The Bird-Catcher
and Other Poems
By Martin Armstrong
Contents
I
The Bird-catcher
Honey Harvest
Spanish Vintage
Summer in Winter
Rhapsody on a Pink-Iced Cake
The Eve of the Fair
II
Before the Battle
Immortality
Bugles
Epitaph
Man Seeks to Cage Delight
To Hate
III
To Messaline
Puppets
IV
Heard in a Lane
Rain in Spring
Blue Night
On the Salt Marsh
Frost in Lincoln’s Inn Fields
The Naiad
Christmas Eve
V
The Fisherman’s Rest
Mrs. Reece Laughs
VI
Expostulation to Helen
To Helen with a Bottle of Scent
Serenade
The House of Love
Autumn
The Immortals
Fog in the Channel
From the French
VII
Cathedral at Night
Poetry and Memory
The Secret
All is One
The Cage
A Note on the Author
I
The Bird-Catcher
O you with the five-stopped pipe
And delicate, close-webbed net and eyes that have stared
Into worlds unknown, what poor wild bird have you snared,
What plover or lark or snipe?
I roved to the rim of the world,
To the borders of life and death, to the glimmering land
Where matter and spirit are one, and I closed my hand
On a marvellous prey in the mouth of the net upcurled:
For while with the breath of dream
I filled the pipe and fingered the stops with the touch of thought,
In a web of sweet and intricate tunes I caught
God, to be caged awhile among things that seem.
Honey Harvest
Late in March, when the days are growing longer
And sight of early green
Tells of the coming spring and suns grown stronger,
Round the pale Willow-catkins there are seen
The year’s first honey-bees
Stealing the nectar; and bee-masters know
This for the first sign of the honey-flow.
Then in the dark hillsides the Cherry-trees
Gleam white with loads of blossom where the gleams
Of piled snow lately hung, and richer streams
The honey. Now, if chilly April days
Delay the Apple-blossom and the May’s
First week comes in with sudden summer weather,
The Apple and the Hawthorn bloom together,
And all day long the plundering hordes go round
And every overweighted blossom nods.
But from that gathered essence they compound
Honey more sweet than nectar of the gods.
Those blossoms fall ere June, warm June that brings
The small white Clover. Field by scented field,
Round farms like islands in the rolling weald,
It spreads thick-flowering or in wildness springs
Short-stemmed upon the naked downs, to yield
A richer store of honey than the Rose,
The Pink, the Honeysuckle. Thence there flows
Syrup of clearest amber, redolent
Of every flowery scent
That the warm wind upgathers as he goes.
In mid-July be ready for the noise
Of million bees in old Lime-avenues,
As though hot noon had found a droning voice
To ease her soul. Here for those busy crews
Green leaves and pale-stemmed clusters of green flowers
Build heavy-perfumed, cool, green-twilight bowers
Whence, load by load, through the long summer days
They fill their glassy cells
With dark green honey, clear as chrysoprase,
Which housewives shun; but the bee-master tells
This brand is more delicious than all else.
In August-time, if moors are near at hand,
Be wise and in the evening twilight load
Your hives upon a cart, and take the road
By night; that, ere the early dawn shall spring
And all the hills turn rosy with the Ling,
Each waking hive may stand
Established in its new-appointed land
Without harm taken, and the earliest flights
Set out at once to loot the heathery heights.
That vintage of the heather yields so dense
And glutinous a syrup that it foils
Him who would spare the comb and drain from thence
Its dark, full-flavoured spoils:
For he must squeeze to wreck the beautiful
Frail edifice. Not otherwise he sacks
Those many-chambered palaces of wax.
Then let a choice of every kind be made
And, labelled, set upon your storehouse racks,—
Of Hawthorn-honey that of almond smacks;
The luscious Lime-tree-honey, green as jade;
Pale Willow-honey, hived by the first rover;
That delicate honey culled
From Apple-blossom, that of the sunlight tastes,
And sunlight-coloured honey of the Clover.
Then, when the late year wastes,
When night falls early and the noon is dulled
And the last warm days are over,
Unlock the store and to your table bring
Essence of every blossom of the spring.
And if, when wind has never ceased to blow
All night, you wake to roofs and trees becalmed
In level wastes of snow,
Bring out the Lime-tree-honey, the embalmed
Soul of a lost July, or Heather-spiced
Brown-gleaming comb wherein sleeps crystallized
All the hot perfume of the heathery slope.
