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Cambridge poets , 1914-1920 :
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CAMBRIDGE POETS, 1914—1920
London Agents
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON. KENT & Co.. Ltd.
Cambridge Poets
1914-1920.
AN ANTHOLOGY
COMPILED BY
EDWARD DAVISON.
Cambridge :
W. HEFFER fi? SONS Ltd,
X920
TO
SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, M.A.
(king EDWARD VII. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE)
THIS ANTHOLOGY
IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
BY
THE COMPILER
PREFACE
AFTER making my grateful acknowledgments to
the forty-seven contributors whose courtesy has
allowed the compilation of this second anthology of
Cambridge Poetry, my thanks are due to the Publishing
Houses and Editors named below who have so kindly
sanctioned the reprint of many poems which they first
published.
Messrs. Lynwood & Co. :
" Exodus and Other Poems "
" Thirty Poems " Martin Armstrong
" Built in Jerusalem's Wall "
The Oxford University Press :
E. Keppel Bennett
Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson :
" 1914 and Other Poems " Rupert Brooke
" Poems and Rh5mies " J^fff^y Day
" A Muse at Sea " E. Hilton Young
Messrs. George Bell & Sons :
" Poems " Edward Davison
Mr. Martin Secker :
" Poems " ; First Series
" The Birds " /. C. Squire
" Collected Poems " /. E. Flecker
vU
viii PREFACE
Messrs. Erskine Macdonald :
" The Survivors " Geffrey Fyson
" Verses from France to the Family "
D. B. Haseler
Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd. :
" Poems " G. H. Luce
Mr. Elkin Mathews :
" Poems " /. H. F. McEwm
The Cambridge University Press :
" Macedonian Measures " John Macleod
" Poems " Donald Goold Johnson
The Poetry Bookshop :
" Children of Love "
" Strange Meetings " Harold Monro
Mr. William Heinemann :
" The Old Huntsman "
" War Poems " Siegfried Sassoon
Mr. B. Blackwell :
" Dreams and Journeys " Fredegond Shove
The Oxford & Cambridge Miscellany
Messrs. George Allen & Unwin :
" The Death of Man " R. C. Trevdyan
Messrs. Methuen & Co., Ltd. :
" Poems "
" New Poems " 1. A. Williams
Messrs. Smith Elder & Co. (Mr. John Murray) :
"Freedom" G. W. Young
preface ix
The Editors of :
The AiheneBum The New Cambridge
The Cambridge Magazine The New Statesman
The Cambridge Review The Old Cambridge
The Cocoon The Poetry Review
Country Life Punch
The Eagle To-day
The Crania Voices
Land and Water The Westminster Gazette
The London Mercury Youth
Twenty-five of the contributors were in residence
at their respective colleges during the year 1920, and
many of the remainder went down in the academical
year preceding the outbreak of war.
The preparation of this anthology involved a catholic
selection from a body of work several times larger than
was compatible which the size and scope of the proposed
volume, and to those whose poetry shoiild have been,
but is not, represented in these pages, my apologies are
anxiously offered.
EDWARD DAVISON.
September 4ih, 1920.
INDEX TO AUTHORS
PAGE
C. CoLLEER Abbott (Gonville and Caius) - i
J. R. AcKERLEY (Magdalene) . . . 3
E. N. Da C. Andrade (Emmanuel) - - 7
Martin Armstrong (Pembroke) - - 10
S. Bellhouse (Emmanuel) - - 16
E. Keppel Bennett (Gonville and Caius) - 17
Rupert Brooke (King's) ... 21
Gerald Bullett (Jesus) - - 28
A. Vivian Burbury (King's) - - - 32
A. Y. Campbell (St. John's) - - 36
Olwen W. Campbell (Newnham) - - 44
H. K. Cassels (Queens') .... 51
Kenneth Codrington (Corpus Christi) - - 36
" D " (Newnham) ... - 58
Norman Davey (Clare) - - - 63
Edward Davison (St. John's) - 68
♦Jeffery Day (St. John's) - - - 73
R. H. D'Elboux (St. John's) - - - 76
James Elroy Flecker (Gonville and Caius) - 82
Dermot Freyer (Trinity) - - - 94
Geoffrey F. Fyson (no college) - 98
*Note — Flight-Commander Jefifery Day, R.N.A.S., was killed
on active service before actually entering St. John's College.
He had, however, been definitely accepted as a member of the
College, and his name appears on a memorial tablet in the
Chapel.
XU INDEX TO AUTHORS
PAGE
Cyril Ogden Harrey (Caius) , - 103
Ada M. Harrison (Newnham) - - - 105
D. B. Haseler (St. John's) - - - - 107
Lewis Horrox (Gonville and Caius) - - no
Donald F. Goold Johnson (Emmanuel) in
Frank H. Kendon (St. John's) - - 115
Rosamond Lehmann (Girton) - - 120
A. S. Le Maitre (St. John's) 125
G. H. Luce (King's) - - - 128
J. H. F. McEwen (Trinity) - - - 133
John Macleod (Corpus Christi) - . . 138
Eric Maschwitz (Gonville and Caius) - - 143
Harold Monro (Gonville and Caius) - 146
E. G. MoRiCE (Girton) - ... 151
C. W. Previte Orton (St. John's) - - 153
Siegfried Sassoon (Clare) - - - . 1^4
Edward Shanks (Trinity) - - - _ j^g
Fredegond Shove (Newnham) - - 164
J. C. Squire (St. John's) - _ . _ jgg
Frank W. Stokoe (Gonville and Caius) - 179
C. B. Tracey (St. John's) - - - - 182
R. C. Trevelyan (Trinity) - - - . jSS
Kathleen Montgomery Wallace (Newnham) 193
loLO Aneurin Williams (King's) - . 199
E. Hilton Young (Trinity) - - . _ 203
Geoffrey Winthrop Young (Trinity) - - 206
C. COLLEER ABBOTT
HONEYSUCKLE
WILD honeysuckle throws across
The hazel-trees its gold and white,
And from its curving flutes and spurs.
Unfettered, sun-dyed revellers.
Such essence importunes the night
That roses are but dross.
The hazel-tree within my mind
Fruit good and bad will bear, and men
May vilify or praise me when
They crack the nuts that grew forgot.
Some kemelled white, some brown with rot ;
No matter what they find.
No matter what they find, if still
Known but to me, the wild spikes fling
Their radiance over each small thing
Round and above my tree, if yet
Wild honeysuckle sprigs curvet
I shall be living still.
C. Colleer Abbott
BERRIES
WOULD that your lips desirable,
And elvish mood that with them plays,
Were necromancing here with me
Along the dark woodways.
The wild wood strawberries do swing
Where silence spills and moonlight drips.
Waiting their ghostly visitor
And her immortal Ups.
They fold their jewelled fruit in leaves,
Reluctant to be mortal prize :
No matter for the wood's wild things
And aU its watching eyes,
I would find wild berries for you.
All through the wood, for your wild lips.
And I would gather them to feed
With wood love, those your lips.
And dip each crimson berry in
Moon's silver light, as this and this
Do swing, and covenant for each
Wild strawberry, a kiss.
J. R. ACKERLEY
DAEDALON
AYE, I am foolish for I know
That I shall sadden when you go,
And I am blind because I see
That you were more than God to me :
A brighter sun than Heaven's shone
When I was with you, Daedalon.
Can I find strength enough to stand
The last sUght pressure of your hand ;
Can I find fortitude to bear
The knowledge that you are not there,
Then turn my Book of Life upon
The memory of Daedalon.
Remember you ! No, no, I'll shut
The Book, or from its pages cut
The image of you graven there.
The dingy tangle of your hair.
Your ill-kept hands and lifeless face.
And seek friends in some other place.
Forget you ? . . . When my heart repeats
Your wisdom to me as it beats ? . . .
That always you may be the same
My rhymes shaU vivify your name . . .
Aye, cunningly I'll play upon
The happy name of Daedalon.
J. R. Ackerley
But you were cold to me, I know,
Who never dreamed my thoughts to show.
But sat content to hear you speak.
And see the bronzeness of your cheek.
Your sunburnt nose and woimded eye . . .
But never told you, no, not I.
Yes, I am blind ; but still I saw
The beauty of you all the more.
How slowly came your drawled reply.
How gleamed your artificial eye ;
And on the morrow you'll be gone . . .
Ah, but I loved you, Daedalon.
J. R. Ackerley
9- 9- 19-
GOD alter me, and tarn my heart to stone.
That I may be as cold as moimtain snow,
And cleave my way untempted and alone.
And have no fire, nor any seeds to sow,
Nor feel the blood within me hotly flow.
And never cry, nor have the least regret.
Nor anything to treasure or forget.
And have no song to offer to the sun,
No secrets for the moon, no pulse to race ;
And have no friend, nor any need for one,
No yearning for the sight of any face.
No sudden hate, no preference of place.
No hope to lose, no trespass to atone . . .
God alter me and turn my heart to stone.
Or make me wholly beast, a questing fire,
A thing of instincts unencumbered by
The need of shame to temper slaked desire.
The power to love, the fearfulness to die ;
A cruel thing that wants and knows not why.
And satisfies its want, and wants again.
Untouched by ruth, insensible to pain.
J. R. Ackerl^
One or the other : anj^hing but this,
To sight the goal ahead and never make it ;
To taste the murder lurking in a kiss.
And thirst for wine and swallow gall to slake it ;
Desire the moon and be too faint to take it ;
To have the precious things and never know
How beautiful they were imtil they go.
To move about in secret, wrapped in lies ;
To do a heartless thing and blush for shame.
And never look your best friend in the eyes
And tell the truth ; but leam to play the game.
And hate its dull conventions all the same.
And live in need, and perish quite alone . . .
Oh God ! Make me a beast then, or a stone.
E. N. Da C. ANDRADE
BUBBLES
OH, so delicate, so gay.
So sweetly poised, so proud in show,
Shimmering in reflected day
Shaped to such a splendid show
Of smooth creation, swift to grow,
But, briefly dear.
Swift to float, break, shrink away.
The lovely bubbles children blow.
— ^And chides them thus :
Why take pleasure, why pursue
So spell-bound things that have no stay.
Things whose joyful shape and hue
Are nothing but a little dew
Blown up with wind, a little spray
Blent in a bowl with suds and shme.
Blown with a breath through clay
To live no time.
Choose rather some enduring good.
Some beauty fixed, some soUd shape
Fit to be slowly understood ;
Not with bright eyes and mouths agape.
But with order, admiration.
Duly to be comprehended.
Which will hold its worth and station
When the first warm flush is ended
Well approved, well based in fame.
E. N. Da C. Andrade
Oh, is it better, chider, then
The jewel shotild still outlive the joy
Its beauty brings, that Fate should first
The pleasure, then the gem, destroy.
Should one love adamantine things
And wear down wonder day by day
On some unchangeable, ungay
Sublimity of marble wings.
Oh, let the emotion still survive
Its fragile cause, let nothing less
Temper the first gay loveliness
That laughs to see the light alive.
Beautiful bubbles, nothing worth,
Joy catches breath, and they are gone ;
You, who despise their easy birth.
Forget that they have ever shone ;
Live with your books, and still decry
All things that lack solidity —
But I'll blow bubbles till I die !
THE PLOVERS
OVER her house there looks a little hill ;
Thither I wandered blindly, to outwear
The aching length of night with my despair.
And strive to find some solace for my ill.
N. Da C. Andmde
. Cold, like false tears, the dew shone thick and still,
The malicious moon, most feminine and fair.
Smiled in cold mockery, the dispiteous air
About my naked heart moved sharp and chill ;
While, like the wailing ghosts of wretched lovers.
Who, ranging sadly on the Stygian shore.
Echo the hopeless moan, " No more, no more,"
With the monotonous mouth of misery
The dreadful damned interminable plovers
Vexed midnight with their melancholy cry.
SHADOW AND SMOKE
THE night now moves in our blood :
I thought that, between the trees.
At the edge of the field and the wood
A man with animal knees,
A goat-legs, a satyr, a faun.
Looked out at us, nodded, and spoke
A greeting in some strange tongue.
But his head so quickly withdrawn
And his arm was that branch of an oak.
And the rest of him shadow and smoke,
I suppose, and his words were sung
By the wind.
MARTIN ARMSTRONG
THE BUZZARDS
WHEN evening cameand the warm glow grew deeper.
And every tree that bordered the green naeadows
And in the yellow cornfields every reaper
And every corn-shock stood above their shadows
Flung eastward from their feet in longer measure.
Serenely far there swam in the sunny height
A buzzard and his mate who took their pleasure
Swirling and poising idly in golden light.
On great pied motionless moth-wings borne along,
So effortless and so strong,
Cutting each other's paths together they glided.
Then wheeled asunder till they soared divided
Two valleys' width (as though it were dehght
To part like this, being sure they could imite
So swiftly in their empty, free dominion).
Curved headlong downward, towered up the sunny steep,
Then, with a sudden lift of the one great pinion.
Swung proudly to a curve, and from its height
Took half a mile of sunlight in one long sweep.
10
tiartin Armstrong
And we, so small on the swift immense hillside.
Stood tranced, imtil our souls arose uplifted
On those far-sweeping, wide.
Strong curves of flight — ^swayed up and hugely driftec
Were washed, made strong and beautiful in the tide
Of sun-bathed air. But far beneath, beholden
Through shining deeps of air, the fields were golden
And rosy burned the heather where cornfields ended.
And still those buzzards wheeled, while light withdrew
Out of the vales and to surging slopes ascended.
Till the loftiest-flaming summit died to blue.
GREY
GREY of the twilight come,
Spread those wide wings above our meadows, brin
Coolness and mist : make dumb
The jarring noise of day, and gently ring
Our woods and ponds with dimness : take away
All busy stir, but let the grey owl sway
Noiselessly over the bough like a lattle ghost :
And let the cricket in the dark hedge sing
His withered note : and, O Immortal Host,
Welcome this traveller to your drowsy hall
And, standing at the porch, speechless and tall,
Close the great doors, shut out the world, and shed
Your benediction on this drooping head.
Martin Armstrong
PURPLE
DEEP, deep is the night,
Brooding, cavernous, beautiful, wide.
Woods on the blue hUlside
Show but as blurs in the gloom more deeply glooming.
And the long, familiar bam, so bland in the light.
Is grown phantasmal, a huge shape dimly looming,
A yawning wave upreared to overwhelm
Us that cower and wonder
In the heavy shadow under.
Dwindled to dwarfs in the midnight's purple realm.
GOLD
EVENING is tawny on the old
Deep-windowed farm.
And yellow elm-trees fold on fold
Are golden-warm.
And a fountain basin drips its gold
'Mid gleaming lawns
Where mellow statue-bases hold
Their gilded fauns.
12
iartin Armstrong
AUTUMN
LET us depart. Lone is the stubble-field,
Gone are the gleaners, for the last gold sheave
Are gathered. Flights of red and russet leaves,
Rowan and beech, come whirling down the weald.
Let us depart. The full moon's lustrous shield
Is dulled with misty haloes ; round the eaves
And in the moving boughs a low wind grieves.
Sifting the moonlight shrouded and revealed.
The west is sullen-red with smouldering fires
Of wild autumnal sunsets — ^smoking pyres
Of perished joys ; and dews of death are rife
At eventide ; their fragrance stings the heart.
The stem archangel in the book of life
Records one summer more. Let us depart.
Martin Armstrong
THE KINGFISHER
UNDER the bank, close-shadowed from the sun,
By winter freshets spun.
Dry tangled wreckage hung above the shallows
In the long roots of the sallows.
And imdemeath in cool twilight the stream
Lay calmed to a brown dream.
Then with the gleam and flash of a swift-blue flame
Out from the dusk he came.
And the heart and the breath stood still with delight
and wonder.
While in the water under
Shot, swift as he, a streak of blue and green
From unseen to imseen.
O wonder, leaping with sudder flutter of wings
From the litter of common things.
Flash on the inward eye till the soul leaps higher
On the surge of a great desire.
And high in the dim-lit hall of earthly years
Another lamp appears.
14
Martin Armstrong
IN LAMPLIGHT
NOW that the chill October day is declining.
Pull the blinds, draw each voluminous curtain
Till the room is full of gloom and of the uncertain
Gleams of firelight on polished edges shining.
Then bring the rosy lamp to its wonted station
On the dcirk-gleaming table. In that soft splendour
Well-known things of the room, grown deep and tendei
Gather round, a mysterious congregation, —
Pallid sheen of silver, the bright brass fender,
The wine-red pool of carpet, the bowl of roses
Lustrous-hearted, crimsons and purples looming
From dusky rugs and curtains. Nothing discloses
The unseen walls but the broken richly-glooming
Gold of frames and opulent pools of mingling
Dim colours gathered in darkened mirrors. And breaking
The dream-like spell and out of your deep chair moving
You go perhaps to the shelves, and, slowly singling
Some old rich-blazoned book, return. But the gleaming
Spells close round you again, and you fall to dreaming
Eyes grown dim, the book on your lap unheeded.
15
S. BELLHOUSE
TWO MORNINGS
IN Flanders where the soldiers lie,
The mist-himg world is cheerless grey.
And willows watch with leaden eye
Penurious Dawn greet haggard Day.
Here on a sudden Night grows old.
And in the gap between the hills,
Green, orange, amethyst, and gold
The careless hand of morning spills.
DOUBT
LAST night our love seemed splendid certainty ;
I held you close and saw the whole roimd world
With all its fair tumultuous lovely things.
Mirrored within your eyes.
At daybreak, when grey morning slowly lifts
Her heavy eyelids neath the wan sun's gaze,
A cold doubt creeps within my colder heart.
And love seems nought, or at the most seems lies.
i6
E. KEPPEL BENNETT
AN INVITATION
IF I should get to Paradise
(And someone says she thinks I may),
I know what joys I would devise
To pass the hours of endless day :
With fingers no more stiff as cranks
That stumble soon as they begin,
I'd play with Michael, Ciaax Franck's
Sonata for the violin.
And you perhaps wiU join as well —
When heavenly duties leave them free —
With Michael, Raphael, Gabriel,
And play Schumann's quintett with me.
And if — supposing that in heaven
Such things could be — ^we tire at last.
We'll hear ' die Zauberflote,' given
By angels with an aU-star cast.
These are the joys I hope will be
Allowed us after our new birth :
Of course improved considerably.
But very much like those of earth.
17
E. Keppel Bennett
TO SAINT BOTOLPH
PATRON OF WAYFARERS AND BEGGARS
O PATRON saint of wayfarers.
This traveller from distant lands
Comes home and kneels before your shrine,
A suppliant with uplifted hands.
Grant me a lodging in your shade.
And peace, and shelter from the rain,
A bed with smooth white sheets, a fire.
Till on my way I fare again.
As votive gift accept these flowers
— Gethsemane once nourished them —
This handful of grey earth, this spray
Of olive from Jerusalem.
patron saint of wayfarers
And beggars, grant that I, who sue
For shelter as a waj^arer.
May never come a beggar, too.
i8
<el Bennett
EPIPHANY
¥ TITH a long train of camels following them,
T Laden with myrrh and frankincense and gold,
Balthasar, Caspar, Melchior the old
aw near a stable door ia Bethlehem,
d, stooping down, each king his diadem
Lays at the feet of Him, whom they behold,
Wrapped round in swaddling clothes against the cold :
e Babe that is a Prince of Jesse's stem.
.d the mild Mother sees with wondering eyes
The strange, bright gems on their uplifted hands.
Their jewelled swords, and raimqnt of rich fur ;
d drawing near beneath the starlit skies,
\ train of camels, bringing. from strange lands
Tribute of gold and frankincense and m}Trh.
19
E. Keppel Bennett
THE SCARECROW
THE plaything of the winds, I stand ; a jest
For idle children who draw near to stare
Or, mocking, pluck the sordid rags I wear :
The fanner's faded coat and filthy vest.
Of all my former honours dispossessed
I scarce avail from fruit and com to scare
The thievish birds, contented if none dare
Pluck out my straw-stuffed limbs to line his nest.
