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diff --git a/old/55079-0.txt b/old/55079-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b036f28..0000000 --- a/old/55079-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4418 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Theodore Maynard - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Poems - -Author: Theodore Maynard - -Contributor: Gilbert Keith Chesterton - -Release Date: July 9, 2017 [EBook #55079] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS *** - - - - -Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif, Bryan Ness and -the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian -Libraries) - - - - - - - - - - POEMS - - - - - POEMS - - BY - THEODORE MAYNARD - - WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY - G. K. CHESTERTON - - TORONTO - McCLELLAND AND STEWART, LTD. - PUBLISHERS - - _Copyright, 1917, 1918, by Daniel E. Hudson; Copyright, 1917, - 1918, by The Sisters of Mercy; Copyright, 1917, 1919, by The - Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle in the State of New - York._ - - _Copyright, 1919, by_ - FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY - - _All Rights Reserved_ - - PRINTED IN U. S. A. - - - - - TO - - MY WIFE - - - _We two have seen with our own eyes - God’s multitudinous disguise; - Waylaid Him in His voyaging - Among the buttercups of Spring; - In valleys where the lilies shone - More glorious than Solomon - We met a poet passing by, - And learned his lyric--you and I!_ - - _But oh! did kindly Heaven not bless - Our lives with more than loveliness, - When, cast on every sapling-rod, - Was seen the motley of our God; - When having picked our way with craft - Up cliffs to hear Him when He laughed, - We felt, uplifted on the wind, - His folly blown into our mind?_ - - _What doubt can touch us? We have heard - The baby laughter of the Word! - We mingle with solemnity - A Catholic note of revelry - In hypostatic union. - From love’s carved choir-stalls we con - The plain-song of the Breviary - Illumined by hilarity. - For as each cleansing sacrament - To our soul’s comforting was sent - (Through water and oil and wheat and wine, - Bringing to human the divine), - So shall we find on lovers’ lips - The splendour of apocalypse, - And through the body’s five gates come - To all the good of Christendom._ - - _We have no fear that we shall lose - This joyous Gospel of good news, - For our symbolic love has stood - By virtue of its fortitude-- - Knowing a bitter Lenten fast, - Satan discomforted at last, - A bowed back scalding with great scars, - Gethsemane of tears and stars, - A journey of the cross, and ah, - Its part and lot in Golgotha!_ - - _We know--let the marvellous thing be said!-- - Love’s resurrection from the dead ... - For as Magdalen came with cinnamon - And aloes to smear Love’s limbs upon, - But met alone on the Easter grass - Life’s Lord, though she wist not Who He was-- - So we, till He spoke as He spoke to her, - Mistook Him for the gardener._ - -_April 14th, 1918._ - - - - -NOTE - - -This edition of Theodore Maynard’s poems represents the author’s own -selection of such of his published verse as he wishes included in a -permanent collection. With few omissions, it represents the contents of -the three volumes issued in Great Britain under the titles, “_Laughs and -Whifts of Song_,” 1915; “_Drums of Defeat_,” 1917; “_Folly_,” 1918, none -of which has hitherto been published in this country. - - - - -ON THEODORE MAYNARD’S POEMS - - -In the case of any poet who has caught and held our recollection, there -is generally a particular piece of work which remains in our mind, not -as the crown, but as the key. And ever since I saw in _The New Witness_ -some lines called “A Song of Colours,” by Theodore Maynard, they have -remained to me as a sort of simplification, or permanent element, of the -rest of the poet’s writings; and I have felt him especially as a poet of -colour. They are not by any means the best of his lines. They are -direct, as is appropriate to a ballad; and they have none of the fine -whimsicality or the frank humour to be found elsewhere in his work. -Among these others the choice is hard: but I should say that the finest -poetry as such is to be found in the images, and even in the very title, -of “The World’s Miser”: and even more in the poem called “Apocalypse.” -In this latter the poet imagines a new world which shall be supernatural -in the strongest sense of the word; that of being more vivid and -positive than the natural; and not (as it is so often imagined) more -tenuous and void. - - “Or what empurpled blooms to oust the rose - Or what strange grass to glow like angels’ hair!” - -The last line has the touch of the true mystic, which changes a thing -and yet leaves it familiar. True artistic pugnacity, a thing that -generally goes with true artistic pleasure, is well-expressed in the -shrewd lines of the poem printed as a sequel to another poem called “To -a Good Atheist.” The sequel is called “To a Bad Atheist,” with the -charming explanation: “Who wrote what he called a trinity of meek -retorts to the preceding poem, which were not meek, but full of pride -and abominable heresy.” He describes the bad atheist’s mind as -containing nothing but sawdust, sun and sand; which is accurate and -exhaustive. And in so far as poetry appeals to particular temperaments, -I myself find enjoyment expecially in the part of the collection -properly to be called “Laughs”; in the ballads of feasting and -fellowship; and especially in that sublime absolution gravely offered to -the Duke of Norfolk. - -But the sentiment of colour still ran like a thread through the whole -texture; and I think there is hardly a poem that does not repeat it. And -this is important; because the whole of Mr. Maynard’s inspiration is -part of what is the main business of our time: the resurrection of the -Middle Ages. The modern movement, with its Guild Socialism and its -military reaction against the fatalism of the Barbarian, is as certainly -drawing its life from the lost centuries of Catholic Europe, as the -movement more commonly called the Renaissance drew its life from the -lost languages and sculptures of antiquity. And, by a quaint -inconsistency, Hellenists and Neo-Pagans of the school of Mr. Lowes -Dickinson will call us antiquated for gathering the flowers which still -grow on the graves of our mediæval ancestors, while they themselves will -industriously search for the scattered ashes from the more distant pyres -of the Pagans. - -And the visible clue to the Middle Ages is colour. The mediæval man -could paint before he could draw. In the almost startling inspiration -which we call stained glass, he discovered something that is almost more -coloured than colour; something that bears the same relation to mere -colour that golden flame does to golden sand. He did not, like other -artists, try in his pictures to paint the sun; he made the sun paint his -pictures. He mixed the aboriginal light with the paints upon his -palette. And it is this translucent actuality of colour which I feel in -the phraseology of this writer, in a way it is not easy to analyse. We -can only say that when he says-- - - “Among the yellow primroses - He holds His summer palaces” - -we have an impression, which it is the object of all poetry to produce. -It can only be described by saying that a primrose by the river’s brim a -_yellow_ primrose is to him, and it could not possibly be anything more. -And this almost torrid directness and distinctness of tint is again -connected with another quality of the poet and his poetic tradition: -what many would call asceticism alternating with what many would call -buffoonery. The colour conventions of the Middle Ages were copied very -beautifully by the school of Rossetti and Swinburne. But they lost the -exuberance of the Gothic and became a pattern rather than a plan; -chiefly because they were not seriously inspired by any of the -enthusiasms of the Middle Ages. Its decorative repetitions sometimes -became quite dreary and artificial; as in Swinburne’s unfortunate -couplet about the lilies and languors of virtue and the raptures and -roses of vice. A little healthy gardening would have taught Swinburne -that it takes quite as much virtue to grow a rose as to grow a lily. It -might also have taught him that virtue is never languid, whatever else -it may be: and that even lilies are not really languid so long as they -are alive. If such decadents want an image of what it really is that -holds up the heads of lilies or any other growing things, I can refer -them to a couplet in this little volume, which is more beautiful and -more original and means a great deal more-- - - “What wilful trees of any spring - Than your young body are more fair?” - -These lines contain a principle of life and mark the end of a pagan -sterility. They contain the secret, not of gathering rosebuds while we -may, but of growing them when we choose. - - G. K. CHESTERTON. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - LAUGHS AND WHIFTS OF SONG - PAGE - -A SONG OF COLOURS 3 - -CECIDIT, CECIDIT BABYLON MAGNA 5 - -APOCALYPSE 7 - -GHOSTS 9 - -PROCESSIONAL 10 - -A SONG OF LAUGHTER 12 - -BALLADE IN PRAISE OF ARUNDEL 13 - -THE TRAMP 15 - -THE WORLD’S MISER 17 - -EASTER 19 - -THE GLORY OF THE ORIFLAMME 20 - -TO A GOOD ATHEIST 21 - -TO A BAD ATHEIST 23 - -PALM SUNDAY 25 - -WHEN I RIDE INTO THE TOWN 27 - -REQUIEM 29 - -AVE ATQUE VALE 30 - -ALADDIN 31 - -ADAM 32 - -THE ENGLISH SPRING 33 - -AT THE CRIB 35 - -THE MYSTIC 37 - -TO ANY SAINT 39 - -SUNSET ON THE DESERT 40 - - FOLLY - -FOLLY 43 - -THE SHIPS 45 - -LAUGHTER 47 - -VOCATION 49 - -BLINDNESS 50 - -DRINKING SONG 52 - -THREE TRIOLETS 54 - -A NEW CANTERBURY TALE 56 - -IN MEMORIAM F. H. M. 62 - -TO THE IRISH DEAD 63 - -JOHN REDMOND 64 - -BEAUTY 65 - -FAITH’S DIFFICULTY 67 - -CHRISTMAS ON CRUSADE 69 - -THE ASCETIC 71 - -SONNET FOR THE FIFTH OF OCTOBER 75 - -WARFARE 76 - -TREASON 77 - -THERE WAS AN HOUR 78 - -NOCTURNE 79 - -PRIDE 80 - -BALLADE OF SHEEP BELLS 82 - -BALLADE OF A FEROCIOUS CATHOLIC 84 - -DAWN 86 - -SUNSET 87 - -PEACE 88 - -CARRION 89 - -THE BUILDING OF THE CITY 91 - -EDEN RE-OPENED 93 - -THE HOLY SPRING 95 - -VIATICUM 97 - -PUNISHMENT 98 - -AFTER COMMUNION 99 - -THE UNIVERSAL MOTHER 100 - -THE BOASTER 102 - -UNWED 104 - -WED 105 - -ENGLAND 106 - -LYRIC LOVE 108 - - - DRUMS OF DEFEAT - -THE FOOL 113 - -DON QUIXOTE 115 - -IRELAND 118 - -IN MEMORIAM 119 - -MATER DESOLATA 120 - -THE STIRRUP CUP 121 - -THE ENSIGN 122 - -BALLADE OF ORCHARDS 124 - -A GREAT WIND 126 - -BIRTHDAY SONNET 128 - -SILENCE 129 - -AT YELVERTON 130 - -THE JOY OF THE WORLD 132 - -GRATITUDE 135 - -IN DOMO JOHANNIS 139 - -AT WOODCHESTER 140 - -“FOR THEY SHALL POSSESS THE EARTH” 142 - -BALLADE OF THE BEST SONG IN THE WORLD 144 - -TAIL-PIECE 146 - -AVE 147 - -A REPLY 149 - -JOB 151 - -THE SOIL OF SOLACE 153 - -TO THE DEAD 154 - -SPRING, 1916 156 - -THE RETURN 157 - -FULFILMENT 158 - -PROPHECY 159 - -THE SINGER TO HIS LADY 160 - -CERTAINTIES 161 - -FEAR 162 - -CHARITY 163 - -SIGHT AND INSIGHT 164 - -CHRISTMAS CAROL 166 - -A GARDEN ENCLOSED 167 - -THE LOVER 169 - - - - -POEMS - - - - -LAUGHS AND WHIFTS OF SONG - - - - -A SONG OF COLOURS - - - Gold for the crown of Mary, - Blue for the sea and sky, - Green for the woods and meadows - Where small white daisies lie, - And red for the colour of Christ’s blood - When He came to the cross to die. - - These things the high God gave us - And left in the world He made-- - Gold for the hilt’s enrichment, - And blue for the sword’s good blade, - And red for the roses a youth may set - On the white brows of a maid. - - Green for the cool, sweet gardens - Which stretch about the house, - And the delicate new frondage - The winds of Spring arouse, - And red for the wine which a man may drink - With his fellows in carouse. - - Blue and green for the comfort - Of tired hearts and eyes, - And red for that sudden hour which comes - With danger and great emprise, - And white for the honour of God’s throne - When the dead shall all arise. - - Gold for the cope and chalice, - For kingly pomp and pride, - And red for the feathers men wear in their caps - When they win a war or a bride, - And red for the robe which they dressed God in - On the bitter day He died. - - - - -CECIDIT, CECIDIT BABYLON MAGNA! - - - The aimless business of your feet, - Your swinging wheels and piston rods, - The smoke of every sullen street - Have passed away with all your Gods. - - For in a meadow far from these - A hodman treads across the loam, - Bearing his solid sanctities - To that strange altar called his home. - - I watch the tall, sagacious trees - Turn as the monks do, every one; - The saplings, ardent novices, - Turning with them towards the sun, - - That Monstrance held in God’s strong hands, - Burnished in amber and in red; - God, His Own priest, in blessing stands; - The earth, adoring, bows her head. - - The idols of your market place, - Your high debates, where are they now? - Your lawyers’ clamour fades apace-- - A bird is singing on the bough! - - Three fragile, sacramental things - Endure, though all your pomps shall pass-- - A butterfly’s immortal wings, - A daisy and a blade of grass. - - - - -APOCALYPSE - -“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first -heaven and the first earth were passed away.”