Classic Poem

In Thy Name and dread,
VIATOR, those who start at peace
With other men essay the ease
of measured stride and supple knees;
their road lies ahead.

The son Israel
passed dryfoot through the cloven sea;
again, the wise mysterious three
were guided by a star to Thee.
May we journey well.

If thus things may be,
grant us, dispensed from all alarm,
protected from conspicuous harm,
to stretch at evening, fed and warm,
and drink merrily;

worn, resolute,
to enter once, nor over late,
in easy trim and blest estate,
by that desired, eternal gate,
where proffered cup and towel wait,
and winged guards salute.

A wind through the hills;
across a variegated plain,
a swampy patch, a bridge, a lane;
and into wooded hills again,
where rocks fringe the ghylls.

Now steep paths ascend
loose-pebbled, once by pack-beasts found,
to broader space of mightier ground:
the moor, by blackening rainclouds bound,
and far mountains penned.

The life past a dream,
when beauty strides from hill to hill,
when lungs and eyes have drunk their fill;
to-morrow's moor is lovelier still;
to-day's moor supreme.

You see fleet and fair
gazelles by hippogriffins torn,
a wild curvetting unicorn
across a cherry-coloured morn
the day the rivulet was born
and forth set to fare.

It creeps from the moss;
and all at once its liquid feet
impetuously run to meet
its Yarrow, Teviot or Tweed;
its slow Applecross.

Rip ropple ho;
it stumbles in a girlish fright,
reflects the sun in pin-head light,
and sweeps the stones it polished bright
a long time ago

The flowers at its brink
season by season are and thrive;
for things organically live
are just beginning to arrive,
to think, drink and blink.

The Windrush, the Kenn,
the Whiteadder, the A'on, the Usk,
the Teme, the Tummel, Nene and Dusk
preserve their cadence in the dusk
of worn tongues of men.

The streams will be young
when each has found a mother's son,
a Denham, Pope or Aldington,
to sing its beauties one by one
in best limpid song.

Over the second hill ,
a curious outline; do you see?
beyond the solitary tree,
to left. It's people; there are three;
they seem very still .

That farmhouse, you said.
I think some honey, bread or cake
might help to keep me half-awake.
A cigarette. Let's overtake
the couple ahead

The man sixty-one;
the woman, far from commonplace,
black-eyed and pale; the stamp of race
upon her twenty years of grace;
the boy eight, and grown;

and wise as they went;
a slight, erect King Oberon;
as if the yellow head had thrown
upon the air a flowery crown
of vast, starred extent.

So thoughts idly ran.
A gentle girl; a boy of eight;
it's meddlesome to speculate
on strangers' ages, rank or state:
a child, maid and man.

And yet, all the same,
big hat, loose suit and no cigar,
it might have been Professor Ker,
or Ruskin, or the Ginger Jar,
or some household name.
PSEUDO-RUSKIN:
Composed as I am ,
the vision which I see as clear
as if the very thing were here
consists of omelette and beer
and gurkins and ham

VESTAL:

Just listen to that .
You know as well you cannot get,
and wouldn't eat, an omelette.
I'll see you have one; don't forget;
both soufflee and flat .

And then, as to beer...

PSEUDO-RUSKIN:

No, this is what I really see:
a most abominable tea,
with scarcely buttered toast for three,
and fearfully dear .

VESTAL: Do you like the bread?

PSEUDO-RUSKIN:
It's better toasted

OBERON: Caroline

VESTAL:
What quantities of

OBERON: Caroline

VESTAL:
toast you men eat

OBERON: Caroline
I take milk instead

I know what he'll say:
" Good morning ; (it was afternoon)
" I see you're bound for Coniston;
" Keep to the left; you'll have the moon;
it's steep all the way "

Observe Norman Wright,
the handsome road by which we come
is Banbury Road, not to, but from;
be thanks to God for every crumb
of favour to-night.

Please do not ring
unless an answer be required
protects the villa uninspired,
desirable and undesired,
unless — Shall we ring?

You see, going about,
the slow constructions of the past;
the venerable faults of taste,
the silly penury and waste,
which just cheek it out.

