The Collected Poems of Edward Thompson

Preface

Most of this book has exceeded the nine years’ test laid down by Horace. Arrangement is in the main chronological. Drama and the long narrative poem, The Thracian Stranger, are omitted.

The ‘Conrad’ pieces may seem obscure. But readers will know the custom whereby Oriental poets in their own persons add a comment on what they have written. After Radha, Krishna’s mistress, has rhapsodised about her lord, the poet (onlooker to the passion he has expressed) will give a verdict, often of the naïvest and most obvious sort, as ‘Chandidas says: “Maiden, love has pierced thee to the heart.”’ Or this statement may take the form of a précis of what has gone before, or a corollary. In the Persian mystics, it is often a distillation of the sense of what has been diffusedly shown. The method seems fitted, in its impersonal standing apart from personality (your own mood regarded as already a detached and shredded thing, open to impartial judgment), to cloak thoughts or suffering one would not care to expose. ‘Conrad of Elsass’ is a character in my early play, The Enchanted Lady; the name had served me in occasional journalism, and many of these poems were first published without any other signature. To-day subjective literature is of all kinds distasteful to me, and I should not write if I found myself with nothing more interesting than my own feelings. But I was many years younger when the ‘Conrad’ poems were written, and they had reason.

The rhyming of Harun-ar-Rasid with ‘placid’¹ vexes me, though naturalised by Tennyson’s example. But I have been comforted by authoritative assurance that the pronunciation would be held allowable by an Arabic poet and, indeed, is often heard in Arabic prose. So it is possible to be right by accident.

Early Poems

The Knight Mystic

Then in the silence where I stood
I saw the grove was dark about;
The married monarchs of the wood
With sombre umbrage quite shut out

All light of sun, all glimpse of moon,
Or stars that nightly fill the sky,
In the mid blaze of fieriest noon
Exclusive of the sun’s hot eye.

Yet in that darkness, heavy, close,
God knows I did not cry for light;
Alone and silent there, God knows,
I wished not human sound or sight.

Nowise the unknown, the unseen I feared;
Darkling, I did not think to pray;
So near was God, that speech appeared
Vain, trustless blasphemy that day.

Nearer than flesh or frame He stood,
Stirring by life and soul and brain
The languid pulses of my blood
To earlier ecstasies again.

Kneeling in spirit, but in limb
Steadfast, unquivering, unafraid,
With unveiled eyes I stood by Him,
Pavilioned with obsequious shade.

One was I with that Living Light
Whereof all stars and spirits be,
Whose tabernacle is cloud and night,
Whose ways are firmament and sea.

Then from that height I wandered down,
And sought the common steps of men;
With hamlet and imperial town
My thoughts grew conversant again.

But folk, that marked my mien and eyes
Unlike the man’s they knew so well,
Questioned me, and in earnest wise
I opened all I had to tell.

‘I have walked and talked with God indeed,
Nearer than any saint, and I,
Though known a weak and worthless reed,
(Marvel of marvels!) did not die!’

‘Thou hast walked with God? How looked He then?’
With passionate, eager speech they cried.
‘And thou hast talked with Him?’ Again:—
‘What message bring’st thou from His side?’

But I—as from the inrushing sea
The lava oft recedes a space,
To gain an awful mastery
And shatter all the mountain’s base—

So, in this flood I could not stem
Of curious questionings, dumb I stood;
Then after fain had opened on them
The flood-gates of an angrier mood.

But something on the scornful thought
Put rein, till gentler speech held flow:—
‘Of visible lineament saw I naught,
Nor what, if aught, He spake I know.’

And, though they pressed for definite word,
I knew not, and I could not say.
And though they scoffed ‘Lo! one who heard
Yet bears no echo of speech away!’

I heeded not. ‘I dreamt, no more!’
Maybe. I only know I gained
Somehow a strength not mine before,
Though since invincible maintained.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Grave on the Moor

A poet underneath this daisied mound
Sleeps, where the sloping banks and braes are green.
Holy the place; the Muses, violet-crowned,
With twilight eyes, may oftentimes be seen,
Haunting their comrade’s grave, or roving through
These hazel-thickets, where wild strawberries run,
Where twayblades keep till night the morning’s dew,
And where geraniums purple drink the sun.
The marshy, moorland paths are lone, untrod,
Except by casual pilgrim; pelting hail
And drizzling mountain-storm pass over the sod
Whose verdure now is for his limbs a veil,
Who second life inherits in the breath
Of sounding hymn and paean that know no death.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Twilight

The race-dust is upon thy cheeks, O soul,—
Assuredly hast thou run against the wind!
Perchance, with many speeding close behind,
Like thee, towards a visionary goal.
Thy limbs are wet and quivering with their woe,—
Ah, me! for ease thy tender form were fitter!
Thine eyes are wild, as one’s who does not know
If he has failed, but knows the strife was bitter.

Bitter? ay, passing bitter was the race!
Yet, though thy feet are torn, thou’rt as a deep
Where not a wind moves on the water’s face.
O soul, thou might’st have walked through asphodel,
But, naked, chose to run through briars. ’Twas well,—
Lie down among the lilies, soul, and sleep!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

A Southern Garden

Arbutùs and myrtle grow
Round about the flowering closes,
Paved with petals white as snow
Dropped from the embowering roses.
Ilex and acanthus there
Front the lurking winds that fare,
Warm and winged, above the beds
Whereon the oleander sheds
Blood-red blossoms, falling lightly.
Here is pleasant noise of rain,
Here the Sun-god’s shafts gleam brightly,
And ‘neath mellow moons that wane,
Wax, and wane, and wax again,
Scent of rose and tuberose,
Gillyflower and lilyflower,
Blows against the patient face
Of the god who guards the place,
Carven Hermes, where he stands,
Fleet of feet, and strong of hands,
Pleased, though not in Arcady,
In this rival heaven to be.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Comrades by the Way

Love, like a palmer clad, erewhile
O’ertook me on my pilgrimage.
Together then for many a mile
We journeyed on from stage to stage,
But ever warily I stept
And neutral ground betwixt us kept.

He bore in hand a scallop-shell;
Wizened his shape and bent his back;
He leaned upon a staff as well,
Though sure of strength he had no lack,
Since youth in his immortal eyes
Looked out and laughed at his disguise.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Eden

Fair river rushing to the sea!
Whose waters green are bordered thus
By woods renowned in venerie
And islands set with mimulus!

Whose laughing billows leap and glide
By sleepy Appleby to where
Thy sister Eamont brings her tide
From out knoll-bordered Ullswatèr!

Surely, fair stream, thou art the queen
Of sliding rivulets crystal-clear,
Whatever currents cool and green
The wise of other realms revere!

The tribute of a thousand hills,
That buttress up the heavens, is thine;
Thine the unnumbered, tumbling rills
From Hèlvellyn to huge Pennìne.

The raven over thee, from gaunt
Crossfèll, flies, far aloft descried;
The peewit and the heron haunt
The meadows at thy willowy side.

Campanula and tansy tall
Bloom where, in shade of hedgerows cool
The luckless urchin meets withal
His sportive namesake, fresh from school.

By many a bridge with fronded walls,
Where rue and brittle spleenwort grow,
The otter, as the twilight falls,
Whistles and dives for prey below.

And where the sward is smooth and green,
With sentinel rushes set about,
Pavilions of the fairy queen
Are pitched for revel when light goes out.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Pastoral

Lone in meadows where the wind
Plays along the whistling green,
Corydon and Ancar bind
Wisps of hay, with laughing mien.

Seated at their side, behold,
Rapt with unbelieving smile,
One fat bunny, brown and bold,
Hearkens with Ancaria while

Corydon the tale relates
Of the men of other days,
Strivers with untoward fates,
Rough and stern in all their ways,

Savage tribes, and Thracian folks
Whom the gods held not in awe.—
Bunny looks most wise and strokes
Furry stomach with one paw.

Now the fields are shorn and bare,
As a paven palace-floor
Smooth; and only here and there,
Where the grasses wave no more,

Hillocks, tangled, warm and green,
Stand across the pleasant lea
(Greener isles were never seen
Upon any summer sea).

Corydon upon the expanse
Looks with anxious eyes about;
Then, with wily countenance,
Brings another story out.

Tells of Pròserpìna’s woes,
But, before the story’s done,
Brings with action to its close
Tale that was with words begun.

Bunny laughs outright and stares;
Dropped are ropes and dropped is hay;
And another Pluto bears
His Proserpina away.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Picture in the New Gallery, 1906

She sits with wild and winsome air
Among the blowing roses.
Here Sorrow’s self, if anywhere,
In calm awhile reposes.
Deeper than starry depths her eyes,
Shyer than buds that gleam
Where bluebells form terrestrial skies
Beside a summer stream.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Dirge in Spring

Violets that are proud and fair
And do wear
Robes of purple, as a king,
Let us to his presence bring,
Let us scatter, whilst we sing
Praise and honour to his name
Whom the ever-jealous hours,
Slaying where they could not tame,
Laid asleep in blackthorn bowers,
Canopied with sweetest flowers.

Here where in the green-haired brake
Buds awake,
Flora from her apron spills
Lustre of the daffodils,
Every nook with primrose fills.
Morning striding on the heights,
Noon the crimson-eyed and stern,
Homage by their varied lights
Bring like us towards his urn,
Fronded o’er with rifted fern.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Song

O for a garland of cypress
To shadow my forehead to-day!
A garland of song and of sorrow
That never should wither away!

Your crownals of olive and myrtle
Are glittering and fragrant and gay,
But Olympic wreaths cannot linger
Much after the dust of the fray.

The grass and the lovely-browed lilies
Bloom bright where the sunbeams stray;
But night draws on and the tempest
Will shiver their beauty away.

Your summer-born lilies and roses
Endure and are fresh for a day,
But your cypress and yew are still pleasant
Long after the summer’s away.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Autumnal Etchings

Evening descends, beset with clouds, and dun:
On everything a murky dampness lies:
Only remains within the western skies
One spot whose whiteness shows the shrouded sun.

The sober hue of autumn, richly shed,
Shadows the sloe and bramble, thick with fruit;
One honeysuckle still lifts its flowering head
Above yon hawthorn, berried in every shoot.

The hips and haws are on the thorn,
The chestnut burrs are on the trees.
Through the deflowered woodland ways forlorn
And crownless wander the sad Dryades.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

For a Sculptured Hermes

See Psychopompos, clad in herald-wise,
With staff of ivory, wrapt with poppies red!
A golden bough, full-leaved, of rich device,
About it twined, flowers into serpent-head.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Reticence

The gods are glad of face and with them bear
In sight of men no heavy brows of care;
Unto their peers alone
Their sterner and sublimer moods are shown.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Halloween

Of godlike shape the shadows steal and pass
Betwixt the trees and glide across the grass.
Through mystic paths the spirit in awed repose
Beneath the wakeful eye of Darkness goes.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Sign-Seeking

An evil generation seeks a sign;
From whence, O Master, shall the sign be sent?
Delusive lights that are no lights of mine
Shall dance amid their darkened firmament.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Intellectual Alps

Heights are there, dizzy, and high beyond all height,
Where, if man dwells at all, he dwells alone,
Pavilioned by the dark, with stars far-strown,
The constellated comrades of his night.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Raleigh’s Last Voyage

Pinioned and gagged, he bore the cuffs of Fate,
But, ere the end, unbound a little space,
Stood, like the man he was, forlornly great,
That Death and he might buffet face to face.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Facilis Est Descensus

By rocky ways, profuse of difficult fight,
The battle slowly wandered up the height;
But, with die crest once gained, the seething mass
Plunged in a moment down the opposite pass.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Grave by the River

With pain he reached the water-side;
He crawled upon the turf and died;
And till a long day’s force was done
He lay exposed to breeze and sun.

His lips were foul with ooze and dredge;
His locks were braided black with sedge,
Which twined with tresses not his own
That forehead, cold as Parian stone.

But with the falling of the dew
And night’s slow conquest in the blue
The kindly spirits that ride the air
Received into their pious care,

Bidding the winds together bring
The wrecks of many a bygone spring,
And, whilst they gathered leaf and stem,
Proclaim the stranger’s requiem.

And Nature, that had given a grave,
Did also from corruption save,
That still, ’neath piled-up leaves and loam,
He sleeps within his quiet home.

And here, oblivious of the damp,
The glow-worm lights her evening lamp,
And voice to voice, across the swell,
The nightingales sing loud and well.

And aye his body from repose
Stiffens, and stark and rigid grows,
At those two hours when, east and west,
God’s presence is most manifest.

For when the dawn breaks up the night
And heaven’s highways with torch doth light,
And when the gathering sunset thrills
The waiting silence of the hills,

His conscious hands are clasped in prayer,
And, wholly purged from taint of care,
His glowing face, beneath the sod,
Turns, like a sunflower, to his God.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Child of Achilles

Child of Achilles, not for thee
Nor all that share thy powerful name
Will the dread lords of destiny
Relax their universal claim.

The poet to the tomb descends;
Alike the priest and victim fall;
Drift cries to drift; and Death attends
Impartially on lord and thrall.

Earth the inscrutable and calm,
Mute mother of a noisy race,
Crowneth alike with pine and palm
The slave’s and victor’s burial-place.

Ask of the God whose shining guise
Is as a light where lights are none,
Whose glittering wand and gracious eyes
Are infinitely more than sun

To ghosts afraid, bewildered, sad,
In downward tracks, with rocks up-piled,
Who flock towards the patient, glad
Herald of souls, Hermes the mild.

Ask of thy smiling guardian-god!
Claim answer ere the light wax dim—

Hermes

‘Somewhere for thee green grows the sod;
Already of thy funeral-hymn
Strains on the voice of wind and wave
Uncaptured float, and wait thine end;
Think not thy father’s name can save
Or thy known prowess can befriend.

‘Behold, I lift my wand, whose sight
Already with prophetic awe
Doth dry untutored spirit smite
And chasten to its own vague law.²

‘Thou too ere long shalt own its sway;
Thou too shalt soon, nor thou alone,
Child of Achilles, take thy way
To fiery swamps of Phlegedion.’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The October Moon

Now, she that is of heaven the shepherdess
And casts sinister influence on the seas,
Who rules the Plough, the Bear, the Pleiades,
All stars with their conjunctions, great and less;
Whose sway the gathered clouds of Jove confess,
When drawn together by the Hyades,
(Those rainy Kids that empty to the lees
Heaven’s cisterns high, when grapes are in the press
And jolly Autumn reels with vintage home),—
I saw her mounted in the Night’s cool dome,
’Mid stretching clouds of more than marble whiteness.
A circling nimbus clung like yellow hair
About that face of sun-surpassing brightness,
And underneath the sleeping Earth lay fair.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Laus Musarum

What magic powers dwell in the lyre!
How mighty is the Muses’ fire,
Which where the holy Maidens will
Hath burnt of old and burneth still!
Pan piping in the cloistered alleys,
Phoebus in the open valleys,
Drew not men and beasts alone
But thrilled each several stock and stone,
And won together
Birds of every plume and feather,
Charmed the kid and charmed the lion.
Wise Amphion
Reared with lute a city fair,
Which so prodigal of splendour
Laughed upon the enamoured air
That the wearied winds at eve
Did their swelling journeys leave,
And a glorious homage render,
Laying their heavy wings at rest
Above each gilt and marbled crest,
Bowing their heads, with sacred fires
Bound about and garlanded,
And hymning, with low voice of dread,
The city of the seven spires.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In Praise of Peterborough

Golden fruit and blossoms red,
And a home at Medehamsted!
Towerèd Medehamsted, of all
Thronèd queen and principal,
Queen of fen and billowing lowland,
Sawtre, Yaxley, Stamford, Crowland!
Where the weltered sun each eve
Miles of waving meadows’ heave
Gilds, and his upturned glows
On the wondrous minster throws;
Gifts with transitory gold
Vanished kings, and abbots old,
That in their nichèd sconces seem
Living lamps that pray and dream.
Peter’s shrine, to Hereward
Erst that gave the knightly sword,
Still to things that flit and flee
Harbour safe and hostelry!
When these eyes beheld thee last
In shimmering noons that quickly passed,
Pigeons circled, swallows flew,
Thrushes built within the yew,
Yea, the sparrow found a nest
Underneath thy sunlit crest,
Tiny lives a shelter gained
In thy borders crevice-veined,
Where snapdragon and featherfew
And golden-freckled wallflower grew!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Trees Have a Garment of Leaves

The trees have a garment of leaves,
Their heads they have crowned with flowers;
They dance and ruffle their sleeves,
Or dream through the silent hours.

I too of their bliss will partake;
With beauty and blossoming rhyme
A crown for my brows I’ll make,
And set my thoughts in time

To the wind of joy that blows
From the jubilant, dancing stream;
And again, at the music’s close,
I’ll wear my garland and dream.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Flower and Wind

Lilies in their peace lift up,
Dewy-brimmed, an ivory cup,
Sweet that gathered, hidden deep,
Through the sliding hours of sleep.

But the winds, at set of sun,
Forth to reckless revel run,
Snap the Stems in eager haste,
Pour the precious stuff to waste.

And die rose, whose flaunted gleam
Flowered like God’s own mind adream,
Hangs, a shamed and tattered flag,
Beauty’s cheek a crimson rag.

Love on the Hills

The feathery-fingered fir-trees grow
Down to the rippling water-edge;
From far away the breezes blow
Through rustling reed and mace and sedge;
While in the morning sun the meads
Stand prodigal of fairest weeds.

The winds in every needled path
Stray echoes of my mood have caught;
There is no flower of all but hath
An inkling of my inner thought—
From whence yon sympathetic rose
So richly on thy bosom glows.

The Forest Sleeper

I have a wanderer been
In forests where the dew of yestereves
Clung to the silent fronds and sunless leaves.
There, where from earth’s wet breast
The mounting sap runs up to set a crown
Of spreading foliage green,
That ever waxeth, ever withereth,
Above the dull trunks brown,
I saw in dreamless rest
Life sleeping in the cave of death.

John in Prison

Tyrannus Sui

He martyred at the self-same stake
Both Faith and Love for Truth’s sweet sake,
And as some cone, though capped with snow,
Bowelled with writhing fires below,
Beneath a wan, cold face he bore
A nature tortured to its core.
The passions which beset his soul
Brake never through the fierce control
Which shewed a part, but masked the whole.
Hope in a captive leash he held,
And Fear’s rebellions sternly quelled,
Until to outward view at length
He stood in self-sufficient strength,
Who in his chambered being’s hold
As paramount denizen controlled
The traitors who were fierce of old.

Yet, as a thousand thoughts begin
Their stifled parliament within,
When the mild night’s maternal sway
Emancipates, and tears away
The stern proscription of the day,
First awed and hushed, then gathering tone,
Till to a fierce insistence grown,
So whispers grim at times would fall
On the stark silence of that hall,
Whispers, God knows, of tortured hosts,
Some living still, some long since ghosts,
Whispers which rose to scream and shout
Flat blasphemy and treason out,
Till that rebellious babel filled
Each corner of the courts it thrilled,
While brushing Shapes, that bore no form,
Would from forgotten crannies swarm,
A hideous rout, with mocking cry
And laughter as they rustled by,
Shapes greatly daring, bold to peer
Into the face now chilled with fear,
Whose touch, though lifted as it pressed,
Seared like white iron the shrinking breast,
And like a biting tremor passed
Through the poor soul that cowered aghast.

O, had ye only seen him then,
Seen as he was this man of men,
Beleaguered, every egress locked,
A raving captive, caged and mocked,
Though Lord of Walls, within them known
A tyrant foiled and overthrown,
Ye would have cast no word of hate
At those proud lips, that upright gait,
Nor dared to front with hostile brow
Those masking eyes, whose silent glow
Lay like some tarn, whose darkened breast
Is cover to a vast unrest,
Seeming to say nor less to hide
All is not well beneath its tide,
From whose far depths, with tossing surge,
A tortured spirit might emerge.
O had ye known him thus, and seen
What lurked behind that iron mien,
With little heart for hate and ire,
Only with pity set afire,
Ye would have cast this brother’s care
At the great Mother’s knees in prayer,
Beseeching, for her woman’s part,
Our Lady of the stricken Heart
On these worn lids her peace to impress,
Oblivion of the old digress,
The sleep-in-life from which the soul
Wakes like a child, renewed and whole,
Or to seal up that shuddering breath
With God’s great second gift of death.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Resurrection

My old-time self whom I slew,
Yet left unburied a space,
Crept from his corpse and stood up
A ghost before my face;

Spoke of the ache that lasted,
Now, though the life was done,
Of the shame and pain that were his,
Unburied, to lie in the sun;

Pleaded the love that was his
Once, from the heart that was mine,
And the sinful memories
That linked our lives in line;

Prayed me, for pity’s sake,
To lift him in from the cold;
Bade my kindness awake
And flow to him, now, as of old.

