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diff --git a/old/53818-0.txt b/old/53818-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4d6fe80..0000000 --- a/old/53818-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2286 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Geoffrey Dearmer - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Poems - -Author: Geoffrey Dearmer - -Release Date: December 27, 2016 [EBook #53818] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS *** - - - - -Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif, Bryan Ness and -the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian -Libraries) - - - - - - - - - - - - POEMS - - - - - POEMS - - BY - GEOFFREY DEARMER - - [Illustration: colophon] - - NEW YORK - Robert M. McBride & Company - 1918 - - - - - Dedication - - TO CHRISTOPHER - - KILLED, SUVLA BAY, OCTOBER 6TH, 1915. - - - _At Suvla when a sickening curse of sound_ - _Came hurtling from the shrapnel-shaken skies,_ - _Without a word you shuddered to the ground_ - _And with a gesture hid your darkening eyes._ - _You are not blind to-day--_ - _But were we blind before you went away?_ - - _Forgive us then, if, faltering, we fail_ - _To speak in terms articulate of you;_ - _Now Death’s celestial journeymen unveil_ - _Your naked soul--the soul we hardly knew._ - _O beauty scarce unfurled,_ - _Your blood shall help to purify the world._ - - _Awakened now, no longer we believe_ - _Knight-errantry a myth of long ago._ - _Let us not shame your happiness and grieve;_ - _All close we feel you live and move, we know_ - _Your life shall ever be_ - _Close to our lives enshrined eternally._ - - - - -CONTENTS - - -I - -_The Dardanelles_ - - PAGE - -From “W” Beach 3 - -A Prayer 5 - -Fallen 6 - -The Turkish Trench Dog 7 - -The Sentinel 9 - -Mudros after the Evacuation 12 - -The Dead Turk 18 - - -II - -_B.E.F._ - -Missing 17 - -Two Trench Poems 22 - -Gommecourt 24 - -A Vision 31 - -Revelation 33 - -Tell me, Stranger 34 - -Spring in the Trenches 36 - -On the Road 38 - -Keats, before Action 41 - -The Somme 42 - -Somme Flower Talk 46 - -To the Uttermost Farthing 48 - -In the Mess 53 - -A Trench Incident 54 - -Reality 55 - -“We Poets of the Proud Old Lineage” 56 - - -III - -_Miscellaneous Poems_ - -Song 59 - -The Shadow 60 - -Everychild 62 - -Child of the Flowing Tide 64 - -Eight Sonnets 66 - -Keats 74 - -Meeting Her in the Street 75 - -Her Homage 76 - -Reaction 77 - -April 78 - -May-June 79 - -The Strolling Singer 80 - -The French Mother to Her Unborn Child 87 - - -My thanks are due to the editors of the _Nineteenth Century_, _Cornhill -Magazine_, _Observer_, _New Statesman_, and _Westminster Gazette_, for -permission to reprint certain of these poems. - - - - - I - - THE DARDANELLES - - - - - FROM “W” BEACH - - - The Isle of Imbros, set in turquoise blue, - Lies to the westward; on the eastern side - The purple hills of Asia fade from view, - And rolling battleships at anchor ride. - - White flocks of cloud float by, the sunset glows, - And dipping gulls fleck a slow-waking sea, - Where dim steel-shadowed forms with foaming bows - Wind up the Narrows towards Gallipoli. - - No colour breaks this tongue of barren land - Save where a group of huddled tents gleams white; - Before me ugly shapes like spectres stand, - And wooden crosses cleave the waning light. - - Celestial gardeners speed the hurrying day - And sow the plains of night with silver grain; - So shall this transient havoc fade away - And the proud cape be beautiful again. - - Laden with figs and olives, or a freight - Of purple grapes, tanned singing men shall row, - Chanting wild songs of how Eternal Fate - Withstood that fierce invasion long ago. - - - - - A PRAYER - - - Lord, keep him near to me: - Revive his image, let my darkening sight - Renew his life by death intensified - (His beating life so pitifully tried) - That we may face the night - And shade the agony. - - We pray in barren stress - Where stricken men await the shrill alarm - And nightly watch, in silent order set, - The beckoning stars enshrine the parapet. - Lord, keep his soul from harm - And grant him happiness. - - When all the world is free, - And, cleansed and purified by floods of pain - We turn, and see the light in human eyes; - When the last echo of War’s thunder dies; - Lord, let us pause again - In silent memory. - - Gallipoli, _October, 1915_. - - - - - FALLEN - - - The days shall darken and sink down to Night, - And Night shall break in the bleak dawn of Day: - The years shall dim his face, our fleeting sight - Shall see his splendid image fade away - Beyond the knowledge of our drifting thought - Which moves in circles to the source again, - Beyond dark seas with shivering stars inwrought - Beyond war-burdened men in stricken pain. - - I searched in rage and passionate despair - Down winding paths of thought, and comradeless - In the full surge and tumult where he died - I turned; and saw my Brother standing there. - His face was like a dawning happiness-- - I saw wounds in his hands, his feet, his side. - - Gallipoli, _October, 1915_. - - - - - THE TURKISH TRENCH DOG - - - Night held me as I crawled and scrambled near - The Turkish lines. Above, the mocking stars - Silvered the curving parapet, and clear - Cloud-latticed beams o’erflecked the land with bars - I, crouching, lay between - Tense-listening armies peering through the night, - Twin giants bound by tentacles unseen. - Here in dim-shadowed light - I saw him, as a sudden movement turned - His eyes towards me, glowing eyes that burned - A moment ere his snuffling muzzle found - My trail; and then as serpents mesmerise - He chained me with those unrelenting eyes, - That muscle-sliding rhythm, knit and bound - In spare-limbed symmetry, those perfect jaws - And soft-approaching pitter-patter paws. - Nearer and nearer like a wolf he crept-- - That moment had my swift revolver leapt-- - But terror seized me, terror born of shame - Brought flooding revelation. For he came - As one who offers comradeship deserved, - An open ally of the human race, - And sniffing at my prostrate form unnerved - He licked my face! - - - - - THE SENTINEL - - _An Episode at the Evacuation of Gallipoli._ - - - He stood enveloped in the darkening mist - High on the cape that proudly kept her tryst - Above the narrow portal. All the day - White shell-flung water-spouts had scattered spray - Round Helles, warden of the Eastern seas; - And still the boom of Asian batteries - Rumbled around the cape. The sentinel - Spied from his high cliff-towered citadel - The leaping flash of guns; but ere the roar - Sprang from its den on the dim Asian shore, - He blew a trumpet. Then, like burrowing moles, - Dim forms below dashed headlong to their holes, - The while that hurtling iron crossed the sea, - And fifteen seconds seemed eternity. - Below we lay - Crushed in a lighter; and the towering spray - That lately blurred the clear star-laden sea - Subsided in the vast tranquillity. - Now, chafing like taut-muscled charioteers - With every sense on tiptoe, we strained ears - For whispers, or the catch of indrawn breath. - Still not the word to cut adrift the rope - That moored us to a wharf of floating piers: - And thus alternately in