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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: Sorrow of War - Poems - -Author: Louis Golding - -Release Date: November 23, 2017 [EBook #56037] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SORROW OF WAR *** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines - - - - - - - - - SORROW OF WAR - - POEMS - - - BY - - LOUIS GOLDING - - - - METHUEN & CO. LTD. - 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. - LONDON - - - - -_First Published in 1919_ - - - - - FOR - MOTHER - AND THE - OTHER MOTHER - - - - -Certain of these poems have appeared in the "English Review," "To-Day," -the "Englishwoman," the "Red Triangle," the "Nation," the "Cambridge -Magazine," the "Sphere," the "Herald," the "Manchester Guardian," and -the "Westminster Gazette." - -To the editors of these journals I tender my acknowledgments. - - - - - CONTENTS - - Lilac, Laburnum - Streets of Gold - "In the Gallery where the Fat Men go" - Dead in Gallipoli - A Journey South - The New Trade - The Woman who Shrieked against Peace - The Women at the Corners Stand - Joining-up - During the Battle - Jack - German Boy - Skylark and Dawn - Jack of April - Statesmen Debonair - Over in Flanders - Wild Weather - Broken Bodies - A Thought - The Vintner - For now comes Summer - The Advent of Mars - Prophet and Fool - Whatever Path I walk upon - London Magdalene - Secret Girl - Lanky Tim - Mrs. Briggs - Athens Now - Down Tottenham Court Road - In a Station - Liza - Women of the Night - I Standing in the Street - Slum Evening - Fires of Change - Poetry - The Prisoner - Nerves - A Poet - For My Friend - "I shall be splendidly and tensely Young" - "I" - I know not whence my Poems come - Lyrria - Faringdon from Salonica - Call of the Plover - The Gallant Road - The Quest - Having finished "Jude the Obscure" - Ghost and Body - Gallop - We Lads who Barter Rhymes - Who knows Me? - Judĉus Errans - Cold Stars - Reactionary - Late - Wind of Black Night - Yellow Satins - My Mother's Portrait - To A. L. O. - The Dark Knight of the Road - To the Swift - Green Wind - The Midmost Field in Kent - Murmuryngeham - Winchester Downs - Cycling in October - The Shepherd - Derwentwater - "I vowed that I would be a Tree" - Wounded Soldiers - Still Life in France - I Dream'd I Died - Flowers in War - Evening--Kent - Black Magic - A Soldier Dying - At Last War Ends - - - - - SORROW OF WAR - - - - LILAC, LABURNUM - - Lilac, lilac, laburnum, - How shall you bloom this Spring? - Gathering birds, gathering birds, - How shall you sing? - - Gathering birds, gathering birds, - How shall you lift your singing head? - Lilac, lilac, laburnum, - Shall not your blossom be fiery red? - - Lilac, laburnum, gathering birds...? - - _Spring_ 1918 - - - - - STREETS OF GOLD - - O there are streets of gold in Bethnal Green, - With troughs of pearl where lovely horses drink, - And tripping on the greenswards, silver-clean, - The girls are marvellouser than you can think. - Gawd blimey! Bethnal Green! - (All this from Tommy Jones, - Delirious in the trench with shattered bones). - - O there is harvest now in Camden Town, - And songs and laughing and old flasks of wine! - O the grand moon of bronze! the wakeful brown - Owl in the barn! ghost-poppies and dream-kine! - Lor lumme! Camden Town! - (This with the gasp of death - From 'Erbert, chlorine-gassed and green for breath). - - O what green seas sweep winds through Camberwell, - Through all her islands where the palm-trees heave! - O winding down the channels steals a bell - Calling poor weary lads to bathe at eve! - God blawst it! Camberwell! - (This from old Bob, whose side - Is pierced with wounds like Jesus crucified). - - - - - "IN THE GALLERY WHERE THE FAT MEN GO" - - ("GREAT PICTURES OF THE SOMME OFFENSIVE, - DAY BY DAY. THE ACTUAL FIGHTING") - - _See Omnibus and Underground Notices, - April_ 1918 - - They are showing how we lie - With our bodies run dry: - The attitudes we take - When impaled upon a stake. - These and other things they show - In the gallery where the fat men go. - - In the gallery where the fat men go - They're exhibiting our guts - Horse-betrampled in the ruts; - And Private Tommy Spout, - With his eye gouged out; - And Jimmy spitting blood; - And Sergeant lying so - That he's drowning in the mud, - In the gallery where the fat men go. - - They adjust their pince-nez - In the gentle urban way, - And they plant their feet tight - For to get a clearer sight. - They stand playing with their thumbs, - With their shaven cheeks aglow. - For the Terror never comes, - And the worms and the woe. - For they never hear the drums - Drumming Death dead-slow, - In the gallery where the fat men go. - - If the gallery where the fat men go - Were in flames around their feet, - Or were sucking through the mud: - If they heard the guns beat - Like a pulse through the blood: - If the lice were in their hair, - And the scabs were on their tongue, - And the rats were smiling there, - Padding softly through the dung, - Would they fix the pince-nez - In the gentle urban way, - Would the pictures still be hung - In the gallery where the fat men go? - - - - - DEAD IN GALLIPOLI - - He died in Gallipoli. - What English flower - That we cherish shall grow of him? - Never a flower - Shall grow that we know of him! - No white daisy-coverlet - Shall grow from the ground of him; - No English bird-loverlet - Pipe love-songs around of him. - Under the sycamore - His grave not appears, - Where the crocuses flicker more - Than armies with spears. - Under no tree at all - England designed - His body may be at all - Gently consigned. - - He died in Gallipoli - The death on a stake. - Gallipoli poison - Is now the great part of him. - A flower like a snake - Shall writhe from the heart of him. - The desolate surf - Below him is muttering. - Over his turf - A bird like a devil - Is flapping and fluttering. - The poisonous bird - Whose scarlet eye glowers, - The poisonous flowers - With petals unclean - Are the only things heard - And the only things seen. - - Is that the whole of you, - White lad from England, - Is that the soul of you, - Dead in Gallipoli? - You are dead to me, dead to me, - Barren and far, - But a Thing that was said to me, - By a bird, by a star, - --An old thing of solace, - O stupid it seemed; - And I now cannot tell at all - If the whisper that fell at all - I heard or I dreamed. - It seemed that I caught a - Faint whisper or sign, - Being drunken with water, - Or hallowed with wine. - - Ah, would that I knew - What the Word was that came, - What the Thing was that gleamed - With a wind and a flame; - Ah, would that I knew, - Even as you, - O white lad from England, - White lad from England, - Dead in Gallipoli, - Would that I knew - If I heard or I dreamed! - - - - - A JOURNEY SOUTH - - To the South lands, the green lands, from the - North, the harsh - Rocks, where the eagles whose granite bills - Screech from the scars of toppling hills. - To the South lands, the green lands, from the - North, the marsh - Hollows which black waste water fills, - --The South green lands! - - To the South lands, the green lands, where - the flowers of fruit - Are moons entangled in cosmic trees, - Where birds are rocks in the foam of seas, - The wind's a player, the grass a lute - Whose wires are swept by the wings of bees, - --The South green lands! - - To the South lands, the green lands--but - halt, O hark! - A sob of birds in a poisoned wood! - The fume of poppies crushed foul in mud! - The whine of the wings of Death through the dark! - A sunset of flame, a moon of blood! - --The South red lands! - - - - - THE NEW TRADE - - In the market-places they have made - A dolorous new trade. - Now you will see in the fierce naphtha-light, - Piled hideously to sight, - Dead limbs of men bronzed in the over-seas, - Bomb-wrenched from elbows and knees; - Torn feet, that would, unwearied by harsh loads, - Have tramped steep moorland roads; - Torn hands that would have moulded exquisitely - Rare things for God to see. - And there are eyes there--blue like blue doves' wings, - Black like the Libyan kings, - Grey as before-dawn rivers, willow-stirred, - Brown as a singing-bird; - But all stare from the dark into the dark, - Reproachful, tense, and stark. - Eyes heaped on trays and in broad baskets there, - Feet, hands, and ropes of hair. - In the market-places ... and women buy ... - ... Naphtha glares ... hawkers cry ... - Fat men rub hands.... - O God, O just God, send - Plague, lightnings ... - Make an end! - - - - - THE WOMAN WHO SHRIEKED AGAINST PEACE - - Abundant woman panting there, - Whose breast is flecked with spots of grease - That splutter from your laboured hair, - O dew-lapped woman, you who reek - Of stout and steak and fish and chips, - Why does the short indignant shriek - Come toppling from your fleshy lips; - Because, poor smitten fool, I dare - To breathe the outcast name of Peace? - - And shall your flesh grow less to view, - And shall your chubby arms grow thin, - And shall you miss your stout and stew, - The bracelets which you wear so well, - If blinded boys no more shall creep - Along the scorching roads to Hell, - If thick red blood no more shall steep - Green fields in France, nor corpses smell; - If Peace send down her blasting blight, - O shall it spoil your sleep at night, - And shall you lose your treble chin? - - - - - THE WOMEN AT THE CORNERS STAND - - The women at the corners stand. They