diff options
Diffstat (limited to '58435-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 58435-0.txt | 2042 |
1 files changed, 2042 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/58435-0.txt b/58435-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5e2d1ad --- /dev/null +++ b/58435-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2042 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58435 *** + + + + + + + + + + + + + +LOLLINGDON DOWNS + +AND OTHER POEMS, WITH SONNETS + + + + + BY THE SAME AUTHOR + + Uniform with this Volume + + DAUBER + THE DAFFODIL FIELDS + PHILIP THE KING + THE FAITHFUL (A PLAY) + + LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + + + + LOLLINGDON DOWNS + + AND OTHER POEMS, WITH SONNETS + + + + BY + + JOHN MASEFIELD + + + + LONDON + WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + + + +LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 1917. + + + + + TO + MY WIFE + + + + + I. + + So I have known this life, + These beads of coloured days, + This self the string. + What is this thing? + + Not beauty, no; not greed, + O, not indeed; + Not all, though much; + Its colour is not such. + + It has no eyes to see, + It has no ears; + It is a red hour's war + Followed by tears. + + It is an hour of time, + An hour of road, + Flesh is its goad; + Yet, in the sorrowing lands, + Women and men take hands. + + O earth, give us the corn, + Come rain, come sun; + We men who have been born + Have tasks undone. + Out of this earth + Comes the thing birth, + The thing unguessed, unwon. + + + + + II. + + O wretched man, that for a little mile + Crawls beneath heaven for his brother's blood, + Whose days the planets number with their style, + To whom all earth is slave, all living, food! + O withering man, within whose folded shell + Lies yet the seed, the spirit's quickening corn, + That Time and Sun will change out of the cell + Into green meadows, in the world unborn! + If Beauty be a dream, do but resolve + And fire shall come, that in the stubborn clay + Works to make perfect till the rocks dissolve, + The barriers burst, and Beauty takes her way: + Beauty herself, within whose blossoming Spring + Even wretched man shall clap his hands and sing. + + + + + III. + + Out of the special cell's most special sense + Came the suggestion when the light was sweet; + All skill, all beauty, all magnificence, + Are hints so caught, man's glimpse of the complete. + And, though the body rots, that sense survives; + Being of life's own essence, it endures + (Fruit of the spirit's tillage in men's lives) + Round all this ghost that wandering flesh immures. + That is our friend, who, when the iron brain + Assails, or the earth clogs, or the sun hides, + Is the good God to whom none calls in vain, + Man's Achieved Good, which, being Life, abides: + The man-made God, that man in happy breath + Makes in despite of Time and dusty Death. + + + + + IV. + + You are the link which binds us each to each. + Passion, or too much thought, alone can end + Beauty, the ghost, the spirit's common speech, + Which man's red longing left us for our friend. + Even in the blinding war I have known this, + That flesh is but the carrier of a ghost + Who, through his longing, touches that which is + Even as the sailor knows the foreign coast. + So by the bedside of the dying black + I felt our uncouth souls subtly made one: + Forgiven, the meanness of each other's lack; + Forgiven, the petty tale of ill things done. + We were but Man, who for a tale of days + Seeks the one city by a million ways. + + + + + V. + + I could not sleep for thinking of the sky, + The unending sky, with all its million suns + Which turn their planets everlastingly + In nothing, where the fire-haired comet runs. + If I could sail that nothing, I should cross + Silence and emptiness with dark stars passing; + Then, in the darkness, see a point of gloss + Burn to a glow, and glare, and keep amassing, + And rage into a sun with wandering planets, + And drop behind; and then, as I proceed, + See his last light upon his last moon's granites + Die to a dark that would be night indeed: + Night where my soul might sail a million years + In nothing, not even Death, not even tears. + + + + + VI. + + How did the nothing come, how did these fires, + These million-leagues of fires, first toss their hair, + Licking the moons from heaven in their ires, + Flinging them forth for them to wander there? + What was the Mind? Was it a mind which thought? + Or chance? or law? or conscious law? or power? + Or a vast balance by vast clashes wrought? + Or Time at trial with Matter for an hour? + Or is it all a body where the cells + Are living things supporting something strange, + Whose mighty heart the singing planet swells + As it shoulders nothing in unending change? + Is this green earth of many-peopled pain + Part of a life, a cell within a brain? + + + + + VII. + + It may be so; but let the unknown be. + We, on this earth, are servants of the sun: + Out of the sun comes all the quick in me, + His golden touch is life to everyone. + His power it is that makes us spin through space; + His youth is April and his manhood bread; + Beauty is but a looking on his face; + He clears the mind, he makes the roses red. + What he may be, who knows? But we are his; + We roll through nothing round him, year by year, + The withering leaves upon a tree which is, + Each with his greed, his little power, his fear, + What we may be, who knows? But every one + Is dust on dust a servant of the sun. + + + + + VIII. + + The Kings go by with jewelled crowns; + Their horses gleam, their banners shake, their spears are many. + The sack of many-peopled towns + Is all their dream; + The way they take + Leaves but a ruin in the brake, + And, in the furrow that the ploughmen make, + A stampless penny: a tale, a dream. + + The merchants reckon up their gold; + Their letters come, their ships arrive, their freights are glories; + The profits of their treasures sold + They tell and sum; + Their foremen drive + The servants starved to half-alive, + Whose labours do but make the earth a hive + Of stinking stories: a tale, a dream. + + The priests are singing in their stalls; + Their singing lifts, their incense burns, their praying clamours; + Yet God is as the sparrow falls; + The ivy drifts, + The votive urns + Are all left void when Fortune turns; + The god is but a marble for the kerns + To break with hammers: a tale, a dream. + + O Beauty, let me know again + The green earth cold, the April rain, the quiet waters figuring sky, + The one star risen. + + So shall I pass into the feast + Not touched by King, merchant, or priest; + Know the red spirit of the beast, + Be the green grain; + Escape from prison. + + + + + IX. + + What is this life which uses living cells + It knows not how nor why, for no known end, + This soul of man upon whose fragile shells + Of blood and brain his very powers depend? + Pour out its little blood or touch its brain, + The thing is helpless, gone, no longer known; + The carrion cells are never man again, + No hand relights the little candle blown. + It comes not from Without, but from the sperm + Fed in the womb; it is a man-made thing + That takes from man its power to live a term, + Served by live cells of which it is the King. + Can it be blood and brain? It is most great. + Through blood and brain alone it wrestles Fate. + + + + + X. + + Can it be blood and brain, this transient force + Which, by an impulse, seizes flesh and grows + To man, the thing less splendid than the horse, + More blind than owls, less lovely than the rose? + O, by a power unknown it works the cells + Of blood and brain; it has the power to see + Beyond the apparent thing the something else + Which it inspires dust to bring to be. + Both blood and brain are its imperfect tools, + Easily wrecked, soon worn, slow to attain; + Only by years of toil the master rules + To lovely ends those servants, blood and brain. + And Death, a touch, a germ, has still the force + To make him ev'n as the rose, the owl, the horse. + + + + + XI. + + Not only blood and brain its servants are; + There is a finer power that needs no slaves, + Whose lovely service distance cannot bar, + Nor the green sea with all her hell of waves; + Nor snowy mountains, nor the desert sand, + Nor heat, nor storm, it bends to no control; + It is a stretching of the spirit's hand + To touch the brother's or the sister's soul; + So that from darkness in the narrow room + I can step forth and be about her heart, + Needing no star, no lantern in the gloom, + No word from her, no pointing on the chart, + Only red knowledge of a window flung + Wide to the night, and calling without tongue. + + + + + XII. + + Drop me the seed, that I even in my brain + May be its nourishing earth. No mortal knows + From what immortal granary comes the grain, + Nor how the earth conspires to make the rose; + But from the dust and from the wetted mud + Comes help, given or taken; so with me, + Deep in my brain the essence of my blood + Shall give it stature until Beauty be. + It will look down, even as the burning flower + Smiles upon June, long after I am gone. + Dust-footed Time will never tell its hour, + Through dusty Time its rose will draw men on, + Through dusty Time its beauty will make plain + Man, and, Without, a spirit-scattering grain. + + + + + XIII. + + Ah, but Without there is no spirit scattering; + Nothing but Life, most fertile but unwise, + Passing through change in the sun's heat and cloud's watering, + Pregnant with self, unlit by inner eyes. + There is no sower, nor seed for any tillage; + Nothing but the grey brain's pash, and the tense will, + And that poor fool of the Being's little village + Feeling for the truth in the little veins that thrill. + There is no Sowing, but digging, year by year, + In a hill's heart, now one way, now another, + Till the rock breaks and the valley is made clear, + And the poor Fool stands, and knows the sun for his brother, + And the Soul shakes wings like a bird escaped from cage, + And the tribe moves on to camp in its heritage. + + + + + XIV. + + You are too beautiful for mortal eyes, + You the divine unapprehended soul; + The red worm in the marrow of the wise + Stirs as you pass, but never sees you whole. + Even as the watcher in the midnight tower + Knows from a change in heaven an unseen star, + So from your beauty, so from the summer flower, + So from the light, one guesses what you are. + So in the darkness does the traveller come + To some lit chink, through which he cannot see, + More than a light, nor hear, more than a hum, + Of the great hall where Kings in council be. + So, in the grave, the red and mouthless worm + Knows of the soul that held his body firm. + + + + + XV. + + Is it a sea on which the souls embark + Out of the body, as men put to sea? + Or do we come like candles in the dark + In the rooms in cities in eternity? + Is it a darkness that our powers can light? + Is this, our little lantern of man's love, + A help to find friends wandering in the night + In the unknown country with no star above? + Or is it sleep, unknowing, outlasting clocks + That outlast men, that, though the cockcrow ring, + Is but one peace, of the substance of the rocks; + Is but one space in the now unquickened thing; + Is but one joy, that, though the million tire, + Is one, always the same, one life, one fire? + + + + + XVI. + + THE SHIP + + + THE ORE. + + Before Man's labouring wisdom gave me birth + I had not even seen the light of day; + Down in the central darkness of the earth, + Crushed by the weight of continents I lay, + Ground by the weight to heat, not knowing then + The air, the light, the noise, the world of men. + + + THE TREES. + + We grew on mountains where the glaciers cry, + Infinite sombre armies of us stood + Below the snow-peaks which defy the sky; + A song like the gods moaning filled our wood; + We knew no men; our life was to stand stanch, + Singing our song, against the avalanche. + + + THE HEMP AND FLAX. + + We were a million grasses on the hill, + A million herbs which bowed as the wind blew, + Trembling in every fibre, never still; + Out of the summer earth sweet life we drew. + Little blue-flowered grasses up the glen, + Glad of the sun, what did we know of men? + + + THE WORKERS. + + We tore the iron from the mountain's hold, + By blasting fires we smithied it to steel; + Out of the shapeless stone we learned to mould + The sweeping bow, the rectilinear keel; + We hewed the pine to plank, we split the fir, + We pulled the myriad flax to fashion her. + + Out of a million lives our knowledge came, + A million subtle craftsmen forged the means; + Steam was our handmaid, and our servant flame, + Water our strength, all bowed to our machines. + Out of the rock, the tree, the springing herb, + We built this wandering beauty so superb. + + + THE SAILORS. + + We, who were born on earth and live by air, + Make this thing pass across the fatal floor, + The speechless sea; alone we commune there, + Jesting with Death, that ever-open door. + Sun, moon, and stars are signs by which we drive + This wind-blown iron like a thing alive. + + + THE SHIP. + + I march across great waters like a queen, + I whom so many wisdoms helped to make; + Over the uncruddled billows of seas green + I blanch the bubbled highway of my wake. + By me my wandering tenants clasp the hands + And know the thoughts of men in other lands. + + + + + XVII. + + THE BLACKSMITH + + The blacksmith in his sparky forge + Beat on the white-hot softness there; + Ever as he beat he sang an air + To keep the sparks out of his gorge. + + So many shoes the blacksmith beat, + So many shares and links for traces, + So many builders' struts and braces, + Such tackling for the chain-fore-sheet, + + That, in his pride, big words he spake: + "I am the master of my trade; + What iron is good for I have made, + I make what is in iron to make." + + Daily he sang thus by his fire, + Till one day, as he poised his stroke + Above his bar, the iron spoke; + "You boaster, drop your hammer, liar!" + + The hammer dropped out of his hand, + The iron rose, it gathered shape, + It took the blacksmith by the nape, + It pressed him to the furnace, and + + Heaped fire upon him till his form + Was molten, flinging sparks aloft, + Until his bones were melted soft, + His hairs crisped in a fiery storm. + + The iron drew him from the blaze + To place him on the anvil; then + It beat him from the shape of men, + Like drugs the apothecary brays; + + Beat him to ploughing coulters, beat + Body and blood to links of chain, + With endless hammerings of pain + Unending torment of white heat; + + And did not stop the work, but still + Beat on him while the furnace roared. + The blacksmith suffered and implored, + With iron bonds upon his will. + + And, though he could not die nor shrink, + He felt his being beat by force + To horseshoes stamped on by the horse, + And into troughs whence cattle drink. + + He felt his blood, his dear delight, + Beat into shares, he felt it rive + The green earth red; he was alive, + Dragged through the earth by horses' might. + + He felt his brain, that once had planned + His daily life, changed to a chain + Which curbed a sail or dragged a wain, + Or hoisted shiploads to the land. + + He felt his heart, that once had thrilled + With love of wife and little ones, + Cut out and mingled with his bones + To pin the bricks where men rebuild. + + He felt his very self impelled + To common uses, till he cried: + "There's more within me than is tried, + More than you ever think to weld. + + "For all my pain I am only used + To make the props for daily labour; + I burn, I am beaten like a tabour + To make men tools: I am abused. + + "Deep in the white heat where I gasp + I see the unmastered finer powers. + Iron by cunning wrought to flowers, + File-worked, not tortured by the rasp. + + "Deep in this fire-tortured mind + Thought bends the bar in subtler ways; + It glows into the mass, its rays + Purge, till the iron is refined. + + "Then, as the full moon draws the tide + Out of the vague uncaptained sea. + Some moony-power there ought to be + To work on ore; it should be tried. + + "By this fierce fire in which I ache + I see new fires not yet begun, + A blacksmith smithying with the sun, + At unmade things man ought to make. + + "Life is not fire and blows, but thought, + Attention kindling into joy; + Those who make nothing new destroy: + O me, what evil I have wrought! + + "O me!" and as he moaned he saw + His iron master shake; he felt + No blow, nor did the fire melt + His flesh, he was released from law. + + He sat upon the anvil top + Dazed, as the iron was dazed; he took + Strength, seeing that the iron shook; + He said: "This cruel time must stop." + + He seized the iron and held him fast + With pincers, in the midmost blaze; + A million sparks went million ways, + The cowhorn handle plied the blast. + + "Burn, then," he cried; the fire was white, + The iron was whiter than the fire. + The fireblast made the embers twire; + The blacksmith's arm began to smite. + + First vengeance for old pain, and then + Beginning hope of better things; + Then swordblades for the sides of Kings + And corselets for the breasts of men; + + And crowns and such-like joys and gems, + And stars of honour for the pure, + Jewels of honour to endure, + Beautiful women's diadems; + + And coulters, sevenfold-twinned, to rend, + And girders to uphold the tower, + Harness for unimagined power, + New ships to make the billows bend; + + And stores of fire-compelling things + By which men dominate and pierce + The iron-imprisoned universe, + Where angels lie with banded wings. + + + + + XVIII. + + THE FRONTIER. + + COTTA. LUCIUS. THEIR CHIEF. + + COTTA. Would God the route would come for home! + My God! this place, day after day, + A month of heavy march from Rome! + This camp, the troopers' huts of clay, + The horses tugging at their pins, + The roaring brook and then the whins, + And nothing new to do or say! + + LUCIUS. They say the tribes are up. + + COTTA. Who knows! + + LUCIUS. Our scouts say that they saw their fires. + + COTTA. Well, if we fight it's only blows + And bogging horses in the mires. + + LUCIUS. Their raiders crossed the line last night, + Eastward from this, to raid the stud; + They stole our old chief's stallion, Kite. + He's in pursuit. + + COTTA. That looks like blood. + + LUCIUS. Well, better that than dicing here + Beside this everlasting stream. + + COTTA. My God! I was in Rome last year, + Under the sun; it seems a dream. + + LUCIUS. Things are not going well in Rome; + This frontier war is wasting men + Like water, and the Tartars come + In hordes. + + COTTA. We beat them back agen. + + LUCIUS. So far we have, and yet I feel + The empire is too wide a bow + For one land's strength. + + COTTA. The stuff's good steel. + + LUCIUS. Too great a strain may snap it, though. + If we were ordered home... + + COTTA. Good Lord! ... + + LUCIUS. If ... then our friends, the tribesmen there, + Would have glad days. + + COTTA. This town would flare + To warm old Foxfoot and his horde. + + LUCIUS. We have not been forethoughtful here, + Pressing the men to fill the ranks; + Centurions sweep the province clear. + + COTTA. Rightly. + + LUCIUS. Perhaps. + + COTTA. We get no thanks. + + LUCIUS. We strip the men for troops abroad, + And leave the women and the slaves + For merchants and their kind. The graves + Of half each province line the road; + These people could not stand a day + Against the tribes, with us away. + + COTTA. Rightly. + + LUCIUS. Perhaps. + + COTTA. Here comes the Chief. + + LUCIUS. Sir, did your riders catch the thief? + + CHIEF. No; he got clear and keeps the horse. + But bad news always comes with worse: + The frontier's fallen, we're recalled, + Our army's broken, Rome's appalled! + My God! the whole world's in a blaze. + So now we've done with idle days, + Fooling on frontiers. Boot and start. + It gives a strange feel in the heart + To think that this, that Rome has made, + Is done with. Yes, the stock's decayed. + We march at once. You mark my words: + We're done, we're crumbled into sherds; + We shall not see this place again + When once we go. + + LUCIUS. Do none remain? + + CHIEF. No, none; all march. Here ends the play. + March, and burn camp. The order's gone; + Your men have sent your baggage on. + + COTTA. My God! hark how the trumpets bray! + + CHIEF. They do. You see the end of things. + The power of a thousand kings + Helped us to this, and now the power + Is so much hay that was a flower. + + LUCIUS. We have been very great and strong. + + CHIEF. That's over now. + + LUCIUS. It will be long + Before the world will see our like. + + CHIEF. We've kept these thieves beyond the dyke + A good long time, here on the Wall. + + LUCIUS. Colonel, we ought to sound a call + To mark the end of this. + + CHIEF. We ought. + Look, there's the hill-top where we fought + Old Foxfoot. Look, there in the whin. + Old ruffian knave! Come on! Fall in! + + + + + XIX. + + Night is on the downland, on the lonely moorland, + On the hills where the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf, + Where the bent grass beats upon the unploughed poorland + And the pine-woods roar like the surf. + + Here the Roman lived on the wind-barren lonely, + Dark now and haunted by the moorland fowl; + None comes here now but the peewit only, + And moth-like death in the owl. + + Beauty was here, on this beetle-droning downland; + The thought of a Cæsar in the purple came + From the palace by the Tiber in the Roman town-land + To this wind-swept hill with no name. + + Lonely Beauty came here and was here in sadness, + Brave as a thought on the frontier of the mind, + In the camp of the wild upon the march of madness, + The bright-eyed Queen of the Blind. + + Now where Beauty was are the wind-withered gorses, + Moaning like old men in the hill-wind's blast; + The flying sky is dark with running horses, + And the night is full of the past. + + + + + XX. + + MIDNIGHT + + The fox came up by Stringer's Pound; + He smelt the south-west warm on the ground, + From west to east a feathery smell + Of blood on the wing-quills tasting well. + A buck's hind-feet thumped on the sod, + The whip-like grass snake went to clod, + The dog-fox put his nose in the air + To taste what food was wandering there. + Under the clover down the hill + A hare in form that knew his will. + Up the hill the warren awake + And the badger showing teeth like a rake. + Down the hill the two twin thorpes + Where the