Archives: Poems

Pre-admonisheth the writer! 
H'm, for a subject it is well enough! 
Who wrote 'Sordello" finds no subject tough.

Well, Jack and Jill—God knows the life they led 
(The poet never told us, more's the pity)
Pent up in some damp kennel of their own, 
Beneath the hillside; but it once befell
That Jack or Jill, niece, cousin, uncle, aunt
(Some one of all the brood) would wash or scour—
Rinse out a cess-pit, swab the kennel floor,
And water (liquor vitae, Lawson calls,
But I'll hold by whisky. Never mind;
I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, sir,
And missed the scrap o' blue at buttonhole—)
Spring water was the needful at the time,
So they must climb the hill for't. Well and good.
We all climb hills, I take it, on some quest,
Maybe for less than stinking (I forgot!
I mean than wholesome) water . . . Ferret out 
The rotten bucket from the lumber-shed,
Weave ropes and splice the handle—off they go 
To where the cold spring bubbles up i' the cleft,
And sink the bucket brimful in the spate.
Then downwards—hanging back? (You bet your life 
The girl's share fell upon Jack's shoulders.) Down, 
Down to the bottom—all but—trip, slip, squelch!
And guggle-guggle goes the bucketful
Back to the earth, and Jack's a broken head,
And swears amid the heather does our Jack.
(A man would swear who watched both blood and bucket, 
One dripping down his forehead, t'other fled,
Clinkety-tinkle, to the stones below,
A good half-hour's trudge to get it back.)
Jack therefore, as I said, exploded straight 
In brimstone-flavoured language. You, of course,
Maintain he bore it calmly—not a bit. 
A good bucolic curse that rent the cliffs
And frightened for a moment quaking Jill
Out of the limp, unmeaning girl's tee-hee
That womankind delight in. . . . Here we end 
The first verse—there's a deal to study in't. 
A cosmic force that blunders into right,
Just when the strained sense hints at revolution 
Because the world's great fly-wheel runs aslant—
And up go Jill's red kibes. (You think I'm wrong;
And Fate was napping at the time; perhaps
You're right.) We'll call it Devil's agency
That sent the shrieking sister on her head,
And knocked the tangled locks against the stones.
Well, down went Jill, but wasn't hurt. Oh, no! 
The Devil pads the world to suit his own,
And packs the cards according. Down went Jill 
Unhurt. And Jack trots off to bed, poor brute,
Fist welted into eyeball, mouth agape
For yelling, your bucolic always yells,— 
And out of his domestic pharmacy
Rips forth the cruet-stand, upsets the cat, 
And ravages the store-room for his balm. 
Eureka!—but he didn't use that word—
A pound of candles, corpse-like, side by side, 
Wrapped up in his medicament. Out, knife!
Cut string, and strip the shrouding from the lot! 
Steep swift and jam it on the gaping cut;
Then bedward—cursing man and fiends alike.

Now back to Jill. She wasn't hurt, I said, 
And all the woman's spite was up in arms.
So Jack's abed. She slips, peeks through the door, 
And sees the split head like a luggage-label, 
Halved, quartered, on the pillow. 'Ee-ki-ree,
Tee-hee-hee-hee', she giggles through the crack, 
Much as the Roman ladies grinned—don't smile—
To see the dabbled bodies in the sand
Appealing to their benches for a sign.
Down thumbs, and giggle louder–so did Jill.
But mark now! Comes the mother round the door, 
Red-hot from climbing up the hill herself,
And caught the graceless giggler. Whack! flack! whack! 
Here's Nemesis whichever way you like!
She didn't stop to argue. Given a head 
Broken, a woman chuckling at the door,
And here's your circumstantial evidence complete. 
Whack! while Jack sniffs and sniggers from the bed. 
I like that horny-handed mother o' Jill.
The world's best women died, sir, long ago. 
Well, Jack's avenged; as for the other, gr-r-r-r!

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The first day back, ay bitter cold it was.
And I tho' rugged and wrappered was a-cold,
Like boilèd spinach, was the playground grass,
Yellow our boots, y-clogged with goosey mould.
Malarious vapours over Goosey rolled.
Stale bread, bad butter, filled our hungry maw, 
Damp were the sheets, huddled in frousty fold, 
Loud forcèd laughter shook the form room floor 
And pale and pinchèd boys peered down the corridor.

