From af3670ce5888f662e9b520397f07663ac5ac7c85 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Thomas Morris Date: Sun, 12 May 2024 14:09:41 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] fix history bug --- README.rst | 2 +- poems/context.py | 4 +++ poems/curator.py | 19 ++++++++-- poems/poem.py | 13 ++++--- poems/poems.json | 85 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------- poems/utils.py | 9 +++-- scripts/send-poem.py | 18 +++++----- 7 files changed, 119 insertions(+), 31 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index c721c1e..e95db0b 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ poems ----- -All of the poems in here are good, or interesting. There are currently 7,790 poems by 531 poets. \ No newline at end of file +All of the poems in here are good, or interesting. There are currently 7,793 poems by 532 poets. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/poems/context.py b/poems/context.py index 2a50d3d..d054442 100644 --- a/poems/context.py +++ b/poems/context.py @@ -49,6 +49,10 @@ def month(self): def day(self): return self.datetime.day + @property + def isoformat(self): + return self.datetime.isoformat() + @property def pretty_date(self): return timestamp_to_pretty_date(self.timestamp) diff --git a/poems/curator.py b/poems/curator.py index 43b295c..c3e812b 100644 --- a/poems/curator.py +++ b/poems/curator.py @@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ import numpy as np from .errors import AuthorNotFoundError, PoemNotFoundError from .catalog import Catalog +from .poem import Author, Poem here, this_file = os.path.split(__file__) @@ -13,14 +14,28 @@ class Curator(): def __init__(self, filepath=f"{here}/poems.json"): self.catalog = Catalog(filepath=filepath) - + + + def get_author(self, author=None) -> Author: + + all_authors = list(self.catalog.data.keys()) + + if author is None: + author = np.random.choice(all_authors) + + if author in all_authors: + return Author(tag=author, **self.catalog.data[author]["metadata"]) + + raise ValueError(f"No author '{author}'.") + + def get_poem( self, author=None, title=None, verbose=False, very_verbose=False, - ): + ) -> Poem: verbose = verbose or very_verbose mask = self.catalog.likelihood > 0 diff --git a/poems/poem.py b/poems/poem.py index 7f03c75..4c23c7b 100644 --- a/poems/poem.py +++ b/poems/poem.py @@ -68,10 +68,6 @@ def __post_init__(self): def __repr__(self): return f"{self.__class__.__name__}({self.title_by_author})" - @property - def translator(self) -> str: - return self.metadata["translator"] if "translator" in self.metadata else "" - @property def keywords(self) -> dict: return self.metadata["keywords"] if "keywords" in self.metadata else {} @@ -109,6 +105,15 @@ def spacetime(self): parts.append(self.metadata["location"]) return ". ".join(parts) or "" + @property + def translator(self) -> str: + return self.metadata.get("translator") + + @property + def translation(self) -> str: + return f"Translated by {self.translator}" if self.translator is not None else "" + + @property def test_email_subject(self): return f"TEST ({self.context.pretty_date}): {self.title_by_author} {self.keywords}" diff --git a/poems/poems.json b/poems/poems.json index a56d470..f2a0063 100644 --- a/poems/poems.json +++ b/poems/poems.json @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ "metadata": {} }, "isaiah-586-9": { - "title": "“Isaiah 58:6–9”", + "title": "“Isaiah 58:6-9”", "body": "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:\nto loose the chains of injustice\n and untie the cords of the yoke,\nto set the oppressed free\n and break every yoke?\nIs it not to share your food with the hungry\n and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter--\nwhen you see the naked, to clothe him,\n and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?\nThen your light will break forth like the dawn,\n and your healing will quickly appear;\nthen your righteousness will go before you,\n and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.\nThen you will call, and the Lord will answer;\n you will cry for help, and he will say: Here I am.", "metadata": {} }, @@ -14548,7 +14548,7 @@ "body": "The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof,\n(This is the end of every song man sings!)\nThe golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain,\nBitter as wormwood and as salt as pain;\nAnd health and hope have gone the way of love\nInto the drear oblivion of lost things.\nGhosts go along with us until the end;\nThis was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend.\nWith pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait\nFor the dropped curtain and the closing gate:\nThis is the end of all the songs man sings.", "metadata": { "keywords": { - "season": "autumn" + "liturgy": "advent" } } }, @@ -32989,7 +32989,7 @@ "tags": [ "english" ], - "n_poems": 34 + "n_poems": 33 }, "poems": { "the-ballad-of-john-silver": { @@ -33036,15 +33036,6 @@ "body": "I have seen flowers come in stony places\nAnd kind things done by men with ugly faces,\nAnd the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,\nSo I trust, too.", "metadata": {} }, - "the-everlasting-mercy": { - "title": "“The Everlasting Mercy”", - "body": "_“Thy place is biggyd above the sterrys cleer,\nNoon erthely paleys wrouhte in so statly wyse,\nCom on my freend, my brothir moost enteer,\nFor the I offryd my blood in sacrifise.”_\n --John Lydgate\n\n\nFrom ’41 to ’51\nI was folk’s contrary son;\nI bit my father’s hand right through\nAnd broke my mother’s heart in two.\nI sometimes go without my dinner\nNow that I know the times I’ve gi’n her.\n\nFrom ’51 to ’61\nI cut my teeth and took to fun.\nI learned what not to be afraid of\nAnd what stuff women’s lips are made of;\nI learned with what a rosy feeling\nGood ale makes floors seem like the ceiling,\nAnd how the moon give shiny light\nTo lads as roll home singing by’t.\nMy blood did leap, my flesh did revel,\nSaul Kane was tokened to the devil.\n\nFrom ’61 to’71\nI lived in disbelief of Heaven.\nI drunk, I fought, I poached, I whored,\nI did despite unto the Lord.\nI cursed, would make a man look pale,\nAnd nineteen times I went to jail.\n\nNow, friends, observe and look upon me,\nMark how the Lord took pity on me.\nBy Dead Man’s Thorn, while setting wires,\nWho should come up but Billy Myers,\nA friend of mine, who used to be\nAs black a sprig of hell as me,\nWith whom I’d planned, to save encroachin’,\nWhich fields and coverts each should poach in.\nNow when he saw me set my snare,\nHe tells me “Get to hell from there.\nThis field is mine,” he says, “by right;\nIf you poach here, there’ll be a fight.\nOut now,” he says, “and leave your wire;\nIt’s mine.”\n“It ain’t.”\n“You put.”\n“You liar.”\n“You closhy put.”\n“You bloody liar.”\n“This is my field.”\n“This is my wire.”\n“I’m ruler here.”\n“You ain’t.”\n“I am.”\n“I’ll fight you for it.”\n“Right, by damn.\nNot now, though, I’ve a-sprained my thumb,\nWe’ll fight after the harvest hum.\nAnd Silas Jones, that bookie wide,\nWill make a purse five pounds a side.”\nThose were the words, that was the place\nBy which God brought me into grace.\n\nOn Wood Top Field the peewits go\nMewing and wheeling ever so;\nAnd like the shaking of a timbrel\nCackles the laughter of the whimbrel …\n\nIn the old quarry-pit they say\nHead-keeper Pike was made away.\nHe walks, head-keeper Pike, for harm,\nHe taps the windows of the farm;\nThe blood drips from his broken chin,\nHe taps and begs to be let in.\nOn Wood Top, nights, I’ve shaked to hark\nThe peewits wambling in the dark\nLest in the dark the old man might\nCreep up to me to beg a light.\n\nBut Wood Top grass is short and sweet\nAnd springy to a boxer’s feet;\nAt harvest hum the moon so bright\nDid shine on Wood Top for the fight.\n\nWhen Bill was stripped down to his bends\nI thought how long we two’d been friends,\nAnd in my mind, about that wire,\nI thought “He’s right, I am a liar.\nAs sure as skilly’s made in prison\nThe right to poach that copse is his’n.\nI’ll have no luck tonight,” thinks I.\n“I’m fighting to defend a lie.\nAnd this moonshiny evening’s fun\nIs worse than aught I’ve ever done.”\nAnd thinking that way my heart bled so\nI almost stept to Bill and said so.\nAnd now Bill’s dead I would be glad\nIf I could only think I had.\nBut no. I put the thought away\nFor fear of what my friends would say.\nThey’d backed me, see? O Lord, the sin\nDone for things there’s money in.\n\nThe stakes were drove, the ropes were hitched,\nInto the ring my hat I pitched.\nMy corner faced the Squire’s park\nJust where the fir trees make it dark;\nThe place where I begun poor Nell\nUpon the woman’s road to hell.\nI thought of’t, sitting in my corner\nAfter the time-keep struck his warner\n(Two brandy flasks, for fear of noise,\nClinked out the time to us two boys).\nAnd while the seconds chafed and gloved me\nI thought of Nell’s eyes when she loved me,\nAnd wondered how my tot would end,\nFirst Nell cast off and now my friend;\nAnd in the moonlight dim and wan\nI knew quite well my luck was gone;\nAnd looking round I felt a spite\nAt all who’d come to see me fight;\nThe five and forty human faces\nInflamed by drink and going to races,\nFaces of men who’d never been\nMerry or true or live or clean;\nWho’d never felt the boxer’s trim\nOf brain divinely knit to limb,\nNor felt the whole live body go\nOne tingling health from top to toe;\nNor took a punch nor given a swing,\nBut just soaked dead round the ring\nUntil their brains and bloods were foul\nEnough to make their throttles howl,\nWhile we whom Jesus died to teach\nFought round on round, three minutes each.