Part 2

I think how men of gentle mind, And friendly will, and honest kind, Deny their nature and appear Fellows of jealousy and fear; Having single faith, and natural wit To measure truth and cherish it, Yet, strangely, when they build in thought, Twisting the honesty that wrought In the straight motion of the heart, Into its feigning counterpart That is the brain’s betrayal of The simple purposes of love; And what yet sorrier decline Is theirs when, eager to confine No more within the silent brain Its habit, thought seeks birth again In speech, as honesty has done In thought; then even what had won From heart to brain fades and is lost In this pretended pentecost, This their forlorn captivity To speech, who have not learnt to be Lords of the word, nor kept among The sterner climates of the tongue ... So truth is in their hearts, and then Falls to confusion in the brain, And, fading through this mid-eclipse, It perishes upon the lips.

I think how year by year I still Find working in my dauntless will Sudden timidities that are Merely the echo of some far Forgotten tyrannies that came To youth’s bewilderment and shame; That yet a magisterial gown, Being worn by one of no renown And half a generation less In years than I, can dispossess Something my circumspecter mood Of excellence and quietude, And if a Bishop speaks to me I tremble with propriety.

I think how strange it is that he Who goes most comradely with me In beauty’s worship, takes delight In shows that to my eager sight Are shadows and unmanifest, While beauty’s favour and behest To me in motion are revealed That is against his vision sealed; Yet is our hearts’ necessity Not twofold, but a common plea That chaos come to continence, Whereto the arch-intelligence Richly in divers voices makes Its answer for our several sakes.

I see the disinherited And long procession of the dead, Who have in generations gone Held fugitive dominion Of this same primrose pasturage That is my momentary wage. I see two lovers move along These shadowed silences of song, With spring in blossom at their feet More incommunicably sweet To their hearts’ more magnificence, Than to the common courts of sense, Till joy his tardy closure tells With coming of the curfew bells. I see the knights of spur and sword Crossing the little woodland ford, Riding in ghostly cavalcade On some unchronicled crusade. I see the silent hunter go In cloth of yeoman green, with bow Strung, and a quiver of grey wings. I see the little herd who brings His cattle homeward, while his sire Makes bivouac in Warwickshire This night, the liege and loyal man Of Cavalier or Puritan. And as they pass, the nameless dead, Unsung, uncelebrate, and sped Upon an unremembered hour As any twelvemonth fallen flower, I think how strangely yet they live For all their days were fugitive.

I think how soon we too shall be A story with our ancestry.

I think what miracle has been That you whose love among this green Delightful solitude is still The stay and substance of my will, The dear custodian of my song, My thrifty counsellor and strong, Should take the time of all time’s tide That was my season, to abide On earth also; that we should be Charted across eternity To one elect and happy day Of yellow primroses in May.

The clock is calling five o’clock, And Nonesopretty brings her flock To fold, and Tom comes back from town With hose and ribbons worth a crown, And duly at The Old King’s Head They gather now to daily bread, And I no more may meditate Our brief and variable state.

PENANCES

These are my happy penances. To make Beauty without a covenant; to take Measure of time only because I know That in death’s market-place I still shall owe Service to beauty that shall not be done; To know that beauty’s doctrine is begun And makes a close in sacrifice; to find In beauty’s courts the unappeasable mind.

LAST CONFESSIONAL

For all ill words that I have spoken, For all clear moods that I have broken, For all despite and hasty breath, Forgive me, Love, forgive me, Death.

Death, master of the great assize, Love, falling now to memories, You two alone I need to prove, Forgive me, Death, forgive me, Love.

For every tenderness undone, For pride when holiness was none But only easy charity, O Death, be pardoner to me.

For stubborn thought that would not make Measure of love’s thought for love’s sake, But kept a sullen difference, Take, Love, this laggard penitence.

For cloudy words too vainly spent To prosper but in argument, When truth stood lonely at the gate, On your compassion, Death, I wait.

For all the beauty that escaped This foolish brain, unsung, unshaped, For wonder that was slow to move, Forgive me, Death, forgive me, Love.

For love that kept a secret cruse, For life defeated of its dues, This latest word of all my breath-- Forgive me, Love, forgive me, Death.

BIRTHRIGHT

Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed Because a summer evening passed; And little Ariadne cried That summer fancy fell at last To dust; and young Verona died When beauty’s hour was overcast.

Theirs was the bitterness we know Because the clouds of hawthorn keep So short a state, and kisses go To tombs unfathomably deep, While Rameses and Romeo And little Ariadne sleep.

ANTAGONISTS

Green shoots, we break the morning earth And flourish in the morning’s breath; We leave the agony of birth And soon are all midway to death.

