Part 2
It's told in those old sagas, how In the beginning the First Cow (For nothing living yet had birth But Elemental Cow on earth) Began to lick cold stones and mud. Under her warm tongue flesh and blood Blossomed, a miracle to believe. And so was Adam born, and Eve.
Here now is Chaos once again, Primæval mud, cold stones and rain; Here flesh decays and blood drips red, And the Cow's dead, the old Cow's dead.
_RUSSELL GREEN_
(_QUEEN'S_)
DE MUNDO[A]
... And then arose the vision of the world Immense, a tangle of dark ravelled time, Twisted and knotted by a surge of men: Vast sombre tribes forth from the old abyss Clambering, travailed, hated, fought and fell. The slow tower, stone upon laborious stone, Compacting men and clans, cities and states, Aspired through ages to the unknown god: Adventurers with the guidance of no star, Discovering all, rich isle and barren shore, And ever seas beyond the indolent seas Rounding known courses with uncharted doubt: A people wandering in the wilderness, So vague a cloud, so dim a pillar of fire They blindly followed to a promised land Flowing with rivers of perennial truth-- And they the chosen vessel,--who of old Knew not wherefore they broke their bonds and fled. Yet in the end a desolation came And the golden bowl was broken.... I saw men, symbols of humanity,-- Immortal longings bound in mortal clay,-- Wayfaring still upon the ancient road Winding away to the invisible hills.
Still on the visionary scaffolding The players played the old Morality,-- The pilgrim Life waylaid by cruel Despair, Wealth dowering Evil and maltreating Good, And Pain and Care tormenting Body and Soul, And Giant Sin bestriding hill and dale, Building his shrines for men to worship him; Corruption, too, with serpents in his hair, And next, obscene Ungodliness, whose eyes Vacant and dull, bent ever on the earth. Then, last of all, Humanum Genus came Bearing a scroll with the Apostle's words-- "Having no hope and without God in the world."
So from the seat of vision I arose Trembling, appalled, and went upon my way Sadly, for all my vision ended in this-- Piercing of heart, reason's bewilderment-- "We've come from mystery and to mystery go."
What shall be said when all things have been said? What shall be said when this is pondered on-- "Either He lives not who created man, Or man for sin is cast forth from His grace; Yea, between Him and man a gulf is set"?
[A] This poem originally appeared in _The Westminster Gazette_.
_MERCY HARVEY_
(_ST. HILDA'S_)
SONG
For Beauty's sake I weep, Because my love is beautiful, I came upon her lying asleep Within a bower sweet and cool. The tall trees intertwined And made a bower for my love, With green shrubs nestling there behind, And a blue strip of sky above. For Beauty's sake I grieve, That Beauty soon must fade and die, As lilac blossoms fall, nor leave One ghostly fragrance lingering nigh. For Beauty's sake I strive For one long moment's raptured bliss To hold her in her form alive And give her one impassioned kiss. For her own sake she dies, Nor leaves behind one memory; The light out of the western skies Is gone, and thou art gone from me.
_H. C. HARWOOD_
(_BALLIOL_)
CALL OF THE DEAD
Have you not waited there too long, Little brother of mine, With a spirit too weak in a world too strong? You do not play as you used to do When you and I were an army of two. Surely you dally there too long, Little brother of mine.
Death is an old benevolent king, Little brother of mine, And around his throne the children sing. Time, life's sullen minister, Dulls the heart and dulls the hair, But does not stand before my king, Little brother of mine.
Hopes we cherish down below, Little brother of mine, Melt in manhood like the snow. Tranquil in inexperience, Call on Death for your defence, And leave the tangle down below, Little brother of mine.
Forgotten laughter, remembered tears, Little brother of mine, Would be the burden of your years. So let us play together again With a child's swift joy and swifter pain, And reckon no more of months and years, Little brother of mine.
RETURN
Against the ebbing tide we make our way. Beyond the low green banks the fenlands stretch To a far horizon. Trawler, smack and ketch Are passing for the business of the day.
