All the Poems

by Stevie Smith

He lifteth up, he singeth

  And all the people arm themselves

  In the love his beauty bringeth.

  Longing for Death because of Feebleness

  Oh would that I were a reliable spirit careering around

  Congenially employed and no longer by feebleness bound

  Oh who would not leave the flesh to become a reliable spirit

  Possibly travelling far and acquiring merit.

  My Heart Goes Out

  My heart goes out to my Creator in love

  Who gave me Death as end and remedy.

  All living creatures come to quiet Death

  For him to eat up their activity

  And give them nothing. Which is what they want, although

  When they are living they do not think so.

  Look!

  I am becalmed in a deep sea

  And give signals, but they are not answered

  And yet I see ships in the distance

  And give signals, but they do not answer.

  Am I a pariah ship, or a leper

  To be shunned reasonably?

  Or did I commit a crime long ago

  And have forgotten, but they remember?

  Into the dark night to darker I move

  And the lights of the ships are not seen now

  But instead there is a phosphorescence from the water.

  That light shines, and now I see

  Low down, as I bend my hand in the water

  A fish so transparent in his inner organs

  That I know he comes from the earthquake bed

  Five miles below where I sail, I sail.

  All his viscera are transparent, his eyes globule on stalks,

  Is he dead? Or alive and only languid? Now

  Into my hand he comes, the travelling creature,

  Not from the sea-bed only but from the generations,

  Faint because of the lighter pressure,

  Fainting, a long fish, stretched out.

  So we meet, and for a moment

  I forget my solitariness

  But then I should like to show him,

  And who shall I show him to?

  Who is this Who Howls and Mutters?

  Who is this that howls and mutters?

  It is the Muse, each word she utters

  Is thrown against a shuttered door

  And very soon she’ll speak no more.

  Cry louder, Muse, make much more noise

  The world is full of rattling toys

  I thought she’d say, Why should I then?

  I have spoke low to better men

  But oh she did not speak at all but went away

  And now I search for her by night and day.

  Night and day I seek my Muse

  Seek the one I did abuse

  She had so sweet a face, so sweet a voice

  But oh she did not make sufficient noise.

  False plea. I did not listen then

  That listen now and listen now in vain.

  And still the tale of talent murdered

  Untimely and untimely buried

  Works in my soul. Forgive me, Lord, I cry

  Who only makest Muses howl and sigh

  Thou, Lord, repent and give her back to me

  Weeping uncomforted, Lord have pity.

  He did repent. I have her now again

  Howling much worse, and oh the door is open.

  Oh What is the Thing He Done?

  Oh what is the terrible thing he has done

  You are always going on about

  My pitiful cousin, my darling one,

  That will shut him out from the grace of the sun

  Oh what is the thing he done?

  Oh is it such a thing as the crocodile

  Would shake in each sensitive coil

  Oh is it such as thing as would make the blood

  Of an adder and his young ones boil

  Oh it is a thing as the Prince of Hell

  Would plainly declare it was not well.

  But what is the thing, oh what is it, pray?

  My lips shall never be sullied to say,

  Go forth with your cousin, you wretched woman,

  And dwell with him in the dark of the sun.

  Magna est Veritas

  With my looks I am bound to look simple or fast I would rather look simple

  So I wear a tall hat on the back of my head that is rather a temple

  And I walk rather queerly and comb my long hair

  And people say, Don’t bother about her.

  So in my time I have picked up a good many facts,

  Rather more than the people do who wear smart hats

  And I do not deceive because I am rather simple too

  And although I collect facts I do not always know what they amount to.

  I regard them as a contribution to almighty Truth, magna est veritas et praevalebit,

  Agreeing with that Latin writer, Great is Truth and will prevail in a bit.

  The Light of Life

  Put out that Light,

  Put out that bright Light,

  Let darkness fall.

  Put out that Day,

  It is the time for nightfall.

  In the Park

  Walking one day in the park in winter

  I heard two silvered gentlemen talking,

  Two old friends, elderly, walking, talking

  There by the silver lake mid-pooled black in winter.

  ‘Pray for the Mute who have no word to say,’

  Cried the one old gentleman, ‘Not because they are dumb,

  But they are weak. And the weak thoughts beating in the brain

  Generate a sort of heat, yet cannot speak.

  Thoughts that are bound without sound

  In the tomb of the brain’s room, wound. Pray for the Mute.’

  ‘But’ (said his friend), ‘see how they swim

  Free in the element best loved, so wet; yet breathe

  As a visitor to the air come; plunge then, rejoicing more,

  Having left it briefly for the visited shore, to come

  Home to the wet

  Windings that are yet

  Best loved though familiar; and oh so right the wet

  Stream and the wave; he is their pet.’

