The Project Gutenberg eBook ofPoemsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: PoemsAuthor: Clive BellRelease date: September 5, 2019 [eBook #60237]Most recently updated: October 17, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Imagesgenerously made available by Internet Archive.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: PoemsAuthor: Clive BellRelease date: September 5, 2019 [eBook #60237]Most recently updated: October 17, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Imagesgenerously made available by Internet Archive.)
Title: Poems
Author: Clive Bell
Author: Clive Bell
Release date: September 5, 2019 [eBook #60237]Most recently updated: October 17, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Imagesgenerously made available by Internet Archive.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***
CONTENTS
PREFACE_THE_ CARD HOUSELETTER TO A LADY I_TO_ A.V.S. WITH A BOOKMYSELF TO MYSELFSPRINGREPLY TO MRS. JOWITT_TO_ GERALD SHOVEMARCHAPRILJUNEOCTOBERDECEMBERLETTER TO A LADY IITO LOPOKOVA DANCINGAFTER AS CLEPIADESTHE LAST INFIRMITY_ΠΑΝΤΩΝ ΓΛΥΚΥΤΑΤΩΝ ΜΕΤΑΒΟΛΗ_
Most or these verses have appeared in the papers—The Nation, New Statesman, Cambridge Magazine—to the editors of which I tender customary dues. Also, in 1917, a dozen were brought together to make a little book,Ad Familiares, of which a hundred copies were printed privately. Of these seventy were immediately distributed amongst my friends, while the remaining thirty have drifted into the hands of curious amateurs who wrote and asked for them. My stock is now exhausted; but apparently the stock of amateurs is not: for, from time to time, still reach me civil requests for a copy. What can I do? On the one hand, my vanity is outraged by the idea of people anxious but unable to read me; on the other, I am too mean to print for their benefit at my own expense. What I have done is to accept with joy an offer by the Hogarth Press to publish a complete edition of my poems—seventeen in number. Thus, in future, without being at pains to write a flattering letter, and at a trifling cost, any amateur can acquire the works of an extremely rare poet.
C. B.
And so he laboured very hard,Piled little card on little cardAnd laughed to see how well it stood,How all his work was sure and goodAnd pretty as a minaret.He shone with pleasure. "Now I'll setA jolly cap to crown the thing."He clapped his hands. Perhaps the fling,Perhaps the shout was over-daring;It toppled down while he was staring.One had to titter, willy-nilly,To see him look so sad and silly.
1912.
Here in a garden under vinesTranslucent in the mid-day sun,Washing, green shutters, and the linesOf theSalute, which is funAnd pure baroque to men of taste,I'm waiting—while the pot-boy chasteOr chastish since Ignatius ChowneAnd J. A. Symonds to this townHave taught Italian history—waiting,I say, while he is regulatingA "conto" of 12.50-ChangeFor 50 lire; it is strangeIn "tutto il viale bello"In which the shops are small but thriftyThere's not a single honest fellowTo furnish 37.50.I'm waiting still, and still I ponder,As I have pondered all the morning,Out on the blueGiudeccayonder,Under the arches, listless, yawningFull-mouthed against precocious summerThat's sprung this quick surprise upon us,And found us out, the sly new-comer,Tweed-coated, winter-hosed, astonished—I ponder, knowing all the timeThe answer, ponder for the pleasureOf fitting fancy into rhymeAnd matching music with the weather,What lacks when sea and sky conspireWith form as thin but more romanticThan that which some of us admireAt Covent Garden,—TransatlanticCousins still call it monumental,But we know better—sentimentalPeople divine a riddle baskingUnder its marble,—never mind them,Be sure they'll come, their tales behind them,Safe home to Chelsea. Still I'm asking:"What's lacking yet?" The Spring's awake,Each palace curtsies to her neighbour,Each gondolier's a handsome rake,Each mouth-organ a dulcet tabor;What can I want when Venice playsAnd Time's a song, and Fate's a dancer,And Life drifts gaily down her ways,What's lacking, Madame? Can you answer?
