Part 2

The pigeons brood in Battersea; while yet the dawn is dark Their ready aubade ripples in the plane-trees round the park; They light upon your balcony, a brave and comely band, Till night decoys their coral feet, their voices low and bland; _But Peter, Peter Pigeon, his feet are in my hand_.

"I AM GLAD THE MARTINS ARE BUILDING AGAIN...."

I am glad the martins are building again, They had all departed From the old deserted House by the stream; Its windows were black to the snow and the rain And the sky and the sun, And the river sobbed on, Like a child in a dream, Under the unlopped sycamore boughs That stifled the old stone house.

Now the axe-edge is blue on the sycamore rind, By the workers huzza'd Till the ashlared façade Outpeers its disguise; Now little white curtains flap out to the wind Across the grey sills And summer instils The peace of the skies And the zest of the sun into every old room So given to grief and gloom.

And the children who wake the green walks with their mirth And lift the shy heads Of the flowers from their beds, By a strange cry stirred-- Desert their dear pastime, look up from the earth, Up, up, through the leaves Where under the eaves Clings the back of the bird: And his nest-mate white-throated regards the new day From her arch of inverted clay.

A PARLEY WITH GRIEF

Grief, let us come to terms! Your strict siege narrows In on the final citadel of my soul, Perish the outworks in a storm of arrows, Mangonel, mace and battleaxe gain their goal. Yet have we still provision and caparison, You will not brook, nor we admit, defeat-- Take then the broken fort not grudge the garrison Generous safe-conduct and a proud retreat. Granted, O Grief? So am I saved disbanding, Even in my end, the powers which called me chief-- Sick Memory, weak Will and Understanding Wounded to death. Marvellest thou, chivalrous Grief, Seeing us slink into the eternal distance, A foe so faint should make such long resistance?

LEVÉE DE RIDEAU

He rode upon the sorrel horse and led the dapple grey, They passed below the gables mute soon after dawn of day, Before the bell had chimed for Mass, while yet the sunless air Lifted the straws of yesterday about the sleeping square.

I recked not of his name and fate nor yet did I surmise Whose were the steeds whose locks were blown betwixt their spacious eyes, The finches fluttered from their hoofs, I stayed to mark the ease Of him who led the grey and swayed the sorrel with his knees.

They passed. Uprose the rural sun and spake his prologue clear Across the world for suburbs sleek and linkèd slums to hear-- "Come hither, hither, where are played the interludes of light And day enacts her dearest parts for your abusèd sight!"

AN AFTERTHOUGHT ON APPLES

While yet unfallen apples throng the bough, To ripen as they cling In lieu of the lost bloom, I ponder how Myself did flower in so rough a spring; And was not set in grace When the first flush was gone from summer's face. How in my tardy season, making one Of a crude congregation, sour in sin, I nodded like a green-clad mandarin, Averse from all that savoured of the sun. But now throughout these last autumnal weeks What skyey gales mine arrogant station thresh, What sunbeams mellow my beshadowed cheeks, What steely storms cudgel mine obdurate flesh; Less loath am I to see my fellows launch Forth from my side into the air's abyss, Whose own stalk is Grown untenacious of its wonted branch. And yet, O God, Tumble me not at last upon the sod, Or, still superb above my fallen kind, Grant not my golden rind To the black starlings screaming in the mist. Nay, rather on some gentle day and bland Give Thou Thyself my stalk a little twist, Dear Lord, and I shall fall into Thy hand.

RECRUITS ON THE ROAD TO OXFORD

They passed in dusty black defile Along the burning champaign's edge Where English oaks for many a mile Dripped acorns o'er the berried hedge,

With valorous smiles on faces soiled Out of the autumn's heat and light These who on English earth had toiled Came forth for English earth to fight,

Round their descending flank outspread The country like a painted page-- God's truth, a man were lightly dead For such a golden heritage!

But these, the surging centuries' wrack Beyond all tides auspicious thrown, Doomed with bowed head and threadbare back To till the land they might not own,

Reft of the swallow's tranquil lease, Reft of the scrap-fed robin's dole-- How have these reared in starving peace This flaming valiancy of soul?...

O England, when with fluttered breath You greet the victory they earn And when with eyes that looked on death The remnant of your sons return,

On your inviolate soil repent And give the guerdon unbesought-- To these whose lives were freely lent Some share of that for which they fought!

A VOLUNTEER

He had no heart for war, its ways and means, Its train of machinations and machines, Its murky provenance, its flagrant ends; His soul, unpledged for his own dividends, He had not ventured for a nation's spoils. So had he sighed for England in her toils Of greed, was't like his pulse would beat less blithe To see the Teuton shells on Rotherhithe And Mayfair--so each body had 'scaped its niche, The wretched poor, the still more wretched rich? Why had he sought the struggle and its pain? Lest little girls with linked hands in the lane Should look "You did not shield us!" as they wended Across his window when the war was ended.

ARS IMMORTALIS

Betsey, when all the stalwarts left Us women to our tasks befitting, Your little fingers, far from deft, Coped for an arduous week with knitting; And, though the meekness of your hair Drooped o'er the task disarmed my strictures, The Army gained when in despair You dropped its socks to paint it pictures.