Then, for him I remembered
Merry and blithe of yore,
‘Perchance I would do it,’ I said,
‘If thou couldst come as before.

‘Laughter and quip and jest,
These couldst thou bring?’ I said.
‘Nay,’ he answered, ‘I bring
Only myself that am dead.’

Then, for I saw my task
Had lain this while undone,
For, slaying him righteously,
I had left him to lie in the sun,

I burnt the corpse and buried
Fathoms away from sight,
That the ghost might have peace that had seen
Its obsequies done aright.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Pilgrim’s Progress

Each cornered stone, each thorn shall sting
Thy tortured feet to bleed afresh.
To every jagged point shall cling
Some morsel of thy flesh.

In torment of thy hottest noon
The taciturn, unfeeling sky
Shall beat thy limbs to flag and swoon,
And bring thee near to die.

No rock, no bush shall bless thy sight
With lure of shelter for awhile
From flaunting glare of ghastly light
That paints each hideous mile.

And, when the way behind is cast
And thou canst well the gates perceive,
Requital of thy laboured past,
Red in thy latest eve,

The bliss for which thou didst forswear
Thy once much-cherished vanity,
For all thy sacrifice and care
Perchance is not for thee.

The veriest phantom of a town
May dance before thy cheated gaze,
Or thou at last mayst wander down
Into forbidden ways.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Viator et Senex

Viator: By this path, if a man straight onward keep,
    Is’t given to reach Elysium?
Senex: Even so.
    But tell me truly, thither wouldst thou go?
Viator: For that same goal I give away my sleep.
Senex: Consider now! The way is far and steep.
Viator: A thing it but inflames desire to know.
Senex: Yet, shouldst thou fail—how bitter then thy woe!
Viator: I shall not fail. For if I sow I reap.
Senex: Yet failed has many a pilgrim heretofore.
Viator: Through lack of care.
Senex: ’Tis aye the way of youth
    To mock the valiant men that went before!
Viator: I mock them not.
Senex: Well, falter not, O friend,
    But push through ever-darkening ways uncouth
    May all good gods go with thee to that end!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

John in Prison

But Herod the Tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias his brother Philip’s wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison.
— Luke III, 19, 20

Strong Christ of God, Sun whose victorious beams
Have put my tiny candle on the wane!
Rise on my soul! Shine in, Thou light of God!
Yet first, because Thou hast not left alone
Thy cousin and forerunner, I give Thee praise
No less than at Thy Father’s throne thy Spirits
Acclaim Thee, God made man—they in the height,
And in my noisome depth of dungeon I.
But come again, Messiah! for unto Thee
Staple, and chains that chafe these festering limbs,
Iron rod and bar that knit the massy gate
Between me and the light I love, are vain
As are the mists that mantle on the hills
Before the inflow of the widening morn.
Lo! how I waver! I, that saw Thee late,
O Light in darkness, gracious as the moon
New-risen ’mid thronging damps, that saw and heard
And from Thee took the mandate to endure
Sole to the world’s confusion, in despite
Of all whose malice sought in me, its slave,
To foil the marching kingdom! Lord, forgive!
Yet come, before these chains that bite the flesh
Pierce to the spirit. Let me see and know.
O let the dark fall from Thee, and the scales
That shut my blinded sight and keep Thee hid!
Speak, art Thou here? It may be. For mine eyes,
Once quick to search all coverts, now with fumes
And rising vapours clouded, wax infirm,
Too weak to find Thy presence. Or dost Thou now
In circuit of the Galilean hills,
Where many waters gather, call the tribes
To test of sifting wind and purging fire,
And baptism of the Spirit, forgetting John?
Remember, Lord! Nay, let me call to mind!
Three weeks since, when my fever and my pain
Had made me madder than now, most miserable,
Forsaken of my God, I thought, and Thee
My kinsman whom I loved, because my soul,
Prophetic, knew in Thee that day to which I
Was but the faint, first streak of ushering light,
I sent for two I loved, for two that still
Clung to their master. And because a thought,
More than all outward sorrows, burnt within,
Peopling my sleep with dreams insane, with roads
Thronged with all mocking voices, roads which shot
By sudden, jagged precipices to Hell,
I bade them seek and ask Thee ‘Art Thou He
Whom all our questionings cry for, all our hopes
Gather towards? Or look we for another,
Groping in dark the darker now because
We deemed it light so lately?’
Then they went
And left me to my madness, till again
They sought my presence, and when I bade them tell:
‘What said the Rabbi?’ spake ‘We found Him thronged,
And, hardly forcing access, gave thy word;
Whereat He answered not, but for a space
Bade us attend. And in that hour He cleansed
A multitude diseased, the cancerous breast
And limbs devoured by leprosy restored,
Strengthened the halt, flooded the groping eyes
With light and bade them see. Then spake again:
“Go now; what ye have seen and heard tell John.”’
This when I learnt, remembrance of the past,
Of God’s great angel-herald ere my birth
Meting my path before me, of the days
Wherethrough I served by Jordan and a voice,
Not man, but voice incarnate, ere the Christ
Came, rang before His presence; of all this,
And of that morn by Jordan when Himself
Stooped to my baptism and from Heaven drew down
To Him, our Christ, the witness of our God;
Memory of what was then, of all I hoped
In Him, my Lord and cousin, for whom I lived,
Yea, and now die; memory of this, and thought
Of now, when to the Kingdom’s portals flock
The radiant peoples, ransomed and redeemed,
While I, the herald who ere the East grew grey
Discerned the conquering sun, I who of all
(Not of this fickle multitude I, His slave,
Friend and forerunner) longed for no high place,
But, standing by, to watch and know the King,
Proud but to see and hear, now doomed to die,
Far from my Sun, and the dear light of Heaven,
The desert spaces, and the blue, ribbed hills,
And rushing Jordan, green with reed and palm,—
What with my grief and my disease, I grew
Mad, mad! O God! it were as if one should
Be crucified in sunlight, seeing the sky
Bright over insert, bird, and flower, each leaf
Glad in the fountain’d radiance, all this world,
This brave, good world in its rejoicing round,
And only he to have no part in it
But hang aloof, helplessly placed at gaze,
One streaming agony!
And with the thought
I cried ere I was ’ware, and turned my face,
And wailing in my hands I beat the wall.
O God! God! God! am I not John, Thy slave,
Glad of Thy bidding, glad to serve Thy Christ,
And yet forsaken here?
But, as I wept,
The Master of my sorrows, He whose hand
Could cleanse, if so He would, could heal and calm,
Redeem or leave in anguish, visited me.
He came not as He came when free I trod,
Unfettered as the winds that beat their way,
Bridging all seas; but on my head a hand,
Light as of old my mother’s when I, rough lad,
Softened beneath her touch, grew gentle with her,
Came, or I dreamt it came, and in the thought
So pleasing drowned my sorrow; and a voice,
Falling like spring’s warm showers, addressed by name.
This also passed into my dream, this too
Built up the pleasing fancy, and I grew calm
Once more beside my mother as I prayed.
Then the voice breathed again, and yet again:
‘John!’ and I looked and saw Him standing there,
Pale in the dungeon gloom, with forehead racked,
Furrowed with anguish. But His eyes were kind;
The twilight of the world was in those eyes,
Which shone with sorrow as a lake with depth.
And when I met their mild, compassionate pain
I was a child once more, forgot my griefs,
Even my failing eyesight in this den,
Amerced of God’s good light, and broke in sobs,
Weeping for very gladness. He, my Friend,
Spake never word nor checked me but stood there,
Gentle and still till I found voice to cry:
‘O Christ, that Thou hadst come! Didst Thou not know—
Yea, for Thou knowest all—my pain and grief,
Here, robbed of light and air, where rats by dark
Gnaw at my naked soles which rot with damp?
Yet all is well, since Thou hast come in time
To lead me to the light!’
Praying, I thought,
He covered with His hands His face, and turned,
Veiled from my fevered look a silent space;
Then answered ‘John, I may not lead thee forth.
Nay, do not speak; I know: I know it all.’
And, when I could have wept afresh, that hand
Quieted as a child and kept me calm.
‘Nay, John, I know it all, thy shame and pain.
Thou sayst thy feet are gnawed and worn away.
I know it, ay, have felt it. See my own!’
And, when I looked, even as mine they were,
Rotting, and bitten, foul. The Lord spake on:
‘Wherever among earth’s children one of these
My brothers suffers wrong, the smart goes home
Here on my body and the mark lives here,
Though none has ever seen it; thou hast seen.’
Still He spake on: ‘The Kingdom moves apace,
Nor have I any of all that call me Lord
Can render to the Kingdom and to Me
Such service as thou canst. For thou art
John, Called from the womb and holy; thou hast borne
A labour not forgotten, O be sure,
But storied with the Father, thine and Mine.
Be sure I know thee well-beloved of God,
Remembered in this sorrow. O my friend,
My cousin whom I love as thou lov’st Me,
Before my Father’s throne this morn arose
Rumours of earth and questioning who could stand
The Kingdom’s martyr. And thy name was held
As one that should not waver, could not fail
Nor falter as the many, but be still
Steadfast above all peril, and in faith
Immovable toward God, although He slay.
O thou art loved, be sure, thy service known.
But yet—what if the Kingdom by thy death,
Rotting within this dungeon, profit more
Than by thy life without, couldst thou not die?’
My eyes gave answer, and He spake again:
‘I may not tell thee all, nor know I all.
But turn thy gaze, and wait, and thou shalt see,
Nor shalt forget for ever. For who that knows
The vision or the voice that falls therewith
Has sight or hearing, save for that emprise
And tireless traffic on these shores of time
Whereby the Father draws unto Himself
A people sanctified, apart from sin?
But first behold Myself!’
And when I looked
His hands were jagg’d and stripped, and through the flesh
A hole ran black, while from His side there fell
Drops from a yawning fissure. I wept to see.
Then in the dungeon voices rose, and came
Eyes that I knew not, faces thronged the wall
In flickering passage, bright against the gloom
One moment ere they faded. Things I saw
Not now remembered, though the mind burns yet
Still unforgetful, restless and aflame.
But strife I saw, the rise and clash of spears,
Stark onset and the beat of sword on sword,
And death amid the tumult, death where fell
The rain of arrows; death not here alone,
But in the fire triumphant, and in pain
That brake the body lifting up to God
A face transfigured as the sunlight streamed
From out the city and the enthroned Love
Whereby this sorrow came. And still through all,
Whatever tumult waxed o’er that which waned,
Fordone ere that which followed it, I heard
The one, clear music of the coming King,
Clamant above all tongues. And ever moved,
Most amid fellest deeds, a light that shone
On pale, brave faces, pausing on the brow
Of faces pinched and wan, of faces proud
But greatly humble, in the light they bore
Transfigured like their Lord’s; and still in these,
In holy deed by sickbed, or in cot
Or brawling city, in souls that home to God
Sped from the sword or furnace, I beheld
The one brave Face bearing the wrong and ever
Suffering in these His servants. Last of all
He prophesied my own release at hand,
And when He went, despite my fever and pain,
My heart burnt on within me, and this den
Grew brighter than the desert spaces are,
Because I knew Him coming, and His hand
Already beckoning, like a dawn in power,
When the keen breeze puts by the rack and Heaven
Flushes with expectation.
So I dreamed,
And whilst I dreamt was happy with myself
As is a child who feigns a secret his
Whereof none else may share, and with grave eyes,
Glad with their burden, goes about his play,
Yea, bears with chafe and chiding for the sake
Of this redress, so sure, so rich in balm
And healing of the aching, piteous past.
But then the days dragged by, and I grew sad,
Lying still here, where no release was given.
Nay, shall I see the light again? My God!
Hast Thou not given Thy word? Am I not John?
Lord, have I failed Thy purpose, or in deed
Or speech unfaithful, as of old was one,
Thy champion, by a lustful woman snared,
Shorn of his strength, and justly for his sin
Blinded, the Gentiles’ sport, the captive held
Of brutish gods, and in Philistia made
A gazing-stock? Make trial, and find me now
Thy servant through all sorrow, waiting still
Till Thou redeemed Israel. Speak, and save!
God, that release would come!

(In the dungeon behold the Christ stand. He speaks:)

‘John, I am here.
Be patient, glad. The end is come.
Thou goest, Still my forerunner, meting still the path
Myself must tread hereafter, home to God
Now by a way of shameful, steep access.
Brief space, myself will follow. Gird thyself.
One comes, executor from the lustful king,
Charged for thy death. My cousin, take this hand.
The dusk falls on the desert, and the night
Is armed with healing wind and lit with stars,
Bringing thee home from travail. Speak no word.
I know’t, nor witness, save these shining eyes,
Require to read thy purpose, know thy mind.
Trust Me, and fear not. Thou art ready now.’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Pheidippides

What! run the race again? Ay, if Zeus would!
Gladly, to feel the lessening distance draw
Me to my Athens, whilst my forehead throbbed
To the cool pulsing of the chafing breeze.
Then at the end to die, and dying, know
I died—for Athens? Ay! But more—for Him.
He said ’t whose word I dare believe for truth.

O friends! Ye know my story? How I ran
Twice for my country, twice, and at the first
In the wet concave of a cavern met
Pan? So they say. Not Pan—an idle tale.
Not Pan. Nay, hearken! Such a tale is mine
As never runner’s yet.
Ye know me, friends,
Pheidippides the racer, Pheres’ son.
Ye know my life; and since my sire was poor,
Sea-faring Pheres, I, whose gifts were none
Save this strong body, like a god’s for speed,
For pelf and prizes ran, and nursed each limb
Up to its swift perfection. But Dion spake,
The old lame man I loved and, meeting whom,
I bore his basket up the rugged ways;
‘Thou yet shalt run for Athens; ay, and more.
Since not for nought Zeus gave this peerless gift,
This strong, swift body.’ So I lived and ran,
First in the wrestle and in gymnasium first:
No part of all the day but knew me well
For strength and speed, whether with dawn I rose
And, battling with the waves beside the coast,
Rode like a Nereid, or upon the heights
Challenged the boisterous winds, and under stars
And all the silver canopy of heaven
Hunted the beasts, swifter by far than they,
Stronger and thereto skilled, no other roof
Shelter save that same arch ’neath which I sped
Nights balmy and clear when, vast in heaven afar,
White clouds revolved through wastes of darkening blue
Where the ecstatic lightning danced at whiles.
For even then some god that loved me well,
Marking me of the people and a name
Nowise illustrious from my sires, imbreathed
So high presentiment, prophetic hope,
That all my thought to deeds heroic ran,
Thoughts of the great of old, of all I knew
Storied along our countryside, of names
Rightly renowned, Protesilaus that leapt
The destined martyr, Pylades no less
Victim in will to save his friend from death,
Theseus whose dauntless valour for his land
The monstrous tribute raised, Achilles famed,
Patroclus, Hector, Zeus-born Heracles,
Jason and Agamemnon, names revered;
Heroes that through the dusty march of life
Moved with erect, bright brows, and eyes that strove
Ever to scale the azure tops and draw
To their weak thoughts rare fancies that had grown
Stern with strange beauty from familiar stay
And ancient sojourn where the encircling hills
Into their everlasting chalice drained
The rivulets of Heaven: saviours of men,
Now and for evermore rightly renowned,
Rightly by bards beloved of Phoebus sung
And rightly to the sounding lyre extolled,
No knights of idle tale, as some now deem
(Erring through wisdom vague), and fable dark,
But men who, to the piteous needs of men
Moving as brothers might, were glad of call
To labour and, if Zeus so willed, to die.
Such then as these I loved, and worshipped these;
And, though I feared my lot, so vile, obscure,
No king of men as these, a runner hired,
Natheless I prayed, if Zeus so found me fit,
I too might run for Athens, I no less
Myself as for a sacrifice might fling
To save my folk.
O friends, my tale is known!
Mark now the grace of the gods, who knew my prayer,
And answered to the uttermost! Came the Mede,
Coasting for Attica, and brought on board
Hippias our banished tyrant; then fell word
To me, Pheidippides, to haste and run,
Craving the aid of Sparta: how I ran,
How surely and how swiftly, and, being there,
How greatly foiled, ye know. But not the end!
May Zeus be thanked! for this was not the end.
But back o’er Parnes as I ran there lay
Aslant the path a bouldered chasm, of old
Famed the resort of nymphs. With slackening feet.
As loth to wrong whoever haunted there,
I loitered past, with downdropt hands and gaze
Fain to fall otherwhere nor pierce the shrine
Of resting Deity, perchance of him
The Matter of our mountains (since thus named,
So call him Pan), although no Attic Power,
Known of Arcadian shepherds the great Dread,
Nor less throughout Thessalia held in awe.
Wherefor with timid foot that feared to haste
Fain had I passed; nor dared to look within
Save with an eye scarce lifted e’er it fell
To earth, how vainly! Fell to lift again,
Nor wander now.
For there sat One within
Who drew me with a glance beneath His will,
And beckoned, that with reverent step I came.
He spake:
‘So, friend, you thought to pass, nor pause
In honour to this cave’s dread habitant.
Grow ye thus slack towards divinity
In Athens? How then hope to slay the Mede,
Unless ye bind the host of Heaven to aid,
Your right good lords? Yet fear not, since from men
I seek not worship. There is One, be sure,
(Hereafter to be known, not dimly seen,
As now, in driving suns traverse the sky,
In moon and flocking stars, in falling fires),
Who seeks my honour, since with His the same.
Return, tell Athens that the cause is hers,
Hers in despite of home-bred treason’s hate,
The myriad Mede, and Hellas’ little love.
Reck not of Sparta. Broken reeds must fail,
And well if sooner, that your hands may find
Support more sure. But of thyself I speak,
Thy land’s best runner, spending now thy strength
In others’ stead! Ask of the gods in Me,
Ask of the gods, and choose, since worthy found,
What most allures thee?’
He spake and smiled,
Marking my travail; for to hear this word
My spirit leapt within me, and the blood,
Surging, so at my temples beat and throbbed,
No speech I found, since here I knew fulfilled
The years’ long vision. Thus I thought, then cried:
‘Since Sparta fails us, let my life be given,
Yea, let me fall a sacrifice, so the gods
Be to our arms propitious!’
‘Nay, what need?’
Came answer. ‘Spake I not, “the cause is yours?”
Athens shall conquer. Then for this thy life,
Brighter amid the glow of victory, choose
And have what boon most pleases.’
But I spake,
Anguished because the hope grew less, and failed
When most in expectation:
‘O my Lord, Refuse me not. Nay, take my life, and grant
Victory, but not without my blood, so shed,
So given, that the triumph evermore
May with my name be knit, and men may know
Not only heroes and the kings of men
Love to the death and perish for their folk!’
Not now He smiled, but drew athwart His brow
A hand, how torn I know not, since such pain
Befalls not gods, unless perchance were here
Prometheus, bearing still, though of the wrath
Of Zeus now free, the marks of that stern watch
Nailed through the palms to stony Caucasus.
But dripping blood He drew it, and I saw,
Not noted sooner, round His head a crown
Far other than the fillets, woven of flowers,
Fresh leaves, and buds sweet-scented, for the brows
Of Pan amid the snow-capped, circling hills
Arcadian. Here was crown none bare before,
Nor shall hereafter, since of thorns, and driven,
Steel-fanged, into the aching brows, above
Eyes that I dared not face, although I knew them
Kind to the uttermost, nay, filled with tears,
If so a god may weep.
He spake:
‘’Tis well. Thou hast thy will. Yet look to run again,
Nor in that race lack fellow, since alone,
By God unholpen, none could bear a boon
As this so mighty.’
Bold I grew and cried:
‘Let not my Lord be angered if I crave
His name whose grace fulfils me, or if Pan
(As some surmise him haunter of these heights)
Or, as I judge, by wounded hands and brows
Painfully stricken, that heroic fame
Of titan-panged Prometheus.’
‘Wherefor crave
A knowledge more than lawful, or enquire
Beyond what to thy just concern belongs?
Pan or Prometheus, call me as thou wilt,
Nor err so doing.’ Thus He spake, nor seemed
Angered in aught, but smiling bade me haste
To those that looked to see my due return.
So from that cave and Presence Athens-ward
I fled, light-hearted, for a word was mine
That warmed me through the biting wind, and held me
Through stub and heath and over stony ways,
Till the blue, dancing waters that I loved
And City of the Gray-eyed Maid I saw.

