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diff --git a/old/50376-0.txt b/old/50376-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 1f01c30..0000000 --- a/old/50376-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2486 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oxford Poetry, by Vera Mary Brittain - -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/license - - -Title: Oxford Poetry - 1920 - -Editors: Vera Mary Brittain - Clifford Henry Benn Kitchin - Alan Porter - -Authors: Edmund Blunden - G. H. Bonner - Vera M. Brittain - G. A. Fielding Bucknall - Roy Campbell - Eric Dickinson - Louis Golding - L. P. Hartley - B. Higgins - Winifred Holtby - R. W. Hughes - E. W. Jacot - G. H. Johnstone - C. H. B. Kitchin - V. De S. Pinto - Alan Porter - Hilda Reid - Edgell Rickword - W. Force Stead - L. A. G. Strong - -Release Date: November 3, 2015 [EBook #50376] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD POETRY *** - - - - -Produced by MWS, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - - - - - - - - - - OXFORD POETRY - - 1920 - - - _Uniform with this Volume_ - - OXFORD POETRY, 1914 - - (_Out of Print_) - - OXFORD POETRY, 1915 - - OXFORD POETRY, 1916 - - OXFORD POETRY, 1917 - - OXFORD POETRY, 1918 - - OXFORD POETRY, 1919 - - OXFORD POETRY, 1917-1919, - - 7s. 6d. net - - - - - OXFORD POETRY - 1920 - - EDITED BY - V. M. B., C. H. B. K., A. P. - - OXFORD - BASIL BLACKWELL - 1920 - - - The following authors wish to make acknowledgment to the editors of - the publications mentioned for permission kindly given to reprint: - Mr. E. Blunden, _The Nation_ ("Forefathers"), _Voices_ ("Sheet - Lightning"); Miss V. M. Brittain, _The Oxford Chronicle_ ("Boar’s - Hill," and "The Lament of the Demobilized"); Mr. R. Campbell, _The - Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany_ ("Bongwi’s Theology"); Mr. L. - Golding, _Voices_ ("The Moon-Clock," "Cold Branch," "I Seek a Wild - Star"); Mr. A. Porter, _Voices_ ("Life and Luxury," "A Far - Country"); Mr. E. Rickword, _The London Mercury_ ("Intimacy"); Mr. - W. Force Stead, _The Poetry Review_; Mr. L. A. G. Strong, _Coterie_ - ("A Devon Rhyme," "Christopher Marlye"), _The Oxford Chronicle_ - ("From the Greek"). - - - - -CONTENTS - - -EDMUND BLUNDEN (QUEEN’S) PAGE - SHEET LIGHTNING 1 - FOREFATHERS 3 - -G. H. BONNER (MAGDALEN) - SONNET 5 - -VERA M. BRITTAIN (SOMERVILLE) - BOAR’S HILL, OCTOBER, 1919 6 - THE LAMENT OF THE DEMOBILIZED 7 - DAPHNE 8 - -G. A. FIELDING BUCKNALL (EXETER) - UNTO DUST 9 - -ROY CAMPBELL (MERTON) - THE PORPOISE 10 - BONGWI’S THEOLOGY 11 - -ERIC DICKINSON (EXETER) - THREE SONNETS 12 - -LOUIS GOLDING (QUEEN’S) - THE MOON-CLOCK 14 - COLD BRANCH IN THE BLACK AIR 15 - I SEEK A WILD STAR 16 - -ROBERT GRAVES (ST. JOHN’S) - MORNING PHŒNIX 17 - -L. P. HARTLEY (BALLIOL) - CANDLEMAS 18 - -B. HIGGINS (B.N.C.) - ONE SOLDIER 21 - -WINIFRED HOLTBY (SOMERVILLE) - THE DEAD MAN 22 - -R. W. HUGHES (ORIEL) - THE ROLLING SAINT 23 - THE SONG OF PROUD JAMES 25 - -E. W. JACOT (QUEEN’S) - HERE’S A DAFFODIL 26 - NURSERY RHYMES 26 - -G. H. JOHNSTONE (MERTON) - SUMMER 27 -"IPSE EGO ..." 28 - -C. H. B. KITCHIN (EXETER) - OPENING SCENE FROM "AMPHITRYON" 29 - -V. DE S. PINTO (CHRIST CHURCH) - ART 38 - -ALAN PORTER (QUEEN’S) - LIFE AND LUXURY 39 - A FAR COUNTRY 44 - -HILDA REID (SOMERVILLE) - THE MAGNANIMITY OF BEASTS 45 - -EDGELL RICKWORD (PEMBROKE) - INTIMACY 46 - GRAVE JOYS 47 - ADVICE TO A GIRL FROM THE WARS 48 - YEGOR 49 - STRANGE ELEMENTS 50 - -W. FORCE STEAD (QUEEN’S) - THE BURDEN OF BABYLON 51 - -L. A. G. STRONG (WADHAM) - FROST 55 - VERA VENVSTAS 55 - A BABY 56 - FROM THE GREEK 56 - A DEVON RHYME 56 - THE BIRD MAN 57 - CHRISTOPHER MARLYE 58 - - - - -_EDMUND BLUNDEN_ - -(_QUEEN’S_) - - -SHEET LIGHTNING - - WHEN on the green the rag-tag game had stopt, - And red the lights through alehouse curtains glowed, - The clambering brake drove out and took the road. - Then on the stern moors all the babble dropt - Among those merry men, who felt the dew - Sweet to the soul and saw the southern blue - Thronged with heat lightning leagues and leagues abroad, - Working and whickering; snake-like; winged and clawed; - Or like old carp lazily rising and shouldering, - Long the slate cloud flank shook with the death-white smouldering; - Yet not a voice. - - The night drooped oven-hot; - Then where the turnpike pierced the black wood plot, - Tongues wagged again and each man felt the grim - Destiny of the hour speaking through him: - And then tales came of dwarfs on Starling Hill, - And those young swimmers drowned at the roller mill, - Where on the drowsiest noon the undertow - Famishing for life boiled like a pot below: - And how two higglers at the "Walnut Tree" - Had curst the Lord in thunderstorm and He - Had struck them into soot with lightning then-- - It left the pitchers whole, it killed the men. - Many a lad and many a lass was named - Who once stept bold and proud--but death had tamed - Their revel on the eve of May: cut short - The primrosing and promise of good sport, - Shut up the score book, laid the ribbands by. - - Such bodings mustered from the fevered sky; - But now the spring well through the honeycomb - Of scored stone rumbling tokened them near home, - The whip lash clacked, the jog-trot sharpened, all - Sang "Farmer’s Boy" as loud as they could bawl, - Till at the "Walnut Tree" the homeward brake - Stopt for hoarse ribaldry to brag and slake. - - The weary wildfire faded from the dark - While this one damned the parson, that the clerk; - And anger’s balefire forked from the unbared blade - At word of notches missed or stakes not paid: - While Joe the driver stooped with oath to find - A young jack rabbit in the roadway, blind - Or dazzled by the lamps, as stiff as steel - With fear. Joe beat its brain out on the wheel. - - -FOREFATHERS - - HERE they went with smock and crook, - Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade, - Here they mudded out the brook - And here their hatchet cleared the glade: - Harvest-supper woke their wit, - Huntsman’s moon their wooings lit. - - From this church they led their brides; - From this church themselves were led - Shoulder-high; on these waysides - Sat to take their beer and bread: - Names are gone--what men they were - These their cottages declare. - - Names are vanished, save the few - In the old brown Bible scrawled, - These were men of pith and thew, - Whom the city never called; - Scarce could read or hold a quill: - Built the barn, the forge, the mill. - - On the green they watched their sons - Playing till too dark to see, - As their fathers watched them once, - As my father once watched me; - While the bat and beetle flew - On the warm air webbed with dew. - - Unrecorded, unrenowned, - Men from whom my ways begin, - Here I know you by your ground, - But I know you not within-- - All is mist, and there survives - Not one moment of your lives. - - Like the bee that now is blown - Honey-heavy on my hand - From the toppling tansy-throne - In the green tempestuous land,-- - I’m a-Maying now, nor know - Who made honey long ago. - - - - -_G. H. BONNER_ - -(_MAGDALEN_) - - -SONNET - - QUIETLY the old men die, in carven chairs - Nodding to silence by the extinguished hearth; - Their days are as a treasure nothing worth, - For