Books are the quiet monitors of mind,They prompt its motions, shape its ways, they findA road through mazes to the higher ground,Whence to explore the sky-bound marches. RoundAbout us lie the open downs. Our daysStill ask a guide and goad. Wherefore alwaysWe meditate wise thoughts and passionate lays;Wherefore I send a book.Books are the mind's last symbol. They expressIts visions and its subtleties—a dressMaterial for the immaterial thingsThat soar to immortality on wingsOf words, and live, by magic of the pen,Where dead minds live, upon the lips of menAnd deep in hearts that stir. Wherefore do I,Drawing a little near, prophetically,Send you a book.Books are the heart's memorial. They shall measure,In after days, our undiscovered treasure,—Thrilling self-knowledge, half-divined untoldYearnings, and tongueless agonies, shall unfoldOr half unfold to half-illumined eyes.The cypress shadows creeping gnomonwiseStill stretch their purple fingers down the hillThat hangs above Fiesole; and stillYour English fireside glows. Do you most dear—Sometimes just guessed at, sometimes very near—Yet always dear and fairest friend, do youRecall the sunlight and the firelight too?Recall the pregnant hours, the gay delights,The pain, the tears maybe, the ravished heights,The golden moments my cold lines commend,The days, in memory or which I sendA book?
Dec. 1909.
It was the thrush's song I heardTo-day, in March. And you who cameAt life through books, whom poets stirredTo love of beauty, who the nameOf art revered and fancy knewFrom earliest days,—why, how should youGuess at my feelings when amongThe elms I heard the thrush's song?For you the country means a mood,Recalls a poem, lays a scene;For you its beauties are more goodSometimes than paintings: it has beenMusic to calm or move you, stillA background to your thought and will.Nothing for me the country means:It is. The thrush's earliest songIn the precocious sunshine cleansMy soul of culture. Comes alongThe acrid smell of daffodil,Hard from the soil still wet and chill.These do not mean. I am contentTo look or listen, passion spent,Far beyond art and thought, and freeFrom Vanity and Jealousy,As free as flower, or bird, or tree,Not to mean anything, but be.
1901.
The sun crept into the peaceful earthAnd troubled her dream of fair content;He tempted the timorous blossoms to birth,The poor pink fools that laughing wentNaked to meet him, their leaves without,And the meddlesome bees droned round and about.The sober grey that shrouded the headOf the pensive sea he ravished away;He twitched it from her, and gave insteadThe libertine breezes who ruffle her day;Who tease and tousle and toss anewHer mourning garment of exquisite blue.He cozened the mud-flies out on the heath,Ephemeral butterflies opened their wings;The credulous birds from their mates beneathCaught up the catch that Eternity sings—Sings to the Echoes in Fools' Paradise—"Shall not our folly befool the wise?"
April 1903.
When all the world was very good(So says the nursery rhyme)The fairy Fays and Mays who stoodAs godmothers, from time to time,Would give their virtuous picaninniesA golden goblet filled with guineas.That was the golden age: and nurseDeclared that ours grew worse and worse("Don't bite the spoon, Miss Leslie!")Yet I believe that fairies stillCan fill a cup, and over-fill,—At any rate in Chelsea.Telling good news is reckoned kind(Except when Germans tell it,)To wrap it in a pleasant rindOf song was thought angelicBy the good shepherds, and by meA piece of sweetdiablerie.One cavil: though it ill becomesOne who has in his timeBedragged the depths and skimmed the scumsTo catch a dubious rhyme,To scold a poetess who fellAnd, though she knew she shouldn't,Wrote down a name that rhymed with "well"Instead of one that wouldn't,Yet, frankly, tuneful, erring sister,Can one be musical to "Mister"?A monosyllable, I confess,Is what the Muse prefers:She cut a queen's name down to BessAnd yours is worse than hers:Meanwhile it takes a better poetThan I to deal with Mrs. Jowitt.
