Miscellany of Poetry
by
Various
Part 1 out of 3
Produced by Clytie Siddall, Keren Vergon
and the online Distributed Proofreading Team!
A MISCELLANY OF POETRY
1919
Edited by W. Kean Seymour.
With decorations by Doris Palmer, Cecil Palmer and Hayward.
To
SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH
1919
PREFATORY NOTE
This 'Miscellany of Poetry, 1919', is issued to the public as a truly
catholic anthology of contemporary poetry. The poems here printed are
new, in the sense that they have not previously been issued by their
authors in book form--a fact which surely gives the Miscellany an unique
place among modern collections. My deep thanks are due to my
fellow-contributors for their generous and hearty co-operation, and to
the editors of the 'English Review', 'To-day', 'Voices', 'New Witness',
'Observer', 'Saturday Westminster', 'Art and Letters', 'Cambridge
Magazine' and the 'Nation' for permission to reprint certain poems.
W. K. S.
'September, 1919'
CONTENTS
BINYON, LAURENCE
Song
Commercial
Numbers
The Children Dancing
BRANFORD, F. V.
Farewell to Mathematics
Return
Over the Dead
CHESTERTON, GILBERT KEITH
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
The Ballad of St. Barbara
CHURCH, RICHARD
Psyche goes forth to Life
DAVIES, WILLIAM H.
The Villain
Bird and Brook
Passion's Hounds
The Truth
The Force of Love
April's Lambs
DEARMER, GEOFFREY
Nous Autres
She to Him
DRINKWATER, JOHN
Malediction
Spectral
GIBSON, WILFRED WILSON
IN WAR-TIME
1. Troopship
2. The Conscript
3. Air-Raid
4. In War-Time
5. Ragtime
6. Leave
7. Bacchanal
GOLDING, Louis
Shepherd Singing Ragtime
The Singer of High State
GOULD, GERALD
Freedoms (Eight Sonnets)
HOUSMAN, LAURENCE
Summer Night
LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD
The Palaces of The Rose
MACAULAY, ROSE
Peace, June 28th, 1919
MASON, EUGENE
Antony and Cleopatra
MAYNARD, THEODORE
Dirge
Desideravi
Laus Deo!
MOORE, T. STURGE
Aforetime
MOULT, THOMAS
Down here the Hawthorn
Invocation
NICHOLS, ROBERT
On Seeing a Portrait of Blake
PHILLPOTTS, EDEN
The Fall
Ghosties at the Wedding
SABIN, ARTHUR K.
Four Lyrics
SACKVILLE, LADY MARGARET
The Return
To--
SEYMOUR, WILLIAM KEAN
Fruitage
In the Wood
Siesta
To One who Eats Larks
If Beauty Came to You
SHIPP, HORACE
Prison
The Sixth Day
SITWELL, EDITH
Eventail
The Lady with the Sewing Machine
Portrait of a Barmaid
Solo for Ear-Trumpet
STUART, MURIEL
The Father
The Shore
Thélus Wood
The Thief of Beauty
TITTERTON, W. R.
The High Wall
The Broken Sword
Night-Shapes
The Silent People
VISIAK, E. H.
Lamps and Lanterns
Stranded
WAUGH, ALEC.
Rubble
WILLIAMS, CHARLES
Christmas
Briseis
* * * * *
LAURENCE BINYON
A SONG
For Mercy, Courage, Kindness, Mirth,
There is no measure upon earth.
Nay, they wither, root and stem,
If an end be set to them.
Overbrim and overflow,
If your own heart you would know;
For the spirit born to bless
Lives but in its own excess.
COMMERCIAL
Gross, with protruding ears,
Sleek hair, brisk glance, fleshy and yet alert,
Red, full, and satisfied,
Cased in obtuseness confident not to be hurt,
He sits at a little table
In the crowded congenial glare and noise, jingling
Coin in his pocket; sips
His glass, with hard eye impudently singling
A woman here and there:--
Women and men, they are all priced in his thought,
All commodities staked
In the market, sooner or later sold and bought.
"Were I he," you are thinking,
You with the dreamer's forehead and pure eyes,
"What should I lose?--All,
All that is worthy the striving for, all my prize,
"All the truth of me, all
Life that is wonder, pity, and fear, requiring
Utter joy, utter pain,
From the heart that the infinite hurts with deep desiring
"Why is it I am not he?
Chance? The grace of God? The mystery's plan?
He, too, is human stuff,
A kneading of the old, brotherly slime of man.
"Am I a lover of men,
And turn abhorring as from fat slug or snake?
Lives obstinate in me too
Something the power of angels could not unmake?"
O self-questioner! None
Unlocks your answer. Steadily look, nor flinch.
This belongs to your kind,
And knows its aim and fails not itself at a pinch.
It is here in the world and works,
Not done with yet.--Up, then, let the test be tried!
Dare your uttermost, be
Completely, and of your own, like him, be justified.
NUMBERS
Trefoil and Quatrefoil!
What shaped those destinied small silent leaves
Or numbered them under the soil?
I lift my dazzled sight
From grass to sky,
From humming and hot perfume
To scorching, quivering light,
Empty blue!--Why,
As I bury my face afresh
In a sunshot vivid gloom--
Minute infinity's mesh,
Where spearing side by side
Smooth stalk and furred uplift
Their luminous green secrets from the grass,
Tower to a bud and delicately divide--
Do I think of the things unthought
Before man was?
Bodiless Numbers!
When there was none to explore
Your winding labyrinths occult,
None to delve your ore
Of strange virtue, or do
Your magical business, you
Were there, never old nor new,
Veined in the world and alive:--
Before the Planets, Seven;
Before these fingers, Five!
You that are globed and single,
Crystal virgins, and you that part,
Melt, and again mingle!
We have hoisted sail in the night
On the oceans that you chart:
Dark winds carry us onward, on;
But you are there before us, silent Answers,
Beyond the bounds of the sun.
You body yourselves in the stars, inscrutable dancers,
Native where we are none.
O inhuman Numbers!
All things change and glide,
Corrupt and crumble, suffer wreck and decay,
But, obstinate dark Integrities, you abide,
And obey but them who obey.
All things else are dyed
In the colours of man's desire:
But you no bribe nor prayer
Avails to soften or sway.