all their joy is stolen by the years. - The striving and the fierce delights and fears - Of youth trouble them not; for them the earth - Is dead; in their cold hearts naught comes to birth - Save ghosts: they are too old even for tears. - - As to the breast of some slow moving stream, - Close girt with sentinel trees on either side, - The sear leaves flutter down and silently - Glide onward on its dark November dream, - So peacefully upon the quiet tide - They steal out to the still moon-silvered sea. - - - - -_VERA M. BRITTAIN_ - -(_SOMERVILLE_) - - -BOAR’S HILL, OCTOBER, 1919 - - TALL slender beech-trees, whispering, touched with fire, - Swaying at even beneath a desolate sky; - Smouldering embers aflame where the clouds hurry by - To the wind’s desire. - - Dark sombre woodlands, rain-drenched by the scattering shower, - Spindle that quivers and drops its dim berries to earth-- - Mourning, perhaps, as I mourn here alone for the dearth - Of a happier hour. - - Can you still see them, who always delighted to roam - Over the Hill where so often together we trod - When winds of wild autumn strewed summer’s dead leaves on the sod, - Ere your steps turned home? - - -THE LAMENT OF THE DEMOBILIZED - - "FOUR years," some say consolingly. "Oh well, - What’s that? You’re young. And then it must have been - A very fine experience for you!" - And they forget - How others stayed behind, and just got on-- - Got on the better since we were away. - And we came home and found - They had achieved, and men revered their names, - But never mentioned ours; - And no one talked heroics now, and we - Must just go back, and start again once more. - "You threw four years into the melting-pot-- - Did you indeed!" these others cry. "Oh well, - The more fool you!" - And we’re beginning to agree with them. - - -DAPHNE - - SUNRISE and spring, and the river agleam in the morning, - Life at its freshest, like flowers in the dawn-dew of May, - Hope, and Love’s dreams the dim hills of the future adorning, - Youth of the world, just awake to the glory of day-- - - Is she not part of them, golden and fair and undaunted, - Glad with the triumph of runners ahead in the race, - Free as a child by no shadows or memories haunted, - Challenging Death to his solemn and pitiful face? - - Sunset and dusk, and the stars of a mellow September, - Sombre grey shadows, like Sleep stealing over the grass, - Autumn leaves blown through the chill empty lanes of November, - Sorrow enduring, though Youth with its rhapsodies pass-- - - Are they not part of her, sweet with unconscious compassion, - Ready to shoulder our burden of life with a jest, - Will she not make them her own in her light-hearted fashion, - Sadder than we in her song, in her laughter more blest? - - - - -_G. A. FIELDING BUCKNALL_ - -(_EXETER_) - - -UNTO DUST - - NOT with a crown of thorns about his head - But with a single rose in his white hand, - Fairer than Death herself, he joins the dead, - He that could laugh at life, yet understand. - No veils are rent in twain, or unknown fears - Fall on the crowd who crucify my lord; - Lay him to rest, while poetry and tears - Be the last gifts his mourning friends accord. - Cast not white flowers on one who loved but red, - Leave him the dust who found in dust the praise - Only of life, and, now that he is dead - Surely in death is fair a thousand ways. - Leave him in peace, a poem to the end-- - He was the man I loved: I was his friend. - - - - -_ROY CAMPBELL_ - -(_MERTON_) - - -THE PORPOISE - - THE ocean-cleaving porpoise goes - Thrashing the waves with fins of gold, - Butting the waves with brows of steel, - From palm-fringed archipelagos - To coasts of coral, where the bold - Cannibal drives a pointed keel. - - And round and round the world he runs, - A golden rocket trailing fire, - Out-distancing the moon and stars, - Leaving the pale abortive suns - To paint their dreams of dead desire - On faint horizons. Nothing mars - - His constant course, though storms may rend - The charging waves from strand to strand, - Though Love may wait with fingers curled - To clutch him at the current’s bend, - Though Death may dart an eager hand - To drag him underneath the world! - - Still threading depths of pearl and rose, - Derisive, gay, and overbold, - Who will not hear, who will not feel, - The ocean-cleaving porpoise goes, - Thrashing the waves with fins of gold, - Butting the waves with brows of steel! - - -BONGWI’S THEOLOGY - - THIS is the wisdom of the ape - Who yelps beneath the moon-- - ’Tis God who made me in his shape; - He is a great baboon. - ’Tis he who tilts the moon askew - And fans the forest trees: - The Heavens, which are broad and blue, - Provide him his trapeze. - He swings with tail divinely bent - Around those azure bars, - And munches, to his soul’s content, - The kernels of the stars. - And when I die, his loving care - Shall raise me from the sod, - To learn the perfect Mischief there, - The Nimbleness of God! - - - - -_ERIC DICKINSON_ - -(_EXETER_) - - -THREE SONNETS - - FOR RANDOLPH HUGHES - - -I - - SUCH beauty is the magic of old kings - Who webbed enchantments on the bowls of night, - Who stole the ocean-coral for their rings, - And samite-curls of mermaids for their light; - Who sent their envoys from the courts of Kand, - To find the blue-flowered crown of ecstasy - That grows beneath a Titan’s quiet hand. - The beauty that is yours is grown to me - More fine than furthest snows in golden Ind, - More fair indeed than doves, who draw the cars - Of purpurate belief in monarch’s mind, - With benediction of the ultimate stars. - Because of all this knowledge born of you, - Raise up my faith in stone, and keep men true. - - -II - - ALWAYS your eyes, your hair, your cheek, your voice, - Impel the wish I had a magic art; - Your beauty’s kind can perfectly rejoice - With delicate music all a poet’s heart, - As voice of summer over hills of joy. - Oh, you are utterly of beauty’s dance, - Such kind of rhythmic beauty they employ, - Where Pheidias shakes the Parthenon with prance - Of his proud steeds, and prouder youths show us - The glory of a fair Athenian day. - Your beauty lived before tumultuous - Chattering knaves sped time and faith away, - Before the chime for Babylon was rung, - Or from the cross men found the stars were hung! - - -III - - My love of most complete and dearest worth, - Has ever breath of years, one day all spent, - Mingled with thought of present smiling earth? - Have you bethought you how so soon is sent - To this poor passionate heart the Worm of Death - With twined and intimate corrupt caress? - Have you bethought you, how that your dear breath, - Bathing the rose upon your mouth, shall press - One day no more betwixt its petalled home? - How all exceeding beauties exquisite - Of limbs, of eyes, of hair, of cheek, shall come - One day perhaps within that open night, - Where sheep go plaintive on a lone highway, - And ecstasy of love is far away? - - - - -_LOUIS GOLDING_ - -(_QUEEN’S_) - - -THE MOON-CLOCK - - TICK-TOCK! the moon, that pale round clock, - Her big face peering, goes tick-tock! - - Metallic as a grasshopper - The far faint tickings start and stir. - - All night tinily you can hear - Tick-tock tinkling down the sheer - - Steep falls of space. Minute, aloof, - Here is no praise, here no reproof. - - Remote in voids star-purged of sense, - Tick-tock in stark indifference! - - From ice-black lands of lack and rock, - The two swords shake and clank tick-tock. - - In the dark din of the day’s vault - Demand thy headlong soul shall halt - - One moment. Hearken, taut and tense, - In the vast Silence beyond sense, - - The moon! From the hushed heart of her, - Metallic as a grasshopper, - - Patient though earth may writhe and rock, - Imperturbably, tock, tick-tock! - - Till, boastful earth, your forests wilt - In grotesque death. Till death shall silt, - - Loud-blooded man, her unchecked sands - From feet and warped expiring hands - - Through fatuous channels of the thinned - Brain. Till all the clangours which have dinned - - Through your arched ears are only this, - Tick-tock down blank eternities, - - Where still the sallow death’s-head ticks - As stars burn down like candle-wicks. - - -COLD BRANCH IN THE BLACK AIR - - WHO taps? You are not the wind tapping? - _No! Not the wind!