I like to let my fancy roveO'er all the charms of Mister Shoave.But oh! how very much aboveSuch obvious charms are those of Shuv.Oh Shuv most intimate! Oh ShoaveMore pompous-fine! Yet interwove,How complex-sweet and meet for loveThe compound name of Gerald Shuv.Oh Gerald dear! Oh Shuv! Oh Shoave!My late-found bliss, my treasure-trove;My poor heart yearns to counter-proveThose double facets that me moveSo strangely; therefore, deign t'approveThis syncretism—Gerald Shoove.
1912.
If I could catch all the stars in a netAnd make them tell me their Christian names,Or snare the dream of a violet,Or persuade the squirrels to teach me their games,Or quite surprise, on a warm June night,The lilac bushes that laugh for delightAnd tremble for fear lest we should hear them,—If I could tiptoe breathlessly near themAnd overhear themAnd master soSecrets that only the lilacs know:If I could feel what a young bird feelsWhen first it flutters across the road,Or learn at last from the creaking wheelsOf a wagon that story they tell their load—The hillside legend that never grows old:If I could be toldAll the subtle, impalpable, exquisite thingsThat we just surmise when the country sings,That week before they begin the hay:If I could contrive to sing, or to say,Or to be, what the poets have never invented,Should I be contented?Was I to-day?
1915.
After so many days...The moon lies right across the sea,The tide's up to the brink,A door keeps flapping in the wind,I cannot sleep a wink,Although I'm sleepy as can be.But lie in bed and thinkOf you and all your proud, gay ways.
1915.
They say you are the latest, loveliest jestOf some transmigratory ghost,The last embodiment, and best,Of some small being—tell me, are you mostYourself when mostA squirrel or jerboa?Or rather,Since you are tender, humorous, and wise,Is yours the spirit of some steadier goer,A grave, precautious donkey, whose wide eyesSee, far away, the thin ambiguous towers,Nor miss the pebbly road nor truant flowers—See farther,And less painfully, than ours?Or, as I think,Have you, like someToo curious spirit peering from the East,O'erleant the ramparts or your little townIn Fairyland; and from the brinkOf The Impossible tumbled downTo where we now uneasily surmiseYour vagrant figure, trailing Sirenwise—Strayed reveller, from some fairy banquet comeTo sow sedition at our sober feast?
1915.
O up the hill and down the hillAnd all across the ferry,Avid as bees under the trees—Probably they'll be merry:And back again, under the rain,As wild as wind-tossed plovers,Wet and chill and enchanted still—I fear they must be lovers.
1915.
In some few years, when you and I—Perhaps in some few months—shall lie,Where lie at last everyone must,Little will it approve our dustThat one shall write above our tombs:"They gave their days to glums and glooms."Much rather had I someone said:"They loved to wantonness, these dead.""They kissed too much," I'd have one say,"Until they kissed their souls away.Still they were young, and, lip to lip,They found a way to make Time skip;And they were bold enough to findA way to brave him, mind to mind;And sometimes, by their deadly art,They caught and crushed him, heart to heart."This elegy methinks becomesUs better than our glooms and glums.
1915.
