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diff --git a/37860.txt b/37860.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f21d94f --- /dev/null +++ b/37860.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3459 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems - First Series, by J. C. Squire + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poems - First Series + +Author: J. C. Squire + +Release Date: October 26, 2011 [EBook #37860] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS - FIRST SERIES *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + + +POEMS + +FIRST SERIES + +BY J. C. SQUIRE + + + + +LONDON + +MARTIN SECKER + +XVII BUCKINGHAM STREET + +ADELPHI + + + + +LONDON: MARTIN SECKER (LTD) 1918 + + + + + _DEDICATION_ + + _Lord, I have seen at harvest festival + In a white lamp-lit fishing-village church, + How the poor folk, lacking fine decorations, + Offer the first-fruits of their various toils: + Not only fruit and blossom of the fields, + Ripe corn and poppies, scabious, marguerites, + Melons and marrows, carrots and potatoes, + And pale round turnips and sweet cottage flowers, + But gifts of other produce, heaped brown nets, + Fine pollack, silver fish with umber backs, + And handsome green-dark-blue-striped mackerel, + And uglier, hornier creatures from the sea, + Lobsters, long-clawed and eyed, and smooth flat crabs, + Ranged with the flowers upon the window-niches, + To lie in that symbolic contiguity + While lusty hymns of gratitude ascend._ + + _So I + Here offer all I have found: + A few bright stainless flowers + And richer, earthlier blooms, and homely grain, + And roots that grew distorted in the dark, + And shapes of livid hue and sprawling form + Dragged from the deepest maters I have searched. + Most diverse gifts, yet all alike in this: + They are all the natural products of my mind + And heart and senses; + And all with labour grown, or plucked, or caught._ + + + + +PREFACE + +The title of this book was chosen for this reason. Had the volume been +called ---- _and Other Poems_ it might have given a false impression +that its contents were entirely new. Had it been called _Collected +Poems_ the equally false impression might have been given that there +was something of finality about it. The title selected seemed best to +convey both the fact that it was a collection and that, under +Providence, other (and, let us hope, superior) collections will follow +it. + +The book contains all that I do not wish to destroy of the contents of +four volumes of verse. A number of small corrections have been made. +There are added, also, a few recent poems not previously published. +The earliest of the poems now reprinted is dated 1905, in which year I +was twenty-one. Some of the subsequent years, such as 1914 and 1915, +contributed nothing to this book: the greater number of the poems were +written in 1911-1912 and 1916-1917. + +Some of the poems were not written as I should now write them; and many +of them reflect transient, though mostly recurrent, moods which I do +not necessarily think worthy of esteem. + +J. C. S. + +_March_ 1918. + + + + +CONTENTS + +YEAR + + Dedication + Preface + +1905 In a Chair + A Day + +1907 The Roof + +1910 Town + Friendship's Garland + +1911 A Chant + The Three Hills + At Night + Lines + Florian's Song + +1912 Antinomies on a Railway Station + Tree-Tops + Artemis Altera + Epilogue + Dialogue + Starlight + Song + Crepuscular + For Music + The Fugitive + Echoes + +1913 The Mind Of Man + A Reasonable Protestation + In the Park + In the Orchard + The Ship + Ode: In a Restaurant + Faith + A Fresh Morning + Interior + +1913-14 On a Friend Recently Dead + +1916 The March + Prologue: In Darkness + The Lily of Malud + +1917 A House + Behind the Lines + Arab Song + The Stronghold + To a Bull-Dog + The Lake + Paradise Lost + Acacia Tree + August Moon + Sonnet + Song + A Generation + Under + Rivers + I Shall make Beauty... + Envoi + + + + + IN A CHAIR + + The room is full of the peace of night, + The small flames murmur and flicker and sway, + Within me is neither shadow, nor light, + Nor night, nor twilight, nor dawn, nor day. + + For the brain strives not to the goal of thought, + And the limbs lie wearied, and all desire + Sleeps for a while, and I am naught + But a pair of eyes that gaze at a fire. + + + + + A DAY + + I. MORNING + + The village fades away + Where I last night came, + Where they housed me and fed me + And never asked my name. + + The sun shines bright, my step is light, + I, who have no abode, + Jeer at the stuck, monotonous + Black posts along the road. + + + II. MIDDAY + + The wood is still, + As here I sit + My heart drinks in + The peace of it. + + A something stirs + I know not where, + Some quiet spirit + In the air. + + O tall straight stems! + O cool deep green! + O hand unfelt! + O face unseen! + + + III. EVENING + + The evening closes in, + As down this last long lane + I plod; there patter round + First heavy drops of rain. + + Feet ache, legs ache, but now + Step quickens as I think + Of mounds of bread and cheese + And something hot to drink. + + + IV. NIGHT + + Ah! sleep is sweet, but yet + I will not sleep awhile + Nor for a space forget + The toil of that last mile; + + But lie awake and feel + The cool sheets' tremulous kisses + O'er all my body steal... + Is sleep as sweet as this is? + + + + + THE ROOF + + I + + When the clouds hide the sun away + The tall slate roof is dull and grey, + And when the rain adown it streams + 'Tis polished lead with pale-blue gleams. + + When the clouds vanish and the rain + Stops, and the sun comes out again, + It shimmers golden in the sun + Almost too bright to look upon. + + But soon beneath the steady rays + The roof is dried and reft of blaze, + 'Tis dusty yellow traversed through + By long thin lines of deepest blue. + + Then at the last, as night draws near, + The lines grow faint and disappear, + The roof becomes a purple mist, + A great square darkening amethyst + + Which sinks into the gathering shade + Till separate form and colour fade, + And it is but a patch which mars + The beauty of a field of stars. + + + II + + It stands so lonely in the sky + The sparrows never come thereby, + The glossy starlings seldom stop + To preen and chatter on the top. + + For a whole week sometimes up there + No wing-wave stirs the quiet air, + The roof lies silent and serene + As though no life had ever been; + + Till some bright afternoon, athwart + The edge two sudden shadows dart, + And two white pigeons with pink feet + Flutter above and pitch on it. + + Jerking their necks out as they walk + They talk awhile their pigeon-talk, + A low continuous murmur blent + Of mock reproaches and content. + + Then cease, and sit there warm and white + An hour, till in the fading light + They wake, and know the close of day, + Flutter above, and fly away, + + Leaving the roof whereon they sat + As 'twas before, a peaceful flat + Expanse, as silent and serene + As though no life had ever been. + + + + + TOWN + + Mostly in a dull rotation + We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep. + Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation-- + Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep. + + Dimly convinced, poor groping wretches, + Like eyeless insects in a murky pond + That out and out this city stretches, + Away, away, and there is no beyond. + + No larger earth, no loftier heaven, + No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe. And yet, + Even to us sometimes is given + Visions of things we other times forget. + + Some day is done, its labour ended, + And as we sit and brood at windows high, + A steady wind from far descended, + Blows off the filth that hid the deeper sky; + + There are the empty waiting spaces, + We watch, we watch, unwinking, pale and dumb, + Till gliding up with noiseless paces, + Night covers all the wide arch: Night has come. + + Not that sick false night of the city, + Lurid and low and yellow and obscene, + But mother Night, pure, full of pity, + The star-strewn Night, blue, potent and serene. + + O, as we gaze the clamour ceases, + The turbid world around grows dim and small, + The soft-shed influence releases + Our shrouded spirits from their dusty pall. + + No more we hear the turbulent traffic, + Not scorned but unremembered is the day; + The Night, all luminous and seraphic, + Has brushed its heavy memories away. + + The great blue Night so clear and kindly, + The little stars so wide-eyed and so still, + Open a door for souls that blindly + Had wandered, tunnelling the endless hill; + + They draw the long-untraversed portal, + Our souls slip out and tremble and expand, + The immortal feels for the immortal, + The eternal holds the eternal by the hand. + + Impalpably we are led and lifted, + Softly we shake into the gulf of blue, + The last environing veil is rifted + And lost horizons float into our view. + + Lost lands, lone seas, lands that afar gleam + With a miraculous beauty, faint yet clear, + Forgotten lands of night and star-gleam, + Seas that are somewhere but that are not here. + + Borne without effort or endeavour, + Swifter and more ethereal than the wind, + In level track we stream, whilst ever + The fair pale panorama rolls behind. + + Now fleets below a tranced moorland, + A sweep of glimmering immobility; + Now craggy cliff and dented foreland + Pass back and there beyond unfolds the sea. + + Now wastes of water heaving, drawing, + Great darkling tracts of patterned restlessness, + With whitened waves round rough rocks mawing + And licking islands in their fierce caress. + + Now coasts with capes and ribboned beaches + Set silent 'neath the canopy sapphirine, + And estuaries and river reaches. + Phantasmal silver in the night's soft shine. + + * * * * * + + Ah, these fair woods the spirit crosses, + These quiet lakes, these stretched dreaming fields, + These undulate downs with piny bosses + Pointing the ridges of their sloping shields. + + These valleys and these heights that screen them, + These tawnier sands where grass and tree are not, + Ah, we have known them, we have seen them, + We saw them long ago and we forgot; + + We know them all, these placid countries, + And what the pathway is and what the goal; + These are the gates and these the sentries + That guard that ancient fortress of the soul. + + And we speed onward flying, flying, + Over the sundering waves of hill and plain + To where they rear their heads undying + The unnamed mountains of old days again. + + The snows upon their calm still summits, + The chasms, the files of trees that foot the snow, + Curving like inky frozen comets, + Into the forest-ocean spread below. + + The glisten where the peaks are hoarest, + The soundless darkness of the sunken vales, + The folding leagues of shadowy forest, + Edge beyond edge till all distinctness fails. + + So invulnerable it is, so deathless, + So floods the air the loveliness of it, + That we stay dazzled, rapt and breathless, + Our beings ebbing to the infinite. + + There as we pause, there as we hover, + Still-poised in ecstasy, a sudden light + Breaks in our eyes, and we discover + We sit at windows gazing to the night. + + Wistful and tired, with eyes a-tingle + Where still the sting of Beauty faintly smarts; + But with our mute regrets there mingle + Thanks for the resurrection of our hearts. + + O night so great that will not mock us! + O stars so wise that understand the weak! + O vast consoling hands that rock us! + O strong and perfect tongues that speak! + + O night enrobed in azure splendour! + O whispering stars whose radiance falls like dew! + O mighty presences and tender, + You have given us back the dreams our childhood knew! + + Lulled by your visions without number, + We seek our beds content and void of pain, + And dreaming drowse and dreaming slumber + And dreaming wake to see the day again. + + + + + FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND + + I + + When I was a boy there was a friend of mine: + We thought ourselves warriors and grown folk swine, + Stupid old animals who never understood + And never had an impulse and said "you must be good." + + We slank like stoats and fled like foxes, + We