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Title: Mice & Other Poems Author: Bullett, Gerald Language: English As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available. *** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Mice & Other Poems" *** produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) MICE & OTHER POEMS by Gerald Bullett _With a General Note by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch_ ONE FLORIN 1921 MICE AND OTHER POEMS PRINTED IN CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS AND SOLD IN LONDON BY SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & Co FIRST IMPRESSION JANUARY 1921 MICE & OTHER POEMS by Gerald Bullett Perkin Warbeck 9 Market Hill Cambridge _Uniform with this volume_ HOME-MADE VERSES BY D. B. HASELER AND R. H. D'ELBOUX LAUGHING GAS AND OTHER POEMS BY MARGUERITE FEW GERALD BULLETT IS THE AUTHOR OF THE PROGRESS OF KAY PUBLISHED BY CONSTABLE & CO. LONDON NOTE If the mental attitude of any critic has ever, in his approach to a first book of verse, been conciliated by an appreciative notice from some older pen, I should say (speaking out of no little experience) that either the author was dead and the fact advertised in the preface, or, alternatively, that the critic was possessed by a gentler spirit than mine. I am sure at any rate that artistic work, great or small, should be sternly judged on what it is rather than on what it promises. The late J. Comyns Carr, in the days when he wrote dramatic criticism, let loose this restive truth in a couple of short sentences--'We are told that So-and-so is a promising young actor. Personally I don't care how much he promises so long as he never again performs.' Let me, then, pass over Mr Gerald Bullett's verses with the simple remark that I believe in them (he himself calls them 'MICE'--no overweening title, however boldly printed. Yet mice were dear to Apollo Smintheus, and his proper emblem): and let me come to the general purpose of this Note. It is meant to preface a series of small volumes of verse by young writers, mostly Cambridge men. That, since the War, young men in extraordinary numbers have taken to expressing themselves in verse is a plain fact, not to be denied: that they choose, as often as not, to express themselves in 'numbers' extraordinary to us can as hardly be contested. But the point is, they have a crowding impulse to say something; and to say it with the emotional seriousness proper to Poetry. For my part, I love the discipline of verse: but I love the impulse better. Time will soften--I hope not too soon, lest it sugar down and sentimentalise--a certain bitterness of resentment observable in this booklet and its next followers: but, as nothing in verse is nobler than true tradition, anything is more hopeful than convention. So these booklets have been planned to give youth its chance to make spoons or spoil horns. If anyone object that the print and page over-dignify the content of any one volume in the proposed series, why, that must be a particular criticism, which cannot honestly (I think) be enlarged to blame the publisher's wish, and the care he has taken, that what pretends, however modestly, to be a work of the Muse, should step forth to the public in honourable dress. ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH CONTENTS Mice 9 Rest 10 'The Strength, the Mellow Music, and the Laughter' 11 Ashes 12 'Du bist wie eine Blume' 13 Home 14 'Maître de Ballet' 15 The Grudge 16 Wedding Day 17 Crucifixion 18 Spring in Winter 19 The Exile 20 Sonnet for Helen 21 Song 22 Musings 23 The Poet 24 'If all the trees were magic trees' 26 'Alone with these my poems...' 28 _'The Exile' is reprinted by courtesy of the Proprietors of Punch_ Mice I see the broken bodies of women and men, Temples of God ruined; I see the claws Of sinister Fate, from the reach of whose feline paws Never are safe the bodies of women and men. Almighty Cat, it sits on the Throne of the World, With paw outstretched, grinning at us, the mice, Who play our trivial games of virtue and vice, And pray--to That which sits on the Throne of the World! From our beginning till all is over and done, Unwitting who watches, pursuing our personal ends, Hither and thither we scamper....The paw descends; The paw descends and all is over and done. Rest Here is tranquillity and silvan shade; For now, emerging from that waste of sand Which was my life, I reach a fruitful glade, A pool of water in a thirsty land. Your gentle soul a well of beauty is, And crystal clear the sunlit deeps thereof; And from that fountain of unmeasured bliss I draw the living water of your love. Here is the goal of all my wandering, Here is oblivion of my bitterness, And here the temple where my heart shall sing Your eyes that light me and your lips that bless. _The strength, the mellow music, and the laughter_ The steadfast beauty of her eyes is balm, And in her touch there's healing for my hurt; She is unshaken as a vessel girt Mid waters of unutterable calm. The years grow fragrant with her fragrance: they, Sipping her sweetness, leave her yet more sweet. Laden with divers colours, at her feet They shed their motley silks and go their way Like withered dreams. So youth must follow after, Youth that is brief and beauty that is grass; But from her gentle soul shall never pass The strength, the mellow music, and