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diff --git a/77636-h/77636-h.htm b/77636-h/77636-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fdd3c88 --- /dev/null +++ b/77636-h/77636-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5162 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <title> + Sonnets from a prison camp | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +.p6 {margin-top: 6em;} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} +table.autotable { border-collapse: collapse; } +table.autotable td, +table.autotable th { padding: 0.25em; font-weight: normal; } + +.tdl {text-align: left;} +.tdr {text-align: right;} + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} /* page numbers */ + +blockquote { + margin-top: 0; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.right {text-align: right; margin-right: 20%;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + +/* Poetry */ +.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote { + background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + +.ph1 { + text-align: center; + font-size: xx-large; + font-weight: bold; +} +.ph2 { + text-align: center; + font-size: x-large; + font-weight: bold; +} +.transnote { + margin-left:17.5%; + margin-right:17.5%; +} + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77636 ***</div> + + + + +<h1> +SONNETS FROM A PRISON CAMP +</h1> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + + + +<div style="margin-left: 33%; margin-right: 33%; border-bottom: solid; border-bottom-style: double;"> +<p class="ph1"> +SONNETS<br> +<span style="font-size: x-large;">FROM A PRISON CAMP</span> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +BY ARCHIBALD ALLAN BOWMAN +</p> +</div> + +<p class="p6 center" style="margin-left: 33%; margin-right: 33%; border-top: solid; border-top-style: double; padding-top: 1em;"> +LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, W.<br> +NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXIX +</p> +</div> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center"> +<i>Printed in Great Britain<br> +by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh</i> +</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</span></p> +<div class="chapter"> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="FOREWORD"> + FOREWORD + </h2> +</div> + + +<p>For allowing this slight volume to see the light +of day I have but one excuse to offer. The situation +to which these verses are the emotional +reaction represents a very real and serious piece of +experience. It is no mere poetical exaggeration +to say that in the first days of captivity at least, +the writing of the sonnets was a labour that “stood +between my soul and madness,” and I cannot help +feeling that what, under one of the heaviest blows +that can befall a soldier, has meant so much to me, +may have in it something that will raise it at times +above the personal to the level of general human +interest.</p> + +<p>It ought to be a pleasure to acknowledge generosity +in an enemy; and I wish to express my +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</span>indebtedness to Captain Hohnholz, Commandant +of the Prison-Camp at Hesepe, to whose kindness +I owe it that I am able to offer the sonnets +as they stand for publication.</p> + + +<p style="text-indent: 2em;"> + Offizier—Gefangenenlager<br> + <span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>17th August 1918</i></span> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="PROEM"> + PROEM + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">He who hath never from behind toothed wire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Glimpsed, helpless, freedom’s waiting amplitude,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hath never watched, fast rooted where he stood</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The embers of another day expire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In glory welling westward, like the pyre</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of some spent viking whom the Atlantic flood</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bears dwindling into that infinitude</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That great souls end in; then around the fire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of his own musings, lodering through the bars</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of a shrunk life, hath sought awhile to limn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His lost felicity—can ne’er divine</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The vastness of the common things that line</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Life’s banked horizon, nor hath learned to rim</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Infinity with galaxies of stars.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p style="margin-left: 30%;"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>26th April 1918</i> +</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a><a id="Page_ix"></a>[Pg ix]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS"> + CONTENTS + </h2> +</div> + + +<table class="autotable"> +<tr> +<th class="tdl"></th> +<th class="tdr" style="font-size: small;">PAGE</th> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">In the Field</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Nadir</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">On the March</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Rastatt</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Hesepe</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Thoughts of Home</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Influences</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Watchwords and Maxims</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">England and Oxford</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Home Thoughts Once More</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Interlude</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">England</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a><a id="Page_xi"></a>[Pg xi]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="SONNETS_FROM_A_PRISON_CAMP"> + SONNETS FROM A PRISON CAMP + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xii"></a><a id="Page_1"></a>[Pg 1]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IN_THE_FIELD"> + IN THE FIELD + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[Pg 3]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Two hours before the mist of morning paled</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beneath a sun that never showed his flame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And spectral day stole on the world with shame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the night unsentinelled there sailed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The whistling murder, sudden. Sudden wailed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shrapnel, and breaking cloud, began to claim</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Window and tile down clattering from the frame</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the littered causeway. Dreamers quailed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And propped themselves to listen, or rising, crept</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From corridors by fitful candle; then</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gathered scared children down the winding stair,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And only whispers passed where no one slept.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And thought drew rein, surmising wildly, when</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The guns spoke murder over doomed Estaires.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>27th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Stand to!” The warning word was hardly said,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And had not moved a man, when round and round</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Forthwith the steaming kettles came to ground,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the men swarmed to dip their hasty bread,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A soldier’s morning bite. Still overhead</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Murder flew hurtling, shell by shell, and found</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth in some rearward purlieu, quenched in sound.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Breakfast began, but not a man was fed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ere the growled “Fall in” menacingly proved</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The dog’s bone kinsman to a soldier’s meal.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We mustered, lowering, hungry. The ranks grew;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And it was seen the world again had moved,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As at the impulse of a groaning wheel,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unto some issue, from that first “Stand to!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>27th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Unto some issue, Whither? No one dreamed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What menace crouched behind that bankèd mist,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Massing to bear down on us. No one wist</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What power that shrapnel covered as it screamed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Futilely overhead. Scarce more it seemed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than many a day had happed, of trials the least,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Vexatious interruption of a feast,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A broken night, a day spoiled ere it gleamed.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But still the thickening barrage combed the air;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Still whistling shrapnel sputtered into smoke;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And momently the cobbled roadway shook</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With sickening thud where freighted monsters took</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The earth with double thunder. Here and there</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Blood trickled into hollows. No one spoke.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>27th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV"> + IV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The bridge across the Lys! A slender thread</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To bind or bar thy holders to their own;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But one span, small and narrow, lightly thrown</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over these sullen waters, lightly shed.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon thy planks the heavy-booted tread</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of men who seemed with sudden trouble grown</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Haggard. “What are you?” “Durhams.” “What is known?”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“Our billet down, our officers are dead.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We seek a new position further on.”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Position! Little recked they then how steep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The way, how sure the ending. They were gone,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the keen harvester prepared to reap</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In fresh fields. The mourne blanket of the dawn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gathered the Durhams to eternal sleep.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>28th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V"> + V + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The Church of Nouveau Monde! Lead on. ’Tis there</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We concentrate. There hung in the void street</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A local silence, which our sudden feet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With lesser clangour startled in its lair,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While, strangely, not the brood that racked the air</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Could break the boding hush of that retreat.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So in a thunder-storm the quickened beat</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of one’s own startled pulses may impair</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The silence of a room which the onfall</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of shafted noise o’erhead left deadly still.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Perchance the mind doth place as on some plan</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The figured sounds which figured space do fill,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Far or more near. ’Tis sure the hodding van</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Broke forward into silence virginal.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>29th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI"> + VI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Waiting! A soldier’s sacrament of strain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The eager cup of poising destiny,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That may not pass from him till it is dry,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Death with peace, or Life unveils with pain.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Full many in this demented play must drain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That cup but once. Full many a soul must try</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Its sharpness, till numbed sense hath lost the lie</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of a life’s landscape, smitten from the brain.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then in a falling twilight of the mind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their way into that temple oft they grope,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where from the true, strong human hand doth slip</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Life’s vesture of live colours, meaning, hope,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Purpose and fear, leaving dumb wont behind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While the word “Fate” drops dreaming from the lip.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>29th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII"> + VII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">What of our comrades in the forward post?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The fog of war but deepened with the day.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We knew that in that troubled ocean lay</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Uncharted shoals, blind rocks, and treacherous coast.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And what of yonder never-ending host</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of wan, unwounded Portuguese? Ah, stay,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pale sergeant. Do you bleed? You came that way?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What is the tidings? Is the front line lost?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“Nothing is known of posts that lie before</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Laventie. At the cross-roads hellish fire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Has cut them off who shouldered the first load.”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Can they live through it? “They can not retire,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor can you reinforce. I know no more</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But this. No living thing comes down that road.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>30th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII"> + VIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Still waiting! And the oozing hours have crept</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The morning out in vapour shot with fire,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That struck now here now there in random ire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bloodily something human down, yet kept</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Alone stagnation at arm’s length. Men leapt</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Suddenly to their feet, smit with a dire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Surmise, collapsed, and huddled in the mire.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">No whisper passed. Some seemed as though they slept.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Only the stolid bearers wound about,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shouldering their still and dabbled burdens white;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or sharply a familiar voice rang out,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Comfortingly peremptory: “All right?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then keep together. Lie low. Do not doubt.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hour will surely come when we shall fight.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>29th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IX"> + IX + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Does the first softening of the season break</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The winter of Glenogle? Do the sighs</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of wooing spring bid curling brackens rise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On hillsides out of nothing for love’s sake?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How sweet it is to think that harebells shake</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over Green Lowther, where the shadow lies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Far in the Enterkin, beneath blue skies;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In trance to see the catkined willows quake,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where April stirs along Loch Lomond side;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To watch the sands of Morar gently take</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Atlantic swell that softly combs the Isles;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And through the gorgeous portals of the Clyde</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To hear at dawn the thudding paddle wake</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The ever-brooding silence of the Kyles.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>29th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="X"> + X + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">There is a stillness in the heart of sound,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How dire soever, if unloosed too long.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There is a time for pause in every song,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in the whirling cyclone’s heady round</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A core of peace. So the taut soul is bound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With iron girdle, and with leathern thong</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To the acute wheel of the sense’s wrong</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Only until the creaking spring is wound.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then softening come sweet phantoms of far things,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Peopling the vacancy with joys unspent,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And visions of fair spaces left behind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As if the genius of the place had wings,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in the migratory hour were sent</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To haunt awhile the silence of the mind.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>30th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XI"> + XI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Back from it, back! The quelling mandate rang,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As the mad moment swooped upon the dream.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Straight heathered hillside, mountain, loch, and stream</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Flashed out of sight, and but the shrapnel sang,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And greater guns with stunning double clang</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rocked the earth under us. It well might seem</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All hell was in the air—not without gleam</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of hope, the worst might prove the final pang.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Men crouched together, shaken as they took</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That presence far too massive for their fear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A quivering sense that something tidal welled</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over their perfect helplessness, and shook</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The core of being; yet that being held.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We knew a limber clattered to the rear.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>30th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XII"> + XII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">’Twixt Nouveau Monde and Laventie there lies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A breastwork, where the clearing tempest found</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tossed remnants of the cyclone come to ground,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Part English, Portuguese in part. The skies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Brightened, the housing spirit to entice</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the air; the string its length unwound,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And nightmare, having pinioned, now unbound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our helplessness. The hour had come to rise.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Alas, the lifting battle-fog proclaimed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The line was gone, with those who bore the brunt.