The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems, 1908-1919 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Poems, 1908-1919 Author: John Drinkwater Release date: March 27, 2016 [eBook #51575] Most recently updated: October 23, 2024 Language: English Credits: Produced by MWS, Bryan Ness, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, 1908-1919 *** POEMS 1908-1919 [Illustration: _John Drinkwater_ _From a drawing by William Rothenstein_ _1917_ _Emery Walker ph. sc._] POEMS 1908-1919 BY JOHN DRINKWATER [Illustration: colophon] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY JOHN DRINKWATER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO MY WIFE CONTENTS RECIPROCITY 1 THE HOURS 2 A TOWN WINDOW 4 MYSTERY 5 THE COMMON LOT 7 PASSAGE 8 THE WOOD 9 HISTORY 10 THE FUGITIVE 12 CONSTANCY 13 SOUTHAMPTON BELLS 15 THE NEW MIRACLE 17 REVERIE 18 PENANCES 26 LAST CONFESSIONAL 27 BIRTHRIGHT 29 ANTAGONISTS 30 HOLINESS 31 THE CITY 32 TO THE DEFILERS 33 A CHRISTMAS NIGHT 34 INVOCATION 35 IMMORTALITY 36 THE CRAFTSMEN 38 SYMBOLS 39 SEALED 40 A PRAYER 43 THE BUILDING 45 THE SOLDIER 48 THE FIRES OF GOD 49 CHALLENGE 60 TRAVEL TALK 61 THE VAGABOND 66 OLD WOMAN IN MAY 67 THE FECKENHAM MEN 68 THE TRAVELLER 70 IN LADY STREET 71 ANTHONY CRUNDLE 75 MAD TOM TATTERMAN 76 FOR CORIN TO-DAY 78 THE CARVER IN STONE 79 ELIZABETH ANN 91 THE COTSWOLD FARMERS 92 A MAN’S DAUGHTER 93 THE LIFE OF JOHN HERITAGE 95 THOMAS YARNTON OF TARLTON 98 MRS. WILLOW 99 ROUNDELS OF THE YEAR 101 LIEGEWOMAN 105 LOVERS TO LOVERS 106 LOVE’S PERSONALITY 107 PIERROT 108 RECKONING 110 DERELICT 112 WED 113 FORSAKEN 115 DEFIANCE 116 LOVE IN OCTOBER 117 TO THE LOVERS THAT COME AFTER US 118 DERBYSHIRE SONG 119 LOVE’S HOUSE 120 COTSWOLD LOVE 124 WITH DAFFODILS 125 FOUNDATIONS 126 DEAR AND INCOMPARABLE 127 A SABBATH DAY 128 A DEDICATION 134 RUPERT BROOKE 136 ON READING FRANCIS LEDWIDGE’S LAST SONGS 137 IN THE WOODS 138 LATE SUMMER 139 JANUARY DUSK 140 AT GRAFTON 141 DOMINION 142 THE MIRACLE 144 MILLERS DALE 145 WRITTEN AT LUDLOW CASTLE 146 WORDSWORTH AT GRASMERE 147 SUNRISE ON RYDAL WATER 148 SEPTEMBER 150 OLTON POOLS 151 OF GREATHAM 152 MAMBLE 154 OUT OF THE MOON 155 MOONLIT APPLES 156 COTTAGE SONG 157 THE MIDLANDS 158 OLD CROW 160 VENUS IN ARDEN 162 ON A LAKE 163 HARVEST MOON 164 AT AN EARTHWORKS 165 INSTRUCTION 166 HABITATION 167 WRITTEN IN WINTERBORNE CAME CHURCH 169 BUDS 171 BLACKBIRD 172 MAY GARDEN 173 AT AN INN 174 PERSPECTIVE 176 CROCUSES 177 RIDDLES R.F.C. 179 THE SHIPS OF GRIEF 180 NOCTURNE 181 THE PATRIOT 182 EPILOGUE FOR A MASQUE 184 THE GUEST 185 TREASON 186 POLITICS 187 FOR A GUEST ROOM 189 DAY 190 DREAMS 191 RESPONSIBILITY 192 PROVOCATIONS 193 TRIAL 194 CHARGE TO THE PLAYERS 195 CHARACTER 196 REALITY 197 EPILOGUE 198 MOONRISE 200 DEER 201 TO ONE I LOVE 202 TO ALICE MEYNELL 205 PETITION 206 HARVESTING 208 POEMS 1908-1919 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. THE HOURS Those hours are best when suddenly The voices of the world are still, And in that quiet place is heard The voice of one small singing bird, Alone within his quiet tree; When to one field that crowns a hill, With but the sky for neighbourhood, The crowding counties of my brain Give all their riches, lake and plain, Cornland and fell and pillared wood; When in a hill-top acre, bare For the seed’s use, I am aware Of all the beauty that an age Of earth has taught my eyes to see; When Pride and Generosity The Constant Heart and Evil Rage, Affection and Desire, and all The passions of experience Are no more tabled in my mind, Learning’s idolatry, but find Particularity of sense In daily fortitudes that fall From this or that companion, Or in an angry gossip’s word; When one man speaks for Every One, When Music lives in one small bird, When in a furrowed hill we see All beauty in epitome-- Those hours are best; for those belong To the lucidity of song. A TOWN WINDOW Beyond my window in the night Is but a drab inglorious street, Yet there the frost and clean starlight As over Warwick woods are sweet. Under the grey drift of the town The crocus works among the mould As eagerly as those that crown The Warwick spring in flame and gold. And when the tramway down the hill Across the cobbles moans and rings, There is about my window-sill The tumult of a thousand wings. MYSTERY Think not that mystery has place In the obscure and veilèd face, Or when the midnight watches are Uncompanied of moon or star, Or where the fields and forests lie Enfolded from the loving eye By fogs rebellious to the sun, Or when the poet’s rhymes are spun From dreams that even in his own Imagining are half-unknown. These are not mystery, but mere Conditions that deny the clear Reality that lies behind The weak, unspeculative mind, Behind contagions of the air And screens of beauty everywhere, The brooding and tormented sky, The hesitation of an eye. Look rather when the landscapes glow Through crystal distances as though The forty shires of England spread Into one vision harvested, Or when the moonlit waters lie In silver cold lucidity; Those countenances search that bear Witness to very character, And listen to the song that weighs A life’s adventure in a phrase-- These are the founts of wonder, these The plainer miracles to please The brain that reads the world aright; Here is the mystery of light. THE COMMON LOT When youth and summer-time are gone, And age puts quiet garlands on, And in the speculative eye The fires of emulation die, But as to-day our time shall be Trembling upon eternity, While, still inconstant in debate, We shall on revelation wait, And age as youth will daily plan The sailing of the caravan. PASSAGE When you deliberate the page Of Alexander’s pilgrimage, Or say--“It is three years, or ten, Since Easter slew Connolly’s men,” Or prudently to judgment come Of Antony or Absalom, And think how duly are designed Case and instruction for the mind, Remember then that also we, In a moon’s course, are history. THE WOOD I walked a nut-wood’s gloom. And overhead A pigeon’s wing beat on the hidden boughs, And shrews upon shy tunnelling woke thin Late winter leaves with trickling sound. Across My narrow path I saw the carrier ants Burdened with little pieces of bright straw. These things I heard and saw, with senses fine For all the little traffic of the wood, While everywhere, above me, underfoot, And haunting every avenue of leaves, Was mystery, unresting, taciturn. * * * * * And haunting the lucidities of life That are my daily beauty, moves a theme, Beating along my undiscovered mind. HISTORY Sometimes, when walls and occupation seem A prison merely, a dark barrier Between me everywhere And life, or the larger province of the mind, As dreams confined, As the trouble of a dream, I seek to make again a life long gone, To be My mind’s approach and consolation, To give it form’s lucidity, Resilient form, as porcelain pieces thrown In buried China by a wrist unknown, Or mirrored brigs upon Fowey sea. Then to my memory comes nothing great Of purpose, or debate, Or perfect end, Pomp, nor love’s rapture, nor heroic hours to spend-- But most, and strangely, for long and so much have I seen, Comes back an afternoon Of a June Sunday at Elsfield, that is up on a green Hill, and there, Through a little farm parlour door, A floor Of red tiles and blue, And the air Sweet with the hot June sun cascading through The vine-leaves under the glass, and a scarlet fume Of geranium flower, and soft and yellow bloom Of musk, and stains of scarlet and yellow glass. Such are the things remain Quietly, and for ever, in the brain, And the things that they choose for history-making pass. THE FUGITIVE Beauty has come to make no longer stay Than the bright buds of May In May-time do. Beauty is with us for one hour, one hour, Life is so brief a flower; Thoughts are so few. Thoughts are so few with mastery to give Shape to these fugitive Dear brevities, That even in its hour beauty is blind, Because the shallow mind Not sees, not sees. And in the mind of man only can be Alert prosperity For beauty brief. So, what can be but little comes to less Upon the wilderness Of unbelief. And beauty that has but an hour to spend With you for friend, Goes outcast by. But know, but know--for all she is outcast-- It is not she at last, But you that die. CONSTANCY The shadows that companion me From chronicles and poetry More constant and substantial are Than these my men familiar, Who draw with me uncertain breath A little while this side of death; For you, my friend, may fail to keep To-morrow’s tryst, so darkly deep The motions mutable that give To flesh its brief prerogative, And in the pleasant hours we make Together for devotion’s sake, Always the testament I see That is our twin mortality. But those from the recorded page Keep an eternal pilgrimage. They stedfastly inhabit here With no mortality to fear, And my communion with them Ails not in the mind’s stratagem Against the sudden blow, the date That once must fall unfortunate. They fret not nor persuade, and when These graduates I entertain, I grieve not that I too must fall As you, my friend, to funeral, But rather find example there That, when my boughs of time are bare, And nothing more the body’s chance Governs my careful circumstance, I shall, upon that later birth, Walk in immortal fields of earth. SOUTHAMPTON BELLS I Long ago some builder thrust Heavenward in Southampton town His spire and beamed his bells, Largely conceiving from the dust That pinnacle for ringing down Orisons and Noëls. In his imagination rang, Through generations challenging His peal on simple men, Who, as the heart within him sang, In daily townfaring should sing By year and year again. II Now often to their ringing go The bellmen with lean Time at heel, Intent on daily cares; The bells ring high, the bells ring low, The ringers ring the builder’s peal Of tidings unawares. And all the bells’ might well be dumb For any quickening in the street Of customary ears; And so at last proud builders come With dreams and virtues to defeat Among the clouding years. III Now, waiting on Southampton sea For exile, through the silver night I hear Noël! Noël! Through generations down to me Your challenge, builder, comes aright, Bell by obedient bell. You wake an hour with me; then wide Though be the lapses of your sleep You yet shall wake again; And thus, old builder, on the tide Of immortality you keep Your way from brain to brain. THE NEW MIRACLE Of old men wrought strange gods for mystery, Implored miraculous tokens in the skies, And lips that most were strange in prophecy Were most accounted wise. The hearthstone’s commerce between mate and mate, Barren of wonder, prospered in content, And still the hunger of their thought was great For sweet astonishment. And so they built them altars of retreat Where life’s familiar use was overthrown, And left the shining world about their feet, To travel worlds unknown. * * * * * We hunger still. But wonder has come down From alien skies upon the midst of us; The sparkling hedgerow and the clamorous town Have grown miraculous. And man from his far travelling returns To find yet stranger wisdom than he sought, Where in the habit of his threshold burns Unfathomable thought. REVERIE Here in the unfrequented noon, In the green hermitage of June, While overhead a rustling wing Minds me of birds that do not sing Until the cooler eve rewakes The service of melodious brakes, And thoughts are lonely rangers, here, In shelter of the primrose year, I curiously meditate Our brief and variable state. I think how many are alive Who better in the grave would thrive, If some so long a sleep might give Better instruction how to live; I think what splendours had been said By darlings now untimely dead Had death been wise in choice of these, And made exchange of obsequies. I think what loss to government It is that good men are content-- Well knowing that an evil will Is folly-stricken too, and still Itself considers only wise For all rebukes and surgeries-- That evil men should raise their pride To place and fortune undefied. I think how daily we beguile Our brains, that yet a little while And all our congregated schemes And our perplexity of dreams, Shall come to whole and perfect state. I think, however long the date Of life may be, at last the sun Shall pass upon campaigns undone. I look upon the world and see A world colonial to me, Whereof I am the architect, And principal and intellect, A world whose shape and savour spring Out of my lone imagining, A world whose nature is subdued For ever to my instant mood, And only beautiful can be Because of beauty is in me. And then I know that every mind Among the millions of my kind Makes earth his own particular And privately created star, That earth has thus no single state, Being every man articulate. Till thought has no horizon then I try to think how many men There are to make an earth apart In symbol of the urgent heart, For there are forty in my street, And seven hundred more in Greet, And families at Luton Hoo, And there are men in China, too. And what immensity is this That is but a parenthesis Set in a little human thought, Before the body comes to naught. There at the bottom of the copse I see a field of turnip tops, I see the cropping cattle pass There in another field, of grass. And fields and fields, with seven towns, A river, and a flight of downs, Steeples for all religious men, Ten thousand trees, and orchards ten, A mighty span that curves away Into blue beauty, and I lay All this as quartered on a sphere Hung huge in space, a thing of fear Vast as the circle of the sky Completed to the astonished eye; And then I think that all I see, Whereof I frame immensity Globed for amazement, is no more Than a shire’s corner, and that four Great shires being ten times multiplied Are small on the Atlantic tide As an emerald on a silver bowl ... And the Atlantic to the whole Sweep of this tributary star That is our earth is but ... and far Through dreadful space the outmeasured mind Seeks to conceive the unconfined. I think of Time. How, when his wing Composes all our quarrelling In some green corner where May leaves Are loud with blackbirds on all eves, And all the dust that was our bones Is underneath memorial stones, Then shall old jealousies, while we Lie side by side most quietly, Be but oblivion’s fools, and still When curious pilgrims ask--“What skill Had these that from oblivion saves?”-- My song shall sing above our graves. I think how men of gentle mind, And friendly will, and honest kind, Deny their nature and appear Fellows of jealousy and fear; Having single faith, and natural wit To measure truth and cherish it, Yet, strangely, when they build in thought, Twisting the honesty that wrought In the straight motion of the heart, Into its feigning counterpart That is the brain’s betrayal of The simple purposes of love; And what yet sorrier decline Is theirs when, eager to confine No more within the silent brain Its habit, thought seeks birth again In speech, as honesty has done In thought; then even what had won From heart to brain fades and is lost In this pretended pentecost, This their forlorn captivity To speech, who have not learnt to be Lords of the word, nor kept among The sterner climates of the tongue ... So truth is in their hearts, and then Falls to confusion in the brain, And, fading through this mid-eclipse, It perishes upon the lips. I think how year by year I still Find working in my dauntless will Sudden timidities that are Merely the echo of some far Forgotten tyrannies that came To youth’s bewilderment and shame; That yet a magisterial gown, Being worn by one of no renown And half a generation less In years than I, can dispossess Something my circumspecter mood Of excellence and quietude, And if a Bishop speaks to me I tremble with propriety. I think how strange it is that he Who goes most comradely with me In beauty’s worship, takes delight In shows that to my eager sight Are shadows and unmanifest, While beauty’s favour and behest To me in motion are revealed That is against his vision sealed; Yet is our hearts’ necessity Not twofold, but a common plea That chaos come to continence, Whereto the arch-intelligence Richly in divers voices makes Its answer for our several sakes. I see the disinherited And long procession of the dead, Who have in generations gone Held fugitive dominion Of this same primrose pasturage That is my momentary wage. I see two lovers move along These shadowed silences of song, With spring in blossom at their feet More incommunicably sweet To their hearts’ more magnificence, Than to the common courts of sense, Till joy his tardy closure tells With coming of the curfew bells. I see the knights of spur and sword Crossing the little woodland ford, Riding in ghostly cavalcade On some unchronicled crusade. I see the silent hunter go In cloth of yeoman green, with bow Strung, and a quiver of grey wings. I see the little herd who brings His cattle homeward, while his sire Makes bivouac in Warwickshire This night, the liege and loyal man Of Cavalier or Puritan. And as they pass, the nameless dead, Unsung, uncelebrate, and sped Upon an unremembered hour As any twelvemonth fallen flower, I think how strangely yet they live For all their days were fugitive. I think how soon we too shall be A story with our ancestry. I think what miracle has been That you whose love among this green Delightful solitude is still The stay and substance of my will, The dear custodian of my song, My thrifty counsellor and strong, Should take the time of all time’s tide That was my season, to abide On earth also; that we should be Charted across eternity To one elect and happy day Of yellow primroses in May. The clock is calling five o’clock, And Nonesopretty brings her flock To fold, and Tom comes back from town With hose and ribbons worth a crown, And duly at The Old King’s Head They gather now to daily bread, And I no more may meditate Our brief and variable state. PENANCES These are my happy penances. To make Beauty without a covenant; to take Measure of time only because I know That in death’s market-place I still shall owe Service to beauty that shall not be done; To know that beauty’s doctrine is begun And makes a close in sacrifice; to find In beauty’s courts the unappeasable mind. LAST CONFESSIONAL For all ill words that I have spoken, For all clear moods that I have broken, For all despite and hasty breath, Forgive me, Love, forgive me, Death. Death, master of the great assize, Love, falling now to memories, You two alone I need to prove, Forgive me, Death, forgive me, Love. For every tenderness undone, For pride when holiness was none But only easy charity, O Death, be pardoner to me. For stubborn thought that would not make Measure of love’s thought for love’s sake, But kept a sullen difference, Take, Love, this laggard penitence. For cloudy words too vainly spent To prosper but in argument, When truth stood lonely at the gate, On your compassion, Death, I wait. For all the beauty that escaped This foolish brain, unsung, unshaped, For wonder that was slow to move, Forgive me, Death, forgive me, Love. For love that kept a secret cruse, For life defeated of its dues, This latest word of all my breath-- Forgive me, Love, forgive me, Death. 