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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Georgian Poetry 1916-17, by Various
+
+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
+
+
+Title: Georgian Poetry 1916-17
+
+Author: Various
+
+Illustrator: Sir Edward Howard Marsh
+
+Posting Date: February 16, 2013 [EBook #9546]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 8, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGIAN POETRY 1916-17 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Clytie Siddall, Keren Vergon, and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Published November 1917
+
+
+
+
+GEORGIAN POETRY
+
+
+
+
+1916-1917
+
+
+
+
+TO EDMUND GOSSE
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH THOUSAND
+
+THE POETRY BOOKSHOP
+35 DEVONSHIRE ST. THEOBALDS RD.
+LONDON W.C.1
+
+MCMXVIII
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+This third book of 'Georgian Poetry' carries to the end of a seventh
+year the presentation of chosen examples from the work of contemporary
+poets belonging to the younger generation. Of the eighteen writers
+included, nine appear in the series for the first time. The
+representation of the older inhabitants has in most cases been
+restricted in order to allow full space for the new-comers; and the
+alphabetical order of the names has been reversed, so as to bring more
+of these into prominence than would otherwise have been done.
+
+My thanks for permission to print the poems are due to Messrs. Chatto &
+Windus, Constable, Fifield, Heinemann, Macmillan, Elkin Mathews, Martin
+Secker, and Sidgwick & Jackson, and to the Editors of the 'Nation', the
+'New Statesman', and 'To-Day'.
+
+E.M.
+
+September 1917.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+W.J. TURNER
+
+  Romance                                        (from 'The Hunter')
+  Ecstasy                                           "        "
+  Magic                                             "        "
+  The Hunter                                        "        "
+  The Sky-sent Death                                "        "
+  The Caves of Auvergne
+
+
+JAMES STEPHENS
+
+  The Fifteen Acres            (from 'The Adventures of Seumas Beg')
+  Check                            "   "     "
+  Westland Row                     "   "     "
+  The Turn of the Road             "   "
+  A Visit from Abroad              "   "
+
+
+J. C. SQUIRE
+
+  A House                               (from 'The Lily of Malud ')
+  To a Bull-dog                            "    "     "
+  The Lily of Malud                        "    "     "
+
+
+SIEGFRIED SASSOON
+
+  A Letter Home                           (from 'The Old Huntsman')
+  The Kiss                                   "    "    "
+  The Dragon and the Undying                           "
+  To Victory                                           "
+  'They'                                               "
+  'In the Pink'                                        "
+  Haunted                                              "
+  The Death-Bed                                        "
+
+
+I. ROSENBERG
+
+  'Ah, Koelue ...'
+
+
+ROBERT NICHOLS
+
+  To----                          (from 'Ardours and Endurances')
+  The Assault                           "   "    "
+  Fulfilment                            "   "    "
+  The Philosopher's Oration                      "
+  The Naiads' Music                          "   "
+  The Prophetic Bard's Oration                   "
+  The Tower                                      "
+
+
+HAROLD MONRO
+
+  Two Poems                               (from 'Strange Meetings')
+  Every Thing                                 "   "    "
+  Solitude                                    "   "    "
+  Week-end                                    "   "    "
+  The Bird at Dawn                                "    "
+
+
+JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+  Seven Poems                             (from 'Lollingdon Downs')
+
+
+RALPH HODGSON
+
+  The Gipsy Girl                                     (from 'Poems')
+  The Bells of Heaven                                         "
+  Babylon                                                     "
+
+
+ROBERT GRAVES
+
+  It's a Queer Time                       (from 'Over the Brazier')
+  David and Goliath                  (from 'Fairies and Fusiliers')
+  A Pinch of Salt                       "          "
+  Star Talk                               (from 'Over the Brazier')
+  In the Wilderness                           "     "
+  The Boy in Church                  (from 'Fairies and Fusiliers')
+  The Lady Visitor                       "   "   "
+  Not Dead                               "   "   "
+
+
+WILFRID WILSON GIBSON
+
+  Rupert Brooke                                    (from 'Friends')
+  Tenants                                              "   "
+  For G.                                               "   "
+  Sea-Change                                           "   "
+  Battle                                           (from 'Battle'):
+    I. The Return
+    II. The Dancers
+    III. Hit
+  Lament                                              (from 'Whin')
+
+
+JOHN FREEMAN
+
+  Music Comes                                  (from 'Stone Trees')
+  November Skies                                   "   "      "
+  Discovery                                        "   "      "
+  'It was the Lovely Moon'                                    "
+  Stone Trees                                                 "
+  The Pigeons                                (published in To-Day')
+  Happy is England Now                         (from 'Stone Trees')
+
+
+JOHN DRINKWATER
+
+  May Garden                                         (from 'Tides')
+  The Midlands                                           "   "
+  The Cotswold Farmers                                       "
+  Reciprocity                                                "
+  Birthright                                   (from 'Olton Pools')
+  Olton Pools                                         "   "  "
+
+
+WALTER DE LA MARE
+
+  The Scribe                                         (from 'Poems')
+  The Remonstrance                                            "
+  The Ghost                                                   "
+  The Fool rings his Bells                                    "
+
+
+WILLIAM H. DAVIES
+
+  The White Cascade                           (from 'Child Lovers')
+  Easter
+  Raptures
+  Cowslips and Larks
+
+
+GORDON BOTTOMLEY
+
+  Atlantis                   (from 'An Annual of New Poetry, 1917')
+  New Year's Eve, 1913           "   "
+  In Memoriam, A. M. W.          "   "
+
+
+MAURICE BARING
+
+  In Memoriam, A. H.
+
+
+HERBERT ASQUITH
+
+  The Volunteer
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+W.J. TURNER
+
+
+
+ROMANCE
+
+
+When I was but thirteen or so
+  I went into a golden land,
+Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
+  Took me by the hand.
+
+My father died, my brother too,
+  They passed like fleeting dreams,
+I stood where Popocatapetl
+  In the sunlight gleams.
+
+I dimly heard the master's voice
+  And boys far-off at play,
+Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
+  Had stolen me away.
+
+I walked in a great golden dream
+  To and fro from school--
+Shining Popocatapetl
+  The dusty streets did rule.
+
+I walked home with a gold dark boy
+  And never a word I'd say,
+Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
+  Had taken my speech away:
+
+I gazed entranced upon his face
+  Fairer than any flower--
+O shining Popocatapetl
+  It was thy magic hour:
+
+The houses, people, traffic seemed
+  Thin fading dreams by day,
+Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
+  They had stolen my soul away!
+
+
+
+ECSTASY
+
+
+I saw a frieze on whitest marble drawn
+Of boys who sought for shells along the shore,
+Their white feet shedding pallor in the sea,
+The shallow sea, the spring-time sea of green
+That faintly creamed against the cold, smooth pebbles.
+
+The air was thin, their limbs were delicate,
+The wind had graven their small eager hands
+To feel the forests and the dark nights of Asia
+Behind the purple bloom of the horizon,
+Where sails would float and slowly melt away.
+
+Their naked, pure, and grave, unbroken silence
+Filled the soft air as gleaming, limpid water
+Fills a spring sky those days when rain is lying
+In shattered bright pools on the wind-dried roads,
+And their sweet bodies were wind-purified.
+
+One held a shell unto his shell-like ear
+And there was music carven in his face,
+His eyes half-closed, his lips just breaking open
+To catch the lulling, mazy, coralline roar
+Of numberless caverns filled with singing seas.
+
+And all of them were hearkening as to singing
+Of far-off voices thin and delicate,
+Voices too fine for any mortal wind
+To blow into the whorls of mortal ears--
+And yet those sounds flowed from their grave, sweet faces.
+
+And as I looked I heard that delicate music,
+And I became as grave, as calm, as still
+As those carved boys. I stood upon that shore,
+I felt the cool sea dream around my feet,
+My eyes were staring at the far horizon:
+
+And the wind came and purified my limbs,
+And the stars came and set within my eyes,
+And snowy clouds rested upon my shoulders,
+And the blue sky shimmered deep within me,
+And I sang like a carven pipe of music.
+
+
+
+MAGIC
+
+I love a still conservatory
+  That's full of giant, breathless palms,
+Azaleas, clematis and vines,
+  Whose quietness great Trees becalms
+Filling the air with foliage,
+  A curved and dreamy statuary.
+
+I like to hear a cold, pure rill
+  Of water trickling low, afar
+With sudden little jerks and purls
+  Into a tank or stoneware jar,
+The song of a tiny sleeping bird
+  Held like a shadow in its trill.
+
+I love the mossy quietness
+  That grows upon the great stone flags,
+The dark tree-ferns, the staghorn ferns,
+  The prehistoric, antlered stags
+That carven stand and stare among
+  The silent, ferny wilderness.
+
+And are they birds or souls that flit
+  Among the trees so silently,
+And are they fish or ghosts that haunt
+  The still pools of the rockery!--
+For I am but a sculptured rock
+  As in that magic place I sit.
+
+Still as a great jewel is the air
+  With boughs and leaves smooth-carved in it,
+And rocks and trees and giant ferns,
+  And blooms with inner radiance lit,
+And naked water like a nymph
+  That dances tireless slim and bare.
+
+I watch a white Nyanza float
+  Upon a green, untroubled pool,
+A fairyland Ophelia, she
+  Has cast herself in water cool,
+And lies while fairy cymbals ring
+  Drowned in her fairy castle moat.
+
+The goldfish sing a winding song
+  Below her pale and waxen face,
+The water-nymph is dancing by
+  Lifting smooth arms with mournful grace,
+A stainless white dream she floats on
+  While fairies beat a fairy gong.
+
+Silent the Cattleyas blaze
+  And thin red orchid shapes of Death
+Peer savagely with twisted lips
+  Sucking an eerie, phantom breath
+With that bright, spotted, fever'd lust
+  That watches lonely travellers craze.
+
+Gigantic, mauve and hairy leaves
+  Hang like obliterated faces
+Full of dim unattained expression
+  Such as haunts virgin forest places
+When Silence leaps among the trees
+  And the echoing heart deceives.
+
+
+
+THE HUNTER
+
+
+"But there was one land he dared not enter."
+
+
+Beyond the blue, the purple seas,
+Beyond the thin horizon's line,
+Beyond Antilla, Hebrides,
+Jamaica, Cuba, Caribbees,
+There lies the land of Yucatan.
+
+The land, the land of Yucatan,
+The low coast breaking into foam,
+The dim hills where my thoughts shall roam
+The forests of my boyhood's home,
+The splendid dream of Yucatan!
+
+I met thee first long, long ago
+Turning a printed page, and I
+Stared at a world I did not know
+And felt my blood like fire flow
+At that strange name of Yucatan.
+
+O those sweet, far-off Austral days
+When life had a diviner glow,
+When hot Suns whipped my blood to know
+Things all unseen, then I could go
+Into thy heart O Yucatan!
+
+I have forgotten what I saw,
+I have forgotten what I knew,
+And many lands I've set sail for
+To find that marvellous spell of yore,
+Never to set foot on thy shore
+O haunting land of Yucatan!
+
+But sailing I have passed thee by,
+And leaning on the white ship's rail
+Watched thy dim hills till mystery
+Wrapped thy far stillness close to me
+And I have breathed ''tis Yucatan!
+
+''Tis Yucatan, 'tis Yucatan!'
+The ship is sailing far away,
+The coast recedes, the dim hills fade,
+A bubble-winding track we've made,
+And thou'rt a Dream O Yucatan!
+
+
+
+THE SKY-SENT DEATH
+
+
+"A German aeroplane flew over Greek territory dropping a bomb which
+killed a shepherd."
+
+
+'Sitting on a stone a Shepherd,
+Stone and Shepherd sleeping,
+Under the high blue Attic sky;
+Along the green monotony
+Grey sheep creeping, creeping'.
+
+Deep down on the hill and valley,
+At the bottom of the sunshine,
+Like great Ships in clearest water,
+Water holding anchored Shadows,
+Water without wave or ripple,
+Sunshine deep and clear and heavy,
+Sunshine like a booming bell
+Made of purest golden metal,
+White Ships heavy in the sky
+Sleep with anchored shadow.
+
+Pipe a song in that still air
+And the song would be of crystal
+Snapped in silence, or a bronze vase
+Smooth and graceful, curved and shining.
+Tell an old tale or a history;
+It would seem a slow Procession
+Full of gestures; limbs and torso
+White and rounded in the sunlight.
+
+'Sitting on a stone a Shepherd,
+Stone and Shepherd sleeping,
+Like a fragment of old marble
+Dug up from the hillside shadow'.
+
+In the sunshine deep and soundless
+Came a faint metallic humming;
+In the sunshine clear and heavy
+Came a speck, a speck of shadow--
+Shepherd lift your head and listen,
+Listen to that humming Shadow!
+
+'Sitting on a stone the Shepherd,
+Stone and Shepherd sleeping
+In a sleep dreamless as water,
+Water in a white glass beaker,
+Clear, pellucid, without shadow;
+Underneath a sky-blue crystal
+Sees his grey sheep creeping'.
+
+In the sunshine clear and heavy
+Shadow-fled a dark hand downward:
+In the sunshine deep and soundless
+Burst a star-dropt thing of thunder--
+Smoked the burnt blue air's torn veiling
+Drooping softly round the hillside.
+
+Boomed the silence in returning
+To the crater in the hillside,
+To the red earth fresh and bleeding,
+To the mangled heap remaining:
+Far away that humming Shadow
+Vanished in the azure distance.
+
+'Sitting on a stone no Shepherd,
+Stone and Shepherd sleeping,
+But across the hill and valley
+Grey sheep creeping, creeping,
+Standing carven on the sky-line,
+Scattering in the open distance,
+Free, in no man's keeping'.
+
+
+
+THE CAVES OF AUVERGNE
+
+
+He carved the red deer and the bull
+  Upon the smooth cave rock,
+Returned from war with belly full,
+  And scarred with many a knock,
+He carved the red deer and the bull
+  Upon the smooth cave rock.
+
+The stars flew by the cave's wide door,
+  The clouds wild trumpets blew,
+Trees rose in wild dreams from the floor,
+  Flowers with dream faces grew
+Up to the sky, and softly hung
+  Golden and white and blue.
+
+The woman ground her heap of corn,
+  Her heart a guarded fire;
+The wind played in his trembling soul
+  Like a hand upon a lyre,
+The wind drew faintly on the stone
+  Symbols of his desire:
+
+The red deer of the forest dark,
+  Whose antlers cut the sky,
+That vanishes into the mirk
+  And like a dream flits by,
+And by an arrow slain at last
+  Is but the wind's dark body.