crying night owl waked the corpse, + And the moon on the stilly windows bright + Instead of a dead man's waking light. + The cock on his perch that shook his wing + When the clock struck for the chimes to ring, + A duck that muttered, a rat that ran, + And a horse that stamped, remembering man. + + + + + XXI. + + Up on the downs the red-eyed kestrels hover, + Eyeing the grass. + The field-mouse flits like a shadow into cover + As their shadows pass. + + Men are burning the gorse on the down's shoulder; + A drift of smoke + Glitters with fire and hangs, and the skies smoulder, + And the lungs choke. + + Once the tribe did thus on the downs, on these downs, burning + Men in the frame, + Crying to the gods of the downs till their brains were turning + And the gods came. + + And to-day on the downs, in the wind, the hawks, the grasses, + In blood and air, + Something passes me and cries as it passes, + On the chalk downland bare. + + + + + XXII. + + No man takes the farm, + Nothing grows there; + The ivy's arm + Strangles the rose there. + + Old Farmer Kyrle + Farmed there the last; + He beat his girl + (It's seven years past). + + After market it was + He beat his girl; + He liked his glass, + Old Farmer Kyrle. + + Old Kyrle's son + Said to his father: + "Now, dad, you ha' done, + I'll kill you rather! + + "Stop beating sister, + Or by God I'll kill you!" + Kyrle was full of liquor-- + Old Kyrle said: "Will you?" + + Kyrle took his cobb'd stick + And beat his daughter; + He said: "I'll teach my chick + As a father oughter." + + Young Will, the son, + Heard his sister shriek; + He took his gun + Quick as a streak. + + He said: "Now, dad, + Stop, once for all!" + He was a good lad, + Good at kicking the ball. + + His father clubbed + The girl on the head. + Young Will upped + And shot him dead. + + "Now, sister," said Will, + "I've a-killed father, + As I said I'd kill. + O my love, I'd rather + + "A-kill him again + Than see you suffer. + O my little Jane, + Kiss good-bye to your brother. + + "I won't see you again, + Nor the cows homing, + Nor the mice in the grain, + Nor the primrose coming, + + "Nor the fair, nor folk, + Nor the summer flowers + Growing on the wold, + Nor ought that's ours. + + "Not Tib the cat, + Not Stub the mare, + Nor old dog Pat, + Never anywhere. + + "For I'll be hung + In Gloucester prison + When the bell's rung + And the sun's risen." + + * * * + + They hanged Will + As Will said; + With one thrill + They choked him dead. + + Jane walked the wold + Like a grey gander; + All grown old + She would wander. + + She died soon: + At high-tide, + At full moon, + Jane died. + + The brook chatters + As at first; + The farm it waters + Is accurst. + + No man takes it, + Nothing grows there; + Blood straiks it, + A ghost goes there. + + + + + XXIII. + + A hundred years ago they quarried for the stone here; + The carts came through the wood by the track still plain; + The drills show in the rock where the blasts were blown here, + They show up dark after rain. + + Then the last cart of stone went away through the wood, + To build the great house for some April of a woman, + Till her beauty stood in stone, as her man's thought made it good, + And the dumb rock was made human. + + The house still stands, but the April of its glory + Is gone, long since, with the beauty that has gone; + She wandered away west, it is an old sad story: + It is best not talked upon. + + And the man has gone, too, but the quarry that he made, + Whenever April comes as it came in old time, + Is a dear delight to the man who loves a maid, + For the primose comes from the lime.... + + And the blackbird builds below the catkin shaking, + And the sweet white violets are beauty in the blood, + And daffodils are there, and the blackthorn blossom breaking + Is a wild white beauty in bud. + + + + + XXIV. + + Here the legion halted, here the ranks were broken, + And the men fell out to gather wood; + And the green wood smoked, and bitter words were spoken, + And the trumpets called to food. + + And the sentry on the rampart saw the distance dying + In the smoke of distance blue and far, + And heard the curlew calling and the owl replying + As the night came cold with one star; + + And thought of home beyond, over moorland, over marshes, + Over hills, over the sea, across the plains, across the pass, + By a bright sea trodden by the ships of Tarshis, + The farm, with cicadæ in the grass. + + And thought, as I: "Perhaps, I may be done with living + To-morrow, when we fight. I shall see those souls no more. + O beloved souls, be beloved in forgiving + The deeds and the words that make me sore." + + + + + XXV. + + We danced away care till the fiddler's eyes blinked, + And at supper, at midnight, our wine glasses chinked; + Then we danced till the roses that hung round the wall + Were broken red petals that did rise and did fall + To the ever-turning couples of the bright eyed and gay + Singing in the midnight to dance care away. + + Then the dancing died out and the carriages came, + And the beauties took their cloaks and the men did the same, + And the wheels crunched the gravel and the lights were turned down, + And the tired beauties dozed through the cold drive to town. + + Nan was the belle, and she married her beau, + Who drank, and then beat her, and she died long ago; + And Mary, her sister, is married, and gone + To a tea-planter's lodge, in the plains, in Ceylon. + + And Dorothy's sons have been killed out in France, + And May lost her man in the August advance, + And Em the man jilted, and she lives all alone + In the house of this dance which seems burnt in my bone. + + Margaret and Susan and Marian and Phyllis, + With red lips laughing and the beauty of lilies, + And the grace of wild-swans and a wonder of bright hair, + Dancing among roses with petals in the air + + All, all are gone, and Hetty's little maid + Is so like her mother that it makes me afraid. + And Rosalind's son, whom I passed in the street, + Clinked on the pavement with the spurs on his feet. + + + + + XXVI. + + Long, long ago, when all the glittering earth + Was heaven itself, when drunkards in the street + Were like mazed kings shaking at giving birth + To acts of war that sickle men like wheat; + When the white clover opened Paradise + And God lived in a cottage up the brook, + Beauty, you lifted up my sleeping eyes + And filled my heart with longing with a look. + And all the day I searched but could not find + The beautiful dark-eyed who touched me there. + Delight in her made trouble in my mind. + She was within all nature, everywhere. + The breath I breathed, the brook, the flower, the grass, + Were her, her word, her beauty, all she was. + + + + + XXVII. + + Night came again, but now I could not sleep; + The owls were watching in the yew, the mice + Gnawed at the wainscot. The mid dark was deep. + The death-watch knocked the dead man's summons thrice. + The cats upon the pointed housetops peered + About the chimneys, with lit eyes which saw + Things in the darkness, moving, which they feared; + The midnight filled the quiet house with awe. + So, creeping down the stair, I drew the bolt + And passed into the darkness, and I knew + That beauty was brought near by my revolt. + Beauty was in the moonlight, in the dew, + But more within myself, whose venturous tread + Walked the dark house where death-ticks called the dead. + + + + + XXVIII. + + Even after all these years there comes the dream + Of lovelier life than this in some new earth, + In the full summer of