fear and hope - Swung the grim pendulum of life and death. - - Then suddenly the sound - Of that loud warning rang the cape around. - We knew a gun had flashed, we knew the roar - That instant rumbled from the Asian shore; - And we lie fettered to a raft!... The shell - Climbs its high trajectory ... Well, - What of it? Fifteen seconds less or more - One--two--three--four--five--six--seven - (Steady, man, - It’s only Asiatic Ann) ... - How slow the moments trickle--eight--nine--ten - (They’re wonderful, these men). - Am I a coward? I can count no more; - Hold Thou my hands, O God. - - The sea, upheaved in anger, rocked and swirled; - Niagara seemed pelting from the stars - In tumult that epitomised a world - Roused by the battling impotence of wars. - We heard a whispered order to escape, - And casting loose, incredulously free, - Unscathed, exulting in the amber light - We left behind the immemorial cape. - - But still above the indomitable sea - From his high cliff a sentry watched the night - - - - - MUDROS AFTER THE EVACUATION - - - I laughed to see the gulls that dipped to cling - To the torn edge of surf and blowing spray, - Where some gaunt battleship, a rolling king, - Still dreams of phantom battles in the bay. - I saw a cloud, a full-blown cotton flower - Drift vaguely like a wandering butterfly, - I laughed to think it bore no pregnant shower - Of blinding shrapnel scattered from the sky. - Life bore new hope. An army’s great release - From a closed cage walled in by fire and sea, - From the hushed pause and swooping plunge of shells, - Sped in a night. Here children in strange peace, - Seek solitude to dull the tragedy, - And needless horror of the Dardanelles. - - Mudros, _January, 1916_. - - - - - THE DEAD TURK - - - Dead, dead, and dumbly chill. He seemed to lie - Carved from the earth, in beauty without stain - And suddenly - Day turned to night, and I beheld again - A still Centurion with eyes ablaze: - And Calvary re-echoed with his cry-- - His cry of stark amaze. - - - - - II - - B. E. F. - - - - - MISSING - - - They told me nothing more: I bow my head - And squander life, between the quick and dead - Irresolute. Yet I again could be - Mistress of life, Queen of my destiny, - If I but knew--But now Remembrance plays - My being back through spring and summer days - We passed together; and I see him still - Swinging to meet me down the tardy hill. - That day the birds were new-inspired; a breeze - Bestirred, as it in wonderment, the trees; - The very clouds paused in their breathless race, - And shadows played upon his open face; - And I remember how his laughing eyes - Shone deep as pools in sea-blue ecstasies. - The meadow grasses rustled in the heat; - I even heard the silence of his feet - Down the slow hill--And now the dawning birth - Of beauty woke my senses to the earth - Unveiled in radiance. The sweeping skies-- - Unseen unless reflected in his eyes-- - Marshalled cloud companies with new delight; - Just for us two the spangled dome of night - Swung out the journeying moon. - But still I hold - Burnt in my memory in beaten gold - Days when the Spring stirred in each waking bush - A blue-flecked jay or tawny-feathered thrush, - And drowsy Winter, startled unawares - By arc-winged partridges or listening hares, - Fled guiltily. We heard the magpies call-- - Those dominoes at Nature’s carnival-- - And once a kingfisher, a lovely gleam - Snatched from a rainbow, darted to a stream. - The snowdrops bowed their heads for us to see - Shy peeping buds of hooded chastity; - And stalwart cowslips raised sun-glinted eyes - To those who stooped to pluck their sanctities. - Grass-nestled crocuses that scorn the wind - Speared upward proudly and besought mankind - To step with care. Near by, we searched a glade - Where violets brood in sweetness, half afraid - To wake their petals. On we roamed, and soon - The flower that shares her secret with the moon - In pale gold fellowship peeped out, among - A host of truculent daffodils that flung - Their trumpets down the wind. - Each breathless day - Broke to fulfil its promise, till the May - Had fledged her clustered blooms and swung her pride - In bowing sweetness to the country side. - Beauty was born again. But now the sound - Of heavy Autumn patters to the ground, - And loud discordant booms of thunder roll - Where that enchanted owner of my soul - Lies dead, or dying, or is living still: - At last the fibres of my struggling will - Falter exhausted, and my cowering brain - Cries out in anguish like a child in pain. - - If he is dead, then I abide to prove - That brief fulfilment may be perfect love. - How should I grieve? His life inspired in me - A joy that shall outlive eternity, - Wrought out, complete, unsnared by time and age - My jewelled past my priceless heritage. - Shall misery usurp my realm of years - And leave me drowning in self-pitying tears, - A derelict in my own whirlpool swirled-- - Me--whom Love crowned an empress of the world? - But sometimes ’ere the light - Glimmers dawn-pearled to splash the feet of night, - Ere red, sun-gilded riot floods the sky, - A whisper, swelling to a ringing cry, - Tells me he’s living still. No lash could sting - Like this persistent voice re-echoing - That mocks me as I stumble to my feet. - O, shall I find him wandering in the street? - But every beckoning corner drags me past - Strangers, new faces, each one like the last - Dull, cold, inscrutable. At times I caught - The look--the walk--the gesture that I sought; - And once with throbbing veins I found those eyes - That shone like pools in sea-blue ecstasies, - But looked beyond me--cold expressionless - In vacant wonder at my helplessness, - Then, haunted by that stare, - Beaten, I knew the bedrock of despair. - O, Thou who poised the world, are all my tears - Too light, too pitiful to reach Thine ears? - Locksmith of happiness, aloof, apart, - Am I too impotent to touch Thine heart? - Tell me he’s dead or dying; say he stands - Seeking for guidance the warm touch of hands, - Doomed in an instant to eternal night, - With only mind and memory for sight-- - For I could cheer him. - But Lord quench this drought, - The unfathomable immensity of doubt, - Tell me he’s maimed or crippled, torn or blind, - Staring through eyes that show his wandering mind-- - Tell me he’s rotting in a place abhorred,-- - Not this, not this, O Lord! - - - - - TWO TRENCH POEMS - - - I - - THE STORM NIGHT - - Peal after peal of splitting thunder rolls - (Still roar the howling guns, and star-shells rise) - We perish, drowned in anger-blasted holes, - Give ear, O Lord! Our very manhood cries, - Shell-fodder yea--but spare our human souls - From fury-shaken skies! - - - II - - RESURRECTION - - Five million men are dead. How can the worth - Of all the world redeem such waste as this? - And yet the spring is clamorous of birth, - And whispering in winter’s chrysalis - Glad tidings to each clod, each particle of earth. - So the year’s Easter triumphs. Shall we then - Mourn for the dead unduly, and forget - The resurrection in the hearts of men? - Even the poppy on the parapet - Shall blossom as before when Summer blows again. - - - - - GOMMECOURT - - - I - - The wind, which heralded the blackening