the laughter. Ashes Bury the ashes. The life, the gleam Of love is gone: we have killed with kisses The fragile soul of rapture: this is Only the hollow husk of a dream, The bitter waking, the end thereof. Come, bury the ashes of love. The music falters; the flame is spent; The vision is gone, the splendour faded, Leaving only a pitiful jaded Half-desire, and a discontent. The end of love is a weary kiss-- Surely hate were better than this! _Du bist wie eine Blume_ So like a flower, so gentle, So fair, so pure thou art, That musing on thy beauty Brings sadness to my heart. I lay my hands, in spirit, Upon thy gleaming hair, Praying that God may keep thee So sweet, so pure, so fair. _From the German of Heine_ Home Five weary days...and I shall creep Into the shadow of her hair And of her loveliness drink deep And lose my desolation there, Feeling her cool lips quench my own. Lying so still, we shall not dare To let one murmur like a stone Into the pool of silence fall. All senses will be fused in one: Peace will surround us with a wall Of visible music, moments go Melodiously by, and all The stillness brim with beauty; so Our hearts will whisper, throbbing fast: 'Must time undeviating flow And bear this fragile moment past?' _Maître de Ballet_ On a gossamer thread Of light that stretches From dark to dark Over the void We giddily jig To the mad music The Master makes. From the Green Room He calls us forth, Sensitive puppets, Live automata, And with a gesture Sets us jerkily Dancing the tightrope. From a seat in the stalls Of the cosmic theatre Silently He watches our antics. When we call to him 'Master, Master! Help, we are falling!' Out of the darkness Comes no word ....Only a chuckle. The Grudge _We grudged not those that were dearer than all we possessed, Lovers, brothers, sons. Our hearts were full, and out of a full heart We gave our beloved ones._ (Laurence Binyon) We are of baser quality: we have been Tried by fire and judged a spurious gold. We are little of soul; and yet in our pigmy way We have suffered and loved with a love that cannot be told. Being less than you, we did not eagerly quaff The cup of gall: we prayed that it might pass. We are not gods: we are pitiful human stuff; And the blood of our passion has stained Gethsemane's grass. We were not blind to the vision. We heard the call And followed, or watched our belovèd steadfastly go. But our grief is naked, and shivers, and will not be soothed By splendid phrases, or clothed in a moral glow. We cannot say for our comfort: 'Losing them, We gain a glimpse of noble terrible heights, A cleansing exquisite pain, a sacred grief, A dream to cherish'--we think of the vanished lights; We think of the fine nerves shattered, the warm blood chilled, The laughter silenced, the zest and the beauty gone, The desolation of wasted wonderful dreams That will never be lived, of work that cannot be done. Wedding Day Was it for this we loved: to settle down (Having once paid the necessary fee) In some nice suburb not too far from town, To eat and sleep and kiss complacently, Loving by rote as decent people do: Was it for this we hungered, I and you? A lover's vows are gossamer, they say; But we have registered our mutual vow For seven and sixpence, dearest. Yesterday There was but love to bind our hearts, but now We owe it to the Vicar to be good And love each other as we said we would. That promise at the altar is a link (Which only death can break) between us two; For every time I kiss you I shall think: 'How this would please the Vicar if he knew!' And we shall put our youthful dreams to bed, And so live on--long after we are dead. We are made one. One mind will serve us both. ('Oh yes, we think Locke's novels rather sweet!') In ever-living witness of our troth You'll serve the vegetables, I the meat... O happiness! It is our wedding day! Embrace me, dear: the Prayer Book says you may. Crucifixion We wage eternal war on the losing side; Ever defeated we by the sinister foe That only pathetic piety seeks to hide In a theological costume of long ago. The goal we seek to attain will never be ours: All our hopes will end in ashes and dust; All our dreams will be dead desolate flowers, Plucked by the pitiless Hand we were taught to trust. Doomed to eternal defeat in the endless strife, Scornful of Chance the Almighty, we worship with pride The divine, frail, terrible Beauty of Life On the Cross of Fate incessantly crucified. Spring in Winter My memories of you are singing birds In the green forest of my mind, where I May roam, recapturing your whispered words, Or on a bank of glowing bluebells lie, Listening for ever. Spring is come again In all her glory; the erst withered trees That creaked, like living skeletons in pain, Defying the wind, have donned green garments: these New shoots, these blossoms and these buds, the springing Grass, and the sky where many colours blend, My songsters by the magic of their singing Have in a moment made. My thoughts of you Are music which to all my spirit's rue Is the ineffable answer and the end. The Exile Now I return to my own land and people, Old familiar things so to recover, Hedgerows and little lanes and meadows, The friendliness of my own land and people. I have seen a world-frieze of glowing orange, Palms painted black on the satin horizon, Palm-trees in the dusk and the silence standing Straight