Others

L'Escargot D'Or

O Tavern of the Golden Snail!
Ten sous have I, so I'll regale;
Ten sous your amber brew to sip
(Eight for the bock and two the tip),
And so I'll sit the evening long,
And smoke my pipe and watch the throng,
The giddy crowd that drains and drinks,
I'll watch it quiet as a sphinx;
And who among them all shall buy
For ten poor sous such joy as I?
As I who, snugly tucked away,
Look on it all as on a play,
A frolic scene of love and fun,
To please an audience of One.


O Tavern of the Golden Snail!
You've stuff indeed for many a tale.
All eyes, all ears, I nothing miss:
Two lovers lean to clasp and kiss;
The merry students sing and shout,
The nimble garcons dart about;
Lo! here come Mimi and Musette
With: "S'il vous plait, une cigarette?"
Marcel and Rudolf, Shaunard too,
Behold the old rapscallion crew,
With flowing tie and shaggy head . . .
Who says Bohemia is dead?
Oh shades of Murger! prank and clown,
And I will watch and write it down.


O Tavern of the Golden Snail!
What crackling throats have gulped your ale!
What sons of Fame from far and near
Have glowed and mellowed in your cheer!
Within this corner where I sit
Banville and Coppée clashed their wit;
And hither too, to dream and drain,
And drown despair, came poor Verlaine.
Here Wilde would talk and Synge would muse,
Maybe like me with just ten sous.
Ah! one is lucky, is one not?
With ghosts so rare to drain a pot!
So may your custom never fail,
O Tavern of the Golden Snail!

L'Escargot D'Or

O Tavern of the Golden Snail!
Ten sous have I, so I'll regale;
Ten sous your amber brew to sip
(Eight for the bock and two the tip),
And so I'll sit the evening long,
And smoke my pipe and watch the throng,
The giddy crowd that drains and drinks,
I'll watch it quiet as a sphinx;
And who among them all shall buy
For ten poor sous such joy as I?
As I who, snugly tucked away,
Look on it all as on a play,
A frolic scene of love and fun,
To please an audience of One.


O Tavern of the Golden Snail!
You've stuff indeed for many a tale.
All eyes, all ears, I nothing miss:
Two lovers lean to clasp and kiss;
The merry students sing and shout,
The nimble garcons dart about;
Lo! here come Mimi and Musette
With: "S'il vous plait, une cigarette?"
Marcel and Rudolf, Shaunard too,
Behold the old rapscallion crew,
With flowing tie and shaggy head . . .
Who says Bohemia is dead?
Oh shades of Murger! prank and clown,
And I will watch and write it down.


O Tavern of the Golden Snail!
What crackling throats have gulped your ale!
What sons of Fame from far and near
Have glowed and mellowed in your cheer!
Within this corner where I sit
Banville and Coppée clashed their wit;
And hither too, to dream and drain,
And drown despair, came poor Verlaine.
Here Wilde would talk and Synge would muse,
Maybe like me with just ten sous.
Ah! one is lucky, is one not?
With ghosts so rare to drain a pot!
So may your custom never fail,
O Tavern of the Golden Snail!

Laughter


I Laugh at Life: its antics make for me a giddy games,
Where only foolish fellows take themselves with solemn aim.
I laugh at pomp and vanity, at riches, rank and pride;
At social inanity, at swager, swank and side.
At poets, pastry-cooks and kings, at folk sublime and small,
Who fuss about a thousand things that matter not at all;
At those who dream of name and fame, at those who scheme for pelf. . . .
But best of all the laughing game - is laughing at myself.


Some poet chap had labelled man the noblest work of God:
I see myself a charlatan, a humbug and a fraud.
Yea, 'spite of show and shallow wit, an sentimental drool,
I know myself a hypocrite, a coward and a fool.
And though I kick myself with glee profoundly on the pants,
I'm little worse, it seems to me, than other human ants.
For if you probe your private mind, impervious to shame,
Oh, Gentle Reader, you may find you're much about the same.


Then let us mock with ancient mirth this comic, cosmic plan;
The stars are laughing at the earth; God's greatest joke is man.
For laughter is a buckler bright, and scorn a shining spear;
So let us laugh with all our might at folly, fraud and fear.
Yet on our sorry selves be spent our most sardonic glee.
Oh don't pay life a compliment to take is seriously.
For he who can himself despise, be surgeon to the bone,
May win to worth in others' eyes, to wisdom in his own.

