Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO ROBIN FEDDEN, by AUSTIN PHILIPS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO ROBIN FEDDEN, by                    
First Line: A huge, but unpaved, place. An ancient halles
Last Line: Katharine fedden called me true and worth-while friend.
Subject(s): Aging; Friendship; Youth


A HUGE, but un-paved, Place. An ancient Halles,
Wood-roof'd, stone-pillar'd. Low and flat-slabbed wall,
Encircling elm-girt, open market-close,
Wherein, at wedding hours, a blind man blows
His binious blithely; while, beside him set,
His blue-bloused confrère fingers flageolet,
Tap-tapping time, as girls in gay attire,
Costumed and coifed, consort with black-clad squire:
While houses, granite-gabled, moist and green
With age, hem in such comic-opera scene.
A convent, whence a Christ indulgent smiles,
A notary's sign, which threatens ... or beguiles.
Two inns. From one of these my terraced chair
Commands this unsophisticated square ...
What thoughts well up! What myriad memories please,
Or rack, me—back, once more, in Breton haunts of Peace!

Twelve years agone—
Almost twelve years this day!—
A mother brought her son
To see, and stay
A space at, this loved haunt wherein she had dwelled
Long since, and which inviolably held
Exquisite souvenirs of her life's lost June,
Creative, vital, boon:
Brought him on pilgrimage
Here, as one further stage
To-wards his true, his appointed heritage ...
Those four fair Sisters, stubborn, shy, demure,
Painting and Music, History, Literature.

Between us three—
Even at the initial hour—
A pleasant sympathy
Had birth, had bud, had flow'r:
I found in her a seeker after Truth,
I saw in you much of my own lost Youth:
So was it that, ere long, we came to walk,
Caught up in eager talk,
By Ellé's lovely stream,
With Poesy for theme. ...
I read your youngling verses. And we drove
Down to the sea, to rove
Concarneau's coast and cove,
Or wandered to and fro in Pont-Avèn,
That old-time haunt of happy Painter-men
And women: in its woods so sweetly set,
Once Horace Vachell's home ... where first your parents met.

And then, in after days,
I came to calm Chantemesle,
That cottage which surveys
The Seine, and Seine's sweet vale:
Where, in the 'Nineties', Conder painted fans,
Where you, fresh down from Cambridge, pondered plans
For future fame. Where, too,
I first found out how true,
How large, how wide in mind
Your mother was, how kind ...
Learned how she worked for wounded in the War,
Proved, and won recognition of, her worth,
Walked with the Great Ones of the Earth,
And how, with every social door ajar
To her, she hitched her wagon to a star ...
And slipped abroad, almost as one in stealth,
The gracious hand-maid of a gallant husband's health.

A huge, but un-paved, Place. An ancient Halles,
Wood-roof'd, stone-pillar'd. Low and flat-slabbed wall,
Encircling elm-girt, open market-close,
Wherein, at wedding-hours, a blind man blows
His binious blithely; while, beside him set,
His blue-bloused confrère fingers flageolet,
Tap-tapping time, as girls in gay attire,
Costumed and coifed, consort with black-clad squire:

While houses, granite-gabled, moist and green
With age, survey such comic-opera scene.
A convent, whence a Christ indulgent smiles,
A notary's sign, which threatens ... or beguiles.
Two inns. From one of these my terraced chair
Commands this unsophisticated square ...
What thoughts well up! What myriad memories please,
Or rack, me—back, once more, in Breton haunts of Peace!

Later, they two came down,
When Autumn's exquisite hour
Assumed this old-world town—
Tyrant to Summer's flow'r,
But tender as, with soft and baneful breath,
It made each leaf more beautiful in death—
You, their son, came as well,
But left, to go and dwell
Apart—as one firm to find
His best, in heart and mind ...
So was it that—your father set, serene,
Painting that long-loved, ten-times intimate scene—
Your lady-mother liked, each morn, to walk
Along the tree-fringed highway: there to talk
Of you, to tell her fear lest aught should baulk
Her son's fulfilment and his true success ...
'Twas then that I rightly learned her spiritual spaciousness.

It followed thus, as Day
Follows the Night, that I—
When I found Fate betray
Me, once more ruthlessly—
Should take my troubles to her in my grief,
Hear her brave words bring comfort and relief;
Go, strengthened, heartened, Home,
To England, and so come
Down to the pleasant pales
Of Devon. In dear dales
Swift to renew myself and once more strive,
(Since he who is not striving does not live!)
There, with the old intensity, to give
Creative tasks my all ... while in my ear
Her voice rang clarion and crisp and clear ...
"Forget your blood-relations. You are best
Without them. Work will heal your griefs. Ignore the rest!"

Robin, it was my hope,
If, ere my passing-bell,
'Neath happier horoscope
I drew, at last, to dwell ...
If, in that other Haunt of Ancient Peace—
At last—I earned elected hours of Ease,
That she, your mother, would come
To grace my Haven, on some
Shining and Summer's day,
When we could take our way
Across the pleasant paths and shaven sward,
And, in old age, put out of mind the hard,
Harsh Battle of Life, and turn our thoughts to-ward
Those hours wherein we trod that Breton road,
Or climbed the Chantemesle cave-side, to unload
Troubles in turn ... grateful and glad that we
Had each in each found friendship, stimulus, sympathy.

Mirage. Illusion. Lost
That hope. My dream is dead.
Troubled and tempest-tost,
Storm-bound, alone, I tread
Wan ways, long-doomed to walk and watch and wait
Till that fair House unlock its gracious gate:
Trapped in that tragic train,
Taken by Death, in Spain,
Not this side Styx can she
Again commune with me:
But, Robin, though you send such black and sad
Tidings from Hellas, I am happy, glad,
Thankful, rejoiced—and almost gay—she had,
In time, such news about her son's success ...
If aught exist to minish and make less
My personal grief, it is that, to the end,
Katharine Fedden called me true and worth-while friend.





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