Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 799
What worried and exasperated us in the poems of the late Lord Tennyson, the late Lewis Morris, the late William Morris, the late — well, whom you like — is not their choice of subject, it is their imitative handling of matter, of words, it is their derivative attitude...
Reading is an excellent thing; it is also experience, and both Mr Yeats and Mr De la Mare have read a great deal. But it is an experience that one should go through not in order to acquire imitative faculties, but in order to find — oneself. Roughly speaking, the late Victorian writers imitated Malory or the Laxdaela Saga and commented upon them; roughly speaking, again, the poets of to-day record their emotions at receiving the experience of the emotions of former writers. It is an attitude critical | rather than imitative, and to the measure of its truth it is the truer poetical attitude.
The measure of the truth has to be found. It would be an obvious hypocrisy in men whose first unashamed action of the day is to open the daily paper for the cricket scores and whose poetic bag and baggage is as small as I have related — it would be an obvious hypocrisy in us to pretend to have passed the greater part of our existences in romantic woods. But it would be a similar hypocrisy in Mr De la Mare, Mr Yeats, or Mr Hardy to attempt to render Life in the terms of the sort of Futurist picture that life is to me and my likes.
To get a sort of truth, a sort of genuineness into your attitude towards the life that God makes you lead, to follow up your real preferences, to like as some of us like the hard, bitter, ironical German poets, the life of restaurants, of Crowds, of flashed impressions, to love, as we may love, in our own way, the Blessed Virgin, Saint Katharine or the sardonic figure of Christina of Milan — and to render it — that is one good thing. Or again, to be genuinely Irish, with all the historic background of death, swords, flames, mists, sorrows, wakes, and again mists — to love those things and the Irish sanctities and Paganisms — that is another good thing if it is truly rendered; the main thing is the genuine love and the faithful rendering of the received impression.
The actual language — the vernacular employed — is a secondary matter. I prefer personally the language of my own day, a language clear enough for certain matters, employing slang where slang is felicitous and vulgarity where it seems to me that vulgarity is the only weapon against dullness. Mr Doughty, on the other hand — and Mr Doughty is a great poet — uses a barbarous idiom as if he were chucking pieces of shale at you from the top of a rock. Mr Yeats makes literal translations from the Irish; Mr Hardy does not appear to bother his head much about words, he drags them in as he likes. Mr De la Mare and Mr Flint are rather literary; Mr Pound as often as not is so unacquainted with English idioms as to be nearly unintelligible.
(God forbid, by the by, that I should seem to arrogate to myself a position as a poet side by side with Mr De la Mare, or, for the matter of that, with Mr Pound. But in stating my preferences I am merely, quite humbly, trying to voice what I imagine will be the views or the aspirations, the preferences or the prejudices, of the poet of my day and circumstances when he shall at last appear and voice the life of dust, toil, discouragement, excitement, and enervation that I and many millions lead to-day.)
When that poet does come it seems to me that his species will be much that of the gentlemen I have several times mentioned. His attitude towards life will be theirs; his circumstances only will be different. An elephant is an elephant whether he pours, at an African water-hole, mud and water over his free and scorched flanks, or whether, in the Zoological Gardens, he carries children about upon his back.
HIGH GERMANY
The following poems were printed in the volume called “High Germany,” published by Messrs Duckworth in 1911. “The Starling” also appeared in the Fortnightly Review.
THE STARLING
IT’S an odd thing how one changes...
Walking along the upper ranges
Of this land of plains,
In this month of rains,
On a drying road where the poplars march along,
Suddenly,
With a rush of wings flew down a company,
A multitude, throng upon throng,
Of starlings,
Successive orchestras of song,
Flung, like the babble of surf,
On to the roadside turf —
And so, for a mile, for a mile and a half — a long way,
Flight follows flight
Thro’ the still grey light
Of the steel-grey day,
Whirling beside the road in clamorous crowds,
Never near, never far, in the shade of the poplars and clouds.
It’s an odd thing how one changes...
And what strikes me now as most strange is:
After the starlings had flown
Over the plain and were gone,
There was one of them stayed on alone
In the trees; it chattered on high,
Lifting its bill to the sky,
Distending its throat,
Crooning harsh note after note,
In soliloquy,
Sitting alone.
And after a hush
It gurgled as gurgled a well,
Warbled as warbles a thrush,
Had a try at the sound of a bell
And mimicked a jay —
But I,
Whilst the starling mimicked on high
Pulsing its throat and its wings,
I went on my way
Thinking of things,
Onwards and over the range
And that’s what is strange.