say, - "Where are the men you stole from us away? - Where are they now, the laughing lovers whom - You heaped in sombre ranks against the gloom?" - They murmur ceaselessly and without haste, - "Our arms are empty and our wombs are waste." - "Where are the men that marched into the dusk?" - They say with voices withered like a husk. - "Night is like cinders: day is lean and stern. - Our hearts are parched with thirsting; yea, we burn. - Where are the men you took? Bid them return." - - The women at the corners stand. But no - Reply is heard. They wait till night. They go - Back to their homes. Once more they come next day, - "Where are the men you stole from us away?" - They draw their shawls around their heads. They wait. - They say, "But we are weary. It is late." - They murmur ceaselessly and without haste, - "Our arms are empty and our wombs are waste." - No word is said to them. But only they, - The women at the corners, stand. They say, - "Send back our lovers whom you stole away." - - - - - JOINING-UP - - No, not for you the glamour of emprise, - Poor driven lad with terror in your eyes. - - No dream of wounds and medals and renown - Called you like Love from your drab Northern town. - - No haunting fife, dizzily shrill and sweet, - Came lilting drunkenly down your dingy street. - - You will not change, with a swift catch of pride, - In the cold hut among the leers and oaths, - Out of your suit of frayed civilian clothes, - Into the blaze of khaki they provide. - - Like a trapped animal you crouch and choke - In the packed carriage where the veterans smoke - And tell such pitiless tales of Over There, - They stop your heart dead short and freeze your hair. - - Your body's like a flower on a snapt stalk, - Your head hangs from your neck as blank as chalk. - - What horrors haunt you, head upon your breast! - ... O but you'll die as bravely as the rest! - - - - - DURING THE BATTLE - - O the terror of the Battle at this ending of the days! - O the thunder of the wings through the gloom! - O the thousand thousand companies that strew the sombre ways - To achieve this final doom! - - Where the flames disrupt the night and the hell-fumes flee, - 'Mid the darkness and the splitting of the skies, - Only your young white wistful face I see, - My brother, only your eyes! - - _March_ 1918 - - - - - JACK - - The heavy smells of Spring - Are flooding through my skin. - My body drinks them in. - Like rich red veils they cling - About my prostrate head. - I swoon into a bed, - The heavy smells of Spring. - - I now almost forget - The pain, the pain, the pain; - Now being lulled by rain, - And smells and warm wings wet. - I swoon into a bed, - Almost forget you're dead, - Almost, almost forget. - - Now, now my memories drowse - Amid the whine of bells, - The fumes of rich red smells, - The stupor round my brows. - My nerves and veins are lead. - I swoon into a bed, - Where all my sorrows drowse. - - Then suddenly you return, - O marrow of my bone, - Blood flowing through my own! - My pulses yearn and burn. - I battle round my head, - Cry strickenly from my bed. - Suddenly you return! - - O God of War and Dearth, - O shattering Blast that blew, - Blood-eyed, blood-fingered, you - Damned God of War and Dearth! - He whom you wrenched from me - To monstrous things and vain, - Burned, broken, buried, _he_, - _He_ is this smell of earth, - This dead moist smell of rain! - - - - - GERMAN BOY - - German boy with cold blue eyes, - In the cold and blue moonrise, - I who live and still shall know - Flowers that smell and winds that blow, - I who live to walk again, - Fired the shot that broke your brain. - - By your hair all stiff with blood, - By your lips befouled with mud, - By your dreams that shall no more - Leave the nest and sing and soar, - By the children never born - From your body smashed and torn, - --When I too shall stand at last - In the deadland vast, - Shall you heap upon my soul - Agonies of coal? - Shall you bind my throat with cords, - Stab me through with swords? - Or shall you be gentler far - Than a bird or than a star? - Shall you know that I was bound - In the noose that choked you round? - Shall you say, "The way was hid. - Lord, he knew not what he did"? - Shall your eyes that day be mild, - Like the Sacrifice, the Child? - ... German boy with cold blue eyes, - In the cold and blue moonrise. - - - - - SKYLARK AND DAWN - - (To Maurice Samuel) - - Stretched and silent they lie to the furious gold of the dawn, - And the earth like a leper's face is pitted and scarred. - Firm in the grip of the wire relentless and hard, - They lie with their dead young faces pallid and drawn. - - Somewhere stupidly, thickly, a big gun booms! - A rifle cracks like the spit of a snake in the trees! - And ever the great sun rises, rolling the glooms - Of the sulphurous night to the fields and the cliffs and the seas. - - The groan of a dying man crawls out from his teeth! - He groans no more: his lips become leaden and cold! - And ever the sun flashes forth like a sword from its sheath, - And dazzles the dawn with terrors of scarlet and gold. - - The guns snarl out like a dog reluctant and grim. - The triggers of rifles loosen in blue numb hands. - Faintly the wings of a silence frightened and dim - Hover down closer over the blasted lands. - - Gods of the great wars, - Gods that stand - Somewhere afar off, - Cruel and grand, - Silence, Silence, - In No Man's Land! - - Gods of the great wars, - Cruel and high, - Listen afar off! - Grant us to die - With the song of Silence - In the morning sky! - - Gods of the great wars, - Gas-wave and gun, - Are ye not happy - With the red work done? - Drown ye the planets, - Shatter the sun! - - Not a twitching of bloodless lip or of glazing eye! - For the Silence is deeper than Noon and older than Time, - The Silence inert and intense of the far first sky - When never a wind breathed over the primal slime. - - The Sun is stayed in his march, and even Death - With the flush of triumph mantling his cheeks of gloom, - He too stands still for an instant and holds his breath. - A million of years passes by in a moment of doom. - - Suddenly! - Terrible! Wild! - A skylark shatters the spell, - With a music more fiery than hell, - More frail than the laugh of a child! - - His little brown wings soar high to assault the sun. - His little round throat sends a challenge audacious and far - To the pale-faced legions of Silence that waver and run, - To the uprisen dawn and every invisible star. - - Ah God! the song cuts deeper than tempered steel! - The eyes overflow with the surge of a salt harsh tear, - Again to listen to Music, again to feel - The uttermost glory of living when Death is so near! - - Scream of a shell! ... - Dull dead thud in a trench, - Curses and flame and stench! ... - - Instantly all the white dawn, - Fragrant and frail and cool, - Breaks like a vase in the hands of a fool. - For the thick sick lips of Death have spoken, - The fine gold chain of the bird-song is broken. - The lank dank hand of Death has withdrawn - The curtain of bird-song and magic dawn - From the sullen red windows of Hell. - - Rattle of rifle and shriek of gun, - Gas-cloud sickly and heavy and dun, - Death has taken his armies in hand, - And the bodies lie countless in No Man's Land. - - Out of the shock of the storm - Where the foul winds meet and cry, - Something drops down at my feet, - A little brown body and sweet, - A little dead body and warm. - - The tiny dead throat shall sing no more, - Nor the quick eyes flash nor the swift wings soar; - But the shells shall hurtle, the grim guns roar, - O skylark out of the sky! - - My singing is ended, the pall descended on land and sea. - I sang my song to the tune of my own heart-beat - Between the sound of the wars, and there sang with me - My little brother the skylark, dead at my feet. - - France, 1917 - - - - - JACK OF APRIL - - April!--this is when - All the flowers beloved of men, - This is when they laugh all day, - Birds and they. - Then are they not opened quite - To the singing year's delight. - This is when the April showers - Make a running road of noise; - Woods are stormed by boyish flowers, - Flowery boys. - Would you then not weep with me, - Wring your hands, - Sing a dirge of saddest grief, - If your eyes should chance to see - Blight upon the April leaf; - O, but more, - Would you not weep long and sore, - If an April flower that stands - Waiting for the kiss of May, - Suddenly, swift, were snapt away, - Down, deep down, were crushed in clay? - Then would you not almost say, - "Curst be April! - Never sunlight bring in May! - Curst be June! - Death hath seized the budding year. - Never flush of copper stir - On the unrisen harvest moon! - May stark winter come straightway - --Now my little flower of April, - Now is cold and clay!" - - April!--this was when - Jack went laughing to the wars. - Now he knew - What a boy in Spring must do. - There are flowers to learn, he said, - In the countries where I go. - There are birds to talk to and - Skies and winds to understand. - Never a moment knew he pause. - Jack went swinging to the ships - With a laughter on his lips, - Jack went singing to the wars. - Jack among the boys and men - Went to France in April when - Flowers and boys laughed all the day, - Birds and they. - ... Till the Doom came down that day, - Even though the time was Spring, - Even April, - Even though he had not sung - Half the songs a lad should sing, - When the nesting-time is young, - April, Spring. - - And he shuddered for a moment, - Blood and flame convulsed the day, - And he crumpled on the way, - And the scarlet tide went sweeping, - Heaping, heaping - Clay upon his trodden clay, - April, Spring! - April!