Chapter 5
And with the coming on of night, The wind had dropped: and as I lay, Retracing all the happy day, And gazing long and dreamily Across the dim, unsounding sea, Over the far horizon came A sudden sail of amber flame; And soon the new moon rode on high Through cloudless deeps of crystal sky.
Too holy seemed the night for sleep; And yet, I must have slept, it seems; For, suddenly, I woke to hear A strange voice singing, shrill and clear, Down in a gully black and deep That cleft the beetling crag in twain. It seemed the very voice of dreams That drive hag-ridden souls in fear Through echoing, unearthly vales, To plunge in black, slow-crawling streams, Seeking to drown that cry, in vain ... Or some sea creature's voice that wails Through blind, white banks of fog unlifting To God-forgotten sailors drifting Rudderless to death ... And as I heard, Though no wind stirred, An icy breath Was in my hair ... And clutched my heart with cold despair ... But, as the wild song died away, There came a faltering break That shivered to a sobbing fall; And seemed half-human, after all ...
And yet, what foot could find a track In that deep gully, sheer and black ... And singing wildly in the night! So, wondering I lay awake, Until the coming of the light Brought day's familiar presence back.
Down by the harbour-mouth that day. A fisher told the tale to me. Three months before, while out at sea, Young Philip Burn was lost, though how, None knew, and none would ever know. The boat becalmed at noonday lay ... And not a ripple on the sea ... And Philip standing in the bow, When his six comrades went below To sleep away an hour or so, Dog-tired with working day and night, While he kept watch ... and not a sound They heard, until, at set of sun They woke; and coming up they found The deck was empty, Philip gone ... Yet not another boat in sight ... And not a ripple on the sea. How he had vanished, none could tell. They only knew the lad was dead They'd left but now, alive and well ... And he, poor fellow, newly-wed ... And when they broke the news to her, She spoke no word to anyone: But sat all day, and would not stir-- Just staring, staring in the fire, With eyes that never seemed to tire; Until, at last, the day was done, And darkness came; when she would rise, And seek the door with queer, wild eyes; And wander singing all the night Unearthly songs beside the sea: But always the first blink of light Would find her back at her own door.
'Twas Winter when I came once more To that old village by the shore; And as, at night, I climbed the street, I heard a singing, low and sweet, Within a cottage near at hand: And I was glad awhile to stand And listen by the glowing pane: And as I hearkened, that sweet strain Brought back the night when I had lain Awake on Devil's Edge ... And now I knew the voice again, So different, free of pain and fear-- Its terror turned to tenderness-- And yet the same voice none the less, Though singing now so true and clear: And drawing nigh the window-ledge, I watched the mother sing to rest The baby snuggling to her breast.
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D.H. LAWRENCE
SNAP-DRAGON
She bade me follow to her garden where The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup Between the old grey walls; I did not dare To raise my face, I did not dare look up Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in My windows of discovery and shrill 'Sin!'
So with a downcast mien and laughing voice I followed, followed the swing of her white dress That rocked in a lilt along: I watched the poise Of her feet as they flew for a space, then paused to press The grass deep down with the royal burden of her: And gladly I'd offered my breast to the tread of her.
'I like to see,' she said, and she crouched her down, She sunk into my sight like a settling bird; And her bosom couched in the confines of her gown Like heavy birds at rest there, softly stirred By her measured breaths: 'I like to see,' said she, 'The snap-dragon put out his tongue at me.'
She laughed, she reached her hand out to the flower Closing its crimson throat: my own throat in her power Strangled, my heart swelled up so full As if it would burst its wineskin in my throat, Choke me in my own crimson; I watched her pull The gorge of the gaping flower, till the blood did float
Over my eyes and I was blind-- Her large brown hand stretched over The windows of my mind, And in the dark I did discover Things I was out to find: My grail, a brown bowl twined With swollen veins that met in the wrist, Under whose brown the amethyst I longed to taste: and I longed to turn My heart's red measure in her cup, I longed to feel my hot blood burn With the lambent amethyst in her cup.
Then suddenly she looked up And I was blind in a tawny-gold day Till she took her eyes away.