While yet the summer of her year Brings life her marvels, she can see Far off the rising dust, and hear The footfall of her enemy.

HOLINESS

If all the carts were painted gay, And all the streets swept clean, And all the children came to play By hollyhocks, with green Grasses to grow between,

If all the houses looked as though Some heart were in their stones, If all the people that we know Were dressed in scarlet gowns, With feathers in their crowns,

I think this gaiety would make A spiritual land. I think that holiness would take This laughter by the hand, Till both should understand.

THE CITY

A shining city, one Happy in snow and sun, And singing in the rain A paradisal strain.... Here is a dream to keep, O Builders, from your sleep.

O foolish Builders, wake, Take your trowels, take The poet’s dream, and build The city song has willed, That every stone may sing And all your roads may ring With happy wayfaring.

TO THE DEFILERS

Go, thieves, and take your riches, creep To corners out of honest sight; We shall not be so poor to keep One thought of envy or despite.

But know that in sad surety when Your sullen will betrays this earth To sorrows of contagion, then Beelzebub renews his birth.

When you defile the pleasant streams And the wild bird’s abiding-place, You massacre a million dreams And cast your spittle in God’s face.

A CHRISTMAS NIGHT

Christ for a dream was given from the dead To walk one Christmas night on earth again, Among the snow, among the Christmas bells. He heard the hymns that are his praise: _Noël_, And _Christ is Born_, and _Babe of Bethlehem_. He saw the travelling crowds happy for home, The gathering and the welcome, and the set Feast and the gifts, because he once was born, Because he once was steward of a word. And so he thought, “The spirit has been kind; So well the peoples might have fallen from me, My way of life being difficult and spare. It is beautiful that a dream in Galilee Should prosper so. They crucified me once, And now my name is spoken through the world, And bells are rung for me and candles burnt. They might have crucified my dream who used My body ill; they might have spat on me Always as in one hour on Golgotha.” ... And the snow fell, and the last bell was still, And the poor Christ again was with the dead.

INVOCATION

As pools beneath stone arches take Darkly within their deeps again Shapes of the flowing stone, and make Stories anew of passing men,

So let the living thoughts that keep, Morning and evening, in their kind, Eternal change in height and deep, Be mirrored in my happy mind.

Beat, world, upon this heart, be loud Your marvel chanted in my blood, Come forth, O sun, through cloud on cloud To shine upon my stubborn mood.

Great hills that fold above the sea, Ecstatic airs and sparkling skies, Sing out your words to master me, Make me immoderately wise.

IMMORTALITY

I

When other beauty governs other lips, And snowdrops come to strange and happy springs, When seas renewed bear yet unbuilded ships, And alien hearts know all familiar things, When frosty nights bring comrades to enjoy Sweet hours at hearths where we no longer sit, When Liverpool is one with dusty Troy, And London famed as Attica for wit ... How shall it be with you, and you, and you, How with us all who have gone greatly here In friendship, making some delight, some true Song in the dark, some story against fear? Shall song still walk with love, and life be brave, And we, who were all these, be but the grave?

II

No; lovers yet shall tell the nightingale Sometimes a song that we of old time made, And gossips gathered at the twilight ale Shall say, “Those two were friends,” or, “Unafraid Of bitter thought were those because they loved Better than most.” And sometimes shall be told How one, who died in his young beauty, moved, As Astrophel, those English hearts of old. And the new seas shall take the new ships home Telling how yet the Dymock orchards stand, And you shall walk with Julius at Rome, And Paul shall be my fellow in the Strand; There in the midst of all those words shall be Our names, our ghosts, our immortality.

THE CRAFTSMEN

Confederate hand and eye Work to the chisel’s blade, Setting the grain aglow Of porch and sturdy beam-- So the strange gods may ply Strict arms till we are made Quick as the gods who know What builds behind this dream.

SYMBOLS

I saw history in a poet’s song, In a river-reach and a gallows-hill, In a bridal bed, and a secret wrong, In a crown of thorns: in a daffodil.

I imagined measureless time in a day, And starry space in a waggon-road, And the treasure of all good harvests lay In the single seed that the sower sowed.

My garden-wind had driven and havened again All ships that ever had gone to sea, And I saw the glory of all dead men In the shadow that went by the side of me.

SEALED

The doves call down the long arcades of pine, The screaming swifts are tiring towards their eaves, And you are very quiet, O lover of mine.

No foot is on your ploughlands now, the song Fails and is no more heard among your leaves That wearied not in praise the whole day long.

I have watched with you till this twilight-fall, The proud companion of your loveliness; Have you no word for me, no word at all?