Yet once my altar lacked no offerings :
The first fruits of the fields and vineyards round
Were mine by right ; in Spring my brows were boimd
With painted flowers ; and at my foot the sod
Drank the hot blood of goats ; for with such things
Men honoured me, Priapus, as a god.
20
RUPERT BROOKE
HOME
I CAME back late and tired last night
Into my little room,
To the long chair and the firelight
And comfortable gloom.
But as I entered softly in
I saw a woman there,
The line of neck and cheek and chin.
The darkness of her hair.
The form of one I did not know
Sitting in my chair.
I stood a moment fierce and still.
Watching her neck and hair.
I made a step to her ; and saw
That there was no one there."
It was some trick of the firelight
That made me see her there.
It was a chance of shade and light
And the cushion in the chair.
21
Rupert Brooke
Oh, all you happy over the earth.
That night, how could I sleep ?
I lay and watched the lonely gloom ;
And watched the moonlight creep
From wall to basin, round the room.
All night I could not sleep.
PEACE
NOW, God be thanked Who has matched us with
His hour.
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power.
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping.
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move.
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary.
And all the little emptiness of love !
Oh ! we, who have known shame, we have found release
there.
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending.
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath ;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending ;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
22
Rupert Brooke
THE DEAD
BLOW out, you bugles, over the rich Dead !
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old.
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away ; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth ; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene.
That men call age ; and those who would have been.
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
Blow, bugles, blow ! They brought us, for our dearth.
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth.
And paid his subjects with a royal wage ;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again ;
And we have come into our heritage.
CLOUDS
DOWN the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow.
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow.
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.
23
Rupert Brooke
They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train.
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas.
And men, coming and going on the earth.
HAUNTINGS
IN the grey tumult of these after years
Oft silence faUs ; the incessant wranglers part ;
And less-than-echoes of remembered tears
Hush all the loud confusion of the heart ;
And a shade, through the toss'd ranks of mirth and
crying,
Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood, —
Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying.
Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.
So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams.
Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams.
Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men.
Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible.
And light on waving grass, he knows not when.
And feet that ran, but where, he caimot tell.
24
Rupert Brooke
TIARE TAHITI
MAMUA, when our laughter ends,
And hearts and bodies, brown as white.
Are dust about the doors of friends,
Or scent ablowing down the night.
Then, oh ! then, the wise agree.
Conies our immortality.
Mamua, there waits a land
Hard for us to imderstand.
Out of time, beyond the sun.
All are one in Paradise,
You and Pupure are one.
And Tail, and the ungainly wise.
There the Eternals are, and there
The Good, the Lovely, and the True,
And Types, whose earthly copies were
The foolish broken things we knew ;
There is the Face, whose ghosts we are ;
The real, the never-setting Star ;
And the Flower, of which we love
Faint and fading shadows here ;
Never a tear, but only Grief ;
Dance, but not the limbs that move ;
Songs in Song shall disappear ;
Instead of lovers. Love shall be ;
For hearts. Immutability ;
25
Rupert Brooke
And there, on the Ideal Reef,
Thunders the Everlasting Sea !
And my laughter, and my pain,
Shall home to the Eternal Brain ;
And all lovely things, they say.
Meet in Loveliness again ;
Miri's laugh, Teipo's feet.
And the hands of Matua,
Stars and sunlight there shall meet
Coral's hues and rainbows there.
And Teiira's braided hair ;
And with the starred Hare's white.
And white birds in the dark ravine.
And flamboyants ablaze at night.
And jewels, and evening's after-green.
And dawns of pearl and gold and red,
Mamua, your lovelier head !
And there'll no more be one who dreams
Under, the ferns, of crumbling stuff.
Eyes of illusion, mouth that seems,
All time-entangled human love.
And you'll no longer swmg and sway
Divinely down the scented shade.
Where feet to Ambulation fade.
And moons are lost in endless Day.
How shall we wind these wreaths of ours.
Where there are neither heads nor flowers ?
26
Rupert Brooke
Oh, Heaven's Heaven ! — ^but we'll be missing
The pahns, and sunlight, and the south ;
And there's an end, I think, of kissing.
When our mouths are one with Mouth. . . .
Tau here, Mamua,
Crown the hair, and come away !
Hear the calling of the moon.
And the whispering scents that stray
About the idle warm lagoon.
Hasten, hand in human hand,
Down the dark, the flowered way.
Along the whiteness of the sand.
And in the waters soft caress.
Wash the mind of foolishness,
Mamua, until the day.
Spend the glittering moonlight there
Pursuing down the soundless deep
Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair.
Or floating lazy, half-asleep.
Dive and double and follow after.
Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call.
With lips that fade, and human laughter.
And faces individual.
Well this side of Paradise ! . . .
There's little comfort in the wise.
27
GERALD BULLETT
THE EXILE
NOW I return to my own land and people,
Old familiar things so to recover.
Hedgerows and little lanes and meadows.
The friendliness of my own land and people.
I have seen a world-frieze of glowing orange.
Palms painted black on the satin horizon :
Palm-trees in the dusk and the silence standing
Straight and still against a background of orange ;
A gorgeous magical pomp of light and colour,
A dream-world, a sparkling gem in the sunlight.
The minarets and domes of an Eastern city ;
And in the midst of all the pomp of colour
My heart cried out for my own land and people ;
My heart cried out for the lush meadows of England.
The hedgerows and little lanes of England,
And for the faces of my own people.
Reprinted from Punch, by kind permission of the Editor.
28
Gerald BuUelt
THE AWAKENING
I WANDERED in the meadows of Romance
And wooed the ethereal maidens that my mind
Spun out of fantasy ; my eyes were blind
With gazing on the moon ; in a sad trance
I moved amid a motley pageantry
Of elfin figures in a shadowy wood.
But now my sorrows and my solitude
And all the gossamer loves that shackled me
Are idle tales told in an idle day,
Passionless poems from the languid hand
Of a bemusM boy whom fairy folk
Had drugged for his undoing. . . For as I lay
Dreaming in that enchanted poppyland,
You came to me, you kissed me, and I woke.
29
Gerald Bullett
THE GRUDGE
We grudged not those that were dearer than oil we possessed.
Lovers, brothers, sons ;
Our hearts were full, and out of a full heart
We gave our beloved ones.
" The Bereaved," by Lawrence Binyon,
WE are of baser quality : we have been
Tried by fire and judged a spurious gold
We are little of soul ; and yet in our pigmy way
We have suffered and loved with a love that cannot
be told.
Being less than you, we did not eagerly quaff
The cup of gall : we prayed that it might pass.
We are not gods ; we are pitiful human stuff.
And the blood of our passion has stained Gethsemane's
grass.
We were not blind to the vision. We heard the call
And followed, or watched our beloved steadfastly go.
But our grief is naked, and shivers, and wUl not be
soothed
By splendid phrases, or clothed in a moral glow.
We cannot say for our comfort : " Losing them.
We gain a glimpse of noble, terrible heights,
A cleansing, exquisite pain, a sacred grief,
A dream to cherish "—we think of the vanished lights.
30
Gerald Bullett
We think of the fine nerves shattered, the warm blood
chilled.
The laughter silenced, the zest and the beauty gone.
The desolation of wasted, wonderful dreams
That will never be lived, of work that cannot be done.
1917
MICE
I SEE the broken bodies of women and men.
Temples of God ruined ; I see the claws
Of sinister Fate, from the reach of whose feline paws
Never are safe the bodies of women and men.
Almighty Cat, it sits on the Throne of the World,
With paw outstretched, grinning at us, the mice.
Who play our trivial games of virtue and vice.
And pray — ^to That which sits on the Throne of the
World !
From our beginning till all is over and done.
Unwitting who watches, pursuing our personal ends.
Hither and thither we scamper. The paw descends ;
The paw descends and all is over and done.
31
A. VIVIAN BURBURY
"THE UNBORN BROTHER"
BROTHER of mine that might have been.
But never was bom to this changing life
Yourself to be changed by this world of strife.
Strong, how strong ! — ^is the bond between
Me that must live and struggle and die.
And you that remained in eternity.
Often I wanted and cried for you,
Someone to love and cherish and fight.
Someone to be what the others might
Could they have done all you alone could do,
You, that would have done everything right.
I have sought you in all that I ever loved.
In the women I liked and the men I knew.
In the things I have done or tried to do ;
For the things that have pained, and ihe things that
moved.
And the things that gripped me were all of them you.
I know that you would have understood
What I could not tell to my father and mother
Just from my love of them ; you, my brother.
Would have given to me what no sister could.
As they give, in their way, more than you or another.
32
A. Vivian Burbury
You would have been them, intimately,
All that I love and have learned to know
In my parents and sisters, — ^things that grow
In the heart, and have made and moulded me, —
Only I never could tell them so —
You are all that a woman has loved in me.
That my friends have liked and a few admired.
The dreams and ambitions my mind has fired.
All that I wanted and tried to be.
And might have been had my heart not tired.
You had been marred by none of my stains
Had you lived, had you lived — ^but I am sure
I could not have grown to love you more ;
And you'd have been tortured by this world's pains.
And killed, like the rest, in this endless war.
MeanwhUe, I like to think of you, dear.
As a friend that is loved but far away.
That can say what a brother alone can say
And stretch out his sold to me lying here.
But never be seen in the light of day.
33
Ai Vivian Burbury
Brother of mine that might have been,
Would that you had been ! so had you grovra
To be my real brother, to know what I've known.
To feel what I've suffered, and see as I've seen :
But I must be finished and dead and forgot.
And you will remain, and remember not.
•■ GOOD-NIGHT ! "
(To Y. M. M.)
THE symphonies that I have dreamed at night.
The mighty odes and sonnets that have sprung
Full-clothed in magic rhythm to my tongue
When, in that half-unconscious moment's flight
That whets before it blunts our wearied sight.
Your image has come to me ! Had I sung.
Had I then marked your graciousness, and hung
Your image in some song, I might, I might. . - .
I might have shown you in your perfect truth.
In all your beauty, all your mystery.
In all your infinitely gracious youth.
In all the sweetness you have offered me. . . .
I might have hung your soul in all men's sight.
I prefer not to. So, my dear. Good-night !
34
Vivian Burbury
"THE TWO"
(To F. P. R.)
A TENDER love between us twined, and death is
hard to bear —
And at the first I could not find courage to stem despair ;
I did not know how I should find your presence every-
where.
In the trees and woods and wilds and desert places.
My limbs were numb, my heart was dead, my soul a
mist of sorrow ;
I had no joy in the days that fled, nor yearning to the
morrow ;
All that I bad inherited my soul had seemed to borrow
From the cadence of the mournful ocean spaces.
But now that I am grown more wise, I see your life again
Like the first gleam in new-washed skies of rainbow after
rain, —
In the soft dreams of women's eyes, the lips of men in
pain, —
Above all, in old men and children's faces.
35
ARCHIBALD YOUNG CAMPBELL
THE PANIC
PALE in her evening silks she sat.
That but a week had been my bride ;
Then, while the stars we wondered at.
Without a word she left my side ;
Devious and silent as a bat,
I watched her round the garden glide.
Soon o'er the moonlit lawn she streamed.
Then iloated idly down the glade ;
Now like a forest nymph she seemed.
Now like a light within a shade ;
She turned, and for a moment gleamed.
And suddenly I saw her fade.
I had been held in tranced stare
Till she had vanished from my sight ;
Then did I start in wild despair.
And followed fast in mad affright ;
What if herself a spirit were,
And had so soon rejoined the night ?
36
Archibald Yotmg Campbell
THE FIRST-BORN
WHILE the chill dawn was breaking, with moist eye.
Wonder, and heart-beat, joy, doubt, aching bones.
Finding strange magic in that wan cold sky,
I, that had heard all night thy mother's groans.
First caught thy shrill, small cry.
Who parted life from life ? What thing whence came ?
How, in one instant, woke thy little soul ?
Which moment earned for me a father's name ?
These, and the grey dawn, o'er my senses stole.
One mystery and the same.
THE CYPRIAN'S HARBINGER
Intermissa, Venus, diu rursus bella mores ? — Horace.
TloiKiXoOpov aOavaT ' AcppoSiTa. — Sappho.
GOLDEN-THRONED, immortal Love,
Sung to by the girls of Greece,
From what islands hails the dove.
Crossing what foam-crested seas.
37
Archibald Young Campbell
That my deepest dreams above.
And my lightest, without cease.
Or by day, where'er I move.
With faint wing-beats kills my ease ?
Ah ! forbear thy power to prove ;
Well I know what wings are these.
Where but in the Paphian grove
Dwells the dove that brings not peace ?
A YOUNG GIRL
{1908)
SHE is most like a lute that lies
Cunningly tuned and laid away ;
Clearly there's passion in her eyes.
But none to play.
She is made up of light and shade.
And sometimes full of laughter.
And sometimes serious and staid
A moment after.
38
Archibald Young Campbell
Her skin is tender and yet tense,
Maidenly flushed and chUdly pure';
Her looks are riddles to the sense,
WUd and demure ;
She's like Pygmalion's statue caught
When the first pink of life was creeping ;
The marble quickened into thought.
The spirit sleeping.
Yet is she full of inward fire ;
Her soul, that has the part assumed
Of Vestal to her own desire.
Bums unconsumed.
She's both impalpable and crisp.
She is both passionate and chilly ;
A star, and yet a will-o'-the-wisp,
A tiger Uly.
28th APRIL, 1917
HUSH, hush, inhuman one ! Haunt moonlit arbours ;
Revel ; ay, love ; but noiseless ; never sing !
Hast thou no sense what heart of listener harbours ?
Oh, is this spring to thee no less than spring ?
39
Archibald Young Campbell
I heard thee suddenly ; that ancient impulse
Breathless to hearken, seized me unaware.
Even as I heard of old, and felt the dim pulse
Of earth speak through thee, and thy bliss could share.
Now, what a pang it brought, the rapture piercing !
Hast thou no heart ? Thou, that in years now fled
So sang, that in thy voice we seemed to hear sing
Our hearts — ^in days before our friends were dead.
How canst thou come again, true to thy season.
Woo, mate, make music, as when spring was joy ?
How canst thou sing to us without a reason ?
Must thou our dear-bought calm of mind destroy ?
We could endure the flowers ; though memories tragic
With their soft beauty woke, it lulled our pain.
Thou hast a soul, and with resistless magic
Whisperest of hopes we dare not nurse again.
Till we can hear thee as these blithe new-comers,
Cuckoos and swallows, that make no heart sore.
Cease ; for our children there shall still be summers ;
Thou'lt sing for them so, though for us no more.
40
Archibald Young Campbell
If thou canst feel, then, wait till we are older ;
Wiser ; to loss resigned ; the way less long.
Dreams, and strange hopes that rise, desires grown
bolder,
Old mystic thoughts revived, rare glints of song —
These wouldst thou bring us now, but old friends bring
not?
O, for one year yet, shim thy wonted grove ;
Or visit us as thou didst once, but sing not ;
Or sing, O nightingale, but not of love.
THE TWO PICTURES
TWO pictures front my study desk ;
One, my work table right above,
Sorely miscalled in sense grotesque,
Titian's (the loveliest) Call to Love.
Year after year in the same place.
Whether it thunder, shine, or rain.
Straight at the heavenly " sacred " face
Gazes the heavenlier still " prof cine."
41
Archibald Young Campbell
Landscape and sport stretch far behind ;
Peace too — the basking white-eared pair ;
Breathing from all you here shall find
What even love loves next, earth and air.
Just on the right a Diirer hangs ;
Jerome at study, pen in hand ;
Softened seem even the Calvary's pangs
In that still chamber sxmbeam-faimed.
Hour-glass above, he heeds yon sun
Less than the halo, therefrom shed.
Or by his tender limner spun
Over the bowed sole-forelocked head.
Studying some pagan, half-divine ;
Poor man, from mediaeval text !
Often I've longed to pass him mine. —
But, from this picture to the next
(Where, of still feared yet hoped-for things,
Joys half-resisted, half-reviewed.
To the divine draped beauty sings.
Earnestly, the diviner nude)
42
Archibald Young Campbell
Only some foot of wall appears.
Well is the bald crown's aureole earned !
Would you believe it, all these years,
That head has never once been turned.
Still hangs the broad-brim on its peg.
Not even the svin such saiathood woos ;
Still gowned and cramped the scholar's leg.
Still by the bench the hermit's shoes.
Still curls the dog in sleep's deep spell.
Still blinks the lion, stretched full span ;
The skull sits on the ledge. Ah, well,
Jerome, another desk, old man.
Facing where you these years have sat.
Felt both the sim's and learning's flame ;
But of the head that stoops thereat.
Ah me ! I dare not say the same.
A bird, a flower, a laugh, a call.
Has turned it fifty times a day ;
And " turned " it now, far worse than all.
That little sylph across the way !
43
OLWEN CAMPBELL
ENISLED
FALLEN as though on some serener planet.
Lapped in a softer daylight we have lain.
Under a vaporous sky, though far we scan it
One with the sea — one vague broad Imninous plain ;
Where, like a meteor, glides and falls a gannet.
Where porpoises roll shining, and seals pass
And sink without a sound. The steeps of granite
Dissolved in light, loom, like a clouded glass ;
All is transparency, yet all is dim.
All mystery, all solitude, all peace.
Through weedy glades becalmed fish dozing swim.
And opalescent eels ; all creatures seem
Like us, the earth, the sky, the somnolent seas.
Locked in a beautiful but dawnless dream.
44
Olwen Campbell
TO W.S.L.
OH Landor, in your quiet grave
What room is there for wrath or pride ?
The peace your heart did break and crave
Is yours — and what beside ?
Do you, with all that ghostly throng
You met in dreams, now such as they.
Wander in earnest talk along
Acheron's waters grey ?
And does your now immortal maid
For whom you wrote and lived and sighed,
Move there, a pale and lovely shade
For ever by your side ?
In that dim world of falling leaves
Which spoke for you no word of fear,
I pray that now your soul receives
That not " too precious " tear.
45
Olwen Campbell
UNKNOWN
LYING in the silent night,
I hear strange birds pass overhead.
Crying faintly in their flight ;
Whence do they come ? and where their home ?
I know not ; and they soon are fled.
Waking between dreams and dawn,
I hear a sudden wind draw by.
Shaking by the wooded lawn
Shrub and tree ; and like a bee
Cradling in their shade to die.
Wondering then I hear a train,
First dim and far ; soon loud and near.
Thundering through the quiet plain ;
It stirs my soul to know its goal.
And who they are that travel there.
Heaven, pale with thousand beams,
A stranger, dearer secret keeps.
Even the little child of dreams.
So much my own, that now unknown,
Unborn, beneath my bosom sleeps.
46
Olwen Campbell
PURSUIT
SEEKING to worship man we find the scroll
Of fame discover man's infirmities.
The vast imaginations of the soul
Are still misatisfied, beholding these.
Beauty half-known, like a sheer peak where roll
Transparent clouds, infinite mysteries.
Remains the one unconquerable goal.
Only perfection can engender peace.
Movement not rest is Nature's ruthless will.
Desire without attainment. By the sheen
Of shapeless dreams enticed we wander still.
Like birds across the inhospitable deep
That ever in their weary vision keep
The splendid image of a land unseen.
SOLVITUR ACRIS HIEMPS— APRIL, 1919
NOW the earth's numb limbs are loosened.
Now the streams and valleys waken ;
Swallow, come from parched Arabia
To thy nest, six months forsaken,
Which winter's rage and ravage leaves
Still sheltered underneath our eaves.
47
Olwen Campbell
To a land sun-freed, sun-quickened,
Voyage from a land sun-sated;
Fear no more thy wonted courses, —
Man, the fateful and ill-fated.
Has set at last his seal of peace
Upon thy mountains and thy seas.
Still untrimmed the rose-tree pillar
Stands and spreads thy once-loved perches ;
Nearer to thy skiey regions
Grow the poplar and the birches.
Long snows and rains have left the soil
Dissolved and supple for thy toil.
Through the silver silent evenings
Thou didst shape thy careful cradle.
Unaware what other nestling
Dwelt beneath the white-washed gable ;
This year, thou dost not divine.
My baby shall peep out at thine.
From thy far wide haunts of freedom
Bring her graces sweet as thine are.