A vast unity;
proportion seeming undesigned
of form and aspect thrice refined;
the resolution of the mind
projected; carried through; and signed;
as grave things should be

Enough facts controlled
for those who care to contemplate,
to order, shape and illustrate;
to give the soul sufficient state
to be, have and hold.

The bust on the stair
appears at least to underrate
a former undergraduate;
or some child's mother knew the state
of unmixed despair

Be dumb, other bells,
while Tom is booming overhead
the memory uncomforted
of more than half forgotten dead,
now called something else

May I be forgiven ,
o Member; tell me more and more,
who know, among your other lore,
what universities are for,
why M A's are given .

Well you see; then
these licences are given to teach
the arts and sciences — or preach —
or both — or neither — each to each;
licet: amen

Just hunger and cold
demand then; if the most of inns
are kept and furnished for our sins,
and dear at half a row of pins,
the story is old

Even, wealthy Reader, you
are fortunate to know a score
the kingdom's length, form shore to shore,
deserving praise; a little more
perhaps three or two.

And here some are named
both where you have and haven't stated,
or where you wouldn't have delayed
for fifty times the bill you paid
For you were jolly-well afraid;
and still feel ashamed

The Maid's Head; the Forge;
the Radegonde; the Gallows Inn;
The Salutation; Harlequin;
The Salutation; Harlequin;
the Cat Hole Keld; the Trout; the Queen;
the Bladebone; the George.

The Magpie; the Chough;
the Red, the Dun, the Dapple Cow;
The Fish; the Boot and Shoe; the Plough;
the Just in Time; the Barley Mow;
the Woodcock; the Dove;

the Plum Pudding; Wheel;
the Merry Mouth; the Duck; the Fleece;
the Apple, Oak and Cocoa Trees;
the Hatchet Inn; the Compasses;
and Bells by Rings and Eights and Threes,
the Blue Bell, the Bell;

and so on and so.
But in the empire of the blest
where inns are old and gala-dressed
their signs are not among the least
of things good to know:

the Wild Palm; the Flame;
the Little Rose; the Not for Me;
the King and Queen of Barbary;
the Violin; the Hat; the Dee;
the What's in a Name;

the Wise Smile; the Pen;
the Mouse; the Pinnacle; the Sword;
the Push the Bell; the Prophet's Gourd;
the Virtue is its Own Reward;
the Twice Five are Ten;

the Piecequilt; the Bolt;
the Flying Horse (but see above);
the Cure for All; the Boy in Love;
the Djinn; the Dimple and the Dove;
the Young Mare and Colt;

the Last Mile; the Nonce;
the Commonsense; the Marigold,
the Pink are neither new nor old,
nor tediously manifold,
like Bulls, Bears and Swans.

the Cockpit; the Styx;
the Open Arms; the Man at Ease;
the Quartermast; the Half a Breeze;
the Coronel of Lemon Trees;
the Red Box of Tricks.

We come in from Mass
with thoughts of Bread beyond desire,
of Bread not only fired but Fire,
of joy than all rejoicing higher,
of great Things which pass.

In God's Name. Amen.
Nos peccatores benedic
et dona Tua haec, et sic
perstemus uti decet, hic
et semper. Amen.

A rare breakfast suit.
The tablecloth of heaven's blue;
you see the dark-brown table through
a lace-worked pond and duck or two
and reeds worked to suit.

And skyblue as well,
without embroidery, the warm
crisp napkins cock a mitre form
and take the appetite by storm,
as who needs to tell.

The fair cutlery:
glass-handled knives of stainless steel,
and forks by Meredith and Neil,
lie even as a king's yacht's keel;
and spoons as should be.

But now out of fear
of greediness we call a halt,
and mention merely there is salt;
and everything without a fault;
the bell-button near.

The great staff of life,
the loaf upon a noble board,
to slice for need, caprice, reward,
and hand before the tea is poured
or hot things arrive.

The true Chin Kiang,
the tea is in a cattytin
of fifteen sides, of white shagreen,
and lined with polished cypressine.
The lid has a tang.

Jean's special boast,
fresh oatcake cut in pentagons;
Kirsty's more than flower-show scones;
meditative butter swans;
well-girdled toast.

A scant egg display;
no bechamel; no portugaise;
no " one of 13,000 ways " ;
but scrambled eggs on holidays;
and poached eggs today.