_ - You straining and moaning there, - Are you a cold branch in the black air - Which the storm has skinned? - _No! Not a cold branch! - Not the wind!_ - - Who are you? Who are you? - _But you loved me once, - You drank me like wine. - The dead wood simmers in my skull. I am rotten. - And your blood is red still and you have forgotten, - And my blood was yours once and yours mine!_ - - Are you there still? O fainter, O further ... nothing! - Nothing taps! - Surely you straining and moaning there, - You were only a cold branch in the black air? -... Or a door perhaps? - - -I SEEK A WILD STAR - - WHAT seek you in this hoarse hard sand - That shuffles from your futile hand? - Your limbs are wry. With salt despair - All day the scant winds freeze your hair. - What mystery in the barren sand - Seek you to understand? - - _All day the acute winds' finger-tips - Flay my skin and cleave my lips. - But though like fame about my skull - Leap the gibes of the cynic gull, - I shall not go from this place. I - Seek through all curved vacancy - Though the sea taunt me and frost scar, - I seek a star, a star!_ - - Why seek you this, why seek you this - Of all distraught futilities? - The tide slides closer. The tide’s teeth - Shall bite your body with keen death! - Of all unspaced things that are - Vain, vain, most hideously far, - Why seek you then a star? - - _I seek a wild star, I that am - Eaten by earth and all her shame; - To whom fields, towns are a close clot - Of mud whence the worm dieth not; - To whom all running water is - Besnagged with timeless treacheries, - Who in a babe’s heart see designed - Mine own distortion and the blind - Lusts of all my kind! - Hence of all things that are - Vain, most hideously far, - A star, I seek, a star!_ - - - - -_ROBERT GRAVES_ - -(_ST. JOHN’S_) - - -MORNING PHŒNIX - - IN my body lives a flame, - Flame that burns me all the day, - When a fierce sun does the same, - I am charred away. - - Who could keep a smiling wit, - Roasted so in heart and hide, - Turning on the sun’s red spit, - Scorched by love inside? - - Caves I long for and cold rocks, - Minnow-peopled country brooks, - Blundering gales of Equinox, - Sunless valley-nooks. - - Daily so I might restore - Calcined heart and shrivelled skin, - A morning phœnix with proud roar - Kindled new within. - - - - -_L. P. HARTLEY_ - -(_BALLIOL_) - - -CANDLEMAS - - THE conversation waned and waxed, - _I_ was there: _you_ were there: - Doubtless a few were overtaxed, - Talking was more than they could bear. - - The aura of each candle-flame - Excited me, excited you; - I felt you in each diadem, - Now in the yellow, now the blue. - - The conversation waxed and waned: - Question, reply; question, reply: - We, for our intercourse, disdained - Such palpable machinery. - - Columnar in transparent gloom, - Symbolical, inviolate, - Those candles held the spell of some - Campanile or minaret, - - Which still takes in, as it exhales, - The mood of joy or orison; - With hoarded ceremonials - Enfranchising communion-- - - Till every spoken word or thought, - However alien and profane, - Becomes the medium and resort - Where spirits spirits entertain; - - So, idle talk’s quintessences - Gleamed in the candles' radiance - With gathered stores of unproved bliss: - The multiplied inheritance - - Of each succeeding moment.... More - Perfect in form the flames appeared; - Their arduous strivings overbore - Slight wayward wisps that swayed and veered. - - They changed their contours, one and all, - Carefully, persistently, - With efforts economical - That had their will of you and me,-- - - For we somehow were party to - The issue of their enterprise; - Confounded in their overthrow, - Triumphant in their victories. - - The alternation of each flame - --Thinning here--swelling there-- - Compell’d our souls into the same - Compass,--ampler or narrower. - - We knew that when those luminous spires - Hung upwards, pacified, and tranc’d, - Pois’d betwixt all and no desires, - Beyond their accidents advanc’d,-- - - We, their adepts, might acquiesce: - The promised consummation - Would drown our wills in its excess, - And mingle both our souls in one. - - When suddenly a permanence, - --A flutter of wings before rest-- - Drew down to those flame-forms: our sense - Was steeped in it, folded, caress’d.... - - A casual devastating gust - (The jolt, the sickening recoil!) - Our universe in chaos thrust; - And, not content to spoil - - Our husbanded endeavour, threw - A mocking, flickering light, - Devour’d by shadows, on us two: - The talk became more bright. - - We entered into it with zest; - Question, reply; question, reply: - And lookers-on were much impressed - By our inane garrulity. - - - - -_B. HIGGINS_ - -(_B.N.C._) - - -ONE SOLDIER - -TO GEORGE WRIGHT - - HEAP the earth upon this head. - Nature, like a wistful child, - Clings unto the clay she fed, - Shatters it--unreconciled - Moans the ashes of her dead. - Heap the earth upon this head. - - Chanter of the lonely tombs, - Lift him to thy harmony-- - Moulded in the million wombs - That breed the soul’s nobility!... - Such the man that perished? - Heap the earth upon this head. - - Our masters brood and preach and plot, - And mourn in monuments, not tears, - The man the centuries forgot - Who builded up the mighty years! - Faded are the fights they led, - Piteous the blood they shed. - Heap the earth upon this head. - - Heap, heap the earth upon this head, - Brother he was to you, to me-- - Lived, lusted, joyed and wept.... _They_ spent - Their verbal earnings, and he went - And fought for human liberty, - And died. And politics were free. - - Raise, raise memorials to our Dead.... - But heap the earth upon this head. - Oh! heap the earth upon this head. - - - - -_WINIFRED HOLTBY_ - -(_SOMERVILLE_) - - -THE DEAD MAN - - I see men walk wild ways with love, - Along the wind their laughter blown - Strikes up against the singing stars; - But I lie all alone. - When love has stricken laughter dead - And tears their silly hearts in twain, - They long for easeful death, but I - Am hungry for their pain. - - - - -_R. W. HUGHES_ - -(_ORIEL_) - - -THE ROLLING SAINT - - UNDER the crags of Teiriwch, - The door-sills of the