--APOC.. xxi, I. - - - Shall summer woods where we have laughed our fill; - Shall all your grass so good to walk upon; - Each field which we have loved, each little hill - Be burnt like paper--as hath said Saint John? - - Then not alone they die! For God hath told - How all His plains of mingled fire and glass, - His walls of hyacinth, His streets of gold, - His aureoles of jewelled light shall pass, - - That He may make us nobler things than these, - And in her royal robes of blazing red - Adorn His bride. Yea, with what mysteries - And might and mirth shall she be diamonded! - - And what new secrets shall our God disclose; - Or set what suns of burnished brass to flare; - Or what empurpled blooms to oust the rose; - Or what strange grass to glow like angels’ hair! - - What pinnacles of silver tracery, - What dizzy rampired towers shall God devise - Of topaz, beryl and chalcedony - To make Heaven pleasant to His children’s eyes! - - And in what cataclysms of flame and foam - Shall the first Heaven sink--as red as sin-- - When God hath Cast aside His ancient home - As far too mean to house His Children in! - - - - -GHOSTS - - - Some dismal nights there are when spirits walk - Who lived and died unhappy in their time, - To waste the air with vows and whispered talk - Of tarnished love or hate or secret crime-- - But now the moon moves splendid through the sky; - The night is brilliant like a silver shield; - And in their cavalcades come riding by - The mighty dead of many a tented field. - On this one night at least of all the year - The lists are set again, the lines are drawn; - Again resounds the clang of horse and spear; - The sweet applause of ladies, till the dawn - Makes glad the souls of vizored knights--then they, - Hearing that seneschal, the cock, all troop away. - - - - -PROCESSIONAL - - - See how the plated gates unfold, - How swing the creaking doors of brass! - With drums and gleaming arms, behold - Christ’s regal cohorts pass! - - Shall Christ not have His chosen men, - Nor lead His crested knights so tall, - Superb upon their horses, when - The world’s last cities fall? - - Ah, no! These few, the maimed, the dumb, - The saints of every lazar’s den, - The earth’s off-scourings--they come - From desert and from fen - - To break the terror of the night, - Black dreams and dreadful mysteries, - And proud, lost empires in their might, - And chains and tyrannies. - - There ride no gold-encinctured kings - Against the potentates of earth; - God chooses all the weakest things, - And gives Himself in birth - With beaten slaves to draw His breath, - And sleeps with foxes on the moor, - With malefactors shares His death, - Tattered and worn and poor. - - See how the plated gates unfold, - How swing the creaking doors of brass! - Victorious in defeat--behold, - Christ and His cohorts pass! - - - - -A SONG OF LAUGHTER - - - The stars with their laughter are shaken; - The long waves laugh at sea; - And the little Imp of Laughter - Laughs in the soul of me. - - I know the guffaw of a tempest, - The mirth of a blossom and bud-- - But I laugh when I think of Cuchulain[A] who laughed - At the Crows with their bills in his blood. - - The mother laughs low at her baby, - The bridegroom with joy in his bride-- - And I think that Christ laughed when they took Him with staves - On the night before He died. - - [A] Pronounced Cuhúlain. - - - - -BALLADE IN PRAISE OF ARUNDEL - -(Made after a walk through Surrey and Sussex.) - - - I’ve trudged along the Pilgrims’ Way, - And from St. Martha’s Hill looked down - O’er Surrey woods and fields which lay - Green in the sunlight. On the crown - Of Hindhead and the Punchbowl’s brink - Of no good thing I’ve been bereaven: - But Arundel’s the place for drink-- - _The pubs keep open till eleven._ - - White chalk-cliffs and the stubborn clay - Are thrown about, and many a town - Breaks on the sight like breaking day; - But after all, who but a clown - Could Arundel with Midhurst link, - Where men go dry from two till seven? - In _Arundel_ (no truth I’ll shrink) - _The pubs keep open till eleven._ - - A great cool church where men can pray - Secure from misbelieving frown; - And in the Square, I beg to say, - The beer is strong and rich and brown. - Some poor, misguided people think - Petworth’s the spot that’s nearest Heaven: - In _Arundel_ the ale-pots clink-- - _The pubs keep open till eleven._ - - - _L’Envoi_ - - Duke, at the dreadful Judgment Day - Your soul will surely be well shriven, - For then all angel trumps shall bray, - _He kept pubs open till eleven!_ - - - - -THE TRAMP - - - My brothers stay in cities - To gather shame and gold, - But I am for the highway - And the wind upon the wold. - - They take the train each morning - To a dull, bricked-up place; - I trudge the living country - With the sunlight on my face. - - I know no home or shelter, - No bed but good green grass, - Nor any friends but hedgerows - To greet me as I pass. - - But though the road still calls me - To places wild and steep, - I find the going heavy; - My eyes are full of sleep. - - The fields lie all about me; - The trees are gay with sap-- - As I go weary, weary - To my great mother’s lap, - - To rest me with my mother, - The kindly earth so brown. - And Lord! But well contented - I’ll lay my carcase down. - - - - -THE WORLD’S MISER - - -I - - A miser with an eager face - Sees that each roseleaf is in place. - - He keeps beneath strong bolts and bars - The piercing beauty of the stars. - - The colours of the dying day - He hoards as treasure--well He may!-- - - And saves with care (lest they be lost) - The dainty diagrams of frost. - - He counts the hairs of every head, - And grieves to see a sparrow dead. - - -II - - Among the yellow primroses - He holds His summer palaces, - - And sets the grass about them all - To guard them as His spearmen small. - - He fixes on each wayside stone - A mark to shew it as His Own, - - And knows when raindrops fall through air - Whether each single one be there, - - That gathered into ponds and brooks - They may become His picture-books, - - To shew in every spot and place - The living glory of His face. - - - - -EASTER - - - Among the gay, exultant trees, - Over the green and growing grass, - Clothed in immortal mysteries, - I see His living body pass. - - The catkins fling abroad His name, - While birds from every bush and spray - Strain feathered necks, and tipped with flame - The hills all stand to greet His day. - - Each violet and bluebell curled - Wakes with the dead Christ’s waking eye, - And like burst gravestones clouds are hurled - Across the wide and waiting sky. - - And drenched, for very height of mirth, - With clean white tears of April rain, - Like Mary Magdalene the earth - Finds April’s risen Lord again. - - - - -THE GLORY OF THE ORIFLAMME - - - The glory of the Oriflamme, - Or strange, red flowers of the South - Hold no such splendours as lie hid - In your sweet mouth! - - The secret honey of the Cliff, - The lure and laughter of the sea - Are not the dear delight that is - Your face to me! - - What wilful trees of any spring - Than your young body are more fair? - What glamour of forgotten gold - Lurks in your hair? - - The glory of the Oriflamme, - Or strange, red flowers of the South - Hold no such splendours as lie hid - In your sweet mouth! - - - - -TO A GOOD ATHEIST - - - That you can keep your crested courage high, - And hopeless hope without a cause, and wage - Christ’s warfare, lacking all the panoply - Of Faith which shall endure the end of age, - - You must be made of finely tempered stuff, - And have a kinship with that Spanish saint, - Who wrote of his soul’s night--it was enough - That he should drag his footsteps tired and faint - - Along his God-appointed pathway. You - Have stood against our day of bitter scorn, - When loudly its triumphant trumpets blew - Contempt of all God’s poor. Had you been born - - But in the time of Jeanne or Catharine, - Whose charity was as a sword of flame, - With those who drank up martyrdom like wine - Had stood your aureoled and ringing name. - - Yet, when that secret day of God shall break - With strange and splendid justice through the skies, - When last are first, then star-ward you shall take - The praise and sorrow of your starry eyes. - - - - -TO A BAD ATHEIST - - NIND - _who wrote what he called a trinity of meek retorts to the preceding - poem, which were not meek, but full of pride and - abominable heresy._ - - - You do not love the shadows on the wall, - Or mists that flee before a blowing wind, - Or Gothic forests, or light aspen leaves, - Or skies that melt into a dreamy sea. - In the hot, glaring noontide of your mind - (I have your word for it) there is no room - For anything save sawdust, sun and sand. - - No monkish flourishes will do for you; - Your life must be set down in black and white. - The quiet half-light of the abbey close, - The cunning carvings of a chantry tomb, - The leaden windows pricked with golden saints-- - All these are nothing to your ragtime soul! - - Yet, since you are a solemn little chap, - In spite of all your blasphemy and booze, - That dreadful sword of satire which you shake - Hurts no hide but your own,--you cannot use - A weapon which is bigger than yourself. - - Yet some there were who rode all clad in mail,-- - With crosses blazoned on their mighty shields, - Roland who blew his horn against the Moor, - Richard who charged for Christ at Ascalon, - Louis a pilgrim with his chivalry, - And Blessed Jeanne who saved the crown of France-- - Pah! you may keep your whining Superman! - - - - -PALM SUNDAY - - - The grey hairs of Caiaphas - Shall know the truth to-day, - For kingly, riding on an ass, - The Truth has come his way. - - (_A thornbush grows upon the hill, - And Golgotha is empty still!_) - - Caiaphas waxes eloquent - On tittle and on jot, - But when they cry “Hosanna!” - Caiaphas answers not. - - (_A thornbush grows upon the hill, - And Golgotha is empty still!_) - - In the temple of Caiaphas - Stand two gold seraphim-- - They do not worship Christ nor shout - As the grey stones shout for Him. - - (_A thornbush grows upon the hill, - And Golgotha is empty still!_) - - The vestments of Caiaphas - With gold and silver shone-- - They would get soiled if he cast them down - For the ass to walk upon. - - (_A thornbush grows upon the hill, - And Golgotha is empty still!_) - - The religion of Caiaphas - Is very spick and span, - It does not love the ill-bred mob, - The homespun Son of Man! - - (_A thornbush grows upon the hill, - And Golgotha is empty still!_) - - The dark soul of Caiaphas - Is full of sin and pride; - It does not know the splendour - Or the triumph of that ride! - - (_A thornbush grows upon the hill, - And Golgotha is empty still!_) - - - - -WHEN I RIDE INTO THE TOWN - - - When I go riding into the town, - When I ride into the town, - I fill my skin at the nearest inn - When I ride into the town. - Oh, what is there then to trouble about? - There are no such things as despair and doubt-- - For when ale goes in the truth comes out, - When I ride into the town! - - When I go riding out of the town, - When I ride out of the town, - I have my men behind me then - When I ride out of the town; - Halberd, battle-axe, culverin, bow, - Four hundred strong as out we go, - Four hundred yeomen to meet the foe, - When I ride out of the town! - - When I ride into the Town of Death-- - That strange and unknown town!-- - It will not be all _cap-à-pie_, - But with sword and lance laid down. - Then may our Lady beside me stand; - Saint Michael guard at my good right hand-- - God rest my soul and the souls of my band, - When we ride into the Town! - - - - -REQUIEM - - - When my last song is sung and I am dead - And laid away beneath the kindly clay, - Set a square stone above my dreamless head, - And sign me with the cross and signing say: - “Here lieth one who loved the steadfast things - Of his own land, its gladness and its grace, - The stubbled fields, the linnets’ gleaming wings, - The long, low gables of his native place, - Its gravelled paths, and the strong wind that rends - The boughs about the house, the hearth’s red glow, - The surly, slow good-fellowship of friends, - The humour of the men he used to know, - And all their swinging choruses and mirth”-- - Then turn aside and leave my dust in earth. - - - - -AVE ATQUE VALE! - - - My friends, I may no longer ride with you - To bear a sword in your brave company, - Or follow our poor tattered flag which knew - No shame or slur--or any victory. - - But this at least, with courage and with mirth - We starveling poets and enthusiasts - Have shirked no battle for the stricken earth - Against its tyrants’ spears and arbalests. - - And though I go to guard another sign, - These things, please God, shall stand and never slip-- - (O friends of mine, O splendid friends of mine!) - Honour and Freedom and Goodfellowship, - On which and on your ragged chivalry - I always think with proud humility. - - - - -ALADDIN - - - Though worlds all melt away in mist, - The Heavens’ slender filament, - The orange and the amethyst, - Are left me--and I am content! - - I stand serene amid the shocks, - Upheavals, cataclysmic dust, - The binding fires, the falling rocks, - The withering of life and lust. - - This little burnished lamp I hold - Has shattered the eternities; - The glamour of all unknown gold, - The ancient puissance of the seas, - - The sunlight and the love of God - Are Cast in chains beneath my feet-- - For at my first behest this sod - Becomes a cosmos, new, complete, - - Instinct with unimagined power, - In colour radiant pole to pole, - The sudden glory of an hour, - The epic moment of my soul! - - - - -ADAM - - - I saw a red sky boding woe, - The gleam of an eternal sword, - And heard the voice that bid me go - From the green garden of the Lord. - - I knew the prick of Destiny, - The scorn of the relentless stars; - The very grass looked down on me-- - The first of all the Avatars! - - Each flower seemed to see my shame; - Each bird as though insulted flew - Before my hateful face--my name - Was blown about the whole world through! - - Even my house with its red roof, - Dear as it is, looks strange and odd; - My garden beds are more aloof - From me than is my angry God! - - - - -THE ENGLISH SPRING - - - I love each inch of English earth; - I love each stone upon the way-- - Whether in Winter’s sullen dearth, - When the soil is trodden into clay-- - In Autumn ripeness, or the mirth - Of a Summer’s day. - - Something peculiar to our land - Is hid in even the greyest sky, - When stiff and stark the tall trees stand - And the wind is high. - - But this one season of our year - Is so peculiarly an English thing, - When the woolly catkins first appear, - And yellow burgeoning - Upon the little coppice here-- - This native Spring - - Which comes to us so suddenly, - Blown over the hills from the fruitful South; - Full of the laughter of the laughing sea - She comes with singing mouth. - - The cool, sweet Wiltshire meadows lie - With buttercups from end to end; - In secret woods are small blooms, shy - Bluebells the good gods send. - There is no cloud that wanders by - But is my friend. - - And now the gorse is gold again; - The violet hides beneath the leaves; - And quickened by thin April rain - The debonair young sapling weaves - His coat of lightest green; again - Birds chirp at the eaves. - - Each hidden brook and waterfall, - Each tiny daisy in the sun - Calls to my heart--the hedgerows all - So full of twigs, they call, each one; - And with insistent voices call - The roads where the wild flowers run. - - O set with grass and the English hedge - Are the long, white roads which wind and wind-- - Roads which reach to the world’s edge, - Where the world is left behind. - - - - -AT THE CRIB - - - Again the royalties are shed, - Disdiademed the kingly head, - He lies again--ah, very small!