In An Old Nursery

A prim old room where memories stir

Through faded chintz and wall-paper,

Like bees along the lavender

          Of some dim border ;

Bay-windowed, whence at close of day

You see the roosty starlings sway

High on the elm-tree's topmost spray

          In gossip order.

In its quaint realm how soon one slips

Back to the age of treasure-ships,

The atmosphere of cowboy-trips

          And boundless prairies ;

And when the red logs fret and fume

(They're lit to-night to air the room)

Here come a tip-toe in the gloom

          Old nursery fairies.

Here come dear ghosts to him who sees-

Fat ghosts of long digested teas,

Thin little ghosts of "saying please,"

          Big ghosts of birthdays,

And sundry honourable sprites

To whisper those foredone delights

Of hallowe'ens and stocking-nights

          And other mirth-days.

Its walls are full of musics drawn

From twitterings in the eaves at dawn,

From swish of scythe on summer lawn,

          From Shetlands pawing

The gravel by the front-door yew,

And, wind-tossed from the avenue,

Fugues of first February blue

          And rooks a-cawing.

Old room, the years have galloped on,

The days that danced, the hours that shone

Have turned their backs on you and gone

          By ways that harden ;

But you in you their gold and myrrh

And frankincense of dreams still stir

Like bees that haunt the lavender

          Of some walled garden !

Patrick R Chalmers – Green Days and Blue Days (1912)

A little too sentimental for me yet it still appeals, stirring up delicate pastel tones of long afternoons spent musing in the dappled shade of old memories.

The Philosophers - Lao Tzu

Po Chü-i - from Wikipedia

 “Those who speak know nothing;

Those who know are silent.”

These words, as I am told,

Were spoken by Lao Tzu.

If we are to believe that Lao Ttzu

      Was himself one who knew,

How comes it that he wrote a book

     Of five thousand words?

Po Chü-i (772–846)

Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley

Beautiful woman

And yet a spirit still and bright

Walked the length of our street,

A golden, shining, superior type

Of person with whom to meet

I crossed the road, nodded to her,

Gave a friendly little smile,

But she scarcely noted my overture,

Made me feel quite small for a while

I saw her again on Thursday night

As EastEnders neared its close,

So I knew she wasn't a TV fan,

More cultured I supposed.

What was her name I asked myself,

Was it cool romantic and rare?

A golden name of soft delight

A name to go with her hair?

I later heard she was Kylie Brown

From a street just off Park Road,

She had two kids by a married man

Whose name was Barry Snoad.

What's in a name, I mused when I knew,

And a couple of kids on the side?

What's inside matters far more,

Such as warmth and beauty and pride.

But Barry Snoad was a bit of a prat,

So what did that make Kylie Brown?

I simply had to talk to her,

I’d begun to feel let down.

One evening as darkness began to fall

I stopped her in the street,

To ask what kind of life she led

But she turned as white as a sheet

"Piss off" was all I heard her say

As she ran off in a bit of a lather.

After that she changed her route,

So what did she see in old Bazza?

Communing with Nature.

 One evening I sat on a heavenward hill,

The winds were asleep and all nature was still, 

Wee children came round me to play at my knee, 

As my mind floated rudderless over the sea. 

I put out one hand to caress them, but held 

With the other my nose, for these cherubim smelled. 

I cast a few glances upon the old sun; 

He was red in the face from the race he had run, 

But he seemed to be doing, for aught I could see, 

Quite well without any assistance from me. 

And so I directed my wandering eye 

Around to the opposite side of the sky, 

And the rapture that ever with ecstasy thrills 

Through the heart as the moon rises bright from the hills, 

Would in this case have been most exceedingly rare, 

Except for the fact that the moon was not there. 

But the stars looked right lovingly down in the sea, 

And, by Jupiter, Venus was winking at me! 

The gas in the city was flaring up bright, 

Montgomery Street was resplendent with light; 

But I did not exactly appear to advance 

A sentiment proper to that circumstance. 

So it only remains to explain to the town 

That a rainstorm came up before I could come down. 

As the boots I had on were uncommonly thin 

My fancy leaked out as the water leaked in. 

Though dampened my ardour, though slackened my strain, 

I’ll “strike the wild lyre” who sings the sweet rain!