O friends, what need to speak of what ye know?
The strife whereby the Fennel-field became
The camping ground of Victory, unto us
Victory but to the Persian Nemesis?
The mountains stern with serried spears, the poise
And downward rush to battle, and the last
Fell slaughter where the beached galleys stood
And the barbarian closed about his gear,
Striving amid the ooze and breaking waves?
Here, too, set in the flash and fall of swords
I bore a part (whereof my tribe-folk yet
Keep memory) not ignoble, for my mind
Thought on Protesilaus, how he fell,
First from the galleys beached; perchance the gods
Would grant me honour otherwise to fall
First on the Median vessels, ere the night
Under her shadow drew the flying sails.
So hoped I, erring; for the battle closed
And found me whole, unstruck of any hurt,
Not knowing how the god could keep His word.
When lo! a clamouring voice: ‘Pheidippides!
Pheidippides to Athens! Make them sure,
Our wives and sisters, that the day is ours.’

And with the passion of that glorious morn
I gathered heart, though wearied, cast aside
My shield and buckler, for the course was mine,
My race to Athens. So I rose and ran,
The proud blood mounting in me as I passed
The Fennel-field, the slaughtered Medes, and those,
Though few, my own dear comrades, in the fight
Fallen victorious, evermore to bear
The title of that day to which all days,
Each age that shall befall, must tribute bring
Of honour, crowning these with name withal
‘Strivers at Marathon.’
But as I ran,
Shod with a speed I knew not, far beyond
All swiftness mine, I came aware of One
Who paced beside me, paced with even stride,
My comrade, and I knew Him for a god,
So beautiful of limb, so swift of step,
Though in His radiant progress tracked with blood,
Suffering with every print. Then on my soul
Came vision of the cave on Parnes’ side,
The god amid the heather; and of His word
Mysterious came remembrance, how He spake
I should not lack for fellow when I ran
My race with Death. Now knew I whence He spake,
And knew my end at hand, and with the drought
Glowed yet the deeper glory in my soul.
Thus would I die, thus would I grave my name,
Pheidippides the Runner, far within
The love and memory of the folk I saved,
One with the Heroes, and the Lives that flashed
A momentary splendour, as a fire
That leaps to perish, fed with sacrifice
Of quickening incense. Swifter grew my stride,
Nearer the city, and a mist arose
Robbing mine eyes, but through the darkness loomed
A mighty pageant of advancing towers,
Of marching walls and folk that sat thereon,
Of thronging peoples in the streets; a hum
Filled up mine ears and shut them from all sound
Save His, my comrade’s, as He spake:
‘Rejoice!
Good cheer, Pheidippides, the race is won!
Behold the city gates.’
I saw and knew.
He spake again:
‘I take this life, the cost
Of such a conquest, and a sacrifice
Such as the High Gods reverence, since a boon
Freely surrendered for the hearths and homes,
Temples and tombs, the fireside happiness
Of gods and men, since mortal and divine
Here best commingle. Lo! thy promised gift,
O Martyr-Runner!’
Then a shout arose,
And some there were who seized my hand and cried:
‘What of the battle? Speak, Pheidippides!’
And as night thickened round me, walls and towers
Swaying together, and beneath my feet
Earth rocking rose and fell, I gasped: ‘Rejoice!
We conquer.’
So His word came true that spake
Myself my country’s saviour and by death
Their joyful victim, as the folk know well,
Knowing that in his convoy Hermes drew
No prouder soul nor one more greatly glad,
More prompt towards the ferry, less afeard
To tread the downward path, nor needing less
wast of the lulling rod, since joyed to go
Erect to Hades, cowering not, a soul
Not fugitive, because I bore in death
The boon I craved, and gloried having won,
His boon whose name I know not, mine as mark
Of the High Gods’ compassion and a love
Such as of old they bare unto their Seed
Heroic. Bright in death at Hermes’ side
Glittered my fate, a star; still on my brow,
Whatever gusts with travelling years arise,
It keeps its station, set to send its ray
Far down the paths of Time for evermore.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Venite, Cantemus

Prima Vox

Each mom my soul with prayer and praise
Frequents the gateways of the King,
And, going thence on earthly ways,
Still towards her fountain-head doth sing.

Nor less at eve, when from their lair
The first grey shadows down the air
Scatter like snowflakes, when they fall
To ground in trooping festival,

She singeth Him whose palace-floor
With matted stars is darkness-proof,
And from whose sky-sequestered door
The lurking whirlwinds slink aloof;

Secunda

Whose sway from farthest west doth hold
Unto the orient’s dawn-lit gold,
Even from those rivers where the sun
Waters his steeds when day is done

Unto that mount whence on his way
Leaps forth the glittering Lord of day,
Driving, where’er his bayonets win,
The pickets of the darkness in.

Tertia

Who weighs the tempers in His hand,
And holds the planets at command;

Quarta

Nor from this firmamental blaze,
Disdains to watch our murky ways,

Ordaining over quaggy mires
The will-o’-wisp’s night-errant fires,
Checking their tiny revels quaint,
Keeping their harms in wise restraint.

Prima

Because, as in the greatest thing,
In these small matters is He King,
Knowing they form, though lacking weight,
Harmonious adjuncts to His state.

Secunda

And furthermore ’tis love for us
In care for these preponderates thus,
Because, although the isles are naught
But very small things in His thought;

Tertia

Nor all the continents which glow
Betwixt the zones of heat and snow,
Yea, all this belted earth, could give
His praise its fit prerogative,

Were each o’ the thousand hills a tongue
Shouting its fellow hills among;

Quarta

Nor Lebanon suffice to burn,
For spicy incense, at His urn;

Prima

Yet unto us, who are His care,
He knows the isles are very fair,
And cedar-shadowed Lebanon
A goodly thing to gaze upon.

Omnes

Wherefore my soul can never leave
From praising this eternal King,
But, whether dawn or closing eve,
Still towards her fountain-head doth sing.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Homeward Bound

When through the dwindling hours of day
The Master of its paths has run,
And silent Eve, in handmaid gray,
Draws her calm veil, and day is done,

Tired wings and eyes that love the shade
Their longed-for tryst with darkness keep;
The lilies of the soul are laid
At rest upon the hills of sleep.

And whilst beneath the brooding skies
Night calls her hurrying creatures home,
My spirit too for slumber hies;
Each errant thought must cease to roam,

Recalled on no high thing to rest,
But just a brief, glad space to mark
How, though the sun has left the west,
His humble proxy fights the dark;

This glow-worm, stationed in the grass,
A fairy lantern to the night
Hangs out, whereby I trust to pass
To God, the fountain of its light.

The Eternal Comrade

The Eternal Comrade

I knew Him late? Not so! Our feet have trod
One path since Time began;
Ages ere I was man
This comradeship was known.
And for the love which lives betwixt us twain,
Whose long fulfilment fell to Time alone,
(Since none could of a thing so old and great
The far beginning give or any date
To that which knew nor birth nor travail-pain)
It waxed, but did not wane,
Nor shed its leaves, as human loves which grow
Deciduous, stripped before each whirling snow,
But in deep splendour ran
This root whereof I hold the blossomed rod
Far back into the purposes of God.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Road to Emmaus

So I forget Him? Nay, I do but feign,
As lovers oft in youth’s delightful game
Forget awhile, because their love is set
Too deep, they know, to falter or forget,
Nor needeth to be bound by other chain
Than knowledge of the love betwixt these twain.
How think you? Though in whatsoe’er disguise
My Lord should wrap Him from his lover’s eyes,
Neither in garb nor lineament the same,
Yet—think you! if He came!
Would not my foot to Him instinctive turn?
Would not my soul, that knew Him
And swerved its glance unto Him,
With sudden, secret, swift allegiance burn?
O most observant, most alert of men!
Why, you who blame me did not mark how then
He passed me, knowing that I knew Him there,
Knowing me, though I looked not neither stirred
Nor spake to Him a word,
Assuredly of my Lord not unaware.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Christos Immanens

I know whose fingers fell with light caress,
I know whose whispered word
My sinking spirit stirred
And soothed this dull distress.
How can I help but know Him, since He lies
In every path apparent to my eyes,
Unmasked by every lifting wind, and known
By shadow with each shaft of sunlight thrown,
Revealed with every breeze
That draws apart the green skirts of the trees?
It were less strange should I move unaware
Of this firm sod, this circumambient air,
Than if I knew Him not whose way must lie
Beside my own for all eternity.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Seekers

I sought Him in the trodden paths of men,
The tide of life, the traffic’s surge and press;
Nor in the silence less
I sought and found, where lurked aloof from ken
The shrinking folk, each woodland denizen
And every timid life that from the eyes
Of glaring Day to patch and hummock flies,
To waving bent, or where the clustered sedge
The mead infringed with wet and perilous edge,
And June’s wild roses bloomed, the covert’s crown,
With ruffling leaves above the shining brook
That through dark ways its dimpled journey took.
Nor vainly on the plunging wilderness
Of climbing waves towards iron heights that frown
At niggard Heaven, that looks in anger down,
I sought the Love whose pleading looks pursue
All paths whereby I pass;
To whom all ways I knew
Were as a mould and glass,
And every wind a rumour, every tone
An echo charged with mandates to His own.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Sunset on the Red Sea

A waste of steel-dark waters, and a line
Of never-ending crags that bear no tree,
Nor any sign
Of life where never aught of life could be,
Which frowned, when noon was high,
In pitiless compact with the beating sky!
Dusk falls! And in the wake of burning Day,
With blazing scimitar,
And eyes that flame afar,
The Angel of the Sunset comes this way,
And cloaks the brows of every rigid height
With royal venture of outfolding night.
Was it not well that He
Who with His presence Heaven and Earth fulfils,
Who gave white crests and thunder to the sea,
And to the land its grace
Of sliding waters, blowing winds, green face,
Should crown His glory thus, in that He spills
His richest sunsets on the desolate hills?

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Vestigia

I

‘As oft within a forest one may know
By broken twig, and herb that, lately pressed,
Not yet has wholly reared its slanting crest,
His track whose feet have trod,
By witness of the leaf and conscious sod,
The yielding ways an hour since—even so,
Meeting this flower, a snow-white speck that shines
Scarce visible ’neath this palm, and yon strange bird,
Whose restless steps a secret knowledge speak,
How well my soul divines
That He has passed this way whom now I seek!’

So spake I musing. Straight a finger stirred
The whispering fronds, and at my ear I heard
A voice that answered: ‘Foolish, slow to see!
Why “passed”? Behold me even now with thee!’

II

I looked, but saw not. Spake the voice again:
‘O blind of heart and erring! Canst thou mark
The babbling turf, yet see not where I stand
Whose dominant presence shuts thy either hand?
It matters not. Then go
Still forward, doubting nothing—nay, but know
Thou canst not miss Me nor desire in vain
To see Me, since the very road whereby
Thy stumbling footsteps move, that road am I,
Alike the sun that cheers thee and the dark
That soothes thy spirit. Exult, for thou shalt see
Myself whom now thou bear’st unseen with thee.’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Light in Light

The thoughts that were the spring of all my life,
The hopes that were auxiliar to the strife,
Blind with industrious folly, I never knew;
But deemed that otherwhere
The fountains rose whereby my life ran fair,
And in the fervid sky
Discerned the governant eye
Which on my deeds compelling influence threw.

Vain spirit, all too weak
To hearken, where a thousand martyrs speak!
For all thy busy thought, too slow to guess
What trumpet-tongued the heavens confess,
What shines on every sunlit wing,
In candid lily’s pencilling,
And in the scarlet forehead of the rose
Burns, like a lamp amid league-stretching snows!
Become the witness’ slave,
I missed the message which the witness gave,
Nor read that blazoned vesture; pointing hands
I saw, which testified to braver lands
And from light’s realm afar
Led to the night where shone my regnant star,
Yet followed not, because—the chief of blame!—
So pilgrim once, grown tame
To Beauty’s lure, Thought fluttered pinion-lame.
Ah! not till all things failed,
Saw I what gentle pulse through all prevailed,
The magic lapse of light from purer air
Pervasive of the noontide’s treacherous glare!
Nor was it till the darkness fell
I knew the stars that guided me so well!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Sun’s Darlings

There is a spot, dim-seen behind our trees,
Where for a space, ere sunny hours are told,
Whoever goes goes garmented in gold;
And I, to take my ease,
Oft-times, my book flung idly on my knees,
That transitory company behold,
Yea, much have mused and marvelled as they went
In sun-brave pilgrimage magnificent.
By largesse of that generous ample air
Enwrapped with light beyond an angel’s dream,
The beggar moves; nor king, if king were there,
More glorious than his meanest hind would gleam.
No eyes but mine behold this daily show,
The folk, the clinging glow,
The ruddy stems of that majestic road.
I watch my fellows go,
Priest, labourer, child, the coolie with his load,
All, man or woman, playing lad or maid,
In one obliterating pomp arrayed.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Deoli Verses

I

In the rising moon
Waters greyly shimmer;
Lamps of fairy revel
Set the grass aglimmer.
Through a sea of light
Mounted (heavenly swimmer!)
Raying out a beauty
Foiling skill of limner,
Shedding radiance forth
From celestial brimmer
(Elvish link and lantern
Waxing dim and dimmer),
Looks the goddess now—behold her!—
O’er the simul’s shoulder!

II

Now from the darkening river
Chill breaths arise;
Athwart the rose-cheeked sunset
A parrot flies;
The noise of driven cattle
And children’s play
Sinks; and the emerald barbets
Fade into grey;
The flowers of oleander
Pale from their red;
A fox laughs in the jungle;
Day is dead.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The New Year

Red berries on the banyan!
And in the pipal-tree
The sickle of a silver moon
Most beautiful to see!

Red berries on the holly!
And in the apple-leaves
A waxen gleam of mistletoe,
A ruffling stir, a silver glow,
White beard and sickle’s glint which show
A Druid ghost of long ago
That gathers in his sheaves!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Queens in Provence

From Eastern suns a space
Winning welcome grace
And seeking the fair face
Of orchard-snowy Kent,
Once by Rhone I went
When Spring had run before,
Touching with her wand from drowsing
Sweet Provence, on lovers olden
Dreaming and the vanished mornings golden.
Halting through the coverts wild,
Spring and ‘frail Aprìl,’ her child,
Magic comers, swift to illume
Hills with flaming bush of broom,
Rods of blest arousing
Bearing (as it would befall
With racers in God’s Lupercal),
And flinging,
Mount and valley o’er,
Endless store
Of lilac-bloom,
Almond, pear, and cherry,
Buds and music’s lilt
Through the green ways spilt.
Mad and merry,
Plunging, leaping, singing,
Rhone with flowers of foam his hoar
Locks adorned, and from each joyous wave
To pulse of those wild pipings answer gave.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Invitation

Come through my ways, O Love,
With flutings and with songs, and call about
Thy happy, joyful rout,
Drunk with the Spring’s first voices and the wine
Of life that flowed like honey from the rock.
This was a grove
And garden erst; the trees, now tattered, frayed,
With apples bowed; dark plum and apricock,
Soft peach and nectarine,
Here grew, where now the poisonous creepers twine.
Tired wind, that, seeking sweet, dost vainly blow,
Be thou my summoner, and let Love know
This plot his father for an orchard made,
To nod with flower and harvest; every stock
That now with lifeless thorns the place encloses
Was one of myriad slaves that lifted up
Drink in a kingly cup,
And baskets crammed with blossoms white and red
Bore for a Royal Master on its head;
Yea, through the alleys spread
A blowing sea and wilderness of roses.

But Conrad says: No lure
For Love is here, where flowers nor fruits endure.
The koel’s sweet voice is silent; in the sun
No flashing barbets wheel, no peacocks run;
The jay’s harsh rasp tears through the thicket’s tangle;
Kites shrilly scream; and daws and parrots wrangle.
Nor would my bugle’s blast Love hither lead,
Since he but horns of honeyed flowers will heed.
Yet, if he knew, perchance
For pity’s sake he would himself Spring’s dance
Pipe to my borders, yea, would bring along,
Beyond Hope’s bravest dreams, both bud and song.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Dear Earth Of Flowers

Dear Earth of flowers,
Wind-shaken bowers,
Heather-hapt fells,
And desolate stormy places!
Great spaces
Washed clean with sunbeams and with breezes blowing!
Rosy with sowing
Of fairy hosts that sang, and sufferers’ fancies!
Wavy with foxglove bells
And grass and clover, dressing
Thy delicate, dimpled vales!
Noisy with nightingales
And cuckoo, bawling blessing!
Lovely with upturned faces
Of children and of pansies!
Shining with lovers’ eyes
And dance of dawn,
And sweet with talk and laughter’s light replies!
Earth! I have loved thee so,
That, going hence, I swear I do not know
On what celestial lawn
Hereafter I shall find
A garden to my mind!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Evening

Here, in my quiet toil apart,
My verse remembers still
The passions of my former heart,
My fierce tempestuous will.
I put my ragged duster by,
I lay the worn chalk down,
I do not hear the jackal’s cry,
The tomtoms of the town.
The perished years long shadows cast,
And on my spirit’s wall
Rich hues by music’s power amassed
And eager figures fall.
Then, in the tranquil words I write
A wind of memory makes
Such stir as in our Indian night
May ruffle sleeping lakes.
So in their moat at Mandalay
The lotus-blossoms dream
Of queens and emperors far away
And Time’s fast-running stream.
Dark fires along their castled banks
Beneath the wan moon burn;
With pomp of drum and marshalled ranks
The exiled years return.
From Irawadi’s depths the ghosts
Of buried glories glide,
And o’er the drowsing plain long hosts
Of vanished warriors stride,
Till even through Amarapura blows
A stirring breath, where sit
The Buddhas in eternal doze
While bat-winged centuries flit.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Cricket-Pitch

To choose a pitch we walk.
How beautiful beneath the drowsy skies
Of falling eve the quiet landscape lies,
And in this gracious air
The white roofs of the Lepers’ Home how fair!
I gaze, we talk.
What say’st thou, friend? Mine eyes
Unearthly glory fills, nor is there found
Within mine ear a way for human sound.
Some unseen power hath touched all things, and now
All ghost am I, and thou.
This mortal scene dissolves, nor can I see
If comrades still we tread eternity,
But in what meadows dim with light I stride
I marvel, and whose voice is at my side.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Travelling Waters

Lo, as a mighty river, plunging still
Towards the ocean, father of his rest,
Doth oft-times feel within his surging breast
Deep waters from afar, that for a space
He pauses, in the joys of that embrace
Forgetful of his quest—
So I at whiles, before the climbing swell
From that profound wherein I haste to dwell,
In God forgetting God, with stabbing thrill,
Whenas those waves my deepening channel fill,
Rejoice through all my soul’s increasing river
With leaping shock and strong ecstatic quiver,
Knowing what waters from that home forerun,
The Father’s greeting to the travelling son.
Thereafter, when the ebb flows seaward back,
The tension falls, the tight-held currents slack;
By changing banks that ever fade to view,
I take my firm exultant march anew.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Lepers’ Hymn

I heard the lepers singing as I went
Towards the jungle; gleamed ahead the line
Sharp-green of sal-trees; silent earth gave sign
Of rain to fall; no less my soul, long dry,
Catching from lips of pain that thankful cry,
Grew ’ware of showers and, rapt to nobler mood,
To graver musings turned and thoughts which blent,
Diverse, to one consent
(For who, so blest, would dare division make
Of lesser from the greater gratitude?)
As thus: the Word
Became flesh; and this eve the drought will break
In torrents; rice to-morrow will be springing;
And God to-day has heard
The lepers singing.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Street-Lamp

Here in this light we met; and, though the street
Is trodden daily by ten thousand feet,
This score of years no other folk I see,
But still the road is walked by only Thee.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Rest’s Golden Crown

The sun drops low, the moon, hung face-to-face,
Waits for her hour; a whispering, sudden gust
Dances amid the dust,
And stirs the trees from calm,
Bursting upon their silence like the psalm
Which from a saint’s long meditation leaps,
Crowning with foam of praise his spirit’s deeps.
It sinks, and in their spreading tops again
Quiet her kingdom keeps,
While sunset tints their trunks with ruddy grain.
Men seek their homes, the noise of day dies down;
Still Heaven experts the grace
Which on her aching brows Rest’s golden crown
Will set, a peace from pain,
And gentler radiance through all paths will shed
Of light which lives not till all light is dead.