I, knowing well your guileless brush, Urged that there wanted something subtler To put Meissonier to the blush And snatch the bays from Lady Butler; And so your skies retained their blue, Nor reddened with the wrath of nations, To prove at least one artist knew Her public and her limitations.

A dozen warriors far away Craved of your skill to keep them posted, With coloured pictures day by day, In aught of note their birthplace boasted; Hence these "Arriving Refugees" (Cheerful in burnt sienna) hurry To soothe your uncle's hours of ease In some congested hut in Surrey.

I hear that Nurse's David gets (His valour is already French's) Your "Market" with the cigarettes His sister forwards to the trenches; This "Cat" (for Rupert in the East), Limned in its moments of inertia, You send that he may show the beast To its progenitors in Persia.

Daily your brush depicts a home Such as our duller pens are mute on; Squanders Vermilion, Lake and Chrome And Prussian Blue--that furious Teuton Paper beneath your fingers calls For forms and figures to divide it, Colours and cock-eyed capitals And kisses cruciform to hide it.

Till brushes sucked and laid apart, And candles lit and daylight dying And you asleep, your works of art Ranged on the mantelpiece and drying-- We elders (older when you're gone) Muse on our country's gains and losses ... Ah, Betsey, is it you alone Who send your kisses shaped like crosses?

THE ADMONITION: TO BETSEY

_Remember, on your knees,_ _The men who guard your slumbers_--

And guard a house in a still street Of drifting leaves and drifting feet, A deep blue window where below Lies moonlight on the roof like snow, A clock that still the quarters tells To the dove that roosts beneath the bell's Grave canopy of silent brass Round which the little night winds pass Yet stir it not in the grey steeple; And guard all small and drowsy people Whom gentlest dusk doth disattire, Undressing by the nursery fire In unperturbed numbers On this side of the seas--

_Remember, on your knees,_ _The men who guard your slumbers_.

THE GREAT REBUKE

"May those at war soon lay down the sword and so end the slaughter which is dishonouring Europe and humanity."--BENEDICT XV.

"Put up thy sword." So Peter found Rebuke upon his weapon's aid, The High Priest's servant of his wound Was healed, and the disciple's blade Rebidden to its scabbard. See, O World, the lovely evidence-- True lesson of Gethsemane-- That Heaven on Earth disdained defence. For still the hostile ages pass, And force may strive for right, but know, You cannot cut at Caiaphas But the hired servant bears the blow; And still the apostle, he who dies In thought to stem Christ's Passion, falls Short of his fervour and denies His Master in the High Priest's halls ... Forth leaps the sword upon the same Innocent pretexts--little homes Childhood and womanhood wronged, the Name Of this rebuking Christ: hence comes A votive fury that begins All conflicts, and the justest pride Is first the stalking-horse of sins And then deserted and denied. Despots, diplomatists, dark trades Set men unceasingly at strife, Usurp the war-cries of crusades, Divert each God-devoted life; Never, Oh never yet, will war, Howe'er so poisonous root and stem, Lack the assurance of a star Outdazzling His of Bethlehem Till Truth and Innocence reprove Their ghastly champions with His word-- Who chid the violence even of love-- "Put up thy sword." "Put up thy sword."

A CHAIRMAN OF TRIBUNAL

"I am joined with ... nobility and tranquillity, burgomasters and great oneyers such as ... pray continually to their saint the commonwealth."--I _Henry IV_, ii. 1.

So ringed about with sparrow-hawks and owls, Bloodhounds and weasels, triplicated jowls, Complaisant dewlaps and uneasy eyes, He sits--this President of Destinies-- Fingers his papers, strokes his creasy chin, Bellows beneath his borrowed baldaquin. Cocytus still sobs past him, on its brink He lays nice odds which souls emerge or sink, Paddles his bovine hoofs in the spilt bliss Of Love, and in the tearfullest abyss Angles for little jests. He knows no ruth-- Though even Pilate was concerned for Truth And Caiaphas for Forms--his scarlet thumb Was born reversed: and Innocence is dumb Bound by the implication of his dream, Unholy revenant of a dead régime, Who made red War ere God made me and you And now, God willing, thinks to see it through.

AFTER THE STORM

Along the silent lane I found-- Where all night long the wind blew Hell-- The chestnut trees had heaped the ground With ruthless spoil of nut and shell.

So shall we see our night's grim tolls-- When dawn displays the insensate dusk's Ravage--the unnumbered, fallen souls, The unnumbered, vacant, mangled husks.

THE PHOENIX LIBERTY

One dark December day, the text-books teach, The English Commons set unbending names, By the wan light of wavering candle-flames, To their immortal Protest for Free Speech: Stern signatories, who spared not to impeach Mompesson and Mitchell of corrupted aims, "And argue and debate," said peevish James, "Publicly, matters far beyond their reach." "O fiery popular spirits," re-create Some sparkle of your ashes. Let us see The Phoenix Liberty, that chirps by stealth Through chinks and crannies of our shuttered state, Bright as the sun and unabashed as he, Cry through the casements of the commonwealth.

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

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