Sun, - Where God has left the bony earth - Just as it was begun; - Where clouds sail past like argosies - Breasting the crested hills, - With mainsail and foretop-sail - That the thin breeze fills; - With ballast of round thunder, - And anchored with the rain; - With a long shadow sounding - The deep, far plain: - Where rocks are broken playthings - By petulant gods hurled, - And Heaven sits a-straddle - On the roof-ridge of the World. - --Under the crags of Teiriwch - Is a round pile of stones: - Large stones, small stones, - --White as old bones; - Some from high places, - Or from the lake’s shore; - And every man that passes - Adds one more: - The years it has been growing - Verge on a hundred score. - - For in the cave of Teiriwch - That scarce holds a sheep, - Where plovers and rock-conies - And wild things sleep, - A woman lived for ninety years - On bilberries and moss - And lizards, and small creeping things, - And carved herself a cross: - But wild hill robbers - Found the ancient saint - And dragged her to the sunlight, - Making no complaint: - Too old was she for weeping, - Too shrivelled, and too dry: - She crouched and mumle-mumled - And mumled to the sky. - No breath had she for wailing, - Her cheeks were paper-thin: - She was, for all her holiness - As ugly as sin. - They cramped her in a barrel - --All but her bobbing head. - --And rolled her down from Teiriwch - Until she was dead: - They took her out, and buried her - --Just broken bits of bone - And rags and skin: and over her - Set one small stone: - But if you pass her sepulchre - And add not one thereto - The ghost of that old murdered Saint - Will roll in front of you - The whole night through. - - The clouds sail past in argosies - And cold drips the rain: - The whole world is far and high - Above the tilted plain. - The silent mist floats eerily, - And I am here alone: - _Dare I pass the place by, - And cast not a stone?_ - - -THE SONG OF PROUD JAMES - -(FROM "THE ENGLISHMAN.") - - "If kith and kin disowned you, - And all your friends were dead?" - --I’d buy a spotted handkerchief - To flaunt upon my head: - I’d resurrect my maddest clothes, - And gaily would I laugh, - And climb the proud hills scornfully - With swinging cherry staff. - - "But when you’d crossed the sky-line, - And knew you were alone?" - --I’d cast away the hollow sham, - I’d kick the ground, and groan, - And tear my coloured handkerchief - And snap my staff; and then - I’d curse the God that built me up - To break me down again. - - - - -_E. W. JACOT_ - -(_QUEEN’S_) - - -HERE’S A DAFFODIL - - HERE’S a daffodil - Nodding to the hill, - Tipsy in the sunlight - Drinking his fill. - - Here’s a violet - Pearled in dew as yet, - Smiling in the wood shade, - Sweet coquette! - -NURSERY RHYMES - - -I - - QUEEN Anne is dead - ’Tis often said, - For my part I agree. - But she lived full ten score years ago - And so - She ought to be. - - -II - - There was a scholar - Of Oxford Town. - He read till his wits were blunt. - He put his gown - On upside down, - And his cap - On back to front. - - - - -_G. H. JOHNSTONE_ - -(_MERTON_) - - -SUMMER - - FULL of unearthly peace lies river-water, - Glaucous and here and there with irised circles: - Now subdued melody rises from the wreaths - Of whirling flies, their mazy conflict driving - To melancholy lamp-images in the pool: - An unseen fish greyly breeds lubric rounds - Up-reaching to the thrill of populous air: - O hour supreme for poised and halting thought! - Down colonnade on colonnade of rose - The immense Symbols move augustly on; - Mystery, her stony eyes revealed a little, - Not cumbered longer by the veils of noise: - Evening, a lithe and virginal dream-figure, - Wavering between a green cloak and a blue, - And, robed at length, turning with exquisite - And old despair towards the gate of Dawn: - And Fate, bemused awhile and half withdrawn, - Charmed to short rest between grim Day and Night. - - -"IPSE EGO ..." - - MARSILIO sighed: and drew a rough discord - From his guitar, and sang so to us listeners: - "I too have mounted every step of ice - And dragged my bleeding ankles, hope-enthralled, - To Heaven’s blessed door; when instantly - From side-nooks rising tripped the outer angels, - In thin, light-hammered armour, giggling boys, - But muscular, and with concerted charge - Seized my poor feet, and flung me laughing, laughing, - Laughing, down, down among the insect men - Who look up never, antwise busy--crawling: - Alas! the burden of their feathery laughter, - More bitter than my fall, has pried a passage - Into my luckless head, and 'Ha-ha, ha-ha!' - Maddens its walls and frets them ruinously: - Beware my flitting pestilence: I’ll not gage - That certain easier outlets may not bring - The noise out and about and thick among you: - O bitter, bitter days for those it visits!" - And murmuring "bitter" with a fading sadness - Marsilio went: the assembly all were silent. - - - - -_C. H. B. KITCHIN_ - -(_EXETER_) - - -OPENING SCENE FROM "AMPHITRYON" - -ALCMENA. THREE ASTROLOGERS - - ALCMENA - - I have commanded you as often of old - To ply the doctor’s trade with my disease, - To cure me or to kill; for in whose veins - Courses the age-long poison of despair, - Seeks for himself no gentle surgery, - Nor wishes for the touch of tender hands - Upon his body. - - FIRST ASTROLOGER - - Something of your need - Has been revealed us. Yet should there remain - No secret hid from the physician’s eye. - - ALCMENA - - It has been said that from the lips of queens - Should come no word more bitter than sweet honey. - If you adjudge me queen, let this too pass - That I must act unqueenly. In my soul - Drips wine more bitter than the taste of gall. - - FIRST ASTROLOGER - - When roses bloom most fully, death is near. - - ALCMENA - - You too know this? - - SECOND ASTROLOGER - - We know that life glides slowly - But death is quicker than a lightning stroke. - - ALCMENA - - Is it of me that you have gained this wisdom? - - THIRD ASTROLOGER - - The grand revolving spheres of heaven teach - The mind that hears their music. We have learned - To listen through the clamour of all noons - With evening in the heart. - - ALCMENA - - He does not live - Who hears no noon-day clamour about his ears. - - FIRST ASTROLOGER - - And you, Queen, that have lived and now confront - Death or his shadow deep within your soul, - Have you in life such wisdom garnered up - As may disarm the heart’s rebellion? - Wherefore then are we summoned? - - SECOND ASTROLOGER - - The garden of life - Is barren for you, bearing little fruit, - And yields no store for hungry days ahead. - - THIRD ASTROLOGER - - To me you seem as one that has in thought - A hidden sin, and seeks an easy priest - Who shall with smooth and flowing words of grace - Persuade it from the heart. - - ALCMENA - - Nay, I am sinless. - - FIRST ASTROLOGER - - You are still young to be thus weary of life. - - ALCMENA - - There comes to every man a sudden time - When he undoes the bolts that bar his heart - Displaying hidden shame and scars concealed. - Such season is the present. Hear me now; - For I am sick and pale with lingering - Over a mystery that has no clue - Created idly by an idle brain. - Astrologers, thrice mighty in yourselves, - Say whence crept