Streets, and Other Verses

Part II

Douglas Goldring

Highbrow Hill

Londonian Athens, I, thy hill sublime

Will celebrate, in my unfeeling rhyme!

In Grave Tannhauser Street and New Thought Lane,

Parsifal Avenue, and Shavian Road

Dwells High Intelligence, with massive brain,

Bearing like Atlas an almighty load—

The burden of decision: “Yes” or “No”?—

Can Nichols stay, or Vachel Lindsay go?

Here dwells the last arbitrament of art.

How great is he? Is that one large or small?

Here is the wanton poet made to smart,

Here the uncurbed romancer takes his fall;

Here they deal faithfully with Squiff and Noggs

And here (for dinners) puff Sir Roller Loggs.

Fresh every day, when dawn makes Highbrow Hill

Softened and rosy, blithe and gentle and sweet,

The Intellectuals their quivers fill

With poisonous darts, to fire from safe retreat.

Biffkin and Briggs and Solomon and Snooks

Must be put down, for they lead awful lives,

And any simple souls who read their books

Might kiss their housemaids or desert their wives.

Earth must be purged, be cleaned from this disease!

(And England does what Highbrow Hill decrees.)

Post-Georgian Poet in Search of a Master

I had been well brought up: I liked the best.

My prose was modelled on Rebecca West,

My “little things” erstwhile reflected tone,

My brother poets claimed me as their own.

In those blithe days, before the War began—

Ah me, I was a safe young Georgian!

Now all is chaos, all confusion.

Bolshes have cast E. M. from his high throne:

Wild women have rushed in, and savage Yanks

Blather of Booth and Heaven: and T. S. E.

Uses great words that are as Greek to me.

Tell me the Truth, and ah, forgo these pranks—

Whom must I imitate? Who’s really It?

On whose embroidered footstool should I sit?

There’s Podgrass now—he seems a coming man;

Writes unintelligible stuff, half French, half Erse.

He told me Philomela had technique

But not much feeling; Crashaw knew his trade,

But Keats had no idea of writing verse....

The thing to read (he said) had just come out,

His latest work, entitled “Bloody Shout.”

And then there’s Father Michael, Secker’s pal,

Who’s left dear Sylvia for the Clergy-house.

Michael lives sumptuously: silver, old oak,

Incunabula, the Yellow Book, Madonnas, Art;

Excited wobblings on the brink of Rome;

The “Inner Life,” birettas, candles, Mass;

Fun with Church Times and Bishops; four hair shirts,

And Mr. Percy Dearmer’s Parson’s Book.

He talked to me of Antinomianism

And stirred the incense, while two candles burned,

Then read aloud his works, with eye upturned.

(Somehow I felt I’d heard it all before—

When I was “boat-boy,” in a pinafore.)

Are Sitwells really safe? Is Iris Tree

A certain guide to higher poesy?

Can Nichols be relied on, for a lead;

Or should I thump it with Sassoon and Read?

Or would it not be vastly better fun

To write of Nymphs, with Richard Aldington?

Or shall I train, and nervously aspire

To join with Edward Shanks and J. C. Squire

—A modest “chorus” in a well-paid choir?

I’ve thought of J. M. Murry and Sturge Moore,

I’ve thought of Yeats (I thought of him before).

I’ve toyed with Aldous Huxley and Monro—

I don’t know where I am, or where to go.

Oh, mighty Mr. Gosse! Unbend, I pray!

Guide one poor poet who has lost his way....

Merveilleuses des nos Jours

(1914)

“I will now call on Alberic Morphine to give us a reading.” ...

The rows of young women look up; their eyes glisten; they shiver

With the kind of emotion that’s really very misleading.

All have fine eyes, yellow faces, vile clothes and “a liver.”

They smoke a great deal, bathe little, and wear no stays;

Their artistic garments are made on the Grecian plan;

They flock in their crowds to the latest “poetic” plays;

And aspire to a union of souls—with some pimply young man.

Daisymead

The most intense resort in Highbrow Green

(Where only those who do things may be seen)

Is known as Crookedwych—a sweet retreat,

Serene and sunny, quite unlike a street.

Herein is “Daisymead,” the Brownes’ abode,

Where Jones encountered highbrows À la mode.

Jones was a very harmless sort of man,

Not made on any esoteric plan,

And when he struck this sanctuary of art

Poor Jones felt quite unequal to his part.

Art maidens with short hair and naked toes

Deprived him of his hat. They wore old rose

And sang about their “little turtle dove”

And asked him if he’d “sow the seeds of love?”

(They were the Misses Browne). “I’ve come to call....”

“Then follow, to the house-place, sir,” they cried,

“And make you featly welcome. Ma’s inside.”

He followed. Ma received him in the hall.

“I’m seventeen come Sunday, fol-de-lol,”

She trilled untruly, pouring out the tea

From leadless teapot into leadless cups.

Then, “fol-de-lol-de-fol-de-diddle-dee,”

—Handing nut tabloids to the waiting pups.