--can you wonder then - That my bitten lips have said, - "Curst be men, - Now that Jack in lyric April, - Jack is dead. - Curst be all the race of men! - May the last child die away - From the poisoned air of day! - Never May-time come, nor summer; - Never autumn - Crown the dim uncertain ending - To the fevers of the race - With a drowsy peace descending - On their spirits racked and rending, - On the evil human face. - May the last supernal winter - Freeze the earth straightway, - Now my little Jack of April, - Now is cold and clay!" - - - - - STATESMEN DEBONAIR - - O ye statesmen debonair, - With the partings in your hair; - Statesmen, ye who do your bit - In the arm-chairs where you sit; - You with top-hats on your head - Even when you lie in bed; - O superbly happy, ye - Traders in Humanity; - Every time you smile, sweet friends, - A moan goes up, a plague descends. - Every time you show your teeth, - A hundred swords desert the sheath. - Every time you pare your nails, - The manhood of a city fails. - Every time you dip your pen, - You slaughter ten platoons of men. - For every glass of port you hold, - Blood is spilt ten thousandfold.... - O ye statesmen debonair, - With the partings in your hair; - O ye statesmen pink and white, - Sleep like little lambs to-night. - - - - - OVER IN FLANDERS ... - - They were writing for the Poetry bookshops, - Poetry no doubt well worth reading. - Over in Flanders, in the wet weather, - Love lay bleeding! - - If you carefully record your emotions, - Lyric or Sonnet that haunts your head, - Will you revive for me over in Flanders - Love stone dead? - - - - - WILD WEATHER - - Wild weather, O my heart, and strong winds beating - The great trees straining in their despair. - The crumpled leaves that fall and flee - Whistle like ghosts across the air. - And how should I, lone mortal fleeting, - Not be uprooted by winds that, meeting, - Wrench at my limbs to cast them in the sea! - - Wild weather, O my heart, for all my lovers, - The lads I loved in the time entombed, - Crumpled and stark against trench and tree, - Whistle like leaves through the woods engloomed. - There all year long my poor ghost hovers, - Never to see what the darkness covers, - The faces I loved of old that so loved me. - - - - - BROKEN BODIES - - Not for the broken bodies, - When the War is over and done, - For the miserable eyes that never - Again shall see the sun; - Not for the broken bodies - Crawling over the land, - The patchwork limbs, the shoddies, - Not for the broken bodies, - Dear Lord, we crave your hand. - - Not for the broken bodies, - We pray your dearest aid, - When the ghost of War for ever - Is levelled at last and laid; - Not for the broken bodies - That wrought their sorrowful parts - Our chiefest need of God is, - Not for the broken bodies, - Dear Lord--the broken hearts! - - - - - A THOUGHT - - To-night a thought leapt in my head like flame. - Suppose one night I walked into my room - And found that someone filling all the gloom - Was waiting on my bed until I came; - - And I walked in and switched the light on straight, - And found the figure sitting on my bed, - Limp with contrition and with sunken head, - Was God bowed down under His burden's weight; - - And He looked up with sorrow and surmise - To see how deep the tale the Wars have written - Lay on my mortal features, battle-smitten, - And in the shadows of my deathless eyes; - - --This was the thought and flame that pierced me through: - If God sat waiting there, anxious and grey, - Then should I have the charity to say, - "God, we forgive you; you know not what you do"? - - - - - THE VINTNER - - The War-God now is happy. - His sunken eyeballs shine. - The War-God is a Vintner - Who makes the rarest wine. - - His vineyard is not bounded - Between the West and East. - A thousand mothers hourly - Grow pregnant for his feast. - - The grapes the Vintner presses - Below his granite feet - Are bodies, bodies, bodies, - Alive and brown and sweet. - - O how the red juice splashes - Around his pounding limbs! - It stains the deepest rivers, - The furthest sunset rims. - - O how the Gods his comrades, - When he, the Vintner, calls, - Drain deep the lurid beakers - In their carousal halls! - - All night they hold red riot, - "For this is wine indeed! - Then bravo! merry Vintner, - We wish thy work good speed!" - - And still the Vintner presses - The grapes with feet of stone, - Until the deep green ocean-cup - Shall hold red wine alone. - - - - - FOR NOW COMES SUMMER - - For now comes Summer with a thousand birds. - And I must add up figures all the day. - And I must drive a tram the whole day long. - And I must make a living out of words. - For now comes Summer with a thousand birds; - And in green fields the little lambs will play, - Brown birds will lift so loud a storm of song, - For now comes Summer with a thousand birds. - - For now comes Summer with a thousand birds. - And I must make munitions right away. - And I must check the biscuits at the base. - And I must plan to slaughter men in herds, - For now comes Summer with a thousand birds. - My brother's lying quiet on his face. - And I must sit and wait and die to-day, - For now comes Summer with a thousand birds. - - HARFLEUR - - - - - THE ADVENT OF MARS - - (To Thomas Moult) - - Then suddenly ... - A thunder was heard like the cracking of suns, - A blackness blacker than blood there came - To choke the world with a fume and a flame. - A palsy fell on the guns. - A numbness froze the hands - Of the gunners in all the lands. - Half-way over the parapet - The limbs of the climbing infantry set - Like limbs of basalt-stone. - The bayonets fell from the fingers numb, - The throats of the officers dried dead-dumb, - For the Terror had come, the Terror had come, - The Terror out of the stark Unknown! - The Shadow was fallen upon the wars - That had raged three centuries long - To shatter the Lie and Wrong, - From the ice-fanged polar jaws, - With never a lull nor pause, - And over the Temperate Zone, - With never a moment's rest, - And over the Burning Line, - With never a halting sign, - And over the East and West, - And down to the ultimate mouth - Of the white Antarctic South. - From the torpid Esquimo-man - Who slew his Esquimo-mate - And poured his fat in a plate, - And lit up a wick therein, - And studied the secret plan - For the poisonous new harpoon. - Wherewith he was going to win - The Esquimo-battle soon. - From the Esquimo-man to the sinister black - Cannibal-boy in his skeleton-shack, - Whose ardent patriot labours - Were extracting the eyes of his foes, - The bones of their fingers and toes, - To teach them never to violate - The inter-cannibal laws of State, - And the boundary-stone of his weaker neighbours. - - But now ... - Great God, - What is the menace, - Now, - The shadow, the thunder, - Now, - Ice on my heart, - Flame on my brow, - The skies dispart, - Lightnings rift through the obscene glooms, - The thews of the darkness are rent in sunder, - And a voice, a voice, a voice, - A great voice booms! - - "Children of Earth, - Listen a moment before ye die. - We have waited long, we have waited long, - (Children of Mars, lift up your song, - For the children of Mars shall be lords of the sky!) - Long have we patiently waited - In a huge red planetous hall. - But never a wind of ruth or grace - Blew through the marshes of your earth-face. - And deeper into the hole - Of your cavernous earthen soul, - Deeper than God and Love and all, - Boulders of evil fall. - Long have we patiently waited - In a huge red planetous hall, - But never a grace not violated, - Never a devil ye did not call! - You have torn, you have torn, - The flowers by their roots, consumed the seed, - Wherever a flower was, planted a weed. - In the pitch of your scorn - Defiled the morn, - Bitten deep death in the mould and the corn. - You have eaten the wings - Of the lily-like frail - Butterfly caught in your treacherous veil. - You have festered the springs - With the corpses ye slew - And given your children to drink of the brew. - Never a grace not violated, - Left God never a roof nor wall; - Never a passion ye have not sated, - Never a devil ye did not call. - And a Word came forth from the Sun to Mars, - 'Gird ye now for the final wars! - For over the planet of Earth, - Wooden and waste and wide, - Great red wounds in his side, - A shadow, a bloodless dearth - Ashen-pale in the caves of his eyes, - Throwing the ghost of a Cross on the skies, - The body of Christ lies crucified!' - We have come with a gladness terrible to behold. - We have come to reclaim the Godhead that was sold. - The levins we shall loosen ye have not ever known, - And the breath of our singing shall fall on you like stone. - - Our weapons shall be flame and the blades be keen, - And they shall not rest again till the skies be clean. - Our weapons shall be tides, the tide of the sea, - The surgings of the tide - Shall not again subside, - Until the Sun's sky-ways again shall be free!" - - So the voice spake, - Thunderous and proud, - So the voice spake, - Then died in a cloud. - And then again the Darkness, the Darkness gathered round, - And the hushed world waited, but heard not a sound. - So