THE SINGING FURIES The yellow sky grows vivid as the sun,
The sea glittering, and the hills dun.
The stones quiver. Twenty pounds of lead
Fold upon fold, the air laps my head.
Both eyes scorch: tongue stiff and bitter.
Flies buzz, but no birds twitter:
Slow bullocks stand with stinging feet,
And naked fishes scarcely stir, for heat.
White as smoke,
As jetted steam, dead clouds awoke
And quivered on the Western rim.
And then the singing started, dim
And sibilant as rime-stiff reeds
That whistle as the wind leads.
The North answered, low and clear;
The South whispered hard and sere,
And thunder muffled up like drums
Beat, whence the East-wind comes.
The heavy sky that could not weep
Is loosened: rain falls steep,
And thirty singing furies ride
To split the sky from side to side.
They sing, and lash the wet-flanked wind:
Sing, from Col to Hafod Mynd
And fling their voices half a score
Of miles along the mounded shore:
Whip loud music from a tree,
And roll their paean out to sea
Where crowded breakers fling and leap,
And strange things throb five fathoms deep.
The sudden tempest roared and died:
The singing furies muted ride
Down wet and slippery roads to hell;
And, silent in their captors’ train
Two fishers, storm-caught on the main;
A shepherd, battered with his flocks;
A pit-boy tumbled from the rocks,
A dozen back-broke gulls, and hosts
Of shadowy, small, pathetic ghosts,
Of mice and leverets caught by flood,
Their beauty shrouded in cold mud.
THE SERMON
(Wales 1920). Like grippt stick
Still I sit:
Eyes fixed on far small eyes,
Full of it:
On the old, broad face,
The hung chin;
Heavy arms, surplice
Worn through and worn thin.
Probe I the hid mind
Under the gross flesh:
Clutch at poetic words,
Follow their mesh
Scarce heaving breath.
Clutch, marvel, wonder,
Till the words end.
Stilled is the muttered thunder:
The hard, few people wake,
Gather their books and go—
Whether their hearts could break
How can I know?
TRAMP When a brass sun staggers above the sky,
When feet cleave to boots, and the tongue’s dry,
And sharp dust goads the rolling eye,
Come thoughts of wine, and dancing thoughts of girls:
They shiver their white arms, and the head whirls,
And noon light is hid in their dark curls:
Noon feet stumble, and head swims.
Out shines the sun, and the thought dims,
And death, for blood, runs in the weak limbs.
To fall on flints in the shade of tall nettles
Gives easy sleep as a bed of rose petals,
And dust drifting from the highway
As light a coverlet as down may.
The myriad feet of many-sized flies
May not open those tired eyes.
The first wind of night
Twitches the coverlet away quite:
The first wind and large first rain
Flickers the dry pulse to life again:
Flickers the lids burning on the eyes
With sudden flashes of the slipping skies.
Hunger, oldest visionary,
Hides a devil in a tree,
Hints a glory in the clouds,
Fills the crooked air with crowds
Of ivory sightless demons singing—
Eyes start: straightens back:
Limbs stagger and crack:
But Brain flies, Brain soars
Up, where the Sky roars
Upon the back of cherubim:
Brain rockets up to Him.
Body gives another twist
To the slack waist-band;
In agony clenches fist
Till the nails bite the hand.
Body floats light as air,
With rain in its sparse hair:
Brain returns, and would tell
The things he has seen well:
Body will not stir his lips:
Brain and Body come to grips.
Deadly each hates the other
As treacherous blood-brother:
No sight, no sound shows
How the struggle goes.
They sink at last faint in the wet gutter;
So many words to sing that the tongue cannot utter.
GRATITUDE Eternal gratitude—a long, thin word:
When meant, oftenest left unheard:
When light on the tongue, light in the purse too:
Of curious metallurgy: when coined true
It glitters not, is neither large nor small:
More worth than rubies—less, times, than a ball.
Not gift, nor willed: yet through its wide range
Buys what it buys exact, and leaves no change.
Old Gurney had it, won on a hot day
With ale, from glib-voiced Gypsy by the way.
He held it lightly: for ’twas a rum start
To find a hedgeling who had still a heart:
So put it down for twist of a beggar’s tongue...
He had not felt the heat: how the dust stung
A face June-roasted: he saw not the look
Aslant the gift-mug; how the hand shook...
Yet the words rang his head, and he grew merry
And whistled from the Boar to Wrye-brook ferry,
And chaffed with Ferryman when the hawser creakt
Or slipping bilge showed where the planks leakt:
Lent hand himself, till doubly hard the barge
Butted its nose in mud of the farther marge.
When Gurney leapt to shore, he found—dismay!
He had no tuppence—(Tuppence was to pay
To sulky Ferryman)—‘Naught have I,’ says he,
‘Naught, but the gratitude of Tammas Lee
Given one hour.’—Sulky Charon grinned:
‘Done,’ said he. ‘Done: I take—all of it, mind.’
‘Done,’ cries Jan Gurney. Down the road he went,
But by the ford left all his merriment.
This is the tale of midday chaffering:
How Charon took, and Gurney lost the thing:
How Ferryman gave it for his youngest daughter
To a tall lad who saved her out of water—
(Being old and mean, had none of his own to give,
So passed on Tammas’; glad to see her live):
And how young Farmer paid his quarter’s rent
With that one coin, when all else was spent,
And how Squire kept it for some goldless debt...
For aught I know, it wanders current yet.
Yet Tammas was no angel in disguise:
He stole Squire’s chickens—often: he told lies,
Robbed Charon’s garden, burnt young Farmer’s ricks
And played the village many lowsy tricks.
No children sniffled, and no dog cried
When full of oaths and smells, he died.
JUDY Sand hot to haunches:
Sun beating eyes down,
Yet they peer under lashes
At the hill’s crown:
See how the hill slants
Up the sky halfway:
Over the top tall clouds
Poke gold and grey.
Down: see a green field
Tipped on its short edge,
Its upper rim straggled round
By a black hedge.
Grass bright as new brass:
Uneven dark gorse
Stuck to its own shadow
Like Judy that black horse.
Birds clatter numberless,
And the breeze tells
That beanflower somewhere
Has ousted the bluebells.
Birds clatter numberless:
In the muffled wood
Big feet move slowly:
Mean no good.
THE RUIN Gone are the coloured princes, gone echo, gone laughter:
Drips the blank roof: and the moss creeps after.
Dead is the crumbled chimney: all mellowed to rotting
The wall-tints, and the floor-tints, from the spotting
Of the rain, from the wind and slow appetite
Of patient mould: and of the worms that bite
At beauty all their innumerable lives.
But the sudden nip of knives,
The lady aching for her stiffening lord,
The passionate-fearful bride,
And beaded Pallor clamped to the torment-board,
—Leave they no ghosts, no memories by the stairs?
No sheeted glimmer treading floorless ways?
No haunting melody of lovers’ airs,
Nor stealthy chill upon the noon of days?
No: for the dead and senseless walls have long forgotten
What passionate hearts beneath the turf lie rotten.
Only from roofs and chimneys pleasantly sliding
Tumbles the rain in the early hours,
Patters its thousand feet on the flowers,
Cools its small grey feet in the grasses.
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