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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..07cab5d --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #53206 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53206) diff --git a/old/53206-0.txt b/old/53206-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2d06e04..0000000 --- a/old/53206-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9170 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Selections from Modern Poets, by Various - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Selections from Modern Poets - Made by J. C. Squire - Sassoon, Joyce, Graves... - -Author: Various - -Release Date: October 4, 2016 [EBook #53206] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM MODERN POETS *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version, also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) -Images generously made available by the Internet Achive. - - - - - - -SELECTIONS FROM MODERN POETS - -MADE BY J. C. SQUIRE - -LONDON: MARTIN SECKER - -1921 - - - - -PREFATORY NOTE - - -No Poet represented in this book was over fifty when, in 1919, I began -to compile it. The eldest of them all was born in 1870. - -Many good and some great living poets are therefore missing from its -pages. Nothing is here by Mr Hardy or Mr Bridges, by Mr A. E. Housman, -Mr Yeats, _Æ,_ Mr Binyon, Mr Hewlett, Mr Herbert Trench, Mr Gosse, Mr -Austin Dobson, Mr Doughty, Mr Kipling, Sir Henry Newbolt, Mrs Meynell, -Mrs Woods, Mr Wilfrid Blunt, and others whose names must appear in -any comprehensive anthology from living poets. The date, 1870, was -arbitrarily chosen: so would any other date have been. But some date I -had to fix, for my object was to illustrate what many of us think an -exceptional recent flowering. - -I do not propose to analyse the tendencies, in idea and in method, -exhibited in the poems here collected. These things are always -better seen at a distance; and anyhow the materials are here for -the production of an analysis by the reader himself, if he is eager -for one. But I will express one opinion, and call attention to one -phenomenon. The opinion is that the majority of the poems in this book -have merit and that many more could have been printed without lowering -the standard. And the phenomenon is the simultaneous appearance--the -result of underlying currents of thought and feeling--of a very large -number of poets who write only or mainly in lyrical forms. Several -living poets of the highest repute have won their reputation solely on -short poems, and there are, and have been, a very large number indeed -who have written one or two good poems. - -The better production of our generation has been mainly lyrical and -it has been widely diffused. Where is the ambitious work on a large -scale? Where is the twentieth century poet who is fulfilling the usual -functions of the greatest poets: to display human life in all its range -and variety, or to exercise a clear and powerful influence on the -thought of mankind with regard to the main problems of our existence? -These questions are asked; possibly Echo may give its traditional and -ironic answer. - -There are several observations, however, which should be made. One is -that the great doctrinal poets have not always become widely recognised -as such in their own prime, their general vogue being posthumous. -Another is that we cannot possibly tell what a poet now living and -young may or may not do before he dies. But though I have my own views -on this subject I do not think that the age, even if admitted to be -purely lyrical, stands in need of defence. It is of no use asking a -poetical renascence to conform to type, for there isn't any type. -There are marked differences in the features of all those English -poetical movements which have chiefly contributed to the body of our -"immortal" poetry. In the Elizabethan age we had the greatest diversity -of production: a multitude of great and small men, with much genius, -or but a spark of it blown to life by the favourable wind, produced -works in every form and on every scale. The age of Herbert and Vaughan, -of Crashaw, Herrick, Marvell, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, Corbet, -Habington, is memorable almost solely for its lyrical work. The era -of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats was an age during -which a vast amount of great poetry was written by a few great poets; -there was very little healthy undergrowth. Should our literary age be -remembered by posterity solely as an age during which fifty men had -written lyrics of some durability for their truth and beauty, it would -not be remembered with contempt. It is in that conviction that I have -compiled this anthology. - -It is irritating to feel that even within its own limits it does -not appear to myself--not to mention others--as good or as nearly -representative as it might have been. Permission could not be obtained -to print Mr Masefield's _Biography_ and his _August 1914,_ which I -personally happen to prefer to any of his shorter works. Since the time -in 1919-20 when I was compiling the book two volumes have come out from -which I should like to have made large seleetions: Edmund Blunden's -_The Waggoner_ and the late Wilfrid Owen's _Poems._ Each of these poets -is inadequately represented here; and a few things by others, who do -not appear here at all, came to my notice when it was too late to put -them in. - -I have to thank the living poets from whose works I have drawn for -permitting me to use everything I wanted. I am grateful to Mrs -Brooke and Rupert Brooke's literary executor, Mr Edward Marsh (whose -"Georgian" collections have been a great stimulus and help to me) for -permission to use a selection from Brooke; to Mrs J. E. Flecker for -poems by her husband; to Lady Desborough for the poems by her son, -Julian Grenfell; to Lord Dunsany for the poems by Francis Ledwidge; to -Mrs Thomas Macdonagh and Mrs Joseph Plunkett for the poems by their -husbands; to Mrs Owen for her son Wilfrid Owen's _Strange Meeting;_ -to Professor W. R. Sorley for the poems by his son, Charles Sorley; -to Lady Glenconner for those by her son, Edward Wyndham Tennant; to -Mrs Edward Thomas for the poems (published too late for him ever to -know-how people would admire them) by Edward Thomas. - -Finally, almost every publisher in the kingdom has assisted the book -with permission to reprint copyright poems. The full list of publishers -and works is as follows: Messrs Bell (Edward L. Davison, _Poems_); -Blackwell (E. Wyndham Tennant, _Worple Flit_); Burns' Oates and -Washbourne (G. K. Chesterton, _Poems_); Cambridge University Press (C. -H. Sorley, _Marlborough and other Poems_); Chatto and Windus (Robert -Nichols, _Ardours and Endurances, Aurelia,_ Wilfred Owen, _Poems_); -Collins (F. Brett Young, _Poems_); Constable (Gordon Bottomley, -_Annual of New Poetry,_ 1917, W. de la Mare, _Collected Poems_); -Dent (G. K. Chesterton, _The Wild Knight_); Duckworth (H. Belloc, -_Poems,_ D. H. Lawrence, _Love Poems,_ Sturge Moore, _Collected Poems_); -Fifield (W. H. Davies, _Collected Poems_); Heffer (A. Y. Campbell, -_Poems_); Heinemann (Robert Graves, _Fairies and Fusiliers,_ John -Masefield, _Lollingdon Downs,_ Siegfried Sassoon, _The Old Huntsman, -Counter-Attack, War Poems_); Herbert Jenkins (Francis Ledwidge, -_Poems_); Lane (Lascelles Abercrombie, _Emblems of Love_); Macmillan -(Ralph Hodgson, _Poems,_ James Stephens, _Songs from the Clay_); -Elkin Mathews (Gordon Bottomley, _Chambers of Imagery,_ James Joyce, -_Chamber Music,_ Sturge Moore, _The Vinedresser_); Maunsel and Roberts -(Padraic Colum, _Poems,_ Seumas O'Sullivan, _The Twilight People,_ -Joseph Plunkett, _Poems_); Methuen (G. K. Chesterton, _The Ballad of -the White Horse,_ W. H. Davies, _The Bird of Paradise,_ I. A. Williams, -_Poems_); Palmer (Francis Burrows, _The Green Knight_); Poetry Bookshop -(Frances Cornford, _Poems,_ Harold Monro, _Children of Love, Strange -Meetings_); Seeker (Martin Armstrong, _The Buzzards,_ Maurice Baring, -_Poems_ 1914-1919, J. E. Flecker, _Collected Poems,_ Robert Graves, -_Country Sentiment,_ Edward Shanks, _The Queen of China_); Selwyn and -Blount (Robin Flower, _Hymensea,_ John Freeman, _Poems New and Old,_ -Edward Thomas, _Collected Poems_); Sidgwick & Jackson (Edmund Blunden, -_The Waggoner,_ Rupert Brooke, _Collected Poems,_ John Drinkwater, -_Olton Pools,_ R. C. K. Ensor, _Odes,_ Ivor Gurney, _Severn and Somme,_ -R. Macaulay, _The Two Blind Countries,_ W. J. Turner, _The Hunter, The -Dark Fire_); Talbot Press and Fisher Unwin (T. Macdonagh, _Poems_). - - J. C. SQUIRE. - - - - LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE - - - - - MARRIAGE SONG - - - Come up, dear chosen morning, come, - Blessing the air with light, - And bid the sky repent of being dark: - Let all the spaces round the world be white, - And give the earth her green again. - Into new hours of beautiful delight, - Out of the shadow where she has lain, - Bring the earth awake for glee, - Shining with dews as fresh and clear - As my beloved's voice upon the air. - For now, O morning chosen of all days, on thee - A wondrous duty lies: - There was an evening that did loveliness foretell; - Thence upon thee, O chosen morn, it fell - To fashion into perfect destiny - The radiant prophecy. - For in an evening of young moon, that went - Filling the moist air with a rosy fire, - I and my beloved knew our love; - And knew that thou, O morning, wouldst arise - To give us knowledge of achieved desire. - For, standing stricken with astonishment, - Half terrified in the delight, - Even as the moon did into clear air move - And made a golden light, - Lo there, croucht up against it, a dark hill, - A monstrous back of earth, a spine - Of hunchèd rock, furred with great growth of pine, - Lay like a beast, snout in its paws, asleep; - Yet in its sleeping seemed it miserable, - As though strong fear must always keep - Hold of its heart, and drive its blood in dream. - Yea, for to our new love, did it not seem, - That dark and quiet length of hill, - The sleeping grief of the world?--Out of it we - Had like imaginations stept to be - Beauty and golden wonder; and for the lovely fear - Of coming perfect joy, had changed - The terror that dreamt there I - And now the golden moon had turned - To shining white, white as our souls that burned - With vision of our prophecy assured: - Suddenly white was the moon; but she - At once did on a woven modesty - Of cloud, and soon went in obscured: - And we were dark, and vanisht that strange hill. - But yet it was not long before - There opened in the sky a narrow door, - Made with pearl lintel and pearl sill; - And the earth's night seem'd pressing there,-- - All as a beggar on some festival would peer,-- - To gaze into a room of light beyond, - The hidden silver splendour of the moon. - Yea, and we also, we - Long gazed wistfully - Towards thee, O morning, come at last, - And towards the light that thou wilt pour upon us soon! - - - II - - O soul who still art strange to sense, - Who often against beauty wouldst complain, - Doubting between joy and pain - If like the startling touch of something keen - Against thee, it hath been - To follow from an upland height - The swift sun hunting rain - Across the April meadows of a plain, - Until the fields would flash into the air - Their joyous green, like emeralds alight - Or when in the blue of night's mid-noon - The burning naked moon - Draws to a brink of cloudy weather near, - A breadth of snow, firm and soft as a wing, - Stretcht out over a wind that gently goes,-- - Through the white sleep of snowy cloud there grows - An azure-border'd shining ring, - The gleaming dream of the approaching joy of her;-- - What now wilt thou do, Soul? What now, - If with such things as these troubled thou wert? - How wilt thou now endure, or how - Not now be strangely hurt?--When - utter beauty must come closer to thee - Than even anger or fear could be; - When thou, like metal in a kiln, must lie - Seized by beauty's mightily able flame; - Enjoyed by beauty as by the ruthless glee - Of an unescapable power; - Obeying beauty as air obeys a cry; - Yea, one thing made of beauty and thee, - As steel and a white heat are made the same! - --Ah, but I know how this infirmity - Will fail and be not, no, not memory, - When I begin the marvellous hour. - This only is my heart's strain'd eagerness, - Long waiting for its bliss.-- - But from those other fears, from those - That keep to Love so close, - From fears that are the shadow of delight, - Hide me, O joys; make them unknown to-night! - - - III - - Thou bright God that in dream earnest to me last night, - Thou with the flesh made of a golden light, - Knew I not thee, thee and thy heart, - Knew I not well, God, who thou wert? - Yea, and my soul divinely understood - The light that was beneath thee a ground, - The golden light that cover'd thee round, - Turning my sleep to a fiery morn, - Was as a heavenly oath there sworn - Promising me an immortal good: - Well I knew thee, God of Marriages, thee and thy flame! - Ah, but wherefore beside thee came - That fearful sight of another mood? - Why in thy light, to thy hand chained, - Towards me its bondage terribly strained, - Why came with thee that dreadful hound, - The wild hound Fear, black, ravenous, and gaunt? - Why him with thee should thy dear light surround? - Why broughtest thou that beast to haunt - The blissful footsteps of my golden dream?-- - All shadowy black the body dread, - All frenzied fire the head,-- - The hunger of its mouth a hollow crimson flame, - The hatred in its eyes a blaze - Fierce and green, stabbing the ruddy glaze, - And sharp white jetting fire the teeth snarl'd at me, - And white the dribbling rage of froth,-- - A throat that gaped to bay and paws working violently, - Yet soundless all as a winging moth; - Tugging towards me, famishing for my heart;-- - Even while thou, O golden god, wert still - Looking the beautiful kindness of thy will - Into my soul, even then must I be, - With thy bright promise looking at me, - Then bitterly of that hound afraid?-- - Darkness, I know, attendeth bright, - And light comes not but shadow comes: - And heart must know, if it know thy light, - Thy wild hound Fear, the shadow of love's delight. - Yea, is it thus? Are we so made - Of death and darkness, that even thou, - O golden God of the joys of love, - Thy mind to us canst only prove, - The glorious devices of thy mind, - By so revealing how thy journeying here - Through this mortality, doth closely bind - Thy brightness to the shadow of dreadful Fear?-- - Ah no, it shall not be! Thy joyous light - Shall hide me from the hunger of fear to-night. - - - IV - - For wonderfully to live I now begin. - So that the darkness which accompanies - Our being here, is fasten'd up within - The power of light that holdeth me; - And from these shining chains, to see - My joy with bold misliking eyes, - The shrouded figure will not dare arise. - For henceforth, from to-night, - I am wholly gone into the bright - Safety of the beauty of love: - Not only all my waking vigours plied - Under the searching glory of love, - But knowing myself with love all satisfied - Even when my life is hidden in sleep; - As high clouds, to themselves that keep - The moon's white company, are all possest - Silverly with the presence of their guest; - Or as a darken'd room - That hath within it roses, whence the air - And quietness are taken everywhere - Deliciously by sweet perfume. - - - EPILOGUE - - What shall we do for Love these days? - How shall we make an altar-blaze - To smite the horny eyes of men - With the renown of our Heaven, - And to the unbelievers prove - Our service to our dear god, Love? - What torches shall we lift above - The crowd that pushes through the mire, - To amaze the dark heads with strange fire? - I should think I were much to blame, - If never I held some fragrant flame - Above the noises of the world, - And openly 'mid men's hurrying stares, - Worshipt before the sacred fears - That are like flashing curtains furl'd - Across the presence of our lord Love. - Nay, would that I could fill the gaze - Of the whole earth with some great praise - Made in a marvel for men's eyes, - Some tower of glittering masonries, - Therein such a spirit flourishing - Men should see what my heart can sing: - All that Love hath done to me - Built into stone, a visible glee; - Marble carried to gleaming height - As moved aloft by inward delight; - Not as with toil of chisels hewn, - But seeming poised in a mighty tune. - For of all those who have been known - To lodge with our kind host, the sun, - I envy one for just one thing: - In Cordova of the Moors - There dwelt a passion-minded King, - Who set great bands of marble-hewers - To fashion his heart's thanksgiving - In a tall palace, shapen so - All the wondering world might know - The joy he had of his Moorish lass. - His love, that brighter and larger was - Than the starry places, into firm stone - He sent, as if the stone were glass - Fired and into beauty blown. - - Solemn and invented gravely - In its bulk the fabric stood, - Even as Love, that trusteth bravely - In its own exceeding good - To be better than the waste - Of time's devices; grandly spaced, - Seriously the fabric stood. - But over it all a pleasure went - Of carven delicate ornament, - Wreathing up like ravishment, - Mentioning in sculptures twined - The blitheness Love hath in his mind; - And like delighted senses were - The windows, and the columns there - Made the following sight to ache - As the heart that did them make. - Well I can see that shining song - Flowering there, the upward throng - Of porches, pillars and windowed walls, - Spires like piercing panpipe calls, - Up to the roof's snow-cloud flight; - All glancing in the Spanish light - White as water of arctic tides, - Save an amber dazzle on sunny sides. - You had said, the radiant sheen - Of that palace might have been - A young god's fantasy, ere he came - His serious worlds and suns to frame; - Such an immortal passion - Quiver'd among the slim hewn stone. - And in the nights it seemed a jar - Cut in the substance of a star, - Wherein a wine, that will be poured - Some time for feasting Heaven, was stored. - - But within this fretted shell, - The wonder of Love made visible, - The King a private gentle mood - There placed, of pleasant quietude. - For right amidst there was a court, - Where always musked silences - Listened to water and to trees; - And herbage of all fragrant sort,--Lavender, - lad's-love, rosemary, - Basil, tansy, centaury,-- - Was the grass of that orchard, hid - Love's amazements all amid. - Jarring the air with rumour cool, - Small fountains played into a pool - With sound as soft as the barley's hiss - When its beard just sprouting is; - Whence a young stream, that trod on moss, - Prettily rimpled the court across. - And in the pool's clear idleness, - Moving like dreams through happiness, - Shoals of small bright fishes were; - In and out weed-thickets bent - Perch and carp, and sauntering went - With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; - Or on a lotus leaf would crawl, - A brinded loach to bask and sprawl, - Tasting the warm sun ere it dipt - Into the water; but quick as fear - Back his shining brown head slipt - To crouch on the gravel of his lair, - Where the cooled sunbeams broke in wrack, - Spilt shatter'd gold about his back. - - So within that green-veiled air, - Within that white-walled quiet, where - Innocent water thought aloud,-- - Childish prattle that must make - The wise sunlight with laughter shake - On the leafage overbowed,-- - Often the King and his love-lass - Let the delicious hours pass. - All the outer world could see - Graved and sawn amazingly - Their love's delighted riotise, - Fixt in marble for all men's eyes; - But only these twain could abide - In the cool peace that withinside - Thrilling desire and passion dwelt; - They only knew the still meaning spelt - By Love's flaming script, which is - God's word written in ecstasies. - - And where is now that palace gone, - All the magical skill'd stone, - All the dreaming towers wrought - By Love as if no more than thought - The unresisting marble was? - How could such a wonder pass? - Ah, it was but built in vain - Against the stupid horns of Rome, - That pusht down into the common loam - The loveliness that shone in Spain. - But we have raised it up again! - A loftier palace, fairer far, - Is ours, and one that fears no war. - Safe in marvellous walls we are; - Wondering sense like builded fires, - High amazement of desires, - Delight and certainty of love, - Closing around, roofing above - Our unapproacht and perfect hour - Within the splendours of love's power. - - - - - MARTIN ARMSTRONG - - - - - THE BUZZARDS - - - When evening came and the warm glow grew deeper, - And every tree that bordered the green meadows - And in the yellow cornfields every reaper - And every corn-shock stood above their shadows - Flung eastward from their feet in longer measure, - Serenely far there swam in the sunny height - A buzzard and his mate who took their pleasure - Swirling and poising idly in golden light. - - On great pied motionless moth-wings borne along, - So effortless and so strong, - Cutting each other's paths together they glided, - Then wheeled asunder till they soared divided - Two valleys' width (as though it were delight - To part like this, being sure they could unite - So swiftly in their empty, free dominion), - Curved headlong downward, towered up the sunny steep, - Then, with a sudden lift of the one great pinion, - Swung proudly to a curve, and from its height - Took half a mile of sunlight in one long sweep. - - And we, so small on the swift immense hillside, - Stood tranced, until our souls arose uplifted - On those far-sweeping, wide, - Strong curves of flight--swayed up and hugely drifted, - Were washed, made strong and beautiful in the tide - Of sun-bathed air. But far beneath, beholden - Through shining deeps of air, the fields were golden - And rosy burned the heather where cornfields ended. - - And still those buzzards whirled, while light withdrew - Out of the vales and to surging slopes ascended, - Till the loftiest flaming summit died to blue. - - - - - MAURICE BARING - - - - - DIFFUGERE NIVES, 1917 - - _To_ J. C. S. - - - The snows have fled, the hail, the lashing rain, - Before the Spring. - The grass is starred with buttercups again, - The blackbirds sing. - - Now spreads the month that feast of lovely things - We loved of old. - Once more the swallow glides with darkling wings - Against the gold. - - Now the brown bees about the peach trees boom - Upon the walls; - And far away beyond the orchard's bloom - The cuckoo calls. - - The season holds a festival of light - For you, for me; - But shadows are abroad, there falls a blight - On each green tree. - - And every leaf unfolding, every flower - Brings bitter meed; - Beauty of the morning and the evening hour - Quickens our need. - - All is reborn, but never any Spring - Can bring back this; - Nor any fullness of midsummer bring - The voice we miss. - - The smiling eyes shall smile on us no more; - The laughter clear, - Too far away on the forbidden shore, - We shall not hear. - - Bereft of these until the day we die, - We both must dwell; - Alone, alone, and haunted by the cry: - "Hail and farewell! - - Yet when the scythe of Death shall near us hiss, - Through the cold air, - Then on the shuddering marge of the abyss - They will be there. - - They will be there to lift us from sheer space - And empty night; - And we shall turn and see them face to face - In the new light. - - So shall we pay the unabated price - Of their release, - And found on our consenting sacrifice - Their lasting peace. - - The hopes that fall like leaves before the wind, - The baffling waste, - And every earthly joy that leaves behind - A mortal taste. - - The uncompleted end of all things dear, - The clanging door - Of Death, forever loud with the last fear, - Haunt them no more. - - Without them the awakening world is dark - With dust and mire; - Yet as they went they flung to us a spark, - A thread of fire. - - To guide us while beneath the sombre skies - Faltering we tread, - Until for us like morning stars shall rise - The deathless dead. - - - - - JULIAN GRENFELL - - - Because of you we will be glad and gay, - Remembering you, we will be brave and strong; - And hail the advent of each dangerous day, - And meet the last adventure with a song. - And, as you proudly gave your jewelled gift, - We'll give our lesser offering with a smile, - Nor falter on that path where, all too swift, - You led the way and leapt the golden stile. - - Whether new paths, new heights to climb you find, - Or gallop through the unfooted asphodel, - We know you know we shall not lag behind, - Nor halt to waste a moment on a fear; - And you will speed us onward with a cheer, - And wave beyond the stars that all is well. - - - - - PIERRE - - - I saw you starting for another war, - The emblem of adventure and of youth, - So that men trembled, saying: He forsooth - Has gone, has gone, and shall return no more. - And then out there, they told me you were dead - Taken and killed; how was it that I knew, - Whatever else was true, that was not true? - And then I saw you pale upon your bed, - - Scarcely a year ago, when you were sent - Back from the margin of the dim abyss; - For Death had sealed you with a warning kiss, - And let you go to meet a nobler fate: - To serve in fellowship, O fortunate: - To die in battle with your regiment. - - - - - HILAIRE BELLOC - - - - - THE SOUTH COUNTRY - - - When I am living in the Midlands - That are sodden and unkind, - I light my lamp in the evening: - My work is left behind; - And the great hills of the South Country - Come back into my mind. - - The great hills of the South Country - They stand along the sea; - And it's there walking in the high woods - That I could wish to be, - And the men that were boys when I was a boy - Walking along with me. - - The men that live in North England - I saw them for a day; - Their hearts are set upon the waste fells, - Their skies are fast and grey; - From their castle-walls a man may see - The mountains far away. - - The men that live in West England - They see the Severn strong, - A-rolling on rough water brown - Light aspen leaves along. - They have the secret of the Rocks, - And the oldest kind of song. - - But the men that live in the South Country - Are the kindest and most wise, - They get their laughter from the loud surf, - And the faith in their happy eyes - Comes surely from our Sister the Spring - When over the sea she flies; - The violets suddenly bloom at her feet, - She blesses us with surprise. - - I never get between the pines - But I smell the Sussex air; - Nor I never come on a belt of sand - But my home is there. - And along the sky the line of the Downs - So noble and so bare. - - A lost thing could I never find, - Nor a broken thing mend: - And I fear I shall be all alone - When I get towards the end. - Who will there be to comfort me - Or who will be my friend? - - I will gather and carefully make my friends - Of the men of the Sussex Weald, - They watch the stars from silent folds, - They stiffly plough the field, - By them and the God of the South Country - My poor soul shall be healed. - - If I ever become a rich man, - Of if ever I grow to be old, - I will build a house with deep thatch - To shelter me from the cold, - And there shall the Sussex songs be sung - And the story of Sussex told. - - I will hold my house in the high wood - Within a walk of the sea, - And the men that were boys when I was a boy - Shall sit and drink with me. - - - - - THE NIGHT - - - Most holy Night, that still dost keep - The keys of all the doors of sleep, - To me when my tired eyelids close - Give thou repose. - - And let the far lament of them - That chant the dead day's requiem - Make in my ears, who wakeful lie, - Soft lullaby. - - Let them that knaw the horned moth - By my bedside their memories clothe. - So shall I have new dreams and blest - In my brief rest. - - Fold your great wings about my face, - Hide dawning from my resting-place, - And cheat me with your false delight, - Most Holy Night. - - - - - SONG - - INVITING THE INFLUENCE OF A YOUNG - LADY UPON THE OPENING YEAR. - - - I - - You wear the morning like your dress - And all with mastery crowned; - When as you walk your loveliness. - Goes shining all around. - Upon your secret, smiling way - Such new contents were found, - The Dancing Loves made holiday - On that delightful ground. - - - II - - Then summon April forth, and send - Commandment through the flowers; - About our woods your grace extend - A queen of careless hours. - For oh, not Vera veiled in vain, - Nor Dian's sacred Ring, - With all her royal nymphs in train - Could so lead on the Spring. - - - - - THE FALSE HEART - - - I said to Heart, "How goes it?" - Heart replied: - "Right as a Ribstone Pippin!" - But it lied. - - - - - HANNAKER MILL (1913) - - - Sally is gone that was so kindly; - Sally is gone from Hannaker Hill, - And the briar grows ever since then so blindly; - And ever since then the clapper is still... - And the sweeps have fallen from Hannaker Mill. - - Hannaker Hill is in desolation; - Ruin a-top and a field unploughed. - And Spirits that call on a falling nation, - Spirits that loved her calling aloud, - Spirits abroad in a windy cloud. - - Spirits that call and no one answers-- - Hannaker's down and England's done. - Wind and thistle for pipe and dancers, - And never a ploughman under the sun: - Never a ploughman, never a one. - - - - - TARANTELLA - - - Do you remember an Inn, - Miranda? - Do you remember an Inn? - And the tedding and the spreading - Of the straw for a bedding, - And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees, - And the wine that tasted of the tar? - And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers - (Under the dark of the vine verandah)? - Do you remember an Inn, Miranda, - Do you remember an Inn? - And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers - Who hadn't got a penny, - And who weren't paying any, - And the hammer at the doors and the Din? - And the Hip! Hop! Hap! - Of the clap - Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl - Of the girl gone chancing, - Glancing, - Dancing, - Backing and advancing, - Snapping of the clapper to the spin - Out and in-- - And the Ting, Tong, Tang of the guitar! - Do you remember an Inn, - Miranda? - Do you remember an Inn? - - Never more; - Miranda, - Never more. - Only the high peaks hoar: - And Aragon a torrent at the door. - No sound - In the walls of the Halls where falls - The tread - Of the feet of the dead to the ground. - No sound: - Only the boom - Of the far Waterfall like Doom. - - - - - ON A DEAD HOSTESS - - - Of this bad world the loveliest and the best - Has smiled, and said good-night, and gone to rest. - - - - - EDMUND BLUNDEN - - - - - ALMSWOMEN - - - At Quincey's moat the squandering village ends, - And there in the almshouse dwell the dearest friends - Of all the village, two old dames that cling - As close as any trueloves in the spring. - Long, long ago they passed three-score-and-ten, - And in this doll's house lived together then; - All things they have in common being so poor, - And their one fear, Death's shadow at the door. - Each sundown makes them mournful, each sunrise - Brings back the brightness in their failing eyes. - - How happy go the rich fair-weather days - When on the roadside folk stare in amaze - At such a honeycomb of fruit and flowers - As mellows round their threshold; what long hours - They gloat upon their steepling hollyhocks, - Bee's balsams, feathery southernwood and stocks, - Fiery dragons'-mouths, great mallow leaves - For salves, and lemon plants in bushy sheaves, - Shagged Esau's Hands with five green finger-tips! - Such old sweet names are ever on their lips. - As pleased as little children where these grow - In cobbled pattens and worn gowns they go, - Proud of their wisdom when on gooseberry shoots - They stuck egg-shells to fright from coming fruits - The brisk-billed rascals; waiting still to see - Their neighbour owls saunter from tree to tree - Or in the hushing half-light mouse the lane - Long-winged and lordly. - - But when those hours wane - Indoors they ponder, scared by the harsh storm - Whose pelting saracens on the window swarm, - And listen for the mail to clatter past - And church clock's deep bay withering on the blast; - They feed the fire that flings a freakish light - On pictured kings and queens grotesquely bright, - Platters and pitchers, faded calendars, - And graceful hour-glass trim with lavenders. - Many a time they kiss and cry, and pray - Both may be summoned in the self-same day, - And wiseman linnet tinkling in his cage - End too with them the friendship of old age, - And all together leave their treasured room - Some bell-like evening when the May's in bloom. - - - - - GLEANING - - - Along the baulk the grasses drenched in dews - Soak through the morning gleaners' clumsy shoes, - And cloying cobwebs trammel their brown cheeks - While from the shouldering sun the dewfog reeks. - Then soon begun, on ground where yesterday - The rakers' warning-sheaf forbade their way, - Hard clucking dames in great white hoods make haste - To cram their lap-bags with the barley waste, - Scrambling as if a thousand were but one, - Careless of stabbing thistles. Now the sun - Gulps up the dew and dries the stubs, and scores - Of tiny people trundle out of doors - Among the stiff stalks, where the scratched hands - Red ants and blackamoors and such as fly; - Tunbellied, too, with legs a finger long, - The spider harvestman; the churlish, strong - Black scorpion, prickled earwig, and that mite - Who shuts up like a leaden shot in fright - And lies for dead. And still before the rout - The young rats and the field mice whisk about - And from the trod whisp out the leveret darts - Bawled at by boys that pass with blundering carts - Top-heavy to the red-tiled barns. And still - The children feed their cornsacks with goodwill, - And farm wives ever faster stoop and flounce. - The hawk drops down a plummet's speed to pounce - The nibbling mouse or resting lark away, - The lost mole tries to pierce the mattocked clay - In agony and terror of the sun. - - The dinner hour and its grudged leisure won, - All sit below the pollards on the dykes, - Rasped with the twinge of creeping barley spikes: - Sweet beyond telling now the small beer goes - From the hooped hardwood bottles, the wasp knows, - And even hornets whizz from the eaten ash-- - Then crusts are dropt and switches snatched to slash, - While, safe in shadow of the apron thrown - Aside the bush which years before was grown - To snap the poacher's nets, the baby sleeps. - Now toil returns, in red-hot fluttering light, - And far afield the weary rabble creeps, - Oft clutching blind wheat black among the white, - That smutches where it touches quick as soot--Oft - gaping where the landrail seems afoot, - Who with such magic throws his baffling speech, - Far off he sounds when scarce beyond arm's reach. - Mongrels are left to mind the morning's gain, - But squinting knaves can slouch to steal the grain; - Now close the farm the fields are gleaned agen, - Where the boy droves the turkey and white hen - To pick the shelled sweet corn; their hue and cry - Answers the gleaners' gabble, and sows trudge - With little pigs to play and rootle there - And all the fields are full of din and blare. - - So steals the time past, so they glean and gloat; - The hobby-horses whir, the moth's dust coat - Blends with the stubble, scarlet soldiers fly - In airy pleasure; but the gleaners' eye - Sees little but their spoil, or robin flower - Ever on tenterhooks to shun the shower, - Their weather-prophet never known astray; - When he folds up, then toward the hedge glean they. - But now the dragon of the sky droops, pales, - And wandering in the wet grey western vales, - Stumbles, and passes, and the gleaning's done. - The farmer, with fat hares slung on his gun, - Gives folk goodnight as down the ruts they pull - The creaking two-wheeled hand carts bursting full, - And whimpering children cease their teasing squalls, - While left alone the supping partridge calls-- - Till all at home is stacked from mischief's way - To thrash and dress the first wild, windy day, - And each good wife crowns weariness with pride, - With such small riches more than satisfied. - - - - - GORDON BOTTOMLEY - - - - - THE PLOUGHMAN - - - Under the long fell's stony eaves - The ploughman, going up and down, - Ridge after ridge man's tide-mark leaves, - And turns the hard grey soil to brown. - - Striding, he measures out the earth - In lines of life, to rain and sun; - And every year that comes to birth - Sees him still striding on and on. - - The seasons change, and then return; - Yet still, in blind, unsparing ways, - However I may shrink or yearn, - The ploughman measures out my days. - - His acre brought forth roots last year; - This year it bears the gloomy grain; - Next Spring shall seedling grass appear; - Then roots and corn and grass again. - - Five times the young corn's pallid green - I have seen spread and change and thrill; - Five times the reapers I have seen - Go creeping up the far-off hill: - - And, as the unknowing ploughman climbs - Slowly and inveterately, - I wonder long how many times - The corn will spring again for me. - - - - - BABEL: THE GATE OF THE GOD - - - Lost towers impend, copeless primeval props - Of the new threatening sky, and first rude digits - Of awe remonstrance and uneasy power - Thrust out by man when speech sank back in his throat: - Then had the last rocks ended bubbling up - And rhythms of change within the heart begun - By a blind need that would make Springs and Winters; - Pylons and monoliths went on by ages, - Mycenae and Great Zimbabwe came about; - Cowed hearts in This conceived a pyramid - That leaned to hold itself upright, a thing - Foredoomed to limits, death and an easy apex; - Then postulants for the stars' previous wisdom - Standing on Carthage must get nearer still; - While in Chaldea an altitude of God - Being mooted, and a Saurian unearthed - Upon a mountain stirring a surmise - Of floods and alterations of the sea, - A round-walled tower must rise upon Senaai - Temple and escape to God the ascertained. - These are decayed like Time's teeth in his mouth, - Black cavities and gaps, yet earth is darkened - By their deep-sunken and unfounded shadows - And memories of man's earliest theme of towers. - - Space--the old source of time--should be undone, - Eternity defined, by men who trusted - Another tier would equal them with God. - A city of grimed brick-kilns, squat truncations, - Hunched like spread toads yet high beneath their circles - Of low packed smoke, assemblages of thunder - That glowed upon their under sides by night - And lit like storm small shadowless workmen's toil. - Meaningless stumps, unturned bare roots, remained - In fields of mashy mud and trampled leaves, - While, if a horse died hauling, plasterers - Knelt on a plank to clip its sweaty coat. - A builder leans across the last wide courses; - His unadjustable unreaching eyes - Fail under him before his glances sink - On the clouds' upper layers of sooty curls - Where some long lightening goes like swallow downward, - But at the wider gallery next below - Recognize master masons with pricked parchments: - That builder then, as one who condescends - Unto the sea and all that is beneath him, - His hairy breast on the wet mortar calls - "How many fathoms is it yet to heaven!" - On the next eminence the orgulous King - Nimrond stands up conceiving he shall live - To conquer God, now that he knows where God is: - His eager hands push up the tower in thought... - Again, his shaggy inhuman height strides down - Among the carpenters because he has seen - One shape an eagle-woman on a door-post: - He drives his spear-beam through him for wasted - day. - - Little men hurrying, running here and there, - Within the dark and stifling walls, dissent - From every sound, and shoulder empty hods: - "The God's great altar should stand in the crypt - Among our earth's foundations"--"The God's great altar - Must be the last far coping of our work"-- - "It should inaugurate the broad main stair"-- - "Or end it"--"It must stand toward the East!" - But here a grave contemptuous youth cries out - "Womanish babblers, how can we build God's altar - Ere we divine its foreordained true shape?" - Then one "It is a pedestal for deeds"-- - "'Tis more and should be hewn like the King's brow"-- - "It has the nature of a woman's bosom"-- - "The tortoise, first created, signifies it"-- - "A blind and rudimentary navel shows - The source of worship better than horned moons." - Then a lean giant "Is not a calyx needful?"-- - "Because round grapes on statues well expressed - Become the nadir of incense, nodal lamps, - Yet apes have hands that but and carved red crystals"-- - "Birds molten, touchly tale veins bronze buds crumble - Ablid ublai ghan isz rad eighar ghaurl ..." - Words said too often seemed such ancient sounds - That men forget them or were lost in them; - The guttural glottis-chasms of language reached - A rhythm, a gasp, were curves of immortal thought. - - Man with his bricks was building, building yet, - Where dawn and midnight mingled and woke no birds, - In the last courses, building past his knowledge - A wall that swung--for towers can have no tops, - No chord can mete the universal segment, - Earth has no basis. Yet the yielding sky, - Invincible vacancy, was there discovered-- - Though piled-up bricks should pulp the sappy balks, - Weight generate a secrecy of heat, - Cankerous charring, crevices' fronds of flame. - - - - - THE END OF THE WORLD - - - The snow had fallen many nights and days; - The sky was come upon the earth at last, - Sifting thinly down as endlessly - As though within the system of blind planets - Something had been forgot or overdriven. - The dawn now seemed neglected in the grey - Where mountains were unbuilt and shadowless trees - Rootlessly paused or hung upon the air. - There was no wind, but now and then a sigh - Crossed that dry falling dust and rifted it - Through crevices of slate and door and casement. - Perhaps the new moon's time was even past. - Outside, the first white twilights were too void - Until a sheep called once, as to a lamb, - And tenderness crept everywhere from it; - But now the flock must have strayed far away. - The lights across the valley must be veiled, - The smoke lost in the greyness or the dusk. - For more than three days now the snow had thatched - That cow-house roof where it had ever melted - With yellow stains from the beasts' breath inside; - But yet a dog howled there, though not quite lately. - Someone passed down the valley swift and singing, - Yes, with locks spreaded like a son of morning; - But if he seemed too tall to be a man - It was that men had been so long unseen, - Or shapes loom larger through a moving snow. - And he was gone and food had not been given him. - When snow slid from an overweighted leaf - Shaking the tree, it might have been a bird - Slipping in sleep or shelter, whirring wings; - Yet never bird fell out, save once a dead one-- - And in two days the snow had covered it. - The dog had howled again--or thus it seemed - Until a lean fox passed and cried no more. - All was so safe indoors where life went on - Glad of the close enfolding snow--O glad - To be so safe and secret at its heart, - Watching the strangeness of familiar things. - They knew not what dim hours went on, went - For while they slept the clock stopt newly wound - As the cold hardened. Once they watched the road, - Thinking to be remembered. Once they doubted - If they had kept the sequence of the days, - Because they heard not any sound of bells. - A butterfly, that hid until the Spring - Under a ceiling's shadow, dropt, was dead. - The coldness seemed more nigh, the coldness deepened - As a sound deepens into silences; - It was of earth and came not by the air; - The earth was cooling and drew down the sky. - The air was crumbling. There was no more sky. - Rails of a broken bed charred in the grate, - And when he touched the bars he thought the sting - Came from their heat--he could not feel such cold ... - She said "O do not sleep, - Heart, heart of mine, keep near me. No, no; sleep. - I will not lift his fallen, quiet eyelids, - Although I know he would awaken then--He - closed them thus but now of his own will. - He can stay with me while I do not lift them." - - - - - ATLANTIS - - - What poets sang in Atlantis? Who can tell - The epics of Atlantis or their names? - The sea hath its own murmurs, and sounds not - The secrets of its silences beneath, - And knows not any cadences enfolded - When the last bubbles of Atlantis broke - Among the quieting of its heaving floor. - - O, years and tides and leagues and all their billows - Can alter not man's knowledge of men's hearts-- - While trees and rocks and clouds include our being - We know the epics of Atlantis still: - A hero gave himself to lesser men, - Who first misunderstood and murdered him, - And then misunderstood and worshipped him; - A woman was lovely and men fought for her, - Towns burnt for her, and men put men in bondage, - But she put lengthier bondage on them all; - A wanderer toiled among all the isles - That fleck this turning star or shifting sea, - Or lonely purgatories of the mind, - In longing for his home or his lost love. - - Poetry is founded on the hearts of men: - Though in Nirvana or the Heavenly courts - The principle of beauty shall persist, - Its body of poetry, as the body of man, - Is but a terrene form, a terrene use, - That swifter being will not loiter with; - And, when mankind is dead and the world cold, - Poetry's immortality will pass. - - - - - NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1913 - - - O, Cartmel bells ring soft to-night, - And Cartmel bells ring clear - But I lie far away to-night, - Listening with my dear; - - Listening in a frosty land - Where all the bells are still - And the small-windowed bell-towers stand - Dark under heath and hill. - - I thought that, with each dying year, - As long as life should last - The bells of Cartmel I should hear - Ring out an aged past: - - The plunging, mingling sounds increase - Darkness's depth and height, - The hollow valley gains more peace - And ancientness to-night: - - The loveliness, the fruitfulness, - The power of life lived there - Return, revive, more closely press - Upon that midnight air. - - But many deaths have place in men - Before they come to die; - Joys must be used and spent, and then - Abandoned and passed by. - - Earth is not ours; no cherished space - Can hold us from life's flow, - That bears us thither and thence by ways - We knew not we should go. - - O, Cartmel bells ring loud, ring clear, - Through midnight deep and hoar, - A year new-born, and I shall hear - The Cartmel bells no more. - - - - - TO IRON-FOUNDERS AND OTHERS - - - When you destroy a blade of grass - You poison England at her roots: - Remember no man's foot can pass - Where evermore no green life shoots. - - You force the birds to wing too high - Where your unnatural vapours creep: - Surely the living rocks shall die - When birds no rightful distance keep. - - You have brought down the firmament - And yet no heaven is more near; - You shape huge deeds without event, - And half made men believe and fear. - - Your worship is your furnaces, - Which, like old idols, lost obscenes, - Have molten bowels; your vision is - Machines for making more machines. - - O, you are buried in the night, - Preparing destinies of rust; - Iron misused must turn to blight - And dwindle to a tettered crust. - - The grass, forerunner of life, has gone, - But plants that spring in ruins and shards - Attend until your dream is done: - I have seen hemlock in your yards. - - The generations of the worm - Know not your loads piled on their soil; - Their knotted ganglions shall wax firm - Till your strong flagstones heave and toil. - - When the old hollowed earth is cracked, - And when, to grasp more power and feasts, - Its ores are emptied, wasted, lacked, - The middens of your burning beasts - - Shall be raked over till they yield - Last priceless slags for fashionings high, - Ploughs to make grass in every field, - Chisels men's hands to magnify. - - - - - RUPERT BROOKE - - _Born 1887_ - _Died at Lemnos 1915_ - - - - - SONNET - - - Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire - Of watching you; and swing me suddenly - Into the shade and loneliness and mire - Of the last land! There, waiting patiently, - - One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing, - See a slow light across the Stygian tide, - And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing, - And tremble. And _I_ shall know that you have died. - - And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream, - Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host, - Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam-- - Most individual and bewildering ghost!-- - - And turn, and toss your brown delightful head - Amusedly, among the ancient Dead. - - - - - THE SOLDIER - - - If I should die, think only this of me: - That there's some corner of a foreign field - That is for ever England. There shall be - In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; - A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, - Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, - A body of England's, breathing English air, - Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. - - And think, this heart, all evil shed away, - A pulse in the eternal mind, no less - Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; - Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; - And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, - In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. - - - - - THE TREASURE - - - When colour goes home into the eyes, - And lights that shine are shut again, - With dancing girls and sweet birds' cries - Behind the gateways of the brain; - And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close - The rainbow and the rose:-- - - Still may Time hold some golden space. - Where I'll unpack that scented store - Of song and flower and sky and face, - And count, and touch, and turn them o'er, - Musing upon them; as a mother, who - Has watched her children all the rich day through, - Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light, - When children sleep, ere night. - - _August,_ 1914. - - - - - THE GREAT LOVER - - - I have been so great a lover I filled my days - So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, - The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, - Desire illimitable, and still content, - And all dear names men use, to cheat despair - For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear - Our hearts at random down the dark of life. - Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife - Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, - My night shall be remembered for a star - That outshone all the suns of all men's days. - Shall I not crown them with immortal praise - Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me - High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see - The inenarrable godhead of delight? - Love is a flame:--we have beaconed the world's night. - A city:--and we have built it, these and I. - An emperor:--we have taught the world to die. - So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, - And the high cause of Love's magnificence, - And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names - Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, - And set them as a banner, that men may know, - To dare the generations, burn, and blow - Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming...... - - These I have loved: - White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, - Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; - Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong - Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; - Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; - And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; - And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, - Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; - Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon - Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss - Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is - Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen - Impassioned beauty of a great machine; - The benison of hot water; furs to touch; - The good smell of old clothes; and other such-- - The comfortable smell of friendly ringers, - Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers - About dead leaves and last year's ferns ... - Dear names, - And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; - Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; - Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; - Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, - Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; - Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam - That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; - And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold - Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; - Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; - And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; - And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;-- - All these have been my loves. And these shall pass, - Whatever passes not, in the great hour, - Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power - To hold them with me through the gate of Death. - They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, - Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust - And sacramented covenant to the dust. - --Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, - And give what's left of love again; and make - New friends, now strangers.... - But the best I've known, - Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown - About the winds of the world, and fades from - brains Of living men, and dies. - Nothing remains. - - O dear my loves, O faithless, once again - This one last gift I give: that after men - Shall know, and later lovers, far removed, - Praise you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved.' - - - - - CLOUDS - - - Down the blue night the unending columns press - In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow, - Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow - Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness. - Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless, - And turn with profound gesture vague and slow, - As who would pray good for the world, but know - Their benediction empty as they bless. - - They say that the Dead die not, but remain - Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. - I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these, - In wise majestic melancholy train, - And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas, - And men, coming and going on the earth. - - _The Pacific_ - - - - - THE OLD VICARAGE, GRANTCHESTER - - - _Cafe des Western, Berlin._ - - - Just now the lilac is in bloom, - All before my little room; - And in my flower-beds, I think, - Smile the carnation and the pink; - And down the borders, well I know, - The poppy and the pansy blow ... - Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through, - Beside the river make for you - A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep - Deeply above; and green and deep - The stream mysterious glides beneath, - Green as a dream and deep as death.-- - Oh, damn! I know it I and I know - How the May fields all golden show, - And when the day is young and sweet, - Gild gloriously the bare feet - That run to bathe ... - _Du lieber Gott!_ - - Here am I, sweating, sick and hot, - And there the shadowed waters fresh - Lean up to embrace the naked flesh. - _Temperamentvoll_ German Jews - Drink beer around; and _there_ the dews - Are soft beneath a morn of gold. - Here tulips bloom as they are told; - Unkempt about those hedges blows - An English unofficial rose; - And there the unregulated sun - Slopes down to rest when day is done, - And wakes a vague unpunctual star, - A slippered Hesper; and there are - Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton - Where _das Betreten's_ not _verboten_.. - - _ἐίθε γενοιμην_ ... would I were - In Grantchester, in Grantchester!-- - Some, it may be, can get in touch - With Nature there, or Earth, or such. - And clever modern men have seen - A Faun a-peeping through the green, - And felt the Classics were not dead, - To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head, - Or hear the Goat-foot piping low ... - But these are things I do not know. - I only know that you may lie - Day long and watch the Cambridge sky, - And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass, - Hear the cool lapse of hours pass, - Until the centuries blend and blur - In Grantchester, in Grantchester ... - Still in the dawnlit waters cool - His ghostly Lordship swims his pool, - And tries the strokes, essays the tricks, - Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx; - Dan Chaucer hears his river still - Chatter beneath a phantom mill; - Tennyson notes, with studious eye, - How Cambridge waters hurry by ... - And in that garden, black and white - Creep whispers through the grass all night; - And spectral dance, before the dawn, - A hundred Vicars down the lawn; - Curates, long dust, will come and go - On lissom, clerical, printless toe; - And oft between the boughs is seen - The sly shade of a Rural Dean ... - Till, at a shiver in the skies, - Vanishing with Satanic cries, - The prim ecclesiastic rout - Leaves but a startled sleeper-out, - Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls, - The falling house that never falls. - . . . . . . . - - God! I will pack, and take a train, - And get me to England once again! - For England's the one land, I know, - Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; - And Cambridgeshire, of all England, - The shire for Men who Understand; - And of _that_ district I prefer - The lovely hamlet Grantchester. - For Cambridge people rarely smile, - Being urban, squat, and packed with guile; - And Royston men in the far South - Are black and fierce and strange of mouth; - At Over they fling oaths at one, - And worse than oaths at Trumpington, - And Ditton girls are mean and dirty, - And there's none in Harston under thirty, - And folks in Shelford and those parts - Have twisted lips and twisted hearts, - And Barton men make cockney rhymes, - And Co ton's full of nameless crimes, - And things are done you'd not believe - At Madingley on Christmas Eve. - Strong men have run for miles and miles - When one from Cherry Hinton smiles; - Strong men have blanched and shot their wives - Rather than send them to St. Ives; - Strong men have cried like babes, bydam, - To hear what happened at Babraham. - But Grantchester, ah, Grantchester! - There's peace and holy quiet there, - Great clouds along pacific skies, - And men and women with straight eyes, - Lithe children lovelier than a dream, - A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream, - And little kindly winds that creep - Round twilight corners, half asleep. - In Grantchester their skins are white, - In Grantchester their skins are white, - They bathe by day, they bathe by night; - The women there do all they ought; - The men observe the Rules of Thought. - They love the Good; they worship Truth; - They laugh uproariously in youth; - (And when they get to feeling old, - They up and shoot themselves, I'm told) - - Ah God! to see the branches stir - Across the moon at Grantchester! - To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten - Unforgettable, unforgotten - River smell, and hear the breeze - Sobbing in the little trees. - Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand, - Still guardians of that holy land? - The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream, - The yet unacademic stream? - Is dawn a secret shy and cold - Anadyomene, silver-gold? - And sunset still a golden sea - From Haslingfield to Madingley? - And after, ere the night is born, - Do hares come out about the corn? - Oh, is the water sweet and cool - Gentle and brown, above the pool? - And laughs the immortal river still-- - Under the mill, under the mill? - Say, is there Beauty yet to find? - And Certainty? and Quiet kind? - Deep-meadows yet, for to forget - The lies, and truths, and pain?... oh! yet - Stands the Church clock at ten to three - And is there honey still for tea? - - - - - THE BUSY HEART - - - Now that we've clone our best and worst, and parted, - I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend. - (O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted) - I'll think of Love in books, Love without end; - Women with child, content; and old men sleeping; - And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain; - And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping; - And the young heavens, forgetful after rain; - And evening hush, broken by homing wings; - And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy, - That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things, - Lovely and loveable, and taste them slowly, - One after one, like tasting a sweet food. - I have need to busy my heart with quietude. - - - - - DINING-ROOM TEA - - - When you were there, and you, and you, - Happiness crowned the night; I too, - Laughing and looking, one of all, - I watched the quivering lamplight fall - On plate and flowers and pouring tea - And cup and cloth; and they and we - Flung all the dancing moments by - With jest and glitter. Lip and eye - Flashed on the glory, shone and cried, - Improvident, unmemoried; - And fitfully and like a flame - The light of laughter went and came. - Proud in their careless transience moved - The changing faces that I loved. - - Till suddenly, and otherwhence, - I looked upon your innocence; - For lifted clear and still and strange - From the dark woven flow of change - Under a vast and starless sky - I saw the immortal moment lie. - One instant I, an instant, knew - As God knows all. And it and you - I, above Time, oh, blind! could see - In witless immortality. - I saw the marble cup; the tea, - Hung on the air, an amber stream; - I saw the fire's unglittering gleam, - The painted flame, the frozen smoke. - No more the flooding lamplight broke - On flying eyes and lips and hair; - But lay, but slept unbroken there, - On stiller flesh, and body breathless, - And lips and laughter stayed and deathless, - And words on which no silence grew. - Light was more alive than you. - - For suddenly, and otherwhence, - I looked on your magnificence. - I saw the stillness and the light, - And you, august, immortal, white, - Holy and strange; and every glint - Posture and jest and thought and tint - Freed from the mask of transiency, - Triumphant in eternity, - Immote, immortal. - - Dazed at length - Human eyes grew, mortal strength - Wearied; and Time began to creep. - Change closed about me like a sleep. - Light glinted on the eyes I loved. - The cup was filled. The bodies moved. - The drifting petal came to ground. - The laughter chimed its perfect round. - The broken syllable was ended. - And I, so certain and so friended, - How could I cloud, or how distress - The heaven of your unconsciousness? - Or shake at Time's sufficient spell, - Stammering of lights unutterable? - The eternal holiness of you, - The timeless end, you never knew, - The peace that lay, the light that shone. - You never knew that I had gone - A million miles away, and stayed - A million years. The laughter played - Unbroken round me; and the jest - Flashed on. And we that knew the best - Down wonderful hours grew happier yet. - I sang at heart, and talked, and eat, - And lived from laugh to laugh, I too, - When you were there, and you, and you. - - - - - FRANCIS BURROWS - - - - - THE PRAYER TO DEMETER - - - Mother whose hair I grasp, whose bosom I tread, - Thy son adopted. Thou who dost so charm me - And in thy lappels of affection warm me, - Heap all thine other misery on my head; - - Madness alone of evils do I dread, - Against its imminent presence guard and arm me, - Suffer its broad flung shadow not to harm me - But plunge me rather with the naked dead. - - Yet if it must come, let it be entire; - Cast then upon me unillumined night, - One whole eclipse not knowing any fire - To give it record of the former light. - Complete destruction of the heart's desire, - A ruin of thought and audience and sight. - - - - - THE GIANT'S DIRGE - - - Remember him who battled here, - What was his living character? - To friends an heart for ever filled - With love and with compassion brave; - To foes a power never stilled - In pushing vengeance to the grave; - Where is his spirit gone now, O where? - - What of his ten grand paces here - Whose motion was a perfect sphere? - To friends a making unafraid, - A sure defence, a wall of glass. - To foes a hidden trap well laid - To catch them stalking through the grass; - Where is he walking now, O where? - - What of his power who is here - Enclosed within the sepulchre? - To friends an eager sword of joy, - A shield to nestle underneath. - To foes whose love is to destroy, - A stumbling block, a hidden death; - Where is his power gone now, O where? - - What of his eye that floated here - Like sky-born dewy gossamer? - To friends the ever-sought desire, - The hope achieved, the loving cup; - To foes an unassaulted fire, - A furnace withering them up. - Where is he shining now, O where? - - What of the head that breathed so here - And the hair beloved so, is it sere; - To friends a shadow shedding stars, - Like blessings, from the upper deep; - To foes a poisoned tree that mars - Men's lives thereunder laid asleep. - Where does it blossom now, O where? - - He lives, is living everywhere, - Where human hearts are, he is there. - To friends a soul of certainty - That love though lost is more than none. - To foes an inability - To say, "We slew him, we alone, - His soul is here, we slew him here." - - - - - THE UNFORGOTTEN - - - There is a cave beneath the throne of grace - Where these have honoured and remembered place; - Strong hairy men, huge-jawed, with wiry limbs, - Half hid in mist, the heroes of old times. - They lie among the pots and flints and beads - Their friends once buried with them as the needs - Of the after-life, to hunt with and to slay with, - And flay and cook, or in repose to play with. - Here he who shaped the flint and bound to axe - And arrow first; who made the thread of flax - And hemp to weave; and he who to the plough - Harnessed and tamed the bull and milked the cow; - Who taught to bake and grind and till the seed - Of corn sufficient for the future's need; - And he who said: "These are my children, these; - My blood between them and their enemies; - For when I age and cannot win my meat, - They shall become new head and hands and feet"; - And he who said: "Let none of our tribe die - Slain by ourselves with violence. For why, - Our foes are plentiful, our friends are few, - Our living scarce. All may have work to do, - As hunting, warring, digging for the strong, - Or potting, cooking, weaving for the young, - The old, the weak, yet for adornment skilled"-- - Too early born and by his brethren killed. - Here he who dreamed a strange dream in the night, - And from his rushes springing swat with fright, - But thought and said with opened eyes, "'Tis beauty," - And terror left him. Those who spoke of duty, - Mercy and truth, and taught the undying soul, - And many more. And many a grunt and growl - They give in friendly dreams; when haunches quiver - And nostrils widen, and hands do twitch and shiver. - And often one awakes, and blinks, half speaks, - And yawns and licks and blows upon his cheeks: - - Pure spirits laugh, and with a kindly eye - The father views their rough-haired majesty. - - - - - THE WELL - - - See this plashing fount enshrined, - Some ancient people roofed and lined; - Some memory here of a forlorn rime, - A thought, a breath of a thought sublime - A sobbing under the wings of time. - - See the ancient people's grave: - No Andromache, no slave - Water here for a master draws, - No slaves longer laugh and pause. - All's strange language and new laws. - - O words, be good to impart assurance - Of hope, of memory, of endurance, - O flourish grass upon our tomb, - Grant us, sunk in a little room, - Both a sepulchre and home. - - - - - EGYPTIAN - - - The pyramid is built, is built, - And stone by stone the sphinx; - Upon the ground the wine is spilt, - And deep the builder drinks. - _Deeply the wise man in the desert thinks. - - Hark to the lanterned gondolas! - The stream is incense-calmed; - We smoke, we draw the gods with praise, - They walk amongst us charmed. - Cries _"Never are the desert-sands disarmed."_ - - Our building toil is done, is done, - All strifes and quarrels cease; - And slaves and masters are at one, - And enemies at peace. - Cries: _"Yet the sands are stirred and wars increase."_ - - Riches and joy and thankfulness - By our rich river are; - To see our noble work and bless - Shall travellers come afar. - Cries: _"Yes, a jew, but many more for war."