Part 2

'Oh whither be ye sailing...?' 'Alas, we sail no longer: Our hulls are wrack, our sails are dust, as any man might know. And why should you torment us? ... Your iron keels are stronger Than ghostly ships that sailed from Tyre a thousand years ago.'

THE GIFT

Marching on Tanga, marching the parch'd plain Of wavering spear-grass past Pangani River, England came to me--me who had always ta'en But never given before--England, the giver, In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiver On still evenings of summer, after rain, By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain. Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain, And, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awake Shivering all night through till cold daybreak: In that I count these sufferings my gain And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fain Suffer as many more for her sweet sake.

FIVE DEGREES SOUTH

I love all waves and lovely water in motion, That wavering iris in comb of the blown spray: Iris of tumbled nautilus in the wake's commotion, Their spread sails dipped in a marmoreal way Unquarried, wherein are greeny bubbles blowing Plumes of faint spray, cool in the deep And lucent seas, that pause not in their flowing To lap the southern starlight while they sleep. These I have seen, these I have loved and known: I have seen Jupiter, that great star, swinging Like a ship's lantern, silent and alone Within his sea of sky, and heard the singing Of the south trade, that siren of the air, Who shivers the taut shrouds, and singeth there.

104 deg. FAHRENHEIT

To-night I lay with fever in my veins Consumed, tormented creature of fire and ice, And, weaving the enhavock'd brain's device, Dreamed that for evermore I must walk these plains Where sunlight slayeth life, and where no rains Abated the fierce air, nor slaked its fire: So that death seemed the end of all desire, To ease the distracted body of its pains. And so I died, and from my eyes the glare Faded, nor had I further need of breath; But when I reached my hand to find you there Beside me, I found nothing.... Lonely was death. And with a cry I wakened, but to hear Thin wings of fever singing in my ear.

FEVER-TREES

The beautiful Acacia She sighs in desert lands: Over the burning waterways Of Africa she sways and sways, Even where no air glideth In cooling green she stands.

The beautiful Acacia She hath a yellow dress: A slender trunk of lemon sheen Gleameth through the tender green (Where the thorn hideth) Shielding her loveliness.

The beautiful Acacia Dwelleth in deadly lands: Over the brooding waterways Where death breedeth, she sways and sways, And no man long abideth In valleys where she stands.

THE RAIN-BIRD

High on the tufted baobab-tree To-night a rain-bird sang to me A simple song, of three notes only, That made the wilderness more lonely;

For in my brain it echoed nearly, Old village church bells chiming clearly: The sweet cracked bells, just out of tune, Over the mowing grass in June--

Over the mowing grass, and meadows Where the low sun casts long shadows. And cuckoos call in the twilight From elm to elm, in level flight.

Now through the evening meadows move Slow couples of young folk in love, Who pause at every crooked stile And kiss in the hawthorn's shade the while:

Like pale moths the summer frocks Hover between the beds of phlox, And old men, feeling it is late, Cease their gossip at the gate,

Till deeper still the twilight grows, And night blossometh, like a rose Full of love and sweet perfume, Whose heart most tender stars illume.

Here the red sun sank like lead, And the sky blackened overhead; Only the locust chirped at me From the shadowy baobab-tree.

MOTHS

When I lay wakeful yesternight My fever's flame was a clear light, A taper, flaring in the wind, Whither, fluttering out of the dim Night, many dreams glimmered by. Like moths, out of the darkness, blind, Hurling at that taper's flame, From drinking honey of the night's flowers Into my circled light they came: So near I could see their soft colours, Grey of the dove, most soothely grey; But my heat singed their wings, and away Darting into the dark again, They escaped me.... Others floated down Like those vaned seeds that fall In autumn from the sycamore's crown When no leaf trembleth nor branch is stirred, More silent in flight than any bird, Or bat's wings flitting in darkness, soft As lizards moving on a white wall They came quietly from aloft Down through my circle of light, and so Into unlighted gloom below. But one dream, strong-winged, daring Flew beating at the heart of the flame Till I feared it would have put out my light, My thin taper, fitfully flaring, And that I should be left alone in the night With no more dreams for my delight.

Can it be that from the dead Even their dreams, their dreams are fled?

BETE HUMAINE

Riding through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise, I saw the world awake; and as the ray Touched the tall grasses where they dream till day, Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies, With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyes Piloting crimson bodies, slender and gay. I aimed at one, and struck it, and it lay Broken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes... Then my soul sickened with a sudden pain And horror, at my own careless cruelty, That where all things are cruel I had slain A creature whose sweet life it is to fly: Like beasts that prey with bloody claw... Nay, they Must slay to live, but what excuse had I?