Conrad of Elsass saith: O Soul, of Him
Thou dream’st who shines when other lights are dim!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Dream and Drift

Ah, fondest, dost thou hear what speech they use,
Who these thy days of careless ease accuse,
Thy brothers, busied in their tasks of might,
Who of thy labours deem
As feathers wind-blown, light,
And this thy life esteem
A thing of drift and dream?
Nay, even they that love thee well proclaim
(Lo, One)
Though once he strove, he strives no more, but now
He sits with idle hands and folded brow,
(Another saith)
Or silent moves amid the market-place,
His toil undone, the while to others’ need
He bends his strength.
(A Third speaketh)
Now song and eager grace
Conrad forgets, and fast to Time’s dim shore
His life drifts on the hours. But little heed,
Whatever billows threat or tempests roar,
Is his who floats without all strife or aim.

Conrad of Elsass saith: As God’s own gift,
For golden praise their speech I humbly take;
And do confession make
There is both dream and drift.
Yet into dreams, perchance, of other Eyes
The glow may pierce, with light from other skies.
And, Brothers, well I know
Beneath my bark what currents strongly flow;
For God is Spirit, and a Breath that sweeps,
Ranging all seas, all tides, all outer deeps.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Garden

Carrying grief
Of heart and bitter unbelief,
Lord, I have lost the world, and now to-day
My mind with broodings slay.
(Ah, show me Thy mercy!)
A naked grove I stand,
Whence yellow drifts are flying
Down the wind
Of autumn, that with rifling hand
Runs along the branches thinned
And leaves all crumpled, wrinkled, dying.
(Ah, show me Thy mercy!)
Fain would I bud and fruit again,
If Thou, Thou only wronged, my sinful pain
Wouldst pardon and my dark repentance vain.
Not the lost years restore, but bid the spring
Through my undefeated borders sing
With rustling boughs and swaying
Breast of bell and bud and emerald spraying.
(Ah, show me Thy mercy!)
Thou lovest gardens and to walk in shade,
And therefor Conrad’s soul a garden made,
Which perishes of thirst, but yet can bear
(So Thou return) red buds to adorn Thy hair,
And such a turf of lilies tall unfold
As danced and laughed about
Thy feet of old.
(Ah, show me Thy mercy!)

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Room

Now in the temple of my mind
Hath sorrow made for Thee a habitation.
Here wilt Thou find
A space swept clear, wherein no speck remains
From Thy late sudden flaw
Which flung through windows wide
My tattered rags, and wisdom’s sorry pride
Of garnered scripts, each wisp and cherished straw,
My dead years’ precious gains.
Fierce was the wind that blew,
And I, with grief that saw,
And terror’s hate, my chamber empty made,
Wailed in my wrath, nor guessed Thy Love to ride
The dreadful storm of that swift visitation;
Nor, as I watched dismayed,
In that rude clamour knew
The Sacred Breath so long
Invoked, and summoned oft in idle song.

Conrad of Elsass saith: With empty hands
I bid Thee to Thy room that empty stands.
Poor is the man that once was rich, and Thou,
Unbribed, for Love’s dear sake must enter now.
Yea, Conrad saith again, The hour grows late;
The lamp is lit; ah, Kingly Heart, I wait!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Friend of Friends

Dear, busy friend,
Forbear the eager love thou dost intend!
And set without
Thy lighted lamp! To-morrow I will heed
Thy gracious speech, and from a poor heart give
All thanks I may. But now
This restless mind, and thoughts so fugitive,
Fain would I fix on One that is His own
Full converse. Neither vex thy mind with doubt
What Conrad means; my own heart’s undertone,
Though none were by, of this shy guest would drown
The whispered word, and His low voice beat down.
This silent space allow
To darkness, for in Heaven the Moon shines clear,
And in thy flickering glim
Diviner lamps grow dim.

Conrad of Elsass says: With that thin flame,
On my bare walls a dance of shadows came.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Garden Hedged

‘Who was it wrought Thy hurt?’
‘Myself, O friend.
Thy house sharp stones defend,
And wastes of cruel thorn.
I wrenched the hedge apart, because a call
I heard, that rang through shuddering night’s black hall.
My feet are cut, my face and hands are torn.’

‘That hedge is old; long since the jungle grew,
And spiky creepers threw
Round bush and splintered rock their armed clasp.
The lightning leaps, the thunder follows hard!
Heaven’s brow, like Thine, is scarred!
The hot rains hiss! In such a night, ah! who
Would strive to pass my garden’s bitter bourn?
The spine, the stone, the scorpion, lurking asp?
Didst Thou not know the night was dark?’
‘I knew.’

Conrad of Elsass says: My friends were wise,
That would not tempt this dangerous earth and skies
With storm and demons racked. O Friend, I’m glad
Thy name is Love; for only Love is mad!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Love’s Pilgrim

Now script and scroll
I put aside; arrived, I will not leave
Thy chamber, Love, till I have learnt the whole.
My feet have found the goal,
That did not know the way.
That did not know? Ah, what is this I say?
That did not know? For, though I went unknowing,
Too busy with my dreams, that built afar
A city of God, to catch from leaf and bird
Thy whispered, wandering word,
Or dawn’s red-blazoned witness to receive,
Yet wast Thou not the road
Whereby through youth my confident footsteps strode?
And was not that Thy realm, on either side
Mocking with glory my unheeding pride,
Rich fields whose dancing beauty was Thy sowing,
Yea, rippled ways where winds and sunbeams clustered
And summer’s scarlet-liveried warriors mustered?
Thou hast undone the gate
Of this Thy house, my Lord; here let me wait,
Though suns and seasons fade, and moon and star
Pale from the scriptured skies. Thou hast from me
All grief and change, all time and loss, shut out,
And Death can be
Only a wind that vainly beats without.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

A Wind of Question

This brief day will pass, surely pass,
And many at the Name
Of Him I worship cast reproach and blame.
Yea, men will say, ‘Alas!
This man, so poor, so broken, at the end
Was lost, for all he boasted God his friend.
Admit him weak, a fool beyond belief,
A child for silly pride,
And bowed with childish fears and childish grief;
But yet he loved; and in his strength he tried.
Ah, could not He
That raised the dead and made the blind to see
Have caused it that His servant had not died?’

So men will speak, and so
Will through their homes a wind of question blow,
And clamour of tongues awake
Along Earth’s ways, an hour, ere friends forget
That Conrad’s sun has set.
But Thou, that little heed
Of men’s wild words and wilder thoughts dost take,
Behold Thy servants jealous for Thy sake!
And, lo, how love dare duty’s bounds exceed!
Yea, Conrad asks, grown bold:
What thing is this, hereafter to be told,
That Thou, a King, dost unto service call,
Yet leave Thy sons amid dark ways to perish,
Unhelped to stray and fall,
For all Thy Name that in their death they cherish?

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

This Sword of Verse

This sword of verse I bear within my hand
The years have fashioned; thus, and thus,
I bade; But they, for higher mandate that they had,
With patient eyes elsewhere to my command
Not hearkened, neither wrought it as I planned,
But damascened with shining joys and clad
The hilt with gems that make the gazer glad,
And plunged in hissing griefs the bitter brand.

Yet men, that dream not of the heats which made,
Chide the sure poise and beauty of the blade,
Till cold its master seems and wrapt apart.
The brightness blinds.—To you this truth appears:
No warrior wields it, but a child, whose heart
Is weak and troubled oft with causeless tears.

1915.

War Poems

Questi Non Vide

Questi non vide mai l’ultima sera,
Ma per la sua follia le fu sì presso,
Che molto poco tempo a volger era.

Or ti piaccia gradir la sua venuta;
Libertà va cercando, che e sì cara,
Come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta.

He never saw his life’s last evening burn,
But by his madness has he been so near,
That very little space remained to turn.

Now thou upon his coming grace confer;
He follows Freedom, she that is so dear,
As that man knows who gives his life for her.

— Dante, Purgatorio, Canto I

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Your Friendly Mess³

In the old days, when eve by eve
Our punctual foe let fly at
Our trenches, ere we garred him leave
His burrows by Sannaiyat,

How often sunset’s ‘orbed blaze’
(A phrase not mine, but Keble’s)
Has seen me treading devious ways
Towards the street called Peebles!⁴

And, with that word my guiding clue,
I sought your Mess at leisure,
And proved the northern adage true,
That Peebles stands for Pleasure.

Then, when a later day broke dim
Above the Mounds of Slaughter,
And, Starved and cold from vigil grim,
I went in search of water,⁵

A rosy splendour pierced the gloom
And succour came, unsought, on;
I saw above a hillock loom
The giant form of Haughton,

And knew at hand your friendly Mess,
And found, ere men count twenty,
A table spread i’ the wilderness,
With meat and drink in plenty.

So, Friends, accept, for gracious hours,
What casual rhymes I’ve mustered,
Nor chide the Muse for faded flowers,
Where once the Spring shone clustered.

Straining through desert ways, her floods
Have sanded up and silted;
Her groves have dropped their crimson buds;
Her crowns have scorched and wilted.

Yet still, though Song her Spring forget,
Through stern and prosperous weather
I’d find your kindness flowering yet;
And, could we come together,

Then Mac and I would greet again
In Eastern phrase and lingo;
Thornhill would talk of birds: of crane,
Owl, bustard, and flamingo:

Of the avocet that fell with cold,
As Caspianward she flighted:
The hawks that screamed in Ajik’s hold,
To know their eyrie sighted;

And critic Mellis’ face would glow
With meek, derisive wonder;
While Haughton’s burly tones hung slow
I’ the air, like buttered thunder;

And those worn eyes, that Shaiba fight
And comrades dead remember,
Would smile, as evening’s crystal light
Sank into flame and ember.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Tale of Death

(January-July, 1916.)

From Orah, Felahiyeh,
Sannaiyat, Hanna, Sinn,
Dujaileh, Nasiriych,
The tale of death came in.

Death, where the soldier stands,
Burnt in an eight-foot trench;
Death, in the blinding sands;
Death, in the desert’s stench;
Death, where the reedbeds’ mesh
Traps, and the Arabs prowl;
Death, in the fly-blown flesh
And the water scant and foul;
Death, where the flarelights fall,
An hour ere dawn’s faint flush,
And we jump the garden wall
(Six hundred yards to rush);
Death, where the P-boats go,
Packed with their huddled pain;
Death, where the strong tides flow
By Busra to the main;
Death, where the wind’s hot breath
Fails, and the fierce seas burn;
Death, in the docks; and death,
Where the stretchers wait their turn.

From Nasiriyeh and Sinn
The tale came in;
And the shark-tracked ships went down
To Bombay town.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Ali Gharbi: Winter, 1915-1916

A bitter wind that tears the river’s cheek;
A sky cloud-massed;
And long grey hills that thrust up shoulders vast
As Cumbrian fells; barges, a monitor;
And, by the brimming edge, mud towers that lift
Like seagirt cables, wrapt with flying drift;
A hawk, two crows, of gulls a screaming score;
And, fading into distance, sole ’twixt here
And Kut, a branching tree; and palms that stand,
Wind-cuffed, scarce ten in all, a draggled band;
Three more trees near;
Where desert was, a marsh most foul and bleak!
And this is Ali Gharbi!
Our Mesopotamian Derby!
Change here for Sinn and Hanna and Sannaiyat,
For bullet’s scream and cannon’s crash and riot,
And enter our enchanted land of pain,
Which whoso enters comes not forth again,
Save bearing eyes that hold, while living last,
Remembrance of past grief that is not past,
That flare, when things once seen to memory start,
Amid all fairest glories dazed and blind,
Since here you leave behind
Childhood’s gay, innocent heart,
Here, where Earth’s bravest slaughter and are slain.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Day, With His Brazen Quiver

Day, with his brazen quiver
And darts of dangerous fire,
Faints; and the hot hours tire;
The flickering West grows dim,
And Night comes crowned from the desert’s rim.
Lifting a gracious face,
The moon keeps pace for pace;
Proud of his golden scales, old Tigris gleams.
The Arabs at our side,
With clapping hands and touch of strings, below
Make music, as we ride
On where the great gales blow.
Now Sleep with his sheaf of poppies
Comes from the willow-coppice,
The silvery-sandalled, swift in his feathered stride,
Walking the happy river
And sowing the dark with dreams.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Strange Are His Ways

Strange are His ways! He gives their hearts repose
And inward strength, whose bodies near their foes.
His friendship makes a flower-strewn path through Hell.
Yea (Conrad saith),
Surely His ways are strange; Strange and hard to spell.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Pilgrim’s Progress

Poor, he waxes unto rich estate,
Tigris, by the desert stripped and shorn,
Tigris, wandering through his maize and thorn,
Tigris, pacing through his groves of date.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Night at Q’alit Salih

The unhasting stream, unruffled, deep, and placid;
The long mud walls, the mirrored groves of date;
Clamour of frogs and crickets; in the sky
The marshfowl’s cry;
When lo! the dusk is stirred;
White sail aloft, and like a giant bird,
Moving along the river’s glassy face
A boat glides in, dim with mysterious state,
Fades down the night; and all
Is as the years had fled, and left no trace
Since days of thine, Harun-ar-Rasid!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Norfolk Hill, Evening

Wrinkled river, drifting,
Drifting down,
In the restless, ever-shifting
Tides to drown,
Late you carried, lapsing slow,
Barges brimmed with human woe.

Wrinkled river, flowing
Deep and strong,
Know you that with you are going
Grief and wrong,
Pain and miseries late that vexed,
Memories and a mind perplexed?

Wrinkled river, bearing
Lives of men,
Here are boats of ours, now faring
Home agen,
Petty wrath and restlessness
Merging in a large distress.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Q’urna Reaches, August

Roses and stars in her raiment,
Roses and stars in her hair—
Here is no Queen of Twilight
Ruling the snow-soft air;
Never the Dawn, with shoulders
Silverly wimpled and clad,
Rosy-fingered, a Maiden,
Rises serene and glad.

Sunset forgets her splendour,
Morning her crimson dye;
Dim are the dusty fingers
That open the darkened sky.
Swiftly the Sun upspringing
Glares with his dreadful eye;
Faint in the Giant’s presence
The great lands wearily lie,
Till over the glimmering meadows
Gnat and poisonous fly
Flock to the boat in her moorings,
And Sleep the Desired goes by.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Umm-El-Hanna⁶

Wintry winds, and a morn
From which the memory blenches!
Tread lightly over the thorn
And the clean-cut, untouched trenches!

They watched through the bitter night,
Crofter and English yeoman;
Or ever the East grew light,
Their feet were swift to the foeman.

The parching months flagged by,
And the guns unconquered thundered;
Their shrivelling skins grew dry,
And their limbs by the beasts were sundered.

Blest as in yew-tree shade
Or by their Highland heather,
They slumber, who watched and prayed,—
Quietly lying together.

Tread lightly over the thorn,
And by the salt-plant bushes!
Peace shall harvest her corn
Here, where are reeds and rushes.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

L. B. G.⁷

The brittle, parched mimosa
Stands stacked before the guns;
Dried is the Arab spinach,
Where partridge make their runs;
Now tamarisk, stripped of tassels,
A rusty brush puts out
For green that waved so bravely
Through all the summer’s drought.

The jerboa from his castle
Surveys the desert wide;
All heedless of the shrapnel
The harriers swoop and glide;
The brooding, mournful buzzard
Sits on the signal-poles,
And hears the crackling brushwood,
The scurrying mice and voles.

But in forsaken trenches
Are banks of living green;
As in a lane of England
Shy leaves put forth unseen;
Dwarf willows by the water
Remember as in dream
The waiting, patient music
Of leaf and wind and stream.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Pastures of Sannaiyat

The pastures of Sannaiyat
Are flanked with grass and reeds;
The pastures of Sannaiyat,
Where now the plover feeds.
Black partridge saunters slowly
Along the thorn-cracked walls,
And sand-grouse unto sand-grouse
Across the river calls.

The pastures of Sannaiyat
Lie broad ’twixt stream and sedge;
The marsh’s silver mirrors
God gave the land for hedge.
’Twixt tamarisk and papyrus
A tongue of sand He thrust,
Where jerboas build their burrows
And scurry through the dust.

And Tigris, racing seaward,
Remembers here a space
The storm of human anguish
That swept the desert’s face.
The flocks are grey hyenas,
And here the jackal feeds—
On the pastures of Sannaiyat,
Sannaiyat flanked with reeds.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Wadi⁸

Wind that in the Wadi
Sett’st the scrub asighing,
In the Wadi, where the grouse are crying!
Like the souls of men
Homeward fleeting,
Through the wintry heavens the fowl their way are beating.

Stream that in the Wadi
Sett’st the grass aswaying,
In the Wadi, where the waves are playing!
Like the souls of men
Homeward going,
Down the racing stream the silvered waves are flowing.

You that saw men die,
Wind and stream! Reply!
After all our pain
Does no trace remain,—
None; but flying
Wings, and crying
Fowl, and weeds and water sighing?

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Remembrance

When I remember all the ways I went
Companioned as was never man before
Companioned, even so the heart grows sore
With too much pain of musing, memories blent
Of joy and sorrow, thoughts of bruise and fall
And petty wrongs that wake to tyrannize
The man that lives their thrall,
For all his friendly skies.

Ah, Lord, at last to think on other things!
The woods, with trembling wings
Aflutter, and with glimmer of golden light
Most glowing and with emerald leafage bright!
The flower-sown darkened ways with bean and clover
Rich-scented! Dusk that sought her poet-lover,
With ruffling step and breath of clustered roses!
And, dim to maple-closes,
The owls slow-flitting from the roads, the skelter
Of furry lives to shelter!
Dear Wind, my friend, the o’erclambered bushes shake
And flood the wearied brain
With breath of rose and honeysuckle again!
Dear Wind, my friend, awake,
That Night may come, tall Night, my Mother, bringing
A sound of nightingales and rivers singing,
Of woodlands murmuring and of blossoms swaying,
Of homing wings, of little children praying,
Of life and wandering tides that seek the deep;
That Night may come, and after Night come Sleep!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Meadow-Rose

Thy love is a meadow-rose,
Which clings to the earth, and grows
Away from the wind, with blossoms whose opened face
Of wonder and innocent grace
Meets children, marvelling on their joyous ways
Where the crimson lamps of the poppy blaze
In the southward-streaming wind, and the purple light
Of the orchis-torches makes the tall grass bright.

The rose by its scent is known,
Its golden heart and ivory petals spreading,
Globes of light in the branches thickly sown,
And a sward for the elves’ gay treading.
Lover of Souls, Thy place is
In the wind-swept, grass-grown, desolate spaces,
Where the air blows sweet
And cool to the brows of Thy roaming child,
And a path worn smooth by the punctual feet
Of Thy ministering friends leads over the wild.

Upper Tigris, August, 1916.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Mind-Valleys

In the green valleys
Where never wind blows,
Light of days forgotten
Lives at daylight’s close.

Springs I once rejoiced in
All their sweets disclose;
Pomegranate-blossom,
Mayflower, and rose;

Summer’s belts of heather,
Slopes of bramble-rose;
Autumn’s every fruit-tree
There in thickets grows.

Down the green lawns
And by the stream grows
All of fruit and flower
That Memory knows.

Folded far, and hidden,
Whose way no man knows,
Deep lies the valley
Beyond its girdling snows.

Here is only winter,
Chill, with early snows;
The Tree of Life stripped,
With death in its repose.

Yet dreams perchance may wander,
In the tired mind’s repose,
Down the green valleys
Where never wind blows.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

To William Canton

Friend beloved from the years when three in our circle met,
Three—and the youngest lies in our Mother's arms at rest!—
Lover and friend grow far; and eyes that have hurt I forget;
Not yours, old comrade-guide, of friends the bravest and best.

Tigris Front, December, 1916.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Christmas, 1916

Over Tigris sinks the sun;
All the golden West’s aflare;
Hearths are lit in Heaven; and One,
Peace, the crownèd Mother, there
Welcomes home from battle’s tide
Sons that for the Kingdom died.