put cigarettes in the pillar-boxes, + Lighted cigarettes and letters all aflame-- + O the surprise when the postman came! + + We stole eggs and apples and made fine hay + In people's houses when people were away, + We broke street lamps and away we ran, + Then I was a boy but now I am a man. + + Now I am a man and don't have any fun, + I hardly ever shout and I never, never run, + And I don't care if he's dead that friend of mine, + For then I was a boy and now I am a swine. + + + II + + We met again the other night + With people; you were quite polite, + Shook my hand and spoke a while + Of common things with cautious smile; + Paid the usual debt men owe + To fellows whom they used to know. + But, when our eyes met full, yours dropped, + And sudden, resolute, you stopped, + Moving with hurried syllables + To make remarks to someone else. + I caught them not, to me they said: + "Let the dead past bury its dead, + Things were very different then, + Boys are fools and men are men." + Several times the other night + You did your best to be polite; + When in the conversation's round + You heard my tongue's familiar sound + You bent in eager pose my way + To hear what I had got to say; + Trying, you thought with some success, + To hide the chasm's nakedness. + But on your eyes hard films there lay; + No mock-interest, no pretence + Could veil your blank indifference; + And if thoughts came recalling things + Far-off, far-off, from those old springs + When underneath the moon and sun + Our separate pulses beat as one, + Vagrant tender thoughts that asked + Admittance found the portal masked; + You spurned them; when I'd said my say, + With laugh and nod you turned away + To toss your friends some easy jest + That smote my brow and stabbed my breast. + Foolish though it be and vain + I am not master of my pain, + And when I said good-night to you + I hoped we should not meet again, + And wondered how the soul I knew + Could change so much; have I changed too? + + + III + + There was a man whom I knew well + Whose choice it was to live in hell; + Reason there was why that was so + But what it was I do not know. + + He had a room high in a tower, + And sat there drinking hour by hour, + Drinking, drinking all alone + With candles and a wall of stone. + + Now and then he sobered down, + And stayed a night with me in town. + If he found me with a crowd, + He shrank and did not speak aloud. + + He sat in a corner silently, + And others of the company + Would note his curious face and eye, + His twitching face and timid eye. + + When they saw the eye he had + They thought, perhaps, that he was mad: + I knew he was clear and sane + But had a horror in his brain. + + He had much money and one friend + And drank quite grimly to the end. + Why he chose to die in hell + I did not ask, he did not tell. + + + + + A CHANT + + Gently the petals fall as the tree gently sways + That has known many springs and many petals fall + Year after year to strew the green deserted ways + And the statue and the pond and the low, broken wall. + + Faded is the memory of old things done, + Peace floats on the ruins of ancient festival; + They lie and forget in the warmth of the sun, + And a sky silver-blue arches over all. + + O softly, O tenderly, the heart now stirs + With desires faint and formless; and, seeking not, I find + Quiet thoughts that flash like azure kingfishers + Across the luminous, tranquil mirror of the mind. + + + + + THE THREE HILLS + + There were three hills that stood alone + With woods about their feet. + They dreamed quiet when the sun shone + And whispered when the rain beat. + + They wore all three their coronals + Till men with houses came + And scored their heads with pits and walls + And thought the hills were tame. + + Red and white when day shines bright + They hide the green for miles, + Where are the old hills gone? At night + The moon looks down and smiles. + + She sees the captors small and weak, + She knows the prisoners strong, + She hears the patient hills that speak: + "Brothers, it is not long; + + "Brothers, we stood when they were not + Ten thousand summers past. + Brothers, when they are clean forgot + We shall outlive the last; + + "One shall die and one shall flee + With terror in his train, + And earth shall eat the stones, and we + Shall be alone again." + + + + + AT NIGHT + + Dark fir-tops foot the moony sky, + Blue moonlight bars the drive; + Here at the open window I + Sit smoking and alive. + + Wind in the branches swells and breaks + Like ocean on a beach; + Deep in the sky and my heart there wakes + A thought I cannot reach. + + + + + LINES + + When London was a little town + Lean by the river's marge, + The poet paced it with a frown, + He thought it very large. + + He loved bright ship and pointing steeple + And bridge with houses loaded + And priests and many-coloured people... + But ah, they were not woaded! + + Not all the walls could shed the spell + Of meres and marshes green, + Nor any chaffering merchant tell + The beauty that had been: + + The crying birds at fall of night, + The fisher in his coracle, + And, grim on Ludgate's windy height, + An oak-tree and an oracle. + + Sick for the past his hair he rent + And dropt a tear in season; + If he had cause for his lament + We have much better reason. + + For now the fields and paths he knew + Are coffined all with bricks, + The lucid silver stream he knew + Runs slimy as the Styx; + + North and south and east and west, + Far as the eye can travel, + Earth with a sombre web is drest + That nothing can unravel. + + And we must wear as black a frown, + Wail with as keen a woe + That London was a little town + Five hundred years ago. + + * * * * * + + Yet even this place of steamy stir, + This pit of belch and swallow, + With chrism of gold and gossamer + The elements can hallow. + + I have a room in Chancery Lane, + High in a world of wires, + Whence fall the roofs a ragged plain + Wooded with many spires. + + There in the dawns of summer days + I stand, and there behold + A city veiled in rainbow haze + And spangled all with gold. + + The breezes waft abroad the rays + Shot by the waking sun, + A myriad chimneys softly blaze, + A myriad shadows run. + + Round the wide rim in radiant mist + The gentle suburbs quiver, + And nearer lies the shining twist + Of Thames, a holy river. + + Left and right my vision drifts, + By yonder towers I linger, + Where Westminster's cathedral lifts + Its belled Byzantine finger, + + And here against my perched home + Where hold wise converse daily + The loftier and the lesser dome, + St Paul's and the Old Bailey. + + + + + FLORIAN'S SONG + + My soul, it shall not take us, + O we will escape + This world that strives to break us + And cast us to its shape; + Its chisel shall not enter, + Its fire shall not touch, + Hard from rim to centre, + We will not crack or smutch. + + 'Gainst words sweet and flowered + We have an amulet, + We will not play the coward + For any black threat; + If we but give endurance + To what is now within-- + The single assurance + That it is good to win. + + Slaves think it better + To be weak than strong, + Whose hate is a fetter + And their love a thong. + But we will view those others + With eyes like stone, + And if we have no brothers + We will walk alone. + + + + + ANTINOMIES ON A RAILWAY STATION + + As I stand waiting in the rain + For the foggy hoot of the London train, + Gazing at silent wall and lamp + And post and rail and platform damp, + What is this power that comes to my sight + That I see a night without the night, + That I see them clear, yet look them through, + The silvery things and the darkly blue, + That the solid wall seems soft as death, + A wavering and unanchored wraith, + And rails that shine and stones that stream + Unsubstantial as a dream? + What sudden door has opened so, + What hand has passed, that I should know + This moving vision not a trance + That melts the globe of circumstance, + This sight that marks not least or most + And makes a stone a passing ghost? + Is it that a year ago + I stood upon this self-same spot; + Is it that since a year ago + The place and I have altered not; + Is it that I half forgot, + A year ago, and all despised + For a space the things that I had prized: + The race of life, the glittering show? + Is it that now a year has passed + In vain pursuit of glittering things, + In fruitless searching, shouting, running, + And greedy lies and candour cunning, + Here as I stand the year above + Sudden the heats and the strivings fail + And fall away, a fluctuant veil, + And the fixed familiar stones restore + The old appearance-buried core, + The unmoving and essential me, + The eternal personality + Alone enduring first and last? + + No, this I have known in other ways, + In other places, other days. + Not only here, on this one peak, + Do fixity and beauty speak + Of the delusiveness of change, + Of the transparency of form, + The bootless stress of minds that range, + The awful calm behind the storm. + In many places, many days, + The invaded soul receives the rays + Of countries she was nurtured in, + Speaks in her silent language strange + To that beyond which is her kin. + Even in peopled streets at times + A metaphysic arm is thrust + Through the partitioning fabric thin, + And tears away the darkening pall + Cast by the bright phenomenal, + And clears the obscured spirit's mirror + From shadows of deceptive error, + And shows the bells and all their ringing, + And all the crowds and all their singing, + Carillons that are nothing's chimes + And dust that is not even dust.... + + But rarely hold I converse thus + Where shapes are bright and clamorous, + More often comes the word divine + In places motionless and far; + Beneath the white peculiar shine + Of sunless summer afternoons; + At eventide on pale lagoons + Where hangs reflected one pale star; + Or deep in the green solitudes + Of still erect entranced woods. + + O, in the woods alone lying, + Scarce a bough in the wind sighing, + Gaze I long with fervid power + At leaf and branch and grass and flower, + Breathe I breaths of trembling sight + Shed from great urns of green delight, + Take I draughts and drink them up + Poured from many a stalk and cup. + Now do I burn for nothing more + Than thus to gaze, thus to adore + This exquisiteness of nature ever + In silence.... + But with instant light + Rends the film; with joy I quiver + To see with new celestial sight + Flower and leaf and grass and tree, + Doomed barks on an eternal sea, + Flit phantom-like as transient smoke. + Beauty herself her spell has broke, + Beauty, the herald and the lure, + Her message told, may not endure; + Her portal opened, she has died, + Supreme immortal suicide. + Yes, sleepless nature soundless flings + Invisible grapples round the soul, + Drawing her through the web of things + To the primal end of her journeyings, + Her ultimate and constant pole. + + For Beauty with her hands that beckon + Is but the Prophet of a Higher, + A flaming and ephemeral beacon, + A Phoenix perishing by fire. + Herself from us herself estranges, + Herself her mighty tale doth kill, + That all things change yet nothing changes. + That all things move yet all are still. + + I cannot sink, I cannot climb, + Now that I see my ancient dwelling, + The central orb untouched of time, + And taste a peace all bliss excelling. + Now I have broken Beauty's wall, + Now that my kindred world I hold, + I care not though the cities fall + And the green earth go cold. + + + + + TREE-TOPS + + There beyond my window ledge, + Heaped against the sky, a hedge + Of huge and waving tree-tops stands + With multitudes of fluttering hands. + + Wave they, beat they, to and fro, + Never stillness may they know, + Plunged by the wind and hurled and torn + Anguished, purposeless, forlorn. + + "O ferocious, O despairing, + In huddled isolation faring + Through a scattered universe, + Lost coins from the Almighty's purse!" + + "No, below you do not see + The firm foundations of the tree; + Anchored to a rock beneath + We laugh in the hammering tempest's teeth. + + "Boughs like men but burgeons are + On an adamantine star; + Men are myriad blossoms on + A staunch and