Chapter 2
Be patient, Oh, my heart! A little while And he shall pierce the darkness of the night That flows between my home and his. The song The youth, the early light that he has lost Are as a little strength submerged and drowned In this fierce rage that bids him seek me out And take me in the darkness of my home, And change, and fill me, as the virgin night Is changed to day, and as the moonlight sky Is emptied of her sterile ray, and filled With overflooding light that spills to earth A golden augury of later fruits And a diviner birth.
Hark! Hark!... He comes He has found the temple of his soul's desire ..., Be still, Oh beating heart, be still ... be still, Lest he be troubled now his sacred fire Creeps through this temple to your inmost shrine. And I at last am his, and he is mine!
* * * * *
WILLIAM H. DAVIES
THE VILLAIN
While joy gave clouds the light of stars, That beamed where'er they looked; And calves and lambs had tottering knees, Excited, while they sucked; While every bird enjoyed his song, Without one thought of harm or wrong-- I turned my head and saw the wind, Not far from where I stood, Dragging the corn by her golden hair, Into a dark and lonely wood.
BIRD AND BROOK
My song, that's bird-like in its kind, Is in the mind, Love--in the mind; And in my season I am moved No more or less from being loved; No woman's love has power to bring My song back when I cease to sing; Nor can she, when my season's strong, Prevent my mind from song.
But where I feel your woman's part, Is in the heart, Love--in the heart; For when that bird of mine broods long, And I'd be sad without my song, Your love then makes my heart a brook That dreams in many a quiet nook, And makes a steady, murmuring sound Of joy the whole year round.
PASSION'S HOUNDS
With mighty leaps and bounds, I followed Passion's hounds, My hot blood had its day; Lust, Gluttony, and Drink, I chased to Hell's black brink, Both night and day.
I ate like three strong men, I drank enough for ten, Each hour must have its glass Yes, Drink and Gluttony Have starved more brains, say I, Than Hunger has.
And now, when I grow old, And my slow blood is cold, And feeble is my breath-- I'm followed by those hounds, Whose mighty leaps and bounds Hunt me to death.
THE TRUTH
Since I have seen a bird one day, His head pecked more than half away; That hopped about, with but one eye, Ready to fight again, and die-- Ofttimes since then their private lives Have spoilt that joy their music gives.
So, when I see this robin now, Like a red apple on the bough, And question why he sings so strong, For love, or for the love of song; Or sings, maybe, for that sweet rill Whose silver tongue is never still--
Ah, now there comes this thought unkind, Born of the knowledge in my mind: He sings in triumph that last night He killed his father in a fight; And now he'll take his mother's blood-- The last strong rival for his food.
THE FORCE OF LOVE
Have I now found an angel in Unrest, That wakeful Love is more desired than sleep: Though you seem calm and gentle, you shall show The force of this strong love in me so deep.
Yes, I will make you, though you seem so calm, Look from your blue eyes that divinest joy As was in Juno's, when she made great Jove Forget the war and half his heaven in Troy.
And I will press your lips until they mix With my poor quality their richer wine: Be my Parnassus now, and grow more green Each upward step towards your top divine.
APRIL'S LAMBS
Though I was born in April's prime, With many another lamb, Yet, thinking now of all my years, What am I but a tough old ram?
"No woman thinks of years," said she, "Or any tough old rams, When she can hear a voice that bleats As tenderly as any lamb's."
* * * * *
GEOFFREY DEARMER
NOUS AUTRES
We never feel the lust of steel Or fury-woken blood, We live and die and wonder why In mud, and mud, and mud, And horror first and horror last And Phantom Terror riding past. We hear and hear the hounds of Fear Nearer and more near. We feel their breath.... Only the nights befriend And mitigate the hell; Of those who ponder, see and hear, Too well. The nights, and Death-- The end. We feel but never fear His breath.
Day after weary day, In vain, in vain, in vain, We turn to Thee and pray, We cry and cry again-- "O lord of Battle, why Should we alone be sane?"
We stifle cries with lightless eyes And face eternal night; We stifle cries to sacrifice Our eyes for Human Sight. And many give that men may live, A life, a limb, a brain, That fellow men may understand And be for ever sane. What matter if we lose a hand If others wander hand in hand; Or lose a foot if others greet The dawn of peace with dancing feet; What matter if we die unheard If others hear the Poet's Word?
