1269 Arts and sciences poems

The great sun sinks behind the town Through a red mist of Volnay wine . . . . But what’s the use of setting down That glorious blaze behind the town? You’ll only skip the page, you’ll look For newer pictures in this book; You’ve read of sunsets rich as mine. A fresh wind fills the evening air With horrid crying of night birds . . . . But what reads new or curious there When cold winds fly across the air? You’ll only frown; you’ll turn the page, But find no glimpse of your ‘New Age Of Poetry’ in my worn-out words. Must winds that cut like blades of steel And sunsets swimming in Volnay, The holiest, cruellest pains I feel, Die stillborn, because old men squeal For something new: ‘Write something new: We’ve read this poem – that one too, And twelve more like ’em yesterday’? No, no! my chicken, I shall scrawl Just what I fancy as I strike it, Fairies and Fusiliers, and all. Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl Across my verse in the classic way. And, sir, be careful what you say; There are old-fashioned folk still like it.

'Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand Hath fix'd upon the sotted age a brand To their swoll'n pride and empty scribbling due; It can nor judge, nor write, and yet 'tis true Thy comic muse, from the exalted line Touch'd by thy Alchemist , doth since decline From that her zenith, and foretells a red And blushing evening, when she goes to bed; Yet such as shall outshine the glimmering light With which all stars shall gild the following night. Nor think it much, since all thy eaglets may Endure the sunny trial, if we say This hath the stronger wing, or that doth shine Trick'd up in fairer plumes, since all are thine. Who hath his flock of cackling geese compar'd With thy tun'd choir of swans? or else who dar'd To call thy births deform'd? But if thou bind By city-custom, or by gavelkind, In equal shares thy love on all thy race, We may distinguish of their sex, and place; Though one hand form them, and though one brain strike Souls into all, they are not all alike. Why should the follies then of this dull age Draw from thy pen such an immodest rage As seems to blast thy else-immortal bays, When thine own tongue proclaims thy itch of praise? Such thirst will argue drouth. No, let be hurl'd Upon thy works by the detracting world What malice can suggest; let the rout say, The running sands, that, ere thou make a play, Count the slow minutes, might a Goodwin frame To swallow, when th' hast done, thy shipwreck'd name; Let them the dear expense of oil upbraid, Suck'd by thy watchful lamp, that hath betray'd To theft the blood of martyr'd authors, spilt Into thy ink, whilst thou growest pale with guilt. Repine not at the taper's thrifty waste, That sleeks thy terser poems; nor is haste Praise, but excuse; and if thou overcome A knotty writer, bring the booty home; Nor think it theft if the rich spoils so torn From conquer'd authors be as trophies worn. Let others glut on the extorted praise Of vulgar breath, trust thou to after-days; Thy labour'd works shall live when time devours Th' abortive offspring of their hasty hours. Thou are not of their rank, the quarrel lies Within thine own verge; then let this suffice, The wiser world doth greater thee confess Than all men else, than thyself only less.

Would that you were alive today, Catullus! Truth ’tis, there is a filthy skunk amongst us, A rank musk-idiot, the filthiest skunk, Of no least sorry use on earth, but only Fit in fancy to justify the outlay Of your most horrible vocabulary. My Muse, all innocent as Eve in Eden, Would yet wear any skins of old pollution Rather than celebrate the name detested. Ev’n now might he rejoice at our attention, Guess'd he this little ode were aiming at him. O! were you but alive again, Catullus! For see, not one among the bards of our time With their flimsy tackle was out to strike him; Not those two pretty Laureates of England, Not Alfred Tennyson nor Alfred Austin.

to come away with Hesiod and leave the rock as though to rocks the tree to trees and dwell on other things imagine the injunction to leave the mint to its own devices among the dust & stones in the shadow of rocks or tree-roots hard as rocks imagine poems left to their own devices as poets gorge on air & airy thoughts & figures – the thought sobers me to the bone of a sobriety earned at the expense of the airiness Hesiod was commissioned to name but who wouldnt seize a staff of bay or ash or gum and trade common or garden cough for lungsfull of song taking the world in one’s stride careering towards heaven?

To converse with the greats by trying their blindfolds on; to correspond with books by rewriting them; to edit holy edicts, and at the midnight hour to talk with the clock by tapping a wall in the solitary confinement of the universe.