+
+The bull that stands in marshy lakes
+  As motionless and still
+As a dark rock jutting from a plain
+  Without a tree or hill,
+The bull that is the sign of life,
+  Its sombre, phallic will.
+
+And from the dead, white eyes of them
+  The wind springs up anew,
+It blows upon the trembling heart,
+  And bull and deer renew
+Their flitting life in the dim past
+  When that dead Hunter drew.
+
+I sit beside him in the night,
+  And, fingering his red stone,
+I chase through endless forests dark
+  Seeking that thing unknown,
+That which is not red deer or bull,
+  But which by them was shown:
+
+By those stiff shapes in which he drew
+  His soul's exalted cry,
+When flying down the forest dark
+  He slew and knew not why,
+When he was filled with song, and strength
+  Flowed to him from the sky.
+
+The wind blows from red deer and bull,
+  The clouds wild trumpets blare,
+Trees rise in wild dreams from the earth,
+  Flowers with dream faces stare,
+'O Hunter, your own shadow stands
+  Within your forest lair!'
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+JAMES STEPHENS
+
+
+
+THE FIFTEEN ACRES
+
+
+  I cling and swing
+  On a branch, or sing
+Through the cool, clear hush of
+       Morning, O:
+  Or fling my wing
+  On the air, and bring
+To sleepier birds a warning, O:
+  That the night's in flight,
+  And the sun's in sight,
+And the dew is the grass adorning, O:
+  And the green leaves swing
+  As I sing, sing, sing,
+    Up by the river,
+      Down the dell,
+    To the little wee nest,
+      Where the big tree fell,
+    So early in the morning, O.
+
+  I flit and twit
+  In the sun for a bit
+When his light so bright is shining, O:
+  Or sit and fit
+  My plumes, or knit
+Straw plaits for the nest's nice lining, O:
+  And she with glee
+  Shows unto me
+Underneath her wings reclining, O:
+  And I sing that Peg
+  Has an egg, egg, egg,
+    Up by the oat-field,
+    Round the mill,
+  Past the meadow,
+    Down the hill,
+  So early in the morning, O.
+
+  I stoop and swoop
+  On the air, or loop
+Through the trees, and then go soaring, O:
+  To group with a troop
+  On the gusty poop
+While the wind behind is roaring, O:
+  I skim and swim
+  By a cloud's red rim
+And up to the azure flooring, O:
+  And my wide wings drip
+  As I slip, slip, slip
+    Down through the rain-drops,
+      Back where Peg
+    Broods in the nest
+      On the little white egg,
+    So early in the morning, O.
+
+
+
+CHECK
+
+
+The night was creeping on the ground;
+She crept and did not make a sound
+Until she reached the tree, and then
+She covered it, and stole again
+Along the grass beside the wall.
+
+I heard the rustle of her shawl
+As she threw blackness everywhere
+Upon the sky and ground and air,
+And in the room where I was hid:
+But no matter what she did
+To everything that was without,
+She could not put my candle out.
+
+So I stared at the night, and she
+Stared back solemnly at me.
+
+
+
+WESTLAND ROW
+
+
+Every Sunday there's a throng
+Of pretty girls, who trot along
+In a pious, breathless state
+(They are nearly always late)
+To the Chapel, where they pray
+For the sins of Saturday.
+
+They have frocks of white and blue,
+Yellow sashes they have too,
+And red ribbons show each head
+Tenderly is ringleted;
+And the bell rings loud, and the
+Railway whistles urgently.
+
+After Chapel they will go,
+Walking delicately slow,
+Telling still how Father John
+Is so good to look upon,
+And such other grave affairs
+As they thought of during prayers.
+
+
+
+THE TURN OF THE ROAD
+
+
+I was playing with my hoop along the road
+  Just where the bushes are, when, suddenly,
+There came a shout,--I ran away and stowed
+  Myself beneath a bush, and watched to see
+What made the noise, and then, around the bend,
+  I saw a woman running. She was old
+And wrinkle-faced, and had big teeth.--The end
+  Of her red shawl caught on a bush and rolled
+Right off her, and her hair fell down.--Her face
+  Was awful white, and both her eyes looked sick,
+And she was talking queer. 'O God of Grace!'
+  Said she, 'where is the child?' and flew back quick
+The way she came, and screamed, and shook her hands;
+... Maybe she was a witch from foreign lands.
+
+
+
+A VISIT FROM ABROAD
+
+
+A speck went blowing up against the sky
+  As little as a leaf: then it drew near
+And broadened.--'It's a bird,' said I,
+  And fetched my bow and arrows. It was queer!
+It grew from up a speck into a blot,
+And squattered past a cloud; then it flew down
+All crumply, and waggled such a lot
+  I thought the thing would fall.--It was a brown
+Old carpet where a man was sitting snug
+  Who, when he reached the ground, began to sew
+A big hole in the middle of the rug,
+  And kept on peeping everywhere to know
+Who might be coming--then he gave a twist
+  And flew away.... I fired at him but missed.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+J.C. SQUIRE
+
+
+
+A HOUSE
+
+
+Now very quietly, and rather mournfully,
+  In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires,
+And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him
+  Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.
+
+And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied,
+  From that faint exquisite celestial strand,
+And turn and see again the only dwelling-place
+  In this wide wilderness of darkening land.
+
+The house, that house, O now what change has come to it.
+  Its crude red-brick facade, its roof of slate;
+What imperceptible swift hand has given it
+  A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?
+
+No hand has altered it, that parallelogram,
+  So inharmonious, so ill-arranged;
+That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was;
+  No, it is not that any line has changed.
+
+Only that loneliness is now accentuate
+  And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave,
+This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again,
+  And all man's energies seem very brave.
+
+And this mean edifice, which some dull architect
+  Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind,
+Takes on the quality of that magnificent
+  Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind.
+
+Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be,
+  Yet imperturbable that house will rest,
+Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny,
+  Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast.
+
+Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac
+  May howl their menaces, and hail descend;
+Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly,
+  Not even scornfully, and wait the end.
+
+And all a universe of nameless messengers
+  From unknown distances may whisper fear,
+And it will imitate immortal permanence,
+  And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear.
+
+It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too,
+  When there is none to watch, no alien eyes
+To watch its ugliness assume a majesty
+  From this great solitude of evening skies.
+
+So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around,
+  While life remains to it prepared to outface
+Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries
+  May hide and wait for it in time and space.
+
+
+
+TO A BULL-DOG
+
+
+(W. H. S., Capt. [Acting Major] R. F. A.; killed, April 12, 1917)
+
+
+We shan't see Willy any more, Mamie,
+  He won't be coming any more:
+He came back once and again and again,
+  But he won't get leave any more.
+
+We looked from the window and there was his cab,
+  And we ran downstairs like a streak,
+And he said, 'Hullo, you bad dog,' and you crouched to the floor,
+  Paralysed to hear him speak,
+
+And then let fly at his face and his chest
+  Till I had to hold you down,
+While he took off his cap and his gloves and his coat,
+  And his bag and his thonged Sam Browne.
+
+We went upstairs to the studio,
+  The three of us, just as of old,
+And you lay down and I sat and talked to him
+  As round the room he strolled.
+
+Here in the room where, years ago
+  Before the old life stopped,
+He worked all day with his slippers and his pipe,
+  He would pick up the threads he'd dropped,
+
+Fondling all the drawings he had left behind,
+  Glad to find them all still the same,
+And opening the cupboards to look at his belongings
+  ... Every time he came.
+
+But now I know what a dog doesn't know,
+  Though you'll thrust your head on my knee,
+And try to draw me from the absent-mindedness
+  That you find so dull in me.
+
+And all your life you will never know
+  What I wouldn't tell you even if I could,
+That the last time we waved him away
+  Willy went for good.
+
+But sometimes as you lie on the hearthrug
+  Sleeping in the warmth of the stove,
+Even through your muddled old canine brain
+  Shapes from the past may rove.
+
+You'll scarcely remember, even in a dream,
+  How we brought home a silly little pup,
+With a big square head and little crooked legs
+  That could scarcely bear him up,
+
+But your tail will tap at the memory
+  Of a man whose friend you were,
+Who was always kind though he called you a naughty dog
+  When he found you on his chair;
+
+Who'd make you face a reproving finger
+  And solemnly lecture you
+Till your head hung downwards and you looked very sheepish:
+  And you'll dream of your triumphs too,
+
+Of summer evening chases in the garden
+  When you dodged us all about with a bone:
+We were three boys, and you were the cleverest,
+  But now we're two alone.
+
+When summer comes again,
+  And the long sunsets fade,
+We shall have to go on playing the feeble game for two
+  That since the war we've played.
+
+And though you run expectant as you always do
+  To the uniforms we meet,
+You'll never find Willy among all the soldiers
+  In even the longest street,
+
+Nor in any crowd; yet, strange and bitter thought,
+  Even now were the old words said,
+If I tried the old trick and said 'Where's Willy?'
+  You would quiver and lift your head,
+
+And your brown eyes would look to ask if I was serious,
+  And wait for the word to spring.
+Sleep undisturbed: I shan't say 'that' again,
+  You innocent old thing.
+
+I must sit, not speaking, on the sofa,
+  While you lie asleep on the floor;
+For he's suffered a thing that dogs couldn't dream of,
+  And he won't be coming here any more.
+
+
+
+THE LILY OF MALUD
+
+
+The lily of Malud is born in secret mud.
+It is breathed like a word in a little dark ravine
+Where no bird was ever heard and no beast was ever seen,
+And the leaves are never stirred by the panther's velvet sheen.
+
+It blooms once a year in summer moonlight,
+In a valley of dark fear full of pale moonlight:
+It blooms once a year, and dies in a night,
+And its petals disappear with the dawn's first light;
+And when that night has come, black small-breasted maids,
+With ecstatic terror dumb, steal fawn-like through the shades
+To watch, hour by hour, the unfolding of the flower.
+
+When the world is full of night, and the moon reigns alone
+And drowns in silver light the known and the unknown,
+When each hut is a mound, half blue-silver and half black,
+And casts upon the ground the hard shadow of its back,
+When the winds are out of hearing and the tree-tops never shake,
+When the grass in the clearing is silent but awake
+'Neath a moon-paven sky: all the village is asleep
+And the babes that nightly cry dream deep:
+
+      From the doors the maidens creep,
+Tiptoe over dreaming curs, soft, so soft, that not one stirs,
+And stand curved and a-quiver, like bathers by a river,
+Looking at the forest wall, groups of slender naked girls,
+Whose black bodies shine like pearls where the moonbeams fall.
+
+They have waked, they knew not why, at a summons from the night,
+They have stolen fearfully from the dark to the light,
+Stepping over sleeping men, who have moved and slept again:
+And they know not why they go to the forest, but they know,
+As their moth-feet pass to the shore of the grass
+And the forest's dreadful brink, that their tender spirits shrink:
+They would flee, but cannot turn, for their eyelids burn
+With still frenzy, and each maid, ere she leaves the moonlit space,
+If she sees another's face is thrilled and afraid.
+
+Now like little phantom fawns they thread the outer lawns
+Where the boles of giant trees stand about in twos and threes,
+Till the forest grows more dense and the darkness more intense,
+And they only sometimes see in a lone moon-ray
+A dead and spongy trunk in the earth half-sunk,
+Or the roots of a tree with fungus grey,
+Or a drift of muddy leaves, or a banded snake that heaves.
+
+And the towering unseen roof grows more intricate, and soon
+It is featureless and proof to the lost forgotten moon.
+But they could not look above as with blind-drawn feet they move
+Onwards on the scarce-felt path, with quick and desperate breath,
+For their circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head,
+Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape,
+And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear
+A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore....
+And when things swish or fall, they shiver but dare not call.
+
+O what is it leads the way that they do not stray?
+What unimagined arm keeps their bodies from harm?
+What presence concealed lifts their little feet that yield
+Over dry ground and wet till their straining eyes are met
+With a thinning of the darkness?
+
+And the foremost faintly cries in awed surprise:
+And they one by one emerge from the gloom to the verge
+Of a small sunken vale full of moonlight pale.
+And they hang along the bank, clinging to the branches dank,
+A shadowy festoon out of sight of the moon;
+And they see in front of them, rising from the mud,
+A single straight stem and a single pallid bud
+In that little lake of light from the moon's calm height.
+
+A stem, a ghostly bud, on the moon-swept mud
+That shimmers like a pond; and over there beyond
+The guardian forest high, menacing and strange,
+Invades the empty sky with its wild black range.
+
+And they watch hour by hour that small lonely flower
+In that deep forest place that hunter never found.
+
+It shines without sound, as a star in space.
+
+And the silence all around that solitary place
+Is like silence in a dream; till a sudden flashing gleam
+Down their dark faces flies; and their lips fall apart
+And their glimmering great eyes with excitement dart
+And their fingers, clutching the branches they were touching,
+Shake and arouse hissing leaves on the boughs.
+
+And they whisper aswoon: Did it move in the moon?
+
+O it moved as it grew!
+It is moving, opening, with calm and gradual will
+And their bodies where they cling are shadowed and still,
+And with marvel they mark that the mud now is dark,
+For the unfolding flower, like a goddess in her power,
+Challenges the moon with a light of her own,
+That lovelily grows as the petals unclose,
+Wider, more wide with an awful inward pride
+Till the heart of it breaks, and stilled is their breath,
+For the radiance it makes is as wonderful as death.
+
+The morning's crimson stain tinges their ashen brows
+As they part the last boughs and slowly step again
+On to the village grass, and chill and languid pass
+Into the huts to sleep.
+                       Brief slumber, yet so deep
+That, when they wake to day, darkness and splendour seem
+Broken and far-away, a faint miraculous dream;
+And when those maidens rise they are as they ever were
+Save only for a rare shade of trouble in their eyes.
+And the surly thick-lipped men, as they sit about their huts
+Making drums out of guts, grunting gruffly now and then,
+Carving sticks of ivory, stretching shields of wrinkled skin,
+Smoothing sinister and thin squatting gods of ebony,
+Chip and grunt and do not see.
+                        But each mother, silently,
+Longer than her wont stays shut in the dimness of her hut,
+For she feels a brooding cloud of memory in the air,
+A lingering thing there that makes her sit bowed
+With hollow shining eyes, as the night-fire dies,
+And stare softly at the ember, and try to remember,
+Something sorrowful and far, something sweet and vaguely seen
+Like an early evening star when the sky is pale green:
+A quiet silver tower that climbed in an hour,
+Or a ghost like a flower, or a flower like a queen:
+Something holy in the past that came and did not last....
+But she knows not what it was.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+SIEGFRIED SASSOON
+
+
+
+A LETTER HOME
+
+
+('To Robert Graves')
+
+
+I
+
+Here I'm sitting in the gloom
+Of my quiet attic room.
