I. The King of Cuckooz THE King of Cuckooz Contrey Hangs peaked above Argier With Janzaries and Marabutts To bid a sailor fear? With lantern-eyed astrologers Who walk upon the walls And ram with stars their basilisks Instead of cannon-balls. And in that floating castle (I tell you it is so) Five thousand naked Concubines With dulcimers do go. Each rosy nose anoints a tile, Bang, bang! the fort salutes, When He, the King of Cuckooz Land, Comes forth in satin boots, Each rosy darling flies before When he desires his tent, Or, like a tempest driving flowers, Inspects a battlement. And this I spied by moonlight Behind a royal bamboo? That Monarch in a curricle Which ninety virgins drew; That Monarch drinking nectar (Lord God, my tale attest!) Milked from a snow-white elephant As white as your white breast! And this is no vain fable As other knaves may lie? Have I not got that Fowl aboard Which no man may deny? The King's own hunting-falcon I limed across the side When by the Bayes of Africa King James's Fleet did ride. What crest is there emblazoned, Whose mark is this, I beg, Stamped on the silver manacle Around that dainty leg? Let this be news to you, my dear, How Man should be revered; Though I'm no King of Cuckooz Land, Behold as fierce a beard! I have as huge an appetite, As deep a kiss, my girl, And somewhere, for the hand that seeks, Perhaps a Sultan's pearl! . Post-Roads POST-ROADS that clapped with tympan heels Of tilburies and whiskys rapidly spanking, Where's now the tireless ghost of Ogilby? Post-roads That buoyed the rich and plunging springs Of coaches vaster than Escurials, Where now does Ogilby propel that Wheel, What milestones does he pause to reprimand, In what unmapped savanna of dumb shades? Ye know not?ye are silent?brutish ducts Numbed by the bastinadoes of iron boots, Three hundred years asnore. Do you forget The phaetons and fiacres, flys and breaks, The world of dead men staring out of glass That drummed upon your bones? Do you forget Those nostrils oozing smoke, those floating tails, Those criniers whipped with air? And kidnapped lights, Floats of rubbed yellow towed from window-panes, Rushing their lozenges through headlong stones; And smells of hackneys, mohair sour with damp, Leather and slopped madeira, partridge-pies Long-buried under floors; and yawning Fares With bumping flap-dark spatulas of cards? 'Knave takes the ten . . . oh, God, I wish that it, I wish that it was Guildford' . . . . Ogilby Did not forget, could not escape such ecstacies, Even in the monasteries of mensuration, Could not forget the roads that he had gone In fog and shining air. Each line was joy, Each computation a beatitude, A diagram of Ogilby's eye and ear With soundings for the nose. Wherefore I think, Wherefore I think some English gentleman, Some learned doctor of the steak-houses, Ending late dinner, having strolled outside To quell the frivolous hawthorn, may behold There in the moonshine, rolling up an hill, Steered by no fleshly hand, with spokes of light, The Wheel?John Ogilby's Wheel?the WHEEL hiss by, Measuring mileposts of eternity. . Dutch Seacoast No wind of Life may strike within This little country's crystal bin, Nor calendar compute the days Tubed in their capsule of soft glaze. Naked and rinsed, the bubble-clear Canals of Amsterdam appear, The blue-tiled turrets, china clocks And glittering beaks of weathercocks. A gulf of sweet and winking hoops Whereon there ride poops With flying mouths and fleeting hair Of saints hung up like candles there? Fox-coloured mansions, lean and tall, That burst in air but never fall Whose bolted shadows, row by row, Float changeless on the stones below? Sky full of ships, bay full of town, A port of waters jellied brown: Such is the world no tide may stir, Sealed by the great cartographer. O, could he but clap up like this My decomposed metropolis, Those other countries of the mind, So tousled, dark and undefined! . Mermaids ONCE Mermaids mocked your ships With wet and scarlet lips And fish-dark difficult hips, Conquistador; Then Ondines danced with Sirens on the shore, Then from his cloudy stall, you heard the Kraken call, And, mad with twisting flame, the Firedrake roar. Such old-established Ladies No mariner eyed askance, But, coming on deck, would swivel his neck To watch the darlings dance, Or in the gulping dark of nights Would cast his tranquil eyes On singular kinds of Hermaphrodites Without the least surprise. Then portu