Standing aloof in giant ignorance, Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades, As one who sits ashore and longs perchance To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas. So thou wast blind;—but then the veil was rent, For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live, And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent, And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive; Aye on the shores of darkness there is light, And precipices show untrodden green, There is a budding morrow in midnight, There is a triple sight in blindness keen; Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

The poet’s duties: no need to stress The subject’s dullness, nonetheless Here’s an incestuous address In Robert Burns’ style To one whom all the Muses bless At Great Turnstile. I’ve no excuses for this theme. Prescription is less popular than dream And little rhymes, God knows, can seem Much too laconic, Bollinger’s visionary gleam Turned gin-and-tonic. But ssch! you know and understand The way these verses have been planned: Gritty like little bits of sand Not shining quartz; No pulsing from a higher gland Just random thoughts. Let’s start by thinking of objectives. Poets hate to have directives: They’re on their own, not on collectives, Share and share about, And what inspires their best invectives Is what they care about. You,James, collapsed upon our sofa As though being driven by a chauffeur, Won’t fail to tell us what you go for: Managerial boobs And answers that you won’t take no for From Fine Tubes. Reporters never throw in towels. Their prose is written from the bowels. Ottava rima about owls Printed by Sycamore Is worlds away from Enoch Powell’s Plans for the blackamoor. But are you James Cameron or Flecker? Are you a maker or a trekker? What is the nature of your Mecca, Your verum pulchrum? I’m glad, of course, that you’re with Secker And not with Fulcrum. Poet and traveller have quarrelled And now you canter where you carolled. We’re waiting still for your Childe Harold, Though quests in Poland Find you fixated and apparelled More like Childe Roland. It is impressive, I agree, Although I know it’s not for me. I take the windfalls from the tree, I’m much too lazy, The prisons that I want to see By Piranesi. You say that Oxford has no marrow, Sucked dry by Trevor-Roper, Sparrow, And others of reaction’s farrow In their fat cloister, Though if my eye is just as narrow It may be moister. We never see our feelings through, And weeping only makes us blue. It may be beautiful and true But it’s not action, And nothing the bourgeoisie can do Gives satisfaction. How can we alter our behaviour? Should we deny our gravy’s gravier? Leave Cleopatra for Octavia? My life is inner, And someone I don’t think a saviour Is B. F. Skinner. Avoid that fashionable flock: To be refitted in their dock Your common-sense must take a knock As it took a course on The reflexes of frogs, and Locke, And P. F. Strawson. Much of the Left we can ignore (Sheer anarchy I don’t adore). The trendy educate the poor In greed and fear, While Labour’s entered on the war Of Jenkins’ ear. No. Righteous more than He who Hath, More reasonable than New Math, Momier than the Mome Rath In their outgrabing, Glossing the Variorum Plath From Krafft-Ebing, Apostles of determinism Whose hero’s Mao or Virgil Grissom Won’t interest your mind one rissom: You’re too empirical. What about Neo-Imagism? Impossibly lyrical. Such knowing brevity needs patience: As unfastidious Croatians Upon quite intimate occasions Shun body-talc, So leave your interpersonal relations To Colin Falck. For poetry to have some merit he Requires it to display sincerity, Each pronoun to convince posterity With deep emotion And an invigorating verity Like hair-lotion. Well, that’s unfair. I’m glad he lives. Just think of the alternatives! Those whose verse resembles sieves Or a diagram, And foul-mouthed transatlantic spivs Wooing Trigram. For they are all still with us,James, Fiddling among the flames, Brandishing the brittle fames They soon arrive at. It’s better not to mention names: They’ll wince in private. Orating offspring of Urania (No fault of yours that they’re not brainier) Have an immodest dogged mania For autobiography Disguised in concrete or the zanier Forms of typography. The wide-eyed audience they’re rooking Would secretly prefer a booking From a quartet like the backward-looking Rank Ailanthus They’d jump to hear what’s really cooking With the Black Panthers. Whatever props the poet uses, Whether he accepts, accuses Or gives up, he must know his Muse is A sensible girl. Even some antics of Ted Hughes’s Make her hair curl. And so you need a form to play About in but which will convey Something of what you want to say Without evasion, Adjusting like the Vicar of Bray To each occasion. The size you haven’t found as yet. What Nabokov calls the ‘triolet’ Is much too trim a maisonette To dawdle in, Unlike your shabby Cloisters set In Magdalen, Which made your poetry much dandier, Much like ottava rima, handier. You needed in its chilly grandeur To turn the fire on For times when you felt even randier Than Lord Byron. Still, you found sonnets quite inspiring Although some rhymes like ancient wiring Showed the circuits could prove tiring (Though not unduly, And no one could be more admiring Than Yours Truly). So carry on: your talents hum. No one will ever find you dumb While you avoid the slightly rum Like the White Goddess Or Black Mountain(and don’t become Roger Woddis). I’ll send a sub to the IS (Please let me know the right address) I shan’t turn up, but I confess I’m not a traitor. I just don’t want to think the less Of Teresa Hayter. Some day I’ll join you in the street Where suffering and truth must meet: It isn’t easy not to feel effete This side of anguish, When those who can’t choose what to eat Don’t speak our language. Meanwhile we have to try to bring Some order to that circus ring Where people think and feel and sing, For at its centre There’s no escape from anything, And we must enter.