Because we pay from day to day The price of sacrifice; Because we face each dreary place Again, again, again. Lord, set us free from Sanity-- Who feel no fighting thrill; Must we remain for ever sane And never learn to kill? No answer came. In very shame Our long-unheeded cry Grew bitterly more bitterly, "O why, O why, O why. May we not feel the lust of steel The fury-woken thrill-- For men may learn to live and die And never learn to kill?"
October, 1918
SHE TO HIM
The day you died, my Share of All My soul was tossed Hither and thither, like a leaf, And lost, lost, lost, From sounds and sight, Beneath the night Of gloom and grief.
But-- (Hush, for the wind may hear) Soon, soon you came in solitude: And we renewed All happiness. Now, who shall guess How close we are, my dear? (Hush, for the wind may hear.)
Yet-- Other women wait Their doors ajar; And listen, listen, listen, For the gate, And murmur, "Soon, the war Will seem a far, Dim agony of sleep."
May I be joyful, too, That day, For love of you May I not turn away Nor--weep.
* * * * *
JOHN DRINKWATER
MALEDICTION
Thrush, across the twilight Here in the abbey close, Pouring from your lilac-bough Note on pebbled note, Why do you sing so, Making your song so bright. Swelling to a throbbing curve That brave little throat?
Soon, but a season brief, The lice among your feathers, Stiff-winged and aimless-eyed, With song dead you shall fall; Refuse of some clotted ditch, Seeking no more berries; Why with lyric numbers now Do you the twilight call?
Proud in your tawny plumes Mottled in devising, Singing as though never sang Bird in close till now-- Sharp are the javelins Of death that are seeking, Seeking even simple birds On a lilac-bough.
Crushed, forlorn, a frozen thing, For no more nesting, For no more speckled eggs In pattered cup of clay,-- Soon your song shall come to this You who make the twilight yours, And echoes of the abbey, At the end of day.
In the song I hear it, The thud of a poor feathered death, In the swelling throat I see The splintering of song-- What demon then has worked in me To tease my brain to bitterness-- In me who have loved bird and tree So long, so long?
Until I come to charity, Until I find peace again, My curse upon the fiend or god That will not let me hear A bird in song upon the bough But, hovering about the notes, There chimes the maniac beating Of black-winged fear.
SPECTRAL
What will the years tell? Hush! If it would but speak-- That shadow athwart the stream, In the gloom of a dream;
Could my brain but spell The thought in the brain of that weak Old ghost that hides in the gloom, Over there, of the chestnut bloom.
I sit in the broad June light On the open bank of the river, In the summer of manhood, young; And over the water bright Is a lair that is overhung With coned pink blooms that quiver And droop, till the water's breast Is of petal and leaf caressed.
And the June sky glares on my prime-- But there in the gloom, with Time, Huddled, with Time on its back, Is a shadow that is my wrack. Yes, it is I in the lair, Peering and watching me there.
Under the chestnut bloom My old age hides in the gloom. And the years to be have been, Could I spell the lore of that brain. But the river flows between, Over the weeds of pain, Over the snares of death, Maybe, should I leap to hold, With myself grown old, Council there in the gloom Under the chestnut bloom.
And so, with instruction none, I go, and leave it there, My ghost with Time in its lair, And the things that must yet be done Tear at my heart unknown, And the years have tongues of stone With no syllable to make For consolation's sake.
But peradventure yet I shall return To dare the weeds of death, And plunge through the coned pink bloom, And cry on that spectre set In its silent ring of gloom, And stay my youth to learn The thing that my old age saith.
* * * * *
WILFRED WILSON GIBSON
IN WAR TIME
1
TROOPSHIP, (s.s. Baltic: Mid-Atlantic: July, 1917)
Dark waters into crystalline brilliance break About the keel, as through the moonless night The dark ship moves in its own moving lake Of phosphorescent cold moon-coloured light; And to the clear horizon, all around Drift pools of fiery beryl flashing bright As though, still flashing, quenchless, cold and white, A million moons in the dark green waters drowned.
