Osbert Sitwell

“ The chatter of the daylight grows
As I look upon the market-place,
Where there is a droning of bag-pipes,
And the hard, wooden music of the hills;
The housewife has left her cottage in the forest,
Driving here through the early tracks of the sun.
The beggars are already at their posts,
Their dry flesh peeps through their garments.
Their old ritual whining
Causes no show of pity.
Why should the hucksters, the busy people notice?
God himself has stood here, out at elbows,
Waiting patiently in the market-place,
While they chatter in gay booths. ”

“ The sound of sobs at night, the fear of laughter;
The misty terror lurking in a wood
Which night has wrapped in her soft robe of sighs.
The horror that is felt where man is not,
In lonely lands all dotted with squat trees
That seem to move in the grey twilight breeze
—Or sit and watch you like malicious cripples,
Intent on every movement, every thought—
Where stones, like evil fungi, raise their bulk
Cover'd with lichen older than the hills—
A warning for the ages yet to come;
Stones that have seen the sun, and moon, and stars,
Deflect their course for very weariness. ”

“ Still you encourage those whom you can hire
To fix on canvas, for the future race
Of War-horses to simper at—admire,
The painted image of your painted face.
And any artist, author, or musician,
—If second-rate—is useful as a bait
To fish for guests—remember words like "Titian"
"—Shakespeare" "—Mozart," let go—and trust to Fate
To pull you through—avoid ideas—they're common
And might crack through the varnish of your smile,
Impinge upon your worship of God Mammon
Filling your soul with pity, and things vile. ”

“ And clings like ivy to the listening walls.
The flickering light flares up—then gutters out.
The shadows seem to shiver and expand
To active, evil things that breathe and live.
But now they whirl and dance in ecstasy.
The highest moment of their mass is near.
We only feel the swaying of the shades,
—Rhythm of wicked music that escapes
Our consciousness, tho' we have known it long—
The music of the evil things of Night
Scarcely remembered from some dim, vast world—
The things that haunted us when we were young
And nearer to our past realities. ”

“ YOUTH AT THE PROW, AND PLEASURE AT THE HELM
Battista Sforza, led by unicorns,
Triumphant, ever set in amber light
By Piero, yet keeps her course; adorns
Her empty palace, still, that floating height
Where Raphael was born—Isotta's name,
Near-by, still, rose-like, clambers through the gloom
Of Malatesta's temple, built to fame
His pagan love, half pleasure-house, half tomb.
Then, even tyrants drunk with blood and pride,
And ever vaunting poison-cup and knife,
No less than angels beauty made; they died,
But Art, their pleasure, still extols their life. ”

“ And all things men have loved and feared
Are mirror'd in each sound.
SONG
Our hidden voices, wreathed with love's soft flowers,
Wind-toss'd thro' valleys, tremble across seas
To turbann'd cities; touch tall lonely towers,
Call to you thro' the sky, the wind, the trees.
Misted and golden as the hanging moon,
That like a summer fruit floats from the sky,
Thrills out our distant age-enchanted tune,
—Nor will it let you pass our beauty by. ”

“ Though the fox gnawed his entrails, would not cry;
These never wince, nor hurl the mirror at Truth,
Though Old Age disembowel them secretly.
Throughout the day, blue shadows in the valley
Hover, crouch down, till dusk will let them rend
The last light on the hills; so wrinkles rally
To overwhelm them at their sudden end—
For Death strikes at the Old as well as Young,
And these—and these—may die at balls or races,
Or living death may make them loll the tongue,
Twitching in doll-like, hideous grimaces. ”

“ Where the cold lies close to the window-pane,
Where the grass grows its little blades of steel
And the wind is armed with seven whips.
VI
Happy is Orpheus as he plays,
The dumb beasts listen quietly,
The music strokes their downy ears,
Melts the fierce fire within.
Only with music can you tame the beasts,
Break them of their grizzly feasts;
Only with music can you open eyes to wonder.
But if they will not hear?
The people have lost faith in music,
Few are there to call, and none to answer. ”