Nothing of me you share,
Yet I cannot think you away.
And if I seek to escape you, still you are there
Stronger than caging pillars of iron
Not to be passed, in an air
Where human wish and word
Fall like a frozen bird.
Music asleep
In pulses of sound, in the waves!
Hidden runes rubbed bright!
Dizzy ladders of thought in the night!
Are you masters or slaves--
Subtlest of man's slaves,--
Shadowy Numbers?
In a vision I saw
Old vulture Time, feeding
On the flesh of the world; I saw
The home of our use undated--
Seasons of fruiting and seeding
Withered, and hunger and thirst
Dead, with all they fed on:
Till at last, when Time was sated,
Only you persisted,
Dædal Numbers, sole and same,
Invisible skeleton frame
Of the peopled earth we tread on--
Last, as first.
Because naught can avail
To wound or to tarnish you;
Because you are neither sold nor bought,
Because you have not the power to fail
But live beyond our furthest thought,
Strange Numbers, of infinite clue,
Beyond fear, beyond ruth,
You strengthen also me
To be in my own truth.
THE CHILDREN DANCING
Away, sad thoughts, and teasing
Perplexities, away!
Let other blood go freezing,
We will be wise and gay;
For here is all heart-easing,
An ecstasy at play!
The children dancing, dancing,
Light upon happy feet,
Both eye and heart entrancing,
Mingle, escape, and meet,
Come joyous-eyed advancing
And floatingly retreat.
Now slow, now swifter treading
Their paces timed and true,
An instant poised, then threading
A maze of printless clue,
The music smoothly wedding
To motions ever new.
They launch in chime, and scatter
In looping ripples; they
Are Music's airy matter,
And their feet move, the way
The raindrops shine and patter
On tossing flowers in May.
As if those flowers were singing
For joy of the bright air,
As if you saw them springing
To dance the breeze--so fair
The lissom bodies swinging,
So light the flung-back hair.
And through the mind enchanted
A happy river goes,
By its own young carol haunted
And bringing, where it flows,
What all the world has wanted
But who in this world knows?
* * * * *
F. V. BRANFORD
FAREWELL TO MATHEMATICS
I laboured on the anvil of my brain
And beat a metal out of pageantry.
Figure and form I carry in my train
To load the scaffolds of Eternity.
Where the masters are
Building star on star;
Where, in solemn ritual,
The great Dead Mathematical
Wait and wait and wait for me.
To the deliberate presence of the Sun
(Bright cynosure of every darkling sign,
Wherein all numbers consummate in One,)
Poised on the bolt of an Un-finite line,
As one whose spirit's state,
Is unafraid but desperate,
Through far unfathomed fears,
Through Time to timeless years,
I soar, through Shade to Shine.
They say that on a night there came to Euler,
As eager-eyed he stared upon a star,
And fought the far infinitude, a toiler
Like to himself and me, for things that are
Buried from the eyes alone
Of men whose sight is made of stone,
And led him out in ecstasy,
Over the dim boundary
By the pale gleam of a scimitar.
Then Euler, mindful of thy lesser need,
Be thou my pilot in this treacherous hour,
That I be less unworth thy greater meed,
O my strong brother in the halls of power;
For here and hence I sail
Alone beyond the pale.
Where square and circle coincide,
And the parallels collide,
And perfect pyramids flower.
RETURN
The hearts of the mountains were void,
The sea spake foreign tongues,
From the speed of the wind I gat me no breath,
And the temples of Time were as sepulchres.
I walked about the world in the midnight,
I stood under water, and over stars,
I cast Life from me,
I handled Death,
I walked naked into lightning,
I had so great a thirst for God.
* * * * *
The heart of the Mountain overfloweth,
The sea speaketh clear words,
The Ark is brought to the Tabernacle.
Lightnings, that withered in the sky,
Are become great beacons roaring in a wind
I see Death, lying in the arms of Life,
And, in the womb of Death, I see Joy.
I had said 'The spirit of the Earth is white,
But lo! He is red with joy.
He devoureth the meat of many nations,
He absorbeth a vintage of scarlet.
Though my head be with the stars,
All the flowers of Earth are singing in mine ears.
Though my foot be planted on the sea-bed.
Yet is it shod with the thunder.
Sorrow for Earth Transient is passed away,
Pain of martyr'd splendour is no more.
They have left a fair child in my lap--
A lusty infant shouting to the dawn.
The Ogre of midnight hath perished.
He shivered in the glare of the mountain,
He screamed upon the sea-swords,
His bowels rushed out upon the lances of the Wind.
I shall look through the eye of Mountain,
I shall set in my scabbard the sabre of Sea,
And the spear of Wind shall be my hand's delight.
I shall not descend from the Hill.
Never go down to the Valley;
For I see, on a snow-crowned peak,
The glory of the Lord,
Erect as Orion,
Belted as to his blade.
But the roots of the mountains mingle with mist.
And raving skeletons run thereon.
I shall not go hence,
For here is my Priest,
Who hath broken me in the waters of Disdain.
Here is my Jester,
Who hath mended me on the wheels of Mirth.
Here is my Champion,
Who hath confounded mine ancient Enemy
Ardgay--the slayer of Giants.
OVER THE DEAD
Who in the splendour of a simple thought,
Whether for England or her enemies,
Went in the night, and in the morning died;
Each bleeding piece of human earth that lies
Stark to the carrion wind, and groaning cries
For burial--each Jesu crucified--
Hath surely won the thing he dearly bought,
For wrong is right, when wrong is greatly wrought.
Yet is the Nazarene no thigh of Thor,
To play on partial fields the puppet king
Bearing the battle down with bloody hand.
Serene he towers above the gods of war,
A naked man where shells go thundering--
The great unchallenged Lord of No-Man's Land.
* * * * *
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON
ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD
The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home;
And bees and birds of England
About the cross can roam.
But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas, for England
They have their graves afar.
And they that rule in England
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas, for England,
They have no graves as yet.
THE BALLAD OF ST. BARBARA
(St. Barbara is the patroness of artillery, and of those who are in fear
of sudden death.)
When the long grey lines came flooding upon Paris in the plain,
We stood and drank of the last free air we never could love again;
They had led us back from a lost battle, to halt we knew not where,
And stilled us; and our gaping guns were dumb with our despair.
