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diff --git a/37861.txt b/37861.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..511d26c --- /dev/null +++ b/37861.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2400 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems - Second 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 - Second Series + +Author: J. C. Squire + +Release Date: October 26, 2011 [EBook #37861] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS - SECOND SERIES *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + + +POEMS + +SECOND SERIES + + +By J. C. Squire + + + + +London: + +William Heinemann Limited + +1922 + + + + +TO + +EDWARD SHANKS + + + + +PREFACE + +Three years ago I published a volume called _Poems: First Series_, +which contained a collection of what I had written between 1905 and +March, 1918. + +The present collection contains all that I have written since then. +_The Birds_ and nine shorter poems were published in a small booklet in +1919; _The Moon_ was separately published in 1920; but the majority of +the poems here printed appear in book form for the first time, and +twelve have never previously been published. + +The poems are as nearly as possible in chronological order, except that +the group called _An Epilogue_ should have been dated 1917. + +J. C. S. + +_September_, 1921. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +YEAR + + Dedication + Preface + +1918 The Birds + A Dog's Death + A Poet to his Muse + Processes of Thought. I + II + III + Airship over Suburb + The Invocation of Lucretius + An Epilogue: + I The Fluke + II The Conversation + III The Deaf Adder + IV The Landscape + V Another Hour + An Impression Received from a Symphony + Fen Landscape + Meditation in Lamplight + Harlequin + +1919 Winter Nightfall + A Far Place + Late Snow + Song: You are My Sky + Song: The Heaven is Full + Old Song + Epitaph in Old Mode + The Moon + The Happy Night + +1920 Constantinople + Elegy + Wars and Rumours, 1920 + +1921 To a Musician + The Rugger Match + + + + + THE BIRDS + + (_To Edmund Gosse_) + + Within mankind's duration, so they say, + Khephren and Ninus lived but yesterday. + Asia had no name till man was old + And long had learned the use of iron and gold; + And aeons had passed, when the first corn was planted, + Since first the use of syllables was granted. + + Men were on earth while climates slowly swung, + Fanning wide zones to heat and cold, and long + Subsidence turned great continents to sea, + And seas dried up, dried up interminably, + Age after age; enormous seas were dried + Amid wastes of land. And the last monsters died. + + Earth wore another face. O since that prime + Man with how many works has sprinkled time! + Hammering, hewing, digging tunnels, roads; + Building ships, temples, multiform abodes. + How, for his body's appetites, his toils + Have conquered all earth's products, all her soils; + And in what thousand thousand shapes of art + He has tried to find a language for his heart! + + Never at rest, never content or tired: + Insatiate wanderer, marvellously fired, + Most grandly piling and piling into the air + Stones that will topple or arch he knows not where. + And yet did I, this spring, think it more strange, + More grand, more full of awe, than all that change, + And lovely and sweet and touching unto tears, + That through man's chronicled and unchronicled years, + And even into that unguessable beyond + The water-hen has nested by a pond, + Weaving dry flags into a beaten floor, + The one sure product of her only lore. + Low on a ledge above the shadowed water + Then, when she heard no men, as nature taught her, + Flashing around with busy scarlet bill + She built that nest, her nest, and builds it still. + + O let your strong imagination turn + The great wheel backward, until Troy unburn, + And then unbuild, and seven Troys below + Rise out of death, and dwindle, and outflow, + Till all have passed, and none has yet been there: + Back, ever back. Our birds still crossed the air; + Beyond our myriad changing generations + Still built, unchanged, their known inhabitations. + A million years before Atlantis was + Our lark sprang from some hollow in the grass, + Some old soft hoof-print in a tussock's shade; + And the wood-pigeon's smooth snow-white eggs were laid, + High amid green pines' sunset-coloured shafts, + And rooks their villages of twiggy rafts + Set on the tops of elms, where elms grew then, + And still the thumbling tit and perky wren + Popped through the tiny doors of cosy balls + And the blackbird lined with moss his high-built walls; + A round mud cottage held the thrush's young, + And straws from the untidy sparrow's hung. + And, skimming forktailed in the evening air, + When man first was were not the martins there? + Did not those birds some human shelter crave, + And stow beneath the cornice of his cave + Their dry tight cups of clay? And from each door + Peeped on a morning wiseheads three or four. + + Yes, daw and owl, curlew and crested hern, + Kingfisher, mallard, water-rail and tern, + Chaffinch and greenfinch, wagtail, stonechat, ruff, + Whitethroat and robin, fly-catcher and chough, + Missel-thrush, magpie, sparrow-hawk and jay, + Built, those far ages gone, in this year's way. + And the first man who walked the cliffs of Rame, + As I this year, looked down and saw the same + Blotches of rusty red on ledge and cleft + With grey-green spots on them, while right and left + A dizzying tangle of gulls were floating and flying, + Wheeling and crossing and darting, crying and crying, + Circling and crying, over and over and over, + Crying with swoop and hover and fall and recover. + And below on a rock against the grey sea fretted, + Pipe-necked and stationary and silhouetted, + Cormorants stood in a wise, black, equal row + Above the nests and long blue eggs we know. + + O delicate chain over all the ages stretched, + O dumb tradition from what far darkness fetched: + Each little architect with its one design + Perpetual, fixed and right in stuff and line, + Each little ministrant who knows one thing, + One learned rite to celebrate the spring. + Whatever alters else on sea or shore, + These are unchanging: man must still explore. + + + + + A DOG'S DEATH + + The loose earth falls in the grave like a peaceful regular breathing; + Too like, for I was deceived a moment by the sound: + It has covered the heap of bracken that the gardener laid above him; + Quiet the spade swings: there we have now his mound. + + A patch of fresh earth on the floor of the wood's renewing chamber: + All around is grass and moss and the hyacinth's dark green sprouts: + And oaks are above that were old when his fiftieth sire was a puppy: + And far away in the garden I hear the children's shouts. + + Their joy is remote as a dream. It is strange how we buy our sorrow + For the touch of perishing things, idly, with open eyes; + How we give our hearts to brutes that will die in a few seasons, + Nor trouble what we do when we do it; nor would have it otherwise. + + + + + A POET TO HIS MUSE + + Muse, you have opened like a flower. + + * * * * * + + Long ago I knew that brown integument, + Like a dead husk, had dormant life within it, + And waited till a first white point appeared + Which shot into a naked stiff pale spike + That grew. + I knew this was not all; + Nothing I said as greener you grew and taller, + But dreamed alone of the day when your bud would unsheathe, + And silently swell, and at last your crown would break + Filling the air with clouds of colour and fragrance, + Radiant waves, odours of immortality. + + * * * * * + + In a pot of earth I watered and tended you, + Breaking the clods and soaking the earth with water + That fed your roots and eased your way to the light. + I gave you the sun and the rain + But saved you from scorching and drowning: + You are mine, and only I know you, + And the ways of your growth, and the days. + + * * * * * + + But you are not from me. + I am but a pen for a hand, + A bed for a river, + A window for light. + And I bow in awe to that Power + That made you a flower. + + + + + PROCESSES OF THOUGHT + + I + + I find my mind as it were a deep water. + + Sometimes I play with a thought and hammer and bend it, + Till tired and displeased with that I toss it away, + Or absently let it slip to the yawning water: + And down it sinks, forgotten for many a day. + + But a time comes when tide or tempest washes it + High on the beach, and I find that shape of mine, + Or I haul it out from the depths on some casual rope, + Or, passing over that spot in quiet shine, + + I see, where my boat's shadow makes deep the water, + A patch of colour, far down, from the bottom apart, + A wavering sign like the gleam from an ancient anchor, + Brown fixing and fleeting flakes; and I feel my heart + + Wake to a strange excitement; so that I stop, + Put up my paddles and dredge with a careful net: + And I catch it, and see it stir, and feel its weight, + And pull till it nears and breaks from the water wet. + + And my eyes dwell on that old abandoned thing + Recovered by chance. For the shape I had found so dull + Has crusted and changed in secrecy and silence, + And its surface shines like a pearl, most beautiful. + + + II + + In bed I lie, and my thoughts come filing by, + All forms and faces, cheerful, serene and sad: + Some clear, some mistily showing and fragmentary, + Some altered in size or shape since last they were seen. + + But O last, you group of merry ones! + Lord knows when I saw you before, but I met you once, + The whole collection of you, impudent-eyed; + And now, rosy and grinning, with linked arms + You go swingingly by, turning your faces to mine, + I laugh aloud; you bad lots; you are a secret, + That nobody else knows. + + And you it was that made me break the procession + (While memory gave me still the power of summons), + And call up all I could of a half-hour's thoughts + To parade them across this proscenium of my skull + In the order they came in, more carefully recognising + The old, and remarking which have developed or changed. + And as for you, you rogues, I am almost certain + There are one or two more of you now than once there were. + + * * * * * + + Good-bye! Good-bye! Dance through the dark door + In to the life that somewhere else you lead. + And one day I shall all unwittingly call + Some word you know as a signal, or you'll see + Someone else coming my way; you'll suddenly follow, + And you'll appear again, quite possibly + Bringing new friends--who are sure to be just as bad. + + + III + + Into the pits of my heart and brain, + My eyes, ears, nose, tongue, fingers, like five gardeners + Are shovelling sights, sounds, odours, savours, contacts, + While I, their master, casually nod, and most times + Stand idly by, looking at something else, + Forgetting that the work is going on + And only fully conscious of my servants + When something they move is consonant with my mood + And draws my notice; or some other thing, + More strange than usual or stronger in its impact, + Makes them exclaim and call to bid me watch. + + And then in a ground of more than our dimensions + Those quietly flowing cascades of things are hid. + They are buried in those illimitable fields, + And ever as they are swallowed by the earth + The steady hours passing in procession + Walk over them and trample them well down + Out of sight, levelling all the soil. + + Then some time my returning feet uncover them + (My slaves are all agog with recognition) + Or else perhaps I come and idly dig + To see what thing I can find, and out there comes + Some old form buried twenty years ago + Now called a memory. + + Or marking well the place where one was put + Find it and more, drawn thither under the ground, + Tangled with others as flower-roots with roots + Into a new festoon, or one old image, + Wearing others like gems. And that's creation. + + + + + AIRSHIP OVER SUBURB + + A smooth blue sky with puffed motionless clouds. + + Standing over the plain of red roofs and bushy trees + The bright coloured shell of the large enamelled sky. + + Out of the distance pointing, a cut dark shape + That moves this way at leisure, then hesitates and turns: + And its darkness suddenly dies as it turns and shows + A gleaming silver, white against even the whitest cloud. + + Across the blue and the low small clouds it moves + Level, with a floating cloud-like motion of its own, + Peaceful, sunny and slow, a thing of summer itself, + Above the basking earth, travelling the clouds and the sky. + + + + + THE INVOCATION OF LUCRETIUS + + BOOK I + + Mother of Rome, delight of gods and men, + Beloved Venus, who under the fleeting stars + Fillest the freighted sea and earth's ripe fields, + O since through thee alone all forms of life + Are born, and climb into the sun's sweet light, + Goddess, before whose lovely advancing feet + The winds and towering clouds scatter and flee, + And the labouring earth discloses odorous flowers, + And the sea falls into a shining calm, + And the assuaged heavens mellow with light. + For when the spring-like face of day awakes, + And the West Wind, unloosed, flies procreant forth, + Then first the coursing birds, smitten at heart, + Betray, Lady, thy entrance and thy power, + And then the beasts caper in happy pastures + And swim swift floods; so all created things, + Captive to thee, drawn by their own desire, + Stray through the world where'er thy presence leads. + Through all the seas and hills and swelling streams, + Wing-fluttering woods and green, luxuriant plains, + Thou harryest them with lust, that none shall fail + To carry their eternal races on. + + Since then thou art sole queen of all that Is, + And without thee to help can nothing rise + To cross the glorious frontiers of the light, + And nothing grow in gentleness or grace, + Thee do I pray to aid my labouring verse, + Now that of all that Is I strive to sing, + Lady, for my dear Memmian heir, whom thou + Hast blest with every constant excellence; + For his sake, chiefly, fill my words with life. + + + + + AN EPILOGUE + + I. THE FLUKE + + For two years you went + Through all the worst of it, + Men fell around you, but you did not fall. + On the Somme when the air was a sea + Of contesting flashes and clouds of smoke, + Your gunners fell fast but you got never a scratch. + And once when you watched from a village tower + (At Longueval, was it?) between our guns and theirs + As men fought in the houses below, + A shell from an English battery came + And tore a hole in the tower below you, + But you were not hurt and remained observing. + + And now, + A casual shell has come + And pierced your head, + And the men who were with you, uninjured, + Carried you back, + And you died on the way. + + + II. THE CONVERSATION + + When we've greeted each other again, + And you've filled your pipe and sat down and stretched your legs, + You will look in the fire for a minute + And then you will say, with a yawn, + "Well, when do you think this damned war will be over?" + And I shall say nothing, or something as empty as nothing. + But I am forgetting. + We shall not greet each other again; + You will not ask that question again. + + + III. THE DEAF ADDER + + Well, it's no good brooding. + The past cannot return. + They have killed him and buried him. + Many men as good as he have gone: + They were good men even if one never knew them. + It is a just and honourable war. + He went in readily at the start, though he hated it, + And one would not have had him do otherwise. + And, thank God, he did the job well + That had to be done. + He has suffered with millions of others + For the sake of the future's peace, + And ungrudgingly laid down his life + In the cleanest of England's wars. + There is no room for regret here, only for pride. + + * * * * * + + _Heart, you fool, lie down. + Cannot you hear + My excellent reasoning?_ + + + IV. THE LANDSCAPE + + You said, that first winter, + That the landscape around Ypres + Reminded you of Chinese paintings: + The green plain, striped with trenches, + The few trees on the plain, + And the puffs of smoke sprinkled over the plain. + You said, when the war was over, + That you would record that green desolation + In flat colours and lines + As a Chinese artist would. + That is what you were going to do. + The plain is still there. + + + V. ANOTHER HOUR + + How many days we spent together! + Thousands. + And now I would give anything, + Anything, + For another, or even for one hour: + An hour, were it only of aimless lounging, + Or a game of billiards in a pub. + + + + + AN IMPRESSION RECEIVED FROM A SYMPHONY + + There was a day, when I, if that was I, + Surrendered lay beneath a burning sky, + Where overhead the azure ached with heat, + And many red fierce poppies splashed the wheat; + Motion was dead, and silence was complete, + And stains of red fierce poppies splashed the wheat, + + And as I lay upon a scent-warm bank, + I fell away, slipped back from earth, and sank, + I lost the place of sky and field and tree, + One covering face obscured the world for me, + And for an hour I knew eternity, + For one fixed face suspended Time for me. + + O had those eyes in that extreme of bliss + Shed one more wise and culminating kiss, + My end had come, nor had I lived to quail, + Frightened and dumb as things must do that fail, + And in this last black devil-mocking gale, + Battered and dumb to fight the dark and fail. + + + + + FEN LANDSCAPE + + Wind waves the reeds by the river, + Grey sky lids the leaden water. + Ducks fly low across the water, + Three flying: one quacks sadly. + + Grey are the sky and the water, + Green the lost ribbons of reed-beds, + Small in the silence a black boat + Floats upon wide pale mirrors. + + + + + MEDITATION IN LAMPLIGHT + + What deaths men have died, not fighting but impotent. + Hung on the wire, between trenches, burning and freezing, + Groaning for water with armies of men so near; + The fall over cliff, the clutch at the rootless grass, + The beach rushing up, the whirling, the turning head first; + Stiff writhings of strychnine, taken in error or haste, + Angina pectoris, shudders of the heart; + Failure and crushing by flying weight to the ground, + Claws and jaws, the stink of a lion's breath; + Swimming, a white belly, a crescent of