There is the inlet where the immortal boys, As white and slim as ever, splash and call. Deserted on the other bank Blake Hall Still contemplates contemptuously their noise.
There are the docks where the tall mastheads shine Of mighty _Helsingfors_, the timber ship. And a new craft is lying in the slip Which presently shall be baptized with wine.
The houses gather thicker, and a girl Waves her indifferent smiling welcome. See! The loungers are awakened on the quay And stand to catch the rope the sailors curl.
Now grey and swift the startled seagulls wheel. The engine-room is silent which so long Has shaped our lives to its monotonous song. The fenders bump against the slowing keel.
The smoke is rising from my father's home Across the street, and flapping in the breeze A curtain welcomes me from off the seas, The querulous seas, where I was wont to roam.
And there miraculously free from age The faces of my playfellows are seen. And all is now as it has ever been, Or smiling destiny turns back the page.
But always ere my feet are firm upon The natal shore, dream ship, dream river fade, And I am burdened with the choice I made And lonely in the land where I am gone.
_E. E. ST. L. HILL_
(_KEBLE_)
DIFFIDENCE
Dulled is the azure of the skies. Can aught but woe my woes beget? My inmost self in anguish cries "I love my Love"--My Love!--and yet I cannot as a lover say "I love my Love," because I know I am not worthy. Still I may Win in the end the right to show My Love what is my heart's desire. For more than this I may not hope, To naught beyond can I aspire. Alone, in secret, I must grope My way and be content to see The beauty of my star above, For never will my Love love me Though I so truly love my Love.
_A. L. HUXLEY_
(_BALLIOL_)
L'APRÈS-MIDI D'UN FAUNE
(_From the French of Stéphane Mallarmé._)
I would immortalize these nymphs: so bright Their sunlit colouring, so airy-light, It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream? My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem A subtle tracery of branches grown The tree's true self--proving that I have known No triumph, but the shadow of a rose.
But think. These nymphs, their loveliness ... suppose They bodied forth my senses' fabulous thirst. Illusion! which the blue eyes of the first, As cold and chaste as is the weeping spring, Beget: the other, sighing, passioning, Is she the wind, warm in your fleece at noon? No. Through this quiet, when a weary swoon Crushes and chokes the latest faint essay Of morning, cool against the encroaching day, There is no murmuring water, save the gush Of my clear fluted notes; and in the hush Blows never a wind save that which through my reed Puffs out before the rain of notes can speed Upon the air, with that calm breath of art That mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly, Where inspiration seeks its native sky.
You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake, The sun's own mirror, which I love to take, Silent beneath your starry flowers, tell _How here I cut the hollow rushes, well Tamed by my skill, when, on the glaucous gold Of distant lawns about their fountain cold, A living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave, And at the first slow notes my panpipes gave These flocking swans, these naiads rather, fly Or dive._
Noon burns inert and tawny-dry, Nor marks how clean that Hymen slipped away From me who seek in song the real A. Wake, then, to your first ardour and the sight, O lonely faun, of the old fierce white light, With, lilies, one of you for innocence.
Other than their lips' delicate pretence, The light caress that quiets treacherous lovers, My breast, I know not how to tell, discovers The bitten print of some immortal's kiss. But hush! a mystery so great as this I dare not tell, save to my double reed, Which, sharer of my every joy and need, Dreams down its cadenced monologues that we Falsely confuse the beauties that we see With the bright palpable shapes our song creates: My flute, as loud as passion modulates, Purges the common dream of flank and breast, Seen through closed eyes and inwardly caressed, Of every empty and monotonous line.
Bloom then, O Syrinx, in thy flight malign, A reed once more beside our trysting-lake. Proud of my music let me often make A song of goddesses and see their rape Profanely done on many a painted shape. So, when the grape's transparent juice I drain, I quell regrets for pleasure past and feign A new real grape. For holding towards the sky The empty skin, I blow it tight and lie Dream-drunk till evening, eyeing it.