+France goes rolling all around,
+Fledged with forest May has crowned.
+And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted,
+Thinking how the fighting started,
+Wondering when we'll ever end it,
+Back to Hell with Kaiser send it,
+Gag the noise, pack up and go,
+Clockwork soldiers in a row.
+I've got better things to do
+Than to waste my time on you.
+
+
+II
+
+Robert, when I drowse to-night,
+Skirting lawns of sleep to chase
+Shifting dreams in mazy light,
+Somewhere then I'll see your face
+Turning back to bid me follow
+Where I wag my arms and hollo,
+Over hedges hasting after
+Crooked smile and baffling laughter,
+Running tireless, floating, leaping,
+Down your web-hung woods and valleys,
+Garden glooms and hornbeam alleys,
+Where the glowworm stars are peeping,
+Till I find you, quiet as stone
+On a hill-top all alone,
+Staring outward, gravely pondering
+Jumbled leagues of hillock-wandering.
+
+
+III
+
+You and I have walked together
+In the starving winter weather.
+We've been glad because we knew
+Time's too short and friends are few.
+We've been sad because we missed
+One whose yellow head was kissed
+By the gods, who thought about him
+Till they couldn't do without him.
+Now he's here again; I've seen
+Soldier David dressed in green,
+Standing in a wood that swings
+To the madrigal he sings.
+He's come back, all mirth and glory,
+Like the prince in a fairy story.
+Winter called him far away;
+Blossoms bring him home with May.
+
+
+IV
+
+Well, I know you'll swear it's true
+That you found him decked in blue
+Striding up through morning-land
+With a cloud on either hand.
+Out in Wales, you'll say, he marches
+Arm-in-arm with oaks and larches;
+Hides all night in hilly nooks,
+Laughs at dawn in tumbling brooks.
+Yet, it's certain, here he teaches
+Outpost-schemes to groups of beeches.
+And I'm sure, as here I stand,
+That he shines through every land,
+That he sings in every place
+Where we're thinking of his face.
+
+
+V
+
+Robert, there's a war in France;
+Everywhere men bang and blunder,
+Sweat and swear and worship Chance,
+Creep and blink through cannon thunder.
+Rifles crack and bullets flick,
+Sing and hum like hornet-swarms.
+Bones are smashed and buried quick.
+Yet, through stunning battle storms,
+All the while I watch the spark
+Lit to guide me; for I know
+Dreams will triumph, though the dark
+Scowls above me where I go.
+_You_ can hear me; _you_ can mingle
+Radiant folly with my jingle.
+War's a joke for me and you
+While we know such dreams are true!
+
+
+
+THE KISS
+
+
+To these I turn, in these I trust;
+Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
+To his blind power I make appeal;
+I guard her beauty clean from rust.
+
+He spins and burns and loves the air,
+And splits a skull to win my praise;
+But up the nobly marching days
+She glitters naked, cold and fair.
+
+Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this;
+That in good fury he may feel
+The body where he sets his heel
+Quail from your downward darting kiss.
+
+
+
+THE DRAGON AND THE UNDYING
+
+
+All night the flares go up; the Dragon sings
+And beats upon the dark with furious wings;
+And, stung to rage by his own darting fires,
+Reaches with grappling coils from town to town;
+He lusts to break the loveliness of spires,
+And hurls their martyred music toppling down.
+
+Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze,
+Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder'd seas.
+Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night,
+And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams.
+Tenderly stooping earthward from their height,
+They wander in the dusk with chanting streams;
+And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung,
+To hail the burning heavens they left unsung.
+
+
+
+
+TO VICTORY
+
+
+Return to greet me, colours that were my joy,
+Not in the woeful crimson of men slain,
+But shining as a garden; come with the streaming
+Banners of dawn and sundown after rain.
+
+I want to fill my gaze with blue and silver,
+Radiance through living roses, spires of green
+Rising in young-limbed copse and lovely wood,
+Where the hueless wind passes and cries unseen.
+
+I am not sad; only I long for lustre,--
+Tired of the greys and browns and the leafless ash.
+I would have hours that move like a glitter of dancers
+Far from the angry guns that boom and flash.
+
+Return, musical, gay with blossom and fleetness,
+Days when my sight shall be clear and my heart rejoice;
+Come from the sea with breadth of approaching brightness,
+When the blithe wind laughs on the hills with up-lifted voice.
+
+
+
+
+'THEY'
+
+
+The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
+They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
+In a just cause: they lead the last attack
+On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
+New right to breed an honourable race.
+They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'
+
+'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
+For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
+Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
+And Bert's gone syphilitic; you'll not find
+A chap who's served that hasn't found _some_ change.'
+And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'
+
+
+
+'IN THE PINK'
+
+
+So Davies wrote: 'This leaves me in the pink.'
+Then scrawled his name: 'Your loving sweet-heart, Willie'
+With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drink
+Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,
+For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.
+Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.
+
+He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the dark
+He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,
+When he'd go out as cheerful as a lark
+In his best suit to wander arm-in-arm
+With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear
+The simple, silly things she liked to hear.
+
+And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge
+Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.
+Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,
+And everything but wretchedness forgotten.
+To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die.
+And still the war goes on; _he_ don't know why.
+
+
+
+HAUNTED
+
+
+Evening was in the wood, louring with storm.
+A time of drought had sucked the weedy pool
+And baked the channels; birds had done with song.
+Thirst was a dream of fountains in the moon,
+Or willow-music blown across the water
+Leisurely sliding on by weir and mill.
+
+Uneasy was the man who wandered, brooding,
+His face a little whiter than the dusk.
+A drone of sultry wings flicker'd in his head.
+
+The end of sunset burning thro' the boughs
+Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours
+Cumber'd, and ugly sorrows hemmed him in.
+
+He thought: 'Somewhere there's thunder,' as he strove
+To shake off dread; he dared not look behind him,
+But stood, the sweat of horror on his face.
+
+He blundered down a path, trampling on thistles,
+In sudden race to leave the ghostly trees.
+And: 'Soon I'll be in open fields,' he thought,
+And half remembered starlight on the meadows,
+Scent of mown grass and voices of tired men,
+Fading along the field-paths; home and sleep
+And cool-swept upland spaces, whispering leaves,
+And far off the long churring night-jar's note.
+
+But something in the wood, trying to daunt him,
+Led him confused in circles through the brake.
+He was forgetting his old wretched folly,
+And freedom was his need; his throat was choking;
+Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs,
+And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps.
+Mumbling: 'I will get out! I must get out!'
+Butting and thrusting up the baffling gloom,
+Pausing to listen in a space 'twixt thorns,
+He peers around with boding, frantic eyes.
+An evil creature in the twilight looping
+Flapped blindly in his face. Beating it off,
+He screeched in terror, and straightway something clambered
+Heavily from an oak, and dropped, bent double,
+To shamble at him zigzag, squat and bestial.
+
+Headlong he charges down the wood, and falls
+With roaring brain--agony--the snapt spark--
+And blots of green and purple in his eyes.
+Then the slow fingers groping on his neck,
+And at his heart the strangling clasp of death.
+
+
+
+THE DEATH-BED
+
+
+He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
+Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
+Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
+Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,--
+Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
+Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.
+
+Some one was holding water to his mouth.
+He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
+Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
+The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
+Water--calm, sliding green above the weir;
+Water--a sky-lit alley for his boat,
+Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
+And shaken hues of summer: drifting down,
+He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.
+
+Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
+Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.
+Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
+Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
+Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
+Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.
+
+Rain; he could hear it rustling through the dark;
+Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
+Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
+That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
+Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace
+Gently and slowly washing life away.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
+Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
+His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
+But some one was beside him; soon he lay
+Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.
+And Death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared.
+
+Light many lamps and gather round his bed.
+Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
+Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.
+He's young; he hated war; how should he die
+When cruel old campaigners win safe through?
+
+But Death replied: 'I choose him.' So he went,
+And there was silence in the summer night;
+Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.
+Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+I. ROSENBERG
+
+
+
+'AH, KOELUE ...'
+
+
+Ah, Koelue!
+Had you embalmed your beauty, so
+It could not backward go,
+Or change in any way,
+What were the use, if on my eyes
+The embalming spices were not laid
+To keep us fixed,
+Two amorous sculptures passioned endlessly?
+What were the use, if my sight grew,
+And its far branches were cloud-hung,
+You small at the roots, like grass,
+While the new lips my spirit would kiss
+Were not red lips of flesh,
+But the huge kiss of power?
+Where yesterday soft hair through my fingers fell,
+A shaggy mane would entwine,
+And no slim form work fire to my thighs,
+But human Life's inarticulate mass
+Throb the pulse of a thing
+Whose mountain flanks awry
+Beg my mastery--mine!
+Ah! I will ride the dizzy beast of the world
+My road--my way!
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT NICHOLS
+
+
+
+TO----
+
+
+Asleep within the deadest hour of night
+And turning with the earth, I was aware
+How suddenly the eastern curve was bright,
+As when the sun arises from his lair.
+But not the sun arose: it was thy hair
+Shaken up heaven in tossing leagues of light.
+
+Since then I know that neither night nor day
+May I escape thee, O my heavenly hell!
+Awake, in dreams, thou springest to waylay;
+And should I dare to die, I know full well
+Whose voice would mock me in the mourning bell,
+Whose face would greet me in hell's fiery way.
+
+
+
+THE ASSAULT
+
+
+The beating of the guns grows louder.
+'Not long, boys, now'.
+My heart burns whiter, fearfuller, prouder.
+Hurricanes grow
+As guns redouble their fire.
+Through the shaken periscope peeping,
+I glimpse their wire:
+Black earth, fountains of earth rise, leaping,
+Spouting like shocks of meeting waves,
+Death's fountains are playing,
+Shells like shrieking birds rush over;
+Crash and din rises higher.
+A stream of lead raves
+Over us from the left ... (we safe under cover!)
+Crash! Reverberation! Crash!
+Acrid smoke billowing. Flash upon flash.
+Black smoke drifting. The German line
+Vanishes in confusion, smoke. Cries, and cry
+Of our men, 'Gah, yer swine!
+Ye're for it', die
+In a hurricane of shell.
+
+One cry:
+'We're comin' soon! look out!'
+There is opened hell
+Over there; fragments fly,
+Rifles and bits of men whirled at the sky:
+Dust, smoke, thunder! A sudden bout
+Of machine guns chattering ...
+And redoubled battering,
+As if in fury at their daring!...
+
+No good staring.
+
+Time soon now ... home ... house on a sunny hill ...
+Gone like a flickered page:
+Time soon now ... zero ... will engage....
+
+A sudden thrill--
+'Fix bayonets!'
+Gods! we have our fill
+Of fear, hysteria, exultation, rage,
+Rage to kill.
+
+My heart burns hot, whiter and whiter,
+Contracts tighter and tighter,
+Until I stifle with the will
+Long forged, now used
+(Though utterly strained)--
+O pounding heart,
+Baffled, confused,
+Heart panged, head singing, dizzily pained--
+To do my part.
+
+Blindness a moment. Sick.
+There the men are!
+Bayonets ready: click!
+Time goes quick;
+A stumbled prayer ... somehow a blazing star
+In a blue night ... where?
+Again prayer.
+The tongue trips. Start:
+How's time? Soon now. Two minutes or less.
+The gun's fury mounting higher ...
+Their utmost. I lift a silent hand. Unseen I bless
+Those hearts will follow me.
+And beautifully,
+Now beautifully my will grips,
+Soul calm and round and filmed and white!
+
+A shout: 'Men, no such order as retire!'
+
+I nod.
+        The whistle's 'twixt my lips ...
+I catch
+A wan, worn smile at me.
+Dear men!
+The pale wrist-watch ...
+The quiet hand ticks on amid the din.
+The guns again
+Rise to a last fury, to a rage, a lust:
+Kill! Pound! Kill! Pound! Pound!
+Now comes the thrust!
+My part ... dizziness ... will ... but trust
+These men. The great guns rise;
+Their fury seems to burst the earth and skies!
+
+They lift.
+
+Gather, heart, all thoughts that drift;
+Be steel, soul,
+Compress thyself
+Into a round, bright whole.
+I cannot speak.
+
+Time. Time!
+
+I hear my whistle shriek,
+Between teeth set;
+I fling an arm up,
+Scramble up the grime
+Over the parapet!
+I'm up. Go on.
+Something meets us.
+Head down into the storm that greets us.
+
+A wail.
+Lights. Blurr.
+Gone.
+On, on. Lead. Lead. Hail.
+Spatter. Whirr! Whirr!
+'Toward that patch of brown;
+Direction left'. Bullets a stream.
+Devouring thought crying in a dream.
+Men, crumpled, going down....
+Go on. Go.
+Deafness. Numbness. The loudening tornado.
+Bullets. Mud. Stumbling and skating.
+My voice's strangled shout:
+'Steady pace, boys!'
+The still light: gladness.
+'Look, sir. Look out!'
+Ha! ha! Bunched figures waiting.
+Revolver levelled quick!
+Flick! Flick!
+Red as blood.
+Germans. Germans.
+Good! O good!
+Cool madness.
+
+
+
+
+FULFILMENT
+
+
+Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
+Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.
+Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir
+More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.
+
+Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,
+Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;
+Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,
+As whose children we are brethren: one.
+
+And any moment may descend hot death
+To shatter limbs! pulp, tear, blast
+Beloved soldiers who love rough life and breath
+Not less for dying faithful to the last.
+
+O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony,
+Oped mouth gushing, fallen head,
+Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony!
+O sudden spasm, release of the dead!
+
+Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
+Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.
+O loved, living, dying, heroic soldier,
+All, all, my joy, my grief, my love, are thine!
+
+
+
+
+THE PHILOSOPHER'S ORATION
+
+(From 'A Faun's Holiday')
+
+
+Meanwhile, though nations in distress
+Cower at a comet's loveliness
+Shaken across the midnight sky;
+Though the wind roars, and Victory,
+A virgin fierce, on vans of gold
+Stoops through the cloud's white smother rolled
+Over the armies' shock and flow
+Across the broad green hills below,
+Yet hovers and will not circle down
+To cast t'ward one the leafy crown;
+Though men drive galleys' golden beaks
+To isles beyond the sunset peaks,
+And cities on the sea behold
+Whose walls are glass, whose gates are gold,
+Whose turrets, risen in an hour,
+Dazzle between the sun and shower,
+Whose sole inhabitants are kings
+Six cubits high with gryphon's wings
+And beard and mien more glorious
+Than Midas or Assaracus;
+Though priests in many a hill-top fane
+Lift anguished hands--and lift in vain--
+Toward the sun's shaft dancing through
+The bright roof's square of wind-swept blue;
+Though 'cross the stars nightly arise
+The silver fumes of sacrifice;
+Though a new Helen bring new scars,
+Pyres piled upon wrecked golden cars,
+Stacked spears, rolled smoke, and spirits sped
+Like a streaked flame toward the dead:
+Though all these be, yet grows not old
+Delight of sunned and windy wold,
+Of soaking downs aglare, asteam,
+Of still tarns where the yellow gleam
+Of a far sunrise slowly breaks,
+Or sunset strews with golden flakes
+The deeps which soon the stars will throng.