night, - Swirled in grey mists the sulphur-laden smoke. - From sleep, in sparkling instancy of light, - Crouched batteries like grumbling tigers woke - And stretched their iron symmetry; they hurled - Skyward with roar and boom each pregnant shell - Rumbling on tracks unseen. Such tyrants reign - The sullen masters of a mangled world, - Grim-mothered in a womb of furnaced hell, - Wrought, forged, and hammered for the work of pain. - - For six long days the common slayers played, - Till, fitfully, there boomed a heavier king, - Who, couched in leaves and branches deftly laid, - And hid in dappled colour of the spring, - Vaunted tornadoes. Far from that covered lair, - Like hidden snares the sinuous trenches lay - Mid fields where nodding poppies show their pride. - The tall star-pointed streamers leap and flare, - And turn the night’s immensity to day; - Or rockets whistle in their upward ride. - - - II - - The moment comes when thrice-embittered fire - Proclaims the prelude to the great attack. - In ruined heaps, torn saps and tangled wire - And battered parapets loom gaunt and black: - The flashes fade, the steady rattle dies, - A breathless hush brings forth a troubled day, - And men of sinew, knit to charge and stand, - Rise up. But he of words and blinded eyes - Applauds the puppets of his ghastly play, - With easy rhetoric and ready hand. - - Unlike those men who waited for the word, - Clean soldiers from a country of the sea; - These were no thong-lashed band or goaded herd - Tricked by the easy speech of tyranny. - All the long week they fought encircling Fate, - While chaos clutched the throat and shuddered past - As phantoms haunt a child, and softly creep - Round cots, so Death stood sentry at the Gate - And beckoned waiting terror, till at last - He vanished at the hurrying touch of sleep. - - The beauty of the Earth seemed doubly sweet - With the stored sacraments the Summer yields-- - Grass-sunken kine, and softly-hissing wheat, - Blue-misted flax, and drowsy poppy fields. - But with the vanished day Remembrance came - Vivid with dreams, and sweet with magic song, - Soft haunting echoes of a distant sea - As from another world. A belt of flame - Held the swift past, and made each moment long - With the tense horror of mortality. - - That easy lordling of the Universe - Who plotted days that stain the path of time, - For him was happy memory a curse, - And Man a scapegoat for a royal crime. - In lagging moments dearly sacrificed - Men sweated blood before eternity: - In cheerful agony, with jest and mirth, - They shared the bitter solitude of Christ - In a new Garden of Gethsemane, - Gethsemane walled in by crested earth. - - They won the greater battle, when each soul - Lay naked to the needless wreck of Mars; - Yet, splendid in perfection, faced the goal - Beyond the sweeping army of the stars. - Necessity foretold that they must die - Mangled and helpless, crippled, maimed and blind, - And cursed with all the sacrilege of war-- - To force a nation to retract a lie, - To prove the unchartered honour of Mankind, - To show how strong the silent passions are. - - - III - - The daylight broke and brought the awaited cheer, - And suddenly the land is live with men. - In steady waves the infantry surge near; - The fire, a sweeping curtain, lifts again. - A battle-plane with humming engines swerves, - Gleams like a whirring dragon-fly, and dips, - Plunging cloud-shadowed in a breathless fall - To climb undaunted in far-reaching curves. - And, swaying in the clouds like anchored ships, - Swing grim balloons with eyes that fathom all. - - But as the broad-winged battle-planes outsoared - The shell-rocked skies, blue fields of cotton flowers, - When bombs like bolts of thunder leapt and roared, - And mighty moments faded into hours, - The curtain fire redoubled yet again: - The grey defence reversed their swift defeat - And rallied strongly; whilst the attacking waves, - Snared in a trench and severed from the main, - Were driven fighting in a forced retreat - Across the land that gaped with shell-turned graves. - - - IV - - The troubled day sped on in weariness - Till Night drugged Carnage in a drunken swoon. - Jet-black, with spangling stars athwart her dress - And pale in the shafted amber of the moon, - She moved triumphant as a young-eyed queen - In silent dignity: her shadowed face - Scarce veiled by gossamer clouds, that scurrying ran - Breathless in speed the high star-lanes between. - She passed unheeding ’neath the dome of space, - And scorned the petty tragedy of Man. - - And one looked upward, and in wonder saw - The vast star-soldiered army of the sky. - Unheard, the needless blasphemy of War - Shrank at that primal splendour sweeping by. - The moon’s gold-shadowed craters bathed the ground-- - (Pale queen, she hunted in her pathless rise - Lithe blackened raiders that bomb-laden creep) - But now the earth-walled comfort wrapped him round, - And soon in lulled forgetfulness he lies - Where soldiers clasping arms like children sleep. - - Sleep held him as a mother holds her child: - Sleep the soft calm that levels hopes and fears, - Now stilled his brain and scarfed his eyelids wild, - And sped the transient misery of tears, - Until the dawn’s sure prophets cleft the night - With opal shafts, and streamers tinged with flame, - Swift merging riot of the turbaned East. - Through rustling gesture loomed the advancing light; - Through fitful eddying winds, grey vanguards came - Rising in billowy mountains silver-fleeced. - - And with the dawn came action, and again - The spiteful interplay of static war: - Dogged, with grim persistence Blood and Pain - Rose venomous to greet the Morning Star. - But others watched that lonely sentinel - Chase fleeting fellow-stars before the day; - Fresh men heard tides of thunder ebb and flow. - --Stumbling in sleep, scarce heeding shot or shell, - The men who fought at Gommecourt filed away: - The poppies nodded as they passed below. - - They left the barren wilderness behind, - And Gommecourt gnarled and dauntless, till they came - To fields where trees unshattered took the wind, - Which tossed the crimson poppy heads to flame. - But one stood musing at a waking thought - That spurred his blood and dimmed his searching eyes-- - The primal thought that stirs the seed to birth. - Here where the battling nations clashed and fought - The common grass still breathed of Paradise - And Love with silent lips was Lord of Earth. - - B. E. F. 1916. - - - - - A VISION - - - Before the dawn wind swept the troubled sky - And stirred the stricken trenches far and wide, - I saw the Lord of Holiness pass by, - With Mary at His side. - - With Mary Michael passed, for I could hear - His clashing arms, and see his spangled sword. - Loudly I cried out, “Mother!” then in fear, - “O Mother of our Lord.” - - For in her eyes all human sorrow burned, - All tenderness lay naked when she smiled; - And once she stooped to kiss, and once she turned - And shuddered like a child. - - He moved through all the surge and clash of war, - The King of Kings since Brotherhood began; - But in His still and shadowed face I saw - The agony of Man. - - And as I gazed, the ruined fields of France - Loomed to the dawn in shades