by Stevie Smith
By man’s called God,
Away, melancholy, let it go.
Man aspires
To good,
To love
Sighs;
Beaten, corrupted, dying
In his own blood lying
Yet heaves up an eye above
Cries, Love, love.
It is his virtue needs explaining,
Not his failing.
Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
Dido’s Farewell to Aeneas
from Virgil
I have lived and followed my fate without flinching, followed it gladly
And now, not wholly unknown, I come to the end.
I built this famous city, I saw the walls rise,
As for my abominable brother, I don’t think I’ve been too lenient.
Was I happy? Yes, at a price, I might have been happier
If our Dardanian Sailor had condescended to put in elsewhere.
Now she fell silent, turning her face to the pillow,
Then getting up quickly, the dagger in her hand,
I die unavenged, she cried, but I die as I choose,
Come Death, you know you must come when you’re called
Although you’re a god. And this way, and this way, I call you.
Childe Rolandine
Dark was the day for Childe Rolandine the artist
When she went to work as a secretary-typist
And as she worked she sang this song
Against oppression and the rule of wrong:
It is the privilege of the rich
To waste the time of the poor
To water with tears in secret
A tree that grows in secret
That bears fruit in secret
That ripened falls to the ground in secret
And manures the parent tree
Oh the wicked tree of hatred and the secret
The sap rising and the tears falling.
Likely also, sang the Childe, my soul will fry in hell
Because of this hatred, while in heaven my employer does well
And why should he not, exacerbating though he be but generous
Is it his fault I must work at a work that is tedious?
Oh heaven sweet heaven keep my thoughts in their night den
Do not let them by day be spoken.
But then she sang, Ah why not? tell all, speak, speak,
Silence is vanity, speak for the whole truth’s sake.
And rising she took the bugle and put it to her lips, crying:
There is a Spirit feeds on our tears, I give him mine.
Mighty human feelings are his food
Passion and grief and joy his flesh and blood
That he may live and grow fat we daily die
This cropping One is our immortality.
Childe Rolandine bowed her head and in the evening
Drew the picture of this spirit from heaven.
The Jungle Husband
Dearest Evelyn, I often think of you
Out with the guns in the jungle stew
Yesterday I hittapotamus
I put the measurements down for you but they got lost in the fuss.
It’s not a good thing to drink out here
You know, I’ve practically given it up, dear.
Tomorrow I am going alone a long way
Into the jungle. It is all grey
But green on top,
Only sometimes when a tree has fallen
The sun comes down plop, it is quite appalling.
You never want to go in a jungle pool
In the hot sun, it would be the act of a fool.
Because it’s always full of anacondas, Evelyn, not looking ill-fed
I’ll say. So no more now, from your loving husband, Wilfred.
‘Come on, Come back’
incident in a future war
Left by the ebbing tide of battle
On the field of Austerlitz
The girl soldier Vaudevue sits
Her fingers tap the ground, she is alone
At midnight in the moonlight she is sitting alone on a round flat stone.
Graded by the Memel Conference first
Of all humane exterminators
M.L.5.
Has left her just alive
Only her memory is dead for evermore.
She fears and cries, Ah me why am I here?
Sitting alone on a round flat stone on a hummock there.
Rising, staggering, over the ground she goes
Over the seeming miles of rutted meadow
To the margin of a lake
The sand beneath her feet
Is cold and damp and firm to the waves’ beat.
Quickly – as a child, an idiot, as one without memory –
She strips her uniform off, strips, stands and plunges
Into the icy waters of the adorable lake.
On the surface of the water lies
A ribbon of white moonlight
The waters on either side of the moony track
Are black as her mind.
Her mind is as secret from her
As the water on which she swims,
As secret as profound as ominous.
Weeping bitterly for her ominous mind, her plight
Up the river of white moonlight she swims
Until a treacherous undercurrent
Seizing her in an icy amorous embrace
Dives with her, swiftly severing
The waters which close above her head.
An enemy sentinel
Finding the abandoned clothes
Waits for the swimmer’s return
(‘Come on, come back’)
Waiting, whiling away the hour
Whittling a shepherd’s pipe from the hollow reeds.
In the chill light of dawn
Ring out the pipe’s wild notes
‘Come on, come back.’
Vaudevue
In the swift and subtle current’s close embrace
Sleeps on, stirs not, hears not the familiar tune
Favourite of all the troops of all the armies
Favourite of Vaudevue
For she had sung it too
Marching to Austerlitz
‘Come on, come back.’