into me this discontent, - This fretfulness of mine. Say whence arose - My malady, so cunning in its ways, - That I tormented have no skill to guide - My doctors to the secret. Day by day - I feel the heavy burden of the flesh - Grow heavier. Your words rang true indeed. - Though I am young, I am grown weary of life. - The tedious cycle of each passing day - Like streams of dripping tears from blinded eyes - Falls in the cup of my calamity; - While thoughts, such as you guess, are often here, - Bringing a sweet temptation. - I have tried - All means of remedy. This perfumed air, - This gold and ivory, these purple robes - Have caused no change. The mute insistent hours - Wait for me still, interminably slow. - And, as in mental pain a man will crave - For any fierce sensation of the flesh - To rid his agony, so I have craved - The frenzied lashing of tempestuous rain, - The heat of flame, the sharpened fang of frost. - I have gone forth at midnight with no robe, - And walked bare-footed over stony ground - While wind and rain have done their worst on me. - - I have kissed flame and held these hands in fire; - These hands have taken the scourge, that is for slaves, - To beat my body. Hear then all my curse. - Neither the blade of sharp-projecting flint - Nor wind nor rain nor burning tongue of flame - Nor knotted scourge can leave a mark on me. - These lips are no less red since they were kissed - By glowing coal; these hands are yet untorn. - Such is my fate, with flesh insensible - To suffer from a mind which has no love - And no distraction. Have it as you will, - I am a shipwreck far on lonely seas - With neither oars aboard, nor land in sight, - Nor mast, nor mast for fluttering rags of sail. - - FIRST ASTROLOGER - - When you have seen the solemn moon in tears - With long green tresses dipped in a purple sea, - And noted in each tear a breaking heart, - A lump of salty crystal, then your dreams - Will give you counsel which we cannot give. - - SECOND ASTROLOGER - - We are empowered to tell you what has been - And what shall be, but this created image - Of your own thought eludes our groping hand. - - THIRD ASTROLOGER - - Soon he shall come to you! - That stung your heart? - - ALCMENA - - O wailing winds, scatter these words away - As chaff unfruitful to unfruitful soil. - - FIRST ASTROLOGER - - As glints the jewel in the toad’s brown head---- - - SECOND ASTROLOGER - - As lurks a bitter sting in honeyed words---- - - THIRD ASTROLOGER - - As a foul plague lies hid beneath the skin---- - - ALCMENA - - You wrong me. - - THIRD ASTROLOGER - - Nay, your heart has uttered it. - When the strong arms of young Amphitryon---- - - FIRST ASTROLOGER - - I hear a voice. - - ALCMENA - - O God! the dream returns. - - THIRD ASTROLOGER - - The dream was not, then, of Amphitryon? - - ALCMENA - - May the royal hand of Zeus deliver me. - - [ZEUS _enters in the form of Amphitryon_. - - ZEUS - - Your task is ended. Go, astrologers, - Taking your admonition to such ears - As are in need of it. Go silently. - - [_The_ ASTROLOGERS _go out_. - - ZEUS - - Still you pursue their empty sorceries? - - ALCMENA - - Will you now weary me again? You drive - My friends away like dogs. I follow them. - - ZEUS - - A sullen greeting to the traveller. - - ALCMENA - - Have I not told you often how it is - With me and you? Or must you ask again - And hear me through unreasoned reasonings - To the last drop of bitterness? And yet---- - - ZEUS - - Why gaze so strangely on me? - - ALCMENA - - I had thought - Your journey would be longer. - - ZEUS - - No, alas! - - ALCMENA - - What brings you here to probe the core of my heart - With your unspoken question? - - ZEUS - - We have need - No longer of these lamps. Quench them. The dawn - Arises in the East. - - ALCMENA - - Since when am I - Become your slave? - - ZEUS - - Since you obeyed my word. - - ALCMENA - - I was no friend to such obedience - In the dead days that were my life’s design. - - ZEUS - - You tremble. Speak your fear. - - ALCMENA - - Heart’s utterance - Were mockery, if spoken by the tongue. - - ZEUS - - Yet, be assured, nothing is hid from me. - - ALCMENA - - Unmoving figure of Amphitryon - I knew and hated, when you crossed the threshold, - Hope seemed to step beside you. - - ZEUS - - Hope is mine. - - ALCMENA - - Then say, where have you found the keys of life, - That you unlock its portals suddenly? - - ZEUS - - At my command all doors are set ajar. - - ALCMENA - - The miserable forebodings of the night - Have fallen from me like the gossamer - Which spiders weave until a master-hand - Sweeps clean their tracery. Mark you a change - In me, as I in you? - - ZEUS - - I am unchanging, - But, till this moment, me you have not known. - - ALCMENA - - Or known myself save as a falling leaf, - The toy of winds, uncherished and unloved, - Gliding to earth and slow decay in earth - Of what was green and young. - - ZEUS - - When you were younger - And guarded still the pitiable illusion - That life is good and destiny exalted, - Did you not dream perhaps of sacrifice - In which yourself as immolated victim - Should satisfy delirious desire, - Wedded at last in death with strength,--which marriage - Humanly shaped has never learned to yield? - - ALCMENA - - Your voice has in it the power of new command - To pierce my secret. - - ZEUS - - Naught is hid from me. - - ALCMENA - - My soul is weak with longing for your counsel. - - ZEUS - - When Semele, with lightning-darted flame - Engirdled, woke with knowledge she must die, - Having aspired to touch the majesty - Of the omnipotent, in no wise dismayed - Was she consumed with that unquenchable fire - Which burns all veils that overspread the flesh. - - ALCMENA - - Whence came the thought of Semele to you? - And why this chain of words now coiled on me - As a predestined victim? - - ZEUS - - I myself - Blaze with the fire of Semele. This hand - Shall rend the veil once more. Myself am hope, - Sole arbiter of germinating life, - The driver of the lusty winds of morning, - The cloud-compeller, dancer of the dance - Wherein the sea is festive and the hills - Nod musical assent, the charioteer - That drags the world behind his flashing wheels, - Bringer of life and change that is called death - And vibrant longing, setter of an end - To fear and doubt, a darting two-edged sword - That heals the wounds created of itself, - The crystal-veined one, in whose blood there flows - The flame of life--in such wise apprehend - Me standing here, and in such wise remark - The honour I have done you. - - ALCMENA - - Open-eyed - At last, I see a spirit stands beside me. - For this cause I grew pale and bent my head - In sweet confusion. Bringer of release, - Even if it should be my worship falls - Before a devil from hell, behold I kneel - To kiss the fragrance of your garment’s hem. - - - - -_V. DE S. PINTO_ - -(_CHRIST CHURCH_) - - -ART - - FATE from an unimaginable throne - Scatters a million roses on the world; - They fall like shooting stars across the sky - Glittering: - Under a dark clump of trees - Man, a gaunt creature, squats upon the ground - Ape-like, and grins to see those brilliant flowers - Raining through the dark foliage: - He tries - Sometimes to clutch at them, but in his hands - They melt like