THE WOODEN PEGASUS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
CLOWNS’ HOUSES
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almonds.”—Land and Water.
WHEELS
Annual Anthology of Verse
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“The vanguard of British Poetry.”
The Saturday Review.
OXFORD
BASIL BLACKWELL
THE
WOODEN PEGASUS
BY
EDITH SITWELL
Author of “Clowns’ Houses”; Editor of “Wheels”
OXFORD
BASIL BLACKWELL
1920
TO
Helen Rootham
Osbert Sitwell
Sacheverell Sitwell
AND
W. T. Walton
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
MY thanks are due to the Editors of The Saturday Westminster, The Cambridge Magazine, Art and Letters, The Coterie, and The Daily Mirror, and to Messrs. Cecil Palmer and Hayward for permission to reprint certain of these poems.
CONTENTS
SINGERIE
SUMMER afternoon in Hell!
Down the empty street it fell,
Pantaloon and Scaramouche—
Tongues like flames and shadows louche—
Flickered down the street together
In the spangled weather.
Flames, bright singing-birds that pass,
Whistled wares as shrill as grass
(Landscapes clear as glittering glass),
Whistled all together:
Papagei, oh Papagei,
Buy our greenest fruits, oh buy,
Melons misty from the bloom
Of mellow moons on some hot night,
Melting in the August light;
Apples like an emerald shower;
Nectarines that falling boom
On the grass in greenest gloom;
Peaches bright as parrot’s feather
Glistening from the moon’s bower;
Chequered like fritillaries,
Fat and red are strawberries.
Parrot-voices shrill together—
Now they pelt each monkey-face
(Pantaloon with simian grace)
From the soft gloom till they smother
Both the plumed head-dresses
With the green fruit-gems that glitter
(Twinkling sharp sounds like a zither).
Sharp each bird-tongue shrills and hisses,
Parrot-voices shrieking bane;—
Down comes every spangled shutter
With a sudden noise like rain.
THE AVENUE
IN the huge and glassy room,
Pantaloon, with his tail-feather
Spangled like the weather,
Panached, too, with many a plume,
Watched the monkey Fanfreluche,
Shivering in his gilded ruche,
Fawn upon the piano keys—
Flatter till they answer back,
Through the scale of centuries,
Difference between white and black.
Winds like hurricanes of light
Change the blackest vacuums
To a light-barred avenue—
Semitones of might and right;
Then, from matter, life comes.
Down that lengthy avenue
Leading us we know not where,
Sudden views creep through the air;
Oh the keys we stumble through!
Jungles splashed with violent light,
Promenades all hard and bright,
Long tails like the swish of seas,
Avenue of piano keys.
Meaning comes to bind the whole,
Fingers separate from thumbs,
Soon the shapeless tune comes:
Bestial efforts at man’s soul.
What though notes are false and shrill—
Black streets tumbling down a hill?
Fundamentally
I am you, and you are me—
Octaves fall as emptily.
MANDOLINE
DOWN in Hell’s gilded street,
Snow dances fleet and sweet,
Bright as a parokeet,
Or Punchinello,
All glistening yellow,
As fruit-jewels mellow,
Glittering white and black
As the swan’s glassy back
On the Styx’ soundless track,
Sharp as bird’s painted bill,
Pecking fruit, sweet and shrill,
On a dark window-sill.
See the glass house as smooth
As a wide puppet-booth ...
Snow strikes it like a sooth
Melon-shaped mandoline
With the sharp tang and sheen
Of flames that cry, “Unclean!”
Dinah with scarlet ruche,
Gay-plumaged Fanfreluche,
Watch shrill as Scaramouche
In the huge house of glass
Old shadows bent, alas!
On ebon sticks now pass—
Lean on a nigger boy
Creep like a broken toy—
Wooden and painted joy.
Trains sweep the empty floors—
Pelongs and Pallampores,
Bulchauls and Sallampores,
Soundless as any breeze
(Amber and orangeries)
From isles in Indian seas.
Black spangled veils falling
(The cold is appalling),
They wave fans, hear calling
Adder-flames shrieking slow,
Stinging bright fruit-like snow,
Down in the street below;
While an ape, with black spangled veil,
Plum’d head-dress, face dust-pale,
Scratch’d with a finger-nail
Sounds from a mandoline,
Tuneless and sharp as sin:—
Shutters whose tang and sheen,
Shrieking all down the scale,
Seem like the flames that fail
Under that onyx nail,
Light as snow dancing fleet,
Bright as a parokeet,
Down in Hell’s empty street.
“COMEDY FOR MARIONETTES”
(To I. C. P.)