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. ANTAGONISTS Green shoots, we break the morning earth And flourish in the morning’s breath; We leave the agony of birth And soon are all midway to death. While yet the summer of her year Brings life her marvels, she can see Far off the rising dust, and hear The footfall of her enemy. HOLINESS If all the carts were painted gay, And all the streets swept clean, And all the children came to play By hollyhocks, with green Grasses to grow between, If all the houses looked as though Some heart were in their stones, If all the people that we know Were dressed in scarlet gowns, With feathers in their crowns, I think this gaiety would make A spiritual land. I think that holiness would take This laughter by the hand, Till both should understand. THE CITY A shining city, one Happy in snow and sun, And singing in the rain A paradisal strain.... Here is a dream to keep, O Builders, from your sleep. O foolish Builders, wake, Take your trowels, take The poet’s dream, and build The city song has willed, That every stone may sing And all your roads may ring With happy wayfaring. TO THE DEFILERS Go, thieves, and take your riches, creep To corners out of honest sight; We shall not be so poor to keep One thought of envy or despite. But know that in sad surety when Your sullen will betrays this earth To sorrows of contagion, then Beelzebub renews his birth. When you defile the pleasant streams And the wild bird’s abiding-place, You massacre a million dreams And cast your spittle in God’s face. A CHRISTMAS NIGHT Christ for a dream was given from the dead To walk one Christmas night on earth again, Among the snow, among the Christmas bells. He heard the hymns that are his praise: _Noël_, And _Christ is Born_, and _Babe of Bethlehem_. He saw the travelling crowds happy for home, The gathering and the welcome, and the set Feast and the gifts, because he once was born, Because he once was steward of a word. And so he thought, “The spirit has been kind; So well the peoples might have fallen from me, My way of life being difficult and spare. It is beautiful that a dream in Galilee Should prosper so. They crucified me once, And now my name is spoken through the world, And bells are rung for me and candles burnt. They might have crucified my dream who used My body ill; they might have spat on me Always as in one hour on Golgotha.” ... And the snow fell, and the last bell was still, And the poor Christ again was with the dead. INVOCATION As pools beneath stone arches take Darkly within their deeps again Shapes of the flowing stone, and make Stories anew of passing men, So let the living thoughts that keep, Morning and evening, in their kind, Eternal change in height and deep, Be mirrored in my happy mind. Beat, world, upon this heart, be loud Your marvel chanted in my blood, Come forth, O sun, through cloud on cloud To shine upon my stubborn mood. Great hills that fold above the sea, Ecstatic airs and sparkling skies, Sing out your words to master me, Make me immoderately wise. IMMORTALITY I When other beauty governs other lips, And snowdrops come to strange and happy springs, When seas renewed bear yet unbuilded ships, And alien hearts know all familiar things, When frosty nights bring comrades to enjoy Sweet hours at hearths where we no longer sit, When Liverpool is one with dusty Troy, And London famed as Attica for wit ... How shall it be with you, and you, and you, How with us all who have gone greatly here In friendship, making some delight, some true Song in the dark, some story against fear? Shall song still walk with love, and life be brave, And we, who were all these, be but the grave? II No; lovers yet shall tell the nightingale Sometimes a song that we of old time made, And gossips gathered at the twilight ale Shall say, “Those two were friends,” or, “Unafraid Of bitter thought were those because they loved Better than most.” And sometimes shall be told How one, who died in his young beauty, moved, As Astrophel, those English hearts of old. And the new seas shall take the new ships home Telling how yet the Dymock orchards stand, And you shall walk with Julius at Rome, And Paul shall be my fellow in the Strand; There in the midst of all those words shall be Our names, our ghosts, our immortality. THE CRAFTSMEN Confederate hand and eye Work to the chisel’s blade, Setting the grain aglow Of porch and sturdy beam-- So the strange gods may ply Strict arms till we are made Quick as the gods who know What builds behind this dream. SYMBOLS I saw history in a poet’s song, In a river-reach and a gallows-hill, In a bridal bed, and a secret wrong, In a crown of thorns: in a daffodil. I imagined measureless time in a day, And starry space in a waggon-road, And the treasure of all good harvests lay In the single seed that the sower sowed. My garden-wind had driven and havened again All ships that ever had gone to sea, And I saw the glory of all dead men In the shadow that went by the side of me. SEALED The doves call down the long arcades of pine, The screaming swifts are tiring towards their eaves, And you are very quiet, O lover of mine. No foot is on your ploughlands now, the song Fails and is no more heard among your leaves That wearied not in praise the whole day long. I have watched with you till this twilight-fall, The proud companion of your loveliness; Have you no word for me, no word at all? The passion of my thought I have given you, Striving towards your passion, nevertheless, The clover leaves are deepening to the dew, And I am still unsatisfied, untaught. You lie guarded in mystery, you go Into your night, and leave your lover naught. Would I were Titan with immeasurable thews To hold you trembling, lover of mine, and know To the full the secret savour that you use Now to my tormenting. I would drain Your beauty to the last sharp glory of it; You should work mightily through me, blood and brain. Your heart in my heart’s mastery should burn, And you before my swift and arrogant wit Should be no longer proudly taciturn. You should bend back astonished at my kiss, Your wisdom should be armourer to my pride, And you, subdued, should yet be glad of this. The joys of great heroic lovers dead Should seem but market-gossiping beside The annunciation of our bridal bed. And now, my lover earth, I am a leaf, A wave of light, a bird’s note, a blade sprung Towards the oblivion of the sickled sheaf; A mere mote driven against your royal ease, A tattered eager traveller among The myriads beating on your sanctuaries. I have no strength to crush you to my will, Your beauty is invulnerably zoned, Yet I, your undefeated lover still, Exulting in your sap am clear of shame, And biding with you patiently am throned Above the flight of desolation’s aim. You may be mute, bestow no recompense On all the thriftless leaguers of my soul-- I am at your gates, O lover of mine, and thence Will I not turn for any scorn you send, Rebuked, bemused, yet is my purpose whole, I shall be striving towards you till the end. A PRAYER Lord, not for light in darkness do we pray, Not that the veil be lifted from our eyes, Nor that the slow ascension of our day Be otherwise. Not for a clearer vision of the things Whereof the fashioning shall make us great, Not for remission of the peril and stings Of time and fate. Not for a fuller knowledge of the end Whereto we travel, bruised yet unafraid, Nor that the little healing that we lend Shall be repaid. Not these, O Lord. We would not break the bars Thy wisdom sets about us; we shall climb Unfettered to the secrets of the stars In Thy good time. We do not crave the high perception swift When to refrain were well, and when fulfil, Nor yet the understanding strong to sift The good from ill. Not these, O Lord. For these Thou hast revealed, We know the golden season when to reap The heavy-fruited treasure of the field, The hour to sleep. Not these. We know the hemlock from the rose, The pure from stained, the noble from the base The tranquil holy light of truth that glows On Pity’s face. We know the paths wherein our feet should press, Across our hearts are written Thy decrees, Yet now, O Lord, be merciful to bless With more than these. Grant us the will to fashion as we feel, Grant us the strength to labour as we know, Grant us the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel, To strike the blow. Knowledge we ask not--knowledge Thou hast lent, But, Lord, the will--there lies our bitter need, Give us to build above the deep intent The deed, the deed. THE BUILDING Whence these hods, and bricks of bright red clay, And swart men climbing ladders in the night? Stilled are the clamorous energies of day, The streets are dumb, and, prodigal of light, The lamps but shine upon a city of sleep. A step goes out into the silence; far Across the quiet roofs the hour is tolled From ghostly towers; the indifferent earth may keep That ragged flotsam shielded from the cold In earth’s good time: not, moving among men, Shall he compel so fortunate a star. Pavements I know, forsaken now, are strange, Alien walks not beautiful, that then, In the familiar day, are part of all My breathless pilgrimage, not beautiful, but dear; The monotony of sound has suffered change, The eddies of wanton sound are spent, and clear To bleak monotonies of silence fall. And, while the city sleeps, in the central poise Of quiet, lamps are flaming in the night, Blown to long tongues by winds that moan between The growing walls, and throwing misty light On swart men bearing bricks of bright red clay In laden hods; and ever the thin noise Of trowels deftly fashioning the clean Long lines that are the shaping of proud thought. Ghost-like they move between the day and day, These men whose labour strictly shall be wrought Into the captive image of a dream. Their sinews weary not, the plummet falls To measured use from steadfast hands apace, And momently the moist and levelled seam Knits brick to brick and momently the walls Bestow the wonder of form on formless space. And whence all these? The hod and plummet-line, The trowels tapping, and the lamps that shine In long, dust-heavy beams from wall to wall, The mortar and the bricks of bright red clay, Ladder and corded scaffolding, and all The gear of common traffic--whence are they? And whence the men who use them? When he came, God upon chaos, crying in the name Of all adventurous vision that the void Should yield up man, and man, created, rose Out of the deep, the marvel of all things made, Then in immortal wonder was destroyed All worth of trivial knowledge, and the close Of man’s most urgent meditation stayed Even as his first thought--“Whence am I sprung?” What proud ecstatic mystery was pent In that first act for man’s astonishment, From age to unconfessing age, among His manifold travel. And in all I see Of common daily usage is renewed This primal and ecstatic mystery Of chaos bidden into many-hued Wonders of form, life in the void create, And monstrous silence made articulate. Not the first word of God upon the deep Nor the first pulse of life along the day More marvellous than these new walls that sweep Starward, these lines that discipline the clay, These lamps swung in the wind that send their light On swart men climbing ladders in the night. No trowel-tap but sings anew for men The rapture of quickening water and continent, No mortared line but witnesses again Chaos transfigured into lineament. THE SOLDIER The large report of fame I lack, And shining clasps and crimson scars, For I have held my bivouac Alone amid the untroubled stars. My battle-field has known no dawn Beclouded by a thousand spears; I’ve been no mounting tyrant’s pawn To buy his glory with my tears. It never seemed a noble thing Some little leagues of land to gain From broken men, nor yet to fling Abroad the thunderbolts of pain. Yet I have felt the quickening breath As peril heavy peril kissed-- My weapon was a little faith, And fear was my antagonist. Not a brief hour of cannonade, But many days of bitter strife, Till God of His great pity laid Across my brow the leaves of life. THE FIRES OF GOD I Time gathers to my name; Along the ways wheredown my feet have passed I see the years with little triumph crowned, Exulting not for perils dared, downcast And weary-eyed and desolate for shame Of having been unstirred of all the sound Of the deep music of the men that move Through the world’s days in suffering and love. Poor barren years that brooded over-much On your own burden, pale and stricken years-- Go down to your oblivion, we part With no reproach or ceremonial tears. Henceforth my hands are lifted to the touch Of hands that labour with me, and my heart Hereafter to the world’s heart shall be set And its own pain forget. Time gathers to my name-- Days dead are dark; the days to be, a flame Of wonder and of promise, and great cries Of travelling people reach me--I must rise. II Was I not man? Could I not rise alone Above the shifting of the things that be, Rise to the crest of all the stars and see The ways of all the world as from a throne? Was I not man, with proud imperial will To cancel all the secrets of high heaven? Should not my sole unbridled purpose fill All hidden paths with light when once was riven God’s veil by my indomitable will? So dreamt I, little man of little vision, Great only in unconsecrated pride; Man’s pity grew from pity to derision, And still I thought, “Albeit they deride, Yet is it mine uncharted ways to dare Unknown to these, And they shall stumble darkly, unaware Of solemn mysteries Whereof the key is mine alone to bear.” So I forgot my God, and I forgot The holy sweet communion of men, And moved in desolate places, where are not Meek hands held out with patient healing when The hours are heavy with uncharitable pain; No company but vain And arrogant thoughts were with me at my side. And ever to myself I lied. Saying “Apart from all men thus I go To know the things that they may never know.” III Then a great change befell; Long time I stood In witless hardihood With eyes on one sole changeless vision set-- The deep disturbèd fret Of men who made brief tarrying in hell On their earth travelling. It was as though the lives of men should be See circle-wise, whereof one little span Through which all passed was blackened with the wing Of perilous evil, bateless misery. But all beyond, making the whole complete O’er which the travelling feet Of every man Made way or ever he might come to death, Was odorous with the breath Of honey-laden flowers, and alive With sacrificial ministrations