Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: Verses about Winter

AWAY TO EGYPT

Enough, enough! This winter is too rude,
Too dark of countenance, of tooth too keen.
Nature finds rebels now in flesh and blood,
And hearts grow sick for change and eyes for green.
Let us away! What profits it that men
Are wise as gods, if winter holds its sway,
If blood be chilled, and numbness clasp the brain?
Frost is too stubborn. Let us then away!

Away to Egypt! There we may forget
All but the presence of the blessed sun.
There in our tents well--housed, sublimely set
Under a pyramid, with horse and gun,
We may make terms with Nature and, awhile,
Put as it were our souls to grass, and run
Barefooted and barehearted in the smile
Of that long summer which still girds the Nile.

UNDER THE SPEAKER'S GALLERY

In all the comedy of human things
What is more mirthful than for those, who sit
Far from the great world's vain imaginings,
To mingle in its war of words and wit,
A listener here, when Greek meets Greek, Fox Pitt,
At question--time in the Queen's Parliament?
'Tis the arena of old Rome. Here meet
More than mere Dacians on mere slaughter bent.

Yonder and close to Mr. Speaker's chair,
Enfolding all things in a net of words,
Stands our first gymnast. Let the rest beware.
The Tory Stafford, with voice sweet as bird's,
Shall answer him anon, or bolder borne
And if luck favours, from the nether herds
A voice of patriot wrath shall rise in scorn,
Or even young Cassius blow his windy horn.

COVER SHOOTING

The week at Whinwood next to Christmas week.
Six guns, no more, but all good men and true,
Of the clean--visaged sort, with ruddy cheek
Which knows not care. Light--hearted Montagu
At the cover's end, as down the wind they flew,
Has stopped his score of pheasants, every beak,
Without more thought of Juliet than of you;
And still I hear his loud--mouthed Purdeys speak.

Tybalt and Paris, with a bet on hand,
Have fired at the same woodcock. ``Truce,'' say I,
``To civil jars.'' For look, as by command,
Bunch following bunch, a hundred pheasants fly.
Now battle, murder, death on every side!
Right, left, left, right, we pile up agony,
Till night stops all. Then home in chastened pride,
With aching heads, our slaughter satisfied.