And, tasting and remembering, live in hope.
Spanish Vintage
Now that the tropic August days are ended
Come Bacchus and Silenus great of girth
And Autumn with her kindly witchcraft blended
Of suns and showers and the dark creative earth,
To stain the swelling grape-skins and to muster
The flavorous juice in every ripening cluster
Where, over all the southern slopes extended,
The laden vineyards wait the vintage-birth.
So in the golden-hued September weather
The master of the vineyard and his men
Bearing small wicker baskets pace together
Down the leaf-shadowed alleys, pausing when
Among the vines thick-leaved and deeply-rooted
They chance upon those bunches heaviest-fruited
And fullest-ripened: these alone they gather
And softly in the baskets lay; and then
Convey them to a sunny spot, made ready
With little mats of woven grass; for here
They must be laid awhile beneath the steady
Streams of the sunshine. But when night draws near,
With other mats they shield them, nor uncover
Till all the dark and dewy hours are over:
So for three days, till the juice turns sweet and heady
From four and twenty hours of sun and air.
Now to the winep
ress. Now the mounded treasure
Load upon load into the trough is tossed,
But never heaped above the proper measure
Lest something of the scented juice be lost
When, stripped to the thighs, the peasants take their station
And tread the grape to rich annihilation,
While all the rest stand round and laugh with pleasure
To see the foam seethe up as keen as frost.
But when above that pool of bubbling juices
Not one whole cluster shows, with wine-stained legs
Then men step forth, and some unstop the sluices
Which soon, close-packed, the rocking mule-cart beareth
Two dusty miles away to white-walled Jerez
Where the great vats, set for their ancient uses,
Sweetened and scoured of former lees and dregs,
Wait in the dark bodega. There unloaded,
The kegs are heaved and emptied one by one
Into the portly vats. So having stowed it
They leave the must to work. Now has begun
That early fermentation musky-scented
And softly-hissing, called “the tumultuous,” ended
After a few brief days, which but foreboded
That slower, stealthier change whose stages run
Beyond Christ’s Birthday to the old year’s ending
And on into the New Year till the first
Or second month, while the slow dregs descending
Leave the wine clear, all cloudy films dispersed.
Thereafter, from its lees drawn off, enduring
Through the long months it waits the slow maturing
Laid up in other vats, till ripe for blending
With older wine, in whose soft flame immersed,
It grows to subtler essence. And that older
Is mixed with older yet, from every vat
A little drawn, till Time, the patient moulder
Of pure perfection, who on Ararat
Watered the vine of Noah, slowly fashion
The pure Solera, daughter of the passion
Of Earth and Sun, and make the gold one golder,
The ripe one riper than that old king who sat
On Israel’s ivory throne, and every nation
Drew near to taste his wisdom. For in wine
Lie wisdom and that fair illumination
That charms the brain to fancies half divine.
Then drink! For, kindling in our crystal rummers,
Wakes the bright Phœnix of a thousand summers
And the great gods stand again, each in his station,
With garlands crowned of the immortal vine.
Summer in Winter
Winter lies on the fields so cold and grey
That morning and noon are dim as the fall of day.
Colour is gone from the world, and the rustle of leaves,
And the song of the birds; but under the loaded eaves
Icicles drip and drip to the ground below,
Melting a line of holes in the floor of snow.
Shut out this desolation. Here indoors
Are bright, warm rooms. The fire of pine-logs roars:
In polished brass and blushing mirror flares
The hearth’s red gleam. Long sofas, deep soft chairs,
And books are here. Let snow mount to the sill,
Here we have made a summer no frost can kill.
And here, conserved in jars, is the wealth of June,—
Raspberry, strawberry, waiting the silver spoon;
Jelly of autumn brambles, gleaming pots
Of plums, greengages, tawny apricots
Steeped in clear syrups, and the crystal spoil
Of bees, the vintage of a five-months’ toil.
But, more than this, in cellared gloom are laid
Other and older vintages that swayed
In purple clusters on Burgundian plains,
On Lusitanian mountain-slopes or Spain’s
Swart vineyards, in whose generous nectar runs
The prisoned soul of long-forgotten suns.