-- - Among the cattle in the stall, - Or in His slender mother’s arms - Is snuggled up from baby harms. - - The Tower of Ivory leans down - From Paradise’s topmost crown; - The House of Gold on earth takes root; - From Jesse comes a saving shoot, - For Mary gives (O manifold - Her courtesies!) that we may hold - Our little Lord’s poor fragile hands - And feet, the guerdon of all lands. - - No fool need fail to enter in - The guarded Heaven we strive to win, - Or miss upon a casual street - The fiery impress of His feet, - But touch with every stone and sod - The extended fingers of our God, - And see in twigs of the stiff hedgerows, - Or in the woods where quiet grows - Among the naked Winter trees, - A thousand times these mysteries: - The branching arms with Christly fruit, - The thorns which bruise His head and foot. - - No more with silver shrilly blown - He treads a conqueror, but, flown - With swift and silent whitening wings, - He comes enwrapped in baby things. - Our God adventures everywhere - Beneath the cool and Christmas air, - And setteth still His candid star - Where Mary and her baby are! - - - - -THE MYSTIC - - - When all my long and weary work is done - (Toiling both soon and late, by candle-light, - Sewing and sewing while my eyes can see) - I lay my glasses by and watch the walls-- - The plaster off in patches, stained with smoke-- - Melt as a hoary mist and flee away. - Then through the splendour of the evening skies, - Along its star-lit paths, past pearl-white clouds - I hasten till I reach the region where - God’s holy city like a virgin keeps - Its spotless tryst, forever night and day. - I do not linger here, but take my way - To Him who sits among the Seraphim; - And He who knows I am a poor old wife, - With naught of wit or wealth that I can bring, - And that my hands are hardened by my toil-- - Sees that ’tis I that need Him most of all. - Yea, God will have the music hushed (for I - Am growing somewhat deaf) and we will talk - Of many things, as friend may talk with friend. - - Ah, I have looked, and in the dear Lord’s face - (More lined with care than any earthly man’s) - Seen that He suffers too, and understands - How hard and late I work to keep the wolf - Outside my door, and bring my children up - To serve Him always, and to keep them clean - In body, heart and mind.... - - At the sun’s call, - Working with all my strength from early dawn, - Through the long day, and then by candle-light - Sewing on buttons while my eyes can see, - I know the glory of God’s gracious face, - And at His touch my weary hands grow strong, - Hearing His voice my heart is glad and gay. - - - - -TO ANY SAINT - - - Before the choirs of angels burst to song, - In night and loneliness your way you trod-- - O valiant heart, O weary feet and strong, - There are no easy by-paths unto God. - - Darkness there was, thick darkness all around; - Nor spoken word, nor hand to touch you knew, - But One who walked the self-same stony ground - And shared your dereliction there with you. - - O valiant heart! O fixed, undaunted will! - While all the heavens hung like brass above, - You faltered not, but steadfast journeyed still - Upon the road of sainthood to your Love. - - And was not it reward exceeding great - To kiss at last with passionate lips His side, - His hands, His feet? O pomp! O regal state! - O crown of life He gives unto His bride! - - Lovers there are with roses chapleted, - But more than theirs is your Lord’s loveliness; - Your Love is crowned with thorns upon His head, - And pain and sorrow woven is His dress. - - - - -SUNSET ON THE DESERT - - - As some priest turns, his ritual all done, - And stretching hands above the kneeling crowd, - Who rapt and silent, wait with heads all bowed - For the last holy words of benison-- - “Now God be with thee, ever Three in One”-- - So turns the sun, though all reluctantly. - One thrilling moment comes to shrub and tree; - Expectant stillness falls; then dark and dun - - The silhouettes of sphinx and pyramid - Gaze at the last deep amber after-glow; - The little stars peep down between the palms; - And all the ghosts that garish daylight hid - Are quickened--Isis with the breasts of snow - And Antony with Egypt in his arms. - - - - -FOLLY - - - - -FOLLY - - - Shall I not wear my motley - And flaunt my bladder of green - Before the earls and the bishops - And the laughing king and queen; - Though hunger is in my belly - And jests my lips between? - - Men listen a moment idly - To the foolishness I sing-- - But my words are sharp and bitter - In savour and in sting, - And harder than mail in battle - Where the heavy maces swing. - - For full of the sap of folly - Grow the branches of the Creed, - The fine adventurous folly - God gave us in our need, - When He yielded up to scornful death - The human brows that bleed. - - They nailed the son of Mary - On a gibbet straight and tall; - But the eagles of the Roman - Were struck in Cæsar’s hall, - And the veil of the Holy of Holies - Was rent in the temple wall. - - Wiser than sage or prophet, - Or the pedant of the school, - Than lord or abbot or priest or prince - Who over the nations rule, - Are the cap and bells and the motley - And the laughter of the fool! - -_February 12th, 1918._ - - - - -THE SHIPS - - - The bending sails shall whiten on the sea, - Guided by hands and eyes made glad for home, - With graven gems and cedar and ebony - From Babylon and Rome. - - For here a lover cometh as to his bride, - And there a merchant to his utmost price-- - Oh, hearts will leap to see the good ships ride - Safely to Paradise! - - And this that cuts the waves with brazen prow - Hath heard the blizzard groaning through her spars; - Battered with honour swings she nobly now - Back from her bitter wars. - - And that doth bring her silver work and spice, - Peacocks and apes from Tarshish, and from Tyre - Great cloaks of velvet stiff with gold device, - Coloured with sunset fire.... - - And one, serenely through the golden gate, - Shall sail and anchor by the ultimate shore, - Who, plundered of her gold by pirate Fate, - Still keeps her richer store - - Unrifled when her perilous journey ends - And the strong cable holds her safe again: - Laughter and memories and the songs of friends - And the sword edge of pain. - -_June 1917._ - - - - -LAUGHTER - - - Oh, not a poet lives but knows - The laughing beauty of the rose, - The heyday humour of the noon, - The solemn smiling of the moon,-- - When night, as happy as a lover, - Doth kiss and kiss the earth, and cover - His face with all her tender hair. - - Sweet bride and bridegroom everywhere, - And mothers, who so softly sing - Upon their babies’ slumbering, - Know joy upon their lips, and laughter - At Joy’s heels that comes tumbling after. - - But who shall shake his sides to hear - That sacred laughter, fraught with fear, - That laughter strange and mystical-- - The hero laughing in his fall; - Whene’er a man goes out alone, - Is thrown and is not overthrown? - - The fates shall never bow the head - That irony hath comforted, - Nor thrust him down with shameful scars - Who towers above the reeling stars. - - Thus God, Who shaketh roof and rafter - Of highest heaven with holy laughter; - Who made fantastic, foolish trees - Shadow the floors of tropic seas, - Where finny gargoyles, goggle-eyed, - Grin monstrously beneath the tide; - Who made for some titanic joke - Out of the acorn grow the oak; - From buried seed and riven rocks, - Brings death and life--a paradox! - Who breaks great Kingdoms, and their Kings, - Upon the knees of helpless things.... - So flesh the Word was made Who gave - His body to a human grave, - While devils gnashed their teeth at loss - To see Him triumph on the cross.... - - Thus God, Who shaketh roof and rafter - Of highest heaven with holy laughter! - -_October 14th, 1917._ - - - - -VOCATION - - - Though God has put me in the world to praise - Each beetle’s burnished wing, each blade of grass, - To track the manifold and marvellous ways - Whereon His bright creative footsteps pass; - - To glory in the poplars’ summer green, - To guard the sunset’s glittering hoard of gold, - To gladden when the fallen leaves careen - On fairy keels upon the windy wold. - - For this, for this, my eager mornings broke, - For this came sunshine and the lonely rain, - For this the stiff and sleepy woods awoke - And every hawthorn hedge along the lane. - - For this God gave me all my joy of verse - That I might shout beneath exultant skies, - And meet, as one delivered from a curse, - The pardon and the pity in your eyes. - - - - -BLINDNESS - - - Open the casement! From my room, - Perched high upon this dizzy spire, - My blinded eyes behold the bloom - Of gardens in their golden fire. - - Oh deep, mysterious recompense-- - Time static to my ardent gaze! - No longer mortal veils of sense - Conceal the blissful ray of rays! - - Fantastic forests toss their heads - For my immortal youth; on grass - Brighter than jewels do the reds - Of riotous summer roses pass. - - I traffic in abysmal seas, - And dive for pearls and coloured shells, - Where, over seaweeds tall as trees, - The waters boom like tenor bells; - - Where bearded goblin-fish and sharks, - With fins as large as eagles’ wings, - Throw phosphorescent trails of sparks - Which glitter on drowned Spaniards’ rings. - - From star to star I pilgrimage, - Undaunted in ethereal space; - And laugh because the sun in rage - Shoots harmless arrows at my face. - - For even if the skies should flare - In God’s last catastrophic blaze, - My happy, blinded eyes would stare - Only upon the ray of rays. - -_January 20th, 1918._ - - - - -DRINKING SONG - - - When Horace wrote his noble verse, - His brilliant, glowing line, - He must have gone to bed the worse - For good Falernian wine. - No poet yet could praise the rose - In verse that so serenely flows - Unless he dipped his Roman nose - In good Falernian wine. - - _Shakespeare and Jonson too_ - _Drank deep of barley brew--_ - _Drank deep of barley brew, my boys,_ - _Drank deep of barley brew!_ - - When Alexander led his men - Against the Persian King, - He broached a hundred hogsheads, then - They drank like anything. - They drank by day, they drank by night, - And when they marshalled for the fight - Each put a score of foes to flight-- - They drank like anything! - - _No warrior worth his salt_ - _But quaffs the mighty malt--_ - _But quaffs the mighty malt, my boys,_ - _But quaffs the mighty malt!_ - - When Patrick into Ireland went - The works of God to do, - It was his excellent intent - To teach men how to brew. - The holy saint had in his train - A man of splendid heart and brain-- - A brewer was this worthy swain-- - To teach men how to brew. - - _The snakes he drove away_ - _Were teetotallers they say--_ - _Teetotallers they say, my boys,_ - _Teetotallers they say!