Tell o'er Remembered joys and plump the grape once more. _Between the reeds I saw their bodies gleam Who cool no mortal fever in the stream, Crying to the woods the rage of their desire: And their bright hair went down in jewelled fire Where crystal broke and dazzled shudderingly. I check my swift pursuit; for see where lie, Bruised, being twins in love, by languor sweet, Two sleeping girls, clasped at my very feet. I seize and run with them, nor part the pair, Breaking this covert of frail petals, where Roses drink scent of the sun and our light play 'Mid tumbled flowers shall match the death of day._ I love that virginal fury, ah! the wild Thrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled, Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear! Contagiously through my linked pair it flies Where innocence in either, struggling, dies, Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew. Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied. _For as I leaned to stifle in the hair Of one my passionate laughter (taking care With a stretched finger, that her innocence Might stain with her companion's kindling sense, To touch the younger little one, who lay Child-like unblushing) my ungrateful prey Slips from me, freed by passion's sudden death, Nor heeds the frenzy of my sobbing breath._ Let it pass! others of their hair shall twist A rope to drag me to those joys I missed. See how the bursting currants ripe and red To quench the thirst of the mumbling bees have bled; So too our blood, kindled by some chance fire, Flows for the swarming legions of desire. At evening, when the woodland green turns gold And ashen-grey, 'mid the quenched leaves, behold! Red Etna glows, by Venus visited, Walking the lava with her snowy tread Whene'er the flames in thunderous slumber die. I hold the goddess!
Ah, sure penalty! But the unthinking soul and body swoon At last beneath the heavy hush of noon. Forgetful let me lie where summer's drouth Sifts fine the sand, and then with gaping mouth Dream, planet-struck by the grape's round wine-red star. Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are.
_C. R. JURY_
(_MAGDALEN_)
LOVE
Though life has stooped before its height, And beauty, that I still shall trust, The child of a diviner light Be torn, and lower than the dust,
Love has a life beyond the heat Of sorrow, pain, desire or dread; He holds as his eternal seat The great remembrance of the dead.
They lose no splendour by decay; They are a fixed immortal power, And I their lover, though I stay Surrounded by the dying hour.
And now thy beauty, as that fire Which walks against the morning, bears Of day and night one great desire, Has made life's splendour one with theirs.
They live; I see them in thine eyes; Thy life is theirs; no death can stem Their torrent. When I watch it rise, I love thee, as I worship them.
SONNET
I would to God thou wert mine own good son Thy face is fair, thy body strong and pure, Thy spirit nobly high, thy deeds well done, Thy heart well set to love and to endure. 'Tis such a fearless boy I would beget, To give the venerable world its due; Yea, to be bold and lovely ere I set, To take the time, and mould what shall ensue. I would thou wert the fruit of my best hour, So that I might bequeathe thee my strong fire; But I am like to die before my flower And lose inheritors for my desire. O if thou wert mine own, I had this boast; Therefore I love thee better than thou know'st.
_CHAMAN LALL_
(_JESUS_)
"THIRTY YEARS AFTER"
It is thirty years since we two parted, It is thirty unswept, cobweb years Since, with a look of indifference, in a storm of elegance, Like some knowing, hungering bird, Like some forewarned, huckstering drone of a butterfly, Like a swift passion--she swept past my youth unhonied. And I am now a very old man--almost dead; I am now a very old ornament of lead; Weismann and Ellis, Burton I have read These thirty years in bed.
This room; And the shadows lengthening on the lawn; And the distant boom, boom of the world; Wearisome watchings for the first star; And the toil, toil of the dawn: These have emptied my soul of its waves, These have made cold prisons of my faery caves, These have frosted The red, red poppy-leaf of time.
Who now cares for my politics? Who now cares for my brilliant repartees That crushed one with an epigram, That struck one like an oriflamme? But now they ask me who I am.