So she came down from above And emptied my heart of love ... So I held my heart aloft To the cuckoo that fluttered above, And she settled soft.
It seemed that I and the morning world Were pressed cup-shape to take this reiver Bird who was weary to have furled Her wings on us, As we were weary to receive her:
This bird, this rich Sumptuous central grain, This mutable witch, This one refrain. This laugh in the fight, This clot of light, This core of night.
She spoke, and I closed my eyes To shut hallucinations out. I echoed with surprise Hearing my mere lips shout The answer they did devise.
Again, I saw a brown bird hover Over the flowers at my feet; I felt a brown bird hover Over my heart, and sweet Its shadow lay on my heart. I thought I saw on the clover A brown bee pulling apart The closed flesh of the clover And burrowing in its heart.
She moved her hand, and again I felt the brown bird hover Over my heart ... and then The bird came down on my heart, As on a nest the rover Cuckoo comes, and shoves over The brim each careful part Of love, takes possession and settles her down, With her wings and her feathers does drown The nest in a heat of love.
She turned her flushed face to me for the glint Of a moment. 'See,' she laughed, 'if you also Can make them yawn.' I put my hand to the dint In the flower's throat, and the flower gaped wide with woe. She watched, she went of a sudden intensely still, She watched my hand, and I let her watch her fill.
I pressed the wretched, throttled flower between My fingers, till its head lay back, its fangs Poised at her: like a weapon my hand stood white and keen, And I held the choked flower-serpent in its pangs Of mordant anguish till she ceased to laugh, Until her pride's flag, smitten, cleaved down to the staff.
She hid her face, she murmured between her lips The low word 'Don't!' I let the flower fall, But held my hand afloat still towards the slips Of blossom she fingered, and my crisp fingers all Put forth to her: she did not move, nor I, For my hand like a snake watched hers that could not fly. Then I laughed in the dark of my heart, I did exult Like a sudden chuckling of music: I bade her eyes Meet mine, I opened her helpless eyes to consult Their fear, their shame, their joy that underlies Defeat in such a battle: in the dark of her eyes My heart was fierce to make her laughter rise ... Till her dark deeps shook with convulsive thrills, and the dark Of her spirit wavered like water thrilled with light, And my heart leaped up in longing to plunge its stark Fervour within the pool of her twilight: Within her spacious gloom, in the mystery Of her barbarous soul, to grope with ecstasy ...
And I do not care though the large hands of revenge Shall get my throat at last--shall get it soon, If the joy that they are lifted to avenge Have risen red on my night as a harvest moon, Which even Death can only put out for me, And death I know is better than not-to-be.
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JOHN MASEFIELD
BIOGRAPHY
When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts, And long before this wandering flesh is rotten The dates which made me will be all forgotten; And none will know the gleam there used to be About the feast days freshly kept by me, But men will call the golden hour of bliss 'About this time,' or 'shortly after this.'
Men do not heed the rungs by which men climb Those glittering steps, those milestones upon time, Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth, Those moments of the soul in years of earth. They mark the height achieved, the main result, The power of freedom in the perished cult, The power of boredom in the dead man's deeds Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.
By many waters and on many ways I have known golden instants and bright days; The day on which, beneath an arching sail, I saw the Cordilleras and gave hail; The summer day on which in heart's delight I saw the Swansea Mumbles bursting white, The glittering day when all the waves wore flags And the ship Wanderer came with sails in rags; That curlew-calling time in Irish dusk When life became more splendid than its husk, When the rent chapel on the brae at Slains Shone with a doorway opening beyond brains; The dawn when, with a brace-block's creaking cry, Out of the mist a little barque slipped by, Spilling the mist with changing gleams of red, Then gone, with one raised hand and one turned head; The howling evening when the spindrift's mists Broke to display the four Evangelists, Snow-capped, divinely granite, lashed by breakers, Wind-beaten bones of long-since-buried acres; The night alone near water when I heard All the sea's spirit spoken by a bird; The English dusk when I beheld once more (With eyes so changed) the ship, the citied shore, The lines of masts, the streets so cheerly trod In happier seasons, and gave thanks to God. All had their beauty, their bright moments' gift, Their something caught from Time, the ever-swift.