TANG the sharp mandoline!
Hail, falling in the lean
Street of Hell, sweeps it clean.
Under the puppet booth,
Down in Hell, see the smooth
Snow bright as fruit and sooth.
Cherries and plums all freeze—
Rubies upon the trees,
Rubied hail falls through these,
Pelting each young Snow Queen—
(A swan’s breath, so whitely seen,)
Flirting her fan in lean
Streets, passing to and fro,
White as the flamelike snow,
Fruit of lips all aglow
As isles of the cherry
Or ruby-sweet berry
All plump sweet and merry.
Mantillas hide the shame
Of each duenna dame,
(Fans made of plumes of flame,)
Pelted with coral bells
Out of the orchard hells,
(Hail with sweet fruitage smells).
Now on the platform seen,
Hoofs clatter with the clean
Sound of a mandoline....
Under the tinsel sun,
See shadow-spiders run!—
Fatter than any bun,
Beelzebub in a chair
Sits on the platform there;
Candles like cold eyes stare.
“Master has got the gout,”
Adder-flames flare and spout
From his lips ... shadows rout.
Tiptoe the Barber crept,
On his furred black locks leapt.
Candles shrieked, flaring wept.
Barber takes up the shears....
“Fur for the shivering fears,
Cold in Hell these long years.”
Candles shriek up the scale,
Creaking down in a wail.
Hear how their protests fail!
Only cold, snakish flutes
Sound like the growing fruits
Out of slow hidden roots....
Strange eyes a moment stare,
Fruit-like and moon-like glare,
From the bright shutters where
Hail, falling in the lean
Street of Hell, sweeps it clean.
Tang the sharp mandoline!
FALSETTO SONG
WHEN I was young, in ages past,
My soul had cast
Man’s foolish shape,
And like a black and hairy ape—
My shadow, he
Now mimics me.
Follows slinking in my shade
Through the corridors of life
(Stifling ’twixt the walls I made
With the mud and murderous knife),
Takes the pulse of my black heart,
Never once controls my will,
Apes me selling in the mart
Song-birds hate did kill.
EVENTAIL
LOVELY Semiramis
Closes her slanting eyes:
Dead is she long ago.
From her fan, sliding slow,
Parrot-bright fire’s feathers,
Gilded as June weathers,
Plumes bright and shrill as grass
Twinkle down; as they pass
Through the green glooms in Hell
Fruits with a tuneful smell,
Grapes like an emerald rain,
Where the full moon has lain,
Greengages bright as grass,
Melons as cold as glass,
Piled on each gilded booth,
Feel their cheeks growing smooth.
Apes in plumed head-dresses
Whence the bright heat hisses,—
Nubian faces, sly
Pursing mouth, slanting eye,
Feel the Arabian
Winds floating from the fan:
Salesmen with gilded face
Paler grow, nod apace;
“Oh, the fan’s blowing
Cold winds ... It is snowing!”
FIFTEEN BUCOLIC POEMS
I
WHAT THE GOOSEGIRL SAID ABOUT THE DEAN
TURN again, turn again,
Goose Clothilda, Goosie Jane!
The wooden waves of people creak
From houses built with coloured straws
Of heat; Dean Pappus’ long nose snores—
Harsh as a hautbois, marshy-weak.
The wooden waves of people creak
Through the fields all water-sleek;
And in among the straws of light
Those bumpkin hautbois-sounds take flight,
Whence he lies snoring like the moon,
Clownish-white all afternoon,
Beneath the trees’ arsenical
Harsh wood-wind tunes. Heretical—
(Blown like the wind’s mane
Creaking woodenly again)
His wandering thoughts escape like geese,
Till he, their gooseherd, sets up chase,
And clouds of wool join the bright race
For scattered old simplicities.
II
NOAH
NOAH, through green waters slipping sliding like a long sleek eel,
Slithered up Mount Ararat and climbed into the Ark,—
Slipping with his long dank hair; and sliding slyly in his barque,
Pushed it slowly in a wholly glassy creek until we feel
Pink crags tremble under us and wondrous clear waters run
Over Shem and Ham and Japhet, moving with their long sleek daughters,
Swift as fishes rainbow-coloured darting under morning waters....
Burning seraph beasts sing clearly to the young flamingo Sun.
Note.—Thanks due to Helen Rootham for her earnest collaboration in this poem.
III
THE GIRL WITH THE LINT-WHITE LOCKS
THE bright-striped wooden fields are edged
With noisy cock’s crow trees, scarce fledged—
The trees that spin like tops, all weathers,
Like strange birds ruffling glassy feathers.