Once, beside an inland main,
Wrapped with flying mists of morn,
Stood a King, from night and pain
Summoning His friends forlorn:
‘Lo,’ He said, ‘your gained desire!
Near to Me is near the Fire!’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The New Moon

Walketh now a Lady
Whom the dusks attire,
Through the dim heavens
Wafting holy fire.

Crescent with our hopes once,
Ere the dawn’s disclose,
Over long Dujaileh
Even thus she rose.

Far above the desert
Where our hopes lie slain,
Lo, she wafteth incense
Up the night of pain.

Famèd Kut is fallen,
Townshend he is gone,
In Hanna and Sannaiyat
The dead slumber on.

Lady, with thine incense
Let our prayers ascend!
Priestess, with tiny worship
Let our worship blend!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Companionship

(In Memory of my Brother, Second-Lieutenant, Civil Service Rifles; attached King’s Royal Rifles; killed in action, Flanders, January 13, 1917.)

The desert flushed; the river’s glassy calm
Was lit with glowing red;
Rose-tinged, the shadows fell of ranked palm
And drooping zizyph. But not more aflame
Was that deep West than my sad heart, whereon
Far braver sunset shone,
Till my dark thoughts became
A garden ruddy-stemmed,
Wherein though Night’s mysterious presence showed
Were whispering winds that prophesied the hour
When her dim brows would be star-diademed,
And carried through the grove’s long depth proclaim
Hereafter of a dawn’s awakening power.
One newly-dead
Was with me, and in mystic, blest communion
Three sundered loves found union;
For with the spirit came One,
My dead of olden days,⁹ who cherished well
The royal-hearted, blameless boy who fell
In Flanders, wearing valour’s deathless flower.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Lieutenant Sowter

Our seven days’ guest, he came and went his ways,
Walking the darkness garlanded with praise.
Our seven days’ guest! Yet love that this man gained
Others have scarce in three-score years attained.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Lieutenant Scarth

Night fell, and slowly o’er the blood-bought mile
They brought a broken body, frail but brave;
A boy who carried into death the smile
With which he thanked for water that we gave.
Steadfast among the steadfast, those who kept
The narrow flank whereby the Leicesters swept,
Amid the mounded sands of ancient pride
He sleeps where Grattan fell and Adams died.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

For L. A. Fowke

Red jacket, shimmering up the field of fight,
Whose magic turns the sleet of death aside,
With Garibaldi’s shirt, by shining right,
Hereafter worthy to be magnified!
Red jacket, marking which the watcher knows
That yonder through the storm of battle goes
A gallant gentleman, our wittiest voice
In Mess, who made our wastes so oft rejoice
And did the dusty camp and trudge beguile
With jest that moved the philosophic smile!
Now onward stalks Bellona’s tallest son,
And now to bind a stricken comrade bends.—
Red jacket, bring him safe! For he is one,
Like Agathon, longed after by his friends.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

You That Are Forest-Elves

Now that the ways are hoar,
Fronted with wintry white,
My feet shall be no more
Where once was their delight;
Shadow of oak and elm
No more be shadow of mine!
Nor mine be any realm
Whereon the sun doth shine!

You that are forest-elves,
Serving your wayward Queen,
Question not in yourselves
What this my speech may mean;
Nor say: He loved full near
All seasons, neither held
Summer than Spring more dear,
Or March by May excelled.

But search your ways, and see
How the cypress’ slender spire
Towers, an alien tree,
Blanching the woods’ green fire!
Now Death in the leafless glades
Walks, burning with frost the boughs
In whose covert a life is laid
No voice of mine shall rouse.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

For the Lord of the Harvest

Having Thee, my life lacks nothing, and I know
All my years have caught fulfilment, as when blow
Fields that long have waited, and there mingles, sweet,
Pomp of flowers and climbing clover with the wheat.
All my ways are now a pleasaunce, nor wilt Thou,
Whiles though flowers o’erflaunt the harvest, and a brow
Flushed and crimson poppies lift, and blossomed dreams
Tint the crowded fruitage more than well beseems,
Turn askance, as merchants might, and look with scorn.
Seeing Thou art Lord of Harvest, flowers and corn
Both alike Thou claimed, Thou that canst transmute
Wine from water, no less simply flowers to fruit.
Chaffering market-terms and foolish talk of price
Thou hast bidden far, for Whom the fields suffice;
And the winds Thy merchants are, that loudly blaze
‘Here is Harvest, here a King has blessed our ways.’
Centuries hence, within my fields let eyes unborn
See Thee, crowned with poppies, walk and pluck the corn!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Wings of Flame

Lacking Thee, my tent was empty, when there came
O’er the sands and scorched desert wings of flame,
Brightness such as never Morning on the heights
Shed, and clearness far surpassing starry nights;
Wings (of flame for brightness, but their coming Airs
Cool as evening) caught my spirit unawares;
And I knew Thee, as of old on inland waves
Walker, and the Friend of mad ones haunting graves,
Seeking now to Conrad’s tent and lonely days,
Through the bitter noon and desert’s shifting haze.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Dreamer

Dreaming as I toil, and toiling as I dream,
Through the Day of Works I pass, as through a stream,
Wade as through a stream, and with a hand shade o’er
Eager eyes bedimmed, that watch the further shore.

Blinded oft I go; men that mark it say,
‘Dazed and lost is Conrad; dazed, with mind astray’;
Yet the stream I pass; and with dusk, I drink,
Shall from its waters climb, and rest on yonder brink.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Man That Hath Withdrawn

The man that hath withdrawn a space
To tremulous ways of peace,
And seen that Leader face to face
Whose looks are Light’s increase,
Cleansed from all guilt, he sings, and knows
For him all paths run right;
Shrived and erect, his spirit goes
Nakedly back to fight.

Now him nor hopes nor fears can fret,
Nor any griefs can hold,
Howe’er his heart remember yet
Loves that have been of old;
For him all works and strifes are o’er,
And, while the calm hours run,
He waits, as for the tide the shore,
And as night for the sun.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The River-Front, Kut

The mud-strips green with lettuce, red with stacks
Of liquorice; shattered walls, and gaping caves;
Beyond, the shifting sands, and jackal’s tracks;
The dirging wind, the wilderness of graves.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

O Plowman

O Plowman, thrusting through the furze and thistle
Thy dripping, sanguine share,
Silent, with onward stare
Driving athwart the wintry blasts that whistle
Thy furrows that are graves, wherein our best
Are laid, their tortured, broken limbs at rest!
I pray thee, speak, and say thou dost prepare
A bed for one, whose eyes, that may not weep,
Have seen all comrades slain, and buried deep!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

At Shumran

Red Autumn on the banks,
Where, through fields that bear no grain,
A desolate Mother treads
By the brimming river, torn with rain!
A chill wind moves in the faded ranks
Of the rushes, rumpling their russet heads.
And out of the mist, on the racing stream
As I drift, I know that there gathers fast,
Over the lands I shall see no more,
Another mist, which with life shall last,
Till all that I watched and my comrades bore
Will be autumn mist, in an old man’s dream.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Shaiba Groves

By Busra Town, at Shaiba
Are shady groves, and there
The tamarisks grow like cypresses,
With plumaged arms, that snare
The desert winds, and garland
(While years shall make to slide
Scarred earth and crumbling trenches)
The Norfolks’ hour of pride.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Baghdad Town

When first we came to Baghdad Town,
The year’s new corn was springing;
The sumach had a purple gown;
The laden winds were singing
Through alleys white with peach and plum,
And green where hares were leaping;
Glad-hearted, grave, we went, as come
From fields of bitter reaping.

When last we came to Baghdad Town,
The river’s banks were brimming;
The groves had cast their rumpled gown;
In faint, grey vapour swimming,
The rusted fields forsaken loomed,
That hid the hearts we cherished,
The lads who came when sumach bloomed
And with the roses perished.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Sufi’s Prayer

Though in the front of folk I call Thee Lord,
And such high titles use
As men to glorify their great ones choose,
Yet in the silence of my heart is word
Far other; facing Thee in darkness, I
‘Dear Comrade,’ and again, ‘Dear Comrade’ cry.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In Via Recta Celeriter¹⁰

The fields will flush, while seasons wake,
In Lansdown Wood wild-cherry
Its sleeves of snowy blossom shake,
And winds again make merry;

And Spring by down and budding combe
With flower-filled basket sally,
By Tadwick strew the kingcups’ bloom
And daffs in Katharine’s Valley;

And Summer store in green retreat
White orchids, trembling lilies,
And sow his poppies through the wheat,
Where Kelston’s tufted hill is;

And we, grown old, returning here,
Shall mourn in life’s November
The Spring that perished from our year,
And through all mists remember

The Shining Comrades, those of old
Who trod the same high places,
Who loved the meadows’ cloth of gold,
The light-filled, flowery spaces.

But theirs were laurelled brows, their eyes
Stars! In the morning glowing
They saw the city’s towers arise,
They heard its bugles blowing.

Beyond our lanes that wind and roam
They saw what path ascended,
Ran in a straight way swiftly home,
And in that brightness ended.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Walker in the Lilies

For me, Death might have had the hated road¹¹
Whereby that March we strode—
The burnt-up scrub, the thorn, the festering sand,
The flies that cursed that Mesopotamian land,
The sandfly plague, the choking, hideous leap
Of swirling dust, a hell-broth pot astir,
One seething buzz and blur!
But . . . that, a later day, beneath the steep
Jebel Hamrin,¹²
Young flowers should peep,
By shaded waters, where a flushing breeze
Touched into gracious life the Spring’s first green,
Where red anemones,
Poppies, and hyacinths blue,
Swayed, and where rosy heads of amaryllis
O’ertopped the wheat—
That Death should from those rough and grim,
Gaunt hills—those lion’s teeth, fit place for him!—
Come down, and walk God’s lilies!
Death walking through the lilies!
Not as, in Palestine,
Christ walked among them!
Ah, here was one did wrong them,
Dashing with blood their cups of morning dew!
Reddening their waters pure to Devil’s Wine!
Trampling a vintage foul with hateful feet!
Ah, Guest of Cana! See what guest was here,
Mocking Spring’s marriage-feast with deadly fear!

Nay, but in Palestine,
When tulips were most fine,
When cistus flowered, and iris, when a rush
Of lilies stormed the naked rocks, why, then,
Men must walk on, nor heed the bullet’s whine;
Though a sleeve would flush
With bursting veins beneath, and one would stop;
And another drop,
With sobbing throat, and blood spirt out and stain
An earth already rich with brightest grain,
All colours, and, with poppies’ sanguine glow
And tulips, staring windflowers, red enow.
In Palestine,
I know the hill where Service sleeps, and there
The flowers wash up in seas, as if to meet
The seas that run from Cyprus, lapping round
Old Arsuf’s ruined pillars and haunted ground;
Flow up to meet the seas—there’s cliff, and sand,
A strip; then, either way, the flower-tides beat,
Foam-flowers and earth-flowers, blue of the waves that way
And green of the field this hand.
And you might search the world before you’d find
A place more to the mind
Of peaceful hearts and such as need to pray.
Yet all that summer-tide
This was no spot for dreams—you used to hurry
(Walking, of course,) through marguerites, and start
When from the long grass quails would whirr and flurry
(Start, and, the moment after,
Curse them with nervous laughter).
Away on Bedouin’s Knoll
Five-nines would rap; and if you stayed a spell
By the cactus-hedged fig-grove and midway well
(Midway to Piffer Ridge from the beach), just then
Some damned gunner would shoot;
Johnny’d be quick on suit;
Over your head would drone an answering shell.
Or be vicious rush of a pipsqueak, landing where,
In one more minute, at most, your feet must fare.
At times you laughed to exchange the flowers for a tomb
On Argyle Ridge, to drive deep down to the gloom
Of rock-cut graves where, in the hill’s rough heart,
The Amorite hid his dead, and now the men
Of Keely’s watch were delving, gnome and troll.

The bitter way that led,¹³
Bridging the poisonous brook
Of Jordan, bursting Gilead’s frowning rocks
(The way the Londons and the Anzacs took),
The bitter way that led
To where Es-Salt, high on its crater-rim,
Forgets the Ghor, which heat and dust bedim;
Bordered with hollyhocks, That way shone red,
A ribbon, a gay, proud, glittering way that lit
The strong, fierce hills whose untamed heart it split.
But through the hollyhocks, more bright by far,
And more erect, and with a nobler star
Of beauty glimmering on their brows, were those
Who went, and knew that, ere the journey’s close,
Death through the sheen of hollyhocks would walk,
And their dear blood would flow,
Tinting the gray, unblossoming thorn to glow
Redder than dawn, redder than flower on stalk.

God, since we men have made
Such havoc in Thy flowers (these flowers that fade,
Yet are so sweet to clothe the hills and fling
Over the stones a rainbow light in Spring),
Forbid that in Thy Kingdom any dwell,
Save children, and those child-like hearts that died;
Or change our wills by spell
Of Thy great love, and take us to Thy side!
Grant, where Thy heavenly hill is,
There may be flowers and children, Death being dead!
That, howsoe’er those slopes be tulip-red,
He walks not there among the lilies!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Beth-Horon

Nigh south from Jaffa, leaving the gray beach
And glinting sea, Strike in, until you reach
A plain, whose wide arms, seized of wheat and oil,
With flowers and foison crown a bounteous soil,
A plain that, warm with fostering airs that bless,
Sleeps in the lap of its own loveliness.
Yet pause not here; though Heaven and Earth may sing
Congratulation, and Eternal Spring
After her lilies sow incessant flowers,
And temper with sea-winds the hotter hours,
Yet there’s a spot my thoughts prefer to trace,
So long as Memory keeps her sovran place.
Behind the fields a rifted, narrow pass
Leads in, and shouldering mountains heave and mass,
Whose highest fell still carries scar and sign
Of one fierce hour, however bramble-vine
Sprawl on the stones, and wild-rose over rocks,
Confusedly heaped, trail a loose arm, and stocks
Of live-oak bristle with armèd, emerald leaves.
Starved hawthorns thrust up soiled and ragged sleeves
From ground that seems of Nature’s coarsest plinth
Compact, one drab mosaic; terebinth
(Dwarf, to be sure; nought comes to stature here,
Where briar and hawthorn flower in fifty year)
Crops out in spots; and scattered fig-trees stand;
And there’s an oliveyard on your left hand,
As up the slope you climb, at top to find
The line of stones the Londons crouched behind.
We had machine-guns here; see, still the ground
With empty cartridges and round on round
Of unused ammunition strewn! Hard by,
Tins, belts, a shirt, and rotting helmets lie.
The hill-foot has its graves. But of that strife
The tale is dead, and here insurgent Life,
In briar and brave, green ilex lifting, fain
Would of that wrath rub out the hateful stain,
And, for the sterile hour that slew and hurt,
Would, as she may, her ancient place assert.
Yet these loose stones, hurriedly flung together,
Shall witness, through the storms of fiercest weather,
Of what a storm once swept an earlier day
And tossed men’s lives like withered leaves away.
Lo, as, by tracing trench and mound, we tell
Ere history dawned where warriors fought and fell,
And know, by ditch and tower and builded ramp,
Where once the Legion kept their busy camp,
So here, if any follow after, bearing
Like blood with us or for our story caring,
Though centuries hence, they of our day shall read,
Scratched on the hill’s hard brow, our graven screed:
Here how we lay, one bitter dusk of winter,
When bullets glanced and bit the rocks, and splinter
And nosecap sang, and all the air was torn
With iron, and shattered stone, and twisted thorn;
Here how we lay, and ducked, and watched the foe,
And kept the height.
They, seeing this, shall know.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Aujeh Meadows

(The Jaffa Aujeh—‘Waters of Raqquon’ of the Old Testament—was crossed by the 52nd Scots Lowland Division on the night of December 20, 1917.)

Midnight! a dark, slow water, deep and chilly!
(Still by our dead the trench-scarred slope we hold.)
Waters of Raqquon, let your water-lily
In valour’s praise its yellow buds unfold!
Let gladiolus its red banners flaunt,
And light of flowers o’erflood your purfled shores!
(Around those graves what deathless memories haunt—
Midnight, and wading men, and muffled oars!)

Make of their graves a garden, lest they mourn
For lowland heaths and fields of sunlit corn!
Ay me! Not all your meadows shall atone,
Waters of Raqquon, for the meadows known!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Dead Horses

Along the road, round rock and boulder spring
Blue crocuses and white,
Great hosts of white, knit in fantastic ring,
Like elves that dance about some giant-King
Who lies with dreamless head,
Drowsing, and all but dead,
Chained by enchantment through the Ages’ flight.
Down the cliff-walls, where cling
Bright moss and ragged scrub,
Cool waters slip and flow.

This is the way the Anzac horsemen swept;
And this the way where came
The Turks, those few, like singed, fierce beasts from flame,
Who from the slaughter by Abana leapt,
Seeking the mountain-track
To Syria’s Hollow Vale,
With that pursuing dread
Hot-breathing at their back.
Dead ponies sprawl, on each five yards or so;
Their ribs our lorries crush,
And pound their shattered skulls into the slush.

Whipped out of life, with sob and straining limb,
With bursting heart, with bloodshot eyes and dim,
Lame, maddened, starved, they died.
See, here one tried
To struggle on, but fell; another made
Some few yards more, to frantic shout and drub;
This third essayed
The stony slope, but dropped, a quivering corse,
Lashed in death’s tremors, lashed, with curses hoarse.
So their poor lives like grain
Were flung in handfuls, so they might avail
For one more hour of flight and frenzied strain,
One hour’s escape from that relentless woe,
And swift, obliterating, restless foe.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Wolves

In winter, when the frosts began to crown
Sannin, three women went from Zahleh town,
From Zahleh, that with cyclamens is bright
And autumn crocus; dells that cleave the height
In Spring with blossomed rhododendrons glow,
And cut a shining heart from plain to snow.
But winter’s hand was on the mountain-side;
Gaunt Hunger ruled; so these three women tried
To reach Beirut.
But, as they climbed the fell,
The air grew cold, the winds began to swell,
And, last, a blinding storm, and eddying whirl
Of snowflakes, wrapt them round, with choking swirl.
’Twas vain to hope to cross that giant shoulder;
Bewildered, dazed, they crept beneath a boulder.
When the storm passed, their bones lay all about
On the white ground; for wolves had found them out.

Glory to God, the All-Compassionate!
The Merciful, whose succour came, though late!
He sent His beasts of prey, and saved them so
From that numb death in suffocating snow,
Or harsher fate, where Famine, starkly chill,
Stalked Beirut’s maddened streets, too pleased to kill,
And, while he paused to take his wretched prey,
By inchmeal drained the fevered life away!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Skull and Stream

Beyond Damascus, where the air blew chill,
Snow-boding, and the whistling, wintry flaw
Round rock and crevice rang, a skull I saw
Facing the plain, chance-tumbled in a rill.
The sparkling water checked and curved, to fill
The shell where Reason once gave Passion law,
Then, under broken arch and fleshless jaw,
Danced out, to slip and glitter down the hill.

This white, far-gleaming dome was late a brow,
In decent semblance clad—a plaything now
For wind and stream! For laughter of human lips
In the naked fangs is ripple of water’s speech,
While the One Life strives here, in life’s eclipse,
Its old, unheeded, patient will to teach.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

To W. G. Rushbrooke

Such greeting as our country Muses know
Be yours, old friend! Sannin’s high bank of snow
Looks on me, on this boulder as I lie
And let the golden afternoon drift by.
Close muffling holm-oak, bryony’s evergreen
Binding a budded ash, make here a screen;
The blunt-nosed bee swings past on my retreat,
Searching the ilex vainly for hid sweet;
Tall, crimson windflowers lift through butcher’s broom;
Brumana’s pines across the valley loom,
Black groves and thrusting ridge where Flecker came.

Now pales Sannin’s white brow; a setting flame,
The sun hangs low, on Homer’s wine-dark sea.
Soon over Lebanon will wander free
Our Huntress-Moon, soon Hesper shine, who home
Gathers the straying thoughts of men who roam.
My thoughts, that these nine years no paths have known
Save alien, till themselves half-alien grown,
Turn back—perchance, in Faunus’ hands this sprig
Of late-flowered broom is made a dowsing-twig
That brings remembrance’ hidden springs to light.
So thought of you shines in my west this night,
And, as I turn within, to where the glow
Leaps out, from knotted pines, these rhymes I throw
For crackling salt on where that other fire
Broods, deep withdrawn, and with clasped hands desire
Whatso Penates wait on Friendship’s hearth
To bless your ways, in forum, field, and garth.
See, ere I go, far down the shadowed steep
I gaze, and think, beyond that twilit deep,
How Rushbrooke dwells, and for your sake invoke
Our kindly Gods of broom and shining oak.
Me, since no trespasser, if these accept
As their true worshipper, who aye has kept
With vows and tears their garlands fresh, my prayer
Not idly forth into the night will fare.