and still against a background of orange; A gorgeous magical pomp of light and colour, A dream-world, a sparkling gem in the sunlight, The minarets and domes of an Eastern city; And in the midst of all the pomp of colour My heart cried out for my own land and people; My heart cried out for the lush meadows of England, The hedgerows and little lanes of England, And for the faces of my own people. Sonnet for Helen When you're very old, when in the candlelight your hair Silver shews--when by the fire you spinning sit and weaving, You will croon my verses, but in wonder, scarce believing 'Ronsard hymned my beauty in the days when I was fair.' Never servant could you have, tho' half-asleep she were, But would rouse herself to listen to your lyric grieving, Wake to hear my name and your glory, my achieving, My immortal praise of your beauty past compare. I shall be beneath the earth, an unsubstantial shade; Where the myrtles throw their shadow will my bones be laid. You will be a squatting crony sighing by the fire, Sighing for the love you scorned, recalling it with sorrow. Live, O live and love to-day; delay not till the morrow: Gather now the roses of youth and desire. _From the French of Ronsard_ Song How did we dim that wistful dream, That shy first love without caress, That breathless wonder, that supreme Vision of all love's loveliness? For surely had we parted then, Kissed once with tears and said Good-bye, We had been speaking truly when We said our love could never die. Because we did a moment cling, With trembling senses cling and kiss-- Does it not seem a bitter thing That bliss should die of too much bliss? Love is a fair and fragile flower Which Youth must needs, poor foolish boy, Pluck greedily....Within the hour He weeps to see his withered joy. Musings Be calmer, O my Grief, be quieter: The dusk you craved enfolds us; everywhere The twilight veil of blue-grey gossamer Falls, bringing peace to some, to others care. While thralls of Pleasure, that most merciless Of tyrants, hasten to his board (although His wine is gall, and his fruit, bitterness), Come with me, O my Grief, and let us go Far from them. See the bygone years that throng Heaven's balconies; see smiling Sorrow, strong In fortitude, rise from the waters; see The dying sun, low sinking, disappear Beyond the verge. The rustling mystery Of night approaches--hear, beloved, hear. _From the French of Baudelaire_ The Poet Where the flowers are most tall, Heedless of his mother's call, Wooden sword in his hand Tightly clasped, I see him stand. He is pondering with eyes Full of four-year-old surmise Two great hollyhocks that sway This way, that way, Till they almost touch his cheek. Queer, solemn souls they seem, Spell-bound, lost in dream, Always just about to speak... Then he with thirsty eyes Drinks the intoxicating skies. Done with earth, he bestrides The galloping white horses, rides The blue valleys and the red hills Of sunset, and his pocket fills With golden apples. Days pass, Long full days... The grass Suddenly stirs, and he plunges Into the perilous wood and lunges Stoutly at the dragon's head Till the fiery beast is dead... Now that dusk is fast falling He'll obey his mother's calling. Out of Fairyland with slow Thoughtful steps he turns to go. Yet there's just time to float In the water-butt his boat Made of cork and spent matches: So, at the last he snatches Great adventure from the dread Unrelenting jaws of Bed. Round the magic world rides he, And lives a breathless Odyssey. _If all the trees were magic trees_ If all the trees were magic trees And talked among themselves, If kings could sleep in daffodils And bishops danced on window-sills, If all the valleys changed to hills And all the tens to twelves, The world would be nonsensical, And we should all be elves. If every street in Camden Town Were paved with precious stones, If modest souls began to drape Their table-legs in decent crape, If every squirrel wore a cape And had the name of Jones, I'd weave a robe of beetles' eyes And jellyfishes' bones. If kingcups blossomed in the sky And fell like golden rain In grey half-light shot through and through With shafts of green and shafts of blue, If pink and purple chickweed grew On every window pane, All truly tidy folk would deem The universe insane. If we were sensible enough To hear the bluebells ring, Were sight so true and hearts so wise That we could see with glowing eyes Enchantment flaming from the skies And joy in everything, Then every girl a queen would be, And every boy a king. _Alone with these my poems..._ Alone with these my poems, when night is still, Earth seems but a speck of fluttering dust, Moth-like, in a waste of eternity. Alone with these symbols of human thought, All our measureless system of whirling worlds Seems itself a symbol, a chance phrase In a poem wrought by the hand of a brooding god, Where we ourselves are less than commas and dots. And had he smeared out with careless thumb All life, from its first birth in the waters To the ultimate dissolution of stars and suns, He had made no more than an ill-timed caesura. Alone with these my poems, when night is still, I am less than a speck of dust on the wing of a moth Fluttering in a waste of eternity. *** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Mice & Other Poems" *** Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.