diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/53206-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/53206-0.txt | 9170 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 9170 deletions
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 ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) -Images generously made available by the Internet Achive. - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - 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. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org - - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - |