“Fifteen Bucolic Poems” by Edith Sitwell (1920

The poetry of Dame Edith Sitwell

Dame Edith Sitwell (1887 – 1964), the British poet, literary critic, and famous eccentric, began publishing her poetry in 1913. With a modernist edge, some of it inscrutably abstract, some even set to music and sound.

Because of her dramatic self-presentation and manner of dress, she was sometimes criticized as a dilettante, but overall, her literary legacy remained intact and has grown over the years. Her poetry is praised for its craftsmanship and attention to technique.

Mother and Other Poems (1915) was her first published collection, followed by Clown’s Houses (1915). The following poems comprise the section titled “Fifteen Bucolic Poems”  from her third collection, The Wooden Pegasus (1920). This book and its poems are  in the public domain.

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I
WHAT THE GOOSEGIRL SAID ABOUT THE DEAN

TURN again, turn again,
Goose Clothilda, Goosie Jane!

The wooden waves of people creak
From houses built with coloured straws
Of heat; Dean Pappus’ long nose snores—
Harsh as a hautbois, marshy-weak.

The wooden waves of people creak
Through the fields all water-sleek;

And in among the straws of light
Those bumpkin hautbois-sounds take flight,

Whence he lies snoring like the moon,
Clownish-white all afternoon,

Beneath the trees’ arsenical
Harsh wood-wind tunes. Heretical—

(Blown like the wind’s mane
Creaking woodenly again)

His wandering thoughts escape like geese,
Till he, their gooseherd, sets up chase,
And clouds of wool join the bright race
For scattered old simplicities.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Edith Sitwell by Cecil Beaton

Learn more about Edith Sitwell

 

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II
NOAH

NOAH, through green waters slipping sliding like a long sleek eel,
Slithered up Mount Ararat and climbed into the Ark,—
Slipping with his long dank hair; and sliding slyly in his barque,
Pushed it slowly in a wholly glassy creek until we feel
Pink crags tremble under us and wondrous clear waters run
Over Shem and Ham and Japhet, moving with their long sleek daughters,
Swift as fishes rainbow-coloured darting under morning waters….
Burning seraph beasts sing clearly to the young flamingo Sun.

Note.—Thanks due to Helen Rootham for her earnest collaboration in this poem.

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III
THE GIRL WITH THE LINT-WHITE LOCKS

THE bright-striped wooden fields are edged
With noisy cock’s crow trees, scarce fledged—

The trees that spin like tops, all weathers,
Like strange birds ruffling glassy feathers.

My hair is white as flocks of geese,
And water hisses out of this;

And when the late sun burns my cheek
Till it is pink as apples sleek,

I wander in the fields and know
Why kings do squander pennies so—

Lest they at last should weight their eyes!
But beggars’ ragged minds, more wise,

Know without flesh we cannot see—
And so they hoard stupidity

(The dull ancestral memory
That is the only property).

They laugh to see the spring fields edged
With noisy cock’s crow trees scarce fledged,

And flowers that grunt to feel their eyes
Made clear with sight’s finalities.

 

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IV
THE LADY WITH THE SEWING MACHINE

ACROSS the fields as green as spinach,
Cropped as close as Time to Greenwich,

Stands a high house; if at all,
Spring comes like a Paisley shawl—

Patternings meticulous
And youthfully ridiculous.

In each room the yellow sun
Shakes like a canary, run

On run, roulade, and watery trill—
Yellow, meaningless, and shrill.

Face as white as any clock’s,
Cased in parsley-dark curled locks,

All day long you sit and sew,
Stitch life down for fear it grow,

Stitch life down for fear we guess
At the hidden ugliness.

Dusty voice that throbs with heat,
Hoping with its steel-thin beat

To put stitches in my mind,
Make it tidy, make it kind;

You shall not! I’ll keep it free
Though you turn earth sky and sea

To a patchwork quilt to keep
Your mind snug and warm in sleep.

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V
BY CANDLELIGHT

HOUSES red as flower of bean,
Flickering leaves and shadows lean!
Pantalone, like a parrot,
Sat and grumbled in the garret,
Sat and growled and grumbled till
Moon upon the window-sill,
Like a red geranium,
Scented his bald cranium.
Said Brighella, meaning well—
“Pack your box and—go to Hell!
Heat will cure your rheumatism.”
Silence crowned this optimism.
Not a sound and not a wail—
But the fire (lush leafy vale)
Watched the angry feathers fly.
Pantalone ’gan to cry
Could not, would not, pack his box.
Shadows (curtseying hens and cocks)
Pecking in the attic gloom,
Tried to smother his tail-plume….
Till a cock’s comb candle-flame,
Crowing loudly, died: Dawn came.