hushed was the world, the slaying and the weeping, - So hushed was the world, the world seemed sleeping, - But lo! in the West, - Lo! in the West! - Leaping, leaping, - A tongue of fire ... - - - - - PROPHET AND FOOL - - From twigs of visionary boughs - I gather berries red and rare. - I twine around my pallid brows - An insubstantial dryad's hair. - - Such song I hear in mission-halls, - As Jason heard in violet seas, - While bodiless birds sing madrigals - In tumult round my head and knees; - - The draper-shops that light their jets - To blink along the lanes of mire, - Weave splendours round the muddy sets - And tip my feet with points of fire. - - For I pursue the Golden Fleece - Down slum-ways magical and cool; - And there I hear the flutes of peace, - Being a prophet and a fool. - - - - - WHATEVER PATH I WALK UPON - - (To George Fasnacht) - - Whatever path I walk upon - That path itself is Avalon. - Whatever woman talks to me, - Venus' foamy self is she. - The floors of factories are made - Of jasper, porphyry and jade. - All that I drink, all food I eat, - Is my Lord's blood and body sweet. - - But if a moth should singe his wings, - The world is black with dismal things. - And if a strangled sparrow fall, - There is not any God at all. - And if a baby moan for food, - My eyes blaze red with rage for blood. - - - - - LONDON MAGDALENE - - How she is careful to make manifest - The budded beauty of her breast; - To hint beneath her unconcealing blouse - The curved seductions there that house. - Would that some Christ your mournful care had seen, - Unmaidened maiden, London Magdalene. - - God gave you roses warm from Paradise, - And they are bleaker now than ice. - God gave you fountains flowing honey-sweet, - And they are spilt upon the street. - All your seductions are the Dead Sea Fruit, - O rifled nest, blown flower, O string-snapt lute. - - In those breast-seas no baby-boat will swim - Through channels warm and dim; - You'll not awake to a twittering in the leaves - When baby bird-throat heaves. - Poor London Magdalene, before you sleep, - Ah weep with me, if not too late to weep. - - - - - SECRET GIRL - - (To Bessie McKellen) - - Thy nudity, like a white flame, - I shall inviolably guard: - O Secret Girl, mine eyes have yet - Not in the place of mortals met. - O Secret Girl whom, splendour-starred, - Some lordly noon my soul shall claim. - - More than the Brahman Heart of Ind, - I shall be spears about thy breasts: - When thou no more, O Secret Goal, - Art secret from mine eyes and soul, - O Mother of my waiting nests, - O dew and dark, O day and wind. - - Thou shalt be sheer beyond the wars, - And sacred from the waste of words: - O Secret Girl, O Dove, O Pard, - I shall inviolably guard. - For we shall crowd the trees with birds, - The sky with swarms of shouting stars! - - - - - LANKY TIM - - A narrow world is Lanky Tim's, - The funnel and the griding lift. - Never the blank walls drop or shift - To show the far fields thro' a rift - Where he might go and stretch his limbs. - - Hour after hour the storeys rise. - "First floor? Yes, round the corner just, - For Madame Smirkey's Wig and Bust. - Second? That way for Lawyer Thrust. - Fifth?"--The quack doctor, spiders, dust ... - These are his depths and these his skies. - - And did Life take you unawares - While you were dreaming still your dreams, - And eyes were wild and shy with gleams, - And heart was thick with aching themes? - --But someone's pushed the bell downstairs. - - And did you fly thro' boyland dells - To catch the songs of youthful kings, - And fly before the flight of Springs? - --But there's no room in here for wings, - Where Life is only these three things-- - A lift, a grid, a screech of bells. - - Poor Lanky Tim, the days that drift - Thro' your drab dismal prison, they - Have drifted all those dreams away, - Till your heart's just a pumping clay. - And now I often wonder, say, - If you'll be nearer God some day - Than the fifth storey up the lift. - - - - - MRS. BRIGGS - - Her ample breasts like moons are seen - Beneath her thin alpaca blouse. - Mrs. Briggs of Sausage Green, - She is an old Egyptian queen, - And she has Cheops Briggs for spouse. - - And when she shouts down Turnip Street, - "Lawks! of all the dirty sights! - 'Enry, quit that puddle quick!" - She has the regal voice that beat - The eardrums of the Israelites, - And turned the tribal bosoms sick. - - But when 'Enry drooped and ailed, - And 'Enry from her side was torn - In a hearse down Dingy Lane, - O she wept the lad in vain, - As that other queen bewailed - The slaying of the eldest born. - - - - - ATHENS NOW - - Behold Athens! What is Athens now? - Cinders and weeds where the eyeballs were, filth for - the marble brow. - Ilissus, Ilissus of the plain? - --Sardine-tins and a dead cat in a drain! - Dead, dead, dead are the Caryatids - Because of the horror that smote their petal-thin lids. - And the Parthenon now is a jawful of yellow teeth - In the snarling skull of an animal humped in death. - For Athens is only a squalor of traders that hope - To retire on the profits from soap. - And the trousers of half of the children of Pallas are - dirty with grease, - And the other half ardently brush them and keep them - in crease. - Then pray, O London, my city, when you are dead, - That none know the place where you reared your mad proud head; - That there be not a mound nor a stone nor even a tree, - But only the ignorant river or the desert sea! - - - - - DOWN TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD - - Down Tottenham Court Road they ululate, - The droning choruses of Fate. - They walk the length of every wind, - The women who sin, the women who have sinned. - This evening's crime, all immemorial crimes, - Here gather from all lands and times. - Here with Orestes through the mart - Walks the grey lad who stabbed his mother's heart. - Gaunt Clytĉmnestra stumbles round the feet - Of Sarah from a Soho street, - Who slew her sallow man to-night - With thin-lipped poison in the street lamp-light. - Pale Helen braids her legendary hair, - Lurking outside a gallery-stair, - While softly through the music calls - Aspasia to her lover in the stalls. - Here broken Orpheus searches, drunken-wild, - Eurydice, the fallen child, - Who, leagues down in the underworld, - Flaunts her white bosom, rouged lips, and gilt hair curled. - Behind the plate-glass windows drum the looms - Of Destinies spinning antique dooms. - The droning choruses of Fate, - Down Tottenham Court Road they ululate. - - - - - IN A STATION - - A station drizzling like a hymn - Sung out of tune by neurasthenes, - In a tin church where darkness leans - Down through the windows blear and grim! - A miserable oil-lamp winks - Like a drab slut, and stares and stinks. - The train snorts out a large disgust, - And snorts again and spits out dust. - - Then suddenly a lightning wakes! - The fumes, the squalors dissipate. - Then suddenly a young voice breaks - Into the darkness like a knife; - --Full of choked hopes and whipt regrets, - Hungry for love, half-dumb with hate, - Intense with death and sick for life, - --Into the darkness like a knife! - "Buy Choc-o-late and Cig-ar-ettes! - Buy Cig-ar-ettes and Choc-o-late!" - - - - - LIZA - - Liza sits on a three-legged stool all day - beneath the railway-stairs. - (Liza is a shadowy woman selling shadowy wares.) - The boots that Liza wears to-day were worn - a score of years ago - By Dick the tramp who threw them away as - far as ever he could throw. - The petticoats that Liza wears around her - limbs of sticks and skin - Were thrown aside with tall disdain into a - back-street rubbish bin. - But O the bonnet that Liza wears, it is the - summit of her pride; - A big limp feather hangs over her nose and - two more hang on either side. - There's no more stately woman than Liza, - be she the sought of a score of kings. - (Liza is a shadowy woman, selling shadowy things.) - All day long she sits upright, waiting upon - her three-legged stool, - Until the hosts of little children come tumbling - homeward out of school. - Then Liza shows her wooden tray whenever - the children meet her eye. - "Come along, babies, only a kiss for any - little dainty you may buy. - Purple figs from a Grecian garden, pomegranate - blossoms blazing red. - Jangle bells of langling silver to wrangle - around of a wee girl's head." - Liza's fingers twitch and tighten, her deep-down - eyes they are flecked and starred. - But her voice is like a moan in a rifted chimney - and you can only hear it if you listen very hard. - Never the little children hear, they toddle - homeward day by day. - --Who would look at a bogey-woman whispering - over an empty tray? - Ironically floats the bobbing feather over - Liza's hungry eye. - "Isn't there just one wee little baby to come - to my face and kiss and buy?" - ... All day long and all year round she - waits, but no one pays her price. - (Liza is a shadowy woman selling shadowy merchandise.) - - - - - WOMEN OF THE NIGHT - - Come, I will take you, O ye empty-eyed, - Into my heart as sheep into a fold - Upon the waste hill-steep. - For ye are weary, O unsatisfied, - Whose breasts were filled for love and sell for gold; - Come, I will give you sleep. - - All night your bodies move like furtive ghosts, - All the black futile night, your hands and feet - Heavy as sunken lead; - Sad, numberless, immortal, bloodless hosts, - Who haunt the hollows of the ashen street, - O ye