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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37860-8.txt b/37860-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5042097 --- /dev/null +++ b/37860-8.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: ISO-8859-1 + +*** 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 trancèd 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 perchèd 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 obscurèd 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 entrancèd 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 naïvely 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 filmèd 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 unresignèd 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 earèd 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 parchèd 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 chainèd 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 façade, 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 37860-8.txt or 37860-8.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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Squire +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.t1 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 200%; + text-align: center } + +P.t2 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 150%; + text-align: center } + +P.t3 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 100%; + text-align: center } + +P.t3b {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 100%; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center } + +P.t4 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + text-align: center } + +P.t4b {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center } + +P.t5 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 60%; + text-align: center } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; } + +P.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.footnote {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +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: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS - FIRST SERIES *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t1"> +POEMS +</P> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +FIRST SERIES +</P> + +<P CLASS="t2"> +BY J. C. SQUIRE +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +LONDON +<BR> +MARTIN SECKER +<BR> +XVII BUCKINGHAM STREET +<BR> +ADELPHI +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +LONDON: MARTIN SECKER (LTD) 1918 +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p5"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<I>DEDICATION</I><BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<I>Lord, I have seen at harvest festival<BR> +In a white lamp-lit fishing-village church,<BR> +How the poor folk, lacking fine decorations,<BR> +Offer the first-fruits of their various toils:<BR> +Not only fruit and blossom of the fields,<BR> +Ripe corn and poppies, scabious, marguerites,<BR> +Melons and marrows, carrots and potatoes,<BR> +And pale round turnips and sweet cottage flowers,<BR> +But gifts of other produce, heaped brown nets,<BR> +Fine pollack, silver fish with umber backs,<BR> +And handsome green-dark-blue-striped mackerel,<BR> +And uglier, hornier creatures from the sea,<BR> +Lobsters, long-clawed and eyed, and smooth flat crabs,<BR> +Ranged with the flowers upon the window-niches,<BR> +To lie in that symbolic contiguity<BR> +While lusty hymns of gratitude ascend.</I><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<I>So I<BR> +Here offer all I have found:<BR> +A few bright stainless flowers<BR> +And richer, earthlier blooms, and homely grain,<BR> +And roots that grew distorted in the dark,<BR> +And shapes of livid hue and sprawling form<BR> +Dragged from the deepest maters I have searched.<BR> +Most diverse gifts, yet all alike in this:<BR> +They are all the natural products of my mind<BR> +And heart and senses;<BR> +And all with labour grown, or plucked, or caught.</I><BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<A NAME="p7"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +PREFACE +</H3> + +<P> +The title of this book was chosen for this reason. Had the volume been +called —— <I>and Other Poems</I> it might have given a false impression +that its contents were entirely new. Had it been called <I>Collected +Poems</I> 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. +</P> + +<P> +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. +</P> + +<P> +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. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +J. C. S. +<BR> +<I>March</I> 1918. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t2"> +CONTENTS +</P> + +<PRE STYLE="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 100%; margin-left: 10%"> +YEAR + + <A HREF="#p5">Dedication</A> + <A HREF="#p7">Preface</A> + +1905 <A HREF="#p11">In a Chair</A> + <A HREF="#p12">A Day</A> + +1907 <A HREF="#p14">The Roof</A> + +1910 <A HREF="#p16">Town</A> + <A HREF="#p21">Friendship's Garland</A> + +1911 <A HREF="#p24">A Chant</A> + <A HREF="#p25">The Three Hills</A> + <A HREF="#p26">At Night</A> + <A HREF="#p27">Lines</A> + <A HREF="#p30">Florian's Song</A> + +1912 <A HREF="#p31">Antinomies on a Railway Station</A> + <A HREF="#p35">Tree-Tops</A> + <A HREF="#p36">Artemis Altera</A> + <A HREF="#p37">Epilogue</A> + <A HREF="#p38">Dialogue</A> + <A HREF="#p41">Starlight</A> + <A HREF="#p42">Song</A> + <A HREF="#p43">Crepuscular</A> + <A HREF="#p44">For Music</A> + <A HREF="#p45">The Fugitive</A> + <A HREF="#p47">Echoes</A> + +1913 <A HREF="#p49">The Mind Of Man</A> + <A HREF="#p52">A Reasonable Protestation</A> + <A HREF="#p57">In the Park</A> + <A HREF="#p59">In the Orchard</A> + <A HREF="#p60">The Ship</A> + <A HREF="#p61">Ode: In a Restaurant</A> + <A HREF="#p71">Faith</A> + <A HREF="#p72">A Fresh Morning</A> + <A HREF="#p73">Interior</A> + +1913-14 <A HREF="#p74">On a Friend Recently Dead</A> + +1916 <A HREF="#p80">The March</A> + <A HREF="#p81">Prologue: In Darkness</A> + <A HREF="#p82">The Lily of Malud</A> + +1917 <A HREF="#p87">A House</A> + <A HREF="#p89">Behind the Lines</A> + <A HREF="#p90">Arab Song</A> + <A HREF="#p92">The Stronghold</A> + <A HREF="#p93">To a Bull-Dog</A> + <A HREF="#p96">The Lake</A> + <A HREF="#p97">Paradise Lost</A> + <A HREF="#p98">Acacia Tree</A> + <A HREF="#p100">August Moon</A> + <A HREF="#p102">Sonnet</A> + <A HREF="#p103">Song</A> + <A HREF="#p104">A Generation</A> + <A HREF="#p105">Under</A> + <A HREF="#p107">Rivers</A> + <A HREF="#p115">I Shall make Beauty...</A> + <A HREF="#p116">Envoi</A> +</PRE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p11"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> + IN A CHAIR +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The room is full of the peace of night,<BR> + The small flames murmur and flicker and sway,<BR> +Within me is neither shadow, nor light,<BR> + Nor night, nor twilight, nor dawn, nor day.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +For the brain strives not to the goal of thought,<BR> + And the limbs lie wearied, and all desire<BR> +Sleeps for a while, and I am naught<BR> + But a pair of eyes that gaze at a fire.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p12"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A DAY<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I. MORNING<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The village fades away<BR> + Where I last night came,<BR> +Where they housed me and fed me<BR> + And never asked my name.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The sun shines bright, my step is light,<BR> + I, who have no abode,<BR> +Jeer at the stuck, monotonous<BR> + Black posts along the road.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II. MIDDAY<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The wood is still,<BR> + As here I sit<BR> +My heart drinks in<BR> + The peace of it.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +A something stirs<BR> + I know not where,<BR> +Some quiet spirit<BR> + In the air.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O tall straight stems!<BR> + O cool deep green!<BR> +O hand unfelt!<BR> + O face unseen!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +III. EVENING<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The evening closes in,<BR> + As down this last long lane<BR> +I plod; there patter round<BR> + First heavy drops of rain.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Feet ache, legs ache, but now<BR> + Step quickens as I think<BR> +Of mounds of bread and cheese<BR> + And something hot to drink.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +IV. NIGHT<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Ah! sleep is sweet, but yet<BR> + I will not sleep awhile<BR> +Nor for a space forget<BR> + The toil of that last mile;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But lie awake and feel<BR> + The cool sheets' tremulous kisses<BR> +O'er all my body steal...<BR> + Is sleep as sweet as this is?<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p14"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE ROOF<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When the clouds hide the sun away<BR> +The tall slate roof is dull and grey,<BR> +And when the rain adown it streams<BR> +'Tis polished lead with pale-blue gleams.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When the clouds vanish and the rain<BR> +Stops, and the sun comes out again,<BR> +It shimmers golden in the sun<BR> +Almost too bright to look upon.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But soon beneath the steady rays<BR> +The roof is dried and reft of blaze,<BR> +'Tis dusty yellow traversed through<BR> +By long thin lines of deepest blue.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Then at the last, as night draws near,<BR> +The lines grow faint and disappear,<BR> +The roof becomes a purple mist,<BR> +A great square darkening amethyst<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Which sinks into the gathering shade<BR> +Till separate form and colour fade,<BR> +And it is but a patch which mars<BR> +The beauty of a field of stars.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +It stands so lonely in the sky<BR> +The sparrows never come thereby,<BR> +The glossy starlings seldom stop<BR> +To preen and chatter on the top.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +For a whole week sometimes up there<BR> +No wing-wave stirs the quiet air,<BR> +The roof lies silent and serene<BR> +As though no life had ever been;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Till some bright afternoon, athwart<BR> +The edge two sudden shadows dart,<BR> +And two white pigeons with pink feet<BR> +Flutter above and pitch on it.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Jerking their necks out as they walk<BR> +They talk awhile their pigeon-talk,<BR> +A low continuous murmur blent<BR> +Of mock reproaches and content.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Then cease, and sit there warm and white<BR> +An hour, till in the fading light<BR> +They wake, and know the close of day,<BR> +Flutter above, and fly away,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Leaving the roof whereon they sat<BR> +As 'twas before, a peaceful flat<BR> +Expanse, as silent and serene<BR> +As though no life had ever been.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p16"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +TOWN<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Mostly in a dull rotation<BR> + We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep.<BR> +Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation—<BR> + Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Dimly convinced, poor groping wretches,<BR> + Like eyeless insects in a murky pond<BR> +That out and out this city stretches,<BR> + Away, away, and there is no beyond.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +No larger earth, no loftier heaven,<BR> + No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe. And yet,<BR> +Even to us sometimes is given<BR> + Visions of things we other times forget.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Some day is done, its labour ended,<BR> + And as we sit and brood at windows high,<BR> +A steady wind from far descended,<BR> + Blows off the filth that hid the deeper sky;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There are the empty waiting spaces,<BR> + We watch, we watch, unwinking, pale and dumb,<BR> +Till gliding up with noiseless paces,<BR> + Night covers all the wide arch: Night has come.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Not that sick false night of the city,<BR> + Lurid and low and yellow and obscene,<BR> +But mother Night, pure, full of pity,<BR> + The star-strewn Night, blue, potent and serene.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O, as we gaze the clamour ceases,<BR> + The turbid world around grows dim and small,<BR> +The soft-shed influence releases<BR> + Our shrouded spirits from their dusty pall.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +No more we hear the turbulent traffic,<BR> + Not scorned but unremembered is the day;<BR> +The Night, all luminous and seraphic,<BR> + Has brushed its heavy memories away.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The great blue Night so clear and kindly,<BR> + The little stars so wide-eyed and so still,<BR> +Open a door for souls that blindly<BR> + Had wandered, tunnelling the endless hill;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +They draw the long-untraversed portal,<BR> + Our souls slip out and tremble and expand,<BR> +The immortal feels for the immortal,<BR> + The eternal holds the eternal by the hand.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Impalpably we are led and lifted,<BR> + Softly we shake into the gulf of blue,<BR> +The last environing veil is rifted<BR> + And lost horizons float into our view.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Lost lands, lone seas, lands that afar gleam<BR> + With a miraculous beauty, faint yet clear,<BR> +Forgotten lands of night and star-gleam,<BR> + Seas that are somewhere but that are not here.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Borne without effort or endeavour,<BR> + Swifter and more ethereal than the wind,<BR> +In level track we stream, whilst ever<BR> + The fair pale panorama rolls behind.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Now fleets below a trancèd moorland,<BR> + A sweep of glimmering immobility;<BR> +Now craggy cliff and dented foreland<BR> + Pass back and there beyond unfolds the sea.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Now wastes of water heaving, drawing,<BR> + Great darkling tracts of patterned restlessness,<BR> +With whitened waves round rough rocks mawing<BR> + And licking islands in their fierce caress.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Now coasts with capes and ribboned beaches<BR> + Set silent 'neath the canopy sapphirine,<BR> +And estuaries and river reaches.<BR> + Phantasmal silver in the night's soft shine.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 3em">*****</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Ah, these fair woods the spirit crosses,<BR> + These quiet lakes, these stretched dreaming fields,<BR> +These undulate downs with piny bosses<BR> + Pointing the ridges of their sloping shields.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +These valleys and these heights that screen them,<BR> + These tawnier sands where grass and tree are not,<BR> +Ah, we have known them, we have seen them,<BR> + We saw them long ago and we forgot;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +We know them all, these placid countries,<BR> + And what the pathway is and what the goal;<BR> +These are the gates and these the sentries<BR> + That guard that ancient fortress of the soul.