Kail Yard Bard

A very humble pen I ply
Beneath a cottage thatch;
And in the sunny hours I try
To till my cabbage patch;
And in the gloaming glad am I
To lift the latch.

I do not plot to pile up pelf,
With jowl and belly fat;

To simple song I give myself,
And seek no gain at that:
Content if milk is on the shelf

To feed the cat.

I joy that haleness I possess,
Though fame has passed me by;
And see such gold of happiness
A-shining in the sky,
I wonder who has won success,
Proud men or I?

I do not grieve that I am poor,
And by the world unknown;
Free as the wind, serene and sure,
In peace I live alone.
'Tis better to be bard obscure
Than King on Throne.

Katie Drummond

My Louis loved me oh so well
And spiered me for his wife;
He would have haled me from the hell
That was my bawdy life:
The mother of his bairns to be,
Daftlike he saw in me.

But I, a hizzie of the town
Just telt him we must part;
Loving too well to drag him down
I tore him from my heart:
To save the honour of his name
I went back to my shame.

They say he soared to starry fame,
Romance flowed from his pen;
A prince of poets he became,
Pride of his fellow men:
My breast was pillow for his head,
Yet naught of his I've read.

Smoking my cutty pipe the while,
In howths of Leith I lag;

* My Louis lies in South Sea isle
As I a sodden hag
Live on . . . Oh Love, by men enskied
The day you went--I died.

*R.L.S.

Inspiration


How often have I started out
With no thought in my noodle,
And wandered here and there about,
Where fancy bade me toddle;
Till feeling faunlike in my glee
I've voiced some gay distiches,
Returning joyfully to tea,
A poem in my britches.


A-squatting on a thymy slope
With vast of sky about me,
I've scribbled on an envelope
The rhymes the hills would shout me;
The couplets that the trees would call,
The lays the breezes proffered . . .
Oh no, I didn't think at all -
I took what Nature offered.


For that's the way you ought to write -
Without a trace of trouble;
Be super-charged with high delight
And let the words out-bubble;
Be voice of vale and wood and stream
Without design or proem:
Then rouse from out a golden dream
To find you've made a poem.


So I'll go forth with mind a blank,
And sea and sky will spell me;
And lolling on a thymy bank
I'll take down what they tell me;
As Mother Nature speaks to me
Her words I'll gaily docket,
So I'll come singing home to tea
A poem in my pocket.

Inspiration


How often have I started out
With no thought in my noodle,
And wandered here and there about,
Where fancy bade me toddle;
Till feeling faunlike in my glee
I've voiced some gay distiches,
Returning joyfully to tea,
A poem in my britches.


A-squatting on a thymy slope
With vast of sky about me,
I've scribbled on an envelope
The rhymes the hills would shout me;
The couplets that the trees would call,
The lays the breezes proffered . . .
Oh no, I didn't think at all -
I took what Nature offered.


For that's the way you ought to write -
Without a trace of trouble;
Be super-charged with high delight
And let the words out-bubble;
Be voice of vale and wood and stream
Without design or proem:
Then rouse from out a golden dream
To find you've made a poem.


So I'll go forth with mind a blank,
And sea and sky will spell me;
And lolling on a thymy bank
I'll take down what they tell me;
As Mother Nature speaks to me
Her words I'll gaily docket,
So I'll come singing home to tea
A poem in my pocket.

Innocence


The height of wisdom seems to me
That of a child;

So let my ageing vision be
Serene and mild.

The depth of folly, I aver,
Is to fish deep

In that dark pool of science where
Truth-demons sleep.

Let me not be a bearded sage
Seeing too clear;

In issues of the atom age
Man-doom I fear.

So long as living's outward show
To me is fair,

What lies behind I do not know,
And do not care.

Of woeful fears of future ill
That earth-folk haunt,

Let me, as radiant meadow rill,
Be ignorant.

Aye, though a sorry dunce I be
In learning's school,

Lord, marvellously make of me
Your Happy Fool!

Imagination


A gaunt and hoary slab of stone
I found in desert place,
And wondered why it lay alone
In that abandoned place.
Said I: 'Maybe a Palace stood
Where now the lizards crawl,
With courts of musky quietude
And turrets tall.

Maybe where low the vultures wing
'Mid mosque and minaret,
The proud pavilion of a King
Was luminously set.
'Mid fairy fountains, alcoves dim,
Upon a garnet throne
He ruled,--and now all trace of him
Is just this stone.

Ah well, I've done with wandering,
But from a blousy bar
I see with drunk imagining
A Palace like a star.
I build it up from one grey stone
With gardens hanging high,
And dream . . . Long, long ere Babylon
It's King was I.