Why are the Clergy …?
Why are the clergy of the Church of England
Always altering the words of the prayers in the Prayer Book?
Cranmer’s touch was surer than theirs, do they not respect him?
For instance last night in church I heard
(I italicize the interpolation)
‘The Lord bless you and keep you and all who are dear unto you’
As the blessing is a congregational blessing and meant to be
This is questionable on theological grounds
But is it not offensive to the ear and also ludicrous?
The ‘unto’ is a particularly ripe piece of idiocy
Oh how offensive it is. I suppose we shall have next
‘Lighten our darkness we beseech thee oh Lord and the darkness of all who are dear unto us.’
It seems a pity. Does Charity object to the objection?
Then I cry, and not for the first time to that smooth face
Charity, have pity.
I Remember
It was my bridal night I remember,
An old man of seventy-three
I lay with my young bride in my arms,
A girl with t.b.
It was wartime, and overhead
The Germans were making a particularly heavy raid on Hampstead.
What rendered the confusion worse, perversely
Our bombers had chosen that moment to set out for Germany.
Harry, do they ever collide?
I do not think it has ever happened,
Oh my bride, my bride.
But Murderous
A mother slew her unborn babe
In a day
of recent date
Because she did not wish him to be born in a world
Of murder and war and hate
‘Oh why should I bear a babe from my womb
To be broke in pieces by the hydrogen bomb?’
I say this woman deserves little pity
That she was a fool and a murderess
Is a child’s destiny to be contained by a mind
That signals only a lady in distress?
And why should human infancy be so superior
As to be too good to be born in this world?
Did she think it was an angel or a baa-lamb
That lay in her belly furled?
Oh the child is the young of its species
Alike with that noble, vile, curious and fierce
How foolish this poor mother to suppose
Her act told us aught that was not murderous
(As, item, That the arrogance of a half-baked mind
Breed murder; makes us all unkind.)
This is Disgraceful and Abominable
Of all the disgraceful and abominable things
Making animals perform for the amusement of human beings is
Utterly disgraceful and abominable.
Animals are animals and have their nature
And that’s enough, it is enough, leave it alone.
A disgraceful and abominable thing I saw in a French circus
A performing dog
Raised his back leg when he did not need to
He did not wish to relieve himself, he was made to raise his leg.
The people sniggered. Oh how disgraceful and abominable.
Weep for the disgrace, forbid the abomination.
The animals are cruelly trained,
How could patience do it, it would take too long, they are cruelly trained.
Lions leap through fire, it is offensive,
Elephants dance, it is offensive
That the dignified elephant should dance for fear of hot plates,
The lion leap or be punished.
And how can the animals be quartered or carted except cheaply?
Profit lays on the whip of punishment, money heats the prodding iron,
Cramps cages. Oh away with it, away with it, it is so disgraceful and abominable.
Weep the disgraces. Forbid the abominations.
God the Eater
There is a god in whom I do not believe
Yet to this god my love stretches,
This god whom I do not believe in is
My whole life. My life and I am his.
Everything that I have of pleasure and pain
(Of pain, of bitter pain and men’s contempt)
I give this god for him to feed upon
And he is my whole life and I am his.
When I am dead I hope that he will eat
Everything I have been and have not been
And crunch and feed upon it and grow fat
Eating my life all up as it is his.
God the Drinker
porque fue sensible
I like to see him drink the gash
I made with my own knife
And draw the blood out of my wrist
And drink my life.
Who is this One who drinks so deep?
His name is Death, He drinks asleep.
(She has taken the sweet knife far away,
The knife bleeds by night and day,
Night and day the blade drips,
I put the sweet knife to my lips.)
It was a god, he drank my health,
He came in shadows and by stealth.
Will Man Ever Face Fact and not Feel Flat?
The rocks and trees in silence stood
To see where Man ran by,
A creature weak as this one is
What can he do but die?
But as they stood and scornful smiled
They heard an angel call:
‘The tender creature needeth love,
He needeth love above all.’
This made the rocks and trees laugh more
Until they saw the force of it,
Saw Man disembowelling the earth
And killing because of it.
Ah then they found Man admirable,
‘But,’ said the angel ‘is he?’
And weeping cried, ‘The need of love
Makes Man too busy.’
Then God said, ‘You are wrong all,
The need of love is meant to call
Man to me, I am love, I,
If it does not, for lack of love he’ll die.’