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our comrades, whom the fierce Valkyries claimed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Closing upon them in the bloody hunt;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Verey lights at hand too well explained</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The long and boding silence of the front.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>30th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII"> + XIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Gray figures stealing, and a headlong dash</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From hedge to house, from house again to hedge,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And fifty rifles levelled on the ledge!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One instant on the aim, and then, the crash!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He went to earth, and vanished in a flash.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And there once more was house, and there was hedge,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With sprouting field, and farm, and ditch with sedge,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And crop-head pollard row and leafless ash—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A cheerless landscape gray, and the profound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Loneliness of the battlefield. The next</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Moment trench-mortar shells were on our head;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Another, and the day was sealed and fixed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On front and flank. Among the stricken dead,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One in the skull, behind, his summons found.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>1st May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV"> + XIV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">—Found it behind, while yet his soul was set</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And his eyes eager with the death he planned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For his foe forward, where he stood and manned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His gun upon the roaring parapet.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We knew the sign, the closing of the net,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The baying of the pack on every hand,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Terror of isolation. Still it fanned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some flame within. We were not conquered yet.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Circled with unseen fire, we only heard</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The bullets whistle round us, only saw</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The solitude of battle. Nothing stirred.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And yet, unseen, we felt his forces draw</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon us, earthed at length where earth had lured</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Treacherously to cover. We endured.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>1st May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XV"> + XV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">A man dashed in among us and caught breath.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A sergeant, resolute and silent, one</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That we who knew him trusted. He had run</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As men run only in the face of death,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet had not fled. What is it that he saith?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“The game is all but up, the end begun.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Live men we shall not see another sun.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Laventie North has fallen, a feast of death.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis your turn, sir. Your left is in the air,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And through the breach, five hundred yards away,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His fours have marched on Sailly and Estaires.”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Column of fours? No! Then God save the day!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">These breastwork trenches!—’Twas as if there snapped</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some devilish mechanism on us—trapped!</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>30th April</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XVI"> + XVI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">How it befel?—The overreaching arm,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bombs; and he was among us. In his plan</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Surprise completed what surprise began.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The treacherous shelter of a too-near farm,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A ditch along a road, a false alarm,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thirty yards of the open; in the van</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A desperado running—How he ran!—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the pack had us. Hands up and disarm!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">—It is the end of all, the bitter end,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The unpardonable, though ineluctable,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A breach in life no living now will mend;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sin that sinned not; fell not, yet a fall.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One thought burned in the brain: How dear it cost</div> + <div class="verse indent0">England to gain what I this day have lost!</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>1st May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_NADIR"> + THE NADIR + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[Pg 21]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_1"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">There is no moment in the life of man</div> + <div class="verse indent0">More potent to subdue the stuff that binds</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His manhood into one than that which finds</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The work the founders of his race began,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And centuries enlarged, until its span</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Encompasses a nation, bodies, minds</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And institutions, scattered to the winds</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of his life, of which it held the plan.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And with the sense of something sacred sold,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His heritage, and branded with the crime</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Against the ages, from the lowest pit,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gathered for judgment meet, his eyes behold,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tier after tier upon the banks of time,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The generations of his fathers sit.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>1st May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_1"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">One moment and his reeling world has rolled</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Back into ages now no longer fit</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For human dwelling. Here exalted sit</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The cruel strong, and, with the cunning bold,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Possess the meek’s inheritance, and hold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The good man in subjection—ages knit</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With blood and iron, and with arson lit,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Crusted with murder, wanton, fierce and cold.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And England, who so mightily championeth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That freedom forced from us (our guards were met,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And we went, speechless—to a living death)</div> + <div class="verse indent0">—England—a new light breaking on me, set</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My brain aworking—England lives! The breath</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That moment spared I hold for England yet!</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>1st May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="ON_THE_MARCH"> + ON THE MARCH + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[Pg 25]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_2"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Never wound cortège more exceeding slow,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor mourners to more melancholy tones,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than that wan wending, musicked by the moans</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of wounded men, whom pity bade us show</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That much of tenderness. Nor friend nor foe</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Spoke in the heavy language of these groans,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But stark mankind, whose utter anguish owns</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A common nature, in a common woe.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Full many a mile of weary footing sore,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By miry side tracks, not unkindly led;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And each unwounded man his burden bore</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On stretcher or in blanket, ransacked bed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Duck-board uprooted, hand-cart, unhinged door.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We left behind the dying and the dead.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>2nd May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_2"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Hour followed hour, and slowly on we wound,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till wan day turned to front the gradual west;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And with day’s waning waned the dream of rest</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For the worn bearers, whom the twilight found</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Voyaging no-man’s gray, wide-watered ground,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their shoulders bowed and aching backs distressed;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Isthmused between deep pools, and sorely pressed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To foot the flanks of many a slippery mound;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While floundering convoys, till the light was gone,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Across the perilous space their drivers nurse,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Limber and gun, by frighted horses drawn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose plunging swerve that bogged their burdens worse,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Provoked Teutonic fury, well laid on</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With sounding whipcord and sonorous curse.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>2nd May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_1"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">And darkness fell, and a great void of space,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As if to bar our further going on,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unfeatured, huge, gloomed o’er us. No light shone.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Strength, too, scarce held sufficient now to trace</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The squalid reaches of this dismal place;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And silence settled near and far upon</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That vacancy at length—our last guide gone.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Night hid each from his comrade, face from face.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As is a voyage through the uncharted waste</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of seas, unpiloted by any star,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Alone, unmooned, uncomforted, unplanned;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So forward still in silent pain we paced,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor light of moon nor pharos gleamed from far</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Across the boding gloom of that lost land.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>3rd May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV_1"> + IV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">We came to Aubers at the dead of night,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And found the semblance of that circled hell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which Dante once, damnation’s pains to tell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Paced out in darkness, agony and fright.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In that blank lazarette no kindly light</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On bending form of nurse or surgeon fell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But darkness and barred doors proclaimed too well</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The piteous end of long-endured plight.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">No room was there in stable or in stall,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor roof to shelter cattle while they eat,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where wounded men could shelter from the blight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the foul dew that drizzling covered all.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But in the open and the squelching street</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We left them to endure the drenching night.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>3rd May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V_1"> + V + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">There is a garden where the whispering breeze</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Perchance has wooed the lilacs in the spring,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where still perchance at dawn a few birds sing,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And love goes nesting in the willow-trees.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But night’s ear now caught other sounds than these,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And darkness, bending, shrouded with his wing</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What from an iceberg scalding tears might wring,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The glowing core of any furnace freeze.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thick as the crimsoned leaves of autumn fall,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And crimsoned, too, and torn, and crushed as they</div> + <div class="verse indent0">(’Twas the wet hand that told it) over all,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Moaning and writhing in their pain they lay;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And none to turn their faces to the wall,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And none to close their eyes, and none to pray.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>4th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI_1"> + VI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">So where the wide and shallow beaches bound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The ceaseless moiling of the North Sea hoar,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And on the sands the rounding billows pour</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their majesty of waters to the ground;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As one by one the rising breakers pound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The beaten salt sands of the yeasty shore,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their bursting charges’ momentary roar</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dies in a background of prevailing sound—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thus hour by hour the moaning did prevail</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over night’s stillness, rose, and swelled, and died</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the sad level of a murmuring wail,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like ocean’s moan with voices multiplied</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Along the reaches of the sounding graile,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The west wind wrestling with the flowing tide.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>5th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII_1"> + VII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The last march opened with the sudden blaze</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of howitzers upon the face of night,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Waving us onward ere the laggard light</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of morning broke down transport-crowded ways.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Next to the first was this the bitterest phase</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of our humiliation. Yet ’tis right</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To chronicle some kindness, and requite</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our armed custodians with this word of praise.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By Fournes, by Haubourdin, the endless reel</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of marching men ran out its windings slow,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till near day’s end, nigh broken on the wheel</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of hunger, and scarce longer fit to go,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Within the moated Citadel of Lille</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sharper pang gave place to deeper woe.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>5th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII_1"> + VIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">—The deep woe of the mind when prison walls</div> + <div class="verse indent0">First darken it with shadow, throbbing hot</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To meet the outrage, as the bolts are shot,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The locks ground home, and the long silence falls.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And next a settling helplessness appals</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sinking soul, as if that hour should blot</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One’s name out of the Book, as if one caught</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of life’s retreat the hurrying last footfalls.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where once a vision smiled of rankèd days</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Drawn on life’s vista’d curtain rich and vast,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Only a gulf now yawns. Of all the plays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Played out in visions, we have played the last.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The future bankrupt, ’tis the present pays;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And of life’s triple span, remains—the Past.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>5th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="RASTATT"> + RASTATT + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[Pg 35]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_3"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet morning comes with pageantry of fire,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And evening falls with majesty of flame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And every hour hath something to reclaim</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The waste of life, slow wilting behind wire.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It were a doleful dungeon that could tire</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nature’s incessant carefulness to shame</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sheer stalemate from each thing that lives, and claim</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All motion for her universal choir.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thus day by dreary day the chargèd hours</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pass influence from the sweetness of the hills</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Across these cages, and the scent of flowers</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is wafted, and the fragrant dew distils,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And unimaginable stir of powers</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From the deep sense of woods divinely thrills.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>7th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_3"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Two silent influences mainly move</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The captive’s mind, not wholly sunk in sloth,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor lost in carnal craving—dangers both</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That to the core the sterling manhood prove.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One is the sense of shrinkage, of the groove</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In which the soul enshuttled—O how loth!—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Feels stoppage of life’s pulse, arrested growth,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Heart-sickness which no medicine can remove.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The other wakens when departing night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Throws up the windows of the spacious morn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon a new day pulsing with new light;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And from the hill the hunter with his horn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sends down imagined valleys strains that smite</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The spirit with the sense of something born.