Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SHORE PICNIC, by JOHN FREEMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SHORE PICNIC, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The whole vast shelving shore serves for our / platter
Last Line: Green-furred and root enfolding.
Subject(s): Picnics; Seashore; Barbecues; Beach; Coast; Shore


THE whole vast shelving shore serves for our platter,
Tilted a little—but 'tis no great matter.
There we can sit like moths clinging to the rim,
While the children, butterfly-like, pursue their whim
Prancing and dancing hither-thither as though they were mad,
So that quiet, if it were wanted, is not to be had.
Ten yards away a rock crouches in a pool
Of weeds and water and weedy shadows full;
And in the rock another small pool hides
Infinite deeps, and no beam-finger slides
In and out fish-like as the sun makes play.
Here waiting, idly hungry, apeing gay,
We silly elders toss by turn small pebbles,
Breaking the pool's deep stillness, till the trebles
Of mocking children tease our hands to hold;
And in a moment the pool is still, dark, old.

No gong summons us, no butler bends, no grimy
Fingers of waiter serve us messes slimy.
We stand, loll, lie; wives two, husbands two, and
Mixed children and a friend or two at hand,
And two by two we eat and drink and talk,
Manners forgot, so that we rise and walk,
Return, nibble like rabbits, gobble like turkeys,
Arrogant as Attila, greedy as Emperor Xerxes,
Languid our women as Helen when Alexander
Looked unawares and deemed her the world's wonder.
The things we eat are things we never eat
In home's satiety, but the air gives a heat
To appetite;—brown thick crusts daubed with butter,
Lettuce washed in the endless watery mutter
Splashing down and down from height to lesser height;
Eggs, cheese, and festal shrimps, and richly dight
Jars of strange meats; then raspberries and plums,
And wasps more plenteous; and syrupy gums
And sweets of various wrapping (but like taste),
And tea so long preparing, poured in haste,
Gulped quickly or sipped loudly and drained by
Throats that had else drunk half a barrel dry,
And thirsted still.

Then for a while outstretching
Lazily luxurious, our thoughts wander, fetching
Ancestral stories, fading memories
And scandals half forgot, the curious lees
Of gossip and old fables idly stirred,
Fable by fable, all lightly told and heard;
For idle thoughts are fruitful, too, and yield
An hundredfold, like flowers in a wastefield.

We rise and walk again. Lydgate's editor
Tall, spar-like, newly home-come, stooping for
Lovely anemones purpling each rock pool;
Shelley's transcriber, smiling wise, brimful
Of stories as the sea is full of seas;
And one that talks of crime and mysteries,
Verse, and the Austenian perfect style.
We saunter eastward for a slow half-mile,
And saunter westward, and returning find
Those youngers tossing between wave and wind,
Light as the light and shining in the sun,
Then plunging in the broken waves that run
Skirting the smooth reef. Their bold colours shake
Like sinking flags of ships that the waves break
Overwhelming; their mingled voices ripple
Quicker than starlings in that thrilling treble.
They are but birds—but now, alack, they sink
Back into human and anon they prink
Their dainties in a mirror not the sea's,
Then lie fatigued and utterly at ease,
Retelling the morning's canter and expecting
To-morrow's, and all lesser joys rejecting;
Prone and content at last between the falling
Cliff water and the sea's near water brawling.

And unregarded all the crescent bay
Zones the bare umbered cliffs and paling gray,
And angular steep cleavings, shadow-holding,
Green-furred and root enfolding.





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