And sliced Bradenham.
There stretch undaunted miles between
the client and the least sardine
or pate, pie or galantine.
Just tea, eggs and jam;

just plain jam for boys;
mulberry jam; rose marmalade,
of tinted apple-shivers made;
the ruby juice of pomegrenade;
and no other choice.

Perhaps, for the great,
the delicacy from the down,
so ivorywhite, so sepiabrown,
abundant as in Malmesbury town;
and not gathered late.

A minute tureen
of honey, made, by honest bees,
of sugar, found on plants and trees,
and not from Carribean seas;
not trade glycerine.

The Genetic curse
lies unabated on the blacks
who own the town of philokaks,
of ball-flower ornament and quacks;
yet all might be worse?

We must not decline,
we cripples, who were born in sin
and love to be confirmed therein,
to lodge in this abysmal inn,
and dismally dine:

Potage Barcelone;
a little dish for golliwogs;
a dish both meat and drink for dogs;
a sweet composed of snarligogs.
The wine's name was Beaune.

Hotel So-and-so.
Do not devote the cook to flame,
nor wish the waiter whence he came,
nor mutter words like " England's shame, "
but pack up and go.

Reflect, if you mind,
that were it not for such as these
the road would not be what it is;
that * * *'s antipodes
is somewhere to find.

On Cotswold-the Crown-
nearer the latter place, between
Fairford and Ciren, entering in
the low-lintelled little inn
sits bareheaded down

to wait what he seeks,
the man who clumps about and drums,
appeals in whistles, coughs and hums
A garden-hatted woman comes,
with flat, patient cheeks.

No drab, dreary stare
receives the minimum request.
Be seated; I've a little best.
The wanderer becomes a guest
with few words to spare

Or Fairford-the Bull
The Coln, for twenty miles or so,
of all most exquisitely slow,
perhaps of all the streams that flow,
of all streams most full,

with sweet waters swollen.
The Bull is what you wish; and if
some farmers tell their stories stiff,
-reiteration past belief-
they farm near the Coln.

A place built to please
your fisher men for nights and days;
its breezy passages and ways
beyond the scope of travellers' praise;
its sweet peace and ease

In good order laid,
the somewhat stately country board,
not over prim or pinafored,
displays what country means afford
of home-grown and made.

The bell's brazen voice
is hoarse with clanging: Come and dine
You know it's useless to repine
for rose- or sunset-coloured wine,
or anything called superfine;
but what is is choice,

and worth waiting for.
Thus: Soup as Adam ordered it;
a chicken roasted at the spit,
and good as long as there's a bit
to say: Have some more.

The beer (in a glass;
a taper goblet, slim and sleek)
exactly neither strong nor weak,
is palatable with the leek,
and green sparrow-grass.

The cook did her best.
When Susan laid another plate
the jellies trembled for their fate;
but cherry tart was what we ate;
and so did the rest.

The place lighted up
suggests an hygienic stroll
to soothe the body as a whole,
and just the least revive the soul
A small parting cup;

then, scarce needing light,
a pair of walkers, young and wise,
who reach the rooms called Paradise,
need no extraneous advice
to Sleep well; good night .

If eyes half awake
discern the buttressed Bibury mill
reflected in the river still
at Fairford small, reluctant wheel,
a day's-end mistake.

Or thinking of flies,
proposed, so praised afar and nigh,
and watered by the wriggling Wye,
an ambit of excursion, try
where Hoarwithy lies.

Here, once on a time,
Comes shuffling in from some long mile,
by twos at most, in straggling style,
an uncommunicative file
of men, boys and grime;

unless staff and chain,
without a stick or rag of pack,
nor even nothing in a sack
to load upon a woman's back.
And last in the train,

of much ursine grace,
a beast with ringed and muzzled nose,
not slightly turning in her toes.
I go where that procession goes
said Hugh Fier de Bras.

By slow mile on mile
a gang that goes a thousand years
and leads for generations bears
is seldom taken unawares
or even deigns to smile

As now, on the route
when from an unsuspected nook
the hero of the story-book
flung out, nor by your leave, and took
a seat astride the brute:

Eh, bien, laissez faire
A family accretion-grown,
where no man's father's no man's son,
as briefly named and simply known
as who houps: The Bear.