+
+For earth yet keeps her undersong
+Of comfort and of ultimate peace,
+That whoso seeks shall never cease
+To hear at dawn or noon or night.
+Joys hath she, too, joys thin and bright,
+Too thin, too bright, for those to hear
+Who listen with an eager ear,
+Or course about and seek to spy,
+Within an hour, eternity.
+First must the spirit cast aside
+This world's and next his own poor pride
+And learn the universe to scan
+More as a flower, less as a man.
+Then shall he hear the lonely dead
+Sing and the stars sing overhead,
+And every spray upon the heath,
+And larks above and ants beneath;
+The stream shall take him in her arms;
+Blue skies shall rest him in their calms;
+The wind shall be a lovely friend,
+And every leaf and bough shall bend
+Over him with a lover's grace.
+The hills shall bare a perfect face
+Full of a high solemnity;
+The heavenly clouds shall weep, and be
+Content as overhead they swim
+To be high brothers unto him.
+
+No more shall he feel pitched and hurled
+Uncomprehended into this world;
+For every place shall be his place,
+And he shall recognize its face.
+At dawn he shall upon his path;
+No sword shall touch him, nor the wrath
+Of the ranked crowd of clamorous men.
+At even he shall home again,
+And lay him down to sleep at ease,
+One with the Night and the Night's peace.
+Ev'n Sorrow, to be escaped of none,
+But a more deep communion
+Shall be to him, and Death at last
+No more dreaded than the Past,
+Whose shadow in the brain of earth
+Informs him now and gave him birth.
+
+
+
+THE NAIADS' MUSIC
+
+(From 'A Faun's Holiday')
+
+Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
+Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:
+For our kisses lightlier run
+Than the traceries of the sun
+By the lolling water cast
+Up grey precipices vast,
+Lifting smooth and warm and steep
+Out of the palely shimmering deep.
+
+Come, ye sorrowful, and take
+Kisses that are but half awake:
+For here are eyes O softer far
+Than the blossom of the star
+Upon the mothy twilit waters,
+And here are mouths whose gentle laughters
+Are but the echoes of the deep
+Laughing and murmuring in its sleep.
+
+Come, ye sorrowful, and see
+The raindrops flaming goldenly
+On the stream's eddies overhead
+And dragonflies with drops of red
+In the crisp surface of each wing
+Threading slant rains that flash and sing,
+Or under the water-lily's cup,
+From darkling depths, roll slowly up
+The bronze flanks of an ancient bream
+Into the hot sun's shattered beam,
+Or over a sunk tree's bubbled hole
+The perch stream in a golden shoal:
+Come, ye sorrowful; our deep
+Holds dreams lovelier than sleep.
+
+But if ye sons of Sorrow come
+Only wishing to be numb:
+Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies,
+Our breasts are soft as silken roses,
+And our hands are tenderer
+Than the breaths that scarce can stir
+The sunlit eglantine that is
+Murmurous with hidden bees.
+Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
+Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.
+
+Come, ye sorrowful, for here
+No voices sound but fond and clear
+Of mouths as lorn as is the rose
+That under water doth disclose,
+Amid her crimson petals torn,
+A heart as golden as the morn;
+And here are tresses languorous
+As the weeds wander over us,
+And brows as holy and as bland
+As the honey-coloured sand
+Lying sun-entranced below
+The lazy water's limpid flow:
+Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
+Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.
+
+
+
+THE PROPHETIC BARD'S ORATION
+
+(From 'A Faun's Holiday')
+
+'Be warned! I feel the world grow old,
+And off Olympus fades the gold
+Of the simple passionate sun;
+And the Gods wither one by one:
+Proud-eyed Apollo's bow is broken,
+And throned Zeus nods nor may be woken
+But by the song of spirits seven
+Quiring in the midnight heaven
+Of a new world no more forlorn,
+Sith unto it a Babe is born,
+That in a propped, thatched stable lies,
+While with darkling, reverent eyes
+Dusky Emperors, coifed in gold,
+Kneel mid the rushy mire, and hold
+Caskets of rubies, urns of myrrh,
+Whose fumes enwrap the thurifer
+And coil toward the high dim rafters
+Where, with lutes and warbling laughters,
+Clustered cherubs of rainbow feather,
+Fanning the fragrant air together,
+Flit in jubilant holy glee,
+And make heavenly minstrelsy
+To the Child their Sun, whose glow
+Bathes them His cloudlets from below....
+Long shall this chimed accord be heard,
+Yet all earth hushed at His first word:
+Then shall be seen Apollo's car
+Blaze headlong like a banished star;
+And the Queen of heavenly Loves
+Dragged downward by her dying doves;
+Vulcan, spun on a wheel, shall track
+The circle of the zodiac;
+Silver Artemis be lost,
+To the polar blizzards tossed;
+Heaven shall curdle as with blood;
+The sun be swallowed in the flood;
+The universe be silent save
+For the low drone of winds that lave
+The shadowed great world's ashen sides
+As through the rustling void she glides.
+Then shall there be a whisper heard
+Of the Grave's Secret and its Word,
+Where in black silence none shall cry
+Save those who, dead-affrighted, spy
+How from the murmurous graveyards creep
+The figures of eternal sleep.
+Last: when 'tis light men shall behold,
+Beyond the crags, a flower of gold
+Blossoming in a golden haze,
+And, while they guess Zeus' halls now blaze,
+Shall in the blossom's heart descry
+The saints of a new hierarchy!'
+
+He ceased ... and in the morning sky
+Zeus' anger threatened murmurously.
+I sped away. The lightning's sword
+Stabbed on the forest. But the word
+Abides with me. I feel its power
+Most darkly in the twilit hour,
+When Night's eternal shadow, cast
+Over earth hushed and pale and vast,
+Darkly foretells the soundless Night
+In which this orb, so green, so bright,
+Now spins, and which shall compass her
+When on her rondure nought shall stir
+But snow-whorls which the wind shall roll
+From the Equator to the Pole ...
+
+For everlastingly there is
+Something Beyond, Behind: I wis
+All Gods are haunted, and there clings,
+As hound behind fled sheep, the things
+Beyond the Universe's ken:
+Gods haunt the Half-Gods, Half-Gods men,
+And Man the brute. Gods, born of Night,
+Feel a blacker appetite
+Gape to devour them; Half-Gods dread
+But jealous Gods; and mere men tread
+Warily lest a Half-God rise
+And loose on them from empty skies
+Amazement, thunder, stark affright,
+Famine and sudden War's thick night,
+In which loud Furies hunt the Pities
+Through smoke above wrecked, flaming cities.
+
+For Pan, the Unknown God, rules all.
+He shall outlive the funeral,
+Change, and decay, of many Gods,
+Until he, too, lets fall his rods
+Of viewless power upon that minute
+When Universe cowers at Infinite!
+
+
+
+THE TOWER
+
+
+It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs
+The moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs.
+The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet,
+Over dome and column, up empty, endless street;
+In the closed, scented gardens the rose loosed from the stem
+Her white showery petals; none regarded them;
+The starry thicket breathed odours to the sentinel palm;
+Silence possessed the city like a soul possessed by calm.
+
+Not a spark in the warren under the giant night,
+Save where in a turret's lantern beamed a grave, still light:
+There in the topmost chamber a gold-eyed lamp was lit--
+Marvellous lamp in darkness, informing, redeeming it!
+For, set in that tiny chamber, Jesus, the blessed and doomed,
+Spoke to the lone apostles as light to men en-tombed;
+And spreading his hands in blessing, as one soon to be dead,
+He put soft enchantment into spare wine and bread.
+
+The hearts of the disciples were broken and full of tears,
+Because their lord, the spearless, was hedged about with spears;
+And in his face the sickness of departure had spread a gloom,
+At leaving his young friends friendless.
+                             They could not forget the tomb.
+He smiled subduedly, telling, in tones soft as voice of the dove,
+The endlessness of sorrow, the eternal solace of love;
+And lifting the earthly tokens, wine and sorrowful bread,
+He bade them sup and remember one who lived and was dead.
+And they could not restrain their weeping.
+                             But one rose up to depart,
+Having weakness and hate of weakness raging within his heart,
+And bowed to the robed assembly whose eyes gleamed wet in the light.
+Judas arose and departed: night went out to the night.
+
+Then Jesus lifted his voice like a fountain in an ocean of tears,
+And comforted his disciples and calmed and allayed their fears.
+But Judas wound down the turret, creeping from floor to floor,
+And would fly; but one leaning, weeping, barred him beside the door.
+And he knew her by her ruddy garment and two yet-watching men:
+Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen.
+And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed him dead.
+We sell the body for silver....'
+                      Then Judas cried out and fled
+Forth into the night!... The moon had begun to set:
+A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret;
+Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed
+To stern Jehovah lest his deed make him afraid.
+
+But in the tiny lantern, hanging as if on air,
+The disciples sat unspeaking. Amaze and peace were there.
+For _his_ voice, more lovely than song of all earthly birds,
+In accents humble and happy spoke slow, consoling words.
+
+Thus Jesus discoursed, and was silent, sitting up-right, and soon
+Past the casement behind him slanted the sinking moon;
+And, rising for Olivet, all stared, between love and dread,
+Seeing the torrid moon a ruddy halo behind his head.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+HAROLD MONRO
+
+
+
+TWO POEMS
+
+(Numbers I and X in 'Strange Meetings')
+
+
+I
+
+If suddenly a clod of earth should rise,
+And walk about, and breathe, and speak, and love,
+How one would tremble, and in what surprise
+Gasp: 'Can _you_ move?'
+
+I see men walking, and I always feel:
+'Earth! How have you done this? What can you be?'
+I can't learn how to know men, or conceal
+How strange they are to me.
+
+
+II
+
+A flower is looking through the ground,
+Blinking at the April weather;
+Now a child has seen the flower:
+Now they go and play together.
+
+Now it seems the flower will speak,
+And will call the child its brother--
+But, oh strange forgetfulness!--
+They don't recognize each other.
+
+
+
+EVERY THING
+
+
+Since man has been articulate,
+Mechanical, improvidently wise,
+(Servant of Fate),
+He has not understood the little cries
+And foreign conversations of the small
+Delightful creatures that have followed him
+Not far behind;
+Has failed to hear the sympathetic call
+Of Crockery and Cutlery, those kind
+Reposeful Teraphim
+Of his domestic happiness; the Stool
+He sat on, or the Door he entered through:
+He has not thanked them, overbearing fool!
+What is he coming to?
+
+But you should listen to the talk of these.
+Honest they are, and patient they have kept,
+Served him without his 'Thank you' or his 'Please'.
+I often heard
+The gentle Bed, a sigh between each word,
+Murmuring, before I slept.
+The Candle, as I blew it, cried aloud,
+Then bowed,
+And in a smoky argument
+Into the darkness went.
+
+The Kettle puffed a tentacle of breath:--
+'Pooh! I have boiled his water, I don't know
+Why; and he always says I boil too slow.
+He never calls me "Sukie, dear," and oh,
+I wonder why I squander my desire
+Sitting submissive on his kitchen fire.'
+
+Now the old Copper Basin suddenly
+Rattled and tumbled from the shelf,
+Bumping and crying: 'I can fall by myself;
+Without a woman's hand
+To patronize and coax and flatter me,
+I understand
+The lean and poise of gravitable land.'
+It gave a raucous and tumultuous shout,
+Twisted itself convulsively about,
+Rested upon the floor, and, while I stare,
+It stares and grins at me.
+
+The old impetuous Gas above my head
+Begins irascibly to flare and fret,
+Wheezing into its epileptic jet,
+Reminding me I ought to go to bed.
+
+The Rafters creak; an Empty-Cupboard door
+Swings open; now a wild Plank of the floor
+Breaks from its joist, and leaps behind my foot.
+Down from the chimney half a pound of Soot
+Tumbles, and lies, and shakes itself again.
+The Putty cracks against the window-pane.
+A piece of Paper in the basket shoves
+Another piece, and toward the bottom moves.
+My independent Pencil, while I write,
+Breaks at the point: the ruminating Clock
+Stirs all its body and begins to rock,
+Warning the waiting presence of the Night,
+Strikes the dead hour, and tumbles to the plain
+Ticking of ordinary work again.
+
+You do well to remind me, and I praise
+Your strangely individual foreign ways.
+You call me from myself to recognize
+Companionship in your unselfish eyes.
+
+I want your dear acquaintances, although
+I pass you arrogantly over, throw
+Your lovely sounds, and squander them along
+My busy days. I'll do you no more wrong.
+
+Purr for me, Sukie, like a faithful cat.
+You, my well trampled Boots, and you, my Hat,
+Remain my friends: I feel, though I don't speak,
+Your touch grow kindlier from week to week.
+It well becomes our mutual happiness
+To go toward the same end more or less.
+There is not much dissimilarity,
+Not much to choose, I know it well, in fine,
+Between the purposes of you and me,
+And your eventual Rubbish Heap, and mine.
+
+
+
+SOLITUDE
+
+
+When you have tidied all things for the night,
+And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,
+You'll pause a moment in the late firelight,
+Too sorrowful to weep.
+
+The large and gentle furniture has stood
+In sympathetic silence all the day
+With that old kindness of domestic wood;
+Nevertheless the haunted room will say:
+'Some one must be away.'
+
+The little dog rolls over half awake,
+Stretches his paws, yawns, looking up at you,
+Wags his tail very slightly for your sake,
+That you may feel he is unhappy too.
+
+A distant engine whistles, or the floor
+Creaks, or the wandering night-wind bangs a door.
+
+Silence is scattered like a broken glass.
+The minutes prick their ears and run about,
+Then one by one subside again and pass
+Sedately in, monotonously out.
+
+You bend your head and wipe away a tear.
+Solitude walks one heavy step more near.
+
+
+
+WEEK-END
+
+
+I
+
+The train! The twelve o'clock for paradise.
+  Hurry, or it will try to creep away.
+Out in the country every one is wise:
+  We can be only wise on Saturday.
+There you are waiting, little friendly house:
+  Those are your chimney-stacks with you between,
+Surrounded by old trees and strolling cows,
+  Staring through all your windows at the green.
