by Stevie Smith
The run of this Daimler?
Or perhaps you would like, Hamster,
To run behind the car, until
You get lost and are eaten
By the puma
That escaped from Lord Sefton’s zoo
Not very long ago?
Mort’s Cry
Oh, Lamb of God I am
Too sharp, too tired,
Make me more amiable, Oh Lamb,
Less tired,
No longer what I am.
So cried poor Colonel Mort, I heard him cry,
And yet he was a good man and fought energetically,
His men loved him, his country too, and did not find him tearful,
Then what a funny cry for him! I thought it made him wonderful.
Change me, Lord Lamb,
Leave me not as I am.
Friend and Neighbour
I go to church because the Rector
Is a friend and neighbour
I lose the war because the general
Is a friend and neighbour
I fix the files for the Treachery
(As he’s a friend and neighbour)
In fact in everything I am
A perfect friend and neighbour
The Publisher
There was a careful Wykehamist
(They are quite often rather)
Who after doing this and that
Set up as publisher.
He was an educated chap,
Except in heart and spirit,
And mediocrity for him
Was the essential merit.
Óμισμα, the moneyed mean,
No need to shout about it,
God rest his soul, he’s doing well,
Oh very well, without it.
Lord Henry de Bohon
Leave off your singing, Lord Henry de Bohon,
Walk silently by my side
Or we shall have tears by the fall of noon
And tears at eventide.
But still the boy sang, and again and again,
Which drove his poor nurse quite out of her brain
For all the words this young lord sung
Was: Bang bang, trouble come.
The Stream with Two Faces
The nettle and the bog-wort grew
Beside the forest stream,
Toadstools and ground ivy also were there
And the Giant Hemlock everywhere,
It was a sombre sight.
The stream ran black between trees in this dark wood.
Soon I began to run too. Because I never could
Stay without feeling peculiar
In places where great woodlands are.
Is not this a peculiar plight?
When I came to the fields beyond the wood, oh then
I dawdled and laughed, and I laughed to see the stream again,
It looked so sweet beneath an open sky,
Pretty stream, I said, I will stay close by
Your smiling face, and forget in woods you turn black as night.
I thank thee, Lord
I thank thee O Lord for my beautiful bed
Have mercy on those who have none
And may all the children still happier lie
When they to thy kingdom come.
Soupir d’Angleterre
We have given the Welsh a most awfully
Nice day out
And now we never want to hear from them again
For years, and years, and years,
And never at all
In Welsh.
He preferred …
He preferred to be a hearthrug sage
To risk the cold opinion of the world,
Somewhere within him there had been
A lack of courage, a nerve failed.
He was not happy: but then he was not miserable,
He had money. Sometimes he wrote.
You might say his character was cast upon him,
And with it that luck’s lot.
Like This (1)
Young Man in an Asylum
It must be some disease I have
To feel so lonely like this,
And not for company I see
The others like this, like this,
It only makes me more isolate
To see another like this,
Oh nobody like this likes this.
Or likes another like this.
Like This (2)
Young girl in an Asylum
The greatest love?
The greatest love?
There is no love at all,
What love means is, To Speak to me.
Not leave me in the cold.
How very cold it is out here,
How bitterly the wind blows,
O Love, why did you dedicate me
To the snows?
Telly-me-Do
Telly me do,
Do telly me too!
You have told all the others
Including your mother’s
Companion
So telly me too!
But they would not,
I felt quite cut off,
So I thought I would try
To burn their house down to make them die,
But they only laughed and cried:
‘Telly me do, Telly me do’,
Again and again, to mock me.
Oh what a lot of pain!
Accented
I love you, Muse,
In your arms I lie,
Speak to me, feed me,
I am not your enemy.
Cars
Out driving one day in the Merc
With Hassan, a friendly young Turk,
I said, ‘Tell me, I pray,
Is the Bosphorus gay,
Or does the whole thing at times rather irk?’
The Bristol makes everyone stare
(Or would, if the brute were still there)
Some drivers have wondered
When passed at 200
Why its makers don’t stick to the air.
When I drive in my darling Lagonda
I find I grow fonder and fonder
In a vacuum, really,
I love everyone dearly
But especially I love my Lagonda.
