All the Poems

by Stevie Smith

  ‘The Abominable Lake’ (p. 106): first published New Statesman (18 Sep. 1937) with minimal punctuation; SP follows TOTO revision.

  ‘One of Many’ (p. 107): CP and original have ‘intoned’ for ‘exclaimed’; Smith revised own copy of TOTO and for SP. In performance Smith sang the poem ‘to a sort of dirge’, UT.

  ‘Death’s Ostracism’ (p. 108): follows Smith’s performance revisions of ‘stood’ for ‘trod’ in l.1, ‘waters’ for ‘water’ in l.15, and ‘footstep’ for ‘foothold’ in l.21.

  ‘Parrot’ (p. 111): Noel Park is an 1880s garden suburb in London, a mile south of Palmers Green.

  ‘I Hate this Girl’ (p. 113): TOTO and CP prints title in block capitals; TFP normalises capitalisation.

  ‘Infelice’ (p. 114): follows Smith’s later performance version, which revised ‘a’ to ‘the’ in l.1, ‘presently’ to ‘suddenly’ in l.11, ‘speaking’ to ‘talking’ in l.17, and ‘he loves me’ to ‘he must love me’ in l.22.

  ‘The Cock and the Hen’ (p. 116): punctuation follows later version prepared for PMP.

  ‘Silence and Tears’ (p. 177): sung in performance to the English folk song ‘The Death of Poor Cock Robin’. Cf. Byron, ‘When we two parted’ (1806), ll.1–2. This follows Smith’s later performance version, which revised ‘sighed’ to ‘cried’ in l.3, ‘Pee-wee’ for ‘Tee-hee’ in l.6, and ‘had’ for ‘has’ in l.13.

  ‘A Father for a Fool’ (p. 119): subtitle added for SP version, which revised original ‘Here’s hoping’ to ‘I hope they give us’; revision also in author’s copy of TOTO and PMP.

  ‘The Murderer’ (p. 124): cf. Robert Browning, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ (1836).

  ‘Mother, among the Dustbins’ (p. 125): TOTO has ‘what lies, what lies behind?’; revised for SP and CP and in author’s copy. Punctuation follows the version prepared for the essay ‘The Necessity of Not Believing’ (Gemini, Spring 1958). In performance introductions Smith calls the mother ‘a romantic revolutionary in a depressed frame of mind’.

  ‘Le Désert de l’Amour’ (p. 127): cf. François Mauriac’s eponymous 1925 novel.

  ‘Portrait (2)’ (p. 128): cf. Robert Browning, ‘In a Gondola’ (1842), ll.63–6; original draft titled ‘Schoolgirl’.

  ‘Arabella’ (p. 130): first published in London Mercury and Bookman (Dec. 1937) as ‘White and Yellow’.

  ‘Dear Karl’ (p. 133): Karl was Smith’s German boyfriend, fictionalised in NOYP. The poem merges the address in W. B. Yeats’ ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ (1899) with section 15 of Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of the Open Road’ from Leaves of Grass (1856): ‘Allons! the road is before us!’.

  ‘In Canaan’s Happy Land’ (p. 135): cf. John Dryden, who uses the phrase to invoke Numbers XIV:8; the first synagogue was built in Palmers Green in 1936, and here Smith ventriloquises a Jewish man trading on Sunday.

  ‘In My Dreams’ (p. 139): cf. OTF pp. 221–2, which includes the poem with only terminal punctuation at the end of each stanza.

  ‘Noble and Ethereal’ (p. 140): cf. Richard Curle’s Aspects of George Meredith (1908), which imagines those who confront death by a riverside look ‘noble and ethereal’, p. 195.

  ‘La Gretchen de Nos Jours (1)’ (p. 147): cf. Schubert’s ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’ (1814) from Goethe’s Faust (1808).

  ‘Dear Muse’ (p. 149): TFP substitutes the drawing for ‘Mr Over’ (p. 299).