cosmic skeleton." + + + + + ARTEMIS ALTERA + + O full of candour and compassion, + Whom love and worship both would praise, + Love cannot frame nor worship fashion + The image of your fearless ways! + + How show your noble brow's dark pallor, + Your chivalrous casque of ebon hair, + Your eyes' bright strength, your lips' soft valour, + Your supple shoulders and hands that dare? + + Our souls when naively you examine, + Your sword of innocence, flaming, huge, + Sweeps over us, and there is famine + Within the ports of subterfuge. + + You hate contempt and love not laughter; + With your sharp spear of virgin will + You harry the wicked strong; but after, + O huntress who could never kill, + + Should they be trodden down or pierced, + Swift, swift, you fly with burning cheek + To place your beauty's shield reversed + Above the vile defenceless weak! + + + + + EPILOGUE + + Than farthest stars more distant, + A mile more, + A mile more, + A voice cries on insistent: + "You may smile more if you will; + + "You may sing too and spring too; + But numb at last + And dumb at last, + Whatever port you cling to, + You must come at last to a hill. + + "And never a man you'll find there + To take your hand + And shake your hand; + But when you go behind there + You must make your hand a sword + + "To fence with a foeman swarthy, + And swink there + Nor shrink there, + Though cowardly and worthy + Must drink there one reward." + + + + + DIALOGUE + + + THE ONE + + The dead man's gone, the live man's sad, the dying leaf shakes + on the tree, + The wind constrains the window-panes and moans like moaning + of the sea, + And sour's the taste now culled in haste of lovely things I won + too late, + And loud and loud above the crowd the Voice of One more strong + than we. + + + THE OTHER + + This Voice you hear, this call you fear, is it unprophesied or new? + Were you so insolent to think its rope would never circle you? + Did you then beastlike live and walk with ears and eyes that + would not turn? + Who bade you hope your service 'scape in that eternal retinue? + + + THE ONE + + No; for I swear now bare's the tree and loud the moaning of the wind, + I walked no rut with eyelids shut, my ears and eyes were never blind, + Only my eager thoughts I bent on many things that I desired + To make my greedy heart content ere flesh and blood I left behind. + + + THE OTHER + + Ignorance, then, was all your fault and filmed eyes that could not know, + That half discerned and never learned the temporal way that men must go; + You set the image of the world high for your heart's idolatry, + Though with your lips you called the world a toy, a ghost, + a passing show. + + + THE ONE + + No, no; this is not true; my lips spoke only what my heart believed. + Called I the world a toy; I spoke not echo-like or self-deceived. + But that I thought the toy was mine to play with, and the passing show + Would sate at least my passing lusts, and did not, therefore am + I grieved. + + What did I do that I must bear this lifelong tyranny of my fate, + That I must writhe in bonds unsought of accidental love and hate? + Had chance but joined different dice, but once or twice, + but once or twice, + All lovely things that I desired I should have held before too late. + + Surely I knew that flesh was grass nor valued overmuch the prize, + But all the powers of chance conspired to cheat a man both just and wise. + Happy I'd been had I but had my due reward, and not a sword + Flaming in diabolic hand between me and my Paradise. + + + THE OTHER + + No hooded band of fates did stand your heart's ambitions to gainsay, + No flaming brand in evil hand was ever thrust across your way, + Only the things all men must meet, the common attributes of men, + That men may flinch to see or, seeing, deny, but avoid them no man may. + + Fall the dice, not once or twice but always, to make the self-same sum; + Chance what may, a life's a life and to a single goal must come; + Though a man search far and wide, never is hunger satisfied; + Nature brings her natural fetters, man is meshed and the wise are dumb. + + O vain all art to assuage a heart with accents of a mortal tongue, + All earthly words are incomplete and only sweet are the songs unsung, + Never yet was cause for regret, yet regret must afflict us all, + Better it were to grasp the world 'thwart which this world is a + curtain flung. + + + + + STARLIGHT + + Last night I lay in an open field + And looked at the stars with lips sealed; + No noise moved the windless air, + And I looked at the stars with steady stare. + + There were some that glittered and some that shone + With a soft and equal glow, and one + That queened it over the sprinkled round, + Swaying the host with silent sound. + + "Calm things," I thought, "in your cavern blue, + I will learn and hold and master you; + I will yoke and scorn you as I can, + For the pride of my heart is the pride of a man." + + Grass to my cheek in the dewy field, + I lay quite still with lips sealed, + And the pride of a man and his rigid gaze + Stalked like swords on heaven's ways. + + But through a sudden gate there stole + The Universe and spread in my soul; + Quick went my breath and quick my heart, + And I looked at the stars with lips apart. + + + + + SONG + + There is a wood where the fairies dance + All night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily, + By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole, + And the moon through the branches darts. + + Light on the grass their slim limbs glance, + Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison, + And the moon discovers that they all have lovers, + But they never break their hearts. + + They never grieve at all for sands that run, + They never know regret for a deed that's done, + And they never think of going to a shed with a gun + At the rising of the sun. + + + + + CREPUSCULAR + + No creature stirs in the wide fields. + The rifted western heaven yields + The dying sun's illumination. + This is the hour of tribulation + When, with clear sight of eve engendered, + Day's homage to delusion rendered, + Mute at her window sits the soul. + + Clouds and skies and lakes and seas, + Valleys and hills and grass and trees, + Sun, moon, and stars, all stand to her + Limbs of one lordless challenger, + Who, without deigning taunt or frown. + Throws a perennial gauntlet down: + "Come conquer me and take thy toll." + + No cowardice or fear she knows, + But, as once more she girds, there grows + An unresigned hopelessness + From memory of former stress. + Head bent, she muses whilst he waits: + How with such weapons dint his plates? + How quell this vast and sleepless giant + Calmly, immortally defiant, + How fell him, bind him, and control + With a silver cord and a golden bowl? + + + + + FOR MUSIC + + Death in the cold grey morning + Came to the man where he lay; + And the wind shivered, and the tree shuddered + And the dawn was grey. + + And the face of the man was grey in the dawn, + And the watchers by the bed + Knew, as they heard the shaking of the leaves, + That the man was dead. + + + + + THE FUGITIVE + + Flying his hair and his eyes averse, + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart. + How could our song his charms rehearse? + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart. + + High on a down we found him last, + Shy as a hare, he fled as fast; + How could we clasp him or ever he passed? + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart. + + How could we cling to his limbs that shone, + Ravish his cheeks' red gonfalon, + Or the wild-skin cloak that he had on? + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart. + + For the wind of his feet still straightly shaping, + He loosed at our breasts from his eyes escaping + One crooked swift glance like a javelin leaping. + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart. + + And his feet passed over the sunset land + From the place forlorn where a forlorn band + Watching him flying we still did stand. + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart. + + Vanishing now who would not stay + To the blue hills on the verge of day. + O soft! soft! Music play, + Fading away, + (Fleet are his feet + And his heart apart) + Fading away. + + + + + ECHOES + + There is a far unfading city + Where bright immortal people are; + Remote from hollow shame and pity, + Their portals frame no guiding star + But blightless pleasure's moteless rays + That follow their footsteps as they dance + Long lutanied measures through a maze + Of flower-like song and dalliance. + + There always glows the vernal sun, + There happy birds for ever sing, + There faint perfumed breezes run + Through branches of eternal spring; + There faces browned and fruit and milk + And blue-winged words and rose-bloomed kisses + In galleys gowned with gold and silk + Shake on a lake of dainty blisses. + + Coyness is not, nor bear they thought, + Save of a shining gracious flow; + All natural joys are temperate sought. + For calm desire there they know, + A fire promiscuous, languorous, kind; + They scorn all fiercer lusts and quarrels, + Nor blow about on anger's wind, + Nor burn with love, nor rust with morals. + + Folk in the far unfading city, + Burning with lusts my senses are, + I am torn with love and shame and pity, + Be to my heart a guiding star: + Wise youths and maidens in the sun, + With eyes that charm and lips that sing, + And gentle arms that rippling run, + Shed on my heart your endless spring! + + + + + THE MIND OF MAN + + I + + Beneath my skull-bone and my hair, + Covered like a poisonous well, + There is a land: if you looked there + What you saw you'd quail to tell. + You that sit there smiling, you + Know that what I say is true. + + My head is very small to touch, + I feel it all from front to back, + An eared round that weighs not much, + Eyes, nose-holes, and a pulpy crack: + Oh, how small, how small it is! + How could countries be in this? + + Yet, when I watch with eyelids shut, + It glimmers forth, now dark, now clear, + The city of Cis-Occiput, + The marshes and the writhing mere, + The land that every man I see + Knows in himself but not in me. + + + II + + Upon the borders of the weald + (I walk there first when I step in) + Set in green wood and smiling field, + The city stands, unstained of sin; + White thoughts and wishes pure + Walk the streets with steps demure. + + In its clean groves and spacious halls + The quiet-eyed inhabitants + Hold innocent sunny festivals + And mingle in decorous dance; + Things that destroy, distort, deface, + Come never to that lovely place. + + Never could evil enter thither, + It could not live in that sweet air, + The shadow of an ill deed must wither + And fall away to nothing there. + You would say as there you stand + That all was beauty in the land. + + * * * * * + + But go you out beyond the gateway, + Cleave you the woods and pass the plain, + Cross you the frontier down, and straightway + The trees will end, the grass will wane, + And you will come to a wilderness + Of sticks and parched barrenness. + + The middle of the land is this, + A tawny desert midmost set, + Barren of living things it is, + Saving at night some vampires flit + That nest them in the farther marish + Where all save vilest things must perish. + + Here in this reedy marsh of green + And oily pools, swarm insects fat + And birds of prey and beasts obscene, + Things that the traveller shudders at, + All cunning things that creep and fly + To suck men's blood until they die. + + Rarely from hence does aught escape + Into the world of outer light, + But now and then some sable shape + Outward will dash in sudden flight; + And men stand stonied or distraught + To know the loathly deed or thought. + + But, ah! beyond the marsh you reach + A purulent place more vile than all, + A festering lake too foul for speech, + Rotten and black, with coils acrawl, + Where writhe with lecherous squeakings shrill + Horrors that make the heart stand still. + + There, 'neath a heaven diseased, it lies, + The mere alive with slimy worms, + With perverse terrible infamies, + And murders and repulsive forms + That have no name, but slide here deep, + Whilst I, their