All the Poems

by Stevie Smith

  The satisfaction, the noble-animal dignity, the imperial carelessness!

  As Blah lay smiling in her sleep, a shadow crossed the face of Thomas.

  He awoke, and putting his arms across Blah’s breast

  He stared in a sullen and offended manner at the young intellectual.

  Go to hell, cried Thomas. Go to hell, cried the young intellectual.

  A purely nervous situation for you I fancy, sneered Thomas.

  The young intellectual crept weeping away,

  Oh, if he could only experience emotional extravagance!

  Who Shot Eugenie?

  We had ridden three days Eugenie and I

  And kept hidden

  By an unnecessary habitual caution

  The papers of our commission.

  How blank is the heart when on service bent

  Empty of all but official content

  So inappropriate is all individual consideration

  So impossible in the individual a communal realization

  Of states’, peoples’, any group-mind’s preoccupation,

  That a girl in the service of her country at war

  Must have a mind as blank as a wall

  Apt only to carry

  The terms of her commission and hurry.

  Eugenie and I in an open deserted country

  Had travelled till nightfall of the third day

  When putting our horses at a hedge at the top of a hill,

  Up and over,

  We found ourselves under cover

  Of a mighty forest whose pines’ green needles

  Fallen carpeted the ground and silenced our horses’ footfall.

  Now night was entrenched and over our head the stars

  Shone out their fitful rather disturbing light

  That hardly served to penetrate the gloomy thread

  Of the long forest ride we rode upon.

  Why is it starlight so disturbs our kind

  Dissipates the purposes of the human mind

  Emptying familiar things of all significance

  Setting the thoughts in an inconsequent dance

  And making the loftiest and ruling of them sit mumchance?

  I said no word of this to her nor she to me,

  We were old campaigners both of us you see,

  Only we rode, she as I, distracted

  And the heart had gone out of us both and the virtue,

  We rode in silence.

  Hour by hour of the night we rode and the sickle moon

  Clearing the feathered treetops soared overhead

  And the path we followed led always towards the north,

  Skirting a lake. We saw where the arms of trees

  Old wood and rotten and allowed to rot and to fall

  When it should have been chopped and cherished in the service of nations

  (According to the best interpretation of King’s Regulations)

  Broke surface.

  Over our shoulders from the right the moonlight shimmered

  Down and across the waters of the forest lake

  Making in semblance more sombre the shadowy margin.

  We were glad to leave it, the sombre sinister pool,

  And rose till daylight came and the cold dawn wind,

  And the stars grew pale, and the moon sank down on the west.

  In the gray of the early day we dismounted and watered our beasts,

  And breakfasted there by the side of the cold clear spring,

  And tethered our horses, and lay and rested and slept,

  The sleep of exhaustion. And still no sound,

  No least hurry or flurry of wild birds moving,

  Spoke of the alien presence of human beings,

  The forest enclosed us around and my dreams were always

  Of ways without ending and passively hostile Nature,

  Of forests deploying and advancing with the power of death

  In the huddle of trees and the treacherous undergrowth.

  The sun was hot on my face when I woke, and Eugenie was dead,

  Shot, with a bullet through her head.

  Yet every chamber in her revolver was full to plenty.

  And only in my own is there one that is empty.

  Full Well I Know

  Full well I know the flinty heart

  That beats beneath those gentle airs

  That asks the people to her hearth

  But for a writer’s cares

  That asks them from below above

  But only to observe, not love.

  Then also as a writer she must fail

  Since art without compassion don’t avail?

  Voices about the Princess Anemone

  Underneath the tangled tree

  Lies the pale Anemone.

  She was the first who ever wrote

  The word of fear, and tied it round her throat.

  She ran into the forest wild

  And there she lay and never smiled.

  Sighing, Oh my word of fear

  You shall be my only dear.

  They said she was a princess lost

  To an inheritance beyond all cost.

  She feared too much they said, but she says, No,

  My wealth is a golden reflection in the stream below.

  She bends her head, her hands dip in the water

  Fear is a band of gold on the King’s daughter.

  Deeply Morbid

  Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters

  Always out of office hours running with her social betters

  But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her

  Not for this ah not for this her office colleagues came to doubt her

  It was that look within her eye

  Why did it always seem to say goodbye?

  Joan her name was and at lunchtime

  Solitary solitary

  She would go and watch the pictures

  In the National Gallery

  All alone all alone

  This time with no friend beside her

  She would go and watch the pictures

  All alone.

  Will she leave her office colleagues

  Will she leave her evening pleasures

  Toil within a friendly bureau

  Running later in her leisure?