 

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VI
SERENADE

THE tremulous gold of stars within your hair
Are yellow bees flown from the hive of night,
Finding the blossom of your eyes more fair
Than all the pale flowers folded from the light.
Then, Sweet, awake, and ope your dreaming eyes
Ere those bright bees have flown and darkness dies.

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VII
CLOWNS’ HOUSES

BENEATH the flat and paper sky
The sun, a demon’s eye,
Glowed through the air, that mask of glass;
All wand’ring sounds that pass

Seemed out of tune, as if the light
Were fiddle-strings pulled tight.
The market square with spire and bell
Clanged out the hour in Hell.

The busy chatter of the heat
Shrilled like a parokeet;
And shuddering at the noonday light
The dust lay dead and white

As powder on a mummy’s face,
Or fawned with simian grace
Round booths with many a hard bright toy
And wooden brittle joy:

The cap and bells of Time the Clown
That, jangling, whistled down
Young cherubs hidden in the guise
Of every bird that flies;

And star-bright masks for youth to wear,
Lest any dream that fare
—Bright pilgrim—past our ken, should see
Hints of Reality.

Upon the sharp-set grass, shrill-green,
Tall trees like rattles lean,
And jangle sharp and dizzily;
But when night falls they sigh

Till Pierrot moon steals slyly in,
His face more white than sin,
Black-masked, and with cool touch lays bare
Each cherry, plum, and pear.

Then underneath the veilèd eyes
Of houses, darkness lies,—
Tall houses; like a hopeless prayer
They cleave the sly dumb air.

Blind are those houses, paper-thin;
Old shadows hid therein,
With sly and crazy movements creep
Like marionettes, and weep.

Tall windows show Infinity;
And, hard reality,
The candles weep and pry and dance
Like lives mocked at by Chance.

The rooms are vast as Sleep within:
When once I ventured in,
Chill Silence, like a surging sea,
Slowly enveloped me.

 

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VIII
THE SATYR IN THE PERIWIG

THE Satyr Scarabombadon
Pulled periwig and breeches on:
“Grown old and stiff, this modern dress
Adds monstrously to my distress;
The gout within a hoofen heel
Is very hard to bear; I feel
When crushed into a buckled shoe
The twinge will be redoubled, too.
And when I walk in gardens green
And, weeping, think on what has been,
Then wipe one eye,—the other sees
The plums and cherries on the trees.
Small bird-quick women pass me by
With sleeves that flutter airily,
And baskets blazing like a fire
With laughing fruits of my desire;
Plums sunburnt as the King of Spain,

Gold-cheeked as any Nubian,
With strawberries all goldy-freckled,
Pears fat as thrushes and as speckled …
Pursue them?… Yes, and squeeze a tear:
‘Please spare poor Satyr one, my dear.’
‘Be off, sir; go and steal your own!’
—Alas, poor Scarabombadon,
They’d rend his ruffles, stretch a twig,
Tear off a satyr’s periwig!”

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IX
THE MUSLIN GOWN

WITH spectacles that flash,
Striped foolscap hung with gold
And silver bells that clash,
(Bright rhetoric and cold),
In owl-dark garments goes the Rain,
Dull pedagogue, again.
And in my orchard wood
Small song-birds flock and fly,
Like cherubs brown and good,
When through the trees go I
Knee-deep within the dark-leaved sorrel.
Cherries red as bells of coral
Ring to see me come—
I, with my fruit-dark hair
As dark as any plum,
My summer gown as white as air
And frilled as any quick bird’s there.
But oh, what shall I do?
Old Owl-wing’s back from town—
He’s skipping through dark trees: I know
He hates my summer gown!

 

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X
MISS NETTYBUN AND THE SATYR’S CHILD

AS underneath the trees I pass
Through emerald shade on hot soft grass,
Petunia faces, glowing-hued
With heat, cast shadows hard and crude—
Green-velvety as leaves, and small
Fine hairs like grass pierce through them all.
But these are all asleep—asleep,
As through the schoolroom door I creep
In search of you, for you evade
All the advances I have made.
Come, Horace, you must take my hand.
This sulking state I will not stand!
But you shall feed on strawberry jam
At tea-time, if you cease to slam
The doors that open from our sense—
Through which I slipped to drag you hence!