_ - - - - - LIFE - - - When I consider this, that bare - Water and earth and common air - Combine together to compose - A being who breathes and stands and goes - With eyes to see the sun, with brain - To contemplate his origin, - I marvel not at death and pain - But rather how he should have been. - - - - - A. Y. CAMPBELL - - - - - ANIMULA VAGULA - - - Night stirs but wakens not, her breathings climb - To one slow sigh; the strokes of many twelves - From unseen spires mechanically chime, - Mingling like echoes, to frustrate themselves; - My soul, remember Time. - - The tones like smoke into the stillness curl, - The slippered hours their placid business ply, - And in thy hand there lies occasion's pearl; - But thou art playing with it absently - And dreaming, like a girl. - - - - - A BIRD - - - His haunts are by the brackish ways - Where rivers and sea-currents meet; - He is familiar with the sprays, - Over the stones his flight is fleet. - - Low, low he flutters, like a rat - That scampers up a river-bank; - Swift, lizard-like, he scours the flat - Where pools are wersh and weeds are dank, - - The fresh green smell of inland groves, - The pureness of the upper air, - Are poorer than his pungent coves - That hold strange spices everywhere. - - Strong is the salt of open sea; - Far out, the virgin brine is keen: - No home is there for such as he, - Out of the beach he is not seen. - - By shallows and capricious foams - Are the queer corners he frequents, - And in an idle humour roams - The borderland of elements. - - - - - THE DROMEDARY - - - In dreams I see the Dromedary still, - As once in a gay park, l saw him stand i - A thousand eyes in vulgar wonder scanned - His humps and hairy neck, and gazed their fill - At his lank shanks and mocked with laughter shrill. - He never moved: and if his Eastern land - Flashed on his eye with stretches of hot sand, - It wrung no mute appeal from his proud will. - He blinked upon the rabble lazily; - And still some trace of majesty forlorn - And a coarse grace remained: his head was high, - Though his gaunt flanks with a great mange were worn: - There was not any yearning in his eye, - But on his lips and nostril infinite scorn. - - - - - THE PANIC - - - Pale in her evening silks she sat - That but a week had been my bride; - Then, while the stars we wondered at, - Without a word she left my side; - Devious and silent as a bat, - I watched her round the garden glide. - - Soon o'er the moonlit lawn she streamed, - Then floated idly down the glade; - Now like a forest nymph she seemed, - Now like a light within a shade: - She turned, and for a moment gleamed, - And suddenly I saw her fade. - - I had been held in tranced stare - Till she had vanished from my sight; - Then did I start in wild despair, - And followed fast in mad affright; - What if herself a spirit were - And had so soon rejoined the night? - - - - - G. K. CHESTERTON - - - - - WINE AND WATER - - - Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale, - He ate his egg with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a pail, - And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and the fish he took was Whale, - But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail, - And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, - "I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine." - - The cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the brink - As if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink, - The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink, - And Noah he cocked his eye and said, "It looks like rain, I think, - The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine, - But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine." - - But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we trod, - Till a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod, - And you can't get wine at a P.S.A., or chapel, or Eisteddfod, - But the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God, - And water is on the Bishop's board and the Higher Thinker's shrine, - But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine. - - - - - THE ROLLING ENGLISH ROAD - - - Before the Roman came to Rye or out of Severn strode, - The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. - A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire, - And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire; - A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread, - The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head. - - I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire, - And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire; - But I did bash their bagginets because they came arrayed - To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made, - When you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands, - The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands. - - His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run - Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun? - The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which, - But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch. - God pardon us, nor harden us: we did not see so clear - The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier. - - My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage, - Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age, - But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth, - And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death; - But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen, - Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green. - - - - - THE DONKEY - - - When fishes flew and forests walked - And figs grew upon thorn, - Some moment when the moon was blood - Then surely I was born; - - With monstrous head and sickening cry - And ears like errant wings, - The devil's walking parody - On all four-footed things. - - The tattered outlaw of the earth, - Of ancient crooked will; - Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, - I keep my secret still. - - Fools! For I also had my hour; - One far fierce hour and sweet _i_ - There was a shout about my ears, - And palms before my feet. - - - - - THE SECRET PEOPLE - - - Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget, - For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet. - There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully, - There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we. - There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise. - There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes; - You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet: - Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet. - - The fine French kings came over in a nutter of flags and dames. - We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names. - The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down; - There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown. - And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way, - And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day. - They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind, - Till there was no bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find. - The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak, - The King's Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak. - - And the face of the King's Servants grew greater than the King: - He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring. - The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey's fruits, - And the men of the new religion, with their Bibles in their boots, - We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss, - And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us. - We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale; - And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale. - - A war that we understood not came over the world and woke - Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke. - They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people's reign: - And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and never scorned us again. - Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then; - Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men. - In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains, - We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains, - We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not - The strange fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought, - And the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke; - And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke. - - Our path of glory ended; we never heard guns again. - But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain - He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew, - He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo. - Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house, - Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse _i_ - We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea, - And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we. - - They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords, - Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords. - They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes; - They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies. - And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs, - Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs. - - We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet, - Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street. - It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first, - Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst. - It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest - God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best. - But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. - Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget. - - - - - FROM THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE - - - Far northward and far westward - The distant tribes drew nigh, - Plains beyond plains, fell beyond fell, - That a man at sunset sees so well, - And the tiny coloured towns that dwell - In the comers of the sky. - - But dark and thick as thronged the host, - With drum and torch and blade, - The still-eyed King sat pondering, - As one that watches a live thing, - The scoured chalk; and he said, - - "Though I give this land to Our Lady, - That helped me in Athelney, - Though lordlier trees and lustier sod - And happier hills hath no flesh trod - Than the garden of the Mother of God - Between Thames side and the sea, - - "I know that weeds shall grow in it - Faster than men can burn; - And though they scatter now and go, - In some far century, sad and slow, - I have a vision, and I know - The heathen shall return. - - "They shall not come with warships, - They shall not waste with brands, - But books be all their eating, - And ink be on their hands. - - "Not with the humour of hunters - Or savage skill in war, - But ordering all things with dead words, - Strings shall they make of beasts and birds - And wheels of wind and star. - - "They shall come mild as monkish clerks, - With many a scroll and pen; - And backward shall ye turn and gaze, - Desiring one of Alfred's days, - When pagans still were men. - - "The dear sun dwarfed of dreadful suns, - Like fiercer flowers on stalk, - Earth lost and little like a pea - In high heaven's towering forestry, - --These be the small weeds ye shall see - Crawl, covering the chalk. - - "But though they bridge St. Mary's sea, - Or steal St. Michael's wing--Though - they rear marvels over us, - Greater than great Vergilius - Wrought for the Roman king; - - "By this sign you shall know them, - The breaking of the sword, - And Man no more a free knight, - That loves or hates his lord. - - "Yea, this shall be the sign of them, - The sign of the dying fire; - And Man made like a half-wit, - That knows not of his sire. - - "What though they come with scroll and pen, - And grave as a shaven clerk, - By this sign you shall know them, - That they ruin and make dark; - - "By all men bond to Nothing, - Being slaves without a lord, - By one blind idiot world obeyed, - Too blind to be abhorred; - - "By terror and the cruel tales - Of curse in bone and kin, - By weird and weakness winning, - Accursed from the beginning, - By detail of the sinning, - And denial of the sin; - - "By thought a crawling ruin, - By life a leaping mire, - By a broken heart in the breast of the world, - And the end of the world's desire; - - "By God and man dishonoured, - By death and life made vain, - Know ye the old barbarian, - The barbarian come again again-- - - "When is great talk of trend and tide, - And wisdom and destiny, - Hail that undying heathen - That is sadder than the sea. - - "In what wise men shall smite him, - Or the Cross stand up again, - Or charity, or chivalry, - My vision saith not; and I see - No more; but now ride doubtfully - To the battle of the plain." - - And the grass-edge of the great down - Was clean cut as a lawn, - While the levies thronged from near and far, - From the warm woods of the western star, - And the King went out to his last war - On a tall grey horse at dawn. - - And news of his far-off fighting - Came slowly and brokenly - From the land of the East Saxons, - From the sunrise and the sea, - - From the plains of the white sunrise, - And sad St. Edmund's crown, - Where the pools of Essex pale and gleam - Out beyond London Town-- - - In mighty and doubtful fragments, - Like faint or fabled wars, - Climbed the old hills of his renown, - Where the bald brow of White Horse Down - Is close to the cold stars. - - But away in the eastern places - The wind of death walked high, - And a raid was driven athwart the raid, - The sky reddened and the smoke swayed, - And the tall grey horse went by. - - The gates of the great river - Were breached as with a barge, - The walls sank crowded, say the scribes, - And high towers populous with tribes - Seemed leaning from the charge. - - Smoke like rebellious heavens rolled - Curled over coloured flames, - Billowed in monstrous purple dreams - In the mighty pools of Thames. - - Loud was the war on London wall, - And loud in London gates, - And loud the sea-kings in the cloud - Broke through their dreaming gods, and loud - Cried on their dreadful fates. - - And all the while on White Horse Hill - The horse lay long and wan, - The turf crawled and the fungus crept, - And the little sorrel, while all men slept, - Unwrought the work of man. - - With velvet finger, velvet foot, - The fierce soft mosses then - Crept on the large white commonweal - All folk had striven to strip and peel, - And the grass, like a great green witch's wheel, - Unwound the toils of men. - - And clover and silent thistle throve, - And buds burst silently, - With little care for the Thames Valley - Or what things there might be-- - - That away on the widening river, - In the eastern plains for crown - Stood up in the pale purple sky - One turret of smoke like ivory; - And the smoke changed and the wind went by, - And the King took London Town. - - - - - PADRAIC COLUM - - - - - THE OLD WOMAN OF THE ROADS - - - O, to have a little house! - To own the hearth and stool and all! - The heaped up sods upon the fire - The pile of turf again' the wall! - - To have a clock with weights and chains, - And pendulum swinging up and down! - A dresser filled with shining delph, - Speckled with white and blue and brown! - - I could be busy all the day - Cleaning and sweeping hearth and floor, - And fixing on their shelf again - My white and blue and speckled store! - - I could be quiet there at night - Beside the fire and by myself, - Sure of a bed, and loth to leave - The ticking clock and shining delph! - - Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark, - And roads where there's never a house or bush, - And tired I am of bog and road, - And the crying wind and the lonesome hush! - - - And I am praying to God on high, - And I am praying Him night and day, - For a little house--a house of my own--Out - of the wind's and rain's way. - - - - - FRANCES CORNFORD - - - - - AUTUMN EVENING - - - The shadows flickering, the daylight dying, - And I upon the old red sofa lying, - The great brown shadows leaping up the wall, - The sparrows twittering; and that is all. - - I thought to send my soul to far-off lands, - Where fairies scamper on the windy sands, - Or where the autumn rain comes drumming down - On huddled roofs in an enchanted town. - - But O my sleepy soul, it will not roam, - It is too happy and too warm at home: - With just the shadows leaping up the wall, - The sparrows twittering; and that is all. - - - - - W. H. DAVIES - - - - - DAYS TOO SHORT - - - When Primroses are out in Spring, - And small, blue violets come between; - When merry birds sing on boughs green, - And rills, as soon as born, must sing; - - When butterflies will make side-leaps, - As though escaped from Nature's hand - Ere perfect quite; and bees will stand - Upon their heads in fragrant deeps; - - When small clouds are so silvery white - Each seems a broken rimmed moon--When - such things are, this world too soon, - For me, doth wear the veil of Night. - - - - - THE EXAMPLE - - - Here's an example from - A Butterfly; - That on a rough, hard rock - Happy can lie; - Friendless and all alone - On this unsweetened stone. - - Now let my bed be hard - No care take I; - I'll make my joy like this - Small Butterfly; - Whose happy heart has power - To make a stone a flower. - - - - - THE EAST IN GOLD - - - Somehow this world is wonderful at times, - As it has been from early morn in May; - Since I first heard the cock-a-doodle-do, - Timekeeper on green farms--at break of day. - - Soon after that I heard ten thousand birds, - Which made me think an angel brought a bin - Of golden grain, and none was scattered yet-- - To rouse those birds to make that merry din. - - I could not sleep again, for such wild cries, - And went out early into their green world; - And then I saw what set their little tongues - To scream for joy--they saw the East in gold. - - - - - THE HAPPY CHILD - - - I saw this day sweet flowers grow thick-- - But not one like the child did pick. - - I heard the packhounds in green park-- - But no dog like the child heard bark. - - I heard this day bird after bird--But - not one like the child has heard. - - A hundred butterflies saw I--But - not one like the child saw fly. - - I saw the horses roll in grass-- - But no horse like the child saw pass. - - My world this day has lovely been-- - But not like what the child has seen. - - - - - A GREAT TIME - - - Sweet Chance, that led my steps abroad, - Beyond the town, where wild flowers grow-- - A rainbow and a cuckoo, Lord, - How rich and great the times are now! - Know, all ye sheep - And cows, that keep - On staring that I stand so long - In grass that's wet from heavy rain-- - A rainbow and a cuckoo's song - May never come together again; - May never come - This side the tomb. - - - - - THE WHITE CASCADE - - - What happy mortal sees that mountain now, - The white cascade that's shining on its brow; - - The white cascade that's both a bird and star, - That has a ten-mile voice and shines as far? - - Though I may never leave this land again, - Yet every spring my mind must cross the main - - To hear and see that water-bird and star - That on the mountain sings, and shines so far. - - - - - IN MAY - - - Yes, I will spend the livelong day - With Nature in this month of May; - And sit beneath the trees, and share - My bread with birds whose homes are there; - While cows lie down to eat, and sheep - Stand to their necks in grass so deep; - While birds do sing with all their might, - As though they felt the earth in flight. - This is the hour I dreamed of, when - I sat surrounded by poor men; - And thought of how the Arab sat - Alone at evening, gazing at - The stars that bubbled in clear skies; - - And of young dreamers, when their eyes - Enjoyed methought a precious boon - In the adventures of the Moon - Whose light, behind the Clouds' dark bars, - Searched for her stolen flocks of stars. - When I, hemmed in by wrecks of men, - Thought of some lonely cottage then, - Full of sweet books; and miles of sea, - With passing ships, in front of me; - And having, on the other hand, - A flowery, green, bird-singing land. - - - - - THUNDERSTORMS - - - My mind has thunderstorms, - That brood for heavy hours: - Until they rain me words, - My thoughts are drooping flowers - And sulking, silent birds. - - Yet come, dark thunderstorms, - And brood your heavy hours; - For when you rain me words - My thoughts are dancing flowers - And joyful singing birds. - - - - - SWEET STAY-AT-HOME - - - Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Well-content, - Thou knowest of no strange continent: - Thou hast not felt thy bosom keep - A gentle motion with the deep; - Thou hast not sailed in Indian seas, - Where scent comes forth in every breeze. - Thou hast not seen the rich grape grow - For miles, as far as eyes can go; - Thou hast not seen a summer's night - When maids could sew by a worm's light; - Nor the North Sea in spring send out - Bright trees that like birds flit about - In solid cages of white ice-- - Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Love-one-place. - Thou hast not seen black fingers pick - White cotton when the bloom is thick, - Nor heard black throats in harmony; - Nor hast thou sat on stones that lie - Flat on the earth, that once did rise - To hide proud kings from common eyes. - Thou hast not seen plains full of bloom - Where green things had such little room - They pleased the eye like fairer flowers-- - Sweet Stay-at-Home, all these long hours. - Sweet Well-content, sweet Love-one-place, - Sweet, simple maid, bless thy dear face; - For thou hast made more homely stuff - Nurture thy gentle self enough; - I love thee for a heart that's kind-- - Not for the knowledge in thy mind. - - - - - EDWARD L. DAVISON - - - - - THE TREES - - - I did not know your names and yet I saw - The handiwork of Beauty in your boughs, - I worshipped as the Druids did, in awe, - Feeling at Spring my pagan soul arouse - To see your leaf-buds open to the day, - And dull green moss upon your ragged girth, - The hoary sanctity of your decay, - Life and Death glimmering upon the Earth. - - - - - IN THIS DARK HOUSE - - - I shall come back to die - From a far place at last - After my life's carouse - In the old bed to lie, - Remembering the past - In this dark house. - - Because of a clock's chime - In the long waste of night - I shall awake and wait - At that calm lonely time - Each smell and sound and sight - Mysterious and innate: - Some shadow on the wall - When curtains by the door - Move in a draught of wind; - Or else a light footfall - In a near corridor; - Even to feel the kind - Caress of a cool hand - Smoothing the draggled hair - Back from my shrunken brow, - And strive to understand - The woman's presence there, - And whence she came, and how. - - What gust of wind that night - Shall mutter her lost name - Through windows open wide, - And twist the nickering light - Of a sole candle's flame - Smoking from side to side, - Till the last spark it blows - Sets a moth's wings aflare - As the faint flame goes out? - - Some distant door may close; - Perhaps a heavy chair - On bare floors dragged about - O'er the low ceiling sound, - And the thin twig of a tree - Knock on my window-pane - Till all the night around - Is listening with me, - While like a noise of rain - Leaves rustle in the wind. - - Then from the inner gloom - The scratching of a mouse - May echo down my mind - And sound around the room - In this dark house. - - The vague scent of a flower, - Smelt then in that warm air - From gardens drifting in, - May slowly overpower - The vapid lavender, - Till feebly I begin - To count the scents I knew - And name them one by one, - And search the names for this. - - Dreams will be swift and few - Ere that last night be done, - And gradual silences - In each long interim - Of halting time awake - Confuse all conscious sense. - Shadows will grow more dim, - And sound and scent forsake - The dark ere dawn commence, - - In the new morning then, - So fixed the stare and fast, - The calm unseeing eye - Will never close again. - - . . . . - - I shall come back at last - To this dark house to die. - - - - - WALTER DE LA MARE - - - - - THE LISTENERS - - - "Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, - Knocking on the moonlit door; - And his horse in the silence champed the grasses - Of the forest's ferny floor: - And a bird flew up out of the turret, - Above the Traveller's head: - And he smote upon the door again a second time; - "Is there anybody there?" he said. - But no one descended to the Traveller; - No head from the leaf-fringed sill - Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, - Where he stood perplexed and still. - But only a host of phantom listeners - That dwelt in the lone house then - Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight - To that voice from the world of men: - Stood thronging the faint moon beams on the dark stair, - That goes down to the empty hall, - Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken - By the lonely traveller's call. - And he felt in his heart their strangeness, - Their stillness answering his cry, - While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, - 'Neath the starred and leafy sky; - For he suddenly smote on the door, even - Louder, and lifted his head:-- - "Tell them I came, and no one answered, - That I kept my word," he said. - Never the least stir made the listeners, - Though every word he spake - Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house - From the one man left awake: - Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, - And the sound of iron on stone - And how the silence surged softly backward - When the plunging hoofs were gone. - - - - - ARABIA - - - Far are the shades of Arabia, - Where the Princes ride at noon, - 'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets, - Under the ghost of the moon; - And so dark is that vaulted purple - Flowers in the forest rise - And toss into blossom 'gainst the phantom stars - Pale in the noonday skies. - - Sweet is the music of Arabia - In my heart, when out of dreams - I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn - Descry her gliding streams; - Hear her strange lutes on the green banks - Ring loud with the grief and delight - Of the dim-silked, dark-haired Musicians - In the brooding silence of night. - - They haunt me--her lutes and her forests; - No beauty on earth I see - But shadowed with that dream recalls - Her loveliness to me. - Still eyes look coldly upon me, - Cold voices whisper and say-- - "He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia, - They have stolen his wits away." - - - - - MUSIC - - - When music sounds, gone is the earth I know, - And all her lovely things even lovelier grow; - Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees - Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies. - - When music sounds, out of the water rise - Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes, - Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face, - With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place. - - When music sounds, all that I was I am - Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came; - And from Time's woods break into distant song - The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along. - - - - - THE SCRIBE - - - What lovely things - hand hath made, - The smooth-plumed bird - In its emerald shade, - The seed of the grass, - The speck of stone - Which the wayfaring ant - Stirs, and hastes on. - - Though I should sit - By some tarn in Thy hills, - Using its ink - As the spirit wills - To write of Earth's wonders - Its live willed things, - Flit would the ages - On soundless wings - Ere unto Z - My pen drew nigh, - Leviathan told, - And the honey-fly; - And still would remain - My wit to try--My - worn reeds broken. - The dark tarn dry, - All words forgotten-- - Thou, Lord, and I. - - - - - THE GHOST - - - "Who knocks?" "I, who was beautiful - Beyond all dreams to restore, - I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither, - And knock on the door." - - "Who speaks?" "I--once was my speech - Sweet as the bird's on the air, - When echo lurks by the waters to heed; - 'Tis I speak thee fair." - - "Dark is the hour!" "Aye, and cold." - "Lone is my house." "Ah, but mine?" - "Sight, touch, lips, eyes gleamed in vain." - "Long dead these to thine." - - Silence. Still faint on the porch - Broke the flames of the stars. - In gloom groped a hope-wearied hand - Over keys, bolts, and bars. - - A face peered. All the grey night - In chaos of vacancy shone; - Nought but vast sorrow was there-- - The sweet cheat gone. - - - - - CLEAR EYES - - - Clear eyes so dim at last, - And cheeks outlive their rose. - Time, heedless of the past, - No loving kindness knows; - Chill unto mortal lip - Still Lethe flows. - - Griefs, too, but brief while stay, - And sorrow, being o'er, - Its salt tears shed away, - Woundeth the heart no more. - Stealthily lave these waters - That solemn shore. - - Ah, then, sweet face burn on, - While yet quick memory lives! - And Sorrow, ere thou art gone, - Know that my heart forgives-- - Ere yet, grown cold in peace, - It loves not, nor grieves. - - - - - FARE WELL - - - When I lie where shades of darkness - Shall no more assail mine eyes, - Nor the rain make lamentation - When the wind sighs; - How will fare the world whose wonder - Was the very proof of me? - Memory fades, must the remembered - Perishing be? - - Oh, when this my dust surrenders - Hand, foot, lip to dust again, - May those loved and loving faces - Please other men! - May the rusting harvest hedgerow - Still the Traveller's Joy entwine, - And as happy children gather - Posies once mine. - - Look thy last on all things lovely, - Every hour. Let no night - Seal thy sense in deathly slumber - Till to delight - Thou have paid thy utmost blessing; - Since that all things thou wouldst praise - Beauty took from those who loved them - In other days. - - - - - ALL THAT'S PAST - - - Very old are the woods; - And the buds that break - Out of the briar's boughs, - When March winds wake, - So old with their beauty are-- - Oh, no man knows - Through what wild centuries - Roves back the rose. - - Very old are the brooks; - And the rills that rise - When snow sleeps cold beneath - The azure skies - Sing such a history - Of come and gone, - Their every drop is as wise - As Solomon. - - Very old are we men; - Our dreams are tales - Told in dim Eden - By Eve's nightingales; - We wake and whisper awhile, - But, the day gone by, - Silence and sleep like fields - Of Amaranth lie. - - - - - THE SONG OF THE MAD PRINCE - - - Who said, "Peacock Pie"? - The old King to the sparrow: - Who said, "Crops are ripe"? - Rust to the harrow: - Who said, "Where sleeps she now? - Where rests she now her head, - Bathed in Eve's loveliness"?-- - That's what I said. - - Who said, "Ay, mum's the word"? - Sexton to willow: - Who said, "Green dust for dreams, - Moss for a pillow"? - Who said, "All Time's delight - Hath she for narrow bed; - Life's troubled bubble broken"?-- - That's what I said. - - - - - JOHN DRINKWATER - - - - - BIRTHRIGHT - - - Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed - Because a summer evening passed; - And little Ariadne cried - That summer fancy fell at last - To dust; and young Verona died - When beauty's hour was overcast. - - Theirs was the bitterness we know - Because the clouds of hawthorn keep - So short a state, and kisses go - To tombs unfathomably deep, - While Rameses and Romeo - And little Ariadne sleep. - - - - - MOONLIT APPLES - - - At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows, - And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those - Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes - A cloud on the moon in the autumn night. - - A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then - There is no sound at the top of the house of men - Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again - Dapples the apples with deep-sea light. - - They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams; - On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams - Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams, - And quiet is the steep stair under. - - In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep, - And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep - Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep - On moon-washed apples of wonder. - - - - - R. C. K. ENSOR - - - - - ODE TO REALITY - - - O Real, O That Which Is, - Beyond all earthly bliss - My spirit prays to be at one with Thee; - Away from that which seems, - From unenduring dreams, - From vain pursuits and vainer meeds set free. - - How rosy to our eyes - The mists of error rise, - The proud pavilions that we weave at will I - How glittering the ray - Of that illusive day, - The hills how grand, the vales how green and still! - - And how inviting yet - The service of deceit, - Paid by the crowd that does not understand, - Parents and friends and foes - All bowing down to those - Who against Thee have lifted up their hand! - - Ah, but on whomsoever - Amid such glib endeavour - Thy light has shined in sudden sovereignty, - He who has fallen and heard - Thy spirit-searching word: - _Why kick against the pricks? Why outrage Me? - - He can no longer stay - There in the easy way, - No longer please himself with make-believe, - No longer shape at will - The forms of good and ill - And what he shall reject and what receive. - - Nor may he dwell content - In self-aggrandisement, - To the deep wrong of modern Mammon blind; - Nor can he drown his cares - Among the doctrinaires, - Who think by sowing hate to save mankind. - - For every scheme of vision - He sees as the condition - Not of the truest only but the best-- - The riches of all wealth, - The beauty of Beauty's self-- - That on Thee and within Thee it should rest. - - By Thee our bounds are set; - Thou madest us; and yet - O Mother, when we strain to see Thy face, - Still dost Thou tease our prying - With masks and mystifying, - Still hold us at arm's length from Thy embrace! - - Yet would I rather in act - Plough with the iron Fact - And earn at least some harvest that is bread, - Than rich and popular - In gay Imposture's car - Dazzle mankind and leave them still unfed. - - Rather would I in thought - Miss all that I had sought, - Still pining on Negation's desert isle, - Than with the current float - In Pragmatism's boat - Down to the fatal shore where sirens smile. - - Rather would I be thrown - Against Thine altar-stone, - Unsanctified, unpitied, unreprieved, - Than in some other shrine - Sup the priests' meat and wine, - Taking the wages of a world deceived. - - - - - JAMES ELROY FLECKER - - _Born 1884_ - _Died 1915_ - - - - - RIOUPEROUX - - - High and solemn mountains guard Riouperoux, - --Small untidy village where the river drives a mill: - Frail as wood anemones, white, and frail were you, - And drooping a little, like the slender daffodil. - - Oh I will go to France again, and tramp the valley through, - And I will change these gentle clothes for clog and corduroy, - And work with the mill-hands of black Rioupéroux, - And walk with you, and talk with you, like any other boy. - - - - - WAR SONG OF THE SARACENS - - - We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early - or late: - We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware! - Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die - Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer. - But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, - and we tramp - With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in - our hair. - - From the lands, where the elephants are, to the forts of Merou - and Balghar, - Our steel we have brought and our star to shine on the ruins of Rum. - We have marched from the Indus to Spain, and by God we will go - there again; - We have stood on the shore of the plain where the Waters of - Destiny boom. - A mart of destruction we made at Jalula where men were afraid, - For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of doom; - - And the Spear was a Desert Physician who cured not a few of ambition, - And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong: - And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate pool, - And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when their cavalry thundered - along: - For the coward was drowned with the brave when our battle sheered up - like a wave, - And the dead to the desert we gave, and the glory to God in our song. - - - - - THE OLD SHIPS - - - I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep - Beyond the village which men still call Tyre, - With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep - For Famagusta and the hidden sun - That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire; - And all those ships were certainly so old - Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun, - Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges, - The pirate Genoese - Hell-raked them till they rolled - Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold. - But now through friendly seas they softly run, - Painted the mid-sea blue or shore-sea green, - Still patterned with the vine and grapes in - gold. - - But I have seen, - Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn - And image tumbled on a rose-swept bay, - A drowsy ship of some yet older day; - And, wonder's breath indrawn, - Thought I--who knows--who knows--but in that same - (Fished up beyond _Ææa,_ patched up new - --Stern painted brighter blue--) - That talkative, bald-headed seaman came - (Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar) - From Troy's doom-crimson shore, - And with great lies about his wooden horse - Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course. - - It was so old a ship--who knows, who knows? - --And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain - To see the mast burst open with a rose, - And the whole deck put on its leaves again. - - - - - STILLNESS - - - When the words rustle no more, - And the last work's done, - When the bolt lies deep in the door, - And Fire, our Sun, - Falls on the dark-laned meadows of the floor; - - When from the clock's last chime to the next chime - Silence beats his drum, - And Space with gaunt grey eyes and her brother Time - Wheeling and whispering come, - She with the mould of form and he with the loom of rhyme: - - Then twittering out in the night my thought-birds flee, - I am emptied of all my dreams: - I only hear Earth turning, only see - Ether's long bankless streams, - And only know I should drown if you laid not your hand on me. - - - - - AREIYA - - - This place was formed divine for love and us to dwell; - This house of brown stone built for us to sleep therein; - Those blossoms haunt the rocks that we should see and smell; - Those old rocks break the hill that we the heights should win. - - Those heights survey the sea that there our thoughts should sail - Up the steep wall of wave to touch the Syrian sky: - For us that sky at eve fades out of purple pale, - Pale as the mountain mists beneath our house that lie. - - In front of our small house are brown stone arches three; - Behind it, the low porch where all the jasmine grows; - Beyond it, red and green, the gay pomegranate tree; - Around it, like love's arms, the summer and the rose. - - Within it sat and wrote in minutes soft and few - This worst and best of songs, one who loves it, and you. - - - - - THE QUEEN'S SONG - - - Had I the power - To Midas given of old - To touch a flower - And leave the petals gold - I then might touch thy face, - Delightful boy, - And leave a metal grace, - A graven joy. - - Thus would I slay,-- - Ah, desperate device! - The vital day - That trembles in thine eyes, - And let the red lips close - Which sang so well, - And drive away the rose - To leave a shell. - - Then I myself, - Rising austere and dumb - On the high shelf - Of my half-lighted room, - Would place the shining bust - And wait alone, - Until I was but dust, - Buried unknown. - - Thus in my love - For nations yet unborn, - I would remove - From our two lives the morn, - And muse on loveliness - In mine arm-chair, - Content should Time confess - How sweet you were. - - - - - BRUMANA - - - Oh shall I never never be home again? - Meadows of England shining in the rain - Spread wide your daisied lawns: your ramparts green - With briar fortify, with blossom screen - Till my far morning--and O streams that slow - And pure and deep through plains and playlands go, - For me your love and all your kingcups store, - And--dark militia of the southern shore, - Old fragrant friends--preserve me the last lines - Of that long saga which you sung me, pines, - When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree - I listened, with my eyes upon the sea. - - O traitor pines, you sang what life has found - The falsest of fair tales. - Earth blew a far-horn prelude all around, - That native music of her forest home, - While from the sea's blue fields and syren dales - Shadows and light noon-spectres of the foam - Riding the summer gales - On aery viols plucked an idle sound. - - Hearing you sing, O trees, - Hearing you murmur, "There are older seas, - That beat on vaster sands, - Where the wise snailfish move their pearly towers - To carven rocks and sculptured promont'ries," - Hearing you whisper, "Lands - Where blaze the unimaginable flowers." - - Beneath me in the valley waves the palm, - Beneath, beyond the valley, breaks the sea; - Beneath me sleep in mist and light and calm - Cities of Lebanon, dream-shadow-dim, - Where Kings of Tyre and Kings of Tyre did rule - In ancient days in endless dynasty, - And all around the snowy mountains swim - Like mighty swans afloat in heaven's pool. - - But I will walk upon the wooded hill - Where stands a grove, O pines, of sister pines, - And when the downy twilight droops her wing - And no sea glimmers and no mountain shines - My heart shall listen still. - For pines are gossip pines the wide world through - And full of runic tales to sigh or sing. - - 'Tis ever sweet through pine to see the sky - Mantling a deeper gold or darker blue. - 'Tis ever sweet to lie - On the dry carpet of the needles brown, - And though the fanciful green lizard stir - And windy odours light as thistledown - Breathe from the lavdanon and lavender, - Half to forget the wandering and pain, - Half to remember days that have gone by, - And dream and dream that I am home again! - - - - - HYALI - - - Στὸ Γυαλὶ στὸ γαλἄζιο βρἄχο - - Island in blue of summer floating on, - Little brave sister of the Sporades, - Hail and farewell! I pass, and thou art gone, - So fast in fire the great boat beats the seas. - - But slowly fade, soft Island! Ah to know - Thy town and who the gossips of thy town, - What flowers flash in thy meadows, what winds blow - Across thy mountain when the sun goes down. - - There is thy market, where the fisher throws - His gleaming fish that gasp in the death-bright dawn: - And there thy Prince's house, painted old rose, - Beyond the olives, crowns its slope of lawn. - - And is thy Prince so rich that he displays - At festal board the flesh of sheep and kine? - Or dare he--summer days are long hot days-- - Load up with Asian snow his Coan wine? - - Behind a rock, thy harbour, whence a noise - Of tarry sponge-boats hammered lustily: - And from that little rock thy naked boys - Like burning arrows shower upon the sea. - - And there by the old Greek chapel--there beneath - A thousand poppies that each sea-wind stirs - And cyclamen, as honied and white as death, - Dwell deep in earth the elder islanders. - - *** - - Thy name I know not, Island, but _his_ name - I know, and why so proud thy mountain stands, - And what thy happy secret, and Who came - Drawing his painted galley up thy sands. - - For my Gods--Trident Gods who deep and pale - Swim in the Latmian Sound, have murmured thus: - "To such an island came with a pompous sail - On his first voyage young Herodotus." - - Since then--tell me no tale how Romans built, - Saracens plundered--or that bearded lords - Rowed by to fight for Venice, and here spilt - Their blood across the bay that keeps their swords. - - That old Greek day was all thy history: - For that did Ocean poise thee as a flower. - Farewell: this boat attends not such as thee: - Farewell: I was thy lover for an hour! - - Farewell! But I who call upon thy caves - Am far like thee,--like thee, unknown and poor. - And yet my words are music as thy waves, - And like thy rocks shall down through time endure. - - - - - THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND - - - PROLOGUE - - - We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage - And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, - We Poets of the proud old lineage - Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why,-- - - What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales - Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest, - Where nevermore the rose of sunset pales, - And winds and shadows fall toward the West: - - And there the world's first huge white-bearded kings - In dim glades sleeping, murmur in their sleep, - And closer round their breasts the ivy clings, - Cutting its pathway slow and red and deep. - - And how beguile you? Death has no repose - Warmer and deeper than that Orient sand - Which hides the beauty and bright faith of those - Who made the Golden Journey to Samarkand. - - And now they wait and whiten peaceably, - Those conquerors, those poets, those so fair: - They know time comes, not only you and I, - But the whole world shall whiten, here or there; - - When those long caravans that cross the plain - With dauntless feet and sound of silver bells - Put forth no more for glory or for gain, - Take no more solace from the palm-girt wells, - - When the great markets by the sea shut fast - All that calm Sunday that goes on and on: - When even lovers find their peace at last, - And Earth is but a star, that once had shone. - - - - EPILOGUE - - - _At the Gate of the Sun, Bagdad, in olden time_ - - THE MERCHANTS (_together_) - - Away, for we are ready to a man! - Our camels sniff the evening and are glad. - Lead on, O Master of the Caravan: - Lead on the Merchant-Princes of Bagdad. - - THE CHIEF DRAPER - - Have we not Indian carpets dark as wine, - Turbans and sashes, gowns and bows and veils, - And broideries of intricate design, - And printed hangings in enormous bales? - - THE CHIEF GROCER - - We have rose-candy, we have spikenard, - Mastic and terebinth and oil and spice, - And such sweet jams meticulously jarred - As God's own Prophet eats in Paradise. - - THE PRINCIPAL JEWS - - And we have manuscripts in peacock styles - By Ali of Damascus; we have swords - Engraved with storks and apes and crocodiles, - And heavy beaten necklaces, for Lords. - - THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN - - But you are nothing but a lot of Jews. - - THE PRINCIPAL JEWS - - Sir, even dogs have daylight, and we pay. - - THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN - - But who are ye in rags and rotten shoes, - You dirty-bearded, blocking up the way? - - THE PILGRIMS - - We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go - Always a little further: it may be - Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow, - Across that angry or that glimmering sea, - White on a throne or guarded in a cave - There lives a prophet who can understand - Why men were born: but surely we are brave, - Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand. - - THE CHIEF MERCHANT - - We gnaw the nail of hurry. Master, away! - - ONE OF THE WOMEN - - O turn your eyes to where your children stand. - Is not Bagdad the beautiful? O stay! - - THE MERCHANTS (_in chorus_) - - We take the Golden Road to Samarkand. - - AN OLD MAN - - Have you not girls and garlands in your homes, - Eunuchs and Syrian boys at your command? - Seek not excess: God hateth him who roams! - - THE MERCHANTS (_in chorus_) - - We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand. - - A PILGRIM WITH A BEAUTIFUL VOICE - - Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells - When shadows pass gigantic on the sand, - And softly through the silence beat the bells - Along the Golden Road to Samarkand. - - A MERCHANT - - We travel not for trafficking alone: - By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned: - For lust of knowing what should not be known - We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand. - - THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN - - Open the gate, O watchman of the night! - - THE WATCHMAN - - Ho, travellers, I open. For what land - Leave you the dim-moon city of delight? - - THE MERCHANTS (_with a shout_) - We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand. - - [_The Caravan passes through the gate_] - - THE WATCHMAN (_consoling the women_) - - What would ye, ladies? It was ever thus. - Men are unwise and curiously planned. - - A WOMAN - - They have their dreams, and do not think of us. - - VOICES OF THE CARAVAN (_in the distance, singing_) - We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand. - - - - - ROBIN FLOWER - - - - - LA VIE CEREBRALE - - - I am alone--alone; - There is nothing--only I, - And, when I will to die, - All must be gone. - - Eternal thought in me - Puts on the dress of time - And builds a stage to mime - Its listless tragedy. - - And in that dress of time - And on that stage of space - I place, change, and replace - Life to a wilful rime. - - I summon at my whim - All things that are, that were: - The high incredible air, - Where stars--my creatures--swim. - - I dream, and from my mind - The dead, the living come; - I build a marble Rome, - I give it to the wind. - - Athens and Babylon - I breathe upon the night, - Troy towers for my delight - And crumbles stone by stone. - - I change with white and green - The seasons hour by hour; - I think--it is a flower, - Think--and the flower has been. - - Men, women, things, a stream - That wavers and flows by, - A lonely dreamer, I - Build and cast down the dream. - - And one day weary grown - Of all my brain has wrought, - I shall destroy my thought - And I and all be gone. - - - - - THE PIPES - - - With the spring awaken other springs, - Those swallows' wings are shadowed by other wings - And another thrush behind that glad bird sings. - - A multitude are the flowers, but multitudes - Blossom and waver and breathe from forgotten woods, - And in silent places an older silence broods. - - With the spring long-buried springs in my heart awaken, - Time takes the years, but the springs he has not taken, - My thoughts with a boy's wild thoughts are mixed and shaken. - - And here amid inland fields by the down's green shoulder - I remember an ancient sea and mountains older, - Older than all but time, skies sterner and colder. - - When the swift spring night on the sea and the mountains fell - In the hush of the solemn hills I remember well - The far pipes calling and the tale they had to tell. - - Sad was the tale, ah! sad beyond all saying - The lament of the lonely pipes in the evening playing - Lost in the glens, in the still, dark pines delaying. - - And now with returning spring I remember all, - On southern fields those mountain shadows fall, - Those wandering pipes in the downland evening call. - - - - - SAY NOT THAT BEAUTY - - - Say not that beauty is an idle thing - And gathered lightly as a wayside flower - That on the trembling verges of the spring - Knows but the sweet survival of an hour. - For 'tis not so. Through dedicated days - And foiled adventure of deliberate nights - We lose and find and stumble in the ways - That lead to the far confluence of delights. - Not with the earthly eye and fleshly ear, - But lifted far above mortality, - We see at last the eternal hills, and hear - The sighing of the universal sea; - And kneeling breathless in the holy place - We know immortal Beauty face to face. - - - - - JOHN FREEMAN - - - - - THE WAKERS - - - The joyous morning ran and kissed the grass - And drew his fingers through her sleeping hair, - And cried, "Before thy flowers are well awake - Rise, and the lingering darkness from thee shake. - - "Before the daisy and the sorrel buy - Their brightness back from that close-folding night, - Come, and the shadows from thy bosom shake, - Awake from thy thick sleep, awake, awake!" - - Then the grass of that mounded meadow stirred - Above the Roman bones that may not stir - Though joyous morning whispered, shouted, sang: - The grass stirred as that happy music rang. - - O, what a wondrous rustling everywhere! - The steady shadows shook and thinned and died, - The shining grass flashed brightness back for brightness, - And sleep was gone, and there was heavenly lightness. - - As if she had found wings, light as the wind, - The grass flew, bent with the wind, from east to west, - Chased by one wild grey cloud, and flashing all - Her dews for happiness to hear morning call ... - - But even as I stepped out the brightness dimmed, - I saw the fading edge of all delight. - The sober morning waked the drowsy herds, - And there was the old scolding of the birds. - - - - - THE BODY - - - When I had dreamed and dreamed what woman's beauty was, - And how that beauty seen from unseen surely flowed, - I turned and dreamed again, but sleeping now no more: - My eyes shut and my mind with inward vision glowed. - - "I did not think!" I cried, seeing that wavering shape - That steadied and then wavered, as a cherry bough in June - Lifts and falls in the wind--each fruit a fruit of light; - And then she stood as clear as an unclouded moon. - - As clear and still she stood, moonlike remotely near; - I saw and heard her breathe, I years and years away. - Her light streamed through the years, I saw her clear and still, - Shape and spirit together mingling night with day. - - Water falling, falling with the curve of time - Over green-hued rock, then plunging to its pool - Far, far below, a falling spear of light; - Water falling golden from the sun but moonlike cool: - - Water has the curve of her shoulder and breast, - Water falls as straight as her body rose, - Water her brightness has from neck to still feet, - Water crystal-cold as her cold body flows. - - But not water has the colour I saw when I dreamed, - Nor water such strength has. I joyed to behold - How the blood lit her body with lamps of fire - And made the flesh glow that like water gleamed cold. - - A flame in her arms and in each finger flame, - And flame in her bosom, flame above, below, - The curve of climbing flame in her waist and her thighs;µ - From foot to head did flame into red flame flow. - - I knew how beauty seen from unseen must rise, - How the body's joy for more than body's use was made. - I knew then how the body is the body of the mind, - And how the mind's own fire beneath the cool skin played. - - O shape that once to have seen is to see evermore, - Falling stream that falls to the deeps of the mind, - Fire that once lit burns while aught burns in the world, - Foot to head a flame moving in the spirit's wind! - - If these eyes could see what these eyes have not seen-- - The inward vision clear--how should I look for - Knowing that beauty's self rose visible in the world - Over age that darkens, and griefs that destroy? - - - - - STONE TREES - - - Last night a sword-light in the sky - Flashed a swift terror on the dark. - In that sharp light the fields did lie - Naked and stone-like; each tree stood - Like a tranced woman, bound and stark. - Far off the wood - With darkness ridged the riven dark. - - The cows astonished stared with fear, - And sheep crept to the knees of cows, - And comes to their burrows slid, - And rooks were still in rigid boughs, - And all things else were still or hid. - From all the wood - Came but the owl's hoot, ghostly, clear. - - In that cold trance the earth was held - It seemed an age, or time was nought. - Sure never from that stone-like field - Sprang golden corn, nor from those chill - Gray granite trees was music wrought. - In all the wood - Even the tall poplar hung stone still. - - It seemed an age, or time was none ... - Slowly the earth heaved out of sleep - And shivered, and the trees of stone - Bent and sighed in the gusty wind, - And rain swept as birds nocking sweep. - Far off the wood - Rolled the slow thunders on the wind. - - From all the wood came no brave bird, - No song broke through the close-fall'n night, - Nor any sound from cowering herd: - Only a dog's long lonely howl - When from the window poured pale light. - And from the wood - The hoot came ghostly of the owl. - - - - - MORE THAN SWEET - - - The noisy fire, - The drumming wind, - The creaking trees, - And all that hum - Of summer air - And all the long inquietude - Of breaking seas-- - - Sweet and delightful are - In loneliness. - But more than these - The quiet light - From the morn's sun - And night's astonished moon, - Falling gently upon breaking seas. - - Such quietness - Another beauty is-- - Ah, and those stars - So gravely still - More than light, than beauty pour - Upon the strangeness - Of the heart's breaking seas. - - - - - WAKING - - - Lying beneath a hundred seas of sleep - With all those heavy waves flowing over me, - And I unconscious of the rolling night - Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep - Risen, I felt the wandering seas no longer cover me - But only air and light ... - - It was a sleep - So dark and so bewilderingly deep - That only death's were deeper or completer, - And none when I awoke stranger or sweeter. - Awake, the strangeness still hung over me - As I with far-strayed senses stared at the light. - - I--and who was I? - Saw--oh, with what unaccustomed eye! - The room was strange and everything strange - Like a strange room entered by wild moonlight; - And yet familiar as the light swept over me - And I rose from the night. - - Strange--yet stranger I. - And as one climbs from water up to land - Fumbling for weedy steps with foot and hand, - So I for yesterdays whereon to climb - To this remote and new-struck isle of time. - But I found not myself nor yesterday-- - - Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep - Risen, I felt the seas no longer over me - But only air and light. - Yes, like one clutching at a ring I heard - The household noises as they stirred, - And holding fast I wondered, What were they? - - I felt a strange hand lying at my side, - Limp and cool. I touched it and knew it mine. - A murmur, and I remembered how the wind died - In the near aspens. Then - Strange things were no more strange. - I travelled among common thoughts again; - - And felt the new-forged links of that strong chain - That binds me to myself, and this to-day - To yesterday. I heard it rattling near - With a no more astonished ear. - And I had lost the strangeness of that sleep, - No more the long night rolled its great seas over me. - - --O, too anxious I! - For in this press of things familiar - I have lost all that clung - Round me awaking of strangeness and such sweetness. - Nothing now is strange - Except the man that woke and then was I. - - - - - THE CHAIR - - - The chair was made - By hands long dead, - Polished by many bodies sitting there, - Until the wood-lines flowed as clean as waves. - - Mine sat restless there, - Or propped to stare - Hugged the low kitchen with fond eyes - Or tired eyes that looked at nothing at all. - - Or watched from the smoke rise - The flame's snake-eyes, - Up the black-bearded chimney leap; - Then on my shoulder my dull head would drop. - - And half asleep - I heard her creep--Her - never-singing lips shut fast, - Fearing to wake me by a careless breath. - - Then, at last, - My lids upcast, - Our eyes met, I smiled and she smiled, - And I shut mine again and truly slept. - - Was I that child - Fretful, sick, wild? - Was that you moving soft and soft - Between the rooms if I but played at sleep? - - Or if I laughed, - Talked, cried, or coughed, - You smiled too, just perceptibly, - Or your large kind brown eyes said, O poor boy! - - From the fireside I - Could see the narrow sky - Through the barred heavy window panes, - Could hear the sparrows quarrelling round the - lilac; - - And hear the heavy rains - Choking in the roof-drains:-- - Else of the world I nothing heard - Or nothing remember now. But most I loved - - To watch when you stirred - Busily like a bird - At household doings; with hands floured - Mixing a magic with your cakes and tarts. - - O into me, sick, froward, - Yourself you poured; - In all those days and weeks when I - Sat, slept, woke, whimpered, wondered and slept again. - - Now but a memory - To bless and harry me - Remains of you still swathed with care; - Myself your chief care, sitting by the hearth - - Propped in the pillowed chair, - Following you with tired stare, - And my hand following the wood lines - By dead hands smoothed and followed many years. - - - - - THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES - - - And now, while the dark vast earth shakes and rocks - In this wild dream-like snare of mortal shocks, - How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars - On these magnificent, cruel wars?--Venus, - that brushes with her shining lips - (Surely!) the wakeful edge of the world and mocks - With hers its all ungentle wantonness?--Or - the large moon (pricked by the spars of ships - Creeping and creeping in their restlessness), - The moon pouring strange light on things more strange, - Looks she unheedfully on seas and lands - Trembling with change and fear of counter-change? - - O, not earth trembles, but the stars, the stars! - The sky is shaken and the cool air is quivering. - I cannot look up to the crowded height - And see the fair stars trembling in their light, - For thinking of the starlike spirits of men - Crowding the earth and with great passion quivering:-- - Stars quenched in anger and hate, stars sick with pity. - I cannot look up to the naked skies - Because a sorrow on dark midnight lies, - Death, on the living world of sense; - Because on my own land a shadow lies - That may not rise; - Because from bare grey hillside and rich city - Streams of uncomprehending sadness pour, - Thwarting the eager spirit's pure intelligence... - How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars - On these magnificent, cruel wars? - - Stars trembled in broad heaven, faint with pity. - An hour to dawn I looked. Beside the trees - Wet mist shaped other trees that branching rose, - Covering the woods and putting out the stars. - There was no murmur on the seas, - No wind blew--only the wandering air that grows - With dawn, then murmurs, sighs, - And dies. - The mist climbed slowly, putting out the stars, - And the earth trembled when the stars were gone; - And moving strangely everywhere upon - The trembling earth, thickened the watery mist. - - And for a time the holy things are veiled. - England's wise thoughts are swords; her quiet hours - Are trodden underfoot like wayside flowers, - And every English heart is England's wholly. - In starless night - A serious passion streams the heaven with light. - A common beating is in the air-- - The heart of England throbbing everywhere. - And all her roads are nerves of noble thought, - And all her people's brain is but her brain; - And all her history, less her shame, - Is part of her requickened consciousness. - Her courage rises clean again. - - Even in victory there hides defeat; - The spirit's murdered though the body survives, - Except the cause for which a people strives - Burn with no covetous, foul heat. - Fights she against herself who infamously draws - The sword against man's secret spiritual laws, - But thou, England, because a bitter heel - Hath sought to bruise the brain, the sensitive will, - The conscience of the world, - For this, England, art risen, and shalt fight - Purely through long profoundest night, - - Making their quarrel thine who are grieved like thee; - And (if to thee the stars yield victory) - Tempering their hate of the great foe that hurled - Vainly her strength against the conscience of the world. - - I looked again, or dreamed I looked, and saw - The stars again and all their peace again. - The moving mist had gone, and shining still - The moon went high and pale above the hill. - Not now those lights were trembling in the vast - Ways of the nervy heaven, nor trembled earth: - Profound and calm they gazed as the soft-shod hours passed. - And with less fear (not with less awe, - Remembering, England, all the blood and pain) - How look, I cried, you stern and solitary stars - On these disastrous wars! - - August, 1914. - - - - - SHADOWS - - - The shadow of the lantern on the wall, - The lantern hanging from the twisted beam, - The eye that sees the lantern, shadow and all. - - The crackle of the sinking fire in the grate, - The far train, the slow echo in the coombe, - The ear that hears fire, train and echo and all. - - The loveliness that is the secret shape - Of once-seen, sweet and oft-dreamed loveliness, - The brain that builds shape, memory, dream and all ... - - A white moon stares Time's thinning fabric through, - And makes substantial insubstantial seem, - And shapes immortal mortal as a dream; - And eye and brain flicker as shadows do - Restlessly dancing on a cloudy wall. - - - - - ROBERT GRAVES - - - - - STAR-TALK - - - "Are you awake, Gemelli, - This frosty night?" - "We'll be awake till reveille, - Which is Sunrise," say the Gemelli, - "It's no good trying to go to sleep: - If there's wine to be got we'll drink it deep, - But rest is hopeless to-night, - But rest is hopeless to-night." - - "Are you cold too, poor Pleiads, - This frosty night?" - "Yes, and so are the Hyads: - See us cuddle and hug," say the Pleiads, - "All six in a ring: it keeps us warm: - We huddle together like birds in a storm: - It's bitter weather to-night, - It's bitter weather to-night." - - "What do you hunt, Orion, - This starry night?" - "The Ram, the Bull and the Lion - And the Great Bear," says Orion, - "With my starry quiver and beautiful belt - I am trying to find a good thick pelt - To warm my shoulders to-night, - To warm my shoulders to-night." - - "Did you hear that, Great She-bear, - This frosty night?" - "Yes, he's talking of stripping _me_ bare - Of my own big fur," says the She-bear. - "I'm afraid of the man and his terrible arrow: - The thought of it chills my bones to the marrow, - And the frost so cruel to-night! - And the frost so cruel to-night!" - - "How is your trade, Aquarius, - This frosty night?" - "Complaints is many and various - And my feet are cold," says Aquarius, - "There's Venus objects to Dolphin-scales, - And Mars to Crab-spawn found in my pails, - And the pump has frozen to-night, - And the pump has frozen to-night." - - - - - TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WARS-- - FOR THE FOURTH TIME - - - It doesn't matter what's the cause, - What wrong they say we're righting, - A curse for treaties, bonds and laws, - When we're to do the fighting! - And since we lads are proud and true, - What else remains to do? - - Lucasta, when to France your man - Returns his fourth time, hating war, - Yet laughs as calmly as he can - And flings an oath, but says no more, - That is not courage, that's not fear--Lucasta - he is Fusilier, - And his pride sends him here. - - Let statesmen bluster, bark and bray - And so decide who started - This bloody war, and who's to pay - But he must be stout-hearted, - Must sit and stake with quiet breath, - Playing at cards with Death. - - Don't plume yourself he fights for you; - It is no courage, love or hate - That lets us do the things we do; - It's pride that makes the heart so great; - It is not anger, no, nor fear--Lucasta - he's a Fusilier, - And his pride keeps him here. - - - - - NOT DEAD - - - Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, - I know that David's with me here again. - All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. - Caressingly I stroke - Rough bark of the friendly oak. - A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. - Turf burns with pleasant smoke; - I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses. - All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. - Over the whole wood in a little while - Breaks his slow smile. - - - - - IN THE WILDERNESS - - - Christ of his gentleness - Thirsting and hungering, - Walked in the wilderness; - Soft words of grace He spoke - Unto lost desert-folk - That listened wondering. - He heard the bittern's call - From ruined palace wall, - Answered them brotherly. - He held communion - With the she-pelican - Of lonely piety. - Basilisk, cockatrice, - Flocked to His homilies, - With mail of dread device, - With monstrous barbed stings, - With eager dragon-eyes; - Great rats on leather wings - And poor blind broken things, - Foul in their miseries. - And ever with Him went, - Of all His wanderings - Comrade, with ragged coat, - Gaunt ribs--poor innocent-- - Bleeding foot, burning throat, - The guileless old scape-goat; - For forty nights and days - Followed in Jesus' ways, - Sure guard behind Him kept, - Tears like a lover wept. - - - - - NEGLECTFUL EDWARD - - - _Nancy_ - - Edward back from the Indian Sea, - "What have you brought for Nancy?" - - _Edward_ - - "A rope of pearls and a gold earring, - And a bird of the East that will not sing. - A carven tooth, a box with a key--" - - _Nancy_ - - "God be praised you are back," says she, - "Have you nothing more for your Nancy?" - - _Edward_ - - "Long as I sailed the Indian Sea - I gathered all for your fancy: - Toys and silk and jewels I bring, - And a bird of the East that will not sing: - What more can you want, dear girl, from me?" - - _Nancy_ - - "God be praised you are back," said she, - "Have you nothing better for Nancy?" - - _Edward_ - - "Safe and home from the Indian Sea - And nothing to take your fancy?" - - _Nancy_ - - "You can keep your pearls and your gold earring, - And your bird of the East that will not sing, - But, Ned, have you _nothing_ more for me - Than heathenish gew-gaw toys?" says she, - "Have you nothing better for Nancy?" - - - - - JULIAN GRENFELL - - _Born 1888_ - _Killed in Action 1915_ - - - - - - TO A BLACK GREYHOUND - - - Shining black in the shining light, - Inky black in the golden sun, - Graceful as the swallow's flight, - Light as swallow, winged one, - Swift as driven hurricane, - Double-sinewed stretch and spring, - Muffled thud of flying feet-- - See the black dog galloping, - Hear his wild foot-beat. - - See him lie when the day is dead, - Black curves curled on the boarded floor. - Sleepy eyes, my sleepy-head-- - Eyes that were aflame before. - Gentle now, they burn no more; - Gentle now and softly warm, - With the fire that made them bright - Hidden--as when after storm - Softly falls the night. - - - - - INTO BATTLE - - - The naked earth is warm with Spring, - And with green grass and bursting trees - Leans to the sun's gaze glorying, - And quivers in the sunny breeze; - And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light, - And a striving evermore for these; - And he is dead who will not fight; - And who dies fighting has increase. - - The fighting man shall from the sun - Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth; - Speed with the light-foot winds to run, - And with the trees to newer birth; - And find, when fighting shall be done, - Great rest, and fullness after dearth. - - All the bright company of Heaven - Hold him in their high comradeship, - The Dog-Star and the Sisters Seven, - Orion's Belt and sworded hip. - - The woodland trees that stand together, - They stand to him each one a friend, - They gently speak in the windy weather; - They guide to valley and ridges' end. - - The kestrel hovering by day, - And the little owls that call by night, - Bid him be swift and keen as they, - As keen of ear, as swift of sight. - - The blackbird sings to him, "Brother, brother, - If this be the last song you shall sing - Sing well, for you may not sing another; - Brother, sing." - - In dreary, doubtful, waiting hours, - Before the brazen frenzy starts, - The horses show him nobler powers; - O patient eyes, courageous hearts - - And when the burning moment breaks, - And all things else are out of mind, - And only Joy of Battle takes - Him by the throat, and makes him blind - - Through joy and blindness he shall know, - Not caring much to know, that still, - Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so - That it be not the Destined Will. - - The thundering line of battle stands, - And in the air Death moans and sings; - But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, - And Night shall fold him in soft wings. - - - - - IVOR GURNEY - - - - - TO THE POET BEFORE BATTLE - - - Now, youth, the hour of thy dread passion comes: - Thy lovely things must all be laid away; - And thou, as others, must face the riven day - Unstirred by rattle of the rolling drums, - Or bugles' strident cry. When mere noise numbs - The sense of being, the fear-sick soul doth sway, - Remember thy great craft's honour, that they may say - Nothing in shame of poets. Then the crumbs - Of praise the little versemen joyed to take - Shall be forgotten: then they must know we are, - For all our skill in words, equal in might - And strong of mettle as those we honoured; make - The name of poet terrible in just war, - And like a crown of honour upon the fight. - - - - - SONG OF PAIN AND BEAUTY - - To M. M. S. - - - O may these days of pain, - These wasted-seeming days, - Somewhere reflower again - With scent and savour of praise, - Draw out of memory all bitterness - Of night with Thy sun's rays. - - And strengthen Thou in me - The love of men here found, - And eager charity, - That, out of difficult ground, - Spring like flowers in barren deserts, or - Like light, or a lovely sound. - - A simpler heart than mine - Might have seen beauty clear - When I could see no sign - Of Thee, but only fear. - Strengthen me, make me to see - Thy beauty always - In every happening here. - - _In Trenches, March_ 1917. - - - - - RALPH HODGSON - - - - - EVE - - - Eve, with her basket, was - Deep in the bells and grass, - Wading in bells and grass - Up to her knees, - Picking a dish of sweet - Berries and plums to eat, - Down in the bells and grass - Under the trees. - - Mute as a mouse in a - Corner the cobra lay, - Curled round a bough of the - Cinnamon tall...... - Now to get even and - Humble proud heaven and - Now was the moment or - Never at all. - - "Eva!" Each syllable - Light as a flower fell, - "Eva!" he whispered the - Wondering maid, - Soft as a bubble sung - Out of a linnet's lung, - Soft and most silverly - "Eva!" he said. - - Picture that orchard sprite, - Eve, with her body white, - Supple and smooth to her - Slim finger tips, - Wondering, listening, - Eve with a berry - Half way to her lips. - - Oh had our simple Eve - Seen through the make-believe! - Had she but known the - Pretender he was! - Out of the boughs he came - Whispering still her name - Tumbling in twenty rings - Into the grass. - - Here was the strangest pair - In the world anywhere; - Eve in the bells and grass - Kneeling, and he - Telling his story low.... - Singing birds saw them go - Down the dark path to - The Blasphemous Tree. - - Oh what a clatter when - Titmouse and Jenny Wren - Saw him successful and - Taking his leave! - How the birds rated him, - How they all hated him! - How they all pitied - Poor motherless' Eve! - - Picture her crying - Outside in the lane, - Eve, with no dish of sweet - Berries and plums to eat, - Haunting the gate of the - Orchard in vain...... - Picture the lewd delight - Under the hill to-night-- - "Eva!" the toast goes round, - "Eva!" again. - - - - - THE BULL - - - See an old unhappy bull, - Sick in soul and body both, - Slouching in the undergrowth - Of the forest beautiful, - Banished from the herd he led, - Bulls and cows a thousand head. - - Cranes and gaudy parrots go - Up and down the burning sky; - Tree-top cats purr drowsily - In the dim-day green below; - And troops of monkeys, nutting, some, - All disputing, go and come; - - And things abominable sit - Picking offal buck or swine, - On the mess and over it - Burnished flies and beetles shine, - And spiders big as bladders lie - Under hemlocks ten foot high; - - And a dotted serpent curled - Round and round and round a tree, - Yellowing its greenery, - Keeps a watch on all the world, - All the world and this old bull - In the forest beautiful. - - Bravely by his fall he came: - One he led, a bull of blood - Newly come to lustihood, - Fought and put his prince to shame, - Snuffed and pawed the prostrate head - Tameless even while it bled. - - There they left him, every one, - Left him there without a lick, - Left him for the birds to pick, - Left him there for carrion, - Vilely from their bosom cast - Wisdom, worth and love at last. - - When the lion left his lair - And roared his beauty through the hills, - And the vultures pecked their quills - And flew into the middle air, - Then this prince no more to reign - Came to life and lived again, - - He snuffed the herd in far retreat, - He saw the blood upon the ground, - And snuffed the burning airs around - Still with beevish odours sweet, - While the blood ran down his head - And his mouth ran slaver red. - - Pity him, this fallen chief, - All his splendour, all his strength, - All his body's breadth and length - Dwindled down with shame and grief, - Half the bull he was before, - Bones and leather, nothing more. - - See him standing dewlap-deep - In the rushes at the lake, - Surly, stupid, half asleep, - Waiting for his heart to break - And the birds to join the flies - Feasting at his bloodshot eyes,-- - - Standing with his head hung down - In a stupor, dreaming things: - Green savannas, jungles brown, - Battlefields and bellowings, - Bulls undone and lions dead - And vultures flapping overhead. - - Dreaming things: of days he spent - With his mother gaunt and lean - In the valley warm and green, - Full of baby wonderment, - Blinking out of silly eyes - At a hundred mysteries; - - Dreaming over once again - How he wandered with a throng - Of bulls and cows a thousand strong, - Wandered on from plain to plain, - Up the hill and down the dale, - Always at his mother's tail; - - How he lagged behind the herd, - Lagged and tottered, weak of limb, - And she turned and ran to him - Blaring at the loathly bird - Stationed always in the skies, - Waiting for the flesh that dies. - - Dreaming maybe of a day - When her drained and drying paps - Turned him to the sweets and saps, - Richer fountains by the way, - And she left the bull she bore - And he looked to her no more; - - And his little frame grew stout, - And his little legs grew strong, - And the way was not so long; - And his little horns came out, - And he played at butting trees - And boulder-stones and tortoises, - - Joined a game of knobby skulls - With the youngsters of his year, - All the other little bulls, - Learning both to bruise and bear, - Learning how to stand a shock - Like a little bull of rock. - - Dreaming of a day less dim, - Dreaming of a time less far, - When the faint but certain star - Of destiny burned clear for him, - And a fierce and wild unrest - Broke the quiet of his breast. - - And the gristles of his youth - Hardened in his comely pow, - And he came to righting growth, - Beat his bull and won his cow, - And flew his tail and trampled off - Past the tallest, vain enough, - - And curved about in splendour full - And curved again and snuffed the airs - As who should say Come out who dares I - And all beheld a bull, a Bull, - And knew that here was surely one - That backed for no bull, fearing none. - - And the leader of the herd - Looked and saw, and beat the ground, - And shook the forest with his sound, - Bellowed at the loathly bird - Stationed always in the skies, - Waiting for the flesh that dies. - - Dreaming, this old bull forlorn, - Surely dreaming of the hour - When he came to sultan power, - And they owned him master-horn, - Chiefest bull of all among - Bulls and cows a thousand strong. - - And in all the tramping herd - Not a bull that barred his way, - Not a cow that said him nay, - Not a bull or cow that erred - In the furnace of his look - Dared a second, worse rebuke; - - Not in all the forest wide, - Jungle, thicket, pasture, fen, - Not another dared him then, - Dared him and again defied; - Not a sovereign buck or boar - Came a second time for more. - - Not a serpent that survived - Once the terrors of his hoof - Risked a second time reproof, - Came a second time and lived, - Not a serpent in its skin - Came again for discipline; - - Not a leopard bright as flame, - Flashing fingerhooks of steel, - That a wooden tree might feel, - Met his fury once and came - For a second reprimand, - Not a leopard in the land. - - Not a lion of them all - Not a lion of the hills, - Hero of a thousand kills, - Dared a second fight and fall, - Dared that ram terrific twice, - Paid a second time the price.... - - Pity him, this dupe of dream, - Leader of the herd again - Only in his daft old brain, - Once again the bull supreme - And bull enough to bear the part - Only in his tameless heart. - - Pity him that he must wake; - Even now the swarm of flies - Blackening his bloodshot eyes - Bursts and blusters round the lake, - Scattered from the feast half-fed, - By great shadows overhead. - - And the dreamer turns away - From his visionary herds - And his splendid yesterday, - Turns to meet the loathly birds - Flocking round him from the skies, - Waiting for the flesh that dies. - - - - - THE SONG OF HONOUR - - - I climbed a hill as light fell short, - And rooks came home in scramble sort, - And filled the trees and flapped and fought - And sang themselves to sleep; - An owl from nowhere with no sound - Swung by and soon was nowhere found, - I heard him calling half-way round, - Holloing loud and deep; - A pair of stars, faint pins of light, - Then many a star, sailed into sight, - And all the stars, the flower of night, - Were round me at a leap; - To tell how still the valleys lay - I heard a watchdog miles away...... - And bells of distant sheep. - - I heard no more of bird or bell, - The mastiff in a slumber fell, - I stared into the sky, - As wondering men have always done, - Since beauty and the stars were one, - Though none so hard as I. - - It seemed, so still the valleys were, - As if the whole world knelt at prayer, - Save me and me alone; - So pure and wide that silence was - I feared to bend a blade of grass, - And there I stood like stone. - - There, sharp and sudden, there I heard-- - _Ah! some wild lovesick singing bird_ - _Woke singing in the trees?_ - _The nightingale and babble-wren_ - _Were in the English greenwood then,_ - _And you heard one of these?