sweet Of man to man, and swift and holy loves, And large heroic hopes, whereby should thrive Man’s spirit as he moves From dawn of life to the great dawn of death. It was as though mine eyes were set alone Upon that woeful passage of despair, Until I held that life had never known Dominion but in this most troubled place Where many a ruined grace And many a friendless care Ran to and fro in sorrowful unrest. Still in my hand I pressed Hope’s fragile chalice, whence I drew deep draughts That heartened me that even yet should grow Out of this dread confusion, as of broken crafts Driven along ungovernable seas, Prosperous order, and that I should know After long vigil all the mysteries Of human wonder and of human fate. O fool, O only great In pride unhallowed, O most blind of heart! Confusion but more dark confusion bred, Grief nurtured grief, I cried aloud and said, “Through trackless ways the soul of man is hurled, No sign upon the forehead of the skies, No beacon, and no chart Are given to him, and the inscrutable world But mocks his scars and fills his mouth with dust.” _And lies bore lies_ _And lust bore lust,_ _And the world was heavy with flowerless rods,_ _And pride outran_ _The strength of a man_ _Who had set himself in the place of gods._ IV Soon was I then to gather bitter shame Of spirit; I had been most wildly proud-- Yet in my pride had been Some little courage, formless as a cloud, Unpiloted save by a vagrant wind, But still an earnest of the bonds that tame The legionary hates, of sacred loves that lean From the high soul of man towards his kind. And all my grief Had been for those I watched go to and fro In uncompassioned woe Along that little span my unbelief Had fashioned in my vision as all life. Now even this so little virtue waned, For I became caught up into the strife That I had pitied, and my soul was stained At last by that most venomous despair, Self-pity. I no longer was aware Of any will to heal the world’s unrest, I suffered as it suffered, and I grew Troubled in all my daily trafficking, Not with the large heroic trouble known By proud adventurous men who would atone With their own passionate pity for the sting And anguish of a world of peril and snares, It was the trouble of a soul in thrall To mean despairs, Driven about a waste where neither fall Of words from lips of love, nor consolation Of grave eyes comforting, nor ministration Of hand or heart could pierce the deadly wall Of self--of self,--I was a living shame-- A broken purpose. I had stood apart With pride rebellious and defiant heart, And now my pride had perished in the flame. I cried for succour as a little child Might supplicate whose days are undefiled,-- For tutored pride and innocence are one. _To the gloom has won_ _A gleam of the sun_ _And into the barren desolate ways_ _A scent is blown_ _As of meadows mown_ _By cooling rivers in clover days._ V I turned me from that place in humble wise, And fingers soft were laid upon mine eyes, And I beheld the fruitful earth, with store Of odorous treasure, full and golden grain, Ripe orchard bounty, slender stalks that bore Their flowered beauty with a meek content, The prosperous leaves that loved the sun and rain, Shy creatures unreproved that came and went In garrulous joy among the fostering green. And, over all, the changes of the day And ordered year their mutable glory laid-- Expectant winter soberly arrayed, The prudent diligent spring whose eyes have seen The beauty of the roses uncreate, Imperial June, magnificent, elate Beholding all the ripening loves that stray Among her blossoms, and the golden time Of the full ear and bounty of the boughs,-- And the great hills and solemn chanting seas And prodigal meadows, answering to the chime Of God’s good year, and bearing on their brows The glory of processional mysteries From dawn to dawn, the woven leaves and light Of the high noon, the twilight secrecies, And the inscrutable wonder of the stars Flung out along the reaches of the night. _And the ancient might_ _Of the binding bars_ _Waned as I woke to a new desire_ _For the choric song_ _Of exultant, strong_ _Earth-passionate men with souls of fire._ VI ’T was given me to hear. As I beheld-- With a new wisdom, tranquil, asking not For mystic revelation--this glory long forgot, This re-discovered triumph of the earth In high creative will and beauty’s pride Establishèd beyond the assaulting years, It came to me, a music that compelled Surrender of all tributary fears, Full-throated, fierce, and rhythmic with the wide Beat of the pilgrim winds and labouring seas, Sent up from all the harbouring ways of earth Wherein the travelling feet of men have trod, Mounting the firmamental silences And challenging the golden gates of God. _We bear the burden of the years_ _Clean limbed, clear-hearted, open-browed,_ _Albeit sacramental tears_ _Have dimmed our eyes, we know the proud_ _Content of men who sweep unbowed_ _Before the legionary fears;_ _In sorrow we have grown to be_ _The masters of adversity._ _Wise of the storied ages we,_ _Of perils dared and crosses borne,_ _Of heroes bound by no decree_ _Of laws defiled or faiths outworn,_ _Of poets who have held in scorn_ _All mean and tyrannous things that be;_ _We prophesy with lips that sped_ _The songs of the prophetic dead._ _Wise of the brief belovèd span_ _Of this our glad earth-travelling,_ _Of beauty’s bloom and ordered plan,_ _Of love and loves compassioning,_ _Of all the dear delights that spring_ _From man’s communion with man;_ _We cherish every hour that strays_ _Adown the cataract of the days._ _We see the clear untroubled skies,_ _We see the summer of the rose_ _And laugh, nor grieve that clouds will rise_ _And wax with every wind that blows,_ _Nor that the blossoming time will close,_ _For beauty seen of humble eyes_ _Immortal habitation has_ _Though beauty’s form may pale and pass._ _Wise of the great unshapen age,_ _To which we move with measured tread_ _All girt with passionate truth to wage_ _High battle for the word unsaid,_ _The song unsung, the cause unled,_ _The freedom that no hope can gauge;_ _Strong-armed, sure-footed, iron-willed_ _We sift and weave, we break and build._ _Into one hour we gather all_ _The years gone down, the years unwrought_ _Upon our ears brave measures fall_ _Across uncharted spaces brought,_ _Upon our lips the words are caught_ _Wherewith the dead the unborn call;_ _From love to love, from height to height_ _We press and none may curb our might._ VII O blessed voices, O compassionate hands, Calling and healing, O great-hearted brothers! I come to you. Ring out across the lands Your benediction, and I too will sing With you, and haply kindle in another’s Dark desolate hour the flame you stirred in me. O bountiful earth, in adoration meet I bow to you; O glory of years to be, I too will labour to your fashioning. Go down, go down, unweariable feet, Together we will march towards the ways Wherein the marshalled hosts of morning wait In sleepless watch, with banners wide unfurled Across the skies in ceremonial state, To greet the men who lived triumphant days, And stormed the secret beauty of the world. CHALLENGE You fools behind the panes who peer At the strong black anger of the sky, Come out and feel the storm swing by, Aye, take its blow on your lips, and hear The wind in the branches cry. No. Leave us to the day’s device, Draw to your blinds and take your ease, Grow peak’d in the face and crook’d in the knees; Your sinews could not pay the price When the storm goes through the trees. TRAVEL TALK LADYWOOD, 1912. (TO E. DE S.) To the high hills you took me, where desire, Daughter of difficult life, forgets her lures, And hope’s eternal tasks no longer tire, And only peace endures. Where anxious prayer becomes a worthless thing Subdued by muted praise, And asking nought of God and life we bring The conflict of long days Into a moment of immortal poise Among the scars and proud unbuilded spires, Where, seeking not the triumphs and the joys So treasured in the world, we kindle fires That shall not burn to ash, and are content To read anew the eternal argument. Nothing of man’s intolerance we know Here, far from man, among the fortressed hills, Nor of his querulous hopes. To what may we attain? What matter, so We feel the unwearied virtue that fulfils These cloudy crests and rifts and heathered slopes With life that is and seeks not to attain, For ever spends nor ever asks again? To the high hills you took me. And we saw The everlasting ritual of sky And earth and the waste places of the air, And momently the change of changeless law Was beautiful before us, and the cry Of the great winds was as a distant prayer From a massed people, and the choric sound Of many waters moaning down the long Veins of the hills was as an undersong; And in that hour we moved on holy ground. To the high hills you took me. Far below Lay pool and tarn locked up in shadowy sleep; Above we watched the clouds unhasting go From hidden crest to crest; the neighbour sheep Cropped at our side, and swift on darkling wings The hawks went sailing down the valley wind, The rock-bird chattered shrilly to its kind; And all these common things were holy things. From ghostly Skiddaw came the wind in flight. By Langdale Pikes to Coniston’s broad brow, From Coniston to proud Helvellyn’s height, The eloquent wind, the wind that even now Whispers again its story gathered in For seasons of much traffic in the ways Where men so straitly spin The garment of unfathomable days. To the high hills you took me. And we turned Our feet again towards the friendly vale, And passed the banks whereon the bracken burned And the last foxglove bells were spent and pale, Down to a hallowed spot of English land Where Rotha dreams its way from mere to mere, Where one with undistracted vision scanned Life’s far horizons, he who sifted clear Dust from the grain of being, making song Memorial of simple men and minds Not bowed to cunning by deliberate wrong, And conversed with the spirit of the winds, And knew the guarded secrets that were sealed In pool and pine, petal and vagrant wing, Throning the shepherd folding from the field, Robing anew the daffodils of spring. We crossed the threshold of his home and stood Beside his cottage hearth where once was told The day’s adventure drawn from fell and wood, And wisdom’s words and love’s were manifold, Where, in the twilight, gossip poets met To read again their peers of older time, And quiet eyes of gracious women set A bounty to the glamour of the rhyme. There is a wonder in a simple word That reinhabits fond and ghostly ways, And when within the poet’s walls we heard One white with ninety years recall the days When he upon his mountain paths was seen, We answered her strange bidding and were made One with the reverend presence who had been Steward of kingly charges unbetrayed. And to the little garden-close we went, Where he at eventide was wont to pass To watch the willing day’s last sacrament, And the cool shadows thrown along the grass, To read again the legends of the flowers, Lighten with song th’ obscure heroic plan, To contemplate the process of the hours, And think on that old story which is man. The lichened apple-boughs that once had spent Their blossoms at his feet, in twisted age Yet knew the wind, and the familiar scent Of heath and fern made sweet his hermitage. And, moving so beneath his cottage-eaves, His song upon our lips, his life a star, A sign, a storied peace among the leaves, Was he not with us then? He was not far. To the high hills you took me. We had seen Much marvellous traffic in the cloudy ways, Had laughed with the white waters and the green, Had praised and heard the choric chant of praise, Communed anew with the undying dead, Resung old songs, retold old fabulous things, And, stripped of pride, had lost the world and led A world refashioned as unconquered kings. And the good day was done, and there again Where in your home of quietness we stood, Far from the sight and sound of travelling men, And watched the twilight climb from Lady-wood Above the pines, above the visible streams, Beyond the hidden sources of the rills, Bearing the season of uncharted dreams Into the silent fastness of the hills. Peace on the hills, and in the valleys peace; And Rotha’s moaning music sounding clear; The passing-song of wearied winds that cease, Moving among the reeds of Rydal Mere; The distant gloom of boughs that still unscarred Beside their poet’s grave due vigil keep-- With us were these, till night was throned and starred And bade us to the benison of sleep. THE VAGABOND I know the pools where the grayling rise, I know the trees where the filberts fall, I know the woods where the red fox lies, The twisted elms where the brown owls call. And I’ve seldom a shilling to call my own, And there’s never a girl I’d marry, I thank the Lord I’m a rolling stone With never a care to carry. I talk to the stars as they come and go On every night from July to June, I’m free of the speech of the winds that blow, And I know what weather will sing what tune. I sow no seed and I pay no rent, And I thank no man for his bounties, But I’ve a treasure that’s never spent, I’m lord of a dozen counties. OLD WOMAN IN MAY “Old woman by the hedgerow In gown of withered black, With beads and pins and buttons And ribbons in your pack-- How many miles do you go? To Dumbleton and back?” “To Dumbleton and back, sir, And round by Cotsall Hill, I count the miles at morning, At night I count them still, A Jill without a Jack, sir, I travel with a will.” “It’s little men are paying For such as you can do, You with the grey dust in your hair And sharp nails in your shoe, The young folks go a-Maying, But what is May to you?” “I care not what they pay me While I can hear the call Of cattle on the hillside, And watch the blossoms fall In a churchyard where maybe There’s company for all.” THE FECKENHAM MEN The jolly men at Feckenham Don’t count their goods as common men, Their heads are full of silly dreams From half-past ten to half-past ten, They’ll tell you why the stars are bright, And some sheep black and some sheep white. The jolly men at Feckenham Draw wages of the sun and rain, And count as good as golden coin The blossoms on the window-pane, And Lord! they love a sinewy tale Told over pots of foaming ale. Now here’s a tale of Feckenham Told to me by a Feckenham man, Who, being only eighty years, Ran always when the red fox ran, And looked upon the earth with eyes As quiet as unclouded skies. These jolly men of Feckenham One day when summer strode in power Went down, it seems, among their lands And saw their bean fields all in flower-- “Wheat-ricks,” they said, “be good to see; What would a rick of blossoms be?” So straight they brought the sickles out And worked all day till day was done, And builded them a good square rick Of scented bloom beneath the sun. And was not this I tell to you A fiery-hearted thing to do? THE TRAVELLER When March was master of furrow and fold, And the skies kept cloudy festival And the daffodil pods were tipped with gold And a passion was in the plover’s call, A spare old man went hobbling by With a broken pipe and a tapping stick, And he mumbled--“Blossom before I die, Be quick, you little brown buds, be quick. “I ’ve weathered the world for a count of years-- Good old years of shining fire-- And death and the devil bring no fears, And I ’ve fed the flame of my last desire; I ’m ready to go, but I ’d pass the gate On the edge of the world with an old heart sick If I missed the blossoms. I may not wait-- The gate is open--be quick, be quick.” IN LADY STREET All day long the traffic goes In Lady Street by dingy rows Of sloven houses, tattered shops-- Fried fish, old clothes and fortune-tellers-- Tall trams on silver-shining rails, With grinding wheels and swaying tops, And lorries with their corded bales, And screeching cars. “Buy, buy!” the sellers Of rags and bones and sickening meat Cry all day long in Lady Street. And when the sunshine has its way In Lady Street, then all the grey Dull desolation grows in state More dull and grey and desolate, And the sun is a shamefast thing, A lord not comely-housed, a god Seeing what gods must blush to see, A song where it is ill to sing, And each gold ray despiteously Lies like a gold ironic rod. Yet one grey man in Lady Street Looks for the sun. He never bent Life to his will, his travelling feet Have scaled no cloudy continent, Nor has the sickle-hand been strong. He lives in Lady Street; a bed, Four cobwebbed walls. But all day long A time is singing in his head Of youth in Gloucester lanes. He hears The wind among the barley-blades, The tapping of the woodpeckers On the smooth beeches, thistle-spades Slicing the sinewy roots; he sees The hooded filberts in the copse Beyond the loaded orchard trees, The netted avenues of hops; He smells the honeysuckle thrown Along the