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And we speed onward flying, flying,<BR> + Over the sundering waves of hill and plain<BR> +To where they rear their heads undying<BR> + The unnamed mountains of old days again.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The snows upon their calm still summits,<BR> + The chasms, the files of trees that foot the snow,<BR> +Curving like inky frozen comets,<BR> + Into the forest-ocean spread below.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The glisten where the peaks are hoarest,<BR> + The soundless darkness of the sunken vales,<BR> +The folding leagues of shadowy forest,<BR> + Edge beyond edge till all distinctness fails.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +So invulnerable it is, so deathless,<BR> + So floods the air the loveliness of it,<BR> +That we stay dazzled, rapt and breathless,<BR> + Our beings ebbing to the infinite.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There as we pause, there as we hover,<BR> + Still-poised in ecstasy, a sudden light<BR> +Breaks in our eyes, and we discover<BR> + We sit at windows gazing to the night.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Wistful and tired, with eyes a-tingle<BR> + Where still the sting of Beauty faintly smarts;<BR> +But with our mute regrets there mingle<BR> + Thanks for the resurrection of our hearts.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O night so great that will not mock us!<BR> + O stars so wise that understand the weak!<BR> +O vast consoling hands that rock us!<BR> + O strong and perfect tongues that speak!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O night enrobed in azure splendour!<BR> + O whispering stars whose radiance falls like dew!<BR> +O mighty presences and tender,<BR> + You have given us back the dreams our childhood knew!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Lulled by your visions without number,<BR> +We seek our beds content and void of pain,<BR> +And dreaming drowse and dreaming slumber<BR> +And dreaming wake to see the day again.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p21"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When I was a boy there was a friend of mine:<BR> +We thought ourselves warriors and grown folk swine,<BR> +Stupid old animals who never understood<BR> +And never had an impulse and said "you must be good."<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +We slank like stoats and fled like foxes,<BR> +We put cigarettes in the pillar-boxes,<BR> +Lighted cigarettes and letters all aflame—<BR> +O the surprise when the postman came!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +We stole eggs and apples and made fine hay<BR> +In people's houses when people were away,<BR> +We broke street lamps and away we ran,<BR> +Then I was a boy but now I am a man.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Now I am a man and don't have any fun,<BR> +I hardly ever shout and I never, never run,<BR> +And I don't care if he's dead that friend of mine,<BR> +For then I was a boy and now I am a swine.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +We met again the other night<BR> +With people; you were quite polite,<BR> +Shook my hand and spoke a while<BR> +Of common things with cautious smile;<BR> +Paid the usual debt men owe<BR> +To fellows whom they used to know.<BR> +But, when our eyes met full, yours dropped,<BR> +And sudden, resolute, you stopped,<BR> +Moving with hurried syllables<BR> +To make remarks to someone else.<BR> +I caught them not, to me they said:<BR> +"Let the dead past bury its dead,<BR> +Things were very different then,<BR> +Boys are fools and men are men."<BR> +Several times the other night<BR> +You did your best to be polite;<BR> +When in the conversation's round<BR> +You heard my tongue's familiar sound<BR> +You bent in eager pose my way<BR> +To hear what I had got to say;<BR> +Trying, you thought with some success,<BR> +To hide the chasm's nakedness.<BR> +But on your eyes hard films there lay;<BR> +No mock-interest, no pretence<BR> +Could veil your blank indifference;<BR> +And if thoughts came recalling things<BR> +Far-off, far-off, from those old springs<BR> +When underneath the moon and sun<BR> +Our separate pulses beat as one,<BR> +Vagrant tender thoughts that asked<BR> +Admittance found the portal masked;<BR> +You spurned them; when I'd said my say,<BR> +With laugh and nod you turned away<BR> +To toss your friends some easy jest<BR> +That smote my brow and stabbed my breast.<BR> +Foolish though it be and vain<BR> +I am not master of my pain,<BR> +And when I said good-night to you<BR> +I hoped we should not meet again,<BR> +And wondered how the soul I knew<BR> +Could change so much; have I changed too?<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +III<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There was a man whom I knew well<BR> +Whose choice it was to live in hell;<BR> +Reason there was why that was so<BR> +But what it was I do not know.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +He had a room high in a tower,<BR> +And sat there drinking hour by hour,<BR> +Drinking, drinking all alone<BR> +With candles and a wall of stone.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Now and then he sobered down,<BR> +And stayed a night with me in town.<BR> +If he found me with a crowd,<BR> +He shrank and did not speak aloud.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +He sat in a corner silently,<BR> +And others of the company<BR> +Would note his curious face and eye,<BR> +His twitching face and timid eye.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When they saw the eye he had<BR> +They thought, perhaps, that he was mad:<BR> +I knew he was clear and sane<BR> +But had a horror in his brain.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +He had much money and one friend<BR> +And drank quite grimly to the end.<BR> +Why he chose to die in hell<BR> +I did not ask, he did not tell.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p24"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A CHANT<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Gently the petals fall as the tree gently sways<BR> + That has known many springs and many petals fall<BR> +Year after year to strew the green deserted ways<BR> + And the statue and the pond and the low, broken wall.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Faded is the memory of old things done,<BR> + Peace floats on the ruins of ancient festival;<BR> +They lie and forget in the warmth of the sun,<BR> + And a sky silver-blue arches over all.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O softly, O tenderly, the heart now stirs<BR> + With desires faint and formless; and, seeking not, I find<BR> +Quiet thoughts that flash like azure kingfishers<BR> + Across the luminous, tranquil mirror of the mind.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p25"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE THREE HILLS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There were three hills that stood alone<BR> + With woods about their feet.<BR> +They dreamed quiet when the sun shone<BR> + And whispered when the rain beat.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +They wore all three their coronals<BR> + Till men with houses came<BR> +And scored their heads with pits and walls<BR> + And thought the hills were tame.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Red and white when day shines bright<BR> + They hide the green for miles,<BR> +Where are the old hills gone? At night<BR> + The moon looks down and smiles.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +She sees the captors small and weak,<BR> + She knows the prisoners strong,<BR> +She hears the patient hills that speak:<BR> + "Brothers, it is not long;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"Brothers, we stood when they were not<BR> + Ten thousand summers past.<BR> +Brothers, when they are clean forgot<BR> + We shall outlive the last;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"One shall die and one shall flee<BR> + With terror in his train,<BR> +And earth shall eat the stones, and we<BR> + Shall be alone again."<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p26"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +AT NIGHT<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Dark fir-tops foot the moony sky,<BR> + Blue moonlight bars the drive;<BR> +Here at the open window I<BR> + Sit smoking and alive.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Wind in the branches swells and breaks<BR> + Like ocean on a beach;<BR> +Deep in the sky and my heart there wakes<BR> + A thought I cannot reach.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p27"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LINES<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When London was a little town<BR> + Lean by the river's marge,<BR> +The poet paced it with a frown,<BR> + He thought it very large.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +He loved bright ship and pointing steeple<BR> + And bridge with houses loaded<BR> +And priests and many-coloured people...<BR> + But ah, they were not woaded!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Not all the walls could shed the spell<BR> + Of meres and marshes green,<BR> +Nor any chaffering merchant tell<BR> + The beauty that had been:<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The crying birds at fall of night,<BR> + The fisher in his coracle,<BR> +And, grim on Ludgate's windy height,<BR> + An oak-tree and an oracle.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Sick for the past his hair he rent<BR> + And dropt a tear in season;<BR> +If he had cause for his lament<BR> + We have much better reason.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +For now the fields and paths he knew<BR> + Are coffined all with bricks,<BR> +The lucid silver stream he knew<BR> + Runs slimy as the Styx;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +North and south and east and west,<BR> + Far as the eye can travel,<BR> +Earth with a sombre web is drest<BR> + That nothing can unravel.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And we must wear as black a frown,<BR> + Wail with as keen a woe<BR> +That London was a little town<BR> + Five hundred years ago.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 3em">*****</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Yet even this place of steamy stir,<BR> + This pit of belch and swallow,<BR> +With chrism of gold and gossamer<BR> + The elements can hallow.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I have a room in Chancery Lane,<BR> + High in a world of wires,<BR> +Whence fall the roofs a ragged plain<BR> + Wooded with many spires.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There in the dawns of summer days<BR> + I stand, and there behold<BR> +A city veiled in rainbow haze<BR> + And spangled all with gold.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The breezes waft abroad the rays<BR> + Shot by the waking sun,<BR> +A myriad chimneys softly blaze,<BR> + A myriad shadows run.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Round the wide rim in radiant mist<BR> + The gentle suburbs quiver,<BR> +And nearer lies the shining twist<BR> + Of Thames, a holy river.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Left and right my vision drifts,<BR> + By yonder towers I linger,<BR> +Where Westminster's cathedral lifts<BR> + Its belled Byzantine finger,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And here against my perchèd home<BR> + Where hold wise converse daily<BR> +The loftier and the lesser dome,<BR> + St Paul's and the Old Bailey.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p30"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> + FLORIAN'S SONG +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +My soul, it shall not take us,<BR> + O we will escape<BR> +This world that strives to break us<BR> + And cast us to its shape;<BR> +Its chisel shall not enter,<BR> + Its fire shall not touch,<BR> +Hard from rim to centre,<BR> + We will not crack or smutch.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +'Gainst words sweet and flowered<BR> + We have an amulet,<BR> +We will not play the coward<BR> + For any black threat;<BR> +If we but give endurance<BR> + To what is now within—<BR> +The single assurance<BR> + That it is good to win.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Slaves think it better<BR> + To be weak than strong,<BR> +Whose hate is a fetter<BR> + And their love a thong.<BR> +But we will view those others<BR> + With eyes like stone,<BR> +And if we have no brothers<BR> + We will walk alone.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p31"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ANTINOMIES ON A RAILWAY STATION<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +As I stand waiting in the rain<BR> +For the foggy hoot of the London train,<BR> +Gazing at silent wall and lamp<BR> +And post and rail and platform damp,<BR> +What is this power that comes to my sight<BR> +That I see a night without the night,<BR> +That I see them clear, yet look them through,<BR> +The silvery things and the darkly blue,<BR> +That the solid wall seems soft as death,<BR> +A wavering and unanchored wraith,<BR> +And rails that shine and stones that stream<BR> +Unsubstantial as a dream?<BR> +What sudden door has opened so,<BR> +What hand has passed, that I should know<BR> +This moving vision not a trance<BR> +That melts the globe of circumstance,<BR> +This sight that marks not least or most<BR> +And makes a stone a passing ghost?<BR> +Is it that a year ago<BR> +I stood upon this self-same spot;<BR> +Is it that since a year ago<BR> +The place and I have altered not;<BR> +Is it that I half forgot,<BR> +A year ago, and all despised<BR> +For a space the things that I had prized:<BR> +The race of life, the glittering show?<BR> +Is it that now a year has passed<BR> +In vain pursuit of glittering things,<BR> +In fruitless searching, shouting, running,<BR> +And greedy lies and candour cunning,<BR> +Here as I stand the year above<BR> +Sudden the heats and the strivings fail<BR> +And fall away, a fluctuant veil,<BR> +And the fixed familiar stones restore<BR> +The old appearance-buried core,<BR> +The unmoving and essential me,<BR> +The eternal personality<BR> +Alone enduring first and last?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +No, this I have known in other ways,<BR> +In other places, other days.<BR> +Not only here, on this one peak,<BR> +Do fixity and beauty speak<BR> +Of the delusiveness of change,<BR> +Of the transparency of form,<BR> +The bootless stress of minds that range,<BR> +The awful calm behind the storm.<BR> +In many places, many days,<BR> +The invaded soul receives the rays<BR> +Of countries she was nurtured in,<BR> +Speaks in her silent language strange<BR> +To that beyond which is her kin.<BR> +Even in peopled streets at times<BR> +A metaphysic arm is thrust<BR> +Through the partitioning fabric thin,<BR> +And tears away the darkening pall<BR> +Cast by the bright phenomenal,<BR> +And clears the obscurèd spirit's mirror<BR> +From shadows of deceptive error,<BR> +And shows the bells and all their ringing,<BR> +And all the crowds and all their singing,<BR> +Carillons that are nothing's chimes<BR> +And dust that is not even dust....<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But rarely hold I converse thus<BR> +Where shapes are bright and clamorous,<BR> +More often comes the word divine<BR> +In places motionless and far;<BR> +Beneath the white peculiar shine<BR> +Of sunless summer afternoons;<BR> +At eventide on pale lagoons<BR> +Where hangs reflected one pale star;<BR> +Or deep in the green solitudes<BR> +Of still erect entrancèd woods.