The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch by R. C. Lehmann
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R. C. Lehmann >> The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch
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THE VAGABOND AND OTHER POEMS
FROM _PUNCH_
BY R. C. LEHMANN
Author of "ANNI FUGACES", "CRUMBS OF PITY", and "LIGHT AND SHADE"
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVIII
_Printed in Great Britain by Tumbull & Spears, Edinburgh_
NOTE
All but two of the pieces here printed appeared originally in _Punch_.
My thanks are due to Messrs Bradbury, Agnew & Co., the Proprietors of
_Punch_, for permitting me to reprint them here. "For Wilma" was first
published in _Blackwood's Magazine_, and appears here by the courtesy
of the Editor.
R. C. L.
CONTENTS
THE VAGABOND
SINGING WATER
FOR WILMA
CRAGWELL END
THE BIRD IN THE ROOM
KILLED IN ACTION
EPITAPH
TO FLIGHT-LIEUTENANT ROBINSON, V.C.
PAGAN FANCIES
ROBIN, THE SEA-BOY
THE BIRTHDAY
THE DANCE
PANSIES
THE DRAGON OF WINTER HILL
FLUFFY, A CAT
THE LEAN-TO SHED
THE CONTRACT
JOHN
THE SPARROW
GELERT
AVE, CAESAR!
SOO-TI
THE BATH
PETER, A PEKINESE PUPPY
THE DOGS' WELCOME
ODE TO JOHN BRADBURY
TEETH-SETTING
THE DEATH OF EUCLID
TO POSTUMUS IN OCTOBER
A RAMSHACKLE ROOM
THE LAST STRAW
THE OLD GREY MARE
AT PUTNEY
"A LITTLE BIT OF BLUE"
THE LAST COCK-PHEASANT
IN MEMORIAM
THE VAGABOND
It was deadly cold in Danbury town
One terrible night in mid November,
A night that the Danbury folk remember
For the sleety wind that hammered them down,
That chilled their faces and chapped their skin,
And froze their fingers and bit their feet,
And made them ice to the heart within,
And spattered and scattered
And shattered and battered
Their shivering bodies about the street;
And the fact is most of them didn't roam
In the face of the storm, but stayed at home;
While here and there a policeman, stamping
To keep himself warm or sedately tramping
Hither and thither, paced his beat;
Or peered where out of the blizzard's welter
Some wretched being had crept to shelter,
And now, drenched through by the sleet, a muddled
Blur of a man and his rags, lay huddled.
But one there was who didn't care,
Whatever the furious storm might dare,
A wonderful, hook-nosed bright-eyed fellow
In a thin brown cape and a cap of yellow
That perched on his dripping coal-black hair.
A red scarf set off his throat and bound him,
Crossing his breast, and, winding round him,
Flapped at his flank
In a red streak dank;
And his hose were red, with a purple sheen
From his tunic's blue, and his shoes were green.
He was most outlandishly patched together
With ribbons of silk and tags of leather,
And chains of silver and buttons of stone,
And knobs of amber and polished bone,
And a turquoise brooch and a collar of jade,
And a belt and a pouch of rich brocade,
And a gleaming dagger with inlaid blade
And jewelled handle of burnished gold
Rakishly stuck in the red scarf's fold--
A dress, in short, that might suit a wizard
On a calm warm day
In the month of May,
But was hardly fit for an autumn blizzard.
Whence had he come there? Who could say,
As he swung through Danbury town that day,
With a friendly light in his deep-set eyes,
And his free wild gait and his upright bearing,
And his air that nothing could well surprise,
So bright it was and so bold and daring?
He might have troubled the slothful ease
Of the Great Mogul in a warlike fever;
He might have bled for the Maccabees,
Or risen, spurred
By the Prophet's word,
And swooped on the hosts of the unbeliever.
Whatever his birth and his nomenclature,
Something he seemed to have, some knowledge
That never was taught at school or college,
But was part of his very being's nature:
Some ingrained lore that wanderers show
As over the earth they come and go,
Though they hardly know what it is they know.
