Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE MAN WITH THE GREEN PATCH, by EDITH SITWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Look through those periwigged green trees Last Line: Murmuring softly, never die. | ||||||||
LOOK through those periwigged green trees At the tall house . . . impressions seize! Trees periwigged and snuffy; old Is silence, with its tales all told And Time is shrunken, bare and cold, And here the malefactor Death Snuffs out the candle with our breath. * * * * * The Admiral had soon returned From active service; "home to die," Said he, a patch upon one eye. The green shade of Death's own yew-tree, So sightless, seemed that shade to me. All day in the limp helpless breeze Beneath the empty platform trees He sits with Brobdignagian asses Talking while the lame time passes, -- And each voice seemed the hard trombone Of harsh seas (blue and white dead bone). He speaks of friendships long ago With fairy aristocracies Who dream in murmurous palaces Haunted by gold eves, -- Chinese, And apes superior to man, Whose life outlives our mortal span, And all the strange inhabitants Of gardens under leaf-like seas, And the Admiral Yang among his plants Asking his god what no one grants When the gold rain begins to fall. But that green shade of Death's yew-tree, His patch, will never let him see The real world terrible and old Where seraphs in the mart are sold And fires from Bedlam's madness flare Like blue palm-leaves in desert air; The prisons where the maimed men pined Because their mothers bore them blind, -- Starved men so thin they seem to be The shadow of that awful Tree Cast down on us from Calvary. Beside the sea, blue-white harsh bone Hard as a ship's deck, while the lone Great sun with flames like leaves flares slow In an empty sky like the great Mikado, The Admiral is lulling these Unreal owlish people there Who though asleep, still sit and stare, Their dullard faces planet-round Fringed all leafily with sound Growth of their long heritage Beasthood, but grown tame with age. The admiral is such a bore Sleep murmurs, flows in the heart's core. Gold as a planet system, rain Falls in the gardens once again. The cook as red as an aubergine Sleeps in her kitchen, fall'n between Two clear-scrubbed wooden kitchen tables Where creep the growing vegetables . . . Crowned are they, and rough and bold. . . . The ass-hide grass grows over her ears And Midas Silence turns to gold Each little sound she never hears. The rain is gold as a planet system Or the silent gardens of the Khan, And all the world is changed to a green Growing world to be touched and seen, And the folk in the caves of far Japan Hear the triumphant growing sound And say, "Are the gold melon flowers we see, The sunrise sound, young pleasure isles, The soft wind from an incense tree, Or the gold Mikado's shadowy smiles?" But the ancient Admiral was loath To see or hear or dream of growth. . . . For his existence was not life But a tired stranger's conversations (Modulated dull gradations) With Life, that sleepy old housewife. And all night long he lies and cowers . . . Pink moonlight turns to feathered flowers, And sleep should be a coral cave Haunted by a siren wave. Yet moonlight lies as harsh as brine Noah's Flood on a disused saltmine; Cold airs prick like grass or the sword Of zanies . . . he falls overboard Into that briny Noah's Flood The moonlight, drowning bestial blood. His house is haunted by the shade Of Death, -- no greenness in earth laid . . . But a monstrous difference agape Between the nations of the Dead, A ghost that ne'er took human shape But has a swinish pig-tailed head Crowned with trembling ghostly flowers. . . It seems a candle guttered down In a green deserted town. It can alter at its will -- Bat-like to the window-sill It will cling, with squeaking shrill Miming Triviality. Or, shapeless now as a black sea, Clattering a hellish hoof With the other dragging after, (Elephantine, muffled o'er) . . . Oh, that tread breaks down the floor! And we shall hear its numbing speech -- A roar that will break down the world, A speech unknown of the race of Man. The Admiral hears through his door That shape flow down the corridor . . . He trembles when the ghost wind comes . . . Outside, among the tallest trees The grey flowers hang Like a snipe's plumes, clang In the wrinkled and the withered breeze. Come softly and we will look through The windows from this avenue . . . For there, my youth passed like a sleep, Yet in my heart, still murmuring deep, The small green airs from Eternity Murmuring softly, never die. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BUCOLIC COMEDY: EARLY SPRING by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: FLEECING TIME by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: FOX TROT by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: SERENADE by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: SPINNING SONG by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: SPRING by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: THE BEAR by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: THE DOLL by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: THE FOX; FOR ANN PEARN by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: WHY by EDITH SITWELL ELEGY: THE GHOST WHOSE LIPS WERE WARM; FOR GEOFFREY GORER by EDITH SITWELL |
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