snow. - Then in despair he turns - Back to his wigwam, stirs the embers, pats - His blear-eyed dog, and smokes a pipe, and soon, - Wrapped in his blankets, drowses off to sleep. - - But all his dreams are full of flying flowers. - - - - -_ALAN PORTER_ - -(_QUEEN’S_) - - -LIFE AND LUXURY - - I held imagination’s candle high - To thread the pitchy cavern, life. A whisper - Dazed all the dark with sweetness oversweet, - A lithe body languished around my neck. - "Do out this unavailing light;" she pleaded. - "Soother is darkness. How may candle strive - With topless, bleak, obdurate blanks of space? - It can but cold the darkness else were warm. - Leave, leave to search so bitter-toilfully - Unthroughgone silence, leave and follow me; - For I will lead where many riches lie, - Where rippling silks and snow-soft cushions, rare - Cool wines, and delicates unearthly sweet, - And all the comfort flesh of man craves more. - We two shall dallying uncurl the long - And fragrant hours." She reached a slender arm - Slowly along mine to the light. I flung her - Off, down. My candle showed her cheeks raddled, - Her bindweed pressure made me sick and mad; - I flung her back to the gloom. Her further hand - Clanked; hidden gyves fell ringing to the rock. - Peering behind her barely I could discern - Outstretching bodies clamped along the floor, - Unmoving most and silent, some uneasy, - Stirring and moaning. Smothery clutches came - Of slothful scents and fingered at my throat; - But, brushing by them, unaccompanied - I held aloft my rushlight in the cave - And searched for beauty through the cleaner air. - Thus far in parable. Laugh loud, O world, - Laugh loud and hollow. There are those would spurn - Your joys unjoyous and your acid fruits. - They would not tread the corpsy paths of commerce - Nor juggle with men’s bones; they would not chaffer - Their souls for strumpet pleasure. Cast them out, - Deny what little they would ask of life, - Assail, starve, torture, murder them, and laugh. - Shall it be war between us? Better war - Than faint submission--better death. And yet - I would not, no, nor shall not die. How weaponed - Shall I go passionate against your host? - How, cautelous, elude your calm blockade? - - Of older days heart-free the poet roved - Along the furrowed lanes, and watched the robin - Squat in a puddle, whir his stumpy wings, - And tweet amid the tempest he aroused; - A hare would hirple on ahead (keep back, - Let her get out of sight; quick, cross yourself), - Or taper weasel slink past over the road; - And, seeing native blossoms, breathing air - From English hills, what recked the wanderer - That barons threw no penny to his song? - Should he be hungered, he would seek some rill - And, scrambling down the hazel scarp, would walk - Wet-ankled up the stream until he found - A larger pool of cold, colourless water, - Full two-foot deep, scooped out of solid stone - By a chuckling trickle spated after rains. - There he would rest upon the bank, while slowly - His fingers crept along the crannied rock. - Poor starveling belly!--No, that lower fissure, - Straight, lipless grin like an unholy god’s, - Reach out for that. The water stings to his armpit, - He hangs above the pool from head to waist, - His legs push tautly back for body’s poise, - And careful, careful creep the sensitive fingers. - - --Sudden touch of cold, wet silk. - Now flesh be one with brain! He lightly strokes - The slippery smoothness upward to the gills - And throws a twiring trout upon the grass. - Or where the rattle of the water slacks - To low leaf-whisper, there he gropes beneath - Root-knots that hug black, unctuous mould from toppling - To slutch the daylit stream. His wary nerves - Tell blunt teeth biting at his thumb. Stormswift - He snatches a heavy hand over his head. - A floundering eel flops wildly to the floor, - And glides for the water. Quick the hungry poet - Spins round, whips out his knife, and shears the neck - How firm soever gripped, the limber body - Long after wriggles headless out of hand. - But if he roam across foot-tangling heath - And bracken, where no burble glads the root - Of juicy grasses? If along his way - Never a kingcup lifted bowls of light, - Nor burly watermint with bludgeon scent, - Beat down the fair, mild, slumbering meadowsweet? - If no nearby forgetmenot looks up - With frank and modest eye, no yellow flag - Plays Harold crowned and girt by fearless pikes? - No more he fails of ample fare; nor famine - Drains out his blood and piecemeal drags his flesh - From outward-leaping bones, till wrathful death, - Grudging to lose a pebble from his cairn, - Bears off the pitiful orts. For, stepping soft, - He finds a rabbit gazing at the world - With eyes in which not many moons have gleamed; - And, raising a bawl of more expended breath - Than fritter your burghers in a year of gabbling, - He runs and hurls himself headlong on to it. - Stunned at the cry, the rabbit waits and dithers; - His muscles melt beneath him; "Pluck up strength," - He calls to his legs; "oh, stiffen, stiffen!" and still - He waits and dithers. Now the trembling scale - Of timeless pain crashes suddenly down, - And life’s a puffed-out flame. - - Thus the poet - Of bygone England (as an alchemist - After ill magics and long labours wrought - Seals in the flask his magisterium, - Lest volatile it waste among the winds, - And all men breathe a never-ageing youth) - Found way to pend within his body life - And what of pain or interwoven joy - Life brings to poets. Friend, I do not gulp - And weep with maudlin, sentimental tears, - Lacking a late lamented golden age. - The more of life was ever misery’s, - And Socrates won hemlock. Yet before - Was man so constant enemy to man? - Did earth grow bleak at all these purposeless, - Rotting and blotting, roaking, smoking chimneys? - Look, men are dying, women dying, children dying. - They sell their souls for bread, and poison-filths - Whiten their flesh, bow their bodies. Crippled, - Consumption-spotted, feeble-minded, sullen, - They seek, bewildered, out of black despair, - The star of life; so, dying a Christian death, - Lie seven a grave unheedful. "Bad as that? - Put down five hundred on the Lord Mayor’s list. - After the cost of organizing’s paid - There’ll still be something left. Besides, it looks well, - And charity brings the firm new customers. - Not that I hold with all this nonsense really. - When I was young I’d nothing more than they, - But I climbed, and trampled other people down. - Why shouldn’t they?" O murderers, look, look, look. - No man but tramples, tramples on his neighbour, - And these the lowest wrench and writhe and kick - And crush the desperate lives of whom they can. - I will not tread the corpsy path of commerce - Nor juggle with men’s bones. The world shall wend - Those murderous ways. Not I, no, never I. - You shall not gaol me round with city walls; - I will not waste among your houses; roads - That indiscriminate feel a thousand footings - Shall not for mine augment their insolence. - But, as of old the poet, poet now - Shall hold a near communion with earth, - Free from all traffic or truck with worldlihood: - As poet one time lived of natural bounty, - So now shall I. Yet differs even this. - Me