+Your homely floor is creaking for our tread;
+  The smiling tea-pot with contented spout
+Thinks of the boiling water, and the bread
+  Longs for the butter. All their hands are out
+    To greet us, and the gentle blankets seem
+    Purring and crooning: 'Lie in us, and dream.'
+
+
+II
+
+The key will stammer, and the door reply,
+  The hall wake, yawn, and smile; the torpid stair
+Will grumble at our feet, the table cry:
+  'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.'
+A clatter! Something in the attic falls.
+  A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled.
+The loitering shadows move along the walls;
+  Then silence very slowly lifts his head.
+The starling with impatient screech has flown
+  The chimney, and is watching from the tree.
+They thought us gone for ever: mouse alone
+  Stops in the middle of the floor to see.
+    Now all you idle things, resume your toil.
+    Hearth, put your flames on. Sulky kettle, boil.
+
+
+III
+
+Contented evening; comfortable joys;
+  The snoozing fire, and all the fields are still:
+Tranquil delight, no purpose, and no noise--
+  Unless the slow wind flowing round the hill.
+'Murry' (the kettle) dozes; little mouse
+  Is rambling prudently about the floor.
+There's lovely conversation in this house:
+  Words become princes that were slaves before.
+What a sweet atmosphere for you and me
+  The people that have been here left behind....
+Oh, but I fear it may turn out to be
+  Built of a dream, erected in the mind:
+    So if we speak too loud, we may awaken
+    To find it vanished, and ourselves mistaken.
+
+
+IV
+
+Lift up the curtain carefully. All the trees
+  Stand in the dark like drowsy sentinels.
+  The oak is talkative to-night; he tells
+The little bushes crowding at his knees
+That formidable, hard, voluminous
+  History of growth from acorn into age.
+They titter like school-children; they arouse
+  Their comrades, who exclaim: 'He is very sage.'
+Look how the moon is staring through that cloud,
+  Laying and lifting idle streaks of light.
+O hark! was that the monstrous wind, so loud
+And sudden, prowling always through the night?
+    Let down the shaking curtain. They are queer,
+    Those foreigners. They and we live so near.
+
+
+V
+
+Come, come to bed. The shadows move about,
+  And some one seems to overhear our talk.
+The fire is low; the candles flicker out;
+  The ghosts of former tenants want to walk.
+Already they are shuffling through the gloom.
+  I felt an old man touch my shoulder-blade;
+Once he was married here; they love this room,
+  He and his woman and the child they made.
+Dead, dead, they are, yet some familiar sound,
+  Creeping along the brink of happy life,
+Revives their memory from under ground--
+  The farmer and his troublesome old wife.
+    Let us be going: as we climb the stairs,
+    They'll sit down in our warm half-empty chairs.
+
+
+VI
+
+Morning! Wake up! Awaken! All the boughs
+  Are rippling on the air across the green.
+The youngest birds are singing to the house.
+  Blood of the world!--and is the country clean?
+Disturb the precinct. Cool it with a shout.
+  Sing as you trundle down to light the fire.
+Turn the encumbering shadows tumbling out.
+  And fill the chambers with a new desire.
+Life is no good, unless the morning brings
+  White happiness and quick delight of day.
+These half-inanimate domestic things
+  Must all be useful, or must go away.
+    Coffee, be fragrant. Porridge in my plate,
+    Increase the vigour to fulfil my fate.
+
+
+VII
+
+The fresh air moves like water round a boat.
+  The white clouds wander. Let us wander too.
+The whining, wavering plover flap and float.
+  That crow is flying after that cuckoo.
+Look! Look!... They're gone. What are the great trees calling?
+  Just come a little farther, by that edge
+Of green, to where the stormy ploughland, falling
+  Wave upon wave, is lapping to the hedge.
+Oh, what a lovely bank! Give me your hand.
+  Lie down and press your heart against the ground.
+Let us both listen till we understand,
+  Each through the other, every natural sound....
+    I can't hear anything to-day, can you,
+    But, far and near: 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!'?
+
+
+VIII
+
+The everlasting grass--how bright, how cool!
+  The day has gone too suddenly, too soon.
+There's something white and shiny in that pool--
+  Throw in a stone, and you will hit the moon.
+Listen, the church-bell ringing! Do not say
+  We must go back to-morrow to our work.
+We'll tell them we are dead: we died to-day.
+  We're lazy. We're too happy. We will shirk.
+We're cows. We're kettles. We'll be anything
+  Except the manikins of time and fear.
+We'll start away to-morrow wandering,
+  And nobody will notice in a year....
+    Now the great sun is slipping under ground.
+    Grip firmly!--How the earth is whirling round!
+
+
+IX
+
+Be staid; be careful; and be not too free.
+Temptation to enjoy your liberty
+May rise against you, break into a crime,
+And smash the habit of employing Time.
+It serves no purpose that the careful clock
+  Mark the appointment, the officious train
+Hurry to keep it, if the minutes mock
+  Loud in your ear: 'Late. Late. Late. Late again.'
+Week-end is very well on Saturday:
+  On Monday it's a different affair--
+A little episode, a trivial stay
+  In some oblivious spot somehow, somewhere.
+    On Sunday night we hardly laugh or speak:
+    Week-end begins to merge itself in Week.
+
+
+X
+
+Pack up the house, and close the creaking door.
+  The fields are dull this morning in the rain.
+It's difficult to leave that homely floor.
+  Wave a light hand; we will return again.
+(What was that bird?) Good-bye, ecstatic tree,
+  Floating, bursting, and breathing on the air.
+The lonely farm is wondering that we
+  Can leave. How every window seems to stare!
+That bag is heavy. Share it for a bit.
+  You like that gentle swashing of the ground
+As we tread?...
+                   It is over. Now we sit
+  Reading the morning paper in the sound
+    Of the debilitating heavy train.
+    London again, again. London again.
+
+
+
+THE BIRD AT DAWN
+
+
+What I saw was just one eye
+In the dawn as I was going:
+A bird can carry all the sky
+In that little button glowing.
+
+Never in my life I went
+So deep into the firmament.
+
+He was standing on a tree,
+All in blossom overflowing;
+And he purposely looked hard at me,
+At first, as if to question merrily:
+'Where are you going?'
+But next some far more serious thing to say:
+I could not answer, could not look away.
+
+Oh, that hard, round, and so distracting eye:
+Little mirror of all sky!--
+And then the after-song another tree
+Held, and sent radiating back on me.
+
+If no man had invented human word,
+And a bird-song had been
+The only way to utter what we mean,
+What would we men have heard,
+What understood, what seen,
+Between the trills and pauses, in between
+The singing and the silence of a bird?
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+
+
+SEVEN POEMS
+
+
+[POEM NO.] I
+
+Here in the self is all that man can know
+Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power,
+All the unearthly colour, all the glow,
+Here in the self which withers like a flower;
+Here in the self which fades as hours pass,
+And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten
+Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass
+In which it sees its glory still unrotten.
+Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind,
+Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone,
+Beauty herself, the universal mind,
+Eternal April wandering alone;
+The God, the holy Ghost, the atoning Lord,
+Here in the flesh, the never yet explored.
+
+
+
+[POEM NO.] II
+
+What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt
+Held in cohesion by unresting cells
+Which work they know not why, which never halt,
+Myself unwitting where their master dwells.
+I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin;
+A world which uses me as I use them,
+Nor do I know which end or which begin,
+Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn.
+So, like a marvel in a marvel set,
+I answer to the vast, as wave by wave
+The sea of air goes over, dry or wet,
+Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave,
+Or the great sun comes north, this myriad I
+Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why.
+
+
+
+[POEM NO.] III
+
+If I could get within this changing I,
+This ever altering thing which yet persists,
+Keeping the features it is reckoned by,
+While each component atom breaks or twists;
+If, wandering past strange groups of shifting forms,
+Cells at their hidden marvels hard at work,
+Pale from much toil, or red from sudden storms,
+I might attain to where the Rulers lurk;
+If, pressing past the guards in those grey gates,
+The brain's most folded, intertwisted shell,
+I might attain to that which alters fates,
+The King, the supreme self, the Master Cell;
+Then, on Man's earthly peak, I might behold
+The unearthly self beyond, unguessed, untold.
+
+
+
+[POEM NO.] IV
+
+Ah, we are neither heaven nor earth, but men;
+Something that uses and despises both,
+That takes its earth's contentment in the pen,
+Then sees the world's injustice and is wroth,
+And flinging off youth's happy promise, flies
+Up to some breach, despising earthly things,
+And, in contempt of hell and heaven, dies
+Rather than bear some yoke of priests or kings.
+Our joys are not of heaven nor earth, but man's,
+A woman's beauty, or a child's delight,
+The trembling blood when the discoverer scans
+The sought-for world, the guessed-at satellite;
+The ringing scene, the stone at point to blush
+For unborn men to look at and say 'Hush.'
+
+
+
+[POEM NO.] V
+
+Roses are beauty, but I never see
+Those blood drops from the burning heart of June
+Glowing like thought upon the living tree
+Without a pity that they die so soon,
+Die into petals, like those roses old,
+Those women, who were summer in men's hearts
+Before the smile upon the Sphinx was cold
+Or sand had hid the Syrian and his arts.
+O myriad dust of beauty that lies thick
+Under our feet that not a single grain
+But stirred and moved in beauty and was quick
+For one brief moon and died nor lived again;
+But when the moon rose lay upon the grass
+Pasture to living beauty, life that was.
+
+
+
+[POEM NO.] VI
+
+I went into the fields, but you were there
+Waiting for me, so all the summer flowers
+Were only glimpses of your starry powers;
+Beautiful and inspired dust they were.
+
+I went down by the waters, and a bird
+Sang with your voice in all the unknown tones
+Of all that self of you I have not heard,
+So that my being felt you to the bones.
+
+I went into the house, and shut the door
+To be alone, but you were there with me;
+All beauty in a little room may be,
+Though the roof lean and muddy be the floor.
+
+Then in my bed I bound my tired eyes
+To make a darkness for my weary brain;
+But like a presence you were there again,
+Being and real, beautiful and wise,
+
+So that I could not sleep, and cried aloud,
+'You strange grave thing, what is it you would say?'
+The redness of your dear lips dimmed to grey,
+The waters ebbed, the moon hid in a cloud.
+
+
+
+[POEM NO.] VII
+
+Death lies in wait for you, you wild thing in the wood,
+Shy-footed beauty dear, half-seen, half-understood,
+Glimpsed in the beech-wood dim and in the dropping fir,
+Shy like a fawn and sweet and beauty's minister.
+Glimpsed as in flying clouds by night the little moon,
+A wonder, a delight, a paleness passing soon.
+
+Only a moment held, only an hour seen,
+Only an instant known in all that life has been,
+One instant in the sand to drink that gush of grace,
+The beauty of your way, the marvel of your face.
+
+Death lies in wait for you, but few short hours he gives;
+I perish even as you by whom all spirit lives.
+Come to me, spirit, come, and fill my hour of breath
+With hours of life in life that pay no toll to death.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+RALPH HODGSON
+
+
+
+THE GIPSY GIRL
+
+'Come, try your skill, kind gentlemen,
+A penny for three tries!'
+Some threw and lost, some threw and won
+A ten-a-penny prize.
+
+She was a tawny gipsy girl,
+A girl of twenty years,
+I liked her for the lumps of gold
+That jingled from her ears;
+
+I liked the flaring yellow scarf
+Bound loose about her throat,
+I liked her showy purple gown
+And flashy velvet coat.
+
+A man came up, too loose of tongue,
+And said no good to her;
+She did not blush as Saxons do,
+Or turn upon the cur;
+
+She fawned and whined 'Sweet gentleman,
+A penny for three tries!'
+--But oh, the den of wild things in
+The darkness of her eyes!
+
+
+
+THE BELLS OF HEAVEN
+
+'Twould ring the bells of Heaven
+The wildest peal for years,
+If Parson lost his senses
+And people came to theirs,
+And he and they together
+Knelt down with angry prayers
+For tamed and shabby tigers
+And dancing dogs and bears,
+And wretched, blind pit ponies,
+And little hunted hares.
+
+
+
+BABYLON
+
+If you could bring her glories back!
+You gentle sirs who sift the dust
+And burrow in the mould and must
+Of Babylon for bric-a-brac;
+Who catalogue and pigeon-hole
+The faded splendours of her soul
+And put her greatness under glass--
+If you could bring her past to pass!
+
+If you could bring her dead to life!
+The soldier lad; the market wife;
+Madam buying fowls from her;
+Tip, the butcher's bandy cur;
+Workmen carting bricks and clay;
+Babel passing to and fro
+On the business of a day
+Gone three thousand years ago--
+That you cannot; then be done,
+Put the goblet down again,
+Let the broken arch remain,
+Leave the dead men's dust alone--
+
+Is it nothing how she lies,
+This old mother of you all,
+You great cities proud and tall
+Towering to a hundred skies
+Round a world she never knew,
+Is it nothing, this, to you?
+Must the ghoulish work go on
+Till her very floors are gone?
+While there's still a brick to save
+Drive these people from her grave.
+
+The Jewish seer when he cried
+Woe to Babel's lust and pride
+Saw the foxes at her gates;
+Once again the wild thing waits.
+Then leave her in her last decay
+A house of owls, a foxes' den;
+The desert that till yesterday
+Hid her from the eyes of men
+In its proper time and way
+Will take her to itself again.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT GRAVES
+
+
+
+IT'S A QUEER TIME
+
+It's hard to know if you're alive or dead
+When steel and fire go roaring through your head.
+
+One moment you'll be crouching at your gun
+Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun:
+The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast--
+No time to think--leave all--and off you go ...
+To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow,
+To lovely groves of mango, quince and lime--
+Breathe no good-bye, but ho, for the Red West!
+          It's a queer time.
+
+You're charging madly at them yelling 'Fag!'
+When somehow something gives and your feet drag.
+You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain
+And find ... you're digging tunnels through the hay
+In the Big Barn, 'cause it's a rainy day.
+Oh springy hay, and lovely beams to climb!
+You're back in the old sailor suit again.
+          It's a queer time.
+
+Or you'll be dozing safe in your dug-out--
+Great roar--the trench shakes and falls about--
+You're struggling, gasping, struggling, then ... hullo!
+Elsie comes tripping gaily down the trench,
+Hanky to nose--that lyddite makes a stench--
+Getting her pinafore all over grime.
+Funny! because she died ten years ago!
+          It's a queer time.
+
+The trouble is, things happen much too quick;
+Up jump the Bosches, rifles thump and click,
+You stagger, and the whole scene fades away:
+Even good Christians don't like passing straight
+From Tipperary or their Hymn of Hate
+To Alleluiah-chanting, and the chime
+Of golden harps ... and ... I'm not well today ...