The grey tribes flowed for ever from the infinite lifeless lands,
And a Norman to a Breton spoke, his chin upon his hands:
"There was an end to Ilium; and an end came to Rome;
And a man plays on a painted stage in the land that he calls home.
Arch after arch of triumph, but floor beyond falling floor,
That lead to a low door at last: and beyond there is no door."
The Breton to the Norman spoke, like a little child spake he,
But his sea-blue eyes were empty as his home beside the sea:
"There are more windows in one house than there are eyes to see;
There are more doors in a man's house, but God has hid the key;
Ruin is a builder of windows; her legend witnesseth
Barbara, the saint of gunners, and a stay in sudden death."
It seemed the wheel of the worlds stood still an instant in its turning,
More than the kings of the earth that turned with the turning of Valmy
mill,
While trickled the idle tale and the sea-blue eyes were burning,
Still as the heart of a whirlwind, the heart of the world stood still.
"Barbara the beautiful had praise of lute and pen,
Her hair was like a summer night, dark and desired of men,
Her feet like birds from far away that linger and light in doubt,
And her face was like a window where a man's first love looked out.
"Her sire was master of many slaves, a hard man of his hands;
They built a tower about her in the desolate golden lands,
Sealed as the tyrants sealed their tombs, planned with an ancient plan,
And set two windows in the tower, like the two eyes of a man."
Our guns were set towards the foe; we had no word for firing;
Grey in the gateways of St. Gond the Guard of the tyrant shone;
Dark with the fate of a falling star, retiring and retiring,
The Breton line went backwards and the Breton tale went on.
"Her father had sailed across the sea from the harbour of Africa,
When all the slaves took up their tools for the bidding of Barbara;
She smote the bare wall with her hand, and bade them smite again,
She poured them wealth of wine and meat to stay them in their pain,
And cried through the lifted thunder of thronging hammer and hod:
'Throw open the third window in the third name of God!'
Then the hearts failed and the tools fell; and far towards the foam
Men saw a shadow on the sands; and her father coming home."
Speak low and low, along the line the whispered word is flying,
Before the touch, before the time, we may not lose a breath.
Their guns must mash us to the mire and there be no replying
Till the hand is raised to fling us for the final dice to Death.
"'There were two windows in your tower, Barbara, Barbara,
For all between the sun and moon in the lands of Africa.
Hath a man three eyes, Barbara, a bird three wings,
That you have riven roof and wall to look upon vain things?'
Her voice was like a wandering thing that falters, yet is free,
Whose soul has drunk in a distant land of the rivers of liberty.
"'There are more wings than the wind knows, or eyes than see the sun,
In the light of the lost window and the wind of the doors undone;
For out of the first lattice are the red lands that break
And out of the second lattice, sea like a green snake,
But out of the third lattice, under low eaves like wings
Is a new corner of the sky and the other side of things.'"
It opened in the inmost place an instant beyond uttering,
A casement and a chasm and a thunder of doors undone,
A seraph's strong wing shaken out the shock of its unshuttering
That split the shattered sunlight from a light behind the sun.
"Then he drew sword and drave her where the judges sat and said:
'Cæsar sits above the Gods, Barbara the maid,
Cæsar hath made a treaty with the moon and with the sun
All the gods that men can praise, praise him every one.
There is peace with the anointed of the scarlet oils of Bel,
With the Fish God, where the whirlpool is a winding stair to hell,
With the pathless pyramids of slime, where the mitred negro lifts
To his black cherub in the cloud abominable gifts,
With the leprous silver cities where the dumb priests dance and nod,
But not with the three windows and the last name of God.'"
They are firing, we are falling, and the red skies rend and shiver us
...
Barbara, Barbara, we may not loose a breath--
Be at the bursting doors of doom, and in the dark deliver us,
Who loosen the last window on the sun of sudden death.
"Barbara, the beautiful, stood up as a queen set free.
Whose mouth is set to a terrible cup and the trumpet of liberty;
'I have looked forth from a window that no man now shall bar,
Cæsar's toppling battle towers shall never stretch so far;
The slaves are dancing in their chains, the child laughs at the rod,
Because of the bird of the three wings, and the third face of God.'
The sword upon his shoulder shifted and shone and fell,
And Barbara lay very small and crumpled like a shell."
What wall upon what hinges turned stands open like a door?
Too simple for the sight of faith, too huge for human eyes,
What light upon what ancient way shines to a far off floor,
The line of the lost land of France or the plains of Paradise?
"Cæsar smiled above the gods, his lip of stone was curled,
His iron armies wound like chains round and round the world.
And the strong slayer of his own that cut down flesh for grass,
Smiled, too, and went to his own tower like a walking tower of brass,
And the songs ceased and the slaves were dumb: and far towards the foam
Men saw a shadow on the sands; and her father coming home....
"Blood of his blood upon the sword stood red but never dry,
He wiped it slowly, till the blade was blue as the blue sky:
But the blue sky split with a thunder-crack, spat down a blinding brand,
And all of him lay back and flat as his shadow on the sand."
The touch and the tornado; all our guns give tongue together,
St. Barbara for the gunnery and God defend the right--
They are stopped and gapped and battered as we blast away the weather,
Building window upon window to our lady of the light;
For the light is come on Liberty, her foes are falling, falling,
They are reeling, they are running, as the shameful years have run,
She is risen for all the humble, she has heard the conquered calling,
St. Barbara of the Gunners, with her hand upon the gun.
They are burst asunder in the midst that eat of their own flatteries,
Whose lip is curled to order as its barbered hair is curled ...
--Blast of the beauty of sudden death, St. Barbara of the batteries!
That blew the new white window in the wall of all the world.
For the hand is raised behind us, and the bolt smites hard
Through the rending of the doorways, through the death-gap of the Guard,
For the shout of the Three Colours is in Condé and beyond,
And the Guard is flung for carrion in the graveyard of St. Gond;
Through Mondemont and out of it, through Morin marsh and on,
With earthquake of salutation the impossible thing is gone;
Gaul, charioted and charging, great Gaul upon a gun,
Tiptoe on all her thousand years, and trumpeting to the sun,
As day returns, as death returns, swung backward for a span,
Back on the barbarous reign returns the battering-ram of Man.
