Classic Poem

On days when the sky is grey, not blue,
My mind strays back for an age or two,
And amuses itself in a little place
I have made to provide a breathing space
Whenever our twentieth-century air
Heats to a temperature so rare
It stifles fancy, and our thundering cities,
Weighted down by cares and pities,
Load my soul with a heap of dust
Through which no least conceit may thrust
A single stalk or a single bloom
In a free-flung way. Keats made a room
To house him on afternoons like this;
Poe followed him, and created a bliss
Of black and silver furniture;
And Samain, obedient to the lure
Of both these chambers, builded his
Like as a pea, a sort of bis
To the others. But Browning broke new ground
In Italy, and what he found
Was “a gash in a wind-grieved Apennine”
With a castle a-top. Now this of mine
Is no rock-perched castle, not even a pink
House of scaling stucco just at the brink
Of a blue Neapolitan bay. Browning's love
Outsoars mine as he soars above
Whatever little there is in me,
I am more modest, as you will see.
My dream is a cottage, trim and neat
As paint can make it, the village street
Runs past, beyond a grove of trees,
But only my gable-ends show through these
To any one walking up and down
The sleepy street of that sea-side town
Where even the fishermen merely fish
When someone's table's in need of a dish
Of oysters, or eels, or cod. My eaves
Peep archly over the bustling leaves
Of Virginia creeper, and down below
The wall-beds glitter with golden glow,
And asters, and black-eyed sun-flowers,
And a strawberry-bush with its dun flowers
That smell of allspice stands at each end
Just where the lawn takes a sudden bend
And turns the corner. A foot or two
From the creaking piazza, a naval review
Of seventy-eights and ninety-fours
Whirls round on a wheel without a pause:
Four-masted schooners luff and jibe,
Fill again with wind, and circumscribe
The limit of their revolution,
And in the centre, the “Constitution”
Points always at the very eye
Of whatever wind is blowing by.
Beyond the lawn, a little cliff
Drops to the shore, held firm and stiff
By rooted broom. The chuckling lap
Of waves on shingle, the sudden flap
Of a fisherman's sail as he hoists it up,
A grumbling rowlock—you may sup
On a sunset silence such as this
Each afternoon. The clematis
Drops a petal on the old sea wall
As purple as the lights which crawl
And melt and flow across the bay.
Whipped green and silver with streaks of grey
Differently mingled every day.
Along the tall horizon slips
A dim procession of sailing ships
So slowly that they scarcely change
Positions from morning till night. The range
Of the telescope planted on the green
Brings illusions of sound where no sound has been,
The bustle of shipboard suddenly grown
Near and clear through the glass half-crown
Of the eye-piece, but take away your eye,
The ships are still as tapestry.
Here is a foot-path, let us go
And see the place where my flowers grow.
Sunken a foot or two below
The bowling-green, my garden lies,
Flanked by hemlocks of every size
Clipped into peacocks and unicorns,
And monstrous dragons for the scorns
Of noble St. Georges. A hedge of thorns
Protects the tiger-lilies set
In rigid rows. The mignonette
Smells sweet, I see a bunch of it
Plucked by a hand which wears a mit,
Just as I see the pansy faces
Peeking from kerchiefs of Mechlin laces,
And not the trace of rowelled spurs
In the monk's-hood bed where a late bee stirs.
Here is a maid and a manikin
Of painted bisque, half-hidden in
An old laburnum's dropping shade.
The little man rests on his spade
And ogles the maiden's broad-brimmed hat
Since he can see nothing of her but that.
Paul and Virginia, he and she,
Mincingly fashioned in pottery.
Now up three steps where the sunlight sifts
Through a thick pleached alley, when one lifts
The latch of the gate, the click as it closes
Is like the snap of buds into roses.
See the little apples are taking shape
And colour above our heads, they gape
And gossip between the latticed leaves.
Look down at your feet where the sunlight weaves
Quaint patterns of stems and fruit and we
Walk round in them deliciously.
Now let us go through my open door
And tread the black-and-white-squared floor
And hang our hats on the horns of a deer
I've put in the corner over here.
Four rooms as uneven as carpenter's rule
Ever dared to leave. The first is full
From floor to ceiling of maps and books;
Poetry mostly, by the looks.
Thick little duodecimos,
Slender cloth-covered octavos,
Musty, and fusty, and fingered all,
Make a faded rainbow of each wall.
Within them, faint as a scent of musk
Are words which glimmer through the dusk
Of that vanished world which lies just over
The hither side of each marbled cover.