+          It's a queer time.
+
+
+
+GOLIATH AND DAVID
+
+('For D. C. T., killed at Fricourt, March 1916')
+
+Once an earlier David took
+Smooth pebbles from the brook:
+Out between the lines he went
+To that one-sided tournament,
+A shepherd boy who stood out fine
+And young to fight a Philistine
+Clad all in brazen mail. He swears
+That he's killed lions, he's killed bears,
+And those that scorn the God of Zion
+Shall perish so like bear or lion.
+But ... the historian of that fight
+Had not the heart to tell it right.
+
+Striding within javelin range
+Goliath marvels at this strange
+Goodly-faced boy so proud of strength.
+David's clear eye measures the length;
+With hand thrust back, he cramps one knee,
+Poises a moment thoughtfully,
+And hurls with a long vengeful swing.
+The pebble, humming from the sling
+Like a wild bee, flies a sure line;
+For the forehead of the Philistine;
+Then ... but there comes a brazen clink
+And quicker than a man can think
+Goliath's shield parries each cast.
+Clang! clang! and clang! was David's last
+Scorn blazes in the Giant's eye,
+Towering unhurt six cubits high.
+Says foolish David, 'Damn your shield!
+And damn my sling! but I'll not yield.'
+
+He takes his staff of Mamre oak,
+A knotted shepherd-staff that's broke
+The skull of many a wolf and fox
+Come filching lambs from Jesse's flocks.
+Loud laughs Goliath, and that laugh
+Can scatter chariots like blown chaff
+To rout: but David, calm and brave,
+Holds his ground, for God will save.
+Steel crosses wood, a flash, and oh!
+Shame for Beauty's overthrow!
+(God's eyes are dim, His ears are shut.)
+One cruel backhand sabre cut--
+'I'm hit! I'm killed!' young David cries,
+Throws blindly forward, chokes ... and dies.
+And look, spike-helmeted, grey, grim,
+Goliath straddles over him.
+
+
+
+A PINCH OF SALT
+
+When a dream is born in you
+  With a sudden clamorous pain,
+When you know the dream is true
+  And lovely, with no flaw nor stain,
+O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch
+You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.
+
+Dreams are like a bird that mocks,
+  Flirting the feathers of his tail.
+When you seize at the salt-box
+  Over the hedge you'll see him sail.
+Old birds are neither caught with salt nor chaff:
+They watch you from the apple bough and laugh.
+
+Poet, never chase the dream.
+  Laugh yourself and turn away.
+Mask your hunger, let it seem
+  Small matter if he come or stay;
+But when he nestles in your hand at last,
+Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.
+
+
+
+STAR-TALK
+
+'Are you awake, Gemelli,
+  This frosty night?'
+'We'll be awake till reveille,
+Which is Sunrise,' say the Gemelli,
+'It's no good trying to go to sleep:
+If there's wine to be got we'll drink it deep,
+  But rest is hopeless tonight,
+  But rest is hopeless tonight.'
+
+'Are you cold too, poor Pleiads,
+  This frosty night?'
+'Yes, and so are the Hyads:
+See us cuddle and hug,' say the Pleiads,
+'All six in a ring: it keeps us warm:
+We huddle together like birds in a storm:
+  It's bitter weather tonight,
+  It's bitter weather tonight.'
+
+'What do you hunt, Orion,
+  This starry night?'
+'The Ram, the Bull and the Lion,
+And the Great Bear,' says Orion,
+'With my starry quiver and beautiful belt
+I am trying to find a good thick pelt
+  To warm my shoulders tonight,
+  To warm my shoulders tonight.'
+
+'Did you hear that, Great She-bear,
+  This frosty night?'
+'Yes, he's talking of stripping _me_ bare
+Of my own big fur,' says the She-bear,
+I'm afraid of the man and his terrible arrow:
+The thought of it chills my bones to the marrow,
+  And the frost so cruel tonight!
+  And the frost so cruel tonight!
+
+'How is your trade, Aquarius,
+  This frosty night?'
+'Complaints is many and various
+And my feet are cold,' says Aquarius,
+'There's Venus objects to Dolphin-scales,
+And Mars to Crab-spawn found in my pails,
+  And the pump has frozen tonight,
+  And the pump has frozen tonight.'
+
+
+
+IN THE WILDERNESS
+
+Christ of his gentleness
+Thirsting and hungering,
+Walked in the wilderness;
+Soft words of grace he spoke
+Unto lost desert-folk
+That listened wondering.
+He heard the bitterns call
+From ruined palace-wall,
+Answered them brotherly.
+He held communion
+With the she-pelican
+Of lonely piety.
+Basilisk, cockatrice,
+Flocked to his homilies,
+With mail of dread device,
+With monstrous barbed stings,
+With eager dragon-eyes;
+Great rats on leather wings
+And poor blind broken things,
+Foul in their miseries.
+And ever with him went,
+Of all his wanderings
+Comrade, with ragged coat,
+Gaunt ribs--poor innocent--
+Bleeding foot, burning throat,
+The guileless old scape-goat;
+For forty nights and days
+Followed in Jesus' ways,
+Sure guard behind him kept,
+Tears like a lover wept.
+
+
+
+THE BOY IN CHURCH
+
+'Gabble-gabble ... brethren ... gabble-gabble!'
+  My window glimpses larch and heather.
+I hardly hear the tuneful babble,
+  Not knowing nor much caring whether
+The text is praise or exhortation,
+Prayer or thanksgiving or damnation.
+
+Outside it blows wetter and wetter,
+  The tossing trees never stay still;
+I shift my elbows to catch better
+  The full round sweep of heathered hill.
+The tortured copse bends to and fro
+In silence like a shadow-show.
+
+The parson's voice runs like a river
+  Over smooth rocks. I like this church.
+The pews are staid, they never shiver,
+  They never bend or sway or lurch.
+'Prayer,' says the kind voice, 'is a chain
+That draws down Grace from Heaven again.'
+
+I add the hymns up over and over
+  Until there's not the least mistake.
+Seven-seventy-one. (Look! there's a plover!
+  It's gone!) Who's that Saint by the Lake?
+The red light from his mantle passes
+Across the broad memorial brasses.
+
+It's pleasant here for dreams and thinking,
+  Lolling and letting reason nod,
+With ugly, serious people linking
+  Prayer-chains for a forgiving God.
+But a dumb blast sets the trees swaying
+With furious zeal like madmen praying.
+
+
+
+THE LADY VISITOR IN THE PAUPER WARD
+
+Why do you break upon this old, cool peace,
+This painted peace of ours,
+With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese,
+With garish flowers?
+Why do you churn smooth waters rough again,
+Selfish old Skin-and-bone?
+Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain,
+Leave us alone.
+
+
+
+NOT DEAD
+
+Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,
+I know that David's with me here again.
+All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
+Caressingly I stroke
+Rough bark of the friendly oak.
+A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his.
+Turf burns with pleasant smoke:
+I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.
+All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
+Over the whole wood in a little while
+Breaks his slow smile.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+WILFRID WILSON GIBSON
+
+
+
+RUPERT BROOKE
+
+Your face was lifted to the golden sky
+Ablaze beyond the black roofs of the square,
+As flame on flame leapt, flourishing in air
+Its tumult of red stars exultantly,
+To the cold constellations dim and high;
+And as we neared, the roaring ruddy flare
+Kindled to gold your throat and brow and hair
+Until you burned, a flame of ecstasy.
+
+The golden head goes down into the night
+Quenched in cold gloom--and yet again you stand
+Beside me now with lifted face alight,
+As, flame to flame, and fire to fire you burn ...
+Then, recollecting, laughingly you turn,
+And look into my eyes and take my hand.
+
+
+
+TENANTS
+
+Suddenly, out of dark and leafy ways,
+We came upon the little house asleep
+In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep,
+In the white magic of the full moon-blaze.
+Strangers without the gate, we stood agaze,
+Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep
+Into the home that had been ours to keep
+Through a long year of happy nights and days.
+
+So unfamiliar in the white moon-gleam,
+So old and ghostly like a house of dream
+It seemed, that over us there stole the dread
+That even as we watched it, side by side,
+The ghosts of lovers, who had lived and died
+Within its walls, were sleeping in our bed.
+
+
+
+FOR G.
+
+All night under the moon
+  Plovers are flying
+Over the dreaming meadows of silvery light,
+Over the meadows of June,
+  Flying and crying--
+Wandering voices of love in the hush of the night.
+
+All night under the moon,
+  Love, though we're lying
+Quietly under the thatch, in silvery light
+Over the meadows of June
+  Together we're flying--
+Rapturous voices of love in the hush of the night?
+
+
+
+SEA-CHANGE
+
+Wind-flicked and ruddy her young body glowed
+In sunny shallows, splashing them to spray;
+But when on rippled, silver sand she lay,
+And over her the little green waves flowed,
+Coldly translucent and moon-coloured showed
+Her frail young beauty, as if rapt away
+From all the light and laughter of the day
+To some twilit, forlorn sea-god's abode.
+
+Again into the sun with happy cry
+She leapt alive and sparkling from the sea,
+Sprinkling white spray against the hot blue sky,
+A laughing girl ... and yet, I see her lie
+Under a deeper tide eternally
+In cold moon-coloured immortality.
+
+
+
+BATTLE
+
+I
+
+THE RETURN
+
+He went, and he was gay to go:
+  And I smiled on him as he went.
+My boy! 'Twas well he couldn't know
+  My darkest dread, or what it meant--
+
+Just what it meant to smile and smile
+  And let my son go cheerily--
+My son ... and wondering all the while
+  What stranger would come back to me.
+
+
+II
+
+THE DANCERS
+
+All day beneath the hurtling shells
+  Before my burning eyes
+Hover the dainty demoiselles--
+  The peacock dragon-flies.
+
+Unceasingly they dart and glance
+  Above the stagnant stream--
+And I am fighting here in France
+  As in a senseless dream.
+
+A dream of shattering black shells
+  That hurtle overhead,
+And dainty dancing demoiselles
+  Above the dreamless dead.
+
+
+III
+
+HIT
+
+    Out of the sparkling sea
+I drew my tingling body clear, and lay
+On a low ledge the livelong summer day,
+    Basking, and watching lazily
+White sails in Falmouth Bay.
+
+    My body seemed to burn
+Salt in the sun that drenched it through and through
+Till every particle glowed clean and new
+    And slowly seemed to turn
+To lucent amber in a world of blue....
+
+I felt a sudden wrench--
+A trickle of warm blood--
+And found that I was sprawling in the mud
+Among the dead men in the trench.
+
+
+
+LAMENT
+
+We who are left, how shall we look again
+Happily on the sun or feel the rain
+Without remembering how they who went
+Ungrudgingly and spent
+Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?
+
+A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings--
+But we, how shall we turn to little things
+And listen to the birds and winds and streams
+Made holy by their dreams,
+Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+JOHN FREEMAN
+
+
+
+MUSIC COMES
+
+Music comes
+Sweetly from the trembling string
+When wizard fingers sweep
+Dreamily, half asleep;
+When through remembering reeds
+Ancient airs and murmurs creep,
+Oboe oboe following,
+Flute answering clear high flute,
+Voices, voices--falling mute,
+And the jarring drums.
+
+At night I heard
+First a waking bird
+Out of the quiet darkness sing ...
+Music comes
+Strangely to the brain asleep!
+And I heard
+Soft, wizard fingers sweep
+Music from the trembling string,
+And through remembering reeds
+Ancient airs and murmurs creep;
+Oboe oboe following,
+Flute calling clear high flute,
+Voices faint, falling mute,
+And low jarring drums;
+Then all those airs
+Sweetly jangled--newly strange,
+Rich with change ...
+Was it the wind in the reeds?
+Did the wind range
+Over the trembling string;
+
+Into flute and oboe pouring
+Solemn music; sinking, soaring
+Low to high,
+Up and down the sky?
+Was it the wind jarring
+Drowsy far-off drums?
+
+Strangely to the brain asleep
+Music comes.
+
+
+
+NOVEMBER SKIES
+
+Than these November skies
+Is no sky lovelier. The clouds are deep;
+Into their grey the subtle spies
+Of colour creep,
+Changing that high austerity to delight,
+Till ev'n the leaden interfolds are bright.
+And, where the cloud breaks, faint far azure peers
+Ere a thin flushing cloud again
+Shuts up that loveliness, or shares.
+The huge great clouds move slowly, gently, as
+Reluctant the quick sun should shine in vain,
+Holding in bright caprice their rain.
+    And when of colours none,
+Not rose, nor amber, nor the scarce late green,
+Is truly seen,--
+In all the myriad grey,
+In silver height and dusky deep, remain
+The loveliest,
+Faint purple flushes of the unvanquished sun.
+
+
+
+DISCOVERY
+
+Beauty walked over the hills and made them bright.
+She in the long fresh grass scattered her rains
+Sparkling and glittering like a host of stars,
+But not like stars cold, severe, terrible.
+Hers was the laughter of the wind that leaped
+Arm-full of shadows, flinging them far and wide.
+Hers the bright light within the quick green
+Of every new leaf on the oldest tree.
+It was her swimming made the river run
+Shining as the sun;
+Her voice, escaped from winter's chill and dark,
+Singing in the incessant lark....
+All this was hers--yet all this had not been
+Except 'twas seen.
+It was my eyes, Beauty, that made thee bright;
+My ears that heard, the blood leaping in my veins,
+The vehemence of transfiguring thought--
+Not lights and shadows, birds, grasses and rains--
+That made thy wonders wonderful.
+For it has been, Beauty, that I have seen thee,
+Tedious as a painted cloth at a bad play,
+Empty of meaning and so of all delight.
+Now thou hast blessed me with a great pure bliss,
+Shaking thy rainy light all over the earth,
+And I have paid thee with my thankfulness.
+
+
+
+'IT WAS THE LOVELY MOON'
+
+It was the lovely moon--she lifted
+Slowly her white brow among
+Bronze cloud-waves that ebbed and drifted
+Faintly, faintlier afar.
+Calm she looked, yet pale with wonder,
+Sweet in unwonted thoughtfulness,
+Watching the earth that dwindled under
+Faintly, faintlier afar.
+It was the lovely moon that lovelike
+Hovered over the wandering, tired
+Earth, her bosom grey and dovelike,
+Hovering beautiful as a dove....
+The lovely moon:--her soft light falling
+Lightly on roof and poplar and pine--
+Tree to tree whispering and calling,
+Wonderful in the silvery shine
+Of the round, lovely, thoughtful moon.
+
+
+
+STONE TREES
+
+Last night a sword-light in the sky
+Flashed a swift terror on the dark.