While that the east held hard and hot like pincers in a forge,
Came like the west wind roaring up the cannon of St. George,
Where the hunt is up and racing over stream and swamp and tarn,
And their batteries, black with battle, hold the bridge-heads of the
Marne;
And across the carnage of the Guard by Paris in the plain
The Normans to the Bretons cried; and the Bretons cheered again;
But he that told the tale went home to his house beside the sea
And burned before St. Barbara, the light of the windows three.
Three candles for an unknown thing, never to come again,
That opened like the eye of God on Paris in the plain.
* * * * *
RICHARD CHURCH
PSYCHE GOES FORTH TO LIFE
What are these tears of loneliness to-night?
Hark! In my neighbour's house the music swells,
Joins with the wind and fills the empty skies
And dies away, like echo of old age
Sighing and dying in the heart that fails.
Ah! the cruel beauty ... how it creeps
Into my home, into my waiting heart!
Who am I that I wait to-night?... Alas,
Where is the old content of maidenhood,
The calmness and the laughter and the song,
The patient hands unshaken as the needle
Plied to the gentle rhythm that my lips
Murmured, untroubled girlhood at their brink?
Was that but yesterday?... How long ago,
How the swift moments flow along the flood.
For yesterday was sweet indifference;
These little drooping breasts had never known
This pain that swells them out and makes them ache
For Love to touch them, for the nestling lips
To trouble them as a warm lifting wind
Murmurs between two swelled and ripening grapes
Whispering of future wines of mad delight.
Ah, let me learn of this! A rapture fills
My limbs, and in my womb there stirs a craving
For life ... life! Oh, wonderful, the vision that glows
About me in such radiance, the light, the strife
Of music, hue and perfume of the rose.
Oh garden of desire, where one awaits
My coming with the sudden knowledge glowing
Deep in my eyes, made sombre as the day
Is somber in the summer noon of light.
Now I perceive I am a sacred temple
Long closed about the hidden flame of life,
Closed with white ivories and gliding shapes
Of river waves, and waves upon the sea
Rising and gliding. Every magic curve
Of these unheeded arms, this supple waist--
So are my eyes set on the infinite--
Are ministering music unto life
Calling love forth to worship in my shrine,
To fill this temple with the prophecy
Of further, wider, deeper life to come.
Hark! The music of the night is rising up!
My neighbour's house is all a flame of song.
I must abide until the prelude closes,
Until his heart has ceased its preparation
And he comes forth into the dying year,
Leaves his house of inspiration empty,
And with a loneliness of heart creeps forth
Eagerly into the night, and gropes his way
With outstretched nerveless hands unto my home,
Where I wait, alone! I hear his lips
Murmur again, and moan, and murmur again
Tones of the broken prelude, vainly trying
To call me forth, who am waiting in my home,
Waiting in sweet imprisonment, the bonds
Of love restraining me from running forth
To greet him and to lead him to my soul.
Oh the swift pain, the agony of waiting,
Galled with these terrible sweet bonds of love
That will not let me rise, though my cold hands
Are wrung with grief ... for do I not behold
Upon the outer night the rising fire,
The danger and the terror of love's flight;
Do I not know my lover; that his eyes
Are blinded by this madness of the skies.
Do I not hear him moaning in the night
For one to lead him to his waiting love,
To lead him to the temple of delight,
To the white ivory casket where his soul
Is set with lovely secrets? Do I not hear
The little echoes roll, and fade, and fret
About the murmuring foliage of the garden
Wherein the temple lies? Do I not fear
Lest in the outer glories he be lost
And thwarted of his heart's desire, that flies
Like a dove before his coming, and alights
Within the inner courtyard of my soul
Bearing such messages of him who comes
That all the altars of my love are kindled
To flame ere he approaches, which fades away
And counterfeits the sweetest death that ever
Sighed the approach of day, and left the stars
More bright to be entranced of the dawn?
Be patient, Oh, my heart! A little while
And he shall pierce the darkness of the night
That flows between my home and his. The song
The youth, the early light that he has lost
Are as a little strength submerged and drowned
In this fierce rage that bids him seek me out
And take me in the darkness of my home,
And change, and fill me, as the virgin night
Is changed to day, and as the moonlight sky
Is emptied of her sterile ray, and filled
With overflooding light that spills to earth
A golden augury of later fruits
And a diviner birth.
Hark! Hark!... He comes
He has found the temple of his soul's desire ...,
Be still, Oh beating heart, be still ... be still,
Lest he be troubled now his sacred fire
Creeps through this temple to your inmost shrine.
And I at last am his, and he is mine!
* * * * *
WILLIAM H. DAVIES
THE VILLAIN
While joy gave clouds the light of stars,
That beamed where'er they looked;
And calves and lambs had tottering knees,
Excited, while they sucked;
While every bird enjoyed his song,
Without one thought of harm or wrong--
I turned my head and saw the wind,
Not far from where I stood,
Dragging the corn by her golden hair,
Into a dark and lonely wood.
BIRD AND BROOK
My song, that's bird-like in its kind,
Is in the mind,
Love--in the mind;
And in my season I am moved
No more or less from being loved;
No woman's love has power to bring
My song back when I cease to sing;
Nor can she, when my season's strong,
Prevent my mind from song.
But where I feel your woman's part,
Is in the heart,
Love--in the heart;
For when that bird of mine broods long,
And I'd be sad without my song,
Your love then makes my heart a brook
That dreams in many a quiet nook,
And makes a steady, murmuring sound
Of joy the whole year round.
PASSION'S HOUNDS
With mighty leaps and bounds,
I followed Passion's hounds,
My hot blood had its day;
Lust, Gluttony, and Drink,
I chased to Hell's black brink,
Both night and day.
I ate like three strong men,
I drank enough for ten,
Each hour must have its glass
Yes, Drink and Gluttony
Have starved more brains, say I,
Than Hunger has.
And now, when I grow old,
And my slow blood is cold,
And feeble is my breath--
I'm followed by those hounds,
Whose mighty leaps and bounds
Hunt me to death.
THE TRUTH
Since I have seen a bird one day,
His head pecked more than half away;
That hopped about, with but one eye,
Ready to fight again, and die--
Ofttimes since then their private lives
Have spoilt that joy their music gives.