_ - -_September 30th, 1917._ - - - - -THREE TRIOLETS - - -I - -OF AN IMPROBABLE STORY - - I heard a story from an oak - As I was walking in the wood-- - I, of the stupid human-folk, - I heard a story from an oak. - Though larches into laughter broke - I hardly think I understood. - I heard a story from an oak - As I was walking in the wood. - - -II - -OF DEPLORABLE SENTIMENTS - - I wouldn’t sell my noble thirst - For half-a-dozen bags of gold; - I’d like to drink until I burst. - I wouldn’t sell my noble thirst - For lucre filthy and accurst-- - Such treasures _can’t_ be bought and sold! - I wouldn’t sell my noble thirst - For half-a-dozen bags of gold. - - -III - -OF LOVE AND LAUGHTER - - You scattered joy about my way - And filled my lips with love and laughter - In white and yellow fields of May - You scattered joy about my way. - Though Winter come with skies of grey - And grisly death come stalking after, - You scattered joy about my way - And filled my lips with love and laughter. - - - - -A NEW CANTERBURY TALE - - - In Italie a mony yeer ago - There lived a little childë Catharine, - With yongë, merrie hertë clere as snow. - From hir first youthful hour she did entwyne - Roses both whyt and reed--Godis columbine - She was. And for hir holy gaiety - Was by hir neighbours clept Euphrosyne. - - Ech stepp she took upon hir fadirs staires, - Kneeling she did an Ave Mary say; - With ful devocioun she seid hir prayers - Ere that she wentë forth ech day to play; - Our Blessid Queen was in hir thought alway-- - Our Modir Mary whose humility - Hath raiséd hir to hevinës magesté. - - When only sevin was this childës age - She vowed hirself to sweet virginity, - Forsweering eny erthly marriáge, - That she the clenë bride of Crist schuld be, - Who on the heavy cross ful cruelly - The Jewës nailéd, hevin to open wide-- - Crist for hir husëbond, she Cristës bride. - - Swich was the litle innocentes intent, - Hirself unspotted from the world to kepe, - Al hidden in hir fadirs hous she went. - Whether in waking or in purë sleep - She builded hir a closë cellë deep-- - Where Lordë Cristë colde walk with hir, - And hold alway His sweetë convers there. - - So ful she was of gentil charity, - She diddë tend upon the sick ech day; - To beggars in their grete necessity - She gave hir cloke and petticoat away; - To no poor wightë did she sayë nay-- - And when reprovéd merrily she spoke, - “God loveth Charity more than my cloke.” - - An oldë widow lay al striken sore - With leprosé, that dreed and foul disease; - And to hir (filléd to the hertë core - With love of God) that she schuld bring hir ease - Did Catharine come, nor did hit hir displese - That she schuld wash the woundës tenderly, - And bind hem up for Goddës charity. - - And though the pacient waxéd querulous, - The blessid seintë wearied neer a whit, - For hir upbrading tong so slanderous, - Nor even when upon hir handës lit - The leprosé corrupt and foul--for hit - Is nothing to the shamë Goddë bore - When nailes and speares His smoothë flesch y-tore. - - But now behold a woundrous miracle! - For al that Seintë Catharine colde do, - Hir pacient died and was y-carried wel - Unto hir gravë by stout men and true. - When they upon hir corse the cloddës threw, - Then new as eny childës gan to shine - The shrivvelled handes of holy Catharine! - - There livéd there a youth clept Nicholas, - Who made in that citee seditioun, - Causing a gretë riot in that place, - So that the magistratës of the toun - Hent him and cast him in a strong prisoun; - And thilkë wightë they anon did try, - And for his sin condemnéd him to die. - - And Catharine y-waxéd piteous - To see him brought unto this sorry case, - And went to him unto the prisoun hous - To move his soul to Jhesu Cristës grace. - So yong he was and fresh and faire of face, - Hir hertë movéd was as to a son, - And he by hir sweet, gracious wordes was won. - - That for his deth he made a good accord, - And was y-shriven wel of his assoyl, - And with a humble soul received our Lord - From the prestes hands. His hertë that did boil - But little whyles ago--was freed from toil, - And fixéd on our Lordës precious blood, - Which for our sak He spilléd on the rood. - - And when he came to executioun, - No feer had he nor eny bitter care, - But walked among the guardës thurgh the toun - In joy so hye as if he trod on air. - Seint Catharine she was y-waiting there - To cheer his soul against the dreedful end, - When unto God his soul at last most wend. - - And there thilke holy virgin welcomed him; - “Come, Nicholas,” she said, “my sonnë deere. - The boul of glorious life is at the brim-- - Come, Nicholas--your nuptials are neer; - The bridegroom calleth, be you of good cheer.” - And whyl they madë redy, on hir brest - She kept the hed of Nicholas at rest. - - And when that al in ordre had been set, - She stretchéd out his nekkë tenderly, - “This day your soulës bridegroom shal be met. - Hark! how He calleth, sweet and winsomely.” - And Nicholas spak to hir ful of glee-- - “Jhesu” and “Catharine” the wordes he seid; - Then fel the ax and severed off his hed. - - And even as his bloody hed did fall, - She caught hit in her lap and handës faire, - Nor reckéd that the blood was over al - Hir robës, but she kissed hit sitting there, - And smoothéd doun the rough and ragged hair. - God wot that gretë peace was in hir herte - That Nicholas in hevin had found his part. - - O holy Catharine, pray for us then, - Be to our soules a modir and a frend; - We are poor wandering and sinful men, - And al unstable through the world we wend. - Pray for us, Catharine, unto the end, - That filléd with thy gretë charity - In Goddës love we schuldë live and die. - - - - -IN MEMORIAM F. H. M. - -KILLED IN ACTION, APRIL 9TH, 1917 - - - Though now we see, as through the battle smoke, - The image of your young uplifted face - Surprised by death, and broken as it broke - The hearts of those who loved your eager grace, - Your noble air and magnanimity-- - A summer perfect in its flowers and leaves, - Brave promises of fruitfulness to be, - Which now no hand may bind in goodly sheaves-- - No hand but God’s.... Yet your remembered ways, - Your eyes alight with gentleness and mirth, - The lovely honour of your shortened days, - A new grave gladness on the furrowed earth - Shall sow for us, a new pride wide and deep-- - And we shall see the corn--and reap, and reap. - - - - -TO THE IRISH DEAD - - - You who have died as royally as kings, - Have seen with eyes ablaze with beauty, eyes - Nor gold nor ease nor comfort could make wise, - The glory of imperishable things. - - Despite your shame and loneliness and loss-- - Your broken hopes, the hopes that shall not cease, - Endure in dreams as terrible as peace; - Your naked folly nailed upon the cross - - Has given us more than bread unto our dearth - And more than water to our aching drouth; - Though death has been as wormwood in your mouth - Your blood shall fructify the barren earth. - -_August 11th, 1917._ - - - - -JOHN REDMOND - - - Shall it be told in tragic song and story - Of two who went embittered all their days, - Two lovely Queens divided in their ways - Until their hearts grew hard, their tresses hoary? - Or shall the flying wings of oratory - Of him who bore a great hope on his face - Bring from the grave reunion to the grace - That men call Ireland and to England’s glory? - - Courageous soul, not yet the work is ended: - The perfect pact you never lived to see, - The peace between the warring sisters mended - Must of your patient labours come to be, - When in a noise of trumpets loud and splendid - The Gael hears blown the name of liberty. - -_March 8th, 1918._ - - - - -BEAUTY - - -I - -(_RELATIVE_) - - How many are the forms that beauty shows; - To what dim shrines of sweet, forgotten art - She calls; on what wide seas her strong wind blows - The proud and perilous passion of the heart! - - How many are the forms of her decay; - The blood that stains the dying of the sun, - The love and loveliness that pass away - Like roses’ petals scattered one by one. - - But there shall issue through the ivory gate, - Amid a mist of dreams, one dream-come-true, - Beauty immortal, mighty of estate, - The beauty that a poet loved in you; - The goodness God has set as aureole - Upon the naked meekness of your soul. - -_July 22nd, 1917._ - - - - -BEAUTY - - -II - -(_ABSOLUTE_) - - Who shall take Beauty in her citadel? - Her gates will splinter not to battering days; - Her slender spires can bear the onslaught well. - Shall any track her through her secret ways - To snare the pinions of the golden bird? - A feather falling through the jewelled air, - Only the echo of a lovely word-- - Nowhere her being is, and everywhere. - - But one may come at last through many woes - And pain and hunger to his resting place, - The watered garden of the Mystic Rose, - The contemplation of the Bruisèd Face-- - The quest of all his wild, adventurous pride; - And, seeing Beauty, shall be satisfied. - -_July 29th, 1917._ - - - - -FAITH’S DIFFICULTY - - - Not these appal - The soul tip-toeing to belief: - The ribald call, - The last black anguish of the thief; - - The fellowship - Of publican and Pharisee, - The harlot’s lip - Passionate with humility; - - Or the feet kissed - By her who was the Magdalen-- - The sensualist - Is one among a world of men! - - Oh, I can look - Upon another’s drama; read - As in a book - Things unrelated to my need; - - Give faith’s assent - To that abysmal love outpoured-- - But why was rent - Thy seamless coat for _me_, dear Lord? - - Why didst Thou bow - Thy bleeding brows for _my_ heart’s good? - How shall I now - Reach to the mystic hardihood - - Where I can take - For personal treasure all Thy loss, - When for my sake, - My sake, Thou didst endure the cross? - - For my soul’s worth - Was “It is finished!” loudly cried? - For me the birth, - The sorrows of the Crucified? - -_February 16th, 1918._ - - - - -CHRISTMAS ON CRUSADE - - - Here shall we bivouac beneath the stars; - Gather the remnant of our chivalry - About the crackling fires, and nurse our scars, - And speak no more as fools must, bitterly. - - The roads familiar to His feet we trod; - We saw the lonely hills whereon He wept, - Prayed, agonised--dear God of very God!-- - And watched the whole world while the whole world slept. - - We speak no more in anger; Christian men - Our armies rolled upon you, wave and wave: - But crooked words and swords, O Saracen, - Can only hold what they have given--a grave! - - We know Him, know that gibbet whence was torn - The pardon that a felon spoke on sin: - There is more life in His dead crown of thorn - Than in your sweeping horsemen, Saladin! - - We speak no more in anger, we will ride - Homeless to our own homes. His bruised head - Had never resting place. Each Christmas-tide - Blossoms the thorn and we are comforted. - - Yea, of the sacred cradle of our creed - We are despoiled; the kindly tavern door - Is shut against us in our utmost need-- - We know the awful patience of the poor. - - We speak no more in anger, for we share - His homelessness. We will forget your scorn. - The bells are ringing in the Christmas air; - God homeless in our homeless homes is born. - - - - -THE ASCETIC - - - A wild wind blows from out the angry sky - And all the clouds are tossed like thistle-down - Above the groaning branches of the trees; - For on this steel-cold night the earth is stirred - To shake away its rottenness; the leaves - Are shed like secret unremembered sins - In the great scourge of the great love of God.... - - Ere I was learned in the ways of love - I looked for it in green and pleasant lands, - In apple orchards and the poppy fields, - And peered among the silences of woods, - And meditated the shy notes of birds - But found it not. - - Oh, many a goodly joy - Of grace and gentle beauty came to me - On many a clear and cleansing night of stars. - But when I sat among my happy friends - (Singing their songs and drinking of their ale, - Warming my limbs before their kindly hearth) - My loneliness would seize me like a pain, - A hunger strong and alien as death. - - No comfort stays with such a man as I, - No resting place amid the dew and dusk, - Whose head is filled with perilous enterprise - The endless quest of my wild fruitless love. - - But these can tell how they have heard His voice, - Have seen His face in pure untroubled sleep, - Or when the twilight gathered on the hills - Or when the moon shone out beyond the sea! - - Have _I_ not seen them? Yet I pilgrimage - In desolation seeking after peace, - Learning how hard a thing it is to love. - There is a love that men find easily, - Familiar as the latch upon the door, - Dear as the curling smoke above the thatch-- - But I have loved unto the uttermost - And know love in the desperate abyss, - In dereliction and in blasphemy! - And fly from God to find him, fill my eyes - With road-dust and with tears and starry hopes, - Ere I may search out Love unsearchable, - Eternal Truth and Goodness infinite, - And the ineffable Beauty that is God. - - Empty of scorn and ceasing not to praise - The meanest stick and stone upon the earth, - I strive unto the stark Reality, - The Absolute grasped roundly in my hands. - Bitter and pitiless it is to love, - To feel the darkness gather round the soul, - Love’s abnegation for the sake of love, - To see my Templed symbols’ slow decay - Become of every ravenous weed the food, - Where bats beat hideous wings about the arch - And ruined roof, where ghosts of tragic kings - And sleek ecclesiastics come and go - Upon the shattered pavements of my creed. - - Yet Mercy at the last shall lead me in, - The Bride immaculate and mystical - Tenderly guide my wayward feet to peace, - And show me love the likeness of a Man, - The Slave obedient unto death, the Lamb - Slain from the first foundations of the world, - The Word made flesh, the tender new-born Child - That is the end of all my heart’s desire. - - Then shall my spirit, naked of its hopes, - Stripped of its love unto the very bone, - Sink simply into Love’s embrace and be - Made consummate of all its burning bliss. - -_August 26th, 1917._ - - - - -SONNET FOR THE FIFTH OF OCTOBER - - - If I had ridden horses in the lists, - Fought wars, gone pilgrimage to fabled lands, - Seen Pharaoh’s drinking cups of amethysts, - Held dead Queens’ secret jewels in my hands-- - I would have laid my triumphs at your feet, - And worn with no ignoble pride my scars.... - But I can only offer you, my sweet, - The songs I made on many a night of stars. - - Yet have I worshipped honour, loving you; - Your graciousness and gentle courtesy, - With ringing and romantic trumpets blew - A mighty music through the heart of me,-- - A joy as cleansing as the wind that fills - The open spaces on the sunny hills. - - - - -WARFARE - - - When I consider all thy dignity, - Thy honour which my baseness doth accuse - To my own soul, thy pride which doth refuse - Less than the suffering thou hast given me, - My hope is chilled to fear. How stealthily - Must I dispose my forces! With what ruse - And ambush snatch the bearer of good news, - Ere I can escalade austerity! - - Easier it were to fling the baleful lord - And the infernal legions of the Pit, - To ride undaunted at that roaring horde: - But who shall armour me with delicate wit - Sufficient for thine overthrow? What sword - Win to the tower where thy perfections sit? - -_March 10th, 1918._ - - - - -TREASON - - - Thou hast renounced thy proud and royal state; - Deserted thy strong men-at-arms who stand - Attentive to imperious command; - And with a small key at the groaning gate-- - Sweet traitress!