+In that sharp light the fields did lie
+Naked and stone-like; each tree stood
+Like a tranced woman, bound and stark.
+  Far off the wood
+With darkness ridged the riven dark.
+
+And cows astonied stared with fear,
+And sheep crept to the knees of cows,
+And conies to their burrows slid,
+And rooks were still in rigid boughs,
+And all things else were still or hid.
+  From all the wood
+Came but the owl's hoot, ghostly, clear.
+
+In that cold trance the earth was held
+It seemed an age, or time was nought.
+Sure never from that stone-like field
+Sprang golden corn, nor from those chill
+Grey granite trees was music wrought.
+  In all the wood
+Even the tall poplar hung stone still.
+
+It seemed an age, or time was none ...
+Slowly the earth heaved out of sleep
+And shivered, and the trees of stone
+Bent and sighed in the gusty wind,
+And rain swept as birds flocking sweep.
+  Far off the wood
+Rolled the slow thunders on the wind.
+
+From all the wood came no brave bird,
+No song broke through the close-fall'n night,
+Nor any sound from cowering herd:
+Only a dog's long lonely howl
+When from the window poured pale light.
+  And from the wood
+The hoot came ghostly of the owl.
+
+
+
+THE PIGEONS
+
+The pigeons, following the faint warm light,
+Stayed at last on the roof till warmth was gone,
+Then in the mist that's hastier than night
+Disappeared all behind the carved dark stone,
+Huddling from the black cruelty of the frost.
+With the new sparkling sun they swooped and came
+Like a cloud between the sun and street, and then
+Like a cloud blown from the blue north were lost,
+Vanishing and returning ever again,
+Small cloud following cloud across the flame
+That clear and meagre burned and burned away
+And left the ice unmelting day by day.
+
+... Nor could the sun through the roof's purple slate
+(Though his gold magic played with shadow there
+And drew the pigeons from the streaming air)
+With any fiery magic penetrate.
+Under the roof the air and water froze,
+And no smoke from the gaping chimney rose.
+The silver frost upon the window pane
+Flowered and branched each starving night anew,
+And stranger, lovelier and crueller grew;
+Pouring her silver that cold silver through,
+The moon made all the dim flower bright again.
+
+... Pouring her silver through that barren flower
+Of silver frost, until it filled and whitened
+A room where two small children waited, frightened
+At the pale ghost of light that hour by hour
+Stared at them till though fear slept not they slept.
+And when that white ghost from the window crept,
+And day came and they woke and saw all plain
+Though still the frost-flower blinded the window pane,
+And touched their mother and touched her hand in vain,
+And wondered why she woke not when they woke;
+And wondered what it was their sleep that broke
+When hand in hand they stared and stared, so frightened;
+They feared and waited, and waited all day long,
+While all the shadows went and the day brightened,
+All the ill shadows but one shadow strong.
+
+Outside were busy feet and human speech
+And daily cries and horns. Maybe they heard,
+Painfully wondering still, and each to each
+Leaning, and listening if their mother stirred--
+Cold, cold,
+Hungering as the long slow hours grew old,
+Though food within the cupboard idle lay
+Beyond their thought, or but beyond their reach.
+The soft blue pigeons all the afternoon
+Sunned themselves on the roof or rose at play,
+Then with the shrinking light fluttered away;
+And once more came the icy-hearted moon,
+Staring down at the frightened children there
+That could but shiver and stare.
+
+How many hours, how many days, who knows?
+Neighbours there were who thought they had gone away
+To return some luckier or luckless day.
+No sound came from the room: the cold air froze
+The very echo of the children's sighs.
+And what they saw within each other's eyes,
+Or heard each other's heart say as they peered
+At the dead mother lying there, and feared
+That she might wake, and then might never wake,
+Who knows, who knows?
+None heard a living sound their silence break.
+
+In those cold days and nights how many birds,
+Flittering above the fields and streams all frozen,
+Watched hungrily the tended flocks and herds--
+Earth's chosen nourished by earth's wise self-chosen!
+How many birds suddenly stiffened and died
+With no plaint cried,
+The starved heart ceasing when the pale sun ceased!
+And when the new day stepped from the same cold East
+The dead birds lay in the light on the snow-flecked field,
+Their song and beautiful free winging stilled.
+
+I walked under snow-sprinkled hills at night,
+And starry sprinkled skies deep blue and bright.
+The keen wind thrust with his knife against the thin
+Breast of the wood as I went tingling by,
+And heard a weak cheep-cheep,--no more--the cry
+Of a bird that crouched the smitten wood within ...
+But no one heeded that sharp spiritual cry
+Of the two children in their misery,
+When in the cold and famished night death's shade
+More terrible the moon's cold shadows made.
+How was it none could hear
+That bodiless crying, birdlike, sharp and clear?
+
+I cannot think what they, unanswered, thought
+When the night came again and shadows moved
+As the moon through the ice-flower stared and roved,
+And that unyielding Shadow came again.
+That Shadow came again unseen and caught
+The children as they sat listening in vain,
+Their starved hearts failing ere the Shadow removed.
+And when the new morn stepped from the same cold East
+They lay unawakening in the barren light,
+Their song and their imaginations bright,
+Their pains and fears and all bewilderment ceased....
+While the brief sun gave
+New beauty to the death-flower of the frost,
+And pigeons in the frore air swooped and tossed,
+And glad eyes were more glad, and grave less grave.
+
+There is not pity enough in heaven or earth,
+There is not love enough, if children die
+Like famished birds--oh, less mercifully.
+A great wrong's done when such as these go forth
+Into the starless dark, broken and bruised,
+With mind and sweet affection all confused,
+And horror closing round them as they go.
+There is not pity enough!
+
+And I have made, children, these verses for you,
+Lasting a little longer than your breath,
+Because I have been haunted with your death:
+So men are driven to things they hate to do.
+Jesus, forgive us all our happiness,
+As Thou dost blot out all our miseries.
+
+
+
+HAPPY IS ENGLAND NOW
+
+There is not anything more wonderful
+Than a great people moving towards the deep
+Of an unguessed and unfeared future; nor
+Is aught so dear of all held dear before
+As the new passion stirring in their veins
+When the destroying Dragon wakes from sleep.
+
+Happy is England now, as never yet!
+And though the sorrows of the slow days fret
+Her faithfullest children, grief itself is proud.
+Ev'n the warm beauty of this spring and summer
+That turns to bitterness turns then to gladness
+Since for this England the beloved ones died.
+
+Happy is England in the brave that die
+For wrongs not hers and wrongs so sternly hers;
+Happy in those that give, give, and endure
+The pain that never the new years may cure;
+Happy in all her dark woods, green fields, towns,
+Her hills and rivers and her chafing sea.
+
+What'er was dear before is dearer now.
+There's not a bird singing upon his bough
+But sings the sweeter in our English ears:
+There's not a nobleness of heart, hand, brain
+But shines the purer; happiest is England now
+In those that fight, and watch with pride and tears.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+JOHN DRINKWATER
+
+
+
+MAY GARDEN
+
+A shower of green gems on my apple tree
+  This first morning of May
+Has fallen out of the night, to be
+  Herald of holiday--
+Bright gems of green that, fallen there,
+Seem fixed and glowing on the air.
+
+Until a flutter of blackbird wings
+  Shakes and makes the boughs alive,
+And the gems are now no frozen things,
+  But apple-green buds to thrive
+On sap of my May garden, how well
+The green September globes will tell.
+
+Also my pear tree has its buds,
+  But they are silver-yellow,
+Like autumn meadows when the floods
+  Are silver under willow,
+And here shall long and shapely pears
+Be gathered while the autumn wears.
+
+And there are sixty daffodils
+  Beneath my wall....
+And jealousy it is that kills
+  This world when all
+The spring's behaviour here is spent
+To make the world magnificent
+
+
+
+THE MIDLANDS
+
+Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill
+  Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky
+Deep as the bedded violets that fill
+  March woods with dusky passion. As I lie
+Abed between cool walls I watch the host
+  Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain,
+And drowsily the habit of these most
+  Beloved of English lands moves in my brain,
+While silence holds dominion of the dark,
+Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.
+
+I see the valleys in their morning mist
+  Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light,
+Happy with many a yeoman melodist:
+  I see the little roads of twinkling white
+Busy with fieldward teams and market gear
+  Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell
+The many-minded changes of the year,
+  Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well;
+I see the sun persuade the mist away,
+Till town and stead are shining to the day.
+
+I see the wagons move along the rows
+  Of ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower,
+I see the lissom husbandman who knows
+  Deep in his heart the beauty of his power,
+As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids on
+  The harvest home. I hear the rickyard fill
+With gossip as in generations gone,
+  While wagon follows wagon from the hill.
+I think how, when our seasons all are sealed,
+Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field.
+
+I see the barns and comely manors planned
+  By men who somehow moved in comely thought,
+Who, with a simple shippon to their hand,
+  As men upon some godlike business wrought;
+I see the little cottages that keep
+  Their beauty still where since Plantagenet
+Have come the shepherds happily to sleep,
+  Finding the loaves and cups of cider set;
+I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old,
+Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold.
+
+And now the valleys that upon the sun
+  Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again,
+And the last light upon the wolds is done,
+  And silence falls on flock and fields and men;
+And black upon the night I watch my hill,
+  And the stars shine, and there an owly wing
+Brushes the night, and all again is still,
+  And, from this land of worship that I sing,
+I turn to sleep, content that from my sires
+I draw the blood of England's midmost shires.
+
+
+
+THE COTSWOLD FARMERS
+
+Sometimes the ghosts forgotten go
+Along the hill-top way,
+And with long scythes of silver mow
+Meadows of moonlit hay,
+Until the cocks of Cotswold crow
+The coming of the day.
+
+There's Tony Turkletob who died
+When he could drink no more,
+And Uncle Heritage, the pride
+Of eighteen-twenty-four,
+And Ebenezer Barleytide,
+And others half a score.
+
+They fold in phantom pens, and plough
+Furrows without a share,
+And one will milk a faery cow,
+And one will stare and stare,
+And whistle ghostly tunes that now
+Are not sung anywhere.
+
+The moon goes down on Oakridge lea,
+The other world's astir,
+The Cotswold Farmers silently
+Go back to sepulchre,
+The sleeping watchdogs wake, and see
+No ghostly harvester.
+
+
+
+RECIPROCITY
+
+I do not think that skies and meadows are
+Moral, or that the fixture of a star
+Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
+Have wisdom in their windless silences.
+Yet these are things invested in my mood
+With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,
+That in my troubled season I can cry
+Upon the wide composure of the sky,
+And envy fields, and wish that I might be
+As little daunted as a star or tree.
+
+
+
+BIRTHRIGHT
+
+Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed
+  Because a summer evening passed;
+And little Ariadne cried
+  That summer fancy fell at last
+To dust; and young Verona died
+  When beauty's hour was overcast.
+
+Theirs was the bitterness we know
+  Because the clouds of hawthorn keep
+So short a state, and kisses go
+  To tombs unfathomably deep,
+While Rameses and Romeo
+  And little Ariadne sleep.
+
+
+
+OLTON POOLS
+
+Now June walks on the waters,
+And the cuckoo's last enchantment
+Passes from Olton pools.
+
+Now dawn comes to my window
+Breathing midsummer roses,
+And scythes are wet with dew.
+
+Is it not strange for ever
+That, bowered in this wonder,
+Man keeps a jealous heart?...
+
+That June and the June waters,
+And birds and dawn-lit roses,
+Are gospels in the wind,
+
+Fading upon the deserts,
+Poor pilgrim revelations?...
+Hist ... over Olton pools!
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+WALTER DE LA MARE
+
+
+
+THE SCRIBE
+
+What lovely things
+Thy hand hath made,
+The smooth-plumed bird
+In its emerald shade,
+The seed of the grass,
+The speck of stone
+Which the wayfaring ant
+Stirs, and hastes on!
+
+Though I should sit
+By some tarn in Thy hills,
+Using its ink
+As the spirit wills
+To write of Earth's wonders,
+Its live willed things,
+Flit would the ages
+On soundless wings
+Ere unto Z
+My pen drew nigh,
+Leviathan told,
+And the honey-fly:
+And still would remain
+My wit to try--
+My worn reeds broken,
+The dark tarn dry,
+All words forgotten--
+Thou, Lord, and I.
+
+
+
+THE REMONSTRANCE
+
+I was at peace until you came
+And set a careless mind aflame;
+I lived in quiet; cold, content;
+All longing in safe banishment,
+Until your ghostly lips and eyes
+    Made wisdom unwise.
+
+Naught was in me to tempt your feet
+To seek a lodging. Quite forgot
+Lay the sweet solitude we two
+In childhood used to wander through;
+Time's cold had closed my heart about,
+    And shut you out.
+
+Well, and what then?... O vision grave,
+Take all the little all I have!
+Strip me of what in voiceless thought
+Life's kept of life, unhoped, unsought!--
+Reverie and dream that memory must
+    Hide deep in dust!
+
+This only I say: Though cold and bare
+The haunted house you have chosen to share,
+Still 'neath its walls the moonbeam goes
+And trembles on the untended rose;
+Still o'er its broken roof-tree rise
+The starry arches of the skies;
+And 'neath your lightest word shall be
+    The thunder of an ebbing sea.
+
+
+
+THE GHOST
+
+'Who knocks?' 'I, who was beautiful
+Beyond all dreams to restore,
+I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither,
+And knock on the door.'
+
+'Who speaks?' 'I--once was my speech
+Sweet as the bird's on the air,
+When echo lurks by the waters to heed;
+'Tis I speak thee fair.'
+
+'Dark is the hour!' 'Aye, and cold.'
+'Lone is my house.' 'Ah, but mine?'
+'Sight, touch, lips, eyes gleamed in vain.'
+'Long dead these to thine.'
+
+Silence. Still faint on the porch
+Brake the flames of the stars.
+In gloom groped a hope-wearied hand
+Over keys, bolts, and bars.
+
+A face peered. All the grey night
+In chaos of vacancy shone;
+Nought but vast sorrow was there--
+The sweet cheat gone.
+
+
+
+THE FOOL RINGS HIS BELLS
+
+Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee;
+And thou, poor Innocency;
+And Love--a lad with broken wing;
+And Pity, too:
+The Fool shall sing to you,
+As Fools will sing.
+
+Aye, music hath small sense.
+And a time's soon told,
+And Earth is old,
+And my poor wits are dense;
+Yet I have secrets,--dark, my dear,
+To breathe you all: Come near.
+And lest some hideous listener tells,
+I'll ring the bells.
+
+They're all at war!
+Yes, yes, their bodies go
+'Neath burning sun and icy star
+To chaunted songs of woe,
+Dragging cold cannon through a mire
+Of rain and blood and spouting fire,
+The new moon glinting hard on eyes
+Wide with insanities!