Ambrose Bierce

At fifteen I went with the army

At fifteen I went with the army,
At fourscore I came home.
On the way I met a man from the village,
I asked him who there was at home.
"That over there is your house,
All covered over with trees and bushes."
Rabbits had run in at the dog-hole,
Pheasants flew down from the beams of the roof.
In the courtyard was growing some wild grain;
And by the well, some wild mallows.
I'll boil the grain and make porridge,
I'll pluck the mallows and make soup.
Soup and porridge are both cooked,
But there is no one to eat them with.
I went out and looked towards the east,
While tears fell and wetted my clothes.

Ancient Chinese poem translated by Arthur Waley

THE RESULT

AFTER READING “THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE,” BY SIR JAMES JEANS.

I cannot suppose I completely

Comprehend the last Lecture I’ve read;

Can one pack “four dimensional” neatly

In a poor three-dimensional head?

Though the world be not made by a tinker-

Some botcher, malicious or blind-

Though a pure mathematical thinker

Conceived it-the first of its kind-

Can “continuums” fully content us-

All our high aspirations supply-

Has the Mind that conceived all things meant us

To live but in thought, and there die?

Is all nothing, of nothing compounded?

Nil, Nihil; in vacuo set;

Are we nowhere, by everywhere bounded,

Whilst nunquam and semper have met?

Is the Firmament all an illusion,

Formed of Nothingness added to Naught?

Is the Earth, is the Moon, an intrusion

Into mixed mathematical thought?

Should the Universe be but a thought, I

Am puzzled to tell if I am;

Whether some folk be good folk, some naughty-

And if anything matters a damn.

Lord Darling (1849–1936)

Note - from Wikipedia:-

The book was denounced by the Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, because "Jeans has written a book called The Mysterious Universe and I loathe it and call it misleading. Take the title...I might say that the title The Mysterious Universe includes a kind of idol worship, the idol being Science and the Scientist."

Mist

from photographymojo.com

Sometimes in moods of gloom-like mist
      Enswathing hill and wood-
A miracle of sunshine breaks
      Into my solitude.

In scattered splendour burns the dew;
      Still as in a dream, the trees
Their vaulted branches echo make
      To the bird's ecstasies.

What secret influence was this
      Made all dark brooding vain?
Has then the mind no inward sun?-
      The mists cloud down again:

Stealthily drape the distant heights,
      Blot out the songless tree:
Into cold silence flit the thoughts
      That sang to me.

Walter de la Mare (1873 - 1956)

Making a Fire

Following on from the last post - a fire-lover's poem from Walter de la Mare - suggested by Sam :-

Scatter a few cold cinders into the empty grate;
On these lay paper puffed into airy balloon,
Then wood - parched dry by the suns of Summer drowsy and sweet;
A flash, a flare, a flame; and a fire will be burning soon-

Fernlike, fleet, and impetuous. But unless you give heed,
It will faint, fade, fall, lose fervour, ash away out.
So is it with anger in heart and in brain; the insensate seed
Of dangerous fiery enkindling leaps in horror and rout;

But remaining untended, it dies. And the soul within
Is refreshed by the dews of sweet amity, pity's cool rain.
Not so with the flames Hell has kindled for unassoiled sin,
As soon as God's mercy would quench them, Love, weeping, lights them again.

Walter de la Mare (1873 - 1956)

Cotswolds

We’ve nipped off for a short break in the Cotswolds. A very sudden decision, but Christmas looms and we have a few spare days. As we are both retired, all our days ought to be spare, but that’s another story,

Anyway, here we are in Cirencester which is a very pleasant sandstone-coloured place, if rather wet. We’ve been here a few times before in the caravan, but this time we tried self-catering.

Yesterday we visited Tetbury, a little town chock full of antique shops so we had a good browse. Lots of shabby chic, much of which seems to be rather more shabby than chic, but maybe that’s the fashion. We didn’t buy anything, but rarely do, it’s mostly the browsing we enjoy.

Apparently our Royal Greenie lives near to Tetbury – at Highgrove. There is a Highgrove shop in the town centre too – pricey and not very interesting. Shortbread packed in fancy tins at fancy prices – that kind of thing. We bought a pack of Warburton’s crumpets from the Co-op over the road instead, but that was pricey too. It must be Tetbury.

This remote whiff of royalty set me wondering what life might be like if Charles ever makes it to the throne. My guess is – and it’s a wild shot in the dark – not much different to now. Very much a non-boat-rocker is Charles, in spite of the causes he espouses.

Whether he'll ever discover that climate science is a crock, I don't know. I feel a man in his unique position should have been too worldly-wise to be taken in, but he was. Still is one presumes. A disappointing man in my view.