holder, silence keep. + + + + + A REASONABLE PROTESTATION + + [_To F., who complained of his vagueness and lack of + dogmatic statement_] + + Not, I suppose, since I deny + Appearance is reality, + And doubt the substance of the earth + Does your remonstrance come to birth; + Not that at once I both affirm + 'Tis not the skin that makes the worm + And every tactile thing with mass + Must find its symbol in the grass + And with a cool conviction say + Even a critic's more than clay + And every dog outlives his day. + This kind of vagueness suits your view, + You would not carp at it; for you + Did never stand with those who take + Their pleasures in a world opaque. + For you a tree would never be + Lovely were it but a tree, + And earthly splendours never splendid + If by transience unattended. + Your eyes are on a farther shore + Than any of earth; nor do adore + As godhead God's dead hieroglyph. + Nor would you be perturbed if + Some prophet with a voice of thunder + And avalanche arm should blast and founder + The logical pillars that maintain + This visible world which loads the brain, + Loads the brain and withers the heart + And holds man from his God apart. + + But still with you remains the craving + For some more solid substance, having + Surface to touch, colour to see, + And form compact in symmetry. + You are not satisfied with these + Vague throbbings, nameless ecstasies, + Nor can your spirit find delight + In an amorphic great white light. + Not with such sickles can you reap; + If a dense earth you cannot keep + You want a dense heaven as substitute + With trees of plump celestial fruit, + Red apples, golden pomegranates, + And a river flowing by tall gates + Of topaz and of chrysolite + And walls of twenty cubits height. + + Frank, you cry out against the age! + Nor you nor I can disengage + Ourselves from that in which we live + Nor seize on things God does not give. + Thirsty as you, perhaps, I long + For courtyards of eternal song, + Even as yours my feet would stray + In a city where 'tis always day + And a green spontaneous leafy garden + With God in the middle for a warden; + But though I hope with strengthening faith + To taste when I have traversed death + The unimaginable sweetness + Of certitude of such concreteness, + How should I draw the hue and scope + Of substances I only hope + Or blaze upon a paper screen + The evidence of things not seen? + This art of ours but grows and stirs + Experience when it registers, + And you know well as I know well + This autumn of time in which we dwell + Is not an age of revelations + Solid as once, but intimations + That touch us with warm misty fingers + Leaving a nameless sense that lingers + That sight is blind and Time's a snare + And earth less solid than the air + And deep below all seeming things + There sits a steady king of kings + A radiant ageless permanence, + A quenchless fount of virtue whence + We draw our life; a sense that makes + A staunch conviction nothing shakes + Of our own immortality. + And though, being man, with certain glee + I eat and drink, though I suffer pain, + And love and hate and love again + Well or in mode contemptible, + Thus shackled by the body's spell + I see through pupils of the beast + Though it be faint and blurred with mist + A Star that travels in the East. + I see what I can, not what I will. + In things that move, things that are still; + Thin motion, even cloudier rest, + I see the symbols God hath drest. + The moveless trees, the trees that wave + The clouds that heavenly highways have, + Horses that run, rocks that are fixt, + Streams that have rest and motion mixt, + The main with its abiding flux, + The wind that up my chimney sucks + A mounting waterfall of flame, + Sticks, straws, dust, beetles and that same + Old blazing sun the Psalmist saw + A testifier to the law: + Divinely to the heart they speak + Saying how they are but weak, + Wan will-o'-the-wisps on the crystal sea; + But stays that sea still dark to me. + + Did I now glibly insolent + Chart the ulterior firmament, + Would you not know my words were lies, + Where not my testimonial eyes + Mortal or spiritual lodge, + Mere uncorroborated fudge? + Praise me, though praise I do not want, + Rather, that I have cast much cant, + That what I see and feel I write, + Read what I can in this dim light + Granted to me in nether night. + And though I am vague and shrink to guess + God's everlasting purposes, + And never save in perplext dream + Have caught the least clear-shapen gleam + Of the great kingdom and the throne + In the world that lies behind our own, + I have not lacked my certainties, + I have not haggard moaned the skies, + Nor waged unnecessary strife + Nor scorned nor overvalued life. + And though you say my attitude + Is questioning, concede my mood + Does never bring to tongue or pen + Accents of gloomy modern men + Who wail or hail the death of God + And weigh and measure man the clod, + Or say they draw reluctant breath + And musically mourn that Death + Is a queen omnipotent of woe + And Life her lean cicisbeo, + Abject and pale, whom vampire-like + She playeth with ere she shall strike, + And pose sad riddles to the Sphinx + With raven quills in purple inks, + Then send the boy to fetch more drinks. + + + + + IN THE PARK + + This dense hard ground I tread. + These iron bars that ripple past, + Will they unshaken stand when I am dead + And my deep thoughts outlast? + + Is it my spirit slips, + Falls, like this leaf I kick aside; + This firmness that I feel about my lips, + Is it but empty pride? + + Mute knowledge conquers me; + I contemplate them as they are, + Faint earth and shadowy bars that shake and flee, + Less hard, more transient far + + Than those unbodied hues + The sunset flings on the calm river; + And, as I look, a swiftness thrills my shoes + And my hands with empire quiver. + + Now light the ground I tread, + I walk not now but rather float; + Clear but unreal is the scene outspread, + Pitiful, thin, remote. + + Poor vapour is the grass, + So frail the trees and railings seem, + That, did I sweep my hand around, 'twould pass + Through them, as in a dream. + + Godlike I fear no changes; + Shatter the world with thunders loud, + Still would I ray-like flit about the ranges + Of dark and ruddy cloud. + + + + + IN AN ORCHARD + + Airy and quick and wise + In the shed light of the sun, + You clasp with friendly eyes + The thoughts from mine that run. + + But something breaks the link; + I solitary stand + By a giant gully's brink + In some vast gloomy land. + + Sole central watcher, I + With steadfast sadness now + In that waste place descry + 'Neath the awful heavens how + + Your life doth dizzy drop + A little foam of flame + From a peak without a top + To a pit without a name. + + + + + THE SHIP + + There was no song nor shout of joy + Nor beam of moon or sun, + When she came back from the voyage + Long ago begun; + But twilight on the waters + Was quiet and grey, + And she glided steady, steady and pensive, + Over the open bay. + + Her sails were brown and ragged, + And her crew hollow-eyed, + But their silent lips spoke content + And their shoulders pride; + Though she had no captives on her deck, + And in her hold + There were no heaps of corn or timber + Or silks or gold. + + + + + ODE: IN A RESTAURANT + + In this dense hall of green and gold, + Mirrors and lights and steam, there sit + Two hundred munching men; + While several score of others flit + Like scurrying beetles over a fen, + With plates in fanlike spread; or fold + Napkins, or jerk the corks from bottles, + Ministers to greedy throttles. + Some make noises while they eat, + Pick their teeth or shuffle their feet, + Wipe their noses 'neath eyes that range + Or frown whilst waiting for their change. + Gobble, gobble, toil and trouble. + Soul! this life is very strange, + And circumstances very foul + Attend the belly's stormy howl. + How horrible this noise! this air how thick! + It is disgusting ... I feel sick... + Loosely I prod the table with a fork, + My mind gapes, dizzies, ceases to work... + + * * * * * + + The weak unsatisfied strain + Of a band in another room; + Through this dull complex din + Comes winding thin and sharp! + The gnat-like mourning of the violin, + The faint stings of the harp. + The sounds pierce in and die again, + Like keen-drawn threads of ink dropped into a glass + Of water, which curl and relax and soften and pass. + Briefly the music hovers in unstable poise, + Then melts away, drowned in the heavy sea of noise. + And I, I am now emasculate. + All my forces dissipate; + Conquered by matter utterly, + Moving not, willing not, I lie, + Like a man whom timbers pin + When the roof of a mine falls in. + + Halt! ... as a cloud condenses + I press my mind, recover + Dominion of my senses. + With newly flowing blood + I lift, and now float over + The restaurant's expanses + Like a draggled sea-gull over dreary flats of mud. + An effort ... ah ... I urge and push, + And now with greater strength I flush, + The hall is full of my pinions' rush; + No drooping now, the place is mine, + Beating the walls with shattering wings, + Over the herd my spirit swings, + In triumph shouts "Aha, you swine! + Grovel before your lord divine! + I, only I, am real here! ..." + Through the uncertain firmament, + Still bestial in their dull content. + The despicable phantoms leer... + Hogs! even now in my right hand + I hold at my will the thunderbolts + Measured not in mortal volts, + Would crash you to annihilation! + Lit with a new illumination, + What need I of ears and eyes + Of flesh? Imperious I will rise, + Dominate you as a god + Who only does not trouble to wield the rod + Of death, or kick your weak spheroid + Like a football through the void! + + * * * * * + + Ha! was it but a dream? + And did it merely seem? + Ha! not yet free of your cage, + Soul, spite of all your rage? + Come now, this foe engage! + With explosion of your might + Oh heave, oh leap and flash up, soul. + Like a stabbing scream in the night! + Hurl aside this useless bowl + Of a body... + But there comes a shock + A soft, tremendous shock + Of contact with the body; I lose all power, + And fall back, back, like a solitary rower + Whose prow that debonair the waves did ride + Is suddenly hurled back by an iron tide. + O sadness, sadness, feel the returning pain + Of touch with unescapable mortal things again! + The cloth is linen, the floor is wood, + My plate holds cheese, my tumbler toddy; + I cannot get free of the body, + And no man ever could. + + * * * * * + + Self! do not lose your hold on life, + Nor coward seek to shrink the strife + Of body and spirit; even now + (Not for the first time), even now + Clear in your ears has rung the message + That tense abstraction is the passage + To nervelessness and living death. + Never forget while you draw breath + That all the hammers of will can never + Your chained soul from matter sever; + And though it be confused and mixed, + This is the world in which you're fixed. + Never despise the things that are. + Set your teeth upon the grit. + Though your heart like a motor beat, + Hold fast this earthly star, + The whole of it, the whole of it. + + Look on this crowd now, calm now, look. + Remember now that each one drew + Woman's milk (which you partook) + And year by year in wonder grew. + Scorn not them, nor scorn not their feasts + (Which you partake) nor call them beasts. + These be children of one Power + With you, nor higher you nor lower. + They also hear the harp and fiddle, + And sometimes quail before the riddle. + They also have hot blood, quick thought, + And try to do the things they ought, + They also have hearts that ache when stung. + And sigh for days when they were young, + And curse their wills because they falter, + And know that they will never alter. + See these men in a world of men. + Material bodies?