  All alone all alone

  Before the pictures she seems turned to stone.

  Close upon the Turner pictures

  Closer than a thought may go

  Hangs her eye and all the colours

  Leap into a special glow

  All for her, all alone

  All for her, all for Joan.

  First the canvas where the ocean

  Like a mighty animal

  With a really wicked motion

  Leaps for sailors’ funeral

  Holds her panting. Oh the creature

  Oh the wicked virile thing

  With its skin of fleck and shadow

  Stretching tightening over him.

  Wild yet captured wild yet captured

  By the painter, Joan is quite enraptured.

  Now she edges from the canvas

  To another loved more dearly

  Where the awful light of purest

  Sunshine falls across the spray,

  There the burning coasts of fancy

  Open to her pleasure lay.

  All alone, all alone

  Come away, come away

  All alone.

  Lady Mary, Lady Kitty

  The Honourable Featherstonehaugh

  Polly Tommy from the office

  Which of these shall hold her now?

  Come away, come away

  All alone.

  The spray reached out and sucked her in

  It was a hardly noticed thing

  That Joan was there and is not now

  (Oh go and tell young Featherstonehaugh)

  Gone away, gone away

  All alone.

  She stood u
p straight

  The sun fell down

  There was no more of London Town

  She went upon the painted shore

  And there she walks for ever more

  Happy quite

  Beaming bright

  In a happy happy light

  All alone.

  They say she was a morbid girl, no doubt of it

  And what befell her clearly grew out of it

  But I say she’s a lucky one

  To walk for ever in that sun

  And as I bless sweet Turner’s name

  I wish that I could do the same.

  The Ghost of Ware

  I look in the mirror,

  Whose face is there?

  It is the face

  Of the Ghost of Ware.

  This is an old house,

  The river flows below placidly,

  I am enchanted completely

  By this ancient city.

  I will never leave you,

  Dear town of Ware,

  I will look into the mirror

  Another afternoon and there

  I shall see the smiling face

  Of the Ghost of Ware.

  NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING (1957)

  Not Waving but Drowning

  Nobody heard him, the dead man,

  But still he lay moaning:

  I was much further out than you thought

  And not waving but drowning.

  Poor chap, he always loved larking

  And now he’s dead

  It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

  They said.

  Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

  (Still the dead one lay moaning)

  I was much too far out all my life

  And not waving but drowning.

  The English Visitor

  In the graveyard, in the graveyard

  By the tomb of Alan Blair

  On the mighty Scottish mountain

  Knelt the English visitor.

  Oh my darling why did you leave me

  To lie so cold where I cannot come,

  I only wished to have you by me

  In the busy town.

  How beautiful are the Scottish mountains

  Their backs are like ancient mammoths so quiet

  And I should like to walk on the mountain

  While it is light.

  The people frowned to see her looking,

  Alas for Alan that fell in with such a woman

  Why is she here, what has brought her?

  She has no thought for him.

  The Englishwoman rose up quickly

  And ran through the gates of the cemetery

  And leapt on the mountain boulders

  With quick step lightly,

  Is that an eagle in the sky wheeling?

  No, it is not wheeling but weaving

  And it’s too small for an eagle, it is not hard

  To tell it is a buzzard.

  Oh why are the people so hostile, why are they angry?

  They say I come too late

  And that Alan’s blood is upon me

  But chiefly it is my walking they hate.

  Then the beautiful woman ran up the mountainside

  As over the top she was spinning

  And the people said she would never think of Alan again

  And it was typical of Englishwomen.

  But No, said an angel, you are wrong

  She will think of him freely and frequently

  She is not less sorry than you are

  Only she was brought up differently.

  ‘What is she writing? Perhaps it will be good’

  What is she writing? Perhaps it will be good,

  The young girl laughs: ‘I am in love.’

  But the older girl is serious: ‘Not now, perhaps later.’

  Still the young girl teases: ‘What’s the matter?

  To lose everything! A waste of time!’

  But now the older one is quite silent,

  Writing, writing and perhaps it will be good.

  Really neither girl is a fool.

  The Fairy Bell

  A renegade poet, having taken to journalism for more money, is rebuked by his Muse in the form of an old gentleman; he cuts her throat.

  A dismal bell hung in the belfry

  And clanged a dismal tune

  And back and forth the bats did fly

  Wherever there was room.

  He seemed a melancholy but a reasonable creature,

  Yet I could see about his hat

  As it were this belfry steeple.

  The agony through which I go

  (He said) is something that you ought to know

  And something that you will know too

  When I have finished telling you.

  He took my hand, I could not choose but stand,

  Perhaps for his own sake he should not have done this?