_ - - The babble-wren and nightingale - Sang in the Abyssinian vale - That season of the year! - Yet, true enough, I heard them plain, - I heard them both again, again, - As sharp and sweet and clear - As if the Abyssinian tree - Had thrust a bough across the sea, - Had thrust a bough across to me - With music for my ear! - - I heard them both, and oh! I heard - The song of every singing bird - That sings beneath the sky, - And with the song of lark and wren - The song of mountains, moths and men - And seas and rainbows vie! - - I heard the universal choir - The Sons of Light exalt their Sire - With universal song, - Earth's lowliest and loudest notes, - Her million times ten million throats - Exalt Him loud and long, - And lips and lungs and tongues of Grace - From every part and every place - Within the shining of His face - The universal throng. - - I heard the hymn of being sound - From every well of honour found - In human sense and soul: - The song of poets when they write - The testament of Beautysprite - Upon a flying scroll, - The song of painters when they take - A burning brush for Beauty's sake - And limn her features whole-- - - The song of men divinely wise - Who look and see in starry skies - Not stars so much as robins' eyes, - And when these pale away - Hear flocks of shiny pleiades - Among the plums and apple trees - Sing in the summer day-- - The song of all both high and low - To some blest vision true, - The song of beggars when they throw - The crust of pity all men owe - To hungry sparrows in the snow, - Old beggars hungry too-- - The song of kings of kingdoms when - They rise above their fortune men, - And crown themselves anew,-- - - The song of courage, heart and will - And gladness in a fight, - Of men who face a hopeless hill - With sparking and delight, - The bells and bells of song that ring - Round banners of a cause or king - From armies bleeding white-- - - The songs of sailors every one - When monstrous tide and tempest run - At ships like bulls at red, - When stately ships are twirled and spun - Like whipping-tops and help there's none - And mighty ships ten thousand ton - Go down like lumps of lead-- - - And songs of fighters stern as they - At odds with fortune night and day, - Crammed up in cities grim and grey - As thick as bees in hives, - Hosannas of a lowly throng - Who sing unconscious of their song, - Whose lips are in their lives-- - - And song of some at holy war - With spells and ghouls more dread by far - Than deadly seas and cities are, - Or hordes of quarrelling kings-- - The song of fighters great and small, - The song of pretty fighters all, - And high heroic things-- - - The song of lovers--who knows how - Twitched up from place and time - Upon a sigh, a blush, a vow, - A curve or hue of cheek or brow, - Borne up and off from here and now - Into the void sublime! - - And crying loves and passions still - In every key from soft to shrill - And numbers never done, - Dog-loyalties to faith and friend, - And loves like Ruth's of old no end, - And intermission none-- - - And burst on burst for beauty and - For numbers not behind, - From men whose love of motherland - Is like a dog's for one dear hand, - Sole, selfless, boundless, blind-- - And song of some with hearts beside - For men and sorrows far and wide, - Who watch the world with pity and pride - And warm to all mankind-- - - And endless joyous music rise - From children at their play, - And endless soaring lullabies - From happy, happy mother's eyes, - And answering crows and baby cries, - How many who shall say! - And many a song as wondrous well - With pangs and sweets intolerable - From lonely hearths too gray to tell, - God knows how utter gray! - - And song from many a house of care - When pain has forced a footing there - And there's a Darkness on the stair - Will not be turned away-- - - And song--that song whose singers come - With old kind tales of pity from - The Great Compassion's lips, - That makes the bells of Heaven to peal - Round pillows frosty with the feel - Of Death's cold finger tips-- - - The song of men all sorts and kinds, - As many tempers, moods and minds - As leaves are on a tree, - As many faiths and castes and creeds, - As many human bloods and breeds - As in the world may be; - - The song of each and all who gaze - On Beauty in her naked blaze, - Or see her dimly in a haze, - Or get her light in fitful rays - And tiniest needles even, - The song of all not wholly dark, - Not wholly sunk in stupor stark - Too deep for groping Heaven-- - - And alleluias sweet and clear - And wild with beauty men mishear, - From choirs of song as near and dear - To Paradise as they, - The everlasting pipe and flute - Of wind and sea and bird and brute, - And lips deaf men imagine mute - In wood and stone and clay; - - The music of a lion strong - That shakes a hill a whole night long, - A hill as loud as he, - The twitter of a mouse among - Melodious greenery, - The ruby's and the rainbow's song, - The nightingale's--all three, - The song of life that wells and flows - From every leopard, lark and rose - And everything that gleams or goes - Lack-lustre in the sea. - - I heard it all, each, every note - Of every lung and tongue and throat, - Ay, every rhythm and rhyme - Of everything that lives and loves - And upward, ever upward moves - From lowly to sublime! - Earth's multitudinous Sons of Light, - I heard them lift their lyric might - With each and every chanting sprite - That lit the sky that wondrous night - As far as eye could climb! - - I heard it all, I heard the whole - Harmonious hymn of being roll - Up through the chapel of my soul - And at the altar die, - And in the awful quiet then - Myself I heard Amen, Amen, - Amen I heard me cry! - I heard it all, and then although - I caught my flying senses, oh, - A dizzy man was I! - I stood and stared; the sky was lit, - The sky was stars all over it, - I stood, I knew not why, - Without a wish, without a will, - I stood upon that silent hill - And stared into the sky until - My eyes were blind with stars and still - I stared into the sky. - - - - - REASON HAS MOONS - - - Reason has moons, but moons not hers - Lie mirror'd on her sea, - Confounding her astronomers, - But, O! delighting me. - - - - - JAMES JOYCE - - - - - STRINGS IN THE EARTH - - - Strings in the earth and air - Make music sweet; - Strings by the river where - The willows meet. - - There's music along the river - For Love wanders there, - Pale flowers on his mantle, - Dark leaves on his hair. - - All softly playing, - With head to the music bent, - And fingers straying - Upon an instrument. - - - - - I HEAR AN ARMY - - - I hear an army charging upon the land, - And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees: - Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand, - Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers. - - They cry unto the night their battle-name: - I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter. - They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame, - Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil. - - They come shaking in triumph their long green hair: - They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore. - My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair? - My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone? - - - - - D. H. LAWRENCE - - - - - SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD - - - Between the avenues of cypresses, - All in their scarlet cloaks, and surplices - Of linen, go the chaunting choristers, - The priests in gold and black, the villagers. - - And all along the path to the cemetery - The round, dark heads of men crowd silently, - And black-scarved faces of women-folk, wistfully - Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery. - - And at the foot of a grave a father stands - With sunken head, and forgotten, folded hands; - And at the foot of a grave a woman kneels - With pale shut face, and neither hears nor feels - - The coming of the chaunting choristers - Between the avenues of cypresses, - The silence of the many villagers, - The candle-flames beside the surplices. - - - - - FRANCIS LEDWIDGE - - _Killed in Action, 1917,_ - - - - - IN FRANCE - - - The silence of maternal hills - Is round me in my evening dreams; - And round me music-making rills - And mingling waves of pastoral streams. - - Whatever way I turn I find - The path is old unto me still. - The hills of home are in my mind, - And there I wander as I will. - - _February 3rd, 1917. - - - - - THOMAS MACDONAGH - - - He shall not hear the bittern cry - In the wild sky, where he is lain, - Nor voices of the sweeter birds - Above the wailing of the rain. - - Nor shall he know when loud March blows - Thro' slanting snows her fanfare shrill, - Blowing to flame the golden cup - Of many an upset daffodil. - - But when the Dark Cow leaves the moor, - And pastures poor with greedy weeds, - Perhaps he'll hear her low at morn - Lifting her horn in pleasant meads. - - - - - IN SEPTEMBER - - - Still are the meadowlands, and still - Ripens the upland com, - And over the brown gradual hill - The moon has dipped a horn. - - The voices of the dear unknown - With silent hearts now call, - My rose of youth is overblown - And trembles to the fall. - - My song forsakes me like the birds - That leave the rain and grey, - I hear the music of the words - My lute can never say. - - - - - ROSE MACAULAY - - - - - TRINITY SUNDAY - - - As I walked in Petty Cury on Trinity Day, - While the cuckoos in the fields did shout, - Right through the city stole the breath of the may, - And the scarlet doctors all about - - Lifted up their heads to snuff at the breeze, - And forgot they were bound for great St. Mary's - To listen to a sermon from the Master of Caius, - And "How balmy," they said, "the air is!" - - And balmy it was; and the sweet bells rocking - Shook it till it rent in two - And fell, a torn veil; and like maniacs mocking - The wild things from without passed through. - - Wild wet things that swam in King's Parade - The days it was a marshy fen, - Through the rent veil they did sprawl and wade - Blind bog-beasts and Ugrian men. - - And the city was not. (For cities are wrought - Of the stuff of the world's live brain. - Cities are thin veils, woven of thought, - And thought, breaking, rends them in twain.) - - And the fens were not. (For fens are dreams - Dreamt by a race long dead; - And the earth is naught, and the sun but seems: - And so those who know have said.) - - So veil beyond veil inimitably lifted: - And I saw the world's naked face, - Before, reeling and baffled and blind, I drifted - Back within the bounds of space. - - *** - - I have forgot the unforgettable. - All of honey and milk the air is. - God send I do forget.... The merry winds swell - In the scarlet gowns bound for St. Mary's. - - - - - THOMAS MACDONAGH - - _Born 1878._ - - - _Executed after Easter Week Rising, 1916._ - - - - - INSCRIPTION ON A RUIN - - - I stood beside the postern here, - High up above the trampling sea, - In shadow, shrinking from the spear - Of light, not daring hence to flee. - - The moon beyond the western cliff - Had passed, and let the shadow fall, - Across the water to the skiff - That came on to the castle wall. - - I heard below murmur of words - Not loud, the splash upon the strand, - And the long cry of darkling birds. - The ivory horn fell from my hand. - - - - - THE NIGHT HUNT - - - In the morning, in the dark, - When the stars begin to blunt, - By the wall of Barn a Park - Dogs I heard and saw them hunt; - All the parish dogs were there, - All the dogs for miles around, - Teeming up behind a hare, - In the dark, without a sound. - - How I heard I scarce can tell-- - 'Twas a patter in the grass-- - And I did not see them well - Come across the dark and pass; - Yet I saw them and I knew - Spearman's dog and Spellman's dog - And, beside my own dog too, - Leamy's from the Island Bog. - - In the morning when the sun - Burnished all the green to gorse, - I went out to take a run - Round the bog upon my horse; - And my dog that had been sleeping - In the heat beside the door - Left his yawning and went leaping - On a hundred yards before. - - Through the village street we passed-- - Not a dog there raised a snout-- - Through the street and out at last - On the white bog road and out - Over Barna Park full pace, - Over to the silver stream, - Horse and dog in happy race, - Rider between thought and dream. - - By the stream, at Leamy's house, - Lay a dog--my pace I curbed-- - But our coming did not rouse - Him from drowsing undisturbed; - And my dog, as unaware - Of the other, dropped beside - And went running by me there - With my horse's slackened stride. - - Yet by something, by a twitch - Of the sleeper's eye, a look - From the runner, something which - Little chords of feeling shook, - I was conscious that a thought - Shuddered through the silent deep - Of a secret--I had caught - Something I had known in sleep. - - - - - JOHN MASEFIELD - - - - - C. L. M. - - - In the dark womb where I began - My mother's life made me a man. - Through all the months of human birth - Her beauty fed my common earth. - I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, - But through the death of some of her. - - Down in the darkness of the grave - She cannot see the life she gave. - For all her love, she cannot tell - Whether I use it ill or well, - Nor knock at dusty doors to find - Her beauty dusty in the mind. - - If the grave's gates could be undone, - She would not know her little son, - I am so grown. If we should meet - She would pass by me in the street, - Unless my soul's face let her see - My sense of what she did for me. - - What have I done to keep in mind - My debt to her and womankind? - What woman's happier life repays - Her for those months of wretched days? - For all my monthless body leeched - Ere Birth's releasing hell was reached? - - What have I done, or tried, or said - In thanks to that dear woman dead? - Men triumph over women still, - Men trample women's rights at will, - And man's lust roves the world untamed. - - *** - - O grave, keep shut lest I be shamed. - - - - - WHAT AM I, LIFE? - - - What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt - Held in cohesion by unresting cells - Which work they know not why, which never halt, - Myself unwitting where their master dwells. - I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin; - A world which uses me as I use them, - Nor do I know which end or which begin, - Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn. - So, like a marvel in a marvel set, - I answer to the vast, as wave by wave - The sea of air goes over, dry or wet, - Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave, - Or the great sun comes north, this myriad I - Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why. - - - - - HAROLD MONRO - - - - - JOURNEY - - - I - - How many times I nearly miss the train - By running up the staircase once again - For some dear trifle almost left behind. - At that last moment the unwary mind - Forgets the solemn tick of station-time; - That muddy lane the feet must climb-- - The bridge--the ticket--signal down-- - Train just emerging beyond the town: - The great blue engine panting as it takes - The final curve, and grinding on its brakes - Up to the platform-edge... The little doors - Swing open, while the burly porter roars. - The tight compartment fills: our careful eyes - Go to explore each other's destinies. - A lull. The station-master waves. The train - Gathers, and grips, and takes the rails again, - Moves to the shining open land, and soon - Begins to tittle-tattle a tame tattoon. - - - II - - They ramble through the country-side, - Dear gentle monsters, and we ride - Pleasantly seated--so we sink - Into a torpor on the brink - Of thought, or read our books, and understand - Half them and half the backward-gliding land: - (Trees in a dance all twirling round; - Large rivers flowing with no sound; - The scattered images of town and field, - Shining flowers half concealed.) - And, having settled to an equal rate, - They swing the curve and straighten to the straight, - Curtail their stride and gather up their joints, - Snort, dwindle their steam for the noisy points, - Leap them in safety, and, the other side, - Loop again to an even stride. - - The long train moves: we move in it along. - Like an old ballad, or an endless song, - It drones and wimbles its unwearied croon-- - Croons, drones, and mumbles all the afternoon. - - Towns with their fifty chimneys close and high, - Wreathed in great smoke between the earth and sky, - It hurtles through them, and you think it must - Halt--but it shrieks and sputters them with dust, - Cracks like a bullet through their big affairs, - Rushes the station-bridge, and disappears - Out to the suburb, laying bare - Each garden trimmed with pitiful care; - Children are caught at idle play, - Held a moment, and thrown away. - Nearly everyone looks round. - Some dignified inhabitant is found - Right in the middle of the commonplace-- - Buttoning his trousers, or washing his face. - - - III - - Oh the wild engine! Every time I sit - In any train I must remember it. - The way it smashes through the air; its great - Petulant majesty and terrible rate: - Driving the ground before it, with those round - Feet pounding, eating, covering the ground; - The piston using up the white steam so - You cannot watch it when it come or go; - The cutting, the embankment; how it takes - The tunnels, and the clatter that it makes; - So careful of the train and of the track, - Guiding us out, or helping us go back; - Breasting its destination: at the close - Yawning, and slowly dropping to a doze. - - - IV - - We who have looked each other in the eyes - This journey long, and trundled with the train, - Now to our separate purposes must rise, - Becoming decent strangers once again. - The little chamber we have made our home - In which we so conveniently abode, - The complicated journey we have come, - Must be an unremembered episode. - Our common purpose made us all like friends. - How suddenly it ends! - A nod, a murmur, or a little smile, - Or often nothing, and away we file. - I hate to leave you, comrades. I will stay - To watch you drift apart and pass away. - It seems impossible to go and meet - All those strange eyes of people in the street. - But, like some proud unconscious god, the train - Gathers us up and scatters us again. - - - - - SOLITUDE - - - When you have tidied all things for the night, - And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep, - You'll pause a moment in the late firelight, - Too sorrowful to weep. - - The large and gentle furniture has stood - In sympathetic silence all the day - With that old kindness of domestic wood; - Nevertheless the haunted room will say: - "Some one must be away." - - The little dog rolls over half awake, - Stretches his paws, yawns, looking up at you, - Wags his tail very slightly for your sake, - That you may feel he is unhappy too. - - A distant engine whistles, or the floor - Creaks, or the wandering night-wind bangs a door. - - Silence is scattered like a broken glass. - The minutes prick their ears and run about, - Then one by one subside again and pass - Sedately in, monotonously out. - - You bend your head and wipe away a tear. - Solitude walks one heavy step more near. - - - - - MILK FOR THE CAT - - - When the tea is brought at five o'clock, - And all the neat curtains are drawn with care, - The little black cat with bright green eyes - Is suddenly purring there. - - At first she pretends, having nothing to do, - She has come in merely to blink by the grate, - But, though tea may be late or the milk may be sour - She is never late. - - And presently her agate eyes - Take a soft large milky haze, - And her independent casual glance - Becomes a stiff, hard gaze. - - Then she stamps her claws or lifts her ears, - Or twists her tail and begins to stir, - Till suddenly all her lithe body becomes - One breathing, trembling purr. - - The children eat and wriggle and laugh; - The two old ladies stroke their silk: - But the cat is grown small and thin with desire, - Transformed to a creeping lust for milk: - - The white saucer like some full moon descends - At last from the clouds of the table above; - She sighs and dreams and thrills and glows, - Transfigured with love. - - She nestles over the shining rim, - Buries her chin in the creamy sea; - Her tail hangs loose; each drowsy paw - Is doubled under each bending knee. - - A long dim ecstasy holds her life; - Her world is an infinite shapeless white, - Till her tongue has curled the last half drop, - Then she sinks back into the night, - - Draws and dips her body to heap - Her sleepy nerves in the great arm-chair, - Lies defeated and buried deep - Three or four hours unconscious there. - - - - - T. STURGE MOORE - - - - - SENT FROM EGYPT WITH A FAIR ROBE - OF TISSUE TO A SICILIAN VINE-DRESSER. - - 276 B.C. - - - Put out to sea, if wine thou wouldest make - Such as is made in Cos: when open boat - May safely launch, advice of pilots take; - And find the deepest bottom, most remote - From all encroachment of the crumbling shore, - Where no fresh stream tempers the rich salt wave, - Forcing rash sweetness on sage ocean's brine; - As youthful shepherds pour - Their first love forth to Battos gnarled and grave, - Fooling shrewd age to bless some fond design. - - Not after storm! but when, for a long spell, - No white-maned horse has raced across the blue, - Put from the beach! lest troubled be the well-- - Less pure thy draught than from such depth were due. - Fast close thy largest jars, prepared and clean! - Next weigh each buoyant womb down through the flood, - Far down! when, with a cord the lid remove, - And it will fill unseen, - Swift as a heart Love smites sucks back the blood:-- - This bubbles, deeper born than sighs, shall prove. - - If thy bowed shoulders ache, as thou dost haul-- - Those groan who climb with rich ore from the mine; - Labour untold round Ilion girt a wall; - A god toiled that Achilles' arms might shine; - Think of these things and double knit thy will! - Then, should the sun be hot on thy return, - Cover thy jars with piles of bladder weed, - Dripping, and fragrant still - From sea-wolds where it grows like bracken-fern: - A grapnel dragged will soon supply thy need. - - Home to a tun-convey thy precious freight! - Wherein, for thirty days, it should abide, - Closed, yet not quite closed from the air, and wait - While, through dim stillness, slowly doth subside - Thick sediment. The humour of a day, - Which has defeated youth and health and joy, - Down, through a dreamless sleep, will settle thus, - Till riseth maiden gay - Set free from all glooms past--or else a boy - Once more a school-friend worthy Troilus. - - Yet to such cool wood tank some dream might dip: - Vision of Aphrodite sunk to sleep, - Or of some sailor let down from a ship, - Young, dead, and lovely, while across the deep, - Through the calm night, his hoarse-voiced comrades chaunt-- - So far at sea, they cannot reach the land - To lay him perfect in the warm brown earth. - Pray that such dreams there haunt! - While, through damp darkness, where thy tun doth stand, - Cold salamanders sidle round its girth. - - Gently draw off the clear and tomb it yet - For other twenty days in cedarn casks! - Where through trance, surely, prophecy will set; - As, dedicated to light temple-tasks, - The young priest dreams the unknown mystery. - Through Ariadne, knelt disconsolate - In the sea's marge, so welled back warmth which throbbed - With nuptial promise: she - Turned; and, half-choked through dewy glens, some great, - Some magic drone of revel coming sobbed. - - Of glorious fruit, indeed, must be thy choice, - Such as has fully ripened on the branch, - Such as due rain, then sunshine, made rejoice, - Which, pulped and coloured, now deep bloom doth blanch; - Clusters like odes for victors in the games, - Strophe on strophe globed, pure nectar all! - Spread such to dry,--if Helios grant thee grace, - Exposed unto his flames - Two days, or, if not, three; or, should rain fall; - Stretch them on hurdles in the house four days. - - Grapes are not sharded chestnuts, which the tree - Lets fall to burst them on the ground, where red - Rolls forth the fruit, from white-lined wards set free, - And all undamaged glows 'mid husks it shed; - Nay, they are soft and should be singly stripped - From off the bunch, by maiden's dainty hand, - Then dropped through the cool silent depth to sink - (Coy, as herself hath slipped, - Bathing, from shelves in caves along the strand) - - Till round each dark grape water barely wink; - Since some nine measures of sea-water fill - A butt of fifty, ere the plump fruit peep, - --Like sombre dolphin shoals when nights are still, - Which penned in Proteus' wizard circle sleep, - And 'twixt them glinting curves of silver glance - If Zephyr, dimpling dark calm, counts them o'er.-- - Let soak thy fruit for two days thus, then tread! - While bare-legged bumpkins dance, - Bright from thy bursting press arched spouts shall pour, - And gurgling torrents towards thy vats run red. - - Meanwhile the maidens, each with wooden rake, - Drag back the skins and laugh at aprons splashed; - Or youths rest, boasting how their brown arms ache, - So fast their shovels for so long have flashed, - Baffling their comrades' legs with mounting heaps. - Treble their labour! still the happier they, - Who at this genial task wear out long hours, - Till vast night round them creeps, - When soon the torch-light dance whirls them away; - For gods who love wine double all their powers. - Iacchus is the always grateful god! - His vineyards are more fair than gardens far; - Hanging, like those of Babylon, they nod - O'er each Ionian cliff and hill-side scar! - While Cypris lends him saltness, depth, and peace; - The brown earth yields him sap for richest green; - And he has borrowed laughter from the sky; - Wildness from winds; and bees - Bring honey.--Then choose casks which thou hast seen - Are leakless, very wholesome, and quite dry! - - That Coan wine the very finest is, - I do assure thee, who have travelled much - And learned to judge of diverse vintages. - Faint not before the toil! this wine is such - As tempteth princes launch long pirate barks;--From - which may Zeus protect Sicilian bays, - And, ere long, me safe home from Egypt bring, - Letting no black-sailed sharks - Scent this king's gifts, for whom I sweeten praise - With those same songs thou didst to Chloe sing! - - I wrote them 'neath the vine-cloaked elm, for thee. - Recall those nights! our couches were a load - Of scented lentisk; upward, tree by tree, - Thy father's orchard sloped, and past us flowed - A stream sluiced for his vineyards; when, above, - The apples fell, they on to us were rolled, - But kept us not awake.--O Laco, own - How thou didst rave of love! - Now art thou staid, thy son is three years old; - But I, who made thee love-songs, live alone. - - Muse thou at dawn o'er thy yet slumbering wife!-- - Not chary of her best was nature there, - Who, though a third of her full gift of life - Was spent, still added beauties still more rare; - What calm slow days, what holy sleep at night, - Evolved her for long twilight trystings fraught - With panic blushes and tip-toe surmise: - And then, what mystic might-- - All, with a crowning boon, through travail brought! - Consider this and give thy best likewise! - - Ungrateful be not! Laco, ne'er be that! - Well worth thy while to make such wine 'twould be; - I see thy red face 'neath thy broad straw hat, - I see thy house, thy vineyards, Sicily!-- - Thou dost demur, good but too easy friend! - Come, put those doubts away! thou hast strong lads, - Brave wenches; on the steep beach lolls thy ship - Where vine-clad slopes descend, - Sheltering our bay, that headlong rillet glads, - Like a stripped child fain in the sea to dip. - - - - - A SPANISH PICTURE - - - Thy life is over now, Don Juan: - Thy fingers are so shrunk - That all their rings from off their cold tips crowd, - Where limp thy hand hath sunk; - - On a trestle-table laid, Don Juan, - A half-mask near thine ear, - A visor black in which void gape two gaps - Where through thou oft didst leer. - - Thou waitest for the priests, Don Juan, - To bear thee to thy grave; - Thou'rt theirs at length beyond all doubt, but ha! - Hast now no soul to save. - - Thou wast brought home last night, Don Juan, - Upon a stable door; - Beneath a young nun's casement, found dropped dead, - Where thou hadst wooed of yore: - - To pay their trouble then, Don Juan, - Those base grooms took thy sword; - A rapier to fetch gold, with shagreened sheath, - Wrought hand-grip, and silk cord; - - Which, with thy fame enhanced, Don Juan, - Were worth hidalgo's rent; - Yet on which now, at most, some few moidore - May by some fop be spent. - - Dull brown a cloak enwraps, Don Juan, - Both thy lean shanks, one arm, - That old bird-cage thy breast, where like magpie - Thy heart hopped on alarm. - - Yet out beyond thy cloak, Don Juan, - Thrust prim white-stocking'd feet--Silk-stocking'd - feet that in quadrille pranced round-- - Slippers high-heeled and neat; - - Thy silver-buckled shoes, Don Juan, - No more shall tread a floor, - Beside their heels upon the board lies now - A half-peeled onion's core: - - Munching, a crone, that knew, Don Juan, - Thy best contrived plots, - Hobbles about the room, whose gaunt stone walls - Drear echo as she trots; - - She makes her bundle up, Don Juan; - She'll not forget thy rings, - Thy buckles, nor silk stockings; nay, not she! - They'll go with her few things. - - Those lids she hath pulled down, Don Juan, - That lowered ne'er for shame; - No spark from beauty more in thy brain pan, - Shall make its tinder flame: - - Thou hast enjoyed all that, Don Juan, - Which good resolves doth daunt, - Which hypocrites doth tempt to stake vile souls, - Which cowards crave and want; - - Thou wast an envied man, Don Juan, - Long shalt be envied still; - Thou hadst thy beauty as the proud pard hath, - And instinct trained to skill. - - - - - A DUET - - - "Flowers nodding gaily, scent in air, - "Flowers posied, flowers for the hair, - "Sleepy flowers, flowers bold to stare-- - "Oh, pick me some!" - - "Shells with lip, or tooth, or bleeding gum, - "Tell-tale shells, and shells that whisper 'Come,' - "Shells that stammer, blush, and yet are dumb--" - "Oh, let me hear!" - - "Eyes so black they draw one trembling near, - "Brown eyes, caverns flooded with a tear, - "Cloudless eyes, blue eyes so windy clear--" - "Oh, look at me!" - - "Kisses sadly blown across the sea, - "Darkling kisses, kisses fair and free, - "Bob-a-cherry kisses 'neath a tree--" - "Oh, give me one!" - - Thus sang a king and queen in Babylon. - - - - - THE GAZELLES - - - When the sheen on tall summer grass is pale, - Across blue skies white clouds float on - In shoals, or disperse and singly sail, - Till, the sun being set, they all are gone: - - Yet, as long as they may shine bright in the sun, - They flock or stray through the daylight bland, - While their stealthy shadows like foxes run - Beneath where the grass is dry and tanned: - - And the waste, in hills that swell and fall, - Goes heaving into yet dreamier haze; - And a wonder of silence is over all - Where the eye feeds long like a lover's gaze: - - Then, cleaving the grass, gazelles appear - (The gentler dolphins of kindlier waves) - With sensitive heads alert of ear; - Frail crowds that a delicate hearing saves, - - That rely on the nostrils' keenest power, - And are governed from trance-like distances - By hopes and fears, and, hour by hour, - Sagacious of safety, snuff the breeze. - - They keep together, the timid hearts; - And each one's fear with a panic thrill - Is passed to an hundred; and if one starts - In three seconds all are over the hill. - - A Nimrod might watch, in his hall's wan space, - After the feast, on the moonlit floor, - The timorous mice that troop and race, - As tranced o'er those herds the sun doth pour; - - Like a wearied tyrant sated with food - Who envies each tiniest thief that steals - Its hour from his abstracted mood, - For it living zest and beauty reveals. - - He alone, save the quite dispassionate moon, - Sees them; she stares at the prowling pard - Who surprises their sleep and, ah! how soon - Is riding the weakest or sleepiest hard! - - Let an agony's nightmare course begin, - Four feet with five spurs a piece control, - Like a horse thief reduced to save his skin - Or a devil that rides a human soul! - - The race is as long as recorded time, - Yet brief as the flash of assassin's knife; - For 'tis crammed as history is with crime - 'Twixt the throbs at taking and losing life; - - Then the warm wet clutch on the nape of the neck, - Through which the keen incisors drive; - Then the fleet knees give, down drops the wreck - Of yesterday's pet that was so alive. - - Yet the moon is naught concerned, ah no! - She shines as on a drifting plank - Far in some northern sea-stream's flow - From which two numbed hands loosened and sank. - - Such thinning their number must suffer; and worse - When hither at times the Shah's children roam, - Their infant listlessness to immerse - In energy's ancient upland home: - - For here the shepherd in years of old - Was taught by the stars, and bred a race - That welling forth from these highlands rolled - In tides of conquest o'er earth's face: - - On piebald ponies or else milk-white, - Here, with green bridles in silver bound, - A crescent moon on the violet night - Of their saddle cloths, or a sun rayed round,-- - - With tiny bells on their harness ringing, - And voices that laugh and are shrill by starts, - Prancing, curvetting, and with them bringing - Swift chetahs cooped up in light-wheeled carts, - - They come, and their dainty pavilions pitch - In some valley, beside a sinuous pool, - Where a grove of cedars towers in which - Herons have built, where the shade is cool; - - Where they tether their ponies to low hung boughs, - Where long through the night their red fires gleam, - Where the morning's stir doth them arouse - To their bath in the lake, as from dreams to a dream. - - And thence in an hour their hunt rides forth, - And the chetahs course the shy gazelle - To the east or west or south or north, - And every eve in a distant vale - - A hetacomb of the slaughtered beasts - Is piled; tongues loll from breathless throats; - Round large jet eyes the horsefly feasts-- - Jet eyes, which now a blue film coats: - - Dead there they bleed, and each prince there - Is met by his sister, wife, or bride-- - Delicious ladies with long dark hair, - And soft dark eyes, and brows arched wide, - - In quilted jacket, embroidered sash, - And tent-like skirts of pleated lawn; - While their silk-lined jewelled slippers flash - Round bare feet bedded like pools at dawn: - - So choicefully prepared to please, - Young, female, royal of race and mood, - In indolent compassion these - O'er those dead beauteous creatures brood: - - They lean some minutes against their friend, - A lad not slow to praise himself, - Who tells how this one met his end - Out-raced, or trapped by leopard stealth, - - And boasts his chetahs fleetest are; - Through his advice the chance occurred, - That leeward vale by which the car - Was well brought round to head the herd. - - Seeing him bronzed by sun and wind, - She feels his power and owns him lord, - Then, that his courage may please her mind, - With a soft coy hand half draws his sword, - - Just shudders to see the cold steel gleam, - And drops it back in the long curved sheath; - She will make his evening meal a dream - And surround his sleep like some rich wreath - - Of heavy-lidded flowers bewitched - To speak soft words of ecstasy - To wizard king old, wise, and enriched - With all save youth's and love's sweet glee. - - But, while they sleep, the orphaned herd - And wounded stragglers, through the night - Wander in pain, and wail unheard - To the moon and the stars so cruelly bright: - - Why are they born? ah! why beget - They in the long November gloom - Heirs of their beauty, their fleetness,--yet - Heirs of their panics, their pangs, their doom? - - That to princely spouses children are born - To be daintily bred and taught to please, - Has a fitness like the return of morn: - But why perpetuate lives like these? - - Why, with horns that jar and with fiery eyes, - Should the male stags fight for the shuddering does - Through the drear dark nights, with frequent cries - From tyrant lust or outlawed woes? - - Doth the meaningless beauty of their lives - Rave in the spring, when they course afar - Like the shadows of birds, and the young fawn strives - Till its parents no longer the fleetest are? - - Like the shadows of flames which the sun's rays throw - On a kiln's blank wall, where glaziers dwell, - Pale shadows as those from glasses they blow, - Yet that lap at the blank wall and rebel,-- - - Even so to my curious trance-like thought - Those herds move over those pallid hills, - With fever as of a frail life caught - In circumstance o'er-charged with ills; - - More like the shadow of lives than life, - Or most like the life that is never born - From baffled purpose and foredoomed strife, - That in each man's heart must be hidden from scorn - - Yet with something of beauty very rare - Unseizable, fugitive, half discerned; - The trace of intentions that might have been fair - In action, left on a face that yearned - - But long has ceased to yearn, alas! - So faint a trace do they leave on the slopes - Of hills as sleek as their coats with grass; - So faint may the trace be of noblest hopes. - - Yet why are they born to roam and die? - Can their beauty answer thy query, O soul? - Nay, nor that of hopes which were born to fly, - But whose pinions the common and coarse day stole. - - Like that region of grassy hills outspread, - A realm of our thoughts knows days and nights - And summers and winters, and has fed - Ineffectual herds of vanished delights. - - - - - ROBERT NICHOLS - - - - - TO ------ - - Asleep within the deadest hour of night - And turning with the earth, I was aware - How suddenly the eastern curve was bright, - As when the sun arises from his lair. - But not the sun arose: it was thy hair - Shaken up heaven in tossing leagues of light. - - Since then I know that neither night nor day - May I escape thee, O my heavenly hell! - Awake, in dreams, thou springest to waylay - And should I dare to die, I know full well - Whose voice would mock me in the mourning bell, - Whose face would greet me in hell's fiery way. - - - - - FAREWELL TO PLACE OF COMFORT - - - For the last time, maybe, upon the knoll - I stand. The eve is golden, languid, sad.... - Day like a tragic actor plays his role - To the last whispered word, and falls gold-clad. - I, too, take leave of all I ever had. - - They shall not say I went with heavy heart: - Heavy I am, but soon I shall be free; - I love them all, but O I now depart - A little sadly, strangely, fearfully, - As one who goes to try a Mystery. - - The bell is sounding down in Dedham Vale: - Be still, O bell! too often standing here - When all the air was tremulous, fine, and pale, - Thy golden note so calm, so still, so clear, - Out of my stony heart has struck a tear. - - And now tears are not mine. I have release - From all the former and the later pain; - Like the mid-sea I rock in boundless peace, - Soothed by the charity of the deep sea rain.... - Calm rain! Calm sea! Calm found, long sought in vain. - - O bronzen pines, evening of gold and blue, - Steep mellow slope, brimmed twilit pool below, - Hushed trees, still vale dissolving in the dew, - Farewell! Farewell! There is no more to do. - We have been happy. Happy now I go. - - - - - THE FULL HEART - - - Alone on the shore in the pause of the night-time - I stand and I hear the long wind blow light; - I view the constellations quietly, quietly burning; - I hear the wave fall in the hush of the night. - - Long after I am dead, ended this bitter journey, - Many another whose heart holds no light - Shall your solemn sweetness, hush, awe, and comfort, - O my companions, Wind, Waters, Stars, and Night. - - _Near Gold Cap,_ 1916. - - - - - THE TOWER - - - It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs - The moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs. - The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet, - Over dome and column, up empty, endless street; - In the closed, scented gardens the rose loosed from the stem - Her white showery petals; none regarded them; - The starry thicket breathed odours to the sentinel palm; - Silence possessed the city like a soul possessed by calm. - - Not a spark in the warren under the giant night, - Save where in a turret's lantern beamed a grave, still light: - There in the topmost chamber a gold-eyed lamp was lit-- - Marvellous lamp in darkness, informing, redeeming it! - For, set in that tiny chamber, Jesus, the blessed and doomed, - Spoke to the lone apostles as light to men entombed; - And spreading His hands in blessing, as one soon to be dead, - He put soft enchantment into spare wine and bread. - - The hearts of the disciples were broken and full of tears, - Because their Lord, the spearless, was hedged about with spears; - And in His face the sickness of departure had spread a gloom - At leaving His young friends friendless. - They could not forget the tomb. - He smiled subduedly, telling, in tones soft as voice of the dove, - The endlessness of sorrow, the eternal solace of love; - And lifting the earthly tokens, wine and sorrowful bread, - He bade them sup and remember One who lived and was dead. - And they could not restrain their weeping. - But one rose up to depart, - Having weakness and hate of weakness raging within his heart, - And bowed to the robed assembly whose eyes gleamed wet in the light. - Judas arose and departed; night went out to the night. - - Then Jesus lifted His voice like a fountain in an ocean of tears, - And comforted His disciples and calmed and allayed their fears. - But Judas wound down the turret, creeping from floor to floor, - And would fly; but one leaning, weeping, barred him beside the door. - And he knew her by her ruddy garment and two yet-watching men: - Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen. - And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed Him dead. - We sell the body for silver ...' - Then Judas cried out and fled - Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set; - A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret, - Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed - To stern Jehovah lest his deed make him afraid. - But in the tiny lantern, hanging as if on air, - The disciples sat unspeaking. Amaze and peace were there. - For _His_ voice, more lovely than song of all earthly birds, - In accents humble and happy spoke slow, consoling words. - - Thus Jesus discoursed, and was silent, sitting upright, and soon - Past the casement behind Him slanted the sinking moon; - And, rising for Olivet, all stared, between love and dread, - Seeing the torrid moon a ruddy halo behind His head. - - - - - FULFILMENT - - - Was there love once? I have forgotten her. - Was there grief once? grief yet is mine. - Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir - More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine. - - Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth, - Lined by the wind, burned by the sun; - Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth, - As whose children we are brethren: one. - - And any moment may descend hot death - To shatter limbs! pulp, tear, blast - Beloved soldiers who love rough life and breath - Not less for dying faithful to the last. - - O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony, - Oped mouth gushing, fallen head, - Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony! - O sudden spasm, release of the dead! - - Was there love once? I have forgotten her. - Was there grief once? grief yet is mine. - O loved, living, dying, heroic soldier, - All, all, my joy, my grief, my love, are thine! - - - - - THE SPRIG OF LIME - - - He lay, and those who watched him were amazed - To see unheralded beneath the lids - Twin tears, new gathered at the price of pain, - Start and at once run crookedly athwart - Cheeks channelled long by pain, never by tears. - So desolate too the sigh next uttered - They had wept also, but his great lips moved, - And bending down one heard, '_A sprig of lime; - Bring me a sprig of lime._' Whereat she stole - With dumb signs forth to pluck the thing he craved. - - So lay he till a lime-twig had been snapped - From some still branch that swept the outer grass - Far from the silver pillar of the hole - Which mounting past the house's crusted roof - Split into massy limbs, crossed boughs, a maze - Of close-compacted intercontorted staffs - Bowered in foliage wherethrough the sun - Shot sudden showers of light or crystal spars - Or wavered in a green and vitreous flood. - - And all the while in faint and fainter tones - Scarce audible on deepened evening's hush - He framed his curious and last request, - For '_lime, a sprig of lime._' Her trembling hand - Closed his loose fingers on the awkward stem - Covered above with gentle heart-shaped leaves - And under dangling, pale as honey-wax, - Square clusters of sweet-scented starry flowers. - - She laid his bent arm back upon his breast, - Then watched above white knuckles clenched in prayer. - He never moved. Only at last his eyes - Opened, then brightened in such avid gaze - She feared the coma mastered him again ... - But no; strange sobs rose chuckling in his throat, - A stranger ecstasy suffused the flesh - Of that just mask so sun-dried, gouged and old - Which few--too few!--had loved, too many feared. - 'Father,' she cried; 'Father!' - He did not hear. - - She knelt and kneeling drank the scent of limes, - Blown round the slow blind by a vesperal gust, - Till the room swam. So the lime incense blew - Into her life as once it had in his, - Though how and when and with what ageless charge - Of sorrow and deep joy how could she know? - - Sweet lime that often at the height of noon - Diffusing dizzy fragrance from your boughs, - Tasselled with blossoms mere innumerable - Than the black bees, the uproar of whose toil - Filled your green vaults, winning such metheglyn - As clouds their sappy cells, distil, as once - Ye used, your sunniest emanations - Toward the window where a woman kneels--She - who within that room in childish hours - Lay through the lasting murmur of blanch'd noon - Behind the sultry blind, now full now flat, - Drinking anew of every odorous breath, - Supremely happy in her ignorance - Of Time that hastens hourly and of Death - Who need not haste. Scatter your fumes, O lime, - Loose from each hispid star of citron bloom, - Tangled beneath the labyrinthine boughs, - Cloud on such stinging cloud of exhalations - As reek of youth, fierce life and summer's prime, - Though hardly now shall he in that dusk room - Savour your sweetness, since the very sprig, - Profuse of blossom and of essences, - He smells not, who in a paltering hand - Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming face - Propped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime, - Your curfew secrets out in fervid scent - To the attendant shadows! Tinge the air - Of the midsummer night that now begins, - At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to dusk - And downward caper of the giddy bat - Hawking against the lustre of bare skies, - With something of th' unfathomable bliss - He, who lies dying there, knew once of old - In the serene trance of a summer night - When with th' abundance of his young bride's hair - Loosed on his breast he lay and dared not sleep, - Listening for the scarce motion of your boughs, - Which sighed with bliss as she with blissful sleep, - And drinking desperately each honied wave - Of perfume wafted past the ghostly blind - Knew first th' implacable and bitter sense - Of Time that hastes and Death who need not haste. - Shed your last sweetness, limes! - But now no more. - She, fruit of that night's love, she heeds you not, - Who bent, compassionate, to the dim floor - Takes up the sprig of lime and presses it - In pain against the stumbling of her heart, - Knowing, untold, he cannot need it now. - - - - - SEUMAS O'SULLIVAN - - - - - THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE - - - It is a whisper among the hazel bushes; - It is a long low whispering voice that fills - With a sad music the bending and swaying rushes; - It is a heart beat deep in the quiet hills. - - Twilight people, why will you still be crying, - Crying and calling to me out of the trees? - For under the quiet grass the wise are lying, - And all the strong ones are gone over the seas. - - And I am old, and in my heart at your calling - Only the old dead dreams a-fluttering go; - As the wind, the forest wind, in its falling - Sets the withered leaves fluttering to and fro. - - - - - WILFRED OWEN - - _Born 1893,_ - _Killed in Action, 1918._ - - - - - - STRANGE MEETING - - - It seemed that out of the battle I escaped - Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped - Through granites which Titanic wars had groined. - Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, - Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred. - Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared - With piteous recognition in fixed eyes, - Lifting distressful hands as if to bless. - And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall. - With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained; - Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground, - And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan. - "Strange, friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn." - "None," said the other, "save the undone years." - The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours, - Was my life also; I went hunting wild - After the wildest beauty in the world, - Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair, - But mocks the steady running of the hour, - And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here. - For by my glee might many men have laughed, - And of my weeping something has been left, - Which must die now. I mean the truth untold, - The pity of war, the pity war distilled. - Now men will go content with what we spoiled, - Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled. - They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress, - None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress. - Courage was mine, and I had mystery, - Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery; - To miss the march of this retreating world - Into vain citadels that are not walled. - Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels - I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, - Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. - I would have poured my spirit without stint - But not through wounds; not on the cess of war. - Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were. - I am the enemy you killed, my friend. - I knew you in this death: for so you frowned - Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed. - I parried; but my hands were loath and cold. - Let us sleep now...... - - - - - JOSEPH PLUNKETT - - _Born 1887._ - _Executed after the Easter Week Rising, 1916._ - - - - - I SEE HIS BLOOD UPON THE ROSE - - - I see His blood upon the rose - And in the stars the glory of His eyes, - His body gleams amid eternal snows, - His tears fall from the skies. - - I see His face in every flower; - The thunder and the singing of the birds - Are but His voice--and carven by His power - Rocks are His written words. - - All pathways by His feet are worn, - His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, - His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, - His cross is every tree. - - - - - SIEGFRIED SASSOON - - - - - 'IN THE PINK' - - - So Davies wrote: 'This leaves me in the pink. - Then scrawled his name: 'Your loving sweet-heart, Willie' - With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drink - Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly, - For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend. - Winter was passing; soon the year would mend. - - He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the dark - He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm, - When he'd go out as cheerful as a lark - In his best suit to wander arm-in-arm - With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear - The simple silly things she liked to hear. - - And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge - Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten. - Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge, - And everything but wretchedness forgotten. - To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die. - And still the war goes on; _he_ don't know why. - - - - - THE DEATH-BED - - - He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped - Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls; - Aqueous-like floating rays of amber light, - Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,-- - Silence and safety; and his mortal shore - Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death. - - Some one was holding water to his mouth, - He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped - Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot - The opiate throb and ache that was his wound. - Water--calm, sliding green above the weir; - Water--a sky-lit alley for his boat, - Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers - And shaken hues of summer: drifting down, - He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept. - - Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward, - Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve. - Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars - Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud; - Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green, - Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes. - - Rain; he could hear it rustling through the dark - Fragrance and passionless music woven as one; - Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers - That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps - Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace - Gently and slowly washing life away. - . . . . . - He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain - Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore - His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs. - But some one was beside him; soon he lay - Shuddering because that evil thing had passed. - And Death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared. - - Light many lamps and gather round his bed. - Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live. - Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet. - He's young; he hated war; how should he die - When cruel old campaigners win safe through? - - But Death replied: 'I choose him.' So he went, - And there was silence in the summer night; - Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep. - Then, far away, the thudding of the guns. - - - - - COUNTER-ATTACK - - - We'd gained our first objective hours before - While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes, - Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke. - Things seemed all right at first. We held their line, - With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed, - And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench. - The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs - High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps; - And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud, - Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled; - And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair, - Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime. - And then the rain began,--the jolly old rain! - A yawning soldier knelt against the bank, - Staring across the morning blear with fog; - He wondered when the Allemands would get busy; - And then, of course, they started with five-nines - Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud. - Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst, - Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell, - While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke. - He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear, - Sick for escape,--loathing the strangled horror - And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead. - - An officer came blundering down the trench: - "Stand-to and man the fire-step!" On he went ... - Gasping and bawling, "Fire-step... Counter-attack!" - Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right - Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left; - And stumbling figures looming out in front. - "O Christ, they're coming at us!" Bullets spat, - And he remembered his rifle ... rapid fire ... - And started blazing wildly ... Then a bang - Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out - To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked - And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom, - Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans ... - Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned, - Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed. - - - - - DREAMERS - - - Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, - Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. - In the great hour of destiny they stand, - Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. - Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win - Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. - Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin - They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives. - - I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats, - And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain, - Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats, - And mocked by hopeless longing to regain - Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats, - And going to the office in the train. - - - - - EVERYONE SANG - - - Everyone suddenly burst out singing; - And I was filled with such delight - As prisoned birds must find in freedom, - Winging wildly across the white - Orchards and dark-green fields; on--on--and out of sight. - - Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted; - And beauty came like the setting sun: - My heart was shaken with tears; and horror - Drifted away ... O, but Everyone - Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done. - - - - - EDWARD SHANKS - - - - - A NIGHT-PIECE - - - Come out and walk. The last few drops of light - Drain silently out of the cloudy blue; - The trees are full of the dark-stooping night, - The fields are wet with dew. - - All's quiet in the wood but, far away, - Down the hillside and out across the plain, - Moves, with long trail of white that marks its way, - The softly panting train. - - Come through the clearing. Hardly now we see - The flowers, save dark or light against the grass, - Or glimmering silver on a scented tree - That trembles as we pass. - - Hark now! So far, so far ... that distant song ... - Move not the rustling grasses with your feet. - The dusk is full of sounds, that all along - The muttering boughs repeat. - - So far, so faint, we lift our heads in doubt. - Wind, or the blood that beats within our ears, - Has feigned a dubious and delusive note, - Such as a dreamer hears. - - Again ... again! The faint sounds rise and fail. - So far the enchanted tree, the song so low ... - A drowsy thrush? A waking nightingale? - Silence. We do not know. - - - - - THE GLOW-WORM - - - The pale road winds faintly upward into the dark skies, - And beside it on the rough grass that the wind invisibly stirs, - Sheltered by sharp-speared gorse and the berried junipers, - Shining steadily with a green light, the glow-worm lies. - - We regard it; and this hill and all the other hills - That fall in folds to the river, very smooth and steep, - And the hangers and brakes that the darkness thickly fills - Fade like phantoms round the light and night is deep, so deep,-- - - That all the world is emptiness about the still flame - And we are small shadows standing lost in the huge night. - We gather up the glow-worm, stooping with dazzled sight, - And carry it to the little enclosed garden whence we came, - - And place it on the short grass. Then the shadowy flowers fade, - The walls waver and melt and the houses dis-appear - And the solid town trembles into insubstantial shade - Round the light of the burning glow-worm, steady and clear. - - - - - THE HALT - - - _"Mark time in front! Rear fours cover! Company--halt!_ - _Order arms! Stand at--ease! Stand easy."_ - A sudden hush: - And then the talk began with a mighty rush-- - "You weren't ever in step--The sergeant.--It wasn't my fault-- - Well, the Lord be praised at least for a ten minutes' halt." - We sat on a gate and watched them easing and shifting; - Out of the distance a faint, keen breath came drifting, - From the sea behind the hills, and the hedges were salt. - - Where do you halt now? Under what hedge do you lie? - Where the tall poplars are fringing the white French roads? - And smoke I have not seen discolours the foreign sky? - Is the company resting there as we rested together - Stamping its feet and readjusting its loads - And looking with wary eyes at the drooping weather? - - - - - A HOLLOW ELM - - - What hast thou not withstood; - Tempest-despising tree, - Whose bleak and riven wood - Gapes now so hollowly, - What rains have beaten thee through many years, - What snows from off thy branches dripped like tears? - - Calmly thou standest now - Upon thy sunny mound; - The first spring breezes flow - Past with sweet dizzy sound; - Yet on thy pollard top the branches few - Stand stiffly out, disdain to murmur too. - - The children at thy foot - Open new-lighted eyes, - Where, on gnarled bark and root, - The soft, warm sunshine lies-- - Dost thou, upon thine ancient sides, resent - The touch of youth, quick and impermanent? - - These, at the beck of spring, - Live in the moment still; - Thy boughs unquivering, - Remembering winter's chill, - And many other winters past and gone, - Are mocked, not cheated, by the transient sun. - - Hast thou so much withstood, - Tempest-despising tree, - That now thy hollow wood - Stiffens disdainfully - Against the soft spring airs and soft spring rain, - Knowing too well that winter comes again? - - - - - THE RETURN - - - I - - Now into hearts long empty of the sun - The morning comes again with golden light - And all the shades of the half-dusk are done - And all the crevices are suddenly bright. - So gradually had love lain down to sleep, - We knew it not; but when we saw his head - Pillowed and sunken in a trance so deep - We whispered shuddering that he was dead. - Then you like Psyche took the light and leant - Over the monster lying in his place, - Daring, despairing, trembling as you bent ... - But love raised up his new-awakening face - And into our hearts long empty of the sun - We felt the sky-distilled bright liquor run. - - - II - - When love comes back that went in mist and cloud - He comes triumphant in his pomp and power; - Voices that muttered long are glad and loud - To mark the sweetness of the sudden hour. - How could we live so long in that half-light? - That opiate shadow, where the deadened nerves - So soon forget how hills and winds are bright, - That drugged and sleepy dusk, that only serves - With false shades to conceal the emptiness - Of hearts whence love has stolen unawares, - Where creeping doubts and dumb, dull sorrows press - And weariness with blind eyes gapes and stares. - This was our state, but now a happy song - Rings through our inner sunlight all day long. - - - III - - When that I lay in a mute agony, - I nothing saw nor heard nor felt nor thought, - The inner self, the quintessential me, - In that blind hour beyond all sense was brought - Hard against pain. I had no body, no mind, - Nought but the point that suffers joy or loss, - No eyes in sudden blackness to be blind, - No brain for swift regrets to run across. - But when you touched me, when your hot tears fell, - The point that had been nothing else but pain - Changed into rapture by a miracle, - In which all raptures known before were vain. - Thus loss which bared the utmost shivering nerve - For joy's precursor in the heart did serve. - - - - - CLOUDS - - - Over this hill the high clouds float all day - And trail their long, soft shadows on the grass, - And now above the meadows make delay - And now with regular, swift motion pass. - Now comes a threatening drift from the south-west, - In smoky colours drest, - That spills far out upon the chequered plain - Its burden of dark rain; - Then hard behind a stately galleon - Sails onward with its piled and carven towers - Stiff sculptured like a heap of marble flowers, - Rigid, unaltering, a miracle - Of moulded surfaces, whereon the light - Shines steadily, intolerably bright; - Now on a livelier wind a wandering bell - Of delicate vapour comes, invisibly hung, - Like feathers from the seeding thistle flung, - And saunters wantonly far out of sight. - O God, who fill'st with shifting imagery - The blue page of the sky, - Thus writ'st thou also, with as vague a pen, - In the immenser hearts of dreaming men. - - - - - THE ROCK POOL - - - This is the Sea. In these uneven walls - A wave lies prisoned. Far and far away, - Outward to ocean, as the slow tide falls, - Her sisters, through the capes that hold the bay, - Dancing in lovely liberty recede. - But lovely in captivity she lies, - Filled with soft colours, where the waving weed - Moves gently, and discloses to our eyes - Blurred shining veins of rock and lucent shells - Under the light-shot water, and here repose - Small quiet fish, and dimly-glowing bells - Of sleeping sea-anemones that close - Their tender fronds and will not now awake - Till on these rocks the waves returning break. - - - - - THE SWIMMERS - - - The cove's a shining plate of blue and green, - With darker belts between - The trough and crest of the slow-rising swell, - And the great rocks throw purple shadows down, - Where transient sun-sparks wink and burst and drown - And glimmering pebbles lie too deep to tell, - Hidden or shining as the shadow wavers. - And everywhere the restless sun-steeped air - Trembles and quavers, - As though it were - More saturate with light than it could bear. - - Now come the swimmers from slow-dripping caves, - Where the shy fern creeps under the veined roof, - And wading out meet with glad breast the waves. - One holds aloof, - Climbing alone the reef with shrinking feet, - That scarce endure the jagged stones' dull beat - Till on the edge he poises - And flies to cleave the water, vanishing - In wreaths of white, with echoing liquid noises, - And swims beneath, a vague, distorted thing. - Now all the other swimmers leave behind - The crystal shallow and the foam-wet shore - And sliding into deeper water find - A living coolness in the lifting flood, - And through their bodies leaps the sparkling blood, - So that they feel the faint earth's drought no more. - There now they float, heads raised above the green, - White bodies cloudily seen, - Farther and farther from the brazen rock, - On which the hot air shakes, on which the tide - Fruitlessly throws with gentle, soundless shock - The cool and lagging wave. Out, out they go, - And now upon a mirrored cloud they ride - Or turning over, with soft strokes and slow, - Slide on like shadows in a tranquil sky. - Behind them, on the tall, parched cliff, the dry - And dusty grasses grow - In shallow ledges of the arid stone, - Starving for coolness and the touch of rain. - But, though to earth they must return again, - Here come the soft sea-airs to meet them, blown - Over the surface of the outer deep, - Scarce moving, staying, falling, straying, gone, - Light and delightful as the touch of sleep... - One wakes and splashes round, - And, as by magic, all the others wake - From that sea-dream, and now with rippling sound - Their rapid arms the enchanted silence break. - And now again the crystal shallows take - The gleaming bedies whose cool hour is done; - They pause upon the beach, they pause and sigh - Then vanish in the caverns one by one. - - Soon the wet foot-marks on the stones are dry: - The cove sleeps on beneath the unwavering sun. - - - - - THE STORM - - - We wake to hear the storm come down, - Sudden on roof and pane; - The thunder's loud and the hasty wind - Hurries the beating rain. - - The rain slackens, the wind blows gently, - The gust grows gentle and stills, - And the thunder, like a breaking stick, - Stumbles about the hills. - - The drops still hang on leaf and thorn, - The downs stand up more green; - The sun comes out again in power - And the sky is washed and clean. - - - - - C. H. SORLEY - - _Born 1895,_ - _Killed in Action 1915._ - - - - - - GERMAN RAIN - - - The heat came down and sapped away my powers. - The laden heat came down and drowned my brain, - Till through the weight of overcoming hours - felt the rain. - - Then suddenly I saw what more to see - I never thought: old things renewed, retrieved, - The rain that fell in England fell on me, - And I believed. - - - - - ALL THE HILLS AND VALES - - - All the hills and vales along - Earth is bursting into song, - And the singers are the chaps - Who are going to die perhaps. - O sing, marching men, - Till the valleys ring again. - Give your gladness to earth's keeping, - So be glad, when you are sleeping. - - Cast away regret and rue, - Think what you are marching to. - Little live, great pass. - Jesus Christ and Barabbas - Were found the same day. - This died, that went his way. - So sing with joyful breath. - For why, you are going to death. - Teeming earth will surely store - All the gladness that you pour. - - Earth that never doubts nor fears, - Earth that knows of death, not tears, - Earth that bore with joyful ease - Hemlock for Socrates, - Earth that blossomed and was glad - 'Neath the cross that Christ had, - Shall rejoice and blossom too - When the bullet reaches you. - Wherefore, men marching - On the road to death, sing! - Pour your gladness on earth's head, - So be merry, so be dead. - - From the hills and valleys earth - Shouts back the sound of mirth, - Tramp of feet and lilt of song - Ringing all the road along. - All the music of their going, - Ringing swinging glad song-throwing, - Earth will echo still, when foot - Lies numb and voice mute. - On, marching men, on - To the gates of death with song. - Sow your gladness for earth's reaping, - So you may be glad, though sleeping. - Strew your gladness on earth's bed, - So be merry, so be dead. - - - - - JAMES STEPHENS - - - - - DEIRDRE - - - Do not let any woman read this verse; - It is for men, and after them their sons - And their sons' sons. - - The time comes when our hearts sink utterly; - When we remember Deirdre and her tale, - And that her lips are dust. - - Once she did tread the earth: men took her hand; - They looked into her eyes and said their say, - And she replied to them. - - More than a thousand years it is since she - Was beautiful: she trod the waving grass; - She saw the clouds. - - A thousand years! The grass is still the same, - The clouds as lovely as they were that time - When Deirdre was alive. - - But there has never been a woman born - Who was so beautiful, not one so beautiful - Of all the women born. - - Let all men go apart and mourn together; - No man can ever love her; not a man - Can ever be her lover. - - No man can bend before her: no man say-- - What could one say to her? There are no words - That one could say to her! - - Now she is but a story that is told - Beside the fire! No man can ever be - The friend of that poor queen. - - - - - THE GOAT PATHS - - - The crooked paths go every way - Upon the hill--they wind about - Through the heather in and out - Of the quiet sunniness. - And there the goats, day after day, - Stray in sunny quietness, - Cropping here and cropping there, - As they pause and turn and pass, - Now a bit of heather spray - Now a mouthful of the grass. - - In the deeper sunniness, - In the place where nothing stirs, - Quietly in quietness, - In the quiet of the furze, - For a time they come and lie - Staring on the roving sky. - - If you approach they run away, - They leap and stare, away they bound, - With a sudden angry sound, - To the sunny quietude; - Crouching down where nothing stirs - In the silence of the furze, - Crouching down again to brood - In the sunny solitude. - - If I were as wise as they - I would stray apart and brood, - I would beat a hidden way - Through the quiet heather spray - To a sunny solitude; - And should you come I'd run away, - I would make an angry sound, - I would stare and turn and bound - To the deeper quietude, - To the place where nothing stirs - In the silence of the furze. - - In that airy quietness - I would think as long as they; - Through the quiet sunniness - I would stray away to brood - By a hidden beaten way - In a sunny solitude. - - I would think until I found - Something I can never find, - Something lying on the ground, - In the bottom of my mind. - - - - - THE FIFTEEN ACRES - - - I cling and swing - On a branch, or sing - Through the cool, clear hush of - Morning, O: - Or fling my wing - On the air, and bring - To sleepier birds a warning, O: - That the night's in flight, - And the sun's in sight, - And the dew is the grass adorning, O: - And the green leaves swing - As I sing, sing, sing, - Up by the river, - Down the dell, - To the little wee nest, - Where the big tree fell, - So early in the morning, O. - - I flit and twit - In the sun for a bit - When his light so bright is shining, O: - Or sit and fit - My plumes, or knit - Straw plaits for the nest's nice lining, O - And she with glee - Shows unto me - Underneath her wings reclining, O: - And I sing that Peg - Has an egg, egg, egg, - Up by the oat-field, - Round the mill - Past the meadow - Down the hill, - So early in the morning, O. - - I stoop and swoop - On the air, or loop - Through the trees, and then go soaring, O: - To group with a troop - On the gusty poop - While the wind behind is roaring, O: - I skim and swim - By a cloud's red rim - And up to the azure flooring, O: - And my wide wings drip - As I slip, slip, slip - Down through the rain-drops, - Back where Peg - Broods in the nest - On the little white egg - So early in the morning, O. - - - - - EDWARD WYNDHAM TENNANT - - _Born 1895._ - _Killed in Action 1916._ - - - - - - HOME THOUGHTS IN LAVENTIE - - - Green gardens in Laventie! - Soldiers only know the street - Where the mud is churned and splashed about - By battle-wending feet; - And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse of grass, - Look for it when you pass. - - Beyond the Church whose pitted spire - Seems balanced on a strand - Of swaying stone and tottering brick - Two roofless ruins stand, - And here behind the wreckage where the _back_ wall should have been - We found a garden green. - - The grass was never trodden on, - The little path of gravel - Was overgrown with celandine, - No other folk did travel - Along its weedy surface, but the nimble-footed mouse - Running from house to house. - - So all among the vivid blades - Of soft and tender grass - We lay, nor heard the limber wheels - That pass and ever pass, - In noisy continuity until their stony rattle - Seems in itself a battle. - - At length we rose up from this ease - Of tranquil happy mind, - And searched the garden's little length - A fresh pleasaunce to find; - And there, some yellow daffodils and jasmine hanging high - Did rest the tired eye. - - The fairest and most fragrant - Of the many sweets we found, - Was a little bush of Daphne flower - Upon a grassy mound, - And so thick were the blossoms set and so divine the scent - That we were well content. - - Hungry for Spring I bent my head, - The perfume fanned my face, - And all my soul was dancing, - In that lovely little place, - Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered towns - Away......upon the Downs. - - I saw green banks of daffodil, - Slim poplars in the breeze, - Great tan-brown hares in gusty March - A-couching on the leas; - And meadows with their glittering streams, and silver scurrying dace, - Home--what a perfect place. - - _Belgium, March,_ 1916. - - - - - EDWARD THOMAS - - _Born 1877._ - _Killed in Action 1017._ - - - - - - ASPENS - - - All day and night, save winter, every weather, - Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop, - The aspens at the cross-roads talk together - Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top. - - Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing - Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn - The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing--The - sounds that for these fifty years have been. - - The whisper of the aspens is not drowned, - And over lightless pane and footless road, - Empty as sky, with every other sound - Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode. - - A silent smithy, a silent inn, not fails - In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom, - In tempest or the night of nightingales, - To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room. - - And it would be the same were no house near. - Over all sorts of weather, men, and times, - A spens must shake their leaves and men may hear - But need not listen, more than to my rhymes. - - Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves - We cannot other than an aspen be - That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves, - Or so men think who like a different tree. - - - - - THE BROOK - - - Seated once by a brook, watching a child - Chiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled. - Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrush - Not far off in the oak and hazel brush, - Unseen. There was a scent like honeycomb - From mugwort dull. And down upon the dome - Of the stone the cart-horse kicks against so oft - A butterfly alighted. From aloft - He took the heat of the sun, and from below, - On the hot stone he perched contented so, - As if never a cart would pass again - That way; as if I were the last of men - And he the first of insects to have earth - And sun together and to know their worth, - I was divided between him and the gleam, - The motion, and the voices, of the stream, - The waters running frizzled over gravel, - That never vanish and for ever travel. - A grey flycatcher silent on a fence - And I sat as if we had been there since - The horseman and the horse lying beneath - The fir-tree-covered barrow on the heath, - The horseman and the horse with silver shoes, - Galloped the downs last. All that I could lose - I lost. And then the child's voice raised the dead. - "No one's been here before" was what she said - And what I felt, yet never should have found - A word for, while I gathered sight and sound. - - - - - THE BRIDGE - - - I have come a long way to-day: - On a strange bridge alone, - Remembering friends, old friends, - I rest, without smile or moan, - As they remember me without smile or moan. - - All are behind, the kind - And the unkind too, no more - To-night than a dream. The stream - Runs softly yet drowns the Past, - The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the Past. - - No traveller has rest more blest - Than this moment brief between - Two lives, when the Night's first lights - And shades hide what has never been, - Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or have been. - - - - - LIGHTS OUT - - - I have come to the borders of sleep, - The unfathomable deep - Forest where all must lose - Their way, however straight, - Or winding, soon or late; - They cannot choose. - - Many a road and track - That, since the dawn's first crack, - Up to the forest brink, - Deceived the travellers - Suddenly now blurs, - And in they sink. - - Here love ends, - Despair, ambition ends, - All pleasure and all trouble, - Although most sweet or bitter, - Here ends in sleep that is sweeter - Than tasks most noble. - - There is not any book - Or face of dearest look - That I would not turn from now - To go into the unknown - I must enter and leave alone - I know not how. - - The tall forest towers; - Its cloudy foliage lowers - Ahead, shelf above shelf; - Its silence I hear and obey - That I may lose my way - And myself. - - - - - WORDS - - - Out of us all - That make rhymes, - Will you choose - Sometimes-- - As the winds use - A crack in the wall - Or a drain, - Their joy or their pain - To whistle through-- - Choose me, - You English words? - - I know you: - You are light as dreams, - Tough as oak, - Precious as gold, - As poppies and corn, - Or an old cloak: - Sweet as our birds - To the ear, - As the linnet note - In the heat - Of Midsummer: - Strange as the races - Of dead and unborn: - Strange and sweet - Equally. - And familiar, - To the eye, - As the dearest faces - That a man knows, - And as lost homes are: - But though older far - Than oldest yew,-- - As our hills are, old,-- - Worn new - Again and again: - Young as our streams - After rain: - And as dear - As the earth which you prove - That we love. - - Make me content - With some sweetness - From Wales - Whose nightingales - Have no wings,-- - From Wiltshire and Kent - And Herefordshire, - And the villages there,-- - From the names, and the things, - No less. - Let me sometimes dance - With you, - Or climb - Or stand perchance - In ecstasy, - Fixed and free - In a rhyme, - As poets do. - - - - - TALL NETTLES - - - Tall nettles cover up, as they have done - These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough - Long worn out, and the roller made of stone: - Only the elm butt tops the nettles now. - - This corner of the farmyard I like most: - As well as any bloom upon a flower - I like the dust on the nettles, never lost - Except to prove the sweetness of a shower. - - - - - THE PATH - - - Running along a bank, a parapet - That saves from the precipitous wood below - The level road, there is a path. It serves - Children for looking down the long smooth steep, - Between the legs of beech and yew, to where - A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women - Content themselves with the road, and what they see - Over the bank, and what the children tell. - The path, winding like silver, trickles on, - Bordered and ever invaded by thinnest moss - That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk - With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain. - The children wear it. They have flattened the bank - On top, and silvered it between the moss - With the current of their feet, year after year. - But the road is houseless, and leads not to school. - To see a child is rare there, and the eye - Has but the road, the wood that overhangs - And underyawns it, and the path that looks - As if it led on to some legendary - Or fancied place where men have wished to go - And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends. - - - - - SWEDES - - - They have taken the gable from the roof of clay - On the long swede pile. They have let in the sun - To the white and gold and purple of curled fronds - Unsunned. It is a sight more tender-gorgeous - At the wood-corner where Winter moans and drips - Than when, in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings, - A boy crawls down into a Pharaoh's tomb - And, first of Christian men, beholds the mummy, - God and monkey, chariot and throne and vase, - Blue pottery, alabaster, and gold. - - But dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies. - This is a dream of Winter, sweet as Spring. - - - - - W. J. TURNER - - - - - ROMANCE - - - When I was but thirteen or so - I went into a golden land, - Chimborazo, Cotopaxi - Took me by the hand. - - My father died, my brother too, - They passed like fleeting dreams. - I stood where Popocatapetl - In the sunlight gleams. - - I dimly heard the Master's voice - And boys far-off at play, - Chimborazo, Cotopaxi - Had stolen me away. - - I walked in a great golden dream - To and fro from school-- - Shining Popocatapetl - The dusty streets did rule. - - I walked home with a gold dark boy - And never a word I'd say, - Chimborazo, Cotopaxi - Had taken my speech away: - - I gazed entranced upon his face - Fairer than any flower-- - O shining Popocatapetl - It was thy magic hour: - - The houses, people, traffic seemed - Thin fading dreams by day, - Chimborazo, Cotopaxi - They had stolen my soul away! - - - - - THE CAVES OF AUVERGNE - - - He carved the red deer and the bull - Upon the smooth cave rock, - Returned from war with belly full, - And scarred with many a knock, - He carved the red deer and the bull - Upon the smooth cave rock. - - The stars flew by the cave's wide door, - The clouds wild trumpets blew, - Trees rose in wild dreams from the floor, - Flowers with dream faces grew - Up to the sky, and softly hung - Golden and white and blue. - - The woman ground her heap of corn, - Her heart a guarded fire; - The wind played in his trembling soul - Like a hand upon a lyre, - The wind drew faintly on the stone - Symbols of his desire: - - The red deer of the forest dark, - Whose antlers cut the sky, - That vanishes into the mirk - And like a dream flits by, - And by an arrow slain at last - Is but the wind's dark body. - - The bull that stands in marshy lakes - As motionless and still - As a dark rock jutting from a plain - Without a tree or hill; - The bull that is the sign of life, - Its sombre, phallic will. - - And from the dead, white eyes of them - The wind springs up anew, - It blows upon the trembling heart, - And bull and deer renew - Their flitting life in the dim past - When that dead Hunter drew. - - I sit beside him in the night, - And, fingering his red stone, - I chase through endless forests dark - Seeking that thing unknown, - That which is not red deer or bull, - But which by them was shown: - - By those stiff shapes in which he drew - His soul's exalted cry, - When flying down the forest dark - He slew and knew not why, - When he was filled with song, and strength - Flowed to him from the sky. - - The wind blows from red deer and bull, - The clouds wild trumpets blare. - Trees rise in wild dreams from the earth, - Flowers with dream faces stare, - _O Hunter, your own shadow stands_ - _Within your forest lair!