\n\nAnd think that, you’ll understand\nI thought, “I’ll go and take Bill’s hand.\nI’ll up and say the fault was mine,\nHe shan’t make play for these here swine.”\nAnd then I thought that that was silly,\nThey’d think I was afraid of Billy;\nThey’d think (I thought it, God forgive me)\nI funked the hiding Bill could give me.\nAnd that thought made me mad and hot.\n“Think that, will they? Well, they shall not.\nThey shan’t think that. I will not. I’m\nDamned if I will. I will not.”\nTime!\n\nFrom the beginning of the bout\nMy luck was gone, my hand was out.\nRight from the start Bill called the play,\nBut I was quick and kept away\nTill the fourth round, when work got mixed,\nAnd then I knew Bill had me fixed.\nMy hand was out, why, Heaven knows;\nBill punched me when and where he chose.\nThrough two more rounds we quartered wide,\nAnd all the time my hands seemed tied;\nBill punched me when and where he pleased.\nThe cheering from my backers eased,\nBut every punch I heard a yell\nOf “That’s the style, Bill, give him hell.”\nNo one for me, but Jimmy’s light\n“Straight left! Straight left!” and “Watch his right.”\n\nI don’t know how a boxer goes\nWhen all his body hums from blows;\nI know I seemed to rock and spin,\nI don’t know how I saved my chin;\nI know I thought my only friend\nWas that clinked flash at each round’s end\nWhen my two seconds, Ed and Jimmy,\nHad sixty seconds help to gimme.\nBut in the ninth, with pain and knocks\nI stopped: I couldn’t fight nor box.\nBill missed his swing, the light was tricky,\nBut I went down, and stayed down, dicky.\n“Get up,” cried Jim. I said, “I will.”\nThen all the gang yelled, “Out him, bill.\nOut him.” Bill rushed … and Clink, Clink, Clink.\nTime! And Jim’s knee, and rum to drink.\nAnd round the ring there ran a titter:\n“Saved by the call, the bloody quitter.”\n\nThey drove (a dodge that never fails)\nA pin beneath my finger nails.\nThey poured what seemed a running beck\nOf cold spring water down my neck;\nJim with a lancet quick as flies\nLowered the swelling round my eyes.\nThey sluiced my legs and fanned my face\nThrough all that blessed minute’s grace;\nThey gave my calves a thorough kneading,\nThey salved my cuts and stopped the bleeding.\nA gulp of liquor dulled the pain,\nAnd then the flasks clinked again.\nTime!\n\nThere was Bill as grim as death,\nHe rushed, I clinched, to get more breath,\nAnd breath I got, though Billy bats\nSome stinging short-arms in my slats.\nAnd when we broke, as I foresaw,\nHe swung his right in for the jaw.\nI stopped it on my shoulder bone,\nAnd at the shock I heard Bill groan\nA little groan or moan or grunt\nAs though I’d hit his wind a bunt.\nAt that, I clinched, and while we clinched,\nHis old time right arm dig was flinched,\nAnd when we broke he hit me light\nAs though he didn’t trust his right,\nHe flapped me somehow with his wrist\nAs though he couldn’t use his fist,\nAnd when he hit he winced with pain.\nI thought, “Your sprained thumb’s crocked again.”\nSo I got strength and Bill gave ground,\nAnd that round was an easy round.\n\nDuring the wait my Jimmy said,\n\n“What’s making Billy fight so dead?\nHe’s all to pieces. Is he blown?”\n“His thumb’s out.”\n“No? Then it’s your own.\nIt’s all your own, but don’t be rash\nHe’s got the goods if you’ve got the cash,\nAnd what one hand can do he’ll do.\nBe careful this next round or two.”\n\nTime. There was Bill, and I felt sick\nThat luck should play so mean a trick\nAnd give me leave to knock him out\nAfter he’d plainly won the bout.\nBut by the way the man came at me\nHe made it plain he meant to bat me;\nIf you’d a seen the way he come\nYou wouldn’t think he’d crocked a thumb.\nWith all his skill and all his might\nHe clipped me dizzy left and right;\nThe Lord knows what the effort cost,\nbut he was mad to think he’d lost,\nAnd knowing nothing else could save him\nHe didn’t care what pain it gave him.\nHe called the music and the dance\nFor five rounds more and gave no chance.\n\nTry to imagine if you can\nThe kind of manhood in the man,\nAnd if you’d like to feel his pain\nYou sprain your thumb and hit the sprain.\nAnd hit it hard with all your power\nOn something hard for half-an-hour,\nWhile someone thumps you black and blue,\nAnd then you’ll know what Billy knew.\nBill took that pain without a sound\nTill halfway through the eighteenth round,\nAnd then I sent him down and out,\nAnd Silas said, “Kane wins the bout.”\n\nWhen Bill came to, you understand,\nI ripped the mitten from my hand\nAnd across to ask Bill shake,\nMy limbs were all one pain and ache,\nI was so weary and so sore\nI don’t think I’d a stood much more.\nBill in his corner bathed his thumb,\nButtoned his shirt and glowered glum.\n“I’ll never shake your hand” he said.\n“I’d rather see my children dead.\nI’ve been about had some fun with you,\nBut you’re a liar and I’ve done with you.\nYou’ve knocked me out, you didn’t beat me;\nLook out the next time that you meet me,\nThere’ll be no friend to watch the clock for you\nAnd no convenient thumb to crock for you,\nAnd I’ll take care, with much delight,\nYou’ll get what you’d a got tonight;\nThat puts my meaning clear, I guess,\nNow get to hell; I want to dress.”\n\n\n\nI dressed. My backers one and all\nSaid, “Well done you” or “Good old Saul.”\n“Saul is a wonder and a fly ’un,\nWhat’ll you have, Saul, at the Lion?”\nWith merry oaths they helped me down\nThe stony wood path to the town.\n\nThe moonlight shone on Cabbage Walk,\nIt made the limestone look like chalk.\nIt was too late for any people,\nTwelve struck as we went by the steeple.\nA dog barked, and an owl was calling,\nThe squire’s brook was still a-falling,\nThe carved heads on the church looked down\nOn “Russell, Blacksmith of this Town,”\nAnd all the graves of all the ghosts\nWho rise on Christmas Eve in hosts\nTo dance and carol in festivity\nFor joy of Jesus Christ’s Nativity\n(Bell-ringer Dawe and his two sons\nBeheld ’em from the bell-tower once),\nTo and two about about\nSinging the end of Advent out,\nDwindling down to windlestraws\nWhen the glittering peacock craws,\nAs craw the glittering peacock should\nWhen Christ’s own star come over the wood.\nLamb of the sky comes out of fold\nWandering windy heavens cold.\nSo they shone and sang till twelve\nWhen all the bells ring out of theirselve.\nRang a peal for Christmas morn,\nGlory, men, for Christ is born.\n\nAll the old monks’ singing places\n\nGlimmered quick with flitting faces,\nSinging anthems, singing hymns\nUnder carven cherubims.\nRinger Dave aloft could mark\nFaces at the window dark\nCrowding, crowding, row on row,\nTill all the church began to glow.\nThe chapel glowed, the nave, the choir,\nAll he faces became fire\nBelow the eastern window high\nTo see Christ’s star come up the sky.\nThen they lifted hands and turned,\nAnd all their lifted fingers burned,\nBurned like the golden altar tallows,\nBurned like a troop of God’s own Hallows,\nBringing to mind the burning time\nWhen all the bells will rock and chime\nAnd burning saints on burning horses\nWill sweep the planets from their courses\nAnd loose the stars to burn up night.\nLord, give us eyes to bear the light.\n\nWe all went quiet down the Scallenge\nLest Police Inspector Drew should challenge.\nBut ’Spector Drew was sleeping sweet,\nHis head upon a charges sheet,\nUnder the gas jet flaring full,\nSnorting and snoring like a bull,\nHis bull cheeks puffed, his bull lips plowing,\nHis ugly yellow front teeth showing.\nJust as we peeped we saw him fumble\nAnd scratch his head, and shift, and mumble.\nDown in the lane so thick and dark\nThe tan-yards stank of bitter bark,\nThe curate’s pigeons gave a flutter,\nA cart went courting down the gutter,\nAnd none else stirred a foot or feather.\nThe houses put their heads together,\nTalking, perhaps, so dark and sly,\nOf all the folk they’d seen go by,\nChildren, and men and women, merry all,\nWho’d some day pass that way to burial.\nIt was all dark, but at the turning\nThe Lion had a window burning.\nSo in we went and up the stairs,\nTreading as still as cats and hares.\nThe way the stairs creaked made you wonder\nIf dead men’s bones were hidden under.\nAt head of stairs upon the landing\nA woman with a lamp was standing;\nshe greet each gent at head of stairs,\nWith “Step in, gents, and take your chairs.\nThe punch’ll come when kettle bubble,\nBut don’t make noise or there’ll be trouble.”\n’Twas Doxy Jane, a bouncing girl\nWith eyes all sparks and hair all curl,\nAnd cheeks all red and lips all coal,\nAnd thirst for men instead of soul.\nShe’s trod her pathway to the fire.\nOld Rivers had his nephew by her.\n\nI step aside from Tom and Jimmy\nTo find if she’d a kiss to gimme.\nI blew out lamp ’fore she could speak.\nShe said, “If you ain’t got a cheek,”\nAnd then beside me in the dim,\n“Did he beat you or you beat him?”\n“Why, I beat him” (though that was wrong).\nShe said, “You must be turble strong,\nI’d be afraid you’d beat me, too.”\n“You’d not,” I said, “I wouldn’t do.”\n“Never?”\n“No, never.”\n“Never?”\n“No.”\n“O Saul. Here’s missus. Let me go.”\nIt wasn’t missus, so I didn’t,\nWhether I mid do or I midn’t,\nUntil she’d promised we should meet\nNext evening, six, at top of street,\nWhen we could have a quiet talk\nOn that low wall up Worcester Walk.\nAnd while we whispered there together\nI give her silver for a feather\nAnd felt a drunkenness like wine\nAnd shut out Christ in husks and swine.\nI felt the dart strike through my liver.\nGod punish me for’t and forgive her.