Dews of Nature that shall make her
Pure and strong as sim and brine are,
Spirit-winged, as thou art too.
Joyous, tireless, swift and true.
48
Olwen CampbeU
THE BLACK-CAP
(Ow discovering a real Poet)
ALL through the night the Black-cap trills.
Beneath the balmy August moon ;
An eager simple throat he fills
With a thin strenuous busy tune.
He has no audience of the night,
No listening earth receives his lay ;
Spring's amorous hours have taken flight.
His mate, his young, have hopped away.
The blowzy over-blossomed hedge.
The undewed, moon-bleached country-side.
The leaf-choked stream, the crumpled sedge.
The hot stars, whence the breeze has died —
These are enough to stir his song,
Of these, aU im-remarked he tells.
When the proud nightingale has long
Ceased to regale the. faded dells.
But should the favoured heavenly bird
Let fall but one fastidious note,
The Black-cap, shamed, exposed, absurd.
His praise arrested in his throat.
49
Olwen Campbell
Would feel his rustic passion checked.
His song recalled into his heart.
Listening to one who only recked
The perfect Season's perfect Art : —
So might he feel — ^if bird-song meant
What poet means ; could bird-heart ail ;
Am I, or is the year, too spent ?
Or have I heard a nightingale ?
50
H. K. CASSELS
I NEED to set down coloured words
To clear the cobwebs from my mind.
And then like little painted birds
I will release them on the wind.
For I will build a castle high
More strange and tall than Babel was,
It shall have walls of ivory
And polished gates of golden brass.
And underneath the towers tall
I will make oriental rooms
With clashing colours on the wall
That blend in the mysterious gloom.
In the broad gardens I will hide
Long shadowy pathways of trim grass
With walls of flowers on each side
And petals falling as you pass.
They'll lead you to a shining pool
For dipping feet and tingling hands ;
It will be shining white and cool
Upon the many-coloured lands.
51
H. K. Cossets.
And there will be a fountain rare
That spouts a glowing ruby wine.
And I will set strange fishes there,
All green and golden they will shine.
Then I will go abroad and find
A bride to give the castle to.
For I have nobody in mind,
And while alone 'twould never do.
And she will have the deep-sea eyes.
And she will have the dusky hair.
And she will have the tiny feet
And the unconscious queenly air.
Because she'll be so wonderful
The world will go to war with me,
But I will walk upon the wall
And frighten off the enemy.
Good-bye to you, I'll never see !
Good-bye my towers and white wall !
But let me have to play with me
A child who will believe it all.
52
E. K. Cassek
II
How can you all go talking to my lovely
And violating the intimate sanctity
Of her white silence, telling my pale lovely
Of her rare beauty in the poor words that be.
While I who have some power to drill these words,
As fiery emblems of our intimacy.
Into a host more paramount than swords.
Yet fear to finger such proud delicacy.
And only want to bow down low my head
If even distantly I see her form.
Or suddenly feel stabbed by eyes, deep-spread
Of foam and shadow like a sea in storm.
Wondering with my hand across my mouth
That snow-quiet peace should rule such fire-bom youth.
Ill
She sat up high on a golden throne
With her head right up in the sky.
And when I prayed her to come down.
This was her reply :
" If I were standing by your side
You would be taller than I."
53
H. K. Cassds
IV
What could he do, caught in that net of flowers.
With her fraU body trembling out to him
Like vibrant wire strung to make music on ?
How could he think of those beleagered towers
He had been set to capture, or that grim
Playground of kings where lights of battle shone ?
For beauty had gone nakedly abroad
To make the sky a paradise of blue.
And summer's flowers secretly had stored
More than their share of liveliness and flew
Brave flags of colour where the sunhght poured.
How could he struggle to escape the snare.
With his rough fingers weary of the sword
And aching to move softly in her hair.
Was it a ringing bugle call that came
To rescue him, or some too fond caress
That stung his manhood to a blush of shame
At being subject to such tenderness ?
For suddenly his breath catches to behold
A loophole where the traitor hedge discourses
How teeming pastures lie and smoking cities.
Cities to loot of all their darling gold ;
Of plains where delicate hoofed fiery horses
Go sleek for capture, and of palaces
Where famous beauty and imrivaUed wit is
And where the fairest queens delight the bold.
54
H. K. Cassels
No smooth arms offered him could now avail
To call the soft look back into his eyes,
No kisses lured him but the kiss of steel,
And it was no fond whispers or low sighs
That lit his face and made his body thrill,
Man's loftier birthright summoned him to rise.
The deathless spark that laimches crazy ships
And drives men's sons to plough the lonely skies.
The answer was found eager on his lips.
55
KENNETH CODRINGTON
EVENING
SHE will not always laugh
And turn away,
Sa5mig life's day
Is what we wUl,
Weep though we may —
She will not always smile
And mocking say,
Life's skies are grey
Only to those
Who say her nay —
— ^But there will come to her
Some eventide.
When shadows hide
Her laughing skies,
And day has died —
Small voices at her ear.
And at her side.
Small hands that will
Not be denied —
56
Kenneth Codrington
KNOWLEDGE
o
H, aren't they sweet ! " you said,
Bending your head.
So that I might not see your eyes.
But only guess poor lover-wise,
The dream that in them lay —
Not of to-day.
But of that distant crown
Of all your sighs.
When you'll look down,
New mother blessed,
To kiss the hands that beat
So long beneath your breast —
— ^When I shall steal away
On leaden feet —
— Oh love, what can I say
Who only know To-day ?
57
D."
AD ASPIRANTEM
I SHALL never again pick speedwell.
Or the young oak's green and brown.
Or the delicate white wild parsley,
Or the nettle's ivory crown.
I shall never again touch children,
With their. curves of rose and snow :
Or coiuit for a sleepy baby
Each curled-up finger and toe.
You shall hold on your lap the Christ-child,
When Mary's arms are tired :
And touch with the tips of your fingers
The flesh that the world desired.
Safe in your arms you shall hold Him,
And His eyes of shadowy blue,
And Mary's hands as she yields Him,
Shall be speedwell and nettle to you.
58
d:
NEWNHAM GARDEN
THE geum has petals of velvet.
Golden and brown in hue.
And the flax bush, set in the pavement.
Discs of bewildering blue.
The holly-hock's crinkled yellow
Leans lazily on the wall,
And the faint, dead flowers of the lime-tree
Catch in your hair and fall.
Lily-buds float on the water,
And beyond the pond's stone edge
Lavender blows, with the crimson
Rose of the four-square hedge.
Grey-green leaves of the willow
Whisper and shudder and shrink.
And the hot blue spire of delphinium
Is dusted over with pink.
Big prim bushes are covered
With tassels of helitrope.
And the waves of the rambler roses
Rush down the brown bank's slope :
59
D."
Don't walk on the path between them,
For I think that their crimson and cream
Might meet one day in the middle.
And drown you in seas of dream ;
And I wouldn't walk in the garden
When the young day trips on the grass.
And colour and scent and sunshine
Are made out of bright clear glass :
For they might all slide together.
Till there was no flax-flower's blue.
Or faint, sweet scent of the lime-tree :
And then, what would happen to you ?
60
d:
THE BEST OF SPRING
YOU asked me : What's the best of spring ?
I'll tell you now just everything.
It's living in a garden square
Whose unmown lawns are everjrwhere
Not lawns, but meadows, green and lush :
Where buttercups and barbary bush
Shade softest orange with sheer gold.
And yellow broom-flowers stiU unfold ;
That's in the day-time, when you see
The chestnut candles' bravery ;
And spring's white flame you almost see.
Burning the great green sturdy tree ;
And then you see the willows' green
Hung mistily above the stream,
And watch each blue anemone ;
That's in the day time, when you see.
But when the sun's an hotir gone
Behind the dm trees on the lawn.
And owls scream, and soft mouse-wings
Flitter around your head in rings.
And melody like golden rain
Comes from the far trees by the lane ;
And when you pause in joy to hail
A most authentic nightingale —
6i
D."
then's the best of spring to me,
The time when you can scarcely see :
When big soft veils of night are thrown
On things you in the day have known :
When trees are piles of deeper grey,
, And colour's almost fled away :
When may-trees are a ghostly gleam.
And lilacs but a purple dream :
Then, as you pass, you're swept beneath
Great waves of scent, and each fresh breath
Swims round you shedding sudden glints
And subtle delicate woven hints
Of things you did not know, but see.
In the day's painted pageantry.
The may-trees line a narrow way.
When you their laden boughs survey :
They're the whole garden's scented sea.
In this grey hour of mystery.
You're almost drowned and swallowed up
In waves of grass and buttercup ;
There's iris, faint and deadly sweet.
And clover, underneath your feet.
And O the sweet-briar hedge, and O
The lUac's lovely, scented glow !
O that's the best of spring to me.
That time when you can scarcely see.
62
NORMAN DAVEY
THE SESTINA OF THE MINOR POET
CRITICS have damned our calling, since the sun
First rose to tip Achilles' spear with light :
One wonders how the little that is done
Ever survives even a summer night ;
And we — ^we wonder more than anyone
Why minor poets ever strive to write.
What use is it to wonder ? We must write
Whether we will or no. Under the sun
God keeps a little sacred flame alight
E'en in the mind of this unable one.
Though Critic Death ring down in dreamless night
A curtain on so many things undone.
And many wasted hours, and iU things done ;
Not only in bright day, but in dark night,
A meanness hidden from the genial sun ;
Wherefore 'tis always difficult to write
And to God's mercy testify, when one
Has been conspirator against the light.
63
Norman Davey
Poets, I think, do mostly love the light.
And scrawl sestinas to the dying sun.
When haply they have skiU enough to write —
Sighing to think how the sun-god is done
To death by the returning wheel of night. . . .
Yet night they woo as much as anyone.
With every bawd and ruffler they are one.
And little credit find they with the light
When through the morning window streams the sun.
I fear me 'tis on water that they write :
On soda-water epics have been done
More lasting than the IjTrics overnight !
Yet there is grace in sleep : and sometimes night
May bring to solace some unhappy one
Dreams sent by God to make, in darkness, light :
With but a spark of hope, much may be done :
And even poets may contrive to write
Something to last a little in the sun.
There was a helpful humour in the sun.
And yet — ^how hard these verses were to write
Will scarcely be believed by anyone !
64
Norman Davey
THE COWARDLY LOVER
THE Western Wind has romped with her,
Salt-ladened from the sea :
And though he is in love with her
I shall not jealous be ;
And though he wind her loosened hair
About him and about.
And tumbles her and kisses her
I shall not call him out.
The Sun has loved my love for years,
All ardent and ablaze :
I've caught the rogue caressing her
In half a hundred wajre :
And though he set her hair afire
And steals beneath her hat.
And presses kisses on her neck
I shall not grudge him that !
The summer seas have sung to her
And led her to their home :
Bearing her on their darker wave.
White as the milk-white foam :
And when she scampers up the beach
The jealous waves below
In little wavelets foUow her —
So loath to let her go !
65
Norman Davey
She has sought the green sea-weedy depths
Where the old sea-god dwells :
And bartered her virginity
For rainbow coloured shells :
Yet though myself a soldier am
As brave as many be
In skirmish, ambush, cannonade,
I do not fight the Sea !
CATULLUS XXVII
COME, boy, pour out a glass of port :
A vintage of the fine old sort :
And I, as Bacchus' laws ordain
Shall drink, begad, and drink again,
Until I grow as ripe and mellow
As any old-time vinter fellow.
But water, bane of wine, away !
Where Quaker folk make holiday.
For me, I swear by all divine.
This is the choicest '89.
66
Norman Davey
WANDERLUST
DOWN among the valleys ! Jog ! Jog ! Jog !
Down across the grass-lands with a great, grey dog!
Up to sunlit rock-ridge : down to shadowed loch ;
Here's to Bit and Bridle ! Hoch ! Hoch ! Hoch !
Off with sleigh and sleigh-dogs ! Yap ! Yap ! Yap !
Brake away to Northward ! Racing through the Gap !
Simset shrouds the birch-trees : starlight stains the snow ;
Here's to Moose and Moonlight ! Ho ! Ho ! Ho !
Beam-seas butting on us ! Thud ! Thud ! Thud !
Poop, a foaming mill-pond ! Foc's'le all a-flood !
On a drunken ocean : 'neath a dancing sky ;
Here's to Gaff and Gunwale ! Aye ! Aye ! Aye !
Axles grimly groaning ! Creak ! Creak ! Creak !
Endless Veldt around us, week on empty week !
Neither lane nor landmark ! Neither trail nor track !
Here's to Wheel and Whipcord ! Crack ! Crack ! Crack !
67
EDWARD DAVISON
VISION OF PEACE
COME, faltering stranger, through the open door,
With shy and gentle footstep entering
The house of Thought. Thick shadows mat the floor.
Heavily bums the lamp to the moth's wiug :
The hesitant silence sighs
Like a child asleep whose dream passes and dies.
Be rested now. The late hour chimes an end.
The doors are sealed and all the curtains drawn ;
The shimmering satins creamUy depend
From your white shoulders, and the slow flames fawn
Upon your cloudy hair.
Pilfering gold from the soft tresses there.
Let us be still even as lovers sleeping.
With this full silence for our bridal bed ;
Stealthily are the dark companions creeping,
Shadow and shadow past your drooping head.
And now the faint lamp's flame
Wavers and whitens when I speak your name.
There is no time within this room of ours.
No sun to sweep day onwards to nightfall ;
There is no hungry clock to spend the hours
With callous hand and face ; no moondial
Of the fantastic brain
To point the darkness to the west again.
68
Edward Davison.
The lamp's last tremulous light can never fail us.
This fire shall bum for ever stiU untended ;
We shall remain, — ^no moment can assail us,
Our wealth of silence cannot be expraided :
Eternity must pass
Ere you can cry " Farewell " ! or I " Alas " !
IN JUDEA
THE Bride of God has lain her head
At rest on Joseph's knee.
In hush of sleep her breath is dead.
Her hair falls loose and free.
And Joseph smooths its rippling strands
Tenderly in his coarse great hands.
He thinks of sunny Nazareth
When Mary kissed him first.
Ere for God's love she brake her faith.
And lest his heart should burst
He turns his eyes away once more
From Jesus smiling by the door.
4)9
Edward Davison
COLIN CLOUT 'S COME HOME AGAIN
COLIN CLOUT 's come home again.
Loping up the rutted lane
Past the farmhouse and the pool.
Smiling at the village fool, —
Past the thatched and yarded stack
With his bundle on his back.
Little girls in gingham frocks
Played around the pillar-box,
Colin spoke to them and passed.
For he's come back home at last.
Nancy, now that Colin's here.
Take the jug and get some beer.
Then put on your pinafore.
Heat the oven, shut the door.
Take your biggest apples down.
Bake the dumplings crisp and brown.
Colin kissed you when he came.
Called you by your pretty name.
And he gave you a new shawl —
Colin hasn't changed at all!
70
Edward Davison
Wind the clock up. make a stir,
Busier be and busier.
Till his supper's done and then
Just you kiss him back again !
Say it's time to go to bed,
Wrap your apron round your head,
Scramble up your cottage stairs,
Turn the lamp out, say your prayers ;
Tell God that the best of men
Colin Clout 's come home again I
{Musical rights reserved by Messrs. Enoch & Sons.)
71
Edward Davison
THE MIND BESIEGED
A LONELY castle was this Mood of mine.
Whose anxious ramparts challenged wind and
cloud,
Mountain and moon with banners leonine.
But the battalions of Event abide
In sleepless siege around, and all the proud
And weary garrison is stupefied ;
And only from that brooding citadel
On the dark battlements resounds aloud
Some failing tread of Thought, the sentinel.
EPITAPH
HERE a pure lady gave the dust
Her body, and the flowers her breath.
And yet had virtue left to thrust
A little dignity on Death.
72
JEFFERY DAY
FROM "TO MY BROTHER"
THIS I will do when peace shall come again —
Peace and return, to ease my heart of pain.
Crouched in the brittle reed-beds wrapped in grey
I'll watch the dawning of the winter's day.
The peaceful, clinging darkness of the night
That mingles with the mystic morning light.
And graceful rushes, melting in the haze.
While all aroxmd in winding water ways
The wild fowl gabble cheerfully and low.
Or wheel with pulsing whistle to and fro.
Filling the silent dawn with sweetest song,
Swelling and dying as they sweep along.
Till shadows of vague trees deceive the eyes
And stealthily the sun begins to rise.
Striving to smear with pink the frosted sky
And pierce the silver mist's opacity ;
Until the hazy silhouettes grow clear
And faintest hints of colouring appear,
And the slow, throbbing, red, distorted sun
Reaches the sky, and all the large mists run.
Leaving the little ones to wreathe and shiver,,
Pathetic, clinging to the friendly river ;
Until the watchful heron, grim and gaunt.
Shows, ghostlike, standing at his favourite haimt.
73
Jeffery Day
And jerkily the moorhens venture out.
Spreading swift, circled ripples round about ;
And softly to the ear, and leisurely
Querulous, comes the plaintive plover's cry.
And then, maybe, some whispering near by.
Some still small soimd as of a happy sigh
Shall steal upon my senses, soft as air,
And, brother ! I shall know that thou art there.
Then, with my gun forgotten in my hand,
I'll wander through the snow-encrusted land.
Following the tracks of hare and stoat, and traces
Of bird and beast, as delicate as laces.
Doing again the things that we held dear.
Keeping thy gracious spirit ever near.
Comforted by the blissful certainty
And sweetness of thy splendid company.
And in the lazy summer nights I'll glide
Silently down the sleepy river's tide.
Listening to the music of the stream.
The plop of ponderously playful bream.
The water whispering around the boat.
And from afar the white owl's liquid note
That lingers through the stillness, soft and slow ;
Watching the little yacht's red homely glow.
Her vague reflection, and her clean cut spars
Ink-black against the stiUness of the stars,
74
Jeffery Day
Stealthily slipping into nothingness.
While on the river's moon-splashed surfaces
Tall shadows sweep. Then, will I go to rest.
It may be that my slumbers will be blest
By the faint sound of thy imtroubled breath.
Proving thy presence near, in spite of death.
75
R. H. D'ELBOUX
IMPENITENT
WATER to drink
And bread to eat ;
For two whole days
No sign of meat,: —
Just for setting
Fire to the peat.
When I am free
I'll nm away.
And bum to the groTind
Old Gilson's hay ;
'Twas he saw me
Yesterday.
When I am free
I'll off to the hills :
Crackling heather
Gives rare thrills.
And the sheep will panic
In the ghylls.
The birds will rise
When the heathers blaze.
And hares lope by.
Their eyes aglaze
With the raging fear
I shall raise.
76
R. H. D'EWoux
Then will I dance
As the flames prowl on,
And mock the town
Those hiUs upon —
Fools ! to call me
A simpleton.
TO A MISCHIEVOUS DEMOCRAT
THINK you the shepherd will forsake
His sheep-walks on the downsj
Because new governments you make —
Change kings for Smiths or Browns ?
Or should the cowman wake wide-eyed
To find a poet's dream come true.
Will he forsake the byre and ride
To drink disorder's heady brew ?
Will merchant men make holiday
Because you change affairs of state,
Disdain your pilot's careful way
And ignorantly navigate ?
77
R. H. D'Elboux
Yet these men are the men who still
Are suffering grave wrongs,
Who quietly their work fulfil :
To these England belongs.
Man's nature changes not because
You advocate a noble labour.
And aU your visonary laws
Are so much jingling of a tabor.
Back, you fool, and know your land ;
Love before you learn to speak ;
Then, with sweated mind and hand.
Will come the change you seek.
TIMOTHY
TIMOTHY, where are you walking to-day.
Slouching along with your hands in your pockets.
Your eyes dreamy blue, as old painters portray
Your girl-mother's eyes in your grandmother's lockets ?
78
R. H. D'Elboux
Timothy, why are you tradging the street
With that delicate, far-away look on your face,
Heedless of jostling folk that you meet ; —
Are you walking this town, or some more remote
place ?
Have you returned to Lyonesse realm.
To shadow-spun towers, to tourneys and feasts,
Where a brighter sun gleams on your damascened helm.