--yes, what then? + These coarse trunks that here you see + Judge them not, lest judged you be, + Bow not to the moment's curse, + Nor make four walls a universe. + Think of these bodies here assembled, + Whence they have come, where they have trembled + With the strange force that fills us all. + Men and beasts both great and small. + Here within this fleeting home + Two hundred men have this day come; + Here collected for one day, + Each shall go his separate way. + Self, you can imagine nought + Of all the battles they have fought, + All the labours they have done, + All the journeys they have run. + O, they have come from all the world, + Borne by invisible currents, swirled + Like leaves into this vortex here + Flying, or like the spirits drear + Windborne and frail, whom Dante saw, + Who yet obeyed some hidden law. + + * * * * * + + Is it not miraculous + That they should here be gathered thus, + All to be spread before your view, + Who are strange to them as they to you? + Soul, how can you sustain without a sob, + The lightest thought of this titanic throb + Of earthly life, that swells and breaks + Into leaping scattering waves of fire, + Into tameless tempests of effort and storms of desire + That eternally makes + The confused glittering armies of humankind, + To their own heroism blind, + Swarm over the earth to build, to dig, and to till, + To mould and compel land and sea to their will... + Whence we are here eating... + Standing here as on a high hill, + Strain, my imagination, strain forth to embrace + The energies that labour for this place, + This place, this instant. Beyond your island's verge, + Listen, and hear the roaring impulsive surge, + The clamour of voices, the blasting of powder, the clanging of steel, + The thunder of hammers, the rattle of oars... + For this one meal + Ten thousand Indian hamlets stored their yields, + Manchurian peasants sweltered in their fields, + And Greeks drove carts to Patras, and lone men + Saw burning summer come and go again + And huddled from the winds of winter on + The fertile deserts of Saskatchewan. + To fabricate these things have been marchings and slaughters, + The sun has toiled and the moon has moved the waters, + Cities have laboured, and crowded plains, and deep in the earth + Men have plunged unafraid with ardour to wrench the worth + Of sweating dim-lit caverns, and paths have been hewn + Through forests where for uncounted years nor sun nor moon + Have penetrated, men have driven straight shining rails + Through the dense bowels of mountains, and climbed their frozen tops, + and wrinkled sailors have shouted at shouting gales + In the huge Pacific, and battled around the Horn + And gasping, coasted to Rio, and turning towards the morn, + Fought over the wastes to Spain, and battered and worn, + Sailed up the Channel, and on into the Nore + To the city of masts and the smoky familiar shore. + + So, so of every substance you see around + Might a tale be unwound + Of perils passed, of adventurous journeys made + In man's undying and stupendous crusade. + This flower of man's energies Trade + Brought hither to hand and lip + By waggon, train or ship, + Each atom that we eat.... + Stare at the wine, stare at the meat. + The mutton which these platters fills + Grazed upon a thousand hills; + This bread so square and white and dry + Once was corn that sang to the sky; + And all these spruce, obedient wines + Flowed from the vatted fruit of vines + That trailed, a bright maternal host, + The warm Mediterranean coast, + Or spread their Bacchic mantle on + That Iberian Helicon + Where the slopes of Portugal + Crown the Atlantic's eastern wall. + + O mighty energy, never-failing flame! + O patient toils and journeys in the name + Of Trade! No journey ever was the same + As another, nor ever came again one task; + And each man's face is an ever-changing mask. + From the minutest cell to the lordliest star + All things are unique, though all of their kindred are. + And though all things exist for ever, all life is change, + And the oldest passions come to each heart in a garment strange. + Though life be as brief as a flower and the body but dust, + Man walks the earth holding both body and spirit in trust; + And the various glories of sense are spread for his delight, + New pageants glow in the sunset, new stars are born in the night, + And clouds come every day, and never a shape recurs, + And the grass grows every year, yet never the same blade stirs + Another spring, and no delving man breaks again the self-same clod + As he did last year though he stand once more where last year he trod. + O wonderful procession fore-ordained by God! + Wonderful in unity, wonderful in diversity. + Contemplate it, soul, and see + How the material universe moves and strives with anguish and glee! + + * * * * * + + I was born for that reason, + With muscles, heart and eyes, + To watch each following season, + To work and to be wise; + Not body and mind to tether + To unseen things alone, + But to traverse together + The known and the unknown. + My muscles were not welded + To waste away in sleep, + My bones were never builded + To throw upon a heap. + "Man worships God in action," + Senses and reason call, + "And thought is putrefaction, + If thought is all in all!" + + Most of the guests are gone; look over there, + Against a pillar leans with absent air + A tall, dark, pallid waiter. There he stands + Limply, with vacant eyes and listless hands. + He dreams of some small Tyrolean town, + A church, a bridge, a stream that rushes down. + A frustrate, hankering man, this one short time + Unconscious he into my gaze did climb; + He sinks again, again he is but one + Of many myriads underneath the sun, + Now faint, now vivid.... How puzzling is it all! + For now again, in spite of all, + The lights, the chairs, the diners, and the hall + Lose their opacity. + Fool! exert your will, + Finish your whisky up, and pay your bill. + + + + + FAITH + + When I see truth, do I seek truth + Only that I may things denote, + And, rich by striving, deck my youth + As with a vain unusual coat? + + Or seek I truth for other ends: + That she in other hearts may stir, + That even my most familiar friends + May turn from me to look on her? + + So I this day myself was asking; + Out of the window skies were blue + And Thames was in the sunlight basking; + My thoughts coiled inwards like a screw. + + I watched them anxious for a while; + Then quietly, as I did watch, + Spread in my soul a sudden smile: + I knew that no firm thing they'd catch. + + And I remembered if I leapt + Upon the bosom of the wind + It would sustain me; question slept; + I felt that I had almost sinned. + + + + + A FRESH MORNING + + Now am I a tin whistle + Through which God blows, + And I wish to God I were a trumpet + --But why, God only knows. + + + + + INTERIOR + + I and myself swore enmity. Alack, + Myself has tied my hands behind my back. + Yielding, I know there's no excuse in them-- + I was accomplice to the stratagem. + + + + + ON A FRIEND RECENTLY DEAD + + I + + The stream goes fast. + When this that is the present is the past, + 'Twill be as all the other pasts have been, + A failing hill, a daily dimming scene, + A far strange port with foreign life astir + The ship has left behind, the voyager + Will never return to; no, nor see again, + Though with a heart full of longing he may strain + Back to project himself, and once more count + The boats, the whitened walls that climbed the mount, + Mark the cathedral's roof, the gathered spires, + The vanes, the windows red with sunset's fires, + The gap of the market-place, and watch again + The coloured groups of women, and the men + Lounging at ease along the low stone wall + That fringed the harbour; and there beyond it all + High pastures morning and evening scattered with small + Specks that were grazing sheep.... It is all gone, + It is all blurred that once so brightly shone; + He cannot now with the old clearness see + The rust upon one ringbolt of the quay. + + + II + + And yesterday is dead, and you are dead. + Your duplicate that hovered in my head + Thins like blown wreathing smoke, your features grow + To interrupted outlines, and all will go + Unless I fight dispersal with my will... + So I shall do it ... but too conscious still + That, when we walked together, had I known + How soon your journey was to end alone, + I should not, now that you have gone from view, + Be gathering derelict odds and ends of you; + But in the intense lucidity of pain + Your likeness would have burnt into my brain. + I did not know; lovable and unique, + As volatile as a bubble and as weak, + You sat with me, and my eyes registered + This thing and that, and sluggishly I heard + Your voice, remembering here and there a word. + + + III + + So in my mind there's not much left of you, + And that disintegrates; but while a few + Patches of memory's mirror still are bright + Nor your reflected image there has quite + Faded and slipped away, it will be well + To search for each surviving syllable + Of voice and body and soul. And some I'll find + Right to my hand, and some tangled and blind + Among the obscure weeds that fill the mind. + A pause.... + I plunge my thought's hooked resolute claws + Deep in the turbid past. Like drowned things in the jaws + Of grappling-irons, your features to the verge + Of conscious knowledge one by one emerge. + Can I not make these scattered things unite? ... + I knit my brows and clench my eyelids tight + And focus to a point.... Streams of dark pinkish light + Convolve; and now spasmodically there flit + Clear pictures of you as you used to sit:-- + The way you crossed your legs stretched in your chair, + Elbow at rest and tumbler in the air, + Jesting on books and politics and worse, + And still good company when most perverse. + Capricious friend! + Here in this room not long before the end, + Here in this very room six months ago + You poised your foot and joked and chuckled so. + Beyond the window shook the ash-tree bough, + You saw books, pictures, as I see them now, + The sofa then was blue, the telephone + Listened upon the desk, and softly shone + Even as now the fire-irons in the grate, + And the little brass pendulum swung, a seal of fate + Stamping the minutes; and the curtains on window and door + Just moved in the air; and on the dark boards of the floor + These same discreetly-coloured rugs were lying... + And then you never had a thought of dying. + + + IV + + You are not here, and all the things in the room + Watch me alone in the gradual growing gloom. + The you that thought and felt are I know not where, + The you that sat and drank in that arm-chair + Will never sit there again. + For months you have lain + Under a graveyard's green + In some place abroad where I've never been. + Perhaps there is a stone over you, + Or only the wood and the earth and the grass cover you. + But it doesn't much matter; for dead and decayed you lie + Like a million million others who felt they would never die, + Like Alexander and Helen the beautiful, + And the last collier hanged for murdering his trull; + All done with and buried in an equal bed. + + + V + + Yes, you are dead like all the other dead. + You are not here, but I am here alone. + And evening falls, fusing tree, water and stone + Into a violet cloth, and the frail ash-tree hisses + With a soft sharpness like a fall of mounded grain. + And a steamer softly puffing along the river passes, + Drawing a file of barges; and silence falls again. + And a bell tones; and the evening darkens; and in sparse rank + The greenish lights well out along the other bank. + I have no force left now; the sights and sounds impinge + Upon me unresisted, like raindrops on the mould. + And, striving not against my melancholy mood, + Limp as a door that hangs upon one failing hinge, + Limp, with slack marrowless arms and thighs, I sit and brood + On death and death and death. And quiet, thin and cold, + Following of this one friend the hopeless, helpless ghost, + The weak appealing wraiths of notable men of old + Who died, pass through the air; and then, host after host, + Innumerable, overwhelming, without form, + Rolling across the sky in awful silent storm, + The myriads of the undifferentiated dead + Whom none recorded, or of whom the record faded. + O spectacle appallingly sublime! + I see the universe one long disastrous strife, + And in the staggering abysses of backward and forward time + Death chasing hard upon the heels of creating life. + And I, I see