of shifting grey; - Dumbly I stood to arms, as in a trance - I watched the climbing day. - - Was this a dream? Yet Mary saw the sky, - Lit by a vision from the darkness hurled; - A little dream which made a baby cry-- - A dream which saved the world. - - - - - REVELATION - - - Can death give you such dignity, and pride - So beautiful it puts our grief to shame? - For now we stumble as we speak your name, - Yet you were just a boy before you died. - We question blankly, pondering heavy-eyed, - Can this be he we used to praise or blame - In careless moments, ere the trial came - When all the bravest hearts in anguish cried? - Then, humbled, we beheld our poor disguise, - False moods and manners clothed in empty speech - Which drowned the silence--till there came a day - That smote our vision to awakened eyes: - For God bent down to bring you to our reach, - But ere we touched you, you had gone away. - - - - - TELL ME, STRANGER - - - Tell me, Stranger, is it true - There is magic happening, - Are _all_ the dappled fields of Kew - Bowing to their Lord the Spring? - - Are the bluebells chaste and mute - Dancing in each dale and hollow - Dew-sprinkled, with a glad salute - To omnipotent Apollo? - - Tell me, do the feathered creatures - Flutter as in days of yore, - What are the “distinctive features” - Of the Swallow’s Flying Corps? - - Here there is no magic, Stranger. - Save within our merry souls-- - For some wanton god in anger - Punches earth with gaping holes. - - Yet the stifled land is showing - Here and there a touch of grace, - And the marshalled clouds are blowing - Through the aerodromes of space. - - Hate is strong, but Love is stronger, - And the world shall wake to birth - When the touch of man no longer - Stays the touch of God from Earth. - - Tell me, Stranger, is it true - There is magic happening, - Are _all_ the dappled fields of Kew - Bowing to their Lord the Spring? - - B. E. F., _April, 1917_. - - - - - SPRING IN THE TRENCHES - - - The racing clouds have borne her message down - And blown a thrilling rumour, from the far - Heart-centres of each crowded port and town, - And up the flowing arteries of War. - Life, life, green tales of corn in sprouting blades, - Of swallows crowding with sea-sprinkled wings - And ash-buds amber-gummed round close-furled green. - High blossom mantling murmurous orchard glades - In air a-tingle April-sweet and keen-- - Ah, we have heard of wondrous happenings. - - For now the magic carnivals begin - The lilac broods in honeyed secrecy, - And dappled lawns are changed: a Harlequin - Has brushed the tangled carpet silently. - We know how white narcissus fills the lake - With dancing shadows; how in open blue - A chestnut builds her clustered pyramids, - And down below anemones awake; - Long-hushed the violets open wide their lids - And all the dreamed-of fantasy comes true. - - Glad tidings thrill the re-awakened earth - By daffodils and blue-bells heralded; - Spring with her van imperial comes forth - To herald Summer proudly canopied - Beneath the bowing leaves. Persistent Spring - Bestirs the seed enshrined in Winter’s store; - And even round the parapet a breath - Of far-flung prophecy is clamouring: - “Behold new life within the tomb of death - “Importunate and vivid as before.” - - - - - ON THE ROAD - - - We halted, with the urgent Spring behind - Our straining teams, where all the land was black, - And huddled woods lay beaten, starkly blind: - Their mangled branches loomed athwart the track - Grotesque and terrible. Yet near the way, - A river, scatheless as the open sea, - Flowed like a breathing hope that cannot die - In desolation. Now, at setting day, - Moored water lilies, pale as argent sky, - Cling to the twilight fading silently. - - Such is the tale of memory, ere night - Had deepened, and our weary convoy slept - Beside the way. Slow-rising points of light - Twinkled amid the spangled netting swept - Across the ebon desert; and a gleam - Pierced the cloud-woven pillows of the moon. - Now slumber freed me from the iron cage - That bound the snarling war; and, in a dream, - The panorama of a dawning age - Unrolled, a world slow-waking from a swoon. - - Before my gaze a teeming city loomed - Gay with the bustling clamour of the street-- - The very town an easy word had doomed - And cast in ashes at the trampling feet - Of mortal gods. Street, corner, square and place, - Seemed woken from a long and squalid trance-- - I saw a nation growing like a flower; - A nation true and loyal to a race - That forged an army of clean-soldiered power - Wrought by the common chivalry of France. - - Here was no arrogance of martial pride, - The fireside boast that sows the fatal seed, - For happiness had come from those who died - Stark of delusion and the deadly creed - Of false romance. I saw a world reborn-- - The very battlefield was robed again - In lines of chequered land, and bordered round - With stretching roads and rills. The poppied corn - Held rubies set in gold, and far beyond - Lay a surf-ravelled sea and swarded plain. - - I marvelled, till oblivion shadowed all, - Blurred in the dawning light of every day. - It was so true, I scarcely heard the call - To feed and water and to move away. - We stretched our limbs, and packed each heavy load; - Moved on, and left the weary night behind, - Through torn and withered trees that stared aghast; - Yet, through the veil that shrouded all the road - I saw new radiance in the land we passed, - And heard a sudden murmur in the wind. - - B. E. F., 1917. - - - - - KEATS, BEFORE ACTION - - - A little moment more--O, let me hear - (The thunder rolls above, and star-shells fall) - Those melodies unheard re-echo clear - Before the shuddering moment closes all. - They come--they come--they answer to my call, - That Grecian throng of graven ecstasies, - Hyperion aglow in blazing skies, - And Cortez with the wonder in his eyes. - In battle-wreaths of smoke they rise, and fall - Beyond--beyond recall. - - Now all is silent, still, and magic-keen - (Yet thunder rolls above and star-shells fall) - And slowly pacing, rides a faery queen - Wild eyed and singing to a knight in thrall. - Enough--enough--let lightning whip me bare - And leave me naked in the howling air - My body broken here, and here, and here. - Beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all, - The very all in all. - - - - - THE SOMME - - - _From Amiens to Abbeville_ - _My swollen waters race,_ - _And silver-veined by many a rill_ - _Green hamlets thrive apace._ - _From Amiens to Abbeville_ - _I labour at the listless mill,_ - _And tempt the nodding daffodil_ - _To blur my open face._ - _But south of Amiens I flow_ - _Past dumb Peronne and Brie,_ - _The peopled land I used to know_ - _Now all belongs to me._ - _Yet phantom armies come and go,_ - _And shadows hurry to and fro;_ - _Again my seething battles grow_ - _In murdered Picardy._ - - Behold the mother of a soil forlorn; - I suckled towns, and fed the forest land, - Behold my shattered villages and mourn - How should I understand? - - Why are those huts o’erpatched like dappled kine, - What are those weary men in blue and brown, - And humming craft that search my sinuous line; - Why should my name re-echo with renown - Past every phantom town? - But still my lily-breasted waters shine, - And still I chant my shadowy ripples down. - - From peace through war my waters flow, - To peace again at sea, - The peopled land I used to know - Now all belongs to me. - Though battling armies come and go, - I toil and spin, I reap and sow, - And poppy-mantled meadows blow - In murdered Picardy. - - My eddies bear the clinging scent of lime - To sweeten clouds of plume-tossed meadowsweet; - My meadow grasses nestle with the thyme - And flowering rushes tower in the heat. - Low-brushing swifts and swallows splashed with white - O’er flash my laden mirrors slow and deep - That bear swift-merging canopies of sleep. - Until the growing light - Has chased marauding owls, and butterflies, - Born of blue-woven skies, - Flutter away like hare-bells spurred to flight. - But who are these? The powdered butterfly - Outshines that air leviathan that swings - In rigid curves adown the barren sky, - With cloudy satellites about her wings. - And I have seen - Dark horsemen ride with spears of tapered steel; - And bellowing guns beneath the far balloons. - And once a ponderous slug bedecked in green - Crept, in the waning moon’s - Still-darkening gloom, and at her giant heel - White-gleaming, ran a train of hooded cars.... - - I triumph, triumph, search my sinuous line - Amid the snarling impotence of wars. - Turn where you will. Look, there a signboard shows - The lair of guns; already round the sign - White trumpeting convolvuli entwine - Their clinging arms, across the placard blows - A quiet-breathing rose. - And still my lily-breasted waters shine - And loud my chanting grows: - - From peace through war my waters flow - To peace again at sea, - The peopled land I used to know - Now all belongs to me. - Though battling armies come and go - I toil and spin, I reap and sow, - And poppy-mantled meadows blow - In murdered Picardy. - - - - - SOMME FLOWER TALK - - - Said the Cornflower to the Pimpernel, - “O sudden scarlet eyes, - You never bloomed till ploughing shell - Laid bare earth’s sanctities!” - - Then upward cried the Pimpernel: - “Blue head in deeper blue, - ’Tis strange this former waste of Hell - Is Paradise anew. - - “But who is Lord of Paradise - And Commandant; and who - Commands sky-faring butterflies - All camouflaged in blue? - - “Are dandelion parachutes - His messages, and do - Those armoured beetles clamber roots - With news from Army Q? - - “Above each water-lily ship - The feathered red caps pipe. - Because the pear has earned a pip, - The tiger-moth a stripe. - - “The gorse artillery has eyes - We never knew before. - And lady bees can organise - The Honey Service Corps. - - “Field-marshals rule the war behind - The guns, but Summer shields - Here in the clash of human kind - Her marshal of the fields.” - - - - - TO THE UTTERMOST FARTHING. - - - “He too! He too!” The veteran paused, the sound - Of a light paper fluttering to the ground - Rustled the twilight peace. “He--too--is--dead--” - His wife, scarce faltering from the words she read, - Stared at the glowing sun, the while her eyes - Shone mistily in nameless agonies. - Five sons, and four were dead! - The clock ticked desolation to their ears - And silence gripped the moments as they passed - Too terrible, too passionless for tears. - At last, - Stronger than he, she curbed herself and smiled - And held him weeping like a weary child - Before the first immensity of pain. - Yet once again - She conjured scenes beyond the darkened cloud - That blurred the soul’s horizon, as aloud - She spoke his name, and whispered little things - More pregnant than the utterance of kings. - - That night she moved, - Spurred by devotion for the man she loved, - Without a pause for sorrow, or a breath - To murmur at the closing walls of death; - Love-steeled and queenly every step she trod; - She climbed unfaltering, serenely browed, - Until she touched the very feet of God - Undaunted and unbowed. - And there in mystic awe - Slow-turning wheels of evolution spun - The poised and pulsing universe. She saw - All life and death synonymous, and birth - The dawn of human wonderment begun - (Birth of all birth) in other realms afar. - Below, ice pivoted revolved the earth, - A traveller’s joy it seemed, a mile-stone star, - Half-glowing, bathed in sun.... - - At dawn they met and found each other’s eyes, - Asked the same questions, sought the same replies: - Their last and youngest fought where harsh commands - Still goaded forward lashed and driven bands, - Where Vaux and Thiaumont twin sentinels - Loomed stalwartly. And still a howl of shells - Shattered the Verdun battlements in vain; - Still domineered that keen death-tutored brain - Behind an army deaf to angry scorn, - The boast forgotten and the mask outworn. - At length she spoke: “Go quickly now,” she said, - “Quick, the next hurrying hour may see him dead. - Find the Great Overlord and tell him all - Quick, for our boy may pass beyond recall - Meanwhile. He shall know happiness to come, - He, the last scion of our stricken home, - Shall blossom like a flower in early Spring - I say it, I who bore him. Time shall bring - The old primeval happiness to birth - If there be any justice upon earth.” - She ceased; it seemed her voice re-echoed still - As strung with hope he hurried on until - He reached the palace and besought for grace - To see his royal master face to face. - - That night in sudden joy he urged away - Across Lorraine, for in his wallet lay - An order blazoned with the royal seals. - Hour after hour the car’s revolving wheels - Rushed dizzily towards the high command - That held his son in fee. Around, the land - Awoke in changeless Spring. Four steady hours - They travelled, till the bloom of passing flowers - Brought tidings of the dawn. Then to his ears - Rumbled a distant thunder, sudden fears - Urged onward faster. Now the country showed - First signs of war-flung tentacles, the road - Lay pitted here and there, a wounded tree - No longer framed its lordly symmetry. - And soon the land whereon all life was stilled - Became as Man had willed. - At last his journey ended. Long delayed - He sought his goal, now pressing on, now stayed, - Until outside the place of high command - The royal warrant burning in his hand - He knocked--was bidden enter--tense and mute - He faced the marshal with a grave salute - And showed the royal word. - The crowded room was silent, no man stirred-- - A pause as long as death, then, dragged and slow, - A voice--“Your son was killed an hour ago.” - A clock importunately unconcerned - Repeated tick--tick--tick. His eyes discerned - A pen vague-sprawling, madly spiderwise. - Not a man glanced--Yet all the room had eyes: - Not a man spoke--Yet clamorous voices cried: - Stumbling, he walked outside. - - - - - IN THE MESS - - - I sat alone although the mess - Was full, when--quick as tears - A song of naked happiness - Came singing in my ears. - - I summoned strength to kill a cry - And mad desire to weep; - Then, glancing round me guiltily, - Found everyone asleep! - - - - - A TRENCH INCIDENT - - - We waited, as the thundering curtain swept - Our sector, and torn shards of iron fell; - Dust from the parapet in showers