WAR-HORSES

How they come out
—These Septuagenarian Butterflies—
After resting
For four years!

Surely they are more spirited
Than ever?
Their enamelled wings
Are rusty with waiting
—Their eyelids
Sag a little
Like those of a bloodhound;
But they swim gaily into the limelight.

Oh, these war-horses!
They have seen it through.
Theirs has been a splendid part!
The waiting—the weariness!
For the Queens of Sheba
Are used to courts and feasting;
But for four years
Platitudes have remained
Uncoined,
For there have been few parties
And only
Three stout meals
A day.

But now
They have come out.
They have preened
And dried themselves
After their blood-bath.
Old men seem a little younger,
And tortoise-shell combs
Are longer than ever;
Earrings weigh down aged ears;
And Golconda has given them of its best.

They have seen it through!
Theirs is the triumph,
And, beneath
The carved smile of the Mona Lisa
False teeth,
Rattle
Like machine guns,
In anticipation
Of food and platitudes.
Les Veilles Dames Sans Merci!

CHURCH-PARADE

The flattened sea is harsh and blue—
Lies stiff beneath—one tone, one hue,
While concertina waves unfold
The painted shimmering sands of gold.

Each bird that whirls and wheels on high
Must strangle, stifle in, its cry,

For nothing that's of Nature born
Should seem so on the Sabbath morn.

The terrace glitters hard and white,
Bedaubed and flecked with points of light

That flicker at the passers-by—
Reproachful as a curate's eye.

And china flowers, in steel-bound beds,
Flare out in blues and flaming reds;

Each blossom, rich and opulent,
Stands like a soldier; and its scent

Is turned to camphor in the air.
No breath of wind would ever dare

To make the trees' plump branches sway,
Whose thick green leaves hang down to pray.

The stiff, tall churches vomit out
Their rustling masses of devout,

Tall churches whose stained Gothic night
Refuses to receive the light!

Watch how the stately walk along
Toward the terrace, join the throng

That paces carefully up and down
Above a cut-out cardboard town!

With prayer-book rigid in each hand,
They look below at sea and sand.

The round contentment in their eyes
Betrays their favourite fond surmise,

That all successful at a trade
Shall tread an eternal Church-Parade,

And every soul that's sleek and fat
Shall gain a heavenly top-hat.

From out the Church's Gothic night,
Past beds of blossoms china-bright,
Beneath the green trees' porous shade,
We watch the sea-side Church-Parade.

AT THE HOUSE OF MRS. KINFOOT

At the house of Mrs. Kinfoot
Are collected
Men and women
Of all ages.
They are supposed
To sing, paint, or to play the piano.
In the drawing-room
The fireplace is set
With green tiles
Of an acanthus pattern.
The black curls of Mrs. Kinfoot
Are symmetrical.
—Descended, it is said,
From the Kings of Ethiopia—
But the British bourgeoisie has triumphed.
Mr. Kinfoot is bald
And talks
In front of the fireplace
With his head on one side,
And his right hand
In his pocket.
The joy of catching tame elephants,
And finding them to be white ones,
Still gleams from the jungle-eyes
Of Mrs. Kinfoot,
But her mind is no jungle
Of Ethiopia,
But a sound British meadow.

Listen then to the gospel of Mrs. Kinfoot:
"The world was made for the British bourgeoisie,
They are its Swiss Family Robinson;
The world is not what it was.
We cannot understand all this unrest!

Adam and Eve were born to evening dress
In the southern confines
Of Belgravia.
Eve was very artistic, and all that,
And felt the fall
Quite dreadfully.
Cain was such a man of the world
And belonged to every club in London;
His father simply adored him,
—But had never really liked Abel,
Who was rather a milk-sop.
Nothing exists which the British bourgeoisie
Does not understand;
Therefore there is no death
—And, of course, no life.

The British bourgeoisie
Is not born,
And does not die,
But, if it is ill,
It has a frightened look in its eyes.

The War was splendid, wasn't it?
Oh yes, splendid, splendid."

Mrs. Kinfoot is a dear,
And so artistic.

GREEN-FLY

I.

Like ninepins houses stand up square
In lines; their windows mouths to bite
At servants, who lean out to stare
At anything that moves in sight.

Where once was green-limbed tree or ledge
Of greener moss or flowery lane,
Set back behind a private hedge
Each house repeats itself again.