The fireplace is low and wide
With a rusty crane against the side
And an oven behind, where I keep my cherry
Brandy. Mahogany, pale as sherry,
My writing-table is; the locks
Are brass in the form of crested cocks.
Here are chairs of red and brown
Crumbling leather, pliant as down;
On the arms is manifest
The very spot where my elbows rest
When I balance my mighty folios
And read of men with timber-toes
Who discovered archipelagoes
Or rotted for weeks in a bear-skin tent
With moss for their sole nourishment
Beneath Auroran boreal
Nights for phantasmagorial
Possession of a goodish slice
Of that part of the earth which is nothing but ice.
Now cross the hall and I'll introduce
You to something else; a ship's caboose
Saved from the wreck of the Minnie B.
Gone on the sands in seventy-three.
Here is a lantern which used to scan
The foaming wake of an Indiaman;
These chessmen were scrimshawed out of the teeth
Of a whale; that knife in its lacquer sheath
Was filched from the deck of a Chinese junk
A half-an-hour before she sunk
With her pirate crew; this necklace of shells
Was strung for the Indian Jezebels
Of Pitcairn Island, who smiled long years
Ago at the “Bounty” mutineers.
The floor of this room seems to careen
Beneath one's feet, and walls of green
Sea-water to dash against the slim
Matched boards of the sides. I hear the swim
Of a deck-wash sliding from scupper to scupper,
And down through the flanges of the upper
Air, faintly flying above the swell,
The everlasting cry: “All's well!”
Or “There she blows!” or “Breakers ahead!”
I wonder if anything's really dead.
Well, well, there's enough of that. In here
Is a totally different atmosphere.
A pretty shape, this room, the leather
Hangings keep out all notion of weather,
They are Spanish, embossed in gold and blue.
That little picture is a view
Of Venice by Guardi, the Piazzetta
In Carnival, a floweret, a
Shimmer, a perfume, an age in petto
Eighteenth century allegretto.
Considerably unlike it hangs
A Turner, where a mountain's fangs
Close over the plunge of a waterfall
With a slant of sunlight striking it all
To the doom of a planet's evenfall.
Jagged, haggard, splintered steep,
Swept with gold above the deep
Abysmal hollow curving under
The bow of the torrent, grim rotunda
Tawny lit and shocked with thunder.
Here's a picture of nothing but the tops of trees,
Wind-blown, cloud overlooked. If you please
'Tis the life-like portrait of a breeze,
No more, no less, what Constable saw
On Hampstead Heath when a brisk cat's-paw
Flurried out of the West-North-West the prize
Of an Autumn morning. I see your eyes
Stray to the corner where stands my spinet.
Suppose we consider it a minute,
Salvator Rosa painted the case
Of satin-wood. Is it out of place
To put a drawing by William Blake
Just above? Does it seem to shake
A symmetry? Perhaps, but it's done.
Observe the rolling, crimson sun
Glitter along the huge outline
Of that weary form, relaxed, supine,
A man on the edge of a rocky world
Balanced above an ocean curled
And frozen. All Eternity
Shouts in that over-borne man for me.
Let us sit awhile and hark to the speech
Of a century beyond our reach,
Colossal, fastidious, witty, brave,
Importuning us from the grave.
Shift on your spindle-legged gold-white chair,
You will not find the answer where
You seek it. Science cannot raise the flap
Between us and these, nor know what gap
Divides Reynolds's, Romney's, Gainsborough's
Population from men like us.
There seems the fragilest sort of partition
Between then and now. But what condition
Do we subscribe to a cruel decree
That what is, for us, is but what we see?
The world shrinks daily; must we confine
Ourselves to a geographer's line,
Choosing our friends by accident
Of almanac? What impertinent
Design is this, which would control
Free intercourse of soul with soul,
Because, forsooth, an airy thing
Brushes us with its bat-like wing.
A thing we cannot see or touch!
Shall such a nothing dare a clutch
At us in passing? So I sit
Considering time and hating it,
Until I glance at that strange clock
Upon the mantel. With a shock,
I see the face is changed, the numbers
Are there no more, something else encumbers
The dial, a half-moon something, writ
About the upper edge of it.
I notice that the iron hands
Point to this crescent, and each stands
Stock still; then I behold the words,
Contrived grotesquely of crossing swords,
And what I read in crimson ink
Is, “It is later than you think!”
I rise and take my latch-key down
And through the peaceful, sleeping town
I walk back to my century,
The dun, dumb years reserved for me
To wander in and call them mine
And be called theirs in every line
Historians may choose to write
Upon my night, my night, my night.