\n\nEach one could be a Jesus mild,\nEach one has been a little child,\nA little child with laughing look,\nA lovely white unwritten book;\nA book that God will take, my friend,\nAs each goes out a journey’s end.\nThe Lord Who gave us Earth and Heaven\nTakes that as thanks for all He’s given.\nThe book He lent is given back\nAll blotted red and smutted black.\n\n“Open the door,” said Jim, “and call.”\nJane gasped “They’ll see me. Loose me, Saul.”\nShe pushed me by, and ducked downstair\nWith half the pins out of her hair.\nI went inside the lit room rollen\nHer scented handkerchief I’d stolen.\n“What would you fancy, Saul?” they said.\n“A gin punch hot and then to bed.”\n“Jane, fetch the punch bowl to the gemmen;\nAnd mind you don’t put too much lemon.\nOur good friend Saul has had a fight of it,\nNow smoke up, boys, and make a night of it.”\n\nThe room was full of men and stink\nOf bad cigars and heavy drink.\nRiley was nodding to the floor\nAnd gurgling as he wanted more.\nHis mouth was wide, his face was pale,\nHis swollen face was sweating ale;\nAnd one of those assembled Greeks\nHad corked black crosses on his cheeks.\nThomas was having words with Goss,\nHe “wouldn’t pay, the fight was cross.”\nAnd Goss told Tom that “cross or no,\nThe bets go as the verdicts go,\nBy all I’ve ever heard or read of.\nSo pay, or else I’ll knock your head off.”\nJim Gurvil said his smutty say\nAbout a girl down Bye Street way,\nAnd how the girl from Froggatt’s circus\nDied giving birth in Newent work’us.\nAnd Dick told how the Dymock wench\nBore twins, poor things, on Dog Hill bench;\nAnd how he’d owned to one Court\nAnd how Judge made him sorry for’t.\nJack set a jew’s harp twanging drily;\n“gimme another cup,” said Riley.\nA dozen more were in their glories\nWith laughs and smokes and smutty stories;\nAnd Jimmy joked and took his sup\nAnd sang his song of “Up, come up.”\nJane brought the bowl of stewing gin\nAnd poured the egg and lemon in,\nAnd whisked it up and served it out\nWhile bawdy questions went about.\nJack chucked her chin, and Jim accost her\nWith bits out of the “Maid of Gloster.”\nAnd fifteen arms went round her waist.\n(And then men ask, Are Barmaids chaste?)\n\nO young men, pray to be kept whole\nfrom bringing down a weaker soul.\nYour minute’s joy so meet in doin’\nMay be the woman’s door to ruin;\nThe door to wandering up and down,\nA painted whore with half a crown.\nThe bright mind fouled, the beauty gay\nAll eaten out and fallen away,\nBy drunken days and weary tramps\nFrom pub to pub by city lamps\nTill men despise the game they started\nTill health and beauty are departed,\nand in a slum the reeking hag\nMumbles a crust with toothy jag,\nOr gets the river’s help to end\nThe life too wrecked for man to mend.\nWe spat and smoked and took our swipe\nTill Silas up and tap his pipe,\nAnd begged us all to pay attention\nBecause he’d several things to mention.\nWe’d seen the fight (Hear, hear. That’s you);\nBut still one task remained to do.\nThat task was his, he didn’t shun it,\nTo give the purse to him as won it.\nWith this remark, from start to out\nHe’d never seen a brisker bout.\nThere was the purse. At that he’d leave it.\nLet Kane come forward to receive it.\n\nI took the purse and hemmed and bowed,\nAnd called for gin punch for the crowd;\nAnd when the second bowl was done,\nI called, “Let’s have another one.”\nSi’s wife come in and sipped and sipped\n(As women will) till she was pipped.\nAnd Si hit Dicky Twot a clouter\nBecause he put his arms about her;\nBut after Si got overtasked\nShe sat and kissed whoever asked.\nMy Doxy Jane was splashed by this,\nI took her on my knee to kiss.\nAnd Tom cried out, “O damn the gin;\nWhy can’t we all have women in?\nBess Evans now, or Sister Polly,\nOr those two housemaids at the Folly?\nLet someone nip to Biddy Price’s,\nThey’d all come in a brace of trices.\nRose Davies, Sue, and Betsy Perks;\nOne man, one girl, and damn all Turks.”\nBut, no. “More gin,” they cried; “Come on.\nWe’ll have the girls in when it’s gone.”\nSo round the g in went, hot and heady,\nHot Hollands punch on top of deady.\n\nHot Hollands punch on top of stout\nPuts madness in and wisdom out.\nFrom drunken man to drunken man\nThe drunken madness raged and ran.\n“I’m climber Joe who climbed the spire.”\n“You’re climber Joe the bloody liar.”\n“Who says I lie?” “I do.”\n“You lie,\nI climbed the spire and had a fly.”\n“I’m French Suzanne, the Circus Dancer,\nI’m going to dance a bloody Lancer.”\n“If I’d my rights I’m Squire’s heir.”\n“By rights I’d be a millionaire.”\n“By rights I’d be the lord of you,\nBut Farmer Scriggins had his do,\nHe done me, so I’ve had to hoove it,\nI’ve got it all wrote down to prove it.\nAnd one of these dark winter nights\nHe’ll learn I mean to have my rights;\nI’ll bloody him a bloody fix,\nI’ll bloody burn his bloody ricks.”\n\nFrom three long hours of gin and smokes,\nAnd two girls’ breath and fifteen blokes,\nA warmish night, and windows shut,\nThe room stank like a fox’s gut.\nThe heat and smell and drinking deep\nBegan to stun the gang to sleep.\nSome fell downstairs to sleep on mat,\nSome snored it sodden where they sat.\nDick Twot had lost a tooth and wept;\nBut all the drunken others slept.\nJane slept beside me in the chair,\nAnd I got up; I wanted air.\n\nI opened window wide and leaned\nOut of that pigstye of the fiend\nAnd felt a cool wind go like grace\nAbout the sleeping market-place.\nThe clock struck three, and sweetly, slowly,\nThe bells chimed Holy, Holy, Holy;\nAnd in a second’s pause there fell\nThe cold note of the chapel bell.\nAnd then a cock crew, flapping wings,\nAnd summat made me think of things.\nHow long those ticking clocks had gone\nFrom church to chapel, on and on,\nTicking the time out, ticking slow\nTo men and girls who’d come and go,\nAnd how they ticked in belfry dark\nWhen half the town was bishop’s park,\nAnd how they’d run a chime full tilt\nThe night after the church was built,\nAnd that night was Lambert’s Feast,\nThe night I’d fought and been a beast.\nAnd how a change had come. And then\nI thought, “You tick to different men.”\nWhat with the fight and what with drinking\nAnd being awake alone there thinking,\nMy mind began to carp and tetter,\n“If this life’s all, the beasts are better.”\nAnd then I thought, “I wish I’d seen\nThe many towns this town has been;\nI wish I knew if they’d a got\nA kind of summat we’ve a-not,\nIf them as built the church so fair\nWere half the chaps folk say they were;\nFor they’d the skill to draw their plan,\nAnd skill’s a joy to any man;\nAnd they’d the strength, not skill alone,\nTo build it beautiful in stone;\nAnd strength and skill together thus\nO, they were happier men than us.\nBut if they were, they had to die\nThe same as every one and I.\nAnd no one lives again, but dies,\nAnd all the bright goes out of eyes,\nand all the skill goes out of hands,\nAnd all the wise brain understands,\nAnd all the beauty, all the power\nIs cut down like a withered flower.\nIn all the show from birth to rest\nI give the poor dumb cattle best.”\n\nI wondered, then, why life should be,\nAnd what would be the end of me\nWhen youth and health and strength were gone\nAnd cold old age came creeping on?\nA keeper’s gun? The Union ward?\nOr that new quod at Hereford?\nAnd looking round I felt disgust\nAt all the nights of drink and lust,\nAnd all the looks of all the swine\nWho’d said that they were friends of mine;\nAnd yet I knew, when morning came,\nThe morning would be just the same,\nfor I’d have drinks and Jane would meet me\nAnd drunken Silas Jones would greet me,\nAnd I’d risk quod and keeper’s gun\nTill all the silly game was done.\n“For parson chaps are mad, supposin’\nA chap can change the road he’s chosen.”\nAnd then the Devil whispered, “Saul,\nWhy should you want to live at all?\nWhy fret and sweat and try to mend?\nIt’s all the same thing in the end.\nBut when it’s done,” he said, “it’s ended.\nWhy stand it , since it can’t be mended?”\nAnd in my heart I heard him plain,\n“Throw yourself down and end it, Kane.”\n\n“Why not?” said I. “Why not? But no.\nI won’t. I’ve never had my go.\nI’ve not had all the world can give.\nDeath by and by, but first I’ll live.\nThe world owes me my time of times,\nAnd that time’s coming now, by crimes.”\n\nA madness took me then. I felt\nI’d like to hit the world a belt.\nI felt that I could fly through air,\nA screaming star with blazing hair,\nA rushing comet, crackling, numbing\nThe folk with fear of judgment coming,\nA ’Lijah in a fiery car,\nComing to tell folk what they are.\n“That’s what I’ll do,” I shouted loud.\n“I’ll tell this sanctimonious crowd\nThis town of window peeping, prying,\nMaligning, peering, hinting, lying,\nMale and female human blots\nWho would, but daren’t be, whores and sots,\nThat they’re so steeped in petty vice\nThat they’re less excellent than lice,\nThat touching one of them will dirt you,\nDirt you with the stain of mean\nCheating trade and going between,\nPinching, starving, scraping, hoarding\nTo see if Sue, the prentice lean,\nDares to touch the margarine.\nFawning, cringing, oiling boots,\nRaging in the crowd’s pursuits,\nFlinging stones at all the Stephens,\nStanding firm with all the evens\nMaking hell for all the odd,\nAll the lonely ones of God,\nThose poor lonely ones who find\nDogs more mild than human kind.\nFor dogs,” I said, “are nobles born\nTo most of you, you cockled corn.\nI’ve known dogs to leave their dinner,\nNosing a kind heart in a sinner.\nPoor old Crafty wagged his tail\nThe day I first came home from jail.\nWhen all my folk, so primly clad,\nGlowered black and thought me mad,.\nAnd muttered how they’d all expected.\n(I’ve thought of that old dog for years,\nAnd of how near I come to tears.)