I went down ‘twixt tobacco and grain,
Descending the chequer board plain
Where the apples and maize are;
Under the loopholed gate
In the village wall
Where the goats clatter over the cobbles
And the intricate, straw-littered ways are...
The ancient watchman hobbles
Cloaked, with his glasses of horn at the end of his nose,
Wearing velvet short hose
And a three-cornered hat on his pate,
And his pike-staff and all.
And he carries a proclamation,
An invitation,
To great and small,
Man and beast
To a wedding feast,
And he carries a bell and rings...
From the steeple looks down a saint,
From a doorway a queenly peasant
Looks out, in her bride-gown of lace
And her sister, a quaint little darling
Who twitters and chirps like a starling.
And this little old place,
It’s so quaint,
It’s so pleasant;
And the watch bell rings, and the church bell rings
And the wedding procession draws nigh,
Bullock carts, fiddlers and goods.
But I
Pass on my way to the woods
Thinking of things.
Years ago I’d have stayed by the starling,
Marking the iridescence of his throat,
Marvelling at the change of his note;
I’d have said to the peasant child: “Darling
Here’s a groschen and give me a kiss”... I’d have stayed
To sit with the bridesmaids at table,
And have taken my chance
Of a dance
With the bride in her laces
Or the maids with the blonde, placid faces
And ribbons and crants in the stable...
But the church bell still rings
And I’m far away out on the plain,
In the grey weather amongst the tobacco and grain,
And village and gate and wall
Are a long grey line with the church over all
And miles and miles away in the sky
The starlings go wheeling round on high
Over the distant ranges.
The violin strings
Thrill away and the day grows more grey.
And I... I stand thinking of things.
Yes, it’s strange how one changes.
IN THE LITTLE OLD MARKET-PLACE
(TO THE MEMORY OF A.V.)
IT rains, it rains,
From gutters and drains
And gargoyles and gables:
It drips from the tables
That tell us the tolls upon grains,
Oxen, asses, sheep, turkeys and fowls
Set into the rain-soaked wall
Of the old Town Hall.
The mountains being so tall
And forcing the town on the river,
The market’s so small
That, with the wet cobbles, dark arches and all,
The owls
(For in dark rainy weather the owls fly out
Well before four), so the owls
In the gloom
Have too little room
And brush by the saint on the fountain
In veering about.
The poor saint on the fountain!
Supported by plaques of the giver
To whom we’re beholden;
His name was de Sales
And his wife’s name von Mangel.
(Now is he a saint or archangel?)
He stands on a dragon
On a ball, on a column
Gazing up at the vines on the mountain:
And his falchion is golden,
And his wings are all golden.
He bears golden scales
And in spite of the coils of his dragon, without hint
of alarm or invective
Looks up at the mists on the mountain.
(Now what saint or archangel
Stands winged on a dragon,
Bearing golden scales and a broad bladed sword all golden?
Alas, my knowledge
Of all the saints of the college,
Of all these glimmering, olden
Sacred and misty stories
Of angels and saints and old glories...
Is sadly defective.)
The poor saint on the fountain...
On top of his column
Gazes up sad and solemn.
But is it towards the top of the mountain
Where the spindrifty haze is
That he gazes?
Or is it into the casement
Where the girl sits sewing?
There’s no knowing.
Hear it rain!
And from eight leaden pipes in the ball he stands on,
That has eight leaden and copper bands on,
There gurgle and drain
Eight driblets of water down into the basin.
And he stands on his dragon
And the girl sits sewing
High, very high in her casement
And before her are many geraniums in a parket
All growing and blowing
In box upon box
From the gables right down to the basement
With the frescoes and carvings and paint...
The poor saint!
It rains and it rains,
In the market there isn’t an ox,
And in all the emplacement
For wagons there isn’t a wagon,
Not a stall for a grape or a raisin,
Not a soul in the market
Save the saint on his dragon
With the rain dribbling down in the basin,
And the maiden that sews in the casement.
They are still and alone,
Mutterseelens alone,
And the rain dribbles down from his heels and his crown,
From wet stone to wet stone.
It’s as grey as at dawn,
And the owls, grey and fawn,
Call from the little town hall
With its arch in the wall,
Where the fire-hooks are stored.
From behind the flowers of her casement
That’s all gay with the carvings and paint,
The maiden gives a great yawn,
But the poor saint —
No doubt he’s as bored!
Stands still on his column
Uplifting his sword
With never the ease of a yawn
From wet dawn to wet dawn...