teeth, + Agony, and a spirting shredded limb + And crimson blood staining the green water; + And, horror of horrors, the slow grind on the rack, + The breaking bones, the stretching and bursting skin, + Perpetual fainting and waking to see above + The down-thrust mocking faces of cruel men, + With the power of mercy, who gloat upon shrieks for mercy. + + O pity me, God! O God make tolerable, + Make tolerable the end that awaits for me, + And give me courage to die when the time comes, + When the time comes as it must, however it comes, + That I shrink not nor scream, gripped by the jaws of the vice; + For the thought of it turns me sick, and my heart stands still, + Knocks and stands still. O fearful, fearful Shadow, + Kill me, let me die to escape the terror of thee! + + A tap. Come in! Oh, no, I am perfectly well, + Only a little tired. Take this one, it's softer. + How are things going with you? Will you have some coffee? + Well, of course it's trying sometimes, but never mind, + It will probably be all right. Carry on, and keep cheerful, + I shouldn't, if I were you, meet trouble half-way, + It is always best to take everything as it comes. + + + + + HARLEQUIN + + Moonlit woodland, veils of green, + Caves of empty dark between; + Veils of green from rounded arms + Drooping, that the moonlight charms. + Tranced the trees, grass beneath + Silent.... + Like a stealthy breath, + Mask and wand and silver skin, + Sudden enters Harlequin. + + Hist! Hist! Watch him go, + Leaping limb and pointing toe, + Slender arms that float and flow, + Curving wand above, below; + Flying, gliding, changing feet; + Onset fading in retreat. + Not a shadow of sound there is + But his motion's gentle hiss, + Till one fluent arm and hand + Suddenly circles, and the wand + Taps a bough far overhead, + "Crack," and then all noise is dead. + For he halts, and a space + Stands erect with upward face, + Taut and tense to the white + Message of the moon's light. + + What is he thinking of, you ask; + Caught you the eyes behind the mask? + Whence did he come, where would he go? + Answers but the resuming flow + Of that swift continuous glide, + Whispering from side to side, + Silvered boughs, branches dim, + All the world's a frame for him; + All the trees standing around + On the fascinated ground, + See him swifter, swifter, sweep, + Dazzling, till one wildest leap... + Whisht! he kneels. And he listens. + How his steady silver glistens! + + He was listening; he was there; + Flash! he went. To the air + He a waiting ear had bent, + Silent; but before he went + Something somewhere else to seek, + He moved his lips as though to speak. + + And we wait, and in vain, + For he will not come again. + Earth, grass, wood, and air, + As we stare, and we stare, + Which that fierce life did hold, + Tired, dim, void, cold. + + + + + WINTER NIGHTFALL + + The old yellow stucco + Of the time of the Regent + Is flaking and peeling: + The rows of square windows + In the straight yellow building + Are empty and still; + And the dusty dark evergreens + Guarding the wicket + Are draped with wet cobwebs, + And above this poor wilderness + Toneless and sombre + Is the flat of the hill. + + They said that a colonel + Who long ago died here + Was the last one to live here: + An old retired colonel, + Some Fraser or Murray, + I don't know his name; + Death came here and summoned him, + And the shells of him vanished + Beyond all speculation; + And silence resumed here, + Silence and emptiness, + And nobody came. + + Was it wet when he lived here, + Were the skies dun and hurrying, + Was the rain so irresolute? + Did he watch the night coming, + Did he shiver at nightfall + Before he was dead? + Did the wind go so creepily, + Chilly and puffing, + With drops of cold rain in it? + Was the hill's lifted shoulder + So lowering and menacing, + So dark and so dread? + + Did he turn through his doorway + And go to his study, + And light many candles? + And fold in the shutters, + And heap up the fireplace + To fight off the damps? + And muse on his boyhood, + And wonder if India + Ever was real? + And shut out the loneliness + With pig-sticking memoirs + And collections of stamps? + + Perhaps. But he's gone now, + He and his furniture + Dispersed now for ever; + And the last of his trophies, + Antlers and photographs, + Heaven knows where. + And there's grass in his gateway, + Grass on his footpath, + Grass on his door-step; + The garden's grown over, + The well-chain is broken, + The windows are bare. + + And I leave him behind me, + For the straggling, discoloured + Rags of the daylight, + And hills and stone walls + And a rick long forgotten + Of blackening hay: + The road pale and sticky, + And cart-ruts and nail marks, + And wind-ruffled puddles, + And the slop of my footsteps + In this desolate country's + Cadaverous clay. + + + + + A FAR PLACE + + (_To K. Wigram._) + + Sheltered, when the rain blew over the hills it was, + Sunny all day when the days of summer were long, + Beyond all rumour of labouring towns it was, + But at dawn and evening its trees were noisy with song. + + There were four elms on the southward lawn standing, + Their great trunks evenly set in a square + Of shadowed grass in spring pierced with crocuses, + And their tops met high in the empty air. + + Where the morning rose the grey church was below us, + If we stood by the porch we saw on either hand + The ground falling, the trees falling, and meadows, + A river, hamlets and spires: a chequered land, + + A wide country where cloud shadows went chasing + Mile after mile, diminishing fast, until + They met the far blue downs; but round the corner + The western garden lay lonely under the hill. + + * * * * * + + And closed in the western garden, under the hillside, + Where silence was and the rest of the world was gone, + We saw and took the curving year's munificence: + Changing from flower to flower the garden shone. + + Early its walks were fringed with little rock-plants, + Sprays and tufts of blossom, white, yellow, and blue, + And all about were sprinkled stars of narcissus, + And swathes of tulips all over the garden grew. + + White groups and pink, red, crimson and lemon-yellow, + And the yellow-and-red-streaked tulips once loved by a boy; + Red and yellow their stiff and varnished petals, + And the scent of them stings me still with a youthful joy. + + And in the season of perfect and frailest beauty, + Pear-blossom broke and the lilacs' waxen cones, + And a tranced laburnum trailing its veils of yellow + Tenderly drooped over the ivied stones. + + The lilacs browned, a breath dried the laburnum, + The swollen peonies scattered the earth with blood, + And the rhododendrons shed their sumptuous mantles, + And the marshalled irises unsceptred stood. + + And the borders filled with daisies and pied sweet-williams + And busy pansies; and there as we gazed and dreamed, + And breathed the swooning smell of the packed carnations, + The present was always the crown of all: it seemed + + Each month more beautiful sprang from a robe discarded, + The year all effortless dropt the best away + And struck the heart with loveliness new, more lavish; + When the clambering rose had blown and died, by day + + The broad-leaved tapering many-shielded hollyhocks + Stood like pillars and shone to the August sun, + The glimmering cups of waking evening primroses + Filled the dusk now the scent of the rose was done. + + * * * * * + + A wall there was and a door to the rose-garden, + And out of that a gate to the orchard led, + And there was the last hedge, and the turf sloped upward + Till the sky was cut by the hill's line overhead. + + And thither at times we climbed, and far below us + That world that had made the world remote was seen, + Small, a huddle of russet roofs and chimneys, + And its guard of elms like bushes against the green: + + One spot in the country, little and mild and homely, + The nearest house of a wide, populous plain.... + But down at evening under the stars and the branches + In the whispering garden we lost the world again. + + * * * * * + + Whispering, faint, the garden under the hillside... + Under the stars.... Is it true that we lived there long? + Was it certainly so? Did ever we know that dwelling, + Breathe that night, and hear in the night that song? + + + + + LATE SNOW + + The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling, + Interminably passing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges + That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences, + Came gullies and passed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges. + + Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted + The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air; + They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits, + Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare. + + Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled, + Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding, + But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland + Passed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding. + + O untroubled these moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows, + And