my living-dead! - - Only a scent of Death, sweet and corrupt, - Breathes from the false flower-gardens of your hair, - O and in your eyes, - No, not the light of the mad wine you supped, - Not tears nor laughter, O but swaying there, - Unweepable miseries! - - Come, I will take you to a still green place, - Where birds that hover above the laden nests, - Birds shall make song. - There shall ye wash with dew the painted face, - Press two wild flowers against the barren breasts, - There hold a vigil long. - - A vigil long until the evening go, - Then sleep, long sleep; till with a shout, O then, - Our Lord the Sun shall rise. - With hearts invincible and bodies like snow, - Back ye shall turn into the place of men, - Love peerless in your eyes! - - _August_ 1918 - - - - - I STANDING IN THE STREET - - I standing in the street, I standing, - Gaze on the unwashed windows, dingy walls, - When lo! a clarion ... - Lo! thro' the slum a spring-time trumpet calls. - Lo! on the roofs a rose-leaf magic falls. - Thro' all the windows dance and jewels shine. - Thro' all the rooms go lissome girls with scent. - The window-frames are tendrilled with the vine. - (Ah, God! I weep in my content.) - - I standing in the street, I standing, - Gaze on my vision splendid and most dear, - When lo! a chimney ... - Lo! on my dreams the soot drifts dry and sere. - Lo! all my flowers wilt in a reek of beer. - On the drab flags squat children dusty-eyed, - Cursed at by blousy women with dank hair. - Just down the street there sprawls a suicide. - (Ah, God! I laugh in my despair.) - - - - - SLUM EVENING - - A dove-grey evening, dusk empearled - By lamps along the fading slums. - Out of the sky a silence comes, - A honey on the wormwood world. - - The flirting adolescents stand - And hush their tingling turbid vows. - For softly on their foolish brows - The evening lays a sober hand. - - Even the butcher, he who shares - The corner-shop with "Boots and Shoes," - Although he has no time to lose, - Delays to light the naphtha flares. - - A bleary woman down the road - With a large twin on either arm, - Her wits are stolen by the charm, - She quite forgets her puling load. - - I know not in what twilight stream - She bathes her dropsy-swollen feet, - But they were fair as dawn and fleet, - In the dead girlhood of her dream. - - - - - FIRES OF CHANGE - - Think you that Athens and Jerusalem - Rot in the places where they builded them? - This is the Temple, this the Parthenon - The priests of old days laid their hands upon? - No more a stream sends the same waters twice - Along its channels to sea-sacrifice. - Not God Himself shall bid Time stand to lock - The midmost atom in the mightiest rock. - Still the most secret atom shall be hurled - Into the riotous wind-ways of the world. - Still, the most ancient town, up wrenched, shall float - Freer than flame and light as a bird's note. - Still shall the crumbling globe itself be spun - Into fresh ethers conquered by the sun. - - So, even so, my soul shall wear no more - The countless shapes my soul endued of yore. - Yea, the stout granite of my soul shall range - Molten across the blasting fires of change. - Not this am I you saw an hour ago. - Me fluid as thought your science shall not know. - Hourly my conquering spirit digs and delves - A grave to hold a hundred slaughtered selves. - Hourly through cowering moons and stellar dins, - I stride across buried virtues and slain sins. - - - - - POETRY - - A star that was mute - Was heard to sing. - A flower took wing, - A bird took root. - - The Right is a Wrong, - The Wrong is a Right. - I fought with the Night, - I sang you a song. - - I slaughtered Time, - For the path I trod - To the feet of God - Was the road of a rhyme. - - A flower took wing, - A bird took root. - A star that was mute - Was heard to sing. - - - - - THE PRISONER - - If you have not a bird inside you, - You have no reason to sing. - But if a pent bird chide you, - A beak and a bleeding wing, - Then you have reason to sing. - - If merely you are clever - With thoughts and rhymes and words, - Then always your poems sever - The veins of our singing-birds, - With blades of glinting words. - - Yet if a Song, without ending, - Inside you choke for breath, - And a beak, devouring, rending, - Tear through your lungs for breath, - Sing--or you bleed to death. - - - - - NERVES - - You are like an ebony sea with derelict ships, - Cold as my lover is cold; - Until Beauty rises like the moon and whips - You into shivering gold. - - You are like a tree-top at the bleak last hour - When birds to the tombs belong; - Until Beauty blows like the dawn, and you flower - Into buds of innumerable song. - - You are like a virginal and a most pale - Girl in a secret mead; - Until Beauty, like the indomitable Male, - Enflames you with innermost seed. - - You are like a corpse with worms in the holes of the head, - Between a board and a board; - Until Beauty shouts like the Trump that convulses the dead, - And you enter the House of the Lord. - - - - - A POET - - He has a voice so exquisite - You can hardly hear it at all: - Tragedy's there and there is wit, - Both faint as a leaf's fall. - - His feet pass hardly like human feet, - Five-toed and leathern-shod, - But more with the sound of bended wheat, - Swayed by the skirts of God. - - His eyes are a wistful and grey sea, - Till a song stir his blood. - Then are they flowers that suddenly - Open from the pent bud. - - But when at the shutting of the day, - He sings faint songs for me, - Then is it very hard to say - If the wind sings or he. - - - - - FOR MY FRIEND - - (F. V. B.) - - Go forth and conquer with the wind for a sword, - O scorching might; - Go forth and blaze through the jungles of night, - Lead in the tameless stars with a cord; - Go forth, Lover of Right! - - Make moons thy pebbles and suns thy coins, - And thy language light. - Fill highest space with thy depth and height; - Gather the nebulĉ round thy loins; - Go forth and fight! - - Go forth and conquer--return, return, - When the hawthorn's white. - Encompass the void; then turn and learn - The veins of the grass and the bee's delight; - Return, Lover of Right! - - - - - "I SHALL BE SPLENDIDLY AND TENSELY YOUNG" - - I shall be splendidly and tensely young, - While yet my limbs are mine. - Each of them shall be strung - As a bowstring by an archer - With fingers strict and fine. - - I shall be splendidly and tensely young, - My heart being whole, my brain - Keen as a hawk's flight flung - Against my victim seen securely - From my austere Inane. - - But when my limbs no more are mine, - My feet to walk, my hands to hold, - I shall be most supremely young. - Then shall my flawless songs be sung, - My brow be sealed with a proud sign: - When I am deaf and blind and fleshless, - I shall be most supremely young, - When I am old. - - - - - "I" - - I shall slough my self as a snake its skin, - My white spots of virtue, my black spots of sin. - I shall abandon my sex, my brain, - My scheming for pleasure, escaping from pain. - I shall dig roots deep down and be - A weed or a reed, a flower, a tree. - I shall lose body and miry feet, - Float with the clouds and sway with the wheat. - I am a fool and foolisher than - Anything else that is not a man. - For of all the things that I see or feel, - The I-that-is-I is far the least real. - And only when I shall learn at the last - That a stream-bed pebble is far more vast - In the scale of Mind and its secret schemes - Than all my passion and blunders and dreams; - Then only that I that shall not be I - Shall play due part beneath sun and sky, - Ranked below sparrow, just above sod, - I shall take my place in the Self of God. - - - - - I KNOW NOT WHENCE MY POEMS COME - - I know not why nor whence you come, - My poems. Only this I know. - You fall like petals failing down - Upon the dustbins of a town. - You fall like flakes of doubtful snow. - Like fairy flutes your musics flow. - _You thunder like a madman's drum._ - - You falter on my worthless lips. - You give me grapes to press for wine. - Unasked, you bring me balm and spice, - You lead me into fields of kine, - With tinted dreams and anodyne. - _You freeze my flesh with flames of ice. - You scorch my shrieking soul with whips._ - - - - - LYRRIA - - Lyrria is an old country. - Lost travellers tremble and call. - A very white, wan, weird country - Where never came traveller at all. - - I am an old, old poet. - Lost poems tremble and call. - A very white, wan, weird poet - Who never wrote poems at all. - - - - - FARINGDON FROM SALONICA - - There's a far road off to Faringdon, - Under the downs it goes; - Into the fine wood, the beech, the pine wood - The dim road shadows and glows. - - My cycle hums to Faringdon, - Hums like a joyful bee, - Through dropping shy light of green tree twilight, - Music of wind and tree. - - Springtime, bluebells, Faringdon, - And a cycle through all three; - Great shadow reaches of English beeches, - Downs far down to the sea. - - There's a far road down to Faringdon. - There no more I ride. - The boys hear mostly a rider ghostly, - The girls they run and hide. - - But that's my ghost in Faringdon, - All year cycling it goes. - Into the fine wood, the beech, the pine wood, - The dim ghost shadows and glows. - - Salonica, 1916 - - - - - CALL OF THE PLOVER - - (To Harry Owen) - - The crying of the lonely plover - From the morning cloud! - Do the wings and clouds still hover - Where my heart sang