_ - - - - - ECSTASY - - - I saw a frieze on whitest marble drawn - Of boys who sought for shells along the shore, - Their white feet shedding pallor in the sea, - The shallow sea, the spring-time sea of green - That faintly creamed against the cold, smooth pebbles. - - The air was thin, their limbs were delicate, - The wind had graven their small eager hands - To feel the forests and the dark nights of Asia - Behind the purple bloom of the horizon, - Where sails would float and slowly melt away. - - Their naked, pure, and grave, unbroken silence - Filled the soft air as gleaming, limpid water - Fills a spring sky those days when rain is lying - In shattered bright pools on the wind-dried roads, - And their sweet bodies were wind-purified. - - One held a shell unto his shell-like ear - And there was music carven in his face, - His eyes half-closed, his lips just breaking open - To catch the lulling, mazy, coralline roar - Of numberless caverns filled with singing seas. - - And all of them were hearkening as to singing - Of far off voices thin and delicate, - Voices too fine for any mortal mind - To blow into the whorls of mortal ears-- - And yet those sounds flowed from their grave, sweet faces. - - And as I looked I heard that delicate music, - And I became as grave, as calm, as still - As those carved boys. I stood upon that shore, - I felt the cool sea dream around my feet, - My eyes were staring at the far horizon: - - And the wind came and purified my limbs, - And the stars came and set within my eyes, - And snowy clouds rested upon my shoulders, - And the blue sky shimmered deep within me, - And I sang like a carven pipe of music. - - - - - KENT IN WAR - - - The pebbly brook is cold to-night, - Its water soft as air, - A clear, cold, crystal-bodied wind - Shadowless and bare, - Leaping and running in this world - Where dark-horned cattle stare: - - Where dark-horned cattle stare, hoof-firm - On the dark pavements of the sky, - And trees are mummies swathed in sleep, - And small dark hills crowd wearily: - Soft multitudes of snow-grey clouds - Without a sound march by. - - Down at the bottom of the road - I smell the woody damp - Of that cold spirit in the grass, - And leave my hill-top camp-- - Its long gun pointing in the sky--And - take the Moon for lamp. - - I stop beside the bright cold glint - Of that thin spirit of the grass, - So gay it is, so innocent! - I watch its sparkling footsteps pass - Lightly from smooth round stone to stone, - Hid in the dew-hung grass. - - My lamp shines in the globes of dew, - And leaps into that crystal wind - Running along the shaken grass - To each dark hole that it can find-- - The crystal wind, the Moon my lamp, - Have vanished in a wood that's blind. - - High lies my small, my shadowy camp, - Crowded about by small dark hills; - With sudden small white flowers the sky - Above the woods' dark greenness fills; - And hosts of dark-browed, muttering trees - In trance the white Moon stills. - - I move among their tall grey forms, - A thin moon-glimmering, wandering Ghost, - Who takes his lantern through the world - In search of life that he has lost, - While watching by that long lean gun - Upon his small hill post. - - - - - DEATH - - - When I am dead a few poor souls shall grieve - As I grieved for my brother long ago. - Scarce did my eyes grow dim, - I had forgotten him; - I was far-off hearing the spring winds blow, - And many summers burned - When, though still reeling with my eyes aflame, - I heard that faded name - Whispered one Spring amid the hurrying world - From which, years gone, he turned. - - I looked up at my windows and I saw - The trees, thin spectres sucked forth by the moon. - The air was very still - Above a distant hill; - It was the hour of night's full silver moon. - "O art thou there my brother?" my soul cried; - And all the pale stars down bright rivers wept, - As my heart sadly crept - About the empty hills, bathed in that light - That lapped him when he died. - - Ah! it was cold, so cold; do I not know - How dead my heart on that remembered day! - Clear in a far-away place - I see his delicate face - Just as he called me from my solitary play, - Giving into my hands a tiny tree. - We planted it in the dark, blossomless ground - Gravely, without a sound; - Then back I went and left him standing by - His birthday gift to me. - - In that far land perchance it quietly grows - Drinking the rain, making a pleasant shade; - Birds in its branches fly - Out of the fathomless sky - Where worlds of circling light arise and fade, - Blindly it quivers in the bright flood of day, - Or drowned in multitudinous shouts of rain - Glooms o'er the dark-veiled plain--Buried - below, the ghost that's in his bones - Dreams in the sodden clay. - - And, while he faded, drunk with beauty's eyes - I kissed bright girls and laughed deep in dumb trees, - That stared fixt in the air - Like madmen in despair - Gaped up from earth with the escaping breeze. - I saw earth's exaltation slowly creep - Out of their myriad sky-embracing veins. - I laughed along the lanes, - Meeting Death riding in from the hollow seas - Through black-wreathed woods asleep. - - I laughed, I swaggered on the cold, hard ground - Through the grey air trembled a falling wave-- - "Thou'rt pale, O Death!" I cried, - Mocking him in my pride; - And passing I dreamed not of that lonely grave, - But of leaf-maidens whose pale, moon-like hands - Above the tree-foam waved in the icy air, - Sweeping with shining hair - Through the green-tinted sky, one moment fled - Out of immortal lands. - - One windless Autumn night the Moon came out - In a white sea of cloud, a field of snow; - In darkness shaped of trees, - I sank upon my knees - And watched her shining, from the small wood below-- - Faintly Death flickered in an owl's far cry-- - We floated soundless in the great gulf of space, - Her light upon my face--Immortal, - shining in that dark wood I knelt - And knew I could not die. - - And knew I could not die--O Death did'st thou - Heed my vain glory, standing pale by thy dead? - There is a spirit who grieves - Amid earth's dying leaves; - Was't thou that wept beside my brother's bed? - For I did never mourn nor heed at all - Him passing on his temporal elm-wood bier; - I never shed a tear. - The drooping sky spread grey-winged through my soul, - While stones and earth did fall. - - That sound rings down the years--I hear it yet-- - All earthly life's a winding funeral-- - And though I never wept, - But into the dark coach stept, - Dreaming by night to answer the blood's sweet call, - She who stood there, high breasted, with small wise lips, - And gave me wine to drink and bread to eat, - Has not more steadfast feet, - But fades from my arms as fade from mariners' eyes - The sea's most beauteous ships. - - The trees and hills of earth were once as close - As my own brother, they are becoming dreams - And shadows in my eyes; - More dimly lies - Guaya deep in my soul, the coastline gleams - Faintly along the darkening crystalline seas. - Glimmering and lovely still, 'twill one day go; - The surging dark will flow - Over my hopes and joys, and blot out all - Earth's hills and skies and trees. - - I shall look up one night and see the Moon - For the last time shining above the hills, - And thou, silent, wilt ride - Over the dark hillside. - 'Twill be, perchance, the time of daffodils-- - _"How come those bright immortals in the woods?_ - _Their joy being young, did'st thou not drag them all_ - _Into dark graves ere Fall?"_ - Shall life thus haunt me, wondering, as I go - To thy deep solitudes? - - There is a figure with a down-turned torch - Carved on a pillar in an olden time, - A calm and lovely boy - Who comes not to destroy - But to lead age back to its golden prime. - Thus did an antique sculptor draw thee, Death, - With smooth and beauteous brow and faint sweet smile, - Nor haggard, gaunt and vile, - And thou perhaps art Him to whom men may - Unvexed, give up their breath. - - But in my soul thou sittest like a dream - Among earth's mountains, by her dim-coloured seas; - A wild unearthly Shape - In thy dark-glimmering cape, - Piping a tune of wavering melodies, - Thou sittest, ay, thou sittest at the feast - Of my brief life among earth's bright-wreathed flowers, - Stemming the dancing hours - With sombre gleams until abrupt, thou risest - And all, at once, is ceased. - - - - - SOLDIERS IN A SMALL CAMP - - - There is a camp upon a rounded hill - Where men do sleep more closely to the stars, - And tree-like shapes stand at its entrances, - Beside the small, dark, shadow-soldiery. - - Deep in the gloom of days of isolation, - Withdrawn, high up from the low, murmuring town, - Those shadows sit, drooping around their fires, - Or move as winds dark-waving in a wood. - - Staring at cattle on a neighbouring hill - They are oblivious as is stone or grass--The - clouds passed voiceless over, and the sun - Rose, and lit trees, and vanished utterly. - - Then in the awful beauty of the world, - When stars are singing in dark ecstasy, - Those ox-like soldiers sit collected round - A thin, metallic echo of human song: - - And click their feet and clap their hands in time, - And wag their heads, and make the white ghost owl - Flit from its branch--but still those tree-like shapes - Stand like archangels dark-winged in the sky. - - And presently the soldiers cease to stir; - The thin voice sinks and all at once is dead; - They lie down on their planks and hear the wind, - And feel the darkness fumbling at their souls. - - They lie in rows as stiff as tombs or trees, - Their eyeballs imageless, like marble still; - And secretly they feel that roof and walls - Are gone and that they stare into the sky. - - It is so black, so black, so black, so black, - Those black-winged shapes have stretched across the world, - Have swallowed up the stars, and if the sun - Rises again, it will be black, black, black. - - - - - A RITUAL DANCE - - - I--THE DANCE - - - In the black glitter of night the grey vapour forest - Lies a dark Ghost in the water, motionless, dark, - Like a corpse by the bank fallen, and hopelessly rotting - Where the thin silver soul of the stars silently dances. - - The flowers are closed, the birds are carved on the trees, - When out of the forest glide hundreds of spear-holding shadows, - In smooth dark ivory bodies their eyeballs gleaming - Forming a gesturing circle beneath the Moon. - The bright-eyed shadows, the tribe in ritual gathered, - Are dancing and howling, the embryo soul of a nation: - In loud drum-beating monotonous the tightly stretched skins - Of oxen that stared at the stars are singing wild paeans: - - Wild paeans for food that magically grew in the clearings - When he that was slain was buried and is resurrected, - And a green mist arose from the mud and shone in the Moon, - A great delirium of faces, a new generation. - - The thin wafer Moon it is there, it is there in the sky, - The hand-linked circle raise faces of mad exaltation-- - Dance, O you Hunters, leap madly upon the flung shields, - Shoot arrows into the sky, thin moon-seeking needles: - - Now you shall have a harvest, a belly-full rapture, - There shall be many fat women, full grown, and smoother than honey, - Their limbs like ivory rounded, and firm as a berry, - Their lips full of food and their eyes full of hunger for men! - - The heat of the earth arises, a faint love mist - Wan with over-desiring, and in the marshes - Blindly the mud stirs, clouding the dark shining water, - And troubling the still soft swarms of fallen stars. - - There is bright sweat upon the bodies of cattle, - Great vials of life motionless in the moonlight, - Breathing faint mists over the warm, damp ground; - And the cry of a dancer rings through the shadowy forest. - - The tiger is seeking his mate and his glassy eyes - Are purple and shot with starlight in the grass shining, - The fiery grass tortured out of the mud and writhing - Under the sun, now shivering and pale in the Moon. - - The shadows are dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing: - The grey vapour amis of the forest lie dreaming around them; - The cold, shining moonlight falls from their bodies and faces, - But caught in their eyes lies prisoned and faintly gleaming: - - And they return to their dwellings within the grey forest, - Into their dark huts, burying the moonlight with them, - Burying the trees and the stars and the flowing river, - And the glittering spears, and their dark, evocative gestures. - - - II--SLEEP - - Hollow the world in the moonlit hour when the birds are shadows small, - Lost in the swarm of giant leaves and myriad branches tall; - When vast thick boughs hang across the sky like solid limbs of night, - Dug from still quarries of grey-black air by the pale transparent light, - And the purple and golden blooms of the sun, each crimson and - spotted flower, - Are folded up or have faded away, as the still intangible power - Floats out of the sky, falls shimmering down, a silver-shadowy bloom, - On the spear-pointed forest a fragile crown, in the soul a soft, - bright gloom; - Hollow the world when the shadow of man lies prone and still on its floor, - And the moonlight shut from his empty heart weeps softly against his door, - And his terror and joy but a little dream in the corner of his house, - And his voice dead in the darkness 'mid the twittering of a mouse. - - - III. - - Hollow the world! hollow the world! - And its dancers shadow-grey; - And the Moon a silver-shadowy bloom - Fading and fading away; - And the forest's grey vapour, and all the trees - Shadows against the sky; - And the soul of man and his ecstasies - A night-forgotten cry. - Hollow the world! hollow the world! - - - - - IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS - - - - - FROM A FLEMISH GRAVEYARD - - JANUARY 1915 - - - A year hence may the grass that waves - O'er English men in Flemish graves, - Coating this clay with green of peace - And softness of a year's increase, - Be kind and lithe as English grass - To bend and nod as the winds pass; - It was for grass on English hills - These bore too soon the last of ills. - - And may the wind be brisk and clean, - And singing cheerfully between - The bents a pleasant-burdened song - To cheer these English dead along; - For English songs and English winds - Are they that bred these English minds. - - And may the circumstantial trees - Dip, for these dead ones, in the breeze, - And make for them their silver play - Of spangled boughs each shiny day. - Thus may these look above, and see - And hear the wind in grass and tree, - And watch a lark in heaven stand, - And think themselves in their own land. - - - - - A MONUMENT - - (AFTER AN ANCIENT FASHION) - - - Traveller, turn a mournful eye - Where my lady's ashes lie; - If thou hast a sweet thine own - Pity me, that am alone;-- - Yet, if thou no lover be, - Nor hast been, I'll pity thee. - - - - - FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG - - - - - SONG OF THE DARK AGES - - - We digged our trenches on the down - Beside old barrows, and the wet - White chalk we shovelled from below; - It lay like drifts of thawing snow - On parados and parapet; - - Until a pick neither struck flint - Nor split the yielding chalky soil, - But only calcined human bone: - Poor relic of that Age of Stone - Whose ossuary was our spoil. - - Home we marched singing in the rain, - And all the while, beneath our song, - I mused how many springs should wane - And still our trenches scar the plain: - The monument of an old wrong. - - But then, I thought, the fair green sod - Will wholly cover that white stain, - And soften, as it clothes the face - Of those old barrows, every trace - Of violence to the patient plain. - - And careless people, passing by - Will speak of both in casual tone: - Saying: "You see the toil they made - The age of iron, pick and spade, - Here jostles with the Age of Stone." - - Yet either from that happier race - Will merit but a passing glance; - And they will leave us both alone: - Poor savages who wrought in stone--Poor - Poor savages who fought in France. - - - - - BÊTE HUMAINE - - - Riding through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise, - I saw the world awake; and as the ray - Touched the tall grasses where they sleeping lay, - Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies: - With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyes - Piloting crimson bodies, slender and gay. - I aimed at one, and struck it, and it lay - Broken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes ... - Then my soul sickened with a sudden pain - And horror, at my own careless cruelty, - That in an idle moment I had slain - A creature whose sweet life it is to fly: - Like beasts that prey with tooth and claw ... - Nay, they - Must slay to live, but what excuse had I? - - - - - THE GIFT - - - Marching on Tanga, marching the parch'd plain - Of wavering spear-grass past Pangani river, - England came to me--me who had always ta'en - But never given before--England, the giver, - In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiver - On still evenings of summer, after rain, - By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver - When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain. - Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain - And, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awake - Shivering all night through till cold daybreak: - In that I count these sufferings my gain - And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fain - Suffer as many more for her sweet sake. - - - - - THE LEANING ELM - - - Before my window, in days of winter hoar - Huddled a mournful wood; - Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore, - In stony sleep they stood: - But you, unhappy elm, the angry west - Had chosen from the rest, - Flung broken on your brothers' branches bare, - And left you leaning there - So dead that when the breath of winter cast - Wild snow upon the blast, - The other living branches, downward bowed, - Shook free their crystal shroud - And shed upon your blackened trunk beneath - Their livery of death...... - - On windless nights between the beechen bars - I watched cold stars - Throb whitely in the sky, and dreamily - Wondered if any life lay locked in thee: - If still the hidden sap secretly moved - As water in the icy winterbourne - Floweth unheard: - And half I pitied you your trance forlorn: - You could not hear, I thought, the voice of any bird, - The shadowy cries of bats in dim twilight - Or cool voices of owls crying by night ... - Hunting by night under the horned moon: - Yet half I envied you your wintry swoon, - Till, on this morning mild, the sun, new-risen - Steals from his misty prison; - The frozen fallows glow, the black trees shaken - In a clear flood of sunlight vibrating awaken: - And lo, your ravaged hole, beyond belief - Slenderly fledged anew with tender leaf - As pale as those twin vanes that break at last - In a tiny fan above the black beech-mast - Where no blade springeth green - But pallid bells of the shy helleborine. - What is this ecstasy that overwhelms - The dreaming earth? See, the embrownèd elms - Crowding purple distances warm the depths of the wood: - A new-born wind tosses their tassels brown, - His white clouds dapple the down: - Into a green flame bursting the hedgerows stand. - - Soon, with banners flying, Spring will walk the land.... - There is no day for thee, my soul, like this, - No spring of lovely words. Nay, even the kiss - Of mortal love that maketh man divine - This light cannot outshine: - Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catch - The shadow of vanishing beauty, may not match - This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull - Such magical beauty as time may not destroy; - But we, alas, are not more beautiful: - We cannot flower in beauty as in joy. - We sing, our mused words are sped, and then - Poets are only men - Who age, and toil, and sicken ... This maim'd tree - May stand in leaf when I have ceased to be. - - - - - PROTHALAMION - - - When the evening came my love said to me: - Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool; - The garden of black hellebore and rosemary - Where wild woodruff spills in a milky pool. - - Low we passed in the twilight, for the wavering heat - Of day had waned; and round that shaded plot - Of secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet: - Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips spake not. - - Between that old garden and seas of lazy foam - Gloomy and beautiful alleys of trees arise - With spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome, - So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but the skies - - Veiled with a soft air, drench'd in the roses' musk - Or the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove: - No stars burned in their deeps, but through the dusk - I saw my love's eyes, and they were brimmed with love. - - No star their secret ravished, no wasting moon - Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours: - Only the soft unseeing heaven of June, - The ghosts of great trees, and the sleeping flowers. - - For doves that crooned in the leafy noonday now - Were silent; the night-jar sought his secret covers, - Nor even a mild sea-whisper moved a creaking bough-- - Was ever a silence deeper made for lovers? - - Was ever a moment meeter made for love? - Beautiful are your close lips beneath my kiss; - And all your yielding sweetness beautiful-- - Oh, never in all the world was such a night as this! - - - - INDEX - - - LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE: - Marriage Song - Epilogue - - MARTIN ARMSTRONG: - The Buzzards - - MAURICE BARING: - Diffugere Nives, 1917 - Julian Grenfell - Pierre - - HILAIRE BELLOC: - The South Country - The Night - Song - The False Heart - Hannaker Mill (1913) - Tarantella - On a Dead Hostess - - EDMUND BLUNDEN: - Almswomen - Gleaning - - GORDON BOTTOMLEY: - The Ploughman - Babel: The Gate of the God - The End of the World - Atlantis - New Year's Eve, 1913 - To Iron-founders and Others - - RUPERT BROOKE: - Sonnet - The Soldier - The Treasure - The Great Lover - Clouds - The Old Vicarage, Grantchester - The Busy Heart - Dining-Room Tea - - FRANCIS BURROWS: - The Prayer to Demeter - The Giant's Dirge - The Unforgotten - The Well - Egyptian - Life - - A. Y. CAMPBELL: - Animula Vagula - A Bird - The Dromedary - The Panic - - G. K. CHESTERTON: - Wine and Water - The Rolling English Road - The Secret People - From the Ballad of the White Horse - - PADRAIC COLUM: - The Old Woman of the Roads - - FRANCES CORNFORD: - Autumn Evening - - W. H. DAVIES: - Days Too Short - The Example - The East in Gold - The Happy Child - A Great Time - The White Cascade - In May - Thunderstorms - Sweet Stay-at-Home - - EDWARD L. DAVISON: - The Trees - In this Dark House - - WALTER DE LA MARE: - The Listeners - Arabia - Music - The Scribe - The Ghost - Clear Eyes - Fare Well - All That's Past - The Song of the Mad Prince - - JOHN DRINKWATER: - Birthright - Moonlit Apples - - R. C. K. ENSOR: - Ode to Reality, 171 - - JAMES ELROY FLECKER: - Riouperoux - War Song of the Saracens - The Old Ships - Stillness - Areiya - The Queen's Song - Brumana - Hyali - The Golden Journey to Samarkand--Prologue - Epilogue - - ROBIN FLOWER: - La Vie Cérébrale - The Pipes - Say not that Beauty - - JOHN FREEMAN: - The Wakers - The Body - Stone Trees - More Than Sweet - Waking - The Chair - The Stars in Their Courses - Shadows - - ROBERT GRAVES: - Star-Talk - To Lucasta on going to the Wars - Not Dead - In the Wilderness - Neglectful Edward - - JULIAN GRENFELL: - To a Black Greyhound - Into Battle - - IVOR GURNEY: - To the Poet before Battle - Song of Pain and Beauty - - RALPH HODGSON: - Eve - The Bull - The Song of Honour - Reason has Moons - - JAMES JOYCE: - Strings in the Earth - I Hear an Army - - D. H. LAWRENCE: - Service of All the Dead - - FRANCIS LEDWIDGE: - In France - Thomas Macdonagh - In September - - ROSE MACAULAY: - Trinity Sunday - - THOMAS MACDONAGH: - Inscription on a Ruin - The Night Hunt - - JOHN MASEFIELD: - C. L. M. - What Am I, Life? - - HAROLD MONRO: - Journey - Solitude - Milk for the Cat - - STURGE MOORE: - Sent from Egypt - A Spanish Picture - A Duet - The Gazelles - - ROBERT NICHOLS: - To ---- - Farewell to place of comfort - The Full Heart - The Tower - Fulfilment - The Sprig of Lime - - SEUMAS O'SULLIVAN: - The Twilight People - - WILFRED OWEN: - Strange Meeting - - JOSEPH PLUNKETT: - I See His Blood Upon the Rose - - SIEGFRIED SASSOON: - "In the Pink" - The Death-Bed - Counter-Attack - Dreamers - Everyone Sang - - EDWARD SHANKS: - A Night Piece - The Glow-Worm - The Halt - A Hollow Elm - The Return - Clouds - The Rock Pool - The Swimmers - The Storm - - C. H. SORLEY: - German Rain - All the Hills and Vales - - JAMES STEPHENS: - Deirdre - The Goat-Paths - The Fifteen Acres - - EDWARD WYNDHAM TENNANT: - Homo Thoughts in Laventie - - EDWARD THOMAS: - Aspens - The Brook - The Bridge - Lights Out - Words - Tall Nettles - The Path - Swedes - - W. J. TURNER: - Romance - The Caves of Auvergne - Ecstasy - Kent in War - Death - Soldiers in a Small Camp - A Ritual Dance - - IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS: - From a Flemish Graveyard - A Monument - - FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG: - Song of the Dark Ages - Bête Humaine - The Gift - The Leaning Elm - Prothalamion - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Selections from Modern Poets, by Various - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM MODERN POETS *** - -***** This file should be named 53206-0.txt or 53206-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/2/0/53206/ - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version, also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... 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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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Selections from Modern Poets - Made by J. C. Squire - Sassoon, Joyce, Graves... - -Author: Various - -Release Date: October 4, 2016 [EBook #53206] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM MODERN POETS *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version, also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) -Images generously made available by the Internet Achive. - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="600" alt="" /> -</div> - -<h1>SELECTIONS FROM MODERN POETS</h1> - -<h2>MADE BY J. C. SQUIRE</h2> - -<h5>LONDON: MARTIN SECKER</h5> - - -<h5>1921</h5> - -<hr class="full" /> -<p><a href="#INDEX">Index</a></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4>PREFATORY NOTE</h4> - - -<p>No Poet represented in this book was over fifty when, in 1919, I began -to compile it. The eldest of them all was born in 1870.</p> - -<p>Many good and some great living poets are therefore missing from its -pages. Nothing is here by Mr Hardy or Mr Bridges, by Mr A. E. Housman, -Mr Yeats, <i>Æ,</i> Mr Binyon, Mr Hewlett, Mr Herbert Trench, Mr Gosse, Mr -Austin Dobson, Mr Doughty, Mr Kipling, Sir Henry Newbolt, Mrs Meynell, -Mrs Woods, Mr Wilfrid Blunt, and others whose names must appear in -any comprehensive anthology from living poets. The date, 1870, was -arbitrarily chosen: so would any other date have been. But some date I -had to fix, for my object was to illustrate what many of us think an -exceptional recent flowering.</p> - -<p>I do not propose to analyse the tendencies, in idea and in method, -exhibited in the poems here collected. These things are always -better seen at a distance; and anyhow the materials are here for -the production of an analysis by the reader himself, if he is eager -for one. But I will express one opinion, and call attention to one -phenomenon. The opinion is that the majority of the poems in this book -have merit and that many more could have been printed without lowering -the standard. And the phenomenon is the simultaneous appearance—the -result of underlying currents of thought and feeling—of a very large -number of poets who write only or mainly in lyrical forms. Several -living poets of the highest repute have won their reputation solely on -short<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> poems, and there are, and have been, a very large number indeed -who have written one or two good poems.</p> - -<p>The better production of our generation has been mainly lyrical and -it has been widely diffused. Where is the ambitious work on a large -scale? Where is the twentieth century poet who is fulfilling the usual -functions of the greatest poets: to display human life in all its range -and variety, or to exercise a clear and powerful influence on the -thought of mankind with regard to the main problems of our existence? -These questions are asked; possibly Echo may give its traditional and -ironic answer.</p> - -<p>There are several observations, however, which should be made. One is -that the great doctrinal poets have not always become widely recognised -as such in their own prime, their general vogue being posthumous. -Another is that we cannot possibly tell what a poet now living and -young may or may not do before he dies. But though I have my own views -on this subject I do not think that the age, even if admitted to be -purely lyrical, stands in need of defence. It is of no use asking a -poetical renascence to conform to type, for there isn't any type. -There are marked differences in the features of all those English -poetical movements which have chiefly contributed to the body of our -"immortal" poetry. In the Elizabethan age we had the greatest diversity -of production: a multitude of great and small men, with much genius, -or but a spark of it blown to life by the favourable wind, produced -works in every form and on every scale. The age of Herbert and Vaughan, -of Crashaw, Herrick, Marvell, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, Corbet, -Habington, is memorable almost solely for its lyrical work. The era -of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats was an age during -which a vast amount of great poetry was written by a few great poets; -there was very little healthy undergrowth. Should our literary age be -remembered by posterity solely as an age during which fifty men had -written lyrics of some durability for their truth and beauty,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span> it would -not be remembered with contempt. It is in that conviction that I have -compiled this anthology.</p> - -<p>It is irritating to feel that even within its own limits it does -not appear to myself—not to mention others—as good or as nearly -representative as it might have been. Permission could not be obtained -to print Mr Masefield's <i>Biography</i> and his <i>August 1914,</i> which I -personally happen to prefer to any of his shorter works. Since the time -in 1919-20 when I was compiling the book two volumes have come out from -which I should like to have made large seleetions: Edmund Blunden's -<i>The Waggoner</i> and the late Wilfrid Owen's <i>Poems.</i> Each of these poets -is inadequately represented here; and a few things by others, who do -not appear here at all, came to my notice when it was too late to put -them in.</p> - -<p>I have to thank the living poets from whose works I have drawn for -permitting me to use everything I wanted. I am grateful to Mrs -Brooke and Rupert Brooke's literary executor, Mr Edward Marsh (whose -"Georgian" collections have been a great stimulus and help to me) for -permission to use a selection from Brooke; to Mrs J. E. Flecker for -poems by her husband; to Lady Desborough for the poems by her son, -Julian Grenfell; to Lord Dunsany for the poems by Francis Ledwidge; to -Mrs Thomas Macdonagh and Mrs Joseph Plunkett for the poems by their -husbands; to Mrs Owen for her son Wilfrid Owen's <i>Strange Meeting;</i> -to Professor W. R. Sorley for the poems by his son, Charles Sorley; -to Lady Glenconner for those by her son, Edward Wyndham Tennant; to -Mrs Edward Thomas for the poems (published too late for him ever to -know-how people would admire them) by Edward Thomas.</p> - -<p>Finally, almost every publisher in the kingdom has assisted the book -with permission to reprint copyright poems. The full list of publishers -and works is as follows: Messrs Bell (Edward L. Davison, <i>Poems</i>); -Blackwell (E. Wyndham Tennant, <i>Worple Flit</i>); Burns' Oates and -Washbourne (G. K. Chesterton, <i>Poems</i>); Cambridge University Press (C. -H. Sorley, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span><i>Marlborough and other Poems</i>); Chatto and Windus (Robert -Nichols, <i>Ardours and Endurances, Aurelia,</i> Wilfred Owen, <i>Poems</i>); -Collins (F. Brett Young, <i>Poems</i>); Constable (Gordon Bottomley, -<i>Annual of New Poetry,</i> 1917, W. de la Mare, <i>Collected Poems</i>); -Dent (G. K. Chesterton, <i>The Wild Knight</i>); Duckworth (H. Belloc, -<i>Poems,</i> D. H. Lawrence, <i>Love Poems,</i> Sturge Moore, <i>Collected Poems</i>); -Fifield (W. H. Davies, <i>Collected Poems</i>); Heffer (A. Y. Campbell, -<i>Poems</i>); Heinemann (Robert Graves, <i>Fairies and Fusiliers,</i> John -Masefield, <i>Lollingdon Downs,</i> Siegfried Sassoon, <i>The Old Huntsman, -Counter-Attack, War Poems</i>); Herbert Jenkins (Francis Ledwidge, -<i>Poems</i>); Lane (Lascelles Abercrombie, <i>Emblems of Love</i>); Macmillan -(Ralph Hodgson, <i>Poems,</i> James Stephens, <i>Songs from the Clay</i>); -Elkin Mathews (Gordon Bottomley, <i>Chambers of Imagery,</i> James Joyce, -<i>Chamber Music,</i> Sturge Moore, <i>The Vinedresser</i>); Maunsel and Roberts -(Padraic Colum, <i>Poems,</i> Seumas O'Sullivan, <i>The Twilight People,</i> -Joseph Plunkett, <i>Poems</i>); Methuen (G. K. Chesterton, <i>The Ballad of -the White Horse,</i> W. H. Davies, <i>The Bird of Paradise,</i> I. A. Williams, -<i>Poems</i>); Palmer (Francis Burrows, <i>The Green Knight</i>); Poetry Bookshop -(Frances Cornford, <i>Poems,</i> Harold Monro, <i>Children of Love, Strange -Meetings</i>); Seeker (Martin Armstrong, <i>The Buzzards,</i> Maurice Baring, -<i>Poems</i> 1914-1919, J. E. Flecker, <i>Collected Poems,</i> Robert Graves, -<i>Country Sentiment,</i> Edward Shanks, <i>The Queen of China</i>); Selwyn and -Blount (Robin Flower, <i>Hymensea,</i> John Freeman, <i>Poems New and Old,</i> -Edward Thomas, <i>Collected Poems</i>); Sidgwick & Jackson (Edmund Blunden, -<i>The Waggoner,</i> Rupert Brooke, <i>Collected Poems,</i> John Drinkwater, -<i>Olton Pools,</i> R. C. K. Ensor, <i>Odes,</i> Ivor Gurney, <i>Severn and Somme,</i> -R. Macaulay, <i>The Two Blind Countries,</i> W. J. Turner, <i>The Hunter, The -Dark Fire</i>); Talbot Press and Fisher Unwin (T. Macdonagh, <i>Poems</i>).</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 70%; font-size: 0.8em;">J. C. SQUIRE.</p> - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<p> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a><br /><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> -<span class="author">LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -MARRIAGE SONG<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Come up, dear chosen morning, come,<br /> -Blessing the air with light,<br /> -And bid the sky repent of being dark:<br /> -Let all the spaces round the world be white,<br /> -And give the earth her green again.<br /> -Into new hours of beautiful delight,<br /> -Out of the shadow where she has lain,<br /> -Bring the earth awake for glee,<br /> -Shining with dews as fresh and clear<br /> -As my beloved's voice upon the air.<br /> -For now, O morning chosen of all days, on thee<br /> -A wondrous duty lies:<br /> -There was an evening that did loveliness foretell;<br /> -Thence upon thee, O chosen morn, it fell<br /> -To fashion into perfect destiny<br /> -The radiant prophecy.<br /> -For in an evening of young moon, that went<br /> -Filling the moist air with a rosy fire,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>I and my beloved knew our love;<br /> -And knew that thou, O morning, wouldst arise<br /> -To give us knowledge of achieved desire.<br /> -For, standing stricken with astonishment,<br /> -Half terrified in the delight,<br /> -Even as the moon did into clear air move<br /> -And made a golden light,<br /> -Lo there, croucht up against it, a dark hill,<br /> -A monstrous back of earth, a spine<br /> -Of hunchèd rock, furred with great growth of pine,<br /> -Lay like a beast, snout in its paws, asleep;<br /> -Yet in its sleeping seemed it miserable,<br /> -As though strong fear must always keep<br /> -Hold of its heart, and drive its blood in dream.<br /> -Yea, for to our new love, did it not seem,<br /> -That dark and quiet length of hill,<br /> -The sleeping grief of the world?—Out of it we<br /> -Had like imaginations stept to be<br /> -Beauty and golden wonder; and for the lovely fear<br /> -Of coming perfect joy, had changed<br /> -The terror that dreamt there I<br /> -And now the golden moon had turned<br /> -To shining white, white as our souls that burned<br /> -With vision of our prophecy assured:<br /> -Suddenly white was the moon; but she<br /> -At once did on a woven modesty<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>Of cloud, and soon went in obscured:<br /> -And we were dark, and vanisht that strange hill.<br /> -But yet it was not long before<br /> -There opened in the sky a narrow door,<br /> -Made with pearl lintel and pearl sill;<br /> -And the earth's night seem'd pressing there,—<br /> -All as a beggar on some festival would peer,—<br /> -To gaze into a room of light beyond,<br /> -The hidden silver splendour of the moon.<br /> -Yea, and we also, we<br /> -Long gazed wistfully<br /> -Towards thee, O morning, come at last,<br /> -And towards the light that thou wilt pour upon us soon!<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -II<br /> -<br /> -O soul who still art strange to sense,<br /> -Who often against beauty wouldst complain,<br /> -Doubting between joy and pain<br /> -If like the startling touch of something keen<br /> -Against thee, it hath been<br /> -To follow from an upland height<br /> -The swift sun hunting rain<br /> -Across the April meadows of a plain,<br /> -Until the fields would flash into the air<br /> -Their joyous green, like emeralds alight<br /> -Or when in the blue of night's mid-noon<br /> -The burning naked moon<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>Draws to a brink of cloudy weather near,<br /> -A breadth of snow, firm and soft as a wing,<br /> -Stretcht out over a wind that gently goes,—<br /> -Through the white sleep of snowy cloud there grows<br /> -An azure-border'd shining ring,<br /> -The gleaming dream of the approaching joy of her;—<br /> -What now wilt thou do, Soul? What now,<br /> -If with such things as these troubled thou wert?<br /> -How wilt thou now endure, or how<br /> -Not now be strangely hurt?—When<br /> -utter beauty must come closer to thee<br /> -Than even anger or fear could be;<br /> -When thou, like metal in a kiln, must lie<br /> -Seized by beauty's mightily able flame;<br /> -Enjoyed by beauty as by the ruthless glee<br /> -Of an unescapable power;<br /> -Obeying beauty as air obeys a cry;<br /> -Yea, one thing made of beauty and thee,<br /> -As steel and a white heat are made the same!<br /> -—Ah, but I know how this infirmity<br /> -Will fail and be not, no, not memory,<br /> -When I begin the marvellous hour.<br /> -This only is my heart's strain'd eagerness,<br /> -Long waiting for its bliss.—<br /> -But from those other fears, from those<br /> -That keep to Love so close,<br /> -From fears that are the shadow of delight,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>Hide me, O joys; make them unknown to-night!<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -III<br /> -<br /> -Thou bright God that in dream earnest to me last night,<br /> -Thou with the flesh made of a golden light,<br /> -Knew I not thee, thee and thy heart,<br /> -Knew I not well, God, who thou wert?<br /> -Yea, and my soul divinely understood<br /> -The light that was beneath thee a ground,<br /> -The golden light that cover'd thee round,<br /> -Turning my sleep to a fiery morn,<br /> -Was as a heavenly oath there sworn<br /> -Promising me an immortal good:<br /> -Well I knew thee, God of Marriages, thee and thy flame!<br /> -Ah, but wherefore beside thee came<br /> -That fearful sight of another mood?<br /> -Why in thy light, to thy hand chained,<br /> -Towards me its bondage terribly strained,<br /> -Why came with thee that dreadful hound,<br /> -The wild hound Fear, black, ravenous, and gaunt?<br /> -Why him with thee should thy dear light surround?<br /> -Why broughtest thou that beast to haunt<br /> -The blissful footsteps of my golden dream?—<br /> -All shadowy black the body dread,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>All frenzied fire the head,—<br /> -The hunger of its mouth a hollow crimson flame,<br /> -The hatred in its eyes a blaze<br /> -Fierce and green, stabbing the ruddy glaze,<br /> -And sharp white jetting fire the teeth snarl'd at me,<br /> -And white the dribbling rage of froth,—<br /> -A throat that gaped to bay and paws working violently,<br /> -Yet soundless all as a winging moth;<br /> -Tugging towards me, famishing for my heart;—<br /> -Even while thou, O golden god, wert still<br /> -Looking the beautiful kindness of thy will<br /> -Into my soul, even then must I be,<br /> -With thy bright promise looking at me,<br /> -Then bitterly of that hound afraid?—<br /> -Darkness, I know, attendeth bright,<br /> -And light comes not but shadow comes:<br /> -And heart must know, if it know thy light,<br /> -Thy wild hound Fear, the shadow of love's delight.<br /> -Yea, is it thus? Are we so made<br /> -Of death and darkness, that even thou,<br /> -O golden God of the joys of love,<br /> -Thy mind to us canst only prove,<br /> -The glorious devices of thy mind,<br /> -By so revealing how thy journeying here<br /> -Through this mortality, doth closely bind<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>Thy brightness to the shadow of dreadful Fear?—<br /> -Ah no, it shall not be! Thy joyous light<br /> -Shall hide me from the hunger of fear to-night.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -IV<br /> -<br /> -For wonderfully to live I now begin.<br /> -So that the darkness which accompanies<br /> -Our being here, is fasten'd up within<br /> -The power of light that holdeth me;<br /> -And from these shining chains, to see<br /> -My joy with bold misliking eyes,<br /> -The shrouded figure will not dare arise.<br /> -For henceforth, from to-night,<br /> -I am wholly gone into the bright<br /> -Safety of the beauty of love:<br /> -Not only all my waking vigours plied<br /> -Under the searching glory of love,<br /> -But knowing myself with love all satisfied<br /> -Even when my life is hidden in sleep;<br /> -As high clouds, to themselves that keep<br /> -The moon's white company, are all possest<br /> -Silverly with the presence of their guest;<br /> -Or as a darken'd room<br /> -That hath within it roses, whence the air<br /> -And quietness are taken everywhere<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>Deliciously by sweet perfume.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -EPILOGUE<br /> -<br /> -What shall we do for Love these days?<br /> -How shall we make an altar-blaze<br /> -To smite the horny eyes of men<br /> -With the renown of our Heaven,<br /> -And to the unbelievers prove<br /> -Our service to our dear god, Love?<br /> -What torches shall we lift above<br /> -The crowd that pushes through the mire,<br /> -To amaze the dark heads with strange fire?<br /> -I should think I were much to blame,<br /> -If never I held some fragrant flame<br /> -Above the noises of the world,<br /> -And openly 'mid men's hurrying stares,<br /> -Worshipt before the sacred fears<br /> -That are like flashing curtains furl'd<br /> -Across the presence of our lord Love.<br /> -Nay, would that I could fill the gaze<br /> -Of the whole earth with some great praise<br /> -Made in a marvel for men's eyes,<br /> -Some tower of glittering masonries,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>Therein such a spirit flourishing<br /> -Men should see what my heart can sing:<br /> -All that Love hath done to me<br /> -Built into stone, a visible glee;<br /> -Marble carried to gleaming height<br /> -As moved aloft by inward delight;<br /> -Not as with toil of chisels hewn,<br /> -But seeming poised in a mighty tune.<br /> -For of all those who have been known<br /> -To lodge with our kind host, the sun,<br /> -I envy one for just one thing:<br /> -In Cordova of the Moors<br /> -There dwelt a passion-minded King,<br /> -Who set great bands of marble-hewers<br /> -To fashion his heart's thanksgiving<br /> -In a tall palace, shapen so<br /> -All the wondering world might know<br /> -The joy he had of his Moorish lass.<br /> -His love, that brighter and larger was<br /> -Than the starry places, into firm stone<br /> -He sent, as if the stone were glass<br /> -Fired and into beauty blown.<br /> -<br /> -Solemn and invented gravely<br /> -In its bulk the fabric stood,<br /> -Even as Love, that trusteth bravely<br /> -In its own exceeding good<br /> -To be better than the waste<br /> -Of time's devices; grandly spaced,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>Seriously the fabric stood.<br /> -But over it all a pleasure went<br /> -Of carven delicate ornament,<br /> -Wreathing up like ravishment,<br /> -Mentioning in sculptures twined<br /> -The blitheness Love hath in his mind;<br /> -And like delighted senses were<br /> -The windows, and the columns there<br /> -Made the following sight to ache<br /> -As the heart that did them make.<br /> -Well I can see that shining song<br /> -Flowering there, the upward throng<br /> -Of porches, pillars and windowed walls,<br /> -Spires like piercing panpipe calls,<br /> -Up to the roof's snow-cloud flight;<br /> -All glancing in the Spanish light<br /> -White as water of arctic tides,<br /> -Save an amber dazzle on sunny sides.<br /> -You had said, the radiant sheen<br /> -Of that palace might have been<br /> -A young god's fantasy, ere he came<br /> -His serious worlds and suns to frame;<br /> -Such an immortal passion<br /> -Quiver'd among the slim hewn stone.<br /> -And in the nights it seemed a jar<br /> -Cut in the substance of a star,<br /> -Wherein a wine, that will be poured<br /> -Some time for feasting Heaven, was stored.<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>But within this fretted shell,<br /> -The wonder of Love made visible,<br /> -The King a private gentle mood<br /> -There placed, of pleasant quietude.<br /> -For right amidst there was a court,<br /> -Where always musked silences<br /> -Listened to water and to trees;<br /> -And herbage of all fragrant sort,—Lavender,<br /> -lad's-love, rosemary,<br /> -Basil, tansy, centaury,—<br /> -Was the grass of that orchard, hid<br /> -Love's amazements all amid.<br /> -Jarring the air with rumour cool,<br /> -Small fountains played into a pool<br /> -With sound as soft as the barley's hiss<br /> -When its beard just sprouting is;<br /> -Whence a young stream, that trod on moss,<br /> -Prettily rimpled the court across.<br /> -And in the pool's clear idleness,<br /> -Moving like dreams through happiness,<br /> -Shoals of small bright fishes were;<br /> -In and out weed-thickets bent<br /> -Perch and carp, and sauntering went<br /> -With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare;<br /> -Or on a lotus leaf would crawl,<br /> -A brinded loach to bask and sprawl,<br /> -Tasting the warm sun ere it dipt<br /> -Into the water; but quick as fear<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>Back his shining brown head slipt<br /> -To crouch on the gravel of his lair,<br /> -Where the cooled sunbeams broke in wrack,<br /> -Spilt shatter'd gold about his back.<br /> -<br /> -So within that green-veiled air,<br /> -Within that white-walled quiet, where<br /> -Innocent water thought aloud,—<br /> -Childish prattle that must make<br /> -The wise sunlight with laughter shake<br /> -On the leafage overbowed,—<br /> -Often the King and his love-lass<br /> -Let the delicious hours pass.<br /> -All the outer world could see<br /> -Graved and sawn amazingly<br /> -Their love's delighted riotise,<br /> -Fixt in marble for all men's eyes;<br /> -But only these twain could abide<br /> -In the cool peace that withinside<br /> -Thrilling desire and passion dwelt;<br /> -They only knew the still meaning spelt<br /> -By Love's flaming script, which is<br /> -God's word written in ecstasies.<br /> -<br /> -And where is now that palace gone,<br /> -All the magical skill'd stone,<br /> -All the dreaming towers wrought<br /> -By Love as if no more than thought<br /> -The unresisting marble was?<br /> -How could such a wonder pass?<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>Ah, it was but built in vain<br /> -Against the stupid horns of Rome,<br /> -That pusht down into the common loam<br /> -The loveliness that shone in Spain.<br /> -But we have raised it up again!<br /> -A loftier palace, fairer far,<br /> -Is ours, and one that fears no war.<br /> -Safe in marvellous walls we are;<br /> -Wondering sense like builded fires,<br /> -High amazement of desires,<br /> -Delight and certainty of love,<br /> -Closing around, roofing above<br /> -Our unapproacht and perfect hour<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a><br /><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>Within the splendours of love's power.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a><br /><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> -<span class="author">MARTIN ARMSTRONG</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -THE BUZZARDS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When evening came and the warm glow grew deeper,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And every tree that bordered the green meadows</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And in the yellow cornfields every reaper</span><br /> -And every corn-shock stood above their shadows<br /> -Flung eastward from their feet in longer measure,<br /> -Serenely far there swam in the sunny height<br /> -A buzzard and his mate who took their pleasure<br /> -Swirling and poising idly in golden light.<br /> -<br /> -On great pied motionless moth-wings borne along,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So effortless and so strong,</span><br /> -Cutting each other's paths together they glided,<br /> -Then wheeled asunder till they soared divided<br /> -Two valleys' width (as though it were delight<br /> -To part like this, being sure they could unite<br /> -So swiftly in their empty, free dominion),<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>Curved headlong downward, towered up the sunny steep,<br /> -Then, with a sudden lift of the one great pinion,<br /> -Swung proudly to a curve, and from its height<br /> -Took half a mile of sunlight in one long sweep.<br /> -<br /> -And we, so small on the swift immense hillside,<br /> -Stood tranced, until our souls arose uplifted<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On those far-sweeping, wide,</span><br /> -Strong curves of flight—swayed up and hugely drifted,<br /> -Were washed, made strong and beautiful in the tide<br /> -Of sun-bathed air. But far beneath, beholden<br /> -Through shining deeps of air, the fields were golden<br /> -And rosy burned the heather where cornfields ended.<br /> -<br /> -And still those buzzards whirled, while light withdrew<br /> -Out of the vales and to surging slopes ascended,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>Till the loftiest flaming summit died to blue.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a><br /><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> -<span class="author">MAURICE BARING</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -DIFFUGERE NIVES, 1917<br /> -<br /> -<i>To</i> J. C. S.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The snows have fled, the hail, the lashing rain,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Before the Spring.</span><br /> -The grass is starred with buttercups again,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The blackbirds sing.</span><br /> -<br /> -Now spreads the month that feast of lovely things<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">We loved of old.</span><br /> -Once more the swallow glides with darkling wings<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Against the gold.</span><br /> -<br /> -Now the brown bees about the peach trees boom<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Upon the walls;</span><br /> -And far away beyond the orchard's bloom<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The cuckoo calls.</span><br /> -<br /> -The season holds a festival of light<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">For you, for me;</span><br /> -But shadows are abroad, there falls a blight<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 4em;">On each green tree.</span><br /> -<br /> -And every leaf unfolding, every flower<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Brings bitter meed;</span><br /> -Beauty of the morning and the evening hour<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Quickens our need.</span><br /> -<br /> -All is reborn, but never any Spring<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Can bring back this;</span><br /> -Nor any fullness of midsummer bring<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The voice we miss.</span><br /> -<br /> -The smiling eyes shall smile on us no more;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The laughter clear,</span><br /> -Too far away on the forbidden shore,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">We shall not hear.</span><br /> -<br /> -Bereft of these until the day we die,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">We both must dwell;</span><br /> -Alone, alone, and haunted by the cry:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">"Hail and farewell!</span><br /> -<br /> -Yet when the scythe of Death shall near us hiss,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Through the cold air,</span><br /> -Then on the shuddering marge of the abyss<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">They will be there.</span><br /> -<br /> -They will be there to lift us from sheer space<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And empty night;</span><br /> -And we shall turn and see them face to face<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 4em;">In the new light.</span><br /> -<br /> -So shall we pay the unabated price<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Of their release,</span><br /> -And found on our consenting sacrifice<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Their lasting peace.</span><br /> -<br /> -The hopes that fall like leaves before the wind,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The baffling waste,</span><br /> -And every earthly joy that leaves behind<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">A mortal taste.</span><br /> -<br /> -The uncompleted end of all things dear,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The clanging door</span><br /> -Of Death, forever loud with the last fear,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Haunt them no more.</span><br /> -<br /> -Without them the awakening world is dark<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">With dust and mire;</span><br /> -Yet as they went they flung to us a spark,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">A thread of fire.</span><br /> -<br /> -To guide us while beneath the sombre skies<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Faltering we tread,</span><br /> -Until for us like morning stars shall rise<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 4em;">The deathless dead.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -JULIAN GRENFELL<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Because of you we will be glad and gay,<br /> -Remembering you, we will be brave and strong;<br /> -And hail the advent of each dangerous day,<br /> -And meet the last adventure with a song.<br /> -And, as you proudly gave your jewelled gift,<br /> -We'll give our lesser offering with a smile,<br /> -Nor falter on that path where, all too swift,<br /> -You led the way and leapt the golden stile.<br /> -<br /> -Whether new paths, new heights to climb you find,<br /> -Or gallop through the unfooted asphodel,<br /> -We know you know we shall not lag behind,<br /> -Nor halt to waste a moment on a fear;<br /> -And you will speed us onward with a cheer,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>And wave beyond the stars that all is well.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -PIERRE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I saw you starting for another war,<br /> -The emblem of adventure and of youth,<br /> -So that men trembled, saying: He forsooth<br /> -Has gone, has gone, and shall return no more.<br /> -And then out there, they told me you were dead<br /> -Taken and killed; how was it that I knew,<br /> -Whatever else was true, that was not true?<br /> -And then I saw you pale upon your bed,<br /> -<br /> -Scarcely a year ago, when you were sent<br /> -Back from the margin of the dim abyss;<br /> -For Death had sealed you with a warning kiss,<br /> -And let you go to meet a nobler fate:<br /> -To serve in fellowship, O fortunate:<br /> -<br />To die in battle with your regiment.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> -<span class="author">HILAIRE BELLOC</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> -THE SOUTH COUNTRY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When I am living in the Midlands<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That are sodden and unkind,</span><br /> -I light my lamp in the evening:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My work is left behind;</span><br /> -And the great hills of the South Country<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Come back into my mind.</span><br /> -<br /> -The great hills of the South Country<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They stand along the sea;</span><br /> -And it's there walking in the high woods<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That I could wish to be,</span><br /> -And the men that were boys when I was a boy<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Walking along with me.</span><br /> -<br /> -The men that live in North England<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I saw them for a day;</span><br /> -Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their skies are fast and grey;</span><br /> -From their castle-walls a man may see<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">The mountains far away.</span><br /> -<br /> -The men that live in West England<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They see the Severn strong,</span><br /> -A-rolling on rough water brown<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Light aspen leaves along.</span><br /> -They have the secret of the Rocks,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the oldest kind of song.</span><br /> -<br /> -But the men that live in the South Country<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Are the kindest and most wise,</span><br /> -They get their laughter from the loud surf,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the faith in their happy eyes</span><br /> -Comes surely from our Sister the Spring<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When over the sea she flies;</span><br /> -The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She blesses us with surprise.</span><br /> -<br /> -I never get between the pines<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But I smell the Sussex air;</span><br /> -Nor I never come on a belt of sand<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But my home is there.</span><br /> -And along the sky the line of the Downs<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So noble and so bare.</span><br /> -<br /> -A lost thing could I never find,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor a broken thing mend:</span><br /> -And I fear I shall be all alone<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When I get towards the end.</span><br /> -Who will there be to comfort me<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or who will be my friend?</span><br /> -<br /> -I will gather and carefully make my friends<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the men of the Sussex Weald,</span><br /> -They watch the stars from silent folds,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They stiffly plough the field,</span><br /> -By them and the God of the South Country<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My poor soul shall be healed.</span><br /> -<br /> -If I ever become a rich man,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of if ever I grow to be old,</span><br /> -I will build a house with deep thatch<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To shelter me from the cold,</span><br /> -And there shall the Sussex songs be sung<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the story of Sussex told.</span><br /> -<br /> -I will hold my house in the high wood<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Within a walk of the sea,</span><br /> -And the men that were boys when I was a boy<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall sit and drink with me.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -THE NIGHT<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Most holy Night, that still dost keep<br /> -The keys of all the doors of sleep,<br /> -To me when my tired eyelids close<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Give thou repose.</span><br /> -<br /> -And let the far lament of them<br /> -That chant the dead day's requiem<br /> -Make in my ears, who wakeful lie,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Soft lullaby.</span><br /> -<br /> -Let them that knaw the horned moth<br /> -By my bedside their memories clothe.<br /> -So shall I have new dreams and blest<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In my brief rest.</span><br /> -<br /> -Fold your great wings about my face,<br /> -Hide dawning from my resting-place,<br /> -And cheat me with your false delight,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Most Holy Night.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -SONG<br /> -<br /> -INVITING THE INFLUENCE OF A YOUNG<br /> -LADY UPON THE OPENING YEAR.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I<br /> -<br /> -You wear the morning like your dress<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And all with mastery crowned;</span><br /> -When as you walk your loveliness.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goes shining all around.</span><br /> -Upon your secret, smiling way<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Such new contents were found,</span><br /> -The Dancing Loves made holiday<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On that delightful ground.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -II<br /> -<br /> -Then summon April forth, and send<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Commandment through the flowers;</span><br /> -About our woods your grace extend<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A queen of careless hours.</span><br /> -For oh, not Vera veiled in vain,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor Dian's sacred Ring,</span><br /> -With all her royal nymphs in train<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Could so lead on the Spring.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -THE FALSE HEART<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I said to Heart, "How goes it?"<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Heart replied:</span><br /> -"Right as a Ribstone Pippin!"<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 9em;">But it lied.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -HANNAKER MILL (1913)<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Sally is gone that was so kindly;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sally is gone from Hannaker Hill,</span><br /> -And the briar grows ever since then so blindly;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And ever since then the clapper is still...</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the sweeps have fallen from Hannaker Mill.</span><br /> -<br /> -Hannaker Hill is in desolation;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ruin a-top and a field unploughed.</span><br /> -And Spirits that call on a falling nation,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Spirits that loved her calling aloud,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Spirits abroad in a windy cloud.</span><br /> -<br /> -Spirits that call and no one answers—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hannaker's down and England's done.</span><br /> -Wind and thistle for pipe and dancers,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And never a ploughman under the sun:</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Never a ploughman, never a one.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -TARANTELLA<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Do you remember an Inn,<br /> -Miranda?<br /> -Do you remember an Inn?<br /> -And the tedding and the spreading<br /> -Of the straw for a bedding,<br /> -And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,<br /> -And the wine that tasted of the tar?<br /> -And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers<br /> -(Under the dark of the vine verandah)?<br /> -Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,<br /> -Do you remember an Inn?<br /> -And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers<br /> -Who hadn't got a penny,<br /> -And who weren't paying any,<br /> -And the hammer at the doors and the Din?<br /> -And the Hip! Hop! Hap!<br /> -Of the clap<br /> -Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>Of the girl gone chancing,<br /> -Glancing,<br /> -Dancing,<br /> -Backing and advancing,<br /> -Snapping of the clapper to the spin<br /> -Out and in—<br /> -And the Ting, Tong, Tang of the guitar!<br /> -Do you remember an Inn,<br /> -Miranda?<br /> -Do you remember an Inn?<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Never more;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Miranda,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Never more.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Only the high peaks hoar:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And Aragon a torrent at the door.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No sound</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the walls of the Halls where falls</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The tread</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of the feet of the dead to the ground.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No sound:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Only the boom</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of the far Waterfall like Doom.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -ON A DEAD HOSTESS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Of this bad world the loveliest and the best<br /> -Has smiled, and said good-night, and gone to rest.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a><br /> -</span> -<span class="author">EDMUND BLUNDEN</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> -ALMSWOMEN<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -At Quincey's moat the squandering village ends,<br /> -And there in the almshouse dwell the dearest friends<br /> -Of all the village, two old dames that cling<br /> -As close as any trueloves in the spring.<br /> -Long, long ago they passed three-score-and-ten,<br /> -And in this doll's house lived together then;<br /> -All things they have in common being so poor,<br /> -And their one fear, Death's shadow at the door.<br /> -Each sundown makes them mournful, each sunrise<br /> -Brings back the brightness in their failing eyes.<br /> -<br /> -How happy go the rich fair-weather days<br /> -When on the roadside folk stare in amaze<br /> -At such a honeycomb of fruit and flowers<br /> -As mellows round their threshold; what long hours<br /> -They gloat upon their steepling hollyhocks,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> -Bee's balsams, feathery southernwood and stocks,<br /> -Fiery dragons'-mouths, great mallow leaves<br /> -For salves, and lemon plants in bushy sheaves,<br /> -Shagged Esau's Hands with five green finger-tips!<br /> -Such old sweet names are ever on their lips.<br /> -As pleased as little children where these grow<br /> -In cobbled pattens and worn gowns they go,<br /> -Proud of their wisdom when on gooseberry shoots<br /> -They stuck egg-shells to fright from coming fruits<br /> -The brisk-billed rascals; waiting still to see<br /> -Their neighbour owls saunter from tree to tree<br /> -Or in the hushing half-light mouse the lane<br /> -Long-winged and lordly.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10.5em;">But when those hours wane</span><br /> -Indoors they ponder, scared by the harsh storm<br /> -Whose pelting saracens on the window swarm,<br /> -And listen for the mail to clatter past<br /> -And church clock's deep bay withering on the blast;<br /> -They feed the fire that flings a freakish light<br /> -On pictured kings and queens grotesquely bright,<br /> -Platters and pitchers, faded calendars,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> -And graceful hour-glass trim with lavenders.<br /> -Many a time they kiss and cry, and pray<br /> -Both may be summoned in the self-same day,<br /> -And wiseman linnet tinkling in his cage<br /> -End too with them the friendship of old age,<br /> -And all together leave their treasured room<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> -Some bell-like evening when the May's in bloom.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -GLEANING<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Along the baulk the grasses drenched in dews<br /> -Soak through the morning gleaners' clumsy shoes,<br /> -And cloying cobwebs trammel their brown cheeks<br /> -While from the shouldering sun the dewfog reeks.<br /> -Then soon begun, on ground where yesterday<br /> -The rakers' warning-sheaf forbade their way,<br /> -Hard clucking dames in great white hoods make haste<br /> -To cram their lap-bags with the barley waste,<br /> -Scrambling as if a thousand were but one,<br /> -Careless of stabbing thistles. Now the sun<br /> -Gulps up the dew and dries the stubs, and scores<br /> -Of tiny people trundle out of doors<br /> -Among the stiff stalks, where the scratched hands<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>Red ants and blackamoors and such as fly;<br /> -Tunbellied, too, with legs a finger long,<br /> -The spider harvestman; the churlish, strong<br /> -Black scorpion, prickled earwig, and that mite<br /> -Who shuts up like a leaden shot in fright<br /> -And lies for dead. And still before the rout<br /> -The young rats and the field mice whisk about<br /> -And from the trod whisp out the leveret darts<br /> -Bawled at by boys that pass with blundering carts<br /> -Top-heavy to the red-tiled barns. And still<br /> -The children feed their cornsacks with goodwill,<br /> -And farm wives ever faster stoop and flounce.<br /> -The hawk drops down a plummet's speed to pounce<br /> -The nibbling mouse or resting lark away,<br /> -The lost mole tries to pierce the mattocked clay<br /> -In agony and terror of the sun.<br /> -<br /> -The dinner hour and its grudged leisure won,<br /> -All sit below the pollards on the dykes,<br /> -Rasped with the twinge of creeping barley spikes:<br /> -Sweet beyond telling now the small beer goes<br /> -From the hooped hardwood bottles, the wasp knows,<br /> -And even hornets whizz from the eaten ash—<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>Then crusts are dropt and switches snatched to slash,<br /> -While, safe in shadow of the apron thrown<br /> -Aside the bush which years before was grown<br /> -To snap the poacher's nets, the baby sleeps.<br /> -Now toil returns, in red-hot fluttering light,<br /> -And far afield the weary rabble creeps,<br /> -Oft clutching blind wheat black among the white,<br /> -That smutches where it touches quick as soot—Oft<br /> -gaping where the landrail seems afoot,<br /> -Who with such magic throws his baffling speech,<br /> -Far off he sounds when scarce beyond arm's reach.<br /> -Mongrels are left to mind the morning's gain,<br /> -But squinting knaves can slouch to steal the grain;<br /> -Now close the farm the fields are gleaned agen,<br /> -Where the boy droves the turkey and white hen<br /> -To pick the shelled sweet corn; their hue and cry<br /> -Answers the gleaners' gabble, and sows trudge<br /> -With little pigs to play and rootle there<br /> -And all the fields are full of din and blare.<br /> -<br /> -So steals the time past, so they glean and gloat;<br /> -The hobby-horses whir, the moth's dust coat<br /> -Blends with the stubble, scarlet soldiers fly<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>In airy pleasure; but the gleaners' eye<br /> -Sees little but their spoil, or robin flower<br /> -Ever on tenterhooks to shun the shower,<br /> -Their weather-prophet never known astray;<br /> -When he folds up, then toward the hedge glean they.<br /> -But now the dragon of the sky droops, pales,<br /> -And wandering in the wet grey western vales,<br /> -Stumbles, and passes, and the gleaning's done.<br /> -The farmer, with fat hares slung on his gun,<br /> -Gives folk goodnight as down the ruts they pull<br /> -The creaking two-wheeled hand carts bursting full,<br /> -And whimpering children cease their teasing squalls,<br /> -While left alone the supping partridge calls—<br /> -Till all at home is stacked from mischief's way<br /> -To thrash and dress the first wild, windy day,<br /> -And each good wife crowns weariness with pride,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"></span>With such small riches more than satisfied.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> -<br /> -<span class="author">GORDON BOTTOMLEY</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> -THE PLOUGHMAN<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Under the long fell's stony eaves<br /> -The ploughman, going up and down,<br /> -Ridge after ridge man's tide-mark leaves,<br /> -And turns the hard grey soil to brown.<br /> -<br /> -Striding, he measures out the earth<br /> -In lines of life, to rain and sun;<br /> -And every year that comes to birth<br /> -Sees him still striding on and on.<br /> -<br /> -The seasons change, and then return;<br /> -Yet still, in blind, unsparing ways,<br /> -However I may shrink or yearn,<br /> -The ploughman measures out my days.<br /> -<br /> -His acre brought forth roots last year;<br /> -This year it bears the gloomy grain;<br /> -Next Spring shall seedling grass appear;<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>Then roots and corn and grass again.<br /> -<br /> -Five times the young corn's pallid green<br /> -I have seen spread and change and thrill;<br /> -Five times the reapers I have seen<br /> -Go creeping up the far-off hill:<br /> -<br /> -And, as the unknowing ploughman climbs<br /> -Slowly and inveterately,<br /> -I wonder long how many times<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>The corn will spring again for me.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -BABEL: THE GATE OF THE GOD<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Lost towers impend, copeless primeval props<br /> -Of the new threatening sky, and first rude digits<br /> -Of awe remonstrance and uneasy power<br /> -Thrust out by man when speech sank back in his throat:<br /> -Then had the last rocks ended bubbling up<br /> -And rhythms of change within the heart begun<br /> -By a blind need that would make Springs and Winters;<br /> -Pylons and monoliths went on by ages,<br /> -Mycenae and Great Zimbabwe came about;<br /> -Cowed hearts in This conceived a pyramid<br /> -That leaned to hold itself upright, a thing<br /> -Foredoomed to limits, death and an easy apex;<br /> -Then postulants for the stars' previous wisdom<br /> -Standing on Carthage must get nearer still;<br /> -While in Chaldea an altitude of God<br /> -Being mooted, and a Saurian unearthed<br /> -Upon a mountain stirring a surmise<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>Of floods and alterations of the sea,<br /> -A round-walled tower must rise upon Senaai<br /> -Temple and escape to God the ascertained.<br /> -These are decayed like Time's teeth in his mouth,<br /> -Black cavities and gaps, yet earth is darkened<br /> -By their deep-sunken and unfounded shadows<br /> -And memories of man's earliest theme of towers.<br /> -<br /> -Space—the old source of time—should be undone,<br /> -Eternity defined, by men who trusted<br /> -Another tier would equal them with God.<br /> -A city of grimed brick-kilns, squat truncations,<br /> -Hunched like spread toads yet high beneath their circles<br /> -Of low packed smoke, assemblages of thunder<br /> -That glowed upon their under sides by night<br /> -And lit like storm small shadowless workmen's toil.<br /> -Meaningless stumps, unturned bare roots, remained<br /> -In fields of mashy mud and trampled leaves,<br /> -While, if a horse died hauling, plasterers<br /> -Knelt on a plank to clip its sweaty coat.<br /> -A builder leans across the last wide courses;<br /> -His unadjustable unreaching eyes<br /> -Fail under him before his glances sink<br /> -On the clouds' upper layers of sooty curls<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>Where some long lightening goes like swallow downward,<br /> -But at the wider gallery next below<br /> -Recognize master masons with pricked parchments:<br /> -That builder then, as one who condescends<br /> -Unto the sea and all that is beneath him,<br /> -His hairy breast on the wet mortar calls<br /> -"How many fathoms is it yet to heaven!"<br /> -On the next eminence the orgulous King<br /> -Nimrond stands up conceiving he shall live<br /> -To conquer God, now that he knows where God is:<br /> -His eager hands push up the tower in thought...<br /> -Again, his shaggy inhuman height strides down<br /> -Among the carpenters because he has seen<br /> -One shape an eagle-woman on a door-post:<br /> -He drives his spear-beam through him for wasted<br /> -day.<br /> -<br /> -Little men hurrying, running here and there,<br /> -Within the dark and stifling walls, dissent<br /> -From every sound, and shoulder empty hods:<br /> -"The God's great altar should stand in the crypt<br /> -Among our earth's foundations "—"The God's great altar<br /> -Must be the last far coping of our work"—<br /> -"It should inaugurate the broad main stair"—<br /> -"Or end it"—"It must stand toward the East!"<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>But here a grave contemptuous youth cries out<br /> -"Womanish babblers, how can we build God's altar<br /> -Ere we divine its foreordained true shape?"<br /> -Then one "It is a pedestal for deeds"—<br /> -"'Tis more and should be hewn like the King's brow"—<br /> -"It has the nature of a woman's bosom"—<br /> -"The tortoise, first created, signifies it"—<br /> -"A blind and rudimentary navel shows<br /> -The source of worship better than horned moons."<br /> -Then a lean giant "Is not a calyx needful?"—<br /> -"Because round grapes on statues well expressed<br /> -Become the nadir of incense, nodal lamps,<br /> -Yet apes have hands that but and carved red crystals—"<br /> -"Birds molten, touchly tale veins bronze buds crumble<br /> -Ablid ublai ghan isz rad eighar ghaurl ..."<br /> -Words said too often seemed such ancient sounds<br /> -That men forget them or were lost in them;<br /> -The guttural glottis-chasms of language reached<br /> -A rhythm, a gasp, were curves of immortal thought.<br /> -<br /> -Man with his bricks was building, building yet,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>Where dawn and midnight mingled and woke no birds,<br /> -In the last courses, building past his knowledge<br /> -A wall that swung—for towers can have no tops,<br /> -No chord can mete the universal segment,<br /> -Earth has no basis. Yet the yielding sky,<br /> -Invincible vacancy, was there discovered—<br /> -Though piled-up bricks should pulp the sappy balks,<br /> -Weight generate a secrecy of heat,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>Cankerous charring, crevices' fronds of flame.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -THE END OF THE WORLD<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The snow had fallen many nights and days;<br /> -The sky was come upon the earth at last,<br /> -Sifting thinly down as endlessly<br /> -As though within the system of blind planets<br /> -Something had been forgot or overdriven.<br /> -The dawn now seemed neglected in the grey<br /> -Where mountains were unbuilt and shadowless trees<br /> -Rootlessly paused or hung upon the air.<br /> -There was no wind, but now and then a sigh<br /> -Crossed that dry falling dust and rifted it<br /> -Through crevices of slate and door and casement.<br /> -Perhaps the new moon's time was even past.<br /> -Outside, the first white twilights were too void<br /> -Until a sheep called once, as to a lamb,<br /> -And tenderness crept everywhere from it;<br /> -But now the flock must have strayed far away.<br /> -The lights across the valley must be veiled,<br /> -The smoke lost in the greyness or the dusk.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>For more than three days now the snow had thatched<br /> -That cow-house roof where it had ever melted<br /> -With yellow stains from the beasts' breath inside;<br /> -But yet a dog howled there, though not quite lately.<br /> -Someone passed down the valley swift and singing,<br /> -Yes, with locks spreaded like a son of morning;<br /> -But if he seemed too tall to be a man<br /> -It was that men had been so long unseen,<br /> -Or shapes loom larger through a moving snow.<br /> -And he was gone and food had not been given him.