lovely the film of falling flakes, so wayward and slack; + But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings, + Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on her back. + + + + + SONG + + You are my sky; beneath your circling kindness + My meadows all take in the light and grow; + Laugh with the joy you've given, + The joy you've given, + And open in a thousand buds, and blow. + + But when you are sombre, sad, averse, forgetful, + Heavily veiled by clouds that brood with rain, + Dumbly I lie all shadowed, + I lie all shadowed, + And dumbly wait for you to shine again. + + + + + SONG + + The heaven is full of the moon's light, + The earth fades below. + In this vast empty world of night + I only know + + Pale-shining trees and moonlit fields, + The bird's tune, + And my night-flowering heart that yields + Her fragrance to the moon. + + + + + OLD SONG + + My window is darkness, + The sighs of the night die in silence; + The lamp on my table + Burns gravely, the walls are withdrawn; + And beneath, in your darkness, + You are sleeping and dreaming forgetful, + But I think of you smiling, + For I'm wakeful and now it is only an hour to the dawn. + + When the first throb of light comes + I shall rise and go out to the garden, + And walk the lawn's verdure + Before the wet gossamer goes; + And when you come down, sweet, + All singing and light in the morning, + Delight will break ambush + With your garden's most fragrant and softest and reddest red rose. + + + + + EPITAPH IN OLD MODE + + The leaves fall gently on the grass, + And all the willow trees, and poplar trees, and elder trees + That bend above her where she sleeps, + O all the willow trees, the willow trees + Breathe sighs upon her tomb. + + O pause and pity, as you pass, + She loved so tenderly, so quietly, so hopelessly; + And sometimes comes one here and weeps: + She loved so tenderly, so tenderly, + And never told them whom. + + + + + THE MOON + + (_To Maurice Baring_) + + I waited for a miracle to-night. + Dim was the earth beneath a star-swept sky, + Her boughs were vague in that phantasmal light, + Her current rippled past invisibly. + No stir was in the dark and windless meadows, + Only the water, whispering in the shadows, + That darkened nature lived did still proclaim. + An hour I stood in that defeat of sight, + Waiting, and then a sudden silver flame + Burned in the eastern heaven, and she came. + + The Moon, the Summer Moon, surveys the vale: + The boughs against the dawning sky grow black, + The shades that hid those whispering waters fail, + And now there falls a gleaming, lengthening track + That lies across the wide and tranquil river, + Burnished and flat, not shaken by a quiver. + She rises still: the liquid light she spills + Makes everywhere quick sparkles, patches pale; + And, as she goes, I know her glory fills + The air of all our English lakes and hills. + + High over all this England will she ride; + She silvers all the roofs of folded towns, + Her brilliance tips the edge of every tide, + Her shadows make soft caverns in the downs; + Even now, beyond my tree serenely sailing, + She clothes far forests with a gauzy veiling, + And even as here, where now I stare and dream, + Standing my own transfigured banks beside, + On many a quiet wandering English stream + There lies the unshifting image of her beam. + + Yes, calm she mounts, and watching her, I know + By many a river other eyes than mine + Turn up to her; and, as of old, they show + Their inward hearts all naked to her shine: + Maids, solitaries, sick and happy lovers, + To whom her dear returning orb discovers + For each the gift he waits for: soft release, + The unsealing of imagination's flow, + Her own sweet pain, or other pain's surcease, + The friendly benediction of her peace. + + I too am held: as kind she is, as fair, + As when long since a younger heart drank deep + From that sweet solace, while, through summer air, + Her lucid fingers hushed the world to sleep. + O as I stand this latest moon beholding, + Her forms unresting memory is moulding; + Beneath my enchanted eyelids there arise + Visions again of many moons that were, + Fair, fleeting moons gathered from faded skies, + Greeted and lost by these corporeal eyes. + + Unnumbered are those moons of memory + Stored in the backward chambers of my brain: + The moons that make bright pathways on the sea, + The golden harvest moon above the grain; + The moon that all a sleeping village blanches, + The woodland moon that roves beyond the branches, + Filtering through the meshes of the green + To breast of bird and mossy trunk of tree; + Moons dimly guessed-at through a cloudy screen, + The bronze diffusion shed by moons unseen; + + Moons that a thin prismatic halo rings, + Looking a hurrying fleecy heaven through; + The fairy moons of luminous evenings, + Phantoms of palest pink in palest blue; + Large orange moons on earth's grey verge suspended, + When trees still slumber from the heat that's ended, + Erect and heavy, and all waters lie + Oily, and there is not a bird that sings. + All these I know, I have seen them born and die, + And many another moon in many a sky. + + There was a moon that shone above the ground + Where on a grassy forest height I stood; + Bright was that open place, and all around + The dense discovered tree-tops of the wood, + Line after line, in misty radiance glistened, + Failing away. I watched the scene and listened; + Then, awed and hushed, I turned and saw alone, + Protruding from the middle of the mound, + Fringed with close grass, a moonlit mottled stone, + Rough-carven, of antiquity unknown. + + A night there was, a crowd, a narrow street, + Torches that reddened faces drunk with dreams, + An orator exultant in defeat, + Banners, fierce songs, rough cheering, women's screams; + My heart was one with those rebellious people, + Until along a chapel's pointing steeple + My eyes unwitting wandered to a thin + Crescent, and clouds a swift and ragged sheet; + And in my spirit's life all human din + Died, and eternal Silence stood within. + + And once, on a far evening, warm and still, + I leant upon a cool stone parapet. + The quays and houses underneath the hill + Twinkled with lights; I heard the sea's faint fret; + And then above the eastern cape's long billow + Silent there welled a trembling line of yellow, + A shred that quickened, then a half that grew + To a full moon, that moved with even will. + The night was long before her, well she knew, + And, as she slowly rose into the blue, + + She slowly paled, and, glittering far away, + Flung on the silken waters like a spear, + Her crisped silver shaft of moonlight lay. + The lighthouse lamp upon the little pier + Burned wanly by that radiance clear and certain. + Waiting I knew not what uplifted curtain, + I watched the unmoving world beneath my feet + Till, without warning, miles across the bay, + Into that silver out of shadows beat, + Dead black, the whole mysterious fishing-fleet. + + These moons I have seen, but these and every one + Came each so new it seemed to be the first, + New as the buds that open to the sun, + New as the songs that to the morning burst. + The roses die, each day fresh flowers are springing, + Last year it was another blackbird singing, + Thou only, marvellous blossom, whose pale flower + Beyond mankind's conjecture hath begun, + Retain'st for ever an unwithering power + That stales the loveliest stranger of an hour. + + But O, had all my infant nights been dark, + Or almost dark, lit by the stars alone, + Had never a teller of stories bid me hark + The promised splendours of that moon unknown: + How perfect then had been the revelation + When first her gradual gold illumination + Broke on a night upon the conscious child: + My heart had stopped with beauty, seeing her arc + Climbing the heavens, so far and undefiled, + So large with light, so even and so mild. + + Most wondrous Light, who bring'st this lovelier earth, + This world of shadows cool with silver fires, + Drawing us higher than our human birth: + To whom our strange twin-natured kind suspires + Its saddest thoughts, and tenderest and most fragrant + Tears, and desires unnameable and vagrant: + Watcher, who leanest quietly from above, + Saying all mortal wars are nothing worth: + Friend of the sorrowful, tranquil as the dove, + Muse of all poets, lamp of all who love. + + Alone and sad, alone and kind and sweet, + But always peaceful and removed and proud, + Whether with loveliness revealed complete, + Or veiling from our vision in a cloud: + Our souls' eternal listener, could we wonder + That men who made of sun and storm and thunder + The awful forms of strong divinity, + Heard in each storm the noise of travelling feet, + Should, gazing at thy face with hearts made free, + Have felt a pure, immortal Power in thee? + + Selene, Cynthia, and Artemis, + The swift proud goddess with the silver bow, + Diana, she whose downward-bending kiss + One only knew, though all men yearned to know; + The shepherd on a hill his flock was keeping, + The night's pale huntress came and found him sleeping: + She stooped: he woke, and saw her hair that shone, + And