that unearthly gleam + Which lights the spirit when the brain gives birth; + Of a perfected I, in happy hours, + Treading above the sea that trembles there, + A path through thickets of immortal flowers + That only grow where sorrows never were; + And, at a turn, of coming face to face + With Beauty's self, that Beauty I have sought + In women's hearts, in friends, in many a place, + In barren hours passed at grips with thought, + Beauty of woman, comrade, earth and sea, + Incarnate thought come face to face with me. + + + + + XXIX. + + If I could come again to that dear place + Where once I came, where Beauty lived and moved, + Where, by the sea, I saw her face to face, + That soul alive by which the world has loved; + If, as I stood at gaze among the leaves, + She would appear again as once before, + While the red herdsmen gathered up his sheaves + And brimming waters trembled up the shore; + If, as I gazed, her Beauty that was dumb, + In that old time, before I learned to speak, + Would lean to me and revelation come, + Words to the lips and colour to the cheek, + Joy with its searing-iron would burn me wise; + I should know all, all powers, all mysteries. + + + + + XXX. + + Here in the self is all that man can know + Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power, + All the unearthly colour, all the glow, + Here in the self which withers like a flower; + Here in the self which fades as hours pass, + And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten + Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass + In which it sees its glory still unrotten. + Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind, + Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone, + Beauty herself, the universal mind, + Eternal April wandering alone; + The God, the holy Ghost, the atoning Lord, + Here in the flesh, the never yet explored. + + + + + XXXI. + + Flesh, I have knocked at many a dusty door, + Gone down full many a windy midnight lane, + Probed in old walls and felt along the floor, + Pressed in blind hope the lighted window-pane. + But useless all, though sometimes when the moon + Was full in heaven and the sea was full, + Along my body's alleys came a tune + Played in the tavern by the Beautiful. + Then for an instant I have felt at point + To find and seize her, whosoe'er she be, + Whether some saint whose glory doth anoint + Those whom she loves, or but a part of me, + Or something that the things not understood + Make for their uses out of flesh and blood. + + + + + XXXII. + + But all has passed, the tune has died away, + The glamour gone, the glory; is it chance? + Is the unfeeling mud stabbed by a ray + Cast by an unseen splendour's great advance? + Or does the glory gather crumb by crumb + Unseen, within, as coral islands rise, + Till suddenly the apparitions come + Above the surface, looking at the skies? + Or does sweet Beauty dwell in lovely things + Scattering the holy hintings of her name + In women, in dear friends, in flowers, in springs, + In the brook's voice, for us to catch the same? + Or is it we who are Beauty, we who ask? + We by whose gleams the world fulfils its task. + + + + + XXXIII. + + These myriad days, these many thousand hours, + A man's long life, so choked with dusty things, + How little perfect poise with perfect powers, + Joy at the heart and Beauty at the springs. + One hour, or two, or three, in long years scattered + Sparks from a smithy that have fired a thatch, + Are all that life has given and all that mattered; + The rest, all heaving at a moveless latch. + For these, so many years of useless toil, + Despair, endeavour, and again despair, + Sweat, that the base machine may have its oil, + Idle delight to tempt one everywhere. + A life upon the cross. To make amends, + Three flaming memories that the deathbed ends. + + + + + XXXIV. + + There, on the darkened deathbed, dies the brain + That flared three several times in seventy years. + It cannot lift the silly hand again, + Nor speak, nor sing, it neither sees nor hears; + And muffled mourners put it in the ground + And then go home, and in the earth it lies + Too dark for vision and too deep for sound, + The million cells that made a good man wise. + Yet for a few short years an influence stirs, + A sense or wraith or essence of him dead, + Which makes insensate things its ministers + To those beloved, his spirit's daily bread; + Then that, too, fades; in book or deed a spark + Lingers, then that, too, fades; then all is dark. + + + + + XXXV. + + So in the empty sky the stars appear, + Are bright in heaven marching through the sky, + Spinning their planets, each one to his year, + Tossing their fiery hair until they die; + Then in the tower afar the watcher sees + The sun, that burned, less noble than it was, + Less noble still, until by dim degrees + No spark of him is specklike in his glass. + Then blind and dark in heaven the sun proceeds, + Vast, dead and hideous, knocking on his moons, + Till crashing on his like creation breeds, + Striking such life, a constellation swoons; + From dead things striking fire a new sun springs, + New fire, new life, new planets with new wings. + + + + + XXXVI. + + It may be so with us, that in the dark, + When we have done with time and wander space, + Some meeting of the blind may strike a spark, + And to Death's empty mansion give a grace. + It may be, that the loosened soul may find + Some new delight of living without limbs, + Bodiless joy of flesh-untrammelled mind, + Peace like a sky where starlike spirit swims. + It may be, that the million cells of sense, + Loosed from their seventy years' adhesion, pass + Each to some joy of changed experience, + Weight in the earth or glory in the grass. + It may be, that we cease; we cannot tell. + Even if we cease, life is a miracle. + + + + + XXXVII. + + What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt + Held in cohesion by unresting cells + Which work they know not why, which never halt, + Myself unwitting where their master dwells. + I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin; + A world which uses me as I use them, + Nor do I know which end or which begin, + Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn. + So, like a marvel in a marvel set, + I answer to the vast, as wave by wave + The sea of air goes over, dry or wet, + Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave, + Or the great sun comes north, this myriad I + Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why. + + + + + XXXVIII. + + If I could get within this changing I, + This ever altering thing which yet persists, + Keeping the features it is reckoned by, + While each component atom breaks or twists, + If, wandering past strange groups of shifting forms, + Cells at their hidden marvels hard at work, + Pale from much toil, or red from sudden storms, + I might attain to where the Rulers lurk. + If, pressing past the guards in those grey gates, + The brains most folded, intertwisted shell, + I might attain to that which alters fates, + The King, the supreme self, the Master Cell; + Then, on Man's earthly peak, I might behold + The unearthly self beyond, unguessed, untold. + + + + + XXXIX. + + What is this atom which contains the whole, + This miracle which needs adjuncts so strange, + This, which imagined God and is the soul, + The steady star persisting amid change? + What waste, that smallness of such power should need + Such clumsy tools so easy to destroy, + Such wasteful servants difficult to feed, + Such indirect dark