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O, in the woods alone lying,<BR> +Scarce a bough in the wind sighing,<BR> +Gaze I long with fervid power<BR> +At leaf and branch and grass and flower,<BR> +Breathe I breaths of trembling sight<BR> +Shed from great urns of green delight,<BR> +Take I draughts and drink them up<BR> +Poured from many a stalk and cup.<BR> +Now do I burn for nothing more<BR> +Than thus to gaze, thus to adore<BR> +This exquisiteness of nature ever<BR> +In silence....<BR> + But with instant light<BR> +Rends the film; with joy I quiver<BR> +To see with new celestial sight<BR> +Flower and leaf and grass and tree,<BR> +Doomed barks on an eternal sea,<BR> +Flit phantom-like as transient smoke.<BR> +Beauty herself her spell has broke,<BR> +Beauty, the herald and the lure,<BR> +Her message told, may not endure;<BR> +Her portal opened, she has died,<BR> +Supreme immortal suicide.<BR> +Yes, sleepless nature soundless flings<BR> +Invisible grapples round the soul,<BR> +Drawing her through the web of things<BR> +To the primal end of her journeyings,<BR> +Her ultimate and constant pole.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +For Beauty with her hands that beckon<BR> + Is but the Prophet of a Higher,<BR> +A flaming and ephemeral beacon,<BR> + A Phoenix perishing by fire.<BR> +Herself from us herself estranges,<BR> + Herself her mighty tale doth kill,<BR> +That all things change yet nothing changes.<BR> + That all things move yet all are still.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I cannot sink, I cannot climb,<BR> + Now that I see my ancient dwelling,<BR> +The central orb untouched of time,<BR> + And taste a peace all bliss excelling.<BR> +Now I have broken Beauty's wall,<BR> + Now that my kindred world I hold,<BR> +I care not though the cities fall<BR> + And the green earth go cold.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p35"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +TREE-TOPS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There beyond my window ledge,<BR> +Heaped against the sky, a hedge<BR> +Of huge and waving tree-tops stands<BR> +With multitudes of fluttering hands.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Wave they, beat they, to and fro,<BR> +Never stillness may they know,<BR> +Plunged by the wind and hurled and torn<BR> +Anguished, purposeless, forlorn.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"O ferocious, O despairing,<BR> +In huddled isolation faring<BR> +Through a scattered universe,<BR> +Lost coins from the Almighty's purse!"<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"No, below you do not see<BR> +The firm foundations of the tree;<BR> +Anchored to a rock beneath<BR> +We laugh in the hammering tempest's teeth.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"Boughs like men but burgeons are<BR> +On an adamantine star;<BR> +Men are myriad blossoms on<BR> +A staunch and cosmic skeleton."<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p36"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ARTEMIS ALTERA<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O full of candour and compassion,<BR> + Whom love and worship both would praise,<BR> +Love cannot frame nor worship fashion<BR> + The image of your fearless ways!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +How show your noble brow's dark pallor,<BR> + Your chivalrous casque of ebon hair,<BR> +Your eyes' bright strength, your lips' soft valour,<BR> + Your supple shoulders and hands that dare?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Our souls when naïvely you examine,<BR> + Your sword of innocence, flaming, huge,<BR> +Sweeps over us, and there is famine<BR> + Within the ports of subterfuge.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +You hate contempt and love not laughter;<BR> + With your sharp spear of virgin will<BR> +You harry the wicked strong; but after,<BR> + O huntress who could never kill,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Should they be trodden down or pierced,<BR> + Swift, swift, you fly with burning cheek<BR> +To place your beauty's shield reversed<BR> + Above the vile defenceless weak!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p37"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +EPILOGUE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Than farthest stars more distant,<BR> + A mile more,<BR> + A mile more,<BR> + A voice cries on insistent:<BR> +"You may smile more if you will;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "You may sing too and spring too;<BR> + But numb at last<BR> + And dumb at last,<BR> + Whatever port you cling to,<BR> +You must come at last to a hill.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "And never a man you'll find there<BR> + To take your hand<BR> + And shake your hand;<BR> + But when you go behind there<BR> +You must make your hand a sword<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "To fence with a foeman swarthy,<BR> + And swink there<BR> + Nor shrink there,<BR> + Though cowardly and worthy<BR> +Must drink there one reward."<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p38"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DIALOGUE<BR> +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE ONE<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The dead man's gone, the live man's sad, the dying leaf shakes on the tree,<BR> +The wind constrains the window-panes and moans like moaning of the sea,<BR> + And sour's the taste now culled in haste of lovely things I won too late,<BR> +And loud and loud above the crowd the Voice of One more strong than we.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE OTHER<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +This Voice you hear, this call you fear, is it unprophesied or new?<BR> +Were you so insolent to think its rope would never circle you?<BR> + Did you then beastlike live and walk with ears and eyes that would not turn?<BR> +Who bade you hope your service 'scape in that eternal retinue?<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE ONE<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +No; for I swear now bare's the tree and loud the moaning of the wind,<BR> +I walked no rut with eyelids shut, my ears and eyes were never blind,<BR> + Only my eager thoughts I bent on many things that I desired<BR> +To make my greedy heart content ere flesh and blood I left behind.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE OTHER<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Ignorance, then, was all your fault and filmèd eyes that could not know,<BR> +That half discerned and never learned the temporal way that men must go;<BR> + You set the image of the world high for your heart's idolatry,<BR> +Though with your lips you called the world a toy, a ghost, a passing show.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE ONE<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +No, no; this is not true; my lips spoke only what my heart believed.<BR> +Called I the world a toy; I spoke not echo-like or self-deceived.<BR> + But that I thought the toy was mine to play with, and the passing show<BR> +Would sate at least my passing lusts, and did not, therefore am I grieved.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +What did I do that I must bear this lifelong tyranny of my fate,<BR> +That I must writhe in bonds unsought of accidental love and hate?<BR> + Had chance but joined different dice, but once or twice, but once or twice,<BR> +All lovely things that I desired I should have held before too late.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Surely I knew that flesh was grass nor valued overmuch the prize,<BR> +But all the powers of chance conspired to cheat a man both just and wise.<BR> + Happy I'd been had I but had my due reward, and not a sword<BR> +Flaming in diabolic hand between me and my Paradise.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE OTHER<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +No hooded band of fates did stand your heart's ambitions to gainsay,<BR> +No flaming brand in evil hand was ever thrust across your way,<BR> + Only the things all men must meet, the common attributes of men,<BR> +That men may flinch to see or, seeing, deny, but avoid them no man may.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Fall the dice, not once or twice but always, to make the self-same sum;<BR> +Chance what may, a life's a life and to a single goal must come;<BR> + Though a man search far and wide, never is hunger satisfied;<BR> +Nature brings her natural fetters, man is meshed and the wise are dumb.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O vain all art to assuage a heart with accents of a mortal tongue,<BR> +All earthly words are incomplete and only sweet are the songs unsung,<BR> + Never yet was cause for regret, yet regret must afflict us all,<BR> +Better it were to grasp the world 'thwart which this world is a curtain flung.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p41"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +STARLIGHT<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Last night I lay in an open field<BR> +And looked at the stars with lips sealed;<BR> +No noise moved the windless air,<BR> +And I looked at the stars with steady stare.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There were some that glittered and some that shone<BR> +With a soft and equal glow, and one<BR> +That queened it over the sprinkled round,<BR> +Swaying the host with silent sound.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"Calm things," I thought, "in your cavern blue,<BR> +I will learn and hold and master you;<BR> +I will yoke and scorn you as I can,<BR> +For the pride of my heart is the pride of a man."<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Grass to my cheek in the dewy field,<BR> +I lay quite still with lips sealed,<BR> +And the pride of a man and his rigid gaze<BR> +Stalked like swords on heaven's ways.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But through a sudden gate there stole<BR> +The Universe and spread in my soul;<BR> +Quick went my breath and quick my heart,<BR> +And I looked at the stars with lips apart.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p42"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SONG<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There is a wood where the fairies dance<BR> +All night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily,<BR> +By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole,<BR> +And the moon through the branches darts.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Light on the grass their slim limbs glance,<BR> +Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison,<BR> +And the moon discovers that they all have lovers,<BR> +But they never break their hearts.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +They never grieve at all for sands that run,<BR> +They never know regret for a deed that's done,<BR> +And they never think of going to a shed with a gun<BR> +At the rising of the sun.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p43"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CREPUSCULAR<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +No creature stirs in the wide fields.<BR> +The rifted western heaven yields<BR> +The dying sun's illumination.<BR> +This is the hour of tribulation<BR> +When, with clear sight of eve engendered,<BR> +Day's homage to delusion rendered,<BR> + Mute at her window sits the soul.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Clouds and skies and lakes and seas,<BR> +Valleys and hills and grass and trees,<BR> +Sun, moon, and stars, all stand to her<BR> +Limbs of one lordless challenger,<BR> +Who, without deigning taunt or frown.<BR> +Throws a perennial gauntlet down:<BR> + "Come conquer me and take thy toll."<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +No cowardice or fear she knows,<BR> +But, as once more she girds, there grows<BR> +An unresignèd hopelessness<BR> +From memory of former stress.<BR> +Head bent, she muses whilst he waits:<BR> +How with such weapons dint his plates?<BR> +How quell this vast and sleepless giant<BR> +Calmly, immortally defiant,<BR> + How fell him, bind him, and control<BR> + With a silver cord and a golden bowl?<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p44"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +FOR MUSIC<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Death in the cold grey morning<BR> + Came to the man where he lay;<BR> +And the wind shivered, and the tree shuddered<BR> + And the dawn was grey.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And the face of the man was grey in the dawn,<BR> + And the watchers by the bed<BR> +Knew, as they heard the shaking of the leaves,<BR> + That the man was dead.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p45"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE FUGITIVE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Flying his hair and his eyes averse,<BR> +Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.<BR> +How could our song his charms rehearse?<BR> + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +High on a down we found him last,<BR> +Shy as a hare, he fled as fast;<BR> +How could we clasp him or ever he passed?<BR> + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +How could we cling to his limbs that shone,<BR> +Ravish his cheeks' red gonfalon,<BR> +Or the wild-skin cloak that he had on?<BR> + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +For the wind of his feet still straightly shaping,<BR> +He loosed at our breasts from his eyes escaping<BR> +One crooked swift glance like a javelin leaping.<BR> + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And his feet passed over the sunset land<BR> +From the place forlorn where a forlorn band<BR> +Watching him flying we still did stand.<BR> + Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Vanishing now who would not stay<BR> + To the blue hills on the verge of day.<BR> + O soft! soft! Music play,<BR> + Fading away,<BR> + (Fleet are his feet<BR> + And his heart apart)<BR> + Fading away.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p47"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ECHOES<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There is a far unfading city<BR> + Where bright immortal people are;<BR> +Remote from hollow shame and pity,<BR> + Their portals frame no guiding star<BR> +But blightless pleasure's moteless rays<BR> + That follow their footsteps as they dance<BR> +Long lutanied measures through a maze<BR> + Of flower-like song and dalliance.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There always glows the vernal sun,<BR> + There happy birds for ever sing,<BR> +There faint perfumed breezes run<BR> + Through branches of eternal spring;<BR> +There faces browned and fruit and milk<BR> + And blue-winged words and rose-bloomed kisses<BR> +In galleys gowned with gold and silk<BR> + Shake on a lake of dainty blisses.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Coyness is not, nor bear they thought,<BR> + Save of a shining gracious flow;<BR> +All natural joys are temperate sought.<BR> + For calm desire there they know,<BR> +A fire promiscuous, languorous, kind;<BR> + They scorn all fiercer lusts and quarrels,<BR> +Nor blow about on anger's wind,<BR> + Nor burn with love, nor rust with morals.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Folk in the far unfading city,<BR> + Burning with lusts my senses are,<BR> +I am torn with love and shame and pity,<BR> + Be to my heart a guiding star:<BR> +Wise youths and maidens in the sun,<BR> + With eyes that charm and lips that sing,<BR> +And gentle arms that rippling run,<BR> + Shed on my heart your endless spring!