lay, drawn up to cool and timeless bliss + Lapt in her radiant arms, Endymion, + All the still night, until the night was gone. + + By many names they knew thee, but thy shape + Was woman's always, transient and white: + A flashing huntress leaving hinds agape, + A sweet descent of beauty in the night: + Yet some, more fierce and more distraught their dreaming, + Brooded, until they fashioned from thy seeming, + A lithe and luring queen with fatal breath, + A witch the man who saw might not escape, + A snare that gleamed in shadowy groves of death, + The tall tiaraed Syrian Ashtoreth. + + And even to-night in African forests some + There are, possessed by such a blasphemy; + Through branching beams thy fevered votaries come + To appease their brains' distorted mask of thee. + There in the glades the drums pulsate and languish, + Men leap and wail to dim the victim's anguish + In the sad frenzy of the sacrifice. + They are slaves to thee, made mad because thou art dumb, + And dumb thou lookest on them from the skies, + Above their fires and dances, blood and cries. + + So these; but otherwhere, at such an hour, + In all the continents, by all the seas, + Men, naming not the goddess, feel thy power, + Adoring her with gentler rites than these: + The thoughts of myriad hearts to thee uplifted + Rise like a smoke above thine altars drifted, + Perpetual incense poured before thy throne + By those whom thou hast given thy secret dower, + Those in whose kindred eyes thy light is known, + Whom thou hast signed and sealed for thine own. + + For thee they watch by Asian peaks remote, + Where thy snows gleam above the pointing pines; + Entranced on templed lakes is many a boat + For thee, where clear thy dropt reflection shines; + On the great seas where nothing else is tender, + Rising and setting, unto thee surrender + All lonely hearts in lonely wandering ships; + And, where their warm far-scattered islands float, + Through forests many a flower-crowned maiden slips + To gaze on thee, with parted burning lips. + + O thus they do, and thus they did of old; + Our hearts were never secret in thy sight; + Ere our first records were thy shrine was cold + That speechless eyes went seeking in the night; + Beyond the compass of our dim traditions + Thou knewest of men the pitiful ambitions, + Their loves and their despair; within thy ken + All our poor history has been unrolled; + Thou hast seen all races born and die again, + The climbing and the crumbling towers of men. + + Black were the hollows of that Emperor's eyes + Who paced with backward arms beyond his tents, + Lone in the night, and felt above him rise + The ancient conqueror's sloping, smooth, immense, + Moon-pointing Pyramid's enduring courses, + Heard not his sentries, nor his stamping horses, + But thought of Egypt dead upon that air, + Fighting with his moon-coloured memories + Of vanished kings who builded, and the bare + Sands in the moon before those builders were. + + Restless, he knew that moon who watched him muse, + Had seen a restless Caesar brood on fame + Amid the Pharaohs' broken avenues. + And, circling round that fixed monition, came + Woven by moonlight, random, transitory, + Fragments of all the dim receding story: + The moonlit water dripping from the oars + Of triremes in the bay of Syracuse; + The opposing bivouacs upon the shores, + That knew dead Hector's and Achilles' wars. + + He saw fall'n Carthage, Alexander's grave, + The tomb of Moses in the wilderness, + The moonlight on the Atlantean wave + That covered all a multitude's distress: + Cities and hosts and emperors departed + Under the steady moon. And sullen-hearted + He turned away, and, in a little, died, + Even as he who hunted from his cave + And struck his foe, and stripped the shaggy hide + Under the moon, and was not satisfied. + + For in the prime, thy influence was felt; + When eyes first saw, thy beauty was as this; + Thy quiet look bade hope, fear, passion melt + Before men dreamed of empire. The abyss + Of thought yawned through their jungle then, as ever + Dark past, dark future, menaced their endeavour: + Yet, on thy nights, stood some by hill and sea + Naked; and blind impulsive spirits knelt, + Not questioning why they knelt, feeling in thee + Thought's strangest, sweetest, saddest mystery. + + Still Moon, bright Moon, compassionate Moon above, + Thou shinedst there ere any life began, + When of his pain or of his powerless love + Thou heardest not from heart of any man; + Though long the earth had shaken off the vapour + Left by the vanished gleams of fire, the shaper, + Old, old, her stony wrinkled face did grow + Whilst only her blind elements did move; + Dumb, bare, and prayerless thou saw'st her go, + And afterwards again shalt see her so. + + A time there was when Life had never been, + A time will be, it will have passed away; + Still wilt thou shine, still tender and serene, + When Life which in thy sister's yesterday + Had never flowered, will have drooped and faded; + Passed with the clouds that once her bosom shaded. + She will be barren then as not before, + Bared of her snows and all her garments green; + No darkling sea by any earthly shore + Will take thy rays: thy kin will be no more. + + Pale satellite, old mistress of our fires, + Who hast seen so much and been so much to men, + Symbol and goal of all our wild desires, + Not any voice will cry upon thee then; + Dreamer and dream, they will have all gone over, + The sick of heart, the singer and the lover, + An end there will have been to all their lust, + Their sorrow, and the sighing of their lyres; + O all this Life that stained Earth's patient crust, + Time's dying breath will have blown away like dust. + + Gone from thine eye that brief confused stir, + The rumours and the marching and the strife; + Earth will be still, and all the face of her + Swept of the last remains of moving life; + The last of all men's monuments that defied them, + Like those his valiant gestures that denied them, + Into the waiting elements will fade, + And thou wilt see thy fellow traveller, + A forlorn round of rocky contours made, + A glimmering disk of empty light and shade, + + Ah, depth too deep for thought therein to cast; + The old, the cold companions, you will go, + Obeying still some long-forgotten past, + And all our pitiful history none will know; + Still shining, Moon, still peaceful, wilt thou wander, + But on that greater ball no heart will ponder + The thought that rose and nightingale are gone, + And all sweet things but thou; and only vast + Ridges of rock remain, and stars and sun; + O Moon, thou wilt be lovely alone for none. + + And so, pale wanderer, so thou leavest me, + Passing beyond imagination's range, + Away into the void where waits for thee + Thy inconceivable destiny of change; + And after all the memories I have striven + To paint, this picture that thyself hast given + Lives, and I watch, to all those others blind, + Thy form, gliding into eternity, + Fading, an unconjectured fate to find, + The last, most wonderful image of the mind. + + + + + THE HAPPY NIGHT + + I have loved to-night; from love's last bordering steep + I have fallen at last with joy and forgotten the shore; + I have known my love to-night as never before, + I have flung myself in the deep, and drawn from the deep, + And kissed her lightly, and left my beloved to sleep. + And now I sit in the night and my heart is still: + Strong and secure; there is nothing that's left to will, + There is nothing to win but only a thing to keep. + + And I look to-night, completed and not afraid, + Into the windy dark where shines no light; + And care not at all though the darkness never should fade, + Nor fear that death should suddenly come to-night. + Knowing my last would be surely my bravest breath, + I am happy to-night: I have laughed to-night at death. + + + + + CONSTANTINOPLE + +"_I suddenly realise that the ambition of my life has been--since I was +two--to go on a military expedition against Constantinople."