The well-meaning Wye
will never tie a lover's knot;
let Monmouth still be what it's not;
let roofless abbeys wait and rot,
and well-fallen lie.

Nay, stroll off like bears
and those who lead them half-asleep;
the route is swampy, squashy deep,
with path and pathless in a heap;
as who careless fares.

Bend, curve and loop,
the idle, everlasting stream
they parcel see and parcel dream;
vistas roll, unroll and ream;
and great willows droop.

Where hop-tangles grow,
high hedges daft with clematis-
cascades; they see and hear the bees;
the bear observing hollowed trees.
And do-dilly-do

With some fair excuse
a man or woman, boy or girl,
collateral of Mr. Kyrle,
read " kidnapped " in the look and curl,
and flashed back the news

Say one word of thanks,
to Boy, that fate should thus afford
a day no chronicles record
in green steep-rolling Hereford,
by Wye's restless banks.

So home rumbling late,
the father's features not serene
nor sullen either, but between;
this Hugh, aetatis suae ten;
and Fred only eight

Let no one be cross,
is all Clarinda has to say.
Forget those gypsies on their way
to end a melancholy day
by this hour at Ross.

The heart leaps at Ross.
May many things be shut and gone
before the inn at Ross, the Swan,
and down to rest a head upon;
let elves sleep on moss.

We shall not forget
how up to Grisedale Tarn we went;
and Sunday Crag was what was meant;
but down we took the wrong descent
in dark, wind and wet.

And some sign of rain
made graver what was mere mischance,
if not exactly ignorance.
The truth requires no second glance
that rain stands for rain.

Now, should there be rain,
a walk the walker never planned
to take by night in Cumberland
enables him to understand
" A much-needed rain. "

A wild water-game:
the heavens descending with a shout
of clouds gyrating inside out,
a veritable waterspout;
or what seems the same.

On all hands the din
runs up a steep chromatic scale
and down the slopes to Patterdale
of pebbly torrents lashed with hail
till (yes) 'tis the inn.

The girl uses art
to shield the light and hold the door:
a stoup of beer and nothing more,
for shelter sake from rush and roar;
humiliated garments pour
their products to the flagstone floor
till shame says: Depart.

To squelch forth again
till boots regurgitate the rain;
till every organ but the brain
seems filled with undiluted rain;
or rain mixed with rain.

A short spell of grace,
a vast umbrella seems the sky;
the air like blotting-paper dry;
nor far what yet is not so nigh:
the kind sleeping place;

the kind feeding place.
While garments hang and drip ham-high,
motley men eat giant pie.
Another few potatoes? — Try!
These good cakes amaze.

Through some organ's fault
the rover stretches every limb
as though it were the whole of him.
A ward, at once both bright and dim
You've nothing but to lie and dream;
and just call a halt.

I feel better now.
Insured against the least surprise,
invariably kind and wise,
the doctor's penetrating eyes
80, 82.

By day, night and day,
a cool and autocratic lass
has something in a little glass.
Detached, imperious women pass;
a man like Herod Antipas;
and life ticks away.

The night nurse's shoes
gliding along the polished floor
as stealthily as on the moor
the creatures wage primeval war
without pause or truce,

and brocks, foxes prowl;
her blueness as the last of light,
as soft as is a summer night,
her movement as an even flight,
but blue and dark as his is white,
the great, ghostly owl.

According to scope
the human frame, no longer racked
with pain and dread, if not intact,
is marching back to work and fact,
and tread-wheel of hope.

Along Wenlock Edge
the apple, plum and cherry dress
their sooty stems with loveliness
as huddled as a swarm of bees,
and first deck the hedge.

Tuft, tassel, spike;
ah, what the old wind-sifter knows
of many other fruits than sloes,
and flowers than the English rose,
not twice pink alike.

Or near Castle Combe,
the bright plantation, roofless fane,
is madly carpeted again
with little springflowers' starry stain
as thick as is room.

The fair needle-tree,
the larch, which surely not the worst
of men, or critics either, cursed,
its emerald bundles newly burst,
and bright flowers free;

flowers round and rose;
flowers ecstatically hung
on pendant twigs a fathom long
in well-measured rows

Now hell's youngest son,
the belching devil of the road,
proceeding in the Burnley mode,
and rolling to its pillion load,
is heard, seen and gone;

to leave men alone.
Where ivy grips the drybuilt wall
once wool-bale-laden waggons crawl;
one harmony comprises all
of green, gold and stone.