As you sally to battle with fabulous beasts ?
Timothy, is the Princess still immured
High in the keep of some monster half-mortal.
Helpless and sorrowful, since she was lured
By a magic white doe to pass under his portal ?
Gird you and fight for her, Timothy mine.
For Lyonesse knights are men of good fettle ;
Win her to-day while your sword edge is fime.
The morrow may prove it of different mettle.
I found you, Timothy — ^not long ago —
Playing wide-eyed amid Lyonesse flowers.
So I stole you for Mother ; how could I know
You would hunger for Lyonesse through the long
hours ?
79
R. H. D'Elboux
TO W. L. L.
THE wind sweeps the grass.
And ruffles my hair ;
Wherever I pass
There are scents in the air.
The strong smells of Summer,
The brine of the sea.
To lull the newcomer.
Float faintly to me.
The nuts growing brown
For a September mom,.
While a filigree crown
Gilds the heads of the com.
The gloss of the apple.
The bloom of the plum.
The peach's red-dapple —
How can one be glum ?
With the wind, the sim's shine.
The haze on the land.
Contentment were mine
Were you but at hand.
80
R. H. D'EUxmx
Yet howe'er hot the sun.
Or howe'er the wind blow.
Without you and your fun.
It is lonely I go.
MAGIC
PUCK sat beside me on a hill to-day.
For through my limbs, as idly there I lay,
I felt a sudden thrill of pleasure pass.
And saw a wind from nowhere sweep the grass.
And sunshine broke upon me through a cloud.
" Oak, ash, and thorn : Puck lives ! " I cried aloud
Three times, until a line of silent trees
Stirred tremulously to a stranger-breeze.
While dappled daisies opened wondering eyes,
Larks rose impulsively to greet the skies ;
Finches in flocks excitedly flew round
The copse where silky willow palm I found.
And the whole earth with lawless motion teemed ;
I only lay a-dreaming there it seemed.
Then, as I say, I felt a sudden thrill —
And Puck was seated by me on the hill.
8i
JAMES ELROY FLECKER
BRUMANA
OH shall I never be home again ?
Meadows of England shining in the rain
Spread wide your daisied lawns : your ramparts green
With briar fortify, with blossom screen
Till my far morning — and streams that slow
And pure and deep through plains and playlands go.
For me your love and all your kingcups store,
And — dark militia of the southern shore.
Old fragrant friends — ^preserve me the last lines
Of that long saga which you sung me, pines,
When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree
I listened, with my eyes upon the sea.
O traitor pines, you sang what life has found
The falsest of fair tales.
Earth blew a far-horn prelude all around.
That native music of her forest home.
While from the sea's blue fields and syren dales
Shadows and light noon-spectres of the foam
Riding the summer gales
On aery viols plucked an idle sovmd.
James Elroy Flecker
Hearing you sing, trees,
Hearing you murmur, " There are older seas.
That beat on vaster sands.
Where the wise snailfish move their pearly towers
To carven rocks and sculptured promont'ries,"
Hearing you whisper, " Lands
Where blaze the unimaginable flowers."
Beneath me in the valley waves the palm.
Beneath, beyond the valley, breaks the sea ;
Beneath me sleep in mist and light and calm
Cities of Lebanon, dream-shadow-dim.
Where Kings of Tyre and Kings of Tyre did rule
In ancient days in endless dynasty,
And all around the snowy mountains swim
Like mighty swans afloat in heaven's pool.
But I will walk upon the wooded hill
Where stands a grove, O pines, of sister pines.
And when the downy twilight droops her wing
And no sea glimmers and no moimtain shines
My heart shall listen still.
For pines are gossip pines the wide world through
And full of runic tales to sigh or sing.
'Tis ever sweet through pine to see the sky
Mantling a deeper gold or darker blue.
83
James Elroy Flecker
'Tis ever sweet to lie
On the dry carpet of the needles brown.
And though the fanciful green lizard stir
And windy odours light as thistledown
Breathe from the lavdanon and lavender.
Half to forget the wandering and pain,
Half to remember days that have gone by,
And dream and dream that I am home again !
THE HAMMAM NAME
{From a poem by a Turkish lady)
WINSOME TORMENT rose from slumber, rubbed
his eyes, and went his way
Down the street towards the Hammam. Goodness
gracious ! People say,
What a handsome countenance ! The sim has risen
twice to-day !
And as for the Undressing Room it quivered in dismay.
With the glory of his presence see the window panes
perspire.
And the water in the basin boils and bubbles with desire.
84
James Elroy Flecker
Now his lovely cap is treated like a lover : off it goes !
Next his belt the boy unbuckles ; down it falls, and at
his toes
All the growing heap of garments buds and blossoms like
a rose.
Last of all his shirt came flying. Ah, I tremble to disclose
How the shell came off the almond, how the lily showed
its face.
How I saw a silver mirror taken flashing from its case.
He was gazed upon so hotly that his body grew too hot.
So the bathman seized the adorers and expelled them on
the spot ;
Then the desperate shampooer his propriety forgot.
Stumbled when he brought the pattens, fumbled when
he tied a knot.
And remarked when musky towels had obscured his
idol's hips.
See Love's Plenilune, Mashallah, in a partial eclipse !
85
James Elroy Flecker
Desperate the loofah wriggled : soap was melted in-
stantly :
All the bubble hearts were broken. Yes, for them as
well as me,
Bitterness was bom of beauty ; as for the shampooer, he
Fainted, till a jug of water set the Captive Reason free.
Happy bath ! The baths of heaven cannot wash their
spotted moon :
You are doing well with this one. Not a spot upon him
soon !
Now he leaves the luckless bath for fear of setting it
aUght ;
Seizes on a yellow towel growing yellower in fright,
Polishes the pearly surface till it bums disastrous bright.
And a bathroom window shatters in amazement at the
sight.
Like the fancies of a dreamer frail and soft his garments
shine
As he robes a mirror body shapely as a poet's line.
86
James Elroy Flecker
Now upon his cup of coffee see the lips of Beauty bent :
And they perfume him with incense and they sprinkle
him with scent,
Call him Bey and call him Pasha, and receive with deep
content
The gratuities he gives them, smiling and indifferent.
Out he goes : the mirror strains to kiss her darling ; out
he goes !
Since the flame is out, the water can but freeze.
The water froze.
SAADABAD
I
LET us deal kindly with a heart of old by sorrow torn :
Come with Nedim to Saadabad, my love, this silver
mom :
I hear the boatmen singing from our caique on the Horn,
Waving cypress, waving cypress, let us go to Saadabad I
We shall watch the Sultan's fountains ripple, rumble,
splash and rise
Over terraces of marble, under the blue balconies.
Leaping through the plaster dragon's hollow mouth and
empty eyes :
Waving cypress, waving cypress, let us go to Saadabad !
87
James Elroy Flecker
Lie a little to your mother : tell her you must out to pray,
And we'll slink along the alleys, thieves of all a summer
day,
Down to the worn old watersteps, and then, my love,
away :
my cypress, waving cypress, let us go to Saadabad.
You and I, and with us only some poor lover in a dream :
I and you — ^perhaps one minstrel who will sing beside
the stream.
Ah Nedim will be the minstrel, and the lover be Nedim,
Waving cypress, waving cypress, when we go to Saadabad !
II
Down the Horn Constantinople fades and flashes
in the blue
Rose of cities dropping with the heavy summer's burning
dew.
Fading now as falls the Orient evening round the sky
and you.
Fading into red and silver as we row to Saadabad.
88
James Elroy Flecker
Banish then, Grecian eyes, the passion of the waiting
West!
Shall God's holy monks not enter on a day God knoweth
best
To Crown the Roman king again, and hang a cross upon
his breast ?
Daughter of the Golden Islands, come away to Saadabad.
And a thousand swinging steeples shall begin as they
began
When Heraclius rode home from the wrack of Ispahan,
Naked captives pulled behind him, double eagles in the
van —
But is that a tale for lovers on the way to Saadabad ?
Rather now shall you remember how of old two such as
we.
You like her the laughing mistress of a poet, him or me.
Came to find the flowery lawns that give the soul
tranquillity :
Let the boatmen row no longer — ^for we land at Saadabad.
89
James Elroy Flecker
See you not that moon-dim caique with the lovers at the
prow,
Straining eyes and aching lips, and touching hands as
we do now.
See you not the turbaned shadows passing, whence ?
and moving, how ?
Are the ghosts of all the Moslems floating down to
Saadabad ?
Broken fountains, phantom waters, nevermore to glide
and gleam
From the dragon-mouth in plaster sung of old by old
Nedim,
Beautiful and broken fountains, keep you still your
Sultan's dream.
Or remember how his poet took a girl to Saadabad ?
STILLNESS
WHEN the words rustle no more.
And the last work's done,
When the bolt lies deep in the door.
And Fire, our Sim,
Falls on the dark-leined meadows of the floor ;
90
James Elroy Flecker
When from the clock's last chime to the next chime
Silence beats his dram.
And Space with gaunt grey eyes and her brother Time
Wheeling and whispering come.
She with the mould of form and he with the loom of
rhyme :
Then twittering out in the night my thought-birds flee,
I am emptied of aU my dreams :
I only hear Earth turning, only see
Ether's long bankless streams.
And only know I should drown if you laid not your hand
on me.
THE QUEEN'S SONG
HAD I the power
To Midas given of old
To touch a flower
And leave the petals gold,
I then might touch thy face.
Delightful boy,
And leave a metal grace,
A graven joy.
91
James Elroy Flecker
Thus would I slay, —
Ah, desperate device !
The vital day
That trembles in thine eyes.
And let the red lips close
Which sang so well.
And drive away the rose
To leave a shell.
Then I myself.
Rising austere and dumb
On the high shelf
Of my half -lighted room.
Would place the shining bust
And wait alone.
Until I was but dust.
Buried unknown.
Thus in my love
For nations yet tmbom,
I would remove
From our two lives the mom.
And muse on loveliness
In mine arm-chair.
Content should Time confess
How sweet you were.
92
James Elroy Flecker
NO COWARD'S SONG
I AM afraid to think about my death.
When it shall be, and whether in great pain
I shall rise up and fight the air for breath.
Or calmly wait the bursting of my brain.
I am no coward who could seek in fear
A folk-lore solace or sweet Indian tales ;
I know dead men are deaf and cannot hear
The singing of a thousand nightingales.
I know dead men are blind and cannot see
The friend that shuts in horror their big eyes.
And they are witless — 0, I'd rather be
A living mouse than dead as a man dies.
93
DERMOT FREYER
TREES
HOW I love trees ! " she said . .
It was the only word.
Not banal, not absurd.
Of all she uttered.
I took her through the lane.
Where the elms overhead
Were yellowing, and red.
Ochre, and amber stain
Lit all the hawthorn hedge.
And on the little bridge.
Between a field and a field.
By where a hay-rick stood
That hid us from the road.
Sudden I made her yield.
Not for the words she said.
Which only could give me pain.
Poor words ! blind, witless, . . . dead ;
But for her white forehead ;
Her eye-brows arched and dark ;
Her eyes, the Pheidias-mark
Of nostrils chiselled
With fine and lively care ;
94
Dermot Freyer
Her lips, her glowing skin,
Wind-bitten, made more fair
Through chill and autmnn rain.
And for the lights therein
— ^A veined pearl ; the note
Of ears half hid, her hair ;
And for her white, warm throat.
Her hands, her hips. . . .
For these.
Not — God ! — ^for gift of speech.
Nor any word-spun snare.
Save that one lonely cry.
That, like a squirrel, shy.
Elusive, slipped the rein
Of her sweet, blockish brain.
Leaped in the live, white air —
Flaming ! — " How I love trees ! "
For these, only for these.
Under the yellowing elms.
Grey elder, brittle and bare.
Browned hawthorn, ochre beech.
Captive I held her there.
Laughing, cynical, vain.
Slender, splendidly fair.
Under the autumn rain.
95
Dermot Freyer
TO EVERY LOVER
RED blossom of the chestnut falling,
, Red hawthorn tarnishing to rust.
And the red earth for ever calling,
" There is no beauty : these are dust."
Red lips, red leaping blood, light laughter.
All the brief pageant of bright birth ;
O eyes, and hair, and hands ! — and after —
" There is no lover but the quiet earth."
CLIFF HEAD
I REMEMBER the rain in her hair.
And the delicate turn of her wrist.
As she lifted her hand to her hair.
Wind-blown, and the sound of the sea ;
And the sun looming large in the mist.
And the wine of the downland air.
Giving strength, and the battle and twist
Of grey gulls over the sea.
96
Dermot Freyer
THE FORTUNATE MEADOWS
OUT of the sun soon let me pass
To those dim fields beneath the grass.
Where women have no power to bring
The poison of their lips, the sting
Of words and glances ; all the vain
Splendour of eyes and hair ; the pain
Of warm young passionate bodies ; where
Even the spring's envenomed air
Is innocent, and may not move
To that sweet suffering which is love.
Under the ever-shadowy trees
Let me go down. Let the day cease.
Let me awake in that deep shade,
Where Helen walks, and imafraid
Men look on her, radiant and white.
And are not wounded ; where the night
Is odorous with oblivion,
And rest and sure heart's ease are won.
To those dim fields beneath the grass
Out of the sun soon let me pass.
97
GEOFFREY FYSON
THE SURVIVORS
WE who come back.
Nerveless and maimed, from the wild sacrifice
Of the Worid's youth, stretch'd quivering on the rack
Of Nature pitiless to all its pain.
Will never look again
With the old gay, uncomprehending eyes
Upon the former founts of our delight.
Morning and eve and night.
Sunshine and shadow, melody, love, and mirth.
War tutored us too well. We know their worth.
We who come back !
These will recall
Our martyred Innocence, the indelible stain
Of blood on our hands. Though leaves of coronal
Be heap'd upon our brows, 'twill not redress
The eternal bitterness
That surges with the memory of our slain.
Our brothers by the bond of suffering.
And though the Spring
Lights with new loves the eyes that once were wet
For loss of them, WE never shall forget.
We who come back !
98
Geoffrey Fyson.
THE VISITOR
LAST night, as dusk fell in my room,
I heard a footstep on the stair ;
Then all your presence filled the gloom.
I turned, and thought to find you there.
I did not see you, but the rare.
Faint fragrance of your body grew
Till sense swam with the scent of you
And distant music lulled the air.
Maybe your spirit dare not dwell
So far from all it holds most dear.
So left its lonely citadel
To seek the love it lost while here.
Ah, my beloved ! have no fear !
Soon I will leave my bonds behind
And follow, follow, till I find.
Thro' every cloud to every sphere.
LOVE FROM THE LINE
THO' in the clash of arms the nations falter
And ancient faiths and fallacies resign.
Not parting, war, nor death itself can alter
Your love and mine.
99
Geoffrey Tyson.
For each soft breeze, as tho' your lips had spoken,
As ever wont, in accents brave and pure.
Tells me the links we forged are still unbroken
And shall endure.
In every sulph'rous cloud the fragrant wonder.
That ring'd your halo'd form, about me lies ;
Even thro' the flash that hails the cannon's thunder
I see your eyes.
So I will wait, till Peace shall gild in splendour
Hillside and valley with a thousand rays.
And I return, to find a love more tender.
For shadow'd days.
POST BELLUM
ALL things are mutable ! The years recede.
And our vast shroud of smoke and flame must pass!
Another age with other eyes shall read
The moment's history ; as thro' a glass.
It shall behold our striving and our toil.
Dissect the cause and calculate the gain.
Prating upon futility of wars.
Traverse for holiday the hallow'd soil
Where now our slain
Lie, with their shatter'd faces to the stars.
100
Geoffrey Fyson.
Some there shall be, with restless hearts and bold.
Who, wrapp'd in ease, shall envy us the life
Of changing scenes and perils manifold.
Casting a gloss of glory on our strife.
But will no gleam last lambent thro' the years
Of squalor, pain, unending weariness.
Borne for a vision, dim descried but sure.
That by our agony and by our tears
Concord shall bless
Our land, and they, our sons, shall dwell secure ?
LOVE'S RENAISSANCE
YOUR voice, that once was wont to go before us,
Calling our steps, as Pan his flocks in Spring,
Faltered at clash of War's discordant chorus
And ceased to sing.
Though, thro' the night of turmoil and of sorrow.
No ling'ring melody has touched our ear.
Yet have we waited, knowing that the morrow
Shovdd find you near.
lOI
Geoffrey Fyson.
The morning breaks ! and from your lonely dwelling
You haste to greet us ! Echoing sweet and strong.
We hear, with outstretch'd arms and bosom swelling.
The old, glad song.
SANCTUARY
NOW that the dawn and noonday of our glory
No longer floods your eyes or stays your rest,
I will recall each fragment of the story.
Pluck from our love all that was loveliest
And weave therewith a tent where the world's thunder
Vainly shall strive to pierce the golden thread ;
Where I can warm my spirit with your wonder.
That cannot die till God Himself be dead.
Until at length my purgM soul goes straying,
(While my eyes follow where they cannot lead).
Lonely across the vales and hills, essaying
To find the last fulfilment of its need ;
Till o'er your tomb it stays and, hesitating.
Sees grey wastes rise and ghostly galleons pass ;
Crosses the Stygian sea to find you waiting, —
And rests beneath the sighing of the grass.
102
C. O. HARREY
THERE is a spirit very near to mine ;
A spirit clear and open to the proud
Wide influences manifold of cloud
And hill and tree and every living sign.
For interwoven in the life of things
Is she, who fills with music since her birth
The everlasting silence of the earth,
And with her sweet adored presence brings
The urgent life of deep rich summer skies
Before the marching clouds impose their fear
Upon the shadowed plains. O all things clear
And elemental haunt those pensive eyes
Which unexplored lands with me have sought
Down every silent lamplit path of thought.
103
0. Harrey
II.
MORE than the clouds and seas and changeless hills
Serve Nature as a subtle instrument
To line the undiscovered soul that fills
The dim large pages of her argument.
So is my being to your purpose bent,
By you controlled, held, mastered, finely wrought ;
And in your kiss is set the monument
Of each dear mingling of our separate thought.
For from the source of life, removed and deep.
And from the secret mind's most secret part
Your dear love rising while I wake or sleep
Impregnates each deep rhythm of my heart:
And as a lake held in a mountain range
My heart is held in yours and cannot change.
104
ADA M. HARRISON
TO POPPIES THAT DROP AS I WATCH
NO charm nor loveliness nor joy is stable.
Glory unfolded for a world's delight
Fades like a lover's tale, a song, a fable
Blown over by the cruel breath of reason
And lost to sound and sight.
Beauty that bourgeoned slowly through a season
Dies in a night.
For beauty dead we fill our hearts with weeping,
Yet never mark it pass beyond recall.
Shall only I, who once, like all men, sleeping
Felt not my gold transmute to baser metal.
With wakened eyes, see, bitterest of aU,
Pale-hued and dark, petal by lovely petal
My silken poppies fall ?
105
Ada M. Harrison
NEW YEAR, 1916
^HOSE that go down into silence . . .
There is no silence in their going down.
Although their grave-turf is not wet with tears.
Although Grief passes by them, and Renown
Has garnered them no glory for the years.
The cloud of war moves on, and men forget
That empires fall. We go our heedless ways
Unknowing still, uncaring still, and yet
The very dust is clamorous with their praise.
106
D. B. HASELER
MATER MEA
ONE harvest — ages ago —
In an orchard with ripe fruit laden
Father met Mother and kissed her, they say.
Behind an old apple tree, out of the way,
(Six on each cheek for the time of day !) —
She was such a beautiful maiden !
Now she is old : but when
She walks in the garden shady
Taking a rest from the mending upstairs.
Tasting the apples or pinching the pears,
I love to come on her unawares —
She is such a delightful old lady !
AT A BRITISH CEMETERY IN FLANDERS
HERE lie no mercenaries who for gold
Bartered their strength and skill and their life's
blood ;
These men led homely lives, and looked to grow old
In peace earning a quiet livelihood.
Yet when the dnims made summons near and far
They sprang to arms, pitifully unprepared
For the great agony of modern war ;
107
D. B. Haseler
And here in Flanders with their comrades shared
Honour and pain, and here in Flanders died
Unflinching . . . Weep a little and be content.