--Letter +from Rupert Brooke. (Died at Scyros, April_ 23_rd,_ 1915.) + + JUSTINIAN. + + Does the church stand I raised + Against the unchristened East? + Still do my ancient altars bear + The sacrificial feast? + + My jewels are they bright, + My marbles and my paint, + Wherewith I glorified the Lord + And many a martyred Saint? + + And does my dome still float + Above the Golden Horn? + And do my priests on Christmas Day + Still sing that Christ was born? + + + EUROPE. + + Though dust your house, Justinian, + Still stands your lordliest shrine, + But the dark men who walk therein, + Know not of bread nor wine. + + They fell long since upon your stones, + And made your colours dim, + Their priests who pray on Christmas Day + They sing no Christmas hymn. + + But a voice at evening goes + From every climbing tower, + Crying a word you never heard, + A name of desert power. + + + CONSTANTINE PALAEOLOGUS. + + For seven hundred years + We gripped a weakening blade, + Keeping the gateway of the West + With none to give us aid. + + Till at the last they broke + What Constantine had built, + And by the shattered wall the blood + Of Constantine was spilt. + + Do men remember still + The manner of my death, + How after all those failing years + I at the last kept faith? + + + EUROPE. + + They know it for a bygone thing + True but indifferent, + For many a fight has come to pass + Since to the wall you went. + + Westward and northward, Emperor, + Poured on that bloody brood, + Till those must turn to save themselves + Who had known not gratitude. + + One fought them on the Middle Sea, + One at Vienna's gate, + And then the kings of Christendom + Watched the red tide abate. + + Till in the end Byzantium + Heard a returning war; + But still a Mehmet holds your tomb... + Keep silence ... ask no more. + + + + + ELEGY + + I vaguely wondered what you were about, + But never wrote when you had gone away; + Assumed you better, quenched the uneasy doubt + You might need faces, or have things to say. + Did I think of you last evening? Dead you lay. + O bitter words of conscience + I hold the simple message, + And fierce with grief the awakened heart cries out: + "It shall not be to-day; + + It is still yesterday; there is time yet!" + Sorrow would strive backward to wrench the sun, + But the sun moves. Our onward course is set, + The wake streams out, the engine pulses run + Droning, a lonelier voyage is begun. + It is all too late for turning, + You are past all mortal signal, + There will be time for nothing but regret + And the memory of things done! + + The quiet voice that always counselled best, + The mind that so ironically played + Yet for mere gentleness forbore the jest. + The proud and tender heart that sat in shade + Nor once solicited another's aid, + Yet was so grateful always + For trifles lightly given, + The silences, the melancholy guessed + Sometimes, when your eyes strayed. + + But always when you turned, you talked the more. + Through all our literature your way you took + With modest ease; yet would you soonest pore, + Smiling, with most affection in your look, + On the ripe ancient and the curious nook. + Sage travellers, learned printers, + Divines and buried poets, + You knew them all, but never half your lore + Was drawn from any book. + + Stories and jests from field and town and port, + And odd neglected scraps of history + From everywhere, for you were of the sort, + Cool and refined, who like rough company: + Carter and barmaid, hawker and bargee, + Wise pensioners and boxers + With whom you drank, and listened + To legends of old revelry and sport + And customs of the sea. + + I hear you: yet more clear than all one note, + One sudden hail I still remember best, + That came on sunny days from one afloat + And drew me to the pane in certain quest + Of a long brown face, bare arms and flimsy vest, + In fragments through the branches, + Above the green reflections: + Paused by the willows in your varnished boat + You, with your oars at rest. + + Did that come back to you when you were dying? + I think it did: you had much leisure there, + And, with the things we knew, came quietly flying + Memories of things you had seen we knew not where. + You watched again with meditative stare + Places where you had wandered, + Golden and calm in distance: + Voices from all your altering past came sighing + On the soft Hampshire air. + + For there you sat a hundred miles away, + A rug upon your knees, your hands gone frail, + And daily bade your farewell to the day, + A music blent of trees and clouds asail + And figures in some old neglected tale: + And watched the sunset gathering, + And heard the birdsong fading, + And went within when the last sleepy lay + Passed to a farther vale. + + Never complaining, and stepped up to bed + More and more slow, a tall and sunburnt man + Grown bony and bearded, knowing you would be dead + Before the summer, glad your life began + Even thus to end, after so short a span, + And mused a space serenely, + Then fell to easy slumber, + At peace, content. For never again your head + Need make another plan. + + Most generous, most gentle, most discreet, + Who left us ignorant to spare us pain: + We went our ways with too forgetful feet + And missed the chance that would not come again, + Leaving, with thoughts on pleasure bent, or gain, + Fidelity unattested + And services unrendered: + The ears are closed, the heart has ceased to beat, + And now all proof is vain. + + Too late for other gifts, I give you this, + Who took from you so much, so carelessly, + On your far brows a first and phantom kiss, + On your far grave a careful elegy. + For one who loved all life and poetry, + Sorrow in music bleeding, + And friendship's last confession. + But even as I speak that inner kiss + Softly accuses me, + + Saying: Those brows are senseless, deaf that tomb, + This is the callous, cold resort of art. + "I give you this." What do I give? to whom? + Words to the air, and balm to my own heart, + To its old luxurious and commanded smart. + An end to all this tuning, + This cynical masquerading; + What comfort now in that far final gloom + Can any song impart? + + O yet I see you dawning from some heaven, + Who would not suffer self-reproach to live + In one to whom your friendship once was given. + I catch a vision, faint and fugitive, + Of a dark face with eyes contemplative, + Deep eyes that smile in silence, + And parted lips that whisper, + "Say nothing more, old friend, of being forgiven, + There is nothing to forgive." + + + + + WARS AND RUMOURS, 1920 + + Blood, hatred, appetite and apathy, + The sodden many and the struggling strong, + Who care not now though for another wrong + Another myriad innocents should die. + At candid savagery or oily lie + We laugh, or, turning, join the noisy throng + Which buries the dead with gluttony and song. + Suppose this very evening from on high + Broke on the world that unexampled flame + The choir-thronged sky, and Thou, descending, Lord; + What agony of horror, fear, and shame, + For those who knew and wearied of Thy word, + I dare not even think, who am confest + Idle, malignant, lustful as the rest. + + + + + TO A MUSICIAN + + Musician, with the bent and brooding face, + White brow and thunderous eyes: you are not playing + Merely the music that dead hand did trace. + + Musician, with the lifted resolute face, + And scornful smile about your closed mouth straying, + And hand that moves with swift or fluttering grace, + It is not that man's music you are playing. + + The grave and merry tunes he made you are playing, + Each march and dirge and dance he made endures, + But changed and mastered, and these things you're saying, + These joys and sorrows are not his but yours. + + You take those notes of his: you seize and fling + His music as a dancer flings her veil, + Toss it and twist it, mould it, make it sing, + Whisper, shout savagely, lament and wail, + + Rush like a hurricane, pause and faint and fail: + And as I watch, my body and soul are bound + Helpless, immovable, in thongs of sound. + + Lonely and strange musician, standing there, + Your bent ear listening to your own soul speaking, + I hear vibrating on the smitten air + The crying of your suffering and your seeking. + + Agonised! raptured! frustrate! you are haunted, + Pursued, beset, beleaguered, filled, possessed + By all you are, all things you have lost and wanted, + Things clear, too clear, things only to be guessed. + + I do not know what earlier scenes you knew, + What sweet reproachful memories you hold + Of broken dreams you had before you grew + So conscious and so lonely and so old. + + I do not know what women's words have taught + Your heart, and only dimly know by name, + The many wandering cities where you have sought + Splendour, and found the hollowness of fame, + + Or where your sad and gentle reveries pass + To family and home--who have for signs + Of all your childhood, only the imagined grass + Of a bright steppe, the wind running in lines, + + And only some old fairy-tale of sleighing, + Dark snow-deep forests, endless turning pines, + Bells tinkling, and wolves howling, and hounds baying. + + Vague is your past, yet as your violin sings, + Its wildness held in desperate control, + I know them all, that world of bygone things + That have left their wounds and wonders in your soul. + + Out in all weathers you have been, my friend, + Climbed into dawn, stood solitary and stark + Against the ashen quiet of twilight's end, + Brooded beneath the night's unanswering dark; + + Through battering tempests you have blindly won, + And lived, and found a medicine for your scars + In resolution taken from the sun + And consolation from the unsleeping stars. + + And here, in this crowded place an hour staying, + Your dim orchestra measuring off your bars, + So pale and proud, you stand your secrets flaying, + + Resolving the tangle, pouring through your song + All your deep ache for Beauty, calm above + Your bitter silent anger and the strong + Ferocity and tenderness of your love, + + Loud challenges and sweet and cynic laughter, + Movements of joy spontaneous and pure, + Remorse, and the dull grief that glimmers after + The obstinate sins you know you will not cure. + + I see you subtly lying, soberly weighing + Gross questions, jesting at the things you hate, + In