LOW IN THE DUST, ROMANSLEIGH, 1843.

Having found this I felt I should not let it get lost again.    Romansleigh ('Rumsleigh') is a long way from Exeter but The Western Times published this on 27th May 1843.   Perhaps it has been recorded elsewhere but, just in case it is not, I replicate it here.  The scale of the infant mortality in this village of North Devon is heart-rending and the ingenuousness of the local scribe only makes it seem more so:  

"CHURCH-YARD POETRY.  -  A Maryansleigh correspondent sends us the following touching communication respecting the mortality in that parish.  He has paraphrased the awful fact with most awful poetry: -

"'MOARTALITY. - In Romansleigh within the Last three months we Have witness thirteen Furnals of Home 10 have been Childering out of this very small parish and one now lyeth a bear [a bier] wich make 14 six out of one House. 

"We 11 childring gone to sleep/ We leave our parentes dear to weep/ Our parents dear weep not for we/ for we are gone our god to see.

"We 11 childring are gone you see/ preay take a pattern now by we/ for you must follow you plinly see/ Low in the Dust we Lied Be.

"Six from one House you plenly see/ What dretful thing must this be/ through the are gone from this/ We all must go and cant resist." 

 

The Western Times helps its readers to read bier for bear but leaves them to work out that Home=whom (which) and through the=though they.

This North Devon Childering/ childring looks like a usage that might be of interest to lexicologists.

AN IMMORTALITY OF GOOD, EXETER, 1842.

 WRITTEN ON THE BANK OVER BELLE-ISLE FIELD

I have been toss’d, how rudely toss’d,

Upon the troubled tide of things -

Now in th’ abyss of misery lost,

Now borne on high on rapture’s wings:

And fifty busy years have shed

Their griefs, their joys, upon my head.

And now I sit in quiet thought

Upon the very bank where oft

I sat in buoyant youth - and nought

Is changed: the self same birds aloft

Seem to flit o’er me - while below

The ancient tranquil waters flow.

The island field, we call’d the fair,

Besprinkled yet with bathing boys,

Is there: the trembling reeds are there

And the mole-hillocks -and the noise

Of Isca dancing o’er the weir -

The herds - the elms - the bees are there.

The breeze as fresh as in its prime -

The hills as green - the plain as gay -

Here lovely nature laughs at time,

And never knew a yesterday:

And many a morrow’s eye shall see

The beauteous things that round us be.

O happy that while death and birth

Triumph o’er man from year to year -

The more enduring charms of earth,

Their light, their love, their music bear -

Triumphant through vicissitude,

An immortality of good.

J.B.   Sept. 3 1842.

These verses grace The Western Times of 10th September 1842. I had never heard of Belle Isle Field but it sounded glorious and I was intrigued. I find that Belle Isle Park is the City's newest park. I visited it and was underwhelmed but it still has potential to become again, two hundred years, almost, after J.B.'s poem, a place where many a morrow's eye shall see/ the beauties that around us be.

Exeter's glory is that it has so many green spaces. If parks and gardens were given the attention and the money they deserve, the City would reap great benefit from its greenness. We may now be short of moles, bees, elms and herds but we still have more green space than most cities. What we seem to lack is qualified gardeners and imaginative planners.

THE MIDNIGHT LOVERS

It was a bitter winter’s night,
the goddess rose up beaming,
a twinkle frost creaked underfoot,
the silver stars were gleaming.
The flood slipped in like beaten light
while all but they were sleeping;
the tide was mirror to the night
it came so calmly creeping.

Chill to the water's edge they came;
she trembled at his shoulder
but when they kissed they burst aflame,
their whole world was asmoulder;
their eyes were furnaces of love
that blazed with youth and yearning;
the very stars looked pale above
the brightness of their burning.

Orion from his post peeped round
and could not mind his duty.
The lady from her chair looked down
and sighed for fatal beauty.
The great bear grinned to gaze upon
a kiss that warmed for ever.
Even the sacred moon smiled on
these lovers in their fever.








.

STEPHANIE JUPP

FARAWAY RIVER

Not for us the Sailing Club,
the racing and the craning in,
we lived up the village
far away from the river;

but there were occasional signs;
the fisherman who sold his fish
at the back door, the ships' sirens
on New Year's Eve;

and when I was in bed
the hollow sound of trains
floated across the river
as I faded into sleep;

the hollow sound of trains
across the river
as I faded into sleep...



Stephanie Jupp

A NEW SONG OF CALM AFTER STORM

.