hedge. He lives alone, Alone--yet not alone, for sweet Are Gloucester lanes in Lady Street. Aye, Gloucester lanes. For down below The cobwebbed room this grey man plies A trade, a coloured trade. A show Of many-coloured merchandise Is in his shop. Brown filberts there, And apples red with Gloucester air, And cauliflowers he keeps, and round Smooth marrows grown on Gloucester ground, Fat cabbages and yellow plums, And gaudy brave chrysanthemums. And times a glossy pheasant lies Among his store, not Tyrian dyes More rich than are the neck-feathers; And times a prize of violets, Or dewy mushrooms satin-skinned And times an unfamiliar wind Robbed of its woodland favour stirs Gay daffodils this grey man sets Among his treasure. All day long In Lady Street the traffic goes By dingy houses, desolate rows Of shops that stare like hopeless eyes. Day long the sellers cry their cries, The fortune-tellers tell no wrong Of lives that know not any right, And drift, that has not even the will To drift, toils through the day until The wage of sleep is won at night. But this grey man heeds not at all The hell of Lady Street. His stall Of many-coloured merchandise He makes a shining paradise, As all day long chrysanthemums He sells, and red and yellow plums And cauliflowers. In that one spot Of Lady Street the sun is not Ashamed to shine and send a rare Shower of colour through the air; The grey man says the sun is sweet On Gloucester lanes in Lady Street. ANTHONY CRUNDLE CENTER _Here lies the body of ANTHONY CRUNDLE, Farmer, of this parish, Who died in 1849 at the age of 82. “He delighted in music.” R. I. P. And of SUSAN, For fifty-three years his wife, Who died in 1860, aged 86._ ANTHONY CRUNDLE of Dorrington Wood Played on a piccolo. Lord was he, For seventy years, of sheaves that stood Under the perry and cider tree; _Anthony Crundle, R.I.P._ And because he prospered with sickle and scythe, With cattle afield and labouring ewe, Anthony was uncommonly blithe, And played of a night to himself and Sue; _Anthony Crundle, eighty-two_. The earth to till, and a tune to play, And Susan for fifty years and three, And Dorrington Wood at the end of day ... May providence do no worse by me; _Anthony Crundle, R.I.P._ MAD TOM TATTERMAN “Old man, grey man, good man scavenger, Bearing is it eighty years upon your crumpled back? What is it you gather in the frosty weather, Is there any treasure here to carry in your sack?” * * * * * “I’ve a million acres and a thousand head of cattle, And a foaming river where the silver salmon leap; But I’ve left fat valleys to dig in sullen alleys Just because a twisted star rode by me in my sleep. “I’ve a brain is dancing to an old forgotten music Heard when all the world was just a crazy flight of dreams, And don’t you know I scatter in the dirt along the gutter Seeds that little ladies nursed by Babylonian streams? “Mad Tom Tatterman, that is how they call me. Oh, they know so much, so much, all so neatly dressed; I’ve a tale to tell you--come and listen, will you?-- One as ragged as the twigs that make a magpie’s nest. “Ragged, oh, but very wise. You and this and that man, All of you are making things that none of you would lack, And so your eyes grow dusty, and so your limbs grow rusty-- But mad Tom Tatterman puts nothing in his sack. “Nothing in my sack, sirs, but the Sea of Galilee Was walked for mad Tom Tatterman, and when I go to sleep They’ll know that I have driven through the acres of broad heaven Flocks are whiter than the flocks that all your shepherds keep.” FOR CORIN TO-DAY Old shepherd in your wattle cote, I think a thousand years are done Since first you took your pipe of oat And piped against the risen sun, Until his burning lips of gold Sucked up the drifting scarves of dew And bade you count your flocks from fold And set your hurdle stakes anew. And then as now at noon you ’ld take The shadow of delightful trees, And with good hands of labour break Your barley bread with dairy cheese, And with some lusty shepherd mate Would wind a simple argument, And bear at night beyond your gate A loaded wallet of content. O Corin of the grizzled eye, A thousand years upon your down You’ve seen the ploughing teams go by Above the bells of Avon’s town; And while there’s any wind to blow Through frozen February nights, About your lambing pens will go The glimmer of your lanthorn lights. THE CARVER IN STONE He was a man with wide and patient eyes, Grey, like the drift of twitch-fires blown in June That, without fearing, searched if any wrong Might threaten from your heart. Grey eyes he had Under a brow was drawn because he knew So many seasons to so many pass Of upright service, loyal, unabased Before the world seducing, and so, barren Of good words praising and thought that mated his. He carved in stone. Out of his quiet life He watched as any faithful seaman charged With tidings of the myriad faring sea, And thoughts and premonitions through his mind Sailing as ships from strange and storied lands His hungry spirit held, till all they were Found living witness in the chiselled stone. Slowly out of the dark confusion, spread By life’s innumerable venturings Over his brain, he would triumph into the light Of one clear mood, unblemished of the blind Legions of errant thought that cried about His rapt seclusion: as a pearl unsoiled, Nay, rather washed to lonelier chastity, In gritty mud. And then would come a bird, A flower, or the wind moving upon a flower, A beast at pasture, or a clustered fruit, A peasant face as were the saints of old, The leer of custom, or the bow of the moon Swung in miraculous poise--some stray from the world Of things created by the eternal mind In joy articulate. And his perfect mood Would dwell about the token of God’s mood, Until in bird or flower or moving wind Or flock or shepherd or the troops of heaven It sprang in one fierce moment of desire To visible form. Then would his chisel work among the stone, Persuading it of petal or of limb Or starry curve, till risen anew there sang Shape out of chaos, and again the vision Of one mind single from the world was pressed Upon the daily custom of the sky Or field or the body of man. His people Had many gods for worship. The tiger-god, The owl, the dewlapped bull, the running pard, The camel and the lizard of the slime, The ram with quivering fleece and fluted horn, The crested eagle and the doming bat Were sacred. And the king and his high priests Decreed a temple, wide on columns huge, Should top the cornlands to the sky’s far line. They bade the carvers carve along the walls Images of their gods, each one to carve As he desired, his choice to name his god.... And many came; and he among them, glad Of three leagues’ travel through the singing air Of dawn among the boughs yet bare of green, The eager flight of the spring leading his blood Into swift lofty channels of the air, Proud as an eagle riding to the sun.... An eagle, clean of pinion--there’s his choice. Daylong they worked under the growing roof, One at his leopard, one the staring ram, And he winning his eagle from the stone, Until each man had carved one image out, Arow beyond the portal of the house. They stood arow, the company of gods, Camel and bat, lizard and bull and ram, The pard and owl, dead figures on the wall, Figures of habit driven on the stone By chisels governed by no heat of the brain But drudges of hands that moved by easy rule. Proudly recorded mood was none, no thought Plucked from the dark battalions of the mind And throned in everlasting sight. But one God of them all was witness of belief And large adventure dared. His eagle spread Wide pinions on a cloudless ground of heaven, Glad with the heart’s high courage of that dawn Moving upon the ploughlands newly sown, Dead stone the rest. He looked, and knew it so. Then came the king with priests and counsellors And many chosen of the people, wise With words weary of custom, and eyes askew That watched their neighbour face for any news Of the best way of judgment, till, each sure None would determine with authority, All spoke in prudent praise. One liked the owl Because an owl blinked on the beam of his barn. One, hoarse with crying gospels in the street, Praised most the ram, because the common folk Wore breeches made of ram’s wool. One declared The tiger pleased him best,--the man who carved The tiger-god was halt out of the womb-- A man to praise, being so pitiful. And one, whose eyes dwelt in a distant void, With spell and omen pat upon his lips, And a purse for any crystal prophet ripe, A zealot of the mist, gazed at the bull-- A lean ill-shapen bull of meagre lines That scarce the steel had graved upon the stone-- Saying that here was very mystery And truth, did men but know. And one there was Who praised his eagle, but remembering The lither pinion of the swift, the curve That liked him better of the mirrored swan. And they who carved the tiger-god and ram, The camel and the pard, the owl and bull, And lizard, listened greedily, and made Humble denial of their worthiness, And when the king his royal judgment gave That all had fashioned well, and bade that each Re-shape his chosen god along the walls Till all the temple boasted of their skill, They bowed themselves in token that as this Never had carvers been so fortunate. Only the man with wide and patient eyes Made no denial, neither bowed his head. Already while they spoke his thought had gone Far from his eagle, leaving it for a sign Loyally wrought of one deep breath of life, And played about the image of a toad That crawled among his ivy leaves. A queer Puff-bellied toad, with eyes that always stared Sidelong at heaven and saw no heaven there, Weak-hammed, and with a throttle somehow twisted Beyond full wholesome draughts of air, and skin Of wrinkled lips, the only zest or will The little flashing tongue searching the leaves. And king and priest, chosen and counsellor, Babbling out of their thin and jealous brains, Seemed strangely one; a queer enormous toad Panting under giant leaves of dark, Sunk in the loins, peering into the day. Their judgment wry he counted not for wrong More than the fabled poison of the toad Striking at simple wits; how should their thought Or word in praise or blame come near the peace That shone in seasonable hours above The patience of his spirit’s husbandry? They foolish and not seeing, how should he Spend anger there or fear--great ceremonies Equal for none save great antagonists? The grave indifference of his heart before them Was moved by laughter innocent of hate, Chastising clean of spite, that moulded them Into the antic likeness of his toad Bidding for laughter underneath the leaves. He bowed not, nor disputed, but he saw Those ill-created joyless gods, and loathed, And saw them creeping, creeping round the walls, Death breeding death, wile witnessing to wile, And sickened at the dull iniquity Should be rewarded, and for ever breathe Contagion on the folk gathered in prayer. His truth should not be doomed to march among This falsehood to the ages. He was called, And he must labour there; if so the king Would grant it, where the pillars bore the roof A galleried way of meditation nursed Secluded time, with wall of ready stone In panels for the carver set between The windows--there his chisel should be set,-- It was his plea. And the king spoke of him, Scorning, as one lack-fettle, among all these Eager to take the riches of renown; One fearful of the light or knowing nothing Of light’s dimension, a witling who would throw Honour aside and praise spoken aloud All men of heart should covet. Let him go Grubbing out of the sight of these who knew The worth of substance; there was his proper trade. A squat and curious toad indeed.... The eyes, Patient and grey, were dumb as were the lips, That, fixed and governed, hoarded from them all The larger laughter lifting in his heart. Straightway about his gallery he moved, Measured the windows and the virgin stone, Till all was weighed and patterned in his brain. Then first where most the shadow struck the wall, Under the sills, and centre of the base, From floor to sill out of the stone was wooed Memorial folly, as from the chisel leapt His chastening laughter searching priest and king-- A huge and wrinkled toad, with legs asplay, And belly loaded, leering with great eyes Busily fixed upon the void. All days His chisel was the first to ring across The temple’s quiet; and at fall of dusk Passing among the carvers homeward, they Would speak of him as mad, or weak against The challenge of the world, and let him go Lonely, as was his will, under the night Of stars or cloud or summer’s folded sun, Through crop and wood and pastureland to sleep. None took the narrow stair as wondering How did his chisel prosper in the stone, Unvisited his labour and forgot. And times when he would lean out of his height And watch the gods growing along the walls, The row of carvers in their linen coats Took in his vision a virtue that alone Carving they had not nor the thing they carved. Knowing the health that flowed about his close Imagining, the daily quiet won From process of his clean and supple craft, Those carvers there, far on the floor below, Would haply be transfigured in his thought Into a gallant company of men Glad of the strict and loyal reckoning That proved in the just presence of the brain Each chisel-stroke. How surely would he prosper In pleasant talk at easy hours with men So fashioned if it might be--and his eyes Would pass again to those dead gods that grew In spreading evil round the temple walls; And, one dead pressure made, the carvers moved Along the wall to mould and mould again The self-same god, their chisels on the stone Tapping in dull precision as before, And he would turn, back to his lonely truth. He carved apace. And first his people’s gods, About the toad, out of their sterile time, Under his hand thrilled and were recreate. The bull, the pard, the camel and the ram, Tiger and owl and bat--all were the signs Visibly made body on the stone Of sightless thought adventuring the host That is mere spirit; these the bloom achieved By secret labour in the flowing wood Of rain and air and wind and continent sun.... His tiger, lithe, immobile in the stone, A swift destruction for a moment leashed, Sprang crying from the jealous stealth of men Opposed in cunning watch, with engines hid Of torment and calamitous desire. His leopard, swift on lean and paltry limbs, Was fear in flight before accusing faith. His bull, with eyes that often in the dusk Would lift from the sweet meadow grass to watch Him homeward passing, bore on massy beam The burden of the patient of the earth. His camel bore the burden of the damned, Being gaunt, with eyes aslant along the nose. He had a friend, who hammered bronze and iron And cupped the moonstone on a silver ring, One constant like himself, would come at night Or bid him as a guest, when they would make Their poets touch a starrier height, or search Together with unparsimonious mind The crowded harbours of mortality. And there were jests, wholesome as harvest ale Of homely habit, bred of hearts that dared Judgment of laughter under the eternal eye: This frolic wisdom was his carven owl. His ram was lordship on the lonely hills, Alert and fleet, content only to know The wind mightily pouring on his fleece, With yesterday and all unrisen suns Poorer than disinherited ghosts. His bat Was ancient envy made a mockery, Cowering below the newer eagle carved Above the arches with wide pinion spread, His faith’s dominion of that happy dawn. And so he wrought the gods upon the wall, Living and crying out of his desire, Out of his patient incorruptible thought, Wrought them in joy was wages to his faith. And other than the gods he made. The stalks Of bluebells heavy with the news of spring, The vine loaded with plenty of the year, And swallows, merely tenderness of thought Bidding the stone to small and fragile flight; Leaves, the thin relics of autumnal boughs, Or massed in June.... All from their native pressure bloomed and sprang Under his shaping hand into a proud And governed image of the central man,-- Their moulding, charts of all his travelling. And all were deftly ordered, duly set Between the windows, underneath the sills, And roofward, as a motion rightly planned, Till on the wall, out of the sullen stone, A glory blazed, his vision manifest, His wonder captive. And he was content. And when the builders and the carvers knew Their labour done, and high the temple stood Over the cornlands, king and counsellor And priest and chosen of the people came Among a ceremonial multitude To dedication. And, below the thrones Where king and archpriest ruled above the throng, Highest among the ranked artificers The carvers stood. And when, the temple vowed To holy use, tribute and choral praise Given as was ordained, the king looked down Upon the gathered folk, and bade them see The comely gods fashioned about the walls, And keep in honour men whose precious skill Could so adorn the sessions of their worship, Gravely the carvers bowed them to the ground. Only the man with wide and patient eyes Stood not among them; nor did any come To count his labour, where he watched alone Above the coloured throng. He heard, and looked Again upon his work, and knew it good, Smiled on his toad, passed down the stair unseen And sang across the teeming meadows home. ELIZABETH ANN This is the tale of Elizabeth Ann, Who went away with her fancy man. Ann was a girl who hadn’t a gown As fine as the ladies who walk the town. All day long from seven to six Ann was polishing candlesticks, For Bishops and crapulous Millionaires To buy for their altars or bed-chambers. And youth in a year and a year will pass, But there’s never an end of polishing brass. All day long from seven to six-- Seventy thousand candlesticks. So frail and lewd Elizabeth Ann Went away with her fancy man. You Bishops and crapulous Millionaires, Give her your charity, give her your prayers. 