Strong in your faith and in your measureless pride.
Their trial was great and their death excellent.
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
"My helmet now shall make an hive for bees," — Peele.
NOW that the King has no more need of me
I will devise a last farewell to arms.
And the great days of strength and chivalry,
Of battles and excursions and alarms.
My helmet now shall hang above my bed.
My pistol serve to scare birds from the grain.
And even my gas-mask stand me in good stead
Whenever I clean out the farmyard drain.
My lips, too, shall forget the soldier's curse
And deal in comfortable words again ;
And I will strive in my campaigns of verse
To sing a song shall please my fellow men.
io8
D. B. Haseler
And Time, who has taken in trust my fighting days.
Shall lead me through the land of Well-and-Fair,
Up hill and down, along the broad highways,
Till the golden bowl breaks beyond all repair.
UNCLE JOB
MY Uncle Job one simxmer's day
Laid ciside his numerous woes.
And from the hedge beside the way
Plucked Aunt Jane a crimson rose.
And skylarks carolled to the sun.
And fairies danced the road along
Singing, singing, " O, well done ! " . . .
And Uncle's heart became a song !
THE BLACKBIRD
AS I tramped off to join the fight
A blackbird nodded to me — so !
Said, " Hope we'll see you back all right.
Keep safe. Cheero ! "
109
LEWIS HORROX
PENNiE COLUMBiE
OLOVE, that you and I might wing our way
Far from the restlessness of earth and sea.
Past the fresh well-heads of the springing day,
To where grey hills sleep everlastingly !
They through the lapse of ages sleep unchanged
(From the primeval deeps they never burst)
In that sweet land where yet unborn we ranged.
By those swift rivers where I loved you first.
no
DONALD F. GOOLD JOHNSON
LOOK long on the last lilac ere it fade ;
So soon it dies ; and when it flowers again
Thy body in the still earth will be laid,
Asleep to memory, and nmnb to pain ;
Deaf to earth's music ; and for thee no more
The crocixs-shov/er'd laburnum shall awake.
And to the dawn its dancing tresses shake —
Tresses more radiant than Apollo wore.
Next year these shall renew their youth, but thou
No more may'st look upon the bursting flow'rs
Nor daze thy senses with the breaths of Spring :
Silent thou'lt lie throughout the endless hours ;
And all the pangs of earth's awakening
Shall not uncalm the stillness of thy brow.
YOUTH AND WAR
AMONG the windy spaces
The star-buds grow to light
With pale and weeping faces
The day-hours bow to night ;
Where down the gusty vaUeys
A blast of thunder dies.
And in the forest alleys
A startled night-bird cries.
Ill
Donald F. Goold Johnson
Not pain but bitter pleasure
Surrounds my spirit here.
For life's supernal treasure
Is garlanded with fear ;
Bright trees delight the garden
About my love's glad home.
But aU the flower-roots harden
Under the frost of doom.
Like the bright stars above me
My youthful hopes were set !
Yearning for lips that love me ;
O how can I forget
The boyish dreams that brought me
To the high azure gate
Of heaven, where beauty sought me.
And love was satiate ?
Now honour lets me dally
No longer with desire.
But goads me to the valley
Of death, and pain, and fire ;
Not love but hate constraining
The soldier in the field,
Honour alone remaining
Of virtue for a shield.
112
Donald F. Goold Johnson
Yet who dare doubt, resigning
The joys that mortals prize —
Beyond the heart's repining,
Behind the sightless eyes —
For all the tears and anguish,
The piteous dismay —
True love at length shall vanquish.
And crown the dawning day ?
A MEMORY
COULD I but see thy face again
A moment's space,
Its yoimg, delightful mock-disdain.
Its wooing grace ;
Could I but kiss thy wilful hair.
That restless hand.
Would you divine how dear you were
And understand ?
Why was it when our hearts were near
They would not speak ?
What barrier of love's shy fear
Could we not break ?
113
Donald F. Goold Johnson
When all my living was thy love
My lips were dumb.
Only when chance and place remove
The accents come.
In those sweet days my daily bread
Was seeing thee ;
Richly my heart with love was fed.
And poesy.
Now others love where I have loved.
And taste their fill,
So far away is that removed
I worship still.
Now for the garden of thy lips
I only sigh ;
My sun of life dark clouds eclipse
'Thwart all the sky ;
O in thy new-won paradise
Wilt thou recall
The love that found in thy young eyes
The sum of all ?
114
FRANK H. KENDON
BOYS BATHING
THEY laugh ! They leap ! The clear
Cool lapping water parts :
One after one, each starts
From his place on the grass, and sheer
Leaps from the bank without fear.
Their lithe arms slip like blades.
Their glowing bodies skim
Up from the clear and dim
Caverns of quivering shades.
And the sedges' secret beds.
One stands aglow with the sun.
His white shape gleamingly wet.
Like alabaster set
Against dark grass, and one
Splashes him, wild with fim.
And now like statues glowing.
Slim and lithe and free.
They race exultingly,
Their proud heads backward throwing —
Happy, untrammelled, unknowing.
"S
Frank H. Kendon
The loud lark's sunny voice
Shivers out of the sky ;
The lush grass meadows lie
Lulled in his lovely noise.
O day that art passing by.
Hold fast in memory
The wonderful vivid poise
Of naked bathing boys !
DISTANT TRUMPET SONG
A WHITE, high-battlemented castle.
Set in the heart and centre of a rainbow.
With rain-weighed trees nodding around it.
And a great sward flowing up and down ;
Give you good dreams, love.
As little children dream.
A summer pool by silence haunted.
Deep in the greenness lit by water-lilies.
Where there are kingfishers, and the imreaped grasses
Whisper soft secrets to the listless winds ;
Give you good dreams, love.
As little children dream.
ii6
Frank H. Kendon
And night, and the stars, and naught beside.
But in your heart of hearts a brimming wonder.
And following, sweet vision-lights of spirits.
And the waves of the sea of peace upon you ;
Give you good dreams, love,
As little children dream.
PALESTINE
OH, we speak not overmuch
Of the strange lands we have seen.
Our eyes were not for such
Very keen.
Frank H. Kendon
Timid lips, that tremble over their smiling,
Fearing lest they wake the surge of her grieving.
Whisper words of wonder, wild, paradisal.
Bom of lands unknown before to her footfall.
O Sleep, thou mother of mortals, sorrow-charmer.
Thou dear deceiver, rendering beauty for ashes.
Now this flower of sadness have in thy keeping.
Lead her down sweet paths, through brightness ethereal.
Stem the tide of her tears with loving devotion ;
Out of her griefs weave glories ; out of her sorrow
Weave her peace ; O Sleep, thou mother of mourners.
Thou dear deceiver, steep her dolour in peace.
HE THAT WALKETH THROUGH THE
TWILIGHT
HE that walketh through the twilight
Sings a melody of peace ;
Great he is, and strong and comely.
Bearing on his star-swept forehead
Cool night-patience, and release
From the dusty day and torrid ;
At his footstep, labour, cease.
Ii8
Frank H. Kendon.
From the far gradated colours,
Through the thin airs of the west,
His sure step advancing, rustles
Over dew-begetting grasses,
Like a wind in search of rest —
Comes in majesty and passes
By the weary he has blest.
Deep to deep of heaven answers
Tone of colour unto tone ;
Faint his song is, low but potent.
Strong to succour, soft and crooning,
Manv hpar and smilp imlmowm •
ROSAMOND N. LEHMANN
MOON-LOVERS
IS it five years then, David, since we met.
Intent to greet the full moon's herald glow ?
To-night this solemn moon is cold and strange.
No friendly face she has for us — and yet
There was no magic mood, no secret change.
No whim of hers we knew not long ago.
Come out upon our moon-capped hill with me.
Come watch : old lovers of the moon are we.
David, I mind a day when we were young, —
I was a baby then, or scarcely more.
And you fourteen or so, an eager boy, —
I see a river, and a boat that swung
Into the sunset as you dipped the oar.
And watched me sitting breathless, dumb with joy ;
For we had nm away, and no one knew —
It was a secret, splendid thing to do !
I20
Rosamond N. Lehmann
And ah ! the eveaiing river, sunset-kissed.
Flame upon liquid flame till all grew blurred
(Breaking and fading round our quiet boat)
Into the dark and cool-washed river-side,
Where still an opal flicker came and went,
Where the thin poplars wrapped their limbs in mist.
And singing shadows — were they rushes ? — ^stirred !
And suddenly we saw the moon afloat,
A drifting flower on a drifting tide :
But when, alas, I stretched my arms and bent
Striving to capture her, she slipped, and lo !
Back through my hands in shattered silver ran.
I think I hear your mocking laughter : " Oh !
Look, the poor moon ! — ^the moon is broken, Anne ! "
Do you remember, too, another night.
The tossing moon, the wind, the fl5dng chase,
The maddest moon that ever we had seen.
Whipped forward by the cloud-rack in its flight
Across her hunted, terror-twisted face ?
And once, like some high, tragic, stricken queen
She rose up slow ... we hid our eyes and said
Something she saw was lost, or changed — or dead.
121
Rosamond N. Lehmann
And now again, as years and years ago
We see her, mounting, cast her clouds, once more
Bound in a girdle of enchanted light
Forth from the hill, a ghostly ship, she glides.
Swimming in deeps of lilac-coloured air. . . .
Oh, luminous and silent fields we know.
Oh hill of many million moons of yore.
And you, old breathless trees, how changed to-night I
Up, up my magic moon I ... In purple tides
The cold sky darkens now, save only where
Its waves come surging round her shining way.
See, she smiles, she has us 'neath a spell :
David, speak now, maybe I cannot tell
What of her mystic meaning we should say.
Art dumb ? So long ago, thou dost forget ? . . .
Reveal thyself, enchantress, smile again !
He has forgot thee, but I know thee yet,
I would not lose the moment : turn ! ... in vain I —
Inscrutable she goes, estranged and dead.
Alas, poor David, when she spoke so plain. . . .
Alas for me, the little hour is fled !
122
Rosamond N. Lehmann
CHALLENGE
I WOULD not be a slave to Time :
Oh, Time, I ever hated thee !
Defiantly I fling my rhyme
At thee in wait to fetter me.
Here, where the nights are still — so still,
So luminous they turn the brain,
My spirit wanders where it will
Through little woods and out again
Across the quiet, moon-washed hill
By springing hedgerows fresh with rain
To where the dreamy orchards Ue,
A sea of drifting, breaking bloom,
That flings its foam-white flower high.
And flickers in the troubled gloom :
And when, upon the midnight, lo !
The soul of night begins to sing.
O'er tangled fragrant things that grow
My spirit leaves its hovering,
And breaks its last remaining bars.
And, chainless, spreads a happy wing,
To leap and soar aroimd the stars.
Alas, I know that it were best
To shut the magic tree-tops out
So late it is, and take my rest
And bind my spirit roimd about,
123
Rosamond N. Lehmann
Else how to-morrow, dreaming, dcized.
Should I take up a weary pen.
And write long notes on questions raised
By solemn reasonable men ?
And how by day should I recall
A prehistoric verb aright ?
For texts and analogues and all
Slip from the mind that roves by night.
This is the worst, my dear, — oh thou.
Serenely patient without end ! —
That I who know thy patience now
And would in such proud fashion spend
A century of aching thought
For thy sole sake, must none the less
Shut thee away, and count thee naught
For hours on hours of hopelessness ;
Must, even while I struggle, hear
The beat of Time go forward still.
And listen with submissive ear.
And bow my forehead to his wUl.
I would not be a slave to Time :
Oh, Time, I ever hated thee !
I hurl defiance . . . and a rhyme
At thee in wait to fetter me.
124
A. S. Le MAITRE
FLOOD
THE river is stirring in his sleep this night,
Full fed and fighting mad from the lusty rains ;
The young spring gods are quick within his veins.
And he's talking, laughing to himself this night.
Listen, the last and holiest eve of flood
Is passing, and to-night the river dreams
Tales from the uplajid lairs of his warrior streams.
How they came flashing down to join his flood.
Yet he has something on his mind to-night —
A-down his dreams a wayward eddy swirls.
And he laughs outright, a clean laugh like a girl's.
And sighs like a child, for he's full of care to-night.
I think his mighty heart is near to bursting.
Hark to him turning and whispering in his sleep ;
Laughter is there, but underneath, the deep
Heart of him swells with sorrow near to bursting.
Hear the great slumber song of all the rivers,
The lay of mountain and meadow, rising, breaking,
The World's High Welcome to the Spring's awaking.
But wild with sorrow, the rhymiug of all the rivers.
125
A. S. Le Maitre
For through his murmurous laughter runs a tale
Of sad eyed heroes and mothers and of death.
And this new Spring with incense in her breath
Of unsimg requiem — so runs the tale.
THE MARINERS
SO on we sailed into the Golden West,
And all before us was the set of the sun.
And high desire, honour and faith were one
Within us, as we gloried in our quest.
And we were young gods for a while, and wise
In Men and Things and Secrets of all earth.
Full hearted with triumphant hero-mirth,
Proud : and our laughter clanged against the skies.
Westward then, heeding nought of smnmer gales
Nor white foam driving against blue-grey rocks.
Unconquerable we ; and each heart mocks
That which inviolable frowns upon our sails.
Till on our faces fell a keen chill breath,
And we grew fearful and found that it was Death.
126
A. S. Le Maitre
TO BARBARA. AGED THIRTEEN
BARBARA, though you aren't a boy.
As you'd have liked, I wish you joy.
And all the things that I think best —
Laughter, a Home, a Heart at rest.
Old books and Love, to make you wise,
A man, like you, with steady eyes :
Children, tribes of them (and they'll fight.
And ask you questions day and night) ;
And, Barbara, when you've got to die,
A grand-daughter to say good-bye.
127
G. H. LUCE
SONG OF THE JURORS.
MIGHT souls pause as a ship,
And all their tackle bright
Fold in a star, and slip
, A silver anchor in the roads of night —
One lantern at the mast
Dropping so many a ray
That all the harbour vast
Lies spellbound in a net till dawn of day ;
No gust to taut her shrouds
Or curl the dark lagoon ;
Cabled above the clouds
And easy sorcery of a froward moon ; —
Then might a guilty heart
Settle itself and know
Life's issues on the chart
And tides of consciousness at ebb or flow ;
Not petulant to own
What any scruple saith.
Nor, hopeless to atone
For error, run a derelict on death ;
138
G. H. Luce
Pale as the steady stars
That flush not at the sun,
Nor feel his glory mars
The magic of the boon they had begun,
But melt as morning snows
That are too young for pain.
Or as a cloud that knows
The innocence of sunshine after rain.
So guilty souls or pure.
Content betimes to wait
Their twilight-hour, and sure
To fade before the final dawn of fate, —
With thought of future bliss
Too impotent to cope.
Save that their aim is this.
And memory lends a dignity to hope —
Lean on the night, and hail.
All guilty though they are.
On the dark seas a sail.
And through the horror of the heavens, a star.
129
G. H. Luce
IDOLA TRIBUS
AH ! huddled o'er thy world, thou plodman Mind,
lU-victuaUed off a field
That yearly less doth yield.
Whose seeds of fact thin crop of inference find ;
Obedient — ^blind
To thy Desire (the god who god denies) :
Yet deeming truth to spill
From thy mechanic mill
While groping fingers follow poring eyes.
Oh ! lean Imagination, glutton nice.
Thou sorry Midas, bold
To make, not eat, thy gold.
Whose very power has pinched thee like a vice ;
Thou pay'st the price
Of thine own godhead, doubting it. Thy curse,
(Omnipotence thy toy)
To build and to destroy.
To love and ne'er enjoy thine universe.
130
G. H. Luce
Oh ! brave, wan, panting, abstract, human soul.
How seeming-certain ! How
Impossible art thou.
Created part, pretending to be whole !
Time — ^Matter — ^roll
Insurgent on thy feigned divinity.
Hug thou thine own conceit —
None else believes in it —
Lest when thou doubtest thine own creed, thou die I
PRESBYOPIA
MEN sweat and cry.
I muse and leer.
I have an eye,
^'But not a tear.
Ifcdia descryjt
(And yet I sing)
No poetry
In anj^hing.
A naughty planet.
Yet, as poet,
I love to scan it.
Hate to know it.
131
G. H. Luce
There's beauty there.
Solid and sad —
A strangled bear.
An ape gone mad,
A boy on stilts,
A snail-eyed god.
Women in quilts,
And men in quod.
Elbow on knee
I muse and blink.
And thoughtless see,
Or sightless think.
132
J. H. F. McEWEN
PEACE, 1919
PRAISE be to God who has given us Victory !
Now in this time of our happy deliverance.
Thanks and praise to our Redeemer
Who by His arm did this day defend us.
Where are the armies, the splendour Imperial ?
Where now the boasts and the pride of the arrogant ?
Were not these, of all creation.
Bom to the line of successive Empire ?
As fled the star-smit legions of Sisera ;
As mighty oak at the blast of the hurricane
Falls, with earth-rent crash, resounding
Even to the shadowy verge of Orcus ;
As the high walls and the bulwarks of Jericho
Fell to the blare of the leaguering trumpeters ;
As, long since, from heights eternal
Lucifer fell to the hosts triumphant —
Bowed to the flame-tongued sword of the Archangel :
So in the dust lies defeated our enemy ;
Deep-whelmed under shamed disaster.
Spumed 'neath the feet o' the shocked battalions.
133
/. H. F. McEwen
Stream out ye far-blown banners of Christendom !
Joy mighty host resplendent in liberty !
This day sees our dead, avenged,
Stoop to our mirth from the ranks of Angels.
Thus are we saved ; as a God-faring traveller
By nighted ways on the steep of Eternity,
Hears through dawn-wreathed mists a trumpet
Speak from the imminent walls of Heaven.
EASTER
NOW let the Earth and Heavens, washed again
In Spring's baptismal waters, speak the praise
Of this most joyous festival. Behold !
The Monarch crowned with many victories
Brings yet another : Death himself is slain.
Now know we that the dead He'U surely raise
From wreck of Time, as divers bring the gold
Of treasure whelmed in srmken argosies.
But in the ultimate hour — sweet Jesus, hear us ! —
Be Thou our stay when Heaven's veil is rending.
To stand between us and the nether HeU
Whereof our souls are dreadful ; Christ, be near us !
When from the flaming skies in pomp descending.
Bursts, with uplifted trumpet, Gabriel.
134
J. H. F. McEwen
A VISIT
AS I went over Windsor bridge
Upon a winter day.
The sun shone faint and wet on roof
And spire, and wet the way ;
And ever57thing was grey.
The trees and liver and the sky
Seemed like a tale twice-told ;
The faces all were utterly
Unknown, and I felt old
Suddenly, and ice-cold.
The length of that remembered street
And by each stone and tree
Were whispers, and the echoing feet
Of those who walked with me, —
Dear ghosts, incessantly.
And though I saw no sign, I knew
Who walked the while beside ;
And knowing, wept some tears, a few —
Though 'tis not much I've cried
Since that day when you died.
135
/. H. F. McEwen
But memories of distant youth
Should garnered be like grain, —
And are better left alone, forsooth,
Than brought to light again :
For seeing them is pain.
And looking forth upon that world
Where all did once begin,
I, too, felt like a ghost without.
Faint-striving there to win, —
Nor would they let me in.
As mayhap in a garden plays
Some child upon the grass
While the unhappy sister stays
Within, and sees him pass
Unheeding, through the glass.
As I went over Windsor bridge
Beneath the castle grey,
I vowed I'd ne'er come back again.
So sad had been the way :
Perhaps I shall — some day.
136
./. H. F. McEwen
II
TO
{After a long absence).
HAD I not seen, and with these eyes
Beheld her loveliness, her grace.
And watched her move from place to place
In ecstasy, — ^nor Paradise
Would e'er to my poor heart have seemed
So infinitely near — ^now I
Can scarcely see the earth for sky —
For she is loveUer than I dreamed.