  ‘Vater Unser’ (p. 152): the first two lines are a German translation of the Lord’s Prayer. CP incorrectly notes original title as ‘Vater Unser’ but has ‘Unser Vater’; TOTO has ‘Unser Vater’, which Smith revised to ‘Vater Unser’ for SP, although penultimate line still read ‘Unser Vater’. Smith amended this in the American copy of SP.

  ‘Gnädiges Fräulein’ (p. 153): now archaic formal address for a German high-born woman.

  ‘The Friend’ (p. 154); see Tennyson’s ‘Guinevere’ from Idylls of the King (1885), l.655.

  ‘The Lads of the Village’ (p. 156): SP substitutes drawing for ‘Dear Little Sirmio’ illustration (p. 400). SP revises ‘sing no more’ to ‘sigh no more’ as does author’s copy of TOTO; CP has ‘sing’.

  ‘Upon a Grave’ (p. 157): the source for the subtitle is unknown, although Smith may be recalling William Blake’s ‘I laid me down upon a bank’ and ‘Under the Greenwood’ in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1600), V.ii; she played Monsieur Le Beau in a production at Palmers Green High School in 1913.

  ‘… and the clouds return after the rain’ (p. 160): included in OTF, p. 161. Cf. the hymn tune by George Crawford Hugg (1848–1907).

  ‘Out of Time’ (p. 161): TOTO, TFP, and CP have ‘languorous’ for ‘ponderous’; revision from author’s copy of TOTO.

  ‘“I’ll have your heart”’ (p. 163): retitled for SP from ‘Tu refuses à obeir à ta mère …!’ (trans. ‘you refuse to obey your mother’), a quotation from Jules Renard’s novel Poil de Carotte (1894). SP omitted the second stanza:

  I do not love you, Mother

  I do not love another,

  Love passed me by

  A long time ago,

  And now I cry

  Doh ray me fah soh.

  Smith used the SP version in poetry readings, although CP reinstates the final stanza. This version follows the revised text Smith prepared for the essay ‘What Poems Are Made Of’ (Vogue, 15 March 1969) and uses the original illustration: a sketchier depiction of a child on their mother’s knee accompanied the poem in SP. Celia introduces the poem in TH as an expression of the animal ‘kennelled close within’, p. 62.

  ‘Fallen, Fallen’ (p. 166): for final two lines, cf. Macbeth (1606) V.v, ll.26–7: ‘It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing’.

  ‘Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges’ (p. 169): cf. Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons (1613) by Pierre de l’Ancre, who led the 1609 Labourd witch-hunts. The first line invokes the 1811 hymn of the same name by Reginald Heber, who lends his surname to a character in TH.

  ‘Will Ever?’ (p. 170): for ll.9–12 cf. Tennyson, ‘Break, break, break’ (1842).

  ‘Ceux qui luttent …’ (p. 171): trans. ‘those who struggle are those who live’; cf. Victor Hugo’s ‘Ceux qui vivent, ce sont ceux qui luttent’ (1849).

  ‘Suicide’s Epitaph’ (p. 172): trans. ‘be punished as you have sinned, he said, looking at me in a cold and enigmatic way’.

  ‘The Violent Hand’ (p. 175): for reasons of pagination, this poem is placed at the end of TOTO in the CP reprint.

  ‘Fuite d’Enfance’ (p. 176): cf. Shakespeare’s sonnet 144 and Émile Nelligan’s ‘La fuite de l’enfance’ (1903); trans. ‘unknown to them I have come to say my farewells’. Celia recites this poem in TH, p. 162.

  MOTHER, WHAT IS MAN? (1942)

  Mother, What is Man? was published by Jonathan Cape in December 1942, described on the cover as ‘poems and drawings by Stevie Smith’. Eighty drawings appear in the original volume; four were added for SP and TFP versions, with new drawings for ‘La Gretchen de nos Jours (2)’, ‘Girls’, ‘When the Sparrow Flies’ and ‘Dirge’.