  Finished, the mild friend

  Smiled, put aside his well-tuned hearing instrument

  And it seemed

  The happiness he spoke of

  Irradiated all his members, and his heart

  Barked with delight to stress

  So much another’s happiness.

  But which other’s? The sombre first

  Speaker reversed

  The happy moment; cried again

  (Mousing for pain) ‘Pray for the Mute’ (a tear drops)

  ‘They are like the brute.’

  Struck by the shout

  That he may not know what it’s about

  The deaf friend again

  Up-ends his hearing instrument to relieve the strain.

  What? Oh shock, ‘“Pray for the Mute”?

  I thought you said the newt.’

  Now which is Christianer pray, of these old friends, the one who will say

  For pain’s sake pray, pray; or the deaf other that rejoices

  So much that the cool amphibian

  Shall have his happiness, all things rejoicing with him?

  But wait: the first speaker now, the old sombre one,

  Is penetrated quite by his friend’s sun

  And, ‘Oh blessed you,’ he cries, ‘to show

  So in simplicity what is true.’

  All his face is suffused with happy tears and as he weeps he sings a happy song,

  Happier even than his friend’s song was, righting the wrong.

  So two, better than one, finally strike truth in his happy song:

  ‘Praise,’ cries the weeping softened one,

  ‘Not pray, praise, all men,

  Praise is the best prayer, the least
<
br />   self’s there, that least’s release.’

  Evangelie

  or

  The Figure of Literary Corruption, seeking Glory not Truth

  Wicked and corrupt

  Was Evangelie

  And the corruption came out of her

  On to me.

  Corruptest and most wicked

  Of creatures,

  Can I forget a word she said

  Or her features?

  Lord, cleanse me of the corruption

  Of Evangelie,

  And of my feelings for her,

  That I may wear again the garment of whiteness,

  And the fair crown in my hair.

  Jumbo

  Jumbo, Jumbo, Jumbo darling, Jumbo come to Mother.

  But Jumbo wouldn’t, he was a dog who simply wouldn’t bother

  An ugly beast he was with drooping guts and filthy skin,

  It was quite wonderful how ‘mother’ loved the ugly thing.

  The Choosers

  Who shall we send to fetch him away

  This young-man Author of the Month of May?

  We will send Mr Puff to fetch him away,

  We are the Choosers and stand in the way.

  Oh we are the Choosers, what we say goes.

  Does Puff know this? Yes, Puff knows.

  Hey ho what a merry game,

  It is as if we were still in Pop, it is the same.

  With a hey-ho and a yah

  No, we will not have So-and-So

  Because we do not like his hat or his Ma.

  Outside of this eclectic and up-to-date circle

  Slink the sleek Great Ones, and you know

  They may go and not care a particle

  Because the Angel of Posterity has chosen them

  And the Choosers will not be known then,

  All the same it a shame to treat them so.

  Let Posterity-Time come

  Quick and Choosers be dumb.

  Oh why does England cherish her arts in this wise,

  Picking inferiorly with grafted eyes?

  It is because it is like the school they never forget,

  So-and-so must be the driven out one, this the pet.

  The Occasional Yarrow

  It was a mile of greenest grass

  Whereon a little stream did pass,

  The Occasional Yarrow

  Only in every seventh year

  Did this pretty stream appear,

  The Occasional Yarrow

  Wading and warbling in its beds

  Of grass decked out with daisy heads,

  The Occasional Yarrow

  There in my seventh year, and this sweet stream’s,

  I wandered happily (as happy gleams

  The Occasional Yarrow).

  Though now to memory alone

  I can call up thy lovely form,

  Occasional Yarrow.

  I still do bless thy Seventh days

  Bless thy sweet name and all who praise

  The Occasional Yarrow.

  The Sorrowful Girl

  Muriel, Muriel, marry me Muriel,

  And I will comfort you as well

  And bring life to your pale hair

  And your languid air.

  Ah then I shall not be I, for I am here

  With my languid air and lifeless hair

  And I do not feel cold or heat

  I am imprisoned and do not need to be freed

  My prison is my sorrowful mind

  And I do not wish to leave it behind

  Wake me not, leave me here, leave me alone

  I am as God made me, a sorrowful one.

  And singing she sang, I am sorrowful, sorrowful

  And because I am sorrowful I am beautiful.

  Her lover has left her and gone angrily off

  He speaks of her only to laugh and to scoff

  Pretending he only wanted to marry her for her money

  Intending to prove his thoughts were not moony

  With love, or any such stuff,

  That he is not such a fool as to have had a rebuff.

  A pale light-moon-white lily romantic girl-of-a-lover

  With nothing to her name but two thousand pounds in Old Consols, who will have her?