But then came a little wind sneaking along
That was older than all and infamously strong,
‘Oh what an artistic animal is our little Man,’
Sneered the wind, ‘It is wonderful how he can
Invent fairy stories about everything, pit pat,
Will he ever face fact and not feel flat?’
Every Lovely Limb’s a Desolation
I feel a mortal isolation
Wrap each lovely limb in desolation,
Sight, hearing, all
Suffer a fall.
I see the pretty fields and streams, I hear
Beasts calling and birds singing, oh not clear
But as a prisoner
Who in a train doth pass
And through the glass
Peer;
Ah me, so far away is joy, so near.
Break, break the glass, you say?
These thoughts are but a mood
Blow them away, go free?
They are my whole soul’s food.
Ghost’s food! Sepulchral ailment!
Thou sleekst in me Death’s tegument
And so art bent
To do, and this I know.
Yet there are days, oh brief,
When thought’s caught half-asleep
(Most merrily) and drowsing
Set in a meadow browsing.
Ah then, like summer breeze in lovely trees
That comes in little pants unequally,
Or like the little waves of summer seas
That push and fuss
In heaven knows what sort of busyness,
Idly, idly, my thoughts bring me to sleep,
On sunny summer day, to sleep. In sun
I fall asleep.
But I must wake and wake again in pain
Crying – to see where sun was once all dust and stain
As on a window pane –
All, all is isolation
And every lovely limb’s a desolation.
A Dream of Nourishment
I had a dream of nourishment
Against a breast
My infant face was presst
Ah me the suffisance I drew therefrom
What strength, what glory from that fattening fluid,
The fattening most
Was to my infant taste
For oh the sun of strength beat in my veins
And swelled me full, I lay in brightest sun
All ready to put forth, all bursting, all delight.
But in my dream the breast withdrew
In darkness I lay then
And thin,
Thin as a sheeted ghost
And I was famished,
Hankered for a dish
I thought, of blood, as in some classicist’s
Old tale
To give me hue and substance, make me hale.
Oh breast, oh Best
That I held fast
Oh fattening draught
Timely repast
Quaffed, presst
And lost.
The breast was withdrawn violently
And oh the famishment for me.
The Airy Christ
Who is this that comes in grandeur, coming from the burning East?
This is he we had not thought of, this is he the airy Christ.
Airy in an airy manner, in an airy parkland walking,
Others ta
ke him by the hand, lead him, do the talking.
But the Form, the airy One, frowns an airy frown
What they say he knows must be, but he looks aloofly down,
Looks aloofly at his feet, looks aloofly at his hands,
Knows they must, as prophets say, nailèd be to wooden bands,
As he knows the words he sings, that he sings so happily,
Must be changed to working laws, yet sings he ceaselessly.
Those who truly hear his voice, the words, the happy song,
Never shall need working laws to keep from doing wrong.
Deaf men will pretend sometimes they hear the song, the words,
And make excuse to sin extremely; this will be absurd.
Heed it not. Whatever foolish men may do the song is cried
For those who hear, and the sweet singer does not care that he was crucified.
For he does not wish that men should love him more than anything
Because he died; he only wishes they would hear him sing.
It Filled my Heart with Love
When I hold in my hand a soft and crushable animal, and feel
the fur beat for fear and the soft feather, I cannot feel unhappy.
In his fur the animal rode, and in his fur he strove,
And oh it filled my heart my heart, it filled my heart with love.
I. An Agnostic
(of his religious friend)
He often gazes on the air
And sees quite plain what is not there
Peopling the wholesome void with horrid shapes
Which he manoeuvres in religious japes.
And yet he is more gracious than I,
He has such a gracious personality.
II. A Religious Man
(of his agnostic friend)
He says that religious thought and all our nerviness
Is because of the great shock it was for all of us
Long, long ago when animal turned human being
Which is more than enough to account for everything …
And yet he is more gracious than I,
He has such a gracious personality.
Dear Little Sirmio
Catullus recollected
Dear little Sirmio
Of all capes and islands
Wherever Neptune rides the coastal waters and the open sea
You really are the nicest.
How glad I am to see you again, how fondly I look at you.
No sooner had I left Bithynia – and what was the name of the other place?
And was safely at sea
I thought only of seeing you.
Really is anything nicer
After working hard and being thoroughly worried
Than to leave it all behind and set out for home
Dear old home and one’s comfortable bed?
Even if one wears oneself out paying for them.
‘Great Unaffected Vampires and the Moon’
It was a graveyard scene. The crescent moon
Performed a devil’s purpose for she shewed