\n\nBut you, you minds of bread and cheese,\nAre less divine tha[n] that dog’s fleas,\nYou suck blood from kindly friends,\nAnd kill them when it serves your ends.,\nDouble traitors, double black,\nStabbing only in the back,\nStabbing with the knives you borrow\nFrom the friends you bring to sorrow.\nYou stab all that’s true and strong,\nTruth and strength you say are wrong,\nMeek and mild, and sweet and creeping,\nRepeating, canting cadging, peeping,\nThat’s the art and that’s the life\nTo win a man his neighbour’s wife.\nAll that’s good and all that’s true,\nYou kill that, so I’ll kill you.”\nAt that I tore my clothes in shreds\nAnd hurled them on the window leads;\nI flung my boots through both the winders\nAnd knocked the glass to little flinders;\nThe punch bowl and the tumblers followed,\nand then I seized the lamps and holloed,\nAnd down the stairs, and tore back bolts,\nAs mad as twenty blooded colts;\nAnd out into the street I pass,\nAs mad as two-year-olds at grass\nA naked madman saving grand\nA blazing lamp in either hand.\nI yelled like twenty drunken sailors,\n“The devil’s come among the tailors.”\nA blaze of flame behind me streamed,\nAnd then I clashed the lamps and screamed\n“I’m Satan, newly come from hell.”\nAnd then I spied the fire bell.\n\nI’ve been a ringer, so I know\nHow best to make a big bell go.\nSo on to bell-rope swift swoop,\nAnd stick my one foot in the loop\nAnd heave a down-swig till I groan\n“Awake, you swine, you devil’s own.”\nI made the fire-bell awake,\nI felt the bell-rope throb and shake;\nI felt the air mingle and clang\nAnd beat the walls a muffled bang,\nAnd stifle back and boom and bay\nLike muffled peals on Boxing Day,\nAnd then surge up and gather shape,\nAnd spread great pinions and escape;\nAnd each great bird of clanging shrieks\nO Fire! Fire, from iron beaks.\nMy shoulders cracked to send around\nThose shrieking birds made out of sound\nWith news of fire in their bills.\n(They heard ’em plain beyond Wall Hills.).\n\nUp go the winders, out come heads,\nI heard the springs go creak in beds;\nBut still I heave and sweat and tire,\nAnd still the clang goes “Fire, Fire!”\n“Where is it, then? Who is it, there?\nYou ringer, stop, and tell us where.”\n“Run round and let the Captain know.”\n“It must be bad, he’s ringing so,”\n“It’s in the town, I see the flame;\nLook there! Look there, how red it came.”\n“Where is it, then? O stop the bell.”\nI stopped and called: “It’s fire of hell;\nAnd this is Sodom and Gomorrah,\nAnd now I’ll burn you up, begorra.”\n\nBy this time firemen were mustering,\nThe half-dressed stable men were flustering,\nBacking the horses out of stalls\nWhile this man swears and that man bawls,\n“Don’t take th’old mare. Back, Toby, back.\nBack, Lincoln. Where’s the fire, Jack?”\n“Damned if I know. Out Preston way.”\n“No. It’s at Chancey’s Pitch, they say.”\n“It’s sixteen ricks at Pauntley burnt.”\n“You back old Darby out, I durn’t.”\nThey ran the big red engine out,\nAnd put ’em to with damn and shout.\nAnd then they start to raise the shire,\n“Who brought the news, and where’s the fire?”\nThey’s moonlight, lamps, and gas to light ’em.\nI give a screech-owl’s screech to fright ’em,\nAnd snatch from underneath their noses\nThe nozzles of the fire hoses.\n“I am the fire. Back, stand back,\nOr else I’ll fetch your skulls a crack;\nD’you see these copper nozzles here?\nThey weigh ten pounds a piece, my dear;\nI’m fire of hell come up this minute\nTo burn this town and burn you clean,\nYou cogwheels in a stopped machine,\nYou hearts of snakes, and brains of pigeons,\nYou dead devout of dead religions,\nYou offspring of the hen and ass,\nBy Pilate ruled, and Caiaphas.\nNow your account is totted. Learn\nHell’s flames are loose and you shall burn.”\n\nAt that I leaped and screamed and ran,\nI heard their cries go, “Catch him, man.”\n“Who was it?” “Down him.” “Out him, Em.”\n“Duck him at pump, we’ll see who’ll burn.”\nA policeman clutched, a fireman clutched,\nA dozen others snatched and touched.\n“By God, he’s stripped down to his buff.”\n“By God, we’ll make him warm enough.”\n“After him,” “Catch him,” “Out him,” “Scrob him.”\n“We’ll give him hell.” “By God, we’ll mob him.”\n“We’ll duck him, scrout him, flog him, fratch him.”\n“All right,” I said. “But first you’ll catch him.”\n\nThe men who don’t know to the root\nThe joy of being swift of foot,\nHave never known divine and fresh\nThe glory of the gift of flesh,\nNor felt the feet exult, not gone\nAlong a dim road, on and on,\nKnowing again the bursting glows,\nthe mating hare in April knows,\nWho tingles to the pads with mirth\nAt being the swiftest thing on earth.\nO, if you want to know delight,\nRun naked in an autumn night,\nAnd laugh, as I laughed then, to find\nA running rabble drop behind,\nand whang, on ever door you pass,\nTwo copper nozzles, tipped with brass,\nAnd double whang at every turning,\nAnd yell, “All hell’s loose, and burning.”\n\nI beat my brass and shouted fire\nAt doors of parson, lawyer, squire,\nat all three doors I threshed and slammed\nAnd yelled aloud that they were damned.\nI clodded squire’s glass with turves\nBecause he spring-gunned his preserves.\nThrough parson’s glass my nozzle swishes\nBecause he stood for loaves and fishes,\nbut parson’s glass I spared a tittle.\nHe give me a orange once when little,\nAnd he who gives a child a treat\nMakes joy-bells ring in Heaven’s street,\nAnd he who gives a child a home\nBuild palaces in Kingdom come\nand she who gives a baby birth\nBrings Saviour Christ again to Earth,\nFor life is joy, and mind is fruit,\nAnd body’s precious earth and root.\nBut lawyer’s glass-well, never mind,\nTh’ old Adam’s strong in me, I find.\nGod pardon man, and may God’s son\nForgive the evil things I’ve done.\n\nWhat more? By Dirty Lane I crept\nBack to the Lion, where I slept.\nThe raging madness hot and floodin’\nBoiled itself out and left me sudden,\nLeft me worn out and sick and cold,\nAching as though I’d all grown old;\nSo there I lay, and there they found me\nOn door-mat, with a curtain round me.\nSi took my heels and Jane my head\nAnd laughed, and carried me to bed.\nAnd from the neighbouring street they reskied\nMy boots and trousers, coat and weskit;\nThey bath-bricked both the nozzles bright\nTo be mementoes of the night,\nAnd knowing what I should awake with,\nThey flanelled me a quart to slake with\nAnd sat and shook till half past two\nExpecting Police Inspector Drew.\nI woke and drank, nd went to meat\nIn clothes still dirty from the street.\nDown in the bar I hear ’em tell\nHow someone rang the fire bell,\nAnd how th’inspector’s search had thriven,\nAnd how five pounds reward was given.\nAnd shepherd Boyce, of Marley, glad us\nBy saying was blokes from mad’us.\nOr two young rips lodged at the Prince\nWhom none had seen nor heard of since,\nOr that young blade from Worcester Walk\n(You know how country people talk).\nYoung Joe the ostler come in sad,\nHe said th’old mare had bit his dad.\nHe said there’d come a blazing screeching\nDaft Bible-prophet chap a-preaching,\nHad put th’old mare in such a taking\nshe’d thought the bloody earth was quaking.\nAnd others come and spread a tale\nOf cut-throats out of Gloucester jail,\nAnd how we needed extra cops\nWith all them Welsh come picking hops:\nWith drunken Welsh in all our sheds\nWe might be murdered in our beds.\n\nBy all accounts, both men and wives\nHad had the scare up of their lives.\n\nI ate and drank and gathered strength,\nAnd stretched along the bench full length,\nOr crossed to window seat to pat\nBlack Silas Jones’s little cat.\nAt four I called, “You devil’s own,\nThe second trumpet shall be blown.\nThe second trump, the second blast;\nHell’s flames are loosed, and judgment’s passed.\nToo late for mercy now. Take warning.\nI’m death and hell and Judgment morning.”\nI hurled the bench into the settle,\nI banged the table on the kettle,\nI sent Joe’s quart of cider spinning.\n“Lo, here begins my second inning.”\nEach bottle, mug, and jug and pot\nI smashed to crocks in half a tot;\nAnd Joe, and Si, and Nick, and Percy\nI rolled together topsy versy.\nAnd as I ran I heard ’em call,\n“Now damn to hell, what’s gone with Saul?”\nOut into street I ran uproarious\nThe devil dancing in me glorious.\nAnd as I ran I yell and shriek\n“Come on, now, turn the other cheek.”\nAcross the way by almshouse pump\nI see old puffing parson stump.\nOld parson, red-eyed as a ferret\nFrom nightly wrestlings with the spirit;\nI ran acrosss, and barred his path.\nHis turkey gills went red as wrath\nAnd then he froze as parsons can.\n“The police will deal with you, my man.”\n“Not yet,” said I, “not yet they won’t;\nAnd now you’ll hear me, like or don’t.\nThe English Church both is and was\nA subsidy of Caiaphas.\nI don’t believe in Prayer or Bible,\nThey’re lies all through, and you’re a libel,\nA libel on the Devil’s plan\nWhen first he miscreated man.\nYou mumble through a formal code\nTo get which martyrs burned and blowed.”\n\n“I look on martyrs as mistakes,\nBut still they burned for it at stakes;\nYour only fire’s the jolly fire\nWhere you can guzzle port with Squire,\nAnd back and praise his damned opinions\nAbout his temporal dominions.\nYou let him give the man who digs,\nA filthy hut unfit for pigs,\nWithout a well, without a drain,\nWith mossy thatch that lets in rain,\nWithout a ’lotment, ’less he rent it,\nAnd never meat, unless he scent it,\nBut weekly doles of ’leven shilling\nTo make a grown man strong and willing,\nTo do the hardest work on earth\nAnd feed his wife when she gives birth,\nAnd feed his little children’s bones.