apathy, and wild despair, and praying + Bowed down before the shadowy knees of Fate, + + And fearfully behind the visible groping + And standing by the heart's bottomless pit, and shrinking, + Who have known the lure and mockery of hoping, + The comic terrible uselessness of thinking. + + O gay and passionate, gloomy and serene, + Your quivering fingers laugh and weep and curse + For all the phantoms you have ever been. + Yet would you wish another universe? + + Let peace come if it will: your last long note + Dies on the quiet breast of space; and now + They clap: I see again your square frock coat, + Dark, foreign fiddler, you have stopped: you bow. + + + + + THE RUGGER MATCH + + (OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE--QUEEN'S--DECEMBER) + + (_To Hugh Brooks_) + + I + + The walls make a funnel, packed full; the distant gate + Bars us from inaccessible light and peace. + Far over necks and ears and hats, I see + Policemen's helmets and cards hung on the ironwork: + "One shilling," "No change given," "Ticket-holders only"; + + Oh Lord! What an awful crush! There are faces pale + And strained, and faces with animal grins advancing, + Stuck fast around mine. We move, we pause again + For an age, then a forward wave and another stop. + The pressure might squeeze one flat. Dig heels into ground + For this white and terrified woman whose male insists + Upon room to get back. Why didn't I come here at one? + Why come here at all? What strange little creatures we are, + Wedged and shoving under the contemptuous sky! + + All things have stopped; the time will never go by; + We shall never get in! ... Yet through the standing glass + The sand imperceptible drops, the inexorable laws + Of number work also here. They are passing and passing, + I can hear the tick of the turnstiles, tick, tick, tick, + A man, a woman, a man, shreds of the crowd, + A man, a man, till the vortex sucks me in + And, squeezed between strangers hurting the flat of my arms, + I am jetted forth, and pay my shilling, and pass + To freedom and space, and a cool for the matted brows. + But we cannot rest yet. Fast from the gates we issue, + Spread conelike out, a crowd of loosening tissue, + All jigging on, and making as we travel + "Pod, pod" of feet on earth, "chix, chix" on gravel. + Heads forward, striding eagerly, we keep + Round to the left in semi-circular sweep + By the back of a stand, excluded, noting the row + Of heads that speck the top, and, caverned below, + The raw, rough, timber back of the new-made mound. + Quicker! The place is swarming! Around, around + Till the edge is reached, and we see a patch of green, + Two masts with a crossbar, tapering, white and clean, + And confluent rows of people that merge and die + In a flutter of faces where the grand-stand blocks the sky. + We hurry along, past ragged files of faces, + Flushing and quick, peering for empty places. + I see one above me, I step and prise and climb, + And stand and turn and breathe and look at the time, + Survey the field, and note with superior glance, + The anxious bobbing fools who still advance. + + + II + + Ah! They are coming still. It is filling up. + It is full. They come. There is almost an hour to go, + Yet all find room, the dribbles of black disappear + In the solid piles around that empty green, + We are packed and ready now. They might as well start, + But two-forty-five was their time, and it's only ten past, + And it's got to be lived through. I haven't a newspaper, + I wish I could steal that little parson's book. + I count three minutes slowly: they seem like an hour; + And then I change feet and loosen the brim of my hat, + And curse the crawling of time. Oh body, body! + Why did I order you here, to stand and feel tired, + To ache and ache when the time will never pass, + In this buzzing crowd, before all those laden housetops, + Around this turf, under the lid of the sky? + I fumble my watch again: it is two-twenty: + Twenty-five minutes to wait. One, two, three, four, + Five, six, seven, eight: what is the good of counting? + It won't be here any quicker, aching hips, + Bored brain, unquiet heart, you are doomed to wait. + Why did I make you come? We have been before, + Struggling with time, fatigued and dull and alone + In all this tumultuous, chattering, happy crowd + That never knew pain and never questions its acts... + Never questions? Do not deceive yourself. + Look at the faces around you, active and gay, + They are lined, there are brains behind them, breasts beneath them, + They have only escaped for an hour, and even now + Many, like you, have not escaped; and away + Across the field those faces ascending in tiers, + Each face is a story, a tragedy and a doubt; + And the teams where they wait, in the sacred place to the right, + Are bewildered souls, who have heard of and brooded on death, + And thought about God. But this is a football match; + And anyhow I don't feel equal to thinking, + And I'm certain the teams don't; they've something better to do. + It is half-past two, and, thank Heaven, a minute over. + We are all here now. The laggards have all booked seats + And stroll in lordly leisure along the front. + What a man! Six foot, silk hat, brown face, moustache! + What a fat complacent parson, snuggling down + In the chair there, among all his cackling ladies! + I have seen that youth before. My neighbour now + On my left shouts out to a college friend below us, + "Tommy! Hallo! Do you think we are going to beat 'em?" + My watch. Twenty-to-three. That lot went quickly; + Five minutes more is nothing; I'm lively now + And fit for a five-mile run. One, two, three, four... + It isn't worth bothering now, it's all but here, + Here, here; a rustle, a murmur, a ready silence, + A billowing cheer--why, here they come, running and passing, + The challenging team! By God, what magnificent fellows! + They have dropped the ball, they pause, they sweep onward again, + And so to the end. Here are the rest of them, + Swingingly up the field and back as they came, + With the cheers swelling and swelling. They disappear, + And out, like wind upon water, come their rivals, + With cheers swelling and swelling, to run and turn + And vanish; and now they are all come out together, + Two teams walking, touch-judges and referee. + And they all line up, dotted about like chessmen, + And the multitude holds its breath, and awaits the start. + + + III + + Whistle! A kick! A rush, a scramble, a scrum, + The forwards are busy already, the halves hover round, + The three-quarters stand in backwards diverging lines, + Eagerly bent, atoe, with elbows back, + And hands that would grasp at a ball, trembling to start, + While the solid backs vigilant stray about + And the crowd gives out a steady resolute roar, + Like the roar of a sea; a scrum, a whistle, a scrum; + A burst, a whistle, a scrum, a kick into touch; + All in the middle of the field. He is tossing it in, + They have got it and downed it, and whurry, oh, here they come, + Streaming like a waterfall, oh, he has knocked it on, + Right at our feet, and the scrum is formed again, + And everything seems to stop while they pack and go crooked. + The scrum-half beats them straight with a rough smack + While he holds the ball, debonair.... How it all comes back, + As the steam goes up of their breath and their sweating trunks! + The head low down, the eyes that swim to the ground, + The mesh of ownerless knees, the patch of dark earth, + The ball that comes in, and wedges and jerks, and is caught, + And sticks, the dense intoxicant smell of sweat, + The grip on the moisture of jerseys, the sickening urge + That seems powerless to help; the desperate final shove + That somehow is timed with a general effort, the sweep + Onward, while enemies reel, and the whole scrum turns + And we torrent away with the ball. Oh, I know it all.... + I know it.... Where are they? ... Far on the opposite line, + Aimlessly kicking while the forwards stand gaping about, + Deprived of their work. Convergence. They are coming again, + They are scrumming again below, red hair, black cap, + And a horde of dark colourless heads and straining backs; + A voice rasps up through the howl of the crowd around + (Triumphant now in possession over all the rest + Of crowds who have lost the moving treasure to us)-- + "Push, you devils!" They push, and push, and push; + The opponents yield, the fortress wall goes down, + The ram goes through, an irresistible rush + Crosses the last white line, and tumbles down, + And the ball is there. A try! A try! A try! + The shout from the host we are assaults the sky. + + Deep silence. Line up by the goal-posts. A man lying down, + Poising the pointed ball, slanted away, + And another who stands, and hesitates, and runs + And lunges out with his foot, and the ball soars up, + While the opposite forwards rush below it in vain, + And curves to the posts, and passes them just outside. + The touch-judge's flag hangs still. It was only a try! + Three points to us. The roar is continuous now, + The game swings to and fro like a pendulum + Struck by a violent hand. But the impetus wanes, + The forwards are getting tired, and all