And staring at the magic with eyes adream, That never till now have looked upon the sea, Boys from the Middle-West lounge listlessly In the unlanterned darkness, boys who go Beckoned by some unchallengeable gleam To unknown lands to fight an unknown foe.
2
THE CONSCRIPT.
Indifferent, flippant, earnest, but all bored, The doctors sit in the glare of electric light Watching the endless stream of naked white Bodies of men for whom their hasty award Means life or death, maybe, or the living death Of mangled limbs, blind eyes or darkened brain: And the chairman, as his monocle falls again, Pronounces each doom with easy, indifferent breath.
Then suddenly they all shudder as they see A young man move before them wearily, Pallid and gaunt as one already dead; And they are strangely troubled as he stands With arms outstretched and drooping, thorn-crowned head, The nail-marks glowing in his feet and hands.
3
AIR-RAID.
Night shatters in mid-heaven: the bark of guns, The roar of planes, the crash of bombs, and all The unshackled skiey pandemonium stuns The senses to indifference, when a fall Of masonry near by startles awake, Tingling wide-eyed, prick-eared, with bristling hair, Each sense within the body crouched aware Like some sore-hunted creature in the brake.
Yet side by side we lie in the little room, Just touching hands, with eyes and ears that strain Keenly, yet dream-bewildered, through tense gloom, Listening in helpless stupor of insane Drugged nightmare panic fantastically wild, To the quiet breathing of our sleeping child.
4
IN WAR-TIME.
As gaudy flies across a pewter plate, On the grey disk of the unrippling sea, Beneath an airless, sullen sky of slate Dazzled destroyers zig-zag restlessly, While underneath the sleek and livid tide, Blind monsters nosing through the soundless deep, Lean submarines among blind fishes glide And through primeval weedy forests sweep.
Over the hot grey surface of my mind Glib, motley rumours zig-zag without rest, While deep within the darkness of my breast Monstrous desires, lean, sinister and blind, Slink through unsounded night and stir the slime And ooze of oceans of forgotten time.
5
RAGTIME.
A minx in khaki struts the limelit boards: With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin Spirtle of sniggering lascivious patter.
Then out into the jostling Strand I turn, And down a dark lane to the quiet river, One stream of silver under the full moon, And think of how cold searchlights flare and burn Over dank trenches where men crouch and shiver. Humming, to keep their hearts up, that same tune.
6
LEAVE.
Crouched on the crowded deck, we watch the sun In naked gold leap out of a cold sea Of shivering silver; and stretching drowsily Crampt legs and arms, relieved that night is done And the slinking, deep-sea peril past, we turn Westward to see the chilly, sparkling light Quicken the Wicklow Hills, till jewel-bright In their Spring freshness of dewy green they burn.
And silent on the deck beside me stands A soldier, lean and brown, with restless hands, And eyes that stare unkindling on the life And rapture of green hills and glistening morn: He comes from Flanders home to his dead wife, And I, from England, to my son newborn.
7
BACCHANAL
(November, 1918)
Into the twilight of Trafalgar Square They pour from every quarter, banging drums And tootling penny trumpets: to a blare Of tin mouth-organs, while a sailor strums A solitary banjo, lads and girls, Locked in embraces, in a wild dishevel Of flags and streaming hair, with curdling skirls Surge in a frenzied, reeling, panic revel.
Lads who so long have looked death in the face, Girls who so long have tended death's machines, Released from the long terror shriek and prance: And watching them, I see the outrageous dance, The frantic torches and the tambourines Tumultuous on the midnight hills of Thrace.
* * * * *
LOUIS GOLDING
SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME
The shepherd sings:-- "_Way down in Dixie, Way down in Dixie, Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay_ ..."
With shaded eyes he stands to look Across the hills where the clouds swoon, He singing, leans upon his crook, He sings, he sings no more. The wind is muffled in the tangled hairs Of sheep that drift along the noon. One mild sheep stares With amber eyes about the pearl-flecked June. Two skylarks soar With singing flame Into the sun whence first they came. All else is only grasshoppers Or a brown wing the shepherd stirs, Who, like a tall tree moving, goes Where the pale tide of sheep-drift flows.