The passion of my thought I have given you, Striving towards your passion, nevertheless, The clover leaves are deepening to the dew,

And I am still unsatisfied, untaught. You lie guarded in mystery, you go Into your night, and leave your lover naught.

Would I were Titan with immeasurable thews To hold you trembling, lover of mine, and know To the full the secret savour that you use

Now to my tormenting. I would drain Your beauty to the last sharp glory of it; You should work mightily through me, blood and brain.

Your heart in my heart’s mastery should burn, And you before my swift and arrogant wit Should be no longer proudly taciturn.

You should bend back astonished at my kiss, Your wisdom should be armourer to my pride, And you, subdued, should yet be glad of this.

The joys of great heroic lovers dead Should seem but market-gossiping beside The annunciation of our bridal bed.

And now, my lover earth, I am a leaf, A wave of light, a bird’s note, a blade sprung Towards the oblivion of the sickled sheaf;

A mere mote driven against your royal ease, A tattered eager traveller among The myriads beating on your sanctuaries.

I have no strength to crush you to my will, Your beauty is invulnerably zoned, Yet I, your undefeated lover still,

Exulting in your sap am clear of shame, And biding with you patiently am throned Above the flight of desolation’s aim.

You may be mute, bestow no recompense On all the thriftless leaguers of my soul-- I am at your gates, O lover of mine, and thence

Will I not turn for any scorn you send, Rebuked, bemused, yet is my purpose whole, I shall be striving towards you till the end.

A PRAYER

Lord, not for light in darkness do we pray, Not that the veil be lifted from our eyes, Nor that the slow ascension of our day Be otherwise.

Not for a clearer vision of the things Whereof the fashioning shall make us great, Not for remission of the peril and stings Of time and fate.

Not for a fuller knowledge of the end Whereto we travel, bruised yet unafraid, Nor that the little healing that we lend Shall be repaid.

Not these, O Lord. We would not break the bars Thy wisdom sets about us; we shall climb Unfettered to the secrets of the stars In Thy good time.

We do not crave the high perception swift When to refrain were well, and when fulfil, Nor yet the understanding strong to sift The good from ill.

Not these, O Lord. For these Thou hast revealed, We know the golden season when to reap The heavy-fruited treasure of the field, The hour to sleep.

Not these. We know the hemlock from the rose, The pure from stained, the noble from the base The tranquil holy light of truth that glows On Pity’s face.

We know the paths wherein our feet should press, Across our hearts are written Thy decrees, Yet now, O Lord, be merciful to bless With more than these.

Grant us the will to fashion as we feel, Grant us the strength to labour as we know, Grant us the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel, To strike the blow.

Knowledge we ask not--knowledge Thou hast lent, But, Lord, the will--there lies our bitter need, Give us to build above the deep intent The deed, the deed.

THE BUILDING

Whence these hods, and bricks of bright red clay, And swart men climbing ladders in the night?

Stilled are the clamorous energies of day, The streets are dumb, and, prodigal of light, The lamps but shine upon a city of sleep. A step goes out into the silence; far Across the quiet roofs the hour is tolled From ghostly towers; the indifferent earth may keep That ragged flotsam shielded from the cold In earth’s good time: not, moving among men, Shall he compel so fortunate a star. Pavements I know, forsaken now, are strange, Alien walks not beautiful, that then, In the familiar day, are part of all My breathless pilgrimage, not beautiful, but dear; The monotony of sound has suffered change, The eddies of wanton sound are spent, and clear To bleak monotonies of silence fall.

And, while the city sleeps, in the central poise Of quiet, lamps are flaming in the night, Blown to long tongues by winds that moan between The growing walls, and throwing misty light On swart men bearing bricks of bright red clay In laden hods; and ever the thin noise Of trowels deftly fashioning the clean Long lines that are the shaping of proud thought. Ghost-like they move between the day and day, These men whose labour strictly shall be wrought Into the captive image of a dream. Their sinews weary not, the plummet falls To measured use from steadfast hands apace, And momently the moist and levelled seam Knits brick to brick and momently the walls Bestow the wonder of form on formless space.

And whence all these? The hod and plummet-line, The trowels tapping, and the lamps that shine In long, dust-heavy beams from wall to wall, The mortar and the bricks of bright red clay, Ladder and corded scaffolding, and all The gear of common traffic--whence are they? And whence the men who use them? When he came, God upon chaos, crying in the name Of all adventurous vision that the void Should yield up man, and man, created, rose Out of the deep, the marvel of all things made, Then in immortal wonder was destroyed All worth of trivial knowledge, and the close Of man’s most urgent meditation stayed Even as his first thought--“Whence am I sprung?” What proud ecstatic mystery was pent In that first act for man’s astonishment, From age to unconfessing age, among His manifold travel. And in all I see Of common daily usage is renewed This primal and ecstatic mystery Of chaos bidden into many-hued Wonders of form, life in the void create, And monstrous silence made articulate.