Yet, all unwitting, plays she here below
The part of mortal, pouring out the tea
As might do others, but unlike the lot ; —
One glance alone from whose eyes can bestow
The gift of life or death, such power has she.
Dear God, and knows it not.
137
JOHN MACLEOD
THE LIGHT
MOLLY, I dreamed this moming of a room
Illumined by one bulb ; one, but control
Came from two several switches. You and I,
Each at a switch, stood, searching our desires.
Unseen, I saw you. Nobly shone the light
Till suddenly you moved, and darkness fell
Obedient to your switch ; but I with mine
Lighted again the room immediately.
Again you summoned darkness, and again
Light leaped at my command. And then your eyes
Were opened, and you knew, and left your switch.
Crying my name. The light shone full and clear.
TIR-NAN-OG
YOU play me, Alan, Highland airs, that hold
From thirty centuries pain and love and fear.
And, as you play, the known walls disappear ;
I take from you a sea-wind, salt and cold ;
I see, through mist of blown spray, fold on fold
Of lordly coast, and shrill birds, hovering near
Over the sobbing backwash ; and I hear
The old sea-rhythm swaying with rimes untold.
138
John Macleod
And look ! the White Barge comes. By cliff and sound.
Gathering souls, from port to port it plies
Off coast and welcoming island. I hear sung
Their ghostly happiness, in whose pure eyes
Like wetted weed youth shines. For they are bound
For Tir-nan-Og, the Island of the Young.
NIGHT AT GOMONIC
GREAT, dark hills to the Westward rise.
Where star-strewn Lake Langaza lies
Beneath the violet Balkan skies.
Somewhere beyond those hills is he
Who lived and laboured and laughed with me.
Look ! many glimmering camp-fires fret
The dark hills. So in my mind are set
Gold-sparkling times since first we met —
That raft — ^that midnight patrol — ^that ride
Over the holly-green countryside —
Erquinghem — ^Proyart — ^Hooge — ^Marseilles —
Billets and trenches — and English mails —
The sea — Greek villages — ^nightingales —
139
John Macleod
Fierce Macedonian blizzards — Spring
With beauty the gaimt hills carpeting —
The cattle bells, when sleep was near.
Heard in the warm dusk, low and clear.
By the meadowy banks of the Iridere —
Dawn — and the eagles' lordly flight —
And the wild geese clamouring in the night —
In those days fury nor fear, let slip
Tho' it were by Hell, the delight could strip
From youth's war-vanquishing comradeship.
140
John Macleotl
A NIGHT MARCH
THE sun has set, and the wild dogs wake ;
Far in the hills the sheep-bells sound ;
Klisali's seven lights are lit.
Frogs, brass-tongued, where the misty lake
Merges slowly in marshy ground,
Jeer and cackle with vacant wit.
We from our scarce-pitched bivouac
Take the road, as of old in France
Alert we took it ; mosquitoes dance
And shrill with delight up the vagabond track
In the swirling dust ; and the pipers play
As our kilted company marches away.
Hard on our flank the Ilanli height
Looks on the plain, and hems our view
Of burning stars in a Balkan sky.
Low by the lake, thro' the odorous night.
On a track that Persian and Roman knew,
Strong-limbed, the Scottish Brigade streams by.
And to those that follow the pipes, what fate
In the hidden days of the year shall come ?
Some shall see wounds and Scotland, some
By the Struma waters shaU lie in state.
Stricken of fever or foe ; for them
The cannon shall thunder a requiem.
141
John Macleod
BETTY AND ANNE
ANNE and Betty, Betty and Anne,
Would wheedle his heart from a marble man.
Betty excels in conversation,
Anne in taciturn observation.
For Anne is a spinster silent and strong ;
But Betty bursts into dance and song.
Betty has now reached half-past three ;
Seventeen months Anne seems to be.
Betty and Anne without due warning
Invaded the smoke-room yesterday morning.
Their Uncle Frank they found there alone ;
So he offered to play them the gramophcoie.
" Div, Oh, div me the Pipes of Pan,"
Said Betty entreatingly. " Bup," said Anne.
143
ERIC MASCHWITZ
MEMORIES
" "¥ /"lOLETS," she called to me and, passing by
V Her flower-sweet stall, I stopped and, with a sigh
Caught their sweet scent ... oh, was it yesterday
That over Lapworth in a wood we lay
When April had not left the land ; you know
The way we talked of Beauty . . . so . . . and so.
Down in the fields the morning sunlight fell
On kindly brown of earth — ^I cannot teU
The wonder of the day . . . my friend, you know
That we were happy once, not long ago . . .
Violets and pale wood anemones.
Half hidden in soft grasses, swaying trees.
Pools in the rutted lane beneath us there.
Laughter in cloudless skies, and ever57where
Such strange sweet Beauty. . . .
You began to tell
Of all the things that you had loved so well.
You told of London and glad winter nights
Spent with good comrades, roadways splashed with
lights,
Italian voices, sad old times that came
From broken barrel organs, and the flame
Of love, soft laughter, strange inviting looks.
And lighted shops of Belgian pastry cooks,
And of the river . . . Chelsea in the Spring !
143
Eric Maschwitx
Beauty of Richmond . . . God in ever3^hing !
And then were silent.
In the wood there stirred
Tree voices on the magic air, a bird
Fluttered once heavily and fled away
To where the glory of the morning lay.
I told you of pale dawns that crept so slow
Down over Evesham in the long ago
Dead past, when all the world and I
Laughed in delight at such another sky ;
Of farms and kindly people ; orchards gleaming
Like summer snow-drifts ; and pale simlight streaming
Thro' many chequered branches, when we found
First bluebells in May's Wood and, wonderbound.
Pressed quiv'ring lip to blossom ; still we lay
Watching the pageant of that April day.
Noon passed, all blue and golden . . . night was grey.
Oh, was it yesterday ? . . . oh, yesterday . . .
That we walked thro' dim fields, an owl-eyed moon
Hung pendulous above — and, all too soon.
The day had ended. . . .
" Violets "... Passing by
Her flower-sweet stall, I stopped. I don't know why.
144
Eric MaschwUz
THE FARM
THERE lies the farm. Do you remember
Those glorious visits in September ?
I shall never forget . . .
I can hear it yet,
" Come in, Master Dick, or your feet'll get wet."
O the wind and the wet !
TO A LITTLE POOR MAN, WIPING A CRUST,
PREPARATORY TO LUNCHING
YOU have eight silver buttons on your coat,
A scarf of faded scarlet at your throat.
The spring is yours, with all her suns and rains.
You stare at restaurants thro' window panes
And see them sitting there, each saint, and sinner.
Talking of golf and horses, eating dinner —
Sit down, my friend, and feed upon your crust,
. . . You shall be splendid when these men are dust.
EPITAPH
HERE lies a man who gazed in Beauty's eyes
And in his busy life had much to do.
He does not ask the tribute of your sighs
But hands his work, unfinished, on to you.
145
HAROLD MONRO
WINTER MILK
THE cows are in the long b57re, low, half-dark.
Now that it is twilight, let us roam
Past the white farm where the dog must bark.
Over mud to fetch milk home.
The byre is like a church, dim, melancholy.
With low windows gleaming like painted glass.
Over uneven brickways slowly.
Watched by the solemn black cow, we pass.
Her horns gleam ; her tall haunches slope and fall
Curving to her neck ; her lazy limbs
Droop, and she chews, while her halter swings.
That large man far away by the end wall
Is milking the white cow : all the time he sings.
Esoteric canticles and farmyard hymns.
Half-a-dozen boys and girls, laughing together.
Lean on the barn-wall waiting for milk.
The hawthorn-bearded ploughman is grumbling at the
weather.
The milk is softly falling with a sound like moving silk.
146
Harold Monro
Gloomy philosophers ; great grim cows,
Chewing and ruminating all in a row :
Wise stupid creatures with haughty brows,
What kind of thing are they pretending to know ?
Now the sound of pouring droops, fails.
There's a clatter of pails,
A movement of haunches, a rolling of eyes.
Some of the cows doze ; some of them rise.
A joke is cracked : everybody smiles.
We pay for our milk ; we take our little can ;
We murmur good-night to the pink-faced man :
We wander through evening home quiet two miles.
HEARTHSTONE
I WANT nothing but your fireside now.
Friend, you are sitting there alone I know.
And the quiet flames are licking up the soot.
Or crackling out of some enormous root :
AU the logs on your hearth are fbur feet long.
Everjrthing in your room is wide and strong
According to the breed of your hard thought.
147
Harold Monro
Now you are leaning forward ; you have caught
That great dog by his paw and are holding it.
And he looks sidelong at you, stretching a bit.
Drowsing with open eyes, huge warm and wide.
The fuU hearth-length on his slow-breathing side.
Your book has dropped unnoticed : you have read
So long you cannot send your brain to bed.
The low quiet room and aU its things are caught
And linger in the meshes of your thought.
(Some people think they know time cannot pause.)
Your eyes are closing now though not because
Of sleep. You are searching something with your brain ;
You have let the old dog's paw drop down again ....
Now suddenly you hum a little catch.
And pick up the book. The wind rattles the latch ;
There's a patter of light cool rain and the curtain shakes ;
The sUly dog growls, moves, and almost wakes.
The kettle near the fire one moment hums.
Then a long peace upon the whole room comes.
So the sweet evening will draw to its bedtime end.
I want nothing now but your fireside, friend.
148
Harold Monro
SUBURB
DULL and hard the low wind creaks
Among the rustling pampas plumes.
Drearily the year consumes
Its fifty-two insipid weeks.
Most of the grey-green meadow land
Was sold in parsimonious lots ;
The dingy houses stand
Pressed by some stout contractor's hand
Tightly together in their plots.
Through builded banks the sullen river
Gropes, where its houses crouch and shiver.
Over the bridge the t37rant train
Shrieks, and- emerges on the plain.
In all the better gardens you may pass,
(Product of many careful Saturdays),
Large red geraniiuns and tall pampas grass
Adorn the plots and mark the gravelled ways.
149
Harold Monro
Sometimes in the background may be seen
A private summer-house in white or green.
Here on warm nights the daughter brings
Her vacillating clerk,
To talk of smaU exciting things
And touch his fingers through the dark.
He, in the imcomfortable breach
Between her trilling laughters.
Promises, in halting speech.
Hopeless immense Hereafters.
She trembles like the pampas plumes.
Her strained lips haggle. He assumes
The serious quest. . . .
Now as the train is whistling past
He takes her in his arms at last.
It's done. She blushes at his side
Across the lawn — a bride, a bride.
* * * * If
The stout contractor will design.
The lazy labourers will prepare.
Another villa on the line ;
In the little garden-square
Pampas grass will rustle there.
150
E. G. MORICE
THE FOOL
THE madman wandering head in air, '
About the mustard fields
Sees hosts of flying angels there
With golden spears and shields ;
The fool, the fool men pity and despise
The brain-sick fool, with wonder stricken eyes.
He cannot hold his mind to earth.
He lives in heaven all day ;
Bright sunlit spirits in their mirth
Flit round about his way.
The fool, the fool stands happy for an hour
To see an angel in a common flower.
He cannot see the wild-rose tree.
He cannot see the stone ;
Strange presences about him be.
He never goes alone.
The fool, the fool who walks the lanes at night.
Feels a warm love enwrap him round like light.
He wanders where the poppies grow
Red-flaming in the sun ;
The racing winds against him blow
A living voice each one. —
The fool, the fool has wit enough to find
God's whisper in the passing of the wind.
151
E. G. Morice
THE RIDERS
WHITHER away, this night so dark.
Shadowy horsemen, ride ye ?
With never a star your way to mark
And a whispering wind beside ye.
We ride on to Huntingdon
To the King's company.
The King ye honoured hunts no more ;
Long since did Death bespeak him ;
He rides no more who rode of yore.
And all in vain ye seek him.
Still keeps he court in Huntingdon,
Where nights are murk and starless.
With phantom lords, and ladies wan.
And ghostly knights in harness.
A shadowy huntsman winds his horn
And shadowy horses follow :
And ghostly hounds before the morn
Give voice through copse and hollow
Whither away this night so dark,
Whither away go ye ?
We ride on to Huntingdon
To the King's company.
152
C. W. PREVITE ORTON
A.D. 1312
' Avec lui (Henry VII.) mourait aussi lavieille idee imperiale.'
IN the old days when Florence from her walls
Saw the seventh Henry sick in leaguer lie
Who would not think a portent in the sky
Spread ghostly light upon her domes and halls
As of the torchUght held at funerals,
And that men heard a voice prophetic cry
Wail ye, O mortals, for your thoughts will die.
Not ye alone. On you and them there falls
Forgetful night. But gaily in the air
The armorial pennons fluttered, and within.
The psalm was sung and all the ancient round
Of life was celebrated, feast and prayer ;
For men see not the Fates who shear and spin,
And wonders must be sought for to be found.
153
SIEGFRIED SASSOON
MORNING EXPRESS
ALONG the wind-swept platform, pinched and white.
The travellers stand in pools of wintry light.
Offering themselves to mom's long, slanting arrows.
The train's due ; porters trundle laden barrows.
The train steams in, volleying resplendent clouds
Of sun-blown vapour. Hither and about.
Scared people hurry, storming the doors in crowds.
The ofi&cials seem to waken with a shout.
Resolved to h'oist and plvmder ; some to the vans
Leap ; others rumble the milk in gleaming cans.
Boys, indolent-eyed, from baskets leaning back,
Question each face ; a man with a hammer steals
Stooping from coach to coach ; with clang and clack.
Touches and tests, and listens to the wheels.
Guard sounds a warning whistle, points to the clock
With brandished flag, and on his folded flock
Qaps the last door : the monster grunts ; " Enough 1 "
Tightening his load of links with pant and puff.
Under the arch, then forth into blue day.
Glide the processional windows on their way.
And glimpse the stately folk who sit at ease
To view the world like kings taking the seas
154
Storied Sassoon
In prosperous weather : drifting banners tell
Their progress to the counties ; with them goes
The damour of their journeying ; while those
Who sped them stand to wave a last farewell.
WHEN I'M AMONG A BLAZE OF LIGHTS...
WHEN I'm among a blaze of lights.
With tawdry music and cigars
And women dawdling through delights.
And officers at cocktail bars, —
Sometimes I think of garden nights
And elm trees nodding at the stars.
I dream of a small firelit room
With yellow candles burning straight.
And glowing pictures in the gloom,
And kindly books that hold me late.
Of things like these I love to think
When I can never be alone ;
Then someone says, " Another drink ? " —
And turns my liAdng heart to stone.
155
Siegfried Sassoon
VILLON
THEY threw me from the gates : my matted hair
Was dank with dungeon wetness ; my spent frame
O'erlaid with marish agues : everywhere
Tortured by leaping pangs of frost and flame,
I was so hideous that even Lazarus there
In noisome rags arrayed and leprous shame.
Beside me set had seemed full sweet and fair.
And looked on me with loathing. But one came
Who wrapped me in his cloak and bore me in
Tenderly to an hostel quiet and clean, —
Used me with healing hands for all my needs.
The foul estate of my unshriven sin,
My long disgrace, and loveless, lecherous deeds.
He has put by as though they had not been.
BEFORE THE BATTLE
MUSIC of whispering trees
Hushed by the broad-winged breeze
Where shaken water gleams ;
And evening radiance falling
With reedy bird-notes calling.
O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
156
Siegfried Sassoon
I have no need to pray
That fear may pass away ;
I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
That summons me from cool
Silence of marsh and pool.
And yellow lilies islanded in light.
O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night.
HOW TO DIE
DARK clouds are smoiildering into red
While down the crater morning bums.
The dying soldier shifts his head
To watch the glory that returns :
He lifts his fingers toward the skies
Where holy brightness breaks in flame ;
Radiance reflected in his eyes,
And on his lips a whispered name.
You'd think, to hear some people talk.
That lads go West with sobs and curses.
And sullen faces white as chalk.
Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
But they've been taught the way to do it
Like Christian soldiers ; not with haste
And shuddering groans ; but passing through it
With due regard for decent taste.
157
Siegfried Sassoon
DEATH'S BROTHERHOOD
WHEN I'm asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm —
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers of the storm
Bellow and drone and rumble overhead.
Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
They whisper to my heart ; their thoughts are mine.
" Why are you here with all your watches ended ?
From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the Line."
In bitter safety I awake, unfriended ;
And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
I think of the Battalion in the mud.
" When are you going out to them again ?
Are they not still your brothers through our blood ? "
158
EDWARD SHANKS
THE SWIMMERS
THE cove's a shining plate of blue and green,
With darker belts between
The trough and crest of the slow-rising swell.
And the great rocks throw purple shadows down,
Where transient sun-sparks wink and burst and drown
And glimmering pebbles lie too deep to tell.
Hidden or shining as the shadow wavers.
And everj^where the restless sun-steeped air
Trembles and quavers.
As though it were
More saturate with light than it could bear.
Now come the swimmers from slow-dripping caves.
Where the shy fern creeps under the veined roof.
And wading out meet with glad breast the waves.
One holds aloof.
Climbing alone the reef with shrinking feet.
That scarce endure the jagged stones' dull beat.
Till on the edge he poises
And flies to cleave the water, vanishing
In wreaths of white, with echoing liquid noises.
And swims beneath, a vague, distorted thing.
Now all the other swimmers leave behind
The cr5retal shallow and the foam-wet shore
And sliding into deeper water find
159
Edward Shanks
A living coolness in the lifting flood.
And through their bodies leaps the sparkling blood.
So that they feel the faint earth's drought no more.
There now they float, heads raised above the green.
White bodies cloudily seen.
Farther and farther from the brazen rock.
On which the hot air shakes, on which the tide
Fruitlessly throws with gentle, soundless shock
The cool and lagging wave. Out, out they go.
And now upon a mirrored cloud they ride
Or turning over, with soft strokes and slow.
Slide on like shadows in a tranquil sky.
Behind them, on the tall, parched cliff, the dry
And dusty grasses grow
In shallow ledges of the arid stone,
Starving for coolness and the touch of rain.
But, though to earth they must return again.
Here come the soft sea airs to meet them, blown
Over the surface of the outer deep.
Scarce moving, sta5dng, falling, straying, gone.
Light and delightful as the touch of sleep. . . .
One wakes and splashes round.
And, as by magic, all the others wake
From that sea-dream, and now with rippling sound
Their rapid arms the enchanted silence break.
i6o
Edward Shanks
And now again the crystal shallows take
The gleaming bodies, whose cool hour is done ;
They pause upon the beach, they pause and sigh.
Then vanish in the caverns one by one.
Soon the wet foot-marks on the stones are dry :
The cove sleeps on beneath the unwavering sun.
THE SHADOW
DEATH, would I feared not thee.
But ever can I see
Thy mutable shadow thrown
Upon the walls of Life's warm, cheerful room.
Companioned or alone,
I feel the presence of that following gloom.
Like one who vaguely knows
Behind his back the shade his body throws —
'Tis not thy shadow only, 'tis my own !
I face towards the light
That rises fair and bright
Over wide fields asleep,
But still I know that stealthy darkness there
Close at my heels doth creep.
Ghostly companion, my still haunting care ;
And if the light be strong
Before my eyes, through pleasant hours and long.
Then, then, the shadow is most black and deep,
i6i
Edward Shanks
A HOLLOW ELM
WHAT hast thou not withstood.
Tempest-despising tree.
Whose bloat and riven wood
Gapes now so hollowly.
What rains have beaten thee through many years.
What snows from off thy branches dripped like tears ?
Calmly thou standest now
Upon thy surmy mound ;
The first spring breezes flov.'
Past with sweet dizzy sound ;
Yet on thy pollard top the branches few
Stand stiffly out, disdain to murmur too.
The children at thy foot
Open new-lighted eyes.
Where, on gnarled bark and root.
The soft warm sunshine lies —
Dost thou, upon thine ancient sides, resent
The touch of youth, quick and impermanent ?
These at the beck of spring
Live in the moment still ;
Thy boughs imquivering.
Remembering winter's chill,
And many other winters past and gone.
Are mocked, not cheated, by the transient sun.
162
Edward Shanks
Hast thou so much withstood.
Tempest-despising tree.