the outsides + Run weakly, pass loosely; there are one or two penalty kicks, + And a feeble attempt from a mark. The ball goes out + Over the heads of the crowd, comes wearily back; + And, lingering about in mid-field, the tedious game + Seems for a while a thing interminable. + And nothing happens, till all of a sudden a shrill + Blast from the whistle flies out and arrests the game. + Half-time ... Unlocking ... The players are all erect, + Easy and friendly, standing about in groups, + Figures in sculpture, better for mud-stained clothes; + Couples from either side chatting and laughing, + And chewing lemons, and throwing the rinds away. + + + IV + + The pause is over. They part from each other, sift out; + The backs trot out to their stations, the forwards spread; + The captains beckon with hands, and the ball goes off + To volleys and answering volleys of harsher cheers; + For the top of the hill is past, we course to the close. + We've a three-point lead. Can we keep it? It isn't enough. + We have always heard their three-quarters were better than ours, + If they once get the ball. They have got it, he runs, he passes, + The centre dodges, is tackled, passes in time + To the other centre who goes like a bird to the left + And flings it out to the wing. The goal is open; + He has only to run as he can. No, the back is across, + He has missed him; he has him; they topple, head over heels, + And the ball bumps along into touch. They are stuck on our line; + Scrum after scrum, with those dangerous threes standing waiting, + Threat after threat forced back; a save, a return; + And the same thing over again, till the ball goes out + Almost unnoticed, and before we can see what is done, + That centre has kicked, he has thought of the four points, + The ball soars, slackens, keeps upright with effort, + Then floats between posts and falls, ignored, to the ground, + Its grandeur gone, while the touch-judge flaps his flag, + And the multitude becomes an enormous din + Which dies as the game resumes, and then rises again, + As battle of cry of triumph and counter-cry, + Defiant, like great waves surging against each other. + They work to the other corner, they stay there long; + They push and wheel, there are runs that come to nothing, + Till the noise wanes, and a curious silence comes. + They lead by a point, their crowd is sobered now, + Anxious still lest a sudden chance should come, + Or a sudden resource of power in mysterious foes + Which may dash them again from their new precarious peak, + Whilst we in our hearts are aware of the chilling touch + Of loss, of a fatal thing irrevocable, + Feel the time fly to the dreaded last wail of the whistle, + And see our team as desperate waves that dash + Against a wall of rock, to be scattered in spray. + Yet fervour comes back, for the players have no thought for the past + Except as a goad to new effort, not they will be chilled: + Fiercer and faster they fight, a grimness comes + Into shoving and running and tackling and handing off. + We are heeling the ball now cleanly, time after time + Our half picks it up and instantly jabs it away, + And the beautiful swift diagonal quarter-line + Tips it across for the wing to go like a stag + Till he's cornered and falls and the gate swings shut again. + Thirty fighting devils, ten thousand throats, + Thundering joy at each pass and tackle and punt, + Yet the consciousness grows that the time approaches the end, + The threat of conclusion grows like a spreading tree + And casts its shadow on all the anxious people, + And is fully known when they stop as a man's knocked out + And limps from the field with his arms round two comrades' necks. + The gradual time seems to have suddenly leapt.... + And all this while the unheeded winter sky + Has faded, and the air gone bluer and mistier. + The players, when they drift away to a corner + Distant from us, seem to have left our world. + We see the struggling forms, tangling and tumbling, + We hear the noise from the featureless mass around them, + But the dusk divides. Finality seems to have come. + Nothing can happen now. The attention drifts. + There's a pause; I become a separate thing again, + Almost forget the game, forget my neighbours, + And the noise fades in my ears to a dim rumour. + I watch the lines and colours of field and buildings, + So simple and soft and few in the vapoury air, + I am held by the brightening orange lights of the matches + Perpetually pricking the haze across the ground, + And the scene is tinged with a quiet melancholy, + The harmonious sadness of twilight on willowed waters, + Still avenues or harbours seen from the sea. + Yet a louder shout recalls me, I wake again, + Find there are two minutes left, and it's nearly over, + See a few weaklings already walking out, + Caring more to avoid a crush with the crowd + Than to give the last stroke to a ritual of courtesy + And a work of intangible art. But we're all getting ready, + Hope gone, and fear, except in the battling teams. + Regret ... a quick movement of hazy forms, + Oh quiet, oh look, there is something happening, + Sudden one phantom form on the other wing + Emerges from nothingness, is singled out, + Curving in a long sweep like a flying gull, + Through the thick fog, swifter as borne by wind, + Swerves at the place where the corner-flag must be, + And runs, by Heaven he's over! and runs, and runs, + And our hearts leap, and our sticks go up in the air + And our hats whirl, and we lose ourselves in a yell + For a try behind the posts. We have beaten them! + + + V + + Outside; and a mob hailing cabs, besieging the station, + Sticks, overcoats, scarves, bowler hats, intensified faces, + Rushes, apologies, voices: "Simpson's at seven," + "Hallo, Jim," "See you next term," "I've just seen old Peter." + They go to their homes, to catch trains, all over the city, + All over England; or, many, to make a good night of it, + Eat oysters, drink more than usual, dispute of the match. + For the match is all over, and what, being done, does it matter? + What happened last year? I was here; I should know, but I don't. + Next year there will be another, with another result, + Just such another crowd, just as excited. + And after next year, for a year and a year and a year, + Till customs have changed and things crumbled and all this strife + Is a dim word from the past. Why, even to-night, + When the last door has been locked, the last groundsman will go, + Leaving that field which was conquered and full of men, + With darkened houses around, void and awake, + Silently talking to the silent travelling moon: + "The day passed. They have gone again. They will die." + To-night in the moon the neighbouring roofs will lie + Lonely and still, all of their dwellers in bed; + The phantom stands will glisten, the goal-posts rise + Slanting their shadows across the grass, as calm + As though they had never challenged an eager swarm, + Or any ball had made their crossbars quiver. + Clouds will pass, and the city's murmur fade, + And the open field await its destiny + Of transient invaders coming and going. + What was the point of it? Why did the heart leap high + Putting reason back, to watch that fugitive play? + Why not? We must all distract ourselves with toys. + Not a brick nor a heap remains, the more durable product + Of all that; effort and pain. Yet, sooner or later, + As much may be said of any human game, + War, politics, art, building, planting and ploughing, + The explorer's freezing, the astronomer's searching of stars, + The philosopher's fight through the thickening webs of thought, + And the writing of poems: a hand, a stir and a sinking. + And so, no more, of the general game of the Race, + That cannot know of its origin or its end, + But strives, for their own sake, its courage and skill + To increase, till Frost or a Flying Flame calls "Time!" + I have seen this day men in the beauty of movement, + A gallant jaw set, the form of a hero that flew, + Cunning, a selfless flinging of self in the fray, + Strength, compassion, control, the obeying of laws, + Victory, and a struggle against defeat. + I think that the Power that gave us the bodies we have, + Can only be praised by our use of the things He gave, + That we are not here to turn our backs to the sun, + Or to scorn the delight of our limbs. And for those who have eyes + The beauty of this is the same as the beauty of flowers, + And of eagles and lions and mountains and oceans and stars, + And I care not, but rather am glad that the thought will recur + That in Egypt the muscles moved under the shining skins + As here, and in Greece where Olympian champions died, + And in isles long ago, where never a record was kept. + And now I'll go home, and open a bottle of port, + And think upon beauty and God and the wonder of love, + That laughs at the shadow of Death, and my vanished youth, + And the throbbing heart that beats its own drum to the grave, + Returning absurdly again to the fact that we won, + Content to let darkness deepen, and stars shine. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems - Second Series, by J. C. 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