As king, will he introduce new carbon-neutral modes of communicating with us? Semaphore springs to mind, although I've heard it suggested that he should try STFU. I don't know what the acronym stands for, but it sounds exciting.

We overheard a Tetbury resident complaining about the recent flooding and the local council. Apparently it issued free sandbags, but required payment for the sand. More than fair I'd say. Those bags may be the shabby chic antiques of the future.   

While we were browsing the shelves of a bookshop, a guy came in with an umbrella and a pair of shoes in his hand - enquiring after local cobblers. I was by the philosophy shelf at the time, but didn't make the obvious comment.

I did find a copy of Walter de la Mare’s Poems 1919 to 1934 though. I’ve blown hot and cold over de la Mare over the years. An odd chap by any standards, but I’ll probably enjoy reading his poetry again.  I had a couple of his books some years ago, but gave them away when we moved house. I’m not really in tune with old Walter, but find him difficult to ignore.

Echoes

The sea laments

The livelong day,

Fringing its waste of sand ;

Cries back the wind from the whispering shore –

No words I understand :

Yet echoes in my heart a voice,

As far, as near, as these –

The wind that weeps,

The solemn surge

Of strange and lonely seas.

Walter de la Mare

The Scholar In The Narrow Street

Flap, flap, the captive bird in the cage
Beating its wings against the four corners.
Depressed, depressed the scholar in the narrow street:
Clasping a shadow, he dwells in an empty house.
When he goes out, there is nowhere for him to go:
Bunches and brambles block up his path.
He composes a memorial, but it is rejected and unread,
He is left stranded, like a fish in a dry pond.
Without - he has not a single farthing of salary:
Within - there is not a peck of grain in his larder.
His relations upbraid him for his lack of success:
His friends and callers daily decrease in number.
Su Ch'in used to go preaching in the North
And Li Ssŭ sent a memorandum to the West.
I once hoped to pluck the fruits of life:
But now alas, they are all withered and dry.
Though one drinks at a river, one cannot drink more than a bellyful;
Enough is good, but there is no use in satiety.
The bird in a forest can perch but on one bough,
And this should be the wise man's pattern.

Tso Ssŭ - third century AD
Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley

Returning To The Fields

When I was young, I was out of tune with the herd:

My only love was for the hills and mountains.

Unwittingly I fell into the Web of the World’s dust

And was not free until my thirtieth year.

The migrant bird longs for the old wood:

The fish in the tank thinks of its native pool.

I had rescued from wildness a patch of the Southern Moor

And, still rustic, I returned to field and garden.

My ground covers no more than ten acres:

My thatched cottage has eight or nine rooms.

Elms and willow cluster by the eaves:

Peach trees and plum trees grow before the Hall.

Hazy, hazy distant hamlets of men.

Steady the smoke of the half-deserted village,

A dog barks somewhere in the deep lanes,

A cock crows at the top of the mulberry tree.

At gate and courtyard – no murmur of the World’s dust:

In the empty rooms – leisure and deep stillness,

Long I lived checked by the bars of a cage:

Now I have turned again to Nature and Freedom.

Tao Yuanming (365–427)

Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley

Reading The Book Of Hills And Seas

In the month of June the grass grows high
And round my cottage thick-leaved branches sway.
There is not a bird but delights in the place where it rests:
And I too - love my thatched cottage.
I have done ploughing:
I have sown my seed.
Again I have time to sit and read my books.
In the narrow lane there are no deep ruts:
Often my friend's carriages turn back.
In high spirits I pour out my spring wine
And pluck the lettuce growing in my garden.
A gentle rain comes stealing up from the east
And a sweet wind bears it company.
My thoughts float idly over the story of King Chou
My eyes wander over the pictures of Hills and Seas.
At a single glance I survey the whole Universe.
He will never be happy, whom such pleasures fail to please!

Tao Yuanming (365–427)

Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley

Father And Son

F R Higgins (1896 - 1941)

Only last week, walking the hushed fields
Of our most lovely Meath, now thinned by November,
I came to where the road from Laracor leads
To the Boyne river - that seemed more lake than river,
Stretched in uneasy light and stript of reeds.

And walking longside an old weir
Of my people's where nothing stirs - only the shadowed
Leaden flight of a heron up the lean air -
I went unmanly with grief, knowing how my father,
Happy though captive in years, walked last with me there.

Yes happy in Meath with me for a day
He walked, taking stock of herds hid in their own breathing ;
And naming colts, gusty as wind, once steered by his hand.
Lightnings winked in the eyes that were half shy in greeting
Old friends - the wild blades, when he gallivanted the land.