As I walk out on Saturday,
on Saturday and late,
the clouds are monstrous birds of prey,
the wind is holy hate.
The gale that roars in from the sea
grows darker with the night.
A savage tide is fighting free
from Topsham to the Bight.

When I walk out on Sunday though
all other is the story.
The clouds are doves with breasts of snow.
The sun climbs high in glory.
The breeze is dreaming and the tide
drinks from the morning's light.
The Exe sleeps gentle as a bride
from Topsham to the Bight.



(Valparaiso)

JENNY MOON (2)

THE WATCHER


For the moment I am a watcher.
From the quayside I watch the sun rise and travel the day,
watch its flare set into the hills beyond the flood and the ebb,
the swing of boats and the arrows of geese that fly into dusk.

On a new morning five swans drift by the quay.
Colours are cut in crystal. A woman wanders,
city clothed and somewhere in her dream.
At the church bell, she stirs and is away.
A dog bounds into the morning, scattering the swans,
but somehow the woman stays with me.
I roll her dream on my tongue, seeking its flavour.

In November, storm winds lash the quay,
drive the tide high in pitch black night.
Figures emerge from the streets, hoods over wet faces.
There are quick voices, torches. She moves among them easily,
feeling ropes, shifting sandbags into doorways.
She calls to me and her laughter is woven
into the wind, softening the night.

On a fine Sunday, I am among the cracking sails,
Thrilled by the breeze and cooled by frisking spray.
On the quay, five summer children dangle hooks.
There is bait and buckets, mud on brown skin.
She is there, reaching for a crab that scuttles to freedom,
A man is with her and I see the look between them. I turn away.
I can only remind myself that I watch and wait.

Over months they walk this quay, sometimes in love,
Sometimes apart. Come winter and she is always alone.
There is a day when snow follows a purple dawn.
Some snow is fallen; some feathers an icy breeze over black water.
She is there, buried in fleece, looking towards the hills.
Suddenly she is the song and all that is warm in this winter
And I walk out in her footprints, carrying my dream to her.

Lympstone





(More Jenny Moon)

JENNY MOON

.








THE SOUND OF THE TIDE


I am wrapped in you and your jacket
and the sound of the tide running out.
A flow along the harbour wall
pulls at buoys, sweeps the eroding rock.
There is the slapping stay,
A squabble of ducks, the suck
of mud on hull. Far is the city
and its cathedral tower, far off its roar
as dusk settles across a big sky.

Wrapped in you and your jacket,
we are somewhere between
our first meeting and what might be;
somewhere in the order of things.
Reflections shatter and remake.
In the wispy breeze the image of a boat,
mirrored exactly, can break at a whim.
We watch the swans pair, glide
and preen, group. They may part,

- but for now we weave our way
Between life’s events, the turn
of tides, the incessant roll of hours
measured out by the harbour bell
Now, to the north, the night
takes its ease over the hills,
while up and down the estuary
the port lights begin to mark
the channel through the dark waters


Lympstone.

A BOAT SONG

(Taken freely from the Norwegian of Arnulf Ǿverland)


The blades dip. The blades ride high.
The shining drops that fall are silent tears.
Around my sleepy boat the ripples sigh.
The shining drops that fall are silent tears.

My boat drifts. She drifts and dreams.
All things are drowsy on this lazy tide.
Nothing I see or hear is what it seems.
All things are drowsy on this lazy tide.

My boat glides. She skims along.
We’re bound for golden joys and heart’s desire.
The sea sings softly, sings a sleepy song.
We’re bound for golden joys and heart’s desire.

THESE DEAD THINGS

How all these dead things come and go
across this Estuary, its shining length and breadth!
Dead creatures, the wholes or parts of them,
that come in with the flood, that go out with the ebb
without asking anyone's leave.

(No last trump for them, then?
No! No more than for you or me, kiddo!)

Spineless, jellied things and twisted skeletal things,
flesh and bone and shell and feather,
remains of bird, beast, fish of the sea,
hanging about, but not for ever.

Where they float they are tugged by crabs and fishes,
where stranded, rent and plundered,
pecked by hungry rook and crow,
nibbled by the progeny of those happy rats
who ate the leather flaps
of Brunel's Atmospheric Railway,
sniffed by night by that dogfox we know
and devoured from within by tiny, salty bugs:

dead things crawling with life!

And even that proud and noble buzzard
resting on her splayed wings,
black on the wind, above Sowden's cliff,
does not distain these dead things.

