• Jaclynns_Heart's Gallery
  • View Profile
  • Send Private Message
  • Artist Info: When I have a house . . . as I sometimes may . . .<br />
    I'll suit my fancy in every way.<br />
    I'll fill it with things that have caught my eye<br />
    In drifting from Iceland to Molokai.<br />
    It won't be correct or in period style,<br />
    But . . . oh, I've thought for a long, long while<br />
    Of all the corners and all the nooks,<br />
    Of all the bookshelves and all the books,<br />
    The great big table, the deep soft chairs, <br />
    And the Chinese rug at the foot of the stairs<br />
    (It's an old, old rug from far Chow Wan<br />
    That a Chinese princess once walked on).<br />
    <br />
    My house will stand on the side of a hill<br />
    By a slow, broad river, deep and still,<br />
    With a tall lone pine on guard nearby<br />
    Where the birds can sing and the storm winds cry.<br />
    A flagstone walk, with lazy curves,<br />
    Will lead to the door where a Pan's head serves<br />
    As a knocker there, like a vibrant drum,<br />
    To let me know that a friend has come,<br />
    And the door will squeak as I swing it wide<br />
    To welcome you to the cheer inside.<br />
    <br />
    For I’ll have good friends who can sit and chat<br />
    Or simply sit, when it comes to that,<br />
    By the fireplace where the fir logs blaze<br />
    And the smoke rolls up in a weaving haze.<br />
    I’ll want a woodbox, scarred and rough<br />
    For leaves and bark and odorous stuff,<br />
    Like resinous knots and cones and gums,<br />
    To toss on the flames when winter comes.<br />
    And I hope a cricket will stay around,<br />
    For I love it’s creaky lonesome sound.<br />
    <br />
    There’ll be driftwood powder to burn on logs<br />
    And a shaggy rug for a couple of dogs,<br />
    Boreas, winner of prize and cup,<br />
    And Mickey, a lovable gutter-pup.<br />
    Thoroughbreds, both of them, right from the start,<br />
    One by breeding, the other by heart.<br />
    There are times when only a dog will do<br />
    For a friend . . . when you’re beaten, sick and blue<br />
    And the world’s all wrong, for he won’t care<br />
    If you break and cry, or gouch and swear,<br />
    For he’ll let you know as he licks your hands<br />
    That he’s downright sorry . . . and understands.<br />
    <br />
    I’ll have on a bench a box inlaid<br />
    With dragon-plaques of milk white jade<br />
    To hold my own particular brand<br />
    Of cigarettes brought from the Pharaohs land,<br />
    With a cloisonne bowl on a lizards skin<br />
    To flick my cigarette ashes in.<br />
    And a squat blue jar for a certain blend<br />
    Of pipe tobacco, I’ll have to send<br />
    To a quaint old chap I chanced to meet<br />
    In his fusty shop on a London street.<br />
    <br />
    A long low shelf of teak will hold<br />
    My best-loved books in leather and gold,<br />
    While magazines lie on a bowlegged stand,<br />
    In a polyglot mixture close at hand.<br />
    I’ll have on a table a rich brocade<br />
    That I think the pixies must have made,<br />
    For the dull gold thread on blues and grays<br />
    Weaves a pattern of Puck . . . the Magic Maze.<br />
    On the mantlepiece I’ll have a place<br />
    For a little mud god with a painted face<br />
    That was given to me . . . oh, long ago,<br />
    By a Philippine maid in Olangapo.<br />
    <br />
    Then just in range of a lazy reach . . .<br />
    A bulging bowl of Indian beech<br />
    Will brim with things that are good to munch,<br />
    Hickory nuts to crack and crunch;<br />
    Big fat raisins and sun-dried dates,<br />
    And curious fruits from the Malay Straits;<br />
    Maple sugar and cookies brown<br />
    With good hard cider to wash them down;<br />
    Wine-sap apples, pick of the crop,<br />
    And ears of corn to shell and pop<br />
    With plenty of butter and lots of salt . . .<br />
    If you don’t get filled it’s not my fault.<br />
    <br />
    And there where the shadows fall I’ve planned<br />
    To have a magnificent concert-grand<br />
    With polished wood and ivory keys,<br />
    For wild discordant rhapsodies,<br />
    For wailing minor Hindu songs,<br />
    For Chinese chants and clanging gongs,<br />
    For flippant jazz, and for lullabies,<br />
    And moody things that I’ll improvise<br />
    To play the long gray dusk away<br />
    And bid goodbye to another day.<br />
    <br />
    Pictures . . . I think I’ll have but three:<br />
    One, in oil, of a windswept sea<br />
    With the flying scud and the waves whipped white . . . <br />
    (I know the chap who can paint it right)<br />
    In lapis blue and deep jade green . . . <br />
    A great big smashing fine marine<br />
    That’ll make you feel the spray in your face.<br />
    I’ll hang it over my fireplace.<br />
    <br />
    <br />
    The second picture . . . a freakish thing . . .<br />
    Is gaudy and bright as a macaw’s wing,<br />
    An impressionist smear called “Sin”,<br />
    A nude on a striped zebra skin<br />
    By a Danish girl I knew in France.<br />
    My respectable friends will look askance<br />
    At the purple eyes and the scarlet hair,<br />
    At the pallid face and the evil stare<br />
    Of the sinister, beautiful vampire face.<br />
    I shouldn’t have it about the place,<br />
    But I like . . . while I loathe . . . the beastly thing,<br />
    And that’s the way that one feels about sin.<br />
    <br />
    The picture I love the best of all<br />
    Will hang alone on my study wall<br />
    Where the sunset’s glow and the moon’s cold gleam<br />
    Will fall on the face, and make it seem<br />