Aleih, Syria, March, 1919.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Death’s Initiate

Flowered fields, where happy children played and hearts
Were joyful, as the moon full-orbed shone down,
Blessing rose-thickets loud with nightingales—
Those paths were mine, and, had I lived, my feet
Had been your foremost, meting out your way.
But now my peace is made, my face is set,
And here, with will at rest and lifted hands
Of invocation, on her grace I wait,
Whom now I cry for. Blossom-Queen of the Dead!
Lover of poppy-crimson paths (as these
Are red with flowers whose seed no God shall own,
Nor any man their sowing boast)! Blest Child
Of the pitiful Earth, Koré whose lifted lids
Are sunlight on bare fields and glimmering brows
Of lilies, trembling for the joy they know!
Turn favourable eyes this way, and look
On me, who over mountain-slopes as fair
As thine have wandered, gathering flowers as fair,
But now, with all my withered crowns put by,
Gaze toward thy throne, where those have taken stand
Whom Spring shall garland nevermore, nor voice
Of mortal praise awaken. (Yet for these
My love sleeps never, neither shall the heart
Remain forgetful, vainly though I sing
Honour for these, whom face to face I knew.)
But thou, their Queen, dear Lady of flowers and ghosts,
Swaying with eyes, not sceptre, towards thy seat
These men, thy friends and subject-souls that came
Most lover-glad (for proud compulsion drove,
Of valour, Lady, and joy to thy fair realm),
Now look on me, on me who strive and dream,
Desiring those brave presences, and here,
(Where idly Spring with blosmy tread goes by,
And idly Summer and Autumn scatter fruit
And harvest, such a Winter shuts from sight
The mind they move no longer), wait, aware
That where the treasure is the heart abides,
The heart not now a pilgrim, howsoe’er
The wearied body plods and dreams of home!
Now gaze on me; and, as thy Mother takes
The dead year to her breast, and gathers in
The faded leaf and brown, so thou, her Child,
With no less pity than hers, command to thee
Thy servant-seasons all (though other fan
Than gaze of the eyes which shone through Enna once
It needs not, since a zeal is mine that leaps
As fire to thy white throne), and bid awaken
The wind of my deliverance, wafting near
This life, which flutters, a leaf and dancing waif,
That soon, with dear companions compassed round,
I may in Hades praise thee, last and best
Of Gods, who gave the dead-in-life thy boon
Of death, and blossomed peace before thy throne!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Half-Lights

Now on this shadowed mood
What message falls?
As one who hears in a wood
Echo of vanishing calls,
Surely I caught through stir
Of the minutes’ tick low cries?
Caught through the candle’s blur
Light of remembered eyes?

I am listening, would ye speak!
Ah, if your love were here,
He would be strong, now weak!
The vision dimmed would clear!
Ruined and foiled though left,
I should repel Death’s scorn!
More than the strong Man’s theft
Would from his grasp be torn!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Recollection

Comrade—or comrades shall I say?
For Thou wast with a band!
Brave hearts, braver than any here,
Dear, beyond praising dear,
Lovers of me, beloved friends who perished,
Protesilaus-like, ’mid scattering spray
Of those adventurous seas you cast behind,
Tingeing with blood the new life's hard-bought strand!
You from the thunder of the conquered surf,
Through a screaming air and past the death-swept sand,
In a morning deaf with hate, with battle blind,
Climbed to the sacred turf.
Ah, loved with tears, with dry-eyed grief, with heart
Aching and shrinking! Who, if I could tell
Of the deep pangs the mind bears graven well,
Would yield belief, when to the day's demand
Needs must I take a cloudless face and hand
Not faltering, neither tired nor flagging aught,
Urged to their task by hid, imperious thought?
Gone are the days, the pleasant sights we cherished. . .
Spring, and the cowslipped green, the cricket sward,
Autumn with health and game, and winter's smart
Tingling each limb. Now shine no more for me
Your glorious eyes, dim in that Devil's Grave,
Nor comes your King. But I through toil-filled years
Have kept the faith, through weariness and fears
Longing for breaking dawn. Though rains should lack,
Though harvests fail, though friends no more come back,
I shall not fail, who had so dear a Lord,
And own such graves hallowing a hostile sea
And hard-won cliffs of Life's Gallipoli.

1919-1929

Via Triumphalis

The deep, clear, racing brook; the bridge
Spanning both tide and river
And linking the Road¹⁴ Whereby they came,
Graving on rock each sequent name—
Briton and Greek
Frank and Assyrian,
Roman and Ramessid!
On the far bank, where winds make quiver
Those creepers hanging like woodnymphs’ hair,
Under the tangle the shapes are hid
(Time-blurred) and arrowy script which speak
Of the march of the arrogant Ninevite.
At hand, see the stoic’s entablature,
Rock-cut, which blazons Aurelius’ boast!
New, glaring, white,
Lo, at its side what words proclaim,
Where the tide thrusts tongue-like in from the coast,
And the rains and the years’ slow drift
Have buried the Flint-Man’s tools, where pale
Pink flowers the branched asphodels lift,
Lo, there what words flaunt the tale,
At the Ages’ end how my comrades strode,
Late in the centuries, last up the Conquerors’ Road!
But rocks with their deeds let the Victors fill!
We have found a bliss that transcends their skill.
So, leaving the chiselled cliffs that declare
Whose fames would fain with the rocks endure,
And leaving the ancient sea, whose waves
Of merchant and corsair whisper and dream,
Checking the bragging, garrulous stream
With name for name, his Turk to their Tyrian,
Strike in, to the hills’ wild heart! Strike in!
Let your wonder begin!
Lift, lift your eyes,
And thrill with surprise,
Aye, shout for the sight,
Far in, beyond height upon height,
Of Sannin, of, shouldering and snowy, that culminant ridge,
Clear, beautiful, white,
And cleansing the vision!
Strike in, with the clear, rushing water beside us,
And . . . that light at the valley’s end!
Ah, the tall, swaying, feather-topped grass,
Deep as where the boar lurked when he slew
Adonis! At foot of the glade,
A pampas, a wind-ruffled palisade
Of thyrses such as the Sylvans bear,
In the river-sand
For a kindly purpose set, be sure,
Since they hide, when the good Pan wills,
A man and a maid alone in the hills,
Alone, with all Gods to connive and befriend,
Where, placed for a guard, the great fells stand!
Lo, the brambles drooping, as when at the fair,
Proud, desolate Goddess, all wild, as she flew,
All anguished, they caught, and her blood splashed the thorn,
Splashed the rending briars,
And the Syrian uplands rang to her wail
For the hunter-lover all gashed and slain,
And the mocking caves,
Whose floors the Flint-Man’s weapons strew,
From dripping, ice-pillared, vast recesses,
Her sorrow cast back in derision!
Lo, the brambles trail, rich-ruddy with fruit,
And, as for memorial, lift where we pass
Red boughs! And the rose-thickets, tinct with grain
Of Autumn’s glory, with scarlet leaves
Dashed through and through,
Blush deep with haws, as once with roses,
And glow, as a withered covert when fire’s
Hot tongues in the dry sticks flicker and shoot!
But the Hill-Gods call; and they chide us,
Who on our steep path linger;
They have scattered the way with their signs to guide us;
And they wait their Child,
The Lady for whom snowy crest, steep vale,
Were a home, and in lonely, elf-beloved closes
The Forest and Winds were a foster-folk,
Till one, by whose speech a magic woke
Sutler than breathed from their music wild,
Drew near, and she turned, being mortal maid,
Leaving immortal lovers to mourn.
But she comes to your valleys again!
And a golden circle the crocus weaves,
Idly, to hold her fast, who by spell
Stronger by far, can escape at will!
Yet blossom, and spill
Through the fairy cracks your vanishing gold!
Vainglorious, flaunt! She is here to behold!
And let the quaint, small spikes unfold
Of dwarf bee-orchis! And clefts be lit
With cyclamens’ flaming, brushed-up tresses!
We have come to the heart
Of the hills, where the Great Gods dwell,
Who, wise themselves, wish lovers well;
And the wilderness deepens round,
Slope on slope, thicket on thicket piled,
And the river is hushed by the River-God’s finger,
And hums, as it slips through the stones.
Plucking apart
The carob-boughs, we will climb and sit,
Where a giant boulder juts
Far out, and the eyes can look
Up to the ridge which the thin firs crown,
Can look down
Over the sharp, stiff, gleaming fence
Of ilex, and over the sprawling, dense
Jungle of fragrant, wax-berried myrtle,
To the quiet-singing brook.
Not ten miles hence,
In the copse where the Hunter died,
From his blood-drops sown in the soil
Sprang, purple and large,
The windflowers aflush by the river’s marge,
And in rifts and ruts
Of the storm-seamed fells aflutter, aglow;
And, Spring by Spring, these brakes still know
Whose presence quickens the hallowed ground!
For Kypris walks,
Where the drab, hard rocks to her grace are foil,
Foil till the hem of her swaying kirtle
Touches the herb and the budded stalks;
When brute Earth atones
For the murdered boy, for the harboured boar,
For the shrinking flesh that the briars once tore,
Atones, with worship of blossom and leaf,
For the wanton wrong, for the bitter grief;
And Lycus, thridding his purfled mazes,
His voice to a jubilant chant upraises;
And Kypris walks, and the glimmering sheen
Of her robes waves, emerald-green on the green.
We have come, we are here!
And the myrtle’s delicate breath and flowers
Make wild! O Gods of this river, these bowers,
These airs snowy-cool, upon you I call
In triumph! O Lebanon, Father of all,
Great cedar-proud King!
Lo, the Mountain-Queen whom I bring,
The Lady the Forest blesses!
Though I praise you, my head above all I rear,
Who more than her fosterfolk am dear,
Whom her will for lover and friend confesses!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Last Vigil

Under the swaying boughs of the apple,
Where gracious snows drip down,
Knee-deep in early flowers I stand,
Waiting, at watch where the sunbeams dapple
The spring-time, flecking with silver the brown
And emerald, glowing wave-bright on my drawn brand.

So should he wait the inevitable end,
Knowing the Sun his helper, Earth his friend,
The man for whom of His pure love God made
The thirsty desert with light and shadow a glade,
And the red field a meadow, where round his feet
A grass of lilies rippled, and wild buds sweet.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Bush and Bird

As down the Kedron Valley I was riding,
Where olives veil the rock-cut tombs I saw
An owl, who neither for myself had awe
Nor of that glaring hour had thought save scorn,
But ruffed his wings and perked each feathered horn,
In anger that I came; but I was glad.
For why? You ask, as chiding
A mind so lightly stirred.
Know then, this joy I had
For sunlight on gray leaf and ragged stone;
But most to see, vouchsafed to me alone,
There, on Athene’s bush, Athene’s bird.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

From the Wilderness

This is he that came
Praising God in flame.

Through the desert’s burning air,
With lips too parched for prayer. . . .

And in battle’s gulfing tide,
When friend and helper died. . . .

Lord, when clamant fears were loud,
This is he nor bowed
Nor denied the Name,
Nay, but overcame.

Whence this man, so hurt and frail,
So set, as in a jail,
’Mid days that suffered wrong,
He shall stand among
The angels, who excel in grace
Yet shall yield him place.
And, should they question why,
These his scars shall cry,
Shall answer and proclaim:
This is he that came
Praising God in flame.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Questioning

Thou Living Purpose, dimly understood,
Thou Whom I held for known,
And Whom I served, a Will beyond my own,
What is this word
Now in the darkness of my spirit heard?
And what this questioning, whether ill or good
I know not, so my heart is vexed
And all my mind perplexed?
Whether Thou art at all, or just and wise
(As once we held) and good past all surmise,
Or evil, is a thing hid from my eyes,
That only know Thou art not to be found.

Pity the heart Thy hands have made, the will
In darkness wavering, fain to serve thee still!
Now, ere the day in cloud and mist go out,
Answer, and save! Now, in this dusk of doubt,
To this poor, flickering mind that perisheth,
Ah, speak, with some clear word, of life, not death!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In Hospital, Damascus

O Lord, our Governor,
Is not my lot more strange
Than any fabled tale of flux and change!
This man who sits, my bed beside,
Scanning a skit with seeming-careless eyes,
Yet heard last mail his wife had died—
His house of life about him tumbled lies.
That dear, remembered lad,
My brother, who two years ago lay down
For his last sleep on earth; and he, my friend
Of youth, whose generous, patient days had end
Where on his grave the rocks of Moab frown—-
Needs must Thou be, O Mind, and needs in Thee
Our diverse paths have rest and unity—
Needs must Thou be, or else I must go mad!

Why hast Thou cast about Thee
Thick darkness and a cloud?
Love Whom we travail for?
Ah, see the hearts of all the nations bowed!
The men who bear without Thee
Trouble and anguish and a breaking mind;
Women who needs must carry to the grave
Their wrong of motherhood unrealised,
Who in their hearts a locked-up casket bear
Of yearning love no other life can share,
Whose eyes the hot tears blind,
Seeing that alien earth and senseless wave
Have hid the hearts wherein their own hearts had
Life and a poured-forth joy that made them glad.—
Why hash Thou so with darkness shut
Thee round, Whereby Thou art not found?

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Abana Lyric

Where Abana’s seven brooks flow,
The poplars toss and lift
Tremulous leaves, that show
Shimmer of lights that shift—
Shadow; and lights that gleam;
Emerald leaves and white:
By Abana’s sevenfold stream,
Prince Naaman’s old delight.

But I, where the trickling drops
Gather together, and run,
To burst through the bramble-copse
And dazzle and dance in sun,
Far rather walk, to behold,
Where the cresses make their bed,
What delicate buds unfold,
What mints their sweetness shed.

Here the rich maidenhair
Droops; and the waters fall,
Murmuring, hushed from glare,
Over the mossed cliff-wall.
I think, as I walk, of a land
Silver with springs, with bowers
Green—of my heart, that was sand
But is cool with fountain and flowers.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Damascus Orchards

Lovely with almond-blossom and flooded water,
With wind-flushed sheen of swaying orchard-meadows;
With azure starred of infrequent grape-hyacinth;
Misted blue with the fig-groves’ wintry haze;
Ruddy with budded apricot; snowy with apple—
Damascus, now into April glory awakening.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Yarmuk Valley

Light green of tamarisk shows
Pale on the dark, sharp oleander-leaves;
Deep through a jungle Yarmuk flows,
With loop and curve his swift path cleaves;
And the long valley glows,
A burnished shield, far-sheeted with gold,
With light packed full as the hills can hold.
Though tamarisk’s head’s but a clouded dust,
His beauty faded, his youth grown pale,
Red hollyhocks
Flower from the steep, rough rocks;
Rose-laurels over the oil-black shale
Their fragrant, pink-tipped spears upthrust;
And the reed-muffled brook through the vale
Runs glad, for the Goat-God lies—
Great Pan, whom mosquitoes trouble not,
Who, being a Baal, ’s immune from flies—
Piping at ease in some wind-cool grot.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

On Kenisiyeh

Bleak Lebanon’s crest
You cross, and look down
To the sea’s unrest,
Breaking a thousand fathoms below,
Where by Berytus spread
Sand-reaches red
And olives fence the Syrians’ town.

And once in November
I came where the lines
Began of stiff pines,
And from Magoras’ verge
The upward surge
Of myrtle and oak
In thin waves broke
On that darker screen;
When lo! a sea Of Lebanon heather!
Red-flowing, a sea
Round the rough, grim pines!

When Kypris appears,
With Spring, and uncloses
Her stores of delight,
Then with pink and white
Of sweet rock-roses
This covert is bright,
And the cliff-sides hold
Great pools of gold,
Where broom flowers free.

But . . . this was November!
Chill mists straying;
Winds, and swaying
Pines—yes, and heather,
Which I had not seen
For these eight years.
So God I remember
And praise for the heather,
For the Cumberland weather
And red, flowing heather.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Nymph in the Brake

Nymph in the brake, thou fair deceiver, hence,
Nor with thy treacherous seeming mock the sense!

I drought yon thorn to sudden blossom burst;
I dreamt that Spring flashed forth; and wondering, ‘Whence,’
I cried, ‘this glow where ’twas December erst?’
Nymph in the brake, thou bright deceiver, hence!

I thought yon woodland lane before me flowered;
That through its gloom a mystic opulence
Of dewy stars was on the brambles showered.
Nymph in the brake, thou vain deceiver, hence!

Nymph in the brake, arrived to mock the sense
With gleam and flight! Thou dear deceiver, hence!

1915.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Owl and the Lady

Owl in the hollybush,
Sitting so still,
With wide eyes staring—
What Fear climbs the hill?

Sit close in your covert,
Your crimson-set fence
Of sharp, glowing leaves!
What, bird! You flit hence!

 * * * * *

Now, through the winter eve
Tinted with flame,
Riding, a Lady
Along the wood came.

Over damp, drifted leaves
That deadened her pace,
She rode, nor drew rein
Till she saw the round face;

Then, checking her horse,
She raised her fair head
To the frost-polished leaves
And berries deep red.

 * * * * *

If the bird were a man,
He would leap for the sight,
But the foolish old owl
Is already in flight!

On the pale, flushing skies,
To wet fields he flits down,
And is lost, as he settles,
Brown wings in the brown.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Norton Common

Flowing at last, now Pix
Through willowherb’s jungle of gray, dry sticks
Straggles, while thwart-flung twig and grasses
In flakes of shadow his waves thrust down.
Black-berried privet cowers, drab, forlorn,
And the ragged thorn
Out of all his swelling, crimson crown
Scarce a handful lifts of wrinkled haws.
Flits furtive jay round bushes brown,
And, with sudden rush under briar’s red clusters,
Fugitive blackbird flutters.
Through the mist-suffused air, fine-drawn like gauze,
A filmy wraith, December passes,
And, seeming at rest in the heaven’s half-height,
The sun that should climb hangs mild and white.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Five Elms

Five elms against a sunset,
The cawing rooks’ bare towers;
Pink flush of budded almond;
White glow of damson flowers—

Gaze, heart, and from the vision
Gain peace for weary hours!
Seer of a thousand sunsets
And countless nights of flowers!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Smoking Reeds

See how the struggling fire
From the damp heap in a white wraith escapes!
But, deep within, the red heart fiercer glows,
Till with a leap the ghost becomes a god,
And shouts and dances on his shrivelling cage.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Willian Trees

The winter evening spills
Its store of quietness ineffable,
And from its horn of beauty fills
The empty elms with sunset.
Low fields lie blue in distance; the grove throws
A shadow-copse on the gleaming lake’s repose.
Against the darkness glows
One lamp, a diamond.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

A Matter for the Police

Thyrsis, as late from Cumnor hill
To Oxford town I went,
Words which transcend poor shepherd’s skill
A signboard did present.
Haply some clerk who wears the gown
Can set their purport free. . . .
‘Bear left in centre of the town
For Banbury.’

Thyrsis, it seems an oversight
To leave a bear at large.
Greatly I blame the fearful wight
Who so forsook his charge.
Was it for this grew Banbury cross,
Her longed-for guest delayed?
Is she still peevish o’er the loss?
Still in the shade?