All of those gleams were golden; but life's hands Have given more constant gifts in changing lands; And when I count those gifts, I think them such As no man's bounty could have bettered much: The gift of country life, near hills and woods Where happy waters sing in solitudes, The gift of being near ships, of seeing each day A city of ships with great ships under weigh, The great street paved with water, filled with shipping, And all the world's flags flying and seagulls dipping.
Yet when I am dust my penman may not know Those water-trampling ships which made me glow, But think my wonder mad and fail to find, Their glory, even dimly, from my mind, And yet they made me: not alone the ships But men hard-palmed from tallying-on to whips, The two close friends of nearly twenty years Sea-followers both, sea-wrestlers and sea-peers, Whose feet with mine wore many a bolthead bright Treading the decks beneath the riding light. Yet death will make that warmth of friendship cold, And who'll know what one said and what one told, Our hearts' communion, and the broken spells When the loud call blew at the strike of bells? No one, I know, yet let me be believed-- A soul entirely known is life achieved.
Years blank with hardship never speak a word Live in the soul to make the being stirred; Towns can be prisons where the spirit dulls Away from mates and ocean-wandering hulls, Away from all bright water and great hills And sheep-walks where the curlews cry their fills; Away in towns, where eyes have nought to see But dead museums and miles of misery And floating life un-rooted from man's need And miles of fish-hooks baited to catch greed And life made wretched out of human ken And miles of shopping women served by men. So, if the penman sums my London days, Let him but say that there were holy ways, Dull Bloomsbury streets of dull brick mansions old With stinking doors where women stood to scold And drunken waits at Christmas with their horn Droning the news, in snow, that Christ was born; And windy gas lamps and the wet roads shining And that old carol of the midnight whining, And that old room above the noisy slum Where there was wine and fire and talk with some Under strange pictures of the wakened soul To whom this earth was but a burnt-out coal.
O Time, bring back those midnights and those friends, Those glittering moments that a spirit lends, That all may be imagined from the flash, The cloud-hid god-game through the lightning gash; Those hours of stricken sparks from which men took Light to send out to men in song or book; Those friends who heard St. Pancras' bells strike two, Yet stayed until the barber's cockerel crew, Talking of noble styles, the Frenchman's best, The thought beyond great poets not expressed, The glory of mood where human frailty failed, The forts of human light not yet assailed, Till the dim room had mind and seemed to brood, Binding our wills to mental brotherhood; Till we became a college, and each night Was discipline and manhood and delight; Till our farewells and winding down the stairs At each gray dawn had meaning that Time spares That we, so linked, should roam the whole world round Teaching the ways our brooding minds had found, Making that room our Chapter, our one mind Where all that this world soiled should be refined.
Often at night I tread those streets again And see the alleys glimmering in the rain, Yet now I miss that sign of earlier tramps, A house with shadows of plane-boughs under lamps, The secret house where once a beggar stood, Trembling and blind, to show his woe for food. And now I miss that friend who used to walk Home to my lodgings with me, deep in talk, Wearing the last of night out in still streets Trodden by us and policemen on their beats And cats, but else deserted; now I miss That lively mind and guttural laugh of his And that strange way he had of making gleam, Like something real, the art we used to dream. London has been my prison; but my books Hills and great waters, labouring men and brooks, Ships and deep friendships and remembered days Which even now set all my mind ablaze-- As that June day when, in the red bricks' chinks I saw the old Roman ruins white with pinks And felt the hillside haunted even then By not dead memory of the Roman men; And felt the hillside thronged by souls unseen Who knew the interest in me, and were keen That man alive should understand man dead So many centuries since the blood was shed, And quickened with strange hush because this comer Sensed a strange soul alive behind the summer. That other day on Ercall when the stones Were sunbleached white, like long unburied bones, While the bees droned and all the air was sweet From honey buried underneath my feet, Honey of purple heather and white clover Sealed in its gummy bags till summer's over. Then other days by water, by bright sea, Clear as clean glass, and my bright friend with me; The cove clean bottomed where we saw the brown Red spotted plaice go skimming six feet down, And saw the long fronds waving, white with shells, Waving, unfolding, drooping, to the swells; That sadder day when we beheld the great And terrible beauty of a Lammas spate Roaring white-mouthed in all the great cliff's gaps, Headlong, tree-tumbling fury of collapse, While drenching clouds drove by and every sense Was water roaring or rushing or in offence, And mountain sheep stood huddled and blown gaps gleamed Where torn white hair of torrents shook and streamed. That sadder day when we beheld again A spate going down in sunshine after rain When the blue reach of water leaping bright Was one long ripple and clatter, flecked with white. And that far day, that never blotted page When youth was bright like flowers about old age, Fair generations bringing thanks for life To that old kindly man and trembling wife After their sixty years: Time never made A better beauty since the Earth was laid, Than that thanksgiving given to grey hair For the great gift of life which brought them there.