  Yet I thought Death was the best prize, if he won this.

  Oh, the sad music of the backward and forth

  Flying of the bats, pleading for worth,

  But in this perhaps again I was wrong?

  That there was for him some enjoyment in their song?

  It is done now and I cannot trouble to rue it,

  I took his gullet in my hand and with my knife cut through it.

  But still in my head I sometimes hear the soft tune

  Of the belfry bats moaning to find more room,

  And the ding-dong of that imaginary sound

  Is as grateful as a fairy bell, tolling by waters drowned.

  The New Age

  Shall I tell you the signs of a New Age coming?

  It is a sound of drubbing and sobbing

  Of people crying, We are old, we are old

  And the sun is going down and becoming cold

  Oh sinful and sad and the last of our kind

  If we turn to God now do you think He will mind?

  Then they fall on their knees and begin to whine

  That the state of Art itself presages decline

  As if Art has anything or ever had

  To do with civilisation whether good or bad.

  Art is wild is as a cat and quite separate from civilisation

  But that is another matter that is not now under consideration.

  Oh these people are fools with their sighing and sinning

  Why should Man be at an end? he is hardly beginining.

  This New Age will slip in under cover of their eyes.

  Well, say geological time is a one-foot rule

  Then Man’s only been here about half an inch to play the fool

  Or be wise if he likes, as he often has been

  Oh heavens how these crying people spoil the beautiful geological scene.

  The Blue from Heaven

  a legend of King Arthur of Britain

  King Arthur rode in another world

  And his twelve knights rode behind him

  And Guinevere was there

  Crying: Arthur, where are you, dear?

  Why is the King so blue?

  Why is he this blue colour?

  It is because the sun is shining

  And he rides under the blue cornflowers.

  High wave the cornflowers

  That shed the pale blue light

  And under the tall cornflowers

  Rides King Arthur and his twelve knights.

  And Guinevere is there

  Crying: Arthur, where are you, dear?

  First there were twelve knights riding

  And then there was only one

  And King Arthur said to the one knight,

  Be gone.

  All I wish for now, said Arthur,

  Is the beautiful colour blue

  And to ride in the blue sunshine

  And Guinevere I do not wish for you.

  Oh lord, said Guinevere

  I do not see the colour blue

  And I wish to ride where our knights rode,
>
  After you.

  Go back, go back, Guinevere,

  Go back to the palace, said the King.

  So she went back to the palace

  And her grief did not seem to her a small thing.

  The Queen has returned to the palace

  Crying: Arthur, where are you, dear?

  And every day she speaks of Arthur’s grandeur

  To the knights who are there.

  That the King has fallen from the power

  Of his grandeur all agree

  And the falling off of Arthur

  Becomes their theme presently.

  As if it were only temporarily

  And it was not for ever

  They speak, but the Queen knows

  He will come back never.

  Yes, Arthur has passed away,

  Gladly he has laid down his reigning power,

  He has gone to ride in the blue light

  Of the peculiar towering cornflowers.

  The Lady of the Well-Spring

  Renoir’s ‘La Source’

  He is quite captive to the Lady of the Well-Spring,

  Who will rescue him?

  Into the French drawing-room

  the afternoon sun shone

  And as the French ladies laughed their white faces

  Barred by the balcony shadows seemed to make grimaces.

  In the far corner of the room

  Sat the English child Joan

  As far away as she could get but without exasperation

  Only to be freed from the difficulty of conversation.

  ‘Quite captive to the lady of the Well-Spring

  Who will rescue him?’

  Now I have an excuse to go

  Said Joan, and walked out of the window

  Down the iron staircase and along the path

  And then she began to run through the tall wet grass.

  Overhead the hot sun slanting

  Fell on Joan as she ran through the fields panting,

  Faster faster uphill she goes hoping

  That as the ground goes uphill steeply sloping

  She will find the well-spring. Into a little wood

  She runs, the branches catching at her feet draw blood

  And there is a sound of piping screaming croaking clacking

  As the birds of the wood rise chattering.

  And now as she runs there is the bicker

  Of a stream growing narrower in a trickle

  And a splash and a flinging, it is water springing.

  Now with her feet in deep moss Joan stands looking

  Where on a bank a great white lady is lying

  A fair smooth lady whose stomach swelling

  Full breasts fine waist and long legs tapering

  Are shadowed with grass-green

  streaks. The lady smiles

  Lying naked. The sun stealing

  Through the branches, her canopies, glorifies

  The beautiful rich fat lady where she lies.

  Never before in history

  In a place so green and watery

  Has lady’s flesh and so divine a lady’s as this is