Chapter 7

“Nay: a richer malediction!— Rather let this thing befall In time’s hurling and unfurling On the night when comes thy call; That compassion dew thy pillow And bedrench thy senses all For thy victims, Till death dark thee with his pall.”

_August_ 1915.

BEFORE MARCHING AND AFTER (_in Memoriam F. W. G._)

ORION swung southward aslant Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned, The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant With the heather that twitched in the wind; But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these, Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow, And wondered to what he would march on the morrow.

The crazed household-clock with its whirr Rang midnight within as he stood, He heard the low sighing of her Who had striven from his birth for his good; But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze, What great thing or small thing his history would borrow From that Game with Death he would play on the morrow.

When the heath wore the robe of late summer, And the fuchsia-bells, hot in the sun, Hung red by the door, a quick comer Brought tidings that marching was done For him who had joined in that game overseas Where Death stood to win, though his name was to borrow A brightness therefrom not to fade on the morrow.

_September_ 1915.

“OFTEN WHEN WARRING”

OFTEN when warring for he wist not what, An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak, Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek, And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot;

Then gone his way, and maybe quite forgot The deed of grace amid the roar and reek; Yet larger vision than loud arms bespeak He there has reached, although he has known it not.

For natural mindsight, triumphing in the act Over the throes of artificial rage, Has thuswise muffled victory’s peal of pride, Rended to ribands policy’s specious page That deals but with evasion, code, and pact, And war’s apology wholly stultified.

1915.

THEN AND NOW

WHEN battles were fought With a chivalrous sense of Should and Ought, In spirit men said, “End we quick or dead, Honour is some reward! Let us fight fair—for our own best or worst; So, Gentlemen of the Guard, Fire first!”

In the open they stood, Man to man in his knightlihood: They would not deign To profit by a stain On the honourable rules, Knowing that practise perfidy no man durst Who in the heroic schools Was nurst.

But now, behold, what Is warfare wherein honour is not! Rama laments Its dead innocents: Herod breathes: “Sly slaughter Shall rule! Let us, by modes once called accurst, Overhead, under water, Stab first.”

1915.

A CALL TO NATIONAL SERVICE

UP and be doing, all who have a hand To lift, a back to bend. It must not be In times like these that vaguely linger we To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land

Untended as a wild of weeds and sand. —Say, then, “I come!” and go, O women and men Of palace, ploughshare, easel, counter, pen; That scareless, scathless, England still may stand.

Would years but let me stir as once I stirred At many a dawn to take the forward track, And with a stride plunged on to enterprize,

I now would speed like yester wind that whirred Through yielding pines; and serve with never a slack, So loud for promptness all around outcries!

_March_ 1917.

THE DEAD AND THE LIVING ONE

THE dead woman lay in her first night’s grave, And twilight fell from the clouds’ concave, And those she had asked to forgive forgave.

The woman passing came to a pause By the heaped white shapes of wreath and cross, And looked upon where the other was.

And as she mused there thus spoke she: “Never your countenance did I see, But you’ve been a good good friend to me!”

Rose a plaintive voice from the sod below: “O woman whose accents I do not know, What is it that makes you approve me so?”

“O dead one, ere my soldier went, I heard him saying, with warm intent, To his friend, when won by your blandishment:

“‘I would change for that lass here and now! And if I return I may break my vow To my present Love, and contrive somehow

“‘To call my own this new-found pearl, Whose eyes have the light, whose lips the curl, I always have looked for in a girl!’

“—And this is why that by ceasing to be— Though never your countenance did I see— You prove you a good good friend to me;

“And I pray each hour for your soul’s repose In gratitude for your joining those No lover will clasp when his campaigns close.”

Away she turned, when arose to her eye A martial phantom of gory dye, That said, with a thin and far-off sigh:

“O sweetheart, neither shall I clasp you, For the foe this day has pierced me through, And sent me to where she is. Adieu!—

“And forget not when the night-wind’s whine Calls over this turf where her limbs recline, That it travels on to lament by mine.”

There was a cry by the white-flowered mound, There was a laugh from underground, There was a deeper gloom around.

1915.