TO ALL THE DEAD
I
A CHINESE Queen on a lacquered throne
With a dragon as big as the side of a house,
All golden, and silent and sitting alone
In an empty house.
With the shadows above and the shadows behind,
And the Queen with a paper white, rice white face,
As still as a partridge, as still as a mouse,
With slanting eyes you would say were blind —
In a dead white face.
And what does she think, and what does she see,
With her face as still as a frozen pool is,
And her air as old as the oldest sea,
Where the oldest ice of the frozen Pole is?
She should have been dead nine thousand year...
But there come in three score and sixty coolies
With a veil of lawn as large as a lake,
And the veil blows here and shimmers there
In the unseen winds of the shadowy house.
And dragons flew in the shadowy air,
And there were chrysanthemums everywhere,
And butterflies and a coral snake
All round the margin of the lake.
For the Prince has come to court the Queen
Still sitting on high on her lacquered throne
With the golden dragon: and all the sheen
And shimmer and shine of a thousand wantons
In silken stuffs, with ivory lutes
And slanting eyes and furred blue boots
That moved in the light of a thousand lanthorns...
It all dies down, and the Queen sits there,
She should have been dead nine thousand year.
II
Now it happened that in the course of to-day
(The Queen was last night) in the rue de la Paix
In a room that was old and darkish and musty,
For most of the rooms are quaintly cranky
In the rue de la Paix,
For when it was new the Grande Armée
Tramped all its legions down this way.
But I sat there, and a friendly Yankee
Was lecturing me on the nature of things
(It’s a way Americans have!) He was cranky,
Just as much as his rooms and his chairs and his tables.
But the window stood open and over the way
I saw that the house with the modernest facings
Had an old tiled roof with mansards and gables.
It housed a jeweller, two modistes,
A vendor of fans; and the topmost sign
Announced in a golden double line
A salon of Chinese chiropodists.
And that is Paris from heel to crown
Plate-glass in the street and jewels and lacings
And cranky rooms on the upper floors
With rusty locks and creaking doors
But of what my American friend was saying
I haven’t a thought — there was too much noise
Through the open windows — the motors braying,
The clatter of hoofs in a steady stream,
And a scream
Unceasing from twenty paper boys,
With twenty versions to take your choice,
In styles courageous or gay or rococo,
Of clamorous news about Morocco...
III
And suddenly he said: “Sandusky!”
Now what was he talking of there in his musky,
Worm-eaten rooms of the rue de la Paix?
— Of his youth of jack rabbits and peanuts and snakes
When all was silent about the Lakes.
Now what is the name of them? Lake Ladoga?
No, no, that’s in Russia. It’s Ticonderoga,
Ontario, Champlin, each with their woods,
And never a house for miles and miles
And the boys in their boats floated on by the piles
Of old wigwams where shreds of blankets dangled.
And they caught their jack rabbits, lit bonfires and angled
In shallows for catfish. That’s it, in Sandusky!
The Bay of Sandusky.
And then I remembered with grey, clear precision,
And I saw — yes I saw — looking over the way
Two Chinese chiropodists, villainous fellows,
With faces of sulphur — and lemon — yellows,
Gaze with that gaze that’s half fanatic,
Part atrocious and partly sweet,
Each from a window of his own attic
At a mannequin on my side of the street,
And each grinned and girned in his Manchester blue,
And smirked with his eyes and his pig-tail too.
And somehow they made me feel sick; but I lost them
At the word “Sandusky.” A landscape crossed them;
A scene no more nor less than a vision,
All clear and grey in the rue de la Paix.
It must have been seven years ago,
I was out on a river whose name I’ve forgotten;
The Hudson perhaps or the Kotohotten.
It doesn’t much matter. Do you know the Hudson?
A sort of a Moselle with New York duds on,
There are crags and castles, a distance all grey,
Rocks, forests and elbows. But castles of Jay
And William H. Post and Mrs Poughkeepsie —
Imagine a Moselle that’s thoroughly tipsy,
A nightmare of ninety American castles
With English servants trained up like vassals,
Of Hiram P. Ouese who’s a fortune from pills for the liver.
Anyhow, I’ve forgotten the name of the river.
And the steamer steamed upwards between the hills
And passed through the rapids they called the
Narrows
‘Twixt the high grey banks where the firs grow jagged,
And the castles ceased and the forest grew ragged,
And the steamer belched forth sparks and stayed
At a wooden village, then grunted and swayed
Out to midstream and round a reach
Where the river widened and swirled about,
