Georgian Poetry 1913-15 Part 38

Sollers:

O, close, I know, and viciously heading down.

Vine:

She was so silver! and the sun had left A kind of tawny red, a dust of fine Thin light upon the blue where she was lying,-- Just a curled paring of the moon, amid The faint grey cloud that set the gleaming wheel Around the tilted slip of s.h.i.+ning silver.

O it did seem to me so safe and homely, The moon quietly going about the earth; It's a rare place we have to live in, here; And life is such a comfortable thing-- And what's the sense of it all? Naught but to make Cruel as may be the slaughtering of it.

[He breaks down again.]

Sollers:

It heats my mind!

[He begins to walk up and down desperately.]

Merrick:

'Twas bound to come sometime, Bound to come, I suppose. 'Tis a poor thing For us, to fall plumb in the chance of it; But, now or another time, 'twas bound to be.-- I have been thinking back. When I was a lad I was delighted with my life: there seemed Naught but things to enjoy. Say we were bathing: There'ld be the cool smell of the water, and cool The splas.h.i.+ng under the trees: but I did loathe The sinking mud slithering round my feet, And I did love to loathe it so! And then We'ld troop to kill a wasp's nest; and for sure I would be stung; and if I liked the dusk And singing and the game of it all, I loved The smart of the stings, and fleeing the buzzing furies.

And sometimes I'ld be looking at myself Making so much of everything; there'ld seem A part of me speaking about myself: 'You know, this is much more than being happy.

'Tis hunger of some power in you, that lives On your heart's welcome for all sorts of luck, But always looks beyond you for its meaning.'

And that's the way the world's kept going on, I believe now. Misery and delight Have both had liking welcome from it, both Have made the world keen to be glad and sorry.

For why? It felt the living power thrive The more it made everything, good and bad, Its own belonging, forged to its own affair,-- The living power that would do wonders some day.

I don't know if you take me?

Sollers:

I do, fine; I've felt the very thought go through my mind When I was at my wains; though 'twas a thing Of such a flight I could not read its colour.-- Why was I like a man sworn to a thing Working to have my wains in every curve, Ay, every tenon, right and as they should be?

Not for myself, not even for those wains: But to keep in me living at its best The skill that must go forward and shape the world, Helping it on to make some masterpiece.

Merrick:

And never was there aught to come of it!

The world was always looking to use its life In some great handsome way at last. And now-- We are just fooled. There never was any good In the world going on or being at all.

The fine things life has plotted to do are worth A rotten toadstool kickt to flying bits.

End of the World? Ay, and the end of a joke.

Vine:

Well, Huff's the man for this turn.

Merrick:

Ay, the good man!

He could but grunt when times were pleasant; now There's misery enough to make him trumpet.

And yet, by G.o.d, he shan't come blowing his horn Over my misery!

We are just fooled, did I say?--We fooled ourselves, Looking for worth in what was still to come; And now there's a stop to our innings. Well, that's fair: I've been a living man, and might have been Nothing at all! I've had the world about me, And felt it as my own concern. What else Should I be crying for? I've had my turn.

The world may be for the sake of naught at last, But it has been for my sake: I've had that.

[He sits again, and broods.]

Sollers:

I can't stay here. I must be where my sight May silence with its business all my thinking-- Though it will be the star plunged down so close It puffs its flaming vengeance in my face.

[He goes.]

Vine:

I wish there were someone who had done me wrong, Like Huff with his wife and Shale; I wish there were Somebody I would like to see go crazed With staring fright. I'ld have my pleasure then Of living on into the End of the World.

But there is no one at all for me, no one Now my poor wife is gone.

Merrick:

Why, what did she To harm you?

Vine:

Didn't she marry me?--It's true She made it come all right. She died at last.

Besides, it would be wasting wishes on her, To be in hopes of her weeping at this.

She'ld have her hands on her hips and her tongue jumping As nimble as a stoat, delighting round The way the world's to be terrible and tormented.-- Ay, but I'll have a thing to tell her now When she begins to ask the news! I'll say 'You've misst such a show as never was nor will be, A roaring great affair of death and ruin; And I was there--the world smasht to sparkles!'

O, I can see her vext at that!

[MERRICK has been sunk in thought during this, but VINE seems to brighten at his notion, and speaks quite cheerfully to HUFF, who now comes in, looking mopish, and sits down.]

Vine:

We've all been envying you, Huff. You're well off, You with your goodness and your enemies Showing you how to relish it with their terror.

When do you mean the gibing is to start?