Not the first word of God upon the deep Nor the first pulse of life along the day More marvellous than these new walls that sweep Starward, these lines that discipline the clay, These lamps swung in the wind that send their light On swart men climbing ladders in the night. No trowel-tap but sings anew for men The rapture of quickening water and continent, No mortared line but witnesses again Chaos transfigured into lineament.

THE SOLDIER

The large report of fame I lack, And shining clasps and crimson scars, For I have held my bivouac Alone amid the untroubled stars.

My battle-field has known no dawn Beclouded by a thousand spears; I’ve been no mounting tyrant’s pawn To buy his glory with my tears.

It never seemed a noble thing Some little leagues of land to gain From broken men, nor yet to fling Abroad the thunderbolts of pain.

Yet I have felt the quickening breath As peril heavy peril kissed-- My weapon was a little faith, And fear was my antagonist.

Not a brief hour of cannonade, But many days of bitter strife, Till God of His great pity laid Across my brow the leaves of life.

THE FIRES OF GOD

I

Time gathers to my name; Along the ways wheredown my feet have passed I see the years with little triumph crowned, Exulting not for perils dared, downcast And weary-eyed and desolate for shame Of having been unstirred of all the sound Of the deep music of the men that move Through the world’s days in suffering and love.

Poor barren years that brooded over-much On your own burden, pale and stricken years-- Go down to your oblivion, we part With no reproach or ceremonial tears. Henceforth my hands are lifted to the touch Of hands that labour with me, and my heart Hereafter to the world’s heart shall be set And its own pain forget. Time gathers to my name-- Days dead are dark; the days to be, a flame Of wonder and of promise, and great cries Of travelling people reach me--I must rise.

II

Was I not man? Could I not rise alone Above the shifting of the things that be, Rise to the crest of all the stars and see The ways of all the world as from a throne? Was I not man, with proud imperial will To cancel all the secrets of high heaven? Should not my sole unbridled purpose fill All hidden paths with light when once was riven God’s veil by my indomitable will?

So dreamt I, little man of little vision, Great only in unconsecrated pride; Man’s pity grew from pity to derision, And still I thought, “Albeit they deride, Yet is it mine uncharted ways to dare Unknown to these, And they shall stumble darkly, unaware Of solemn mysteries Whereof the key is mine alone to bear.”

So I forgot my God, and I forgot The holy sweet communion of men, And moved in desolate places, where are not Meek hands held out with patient healing when The hours are heavy with uncharitable pain; No company but vain And arrogant thoughts were with me at my side. And ever to myself I lied. Saying “Apart from all men thus I go To know the things that they may never know.”

III

Then a great change befell; Long time I stood In witless hardihood With eyes on one sole changeless vision set-- The deep disturbèd fret Of men who made brief tarrying in hell On their earth travelling. It was as though the lives of men should be See circle-wise, whereof one little span Through which all passed was blackened with the wing Of perilous evil, bateless misery. But all beyond, making the whole complete O’er which the travelling feet Of every man Made way or ever he might come to death, Was odorous with the breath Of honey-laden flowers, and alive With sacrificial ministrations sweet Of man to man, and swift and holy loves, And large heroic hopes, whereby should thrive Man’s spirit as he moves From dawn of life to the great dawn of death.

It was as though mine eyes were set alone Upon that woeful passage of despair, Until I held that life had never known Dominion but in this most troubled place Where many a ruined grace And many a friendless care Ran to and fro in sorrowful unrest. Still in my hand I pressed Hope’s fragile chalice, whence I drew deep draughts That heartened me that even yet should grow Out of this dread confusion, as of broken crafts Driven along ungovernable seas, Prosperous order, and that I should know After long vigil all the mysteries Of human wonder and of human fate.

O fool, O only great In pride unhallowed, O most blind of heart! Confusion but more dark confusion bred, Grief nurtured grief, I cried aloud and said, “Through trackless ways the soul of man is hurled, No sign upon the forehead of the skies, No beacon, and no chart Are given to him, and the inscrutable world But mocks his scars and fills his mouth with dust.”

_And lies bore lies_ _And lust bore lust,_ _And the world was heavy with flowerless rods,_ _And pride outran_ _The strength of a man_ _Who had set himself in the place of gods._

IV