\nI tell you, man, the Devil groans.\nWith all your main and all your might\nYou back what is against what’s right;\nYou let the Squire do things like these,\nYou back him in’t and give him ease,\nYou take his hand and drink his wine,\nAnd he’s a hog, but you’re a swine.\nFor you take gold to teach God’s ways\nAnd teach man how to sing God’s praise.\nAnd now I’ll tell you what you teach\nIn downright honest English speech.”\n\n“You teach the ground-down starving man\nThat Squire’s greed’s Jehovah’s plan.\nYou get his learning circumvented\nLest it should make him discontented\n(Better a brutal, starving nation\nThan men with thoughts above their station),\nYou let him neither read nor think,\nYou goad his wretched soul to drink\nAnd then to jail, the drunken boor;\nO sad intemperance of the poor.\nYou starve his soul till it’s rapscallion,\nThen blame his flesh for being stallion.\nYou send your wife around to paint\nThe golden glories of ‘restraint.’\nHow moral exercise bewild’rin’\nWould soon result in fewer children.\nYou work a day in Squire’s fields\nAnd see what sweet restraint it yields,\nA woman’s day at turnip picking,\nYour hearts too fat for plough or ricking.”\n\n“And you whom luck taught French and Greek\nHave purple flaps on either cheek,\nA stately house, and time for knowledge,\nAnd gold to send your sons to college,\nThat pleasant place, where getting learning\nIs also key to money earning.\nBut quite your damndest want of grace\nIs what you do to save your face;\nThe way you sit astride the gates\nBy padding wages out of rates;\nYour Christmas gifts of shoddy blankets\nThat every working soul may thank its\nLoving parson, loving squire\nThrough whom he can’t afford a fire.\nYour well-packed bench, your prison pen,\nTo keep them something less than men;\nYour friendly clubs to help ’em bury.\nYour charities of midwifery.\nYour bidding children duck and cap\nTo them who give them workhouse pap.\nO, what you are, and what you preach,\nAnd what you do, and what you teach\nIs not God’s Word, nor honest schism,\nBut Devil’s scant and pauperism.”\n\nBy this time many folk had gathered\nTo listen to me while I blathered;\nI said my piece, and when I’d said it,\nI’ll do the purple parson credit,\nHe sunk (as sometimes parsons can)\nHis coat’s excuses in the man.\n“You’d think the Squire and I are kings\nWho made the existing state of things,\nAnd made it ill. I answer, No,\nStates are not made, nor patched; they grow,\nGrow slow through centuries of pain\nAnd grow correctly in the main,\nBut only grow by certain laws\nOf certain bits in certain jaws.\nYou want to doctor that. Let be.\nYou cannot patch a growing tree.\nPut these two words beneath your hat,\nThese two: securus judicat.\nThe social states of human kinds\nAre made by multitudes of minds,\nAnd after multitudes of years\nA little human growth appears\nWorth having, even to the soul\nWho sees most plain it’s not the whole.\n\nThis state is dull and evil, both,\nI keep it in the path of growth;\nYou think the Church an outworn fetter;\nKane, keep it, till you’ve built a better.\nAnd keep the existing social state;\nI quite agree it’s out of date,\nOne does too much, another shirks,\nUnjust, I grant; but still … it works.\nTo get the whole world out of bed\nAnd washed, and dressed, and warmed, and fed,\nTo work, and back to bed again,\nBelieve me, Saul, costs worlds of pain.\nThen, as to whether true or sham\nThat book of Christ, Whose priest I am;\nThe Bible is a lie, say you,\nwhere do you stand, suppose it true?\nGoodbye. But if you’ve more to say\nMy doors are open night and day.\nMeanwhile, my friend, ’twould be no sin\nTo mix more water in your gin.\nWe’re neither saints nor Philip Sidneys,\nBut mortal men with mortal kidneys.”\n\n\n\nHe took his snuff, and wheezed a greeting,\nAnd waddled off to mother’s meeting;\nI hung my head upon my chest,\nI give old purple parson best.\nFor while the Plough tips round the Pole\nThe trained mind outs the upright soul,\nAs Jesus said the trained mind might,\nBeing wiser than the sons of light,\nBut trained men’s minds are spread so thin\nThey let all sorts of darkness in;\nWhatever light man finds they doubt it\nThey love, not light, but talk about it.\n\nBut parson’d proved to people’s eyes\nThat I was drunk, and he was wise;\nAnd people grinned and women tittered,\nAnd little children mocked and twittered.\nSo, blazing mad, I stalked to bar\nTo show how noble drunkards are,\nAnd guzzled spirits like a beast,\nTo show contempt for Church and priest,\nUntil, by six, my wits went round\nLike hungry pigs in parish pound.\nAt half past six, rememb’ring Jane,\nI staggered into street again\nWith mind made up (or primed for gin)\nTo bash the coop who’d run me in;\nFor well I knew I’d have to cock up\nMy legs that night inside the lock-up,\nAnd it was my most fixed intent\nTo have a fight before I went.\nOur Fates are strange, and no one now his;\nOur lovely Saviour Christ disposes.\n\nJane wasn’t where we’d planned, the jade.\nShe’d thought me drunk and hadn’t stayed.\nSo I went up the Walk to look for her\nAnd lingered by the little brook for her,\nAnd dowsed my face, and drank at spring,\nAnd watched two wild ducks on the wing,\nThe moon come pale, the wind come cool,\nA big pike leapt in Lower Pool,\nThe Peacock screamed, the clouds were straking,\nMy cut cheek felt the weather breaking;\nAn orange sunset waned and thinned\nForetelling rain and western wind,\nAnd while I watched I heard distinct\nThe metals on the railway clinked.\nThe blood-edged clouds were all in tatters,\nThe sky and earth seemed mad as hatters;\nthey had a death look, wild and odd,\nOf something dark foretold by God.\nAnd seeing it so, I felt so shaken\nI wouldn’t keep the road I’d taken,\nBut wandered back towards the inn\nResolved to brace myself with gin.\nAnd as I walked, I said, “It’s strange,\nThere’s Death let loose to-night, and Change.”\n\nIn Cabbage Walk, I made a haul\nOf two big pears from lawyer’s wall,\nAnd, munching one, I took the lane\nBack into Market-place again.\nLamp-lighter Dick had passed the turning.\nAnd all the Homend lamps were burning,\nThe windows shone, the shops were busy,\nBut that strange Heaven made me dizzy.\nThe sky had all God’s warning writ\nIn bloody marks all over it,\nAnd over all I thought there was\nA ghastly light besides the gas.\nThe Devil’s tasks and Devil’s rages\nWere giving me the Devil’s wages.\n\nIn Market-place it’s always light,\nThe big shop windows make it bright;\nAnd in the press of people buying\nI spied a little fellow crying\nBecause his mother’d gone inside\nAnd left him there, and so he cried.\nAnd mother’d beat him when she found him,\nAnd mother’s whip would curl right round him,\nAnd mother’d say h’ed done to crost her,\nThough there being crowds about he’d lost her.\n\nLord, give to men who are old and rougher\nThe things that little children suffer,\nAnd let keep bright and undefiled\nThe young years of the little child.\nI pat his head at edge of street\nAnd gi’m my second pear to eat.\nRight under lamp I pat his head,\n“I’ll stay till mother come,” I said,\nAnd stay I did, and joked and talked,\nAnd shoppers wondered as they walked,\n“There’s that Saul Kane, the drunken blaggard,\nTalking to little Jimmy Jaggard.\nThe drunken blaggard reeks of drink.”\n“Whatever will his mother think?”\n“Wherever has his mother gone?\nNip round to Mrs. Jaggard’s, John,\nAnd say her Jimmy’s out again,\nIn Market-place with boozer Kane.”\n“When he come out to-day he staggered.\nO, Jimmy Jaggard, Jimmy Jaggard.”\n“His mother’s gone inside to bargain,\nRun in and tell her , Polly Margin,\nAnd tell her poacher Kane is tipsy\nAnd selling Jimmy to a gipsy.”\n“Run in to Mrs. Jaggard, Ellen,\nOr else, dear knows, there’ll be no tellin’,\nAnd don’t dare leave yer till you’ve fount her,\nYou’ll find her at the linen counter.”\nI told a tale, to Jim’s delight\nOf where the tom-cats go by night,\nAnd how when moonlight came they went\nAmong the chimneys black and bent,\nFrom roof to roof, from house to house,\nWith little baskets full of mouse\nAll red and white, both joint and chnop\nLike meat out of a butcher’s shop;\nThen all along the wall they creep\nAnd everyone is fast asleep,\nAnd honey-hunting moths go by,\nAnd by the bread-batch crickets cry;\nThen on they hurry, never waiting\nTo lawyer’s backyard cellar grating\nwhere Jaggard’s cat, with clever paw,’\nUnhooks a broke-brick’s secret door;\nThen down into the cellar black,\nAcross the wood slug’s slimy track,\nInto an old cask’s quiet hollow,\nWhere they’ve got seats for what’s to follow;\nThen each tom-cats light little candles,\nAnd O, the stories and the scandals,\nAnd O, the songs and Christmas carols,\nAnd O, the milk from little barrels.\nThey light a fire fit for roasting\n(And how good mouse-meat smells when toasting),\nThen down they sit to merry feast\nWhile moon goes west and sun comes east.\n\nSometimes they make so merry there\nOld lawyer comes to head of stair\nTo ’fend with fist and poker took firm\nHis parchments channeled by the bookworm,\nAnd all his deeds, and all his packs\nOf withered ink and sealing wax;\nAnd there he stands, with candle raised,\nAnd listens like a man amazed,\nOr like ghost a man stands dumb at,\nHe says, “Hush! Hush! I’m sure there’s summat.”\nHe hears outside the brown owl call,\nHe hears the death-tick tap the wall,\nthe gnawing of the wainscot mouse,\nThe creaking ujp and down the house,\nThe unhooked window’s hinges ranging,\nThe sounds that say the wind is changing.\nAt last he turns and shakes his head,\n“It’s nothing. I’ll go back to bed.”