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. A MAN’S DAUGHTER There is an old woman who looks each night Out of the wood. She has one tooth, that isn’t too white. She isn’t too good. She came from the north looking for me, About my jewel. Her son, she says, is tall as can be; But, men say, cruel. My girl went northward, holiday making, And a queer man spoke At the woodside once when night was breaking, And her heart broke. For ever since she has pined and pined, A sorry maid; Her fingers are slack as the wool they wind, Or her girdle-braid. So now shall I send her north to wed, Who here may know Only the little house of the dead To ease her woe? Or keep her for fear of that old woman, As a bird quick-eyed, And her tall son who is hardly human, At the woodside? She is my babe and my daughter dear, How well, how well. Her grief to me is a fourfold fear, Tongue cannot tell. And yet I know that far in that wood Are crumbling bones, And a mumble mumble of nothing that’s good, In heathen tones. And I know that frail ghosts flutter and sigh In brambles there, And never a bird or beast to cry-- Beware, beware,-- While threading the silent thickets go Mother and son, Where scrupulous berries never grow, And airs are none. And her deep eyes peer at eventide Out of the wood, And her tall son waits by the dark woodside For maidenhood. And the little eyes peer, and peer, and peer; And a word is said. And some house knows, for many a year, But years of dread. THE LIFE OF JOHN HERITAGE Born in the Cotswolds in eighteen-forty or so, Bred on a hill-top that seemed the most of the world Until he travelled the valleys, and found what a wonder Of leagues from Gloucester lay to Stroud or Ciceter, John Heritage was a tiler. He split the stone, After the frosts, and learnt the laying of tiles, And was famous about the shire. And he was friendly With Cotswold nature, hearing the hidden rooks In Golden Vale, and the thin bleat of goats, And the rattling harness of Trilly’s teams at plough, And Richard Parker’s scythe for many years, As he went upon his tiling; and the great landmarks, As loops of the Severn seen from Bisley Hill, Were his familiars, something of his religion. And he prospered, as men do. His little wage Yet left a little over his wedded needs, And here a cottage he bought, and there another, About the Cotswolds, built of the royallest stone That’s quarried in England, until he could think of age With an easy mind; and an acre of land was his Where at hay-harvest he worked a little from tiling, Making his rick maturely or damning the wind That scattered the swathes beyond his fork’s controlling. And he trotted ajog to the town on market Thursdays, Driving a stout succession of good black geldings, That cropped his acre some twenty years apiece. And he was an honest neighbour; and so he grew old, And five strong sons, grizzled and middle-aged, Carried him down the hill, and on a stone The mason cut--“John Heritage, who died, Fearing the Lord, at the age of seventy-six.” And I know that some of us shatter our hearts on earth, With mightier aims than ever John Heritage knew, And think such things as never the tiler thought, Because of our pride and our eagerness of mind ... But a life complete is a great nobility, And there’s a wisdom biding in Cotswold stone, While we in our furious intellectual travel Fall in with strange foot-fellows on the road. THOMAS YARNTON OF TARLTON One of those old men fearing no man, Two hundred broods his eaves have known Since they cut on a Sapperton churchyard stone-- “Thomas Yarnton of Tarlton, Yeoman.” At dusk you can hear the yeomen calling The cattle still to Sapperton stalls, And still the stroke of the woodman falls As Thomas of Tarlton heard it falling. I walked these meadows in seventeen-hundred, Seed of his loins, a dream that stirred Beyond the shape of a yeoman’s word, So faint that but unawares he wondered. And now, from the weeds of his tomb uncomely, I travel again the tracks he made, And walks at my side the yeoman shade Of Thomas Yarnton of Tarlton dumbly. MRS. WILLOW Mrs. Thomas Willow seems very glum. Her life, perhaps, is very lonely and hum-drum, Digging up potatoes, cleaning out the weeds, Doing the little for a lone woman’s needs. Who was her husband? How long ago? What does she wonder? What does she know? Why does she listen over the wall, Morning and noon-time and twilight and all, As though unforgotten were some footfall? “Good morning, Mrs. Willow.” “Good morning, sir,” Is all the conversation I can get from her. And her path-stones are white as lilies of the wood, And she washes this and that till she must be very good. She sends no letters, and no one calls, And she doesn’t go whispering beyond her walls; Nothing in her garden is secret, I think-- That’s all sun-bright with foxglove and pink, And she doesn’t hover around old cupboards and shelves As old people do who have buried themselves; She has no late lamps, and she digs all day And polishes and plants in a common way, But glum she is, and she listens now and then For a footfall, a footfall, a footfall again, And whether it’s hope, or whether it’s dread, Or a poor old fancy in her head, I shall never be told; it will never be said. ROUNDELS OF THE YEAR _I caught the changes of the year_ _In soft and fragile nets of song,_ _For you to whom my days belong._ _For you to whom each day is dear_ _Of all the high processional throng,_ _I caught the changes of the year_ _In soft and fragile nets of song._ _And here some sound of beauty, here_ _Some note of ancient, ageless wrong_ _Reshaping as my lips were strong,_ _I caught the changes of the year_ _In soft and fragile nets of song,_ _For you to whom my days belong._ I The spring is passing through the land In web of ghostly green arrayed, And blood is warm in man and maid. The arches of desire have spanned The barren ways, the debt is paid, The spring is passing through the land In web of ghostly green arrayed. Sweet scents along the winds are fanned From shadowy wood and secret glade Where beauty blossoms unafraid, The spring is passing through the land In web of ghostly green arrayed And blood is warm in man and maid. II Proud insolent June with burning lips Holds riot now from sea to sea, And shod in sovran gold is she. To the full flood of reaping slips The seeding-tide by God’s decree, Proud insolent June with burning lips Holds riot now from sea to sea. And all the goodly fellowships Of bird and bloom and beast and tree Are gallant of her company-- Proud insolent June with burning lips Holds riot now from sea to sea, And shod in sovran gold is she. III The loaded sheaves are harvested, The sheep are in the stubbled fold, The tale of labour crowned is told. The wizard of the year has spread A glory over wood and wold, The loaded sheaves are harvested, The sheep are in the stubbled fold. The yellow apples and the red Bear down the boughs, the hazels hold No more their fruit in cups of gold. The loaded sheaves are harvested, The sheep are in the stubbled fold, The tale of labour crowned is told. IV The year is lapsing into time Along a deep and songless gloom, Unchapleted of leaf or bloom. And mute between the dusk and prime The diligent earth resets her loom,-- The year is lapsing into time Along a deep and songless gloom. While o’er the snows the seasons chime Their golden hopes to reillume The brief eclipse about the tomb, The year is lapsing into time Along a deep and songless gloom Unchapleted of leaf or bloom. V _Not wise as cunning scholars are,_ _With curious words upon your tongue,_ _Are you for whom my song is sung._ _But you are wise of cloud and star,_ _And winds and boughs all blossom-hung,_ _Not wise as cunning scholars are,_ _With curious words upon your tongue._ _Surely, clear child of earth, some far_ _Dim Dryad-haunted groves among,_ _Your lips to lips of knowledge clung--_ _Not wise as cunning scholars are,_ _With curious words upon your tongue,_ _Are you for whom my song is sung._ LIEGEWOMAN You may not wear immortal leaves Nor yet go laurelled in your days, But he believes Who loves you with most intimate praise That none on earth has ever gone, In whom a cleanlier spirit shone. You may be unremembered when Our chronicles are piled in dust: No matter than-- None ever bore a lordlier lust To know the savour sweet or sour Down to the dregs of every hour. And this your epitaph shall be-- “Within life’s house her eager words Continually Lightened as wings of arrowy birds: She was life’s house-fellow, she knew The passion of him, soul and thew.” LOVERS TO LOVERS Our love forsworn Was very love upon a day, Bitterness now, forlorn, This tattered love once went as proud a way As any born. You well have kept Your love from all corrupting things, Your house of love is swept And bright for use; whatso each season brings You may accept In pride. But we? Our date of love is dead. Our blind Brief moment was to be The sum, yet was it signed as yours, and signed Indelibly. LOVE’S PERSONALITY If I had never seen Thy sweet grave face, If I had never known Thy pride as of a queen, Yet would another’s grace Have led me to her throne. I should have loved as well Not loving thee, My faith had been as strong Wrought by another spell; Her love had grown to be As thine for fire and song. Yet is our love a thing Alone, austere, A new and sacred birth That we alone could bring Through flames of faith and fear To pass upon the earth. As one who makes a rhyme Of his fierce thought, With momentary art May challenge change and time, So is the love we wrought Not greatest, but apart. PIERROT _Pierrot alone,_ _And then Pierrette,_ _And then a story to forget._ _Pierrot alone._ Pierrette among the apple boughs Come down and take a Pierrot’s kiss, The moon is white upon your brows, Pierrette among the apple boughs, Your lips are cold, and I would set A rose upon your lips, Pierrette, A rosy kiss, Pierrette, Pierrette. _And then Pierrette._ I’ve left my apple boughs, Pierrot, A shadow now is on my face, But still my lips are cold, and O No rose is on my lips, Pierrot, You laugh, and then you pass away Among the scented leaves of May, And on my face The shadows stay. _And then a story to forget._ The petals fall upon the grass, And I am crying in the dark, The clouds above the white moon pass-- My tears are falling on the grass; Pierrot, Pierrot, I heard your vows And left my blossomed apple boughs, And sorrows dark Are on my brows. RECKONING I heard my love go laughing Beyond the bolted door, I saw my love go riding Across the windy moor, And I would give my love no word Because of evil tales I heard. Let fancy men go laughing, Let light men ride away, Bruised corn is not for my mill, What’s paid I will not pay,-- And so I thought because of this Gossip that poisoned clasp and kiss. Four hundred men went riding, And he the best of all, A jolly man for labour, A sinewy man and tall; I watched him go beyond the hill, And shaped my anger with my will. At night my love came riding Across the dusky moor, And other two rode with him Who knocked my bolted door, And called me out and bade me see How quiet a man a man could be. And now the tales that stung me And gave my pride its rule, Are worth a beggar’s broken shoe Or the sermon of a fool, And all I know and all I can Is, false or true, he was my man. DERELICT The cloudy peril of the seas, The menace of mid-winter days, May break the scented boughs of ease And lock the lips of praise, But every sea its harbour knows, And every winter wakes to spring, And every broken song the rose Shall yet resing. But comfortable love once spent May not re-shape its broken trust, Or find anew the old content, Dishonoured in the dust; No port awaits those tattered sails, No sun rides high above that gloom, Unchronicled those half-told tales Shall time entomb. WED I married him on Christmas morn,-- Ah woe betide, ah woe betide, Folk said I was a comely bride,-- Ah me forlorn. All braided was my golden hair, And heavy then, and shining then, My limbs were sweet to madden men,-- O cunning snare. My beauty was a thing they say Of large renown,--O dread renown,-- Its rumour travelled through the town, Alas the day. His kisses burn my mouth and brows,-- O burning kiss, O barren kiss,-- My body for his worship is, And so he vows. But daily many men draw near With courtly speech and subtle speech; I gather from the lips of each A deadly fear. As he grows sullen I grow cold, And whose the blame? Not mine the blame; Their passions round me as a flame All fiercely fold. And oh, to think that he might be So proudly set, above them set, If he might but awaken yet The soul of me. Will no man seek and seeking find The soul of me, the soul of me? Nay, even as they are, so is he, And all are blind. On Christmas morning we were wed, Ah me the morn, the luckless morn; Now poppies burn along the corn, Would I were dead. FORSAKEN The word is said, and I no more shall know Aught of the changing story of her days, Nor any treasure that her lips bestow. And I, who loving her was wont to praise All things in love, now reft of music go With silent step down unfrequented ways. My soul is like a lonely market-place, Where late were laughing folk and shining steeds And many things of comeliness and grace; And now between the stones are twisting weeds, No sound there is, nor any friendly face, Save for a bedesman telling o’er his beads. DEFIANCE O wide the way your beauty goes, For all its feigned indifference, And every folly’s path it knows, And every humour of pretence. But I can be as false as are The rainbow loves which are your days, And I will gladly go and far, Content with your immediate praise. Your lips, the shyer lover’s bane, I take with disputation none, And am your kinsman in disdain When all is excellently done. LOVE IN OCTOBER The fields, the clouds, the farms and farming gear, The drifting kine, the scarlet apple trees ... Not of the sun but separate are these, And individual joys, and very dear; Yet when the sun is folded, they are here No more, the drifting skies: the argosies Of wagoned apples: still societies Of elms: red cattle on the stubbled year. So are you not love’s whole estate. I owe In many hearts more dues than I shall pay; Yet is your heart the spring of all love’s light, And should your love weary of me and go With all its thriving beams out of my day, These many loves would founder in that night. TO THE LOVERS THAT COME AFTER US Lovers, a little of this your happy time Give to the thought of us who were as you, That we, whose dearest passion in your prime Is but a winter garment, may renew Our love in yours, our flesh in your desire, Our tenderness in your discovering kiss, For we are half the fuel of your fire, As ours was fed by Marc and Beatrice. Remember us, and, when you too are dead, Our prayer with yours shall fall upon love’s spring That all our ghostly loves be comforted In those yet later lover’s love-making; So shall oblivion bring his dust to spill On brain and limbs, and we be lovers still. DERBYSHIRE SONG Come loving me to Darley Dale In spring time or sickle time, And we will make as proud a tale As lovers in the antique prime Of Harry or Elizabeth. With kirtle green and nodding flowers To deck my hair and little waist, I ’ll be worth a lover’s hours.... Come, fellow, thrive, there is no haste But soon is worn away in death. Soon shall the blood be tame, and soon Our bodies lie in Darley Dale, Unreckoning of jolly June, With tongues past telling any tale; My man, come loving me to-day. I have a wrist is smooth and brown, I have a shoulder smooth and white, I have my grace in any gown By sun or moon or candle-light.... Come Darley way, come Darley way. LOVE’S HOUSE I I know not how these men or those may take Their first glad measure of love’s character, Or whether one should let