--met thine enemy. The great - Moon threw a white enchantment o’er the land - When in my hand I caught thy yielded hand, - And laughing kissed thy laughing lips elate. - - For of thy queenly folly thou hast laid - In sandalwood thy stiff, embroidered gown; - With happiness apparelled thou hast strayed - _Incognita_ through many a sunlit town, - Heedless of our uncaptained hosts arrayed - Or of the flags their battles shall bring down. - -_March 17th, 1918._ - - - - -THERE WAS AN HOUR - - - There was an hour when stars flung out - A magical wild melody, - When all the woods became alive - With elfin dance and revelry. - - A holiday for happy hearts!-- - The trees shone silver in the moon, - And clapped their gleaming hands to see - Night like a radiant kindled noon! - - For suddenly a new world woke - At one new touch of wizardry, - When my love from her mirthful mouth - Spoke words of sweet true love to me. - -_February 9th, 1918._ - - - - -NOCTURNE - - - When evening hangs her lamp above the hill - And calls her children to her waiting hearth, - Where pain is shed away and love and wrath, - And every tired head lies white and still-- - - Dear heart, will you not light a lamp for me, - And gather up the meaning of the lands, - Silent and luminous within your hands, - Where peace abides and mirth and mystery? - - That I may sit with you beside the fire, - And ponder on the thing no man may guess, - Your soul’s great majesty and gentleness, - Until the last sad tongue of flame expire. - -_December 21st, 1916._ - - - - -PRIDE - - - Who having known through night a great star falling - With half the host of heaven in its wake, - And o’er chaotic seas a dread voice calling, - And a new purple dawn of presage break, - - Can hope to conquer thee, proud Son of Morning, - Arrayed in mighty lusts of heart and eyes, - With blood-red rubies set for thine adorning - And sorceries wherein men’s souls grow wise? - - Who shall withstand the onslaught of thy chariot, - Who ride to battle with thy gorgeous kings? - Dost thou not count the silver to Iscariot, - And Tyrian scarlet and the marvellous rings? - - But ivory limbs and the flung festal roses, - The maddening music and the Chian wine, - Are overpast when one glad heart discloses - A pride more strange and terrible than thine! - - That looked unsatisfied upon thy splendour, - And turned, all shaken with his love, away - To one dear face that holds him true and tender - Until the trumpets of the Judgment Day. - - A pride that binds him till the last fierce ember - Shall fade from pride’s tall roaring pyre in hell; - The gentleness and grace he shall remember, - The flower she gave, the love that she did tell. - - - - -BALLADE OF SHEEP BELLS - - - I left behind the green and gracious weald, - And climbing stiffly up the steep incline - Found high above each little cloistered field, - Above the sombre autumn woods of pine-- - Where gentle skies are clear and crystalline-- - The place remote from dense and foolish towns; - And there, where all the winds are sharp with brine, - _I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs_. - - The sun hung out of heaven like a shield - Emblazoned o’er with heraldry divine. - I suddenly saw, as though with eyes unsealed, - A portent sent me for an awful sign, - A fairy sea whereon the cold stars shine; - And standing on the sward of withered browns, - Burnt by the noontide and cropped close and fine, - _I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs_. - - A carillon of delicate music pealed - And tingled through the steeple of my spine; - My soul was filled with loveliness and healed. - I know how joy and anguish intertwine-- - But this shall greatly comfort me as wine, - Good wine, comforts a man and sweetly drowns - The many sorrows of this heart of mine-- - _I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs_. - - -_L’Envoi_ - - Prince, old bell-wether of an ancient line, - When you’re dead mutton I will weave you crowns - Of living laurel--if on you I dine-- - _I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs!_ - - - - -BALLADE OF A FEROCIOUS CATHOLIC - - - There is a term to every loud dispute, - A final reckoning I’m glad to say: - Some people end discussion with their boot; - Others, the prigs, will simply walk away. - But I, within a world of rank decay, - Can face its treasons with a flaming hope, - Undaunted by faith’s foemen in array-- - _I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope!_ - - They do not ponder on the Absolute, - But wander in a fog of words astray. - They have no rigid creed one can confute, - No hearty dogmas riotous and gay, - But feebly mutter through thin lips and grey - Things foully fashioned out of sin and soap;-- - But I, until my body rests in clay, - _I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope!_ - - I’ve often thought that I would like to shoot - The modernists on some convenient day; - Pull out eugenists by their noxious root; - The welfare-worker chattering like a jay - I’d publicly and pitilessly slay - With blunderbuss or guillotine or rope, - Burn at the stake, or boil in oil, or flay-- - _I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope._ - - -_L’Envoi_ - - Prince, proud prince Lucifer, your evil sway - Is over many who in darkness grope: - But as for me, I go another way-- - _I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope!_ - -_March 2nd, 1918._ - - - - -DAWN - - - I have beheld above the wooded hill - Thy tender loveliness, O Morning, break; - Beheld the solemn gladness thou dost spill - On eyes not yet awake. - - But why recall unto the painful day - Wild passions sleeping like oblivious kings? - The broad day comes and thou dost speed away - Westward on swift wide wings! - -_December 23rd, 1917._ - - - - -SUNSET - - - I have seen death in many a varied guise, - Cruel and tender, rude and beautiful, - Looking through windows in a young child’s eyes, - Stealing as soft as shadows in a pool, - Falling a sudden arrow of dismay, - Blown on a bugle with an iron note: - The slow and gentle progress of decay, - The taking of a strong man by the throat. - - I have seen flowers wither and the leaf - Of lusty Summer burn to hectic red. - But ah! that splendid death untouched by grief: - The sun with glad and golden-visaged head - Superbly standing on his deadly pyre, - And sinking in a sea of jewelled fire! - -_February 10th, 1918._ - - - - -PEACE - - - Whose lives are bound - By sleep and custom and tranquillity - Have never found - That peace which is a riven mystery - - Who only share - The calm that doth this stream, these orchards bless, - Breathe but the air - Of unimpassioned pagan quietness.... - - Initiate, - Pain burns about your head, an aureole, - Who hold in state - The utter joy which wounds and heals the soul. - - You kiss the Rod - With dumb, glad lips, and bear to worlds apart - The peace of God - Which passeth all understanding in your heart. - - - - -CARRION - - - The guns are silent for an hour; the sounds - Of war forget their doom; the work is done-- - Strong men, uncounted corpses heaped in mounds, - Are rotting in the sun. - - Foul carrion--souls till yesterday!--are these - With piteous faces in the bloodied mire; - But where are now their generous charities? - Their laughter, their desire? - - In each rent breast, each crushed and shattered skull - Lived joy and sorrow, tenderness and pain, - Hope, ardours, passions brave and beautiful - Among these thousands slain! - - A little time ago they heard the call - Of mating birds in thicket and in brake; - They wondering saw night’s jewelled curtain fall - And all the pale stars wake.... - - Bodies most marvellously fashioned, stark, - Strewn broadcast out upon the trampled sod-- - These temples of the Holy Ghost--O hark!-- - These images of God! - - Flesh, as the Word became in Bethlehem, - Houses to hold their Sacramental Lord: - Swiftly and terribly to harvest them - Swept the relentless sword! - - Happy if in your dying you can give - Some symbol of the Eternal Sacrificed, - Some pardon to the hearts of those who live-- - Dying the death of Christ! - -_Feast of the Epiphany, - - January 6th, 1917._ - - - - -THE BUILDING OF THE CITY - - - I, John, who once was called by Him in jest - Boanerges, the thunder’s son, - Who lay in tenderness upon His breast-- - Now that my days are done, - - And a great gathering glory fills my sight, - Would tell my children e’er I go - Of Him I saw with head and hair as white - As white wool--white as snow. - - The face before which heaven and earth did flee, - The burnished feet, the eyes of flame, - The seven stars bright with awful mystery, - And the Ineffable Name! - - Yet I who saw the four dread horsemen ride, - The vials of the wrath of God, - Beheld a greater thing: the Lamb’s pure Bride, - The golden floors she trod. - - How Babylon, Babylon was overthrown, - And how Euphrates flowed with blood-- - Ah, but His mercy through the wide world sown, - The tree with healing bud! - - I heard, among the hosts of Paradise, - The glad new song that never tires, - A Lamb as it had been slain in sacrifice - Enthroned amid the choirs. - - After the utmost woes have taken toll, - And ravens plucked the eyes of kings, - God’s own strange peace shall come upon the soul - On gentle, dove-like wings. - - The Dragon cast into the voidless night, - God’s city cometh from above, - Built by the sword of Michael and his might, - But founded in God’s love. - - - - -EDEN RE-OPENED - - - No man regarded where God sat - Among the rapt seraphic brows, - And God’s heart heavy grew thereat, - At man’s long absence from His house. - - Then from the iris-circled throne - A strange and secret word is said, - And straightway hath an angel flown, - On wings of feathered sunlight sped, - Through space to where the world shone red. - - Reddest of all the stars of night - To the hoar watchers of the spheres, - But ashy cold to man’s dim sight, - And filled with sins and woes and fears - And the waste weariness of years. - - (No laughter rippled in the grass, - No light upon the jewelled sea; - The sky hung sullenly as brass, - And men went groping tortuously.) - - But the stern warden of the Gate - Broke his dread sword upon his knees, - And opened wide the fields where wait - The loveless unremembered trees, - The sealed and silent mysteries. - - And the scales fell from man’s eyes, - And his heart woke again, as when - Adam found Eve in Paradise; - And joy was made complete ... and then - God entered in and spoke with men. - - - - -THE HOLY SPRING - - - The radiant feet of Christ now lead - The dancing sunny hours, - The ancient Earth is young again - With growing grass and warm white rain - And hedgerows full of flowers. - - The lilac and laburnum show - The glory of their bud, - And scattered on each hawthorn spray - The snow-white and the crimson may-- - The may as red as blood. - - The bluebells in the deep dim woods - Like fallen heavens lie, - And daffodils and daffodils - Upon a thousand little hills - Are waving to the sky. - - The corn imprisoned in the mould - Has burst its wintry tomb, - And on each burdened orchard tree - Which stood an austere calvary - The apple blossom bloom. - - The kiss of Christ has brought to life - The marvel of the sod. - Oh, joy has rent its chrysalis - To flash its jewelled wings, and is - A dream of beauty and of bliss-- - The loveliness of God. - -_May 1917._ - - - - -VIATICUM - - - Dear God, not only do Thou come at last - When death hath filled my heart with dread affright, - But when in gathered dark I meet aghast - The mimic death that falls on me at night. - - The daily dying, when alone I tread - The valley of the shadow, breast the Styx, - With shrouded soul and body stiff in bed ... - And no companion from the welcome pyx! - - How should I face disarmed and unawares - The phantoms of the Pit oblivion brings-- - My will surrendered, mind unapt for snares, - Eyes blinded by the evil, shuddering wings, - - Did not the sunset stand encoped in gold - For priestly offices, ’mid censers swung, - And with anointed thumb and finger hold - The symbolled Godhead to my eager tongue? - - Then with my body’s trance there doth descend - Peace on my eyelids, goodness that shall keep - My wandering feet, and at my side a friend - Through all the winding caverns of my sleep. - -_August 12th, 1917._ - - - - -PUNISHMENT - - - What vengeful rod - Is laid upon my bleeding shoulders? - What scourge, O God, - Makes known my shame to all beholders? - - Through what vast skies - Crashes Thy wrath like shuddering thunders? - - * * * * * - - Before my eyes - Thou dost display the wonder of wonders! - - As punishment - To one whom sin should bind in prison, - Hath Mercy sent - Word of the crucified arisen! - - Guilt’s penalty - Exacted--past my reeling reason!