“ Loving the sea of faces, eyes with tears,
And gaping mouths wide open—loosely hung;
The acrid, opalescent haze of smoke,
Hanging above the auditorium.
And over it the crowded galleries
That float far up, like painted prows of ships—
All overweighted and alive with men.
I loved the limelight, hard and white and strong,
The throbbing music and the theatre's scent,
That artificial, paper, printed scent
That sweeps across the footlights to the stalls. ”

“ Small winds brush past against our lips and eyes,
Caress them like a laughing summer rose,
And rainbow moths flit by, in circling flight.
A harp sobs out its crystal syruppings;
Faintly it sounds, as the poor petal-wings,
Fragile yet radiant, of a butterfly
Beating against the barriers of night.
Then from the Ocean came the Syren song,
Heavy with perfume, yet faint as a sigh,
Kissing our minds, and changing right from wrong;
Chaining our limbs; making our bodies seem
Inert and spellbound, dead as in a dream. ”

“ Fall through tropic din with a clatter of light.
The crooked dwarf now ripples the strings of a mandoline,
His floating voice has wings that brush us like a butterfly;
Music fills the mountains
With a riot of fountains
That spray back on the hot plain like a waterfall.
Smaller grow the dwarfs, singing "I'll bring shoes of satin,"
Smaller they grow, fade to golden motes, then die. ”

“ The din grows greater from the universe:
There rises up the smell of fire and iron,—
Not dreary like the smell of burnt-out things,
But like the smell of some gigantic forge—
Cheerful, of good intent, and full of life.
Now all the joyous cries of sea and earth,
The universal harmonies of birth,
Rise up to haunt the slumber of their God.
THE END
Round the great ruins crawl those things of slime
Green ruins lichenous and scarred by moss—
An evil lichen that proclaims world doom,
Like blood dried brown upon a dead man's face. ”

“ At the dancing dwarfs in the golden plain,
Till the bamboos sing as the dwarfs dance by,
Kicking their feet at a jagged sky,
That torn by leaves and gashed by hills
Rocks to the rhythm the hot sun shrills;
The bubble sun stretches shadows that pass
To noiseless jumping-jacks of glass,
So long and thin, so silent and opaque,
That the lions shake their orange manes, and quake;
And a shadow that leaps over Popacatapetl
Terrifies the tigers as they settle
Cat-like limbs, cut with golden bars,
Under bowers of flowers that shimmer like stars. ”

“ But the British bourgeoisie has triumphed.
Mr. Kinfoot is bald
And talks
In front of the fireplace
With his head on one side,
And his right hand
In his pocket.
The joy of catching tame elephants,
And finding them to be white ones,
Still gleams from the jungle-eyes
Of Mrs. Kinfoot,
But her mind is no jungle
Of Ethiopia,
But a sound British meadow.
Listen then to the gospel of Mrs. Kinfoot:
"The world was made for the British bourgeoisie,
They are its Swiss Family Robinson;
The world is not what it was. ”

“ Till the fruit rushes down like a comet, whose tail
Thrashes the night with its golden flail,
The fruit hisses down with a plump from its tree
Like the singing of a rainbow as it dips into the sea. ”

“ Long writhing bodies fall and twist and rise,
And one can hear them playing in the mud.
Upon the ruined walls there gleam and shine
The track of those grey vast monstrosities—
As some gigantic snail had crawled along.
All round the shining bushes waver lines
Suggesting shadows, slight and grey, but full
Of that which makes one nigh to dead with fear.
Watch how those awful shadows culminate
And dance in one long wish to hurt the world.
A world that now is past all agony!
FOUNTAINS
"The graven fountain-masks suffer and weep. ”