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p49"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE MIND OF MAN<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Beneath my skull-bone and my hair,<BR> + Covered like a poisonous well,<BR> +There is a land: if you looked there<BR> + What you saw you'd quail to tell.<BR> +You that sit there smiling, you<BR> +Know that what I say is true.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +My head is very small to touch,<BR> + I feel it all from front to back,<BR> +An earèd round that weighs not much,<BR> + Eyes, nose-holes, and a pulpy crack:<BR> +Oh, how small, how small it is!<BR> +How could countries be in this?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Yet, when I watch with eyelids shut,<BR> + It glimmers forth, now dark, now clear,<BR> +The city of Cis-Occiput,<BR> + The marshes and the writhing mere,<BR> +The land that every man I see<BR> +Knows in himself but not in me.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Upon the borders of the weald<BR> + (I walk there first when I step in)<BR> +Set in green wood and smiling field,<BR> + The city stands, unstained of sin;<BR> +White thoughts and wishes pure<BR> +Walk the streets with steps demure.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +In its clean groves and spacious halls<BR> + The quiet-eyed inhabitants<BR> +Hold innocent sunny festivals<BR> + And mingle in decorous dance;<BR> +Things that destroy, distort, deface,<BR> +Come never to that lovely place.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Never could evil enter thither,<BR> + It could not live in that sweet air,<BR> +The shadow of an ill deed must wither<BR> + And fall away to nothing there.<BR> +You would say as there you stand<BR> +That all was beauty in the land.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 3em">*****</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But go you out beyond the gateway,<BR> + Cleave you the woods and pass the plain,<BR> +Cross you the frontier down, and straightway<BR> + The trees will end, the grass will wane,<BR> +And you will come to a wilderness<BR> +Of sticks and parchèd barrenness.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The middle of the land is this,<BR> + A tawny desert midmost set,<BR> +Barren of living things it is,<BR> + Saving at night some vampires flit<BR> +That nest them in the farther marish<BR> +Where all save vilest things must perish.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Here in this reedy marsh of green<BR> + And oily pools, swarm insects fat<BR> +And birds of prey and beasts obscene,<BR> + Things that the traveller shudders at,<BR> +All cunning things that creep and fly<BR> +To suck men's blood until they die.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Rarely from hence does aught escape<BR> + Into the world of outer light,<BR> +But now and then some sable shape<BR> + Outward will dash in sudden flight;<BR> +And men stand stonied or distraught<BR> +To know the loathly deed or thought.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But, ah! beyond the marsh you reach<BR> + A purulent place more vile than all,<BR> +A festering lake too foul for speech,<BR> + Rotten and black, with coils acrawl,<BR> +Where writhe with lecherous squeakings shrill<BR> +Horrors that make the heart stand still.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There, 'neath a heaven diseased, it lies,<BR> + The mere alive with slimy worms,<BR> +With perverse terrible infamies,<BR> + And murders and repulsive forms<BR> +That have no name, but slide here deep,<BR> +Whilst I, their holder, silence keep.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p52"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> + A REASONABLE PROTESTATION +</H3> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +[<I>To F., who complained of his vagueness and lack of<BR> +dogmatic statement</I>]<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Not, I suppose, since I deny<BR> +Appearance is reality,<BR> +And doubt the substance of the earth<BR> +Does your remonstrance come to birth;<BR> +Not that at once I both affirm<BR> +'Tis not the skin that makes the worm<BR> +And every tactile thing with mass<BR> +Must find its symbol in the grass<BR> +And with a cool conviction say<BR> +Even a critic's more than clay<BR> +And every dog outlives his day.<BR> +This kind of vagueness suits your view,<BR> +You would not carp at it; for you<BR> +Did never stand with those who take<BR> +Their pleasures in a world opaque.<BR> +For you a tree would never be<BR> +Lovely were it but a tree,<BR> +And earthly splendours never splendid<BR> +If by transience unattended.<BR> +Your eyes are on a farther shore<BR> +Than any of earth; nor do adore<BR> +As godhead God's dead hieroglyph.<BR> +Nor would you be perturbed if<BR> +Some prophet with a voice of thunder<BR> +And avalanche arm should blast and founder<BR> +The logical pillars that maintain<BR> +This visible world which loads the brain,<BR> +Loads the brain and withers the heart<BR> +And holds man from his God apart.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But still with you remains the craving<BR> +For some more solid substance, having<BR> +Surface to touch, colour to see,<BR> +And form compact in symmetry.<BR> +You are not satisfied with these<BR> +Vague throbbings, nameless ecstasies,<BR> +Nor can your spirit find delight<BR> +In an amorphic great white light.<BR> +Not with such sickles can you reap;<BR> +If a dense earth you cannot keep<BR> +You want a dense heaven as substitute<BR> +With trees of plump celestial fruit,<BR> +Red apples, golden pomegranates,<BR> +And a river flowing by tall gates<BR> +Of topaz and of chrysolite<BR> +And walls of twenty cubits height.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Frank, you cry out against the age!<BR> +Nor you nor I can disengage<BR> +Ourselves from that in which we live<BR> +Nor seize on things God does not give.<BR> +Thirsty as you, perhaps, I long<BR> +For courtyards of eternal song,<BR> +Even as yours my feet would stray<BR> +In a city where 'tis always day<BR> +And a green spontaneous leafy garden<BR> +With God in the middle for a warden;<BR> +But though I hope with strengthening faith<BR> +To taste when I have traversed death<BR> +The unimaginable sweetness<BR> +Of certitude of such concreteness,<BR> +How should I draw the hue and scope<BR> +Of substances I only hope<BR> +Or blaze upon a paper screen<BR> +The evidence of things not seen?<BR> +This art of ours but grows and stirs<BR> +Experience when it registers,<BR> +And you know well as I know well<BR> +This autumn of time in which we dwell<BR> +Is not an age of revelations<BR> +Solid as once, but intimations<BR> +That touch us with warm misty fingers<BR> +Leaving a nameless sense that lingers<BR> +That sight is blind and Time's a snare<BR> +And earth less solid than the air<BR> +And deep below all seeming things<BR> +There sits a steady king of kings<BR> +A radiant ageless permanence,<BR> +A quenchless fount of virtue whence<BR> +We draw our life; a sense that makes<BR> +A staunch conviction nothing shakes<BR> +Of our own immortality.<BR> +And though, being man, with certain glee<BR> +I eat and drink, though I suffer pain,<BR> +And love and hate and love again<BR> +Well or in mode contemptible,<BR> +Thus shackled by the body's spell<BR> +I see through pupils of the beast<BR> +Though it be faint and blurred with mist<BR> +A Star that travels in the East.<BR> +I see what I can, not what I will.<BR> +In things that move, things that are still;<BR> +Thin motion, even cloudier rest,<BR> +I see the symbols God hath drest.<BR> +The moveless trees, the trees that wave<BR> +The clouds that heavenly highways have,<BR> +Horses that run, rocks that are fixt,<BR> +Streams that have rest and motion mixt,<BR> +The main with its abiding flux,<BR> +The wind that up my chimney sucks<BR> +A mounting waterfall of flame,<BR> +Sticks, straws, dust, beetles and that same<BR> +Old blazing sun the Psalmist saw<BR> +A testifier to the law:<BR> +Divinely to the heart they speak<BR> +Saying how they are but weak,<BR> +Wan will-o'-the-wisps on the crystal sea;<BR> +But stays that sea still dark to me.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Did I now glibly insolent<BR> +Chart the ulterior firmament,<BR> +Would you not know my words were lies,<BR> +Where not my testimonial eyes<BR> +Mortal or spiritual lodge,<BR> +Mere uncorroborated fudge?<BR> +Praise me, though praise I do not want,<BR> +Rather, that I have cast much cant,<BR> +That what I see and feel I write,<BR> +Read what I can in this dim light<BR> +Granted to me in nether night.<BR> +And though I am vague and shrink to guess<BR> +God's everlasting purposes,<BR> +And never save in perplext dream<BR> +Have caught the least clear-shapen gleam<BR> +Of the great kingdom and the throne<BR> +In the world that lies behind our own,<BR> +I have not lacked my certainties,<BR> +I have not haggard moaned the skies,<BR> +Nor waged unnecessary strife<BR> +Nor scorned nor overvalued life.<BR> +And though you say my attitude<BR> +Is questioning, concede my mood<BR> +Does never bring to tongue or pen<BR> +Accents of gloomy modern men<BR> +Who wail or hail the death of God<BR> +And weigh and measure man the clod,<BR> +Or say they draw reluctant breath<BR> +And musically mourn that Death<BR> +Is a queen omnipotent of woe<BR> +And Life her lean cicisbeo,<BR> +Abject and pale, whom vampire-like<BR> +She playeth with ere she shall strike,<BR> +And pose sad riddles to the Sphinx<BR> +With raven quills in purple inks,<BR> +Then send the boy to fetch more drinks.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p57"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN THE PARK<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +This dense hard ground I tread.<BR> +These iron bars that ripple past,<BR> +Will they unshaken stand when I am dead<BR> +And my deep thoughts outlast?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Is it my spirit slips,<BR> +Falls, like this leaf I kick aside;<BR> +This firmness that I feel about my lips,<BR> +Is it but empty pride?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Mute knowledge conquers me;<BR> +I contemplate them as they are,<BR> +Faint earth and shadowy bars that shake and flee,<BR> +Less hard, more transient far<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Than those unbodied hues<BR> +The sunset flings on the calm river;<BR> +And, as I look, a swiftness thrills my shoes<BR> +And my hands with empire quiver.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Now light the ground I tread,<BR> +I walk not now but rather float;<BR> +Clear but unreal is the scene outspread,<BR> +Pitiful, thin, remote.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Poor vapour is the grass,<BR> +So frail the trees and railings seem,<BR> +That, did I sweep my hand around, 'twould pass<BR> +Through them, as in a dream.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Godlike I fear no changes;<BR> +Shatter the world with thunders loud,<BR> +Still would I ray-like flit about the ranges<BR> +Of dark and ruddy cloud.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p59"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN AN ORCHARD<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Airy and quick and wise<BR> + In the shed light of the sun,<BR> +You clasp with friendly eyes<BR> + The thoughts from mine that run.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But something breaks the link;<BR> + I solitary stand<BR> +By a giant gully's brink<BR> + In some vast gloomy land.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Sole central watcher, I<BR> + With steadfast sadness now<BR> +In that waste place descry<BR> + 'Neath the awful heavens how<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Your life doth dizzy drop<BR> + A little foam of flame<BR> +From a peak without a top<BR> + To a pit without a name.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p60"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE SHIP<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There was no song nor shout of joy<BR> + Nor beam of moon or sun,<BR> +When she came back from the voyage<BR> + Long ago begun;<BR> +But twilight on the waters<BR> + Was quiet and grey,<BR> +And she glided steady, steady and pensive,<BR> + Over the open bay.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Her sails were brown and ragged,<BR> + And her crew hollow-eyed,<BR> +But their silent lips spoke content<BR> + And their shoulders pride;<BR> +Though she had no captives on her deck,<BR> + And in her hold<BR> +There were no heaps of corn or timber<BR> + Or silks or gold.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p61"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ODE: IN A RESTAURANT<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + In this dense hall of green and gold,<BR> + Mirrors and lights and steam, there sit<BR> + Two hundred munching men;<BR> + While several score of others flit<BR> + Like scurrying beetles over a fen,<BR> + With plates in fanlike spread; or fold<BR> + Napkins, or jerk the corks from bottles,<BR> + Ministers to greedy throttles.<BR> + Some make noises while they eat,<BR> + Pick their teeth or shuffle their feet,<BR> + Wipe their noses 'neath eyes that range<BR> + Or frown whilst waiting for their change.<BR> + Gobble, gobble, toil and trouble.<BR> + Soul! this life is very strange,<BR> + And circumstances very foul<BR> + Attend the belly's stormy howl.<BR> +How horrible this noise! this air how thick!<BR> +It is disgusting ... I feel sick...<BR> +Loosely I prod the table with a fork,<BR> +My mind gapes, dizzies, ceases to work...<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 3em">*****</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + The weak unsatisfied strain<BR> + Of a band in another room;<BR> + Through this dull complex din<BR> + Comes winding thin and sharp!<BR> + The gnat-like mourning of the violin,<BR> + The faint stings of the harp.<BR> + The sounds pierce in and die again,<BR> +Like keen-drawn threads of ink dropped into a glass<BR> +Of water, which curl and relax and soften and pass.<BR> +Briefly the music hovers in unstable poise,<BR> +Then melts away, drowned in the heavy sea of noise.<BR> + And I, I am now emasculate.<BR> + All my forces dissipate;<BR> + Conquered by matter utterly,<BR> + Moving not, willing not, I lie,<BR> + Like a man whom timbers pin<BR> + When the roof of a mine falls in.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Halt! ... as a cloud condenses<BR> + I press my mind, recover<BR> + Dominion of my senses.<BR> + With newly flowing blood<BR> + I lift, and now float over<BR> + The restaurant's expanses<BR> +Like a draggled sea-gull over dreary flats of mud.<BR> + An effort ... ah ... I urge and push,<BR> + And now with greater strength I flush,<BR> + The hall is full of my pinions' rush;<BR> + No drooping now, the place is mine,<BR> + Beating the walls with shattering wings,<BR> + Over the herd my spirit swings,<BR> + In triumph shouts "Aha, you swine!<BR> + Grovel before your lord divine!<BR> + I, only I, am real here! ..."<BR> + Through the uncertain firmament,<BR> + Still bestial in their dull content.<BR> + The despicable phantoms leer...<BR> + Hogs! even now in my right hand<BR> + I hold at my will the thunderbolts<BR> + Measured not in mortal volts,<BR> + Would crash you to annihilation!<BR> + Lit with a new illumination,<BR> + What need I of ears and eyes<BR> + Of flesh? Imperious I will rise,<BR> + Dominate you as a god<BR> +Who only does not trouble to wield the rod<BR> + Of death, or kick your weak spheroid<BR> + Like a football through the void!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 3em">*****</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Ha! was it but a dream?