Each house repeats itself again,
But smaller still and yet more dry;
For—just as those who live within—
So have these houses progeny.

Throughout each dusty endless year,
Whose days seem merely wet or fine,
These children constantly appear
In an unending dusty line.

As, on a rose that is ill-grown
Nature, insulted and defied,
Showers down a blight, so sends she down
On houses, those who live inside.

II.

Within each high, well-papered room,
Compressed, all darkness lay,
Darkness of night, and crypt, and tomb,
Nor ever entered day.

But through the endless black there crept,
With groping hand and groping thought,
With eyes that blinked, but never wept,
And minds that fell, but never fought,

The wonderless, the hard, the nice,
Who scurry at a ray of light,
Then, like a flock of frightened mice,
Career back into night.

From out this damning dreadful dark
(While history, thundering, rolls by)
They wait for an anÆmic lark
To sing from weak blue sky.

Or if a dog is hurt, why then
They see the evil, and they cry.
But yet they watch ten million men
Go out to end in agony!

Their own strange God they have set up,
Of clay, of iron, and mothÉd hide;
Whose eyes, each convex as a cup,
Reflect the herd endeified.

Their twisted feet in boots He made
To walk the narrow asphalt way,
And gave each room a curtain's shade
To muffle out the light of day.

For this God understands their need;
Created lids for each pale eye;
He sculped each mouth to say "Agreed,"
And gives them coffins if they die.

When, if for punishment they go
To other lands, why, it should be
The judgment that, down there below,
They see this world as they might see!

A world of contrast, shade and light—
Clashing romance and cruelty,
But stricken with the dreadful blight
Of fear to feel and fear to cry.

Where for a moment lives are filled
With love or hate—where born of pain
The children grow up—to be killed!
Where freedom—dead—is born again.

Wherein life's pattern crude and shrill
Is weft by neither foe nor friend,
But by some rough colossal will
Towards some vast invisible end.

But in those houses dark there creep,
With bodies wrapt in woollen dress,
With eyes that blink but never weep,
The sentimental wonderless!

DE LUXE

I.

HYMN.

Above from plaster-mountains,
Wine-shadowed by the sea,
Spurt white-wool clouds, as fountains
Whirl from a rockery.

These clouds were surely given
To keep the hills from harm,
For when a cloud is riven
The fatted rain falls warm.

Through porous leaves the sun drops
Each dripping stalactite
Of green. The chiselled tree-tops
Seem cut from malachite.

Stiff leaves with ragged edges
(Each one a wooden sword)
Are carved to prickly hedges,
On which, with one accord,

Their clock-work songs of calf-love
Stout birds stop to recite,
From cages which the sun wove
Of shade and latticed light.

Each brittle booth and joy-store
Shines brightly. Below these
The ocean at a toy shore
Yaps like a Pekinese.

II.

NURSERY RHYME.

The dusky king of Malabar
Is chief of Eastern Potentates;
Yet he wears no clothes except
The jewels that decency dictates.

A thousand Malabaric wives
Roam beneath green-tufted palms;
Revel in the vileness
That Bishop Heber psalms.

From honey-combs of light and shade
They stop to watch black bodies dart
Into the sea to search for pearls.
By means of diabolic art

Magicians keep the sharks away;
Mutter, utter, each dark spell,
So that if a thief should steal,
One more black would go to Hell.

But Mrs. Freudenthal, in furs,
From brioche dreams to mild surprise
Awakes; the music throbs and purrs.
The cellist, with albino eyes,

Rivets attention; is, in fact,
The very climax; pink eyes flash
Whenever nervous and pain-racked
He hears the drums and cymbols clash.

Mrs. Freudenthal day-dreams
—Ice-spoon half-way to her nose—
Till the girl in ochre screams,
Hits out at the girl in rose.

This is not at all the way
To act in large and smart hotels;
Angrily the couples sway,
Eagerly the riot swells.

Girls who cannot act with grace
Should learn behaviour; stay at home;
A convent is the proper place.
Why not join the Church of Rome?

A waiter nearly drops the tray
—Twenty tea-cups in one hand.
Now the band joins in the fray,
Fighting for the Promised Land.

Mrs. Freudenthal resents
The scene; and slowly rustles out,
But the orchestra relents,
Waking from its fever bout.