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1 
Men make them fires on the hearth
  Each under his roof-tree, 
And the Four Winds that rule the earth
  They blow the smoke to me.
2 
Across the high hills and the sea
   And all the changeful skies,
The Four Winds blow the smoke to me
  Till the tears are in my eyes.
3 
Until the tears are in my eyes
  And my heart is wellnigh broke
For thinking on old memories
  That gather in the smoke.
4 
With every shift of every wind
  The homesick memories come,
From every quarter of mankind
  Where I have made me a home.
5 
Four times afire against the cold
   And a roof against the rain—
Sorrow fourfold and joy fourfold
   The Four Winds bring again!
6 
How can I answer which is best
  Of all the fires that burn?
I have been too often host or guest
   At every fire in turn.
7 
How can I turn from any fire,
  On any man’s hearthstone?
I know the wonder and desire
  That went to build my own!
8 
How can I doubt man’s joy or woe
   Where’er his house-fires shine,
Since all that man must undergo
  Will visit me at mine?
9 
Oh, you Four Winds that blow so strong
   And know that this is true,
Stoop for a little and carry my song
  To all the men I knew!
10 
Where there are fires against the cold,
   Or roofs against the rain
With love fourfold and joy fourfold,
  Take them my songs again!

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One brought her Fire from a distant place,
And She—what should she know of it?—
She took His offering with the same untroubled look
  Of peace upon her face.
  'And I have brought it of my best,' quoth he, 
'By barren deserts and a frozen land.
What recompense?' She could not understand, 
  But let the bright light be.
  'A kindly gift,' the answer broke at length, 
'A kindly gift. We thank you. What is this 
That fiercer than all household fire is,
  And gathereth in strength?
  Strange fires? Take them hence with you, O sir! 
Presage of coming woe we dimly feel.'
Sudden She crushed the embers 'neath her heel,—
  And all light went with Her.

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1
Now the new year reviving old desires,
The restless soul to open sea aspires,
    Where the Blue Peter flickers from the fore,
And the grimed stoker feeds the engine-fires. 
2
Coupons, alas, depart with all their rows,
And last year’s sea-met loves where Grindley knows;
     But still the wild wind wakes off Gardafui,
And hearts turn eastward with the P. & O’s. 
3
Twelve knots an hour, be they more or less—
Oh slothful mother of much idleness,
    Whom neither rivals spur nor contracts speed!
Nay, bear us gently! Wherefore need we press? 
4
The Tragedy of all our East is laid
On those white decks beneath the awning shade—
    Birth, absence, longing, laughter, love and tears,
And death unmaking ere the land is made. 
5
And midnight madnesses of souls distraught
Whom the cool seas call through the open port,
    So that the table lacks one place next morn,
And for one forenoon men forego their sport. 
6
The shadow of the rigging to and fro
Sways, shifts, and flickers on the spar-deck’s snow,
    And like a giant trampling in his chains,
The screw-blades gasp and thunder deep below; 
7
And, leagued to watch one flying-fish’s wings,
Heaven stoops to sea, and sea to Heaven clings;
     While, bent upon the ending of his toil,
The hot sun strides, regarding not these things: 
8
For the same wave that meets our stem in spray
Bore Smith of Asia eastward yesterday,
    And Delhi Jones and Brown of Midnapore
To-morrow follow on the self-same way. 
9
Linked in the chain of Empire one by one,
Flushed with long leave, or tanned with many a sun,
     The Exiles’ Line brings out the exiles’ line
And ships them homeward when their work is done. 
10
Yea, heedless of the shuttle through the loom,
The flying keels fulfil the web of doom.
    Sorrow or shouting—what is that to them?
Make out the cheque that pays for cabin room! 
11
And how so many score of times ye flit
With wife and babe and caravan of kit,
     Not all thy travels past shall lower one fare,
Not all thy tears abate one pound of it. 
12
And how so high thine earth-born dignity,
Honour and state, go sink it in the sea,
    Till that great one upon the quarter deck,
Brow-bound with gold, shall give thee leave to be. 
13
Indeed, indeed from that same line we swear
Off for all time, and mean it when we swear;
     And then, and then we meet the Quartered Flag,
And, surely for the last time, pay the fare. 
14
And Green of Kensington, estrayed to view
In three short months the world he never knew,
    Stares with blind eyes upon the Quartered Flag
And sees no more than yellow, red and blue. 
15
But we, the gypsies of the East, but we—
Waifs of the land and wastrels of the sea—
    Come nearer home beneath the Quartered Flag
Than ever home shall come to such as we. 
16
The camp is struck, the bungalow decays,
Dead friends and houses desert mark our ways,
    Till sickness send us down to Prince’s Dock 
To meet the changeless use of many days. 
17
Bound in the wheel of Empire, one by one,
The chain-gangs of the East from sire to son,
    The Exiles’ Line takes out the exiles’ line
And ships them homeward when their work is done. 
18
How runs the old indictment? “Dear and slow,”
So much and twice so much. We gird, but go.
    For all the soul of our sad East is there,
Beneath the house-flag of the P. & O.

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