Part 2

Here should be peace as was peace and splendour Of hearts’ first stirrings, the eye to the hills Turned, the call of the perilous margins Life just beginning, but life well begun. Here by the well we played (you remember) (Then too the grasses grew at the edges Tempting small hands but tempt now no longer) Here by the well we dreamed after playing.

Have you forgotten (or has death no mercy) How bright the days were and how the evening Softer than sleep laid her mysterious Hands on the garden soothing and changing. Here at the well side we loved after dreaming Since we had played by it, since we had dreamed. Here at the well side love that was wakened Sank like a stone, but leaving no ripple.

Here are our shapes that play dream love quarrel, Here are our dreams (and if there were dreamers, If we were not like our visions a dream) All is not over--is all then over?

Here is the well and the delicate water Far below gleaming, the starred white branches Fragrant with flowers. Here is the noontide, Even the grasses grow at the edges. What then is gone? If we were the dreamers (And not a dream) then all must be over. I an old man cold, fruitless and lonely, Watch by the water, which you cannot see.

But if we two are dreams of a dreamer, All is not over, and here together Age falls from me, and from you the mantle Death seemed to cast, and here by the well side Lifted again is the voice of your singing, Golden again are the perilous margins, Sweet are your eyes and young and immortal Our hearts are set to the day and the hills.

JUDAS.

Not I, oh Christ, not I betrayed thee But He was traitor, He who made thee Born of a village carpenter With such immortal longings stir As stretched beyond the world and found In God himself the final wound. Through me thou wast by soldiers taken By Him, by Him on the Cross forsaken.

THE NIGHT.

Be quiet bird Be silent all That e’er were heard And cease to call.

Drop perfume rose And flowers white Put off your shows For see ’tis night.

Soft creatures slow Begin to pass, And thousands grow From out the grass.

With deep low whirr The air is full And through the fir The moon shines cool.

There is no pain Sorrow is dead Slow Charles’ wain Wheels overhead.

There is no grief All things have ease No bough or leaf Stirs on the trees.

OTHER SONNETS.

THREE SONNETS OF LOVE.

I.

AT NOONTIDE SEEKING.

Can love being love and therefore magical When summer and the roses lie between, Find back to spring? Or shall he know at all The places where his golden feet have been At noontide seeking. Shall he know again The tune of dawn, the unconditioned sky, The world before the coming of the rain, That like a shadow waited and went by, Soft like a God and like a God aflame? Ah will he find that murmur at your lips, Still see you standing, as the morning stands, With fingers stretched that touched and fled and came To mine again, warm to the tender lips Once lilies and now roses--Oh your hands?

II.

AN ACCUSATION.

What have you given, love, to those who gave All for your sake? What gift to weigh the worth Of those who, having all, did nothing save, But for a kiss made jetsam of the earth? What answer have you for the thronging ghosts-- Gentlemen of high heart, who were not brave Because of you? What for the stricken hosts Of those who, seeking truth, embraced the grave Your magic sets about the brain? What way Of answer have you for the fallen tears Of those who heard you calling, and, once strong As being pure, became the body’s prey? What answer, O sweet God, to all the years That worshipped you and crowned you, and were wrong?

III.

THE TREMBLING BRIM.

Love, if remorseless, needeth no defence, (You say) for though he waste our lives it seems A moment spent with love is recompense, For all the might have beens of all our dreams. Yet is there something in the might have been Was never yet in love. O trembling brim Of the far country, that our eyes have seen, Have seen and turned from for the sake of him. Are there no pleasant places, no strange deeds Waiting the comer? Is there no great sea Watched by immaculate angels who attend Our sails that linger? No red star that leads To where beyond all passion shaken free We follow the great road that has no end?

THE REPLY.

All things are true of love, save these things only, That at the long day’s end when love is over, He’s of love cheated who was once a lover, And she, by love once visited, left lonely. The dream is done, but here’s no cause for sorrow When beauty’s seal is on the dream descending. Beauty is mortal, beauty has an ending, Beauty and love alone need no to-morrow. All other things--courage and truth and virtue-- Have the one doom, the lust for the immortal. Love only, with lost beauty, life outpaces, Cold, though they burn, untroubled, though they hurt you, And white, like gods, when through the sculptured portal The starshine enter and the moon’s cold graces.

GOD GAVE US BODIES....

God gave us bodies for suffering and for strangers, To have their will of. We divided waken To find the heart that won through all its dangers By the stained body at the dawn forsaken. We said of love “The body, and its langours Are but a little thing, though sweet. Unshaken Behold the heart!” Fools! Who forgot the angers Of blood despised and the heart overtaken By the gross hands of lust even at the portal Of bliss. And not for any tears is altered Love thus betrayed, yet though betrayed, immortal, Struggling for ever and for ever haltered. God gave us bodies; let them write in heaven “Love we forgive, but God is not forgiven.”

RONSARD AND HELENE.