Donne, the delight of Phoebus and each Muse Who, to thy one, all other brains refuse; Whose every work of thy most early wit Came forth example, and remains so yet; Longer a-knowing than most wits do live; And which no affection praise enough can give! To it, thy language, letters, arts, best life, Which might with half mankind maintain a strife. All which I meant to praise, and yet I would; But leave, because I cannot as I should!

Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are Life of the Muses' day, their morning star! If works, not th' author's, their own grace should look, Whose poems would not wish to be your book? But these, desir'd by you, the maker's ends Crown with their own. Rare poems ask rare friends. Yet satires, since the most of mankind be Their unavoided subject, fewest see; For none e'er took that pleasure in sin's sense But, when they heard it tax'd, took more offence. They, then, that living where the matter is bred, Dare for these poems, yet, both ask and read And like them too, must needfully, though few, Be of the best; and 'mongst those best are you, Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are The Muses' evening, as their morning star.

Well then; the promis'd hour is come at last; The present age of wit obscures the past: Strong were our sires; and as they fought they writ, Conqu'ring with force of arms, and dint of wit; Theirs was the giant race, before the Flood; And thus, when Charles return'd, our empire stood. Like Janus he the stubborn soil manur'd, With rules of husbandry the rankness cur'd: Tam'd us to manners, when the stage was rude; And boisterous English wit, with art endu'd. Our age was cultivated thus at length; But what we gained in skill we lost in strength. Our builders were, with want of genius, curst; The second temple was not like the first: Till you, the best Vitruvius, come at length; Our beauties equal; but excel our strength. Firm Doric pillars found your solid base: The fair Corinthian crowns the higher space; Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace. In easy dialogue is Fletcher's praise: He mov'd the mind, but had not power to raise. Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please: Yet doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease. In differing talents both adorn'd their age; One for the study, t'other for the stage. But both to Congreve justly shall submit, One match'd in judgment, both o'er-match'd in wit. In him all beauties of this age we see; Etherege's courtship, Southern's purity; The satire, wit, and strength of manly Wycherly. All this in blooming youth you have achiev'd; Nor are your foil'd contemporaries griev'd; So much the sweetness of your manners move, We cannot envy you because we love. Fabius might joy in Scipio, when he saw A beardless Consul made against the law, And join his suffrage to the votes of Rome; Though he with Hannibal was overcome. Thus old Romano bow'd to Raphael's fame; And scholar to the youth he taught, became. Oh that your brows my laurel had sustain'd, Well had I been depos'd, if you had reign'd! The father had descended for the son; For only you are lineal to the throne. Thus when the State one Edward did depose; A greater Edward in his room arose. But now, not I, but poetry is curs'd; For Tom the second reigns like Tom the first. But let 'em not mistake my patron's part; Nor call his charity their own desert. Yet this I prophesy; thou shalt be seen, (Tho' with some short parenthesis between:) High on the throne of wit; and seated there, Not mine (that's little) but thy laurel wear. Thy first attempt an early promise made; That early promise this has more than paid. So bold, yet so judiciously you dare, That your least praise, is to be regular. Time, place, and action, may with pains be wrought, But genius must be born; and never can be taught. This is your portion; this your native store; Heav'n that but once was prodigal before, To Shakespeare gave as much; she could not give him more. Maintain your post: that's all the fame you need; For 'tis impossible you should proceed. Already I am worn with cares and age; And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage: Unprofitably kept at Heav'n's expense, I live a rent-charge on his providence: But you, whom ev'ry muse and grace adorn, Whom I foresee to better fortune born, Be kind to my remains; and oh defend, Against your judgment your departed friend! Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue; But shade those laurels which descend to you: And take for tribute what these lines express: You merit more; nor could my love do less.