Ignorance


Oh happy he who cannot see
With scientific eyes;
Who does not know how flowers grow,
And is not planet wise;
Content to find with simple mind
Joys as they are:
To whom a rose is just a rose,
A star--a star.

It is not good, I deem, to brood
On things beyond our ken;
A rustic I would live and die,
Aloof from learned men;
And laugh and sing with zest of Spring
In life's exultant scene,--
For vain my be philosophy,
And what does meaning mean?

I'm talking rot,--I'm really not
As dumb as I pretend;
But happiness, I dimly guess,


Is what counts in the end.
To educate is to dilate
The nerves of pain:
So let us give up books and live
Like hinds again.

The best of wisdom surely is
To be not overwise;
For may not thought be evil fraught,
And truth less kind than lies?
So let me praise the golden days
I played a gay guitar,
And deemed a rose was just a rose,
A star--a star.

Hero Worship

Said he: "You saw the Master clear;
By Rushy Pond alone he sat,
Serene and silent as a seer,
in tweedy coat and seedy hat.
you tell me you did not intrude,
(Although his book was in your hand,)
Upon his melancholy mood . . .


I do not understand.

"You did not tell him: 'I have come
From o'er the sea to speak to you.'
You did not dare, your lips were dumb . . .
You thought a little zephyr blew
From Rushy Pond a touch of him
You'll cherish to your dying day,
Perhaps with tears your eyes were dim . . .


And then - you went away.

"And down the years you will proclaim:
'O call me dullard, dub me dunce!
But let this be my meed of fame:
I looked on Thomas Hardy once.
Aye, by a stile I stood a span
And with these eyes did plainly see
A little, shrinking, shabby man . . .


But Oh a god to me!'"

Said I: "'Tis true, I scarce dared look,
yet he would have been kind, I'm sure;
But though I clutched his precious book
I feared to beg his signature.
Ah yes, my friend, I merit mirth.
You're bold, you have the right to laugh,
And if Christ came again to earth


You'd cadge his autograph."

Heart O' The North

And when I come to the dim trail-end,
I who have been Life's rover,
This is all I would ask, my friend,
Over and over and over:

A little space on a stony hill
With never another near me,
Sky o' the North that's vast and still,
With a single star to cheer me;

Star that gleams on a moss-grey stone
Graven by those who love me --
There would I lie alone, alone,
With a single pine above me;

Pine that the north wind whinneys through -Oh,
I have been Life's lover!
But there I'd lie and listen to
Eternity passing over.

Grey Gull

'Twas on an iron, icy day
I saw a pirate gull down-plane,
And hover in a wistful way
Nigh where my chickens picked their grain.
An outcast gull, so grey and old,
Withered of leg I watched it hop,
By hunger goaded and by cold,
To where each fowl full-filled its crop.


They hospitably welcomed it,
And at the food rack gave it place;
It ate and ate, it preened a bit,
By way way of gratitude and grace.
It parleyed with my barnyard cock,
Then resolutely winged away;
But I am fey in feather talk,
And this is what I heard it say:


"I know that you and all your tribe
Are shielded warm and fenced from fear;
With food and comfort you would bribe
My weary wings to linger here.
An outlaw scarred and leather-lean,
I battle with the winds of woe:
You think me scaly and unclean...
And yet my soul you do not know,


"I storm the golden gates of day,
I wing the silver lanes of night;
I plumb the deep for finny prey,
On wave I sleep in tempest height.
Conceived was I by sea and sky,
Their elements are fused in me;
Of brigand birds that float and fly
I am the freest of the free.


"From peak to plain, from palm to pine
I coast creation at my will;
The chartless solitudes are mine,
And no one seeks to do me ill.
Until some cauldron of the sea
Shall gulp for me and I shall cease...
Oh I have lived enormously
And I shall have prodigious peace."


With yellow bill and beady eye
This spoke, I think, that old grey gull;
And as I watched it Southward fly
Life seemed to be a-sudden dull.
For I have often held this thought -
If I could change this mouldy me,
By heaven! I would choose the lot,



Of all the gypsy birds, to be
A gull that spans the spacious sea.

Ghosts


I to a crumpled cabin came
upon a hillside high,
And with me was a withered dame
As weariful as I.
"It used to be our home," she said;
"How well I remember well!
Oh that our happy hearth should be
Today an empty shell!"