no man wronging still the world shall hound - With interdict of food. Gamekeepers, bailiffs, - And all the manlings vail and bob to lords - Shall sturdy stand on decent English Law - And threat my famine with a worser fate, - The seasonless monotonies of walls - That straitlier cabin than the closest town. - So let them threat. War stands between us. I - Take peril comrade, knowing a hazel scarp - That breaks down ragged to a scampering brook; - Knowing a hill whose deep-slit, slanting sides - Brave out the wind and shoulder the rough clouds through. - - -A FAR COUNTRY - - THIS wood is older born than other woods: - The trees are God’s imagining of trees, - Anemones - So pale as these - Have never laughed like children in far solitudes, - Shaking and breaking worldforweary moods - To pure and childish glees. - - The dripple from the mossed and plashing beck - Has carven glassy walls of pallid stone, - Where ferns have thrown - Fine silks unsewn, - Faint clouds unskied, that, one enchanted moment, check - And chalice waterdrops. They, silver grown, - With moons the darkness fleck. - - - - -_HILDA REID_ - -(_SOMERVILLE_) - - -THE MAGNANIMITY OF BEASTS - - MAN--you who think you really know - The beast you gaze on in the show, - Nor see with what consummate art - Each animal enacts its part-- - How different do they all appear - The moment that you are not there! - Then, fawns with liquid eyes a-flame - Pursue the bear, their nightly game; - Wolves shiver as the rabbit roars - And stretches his terrific claws; - While trembling tigers dare not sleep - For passionate, relentless sheep, - And frantic eagles through the skies - Are chased by angry butterflies. - --But beasts would suffer all confusions - Before they shattered man’s illusions. - - - - -_EDGELL RICKWORD_ - -(_PEMBROKE_) - - -INTIMACY - - SINCE I have seen you do those intimate things - That other men but dream of; lull asleep - The sinister dark forest of your hair, - And tie the bows that stir on your calm breast - Faintly as leaves that shudder in their sleep. - Since I have seen your stocking swallow up, - A swift black wind, the pale flame of your foot, - And deemed your slender limbs so meshed in silk - Sweet mermaid sisters drowned in their dark hair; - I have not troubled overmuch with food, - And wine has seemed like water from a well; - Pavements are built of fire, grass of thin flames. - All other girls grow dull as painted flowers - Or flutter harmlessly like coloured flies - Whose wings are tangled in the net of leaves - Spread by frail trees that grow behind the eyes. - - -GRAVE JOYS - -TO PEGGY - - WHEN our sweet bodies moulder under-ground, - Shut off from these bright waters and clear skies, - When we hear nothing but the sullen sound - Of dead flesh dropping slowly from the bone - And muffled fall of tongue and ears and eyes; - Perhaps, as each disintegrates alone, - Frail broken vials once brimmed with curious sense, - Our souls will pitch old Grossness from his throne, - And on the beat of unsubstantial wings - Soar to new ecstasies still more intense. - There the thin voice of horny, black-legged things - Shall thrill me as girls' laughter thrills me here, - And the cold drops a passing storm-cloud flings - Be my strong wine, and crawling roots and clods - My trees and hills, and slugs swift fallow deer. - There I shall dote upon a sexless flower - By dream-ghosts planted in my dripping brain, - And suck from those cold petals subtler power - Than from your colder, whiter flesh could fall, - Most vile of girls and lovelier than all. - But in your tomb the deathless She will reign - And draw new lovers out of rotting sods - That your lithe body may for ever squirm - Beneath the strange embraces of the worm. - - -ADVICE TO A GIRL FROM THE WARS - - WEEP for me but one day, - Dry then your eyes; - Think, is a heap of clay - Worth a maid’s sighs? - - Sigh nine days if you can - For my waste blood; - Think then, you love a man - Whose face is mud; - - Whose flesh and hair thrill not - At your faint touch; - Dear! limbs and brain will rot, - Dream not of such. - - -YEGOR - -"What shall I write?" said Yegor.--TCHEKOV. - - "What shall I write?" said Yegor; - "Of the bright-plumed bird that sings - Hovering on the fringes of the forest, - Where leafy dreams are grown, - And thoughts go with silent flutterings, - Like moths by a dark wind blown?" - - "Oh, write of those quiet women, - Beautiful, slim and pale, - Whose bodies glimmer under cool green waters, - Whose hands like lilies float - Tangled in the heavy purple veil - Of hair on their breast and throat." - - "Or write of swans and princes - Carved out of marble clouds, - Of the flowers that wither upon distant mountains, - Grey-pencilled in the brain; - Of fiercely hurrying night-born crowds - By the first swift sun-ray slain." - - "Nay, I will sing," said Yegor, - "Of stranger things than these, - Of a girl I met in the fresh of morning, - A laughing, slender flame; - Of the slow stream’s song and the chant of bees, - In a land without a name." - - -STRANGE ELEMENTS - - WHEN my girl swims with me I think - She is a Shark with hungry teeth, - Because her throat that dazzles me - Is white as sharks are underneath. - - And when she drags me down with her - Under the wave, she clings so tight, - She seems a deadly Water-snake - Who smothers me in that dim light. - - Yet when we lie on the hot sand, - I find she cannot bite or hiss, - But she swears I’m a Tiger fierce - Who kills her slowly with a kiss. - - - - -_W. FORCE STEAD_ - -(_QUEEN’S_) - - -THE BURDEN OF BABYLON[A] - - "It is in the soul that things happen." - - [A] The lyrics from "The Burden of Babylon" appeared in OXFORD POETRY, - 1919. The present editors have decided to reprint them with their - context. - - SCENE: _An upper chamber in the Palace of the King of Babylon. Dusk - on a hot summer’s evening. The voice of one singing far off beyond - the palace-gardens is heard vaguely from time to time. The King is - sitting by an open window._ - - - THE KING OF BABYLON - - SINCE I am Babylon, I am the world. - The windy heavens and the rainy skies - Attend the earth in humble servitude. - And I am Babylon, I am the world: - The heavens and their powers attend on me. - - THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE NIGHT - - _Babylon, the glory of the Kingdoms,_ - _And the Chaldee’s excellency,_ - _Is become as Sodom and Gomorrah,_ - _Whom God overthrew by the Sea._ - - THE KING - - Who is that fellow crying by the river? - I think I heard him lift his voice in praise - Of Babylon: some minstrelle seeking hire: - I need him not to tell me who I am, - For I am Baladan of Babylon. - The splendours of my sceptre, throne, and crown, - And all the awe that fills my royal halls, - The pomp that heralds me, the shout that follows, - Are flying shadows and reflections only - From the wide dazzlings of myself, the King. - This I conceive: and yet, we kings have labour - To apprehend ourselves imperially, - And see the blaze and lightnings of our person; - The thought of their own sovereignty amazes - The princelings even, and the lesser kings: - But I am Baladan of Babylon. - - THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT - - _Never again inhabited,_ - _Babylon, O