My hair is white as flocks of geese,
And water hisses out of this;
And when the late sun burns my cheek
Till it is pink as apples sleek,
I wander in the fields and know
Why kings do squander pennies so—
Lest they at last should weight their eyes!
But beggars’ ragged minds, more wise,
Know without flesh we cannot see—
And so they hoard stupidity
(The dull ancestral memory
That is the only property).
They laugh to see the spring fields edged
With noisy cock’s crow trees scarce fledged,
And flowers that grunt to feel their eyes
Made clear with sight’s finalities.
IV
THE LADY WITH THE SEWING MACHINE
ACROSS the fields as green as spinach,
Cropped as close as Time to Greenwich,
Stands a high house; if at all,
Spring comes like a Paisley shawl—
Patternings meticulous
And youthfully ridiculous.
In each room the yellow sun
Shakes like a canary, run
On run, roulade, and watery trill—
Yellow, meaningless, and shrill.
Face as white as any clock’s,
Cased in parsley-dark curled locks,
All day long you sit and sew,
Stitch life down for fear it grow,
Stitch life down for fear we guess
At the hidden ugliness.
Dusty voice that throbs with heat,
Hoping with its steel-thin beat
To put stitches in my mind,
Make it tidy, make it kind;
You shall not! I’ll keep it free
Though you turn earth sky and sea
To a patchwork quilt to keep
Your mind snug and warm in sleep.
V
BY CANDLELIGHT
HOUSES red as flower of bean,
Flickering leaves and shadows lean!
Pantalone, like a parrot,
Sat and grumbled in the garret,
Sat and growled and grumbled till
Moon upon the window-sill,
Like a red geranium,
Scented his bald cranium.
Said Brighella, meaning well—
“Pack your box and—go to Hell!
Heat will cure your rheumatism.”
Silence crowned this optimism.
Not a sound and not a wail—
But the fire (lush leafy vale)
Watched the angry feathers fly.
Pantalone ’gan to cry—
Could not, would not, pack his box.
Shadows (curtseying hens and cocks)
Pecking in the attic gloom,
Tried to smother his tail-plume....
Till a cock’s comb candle-flame,
Crowing loudly, died: Dawn came.
VI
SERENADE
THE tremulous gold of stars within your hair
Are yellow bees flown from the hive of night,
Finding the blossom of your eyes more fair
Than all the pale flowers folded from the light.
Then, Sweet, awake, and ope your dreaming eyes
Ere those bright bees have flown and darkness dies.
VII
CLOWNS’ HOUSES
BENEATH the flat and paper sky
The sun, a demon’s eye,
Glowed through the air, that mask of glass;
All wand’ring sounds that pass
Seemed out of tune, as if the light
Were fiddle-strings pulled tight.
The market square with spire and bell
Clanged out the hour in Hell.
The busy chatter of the heat
Shrilled like a parokeet;
And shuddering at the noonday light
The dust lay dead and white
As powder on a mummy’s face,
Or fawned with simian grace
Round booths with many a hard bright toy
And wooden brittle joy:
The cap and bells of Time the Clown
That, jangling, whistled down
Young cherubs hidden in the guise
Of every bird that flies;
And star-bright masks for youth to wear,
Lest any dream that fare
—Bright pilgrim—past our ken, should see
Hints of Reality.
Upon the sharp-set grass, shrill-green,
Tall trees like rattles lean,
And jangle sharp and dizzily;
But when night falls they sigh
Till Pierrot moon steals slyly in,
His face more white than sin,
Black-masked, and with cool touch lays bare
Each cherry, plum, and pear.
Then underneath the veilèd eyes
Of houses, darkness lies,—
Tall houses; like a hopeless prayer
They cleave the sly dumb air.
Blind are those houses, paper-thin;
Old shadows hid therein,
With sly and crazy movements creep
Like marionettes, and weep.
Tall windows show Infinity;
And, hard reality,
The candles weep and pry and dance
Like lives mocked at by Chance.
The rooms are vast as Sleep within:
When once I ventured in,
Chill Silence, like a surging sea,
Slowly enveloped me.
VIII
THE SATYR IN THE PERIWIG
THE Satyr Scarabombadon
Pulled periwig and breeches on:
“Grown old and stiff, this modern dress
Adds monstrously to my distress;
The gout within a hoofen heel
Is very hard to bear; I feel
When crushed into a buckled shoe
The twinge will be redoubled, too.
And when I walk in gardens green
And, weeping, think on what has been,
Then wipe one eye,—the other sees
The plums and cherries on the trees.