Days of endeavour have been good: the days Racing in cutters for the comrade's praise. The day they led my cutter at the turn, Yet could not keep the lead, and dropped astern; The moment in the spurt when both boats' oars Dipped in each other's wash, and throats grew hoarse, And teeth ground into teeth, and both strokes quickened Lashing the sea, and gasps came, and hearts sickened, And coxswains damned us, dancing, banking stroke, To put our weights on, though our hearts were broke, And both boats seemed to stick and sea seemed glue, The tide a mill race we were struggling through; And every quick recover gave us squints Of them still there, and oar-tossed water-glints, And cheering came, our friends, our foemen cheering, A long, wild, rallying murmur on the hearing, 'Port Fore!' and 'Starboard Fore!' 'Port Fore' 'Port Fore,' 'Up with her,' 'Starboard'; and at that each oar Lightened, though arms were bursting, and eyes shut, And the oak stretchers grunted in the strut, And the curse quickened from the cox, our bows Crashed, and drove talking water, we made vows, Chastity vows and temperance; in our pain We numbered things we'd never eat again If we could only win; then came the yell 'Starboard,' 'Port Fore,' and then a beaten bell Rung as for fire to cheer us. 'Now.' Oars bent, Soul took the looms now body's bolt was spent, 'Damn it, come on now.' 'On now,' 'On now,' 'Starboard.' 'Port Fore,' 'Up with her, Port'; each cutter harboured Ten eye-shut painsick strugglers, 'Heave, oh heave,' Catcalls waked echoes like a shrieking sheave. 'Heave,' and I saw a back, then two. 'Port Fore,' 'Starboard,' 'Come on'; I saw the midship oar, And knew we had done them. 'Port Fore,' 'Starboard,' 'Now.' I saw bright water spurting at their bow, Their cox' full face an instant. They were done. The watchers' cheering almost drowned the gun. We had hardly strength to toss our oars; our cry Cheering the losing cutter was a sigh.
Other bright days of action have seemed great: Wild days in a pampero off the Plate; Good swimming days, at Hog Back or the Coves Which the young gannet and the corbie loves; Surf-swimming between rollers, catching breath Between the advancing grave and breaking death, Then shooting up into the sunbright smooth To watch the advancing roller bare her tooth; And days of labour also, loading, hauling; Long days at winch or capstan, heaving, pawling; The days with oxen, dragging stone from blasting, And dusty days in mills, and hot days masting. Trucking on dust-dry deckings smooth like ice, And hunts in mighty wool-racks after mice; Mornings with buckwheat when the fields did blanch With White Leghorns come from the chicken ranch; Days near the spring upon the sunburnt hill, Plying the maul or gripping tight the drill; Delights of work most real, delights that change The headache life of towns to rapture strange Not known by townsmen, nor imagined; health That puts new glory upon mental wealth And makes the poor man rich. But that ends, too. Health, with its thoughts of life; and that bright view, That sunny landscape from life's peak, that glory, And all a glad man's comments on life's story, And thoughts of marvellous towns and living men, And what pens tell, and all beyond the pen, End, and are summed in words so truly dead They raise no image of the heart and head, The life, the man alive, the friend we knew, The minds ours argued with or listened to, None; but are dead, and all life's keenness, all, Is dead as print before the funeral; Even deader after, when the dates are sought, And cold minds disagree with what we thought.