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XI
QUEEN VENUS AND THE CHOIR-BOY

(To Naomi Royde Smith)
THE apples grow like silver trumps
That red-cheeked fair-haired angels blow—
So clear their juice; on trees in clumps,
Feathered as any bird, they grow.

A lady stood amid those crops—
Her voice was like a blue or pink
Glass window full of lollipops;
Her words were very strange, I think:

“Prince Paris, too, a fair-haired boy
Plucked me an apple from dark trees;
Since when their smoothness makes my joy;
If you will pluck me one of these

I’ll kiss you like a golden wind
As clear as any apples be.”
And now she haunts my singing mind—
And oh, she will not set me free.

 

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XII
THE APE SEES THE FAT WOMAN

AMONG the dark and brilliant leaves,
Where flowers seem tinsel firework-sheaves,

Blond barley-sugar children stare
Through shining apple-trees, and there

A lady like a golden wind
Whose hair like apples tumbles kind,

And whose bright name, so I believe,
Is sometimes Venus, sometimes Eve,

Stands, her face furrowed like my own
With thoughts wherefrom strange seeds are sown,

Whence, long since, stars for bright flowers grew
Like periwinkles pink and blue,

(Queer impulses of bestial kind,
Flesh indivisible from mind.)

I, painted like the wooden sun,
Must hand-in-hand with angels run—

The tinsel angels of the booth
That lead poor yokels to the truth

Through raucous jokes, till we can see
That narrow long Eternity

Is but the whip’s lash o’er our eyes—
Spurring to new vitalities.

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XIII
THE APE WATCHES “AUNT SALLY”

THE apples are an angel’s meat,
The shining dark leaves make clear-sweet

The juice; green wooden fruits alway
Drop on these flowers as white as day—

Clear angel-face on hairy stalk;
(Soul grown from flesh, an ape’s young talk.)

And in this green and lovely ground
The Fair, world-like, turns round and round,

And bumpkins throw their pence to shed
Aunt Sally’s crude-striped wooden head.

I do not care if men should throw
Round sun and moon to make me go,

(As bright as gold and silver pence) …
They cannot drive their own blood hence!

 

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XIV
SPRINGING JACK

GREEN wooden leaves clap light away,
Severely practical, as they

Shelter the children, candy-pale.
The chestnut-candles flicker, fail….

The showman’s face is cubed clear as
The shapes reflected in a glass

Of water—(glog, glut, a ghost’s speech
Fumbling for space from each to each).

The fusty showman fumbles, must
Fit in a particle of dust

The universe, for fear it gain
Its freedom from my box of brain.

Yet dust bears seeds that grow to grace
Behind my crude-striped wooden face

As I, a puppet tinsel-pink,
Leap on my springs, learn how to think,

Then like the trembling golden stalk
Of some long-petalled star, I walk

Through the dark heavens until dew
Falls on my eyes and sense thrills through.

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XV
“TOURNEZ, TOURNEZ, BONS CHEVAUX DE BOIS”

TURN, turn again,
Ape’s blood in each vein.
The people that pass
Seem castles of glass,
The old and the good,
Giraffes of blue wood;
The soldier, the nurse,
Wooden face and a curse,
Are shadowed with plumage
Like birds by the gloomage.
Blond hair like a clown’s,
The music floats, drowns
The creaking of ropes
The breaking of hopes.
The wheezing, the old,
Like harmoniums scold:
Go to Babylon, Rome,
The brain-cells called home,
The grave, New Jerusalem,
Wrinkled Methusalem:
From our floating hair
Derived the first fair
And queer inspiration
Of music (the nation
Of bright-plumed trees
And harpy-shrill breeze).
. . .
Turn, turn again,
Ape’s blood in each vein.

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One Response to ““Fifteen Bucolic Poems” by Edith Sitwell (1920”

  1. Dame Edith Sitwell’s poetry is truly a fascinating blend of modernist innovation and traditional craftsmanship. Her ability to weave abstract imagery with musicality sets her work apart, making it both challenging and rewarding for readers. Despite her often eccentric public persona, which drew some criticism, Sitwell’s legacy as a masterful poet has only strengthened over time. Collections like Mother and Other Poems and Clown’s Houses showcase her unique voice and meticulous attention to technique, cementing her place in the literary canon. The poems from The Wooden Pegasus illustrate her distinctive style and imaginative use of language, offering a glimpse into her rich poetic world. Her work remains an essential read for anyone interested in the evolution of modernist poetry.

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