Poems, 1908-1919

But I’ve left fat valleys to dig in sullen alleys
Just because a twisted star rode by me in my sleep.

“I’ve a brain is dancing to an old forgotten music
Heard when all the world was just a crazy flight of dreams,
And don’t you know I scatter in the dirt along the gutter
Seeds that little ladies nursed by Babylonian streams?

“Mad Tom Tatterman, that is how they call me.
Oh, they know so much, so much, all so neatly dressed;
I’ve a tale to tell you – come and listen, will you? —
One as ragged as the twigs that make a magpie’s nest.

“Ragged, oh, but very wise. You and this and that man,
All of you are making things that none of you would lack,
And so your eyes grow dusty, and so your limbs grow rusty —
But mad Tom Tatterman puts nothing in his sack.

“Nothing in my sack, sirs, but the Sea of Galilee
Was walked for mad Tom Tatterman, and when I go to sleep
They’ll know that I have driven through the acres of broad heaven
Flocks are whiter than the flocks that all your shepherds keep.”

FOR CORIN TO-DAY

Old shepherd in your wattle cote,
I think a thousand years are done
Since first you took your pipe of oat
And piped against the risen sun,
Until his burning lips of gold
Sucked up the drifting scarves of dew
And bade you count your flocks from fold
And set your hurdle stakes anew.

And then as now at noon you ’ld take
The shadow of delightful trees,
And with good hands of labour break
Your barley bread with dairy cheese,
And with some lusty shepherd mate
Would wind a simple argument,
And bear at night beyond your gate
A loaded wallet of content.

O Corin of the grizzled eye,
A thousand years upon your down
You’ve seen the ploughing teams go by
Above the bells of Avon’s town;
And while there’s any wind to blow
Through frozen February nights,
About your lambing pens will go
The glimmer of your lanthorn lights.

THE CARVER IN STONE

He was a man with wide and patient eyes,
Grey, like the drift of twitch-fires blown in June
That, without fearing, searched if any wrong
Might threaten from your heart. Grey eyes he had
Under a brow was drawn because he knew
So many seasons to so many pass
Of upright service, loyal, unabased
Before the world seducing, and so, barren
Of good words praising and thought that mated his.
He carved in stone. Out of his quiet life
He watched as any faithful seaman charged
With tidings of the myriad faring sea,
And thoughts and premonitions through his mind
Sailing as ships from strange and storied lands
His hungry spirit held, till all they were
Found living witness in the chiselled stone.
Slowly out of the dark confusion, spread
By life’s innumerable venturings
Over his brain, he would triumph into the light
Of one clear mood, unblemished of the blind
Legions of errant thought that cried about
His rapt seclusion: as a pearl unsoiled,
Nay, rather washed to lonelier chastity,
In gritty mud. And then would come a bird,
A flower, or the wind moving upon a flower,
A beast at pasture, or a clustered fruit,
A peasant face as were the saints of old,
The leer of custom, or the bow of the moon
Swung in miraculous poise – some stray from the world
Of things created by the eternal mind
In joy articulate. And his perfect mood
Would dwell about the token of God’s mood,
Until in bird or flower or moving wind
Or flock or shepherd or the troops of heaven
It sprang in one fierce moment of desire
To visible form.
Then would his chisel work among the stone,
Persuading it of petal or of limb
Or starry curve, till risen anew there sang
Shape out of chaos, and again the vision
Of one mind single from the world was pressed
Upon the daily custom of the sky
Or field or the body of man.

His people
Had many gods for worship. The tiger-god,