myself as one of a heap of stones + Wetted a moment to life as the flying wave goes over, + Onward and never returning, leaving no mark behind. + There's nothing to hope for. Blank cessation numbs my mind, + And I feel my heart thumping gloomy against its cover, + My heavy belly hanging from my bones. + + + VI + + Below in the dark street + There is a tap of feet, + I rise and angrily meditate + How often I have let of late + This thought of death come over me. + How often I will sit and backward trace + The deathly history of the human race, + The ripples of men who chattered and were still, + Known and unknown, older and older, until + Before man's birth I fall, shivering and aghast + Through a hole in the bottom of the remotest past; + Till painfully my spirit throws + Her giddiness off; and then as soon + As I recover and try to think again, + Life seems like death; and all my body grows + Icily cold, and all my brain + Cold as the jagged craters of the moon.... + And I wonder is it not strange that I + Who thus have heard eternity's black laugh + And felt its freezing breath, + Should sometimes shut it out from memory + So as to play quite prettily with death, + And turn an easy epitaph? + + I can hear a voice whispering in my brain: + "Why this is the old futility again! + Criminal! day by day + Your own life is ebbing swiftly away. + And what have you done with it, + Except to become a maudlin hypocrite?" + Yes, I know, I know; + One should not think of death or the dead overmuch; but one's + mind's made so + That at certain times the roads of thought all lead to death, + And false reasoning clouds one's soul as a window with breath + Is clouded in winter's air, + And all the faith one may have + Lies useless and dead as a body in the grave. + + + + + THE MARCH + + I heard a voice that cried, "Make way for those who died!" + And all the coloured crowd like ghosts at morning fled; + And down the waiting road, rank after rank there strode, + In mute and measured march a hundred thousand dead. + + A hundred thousand dead, with firm and noiseless tread, + All shadowy-grey yet solid, with faces grey and ghast, + And by the house they went, and all their brows were bent + Straight forward; and they passed, and passed, and passed, and passed. + + But O there came a place, and O there came a face, + That clenched my heart to see it, and sudden turned my way; + And in the Face that turned I saw two eyes that burned, + Never-forgotten eyes, and they had things to say. + + Like desolate stars they shone one moment, and were gone, + And I sank down and put my arms across my head, + And felt them moving past, nor looked to see the last, + In steady silent march, our hundred thousand dead. + + + + + PROLOGUE: IN DARKNESS + + With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why + do I lie awake, + Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling + my heart's fierce ache + That beats one response to the brain's many questionings, + and in solitude bears the weight + Of all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and the + senseless pressure of fate? + + Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that so + certainly it recurs? + In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it here + that a song first stirs? + Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory, + there will spring of a sudden, some time, + Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, the + thin-blown shape of a rhyme? + + + + + THE LILY OF MALUD + + The lily of Malud is born in secret mud. + It is breathed like a word in a little dark ravine + Where no bird was ever heard and no beast was ever seen, + And the leaves are never stirred by the panther's velvet sheen. + + It blooms once a year in summer moonlight, + In a valley of dark fear full of pale moonlight: + It blooms once a year, and dies in a night, + And its petals disappear with the dawn's first light; + And when that night has come, black small-breasted maids, + With ecstatic terror dumb, steal fawn-like through the shades + To watch, hour by hour, the unfolding of the flower. + + When the world is full of night, and the moon reigns alone + And drowns in silver light the known and the unknown, + When each hut is a mound, half blue silver and half black, + And casts upon the ground the hard shadow of its back, + When the winds are out of hearing and the tree-tops never shake, + When the grass in the clearing is silent but awake + 'Neath a moon-paven sky: all the village is asleep + And the babes that nightly cry dream deep: + From the doors the maidens creep, + Tiptoe over dreaming curs, soft, so soft, that not one stirs, + And stand curved and a-quiver, like bathers by a river, + Looking at the forest wall, groups of slender naked girls, + Whose black bodies shine like pearls where the moonbeams fall. + They have waked, they knew not why, at a summons from the night, + They have stolen fearfully from the dark to the light, + Stepping over sleeping men, who have moved and slept again: + And they know not why they go to the forest, but they know, + As their moth-feet pass to the shore of the grass + And the forest's dreadful brink, that their tender spirits shrink: + They would flee, but cannot turn, for their eyelids burn + With frenzy, and each maid, ere she leaves the moonlit space, + If she sees another's face is thrilled and afraid. + + Now like little phantom fawns they thread the outer lawns + Where the boles of giant trees stand about in twos and threes, + Till the forest grows more dense and the darkness more intense, + And they only sometimes see in a lone moon-ray + A dead and spongy trunk in the earth half-sunk, + Or the roots of a tree with fungus grey, + Or a drift of muddy leaves, or a banded snake that heaves. + + And the towering unseen roof grows more intricate, and soon + It is featureless and proof to the lost forgotten moon. + But they could not look above as with blind-drawn feet they move + Onwards on the scarce-felt path, with quick and desperate breath, + For their circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head, + Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape, + And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear + A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore.... + And when things swish or fall, they shiver but dare not call. + + O what is it leads the way that they do not stray? + What unimagined arm keeps their bodies from harm? + What presence concealed lifts their little feet that yield + Over dry ground and wet till their straining eyes are met + With a thinning of the darkness? + And the foremost faintly cries in awed surprise: + And they one by one emerge from the gloom to the verge + Of a small sunken vale full of moonlight pale. + And they hang along the bank, clinging to the branches dank, + A shadowy festoon out of sight of the moon; + And they see in front of them, rising from the mud + A single straight stem and a single pallid bud + In that little lake of light from the moon's calm height. + + A stem, a ghostly bud, on the moon-swept mud + That shimmers like a pond; and over there beyond + The guardian forest high, menacing and strange, + Invades the empty sky with its wild black range. + + And they watch hour by hour that small lonely flower + In that deep forest place that hunter never found. + + It shines without sound, as a star in space. + + And the silence all around that solitary place + Is like silence in a dream; till a sudden flashing gleam + Down their dark faces flies; and their lips fall apart + And their glimmering great eyes with excitement dart + And their fingers, clutching the branches they were touching, + Shake and arouse hissing leaves on the boughs. + + And they whisper aswoon: Did it move in the moon? + O it moved as it grew! + It is moving, opening, with calm and gradual will, + And their bodies where they cling are shadowed and still + And with marvel they mark that the mud now is dark + For the unfolding flower, like a goddess in her power, + Challenges the moon with a light of her own, + That lovelily grows as the petals unclose, + Wider, more wide with an awful inward pride, + Till the heart of it breaks, and stilled is their breath, + For the radiance it makes is as wonderful as death. + + The morning's crimson stain tinges their ashen brows + As they part the last boughs and slowly step again + On to the village grass, and chill and languid pass + Into the huts to sleep. + Brief slumber, yet so deep + That, when they wake to day, darkness and splendour seem + Broken and far away, a faint miraculous dream; + And when those maidens rise they are as they ever were + Save only for a rare shade of trouble in their eyes. + And the surly thick-lipped men, as they sit about their huts + Making drums out of guts, grunting gruffly now and then, + Carving sticks of ivory, stretching shields of wrinkled skin, + Smoothing sinister and thin squatting gods of ebony, + Chip and grunt and do not see. + But each mother, silently, + Longer than her wont stays shut in the dimness of her hut, + For she feels a brooding cloud of memory in the air, + A lingering thing there that makes her sit bowed + With hollow shining eyes, as the night-fire dies, + And stare softly at the ember, and try to remember + Something sorrowful and far, something sweet and vaguely seen + Like an early evening star when the sky is pale green: + A quiet silver tower that climbed in an hour, + Or a ghost like a flower, or a flower like a queen: + Something holy in the past that came and did not last. + + But she knows not what it was. + + + + + A HOUSE + + Now very quietly, and rather mournfully, + In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires, + And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him + Keep but in memory their borrowed fires. + + And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied, + From that faint exquisite celestial strand, + And turn and see again the only dwelling-place + In this wide wilderness of darkening land. + + The house, that house, O now what change has come to it, + Its crude red-brick facade, its roof of slate; + What imperceptible swift hand has given it + A new, a wonderful, a queenly state? + + No hand has altered it, that parallelogram, + So inharmonious, so ill arranged; + That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was; + No, it is not that any line has changed. + + Only that loneliness is now accentuate + And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave, + This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again, + And all man's energies seem very brave. + + And this mean edifice, which some dull architect + Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind, + Takes on the quality of that magnificent + Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind. + + Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be, + Yet imperturbable that house will rest, + Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny, + Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast. + + Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac + May howl their menaces, and hail descend; + Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly, + Not even scornfully, and wait the end. + + And all a universe of nameless messengers + From unknown distances may whisper fear, + And it will imitate immortal permanence, + And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear. + + It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too, + When there is none to watch, no alien eyes + To watch its ugliness assume a majesty + From this great solitude of evening skies. + + So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around, + While life remains to it prepared to outface + Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries + May hide and wait for it in time and space. + + + + + BEHIND THE LINES + + The wind of evening cried along the darkening trees, + Along the darkening trees, heavy with ancient pain, + Heavy with ancient pain from faded centuries, + From faded centuries.... O foolish thought and vain! + + O foolish thought and vain to think the wind could know, + To think the wind could know the griefs of