The door was flailing in the storm
That deafed us with its din;
The roof that kept us once so warm
Now let the snow-drift in.
The floor sagged to the sod below,
The walls caved crazily;
We only heard the wind of woe
Where once was glow and glee.


So there we stood disconsolate
Beneath the Midnight Dome,
And ancient miner and his mate,
Before our wedded home,
Where we had know such love and cheer . . .
I sighed, then soft she said:
"Do not regret - remember, dear,


We, too, are dead."

Gangrene


So often in the mid of night
I wake me in my bed
With utter panic of affright
To find my feet are dead;
And pace the floor to easy my pain
And make them live again.

The folks at home are so discreet;
They see me walk and walk
To keep the blood-flow in my feet,
And though they never talk
I've heard them whisper: 'Mother may
Have them cut off some day.'

Cut off my feet! I'd rather die . . .
And yet the years of pain,
When in the darkness I will lie

And pray to God in vain,
Thinking in agony: Oh why
Can doctors not annul our breath

In honourable death?

Frustration


Gazing to gold seraph wing,
With wistful wonder in my eyes,
A blue-behinded ape, I swing
Upon the palms of Paradise.


A parakeet of gaudy hue
Upon a flame tree smugly rocks;
Oh, we're a precious pair, we two,
I gibber while the parrot squawks.


"If I had but your wings," I sigh,
"How ardently would I aspire
To soar celestially high
And mingle with yon angel choir."


His beady eye is bitter hard;
Right mockingly he squints at me;
As critic might review a bard
His scorn is withering to see.


And as I beat my brest and howl,
"Poor fool," he shrills, my bliss to wreck.
So . . . so I steal behind that fowl
And grab his claw and screw his neck.


And swift his scarlet wings I tear;
Seeking to soar, with hope divine,
I frantically beat the air,
And crash to earth and - snap my spine.


Yet as I lie with shaken breaths
Of pain I watch my seraph throng. . . .
Oh, I would die a dozen deaths
Could I but sing one deathless song!

Frustration


Gazing to gold seraph wing,
With wistful wonder in my eyes,
A blue-behinded ape, I swing
Upon the palms of Paradise.


A parakeet of gaudy hue
Upon a flame tree smugly rocks;
Oh, we're a precious pair, we two,
I gibber while the parrot squawks.


"If I had but your wings," I sigh,
"How ardently would I aspire
To soar celestially high
And mingle with yon angel choir."


His beady eye is bitter hard;
Right mockingly he squints at me;
As critic might review a bard
His scorn is withering to see.


And as I beat my brest and howl,
"Poor fool," he shrills, my bliss to wreck.
So . . . so I steal behind that fowl
And grab his claw and screw his neck.


And swift his scarlet wings I tear;
Seeking to soar, with hope divine,
I frantically beat the air,
And crash to earth and - snap my spine.


Yet as I lie with shaken breaths
Of pain I watch my seraph throng. . . .
Oh, I would die a dozen deaths
Could I but sing one deathless song!

Freedom's Fool

To hell with Government I say;
I'm sick of all the piddling pack.
I'd like to scram, get clean away,
And never, nevermore come back.
With heart of hope I long to go
To some lost island of the sea,
And there get drunk with joy to know
No one on earth is over me.


There will be none to say me nay,
So from my lexicon I can
Obliterate the word "obey",
And mock the meddling laws of man.
The laws of Nature and of God
Are good enough for guys like me,
Who scorn to kiss the scarlet rod
Of office and authority.


No Stars and Stripes nor Union Jack,
Nor tri-colour nor crimson rag
Shall claim my love, I'll turn my back
On every land, on every flag.
My banner shall be stainless white,
An emblem of the Golden Rule,
Yet for its freedom I will fight
And die - like any other fool.


Oh Government's a bitter pill!
No force or fear shall forge my fate;
I'll bow to no communal will,
For I myself shall be the State.
Uncurst by man-curb and control,
my Isle shall be emparadised,
And I will re-possess my soul . . .
Mad Anarchist! - Well, wasn't Christ?

Forward


I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes
In weary, woeful, waiting times;
In doleful hours of battle-din,
Ere yet they brought the wounded in;
Through vigils of the fateful night,
In lousy barns by candle-light;
In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,
On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;
By ragged grove, by ruined road,
By hearths accurst where Love abode;
By broken altars, blackened shrines
I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes.


I've solaced me with scraps of song
The desolated ways along:
Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown,
And meadows reaped by death alone;
By blazing cross and splintered spire,
By headless Virgin in the mire;
By gardens gashed amid their bloom,
By gutted grave, by shattered tomb;
Beside the dying and the dead,
Where rocket green and rocket red,
In trembling pools of poising light,
With flowers of flame festoon the night.
Ah me! by what dark ways of wrong
I've cheered my heart with scraps of song.


