Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (629 page)
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Authors: Ford Madox Ford
A POOR girl sat by a tower of the sea
All a-wringing of her hands; “Will he never
show,” says she,
“Just as a token, just a glimmer of his ship’s lant... horn?”
“Oh, all ye little grains of sand
Twist into a rope shall draw his keel
Hither. Oh, ye little gulls and terns,
Join wings and bear me from this strand
To where I’ll feel
His arms, and find where on the foam his ship is borne.”
A poor girl sat, etc.
“Oh, all ye little stars o’ the night
Come down and cluster in my hair;
Oh, bright night-flashes o’ the waves
Shine round me till I’m all one flame of light.
So, far at sea,
He’ll deem a beacon beckons him to me....”
A poor girl sat nigh a tower of the sea
All a-wringing of her hands;
“
Will he never show said she
,
“
Just a token
,
just a glimmer of his ship’s lant... horn?”
(A SAVAGE SORT OF SONG ON THE ROAD)
“ONCE
I was a gallant and bold I
And you so tender and true
,
But I’ll never again be the old I
Nor you the old you.
I shall go lounging along on the edge
Of the grass — You’ll loiter along by the hedge.
I shall go dogged through dust and the dirt
Like an ass in my moods.
You with a new sweetheart at your skirt
Ev’ry few roods —
“
Once I was a gallant,” etc.
We’ll maybe jog along together
Along way;
Maybe put up with the weather together,
Better or worse
As it chances day by day,
Or maybe part with a kick and a curse
I — and you,
After a turning or two —
“
But I’ll never again,” etc
.
(WINTER NIGHTFALL)
A BLUFF of cliff, purple against the south,
And nigh one shoulder-top an orange pane.
This wet, clean road; clear twilight held in the pools,
And ragged thorns, ghost reeds and dim, dead willows.
Past all the windings of these grey, forgotten valleys,
To west, past clouds that close on one dim rift —
The golden plains; the infinite, glimpsing distances,
The eternal silences; dim lands of peace.
Infinite plains to know no wanderer’s foot; infinite
distances where alone is rest;
All-virgin downs where none shall pasture sheep;
inviolable peaks that none shall climb,
From whose summit nor you nor I shall gaze on
ocean’s infinite beyond,
Nor none look back upon this world folding to-night,
to rain and to sleep.
CLOSE the book and say good-bye to everything;
Pass up from the shore and pass by byre and stall,
— For the smacks shall sail home on the tail of the tides,
And the kine shall stand deep in the sweet water sides,
And they still shall go burying, still wedding brides,
But I must be gone in the morning.
One more look, and so farewell, sweet summering,
One moment more and then no more at all,
For the skipper shall summon his hands to the sea,
And the shepherd still shepherd his sheep on the lea,
But it’s over and done with the man that was me,
As over the hill comes the morning.
Note
. — The following poems were printed in the
volume of the same title published by Mr Macqueen in 1897.
UPON THE SHEEPDOWNS
SAIL, oh sail away,
Oh sail, ye clouds, above my face,
Here where I lie;
Trail, oh trail away
Ye ling’ring minutes and give place
To hours that fly.
But when I hear an echo mutter,
Soft up the slope of golden gorse,
Oh, when I see a distant horse,
When I shall see, afar, a kerchief flutter
Among the shrouds
And driving veils of mist, you’ll sail away you
hours and clouds,
You’ll sail away.
YES, what’s the use of striving on?
And what’s to show when all is done?
The bells will toll as now they toil,
Here’s an old lilt will summarize the whole:
“This fell about in summertide,
About the midmost of the year,
Our master did to covert ride
To drive the fallow deer.
Chanced we upon the Douglas men ere ever one of us was ware.
“Then sped a shaft from covert side
And pierced in behind his ear;
This fell about in summertide
At midmost of the year.”
So down he fell and rested there
Among the sedge hard by the brook,
About the midmost of the year
His last and lasting rest he took.
And so, “This fell in winter late,
Or ever Candlemas drew near,
His bride had found another mate
Before the ending of the year.
“His goshawks decked another’s wrists,
His hounds another’s voice did fear.
His men another’s errands ride
His steed another burden bear,
Him they forgot by Christmastide.
Ere Candlemas drew near.”
Our hounds shall know another leash,
Our men another master know,
And we reck little of it all, so we but find good rest below.
So what’s the use of striving on?
And what’s to show when all is done?
The ring of bells will chime and chime,
And all the rest’s just waste — just waste of time.
WHEN the world is growing older,
And the road leads down and down and down,
And the wind is in the bare tree-tops
And the meadows sodden with much rain,
Seek me here in the old places,
And here, where I dwell, you shall find me,”
Says the old Faith we are leaving.
“When the muscles stiffen,
Eyes glaze, ears lose their keenness,
When the mind loses its familiar nimbleness,
And the tongue no longer voices it, speeds before
it, follows it find me,”
Seek me here in the old places,
And here, where I have always dwelt, you shall
Says the old Faith we are leaving.
“I shall not watch your going down the road,
Not even to the turning at the hill,
Not for me to hear you greet the strange women,
Not for me to see them greet you.