A NEW YEAR’S EVE IN WAR TIME

I

PHANTASMAL fears, And the flap of the flame, And the throb of the clock, And a loosened slate, And the blind night’s drone, Which tiredly the spectral pines intone!

II

And the blood in my ears Strumming always the same, And the gable-cock With its fitful grate, And myself, alone.

III

The twelfth hour nears Hand-hid, as in shame; I undo the lock, And listen, and wait For the Young Unknown.

IV

In the dark there careers— As if Death astride came To numb all with his knock— A horse at mad rate Over rut and stone.

V

No figure appears, No call of my name, No sound but “Tic-toc” Without check. Past the gate It clatters—is gone.

VI

What rider it bears There is none to proclaim; And the Old Year has struck, And, scarce animate, The New makes moan.

VII

Maybe that “More Tears!— More Famine and Flame— More Severance and Shock!” Is the order from Fate That the Rider speeds on To pale Europe; and tiredly the pines intone.

1915–1916.

“I MET A MAN”

I MET a man when night was nigh, Who said, with shining face and eye Like Moses’ after Sinai:—

“I have seen the Moulder of Monarchies, Realms, peoples, plains and hills, Sitting upon the sunlit seas!— And, as He sat, soliloquies Fell from Him like an antiphonic breeze That pricks the waves to thrills.

“Meseemed that of the maimed and dead Mown down upon the globe,— Their plenteous blooms of promise shed Ere fruiting-time—His words were said, Sitting against the western web of red Wrapt in His crimson robe.

“And I could catch them now and then: —‘Why let these gambling clans Of human Cockers, pit liege men From mart and city, dale and glen, In death-mains, but to swell and swell again Their swollen All-Empery plans,

“‘When a mere nod (if my malign Compeer but passive keep) Would mend that old mistake of mine I made with Saul, and ever consign All Lords of War whose sanctuaries enshrine Liberticide, to sleep?

“‘With violence the lands are spread Even as in Israel’s day, And it repenteth me I bred Chartered armipotents lust-led To feuds . . . Yea, grieves my heart, as then I said, To see their evil way!’

—“The utterance grew, and flapped like flame, And further speech I feared; But no Celestial tongued acclaim, And no huzzas from earthlings came, And the heavens mutely masked as ’twere in shame Till daylight disappeared.”

Thus ended he as night rode high— The man of shining face and eye, Like Moses’ after Sinai.

1916.

“I LOOKED UP FROM MY WRITING”

I LOOKED up from my writing, And gave a start to see, As if rapt in my inditing, The moon’s full gaze on me.

Her meditative misty head Was spectral in its air, And I involuntarily said, “What are you doing there?”

“Oh, I’ve been scanning pond and hole And waterway hereabout For the body of one with a sunken soul Who has put his life-light out.

“Did you hear his frenzied tattle? It was sorrow for his son Who is slain in brutish battle, Though he has injured none.

“And now I am curious to look Into the blinkered mind Of one who wants to write a book In a world of such a kind.”

Her temper overwrought me, And I edged to shun her view, For I felt assured she thought me One who should drown him too.

FINALE

THE COMING OF THE END

HOW it came to an end! The meeting afar from the crowd, And the love-looks and laughters unpenned, The parting when much was avowed, How it came to an end!

It came to an end; Yes, the outgazing over the stream, With the sun on each serpentine bend, Or, later, the luring moon-gleam; It came to an end.

It came to an end, The housebuilding, furnishing, planting, As if there were ages to spend In welcoming, feasting, and jaunting; It came to an end.

It came to an end, That journey of one day a week: (“It always goes on,” said a friend, “Just the same in bright weathers or bleak;”) But it came to an end.

“_How_ will come to an end This orbit so smoothly begun, Unless some convulsion attend?” I often said. “What will be done When it comes to an end?”

Well, it came to an end Quite silently—stopped without jerk; Better close no prevision could lend; Working out as One planned it should work Ere it came to an end.

AFTERWARDS

WHEN the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say, “He was a man who used to notice such things”?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink, The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think, “To him this must have been a familiar sight.”

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, One may say, “He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, But he could do little for them; and now he is gone”?

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door, Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees, Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more, “He was one who had an eye for such mysteries”?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom, And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom, “He hears it not now, but used to notice such things”?

FOOTNOTES

{235} Jer. li. 20.