AN INVITATION TO SAIL BY NIGHT

Take my word for it, there is too much light,
up poles, down holes, from bulbs and tubes it pours
and too much noise; the world shouts ev'ry night,
clanging, jangling, piercing my limp ears.

So to be lighted is to lose one's sight,
to miss the comet with his fiery train,
to miss the countless stars that grace the night,
to miss the sacred moon, her wax and wane.

And we are deafened 'til we hear the singing
of these dark waters where the salmon leap
and sea birds pass like ghosts silently winging
over the shallows where the shadows creep.

Come, why should we be blind? We'll sail beneath
stars in their glory, there we'll see the bright
road to eternity; shall we be deaf?
Hush!, you shall hear the silence of the night.



Light Pollution?

GHOSTING

Ghosting they call this
when there is just breeze enough to fill the sail
and not a puff more

and the boats move silently
like spirits over the water, like phantoms drifting
between the far banks.

Alongside, unseen, who knows?, perhaps are ghosts
of some who drowned here by ill chance, others who drowned
to end their hurt.

For now might be just the time for them
and tide, this brimming evening lull
and the half light

when there is just breeze enough
to fill the sail and not a puff more.

Ghosting they call this.

STEPHANIE JUPP

.


LYMPSTONE, SEPTEMBER 1960


On Station Hill I stare astonished -
deep water lies below; the brook
angry at the clogged up sluice gates
has roared and tumbled through houses and shops -

the estuary has kept out of it, being neapish
and near low tide; a man hands me
into a boat and rows me along
the street at window level; a schoolgirl

Cleopatra in her barge; but unlike
the Nile Queen, I have to step out
and trudge homewards, navy hatted
and black stockinged up and up

the village, wondering if an asp
would be preferable to Science prep.




Stephanie Jupp



More:

FIVE WINTER SCENES: LYMPSTONE: 1977

These verses were first published in Devon Life in October 1977. They were also runners up, we was robbed, for the Gladys Hunkin Poetry Prize of the University of Exeter. They are reprinted here by permission of the author. For the record, the Mr Bell of the fifth scene was Mr John Clapp of this pish who lived opposite The Green and who died some thirty years ago.

1.

With noises borrowed from the old men's throats,

the raucous rooks about the chimney pots

are croaking out the old year, in the new.

Though January looks both ways, the old

look only back. The black rooks have foretold

this new year's cipher on the headstones too.

2.

At the twilight calm when the smoke soars lazily,

out of the winter haze drift evening swans,

ghosts on the polished edge of the filling tide,

five white souls and two grey little ones.

Five hard working, chapel going fellows

and two, alas, who had their peccadillos.

3.

Across the water, field and winter tree

sketched with a bamboo pen.

Like the shadow of Azrael's wing, the pewter sea

draws back and leaves old men

creaking for one tide more

in their long sea boots.

4.

At low tide the banks wrinkle and fold like an old skin

and under the long abandoned limekiln

old anchors, links of chain,

rusted and forgotten,

rest in the mud.

Here too the old men

who stand and gaze with dimming eyes,

dreaming of wild green years and wild green seas.

5.

As sure of resurrection as a Wesleyan

the winter sun goes down in fierce glory.

Old Mr. Bell has set aside his Bible

and tottered out to watch the setting sun.

The glowing banks are golden backed Leviathans.

And Mr. Bell, who fears the Lord's good name,

reminds the Lord his prophet has predicted

a rising sun with healing in its wings

and Mr Bell shall frisk like any calf.

A WINTER SONG

It's goodbye to our summer suns.

Farewell, the skies of blue.

The balmy nights have left us.

The birds are far and few.

The boats have left their moorings.

The fish are God knows where.

A sigh of loss sings in the breeze.

There's sorrow in the air.

But beauty has not left us.

I trust she never will.

Along the fiery banks of Exe

her glories glimmer still.

There's beauty in our blackest cloud

and in our coldest light,

in all the winter waves that chase

from Topsham to the Bight.

.

A SONG FOR THE ESTUARY

Sometimes we pull up and sometimes we pull down.
Sometimes we pull over from this to that side,
but as often as not we don't pull much at all.
We just dip with the paddles and ride with the tide.

Upriver is handsome. Downriver’s the sea.
The sea's quite a swell. Well, we know about that;
'tis best to defer to the oceans, my dear,
magnificent, infinite. Take off your hat!

But here, where the two of them meet it is rare,
for here the tide rises and here the tide falls
and here screaks the sea pie while tides tap away
and the sandpiper pipes and the sad curlew calls.