That now thy hollow wood
Stiffens disdainfully
Against the soft spring airs and soft spring rain,
Knowing too well that winter comes again ?
THE ROCK POOL
{To Miss Alice Warrender)
THIS is the sea. In these uneven walls
A wave lies prisoned. Far and far away.
Outward to ocean as the slow tide falls.
Her sisters, through the capes that hold the bay.
Dancing in lovely liberty recede.
Yet lovely in captivity she lies.
Filled with soft colours, where the waving weed
Moves gently and discloses to our eyes
Blurred shining veins of rock and lucent shells
Under the light-shot water ; and here repose
Small quiet fish and the dimly glowing bells
Of sleeping sea-anemones that close
Their tender fronds and will not now awake
Till on these rocks the waves returning break.
163
FREDEGOND SHOVE
SPIRIT IS IMMORTAL
WHEN the soul ages, let the rivers be
All one with the proud sea ;
When spirit lichens let the stars go quite
Out of the 'body of the light ;
When aught can sicken, sere, or can decay
That quick and living seed of beauty's womb
Prepare love's tomb,
And with love's form shut up the thousand springs
Of human joy, those things
By whose transcendent force alone we strive
To nobly live.
Do this when spirit ages. While it breathes
And with its beauty wreathes
Perishing towers, laughing at death's hand
Let heaven stand
Gold on the meadows, and let rivers feed
With pearl the mortal seed.
So said I, looking in the glass to greet
My ageing face, and meet
Death's shadow which made mouths at me behind
The quickness of my mind ;
But while age mocked and death still beckoned, I
Knew that my soul is younger than the leaves,
In April are ;
164
Fredegond Shove
Since every moment it is bom again.
And comes from far —
From worlds where time has never been begun
And innocence alone
Causes eternal youth to wash the air
With loveliness despair
Has never soiled ; thence spirit has its birth,
Thence flies to earth —
And thither goes again, when it has passed
Corruption's ugly, outstretched arms at last.
MERCY AND JUSTICE
MERCY hides him in a hole.
Justice moves in haughty places ;
Mercy travels like the mole
In the solitary soul,
Justice walks with heavy paces
Through the city's solemn arches
In the parks he prinks, and marches
Covered with an ermine stole.
M
1^5
Fredegond Shove
Mercy knows him for a thief,
If he knew where Mercy cowered
He would try him without brief.
Nail him to the tree of Grief,
Which for centuries has towered
In the court of Justice, yearly
Hung with human lives and rarely
Breaking into bitter leaf.
SONG
SPRING lights her candles everywhere.
But death still hangs upon the air
The celandine through dusk is lit.
The redbreasts from the holly flit.
At night the violets spring to birth
Out of the mute, encrusted earth.
The wind has cast his winding sheet
(Which is the sky) and he goes fleet
Over the country in the rain.
Singing how all the world is vain
And how, of all things vainest, he
Journeys above both land and sea.
i66
Fredegond Shove
A WOOD CUTTER'S SONG
A CHILD has eyes like dewberries ; a child has
cheeks like flame ;
A child feels sudden love and hate, and sudden fear and
shame.
I was a child when to the woods out of the womb I came.
The woods have aged, and so have I : I am as old as care ;
My spirit is as dry as crust, my heart is cold and bare : —
Yet have I stiU a child's light laugh and still a child's
strange stare.
A BIRCH TREE
PLANT a birch tree on my grave
When you bury me ;
In aU the wild, wet spring woods
There is not sweeter tree ;
She is so delicae, so rare, her body is so white.
And she cries like a gentle ghost.
All the long night.
167
Fredegond Shove
I love her ; she shall be my lute
When I am dead ;
She shall carry all the earth's tunes
Into my small bed ;
She will not break the stir of wings
That are as fine as glass ;
Neither will let the rain away
On to the wild grass.
When stars come out above the earth
She will shake them down ;
All in a shower through her hair
They shall be blown ;
She knows the stars, and they know her,-
O what a lovely thing
Is a young birch tree growing up
In. the green spring.
I68
J. C. SQUIRE
A FAR PLACE
(To K. W. departing
SHELTERED, when the rain blew over the hills it
was,
Sunny all day when the days of summer were long,
Beyond all rumour of labouring towns it was,
And at dawn and evening its trees were noisy with song.
There were four elms on the southward lawn standing,
Their great trunks evenly set in a square
Of shadowed grass in spring pierced with crocuses.
And their tops met high in the empty air.
Where the morning rose the grey church was below us.
If we stood by the porch we saw on either hand
The ground falling, the trees falling, and meadows,
A river, hamlets and spires : a chequered land.
A wide country where cloud shadows went chasing
Mile after mile, diminishing fast, until
They met the far blue downs ; but round the comer
The western garden lay lonely under the hill.
169
J. C. Squire
And closed in the western garden, under the hillside.
Where silence was and the rest of the world was gone.
We saw and took the curving year's munificence :
Changing from flower to flower the garden shone.
Early its walks were fringed with little rock-plants.
Sprays and tufts of blossom, white, yellow, and blue.
And aU about were sprinkled stars of narcissus.
And swathes of tulips all over the garden grew.
White groups and pink, red, crimson and lemon-yellow.
And the yellow-and-red-streaked tulips once loved by
a boy ;
Red and yellow their stiff and varnished petals.
And the scent of them stings me still with a youthful joy.
And in the season of perfect and frailest beauty.
Pear-blossom broke and the lilacs' waxen cones.
And a tranced laburnum trailing its veils of yellow
Tenderly drooped over the ivied stones.
The lilacs browned, a breath dried the laburnum.
The swollen peonies scattered the earth with blood.
And the rhododendrons shed their sumptuous mantles,
And the marshalled irises unsceptred stood.
170
J. C. Squire
And the borders filled with daisies and pied sweet-
williams.
And busy pansies ; and there as we gazed and dreamed.
And breathed the swooning smell of the packed carna-
tions.
The present was always the crown of all : it seemed
Each month more beautiful sprang from a robe dis-
carded.
The year all effortless dropt the best away
And struck the heart with loveliness new, more lavish ;
When the clambering rose had blown and died, by day
The broad-leaved tapering many-shielded hollyhock;
Stood like pillars and shone to the August sun,
The glinunering cups of waking evening primroses
Filled the dusk now the scent of the rose was done.
A wall there was and a door to the rose-garden.
And out of that a gate to the orchard led.
And there was the last hedge, and the turf sloped upward
Till the sky was cut by the hill's line overhead.
171
J. C. Squire
And thither at times we climbed, and far below us
That world that had made the world remote was seen.
Small, a huddle of russet roofs and chimneys.
And its guard of elms like bushes against the green :
One spot in the country, little and mild and homely.
The nearest house of a wide populous plain. . . .
But down at evening under the stars and the branches
In the whispering garden we lost the world again.
Whispering, faint, the garden under the hillside. . . .
Under the stars. ... Is it true that we lived there long ?
Was it certainly so ? Did ever we know that dwelling,.
Breathe that night, and hear in the night that song?
A HOUSE
^'yOW very quietly, and rather mournfully,
S In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires.
And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him
Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.
172
C. Squire
And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied,
From that faint exquisite celestial strand,
And turn and see again the only dwelling-place
In this wide wilderness of darkening land.
The house, that house, now what change has come to
it?
Its crude red-brick facade, its roof of slate ;
What imperceptible swift hand has given it
A new, a wonderful, a queenly state ?
No hand has altered it, that parallelogram.
So inharmonious, so ill-arranged ;
That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was ;
No, it is not that any line has changed.
Only that loneliness is now accentuate
And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave.
This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again.
And all man's energies seem very brave.
And this mean edifice, which some dull architect
Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind.
Takes on the quality of that magnificent
Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind.
173
/. C. Squire
Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be.
Yet imperturbable that house will rest.
Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny.
Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast.
Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac
May howl their menaces, and hail descend ;
Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly.
Not even scornfully, and wait the end.
And all a universe of nameless messengers
From unknown distances may whisper fear.
And it will imitate immortal permanence.
And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear.
It stood there yesterday ; it will to-morrow, too.
When there is none to watch, no alien eyes
To watch its ugliness assume a majesty
From this great solitude of evening skies.
So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around.
While life remains to it prepared to outface
Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries
May hide and wait for it in time and space.
174
/. C. Squire
THE STRONGHOLD
OUIETER than any twilight
Shed over earth's last deserts.
Quiet and vast and shadowless
Is that unfounded keep.
Higher than the roof of the night's high chamber
Deep as the shaft of sleep.
And solitude will not cry there,
Melancholy will not brood there,
Hatred, with its sharp corroding pain.
And fear will not come there at all :
Never wiU a tear or a heart-ache enter
Over that enchanted wall.
But, O, if you find that castle.
Draw back your foot from the gateway.
Let not its peace invite you.
Let not its offerings tempt you.
For faded and decayed like a garment.
Love to a dust will have fallen.
And song and laughter will have gone with sorrow.
And hope will have gone with pain ;
And of all the throbbing heart's high courage
Nothing will remain.
175
/. C. Squire
I
AUGUST MOON*
(To F. S.)
N the smooth grey heaven is poised the pale half moon.
And sheds on the wide grey river a broken reflection.
Out from the low church-tower the boats are moored
After the heat of the day, and await the dark.
And here, where the side of the road shelves into the
river
At the gap where barges load and horses drink.
There are no horses. And the river is full
And the water stands by the shore and does not lap.
And a barge lies up for the night this side of the island.
The bargeman sits in the bows and smokes his pipe
And his wife by the cabin stirs. Behind me voices pass.
Calm sky, calm river : and a few calm things reflected.
And all as yet keep their colours ; the island osiers.
The ash-white spots of umbelliferous flowers.
And the yellow clay of its bank, the barge's brown sails
That are furled up the mast and then make a lean triangle
To the end of the hoisted boom, and the high dark shps
Where they used to build vessels, and now build them
no more.
* Hearing Flanders guns from Chiswick in 1917.
176
/. C. Squire
All in the river reflected in quiet colours.
Beyond the river sweeps round in a bend, and is vast,
A wide grey level under the motionless sky
And the waxing moon, clean cut in the mole-grey sky.
Silence. Time is suspended ; that the light fails
One would not know were it not for the moon in the sky.
And the broken moon in the water, whose fractures tell
Of slow broad ripples that otherwise do not show.
Maturing imperceptibly from a pale to a deeper gold,
A golden half moon in the sky, and broken gold in the
water
In the water, tranquilly severing, joining, gold :
Three or four little plates of gold on the river :
A little motion of gold between the dark images
Of two tall posts that stand in the grey water.
There are voices passing, a murmur of quiet voices,
A woman's laugh, and children going home.
A whispering couple, leaning over the railings.
And, somewhere, a little splash as a dog goes in.
I have always known all this, it has always been.
There is no change anywhere, nothing will ever change.
I heard a story, a crazy and tiresome myth.
177
/. C. Squire
Listen ! behind the twilight a deep low sound
Like the constant shutting of very distant doors.
Doors that are letting people over there;
Out to some other place beyond the end of the sky.
178
F. W. STOKOE
EPITAPHIC
I TO whom now the world has grown too strange,
, May turn my meditation, well-content,
Upon the last unmarred competest change
Once feared, held now the surest muniment.
And so forboding speechless long repose
That shall receive my spirit after strife,
I hold the gates a moment ere they close
Pondering how I may say farewell to life. —
Shape what conclusion with my latest breath
And wisdom's ripeness to this end deferred ?
By what confession win my shrift from death ?
Simi up my love and hatred in what word ?
" Here, Life, thy lover thou hast foully slain,"
But should I tell if I have loved thee right ?
" Here's one who sought the live-long day in vara.
He knew not what ; him overtook the night."
179
F. W. Stokoe
Or this : " I found the things I did not seek,
And could not love them, for the things I sought."
So mustering conclusions vain and weak
To hold the strength and depths of my last thought
I'll grant the leave my day worn heart awaits
And turn in silence from the falling gates.
THE SORROWS OF WERTHER
IN old, dim days — ^nay, passionate, poignant true —
Love drunken Werther raved, despaired and died.
The other day I read it all anew
And, ere I shut the covers, stepped inside
And found good Albert making from the room,
A little puzzled, busy, narrow, trim ;
And Werther crouching in ecstatic gloom
While Lotte played that magic air for him.
Young, modest, generous and fair were they.
And when that little melody was played
He kissed her hand and wept — ^how cool it lay
In his, impassioned, hers, all unafraid !
Their twilight falls. Our insolent day shows,
(Bright feathers in the cold deserted nest).
Her pretty ribbons and her furbelows.
His curious long blue coat and yellow vest.
i8o
F. W. Stokoe
DECEMBER
THE land enfolded with the skies
As images in pensive eyes.
As tears in laughter, dreams in sleep
Is caught in quiet trances deep.
This is December, when the ground,
Rain-flooded in the nights profound.
His pools to snare the flying day
In every field and broken way.
i8i
C. B. TRACEY
WIND-WATCHES
(I)
The Night Watch
DECEMBER Nights !
There is no respite from their wind-tongued rage ;
There is no expiation to assuage
The hvmger of such wrath. Their vengeance cries
Woe through the country where their blast alights.
They are desirous of a sacrifice
That would not satisfy though like a flood
Outbroken were the sluices of man's blood.
And from their tumult legionary fears
Storm on my soul like battle-charges poured.
When like the terror of the crime of years.
And like the sibilant menace of the sword,
And like the jealous anger of the Lord
Speak the December Nights.
(11)
The Middle Watch
December Nights !
And watch on watch the impetuous gusts are loud
About the naked roofs and through the crowd
Of bleak tree-spectres querulously wail
x&z
C. B. Tracey
Their penitence like haggard eremites.
Who kneeling at an icy chancel rail
Lift up gaunt eyes against the sightless dark
And pray their hearts out where none seems to hark.
All night I hear their wildly-contrite dirges
Repeated, and their shrill pain is never thinned.
Until the wailing of this lost heart merges
Into their passion knowing I have sinned ;
And I am fierce and futile as the wind
Is on December Nights.
(Ill)
The Morning Watch
cember Nights !
eir sound is as the sea ; and as the surge
ishes continuously as if to purge
stained pollution from the land, even so
le foam-loud sweeping of the tempest fights
ound my spirit till its breakers flow
to the stagnant pool — my heart and lave
; fetor out upon the snowy wave,
cleanse me through and through ! make me pure
the clear fountains of the Ocean are.
irill me with vibrant musics that endure.
)ve me to harmonies I may not mar.
can You hear me crying from afar,
id, in December Nights ?
183
C. B. Tracey
THE BATTLEFIELD
SOFTLY over the sheen of the meadows,
Where the unmemoried bowmen lie.
Vagrant breaths through the evenmg shadows
Whisper and sigh.
Low they lie in the centuried quiet ;
Over them annual flower-bells break ;
Petals blow and the red leaves riot.
They never wake.
FAILURE
HERE where the Isles of Knowledge lie
Set strangely in a fluctuant strait.
Clear-cut and sheer against the sky
The heights of Wisdom meditate.
And in a proud and certain hope
The dateless feet of men have trod
Laboriously its flinted slope
To find thereon the throne of God.
184
C. B. Tracey
Sublime upon its ultimate crest
They gaze, then bow on bleeding knees.
Whom still the vacant heavens invest
And the vague circle of the seas.
TUMULT
THROUGH the storm and the desolate night there
was far away heard
The cry of a plover that wailed Uke a soul without
sight ;
nd a horror of darkness enveloped the land and be-
stirred '
lirough the storm and the desolate night.
3 the wind in the trees goeth wistfully forth to the dark.
Like a querulous voice ineffectually pleading for ease
ust the Spirit be poured into sound to which no one will
hark —
As the wind in the trees ?
s the call of a bird in the night is the voice that is I ; —
And hasten, O Dawn, and illumine me. Send me thy
light,
est I pass as a gust in the trees, lest I utterly die
As the call of a bird in the night.
(Poetry Review.)
185
C. B. Tracey
PHILOMELA
AGE-OLD quivering Heart of Song,
Nightingale ! when the ancients heard
Your voice a-tremble the live night long
Plaintively — 't was no bird
But Philomela, the tongueless child
Agonized in her outrage, trying
To sing her secret clear, and wild
With the impotence of her crjong. . . .
Nightingale ! In this English wood
I know how carelessly you call ;
But your voice awakes a passionate mood
To the old futility of it all.
i86
C. B. Tracey
THE PADDLERS
BENEATH the headland where the gales
Last winter spat their bitterest white.
Where twisted iron plates and rails
Bear witness to their turbulent might,
Small figures in the summer sim
Paddle eimong the rocks for fun.
And there they hunt for water-flowers
Scarlet anemones and shells.
While fairies from their coral towers
And barnacled sea-citadels
Peep up at wonder-widened eyes
That look so fancifully wise.
Then baby-laughter shrilly rings
Down to the long forgotten wrecks ;
And finds through weedy eddyings
The sleepers round the sunken decks ;
And sweet with living Ughtness mocks
The staid and immemorial rocks.
187
R. C. TREVELYAN
THE LAKE
T T 7E sat together by the lake.
W So smooth it seemed, so still, so fair.
That neither of us dared to break
The silent evening air.
We watched the rocks and forests glow
Within the sinking smi's last beams
Reflected tranquilly below
Like a charmed land of dreams.
At length you sighed and raised your head.
And smiling looked into my eyes.
Had you but smiled and nothing said.
Ah love, you had been most wise.
But wisdom comes not till love dies,
Alas, with the first word you spoke.
The light had faded from the skies.
The magic circle broke.
The sun sank down ; the mirrored hill
Grew dark, the forest dim and gray.
We had been gazing on it still.
Had you found nought to say.
i88
R. C. Trevelyan
WINTER RAINS
WHEN after weeks of winter rains
The foggy air hangs chiU and wet,
When misted are the window-panes,
And walls and sheets and cupboards sweat ;
When chilblains itch in every shoe.
And the mind's furnished chambers too
Are damp and sodden through and through ;
When meals are glum and shoulders ache.
No match will strike nor firewood blaze,
Fiddlestrings squeak and tempers break.
No robin sings and no hen lays ;
When paths are pools, and noses pearled.
And cats in kitchen fenders curled
Dream of a happier, drier world ;
Then suddenly, when least we think,
A bright wind breaks the mist, and there
The sua looks out above the brink
Of piled up clouds, stair over stair :
Glad then at heart are aU live things,
Both small and great, on feet or wings.
Birds, boys and beggars, cats and kings.
189
R. C. Trevelyan
A CHILD'S BIRTHDAY
SIX years ago to-day, when first
On my senses the light burst.
When my mind became aware
Of strange brightness everywhere.
Did I then shut my eyes in fright.
And shrink back into friendly night ?
Or in troubled, sulky mood
Did I stare and blink and brood.
Teased by changing mysteries
That mocked the question of my eyes ?
Or in gladness and amaze
Quietly did I lie and gaze.
Till drowsiness upon me crept.
And with pleasure tired I slept ?
Or was then my mind so small.
It had no room for thoughts at all.
But as a leaf or flower might.
Through wide eyes drank in the light ?
rgo
R. C. Trevelyan
ARCHILOCHUS AND NEOBULE
SPRING is come to meadow and vineyard,
Spring through every garden blows
Moist and warm in dallying breezes.
Aphrodite's harbingers.
Swelling buds to leaf and flower,
Loosening the tongues of birds
And the hearts of beast and man.
But alone in my heart Love
Still like a withering blast from the ice-helmed Thracian
mountains.
Terribly lightening above, darkening and ravaging the
earth.
Storms without respite through me,
A pitiless indomitable deity.
Love that was bom in the eyes and sped from the glance
of a girl.
II
On a well's side alone we sat
Together she and I that day :
Yet of love no word was said.
Upon her knee my hand I laid :
But it was not of love I then was thinking.
191
R. C. Trevdyan
She took my hand and pushed it away.
While still we talked of this and that.
Again I touched her, and again
She thrust me away without reproving ;
And still of love no word was spoken.
I looked down deep into the well.
There in the water that lay so still
I gazed into her eyes, and she
Pondering gazed back up at me.
A pearl from her necklace she imdid,
And held it in her hand awhile.
