University of Virginia Library

ST SWITHIN'S DAY

BASIL SANDY BRIAN MENZIES
Basil
We four—since Easter-time we have not met.

Brian
And now the Dog Days bake us in our rooms
Like heretics in Dis's lidded tombs.

Sandy
Oh, for a little wind, a little wet!

Brian
A little wet, but not from heaven, I pray!
Have you forgotten 'tis St Swithin's Day?

Basil
Cast books aside, strew paper, drop the pen!
Bring ice, bring lemons, bring St Julien!

Sandy
Bring garlands!

Brian
With the laurel, lest it fade,
Let Bacchus twist vine-leaf and cabbage-blade!

Basil
I would I lay beside a brook at morn,
And watched the shepherd's-clock declare the hours;
And heard the husky whisper of the corn,
Legions of bees in leagues of summer flowers.

Brian
Who has been out of London?

Basil
Once, in June
Upstream I went to hear the summer tune
The birds sing at Long Ditton in a vale
Sacred to him who wrote his own heart's tale.
Of singing birds that hollow is the haunt;
Never was such a place for singing in!
The valley overflows with song and chaunt,
And brimming echoes spill the pleasant din.
High in the oak-trees where the fresh leaves sprout,
The blackbirds with their oboe voices make
The sweetest broken music all about
The beauty of the day for beauty's sake,
The wanton shadow and the languid cloud,
The grass-green velvet where the daisies crowd;
And all about the air that softly comes
Thridding the hedgerows with its noiseless feet,
The purling waves with muffled elfin drums,
That step along their pebble-paven street;
And all about the mates whose love they won,
And all about the sunlight and the sun.
The thrushes into song more bravely launch
Than thrushes do in any other dell;
Warblers and willow-wrens on every branch,
Each hidden by a leaf, their rapture tell;
Green-finches in the elms sweet nothings say,
Busy with love from dawn to dusk are they.
A passionate nightingale adown the lane
Shakes with the force and volume of his song
A hawthorn's heaving foliage; such a strain,
Self-caged like him to make his singing strong,
Some poet may have made in days of yore,
Untold, unwritten, lost for evermore.

Sandy
Your holiday was of a rarer mood,
A dedication loftier than mine;
But yet I swear my holiday was good:
I went to Glasgow just for auld lang syne.
In Sauchiehall Street in the afternoon
I saw a lady walking all in black,
But on her head a hat shaped like the moon,
Crescent and white and clouded with a veil.
I could not see if she were fair or pale
Because her beauty hid her like a mist:
But well I knew her bosom from her back;
And all her delicacy well I wist:
And every boy and man that saw her pass
Adored the beauty of that Scottish lass.
I said within: ‘Three things are worthiest knowing,
And when I know them nothing else I know.
I know unboundedly, what needs no showing,
That women are most beautiful; and then
I know I love them; and I know again
Herein alone true Science lies, for, lo!
Old Rome's a ruin; Cæsar is a name;
The Church?—alas! a lifeboat, warped and sunk;
God, a disputed title: but the fame
Of those who sang of love, fresher than spring,
Blossoms for ever with the tree of life,
Whose boughs are generations; and its trunk
Love; and its flowers, lovers.

Brian
Love we sing,
Towards Love we strive; no other song or strife
We know, or heed.—You, Menzies, what say you?
Dark, in your corner—with a volume too!

Menzies
Now that I hang above the loathsome hell
Of smouldering spite and foul disparagement,
Even as a Christian, singed and basted well
By Christians, hung in dreadful discontent
Chained to a beam, and dangling in the fire;
And like an ocean-searching sailor-wight
Whose lonely eyes and clinging fingers tire;
And like a desperate, pallid acolyte
Of giddy Fortune, who with straining clutch
Swings in her wheel's wind from its lower rim,
Doubting of all things, disbelieving much,
I come to him who sang the heavenly hymn.

Brian
To Colin Clout! But whence this desperate thought?

Menzies
Two months ago I published—

Brian
(Out! Alack!)

Menzies
A book that held the essence of my life:
Wrong praise and wrong abuse was all I got.

Basil
We all have suffered from the critic's knife.

Sandy
And helpless lain on many a weekly rack.

Menzies
But I am weak.

Basil
No, Menzies; you are strong.
Already you have cast aside the wrong,
And solace found in Spenser's noble song.
When I was in like case it took a year
Before my wounds were whole, my vision clear.

Menzies
What brought you to yourself?

Basil
I prayed.

Menzies
Indeed!

Brian
To whom?

Basil
I know not; 'tis the mood I need—
Submissive aspiration.

Menzies
Pray with us:
Here from the city's centre make appeal.

Brian
Where hawkers cry, where roar the cab and 'bus.

Basil