So, when I see this robin now,
Like a red apple on the bough,
And question why he sings so strong,
For love, or for the love of song;
Or sings, maybe, for that sweet rill
Whose silver tongue is never still--
Ah, now there comes this thought unkind,
Born of the knowledge in my mind:
He sings in triumph that last night
He killed his father in a fight;
And now he'll take his mother's blood--
The last strong rival for his food.
THE FORCE OF LOVE
Have I now found an angel in Unrest,
That wakeful Love is more desired than sleep:
Though you seem calm and gentle, you shall show
The force of this strong love in me so deep.
Yes, I will make you, though you seem so calm,
Look from your blue eyes that divinest joy
As was in Juno's, when she made great Jove
Forget the war and half his heaven in Troy.
And I will press your lips until they mix
With my poor quality their richer wine:
Be my Parnassus now, and grow more green
Each upward step towards your top divine.
APRIL'S LAMBS
Though I was born in April's prime,
With many another lamb,
Yet, thinking now of all my years,
What am I but a tough old ram?
"No woman thinks of years," said she,
"Or any tough old rams,
When she can hear a voice that bleats
As tenderly as any lamb's."
* * * * *
GEOFFREY DEARMER
NOUS AUTRES
We never feel the lust of steel
Or fury-woken blood,
We live and die and wonder why
In mud, and mud, and mud,
And horror first and horror last
And Phantom Terror riding past.
We hear and hear the hounds of Fear
Nearer and more near.
We feel their breath....
Only the nights befriend
And mitigate the hell;
Of those who ponder, see and hear,
Too well.
The nights, and Death--
The end.
We feel but never fear
His breath.
Day after weary day,
In vain, in vain, in vain,
We turn to Thee and pray,
We cry and cry again--
"O lord of Battle, why
Should we alone be sane?"
We stifle cries with lightless eyes
And face eternal night;
We stifle cries to sacrifice
Our eyes for Human Sight.
And many give that men may live,
A life, a limb, a brain,
That fellow men may understand
And be for ever sane.
What matter if we lose a hand
If others wander hand in hand;
Or lose a foot if others greet
The dawn of peace with dancing feet;
What matter if we die unheard
If others hear the Poet's Word?
Because we pay from day to day
The price of sacrifice;
Because we face each dreary place
Again, again, again.
Lord, set us free from Sanity--
Who feel no fighting thrill;
Must we remain for ever sane
And never learn to kill?
No answer came. In very shame
Our long-unheeded cry
Grew bitterly more bitterly,
"O why, O why, O why.
May we not feel the lust of steel
The fury-woken thrill--
For men may learn to live and die
And never learn to kill?"
October, 1918
SHE TO HIM
The day you died, my Share of All
My soul was tossed
Hither and thither, like a leaf,
And lost, lost, lost,
From sounds and sight,
Beneath the night
Of gloom and grief.
But--
(Hush, for the wind may hear)
Soon, soon you came in solitude:
And we renewed
All happiness.
Now, who shall guess
How close we are, my dear?
(Hush, for the wind may hear.)
Yet--
Other women wait
Their doors ajar;
And listen, listen, listen,
For the gate,
And murmur, "Soon, the war
Will seem a far,
Dim agony of sleep."
May I be joyful, too,
That day,
For love of you
May I not turn away
Nor--weep.
* * * * *
JOHN DRINKWATER
MALEDICTION
Thrush, across the twilight
Here in the abbey close,
Pouring from your lilac-bough
Note on pebbled note,
Why do you sing so,
Making your song so bright.
Swelling to a throbbing curve
That brave little throat?
Soon, but a season brief,
The lice among your feathers,
Stiff-winged and aimless-eyed,
With song dead you shall fall;
Refuse of some clotted ditch,
Seeking no more berries;
Why with lyric numbers now
Do you the twilight call?
Proud in your tawny plumes
Mottled in devising,
Singing as though never sang
Bird in close till now--
Sharp are the javelins
Of death that are seeking,
Seeking even simple birds
On a lilac-bough.
Crushed, forlorn, a frozen thing,
For no more nesting,
For no more speckled eggs
In pattered cup of clay,--
Soon your song shall come to this
You who make the twilight yours,
And echoes of the abbey,
At the end of day.
In the song I hear it,
The thud of a poor feathered death,
In the swelling throat I see
The splintering of song--
What demon then has worked in me
To tease my brain to bitterness--
In me who have loved bird and tree
So long, so long?
Until I come to charity,
Until I find peace again,
My curse upon the fiend or god
That will not let me hear
A bird in song upon the bough
But, hovering about the notes,
There chimes the maniac beating
Of black-winged fear.
SPECTRAL
What will the years tell?
Hush! If it would but speak--
That shadow athwart the stream,
In the gloom of a dream;
Could my brain but spell
The thought in the brain of that weak
Old ghost that hides in the gloom,
Over there, of the chestnut bloom.
I sit in the broad June light
On the open bank of the river,
In the summer of manhood, young;
And over the water bright
Is a lair that is overhung
With coned pink blooms that quiver
And droop, till the water's breast
Is of petal and leaf caressed.
And the June sky glares on my prime--
But there in the gloom, with Time,
Huddled, with Time on its back,
Is a shadow that is my wrack.
Yes, it is I in the lair,
Peering and watching me there.
Under the chestnut bloom
My old age hides in the gloom.
And the years to be have been,
Could I spell the lore of that brain.
But the river flows between,
Over the weeds of pain,
Over the snares of death,
Maybe, should I leap to hold,
With myself grown old,
Council there in the gloom
Under the chestnut bloom.
And so, with instruction none,
I go, and leave it there,
My ghost with Time in its lair,
And the things that must yet be done
Tear at my heart unknown,
And the years have tongues of stone
With no syllable to make
For consolation's sake.
But peradventure yet
I shall return
To dare the weeds of death,
And plunge through the coned pink bloom,
And cry on that spectre set
In its silent ring of gloom,
And stay my youth to learn
The thing that my old age saith.
* * * * *
WILFRED WILSON GIBSON
IN WAR TIME
1
TROOPSHIP, (s.s. Baltic: Mid-Atlantic: July, 1917)
Dark waters into crystalline brilliance break
About the keel, as through the moonless night
The dark ship moves in its own moving lake
Of phosphorescent cold moon-coloured light;
And to the clear horizon, all around
Drift pools of fiery beryl flashing bright
As though, still flashing, quenchless, cold and white,
A million moons in the dark green waters drowned.