loud? - - O the valley and the stream there. - Where we shouted, being young! - Are there boys still dream a dream there, - Are the boys' songs sung? - - O the winds that once blew round us, - O the sun! the rain! - Shall the ancient spells that bound us, - Bind us ever again? - - O a great Word then was spoken, - Then was a boy's will clean and strong! - Is the boy's will broken - That went straight along? - - O our ageing ears are ringing - With many sad things! - Shall we come again with singing - Where the plover sings? - - CLOUD END - - - - - THE GALLANT ROAD - - (For my School--without permission) - - Grant us, O Lord, to do the thing - Clean men and boys have always done; - These works to do, these songs to sing, - The gallant road to run. - - Grant us, O Lord, that we go straight - Along the path where shines the sun; - These things to love, these things to hate, - The gallant road to run. - - Grant us, O Lord, to win the fight - That all the cleanly hearts have won, - Having sure feet, even at night - The gallant road to run. - - Grant us, O Lord, when Death enfold, - That we take Death as half in fun; - Like men and boys that knew of old - The gallant road to run. - - 1915 - - - - - THE QUEST - - "I have sought you," I said; "I have - found you," I said, "in the pitch of your - intimate midnight lair." - He drew back with a sob like the swish of a - stick thro' the smarting air. - - "I have moved like Death on deliberate - feet thro' a thousand towns and a hundred lands. - Thinking you found, I have squeezed men's - throats with pulsing, twitching, inquisitive hands. - - "But the fire that waned in their blood-starred - eyes was not the flame of the fire I sought, - And I went my way with the sword in my - heart and the sword in my hand of passion - and thought. - - "My blood spurted over the boulders of far - intolerant mountains of iron and ice, - But never in crevice or cave or chasm I found - the flesh of my sacrifice. - - "I burned with the wrath of a wind from hell - thro' molten deserts panting and pent; - But ever my foeman fled me afar, the sinister - goal of my intent. - - "I have sought you," I said, "I have found - you," I said; "we shall die together, for - I am you." - The foam and fever oozed out of my forehead, - with a dew like blood, with a blood like dew. - - He wailed like a child that recoils from a - shadow that moves with menace over his bed; - But I pierced my heart with the sword in my - hand, and his body at last lay stretched - and dead. - - - - - HAVING FINISHED "JUDE THE OBSCURE" - - Such purposeless and iron wings - Obscure our mortal music quite? - Such gloom to monstrous gloom outflings - The stenches of a churchyard night? - - We are no more for God or Sin - Than parasites in rotting hair, - No different but only in - The boundlessness of our despair? - - Glories have sprung before our gaze - From the wet wood the grey tide warps! - We have heard peals of music blaze - Sheer from the cold heart of a corpse! - - - - - GHOST AND BODY - - I that am wiser than most, - Have yielded the tract of my ghost - To a panting and flat-eyed ghost who gathers these useless things. - In a country of seventeen moons, - He sits in the sound of bassoons - Playing terrible stupid tunes to the first of the ghostial kings. - - He has gathered my ghost with the rest - To plough it, or do what is best, - And doubtless he does it with zest in the country whereover - he reigns. - I am glad--for the thing was a pest; - It lay at the roots of my chest, - And it darkened the East and the West and it plastered - my eyes with stains. - - But heigh-ho! my arms and my feet - Now are mine as I swing down the street, - And my heart for to storm and to beat whenever my body desires. - My eyes will look when they please - Down the drains or high to the trees. - My body is mine to freeze or shrivel with whitest fires! - - - - - GALLOP - - My drunken head is a whirl of song, - My heart is a drumstick beating time. - My pen goes swiftly galloping along - The echoing roads of rhythm and rhyme. - - The stars are dizzy, for they circle in a ring. - Round about the Pole Star all hold hands. - The moon lifts her skirts up to do a giddy fling, - The trees in the forest dance in big black bands. - - The river is bounding from place to place, - The fishes in the cold air rise and shine. - The parallel hedgerows are running in a race, - For each of them and all of them are drunk with wine. - - The grand old buildings, alas and woe is me! - Sway about unsteadily from side to side. - The streets are moreover crooked things to see; - There is no object anywhere will stand and bide. - - The goblins are assembled in a mad-moon crowd - Upon the hazy summit of the palpitating hill. - Let the things that have no voice shout out loud! - Let them dance, the fickle things, and have their fill! - - And if again they will not sub-subside, - (For round-around-around ho! and dance shall we!) - The road of the rebel stars is cool and wide, - The mad waves dance on the sea! - - Then beat like thunder heart, then! round go head! - The red stars swing in time. - For soon enough, the Lord knows, shall I be dead, - And dead my rhythm and rhyme! - - OXFORD - - - - - WE LADS WHO BARTER RHYMES - - There's some be red of face, they be, - Like jolly suns in harvest times, - And some be haggard men to see, - Because of certain hidden crimes. - But let us sing with one accord - That we're the chosen of the Lord, - We lads who barter rhymes. - - There's some so tall and fair and free, - Like policemen in their leisure times, - And some are like a wizened pea, - Some worth no more than twenty dimes. - But here's our sober view expressed, - We're three times better than the best, - We lads who barter rhymes. - - - - - WHO KNOWS ME? - - Who knows me? None knows me. - I hobble on two blistered feet - Round the corner, down the street. - Now and then a child will cry, - Seeing a strange thing in my eye, - A Bogey Man, a Thing of Dread, - Stand from each eye in my head. - Now and then a baby 'll smile, - --But that's only once a while. - Boys of thirteen all throw stones - At my stiff and creaky bones. - Middle-aged people, fat and bright, - Shrug and sniff "It serves him right." - Round the corner, out of sight, - Down the Street, across the Night. - - Who knows me? None knows me. - I am young and I am proud, - Strong as sun and pure as cloud. - All the five seas wash my veins - With stinging foam and swinging rains. - With the white stars I commune - In a silent spheric tune. - Who knows me? None knows me. - Only but a brown Bird, - Only but a little Child, - A little Child, a little Bird, - Only they know me. - - - - - JUDĈUS ERRANS - - He hath no place to rest his head. - O happy nations, weep indeed. - He is forlorn till he be dead. - O pity him his wretched meed, - His wounds that bleed. - - There is no resting in his eyes, - And he hath scars upon his feet. - He is a stranger to all skies. - He walks sad-eyed along the street, - And shadow-wise. - - For with the dawn must he depart, - And with the sunset make his way. - All day he bears an aching heart, - All night his aching sorrows stay, - Yea, night and day. - - Then look a moment as he goes, - A little sadly, in his eyes. - For there are written all the woes, - And a surprise. - For he is sadder than God knows. - - - - - COLD STARS - - Cold night, cold with pointed stars - That swing like instant scimitars, - How you reproach with acid fire - The smoky lamps of our desire. - - Cold stars, inexorably aloof, - That freeze from Vision's dizziest roof, - On these our human sins you brood - In pride of glacial rectitude. - - Cold stars, come down and walk along - Our avenues of Sense and Song; - Take human shape one night and vex - Your bowels with the scourge of sex. - - When you return at last to those - Cold skies from whence your travel rose, - Will you still stare with such disdain, - When you, cold stars, are stars again? - - - - - REACTIONARY - - My heart's blood leaps high, O my Lady, in a - fountain of restless aspiring. - That you should dangle within it the dissolute - gold of your hair. - I have shattered the doors of my spirit that - you might thereinto retiring - Reposefully lie on my pain and reflect that - the morning is fair. - - You may go to the devil, my Lady, yourself - and the rest of your species! - I mean it, O desperate damsel, O Lady most - anxious and coy! - I shall retire to my chamber to see that my - clothes are in creases, - For I see by the tilt of your brow the minuteness - of brain you enjoy. - - You have set the clear bells of my spirit to - crack in a dissonant jangle. - You are fair in your way, O my Lady, but rather - oppressively sexed. - There is no such fatal mistake as a primitive - facial angle. - Good-bye, O my dispossessed Lady, remember - my name to the next. - - - - - LATE - - I am very desolate. - I am afraid. - I am alone. - The shadows wait - Till I am laid - Beneath a stone. - - I am very desolate. - I can hear feet. - I can see ghosts. - Fear's by the gate, - Death's in the street - By the dark posts. - - I am very desolate. - What have I made - Of the dead time? - The night is late. - I am afraid - Of my own rhyme. - - - - - WIND OF BLACK NIGHT - - I would go where you go, - You sole monarch that I know. - Wind, wind of black night, - I would go with your delight. - Take me by my streaming hair, - Take me where in the air - Planets meet, stars fight. - - I have need