See! the sun smites With sea-drawn lights The turned wing of a gull that glows Aslant the violet, the profound Dome of the mid-June heights.
Alas! again the grasshoppers, The birds, the slumber-winging bees, Alas! again for those and these Demure and sweet things drowned; Drowned in vain raucous words men made Where no lark rose with swift and sweet Ascent and where no dim sheep strayed About the stone immensities, Where no sheep strayed and where no bees Probed any flowers nor swung a blade Of grass with pollened feet.
He sings:-- "_In Dixie, Way down in Dixie, Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay Scrambled eggs in the new-mown hay_..."
The herring-gulls with peevish cries Rebuke the man who sings vain words; His sheep-dog growls a low complaint, Then turns to chasing butterflies. But when the indifferent singing-birds From midmost down to dimmest shore Innumerably confirm their songs, And grasshoppers make summer rhyme And solemn bees in the wild thyme Clash cymbals and beat gongs, The shepherd's words once more are faint, The shepherd's song once more is thinned Upon the long course of the wind, He sings, he sings no more.
Ah, now the sweet monotonies Of bells that jangle on the sheep To the low limit of the hills! Till the blue cup of music spills Into the boughs of lowland trees; Till thence the lowland singings creep Into the silenced shepherd's head, Creep drowsily through his blood: The young thrush fluting all he knows, The ring-dove moaning his false woes, Almost the rabbit's tiny tread, The last unfolding bud.
But now, Now a cool word spreads out along the sea. Now the day's violet is cloud-tipped with gold. Now dusk most silently Fills the hushed day with other wings than birds'. Now where on foam-crest waves the seagulls rock, To their cliff-haven go the seagulls thence. So too the shepherd gathers in his flock, Because birds journey to their dens, Tired sheep to their still fold. A dark first bat swoops low and dips About the shepherd who now sings A song of timeless evenings; For dusk is round him with wide wings, Dusk murmurs on his moving lips.
_There is not mortal man who knows From whence the, shepherd's song arose: It came a thousand years ago.
Once the world's shepherds woke to lead The folded sheep that they might feed On green downs where winds blow.
One shepherd sang a golden word. A thousand miles away one heard. One sang it swift, one sang it slow._
_Three skylarks heard, three skylarks told All shepherds this same song of gold On all downs where winds blow.
This is the song that shepherds must Sing till the green downlands be dust And tide of sheep-drift no more flow:
The song three skylarks told again To all the sheep and shepherd men On green downs where winds blow._
THE SINGER OF HIGH STATE
On hills too harsh for firs to climb, Where eagle dare not hatch her brood, Upon the peak of solitude, With anvils of black granite crude I forge austerities of rhyme.
Such godlike stuff my spirit drinks I make grand odes of tempests there. The steel-winged eagle, if he dare To cleave these tracts of frozen air, Hearing such music, swoops and sinks.
Stark clangours of forgotten wars, Tumults of primal love and hate, Through crags of song reverberate. Held by the Singer of High State, Battalions of the midnight pause.
On hills uplift from Space and Time, Upon the peak of Solitude, With stars to give my furnace food, On anvils of black granite crude I forge austerities of rhyme.
* * * * *
GERALD GOULD
FREEDOMS
1
Those were our freedoms, and we come to this: The climbing road that lures the climbing feet Is lost: there lies no mist above the wheat, Where-thro' to glimpse the silver precipice, Far off, about whose base the white seas hiss In spray; the world grows narrow and complete; We have lost our perils in the certain sweet; We have sold our great horizon for a kiss.
To every hill there is a lowly slope, But some have heights beyond all height--so high They make new worlds for the adventuring eye. We for achievement have forgone our hope, And shall not see another morning ope, Nor the new moon come into the new sky.
2
Where is our freedom sought, and where to seek? The voices of the various world agree The future's ours: to hope is to be free: Only to doubt, to fear, is to be weak. Have you not felt upon your calm clear cheek The kiss of the bright wind of liberty? What more is there to ask, what more to be? Peace, peace, my soul, and let the silence speak!