This many-pictured world of many passions Wears out the nations as a woman fashions, And what life is is much to very few; Men being so strange, so mad, and what men do So good to watch or share; but when men count Those hours of life that were a bursting fount Sparkling the dusty heart with living springs, There seems a world, beyond our earthly things, Gated by golden moments, each bright time Opening to show the city white like lime, High-towered and many-peopled. This made sure, Work that obscures those moments seems impure, Making our not-returning time of breath Dull with the ritual and records of death, That frost of fact by which our wisdom gives Correctly stated death to all that lives.
Best trust the happy moments. What they gave Makes man less fearful of the certain grave, And gives his work compassion and new eyes. The days that make us happy make us wise.
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HAROLD MONRO
CHILD OF DAWN
O gentle vision in the dawn: My spirit over faint cool water glides. Child of the day, To thee; And thou art drawn By kindred impulse over silver tides The dreamy way To me.
I need thy hands, O gentle wonder-child, For they are moulded unto all repose; Thy lips are frail, And thou art cooler than an April rose; White are thy words and mild: Child of the morning, hail!
Breathe thus upon mine eyelids--that we twain May build the day together out of dreams. Life, with thy breath upon my eyelids, seems Exquisite to the utmost bounds of pain. I cannot live, except as I may be Compelled for love of thee. O let us drift, Frail as the floating silver of a star, Or like the summer humming of a bee, Or stream-reflected sunlight through a rift.
I will not hope, because I know, alas, Morning will glide, and noon, and then the night Will take thee from me. Everything must pass Swiftly--but nought so swift as dawn-delight. If I could hold thee till the day, Is broad on sea and hill, Child of repose, What god can say, What god or mortal knows, What dream thou mightest not in me fulfil?
O gentle vision in the dawn: My spirit over faint cool water glides, Child of the day, To thee; And thou art drawn By kindred impulse over silver tides The dreamy way To me.
LAKE LEMAN
It is the sacred hour: above the far Low emerald hills that northward fold, Calmly, upon the blue the evening star Floats, wreathed in dusky gold. The winds have sung all day; but now they lie Faint, sleeping; and the evening sounds awake. The slow bell tolls across the water: I Am haunted by the spirit of the lake. It seems as though the sounding of the bell Intoned the low song of the water-soul, And at some moments I can hardly tell The long-resounding echo from the toll. O thou mysterious lake, thy spell Holds all who round thy fruitful margin dwell. Oft have I seen home-going peasants' eyes Lit with the peace that emanates from thee. Those who among thy waters plunge, arise Filled with new wisdom and serenity. Thy veins are in the mountains. I have heard, Down-stretched beside thee at the silent noon, With leaning head attentive to thy word, A secret and delicious mountain-tune, Proceeding as from many shadowed hours In ancient forests carpeted with flowers, Or far, where hidden waters, wandering Through banks of snow, trickle, and meet, and sing. Ah, what repose at noon to go, Lean on thy bosom, hold thee with wide hands, And listen for the music of the snow! But most, as now, When harvest covers thy surrounding lands, I love thee, with a coronal of sheaves Crowned regent of the day; And on the air thy placid breathing leaves A scent of corn and hay. For thou hast gathered (as a mother will The sayings of her children in her heart) The harvest-thoughts of reapers on the hill, When the cool rose and honeysuckle fill The air, and fruit is laden on the cart. Thou breathest the delight Of summer evening at the deep-roofed farm, And meditation of the summer night, When the enravished earth is lying warm From recent kisses of the conquering sun.
Dwell as a spirit in me, O thou one Sweet natural presence. In the years to be When all the mortal loves perchance are done, Them I will bid farewell, but, oh, not thee. I love thee. When the youthful visions fade, Fade thou not also in the hopeless past. Be constant and delightful, as a maid Sought over all the world, and found at last.