<BR> + And did it merely seem?<BR> + Ha! not yet free of your cage,<BR> + Soul, spite of all your rage?<BR> + Come now, this foe engage!<BR> + With explosion of your might<BR> + Oh heave, oh leap and flash up, soul.<BR> + Like a stabbing scream in the night!<BR> + Hurl aside this useless bowl<BR> + Of a body...<BR> + But there comes a shock<BR> + A soft, tremendous shock<BR> +Of contact with the body; I lose all power,<BR> +And fall back, back, like a solitary rower<BR> +Whose prow that debonair the waves did ride<BR> +Is suddenly hurled back by an iron tide.<BR> +O sadness, sadness, feel the returning pain<BR> +Of touch with unescapable mortal things again!<BR> + The cloth is linen, the floor is wood,<BR> + My plate holds cheese, my tumbler toddy;<BR> + I cannot get free of the body,<BR> + And no man ever could.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 3em">*****</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Self! do not lose your hold on life,<BR> + Nor coward seek to shrink the strife<BR> + Of body and spirit; even now<BR> + (Not for the first time), even now<BR> + Clear in your ears has rung the message<BR> + That tense abstraction is the passage<BR> + To nervelessness and living death.<BR> + Never forget while you draw breath<BR> + That all the hammers of will can never<BR> + Your chainèd soul from matter sever;<BR> + And though it be confused and mixed,<BR> + This is the world in which you're fixed.<BR> + Never despise the things that are.<BR> + Set your teeth upon the grit.<BR> + Though your heart like a motor beat,<BR> + Hold fast this earthly star,<BR> + The whole of it, the whole of it.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Look on this crowd now, calm now, look.<BR> + Remember now that each one drew<BR> + Woman's milk (which you partook)<BR> + And year by year in wonder grew.<BR> + Scorn not them, nor scorn not their feasts<BR> + (Which you partake) nor call them beasts.<BR> + These be children of one Power<BR> + With you, nor higher you nor lower.<BR> + They also hear the harp and fiddle,<BR> + And sometimes quail before the riddle.<BR> + They also have hot blood, quick thought,<BR> + And try to do the things they ought,<BR> + They also have hearts that ache when stung.<BR> + And sigh for days when they were young,<BR> + And curse their wills because they falter,<BR> + And know that they will never alter.<BR> + See these men in a world of men.<BR> + Material bodies?—yes, what then?<BR> + These coarse trunks that here you see<BR> + Judge them not, lest judged you be,<BR> + Bow not to the moment's curse,<BR> + Nor make four walls a universe.<BR> + Think of these bodies here assembled,<BR> + Whence they have come, where they have trembled<BR> + With the strange force that fills us all.<BR> + Men and beasts both great and small.<BR> + Here within this fleeting home<BR> + Two hundred men have this day come;<BR> + Here collected for one day,<BR> + Each shall go his separate way.<BR> + Self, you can imagine nought<BR> + Of all the battles they have fought,<BR> + All the labours they have done,<BR> + All the journeys they have run.<BR> + O, they have come from all the world,<BR> + Borne by invisible currents, swirled<BR> + Like leaves into this vortex here<BR> + Flying, or like the spirits drear<BR> + Windborne and frail, whom Dante saw,<BR> + Who yet obeyed some hidden law.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 3em">*****</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Is it not miraculous<BR> + That they should here be gathered thus,<BR> + All to be spread before your view,<BR> + Who are strange to them as they to you?<BR> +Soul, how can you sustain without a sob,<BR> +The lightest thought of this titanic throb<BR> + Of earthly life, that swells and breaks<BR> + Into leaping scattering waves of fire,<BR> +Into tameless tempests of effort and storms of desire<BR> + That eternally makes<BR> +The confused glittering armies of humankind,<BR> + To their own heroism blind,<BR> +Swarm over the earth to build, to dig, and to till,<BR> +To mould and compel land and sea to their will...<BR> +Whence we are here eating...<BR> + Standing here as on a high hill,<BR> +Strain, my imagination, strain forth to embrace<BR> +The energies that labour for this place,<BR> +This place, this instant. Beyond your island's verge,<BR> +Listen, and hear the roaring impulsive surge,<BR> +The clamour of voices, the blasting of powder, the clanging of steel,<BR> +The thunder of hammers, the rattle of oars...<BR> + For this one meal<BR> +Ten thousand Indian hamlets stored their yields,<BR> +Manchurian peasants sweltered in their fields,<BR> +And Greeks drove carts to Patras, and lone men<BR> +Saw burning summer come and go again<BR> +And huddled from the winds of winter on<BR> +The fertile deserts of Saskatchewan.<BR> +To fabricate these things have been marchings and slaughters,<BR> +The sun has toiled and the moon has moved the waters,<BR> +Cities have laboured, and crowded plains, and deep in the earth<BR> +Men have plunged unafraid with ardour to wrench the worth<BR> +Of sweating dim-lit caverns, and paths have been hewn<BR> +Through forests where for uncounted years nor sun nor moon<BR> +Have penetrated, men have driven straight shining rails<BR> +Through the dense bowels of mountains, and climbed their frozen tops,<BR> + and wrinkled sailors have shouted at shouting gales<BR> +In the huge Pacific, and battled around the Horn<BR> +And gasping, coasted to Rio, and turning towards the morn,<BR> +Fought over the wastes to Spain, and battered and worn,<BR> +Sailed up the Channel, and on into the Nore<BR> +To the city of masts and the smoky familiar shore.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +So, so of every substance you see around<BR> + Might a tale be unwound<BR> +Of perils passed, of adventurous journeys made<BR> +In man's undying and stupendous crusade.<BR> + This flower of man's energies Trade<BR> + Brought hither to hand and lip<BR> + By waggon, train or ship,<BR> + Each atom that we eat....<BR> + Stare at the wine, stare at the meat.<BR> + The mutton which these platters fills<BR> + Grazed upon a thousand hills;<BR> + This bread so square and white and dry<BR> + Once was corn that sang to the sky;<BR> + And all these spruce, obedient wines<BR> + Flowed from the vatted fruit of vines<BR> + That trailed, a bright maternal host,<BR> + The warm Mediterranean coast,<BR> + Or spread their Bacchic mantle on<BR> + That Iberian Helicon<BR> + Where the slopes of Portugal<BR> + Crown the Atlantic's eastern wall.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O mighty energy, never-failing flame!<BR> +O patient toils and journeys in the name<BR> +Of Trade! No journey ever was the same<BR> +As another, nor ever came again one task;<BR> +And each man's face is an ever-changing mask.<BR> +From the minutest cell to the lordliest star<BR> +All things are unique, though all of their kindred are.<BR> +And though all things exist for ever, all life is change,<BR> +And the oldest passions come to each heart in a garment strange.<BR> +Though life be as brief as a flower and the body but dust,<BR> +Man walks the earth holding both body and spirit in trust;<BR> +And the various glories of sense are spread for his delight,<BR> +New pageants glow in the sunset, new stars are born in the night,<BR> +And clouds come every day, and never a shape recurs,<BR> +And the grass grows every year, yet never the same blade stirs<BR> +Another spring, and no delving man breaks again the self-same clod<BR> +As he did last year though he stand once more where last year he trod.<BR> +O wonderful procession fore-ordained by God!<BR> +Wonderful in unity, wonderful in diversity.<BR> + Contemplate it, soul, and see<BR> +How the material universe moves and strives with anguish and glee!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 3em">*****</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + I was born for that reason,<BR> + With muscles, heart and eyes,<BR> + To watch each following season,<BR> + To work and to be wise;<BR> + Not body and mind to tether<BR> + To unseen things alone,<BR> + But to traverse together<BR> + The known and the unknown.<BR> + My muscles were not welded<BR> + To waste away in sleep,<BR> + My bones were never builded<BR> + To throw upon a heap.<BR> + "Man worships God in action,"<BR> + Senses and reason call,<BR> + "And thought is putrefaction,<BR> + If thought is all in all!"<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Most of the guests are gone; look over there,<BR> +Against a pillar leans with absent air<BR> +A tall, dark, pallid waiter. There he stands<BR> +Limply, with vacant eyes and listless hands.<BR> +He dreams of some small Tyrolean town,<BR> +A church, a bridge, a stream that rushes down.<BR> +A frustrate, hankering man, this one short time<BR> +Unconscious he into my gaze did climb;<BR> +He sinks again, again he is but one<BR> +Of many myriads underneath the sun,<BR> +Now faint, now vivid.... How puzzling is it all!<BR> +For now again, in spite of all,<BR> +The lights, the chairs, the diners, and the hall<BR> +Lose their opacity.<BR> + Fool! exert your will,<BR> +Finish your whisky up, and pay your bill.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p71"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +FAITH<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When I see truth, do I seek truth<BR> + Only that I may things denote,<BR> +And, rich by striving, deck my youth<BR> + As with a vain unusual coat?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Or seek I truth for other ends:<BR> + That she in other hearts may stir,<BR> +That even my most familiar friends<BR> + May turn from me to look on her?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +So I this day myself was asking;<BR> + Out of the window skies were blue<BR> +And Thames was in the sunlight basking;<BR> + My thoughts coiled inwards like a screw.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I watched them anxious for a while;<BR> + Then quietly, as I did watch,<BR> +Spread in my soul a sudden smile:<BR> + I knew that no firm thing they'd catch.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And I remembered if I leapt<BR> + Upon the bosom of the wind<BR> +It would sustain me; question slept;<BR> + I felt that I had almost sinned.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p72"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> + A FRESH MORNING +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Now am I a tin whistle<BR> +Through which God blows,<BR> +And I wish to God I were a trumpet<BR> +—But why, God only knows.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p73"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +INTERIOR<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I and myself swore enmity. Alack,<BR> +Myself has tied my hands behind my back.<BR> +Yielding, I know there's no excuse in them—<BR> +I was accomplice to the stratagem.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p74"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ON A FRIEND RECENTLY DEAD<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The stream goes fast.<BR> +When this that is the present is the past,<BR> +'Twill be as all the other pasts have been,<BR> +A failing hill, a daily dimming scene,<BR> +A far strange port with foreign life astir<BR> +The ship has left behind, the voyager<BR> +Will never return to; no, nor see again,<BR> +Though with a heart full of longing he may strain<BR> +Back to project himself, and once more count<BR> +The boats, the whitened walls that climbed the mount,<BR> +Mark the cathedral's roof, the gathered spires,<BR> +The vanes, the windows red with sunset's fires,<BR> +The gap of the market-place, and watch again<BR> +The coloured groups of women, and the men<BR> +Lounging at ease along the low stone wall<BR> +That fringed the harbour; and there beyond it all<BR> +High pastures morning and evening scattered with small<BR> +Specks that were grazing sheep.... It is all gone,<BR> +It is all blurred that once so brightly shone;<BR> +He cannot now with the old clearness see<BR> +The rust upon one ringbolt of the quay.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And yesterday is dead, and you are dead.<BR> +Your duplicate that hovered in my head<BR> +Thins like blown wreathing smoke, your features grow<BR> +To interrupted outlines, and all will go<BR> +Unless I fight dispersal with my will...<BR> +So I shall do it ... but too conscious still<BR> +That, when we walked together, had I known<BR> +How soon your journey was to end alone,<BR> +I should not, now that you have gone from view,<BR> +Be gathering derelict odds and ends of you;<BR> +But in the intense lucidity of pain<BR> +Your likeness would have burnt into my brain.<BR> +I did not know; lovable and unique,<BR> +As volatile as a bubble and as weak,<BR> +You sat with me, and my eyes registered<BR> +This thing and that, and sluggishly I heard<BR> +Your voice, remembering here and there a word.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +III<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +So in my mind there's not much left of you,<BR> +And that disintegrates; but while a few<BR> +Patches of memory's mirror still are bright<BR> +Nor your reflected image there has quite<BR> +Faded and slipped away, it will be well<BR> +To search for each surviving syllable<BR> +Of voice and body and soul. And some I'll find<BR> +Right to my hand, and some tangled and blind<BR> +Among the obscure weeds that fill the mind.<BR> +A pause....<BR> +I plunge my thought's hooked resolute claws<BR> +Deep in the turbid past. Like drowned things in the jaws<BR> +Of grappling-irons, your features to the verge<BR> +Of conscious knowledge one by one emerge.<BR> +Can I not make these scattered things unite? ...<BR> +I knit my brows and clench my eyelids tight<BR> +And focus to a point.... Streams of dark pinkish light<BR> +Convolve; and now spasmodically there flit<BR> +Clear pictures of you as you used to sit:—<BR> +The way you crossed your legs stretched in your chair,<BR> +Elbow at rest and tumbler in the air,<BR> +Jesting on books and politics and worse,<BR> +And still good company when most perverse.<BR> +Capricious friend!<BR> +Here in this room not long before the end,<BR> +Here in this very room six months ago<BR> +You poised your foot and joked and chuckled so.<BR> +Beyond the window shook the ash-tree bough,<BR> +You saw books, pictures, as I see them now,<BR> +The sofa then was blue, the telephone<BR> +Listened upon the desk, and softly shone<BR> +Even as now the fire-irons in the grate,<BR> +And the little brass pendulum swung, a seal of fate<BR> +Stamping the minutes; and the curtains on window and door<BR> +Just moved in the air; and on the dark boards of the floor<BR> +These same discreetly-coloured rugs were lying...<BR> +And then you never had a thought of dying.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +IV<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +You are not here, and all the things in the room<BR> +Watch me alone in the gradual growing gloom.<BR> +The you that thought and felt are I know not where,<BR> +The you that sat and drank in that arm-chair<BR> + Will never sit there again.<BR> + For months you have lain<BR> + Under a graveyard's green<BR> + In some place abroad where I've never been.<BR> + Perhaps there is a stone over you,<BR> + Or only the wood and the earth and the grass cover you.<BR> +But it doesn't much matter; for dead and decayed you lie<BR> +Like a million million others who felt they would never die,<BR> +Like Alexander and Helen the beautiful,<BR> +And the last collier hanged for murdering his trull;<BR> +All done with and buried in an equal bed.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +V<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Yes, you are dead like all the other dead.