\n\nAnd just then Mrs. Jaggard came\nTo view and end her Jimmy’s shame.\n\nShe made on rush and gi’m a bat\nAnd shook him like a dog a rat.\n“I can’t turn round but what you’re straying.\nI’ll give you tales and gipsy playing.\nI’ll give you wand’ring off like this\nAnd listening to whatever ’tis,\nYou’ll laugh the little side of the can,\nYou’ll have the whip for his, my man;\nAnd not a bite of meat nor bread\nYou’ll touch before you go to bed.\nSome day you’ll break your mother’s heart,\nAfter God knows she done her part,\nWorking her arms off day and night\nTrying to keep your collars white.\nLook at your face, too, in the street.\nWhat dirty filth’ve you found to eat?\nNow don’t you blubber here, boy, or\nI’ll give you sum’t to blubber for.”\nShe snatched him off from where we stand\nAnd knocked the pear-core from his hand,\nand looked at me, “You Devil’s limb,\nHow dare you talk to Jaggard’s Jim;\nYou drunken, poaching, boozing brute, you,\nIf Jaggard was a man, he’d shoot you.”\nShe glared all this, but didn’t speak,\nshe gasped, white hollows in her cheek;\nJimmy was writhing, screaming wild,\nThe shoppers thought I’d killed the child.\n\nI had to speak, so I begun.\n“You oughtn’t beat your little son;\nHe did no harm, but seeing him there\nI talked to him and gi’m a pear;\nI’m sure the poor child meant no wrong,\nIt’s all my fault he stayed so long,\nHe’d not have stayed, mum, I’ll be bound\nIf I’d not chanced to come around.\nIt’s all my fault he stayed, not his.\nI kept him here, that’s how it is.”\n“Oh!” “And how dare you, then?” says she,\nHow dare yo tempt my boy from me?\nHow dare you do’t, you drunken swine,\nIs he your child or is he mine?\nA drunken sot they’ve had the beak to,\nHas got his dirty whores to speak to,\nHis dirty mates with home he drink,\nNot little children, one would think.\n“Look on him, there,” she says, “Look on him\nAnd smell the stinking gin upon him,\nThe lowest sot, the drunknest liar,\nThe dirtiest dog in all the shire:\nNice friends for any woman’s son\nAfter ten years, and all she’s done.”\n\n“For I’ve had eight, and buried five,\nAnd only three are left alive.\nI’ve given them all we could afford.\nI’ve taught them all to fear the Lord.\nThey’ve had the best we had to give,\nThe only three the Lord let live.”\n\n“For Minnie whom I love the worst\nDied mad in childbirth with her first.\nAnd John and Mary died of measles,\nAnd Rob was drowned at the Teasels.\nAnd little Nan, dear little sweet,\nA cart run over in the street;\nHer little shift was all one stain,\nI prayed God put her out of pain.\nAnd all the rest are gone or going\nThe road to hell, and there’s no knowing\nFor all I’ve done and all I’ve made them\nI’d better not have overlaid them.\nFor Susan went the ways of shame\nThe time the ’till’ry regiment came,\nAnd t’have her child without a father\nI think I’d have her buried father.\nAnd Dicky boozes, God forgimme,\nAnd now’t’s to be the same with Jimmy.\nAnd all I’ve done and all I’ve bore\nHas made a drunkard and a whore,,\nA bastard boy who wasn’t meant,\nAnd Jimmy gwine where Dicky went;\nFor Dick began the self-same way\nAnd my old hairs are going gray,\nAnd my poor man’s a withered knee,\nAnd all the burden falls on me.”\n\n“I’ve washed eight little children’s limbs,\nI’ve taught eight little souls their hymns,\nI’ve risen sick and lain down pinched\nAnd borne it all and never flinched;\nBut to see him, the town’s disgrace,\nWith God’s commandments broke in’s face,\nWho never worked, not he, nor earned,\nNor will do till the seas are burned,\nWho never did since he was whole\nA hand’s turn for a human soul,\nBut poached and stole and gone with women,\nAnd swilled down gin enough to swim in,\nTo see him only lift a finger\nTo make my little Jimmy linger.\nIn spite of all his mother’s prayers,\nAnd all her ten long years of cares,\nand all her broken spirit’s cry\nThat drunkard’s finger puts them by,\nAnd Jimmy turns. And now I see\nThat just as Dick was, Jim will be,\nAnd all my life will have been in vain.\nI might have spared myself the pain,\nAnd done the world a blessed riddance\nIf I’d a drowned ’em all like kittens.\nAnd he the sot, so strong and proud,\nWho’d make white shirts of a mother’s shroud,\nHe laughs now, it’s a joke to him,\nThough it’s the gates of hell for Jim.”\n\n“I’ve had my heart burnt out like coal,\nAnd drops of blood wrung from my soul\nDay in, day out, in pain and tears,\nFor five and twenty wretched years;\nAnd he, he’s ate the fat and sweet,\nAnd loafed and spat at top of street,\nAnd drunk and leched from day till morrow,\nAnd never known a moment’s sorrow.\nHe come out drunk from th’inn to look\nthe day my little Nan was took;\nHe sat there drinking, glad and gay,\nThe night my girl was led astray;\nHe praised my Dick for singing well,\nThe night Dick took the road to hell;\nAnd when my corpse goes stiff and blind,\nLeaving four helpless souls behind,\nHe will be there still, drunk and strong.\nIt do seem hard. It do seem wring.\nBut ‘Woe to him by whom the offense,’\nSays our Lord Jesus’ Testaments.\nWhatever seems, God doth not slumber\nThough he lets pass times without number.\nHe’ll come with trump to call his own,\nAnd t his world’s way’ll be overthrown.\nHe’ll come with glory and with fire\nTo cast great darkness on the liar,\nTo burn the drunkard and the treacher,\nAnd do his judgment on the lecher,\nTo glorify the spirit’s faces\nOf those whose ways were stony places\nWho chose with Ruth the better part;\nO Lord, I see Thee as Thou are,\nO God, the fiery, four-edged sword,\nThe thunder of the wrath outpoured,\nThe fiery four-faced creatures burning,\nAnd all the four-faced wheels all turning,\nComing with trump and fiery saint.\nJim, take me home, I’m turning faint.”\nThey went, and some cried, “Good old sod.”\n“She put it to him straight, by God.”\n\nSummat, whe was, or looked, or said,\nWent home and made me hang my head.\nI slunk away into the night\nKnowing deep down that she was right.\nI’d often hear[d] religious ranters,\nAnd put them down as windy canters,\nBut this old mother made me see\nthe harm I done by being me.\nBeing both strong and given to sin\nI ’stracted weaker vessels in.\nSo back to bar to get more drink,\nI didn’t dare begin to think,\nAnd there were drinks and drunken singing,\nAs though this life were dice for flinging;\nDice to be flung, and nothing furder,\nAnd Christ’s blood just another murder.\n“Come on, drinks round, salue, drink hearty,\nNow, Jane, the punch-bowl for the party.\nIf any here won’t drink with me\nI’ll knock his bloody eyes out. See?\nCome on, cigars round, rum for mine,\nSing us a smutty song, some swine.”\nBut though the drinks and songs went round\nThat thought remained, it was not drowned.\nAnd when I’d rise to get a light\nI’d think, “What’s come to me tonight?”\n\nThere’s always crowds when drinks are standing.\nThe house doors slammed along the landing,\nThe rising wind was gusty yet,\nAnd those who cam in late were wet;\nAnd all my body’s nerves were snappin’\nWith sense of summat ’bout to happen,\nAnd music seemed to come and go\nAnd seven lights danced in a row.\nThere used be a custom then,\nMiss Bourne, the Friend, went round at ten\nTo all the pubs in all the place,\nTo bring the drunkards’ souls to grace;\nSome sulked, of course, and some were stirred,\nBut none give her a dirty word.\nA tall pale woman, grey and bent,\nFolk said of her that she was sent\nShe wore Friend’s clothes, and women smiled,\nBut she’d a heart just like a child.\nShe come to us near closing time\nwhen we were at some smutty rhyme,\nAnd I was mad, and ripe for fun;\nI wouldn’t a minded what I done.\nSo when she come so prim and grey\nI pound the bar and sing, “Hooray,\nHere’s Quaker come to bless and kiss us,\nCome, have a gin and bitters, missus,\nOr may be Quaker girls so prim\nWould rather start a bloody hymn.\nNow Dick, oblige. A hymn, you swine,\nPipe up the ’Officer of the Line,’\nA song to make one’s belly ache,\nOr ’Nell and Roger at the Wake,’\nOr that sweet song, the talk in town,\n’The lady fair and Abel Brown.’\n’O, who’s that knocking at the door,’\nMiss Bourne’ll play the music score.”\nThe men stood dumb as cattle are,\nThey grinned, but thought I’d gone too far,\nThere come a hush and no one break it,\nThey wondered how Miss Bourne would take it.\nShe up to me with black eyes wide,\nShe looked as though her spirit cried;\nShe took my tumbler from the bar\nBeside where all the matches are\nAnd poured it out upon the floor dust,\nAmong the fag-ends, spit and saw-dust.\n\n“Saul Kane,” she said, “when next you drink,\nDo me the gentleness to think\nThat every drop of drink accursed\nMakes Christ within you die of thirst,\nThat every dirty word you say\nIs one more flint upon his way,\nAnother thorn about His head,\nAnother mock by where He tread,\nAnother nail, another cross.\nAll that you are is that Christ’s loss.”\nThe clock run down and struck a chime\nAnd Mrs. Si said, “Closing time.”\n\nThe wet was pelting on the pane\nAnd something broke inside my brain,\nI heard the rain drip from the gutters\nAnd Silas putting up the shutters,\nWhile one by one the drinkers went;\nI got a glimpse of what it meant,\nHow she and I had stood before\nIn some old town by some old door\nWaiting intent while someone knocked\nBefore the door for ever locked;\nShe was so white that I was scared,\nA gas jet, turned the wrong way, flared,\nAnd Silas snapped the bars in place.\nMiss Bourne stood white and searched my face.\nWhen Silas done, with ends of tunes\nHe ’gan a gathering the spittoons,\nHis wife primmed lips and took the till.\nMiss Bourne stood still and I stood still.