O vanished days of high romance,
Which had of bears no lack!
Can it be true, this wondrous chance?
And come the dragons back?
In Oxford streets of grave renown
Be there such toys to see?
‘Bear left in centre of the town
For Banbury!’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Twelfth Night

Now is the time to build the fire which shows
With what fair rites our Holy-tide must close;
For, as the Wise Men came with gifts, so we
Finish the Feast of God’s Nativity
With incense such as puts their pomps to shame.
Laurel now gives up its green ghost in flame
And pungent mists that mount to roof and rafter,
Falling, a cloudy fragrance, brief while after.
Bright-blazing holly, brightlier-blazing yew,
Fierce-spluttering, die; with sprigs of Mary’s Dew,¹⁵
And snapping, resinous pine (more sweet than myrrh),
And polished barberry, swart juniper,
Neat box, and ivy dull, and (last to go)
White-waxen-berried, tough-leaved mistletoe.
Nay, for the end, in pagan rite allow
To burn of sombre yew one crackling bough,
That so the gracious little Lars who dwell
With us and this our hearth have guarded well,
May take the spitting fire for leaping salt.
Nor will the season’s King impute for fault
That our glad spirits on this holy night
Invoked the flickering wraith of old delight.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

This Ancient Thorn

This ancient thorn now like a beggar stands,
Thrusting through tattered sleeves its agued hands
That shake to the chill breeze, a mendicant
For such poor boon as niggard skies will grant
(Dribbling, as misers might, faint, straggling beams,
Bronze rays of light, for Summer’s golden streams).
Yet in old days this beggar was a Chief,
Regal with flowery crown and emerald leaf;
To beast and bird his bounteous house was free,
A haunt of building wren and singing bee,
Each scented bough of shining pensioners
More full than is the fire-bright, gracious furze—
Scale-burnished beetles, chafers, hoverer-flies,
And moths with powdered plumes and soft, deep eyes.
Here, where his subjects made their choice resort,
The Elvish Monarch held his jolly court,
Under a canopy rich-garlanded,
Where warm night-winds a fragrant incense shed.
Yet still one branch survives; and still, with Spring,
Life will flood back to this dead, dreaming thing,
The swelling sap will rise, the old delight
Wrap up one wrinkled arm with blossomed white.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Wild Broom

O perishing, wasteful Broom,
Each spur and spire
A splendour outleaping, a flickering fire,
Thou wilt burn thyself out!
Why lavish thy gold
On this bleak hillside where no eyes behold,
Save the flitting birds, that pass unaware,
And the scuttering bunnies who never care?
Be thrifty, and keep for the bare, dark days
Some wisp of bright raiment, some spark of thy blaze!
Be wiser, O Broom!
Be wastrel no longer, but mindful of doom!

But the Broom—
I flame, I expire;
I am Beauty’s plumage, my wings are a fire;
For a boon, neither buying nor sold,
I scatter my gold.
I have made this hillside one far-trumpeted shout.
Sky and field may behold,
And the wind-ragged rout
Of tumultuous clouds,
The passionate dawn, and the hurrying crowds
Of fear-stricken lives, they may pause, they may listen
To my pealing thanksgiving,
My clamouring glory, my fierce boughs that glisten
And blaze to dry scrub, as I perish by living.
Your chaffer I flout,
Your marts and your pricings, your wisdom I scout.
But oh, the mad joy as I burn myself out!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Barren Sloe

O blackthorn myriad-budded,
Lifting your tiny fists of clenchèd white!
Be braver, Bush, for Winter is vanished quite!
Your fears forget, and open your hands shut tight!
Now for eyes’ delight
Your treasures unlock, that our ways be flooded
With beauty! With snowy blossom thick
Each naked bough, each bare, sharp stick
Cover, that hither whoever strays
May shout unawares, as he stands at gaze!
Ah, Bush, there is wrath through the copse!
The blackbird chides, as he calls to his mate;
The rook, as he tugs in the elm-tree tops,
For his nest the branches tearing, drops
The twig from his beak, and guffaws in amaze;
Scream-voiced jay is harshly scolding;
Robin and wren hold gossip, beholding;
You make them feel cold, shrill squirrels chatter;
Bunny sits up and ponders the matter;
Chaffinch and thrush, in a tumult of scorn,
Cry ‘Fie on the Bush of the bare, black thorn!’
O Bush, you are laggard, are late!
Why, elm has flowered, the raspberry brakes
Are dreaming of buds! Even bramble knows,
The forest slut, with her drab, slack ways,
That her autumn finery tawdry shows!
She is getting new leaves. Bold furze is ablaze!
See, pussy-willows their halls have decked
For a marriage-feast, where in silk attire
And robes gold-powdered the lovers have come;
And a jubilant quire
Rushes in, till the chambers rock with hum
Of the minstrel-bees, till the whole house sings.
Clumsy and joyous, big bumble shakes
The catkined stems; peacock butterfly flits
From his winter niche, to the golden-flecked,
Mad, blossoming trees, and in sunlight sits,
Forgetting how storms his glory have specked,
Fanning and shutting his faded wings.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Starlight

Ocean, that eating Pride,
Seizes the sullen lands;
Wave after wave, with rushing tide
He ploughs the frightened sands.

Through crowded years of wrong
Filching our fruitful miles,
He has decked out his bosom strong
With flashing, emerald isles.

A bitter thief! but yet
His swelling wraths assuage.
For a new play the sands are set;
New lights attend the stage.

He is but a drowsy roar,
Far from these glistening shelves;
With link and lamp the dancing shore
’S a festival of elves.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Pillars of Hercules

Tuscan or Tyrian, Athenian bold,
Arab or Spaniard, ghosts of voyageurs old,
Thrice-valiant hearts who sailed these middle seas,
Seeking the pillared gates of Hercules,
A westward-beating scud, a flying drift
Thrusting to sunset and the land’s steep rift!
Great, vanished friends, the self-same sights ye had
And with the self-same glories were made glad,
Who saw the white sierras shoulder aloft
Their snowfields tall, whence airs blow cool and soft,
Who watched the puffins from the tranquil wave
Spring, and the circling gulls!
But ye were brave! Knowing no earth beyond, but waters waste!
While I float on, nor fear left currents haste,
Nor think, beyond these cliffs, of finis-terre,
Sure of new capes where’er my bark can fare,
Scorning all rumoured tale of God-cursed straits
Or let of wildered waves and storm-clashed gates.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Shadows

Ye clouds and trees that cast
Your shadows on the lake,
Upon my mind you shall
No shadows make.

For like a loving face
From heaven you bend,
Saying, how great the peace
That would befriend.

Going my joyous way,
I hate the day’s hot shine,
And drink your calm, sweet rest
Like cool, rich wine.

Fall closer, closer yet!
And thrust fierce light afar!
Keep back the climbing moon
And eve’s proud star.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Freedom

Why should I shrink from life,
Who have seen death’s face?
How should I, if I would,
For fear find place?

Anger and scorn of men
He leaves aside,
Who has trampled into shards
His brittle pride.

Strange words are cast about,
And shouts arise,
That these are foiled, and that
Has won the prize!

But from my cherished hopes
This boast remains:
No crown I seek, whose limbs
Will brook no chains!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Cloud-Messenger

These clouds that all my heavens overcast
Keep some their place awhile, then the in rain;
Others, before the scurrying winds amain,
Flee to where, hill on giant hill amassed,
Sown with white brooks, darkened with forests vast,
The towering homes of cold and moist disdain
The rank, wet flats, lush fields, hot, winking plain.
Cloud, wind, may flee; but me here toil holds fast.

So, like the exiled servant of the God,¹⁶
I watch the changing skies. If wind and cloud
My thought might bear, then paths by me untrod
Should speak my message; peaks which mists enshroud
Would clang it; rains would write it on the sod:
Dark trees would whisper; cataracts cry aloud.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Mid-August

All in a golden gown
Now dal upstands:
The rains no longer drown
The patient lands.

In the mango-boughs all day
The squirrel shrills;
The mynas’ angry play
The sunlight fills.

From joy the butterflies
Have ceased to flit,
Nor at your coming rise,
But bask and sit;

And, while the whole world sings,
In the path arow,
Fanning their gaudy wings,
They burn and glow.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Banyan Verses

I

Now for their winter feast
In the banyan boughs joy-tremulous guests are shrilling;
The tree is a laurelled priest,
His old palms spreading, the air with blessing filling.
The winds fly forth from his hands,
And wide through the ways his benedictions scatter—
‘Lo,’ they cry, ‘where he stands,
Offering fruits, four on each four-leaved platter!
Priest and host, he calls,
He beckons you in to the feast he has consecrated!’

Wings to his windy halls
Rush in, till a hungry horde is gorged and sated.

II

As a swarm of bees in a flowery bush aswing,
That sways to their weight, so now to the banyan seeding
The birds fly up, and flutter, three parts awing.
Ah, Banyan, see at your bread: your children feeding!
They cry, they clutch, for the red berries thrust and wrestle;
Your fruit is their life, they cling in your breast and nestle.

III

Lord, when I hear Thy feasting birds in Thy banyan,
Greatly do I rejoice;
For I have buoyant moods which lack a voice;
But these are fluttering pleasures, a jubilant throng,
Discordant gratitudes, far too happy for song.
See how they tug and rend the ripe, red berries!
This is their orchard, these their harvest of cherries!
Lord, let my praise go up with them from Thy banyan!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Green Pigeon

Green pigeon came to our pipal,
The giant who year by year for a festival-tide
His chambers that rock with kindly mirth flings wide
(He is regal in bounty, our pipal).
He was crammed with excited mynas and saw-voiced crows,
At his base each night the jackals gorged in rows
(He has pensioners many, the pipal);
Kingcrows fluttered, and tiny wings were flitting,
Aloft an indifferent, bald-browed kite was sitting
(He too had a use for our pipal);
When, slipping in like tremulous, timid flame,
To the vulgar, screaming mob our shy guests came
(Green pigeon came to the pipal);
Softer their plumes than the clouds’ swan-down, and the sheen
Of rainbows burnished their forest gold and green
(They had robbed the woods for our pipal);
And the screeching parrots were shamed, and the kokils’ clamour
Died on the wind, and the coppersmith stilled his hammer
(There was peace in the swaying pipal);
The roller hushed, as he rocketed out to the light—
His robes were gaudy, glaring, garishly bright
(Green pigeon had come to the pipal);
The kingcrow ceased to bully, the myna to scold;
A gentler green was glowing, a glimmering gold
(Green pigeon had come to our pipal).

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Evening Voluntary

Now is the time of the great evening peace,
When light and shadow lie side by side,
Chequering the fields; day’s oppression and pride
Are ending, the long misery and heat.
The coppersmith flags at his forge; his hammer’s beat,
Tonk, tonk, tonk, sounds but at intervals.
A cool breath stirs; voices of birds awaken;
A kingcrow chases a kite; pert, golden-eyed,
A myna struts; on a sudden the air is shaken
With yelling laughter of kokils; an oriole calls;
These in their fashion all witness their joy of release.
Their fierce, proud Lord forgoes his power to oppress.

I will seek the woods, the shining quietness
Of sal and flowering laurel—there wait till falls
The drift of darkening shadows, and memory throws
Over loved trees and spirit her cloak of repose.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Encouragement to Pipals

Dancing pipal leaves!
Net of the glowing silver that follows dawn!
In endless revel you spend the hours.
At noon, if some chance wind come straying,
Instantly all your hosts are playing!
Rufflers, your points are flashing! You are swaying
A thousand ways at once, a twinkling sea!
You have no flowers,
Nor at your feet a sunlit, emerald lawn,
But, O you rogues who intern the wandering light
And make your captive scatter his gold,
Who dance, dance, dance,
As reapers dance round their tied-up sheaves,
Dance, dance, dance,
As the waves dance, you who are waves of a tree!
Joy have you brought to me,
Joy your joyous steps to behold,
Joy as deep as has come from sight
Of many a flower’s fair countenance!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Rebuke to Banyans

Red-berried banyan, still unsatisfied,
For all your swelling bulk and verdurous pride
Of sweeping branches, throwing out new sprays
And fibres ever, seeking still to raise
Fresh pillars and augment your kingdom vast,
Fenced from the sun and the destructive blast
Of the wild month of rains, that strips and tears
Tough pipals and to earth the siris bears,
Uproots the sturdy jack, and maims the teak!
Somewhat in envy, banyan, do I speak;
Yet not unjustly. If my tree could show
One-tenth so rich a pomp, such scarlet glow
Of green-set fruit that feeds the scuffling bats
And eager birds, and even for sordid rats
Scatters a largesse . . . such a shining roof
Of glossy leaves, Night’s Temple huge, sun-proof,
With cool, deep glooms where gods and flies awhile
Shelter from noon . . . with many a dappled aisle,
Where rays of light in harmless arrows fall,
And tired winds sleep, and birds forget to call. . . .
If this were mine, I should not grab more land
Or seek proportions vaster, lot more grand;
I would not still of waxing empire dream,
Chamber to chamber add, and giant beam
With beam inlay, an endless swink and toil;
With nervous, itching fingers still more soil
Grasp and for yet more swollen kingdom strive!
No! I should rest, and save my soul alive.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Chaitra¹⁷ Verses

I

The Ghost of Phalgun¹⁸ clatters at my door;
Opening it, I see
Bloom is dust upon the mango-tree,
All fragrance blown away
With winds of yesterday.
Dust from dust the shredded dust receives,
Wherein life coiled a space,
Becoming sap and stamen, curve and grace;

Without, with choking leap and restless bound,
An eddying goblin, swirling round and round
In cloak of burning wind and earth-cloud gray,
The Ghost of Phalgun dances,
Whisks, and whirls, and glances—
A rattle of dry leaves
Sweeps o’er the forest-floor.

II

Through the forest Chaitra striding hurls
Mohwa’s fragrant waxen whorls
To earth, and showers
The massèd, ruddy flowers
Of parrot-beakèd palas; dustward thud
The simul-bowls, which linked in fellowship
Dawn by dawn, with their sweet wine, trim rows
Of mynas, mobs of cunning, clamorous crows,
Crowding to sip.
Chaitra hears, and laughs: ‘Another dud!
Soon not a bowl shall burn on any bough!’
His spear of wind he twirls,
Then spins aloft; the tree, with groaning sough,
Drops its last flower, stained dark as congealed blood.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Sravan¹⁹

On Sravan nights the rain
Roars like a river in spate;
The moving walls draw near
With rush and bound, thin out and disappear,
Then swell to a steady, pelting pour again.
Lying awake, I hear
How the Spirit of Sravan walks the troubled night,
Swaying the rain-thrashed winds for his delight,
This way and that the clamorous dark dividing,
Cleaving and thrusting the storm’s black-silvery freight
Hither and thither, racing, receding, gliding—
As he walks the watery world with his demon-gait.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Badal²⁰

The badal burst; steadily fell all day
The rain; the boys on the further side of the river
Asked leave to go, for the water was rising fast.
The rain poured on all night; dawn showed at last
On a mist-swept, twilight world, a dusk wherethrough,
Twisting the rain in wisps, a rough wind flew,
Whirling the showers like waterspouts round and round,
And leaping upon the trees with the tiger’s bound
When he breaks the buffalo’s back—with strain and shiver
The garden moaned, as he ravaged and raved on his way.

Last, with his thousand secret arms the river
From nulla and forest-pool his tribute drew,
And Susunia²¹ shook his dark, drenched tresses loose.
Huddled and hurrying, tumbling by hasty sluice,
The yellow, turbid flood rushed in, and the bank
Crumbled, the swollen river the ricefields drank,
Islanding copse and orchard; whirlingly shot,
Great trunks went spinning; the stream like a boiling pot
Seethed and hissed, its billows a winepress trod
By the stamping, clay-plashed feet of an unseen god.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Spectators

Comes a wind, which drives like a hooded snake
The dust before it, crying: ‘Get out of the way,
You little fellows! The Champions are coming to play.
So clear this world, our pitch! Run away, and hide!’
And the black-cloaked, dignified myna steps aside;
And that pert cockney, the chattering squirrel,
Runs for his life; the roller, impudent swank,
Who sits on the goalpost, sunning his gaudy wings,
Drawing all eyes in the shimmer, says ‘I’m off!’;
The coppersmith closes his forge, and even the crow
Sidles to shelter.
Gray clouds veil the sky,
Armies gathered in silence; then a swaying,
Wavering wall of rain sweeps over the field;
The round-headed, glossy-leaved jacks are all acurtsy,
Bobbing and bending—this way and that they yield.
The great game, rain and wind at football together,
Holds a million eyes, of a host that take secret station
And watch with swelling, speechless indignation.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Himalayan Bulbul

Fire-capped bulbul, flame-mantilla’d friend,
How will this mask of joy and fear have end?
Thou in the branches swaying, hurling about
Thy body, so that all thy actions shout,
Thou hast no care except to indulge the thrill
Of winds that roam the pine-sharp-scented hill,
Which bear thy reckless body as a boat,
That now shoots rapids, now aloft will float.
Yet, in the night, of hawk and knife-beaked owl
And sinuous snake and cruel claws that prowl
Thy dreams are rife, and agonisèd cries
Through the still darkness I have heard arise.
Then airs which sport with thee by day can make
Each huddled bough with drowsy terror shake.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Life and Death

At the Bengali service, which was long,
With endless droning hymns, with droned-out prayer
Which seemed to make the universe its care,
Working the springing spirit of man deep wrong,
A drowsy, fumbling rumble of parrot-phrase,
Dull, dull! My hat, but it was dull!
So dull, it seemed to daze,
Sandbagging thought, vaguely vexing the ear
And brain, which were too wise to admit and hear. . . .
Suddenly at the preacher’s back there shone,
Framed in an open window, a glorious sight,
A mighty banyan; and my heart was gone
To service there, with squirrel and pagan bird,
With butterflies, and leaves, by sharp gusts stirred.
Do you not see? The whole thing was living!
There was worship, there was prayer, there thanksgiving!
The tree was glad; its spreading boughs were resting;
A million happy lives, wild with elation,
Scampered and flew, or in its depths were nesting;
Shadow and light, in magical alternation,
Chequered the clear, brown earth; with flooded light
Its towering body was bathed, its leaves were bright.
Here were dead books, drugged souls, here apathy,
Murmuring chant, and aimless, nerveless word,
Wandering in endless track, about and about—
But ah, how bright the Tree!
How good the Life without!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Church Reform

Every church should have behind the pulpit
A window taking up the whole of the wall;
Behind the window there should be a tree,
Banyan, or oak, or beech, or ash, or elm,
Magnolia, wattle, chestnut, baobab,
Mangrove, sandal, cedar of Lebanon,
(Anyway, something huge, with roomy arms).
Squirrels and every sort of bird should here
Be cherished—I would have it felony
To bring a gun within a thousand yards,
Unless to shoot a preacher once a year;
And even he, I think, might be let off,
If the church stewards kept the tree well stocked.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

An Old Woman

Beneath this pipal, on a verminous mat,
With skin-clad ribs and withered shank she lies,
Dying by inches, after her fierce day
Of labour—carrying water, bearing babes,
And nameless menial tasks—the anguished toil
For the scant meal which came with so much fear.

Though we escape the rending hands of pain,
And shaking fevers, famine’s choking grip,
When we have slaved, and striven, and brought forth life,
Have sheltered youth to power, for our reward
Await us age, and agues, twitching limbs,
And brain too worn to care save for release.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Banyan’s Guests

These sojourners of a day and night pause here,
One with the friendly life of tree and road.

Against the many-twisted serpent-trunk
They prop a sheet of corrugated iron,
Filched from some railway-shed, and hang with pots
The bumps and cracks provided for their use;
A lean, appalling ‘pie’ keeps guard on goods
That kites and lepers would be loath to pinch;
Their stolen kerosene tins crows inspect
And pass them, certified as empty found.

Beneath a better bivouac by far
Than those I had in Mesopotamian sands,
Black, matted heads peep out and watch the world.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Through the Rain

I saw a jungle-dweller, dark, unclad
Except for waist-rag—in his ears he had
Rosettes of oleander, glimmering red
Stars on the close-webbed blackness of his head.
Stark in the drizzling eve he stood, and made
Tough sal-roots leap beneath his mattock’s blade.
His smoky hut, and hungry, squalid brood,
Waiting these sticks to cook their scanty food,
Sufficed, and at his toil he smote amain,
Flaunting his gladness through the cheerless rain.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Ekteswar Mela

Ages since, in a blinding flash,
He came to earth, with shattering crash,
(Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord)

Cleaving the quaking skies asunder,
With lightning chisel and mallet of thunder,
(Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord)

The tallest simul from crown to root,
He smote, and an old man slew at its foot,
(Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord)

And, after the storm, the people found
A jagged rock on the blackened ground
(Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord).

So amid the trees they built a dome,
Shrining the stone, the Great God’s home;
(Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord)

And year by year, as the tired year ends,
When the God through heaven his war-clouds sends,
(Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord)

When his white plumes flash on the dark expanse,
And his thunders rattle, his lightnings dance,
(Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord)

Women of barren, aching breast,
Women by grievous Fate distressed
(By Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord),

With frightened faces and eyes that stare
Bright as the pots of fire they bear
(For Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord),

In procession move to the shrine, and throw
Their burdens down, till the ground’s aglow
(For Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord),

Aglow with the tongues that flicker and shoot
Like a thousand snakes that sway to a flute
(To Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord).