the summer make Love’s festival, and one the falling year. I only know that in my prime of days When my young branches came to blossoming, You were the sign that loosed my lips in praise, You were the zeal that governed all my spring. II In prudent counsel many gathered near, Forewarning us of deft and secret snares That are love’s use. We heard them as we hear The ticking of a clock upon the stairs. The troops of reason, careful to persuade, Blackened love’s name, but love was more than these, For we had wills to venture unafraid The trouble of unnavigable seas. III Their word was but a barren seed that lies Undrawn of the sun’s health and undesired, Because the habit of their hearts was wise, Because the wisdom of their tongues was tired. For in the smother of contentious pride, And in the fear of each tumultuous mood, Our love has kept serenely fortified And unusurped one stedfast solitude. IV Dark words, and hasty humours of the blood Have come to us and made no longer stay Than footprints of a bird upon the mud That in an hour the tide will take away. But not March weather over ploughlands blown, Nor cresses green upon their gravel bed, Are beautiful with the clean rigour grown Of quiet thought our love has piloted. V I sit before the hearths of many men, When speech goes gladly, eager to withhold No word at all, yet when I pass again The last of words is captive and untold. We talk together in love’s house, and there No thought but seeks what counsel you may give, And every secret trouble from its lair Comes to your hand, no longer fugitive. VI I woo the world, with burning will to be Delighted in all fortune it may find, And still the strident dogs of jealousy Go mocking down the tunnels of my mind. Only for you my contemplation goes Clean as a god’s, undarkened of pretence, Most happy when your garner overflows, Achieving in your prosperous diligence. VII When from the dusty corners of my brain Comes limping some ungainly word or deed, I know not if my dearest friend’s disdain Be durable or brief, spent husk or seed. But your rebuke and that poor fault of mine Go straitly outcast, and we close the door, And I, no promise asking and no sign, Stand blameless in love’s presence as before. VIII A beggar in the ditch, I stand and call My questions out upon the queer parade Of folk that hurry by, and one and all Go down the road with never answer made. I do not question love. I am a lord High at love’s table, and the vigilant king, Unquestioned, from the hubbub at the board Leans down to me and tells me everything. COTSWOLD LOVE Blue skies are over Cotswold And April snows go by, The lasses turn their ribbons For April’s in the sky, And April is the season When Sabbath girls are dressed, From Rodboro’ to Campden, In all their silken best. An ankle is a marvel When first the buds are brown, And not a lass but knows it From Stow to Gloucester town. And not a girl goes walking Along the Cotswold lanes But knows men’s eyes in April Are quicker than their brains. It’s little that it matters, So long as you’re alive, If you’re eighteen in April, Or rising sixty-five, When April comes to Amberley With skies of April blue, And Cotswold girls are briding With slyly tilted shoe. WITH DAFFODILS I send you daffodils, my dear, For these are emperors of spring, And in my heart you keep so clear So delicate an empery, That none but emperors could be Ambassadors endowed to bring My messages of honesty. My mind makes faring to and fro, Deft or bewildered, dark or kind, That not the eye of God may know Which motion is of true estate And which a twisted runagate Of all the farings of my mind, And which has honesty for mate. Only my love for you is clean Of scandal’s use, and though, may be, Far rangers have my passions been,-- Since thus the word of Eden went,-- Yet of the springs of my content, My very wells of honesty Are you the only firmament. FOUNDATIONS Those lovers old had rare conceits To make persuasion beautiful, Or rail upon the pretty fool Who would not share those wanton sweets That, guarded, soon are bitterness. But we, my love, can look on these Old tournaments of wit, and say What novices of love were they, Who loved by seasons and degrees, And in the rate of more and less. We will not make of love a stale For deft and nimble argument, Nor shall denial and consent Be processes whereof shall fail One surety that we possess. DEAR AND INCOMPARABLE Dear and incomparable Is that love to me Flowing out of the woodlands, Out of the sea; Out of the firmament breathing Between pasture and sky, For no reward is cherished here To reckon by. It is not of my earning, Nor forfeit I can This love that flows upon The poverty of man, Though faithless and unkind I sleep and forget This love that asks no wage of me Waits my waking yet. Of such is the love, dear, That you fold me in, It knows no governance Of virtue or sin; From nothing of my achieving Shall it enrichment take, And the glooms of my unworthiness It will not forsake. A SABBATH DAY IN FIVE WATCHES I. MORNING (TO M. C.) You were three men and women two, And well I loved you, all of you, And well we kept the Sabbath day. The bells called out of Malvern town, But never bell could call us down As we went up the hill away. Was it a thousand years ago Or yesterday that men were so Zealous of creed and argument? Here wind is brother to the rain, And the hills laugh upon the plain, And the old brain-gotten feuds are spent. Bring lusty laughter, lusty jest, Bring each the song he names the best, Bring eager thought and speech that’s keen, Tell each his tale and tell it out, The only shame be prudent doubt, Bring bodies where the lust is clean. II. FULL DAY (TO K. D.) We moved along the gravelled way Between the laurels and the yews, Some touch of old enchantment lay About us, some remembered news Of men who rode among the trees With burning dreams of Camelot, Whose names are beauty’s litanies, As Galahad and Launcelot. We looked along the vaulted gloom Of boughs unstripped of winter’s bane, As for some pride of scarf and plume And painted shield and broidered rein, And through the cloven laurel walls We searched the darkling pines and pale Beech-boles and woodbine coronals, As for the passing of the Grail. But Launcelot no travel keeps, For brother Launcelot is dead, And brother Galahad he sleeps This long while in his quiet bed, And we are all the knights that pass Among the yews and laurels now. They are but fruit among the grass, And we but fruit upon the bough. No coloured blazon meets us here Of all that courtly company; Elaine is not, nor Guenevere, The dream is but of dreams that die. But yet the purple violet lies Beside the golden daffodil, And women strong of limb and wise And fierce of blood are with us still. And never through the woodland goes The Grail of that forgotten quest, But still about the woodland flows The sap of God made manifest In boughs that labour to their time, And birds that gossip secret things, And eager lips that seek to rhyme The latest of a thousand springs. III. DUSK (TO E. S. V.) We come from the laurels and daffodils Down to the homestead under the fell, We’ve gathered our hunger upon the hills, And that is well. Howbeit to-morrow gives or takes, And leads to barren or flowering ways, We’ve a linen cloth and wheaten cakes, For which be praise. Here in the valley at lambing-time The shepherd folk of their watching tell While the shadows up to the beacon climb, And that is well. Let be what may when we make an end Of the laughter and labour of all our days We’ve men to friend and women to friend, For whom be praise. IV. EVENSONG (TO B. M.) Come, let us tell it over, Each to each by the fireside, How that earth has been a swift adventure for us, And the watches of the day as a gay song and a right song, And now the traveller wind has found a bed, And the sheep crowd under the thorn. Good was the day and our travelling, And now there is evensong to sing. Night, and along the valleys Watch the eyes of the homesteads. The dark hills are very still and still are the stars. Patiently under the ploughlands the wheat moves and the barley. The secret hour of love is upon the sky, And our thought in praise is aflame. Sing evensong as well we may For our travel upon this Sabbath day. Earth, we have known you truly, Heard your mutable music, Have been your lovers and felt the savour of you, And you have quickened in us the blood’s fire and the heart’s fire. We have wooed and striven with you and made you ours By the strength sprung out of your loins. Lift the latch on its twisted thong, And an end be made of our evensong. V. NIGHT (TO H. S. S.) The barriers of sleep are crossed And I alone am yet awake, Keeping another Pentecost For that new visitation’s sake Of life descending on the hills In blackthorn bloom and daffodils. At peace upon my pillow lain I celebrate the spirit come In spring’s immutable youth again Across the lands of Christendom; I hear in all the choral host The coming of the Holy Ghost. The sacrament of bough and blade, Of populous folds and building birds I take, till now an end is made Of praise and ceremonial words, And I too turn myself to keep The quiet festival of sleep. _March 1913._ A DEDICATION (TO E. G.) I Sometimes youth comes to age and asks a blessing, Or counsel, or a tale of old estate, Yet youth will still be curiously guessing The old man’s thought when death is at his gate; For all their courteous words they are not one, This youth and age, but civil strangers still, Age with the best of all his seasons done, Youth with his face towards the upland hill. Age looks for rest while youth runs far and wide, Age talks with death, which is youth’s very fear, Age knows so many comrades who have died, Youth burns that one companion is so dear. So, with good will, and in one house, may dwell These two, and talk, and all be yet to tell. II But there are men who, in the time of age, Sometimes remember all that age forgets: The early hope, the hardly compassed wage, The change of corn, and snow, and violets; They are glad of praise; they know this morning brings As true a song as any yesterday; Their labour still is set to many things, They cry their questions out along the way. They give as who may gladly take again Some gift at need; they move with gallant ease Among all eager companies of men; And never signed of age are such as these. They speak with youth, and never speak amiss; Of such are you; and what is youth but this? RUPERT BROOKE (DIED APRIL 23, 1915) To-day I have talked with old Euripides; Shakespeare this morning sang for my content Of chimney-sweepers; through the Carian trees Comes beating still the nightingales’ lament; The Tabard ales to-day are freshly brewed; Wordsworth is with me, mounting Loughrigg Fell; All timeless deaths in Lycid are renewed, And basils blossom yet for Isabel. Quick thoughts are these; they do not pass; they gave Only to death such little, casual things As are the noteless levies of the grave,-- Sad flesh, weak verse, and idle marketings. So my mortality for yours complains, While our immortal fellowship remains. ON READING FRANCIS LEDWIDGE’S LAST SONGS At April’s end, when blossoms break To birth upon my apple-tree, I know the certain year will take Full harvest of this infancy. At April’s end, when comes the dear Occasion of your valley tune, I know your beauty’s arc is here, A little ghostly morning moon. Yet are these fosterlings of rhyme As fortunately born to spend Happy conspiracies with time As apple flowers at April’s end. IN THE WOODS I was in the woods to-day, And the leaves were spinning there, Rich apparelled in decay,-- In decay more wholly fair Than in life they ever were. Gold and rich barbaric red Freakt with pale and sapless vein, Spinning, spinning, spun and sped With a little sob of pain Back to harbouring earth again. Long in homely green they shone Through the summer rains and sun, Now their humbleness is gone, Now their little season run, Pomp and pageantry begun. Sweet was life, and buoyant breath, Lovely too; but for a day Issues from the house of death Yet more beautiful array: Hark, a whisper--“Come away.” One by one they spin and fall, But they fall in regal pride: Dying, do they hear a call Rising from an ebbless tide, And, hearing, are beatified? LATE SUMMER Though summer long delayeth Her blue and golden boon, Yet now at length she stayeth Her wings above the noon; She sets the waters dreaming To murmurous leafy tones, The weeded waters gleaming Above the stepping-stones. Where fern and ivied willow Lean o’er the seaward brook, I read a volume mellow-- A poet’s fairy-book; The seaward brook is narrow, The hazel spans its pride, And like a painted arrow The king-bird keeps the tide. JANUARY DUSK Austere and clad in sombre robes of grey, With hands upfolded and with silent wings, In unimpassioned mystery the day Passes; a lonely thrush its requiem sings. The dust of night is tangled in the boughs Of leafless lime and lilac, and the pine Grows blacker, and the star upon the brows Of sleep is set in heaven for a sign. Earth’s little weary peoples fall on peace And dream of breaking buds and blossoming, Of primrose airs, of days of large increase, And all the coloured retinue of spring. AT GRAFTON God laughed when he made Grafton That’s under Bredon Hill, A jewel in a jewelled plain. The seasons work their will On golden thatch and crumbling stone, And every soft-lipped breeze Makes music for the Grafton men In comfortable trees. God’s beauty over Grafton Stole into roof and wall, And hallowed every pavèd path And every lowly stall, And to a woven wonder Conspired with one accord The labour of the servant, The labour of the Lord. And momently to Grafton Comes in from vale and wold The sound of sheep unshepherded, The sound of sheep in fold, And, blown along the bases Of lands that set their wide Frank brows to God, comes chanting The breath of Bristol tide. DOMINION I went beneath the sunny sky When all things bowed to June’s desire,-- The pansy with its steadfast eye, The blue shells on the lupin spire, The swelling fruit along the boughs, The grass grown heady in the rain, Dark roses fitted for the brows Of queens great kings have sung in vain; My little cat with tiger bars, Bright claws all hidden in content; Swift birds that flashed like darkling stars Across the cloudy continent; The wiry-coated fellow curled Stump-tailed upon the sunny flags; The bees that sacked a coloured world Of treasure for their honey-bags. And all these things seemed very glad, The sun, the flowers, the birds on wing, The jolly beasts, the furry-clad Fat bees, the fruit, and everything. But gladder than them all was I, Who, being man, might gather up The joy of all beneath the sky, And add their treasure to my cup, And travel every shining way, And laugh with God in God’s delight, Create a world for every day, And store a dream for every night. THE MIRACLE Come, sweetheart, listen, for I have a thing Most wonderful to tell you--news of spring. Albeit winter still is in the air, And the earth troubled, and the branches bare, Yet down the fields to-day I saw her pass-- The spring--her feet went shining through the grass. She touched the ragged hedgerows--I have seen Her finger-prints, most delicately green; And she has whispered to the crocus leaves, And to the garrulous sparrows in the eaves. Swiftly she passed and shyly, and her fair Young face was hidden in her cloudy hair. She would not stay, her season is not yet, But she has reawakened, and has set The sap of all the world astir, and rent Once more the shadows of our discontent. Triumphant news--a miracle I sing-- The everlasting miracle of spring. MILLERS DALE Barefoot we went by Millers Dale When meadowsweet was golden gloom And happy love was in the vale Singing upon the summer bloom Of gipsy crop and branches laid Of willows over chanting pools, Barefoot by Millers Dale we made Our summer festival of fools. Folly bright-eyed, and quick, and young Was there with all his silly plots, And trotty wagtail stepped among The delicate forget-me-nots, And laughter played with us above The rocky shelves and weeded holes And we had fellowship to love The pigeons and the water-voles. Time soon shall be when we are all Stiller than ever runs the Wye, And every bitterness shall fall To-morrow in obscurity, And wars be done, and treasons fail, Yet shall new friends go down to greet The singing rocks of Millers Dale, And willow pools and meadowsweet. WRITTEN AT LUDLOW CASTLE (IN THE HALL WHERE COMUS WAS FIRST PERFORMED) Where wall and sill and broken window-frame Are bright with flowers unroofed against the skies, And nothing but the nesting jackdaws’ cries Breaks the hushed even, once imperial came The muse that moved transfiguring the name Of Puritan, and beautiful and wise The verses fell, forespeaking Paradise, And poetry set all this hall aflame. Now silence