  ‘The King in Funeral Procession’ (p. 182): George V’s state funeral was on 28 Jan. 1936. Cf. Psalm 130. For ‘loud bassoon’, cf. Coleridge, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (1834), l.32.

  ‘La Gretchen de Nos Jours (2)’ (p. 184): the accompanying illustration was used as the front cover for early editions of CP. For SP Smith substitutes a marginal drawing of a woman’s head.

  ‘Murder’ (p. 186): Reggie Smith married close friend Olivia Manning; Smith was a witness at their wedding in 1939 with Louis MacNeice. Smith changed ‘Reggie’ to ‘Filmer’ for TFP, mindful of libel.

  ‘Girls!’ (p. 187): CP follows original with no apostrophe in ‘don’t’; Smith inserts apostrophe for SP and replaces illustration with drawings of a woman holding flowers, a cat, and a girl’s head in profile. The OED quotes Smith’s idiosyncratic ‘balsy’ as its lone example of the variant.

/>   ‘Where are you going?’ (p. 188): cf. Coleridge’s ‘Youth and Age’ (1834), which recounts the ‘oft and tedious taking-leave’ of an old man who ‘hath outstay’d his welcome’.

  ‘Bog-Face’ (p. 191): cf. William Blake, ‘Infant Joy’ (1789).

  ‘The Zoo’ (p. 192): CP follows author’s own copy, which adds a grave accent on ‘misused’ but adds no apostrophe for ‘don’t’; author’s proofs insert the apostrophe.

  ‘Advice to Young Children’ (p. 194): in Smith’s short story ‘Beside the Seaside: A Holiday with Children’ (1949; MA p. 13), the poet-protagonist Helen recites the first stanza to her friends. Cf. Robert Graves, ‘Warning to Children’ (1929).

  ‘If I lie down’ (p. 196): in performance, Smith noted the child in this poem was responding to Seneca’s De Ira 15:4, where the precipice of a cliff offers a slave liberty through death.

  ‘Conviction (iv)’ (p. 199): illustration appears in SAMHTO with caption ‘This does not break down any barriers’.

  ‘The Little Daughters of America’ (p. 202): America declared war on Japan on 7 Dec. 1941.

  ‘She said …’ (p. 203): alternative titles in typescript drafts are ‘The Wicked Mother’ and ‘Fille Infame’.

  ‘Quand on n’a pas ce que l’on aime, il faut aimer ce que l’on a –’ (p. 204): French proverb (trans. ‘if you don’t get the thing you love, you must love the thing you get’; cf. final couplet of Tennyson’s ‘Tears, Idle Tears’ (1847).

  ‘Study to Deserve Death’ (p. 207): in SP the poem was illustrated with the drawing for ‘Where are you going?’ (p. 188).

  ‘Dirge’ (p. 208) was inadvertently chosen for both SP and TFP: SP offers an alternative illustration of a woman walking with an umbrella wearing a beret, while TFP reverts to the original illustration; TIO prints the poem twice with different illustrations.

  ‘La Speakerine de Putney’ (p. 209): cf. King Lear (1606) III.ii, l.1 for line 3.

  ‘My Heart was Full’ (p. 218): cf. Sir Walter Scott, The Monastery: a Romance (1820), which describes tears as the ‘softened showers’ allowing the ‘seed of Heaven’ to ‘take root in the human breast’, ch.XXX.

  ‘Croft’ (p. 218): inspired the play Top Storey (1987), produced by the Trestle Theatre Company.

  ‘Rencontres Funestes’ (p. 219): cf. Jean-Pierre Camus’ Les Rencontres funestes (1644); trans. ‘fatal encounters’.

  ‘The Film Star’ (p. 220): trans. for first and final lines ‘give a meal to the starved’; the poem was introduced as ‘Donnez à manger’ in some performances.