Once women came to me, And she, Once women came to me with their offerings Like long lines of brown bees Burdened with offerings, Like naked houris of turbaned Kings, Once----But now drifts Across the living-deadness Of an Egyptian desert My barren Arab way, My unflowered desert way.
It is thirty years since we two parted, It is thirty unswept, cobweb years Since, with a look of indifference, in a storm of elegance, Like a swift passion--she swept past my youth unhonied. And I am now a very old man--almost dead; I am now a very old ornament of lead; Weismann and Ellis, Burton I have read These thirty years in bed.
_M. LEIGH_
(_SOMERVILLE_)
TWO EPITAPHS
ON TWO LOVERS
Love, when we walked on earth, your chastity Was all to you, your body all to me; Now the grave holds the flesh that parted us, And being nought, we shall united be.
ON AN ARISTOCRAT DYING UNDER A DEMOCRACY
Living, your constitution levelled me; Dead, all are equal in their six-foot graves: But God counts not by heads; in His regard One freeborn man is worth a host of slaves.
_E. H. W. MEYERSTEIN_
(_MAGDALEN_)
THE FINGER
(To R. T.)
How curiously this triple whole Of skin and blood and bone Consenteth to the mind's control And to the mind's alone.
'Tis for diurnal uses mine, To move howe'er I please, Or mingle with its brothers nine Enclasped about my knees.
Yet often when the mind's afar, By vagrant thought bestirred, It gaily shifts and beats the bar To songs and sounds unheard.
Mute eloquence! 'Tis plain to see As face in looking-glass That more than one is lord of me When this is brought to pass.
What else but mind and mind alone Should rule the triple whole, But how if skin and blood and bone Themselves enshroud a soul?
LONDON
Sir, you're from Oxford, seat of bliss Arrived in the Metropolis; We hold you well and think we can Make you, in your despite, a man.
'Tis here our wont, though strange it seems, To deal in solid facts, not dreams; For lies are lies, and gold is gold, And men are daily bought or sold.
Parade the purlieus if you wish To study poor-law and fried fish; There's much that waits to be improved, And an improver's rarely loved.
Or yours is the creative touch; We have a score of shops for such, Where novelties in paint and words Are scrutinized by lonely herds.
Colour and motion are aglow In streets above and tubes below. We energize: to meditate Only befits a culture-state.
Such friends we'll give you as will prove The world is only made of love; But life is necessary too, And vices, seeing you are you.
For in this pantomimic scene There's nothing common or unclean; You lodge upon the second floor And opposite a noted whore.
So, when your dreams are laid to rest, You're part of what you most detest, And know this nightmare was made real To dissipate a false ideal.
_EVAN MORGAN_
(_CHRIST CHURCH_)
IN OLDEN DAYS
AN ALLEGORY
Down from the flowering tulip-tree The birds of love flew down to me,-- The birds of love with plumage rare Sped in circles 'bout my hair, And it was dawn and I was glad, And Dawn appeared, a Spartan lad; With flowers twined about his hair, A countenance that knew not care. The flow'rs waved in careless joy As they nodded and danced o'er the head of the boy. Lo! he picked the birds up one by one And he killed them in his wanton fun, So I cried to him: "They're the birds of love That abide in the jewelled tree above, And the tree and the birds are the jewels of love." But the youth of the morn with laughter cried: "Those birds are mine that you espied; Mine are these birds, and mine this tree: I am the God of Love," cried he, "The God of Love, of birds and tree." "I weep for the birds, for they brought me love Down from the tulip-tree above, From the tree above they brought me love." "I'll give you love, my sorrowful brave-- I'll give you myself to hold as a slave," So taking Love as a slave with me, Fast I fled from the tulip-tree; I fled from the tree and my slave with me,-- Love was the slave and I Poetry.
A SERENADE
Your love is like some wondrous scented rose. The evening sees a purple pool of blood Beneath the tree that Summer's glory chose Crimsonly thick with passion'd joys to flood.