-- - Which lays on me - Love--as a whip fit for my Treason! - -_March 3rd, 1918._ - - - - -AFTER COMMUNION - - - Now art Thou in my house of feeble flesh, - O Word made flesh! My burning soul by Thine - Caught mystically in a living mesh! - Now is the royal banquet, now the wine, - The body broken by the courteous Host - Who is my humble Guest--a Guest adored-- - Though once I spat upon, scourged at the post, - Hounded to Calvary and slew my Lord! - - My name is Legion, but separate and alone; - Wash, wash, dear Crucified, my Pilate hand! - Rejected Stone, be Thou my corner-stone! - Like Mary at the cross’s foot I stand; - Like Magdalene upon my sins I grieve; - Like Thomas do I touch Thee and believe. - -_December 16th, 1917._ - - - - -THE UNIVERSAL MOTHER - - - Who standing thrilled in his bewilderment - Can tell thy humble ways, - The hidden paths on which thy white feet went - Through all thy lonely days? - - From what deep root the Lily of the Lord - To grace and beauty grew, - Or in what fires was tempered the keen sword - That pierced thy bosom through? - - But we may turn and find within our hands - Our souls’ strange bread and wine, - The gathered meanings of thy starry lands - Where mystic roses shine. - - Heaven’s air might grow for us too cold and tense, - Her towers far and faint, - Did we not know thy sorrowful innocence, - Or soldier, singer, saint, - - Earth’s heroes with earth’s poor not kneel and tell - Their full hearts’ burdenings - To those dear eyes before which Gabriel - Bent low with folded wings. - - The soldier shall remember whose the heel - That crushed the serpent’s head, - How mighty in thy hand hath been the steel - That dyed thy bosom red. - - The singer weave for thee a cloak of light - Where earth’s wild colours run, - As God hath crowned thee with the stars of night - And clothed thee with the sun. - - The saint who in a cloister cool and dim - His difficult road hath kept - Shall think of thee whose body cloistered Him - When in thy womb He slept. - - And thou shalt call to thee the poor of earth - To share thy joy with them, - And fill them with thy magnitude and mirth - In many a Bethlehem. - -_February 4th, 1917._ - - - - -THE BOASTER - - - If the last blissful star should fade and wither, - If one by one - Orion and the Pleiades Crash and Crumble; - The lordly sun - - Be turned away, a beggar, all his triumphs - Gone down in doom, - Wandering unregarded through the cosmos, - None giving him room. - - Then would I shout defiant to the whirlwinds; - Boastingly cry, - “Go wreck the world, its towering hills and waters! - But I, even I, - - “Whose body was flung out upon the dungheap - With weeds to rot, - Still keep my soul unshaken by the ruin - That harms me not! - - “True, I have fled from many a shameful battle, - Did cringe and cower - Before my foes, but who can ever rob me - Of one great hour?” - - For joy rang through me like a silver trumpet; - About my head - The tiny flowers flapped in the breeze like banners - Of royal red. - - And suddenly the seven deeps of heaven - Were cloven apart, - When love stood in your eyes and shone and trembled - Within your heart. - -_February 3rd, 1918._ - - - - -UNWED - - - If I go down to death uncomforted - By love’s great conquest and its great surrender, - Bearing my soul along, unwed, unwed; - (Your darling hands’ caresses swift and tender - Lacking upon my head, upon my lips - Your lips); and in my heart love unfulfilled, - And in my eyes a blind apocalypse, - Bereft of all the glory I have willed; - - I shall go proudly for your dear love’s sake, - Triumphant for brief memories, but tragic - Because of those large hopes that fail and break - Beneath Fate’s wizard-wand of cruel magic-- - But ah, Fate could not touch me if I stood - Completed by your love’s beatitude! - -_December 15th, 1917._ - - - - -WED - - - I know the winds are rhythmical - In unison with your footfall. - I know that in your heart you keep - The secret of the woodland’s sleep. - - You met the blossom-bearing May-- - Sweet sister!--on the road half way, - And she has laid upon your hair - The coloured coronal you wear. - - But ah! the white wings of the Dove - Flutter about the head I love, - And on your bosom doth repose - The beauty of the Mystic Rose, - - That I must add to poetry - A dark and fearful ecstasy; - For in the house of joy you bless - Unworthiness with holiness. - - - - -ENGLAND - - -I - - Like some good ship that founders in the sea, - Like granite towers that crumble into dust, - So pass the emblems of thine empery. - But O immortal Mother and august, - Ardours of English saint and bard and king - Blend simply with thy soul, even as their bones - Mingle with English soil. Their spirits sing - A great song lordly as is a loud wind’s tones. - Decayed by gold and ease and loathly pride, - We had forgot our greatness and become - Huckstering empire-builders, and denied - The excellent name of freedom ... till the drum - Woke glory such as met the eyes of Drake, - Or Alfred when he saw the heathen break! - - -II - - Where shall we find thee? In the avarice - That robs our brave adventures? In the shame - Spoiling our splendours? In the sacrifice - Of tears we wrung from Ireland? Nay, thy name - Is written secretly in kindliness - Upon the patient faces of the poor, - In that good anger wherewith thou didst bless - Our hearts, when beat upon the shaking door - Strong hands of hell.... Whether before the flood - We sink, or out of agonies reborn - Learn once again the meaning of our blood, - Laughter and liberty--a sacred scorn - Is ours irrevocably since we stood - And heard the barbarians’ guns across the morn. - -_December 24th and 26th, 1917._ - - - - -LYRIC LOVE - - - When kindly years have given me grace - To read your spirit through; - To see the starlight on your face, - Upon your hair the dew; - - To touch the fingers of your hands, - The shining wealth they hold; - To find in dim and dreamy lands - That tender dusks enfold - - The ancient sorrows that were sealed, - The hidden wells of joy, - The secrets that were unrevealed - To one who was a boy. - - Then to my patient ponderings - Will fruits of solace fall, - When I have learned through many Springs, - Mighty and mystical, - - To hear through sounds of brooks and birds - Love in the leafy grove, - As in my lyric heart your words - Bestir a lyric love. - - Then I shall brood, grown good and wise, - The truth of fairy tales, - And greet romance with gay surprise - In woods of nightingales. - - And find, with hoary head and sage, - In songs which I have sung - The meanings of the end of age-- - The rapture of the young! - -_February 11th, 1918._ - - - - -DRUMS OF DEFEAT - - - - -THE FOOL - - - A shout of laughter and of scorn, - A million jeering lips and eyes-- - And in the sight of all men born - The wildest of earth’s madmen dies! - - Whose trust was put in empty words - To-day is numbered with the dead; - To-morrow crows and evil birds - Shall pluck those strange eyes from his head! - - The fellows of this country clown - Are scattered (fool beyond belief!), - All blown away like thistledown, - Except a harlot and a thief. - - And shall he shatter fates with _these_? - (He that would neither strive nor cry) - Or thunder through the Seven Seas? - Or shake the stars down from the sky? - - Have mercy and humility - Become unconquerable swords, - That Caiaphas must tremblingly - Kneel with the world’s imperial lords - Before this crazy carpenter-- - This body writhing on a rod-- - And worship in that bloody hair - The dreadful foolishness of God? - - A shout of laughter and of scorn, - A million jeering lips and eyes-- - And in the sight of all men born - The wildest of earth’s madmen dies! - - - - -DON QUIXOTE - - - The air is valiant with drums - And honourable the skies, - When he rides singing as he comes - With solemn, dreamy eyes-- - Of swinging of the splendid swords, - And crashing of the nether lords, - When Hell makes onslaught with its hordes - In desperate emprise. - - He rides along the roads of Spain - The champion of the world, - For whom great soldans live again - With Moorish beards curled-- - But all their spears shall not avail - With one who weareth magic mail, - This hero of an epic tale - And his brave gauntlet hurled! - - Clangour of horses and of arms - Across the quiet fields, - Herald and trumpeter, alarms - Of bowmen and of shields; - When doubt that twists and is afraid - Is shattered in the last crusade, - Where flaunts the plume and falls the blade - The cavalier wields. - - Although in that eternal cause - No liegemen gather now, - Or flowered dames to grant applause, - Yet on his naked brow - The victor’s laurels interwreath; - But he no dower can bequeath - But sword snapped short and empty sheath - And errantry and vow! - - Against his foolish innocence - No man alive can stand, - Nor any giant drive him hence - With sling or club or brand-- - For where his angry bugle blows - There fall unconquerable foes; - Of mighty men of war none knows - To stay his witless hand. - - All legendary wars grow tame - And every tale gives place - Before the knight’s unsullied name - And his romantic face: - Yea, he shall break the stoutest bars - And bear his courage and his scars - Beyond the whirling moons and stars - And all the suns of space! - - - - -IRELAND - - - Beside your bitter waters rise - The Mystic Rose, the Holy Tree, - Immortal courage in your eyes, - And pain and liberty. - - The stricken arms, the cloven shields, - The trampled plumes, the shattered drum, - The swords of your lost battlefields - To hopeless battles come. - - And though your scattered remnants know - Their shameful rout, their fallen kings, - Yet shall the strong, victorious foe - Not understand these things: - - The broken ranks that never break, - The merry road your rabble trod, - The awful laughter they shall take - Before the throne of God. - - - - -IN MEMORIAM - -PATRICK HENRY PEARSE - -_Executed May 3rd, 1916_ - -R.I.P. - - - In this grey morning wrapped in mist and rain - You stood erect beneath the sullen sky, - A heart which held its peace and noble pain, - A brave and gentle eye! - - The last of all your silver songs are sung; - Your fledgling dreams on broken wings are dashed-- - For suddenly a tragic sword was swung - And ten true rifles crashed. - - By one who walks aloof in English ways - Be this high word of praise and sorrow said: - He lived with honour all his lovely days, - And is immortal, dead! - - - - -MATER DESOLATA - -TO MARGARET PEARSE - - - To you the dreary night’s long agony, - The anguish, and the laden heart that broke - Its vase of burning tears, the voiceless cry,-- - And then the horror of that blinding stroke! - To you all this--and yet to you much more. - God pressed into the chalice of your pain - A starry triumph, when the sons you bore - Were written on the roll of Ireland’s slain. - Let no man touch your glorious heritage, - Or pluck one pang of sorrow from your heart, - Or stain with any pity the bright page - Emblazoning the holy martyrs’ part. - Ride as a queen your splendid destiny, - Since death is swallowed up in victory! - - - - -THE STIRRUP CUP - - - Draw rein; there’s the inn where the lamps show plain-- - Where we never may drink together again. - While the stars are lost in the slate-cold sky - Let us drink good ale before we die - In the wind and bitter rain! - - Your sword is made ready upon your hip? - Then once again, man, in good-fellowship! - Though hunted and outlawed and fugitive - We shall drink together again if we live-- - Set the tankard to your lip! - - _Honour and death and_--how goes the tune? - See the clouds rift and disrobe the moon! - And a blood-red streak in the sullen skies - And--_Honour and death and adventure’s eyes_-- - Now spurs--for they’ll be here soon! - - - - -THE ENSIGN - - - High up above the wooded ridge - Beams out a round benignant moon - Upon the village and the bridge - Through which the slumberous waters croon. - - Now polished silver is the mill; - And, clad in ghostly mysteries, - The church tower glimmers on the hill - Among the sad, abiding trees; - - And watched by its familiar star - Sleeps each small house, so still and white-- - From all the noise and blood of war, - O God, how far removed to-night! - - Unconscious of their destiny - How many drew this air for breath; - Here lived and loved ... and now they see - The terrible, swift shape of death. - - The bounty of these quiet skies, - The tender beauty of these lands, - Still sheds a peace upon their eyes, - And binds their hearts and nerves their hands. - - That they who only thought to know - This valley in the moonlight furled, - Have heard immortal trumpets blow, - And shake the pillars of the world! - - - - -BALLADE OF ORCHARDS - - - Though Jeshurun kicks and grows fatter and fatter, - And chinks in his pockets the gold of his gain, - Yet up in the gables the young sparrows chatter, - The corn-fields are rich with the promise of grain, - The hedges are yellow, and (balm to the brain!) - Their pink and white blossoms the cherry trees scatter-- - _The blossoming orchards of England remain!_ - - Long lines of our soldiers swing by with a clatter, - To die in their thousands by river and plain, - In lands where the gathering loud torrents batter, - They heap the hills high with heroical slain-- - But far in the weald how the misty moons wane! - And deep in a silence no anger can shatter - _The blossoming orchards of England remain!