Part 1

Chapter 12,581 wordsPublic domain

POEMS 1908-1919

BY JOHN DRINKWATER

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge

TO MY WIFE

CONTENTS

RECIPROCITY 1

THE HOURS 2

A TOWN WINDOW 4

MYSTERY 5

THE COMMON LOT 7

PASSAGE 8

THE WOOD 9

HISTORY 10

THE FUGITIVE 12

CONSTANCY 13

SOUTHAMPTON BELLS 15

THE NEW MIRACLE 17

REVERIE 18

PENANCES 26

LAST CONFESSIONAL 27

BIRTHRIGHT 29

ANTAGONISTS 30

HOLINESS 31

THE CITY 32

TO THE DEFILERS 33

A CHRISTMAS NIGHT 34

INVOCATION 35

IMMORTALITY 36

THE CRAFTSMEN 38

SYMBOLS 39

SEALED 40

A PRAYER 43

THE BUILDING 45

THE SOLDIER 48

THE FIRES OF GOD 49

CHALLENGE 60

TRAVEL TALK 61

THE VAGABOND 66

OLD WOMAN IN MAY 67

THE FECKENHAM MEN 68

THE TRAVELLER 70

IN LADY STREET 71

ANTHONY CRUNDLE 75

MAD TOM TATTERMAN 76

FOR CORIN TO-DAY 78

THE CARVER IN STONE 79

ELIZABETH ANN 91

THE COTSWOLD FARMERS 92

A MAN’S DAUGHTER 93

THE LIFE OF JOHN HERITAGE 95

THOMAS YARNTON OF TARLTON 98

MRS. WILLOW 99

ROUNDELS OF THE YEAR 101

LIEGEWOMAN 105

LOVERS TO LOVERS 106

LOVE’S PERSONALITY 107

PIERROT 108

RECKONING 110

DERELICT 112

WED 113

FORSAKEN 115

DEFIANCE 116

LOVE IN OCTOBER 117

TO THE LOVERS THAT COME AFTER US 118

DERBYSHIRE SONG 119

LOVE’S HOUSE 120

COTSWOLD LOVE 124

WITH DAFFODILS 125

FOUNDATIONS 126

DEAR AND INCOMPARABLE 127

A SABBATH DAY 128

A DEDICATION 134

RUPERT BROOKE 136

ON READING FRANCIS LEDWIDGE’S LAST SONGS 137

IN THE WOODS 138

LATE SUMMER 139

JANUARY DUSK 140

AT GRAFTON 141

DOMINION 142

THE MIRACLE 144

MILLERS DALE 145

WRITTEN AT LUDLOW CASTLE 146

WORDSWORTH AT GRASMERE 147

SUNRISE ON RYDAL WATER 148

SEPTEMBER 150

OLTON POOLS 151

OF GREATHAM 152

MAMBLE 154

OUT OF THE MOON 155

MOONLIT APPLES 156

COTTAGE SONG 157

THE MIDLANDS 158

OLD CROW 160

VENUS IN ARDEN 162

ON A LAKE 163

HARVEST MOON 164

AT AN EARTHWORKS 165

INSTRUCTION 166

HABITATION 167

WRITTEN IN WINTERBORNE CAME CHURCH 169

BUDS 171

BLACKBIRD 172

MAY GARDEN 173

AT AN INN 174

PERSPECTIVE 176

CROCUSES 177

RIDDLES R.F.C. 179

THE SHIPS OF GRIEF 180

NOCTURNE 181

THE PATRIOT 182

EPILOGUE FOR A MASQUE 184

THE GUEST 185

TREASON 186

POLITICS 187

FOR A GUEST ROOM 189

DAY 190

DREAMS 191

RESPONSIBILITY 192

PROVOCATIONS 193

TRIAL 194

CHARGE TO THE PLAYERS 195

CHARACTER 196

REALITY 197

EPILOGUE 198

MOONRISE 200

DEER 201

TO ONE I LOVE 202

TO ALICE MEYNELL 205

PETITION 206

HARVESTING 208

POEMS

1908-1919

RECIPROCITY

I do not think that skies and meadows are Moral, or that the fixture of a star Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees Have wisdom in their windless silences. Yet these are things invested in my mood With constancy, and peace, and fortitude, That in my troubled season I can cry Upon the wide composure of the sky, And envy fields, and wish that I might be As little daunted as a star or tree.

THE HOURS

Those hours are best when suddenly The voices of the world are still, And in that quiet place is heard The voice of one small singing bird, Alone within his quiet tree;

When to one field that crowns a hill, With but the sky for neighbourhood, The crowding counties of my brain Give all their riches, lake and plain, Cornland and fell and pillared wood; When in a hill-top acre, bare For the seed’s use, I am aware Of all the beauty that an age Of earth has taught my eyes to see;

When Pride and Generosity The Constant Heart and Evil Rage, Affection and Desire, and all The passions of experience Are no more tabled in my mind, Learning’s idolatry, but find Particularity of sense In daily fortitudes that fall From this or that companion, Or in an angry gossip’s word; When one man speaks for Every One, When Music lives in one small bird, When in a furrowed hill we see All beauty in epitome-- Those hours are best; for those belong To the lucidity of song.