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>7th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_2"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Within these cages day by day we pace</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The bitter shortness of the meted span;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And this and that way variously we plan</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our poor excursions over the poor place,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Cribbed to extinction. Yet remains one grace.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For neither bars nor tented wire can ban</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Full many a roving glance that dares to scan</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The roomy hill, and wanders into space.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yea, and remains for ever unrepealed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And unimpaired the free impetuous quest</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the mind’s soaring eye, at length unsealed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To the full measure of a life possessed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Awhile, but never counted, now revealed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Inestimable, wonderful, unguessed.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>7th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV_2"> + IV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The long day waned beneath refulgent skies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And evening sunshine bathed the hilltops round,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where on the sudden from the level ground</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pine-vestured, solemn, summit by summit rise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The tops of the Black Forest. Wistful eyes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wandered from peak to peak, as if to sound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their mystery, if perchance there might be found</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some healing essence there, some glad surprise.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Long strove the puzzled spirit, vainly yearned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into that alien soul to force its way;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When suddenly—the mystic rune was learned!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in an upland glen remote and gray</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There moved a presence known and last discerned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In Glendaruel on a morn of May.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>7th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V_2"> + V + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">O May! O month of months divinely dear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which severest, amidst the toil and strife</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of Nature’s round, as with a glittering knife,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A perfect segment from the varying year!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Month of entrancing spaces, wide and clear,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Calling us to the open, thick with life,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All leaf and lamb and freshness, welling, rife</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With blossom—can it be that thou art here?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O that it were in some sweet Scottish strath,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Backed by the mountains, watered, green and wide,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where the Tay laves in shallow crystal bath</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His pebbles, or the Forth’s meandering tide</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Receives Dumyat’s shadow o’er his path,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And young light breaks down Ochill’s mottled side.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>8th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI_2"> + VI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">As the lone searcher, crouching o’er his glass,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beside the window while the light is high,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Doth moved therein the forms of things descry</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Invisible else to common vision crass;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Spirilla, the amœba’s sprawling mass,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With gliding infusoria sailing by—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And marks each vestige with entranced eye,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Glimmer, emerge and clear, dissolve and pass;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So in that optic lens, where never yet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sun prevailed, beneath my prison wall,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One-windowed to the past, but brightly lit</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By the eye’s own pure light, a swarm of small</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And fleeting memories, else forgotten, flit,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Trivial, yet entrancing to recall.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>9th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII_2"> + VII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Oft at the hour when night’s aërial spring</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Waters with dew the beauty of the morn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What time another rosy day is born,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Along these lanes the echoing footsteps ring</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of marching men, who to their marching sing,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Deep-voiced, light-hearted. Yet they do not scorn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Due pause and measure, and the theme well-worn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From the full heart of Germany they bring.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But we, whose fathers once in songs as fine</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unburdened hearts as full, and with the power</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of our dear country pulsing in each line,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Scorn to remember England, and to our</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Incomparable heritage of song</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Prefer the tinkle of some mean ding-dong.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>9th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII_2"> + VIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">All is not well with England. Her great heart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beats faultily and to no music set.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She hath her moods, suspicions, and doth fret</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The daylong hour, by night doth toss and start.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Oft she stands dreaming in the crowded mart.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis true that this distemper doth not yet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The deeper functions of her life beset,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And mightily she plays her mighty part.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet sometimes in this tempest the heart fears</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whether, so faulted, the old anchor grips.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And shall we find, we ask, when the sky clears,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">England still mightier than England’s slips?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let our own past proclaim it. Let the years</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Advance and set their trumpets to their lips.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>9th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IX_1"> + IX + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The root of our infirmity is found</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In English liberty, grandly achieved,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet little understood and ill conceived,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sprouting rank from the uncultured ground.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Too much the thought prevails that man unbound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is man made free, a life oft unretrieved</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From chaos by a content; undeceived</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Only when licence runs the ship aground.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O England! Mother! whom thine every child</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Loves, surely, to the last, forgive that some</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Must fear the loss of thy benignant strength</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Through the mind’s error—lest, too freely wild,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy liberty of indifference become</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A liberty of impotence at length.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>9th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="X_1"> + X + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">There is no single foot of English soil,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Howe’er defaced, that is not holy ground.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There is no spot where great souls more abound,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or where man’s greatness is more truly royal.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who hath o’ertopped our Shakespeare? Who by toil</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of kingly thought more lofty, more profound,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than Newton e’er from heaven’s majestic round</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Brought home at night a more stupendous spoil?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One thing I find not well. In our reserve</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We oft-times cloak our excellence, ashamed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not of our imperfections, but our Best;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And what is finest, most our own, we serve</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In some mean dish, or pass it by unclaimed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Leaving the noble in us unexpressed.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Rastatt</span>, <i>9th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="HESEPE"> + HESEPE + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[Pg 47]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_4"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">A lonely camp and small amidst the miles</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the Westphalian plain, where islanded</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the green waste our simple lives are led</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of the troubled world. Here morning smiles</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Splendidly, and the mustering twilight wiles</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To a strange sense of peace consummated</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over these low-hung woods, where setting red</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And oval the sun the yearning eye beguiles.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then as the white and sheeted vapour steals</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Along the flats lagoon-like, comes a breath</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of anguish from the void, where still is hurled</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nation on nation; and the spirit feels</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A tidal presence of o’erwhelming death</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stir through this weird backwater of the world.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>19th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_4"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">How hard it is to think upon this shoal</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of Inanition that the world’s ablaze.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How hard to link these lazy summer days</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With ends and issues that will not unroll</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their length in æons—mankind’s furthest goal,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Perpending in the thick and murderous haze</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of yonder battle-hurricane that lays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Legions to rest till the last tattoo roll.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On sun-beat sand the busy ants deploy;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Industrious spiders ply their little looms;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With brush and pencil or with book we toy.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The quiet evening nears; the beetle booms.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">God blazes at the world. Hell gapes for joy.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Europe whitens with those nameless tombs.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>30th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_3"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Scanted of life and vented on this shore,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where but the salt and sailless ocean plies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His tide of time with soulless fall and rise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We conn the unfeatured waste from pole to pole.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Daily the gray remorseless waters roll</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of the blank of gray remorseless skies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And nothing happens. Then we close sick eyes,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sadly the soul communes with the soul—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When often o’er night’s face a sudden glow</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of Boreal splendour palpitating plays,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the long runners, shaking tress-like, show</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our life’s plan in a vision which betrays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our secrets to our pillows; and we know</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our selves more clearly than in happier days.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>4th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV_3"> + IV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">When in this deep Re-entrant’s sullen shade,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What hour night’s middle watches change reliefs,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The mind compiles the roster of its griefs,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Before the inward eye there oft parade</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Life’s serried loves, appointed and arrayed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For high inspection, potentates and chiefs,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And armed retainers whom some bond enfeoffs,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all precisely marshalled grade by grade.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then we discern at length where each doth stand,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In front or rear, and what the rank they bear;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The acquainted Mass, the Intimates, the band</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of such as do the forward stations share.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And last the One with none on either hand.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And thou art She, whose ring and seal I wear.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>4th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V_3"> + V + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">What time in empty hour awhile relaxed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Around my cage’s circuit I have paced,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sunk in myself, and broodingly have traced</div> + <div class="verse indent0">These late appalling issues, I have taxed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My country with a weakening will: “Thou slack’st</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy effort, England.” Then some sight hath braced</div> + <div class="verse indent0">My soul, and from my mind the doubt effaced.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">England, it is not energy thou lack’st!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I felt it when one morn there sudden flew</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Around the camp new life and boisterous cheer,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unlike the mood of those who hitherto</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our wants supplied, and something did endear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The noise of labour to us, and we knew</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That English orderlies at length were here.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>20th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI_3"> + VI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">My Countrymen! The years that have gone by</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Since Hengist came with Horsa from the sea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Find the same substance in you, fiercely free,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet of that fundamental liberty,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The soul’s state, oft unable to descry</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The deeper import, your simplicity,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Your limit, only natural chivalry</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Redeeming what your insight doth deny.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unskilled to conn the inwardness of things,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There is a health about you keeps you clean,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Derisive of all high pretence that chimes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not with your plainness, sound. Your laughter rings</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over hard toil, and all things grandly mean</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Your humour shatters, punctures, or sublimes.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>22nd June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII_3"> + VII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">With little tasks we wile the hours away,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each bringing shyly forth his piteous store</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of erudition, oft-times dubious lore,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Since memory cupboards all we dare to say.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One tells us how to mine, one how to lay</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A crop of good Rhodesian maize. Nay more,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The skirts of metaphysics we explore,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And touch the dread fringe of psychology.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O to be hidden here amongst the seams</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of History’s garment, while the whole world rocks</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon its base! When every day that gleams</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tells us that England still against all shocks</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Raises her front; and starting from our dreams,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each morning Hesepe the lonely mocks!</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>30th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a><a id="Page_55"></a>[Pg 55]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="THOUGHTS_OF_HOME"> + THOUGHTS OF HOME + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[Pg 57]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_5"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">As are the features of some well-loved face,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On which a life’s prolixity is writ</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In moving characters much conned and fit</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Across a single soulful ground to trace</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Feeling and thought and purpose, like the grace</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which motion adds to loveliness (there flit</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The spirit’s shades, and there the lamp is lit</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That lights twin souls to a lifelong embrace);</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So to the city-dweller hath the town,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Much conned, its moving physiognomy,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which oft in exile, as the sun goes down,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Teams in the caverned dusk of memory</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With haunting visions of dear streets, that crown</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Night’s sorrow with entrancing imagery.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>19th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_5"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Does the slant touch of early light awake</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sirens on the Clyde, and fling the door</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wide on the city’s rousing all-day roar?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Are the streets well a-clatter? Do they break</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From tram and train, that travelling host, and take</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The town by storm? Does gathering traffic pour</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over the tide-line of night’s silent shore,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the spaces, till the cobbles quake?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While down the river, crowded to the brink</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With huddled shipyards, many a loaded quay,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ten hundred thousand volleying hammers clink;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the slow homing liner booms to see</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The ever-coiling waters still a-wink</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With mirrored shipping freighted for the sea.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>19th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_4"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Ah me, I dream of what they do at home</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This Sabbath sunrise of the early prime!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The slumbering city waking to the chime</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of opening church-bells, when the sun hath clomb</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Full half-way up the hollow of heaven’s dome;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The leisured family muster, the sublime</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Jollity and the uplift of the time</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That sets the week-worn spirit free to roam;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The walking to the kirk, the solemn hour</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With the Creator, lapsing at the close</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the sweet expansiveness that plays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Round the church door, when from the too tense power</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of prayer and praise the natural spirit flows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Back to its level.—That was in past days.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>19th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV_4"> + IV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">What do they do <i>to-day</i>? What form of fear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Haunts the now voided chambers of their life,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Troubling its ancient tenor, parent, wife,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Survivors of the broken circle dear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the old home enisled, as in some drear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Interspace of existence, till the strife</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is overblown, and but the echoes rife</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Volley adown the days still left them here?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How they must suffer!—Yet these later shocks</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Displace not from my brain the life it knew</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Before the Power that our planned journey mocks,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over our faring war’s dark glory drew;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And when my miser mind its store unlocks,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It takes out treasures rather old than new.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>20th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V_4"> + V + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">So thus I picture it, not as life lies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Now writhing, but as when the days and nights</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Followed each other in unmarked delights;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor noted we the measure of the prize</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till all was over. Now the spirit cries,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What time encroaching Inanition blights,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For but the phantom of its past, and fights</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Extinction with its memories. Let them rise!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let me dissemble that as in past days</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The crystal fountain with delicious flow</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of bursting social joy unconscious plays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over the garden close, where row by row</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The flowers of life in such profusion blaze</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That their own loveliness they do not know.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>20th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI_4"> + VI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Day follows night, and night returns to day</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Through all the enchanting stages of the spring;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And exile lengthens out to months that fling</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their shadow further, and my life grows gray;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Grays even with the sun’s increasing ray;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While forward still the heading heats do wing</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the year, that softly rounds his ring</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To midsummer, and June is on the way:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The perfect season, when the hawthorn blows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Down cream-white Scottish hedges, and the spent</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Airs of the evening gently swaying close</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tired eyes upon it, heavy with its scent;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While on the Downs the beating sunlight glows,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sends the wildering roses over Kent.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>21st May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="INFLUENCES"> + INFLUENCES + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[Pg 65]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_6"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">When in the waking visions of the night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I travel back the miles my feet have worn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Since with a cry my spirit was reborn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There stirs again the anguish and delight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Felt first as each new vista on the sight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Swam in the luminous duskiness of morn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the soul quested down the long leagues, torn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With its own thirst for vision and more light.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One realm in thought I near with awe profound,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where hangs the Slav for ever on his tree,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bedewed with sorrow, with contrition crowned,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And thorns of perfected humility,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The holy flowering of that cursed ground;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And at the mighty portals Titans three.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>21st May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_6"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Russia, thy bitter sorrows partly spring</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From the deep cleavage which, as with a knife,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Severs what is most native in thy life</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From what thy troubled history doth bring</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of dark days that threatened once to wring</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That life itself from thee. The very strife</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That heals our Europe through thy pains, is rife</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With thine own Tragedy, still on the wing.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Here stand thine institutes, designed to sway</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A local life within thee, Zemstvo, Mir,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Duma, people’s parliaments; and here</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The iron empire with the feet of clay,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That froward issue of the Olden day</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When Ivan’s legions laid the Tartar spear.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>22nd May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_5"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The other cause behind the ages lies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A-swelter in the elemental yeast,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where yet thou lay’st fermenting for the feast</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of nationality, thine opening eyes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Turned longingly to where the sun doth rise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And thy great spirit, when the ferment ceased,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For ever oriented to the East,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mysterious, helpless, beautiful and wise.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thence while the bitter ages onward run,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the fierce West doth rend a path through time,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou for the nations from the healing sun</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Draw’st healing still, and in the teeth of crime</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Provest by many a bloodless victory won,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than this world’s pride of power Love more sublime.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>22nd May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV_5"> + IV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Who is it loometh o’er the Steppes at e’en,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A giant from the sunrise of man’s race,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Statured of eld, that immemorial face</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hewn out of Ararat, in which we glean,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in the froward, patriarchal mien,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">An old tale told in many a furrowed trace,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Moulded before the Sphynx crouched in her place,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By passion uncontrollable and clean.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For he hath sat with Abram in the tent,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And gazed on Hebron, till the blue heaven broke</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over them into stars. Then he went on</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Down all the ages ageless and unbent,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till in this later world of lesser folk</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Mongst men he towers the eternal Mastodon.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>23rd May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V_5"> + V + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">And all that man hath felt since man hath known</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Life first within him, aye, and woman too,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Conceived and manifolded in him, drew</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To limitless creation, widely sown</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On teaming soil o’er which his breath had blown.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Magnificently carnal, through and through.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each taste of the green earth, the brown, he knew,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And tasted deep, and joyed, and made his own:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The boundless steppe, to which the sky bends down,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The forest where the eternal shadows sleep,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sowing and the mowing and the frost;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The village and the pleasures of the town,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And birth and death and love, and the starred deep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of heaven by night; and here his soul was lost!</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>23rd May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI_5"> + VI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Tolstoy is great in art, in thought not great.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet his thought troubles, oft-times shivering through</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With icy barb the best that thought can do.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And when we ponder o’er his latter state,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And note its argument, backed by the fate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That marked his greatness down, we feel here too</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That Something elemental, vast and true</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To which all things at length capitulate.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And ye who sadly ponder to behold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The ruin of such greatness, grieved to see</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How the child in him acted, thought and spoke,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Perchance will wonder, when the tale is told,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whether ’twas not a mightier Thing than he</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On which the Titan stumbled when he broke.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>24th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII_4"> + VII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">So Tolstoy passed, and passing left behind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not great themes only, but himself a great</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And tragic Theme. Another shares his state,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Supreme within the kingdom of the mind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As he where soul and body meet, combined</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In lovely earth-forms. Dostoievsky, late</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou cam’st into thine own, thy bitter fate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be an exile; for the world is blind.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But in thy mantic cavern, undismayed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Amongst thy spirits, named and known so well,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each a familiar, and thyself a shade,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By whitest light of heaven, by reddest hell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unscorched, unblinded, wrapt yet unafraid,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And true to thine own Passion, thou dost dwell.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>26th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII_3"> + VIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Deep-sounding, subtle, pitiful, profound,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dredger of human nature, versed in crime,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mated with every grief, who in the slime</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Divinest well where purest pearls abound;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where darkness mostly reigneth thou dost found</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A kingdom of the light, O soul sublime,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Most pure, most Christ-like spirit of thy time;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And where thy feet have trod is holy ground—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Holy, yet haunted, and a realm of fright,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not to be traversed but with flying feet,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And beating heart and racing brain alight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With fire from hell, and heated with hell’s heat,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till in the cooler spaces of the night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The o’erwrought spirit finds a safe retreat.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>27th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IX_2"> + IX + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Here is thy limit, mightiest of thine age</div> + <div class="verse indent0">An under- and an over-world to paint,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Peopled with epileptic and with saint,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The murderer’s, ogre’s, and the gambler’s rage:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Too much of fever in thee to assuage</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our average human restlessness, the taint</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of a charmed subtlety oft rendering faint</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sense of man’s salvation in thy page.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Perchance in thy heroic spirit, fraught</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With too much tragedy, the causes lie;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That spirit unembittered, overwrought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In which a something fitful we descry,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A fretfulness, as in thine image caught</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By Sonia Kovalevsky’s soulful eye.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>28th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="X_2"> + X + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Turgenev, gentlest of the sons of pain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who in a line, as Homer wont, distillest</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The essence of all pathos, thou who fillest</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A human place ’twixt the Cyclopean twain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis not with hell-fire driven o’er the brain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor stretched titanic canvas that thou thrillest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But by the plotted garden-space thou tillest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Making man’s middle courses thy domain.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Here once more we discern how still great art</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Meets nature greatly. Elemental powers</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pulse in thy perfect pages. Souls depart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With awe upon them to the silent bowers.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The world is ever with thee, its great heart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Laid to thy beating own, as thine to ours.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>21st May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XI_1"> + XI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Wordsworth, above all poets in thee I find</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What in the greatest we too seldom see,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The crowning virtue of tranquillity,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Effectual o’er the sorrows of the mind.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Others to gain such peace have left behind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This hard world for the realm of fantasie,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or in a past remote found sanctuary,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or in the end thought’s burden have resigned.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One above all by daily struggle rose</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into a blue empyrean of the brain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Self-mastering might, yet such as never knows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The deeper calm that masters. There remain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nature’s anointed dynasts. Only those</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose peace is fundamental truly reign.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>30th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XII_1"> + XII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Of these thou art. And, Wordsworth, it is not</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That thou hast missed man’s feverish heritage.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Strange passions thou hast known, and noble rage,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor in Romance an anodyne hast sought.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And if to souls in trouble thou hast brought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Strength and relief, ’tis not thy sauntering page,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor oft-times common theme that doth assuage</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The anguish of the spirit overwrought.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rather it is that, deeply moved, thou sink’st</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Deeply in nature’s homeliness, thy rime</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Plain as her face; but, stooping as thou drink’st,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The eternal from beyond the hills of Time</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is on thee ere thou know’st it, and thou link’st</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy being with it, suddenly sublime.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>31st May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII_1"> + XIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Herein is thy celestial wisdom shown,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That thou, divining Godhead scarce concealed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In nature’s plain immediacy, dost yield</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To her the soul of poetry and thine own.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Until thou cam’st no son of time had known</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The measure of the glory now revealed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In common things, the beauty of the field,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The moving grace of planet and of stone.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What bliss it was to feel as at the first,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But with that insight now supremely thine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The trailing clouds upon a world accurst</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In all their fresh and pristine splendour shine;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While into that familiar face there burst</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The expression of the Countenance divine.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>31st May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV_1"> + XIV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Sweetly at length, like faithful love abused</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By cold neglect, in this domed interval</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of silent time returns with soft footfall</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The echo of a music long disused.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ah me, before such strains I stand accused,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So early known, and then my all in all,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And with the magic of the morning’s call</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And ethos of my children interfused—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A nameless sense of youth that will not die,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While Homer’s volleying dactyls surging send</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The music of the wind-entangled seas</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Around the world, and as the billows fly,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shouldering each other shorewards, metely blend</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His harping with the thunderous centuries.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>8th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XV_1"> + XV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Oft have I risen before the night hath flown,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To catch the hour of deepest silence sweet,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And through that hush to list in my retreat</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The solemn voice of Æschylus intone,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His great Iambic, till the tale hath grown</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into a passion over me, where meet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Huge forms archaic, and on stately feet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Move to swift doom in Æginetan stone.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">High over all in simple grandeur bold,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With crest on crest against the morning skies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet in eternal shadow, I behold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The massif of the <i>Agamemnon</i> rise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And through its marble caverns shuddering hear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The haunting voice of Clytæmnestra’s fear.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>9th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XVI_1"> + XVI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">—Infatuate queen, who oft as lingering day</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rounds to his close, and passion’s hour is nigh,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Through Atreus’ halls on soundless foot doth hie,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And from the tower the purpling east survey—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lest in the still and fearful night’s thick play,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While by her beating side doth sweltering lie</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sallow Ægisthus with the hawking eye,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Swift Fate prepare a swifter stroke than they;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And while love’s maddening vintage they partake,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A sudden flame should redden all the land,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And beacon call to beacon, where they break</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From the lone watchman on the Ægean strand.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“The ship! the ship! His ship comes tossing o’er</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The wine-dark sea. The King is at the door.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>9th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XVII"> + XVII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">I paced entranced the mourne, melodious shore</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where Sophocles unwinds with matchless art</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Life’s tangled error, pondering in my heart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The tragic theme that middle diction bore—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The end not hopeless, when, all wanderings o’er,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By still Colonus in that place apart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The thunder rolled, and while the earth did start,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The old man of the sorrows was no more.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And I have felt the moving of the strings</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beneath the fingers of that troubled soul,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Third in the triple dynasty of kings,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose tenderness, beyond his art’s control,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over life’s mutilated torso wrings</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fierce protest, agonizing for the Whole.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>10th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XVIII"> + XVIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">One scene, Euripides, throughout the years</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Clings to the moving skirts of memory,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Among the images of things that lie</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In beauty perfected, too deep for tears.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis where, to still his faithful matron’s fears</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Through lonely days and nights of agony,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Having fulfilled his roving chivalry,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At length the Paladin of eld appears,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy Herakles; and wife and children stand</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Neath that majestic manhood pure from blame;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The basket circulates from hand to hand.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When of a sudden—<i>He was not the same</i>.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There could no more, but with the dripping sword.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all that ruth impounded in a word!</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>10th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIX"> + XIX + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">While still that music pealed an alien strain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Broke boisterous into sudden interplay,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Troubling the soul with laughter and dismay;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And chattering drolls appeared, expressly plain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And tingling to the immemorial vein</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the obscene in all things formed of clay.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There pausing on the turmoiled scene that lay</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Before my eyes, a light broke on my brain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And vast Aristophanic laughter shook</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each nerve within me, and a hand did part</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some far-back curtain of the soul, and took</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A portion of my years; and I did start,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Divining art’s new purport, to rebuke</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And humanize the stiffly pure of heart.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>11th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XX"> + XX + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">It were not well with man did he not feel</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At home with his own nature, all we are</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Conspiring with our angel and our star</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To keep our being whole, or, broken, heal,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lest in some faulted mould the soul congeal.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And oft-times ’tis the Highest that doth mar</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Perfect in us, straining us too far,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And overreaching Justice. Hence the peal</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of that great cachinnation echoing woke</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Appreciation of the lofty use</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of comedy, to shake the settling soul</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of itself. The Elemental spoke,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And something broadened in me. The recluse</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unstiffened, and I felt my nature whole.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>11th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXI"> + XXI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Justice! the very sound brings back the throes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of that tremendous season when Youth sees</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His world collapse, and beaten to his knees</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He takes the bolt of doubt, all that he knows,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That he knows nothing. Underneath the blows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of thought I laboured long in labouring seas,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pledging my soul to martyred Socrates;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And o’er night’s face the star of Plato rose.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This much of truth I still divined, that here</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Was internecine conflict; only doubt</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Strained to the uttermost a path could clear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To that last Deep where wind and tide give out,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And freighted Time drops softly out to sea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A moving image of Eternity.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>12th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXII"> + XXII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Who to the visions of immortal Thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Engendered by the music of the mind—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">First in that place where our poor human kind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sit in the cave and watch the shadows wrought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By firelight on the wall, obscurely caught;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then luring on to where the soul, half blind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Turns from the Splendour which itself divined—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With kinglier toil a loftier art hath brought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than Plato? Who more haunted by the light</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hath ever yet gone coasting with the sun,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or in the deep and constellated night,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Claimed from the spheres their voices as they run?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or soaring where the Eternal Glories shine</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hath stretched to earth a more majestic line?</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>13th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXIII"> + XXIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">As deeply versed in that infinitude</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where man his doom within himself doth find</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By no strait pedagogy, but divined</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Through some more massive sense of True and Good,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A kind of Inspiration, the soul’s food,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Derived from far, and working still behind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All conscious reason, till the labouring mind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Neath that profounder suasion sinks subdued.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So Plato’s thought grows cosmic, by its own</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Illumination led and mystified,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And haunted by a voice of purer tone</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than reason’s groping motion e’er supplied;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The beam refracted by the Forms and shown</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As coloured light wherein the soul is dyed.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>14th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXIV"> + XXIV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Thus do the greatest ever by sheer might</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of natural penetration find their way</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the Innermost, where Being’s ray</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Burns unendurable, and in that light</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their own with nature’s majesty unite</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To one high rhythm, stupendous interplay</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of Thought and Being, perioded, gray</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With shadow, with serenest sunshine bright.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So that old man of Koenigsberg profound,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By night revolving two infinities,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And so Spinoza, when his spirit found</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Intellect into Intuition rise,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Envisaging creation from above,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where knowledge takes the perfect form of Love.⁠<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>14th June</i> +</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> The “Amor Dei intellectualis.”</p></div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXV"> + XXV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">But thy peculiar greatness more than these,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By thinking pregnant with creative art,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Subduing chance and moulding part to part,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hath Cosmic in it, Plato, harmonies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That wake the dim immortal memories</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We bring from the Eternal, whence we start</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The round of Being, bearing in our heart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The echoes of the everlasting seas.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Here stands no accidental word. And so,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While theme with theme grows twisted and entwined,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is freedom perfected. We gaze, and lo,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The argument is off before the wind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like some great trireme tacking endlessly,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet ever headed for Eternity.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>14th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a><a id="Page_91"></a>[Pg 91]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="WATCHWORDS_AND_MAXIMS"> + WATCHWORDS AND MAXIMS + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[Pg 93]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_7"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Live dangerously.” No braver mandate yet,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nietzsche, nor charged with finer lightning ran</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Around the world. And true it is the man</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who hath no menace in him, nor hath met</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A threatening Universe with counter-threat</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is caitiff still. In those who lead the van</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Headlong is the guide to each new plan,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While lances leap, spears break, the ground is wet.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One prayer I prayed: “Lord, if Thou hast discerned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Within me ought of manliness, enroll</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy servant with the fighters, who have earned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their manhood’s charter where the thunders roll</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over the field, that so I may have learned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To taste this Element, and know my soul.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>6th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_7"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">There comes to me a memorable thought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Borne on that voice, which like some wandering gleam</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Brings freshness into Hegel’s well-worn theme</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From Naples lately, Croce, he who taught</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That Art’s true nature is not to be sought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In what is fitted only to redeem</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By strict initiation souls who dream</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of beauty in some crafty pattern wrought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But in the apt Expression, wheresoe’er</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Expression apt is found, the Inward still</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Externalizing till the soul declare</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The thing within it, and divinely fill</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With sound or sign the habitable air—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A language universal as man’s will.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>18th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_6"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Thus language is the type wherein revealed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Art’s universal function we behold,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In sensuous forms appropriate to unfold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whate’er of meaning Individuals yield:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A doctrine this which doth enlarge the field</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To every man who in himself doth hold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But speech enough a simple thought to mould</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In words well wedded to the sense concealed.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">—Doubtless a truth, though strained beyond the Norm,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If still the theme, with varying purport fraught,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Loses itself entirely in the Form,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And ugliness and beauty count for naught;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And yet a truth, although a truth in part,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All art expression, not all expression art.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>18th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV_6"> + IV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The Import counts. All great art greatly deals</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With themes not insignificant. The less</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gives lesser art, howe’er the form express</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sense of that the artist thinks or feels.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And wonderful it is how life reveals</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The great theme near at hand, did we but press</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our lives less fiercely, and our souls possess,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When stirred, until the fitting word congeals.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Art should not fail among us. All have eyes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which bring the star-sown heavens nightly home,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And there are ever winds about the world.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And no man but hath felt the mysteries</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of birth and wedlock and death’s solemn gloam,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or seen the petals of a rose uncurled.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>19th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V_6"> + V + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Of Tragedy the essence and the goal</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is Vindication. Fear and pity close</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The tale with mourning, but the issue shows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The moral order master of man’s soul.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And as its slow and solemn waters roll</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thunderingly through the scenes, a sense there grows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of some high Presence working in these throes,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose Being is the topic and the whole.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thus not these personal griefs alone comprise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The theme of Tragedy, that theme more vast</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than its own content, deeper than the sighs</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the doomed Titan hounded home at last—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Universe in action, and the cries</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of Cosmic Vengeance closing with the Past.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>25th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI_6"> + VI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Gehorsam.” It is seldom that one hears</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The German tongue commended. Yet I find</div> + <div class="verse indent0">No spell more swift, more potent to unbind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The spirit’s shades in some fine phrase that clears</div> + <div class="verse indent0">An entrance to the import of the years,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where speech, unwinding as thought’s coils unwind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Makes landfall, and companioning man’s mind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ends in the Innermost, whereto he steers.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And many a haunting solitary sound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In that strange tongue, with doubling content fraught,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Booms at the ear of conscience, whose profound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Responses in that energy are caught,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Teuton loyalty, that holds its ground,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sweeps Europe still, and sets a world at naught.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>4th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII_5"> + VII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Two other words contrasting well distil</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In two clear drops of sound significant,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And flavoured to the thought, the crowning want</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That mars our enterprise—the English will,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Steadfast of purpose, but unsteady still</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the particular. Strange humours haunt</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The earnestness of battle, and we flaunt</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The eccentric in us even as we kill.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A nobly erring pride is here, disdain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of death—and duty, when that duty chimes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not with our liking; and our stubbornness</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wants sternness in it to perfect the grain.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of late to tragic heights the contrast climbs,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which “Ernst” and “Eigensinnigkeit” express.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>5th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII_4"> + VIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Compel them to be free! A true word there</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou minted’st, Rousseau—half the human race</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Still unaspiring to that crowning grace,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Still disinclined the easy yoke to wear.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Oh, that at length our people would but dare</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To look their cancer fiercely in the face,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Consenting on the foul and rotting place</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The short sharp anguish of the knife to bear.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For there are powers upon us that still sap</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our liberty and drain our manhood dry,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which if we clear not speedily, mayhap</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our twilight follows and the end is nigh;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or else there rise a Strong One who will clap</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Teuton iron on us, and we die.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>7th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IX_3"> + IX + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">As when along a level land we pace,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The scene, from where our forward-moving feet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Touch ground, to where the earth and heaven greet,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Seems to revolve in some vast wheel’s embrace,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whose spoke-wise turning slow the eye can trace</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From near-by hedges, wayside trees, that fleet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With rick and steading by, till all lines meet</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And motion dwindles in far distant space—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There haply some majestic mountain mass</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By contrast travels with us as we go,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And doth across the spirit, as we pass,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The feeling of its omnipresence throw—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So o’er man’s fleeting and particular fate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For ever omnipresent broods the State.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>30th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="X_3"> + X + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Unto man’s spirit thou art closely bound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By natural drift and consanguinity,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But more by long companionship, the tie</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That holds you twain together tightly wound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">First in his infancy, where thou art found</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like some great watchdog that doth panting lie</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Stretched by his infant master, his dull eye</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wakeful, his sharp ear cocked at every sound.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nay, for the bond is closer, ’twas thy face</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bent over him at birth; thy kindly pains</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Steadied his childish feet. Nor can we trace</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What in his blood derives not from thy veins</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By long transfusion unprecipitate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Alive, organically intimate.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>19th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XI_2"> + XI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Suppose a race (the vision first I saw</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Among the dark stern reasonings of Kant)</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Resolved its past for ever to recant,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And from its island borders to withdraw:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">No man shall move—I heard that doom with awe—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Until the wretched, last, lorn miscreant</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By shameful death full reparation grant</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To the offended majesty of Law.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So as man’s coming race prepares to leave</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Island of its Present, where to-day</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Europe in crime lies sweltering, and to cleave</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A fresh path through the portals of the Day,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At History’s bar the nations duly lined</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Await their judgment. Some remain behind.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>7th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XII_2"> + XII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">One thing upon the tablet of the mind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By fire should be imprinted. Nations stand</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Only as to the touch of that great Hand</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their substance answers, which when it outlined</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A cosmos on the waters, and designed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth’s granite frame, and sundered sea and land,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Laid in man’s heart a Law, more deeply planned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than that of nations, compassing his kind.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in that Law eternal stands revealed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How by self-abnegation man at length</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Comes to himself, how to the meek is sealed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The habitable earth, how human strength</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is perfected in weakness, into dross</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth’s glory sinks confronted with Christ’s cross.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>25th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII_2"> + XIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Protector of the spirit, who by night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With hands bent round it lanthorn-like dost frame</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Against the wind a shelter for its flame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thyself a thing of spirit and a light,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Commonwealth! Yet in thy sovereign right</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou may’st not unrebuked, unchallenged claim</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be the First and Last, a holier Name</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Than thine intoning from a higher height.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For blood is on thy hand and on thy head,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And war’s black cloud upon thy deep dark brow;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in thy shadow Socrates lies dead.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And though awhile it needs must be that thou</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For man’s unrighteousness shalt legislate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Man’s righteousness will yet become thy Fate.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>17th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a><a id="Page_107"></a>[Pg 107]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="ENGLAND_AND_OXFORD"> + ENGLAND AND OXFORD + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[Pg 109]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_8"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Line after line the tale beneath the pen</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Moves on, and rodent Time with tireless tooth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Works o’er our portion, till one day forsooth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We tread the cool gray shadow, ageing men.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This change I mark, and sadly pondering then</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Catch the soul’s murmur, accented with ruth:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“Oh, let me hear upon the lips of youth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Eothen’ and ‘Eothen’ once again!”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Oxford, oh, do thou with soulful toil,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While o’er our folk tumultuous ages throng,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mounted at night as o’er some priceless spoil,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For us the fineness of this cult prolong,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Still nurturing in our sweet English soil</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That glory from the Morningland of song.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>8th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_8"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet, Oxford, it is better thou should’st know</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That eyes which love thee in thy culture see</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The withering curse of long sterility.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rooted in England, thou hast ceased to grow</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Together with her growth. Thy waters flow</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not with her broadening current to the sea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But murmuring their delicious melody</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They wander forth and wist not where they go.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And thus thy fine-edged spirit, which in high</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Disdain hath never paltered with the pelf</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of modern rapine, doth too often fly</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To endless crochets, wayward as an elf,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Self-humouring and posturing and shy,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And broods apart and lives unto itself.⁠<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>8th June</i> +</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> It is hoped that it may not be thought too much of a liberty in +an outsider to criticize anything so esoteric as the Oxford culture; +but if so I should reply that it is just this esoteric quality which I +wish to criticize. Admiration for Oxford and love of England alike +compel me to deplore the fact that so typical a <i>product</i> of our national +life should be so little <i>representative</i>.</p></div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_7"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">None than thyself more royally to-day</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hath given to England in her hour of need.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In every field where England’s children bleed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thine own have there more richly bled than they.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Oxford still incarnadines the clay</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To such a sanctity as doth o’erplead</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The voice of censure, silenced by the deed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the great heart that laid them where they lay.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis their’s, that murmur fluttering from the marge</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of thither Acheron, where their cares they ply</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In deathless death: “O Mother mine, enlarge</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy life to England’s. Thou hast learned to die.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But while thy life thou dost so grandly give,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">One thing thou lackest, Oxford: learn to live!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>8th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV_7"> + IV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">There is one source alone which can supply</div> + <div class="verse indent0">New life and impulse. ’Tis a voice that rolls</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Half inarticulate in English souls,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From field and mine and factory, where they ply</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The single talent Fate did not deny,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their labour. Now they hear upon the shoals</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of a sad life that there are other goals</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To man’s existence than they yet descry;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And, scarcely yet discerned, they deeply feel</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A presence over them, a haunting sense</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of music in the world, whose echoes steal</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unto them from the spheres, where in the immense</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Circle of night and day the planets keep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Measure and watch, while mortals toil and weep.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>15th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V_7"> + V + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Thine be it to direct their steps aright</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unto that bourne which doth not cease to haunt.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They cry for it, not knowing what they want,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or what for man is best—the use of sight;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some inkling of the precious power of light,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To glorify a mean existence gaunt,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And check the bitter self-inflicted taunt</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That nothing worthy calls them home at night.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And thou can’st set them questing, make them feel</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The nearness of true knowledge, where it lies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In common things with which they daily deal,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet ending in the Splendour of the skies;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or teach them in shunned volumes to detect</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The simplicity of letters unsuspect.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>16th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI_7"> + VI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet—for the kindly Mother may not quit</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Her cloistered sanctuary, where from the height</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of scholarship’s remoteness day and night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She strains truth’s fabric—it is those who sit</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A season at her feet, and learn to fit</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their spirits to her own, who must requite</div> + <div class="verse indent0">These lofty cares, and carry out the light,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And serve it round, and tend its burning, lit.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But thine, O Kindly Mother, first to prove</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy ministers, and having chosen, tune,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bringing thy spirit o’er them, till they move</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like one at thy behest—as to the moon,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Passing soft influence from the quiet skies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The oceans with their weight of waters rise.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>16th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII_6"> + VII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">One thing must be thine instant, anxious care,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which on thine honour thou dar’st not refuse.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Long time our people now the habit lose</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of speech consecutive (which man should wear</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon him like a garment, fit and fair)</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And through some faulting of the brain abuse</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thought’s flowing vesture of a thousand hues,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Oft shorn to shreds, all fluttering in the air.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I mark and grieve; for in this lost control</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We trace the weakness of these breathless times,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When man no longer keeps his nature whole,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor governs his spirit; and it chimes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With the unruly in us, deadliest threat</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our English liberty hath fronted yet.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>17th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII_5"> + VIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">It is not for art’s sake this precious dower</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of speech must be renewed, but for the sake</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of life within. The expression doth not break</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Silence in vain, but with reflexive power</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To vitalize its source, and parting shower</div> + <div class="verse indent0">New riches on the donor. Thus we take</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Life’s counterthrust upon our souls, and shake</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The vessel, lest by standing Being sour.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All life’s a language; but ’tis not enough</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To launch forth with it wildly into space,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Adding one atom to the blinding drain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A pitiable froth-bell in the trough</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of each new cause, wherein the striving race</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tries issue with stern time—perchance in vain.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>20th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="HOME_THOUGHTS_ONCE_MORE"> + HOME THOUGHTS ONCE MORE + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[Pg 119]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_9"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">A week of nights and days once more brings round</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Sabbath tide; and once again the heart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sets yearningly to homewards. Do they part</div> + <div class="verse indent0">At the church door to-day, as when the stound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of disillusioned fancy last unbound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Memory’s deep wound, and in the bitter smart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The vision vanished? Ah, the shadows start</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To life again across the haunted ground;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The kindly farewells said, the sauntering walk</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Home through the sun-baked streets, by twos and twos,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The friendly flow of pleasant secular talk,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And personalities and trivial news.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the long winding prospect of the day,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The feast of children yet shall wile away.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>26-27th May</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_9"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis July, and a sunny stillness broods</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On our magnificent England. Misty skies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Break into blue, and ripening harvests rise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over her bosom. Her majestic woods</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ripple and sway before the varying moods</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the west wind. The roses sacrifice</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In every garden to the sun. There lies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Deep peace o’er all: no sound profane intrudes.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Far in the north the solemn mountains keep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A sanctuary amongst the shades that dwell</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the deep gloom of haunted Highland glens,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where silence awes, and where for ever sleep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In lochs unfathomed and inscrutable</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The shadows of the everlasting Bens.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>2nd July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_8"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">There is another England, that which feeds</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our sinews where the champing engines chide</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beneath the settled darkness that doth hide</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth’s stricken face from Rotherham to Leeds.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Deep in that gloom the blinding furnace bleeds</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A molten treasure: England is supplied;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A million hammers roar along the Clyde;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The transport of a million men proceeds.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all this horror of the work of man,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Effacing God, I magnify and bless—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The way that leads out leading also through,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While God goes round to compass His great plan,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And out of ashes and of hideousness</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By curse of toil Creation blooms anew.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>3rd July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a><a id="Page_123"></a>[Pg 123]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="INTERLUDE"> + INTERLUDE + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[Pg 125]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_10"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">My hundredth sonnet! Here I pause to brood</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A little by myself upon the theme</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ere once again with the meandering stream</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of my own thoughts I move. And it were good</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To give thanks for the labour that hath stood</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Between my soul and madness, like a gleam</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of sunlight in the darkness of the dream</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which passes over me, else scarce withstood.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wonderful is it how the heart o’erwrought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unloads in song, life’s passionate rebound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Gainst agonies whose barb alone hath brought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This bird of sorrows fluttering to the ground,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And with these wild and wandering flowers of thought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The portion of a prisoner metely crowned.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>23rd June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_10"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">I ponder on the form, and truth to tell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Twere scarcely to be deemed a sonnet chain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which did not in its forged length contain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some turn contemplative, where for a spell</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The smith might lay his hammer by, to dwell</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon the pattern, lest the octet strain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The content, or the sextet court in vain</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A bigger thought than it can compass well.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And oft when to the varying interplay</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of partnered sounds I strive thought’s flower to train</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon this trellis, the perplexing way</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By lucky chance of rime lies sudden plain,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And I cry out with Agathon: τέχνη</div> + <div class="verse indent0">τύχην ἔστερξε καὶ τύχη τέχνην.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>23rd June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_9"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet the sport wind that doubling oft blows home</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some welcome unforeseen felicity,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is but, within the dreams of poesie,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Life’s average accident, which all who roam</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The spacious earth, or try the beckoning foam</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of some unvisited soul-haunting sea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">May count on as their portion—even as we</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who chance a star or two in this weird gloam.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hence as in all high toil which must be traced</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In long-drawn sequence, linking part to part,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not chance nor inspiration can fulfil</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The welded whole, nor vanquish that distaste</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which ever comes with pause; but sovereign Art</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Herself must bow to man’s more sovereign Will.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>24th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV_8"> + IV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">So forward still, might but my strength avail</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of the brooding darkness of my plight,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each day to bring one glimmering shaft of light,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each night to add some fragment to the tale,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That so I sleep. Else o’er my dreams prevail</div> + <div class="verse indent0">These sorrows, or within me hour-long smite</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hammers of the brain, and turn the night</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into a thing to make man’s reason fail.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">—A little further; for the thoughts still rise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over me like a soughing wind, that blows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From where the surges boom along the graile</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the world’s misery under lowering skies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">—A little further and my task I close,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lest twilight overtake me and I stale.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>25th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="ENGLAND"> + ENGLAND + </h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[Pg 131]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="I_11"> + I + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">England, the strain of weakness in thee shows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like to some fell distemper which doth threat</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy noble life with blight, and doth beget</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Many malignant sores. The evil flows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not from one source, but gradually grows</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With thine own growth of years, wherein are met</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All the deep instincts that did ever fret</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The soul of freedom against freedom’s foes.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But whatsoe’er the form, the effect is one;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some great cause grandly tried and bravely lost,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some work of beauty marred upon the loom,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And at the final reckoning, something done,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet at a bitter and a fearful cost—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In broken hearts and many a needless tomb.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>25th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="II_11"> + II + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">I heard it in the strife of other days;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It reached me in my home across the sea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That the great soul that made my England free,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And now must make her perfect, idly plays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With the tremendous issue; that they raise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sedition’s banner with impunity,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And legislators, hot with laboured plea,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pile law on law, while Law herself decays.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It is the everlasting cloud that dwells</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon the summit, compassed in one word,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Disruption, whose deep thunder as it swells</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unnerves us, and arrests the falling sword,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Even to this hour, when but to differ spells</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lese-majesty, and loyalty means accord.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>25th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="III_10"> + III + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Man lives by love. The state subsists by Law.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in these sacred islands east and west,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Constant of late the Beast its scaly breast</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Half rears from earth, and with its unclean paw</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And bloody fang a-work, and dripping jaw,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Offers at England. It is time this pest</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Were exorcised, and Unrest laid to rest,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With all that dares to hold thee not in awe.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So thou deal’st faithfully with God and man;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With man, who prays thee, England, but to place</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy heavy hand on all that doth immerse</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The god-like in him, and distort his plan;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With God, who made thee regent for a space</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over a portion of His Universe.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>1st July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV_9"> + IV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">England, I trust thee. What thy soul hath planned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Will be performed; and towards that last long end</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou hast not wavered since thou first did’st send</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ship hot on ship, by freemen freely manned,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over the sea to France’s sacred strand.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Faithful thou art, and knowest well to blend</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Patience with resolution, and to lend</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To thy heart’s aim thy gauntleted right hand.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">This in the main. And yet the enterprise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Articulated, mocks the purposed whole</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With fitful effort; and the dread doth loom,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As each fresh crisis darkens all the skies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That the Disruptive in thy restless soul,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Become habitual, is become thy doom.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>28th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="V_8"> + V + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Forget it, England, that this Tempest finds</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy life at home with troubles overrun,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Issues unsettled, justice to be done,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And dark distrust corrupting all men’s minds.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Trust England, all her sons. Her millstone grinds</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Slowly perchance; but while in heaven the sun</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Endureth, while their rounds the planets run,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Her word is bond, and what she binds she binds.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And England, see thou that these debts are paid!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Be firmly true to thine own children. Stand</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For justice. Let these arms aside be laid.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in our dear inviolable land</div> + <div class="verse indent0">None but thyself go armed—the only blade</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of its sheath, that flashing in thy hand.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>28th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI_8"> + VI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Until the day that England’s sons shall learn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not in that instant only when there burst</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thunders upon her to place England first,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But steadily, and in her face discern</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hunger-look of one who still doth yearn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over the children whom her breast hath nursed;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The long look of a mother, and her thirst</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To see her children’s eyes that look return—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not till the day when o’er our local strife</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The feeling of our nationality</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shall rise spontaneous as our English Life,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Outsoaring every animosity</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By sheer force of its grandeur—shall we see</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The truth come home and our free England free.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>29th June</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII_7"> + VII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Have you e’er thought, you people, have you thought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How great a thing it is in these great days</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But to belong to England? The world stays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon the event. ’Twas English armies caught</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The onfall of the Cyclone. While they fought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The world forbore to breathe. Stern Fate delays</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The issue; but that service and its praise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While England lives will never be forgot.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">There was an honour that the ages kept</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For English arms from immemorial time,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While yet the chivalry of nations slept</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With mastodon and mammoth in the slime.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The æons rolled. Fate nodded. England woke.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The hour boomed forth. ’Twas England took the stroke.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>1st July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII_6"> + VIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Let every child of England every day,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While o’er the world these battle-thunders roll,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Enter into the silence of his soul,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And there communing with his conscience say:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“I am a child of England, and I pray</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That with a single eye and one fixed goal,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou grant me, God, to give my being whole</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To England in her hour of agony.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Chasten me to the greatness of my fate;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And, self-divided, make me one again,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That, as to this last rally congregate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The last stern remnants of my countrymen,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou may’st behold Thy England move as one,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Swift, final, justified of every son.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>2nd July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="IX_4"> + IX + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">There have been moments haunted by the sound</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of riot in our midst and foul rapine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which, with more wealth, still makes our lives more mean,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When I have asked: “If one who strove to ground</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our life afresh should cast his eyes around</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Amongst the people, one great class to glean</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Out of the whole, that should keep England clean,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where should this pure, effectual class be found?”</div> + <div class="verse indent0">No answer came from those who still divide</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The old tradition of a worn-out past.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I asked the Church: the labouring lost replied;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For these the Publican. And at the last</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I looked into the honest eyes of youth,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And knew—the exceeding bitterness of truth.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>5th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="X_4"> + X + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">My countrymen, if while upon the brink</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of this Penultimate of Destiny,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The world with gathered sinews, anxiously</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Craning upon the plunge, awaits the wink</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of swithering Mars, I could but make you think</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A wildish thought on purpose, it would be</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That England in a night beneath the sea</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Should like some greater Krakatoa sink.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Then while to water and oblivion</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The great ship heels majestically down,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ask ye what world it were in which the dawn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sparkled no more on Ocean’s jewelled crown,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But in that place where England used to be</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Spouted and plashed the insufferable sea.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>9th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XI_3"> + XI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Can it be thought, or can the thought be borne,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That for a single hour beneath the sun</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Earth shall endure, when England’s day is done?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A world without an England! Yea, but shorn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of the divinest gem her breast hath worn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What most she makes for—doomed thenceforth to run</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Blind, lost, and calling for that treasured One,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Through star-sown space, unfathomably mourne!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Never again the liquid air to breathe</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On a May morn among the Mendip Hills;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Never to watch the green Atlantic seethe</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Around the Lizard, while the Severn fills;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Never to hear the quivering strings that hung</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The speech of Chatham on the English tongue!</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>10th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XII_3"> + XII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis not these Islands sundered from the Deep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">By many a winding and melodious strand,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lovely as when they issued from the Hand</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That bade the Shannon from his cradle leap;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That smoothed the Cotswolds to the wandering sheep,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And spread the waters o’er the Solway sand,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And motioned where Ben Cruachan should stand,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in his shadow laid Loch Awe to sleep;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis not these shimmering woods of oak and beech,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor these green shires, each in its golden frame,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like pictures hanging side by side, and each</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Entangled with the music of its name—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Not all this weight of glory passing speech</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Full measure of the English soul can claim.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>11th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII_3"> + XIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">England is England’s history, that great dome</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which ever us and our immortal dead</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Draws shadow, while men’s common lives are led,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Strange thought! in that superb half-light, half-gloam.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all who dwell in England, all who roam</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The seas on great emprise inherited,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gazing into that fulness overhead,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Behold a sanctuary and a home.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">England’s a spirit that doth interfuse</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Whate’er is of her, every form wherein</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Herself she reincarnates, all that strews</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Her bosom and her years, and works within,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And spreads, and wells, and sinks, and overflows;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And how to know her only Spirit knows.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>12th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV_2"> + XIV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">And in that spirit interpenetrate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The numberless appealing strains that bring</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The look of England into everything</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That she hath looked on till the night grew late;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where, as amongst the four gray seas she sate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And mused upon it, she hath felt the ring</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That bound her to her narrow island spring,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And something passed, and passing made her great.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Empire mustered round her. Ere she knew</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Her state, her hour was on her once again.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Herseemed that something winged from her flew.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Herseemed as though the feet of marching men</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bore past her to a music never mute</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While England proudly takes that proud salute.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>12th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XV_2"> + XV + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">It is her destiny. She seems to sleep.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">She dreams; and nodding, world on world is born.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For her the splendour of an eastern morn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Coromandel sands profusely steep;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The rocks of Aden sentinel the deep.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Her paths are round the Cape and round the Horn.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And where the sun goes down in seas of corn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Across the West their way her children reap.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thus ere she hath outdreamt herself, the wheels</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of her achievement on their axle-trees</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Have turned without her; and upon her steals</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A sense of waking amidst unknown seas;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And wondering at her motherhood, she feels</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The greatness of the Thing upon her knees.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>13th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XVI_2"> + XVI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Soul of an empire that hath far outrun</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy purpose, England! thou who in the shade</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of thy maturing years thyself had’st laid</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To rest amongst thy flocks—and lo! the sun</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Set never more upon thee! One by one</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The nations place them at those feet which strayed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the Innermost, where worlds are made,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And bless the Mother saw their race begun.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">England, it must be that thou hast been sent</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Some quest beyond thy vision to fulfil;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That, Mother of the Mighty, thou art meant</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be the Organ of a Mightier still;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And, while the final End we may not see,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We feel ’tis holier than or they or thee.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>14th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XVII_1"> + XVII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">My country! To the height of this great thought,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With all that in thee is, with all the weight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of thy self-consciousness, though born full late,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon thee, and thy thronging memories fraught</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With germinating dreams, still to be brought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Unto fruition—chastened, consecrate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To the high calling of the Perfect State,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou must arise, or, failing, come to naught.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Organ of the Highest! pre-ordained</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To execute the fateful judgment, planned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From the Beginning by the Power that deigned</div> + <div class="verse indent0">First to create in air and sea and land</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Each thing that breathes and seeks its daily food,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And having formed, pronounced Creation good.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>15th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XVIII_1"> + XVIII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Not to prevail by measure of thy might</div> + <div class="verse indent0">O’er might that measures scarcely less than thine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bathing the naked world in blood and brine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till nature turns and sickens at the sight</div> + <div class="verse indent0">—All but her vultures, gloating o’er the fight;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the sun rages daily down the line</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That doth compel his radiancy divine</div> + <div class="verse indent0">So fair a world to such a doom to light—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nay, be thy function rather to disperse</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The shouldering elements, that so the core</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of pure light in this glimmering universe</div> + <div class="verse indent0">May by its motion kindling more and more</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The look and loveliness of Spirit bring</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Into the face of every living thing.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>16th July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIX_1"> + XIX + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The Hittite is no longer. Babylon</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Has gone into the silence of the sand.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mirage-like in the Syrian desert stand</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The pillars of Palmyra. Greece is gone.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And where for generations softly shone</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The drowsy Pax Romana, sea and land</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mouth at the fragile landmarks Hadrian planned.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The State departs for ever: Man lives on.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And England, would’st thou live, it can but be</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As thou, a spirit, in the restlessness</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of thine abundant strength on land and sea</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Becom’st the spirit’s vehicle and dress,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Attaining in the measure of thy span</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The spirit’s measure in the Perfect Man.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>21st July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XX_1"> + XX + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Man, little man, whose sun hath not declined,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pale man with spirit written on his face,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Punched out of clay, and pitched on some mean place,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A breath of being battling with the wind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A prisoner on Time’s floating isle confined,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Yet in himself encompassing all space,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">While with the regal gesture of his race</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He sweeps Eternity into his mind!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The Spirit! The Encompasser! O thou,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">England my country, could I but behold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The steadiness of spirit on thy brow,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Could’st thou <i>encompass</i> spirit, I should hold</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thee master of the Future as the Past,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The immortal, perfect nation—and the last.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>21st July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXI_1"> + XXI + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou hast vast life in thee, howe’er uncouth,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And, unenlightened, dost possess the art</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To feel the fairway home without the chart,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And erring still, inclinest still to truth.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sense of justice and the sense of ruth</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Are not yet dead within thee, and thy part</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It is to be magnanimous. Thy heart</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Bounds to the fulness of perpetual youth.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And while the shadows deepen into gloam,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And while the long years whiten on thy head,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Thy freshness fails not. Thou bring’st nightly home</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sense that thou hast earned a dreamless bed.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The solemn Abbey, and the whispering Dome</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Open to-day to take thy Immortal Dead.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>22nd July</i> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="XXII_1"> + XXII + </h2> +</div> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">—Our own Immortals! Ours while we can keep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">An isle of quiet for you ’neath the hoar</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shade of the Minster, where the Nation bore</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Your mortal relics weeping. Rest you deep!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rest! And while children’s children softly weep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Over you, and the great rose windows pour</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A glory round, at peace for evermore</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In marble and in alabaster sleep!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">—Knowing your England! Knowing that while Time</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Tries men by fire, these men will not recede</div> + <div class="verse indent0">From where their fathers of the early prime</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Led them by generations great in deed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To deeds still greater, where on fields sublime</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The freeborn sons of England bled—and bleed!</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="right"> + <span class="smcap">Hesepe</span>, <i>25th July</i> +</p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="transnote"> +<p class="ph2">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</p> +<p><a href="#Page_84">Influences, XX</a>: spelling error in “cachinnation” corrected.</p> +<p><a href="#Page_144">England, XIV</a>: stray period removed.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77636 ***</div> +</body> +</html> |