<br /> -When snow slid from an overweighted leaf<br /> -Shaking the tree, it might have been a bird<br /> -Slipping in sleep or shelter, whirring wings;<br /> -Yet never bird fell out, save once a dead one—<br /> -And in two days the snow had covered it.<br /> -The dog had howled again—or thus it seemed<br /> -Until a lean fox passed and cried no more.<br /> -All was so safe indoors where life went on<br /> -Glad of the close enfolding snow—O glad<br /> -To be so safe and secret at its heart,<br /> -Watching the strangeness of familiar things.<br /> -They knew not what dim hours went on, went<br /> -For while they slept the clock stopt newly wound<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>As the cold hardened. Once they watched the road,<br /> -Thinking to be remembered. Once they doubted<br /> -If they had kept the sequence of the days,<br /> -Because they heard not any sound of bells.<br /> -A butterfly, that hid until the Spring<br /> -Under a ceiling's shadow, dropt, was dead.<br /> -The coldness seemed more nigh, the coldness deepened<br /> -As a sound deepens into silences;<br /> -It was of earth and came not by the air;<br /> -The earth was cooling and drew down the sky.<br /> -The air was crumbling. There was no more sky.<br /> -Rails of a broken bed charred in the grate,<br /> -And when he touched the bars he thought the sting<br /> -Came from their heat—he could not feel such cold ...<br /> -She said "O do not sleep,<br /> -Heart, heart of mine, keep near me. No, no; sleep.<br /> -I will not lift his fallen, quiet eyelids,<br /> -Although I know he would awaken then—He<br /> -closed them thus but now of his own will.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>He can stay with me while I do not lift them."<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -ATLANTIS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -What poets sang in Atlantis? Who can tell<br /> -The epics of Atlantis or their names?<br /> -The sea hath its own murmurs, and sounds not<br /> -The secrets of its silences beneath,<br /> -And knows not any cadences enfolded<br /> -When the last bubbles of Atlantis broke<br /> -Among the quieting of its heaving floor.<br /> -<br /> -O, years and tides and leagues and all their billows<br /> -Can alter not man's knowledge of men's hearts—<br /> -While trees and rocks and clouds include our being<br /> -We know the epics of Atlantis still:<br /> -A hero gave himself to lesser men,<br /> -Who first misunderstood and murdered him,<br /> -And then misunderstood and worshipped him;<br /> -A woman was lovely and men fought for her,<br /> -Towns burnt for her, and men put men in bondage,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>But she put lengthier bondage on them all;<br /> -A wanderer toiled among all the isles<br /> -That fleck this turning star or shifting sea,<br /> -Or lonely purgatories of the mind,<br /> -In longing for his home or his lost love.<br /> -<br /> -Poetry is founded on the hearts of men:<br /> -Though in Nirvana or the Heavenly courts<br /> -The principle of beauty shall persist,<br /> -Its body of poetry, as the body of man,<br /> -Is but a terrene form, a terrene use,<br /> -That swifter being will not loiter with;<br /> -And, when mankind is dead and the world cold,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>Poetry's immortality will pass.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1913<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -O, Cartmel bells ring soft to-night,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Cartmel bells ring clear</span><br /> -But I lie far away to-night,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Listening with my dear;</span><br /> -<br /> -Listening in a frosty land<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where all the bells are still</span><br /> -And the small-windowed bell-towers stand<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dark under heath and hill.</span><br /> -<br /> -I thought that, with each dying year,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As long as life should last</span><br /> -The bells of Cartmel I should hear<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ring out an aged past:</span><br /> -<br /> -The plunging, mingling sounds increase<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Darkness's depth and height,</span><br /> -The hollow valley gains more peace<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">And ancientness to-night:</span><br /> -<br /> -The loveliness, the fruitfulness,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The power of life lived there</span><br /> -Return, revive, more closely press<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon that midnight air.</span><br /> -<br /> -But many deaths have place in men<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Before they come to die;</span><br /> -Joys must be used and spent, and then<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Abandoned and passed by.</span><br /> -<br /> -Earth is not ours; no cherished space<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Can hold us from life's flow,</span><br /> -That bears us thither and thence by ways<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We knew not we should go.</span><br /> -<br /> -O, Cartmel bells ring loud, ring clear,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Through midnight deep and hoar,</span><br /> -A year new-born, and I shall hear<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Cartmel bells no more.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -TO IRON-FOUNDERS AND OTHERS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When you destroy a blade of grass<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You poison England at her roots:</span><br /> -Remember no man's foot can pass<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where evermore no green life shoots.</span><br /> -<br /> -You force the birds to wing too high<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where your unnatural vapours creep:</span><br /> -Surely the living rocks shall die<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When birds no rightful distance keep.</span><br /> -<br /> -You have brought down the firmament<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And yet no heaven is more near;</span><br /> -You shape huge deeds without event,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And half made men believe and fear.</span><br /> -<br /> -Your worship is your furnaces,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which, like old idols, lost obscenes,</span><br /> -Have molten bowels; your vision is<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Machines for making more machines.</span><br /> -<br /> -O, you are buried in the night,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Preparing destinies of rust;</span><br /> -Iron misused must turn to blight<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And dwindle to a tettered crust.</span><br /> -<br /> -The grass, forerunner of life, has gone,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But plants that spring in ruins and shards</span><br /> -Attend until your dream is done:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I have seen hemlock in your yards.</span><br /> -<br /> -The generations of the worm<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Know not your loads piled on their soil;</span><br /> -Their knotted ganglions shall wax firm<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Till your strong flagstones heave and toil.</span><br /> -<br /> -When the old hollowed earth is cracked,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And when, to grasp more power and feasts,</span><br /> -Its ores are emptied, wasted, lacked,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The middens of your burning beasts</span><br /> -<br /> -Shall be raked over till they yield<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Last priceless slags for fashionings high,</span><br /> -Ploughs to make grass in every field,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chisels men's hands to magnify.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> -<span class="author">RUPERT BROOKE</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Born 1887</i><br /> -<i>Died at Lemnos 1915</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> -SONNET<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of watching you; and swing me suddenly</span><br /> -Into the shade and loneliness and mire<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,</span><br /> -<br /> -One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">See a slow light across the Stygian tide,</span><br /> -And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And tremble. And <i>I</i> shall know that you have died.</span><br /> -<br /> -And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,</span><br /> -Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Most individual and bewildering ghost!—</span><br /> -<br /> -And turn, and toss your brown delightful head<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> -Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -THE SOLDIER<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -If I should die, think only this of me:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That there's some corner of a foreign field</span><br /> -That is for ever England. There shall be<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;</span><br /> -A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,</span><br /> -A body of England's, breathing English air,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.</span><br /> -<br /> -And think, this heart, all evil shed away,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A pulse in the eternal mind, no less</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;</span><br /> -Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -THE TREASURE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When colour goes home into the eyes,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And lights that shine are shut again,</span><br /> -With dancing girls and sweet birds' cries<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Behind the gateways of the brain;</span><br /> -And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close<br /> -The rainbow and the rose:—<br /> -<br /> -Still may Time hold some golden space.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where I'll unpack that scented store</span><br /> -Of song and flower and sky and face,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,</span><br /> -Musing upon them; as a mother, who<br /> -Has watched her children all the rich day through,<br /> -Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,<br /> -When children sleep, ere night.<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span><i> -August,</i> 1914.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -THE GREAT LOVER<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I have been so great a lover I filled my days<br /> -So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,<br /> -The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,<br /> -Desire illimitable, and still content,<br /> -And all dear names men use, to cheat despair<br /> -For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear<br /> -Our hearts at random down the dark of life.<br /> -Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife<br /> -Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,<br /> -My night shall be remembered for a star<br /> -That outshone all the suns of all men's days.<br /> -Shall I not crown them with immortal praise<br /> -Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me<br /> -High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see<br /> -The inenarrable godhead of delight?<br /> -Love is a flame:—we have beaconed the world's night.<br /> -A city:—and we have built it, these and I.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> -An emperor:—we have taught the world to die.<br /> -So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,<br /> -And the high cause of Love's magnificence,<br /> -And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names<br /> -Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,<br /> -And set them as a banner, that men may know,<br /> -To dare the generations, burn, and blow<br /> -Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming......<br /> -<br /> -These I have loved:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,</span><br /> -Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;<br /> -Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong<br /> -Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;<br /> -Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;<br /> -And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;<br /> -And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,<br /> -Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;<br /> -Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon<br /> -Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss<br /> -Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is<br /> -Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> -Impassioned beauty of a great machine;<br /> -The benison of hot water; furs to touch;<br /> -The good smell of old clothes; and other such—<br /> -The comfortable smell of friendly ringers,<br /> -Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers<br /> -About dead leaves and last year's ferns ...<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 18em;">Dear names,</span><br /> -And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames;<br /> -Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;<br /> -Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing;<br /> -Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain,<br /> -Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;<br /> -Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam<br /> -That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;<br /> -And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold<br /> -Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;<br /> -Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;<br /> -And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;<br /> -And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;—<br /> -All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,<br /> -Whatever passes not, in the great hour,<br /> -Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power<br /> -To hold them with me through the gate of Death.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> -They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,<br /> -Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust<br /> -And sacramented covenant to the dust.<br /> -—Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,<br /> -And give what's left of love again; and make<br /> -New friends, now strangers....<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 12em;">But the best I've known,</span><br /> -Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown<br /> -About the winds of the world, and fades from<br /> -brains Of living men, and dies.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 18em;">Nothing remains.</span><br /> -<br /> -O dear my loves, O faithless, once again<br /> -This one last gift I give: that after men<br /> -Shall know, and later lovers, far removed,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>Praise you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved.'<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -CLOUDS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Down the blue night the unending columns press<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow</span><br /> -Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.<br /> -Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As who would pray good for the world, but know</span><br /> -Their benediction empty as they bless.<br /> -<br /> -They say that the Dead die not, but remain<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,</span><br /> -In wise majestic melancholy train,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,</span><br /> -And men, coming and going on the earth.<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> -<i>The Pacific</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -THE OLD VICARAGE, GRANTCHESTER<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6.5em;"><i>Cafe des Western, Berlin.</i></span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Just now the lilac is in bloom,<br /> -All before my little room;<br /> -And in my flower-beds, I think,<br /> -Smile the carnation and the pink;<br /> -And down the borders, well I know,<br /> -The poppy and the pansy blow ...<br /> -Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,<br /> -Beside the river make for you<br /> -A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep<br /> -Deeply above; and green and deep<br /> -The stream mysterious glides beneath,<br /> -Green as a dream and deep as death.—<br /> -Oh, damn! I know it I and I know<br /> -How the May fields all golden show,<br /> -And when the day is young and sweet,<br /> -Gild gloriously the bare feet<br /> -That run to bathe ...<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>Du lieber Gott!</i></span><br /> -<br /> -Here am I, sweating, sick and hot,<br /> -And there the shadowed waters fresh<br /> -Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.<br /> -<i>Temperamentvoll</i> German Jews<br /> -Drink beer around; and <i>there</i> the dews<br /> -Are soft beneath a morn of gold.<br /> -Here tulips bloom as they are told;<br /> -Unkempt about those hedges blows<br /> -An English unofficial rose;<br /> -And there the unregulated sun<br /> -Slopes down to rest when day is done,<br /> -And wakes a vague unpunctual star,<br /> -A slippered Hesper; and there are<br /> -Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton<br /> -Where <i>das Betreten's</i> not <i>verboten</i>..<br /> -<br /> -<i>ἐίθε γενοιμην</i> ... would I were<br /> -In Grantchester, in Grantchester!—<br /> -Some, it may be, can get in touch<br /> -With Nature there, or Earth, or such.<br /> -And clever modern men have seen<br /> -A Faun a-peeping through the green,<br /> -And felt the Classics were not dead,<br /> -To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,<br /> -Or hear the Goat-foot piping low ...<br /> -But these are things I do not know.<br /> -I only know that you may lie<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> -Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,<br /> -And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,<br /> -Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,<br /> -Until the centuries blend and blur<br /> -In Grantchester, in Grantchester ...<br /> -Still in the dawnlit waters cool<br /> -His ghostly Lordship swims his pool,<br /> -And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,<br /> -Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx;<br /> -Dan Chaucer hears his river still<br /> -Chatter beneath a phantom mill;<br /> -Tennyson notes, with studious eye,<br /> -How Cambridge waters hurry by ...<br /> -And in that garden, black and white<br /> -Creep whispers through the grass all night;<br /> -And spectral dance, before the dawn,<br /> -A hundred Vicars down the lawn;<br /> -Curates, long dust, will come and go<br /> -On lissom, clerical, printless toe;<br /> -And oft between the boughs is seen<br /> -The sly shade of a Rural Dean ...<br /> -Till, at a shiver in the skies,<br /> -Vanishing with Satanic cries,<br /> -The prim ecclesiastic rout<br /> -Leaves but a startled sleeper-out,<br /> -Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls,<br /> -The falling house that never falls.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> - . . . . . . .<br /> - -God! I will pack, and take a train,<br /> -And get me to England once again!<br /> -For England's the one land, I know,<br /> -Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;<br /> -And Cambridgeshire, of all England,<br /> -The shire for Men who Understand;<br /> -And of <i>that</i> district I prefer<br /> -The lovely hamlet Grantchester.<br /> -For Cambridge people rarely smile,<br /> -Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;<br /> -And Royston men in the far South<br /> -Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;<br /> -At Over they fling oaths at one,<br /> -And worse than oaths at Trumpington,<br /> -And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,<br /> -And there's none in Harston under thirty,<br /> -And folks in Shelford and those parts<br /> -Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,<br /> -And Barton men make cockney rhymes,<br /> -And Co ton's full of nameless crimes,<br /> -And things are done you'd not believe<br /> -At Madingley on Christmas Eve.<br /> -Strong men have run for miles and miles<br /> -When one from Cherry Hinton smiles;<br /> -Strong men have blanched and shot their wives<br /> -Rather than send them to St. Ives;<br /> -Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>To hear what happened at Babraham.<br /> -But Grantchester, ah, Grantchester!<br /> -There's peace and holy quiet there,<br /> -Great clouds along pacific skies,<br /> -And men and women with straight eyes,<br /> -Lithe children lovelier than a dream,<br /> -A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,<br /> -And little kindly winds that creep<br /> -Round twilight corners, half asleep.<br /> -In Grantchester their skins are white,<br /> -In Grantchester their skins are white,<br /> -They bathe by day, they bathe by night;<br /> -The women there do all they ought;<br /> -The men observe the Rules of Thought.<br /> -They love the Good; they worship Truth;<br /> -They laugh uproariously in youth;<br /> -(And when they get to feeling old,<br /> -They up and shoot themselves, I'm told)<br /> -<br /> -Ah God! to see the branches stir<br /> -Across the moon at Grantchester!<br /> -To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten<br /> -Unforgettable, unforgotten<br /> -River smell, and hear the breeze<br /> -Sobbing in the little trees.<br /> -Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand,<br /> -Still guardians of that holy land?<br /> -The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>The yet unacademic stream?<br /> -Is dawn a secret shy and cold<br /> -Anadyomene, silver-gold?<br /> -And sunset still a golden sea<br /> -From Haslingfield to Madingley?<br /> -And after, ere the night is born,<br /> -Do hares come out about the corn?<br /> -Oh, is the water sweet and cool<br /> -Gentle and brown, above the pool?<br /> -And laughs the immortal river still—<br /> -Under the mill, under the mill?<br /> -Say, is there Beauty yet to find?<br /> -And Certainty? and Quiet kind?<br /> -Deep-meadows yet, for to forget<br /> -The lies, and truths, and pain?... oh! yet<br /> -Stands the Church clock at ten to three<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>And is there honey still for tea?<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -THE BUSY HEART<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Now that we've clone our best and worst, and parted,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend.</span><br /> -(O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted)<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I'll think of Love in books, Love without end;</span><br /> -Women with child, content; and old men sleeping;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain;</span><br /> -And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the young heavens, forgetful after rain;</span><br /> -And evening hush, broken by homing wings;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy,</span><br /> -That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lovely and loveable, and taste them slowly,</span><br /> -One after one, like tasting a sweet food.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>I have need to busy my heart with quietude.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -DINING-ROOM TEA<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When you were there, and you, and you,<br /> -Happiness crowned the night; I too,<br /> -Laughing and looking, one of all,<br /> -I watched the quivering lamplight fall<br /> -On plate and flowers and pouring tea<br /> -And cup and cloth; and they and we<br /> -Flung all the dancing moments by<br /> -With jest and glitter. Lip and eye<br /> -Flashed on the glory, shone and cried,<br /> -Improvident, unmemoried;<br /> -And fitfully and like a flame<br /> -The light of laughter went and came.<br /> -Proud in their careless transience moved<br /> -The changing faces that I loved.<br /> -<br /> -Till suddenly, and otherwhence,<br /> -I looked upon your innocence;<br /> -For lifted clear and still and strange<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> -From the dark woven flow of change<br /> -Under a vast and starless sky<br /> -I saw the immortal moment lie.<br /> -One instant I, an instant, knew<br /> -As God knows all. And it and you<br /> -I, above Time, oh, blind! could see<br /> -In witless immortality.<br /> -I saw the marble cup; the tea,<br /> -Hung on the air, an amber stream;<br /> -I saw the fire's unglittering gleam,<br /> -The painted flame, the frozen smoke.<br /> -No more the flooding lamplight broke<br /> -On flying eyes and lips and hair;<br /> -But lay, but slept unbroken there,<br /> -On stiller flesh, and body breathless,<br /> -And lips and laughter stayed and deathless,<br /> -And words on which no silence grew.<br /> -Light was more alive than you.<br /> -<br /> -For suddenly, and otherwhence,<br /> -I looked on your magnificence.<br /> -I saw the stillness and the light,<br /> -And you, august, immortal, white,<br /> -Holy and strange; and every glint<br /> -Posture and jest and thought and tint<br /> -Freed from the mask of transiency,<br /> -Triumphant in eternity,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> -Immote, immortal.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">Dazed at length</span><br /> -Human eyes grew, mortal strength<br /> -Wearied; and Time began to creep.<br /> -Change closed about me like a sleep.<br /> -Light glinted on the eyes I loved.<br /> -The cup was filled. The bodies moved.<br /> -The drifting petal came to ground.<br /> -The laughter chimed its perfect round.<br /> -The broken syllable was ended.<br /> -And I, so certain and so friended,<br /> -How could I cloud, or how distress<br /> -The heaven of your unconsciousness?<br /> -Or shake at Time's sufficient spell,<br /> -Stammering of lights unutterable?<br /> -The eternal holiness of you,<br /> -The timeless end, you never knew,<br /> -The peace that lay, the light that shone.<br /> -You never knew that I had gone<br /> -A million miles away, and stayed<br /> -A million years. The laughter played<br /> -Unbroken round me; and the jest<br /> -Flashed on. And we that knew the best<br /> -Down wonderful hours grew happier yet.<br /> -I sang at heart, and talked, and eat,<br /> -And lived from laugh to laugh, I too,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"></span>When you were there, and you, and you.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> -<span class="author">FRANCIS BURROWS</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> -THE PRAYER TO DEMETER<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Mother whose hair I grasp, whose bosom I tread,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy son adopted. Thou who dost so charm me</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And in thy lappels of affection warm me,</span><br /> -Heap all thine other misery on my head;<br /> -<br /> -Madness alone of evils do I dread,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Against its imminent presence guard and arm me,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Suffer its broad flung shadow not to harm me</span><br /> -But plunge me rather with the naked dead.<br /> -<br /> -Yet if it must come, let it be entire;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cast then upon me unillumined night,</span><br /> -One whole eclipse not knowing any fire<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To give it record of the former light.</span><br /> -Complete destruction of the heart's desire,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A ruin of thought and audience and sight.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -THE GIANT'S DIRGE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Remember him who battled here,<br /> -What was his living character?<br /> -To friends an heart for ever filled<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With love and with compassion brave;</span><br /> -To foes a power never stilled<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In pushing vengeance to the grave;</span><br /> -Where is his spirit gone now, O where?<br /> -<br /> -What of his ten grand paces here<br /> -Whose motion was a perfect sphere?<br /> -To friends a making unafraid,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A sure defence, a wall of glass.</span><br /> -To foes a hidden trap well laid<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To catch them stalking through the grass;</span><br /> -Where is he walking now, O where?<br /> -<br /> -What of his power who is here<br /> -Enclosed within the sepulchre?<br /> -To friends an eager sword of joy,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A shield to nestle underneath.</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>To foes whose love is to destroy,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A stumbling block, a hidden death;</span><br /> -Where is his power gone now, O where?<br /> -<br /> -What of his eye that floated here<br /> -Like sky-born dewy gossamer?<br /> -To friends the ever-sought desire,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The hope achieved, the loving cup;</span><br /> -To foes an unassaulted fire,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A furnace withering them up.</span><br /> -Where is he shining now, O where?<br /> -<br /> -What of the head that breathed so here<br /> -And the hair beloved so, is it sere;<br /> -To friends a shadow shedding stars,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like blessings, from the upper deep;</span><br /> -To foes a poisoned tree that mars<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Men's lives thereunder laid asleep.</span><br /> -Where does it blossom now, O where?<br /> -<br /> -He lives, is living everywhere,<br /> -Where human hearts are, he is there.<br /> -To friends a soul of certainty<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That love though lost is more than none.</span><br /> -To foes an inability<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To say, "We slew him, we alone,</span><br /> -His soul is here, we slew him here."<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> -THE UNFORGOTTEN<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -There is a cave beneath the throne of grace<br /> -Where these have honoured and remembered place;<br /> -Strong hairy men, huge-jawed, with wiry limbs,<br /> -Half hid in mist, the heroes of old times.<br /> -They lie among the pots and flints and beads<br /> -Their friends once buried with them as the needs<br /> -Of the after-life, to hunt with and to slay with,<br /> -And flay and cook, or in repose to play with.<br /> -Here he who shaped the flint and bound to axe<br /> -And arrow first; who made the thread of flax<br /> -And hemp to weave; and he who to the plough<br /> -Harnessed and tamed the bull and milked the cow;<br /> -Who taught to bake and grind and till the seed<br /> -Of corn sufficient for the future's need;<br /> -And he who said: "These are my children, these;<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> -My blood between them and their enemies;<br /> -For when I age and cannot win my meat,<br /> -They shall become new head and hands and feet";<br /> -And he who said: "Let none of our tribe die<br /> -Slain by ourselves with violence. For why,<br /> -Our foes are plentiful, our friends are few,<br /> -Our living scarce. All may have work to do,<br /> -As hunting, warring, digging for the strong,<br /> -Or potting, cooking, weaving for the young,<br /> -The old, the weak, yet for adornment skilled"—<br /> -Too early born and by his brethren killed.<br /> -Here he who dreamed a strange dream in the night,<br /> -And from his rushes springing swat with fright,<br /> -But thought and said with opened eyes, "'Tis beauty,"<br /> -And terror left him. Those who spoke of duty,<br /> -Mercy and truth, and taught the undying soul,<br /> -And many more. And many a grunt and growl<br /> -They give in friendly dreams; when haunches quiver<br /> -And nostrils widen, and hands do twitch and shiver.<br /> -And often one awakes, and blinks, half speaks,<br /> -And yawns and licks and blows upon his cheeks:<br /> -<br /> -Pure spirits laugh, and with a kindly eye<br /> -The father views their rough-haired majesty.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> -THE WELL<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -See this plashing fount enshrined,<br /> -Some ancient people roofed and lined;<br /> -Some memory here of a forlorn rime,<br /> -A thought, a breath of a thought sublime<br /> -A sobbing under the wings of time.<br /> -<br /> -See the ancient people's grave:<br /> -No Andromache, no slave<br /> -Water here for a master draws,<br /> -No slaves longer laugh and pause.<br /> -All's strange language and new laws.<br /> -<br /> -O words, be good to impart assurance<br /> -Of hope, of memory, of endurance,<br /> -O flourish grass upon our tomb,<br /> -Grant us, sunk in a little room,<br /> -Both a sepulchre and home.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> -EGYPTIAN<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The pyramid is built, is built,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And stone by stone the sphinx;</span><br /> -Upon the ground the wine is spilt,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And deep the builder drinks.</span><br /> -<i>Deeply the wise man in the desert thinks.</i><br /> -<br /> -Hark to the lanterned gondolas!<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The stream is incense-calmed;</span><br /> -We smoke, we draw the gods with praise,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They walk amongst us charmed.</span><br /> -Cries <i>"Never are the desert-sands disarmed."</i><br /> -<br /> -Our building toil is done, is done,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All strifes and quarrels cease;</span><br /> -And slaves and masters are at one,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And enemies at peace.</span><br /> -Cries: <i>"Yet the sands are stirred and wars increase."</i><br /> -<br /> -Riches and joy and thankfulness<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By our rich river are;</span><br /> -To see our noble work and bless<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall travellers come afar.</span><br /> -Cries: <i>"Yes, a jew, but many more for war."</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> -LIFE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When I consider this, that bare<br /> -Water and earth and common air<br /> -Combine together to compose<br /> -A being who breathes and stands and goes<br /> -With eyes to see the sun, with brain<br /> -To contemplate his origin,<br /> -I marvel not at death and pain<br /> -<span class="pagenum"></span>But rather how he should have been.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> -<span class="author">A. Y. CAMPBELL</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> -ANIMULA VAGULA<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Night stirs but wakens not, her breathings climb<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To one slow sigh; the strokes of many twelves</span><br /> -From unseen spires mechanically chime,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mingling like echoes, to frustrate themselves;</span><br /> -My soul, remember Time.<br /> -<br /> -The tones like smoke into the stillness curl,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The slippered hours their placid business ply,</span><br /> -And in thy hand there lies occasion's pearl;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But thou art playing with it absently</span><br /> -And dreaming, like a girl.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> -A BIRD<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -His haunts are by the brackish ways<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where rivers and sea-currents meet;</span><br /> -He is familiar with the sprays,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Over the stones his flight is fleet.</span><br /> -<br /> -Low, low he flutters, like a rat<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That scampers up a river-bank;</span><br /> -Swift, lizard-like, he scours the flat<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where pools are wersh and weeds are dank,</span><br /> -<br /> -The fresh green smell of inland groves,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The pureness of the upper air,</span><br /> -Are poorer than his pungent coves<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That hold strange spices everywhere.</span><br /> -<br /> -Strong is the salt of open sea;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Far out, the virgin brine is keen:</span><br /> -No home is there for such as he,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Out of the beach he is not seen.</span><br /> -<br /> -By shallows and capricious foams<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Are the queer corners he frequents,</span><br /> -And in an idle humour roams<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The borderland of elements.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> -THE DROMEDARY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -In dreams I see the Dromedary still,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As once in a gay park, l saw him stand i</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A thousand eyes in vulgar wonder scanned</span><br /> -His humps and hairy neck, and gazed their fill<br /> -At his lank shanks and mocked with laughter shrill.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He never moved: and if his Eastern land</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flashed on his eye with stretches of hot sand,</span><br /> -It wrung no mute appeal from his proud will.<br /> -He blinked upon the rabble lazily;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And still some trace of majesty forlorn</span><br /> -And a coarse grace remained: his head was high,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Though his gaunt flanks with a great mange were worn:</span><br /> -There was not any yearning in his eye,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But on his lips and nostril infinite scorn.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> -THE PANIC<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Pale in her evening silks she sat<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That but a week had been my bride;</span><br /> -Then, while the stars we wondered at,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Without a word she left my side;</span><br /> -Devious and silent as a bat,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I watched her round the garden glide.</span><br /> -<br /> -Soon o'er the moonlit lawn she streamed,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then floated idly down the glade;</span><br /> -Now like a forest nymph she seemed,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Now like a light within a shade:</span><br /> -She turned, and for a moment gleamed,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And suddenly I saw her fade.</span><br /> -<br /> -I had been held in tranced stare<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Till she had vanished from my sight;</span><br /> -Then did I start in wild despair,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And followed fast in mad affright;</span><br /> -What if herself a spirit were<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And had so soon rejoined the night?</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> -<span class="author">G. K. CHESTERTON</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> -WINE AND WATER<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale,<br /> -He ate his egg with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a pail,<br /> -And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and the fish he took was Whale,<br /> -But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail,<br /> -And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,<br /> -"I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."<br /> -<br /> -The cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the brink<br /> -As if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink,<br /> -The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> -And Noah he cocked his eye and said, "It looks like rain, I think,<br /> -The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine,<br /> -But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."<br /> -<br /> -But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we trod,<br /> -Till a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod,<br /> -And you can't get wine at a P.S.A., or chapel, or Eisteddfod,<br /> -But the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God,<br /> -And water is on the Bishop's board and the Higher Thinker's shrine,<br /> -But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> -THE ROLLING ENGLISH ROAD<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Before the Roman came to Rye or out of Severn strode,<br /> -The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.<br /> -A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,<br /> -And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;<br /> -A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread,<br /> -The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.<br /> -<br /> -I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,<br /> -And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;<br /> -But I did bash their bagginets because they came arrayed<br /> -To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> -When you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,<br /> -The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.<br /> -<br /> -His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run<br /> -Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?<br /> -The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,<br /> -But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.<br /> -God pardon us, nor harden us: we did not see so clear<br /> -The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.<br /> -<br /> -My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,<br /> -Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,<br /> -But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,<br /> -And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;<br /> -But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,<br /> -Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> -THE DONKEY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When fishes flew and forests walked<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And figs grew upon thorn,</span><br /> -Some moment when the moon was blood<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then surely I was born;</span><br /> -<br /> -With monstrous head and sickening cry<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And ears like errant wings,</span><br /> -The devil's walking parody<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On all four-footed things.</span><br /> -<br /> -The tattered outlaw of the earth,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of ancient crooked will;</span><br /> -Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I keep my secret still.</span><br /> -<br /> -Fools! For I also had my hour;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">One far fierce hour and sweet:</span><br /> -There was a shout about my ears,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And palms before my feet.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> -THE SECRET PEOPLE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,<br /> -For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.<br /> -There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,<br /> -There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.<br /> -There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.<br /> -There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;<br /> -You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:<br /> -Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.<br /> -<br /> -The fine French kings came over in a nutter of flags and dames.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> -We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.<br /> -The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;<br /> -There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.<br /> -And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way,<br /> -And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day.<br /> -They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,<br /> -Till there was no bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find.<br /> -The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak,<br /> -The King's Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.<br /> -<br /> -And the face of the King's Servants grew greater than the King:<br /> -He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.<br /> -The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey's fruits,<br /> -And the men of the new religion, with their Bibles in their boots,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> -We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,<br /> -And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.<br /> -We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;<br /> -And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.<br /> -<br /> -A war that we understood not came over the world and woke<br /> -Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.<br /> -They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people's reign:<br /> -And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and never scorned us again.<br /> -Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;<br /> -Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.<br /> -In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,<br /> -We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,<br /> -We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not<br /> -The strange fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> -And the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke;<br /> -And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.<br /> -<br /> -Our path of glory ended; we never heard guns again.<br /> -But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain<br /> -He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,<br /> -He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.<br /> -Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,<br /> -Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse <i>i</i><br /> -We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,<br /> -And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.<br /> -<br /> -They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,<br /> -Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.<br /> -They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> -They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.<br /> -And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,<br /> -Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.<br /> -<br /> -We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,<br /> -Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.<br /> -It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,<br /> -Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.<br /> -It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest<br /> -God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.<br /> -But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.<br /> -Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> -FROM THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Far northward and far westward<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The distant tribes drew nigh,</span><br /> -Plains beyond plains, fell beyond fell,<br /> -That a man at sunset sees so well,<br /> -And the tiny coloured towns that dwell<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the comers of the sky.</span><br /> -<br /> -But dark and thick as thronged the host,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With drum and torch and blade,</span><br /> -The still-eyed King sat pondering,<br /> -As one that watches a live thing,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The scoured chalk; and he said,</span><br /> -<br /> -"Though I give this land to Our Lady,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That helped me in Athelney,</span><br /> -Though lordlier trees and lustier sod<br /> -And happier hills hath no flesh trod<br /> -Than the garden of the Mother of God<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Between Thames side and the sea,</span><br /> -<br /> -"I know that weeds shall grow in it<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Faster than men can burn;</span><br /> -And though they scatter now and go,<br /> -In some far century, sad and slow,<br /> -I have a vision, and I know<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The heathen shall return.</span><br /> -<br /> -"They shall not come with warships,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They shall not waste with brands,</span><br /> -But books be all their eating,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And ink be on their hands.</span><br /> -<br /> -"Not with the humour of hunters<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or savage skill in war,</span><br /> -But ordering all things with dead words,<br /> -Strings shall they make of beasts and birds<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And wheels of wind and star.</span><br /> -<br /> -"They shall come mild as monkish clerks,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With many a scroll and pen;</span><br /> -And backward shall ye turn and gaze,<br /> -Desiring one of Alfred's days,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">When pagans still were men.</span><br /> -<br /> -"The dear sun dwarfed of dreadful suns,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Like fiercer flowers on stalk,</span><br /> -Earth lost and little like a pea<br /> -In high heaven's towering forestry,<br /> -—These be the small weeds ye shall see<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Crawl, covering the chalk.</span><br /> -<br /> -"But though they bridge St. Mary's sea,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or steal St. Michael's wing—Though</span><br /> -they rear marvels over us,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Greater than great Vergilius</span><br /> -Wrought for the Roman king;<br /> -<br /> -"By this sign you shall know them,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The breaking of the sword,</span><br /> -And Man no more a free knight,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That loves or hates his lord.</span><br /> -<br /> -"Yea, this shall be the sign of them,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The sign of the dying fire;</span><br /> -And Man made like a half-wit,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That knows not of his sire.</span><br /> -<br /> -"What though they come with scroll and pen,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And grave as a shaven clerk,</span><br /> -By this sign you shall know them,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That they ruin and make dark;</span><br /> -<br /> -"By all men bond to Nothing,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Being slaves without a lord,</span><br /> -By one blind idiot world obeyed,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Too blind to be abhorred;</span><br /> -<br /> -"By terror and the cruel tales<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of curse in bone and kin,</span><br /> -By weird and weakness winning,<br /> -Accursed from the beginning,<br /> -By detail of the sinning,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And denial of the sin;</span><br /> -<br /> -"By thought a crawling ruin,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">By life a leaping mire,</span><br /> -By a broken heart in the breast of the world,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And the end of the world's desire;</span><br /> -<br /> -"By God and man dishonoured,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">By death and life made vain,</span><br /> -Know ye the old barbarian,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The barbarian come again again—</span><br /> -<br /> -"When is great talk of trend and tide,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And wisdom and destiny,</span><br /> -Hail that undying heathen<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That is sadder than the sea.</span><br /> -<br /> -"In what wise men shall smite him,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or the Cross stand up again,</span><br /> -Or charity, or chivalry,<br /> -My vision saith not; and I see<br /> -No more; but now ride doubtfully<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To the battle of the plain."</span><br /> -<br /> -And the grass-edge of the great down<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Was clean cut as a lawn,</span><br /> -While the levies thronged from near and far,<br /> -From the warm woods of the western star,<br /> -And the King went out to his last war<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">On a tall grey horse at dawn.</span><br /> -<br /> -And news of his far-off fighting<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Came slowly and brokenly</span><br /> -From the land of the East Saxons,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From the sunrise and the sea,</span><br /> -<br /> -From the plains of the white sunrise,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And sad St. Edmund's crown,</span><br /> -Where the pools of Essex pale and gleam<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Out beyond London Town—</span><br /> -<br /> -In mighty and doubtful fragments,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Like faint or fabled wars,</span><br /> -Climbed the old hills of his renown,<br /> -Where the bald brow of White Horse Down<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Is close to the cold stars.</span><br /> -<br /> -But away in the eastern places<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The wind of death walked high,</span><br /> -And a raid was driven athwart the raid,<br /> -The sky reddened and the smoke swayed,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And the tall grey horse went by.</span><br /> -<br /> -The gates of the great river<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Were breached as with a barge,</span><br /> -The walls sank crowded, say the scribes,<br /> -And high towers populous with tribes<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Seemed leaning from the charge.</span><br /> -<br /> -Smoke like rebellious heavens rolled<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Curled over coloured flames,</span><br /> -Billowed in monstrous purple dreams<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the mighty pools of Thames.</span><br /> -<br /> -Loud was the war on London wall,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And loud in London gates,</span><br /> -And loud the sea-kings in the cloud<br /> -Broke through their dreaming gods, and loud<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cried on their dreadful fates.</span><br /> -<br /> -And all the while on White Horse Hill<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The horse lay long and wan,</span><br /> -The turf crawled and the fungus crept,<br /> -And the little sorrel, while all men slept,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Unwrought the work of man.</span><br /> -<br /> -With velvet finger, velvet foot,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The fierce soft mosses then</span><br /> -Crept on the large white commonweal<br /> -All folk had striven to strip and peel,<br /> -And the grass, like a great green witch's wheel,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Unwound the toils of men.</span><br /> -<br /> -And clover and silent thistle throve,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And buds burst silently,</span><br /> -With little care for the Thames Valley<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or what things there might be—</span><br /> -<br /> -That away on the widening river,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the eastern plains for crown</span><br /> -Stood up in the pale purple sky<br /> -One turret of smoke like ivory;<br /> -And the smoke changed and the wind went by,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And the King took London Town.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> -<span class="author">PADRAIC COLUM</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> -THE OLD WOMAN OF THE ROADS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -O, to have a little house!<br /> -To own the hearth and stool and all!<br /> -The heaped up sods upon the fire<br /> -The pile of turf again' the wall!<br /> -<br /> -To have a clock with weights and chains,<br /> -And pendulum swinging up and down!<br /> -A dresser filled with shining delph,<br /> -Speckled with white and blue and brown!<br /> -<br /> -I could be busy all the day<br /> -Cleaning and sweeping hearth and floor,<br /> -And fixing on their shelf again<br /> -My white and blue and speckled store!<br /> -<br /> -I could be quiet there at night<br /> -Beside the fire and by myself,<br /> -Sure of a bed, and loth to leave<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> -The ticking clock and shining delph!<br /> -<br /> -Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,<br /> -And roads where there's never a house or bush,<br /> -And tired I am of bog and road,<br /> -And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -And I am praying to God on high,<br /> -And I am praying Him night and day,<br /> -For a little house—a house of my own—Out<br /> -of the wind's and rain's way.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> -<span class="author">FRANCES CORNFORD</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> -AUTUMN EVENING<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The shadows flickering, the daylight dying,<br /> -And I upon the old red sofa lying,<br /> -The great brown shadows leaping up the wall,<br /> -The sparrows twittering; and that is all.<br /> -<br /> -I thought to send my soul to far-off lands,<br /> -Where fairies scamper on the windy sands,<br /> -Or where the autumn rain comes drumming down<br /> -On huddled roofs in an enchanted town.<br /> -<br /> -But O my sleepy soul, it will not roam,<br /> -It is too happy and too warm at home:<br /> -With just the shadows leaping up the wall,<br /> -The sparrows twittering; and that is all.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> -<span class="author">W. H. DAVIES</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> -DAYS TOO SHORT<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When Primroses are out in Spring,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And small, blue violets come between;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When merry birds sing on boughs green,</span><br /> -And rills, as soon as born, must sing;<br /> -<br /> -When butterflies will make side-leaps,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As though escaped from Nature's hand</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ere perfect quite; and bees will stand</span><br /> -Upon their heads in fragrant deeps;<br /> -<br /> -When small clouds are so silvery white<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Each seems a broken rimmed moon—When</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">such things are, this world too soon,</span><br /> -For me, doth wear the veil of Night.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> -THE EXAMPLE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Here's an example from<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A Butterfly;</span><br /> -That on a rough, hard rock<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Happy can lie;</span><br /> -Friendless and all alone<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">On this unsweetened stone.</span><br /> -<br /> -Now let my bed be hard<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No care take I;</span><br /> -I'll make my joy like this<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Small Butterfly;</span><br /> -Whose happy heart has power<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To make a stone a flower.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> -THE EAST IN GOLD<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Somehow this world is wonderful at times,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As it has been from early morn in May;</span><br /> -Since I first heard the cock-a-doodle-do,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Timekeeper on green farms—at break of day.</span><br /> -<br /> -Soon after that I heard ten thousand birds,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which made me think an angel brought a bin</span><br /> -Of golden grain, and none was scattered yet—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To rouse those birds to make that merry din.</span><br /> -<br /> -I could not sleep again, for such wild cries,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And went out early into their green world;</span><br /> -And then I saw what set their little tongues<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To scream for joy—they saw the East in gold.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> -THE HAPPY CHILD<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I saw this day sweet flowers grow thick—<br /> -But not one like the child did pick.<br /> -<br /> -I heard the packhounds in green park—<br /> -But no dog like the child heard bark.<br /> -<br /> -I heard this day bird after bird—But<br /> -not one like the child has heard.<br /> -<br /> -A hundred butterflies saw I—But<br /> -not one like the child saw fly.<br /> -<br /> -I saw the horses roll in grass—<br /> -But no horse like the child saw pass.<br /> -<br /> -My world this day has lovely been—<br /> -But not like what the child has seen.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> -A GREAT TIME<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Sweet Chance, that led my steps abroad,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beyond the town, where wild flowers grow—</span><br /> -A rainbow and a cuckoo, Lord,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How rich and great the times are now!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Know, all ye sheep</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And cows, that keep</span><br /> -On staring that I stand so long<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In grass that's wet from heavy rain—</span><br /> -A rainbow and a cuckoo's song<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">May never come together again;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">May never come</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">This side the tomb.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> -THE WHITE CASCADE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -What happy mortal sees that mountain now,<br /> -The white cascade that's shining on its brow;<br /> -<br /> -The white cascade that's both a bird and star,<br /> -That has a ten-mile voice and shines as far?<br /> -<br /> -Though I may never leave this land again,<br /> -Yet every spring my mind must cross the main<br /> -<br /> -To hear and see that water-bird and star<br /> -That on the mountain sings, and shines so far.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> -IN MAY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Yes, I will spend the livelong day<br /> -With Nature in this month of May;<br /> -And sit beneath the trees, and share<br /> -My bread with birds whose homes are there;<br /> -While cows lie down to eat, and sheep<br /> -Stand to their necks in grass so deep;<br /> -While birds do sing with all their might,<br /> -As though they felt the earth in flight.<br /> -This is the hour I dreamed of, when<br /> -I sat surrounded by poor men;<br /> -And thought of how the Arab sat<br /> -Alone at evening, gazing at<br /> -The stars that bubbled in clear skies;<br /> -<br /> -And of young dreamers, when their eyes<br /> -Enjoyed methought a precious boon<br /> -In the adventures of the Moon<br /> -Whose light, behind the Clouds' dark bars,<br /> -Searched for her stolen flocks of stars.<br /> -When I, hemmed in by wrecks of men,<br /> -Thought of some lonely cottage then,<br /> -Full of sweet books; and miles of sea,<br /> -With passing ships, in front of me;<br /> -And having, on the other hand,<br /> -A flowery, green, bird-singing land.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> -THUNDERSTORMS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -My mind has thunderstorms,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That brood for heavy hours:</span><br /> -Until they rain me words,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My thoughts are drooping flowers</span><br /> -And sulking, silent birds.<br /> -<br /> -Yet come, dark thunderstorms,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And brood your heavy hours;</span><br /> -For when you rain me words<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My thoughts are dancing flowers</span><br /> -And joyful singing birds.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> -SWEET STAY-AT-HOME<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Well-content,<br /> -Thou knowest of no strange continent:<br /> -Thou hast not felt thy bosom keep<br /> -A gentle motion with the deep;<br /> -Thou hast not sailed in Indian seas,<br /> -Where scent comes forth in every breeze.<br /> -Thou hast not seen the rich grape grow<br /> -For miles, as far as eyes can go;<br /> -Thou hast not seen a summer's night<br /> -When maids could sew by a worm's light;<br /> -Nor the North Sea in spring send out<br /> -Bright trees that like birds flit about<br /> -In solid cages of white ice—<br /> -Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Love-one-place.<br /> -Thou hast not seen black fingers pick<br /> -White cotton when the bloom is thick,<br /> -Nor heard black throats in harmony;<br /> -Nor hast thou sat on stones that lie<br /> -Flat on the earth, that once did rise<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> -To hide proud kings from common eyes.<br /> -Thou hast not seen plains full of bloom<br /> -Where green things had such little room<br /> -They pleased the eye like fairer flowers—<br /> -Sweet Stay-at-Home, all these long hours.<br /> -Sweet Well-content, sweet Love-one-place,<br /> -Sweet, simple maid, bless thy dear face;<br /> -For thou hast made more homely stuff<br /> -Nurture thy gentle self enough;<br /> -I love thee for a heart that's kind—<br /> -Not for the knowledge in thy mind.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> -<span class="author">EDWARD L. DAVISON</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> -THE TREES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I did not know your names and yet I saw<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The handiwork of Beauty in your boughs,</span><br /> -I worshipped as the Druids did, in awe,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Feeling at Spring my pagan soul arouse</span><br /> -To see your leaf-buds open to the day,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And dull green moss upon your ragged girth,</span><br /> -The hoary sanctity of your decay,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Life and Death glimmering upon the Earth.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> -IN THIS DARK HOUSE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I shall come back to die<br /> -From a far place at last<br /> -After my life's carouse<br /> -In the old bed to lie,<br /> -Remembering the past<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In this dark house.</span><br /> -<br /> -Because of a clock's chime<br /> -In the long waste of night<br /> -I shall awake and wait<br /> -At that calm lonely time<br /> -Each smell and sound and sight<br /> -Mysterious and innate:<br /> -Some shadow on the wall<br /> -When curtains by the door<br /> -Move in a draught of wind;<br /> -Or else a light footfall<br /> -In a near corridor;<br /> -Even to feel the kind<br /> -Caress of a cool hand<br /> -Smoothing the draggled hair<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> -Back from my shrunken brow,<br /> -And strive to understand<br /> -The woman's presence there,<br /> -And whence she came, and how.<br /> -<br /> -What gust of wind that night<br /> -Shall mutter her lost name<br /> -Through windows open wide,<br /> -And twist the nickering light<br /> -Of a sole candle's flame<br /> -Smoking from side to side,<br /> -Till the last spark it blows<br /> -Sets a moth's wings aflare<br /> -As the faint flame goes out?<br /> -<br /> -Some distant door may close;<br /> -Perhaps a heavy chair<br /> -On bare floors dragged about<br /> -O'er the low ceiling sound,<br /> -And the thin twig of a tree<br /> -Knock on my window-pane<br /> -Till all the night around<br /> -Is listening with me,<br /> -While like a noise of rain<br /> -Leaves rustle in the wind.<br /> -<br /> -Then from the inner gloom<br /> -The scratching of a mouse<br /> -May echo down my mind<br /> -And sound around the room<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In this dark house.</span><br /> -<br /> -The vague scent of a flower,<br /> -Smelt then in that warm air<br /> -From gardens drifting in,<br /> -May slowly overpower<br /> -The vapid lavender,<br /> -Till feebly I begin<br /> -To count the scents I knew<br /> -And name them one by one,<br /> -And search the names for this.<br /> -<br /> -Dreams will be swift and few<br /> -Ere that last night be done,<br /> -And gradual silences<br /> -In each long interim<br /> -Of halting time awake<br /> -Confuse all conscious sense.<br /> -Shadows will grow more dim,<br /> -And sound and scent forsake<br /> -The dark ere dawn commence,<br /> -<br /> -In the new morning then,<br /> -So fixed the stare and fast,<br /> -The calm unseeing eye<br /> -Will never close again.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">. . . .</span><br /> -<br /> -I shall come back at last<br /> -To this dark house to die.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> -<span class="author">WALTER DE LA MARE</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> -THE LISTENERS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Knocking on the moonlit door;</span><br /> -And his horse in the silence champed the grasses<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the forest's ferny floor:</span><br /> -And a bird flew up out of the turret,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Above the Traveller's head:</span><br /> -And he smote upon the door again a second time;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Is there anybody there?" he said.</span><br /> -But no one descended to the Traveller;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No head from the leaf-fringed sill</span><br /> -Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where he stood perplexed and still.</span><br /> -But only a host of phantom listeners<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That dwelt in the lone house then</span><br /> -Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To that voice from the world of men:</span><br /> -Stood thronging the faint moon beams on the dark stair,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That goes down to the empty hall,</span><br /> -Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By the lonely traveller's call.</span><br /> -And he felt in his heart their strangeness,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their stillness answering his cry,</span><br /> -While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Neath the starred and leafy sky;</span><br /> -For he suddenly smote on the door, even<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Louder, and lifted his head:—</span><br /> -"Tell them I came, and no one answered,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That I kept my word," he said.</span><br /> -Never the least stir made the listeners,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Though every word he spake</span><br /> -Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the one man left awake:</span><br /> -Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the sound of iron on stone</span><br /> -And how the silence surged softly backward<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When the plunging hoofs were gone.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> -ARABIA<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Far are the shades of Arabia,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where the Princes ride at noon,</span><br /> -'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Under the ghost of the moon;</span><br /> -And so dark is that vaulted purple<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flowers in the forest rise</span><br /> -And toss into blossom 'gainst the phantom stars<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pale in the noonday skies.</span><br /> -<br /> -Sweet is the music of Arabia<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In my heart, when out of dreams</span><br /> -I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Descry her gliding streams;</span><br /> -Hear her strange lutes on the green banks<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ring loud with the grief and delight</span><br /> -Of the dim-silked, dark-haired Musicians<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the brooding silence of night.</span><br /> -<br /> -They haunt me—her lutes and her forests;<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> -No beauty on earth I see<br /> -But shadowed with that dream recalls<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her loveliness to me.</span><br /> -Still eyes look coldly upon me,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cold voices whisper and say—</span><br /> -"He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia,<br /> -They have stolen his wits away."<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> -MUSIC<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,<br /> -And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;<br /> -Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees<br /> -Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.<br /> -<br /> -When music sounds, out of the water rise<br /> -Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,<br /> -Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face,<br /> -With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.<br /> -<br /> -When music sounds, all that I was I am<br /> -Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;<br /> -And from Time's woods break into distant song<br /> -The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> -THE SCRIBE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -What lovely things<br /> -hand hath made,<br /> -The smooth-plumed bird<br /> -In its emerald shade,<br /> -The seed of the grass,<br /> -The speck of stone<br /> -Which the wayfaring ant<br /> -Stirs, and hastes on.<br /> -<br /> -Though I should sit<br /> -By some tarn in Thy hills,<br /> -Using its ink<br /> -As the spirit wills<br /> -To write of Earth's wonders<br /> -Its live willed things,<br /> -Flit would the ages<br /> -On soundless wings<br /> -Ere unto Z<br /> -My pen drew nigh,<br /> -Leviathan told,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> -And the honey-fly;<br /> -And still would remain<br /> -My wit to try—<br /> -My Myworn reeds broken.<br /> -The dark tarn dry,<br /> -All words forgotten—<br /> -Thou, Lord, and I.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> -THE GHOST<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -"Who knocks?" "I, who was beautiful<br /> -Beyond all dreams to restore,<br /> -I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither,<br /> -And knock on the door."<br /> -<br /> -"Who speaks?" "I—once was my speech<br /> -Sweet as the bird's on the air,<br /> -When echo lurks by the waters to heed;<br /> -'Tis I speak thee fair."<br /> -<br /> -"Dark is the hour!" "Aye, and cold."<br /> -"Lone is my house." "Ah, but mine?"<br /> -"Sight, touch, lips, eyes gleamed in vain."<br /> -"Long dead these to thine."<br /> -<br /> -Silence. Still faint on the porch<br /> -Broke the flames of the stars.<br /> -In gloom groped a hope-wearied hand<br /> -Over keys, bolts, and bars.<br /> -<br /> -A face peered. All the grey night<br /> -In chaos of vacancy shone;<br /> -Nought but vast sorrow was there—<br /> -The sweet cheat gone.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> -CLEAR EYES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Clear eyes so dim at last,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And cheeks outlive their rose.</span><br /> -Time, heedless of the past,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No loving kindness knows;</span><br /> -Chill unto mortal lip<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Still Lethe flows.</span><br /> -<br /> -Griefs, too, but brief while stay,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And sorrow, being o'er,</span><br /> -Its salt tears shed away,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Woundeth the heart no more.</span><br /> -Stealthily lave these waters<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That solemn shore.</span><br /> -<br /> -Ah, then, sweet face burn on,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">While yet quick memory lives!</span><br /> -And Sorrow, ere thou art gone,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Know that my heart forgives—</span><br /> -Ere yet, grown cold in peace,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It loves not, nor grieves.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> -FARE WELL<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When I lie where shades of darkness<br /> -Shall no more assail mine eyes,<br /> -Nor the rain make lamentation<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">When the wind sighs;</span><br /> -How will fare the world whose wonder<br /> -Was the very proof of me?<br /> -Memory fades, must the remembered<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Perishing be?</span><br /> -<br /> -Oh, when this my dust surrenders<br /> -Hand, foot, lip to dust again,<br /> -May those loved and loving faces<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Please other men!