You sang, Ronsard, in your imperial lay Hélène, and sang as only you would dare That she would cry, in reading, old and grey “Ronsard sang this of me when I was fair.” That was youth spoke, Ronsard, who will not stay To wonder if his own divine despair May not with losing loveliness outweigh Kisses, that given, melt upon the air. If youth but knew, Ronsard! The things that seem Would he not barter for the things that are, And leave his mistress to embrace her dream Exchange her lips for her lost beauty’s star? Losing Hélène youth finds the lovelier truth, If youth but knew! But then he were not youth.

THE DRIFT OF THE LUTE.

Love, lay aside your lute and leave the roses That with the bays are twined. No time for sweeping The strings now in the hush of the heart, nor reaping Summer’s fulfilment. For the daylight closes With laying on of hands and the heart shriven, And mystical washing away of sorrow, So there is neither yesterday nor morrow But quiet and the world to healing given. And if such peace o’er lute and roses drifted Would seem to beggar love of coronation Thus in the darkness fallen on an ending, See! Than the sun, whose golden hands were lifted In heaven, now cloaked, more lovely seek her station, The moon consummate in her place ascending.

LOVE AND BEAUTY.

Even tho’ love were done, shall we complain If in the world there’s hidden loveliness Born of that love, and not a lost caress But makes us poorer to the common gain? This beauty may adorn with deeper stain The cool first jonquil, or with light redress The vision of a star, and thus confess That love, though lost, is never lost in vain. And if for others we have lit this flame, While us the gloom invests of dying embers, Being so separate, your heart remembers, As mine, the world before the wonder came, For that sweet change we spent our hearts in heaven, Thus briefly won, thus lost, and thus forgiven.

WAR VERSE.

V. D. F.

(_Ave atque Vale._)

You from Givenchy, since no years can harden The beautiful dead, when holy twilight reaches The sleeping cedar and the copper beeches, Return to walk again in Wadham Garden. We, growing old, grow stranger to the College, Symbol of youth, where we were young together, But you, beyond the reach of time and weather, Of youth in death for ever keep the knowledge. We hoard our youth, we hoard our youth, and fear it, But you, who freely gave what we have hoarded, Are with the final goal of youth rewarded The road to travel and the traveller’s spirit. And, therefore, when for us the stars go down, Your star is steady over Oxford Town.

ENGLAND.

Dear English heart, the open waterways, The sea that is aware of liberty, And your great ships, her servitors, the sea Deep, as your depths, saying of pomp and blaze, “These things are not for us,” since other days Return, and when the flag is shaken free, Cold captains, Drake and Nelson, watch with thee, Whose eyes, of boastings cleared and empty praise, Beyond the wrecked armadas find the soul That unto battle brings our captains’ test: “Triumph is good, but honour still is best. Conquest of what is evil, and no goal Of self-advancement. For the world set free The ships of England keep the English sea.”

THE MOON IN FLANDERS.

Soldiers that after struggle in the night See the cold stars assume their shining place, Watch the sweet moon and her unaltered grace Mocking with peace the battle-tortured sight, Think these not careless. These were not less white Long years ago upon the upturned face Of other soldiers also of your race Who on those fields fought such another fight, These stars, this moon, in their high citadel Of heaven are witness in the Low Country, Whose lights are the mere lights of history Falling on you, these on your fathers fell. See through the reek and horror, shining through, Cold lights indeed, but lights of Waterloo!

THE SOLDIER SPEAKS.

This then was love of women. O how little Remembered, being free! Say she was tender And had a lure of the hands. Here ruthless splendour Outlures that lure. And, look you, love was brittle That broke, and none could heal it, being sated. But this is lasting, this is always stranger Each terrible new dawn, for each new danger May be the last of all. O, we have waited On love like cowards, and the worshipped woman Enslaved and shamed us. But that shame is over. We are with death acquainted, and to riot And call of blood and tenderness and human Regrets, he does succeed this final lover Whose love is freedom and whose gift is quiet.

FLOWERS AT HAMPTON COURT.

The chestnut trees in Bushey Park are lit This year as always since the spring knows naught Of war and death, and still the shadows flit Across the dappled grass and burnish it. And still at night the moon in stately sort Is tranquil with the avenues, and lights The sleeping palace, as on other nights Of springs long past; but searching for the rose In vain, the dawn a little whisper knows: “Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”

Two years ago when all the trees were green The old red walls were unto to summer brought, By joyous bands of lilies and the lean Daffodils danced before or ran between. Where are they gone these blooms of good report? And where the lad and where the laughing maid Who came to wonder and to love who stayed? For a lost flower is a little thing But a lost lover is the end of spring. “Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”

Ah! spring these flowers are growing otherwhere, In a new soil a changing radiance taught, Born of the soul and nourished of the air, Sweeter though scentless and unseen more fair. Where are they gone these blooms of good report? Is it perhaps that where the Tigris flows There blooms an unaccustomed English rose? And where the guns have killed the spring in France The English lilies break a silver lance? “Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”

If thus the flowers, where are those who here Themselves fresh flowers with the springtime fraught, Saw the first leaves in Bushey Park appear The dead swept leaves the leaves of yesteryear? Where are they gone those lads of good report? It may be they are sleeping; it may be Strange lands have taken them or a strange sea. But wheresoever in the world they lie An English voice till that world ends will cry “Here are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”

_Printed at The Vincent Works, Oxford._