leapt - Swirled up by bursting shell. - - We waited, like a storm-bespattered ship - That flutters sail to free her grounded keel; - The tingling moments tightened every grip - On rifles lanced with steel. - - We knew the man who led us. All could hear - His ringing voice re-echo loud and strong, - Born of that higher bravery when fear. - Is battled into song. - - Then sudden fury lulled and far behind - Like angered beasts our batteries replied-- - And suddenly he stumbled, dazed and blind. - He lay, but ere he died - - He struggled for a while, then dimly smiled, - Wrapped in the comradeship of happy things, - Before he entered like a wondering child - The heritage of kings. - - - - - REALITY - - - Below my room the noise and measured beat - Of marching men re-echoed loud and clear; - Now bobbing cavalry swung down the street; - Now mules and rumbling batteries drew near. - But all is dim--The rolling wagon-stream - To Amiens between the aspen trees, - The stables, billets, men and horses, seem - Dead mummers of forgotten fantasies. - - Only my dreams are still aglow, a throng - Of scenes that crowded through a waiting mind - A myriad scenes: For I have swept along - To foam ashriek with gulls, and rowed behind - Brown oarsmen swinging to an ocean song - Where stately galleons bowed before the wind. - - - - -“WE POETS OF THE PROUD OLD LINEAGE” - - - Apart we labour, and alone we climb - The barren heights; for we the singing throng - Whose lives were hallowed by impassioned song - Must die or prove unworthy of our rhyme. - Man after man--we know the price of wars - Who watched the mask of Night whilst others slept, - And spread our laughter far and wide, but kept - Our tears and terror privy to the stars. - - 0 magic gift omnipotent, to sing - And conjure Heaven from surrounding Hell. - Our lips and eyes are touched (for we have seen - Celestial weavers at the loom of Spring). - But O the iron bitterness and keen - Of voices ever clamouring farewell! - - - - - III - - MISCELLANEOUS POEMS - - - - - SONG - - - Would I could commandeer the bees - To hum you droning symphonies. - I love the climbing thoughts that rise - To the sheer heaven of your eyes, - Wide laughter-dromes of wondering blue, - Yes, yes, I do! - - But when I sing of bubbling seas, - The zephyr-clapping hands of trees - Applauding in tumultuous skies, - Or window-winged dragonflies, - Or anything that’s good and true - I sing of you-- - Yes, yes, I do! - - - - - THE SHADOW - - - I stood one night where rivers pause to meet - And mingle in the traffic-rumbling sea: - The surge and clamour of a London street, - In tides alternate, rolled, impassively. - Before my feet - Ran shouting boys, and through the pallid glare - Loomed gaunt leviathans that swayed and roared - Past glittering shops, and stations which outpoured - Load after weary load; and everywhere - Strange sounds, a snatch of laughter, shout or word, - Sleek-coated motor-cars that softly purred - Round corners sounding with the rustling beat - Of hurried swarms of feet. - And yet I seemed alone, and dumb-amazed - Before a towering building, wherein blazed - One staring patch of light, one amber square - That shone enshrouded by the dome of night - High in the naked air. And still I gazed - Until a shadow passed across the blind: - A shadow-woman pacing time away - Beside a bed, wherein a poet lay - Dying, dying. One whose mind - (A womb of beauty whereof love was lord) - Had fashioned symphonies of thought and word - Impassionately sweet. And suddenly - She paused--I saw the shadow of her hand - Stretch out and shudder back. I saw her stand - All sorrow-bound in graven dignity. - She bowed her head, her shoulders taut with pain, - Her figure burdened with the weight of tears. - Then all grew dark. And in my waking ears - The traffic surged again. - - - - - EVERYCHILD - - - We take you through Pacific seas - To islands strange and new, - Where howling monkeys scale the trees - Alive with humming-birds and bees, - Where shiny seals and porpoises - Snort in the rolling blue. - - Then quicker than a shaft of light - We shear the arctic foam, - And lounging bears of polar white - Roar loudly through the dancing night, - And drive the killer-whales to flight-- - Upon the floor at home. - - O hear the chant of Eastern song - Beneath Arabian stars, - Where camels slowly stalk along - And gleaming Arabs, tall and strong, - Buy gold and merchandise among - The riot of bazaars! - - The glow-worms crawl excitedly - And trim their lamps o’ night; - For often, ere the moon is high, - Bat-harnessed walnut-shells flit by - To bear them to the waiting sky - And set the stars alight. - - The nodding poplars understand - And birds and beasts and flowers: - And we shall wander hand in hand - With better things than Peter Panned-- - O what is footlight fairyland - Beside this world of ours? - - What matter if the clouds are grey - Or winter-keen and wild, - When you and I have found a way - To turn November into May; - For Everyjoy is Everyday - And Everyman a child. - - - - - CHILD OF THE FLOWING TIDE - - - Away to the call of the racing sea-- - (Child of the flowing tide) - A hundred chargers of ivory, - And two of them saddled for you and for me, - Are pawing and stamping the surf to be free - Where the wild sea-horses ride. - The deep water shall roar as we race from the shore - On the back of the flowing tide. - - O hurry, the moon is away in the sky - (Child of the flowing tide) - With your heels well down, and your heart set high - You’re saddled and bridled, and so am I; - So gather your reins, for the foam will fly - Where the wild sea-horses ride. - Grip tight with your knees as you gallop the seas - On the back of the flowing tide. - - On the wide lagoon I’ll meet you to-night - (Child of the flowing tide) - When the moon swings high and the stars are alight - And the roaring sea-chargers are ready to fight: - Their manes are all foam and their coats are all white - Where the wild sea-horses ride. - The deep waters shall roar as we race from the shore - On the back of the flowing tide. - - - - - EIGHT SONNETS - - - I - - I Tremble at the outset, for I know - How rhythm halts and rhyme rings falsely true. - Yet courage, your disciple, bids me show - That speech may offer sacrifice to you. - Vain boast! For if success in splendour came - Poised faultlessly in lines of perfect stress, - I must fall short of it in very shame - Unworthy of my sonnet’s worthiness. - - But should I fail, and feel the words I sought - Elusive, or bedecked with frail disguise - Of tattered sentiment, that risk I dare - Not hazard in the winding maze of thought, - Lest I should stir the wonder in your eyes - Or wind a little tangle in your hair. - - - II - - So let me fail: what matter if the wise - And worldly whisper, who so poor as they? - For everywhere alike the common way - Has now become an earthly paradise. - And where you walk the very pavement cries - Of blue-bells, April-chimed, and fawns at play; - And London seems a sylvan holiday - Of flower-hunting bees and butterflies. - - So let me fail, for where I could succeed - How mean the quest, a climber gazing down - From the low vantage of some petty hill. - But chance success would be