The path deeply strown
with coral, orange, cinnamon;
with aloe, benjamin and myrrh;
which, heaped and burning, scent the air
with thoughts past and gone.

A still afternoon
among the hills to rest the eyes
on tender northern winter skies,
gold brightness, blue varieties,
until the moonless pallor dies
on grim Auchindoun.

The fields under snow,
we choose the risk to learn the charm
of striking Tullochallum farm;
and there, attempting to be warm,
is Hay, whom we know.

His sad, shaggy head.
He does not smile on being told
of ducks like pale transparent gold;
he'd not deny the wind was cold;
had kelty been fed?

The goose-gaggle's strength
defined by cackling overhead
of broods on Kebnekajse bred
by one lithe bird a century led
in great shimmering length.

Or set out at noon;
or take the road by rosy light;
or woo the cool and velvet night
to gather fodder for the sight;
it all passes soon.

As cut off in time,
your history is soon compiled:
a flower observed; a playing child;
the hemispheric undefiled
where white cloudlets climb.

Why number days
when verdure at the height of day
torrentially rolls away
along the deep-descending Bray
and so into space;

and fond vision clings
to flattering lines where green earth heaves
above arterial clouds of leaves,
and never shock or gibe receives
or less worthy things?

Familiar, strange,
the line of man and utter need;
his well-aimed path of joy and greed;
by every pore to drink and bleed;
and hunger for change;

that each go his own,
and get what not another hath;
and jealously possess the path
from Challacombe to Simonsbath;
and each go alone.

Destiny's slave,
and master of unnumbered fates;
the minister of loves and hates,
which neither stirs, nor neither waits,
for magistrates, for runagates,
nor mirthful, nor grave

The known yet to know;
a river gliding from and hence
in utmost calm to thought and sense;
the effort and its recompense
at once ebb and flow.

The long-aged road
is tough, resilient and young;
becomingly abashed among
the singing streams of earth, so sung;
the scored, sacred road

Its void's counterpart:
its breadth with huddling forms replete,
and ghosts of those these trudged to meet;
incessant thunder of their feet
and slow beating heart.

Some graveyards are gay;
a wicket or a kissingstile
invites the guest, with beck and smile;
or Stride the dyke in easy style;
but don't go away.

While bolt, bar and chain
make private some, as though the gate
were shut in irony or hate
until the heir come, soon or late,
and proudly again;

dim-shaded earth,
dark cypresses and darker yews
attribute thoughts to those who choose
their place of rest , and do not use
accents of mirth.

In dull undertones,
with arms unequal to the end,
the living and the dead contend;
keep silence; laugh, but try to bend
each other's bones.

The dead, numerous,
and many of the better sort,
have arguments beyond retort
we cannot merrily support:
Why not join with us?

So brisk living men
try varied gestures, to placate
what they can neither love nor hate,
to give the dead a certain state —
and well fastened pen.

An elbow of stream
is rampart to the man who dwells
(would he have said?) among the fells
and dales for him like nothing else
in this world or dream.

And James Hogg; so rough
to the outer eye; what snowdrops spread
a counterpane above the bed
where sober lies the farmer's head,
and well lodged enough.

The God's-acre charm
is aptly reached where, marked from birth,
rest shreds of much-disputed worth;
and tumbled troubled waves of earth
connote no alarm.

At times (thank the dead;
their soft, fierce grip upon their waste)
what, ruined, could not be replaced,
exists to please a man of taste,
if not overfed.

Thus: Greyfriars ground
squeezes the longest drop of dread,
of life and love of living bred;
ah, no one there lies shamming dead,
in long garments wound.

The slow pollen showers.
Blue geranium to my knee
and scabiouses; chicory
with wondrous eyes is watching me.
O sweet God, the flowers.

This green; sultriness;
this swelling ecstacy of earth
is rising to unruly worth;
the clay were yet for length and girth
a clean sober dress.

To ends known, unknown,
perhaps where summits of desire
are touched by uncreated fire
and joy is as a just man's hire
the road passes on.