Unlock the door, then; down the dark stone stair
Grope in the taper’s wavering light to where
The cobwebbed bottle slumbers; gently lift—
Gently as new-born babe—lest you should shift
The cloudy sediment; then thief-like slink
Upstairs again and in the pantry sink
Knock off the sealing-wax, then draw with care,
Decant, and set in a warm room to air.
Then shall we sit and sip in candle light
And let the storm roar out its heart all night.
Rhapsody on a Pink-Iced Cake
To Gertrude Freeman
When Earth arose out of the Flood
And sang before the throne of God,
So shone on Ararat sublime,
Bright in the second dawn of Time,
The rosy Ark, its roofing laid
With beam of ruby, tile of jade,
And the bright bulwarks crusted o’er
With silver limpets from the floor
Of the drowned Earth. So Solomon,
Dreaming towards evening alone,
In the clear kingdom of his brain
Wrought that first temple without stain,
Too pure for stone or the rough grain
Of cedar or the dross of gold.
Along the wide plains of his thought
Saw battles and long sieges fought
Round ramparts rosy even as these.
So soared above the glooming trees
That tower of laughter and of tears
Where Beauty slept a hundred years.
And, built of sweetness and pure light,
So love and hope and heart’s-delight
And all the lovely things of dream,
Hovering an instant on the stream
Of Man’s ambitious spirit, glow
And vanish like an April snow.
The Eve of the Fair
Green grows the grass in these well-watered meadows
For here there bubbles from a hundred springs
The bright Clitumnus under dappled shadows
Of slender poplars where the faint breeze sings
And the green-showering tresses of weeping willows;
And all the pool is floored with woven weed
And caverns lined with glimmering mossy pillows
And pale blue rocks. Those bubbling waters feed
Rich farms, half-hidden behind a feathery screen
Of silver olive-boughs and trailing vines
Heavy with clusters purple, red, and green,
Soon to be trodden to red and golden wines.
And bounding either edge of the green plain,
The violet mountains lift their peaceful crowns,
Soaring like waves crest above crest again,
Still peopled by remote and ancient towns,—
Lofty Spoleto with its rocky gorge
Spanned by the aqueduct, and many a keep,
Spello and Montefalco, towns that urge
Stone street and scowling palace up the steep
And set a crown of towers on many hills,
Leaping abrupt and stark against the sky
And turbid at noon and eve with clanging bells.
From these and all the villages that lie
Scattered upon the plain, the countryfolk
Are flocking towards Foligno for the fair,
Bringing their goods. With song and curse and joke
They swelter along in the dry and dusty glare.
All day along the parched and dazzling roads
That straggle to the town from every part,
Oxen and mules and horses draw their loads
In wain and barrow and brightly painted cart.
While in the town all day, alon
g the streets
And in that empty space within the walls
Edged with cool-shaded trees and long stone seats,
A crowd of busy folk are building stalls;
Till the place rings with hammering and knocking
And cracking whips and jangling harness-bells
And rumbling wheels of all the traffic flocking
In from the teeming plains and those blue hills.
Still with the growing crowd the din grows louder
With shouts of drivers, wagons turning, backing,
And stamping hooves that churn the dust to powder
And sweating men unloading and unpacking,
Spreading the wares in clusters on the grass
All duly planned like little towns with walls
And lanes and streets to let the buyers pass,
Or carefully disposed upon the stalls.
And carts and mules come pushing through the throng
Or scarlet wagon like a stranded hulk
That great white oxen slowly haul along
Heaving the yoke with all their noble bulk,
Patient, with branching horns and deep calm eyes
Like forest pools, and scarlet-tasselled brows.
Evening draws on; but ere the sunset dies
The bells in every tower and belfry rouse
A hum of clanging bronze that builds a dome
Of mellow noise above the din below,
So bright, it seems as if the shining foam
Of dust-motes and the golden evening glow
Were suddenly enchanted into sound.
But when both sound and light from the sky have faded
And colour has faded from all the hills around
And streets and squares are all grown cool and shaded,
Those weary folk make ready for the night.
Some with tarpaulin sheets build bivouacs
Or over the wide wagons stretch them tight
To form a hutch, or spread their rugs and sacks
Under the carts, while every tethered beast
With drooping head crops at the scanty grass.
Then, before rest, they spread the evening feast