They shall be many and many the houses you shall
enter, but never shall house be like to mine,”
Says the old Faith we are leaving.
“You shall hear strange new songs,
But never song like the one I sing by your pillow;
You shall breathe strange new scents, [the linen.
But never scent like that of the herbs I strew’mid
Go! I give you time to make holiday,
Travel, travel, fare into far countries,
But you shall come back again to the old places,
And here, where I have always dwelt, you shall find me,”
Says the old Faith we are leaving.
But we — we shall never return.
FOR A PICTURE
St Aethelburga, daughter of Athelbert, King of Kent, wedded
Aedwin, King of Northumbria. Him and thereafter his whole folk
she won for the worship of Christianity. Hut in the end he was
slain by Penda, a heathen, who took the land. Then did St
Aethelburga return into Kent and found the convent and church
at Lyminge, where she died.
To purge our minds of haste, pass from an age outworn
And travel to the depths of tranquil times long past;
Sinking as sinks a stone through waters of a tarn,
Be fitting things and meet:
And, look you, on our walls hang treasures from such depths.
QUEEN, saint, evangelist; sweet, patient, fain to wait
With crucifix in hand, broad brow and haloed crown
Half-hidden by the coif, she enters through that gate.
She enters through that door, where tapestry drawn back
Left seen, a moment since, an apple lawn; but moors
Spread far away beyond. That span of shorn green turf,
Won from the heather’s grasp, will whisper of regret
For far-off swarded downs —
For far-off Kentish downs, soft sky and glint of sea,
Sweet chime of convent bells and flower scents of home.
Here, in a Northern land, where skies are grey and hearts
Are slow to gather warmth: where Truth is slow to spread.
And gibes spring swift to lips; home thoughts are bitter sweet.
Saint in a pagan court, Queen of a wav’ring King,
She murmurs inly, “Wait,” clasps tight the crucifix,
Enters the narrow door and passes up the hall.
In those old homespun days, the voices of a court,
The whispers that are passed behind the dais-seats
By fearers of a frown, came to the war-lord’s ear
In some shrewd jester’s jape: —
And some such licensed fool now voiced the folk for her song,
These lovers of their mead, strong beef and rolling
Liked little her soft ways, her Friday fasts and chants
That rose and fell unmarked, unrhythmic and unrhymed —
Her sweet and silent ways and distant-gazing eyes.
“Mead and strong meats on earth and arrow flights on earth,
What boots the rest?” they said,
Questions their jester her:
“Oh, Queen, of fasting fain,
King’s wife that scourge your flesh,
King’s daughter sadly clad,
Sad shall be your estate, after sad faring here,
If you be laid i’ the grave and find no future state.”
To him the Queen: “True, son, but what shall be your fate,
If future state there be?” and crossed the rush-strewn floor,
Thanking the Lord that found shrewd answers for shrewd jests.
So fared she for awhile. In time her King was won,
Knelt in the font and sloughed, beneath Paulinus’ hands
His scales of pagan sin. But when his time was come
Ill fared he’fore his foes that sent his soul to God.
So turned the sad Queen back and sought her brother’s land,
Just over those high downs, in a grey hollowed vale,
She built her nunnery and rested there awhile.
(Maybe her feet once trod this yielding sheep-cropped sward —
‘Tis like her eyes once filled at sight of just that glint
Of distant sun-kissed sea, out where the hill drops down.)
So fared she for awhile, and when her time was come,
Down there in Lyminge Church, she laid her weary limbs.
And yet we see her stand: sad Queen, sweet, silent saint,
With crucifix clasped close, low brow and distant gaze
She enters through that gate.
GRA
Y
FOR A PICTURE
THE firelight gilds the patterns on the walls,
The yellow flames fly upwards from the brands,
On fold and farm the sad grey twilight falls,
And shrouds the downs and hides the hollow lands.
And pensive is the hour and bids the brain
Weave morals from the peeping things of dusk,
Dwelling a moment on the darkling pane,
The tapping roses and the pot of musk.
That picture there — the one the firelight shows:
The poet by a grave, beneath the may,
With ready notebook and unruffled brows
And elegiac pose — you guess it’s Gray.
Below, beneath his rounded, withered grave,
A ploughman sleeps, the tablet at his head
Tells the short tale of life that such men have —
The scarcely cold and half-forgotten dead
Who “five and fifty years the furrows trod,”
Such were the time and toil of William Mead
Who passed: “And now he’s resting ‘neath this sod,”
“And there’s an end,” you say. ‘Twere so indeed.
But William was a ploughman of the best,
Who ploughed his furrow straight from hedge to shaws
From sun in east to sun low down in west,
With following of rooks and gulls and daws.
He taught some score the honest trick of plough —
Crop-headed yokels, youths of clay and loam —
Who learnt his ways and gathered from him how
To drive good team and draw straight furrow home.
Thus when his work was done and done his days
He left a school of workers — to this day
We recognize their touch — and owe due praise
For bread and thought to such as he and Gray.
Who ploughed such furrows each in his own field,
Who sowed such seed and gathered in such grain,
That we still batten on their well-sown yield,
And wonder who shall do the like again.