A TOWN WINDOW

Beyond my window in the night Is but a drab inglorious street, Yet there the frost and clean starlight As over Warwick woods are sweet.

Under the grey drift of the town The crocus works among the mould As eagerly as those that crown The Warwick spring in flame and gold.

And when the tramway down the hill Across the cobbles moans and rings, There is about my window-sill The tumult of a thousand wings.

MYSTERY

Think not that mystery has place In the obscure and veilèd face, Or when the midnight watches are Uncompanied of moon or star, Or where the fields and forests lie Enfolded from the loving eye By fogs rebellious to the sun, Or when the poet’s rhymes are spun From dreams that even in his own Imagining are half-unknown.

These are not mystery, but mere Conditions that deny the clear Reality that lies behind The weak, unspeculative mind, Behind contagions of the air And screens of beauty everywhere, The brooding and tormented sky, The hesitation of an eye.

Look rather when the landscapes glow Through crystal distances as though The forty shires of England spread Into one vision harvested, Or when the moonlit waters lie In silver cold lucidity; Those countenances search that bear Witness to very character, And listen to the song that weighs A life’s adventure in a phrase-- These are the founts of wonder, these The plainer miracles to please The brain that reads the world aright; Here is the mystery of light.

THE COMMON LOT

When youth and summer-time are gone, And age puts quiet garlands on, And in the speculative eye The fires of emulation die, But as to-day our time shall be Trembling upon eternity, While, still inconstant in debate, We shall on revelation wait, And age as youth will daily plan The sailing of the caravan.

PASSAGE

When you deliberate the page Of Alexander’s pilgrimage, Or say--“It is three years, or ten, Since Easter slew Connolly’s men,” Or prudently to judgment come Of Antony or Absalom, And think how duly are designed Case and instruction for the mind, Remember then that also we, In a moon’s course, are history.

THE WOOD

I walked a nut-wood’s gloom. And overhead A pigeon’s wing beat on the hidden boughs, And shrews upon shy tunnelling woke thin Late winter leaves with trickling sound. Across My narrow path I saw the carrier ants Burdened with little pieces of bright straw. These things I heard and saw, with senses fine For all the little traffic of the wood, While everywhere, above me, underfoot, And haunting every avenue of leaves, Was mystery, unresting, taciturn.

* * * * *

And haunting the lucidities of life That are my daily beauty, moves a theme, Beating along my undiscovered mind.

HISTORY

Sometimes, when walls and occupation seem A prison merely, a dark barrier Between me everywhere And life, or the larger province of the mind, As dreams confined, As the trouble of a dream, I seek to make again a life long gone, To be My mind’s approach and consolation, To give it form’s lucidity, Resilient form, as porcelain pieces thrown In buried China by a wrist unknown, Or mirrored brigs upon Fowey sea.

Then to my memory comes nothing great Of purpose, or debate, Or perfect end, Pomp, nor love’s rapture, nor heroic hours to spend-- But most, and strangely, for long and so much have I seen, Comes back an afternoon Of a June Sunday at Elsfield, that is up on a green Hill, and there, Through a little farm parlour door, A floor Of red tiles and blue, And the air Sweet with the hot June sun cascading through The vine-leaves under the glass, and a scarlet fume Of geranium flower, and soft and yellow bloom Of musk, and stains of scarlet and yellow glass.

Such are the things remain Quietly, and for ever, in the brain, And the things that they choose for history-making pass.

THE FUGITIVE

Beauty has come to make no longer stay Than the bright buds of May In May-time do.

Beauty is with us for one hour, one hour, Life is so brief a flower; Thoughts are so few.

Thoughts are so few with mastery to give Shape to these fugitive Dear brevities,

That even in its hour beauty is blind, Because the shallow mind Not sees, not sees.

And in the mind of man only can be Alert prosperity For beauty brief.

So, what can be but little comes to less Upon the wilderness Of unbelief.

And beauty that has but an hour to spend With you for friend, Goes outcast by.

But know, but know--for all she is outcast-- It is not she at last, But you that die.