has come down upon the place Where life and song so wonderfully went, And the mole’s afoot now where that passion rang, Yet Comus now first moves his laurelled pace, For song and life for ever are unspent, And they are more than ghosts who lived and sang. WORDSWORTH AT GRASMERE These hills and waters fostered you Abiding in your argument Until all comely wisdom drew About you, and the years were spent. Now over hill and water stays A world more intimately wise, Built of your dedicated days, And seen in your beholding eyes. So, marvellous and far, the mind, That slept among them when began Waters and hills, leaps up to find Its kingdom in the thought of man. SUNRISE ON RYDAL WATER (TO E. DE S.) Come down at dawn from windless hills Into the valley of the lake, Where yet a larger quiet fills The hour, and mist and water make With rocks and reeds and island boughs One silence and one element, Where wonder goes surely as once It went By Galilean prows. Moveless the water and the mist, Moveless the secret air above, Hushed, as upon some happy tryst The poised expectancy of love; What spirit is it that adores What mighty presence yet unseen? What consummation works apace Between These rapt enchanted shores? Never did virgin beauty wake Devouter to the bridal feast Than moves this hour upon the lake In adoration to the east; Here is the bride a god may know, The primal will, the young consent, Till surely upon the appointed mood Intent The god shall leap--and, lo, Over the lake’s end strikes the sun, White, flameless fire; some purity Thrilling the mist, a splendour won Out of the world’s heart. Let there be Thoughts, and atonements, and desires, Proud limbs, and undeliberate tongue, Where now we move with mortal oars Among Immortal dews and fires. So the old mating goes apace, Wind with the sea, and blood with thought, Lover with lover; and the grace Of understanding comes unsought When stars into the twilight steer, Or thrushes build among the may, Or wonder moves between the hills, And day Comes up on Rydal mere. SEPTEMBER Wind and the robin’s note to-day Have heard of autumn and betray The green long reign of summer. The rust is falling in the leaves, September stands beside the sheaves, The new, the happy comer. Not sad my season of the red And russet orchards gaily spread From Cholesbury to Cooming, Nor sad when twilit valley trees Are ships becalmed on misty seas, And beetles go abooming. Now soon shall come the morning crowds Of starlings, soon the coloured clouds From oak and ash and willow, And soon the thorn and briar shall be Rich in their crimson livery, In scarlet and in yellow. Spring laughed and thrilled a million veins, And summer shone above her rains To fill September’s faring; September talks as kings who know The world’s way and superbly go In robes of wisdom’s wearing. OLTON POOLS (TO G. C. G.) 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! OF GREATHAM (TO THOSE WHO LIVE THERE) For peace, than knowledge more desirable Into your Sussex quietness I came, When summer’s green and gold and azure fell Over the world in flame. And peace upon your pasture-lands I found, Where grazing flocks drift on continually, As little clouds that travel with no sound Across a windless sky. Out of your oaks the birds call to their mates That brood among the pines, where hidden deep From curious eyes a world’s adventure waits In columned choirs of sleep. Under the calm ascension of the night We heard the mellow lapsing and return Of night-owls purring in their groundling flight Through lanes of darkling fern. Unbroken peace when all the stars were drawn Back to their lairs of light, and ranked along From shire to shire the downs out of the dawn Were risen in golden song. * * * * * I sing of peace who have known the large unrest Of men bewildered in their travelling, And I have known the bridal earth unblest By the brigades of spring. I have known that loss. And now the broken thought Of nations marketing in death I know, The very winds to threnodies are wrought That on your downlands blow. I sing of peace. Was it but yesterday I came among your roses and your corn? Then momently amid this wrath I pray For yesterday reborn. MAMBLE I never went to Mamble That lies above the Teme, So I wonder who’s in Mamble, And whether people seem Who breed and brew along there As lazy as the name, And whether any song there Sets alehouse wits aflame. The finger-post says Mamble, And that is all I know Of the narrow road to Mamble, And should I turn and go To that place of lazy token That lies above the Teme, There might be a Mamble broken That was lissom in a dream. So leave the road to Mamble And take another road To as good a place as Mamble Be it lazy as a toad; Who travels Worcester county Takes any place that comes When April tosses bounty To the cherries and the plums. OUT OF THE MOON Merely the moonlight Piercing the boughs of my may-tree, Falling upon my ferns; Only the night Touching my ferns with silver bloom Of sea-flowers here in the sleeping city-- And suddenly the imagination burns With knowledge of many a dark significant doom Out of antiquity, Sung to hushed halls by troubadours Who knew the ways of the heart because they had seen The moonlight washing the garden’s deeper green To silver flowers, Falling with tidings out of the moon, as now It falls on the ferns under my may-tree bough. MOONLIT APPLES At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows, And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes A cloud on the moon in the autumn night. A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then There is no sound at the top of the house of men Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again Dapples the apples with deep-sea light. They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams; On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams, And quiet is the steep stair under. In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep. And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep On moon-washed apples of wonder. COTTAGE SONG Morning and night I bring Clear water from the spring, And through the lyric noon I hear the larks in tune, And when the shadows fall There’s providence for all. My garden is alight With currants red and white; And my blue curtains peep On starry courses deep, When down her silver tides The moon on Cotswold rides. My path of paven grey Is thoroughfare all day For fellowship, till time Bids us with candles climb The little whitewashed stair Above my lavender. 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 flocks 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. OLD CROW The bird in the corn Is a marvellous crow. He was laid and was born In the season of snow; And he chants his old catches Like a ghost under hatches. He comes from the shades Of his wood very early, And works in the blades Of the wheat and the barley, And he’s happy, although He’s a grumbleton crow. The larks have devices For sunny delight, And the sheep in their fleeces Are woolly and white; But these things are the scorn Of the bird in the corn. And morning goes by, And still he is there, Till a rose in the sky Calls him back to his lair In the boughs where the gloom Is a part of his plume. But the boy in the lane With his gun, by and by, To the heart of the grain Will narrowly spy, And the twilight will come, And no crow will fly home. VENUS IN ARDEN Now Love, her mantle thrown, Goes naked by, Threading the woods alone, Her royal eye Happy because the primroses again Break on the winter continence of men. I saw her pass to-day In Warwickshire, With the old imperial way, The old desire, Fresh as among those other flowers they went More beautiful for Adon’s discontent. Those other years she made Her festival When the blue eggs were laid And lambs were tall, By the Athenian rivers while the reeds Made love melodious for the Ganymedes. And now through Cantlow brakes, By Wilmcote hill, To Avon-side, she makes Her garlands still, And I who watch her flashing limbs am one With youth whose days three thousand years are done. ON A LAKE Sweet in the rushes The reed-singers make A music that hushes The life of the lake; The leaves are dumb, And the tides are still, And no calls come From the flocks on the hill. Forgotten now Are nightingales, And on his bough The linnet fails,-- Midway the mere My mirrored boat Shall rest and hear A slenderer note. Though, heart, you measure But one proud rhyme, You build a treasure Confounding time-- Sweet in the rushes The reed-singers make A music that hushes The life of the lake. HARVEST MOON “Hush!” was my whisper At the stair-top When the waggoners were down below Home from the barley-crop. Through the high window Looked the harvest moon, While the waggoners sang A harvest tune,-- “Hush!” was my whisper when Marjory stept Down from her attic-room, A true-love-adept. “Fill a can, fill a can,” Waggoners of heart were they, “Harvest-home, harvest-home, Barleycorn is home to-day.” ... “Marjory, hush now-- Harvest--you hear?”-- Red was the moon’s rose On the full year, The cobwebs shook, so well Did the waggoners sing-- “Hush!”--there was beauty at That harvesting. AT AN EARTHWORKS Ringed high with turf the arena lies, The neighbouring world unseen, unheard, Here are but unhorizoned skies, And on the skies a passing bird, The conies and a wandering sheep, The castings of the chambered mole,-- These, and the haunted years that keep Lost agonies of blood and soul. They say that in the midnight moon The ghostly legions gather yet, And hear a ghostly timbrel-tune, And see a ghostly combat met. These are but yeoman’s tales. And here No marvel on the midnight falls, But starlight marvellously clear, Being girdled in these shadowy walls. Yet now strange glooms of ancestry Creep on me through this morning light, Some spectral self is seeking me ... I will not parley with the night. INSTRUCTION I have a place in a little garden, That laurel-leaf and fern Keep a cool place though fires of summer All the green grasses burn. Little cool winds creep there about When winds all else are dead, And tired limbs there find gentle keeping, And humours of sloth are shed. So do your songs come always to me, Poets of age and age, Clear and cool as rivers of wind Threading my hermitage, Stilling my mind from tribulation Of life half-seen, half-heard, With images made in the brain’s quietness, And the leaping of a word. HABITATION High up in the sky there, now, you know, In this May twilight, our cottage is asleep, Tenantless, and no creature there to go Near it but Mrs. Fry’s fat cows, and sheep Dove-coloured, as is Cotswold. No one hears Under that cherry-tree the night-jars yet, The windows are uncurtained; on the stairs Silence is but by tip-toe silence met. All doors are fast there. It is a dwelling put by From use for a little, or long, up there in the sky. Empty; a walled-in silence, in this twilight of May-- A home for lovers, and friendly withdrawing, and sleep, With none to love there, nor laugh, nor climb from the day To the candles and linen.... Yet in the silence creep, This minute, I know, little ghosts, little virtuous lives, Breathing upon that still, insensible place, Touching the latches, sorting the napkins and knives, And such for the comfort of being, and bowls for the grace, That roses will brim; they are creeping from that room to this, One room, and two, till the four are visited ... they, Little ghosts, little lives, are our thoughts in this twilight of May, Signs that even the curious man would miss, Of travelling lovers to Cotswold, signs of an hour, Very soon, when up from the valley in June will ride Lovers by Lynch to Oakridge up in the wide Bow of the hill, to a garden of lavender flower.... The doors are locked; no foot falls; the hearths are dumb-- But we are there--we are waiting ourselves who come. WRITTEN IN WINTERBORNE CAME CHURCH (William Barnes, 1801-1886) _To Mrs. Thomas Hardy_ I do not use to listen well At sermon time, I ’ld rather hear the plainest rhyme Than tales the parsons tell; The homespun of experience They will not wear, But walk a transcendental air In dusty rags of sense. But humbly in your little church Alone I watch; Old rector, lift again the latch, Here is a heart to search. Come, with a simple word and wise Quicken my brain, And while upon the painted pane The painted butterflies Beat in the early April beams, You shall instruct My spirit in the knowledge plucked From your still Dorset dreams. Your word shall strive with no obscure Debated text, Your vision being unperplexed, Your loving purpose pure. I know you’ll speak of April flowers, Or lambs in pen, Or happy-hearted maids and men Weaving their April hours. Or rising to your thought will come, For lessoning, Those lovers of an older spring, That now in tombs are dumb. And brooding in your theme shall be, Half said, half heard, The presage of a poet’s word To mock mortality. * * * * * The years are on your grave the while, And yet, almost, I think to see your surpliced ghost Stand hesitant in the aisle, Find me sole congregation there, Assess my mood, Know mine a kindred solitude, And climb the pulpit-stair. BUDS The raining hour is done, And, threaded on the bough, The May-buds in the sun Are shining emeralds now. As transitory these As things of April will, Yet, trembling in the trees, Is briefer beauty still. For, flowering from the sky Upon an April day, Are silver buds that lie Amid the buds of May. The April emeralds now, While thrushes fill the lane, Are linked along the bough With silver buds of rain. And, straightly though to earth The buds of silver slip, The green buds keep the mirth Of that companionship. BLACKBIRD He comes on chosen evenings, My blackbird bountiful, and sings Over the gardens of the town Just at the hour the sun goes down. His flight across the chimneys thick, By some divine arithmetic, Comes to his customary stack, And couches there his plumage black, And there he lifts his yellow bill, Kindled against the sunset, till These suburbs are like Dymock woods Where music has her solitudes, And while he mocks the winter’s wrong Rapt on his pinnacle of song, Figured above our garden plots Those are celestial chimney-pots. 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. AT AN INN We are talkative proud, and assured, and self-sufficient, The quick of the earth this day; This inn is ours, and its courtyard, and English history, And the Post Office up the way. The stars in their changes, and heavenly speculation, The habits of birds and flowers, And character bred of poverty and riches, All these are ours. The world is ours, and these its themes and its substance, And of these we are free men and wise; Among them all we move in possession and judgment, For a day, till it dies. But in eighteen-hundred-and-fifty, who were the tenants, Sure and deliberate as we? They knew us not in the time of their ascension, Their self-sufficiency. And in nineteen-hundred-and-fifty this inn shall flourish, And history still be told, And the heat of blood shall thrive, and speculation, When we are cold. PERSPECTIVE In the Wheatsheaf parlour I sat to see The story of Chippington street go by, The squire, and dames of little degree, And drovers with cattle and flocks to cry. And these were all as my creatures there, Twinkling to and fro in the sun, And placidly I had joy, had care, Of all their labours and dealings done. Into the parlour strode me then Two fellows fiercely set at odds, To whom the difference of men Gave the sufficiency of God. They saw me, and they stept beyond To a chamber within earshot still, And each on each of broken bond, And honour, and inflexible will, Railed. And loud the little inn grew, But nothing I cared their quarrel to learn, Though the issue tossing between the two They deemed the bait of the world’s concern. Only I thought how most are men Fantastic when they most are proud, And out of my laughter I looked again On the flowing figures of Chippington crowd. CROCUSES TO E. H. C. Desires, Little determined desires, Gripped by the mould, Moving so hardly among The earth, of whose heart they were bred, That is old; it is old, Not gracious to little desires such as these, But apter for work on the bases of trees, Whose branches are hung Overhead, Very mightily, there overhead. Through the summer they stirred, They strove to the bulbs after May, Until harvest and song of the bird Went together away; And ever till coming of snows They worked in the mould, for undaunted were those Swift little determined desires, in the earth Without sign, any day, Ever shaping to marvels of birth, Far away. And we went Without heed On our way, Never knowing what virtue was spent, Day by day, By those little desires that were gallant to breed Such beauty as fortitude may. Not once in our mind Was that corner of earth under trees, Very mighty and tall, As we travelled the roads and the seas, And gathered the wage of our kind, And were laggard or trim to the call Of the duties that lengthen the hours Into seasons that flourish and fall. And blind, In the womb of the flowers, Unresting they wrought, In the bulbs, in the depth of the year, Buried far from our thought; Till one day, when the thrushes were clear In their note it was spring--and they know-- Unheeding we came into sight Of that corner forgotten, and lo, They had won through the meshes of mould, And treasuries lay in the light, Of ivory, purple, and gold. RIDDLES, R.F.C.