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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO MICHAL: ON BRINGING HER BREAKFAST IN BED, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Here come I from the buttery
Last Line: In the land of the trinity.
Subject(s): Death; Trinity, The; Dead, The


HERE come I from the buttery
In the land of the Trinity.
With a new day's new supplies:
Open, Fair, those sacred eyes
On these rolls and fruit and tea,
All in order decently
Set upon a fair white cloth.
While a weight (too deep for sloth)
Held you on your pillows fast
Till all weariness had past
Your fresh beauty, I was up
With my platter and my cup,
Up and out beside the hatch
Which the early Hours unlatch,
Out beside the grills and gates
Where the world at morning waits
And tiptoeing just can see
The broad lands of the Trinity.

From these Northern heights went I
With an English company,—
Men and maids and mistresses:
A rare riot of degrees!—
Some, awaking earlier,
With the Easterns nourished were;
Some in sleep delay advent
Till the Western continent
Surges there for food; but we,
Timely waking timelessly,
Somewhere between six and seven
Halted at the bars of heaven;
O what chatter filled the air!
None saw any other there,
Yet through London and our land
Called and answered all the band;
Silently and surely called
To that house, by Nature walled,
Gated fast, till our desire
Saw the gate-pillars afire.
Many deputies have they
Who prepare our food each day,
But themselves have place behind
Each subordinated mind;
Chiefly they direct the power
Grinds the corn to baking flour,
Milks the cow or crisps the tea.
O that heavenly industry!
Through the gates, with fires that burn,
Peeping down, could we discern
The Three Wise Masters; of them one
Drew the bread when it was done,
Kept the blazing fires alight;
One, dividing each his right
Lot and portion, so began
The great daily task of man,
Or with eyes of laughter kept
Shares aside for those who slept;
One amidst our clusters rude
Taught civility, subdued
Greed in us, and (so to share
The work) was here and everywhere.
In and out the buttery
Worked the joyous Trinity.

(Them you saw not,—nor the wide
Flocks and droves that strayed beside
That dire house, that gate of dread!
Must their guiltless blood be shed,
And our comfort still prefer
That long morning massacre?
Is not fruit of every kind,
Grapes, bananas, here to find,
Apples, watercresses, figs?
Hath the Lord no care for pigs?

Fear not, sweet; those cloudy lids
Rise on naught that ruth forbids.
Later, when the sun is high
And our heavier minds descry
All the price that all things pay
For their sight of this pale day,
You shall know what Death informs
That land's lurid noon of storms.
In a lighter-darker hour
You shall feel a tempest lour;
Dying, feed on death; but now,
Innocent and joyous, grow
In waking on a scatheless show!
You who love the legend told
How Gautama once of old,
Meeting, ere his Buddha-birth,
A tigress, in a year of dearth,
Her and her young cubs to save
His thrice-sacred body gave!)

Backward from those gates, that burned
With the morning's fires, we turned;
Furnished with full dish and can,
Each to his own doorway ran
In our colony; while fade,
In the soul's remoter shade,
The high pastures, the dark sea,
The cornlands of the Trinity.
Fades their singing speed, the bright,
Quick, and curious delight
Of those channels, moors and hills,
To my tender duty stills,
Who at our own board prepare,
Sweet, for you the finer share.
Morn in you and morn without
Now anew are come about
To their high conjunction; ease
Now those dainty limbs can please
But a little more—O wake
And behold me for your sake
Coming from the buttery
In the land of the Trinity.





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