  ‘The Bottle of Aspirins’ (p. 221): cf. Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s short story ‘Le Dessous de cartes d’une partie de whist’, Les Diaboliques (1874), ch. III; trans. ‘“It’s a remedy against all ills,” he added, with the morbid humour typical of those who hailed from his suicidal land.’

  ‘The Actress’ (p. 223): l.4 reads in draft: ‘I earn my bread upon the boards before painted greenery’; author’s note indicates this version was published in a magazine before being amended for MWIM.

  ‘The Devil-my-Wife’ (p. 224): ‘Golden Slumbers’ is a traditional English folk tune; Thomas Dekker’s ‘Cradle Song’ in the play Patient Grissel (1603) provided the words for the Beatles song of the same name.

  ‘The Broken Heart’ (p. 229): ‘Oh, Play to me, Gypsy’ was a 1932 Karel Vacek tune popularised by Gracie Fields.

  ‘The Magic Morning’ (p. 232): punctuation follows later version Smith prepared for PMP; Celia in TH calls herself ‘nervy bold and grim’, p. 192, and the phrase is revised for ‘Cool as a Cucumber’ (p. 275).

  ‘Après la Politique, la Haine des Bourbons’ (p. 235): trans. ‘after the policy, the hatred of the Bourbons’. Punctuation follows later version prepared for PMP.

  ‘The Poets are Silent’ (p. 236): Smith was encouraged to revise or omit this poem for MWIM by her editor at Cape, who worried its ‘defeatist’ tone would be seen as ‘hindering the war effort’ (28 Sept. 1942, UT).

  ‘Old Ghosts’ (p. 241): when first published in London Mercury and Bookman, Dec. 1937, p. 122, the epigraph from Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) read: ‘… by one-half as unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers’. It was deleted for MWIM, but revised and reinstated for SP, although De Quincey has the opposite implication:

  I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms. In some that power is simply a mechanical affection of the eye; others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or to summon them; or, as a child once said to me when I questioned him on this matter, ‘I can tell them to go, and they go –, but sometimes they come when I don’t tell them to come.’ Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers. (‘The Pains of Opium’)

  SSACB notes a further allusion to Shakepeare’s Henry IV Part I III.i, ll.52–8. See also Wordsworth’s ‘The Affliction of Margaret’ (1807): ‘I look for ghosts; but none will force / Their way to me’.

  ‘Death in the Rose Garden’ (p. 242): the melody is the traditional French folk song ‘Marcho dei Rei’, popularised in England by Bizet’s L’Arlésienne Suite No. 1 (1872).

  ‘Hast Du dich verirrt?’ (p. 244): trans. ‘have you lost your way?’. The protagonist of TH is asked this by Casmilus, p. 162.

  ‘“Ceci est digne de gens sans Dieu”’ (p. 247): title taken from epigram for Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s short story, ‘À un Dîner d’athées’, Les Diaboliques (1874); trans. ‘this is worthy of a godless people’.

  ‘When the Sparrow Flies’ (p. 248): reprinted in SP with the drawings used in TFP for ‘Anger’s Freeing Power’ (p. 369).

  ‘Voices against England in the Night’ (p. 249): this follows the later version of the poem included in TH, which has ‘braver’ for ‘earlier’ and adds ‘now’ after ‘songs you sing’, p. 128; Celia recites the poem and suggests Britain’s withdrawal from India (1945–7) is the ‘answer’ to it. In SAMHTO, the drawing appears with the caption: ‘I never sleep’. Cf. Joseph Goebbels, ‘Children with their Hands Chopped Off’ (1939).

  ‘“N’est-ce pas assez de ne me point haïr?”’ (p. 250): cf. Alfred du Musset, ‘Chanson: J’ai dit à mon coeur …’ (1831); trans. ‘is it not enough that you hate me?’

  ‘The Failed Spirit’ (p. 251): this version follows the revised punctuation Smith prepared for the essay ‘What Poems Are Made Of’ (Vogue, 15 March 1969). Cf. Thomas Gray, ‘Hymn to Adversity’ (1753), ll.5–8.