CONSTANCY

The shadows that companion me From chronicles and poetry More constant and substantial are Than these my men familiar, Who draw with me uncertain breath A little while this side of death; For you, my friend, may fail to keep To-morrow’s tryst, so darkly deep The motions mutable that give To flesh its brief prerogative, And in the pleasant hours we make Together for devotion’s sake, Always the testament I see That is our twin mortality. But those from the recorded page Keep an eternal pilgrimage. They stedfastly inhabit here With no mortality to fear, And my communion with them Ails not in the mind’s stratagem Against the sudden blow, the date That once must fall unfortunate. They fret not nor persuade, and when These graduates I entertain, I grieve not that I too must fall As you, my friend, to funeral, But rather find example there That, when my boughs of time are bare, And nothing more the body’s chance Governs my careful circumstance, I shall, upon that later birth, Walk in immortal fields of earth.

SOUTHAMPTON BELLS

Long ago some builder thrust Heavenward in Southampton town His spire and beamed his bells, Largely conceiving from the dust That pinnacle for ringing down Orisons and Noëls.

In his imagination rang, Through generations challenging His peal on simple men, Who, as the heart within him sang, In daily townfaring should sing By year and year again.

Now often to their ringing go The bellmen with lean Time at heel, Intent on daily cares; The bells ring high, the bells ring low, The ringers ring the builder’s peal Of tidings unawares.

And all the bells’ might well be dumb For any quickening in the street Of customary ears; And so at last proud builders come With dreams and virtues to defeat Among the clouding years.

III

Now, waiting on Southampton sea For exile, through the silver night I hear Noël! Noël! Through generations down to me Your challenge, builder, comes aright, Bell by obedient bell.

You wake an hour with me; then wide Though be the lapses of your sleep You yet shall wake again; And thus, old builder, on the tide Of immortality you keep Your way from brain to brain.

THE NEW MIRACLE

Of old men wrought strange gods for mystery, Implored miraculous tokens in the skies, And lips that most were strange in prophecy Were most accounted wise.

The hearthstone’s commerce between mate and mate, Barren of wonder, prospered in content, And still the hunger of their thought was great For sweet astonishment.

And so they built them altars of retreat Where life’s familiar use was overthrown, And left the shining world about their feet, To travel worlds unknown.

* * * * *

We hunger still. But wonder has come down From alien skies upon the midst of us; The sparkling hedgerow and the clamorous town Have grown miraculous.

And man from his far travelling returns To find yet stranger wisdom than he sought, Where in the habit of his threshold burns Unfathomable thought.

REVERIE

Here in the unfrequented noon, In the green hermitage of June, While overhead a rustling wing Minds me of birds that do not sing Until the cooler eve rewakes The service of melodious brakes, And thoughts are lonely rangers, here, In shelter of the primrose year, I curiously meditate Our brief and variable state.

I think how many are alive Who better in the grave would thrive, If some so long a sleep might give Better instruction how to live; I think what splendours had been said By darlings now untimely dead Had death been wise in choice of these, And made exchange of obsequies.

I think what loss to government It is that good men are content-- Well knowing that an evil will Is folly-stricken too, and still Itself considers only wise For all rebukes and surgeries-- That evil men should raise their pride To place and fortune undefied. I think how daily we beguile Our brains, that yet a little while And all our congregated schemes And our perplexity of dreams, Shall come to whole and perfect state. I think, however long the date Of life may be, at last the sun Shall pass upon campaigns undone.

I look upon the world and see A world colonial to me, Whereof I am the architect, And principal and intellect, A world whose shape and savour spring Out of my lone imagining, A world whose nature is subdued For ever to my instant mood, And only beautiful can be Because of beauty is in me. And then I know that every mind Among the millions of my kind Makes earth his own particular And privately created star, That earth has thus no single state, Being every man articulate. Till thought has no horizon then I try to think how many men There are to make an earth apart In symbol of the urgent heart, For there are forty in my street, And seven hundred more in Greet, And families at Luton Hoo, And there are men in China, too.

And what immensity is this That is but a parenthesis Set in a little human thought, Before the body comes to naught. There at the bottom of the copse I see a field of turnip tops, I see the cropping cattle pass There in another field, of grass. And fields and fields, with seven towns, A river, and a flight of downs, Steeples for all religious men, Ten thousand trees, and orchards ten, A mighty span that curves away Into blue beauty, and I lay All this as quartered on a sphere Hung huge in space, a thing of fear Vast as the circle of the sky Completed to the astonished eye; And then I think that all I see, Whereof I frame immensity Globed for amazement, is no more Than a shire’s corner, and that four Great shires being ten times multiplied Are small on the Atlantic tide As an emerald on a silver bowl ... And the Atlantic to the whole Sweep of this tributary star That is our earth is but ... and far Through dreadful space the outmeasured mind Seeks to conceive the unconfined.

I think of Time. How, when his wing Composes all our quarrelling In some green corner where May leaves Are loud with blackbirds on all eves, And all the dust that was our bones Is underneath memorial stones, Then shall old jealousies, while we Lie side by side most quietly, Be but oblivion’s fools, and still When curious pilgrims ask--“What skill Had these that from oblivion saves?”-- My song shall sing above our graves.