Your love is like the harvest of the sun Moltenly golden, gloriously sublime. Were I the reaper, swiftly would I run And reap thy golden love till death were time.
Your love is like the shadows of the ev'n, The gold-green tints that linger in the sky; When the red king in opal cloud flies heav'n, Leaving the dewy earth to sleep and cry.
Your love is like the mystery of the night, When the wan mists the dreamy violets kiss, It comes like ghostly owl with muted flight, It comes like Death;--but Death from you is bliss.
_F. ST. V. MORRIS_
(_WADHAM_)
[_3rd Batt. Sherwood Foresters, attached R.F.C. Died of wounds, April 29, 1917_]
LAST POEM
Through vast Realms of air we passed On wings all-whitely fair.
Sublime On speeding wing we climb Like an unfettered Thing,
Away Height upon height; and play In God's great Lawns of Light.
And He Guides us safe home to see The Fields He bade us roam.
_ROBERT NICHOLS_
(_TRINITY_)
THE MAN OF HONOUR
I.
O had I died when o'er the sullen plain The harsh light drifted and the roaring guns Lifted their voices summoning amain Youth from its joy in storms and flying suns And happy comradeship of weathered men, All had been as in purpose due and well, Honourable my service had been then And honoured the blank spot on which I fell.
But now--O heart!--how much dishonoured I, And by my own hand too--twice bitter case-- My true love stained with secret infamy, My treachery disguised by friendship's face, And that bare passion bade me forth to die Fouled to the instrument of my disgrace!
II.
What has a man but honour? When 'tis gone The man is gone: for all that in him blent To strike a star for men to gaze upon Becomes his quicker ruin's instrument. For from that height to which with toil we climb, From that we fall and to the further pit, Who honour bore and lost. This is my crime And this the daily punishment of it:--
To honour honour more than e'er I did When I possessed it, to esteem the lot Of those whose treasure from themselves lies hid Or those who lose it and yet miss it not. O God, now raise me to the thing forbid Or from my eyes its pure light wholly blot!
III.
Wherefore on God thou callest? 'Tis in vain: Our hearts our fortunes are until we die, And naught can change them or for loss or gain Save Courage at least glance of Honour's eye. For Honour, daughter of sound brain and blood, Motions us ever though we may not heed; She is imperative hunger for the good, Good so instinctive that to gain we bleed.
Wherefore, dishonoured soul, part from thy love-- Fearfuller wrench than muscle torn from bone-- Or her soul too must perish here. Enough! I cannot leave her. Then there is but one Refuge for us now to make trial of,-- Refuge to which I cannot fare alone.
IV.
They burned too deep. Had they but taken that lightly Which take they must, Love being absolute lord-- Parted by now they yet had rendered rightly Memory each to each, love's last reward. But of their love maybe a fiercer glow They had who saved their honour at the last By direst means. Whether it be or no, In death their faces held a _something_ fast.
Beneath the fall's white glare and drumming zest, Where on black depths an hundred suns are burning, Their bodies bound, like faggots, breast to breast Rose for a peaceful space, lazily turning: Their mutual smile acknowledged _this_ was best. Love had found Honour's way. O bitter learning!
_ELIZABETH RENDALL_
(_HOME STUDENT_)
MY SOUL IS AN INFANTA
(_From the French of Albert Samain._)
My soul is an Infanta, robed for state, Whose exiled years, termless, imperial, Are mirrored in some dim Escurial, Forgotten as old galleys in the roads disconsolate.
Fleet as the wind, her daïsed throne beside, Twin greyhounds couch majestical, and seem To course, through Forests of Enchanted Dream, At will, a phantom fancied quarry, melancholy-eyed.
Stirless, she holds a tulip flower, attent The while her page, whose name is Yesterday, Reads with hushed breath an old bewitching lay, And hears its magic in her heart die impotent.
Before her--marbled fountains, terraced slopes, And all the green of Spring. Sombre, her mind She mads with those high dreams, the unconfined Horizon hides, and turns, for our despair, to wistful hopes.