Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OASIS (TO WILLIAM AND CONSTANCE LLOYD), by AUSTIN PHILIPS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OASIS (TO WILLIAM AND CONSTANCE LLOYD), by                    
First Line: A tiny town, high-huddled o'er the sea
Last Line: Where life, in fine, was good—and talk and laughter glad!
Subject(s): Home; Hospitality; Pleasure


A TINY town, high-huddled o'er the sea,
A little house, large hospitality,
A pleasant room, rose-curtained, where there stood
Piano and chairs of polished satin-wood,
Where silver sparkled, and before whose fire
Two drowsy dachshunds watched the flames aspire:
Much food, much wine, much music, and much jest,
To give the morrow and its tasks more zest,
Kindness and consolation for the sad ...
Where life, in fine, was good—and talk and laughter glad.

Early one mid-March morn,
Into the desolate dawn,
As wild Spring winds—Heaven's handmaids—swept the stars,
One who at cost of cruel wounds and scars
Had burst his prisoner's chain,
A Pyrrhic victor, stepped,
Eager, alone, forlorn,
Out of that sleepy, sauntering Branch-Line train,
Within the Haven of Peace
He held that artist-haunted, pre-War place, St. Ives:
Not by the Cornish sea
To live at Capuan ease,
But stubborn to regain
Force, and fight on amain,
Conscious that spiritual death
Comes by the cankering breath
Of dullard repetition ... terribly aware
That man was born to dare,
That he who faints and flies
Odiously ossifies ...
That the one road which leads to widening life
Is rough with effort, and paved with never-ending strife.
In that grey Spartan studio that hung
High o'er Porthmeor's broad and moon-blanch'd beach,
Upon which the Atlantic flung
Fierce waves which sought to breach
The embastioned walls below ...
He who but now had battled with baffling foe
Rested a space, was still,
Communed with heart, soul, will:
Read, ravenous-wise, to reach
Knowledge by birthright his,
But in his boyhood's hours so foully robbed
By that unfeeling family who fobbed
Upon him vulgar tastes, unworthy aims ...
Thus, studying, sought to shed
Ideas outworn and dead,
To cast his minor Civil Servant's slough,
And there, in solitude and spiritual storm and stress,
Unhelped—except by man's great helper, Loneliness—
Ardent, ambition-whipped,
Onward did pant and press,
Until to him, equipped
After long years, there richly ripening came
Harvest of fresh achievement ... worthier of that name.
Whereon, pursued, possest
By that divine unrest
Which drives into new paths the advancing man,
Because within his breast
There flamed reviving zest
To make fresh human contacts for a span,
Humble to seek and know,
He turned himself to go
Among the local artists and their close community,
And, once admitted to that curious Colony,
Wandered from studio
To studio: fain would rub
Shoulders with one and all ... so joined their little Club,
Trusting to give good friendship; thus, in turn,
The esoterics of the Painter's trade to learn.
But to his stark amaze,
And all too soon, he saw
That no diviner ways
Informed the lives of this supposed élite,
Which feigned to have found retreat
From worldly wants and Earth's imperious claims,
Pursuing loftier aims:
Since crevice, crack and flaw
Insistently appeared,
And foul pretension leered
In almost every studio. Some with greedy maw
Lived but for dross; while certain sought to gain
Repute by artifice, evasion, trick.
Others but used the Painter's name as cloak
For climbing socially where else in vain
They had sought to be admitted. Thunder-stroke
Staggered me while I sat
Within that one-roomed Club,
Which seemed to them the hub
Of the whole World—where all was one immense
And pitiful pretence:
Where in the afternoons card-games consumed the hour,
Where cheap flirtation ruled,
Or husbands were be-fooled,
Or where such talk beguiled
Grown men as intelligent child
Would scorn for empty, trivial. Worse than all,
Gossip and scandal reigned
Supreme, while the petty feigned
To despise the striving few that held aloof
From the main warp and woof
Of that contemptible chief coterie,
From which, in horror and hate,
I fled, to dwell apart
Behind my close-barred door,
And there to dedicate
Myself to Truth once more:
Feeling such fierce contempt
For those false priests of Art
As I had never dreamt
Of harbouring for Philistia's uncouth crew,
From whom, impelled by secret forces deep in me,
I had, despite of all discouragement, won free.