</span><br /> -May the rusting harvest hedgerow<br /> -Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,<br /> -And as happy children gather<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Posies once mine.</span><br /> -<br /> -Look thy last on all things lovely,<br /> -Every hour. Let no night<br /> -Seal thy sense in deathly slumber<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Till to delight</span><br /> -Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;<br /> -Since that all things thou wouldst praise<br /> -Beauty took from those who loved them<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In other days.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> -ALL THAT'S PAST<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Very old are the woods;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the buds that break</span><br /> -Out of the briar's boughs,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When March winds wake,</span><br /> -So old with their beauty are—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oh, no man knows</span><br /> -Through what wild centuries<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Roves back the rose.</span><br /> -<br /> -Very old are the brooks;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the rills that rise</span><br /> -When snow sleeps cold beneath<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The azure skies</span><br /> -Sing such a history<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of come and gone,</span><br /> -Their every drop is as wise<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As Solomon.</span><br /> -<br /> -Very old are we men;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our dreams are tales</span><br /> -Told in dim Eden<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Eve's nightingales;</span><br /> -We wake and whisper awhile,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But, the day gone by,</span><br /> -Silence and sleep like fields<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of Amaranth lie.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> -THE SONG OF THE MAD PRINCE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Who said, "Peacock Pie"?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The old King to the sparrow:</span><br /> -Who said, "Crops are ripe"?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rust to the harrow:</span><br /> -Who said, "Where sleeps she now?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where rests she now her head,</span><br /> -Bathed in Eve's loveliness"?—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That's what I said.</span><br /> -<br /> -Who said, "Ay, mum's the word"?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sexton to willow:</span><br /> -Who said, "Green dust for dreams,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moss for a pillow"?</span><br /> -Who said, "All Time's delight<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hath she for narrow bed;</span><br /> -Life's troubled bubble broken"?—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That's what I said.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> -<span class="author">JOHN DRINKWATER</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> -BIRTHRIGHT<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Because a summer evening passed;</span><br /> -And little Ariadne cried<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That summer fancy fell at last</span><br /> -To dust; and young Verona died<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When beauty's hour was overcast.</span><br /> -<br /> -Theirs was the bitterness we know<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Because the clouds of hawthorn keep</span><br /> -So short a state, and kisses go<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To tombs unfathomably deep,</span><br /> -While Rameses and Romeo<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And little Ariadne sleep.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> -MOONLIT APPLES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,<br /> -And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those<br /> -Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.</span><br /> -<br /> -A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then<br /> -There is no sound at the top of the house of men<br /> -Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.</span><br /> -<br /> -They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams;<br /> -On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams<br /> -Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And quiet is the steep stair under.</span><br /> -<br /> -In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep,<br /> -And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep<br /> -Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On moon-washed apples of wonder.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> -<span class="author">R. C. K. ENSOR</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> -ODE TO REALITY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O Real, O That Which Is,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Beyond all earthly bliss</span><br /> -My spirit prays to be at one with Thee;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Away from that which seems,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From unenduring dreams,</span><br /> -From vain pursuits and vainer meeds set free.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">How rosy to our eyes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The mists of error rise,</span><br /> -The proud pavilions that we weave at will I<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">How glittering the ray</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of that illusive day,</span><br /> -The hills how grand, the vales how green and still!<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And how inviting yet</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The service of deceit,</span><br /> -Paid by the crowd that does not understand,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Parents and friends and foes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">All bowing down to those</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> -Who against Thee have lifted up their hand!<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ah, but on whomsoever</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Amid such glib endeavour</span><br /> -Thy light has shined in sudden sovereignty,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">He who has fallen and heard</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thy spirit-searching word:</span><br /> -<i>Why kick against the pricks? Why outrage Me?</i><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">He can no longer stay</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">There in the easy way,</span><br /> -No longer please himself with make-believe,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No longer shape at will</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The forms of good and ill</span><br /> -And what he shall reject and what receive.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nor may he dwell content</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In self-aggrandisement,</span><br /> -To the deep wrong of modern Mammon blind;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nor can he drown his cares</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Among the doctrinaires,</span><br /> -Who think by sowing hate to save mankind.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For every scheme of vision</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">He sees as the condition</span><br /> -Not of the truest only but the best—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The riches of all wealth,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The beauty of Beauty's self—</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> -That on Thee and within Thee it should rest.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">By Thee our bounds are set;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thou madest us; and yet</span><br /> -O Mother, when we strain to see Thy face,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Still dost Thou tease our prying</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With masks and mystifying,</span><br /> -Still hold us at arm's length from Thy embrace!<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Yet would I rather in act</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Plough with the iron Fact</span><br /> -And earn at least some harvest that is bread,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Than rich and popular</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In gay Imposture's car</span><br /> -Dazzle mankind and leave them still unfed.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rather would I in thought</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Miss all that I had sought,</span><br /> -Still pining on Negation's desert isle,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Than with the current float</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In Pragmatism's boat</span><br /> -Down to the fatal shore where sirens smile.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rather would I be thrown</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Against Thine altar-stone,</span><br /> -Unsanctified, unpitied, unreprieved,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Than in some other shrine</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sup the priests' meat and wine,</span><br /> -Taking the wages of a world deceived.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> -<span class="author">JAMES ELROY FLECKER</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Born 1884</i><br /> -<i>Died 1915</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> -RIOUPEROUX<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -High and solemn mountains guard Riouperoux,<br /> -—Small untidy village where the river drives a mill:<br /> -Frail as wood anemones, white, and frail were you,<br /> -And drooping a little, like the slender daffodil.<br /> -<br /> -Oh I will go to France again, and tramp the valley through,<br /> -And I will change these gentle clothes for clog and corduroy,<br /> -And work with the mill-hands of black Rioupéroux,<br /> -And walk with you, and talk with you, like any other boy.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> -WAR SONG OF THE SARACENS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">or late:</span><br /> -We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware!<br /> -Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die<br /> -Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer.<br /> -But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and we tramp</span><br /> -With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">our hair.</span><br /> -<br /> -From the lands, where the elephants are, to the forts of Merou<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and Balghar,</span><br /> -Our steel we have brought and our star to shine on the ruins of Rum.<br /> -We have marched from the Indus to Spain, and by God we will go<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">there again;</span><br /> -We have stood on the shore of the plain where the Waters of<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Destiny boom.</span><br /> -A mart of destruction we made at Jalula where men were afraid,<br /> -For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of doom;<br /> -<br /> -And the Spear was a Desert Physician who cured not a few of ambition,<br /> -And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong:<br /> -And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate pool,<br /> -And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when their cavalry thundered<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">along:</span><br /> -For the coward was drowned with the brave when our battle sheered up<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">like a wave,</span><br /> -And the dead to the desert we gave, and the glory to God in our song.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> -THE OLD SHIPS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep<br /> -Beyond the village which men still call Tyre,<br /> -With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep<br /> -For Famagusta and the hidden sun<br /> -That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire;<br /> -And all those ships were certainly so old<br /> -Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun,<br /> -Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges,<br /> -The pirate Genoese<br /> -Hell-raked them till they rolled<br /> -Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold.<br /> -But now through friendly seas they softly run,<br /> -Painted the mid-sea blue or shore-sea green,<br /> -Still patterned with the vine and grapes in<br /> -gold.<br /> -<br /> -But I have seen,<br /> -Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn<br /> -And image tumbled on a rose-swept bay,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> -A drowsy ship of some yet older day;<br /> -And, wonder's breath indrawn,<br /> -Thought I—who knows—who knows—but in that same<br /> -(Fished up beyond <i>Ææa,</i> patched up new<br /> -—Stern painted brighter blue—)<br /> -That talkative, bald-headed seaman came<br /> -(Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar)<br /> -From Troy's doom-crimson shore,<br /> -And with great lies about his wooden horse<br /> -Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course.<br /> -<br /> -It was so old a ship—who knows, who knows?<br /> -—And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain<br /> -To see the mast burst open with a rose,<br /> -And the whole deck put on its leaves again.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> -STILLNESS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When the words rustle no more,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the last work's done,</span><br /> -When the bolt lies deep in the door,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Fire, our Sun,</span><br /> -Falls on the dark-laned meadows of the floor;<br /> -<br /> -When from the clock's last chime to the next chime<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Silence beats his drum,</span><br /> -And Space with gaunt grey eyes and her brother Time<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wheeling and whispering come,</span><br /> -She with the mould of form and he with the loom of rhyme:<br /> -<br /> -Then twittering out in the night my thought-birds flee,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I am emptied of all my dreams:</span><br /> -I only hear Earth turning, only see<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ether's long bankless streams,</span><br /> -And only know I should drown if you laid not your hand on me.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> -AREIYA<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -This place was formed divine for love and us to dwell;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This house of brown stone built for us to sleep therein;</span><br /> -Those blossoms haunt the rocks that we should see and smell;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Those old rocks break the hill that we the heights should win.</span><br /> -<br /> -Those heights survey the sea that there our thoughts should sail<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Up the steep wall of wave to touch the Syrian sky:</span><br /> -For us that sky at eve fades out of purple pale,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pale as the mountain mists beneath our house that lie.</span><br /> -<br /> -In front of our small house are brown stone arches three;<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Behind it, the low porch where all the jasmine grows;</span><br /> -Beyond it, red and green, the gay pomegranate tree;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Around it, like love's arms, the summer and the rose.</span><br /> -<br /> -Within it sat and wrote in minutes soft and few<br /> -This worst and best of songs, one who loves it, and you.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> -THE QUEEN'S SONG<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Had I the power<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To Midas given of old</span><br /> -To touch a flower<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And leave the petals gold</span><br /> -I then might touch thy face,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Delightful boy,</span><br /> -And leave a metal grace,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A graven joy.</span><br /> -<br /> -Thus would I slay,—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Ah, desperate device!</span><br /> -The vital day<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That trembles in thine eyes,</span><br /> -And let the red lips close<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Which sang so well,</span><br /> -And drive away the rose<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To leave a shell.</span><br /> -<br /> -Then I myself,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Rising austere and dumb</span><br /> -On the high shelf<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of my half-lighted room,</span><br /> -Would place the shining bust<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And wait alone,</span><br /> -Until I was but dust,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Buried unknown.</span><br /> -<br /> -Thus in my love<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For nations yet unborn,</span><br /> -I would remove<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">From our two lives the morn,</span><br /> -And muse on loveliness<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">In mine arm-chair,</span><br /> -Content should Time confess<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">How sweet you were.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> -BRUMANA<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Oh shall I never never be home again?<br /> -Meadows of England shining in the rain<br /> -Spread wide your daisied lawns: your ramparts green<br /> -With briar fortify, with blossom screen<br /> -Till my far morning—and O streams that slow<br /> -And pure and deep through plains and playlands go,<br /> -For me your love and all your kingcups store,<br /> -And—dark militia of the southern shore,<br /> -Old fragrant friends—preserve me the last lines<br /> -Of that long saga which you sung me, pines,<br /> -When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree<br /> -I listened, with my eyes upon the sea.<br /> -<br /> -O traitor pines, you sang what life has found<br /> -The falsest of fair tales.<br /> -Earth blew a far-horn prelude all around,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> -That native music of her forest home,<br /> -While from the sea's blue fields and syren dales<br /> -Shadows and light noon-spectres of the foam<br /> -Riding the summer gales<br /> -On aery viols plucked an idle sound.<br /> -<br /> -Hearing you sing, O trees,<br /> -Hearing you murmur, "There are older seas,<br /> -That beat on vaster sands,<br /> -Where the wise snailfish move their pearly towers<br /> -To carven rocks and sculptured promont'ries,"<br /> -Hearing you whisper, "Lands<br /> -Where blaze the unimaginable flowers."<br /> -<br /> -Beneath me in the valley waves the palm,<br /> -Beneath, beyond the valley, breaks the sea;<br /> -Beneath me sleep in mist and light and calm<br /> -Cities of Lebanon, dream-shadow-dim,<br /> -Where Kings of Tyre and Kings of Tyre did rule<br /> -In ancient days in endless dynasty,<br /> -And all around the snowy mountains swim<br /> -Like mighty swans afloat in heaven's pool.<br /> -<br /> -But I will walk upon the wooded hill<br /> -Where stands a grove, O pines, of sister pines,<br /> -And when the downy twilight droops her wing<br /> -And no sea glimmers and no mountain shines<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> -My heart shall listen still.<br /> -For pines are gossip pines the wide world through<br /> -And full of runic tales to sigh or sing.<br /> -<br /> -'Tis ever sweet through pine to see the sky<br /> -Mantling a deeper gold or darker blue.<br /> -'Tis ever sweet to lie<br /> -On the dry carpet of the needles brown,<br /> -And though the fanciful green lizard stir<br /> -And windy odours light as thistledown<br /> -Breathe from the lavdanon and lavender,<br /> -Half to forget the wandering and pain,<br /> -Half to remember days that have gone by,<br /> -And dream and dream that I am home again!<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> -HYALI<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Στὸ Γυαλὶ στὸ γαλἄζιο βρἄχο<br /> -<br /> -Island in blue of summer floating on,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Little brave sister of the Sporades,</span><br /> -Hail and farewell! I pass, and thou art gone,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So fast in fire the great boat beats the seas.</span><br /> -<br /> -But slowly fade, soft Island! Ah to know<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy town and who the gossips of thy town,</span><br /> -What flowers flash in thy meadows, what winds blow<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Across thy mountain when the sun goes down.</span><br /> -<br /> -There is thy market, where the fisher throws<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His gleaming fish that gasp in the death-bright dawn:</span><br /> -And there thy Prince's house, painted old rose,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beyond the olives, crowns its slope of lawn.</span><br /> -<br /> -And is thy Prince so rich that he displays<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At festal board the flesh of sheep and kine?</span><br /> -Or dare he—summer days are long hot days—<br /> -Load up with Asian snow his Coan wine?<br /> -<br /> -Behind a rock, thy harbour, whence a noise<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of tarry sponge-boats hammered lustily:</span><br /> -And from that little rock thy naked boys<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like burning arrows shower upon the sea.</span><br /> -<br /> -And there by the old Greek chapel—there beneath<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A thousand poppies that each sea-wind stirs</span><br /> -And cyclamen, as honied and white as death,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dwell deep in earth the elder islanders.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 20%;">* * *</span><br /> -<br /> -Thy name I know not, Island, but <i>his</i> name<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I know, and why so proud thy mountain stands,</span><br /> -And what thy happy secret, and Who came<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Drawing his painted galley up thy sands.</span><br /> -<br /> -For my Gods—Trident Gods who deep and pale<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Swim in the Latmian Sound, have murmured thus:</span><br /> -"To such an island came with a pompous sail<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On his first voyage young Herodotus."</span><br /> -<br /> -Since then—tell me no tale how Romans built,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Saracens plundered—or that bearded lords</span><br /> -Rowed by to fight for Venice, and here spilt<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their blood across the bay that keeps their swords.</span><br /> -<br /> -That old Greek day was all thy history:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For that did Ocean poise thee as a flower.</span><br /> -Farewell: this boat attends not such as thee:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Farewell: I was thy lover for an hour!</span><br /> -<br /> -Farewell! But I who call upon thy caves<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Am far like thee,—like thee, unknown and poor.</span><br /> -And yet my words are music as thy waves,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And like thy rocks shall down through time endure.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> -THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -PROLOGUE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die,</span><br /> -We Poets of the proud old lineage<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why,—</span><br /> -<br /> -What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest,</span><br /> -Where nevermore the rose of sunset pales,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And winds and shadows fall toward the West:</span><br /> -<br /> -And there the world's first huge white-bearded kings<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In dim glades sleeping, murmur in their sleep,</span><br /> -And closer round their breasts the ivy clings,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cutting its pathway slow and red and deep.</span><br /> -<br /> -And how beguile you? Death has no repose<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Warmer and deeper than that Orient sand</span><br /> -Which hides the beauty and bright faith of those<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who made the Golden Journey to Samarkand.</span><br /> -<br /> -And now they wait and whiten peaceably,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Those conquerors, those poets, those so fair:</span><br /> -They know time comes, not only you and I,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But the whole world shall whiten, here or there;</span><br /> -<br /> -When those long caravans that cross the plain<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With dauntless feet and sound of silver bells</span><br /> -Put forth no more for glory or for gain,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Take no more solace from the palm-girt wells,</span><br /> -<br /> -When the great markets by the sea shut fast<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:</span><br /> -When even lovers find their peace at last,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -EPILOGUE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<i>At the Gate of the Sun, Bagdad, in olden time</i><br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE MERCHANTS</span> (<i>together</i>)<br /> -<br /> -Away, for we are ready to a man!<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our camels sniff the evening and are glad.</span><br /> -Lead on, O Master of the Caravan:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lead on the Merchant-Princes of Bagdad.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE CHIEF DRAPER</span><br /> -<br /> -Have we not Indian carpets dark as wine,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Turbans and sashes, gowns and bows and veils,</span><br /> -And broideries of intricate design,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And printed hangings in enormous bales?</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE CHIEF GROCER</span><br /> -<br /> -We have rose-candy, we have spikenard,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mastic and terebinth and oil and spice,</span><br /> -And such sweet jams meticulously jarred<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As God's own Prophet eats in Paradise.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE PRINCIPAL JEWS</span><br /> -<br /> -And we have manuscripts in peacock styles<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Ali of Damascus; we have swords</span><br /> -Engraved with storks and apes and crocodiles,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And heavy beaten necklaces, for Lords.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN</span><br /> -<br /> -But you are nothing but a lot of Jews.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE PRINCIPAL JEWS</span><br /> -<br /> -Sir, even dogs have daylight, and we pay.<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN</span><br /> -<br /> -But who are ye in rags and rotten shoes,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You dirty-bearded, blocking up the way?</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE PILGRIMS</span><br /> -<br /> -We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Always a little further: it may be</span><br /> -Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Across that angry or that glimmering sea,</span><br /> -White on a throne or guarded in a cave<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There lives a prophet who can understand</span><br /> -Why men were born: but surely we are brave,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE CHIEF MERCHANT</span><br /> -<br /> -We gnaw the nail of hurry. Master, away!<br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">ONE OF THE WOMEN</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O turn your eyes to where your children stand.</span><br /> -Is not Bagdad the beautiful? O stay!<br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE MERCHANTS</span> (<i>in chorus</i>)<br /> -<br /> -We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">AN OLD MAN</span><br /> -<br /> -Have you not girls and garlands in your homes,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Eunuchs and Syrian boys at your command?</span><br /> -Seek not excess: God hateth him who roams!<br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE MERCHANTS</span> (<i>in chorus</i>)<br /> -<br /> -We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">A PILGRIM WITH A BEAUTIFUL VOICE</span><br /> -<br /> -Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,</span><br /> -And softly through the silence beat the bells<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">A MERCHANT</span><br /> -<br /> -We travel not for trafficking alone:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:</span><br /> -For lust of knowing what should not be known<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN</span><br /> -<br /> -Open the gate, O watchman of the night!<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE WATCHMAN</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ho, travellers, I open. For what land</span><br /> -Leave you the dim-moon city of delight?<br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE MERCHANTS</span> (<i>with a shout</i>)<br /> -We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.<br /> -<br /> -[<i>The Caravan passes through the gate</i>]<br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">THE WATCHMAN</span> (<i>consoling the women</i>)<br /> -<br /> -What would ye, ladies? It was ever thus.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Men are unwise and curiously planned.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">A WOMAN</span><br /> -<br /> -They have their dreams, and do not think of us.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="font-size: 0.8em;">VOICES OF THE CARAVAN</span> (<i>in the distance, singing</i>)<br /> -We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> -<span class="author">ROBIN FLOWER</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> -LA VIE CEREBRALE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I am alone—alone;<br /> -There is nothing—only I,<br /> -And, when I will to die,<br /> -All must be gone.<br /> -<br /> -Eternal thought in me<br /> -Puts on the dress of time<br /> -And builds a stage to mime<br /> -Its listless tragedy.<br /> -<br /> -And in that dress of time<br /> -And on that stage of space<br /> -I place, change, and replace<br /> -Life to a wilful rime.<br /> -<br /> -I summon at my whim<br /> -All things that are, that were:<br /> -The high incredible air,<br /> -Where stars—my creatures—swim.<br /> -<br /> -I dream, and from my mind<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>The dead, the living come;<br /> -I build a marble Rome,<br /> -I give it to the wind.<br /> -<br /> -Athens and Babylon<br /> -I breathe upon the night,<br /> -Troy towers for my delight<br /> -And crumbles stone by stone.<br /> -<br /> -I change with white and green<br /> -The seasons hour by hour;<br /> -I think—it is a flower,<br /> -Think—and the flower has been.<br /> -<br /> -Men, women, things, a stream<br /> -That wavers and flows by,<br /> -A lonely dreamer, I<br /> -Build and cast down the dream.<br /> -<br /> -And one day weary grown<br /> -Of all my brain has wrought,<br /> -I shall destroy my thought<br /> -And I and all be gone.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> -THE PIPES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -With the spring awaken other springs,<br /> -Those swallows' wings are shadowed by other wings<br /> -And another thrush behind that glad bird sings.<br /> -<br /> -A multitude are the flowers, but multitudes<br /> -Blossom and waver and breathe from forgotten woods,<br /> -And in silent places an older silence broods.<br /> -<br /> -With the spring long-buried springs in my heart awaken,<br /> -Time takes the years, but the springs he has not taken,<br /> -My thoughts with a boy's wild thoughts are mixed and shaken.<br /> -<br /> -And here amid inland fields by the down's green shoulder<br /> -I remember an ancient sea and mountains older,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> -Older than all but time, skies sterner and colder.<br /> -<br /> -When the swift spring night on the sea and the mountains fell<br /> -In the hush of the solemn hills I remember well<br /> -The far pipes calling and the tale they had to tell.<br /> -<br /> -Sad was the tale, ah! sad beyond all saying<br /> -The lament of the lonely pipes in the evening playing<br /> -Lost in the glens, in the still, dark pines delaying.<br /> -<br /> -And now with returning spring I remember all,<br /> -On southern fields those mountain shadows fall,<br /> -Those wandering pipes in the downland evening call.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> -SAY NOT THAT BEAUTY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Say not that beauty is an idle thing<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And gathered lightly as a wayside flower</span><br /> -That on the trembling verges of the spring<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Knows but the sweet survival of an hour.</span><br /> -For 'tis not so. Through dedicated days<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And foiled adventure of deliberate nights</span><br /> -We lose and find and stumble in the ways<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That lead to the far confluence of delights.</span><br /> -Not with the earthly eye and fleshly ear,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But lifted far above mortality,</span><br /> -We see at last the eternal hills, and hear<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sighing of the universal sea;</span><br /> -And kneeling breathless in the holy place<br /> -We know immortal Beauty face to face.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> -<span class="author">JOHN FREEMAN</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> -THE WAKERS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The joyous morning ran and kissed the grass<br /> -And drew his fingers through her sleeping hair,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And cried, "Before thy flowers are well awake</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rise, and the lingering darkness from thee shake.</span><br /> -<br /> -"Before the daisy and the sorrel buy<br /> -Their brightness back from that close-folding night,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Come, and the shadows from thy bosom shake,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Awake from thy thick sleep, awake, awake!"</span><br /> -<br /> -Then the grass of that mounded meadow stirred<br /> -Above the Roman bones that may not stir<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Though joyous morning whispered, shouted, sang:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The grass stirred as that happy music rang.</span><br /> -<br /> -O, what a wondrous rustling everywhere!<br /> -The steady shadows shook and thinned and died,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The shining grass flashed brightness back for brightness,</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">And sleep was gone, and there was heavenly lightness.</span><br /> -<br /> -As if she had found wings, light as the wind,<br /> -The grass flew, bent with the wind, from east to west,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chased by one wild grey cloud, and flashing all</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her dews for happiness to hear morning call ...</span><br /> -<br /> -But even as I stepped out the brightness dimmed,<br /> -I saw the fading edge of all delight.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sober morning waked the drowsy herds,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And there was the old scolding of the birds.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> -THE BODY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When I had dreamed and dreamed what woman's beauty was,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And how that beauty seen from unseen surely flowed,</span><br /> -I turned and dreamed again, but sleeping now no more:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My eyes shut and my mind with inward vision glowed.</span><br /> -<br /> -"I did not think!" I cried, seeing that wavering shape<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That steadied and then wavered, as a cherry bough in June</span><br /> -Lifts and falls in the wind—each fruit a fruit of light;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And then she stood as clear as an unclouded moon.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> -As clear and still she stood, moonlike remotely near;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I saw and heard her breathe, I years and years away.</span><br /> -Her light streamed through the years, I saw her clear and still,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shape and spirit together mingling night with day.</span><br /> -<br /> -Water falling, falling with the curve of time<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Over green-hued rock, then plunging to its pool</span><br /> -Far, far below, a falling spear of light;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Water falling golden from the sun but moonlike cool:</span><br /> -<br /> -Water has the curve of her shoulder and breast,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Water falls as straight as her body rose,</span><br /> -Water her brightness has from neck to still feet,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Water crystal-cold as her cold body flows.</span><br /> -<br /> -But not water has the colour I saw when I dreamed,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor water such strength has. I joyed to behold</span><br /> -How the blood lit her body with lamps of fire<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And made the flesh glow that like water gleamed cold.</span><br /> -<br /> -A flame in her arms and in each finger flame,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And flame in her bosom, flame above, below,</span><br /> -The curve of climbing flame in her waist and her thighs;µ<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From foot to head did flame into red flame flow.</span><br /> -<br /> -I knew how beauty seen from unseen must rise,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How the body's joy for more than body's use was made.</span><br /> -I knew then how the body is the body of the mind,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And how the mind's own fire beneath the cool skin played.</span><br /> -<br /> -O shape that once to have seen is to see evermore,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Falling stream that falls to the deeps of the mind,</span><br /> -Fire that once lit burns while aught burns in the world,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Foot to head a flame moving in the spirit's wind!</span><br /> -<br /> -If these eyes could see what these eyes have not seen—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The inward vision clear—how should I look for</span><br /> -Knowing that beauty's self rose visible in the world<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Over age that darkens, and griefs that destroy?</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> -STONE TREES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Last night a sword-light in the sky<br /> -Flashed a swift terror on the dark.<br /> -In that sharp light the fields did lie<br /> -Naked and stone-like; each tree stood<br /> -Like a tranced woman, bound and stark.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Far off the wood</span><br /> -With darkness ridged the riven dark.<br /> -<br /> -The cows astonished stared with fear,<br /> -And sheep crept to the knees of cows,<br /> -And conies to their burrows slid,<br /> -And rooks were still in rigid boughs,<br /> -And all things else were still or hid.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From all the wood</span><br /> -Came but the owl's hoot, ghostly, clear.<br /> -<br /> -In that cold trance the earth was held<br /> -It seemed an age, or time was nought.<br /> -Sure never from that stone-like field<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> -Sprang golden corn, nor from those chill<br /> -Gray granite trees was music wrought.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In all the wood</span><br /> -Even the tall poplar hung stone still.<br /> -<br /> -It seemed an age, or time was none ...<br /> -Slowly the earth heaved out of sleep<br /> -And shivered, and the trees of stone<br /> -Bent and sighed in the gusty wind,<br /> -And rain swept as birds nocking sweep.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Far off the wood</span><br /> -Rolled the slow thunders on the wind.<br /> -<br /> -From all the wood came no brave bird,<br /> -No song broke through the close-fall'n night,<br /> -Nor any sound from cowering herd:<br /> -Only a dog's long lonely howl<br /> -When from the window poured pale light.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And from the wood</span><br /> -The hoot came ghostly of the owl.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> -MORE THAN SWEET<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The noisy fire,<br /> -The drumming wind,<br /> -The creaking trees,<br /> -And all that hum<br /> -Of summer air<br /> -And all the long inquietude<br /> -Of breaking seas—<br /> -<br /> -Sweet and delightful are<br /> -In loneliness.<br /> -But more than these<br /> -The quiet light<br /> -From the morn's sun<br /> -And night's astonished moon,<br /> -Falling gently upon breaking seas.<br /> -<br /> -Such quietness<br /> -Another beauty is—<br /> -Ah, and those stars<br /> -So gravely still<br /> -More than light, than beauty pour<br /> -Upon the strangeness<br /> -Of the heart's breaking seas.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> -WAKING<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Lying beneath a hundred seas of sleep<br /> -With all those heavy waves flowing over me,<br /> -And I unconscious of the rolling night<br /> -Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep<br /> -Risen, I felt the wandering seas no longer cover me<br /> -But only air and light ...<br /> -<br /> -It was a sleep<br /> -So dark and so bewilderingly deep<br /> -That only death's were deeper or completer,<br /> -And none when I awoke stranger or sweeter.<br /> -Awake, the strangeness still hung over me<br /> -As I with far-strayed senses stared at the light.<br /> -<br /> -I—and who was I?<br /> -Saw—oh, with what unaccustomed eye!<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> -The room was strange and everything strange<br /> -Like a strange room entered by wild moonlight;<br /> -And yet familiar as the light swept over me<br /> -And I rose from the night.<br /> -<br /> -Strange—yet stranger I.<br /> -And as one climbs from water up to land<br /> -Fumbling for weedy steps with foot and hand,<br /> -So I for yesterdays whereon to climb<br /> -To this remote and new-struck isle of time.<br /> -But I found not myself nor yesterday—<br /> -<br /> -Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep<br /> -Risen, I felt the seas no longer over me<br /> -But only air and light.<br /> -Yes, like one clutching at a ring I heard<br /> -The household noises as they stirred,<br /> -And holding fast I wondered, What were they?<br /> -<br /> -I felt a strange hand lying at my side,<br /> -Limp and cool. I touched it and knew it mine.<br /> -A murmur, and I remembered how the wind died<br /> -In the near aspens. Then<br /> -Strange things were no more strange.<br /> -I travelled among common thoughts again;<br /> -<br /> -And felt the new-forged links of that strong chain<br /> -That binds me to myself, and this to-day<br /> -To yesterday. I heard it rattling near<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> -With a no more astonished ear.<br /> -And I had lost the strangeness of that sleep,<br /> -No more the long night rolled its great seas over me.<br /> -<br /> -—O, too anxious I!<br /> -For in this press of things familiar<br /> -I have lost all that clung<br /> -Round me awaking of strangeness and such sweetness.<br /> -Nothing now is strange<br /> -Except the man that woke and then was I.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> -THE CHAIR<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The chair was made<br /> -By hands long dead,<br /> -Polished by many bodies sitting there,<br /> -Until the wood-lines flowed as clean as waves.<br /> -<br /> -Mine sat restless there,<br /> -Or propped to stare<br /> -Hugged the low kitchen with fond eyes<br /> -Or tired eyes that looked at nothing at all.<br /> -<br /> -Or watched from the smoke rise<br /> -The flame's snake-eyes,<br /> -Up the black-bearded chimney leap;<br /> -Then on my shoulder my dull head would drop.<br /> -<br /> -And half asleep<br /> -I heard her creep—Her<br /> -never-singing lips shut fast,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> -Fearing to wake me by a careless breath.<br /> -<br /> -Then, at last,<br /> -My lids upcast,<br /> -Our eyes met, I smiled and she smiled,<br /> -And I shut mine again and truly slept.<br /> -<br /> -Was I that child<br /> -Fretful, sick, wild?<br /> -Was that you moving soft and soft<br /> -Between the rooms if I but played at sleep?<br /> -<br /> -Or if I laughed,<br /> -Talked, cried, or coughed,<br /> -You smiled too, just perceptibly,<br /> -Or your large kind brown eyes said, O poor boy!<br /> -<br /> -From the fireside I<br /> -Could see the narrow sky<br /> -Through the barred heavy window panes,<br /> -Could hear the sparrows quarrelling round the<br /> -lilac;<br /> -<br /> -And hear the heavy rains<br /> -Choking in the roof-drains:—<br /> -Else of the world I nothing heard<br /> -Or nothing remember now. But most I loved<br /> -<br /> -To watch when you stirred<br /> -Busily like a bird<br /> -At household doings; with hands floured<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> -Mixing a magic with your cakes and tarts.<br /> -<br /> -O into me, sick, froward,<br /> -Yourself you poured;<br /> -In all those days and weeks when I<br /> -Sat, slept, woke, whimpered, wondered and slept again.<br /> -<br /> -Now but a memory<br /> -To bless and harry me<br /> -Remains of you still swathed with care;<br /> -Myself your chief care, sitting by the hearth<br /> -<br /> -Propped in the pillowed chair,<br /> -Following you with tired stare,<br /> -And my hand following the wood lines<br /> -By dead hands smoothed and followed many years.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> -THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -And now, while the dark vast earth shakes and rocks<br /> -In this wild dream-like snare of mortal shocks,<br /> -How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars<br /> -On these magnificent, cruel wars?—Venus,<br /> -that brushes with her shining lips<br /> -(Surely!) the wakeful edge of the world and mocks<br /> -With hers its all ungentle wantonness?—Or<br /> -the large moon (pricked by the spars of ships<br /> -Creeping and creeping in their restlessness),<br /> -The moon pouring strange light on things more strange,<br /> -Looks she unheedfully on seas and lands<br /> -Trembling with change and fear of counter-change?<br /> -<br /> -O, not earth trembles, but the stars, the stars!<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> -The sky is shaken and the cool air is quivering.<br /> -I cannot look up to the crowded height<br /> -And see the fair stars trembling in their light,<br /> -For thinking of the starlike spirits of men<br /> -Crowding the earth and with great passion quivering:—<br /> -Stars quenched in anger and hate, stars sick with pity.<br /> -I cannot look up to the naked skies<br /> -Because a sorrow on dark midnight lies,<br /> -Death, on the living world of sense;<br /> -Because on my own land a shadow lies<br /> -That may not rise;<br /> -Because from bare grey hillside and rich city<br /> -Streams of uncomprehending sadness pour,<br /> -Thwarting the eager spirit's pure intelligence...<br /> -How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars<br /> -On these magnificent, cruel wars?<br /> -<br /> -Stars trembled in broad heaven, faint with pity.<br /> -An hour to dawn I looked. Beside the trees<br /> -Wet mist shaped other trees that branching rose,<br /> -Covering the woods and putting out the stars.<br /> -There was no murmur on the seas,<br /> -No wind blew—only the wandering air that grows<br /> -With dawn, then murmurs, sighs,<br /> -And dies.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> -The mist climbed slowly, putting out the stars,<br /> -And the earth trembled when the stars were gone;<br /> -And moving strangely everywhere upon<br /> -The trembling earth, thickened the watery mist.<br /> -<br /> -And for a time the holy things are veiled.<br /> -England's wise thoughts are swords; her quiet hours<br /> -Are trodden underfoot like wayside flowers,<br /> -And every English heart is England's wholly.<br /> -In starless night<br /> -A serious passion streams the heaven with light.<br /> -A common beating is in the air—<br /> -The heart of England throbbing everywhere.<br /> -And all her roads are nerves of noble thought,<br /> -And all her people's brain is but her brain;<br /> -And all her history, less her shame,<br /> -Is part of her requickened consciousness.<br /> -Her courage rises clean again.<br /> -<br /> -Even in victory there hides defeat;<br /> -The spirit's murdered though the body survives,<br /> -Except the cause for which a people strives<br /> -Burn with no covetous, foul heat.<br /> -Fights she against herself who infamously draws<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> -The sword against man's secret spiritual laws,<br /> -But thou, England, because a bitter heel<br /> -Hath sought to bruise the brain, the sensitive will,<br /> -The conscience of the world,<br /> -For this, England, art risen, and shalt fight<br /> -Purely through long profoundest night,<br /> -<br /> -Making their quarrel thine who are grieved like thee;<br /> -And (if to thee the stars yield victory)<br /> -Tempering their hate of the great foe that hurled<br /> -Vainly her strength against the conscience of the world.<br /> -<br /> -I looked again, or dreamed I looked, and saw<br /> -The stars again and all their peace again.<br /> -The moving mist had gone, and shining still<br /> -The moon went high and pale above the hill.<br /> -Not now those lights were trembling in the vast<br /> -Ways of the nervy heaven, nor trembled earth:<br /> -Profound and calm they gazed as the soft-shod hours passed.<br /> -And with less fear (not with less awe,<br /> -Remembering, England, all the blood and pain)<br /> -How look, I cried, you stern and solitary stars<br /> -On these disastrous wars!<br /> -<br /> -August, 1914.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> -SHADOWS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The shadow of the lantern on the wall,<br /> -The lantern hanging from the twisted beam,<br /> -The eye that sees the lantern, shadow and all.<br /> -<br /> -The crackle of the sinking fire in the grate,<br /> -The far train, the slow echo in the coombe,<br /> -The ear that hears fire, train and echo and all.<br /> -<br /> -The loveliness that is the secret shape<br /> -Of once-seen, sweet and oft-dreamed loveliness,<br /> -The brain that builds shape, memory, dream and all ...<br /> -<br /> -A white moon stares Time's thinning fabric through,<br /> -And makes substantial insubstantial seem,<br /> -And shapes immortal mortal as a dream;<br /> -And eye and brain flicker as shadows do<br /> -Restlessly dancing on a cloudy wall.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> -<span class="author">ROBERT GRAVES</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> -STAR-TALK<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -"Are you awake, Gemelli,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This frosty night?"</span><br /> -"We'll be awake till reveille,<br /> -Which is Sunrise," say the Gemelli,<br /> -"It's no good trying to go to sleep:<br /> -If there's wine to be got we'll drink it deep,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But rest is hopeless to-night,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But rest is hopeless to-night."</span><br /> -<br /> -"Are you cold too, poor Pleiads,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This frosty night?"</span><br /> -"Yes, and so are the Hyads:<br /> -See us cuddle and hug," say the Pleiads,<br /> -"All six in a ring: it keeps us warm:<br /> -We huddle together like birds in a storm:<br /> -It's bitter weather to-night,<br /> -It's bitter weather to-night."<br /> -<br /> -"What do you hunt, Orion,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> -This starry night?"<br /> -"The Ram, the Bull and the Lion<br /> -And the Great Bear," says Orion,<br /> -"With my starry quiver and beautiful belt<br /> -I am trying to find a good thick pelt<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To warm my shoulders to-night,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To warm my shoulders to-night."</span><br /> -<br /> -"Did you hear that, Great She-bear,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This frosty night?"</span><br /> -"Yes, he's talking of stripping <i>me</i> bare<br /> -Of my own big fur," says the She-bear.<br /> -"I'm afraid of the man and his terrible arrow:<br /> -The thought of it chills my bones to the marrow,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the frost so cruel to-night!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the frost so cruel to-night!"</span><br /> -<br /> -"How is your trade, Aquarius,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This frosty night?"</span><br /> -"Complaints is many and various<br /> -And my feet are cold," says Aquarius,<br /> -"There's Venus objects to Dolphin-scales,<br /> -And Mars to Crab-spawn found in my pails,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the pump has frozen to-night,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the pump has frozen to-night."</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> -TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WARS—<br /> -FOR THE FOURTH TIME<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -It doesn't matter what's the cause,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What wrong they say we're righting,</span><br /> -A curse for treaties, bonds and laws,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When we're to do the fighting!</span><br /> -And since we lads are proud and true,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What else remains to do?</span><br /> -<br /> -Lucasta, when to France your man<br /> -Returns his fourth time, hating war,<br /> -Yet laughs as calmly as he can<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And flings an oath, but says no more,</span><br /> -That is not courage, that's not fear—Lucasta<br /> -he is Fusilier,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And his pride sends him here.</span><br /> -<br /> -Let statesmen bluster, bark and bray<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And so decide who started</span><br /> -This bloody war, and who's to pay<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">But he must be stout-hearted,</span><br /> -Must sit and stake with quiet breath,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Playing at cards with Death.</span><br /> -<br /> -Don't plume yourself he fights for you;<br /> -It is no courage, love or hate<br /> -That lets us do the things we do;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It's pride that makes the heart so great;</span><br /> -It is not anger, no, nor fear—Lucasta<br /> -he's a Fusilier,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And his pride keeps him here.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> -NOT DEAD<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,<br /> -I know that David's with me here again.<br /> -All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.<br /> -Caressingly I stroke<br /> -Rough bark of the friendly oak.<br /> -A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his.<br /> -Turf burns with pleasant smoke;<br /> -I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.<br /> -All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.<br /> -Over the whole wood in a little while<br /> -Breaks his slow smile.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> -IN THE WILDERNESS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Christ of his gentleness<br /> -Thirsting and hungering,<br /> -Walked in the wilderness;<br /> -Soft words of grace He spoke<br /> -Unto lost desert-folk<br /> -That listened wondering.<br /> -He heard the bittern's call<br /> -From ruined palace wall,<br /> -Answered them brotherly.<br /> -He held communion<br /> -With the she-pelican<br /> -Of lonely piety.<br /> -Basilisk, cockatrice,<br /> -Flocked to His homilies,<br /> -With mail of dread device,<br /> -With monstrous barbed stings,<br /> -With eager dragon-eyes;<br /> -Great rats on leather wings<br /> -And poor blind broken things,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> -Foul in their miseries.<br /> -And ever with Him went,<br /> -Of all His wanderings<br /> -Comrade, with ragged coat,<br /> -Gaunt ribs—poor innocent—<br /> -Bleeding foot, burning throat,<br /> -The guileless old scape-goat;<br /> -For forty nights and days<br /> -Followed in Jesus' ways,<br /> -Sure guard behind Him kept,<br /> -Tears like a lover wept.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> -NEGLECTFUL EDWARD<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<i>Nancy</i><br /> -<br /> -Edward back from the Indian Sea,<br /> -"What have you brought for Nancy?"<br /> -<br /> -<i>Edward</i><br /> -<br /> -"A rope of pearls and a gold earring,<br /> -And a bird of the East that will not sing.<br /> -A carven tooth, a box with a key—"<br /> -<br /> -<i>Nancy</i><br /> -<br /> -"God be praised you are back," says she,<br /> -"Have you nothing more for your Nancy?"<br /> -<br /> -<i>Edward</i><br /> -<br /> -"Long as I sailed the Indian Sea<br /> -I gathered all for your fancy:<br /> -Toys and silk and jewels I bring,<br /> -And a bird of the East that will not sing:<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> -What more can you want, dear girl, from me?"<br /> -<br /> -<i>Nancy</i><br /> -<br /> -"God be praised you are back," said she,<br /> -"Have you nothing better for Nancy?"<br /> -<br /> -<i>Edward</i><br /> -<br /> -"Safe and home from the Indian Sea<br /> -And nothing to take your fancy?"<br /> -<br /> -<i>Nancy</i><br /> -<br /> -"You can keep your pearls and your gold earring,<br /> -And your bird of the East that will not sing,<br /> -But, Ned, have you <i>nothing</i> more for me<br /> -Than heathenish gew-gaw toys?" says she,<br /> -"Have you nothing better for Nancy?"<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> -<span class="author">JULIAN GRENFELL</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Born 1888</i><br /> -<i>Killed in Action 1915</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> -TO A BLACK GREYHOUND<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Shining black in the shining light,<br /> -Inky black in the golden sun,<br /> -Graceful as the swallow's flight,<br /> -Light as swallow, winged one,<br /> -Swift as driven hurricane,<br /> -Double-sinewed stretch and spring,<br /> -Muffled thud of flying feet—<br /> -See the black dog galloping,<br /> -Hear his wild foot-beat.<br /> -<br /> -See him lie when the day is dead,<br /> -Black curves curled on the boarded floor.<br /> -Sleepy eyes, my sleepy-head—<br /> -Eyes that were aflame before.<br /> -Gentle now, they burn no more;<br /> -Gentle now and softly warm,<br /> -With the fire that made them bright<br /> -Hidden—as when after storm<br /> -Softly falls the night.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> -INTO BATTLE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The naked earth is warm with Spring,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And with green grass and bursting trees</span><br /> -Leans to the sun's gaze glorying,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And quivers in the sunny breeze;</span><br /> -And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And a striving evermore for these;</span><br /> -And he is dead who will not fight;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And who dies fighting has increase.</span><br /> -<br /> -The fighting man shall from the sun<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;</span><br /> -Speed with the light-foot winds to run,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And with the trees to newer birth;</span><br /> -And find, when fighting shall be done,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Great rest, and fullness after dearth.</span><br /> -<br /> -All the bright company of Heaven<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hold him in their high comradeship,</span><br /> -The Dog-Star and the Sisters Seven,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a> -</span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Orion's Belt and sworded hip.</span><br /> -<br /> -The woodland trees that stand together,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They stand to him each one a friend,</span><br /> -They gently speak in the windy weather;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They guide to valley and ridges' end.</span><br /> -<br /> -The kestrel hovering by day,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the little owls that call by night,</span><br /> -Bid him be swift and keen as they,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As keen of ear, as swift of sight.</span><br /> -<br /> -The blackbird sings to him, "Brother, brother,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If this be the last song you shall sing</span><br /> -Sing well, for you may not sing another;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Brother, sing."</span><br /> -<br /> -In dreary, doubtful, waiting hours,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Before the brazen frenzy starts,</span><br /> -The horses show him nobler powers;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O patient eyes, courageous hearts</span><br /> -<br /> -And when the burning moment breaks,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And all things else are out of mind,</span><br /> -And only Joy of Battle takes<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Him by the throat, and makes him blind</span><br /> -<br /> -Through joy and blindness he shall know,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not caring much to know, that still,</span><br /> -Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That it be not the Destined Will.</span><br /> -<br /> -The thundering line of battle stands,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And in the air Death moans and sings;</span><br /> -But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Night shall fold him in soft wings.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> -<span class="author">IVOR GURNEY</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> -TO THE POET BEFORE BATTLE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Now, youth, the hour of thy dread passion comes:<br /> -Thy lovely things must all be laid away;<br /> -And thou, as others, must face the riven day<br /> -Unstirred by rattle of the rolling drums,<br /> -Or bugles' strident cry. When mere noise numbs<br /> -The sense of being, the fear-sick soul doth sway,<br /> -Remember thy great craft's honour, that they may say<br /> -Nothing in shame of poets. Then the crumbs<br /> -Of praise the little versemen joyed to take<br /> -Shall be forgotten: then they must know we are,<br /> -For all our skill in words, equal in might<br /> -And strong of mettle as those we honoured; make<br /> -The name of poet terrible in just war,<br /> -And like a crown of honour upon the fight.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> -SONG OF PAIN AND BEAUTY<br /> -<br /> -To M. M. S.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -O may these days of pain,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">These wasted-seeming days,</span><br /> -Somewhere reflower again<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With scent and savour of praise,</span><br /> -Draw out of memory all bitterness<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of night with Thy sun's rays.</span><br /> -<br /> -And strengthen Thou in me<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The love of men here found,</span><br /> -And eager charity,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That, out of difficult ground,</span><br /> -Spring like flowers in barren deserts, or<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like light, or a lovely sound.</span><br /> -<br /> -A simpler heart than mine<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Might have seen beauty clear</span><br /> -When I could see no sign<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of Thee, but only fear.</span><br /> -Strengthen me, make me to see<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy beauty always</span><br /> -In every happening here.<br /> -<br /> -<i>In Trenches, March</i> 1917.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> -<span class="author">RALPH HODGSON</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> -EVE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Eve, with her basket, was<br /> -Deep in the bells and grass,<br /> -Wading in bells and grass<br /> -Up to her knees,<br /> -Picking a dish of sweet<br /> -Berries and plums to eat,<br /> -Down in the bells and grass<br /> -Under the trees.<br /> -<br /> -Mute as a mouse in a<br /> -Corner the cobra lay,<br /> -Curled round a bough of the<br /> -Cinnamon tall......<br /> -Now to get even and<br /> -Humble proud heaven and<br /> -Now was the moment or<br /> -Never at all.<br /> -<br /> -"Eva!" Each syllable<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> -Light as a flower fell,<br /> -"Eva!" he whispered the<br /> -Wondering maid,<br /> -Soft as a bubble sung<br /> -Out of a linnet's lung,<br /> -Soft and most silverly<br /> -"Eva!" he said.<br /> -<br /> -Picture that orchard sprite,<br /> -Eve, with her body white,<br /> -Supple and smooth to her<br /> -Slim finger tips,<br /> -Wondering, listening,<br /> -Eve with a berry<br /> -Half way to her lips.<br /> -<br /> -Oh had our simple Eve<br /> -Seen through the make-believe!<br /> -Had she but known the<br /> -Pretender he was!<br /> -Out of the boughs he came<br /> -Whispering still her name<br /> -Tumbling in twenty rings<br /> -Into the grass.<br /> -<br /> -Here was the strangest pair<br /> -In the world anywhere;<br /> -Eve in the bells and grass<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> -Kneeling, and he<br /> -Telling his story low....<br /> -Singing birds saw them go<br /> -Down the dark path to<br /> -The Blasphemous Tree.<br /> -<br /> -Oh what a clatter when<br /> -Titmouse and Jenny Wren<br /> -Saw him successful and<br /> -Taking his leave!<br /> -How the birds rated him,<br /> -How they all hated him!<br /> -How they all pitied<br /> -Poor motherless' Eve!<br /> -<br /> -Picture her crying<br /> -Outside in the lane,<br /> -Eve, with no dish of sweet<br /> -Berries and plums to eat,<br /> -Haunting the gate of the<br /> -Orchard in vain......<br /> -Picture the lewd delight<br /> -Under the hill to-night—<br /> -"Eva!" the toast goes round,<br /> -"Eva!" again.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> -THE BULL<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -See an old unhappy bull,<br /> -Sick in soul and body both,<br /> -Slouching in the undergrowth<br /> -Of the forest beautiful,<br /> -Banished from the herd he led,<br /> -Bulls and cows a thousand head.<br /> -<br /> -Cranes and gaudy parrots go<br /> -Up and down the burning sky;<br /> -Tree-top cats purr drowsily<br /> -In the dim-day green below;<br /> -And troops of monkeys, nutting, some,<br /> -All disputing, go and come;<br /> -<br /> -And things abominable sit<br /> -Picking offal buck or swine,<br /> -On the mess and over it<br /> -Burnished flies and beetles shine,<br /> -And spiders big as bladders lie<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> -Under hemlocks ten foot high;<br /> -<br /> -And a dotted serpent curled<br /> -Round and round and round a tree,<br /> -Yellowing its greenery,<br /> -Keeps a watch on all the world,<br /> -All the world and this old bull<br /> -In the forest beautiful.<br /> -<br /> -Bravely by his fall he came:<br /> -One he led, a bull of blood<br /> -Newly come to lustihood,<br /> -Fought and put his prince to shame,<br /> -Snuffed and pawed the prostrate head<br /> -Tameless even while it bled.<br /> -<br /> -There they left him, every one,<br /> -Left him there without a lick,<br /> -Left him for the birds to pick,<br /> -Left him there for carrion,<br /> -Vilely from their bosom cast<br /> -Wisdom, worth and love at last.<br /> -<br /> -When the lion left his lair<br /> -And roared his beauty through the hills,<br /> -And the vultures pecked their quills<br /> -And flew into the middle air,<br /> -Then this prince no more to reign<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> -Came to life and lived again,<br /> -<br /> -He snuffed the herd in far retreat,<br /> -He saw the blood upon the ground,<br /> -And snuffed the burning airs around<br /> -Still with beevish odours sweet,<br /> -While the blood ran down his head<br /> -And his mouth ran slaver red.<br /> -<br /> -Pity him, this fallen chief,<br /> -All his splendour, all his strength,<br /> -All his body's breadth and length<br /> -Dwindled down with shame and grief,<br /> -Half the bull he was before,<br /> -Bones and leather, nothing more.<br /> -<br /> -See him standing dewlap-deep<br /> -In the rushes at the lake,<br /> -Surly, stupid, half asleep,<br /> -Waiting for his heart to break<br /> -And the birds to join the flies<br /> -Feasting at his bloodshot eyes,—<br /> -<br /> -Standing with his head hung down<br /> -In a stupor, dreaming things:<br /> -Green savannas, jungles brown,<br /> -Battlefields and bellowings,<br /> -Bulls undone and lions dead<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> -And vultures flapping overhead.<br /> -<br /> -Dreaming things: of days he spent<br /> -With his mother gaunt and lean<br /> -In the valley warm and green,<br /> -Full of baby wonderment,<br /> -Blinking out of silly eyes<br /> -At a hundred mysteries;<br /> -<br /> -Dreaming over once again<br /> -How he wandered with a throng<br /> -Of bulls and cows a thousand strong,<br /> -Wandered on from plain to plain,<br /> -Up the hill and down the dale,<br /> -Always at his mother's tail;<br /> -<br /> -How he lagged behind the herd,<br /> -Lagged and tottered, weak of limb,<br /> -And she turned and ran to him<br /> -Blaring at the loathly bird<br /> -Stationed always in the skies,<br /> -Waiting for the flesh that dies.<br /> -<br /> -Dreaming maybe of a day<br /> -When her drained and drying paps<br /> -Turned him to the sweets and saps,<br /> -Richer fountains by the way,<br /> -And she left the bull she bore<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> -And he looked to her no more;<br /> -<br /> -And his little frame grew stout,<br /> -And his little legs grew strong,<br /> -And the way was not so long;<br /> -And his little horns came out,<br /> -And he played at butting trees<br /> -And boulder-stones and tortoises,<br /> -<br /> -Joined a game of knobby skulls<br /> -With the youngsters of his year,<br /> -All the other little bulls,<br /> -Learning both to bruise and bear,<br /> -Learning how to stand a shock<br /> -Like a little bull of rock.<br /> -<br /> -Dreaming of a day less dim,<br /> -Dreaming of a time less far,<br /> -When the faint but certain star<br /> -Of destiny burned clear for him,<br /> -And a fierce and wild unrest<br /> -Broke the quiet of his breast.<br /> -<br /> -And the gristles of his youth<br /> -Hardened in his comely pow,<br /> -And he came to righting growth,<br /> -Beat his bull and won his cow,<br /> -And flew his tail and trampled off<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> -Past the tallest, vain enough,<br /> -<br /> -And curved about in splendour full<br /> -And curved again and snuffed the airs<br /> -As who should say Come out who dares I<br /> -And all beheld a bull, a Bull,<br /> -And knew that here was surely one<br /> -That backed for no bull, fearing none.<br /> -<br /> -And the leader of the herd<br /> -Looked and saw, and beat the ground,<br /> -And shook the forest with his sound,<br /> -Bellowed at the loathly bird<br /> -Stationed always in the skies,<br /> -Waiting for the flesh that dies.<br /> -<br /> -Dreaming, this old bull forlorn,<br /> -Surely dreaming of the hour<br /> -When he came to sultan power,<br /> -And they owned him master-horn,<br /> -Chiefest bull of all among<br /> -Bulls and cows a thousand strong.<br /> -<br /> -And in all the tramping herd<br /> -Not a bull that barred his way,<br /> -Not a cow that said him nay,<br /> -Not a bull or cow that erred<br /> -In the furnace of his look<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> -Dared a second, worse rebuke;<br /> -<br /> -Not in all the forest wide,<br /> -Jungle, thicket, pasture, fen,<br /> -Not another dared him then,<br /> -Dared him and again defied;<br /> -Not a sovereign buck or boar<br /> -Came a second time for more.<br /> -<br /> -Not a serpent that survived<br /> -Once the terrors of his hoof<br /> -Risked a second time reproof,<br /> -Came a second time and lived,<br /> -Not a serpent in its skin<br /> -Came again for discipline;<br /> -<br /> -Not a leopard bright as flame,<br /> -Flashing fingerhooks of steel,<br /> -That a wooden tree might feel,<br /> -Met his fury once and came<br /> -For a second reprimand,<br /> -Not a leopard in the land.<br /> -<br /> -Not a lion of them all<br /> -Not a lion of the hills,<br /> -Hero of a thousand kills,<br /> -Dared a second fight and fall,<br /> -Dared that ram terrific twice,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> -Paid a second time the price....<br /> -<br /> -Pity him, this dupe of dream,<br /> -Leader of the herd again<br /> -Only in his daft old brain,<br /> -Once again the bull supreme<br /> -And bull enough to bear the part<br /> -Only in his tameless heart.<br /> -<br /> -Pity him that he must wake;<br /> -Even now the swarm of flies<br /> -Blackening his bloodshot eyes<br /> -Bursts and blusters round the lake,<br /> -Scattered from the feast half-fed,<br /> -By great shadows overhead.<br /> -<br /> -And the dreamer turns away<br /> -From his visionary herds<br /> -And his splendid yesterday,<br /> -Turns to meet the loathly birds<br /> -Flocking round him from the skies,<br /> -Waiting for the flesh that dies.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> -THE SONG OF HONOUR<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I climbed a hill as light fell short,<br /> -And rooks came home in scramble sort,<br /> -And filled the trees and flapped and fought<br /> -And sang themselves to sleep;<br /> -An owl from nowhere with no sound<br /> -Swung by and soon was nowhere found,<br /> -I heard him calling half-way round,<br /> -Holloing loud and deep;<br /> -A pair of stars, faint pins of light,<br /> -Then many a star, sailed into sight,<br /> -And all the stars, the flower of night,<br /> -Were round me at a leap;<br /> -To tell how still the valleys lay<br /> -I heard a watchdog miles away......<br /> -And bells of distant sheep.<br /> -<br /> -I heard no more of bird or bell,<br /> -The mastiff in a slumber fell,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> -I stared into the sky,<br /> -As wondering men have always done,<br /> -Since beauty and the stars were one,<br /> -Though none so hard as I.<br /> -<br /> -It seemed, so still the valleys were,<br /> -As if the whole world knelt at prayer,<br /> -Save me and me alone;<br /> -So pure and wide that silence was<br /> -I feared to bend a blade of grass,<br /> -And there I stood like stone.<br /> -<br /> -There, sharp and sudden, there I heard—<br /> -<i>Ah! some wild lovesick singing bird</i><br /> -<i>Woke singing in the trees?</i><br /> -<i>The nightingale and babble-wren</i><br /> -<i>Were in the English greenwood then,</i><br /> -<i>And you heard one of these?</i><br /> -<br /> -The babble-wren and nightingale<br /> -Sang in the Abyssinian vale<br /> -That season of the year!<br /> -Yet, true enough, I heard them plain,<br /> -I heard them both again, again,<br /> -As sharp and sweet and clear<br /> -As if the Abyssinian tree<br /> -Had thrust a bough across the sea,<br /> -Had thrust a bough across to me<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> -With music for my ear!<br /> -<br /> -I heard them both, and oh! I heard<br /> -The song of every singing bird<br /> -That sings beneath the sky,<br /> -And with the song of lark and wren<br /> -The song of mountains, moths and men<br /> -And seas and rainbows vie!<br /> -<br /> -I heard the universal choir<br /> -The Sons of Light exalt their Sire<br /> -With universal song,<br /> -Earth's lowliest and loudest notes,<br /> -Her million times ten million throats<br /> -Exalt Him loud and long,<br /> -And lips and lungs and tongues of Grace<br /> -From every part and every place<br /> -Within the shining of His face<br /> -The universal throng.