And he is my Firstest Friend!
The Cat that Walked by Himself
This Uninhabited Island
Is off Cape Gardafui;
By the beaches of Socotra
And the pink Arabian Sea.
But it’s hot – too hot – from Suez
For the likes of you and me
Ever to go
In a P. & O.
To call on the Cake Parsee.
How the Rhinoceros got his Skin
There was never a Queen like Balkis,
From here to the wide world’s end;
But Balkis talked to a butterfly
As you would talk to a friend.
There was never a King like Solomon,
Not since the world began;
But Solomon talked to a butterfly
As a man would talk to a man.
She was Queen of Sabaea –
And he was Asia’s Lord –
But they both of ’em talked to butterflies
When they took their walks abroad!
The Butterfly that Stamped
THE TWO COUSINS
Valour and Innocence
Have latterly gone hence
To certain death by certain shame attended.
Envy – ah! even to tears! –
The fortune of their years
Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended.
Scarce had they lifted up
Life’s full and fiery cup,
Than they had set it down untouched before them.
Before their day arose
They beckoned it to close –
Close in confusion and destruction o’er them.
They did not stay to ask
What prize should crown their task –
Well sure that prize was such as no man strives for;
But passed into eclipse,
Her kiss upon their lips –
Even Belphoebe’s, whom they gave their lives for!
‘CITIES AND THRONES AND POWERS’
Cities and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time’s eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth
The Cities rise again.
This season’s Daffodil,
She never hears
What change, what chance, what chill,
Cut down last year’s;
But with bold countenance,
And knowledge small,
Esteems her seven days’ continuance
To be perpetual.
So Time that is o’er-kind
To all that be,
Ordains us e’en as blind,
As bold as she:
That in our very death,
And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
‘See how our works endure!’
IF –
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
‘OUR FATHERS OF OLD’
Excellent herbs had our fathers of old –
Excellent herbs to ease their pain –
Alexanders and Marigold,
Eyebright, Orris, and Elecampane –
Basil, Rocket, Valerian, Rue,
(Almost singing themselves they run)
Vervain, Dittany, Call-me-to-you –
Cowslip, Melilot, Rose of the Sun,
Anything green that grew out of the mould
Was an excellent herb to our fathers of old.
Wonderful tales had our fathers of old,
Wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars –
The Sun was Lord of the Marigold,
Basil and Rocket belonged to Mars.
Pat as a sum in division it goes –
(Every herb had a planet bespoke) –
Who but Venus should govern the Rose?
Who but Jupiter own the Oak?
Simply and gravely the facts are told
In the wonderful books of our fathers of old.
Wonderful little, when all is said,
Wonderful little our fathers knew.
Half their remedies cured you dead –
Most of their teaching was quite untrue –
‘Look at the stars when a patient is ill
(Dirt has nothing to do with disease),
Bleed and blister as much as you will,
Blister and bleed him as oft as you please.’
Whence enormous and manifold
Errors were made by our fathers of old.
Yet when the sickness was sore in the land,
And neither planets nor herbs assuaged,
They took their lives in their lancet-hand
And, oh, what a wonderful war they waged!
Yes, when the crosses were chalked on the door –
Yes, when the terrible dead-cart rolled!
Excellent courage our fathers bore –
Excellent heart had our fathers of old.
None too learned, but nobly bold
Into the fight went our fathers of old.
If it be certain, as Galen says –
And sage Hippocrates holds as much –
‘That those afflicted by doubts and dismays
Are mightily helped by a dead man’s touch,’
Then, be good to us, stars above!
Then, be good to us, herbs below!
We are afflicted by what we can prove,
We are distracted by what we know.
So – ah, so!
Down from your heaven or up from your mould,
Send us the hearts of our fathers of old!
THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in
his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often
turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth
and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than
the male.
When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot
of man,
> He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it as
he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps
beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than
the male.
When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and
Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of
the squaws.
’Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark
enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than
the male.
Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must
not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give
away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms
the other’s tale –
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man, a bear in most relations – worm and savage
otherwise, –
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the
compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the
wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger! Doubt and Pity
oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue – to the scandal of
The Sex!
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of
her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and
engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath
her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity – must not swerve for
fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions – not in these her
honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and
nothing else.
She can bring no more to living than the powers that
make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of
the Mate!
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides
unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is
the same.
She is wedded to convictions – in default of
grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him
who denies! –
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant,
white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse
and child.
Unprovoked and awful charges – even so the
she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes and poisons – even so the
cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish – like the Jesuit
with the squaw!
So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers
to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a
place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his
erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice – which no woman
understands.
And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman
that God gave him
Must command but may not govern – shall enthral
but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her
instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than
the Male.
THE ROMAN CENTURION’S SONG
Legate, I had the news last night – my cohort
ordered home
By ship to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome.
I’ve watched the companies aboard, the arms are
stowed below:
Now let another take my sword. Command me not
to go!
I’ve served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to
the Wall.
I have none other home than this, nor any life at all.
Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour
draws near
That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here.
Here where men say my name was made, here where
my work was done;
Here where my dearest dead are laid – my wife – my
wife and son;
Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory,
service, love,
Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how shall
I remove?
For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and
fields suffice.
What purple Southern pomp can match our changeful
Northern skies,
Black with December snows unshed or pearled with
August haze –
The clanging arch of steel-grey March, or June’s
long-lighted days?
You’ll follow widening Rhodanus till vine and
olive lean
Aslant before the sunny breeze that sweeps
Nemausus clean
To Arelate’s triple gate; but let me linger on,
Here where our stiff-necked British oaks confront
Euroclydon!
You’ll take the old Aurelian Road through
shore-descending pines
Where, blue as any peacock’s neck, the Tyrrhene
Ocean shines.
You’ll go where laurel crowns are won, but – will you
e’er forget
The scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken in
the wet?
Let me work here for Britain’s sake – at any task
you will –
A marsh to drain, a road to make or native troops
to drill.
Some Western camp (I know the Pict) or granite
Border keep,
Mid seas of heather derelict, where our old
messmates sleep.
Legate, I come to you in tears – My cohort ordered
home!
I’ve served in Britain forty years. What should I do
in Rome?
Here is my heart, my soul, my mind – the only life
I know.
I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!
DANE-GELD
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
‘We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared
to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.’
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: –
‘Though we know we should defeat you, we have not
the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.’
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: –
‘We never pay any-one Dane-Geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!’
THE GLORY OF THE GARDEN
Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets
the eye.
For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin
red wall,
You find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the
heart of all;
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and
the tanks,
The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows
and the planks.
And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and
’prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to
scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.
And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything
that grows;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand
and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are
not made
By singing – ‘Oh how beautiful!’ and sitting in
the shade,
While better men than we go out and start their
working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken
dinner-knives.
There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head
so thick,
There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart
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