Part 2

Out of the battle I am sped, Unharmed, yet stricken sore; A living shape 'mid whispering shades On Lethe's shore.

No trophy in my hands I bring, To this sad, sighing stream, The neighings and the trumps and cries Were but a dream--a dream.

Traitor to life, of life betrayed-- O, of thy mercy deep, A dream my all, the all I ask Is sleep.

HAPPY ENGLAND

Now each man's mind all Europe is: Boding and fear in dread array Daze every heart: O grave and wise, Abide in hope the judgment day.

This war of millions in arms In myriad replica we wage; Unmoved, then, Soul, by earth's alarms The dangers of the dark engage.

Remember happy England: keep For her bright cause thy latest breath; Her peace that long hath lulled to sleep, May now exact the sleep of death.

Her woods and wilds, her loveliness, With harvest now are richly at rest; Safe in her isled securities, Thy children's heaven is her breast.

O what a deep contented night The sun from out her Eastern seas Would bring the dust which in her sight Had given its all for these!

MOTLEY

Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee; And thou, poor Innocency; And Love--a lad with broken wing; And Pity, too: The Fool shall sing to you, As Fools will sing.

Ay, music hath small sense, And a tune's soon told, And Earth is old, And my poor wits are dense; Yet have I secrets,--dark, my dear, To breathe you all: Come near. And lest some hideous listener tells, I'll ring my bells.

They're all at war!-- Yes, yes, their bodies go 'Neath burning sun and icy star To chaunted songs of woe, Dragging cold cannon through a mire Of rain and blood and spouting fire, The new moon glinting hard on eyes Wide with insanities!

Hush! ... I use words I hardly know the meaning of; And the mute birds Are glancing at Love From out their shade of leaf and flower, Trembling at treacheries Which even in noonday cower. Heed, heed not what I said Of frenzied hosts of men, More fools than I, On envy, hatred fed, Who kill, and die-- Spake I not plainly, then? Yet Pity whispered, 'Why?'

Thou silly thing, off to thy daisies go. Mine was not news for child to know, And Death--no ears hath. He hath supped where creep Eyeless worms in hush of sleep; Yet, when he smiles, the hand he draws Athwart his grinning jaws-- Faintly the thin bones rattle, and--There, there; Hearken how my bells in the air Drive away care!...

Nay, but a dream I had Of a world all mad. Not simple happy mad like me, Who am mad like an empty scene Of water and willow tree, Where the wind hath been; But that foul Satan-mad, Who rots in his own head, And counts the dead, Not honest one--and two-- But for the ghosts they were, Brave, faithful, true, When, head in air, In Earth's clear green and blue Heaven they did share With beauty who bade them there....

There, now! Death goes-- Mayhap I've wearied him. Ay, and the light doth dim, And asleep's the rose, And tired Innocence In dreams is hence.... Come, Love, my lad, Nodding that drowsy head, 'Tis time thy prayers were said!

THE MARIONETTES

Let the foul Scene proceed: There's laughter in the wings; 'Tis sawdust that they bleed, But a box Death brings.

How rare a skill is theirs These extreme pangs to show, How real a frenzy wears Each feigner of woe!

Gigantic dins uprise! Even the gods must feel A smarting of the eyes As these fumes upsweal.

Strange, such a Piece is free, While we Spectators sit, Aghast at its agony, Yet absorbed in it!

Dark is the outer air, Coldly the night draughts blow, Mutely we stare, and stare At the frenzied Show.

Yet heaven hath its quiet shroud Of deep, immutable blue-- We cry 'An end!' We are bowed By the dread, ''Tis true!'

While the Shape who hoofs applause Behind our deafened ear, Hoots--angel-wise--'the Cause!' And affright ev'n fear.

TO E. T.: 1917

You sleep too well--too far away, For sorrowing word to soothe or wound; Your very quiet seems to say How longed-for a peace you have found.

Else, had not death so lured you on, You would have grieved--'twixt joy and fear-- To know how my small loving son Had wept for you, my dear.

APRIL MOON

Roses are sweet to smell and see, And lilies on the stem; But rarer, stranger buds there be, And she was like to them.

The little moon that April brings, More lovely shade than light, That, setting, silvers lonely hills Upon the verge of night--

Close to the world of my poor heart So stole she, still and clear; Now that she's gone, O dark, and dark, The solitude--the fear.

THE FOOL'S SONG

Never, no never, listen too long, To the chattering wind in the willows, the night bird's song.

'Tis sad in sooth to lie under the grass, But none too gladsome to wake and grow cold where life's shadows pass.

Dumb the old Toll-Woman squats, And, for every green copper battered and worn, doles out Nevers and Nots.

I know a Blind Man, too, Who with a sharp ear listens and listens the whole world through.

Oh, sit we snug to our feast. With platter and finger and spoon--and good victuals at least.

CLEAR EYES

Clear eyes do dim at last, And cheeks outlive their rose. Time, heedless of the past, No loving-kindness knows; Chill unto mortal lip Still Lethe flows.

Griefs, too, but brief while stay, And sorrow, being o'er, Its salt tears shed away, Woundeth the heart no more. Stealthily lave those waters That solemn shore.

Ah, then, sweet face burn on, While yet quick memory lives! And Sorrow, ere thou art gone, Know that my heart forgives-- Ere yet, grown cold in peace, It loves not, nor grieves.

DUST TO DUST

Heavenly Archer, bend thy bow; Now the flame of life burns low, Youth is gone; I, too, would go.

Ever Fortune leads to this: Harsh or kind, at last she is Murderess of all ecstasies.

Yet the spirit, dark, alone, Bound in sense, still hearkens on For tidings of a bliss foregone.

Sleep is well for dreamless head, At no breath astonished, From the Gardens of the Dead.

I the immortal harps hear ring, By Babylon's river languishing. Heavenly Archer, loose thy string.

THE THREE STRANGERS

Far are those tranquil hills, Dyed with fair evening's rose; On urgent, secret errand bent, A traveller goes.

Approach him strangers three, Barefooted, cowled; their eyes Scan the lone, hastening solitary With dumb surmise.

One instant in close speech With them he doth confer: God-sped, he hasteneth on, That anxious traveller...

I was that man--in a dream: And each world's night in vain I patient wait on sleep to unveil Those vivid hills again.

Would that they three could know How yet burns on in me Love--from one lost in Paradise-- For their grave courtesy.

ALEXANDER

It was the Great Alexander, Capped with a golden helm, Sate in the ages, in his floating ship, In a dead calm.

Voices of sea-maids singing Wandered across the deep: The sailors labouring on their oars Rowed, as in sleep.

All the high pomp of Asia, Charmed by that siren lay, Out of their weary and dreaming minds, Faded away.

Like a bold boy sate their Captain, His glamour withered and gone, In the souls of his brooding mariners, While the song pined on.

Time, like a falling dew, Life, like the scene of a dream, Laid between slumber and slumber, Only did seem....

O Alexander, then, In all us mortals too, Wax thou not bold--too bold On the wave dark-blue!

Come the calm, infinite night, Who then will hear Aught save the singing Of the sea-maids clear?

THE REAWAKENING

Green in light are the hills, and a calm wind flowing Filleth the void with a flood of the fragrance of Spring; Wings in this mansion of life are coming and going, Voices of unseen loveliness carol and sing.

Coloured with buds of delight the boughs are swaying, Beauty walks in the woods, and wherever she rove Flowers from wintry sleep, her enchantment obeying, Stir in the deep of her dream, reawaken to love.

Oh, now begone sullen care--this light is my seeing; I am the palace, and mine are its windows and walls; Daybreak is come, and life from the darkness of being Springs, like a child from the womb, when the lonely one calls.

THE VACANT DAY

As I did walk in meadows green I heard the summer noon resound With call of myriad things unseen That leapt and crept upon the ground.

High overhead the windless air Throbbed with the homesick coursing cry Of swallows that did everywhere Wake echo in the sky.

Beside me, too, clear waters coursed Which willow branches, lapsing low, Breaking their crystal gliding forced To sing as they did flow.

I listened; and my heart was dumb With praise no language could express; Longing in vain for him to come Who had breathed such blessedness.

On this fair world, wherein we pass So chequered and so brief a stay; And yearned in spirit to learn, alas, What kept him still away.

THE FLIGHT

How do the days press on, and lay Their fallen locks at evening down, Whileas the stars in darkness play And moonbeams weave a crown--

A crown of flower-like light in heaven, Where in the hollow arch of space Morn's mistress dreams, and the Pleiads seven Stand watch about her place.

Stand watch--O days no number keep Of hours when this dark clay is blind. When the world's clocks are dumb in sleep 'Tis then I seek my kind.

THE TWO HOUSES

In the strange city of Life Two houses I know well: One wherein Silence a garden hath, And one where Dark doth dwell.

Roof unto roof they stand, Shadowing the dizzied street, Where Vanity flaunts her gilded booths In the noontide glare and heat.

Green-graped upon their walls An ancient hoary vine Hath clustered their carven, lichenous stones With tendril serpentine.

And ever and anon, Dazed in that clamorous throng, I thirst for the soundless fount that stills Those orchards mute of song.

Knock, knock, nor knock in vain: Heart all thy secrets tell Where Silence a fast-sealed garden hath, Where Dark doth dwell.

FOR ALL THE GRIEF

For all the grief I have given with words May now a few clear flowers blow, In the dust, and the heat, and the silence of birds, Where the lonely go.

For the thing unsaid that heart asked of me Be a dark, cool water calling--calling To the footsore, benighted, solitary, When the shadows are falling.

O, be beauty for all my blindness, A moon in the air where the weary wend, And dews burdened with loving-kindness In the dark of the end.

THE SCRIBE

What lovely things Thy hand hath made: The smooth-plumed bird In its emerald shade, The seed of the grass, The speck of stone Which the wayfaring ant Stirs--and hastes on!

Though I should sit By some tarn in thy hills, Using its ink As the spirit wills To write of Earth's wonders, Its live, willed things, Flit would the ages On soundless wings Ere unto Z My pen drew nigh; Leviathan told, And the honey-fly: And still would remain My wit to try-- My worn reeds broken, The dark tarn dry, All words forgotten-- Thou, Lord, and I.

FARE WELL

When I lie where shades of darkness Shall no more assail mine eyes, Nor the rain make lamentation When the wind sighs; How will fare the world whose wonder Was the very proof of me? Memory fades, must the remembered Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders Hand, foot, lip, to dust again, May these loved and loving faces Please other men! May the rusting harvest hedgerow Still the Traveller's Joy entwine, And as happy children gather Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely, Every hour. Let no night Seal thy sense in deathly slumber Till to delight Thou have paid thy utmost blessing; Since that all things thou wouldst praise Beauty took from those who loved them In other days.

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press