  Is the burden of the anger of this churl and of his troubles.

  But ever here came from far away

  Growing fainter with the passing day

  The sorrowful song on the sorrowful air

  Of the languid girl with the lifeless hair

  Singing: Oh I am sorrowful, sorrowful, sorrowful

  And because I am sorrowful I am beautiful.

  The Starling

  I will never leave you darling

  To be eaten by the starling

  For I love you more than ever

  In the wet and stormy weather.

  Thus to the husband sang the wife

  That loved him more than his own life

  Oh at these words the husband felt

  Each hair rise separate upon his icy pelt.

  He let himself down from out his room

  He went upon the ancient mountain

  And there he quite forgot his gloom

  As he trod the torrent’s icy fountain.

  Cold, cold, icy cold,

  Cold, cold, cold I am,

  Cold has no place in my wife’s warm thought

  There she will have me cradled and wraught.

  Oh nothing, nothing, nothing I

  He cried, that in her thinking does not lie.

  Then he doffed his clothes and quickly froze

  In the ice of the ancient mountainside

  And there in an icy happy doze

  He doth for evermore abide.

  Down in the valley waits the wife

  That loved him more than his own life

  And still she sings, in hope to lure

  Him to her side again, Be very sure

  I will never leave you darling

  To be eaten by the starling

  For I love you more than ever

  In the wet and stormy weather.

  Die Lorelei

  An antique story comes to me

  And fills me with anxiety,

  I wonder why I fear so much

  What surely has no modern touch?

  It is of Germany it speaks,

  One evening time; the mountain peaks

  Are in the sun, but the old Rhine

  Flows secretly and does not shine.

  There, on a rock majestical,

  A girl with smile equivocal,

  Painted, young and damned and fair,

  Sits and combs her yellow hair.

  With a yellow comb she combs it,

  Sings a song, and sometimes moans it,

  That has a most peculiar turn,

  It makes the heart and belly burn.

  The sailor sailing, hearing it

  Falls at once into a fit,

  He does not see the rocky race,

  His eyes are looking for a face.

  The boat strikes hard, as she must do,

  And down she goes, and he goes too.

  This story brings me so much grief

  I know not how to find relief.

  Lurks there some meaning underneath?

  Farewell

  Farewell dear friends

  I loved you so much

  But now I must leave you

  And spread over me the dust

  Fare life fare well

  Fare never ill

  Far I go now

  And say, Farewell.

  Farewell dear world

  With the waters around you curled

  And the grass on your breast

  I loved you best.

  Farewell fish and insect

  Bird, animal, swift mover

  Grim reptile as well

  I was your approver.

  Wide sky, farewell,

  Sun, moon, stars in places

  Farewell all fair universesr />
  In far places.

  Ding dong, ding dong

  As a bell is rung,

  Sing ding dong farewell

  As a sweet bell.

  SELECTED POEMS (1962)

  Thoughts about the Person from Porlock

  Coleridge received the Person from Porlock

  And ever after called him a curse

  Then why did he hurry to let him in? –

  He could have hid in the house.

  It was not right of Coleridge in fact it was wrong

  (But often we all do wrong)

  As the truth is I think he was already stuck

  With Kubla Khan.

  He was weeping and wailing, I am finished, finished,

  I shall never write another word of it

  When along comes the Person from Porlock

  And takes the blame for it.

  It was not right, it was wrong,

  But often we all do wrong.

  *

  May we enquire the name of the Person from Porlock?

  Why, Porson, didn’t you know?

  He lived at the bottom of Porlock Hill

  So had a long way to go

  He wasn’t much in the social sense

  Though his grandmother was a Warlock,

  One of the Rutlandshire ones I fancy

  And nothing to do with Porlock

  And he lived at the bottom of the hill as I said

  And had a cat named Flo,

  And had a cat named Flo.

  Thoughts about the Person from Porlock (cont.)

  I long for the Person from Porlock

  To bring my thoughts to an end,

  I am becoming impatient to see him

  I think of him as a friend

  Often I look out of the window

  Often I run to the gate

  I think, He will come tomorrow

  I think it is rather late.

  I am hungry to be interrupted

  For ever and ever amen

  Oh Person from Porlock come quickly

  And bring my thoughts to an end.

  *

  I felicitate the people who have a Person from Porlock

  To break up everything and throw it away

  Because then there will be nothing to keep them

  And they need not stay.

  *

  Why do they grumble so much?

  He comes like a benison

  They should be glad he has not forgotten them

  They might have had to go on.

  *

  These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing,

  I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,

  Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting

  To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting

  With various mixtures of human character which goes best.

  All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us.

  There I go again. Smile, smile and get some work to do

  Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.

  Thoughts about the Christian Doctrine of Eternal Hell