_ - - The world is a fool and as mad as a hatter-- - And poets and lovers were sent her for bane-- - Yet theirs are the ears which can catch the first patter, - The prophet of all God’s abundance of rain, - The smell of earth earthy and wholesome again; - And from the drenched ground where the spent bullets spatter - _The blossoming orchards of England remain!_ - - -_L’Envoi_ - - Princes and potentates, ye whom men flatter, - Harken a moment to this my refrain-- - Ye shall pass as a dream, and it will not much matter-- - _The blossoming orchards of England remain!_ - - - - -A GREAT WIND - - - A great wind blows through the pine trees, - A clean salt wind from sea, - A loud wind full of all healing - Blows kindly but boisterously; - Oh, a good wind blows through the pine trees - And the heart and mind of me! - - A wind stirs the long grass lightly - And the dear young flowers of May, - And blows in the English meadows - The breath of a Summer’s day-- - But this wind rings with honour - And is wet with the cold sea spray. - - There are straits where the tall ships founder - And no live thing may draw breath, - Where men look at splendid, angry skies - And hear what the thunder saith: - Where men look their last at glory - And bravely drink of death. - - There is much afoot this evening - In these pine woods by the sea, - And no branch shall endure until morning - That is rotten on the tree-- - Nor any decayed thing endure in my soul - When God’s wind blows through me! - - - - -BIRTHDAY SONNET - - - How shall I find the words of perfect praise, - To give you back the gladness and the mirth, - With which you filled my hands, the lyric days - Your gracious bounty gave me in my dearth? - My song fails on the wing, and yet I know - The meaning of Spring’s living ecstasy, - The laughing prophecy the March winds blow - Among the buds, and through the heart of me. - - I know, I know the rose and silver dress, - Wherewith God clothed that clear and virginal morn, - Which came to you in joyful gentleness, - The hour of shy delight when you were born. - I know the innocence and sweet surprise, - The waiting earth made ready for your eyes. - -_March 27th, 1917_ - - - - -SILENCE - - - Though I should deck you with my jewelled rhyme, - And spread my songs a carpet at your feet, - Where men may see unchanged through changing time - Your face a pattern in sad songs and sweet; - Though I should blow your honour through the earth - Or touch your gentleness on gentle strings, - Or sing abroad your beauty and your worth-- - Dearest, yet these were all imperfect things. - - Rather in lovely silence will I keep - The heart’s shut song no words of mine may mar, - No words of mine enrich. The ways of sleep - And prayer and pain, all things that lonely are, - All humble things that worship and rejoice - Shall weave a spell of silence for my voice. - - - - -AT YELVERTON - - - When into Yelverton I came - I found the bracken all aflame, - The tors in their unyielding line, - The air as comforting as wine, - The swinging wind, the singing sun - At Yelverton. - - At Yelverton the moor is kind - And blows its healing through my mind, - The hunchback skyline lies a mist - Of purple and of amethyst, - And up and down the smooth roads run - At Yelverton. - - At Yelverton a man may stand, - The whole of Devon within his hand, - The tors in their austerity, - And far away the basking sea, - A cloth of shining silver spun - At Yelverton. - - At Yelverton a man may keep - Deep silence and a deeper sleep, - Yet know the brave recurring dream - Of kingly cider, queenly cream - To bless him when his days are done - At Yelverton. - - - - -THE JOY OF THE WORLD - - - For your joy do the long grasses rustle, the tree-tops stir - Where the wind moves eagerly through the pine and the fir; - Alert for your coming the woods and the meadows all wait; - The buttercups grow and the turtle calls to his mate. - - And God for your Clothing fashioned in patience the sun, - A cloak wrought of glory and fire where dreadful dyes run, - Saffron and Crimson and sapphire and gold, as is meet; - And stars to be set on your head and stars under your feet. - - For you, His most lovely of daughters, the mighty God bowed - From heaven to give you your dowry of sunset and cloud; - And splendid in light and in worship were Gabriel’s wings, - When he breathed in your bosom the hope of impossible things. - - Sudden and dear was the secret he whispered to you, - Of one who should quietly fall to the earth with the dew; - As dew that at night in the valleys distils upon fleece, - With no shattering trump did He come but in terrible peace. - - In your hands that are sweeter than honey, in all the wide earth - God laid the desire of the nations, their home and their mirth, - And gave to your merciful keeping man’s joy and man’s rest, - And under incredible skies a babe at your breast. - - And though the stars wane and the royal deep colours should fade, - Yet still shall endure in the heart and the lips of a Maid, - The sweep of the archangel’s pinions--the humble accord-- - The song--the dim stable--the night--and the birth of the Lord! - - For your joy do the long grasses rustle, the tree-tops stir - Where the wind moves eagerly through the pine and the fir; - Alert for your coming the woods and the meadows all wait; - The buttercups grow and the turtle calls to his mate. - - - - -GRATITUDE - - - How shall I answer God and stand, - My naked life within my hand, - To plead upon the Judgment Day? - Seeing the glory in array - Of cherubim and seraphim, - What answer shall I give to Him? - - I was too dull of heart and sense - To read His cryptic providence, - Its strange and intricate device - Was hidden from my foolish eyes. - My gratitude could not reach up - To the sharing of His awful cup, - To the blinding light of mystery - And the painful pomp of sanctity. - - But since as a happy child I went - With love and laughter and content - Along the road of simple things, - Making no idle questionings; - Since young and careless I did keep - The cool and cloistered halls of sleep, - And took my daily drink and food, - Finding them very, very good-- - God may perhaps be pleased to see - Such signs of sheer felicity. - - But if I somehow should be given - An attic in His storied heaven, - I’m sure I should be far apart - From Catherine of the wounded heart, - Teresa of the flaming soul, - And Bruno’s sevenfold aureole, - And be told, of course, I’m not to mix - With the Bernards or the Dominics, - Or thrust my company upon - St. Michael or the great St. John. - - Yet God may grant it me to sit - And sing (with little skill or wit) - My intimate canticles of praise - For all life’s dear and gracious days-- - Though hardly a single syllable - Of what St. Raphael has to tell, - The triumphs of the cosmic wars, - The raptures and the jewelled scars - Of the high lords of martyrdom-- - Hardly a word of this will come - To strike my understanding ear, - Hardly a single word, I fear! - - * * * * * - - But woe upon the Judgment Day - If my heart gladdened not at May; - Nor woke to hear with the waking birds - The morning’s sweet and winsome words; - Nor loved to see laburnums fling - Their pennons to the winds of Spring; - Nor watched among the expectant grass - The Summer’s painted pageant pass; - Nor thrilled with blithe beatitude - Within a kindling Autumn wood - Or when each separate twig did lie - Etched sharp upon the wintry sky. - If out of all my sunny hours - I brought no chaplet of their flowers; - If I gave no kiss to His lovely feet - When they shone as poppies in the wheat; - If no rose to me were a Mystic Rose, - No Snow were whiter than the snows; - If in my baseness I let fall - At once His cross and His carnival ... - Then must I take my ungrateful head - To where the lakes of Hell burn red. - - - - -IN DOMO JOHANNIS - - - Here rest the thin worn hands which fondled Him, - The trembling lips which magnified the Lord, - Who looked upon His handmaid, the young, slim - Mary at her meek tasks, and here the sword - Within the soul of her whose anguished eyes - Gazed at the stars which watch Gethsemane, - And saw the sun fail in the stricken skies. - In these dim rooms she guards the treasury - Of her white memories--the strange, sweet face - More marred than any man’s, the tender, fain - And eager words, the wistful human grace, - The mysteries of glory, joy and pain, - And that hope tremulous, half-sob, half-song, - Ringing through night--“How long, O Lord, how long?” - - - - -AT WOODCHESTER - - - Hark how a silver music falls - Between these meek monastic walls, - And airy flute and psaltery - Awaken heavenly melody! - - Yet not to unentunèd ears - May come the joyance of the spheres, - And only humbled hearts may see - The humble heart of mystery. - - Where tread in light and lilting ways - Bright angels through the dance’s maze - On grassy floors to meet the just - In robes of woven diamond dust. - - And jewelled daisies burst to greet - The flutter of the Blessed’s feet: - Along the cloister’s gathered gloom - Lilies and mystic roses bloom. - - Grown in the hush of hidden hours - Thoughts fairer than the summer flowers - Lift up their sweet and living heads, - Crystalline whites and sanguine reds! - - Who keep in lowly pageantry - Silence a lovely ceremony;[B] - Who set a seal upon their eyes - Responsive only to the skies; - - Who in a quick obedience move - Along the hallowed paths of love, - Win at last to that secret place - Adorned with the glory of God’s face. - - And as each eve the tired sun - Sinks softly down, the long day done, - Upon the bosom of the west-- - So, even so, upon God’s breast - - Each weary heart is folded deep - Into His arms in quiet sleep, - And sheltered safe, all warm and bright, - Against the phantoms of the night. - - [B] “_Quia silentium est pulchra caeremonia_”: - - Ex Constitutionibus Fratrum - S. Ordinis Prædicatorum. - - - - - -“FOR THEY SHALL POSSESS THE EARTH” - - - You who were beauty’s worshipper, - Her ardent lover, in this place - You have seen Beauty face to face; - And known the wistful eyes of her, - And kissed the hands of Poverty, - And praised her tattered bravery. - - You shall be humble, give your days - To silence and simplicity; - And solitude shall come to be - The goal of all your winding ways; - When pride and youthful pomp of words - Fly far away like startled birds. - - Possessing nothing, you shall know - The heart of all things in the earth, - Their secret agonies and mirth, - The awful innocence of snow, - The sadness of November leaves, - The joy of fields of girded sheaves. - - A shelter from the driving rain - Your high renouncement of desire; - Food it shall be and wine and fire; - And Peace shall enter once again - As quietly as dreams in sleep - The hidden trysting-place you keep. - - You shall grow humble as the grass, - And patient as each slow, dumb beast; - And as their fellow--yea the least-- - Yield stoat and hedgehog room to pass; - And learn the ignorance of men - Before the robin and the wren. - - The things so terrible and sweet - You strove to say in accents harsh, - The frogs are croaking on the marsh, - The crickets chirping at your feet-- - Oh, they can teach you unafraid - The meaning of the songs you made. - - Till clothed in white humilities, - Each happening that doth befall, - Each thought of yours be musical, - As wind is musical in the trees, - When strong as sun and clean as dew - Your old dead songs come back to you. - - - - -BALLADE OF THE BEST SONG IN THE WORLD - - - I know a sheaf of splendid songs by heart - Which stir the blood or move the soul to tears, - Of death or honour or of love’s sweet smart, - The runes and legends of a thousand years; - And some of them go plaintively and slow, - And some are jolly like the earth in May-- - But this is _really_ the best song I know: - _I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_. - - I sang it in a house-boat on the Dart - To several members of the House of Peers. - The Editor of the _Exchange and Mart_ - (A man of taste) stood up and led the cheers. - I carolled it at Christmas in the snow, - I hummed it on my summer holiday-- - Doh-ray-me-fah-sol-la-fah-me-ray-doh-- - _I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_. - - It made a gathering of Fabians start - And put their fingers in their outraged ears. - They did not understand my subtle art, - But though they only gave me scoffs and jeers, - I sang my ditty high, I sang it low, - I sang it every known (and unknown) way-- - _Crescendo, forte, pianissimo_-- - _I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_. - - -_L’Envoi_ - - Prince, if by some amazing fluke you go - To heaven, you’ll hear the shawms and citherns play, - And all the trumpets of the angels blow - _I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_. - - - - -TAIL-PIECE - - - A boy goes by the window while I write, - Whistling--the little demon!