So here's my sheaf of war-won verse,
And some is bad, and some is worse.
And if at times I curse a bit,
You needn't read that part of it;
For through it all like horror runs
The red resentment of the guns.
And you yourself would mutter when
You took the things that once were men,
And sped them through that zone of hate
To where the dripping surgeons wait;
And wonder too if in God's sight
War ever, ever can be right.


Yet may it not be, crime and war
But effort misdirected are?
And if there's good in war and crime,
There may be in my bits of rhyme,
My songs from out the slaughter mill:
So take or leave them as you will.

Forgotten Master

As you gaze beyond the bay
With such wanness in your eyes,
You who have out-stayed your day,
Seeing other stars arise,
Slender though your lifehold be,
Still you dream beside the sea.


We, alas! may live too long,
Know the best part of us die;
Echo of your even-song
Hushes down the darkling sky . . .
But your greatness would be less
If you cherished bitterness.


I am sure you do not care
Though the rabble turn thumbs down;
Their neglect you well can bear,
knowing you have won your crown,
proudly given of your best . . .
Masterlinck, leave God the rest.

Fool Faith

Said I: "See yon vast heaven shine,-What
earthly sight diviner?
Before such radiant Design
Why doubt Designer?"

Said he: "Design is just a thought
In human cerebration,
And meaningless if Man is not
Part of creation.

"But grant Design,--we may imply
The job took toil aplenty;
Then why one sole designer, why
Not ten or twenty.

"But should there be one Source supreme
Of matter and of motion,
Why mould it like our man-machine
For daft devotion?"

Said I: "You may be right or wrong,
I'll seek not to discover . . .
I listen to yon starry song,-Still,
still God's lover."

Flight


On silver sand where ripples curled
I counted sea-gulls seven;
Shy, secret screened from all the world,
And innocent as heaven.
They did not of my nearness know,
For dawn was barely bright,
And they were still, like spots of snow
In that pale, pearly light.


Then one went forth unto the sea
That rippled up in gold,
And there were rubies flashing free
From out its wing-unfold;
It ducked and dived in pretty play,
The while the other six
So gravely sat it seemed that they
Were marvelled by its tricks.


Then with a sudden flurry each
Down-rushed to join its mate,
And in a flash that sickle beach
With rapture was elate.
With joy they pranked till everyone
Was diamonded with spray,
Then flicked with flame to greet the sun
They rose and winged away.


But with their going, oh, the surge
Of loss they left in me!
For in my heart was born the urge,
The passion to be free.
And where each dawn with terror brings
Some tale of bale and blight,
Who would not envy silver wings,
The sea-gull in its flight!


Let me not know the soils of woe
That chain this stricken earth;
Let me forget the fear and fret
That bind men from their birth;
Let me be the one with wind and sun,
With earth and sky and sea. . . .
Oh, let me teach in living speech
God's glory - Liberty.

Fisherfolk


I like to look at fishermen
And oftentimes I wish
One would be lucky now and then
And catch a little fish.
I watch them statuesquely stand,
And at the water look;
But if they pull their float to land
It's just to bait a hook.

I ponder the psychology
That roots them in their place;
And wonder at the calm I see
In ever angler's face.
There is such patience in their eyes,
Beside the river's brink;
And waiting for a bite or rise
I do not think they think.

Or else they are just gentle men,
Who love--they know not why,
Greeen grace of trees or water when
It wimples to the sky . . .
Sweet simple souls! As vain I watch
My heart to you is kind:
Most precious prize of all you catch,
--Just Peace of Mind.

Finale


Here is this vale of sweet abiding,
My ultimate and dulcet home,
That gently dreams above the chiding
of restless and impatient foam;
Beyond the hazards of hell weather,
The harceling of wind and sea,
With timbers morticed tight together
My old hulk havens happily.


The dawn exultantly discloses
My lawn lit with mimosa gold;
The joy of January roses
Is with me when rich lands are cold;
Serene with bells of beauty chiming,
This dream domain to be belongs,
By sweet conspiracy of rhyming,
And virtue of some idle songs.


I thank the gracious Lord of Living
Who gave me power and will to write:
May I be worthy of His giving
And win to merit in His sight. . . .
O merciful and mighty Master,
Though I have faltered in the past,
Your scribe I be. . . . Despite disaster
Let me be faithful to the last.