And so with his head upheld he walked,
And ever the rain drove down;
And now and again to himself he talked
In the streets of Danbury town.
And now and again he'd stop and troll
A stave of music that seemed to roll
From the inmost depths of his ardent soul;
But the wind took hold of the notes and tossed them
And the few who chanced to be near him lost them.
So, moving on where his fancy listed,
He came to a street that turned and twisted;
And there by a shop-front dimly lighted
He suddenly stopped as though affrighted,
Stopped and stared with his deep gaze centred
On something seen, like a dream's illusion,
Through the streaming glass, mid the queer confusion
Of objects littered on shelf and floor,
And about the counter and by the door--
And then with his lips set tight he entered.
There were rusty daggers and battered breastplates,
And jugs of pewter and carved oak cases,
And china monsters with hideous faces,
And cracked old plates that had once been best plates;
And needle-covers and such old-wivery;
Wonderful chess-men made from ivory;
Cut-glass bottles for wines and brandies,
Sticks once flourished by bucks and dandies;
Deep old glasses they drank enough in,
And golden boxes they took their snuff in;
Rings that flashed on a gallant's knuckles,
Seals and lockets and shining buckles;
Watches sadly in need of menders,
Blackened firedogs and dinted fenders;
Prints and pictures and quaint knick-knackery,
Rare old silver and mere gimcrackery--
Such was the shop, and in its middle
Stood an old man holding a dusty fiddle.
The Vagabond bowed and the old man bowed,
And then the Vagabond spoke aloud.
"Sir," he said, "we are two of a trade,
Each for the other planned and made,
And so we shall come to a fair agreement,
Since I am for you and you're for me meant.
And I, having travelled hither from far, gain
You yourself as my life's best bargain.
But I am one
Who chaffers for fun,
Who when he perceives such stores of beauty
Outspread conceives it to be his duty
To buy of his visit a slight memento:
Some curious gem of the quattrocento,
Or something equally rare and priceless,
Though its outward fashions perhaps entice less:
A Sultan's slipper, a Bishop's mitre,
Or the helmet owned by a Roundhead fighter,
Or an old buff coat by the years worn thin,
Or--what do you say to the violin?
I'll wager you've many, so you can't miss one,
And I--well, I have a mind for this one,
This which was made, as you must know,
Three hundred years and a year ago
By one who dwelt in Cremona city
For me--but I lost it, more's the pity,
Sixty years back in a wild disorder
That flamed to a fight on the Afghan border;
And, whatever it costs, I am bound to win it,
For I left the half of my full soul in it."
And now as he spoke his eyes began
To shiver the heart of the grey old man;
And the old man stuttered,
And "Sir," he muttered,
"The words you speak are the merest riddle,
But-five pounds down, and you own the fiddle!
And I'll choose for your hand, while the pounds you dole out,
A bow with which you may pick that soul out."
So said so done, and our friend again
Was out in the raging wind and rain.
Swift through the twisting street he passed
And came to the Market Square at last,
And climbed and stood
On a block of wood
Where a pent-house, leant to a wall, gave shelter
From the brunt of the blizzard's helter-skelter,
And, waving his bow, he cried, "Ahoy!
Now steady your hearts for an hour of joy!"
And so to his cheek and jutting chin
Straight he fitted the violin,
And, rounding his arm in a movement gay,
Touched the strings and began to play.
There hasn't been heard since the world spun round
Such a marvellous blend of thrilling sound.
It streamed, it flamed, it rippled and blazed,
And now it reproached and now it praised,
And the liquid notes of it wove a scheme
That was one-half life and one-half a dream.
And again it scaled in a rush of fire
The glittering peaks of high desire;
Now, foiled and shattered, it rose again
And plucked at the souls and hearts of men;
And still as it rose the sleet came down
In the Market Square of Danbury town.