No matter who rides in my Ford
Nothing happens at all untoward
Because I really will not
Have it. Have what?
Oh I don’t know … well THAT. In a Ford!
Surely all souls must rejoice
Whose passage is made by Rolls Royce
So delicious the journey is
Who cares where it finishes?
Oh this car should be everyone’s choice.
César
The animal that most loved Hans
Was César, his dog-hound
And in the German forests
He walked round and round
Lying snug, beneath a rug.
And in the German State Railways
He never made a sound
Crying César
Bow wow, sir,
Are you there, sir?
Not I, sir.
Oh ho it was a joke.
But when the trees came round
And they left the train
It was not quite the same,
Into the forest César ran faster
And the poor Hans comes pelting after
Crying César,
Bow wow, sir
Come here, sir,
No fear, sir.
Oh ho it was no joke.
What will Hans do?
Round he wanders
And there is no one to hold his hand when he wanders
Where César
Is now,
The wicked César,
Bow wow.
Oh ho it is no joke.
Childhood and Interruption
Now it is time to go for a walk
Perhaps we shall go for a walk in the park
And then it will be tim
e to play until dark
Not quite, when the shadows fall it is time to go home
It is always time to do something I am never torn
With a hesitation of my own
For always everything is arranged punctually
I am guarded entirely from the tension of anxiety
Walk tea-supper bath bed I am a very happy child really
And underneath the pram cover lies my brother Jake
He is not old enough yet to be properly awake
He is alone in his sleep; no arrangement they make
For him can touch him at all, he is alone,
For a little while yet, it is as if he had not been born
Rest in infancy, brother Jake; childhood and interruption come swiftly on.
Death
There’s a great many things I’d rather not be than dead
And this is the thought that runs for ever in my head
When I’m sitting alone or lying on my bed
What’s life, friend, that you so much should prize it
Or Death, that you’d think on it to disguise it
Remembering, not go forth to surprise it?
It is the end of life, the end of strife,
A rope, a poisoned cup, a knife.
It is all this and so all this should only be
An end, and at the end, not bear thee company,
Ever at hand and fobbed with an insurance policy
Keep Death where he would be, in his own place,
He has a dusky half familiar face
And waits to do you a last act of grace.
Last, last and ultimate,
Not the thought-fellow of your living state,
Not to be had in mind but only at the end to wait.
Mabel
In her loneliness Mabel
Found the hiss of the unlit gas
Companionable
And in a little time, dying
Sublime.
‘Mother Love’
Mother love is a mighty benefaction
The prop of the world and its population
If mother love died the world would rue it
No money would bring the women to it.
None of the Other Birds
None of the other birds seem to like it It sits alone on the corner edge of the outhouse gutter
They do not even dislike it
Enough to bite it
So it sits alone unbitten
It is always alone.
Oh Thou Pale Intellectual Brow
Oh thou intellectual brow –
The angel said. The boy replied:
The intellect is but a toy
And I a medium-sensual boy
Can hardly hear you now.
This doll that lies against my side
Is easy and agreeable,
And so I like to play with her,
Come, be sensible.
The doll rose up with awful frown
And with the angel fled the town
The boy waits on, and he will play
With anything that comes his way.
He should go up and after them,
Pray heaven he may do so in time,
God send him back his angel friend,
And all the women cried Amen.
Roaming
Far from his home he came, the old person,
Not comely or of much account,
People thought he was a shifty Eulenspiegel
Whose nose was out of joint.
Yet how could a man that was shifty
Look so purposeful,
And when he was looking purposeful
Seem beautiful?
He had excellent manners too
And never spoke of Heaven
Only when he came close up
You saw he was driven.
Do I believe in heaven? (he asked)
What is belief?
I only know when I speak of Death
I experience relief.
But since I was sent to roam
And given a place to roam in,
Roam I will with a will of tears.
Was this wise of him?
Yes, he was wise to say it
For being kindly and able to reason
The people saw they could serve him best
By giving him poison.
When he was dead they buried him
And wrote on his tomb:
Eulenspiegel
Who used to roam.
Ruory and Edith
Ruory loved the aged Edith
She lived in kindness with
And ever had done and ever had done
In a sweet domestic kingdom.