<BR> +You are not here, but I am here alone.<BR> +And evening falls, fusing tree, water and stone<BR> +Into a violet cloth, and the frail ash-tree hisses<BR> +With a soft sharpness like a fall of mounded grain.<BR> +And a steamer softly puffing along the river passes,<BR> +Drawing a file of barges; and silence falls again.<BR> +And a bell tones; and the evening darkens; and in sparse rank<BR> +The greenish lights well out along the other bank.<BR> +I have no force left now; the sights and sounds impinge<BR> +Upon me unresisted, like raindrops on the mould.<BR> +And, striving not against my melancholy mood,<BR> +Limp as a door that hangs upon one failing hinge,<BR> +Limp, with slack marrowless arms and thighs, I sit and brood<BR> +On death and death and death. And quiet, thin and cold,<BR> +Following of this one friend the hopeless, helpless ghost,<BR> +The weak appealing wraiths of notable men of old<BR> +Who died, pass through the air; and then, host after host,<BR> +Innumerable, overwhelming, without form,<BR> +Rolling across the sky in awful silent storm,<BR> +The myriads of the undifferentiated dead<BR> +Whom none recorded, or of whom the record faded.<BR> +O spectacle appallingly sublime!<BR> +I see the universe one long disastrous strife,<BR> +And in the staggering abysses of backward and forward time<BR> +Death chasing hard upon the heels of creating life.<BR> +And I, I see myself as one of a heap of stones<BR> +Wetted a moment to life as the flying wave goes over,<BR> +Onward and never returning, leaving no mark behind.<BR> +There's nothing to hope for. Blank cessation numbs my mind,<BR> +And I feel my heart thumping gloomy against its cover,<BR> +My heavy belly hanging from my bones.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +VI<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + Below in the dark street<BR> + There is a tap of feet,<BR> + I rise and angrily meditate<BR> + How often I have let of late<BR> + This thought of death come over me.<BR> + How often I will sit and backward trace<BR> + The deathly history of the human race,<BR> + The ripples of men who chattered and were still,<BR> + Known and unknown, older and older, until<BR> + Before man's birth I fall, shivering and aghast<BR> + Through a hole in the bottom of the remotest past;<BR> + Till painfully my spirit throws<BR> + Her giddiness off; and then as soon<BR> + As I recover and try to think again,<BR> + Life seems like death; and all my body grows<BR> + Icily cold, and all my brain<BR> + Cold as the jagged craters of the moon....<BR> + And I wonder is it not strange that I<BR> + Who thus have heard eternity's black laugh<BR> + And felt its freezing breath,<BR> + Should sometimes shut it out from memory<BR> + So as to play quite prettily with death,<BR> + And turn an easy epitaph?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I can hear a voice whispering in my brain:<BR> +"Why this is the old futility again!<BR> +Criminal! day by day<BR> +Your own life is ebbing swiftly away.<BR> +And what have you done with it,<BR> +Except to become a maudlin hypocrite?"<BR> + Yes, I know, I know;<BR> +One should not think of death or the dead overmuch; but one's mind's made so<BR> +That at certain times the roads of thought all lead to death,<BR> +And false reasoning clouds one's soul as a window with breath<BR> + Is clouded in winter's air,<BR> + And all the faith one may have<BR> +Lies useless and dead as a body in the grave.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p80"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE MARCH<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I heard a voice that cried, "Make way for those who died!"<BR> +And all the coloured crowd like ghosts at morning fled;<BR> +And down the waiting road, rank after rank there strode,<BR> +In mute and measured march a hundred thousand dead.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +A hundred thousand dead, with firm and noiseless tread,<BR> +All shadowy-grey yet solid, with faces grey and ghast,<BR> +And by the house they went, and all their brows were bent<BR> +Straight forward; and they passed, and passed, and passed, and passed.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But O there came a place, and O there came a face,<BR> +That clenched my heart to see it, and sudden turned my way;<BR> +And in the Face that turned I saw two eyes that burned,<BR> +Never-forgotten eyes, and they had things to say.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Like desolate stars they shone one moment, and were gone,<BR> +And I sank down and put my arms across my head,<BR> +And felt them moving past, nor looked to see the last,<BR> +In steady silent march, our hundred thousand dead.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p81"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +PROLOGUE: IN DARKNESS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why do I lie awake,<BR> +Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling my heart's fierce ache<BR> +That beats one response to the brain's many questionings, and in solitude bears the weight<BR> +Of all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and the senseless pressure of fate?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that so certainly it recurs?<BR> +In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it here that a song first stirs?<BR> +Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory, there will spring of a sudden, some time,<BR> +Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, the thin-blown shape of a rhyme?<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p82"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE LILY OF MALUD<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The lily of Malud is born in secret mud.<BR> +It is breathed like a word in a little dark ravine<BR> +Where no bird was ever heard and no beast was ever seen,<BR> +And the leaves are never stirred by the panther's velvet sheen.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +It blooms once a year in summer moonlight,<BR> +In a valley of dark fear full of pale moonlight:<BR> +It blooms once a year, and dies in a night,<BR> +And its petals disappear with the dawn's first light;<BR> +And when that night has come, black small-breasted maids,<BR> +With ecstatic terror dumb, steal fawn-like through the shades<BR> +To watch, hour by hour, the unfolding of the flower.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When the world is full of night, and the moon reigns alone<BR> +And drowns in silver light the known and the unknown,<BR> +When each hut is a mound, half blue silver and half black,<BR> +And casts upon the ground the hard shadow of its back,<BR> +When the winds are out of hearing and the tree-tops never shake,<BR> +When the grass in the clearing is silent but awake<BR> +'Neath a moon-paven sky: all the village is asleep<BR> +And the babes that nightly cry dream deep:<BR> + From the doors the maidens creep,<BR> +Tiptoe over dreaming curs, soft, so soft, that not one stirs,<BR> +And stand curved and a-quiver, like bathers by a river,<BR> +Looking at the forest wall, groups of slender naked girls,<BR> +Whose black bodies shine like pearls where the moonbeams fall.<BR> +They have waked, they knew not why, at a summons from the night,<BR> +They have stolen fearfully from the dark to the light,<BR> +Stepping over sleeping men, who have moved and slept again:<BR> +And they know not why they go to the forest, but they know,<BR> +As their moth-feet pass to the shore of the grass<BR> +And the forest's dreadful brink, that their tender spirits shrink:<BR> +They would flee, but cannot turn, for their eyelids burn<BR> +With frenzy, and each maid, ere she leaves the moonlit space,<BR> +If she sees another's face is thrilled and afraid.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Now like little phantom fawns they thread the outer lawns<BR> +Where the boles of giant trees stand about in twos and threes,<BR> +Till the forest grows more dense and the darkness more intense,<BR> +And they only sometimes see in a lone moon-ray<BR> +A dead and spongy trunk in the earth half-sunk,<BR> +Or the roots of a tree with fungus grey,<BR> +Or a drift of muddy leaves, or a banded snake that heaves.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And the towering unseen roof grows more intricate, and soon<BR> +It is featureless and proof to the lost forgotten moon.<BR> +But they could not look above as with blind-drawn feet they move<BR> +Onwards on the scarce-felt path, with quick and desperate breath,<BR> +For their circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head,<BR> +Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape,<BR> +And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear<BR> +A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore....<BR> +And when things swish or fall, they shiver but dare not call.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O what is it leads the way that they do not stray?<BR> +What unimagined arm keeps their bodies from harm?<BR> +What presence concealed lifts their little feet that yield<BR> +Over dry ground and wet till their straining eyes are met<BR> +With a thinning of the darkness?<BR> +And the foremost faintly cries in awed surprise:<BR> +And they one by one emerge from the gloom to the verge<BR> +Of a small sunken vale full of moonlight pale.<BR> +And they hang along the bank, clinging to the branches dank,<BR> +A shadowy festoon out of sight of the moon;<BR> +And they see in front of them, rising from the mud<BR> +A single straight stem and a single pallid bud<BR> +In that little lake of light from the moon's calm height.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +A stem, a ghostly bud, on the moon-swept mud<BR> +That shimmers like a pond; and over there beyond<BR> +The guardian forest high, menacing and strange,<BR> +Invades the empty sky with its wild black range.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And they watch hour by hour that small lonely flower<BR> +In that deep forest place that hunter never found.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +It shines without sound, as a star in space.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And the silence all around that solitary place<BR> +Is like silence in a dream; till a sudden flashing gleam<BR> +Down their dark faces flies; and their lips fall apart<BR> +And their glimmering great eyes with excitement dart<BR> +And their fingers, clutching the branches they were touching,<BR> +Shake and arouse hissing leaves on the boughs.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And they whisper aswoon: Did it move in the moon?<BR> +O it moved as it grew!<BR> +It is moving, opening, with calm and gradual will,<BR> +And their bodies where they cling are shadowed and still<BR> +And with marvel they mark that the mud now is dark<BR> +For the unfolding flower, like a goddess in her power,<BR> +Challenges the moon with a light of her own,<BR> +That lovelily grows as the petals unclose,<BR> +Wider, more wide with an awful inward pride,<BR> +Till the heart of it breaks, and stilled is their breath,<BR> +For the radiance it makes is as wonderful as death.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The morning's crimson stain tinges their ashen brows<BR> +As they part the last boughs and slowly step again<BR> +On to the village grass, and chill and languid pass<BR> +Into the huts to sleep.<BR> + Brief slumber, yet so deep<BR> +That, when they wake to day, darkness and splendour seem<BR> +Broken and far away, a faint miraculous dream;<BR> +And when those maidens rise they are as they ever were<BR> +Save only for a rare shade of trouble in their eyes.<BR> +And the surly thick-lipped men, as they sit about their huts<BR> +Making drums out of guts, grunting gruffly now and then,<BR> +Carving sticks of ivory, stretching shields of wrinkled skin,<BR> +Smoothing sinister and thin squatting gods of ebony,<BR> +Chip and grunt and do not see.<BR> + But each mother, silently,<BR> +Longer than her wont stays shut in the dimness of her hut,<BR> +For she feels a brooding cloud of memory in the air,<BR> +A lingering thing there that makes her sit bowed<BR> +With hollow shining eyes, as the night-fire dies,<BR> +And stare softly at the ember, and try to remember<BR> +Something sorrowful and far, something sweet and vaguely seen<BR> +Like an early evening star when the sky is pale green:<BR> +A quiet silver tower that climbed in an hour,<BR> +Or a ghost like a flower, or a flower like a queen:<BR> +Something holy in the past that came and did not last.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But she knows not what it was.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p87"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A HOUSE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Now very quietly, and rather mournfully,<BR> + In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires,<BR> +And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him<BR> + Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied,<BR> + From that faint exquisite celestial strand,<BR> +And turn and see again the only dwelling-place<BR> + In this wide wilderness of darkening land.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The house, that house, O now what change has come to it,<BR> + Its crude red-brick façade, its roof of slate;<BR> +What imperceptible swift hand has given it<BR> + A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +No hand has altered it, that parallelogram,<BR> + So inharmonious, so ill arranged;<BR> +That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was;<BR> + No, it is not that any line has changed.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Only that loneliness is now accentuate<BR> + And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave,<BR> +This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again,<BR> + And all man's energies seem very brave.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And this mean edifice, which some dull architect<BR> + Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind,<BR> +Takes on the quality of that magnificent<BR> + Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be,<BR> + Yet imperturbable that house will rest,<BR> +Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny,<BR> + Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac<BR> + May howl their menaces, and hail descend;<BR> +Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly,<BR> + Not even scornfully, and wait the end.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And all a universe of nameless messengers<BR> + From unknown distances may whisper fear,<BR> +And it will imitate immortal permanence,<BR> + And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too,<BR> + When there is none to watch, no alien eyes<BR> +To watch its ugliness assume a majesty<BR> + From this great solitude of evening skies.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around,<BR> + While life remains to it prepared to outface<BR> +Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries<BR> + May hide and wait for it in time and space.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p89"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BEHIND THE LINES<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The wind of evening cried along the darkening trees,<BR> +Along the darkening trees, heavy with ancient pain,<BR> +Heavy with ancient pain from faded centuries,<BR> +From faded centuries.... O foolish thought and vain!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O foolish thought and vain to think the wind could know,<BR> +To think the wind could know the griefs of men who died,<BR> +The griefs of men who died and mouldered long ago:<BR> +"And mouldered long ago," the wind of evening cried.