“ On sounds forgotten and forbidden.
—For muttering of muted bell
Swells music from the nightingales
Whose crystal gurglings excel
The singing streams that formed these vales
So fruitfully luxuriant still
To eyes closed like a curving sword
—Though now no sound save droning thrill
Of shifting sand is ever heard.
Yet of an influence here felt
Tradition tells the Bedouin.
Into grey sand the mirages melt.
Spell the Arab's road to ruin.
On through the dusk he hears his name
Called, then repeated—seek he must
That voice which calls, like wealth or fame
Only to lead from dust to dust ”

“ Thrills through you, shaking, fainting, with delight;
Where sway tall luminous trees
Wind-swept in one vast flashing harmony,
That like a wave
Splashes its seething sound
And then envelops you.
We have strayed to other places,
Courts of fear,
That stretch like echoes through the endless dusk
Drenched with dead memories;
Like musk
They cling about you
In a heavy cloud.
Each shadow-sound we hear
Clutches the heart.
With fevered hands we tear
The terror-pulsing walls
—Fight our way out
—Out
Into other Courts
As vague and full of fear. ”

“ Aspire to feed the lions, yet unlike Daniel,
Once there insist on resting in their den,
To treat them as one would a King Charles Spaniel
With frowns—with bones and biscuits, now and then?
For Mrs. Freudenthal is weary of
Her auction-bridge and hissing hotel-friend,
Seeks spheres where Novelist and Romanoff
Eat with Artistic Ladies without end.
Money is power—a golden pedestal
Atones for beauty that is long, long dead—
As Orpheus, Mrs. Kinfoot has enchanted all,
The lions who have not thundered—and then fled. ”

“ Of things we cannot tell—
Of things the sea could tell.
No wisp of wind, no watery sound
Reached us; as if high on the ground
We stayed. A sense of fever fell
Upon each mind,
Each soul and mind.
Until our eyes, that ever sought
The cloying empty darkness, find
Another shape—or is it wrought
Of terror?—on the deep
The endless deep.
All dark it lay. No light shone out ”

“ The hurrying throng of homeward-going men,
The cries of children, colour of the streets,
Their whistling and their shouting and their joy,
The lights, the trees, the fanes and towers of churches,
Thanksgiving for the sun, the moon, the earth,
The labour, love, and laughter of our lives.
He thinks they mock his age with ribaldry. ”

“ In the sound was mirrored
The panic seizures of the night,
—The fear of things that walk in darkness.
The drums were painted
In hot colours
That, even through the dusk,
Glowed torture and writhing torment. ”

“ And wicked as the Prince of Evil Things.
Faintly his glowing presence is revealed to us
Amid the chorus of his satellites.
The consummation of our awful hopes.
PIERROT AT THE WAR
The leaden years have dragged themselves away;
The blossoms of the world lie all dash'd down
And flattened by the hurricane of death:
The roses fallen, and their fragrant breath
Has passed beyond our senses—and we drown
Our tragic thoughts: confine them to the day.
Pierrot was happy here two years ago,
Singing through all the summer-scented hours,
Dancing throughout the warm moon-haunted night. ”

“ While birds that flaunt their pinions like pennons
Shriek from their trees of oranges and lemons,
And the scent rises up in a cloud, to make
The hairy, swinging monkeys feel so weak
That they each throw down a bitten coconut or mango.
* * * * *
Up flames a flamingo over the fandango,
Glowing like a fire, and gleaming like a ruby.
From Guadalajara to Guadalupe
It flies—in flying drops a feather
... And the snatching dwarfs stop dancing—and fight together. ”

“ The World is still, until a breeze sets free
Green leaves, with plucking sound of mandoline.
Convulsed the monkey capers—seems to see
The wind, that wingéd God and Harlequin.
Who, flying down, sounds waters' silver strings
And brings soft music from far trembling towers,
Snatches a bird-bright feather for his wings
And flickers light on many secret flowers.
ENGLISH GOTHIC
Above the valley floats a fleet
Of white, small clouds. Like castanets
The corn-crakes clack; down in the street
Old ladies air their canine pets. ”