Read The Bird-Catcher Online

Authors: Martin Armstrong

The Bird-Catcher

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 winepress. 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

And catch the gurgling must in wooden kegs

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,

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