\nMiss Bourne stood still and I stood still,\nAnd “Tick. Slow. Tick. Slow” went the clock.\nShe said, “He waits until you knock.”\nShe turned at that and went out swift,\nSi grinned and winked, his missus sniffed.\n\nI heard her clang the Lion door,\nI marked a drink-drop roll to floor;\nIt took up scraps of sawdust, furry,\nAnd crinkled on, a half inch, blurry;\nA drop from my last glass of gin;\nAnd someone waiting to come in,\nA hand upon the door latch gropen\nKnocking the man inside to open.\nI know the very words I said,\nThey bayed like bloodhounds in my head.\n“The water’s going out to sea\nAnd there’s a great moon calling me;\nBut there’s a great sun calls the moon,\nAnd all God’s bells will carol soon\nFor joy and glory and delight\nOf someone coming home to-night.”\nOut into darkness, out to night,\nMy flaring heart gave plenty light,\nSo wild it was there was no knowing\nWhether the clouds or stars were blowing;\nBlown chimney pots and folk blown blind,\nAnd puddles glimmering in my mind,\nAnd chinking glass from windows banging,\nAnd inn signs swung like people hanging,\nAnd in my heart the drink unpriced,\nThe burning cataracts of Christ.\n\nI did not think, I did not strive,\nThe deep peace burnt my me alive;\nThe bolted door had broken in,\nI knew that I had done with sin.\nI knew that Christ had given me birth\nTo brother all the souls on earth,\nAnd every bird and every beast\nShould share the crumbs broke at the feast.\n\n\n\nO glory of the lighted mind.\nHow dead I’d been, how dumb, how blind.\nThe station brook, to my new eyes,\nWas babbling out of Paradise,\nThe waters rushing from the rain\nWere singing Christ has risen again.\nI thought all earthly creatures knelt\nFrom rapture of the joy I felt.\nThe narrow station-wall’s brick ledge,\nThe wild hop withering in the hedge,\nThe lights in huntsmans’ upper storey\nWere parts of an eternal glory,\nWere God’s eternal garden flowers.\nI stood in bliss at this for hours.\n\nO glory of the lighted soul.\nThe dawn came up on Bradlow Knoll,\nThe dawn with glittering on the grasses,\nThe dawn which pass and never passes.\n\n“It’s dawn,” I said, “And chimney’s smoking,\nAnd all the blessed fields are soaking.’\nIt’s dawn, and there’s an engine shunting;\nAnd hounds, for huntsman’s going hunting.\nIt’s dawn, and I must wander north\nAlong the road Christ led me forth.”\n\nSo up the road I wander slow\nPast where the snowdrops used to grow\nWith celandines in early springs,\nWhen rainbows were triumphant things\nAnd dew so bright and flowers so glad,\nEternal joy to lass and lad.\nAnd past the lovely brook I paced,\nThe brook whose source I never traced,\nThe brook, the one of two which rise\nIn my green dream in Paradise,\nIn wells where heavenly buckets clink\nTo give God’s wandering thirsty drink\nBy those clean cots of carven stone\nWhere the clear water sings alone.\nThen down, past that white-blossomed pond,\nAnd past the chestnut trees beyond,\nAnd past the bridge the fishers knew,\nWhere yellow flag flowers once grew,\nWhere we’d go gathering cops of clover,\nIn sunny June times long since over.\nO clover-cops half white, half red,\nO beauty from beyond the dead.\nO blossom, key to earth and heaven,\nO souls that Christ has new forgiven.\nThen down the hill to gipsies’ pitch\nBy where the brook clucks in the ditch.\nA gipsy’s camp was in the copse,\nThree felted tents, with beehive tops,\nAnd round black marks where fires had been,\nAnd one old waggon painted green,\nAnd three ribbed horses wrenching grass,\nAnd three wild boys to watch me pass,\nAnd one old woman by the fire\nHulking a rabbit warm from wire.\nI loved to see the horses bait,\nI felt I walked at Heaven’s gate,\nThat Heaven’s gate was opened wide\nYet still the gipsies camped outside.\nThe waste souls will prefer the wild,\nLong after life is meek and mild.\nPerhaps when man has entered in’\nHis perfect city free from sin,\nThe campers will come past the walls\nWith old lame horses full of galls,\nAnd waggons hung about with withies,\nAnd burning coke in tinker’s stithies,\nAnd see the golden town, and choose,\nAnd think the wild to good to lose.\nAnd camp outside, as these camped then\nWith wonder at the entering men.\nSo past, and past the stone heap white\nThat dewberry trailers hid from sight,\nAnd down the field so full of springs,\nWhere mewing peewits clap their wings,\nAnd past the trap made for the mill\nInto the field below the hill.\nThere was a mist along the stream,\nA wet mist, dim, like in a dream;\nI heard the heavy breath of cows\nAnd waterdrops from th’alder boughs;\nAnd eels, or snakes, in dripping grass,\nWhipping aside to let me pass.\nThe gate was backed against the ryme\nTo pass the cows at milking time.\nAnd by the gate as I went out\nA moldwarp rooted earth wi’s snout.\nA few steps up the Callow’s Lane\nBrought me above the mist again,\nThe two great fields arose like death\nAbove the mists of human breath.\n\nAll earthly things that blessèd morning\nWere everlasting joy and warning,\nThe gate was Jesus’way made plain,\nthe mole was Satan foiled again,\nblack blinded Satan snouting way\nAlong the red of Adam’s clay;\nThe mist was error and damnatiion,\nThe lane the road unto salvation.\nOut of the mist into the light,\nO blessèd gift of inner sight.\nThe past was faded like a dream;\nThere come the jingling of a team,\nA ploughman’s voice, a clink of chain,\nSlow hoofs, and harness under strain.\nUp the slow slope a team came bowing,\nOld Callow at his autumn ploughing,\nOld Callow, stooped above the hales,\nPloughing the stubble into wales.\nHis grave eyes looking straight ahead,\nShearing a long straight furrow red;\nHis plough-foot high to give it earth\nTo bring new food for men to birth.\nO wet red swathe of earth laid bare,\nO truth, O strength, O gleaming share,\nO patient eyes that watch the goal,\nO ploughman of the sinner’s soul.\nO Jesus, drive the coulter deep\nTo plough my living man from sleep.\n\nSlow up the hill the plough team plod,\nOld Callow at the task of God,\nHelped by man’s wit, helped by the brute,\nTurning a stubborn clay to fruit,\nHis eyes forever on some sign\nTo help him plough a perfect line.\nAt top of rise the plough team stopped,\nThe fore-horse bent his head and cropped.\nThen the chains chack, the brasses jingle,\nThe lean reins gather through the cringle,\nThe figures move against the sky,\nThe clay wave breaks as they go by.\nI kneeled there in the muddy fallow,\nI knew that Christ was there with Callow,\nThat Christ was standing there with me,\nThat Christ had taught me what to be,\nThat I should plough, and as I ploughed\nMy Saviour Christ would sing aloud,\nAnd as I drove the clods apart\nChrist would be ploughing in my heart,\nThrough rest-harrow and bitter roots,\nThrough all my bad life’s rotten fruits.\n\nO Christ who holds the open gate,\nO Christ who drives the furrow straight,\nO Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter\nOf holy white birds flying after,\nLo, all my heart’s field red and torn,\nAnd Thou wilt bring the young green corn,\nThe young green corn divinely springing,\nThe young green corn forever singing;\nAnd when the field is fresh and fair\nThy blessèd feet shall glitter there,\nAnd we will walk the weeded field,\nAnd tell the holden harvests’s yield,\nThe corn that makes the holy bread\nBy which the soul of man is fed,\nThe holy bread, the food unpriced,\nThy everlasting mercy, Christ.\n\nThe share will jar on many a stone,\nThou wilt not let me stand alone;\nAnd I shall feel (thou wilt not fail),\nThy hand on mine upon the hale.\nNear Bullen Bank, on Gloucester Road,\nThy everlasting mercy showed\nThe ploughman patient on the hill\nForever there, forever still,\nPloughing the hill with steady yoke\nOf pine-trees lightning-struck and broke.\nI’ve marked the May Hill ploughman stay\nThere on his hill, day after day\nDriving his team against the sky,\nWhile men and women live and die.\nAnd now and then he seems to stoop\nTo clear the coulter with the scoop,\nOr touch an ox to haw or gee\nWhile Severn stream goes out to sea.\nThe sea with all her ships and sails,\nAnd that great smoky port in Wales,\nAnd Gloucester tower bright i’ the sun,\nAll know that patient wandering one.\nAnd sometimes when they burn the leaves\nThe bonfires’ smoking trails and heaves,\nAnd girt red flames twink and twire\nAs though he ploughed the hill afire.\nAnd in men’s hearts in many lands\nA spiritual ploughman stands\nForever waiting, waiting now,\nThe heart’s “Put in, man, zook the plough.”\n\nBy this the sun was all one glitter,\nThe little birds were all atwitter;\nOut of a tuft a little lark\nWent higher up than I could mark,\nHis little throat was all one thirst\nTo sing until his heart should burst\nTo sing aloft in golden light\nHis song from blue air out of sight.\nThe mist drove by, and now the cows\nCame plodding up to milking house.\nFollowed by Frank, the Callow’s cowman,\nWho whistled, “Adam was a ploughman.”\nThere came such cawing from the rooks,\nSuch running chuck from little brooks,\nOne thought it March, just budding green,\nWith hedgerows full of celandine.\nAn otter’ out of stream and played,\nTwo hares come loping up and stayed;\nWide-eyed and tender-eared but bold.\nSheep bleated up from Penny’s fold.\nI heard a partridge covey call,\nThe morning sun was bright on all.\nDown the long slope the plough team drove\nThe tossing rooks arose and hove.\nA stone struck on the share. A word\nCame to the team. The red earth stirred.\n\nI crossed the hedge by shooter’s gap,\nI hitched my boxer’s belt a strap,\nI jumped the ditch and crossed the fallow:\nI took the hales from framer Callow.