A tiny town, high-huddled o'er the sea,
A little house, large hospitality,
A pleasant room, rose-curtained, where there stood
Piano and chairs of polished satin-wood,
Where silver sparkled, and before whose fire
Two drowsy dachshunds watched the flames aspire:
Much food, much wine, much music and much jest,
To give the morrow and its tasks more zest:
Kindness and consolation for the sad ...
Where life, in fine, was good—and talk and laughter glad!

Then, in those desolate hours,
Upon me—thus bereaved
Of Friendship and deceived
Where most expecting—Friendship's fairest flowers
Budded and bloomed. By Destiny or Chance,
William and Constance came,
Undreamed of and unsought,
Into my life and brought
With them an infinite irradiance
Which sent it leaping forward like some flame.

Although that catiff crew
Of Painters, in their pride
And ignorance, had lied
Foully to me of you,
And spoken words of blackest bitterness,
Sneering at your so-called exclusiveness,
A truer, simpler pair
Ne'er trod this earth. You were
Yourselves—just that—and honest seekers, too ...
Thus you kept open house in those old days
For such few first-class men
As took their wandering ways
Through that preposterous but charming Cornish town,

Or who lived there, with the aim
Of earning future fame
Or adding to already-won renown ...
Who, when their daily tasks were over and done,
Liked to relax, to laugh and to discourse
Of things they knew or else aspired to learn:
Men who to some seemed stern,
But in those souls was sun,
Men who had striven and won,
Men who themselves were not afraid to sit
Carelessly in their chairs,
Casting aside all cares,
Men who loved wine, loved wit,
Men who could praise as well as criticise,
Men who at once were kindly, frank and wise,
Men in whose beings there burned some rich, essential force,
Men who themselves had struck and steered strong course,
Men by their host and hostess placed at happiest ease ...
And so, in turn, impelled to sparkle and to please.

Thus, then, the least among
Them all, as at some shrine
I sat enrapt, and hung
On lips more wise than mine:
Drinking in knowledge, seeking, storing up
Equipment from that glad communion-cup,
Which moved from mind to mind, from mouth to mouth,
Dispersing, as it passed, my intellectual drouth.

But, best of all, to me, was winter afternoon,
When that round table, which you loved to keep
In Summer, stood dissolved. When you and I,
William—we two, alone—
Either in weather beautiful and boon,
Or while across the choked, resentful sky
We watched the heavy-laden storm-clouds sweep,
Would take our care-free way,
Until the close of day,
Forth from that blessèd house hung high above the Bay.

Ah, me! How hard we talked
And argued! How we walked
In days when Cornwall still was Cornwall, and before
Penwith and Zennor Tor
Had come within the ken
Of hosts of hateful men
And women who, to-day, in Summer pour
To vulgarise and devastate the moor.
How heatedly each friend
Would fight for faiths, defend
His own ideals of Art,
Till it was time to part:
One going home to Constance and to tea
And pen and Poetry. ...
The other, turning into Painters' Yard,
Climbing the gangway to his studio,
There settling down to hard
Grinding of fiction, fashioned to go forth
To East, West, South and North,
Within the pages of that pre-War magazine,
The Strand of old-time: the 'Has-Been',
Once wont to take its way
Into each English home,
Or, passing overseas
As anodyne, heart's ease,
To bring to exiles in their hours of teen
A breath of England's beauty, exquisite and green.

Those days are dead and done,
Those happy, golden hours
Irrevocably gone,
And all that goodly Company dispersed:
But, though we dwell apart,
Sweet friends of my sad heart,
That heart is still imbued
With all the deep, unalterable gratitude
Felt in the past—kept glowing and alive
By kindness oft renewed. ...
Be sure that what you gave
With open, generous hand,
To me and many in that much-changed Cornish land,
Was no-wise given in vain,
But, rather, brought you increase, brought you gain
An hundredfold ... while that you flung abroad you have!

A tiny town, high-huddled o'er the sea,
A little house, large hospitality,
A pleasant room, rose-curtained, where there stood
Piano and chairs of polished satin-wood,
Where silver sparkled, and before whose fire
Two drowsy dachshunds watched the flames aspire;
Much food, much wine, much music and much jest,
To give the morrow and its tasks more zest,
Kindness and consolation for the sad ...
Where life, in fine, was good—and talk and laughter glad!





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