For that proud, wayward man now my heart breaks-
Breaks for that man whose mind was a secret eyrie,
Whose kind hand was sole signet of his race,
Who curbed me, scorned my green ways, yet increasingly loved me
Till Death drew its grey blind down his face.

And yet I am pleased that even my reckless ways
Are living shades of his rich calms and passions-
Witnesses for him and for those faint namesakes
With whom now he is one, under yew branches,
Yes, one in a graven silence no bird breaks.

F R Higgins (1896 - 1941)

In the Wings

Bliss Carman (1861 - 1929) 

The play is Life; and this round earth
The narrow stage whereon
We act before an audience
Of actors dead and gone.

There is a figure in the wings
That never goes away,
And though I cannot see his face,
I shudder while I play.

His shadow looms behind me here,
Or capers at my side;
And when I mouth my lines in dread,
Those scornful lips deride.

Sometimes a hooting laugh breaks out,
And startles me alone;
While all my fellows, wondering
At my stage-fright, play on.

I fear that when my Exit comes,
I shall encounter there,
Stronger than fate, or time, or love
And sterner than despair,

The Final Critic of the craft,
As stage tradition tells;
And yet - perhaps 'twill only be
The jester with his bells.

Bliss Carman (1861 - 1929)

Slightly Foxed

Decades ago wits, poets and dukes

Circled like planets round Gloria Jukes,

Bluestocking, tuft-hunter, grande amoureuse –

Was ever a salon brilliant as hers?

Her name still turns up though she’s turned up her

      toes,

You meet her in memoirs, they still quote her mots,

And old crones remember her faults and her furs –

Such foibles, my dear, such sables were hers!

A wrecker of homes and a breaker of hearts,

She talked like a book and encouraged the arts,

Political hostesses envied her poise

And said they preferred conversation to noise.

Her cook was a dream, her pearls were in ropes,

She furthered ambitions, she realized hopes,

Lent Dowson a fiver, put rouge on her eyebrows,

Enchanted grandees and reconciled highbrows.

Acclimatized novel Bohemian behaviour

In the stuffiest house in Victorian Belgravia,

And when St. John’s Wood was abandoned to orgies

Behaved like a dignified bride at St. George’s.

A Personage paid to her regal poitrine

A compliment royal, and she looked like a queen –

But of some Ruritanian kingdom, maybe –

All plastered with gifts like a Christmas tree.

When her guests were awash with champagne and

      With gin

She was recklessly sober, as sharp as a pin:

An abstemious man would reel at her look

As she rolled a bright eye and praised his last book.

She twitted George Moore, she flirted with Tree,

Gave dear Rider Haggard material for She,

Talked scansion with Bridges and scandal with Wilde,

To Drinkwater drank and at Crackanthorpe smiled.

Brzeska and Brooke were among those she knew

And she lived long enough to meet Lawrence too,

D.H. and T.E. – she, who’d known R.L.S.,

Talked to Hardy of Kim, and to Kipling of Tess!

Now she’s been dead for more than ten years

We look round in vain to discover her peers;

The Gloria (it has often been said) is departed

And a new and inferior period has started...

But tucked right away in a Bayswater attic,

Arthritic, ignoble, stone-deaf and rheumatic,

There still lingers on, by the strangest of flukes,

Yes, Gloria’s husband – Plantagenet Jukes!

Ignored in her lifetime, he paid for her fun

And enjoyed all the fuss. When she died he was done.

He sold up the house and retired from the scene

Where nobody noticed that he’d ever been.

His memoirs unwritten (though once he began ‘em)

He lives on a hundred and fifty per annum

And once in the day totters out for a stroll

To purchase the Times, two eggs and a roll.

Up to now he has paid for his pleasures and needs

With books he had saved and that everyone reads,

Signed copies presented by authors to Gloria

In the reign of King Edward and good Queen Victoria.

They brought in fair prices but came to an end,

Then Jukes was reduced to one book-loving friend,

A girl of the streets with a smatter of culture

And the genial ways of an African vulture.

To this bird he offered the last of the lot,

A volume of Flecker beginning to rot.

She opened it, stormed: ‘Cor blimey, you’re potty!

D’you think I can’t see that the pages are spotty?

Your Flecker is foxed, you old fool, and I’m through!'

Then out of the door in a tantrum she flew,

Leaving poor Jukes, in the black-out, in bed

With his past, and the book, and a bruise on his head.