of the speed - Of your thunder-shattering steed. - Wind, wind of black night, - I would battle with your might. - Take me by my soaring mind. - No more blind, I shall find - Hell's depth and sky's height. - - I would follow where you lead, - Freed, freed of sense and creed. - Wind, wind of black night, - I would see with your sight. - Take me by my burning soul, - Stark, whole, to God my goal, - Clean darkness, sheer light. - - - - - YELLOW SATINS - - (To Janey Golding) - - When I am rich, mother, - You will sit in satins, - Yellow satins, looking out upon the street. - You will smile out on the neighbours, - Who will have no yellow satins; - And there'll be a great big hassock to rest your tired feet. - - You'll have a gold-clasped family album, - And a grand piano in the corner; - But yellow satins, yellow satins, I have chiefly dreamed of them. - And the most wonderful silk-lined work-box, - With the clothes of my first baby, - For your dear pale fingers to hem. - - And the neighbours will come to see you, - And pretend not to be looking - At the wonderful yellow satins, till I take you away to bed. - But in dreaming of the yellow satins, - I have forgotten, I have forgotten.... - Isn't it seven years, little mother, since you've been dead? - - - - - MY MOTHER'S PORTRAIT - - Dost thou turn thine eyes away from me, - thy stern and gentle eyes, - From the error of my living days, O thou in - Death most wise? - O thou in Death most wise, - With thy stern and gentle eyes, - Then is thy sleep disturbed by doubt, thy - coffin by surprise? - - Have I not trodden then the ways which thou - wouldst have me tread? - Then was it but a wind of words, the passioned - vows I said? - The passioned vows I said, - The ways which I should tread, - So have I quite forgotten these now thou art - safely dead? - - Unless I take thy buried lips my final word to say, - Unless I take thy crumbled eyes to light my tangled way, - To light my tangled way, - My final word to say, - Suddenly, Death, come down in flame and - shrive me from the day! - - - - - TO A. L. O. - - My soul is a white flame that has burned longer - Than Mars or Aldebaran or all the stars, - And gentler than a snowdrop, and far stronger - Than all the steel of its containing bars. - In cosmic triumphs upon timeless cars - My lordly soul hath lain. My soul is younger - Than the new-fallen dews in flowery jars: - My soul, my godly food, my godly hunger. - - Where shall I place my soul for most safe keeping - From boisterous intention and omnivorous wave? - And sow it in what field for goodliest reaping, - From night to shield it and from sins to save? - Thou art my treasure-house, awake or sleeping, - Or wind-free in meadows or in the obscure grave. - - - - - THE DARK KNIGHT OF THE ROAD - - Three tall poplars are his plumes, - The Dark Knight of the Road. - And he is cuirassed round with glooms, - And all his stern abode - Is loud with seas and dooms. - - A rock he takes to be his shield. - Loud winds his clarions are. - Should banded warriors take the field, - Though strong troops come from far, - Naught know they but to yield. - - But if a sparrow taunt his helm, - Froth-like his power is blown. - Him shall the mating thrush o'erwhelm. - Yea, I have even known - Tom-tit usurp his realm. - - - - - TO THE SWIFT - - Swift, feathered lightning, swift, - Flesh of flame, wind-fleet, - God who gave you your good gift - Gave me only two slow feet. - - Countries merge within the span - Of your single hour's essay. - I being but a wingless man - Plod my score of miles a day. - - Fading into blankness now, - Song that flies and flight that sings, - I am chained to clay, but thou, - Winds are leashed around thy wings. - - Art thou faded, swift? then see, - Poet where the swift shall halt, - Poet see the sun assault - The stone towers of Finity. - - Swift, dreamless atom, clod, - Swift, thou art slower than - Any eyeless, limbless man. - Him his soul shall drive to God. - - FRESHWATER - - - - - GREEN WIND - - The wind of course is Green. - There is no other word - For what no man has seen - And every man has heard. - - It's neither man nor fowl, - And neither fish nor beast. - But it comes out of the West - And goes into the East. - - It never was defined - By instrument or mouth. - But it comes out of the North - And goes into the South. - - The wind it is a Green Thing - That swishes thro' the corn, - And shouts you to praise loudly - The day that you were born. - - The wind it is a Wise Thing - That rumbles thro' the beech, - And bids you to learn there - A wisdom it can teach. - - The wind's as Green as Greenness - Possibly can be, - And lashes to a foam of Green - The deepest bluest sea. - - And even in the grassless towns, - The murky streets and mean, - Along the greys, behind the browns, - It sings a Song of Green. - - And whither does it go then, - And whence does it come forth? - It comes out of the South, - And goes into the North. - - It comes out of the East, - And goes into the West, - And why the wind is Green as Green, - God alone knows best. - - - - - THE MIDMOST FIELD IN KENT - - There is a time of charm and chime, - And this is Sabbath evening time. - There is a place of dear content, - This is the midmost field in Kent. - This is the time and this the place - Where boughs droop down with dews of grace; - Where under hedges hung with sleep, - Through atmospheres of music creep - Sheep like ghosts and ghosts like sheep. - Here a great Lord of Magic comes - Fanfarronading with far drums, - And deep athwart the night he throws - His banners of white fire and rose. - From the great town unto the sea, - He thunders through his empiry. - But when his drums are heard no more, - The quiet is quiet as before. - And there's a drowsy dreamy scent - Drenches the midmost field in Kent. - Neither more quickly nor more slow, - Shadows come, shadows go. - Shadows that reap while others sow, - Shadows that sow while others reap, - Shadows whose windy singings keep, - Sheep like ghosts and ghosts like sheep. - - - - - MURMURYNGEHAM - - In Murmuryngeham, in Murmuryngeham, - The bees is always singing, - The flowers is always chiming, - The sheep stands on their head. - There's lads and lasses clinging, - And minor poets rhyming, - In Murmuryngeham, in Murmuryngeham, - When they should be in bed. - So now my feet is winging, - When other men's are climbing, - To Murmuryngeham, which I shall find - If my good Patron be inclined, - Murmuryngeham, Murmuryngeham, - Some day before I'm dead. - - - - - WINCHESTER DOWNS - - In Winchester on the white downs - This is not mist at all, - But the thin silk of fairy gowns - Which is not woven in the towns - And all behind a wall. - - In Winchester, be taught of me, - The fairies seize your wrist. - Their gowns are caught in every tree; - --But if you have no eyes to see, - Then sure, it's only mist. - - - - - CYCLING IN OCTOBER - - O the wind blowing round me, the wind - blowing round me, the same wind that - blew when the grey world was green! - The high hills before me, the brown hills before - me, that stand in their places where Death - has not been. - The blue sky over my head is singing, is singing, - is singing, as loudly as I. - For Death was only a seeming, a dreaming, - and Life is as clouds that fade and fly. - The strong hills vanish, as thin clouds vanish, - as I shall vanish, my dream, my pain; - But all my dreams and I the dreamer, clouds - and hills shall sing again. - Then birds of October, hills of October, winds - of October, wrap me round. - Carry me forward, road of October, sped on - the wheels of light and sound. - For the birds are on wings now and I am on - wings now over the white road the dead - men trod. - And there are no dead men, there are no dead - men, but living men only and dead men - are God! - - - - - THE SHEPHERD - - "Ah me," the shepherd said - Who dwelt beside a fold - Upon the Northern hills. - "Ah me, 'tis bitter cold, - My oldest friends be dead. - And O a humming fills - My nid-nod-nodding head." - - The guns lie in the beams. - The shepherd feeds the fire - With fingers old and numb. - The lamplight flickers higher. - A double winter seems - Surely to have come. - The old friends hover nigher - In simple shepherd dreams. - - The frost lies on the fells. - The moon's a great white flower. - The stars have cruel hearts. - And loud and very clear, - With sudden silly starts, - The old clock ticks and tells - The changing of the hour. - But the shepherd hears the bells - No other man may hear. - - A look's within his eyes - I have not seen before - In shepherd North or South. - The old head sinketh lower. - The shadows fall and rise - Along the earthen floor. - --God wot, he'll go no more - Beneath the windy skies. - - No more the shepherd will - Lead down the misty scars - The small sheep frail and lost, - Nor thread the bracken hill - Singing a shepherd's rune. - The moorland wind is still, - Beneath the ancient moon. - The fells are white with frost. - The white peaks touch the stars. - - - - - DERWENTWATER - - (To J. L. Paton) - - God give me Derwentwater when I die. - Let no one else be by - To say prayers over me or close my eye. - - On Friar's Crag my body will lie down. - On green grass and earth brown. - I will forget the fever and the town. - - Over the tops of ancient Borrowdale, - Slowly the clouds will sail - Through great sky spaces, exquisite and frail. - - And grandly will the flames of heather climb - Up