And to Aunt Edith the cry went up
From many an uneven stance
For Ruory’s soul was pitched awry
And often went unbalanced.
Without that lady’s help
Who so firmly behaved
Ruory would not be here at all
But off to the icy glades.
Then God bless Edith’s kindness
And her strongmindedness
And Lord God never let Ruory forget
The gracious mercies her path beset.
She got up and went away
She got up and went away
Should she not have? Not have what?
Got up and gone away.
Yes, I think she should have
Because it was getting darker.
Getting what? Darker. Well,
There was still some
Day left when she went away, well,
Enough to see the way.
And it was the last time she would have been able…
Able? … to get up and go away.
It was the last time the very last time for
After that she could not
Have got up and gone away any more.
The Easter Rose
It was a sweet unnatural rose
That rose at Eastertide,
Its heart seemed hardly warmed at all
By the sun that newly came
And yet its petals burnt so bright
They seemed to burn in flame of unconsuming light.
Why do you come so early, Rose,
Before your time, and burn so bright
That your white petals are more like
A fire than light?
Then spake the rose: You seem to say
I come too soon,
Know then, an afrit planted me
And bade me bloom
And swore and said: All who are drawn
By thy untimely beauty to come near
To see and then to touch
Shall their own hearts on fire for ever clutch
Until God’s judgement day.
The speaking rose bowed her head down
I saw a tear fall down
Beware, she said, for that foul afrit watches
and I must perish in his fire if I
Should be seen to warn
And keep thee from his clutches.
How could I heed the afrit evil?
I only thought to save my rose
From peril.
And so I plucked her to my heart
(I heard her groan)
And as I placed her on my heart
I felt it burn
My heart burns now for evermore until the Judgment Day
And all that cools it are the tears
That fall by night and day
From sweet rose whose premature
Sweet flowering has cost us sore
To love and burn and cool in tears
Til the Judgement Day
When God shall wash all afrits and their
Works away.
The Little Birdies
The little birdies
Must get up early
To sing ‘Singsing’ (sing ‘Singsing’)
To the pretty dawning.
But when day time
Is winter time
To sing their
Pretty song to
Day’s dawning.
Sing ‘Singsing’ (sing ‘Singsing’)
Pretty singsing.
The birdies
Would much rather
Get up early
They hate
To be late
Because then their dawning
(Pretty dawning)
Is shared by the morning
People and the noise they make.
All birdies
Would rather
Have the morning
To themselves
To sing ‘Singsing’ (pretty ‘Singsing’)
To sing singsing to.
The Old Soul
When all was young the Race began
And life was fair in Eden’s span
But oh the way and oh the way
was long that then began.
Oh boys and girls whose laughing curls
The ancient winds well practised toss
I’m very glad the way we tread
is not so long as it once was.
Then dance with me and don’t mope
Or ponder or too fondly hope
But oh I hear and oh I see
That oh they will not dance with me.
The Pearl
Weep not my pretty boy, grieve not my girl
Mankind is Nature’s pearl
Not so much for his beauty, being beautiful
As in that he’s the child of all things irritable.
There is an Old Man
There is an old man
Who sleeps in the park
When he has no light
He sleeps in the dark
When he has no fire
He sleeps in the cold
Oh why do you do this
Old man, so old?
I sleep in the park
And by day I roam
I would rather do this
Than live in a Home
I was put in one once
Where the meth men were
And they stole my money
And kicked me downstair.
So now I sleep
In the lonely park
And I do not mind
If it’s cold and dark
As soon as day breaks
I roam up and down
And when night returns
To my park I come.
Oh living like this is much jollier for me
Than anything I’ve found for the Elderly.
Tom Snooks the Pundit
‘Down with creative talent
(I have none)
Down with creative talent,
Kick it down!’
So cried Tom Snooks, a literary pundit,
The tender talent lay where he had stunn’d it,
He kicked the poor thing dead quite easily and then he cried:
‘Hats off, my friends, it was a genius died.’
Oh long live Tom, long live his reputation,
(His proper name I’ll give on application).
Wife’s Lament at Hereford
The beast
At the end of the lane
Has risen again
And spread his slime
On my furniture
Why must the Wye
Rise so high? He is
Such a pretty runner between banks.