avenues to joy. + Why, if its business is not mainly earth, + Should it demand such heavy chains to sense? + A heavenly thing demands a swifter birth, + A quicker hand to act intelligence; + An earthly thing were better like the rose, + At peace with clay from which its beauty grows. + + + + + XL. + + Ah, we are neither heaven nor earth, but men; + Something that uses and despises both, + That takes its earth's contentment in the pen, + Then sees the world's injustice and is wroth, + And flinging off youth's happy promise, flies + Up to some breach, despising earthly things, + And, in contempt of hell and heaven, dies + Rather than bear some yoke of priests or kings. + Our joys are not of heaven nor earth, but man's. + A woman's beauty, or a child's delight, + The trembling blood when the discoverer scans + The sought-for world, the guessed-at satellite; + The ringing scene, the stone at point to blush + For unborn men to look at and say "Hush." + + + + + XLI. + + Roses are beauty, but I never see + Those blood drops from the burning heart of June + Glowing like thought upon the living tree + Without a pity that they die so soon, + Die into petals, like those roses old, + Those women, who were summer in men's hearts + Before the smile upon the Sphinx was cold + Or sand had hid the Syrian and his arts. + O myriad dust of beauty that lies thick + Under our feet that not a single grain + But stirred and moved in beauty and was quick + For one brief moon and died nor lived again; + But when the moon rose lay upon the grass + Pasture to living beauty, life that was. + + + + + XLII. + + Over the church's door they moved a stone, + And there, unguessed, forgotten, mortared up, + Lay the priest's cell where he had lived alone. + There was his ashy hearth, his drinking cup, + There was his window whence he saw the Host, + The God whose beauty quickened bread and wine; + The skeleton of a religion lost, + The ghostless bones of what had been divine. + O many a time the dusty masons come + Knocking their trowels in the stony brain + To cells where perished priests had once a home, + Or where devout brows pressed the window pane, + Watching the thing made God, the God whose bones + Bind underground our soul's foundation stones. + + + + + XLIII. + + Out of the clouds come torrents, from the earth + Fire and quakings, from the shrieking air + Tempests that harry half the planet's girth. + Death's unseen seeds are scattered everywhere. + Yet in his iron cage the mind of man + Measures and braves the terrors of all these. + The blindest fury and the subtlest plan + He turns, or tames, or shows in their degrees. + Yet in himself are forces of like power, + Untamed, unreckoned; seeds that brain to brain + Pass across oceans bringing thought to flower, + New worlds, new selves, where he can live again + Eternal beauty's everlasting rose + Which casts this world as shadow as it goes. + + + + + XLIV. + + O little self, within whose smallness lies + All that man was, and is, and will become, + Atom unseen that comprehends the skies + And tells the tracks by which the planets roam; + That, without moving, knows the joys of wings, + The tiger's strength, the eagle's secrecy, + And in the hovel can consort with kings, + Or clothe a God with his own mystery. + O with what darkness do we cloak thy light, + What dusty folly gather thee for food, + Thou who alone art knowledge and delight, + The heavenly bread, the beautiful, the good. + O living self, O God, O morning star, + Give us thy light, forgive us what we are. + + + + + XLV. + + I went into the fields, but you were there + Waiting for me, so all the summer flowers + Were only glimpses of your starry powers; + Beautiful and inspired dust they were. + + I went down by the waters, and a bird + Sang with your voice in all the unknown tones + Of all that self of you I have not heard, + So that my being felt you to the bones. + + I went into the house, and shut the door + To be alone, but you were there with me; + All beauty in a little room may be, + Though the roof lean and muddy be the floor. + + Then in my bed I bound my tired eyes + To make a darkness for my weary brain; + But like a presence you were there again, + Being and real, beautiful and wise, + + So that I could not sleep, and cried aloud, + "You strange grave thing, what is it you would say?" + The redness of your dear lips dimmed to grey, + The waters ebbed, the moon hid in a cloud. + + + + + XLVI. + + This is the living thing that cannot stir. + Where the seed chances there it roots and grows, + To suck what makes the lily or the fir + Out of the earth and from the air that blows, + Great power of Will that little thing the seed + Has, all alone in earth, to plan the tree, + And, though the mud oppresses, to succeed + And put out branches where the birds may be. + Then the wind blows it, but the bending boughs + Exult like billows, and their million green + Drink the all-living sunlight in carouse, + Like dainty harts where forest wells are clean, + While it, the central plant, which looks o'er miles, + Draws milk from the earth's breast, and sways, and smiles. + + + + + XLVII. + + Here, where we stood together, we three men, + Before the war had swept us to the East, + Three thousand miles away, I stand agen + And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast. + We trod the same path, to the self-same place, + Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves, + Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase, + And Sedd-el-Bahr that ever more blood craves. + So, since we communed here, our bones have been + Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be. + Earth and the world-wide battle lie between, + Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea. + Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood + As I stand now, with pulses beating blood. + + + + + XLVIII. + + I saw her like a shadow on the sky + In the last light, a blur upon the sea; + Then the gale's darkness put the shadow by. + But from one grave that island talked to me; + And in the midnight, in the breaking storm, + I saw its blackness and a blinding light, + And thought "So death obscures your gentle form, + So memory strives to make the darkness bright; + And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies, + Part of the island till the planet ends, + My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise, + Part of this crag this bitter surge offends, + While I, who pass, a little obscure thing, + War with this force, and breathe, and am its king." + + + + + XLIX. + + Look at the grass, sucked by the seed from dust, + Whose blood is the spring rain, whose food the sun, + Whose life the scythe takes ere the sorrels rust, + Whose stalk is chaff before the winter's done. + Even the grass its happy moment has + In May, when glistering buttercups make gold; + The exulting millions of the meadow-grass + Give out a green thanksgiving from the mould. + Even the blade that has not even a blossom + Creates a mind, its joy's persistent soul + Is a warm spirit on the old earth's bosom + When April's fire has dwindled to a coal; + The spirit of the grasses' joy makes fair + The winter fields when even the wind goes bare. + + + + + L. + + There is no God, as I was taught in youth, + Though each, according to his stature, builds + Some covered shrine for what he thinks the truth, + Which day by day his reddest heart-blood gilds. + There is no God; but death, the clasping sea, + In which we move like fish, deep over deep, + Made