DOVES

On the edge of the wild-wood Grey doves fluttering: Grey doves of Astarte To the woods at daybreak Lazily uttering Their murmured enchantment, Old as man's childhood;

While she, pale divinity Of hidden evil, Silvers the regions chaste Of cold sky, and broodeth Over forests primeval And all that thorny waste's Wooded infinity.

'Lovely goddess of groves,' Cried I, 'what enchanted Sinister recesses Of these lone shades May still be haunted By thy demon caresses, Thy unholy loves?'

But clear day quelleth Her dominion lonely, And the soft ring-dove, Murmuring, telleth That dark sin only From man's lust springeth, In man's heart dwelleth.

SONG

I made a song in my love's likeness From colours of my quietude, From trees whose blossoms shine no less Than butterflies in the wild-wood.

I laid claim on all beauty Under the sun to praise her wonder, Till the noise of war swept over me, Stopp'd my singing mouth with thunder.

The angel of death hath swift wings, I heard him strip the huddled trees Overhead, as a hornet sings, And whip the grass about my knees.

Down we crouched in the parched dust, Down beneath that deadly rain: Dead still I lay, as lie one must Who hath a bullet in his brain.

Dead they left me: but my soul, waking, Quietly laughed at their distress Who guessed not that I still was making That new song in my love's likeness.

BEFORE ACTION

Now the wind of the dawn sighs, Now red embers have burned white, Under the darkness faints and dies The slow-beating heart of night.

Into the darkness my eyes peer Seeing only faces steel'd, And level eyes that know not fear; Yet each heart is a battlefield

Where phantom armies foin and feint And bloody victories are won From the time when stars are faint To the rising of the sun.

With banners broken, and the roll Of drums, at dawn the phantoms fly: A man must commune with his soul When he marches out to die.

O day of wrath and of desire! For each may know upon this day Whether he be a thing of fire Or fettered to the traitor clay.

Such is the hazard that is thrown: We know not how the dice may fall: All the secrets shall be known Or else we shall not know at all.

ON A SUBALTERN KILLED IN ACTION

Into that dry and most desolate place With heavy gait they dragged the stretcher in And laid him on the bloody ground: the din Of Maxim fire ceased not. I raised his head, And looked into his face, And saw that he was dead. Saw beneath matted curls the broken skin That let the bullet in; And saw the limp, lithe limbs, the smiling mouth... (Ah, may we smile at death As bravely....) the curv'd lips that no more drouth Should blacken, and no sweetly stirring breath Mildly displace. So I covered the calm face And stripped the shirt from his firm breast, and there, A zinc identity disc, a bracelet of elephant hair I found.... Ah, God, how deep it stings This unendurable pity of small things!

But more than this I saw, That dead stranger welcoming, more than the raw And brutal havoc of war. England I saw, the mother from whose side He came hither and died, she at whose hems he had play'd, In whose quiet womb his body and soul were made. That pale, estranged flesh that we bowed over Had breathed the scent in summer of white clover; Dreamed her cool fading nights, her twilights long, And days as careless as a blackbird's song Heard in the hush of eve, when midges' wings Make a thin music, and the night-jar spins. (For it is summer, I thought, in England now....) And once those forward gazing eyes had seen Her lovely living green: that blackened brow Cool airs, from those blue hills moving, had fann'd-- Breath of that holy land Whither my soul aspireth without despair: In the broken brain had many a lovely word Awakened magical echoes of things heard, Telling of love and laughter and low voices, And tales in which the English heart rejoices In vanishing visions of childhood and its glories: Old-fashioned nursery rhymes and fairy stories: Words that only an English tongue could tell.

And the firing died away; and the night fell On our battle. Only in the sullen sky A prairie fire, with huge fantastic flame Leapt, lighting dark clouds charged with thunder. And my heart was sick with shame That there, in death, he should lie, Crying: 'Oh, why am I alive, I wonder?'

In a dream I saw war riding the land: Stark rode she, with bowed eyes, against the glare Of sack'd cities smouldering in the dark, A tired horse, lean, with outreaching head, And hid her face of dread.... Yet, in my passion would I look on her, Crying, O hark, Thou pale one, whom now men say bearest the scythe Of God, that iron scythe forged by his thunder For reaping of nations overripened, fashioned Upon the clanging anvil whose sparks, flying In a starry night, dying, fall hereunder.... But she, she heeded not my cry impassioned Nor turned her face of dread, Urging the tired horse, with outreaching head, O thou, cried I, who choosest for thy going These bloomy meadows of youth, these flowery ways Whereby no influence strays Ruder than a cold wind blowing, Or beating needles of rain, Why must thou ride again Ruthless among the pastures yet unripened, Crushing their beauty in thine iron track Downtrodden, ravish'd in thy following flame, Parched and black? But she, she stayed not in her weary haste Nor turned her face; but fled: And where she passed the lands lay waste....