<br /> -<br /> -I heard the hymn of being sound<br /> -From every well of honour found<br /> -In human sense and soul:<br /> -The song of poets when they write<br /> -The testament of Beautysprite<br /> -Upon a flying scroll,<br /> -The song of painters when they take<br /> -A burning brush for Beauty's sake<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> -And limn her features whole—<br /> -<br /> -The song of men divinely wise<br /> -Who look and see in starry skies<br /> -Not stars so much as robins' eyes,<br /> -And when these pale away<br /> -Hear flocks of shiny pleiades<br /> -Among the plums and apple trees<br /> -Sing in the summer day—<br /> -The song of all both high and low<br /> -To some blest vision true,<br /> -The song of beggars when they throw<br /> -The crust of pity all men owe<br /> -To hungry sparrows in the snow,<br /> -Old beggars hungry too—<br /> -The song of kings of kingdoms when<br /> -They rise above their fortune men,<br /> -And crown themselves anew,—<br /> -<br /> -The song of courage, heart and will<br /> -And gladness in a fight,<br /> -Of men who face a hopeless hill<br /> -With sparking and delight,<br /> -The bells and bells of song that ring<br /> -Round banners of a cause or king<br /> -From armies bleeding white—<br /> -<br /> -The songs of sailors every one<br /> -When monstrous tide and tempest run<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> -At ships like bulls at red,<br /> -When stately ships are twirled and spun<br /> -Like whipping-tops and help there's none<br /> -And mighty ships ten thousand ton<br /> -Go down like lumps of lead—<br /> -<br /> -And songs of fighters stern as they<br /> -At odds with fortune night and day,<br /> -Crammed up in cities grim and grey<br /> -As thick as bees in hives,<br /> -Hosannas of a lowly throng<br /> -Who sing unconscious of their song,<br /> -Whose lips are in their lives—<br /> -<br /> -And song of some at holy war<br /> -With spells and ghouls more dread by far<br /> -Than deadly seas and cities are,<br /> -Or hordes of quarrelling kings—<br /> -The song of fighters great and small,<br /> -The song of pretty fighters all,<br /> -And high heroic things—<br /> -<br /> -The song of lovers—who knows how<br /> -Twitched up from place and time<br /> -Upon a sigh, a blush, a vow,<br /> -A curve or hue of cheek or brow,<br /> -Borne up and off from here and now<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> -Into the void sublime!<br /> -<br /> -And crying loves and passions still<br /> -In every key from soft to shrill<br /> -And numbers never done,<br /> -Dog-loyalties to faith and friend,<br /> -And loves like Ruth's of old no end,<br /> -And intermission none—<br /> -<br /> -And burst on burst for beauty and<br /> -For numbers not behind,<br /> -From men whose love of motherland<br /> -Is like a dog's for one dear hand,<br /> -Sole, selfless, boundless, blind—<br /> -And song of some with hearts beside<br /> -For men and sorrows far and wide,<br /> -Who watch the world with pity and pride<br /> -And warm to all mankind—<br /> -<br /> -And endless joyous music rise<br /> -From children at their play,<br /> -And endless soaring lullabies<br /> -From happy, happy mother's eyes,<br /> -And answering crows and baby cries,<br /> -How many who shall say!<br /> -And many a song as wondrous well<br /> -With pangs and sweets intolerable<br /> -From lonely hearths too gray to tell,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> -God knows how utter gray!<br /> -<br /> -And song from many a house of care<br /> -When pain has forced a footing there<br /> -And there's a Darkness on the stair<br /> -Will not be turned away—<br /> -<br /> -And song—that song whose singers come<br /> -With old kind tales of pity from<br /> -The Great Compassion's lips,<br /> -That makes the bells of Heaven to peal<br /> -Round pillows frosty with the feel<br /> -Of Death's cold finger tips—<br /> -<br /> -The song of men all sorts and kinds,<br /> -As many tempers, moods and minds<br /> -As leaves are on a tree,<br /> -As many faiths and castes and creeds,<br /> -As many human bloods and breeds<br /> -As in the world may be;<br /> -<br /> -The song of each and all who gaze<br /> -On Beauty in her naked blaze,<br /> -Or see her dimly in a haze,<br /> -Or get her light in fitful rays<br /> -And tiniest needles even,<br /> -The song of all not wholly dark,<br /> -Not wholly sunk in stupor stark<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> -Too deep for groping Heaven—<br /> -<br /> -And alleluias sweet and clear<br /> -And wild with beauty men mishear,<br /> -From choirs of song as near and dear<br /> -To Paradise as they,<br /> -The everlasting pipe and flute<br /> -Of wind and sea and bird and brute,<br /> -And lips deaf men imagine mute<br /> -In wood and stone and clay;<br /> -<br /> -The music of a lion strong<br /> -That shakes a hill a whole night long,<br /> -A hill as loud as he,<br /> -The twitter of a mouse among<br /> -Melodious greenery,<br /> -The ruby's and the rainbow's song,<br /> -The nightingale's—all three,<br /> -The song of life that wells and flows<br /> -From every leopard, lark and rose<br /> -And everything that gleams or goes<br /> -Lack-lustre in the sea.<br /> -<br /> -I heard it all, each, every note<br /> -Of every lung and tongue and throat,<br /> -Ay, every rhythm and rhyme<br /> -Of everything that lives and loves<br /> -And upward, ever upward moves<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> -From lowly to sublime!<br /> -Earth's multitudinous Sons of Light,<br /> -I heard them lift their lyric might<br /> -With each and every chanting sprite<br /> -That lit the sky that wondrous night<br /> -As far as eye could climb!<br /> -<br /> -I heard it all, I heard the whole<br /> -Harmonious hymn of being roll<br /> -Up through the chapel of my soul<br /> -And at the altar die,<br /> -And in the awful quiet then<br /> -Myself I heard Amen, Amen,<br /> -Amen I heard me cry!<br /> -I heard it all, and then although<br /> -I caught my flying senses, oh,<br /> -A dizzy man was I!<br /> -I stood and stared; the sky was lit,<br /> -The sky was stars all over it,<br /> -I stood, I knew not why,<br /> -Without a wish, without a will,<br /> -I stood upon that silent hill<br /> -And stared into the sky until<br /> -My eyes were blind with stars and still<br /> -I stared into the sky.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> -REASON HAS MOONS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Reason has moons, but moons not hers<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lie mirror'd on her sea,</span><br /> -Confounding her astronomers,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But, O! delighting me.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> -<span class="author">JAMES JOYCE</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> -STRINGS IN THE EARTH<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Strings in the earth and air<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Make music sweet;</span><br /> -Strings by the river where<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The willows meet.</span><br /> -<br /> -There's music along the river<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For Love wanders there,</span><br /> -Pale flowers on his mantle,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dark leaves on his hair.</span><br /> -<br /> -All softly playing,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With head to the music bent,</span><br /> -And fingers straying<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon an instrument.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> -I HEAR AN ARMY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I hear an army charging upon the land,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:</span><br /> -Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.</span><br /> -<br /> -They cry unto the night their battle-name:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.</span><br /> -They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.</span><br /> -<br /> -They come shaking in triumph their long green hair:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.</span><br /> -My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> -<span class="author">D. H. LAWRENCE</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> -SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Between the avenues of cypresses,<br /> -All in their scarlet cloaks, and surplices<br /> -Of linen, go the chaunting choristers,<br /> -The priests in gold and black, the villagers.<br /> -<br /> -And all along the path to the cemetery<br /> -The round, dark heads of men crowd silently,<br /> -And black-scarved faces of women-folk, wistfully<br /> -Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery.<br /> -<br /> -And at the foot of a grave a father stands<br /> -With sunken head, and forgotten, folded hands;<br /> -And at the foot of a grave a woman kneels<br /> -With pale shut face, and neither hears nor feels<br /> -<br /> -The coming of the chaunting choristers<br /> -Between the avenues of cypresses,<br /> -The silence of the many villagers,<br /> -The candle-flames beside the surplices.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> -<span class="author">FRANCIS LEDWIDGE</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /><i>Killed in Action, 1917,</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> -IN FRANCE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The silence of maternal hills<br /> -Is round me in my evening dreams;<br /> -And round me music-making rills<br /> -And mingling waves of pastoral streams.<br /> -<br /> -Whatever way I turn I find<br /> -The path is old unto me still.<br /> -The hills of home are in my mind,<br /> -And there I wander as I will.<br /> -<br /> -<i>February 3rd,</i> 1917.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> -THOMAS MACDONAGH<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -He shall not hear the bittern cry<br /> -In the wild sky, where he is lain,<br /> -Nor voices of the sweeter birds<br /> -Above the wailing of the rain.<br /> -<br /> -Nor shall he know when loud March blows<br /> -Thro' slanting snows her fanfare shrill,<br /> -Blowing to flame the golden cup<br /> -Of many an upset daffodil.<br /> -<br /> -But when the Dark Cow leaves the moor,<br /> -And pastures poor with greedy weeds,<br /> -Perhaps he'll hear her low at morn<br /> -Lifting her horn in pleasant meads.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> -IN SEPTEMBER<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Still are the meadowlands, and still<br /> -Ripens the upland com,<br /> -And over the brown gradual hill<br /> -The moon has dipped a horn.<br /> -<br /> -The voices of the dear unknown<br /> -With silent hearts now call,<br /> -My rose of youth is overblown<br /> -And trembles to the fall.<br /> -<br /> -My song forsakes me like the birds<br /> -That leave the rain and grey,<br /> -I hear the music of the words<br /> -My lute can never say.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> -<span class="author">ROSE MACAULAY</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> -TRINITY SUNDAY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -As I walked in Petty Cury on Trinity Day,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">While the cuckoos in the fields did shout,</span><br /> -Right through the city stole the breath of the may,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the scarlet doctors all about</span><br /> -<br /> -Lifted up their heads to snuff at the breeze,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And forgot they were bound for great St. Mary's</span><br /> -To listen to a sermon from the Master of Caius,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And "How balmy," they said, "the air is!"</span><br /> -<br /> -And balmy it was; and the sweet bells rocking<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shook it till it rent in two</span><br /> -And fell, a torn veil; and like maniacs mocking<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wild things from without passed through.</span><br /> -<br /> -Wild wet things that swam in King's Parade<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The days it was a marshy fen,</span><br /> -Through the rent veil they did sprawl and wade<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Blind bog-beasts and Ugrian men.</span><br /> -<br /> -And the city was not. (For cities are wrought<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the stuff of the world's live brain.</span><br /> -Cities are thin veils, woven of thought,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And thought, breaking, rends them in twain.)</span><br /> -<br /> -And the fens were not. (For fens are dreams<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dreamt by a race long dead;</span><br /> -And the earth is naught, and the sun but seems:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And so those who know have said.)</span><br /> -<br /> -So veil beyond veil inimitably lifted:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And I saw the world's naked face,</span><br /> -Before, reeling and baffled and blind, I drifted<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Back within the bounds of space.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 15%;">* * *</span><br /> -<br /> -I have forgot the unforgettable.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All of honey and milk the air is.</span><br /> -God send I do forget.... The merry winds swell<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the scarlet gowns bound for St. Mary's.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> -<span class="author">THOMAS MACDONAGH</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Born 1878.</i><br /> -<br /> -<i>Executed after Easter Week Rising, 1916.</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> -INSCRIPTION ON A RUIN<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I stood beside the postern here,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">High up above the trampling sea,</span><br /> -In shadow, shrinking from the spear<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of light, not daring hence to flee.</span><br /> -<br /> -The moon beyond the western cliff<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had passed, and let the shadow fall,</span><br /> -Across the water to the skiff<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That came on to the castle wall.</span><br /> -<br /> -I heard below murmur of words<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not loud, the splash upon the strand,</span><br /> -And the long cry of darkling birds.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The ivory horn fell from my hand.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> -THE NIGHT HUNT<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -In the morning, in the dark,<br /> -When the stars begin to blunt,<br /> -By the wall of Barn a Park<br /> -Dogs I heard and saw them hunt;<br /> -All the parish dogs were there,<br /> -All the dogs for miles around,<br /> -Teeming up behind a hare,<br /> -In the dark, without a sound.<br /> -<br /> -How I heard I scarce can tell—<br /> -'Twas a patter in the grass—<br /> -And I did not see them well<br /> -Come across the dark and pass;<br /> -Yet I saw them and I knew<br /> -Spearman's dog and Spellman's dog<br /> -And, beside my own dog too,<br /> -Leamy's from the Island Bog.<br /> -<br /> -In the morning when the sun<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> -Burnished all the green to gorse,<br /> -I went out to take a run<br /> -Round the bog upon my horse;<br /> -And my dog that had been sleeping<br /> -In the heat beside the door<br /> -Left his yawning and went leaping<br /> -On a hundred yards before.<br /> -<br /> -Through the village street we passed—<br /> -Not a dog there raised a snout—<br /> -Through the street and out at last<br /> -On the white bog road and out<br /> -Over Barna Park full pace,<br /> -Over to the silver stream,<br /> -Horse and dog in happy race,<br /> -Rider between thought and dream.<br /> -<br /> -By the stream, at Leamy's house,<br /> -Lay a dog—my pace I curbed—<br /> -But our coming did not rouse<br /> -Him from drowsing undisturbed;<br /> -And my dog, as unaware<br /> -Of the other, dropped beside<br /> -And went running by me there<br /> -With my horse's slackened stride.<br /> -<br /> -Yet by something, by a twitch<br /> -Of the sleeper's eye, a look<br /> -From the runner, something which<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> -Little chords of feeling shook,<br /> -I was conscious that a thought<br /> -Shuddered through the silent deep<br /> -Of a secret—I had caught<br /> -Something I had known in sleep.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> -<span class="author">JOHN MASEFIELD</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> -C. L. M.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -In the dark womb where I began<br /> -My mother's life made me a man.<br /> -Through all the months of human birth<br /> -Her beauty fed my common earth.<br /> -I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,<br /> -But through the death of some of her.<br /> -<br /> -Down in the darkness of the grave<br /> -She cannot see the life she gave.<br /> -For all her love, she cannot tell<br /> -Whether I use it ill or well,<br /> -Nor knock at dusty doors to find<br /> -Her beauty dusty in the mind.<br /> -<br /> -If the grave's gates could be undone,<br /> -She would not know her little son,<br /> -I am so grown. If we should meet<br /> -She would pass by me in the street,<br /> -Unless my soul's face let her see<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> -My sense of what she did for me.<br /> -<br /> -What have I done to keep in mind<br /> -My debt to her and womankind?<br /> -What woman's happier life repays<br /> -Her for those months of wretched days?<br /> -For all my monthless body leeched<br /> -Ere Birth's releasing hell was reached?<br /> -<br /> -What have I done, or tried, or said<br /> -In thanks to that dear woman dead?<br /> -Men triumph over women still,<br /> -Men trample women's rights at will,<br /> -And man's lust roves the world untamed.<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 15%;">* * *</span><br /> -<br /> -O grave, keep shut lest I be shamed.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> -WHAT AM I, LIFE?<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt<br /> -Held in cohesion by unresting cells<br /> -Which work they know not why, which never halt,<br /> -Myself unwitting where their master dwells.<br /> -I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin;<br /> -A world which uses me as I use them,<br /> -Nor do I know which end or which begin,<br /> -Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn.<br /> -So, like a marvel in a marvel set,<br /> -I answer to the vast, as wave by wave<br /> -The sea of air goes over, dry or wet,<br /> -Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave,<br /> -Or the great sun comes north, this myriad I<br /> -Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> -<span class="author">HAROLD MONRO</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> -JOURNEY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I<br /> -<br /> -How many times I nearly miss the train<br /> -By running up the staircase once again<br /> -For some dear trifle almost left behind.<br /> -At that last moment the unwary mind<br /> -Forgets the solemn tick of station-time;<br /> -That muddy lane the feet must climb—<br /> -The bridge—the ticket—signal down—<br /> -Train just emerging beyond the town:<br /> -The great blue engine panting as it takes<br /> -The final curve, and grinding on its brakes<br /> -Up to the platform-edge... The little doors<br /> -Swing open, while the burly porter roars.<br /> -The tight compartment fills: our careful eyes<br /> -Go to explore each other's destinies.<br /> -A lull. The station-master waves. The train<br /> -Gathers, and grips, and takes the rails again,<br /> -Moves to the shining open land, and soon<br /> -Begins to tittle-tattle a tame tattoon.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> -II<br /> -<br /> -They ramble through the country-side,<br /> -Dear gentle monsters, and we ride<br /> -Pleasantly seated—so we sink<br /> -Into a torpor on the brink<br /> -Of thought, or read our books, and understand<br /> -Half them and half the backward-gliding land:<br /> -(Trees in a dance all twirling round;<br /> -Large rivers flowing with no sound;<br /> -The scattered images of town and field,<br /> -Shining flowers half concealed.)<br /> -And, having settled to an equal rate,<br /> -They swing the curve and straighten to the straight,<br /> -Curtail their stride and gather up their joints,<br /> -Snort, dwindle their steam for the noisy points,<br /> -Leap them in safety, and, the other side,<br /> -Loop again to an even stride.<br /> -<br /> -The long train moves: we move in it along.<br /> -Like an old ballad, or an endless song,<br /> -It drones and wimbles its unwearied croon—<br /> -Croons, drones, and mumbles all the afternoon.<br /> -<br /> -Towns with their fifty chimneys close and high,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> -Wreathed in great smoke between the earth and sky,<br /> -It hurtles through them, and you think it must<br /> -Halt—but it shrieks and sputters them with dust,<br /> -Cracks like a bullet through their big affairs,<br /> -Rushes the station-bridge, and disappears<br /> -Out to the suburb, laying bare<br /> -Each garden trimmed with pitiful care;<br /> -Children are caught at idle play,<br /> -Held a moment, and thrown away.<br /> -Nearly everyone looks round.<br /> -Some dignified inhabitant is found<br /> -Right in the middle of the commonplace—<br /> -Buttoning his trousers, or washing his face.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -III<br /> -<br /> -Oh the wild engine! Every time I sit<br /> -In any train I must remember it.<br /> -The way it smashes through the air; its great<br /> -Petulant majesty and terrible rate:<br /> -Driving the ground before it, with those round<br /> -Feet pounding, eating, covering the ground;<br /> -The piston using up the white steam so<br /> -You cannot watch it when it come or go;<br /> -The cutting, the embankment; how it takes<br /> -The tunnels, and the clatter that it makes;<br /> -So careful of the train and of the track,<br /> -Guiding us out, or helping us go back;<br /> -Breasting its destination: at the close<br /> -Yawning, and slowly dropping to a doze.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> -IV<br /> -<br /> -We who have looked each other in the eyes<br /> -This journey long, and trundled with the train,<br /> -Now to our separate purposes must rise,<br /> -Becoming decent strangers once again.<br /> -The little chamber we have made our home<br /> -In which we so conveniently abode,<br /> -The complicated journey we have come,<br /> -Must be an unremembered episode.<br /> -Our common purpose made us all like friends.<br /> -How suddenly it ends!<br /> -A nod, a murmur, or a little smile,<br /> -Or often nothing, and away we file.<br /> -I hate to leave you, comrades. I will stay<br /> -To watch you drift apart and pass away.<br /> -It seems impossible to go and meet<br /> -All those strange eyes of people in the street.<br /> -But, like some proud unconscious god, the train<br /> -Gathers us up and scatters us again.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> -SOLITUDE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When you have tidied all things for the night,<br /> -And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,<br /> -You'll pause a moment in the late firelight,<br /> -Too sorrowful to weep.<br /> -<br /> -The large and gentle furniture has stood<br /> -In sympathetic silence all the day<br /> -With that old kindness of domestic wood;<br /> -Nevertheless the haunted room will say:<br /> -"Some one must be away."<br /> -<br /> -The little dog rolls over half awake,<br /> -Stretches his paws, yawns, looking up at you,<br /> -Wags his tail very slightly for your sake,<br /> -That you may feel he is unhappy too.<br /> -<br /> -A distant engine whistles, or the floor<br /> -Creaks, or the wandering night-wind bangs a door.<br /> -<br /> -Silence is scattered like a broken glass.<br /> -The minutes prick their ears and run about,<br /> -Then one by one subside again and pass<br /> -Sedately in, monotonously out.<br /> -<br /> -You bend your head and wipe away a tear.<br /> -Solitude walks one heavy step more near.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> -MILK FOR THE CAT<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When the tea is brought at five o'clock,<br /> -And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,<br /> -The little black cat with bright green eyes<br /> -Is suddenly purring there.<br /> -<br /> -At first she pretends, having nothing to do,<br /> -She has come in merely to blink by the grate,<br /> -But, though tea may be late or the milk may be sour<br /> -She is never late.<br /> -<br /> -And presently her agate eyes<br /> -Take a soft large milky haze,<br /> -And her independent casual glance<br /> -Becomes a stiff, hard gaze.<br /> -<br /> -Then she stamps her claws or lifts her ears,<br /> -Or twists her tail and begins to stir,<br /> -Till suddenly all her lithe body becomes<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> -One breathing, trembling purr.<br /> -<br /> -The children eat and wriggle and laugh;<br /> -The two old ladies stroke their silk:<br /> -But the cat is grown small and thin with desire,<br /> -Transformed to a creeping lust for milk:<br /> -<br /> -The white saucer like some full moon descends<br /> -At last from the clouds of the table above;<br /> -She sighs and dreams and thrills and glows,<br /> -Transfigured with love.<br /> -<br /> -She nestles over the shining rim,<br /> -Buries her chin in the creamy sea;<br /> -Her tail hangs loose; each drowsy paw<br /> -Is doubled under each bending knee.<br /> -<br /> -A long dim ecstasy holds her life;<br /> -Her world is an infinite shapeless white,<br /> -Till her tongue has curled the last half drop,<br /> -Then she sinks back into the night,<br /> -<br /> -Draws and dips her body to heap<br /> -Her sleepy nerves in the great arm-chair,<br /> -Lies defeated and buried deep<br /> -Three or four hours unconscious there.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> -<span class="author">T. STURGE MOORE</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> -SENT FROM EGYPT WITH A FAIR ROBE<br /> -OF TISSUE TO A SICILIAN VINE-DRESSER.<br /> -<br /> -276 B.C.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Put out to sea, if wine thou wouldest make<br /> -Such as is made in Cos: when open boat<br /> -May safely launch, advice of pilots take;<br /> -And find the deepest bottom, most remote<br /> -From all encroachment of the crumbling shore,<br /> -Where no fresh stream tempers the rich salt wave,<br /> -Forcing rash sweetness on sage ocean's brine;<br /> -As youthful shepherds pour<br /> -Their first love forth to Battos gnarled and grave,<br /> -Fooling shrewd age to bless some fond design.<br /> -<br /> -Not after storm! but when, for a long spell,<br /> -No white-maned horse has raced across the blue,<br /> -Put from the beach! lest troubled be the well—<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> -Less pure thy draught than from such depth were due.<br /> -Fast close thy largest jars, prepared and clean!<br /> -Next weigh each buoyant womb down through the flood,<br /> -Far down! when, with a cord the lid remove,<br /> -And it will fill unseen,<br /> -Swift as a heart Love smites sucks back the blood:—<br /> -This bubbles, deeper born than sighs, shall prove.<br /> -<br /> -If thy bowed shoulders ache, as thou dost haul—<br /> -Those groan who climb with rich ore from the mine;<br /> -Labour untold round Ilion girt a wall;<br /> -A god toiled that Achilles' arms might shine;<br /> -Think of these things and double knit thy will!<br /> -Then, should the sun be hot on thy return,<br /> -Cover thy jars with piles of bladder weed,<br /> -Dripping, and fragrant still<br /> -From sea-wolds where it grows like bracken-fern:<br /> -A grapnel dragged will soon supply thy need.<br /> -<br /> -Home to a tun-convey thy precious freight!<br /> -Wherein, for thirty days, it should abide,<br /> -Closed, yet not quite closed from the air, and wait<br /> -While, through dim stillness, slowly doth subside<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> -Thick sediment. The humour of a day,<br /> -Which has defeated youth and health and joy,<br /> -Down, through a dreamless sleep, will settle thus,<br /> -Till riseth maiden gay<br /> -Set free from all glooms past—or else a boy<br /> -Once more a school-friend worthy Troilus.<br /> -<br /> -Yet to such cool wood tank some dream might dip:<br /> -Vision of Aphrodite sunk to sleep,<br /> -Or of some sailor let down from a ship,<br /> -Young, dead, and lovely, while across the deep,<br /> -Through the calm night, his hoarse-voiced comrades chaunt—<br /> -So far at sea, they cannot reach the land<br /> -To lay him perfect in the warm brown earth.<br /> -Pray that such dreams there haunt!<br /> -While, through damp darkness, where thy tun doth stand,<br /> -Cold salamanders sidle round its girth.<br /> -<br /> -Gently draw off the clear and tomb it yet<br /> -For other twenty days in cedarn casks!<br /> -Where through trance, surely, prophecy will set;<br /> -As, dedicated to light temple-tasks,<br /> -The young priest dreams the unknown mystery.<br /> -Through Ariadne, knelt disconsolate<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> -In the sea's marge, so welled back warmth which throbbed<br /> -With nuptial promise: she<br /> -Turned; and, half-choked through dewy glens, some great,<br /> -Some magic drone of revel coming sobbed.<br /> -<br /> -Of glorious fruit, indeed, must be thy choice,<br /> -Such as has fully ripened on the branch,<br /> -Such as due rain, then sunshine, made rejoice,<br /> -Which, pulped and coloured, now deep bloom doth blanch;<br /> -Clusters like odes for victors in the games,<br /> -Strophe on strophe globed, pure nectar all!<br /> -Spread such to dry,—if Helios grant thee grace,<br /> -Exposed unto his flames<br /> -Two days, or, if not, three; or, should rain fall;<br /> -Stretch them on hurdles in the house four days.<br /> -<br /> -Grapes are not sharded chestnuts, which the tree<br /> -Lets fall to burst them on the ground, where red<br /> -Rolls forth the fruit, from white-lined wards set free,<br /> -And all undamaged glows 'mid husks it shed;<br /> -Nay, they are soft and should be singly stripped<br /> -From off the bunch, by maiden's dainty hand,<br /> -Then dropped through the cool silent depth to sink<br /> -(Coy, as herself hath slipped,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> -Bathing, from shelves in caves along the strand)<br /> -<br /> -Till round each dark grape water barely wink;<br /> -Since some nine measures of sea-water fill<br /> -A butt of fifty, ere the plump fruit peep,<br /> -—Like sombre dolphin shoals when nights are still,<br /> -Which penned in Proteus' wizard circle sleep,<br /> -And 'twixt them glinting curves of silver glance<br /> -If Zephyr, dimpling dark calm, counts them o'er.—<br /> -Let soak thy fruit for two days thus, then tread!<br /> -While bare-legged bumpkins dance,<br /> -Bright from thy bursting press arched spouts shall pour,<br /> -And gurgling torrents towards thy vats run red.<br /> -<br /> -Meanwhile the maidens, each with wooden rake,<br /> -Drag back the skins and laugh at aprons splashed;<br /> -Or youths rest, boasting how their brown arms ache,<br /> -So fast their shovels for so long have flashed,<br /> -Baffling their comrades' legs with mounting heaps.<br /> -Treble their labour! still the happier they,<br /> -Who at this genial task wear out long hours,<br /> -Till vast night round them creeps,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> -When soon the torch-light dance whirls them away;<br /> -For gods who love wine double all their powers.<br /> -Iacchus is the always grateful god!<br /> -His vineyards are more fair than gardens far;<br /> -Hanging, like those of Babylon, they nod<br /> -O'er each Ionian cliff and hill-side scar!<br /> -While Cypris lends him saltness, depth, and peace;<br /> -The brown earth yields him sap for richest green;<br /> -And he has borrowed laughter from the sky;<br /> -Wildness from winds; and bees<br /> -Bring honey.—Then choose casks which thou hast seen<br /> -Are leakless, very wholesome, and quite dry!<br /> -<br /> -That Coan wine the very finest is,<br /> -I do assure thee, who have travelled much<br /> -And learned to judge of diverse vintages.<br /> -Faint not before the toil! this wine is such<br /> -As tempteth princes launch long pirate barks;—From<br /> -which may Zeus protect Sicilian bays,<br /> -And, ere long, me safe home from Egypt bring,<br /> -Letting no black-sailed sharks<br /> -Scent this king's gifts, for whom I sweeten praise<br /> -With those same songs thou didst to Chloe sing!<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> -I wrote them 'neath the vine-cloaked elm, for thee.<br /> -Recall those nights! our couches were a load<br /> -Of scented lentisk; upward, tree by tree,<br /> -Thy father's orchard sloped, and past us flowed<br /> -A stream sluiced for his vineyards; when, above,<br /> -The apples fell, they on to us were rolled,<br /> -But kept us not awake.—O Laco, own<br /> -How thou didst rave of love!<br /> -Now art thou staid, thy son is three years old;<br /> -But I, who made thee love-songs, live alone.<br /> -<br /> -Muse thou at dawn o'er thy yet slumbering wife!—<br /> -Not chary of her best was nature there,<br /> -Who, though a third of her full gift of life<br /> -Was spent, still added beauties still more rare;<br /> -What calm slow days, what holy sleep at night,<br /> -Evolved her for long twilight trystings fraught<br /> -With panic blushes and tip-toe surmise:<br /> -And then, what mystic might—<br /> -All, with a crowning boon, through travail brought!<br /> -Consider this and give thy best likewise!<br /> -<br /> -Ungrateful be not! Laco, ne'er be that!<br /> -Well worth thy while to make such wine 'twould be;<br /> -I see thy red face 'neath thy broad straw hat,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> -I see thy house, thy vineyards, Sicily!—<br /> -Thou dost demur, good but too easy friend!<br /> -Come, put those doubts away! thou hast strong lads,<br /> -Brave wenches; on the steep beach lolls thy ship<br /> -Where vine-clad slopes descend,<br /> -Sheltering our bay, that headlong rillet glads,<br /> -Like a stripped child fain in the sea to dip.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> -A SPANISH PICTURE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Thy life is over now, Don Juan:<br /> -Thy fingers are so shrunk<br /> -That all their rings from off their cold tips crowd,<br /> -Where limp thy hand hath sunk;<br /> -<br /> -On a trestle-table laid, Don Juan,<br /> -A half-mask near thine ear,<br /> -A visor black in which void gape two gaps<br /> -Where through thou oft didst leer.<br /> -<br /> -Thou waitest for the priests, Don Juan,<br /> -To bear thee to thy grave;<br /> -Thou'rt theirs at length beyond all doubt, but ha!<br /> -Hast now no soul to save.<br /> -<br /> -Thou wast brought home last night, Don Juan,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> -Upon a stable door;<br /> -Beneath a young nun's casement, found dropped dead,<br /> -Where thou hadst wooed of yore:<br /> -<br /> -To pay their trouble then, Don Juan,<br /> -Those base grooms took thy sword;<br /> -A rapier to fetch gold, with shagreened sheath,<br /> -Wrought hand-grip, and silk cord;<br /> -<br /> -Which, with thy fame enhanced, Don Juan,<br /> -Were worth hidalgo's rent;<br /> -Yet on which now, at most, some few moidore<br /> -May by some fop be spent.<br /> -<br /> -Dull brown a cloak enwraps, Don Juan,<br /> -Both thy lean shanks, one arm,<br /> -That old bird-cage thy breast, where like magpie<br /> -Thy heart hopped on alarm.<br /> -<br /> -Yet out beyond thy cloak, Don Juan,<br /> -Thrust prim white-stocking'd feet—Silk-stocking'd<br /> -feet that in quadrille pranced round—<br /> -Slippers high-heeled and neat;<br /> -<br /> -Thy silver-buckled shoes, Don Juan,<br /> -No more shall tread a floor,<br /> -Beside their heels upon the board lies now<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> -A half-peeled onion's core:<br /> -<br /> -Munching, a crone, that knew, Don Juan,<br /> -Thy best contrived plots,<br /> -Hobbles about the room, whose gaunt stone walls<br /> -Drear echo as she trots;<br /> -<br /> -She makes her bundle up, Don Juan;<br /> -She'll not forget thy rings,<br /> -Thy buckles, nor silk stockings; nay, not she!<br /> -They'll go with her few things.<br /> -<br /> -Those lids she hath pulled down, Don Juan,<br /> -That lowered ne'er for shame;<br /> -No spark from beauty more in thy brain pan,<br /> -Shall make its tinder flame:<br /> -<br /> -Thou hast enjoyed all that, Don Juan,<br /> -Which good resolves doth daunt,<br /> -Which hypocrites doth tempt to stake vile souls,<br /> -Which cowards crave and want;<br /> -<br /> -Thou wast an envied man, Don Juan,<br /> -Long shalt be envied still;<br /> -Thou hadst thy beauty as the proud pard hath,<br /> -And instinct trained to skill.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> -A DUET<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -"Flowers nodding gaily, scent in air,<br /> -"Flowers posied, flowers for the hair,<br /> -"Sleepy flowers, flowers bold to stare—<br /> -"Oh, pick me some!"<br /> -<br /> -"Shells with lip, or tooth, or bleeding gum,<br /> -"Tell-tale shells, and shells that whisper 'Come,'<br /> -"Shells that stammer, blush, and yet are dumb—"<br /> -"Oh, let me hear!"<br /> -<br /> -"Eyes so black they draw one trembling near,<br /> -"Brown eyes, caverns flooded with a tear,<br /> -"Cloudless eyes, blue eyes so windy clear—"<br /> -"Oh, look at me!"<br /> -<br /> -"Kisses sadly blown across the sea,<br /> -"Darkling kisses, kisses fair and free,<br /> -"Bob-a-cherry kisses 'neath a tree—"<br /> -"Oh, give me one!"<br /> -<br /> -Thus sang a king and queen in Babylon.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> -THE GAZELLES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When the sheen on tall summer grass is pale,<br /> -Across blue skies white clouds float on<br /> -In shoals, or disperse and singly sail,<br /> -Till, the sun being set, they all are gone:<br /> -<br /> -Yet, as long as they may shine bright in the sun,<br /> -They flock or stray through the daylight bland,<br /> -While their stealthy shadows like foxes run<br /> -Beneath where the grass is dry and tanned:<br /> -<br /> -And the waste, in hills that swell and fall,<br /> -Goes heaving into yet dreamier haze;<br /> -And a wonder of silence is over all<br /> -Where the eye feeds long like a lover's gaze:<br /> -<br /> -Then, cleaving the grass, gazelles appear<br /> -(The gentler dolphins of kindlier waves)<br /> -With sensitive heads alert of ear;<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> -Frail crowds that a delicate hearing saves,<br /> -<br /> -That rely on the nostrils' keenest power,<br /> -And are governed from trance-like distances<br /> -By hopes and fears, and, hour by hour,<br /> -Sagacious of safety, snuff the breeze.<br /> -<br /> -They keep together, the timid hearts;<br /> -And each one's fear with a panic thrill<br /> -Is passed to an hundred; and if one starts<br /> -In three seconds all are over the hill.<br /> -<br /> -A Nimrod might watch, in his hall's wan space,<br /> -After the feast, on the moonlit floor,<br /> -The timorous mice that troop and race,<br /> -As tranced o'er those herds the sun doth pour;<br /> -<br /> -Like a wearied tyrant sated with food<br /> -Who envies each tiniest thief that steals<br /> -Its hour from his abstracted mood,<br /> -For it living zest and beauty reveals.<br /> -<br /> -He alone, save the quite dispassionate moon,<br /> -Sees them; she stares at the prowling pard<br /> -Who surprises their sleep and, ah! how soon<br /> -Is riding the weakest or sleepiest hard!<br /> -<br /> -Let an agony's nightmare course begin,<br /> -Four feet with five spurs a piece control,<br /> -Like a horse thief reduced to save his skin<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> -Or a devil that rides a human soul!<br /> -<br /> -The race is as long as recorded time,<br /> -Yet brief as the flash of assassin's knife;<br /> -For 'tis crammed as history is with crime<br /> -'Twixt the throbs at taking and losing life;<br /> -<br /> -Then the warm wet clutch on the nape of the neck,<br /> -Through which the keen incisors drive;<br /> -Then the fleet knees give, down drops the wreck<br /> -Of yesterday's pet that was so alive.<br /> -<br /> -Yet the moon is naught concerned, ah no!<br /> -She shines as on a drifting plank<br /> -Far in some northern sea-stream's flow<br /> -From which two numbed hands loosened and sank.<br /> -<br /> -Such thinning their number must suffer; and worse<br /> -When hither at times the Shah's children roam,<br /> -Their infant listlessness to immerse<br /> -In energy's ancient upland home:<br /> -<br /> -For here the shepherd in years of old<br /> -Was taught by the stars, and bred a race<br /> -That welling forth from these highlands rolled<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> -In tides of conquest o'er earth's face:<br /> -<br /> -On piebald ponies or else milk-white,<br /> -Here, with green bridles in silver bound,<br /> -A crescent moon on the violet night<br /> -Of their saddle cloths, or a sun rayed round,—<br /> -<br /> -With tiny bells on their harness ringing,<br /> -And voices that laugh and are shrill by starts,<br /> -Prancing, curvetting, and with them bringing<br /> -Swift chetahs cooped up in light-wheeled carts,<br /> -<br /> -They come, and their dainty pavilions pitch<br /> -In some valley, beside a sinuous pool,<br /> -Where a grove of cedars towers in which<br /> -Herons have built, where the shade is cool;<br /> -<br /> -Where they tether their ponies to low hung boughs,<br /> -Where long through the night their red fires gleam,<br /> -Where the morning's stir doth them arouse<br /> -To their bath in the lake, as from dreams to a dream.<br /> -<br /> -And thence in an hour their hunt rides forth,<br /> -And the chetahs course the shy gazelle<br /> -To the east or west or south or north,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> -And every eve in a distant vale<br /> -<br /> -A hetacomb of the slaughtered beasts<br /> -Is piled; tongues loll from breathless throats;<br /> -Round large jet eyes the horsefly feasts—<br /> -Jet eyes, which now a blue film coats:<br /> -<br /> -Dead there they bleed, and each prince there<br /> -Is met by his sister, wife, or bride—<br /> -Delicious ladies with long dark hair,<br /> -And soft dark eyes, and brows arched wide,<br /> -<br /> -In quilted jacket, embroidered sash,<br /> -And tent-like skirts of pleated lawn;<br /> -While their silk-lined jewelled slippers flash<br /> -Round bare feet bedded like pools at dawn:<br /> -<br /> -So choicefully prepared to please,<br /> -Young, female, royal of race and mood,<br /> -In indolent compassion these<br /> -O'er those dead beauteous creatures brood:<br /> -<br /> -They lean some minutes against their friend,<br /> -A lad not slow to praise himself,<br /> -Who tells how this one met his end<br /> -Out-raced, or trapped by leopard stealth,<br /> -<br /> -And boasts his chetahs fleetest are;<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> -Through his advice the chance occurred,<br /> -That leeward vale by which the car<br /> -Was well brought round to head the herd.<br /> -<br /> -Seeing him bronzed by sun and wind,<br /> -She feels his power and owns him lord,<br /> -Then, that his courage may please her mind,<br /> -With a soft coy hand half draws his sword,<br /> -<br /> -Just shudders to see the cold steel gleam,<br /> -And drops it back in the long curved sheath;<br /> -She will make his evening meal a dream<br /> -And surround his sleep like some rich wreath<br /> -<br /> -Of heavy-lidded flowers bewitched<br /> -To speak soft words of ecstasy<br /> -To wizard king old, wise, and enriched<br /> -With all save youth's and love's sweet glee.<br /> -<br /> -But, while they sleep, the orphaned herd<br /> -And wounded stragglers, through the night<br /> -Wander in pain, and wail unheard<br /> -To the moon and the stars so cruelly bright:<br /> -<br /> -Why are they born? ah! why beget<br /> -They in the long November gloom<br /> -Heirs of their beauty, their fleetness,—yet<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> -Heirs of their panics, their pangs, their doom?<br /> -<br /> -That to princely spouses children are born<br /> -To be daintily bred and taught to please,<br /> -Has a fitness like the return of morn:<br /> -But why perpetuate lives like these?<br /> -<br /> -Why, with horns that jar and with fiery eyes,<br /> -Should the male stags fight for the shuddering does<br /> -Through the drear dark nights, with frequent cries<br /> -From tyrant lust or outlawed woes?<br /> -<br /> -Doth the meaningless beauty of their lives<br /> -Rave in the spring, when they course afar<br /> -Like the shadows of birds, and the young fawn strives<br /> -Till its parents no longer the fleetest are?<br /> -<br /> -Like the shadows of flames which the sun's rays throw<br /> -On a kiln's blank wall, where glaziers dwell,<br /> -Pale shadows as those from glasses they blow,<br /> -Yet that lap at the blank wall and rebel,—<br /> -<br /> -Even so to my curious trance-like thought<br /> -Those herds move over those pallid hills,<br /> -With fever as of a frail life caught<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> -In circumstance o'er-charged with ills;<br /> -<br /> -More like the shadow of lives than life,<br /> -Or most like the life that is never born<br /> -From baffled purpose and foredoomed strife,<br /> -That in each man's heart must be hidden from scorn<br /> -<br /> -Yet with something of beauty very rare<br /> -Unseizable, fugitive, half discerned;<br /> -The trace of intentions that might have been fair<br /> -In action, left on a face that yearned<br /> -<br /> -But long has ceased to yearn, alas!<br /> -So faint a trace do they leave on the slopes<br /> -Of hills as sleek as their coats with grass;<br /> -So faint may the trace be of noblest hopes.<br /> -<br /> -Yet why are they born to roam and die?<br /> -Can their beauty answer thy query, O soul?<br /> -Nay, nor that of hopes which were born to fly,<br /> -But whose pinions the common and coarse day stole.<br /> -<br /> -Like that region of grassy hills outspread,<br /> -A realm of our thoughts knows days and nights<br /> -And summers and winters, and has fed<br /> -Ineffectual herds of vanished delights.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> -<span class="author">ROBERT NICHOLS</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> -TO ———<br /> -<br /> -Asleep within the deadest hour of night<br /> -And turning with the earth, I was aware<br /> -How suddenly the eastern curve was bright,<br /> -As when the sun arises from his lair.<br /> -But not the sun arose: it was thy hair<br /> -Shaken up heaven in tossing leagues of light.<br /> -<br /> -Since then I know that neither night nor day<br /> -May I escape thee, O my heavenly hell!<br /> -Awake, in dreams, thou springest to waylay<br /> -And should I dare to die, I know full well<br /> -Whose voice would mock me in the mourning bell,<br /> -Whose face would greet me in hell's fiery way.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> -FAREWELL TO PLACE OF COMFORT<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -For the last time, maybe, upon the knoll<br /> -I stand. The eve is golden, languid, sad....<br /> -Day like a tragic actor plays his role<br /> -To the last whispered word, and falls gold-clad.<br /> -I, too, take leave of all I ever had.<br /> -<br /> -They shall not say I went with heavy heart:<br /> -Heavy I am, but soon I shall be free;<br /> -I love them all, but O I now depart<br /> -A little sadly, strangely, fearfully,<br /> -As one who goes to try a Mystery.<br /> -<br /> -The bell is sounding down in Dedham Vale:<br /> -Be still, O bell! too often standing here<br /> -When all the air was tremulous, fine, and pale,<br /> -Thy golden note so calm, so still, so clear,<br /> -Out of my stony heart has struck a tear.<br /> -<br /> -And now tears are not mine. I have release<br /> -From all the former and the later pain;<br /> -Like the mid-sea I rock in boundless peace,<br /> -Soothed by the charity of the deep sea rain....<br /> -Calm rain! Calm sea! Calm found, long sought in vain.<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> -O bronzen pines, evening of gold and blue,<br /> -Steep mellow slope, brimmed twilit pool below,<br /> -Hushed trees, still vale dissolving in the dew,<br /> -Farewell! Farewell! There is no more to do.<br /> -<br /> -We have been happy. Happy now I go.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> -THE FULL HEART<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Alone on the shore in the pause of the night-time<br /> -I stand and I hear the long wind blow light;<br /> -I view the constellations quietly, quietly burning;<br /> -I hear the wave fall in the hush of the night.<br /> -<br /> -Long after I am dead, ended this bitter journey,<br /> -Many another whose heart holds no light<br /> -Shall your solemn sweetness, hush, awe, and comfort,<br /> -O my companions, Wind, Waters, Stars, and Night.<br /> -<br /> -<i>Near Gold Cap,</i> 1916.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> -THE TOWER<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs<br /> -The moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs.<br /> -The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet,<br /> -Over dome and column, up empty, endless street;<br /> -In the closed, scented gardens the rose loosed from the stem<br /> -Her white showery petals; none regarded them;<br /> -The starry thicket breathed odours to the sentinel palm;<br /> -Silence possessed the city like a soul possessed by calm.<br /> -<br /> -Not a spark in the warren under the giant night,<br /> -Save where in a turret's lantern beamed a grave, still light:<br /> -There in the topmost chamber a gold-eyed lamp was lit—<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> -Marvellous lamp in darkness, informing, redeeming it!<br /> -For, set in that tiny chamber, Jesus, the blessed and doomed,<br /> -Spoke to the lone apostles as light to men entombed;<br /> -And spreading His hands in blessing, as one soon to be dead,<br /> -He put soft enchantment into spare wine and bread.<br /> -<br /> -The hearts of the disciples were broken and full of tears,<br /> -Because their Lord, the spearless, was hedged about with spears;<br /> -And in His face the sickness of departure had spread a gloom<br /> -At leaving His young friends friendless.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">They could not forget the tomb.</span><br /> -He smiled subduedly, telling, in tones soft as voice of the dove,<br /> -The endlessness of sorrow, the eternal solace of love;<br /> -And lifting the earthly tokens, wine and sorrowful bread,<br /> -He bade them sup and remember One who lived and was dead.<br /> -And they could not restrain their weeping.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 11em;">But one rose up to depart,</span><br /> -Having weakness and hate of weakness raging within his heart,<br /> -And bowed to the robed assembly whose eyes gleamed wet in the light.<br /> -Judas arose and departed; night went out to the night.<br /> -<br /> -Then Jesus lifted His voice like a fountain in an ocean of tears,<br /> -And comforted His disciples and calmed and allayed their fears.<br /> -But Judas wound down the turret, creeping from floor to floor,<br /> -And would fly; but one leaning, weeping, barred him beside the door.<br /> -And he knew her by her ruddy garment and two yet-watching men:<br /> -Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen.<br /> -And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed Him dead.<br /> -We sell the body for silver ...'<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">Then Judas cried out and fled</span><br /> -Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set;<br /> -A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> -Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed<br /> -To stern Jehovah lest his deed make him afraid.<br /> -But in the tiny lantern, hanging as if on air,<br /> -The disciples sat unspeaking. Amaze and peace were there.<br /> -For <i>His</i> voice, more lovely than song of all earthly birds,<br /> -In accents humble and happy spoke slow, consoling words.<br /> -<br /> -Thus Jesus discoursed, and was silent, sitting upright, and soon<br /> -Past the casement behind Him slanted the sinking moon;<br /> -And, rising for Olivet, all stared, between love and dread,<br /> -Seeing the torrid moon a ruddy halo behind His head.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> -FULFILMENT<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Was there love once? I have forgotten her.<br /> -Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.<br /> -Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir<br /> -More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.<br /> -<br /> -Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,<br /> -Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;<br /> -Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,<br /> -As whose children we are brethren: one.<br /> -<br /> -And any moment may descend hot death<br /> -To shatter limbs! pulp, tear, blast<br /> -Beloved soldiers who love rough life and breath<br /> -Not less for dying faithful to the last.<br /> -<br /> -O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony,<br /> -Oped mouth gushing, fallen head,<br /> -Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony!<br /> -O sudden spasm, release of the dead!<br /> -<br /> -Was there love once? I have forgotten her.<br /> -Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.<br /> -O loved, living, dying, heroic soldier,<br /> -All, all, my joy, my grief, my love, are thine!<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> -THE SPRIG OF LIME<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -He lay, and those who watched him were amazed<br /> -To see unheralded beneath the lids<br /> -Twin tears, new gathered at the price of pain,<br /> -Start and at once run crookedly athwart<br /> -Cheeks channelled long by pain, never by tears.<br /> -So desolate too the sigh next uttered<br /> -They had wept also, but his great lips moved,<br /> -And bending down one heard, '<i>A sprig of lime;<br /> -Bring me a sprig of lime.</i>' Whereat she stole<br /> -With dumb signs forth to pluck the thing he craved.<br /> -<br /> -So lay he till a lime-twig had been snapped<br /> -From some still branch that swept the outer grass<br /> -Far from the silver pillar of the hole<br /> -Which mounting past the house's crusted roof<br /> -Split into massy limbs, crossed boughs, a maze<br /> -Of close-compacted intercontorted staffs<br /> -Bowered in foliage wherethrough the sun<br /> -Shot sudden showers of light or crystal spars<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> -Or wavered in a green and vitreous flood.<br /> -<br /> -And all the while in faint and fainter tones<br /> -Scarce audible on deepened evening's hush<br /> -He framed his curious and last request,<br /> -For '<i>lime, a sprig of lime.</i>' Her trembling hand<br /> -Closed his loose fingers on the awkward stem<br /> -Covered above with gentle heart-shaped leaves<br /> -And under dangling, pale as honey-wax,<br /> -Square clusters of sweet-scented starry flowers.<br /> -<br /> -She laid his bent arm back upon his breast,<br /> -Then watched above white knuckles clenched in prayer.<br /> -He never moved. Only at last his eyes<br /> -Opened, then brightened in such avid gaze<br /> -She feared the coma mastered him again ...<br /> -But no; strange sobs rose chuckling in his throat,<br /> -A stranger ecstasy suffused the flesh<br /> -Of that just mask so sun-dried, gouged and old<br /> -Which few—too few!—had loved, too many feared.<br /> -'Father,' she cried; 'Father!'<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 14.5em;">He did not hear.</span><br /> -<br /> -She knelt and kneeling drank the scent of limes,<br /> -Blown round the slow blind by a vesperal gust,<br /> -Till the room swam. So the lime incense blew<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> -Into her life as once it had in his,<br /> -Though how and when and with what ageless charge<br /> -Of sorrow and deep joy how could she know?<br /> -<br /> -Sweet lime that often at the height of noon<br /> -Diffusing dizzy fragrance from your boughs,<br /> -Tasselled with blossoms mere innumerable<br /> -Than the black bees, the uproar of whose toil<br /> -Filled your green vaults, winning such metheglyn<br /> -As clouds their sappy cells, distil, as once<br /> -Ye used, your sunniest emanations<br /> -Toward the window where a woman kneels—She<br /> -who within that room in childish hours<br /> -Lay through the lasting murmur of blanch'd noon<br /> -Behind the sultry blind, now full now flat,<br /> -Drinking anew of every odorous breath,<br /> -Supremely happy in her ignorance<br /> -Of Time that hastens hourly and of Death<br /> -Who need not haste. Scatter your fumes, O lime,<br /> -Loose from each hispid star of citron bloom,<br /> -Tangled beneath the labyrinthine boughs,<br /> -Cloud on such stinging cloud of exhalations<br /> -As reek of youth, fierce life and summer's prime,<br /> -Though hardly now shall he in that dusk room<br /> -Savour your sweetness, since the very sprig,<br /> -Profuse of blossom and of essences,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> -He smells not, who in a paltering hand<br /> -Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming face<br /> -Propped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime,<br /> -Your curfew secrets out in fervid scent<br /> -To the attendant shadows! Tinge the air<br /> -Of the midsummer night that now begins,<br /> -At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to dusk<br /> -And downward caper of the giddy bat<br /> -Hawking against the lustre of bare skies,<br /> -With something of th' unfathomable bliss<br /> -He, who lies dying there, knew once of old<br /> -In the serene trance of a summer night<br /> -When with th' abundance of his young bride's hair<br /> -Loosed on his breast he lay and dared not sleep,<br /> -Listening for the scarce motion of your boughs,<br /> -Which sighed with bliss as she with blissful sleep,<br /> -And drinking desperately each honied wave<br /> -Of perfume wafted past the ghostly blind<br /> -Knew first th' implacable and bitter sense<br /> -Of Time that hastes and Death who need not haste.<br /> -Shed your last sweetness, limes!<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 13em;">But now no more.</span><br /> -She, fruit of that night's love, she heeds you not,<br /> -Who bent, compassionate, to the dim floor<br /> -Takes up the sprig of lime and presses it<br /> -In pain against the stumbling of her heart,<br /> -Knowing, untold, he cannot need it now.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> -<span class="author">SEUMAS O'SULLIVAN</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> -THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -It is a whisper among the hazel bushes;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It is a long low whispering voice that fills</span><br /> -With a sad music the bending and swaying rushes;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It is a heart beat deep in the quiet hills.</span><br /> -<br /> -Twilight people, why will you still be crying,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crying and calling to me out of the trees?</span><br /> -For under the quiet grass the wise are lying,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And all the strong ones are gone over the seas.</span><br /> -<br /> -And I am old, and in my heart at your calling<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Only the old dead dreams a-fluttering go;</span><br /> -As the wind, the forest wind, in its falling<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sets the withered leaves fluttering to and fro.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> -<span class="author">WILFRED OWEN</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Born 1893,</i><br /> -<i>Killed in Action, 1918.</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> -STRANGE MEETING<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -It seemed that out of the battle I escaped<br /> -Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped<br /> -Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.<br /> -Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,<br /> -Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.<br /> -Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared<br /> -With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,<br /> -Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.<br /> -And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall.<br /> -With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;<br /> -Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,<br /> -And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.<br /> -"Strange, friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn."<br /> -"None," said the other, "save the undone years."<br /> -The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,<br /> -Was my life also; I went hunting wild<br /> -After the wildest beauty in the world,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> -Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,<br /> -But mocks the steady running of the hour,<br /> -And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.<br /> -For by my glee might many men have laughed,<br /> -And of my weeping something has been left,<br /> -Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,<br /> -The pity of war, the pity war distilled.<br /> -Now men will go content with what we spoiled,<br /> -Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.<br /> -They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,<br /> -None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.<br /> -Courage was mine, and I had mystery,<br /> -Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;<br /> -To miss the march of this retreating world<br /> -Into vain citadels that are not walled.<br /> -Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels<br /> -I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,<br /> -Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.<br /> -I would have poured my spirit without stint<br /> -But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.<br /> -Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.<br /> -I am the enemy you killed, my friend.<br /> -I knew you in this death: for so you frowned<br /> -Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.<br /> -I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.<br /> -Let us sleep now......<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> -<span class="author">JOSEPH PLUNKETT</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Born 1887.</i><br /> -<i>Executed after the Easter Week Rising, 1916.</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> -I SEE HIS BLOOD UPON THE ROSE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I see His blood upon the rose<br /> -And in the stars the glory of His eyes,<br /> -His body gleams amid eternal snows,<br /> -His tears fall from the skies.<br /> -<br /> -I see His face in every flower;<br /> -The thunder and the singing of the birds<br /> -Are but His voice—and carven by His power<br /> -Rocks are His written words.<br /> -<br /> -All pathways by His feet are worn,<br /> -His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,<br /> -His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,<br /> -His cross is every tree.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> -<span class="author">SIEGFRIED SASSOON</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> -'IN THE PINK'<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -So Davies wrote: 'This leaves me in the pink.<br /> -Then scrawled his name: 'Your loving sweet-heart, Willie'<br /> -With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drink<br /> -Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,<br /> -For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.<br /> -Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.<br /> -<br /> -He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the dark<br /> -He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,<br /> -When he'd go out as cheerful as a lark<br /> -In his best suit to wander arm-in-arm<br /> -With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear<br /> -The simple silly things she liked to hear.<br /> -<br /> -And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge<br /> -Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.<br /> -Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,<br /> -And everything but wretchedness forgotten.<br /> -To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die.<br /> -And still the war goes on; <i>he</i> don't know why.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> -THE DEATH-BED<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped<br /> -Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;<br /> -Aqueous-like floating rays of amber light,<br /> -Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,—<br /> -Silence and safety; and his mortal shore<br /> -Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.<br /> -<br /> -Some one was holding water to his mouth,<br /> -He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped<br /> -Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot<br /> -The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.<br /> -Water—calm, sliding green above the weir;<br /> -Water—a sky-lit alley for his boat,<br /> -Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers<br /> -And shaken hues of summer: drifting down,<br /> -He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.<br /> -<br /> -Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,<br /> -Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.<br /> -Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars<br /> -Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;<br /> -Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> -Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.<br /> -<br /> -Rain; he could hear it rustling through the dark<br /> -Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;<br /> -Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers<br /> -That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps<br /> -Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace<br /> -Gently and slowly washing life away.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">. . . . . . . .</span><br /> -He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain<br /> -Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore<br /> -His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.<br /> -But some one was beside him; soon he lay<br /> -Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.<br /> -And Death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared.<br /> -<br /> -Light many lamps and gather round his bed.<br /> -Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.<br /> -Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.<br /> -He's young; he hated war; how should he die<br /> -When cruel old campaigners win safe through?<br /> -<br /> -But Death replied: 'I choose him.' So he went,<br /> -And there was silence in the summer night;<br /> -Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.<br /> -Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> -COUNTER-ATTACK<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -We'd gained our first objective hours before<br /> -While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,<br /> -Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.<br /> -Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,<br /> -With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,<br /> -And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And then the rain began,—the jolly old rain!</span><br /> -A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,<br /> -Staring across the morning blear with fog;<br /> -He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;<br /> -And then, of course, they started with five-nines<br /> -Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.<br /> -Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst,<br /> -Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,<br /> -While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.<br /> -He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,<br /> -Sick for escape,—loathing the strangled horror<br /> -And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.<br /> -<br /> -An officer came blundering down the trench:<br /> -"Stand-to and man the fire-step!" On he went ...<br /> -Gasping and bawling, "Fire-step... Counter-attack!"<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left;</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And stumbling figures looming out in front.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"O Christ, they're coming at us!" Bullets spat,</span><br /> -And he remembered his rifle ... rapid fire ...<br /> -And started blazing wildly ... Then a bang<br /> -Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out<br /> -To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked<br /> -And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,<br /> -Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans ...<br /> -Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,<br /> -Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> -DREAMERS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.</span><br /> -In the great hour of destiny they stand,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.</span><br /> -Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.</span><br /> -Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.</span><br /> -<br /> -I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,</span><br /> -Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And mocked by hopeless longing to regain</span><br /> -Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And going to the office in the train.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> -EVERYONE SANG<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Everyone suddenly burst out singing;<br /> -And I was filled with such delight<br /> -As prisoned birds must find in freedom,<br /> -Winging wildly across the white<br /> -Orchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight.<br /> -<br /> -Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;<br /> -And beauty came like the setting sun:<br /> -My heart was shaken with tears; and horror<br /> -Drifted away ... O, but Everyone<br /> -Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> -<span class="author">EDWARD SHANKS</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> -A NIGHT-PIECE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Come out and walk. The last few drops of light<br /> -Drain silently out of the cloudy blue;<br /> -The trees are full of the dark-stooping night,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The fields are wet with dew.</span><br /> -<br /> -All's quiet in the wood but, far away,<br /> -Down the hillside and out across the plain,<br /> -Moves, with long trail of white that marks its way,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The softly panting train.</span><br /> -<br /> -Come through the clearing. Hardly now we see<br /> -The flowers, save dark or light against the grass,<br /> -Or glimmering silver on a scented tree<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That trembles as we pass.</span><br /> -<br /> -Hark now! So far, so far ... that distant song ...<br /> -Move not the rustling grasses with your feet.<br /> -The dusk is full of sounds, that all along<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The muttering boughs repeat.</span><br /> -<br /> -So far, so faint, we lift our heads in doubt.<br /> -Wind, or the blood that beats within our ears,<br /> -Has feigned a dubious and delusive note,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Such as a dreamer hears.</span><br /> -<br /> -Again ... again! The faint sounds rise and fail.<br /> -So far the enchanted tree, the song so low ...<br /> -A drowsy thrush? A waking nightingale?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Silence. We do not know.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> -THE GLOW-WORM<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The pale road winds faintly upward into the dark skies,<br /> -And beside it on the rough grass that the wind invisibly stirs,<br /> -Sheltered by sharp-speared gorse and the berried junipers,<br /> -Shining steadily with a green light, the glow-worm lies.<br /> -<br /> -We regard it; and this hill and all the other hills<br /> -That fall in folds to the river, very smooth and steep,<br /> -And the hangers and brakes that the darkness thickly fills<br /> -Fade like phantoms round the light and night is deep, so deep,—<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> -That all the world is emptiness about the still flame<br /> -And we are small shadows standing lost in the huge night.<br /> -We gather up the glow-worm, stooping with dazzled sight,<br /> -And carry it to the little enclosed garden whence we came,<br /> -<br /> -And place it on the short grass. Then the shadowy flowers fade,<br /> -The walls waver and melt and the houses dis-appear<br /> -And the solid town trembles into insubstantial shade<br /> -Round the light of the burning glow-worm, steady and clear.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> -THE HALT<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<i>"Mark time in front! Rear fours cover! Company—halt!</i><br /> -<i>Order arms! Stand at—ease! Stand easy."</i><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A sudden hush:</span><br /> -And then the talk began with a mighty rush—<br /> -"You weren't ever in step—The sergeant.—It wasn't my fault—<br /> -Well, the Lord be praised at least for a ten minutes' halt."<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We sat on a gate and watched them easing and shifting;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Out of the distance a faint, keen breath came drifting,</span><br /> -From the sea behind the hills, and the hedges were salt.<br /> -<br /> -Where do you halt now? Under what hedge do you lie?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where the tall poplars are fringing the white French roads?</span><br /> -And smoke I have not seen discolours the foreign sky?<br /> -Is the company resting there as we rested together<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stamping its feet and readjusting its loads</span><br /> -And looking with wary eyes at the drooping weather?<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> -A HOLLOW ELM<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -What hast thou not withstood;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Tempest-despising tree,</span><br /> -Whose bleak and riven wood<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Gapes now so hollowly,</span><br /> -What rains have beaten thee through many years,<br /> -What snows from off thy branches dripped like tears?<br /> -<br /> -Calmly thou standest now<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Upon thy sunny mound;</span><br /> -The first spring breezes flow<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Past with sweet dizzy sound;</span><br /> -Yet on thy pollard top the branches few<br /> -Stand stiffly out, disdain to murmur too.<br /> -<br /> -The children at thy foot<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Open new-lighted eyes,</span><br /> -Where, on gnarled bark and root,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The soft, warm sunshine lies—</span><br /> -Dost thou, upon thine ancient sides, resent<br /> -The touch of youth, quick and impermanent?<br /> -<br /> -These, at the beck of spring,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Live in the moment still;</span><br /> -Thy boughs unquivering,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Remembering winter's chill,</span><br /> -And many other winters past and gone,<br /> -Are mocked, not cheated, by the transient sun.<br /> -<br /> -Hast thou so much withstood,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Tempest-despising tree,</span><br /> -That now thy hollow wood<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Stiffens disdainfully</span><br /> -Against the soft spring airs and soft spring rain,<br /> -Knowing too well that winter comes again?<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> -THE RETURN<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I<br /> -<br /> -Now into hearts long empty of the sun<br /> -The morning comes again with golden light<br /> -And all the shades of the half-dusk are done<br /> -And all the crevices are suddenly bright.<br /> -So gradually had love lain down to sleep,<br /> -We knew it not; but when we saw his head<br /> -Pillowed and sunken in a trance so deep<br /> -We whispered shuddering that he was dead.<br /> -Then you like Psyche took the light and leant<br /> -Over the monster lying in his place,<br /> -Daring, despairing, trembling as you bent ...<br /> -But love raised up his new-awakening face<br /> -And into our hearts long empty of the sun<br /> -We felt the sky-distilled bright liquor run.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -II<br /> -<br /> -When love comes back that went in mist and cloud<br /> -He comes triumphant in his pomp and power;<br /> -Voices that muttered long are glad and loud<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> -To mark the sweetness of the sudden hour.<br /> -How could we live so long in that half-light?<br /> -That opiate shadow, where the deadened nerves<br /> -So soon forget how hills and winds are bright,<br /> -That drugged and sleepy dusk, that only serves<br /> -With false shades to conceal the emptiness<br /> -Of hearts whence love has stolen unawares,<br /> -Where creeping doubts and dumb, dull sorrows press<br /> -And weariness with blind eyes gapes and stares.<br /> -This was our state, but now a happy song<br /> -Rings through our inner sunlight all day long.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -III<br /> -<br /> -When that I lay in a mute agony,<br /> -I nothing saw nor heard nor felt nor thought,<br /> -The inner self, the quintessential me,<br /> -In that blind hour beyond all sense was brought<br /> -Hard against pain. I had no body, no mind,<br /> -Nought but the point that suffers joy or loss,<br /> -No eyes in sudden blackness to be blind,<br /> -No brain for swift regrets to run across.<br /> -But when you touched me, when your hot tears fell,<br /> -The point that had been nothing else but pain<br /> -Changed into rapture by a miracle,<br /> -In which all raptures known before were vain.<br /> -Thus loss which bared the utmost shivering nerve<br /> -For joy's precursor in the heart did serve.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> -CLOUDS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Over this hill the high clouds float all day<br /> -And trail their long, soft shadows on the grass,<br /> -And now above the meadows make delay<br /> -And now with regular, swift motion pass.<br /> -Now comes a threatening drift from the south-west,<br /> -In smoky colours drest,<br /> -That spills far out upon the chequered plain<br /> -Its burden of dark rain;<br /> -Then hard behind a stately galleon<br /> -Sails onward with its piled and carven towers<br /> -Stiff sculptured like a heap of marble flowers,<br /> -Rigid, unaltering, a miracle<br /> -Of moulded surfaces, whereon the light<br /> -Shines steadily, intolerably bright;<br /> -Now on a livelier wind a wandering bell<br /> -Of delicate vapour comes, invisibly hung,<br /> -Like feathers from the seeding thistle flung,<br /> -And saunters wantonly far out of sight.