And more, about the “wraggle gipsies, O.”

Jones murmured, “Pray excuse me. I must go.

I think I am unwell ... the walk too much.

Proteid? No thank you. No, I never touch

Food before dinner ... I can find the door.”

He found it and he fled. Ah, never more!

Benevolence

Mr. Reginald Hyphen

(St. James’s Street)

Mr. Reginald Hyphen is terribly “one of us;”

He was born with a mouth just made for a silver spoon,

And he’s always “dwedfully late” when he comes to dine.

The thought of the Middle Classes makes him swoon,

And he never will dance unless he is sure of the wine—

And O, it was such an affair, when he took a ’bus!

And yet he’s not only a butterfly, carefully smart,

He thinks a great deal, and has a devotion to Art.

He has read some Meredith, too—“Rather neat in its way”—

And perhaps, if he’s time, he will “do something like it—some day.”

She-Devil

(Davies Street)

White arms, Love, you have, and thin fingers with glittering nails,

And the soft blue smoke curls up from your parted mouth!

The delicate rose of your cheeks never varies nor pales,

And your frocks and your furs are perfection—devourer of youth!

It is thrilling to think of your room and you, wicked, inside—

Adorable snake, with a snake’s unflickering eyes,

And an intimate smile (to share which, fools have died)

And lips soft as a girl’s and like a siren’s, wise!

Devourer of youth! You are never alone by your fire,

You have always a boy there, who thinks you a goddess, ill-used,

And adores you with passion, and brings you the gifts you desire—

And the fiercer he burns, Dear, the better he keeps you amused!

Ritz

(July, 1914)

White teeth, neat black moustache and lovely eyes—

Face bronzed and beautiful, like a young god—

Tired Rollo is the dreaming school girl’s prize.

He leans against the wall, perhaps will dance

If they ask very nicely: sweet young things!

He’s “an observer,” and he can’t conceal

He’s frightfully bored with all this sort of crowd.

He prefers artists, men of genius;

He has a soul above the idle rich—

“A looker-on, you know, at the world’s game.”

Rude persons laugh. Adonis, rather hot,

Twirls the ineffable moustache and smiles.

—He is so much that other men are not.

1914.

A Triumphal Ode

Written on the occasion of the grand MARCH PAST of British Poets and Men of Letters, which took place under the Auspices of the League of National & Civic Idiocy on Victory Day, July 19th, 1919

Of Shavian prophets, bearded, and the bleat

Of infant Sitwells baying at the moon;

Of abstruse Eliot, and the effete

Vieux Gosse—Sing Boom! Sing Boom!

See, here they come! The martial music swells;

Northcliffe, beflagged, leads on, with H. G. Wells;

And prancing solemnly, and prancing slow,

Come Hueffer, Shorter and Sir Sidney Low!

Now, there’s a murmuring as of asphodels,

The while each poet mouthes his roundelay—

The bards, the bards! Be still my heart, ’tis they!

Here’s J. C. Squire, and here the laurell’d Shanks;

There’s Ezra’s circle of performing Yanks;

And here that ardent and enduring one

Who, with cool madness, faced th’ opposing Hun

Until—flick! Flick!—they fell down every one.

And here is Lewis, blasting as he goes—

He plays his one-man-band, yet keeps the pose!

Here’s Secker with his owl; the Coterie;

And gentle John with “gray dog Timothy”:

Here’s sly Monro with Chapbook under arm

And fair aspirants round him in a swarm;

Here is our Centaur, with desponding lyre;

And here the Wufflet with adoring sire!

Now come the veterans of Victorian years—

Kipling in khaki, Binyon in tears,

Here Yeats, with eyes distraught, and tangled hair,

Moans the lost vogue of Deirdre, in Mayfair;

While aged Moore, detached, a little bored,

Tells doubtful tales to Mrs. Humphry Ward.

See, now, Dame Propaganda lifts her gamp

And shelters under it each scribbling scamp.

Hola, Sir Hall! Hail Beith! Hail Buchan bland!

See, Dame Corelli takes Hugh Walpole’s hand;

And Dora and Censora hover nigh,

To tempt Sassoon and Read. They cannot buy;

So Bennett weeps, and Beaver heaves a sigh.

Now comes a rabble foul—avert the eyes—

Of arm-chair “patriots” and Lloyd-Georgian spies.

Hurl them from off Parnassus, with a shout—

Even from the Press Club let them be kicked out!

Chase them from London’s pubs, and bid them go

Across the foam, to lunch with Clemenceau!

Chase them with odorous eggs and hunks of cheese!

Be quiet, Muse, I will not sing of these.

Of all the Georgian and Edwardian potes,

Of all the Mile End Yidds in velvet coats,

Of all the sets, the circles and the cliques

Who boost each other’s works in their critiques,

Of all on whom E. M. has ever smiled;

Of all whom Galloway has ever kyled;

Of “marvellous boys,” and of youth’s soulful loom—

Sing Boom!

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