William Plomer (1903–1973)

How beastly the bourgeois is

A Specimen

How beastly the bourgeois is

especially the male of the species –

Presentable, eminently presentable –

shall I make you a present of him?

Isn’t he handsome? Isn’t he healthy? Isn’t he a fine

      specimen?

doesn’t he look the fresh clean englishman, outside?

Isn’t it god’s own image? Tramping his thirty miles a

      day

after partridges, or a little rubber ball?

wouldn’t you like to be like that, well off, and quite

      the thing?

Oh, but wait!

Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with

      another man’s need,

let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life

      face him with a new demand on his understanding

and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.

Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.

Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new

      demand on his intelligence,

a new life-demand.

How beastly the bourgeois is

especially the male of the species –

Nicely groomed, like a mushroom

standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable –

and like a fungus, living on the remains of bygone life

sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life

      than his own.

And even so, he’s stale, he’s been there too long.

Touch him, and you’ll find he’s all gone inside

just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow

under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.

Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings

rather nasty –

How beastly the bourgeois is!

Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp

      England

what a pity they can’t all be kicked over

like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly

into the soil of England.

D H Lawrence (1885 - 1930)

Tattooed

On his arms he wears

Diagrams he chose,

A snake inside a skull,

A dagger in a rose,

And the muscle playing

Under the skin

Makes the rose writhe

And the skull grin.

He is one who acts his dreams

And these emblems are a clue

To the wishes in his blood

And what they make him do,

These signs are truer

Than the wearer knows:

The blade vibrates

In the vulnerable rose,

Anthers bend, and carmine curly

Petals kiss the plunging steel,

Dusty with essential gold

Close in upon the thing they feel.

Moistly once in bony sockets

Eyeballs hinted at a soul,

In the death’s head now a live head

Fills a different role;

Venomous resilience sliding

In the empty cave of thought,

Call it instinct ousting reason,

Or a reptile’s indoor sport.

The flower’s pangs, the snake exploring,

The skull, the violating knife,

Are the active and the passive

Aspects of his life,

Who is at home with death

More than he guesses;

The rose will die, and a skull

Gives back no caresses.

William Plomer (1903–1973)

Money

Something cheery for Monday morning...

I am your master and your master’s master,

I am the dragon’s teeth which you have sown

In the field of dead men’s and live men’s bones.

I am the moving belt you cannot turn from :

The threat behind the smiling of the clock :

The paper on which your days are signed and witnessed

Which only the mouse and the moth and the flame

          Dare devour.

I an the rustle of bank-notes in your graves,

The crackle of lawyer’s seals beneath your tombstones,

Borne to the leaning ears of legatees.

I am the cunning one whose final cunning

Was to buy grace, to corner loveliness,

To make a bid for beauty and to win it

And lock it away.

A S J Tessimond (1902 - 1962)

The Twilight People

It is a whisper among hazel bushes;
   It is a long low whispering voice that fills
With a sad music the bending and swaying
      rushes;
   It is a heart beat deep in the quiet hills.

Twilight people, why will you still be crying,
   Crying and calling to me out of the trees?
For under the quiet grass the wise are lying,
   And all the strong ones are gone over the seas.

And I am old, and in my heart at your calling
   Only the old dead dreams a-fluttering go;
As the wind, the forest wind, in its falling
   Sets the withered leaves fluttering to and fro.
Seumas O'Sullivan (1879 - 1958)

O'Sullivan was fond of a drink. As Wikipedia puts it:-

He was a friend of most of the leading literary figures in Dublin, including William Butler Yeats, James Stephens and George William Russell, but was inlined to be quarrelsome, largely due to his heavy drinking. Even the tolerant Russell admitted " Seumas drinks too much "; Yeats' verdict was;" the trouble with Seumas is that when he's not drunk, he's sober ".

Venture To Be Wise

Abraham Cowley - from Wikipedia

Begin, be bold and venture to be wise.

He who defers this work from day to day,

Does on a river’s bank expecting stay,

Till the whole stream that stopped him shall be gone,

Which runs, and as it runs, for ever shall run on.

Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667)

Cowley took the first line from Horace which most of his readers at the time would have known. It's a bit of versification I  use as a kind of mantra for getting on with life, a reminder that there are always more possibilities to explore. It encourages me to write, to read more widely and in my quiet way to make the most of now.

Samuel Johnson saw Cowley as one of the metaphysical poets of whom he did not have a high opinion. He says as much in his inimitable style in Lives of the Poets:-

The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to shew their learning was their whole endeavour: but, unluckily resolving to shew it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables.