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diff --git a/old/50815-0.txt b/old/50815-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6039b46..0000000 --- a/old/50815-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2359 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oxford Poetry, by Various - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Oxford Poetry - 1917 - -Author: Various - -Editor: Wilfred Rowland Childe - Thomas Wade Earp - Dorothy Leigh Sayers - -Release Date: January 1, 2016 [EBook #50815] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD POETRY *** - - - - -Produced by MWS, Les Galloway and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - - - - - - - OXFORD POETRY - - 1917 - - - EDITED BY - - W. R. C., T. W. E., AND D. L. S. - - - (_SECOND IMPRESSION_) - - - OXFORD - B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET - 1918 - - - - - OXFORD POETRY SERIES - - OXFORD POETRY 1910-1913. Edited by G. D. H. C., G. P. D., and W. S. V. - With an Introduction by GILBERT MURRAY. Cloth boards, 4s. net. - - OXFORD POETRY 1914. Edited by G. D. H. C. and W. S. V. With a Preface - by Sir WALTER RALEIGH. [_Out of print._ - - - OXFORD POETRY 1915. Edited by G. D. H. C. and T. W. E. Roxburgh - parchment, 2s. 6d. net; sewed, 1s. 3d. net. - - OXFORD POETRY 1916. Edited by T. W. E., W R. C., and A. L. H. Uniform - with the above. - - OXFORD POETRY 1914-1916. Uniform with the 1910-1913 volume. Now ready. - 4s. net. - - - NEW YORK AGENTS - LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., FOURTH AVENUE - AND THIRTIETH STREET - - - - -CONTENTS - - -P. BLOOMFIELD (BALLIOL) PAGE -SECOND-BEST 1 - -M. ST. CLARE BYRNE (SOMERVILLE) -FAVETE LINGUIS 2 - -J. E. A. CARVER (MAGDALEN) -TINTAGIL 3 - -EUGENE PARKER CHASE (MAGDALEN) -ON SUSSEX DOWNS 4 - -W. R. CHILDE (MAGDALEN) -THE LAST ABBOT OF GLOUCESTER 5 -THE GOTHIC ROSE 6 - -GERALD H. CROW (HERTFORD) -AD DOMINAM SUAM MARIAM VIRGINEM 7 -DESIDERIO DESIDERAVI 8 -HUMILITY 9 - -D. N. DALGLISH (ST. HILDA'S) -OTMOOR 10 - -E. C. DICKINSON (NON-COLL.) -A CHILD'S VOICE 12 -RIVER SONG 14 - -E. R. DODDS (UNIVERSITY) -MEASURE 15 - -C. J. DRUCE (NON-COLL.) -THE MEETING 16 - -T. W. EARP (EXETER) -THE CANAL 18 -SOLITUDE 19 - -U. ELLIS-FERMOR (SOMERVILLE) -SED MILES 20 - -JOAN EVANS (ST. HUGH'S) -THE HAMADRYAD 21 - -FLORA FORSTER (SOMERVILLE) -DUCKLINGTON 22 - -L. GIELGUD (MAGDALEN) -SUMMER DEVILRY 23 - -ROBERT GRAVES (ST. JOHN'S) -DOUBLE RED DAISIES 24 -DEAD COW FARM 25 - -RUSSELL GREEN (QUEEN'S) -DE MUNDO 26 - -MERCY HARVEY (ST. HILDA'S) -SONG 28 - -H. C. HARWOOD (BALLIOL) -CALL OF THE DEAD 29 -RETURN 30 - -E. E. ST. L. HILL (KEBLE) -DIFFIDENCE 32 - -A. L. HUXLEY (BALLIOL) -L'APRÈS-MIDI D'UN FAUNE 33 - -C. R. JURY (MAGDALEN) -LOVE 37 -SONNET 38 - -CHAMAN LALL (JESUS) -"THIRTY YEARS AFTER" 39 - -M. LEIGH (SOMERVILLE) -TWO EPITAPHS 41 - -E. H. W. MEYERSTEIN (MAGDALEN) -THE FINGER 42 -LONDON 43 - -EVAN MORGAN (CHRIST CHURCH) -IN OLDEN DAYS 45 -A SERENADE 46 - -F. ST. V. MORRIS (WADHAM) -LAST POEM 47 - -ROBERT NICHOLS (TRINITY) -THE MAN OF HONOUR 48 - -ELIZABETH RENDALL (HOME STUDENT) -MY SOUL IS AN INFANTA 50 - -D. L. SAYERS (SOMERVILLE) -FAIR EREMBOURS 52 - -H. SIMPSON (HOME STUDENT) -"THERE ARE QUANTITIES OF THINGS" 54 - -E. E. SMITH (UNIVERSITY) -THE VOYAGE 55 - -L. A. G. STRONG (WADHAM) -THE MAD MAN 56 -THE BAIT-DIGGER'S SON 57 - -D. E. A. WALLACE (SOMERVILLE) -SONNET IN CONTEMPT OF DEATH 59 - -LEO WARD (CHRIST CHURCH) -THE LAST COMMUNION 60 - - - - - _P. BLOOMFIELD_ - - (_BALLIOL_) - - -SECOND-BEST - - I would sail all alone up the stream, - Since you are far away, dear brother; - I would sail alone, and rather dream - Of you, than change thoughts with another. - - Now May is come so beautiful, so blue, - And the chestnuts and the willows are green - Again ... then, since I may not be near you, - Dear brother, let me sail alone, unseen, - 'Neath the overhanging buds, past rushes - Where the white, graceful swan sits on her nest, - Hear the song of the ripples and thrushes - And be with solitude ... the second-best. - - All alone up the stream would I sail, - Think of your smile, and your voice, and eyes, - Fear you were out of a fairy-tale, - Paint your vision, brother, in the skies. - - - - - _M. ST. CLARE BYRNE_ - - (_SOMERVILLE_) - - -FAVETE LINGUIS - - There are few people, being by, - That leave me peacefully to lie: - Mostly their restless brains, or mine, - Seek each the other to divine: - Silence, that rightfully should be - Clear-hearted as a stretch of sea - That runs far inland, luminous, - To rest in still shades verdurous, - Becomes instead a thwarted thing, - With only waywardness to bring. - - All otherwise in you I find - The inner places of the mind: - The gift of quiet on your brow - Like some long benediction now - Closes upon me: spirit-born - Tranquillity enfolds each worn - Wan thought, with slender fingers cool - Drawing away from off the pool - Of night the mists that hide a star, - Dreaming wondrously afar: - Till vision cometh down for me - In gracious white serenity. - - - - - _J. E. A. CARVER_ - - (_MAGDALEN_) - - -TINTAGIL - - I lay on the verge of a Western cliff - On a waning Summer's day, - And watched the seagulls' skimming flight - As their shrill call filled the bay. - - The waves rolled on from pool to pool - To the end of the rock-strewn lea: - Where a glistening stream through a vale sped on, - With its leaping trout, to the sea. - - The wind rose, too, from a breath to a blast - As the rising tide drew near, - And the rain-clouds swelled from the distant deep, - So I knew 'twas a storm to fear. - - I've lived on that coast for years now, - And I love the roar of the waves - As they lash the seaweed on the shore, - And the cold grey rocks and the caves. - - - - - _EUGENE PARKER CHASE_ - - (_MAGDALEN_) - - -ON SUSSEX DOWNS - - A boy stood on the windy Sussex downs, - Resting a moment in his lonely walk - To gaze at the fresh fields, and their neighbour towns - Sunk in the valleys watered by thin streams - And sheltered by the pallid hills of chalk. - - It seemed a land for slow and leisured dreams, - For fantasy, vague and cool as the mist. - The church there in the field, with yew-trees round - Should send across the air a silver sound - Of holy bells. The loud rooks should desist - A moment from their cawing; the dim sun - Brighten his face, the rounded meadows glisten, - And all the windswept grassy hillsides listen - And then take up the sound the bells begun. - - Slowly, at length, rounding the hill, a white, - Long, slender, floating airship flies. - It, of this quiet landscape, is the sight - Most peaceful--white splash on the blue spring skies. - It passes over the church-crowned slope, it blends - Its whiteness for a moment with the cloud, - And finally, with nose a little bowed, - Off towards the distant sea its course it bends. - - The watching boy beheld no other change - In all the placid, comfortable scene, - And yet he deeply realized what mean - The airships and the other things that are strange, - But form a living part of England now; - And when he left the place where he had been, - He seemed to have become a man somehow. - - - - - _W. R. CHILDE_ - - (_MAGDALEN_) - - -THE LAST ABBOT OF GLOUCESTER - - The Middle Ages sleep in alabaster - A delicate fine sleep. They never knew - The irreparable hell of that disaster, - That broke with hammers Heaven's fragile blue. - - Yea, crowned and robed and silent he abides, - Last of the Romans and that ivory calm, - Beneath whose wings august the minster-sides - Trembled like virgins to the perfect Psalm. - - Yea, it is gone with him, yea, it returns not; - The gilt proud sanctuaries are dust, the high - Steam of the violet fragrant frankincense burns not: - All gone; it was too beautiful to die. - - It was too beautiful to live; the world - Ne'er rotted it with her slow-creeping hells: - Men shall not see the Vision crowned and pearled, - When Jerusalem blossomed in the noontide bells! - - -THE GOTHIC ROSE - - Amid the blue smoke of gem-glassed chapels - You shall find Me, the white five-wounded Flower, - The Rose of Sarras. Yea, the moths have eaten, - And fretted the gold cloths of the duke of York, - And lost is the scarlet cloak of the cardinal Beaufort; - Tapers are quencht and rods of silver broken, - Where once king Richard dined beneath the leopards: - But think you that any beautifulness is wasted, - Wherewith Mine angels have blessed the blue-eyed English, - Twining into stone an obscure dream of Heaven, - A crown of flinty spines about the Rose, - A slim flame blessing the coronal of thorns? - And York is for ever the White Rose of Mary, - And Lancaster is dipt in the Precious Blood, - Though the high shrine that was built by the king of the Romans - Be down at Hayles, and the abbey of saint Mary - Be shattered now in three-towered Eboracum. - - - - - _GERALD H. CROW_ - - (_HERTFORD_) - - -AD DOMINAM SUAM MARIAM VIRGINEM - - O lily Lady of loveliness, - O tender-hearted, marvellous-eyed, - Bend from Thine aureate throne and bless - The lonely people and comfortless - At Jesu-Mass and Vespertide. - - And bless the mighty and proud of mien, - The scornful folk that pity and pass,-- - For they are lonely as none have been, - The proud that lack on whom to lean-- - At Vespertide and Jesu-Mass. - - And bless before Thou makest end - Both me and mine in sorrow and pride, - Where frankincense and prayer ascend - And kneeling lilies whisper and bend - At Jesu-Mass and Vespertide. - - -DESIDERIO DESIDERAVI - - Dear Father God, I want but one thing now. - Because I have been heart-proud all my days, - And given and asked all proudly for Love's sake, - In search of some lost tenderness out of the world, - And somehow never found it, I want this. - I want to choose my death as I have chosen - Mine other lovers proudly, and cleave to him. - I do not want to die afraid and failing - Some king that trusted me; nor yet to leave - This beautiful bright-coloured world in anguish, - Dirt, ugliness, old age, or shamefully - Eaten up with lust. I want to make myself - Lovelier on that last day than any of these - My lovers yet have found me, and so to die - Calmly by mine own hand and follow after - That tenderness that somehow passed me by, - That tenderness that will not let me be. - - -HUMILITY - - Take counsel, O my friend, of your heart's pride, - And choose the proud thing alway. Never heed - The "wretched, rash, intruding fools" of the world, - Nor take the half-truths that life brings old men - For wisdom: nor the naked indecencies - That purity-mongers have shamed children with - For goodness: nor the silly hypocrisies - Of mean men for humility. But say, - "God is my Father. Christ was young and died - To comfort me. The towering archangels - With all their blue and gold and steely mail - Are my strong helpers and mine elder brothers. - The sweet white virgins gone to martyrdom - Calm-eyed and singing are my sisters." Yea, - Because of all these things keep your heart proud. - Be proud enough to serve the poor, too proud - To attend the rich: enough to love, not hate, - And give, not sell. Remember gentleness - Is the heart's pride of understanding, truth - Her greatness that will not be afraid for wrath - Nor flatter favour. This remember also, - The pure in heart shall walk like fierce white flames - Questing across the world in goodlier hope - And knightlier courtesy than they of the Graal, - For these are they in the end that shall see God. - - - - - _D. N. DALGLISH_ - - (_ST. HILDA'S_) - - -OTMOOR - - The armies take the field in May, - And trees go marching all the day - On Otmoor, where the winds are strong - And mornings are a season long; - Where shining clouds halt for a pace, - Idling behind out of the race. - On Otmoor, hedges never die - Once spring has flung her tapestry; - And there most kindly summer throws - The lightest snowflakes of the rose, - And buttercups grow tall and straight - In fields that keep an open gate, - And daisies make a frosty gleam; - And yet you may not sleep nor dream, - Though field and road and wood are blessed, - Touched by the peaceful hands of rest. - On Otmoor, you may hear the voice - Of living green things that rejoice-- - Hedges that boast defended fields, - And green seclusions proud of shields; - Great open deserts in the sky, - Cool icebergs slowly riding by - In the unruffled sea of blue; - Branches that let the sun pass through, - The cuckoo and the ecstatic lark, - Shadows that play at being dark-- - In every leaf and stem and flower - There throbs a kindly, silent power, - And energies of being pass - From every breeze that stirs the grass, - And close around, with friendly care, - I feel the encircling sky and air, - That keep me safe, that hold without - Each shuddering fear, each traitorous doubt. - So am I safe and fenced around; - Boundless themselves, they set my bound, - For, should I make the ring less wide, - My fears start up on every side; - And only in unmeasured space - Can lives meet Life with braver face. - Here I may watch the silent earth - Consuming what shall come to birth; - For every leaf that falls and dies - Unbounded woodlands shall arise, - And though the roadside stream be dead, - New springs leap at the mountain head. - - - - - _E. C. DICKINSON_ - - (_NON-COLL._) - - -A CHILD'S VOICE - - 'Twas in a far back swallow-time - When the air was filled with chime - Of Sunday bells that danced in tune - With Eastern phantasies, - A child within a garden's boon - Oft sighed with saddened eyes. - - A swallow screamed and wheeled at him - Beside the greenhouse door; - It knew that there he strove to limn - The need in his soul's core: - And he is lonely and sad who tells - His need to Sunday bells. - - Of playfellows there was not one - To whom at wake of sun - The child might turn to speak a dream - Of lazy summer seas - O'er which a ship rode fair of beam - Bringing his soul's keys; - - And how a wondrous alien boy - Trod proud that ship of Fate. - There mid the bells of Sunday joy - He whispered, "Come not late - Within my longing, for my play - Won't keep for any day." - - "The greenhouse tank is stagnant now - Under the cherry bough; - And there a ship is by the quay, - The joy of my Baghdad. - Oh come, oh come and play with me - That I should not be sad." - - The jewelled shade of evening's hood - Held many Eastern tales; - And cinnamon and sandalwood - Lurked in his camels' bales. - But then a swallow harshly screamed - And tumbled what he dreamed. - - And that was back in swallow-time - With life a child's rhyme. - And some came true of what he dreamed, - And some has been forgot. - But life with sadness still is seamed, - And thorns take long to rot. - - -RIVER SONG - - One day I would be glad - And with all quiet be - Except your cadenced murmur - Beside the willow-tree. - - One day I would be glad - With fields of king-cup gold: - One day of dancing water - Below the cuckoo-fold. - - One day I would be glad - With crowned vermilion kings - Whose scarves are lilies blowing - Where youth for ever sings. - - One day I would be glad - With Oxford's poplared grace: - One day with love between us - And then--to lose your face. - - - - - _E. R. DODDS_ - - (_UNIVERSITY_) - - -MEASURE - - I think we are made the prisoners of the sun, - Snared in the waxing and the waning passion, - Lest life should grow intense - To burn up sense - And lose life's fashion in the unfashioned One. - - I believe the cool unlabouring dark is sent - Swift on the wildness of the day's mad ending - Lest the delight of fire - Consume desire - And in Love's spending Love itself be spent. - - I believe the rain-soft autumn has its task - To curb the stretched importunate flame of summer, - For fear too strong a fever - Should quite dissever - The invisible murmur from the coloured mask. - - This is the sun's wisdom: that change and rest - And change, the embodied world's recurrent measure, - In check and counterpoise - Contain all joys - Lest the one treasure perish, being possessed. - - - - - _C. J. DRUCE_ - - (_NON-COLL._) - - -THE MEETING - - But we should meet in very different wise-- - On some clear-lifted crest when sunset stills - Wide cleansing winds, and transient beauty lies - Immortal in the moment it fulfils: - - Or down a deep glade you should come to me, - Moving your limbs with slow primordial ease, - With eyes whose calm has caught the mystery - That walks at dawn beneath the gloom of trees: - - Or by the tenderness of a placid stream: - Or anywhere where trivial clamours cease, - And things irrelevant fade like a dream, - That souls may grow articulate in peace. - - Instead of this, I know what will befall:-- - The seething station where, urged and confined, - Chaotic energies interweave and brawl, - And confused sights and sounds beat on my mind; - - There I shall wait, and feel my spirit's flame - (Trained upwards, purged, for that white moment's sake) - Flicker, burn thickly, bowing to the claim - Of alien currents that I cannot break. - - For all the folk who come and go, or stand - With strained expectant eyes, or talk with those - From whom they soon must part, have at command - Some part of my unwilling brain, impose - - Conjectured joys and griefs upon my sense, - As they, perhaps, guess at my purpose here; - And jealous egotisms feed suspense - As the desired, half-dreaded hour draws near. - - At last a rumble, distant, ominous, hoarse, - Swells to a shattering roar that daunts the world; - And round the curve, a black embodied force - Triumphantly increases, and is hurled - - Like a great wave upon us, swallowing all. - Vague figures wax and wane and fluctuate - In the inane, till one, more steadfast-small, - Persists, grows luminous, letting penetrate - - Some likeness of your shape, and of your face - Some strange reflected charm: I grope to find - A hand with mine in the resisting space, - Hear my tongue utter what no thought designed, - - Weak ineffectual words, unheedful of replies-- - Questions of tickets, luggage, urge and swarm-- - But far beneath all this, in secret lies - An infant consciousness, yet feebly warm - - With life, and promise that the time is nigh - That crowds or things no longer may subdue, - When the dull futile body that is I - Shall feel the quickening spirit that is you. - - - - - _T. W. EARP_ - - (_EXETER_) - - -THE CANAL - - When you're tired of books and the dusty, well-known room - It's good to put on a gown and go for a walk, - Taking deep breaths and smelling the hawthorn bloom - By the canal, where shadowy lovers talk. - - They are far too happy to care if anyone passes, - And you envy a little, as you go along, - Those happy lovers of the lower classes - Whose emotions are like the rhythm of a rag-time song. - - The breath of the summer night is about your head, - Burdened with fragrance, lulling the brain to sleep, - You begin to forget the dull things you have read, - And just go walking on and breathing deep. - - -SOLITUDE - - They have been sitting here until eleven, - The loud and the quiet and the one who is never shocked, - And we talked of most of the things between hell and heaven, - But now the last friend has gone and the door is locked. - - And I cannot help feeling, though it's rather silly, - A little afraid to be left so quiet and alone; - I can hear a petal drop from the tiger-lily, - So complete and awful has the silence grown. - - I long to hear that tramp of the policeman's - Outside the shutters, but the night is dumb, - And in a state of tension unknown to Huysmans - I wait and wait for the sound that will not come. - - - - - _U. ELLIS-FERMOR_ - - (_SOMERVILLE_) - - -SED MILES... - - Bear the hearse, bear the pall, - We shall fare forward, - We have answered the problem, - We have closed the volume. - - In the doubt, in the strife, - We chose the giving, - We have had light for doubt, - We have had our answer. - - Doubts of the end of life, - We have been spared them; - We have given the tangled skein - To be cut by the shearers. - - Violet scent, flower of broom, - We have foregone them, - We have given the morning, - The gods have accepted, - They have pardoned the reckoning. - - - - - _JOAN EVANS_ - - (_ST. HUGH'S_) - - -THE HAMADRYAD - - Her flitting form is slim and pale - As beechen stems at night, - Her hair is dark as barren trees - Against the moon's pale light. - Her dreadful seeking hands are curved - Like chestnut buds in spring; - Against her bosom close she holds - A dove with frightened wing. - We may not see her as she goes - Over the leaf-strewn moss; - But see the russet leaves are stirred, - Feel some strange sense of loss. - We cannot see her cold sad eyes - Filled with a craving pain-- - We only hear upon the leaves - Patter of April rain. - - - - - _FLORA FORSTER_ - - (_SOMERVILLE_) - - -DUCKLINGTON - - Down there at Ducklington - The ducks are never old; - The geese are always goslings, - The catkins always gold. - The orchards blossom ever - Like foam heaped on a cup, - Down there at Ducklington - Where never a duck grows up! - - Down there at Ducklington - The years linger yet - At April, with its little leaves - And ash-buds of jet. - And I could be a child again - And drink, as from a cup, - Youth, down at Ducklington, - Where never a duck grows up! - - Down there at Ducklington, - With its ducklings ever young, - With its year ever at April, - And the songs of June unsung-- - The potion of eternal youth - Is brewed there in a cup-- - Down there at Ducklington - Where never a duck grows up! - - - - - _L. GIELGUD_ - - (_MAGDALEN_) - - -SUMMER DEVILRY - - The sky is very near to me to-night: - It breathes, as from a throat of molten lead, - A damnèd effluence about my head, - An effluence of hell, a fœtid blight: - Dark visions break on my distorted sight - Of bloody lust and cruelty and dread, - Devils unnamed in their own likeness tread - The ways of earth, and are not put to flight. - In rifts of voiceless lightning, such as breaks - This goitrous firmament, have stood revealed - Over the dead in some old battlefield - The ghastly dogs of death, and bloated snakes - Dripping the slime of Acherontian lakes - On some dead sovereign's blood-emblazoned shield. - - - - - _ROBERT GRAVES_ - - (_ST. JOHN'S_) - - -DOUBLE RED DAISIES - - Double red daisies, they're my flowers - Which nobody else may grow - In a big quarrelsome house like ours - They try it sometimes, but no, - I root them up because they're my flowers - Which nobody else may grow. - _Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn't plant it; - Ben has an iris, but I don't want it. - Daisies, double red daisies for me, - The beautifullest flowers in the garden._ - - Double red daisy, that's my mark: - I paint it in all my books. - It's carved high up on the beech-tree bark-- - How neat and lovely it looks! - So don't forget that it's my trademark; - Don't copy it in your books. - _Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn't plant it; - Ben has an iris, but I don't want it. - Daisies, double red daisies for me, - The beautifullest flowers in the garden._ - - -DEAD COW FARM - - It's told in those old sagas, how - In the beginning the First Cow - (For nothing living yet had birth - But Elemental Cow on earth) - Began to lick cold stones and mud. - Under her warm tongue flesh and blood - Blossomed, a miracle to believe. - And so was Adam born, and Eve. - - Here now is Chaos once again, - Primæval mud, cold stones and rain; - Here flesh decays and blood drips red, - And the Cow's dead, the old Cow's dead. - - - - - _RUSSELL GREEN_ - - (_QUEEN'S_) - - -DE MUNDO[A] - - ... And then arose the vision of the world - Immense, a tangle of dark ravelled time, - Twisted and knotted by a surge of men: - Vast sombre tribes forth from the old abyss - Clambering, travailed, hated, fought and fell. - The slow tower, stone upon laborious stone, - Compacting men and clans, cities and states, - Aspired through ages to the unknown god: - Adventurers with the guidance of no star, - Discovering all, rich isle and barren shore, - And ever seas beyond the indolent seas - Rounding known courses with uncharted doubt: - A people wandering in the wilderness, - So vague a cloud, so dim a pillar of fire - They blindly followed to a promised land - Flowing with rivers of perennial truth-- - And they the chosen vessel,--who of old - Knew not wherefore they broke their bonds and fled. - Yet in the end a desolation came - And the golden bowl was broken.... - I saw men, symbols of humanity,-- - Immortal longings bound in mortal clay,-- - Wayfaring still upon the ancient road - Winding away to the invisible hills. - - Still on the visionary scaffolding - The players played the old Morality,-- - The pilgrim Life waylaid by cruel Despair, - Wealth dowering Evil and maltreating Good, - And Pain and Care tormenting Body and Soul, - And Giant Sin bestriding hill and dale, - Building his shrines for men to worship him; - Corruption, too, with serpents in his hair, - And next, obscene Ungodliness, whose eyes - Vacant and dull, bent ever on the earth. - Then, last of all, Humanum Genus came - Bearing a scroll with the Apostle's words-- - "Having no hope and without God in the world." - - So from the seat of vision I arose - Trembling, appalled, and went upon my way - Sadly, for all my vision ended in this-- - Piercing of heart, reason's bewilderment-- - "We've come from mystery and to mystery go." - - What shall be said when all things have been said? - What shall be said when this is pondered on-- - "Either He lives not who created man, - Or man for sin is cast forth from His grace; - Yea, between Him and man a gulf is set"? - -[A] This poem originally appeared in _The Westminster Gazette_. - - - - - _MERCY HARVEY_ - - (_ST. HILDA'S_) - - -SONG - - For Beauty's sake I weep, - Because my love is beautiful, - I came upon her lying asleep - Within a bower sweet and cool. - The tall trees intertwined - And made a bower for my love, - With green shrubs nestling there behind, - And a blue strip of sky above. - For Beauty's sake I grieve, - That Beauty soon must fade and die, - As lilac blossoms fall, nor leave - One ghostly fragrance lingering nigh. - For Beauty's sake I strive - For one long moment's raptured bliss - To hold her in her form alive - And give her one impassioned kiss. - For her own sake she dies, - Nor leaves behind one memory; - The light out of the western skies - Is gone, and thou art gone from me. - - - - - _H. C. HARWOOD_ - - (_BALLIOL_) - - -CALL OF THE DEAD - - Have you not waited there too long, - Little brother of mine, - With a spirit too weak in a world too strong? - You do not play as you used to do - When you and I were an army of two. - Surely you dally there too long, - Little brother of mine. - - Death is an old benevolent king, - Little brother of mine, - And around his throne the children sing. - Time, life's sullen minister, - Dulls the heart and dulls the hair, - But does not stand before my king, - Little brother of mine. - - Hopes we cherish down below, - Little brother of mine, - Melt in manhood like the snow. - Tranquil in inexperience, - Call on Death for your defence, - And leave the tangle down below, - Little brother of mine. - - Forgotten laughter, remembered tears, - Little brother of mine, - Would be the burden of your years. - So let us play together again - With a child's swift joy and swifter pain, - And reckon no more of months and years, - Little brother of mine. - - -RETURN - - Against the ebbing tide we make our way. - Beyond the low green banks the fenlands stretch - To a far horizon. Trawler, smack and ketch - Are passing for the business of the day. - - There is the inlet where the immortal boys, - As white and slim as ever, splash and call. - Deserted on the other bank Blake Hall - Still contemplates contemptuously their noise. - - There are the docks where the tall mastheads shine - Of mighty _Helsingfors_, the timber ship. - And a new craft is lying in the slip - Which presently shall be baptized with wine. - - The houses gather thicker, and a girl - Waves her indifferent smiling welcome. See! - The loungers are awakened on the quay - And stand to catch the rope the sailors curl. - - Now grey and swift the startled seagulls wheel. - The engine-room is silent which so long - Has shaped our lives to its monotonous song. - The fenders bump against the slowing keel. - - The smoke is rising from my father's home - Across the street, and flapping in the breeze - A curtain welcomes me from off the seas, - The querulous seas, where I was wont to roam. - - And there miraculously free from age - The faces of my playfellows are seen. - And all is now as it has ever been, - Or smiling destiny turns back the page. - - But always ere my feet are firm upon - The natal shore, dream ship, dream river fade, - And I am burdened with the choice I made - And lonely in the land where I am gone. - - - - - _E. E. ST. L. HILL_ - - (_KEBLE_) - - -DIFFIDENCE - - Dulled is the azure of the skies. - Can aught but woe my woes beget? - My inmost self in anguish cries - "I love my Love"--My Love!--and yet - I cannot as a lover say - "I love my Love," because I know - I am not worthy. Still I may - Win in the end the right to show - My Love what is my heart's desire. - For more than this I may not hope, - To naught beyond can I aspire. - Alone, in secret, I must grope - My way and be content to see - The beauty of my star above, - For never will my Love love me - Though I so truly love my Love. - - - - - _A. L. HUXLEY_ - - (_BALLIOL_) - - -L'APRÈS-MIDI D'UN FAUNE - -(_From the French of Stéphane Mallarmé._) - - I would immortalize these nymphs: so bright - Their sunlit colouring, so airy-light, - It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream? - My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem - A subtle tracery of branches grown - The tree's true self--proving that I have known - No triumph, but the shadow of a rose. - - But think. These nymphs, their loveliness ... suppose - They bodied forth my senses' fabulous thirst. - Illusion! which the blue eyes of the first, - As cold and chaste as is the weeping spring, - Beget: the other, sighing, passioning, - Is she the wind, warm in your fleece at noon? - No. Through this quiet, when a weary swoon - Crushes and chokes the latest faint essay - Of morning, cool against the encroaching day, - There is no murmuring water, save the gush - Of my clear fluted notes; and in the hush - Blows never a wind save that which through my reed - Puffs out before the rain of notes can speed - Upon the air, with that calm breath of art - That mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly, - Where inspiration seeks its native sky. - - You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake, - The sun's own mirror, which I love to take, - Silent beneath your starry flowers, tell - _How here I cut the hollow rushes, well - Tamed by my skill, when, on the glaucous gold - Of distant lawns about their fountain cold, - A living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave, - And at the first slow notes my panpipes gave - These flocking swans, these naiads rather, fly - Or dive._ - - Noon burns inert and tawny-dry, - Nor marks how clean that Hymen slipped away - From me who seek in song the real A. - Wake, then, to your first ardour and the sight, - O lonely faun, of the old fierce white light, - With, lilies, one of you for innocence. - - Other than their lips' delicate pretence, - The light caress that quiets treacherous lovers, - My breast, I know not how to tell, discovers - The bitten print of some immortal's kiss. - But hush! a mystery so great as this - I dare not tell, save to my double reed, - Which, sharer of my every joy and need, - Dreams down its cadenced monologues that we - Falsely confuse the beauties that we see - With the bright palpable shapes our song creates: - My flute, as loud as passion modulates, - Purges the common dream of flank and breast, - Seen through closed eyes and inwardly caressed, - Of every empty and monotonous line. - - Bloom then, O Syrinx, in thy flight malign, - A reed once more beside our trysting-lake. - Proud of my music let me often make - A song of goddesses and see their rape - Profanely done on many a painted shape. - So, when the grape's transparent juice I drain, - I quell regrets for pleasure past and feign - A new real grape. For holding towards the sky - The empty skin, I blow it tight and lie - Dream-drunk till evening, eyeing it. - - Tell o'er - Remembered joys and plump the grape once more. - _Between the reeds I saw their bodies gleam - Who cool no mortal fever in the stream, - Crying to the woods the rage of their desire: - And their bright hair went down in jewelled fire - Where crystal broke and dazzled shudderingly. - I check my swift pursuit; for see where lie, - Bruised, being twins in love, by languor sweet, - Two sleeping girls, clasped at my very feet. - I seize and run with them, nor part the pair, - Breaking this covert of frail petals, where - Roses drink scent of the sun and our light play - 'Mid tumbled flowers shall match the death of day._ - I love that virginal fury, ah! the wild - Thrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled, - Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear - Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear! - Contagiously through my linked pair it flies - Where innocence in either, struggling, dies, - Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew. - Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew - So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide - Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied. - _For as I leaned to stifle in the hair - Of one my passionate laughter (taking care - With a stretched finger, that her innocence - Might stain with her companion's kindling sense, - To touch the younger little one, who lay - Child-like unblushing) my ungrateful prey - Slips from me, freed by passion's sudden death, - Nor heeds the frenzy of my sobbing breath._ - Let it pass! others of their hair shall twist - A rope to drag me to those joys I missed. - See how the bursting currants ripe and red - To quench the thirst of the mumbling bees have bled; - So too our blood, kindled by some chance fire, - Flows for the swarming legions of desire. - At evening, when the woodland green turns gold - And ashen-grey, 'mid the quenched leaves, behold! - Red Etna glows, by Venus visited, - Walking the lava with her snowy tread - Whene'er the flames in thunderous slumber die. - I hold the goddess! - - Ah, sure penalty! - But the unthinking soul and body swoon - At last beneath the heavy hush of noon. - Forgetful let me lie where summer's drouth - Sifts fine the sand, and then with gaping mouth - Dream, planet-struck by the grape's round wine-red star. - Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are. - - - - - _C. R. JURY_ - - (_MAGDALEN_) - - -LOVE - - Though life has stooped before its height, - And beauty, that I still shall trust, - The child of a diviner light - Be torn, and lower than the dust, - - Love has a life beyond the heat - Of sorrow, pain, desire or dread; - He holds as his eternal seat - The great remembrance of the dead. - - They lose no splendour by decay; - They are a fixed immortal power, - And I their lover, though I stay - Surrounded by the dying hour. - - And now thy beauty, as that fire - Which walks against the morning, bears - Of day and night one great desire, - Has made life's splendour one with theirs. - - They live; I see them in thine eyes; - Thy life is theirs; no death can stem - Their torrent. When I watch it rise, - I love thee, as I worship them. - - -SONNET - - I would to God thou wert mine own good son - Thy face is fair, thy body strong and pure, - Thy spirit nobly high, thy deeds well done, - Thy heart well set to love and to endure. - 'Tis such a fearless boy I would beget, - To give the venerable world its due; - Yea, to be bold and lovely ere I set, - To take the time, and mould what shall ensue. - I would thou wert the fruit of my best hour, - So that I might bequeathe thee my strong fire; - But I am like to die before my flower - And lose inheritors for my desire. - O if thou wert mine own, I had this boast; - Therefore I love thee better than thou know'st. - - - - - _CHAMAN LALL_ - - (_JESUS_) - - -"THIRTY YEARS AFTER" - - It is thirty years since we two parted, - It is thirty unswept, cobweb years - Since, with a look of indifference, in a storm of elegance, - Like some knowing, hungering bird, - Like some forewarned, huckstering drone of a butterfly, - Like a swift passion--she swept past my youth unhonied. - And I am now a very old man--almost dead; - I am now a very old ornament of lead; - Weismann and Ellis, Burton I have read - These thirty years in bed. - - This room; - And the shadows lengthening on the lawn; - And the distant boom, boom of the world; - Wearisome watchings for the first star; - And the toil, toil of the dawn: - These have emptied my soul of its waves, - These have made cold prisons of my faery caves, - These have frosted - The red, red poppy-leaf of time. - - Who now cares for my politics? - Who now cares for my brilliant repartees - That crushed one with an epigram, - That struck one like an oriflamme? - But now they ask me who I am. - - Once women came to me, - And she, - Once women came to me with their offerings - Like long lines of brown bees - Burdened with offerings, - Like naked houris of turbaned Kings, - Once----But now drifts - Across the living-deadness - Of an Egyptian desert - My barren Arab way, - My unflowered desert way. - - It is thirty years since we two parted, - It is thirty unswept, cobweb years - Since, with a look of indifference, in a storm of elegance, - Like a swift passion--she swept past my youth unhonied. - And I am now a very old man--almost dead; - I am now a very old ornament of lead; - Weismann and Ellis, Burton I have read - These thirty years in bed. - - - - - _M. LEIGH_ - - (_SOMERVILLE_) - - -TWO EPITAPHS - - -ON TWO LOVERS - - Love, when we walked on earth, your chastity - Was all to you, your body all to me; - Now the grave holds the flesh that parted us, - And being nought, we shall united be. - - -ON AN ARISTOCRAT DYING UNDER A DEMOCRACY - - Living, your constitution levelled me; - Dead, all are equal in their six-foot graves: - But God counts not by heads; in His regard - One freeborn man is worth a host of slaves. - - - - - _E. H. W. MEYERSTEIN_ - - (_MAGDALEN_) - - -THE FINGER - -(To R. T.) - - How curiously this triple whole - Of skin and blood and bone - Consenteth to the mind's control - And to the mind's alone. - - 'Tis for diurnal uses mine, - To move howe'er I please, - Or mingle with its brothers nine - Enclasped about my knees. - - Yet often when the mind's afar, - By vagrant thought bestirred, - It gaily shifts and beats the bar - To songs and sounds unheard. - - Mute eloquence! 'Tis plain to see - As face in looking-glass - That more than one is lord of me - When this is brought to pass. - - What else but mind and mind alone - Should rule the triple whole, - But how if skin and blood and bone - Themselves enshroud a soul? - - -LONDON - - Sir, you're from Oxford, seat of bliss - Arrived in the Metropolis; - We hold you well and think we can - Make you, in your despite, a man. - - 'Tis here our wont, though strange it seems, - To deal in solid facts, not dreams; - For lies are lies, and gold is gold, - And men are daily bought or sold. - - Parade the purlieus if you wish - To study poor-law and fried fish; - There's much that waits to be improved, - And an improver's rarely loved. - - Or yours is the creative touch; - We have a score of shops for such, - Where novelties in paint and words - Are scrutinized by lonely herds. - - Colour and motion are aglow - In streets above and tubes below. - We energize: to meditate - Only befits a culture-state. - - Such friends we'll give you as will prove - The world is only made of love; - But life is necessary too, - And vices, seeing you are you. - - For in this pantomimic scene - There's nothing common or unclean; - You lodge upon the second floor - And opposite a noted whore. - - So, when your dreams are laid to rest, - You're part of what you most detest, - And know this nightmare was made real - To dissipate a false ideal. - - - - - _EVAN MORGAN_ - - (_CHRIST CHURCH_) - - -IN OLDEN DAYS - -AN ALLEGORY - - Down from the flowering tulip-tree - The birds of love flew down to me,-- - The birds of love with plumage rare - Sped in circles 'bout my hair, - And it was dawn and I was glad, - And Dawn appeared, a Spartan lad; - With flowers twined about his hair, - A countenance that knew not care. - The flow'rs waved in careless joy - As they nodded and danced o'er the head of the boy. - Lo! he picked the birds up one by one - And he killed them in his wanton fun, - So I cried to him: "They're the birds of love - That abide in the jewelled tree above, - And the tree and the birds are the jewels of love." - But the youth of the morn with laughter cried: - "Those birds are mine that you espied; - Mine are these birds, and mine this tree: - I am the God of Love," cried he, - "The God of Love, of birds and tree." - "I weep for the birds, for they brought me love - Down from the tulip-tree above, - From the tree above they brought me love." - "I'll give you love, my sorrowful brave-- - I'll give you myself to hold as a slave," - So taking Love as a slave with me, - Fast I fled from the tulip-tree; - I fled from the tree and my slave with me,-- - Love was the slave and I Poetry. - - -A SERENADE - - Your love is like some wondrous scented rose. - The evening sees a purple pool of blood - Beneath the tree that Summer's glory chose - Crimsonly thick with passion'd joys to flood. - - Your love is like the harvest of the sun - Moltenly golden, gloriously sublime. - Were I the reaper, swiftly would I run - And reap thy golden love till death were time. - - Your love is like the shadows of the ev'n, - The gold-green tints that linger in the sky; - When the red king in opal cloud flies heav'n, - Leaving the dewy earth to sleep and cry. - - Your love is like the mystery of the night, - When the wan mists the dreamy violets kiss, - It comes like ghostly owl with muted flight, - It comes like Death;--but Death from you is bliss. - - - - - _F. ST. V. MORRIS_ - - (_WADHAM_) - - [_3rd Batt. Sherwood Foresters, attached - R.F.C. Died of wounds, April 29, 1917_] - - -LAST POEM - - Through vast - Realms of air - we passed - On wings all-whitely fair. - - Sublime - On speeding wing - we climb - Like an unfettered Thing, - - Away - Height upon height; - and play - In God's great Lawns of Light. - - And He - Guides us safe home - to see - The Fields He bade us roam. - - - - - _ROBERT NICHOLS_ - - (_TRINITY_) - - -THE MAN OF HONOUR - - -I. - - O had I died when o'er the sullen plain - The harsh light drifted and the roaring guns - Lifted their voices summoning amain - Youth from its joy in storms and flying suns - And happy comradeship of weathered men, - All had been as in purpose due and well, - Honourable my service had been then - And honoured the blank spot on which I fell. - - But now--O heart!--how much dishonoured I, - And by my own hand too--twice bitter case-- - My true love stained with secret infamy, - My treachery disguised by friendship's face, - And that bare passion bade me forth to die - Fouled to the instrument of my disgrace! - - -II. - - What has a man but honour? When 'tis gone - The man is gone: for all that in him blent - To strike a star for men to gaze upon - Becomes his quicker ruin's instrument. - For from that height to which with toil we climb, - From that we fall and to the further pit, - Who honour bore and lost. This is my crime - And this the daily punishment of it:-- - - To honour honour more than e'er I did - When I possessed it, to esteem the lot - Of those whose treasure from themselves lies hid - Or those who lose it and yet miss it not. - O God, now raise me to the thing forbid - Or from my eyes its pure light wholly blot! - - -III. - - Wherefore on God thou callest? 'Tis in vain: - Our hearts our fortunes are until we die, - And naught can change them or for loss or gain - Save Courage at least glance of Honour's eye. - For Honour, daughter of sound brain and blood, - Motions us ever though we may not heed; - She is imperative hunger for the good, - Good so instinctive that to gain we bleed. - - Wherefore, dishonoured soul, part from thy love-- - Fearfuller wrench than muscle torn from bone-- - Or her soul too must perish here. Enough! - I cannot leave her. Then there is but one - Refuge for us now to make trial of,-- - Refuge to which I cannot fare alone. - - -IV. - - They burned too deep. Had they but taken that lightly - Which take they must, Love being absolute lord-- - Parted by now they yet had rendered rightly - Memory each to each, love's last reward. - But of their love maybe a fiercer glow - They had who saved their honour at the last - By direst means. Whether it be or no, - In death their faces held a _something_ fast. - - Beneath the fall's white glare and drumming zest, - Where on black depths an hundred suns are burning, - Their bodies bound, like faggots, breast to breast - Rose for a peaceful space, lazily turning: - Their mutual smile acknowledged _this_ was best. - Love had found Honour's way. O bitter learning! - - - - - _ELIZABETH RENDALL_ - - (_HOME STUDENT_) - - -MY SOUL IS AN INFANTA - -(_From the French of Albert Samain._) - - My soul is an Infanta, robed for state, - Whose exiled years, termless, imperial, - Are mirrored in some dim Escurial, - Forgotten as old galleys in the roads disconsolate. - - Fleet as the wind, her daïsed throne beside, - Twin greyhounds couch majestical, and seem - To course, through Forests of Enchanted Dream, - At will, a phantom fancied quarry, melancholy-eyed. - - Stirless, she holds a tulip flower, attent - The while her page, whose name is Yesterday, - Reads with hushed breath an old bewitching lay, - And hears its magic in her heart die impotent. - - Before her--marbled fountains, terraced slopes, - And all the green of Spring. Sombre, her mind - She mads with those high dreams, the unconfined - Horizon hides, and turns, for our despair, to wistful hopes. - - Here dwells she, gracious, unrebellious, kind, - Knowing, since Fate is Lord, the strife how vain; - Knowing, for all her birthright of disdain, - Her spirit touched to pity as the sea stirs to the wind. - - Here dwells she, unrebellious, past surprise, - Tranquil through tears, save when she evokes the ghost - Of Hope's Armadas with their piteous host - Foundering, betrayed anew eternally before her eyes. - - Yet, in some magic, purple, sunset hour, - Old portraits, shadowy on the tarnished gold-- - Ivory, black of velvet--wake to hold - New promise from the past of splendid insubstantial power. - - Pale painted hands Velasquez pictured, guide - Her soaring thoughts again to nothingness - Miraged so fair, dies all her weariness - And glows a sudden glory from the rubies of her pride. - - But lo, old horror of the world of men - And all its brazen clangour stills her blood... - Life flows--a distant murmur--like the flood... - More secret and more strange the smile is on her lips again. - - No breath may trouble now her eyes' repose - Where haunt the veilèd ghosts of cities dead; - Adown dim corridors with tranquil tread - Singing she passes where an idle fountain idly flows. - - Pale at her casement sits she, to await - Till pride and peace shall have an end at last, - Holding her tulip, mirrored in the past, - Forgotten as old galleys in the roads disconsolate. - - My soul is an Infanta, robed for state. - - - - - _D. L. SAYERS_ - - (_SOMERVILLE_) - - -FAIR EREMBOURS - -A SONG OF THE WEB. FRENCH, XII C. - - When in the long-day month, the month of May, - The Franks of France from king's court ride away, - Reynault rides foremost, the first in rank alway. - Passes the tower where Erembours doth stay; - He never deigned to lift his head her way, - Ha, Reynault, ha, true love! - - Fair Erembours, within the window's ray, - Holds on her knees a web of colours gay, - Sees Franks of France from king's court ride away, - Sees Reynault riding the first in rank alway, - Speaketh aloud, on this wise she doth say: - Ha, Reynault, ha, true love! - - Reynault, true love, I have beheld the day - When if my father's castle stood on your way - You had been sad, had I had nought to say. - --Ill hast thou wrought with me, king's daughter, yea, - Hast loved another, cast my love away. - Ha, Reynault, ha, true love! - - Reynault, fair sir, on relics solemnly - I'll swear, before an hundred maidens free - And thirty ladies that I shall bring with me, - I never loved another man save thee; - Take this amends, I'll give thee kisses three. - Ha, Reynault, ha, true love! - - O then Count Reynault up by the stairway ran, - Wide were his shoulders, and small his girdle's span, - His hair close-curled, and very fair to scan, - In all the world is not so fine a man. - Erembours saw him, and so to weep began. - Ha, Reynault, ha, true love! - - Count Reynault mounts into her highest towers - And sets him on a bed of broidered flowers, - And close beside him sits fair Erembours. - Then they take up their loves of former hours. - Ha, Reynault, ha, true love! - - - - - _H. SIMPSON_ - - (_HOME-STUDENT_) - - -"THERE ARE QUANTITIES OF THINGS..." - - There are quantities of things - One would like to be and do - When one's mind unfurls its wings; - - Clouds full chase across the blue - All unthinking in their flight; - Overcasting me and you, - - Sometimes raining out of spite. - Or perhaps you would prefer - To go coasting through the night - - With a flutter and a stir, - Like a nightjar in a wood - Rising softly with a whirr. - - Or with cold and scanty blood - Don a fish's suit of scales, - And go oaring through the flood - - Under bigger fishes' tails, - Into warm and open sea - While above you blow the gales-- - - So my mind spins constantly - In unprofitable rings - Almost to infinity-- - - Such innumerable things - One would like to do and be - When one's thoughts shake out their wings. - - - - - _E. E. SMITH_ - - (_UNIVERSITY_) - - -THE VOYAGE - - O my soul that fliest over never-ending seas - That are so still their deeps lie dark beneath the sun, - Untroubled by any foam, so that the ship-boy sees - All the world's water, and thinks his voyage never done: - Some day thou wilt stay thy wings and stoop to land - Where the sea's edge lies sharp like a bright sword, - And hardly break the waves, and sweet is the sand - Where the keel runs home and ships are gently shored. - There sit the solemn seamen, with rings in their brown ears, - Who are grave when they laugh and are not ashamed to weep; - Their hair and their beards are grown long with the long years, - And some are too old and too wise for speaking, and some sleep. - And when the night grows cold they stir, and touch their lips - With dark-red sluggish liquor, and kindle a fire from wood - Washed up by a quiet wave from the wracked majestical ships, - The planks where the feet of the sea-captains and the ship-boys - stood. - Their eyes grow silent and dark, their gnarled bodies swing - Like trees that are stript in a wind; they go mad with moon and - stars, - Murmuring songs like water, and beating their hands as they sing - Of how they are fled far off from the foam of tides and the handling - of bars. - - - - - _L. A. G. STRONG_ - - (_WADHAM_) - - -THE MAD MAN - - I think I'll do a fearful deed - Of wickedness and cruelty, - And then, if Father Walsh speaks truth, - Jesus will weep a tear for me, - - And I will catch it in my hat - Just here outside my cabin door: - And put it on my little field - Where nothing ever grew before. - - And it will sprout so fine and brave, - That lovely birds with yellow bills - Will come to peck my crowded corn - From all the Seven Holy Hills. - - -THE BAIT-DIGGER'S SON - - Aye, there's many a man does be drownded, - An' carried a middling way: - But never the like o' me brother - Was floated from Dublin to Bray. - - An' him only two days in it-- - Sure ye'd hardly believe it at all: - But it's God's truth. He went down fishing - One night from the North Wall. - - What way was it? There's none knows rightly-- - He was there one turn o' the light, - An' when next it came round he was no place: - An' no sign of him till next night, - - When two men out o' Coliemore Harbour, - Rowin' back from the fishin' ground, - Seen him floatin' by on his belly - Down the middle o' Dalkey Sound: - - But they didn't dare stop for to get him, - For the boat was a heavy weight, - An' the wind was strong, an' the current - Was runnin' the divil's own gate. - - An' he crossed the Bay o' Killiney; - Till next mornin', at twelve o' the clock, - They found him all swelled an' puffy, - At Bray, in the slit of a rock. - - * * * * * - - Aye, there's many a man does be drownded, - An' carried a middling way: - But never the like o' me brother - Was floated from Dublin to Bray. - - - - - _D. E. A. WALLACE_ - - (_SOMERVILLE_) - - -SONNET IN CONTEMPT OF DEATH - - When I consider some day wanton Death - With sudden hand ungently laid above - The heart of her, my softly-sleeping love, - Shall fright away her sweet and rhythmic breath; - Shall quell the colour in her flower-face, - Inevitable and unheralded - As frosts in May that strike the blossom dead-- - Shall quench her eyes, transfix her dreaming grace; - When I consider that her limbs shall be - Set stiffly in a strong rigidity; - That by-and-by her flesh shall fall away, - Unsightly in a horrible decay, - Then do I laugh, despite my catching breath-- - A piteous fool, a sad, blind fool is Death! - - - - - _LEO WARD_ - - (_CHRIST CHURCH_) - - -THE LAST COMMUNION - - There is a time wherein eternity - Takes rest upon the world: King Charity - Bow'd to our fallen state: the God of Grace - Made visible upon a human face:-- - When the deep harmony, the eternal Word, - The unfallen Wisdom (only love has heard!) - Touches the troubled body, bruised and hard - With the long fight, yet now set heavenward:-- - When the deep argument of souls must cease, - Dying--to meet the victory of peace! - - -BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND - - - * * * * * - -Transcriber's Notes - -Italics are represented thus _italics_. - -Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected, but no other -changes have been made to the text. - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Oxford Poetry, by Various - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD POETRY *** - -***** This file should be named 50815-0.txt or 50815-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/8/1/50815/ - -Produced by MWS, Les Galloway and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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