No: I was not made for love;I was made for easier things,Ecstasies on paper wings,Agonies that end in laughter—Smoke or kisses coming after—Not for love.I was made for airy thinking,Nimble sallies, champagne-drinking,Badinage and argument,Reading's infinite content,Ill-considered merriment,Friendship, anything but love.Made for singing little songs,Made for righting little wrongs,Made to taste whate'er there beOf loveliness and gaietyOn this variegated earth;Made for sentiment and mirthAnd light romance, perhaps just worthA smile from Art, a nod from Truth,I, apt for a fantastic youthOf follies, an old age of thought,And never thinking to be caughtAs now I am, said "Never mindLove, for Love, you know, is blind."I was made with eyes to see,And taste to choose fastidiously,And ears to hear, enough of brainTo make most matters fairly plain,Enough of health for work or play,Of wealth enough to pick my way,Sense to enjoy, and arts to bringSoft nothings off a softer thing,A turn of wit, a taste for ease,And what had love to do with these?I was made to revel inThe viola and violin,The broad bassoon and clarinette,From every art devised to getIts complement of melody:Believe me, I was meant to beOne who smiled back at smiling faces,A loiterer in life's pleasant places,A well of receptivity.I was contrived by God to pullThe noses of the very dull;Tweak up as 'twere a cotton gownThe law most solemnly laid down;Expressly charged to mock the greatAnd weather-cockwise still girate.To choose a rose and praise a frill,And sometimes cause a tiny thrill,To be a lover in my fashion—But O! I was not made for passion.Therefore, dear Lady, if you pleaseDeal very gingerly with these.Here is our garden: O, take careOur passion spoil not our parterre.Be gracious, Madame, lest your frownShould bake the lawns and burn them brown,Be very kind, or jealous showersMay quite dash down our scented flowers,And O! be chary of reproof,Remember I'm not made for love.
Is it true?Are Ariel's whimsEmbodied in your artful limbs?And Puck, they say, betrayed you all his lore:Did he? Are you—As now to me at any rate you seem,Twisting a Longhi into fun and air,—Are you, perhaps, that unpropounded themeOf playfulness Mozart forgot to score,As lyrical and debonair and newAnd fair?The rhythm snaps. Surely I caught you there?You are, at least I'm almost sure you were,Some truant from the lesser Piero's store,A living Procne by a livelier shore,Where lustier satyrs ply remorselesslyMore pagan antics by a bluer sea,A sea as frankly unmysteriousAs Theocritus.
1918.
O iced gin-slings are pretty good in Ascot week at tea,And, though no poet, I protest lilacs have bloomed for me:But when beneath one baldaquin two bees are but one sting,The lilacs and the juniper are quite another thing.
1921.
Then tell me this, how must I praise you, dearAnd desperate doubter of all pleasant things—Infidel to yourself—who neither clear,Untroubled truth, nor chequered flatteries,Nor love's tried tales and trusted sorceries,Will hear?In vain the throstle sings,Roses are red in vain, and sunlight fair:For all that amorous armoury of words,Which poets forge themselves from ecstasy,For all youth's uncontrivedniaiseries,Melodious similes of flowers and birds,For well-found compliment or unfeigned prayer,You do not care.You are the last word of a thousand years,Fine fleurof Europe's slow civility.All subtlest products of her ceaseless toils,The middle ages' mystic gaiety,The gorgeous hubris of Italian dawn,The slow maturing vintage of its spoils,What Titian dreamed of, what Velasquez guessed,Rambouillet played with, Versailles half expressed,You are the heir to: and to you have goneVoltaire's thin smiles and Prévost's prettiest tears.Listen! You are that mystery,That still life that just liesBelow the surface. Sometimes you'd surmise,So smooth, so silently, the stream goes by,That it were dead: but, peering past the brink,An inch below the glass you catch a wink,A twist, the thrilling sense of flow.And there! And there! And see the green weeds blowAnd strain against the strong, subaqueous wind.So, just beneath that faint, diaphanous snow,Your skin, it flutters pulsewise: now behindThat bright brown eye stays frozen; now afarMocks our dull inquisition that would knowWhat life is, what you are.
1921.
Frankly, I do not greatly careAlways to be my best;I like sometimes to take the air,Sometimes to take a rest.Sometimes, austere philosopher,I scan what thought reveals:At other times I much preferSilk stockings and high heels.And sometimes Beauty moves me much,And sometimes Pleasure more:Great Art seems sometimes Double Dutch,And Amabel a bore.Is God's clock always just at noon?Is Heaven always fair?May angels not adore the moon?Is there no tea-time there?Why, then, how blest are we on earth,Who know an ampler range,With blondes and browns and grief and mirthAnd, above all things, Change.