    That the eyes in the picture are meeting mine,<br />
    That the lips are curved in the fine sweet line<br />
    Of that wistful, tender, provocative smile<br />
    That has stirred my heart for a wondrous while.<br />
    It’s a sketch of the girl who loved too well<br />
    To tie me down to that bit of Hell<br />
    That a drifter knows when he know’s he’s held<br />
    By the soft, strong chains that passions weld.<br />
    <br />
    It was best for her and for me, I know,<br />
    That she measured my love and bade me go _<br />
    For we both have our great illusion yet<br />
    Unsoiled, unspoiled by vain regret.<br />
    I won’t deny that it makes me sad<br />
    To know that I’ve missed what I might have had.<br />
    It’s a clean sweet memory, quite apart,<br />
    And I’ve been faithful . . . in my heart.<br />
    <br />
    All these things I will have about,<br />
    Not a one could I do without;<br />
    Cedar and sandalwood chips to burn<br />
    In the tarnished bowl of a copper urn;<br />
    A paperweight of meteorite<br />
    That seared and scorched the sky one night,<br />
    A moro kris . . . my paper knife . . .<br />
    Once slit the throat of a Rajah’s wife.<br />
    The beams of my house will be fragrant wood<br />
    That once in a teeming jungle stood<br />
    As a proud tall tree where the leopards crouched<br />
    And the parrots screamed and the black men crouched.<br />
    <br />
    The roof must have a rakish dip<br />
    To shadowy eaves where the rain can drip<br />
    In a damp persistent tuneful way;<br />
    It’s a cheerful sound on a gloomy day.<br />
    And I want a shingle loose somewhere<br />
    To wail like a banshee in despair<br />
    When the wind is high and the storm-gods race _<br />
    And I am snug by my fireplace.<br />
    <br />
    I hope a couple of birds will nest<br />
    Around the house. I’ll do my best<br />
    To make them happy, so every year<br />
    They’ll raise their brood of fledglings here.<br />
    <br />
    When I have my house I’ll suit myself<br />
    And have what I call my “Condiment Shelf”,<br />
    Filled with all manner of herbs and spice,<br />
    Curry and chutney for meats and rice,<br />
    Pots and bottles of extracts rare . . . <br />
    Onions and garlic will both be there . . .<br />
    And soya and saffron and savoury goo<br />
    And stuff that I’ll buy from an old Hindu;<br />
    Ginger with syrup in quaint stone jars;<br />
    Almonds and figs in tinselled bars;<br />
    Astrakhan caviare, highly prized,<br />
    And citron and orange peel crystallised;<br />
    Anchovy paste and poha jam;<br />
    Basil and chilli and marjoram;<br />
    And flavours that come from Samarkand;<br />
    And, hung with a string from a handy hook,<br />
    Will be a dog-eared, well-thumbed book<br />
    That is pasted full of recipes<br />
    >From France and Spain and the Caribbees;<br />
    Roots and leaves and herbs to use<br />
    For curious soups and odd ragouts.<br />
    <br />
    I’ll have a cook that I’ll name “Oh Joy”,<br />
    A sleek, fat, yellow-faced China boy<br />
    Who can roast a pig or mix a drinkl,<br />
    (You can’t improve on a slant-eyed Chink).<br />
    On the gray-stone hearth there’ll be a mat<br />
    For a scrappy, swaggering yellow cat<br />
    With a war-scarred face from a hundred fights<br />
    With neighbours’ cats on moonlight nights.<br />
    A wise old Tom who can hold his own<br />
    And make my dogs let him alone.<br />
    <br />
    I’ll have a window-seat broad and deep<br />
    Where I can sprawl to read or sleep,<br />
    With windows placed so I can turn<br />
    And watch the sunsets blaze and burn<br />
    Beyond high peaks that scar the sky<br />
    Like bare white wolf-fangs that defy<br />
    The very gods. I’ll have a nook<br />
    For a savage idol that I took<br />
    >From a ruined temple in Peru,<br />
    A demon-chaser named Mang-Chu<br />
    To guard my house by night and day<br />
    And keep all evil things away.<br />
    <br />
    Pewter and bronze and hammered brass;<br />
    Old carved wood and gleaming glass;<br />
    Candles and polychrome candlesticks,<br />
    And peasant lamps with floating wicks;<br />
    Dragons in silk on a Mandarin suit<br />
    In a chest that is filled with vagabond-loot.<br />
    All of the beautiful, useless things<br />
    That a vagabond’s aimless drifting brings.<br />
    <br />
    Then, when my house is all complete<br />
    I’ll stretch me out on the window seat<br />
    With a favourite book and a cigarette,<br />
    And a long cool drink that Oh Joy will get;<br />
    And I’ll look about at my bachelor-nest<br />
    While the sun goes zooming down the west,<br />
    And the hot gold light will fall on my face<br />
    And make me think of some heathen place<br />
    That I’ve failed to see . . . that I’ve missed some way . . . <br />
    A place that I’d planned to find some day,<br />
    And I’ll feel the lure of it driving me.<br />
    Oh damn! I know what the end will be _<br />
    <br />
    I’ll go. And my house will fall away<br />
    While the mice by night and the moths by day<br />
    Will nibble the covers off all my books,<br />
    And the spiders weave in the shadowed nooks.<br />
    And my dogs . . . I’ll see that they have a home<br />
    While I follow the sun, while I drift and roam<br />
    To the ends of the earth like a chip on the stream,<br />
    Like a straw on the wind, like a vagrant dream;<br />
    And the thought will strike with a swift sharp pain<br />
    That I probably never will build again<br />
    This house that I’ll have in some far day _<br />
    Well . . . it’s just a dream house, anyway     <br />
  • Avg. rating: