Tea In The Garden Poem by Arthur Graeme West

You see this Tea, no milk or sugar in it,
Like peat-born water’s brown translucency,
Where deep and still it lingers through the shade
Of hazel curtains: Well, this liquid jewel,
This quiet, self-contained, smooth, rounded pool,
This glowing agaric, gold-threaded dusk,
Tranquilly dreaming, yet shot every way,
By rays of china-filtered sunlight, steam
Gliding in banks, whirling in eddied dances
Over the polished floor, now leaping off it
In restless clouds that win a kiss of the sun
Ere a death, like Semele’s, from the levin-brand,
Whisk them to dissolution; this brimmed cup,
Let us pretend that it’s a human mind
That we’ve created, for we poured it out,
Aye! and will spill it if we like — this mind,
A young man’s mind, clean, unadulterate,
And noble, too, as China-tea minds are —
None of your vulgar one-and-fourpennies —
We’ll govern as the gods do govern us.
He’s happy now, the man: wits clean, blood warm
And dim delightful clouds of sunlit visions,
Like steam, are born and die in loveliness
Continuously.
But he’s not fit to drink,
Needs milk and sugar, and we poured him out
The best of Tea in a biscuit-china cup,
Because we want to drink him; milk and sugar
Will rather stultify his Attic salts
And cloud the clearness of his intellect —
But we are gods, he’s ours and not his own,
So pass the milk-jug and the sugar-bowl!
Ah! how he lies and sweetly meditates,
Fond fool, those fair reflections in his mind;
Slow clouds and passing wings and leaves a-flicker
Like little yellow flames, on the poplar tree,
And weaves an intricate theology
From the silver tea-pot spout, that gave him birth,
Your hand and wrist, jewelled and braceleted,
Behind the pot, well-wishing deities
That made him out of love, will care for him,
And bring him home at last.
Pour in some milk!
His light is dimmed, for quite impermeable
Is this dull muddy fluid to the sun:
Where are his glinting sparkles, amber glows,
The glazed clearness of his mirror-like soul,
As sharp reflecting as Narcissus’ well?
His blood runs colder, no more leaping clouds
Of vaporous spring to gaze on the sun,
And perish gazing; he’s turned “practical”
(His own word that), must keep his energies
For the lukewarm days, when life is on the lees.
Pour in more milk: the cold white heaviness
Drops clean through all his being, re-ascends
Like monstrous births form wind impregnate wombs
In cloudy humours: like a witch’s cauldron
His brain boils up in vaporous melancholy,
And pallid phantoms hold in it high revel
Of tireless whirling orgy.
Sugar him!
And a few bubbles of air, like noisome gas,
Come popping up, and dully burst; a sweet
Faint opiate apathy distils about
His goblin-haunted soul. Thick fatty blobs
Of yellow cream o’erlay his seething brain
And spread a general obscuration;
Drawing a veil betwixt him and the world
Of mirrorable beauty — a wrinkled rind,
Like skin on a hag’s cheek, that shows you still,
Crinkling and creasing in fantastic flickers,
The weary ebb and flow of his sick mind.
Come, let us end it!
Take that silver spoon,
And stab him to the soul; the agony
Of its entrance may confound his fond beliefs
Concerning us, who made him, and a flame
Of purifying hatred cauterise
His poisoned being, such a flame as we
Might wince at if, between our separate worlds
Were any commerce found.
Well struck! he’s dead;
And only posthumous nervous energy
Still sends the cream, and bubbles floating round.
Here is no form, nor vestige of a mind.
Drink him! You take no sugar? No, nor I,
Of course! Well, pour him on the grass, we two
Are not gods yet, to torture what we rule,
And then find joy in the mangled body. Tea!
Pour out more Tea, and let’s pretend no more.