And staring at the magic with eyes adream,
That never till now have looked upon the sea,
Boys from the Middle-West lounge listlessly
In the unlanterned darkness, boys who go
Beckoned by some unchallengeable gleam
To unknown lands to fight an unknown foe.
2
THE CONSCRIPT.
Indifferent, flippant, earnest, but all bored,
The doctors sit in the glare of electric light
Watching the endless stream of naked white
Bodies of men for whom their hasty award
Means life or death, maybe, or the living death
Of mangled limbs, blind eyes or darkened brain:
And the chairman, as his monocle falls again,
Pronounces each doom with easy, indifferent breath.
Then suddenly they all shudder as they see
A young man move before them wearily,
Pallid and gaunt as one already dead;
And they are strangely troubled as he stands
With arms outstretched and drooping, thorn-crowned head,
The nail-marks glowing in his feet and hands.
3
AIR-RAID.
Night shatters in mid-heaven: the bark of guns,
The roar of planes, the crash of bombs, and all
The unshackled skiey pandemonium stuns
The senses to indifference, when a fall
Of masonry near by startles awake,
Tingling wide-eyed, prick-eared, with bristling hair,
Each sense within the body crouched aware
Like some sore-hunted creature in the brake.
Yet side by side we lie in the little room,
Just touching hands, with eyes and ears that strain
Keenly, yet dream-bewildered, through tense gloom,
Listening in helpless stupor of insane
Drugged nightmare panic fantastically wild,
To the quiet breathing of our sleeping child.
4
IN WAR-TIME.
As gaudy flies across a pewter plate,
On the grey disk of the unrippling sea,
Beneath an airless, sullen sky of slate
Dazzled destroyers zig-zag restlessly,
While underneath the sleek and livid tide,
Blind monsters nosing through the soundless deep,
Lean submarines among blind fishes glide
And through primeval weedy forests sweep.
Over the hot grey surface of my mind
Glib, motley rumours zig-zag without rest,
While deep within the darkness of my breast
Monstrous desires, lean, sinister and blind,
Slink through unsounded night and stir the slime
And ooze of oceans of forgotten time.
5
RAGTIME.
A minx in khaki struts the limelit boards:
With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes
And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries
To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords
Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter;
And over the brassy blare and drumming din
She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin
Spirtle of sniggering lascivious patter.
Then out into the jostling Strand I turn,
And down a dark lane to the quiet river,
One stream of silver under the full moon,
And think of how cold searchlights flare and burn
Over dank trenches where men crouch and shiver.
Humming, to keep their hearts up, that same tune.
6
LEAVE.
Crouched on the crowded deck, we watch the sun
In naked gold leap out of a cold sea
Of shivering silver; and stretching drowsily
Crampt legs and arms, relieved that night is done
And the slinking, deep-sea peril past, we turn
Westward to see the chilly, sparkling light
Quicken the Wicklow Hills, till jewel-bright
In their Spring freshness of dewy green they burn.
And silent on the deck beside me stands
A soldier, lean and brown, with restless hands,
And eyes that stare unkindling on the life
And rapture of green hills and glistening morn:
He comes from Flanders home to his dead wife,
And I, from England, to my son newborn.
7
BACCHANAL
(November, 1918)
Into the twilight of Trafalgar Square
They pour from every quarter, banging drums
And tootling penny trumpets: to a blare
Of tin mouth-organs, while a sailor strums
A solitary banjo, lads and girls,
Locked in embraces, in a wild dishevel
Of flags and streaming hair, with curdling skirls
Surge in a frenzied, reeling, panic revel.
Lads who so long have looked death in the face,
Girls who so long have tended death's machines,
Released from the long terror shriek and prance:
And watching them, I see the outrageous dance,
The frantic torches and the tambourines
Tumultuous on the midnight hills of Thrace.
* * * * *
LOUIS GOLDING
SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME
The shepherd sings:--
"_Way down in Dixie,
Way down in Dixie,
Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay_ ..."
With shaded eyes he stands to look
Across the hills where the clouds swoon,
He singing, leans upon his crook,
He sings, he sings no more.
The wind is muffled in the tangled hairs
Of sheep that drift along the noon.
One mild sheep stares
With amber eyes about the pearl-flecked June.
Two skylarks soar
With singing flame
Into the sun whence first they came.
All else is only grasshoppers
Or a brown wing the shepherd stirs,
Who, like a tall tree moving, goes
Where the pale tide of sheep-drift flows.
See! the sun smites
With sea-drawn lights
The turned wing of a gull that glows
Aslant the violet, the profound
Dome of the mid-June heights.
Alas! again the grasshoppers,
The birds, the slumber-winging bees,
Alas! again for those and these
Demure and sweet things drowned;
Drowned in vain raucous words men made
Where no lark rose with swift and sweet
Ascent and where no dim sheep strayed
About the stone immensities,
Where no sheep strayed and where no bees
Probed any flowers nor swung a blade
Of grass with pollened feet.
He sings:--
"_In Dixie,
Way down in Dixie,
Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay
Scrambled eggs in the new-mown hay_..."
The herring-gulls with peevish cries
Rebuke the man who sings vain words;
His sheep-dog growls a low complaint,
Then turns to chasing butterflies.
But when the indifferent singing-birds
From midmost down to dimmest shore
Innumerably confirm their songs,
And grasshoppers make summer rhyme
And solemn bees in the wild thyme
Clash cymbals and beat gongs,
The shepherd's words once more are faint,
The shepherd's song once more is thinned
Upon the long course of the wind,
He sings, he sings no more.
Ah, now the sweet monotonies
Of bells that jangle on the sheep
To the low limit of the hills!
Till the blue cup of music spills
Into the boughs of lowland trees;
Till thence the lowland singings creep
Into the silenced shepherd's head,
Creep drowsily through his blood:
The young thrush fluting all he knows,
The ring-dove moaning his false woes,
Almost the rabbit's tiny tread,
The last unfolding bud.
But now,
Now a cool word spreads out along the sea.
Now the day's violet is cloud-tipped with gold.
Now dusk most silently
Fills the hushed day with other wings than birds'.