And now from hundreds of opened doors,
With quiet paces
And happy faces,
In ones and twos and threes and fours,
A crowd pressed out to the Market Square
And stood in the storm and listened there.
And, oh, with what a solemn tender strain
The long-drawn music eased their hearts of pain;
And gave them visions of divine content;
Green fields and happy valleys far away,
And rippling streams and sunshine and the scent
Of bursting buds and flowers that come in May.
And one spoke in a rapt and gentle voice,
And bade his friends rejoice,
"For now," he said, "I see, I see once more
My little lass upon a pleasant shore
Standing, as long ago she used to stand,
And beckoning to me with her dimpled hand.
As in the vanished years,
So I behold her and forget my tears."
And each one had his private joy, his own,
All the old happy things he once had known,
Renewed and from the prisoning past set free,
And mixed with hope and happy things to be.
So for a magic hour the music gushed,
Then faded to a close, and all was hushed,
And the tranced people woke and looked about,
And fell to wondering what had brought them out
On such a night of wind and piercing sleet,
Exposed with hatless heads and thin-shod feet.
Something, they knew, had chased their heavy sadness;
And for the years to come they still may keep,
As from a morning sleep,
Some broken gleam of half-remembered gladness.
But the wild fiddler on his feet of flame
Vanished and went the secret way he came.
SINGING WATER
I heard--'twas on a morning, but when it was and where,
Except that well I heard it, I neither know nor care--
I heard, and, oh, the sunlight was shining in the blue,
A little water singing as little waters do.
At Lechlade and at Buscot, where Summer days are long,
The tiny rills and ripples they tremble into song;
And where the silver Windrush brings down her liquid gems,
There's music in the wavelets she tosses to the Thames.
The eddies have an air too, and brave it is and blithe;
I think I may have heard it that day at Bablockhythe;
And where the Eynsham weir-fall breaks out in rainbow spray
The Evenlode comes singing to join the pretty play.
But where I heard that music I cannot rightly tell;
I only know I heard it, and that I know full well:
I heard a little water, and, oh, the sky was blue,
A little water singing as little waters do.
FOR WILMA
(AGED FIVE YEARS)
Like winds that with the setting of the sun
Draw to a quiet murmuring and cease,
So is her little struggle fought and done;
And the brief fever and the pain
In a last sigh fade out and so release
The lately-breathing dust they may not hurt again.
Now all that Wilma was is made as naught:
Stilled is the laughter that was erst our pleasure;
The pretty air, the childish grace untaught,
The innocent wiles,
And all the sunny smiles,
The cheek that flushed to greet some tiny treasure;
The mouth demure, the tilted chin held high,
The gleeful flashes of her glancing eye;
Her shy bold look of wildness unconfined,
And the gay impulse of her baby mind
That none could tame,
That sent her spinning round,
A spirit of living flame
Dancing in airy rapture o'er the ground--
All these with that faint sigh are made to be
Man's breath upon a glass, a mortal memory.
Then from the silent room where late she played,
Setting a steady course toward the light,
Swifter than thistledown the little shade,
Reft from the nooks that she had made her own
And from the love that sheltered, fared alone
Forth through the gloomy spaces of the night,
Until at last she lit before the gate
Where all the suppliant shades must stand and wait.
Grim Cerberus, the foiler of the dead,
Keeping his everlasting vigil there
In deep-mouthed wrath
Athwart the rocky path,
Did at her coming raise his triple head
And lift his bristling hair;
But when he saw our tender little maid
Forlorn, but unafraid,
He blinked his flaming eyes and ceased to frown,
And, fawning on her, smoothed his shaggy crest,
Composed his savage limbs and settled down
With ears laid back and all his care at rest;
And so with kindly aspect beckoned in
The little playmate of his earthly kin.
For often she had tugged old Rollo's mane,
And often Lufra felt the loving check
Of childish arms about her glossy neck--
Lufra and Rollo, who with anxious faces
Now cast about the haunts and hiding-places
To find their friend, but ever cast in vain.