Then home, through the folk and the clamours loud,
On the dust-choked roads which the ox-carts crowd
(From Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord),

With hearts where Hope’s red flames upthrust,
Lit at those flames which danced in the dust
(To Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord),

They fare, through the eve that’s athrob with drum
And cymbal’s clash, and with shouted hum
‘Siva the Sage, Ekteswar’s Lord.’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Lepers

Sullenly friendly, watching me they sit,
Their battered hands drawn close across their knees.
What should he say, this saheb who means them well,
Yet in whose veins the blood runs clean, whose limbs
No fires of anguish eat?
A woman there
Dandles her babe; the tainted children²² crowd
In front, against my left; that man behind,
With large, hot, fretful face, towers o’er the rest,
The leader in the lepers’ parles, who fans
Their smouldering grievances to flaming speech.

My speaking done, they cluster round my bike.
‘How do they feel?’ ‘Well.’ But I probe more near—
‘The treatment?’ Then an angry clamour bursts,
Of the injection’s pain, the fever’s throb.

‘The profit?’ ‘None!’ A young man lifts his feet,
Shows me two round deep pits—will these grow well?
A woman thrusts out knuckled palms—to these
Will fingers come again? I talk of cures,
Of life given slowly back, of the fell plague
Quenched in the crumbling limbs, that break no more.

But, as I go, about my head there scatters
A rain of bitter, unbelieving mirth.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Two Women

Against the knife-keen wind she ran for warmth,
Her torn, thin cloth drawn close about her head,
Her huddled body twisted to the cold,
Each sinewy limb a witness to the wrongs
Of sixty buffeting years.
A clatter of hoofs
Rang on the road—an English lady came,
Ruling her proud slave proudly and easily.
The season’s welcome sharpness whipped the blood
To riot in her cheeks, and in her eyes
Fanned to a flame the never-smouldering joy.
A gracious nod; and the tall waler’s strength
Had borne her onward, one with the bright form
That danced her exquisite wildness out of sight.

Spirit of Beauty, doubly manifest
In these, my blood! Let not the visions go,
As went this Indian dawn, without they leave
A heart more quick to feel, an eye not blind
To glory’s steps, a braver, firmer mind!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Flowers in Bowl

These tigerlilies’ petals curve
Back like oryx-horns; their arrogant grace
Makes my brain an Arabian Nights; they dance,
Sultans in the Damascus of my soul.
O sinister, ebony-dotted, beautiful flowers!
Mind of the world, that Thou shouldst think of these!

Fire is a thought of Thine; this pine-fed flame;
And smoke which grows from fire; these warm, dark firs;
Flower-downy moths which flit from fir to flame;
This wall of mist, which shuts, heaven-high, vale-deep.
A thousand things there are whose beauty pains,
Tearing the exquisite sense with sharp delight:
The broad, gold smile of sunflower; prim device
Of snapdragon, dainty in such different hues;
Begonia on these climbing, cloud-wrapt ways;
Demure, red-tongue-outthrusting fuchsia; dense
Fragrance of heliotrope; the crinkled floss
Of evening primrose, pollened thick, so soft
The fingers feel it like a fairy’s plumes;
Pink sea-thrift carpeting a crumbled cliff;
A Cornish moor, bee-murmurous, headier-scented,
Sun-drowsy, lulled with chime of double seas;
A Cotswold hazel-coppice, primrose-starred;
Moonlight on Indian waters; frosty skies
Of cold, bright stars.
Mind whence my mind was made,
Thìnker, Drèamer, Pàinter, Architect!
Why haft Thou so with beauty crammed this world,
Which we have crowded close with graves of war,
With factories, palaces, and works of art?

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Retrospect

Ah, I muse, by any other channel
Smoothly had this river reached the sea!
But this has thwarting sands and black, strait chasms,
Roaring gulfs, one eddying jeopardy!
Spate of melting Alp and Andes fills,
Sudden torrents rushing from the hills;
Racing Rhone, and Jumna’s turbid waves;
Rain-augmented Meghna fiercely raves.

Falls on my ear at last that deeper sound,
From vaster swell and waters more profound?
Sweep up, O Sea! and lay these tides to rest
And guide the fretted stream to thy strong breast!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

I Have Sought a City

I have sought a city that I shall not win;
Until my broken body they bear in;
I serve a King whose courts I shall not find,
Till I can never see his face, since blind.
Vain service! Effort vain! Yet I but know
One fear, that I should cease to wish it so;
And out of failure make no other prayer
But this—when that last dimness holds the air,
When crushed I reel, with dying eyes that glaze—
Let not Faith fail, at crowning of her days!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Invocation

Come to the smouldering fire of my heart,
Spirit of Inspiration!
Scattering sparks, beating the embers, awaking
Tongues of flame that dance and shout in elation!
Cleaving, piercing, dividing apart
Night, which hangs like a huge bat, drowsy and blind!
So travellers, thridding their ways
On the dull road, shall for a moment pause,
And stand in the splendour, clapping their hands for delight,
Or, silent in wondering happiness, stare at the sight,
At the swaying shadows, the leaping god who awes
Whirling amid the flames’ intoxication;
With burning eyes shall gaze,
Lifting glad brows whence the glow shall fade to find
In memory’s wells its deep, securer station.
Spirit of Inspiration!
These shall in my bright moment tower, then wend
Onward with praise to their dark journey’s end.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Author Writes His Own Epitaph

Stranger, if passing by you seek to learn
What man was he whose ashes fill this urn,
Know: there’s a ghost remembers now by Styx
He marched with Maude, was with the few who first
The embattled sandhills of Samara burst,
And once hit Faulkner over the ropes for six.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Thoughts on the Islip Witch

Our last witch was seen
Astraddle a plank, crossing this brook, the Ray;
From the Bletchington²³ slaughter
Riding this way,
Cromwell’s troopers saw her and shot her;
She ducked, but they got her;
Their bullets crashed through the willows, and whipped
The yeasty moss to a froth of green,
And singing smote
Beelzebub’s spawn in her foul, fair throat;
She tumbled, and gripped
Her see-sawing raft—it lurched, she slipped,
Then choked in a swirl of red water.

‘Shame on the devils who murdered a lass’
(The neighbours cried) ‘scarce turned seventeen!
The bonniest wench in these borders seen.’
She was fond of a dip in the Ray,
And astride of a log that had floated her way
She climbed in sport
Just when those thieves o’er the bridge were coming,
Those sour-faced brutes whose bonnets with bees were humming—
Who deemed all women were witches, who knew
All lives but as stuff to be slain, save the few
Whom the Lord considered His own (these slew!).
Fresh from their butchery Bletchington way,
They were looking for somebody else to slay—
So they shot her, in short.

And Matthew Hopkins,²⁴ when he heard,
Was woundily vexed, and averred
It was evilly done.
He’d have dragged her ashore, then sifted her out
(Those clumsy troopers had wrecked his sport),
Searching for Satan’s sign with a pin;
Then have chucked her in,
Shrewdly trussed, big toe to thumb,
To try could she swim.
Drowned, she’d be cleared as a witch, no doubt;
There’d be one wench less in the world, to lure
Young saints astray into thoughts impure;
While, had she swum—
That is, if her face but a moment rose,
As she flung and tossed in her strangling throes—
Her obscene idolatry proved, she’d have gone
To the gallowstree, in her Master’s rout.

And Harold the poet concurred
(Three centuries later), the shooting was wrong.
But the neighbours’ talk was absurd!
The girl was a witch;
On her ivory shoulder a black dog huddled,
Her incubus, Satan’s flame-eyed whelp,
And she rode this ditch
By her paramour’s help.
Incubus, succubus, gnome, and sprite,
With devils by day, devils by night,
The world is a warren—the man is dense
Who doubts when the proofs are so many and strong.
The camera’s evidence clinches the case
With fairies in Yorkshire—the very last place
One would look to find fairies—the thing’s plain to sense!
Black magic’s a cert.—those neighbours were fuddled.
But the shooting was wrong;
And thumbscrew and ducking and pricking with pins—
The witch had a right to her picturesque sins.

Last—an irrelevance—when I consider
In what a storm of dread the generations
Went by; how demon thrones and dominations
Darkened the mind, madding with slavish fright
What even at ease can scarcely judge aright
(The mind that in a fierce delirium sent
Frail doddering eld to hideous punishment,
And crushed defenceless beauty, hardly so
Slaking its pangs of throbbing, gibbering woe);
How every generation to the next
Passed on its tainted blood and vision vext;
I wonder not that shadows haunt us still,
That silly thoughts and fears the people fill,
That nonsense breeds in even a poet’s brain—
I marvel anyone is kind or sane.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Water-Finders

Old Hall the ashes from his pipe knocked out,
Blew through it, then he said: ‘You’ve asked about
These water-finders, sir. There’s two I knows
And uses, when on building-jobs I goes;
They’ve found me many a spring.
John Ford of Noke,
The blacksmith—he’s a tall man, tough as oak—
He fights against the power with all his might;
He holds his hands out so, with sinews tight.
And yet, for all that he’s so strong and big,
The power’s that fierce, I’ve seen a hazel-twig
Twist all askew, when in his fingers gripped,
Tugged earthward! Though he held it fast, it slipped!
And, when the spring’s beneath, his muscles swell—
You’d not believe me, if I was to tell!
That’s why he’s grown so strong and large of arm—
For he’s a great, stout man, and takes no harm.

‘T’other’s a different sort. You’ve heard, perhaps,
Of Islip Tom? He’s one of these small chaps,
And weak. He cannot fight the power—he shakes,
He lets it slide over his arms, and takes
The shock deep in his breast; and people say
This water-work will be his death one day.
He’s grown that weak—his chest is all sunk in,
His face is sharp, his arms are dry and thin.
He shudders when the current hits his heart;
The sweat runs from his head, his eyeballs start.
And that’s why, when I has him for the job,
I always pays an extra couple of bob.’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Crowning Mercies

When measles reached our village,
Miss Wilmot said:
It was the chapel children had them first—
Argal, a Wesleyan local preacher brought them—
The chapel children by a judgment caught them—
And next, the same disfiguring anger burst
Upon those children of the church who played
With chapel children. Then the plague was stayed.

So all was well.
Seceders and encouragers of schism
Alike were sprinkled with the self-same chrism;
And, for the weeds that through the corn had spread,
On those who sowed and those who gave them tillage
The one stroke fell.

She doubted watching Providence no longer—
With every year her faith in God grew stronger—
Miss Wilmot said.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Intercession

A three-months’ drought, the churches called for rain;
The bishops made new forms of prayer—in vain.
We tried a cup-match then; Heaven, uninvoked,
Relented; and the char-a-bancs were soaked.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Harbour Music

I

Beyond the harbour drift
And pace far out of sight
Impatient tides that lift
Against the fire-hung night—

Against the thunder-glow
Of stars that curb their hate
(Those glimmering wastes below
Must watch and float and wait).

There is a fierce wind stalks
Athirst and gripped to slay—
There is a dim moon walks
Loiteringly astray.

II

She wanders till the morn
Shall drive her weakness hence;
The prowling waters scorn
Her gracious impotence.

But still the impartial stars
Thrust back that raging crew,
Who may not pass their bars
Before their season due;

Who plunge and peer and roar,
And sullen wait the hour
The wind shall burst my door
And toss me to their power.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Royal Audience

Gilbert Murray
Lecturing in Christ Church Hall—
Harry Eight,
Puff-cheeked, overfed, and furry,
Straddles o’er him on the wall,
Bulging-eyed, as when his bellow
Crashed on Lambert’s plea, with ‘Fellow!
Thou shalt burn!’—or when he sent
Nan or Katherine from his bed
To the grave’s embrace instead.

And Swagger-gait,
As Geneva’s name he catches,
Fusses, fatly insolent.
‘Body o’ me! lo, what is this
New, false doctrine now that hatches
In Heresy’s metropolis?’
Visibly in their pictured stations
Tremble all the Dead, to mark
How the coldly-bestial stare
Kindles to a wolfish glare
On that bold heresiarch
Lecturing for the League of Nations.

But Professor Murray,
Always gentle, courteous, reasoning, never in a hurry,
Tells us, ‘In some minds there seems confusion.
As for this so-called right of making war,
Civilized people more and more
Are everywhere coming, I think, to the conclusion. . ..’

He does not see at all
That listening Wrath upon the wall,
Looming through the painter’s glaze
With axe and gallows in its gaze.
‘So-called right, indeed!’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Compleat Angler

Saint Peter was a fisherman—
In heaven he begged the boon
To change for hook his bishop’s crook,
His harp for a harpoon;

And then, beside the crystal sea,
With patience and with prayer,
He swung his rod and cast his net,
And left his night-lines there;

But, with a waited sennight gone,
‘Celestial fish are slow
To bite’ (quotha)—‘my bait was good—
I’ll have the fish I know.’

He fenced apart a space in Heaven,
Filled it with earthly rain,
And flocked it with the sweetest fish
Of river, pond, and main;

And, when the Milky Way is clear,
He clangs the Golden Gate
And sits him down with rod and creel—
Who comes can knock and wait.

Yet sinners, in their shivering throngs,
Can still take heart of grace
And trust the Prince of Fishermen
To give poor souls a place.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

A Perfect Bear

The Bear is much misunderstood;
Our writers do him grave injustice.
So listen, Frank—no beast more good
And worthy of your deepest trust is.

Witness his kindness to those two
Their wicked uncle had forsaken!
I tell a story known to few—
The children wept, by night o’ertaken,

When lo, a furry, friendly form!
He gave to each a paw, then shelter;
Those tiny travellers from the storm
Into his den ran helter-skelter.

They heard outside the hissing sleet;
They heard the forest groan and stagger;
The sky was like a tattered sheet
Ripped by the lightning’s fiery dagger!

They cried at first with fear; but he
Did with kind looks and ways restore them;
His capers filled their hearts with glee;
He set wild raspberries before them;

He brought dry bracken for their bed;
He shook down leaves of weeping willow;
He placed a glow-worm by their head;
He pulled his fur to make their pillow.

All night they slept without a stir,
Then breakfasted on wild bees’ honey;
He took them to a woodcutter,
And gave him wax to sell for money.

Was this not kind? And yet to-day
How often! Frank, the words are cruel!
‘He is a perfect bear,’ we say!
A perfect bear! Fairplay’s a jewel!

Why, if he were a perfect bear,
He would be something so entrancing,
His very name would banish care
And we should hardly keep from dancing!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

A Diver

Towards his hole,
Startled, he lunges,
Flirting to sight
His fleecy tail—
A snowy sail
That grips the light!
Into a grassy sea
The whole bark plunges.

Far before the wind-puffs roll
Waves whose green tops wag silently;
Drowned in their depths—and in my gulfing eyes—
Pert, timid, scampering Beauty
Securely lies.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Philosophy

Bunny at burrow sits
And groweth wise thereby;
He sees the flying rooks,
And has no wish to fly.

For all the wrangling noise
Wherewith they beat the air,
It cuts no grass, nor brings
One lettuce to their lair!

And, as philosophers
Chew on their straws of talk,
So Bunny chews on his,
And masters root and stalk.

‘I let those fellows brag
And call their flappings fun;
For me the world’s a field
Wherein to skip and run—

‘A pantry packed with grass!
Ah, see my whiskered face!
Have you a face as calm
And wise and full of grace?’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Valetta from the Sea, 1927

Where the Eyes of Christendom looked out
To spy the Turkish sails,
What legends crown the grey redoubt,
Waking heroic tales?

‘Ask for McEwan’s Splendid stout.’
And ‘Gait’s Fine Burton Ales.’

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Olive-Groves; Ludd, Palestine, 1927

What berries on your glimmering boughs ye bear,
Grey Olives, like a flock in moonlight seen,
Blanching the field and casting on the air
A haze of dimness! reverie and dream—
Of Athens and the City-Guarding Queen
(The olive-tree’s inventress)—of the glow
That lit the dusk within an old man’s brain
(Remembering how through noon the nightingale
Deep in the dark of your close-plumaged boughs
Sang to Colonus’ million-crocused vale)—
Of men (my friends) who from the lagging train
(Their eyes not cleansed of the deceptive gleam
That dances over Iraq’s desert waste)
In an April morn with sullen clouds hung low
Emerging marched to where with muffled roar
The guns were waves bursting on battle’s shore—
Of Kedron midnights when your leaves were roof
Above a blackness pierced and interspaced
Only with glow-worms’ lamps of glassy green.

Grey Olives, ’tis the man ye knew! for proof,
Look in my eyes, and see what memories rouse
At glimpse of your soft leaves and silken sheen.
No alien this—whose spirit understands
Each scent and sound of these beloved lands!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

This Brain, With Sorrow’s Dint

This brain, with sorrow’s dint
Battered and scored—
As a chalk-scrabbled board,
So, with drudge
Of anxious pain, and gray, dim drought,
One smear and smudge—
Will nevermore take print
Of beauty (once that wrought
Its impress fine, clear without effort caught),
Unless that, riving sheer,
Some knife fell, scraping clean
This folly, wisdom’s blur
And scars where toil’s hard, slipping edge has been.
Then—if no streak of memory stayed, no white
Of dingy thought, to mar new scriptures bright—
Then might it bear
Image of beauty’s eyes—as from a glass
Fling back the grass
Wind-shimmer-stirred,
Or flashing water, yellowing moon, quick bird,
The virgin frankness of the encrimsoned air
When March the almond-branches shakes,
Or Earth’s wild brightness when she wakes,
’Mid snow new-fallen, with dazed and dazzling stare.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Thoughts at an O.U.D.S. Performance

‘And the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.’
To me, beneath the elms of Magdalen sitting,
The old words, round their netted cage slow-flitting,
Fell pausing.
‘We have cates and wines enow;
And, for the general, ale.’
‘’Tis well. Do thou
Some nimble-witted fellow hire, to frame
An hour of mirth and spangles, prinked with name
Of nymph and hero—such a pretty toy
As our court-scribblers make with Venus’ boy,
Dian and dolphins, tritons, lovers true
(But crossed by fate), Mars’ warrior-retinue,
The Amazonian lady chaste as ice—
Some delicate and intricate device
Well sorting with a nuptial ceremony.’

And Shakespeare, bidden to prepare a mask
For Essex his great patron, at his task
Pondered, and juggling, jigging patterns made,
Shuffled the stale, ‘quaint’ counters of his trade—
Cupid all-armed, the cold moon, hearts and flowers,
Pure maidens, burning shafts, and woodbine bowers—
Till his mind wandered back to earlier skies,
That domed a lad walking in paradise
Rapturous as he watched the dusk ablaze
With rocket-stars that threaded fiery ways
And then shot madly from their spheres, to awake
The moon-tranced glimmer of the sleeping lake,
Where white fangs hissed in angry seethe around
The Silver Fysshe whose back a mermaid crowned—
A mermaid singing, as she rode the tide,
Of Gloriana great and glorified,
Of Gloriana and a gazing earth
(When Gloriana came to Kenilworth).

But when the play attained a second birth,
Before vast Gloriana in her court
(Her mind relaxed from many a harsh report
And rumour), did the imperial votaress
Behind the music of sweet flattery guess
A poor man’s hopes, and send a gracious word
To enchant her praiser? Or belike she heard
Unheeding, and the poet left to shame
Of failure purchased in ignoble aim?
We know not. But the quiet words have wrought
Unwitting record of their master’s thought--
Of how a young man strove to please a queen:
Of how a boy (what time in fierce delight
He walked a field with torch and pageant bright)
Once raised his eyes, and saw the moon serene
Sail far aloof, as in time’s sky she shone.
The ambitious rockets flared, earth shook to see
And shouted forth in tinsel revelry!
But the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Then; And After

A thousand faces filled the room; this hall
With beauty and with greatness flashed—all, all
A darkened sea upon whose desert shone
One face—a star now all the rest have gone!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Epilogue

With words as counters, talk of day and night,
Sun, moon and stars, using such toys as these,
I play, who towards the timeless shape my flight,
Seeking a home that knows nor land nor seas.
Hereafter, on the mirror of that mind
If any shadow of these times should fall,
Amid that brighter world how shall I find
Utterance that can my vanished dreams recall—
What wonder with the orange moon arose
Over my palms or on stark Moab hills;
How musical the brook of Weston flows
Through hazel shade which March with windflowers fills?

So, after sleep, its mists of fleeing thought
Vainly upon the mind’s clear sky are sought.