Now where on foam-crest waves the seagulls rock,
To their cliff-haven go the seagulls thence.
So too the shepherd gathers in his flock,
Because birds journey to their dens,
Tired sheep to their still fold.
A dark first bat swoops low and dips
About the shepherd who now sings
A song of timeless evenings;
For dusk is round him with wide wings,
Dusk murmurs on his moving lips.
_There is not mortal man who knows
From whence the, shepherd's song arose:
It came a thousand years ago.
Once the world's shepherds woke to lead
The folded sheep that they might feed
On green downs where winds blow.
One shepherd sang a golden word.
A thousand miles away one heard.
One sang it swift, one sang it slow._
_Three skylarks heard, three skylarks told
All shepherds this same song of gold
On all downs where winds blow.
This is the song that shepherds must
Sing till the green downlands be dust
And tide of sheep-drift no more flow:
The song three skylarks told again
To all the sheep and shepherd men
On green downs where winds blow._
THE SINGER OF HIGH STATE
On hills too harsh for firs to climb,
Where eagle dare not hatch her brood,
Upon the peak of solitude,
With anvils of black granite crude
I forge austerities of rhyme.
Such godlike stuff my spirit drinks
I make grand odes of tempests there.
The steel-winged eagle, if he dare
To cleave these tracts of frozen air,
Hearing such music, swoops and sinks.
Stark clangours of forgotten wars,
Tumults of primal love and hate,
Through crags of song reverberate.
Held by the Singer of High State,
Battalions of the midnight pause.
On hills uplift from Space and Time,
Upon the peak of Solitude,
With stars to give my furnace food,
On anvils of black granite crude
I forge austerities of rhyme.
* * * * *
GERALD GOULD
FREEDOMS
1
Those were our freedoms, and we come to this:
The climbing road that lures the climbing feet
Is lost: there lies no mist above the wheat,
Where-thro' to glimpse the silver precipice,
Far off, about whose base the white seas hiss
In spray; the world grows narrow and complete;
We have lost our perils in the certain sweet;
We have sold our great horizon for a kiss.
To every hill there is a lowly slope,
But some have heights beyond all height--so high
They make new worlds for the adventuring eye.
We for achievement have forgone our hope,
And shall not see another morning ope,
Nor the new moon come into the new sky.
2
Where is our freedom sought, and where to seek?
The voices of the various world agree
The future's ours: to hope is to be free:
Only to doubt, to fear, is to be weak.
Have you not felt upon your calm clear cheek
The kiss of the bright wind of liberty?
What more is there to ask, what more to be?
Peace, peace, my soul, and let the silence speak!
To hope is to be free? Nay, hope's a slave
To every chance; hope is the same as fear;
Hope trembles at the wind, the star, the wave,
The voice, the mood, the music; hope stands near
The chilly threshold of the waiting grave,
And when the silence speaks, hope does not hear.
3
In the old days came freedom with a sword.
Ev'n so; but also freedom came with wings
Fanning the faint and purple bloom that clings
To the great twilight where our dreams are stored.
Freedom was what the waters would afford
That yet obeyed the white moon's whisperings,
And freedom leapt and listened in the strings
Of dulcimer and lute and clavichord.
In the old days? But those old days are now.
O merciful, O bright, O valiant brow,
Can you seek freedom that way and I this?
Not in the single note is music free,
But where creation's climbing fires agree
In multitudes, in nights, in silences.
4
Shall we mark off our little patch of power
From time's compulsive process? Shall we sit
With memory, warming our weak hands at it,
And say: "So be it; we have had one hour"?
Surely the mountains are a better dower,
With their dark scope and cloudy infinite,
Than small perfection, trivial exquisite;
'Mid all that dark the brightness of a flower!
Lovers are not themselves: they are more, they are all:
For them are past and future spread together
Like a green landscape lit by golden weather:
For them the rhythmic change conjectural
Of time and place is but the question whether
Their God shall stand (as stand he must) or fall.
5
O cold remembrance, careful-careless kiss,
That does not wake to hope with waking day,
And at the hour of bed-time does not say:
"That was for rapture, that for peace, but this
Burns for the night's more terrible auspices,
And pangs and sweets of doubt and disarray!"--
Yet in one kiss two hearts found once the way
From perfect ignorance to perfect bliss.
Love has so many voices, low and high.
Such range of reason, such delight of rhyme!
Yet when I asked love such a simple thing
As why the autumn comes where came the spring,
The only soul that answered me was I,
And love was silent then for the first time.
6
Our love is hurt, and the bad world goes on
Moving to its conclusion: in a year
This corn now reaped will come again to ear,
The moon will shine as last night the moon shone;
The tide, whose thought is the moon's thought, will don
The silver livery of subjection. Dear,
Is it not strange that hearts will hope and fear
And break, when our hearts, broken now, are gone?
If this were true, life's movement would rebel,
And curdle to its source, as blood to the heart
When the cold fires of indignation start
From their obscure lair in the body.--Well,
If for us two to part were just to part
All years would have one pointless tale to tell.
7
The little things, the little restless things,
The base and barren things, the things that spite
The day, and trail processions through the night
Of sad remembrances and questionings;
The poverties, stupidities and stings,
The silted misery, the hovering blight;
The things that block the paths of sound and sight;
The things that snare our thought and break its wings--
How shall we bear these?--we who suffer so
The shattering sacrifice, the huge despair,
The terrors loosed like lightnings on the air,
To leave all nature blackened from that curse!
The big things are the enemies we know,
The little things the traitors. Which are worse?
8
Now must we gather up and comprehend
The volume of vicissitude, and take
Account of loving, for each other's sake,
And ask how love began and how will end
(If there be any end of love, O friend
Of my worst hours and best desires!)--and stake
Our all upon the sweetness and the ache
Of what men's stories and God's stars intend.
You have my all: you are my all: you give,
Out of your bounty and content of soul,
The only strength that makes me fit to live--
Since earth of spirit takes such heavy toll:
Yet I, the weak, the faint, the fugitive,
Stand here, an equal part of the great whole.
* * * * *
LAURENCE HOUSMAN
SUMMER NIGHT
Light, like a closing flower, covers to earth her herds,
Out of the world we only watch for the rise of moon;
Darker the twilight glimmers, dulls the warble of birds,
Over the silent field travels the night-jar's tune.