So now, set free from all that can oppress,
And in her own white innocence arrayed,
Made one for ever with all happiness,
Alert she wanders through the starry glade;
Or, where the blissful Shades intone their praise,
She from the lily-covered bowers
Heaping her arms with flowers
Soars and is borne along
The amaranthine the delightful ways,
Gushes the pretty notes and careless trills
Of her unstudied song,
And with her music all the joyous valley fills.
Yet, oh ye Powers whose rule is set above
These fair abodes that ring the firmament,
Spirits of Peace and Happiness and Love,
And thou, too, mild-eyed Spirit of Content,
Ye will not chide if sometimes in her play
The child should start and droop her shining head,
Turning in meek surmise
Her wistful eyes
Back tow'rd the dimness of our mortal day
And the loved home from which her soul was sped.
Soon shall our little Wilma learn to be
Amid the immortal blest
An unrepining guest,
Who now, dear heart, is young for your eternity.
CRAGWELL END
I
There's nothing I know of to make you spend
A day of your life at Cragwell End.
It's a village quiet and grey and old,
A little village tucked into a fold
(A sort of valley, not over wide)
Of the hills that flank it on either side.
There's a large grey church with a square stone tower,
And a clock to mark you the passing hour
In a chime that shivers the village calm
With a few odd bits of the 100th psalm.
A red-brick Vicarage stands thereby,
Breathing comfort and lapped in ease,
With a row of elms thick-trunked and high,
And a bevy of rooks to caw in these.
'Tis there that the Revd. Salvyn Bent
(No tie could be neater or whiter than _his_ tie)
Maintains the struggle against dissent,
An Oxford scholar _ex Aede Christi_;
And there in his twenty-minute sermons
He makes mince-meat of the modern Germans,
Defying their _apparatus criticus_
Like a brave old Vicar,
A famous sticker
To Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus.
He enjoys himself like a hearty boy
Who finds his life for his needs the aptest;
But the poisoned drop in his cup of joy
Is the Revd. Joshua Fall, the Baptist,
An earnest man with a tongue that stings--
The Vicar calls him a child of schism--
Who has dared to utter some dreadful things
On the vices of sacerdotalism,
And the ruination
Of education
By the Church of England Catechism.
Set in a circle of oak and beech,
North of the village lies Cragwell Hall;
And stretching far as the eye can reach,
Over the slopes and beyond the fall
Of the hills so keeping their guard about it
That the north wind never may chill or flout it,
Through forests as dense as that of Arden,
With orchard and park and trim-kept garden,
And farms for pasture and farms for tillage,
The Hall maintains its rule of the village.
And in the Hall
Lived the lord of all,
Girt round with all that our hearts desire
Of leisure and wealth, the ancient Squire.
He was the purplest-faced old man
Since ever the Darville race began,
Pompous and purple-faced and proud;
With a portly girth and a voice so loud
You might have heard it a mile away
When he cheered the hounds on a hunting day.
He was hard on dissenters and such encroachers,
He was hard on sinners and hard on poachers;
He talked of his rights as one who knew
That the pick of the earth to him was due:
The right to this and the right to that,
To the humble look and the lifted hat;
The right to scold or evict a peasant,
The right to partridge and hare and pheasant;
The right to encourage discontent
By raising a hard-worked farmer's rent;
The manifest right to ride to hounds
Through his own or anyone else's grounds;
The right to eat of the best by day
And to snore the whole of the night away;
For his motto, as often he explained,
Was "A Darville holds what a Darville gained."
He tried to be just, but that may be
Small merit in one who has most things free;
And his neighbours averred,
When they heard the word,
"Old Darville's a just man, is he? Bust his
Gills, we could do without his justice!"
II
The village itself runs, more or less,
On the sinuous line of a letter S,
Twining its little houses through
The twists of the street, as our hamlets do,
For no good reason, so far as I know,
Save that chance has arranged it so.