Babylon_ - _Even the wandering Arabian_ - _From thy weary waste is gone._ - _Neither shall the shepherd tend his fold there,_ - _Nor any green herb be grown:_ - _It cometh in the night-time suddenly,_ - _And Babylon is overthrown._ - - THE KING - - PALE from the east, the stars arise, and climb, - And then grow bright, beholding Babylon; - They would delay, but may not; so they pass, - And fade and fall, bereft of Babylon. - Quick from the Midian line the sun comes up, - For he expects to see my palaces; - And the moon lingers, even on the wane.... - Mine ancient dynasty, as yon great river, - Euphrates, with his fountains in far hills, - Arose in the blue morning of the years; - And as yon river flows on into time, - Unalterable in majesty, my line - Survives in domination down the years. - I know, but am concerned not, that some peoples, - At the pale limits of the world, abide - As yet beyond the circle of my sway, - The miserable sons of meagre soil - That needs much tillage ere the yield be good. - I only wait until they ripen more, - And fatten toward my final harvesting: - When I am ready, I will reap them in. - For it is written in the stars, and read - Of all my wise men and astrologers, - That I, and my great line of Babylon, - Shall rule the world, and only find a bound - Where the horizon’s bounds are set, an end - When the world ends; so shall all other lands, - All languages, all peoples, and all tongues, - Become a fable told of olden times, - Deemed of our sons a thing incredulous. - - THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT - - _Woeful are thy desolate palaces,_ - _Where doleful creatures lie,_ - _And wild beasts out of the islands_ - _In thy fallen chambers cry._ - _Where now are the viol and the tabret?--_ - _But owls hoot in moonlight,_ - _And over the ruins of Babylon_ - _The satyrs dance by night._ - - THE KING - - THAT voice, that seems to hum my kingdom’s glory - Fails in the vast immensity of night, - As fails all earthly praise of Him who hears - The ceaseless acclamation of the stars. - What needs there more?--the apple of the world, - Grown ripe and juicy, rolls into my lap, - And all the gods of Babylon, well pleased - With blood of bulls and fume of fragrant things, - Even while I take mine ease, attend on me: - The figs do mellow, the olive, and the vine, - And in the plains climb the big sycamores; - My camels and my laden dromedaries - Move in from eastward bearing odorous gums, - And the Zidonians hew me cedar beams, - Even tall cedars out of Lebanon; - Euphrates floats his treasured freightage down, - And all great Babylon is filled with spoil. - Wherefore, upon the summit of the world, - The utmost apex of this thronèd realm, - I stand, as stands the driving charioteer, - And steer my course right onward toward the stars. - Mean-fated men my horses trample under, - And my wine-bins have drained the blood of mothers, - And smoothly my wheels run upon the necks - Of babes and sucklings,--while I hold my way, - Serene, supreme, secure in destiny, - Because the gods perceive mine excellence, - And entertain for mine imperial Person - Peculiar favours.... I am Babylon: - Exceeding precious in the High One’s eyes. - - THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT - - _Babylon is fallen, fallen,_ - _And never shall be known again!_ - _Drunken with the blood of my belovèd,_ - _And trampling on the sons of men._ - _But God is awake and aware of thee,_ - _And sharply shines His sword,_ - _Where over the earth spring suddenly_ - _The hidden hosts of the Lord;_ - _Armies of right and of righteousness,_ - _Huge hosts, unseen, unknown:_ - _And thy pomp, and thy revellings, and glory,_ - _Where the wind goes, they are gone._ - - - - -_L. A. G. STRONG_ - -(_WADHAM_) - - -FROST - - Unnatural foliage pales the trees, - Frost in compassion of their death - Has kissed them, and his icy breath - Proclaims and silvers their election. - Death, wert thou beautiful as these, - We scarce would pray for resurrection. - - -VERA VENVSTAS - - CORPORIS - - Proud Eastern Queene, - Borne forth in splendour to thy buriall. - What need of gems - To deck thee? Bear the Tyrian gauds aside. - Thy own dead loveliness outshines the pride - Of diadems. - - ANIMÆ - - O splendid hearte, - Scorned and afflicted, still thou needest not - Comfort of me. - What matter though the body be uncouthe - Wherein thou art? Fear not. He seeth truth - Who gave it thee. - -[To be chaunted as in a solemn Dumpe by such as fear God.] - - -A BABY - - TWO days with puckered face of pain - The accidental baby cried, - And on the morning of the third - Unclenched her tiny hands, and died. - - -FROM THE GREEK - - BILL Jupp lies ’ere, aged sixty year: - From Tavistock ’e came. - Single ’e bided, and ’e wished - ’Is father’d done the same. - - -A DEVON RHYME - - GNARLY and bent and deaf ’s a post - Pore ol' Ezekiel Purvis - Goeth creepin' slowly up the ’ill - To the Commoonion Survis. - - Tap-tappy-tappy up the haisle - Goeth stick and brassy ferule; - And Parson ’ath to stoopy down - And ’olley in ees yerole. - - -THE BIRD MAN - -TO ERIC DICKINSON - - I DREAD the parrots of the summer sun, - The harsh and blazing screams of July noon, - A riot of jays and peacocks and macaws. - There is some presage of big ardours due - Even in the pale flamingoes of the dawn; - While golden pheasants and hoopoes of the West - Burn fierce and proudly still, when he has set. - - Better the winter wagtails of pied skies, - Cold ospreys of the north, cormorants of squall, - Brown wrens of rain, white silent owls of snow, - And bitterns of great clouds that in October - Sweep from the west at evening. Lovelier still - The night’s black swans, the daws of starless night - (Daw-like to hide what’s shiny), plovers and gulls - Of winds that cry on autumn afternoons.... - - These every one I love: but above these - Rarest of all my birds, I dearly love - The blue and silver herons of the moon. - - -CHRISTOPHER MARLYE - - CHRISTOPHER MARLYE damned his God - In many a blasphemous mighty line, - --Being given to words and wenches and wine. - - He wrote his Faustus, and laughed to see - How everyone feared his devils but he. - - Christopher Marlye passed the gate, - Eager to stalk on the floor of Heaven, - Outface his God, and affront the Seven: - - But Peter genially let him in, - Making no mention of all his sin. - - And he got no credit for all he had done, - Though he grabbed a hold on the coat of God, - And bellowed his infamies one by one, - Blasphemy, lechery, thought, and deed ... - - But nobody paid him the slightest heed. - - And the devils and torments he thought to brave - He left behind, on this side of the grave. - - Heigh-ho! for Christopher Marlye. - - - PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY - BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Oxford Poetry, by Vera Mary Brittain - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD POETRY *** - -***** This file should be named 50376-0.txt or 50376-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/3/7/50376/ - -Produced by MWS, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - -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. 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