\n\nHow swift the summer goes,\nForget-me-not, pink, rose.\nThe young grass when I started\nAnd now the hay is carted,\nAnd now my song is ended,\nAnd all the summer splended;\nThe blackbirds’ second brood\nRouts beech leaves in the wood;\nThe pink and rose have speeded,\nForget-me-not has seeded.\nOnly the winds that blew,\nThe rain that makes things new,\nThe earth that hides things old,\nAnd blessings manifold.\n\nO lovely lily clean,\nO lily springing green,\nO lily bursting white,\nDear lily of delight,\nSpring my heart agen\nThat I may flower to men.", - "metadata": { - "keywords": { - "liturgy": "advent" - } - } - }, "fragments": { "title": "“Fragments”", "body": "Troy Town is covered up with weeds,\nThe rabbits and the pismires brood\nOn broken gold, and shards, and beads\nWhere Priam’s ancient palace stood.\n\nThe floors of many a gallant house\nAre matted with the roots of grass;\nThe glow-worm and the nimble mouse\nAmong her ruins flit and pass.\n\nAnd there, in orts of blackened bone,\nThe widowed Trojan beauties lie,\nAnd Simois babbles over stone\nAnd waps and gurgles to the sky.\n\nOnce there were merry days in Troy,\nHer chimneys smoked with cooking meals,\nThe passing chariots did annoy\nThe sunning housewives at their wheels.\n\nAnd many a lovely Trojan maid\nSet Trojan lads to lovely things;\nThe game of life was nobly played,\nThey played the game like Queens and Kings.\n\nSo that, when Troy had greatly passed\nIn one red roaring fiery coal,\nThe courts the Grecians overcast\nBecame a city in the soul.\n\nIn some green island of the sea,\nWhere now the shadowy coral grows\nIn pride and pomp and empery\nThe courts of old Atlantis rose.\n\nIn many a glittering house of glass\nThe Atlanteans wandered there;\nThe paleness of their faces was\nLike ivory, so pale they were.\n\nAnd hushed they were, no noise of words\nIn those bright cities ever rang;\nOnly their thoughts, like golden birds,\nAbout their chambers thrilled and sang.\n\nThey knew all wisdom, for they knew\nThe souls of those Egyptian Kings\nWho learned, in ancient Babilu,\nThe beauty of immortal things.\n\nThey knew all beauty--when they thought\nThe air chimed like a stricken lyre,\nThe elemental birds were wrought,\nThe golden birds became a fire.\n\nAnd straight to busy camps and marts\nThe singing flames were swiftly gone;\nThe trembling leaves of human hearts\nHid boughs for them to perch upon.\n\nAnd men in desert places, men\nAbandoned, broken, sick with fears,\nRose singing, swung their swords agen,\nAnd laughed and died among the spears.\n\nThe green and greedy seas have drowned\nThat city’s glittering walls and towers,\nHer sunken minarets are crowned\nWith red and russet water-flowers.\n\nIn towers and rooms and golden courts\nThe shadowy coral lifts her sprays;\nThe scrawl hath gorged her broken orts,\nThe shark doth haunt her hidden ways.\n\nBut, at the falling of the tide,\nThe golden birds still sing and gleam,\nThe Atlanteans have not died,\nImmortal things still give us dream.\n\nThe dream that fires man’s heart to make,\nTo build, to do, to sing or say\nA beauty Death can never take,\nAn Adam from the crumbled clay.", @@ -52313,6 +52304,76 @@ } } }, + "fyodor-sologub": { + "metadata": { + "name": "Fyodor Sologub", + "birth": "1863", + "death": "1927", + "gender": "male", + "nationality": "russian", + "language": "russian", + "flag": "🇷🇺", + "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Sologub", + "favorite": false, + "tags": [ + "russian" + ], + "n_poems": 4 + }, + "poems": { + "the-devils-swing": { + "title": "“The Devil’s Swing”", + "body": "Beneath a shaggy fir tree,\nAbove a noisy stream\nThe devil’s swing is swinging,\nPushed by his hairy hand.\n\nHe swings the swing while laughing,\nSwing high, swing low,\nSwing high, swing low,\nThe board is bent and creaking,\nThe rope is taut and chafing\nAgainst a heavy branch.\n\nThe swaying board is rushing\nWith long and drawn-out creaks;\nWith hand on hip, the devil\nIs laughing with a wheeze.\n\nI clutch, I swoon. I’m swinging.\nSwing high, swing low,\nSwing high, swing low,\nI’m clinging and I’m dangling.\nAnd from the devil trying\nTo turn my languid gaze.\n\nAbove the dusky fir tree\nThe azure sky guffaws:\n“You’re caught upon the swings, love,\nThe devil take you, swing!”\n\nBeneath the shaggy fir tree\nThe screeching throng whirls round:\n“You’re caught upon the swings, love,\nThe devil take you, swing!”\n\nThe devil will not slacken\nThe swift board’s pace, I know,\nUntil his hand unseats me\nWith a ferocious blow.\n\nUntil the jute, while twisting,\nIs frayed through till it breaks,\nUntil my ground beneath me\nTurns upward to my face.\n\nI’ll fly above the fir tree\nAnd fall flat on the ground.\nSo swing the swing, you devil,\nGo higher, higher ... oh!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "April FitzLyon", + "date": { + "year": 1907, + "month": 6, + "day": 14 + } + } + }, + "in-this-hour": { + "title": "“In this hour …”", + "body": "In this hour when darkened skies arc by the awful thunder rent,\nIn this hour when shakes our dwelling to its very fundament,\nIn this hour when every hope and every love are in despair,\nWhen the mightiest in spirit purse the brow in restless care\nIn this hour your hearts shall rouse them higher, higher in their pride,\nVictory is theirs alone who faithful to the end abide.\nOnly theirs who trust with blindness, even though in spite of fate,\nOnly theirs who on their mother fling not grievous stones of hate.", + "metadata": { + "keywords": { + "liturgy": "lent" + }, + "translator": "Paul Selver", + "date": { + "year": 1915, + "month": 6, + "day": 25 + } + } + }, + "the-jare": { + "title": "“The Jare”", + "body": "Inside a jar with painted flowers\nA surly servant carries wine.\nIn skies above the darkness lowers,\nThe road is rough and no stars shine.\nWith straining eyes to guide his going.\nHe peers into the darkness dim.\nLest the wine flood and overflowing\nDrip down and soak his breast for him.\n\nI also bear a jar, and filled it\nWith sufferings of long ago;\nI lulled and cunningly distilled it.\nMy poison of remembered woe.\nBy devious ways I travel bearing\nMy jar that brims with evil, lest\nSomeone should come with hands uncaring\nAnd spill it down upon my breast.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Cecil Maurice Bowra", + "date": { + "year": 1895, + "month": 9, + "day": 12 + } + } + }, + "over-the-river-the-hazes-that-flow": { + "title": "“Over the river the hazes that flow …”", + "body": "Over the river the hazes that flow\n’Neath the moon in the lonesome night,\nThey beset me with hate, and they bring me delight\nFor the stillness thereof and the woe.\n\nForgotten the beauty of day,\nAnd thro’ mist I stealthily pace,\nA track scarce beheld, in my travail I trace\nAnd I carry my lonely despair on my way.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Paul Selver", + "date": { + "year": 1895, + "month": 5, + "day": 14 + } + } + } + } + }, "vladimir-solovyov": { "metadata": { "name": "Vladimir Solovyov", diff --git a/poems/utils.py b/poems/utils.py index e10d7e4..67c4f0d 100644 --- a/poems/utils.py +++ b/poems/utils.py @@ -70,21 +70,24 @@ def make_author_stats(history, catalog=None): if author not in entries: author_mask = history.author.values == author - days_since_last_sent = (timestamp - history.loc[author_mask, "timestamp"].max()) / 86400 + timestamp_last_sent = history.loc[author_mask, "timestamp"].max() + isoformat_last_sent = datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp_last_sent).astimezone(pytz.utc).isoformat() + days_since_last_sent = (timestamp - timestamp_last_sent) / 86400 entries[author] = { "n_times_sent": sum(author_mask), + "date_last_sent": isoformat_last_sent[:10], "days_since_last_sent": int(days_since_last_sent), } - stats = pd.DataFrame(entries, dtype=int).T + stats = pd.DataFrame(entries).T if catalog: sort_kwargs["by"].append("n_poems") sort_kwargs["ascending"].append(False) - stats.insert(0, "n_poems", 0) + stats.insert(1, "n_poems", 0) for author in stats.index: diff --git a/scripts/send-poem.py b/scripts/send-poem.py index 445866c..57f4d1f 100644 --- a/scripts/send-poem.py +++ b/scripts/send-poem.py @@ -51,14 +51,14 @@ if not test: index = len(history) + 1 - now = datetime.now(tz=pytz.utc) - date, time = now.isoformat()[:19].split("T") + now = Context.now() + date, time = now.isoformat[:19].split("T") - history.loc[index, "date"] = date, - history.loc[index, "time"] = time, - history.loc[index, "timestamp"] = int(now.timestamp()), - history.loc[index, "title"] = p.tag, - history.loc[index, "author"] = p.author.tag, + history.loc[index, "date"] = date + history.loc[index, "time"] = time + history.loc[index, "timestamp"] = int(now.timestamp) + history.loc[index, "title"] = p.tag + history.loc[index, "author"] = p.author.tag daily_poems = {} for index, entry in history.iterrows(): @@ -71,7 +71,7 @@ "description": p.html_description, "body": p.html_body, "translation": f"Translated by {p.translator}" if p.translator else "", - "spacetime": p.spacetime + "spacetime": p.spacetime, } daily_poems[str(index)] = packet @@ -82,7 +82,7 @@ utils.write_to_repo(repo, items={ "data/poems/history-daily.csv": history.to_csv(), - "data/poems/author-stats.csv": utils.make_author_stats(history).to_csv(), + "data/poems/author-stats.csv": utils.make_author_stats(history, catalog=curator.catalog).to_csv(), "docs/assets/scripts/data/daily-poems.js": f"var dailyPoems = {json.dumps(daily_poems, indent=4, ensure_ascii=False)}", }, verbose=True) \ No newline at end of file