Small bird-quick women pass me by
With sleeves that flutter airily,
And baskets blazing like a fire
With laughing fruits of my desire;
Plums sunburnt as the King of Spain,
Gold-cheeked as any Nubian,
With strawberries all goldy-freckled,
Pears fat as thrushes and as speckled ...
Pursue them?... Yes, and squeeze a tear:
‘Please spare poor Satyr one, my dear.’
‘Be off, sir; go and steal your own!’
—Alas, poor Scarabombadon,
They’d rend his ruffles, stretch a twig,
Tear off a satyr’s periwig!”
IX
THE MUSLIN GOWN
WITH spectacles that flash,
Striped foolscap hung with gold
And silver bells that clash,
(Bright rhetoric and cold),
In owl-dark garments goes the Rain,
Dull pedagogue, again.
And in my orchard wood
Small song-birds flock and fly,
Like cherubs brown and good,
When through the trees go I
Knee-deep within the dark-leaved sorrel.
Cherries red as bells of coral
Ring to see me come—
I, with my fruit-dark hair
As dark as any plum,
My summer gown as white as air
And frilled as any quick bird’s there.
But oh, what shall I do?
Old Owl-wing’s back from town—
He’s skipping through dark trees: I know
He hates my summer gown!
X
MISS NETTYBUN AND THE SATYR’S CHILD
AS underneath the trees I pass
Through emerald shade on hot soft grass,
Petunia faces, glowing-hued
With heat, cast shadows hard and crude—
Green-velvety as leaves, and small
Fine hairs like grass pierce through them all.
But these are all asleep—asleep,
As through the schoolroom door I creep
In search of you, for you evade
All the advances I have made.
Come, Horace, you must take my hand.
This sulking state I will not stand!
But you shall feed on strawberry jam
At tea-time, if you cease to slam
The doors that open from our sense—
Through which I slipped to drag you hence!
XI
QUEEN VENUS AND THE CHOIR-BOY
(To Naomi Royde Smith)
THE apples grow like silver trumps
That red-cheeked fair-haired angels blow—
So clear their juice; on trees in clumps,
Feathered as any bird, they grow.
A lady stood amid those crops—
Her voice was like a blue or pink
Glass window full of lollipops;
Her words were very strange, I think:
“Prince Paris, too, a fair-haired boy
Plucked me an apple from dark trees;
Since when their smoothness makes my joy;
If you will pluck me one of these
I’ll kiss you like a golden wind
As clear as any apples be.”
And now she haunts my singing mind—
And oh, she will not set me free.
XII
THE APE SEES THE FAT WOMAN
AMONG the dark and brilliant leaves,
Where flowers seem tinsel firework-sheaves,
Blond barley-sugar children stare
Through shining apple-trees, and there
A lady like a golden wind
Whose hair like apples tumbles kind,
And whose bright name, so I believe,
Is sometimes Venus, sometimes Eve,
Stands, her face furrowed like my own
With thoughts wherefrom strange seeds are sown,
Whence, long since, stars for bright flowers grew
Like periwinkles pink and blue,—
(Queer impulses of bestial kind,
Flesh indivisible from mind.)
I, painted like the wooden sun,
Must hand-in-hand with angels run—
The tinsel angels of the booth
That lead poor yokels to the truth
Through raucous jokes, till we can see
That narrow long Eternity
Is but the whip’s lash o’er our eyes—
Spurring to new vitalities.
XIII
THE APE WATCHES “AUNT SALLY”
THE apples are an angel’s meat,
The shining dark leaves make clear-sweet
The juice; green wooden fruits alway
Drop on these flowers as white as day—
Clear angel-face on hairy stalk;
(Soul grown from flesh, an ape’s young talk.)
And in this green and lovely ground
The Fair, world-like, turns round and round,
And bumpkins throw their pence to shed
Aunt Sally’s crude-striped wooden head.
I do not care if men should throw
Round sun and moon to make me go,
(As bright as gold and silver pence) ...
They cannot drive their own blood hence!
XIV
SPRINGING JACK
GREEN wooden leaves clap light away,
Severely practical, as they
Shelter the children, candy-pale.
The chestnut-candles flicker, fail....
The showman’s face is cubed clear as
The shapes reflected in a glass
Of water—(glog, glut, a ghost’s speech
Fumbling for space from each to each).
The fusty showman fumbles, must
Fit in a particle of dust
The universe, for fear it gain
Its freedom from my box of brain.
Yet dust bears seeds that grow to grace
Behind my crude-striped wooden face
As I, a puppet tinsel-pink,
Leap on my springs, learn how to think,
Then like the trembling golden stalk
Of some long-petalled star, I walk
Through the dark heavens until dew
Falls on my eyes and sense thrills through.