  ‘The Recluse’ (p. 253): follows punctuation from revised version in PMP.

  The final illustration was titled ‘Torquemada’ in CP.

  HAROLD’S LEAP (1950)

  Harold’s Leap was published by Chapman and Hall in December 1950, with the frontispiece noting the poems were ‘illustrated by the author’. Seventy-nine drawings appear in the original volume, where they are printed in red, and often overlay the text. Eighteen poems were chosen for SP, and a further fourteen for TFP, where drawings were removed from ‘The Ambassador’ alongside the marginal illustration from ‘Harold’s Leap’. Smith noted a number of post-publication revisions in a letter she sent to novelist Kathleen Farrell, now at UT.

  ‘The Castle’ (p. 262): the protagonist of TH recites the poem to her uncle, noting ‘the poem is not sensible’, p. 174; the TH version is more lightly punctuated. In SAMHTO, one caption reads: ‘The Countess of Egremont does not wish for visitors’.

  ‘To Dean Inge Lecturing on Origen’ (p. 264): poem first published as ‘Wisdom’ in The Holiday Book (1946), p. 60, where final couplet reads: ‘Oh, is it lost that good man’s word? / Is it dimmed?’. See William Ralph Inge’s second and third Gifford Lectures in The Philosophy of Plotinus (1918). Celia recites the poem in TH, and explains, ‘I took one sentence that he said and […] I made this poem’; her uncle claims Inge was quoting Tertullian, p. 146. Cf. Tertullia
n’s De Resurrectione Carnis (c.AD 240), which notes popular ideas are ‘commended by their simplicity’, trans. Ernest Evans.

  ‘Behind the Knight’ (p. 265): introduced in performances by the Latin title ‘Post Equitem Sedet Atra Cura’, from Horace’s Odes Bk. III.i, l.40. William Makepeace Thackeray makes use of the same tag in The Newcomes (1855) and The Adventures of Philip (1861–2), and Smith saw the eponymous Alfred Gilbert sculpture (1899) in the V&A.

  ‘The Warden’ (p. 266): for epigraph, see broadside ballad ‘The Children’s Home’ (1884) written by F. E. Weatherly to the F. H. Cowen tune. Published in SP with drawing of young girl holding a ball.

  ‘Harold’s Leap’ (p. 267): lineation and punctuation follows final version Smith prepared for PMP; HL and CP have ‘rock’ for ‘place’ in final line.

  ‘Touch and Go’ (p. 269): Celia recites the poem in TH, where her friend Tom responds by playing Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no.12, p. 72; the earlier version has ‘sorrow’ for ‘passion’, though first publication in The Holiday Book (1946) has ‘passion’, p. 56.

  ‘Thought is Superior’ (p. 272): Smith revised ‘proud thought’ from ‘pure thought’ in her copies of HL; CP has ‘pure thought’. Drafts and readings moved between ‘Galileo’s discovery’ and ‘Copernicus’ discovery’; mindful that Galileo finally supported the heliocentric theories Copernicus had put forward, she revised her copy to ‘the discovery’; CP has ‘Galileo’s discovery’.

  ‘The River God of the River Mimram in Hertfordshire’ (p. 273): published in HL and CP as ‘The River God’; Smith amends title for PMP and in SP the additional material appears parenthetically. In performance it was introduced as ‘The River God Speaks’.

  ‘Cool as a Cucumber’ (p. 275): cf. John Gay, ‘A New Song of New Similes’ (1732).

  ‘The Orphan Reformed’ (p. 276): cf. William Wordsworth, ‘Alice Fell’ (1802), ll.41–4.

  ‘A Shooting Incident’ (p. 277): cf. Matthew 4:4 for first line.

  ‘“Oh stubborn race of Cadmus’ seed …”’ (p. 281): cf. Sophocles, Antigone, ll.517–519; draft title, ‘It is the bird of burial’, used for early proofs (UT).