of men's souls that bodies have set free, + Floods to a Justice though it seems asleep. + There is no God; but still, behind the veil, + The hurt thing works, out of its agony. + Still like the given cruse that did not fail + Return the pennies given to passers-by. + There is no God; but we, who breathe the air, + Are God ourselves, and touch God everywhere. + + + + + LI. + + Wherever beauty has been quick in clay + Some effluence of it lives, a spirit dwells, + Beauty that death can never take away + Mixed with the air that shakes the flower bells; + So that by waters where the apples fall, + Or in lone glens, or valleys full of flowers, + Or in the streets where bloody tidings call, + The haunting waits the mood that makes it ours. + Then at a turn, a word, an act, a thought, + Such difference comes; the spirit apprehends + That place's glory; for where beauty fought + Under the veil the glory never ends; + But the still grass, the leaves, the trembling flower + Keep, through dead time, that everlasting hour. + + + + + LII. + + Beauty, let be; I cannot see your face, + I shall not know you now, nor touch your feet, + Only within me tremble to your grace, + Tasting this crumb vouchsafed which is so sweet. + Even when the full-leaved summer bore no fruit + You gave me this, this apple of man's tree; + This planet sings when other spheres were mute, + This light begins when darkness covered me. + Now, though I know that I shall never know + All, through my fault, nor blazon with my pen + That path prepared where only I could go, + Still, I have this, not given to other men: + Beauty, this grace, this spring, this given bread, + This life, this dawn, this wakening from the dead. + + + + + LIII. + + You are more beautiful than women are, + Wiser than men, stronger than ribbed death, + Juster than Time, more constant than the star, + Dearer than love, more intimate than breath, + Having all art, all science, all control + Over the still unsmithied, even as Time + Cradles the generations of man's soul. + You are the light to guide, the way to climb. + So, having followed beauty, having bowed + To wisdom and to death, to law, to power, + I like a blind man stumble from the crowd + Into the darkness of a deeper hour, + Where in the lonely silence I may wait + The prayed-for gleam--your hand upon the gate. + + + + + + LIV. + + Beauty retires; the blood out of the earth + Shrinks, the stalk dries, lifeless November still + Drops the brown husk of April's greenest birth. + Through the thinned beech clump I can see the hill. + So withers man, and though his life renews + In Aprils of the soul, an autumn comes + Which gives an end, not respite, to the thews + That bore his soul through the world's martyrdoms. + Then all the beauty will be out of mind, + Part of man's store, that lies outside his brain, + Touch to the dead and vision to the blind, + Drink in the desert, bread, eternal grain, + Part of the untilled field that beauty sows + With flowers untold, where quickened spirit goes. + + + + + LV. + + Not for the anguish suffered is the slur, + Not for the woman's taunts, the mocks of men; + No, but because you never welcomed her, + Her of whose beauty I am only the pen. + + There was a dog, dog-minded, with dog's eyes, + Damned by a dog's brute-nature to be true. + Something within her made his spirit wise; + He licked her hand, he knew her; not so you. + + When all adulterate beauty has gone by, + When all inanimate matter has gone down, + We will arise and walk, that dog and I, + The only two who knew her in the town. + + We'll range the pleasant mountain side by side, + Seeking the blood-stained flowers where Christs have died. + + + + + LVI. + + Beauty was with me once, but now, grown old, + I cannot hear nor see her: thus a King + In the high turret kept him from the cold + Over the fire with his magic ring, + Which, as he wrought, made pictures come and go + Of men and times, past, present, and to be; + Now like a smoke, now flame-like, now a glow, + Now dead, now bright, but always fantasy, + While, on the stair without, a faithful slave + Stabbed to the death, crawled bleeding, whispering, "Sir, + They come to kill you, fly: I come to save, + O you great gods, for pity let him hear." + Then, with his last strength tapped, and muttered, "Sire." + While the King smiled and drowsed above the fire. + + + + + LVII. + + So beauty comes, so with a failing hand + She knocks, and cries, and fails to make me hear, + She who tells futures in the falling sand, + And still, by signs, makes hidden meanings clear; + She, who behind this many peopled smoke, + Moves in the light and struggles to direct, + Through the deaf ear and by the baffled stroke, + The wicked man, the honoured architect. + Yet at a dawn before the birds begin, + In dreams, as the horse stamps and the hound stirs, + Sleep slips the bolt and beauty enters in + Crying aloud those hurried words of hers, + And I awake and, in the birded dawn, + Know her for Queen, and own myself a pawn. + + + + + LVIII. + + You will remember me in days to come, + With love, or pride, or pity, or contempt, + So will my friends (not many friends, yet some), + When this my life will be a dream out-dreamt; + And one, remembering friendship by the fire, + And one, remembering love time in the dark, + And one, remembering unfulfilled desire, + Will sigh, perhaps, yet be beside the mark; + For this my body with its wandering ghost + Is nothing solely but an empty grange, + Dark in a night that owls inhabit most, + Yet when the King rides by there comes a change + The windows gleam, the cresset's fiery hair + Blasts the blown branch and beauty lodges there. + + + + + LIX. + + If Beauty be at all, if, beyond sense, + There be a wisdom piercing into brains, + Why should the glory wait on impotence, + Biding its time till blood is in the veins? + + There is no beauty, but, when thought is quick, + Out of the noisy sickroom of ourselves + Some flattery comes to try to cheat the sick, + Some drowsy drug is groped for on the shelves. + + There is no beauty, for we tread a scene + Red to the eye with blood of living things; + Thought is but joy from murder that has been, + Life is but brute at war upon its kings. + + There is no beauty, nor could beauty care + For us, this dust, that men make everywhere. + + + + + LX. + + If all be governed by the moving stars, + If passing planets bring events to be, + Searing the face of Time with bloody scars, + Drawing men's souls even as the moon the sea, + If as they pass they make a current pass + Across man's life and heap it to a tide, + We are but pawns, ignobler than the grass + Cropped by the beast and crunched and tossed aside. + Is all this beauty that doth inhabit heaven + Train of a planet's fire? Is all this lust + A chymic means by warring stars contriven + To bring the violets out of Cæsar's dust? + Better be grass, or in some hedge unknown + The spilling rose whose beauty is its own. + + + + + LXI. + + In emptiest furthest heaven where no stars are, + Perhaps some planet of our master sun + Still rolls an unguessed orbit round its star, + Unthought, unseen, unknown of anyone. + Roving dead space according to its law, + Casting our light on burnt-out suns and blind, + Singing in the frozen void its word of awe, + One wandering thought in all that idiot mind. + And, in some span of many a thousand year, + Passing through heaven its influence may arouse + Beauty unguessed in those who habit here, + And men may rise with glory on their brows + And feel new life like fire, and see the old + Fall from them dead, the bronze's broken mould. + + + + + LXII. + + Perhaps in chasms of the wasted past, + That planet wandered within hail of ours, + And plucked men's souls to loveliness and cast + The old, that was, away, like husks of flowers; + And made them stand erect and bade them build + Nobler than hovels plaited in the mire, + Gave them an altar and a God to gild, + Bridled the brooks for them and fettered fire; + And, in another coming, forged the steel + Which, on life's scarlet wax, for ever set + Longing for beauty bitten as a seal + That blood not clogs nor centuries forget, + That built Atlantis, and, in time, will raise + That grander thing whose image haunts our days. + + + + + LXIII. + + For, like an outcast from the city, I + Wander the desert strewn with travellers' bones, + Having no comrade but the starry sky + Where the tuned planets ride their floating thrones. + I pass old ruins where the kings caroused + In cups long shards from vines long since decayed, + I tread the broken brick where queens were housed + In beauty's time ere beauty was betrayed, + And in the ceaseless pitting of the sand + On monolith and pyle, I see the dawn + Making those skeletons of beauty grand + By fire that comes as darkness is withdrawn, + And, in that fire, the art of men to come + Shines with such glow I bless my martyrdom. + + + + + LXIV. + + Death lies in wait for you, you wild thing in the wood, + Shy-footed beauty dear, half-seen, half-understood. + Glimpsed in the beech-wood dim and in the dropping fir, + Shy like a fawn and sweet and beauty's minister. + Glimpsed as in flying clouds by night the little moon, + A wonder, a delight, a paleness passing soon. + + Only a moment held, only an hour seen, + Only an instant known in all that life has been, + One instant in the sand to drink that gush of grace, + The beauty of your way, the marvel of your face. + Death lies in wait for you, but few short hours he gives; + I perish even as you by whom all spirit lives. + Come to me, spirit, come, and fill my hour of breath + With hours of life in life that pay no toll to death. + + + + + LXV. + + They called that broken hedge The Haunted Gate. + Strange fires (they said) burnt there at moonless times. + Evil was there, men never went there late, + The darkness there was quick with threatened crimes. + And then one digging in that bloodied clay + Found, but a foot below, a rotted chest. + Coins of the Romans, tray on rusted tray, + Hurriedly heaped there by a digger prest. + So that one knew how, centuries before, + Some Roman flying from the sack by night, + Digging in terror there to hide his store, + Sweating his pick, by windy lantern light, + Had stamped his anguish on that place's soul, + So that it knew and could rehearse the whole. + + + + + LXVI. + + There was an evil in the nodding wood + Above the quarry long since overgrown, + Something which stamped it as a place of blood + Where tortured spirit cried from murdered bone. + Then, after years, I saw a rusty knife + Stuck in a woman's skull, just as 'twas found, + Blackt with a centuried crust of clotted life, + In the red clay of that unholy ground. + So that I knew the unhappy thing had spoken, + That tongueless thing for whom the quarry spoke, + The evil seals of murder had been broken + By the red earth, the grass, the rooted oak, + The inarticulate dead had forced the spade, + The hand, the mind, till murder was displayed. + + + + + LXVII. + + Go, spend your penny, Beauty, when you will, + In the grave's darkness let the stamp be lost. + The water still will bubble from the hill, + And April quick the meadows with her ghost; + Over the grass the daffodils will shiver, + The primroses with their pale beauty abound, + The blackbird be a lover and make quiver + With his glad singing the great soul of the ground; + So that if the body rot, it will not matter; + Up in the earth the great game will go on, + The coming of spring and the running of the water, + And the young things glad of the womb's darkness gone. + And the joy we felt will be a part of the glory + In the lover's kiss that makes the old couple's story. + + + + + LXVIII. + + Though in life's streets the tempting shops have lured + Because all beauty, howsoever base, + Is vision of you, marred, I have endured, + Tempted or fall'n, to look upon your face. + Now through the grinning death's-head in the paint, + Within the tavern-song, hid in the wine, + In many-kinded man, emperor and saint, + I see you pass, you breath of the divine. + I see you pass, as centuries ago + The long dead men with passionate spirit saw. + O brother man, whom spirit habits so, + Through your red sorrows Beauty keeps her law, + Beauty herself, who takes your dying hand, + To leave through Time the Memnon in the sand. + + + + + LIX. + + When all these million cells that are my slaves + Fall from my pourried ribs and leave me lone, + A living speck among a world of graves, + What shall I be, that spot in the unknown? + A glow-worm in a night that floats the sun? + Or deathless dust feeling the passer's foot? + An eye undying mourning things undone? + Or seed for quickening free from prisoning fruit? + Or an eternal jewel on your robe, + Caught to your heart, one with the April tire + That made me yours as man upon the globe, + One with the spring, a breath in all desire, + One with the primrose, present in all joy? + Or pash that rots, which pismires can destroy? + + + + + LX. + + Let that which is to come be as it may, + Darkness, extinction, justice, life intense, + The flies are happy in the summer day, + Flies will be happy many summers hence. + Time with his antique breeds that built the Sphinx, + Time with her men to come whose wings will tower, + Poured and will pour, not as the wise man thinks, + But with blind force, to each his little hour. + And when the hour has struck, comes death or change, + Which, whether good or ill we cannot tell, + But the blind planet will wander through her range + Bearing men like us who will serve as well. + The sun will rise, the winds that ever move + Will blow our dust that once were men in love. + + + + +NOTE + +Some seven or eight of these poems have appeared serially in the +_Atlantic Monthly_, _Harper's_, the _Yale Review_, _The Forge_, +_Contemporary Verse_, and _Science Progress_; others have been issued +privately, in a book now out of print; the rest are new. + +J. M. + + LONDON, + _February_ 1, 1917. + + + +BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND + + + + * * * * * + + + + +By EDMUND GOSSE, C.B., LL.D. + +COLLECTED POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. 5s. net. + + +By LAURENCE HOPE + + THE GARDEN OF KAMA. + INDIAN LOVE. + STARS OF THE DESERT. + Demy 8vo. 5s. net each. + + +By EDEN PHILLPOTTS + + PLAIN SONG. 1914-1916. + Demy 8vo. 5s. net. + + +By SAROJINI NAIDU + + POEMS OF LIFE AND DEATH. + THE BIRD OF TIME. + Demy 8vo. 5s. net each. + + THE GOLDEN THRESHOLD. + Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. + + +By ARTHUR SYMONS + + TRAGEDIES. Demy 8vo. 5s. net. + POEMS. 2 vols. Demy 8vo. 10s. net. + KNAVE OF HEARTS. Demy 8vo. 5s. net. + + +By SIEGFRIED SASSOON + + THE OLD HUNTSMAN and Other Poems. + Demy 8vo. 5s. net. + + +By GEORGE RESTON MALLOCH + + POEMS AND LYRICS. + Demy 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. + + + +LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lollingdon Downs, by John Masefield + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58435 *** |