And now I cannot tell whither she rideth: But tired, tired rides she. Yet know I well why her dread face she hideth: She is pale and faint to death. Yea, her day faileth, Nor all her blood, nor all her frenzy burning, Nor all her hate availeth: For she passeth out of sight Into that night From which none, none returneth To waste the meadows of youth, Nor vex thine eyelids, Routhe, O sorrowful sister, soother of our sorrow. And a hope within me springs That fair will be the morrow, And that charred plain, Those flowery meadows, shall rejoice at last In a sweet, clean Freshness, as when the green Grass springeth, where the prairie fire hath passed.

AFTER ACTION

All through that day of battle the broken sound Of shattering Maxim fire made mad the wood; So that the low trees shuddered where they stood, And echoes bellowed in the bush around: But when, at last the light of day was drowned, That madness ceased.... Ah, God, but it was good! There, in the reek of iodine and blood, I flung me down upon the thorny ground. So quiet was it, I might well have been lying In a room I love, where the ivy cluster shakes Its dew upon the lattice panes at even: Where rusty ivory scatters from the dying Jessamine blossom, and the musk-rose breaks Her dusky bloom beneath a summer heaven.

SONNET

Not only for remembered loveliness, England, my mother, my own, we hold thee rare Who toil, and fight, and sicken beneath the glare Of brazen skies that smile on our duress, Making us crave thy cloudy state no less Than the sweet clarity of thy rain-wash'd air, Meadows in moonlight cool, and every fair Slow-fading flower of thy summer dress: Not for thy flowers, but for the unfading crown Of sacrifice our happy brothers wove thee: The joyous ones who laid thy beauty down Nor stayed to see it shamed. For these we love thee, For this (O love, O dread!) we hold thee more Divinely fair to-day than heretofore.

A FAREWELL TO AFRICA

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Now once again, upon the pole-star's bearing, We plough these furrowed fields where no blade springeth; Again the busy trade in the halyards singeth Sun-whitened spindrift from the blown wave shearing; The uncomplaining sea suffers our faring; In a brazen glitter our little wake is lost, And the starry south rolls over until no ghost Remaineth of us and all our pitiful daring; For the sea beareth no trace of man's endeavour, His might enarmoured, his prosperous argosies, Soundless, within her unsounded caves, forever She broodeth, knowing neither war nor peace, And our grey cruisers holds in mind no more Than the cedarn fleets that Sheba's treasure bore.

SONG

What is the worth of war In a world that turneth, turneth About a tired star Whose flaming centre burneth No longer than the space Of the spent atom's race: Where conquered lands, soon, soon Lie waste as the pale moon?

What is the worth of art In a world that fast forgetteth Those who have wrung its heart With beauty that love begetteth, Whose faint flames vanish quite In that star-powdered night Where even the mighty ones Shine only as far suns?

And what is beauty worth, Sweet beauty, that persuadeth Of her immortal birth, Then, as a flower, fadeth: Or love, whose tender years End with the mourner's tears, Die, when the mourner's breath Is quiet, at last, in death?

Beauty and love are one, Even when fierce war clashes: Even when our fiery sun Hath burnt itself to ashes, And the dead planets race Unlighted through blind space, Beauty will still shine there: Wherefore, I worship her.

THE HAWTHORN SPRAY

I saw a thrush light on a hawthorn spray, One moment only, spilling creamy blossom, While the bough bent beneath her speckled bosom, Bent, and recovered, and she fluttered away.

The branch was still; but, in my heart, a pain Than the thorn'd spray more cruel, stabbed me, only Remembering days in a far land and lonely When I had never hoped for summer again.

THE PAVEMENT

In bitter London's heart of stone, Under the lamplight's shielded glare. I saw a soldier's body thrown Unto the drabs that traffic there

Pacing the pavements with slow feet: Those old pavements whose blown dust Throttles the hot air of the street, And the darkness smells of lust.

The chaste moon, with equal glance, Looked down on the mad world, astare At those who conquered in sad France And those who perished in Leicester Square.

And in her light his lips were pale: Lips that love had moulded well: Out of the jaws of Passchendaele They had sent him to this nether hell.

I had no stone of scorn to fling, For I know not how the wrong began-- But I had seen a hateful thing Masked in the dignity of man:

And hate and sorrow and hopeless anger Swept my heart, as the winds that sweep Angrily through the leafless hanger When winter rises from the deep....

* * * * *

I would that war were what men dream: A crackling fire, a cleansing flame, That it might leap the space between And lap up London and its shame.

To LYDIA LOPOKOVA

HER GARLAND

O thou who comest to our wintry shade Gay and light-footed as the virgin Spring, Before whose shining feet the cherries fling Their moony tribute, when the sloe is sprayed With light, and all things musical are made: O thou who art Spring's daughter, who can bring Blossom, or song of bird, or anything To match the youth in which you stand arrayed? Not that rich garland Meleager twined In his sun-guarded glade above the blue That flashes from the burning Tyrian seas: No, you are cooler, sweeter than the wind That wakes our woodlands; so I bring to you These wind-blown blossoms of anemones.

