say

  She knew not there were bills to pay

  For simple beauty,

  But pay she must, and on the nail,

  Giddied with tears, distraught, death-pale,

  Jane Oyster’s debt and John the Whale.

  This done, there’s room for beauty.

  TWIN SOULS

  The hermit on his pillar top

  Shuddering lean and bare;

  The glutton in his rowdy-shop

  With velvet clothes to wear.

  The hermit with his finger-nails

  Growing through his palms;

  The glutton in his swallow-tails

  Humming hell-fire psalms.

  Glutton: ‘By day I am a glutton,

  But (this is my complaint)

  In dreams I groan upon your stone

  A parched and giddy saint.’

  Hermit: ‘By day I am a hermit,

  But (this is my complaint)

  In dreams a glutton of beef and mutton

  Kissing powder and paint.’

  Then each began to say and see,

  Which cut him like a knife,

  ‘Visions of dark are more to me

  Than this my waking life.’

  Glutton: ‘My body is feeble and fat,

  My head has never been strong,

  If I were to stand on your pillar

  I doubt I would stand for long.

  ‘Heigh me! I am growing old

  And gone too far on my way,

  In dreams of midnight, bold,

  But a coward at break of day.’

  Hermit: ‘My body is feeble and thin,

  My head has never been strong,

  If I were to drink in your manner

  I doubt I would drink for long.

  ‘My eyes are a frosted glass,

  My fists are clenched like buckles:

  Could I please your saucy lass

  With a hand that is only knuckles?’

  The glutton on his pillar top

  Shuddering cold and bare,

  The hermit in his rowdy-shop

  Groaning hot despair,

  They died and they are buried,

  Both on the Easter Day,

  Now joined as one in spirit,

  Who li
ved apart in clay.

  THE NORTH WINDOW

  When the chapel is lit and sonorous with ploughmen’s praise,

  When matron and child crouch low to the Lord of Days,

  When the windows are shields of greyness all about,

  For the glowing lamps within and the storm without;

  On this Eve of All Souls (suicides too have souls)

  The damned to the Northward rise from their tablets and scrolls,

  With infants unbaptized that lie without ease,

  With women betrayed, their mothers, who murdered these,

  They make them a furious chapel of wind and gloom

  With, Southward, one stained window The Hour of Doom

  Lit up by the lamp of the righteous beaming through

  With the scene reversed, and the legend backwards too,

  Displaying in scarlet and gold the Creator who damns

  Who has thrust on His Left the bleating sheep and the lambs,

  Who has fixed on His Right the goats and kids accursed,

  With Omega : Alpha restoring the last as first:

  Then the psalms to God that issue hence or thence

  Ring blasphemy each to the other’s Omnipotence.

  ATTERCOP: THE ALL-WISE SPIDER

  James derided Walter,

  Twisting him a halter

  Of argument and synthesis,

  ‘Hang yourself, Poet, in this.’

  Walter, whistling on a reed

  ‘Sweet Melancholy’, took no heed;

  He lolled against a finger-post,

  Preening Fancy’s pinion,

  He summoned bogle, elf and ghost

  With other trivial sprites that most

  Resent the sour dominion

  Of James, renowned philosopher;

  He clothed each airy minion

  With cobwebs, with gossamer,

  He bade them cast in bonfire flames

  All the writings of this James

  To smoke with yon green rubbish, sir!

  Myself, not bound by James’ view

  Nor Walter’s, in a vision saw these two

  Like trapped and weakening flies

  In toils of the same hoary net;

  I seemed to hear ancestral cries

  Buzzing ‘To our All-Wise, Omnivorous

  Attercop glowering over us,

  Whose table we have set

  With blood and bones and sweat.’

  These old cries echo plainly yet

  Though James sits calmer now

  Composed, with spectacles on brow,

  Explaining why and how,

  Telling on the fingers of his hands

  And seldom losing count, the strands

  Of intricate silk entangling both his feet.

  He points ‘Here this and that web meet,

  Yet, I surmise,

  A different combination might arise