My Virtual Reading Room

What the Orderly Dog Saw

A Winter Landscape
To Mrs. Percy Jackson

I
The seven white peacocks against the castle wall
In the high trees and the dusk are like tapestry;
The sky being orange, the high wall a purple barrier,
The canal dead silver in the dusk:
And you are far away.

Yet I see infinite miles of mountains,
Little lights shining in rows in the dark of them—
Infinite miles of marshes;
Thin wisps of mist, shimmering like blue webs
Over the dusk of them.

Great curves and horns of sea,
And dusk and dusk, and the little village;
And you, sitting in the firelight.

II
Around me are the two hundred and forty men of B Company,
Mud-colored;
Going about their avocations,
Resting between their practice of the art
Of killing men;
As I too rest between my practice
Of the art of killing men.
Their pipes glow over the mud and their mud-color, moving like fireflies beneath the trees—
I too being mud-colored—
Beneath the trees and the peacocks.
When they come up to me in the dusk
They start, stiffen and salute, almost invisibly.
And the forty-two prisoners from the battalion guard-room
Crouch over the tea-cans in the shadow of the wall.
And the bread hunks glimmer, beneath the peacocks—
And you are far away.

III
Presently I shall go in.
I shall write down the names of the forty-two
Prisoners in the battalion guard-room
On fair white foolscap:
Their names, rank and regimental numbers;
Corps, Companies, Punishments and Offences,
Remarks, and By whom confined.
Yet in spite of all I shall see only
The infinite miles of dark mountain,
The infinite miles of dark marshland,
Great curves and horns of sea,
The little village;
And you,
Sitting in the firelight.

By Ford Madox Hueffer


The Silver Music

In Chepstow stands a castle—
My love and I went there.
The foxgloves on the wall all heard
Her footsteps on the stair.

The sun was high in heaven,
And the perfume in the air
Came from purple cat’s-valerian …
But her footsteps on the stair
Made a sound like silver music
Through the perfume in the air.

Oh I’m weary for the castle,
And I’m weary for the Wye;
And the flowered walls are purple,
And the purple walls are high,
And above the cat’s-valerian
The foxgloves brush the sky.
But I must plod along the road
That leads to Germany.

And another soldier fellow
Shall come courting of my dear;
And it’s I shall not be with her
With my lips beside her ear.
For it’s he shall walk beside her
In the perfume of the air
To the silver, silver music
Of her footstep on the stair.

By Ford Madox Hueffer

These poems were kindly shared by duathir--many thanks!