[1] (1916) He was a boy of April beauty; one Who had not tried the world; who, while the sun Flamed yet upon the eastern sky, was done. Time would have brought him in her patient ways-- So his young beauty spoke--to prosperous days, To fulness of authority and praise. He would not wait so long. A boy, he spent His boy’s dear life for England. Be content: No honour of age had been more excellent. [1] Lieutenant Stewart G. Ridley, Royal Flying Corps, sacrificed his life in the Egyptian desert in an attempt to save a comrade. He was twenty years of age. THE SHIPS OF GRIEF On seas where every pilot fails A thousand thousand ships to-day Ride with a moaning in their sails, Through winds grey and waters grey. They are the ships of grief. They go As fleets are derelict and driven, Estranged from every port they know, Scarce asking fortitude of heaven. No, do not hail them. Let them ride Lonely as they would lonely be ... There is an hour will prove the tide, There is a sun will strike the sea. NOCTURNE O royal night, under your stars that keep Their golden troops in charted motion set, The living legions are renewed in sleep For bloodier battle yet. O royal death, under your boundless sky Where unrecorded constellations throng, Dispassionate those other legions lie, Invulnerably strong. THE PATRIOT Scarce is my life more dear to me, Brief tutor of oblivion, Than fields below the rookery That comfortably looks upon The little street of Piddington. I never think of Avon’s meadows, Ryton woods or Rydal mere, Or moon-tide moulding Cotswold shadows, But I know that half the fear Of death’s indifference is here. I love my land. No heart can know The patriot’s mystery, until It aches as mine for woods ablow In Gloucestershire with daffodil, Or Bicester brakes that violets fill. No man can tell what passion surges For the house of his nativity In the patriot’s blood, until he purges His grosser mood of jealousy, And comes to meditate with me Of gifts of earth that stamp his brain As mine the pools of Ludlow mill, The hazels fencing Trilly’s Lane, And Forty Acres under Brill, The ferry under Elsfield hill. These are what England is to me, Not empire, nor the name of her Ranging from pole to tropic sea. These are the soil in which I bear All that I have of character. That men my fellows near and far May live in like communion, Is all I pray; all pastures are The best beloved beneath the sun; I have my own; I envy none. EPILOGUE FOR A MASQUE A little time they lived again, and lo! Back to the quiet night the shadows go, And the great folds of silence once again Are over fools and kings and fighting-men. A little while they went with stumbling feet, With spears of hate, and love all flowery sweet, With wondering hearts and bright adventurous wills, And now their dust is on a thousand hills. We dream of them, as men unborn shall dream Of us, who strive a little with the stream Before we too go out beyond the day, And are as much a memory as they. And Death, so coming, shall not seem a thing Of any fear, nor terrible his wing. We too shall be a tale on earth, and time Shall shape our pilgrimage into a rhyme. THE GUEST Sometimes I feel that death is very near, And, with half-lifted hand, Looks in my eyes, and tells me not to fear, But walk his friendly land, Comrade with him, and wise As peace is wise. Then, greatly though my heart with pity moves For dear imperilled loves, I somehow know That death is friendly so, A comfortable spirit; one who takes Long thought for all our sakes. I wonder; will he come that friendly way, That guest, or roughly in the appointed day? And will, when the last drops of life are spilt, My soul be torn from me, Or, like a ship truly and trimly built, Slip quietly to sea? TREASON What time I write my roundelays, I am as proud as princes gone, Who built their empires in old days, As Tamburlaine or Solomon; And wisely though companions then Say well it is and well I sing, Assured above the praise of men I am a solitary king. But when I leave that straiter mood, That lonely hour, and put aside The continence of solitude, I fall in treason to my pride, And if a witling’s word be spent Upon my song in jealousy, In anger and in argument I am as derelict as he. POLITICS You say a thousand things, Persuasively, And with strange passion hotly I agree, And praise your zest, And then A blackbird sings On April lilac, or fieldfaring men, Ghostlike, with loaded wain, Come down the twilit lane To rest, And what is all your argument to me? Oh, yes--I know, I know, It must be so-- You must devise Your myriad policies, For we are little wise, And must be led and marshalled, lest we keep Too fast a sleep Far from the central world’s realities. Yes, we must heed-- For surely you reveal Life’s very heart; surely with flaming zeal You search our folly and our secret need; And surely it is wrong To count my blackbird’s song, My cones of lilac, and my wagon team, More than a world of dream. But still A voice calls from the hill-- I must away-- I cannot hear your argument to-day. FOR A GUEST ROOM All words are said, And may it fall That, crowning these, You here shall find A friendly bed, A sheltering wall, Your body’s ease, A quiet mind. May you forget In happy sleep The world that still You hold as friend, And may it yet Be ours to keep Your friendly will To the world’s end. For he is blest Who, fixed to shun All evil, when The worst is known, Counts, east and west, When life is done, His debts to men In love alone. DAY Dawn is up at my window, and in the May-tree The finches gossip, and tits, and beautiful sparrows With feathers bright and brown as September hazels. The sunlight is here, filtered through rosy curtains, Docile and disembodied, a ghost of sunlight, A gentle light to greet the dreamer returning. Part the curtains. I give you salutation Day, clear day; let us be friendly fellows. Come.... I hear the Liars about the city. DREAMS We have our dreams; not happiness. Great cities are upon the hill To lighten all our dream, and still We have no cities to possess But cities built of bitterness. We see gay fellows top to toe, And girls in rainbow beauty bright-- ’Tis but of silly dreams I write, For up and down the streets we know, The scavengers and harlots go. Give me a dozen men whose theme Is honesty, and we will set On high the banner of dreams ... and yet Thousands will pass us in a stream, Nor care a penny what we dream. RESPONSIBILITY You ploughmen at the gate, All that you are for me Is of my mind create, And in my brain to be A figure newly won From the world’s confusion. And if you are of grace, That’s honesty for me, And if of evil face, Recorded then shall be Dishonour that I saw Not beauty, but the flaw. PROVOCATIONS I am no merry monger when I see the slatterns of the town: I hate to think of docile men Whose angers all are driven down; For sluts make joy a thing obscene, And in contempt is nothing clean. I like to see the ladies walk With heels to set their chins atilt: I like to hear the clergy talk Of other clergy’s people’s guilt; For happy is the amorous eye, And indignation clears the sky. TRIAL Beauty of old and beauty yet to be, Stripped of occasion, have security; This hour it is searches the judgment through, When masks of beauty walk with beauty too. CHARGE TO THE PLAYERS THE TROJAN WOMEN, BIRMINGHAM REPERTORY THEATRE, APRIL 1918 Shades, that our town-fellows have come To hear rewake for Christendom This cleansing of a Pagan wrong In flowing tides of tragic song,-- You shadows that the living call To walk again the Trojan wall,-- You lips and countenance renewed Of an immortal fortitude,-- Know that, among the silent rows Of these our daily town-fellows, Watching the shades with these who bring But mortal ears to this you sing, There somewhere sits the Greek who made This gift of song, himself a shade. CHARACTER If one should tell you that in such a spring The hawthorn boughs into the blackbird’s nest Poured poison, or that once at harvesting The ears were stony, from so manifest Slander of proven faith in tree and corn You would turn unheeding, knowing him forsworn. Yet now, when one whose life has never known Corruption, as you know: whose days have been As daily tidings in your heart of lone And gentle courage, suffers the word unclean Of envious tongues, doubting you dare not cry-- “I have been this man’s familiar, and you lie.” REALITY It is strange how we travel the wide world over, And see great churches and foreign streets, And armies afoot and kings of wonder, And deeds a-doing to fill the sheets That grave historians will pen To ferment the brains of simple men. And all the time the heart remembers The quiet habit of one far place, The drawings and books, the turn of a passage, The glance of a dear familiar face, And there is the true cosmopolis, While the thronging world a phantom is. EPILOGUE Come tell us, you that travel far With brave or shabby merchandise, Have you saluted any star That goes uncourtiered in the skies? Do you remember leaf or wing Or brook the willows leant along, Or any small familiar thing That passed you as you went along? Or does the trade that is your lust Drive you as yoke-beasts driven apace, Making the world a road of dust From market-place to market-place? Your traffic in the grain, the wine, In purple and in cloth of gold, In treasure of the field and mine, In fables of the poets told,-- But have you laughed the wine-cups dry And on the loaves of plenty fed, And walked, with all your banners high, In gold and purple garmented? And do you know the songs you sell And cry them out along the way? And is the profit that you tell After your travel day by day Sinew and sap of life, or husk-- Dead coffer-ware or kindled brain? And do you gather in the dusk To make your heroes live again? If the grey dust is over all, And stars and leaves and wings forgot, And your blood holds no festival-- Go out from us; we need you not. But if you are immoderate men, Zealots of joy, the salt and sting And savour of life upon you--then We call you to our counselling. And we will hew the holy boughs To make us level rows of oars, And we will set our shining prows For strange and unadventured shores. Where the great tideways swiftliest run We will be stronger than the strong And sack the cities of the sun And spend our booty in a song. MOONRISE Where are you going, you pretty riders?-- To the moon’s rising, the rising of death’s moon, Where the waters move not, and birds are still and songless, Soon, very soon. Where are you faring to, you proud Hectors? Through battle, out of battle, under the grass, Dust behind your hoof-beats rises, and into dust, Clouded, you pass. I’m a pretty rider, I’m a proud Hector, I as you a little am pretty and proud; I with you am riding, riding to the moonrise, So sing we loud-- “Out beyond the dust lies mystery of moonrise, We go to chiller learning than is bred in the sun, Hectors, and riders, and a simple singer, Riding as one.” DEER Shy in their herding dwell the fallow deer. They are spirits of wild sense. Nobody near Comes upon their pastures. There a life they live, Of sufficient beauty, phantom, fugitive, Treading as in jungles free leopards do, Printless as evelight, instant as dew. The great kine are patient, and home-coming sheep Know our bidding. The fallow deer keep Delicate and far their counsels wild, Never to be folded reconciled To the spoiling hand as the poor flocks are: Lightfoot, and swift, and unfamiliar, These you may not hinder, unconfined Beautiful flocks of the mind. TO ONE I LOVE As I walked along the passage, in the night, beyond the stairs, In the dark, I was afraid, Suddenly, As will happen you know, my dear, it will often happen. I knew the walls at my side, Knew the drawings hanging there, the order of their placing, And the door where my bed lay beyond, And the window on the landing-- There was even a little ray of moonlight through it-- All was known, familiar, my comfortable home; And yet I was afraid, Suddenly, In the dark, like a child, of nothing, Of vastness, of eternity, of the queer pains of thought, Such as used to trouble me when I heard, When I was little, the people talk On Sundays of “As it was in the Beginning, Is Now, and Ever Shall Be....” I am thirty-six years old, And folk are friendly to me, And there are no ghosts that should have reason to haunt me, And I have tempted no magical happenings By forsaking the clear noons of thought For the wizardries that the credulous take To be golden roads to revelation. I knew all was simplicity there, Without conspiracy, without antagonism, And yet I was afraid, Suddenly, A child, in the dark, forlorn.... And then, as suddenly, I was aware of a profound, a miraculous understanding, Knowledge that comes to a man But once or twice, as a bird’s note In the still depth of the night Striking upon the silence ... I stood at the door, and there Was mellow candle-light, And companionship, and comfort, And I knew That it was even so, That it must be even so With death. I knew That no harm could have touched me out of my fear, Because I had no grudge against anything, Because I had desired In the darkness, when fear came, Love only, and pity, and fellowship, And it would have been a thing monstrous, Something defying nature And all the simple universal fitness For any force there to have come evilly Upon me, who had no evil in my heart, But only trust, and tenderness For every presence about me in the air, For the very shadow about me, Being a little child for no one’s envy. And I knew that God Must understand that we go To death as little children, Desiring love so simply, and love’s defence, And that he would be a barren God, without humour, To cheat so little, so wistful, a desire, That he created In us, in our childishness ... And I may never again be sure of this, But there, for a moment, In the candle-light, Standing at the door, I knew. TO ALICE MEYNELL I too have known my mutinies, Played with improvident desires, Gone indolently vain as these Whose lips from undistinguished choirs Mock at the music of our sires. I too have erred in thought. In hours When needy life forbade me bring To song the brain’s unravished powers, Then had it been a temperate thing Loosely to pluck an easy string. Yet thought has been, poor profligate, Sin’s period. Through dear and long Obedience I learn to hate Unhappy lethargies that wrong The larger loyalties of song. And you upon your slender reed, Most exquisitely tuned, have made For every singing heart a creed. And I have heard; and I have played My lonely music unafraid, Knowing that still a friendly few, Turning aside from turbulence, Cherish the difficult phrase, the due Bridals of disembodied sense With the new word’s magnificence. PETITION O Lord, I pray: that for each happiness My housemate brings I may give back no less Than all my fertile will; That I may take from friends but as the stream Creates again the hawthorn bloom adream Above the river sill; That I may see the spurge upon the wall And hear the nesting birds give call to call, Keeping my wonder new; That I may have a body fit to mate With the green fields, and stars, and streams in spate, And clean as clover-dew; That I may have the courage to confute All fools with silence when they will dispute, All fools who will deride; That I may know all strict and sinewy art As that in man which is the counterpart, Lord, of Thy fiercest pride; That somehow this beloved earth may wear A later grace for all the love I bear, For some song that I sing; That, when I die, this word may stand for me-- He had a heart to praise, an eye to see, And beauty was his king. HARVESTING Pale sheaves of oats, pocked by untimely rain, Under October skies, Teased and forlorn, Ungathered lie where still the tardy wain Comes not to seal The seasons of the corn, From prime to June, with running barns of grain. Now time with me is at the middle year, The register of youth Is now to sing ... My thoughts are ripe, my moods are in full ear; That they should fail Of harvesting, Uncarried on cold fields, is all my fear. * * * * * The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS U. S. A. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, 1908-1919 *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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