It's a quaint old ramshackle moss-grown place,
Keeping its staid accustomed pace;
Not moved at all by the rush and flurry,
The mad tempestuous windy hurry
Of the big world tossing in rage and riot,
While the village holds to its old-world quiet.
There's a family grocer, a family baker,
A family butcher and sausage-maker--
A butcher, proud of his craft and willing
To admit that his business in life is killing,
Who parades a heart as soft as his meat's tough--
There's a little shop for the sale of sweet stuff;
There's a maker and mender of boots and shoes
Of the sort that the country people use,
Studded with iron and clamped with steel,
And stout as a ship from toe to heel,
Who announces himself above his entry
As "patronised by the leading gentry."
There's an inn, "The George";
There's a blacksmith's forge,
And in the neat little inn's trim garden
The old men, each with his own churchwarden,
Bent and grey, but gossipy fellows,
Sip their innocent pints of beer,
While the anvil-notes ring high and clear
To the rushing bass of the mighty bellows.
And thence they look on a cheerful scene
As the little ones play on the Village Green,
Skipping about
With laugh and shout
As if no Darville could ever squire them,
And nothing on earth could tame or tire them.
On the central point of the pleasant Green
The famous stone-walled well is seen
Which has never stinted its ice-cold waters
To generations of Cragwell's daughters.
No matter how long the rain might fail
There was always enough for can and pail--
Enough for them and enough to lend
To the dried-out rivals of Cragwell End.
An army might have been sent to raise
Enough for a thousand washing days
Crowded and crammed together in one day,
One vast soap-sudded and wash-tubbed Monday,
And, however fast they might wind the winch,
The water wouldn't have sunk an inch.
For the legend runs that Crag the Saint,
At the high noon-tide of a summer's day,
Thirsty, spent with his toil and faint,
To the site of the well once made his way,
And there he saw a delightful rill
And sat beside it and drank his fill,
Drank of the rill and found it good,
Sitting at ease on a block of wood,
And blessed the place, and thenceforth never
The waters have ceased but they run for ever.
They burnt St. Crag, so the stories say,
And his ashes cast on the winds away,
But the well survives, and the block of wood
Stands--nay, stood where it always stood,
And still was the village's pride and glory
On the day of which I shall tell my story.
Gnarled and knotty and weather-stained,
Battered and cracked, it still remained;
And thither came,
Footsore and lame,
On an autumn evening a year ago
The wandering pedlar, Gipsy Joe.
Beside the block he stood and set
His table out on the well-stones wet.
"Who'll buy? Who'll buy?" was the call he cried
As the folk came flocking from every side;
For they knew their Gipsy Joe of old,
His free wild words and his laughter bold:
So high and low all gathered together
By the village well in the autumn weather,
Lured by the gipsy's bargain-chatter
And the reckless lilt of his hare-brained patter.
And there the Revd. Salvyn Bent,
The parish church's ornament,
Stood, as it chanced, in discontent,
And eyed with a look that was almost sinister
The Revd. Joshua Fall, the minister.
And the Squire, it happened, was riding by,
With an angry look in his bloodshot eye,
Growling, as was his wont, and grunting
At the wasted toil of a bad day's hunting;
And he stopped his horse on its homeward way
To hear what the gipsy had to say.
III
Then the pedlar called to the crowd to hear,
And his voice rang loud and his voice rang clear;
And he lifted his head and began to troll
The whimsical words of his rigmarole:--
"_Since last I talked to you here I've hurled
My lone way over the wide, wide world.
South and North and West and East
I've fought with man and I've fought with beast_;
_And I've opened the gates and cleared the bar
That blocks the road to the morning star!_
"_I've seen King Pharaoh sitting down
On his golden throne in his jewelled crown,
With wizards fanning like anything
To cool the face of the mighty King:
But the King said, 'Wizards are off,' said he;
'Let Joseph the gipsy talk to me.'_
"_So I sat by the King and began to spout
As the day drew in and the sun went out;
And I sat by the King and spun my tale
Till the light returned and the night grew pale;
And none of the Wizards blinked or stirred
While the King sat drinking it word by word._
"_Then he gave me rubies and diamonds old;
He gave me masses of minted gold.