To hope is to be free? Nay, hope's a slave To every chance; hope is the same as fear; Hope trembles at the wind, the star, the wave, The voice, the mood, the music; hope stands near The chilly threshold of the waiting grave, And when the silence speaks, hope does not hear.
3
In the old days came freedom with a sword. Ev'n so; but also freedom came with wings Fanning the faint and purple bloom that clings To the great twilight where our dreams are stored. Freedom was what the waters would afford That yet obeyed the white moon's whisperings, And freedom leapt and listened in the strings Of dulcimer and lute and clavichord.
In the old days? But those old days are now. O merciful, O bright, O valiant brow, Can you seek freedom that way and I this? Not in the single note is music free, But where creation's climbing fires agree In multitudes, in nights, in silences.
4
Shall we mark off our little patch of power From time's compulsive process? Shall we sit With memory, warming our weak hands at it, And say: "So be it; we have had one hour"? Surely the mountains are a better dower, With their dark scope and cloudy infinite, Than small perfection, trivial exquisite; 'Mid all that dark the brightness of a flower!
Lovers are not themselves: they are more, they are all: For them are past and future spread together Like a green landscape lit by golden weather: For them the rhythmic change conjectural Of time and place is but the question whether Their God shall stand (as stand he must) or fall.
5
O cold remembrance, careful-careless kiss, That does not wake to hope with waking day, And at the hour of bed-time does not say: "That was for rapture, that for peace, but this Burns for the night's more terrible auspices, And pangs and sweets of doubt and disarray!"-- Yet in one kiss two hearts found once the way From perfect ignorance to perfect bliss.
Love has so many voices, low and high. Such range of reason, such delight of rhyme! Yet when I asked love such a simple thing As why the autumn comes where came the spring, The only soul that answered me was I, And love was silent then for the first time.
6
Our love is hurt, and the bad world goes on Moving to its conclusion: in a year This corn now reaped will come again to ear, The moon will shine as last night the moon shone; The tide, whose thought is the moon's thought, will don The silver livery of subjection. Dear, Is it not strange that hearts will hope and fear And break, when our hearts, broken now, are gone?
If this were true, life's movement would rebel, And curdle to its source, as blood to the heart When the cold fires of indignation start From their obscure lair in the body.--Well, If for us two to part were just to part All years would have one pointless tale to tell.
7
The little things, the little restless things, The base and barren things, the things that spite The day, and trail processions through the night Of sad remembrances and questionings; The poverties, stupidities and stings, The silted misery, the hovering blight; The things that block the paths of sound and sight; The things that snare our thought and break its wings--
How shall we bear these?--we who suffer so The shattering sacrifice, the huge despair, The terrors loosed like lightnings on the air, To leave all nature blackened from that curse! The big things are the enemies we know, The little things the traitors. Which are worse?
8
Now must we gather up and comprehend The volume of vicissitude, and take Account of loving, for each other's sake, And ask how love began and how will end (If there be any end of love, O friend Of my worst hours and best desires!)--and stake Our all upon the sweetness and the ache Of what men's stories and God's stars intend.
You have my all: you are my all: you give, Out of your bounty and content of soul, The only strength that makes me fit to live-- Since earth of spirit takes such heavy toll: Yet I, the weak, the faint, the fugitive, Stand here, an equal part of the great whole.
* * * * *
LAURENCE HOUSMAN
SUMMER NIGHT
Light, like a closing flower, covers to earth her herds, Out of the world we only watch for the rise of moon; Darker the twilight glimmers, dulls the warble of birds, Over the silent field travels the night-jar's tune.
Here, at my side, so close that even your breath I hear, Face and form that I love, now with the night made one, Pray not for any star! Come not, O moon, for fear Lest in thy light we lose our way ere the dream be done.
Touch, and clasp, and be close! Kiss, oh kiss, and be warm! What is here, O beloved, so like a sea without sound? Under the swathe at our feet, swifter than wings of storm, Summer speeds on his way: Spring lies dead in the ground.
How like a closing flower, clasped by a sleeping bee, Life folds over us now:--and here in the midst love lies. O beloved, O flower of night, no morrow's moon shall we see: Between a dusk and a day we meet, and at dawn Time dies!
THE PALACES OF THE ROSE
(A VALENTINE)