XV
“TOURNEZ, TOURNEZ, BONS CHEVAUX DE BOIS”
TURN, turn again,
Ape’s blood in each vein.
The people that pass
Seem castles of glass,
The old and the good,
Giraffes of blue wood;
The soldier, the nurse,
Wooden face and a curse,
Are shadowed with plumage
Like birds by the gloomage.
Blond hair like a clown’s,
The music floats, drowns
The creaking of ropes
The breaking of hopes.
The wheezing, the old,
Like harmoniums scold:
Go to Babylon, Rome,
The brain-cells called home,
The grave, New Jerusalem,
Wrinkled Methusalem:
From our floating hair
Derived the first fair
And queer inspiration
Of music (the nation
Of bright-plumed trees
And harpy-shrill breeze).
. . .
Turn, turn again,
Ape’s blood in each vein.
SEVEN NURSERY SONGS
I
OLD LADY FLY-AWAY
OLD Lady Fly-Away
Lost her temper, night and day,
Took the bright moon’s broom—
Swept round the attic room.
“Dear me, where can it be?
Not a temper can I see!”
Sighed the Moon upon the stair:
“Always look to see, dear,
When you ‘put your foot down,’
Lest it crushes Babylon;
Try to get it nearer home,
In fields of clover or in Rome!”
Old Lady Fly-Away
Knew her temper would not stay,
So pretended not to hear—
Sweeping for it on the stair.
II
GREAT SNORING AND NORWICH
GREAT Snoring and Norwich
A dish of pease porridge!
The clock of Troy town
Strikes one o’clock; brown
Honey-bees in the clover
Are half-the-seas-over,
And Time is a-boring
From here to Great Snoring.
But Time, the grey mouse,
Can’t wake up the house,
For old King Priam
Is sleepy as I am!
III
FAT WILLIAM AND THE TRAINS
WHEN I should be at work, instead
I lie and kick for fun, in bed:
Down the narrow rails, hear trains
Go quick as other people’s brains—
Hump their backs and snore and growl,
Grumble, rumble, tumble, prowl—
Bearing people, pink as pigs,
Through water-clear fields dancing jigs.
Like a whale among my pillows
Dash I, splash I, sheets in billows
As the trains toss spangled seas,
Like bright flags on the tusks of these.
How I envy those at work
When I can lie in bed and shirk.
IV
A PENNY FARE TO BABYLON
“A PENNY fare to Babylon,
A penny for each thought!”
“Oh, ma’am, no, ma’am,
Can’t be bought!
The Sun gives pots of money,
The Moon, her bread and honey,
When humming like a clover-field
I go up to town.
Whitened by the Moon’s flour,
All the birds I own,
Lest they be baked into a pie,
Are flown, dear, flown.
Though you whistle in the corridors
That dance into my brain—
Oh, ma’am, no, ma’am,
They will not come again.”
V
THE BUTCHER’S SHOP
PANTALOON jumps in his bright
Butcher’s shop, where red and white
Meat hangs up like clown’s attire—
Laughs as shrill as grass or fire.
In his house sits Il Dottore,
In the rickety top story
Plays a mandoline to please
Coral bells on cherry trees....
But the bees have left his bonnet
For the meat; they buzz upon it—
Goldy summer lights—they hover
Like the bees upon red clover,
Flying straight into the shop,
Full of facts, where theories stop.
VI
THE KING OF CHINA’S DAUGHTER
THE King of China’s daughter,
She never would love me
Though I hung my cap and bells upon
Her nutmeg tree.
For oranges and lemons,
The stars in bright blue air,
(I stole them long ago, my dear)
Were dangling there.
The Moon did give me silver pence,
The Sun did give me gold,
And both together softly blew
And made my porridge cold;
But the King of China’s daughter
Pretended not to see
When I hung my cap and bells upon
Her nutmeg tree.
VII
OLD KING PTOLEMY
OLD King Ptolemy
Climbed the stair
Into the attic
Of Anywhere.
Old King Ptolemy
Sulked to bed;
Maids cleared up his toys—
“Broken,” they said.
“The King’s in a temper,
The King’s in a pet,”
Wriggling their necks like geese—
“Oh, what a fret!”
The Struwwelpeter
Round-eyed Sun,
Rocked on his rocking-horse
Half in fun,—
Rocked on the landing,
Rocked on the stair:
“Babylon’s empty,
The cupboard is bare....
King Ptolemy’s snoring
Sounds on the breeze
Like the sound of fruit growing
On mulberry trees.”