--in delight. - I shake my fist and scowl at him, and curse - Over the carcase of my murdered verse. - And yet--which is it that the world most needs, - His happy laughter or my threadbare screeds? - There is more poetry in being young - Than in the finest song that Shakespeare sung-- - And if that’s true of godlike Shakespeare--well, - Whistle the Marseillaise, and ring the bell, - And chase the cat, and lose your tennis-ball, - And tear your trousers on the garden wall, - Scalp a Red Indian, sail the Spanish seas-- - Do any mortal thing you damn well please. - - - - -AVE - - - When all the world was black - Your courage did not fail; - No laughter did you lack - Or fellowship or ale. - - And you have made defeat - A nobler pageantry, - Your bitterness more sweet - Than is their victory. - - For by your stricken lips - A gallant song is sung; - Joy suffers no eclipse, - Is lyrical and young, - - Is rooted in the sod, - Is ambient in the air, - Since Hope lifts up to God - The escalade of prayer. - - The tyrants and the kings - In purple splendour ride, - But all ironic things - Go marching at your side - To nerve your hands with power, - To salt your souls with scorn, - Till that awaited hour - When Freedom shall be born. - - - - -A REPLY - -_To one who said that to conceive of God as a person was to -reduce Him to our own level._ - - - Oh, we can pierce - With the swift lightnings far and fierce; - We can behold - Him in the sunset’s lucid gold. - - Yet not by these - Do we read His dark mysteries, - Or tear apart - The thick veil upon Heaven’s heart.... - - Kneel with the kings - Before His dreadful Emptyings, - And see Him laid - In the slender arms of a Maid. - - The village street - Knew God’s familiar, weary feet-- - The carpenter’s Son - Who made the great hills one by one. - - No glory slips - From His sublime apocalypse-- - His homespun dress, - Hunger, thirst and the wilderness. - - To a slave’s death - He gave his broken body’s breath; - An outcast hung - The swart and venomous thieves among. - - And still yields He - Godhead to our humanity, - Leaving for sign - Himself in the meek bread and wine. - - - - -JOB - - - Can flesh and blood contrive defence - ’Gainst swords that pierce the spirit through, - Or meet, not knowing why or whence, - The blind bolt crashing from the blue? - - “Oh, men have held times out of mind - Their stern and stoic courage bright-- - But if no cry comes on the wind, - How shall I face the ambushed night? - - “How shall I turn to bay, and stand - To grapple, if I cannot see - My fierce assailant at my hand, - The high look of mine enemy? - - “If He will answer me, with rod - And plague and thunder let Him come-- - But how can man dispute with God - Who writes no book, whose voice is dumb? - - “Who rings me round with prison bars - Through which I peer with sleepless eyes, - And see the enigmatic stars-- - These only--in the iron skies.” - - * * * * * - - “_These only?_ These together sang - At the glad birthday of the earth - When all the courts of Heaven rang - With shouting and angelic mirth! - - “The night enfolds you with a cloak - Of silence and of chill affright? - But when man’s wells of laughter broke, - Who gave man singing in the night? - - “The Rod shall burst to flowers and fruit - Richer than grew on Aaron’s rod, - And Mercy clothe you head to foot, - Beloved and smitten of your God!” - - - - -THE SOIL OF SOLACE - - - I may not stand with other men, or ride - In those grey fields where fall the screaming shells, - Or mix my blood with blood of those who died - To find a heaven in their sevenfold hells. - Honour and death a strident bugle blows, - Setting an end to death and blasphemy-- - Oh, had I any choice in it, God knows - Where in this epic day I too would be! - Yet may I keep some English heart alive - With a poet’s pleasure in all English things-- - Good-fellowship and kindliness still thrive - In English soil; the dusk is full of wings; - And by the river long reeds grow; and still - A little house sits brooding on the hill! - - - - -TO THE DEAD - - - Now lays the king his crown and sceptre down, - Her gown of taffeta the lovely bride, - The knight his sword, his cap and bells the clown, - The poet all his verse’s pomp and pride-- - The eloquent, the beautiful, the brave - Descend reluctant to the straight, cold grave. - - No more shall shine for them the glorious rose, - Or sunsets stain with red and awful gold, - Night shall no more for them her stars disclose, - Or day the grandeur of the Downs unfold, - Or those eyes dull in death watch solemnly - The regal splendour of the Sussex sea. - - For them the ringing surges are in vain; - They wake not at the cry of waking bird; - The sun, the holy hill, the fruitful rain, - The winds have called them and they have not stirred; - The woods are widowed of your eager tread, - O dear and desolate and dungeoned dead! - - Yet you shall rest awhile in English earth, - And ripen many a pleasant English field - Through the green Summer to the Autumn’s mirth - And flower unconsciously upon the weald-- - Until that last angelic word be said, - And the shut graves deliver up their dead! - - - - -SPRING, 1916 - - - The grey and wrinkled earth again is young - And lays aside her tattered winter weeds - For April-coloured gauze, and gives her tongue - To jocund songs instead of pedants’ screeds. - Scatter the thin, white ashes of the hearth, - And throw the brilliant diamond casement wide-- - Oh, wonder of the lonely garden garth! - Oh, golden glory of the steep hillside - Where flames the living loveliness of God!... - But far, far off, beyond the bloom and bud - A fiercer blossom burgeons from the sod - Bright with the hues of honour and of blood; - And men have plucked the sanguine flower of pain - Where violets might be growing in the rain! - - - - -THE RETURN - - - Beyond these hills where sinks the sun in amber, - Imperial in purple, gold and blood, - I keep the garden walks where roses clamber, - Set in still rows with shrub and flower and bud. - - After the clash of all the swords that sunder, - After the headstrong pride of youth that fails, - After the shattered heavens and the thunder - Remain the summer woods and nightingales! - - So when the fever has died down that urges - My lips to utterance of whirling words, - Which, blown among the winds and stormy surges, - Skim the wild sea-waves like the wild sea-birds. - - So when has ceased the tumult and the riot, - A man may rest his soul a little space, - And seek your solitary eyes in quiet, - And all the gracious calmness of your face. - - - - -FULFILMENT - -(_An Inscription for a Book of Poems_) - - - You who will hold these gathered songs, - Made, darling, long before we met, - Must keep the prophecy which belongs - To those dear eyes, so strangely set - With peace and laughter, where fulfils - The rapture of my alien hills. - - Unknown, unknown you softly trod - Among my fruitful silences, - The last and splendid gift of God. - The quest of all my Odysseys, - The meaning of those quiet lands - Where I found comfort at your hands. - - And when the yellowing woods awake, - And small birds’ twittered loves are told, - When streams run silver, and there break - The crocuses to tender gold, - When quick light winds shall stir my hair, - Some part of you will wander there. - - - - -PROPHECY - - - My eyes look out across the dim grey wold, - The grey sky and the grey druidic trees, - Knowing they keep inviolate the gold - Memories of summer and the prophecies - That lie imprisoned in the buried seeds - Of all the lyric gaiety of Spring.... - The sun shall ride again his flaming steeds; - The dragon-fly dance past on diamond wing; - The earth distil to music; and the rose - Flaunt her impassioned loveliness and be - A symbol of the singing hour that blows - The tall ship and my gladness home to me-- - When I shall cry: Awake, my heart, awake, - And deck yourself in beauty for her sake! - - - - -THE SINGER TO HIS LADY - - - If any song I sing for you should be - But made to please a poet’s vanity, - A richly jewelled and an empty cup - In which no hallowed wine is offered up, - A thing of chosen rhyme and cunning phrase, - Fashioned that it may bring its maker praise; - If love in me grow only soft and sweet, - Remembering not with what worn and weary feet - It journeyed to your fields of golden grain, - The quiet orchards folded in the rain, - The twilight gardens and the morning birds; - If love remembers not and brings you words, - Words as your thanks; if in an idle hour - It breaks its sword and plays the troubadour-- - Then may high God, the Universal Lord, - Break me, as I false knight have broken my sword, - If I who have touched your hands should bring eclipse - To love’s nobility with lying lips, - Having seen more terrible than gleaming spears - Your gentleness, your sorrow and your tears! - - - - -CERTAINTIES - - - Across the fields of unforgotten days - I see the gorgeous pearl-white morning burst - Through her fine gauze of dreamy summer haze - Beyond the rolling flats of Staplehurst, - To bless the hours with songs of nesting birds, - And the wild hedge rose and the apple tree, - And laughter and the ring of friendly words, - And the noon’s pageant moving languidly. - I walk again with boys now grown to men, - And see far off with reminiscent eyes, - How in the tangled woods of Horsmonden - The mighty sun, a blood-red dragon, dies.... - Some things there are as rooted as the grass - In a man’s mind--and these shall never pass. - - - - -FEAR - - - Tread softly; we are on enchanted ground: - One touch and every hidden thing lies bare, - The deep sea sundered, suddenly unbound - The awful thunders instinct in the air! - - Oh, these we know; but what if we should break - A secret spell as easily as glass, - And stumble on their sleeping wrath and wake - The armies and the million blades of grass? - - And find more dread than whirlwinds round our head, - The sweep of sparrows’ fierce, avenging wings, - The anger of wild roses burning red, - The terrible hate of earth’s most helpless things? - - - - -CHARITY - - - Who think of Charity as milky-eyed - Know not of God’s great handmaid’s terrible name, - Who comes in garments by the rainbow dyed, - And crowned and winged and charioted with flame. - - For Truth and Justice ride abroad with her, - And Honour’s trumpets peal before her face: - The high archangels stand and minister - When she doth sit within her holy place. - - None knoweth in the depth nor in the height - What meaneth Charity, God’s secret word, - But kiss her feet, and veil their burning sight - Before her naked heart, her naked sword. - - - - -SIGHT AND INSIGHT - - - This hour God’s darkest mysteries - Are plainer than the screeds of men, - Tangled and false philosophies - Fashioned by lying tongue and pen. - - Plain as those bastions of cloud, - Kind as the wide and kindly skies, - And in the wild winds shouting loud - The truths concealed from pedants’ eyes. - - Pages which he may read who runs, - Where no unlettered man may fail, - Candid as are his noonday suns - Familiar as his cheese and ale. - - Him, Whom our eyes may see, our ears - Hear, Whom our groping hands may touch-- - Him we shall find ere many years, - And finding fear not overmuch. - - Who gave me simple things to keep,-- - Laughter and love and memories, - A farm, and meadows full of sheep, - And quiet gardens full of bees, - And those five gateways of the soul, - Through which all good may come to me, - Saints glorious of aureole, - The flying thunders of the sea, - - And feasts, and gracious hands of friends, - And flowers good to stroke and smell; - Oh, in the secret woods He sends - The birds their trembling joys to tell! - - He, too, is every day afresh - Hid and revealed in bread and wine,-- - The awful Word of God made flesh, - Mortal commingling with divine! - - Shadows and evil dreams o’erthrown - With Dagon and the gods of scorn, - Since Peace was in the silence blown - On that dear night when God was born. - - - - -CHRISTMAS CAROL - - - Lay quietly Thy kingly head - O mighty weakness from on high; - God rest Thee in Thy manger-bed-- - _Sing Lullo-lullo-lullaby_-- - O Splendour hid from every eye!-- - _La-lullo-lullo-lullaby!_ - - “Ye mild and humble cattle, yield - Room for my little son to lie; - Your God and mine is here revealed-- - _Sing Lullo-lullo-lullaby_-- - Naked beneath a naked sky-- - _La-lullo-lullo-lullaby!_ - - “Deal kindly with Him, moon and sun; - No bird to Him a song deny; - Ye winds and showers every one - _Sing Lullo-lullo-lullaby_-- - For men shall cast Him out to die ... - _La-lullo-lullo-lullaby!_” - - - - -A GARDEN ENCLOSED - - - There is a plot where all the winds are still, - A hidden garden where no voice is heard, - Only a splashing fountain and the shrill - Sweet clamour of a bird. - - The poplars guard like tall, grave sentinels - Its peace inviolate; and in the tower - With careful ritual ring out the bells - The end of each dead hour. - - Laburnums, hollyhocks and roses run - By secret paths--but who shall burst the bars? - Oh, who shall see--except the curious sun - And all the peering stars?... - - And Thou and Thou, my Love, for whom I keep - My heart a watered garden, all Thine own, - Where flowers my guardian angel tends in sleep, - Bright summer blooms, are grown! - - Come, my Belovèd, come--behold, the skies - Are fragrant with the evening scents and dew: - My soul hath sickened for Thy lips and eyes, - And laden is with rue! - - Oh, Thou shalt fly with soft wings like a dove’s - And hold me fast beyond all fate and fear, - And we ’mid flowers shall tell our flowering loves - Where no one else can hear! - - - - -THE LOVER - - - An hour ago I saw Thee ride in gold - Along the burning highways of the skies; - And now--Thou comest with soft and suppliant eyes, - And fearing lest Thy love seem overbold. - - In this dear garden set with flower and tree, - My soul, a maiden whom a great king woos, - Stands thrilled and silent--Lord, what can she choose, - Dumbfounded by Thy strange humility? - - Since Thou wilt have it so, my Lord, I bare - In love and shamefastness my soul--Thy soul-- - So lay Thy tender hand, an aureole, - Upon my beating heart, my chrismed hair. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Theodore Maynard - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS *** - -***** This file should be named 55079-0.txt or 55079-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/0/7/55079/ - -Produced by Larry B. 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