Skiddaw-Hill sublime, - With head unbowed before the knees of time. - - Thro' the still dusk a little bird will sing - Sweetly a holy thing, - And fade in silence on a drowsy wing. - - The winds will pass along the quiet lake, - And God will gently take - My own breath with them for His Godhead's sake. - - - - - "I VOWED THAT I WOULD BE A TREE" - - I vowed that I would be a tree. - I went up to an oak and said, - "What shall I do that I might be - A beech, an oak, or any tree, - With branches leafing from my head?" - - There was a sound of sap that ran, - There was a wind of leaves that spoke. - "So you would cease to be a man, - And be a green tree, if you can, - A pine, a beech, an oak?" - - I answered, "I am tired of men, - As tired as they of me. - I fain would not return again - To the perplexity of men, - But straightway be a tree." - - There was a sound of winds that went - To summon every oldest tree, - To hold their austere Parliament - About the thing had craved to be - Elect of their calm company. - - There was a sound of bursting tide, - There was a wash of clanging foam, - A crumbling shore, a bursting tide. - There came a thunder that outcried, - "Go, wretched mortal, get thee home! - - "Who art thou that would be a tree, - Least of the weeds that shoot and pass? - Bide till a Wisdom come, and see - Before a mortal be a tree, - He first must be a blade of grass!" - - - - - WOUNDED SOLDIERS - - Have you no arms, soldier? - See, I have two. - Whatever deeds for arms there be, - These still I can do. - Out of clay I still can make - Living things like me and you. - I still can cleave the lake - With strong arms true. - - Have you no feet, soldier, - No feet at all? - I still have feet to climb - Oak-tree and tall. - Still as in our boyhood, - I leap the hedge and climb the wall. - Still my feet will chase the Spring - When birds call. - - Have you no eyes, soldier, - Keen eyes like me? - My eyes still have light that draw - Strength from the great sea. - O soldier, is it hard to lose - The first Spring-whisper on the tree, - Sun foaming round the love you choose, - Whosoever she? - - Ah! but you have something, soldier, - Never we shall know. - You shall hear the holy winds - We can not hear blow. - From your garden-soul shall start - Flowers of flaming snow. - There's the secret at your heart - Never we shall know. - - - - - STILL LIFE IN FRANCE - - Sweet peas drooping in a vase - Like the tears of Niobe, - Poppies like the cheeks of Mars - Kissing the Aphrodite. - - Pansies like a dryad's eyes, - Open-wide and half-afraid, - Like unfolded butterflies - In a little Tempe glade. - - * * * * * - - Flowers and words might be my toys - Half a drowsy summer day, - But at night I hear the noise - Of bombardment far away. - - Very quiet I am then, - Like a moon-enchanted boy, - As I see the khaki men - Storm the granite walls of Troy. - - HARFLEUR, 1917 - - - - - I DREAM'D I DIED - - I dream'd I died. - The green of Spring was not yet manifest - Upon the cold hillside. - They bore me slowly to my place of rest, - And let me bide. - Far from the pale I lay of space and light, - Of dusk and dawn. - I knew the sharp stars of the winter night - Were far withdrawn. - Silent I lay upon my bed, - In sooth at rest. - The earth pressed heavily on my head, - My lean hands cross'd my breast. - I saw not through my eyes. - When I had faded from the room of sighs, - Someone had sealed them down with clay, - Had whispered, "He hath seen the whole - Of summer earth and starlit skies, - Or yellow hills of tumbled hay - That he shall see. - Here till the time of Judgment let him be. - God soothe his soul." - - Under the moon - I lay remote from the dear nightingale. - Late and soon, - Faintly I heard the wan wind drone and wail. - I dream'd, - Thro' many years it seemed: - Until I wearied me of dreaming - And closed the windows of my soul, - Where no sun streaming - Show'd how God's far far days did westward roll. - All blind, blind, - A sea of sleep did drown me unconfin'd, - Wide and deep, - A sea of utter sleep, - Its levels no time stirred by any wind. - And so I slept, - My hands across my breast. - My clamped spirit kept - A total rest. - - * * * * * - - Earth of the Earth I slumber'd long, - I slumber'd in the untrod glooms, - And then Dawn came. - I felt the world was glad with song, - I felt the hillsides were a flame - Of king-cup blooms. - And when Dawn came, - Three times I knocked upon the door - Which was my seal, my world and sky, - Three times with might. - There came a burst of sound and light, - A knowledge broad and deep and high, - The long breath of a sloping moor. - I looked into the daylight wide, - A bird sang thro' the singing blue, - And then, O heart, and then I knew - I _dream'd_ I died. - - - - - FLOWERS IN WAR - - Still, still, with all your ancient bloom, - You glow athwart our gloom. - Still, O too callous flowers, - You load with gems these swooning hours. - Still, still, the lilac foams and falls - Against our hollow silenced walls. - Against the cinders of our homes, - Wistaria falls and foams. - - When all the Spring is all a loaded grave, - How can your banners wave? - How when the wind goes round your way, - How can your trumpets play? - - For whom your splendours chiefly shone, - All those, all those, are gone. - Now Spring is nipped and hoar, - Too callous flowers, why bloom ye more? - Still, still, the scarlet sorrel gleams - All noon along the noon-gold streams. - Still, still, the meadow-pippet's feet - Are dewed on meadow-sweet. - - Be curst, O callous flowers that come so fair - With taunts at our despair. - Or if next Spring shall lead you back, - Be all your petals black! - - - - - EVENING--KENT - - Sheep, like woolly clouds dropt from the sky, - Drift through the quiet meads. - From over the seas, a little cry, - --Europe bleeds! - - Clouds, like woolly sheep, hardly stir'd, - Drift through the quiet skies. - From over the seas, a little word, - --Europe dies! - - - - - BLACK MAGIC - - Hands on the window-sill - I hear but cannot see. - Ghosts riding down the hill - I see but cannot hear. - My heart is cold with fear - Of every trembling tree. - - The day has never been, - And day will never be. - And Night is very lean, - And Death is very swift. - And green eyes blink and shift - Through every monstrous tree. - - Black arms across the night, - And hands I may not flee, - And fingers grasping tight - That choke my little cries, - And I shall have green eyes - Within a phantom tree. - - - - - A SOLDIER DYING - - "Lad, why are your fingers twitching, - What is the thing they strain to hold? - Why does your blood flow thick, enriching - A bleak strange place?" - - "Dying, dying--then do not task me!" - "Tell me before your lips are cold." - "I am afraid of the thing you ask me." - "--Before the dark is in your face." - - "This is why my blood is oozing. - Because my masters did the choosing. - Blood is cheap and bought for gold." - - "Are they masters of your knowing?" - "I know not who my masters be. - I only know my blood is flowing, - Because my secret masters said, - 'We shall live and he be dead.'" - - "This is why your fingers straining - Clutch the thing they shall not hold?" - "This is why the blood is waning, - Waning from my face. - They gathered in the market-place, - They gathered to buy merchandise. - My blood was bought for little price, - My masters bought and I was sold. - This is why my blood is oozing, - Blood is cheap and bought for gold." - - - - - AT LAST WAR ENDS - - And still the War went on: till only ten - Were left to win the War; they fought; and then, - Then there were no more men. - - There was a gloom of apprehension lest - For lack of flesh the first and last and best - Of wars might be suppressed. - - But Mars was far too sage to be surprised. - Now that the race of men were quite demised, - The women mobilized. - - So now for gassier gas and flamier flame! - Compared with what the present War became, - The old War was a game. - - The old had fifty years in which to thrive; - When this had lasted only twenty-five, - Two dames remained alive. - - With flammen-werfer strictly up-to-date, - They stalked each other, singing Hymns of Hate: - --But one was just too late! - - The Victress trying vainly to decide - For whom her late opponent had just died, - Committed suicide. - - So now the world consisted but of trees - And dogs and beetles livid with disease, - And babies blue with fleas. - - Trees, dogs, and beetles perished from the day. - Like flies brought crawling earthwards by a spray, - The babies dropped away. - - Now truly War seemed ended. Mars was pained - Beyond expression till he ascertained, - Two babes, thank God! remained. - - He fired them with the fury of all wars. - A bloody hunger stung their toothless jaws. - They squealed--"The Cause! The Cause!" - - Black to the blinding noon they foamed and swore. - Each from his brother's breast the red heart tore. - Then there was War no more. - - - - - PRINTED BY - MORRISON AND GIBB LTD. - EDINBURGH - - - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sorrow of War, by Louis Golding - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SORROW OF WAR *** - -***** This file should be named 56037-8.txt or 56037-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/6/0/3/56037/ - -Produced by Al Haines -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. 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