the gambler’s thrill - Who plays with God for worlds, and wins indeed - The whole of Paradise for half-a-crown! - - - III - - I Have no room for jealous gods, and find - No ring of joy or laughter in the Creed, - Nor shall my great possession be resigned - In fear or favour of my spirit’s need. - For joy is mine, and mine the teeming years - Unfettered in a world impassionate; - Not mine a sorrowed Calvary of tears - Where love was vassal to the lords of hate. - - Let others bow before a God unknown - Enshrined in words they dimly understand. - Let every man make Paradise his own-- - My Goddess breathes and leads me by the hand - O hush! I dare not speak of it alone, - ’Tis all too wonderful and strangely planned! - - - IV - - Day after day my growing pinions beat - Impatiently. Yet, in a place unclean - I sought the dwarfed, the petty and obscene, - And aped the clownish mummers of the street; - Till suddenly the world grew strangely sweet, - All eager at a touch, and thrilling-keen; - With half-forgotten hands I strove unseen - To mould a little planet at your feet. - - You spoke and there was light, and slowly grew - My teeming world of verse, a brotherhood - Of music, thought, and wonder, born anew, - Alive, aglow, in every varied mood. - And when the waking truth is bursting through - I feel you bend to see that all is good. - - - V - - If I had seen what hourly happiness - In this my world your being could ordain, - How then should I have trysted with distress - And misery the cringing friend of pain? - If I had seen beyond the looming years - Your shadow, grief had haunted me in vain, - For what are cataracts of human tears - Beside the boundless laughter of the main? - - O barren days bygone! Now every field - Wakes clamorous with dawning life conceived, - So has the magic universe revealed - Whole happiness to one who half believed-- - Whole happiness, and in my heart concealed - Wide wonder at the sacrament received. - - - VI - - “Great men and happy years,” you say from these - Your knowledge came, and your diviner powers - More thrilling than the honey-womb of flowers - Or the bright star-foam of the Pleiades. - So, did you learn the droning lore of bees - From some be-medalled soldier? Did you meet - Madonna-hearted statesmen in the street, - Or bishops, babbling of the opal seas? - - O poor deceiver, conscript joys belong - To you as homage. For the happy years - Bear fruit to-day, and blossom like the flowers - That breathe of summertime in after hours. - For you were loyal to a creed of Song - Nor ever stooped to misery and tears. - - - VII - - Would I could throw my stuttering self away - And shrine the soul wherein all wonders beat, - Would I were you, for one brief holiday - The whole shy universe before my feet. - O happiness, to know joy’s secret mine, - To hold adoring ministers in fee, - Narcissus-like to bless the Serpentine - And with the stars outdance Terpsichore. - - For once a poet sang of happiness, - But now, like running flame, glad voices say-- - “Joy is the sheer antithesis of wrong.” - Enough,--and I, no longer comradeless, - Behold exultant on the world’s highway - Your being, and the proof of Pippa’s song. - - - VIII - - When you are old and dancing shadows play - Around the sky-blown laughter in your eyes - Shall I, unworthy of your new disguise, - Forget the sacrament and go away? - Shall I adore, like sorrowed men to-day, - The child who gurgled in first ecstasies - At oxen (Mary said) that mooed surprise - And snuffed with wondering muzzles in the hay? - - O leave the past--the living world is mine - Warm, passionate, and breathing. Even so - Shall Life in after years make Earth divine - And fire shall burn as long as embers glow. - But he who babbled to the wondering kine - Is dead, long dead, two thousand years ago. - - - - - KEATS - - - Touch me, O Lord, and let my sonnet ring - With echoes. Now his words of crowned belief - In raging hours of pain and suffering - Too high for praise, too terrible for grief, - Ring loud and clear. Last night his chariot rolled - And I beheld him urge amid the stars - Cloud-fashioned steeds of snow moon-aureoled, - Himself a charioteer equipped for wars. - - Faster and faster--men of Blood and Pain - Opposed in vast battalions, but he - Rolled back their army to the dark again - And triumphed while he sang exultingly - As now he sings. Boy of the glowing brain, - Dear Keats your name is Paradise to me! - - - - - MEETING HER IN THE STREET - - - She’s coming down the road! You know - Those laughter-woken eyes? - I beckon at the stars--But O - If she should recognise: - - Nearer and nearer yet she trod - Till (mad blood-dancing joy) - Down from the planet-fields of God - She nodded, “Hullo, Boy.” - - - - - HER HOMAGE - - - Silence outlives the argument of kings - And best is dumb applause. Behold, she moves: - No soft-winged owlets blink, no cricket sings, - Before she greets the murmuring world she loves. - Now twirling parachutes of sycamore - Hang waiting, and the rippled trout-rings die, - The murmur round a jasmine honey store - Is still--a linnet falters suddenly. - - From out the reeds an awe-struck otter peers - As eerie quiet speeds from bush to bush: - High Summer stands on tip-toe as She nears - The woods, and magic numbs the missel-thrush: - Above still grasses prick the listening ears - Of rabbits, and a squirrel whispers “Hush!” - - - - - REACTION - - - Afraid, afraid, I sought the kindly night - In fear that mocking fools should scrutinise - The beauty I discovered in men’s eyes, - And mock me as a dreaming anchorite. - For long in fear I sinned against the light - And shrouded Poetry with vain disguise; - Before I sang, unconscious as the skies, - Self-chanting songs to me supreme delight. - - But now, O littlest of all little minds, - High-browed, alone, aloof, you little know - How like you are to Brown, who lifts the blinds - Of his suburban villa, just to show - That he alone is up, but always finds - The neighbourhood awoke an hour ago! - - - - - APRIL - - - How much are you achieving - O April day, - By orchard looms a-weaving - All apple-gay? - Tie on your cherry blossom, clothe your squills - Madonna-blue, and give your daffodils - Their collars of pale straw, and come away, - Your rain-awoken hills - Shall welcome May. - - What is behind your weeping - O April tears? - Your lilac plumes are sweeping, - Your silken spears - Of chestnut bristle in the changing sky - Whilst herded clouds foregather, ’neath the high - Storm-loud arena’s thundering charioteers: - And beckoned silently - The swallow nears. - - - - - MAY-JUNE - - - Now is the swaddling husk of Winter shed, - And waking Summer, robed in windy showers, - Is heralded from silvered aspen towers - And orchards in high blossom garlanded. - Now sunlight, in the plumed laburnum flowers - And purple lilac, trembles overhead; - And bees a-drone in field and flower bed - Make clamorous the trade of teeming hours. - - Now the sweet-pea, all honey-laden, shows - Full-swollen sails, her mooring ropes of green - Encircle twigs. And soon the primrose queen - Lights her pale lamps of Evening ’mid the glows - Of brazen flower-suns, that burn between - The yawning honeysuckle and the