+
+Hush!... I use words
+I hardly know the meaning of;
+And the mute birds
+Are glancing at Love
+From out their shade of leaf and flower,
+Trembling at treacheries
+Which even in noonday cower.
+
+Heed, heed not what I said
+Of frenzied hosts of men,
+More fools than I,
+On envy, hatred fed,
+Who kill, and die--
+Spake I not plainly, then?
+Yet Pity whispered, 'Why?'
+
+Thou silly thing, off to thy daisies go.
+Mine was not news for child to know,
+And Death--no ears hath. He hath supped where creep
+Eyeless worms in hush of sleep;
+Yet, when he smiles, the hand he draws
+Athwart his grinning jaws--
+Faintly the thin bones rattle and ... there, there,
+Hearken how my bells in the air
+Drive away care!...
+
+Nay, but a dream I had
+Of a world all mad.
+Not simple happy mad like me,
+Who am mad like an empty scene
+Of water and willow tree,
+Where the wind hath been;
+But that foul Satan-mad,
+Who rots in his own head,
+And counts the dead,
+Not honest one--and two--
+But for the ghosts they were,
+Brave, faithful, true,
+When, head in air,
+In Earth's clear green and blue
+Heaven they did share
+With Beauty who bade them there....
+
+There, now!--Death goes--
+Mayhap I have wearied him.
+Aye, and the light doth dim,
+And asleep's the rose,
+And tired Innocence
+In dreams is hence....
+Come, Love, my lad,
+Nodding that drowsy head,
+'Tis time thy prayers were said.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM H. DAVIES
+
+
+
+THE WHITE CASCADE
+
+What happy mortal sees that mountain now,
+The white cascade that's shining on its brow;
+
+The white cascade that's both a bird and star,
+That has a ten-mile voice and shines as far?
+
+Though I may never leave this land again,
+Yet every spring my mind must cross the main
+
+To hear and see that water-bird and star
+That on the mountain sings, and shines so far.
+
+
+
+EASTER
+
+What exultations in my mind,
+From the love-bite of this Easter wind!
+My head thrown back, my face doth shine
+Like yonder Sun's, but warmer mine.
+A butterfly--from who knows where--
+Comes with a stagger through the air,
+And, lying down, doth ope and close
+His wings, as babies work their toes:
+Perhaps he thinks of pressing tight
+Into his wings a little light!
+And many a bird hops in between
+The leaves he dreams of, long and green,
+And sings for nipple-buds that show
+Where the full-breasted leaves must grow.
+
+
+
+RAPTURES
+
+Sing for the sun your lyric, lark,
+  Of twice ten thousand notes;
+Sing for the moon, you nightingales,
+  Whose light shall kiss your throats;
+Sing, sparrows, for the soft warm rain,
+  To wet your feathers through;
+And when a rainbow's in the sky,
+  Sing you, cuckoo--Cuckoo!
+
+Sing for your five blue eggs, fond thrush,
+  By many a leaf concealed;
+You starlings, wrens, and blackbirds, sing
+  In every wood and field:
+While I, who fail to give my love
+  Long raptures twice as fine,
+Will for her beauty breathe this one--
+  A sigh, that's more divine.
+
+
+
+COWSLIPS AND LARKS
+
+I hear it said yon land is poor,
+In spite of those rich cowslips there--
+And all the singing larks it shoots
+To heaven from the cowslips' roots.
+But I, with eyes that beauty find,
+And music ever in my mind,
+Feed my thoughts well upon that grass
+Which starves the horse, the ox, and ass.
+So here I stand, two miles to come
+To Shapwick and my ten-days-home,
+Taking my summer's joy, although
+The distant clouds are dark and low,
+And comes a storm that, fierce and strong,
+Has brought the Mendip hills along:
+Those hills that when the light is there
+Are many a sunny mile from here.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+GORDON BOTTOMLEY
+
+
+
+ATLANTIS
+
+What poets sang in Atlantis? Who can tell
+The epics of Atlantis or their names?
+The sea hath its own murmurs, and sounds not
+The secrets of its silences beneath,
+And knows not any cadences enfolded
+When the last bubbles of Atlantis broke
+Among the quieting of its heaving floor.
+
+O, years and tides and leagues and all their billows
+Can alter not man's knowledge of men's hearts--
+While trees and rocks and clouds include our being
+We know the epics of Atlantis still:
+A hero gave himself to lesser men,
+Who first misunderstood and murdered him,
+And then misunderstood and worshipped him;
+A woman was lovely and men fought for her,
+Towns burnt for her, and men put men in bondage,
+But she put lengthier bondage on them all;
+A wanderer toiled among all the isles
+That fleck this turning star of shifting sea,
+Or lonely purgatories of the mind,
+In longing for his home or his lost love.
+
+Poetry is founded on the hearts of men:
+Though in Nirvana or the Heavenly courts
+The principle of beauty shall persist,
+Its body of poetry, as the body of man,
+Is but a terrene form, a terrene use,
+That swifter being will not loiter with;
+And, when mankind is dead and the world cold,
+Poetry's immortality will pass.
+
+
+
+NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1913
+
+O, Cartmel bells ring soft to-night,
+And Cartmel bells ring clear,
+But I lie far away to-night,
+Listening with my dear;
+
+Listening in a frosty land
+Where all the bells are still
+And the small-windowed bell-towers stand
+Dark under heath and hill.
+
+I thought that, with each dying year,
+As long as life should last
+The bells of Cartmel I should hear
+Ring out an aged past:
+
+The plunging, mingling sounds increase
+Darkness's depth and height,
+The hollow valley gains more peace
+And ancientness to-night:
+
+The loveliness, the fruitfulness,
+The power of life lived there
+Return, revive, more closely press
+Upon that midnight air.
+
+But many deaths have place in men
+Before they come to die;
+Joys must be used and spent, and then
+Abandoned and passed by.
+
+Earth is not ours; no cherished space
+Can hold us from life's flow,
+That bears us thither and thence by ways
+We knew not we should go.
+
+O, Cartmel bells ring loud, ring clear,
+Through midnight deep and hoar,
+A year new-born, and I shall hear
+The Cartmel bells no more.
+
+
+
+IN MEMORIAM, A. M. W.
+
+SEPTEMBER 1910
+
+(For a Solemn Music)
+
+
+Out of a silence
+The voice of music speaks.
+
+When words have no more power,
+When tears can tell no more,
+The heart of all regret
+Is uttered by a falling wave
+Of melody.
+
+No more, no more
+The voice that gathered us
+Shall hush us with deep joy;
+But in this hush,
+Out of its silence,
+In the awaking of music,
+It shall return.
+
+For music can renew
+Its gladness and communion,
+Until we also sink,
+Where sinks the voice of music,
+Into a silence.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+MAURICE BARING
+
+
+
+IN MEMORIAM, A. H.
+
+(Auberon Herbert, Captain Lord Lucas, R. F. C. killed November 3, 1916)
+
+[Greek: Nomatai d'en atrugetou chaei]
+
+
+The wind had blown away the rain
+That all day long had soaked the level plain.
+Against the horizon's fiery wrack,
+The sheds loomed black.
+And higher, in their tumultuous concourse met,
+The streaming clouds, shot-riddled banners, wet
+With the flickering storm,
+Drifted and smouldered, warm
+With flashes sent
+From the lower firmament.
+And they concealed--
+They only here and there through rifts revealed
+A hidden sanctuary of fire and light,
+A city of chrysolite.
+
+We looked and laughed and wondered, and I said:
+That orange sea, those oriflammes outspread
+Were like the fanciful imaginings
+That the young painter flings
+Upon the canvas bold,
+Such as the sage and the old
+Make mock at, saying it could never be;
+And you assented also, laughingly.
+I wondered what they meant,
+That flaming firmament,
+Those clouds so grey so gold, so wet so warm,
+So much of glory and so much of storm,
+The end of the world, or the end
+Of the war--remoter still to me and you, my friend.
+
+Alas! it meant not this, it meant not that:
+It meant that now the last time you and I
+Should look at the golden sky,
+And the dark fields large and flat,
+And smell the evening weather,
+And laugh and talk and wonder both together.
+
+The last, last time. We nevermore should meet
+In France or London street,
+Or fields of home. The desolated space
+Of life shall nevermore
+Be what it was before.
+No one shall take your place.
+No other face
+Can fill that empty frame.
+There is no answer when we call your name.
+We cannot hear your step upon the stair.
+We turn to speak and find a vacant chair.
+Something is broken which we cannot mend.
+God has done more than take away a friend
+In taking you; for all that we have left
+Is bruised and irremediably bereft.
+There is none like you. Yet not that alone
+Do we bemoan;
+But this; that you were greater than the rest,
+And better than the best.
+
+O liberal heart fast-rooted to the soil,
+O lover of ancient freedom and proud toil,
+Friend of the gipsies and all wandering song,
+The forest's nursling and the favoured child
+Of woodlands wild--
+O brother to the birds and all things free,
+Captain of liberty!
+
+Deep in your heart the restless seed was sown;
+The vagrant spirit fretted in your feet;
+We wondered could you tarry long,
+And brook for long the cramping street,
+Or would you one day sail for shores unknown,
+And shake from you the dust of towns, and spurn
+The crowded market-place--and not return?
+You found a sterner guide;
+You heard the guns. Then, to their distant fire,
+Your dreams were laid aside;
+And on that day, you cast your heart's desire
+Upon a burning pyre;
+You gave your service to the exalted need,
+Until at last from bondage freed,
+At liberty to serve as you loved best,
+You chose the noblest way. God did the rest.
+
+So when the spring of the world shall shrive our stain,
+After the winter of war,
+When the poor world awakes to peace once more,
+After such night of ravage and of rain,
+You shall not come again.
+You shall not come to taste the old spring weather,
+To gallop through the soft untrampled heather,
+To bathe and bake your body on the grass.
+We shall be there, alas!
+But not with you. When Spring shall wake the earth,
+And quicken the scarred fields to the new birth,
+Our grief shall grow. For what can Spring renew
+More fiercely for us than the need of you?
+
+That night I dreamt they sent for me and said
+That you were missing, 'missing, missing--dead':
+I cried when in the morning I awoke,
+And all the world seemed shrouded in a cloak;
+But when I saw the sun,
+And knew another day had just begun,
+I brushed the dream away, and quite forgot
+The nightmare's ugly blot.
+So was the dream forgot. The dream came true.
+Before the night I knew
+That you had flown away into the air
+For ever. Then I cheated my despair.
+I said
+That you were safe--or wounded--but not dead.
+Alas! I knew
+Which was the false and true.
+
+And after days of watching, days of lead,
+There came the certain news that you were dead.
+You had died fighting, fighting against odds,
+Such as in war the gods
+AEthereal dared when all the world was young;
+Such fighting as blind Homer never sung,
+Nor Hector nor Achilles never knew,
+High in the empty blue.
+High, high, above the clouds, against the setting sun,
+The fight was fought, and your great task was done.
+
+Of all your brave adventures this the last
+The bravest was and best;
+Meet ending to a long embattled past,
+This swift, triumphant, fatal quest,
+Crowned with the wreath that never perisheth,
+And diadem of honourable death;
+Swift Death aflame with offering supreme
+And mighty sacrifice,
+More than all mortal dream;
+A soaring death, and near to Heaven's gate;
+Beneath the very walls of Paradise.
+Surely with soul elate,
+You heard the destined bullet as you flew,
+And surely your prophetic spirit knew
+That you had well deserved that shining fate.
+
+Here is no waste,
+No burning Might-have-been,
+No bitter after-taste,
+None to censure, none to screen,
+Nothing awry, nor anything misspent;
+Only content, content beyond content,
+Which hath not any room for betterment.
+
+God, Who had made you valiant, strong and swift,
+And maimed you with a bullet long ago,
+And cleft your riotous ardour with a rift,
+And checked your youth's tumultuous overflow,
+Gave back your youth to you,
+And packed in moments rare and few
+Achievements manifold
+And happiness untold,
+And bade you spring to Death as to a bride,
+In manhood's ripeness, power and pride,
+And on your sandals the strong wings of youth.
+He let you leave a name
+To shine on the entablatures of truth,
+For ever:
+To sound for ever in answering halls of fame.
+
+For you soared onwards to that world which rags
+Of clouds, like tattered flags,
+Concealed; you reached the walls of chrysolite,
+The mansions white;
+And losing all, you gained the civic crown
+Of that eternal town,
+Wherein you passed a rightful citizen
+Of the bright commonwealth ablaze beyond our ken.
+
+Surely you found companions meet for you
+In that high place;
+You met there face to face
+Those you had never known, but whom you knew:
+Knights of the Table Round,
+And all the very brave, the very true,
+With chivalry crowned;
+The captains rare,
+Courteous and brave beyond our human air;
+Those who had loved and suffered overmuch,
+Now free from the world's touch.
+And with them were the friends of yesterday,
+Who went before and pointed you the way;
+And in that place of freshness, light and rest,
+Where Lancelot and Tristram vigil keep
+Over their King's long sleep,
+Surely they made a place for you.
+Their long-expected guest,
+Among the chosen few,
+And welcomed you, their brother and their friend,
+To that companionship which hath no end.
+
+And in the portals of the sacred hall
+You hear the trumpet's call,
+At dawn upon the silvery battlement,
+Re-echo through the deep
+And bid the sons of God to rise from sleep,
+And with a shout to hail
+The sunrise on the city of the Grail:
+The music that proud Lucifer in Hell
+Missed more than all the joys that he forwent.
+You hear the solemn bell
+At vespers, when the oriflammes are furled;
+And then you know that somewhere in the world,
+That shines far-off beneath you like a gem,
+They think of you, and when you think of them
+You know that they will wipe away their tears,
+And cast aside their fears;
+That they will have it so,
+And in no otherwise;
+That it is well with them because they know,
+With faithful eyes,
+Fixed forward and turned upwards to the skies,
+That it is well with you,
+Among the chosen few,
+Among the very brave, the very true.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+HERBERT ASQUITH
+
+
+
+THE VOLUNTEER
+
+Here lies the clerk who half his life had spent
+Toiling at ledgers in a city grey,
+Thinking that so his days would drift away
+With no lance broken in life's tournament:
+Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes
+The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
+And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,
+Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.
+
+And now those waiting dreams are satisfied;
+From twilight to the halls of dawn he went;
+His lance is broken; but he lies content
+With that high hour, in which he lived and died.
+And falling thus, he wants no recompense,
+Who found his battle in the last resort;
+Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence,
+Who goes to join the men of Agincourt.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Georgian Poetry 1916-17, by Various
+
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