men who died, + The griefs of men who died and mouldered long ago: + "And mouldered long ago," the wind of evening cried. + + + + + ARAB SONG + + When her eyes' sudden challenge first halted my feet on the path, + I stood like a shivering caught fugitive, and strained at my breath, + And the Truth in her eyes was the portent of Love and of Death, + For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love. + + O you who have faded because girls were contemptuous and cold, + I pitied you; but mine I have won, and her breast I enfold + Despairing, and in agony long for the thing that I hold: + For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love. + + She is fair; and her eyes in her hair are like stars in a stream. + She is kind: never vaporous sleep-eddying maid in a dream + Leaning over my darkness-drowned pillow more tender did seem. + But her beauty and sweetness are as blasts from the sands of the South. + Drink me, palsy me, flay me, bleed my veins, chain my limbs, + choke my mouth, + And make salt to my lips the wine that should temper my drouth: + For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love. + + Death must come: it were best by a knife in her hand or my own. + She'd not strike and I dare not, but here, as I wander alone, + Should the wood topple over at a beast flying out like a stone + I shall smile in its face at her image bending down from the sky, + And its teeth in my neck will be hers, and its snarls as I die + Will be gentle and sweet to my ears as the voice of the dove: + For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love. + + + + + THE STRONGHOLD + + Quieter than any twilight + Shed over earth's last deserts, + Quiet and vast and shadowless + Is that unfounded keep, + Higher than the roof of the night's high chamber + Deep as the shaft of sleep. + + And solitude will not cry there, + Melancholy will not brood there, + Hatred, with its sharp corroding pain, + And fear will not come there at all: + Never will a tear or a heart-ache enter + Over that enchanted wall. + + But, O, if you find that castle, + Draw back your foot from the gateway, + Let not its peace invite you, + Let not its offerings tempt you. + For faded and decayed like a garment, + Love to a dust will have fallen, + And song and laughter will have gone with sorrow, + And hope will have gone with pain; + And of all the throbbing heart's high courage + Nothing will remain. + + + + + TO A BULL-DOG + + (_W. H. S., Capt. [Acting Major] R.F.A.; killed April_ 12, 1917) + + We sha'n't see Willy any more, Mamie, + He won't be coming any more: + He came back once and again and again, + But he won't get leave any more. + + We looked from the window and there was his cab, + And we ran downstairs like a streak, + And he said "Hullo, you bad dog," and you crouched to the floor, + Paralysed to hear him speak, + + And then let fly at his face and his chest + Till I had to hold you down, + While he took off his cap and his gloves and his coat. + And his bag and his thonged Sam Browne. + + We went upstairs to the studio, + The three of us, just as of old, + And you lay down and I sat and talked to him + As round the room he strolled. + + Here in the room where, years ago + Before the old life stopped, + He worked all day with his slippers and his pipe, + He would pick up the threads he'd dropped, + + Fondling all the drawings he had left behind, + Glad to find them all still the same, + And opening the cupboards to look at his belongings + ... Every time he came. + + But now I know what a dog doesn't know, + Though you'll thrust your head on my knee, + And try to draw me from the absent-mindedness + That you find so dull in me. + + And all your life you will never know + What I wouldn't tell you even if I could, + That the last time we waved him away + Willy went for good. + + But sometimes as you lie on the hearthrug + Sleeping in the warmth of the stove, + Even through your muddled old canine brain + Shapes from the past may rove. + + You'll scarcely remember, even in a dream, + How we brought home a silly little pup. + With a big square head and little crooked legs + That could scarcely bear him up, + + But your tail will tap at the memory + Of a man whose friend you were, + Who was always kind though he called you a naughty dog + When he found you on his chair; + + Who'd make you face a reproving finger + And solemnly lecture you + Till your head hung downwards and you looked very sheepish! + And you'll dream of your triumphs too. + + Of summer evening chases in the garden + When you dodged us all about with a bone: + We were three boys, and you were the cleverest, + But now we're two alone. + + When summer comes again, + And the long sunsets fade, + We shall have to go on playing the feeble game for two + That since the war we've played. + + And though you run expectant as you always do + To the uniforms we meet, + You'll never find Willy among all the soldiers + In even the longest street, + + Nor in any crowd; yet, strange and bitter thought, + Even now were the old words said, + If I tried the old trick and said "Where's Willy?" + You would quiver and lift your head, + + And your brown eyes would look to ask if I were serious, + And wait for the word to spring. + Sleep undisturbed: I sha'n't say that again, + You innocent old thing. + + I must sit, not speaking, on the sofa, + While you lie asleep on the floor; + For he's suffered a thing that dogs couldn't dream of, + And he won't be coming here any more. + + + + + THE LAKE + + I am a lake, altered by every wind. + The mild South breathes upon me, and I spread + A dance of merry ripples in the sun. + The West comes stormily and I am troubled, + My waves conflict and black depths show between them. + Under the East wind bitter I grow and chill, + Slate-coloured, desolate, hopeless. But when blows + A steady wind from the North my motion ceases, + I am frozen smooth and hard; my conquered surface + Returns the skies' cold light without a comment. + I make no sound, nor can I; nor can I show + What depth I have, if any depth, below. + + + + + PARADISE LOST + + What hues the sunlight had, how rich the shadows were, + The blue and tangled shadows dropped from the crusted branches + Of the warped apple-trees upon the orchard grass. + + How heavenly pure the blue of two smooth eggs that lay + Light on the rounded mud that lined the thrush's nest: + And what a deep delight the spots that speckled them. + + And that small tinkling stream that ran from hedge to hedge, + Shadowed over by the trees and glinting in the sunbeams, + How clear the water was, how flat the beds of sand + With travelling bubbles mirrored, each one a golden world + To my enchanted eyes. Then earth was new to me. + + But now I walk this earth as it were a lumber room, + And sometimes live a week, seeing nothing but mere herbs, + Mere stones, mere passing birds: nor look at anything + Long enough to feel its conscious calm assault: + The strength of it, the word, the royal heart of it. + + Childhood will not return; but have I not the will + To strain my turbid mind that soils all outer things, + And, open again to all the miracles of light, + To see the world with the eyes of a blind man gaining sight? + + + + + ACACIA TREE + + All the trees and bushes of the garden + Display their bright new green. + + But above them all, still bare, + The great old acacia stands, + His solitary bent black branches stark + Against the garden and the sky. + + It is as though those other thoughtless shrubs, + The winter over, hastened to rejoice + And clothe themselves in spring's new finery, + Heedless of all the iron time behind them. + + But he, older and wiser, stronger and sadder of heart, + Remembers still the cruel winter, and knows + That in some months that death will come again; + And, for a season, lonelily meditates + Above his lighter companions' frivolity. + + Till some late sunny day when, breaking thought, + He'll suddenly yield to the fickle persuasive sun, + And over all his rough and writhing boughs + And tiniest twigs + Will spread a pale green mist of feathery leaf, + More delicate, more touching than all the verdure + Of the younger, slenderer, gracefuller plants around. + + And then, when the leaves have grown + Till the boughs can scarcely be seen through their crowded plumes, + There will softly glimmer, scattered upon him, blooms, + Ivory-white in the green, weightlessly hanging. + + + + + AUGUST MOON + + (_To F. S._) + + In the smooth grey heaven is poised the pale half moon + And sheds on the wide grey river a broken reflection. + Out from the low church-tower the boats are moored + After the heat of the day, and await the dark. + + And here, where the side of the road shelves into the river + At the gap where barges load and horses drink, + There are no horses. And the river is full + And the water stands by the shore and does not lap. + + And a barge lies up for the night this side of the island, + The bargeman sits in the bows and smokes his pipe + And his wife by the cabin stirs. Behind me voices pass. + + Calm sky, calm river: and a few calm things reflected. + And all as yet keep their colours; the island osiers, + The ash-white spots of umbelliferous flowers, + And the yellow clay of its bank, the barge's brown sails + That are furled up the mast and then make a lean triangle + To the end of the hoisted boom, and the high dark slips + Where they used to build vessels, and now build them no more. + + All in the river reflected in quiet colours. + Beyond the river sweeps round in a bend, and is vast, + A wide grey level under the motionless sky + And the waxing moon, clean cut in the mole-grey sky. + Silence. Time is suspended; that the light fails + One would not know were it not for the moon in the sky, + And the broken moon in the water, whose fractures tell + Of slow broad ripples that otherwise do not show, + Maturing imperceptibly from a pale to a deeper gold, + A golden half moon in the sky, and broken gold in the water. + + In the water, tranquilly severing, joining, gold: + Three or four little plates of gold on the river: + A little motion of gold between the dark images + Of two tall posts that stand in the grey water. + + There are voices passing, a murmur of quiet voices, + A woman's laugh, and children going home. + A whispering couple, leaning over the railings, + And, somewhere, a little splash as a dog goes in. + + I have always known all this, it has always been, + There is no change anywhere, nothing will ever change. + + I heard a story, a crazy and tiresome myth. + + Listen! behind the twilight a deep low sound + Like the constant shutting of very distant doors, + + Doors that are letting people over there + Out to some other place beyond the end of the sky. + + + + + SONNET + + There was an Indian, who had known no change, + Who strayed content along a sunlit beach + Gathering shells. He heard a sudden strange + Commingled noise; looked up; and gasped for speech. + For in the bay, where nothing was before, + Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes, + With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar, + And fluttering coloured signs and clambering crews. + + And he, in fear, this naked man alone, + His fallen hands forgetting all their shells, + His lips gone pale, knelt low behind a stone, + And stared, and saw, and did not understand, + Columbus's doom-burdened caravels + Slant to the shore, and all their seamen land. + + + + + SONG + + Eyes like flowers and falling hair + Seldom seen, nor ever long, + Then I did not know you were + Destined subject for a song: + Sharing your unconsciousness + Of your double loveliness, + Unaware how fair you were, + Peaceful eyes and shadowy hair. + + Only, now your beauty falls + Sweetly on some other place, + Lonely reverie recalls + More than anything your face; + Any idle hour may find + Stealing on my captured mind, + Faintly merging from the air, + Eyes like flowers and falling hair. + + + + + A GENERATION (1917) + + There was a time that's gone + And will not come again, + We knew it was a pleasant time, + How good we never dreamed. + + When, for a whimsy's sake, + We'd even play with pain, + For everything awaited us + And