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p90"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> + ARAB SONG +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When her eyes' sudden challenge first halted my feet on the path,<BR> +I stood like a shivering caught fugitive, and strained at my breath,<BR> +And the Truth in her eyes was the portent of Love and of Death,<BR> +For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O you who have faded because girls were contemptuous and cold,<BR> +I pitied you; but mine I have won, and her breast I enfold<BR> +Despairing, and in agony long for the thing that I hold:<BR> +For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +She is fair; and her eyes in her hair are like stars in a stream.<BR> +She is kind: never vaporous sleep-eddying maid in a dream<BR> +Leaning over my darkness-drowned pillow more tender did seem.<BR> +But her beauty and sweetness are as blasts from the sands of the South.<BR> +Drink me, palsy me, flay me, bleed my veins, chain my limbs,<BR> + choke my mouth,<BR> +And make salt to my lips the wine that should temper my drouth:<BR> +For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Death must come: it were best by a knife in her hand or my own.<BR> +She'd not strike and I dare not, but here, as I wander alone,<BR> +Should the wood topple over at a beast flying out like a stone<BR> +I shall smile in its face at her image bending down from the sky,<BR> +And its teeth in my neck will be hers, and its snarls as I die<BR> +Will be gentle and sweet to my ears as the voice of the dove:<BR> +For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p92"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE STRONGHOLD<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Quieter than any twilight<BR> +Shed over earth's last deserts,<BR> +Quiet and vast and shadowless<BR> +Is that unfounded keep,<BR> +Higher than the roof of the night's high chamber<BR> +Deep as the shaft of sleep.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And solitude will not cry there,<BR> +Melancholy will not brood there,<BR> +Hatred, with its sharp corroding pain,<BR> +And fear will not come there at all:<BR> +Never will a tear or a heart-ache enter<BR> +Over that enchanted wall.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + But, O, if you find that castle,<BR> + Draw back your foot from the gateway,<BR> + Let not its peace invite you,<BR> + Let not its offerings tempt you.<BR> +For faded and decayed like a garment,<BR> +Love to a dust will have fallen,<BR> +And song and laughter will have gone with sorrow,<BR> +And hope will have gone with pain;<BR> +And of all the throbbing heart's high courage<BR> +Nothing will remain.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p93"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +TO A BULL-DOG<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +(<I>W. H. S., Capt. [Acting Major] R.F.A.; killed April</I> 12, 1917)<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +We sha'n't see Willy any more, Mamie,<BR> + He won't be coming any more:<BR> +He came back once and again and again,<BR> + But he won't get leave any more.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +We looked from the window and there was his cab,<BR> + And we ran downstairs like a streak,<BR> +And he said "Hullo, you bad dog," and you crouched to the floor,<BR> + Paralysed to hear him speak,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And then let fly at his face and his chest<BR> + Till I had to hold you down,<BR> +While he took off his cap and his gloves and his coat.<BR> + And his bag and his thonged Sam Browne.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +We went upstairs to the studio,<BR> + The three of us, just as of old,<BR> +And you lay down and I sat and talked to him<BR> + As round the room he strolled.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Here in the room where, years ago<BR> + Before the old life stopped,<BR> +He worked all day with his slippers and his pipe,<BR> + He would pick up the threads he'd dropped,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Fondling all the drawings he had left behind,<BR> + Glad to find them all still the same,<BR> +And opening the cupboards to look at his belongings<BR> + ... Every time he came.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But now I know what a dog doesn't know,<BR> + Though you'll thrust your head on my knee,<BR> +And try to draw me from the absent-mindedness<BR> + That you find so dull in me.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And all your life you will never know<BR> + What I wouldn't tell you even if I could,<BR> +That the last time we waved him away<BR> + Willy went for good.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But sometimes as you lie on the hearthrug<BR> + Sleeping in the warmth of the stove,<BR> +Even through your muddled old canine brain<BR> + Shapes from the past may rove.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +You'll scarcely remember, even in a dream,<BR> + How we brought home a silly little pup.<BR> +With a big square head and little crooked legs<BR> + That could scarcely bear him up,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But your tail will tap at the memory<BR> + Of a man whose friend you were,<BR> +Who was always kind though he called you a naughty dog<BR> + When he found you on his chair;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Who'd make you face a reproving finger<BR> + And solemnly lecture you<BR> +Till your head hung downwards and you looked very sheepish!<BR> + And you'll dream of your triumphs too.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Of summer evening chases in the garden<BR> + When you dodged us all about with a bone:<BR> +We were three boys, and you were the cleverest,<BR> + But now we're two alone.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When summer comes again,<BR> + And the long sunsets fade,<BR> +We shall have to go on playing the feeble game for two<BR> + That since the war we've played.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And though you run expectant as you always do<BR> + To the uniforms we meet,<BR> +You'll never find Willy among all the soldiers<BR> + In even the longest street,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Nor in any crowd; yet, strange and bitter thought,<BR> + Even now were the old words said,<BR> +If I tried the old trick and said "Where's Willy?"<BR> + You would quiver and lift your head,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And your brown eyes would look to ask if I were serious,<BR> + And wait for the word to spring.<BR> +Sleep undisturbed: I sha'n't say that again,<BR> + You innocent old thing.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I must sit, not speaking, on the sofa,<BR> + While you lie asleep on the floor;<BR> +For he's suffered a thing that dogs couldn't dream of,<BR> + And he won't be coming here any more.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p96"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE LAKE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I am a lake, altered by every wind.<BR> +The mild South breathes upon me, and I spread<BR> +A dance of merry ripples in the sun.<BR> +The West comes stormily and I am troubled,<BR> +My waves conflict and black depths show between them.<BR> +Under the East wind bitter I grow and chill,<BR> +Slate-coloured, desolate, hopeless. But when blows<BR> +A steady wind from the North my motion ceases,<BR> +I am frozen smooth and hard; my conquered surface<BR> +Returns the skies' cold light without a comment.<BR> +I make no sound, nor can I; nor can I show<BR> +What depth I have, if any depth, below.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p97"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +PARADISE LOST<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +What hues the sunlight had, how rich the shadows were,<BR> +The blue and tangled shadows dropped from the crusted branches<BR> +Of the warped apple-trees upon the orchard grass.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +How heavenly pure the blue of two smooth eggs that lay<BR> +Light on the rounded mud that lined the thrush's nest:<BR> +And what a deep delight the spots that speckled them.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And that small tinkling stream that ran from hedge to hedge,<BR> +Shadowed over by the trees and glinting in the sunbeams,<BR> +How clear the water was, how flat the beds of sand<BR> +With travelling bubbles mirrored, each one a golden world<BR> +To my enchanted eyes. Then earth was new to me.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But now I walk this earth as it were a lumber room,<BR> +And sometimes live a week, seeing nothing but mere herbs,<BR> +Mere stones, mere passing birds: nor look at anything<BR> +Long enough to feel its conscious calm assault:<BR> +The strength of it, the word, the royal heart of it.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Childhood will not return; but have I not the will<BR> +To strain my turbid mind that soils all outer things,<BR> +And, open again to all the miracles of light,<BR> +To see the world with the eyes of a blind man gaining sight?<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p98"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ACACIA TREE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +All the trees and bushes of the garden<BR> +Display their bright new green.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But above them all, still bare,<BR> +The great old acacia stands,<BR> +His solitary bent black branches stark<BR> +Against the garden and the sky.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +It is as though those other thoughtless shrubs,<BR> +The winter over, hastened to rejoice<BR> +And clothe themselves in spring's new finery,<BR> +Heedless of all the iron time behind them.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But he, older and wiser, stronger and sadder of heart,<BR> +Remembers still the cruel winter, and knows<BR> +That in some months that death will come again;<BR> +And, for a season, lonelily meditates<BR> +Above his lighter companions' frivolity.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Till some late sunny day when, breaking thought,<BR> +He'll suddenly yield to the fickle persuasive sun,<BR> +And over all his rough and writhing boughs<BR> +And tiniest twigs<BR> +Will spread a pale green mist of feathery leaf,<BR> +More delicate, more touching than all the verdure<BR> +Of the younger, slenderer, gracefuller plants around.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And then, when the leaves have grown<BR> +Till the boughs can scarcely be seen through their crowded plumes,<BR> +There will softly glimmer, scattered upon him, blooms,<BR> +Ivory-white in the green, weightlessly hanging.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p100"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +AUGUST MOON<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +(<I>To F. S.</I>)<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +In the smooth grey heaven is poised the pale half moon<BR> +And sheds on the wide grey river a broken reflection.<BR> +Out from the low church-tower the boats are moored<BR> +After the heat of the day, and await the dark.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And here, where the side of the road shelves into the river<BR> +At the gap where barges load and horses drink,<BR> +There are no horses. And the river is full<BR> +And the water stands by the shore and does not lap.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And a barge lies up for the night this side of the island,<BR> +The bargeman sits in the bows and smokes his pipe<BR> +And his wife by the cabin stirs. Behind me voices pass.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Calm sky, calm river: and a few calm things reflected.<BR> +And all as yet keep their colours; the island osiers,<BR> +The ash-white spots of umbelliferous flowers,<BR> +And the yellow clay of its bank, the barge's brown sails<BR> +That are furled up the mast and then make a lean triangle<BR> +To the end of the hoisted boom, and the high dark slips<BR> +Where they used to build vessels, and now build them no more.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +All in the river reflected in quiet colours.<BR> +Beyond the river sweeps round in a bend, and is vast,<BR> +A wide grey level under the motionless sky<BR> +And the waxing moon, clean cut in the mole-grey sky.<BR> +Silence. Time is suspended; that the light fails<BR> +One would not know were it not for the moon in the sky,<BR> +And the broken moon in the water, whose fractures tell<BR> +Of slow broad ripples that otherwise do not show,<BR> +Maturing imperceptibly from a pale to a deeper gold,<BR> +A golden half moon in the sky, and broken gold in the water.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +In the water, tranquilly severing, joining, gold:<BR> +Three or four little plates of gold on the river:<BR> +A little motion of gold between the dark images<BR> +Of two tall posts that stand in the grey water.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There are voices passing, a murmur of quiet voices,<BR> +A woman's laugh, and children going home.<BR> +A whispering couple, leaning over the railings,<BR> +And, somewhere, a little splash as a dog goes in.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I have always known all this, it has always been,<BR> +There is no change anywhere, nothing will ever change.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I heard a story, a crazy and tiresome myth.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Listen! behind the twilight a deep low sound<BR> +Like the constant shutting of very distant doors,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Doors that are letting people over there<BR> +Out to some other place beyond the end of the sky.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p102"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SONNET<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There was an Indian, who had known no change,<BR> + Who strayed content along a sunlit beach<BR> +Gathering shells. He heard a sudden strange<BR> + Commingled noise; looked up; and gasped for speech.<BR> +For in the bay, where nothing was before,<BR> + Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes,<BR> +With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar,<BR> + And fluttering coloured signs and clambering crews.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And he, in fear, this naked man alone,<BR> + His fallen hands forgetting all their shells,<BR> +His lips gone pale, knelt low behind a stone,<BR> + And stared, and saw, and did not understand,<BR> +Columbus's doom-burdened caravels<BR> + Slant to the shore, and all their seamen land.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p103"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SONG<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Eyes like flowers and falling hair<BR> + Seldom seen, nor ever long,<BR> +Then I did not know you were<BR> + Destined subject for a song:<BR> +Sharing your unconsciousness<BR> +Of your double loveliness,<BR> +Unaware how fair you were,<BR> +Peaceful eyes and shadowy hair.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Only, now your beauty falls<BR> + Sweetly on some other place,<BR> +Lonely reverie recalls<BR> + More than anything your face;<BR> +Any idle hour may find<BR> +Stealing on my captured mind,<BR> +Faintly merging from the air,<BR> +Eyes like flowers and falling hair.