Upriver’s a rushing. Downriver’s a lop
but here on the lake it is sometimes so calm
your soul can glide off like a white winter swan
and paddle back home with a beakful of balm.

And the grey herons stalk and the white herons squawk
and the cormorants hang out their dark wings to dry
and the bright gulls line up as they wait for the ebb
and the wild geese come honking, low down in the sky.

Upriver’s a green and a beautiful land.
Downriver’s the bay and the wide open sea.
There's nought to be said against either, my dear,
But here where they meet is the rare place to be.

Sometimes we pull up and sometimes we pull down.
Sometimes we pull over from this to that side.
But as often as not we don't pull much at all.
We just dip with the paddles and ride on the tide.





Another?

VERSES BY STEPHEN REYNOLDS (2)

THE FISHER FATHER AND CHILD (The Child)


And the boy –

Like delicate dawn to the sunset was the child to his father –
A sturdy slight figure, as straight as the mast,
A grey and more gently coloured figure, glancing round with the father’s self-same gestures softened and with childish trustful sea-blue eyes;
Pattering with naked feet on the stern-sheets, and hauling the fish with a wary cat-like motion….

O splendid and beautiful pair!
O man of the sea! O child growing up to the sea,’tis the likeness of your souls,
And I know that as I love you, I am loving also the sea –
O splendid and beautiful portions of the sea!



From: 'A Poor Man's House'' Stephen Reynolds, 1908

Part 1 (The Father)

VERSES BY STEPHEN REYNOLDS (1)

THE FISHER FATHER AND CHILD (The Father)


As I pulled the boat across a loppy sea –
The bumping and splashing boat,
With the sail flapping round my head,
And the pile of mackerel amidships ever growing larger and lovelier in the light –
And the sun rose behind the cliffs to eastward, and the sky became lemon-yellow
(A graciously coloured veil twixt the earth and all mystery beyond),
And the wavelets sparkled and darted like ten thousand fishes at play in the ambient dawn, –
It seemed that the sky and the sea and the earth gathered themselves together,
And became one vast kind eye, looking into the stern of the boat,
At the father and boy.

Navy blue guernsey, and trousers stained by the sea, scarce hiding the ribbed muscles;
Tan-red face, the fresh blood showing through;
Blue eyes all of a flash with fishing and the joy of hauling ’em in; now on the luff of the sail (out of habit. There being hardly a sail-full of air), now to wind’ard, and again smiling on the child;
Big pendulous russet hands, white in the palms from salt water, and splashed with scales –
Hands that seem implements rather, appearing strangely no part of the man, but something, like the child, that has grown away from him and has taken a life of its own –
Strong for a sixteen foot sweep, delicate to handle the silken snood of a line –
A man that the winds and spray have blown on, gnarled and bent to the sea’s own liking,
The Father!



From ‘A Poor Man’s House’ Stephen Reynolds, 1908.
Next Monday: Part 2. (The Child)

THIS POMP OF SWANS

By last night’s ebb the swans sailed past in line.
How many? Ten? A dozen? Maybe more.
Their liquid world moved them, but I in mine
was fixed. I watched from the too solid shore.

The rain clouds which had leadened the long day
still lowered, but an amber from the West
brightened the moorings where their passage lay,
gilded the waters where these swans progressed.

No doubt it wondered as it slipped along,
this pomp of swans advancing through the night,
that other beasts live in a world so wrong
whereas the swan lives in a world so right.




Another Swan

And another

THE GREEN CRAB

If you tie a fish head
to a length of string,
dangle it from a wall
into the tide
you can catch the green crab.

The green crab is good for little.
Nobody wants him
to eat,
for bait,
as the family pet.

But you can watch him
scuttle about for a while,
shuffle home to his muddy depths.
That’s about it
with the green crab.

Beyond, however, any doubt
catching the green crab is something for you.
Go to it!
Get feckless!
Let’s face it, lately there has been
altogether too much purpose in your life.

Remember!
All you need is a fish head
and a length of string.
Perhaps take some child with you
By way of pretext.

STEPHANIE JUPP

.


Sowden End

No, World's end,
a place to run away to,
where the dark lane's elbow
nudges away the tide
and a thin moon shivers eerily
over the fleeing water;

yet an hour ago
sunset viewers came
over the village's left shoulder
to the waiting seats
as high tide trickled up the slipway
and blushing cliffs blushed deeper.






More!