life immortal seemed. + + It seemed unending then + To forward-looking eyes, + No thought of what postponement meant + Hung dark across our mirth; + + We had years and strength enough + For any enterprise, + Our numerous companionship + Were heirs to all the earth. + + But now all memory + Is one ironic truth, + We look like strangers at the boys + We were so long ago; + + For half of us are dead, + And half have lost their youth, + And our hearts are scarred by many griefs, + That only age should know. + + + + + UNDER + + In this house, she said, in this high second storey, + In this room where we sit, above the midnight street, + There runs a rivulet, narrow but very rapid, + Under the still floor and your unconscious feet. + + The lamp on the table made a cone of light + That spread to the base of the walls: above was in gloom. + I heard her words with surprise; had I worked here so long, + And never divined that secret of the room? + + "But how," I asked, "does the water climb so high?" + "I do not know," she said, "but the thing is there; + Pull up the boards while I go and fetch you a rod." + She passed, and I heard her creaking descend the stair. + + And I rose and rolled the Turkey carpet back + From the two broad boards by the north wall she had named, + And, hearing already the crumple of water, I knelt + And lifted the first of them up; and the water gleamed, + + Bordered with little frosted heaps of ice, + And, as she came back with a rod and line that swung, + I moved the other board; in the yellow light + The water trickled frostily, slackly along. + + I took the tackle, a stiff black rubber worm, + That stuck out its pointed tail from a cumbrous hook, + "But there can't be fishing in water like this," I said. + And she, with weariness, "There is no ice there. Look." + + And I stood there, gazing down at a stream in spate, + Holding the rod in my undecided hand... + Till it all in a moment grew smooth and still and clear, + And along its deep bottom of slaty grey sand + + Three scattered little trout, as black as tadpoles, + Came waggling slowly along the glass-dark lake, + And I swung my arm to drop my pointing worm in, + And then I stopped again with a little shake. + + For I heard the thin gnat-like voices of the trout + --My body felt woolly and sick and astray and cold-- + Crying with mockery in them: "You are not allowed + To take us, you know, under ten years old." + + And the room swam, the calm woman and the yellow lamp, + The table, and the dim-glistering walls, and the floor, + And the stream sank away, and all whirled dizzily, + And I moaned, and the pain at my heart grew more and more. + + And I fainted away, utterly miserable. + Falling in a place where there was nothing to pass, + Knowing all sorrows and the mothers and sisters of sorrows, + And the pain of the darkness before anything ever was. + + + + + RIVERS + + Rivers I have seen which were beautiful, + Slow rivers winding in the flat fens, + With bands of reeds like thronged green swords + Guarding the mirrored sky; + And streams down-tumbling from the chalk hills + To valleys of meadows and watercress-beds, + And bridges whereunder, dark weed-coloured shadows, + Trout flit or lie. + + I know those rivers that peacefully glide + Past old towers and shaven gardens, + Where mottled walls rise from the water + And mills all streaked with flour; + And rivers with wharves and rusty shipping, + That flow with a stately tidal motion + Towards their destined estuaries + Full of the pride of power; + + Noble great rivers, Thames and Severn, + Tweed with his gateway of many grey arches, + Clyde, dying at sunset westward + In a sea as red as blood; + Rhine and his hills in close procession, + Placid Elbe, Seine slaty and swirling, + And Isar, son of the Alpine snows, + A furious turquoise flood. + + All these I have known, and with slow eyes + I have walked on their shores and watched them, + And softened to their beauty and loved them + Wherever my feet have been; + And a hundred others also + Whose names long since grew into me, + That, dreaming in light or darkness, + I have seen, though I have not seen. + + Those rivers of thought: cold Ebro, + And blue racing Guadiana, + Passing white houses, high-balconied, + That ache in a sun-baked land, + Congo, and Nile and Colorado, + Niger, Indus, Zambesi, + And the Yellow River, and the Oxus, + And the river that dies in sand. + + What splendours are theirs, what continents, + What tribes of men, what basking plains, + Forests and lion-hided deserts, + Marshes, ravines and falls: + All hues and shapes and tempers + Wandering they take as they wander + From those far springs that endlessly + The far sea calls. + + O in reverie I know the Volga + That turns his back upon Europe, + And the two great cities on his banks, + Novgorod and Astrakhan; + Where the world is a few soft colours, + And under the dove-like evening + The boatmen chant ancient songs, + The tenderest known to man. + + And the holy river Ganges, + His fretted cities veiled in moonlight, + Arches and buttresses silver-shadowy + In the high moon, + And palms grouped in the moonlight + And fanes girdled with cypresses, + Their domes of marble softly shining + To the high silver moon. + + And that aged Brahmapootra + Who beyond the white Himalayas + Passes many a lamassery + On rocks forlorn and frore, + A block of gaunt grey stone walls + With rows of little barred windows, + Where shrivelled young monks in yellow silk + Are hidden for evermore.... + + But O that great river, the Amazon, + I have sailed up its gulf with eyelids closed, + And the yellow waters tumbled round, + And all was rimmed with sky, + Till the banks drew in, and the trees' heads, + And the lines of green grew higher + And I breathed deep, and there above me + The forest wall stood high. + + Those forest walls of the Amazon + Are level under the blazing blue + And yield no sound save the whistles and shrieks + Of the swarming bright macaws; + And under their lowest drooping boughs + Mud-banks torpidly bubble, + And the water drifts, and logs in the water + Drift and twist and pause. + + And everywhere, tacitly joining, + Float noiseless tributaries, + Tall avenues paved with water: + And as I silent fly + The vegetation like a painted scene, + Spars and spikes and monstrous fans + And ferns from hairy sheaths up-springing, + Evenly passes by. + + And stealthier stagnant channels + Under low niches of drooping leaves + Coil into deep recesses: + And there have I entered, there + To heavy, hot, dense, dim places + Where creepers climb and sweat and climb, + And the drip and splash of oozing water + Loads the stifling air. + + Rotting scrofulous steaming trunks, + Great horned emerald beetles crawling, + Ants and huge slow butterflies + That had strayed and lost the sun; + Ah, sick I have swooned as the air thickened + To a pallid brown ecliptic glow, + And on the forest, fallen with languor, + Thunder has begun. + + Thunder in the dun dusk, thunder + Rolling and battering and cracking, + The caverns shudder with a terrible glare + Again and again and again, + Till the land bows in the darkness, + Utterly lost and defenceless, + Smitten and blinded and overwhelmed + By the crashing rods of rain. + + And then in the forests of the Amazon, + When the rain has ended, and silence come, + What dark luxuriance unfolds + From behind the night's drawn bars: + The wreathing odours of a thousand trees + And the flowers' faint gleaming presences, + And over the clearings and the still waters + Soft indigo and hanging stars. + + * * * * * + + O many and many are rivers, + And beautiful are all rivers, + And lovely is water everywhere + That leaps or glides or stays; + Yet by starlight, moonlight, or sunlight, + Long, long though they look, these wandering eyes, + Even on the fairest waters of dream, + Never untroubled gaze. + + For whatever stream I stand by, + And whatever river I dream of, + There is something still in the back of my mind + From very far away; + There is something I saw and see not, + A country full of rivers + That stirs in my heart and speaks to me + More sure, more dear than they. + + And always I ask and wonder + (Though often I do not know it): + Why does this water not smell like water? + Where is the moss that grew + Wet and dry on the slabs of granite + And the round stones in clear brown water? + --And a pale film rises before them + Of the rivers that first I knew. + + Though famous are the rivers of the great world, + Though my heart from those alien waters drinks + Delight however pure from their loveliness, + And awe however deep, + Would I wish for a moment the miracle + That those waters should come to Chagford, + Or gather and swell in Tavy Cleave + Where the stones cling to the steep? + + No, even were they Ganges and Amazon + In all their great might and majesty, + League upon league of wonders, + I would lose them all, and more, + For a light chiming of small bells, + A twisting flash in the granite, + The tiny thread of a pixie waterfall + That lives by Vixen Tor. + + Those rivers in that lost country, + They were brown as a clear brown bead is, + Or red with the earth that rain washed down, + Or white with china-clay; + And some tossed foaming over boulders, + And some curved mild and tranquil, + In wooded vales securely set + Under the fond warm day. + + Okement and Erme and Avon, + Exe and his ruffled shallows, + I could cry as I think of those rivers + That knew my morning dreams; + The weir by Tavistock at evening + When the circling woods were purple, + And the Lowman in spring with the lent-lilies, + And the little moorland streams. + + For many a hillside streamlet + There falls with a broken tinkle, + Falling and dying, falling and dying. + In little cascades and pools, + Where the world is furze and heather + And flashing plovers and fixed larks, + And an empty sky, whitish blue, + That small world rules. + + There, there, where the high waste bog-lands + And the drooping slopes and the spreading valleys, + The orchards and the cattle-sprinkled pastures + Those travelling musics fill, + There is my lost Abana, + And there is my nameless Pharphar + That mixed with my heart when I was a boy, + And time stood still. + + And I say I will go there and die there: + But I do not go there, and sometimes + I think that the train could not carry me there, + And it's possible, maybe, + That it's farther than Asia or Africa, + Or any voyager's harbour, + Farther, farther, beyond recall.... + O even in memory! + + + + + I SHALL MAKE BEAUTY + + I shall make beauty out of many things: + Lights, colours, motions, sky and earth and sea, + The soft unbosoming of all the springs + Which that inscrutable hand allows to me, + Odours of flowers, sounds of smitten strings, + The voice of many a wind in many a tree, + Fields, rivers, moors, swift feet and floating wings, + Rocks, caves, and hills that stand and clouds that flee. + + Men also and women, beautiful and dear, + Shall come and pass and leave a fragrant breath; + And my own heart, laughter and pain and fear, + The majesties of evil and of death; + But never, never shall my verses trace + The loveliness of your most lovely face. + + + + + ENVOI + + Beloved, when my heart's awake to God + And all the world becomes His testimony, + In you I most do see, in your brave spirit, + Erect and certain, flashing deeds of light, + A pure jet from the fountain of all being, + A scripture clearer than all else to read. + + And when belief was dead and God a myth, + And the world seemed a wandering mote of evil, + Endurable only by its impermanence, + And all the planets perishable urns + Of perished ashes, to you alone I clung + Amid the unspeakable loneliness of the universe. + + + + + THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED. EDINBURGH + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems - First Series, by J. C. Squire + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS - FIRST SERIES *** + +***** This file should be named 37860.txt or 37860.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/8/6/37860/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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