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p104"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A GENERATION (1917)<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There was a time that's gone<BR> +And will not come again,<BR> +We knew it was a pleasant time,<BR> +How good we never dreamed.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When, for a whimsy's sake,<BR> +We'd even play with pain,<BR> +For everything awaited us<BR> +And life immortal seemed.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +It seemed unending then<BR> +To forward-looking eyes,<BR> +No thought of what postponement meant<BR> +Hung dark across our mirth;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +We had years and strength enough<BR> +For any enterprise,<BR> +Our numerous companionship<BR> +Were heirs to all the earth.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But now all memory<BR> +Is one ironic truth,<BR> +We look like strangers at the boys<BR> +We were so long ago;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +For half of us are dead,<BR> +And half have lost their youth,<BR> +And our hearts are scarred by many griefs,<BR> +That only age should know.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p105"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +UNDER<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +In this house, she said, in this high second storey,<BR> +In this room where we sit, above the midnight street,<BR> +There runs a rivulet, narrow but very rapid,<BR> +Under the still floor and your unconscious feet.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The lamp on the table made a cone of light<BR> +That spread to the base of the walls: above was in gloom.<BR> +I heard her words with surprise; had I worked here so long,<BR> +And never divined that secret of the room?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"But how," I asked, "does the water climb so high?"<BR> +"I do not know," she said, "but the thing is there;<BR> +Pull up the boards while I go and fetch you a rod."<BR> +She passed, and I heard her creaking descend the stair.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And I rose and rolled the Turkey carpet back<BR> +From the two broad boards by the north wall she had named,<BR> +And, hearing already the crumple of water, I knelt<BR> +And lifted the first of them up; and the water gleamed,<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Bordered with little frosted heaps of ice,<BR> +And, as she came back with a rod and line that swung,<BR> +I moved the other board; in the yellow light<BR> +The water trickled frostily, slackly along.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I took the tackle, a stiff black rubber worm,<BR> +That stuck out its pointed tail from a cumbrous hook,<BR> +"But there can't be fishing in water like this," I said.<BR> +And she, with weariness, "There is no ice there. Look."<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And I stood there, gazing down at a stream in spate,<BR> +Holding the rod in my undecided hand...<BR> +Till it all in a moment grew smooth and still and clear,<BR> +And along its deep bottom of slaty grey sand<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Three scattered little trout, as black as tadpoles,<BR> +Came waggling slowly along the glass-dark lake,<BR> +And I swung my arm to drop my pointing worm in,<BR> +And then I stopped again with a little shake.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +For I heard the thin gnat-like voices of the trout<BR> +—My body felt woolly and sick and astray and cold—<BR> +Crying with mockery in them: "You are not allowed<BR> +To take us, you know, under ten years old."<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And the room swam, the calm woman and the yellow lamp,<BR> +The table, and the dim-glistering walls, and the floor,<BR> +And the stream sank away, and all whirled dizzily,<BR> +And I moaned, and the pain at my heart grew more and more.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And I fainted away, utterly miserable.<BR> +Falling in a place where there was nothing to pass,<BR> +Knowing all sorrows and the mothers and sisters of sorrows,<BR> +And the pain of the darkness before anything ever was.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p107"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +RIVERS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Rivers I have seen which were beautiful,<BR> +Slow rivers winding in the flat fens,<BR> +With bands of reeds like thronged green swords<BR> + Guarding the mirrored sky;<BR> +And streams down-tumbling from the chalk hills<BR> +To valleys of meadows and watercress-beds,<BR> +And bridges whereunder, dark weed-coloured shadows,<BR> + Trout flit or lie.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I know those rivers that peacefully glide<BR> +Past old towers and shaven gardens,<BR> +Where mottled walls rise from the water<BR> + And mills all streaked with flour;<BR> +And rivers with wharves and rusty shipping,<BR> +That flow with a stately tidal motion<BR> +Towards their destined estuaries<BR> + Full of the pride of power;<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Noble great rivers, Thames and Severn,<BR> +Tweed with his gateway of many grey arches,<BR> +Clyde, dying at sunset westward<BR> + In a sea as red as blood;<BR> +Rhine and his hills in close procession,<BR> +Placid Elbe, Seine slaty and swirling,<BR> +And Isar, son of the Alpine snows,<BR> + A furious turquoise flood.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +All these I have known, and with slow eyes<BR> +I have walked on their shores and watched them,<BR> +And softened to their beauty and loved them<BR> + Wherever my feet have been;<BR> +And a hundred others also<BR> +Whose names long since grew into me,<BR> +That, dreaming in light or darkness,<BR> + I have seen, though I have not seen.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Those rivers of thought: cold Ebro,<BR> +And blue racing Guadiana,<BR> +Passing white houses, high-balconied,<BR> + That ache in a sun-baked land,<BR> +Congo, and Nile and Colorado,<BR> +Niger, Indus, Zambesi,<BR> +And the Yellow River, and the Oxus,<BR> + And the river that dies in sand.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +What splendours are theirs, what continents,<BR> +What tribes of men, what basking plains,<BR> +Forests and lion-hided deserts,<BR> + Marshes, ravines and falls:<BR> +All hues and shapes and tempers<BR> +Wandering they take as they wander<BR> +From those far springs that endlessly<BR> + The far sea calls.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O in reverie I know the Volga<BR> +That turns his back upon Europe,<BR> +And the two great cities on his banks,<BR> + Novgorod and Astrakhan;<BR> +Where the world is a few soft colours,<BR> +And under the dove-like evening<BR> +The boatmen chant ancient songs,<BR> + The tenderest known to man.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And the holy river Ganges,<BR> +His fretted cities veiled in moonlight,<BR> +Arches and buttresses silver-shadowy<BR> + In the high moon,<BR> +And palms grouped in the moonlight<BR> +And fanes girdled with cypresses,<BR> +Their domes of marble softly shining<BR> + To the high silver moon.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And that aged Brahmapootra<BR> +Who beyond the white Himalayas<BR> +Passes many a lamassery<BR> + On rocks forlorn and frore,<BR> +A block of gaunt grey stone walls<BR> +With rows of little barred windows,<BR> +Where shrivelled young monks in yellow silk<BR> + Are hidden for evermore....<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But O that great river, the Amazon,<BR> +I have sailed up its gulf with eyelids closed,<BR> +And the yellow waters tumbled round,<BR> + And all was rimmed with sky,<BR> +Till the banks drew in, and the trees' heads,<BR> +And the lines of green grew higher<BR> +And I breathed deep, and there above me<BR> + The forest wall stood high.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Those forest walls of the Amazon<BR> +Are level under the blazing blue<BR> +And yield no sound save the whistles and shrieks<BR> + Of the swarming bright macaws;<BR> +And under their lowest drooping boughs<BR> +Mud-banks torpidly bubble,<BR> +And the water drifts, and logs in the water<BR> + Drift and twist and pause.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And everywhere, tacitly joining,<BR> +Float noiseless tributaries,<BR> +Tall avenues paved with water:<BR> + And as I silent fly<BR> +The vegetation like a painted scene,<BR> +Spars and spikes and monstrous fans<BR> +And ferns from hairy sheaths up-springing,<BR> + Evenly passes by.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And stealthier stagnant channels<BR> +Under low niches of drooping leaves<BR> +Coil into deep recesses:<BR> + And there have I entered, there<BR> +To heavy, hot, dense, dim places<BR> +Where creepers climb and sweat and climb,<BR> +And the drip and splash of oozing water<BR> + Loads the stifling air.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Rotting scrofulous steaming trunks,<BR> +Great horned emerald beetles crawling,<BR> +Ants and huge slow butterflies<BR> + That had strayed and lost the sun;<BR> +Ah, sick I have swooned as the air thickened<BR> +To a pallid brown ecliptic glow,<BR> +And on the forest, fallen with languor,<BR> + Thunder has begun.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Thunder in the dun dusk, thunder<BR> +Rolling and battering and cracking,<BR> +The caverns shudder with a terrible glare<BR> + Again and again and again,<BR> +Till the land bows in the darkness,<BR> +Utterly lost and defenceless,<BR> +Smitten and blinded and overwhelmed<BR> + By the crashing rods of rain.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And then in the forests of the Amazon,<BR> +When the rain has ended, and silence come,<BR> +What dark luxuriance unfolds<BR> + From behind the night's drawn bars:<BR> +The wreathing odours of a thousand trees<BR> +And the flowers' faint gleaming presences,<BR> +And over the clearings and the still waters<BR> + Soft indigo and hanging stars.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 3em">*****</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O many and many are rivers,<BR> +And beautiful are all rivers,<BR> +And lovely is water everywhere<BR> + That leaps or glides or stays;<BR> +Yet by starlight, moonlight, or sunlight,<BR> +Long, long though they look, these wandering eyes,<BR> +Even on the fairest waters of dream,<BR> + Never untroubled gaze.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +For whatever stream I stand by,<BR> +And whatever river I dream of,<BR> +There is something still in the back of my mind<BR> + From very far away;<BR> +There is something I saw and see not,<BR> +A country full of rivers<BR> +That stirs in my heart and speaks to me<BR> + More sure, more dear than they.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And always I ask and wonder<BR> +(Though often I do not know it):<BR> +Why does this water not smell like water?<BR> + Where is the moss that grew<BR> +Wet and dry on the slabs of granite<BR> +And the round stones in clear brown water?<BR> +—And a pale film rises before them<BR> + Of the rivers that first I knew.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Though famous are the rivers of the great world,<BR> +Though my heart from those alien waters drinks<BR> +Delight however pure from their loveliness,<BR> + And awe however deep,<BR> +Would I wish for a moment the miracle<BR> +That those waters should come to Chagford,<BR> +Or gather and swell in Tavy Cleave<BR> + Where the stones cling to the steep?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +No, even were they Ganges and Amazon<BR> +In all their great might and majesty,<BR> +League upon league of wonders,<BR> + I would lose them all, and more,<BR> +For a light chiming of small bells,<BR> +A twisting flash in the granite,<BR> +The tiny thread of a pixie waterfall<BR> + That lives by Vixen Tor.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Those rivers in that lost country,<BR> +They were brown as a clear brown bead is,<BR> +Or red with the earth that rain washed down,<BR> + Or white with china-clay;<BR> +And some tossed foaming over boulders,<BR> +And some curved mild and tranquil,<BR> +In wooded vales securely set<BR> + Under the fond warm day.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Okement and Erme and Avon,<BR> +Exe and his ruffled shallows,<BR> +I could cry as I think of those rivers<BR> + That knew my morning dreams;<BR> +The weir by Tavistock at evening<BR> +When the circling woods were purple,<BR> +And the Lowman in spring with the lent-lilies,<BR> + And the little moorland streams.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +For many a hillside streamlet<BR> +There falls with a broken tinkle,<BR> +Falling and dying, falling and dying.<BR> + In little cascades and pools,<BR> +Where the world is furze and heather<BR> +And flashing plovers and fixed larks,<BR> +And an empty sky, whitish blue,<BR> + That small world rules.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There, there, where the high waste bog-lands<BR> +And the drooping slopes and the spreading valleys,<BR> +The orchards and the cattle-sprinkled pastures<BR> + Those travelling musics fill,<BR> +There is my lost Abana,<BR> +And there is my nameless Pharphar<BR> +That mixed with my heart when I was a boy,<BR> + And time stood still.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And I say I will go there and die there:<BR> +But I do not go there, and sometimes<BR> +I think that the train could not carry me there,<BR> + And it's possible, maybe,<BR> +That it's farther than Asia or Africa,<BR> +Or any voyager's harbour,<BR> +Farther, farther, beyond recall....<BR> + O even in memory!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p115"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +I SHALL MAKE BEAUTY<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I shall make beauty out of many things:<BR> + Lights, colours, motions, sky and earth and sea,<BR> +The soft unbosoming of all the springs<BR> + Which that inscrutable hand allows to me,<BR> +Odours of flowers, sounds of smitten strings,<BR> + The voice of many a wind in many a tree,<BR> +Fields, rivers, moors, swift feet and floating wings,<BR> + Rocks, caves, and hills that stand and clouds that flee.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Men also and women, beautiful and dear,<BR> + Shall come and pass and leave a fragrant breath;<BR> +And my own heart, laughter and pain and fear,<BR> + The majesties of evil and of death;<BR> +But never, never shall my verses trace<BR> + The loveliness of your most lovely face.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p116"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ENVOI<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Beloved, when my heart's awake to God<BR> +And all the world becomes His testimony,<BR> +In you I most do see, in your brave spirit,<BR> +Erect and certain, flashing deeds of light,<BR> +A pure jet from the fountain of all being,<BR> +A scripture clearer than all else to read.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And when belief was dead and God a myth,<BR> +And the world seemed a wandering mote of evil,<BR> +Endurable only by its impermanence,<BR> +And all the planets perishable urns<BR> +Of perished ashes, to you alone I clung<BR> +Amid the unspeakable loneliness of the universe.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED. EDINBURGH<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +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-h.htm or 37860-h.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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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. 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