HER VARIETY

Soft as a pale moth flitting in moonshine I saw thee flutter to the shadowy call That beckons from the strings of Carneval, O frail and fragrant image of Columbine: So, when the spectre of the rose was thine, A flower wert thou, and last I saw thee fall In Cleopatra's stormy bacchanal Flown with the red insurgence of the vine. O moth, O flower, O maenad, which art thou? Shadowy, beautiful, or leaping wild As stormlight over savage Tartar skies? Such were my ancient questionings; but now I know that you are nothing but a child With a red flower's mouth and hazel eyes.

HER SWIFTNESS

You are too swift for poetry, too fleet For any mused numbers to ensnare: Swifter than music dying on the air Or bloom upon rose-petals, fades the sweet Vanishing magic of your flying feet, Your poised finger, and your shining hair: Words cannot tell how wonderful you were, Or how one gesture made a joy complete. And since you know my pen may never capture The transient swift loveliness of you, Come, let us salve our sense of the world's loss Remembering, with a melancholy rapture, How many dancing-girls ... and poets too... Dream in the dust of Hecatompylos.

GHOSTLY LOVES

'Oh why,' my darling prayeth me, 'must you sing For ever of ghostly loves, phantasmal passion? Seeing that you never loved me after that fashion And the love I gave was not a phantom thing, But delight of eager lips and strong arms folding The beauty of yielding arms and of smooth shoulder, All fluent grace of which you were the moulder: And I.... Oh, I was happy for your holding.' 'Ah, do you not know, my dearest, have you not seen The shadow that broodeth over things that perish: How age may mock sweet moments that have been And death defile the beauty that we cherish? Wherefore, sweet spirit, I thank thee for thy giving: 'Tis my spirit that embraceth thee dead or living.'

FEBRUARY

The robin on my lawn, He was the first to tell How, in the frozen dawn, This miracle befell, Waking the meadows white With hoar, the iron road Agleam with splintered light, And ice where water flowed: Till, when the low sun drank Those milky mists that cloak Hanger and hollied bank, The winter world awoke To hear the feeble bleat Of lambs on downland farms: A blackbird whistled sweet; Old beeches moved their arms Into a mellow haze Aerial, newly-born: And I, alone, agaze, Stood waiting for the thorn To break in blossom white Or burst in a green flame... So, in a single night, Fair February came, Bidding my lips to sing Or whisper their surprise, With all the joy of spring And morning in her eyes.

SONG OF THE DARK AGES

We digged our trenches on the down Beside old barrows, and the wet White chalk we shovelled from below; It lay like drifts of thawing snow On parados and parapet:

Until a pick neither struck flint Nor split the yielding chalky soil, But only calcined human bone: Poor relic of that Age of Stone Whose ossuary was our spoil.

Home we marched singing in the rain, And all the while, beneath our song, I mused how many springs should wane And still our trenches scar the plain: The monument of an old wrong.

But then, I thought, the fair green sod Will wholly cover that white stain, And soften, as it clothes the face Of those old barrows, every trace Of violence to the patient plain.

And careless people, passing by, Will speak of both in casual tone: Saying: 'You see the toil they made: The age of iron, pick, and spade, Here jostles with the Age of Stone.'

Yet either from that happier race Will merit but a passing glance; And they will leave us both alone: Poor savages who wrought in stone-- Poor savages who fought in France.

WINTER SUNSET

Athwart the blackening bars of pines benighted, The sun, descending to the zones of denser Cloud that o'erhung the long horizon, lighted Upon the crown of earth a flaming censer From which white clouds of incense, overflowing, Filled the chill clarity from whence the swallows Had lately fled with wreathed vapours, showing Like a fine bloom over the lonely fallows: Where, with the pungent breath of mist was blended A faint aroma of pine-needles sodden By autumn rains, and fainter still, ascended Beneath high woods the scent of leaves downtrodden. It was a moment when the earth, that sickened For Spring, as lover when the beloved lingers, Lay breathless, while the distant goddess quickened Some southern hill-side with her glowing fingers: And so, it seemed, the drowsy lands were shaken, Stirred in their sleep, and sighed, as though the pain Of a strange dream had bidden them awaken To frozen days and bitter nights again.

SONG

Why have you stolen my delight In all the golden shows of Spring When every cherry-tree is white And in the limes the thrushes sing,

O fickler than the April day, O brighter than the golden broom, O blyther than the thrushes' lay, O whiter than the cherry-bloom,

O sweeter than all things that blow ... Why have you only left for me The broom, the cherry's crown of snow, And thrushes in the linden-tree?

ENGLAND--APRIL, 1918