Here, at my side, so close that even your breath I hear,
Face and form that I love, now with the night made one,
Pray not for any star! Come not, O moon, for fear
Lest in thy light we lose our way ere the dream be done.
Touch, and clasp, and be close! Kiss, oh kiss, and be warm!
What is here, O beloved, so like a sea without sound?
Under the swathe at our feet, swifter than wings of storm,
Summer speeds on his way: Spring lies dead in the ground.
How like a closing flower, clasped by a sleeping bee,
Life folds over us now:--and here in the midst love lies.
O beloved, O flower of night, no morrow's moon shall we see:
Between a dusk and a day we meet, and at dawn Time dies!
THE PALACES OF THE ROSE
(A VALENTINE)
Which of my palaces? Gold one by one,
Of all the splendid houses of my throne,
This day in grave thought have I over-gone:
Those roofs of stars where I have lived alone
Gladly with God; those blue-encompassed bowers
Hushed round with lakes, and guarded with still flowers,
Where I have watched a face from eve till morn,
Wondering at being born--
Then on from morn again till the next eve,
Still with strange eyes, unable to believe;
And yet, though week and month and year went by.
Incredulous of my ensorcelled eye.
O had I thus in trance for ever stayed,
Still were she there in the reed-girdled isle,
And I there still--I who go treading now
Eternity, a-hungered mile by mile:
Because I pressed one kiss upon her brow,--
After a thousand years that seemed an hour
Of looking on my flower,
After that patient planetary fast,
One kiss at last;
One kiss--and then strange dust that once was she.
Sayest thou, Rose, "What is all this to me?"
This would I answer, if it pleaseth thee,
Thou Rose and Nightingale so strangely one:
That of my palaces, gold one by one,
I fell a-thinking, pondering which to-day,
The day of the Blessed Saint, Saint Valentine,
Which of those many palaces of mine,
I, with bowed head and lowly bended knee,
Might bring to thee.
O which of all my lordly roofs that rise
To kiss the starry skies
May with great beams make safe that golden head,
With all that treasure of hair showered and spread.
Careless as though it were not gold at all--
Yet in the midnight lighting the black hall;
And all that whiteness lying there as though
It were but driven snow.
Pondering on all these pinnacles and towers,
That, as I come with trumpets, call me lord,
And crown their battlements with girlhood flowers,
I can but think of one. 'Twas not my sword
That won it, nor was it aught I did or dreamed,
But O it is a palace worthy thee!
For all about it flows the eternal sea,
A blue moat guarding an immortal queen;
And over it an everlasting crown
That, as the moon comes and the sun goes down,
Adds jewel after jewel, gem on gem,
To the august appropriate diadem
Of her, in whom all potencies that are
Wield sceptres and with quiet hands control,
Kind as that fairy wand the evening star,
Or the strong angel that we call the soul.
Thou splendid girl that seemest the mother of all,
Dear Ceres-Aphrodite, with every lure
That draws the bee to honey, with the call
Of moth-winged night to sinners, yet as pure
As the white nun that counts the stars for beads;
Thou blest Madonna of all broken needs,
Thou Melusine, thou sister of sorrowing man,
Thou wave-like laughter, thou dear sob in the throat,
Thou all-enfolding mercy, and thou song
That gathers up each wild and wandering note,
And takes and breaks and heals and breaks the heart
With the omnipotent tenderness of art;
And thou Intelligence of rose-leaves made
That makes that little thing the brain afraid.
For thee my Castle of the Spring prepares:
On the four winds are sped my couriers,
For thee the towered trees are hung with green;
Once more for thee, O queen,
The banquet hall with ancient tapestry
Of woven vines grows fair and still more fair.
And ah! how in the minstrel gallery
Again there is the sudden string and stir
Of music touching the old instruments,
While on the ancient floor
The rushes as of yore
Nymphs of the house of spring plait for your feet--
Ancestral ornaments.
And everywhere a hurrying to and fro,
And whispers saying, "She is so sweet--so sweet";
O violets, be ye not too late to blow,
O daffodils be fleet:
For, when she comes, all must be in its place,
All ready for her entrance at the door,
All gladness and all glory for her face,
All flowers for her flower-feet a floor;
And, for her sleep at night in that great bed
Where her great locks are spread,
O be ye ready, ye young woodland streams
To sing her back her dreams.
PEACE
June 28th, 1919
From the tennis lawn you can hear the guns going,
Twenty miles away,
Telling the people of the home counties
That the peace was signed to-day.
To-night there'll be feasting in the city;
They will drink deep and eat--
Keep peace the way you planned you would keep it
(If we got the Boche beat).
Oh, your plan and your word, they are broken,
For you neither dine nor dance;
And there's no peace so quiet, so lasting,
As the peace you keep in France.
You'll be needing no Covenant of Nations
To hold your peace intact.
It does not hang on the close guarding
Of a frail and wordy pact.
When ours screams, shattered and driven,
Dust down the storming years,
Yours will stand stark, like a grey fortress,
Blind to the storm's tears.
Our peace ... your peace ... I see neither.
They are a dream, and a dream.
I only see you laughing on the tennis lawn;
And brown and alive you seem,
As you stoop over the tall red foxglove,
(It flowers again this year)
And imprison within a freckled bell
A bee, wild with fear....
* * * * *
Oh, you cannot hear the noisy guns going:
You sleep too far away.
It is nothing to you, who have your own peace,
That our peace was signed to-day.
* * * * *
EUGENE MASON
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
THE CYNDUS
1
Beneath th' triumphal blue, th' riotous day,
Her silvern galley beats the black flood white,
Whilst the long sillage hoards some close delight
Of incense, flutes, and stir of silk array.
From forth the pompous poop, her royal sway,
Near where the mystic hawk stands poised for flight,
The Queen, erect, stares out, flushed, exquisite,
Like some great golden bird that spies her prey.
The tryst is kept: her spoilèd warrior there:
And the brown gipsy in the swooning air
Spreads amber arms the purple glow stains red;
Nor hath she seen, nor known with shuddering breath.
Symbols of Doom, those Youths Divine who shed
Rose-leaves on sombre deeps--Desire and Death.
BATTLE AT SUNSET
2
Back to Full Books
|