rose. - - - - - THE STROLLING SINGER - - - Sun-bathed in Summer peace the village lay - That afternoon. Along the happy street - Milk-fragrant kine, and wagons high with hay - Came lumbering. The fields were loud with bees - And drowsy with the wind-stirred meadowsweet. - From bowing trees - Fell chatter, and above the garden wall - Wide sunflowers beamed at spearing hollyhocks - That dared the wind, and scorned the clustered stocks, - And bore their laddered blooms high over all. - - Here amid Summer murmur and delight - The strolling singer came. The people heard - Stray snatches of a song--a laugh--a word, - And gossiping in groups of two or three - Stood all amazed. For no one came in sight, - Only the wind was laden drowsily - With mellow sounds that slowly growing strong - At last became a song:-- - - “Bend down, the marsh and meadow holds - Pale yellow pimpernels, - And sun-begotten marigolds, - Thyme, orchis, asphodels, - And borage born of ocean blue, - Plumed armoured thistles, fever-few, - Sea-campion globed, and clinging dew - In giant flower-bells. - - “Bend down--an ebon beetle prowls, - And there a swinging bee - Drinks honey from the laden cowls - That clothe the foxglove tree. - And giant peacock butterflies - Light meadowsweet with sudden eyes, - And through the tangled grasses rise - Lucerne and timothy.” - - Louder and louder grew the voice, until - A figure specked the heaven-touching hill, - And nearer, nearer, still ... - The villagers in mingled fear and awe - Stood round on tiptoe waiting. Soon they saw - A little sylvan man with beckoning eyes - And limbs of lithe expression. Woven flowers - And grasses, splashed with rainbow-tinted showers, - And jewelled with alluring butterflies, - Enwrapped him. Russet face, clear-featured, gay - As pebble-rumpled streams, and tousled hair - Sun-dyed and naked. His limbs were bronzed and bare, - And sprang, it seemed, from the wild interplay - Of flower-woven garb. Around his waist - Twined traveller’s-joy and honeysuckle, sweet - And freshly dewed, and on his lissom feet - Were pointed shoes of silver beech rush-laced. - - The village gazed in silence, till a child - Began:--“Who are you, funny man? - Your face seems to be telling truth, your eyes - Are just the colour of blue butterflies, - O tell us who you are?” - The stranger smiled, - And turned his face that bore the wistful, far, - Strange wonder-look of one whose dreams come true, - Who delves in darkened quarries of his brain - Unhoped-for gold, and changes old to new - As Spring rejuvenates the earth again. - Of one who plays Narcissus in Life’s pool - And sees an image strangely beautiful ... - Then suddenly they heard him cry:-- - - “Come buy, - I own the laughing earth. - And all my chanted words are deeds; - I follow where my fancy leads, - And sell my songs for mirth. - What will you buy? - - “Speak hurriedly, and choose your song, - The poplar’s shadow creeps along, - Search hurriedly the Earth and Sky, - What will you buy?” - - Meanwhile a crowd had gathered, in a ring; - The butcher, grocer, postman, parson, clerk, - And all the village, open-mouthed and stark, - Stood mutely marvelling; - And children clamoured round him with large eyes - And pelted him for songs, like countless hail, - With pleadings, shouts and cries:-- - - Sing us a song of Paradise, - Of railway engines, fawns, - Of stolen queens in guarded towers, - Of sprites and leprechauns”-- - O HUSH! All were dumb-- - “Boy in blue smock, sucking your thumb, - With hair like a tangled chrysanthemum, - What would you like me to sing, Ocean-eyed?” - - Loud the boy’s answer rang, - “_I_ want a song of flowers!” - And this is the song he sang: - - “Sisters of mercy are Cyclamen, - Snowdrops and Arums too, - But Primulus, Violets, Stocks, Mignonette, - Crocus aflame, and the Never Forget, - Are chaster than chastity too. - Now sulphur Laburnum and Lilac, adieu, - Good-bye April children to you! - For who - Will climb up the flowers of my Hollyhock towers - With butterfly steeple-jacks blue? - - But, climber, beware! - Of Love-in-a-mist in a tangle of hair, - Of thistly Teazles, and winged Sweet-Peas - With tentacle tendrils that strangle with ease, - Of butterfly Orchis a-clamour for bees. - For Dragon may Snap you, and Sundew may trap you, - Before you have started, before you have parted - The grass at the foot of my Hollyhock trees. - But think of the view - Of the whole garden side! - We’ll charter a dragon-fly homeward, and ride - Down to our Rosemary, Marjoram, Rue, - Lavender, London Pride.” - - All watched him, held, bewitched, and with him clung - To the green tops of slowly swaying towers, - Where bees had scattered pollen-dust, that hung - Above the teeming nectaries of flowers, - And all again were young. - But now the poplars cast their phantom bars - In latticed shadows; now a scarf unfurled, - Like parrot-tulip petals hued and torn, - Across the West was flung. - And now, before the twilight bares the stars, - Ere jewelled night is born, - All silently the Singer left the world. - Beyond the hill he passed, - But singing all the while; first loud and strong. - Then fainter, till at last - Came only jumbled echoes of a song:-- - - “Bend down--the marsh and meadow holds - Pale yellow Pimpernels, - And sun-begotten Marigolds - Thyme, Orchis, Asphodels” ... - (Fainter and fainter it grew - Gentle as ebbing tide) - “Butterfly steeple-jacks blue” ... - (Fainter it grew - And died) - Echoing “Rosemary, Marjoram, Rue, - Lavender, London Pride” - - - - - THE FRENCH MOTHER TO HER UNBORN CHILD - - - Beat quietly, hid heart. - Build, little limbs, and brain divinely wrought, - Grow, grow in peace. Around, the pangs of war - Are powerless to cripple thee or mar - Thy sure perfection. But, if Death besought - For thee, our tethered souls could never part: - Beat quietly, hid heart. - Form, primal thought, - Close-furled and sheltered as the budding Spring - Unknown, unknowing, yet divinely planned. - But stay awhile, for sounds of battle ring. - Stir, little hand - Unrealized--I count the dragging hours - And yearn to see it clutch at yonder flowers; - To see thy lucent feet and dimpled frame - And gaze at heav’n-snatched eyes and know thy name, - But stay awhile. - For thou art best alone away from Man: - Wait longer, tears unshed and lurking smile - Of joy enshrined where every joy began. - Time hurries as the moments thump along - (Hark, little ears, my heart is beating strong) - Life is aglow, alive, a perfect song. - Around the land is ugly, but apart - I fashion thee in thought. Now hush, for sleep - Is here. Close, eyes unopened, voice unheard, - Be still. Grow on in beauty till day creep ... - Hark to my whispered word-- - Beat quietly, hid heart. - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Geoffrey Dearmer - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS *** - -***** This file should be named 53818-0.txt or 53818-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/8/1/53818/ - -Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif, Bryan Ness and -the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian -Libraries) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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