Still watching me with a strange smile.
Suddenly from her hand it slid.
Flashing down till it struck the well,
A faint splash sounded like a bell.
And the image of my face was broken.
She rose as though in anger and cried,
"You should have caught it as it fell,"
Then tximed to go. I laughing tried
To stay her flight ; but she was flown.
Slipped from my hands among the trees.
Leaving me to sit there alone
And stare for as long as I might please
At my fool's image in the well.
That now once more lay smooth and still.
192
KATHLEEN MONTGOMERY
WALLACE
ON THE LOWER RIVER
OH, when the very last is played
Of games that we have lost and won,
And out of reach of wind and sun
You are a shade ; and I a shade.
We'll not be sociable, nor mix
With all those far heroic souls,
But slip away to where there rolls
The quiet current of the St5TC.
Charon will stand aside for us
(Fingering a coin, all amaze).
And you, whom every dog obeys.
Will swiftly deal with Cerberus,
Who, rearing an abysmal throat
In bull-dog smile serene and bland,
With aU three tongues will lick your hand
And curl round meekly in the boat.
So, moving smoothly from the side.
You with the oars and I the lines.
Over the tide where no sun shines
That immemorial barque shall glide.
193
Kathleen Montgomery Wallace
Sheer through the weeds and sedges dank.
Disturbing ghostly rats at play.
And veering, in a well-known way
From one bank to the other bank. . . .
And when the backwater we pass
Where Lethe flows but makes no sound.
We will shoot on, nor turn us round
At those faint voices from the grass ;
" Turn. Here is room for millions yet,
And here the cure for every ill. . . ."
Be still, most piteous shade, be still.
We would remember, not forget.
And when indignant ghosts who wait
For Charon's boat across the stream.
Shatter with shouts his pipe-filled dream.
Demanding why the ^he's late —
He'll call across the waters black,
" Sorry, sir ! They was lookin' so
Happy, I had to let them go —
And Heaven knows when they'll be back !
194
Kathleen Montgomery Wallace
UNRETURNING
UNDER these walls and towers
By these green water-ways.
Oh the good days were ours.
The unforgotten days !
Too happy to be wise
When the road used to run
Under such maddening skies
Headlong to Huntingdon.
Paths where the lilac spills
Blossom too rich to bear ;
Gold sheets of daffodils
Lighting the Market Square ;
Shimmer of gliding prows
Where the green shade is cool.
Tea imder orchard boughs.
Smoke-rings by Byron's Pool.
Sunset at back of King's
Behind the silver spire,
Talk of uncoimted things
Over a college fire —
195
Kathleen Montgomery Wallace
Red leaves above yoTir door,
Gray walls and echoing street
Whose stones will never more
Ring to your passing feet ;
Strange 1 to think Term is here.
Life leads the same old dance.
While you lie dead, my dear.
Somewhere in France. . . .
CHESTNUT SUNDAY
FROM end to end of Cambridge town
The chestnut boughs move up and down.
And rain their petals on the grass
And on the busy folk who pass.
Their foaming sweetness drops in showers
Under a sky like gentian flowers ;
White as a bride's is their array,
The|chestnuts keeping holiday !
Oh, in your dreamless sleep, my dear,
I know, I know you see me here.
Between the voices and the sun.
And petals pattering, one by one.
196
KatMeen Montgomery Wallace
I never feel you watch me weep.
Nor din of battle breaks your sleep.
But I am sure you woke this hour
To see yotir chestnut trees in flower !
WALNUT-TREE COURT
THE court below drowns in an emerald deep
Of dusk, all murmiu-ous
With things the river whispers in its sleep ;
I, leaning outward thus
From this high window, over the silence, hear
Your voice, your laugh, and know
Down in the dusk, and infinitely near
You stand below. . . .
197
Kathleen Montgomery Wallace
DIED OF WOUNDS
BECAUSE you are dead, so many words they say.
If you could hear them, how they crowd, they
crowd ;
" Dying for England — ^but you must be proud " —
And " Greater love, honour, a debt to pay,"
And " Cry dear," someone says ; and someone " Pray ! "
What do they mean, their words that throng so loud ?
This, dearest ; that for us there will not be
Laughter and joy of living dwindling cold.
Ashes of words that dropped in flame, first told ;
Stale tenderness, made foolish suddenly.
This only, heart's desire, for you and me.
We who lived love, will not see love grow old.
We who had morning time and crest o' the wave
Will have no twilight chill after the gleam.
Nor any ebb-tide with a sluggish stream ;
No, nor clutch wisdom as a thing to save.
We keep for ever (and yet they call me brave)
Untouched, imbroken, unrebuilt, our dream.
198
lOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS
SONG
THE lightest gait to walk the land,
The clearest eye to see,
The keenest mind to understand —
Link up all these, and there is she,
Sweet lady !
To Form and Wit in her combined
Add Honour, clean without a blot.
And — ^miracle — a heart that's kind —
Alas, alas, I know her not.
Sweet lady !
THE COUNTRY SONGS
A Fragment
LOVE each verse and tune that fills
I
A nook among the vales and hills
And all the sweetness that belongs
To Sussex and to Surrey songs.
I like to hear the countrymen
Chasing Beau Reynolds once again.
Praising once more the Painful Plough,
The cottagfe maiden's Spotted Cow,
Punch Ladle, strong Tobacco smoke,
And that good ship the Royal Oak.
199
lolo Aneurin Williams
For still in bottom and in hurst
The old folk sing the songs that first
When they were young, seemed sweet to them.
With croaking voice, and black pipe stem
Beating in time ; by cottage fires
Eighty win chant eighteen's desires,
— Old trees remembering to the last
The Seeds of Love so long gone past.
ROCKS
DUST when the years are gone.
You are not dust to-day.
But rocks, though winds rage on,
You scorn your own decay.
Denying your foreknown end
You stand, as an age to an hour.
The lizard's immortal friend
And deathless to the flower.
But the smallest winds and rills
Still wear your state to worse ;
And you are the jest of the hills.
As they of the universe.
200
lolo Aneurin Williams
ASTRONOMY
JUPITER may be that or this
Of stars that shme in heaven,
Neptune a mere h5^othesis.
And Saturn one of seven.
They will not make the dark less bright
For names I do not know ;
Nameless the stars across the night
In nameless Beauty go.
Over my head their vault is bent —
A mirror and a screen —
An ever fresh prefigurement
Of glory past the seen.
201
lolo Aneurin Williams
CHOICES
HOW may a man become a sage
When comitless sights appear-
Villages that demand an age
And towns that claim a year ?
A hill studied a century
Leaves man an ignoramus ;
There's hidden wisdom in a tree
To make a senate famous.
The swiftest journey will display
To new philosophies
Doors fifty. One life wins a way
Hardly through one of these.
A rock upon a mountain-side,
A road to an old house
A young man singing to his bride.
An owl that hunts a mouse ;
These lie in every nook of land :
Alas, that only once
Man has his life to imderstand
And stiU remain a dunce.
202
E. HILTON YOUNG
CHRISTMAS
A BOY was bom at Bethlehem
That knew the haunts of Galilee.
He wandered on Mount Lebanon,
And learned to love each forest tree.
But I was bom at Marlborough,
And love the homely faces there ;
And for all other men besides
'Tis little love I have to spare.
I should not mind to die for them.
My own dear downs, my comrades true.
But that great heart of Bethlehem,
He died for men he never knew.
And yet, I think at Golgotha,
As Jesus' eyes were closed in death,
They saw with love most passionate
The village street at Nazareth.
H.M.S, Iron Duke, 1914,
203
E. Hilton Young
TO THE BOYS LOST IN OUR CRUISERS
OTHERS bring much, but these had most to bring ;
All hope, all dreams, life left an unrun race ;
For that has death, the just and gentle king.
Now set them first in place.
Sea-children ! Still, by quiet copse and close.
Safe through your service, other children play
Dear brothers are you now to all of those.
For whom you died that day.
H.M.S. Iron Duke, 1914.
204
E. Hilton Young
RETURN
THIS was the way that, when the war was over.
We were to pass together. You, its lover.
Would make me love your land, you said, no less.
Its shining levels and their loneliness.
The reedy windings of the silent stream.
Your boyhood's playmate, and your childhood's dream.
The war is over now : and we can pass
This way together. Every blade of grass
Is you : you are the ripples on the river :
You are the breeze in which they leap and quiver.
I find you in the evening shadows f aUing
Athwart the fen, you in the wildfowl caJling :
And all the immanent vision cannot save
My thoughts from wandering to your unknown grave.
St. Ives, 1919.
205
GEOFFREY WINTHROP YOUNG
THE BONES IN THE LONG-BARROW
IS it your birth-dance, brother of white fire burning ?
Is it your death-song, brother of red-charred tree?
There is a stir of flame and dance returning
Through the brown body of me.
Am I alive, yet cannot feel ye flitting,
Brothers of heat, in rush of tongue and spark ?
Was that rough of my bones, flesh-bare and gritting.
As I turned in the dark ?
Was there not hair that wrapped me, red and swaying
Harsh on the huddled knees that flamed a-ring.
Where we crouched and rocked to the white gusts playing
Through your red rioting ?
Had I not eyes that flashed to watch ye leaping.
Seared, and red, and glad of your stabbing light :
Eyes that shunned the devU shadows creeping
Close through the hidden night ?
Shadows, shadows of dusk ! swift in pursuing.
Soon as the sun-lord slept and his shrine burned grey.
Hemming our fearful watch, till his might renewing
Sucked them in shreds of day !
206
Geoffrey Winthrop Young
Shadowy throng in the forest ! Ever they sought me
When as a boy I sped on the lowland chase ;
Ha ! how I dared the dark that all but caught me,
Leaped for the bare green space.
When in the drought I drove the flocks from drinking
Up the white chalk scarp from the hollow of dew,
Grey wolf shadows, I knew them, sly and shrinking.
Peering from thorn and yew.
hadows of summer stealth, alert and cunning,
.apping the cliff that ringed the herds below ;
hadows to flee, in their gaunt and savage running
O'er wintry downs of snow :
hadow-voices of night, of winds assailing,
tilled to a shuffle of feet that crept and crept ;
huddering hungry death when the flame-god failing
Hissed that his servant slept.
>arkness, and dread, and only shadowy thinking,
ure was the night, but would the daybreak tire ?
leap our brother the wood-sap for his drinking !
Rouse the red dream of fire 1
207
Geoffrey Winthrop Young
Shadows of men to fight ! They sought us, shrilling
Hoarse attack from the vale of marsh and flood ;
Fierce the lust of the heavy hand and the killing.
The lanchards sodden with blood.
Blood on the sim-blink stone at day's unsealing
Held thee, brother of light, for my hunting hours.
Blood on the night stone pledged ye to my shielding,
Brother of dew and showers.
Am I not lord of the dene and the valley waters ?
Son of the thong-ringed axe and the shapen stone ?
These I slew, and the sons of their mist-haired daughters
Are hill-bom, and mine own.
Grey stones of life I raised in countless number.
Barring with woven gloom the shadow raid.
High I heaped my hill of moonlit slumber.
Mocking death's master-shade.
Did I but dream that the long grey shadows spied me.
Crushed my strength, shrunken and old for flight,
Far on the hollow down, with none beside me,
Lonely for my last night ?
308
Geoffrey Winthrop Young
Have I not dreamed a sound of summers sowing
Sod on sod o'er my cjTst of secret stones ?
Have I not dreamed a frost of winters throwing
Dust through my whitening bones ?
These are the herds, my sons, for ever crying
Summons to unseen flocks along my hills :
The changeless mutter of hidden watchmen pljong
The handstones in my miUs.
'Tis but a night of winds, and shadows fleeting.
Of dry chalk whispering at the sip of rain.
The downs still keep fire and the dawn from meeting ;
And I may sleep again.
FROM THE MOUNTAIN
WHAT does the world think ? What my sense
shall make it :
There is no world but what is in my mind ;
It has no truth, but as I choose to take it ;
It cannot hurt, if I but call it kind :
I am alone, and all the shapes of earth
Are empty — ^till I bring their life to birth.
209
Geoffrey Winthrop Young
The winds live not : I listen, and they sing to me,
Motionless hills are gods with whom I walk ;
Sunshine and night have souls, for what they bring to me;
Children are all the joy I hear them talk.
The earth is full of echoes ; that can give
Life to my heart, — ^if I but let them live.
Men cannot move me, for their much repeating
A pettiness of shape they share with mine ;
Shades of my semblance, shattered in their meeting
With deeper shadows on my heart's design :
I only live ; and all mankind is naught.
But as I lend it being in my thought.
Through this blue dusk the soulless stars are wheeling
To meet the soulless lights from the blue plain ;
One lamp for every nest of mortals stealing
Back to their nothingness of life again.
In the wide spaces of this lonely night
Candle and star live only in my sight.
SOLITUDE
I SHALL meet you once by day.
Where you race the rush of foam
From the passing of the ships.
Braid of samphire at your waist,
210
Geoffrey Winthrop Young
Bronze of wind for naked pride.
Pressing with impatient feet
Shadowy circles up the sand :
I shall take them from your hand
Fruits of ocean salt and sweet,
Mermaid love and seaman woe.
Danger quest and tempest home ;
Bind a wreath of sun and spray ;
Crush the froth against my lips ;
Hold your secret fierce embraced : —
Till the movements of the tide
Surge about my heart, and flow
Singing chill from throat to knee : —
Once by day
Mine the vision of the sea !
I shall meet you once by night.
Where the wintry wrath of wind
Bends a mutiny of trees
Black against the moonlit fall :
I shall feel the river flow.
Shivering in the willow-root,
From the urgence of your arm :
I shall hear all silence call ;
Join aU darkness in pursuit ;
Leave no loneliness unscanned : —
an
Geoffrey Winthrop Young
Till I touch your welcoming hand.
Kiss the warmth of rainbow light
From the frost-stars on your breast ;
Catch you crying from the breeze ;
Clasp your whiteness through the snow ;
And you yield your soul confessed,
All your song of woodland charm
Sighing passion for my dream : —
Once by night
Mine the soxmd of wood and stream !
I shall meet you once ere death.
In the brown and lonely spaces
Where you ride the sands of storm
Headlong at the angry sun :
I shall see the red light run
Molten on each supple Umb
Down the aisles of desert places.
Blazoning a burnished form
On the illusory glare :
Dust of wandering on your hair,
Evening answer in your face,
You will wait me on the rim
Where the very deserts tire
Startled into sudden ending :
I shall touch your throat of fire.
212
Geoffrey Winthrop Young
Read the measure of all space
Shadowed in your restless wings.
On the brow of time descending
When the level lights gleam low,
I shall know
All the joy of endless things !
WASTE
GRUB for gold with prisoned life ;
Mint it at the price of breath ;
Let it bear the stamp of strife ;
Let it purchase power of death :
Life and gold, one sweated bar.
Lavish it on waste of war.
Dig the gold with good men's toU ;
Leave the holes for dead men's graves ;
Starve the growth, and hoard the spoil
Stored in trenches, heaped on waves :
Murder, lurking underground.
Till the trump of Azrael sound.
Drain the gold, and forge the chain ;
Drain the strength, and bind the race ;
Rouse the brute in man to reign ;
Train him for his princely place :
Flunkey to a nation's pride
In the lust of fratricide.
213
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
C. CoLiiEER Abbott.
" Youth and Age." Sidgwick & Jackson, 1911
"Nine Songs" from the 12th century French,
withdeoorationsby LovatFraser. Chelsea Book Club, 1920
Maettn Abmstbong, Pembroke.
" Exodus and Other Poems " Lynwood & Co., 1912
"Thirty Poems" 1918
E. Bj;ppbl Bbnitett, Qonville and Cams.
" Built in Jerusalem's Wall " Oxford University Press
1920
RtJPBET Beooke, King's.
" Poems " Sidgwick & Jackson, 1911
" 1914 and Other Poems " Sidgwick & Jackson, 1915
" Collected Poems " (with a Memoir by E. M.)
Sidgwick & Jackson, 1918
GeBAID BtTLlBTT, Jestis.
" Poems " Erskine Macdonald, 1918
Aechibaid Young CAMPBBUi, St. John's.
"Poems" HefEer, 1912
" D," Newnkam.
" The Celtic Tinker and Other Poems " Heffer, 1918
Norman Davy, Oonville and Caius.
"Desiderium" HefEer, 1920
Edwabd Davison, St. John's.
" Poems " G. Bell & Sons, 1920
jEFrEEY Day, St. John's.
" Poems and Rhymes " Sidgwick & Jackson, 1919
Jambs Elboy Flecker, Oonville and Caitis.
" Collected Poems " (edited with an Introduction by
J. C. Squire) Martin Seeker, 1916
" Selected Poems " Martin Seeker, 1918
214
BIBLIOGRAPHY
H. J. Glaisher, 1907
H. J. Glaisher, 1909
H. J. Glaisher, 1912
H. J. Glaisher, 1915
Debmot Fbeybr, Trinity.
" Rhymes and Varieties "
" Svmlit Leaves "
" In Lavender Covers "
"For Christmas and Easter"
Geoitbby FysoN, Fitzimlliam Hall.
" The Survivors " Erskine Macdonald, 1918
D. B. Haseleb, St. John's.
" "Verses from France to the Family "
Erskine Macdonald, 1919
DoNAiD F. GooLD Johnson.
" Poems " Cambridge University Press, 1919
G. H. LuOB, King's.
"Poems" Macmillan, 1920
J. H. F. MacEwbn.
" Poems." Elkin Mathews, 1920
John D. Macleod, Gorpics Ghristi.
" Macedonian Measiu'es "
Cambridge University Press, 1919
Habold Monbo, Gonvilh and Cuius.
" Judas "
"Before Dawn"
" Children of Love "
" Strange Meetings "
SiEGPBiBD Sassoon, Glare.
" The Old Huntsman "
" Counter Attack "
"Picture Show"
Privateh/ printed, Cambridge University Press, 1919
" War Poems " Heinemann, 1919
Edwabd Shanks, Trinity.
" Songs " (out of print)
" Poems "
"The Queen of China"
Sampson Low, 1908
Constable, 1911
Poetry Bookshop, 1914
Poetry Bookshop, 1917
Heinemann, 1917
Heinemann, 1918
Poetry Bookshop,1915
Sidgwick & Jackson, 1916
Martin Seeker, 1919
213
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fbedbgond Shove, Newnham.
" Dreams and Journeys " Blaokwell, 1919
J. C. Squibb, St. John's.
" Imaginary Speeches " (Verse and Prose)
AUen & Unwin, 1912
" Steps to Parnassus " (Verse and Prose)
Allen & Unwin, 1913
" The Survival of the Fittest " Allen & Unwin, 1916
" Tricks of the Trade " Martin Seeker, 1917
* * * * *
"Poems" (First Series) Martin Seeker, 1918
"The Birds and Other Poems" Martin Seeker, 1919
" The Moon " Hodder & Stoughton, 1920
R. C. Tbevelyan, Trinity.
" Mallow and Asphodel " MacmiUan, 1898
" Poljrphemus " Brimley Johnson, 1901
" Cecilia Gouzaga " Longmans & Green, 1902
" The Birth of Parsival " Longmans & Green, 1904
" Sisj^hus " Longmans & Green, 1908
" The Bride of Dionysus " Longmans & Green, 1910
" The New Parsifal " The Chiswick Press, 1914
" The Foolishness of Solomon " Allen & Unwin, 1915
" The Pterodamozels " The Pelican Press, 1917
" The Ajax of Sophocles " Allen & Unwin, 1919
" The Death of Man " Allen & Unwin, 1919
" Translations from Lucretius " Allen & Unwin, 1920
K. M. Wallace, Newnham.
" The Lost aty " HefEer, 1918
Ioi>o ANExmiN Williams, King's.
"Poems" Methuen, 1915
"New Poems" Methuen, 1919
E. Hilton Young, Trinity.
" A Muse at Sea " Sidgwick & Jackson, 1919
Geoftrey Winthbop Young, Triniiy.
" Wind and HiU " Smith Elder (John Murray), 1909
" Freedom " Smith Elder (John Murray), 1914
2l6
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