He gave me all that a King can give:
The right to live and to cease to live
Whenever--and that'll be soon, I know--
The days are numbered of Gipsy Joe._
"_Then I went and I wandered on and on
Till I came to the kingdom of Prester John;
And there I stood on a crystal stool
And sang the song of 'The First Wise Fool':
Oh, I sang it low and I sang it high
Till John he whimpered and piped his eye._
"_Then I drew a tooth from the lively jaw
Of the Prester's ebony Aunt-in-law;
And he bubbled and laughed so long, d'you see,
That his wife looked glum and I had to flee.
So I fled to the place where the Rajahs grow,
A place where they wanted Gipsy Joe._
"_The Rajahs summoned the turbaned hordes
And gave me sheaves of their inlaid swords;
And the Shah of Persia next I saw,
Who's brother and friend to the Big Bashaw;
And he sent me a rope of turquoise stones
The size of a giant's knuckle-bones._
"_But a little brown Pygmie took my hand
And rattled me fast to a silver strand,
Where the little brown Pygmie boys and girls
Are cradled and rocked to sleep in pearls._
_And the Pygmies flattered me soft and low,
'You are tall; be King of us, Gipsy Joe.'_
"_I governed them well for half-a-year,
But it came to an end, and now I'm here.
Oh, I've opened the gates and cleared the bar,
And I've come, I've come to my friends from far.
I'm old and broken, I'm lame and tired,
But I've come to the friends my soul desired._
"_So it's watches and lockets, and who will buy?
It's ribbon and lace, and they're not priced high.
If you're out for a ring or a golden chain
You can't look over my tray in vain:
And here is a balsam made of drops
From a tree that's grown by the AEthiops!_
"_I've a chip of the tooth of a mastodont
That's sure to give you the girl you want.
I've a packet of spells to make men sigh
For the lustrous glance of your liquid eye--
But it's much too dark for such wondrous wares,
So back, stand back, while I light my flares!_"
Then he lit a match, but his fingers fumbled,
And, striking his foot on a stone, he stumbled;
And the match, released by the sudden shock,
Fell in flame on the old wood-block,
And burnt there very quietly--
But before you could have counted three,
Hardly giving you time to shout,
A red-blue column of fire shot out,
Up and up and ever higher,
A marvellous burst of raging fire,
Lighting the crowd that shrank from its flashes,
And so decreasing,
And suddenly ceasing
As the seat of St. Crag was burnt to ashes!
But in the smoke that drifted on the Green
Queer freaks of vision weirdly wrought were seen:
For on that shifting background each one saw
His own reflection and recoiled in awe;
Saw himself there, a bright light shining through him,
Not as he thought himself, but as men knew him.
Before this sudden and revealing sense
Each rag of sham, each tatter of pretence
Withered and vanished, as dissolved in air,
And left the shuddering human creature bare.
But when they turned and looked upon a friend
They saw a sight that all but made amend:
For they beheld him as a radiant spirit
Indued with virtue and surpassing merit,
Not vain or dull or mean or keen for pelf,
But splendid--as he mostly saw himself.
Darville and Fall were drawn to one another,
And both to Bent as to their heart's own brother;
And a strange feeling grew in every breast,
A self-defeating altruistic zest
Which from that moment's flash composed their strife,
Informed their nature and controlled their life.
But when they sought the Gipsy, him they found,
His dark eyes staring, dead upon the ground.
THE BIRD IN THE ROOM
A robin skimmed into the room,
And blithe he looked and jolly,
A foe to every sort of gloom,
And, most, to melancholy.
He cocked his head, he made no sound,
But gave me stare for stare back,
When, having fluttered round and round,
He perched upon a chair-back.