<br /> -O God, who fill'st with shifting imagery<br /> -The blue page of the sky,<br /> -Thus writ'st thou also, with as vague a pen,<br /> -In the immenser hearts of dreaming men.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> -THE ROCK POOL<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -This is the Sea. In these uneven walls<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A wave lies prisoned. Far and far away,</span><br /> -Outward to ocean, as the slow tide falls,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Her sisters, through the capes that hold the bay,</span><br /> -Dancing in lovely liberty recede.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But lovely in captivity she lies,</span><br /> -Filled with soft colours, where the waving weed<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Moves gently, and discloses to our eyes</span><br /> -Blurred shining veins of rock and lucent shells<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Under the light-shot water, and here repose</span><br /> -Small quiet fish, and dimly-glowing bells<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of sleeping sea-anemones that close</span><br /> -Their tender fronds and will not now awake<br /> -Till on these rocks the waves returning break.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> -THE SWIMMERS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The cove's a shining plate of blue and green,<br /> -With darker belts between<br /> -The trough and crest of the slow-rising swell,<br /> -And the great rocks throw purple shadows down,<br /> -Where transient sun-sparks wink and burst and drown<br /> -And glimmering pebbles lie too deep to tell,<br /> -Hidden or shining as the shadow wavers.<br /> -And everywhere the restless sun-steeped air<br /> -Trembles and quavers,<br /> -As though it were<br /> -More saturate with light than it could bear.<br /> -<br /> -Now come the swimmers from slow-dripping caves,<br /> -Where the shy fern creeps under the veined roof,<br /> -And wading out meet with glad breast the waves.<br /> -One holds aloof,<br /> -Climbing alone the reef with shrinking feet,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> -That scarce endure the jagged stones' dull beat<br /> -Till on the edge he poises<br /> -And flies to cleave the water, vanishing<br /> -In wreaths of white, with echoing liquid noises,<br /> -And swims beneath, a vague, distorted thing.<br /> -Now all the other swimmers leave behind<br /> -The crystal shallow and the foam-wet shore<br /> -And sliding into deeper water find<br /> -A living coolness in the lifting flood,<br /> -And through their bodies leaps the sparkling blood,<br /> -So that they feel the faint earth's drought no more.<br /> -There now they float, heads raised above the green,<br /> -White bodies cloudily seen,<br /> -Farther and farther from the brazen rock,<br /> -On which the hot air shakes, on which the tide<br /> -Fruitlessly throws with gentle, soundless shock<br /> -The cool and lagging wave. Out, out they go,<br /> -And now upon a mirrored cloud they ride<br /> -Or turning over, with soft strokes and slow,<br /> -Slide on like shadows in a tranquil sky.<br /> -Behind them, on the tall, parched cliff, the dry<br /> -And dusty grasses grow<br /> -In shallow ledges of the arid stone,<br /> -Starving for coolness and the touch of rain.<br /> -But, though to earth they must return again,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> -Here come the soft sea-airs to meet them, blown<br /> -Over the surface of the outer deep,<br /> -Scarce moving, staying, falling, straying, gone,<br /> -Light and delightful as the touch of sleep...<br /> -One wakes and splashes round,<br /> -And, as by magic, all the others wake<br /> -From that sea-dream, and now with rippling sound<br /> -Their rapid arms the enchanted silence break.<br /> -And now again the crystal shallows take<br /> -The gleaming bedies whose cool hour is done;<br /> -They pause upon the beach, they pause and sigh<br /> -Then vanish in the caverns one by one.<br /> -<br /> -Soon the wet foot-marks on the stones are dry:<br /> -The cove sleeps on beneath the unwavering sun.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> -THE STORM<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -We wake to hear the storm come down,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sudden on roof and pane;</span><br /> -The thunder's loud and the hasty wind<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hurries the beating rain.</span><br /> -<br /> -The rain slackens, the wind blows gently,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The gust grows gentle and stills,</span><br /> -And the thunder, like a breaking stick,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stumbles about the hills.</span><br /> -<br /> -The drops still hang on leaf and thorn,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The downs stand up more green;</span><br /> -The sun comes out again in power<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the sky is washed and clean.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> -<span class="author">C. H. SORLEY</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Born 1895,</i><br /> -<i>Killed in Action 1915.</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> -GERMAN RAIN<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The heat came down and sapped away my powers.<br /> -The laden heat came down and drowned my brain,<br /> -Till through the weight of overcoming hours<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">felt the rain.</span><br /> -<br /> -Then suddenly I saw what more to see<br /> -I never thought: old things renewed, retrieved,<br /> -The rain that fell in England fell on me,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">And I believed.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> -ALL THE HILLS AND VALES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -All the hills and vales along<br /> -Earth is bursting into song,<br /> -And the singers are the chaps<br /> -Who are going to die perhaps.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">O sing, marching men,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Till the valleys ring again.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Give your gladness to earth's keeping,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">So be glad, when you are sleeping.</span><br /> -<br /> -Cast away regret and rue,<br /> -Think what you are marching to.<br /> -Little live, great pass.<br /> -Jesus Christ and Barabbas<br /> -Were found the same day.<br /> -This died, that went his way.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">So sing with joyful breath.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">For why, you are going to death.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Teeming earth will surely store</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">All the gladness that you pour.</span><br /> -<br /> -Earth that never doubts nor fears,<br /> -Earth that knows of death, not tears,<br /> -Earth that bore with joyful ease<br /> -Hemlock for Socrates,<br /> -Earth that blossomed and was glad<br /> -'Neath the cross that Christ had,<br /> -Shall rejoice and blossom too<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">When the bullet reaches you.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Wherefore, men marching</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">On the road to death, sing!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Pour your gladness on earth's head,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">So be merry, so be dead.</span><br /> -<br /> -From the hills and valleys earth<br /> -Shouts back the sound of mirth,<br /> -Tramp of feet and lilt of song<br /> -Ringing all the road along.<br /> -All the music of their going,<br /> -Ringing swinging glad song-throwing,<br /> -Earth will echo still, when foot<br /> -Lies numb and voice mute.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">On, marching men, on</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">To the gates of death with song.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Sow your gladness for earth's reaping,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">So you may be glad, though sleeping.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Strew your gladness on earth's bed,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">So be merry, so be dead.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> -<span class="author">JAMES STEPHENS</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> -DEIRDRE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Do not let any woman read this verse;<br /> -It is for men, and after them their sons<br /> -And their sons' sons.<br /> -<br /> -The time comes when our hearts sink utterly;<br /> -When we remember Deirdre and her tale,<br /> -And that her lips are dust.<br /> -<br /> -Once she did tread the earth: men took her hand;<br /> -They looked into her eyes and said their say,<br /> -And she replied to them.<br /> -<br /> -More than a thousand years it is since she<br /> -Was beautiful: she trod the waving grass;<br /> -She saw the clouds.<br /> -<br /> -A thousand years! The grass is still the same,<br /> -The clouds as lovely as they were that time<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> -When Deirdre was alive.<br /> -<br /> -But there has never been a woman born<br /> -Who was so beautiful, not one so beautiful<br /> -Of all the women born.<br /> -<br /> -Let all men go apart and mourn together;<br /> -No man can ever love her; not a man<br /> -Can ever be her lover.<br /> -<br /> -No man can bend before her: no man say—<br /> -What could one say to her? There are no words<br /> -That one could say to her!<br /> -<br /> -Now she is but a story that is told<br /> -Beside the fire! No man can ever be<br /> -The friend of that poor queen.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> -THE GOAT PATHS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The crooked paths go every way<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Upon the hill—they wind about</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Through the heather in and out</span><br /> -Of the quiet sunniness.<br /> -And there the goats, day after day,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Stray in sunny quietness,</span><br /> -Cropping here and cropping there,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As they pause and turn and pass,</span><br /> -Now a bit of heather spray<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Now a mouthful of the grass.</span><br /> -<br /> -In the deeper sunniness,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the place where nothing stirs,</span><br /> -Quietly in quietness,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the quiet of the furze,</span><br /> -For a time they come and lie<br /> -Staring on the roving sky.<br /> -<br /> -If you approach they run away,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They leap and stare, away they bound,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With a sudden angry sound,</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> -To the sunny quietude;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Crouching down where nothing stirs</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the silence of the furze,</span><br /> -Crouching down again to brood<br /> -In the sunny solitude.<br /> -<br /> -If I were as wise as they<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I would stray apart and brood,</span><br /> -I would beat a hidden way<br /> -Through the quiet heather spray<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To a sunny solitude;</span><br /> -And should you come I'd run away,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I would make an angry sound,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I would stare and turn and bound</span><br /> -To the deeper quietude,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To the place where nothing stirs</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the silence of the furze.</span><br /> -<br /> -In that airy quietness<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I would think as long as they;</span><br /> -Through the quiet sunniness<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I would stray away to brood</span><br /> -By a hidden beaten way<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In a sunny solitude.</span><br /> -<br /> -I would think until I found<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Something I can never find,</span><br /> -Something lying on the ground,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the bottom of my mind.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> -THE FIFTEEN ACRES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I cling and swing</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">On a branch, or sing</span><br /> -Through the cool, clear hush of<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Morning, O:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or fling my wing</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">On the air, and bring</span><br /> -To sleepier birds a warning, O:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That the night's in flight,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And the sun's in sight,</span><br /> -And the dew is the grass adorning, O:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And the green leaves swing</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As I sing, sing, sing,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Up by the river,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Down the dell,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">To the little wee nest,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Where the big tree fell,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">So early in the morning, O.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I flit and twit</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the sun for a bit</span><br /> -When his light so bright is shining, O:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or sit and fit</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">My plumes, or knit</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> -Straw plaits for the nest's nice lining, O<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And she with glee</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Shows unto me</span><br /> -Underneath her wings reclining, O:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And I sing that Peg</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Has an egg, egg, egg,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Up by the oat-field,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Round the mill</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Past the meadow</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Down the hill,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">So early in the morning, O.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I stoop and swoop</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">On the air, or loop</span><br /> -Through the trees, and then go soaring, O:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To group with a troop</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">On the gusty poop</span><br /> -While the wind behind is roaring, O:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I skim and swim</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">By a cloud's red rim</span><br /> -And up to the azure flooring, O:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And my wide wings drip</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As I slip, slip, slip</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Down through the rain-drops,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Back where Peg</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Broods in the nest</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">On the little white egg</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">So early in the morning, O.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> -<span class="author">EDWARD WYNDHAM TENNANT</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Born 1895.</i><br /> -<i>Killed in Action 1916.</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> -HOME THOUGHTS IN LAVENTIE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Green gardens in Laventie!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Soldiers only know the street</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where the mud is churned and splashed about</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">By battle-wending feet;</span><br /> -And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse of grass,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Look for it when you pass.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beyond the Church whose pitted spire</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Seems balanced on a strand</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of swaying stone and tottering brick</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Two roofless ruins stand,</span><br /> -And here behind the wreckage where the <i>back</i> wall should have been<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">We found a garden green.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The grass was never trodden on,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The little path of gravel</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Was overgrown with celandine,</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No other folk did travel</span><br /> -Along its weedy surface, but the nimble-footed mouse<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Running from house to house.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So all among the vivid blades</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of soft and tender grass</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We lay, nor heard the limber wheels</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That pass and ever pass,</span><br /> -In noisy continuity until their stony rattle<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Seems in itself a battle.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At length we rose up from this ease</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of tranquil happy mind,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And searched the garden's little length</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A fresh pleasaunce to find;</span><br /> -And there, some yellow daffodils and jasmine hanging high<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Did rest the tired eye.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The fairest and most fragrant</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of the many sweets we found,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Was a little bush of Daphne flower</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Upon a grassy mound,</span><br /> -And so thick were the blossoms set and so divine the scent<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That we were well content.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hungry for Spring I bent my head,</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The perfume fanned my face,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And all my soul was dancing,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In that lovely little place,</span><br /> -Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered towns<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Away......upon the Downs.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I saw green banks of daffodil,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Slim poplars in the breeze,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Great tan-brown hares in gusty March</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A-couching on the leas;</span><br /> -And meadows with their glittering streams, and silver scurrying dace,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Home—what a perfect place.</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Belgium, March,</i> 1916.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> -<span class="author">EDWARD THOMAS</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Born 1877.</i><br /> -<i>Killed in Action 1017.</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> -ASPENS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -All day and night, save winter, every weather,<br /> -Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,<br /> -The aspens at the cross-roads talk together<br /> -Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.<br /> -<br /> -Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing<br /> -Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn<br /> -The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing—The<br /> -sounds that for these fifty years have been.<br /> -<br /> -The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,<br /> -And over lightless pane and footless road,<br /> -Empty as sky, with every other sound<br /> -Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode.<br /> -<br /> -A silent smithy, a silent inn, not fails<br /> -In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,<br /> -In tempest or the night of nightingales,<br /> -To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.<br /> -<br /> -And it would be the same were no house near.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> -Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,<br /> -A spens must shake their leaves and men may hear<br /> -But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.<br /> -<br /> -Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves<br /> -We cannot other than an aspen be<br /> -That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,<br /> -Or so men think who like a different tree.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> -THE BROOK<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Seated once by a brook, watching a child<br /> -Chiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled.<br /> -Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrush<br /> -Not far off in the oak and hazel brush,<br /> -Unseen. There was a scent like honeycomb<br /> -From mugwort dull. And down upon the dome<br /> -Of the stone the cart-horse kicks against so oft<br /> -A butterfly alighted. From aloft<br /> -He took the heat of the sun, and from below,<br /> -On the hot stone he perched contented so,<br /> -As if never a cart would pass again<br /> -That way; as if I were the last of men<br /> -And he the first of insects to have earth<br /> -And sun together and to know their worth,<br /> -I was divided between him and the gleam,<br /> -The motion, and the voices, of the stream,<br /> -The waters running frizzled over gravel,<br /> -That never vanish and for ever travel.<br /> -A grey flycatcher silent on a fence<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> -And I sat as if we had been there since<br /> -The horseman and the horse lying beneath<br /> -The fir-tree-covered barrow on the heath,<br /> -The horseman and the horse with silver shoes,<br /> -Galloped the downs last. All that I could lose<br /> -I lost. And then the child's voice raised the dead.<br /> -"No one's been here before" was what she said<br /> -And what I felt, yet never should have found<br /> -A word for, while I gathered sight and sound.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> -THE BRIDGE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I have come a long way to-day:<br /> -On a strange bridge alone,<br /> -Remembering friends, old friends,<br /> -I rest, without smile or moan,<br /> -As they remember me without smile or moan.<br /> -<br /> -All are behind, the kind<br /> -And the unkind too, no more<br /> -To-night than a dream. The stream<br /> -Runs softly yet drowns the Past,<br /> -The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the Past.<br /> -<br /> -No traveller has rest more blest<br /> -Than this moment brief between<br /> -Two lives, when the Night's first lights<br /> -And shades hide what has never been,<br /> -Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or have been.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> -LIGHTS OUT<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I have come to the borders of sleep,<br /> -The unfathomable deep<br /> -Forest where all must lose<br /> -Their way, however straight,<br /> -Or winding, soon or late;<br /> -They cannot choose.<br /> -<br /> -Many a road and track<br /> -That, since the dawn's first crack,<br /> -Up to the forest brink,<br /> -Deceived the travellers<br /> -Suddenly now blurs,<br /> -And in they sink.<br /> -<br /> -Here love ends,<br /> -Despair, ambition ends,<br /> -All pleasure and all trouble,<br /> -Although most sweet or bitter,<br /> -Here ends in sleep that is sweeter<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> -Than tasks most noble.<br /> -<br /> -There is not any book<br /> -Or face of dearest look<br /> -That I would not turn from now<br /> -To go into the unknown<br /> -I must enter and leave alone<br /> -I know not how.<br /> -<br /> -The tall forest towers;<br /> -Its cloudy foliage lowers<br /> -Ahead, shelf above shelf;<br /> -Its silence I hear and obey<br /> -That I may lose my way<br /> -And myself.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> -WORDS<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Out of us all<br /> -That make rhymes,<br /> -Will you choose<br /> -Sometimes—<br /> -As the winds use<br /> -A crack in the wall<br /> -Or a drain,<br /> -Their joy or their pain<br /> -To whistle through—<br /> -Choose me,<br /> -You English words?<br /> -<br /> -I know you:<br /> -You are light as dreams,<br /> -Tough as oak,<br /> -Precious as gold,<br /> -As poppies and corn,<br /> -Or an old cloak:<br /> -Sweet as our birds<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> -To the ear,<br /> -As the linnet note<br /> -In the heat<br /> -Of Midsummer:<br /> -Strange as the races<br /> -Of dead and unborn:<br /> -Strange and sweet<br /> -Equally.<br /> -And familiar,<br /> -To the eye,<br /> -As the dearest faces<br /> -That a man knows,<br /> -And as lost homes are:<br /> -But though older far<br /> -Than oldest yew,—<br /> -As our hills are, old,—<br /> -Worn new<br /> -Again and again:<br /> -Young as our streams<br /> -After rain:<br /> -And as dear<br /> -As the earth which you prove<br /> -That we love.<br /> -<br /> -Make me content<br /> -With some sweetness<br /> -From Wales<br /> -Whose nightingales<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> -Have no wings,—<br /> -From Wiltshire and Kent<br /> -And Herefordshire,<br /> -And the villages there,—<br /> -From the names, and the things,<br /> -No less.<br /> -Let me sometimes dance<br /> -With you,<br /> -Or climb<br /> -Or stand perchance<br /> -In ecstasy,<br /> -Fixed and free<br /> -In a rhyme,<br /> -As poets do.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> -TALL NETTLES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Tall nettles cover up, as they have done<br /> -These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough<br /> -Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:<br /> -Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.<br /> -<br /> -This corner of the farmyard I like most:<br /> -As well as any bloom upon a flower<br /> -I like the dust on the nettles, never lost<br /> -Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> -THE PATH<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Running along a bank, a parapet<br /> -That saves from the precipitous wood below<br /> -The level road, there is a path. It serves<br /> -Children for looking down the long smooth steep,<br /> -Between the legs of beech and yew, to where<br /> -A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women<br /> -Content themselves with the road, and what they see<br /> -Over the bank, and what the children tell.<br /> -The path, winding like silver, trickles on,<br /> -Bordered and ever invaded by thinnest moss<br /> -That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk<br /> -With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain.<br /> -The children wear it. They have flattened the bank<br /> -On top, and silvered it between the moss<br /> -With the current of their feet, year after year.<br /> -But the road is houseless, and leads not to school.<br /> -To see a child is rare there, and the eye<br /> -Has but the road, the wood that overhangs<br /> -And underyawns it, and the path that looks<br /> -As if it led on to some legendary<br /> -Or fancied place where men have wished to go<br /> -And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> -SWEDES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -They have taken the gable from the roof of clay<br /> -On the long swede pile. They have let in the sun<br /> -To the white and gold and purple of curled fronds<br /> -Unsunned. It is a sight more tender-gorgeous<br /> -At the wood-corner where Winter moans and drips<br /> -Than when, in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings,<br /> -A boy crawls down into a Pharaoh's tomb<br /> -And, first of Christian men, beholds the mummy,<br /> -God and monkey, chariot and throne and vase,<br /> -Blue pottery, alabaster, and gold.<br /> -<br /> -But dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies.<br /> -This is a dream of Winter, sweet as Spring.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> -<span class="author">W. J. TURNER</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> -ROMANCE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When I was but thirteen or so<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I went into a golden land,</span><br /> -Chimborazo, Cotopaxi<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Took me by the hand.</span><br /> -<br /> -My father died, my brother too,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They passed like fleeting dreams.</span><br /> -I stood where Popocatapetl<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the sunlight gleams.</span><br /> -<br /> -I dimly heard the Master's voice<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And boys far-off at play,</span><br /> -Chimborazo, Cotopaxi<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had stolen me away.</span><br /> -<br /> -I walked in a great golden dream<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To and fro from school—</span><br /> -Shining Popocatapetl<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The dusty streets did rule.</span><br /> -<br /> -I walked home with a gold dark boy<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And never a word I'd say,</span><br /> -Chimborazo, Cotopaxi<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had taken my speech away:</span><br /> -<br /> -I gazed entranced upon his face<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fairer than any flower—</span><br /> -O shining Popocatapetl<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It was thy magic hour:</span><br /> -<br /> -The houses, people, traffic seemed<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thin fading dreams by day,</span><br /> -Chimborazo, Cotopaxi<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They had stolen my soul away!</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> -THE CAVES OF AUVERGNE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -He carved the red deer and the bull<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon the smooth cave rock,</span><br /> -Returned from war with belly full,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And scarred with many a knock,</span><br /> -He carved the red deer and the bull<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon the smooth cave rock.</span><br /> -<br /> -The stars flew by the cave's wide door,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The clouds wild trumpets blew,</span><br /> -Trees rose in wild dreams from the floor,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flowers with dream faces grew</span><br /> -Up to the sky, and softly hung<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Golden and white and blue.</span><br /> -<br /> -The woman ground her heap of corn,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her heart a guarded fire;</span><br /> -The wind played in his trembling soul<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like a hand upon a lyre,</span><br /> -The wind drew faintly on the stone<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Symbols of his desire:</span><br /> -<br /> -The red deer of the forest dark,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose antlers cut the sky,</span><br /> -That vanishes into the mirk<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And like a dream flits by,</span><br /> -And by an arrow slain at last<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is but the wind's dark body.</span><br /> -<br /> -The bull that stands in marshy lakes<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As motionless and still</span><br /> -As a dark rock jutting from a plain<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Without a tree or hill;</span><br /> -The bull that is the sign of life,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Its sombre, phallic will.</span><br /> -<br /> -And from the dead, white eyes of them<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wind springs up anew,</span><br /> -It blows upon the trembling heart,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And bull and deer renew</span><br /> -Their flitting life in the dim past<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When that dead Hunter drew.</span><br /> -<br /> -I sit beside him in the night,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And, fingering his red stone,</span><br /> -I chase through endless forests dark<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Seeking that thing unknown,</span><br /> -That which is not red deer or bull,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But which by them was shown:</span><br /> -<br /> -By those stiff shapes in which he drew<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His soul's exalted cry,</span><br /> -When flying down the forest dark<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He slew and knew not why,</span><br /> -When he was filled with song, and strength<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flowed to him from the sky.</span><br /> -<br /> -The wind blows from red deer and bull,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The clouds wild trumpets blare.</span><br /> -Trees rise in wild dreams from the earth,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flowers with dream faces stare,</span><br /> -<i>O Hunter, your own shadow stands</i><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Within your forest lair!</i></span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span> -ECSTASY<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I saw a frieze on whitest marble drawn<br /> -Of boys who sought for shells along the shore,<br /> -Their white feet shedding pallor in the sea,<br /> -The shallow sea, the spring-time sea of green<br /> -That faintly creamed against the cold, smooth pebbles.<br /> -<br /> -The air was thin, their limbs were delicate,<br /> -The wind had graven their small eager hands<br /> -To feel the forests and the dark nights of Asia<br /> -Behind the purple bloom of the horizon,<br /> -Where sails would float and slowly melt away.<br /> -<br /> -Their naked, pure, and grave, unbroken silence<br /> -Filled the soft air as gleaming, limpid water<br /> -Fills a spring sky those days when rain is lying<br /> -In shattered bright pools on the wind-dried roads,<br /> -And their sweet bodies were wind-purified.<br /> -<br /> -One held a shell unto his shell-like ear<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> -And there was music carven in his face,<br /> -His eyes half-closed, his lips just breaking open<br /> -To catch the lulling, mazy, coralline roar<br /> -Of numberless caverns filled with singing seas.<br /> -<br /> -And all of them were hearkening as to singing<br /> -Of far off voices thin and delicate,<br /> -Voices too fine for any mortal mind<br /> -To blow into the whorls of mortal ears—<br /> -And yet those sounds flowed from their grave, sweet faces.<br /> -<br /> -And as I looked I heard that delicate music,<br /> -And I became as grave, as calm, as still<br /> -As those carved boys. I stood upon that shore,<br /> -I felt the cool sea dream around my feet,<br /> -My eyes were staring at the far horizon:<br /> -<br /> -And the wind came and purified my limbs,<br /> -And the stars came and set within my eyes,<br /> -And snowy clouds rested upon my shoulders,<br /> -And the blue sky shimmered deep within me,<br /> -And I sang like a carven pipe of music.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> -KENT IN WAR<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -The pebbly brook is cold to-night,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Its water soft as air,</span><br /> -A clear, cold, crystal-bodied wind<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shadowless and bare,</span><br /> -Leaping and running in this world<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where dark-horned cattle stare:</span><br /> -<br /> -Where dark-horned cattle stare, hoof-firm<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the dark pavements of the sky,</span><br /> -And trees are mummies swathed in sleep,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And small dark hills crowd wearily:</span><br /> -Soft multitudes of snow-grey clouds<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Without a sound march by.</span><br /> -<br /> -Down at the bottom of the road<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I smell the woody damp</span><br /> -Of that cold spirit in the grass,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And leave my hill-top camp—</span><br /> -Its long gun pointing in the sky—And<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">take the Moon for lamp.</span><br /> -<br /> -I stop beside the bright cold glint<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of that thin spirit of the grass,</span><br /> -So gay it is, so innocent!<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I watch its sparkling footsteps pass</span><br /> -Lightly from smooth round stone to stone,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hid in the dew-hung grass.</span><br /> -<br /> -My lamp shines in the globes of dew,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And leaps into that crystal wind</span><br /> -Running along the shaken grass<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To each dark hole that it can find—</span><br /> -The crystal wind, the Moon my lamp,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Have vanished in a wood that's blind.</span><br /> -<br /> -High lies my small, my shadowy camp,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crowded about by small dark hills;</span><br /> -With sudden small white flowers the sky<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Above the woods' dark greenness fills;</span><br /> -And hosts of dark-browed, muttering trees<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In trance the white Moon stills.</span><br /> -<br /> -I move among their tall grey forms,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A thin moon-glimmering, wandering Ghost,</span><br /> -Who takes his lantern through the world<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In search of life that he has lost,</span><br /> -While watching by that long lean gun<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon his small hill post.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> -DEATH<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When I am dead a few poor souls shall grieve<br /> -As I grieved for my brother long ago.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scarce did my eyes grow dim,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I had forgotten him;</span><br /> -I was far-off hearing the spring winds blow,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And many summers burned</span><br /> -When, though still reeling with my eyes aflame,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I heard that faded name</span><br /> -Whispered one Spring amid the hurrying world<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From which, years gone, he turned.</span><br /> -<br /> -I looked up at my windows and I saw<br /> -The trees, thin spectres sucked forth by the moon.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The air was very still</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Above a distant hill;</span><br /> -It was the hour of night's full silver moon.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"O art thou there my brother?" my soul cried;</span><br /> -And all the pale stars down bright rivers wept,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As my heart sadly crept</span><br /> -About the empty hills, bathed in that light<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That lapped him when he died.</span><br /> -<br /> -Ah! it was cold, so cold; do I not know<br /> -How dead my heart on that remembered day!<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Clear in a far-away place</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I see his delicate face</span><br /> -Just as he called me from my solitary play,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Giving into my hands a tiny tree.</span><br /> -We planted it in the dark, blossomless ground<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gravely, without a sound;</span><br /> -Then back I went and left him standing by<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His birthday gift to me.</span><br /> -<br /> -In that far land perchance it quietly grows<br /> -Drinking the rain, making a pleasant shade;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Birds in its branches fly</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Out of the fathomless sky</span><br /> -Where worlds of circling light arise and fade,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Blindly it quivers in the bright flood of day,</span><br /> -Or drowned in multitudinous shouts of rain<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Glooms o'er the dark-veiled plain—Buried</span><br /> -below, the ghost that's in his bones<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dreams in the sodden clay.</span><br /> -<br /> -And, while he faded, drunk with beauty's eyes<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span> -I kissed bright girls and laughed deep in dumb trees,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That stared fixt in the air</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like madmen in despair</span><br /> -Gaped up from earth with the escaping breeze.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I saw earth's exaltation slowly creep</span><br /> -Out of their myriad sky-embracing veins.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I laughed along the lanes,</span><br /> -Meeting Death riding in from the hollow seas<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Through black-wreathed woods asleep.</span><br /> -<br /> -I laughed, I swaggered on the cold, hard ground<br /> -Through the grey air trembled a falling wave—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Thou'rt pale, O Death!" I cried,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mocking him in my pride;</span><br /> -And passing I dreamed not of that lonely grave,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But of leaf-maidens whose pale, moon-like hands</span><br /> -Above the tree-foam waved in the icy air,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sweeping with shining hair</span><br /> -Through the green-tinted sky, one moment fled<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Out of immortal lands.</span><br /> -<br /> -One windless Autumn night the Moon came out<br /> -In a white sea of cloud, a field of snow;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In darkness shaped of trees,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I sank upon my knees</span><br /> -And watched her shining, from the small wood below—<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Faintly Death flickered in an owl's far cry—</span><br /> -We floated soundless in the great gulf of space,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her light upon my face—Immortal,</span><br /> -shining in that dark wood I knelt<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And knew I could not die.</span><br /> -<br /> -And knew I could not die—O Death did'st thou<br /> -Heed my vain glory, standing pale by thy dead?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There is a spirit who grieves</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Amid earth's dying leaves;</span><br /> -Was't thou that wept beside my brother's bed?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For I did never mourn nor heed at all</span><br /> -Him passing on his temporal elm-wood bier;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I never shed a tear.</span><br /> -The drooping sky spread grey-winged through my soul,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">While stones and earth did fall.</span><br /> -<br /> -That sound rings down the years—I hear it yet—<br /> -All earthly life's a winding funeral—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And though I never wept,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But into the dark coach stept,</span><br /> -Dreaming by night to answer the blood's sweet call,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She who stood there, high breasted, with small wise lips,</span><br /> -And gave me wine to drink and bread to eat,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Has not more steadfast feet,</span><br /> -But fades from my arms as fade from mariners' eyes<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sea's most beauteous ships.</span><br /> -<br /> -The trees and hills of earth were once as close<br /> -As my own brother, they are becoming dreams<br /> -And shadows in my eyes;<br /> -More dimly lies<br /> -Guaya deep in my soul, the coastline gleams<br /> -Faintly along the darkening crystalline seas.<br /> -Glimmering and lovely still, 'twill one day go;<br /> -The surging dark will flow<br /> -Over my hopes and joys, and blot out all<br /> -Earth's hills and skies and trees.<br /> -<br /> -I shall look up one night and see the Moon<br /> -For the last time shining above the hills,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And thou, silent, wilt ride</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Over the dark hillside.</span><br /> -'Twill be, perchance, the time of daffodils—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>"How come those bright immortals in the woods?</i></span><br /> -<i>Their joy being young, did'st thou not drag them all</i><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Into dark graves ere Fall?"</i></span><br /> -Shall life thus haunt me, wondering, as I go<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To thy deep solitudes?</span><br /> -<br /> -There is a figure with a down-turned torch<br /> -Carved on a pillar in an olden time,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A calm and lovely boy</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who comes not to destroy</span><br /> -But to lead age back to its golden prime.<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thus did an antique sculptor draw thee, Death,</span><br /> -With smooth and beauteous brow and faint sweet smile,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor haggard, gaunt and vile,</span><br /> -And thou perhaps art Him to whom men may<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Unvexed, give up their breath.</span><br /> -<br /> -But in my soul thou sittest like a dream<br /> -Among earth's mountains, by her dim-coloured seas;<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A wild unearthly Shape</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In thy dark-glimmering cape,</span><br /> -Piping a tune of wavering melodies,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thou sittest, ay, thou sittest at the feast</span><br /> -Of my brief life among earth's bright-wreathed flowers,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stemming the dancing hours</span><br /> -With sombre gleams until abrupt, thou risest<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And all, at once, is ceased.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> -SOLDIERS IN A SMALL CAMP<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -There is a camp upon a rounded hill<br /> -Where men do sleep more closely to the stars,<br /> -And tree-like shapes stand at its entrances,<br /> -Beside the small, dark, shadow-soldiery.<br /> -<br /> -Deep in the gloom of days of isolation,<br /> -Withdrawn, high up from the low, murmuring town,<br /> -Those shadows sit, drooping around their fires,<br /> -Or move as winds dark-waving in a wood.<br /> -<br /> -Staring at cattle on a neighbouring hill<br /> -They are oblivious as is stone or grass—The<br /> -clouds passed voiceless over, and the sun<br /> -Rose, and lit trees, and vanished utterly.<br /> -<br /> -Then in the awful beauty of the world,<br /> -When stars are singing in dark ecstasy,<br /> -Those ox-like soldiers sit collected round<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span> -A thin, metallic echo of human song:<br /> -<br /> -And click their feet and clap their hands in time,<br /> -And wag their heads, and make the white ghost owl<br /> -Flit from its branch—but still those tree-like shapes<br /> -Stand like archangels dark-winged in the sky.<br /> -<br /> -And presently the soldiers cease to stir;<br /> -The thin voice sinks and all at once is dead;<br /> -They lie down on their planks and hear the wind,<br /> -And feel the darkness fumbling at their souls.<br /> -<br /> -They lie in rows as stiff as tombs or trees,<br /> -Their eyeballs imageless, like marble still;<br /> -And secretly they feel that roof and walls<br /> -Are gone and that they stare into the sky.<br /> -<br /> -It is so black, so black, so black, so black,<br /> -Those black-winged shapes have stretched across the world,<br /> -Have swallowed up the stars, and if the sun<br /> -Rises again, it will be black, black, black.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span> -A RITUAL DANCE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -I—THE DANCE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -In the black glitter of night the grey vapour forest<br /> -Lies a dark Ghost in the water, motionless, dark,<br /> -Like a corpse by the bank fallen, and hopelessly rotting<br /> -Where the thin silver soul of the stars silently dances.<br /> -<br /> -The flowers are closed, the birds are carved on the trees,<br /> -When out of the forest glide hundreds of spear-holding shadows,<br /> -In smooth dark ivory bodies their eyeballs gleaming<br /> -Forming a gesturing circle beneath the Moon.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> -The bright-eyed shadows, the tribe in ritual gathered,<br /> -Are dancing and howling, the embryo soul of a nation:<br /> -In loud drum-beating monotonous the tightly stretched skins<br /> -Of oxen that stared at the stars are singing wild paeans:<br /> -<br /> -Wild paeans for food that magically grew in the clearings<br /> -When he that was slain was buried and is resurrected,<br /> -And a green mist arose from the mud and shone in the Moon,<br /> -A great delirium of faces, a new generation.<br /> -<br /> -The thin wafer Moon it is there, it is there in the sky,<br /> -The hand-linked circle raise faces of mad exaltation—<br /> -Dance, O you Hunters, leap madly upon the flung shields,<br /> -Shoot arrows into the sky, thin moon-seeking needles:<br /> -<br /> -Now you shall have a harvest, a belly-full rapture,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> -There shall be many fat women, full grown, and smoother than honey,<br /> -Their limbs like ivory rounded, and firm as a berry,<br /> -Their lips full of food and their eyes full of hunger for men!<br /> -<br /> -The heat of the earth arises, a faint love mist<br /> -Wan with over-desiring, and in the marshes<br /> -Blindly the mud stirs, clouding the dark shining water,<br /> -And troubling the still soft swarms of fallen stars.<br /> -<br /> -There is bright sweat upon the bodies of cattle,<br /> -Great vials of life motionless in the moonlight,<br /> -Breathing faint mists over the warm, damp ground;<br /> -And the cry of a dancer rings through the shadowy forest.<br /> -<br /> -The tiger is seeking his mate and his glassy eyes<br /> -Are purple and shot with starlight in the grass shining,<br /> -The fiery grass tortured out of the mud and writhing<br /> -Under the sun, now shivering and pale in the Moon.<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> -The shadows are dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing:<br /> -The grey vapour amis of the forest lie dreaming around them;<br /> -The cold, shining moonlight falls from their bodies and faces,<br /> -But caught in their eyes lies prisoned and faintly gleaming:<br /> -<br /> -And they return to their dwellings within the grey forest,<br /> -Into their dark huts, burying the moonlight with them,<br /> -Burying the trees and the stars and the flowing river,<br /> -And the glittering spears, and their dark, evocative gestures.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -II—SLEEP<br /> -<br /> -Hollow the world in the moonlit hour when the birds are shadows small,<br /> -Lost in the swarm of giant leaves and myriad branches tall;<br /> -When vast thick boughs hang across the sky like solid limbs of night,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span> -Dug from still quarries of grey-black air by the pale transparent light,<br /> -And the purple and golden blooms of the sun, each crimson and<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">spotted flower,</span><br /> -Are folded up or have faded away, as the still intangible power<br /> -Floats out of the sky, falls shimmering down, a silver-shadowy bloom,<br /> -On the spear-pointed forest a fragile crown, in the soul a soft,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">bright gloom;</span><br /> -Hollow the world when the shadow of man lies prone and still on its floor,<br /> -And the moonlight shut from his empty heart weeps softly against his door,<br /> -And his terror and joy but a little dream in the corner of his house,<br /> -And his voice dead in the darkness 'mid the twittering of a mouse.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -III.<br /> -<br /> -Hollow the world! hollow the world!<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And its dancers shadow-grey;</span><br /> -And the Moon a silver-shadowy bloom<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fading and fading away;</span><br /> -And the forest's grey vapour, and all the trees<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shadows against the sky;</span><br /> -And the soul of man and his ecstasies<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A night-forgotten cry.</span><br /> -Hollow the world! hollow the world!<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> -<span class="author">IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span> -FROM A FLEMISH GRAVEYARD<br /> -<br /> -JANUARY 1915<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -A year hence may the grass that waves<br /> -O'er English men in Flemish graves,<br /> -Coating this clay with green of peace<br /> -And softness of a year's increase,<br /> -Be kind and lithe as English grass<br /> -To bend and nod as the winds pass;<br /> -It was for grass on English hills<br /> -These bore too soon the last of ills.<br /> -<br /> -And may the wind be brisk and clean,<br /> -And singing cheerfully between<br /> -The bents a pleasant-burdened song<br /> -To cheer these English dead along;<br /> -For English songs and English winds<br /> -Are they that bred these English minds.<br /> -<br /> -And may the circumstantial trees<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> -Dip, for these dead ones, in the breeze,<br /> -And make for them their silver play<br /> -Of spangled boughs each shiny day.<br /> -Thus may these look above, and see<br /> -And hear the wind in grass and tree,<br /> -And watch a lark in heaven stand,<br /> -And think themselves in their own land.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span> -A MONUMENT<br /> -<br /> -(AFTER AN ANCIENT FASHION)<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Traveller, turn a mournful eye<br /> -Where my lady's ashes lie;<br /> -If thou hast a sweet thine own<br /> -Pity me, that am alone;—<br /> -Yet, if thou no lover be,<br /> -Nor hast been, I'll pity thee.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a><br /> -<a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> -<span class="author">FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span> -SONG OF THE DARK AGES<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -We digged our trenches on the down<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beside old barrows, and the wet</span><br /> -White chalk we shovelled from below;<br /> -It lay like drifts of thawing snow<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On parados and parapet;</span><br /> -<br /> -Until a pick neither struck flint<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor split the yielding chalky soil,</span><br /> -But only calcined human bone:<br /> -Poor relic of that Age of Stone<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose ossuary was our spoil.</span><br /> -<br /> -Home we marched singing in the rain,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And all the while, beneath our song,</span><br /> -I mused how many springs should wane<br /> -And still our trenches scar the plain:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The monument of an old wrong.</span><br /> -<br /> -But then, I thought, the fair green sod<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will wholly cover that white stain,</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span> -And soften, as it clothes the face<br /> -Of those old barrows, every trace<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of violence to the patient plain.</span><br /> -<br /> -And careless people, passing by<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will speak of both in casual tone:</span><br /> -Saying: "You see the toil they made<br /> -The age of iron, pick and spade,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Here jostles with the Age of Stone."</span><br /> -<br /> -Yet either from that happier race<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will merit but a passing glance;</span><br /> -And they will leave us both alone:<br /> -Poor savages who wrought in stone—Poor<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Poor savages who fought in France.</span><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span> -BÊTE HUMAINE<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Riding through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise,<br /> -I saw the world awake; and as the ray<br /> -Touched the tall grasses where they sleeping lay,<br /> -Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies:<br /> -With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyes<br /> -Piloting crimson bodies, slender and gay.<br /> -I aimed at one, and struck it, and it lay<br /> -Broken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes ...<br /> -Then my soul sickened with a sudden pain<br /> -And horror, at my own careless cruelty,<br /> -That in an idle moment I had slain<br /> -A creature whose sweet life it is to fly:<br /> -Like beasts that prey with tooth and claw ...<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nay, they</span><br /> -Must slay to live, but what excuse had I?<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> -THE GIFT<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Marching on Tanga, marching the parch'd plain<br /> -Of wavering spear-grass past Pangani river,<br /> -England came to me—me who had always ta'en<br /> -But never given before—England, the giver,<br /> -In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiver<br /> -On still evenings of summer, after rain,<br /> -By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver<br /> -When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain.<br /> -Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain<br /> -And, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awake<br /> -Shivering all night through till cold daybreak:<br /> -In that I count these sufferings my gain<br /> -And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fain<br /> -Suffer as many more for her sweet sake.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> -THE LEANING ELM<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Before my window, in days of winter hoar<br /> -Huddled a mournful wood;<br /> -Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore,<br /> -In stony sleep they stood:<br /> -But you, unhappy elm, the angry west<br /> -Had chosen from the rest,<br /> -Flung broken on your brothers' branches bare,<br /> -And left you leaning there<br /> -So dead that when the breath of winter cast<br /> -Wild snow upon the blast,<br /> -The other living branches, downward bowed,<br /> -Shook free their crystal shroud<br /> -And shed upon your blackened trunk beneath<br /> -Their livery of death......<br /> -<br /> -On windless nights between the beechen bars<br /> -I watched cold stars<br /> -Throb whitely in the sky, and dreamily<br /> -Wondered if any life lay locked in thee:<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> -If still the hidden sap secretly moved<br /> -As water in the icy winterbourne<br /> -Floweth unheard:<br /> -And half I pitied you your trance forlorn:<br /> -You could not hear, I thought, the voice of any bird,<br /> -The shadowy cries of bats in dim twilight<br /> -Or cool voices of owls crying by night ...<br /> -Hunting by night under the horned moon:<br /> -Yet half I envied you your wintry swoon,<br /> -Till, on this morning mild, the sun, new-risen<br /> -Steals from his misty prison;<br /> -The frozen fallows glow, the black trees shaken<br /> -In a clear flood of sunlight vibrating awaken:<br /> -And lo, your ravaged hole, beyond belief<br /> -Slenderly fledged anew with tender leaf<br /> -As pale as those twin vanes that break at last<br /> -In a tiny fan above the black beech-mast<br /> -Where no blade springeth green<br /> -But pallid bells of the shy helleborine.<br /> -What is this ecstasy that overwhelms<br /> -The dreaming earth? See, the embrownèd elms<br /> -Crowding purple distances warm the depths of the wood:<br /> -A new-born wind tosses their tassels brown,<br /> -His white clouds dapple the down:<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> -Into a green flame bursting the hedgerows stand.<br /> -<br /> -Soon, with banners flying, Spring will walk the land....<br /> -There is no day for thee, my soul, like this,<br /> -No spring of lovely words. Nay, even the kiss<br /> -Of mortal love that maketh man divine<br /> -This light cannot outshine:<br /> -Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catch<br /> -The shadow of vanishing beauty, may not match<br /> -This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull<br /> -Such magical beauty as time may not destroy;<br /> -But we, alas, are not more beautiful:<br /> -We cannot flower in beauty as in joy.<br /> -We sing, our mused words are sped, and then<br /> -Poets are only men<br /> -Who age, and toil, and sicken ... This maim'd tree<br /> -May stand in leaf when I have ceased to be.<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span> -PROTHALAMION<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -When the evening came my love said to me:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool;</span><br /> -The garden of black hellebore and rosemary<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where wild woodruff spills in a milky pool.</span><br /> -<br /> -Low we passed in the twilight, for the wavering heat<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of day had waned; and round that shaded plot</span><br /> -Of secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet:<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips spake not.</span><br /> -<br /> -Between that old garden and seas of lazy foam<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gloomy and beautiful alleys of trees arise</span><br /> -With spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but the skies</span><br /> -<br /> -Veiled with a soft air, drench'd in the roses' musk<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove:</span><br /> -No stars burned in their deeps, but through the dusk<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I saw my love's eyes, and they were brimmed with love.</span><br /> -<br /> -No star their secret ravished, no wasting moon<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours:</span><br /> -Only the soft unseeing heaven of June,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The ghosts of great trees, and the sleeping flowers.</span><br /> -<br /> -For doves that crooned in the leafy noonday now<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Were silent; the night-jar sought his secret covers,</span><br /> -Nor even a mild sea-whisper moved a creaking bough—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Was ever a silence deeper made for lovers?</span><br /> -<br /> -Was ever a moment meeter made for love?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beautiful are your close lips beneath my kiss;</span><br /> -And all your yielding sweetness beautiful—<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oh, never in all the world was such a night as this!</span><br /> -</p> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p> -<a id="INDEX"></a>INDEX<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE:<br /> -Marriage Song, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br /> -Epilogue, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br /> -<br /> -MARTIN ARMSTRONG:<br /> -The Buzzards, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br /> -<br /> -MAURICE BARING:<br /> -Diffugere Nives, 1917, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> -Julian Grenfell, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br /> -Pierre, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br /> -<br /> -HILAIRE BELLOC:<br /> -The South Country, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br /> -The Night, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br /> -Song, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br /> -The False Heart, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br /> -Hannaker Mill (1913), <a href="#Page_37">37</a><br /> -Tarantella, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br /> -On a Dead Hostess, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br /> -<br /> -EDMUND BLUNDEN:<br /> -Almswomen, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br /> -Gleaning, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> -<br /> -GORDON BOTTOMLEY:<br /> -The Ploughman, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br /> -Babel: The Gate of the God, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br /> -The End of the World, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br /> -Atlantis, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br /> -New Year's Eve, 1913, <a href="#Page_65">65</a><br /> -To Iron-founders and Others, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> -<br /> -RUPERT BROOKE:<br /> -Sonnet, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br /> -The Soldier, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br /> -The Treasure, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br /> -The Great Lover, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br /> -Clouds, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br /> -The Old Vicarage, Grantchester, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br /> -The Busy Heart, <a href="#Page_85">85</a><br /> -Dining-Room Tea, <a href="#Page_86">86</a><br /> -<br /> -FRANCIS BURROWS:<br /> -The Prayer to Demeter, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br /> -The Giant's Dirge, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br /> -The Unforgotten, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br /> -The Well, <a href="#Page_96">96</a><br /> -Egyptian, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br /> -Life, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br /> -<br /> -A. Y. CAMPBELL:<br /> -Animula Vagula, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br /> -A Bird, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br /> -The Dromedary, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br /> -The Panic, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br /> -<br /> -G. K. CHESTERTON:<br /> -Wine and Water, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br /> -The Rolling English Road, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br /> -The Secret People, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br /> -From the Ballad of the White Horse, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br /> -<br /> -PADRAIC COLUM:<br /> -The Old Woman of the Roads, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br /> -<br /> -FRANCES CORNFORD:<br /> -Autumn Evening, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br /> -<br /> -W. H. DAVIES:<br /> -Days Too Short, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><br /> -The Example, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br /> -The East in Gold, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br /> -The Happy Child, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br /> -A Great Time, <a href="#Page_139">139</a><br /> -The White Cascade, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br /> -In May, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br /> -Thunderstorms, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br /> -Sweet Stay-at-Home, <a href="#Page_143">143</a><br /> -<br /> -EDWARD L. DAVISON:<br /> -The Trees, <a href="#Page_147">147</a><br /> -In this Dark House, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> -<br /> -WALTER DE LA MARE:<br /> -The Listeners, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br /> -Arabia, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br /> -Music, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br /> -The Scribe, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br /> -The Ghost, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br /> -Clear Eyes, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br /> -Fare Well, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br /> -All That's Past, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br /> -The Song of the Mad Prince, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br /> -<br /> -JOHN DRINKWATER:<br /> -Birthright, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br /> -Moonlit Apples, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br /> -<br /> -R. C. K. ENSOR:<br /> -Ode to Reality, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br /> -<br /> -JAMES ELROY FLECKER:<br /> -Riouperoux, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br /> -War Song of the Saracens, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br /> -The Old Ships, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br /> -Stillness, <a href="#Page_182">182</a><br /> -Areiya, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br /> -The Queen's Song, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br /> -Brumana, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br /> -Hyali, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br /> -The Golden Journey to Samarkand—Prologue, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br /> -Epilogue, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br /> -<br /> -ROBIN FLOWER:<br /> -La Vie Cerébrale, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br /> -The Pipes, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> -Say not that Beauty, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br /> -<br /> -JOHN FREEMAN:<br /> -The Wakers, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br /> -The Body, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br /> -Stone Trees, <a href="#Page_214">214</a><br /> -More Than Sweet, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br /> -Waking, <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br /> -The Chair, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br /> -The Stars in Their Courses, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br /> -Shadows, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br /> -<br /> -ROBERT GRAVES:<br /> -Star-Talk, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br /> -To Lucasta on going to the Wars, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br /> -Not Dead, <a href="#Page_235">235</a><br /> -In the Wilderness, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br /> -Neglectful Edward, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br /> -<br /> -JULIAN GRENFELL:<br /> -To a Black Greyhound, <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br /> -Into Battle, <a href="#Page_244">244</a><br /> -<br /> -IVOR GURNEY:<br /> -To the Poet before Battle, <a href="#Page_249">249</a><br /> -Song of Pain and Beauty, <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br /> -<br /> -RALPH HODGSON:<br /> -Eve, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br /> -The Bull, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br /> -The Song of Honour, <a href="#Page_264">264</a><br /> -Reason has Moons, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br /> -<br /> -JAMES JOYCE:<br /> -Strings in the Earth, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br /> -I Hear an Army, <a href="#Page_278">278</a><br /> -<br /> -D. H. LAWRENCE:<br /> -Service of All the Dead, <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br /> -<br /> -FRANCIS LEDWIDGE:<br /> -In France, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br /> -Thomas Macdonagh, <a href="#Page_286">286</a><br /> -In September, <a href="#Page_287">287</a><br /> -<br /> -ROSE MACAULAY:<br /> -Trinity Sunday, <a href="#Page_291">291</a><br /> -<br /> -THOMAS MACDONAGH:<br /> -Inscription on a Ruin, <a href="#Page_295">295</a><br /> -The Night Hunt, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br /> -<br /> -JOHN MASEFIELD:<br /> -C. L. M., <a href="#Page_301">301</a><br /> -What Am I, Life?, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br /> -<br /> -HAROLD MONRO:<br /> -Journey, <a href="#Page_307">307</a><br /> -Solitude, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br /> -Milk for the Cat, <a href="#Page_312">312</a><br /> -<br /> -STURGE MOORE:<br /> -Sent from Egypt, <a href="#Page_317">317</a><br /> -A Spanish Picture, <a href="#Page_325">325</a><br /> -A Duet, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br /> -The Gazelles, <a href="#Page_329">329</a><br /> -<br /> -ROBERT NICHOLS:<br /> -To ——, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br /> -Farewell to place of comfort, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br /> -The Full Heart, <a href="#Page_342">342</a><br /> -The Tower, <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br /> -Fulfilment, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>;<br /> -The Sprig of Lime, <a href="#Page_348">348</a><br /> -<br /> -SEUMAS O'SULLIVAN:<br /> -The Twilight People, <a href="#Page_355">355</a><br /> -<br /> -WILFRED OWEN:<br /> -Strange Meeting, <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br /> -<br /> -JOSEPH PLUNKETT:<br /> -I See His Blood Upon the Rose, <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br /> -<br /> -SIEGFRIED SASSOON:<br /> -"In the Pink," <a href="#Page_367">367</a><br /> -The Death-Bed, <a href="#Page_368">368</a><br /> -Counter-Attack, <a href="#Page_370">370</a><br /> -Dreamers, <a href="#Page_373">373</a><br /> -Everyone Sang, <a href="#Page_374">374</a><br /> -<br /> -EDWARD SHANKS:<br /> -A Night Piece, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br /> -The Glow-Worm, <a href="#Page_379">379</a><br /> -The Halt, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br /> -A Hollow Elm, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br /> -The Return, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br /> -Clouds, <a href="#Page_386">386</a><br /> -The Rock Pool, <a href="#Page_387">387</a><br /> -The Swimmers, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br /> -The Storm, <a href="#Page_391">391</a><br /> -<br /> -C. H. SORLEY:<br /> -German Rain, <a href="#Page_395">395</a><br /> -All the Hills and Vales, <a href="#Page_396">396</a><br /> -<br /> -JAMES STEPHENS:<br /> -Deirdre, <a href="#Page_401">401</a><br /> -The Goat-Paths, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br /> -The Fifteen Acres, <a href="#Page_405">405</a><br /> -<br /> -EDWARD WYNDHAM TENNANT:<br /> -Homo Thoughts in Laventie, <a href="#Page_409">409</a><br /> -<br /> -EDWARD THOMAS:<br /> -Aspens, <a href="#Page_415">415</a><br /> -The Brook, <a href="#Page_417">417</a><br /> -The Bridge, <a href="#Page_419">419</a><br /> -Lights Out, <a href="#Page_420">420</a><br /> -Words, <a href="#Page_422">422</a><br /> -Tall Nettles, <a href="#Page_425">425</a><br /> -The Path, <a href="#Page_426">426</a><br /> -Swedes, <a href="#Page_427">427</a><br /> -<br /> -W. J. TURNER:<br /> -Romance, <a href="#Page_431">431</a><br /> -The Caves of Auvergne, <a href="#Page_433">433</a><br /> -Ecstasy, <a href="#Page_436">436</a><br /> -Kent in War, <a href="#Page_438">438</a><br /> -Death, <a href="#Page_440">440</a><br /> -Soldiers in a Small Camp, <a href="#Page_446">446</a><br /> -A Ritual Dance, <a href="#Page_448">448</a><br /> -<br /> -IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS:<br /> -From a Flemish Graveyard, <a href="#Page_455">455</a><br /> -A Monument, <a href="#Page_457">457</a><br /> -<br /> -FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG:<br /> -Song of the Dark Ages, <a href="#Page_461">461</a><br /> -Bête Humaine, <a href="#Page_463">463</a><br /> -The Gift, <a href="#Page_464">464</a><br /> -The Leaning Elm, <a href="#Page_465">465</a><br /> -Prothalamion, <a href="#Page_468">468</a><br /> -</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Selections from Modern Poets, by Various - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM MODERN POETS *** - -***** This file should be named 53206-h.htm or 53206-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/2/0/53206/ - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version, also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... 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