Part 5

But since as a happy child I went With love and laughter and content Along the road of simple things, Making no idle questionings; Since young and careless I did keep The cool and cloistered halls of sleep, And took my daily drink and food, Finding them very, very good-- God may perhaps be pleased to see Such signs of sheer felicity.

But if I somehow should be given An attic in His storied heaven, I’m sure I should be far apart From Catherine of the wounded heart, Teresa of the flaming soul, And Bruno’s sevenfold aureole, And be told, of course, I’m not to mix With the Bernards or the Dominics, Or thrust my company upon St. Michael or the great St. John.

Yet God may grant it me to sit And sing (with little skill or wit) My intimate canticles of praise For all life’s dear and gracious days-- Though hardly a single syllable Of what St. Raphael has to tell, The triumphs of the cosmic wars, The raptures and the jewelled scars Of the high lords of martyrdom-- Hardly a word of this will come To strike my understanding ear, Hardly a single word, I fear!

* * * * *

But woe upon the Judgment Day If my heart gladdened not at May; Nor woke to hear with the waking birds The morning’s sweet and winsome words; Nor loved to see laburnums fling Their pennons to the winds of Spring; Nor watched among the expectant grass The Summer’s painted pageant pass; Nor thrilled with blithe beatitude Within a kindling Autumn wood Or when each separate twig did lie Etched sharp upon the wintry sky. If out of all my sunny hours I brought no chaplet of their flowers; If I gave no kiss to His lovely feet When they shone as poppies in the wheat; If no rose to me were a Mystic Rose, No Snow were whiter than the snows; If in my baseness I let fall At once His cross and His carnival ... Then must I take my ungrateful head To where the lakes of Hell burn red.

IN DOMO JOHANNIS

Here rest the thin worn hands which fondled Him, The trembling lips which magnified the Lord, Who looked upon His handmaid, the young, slim Mary at her meek tasks, and here the sword Within the soul of her whose anguished eyes Gazed at the stars which watch Gethsemane, And saw the sun fail in the stricken skies. In these dim rooms she guards the treasury Of her white memories--the strange, sweet face More marred than any man’s, the tender, fain And eager words, the wistful human grace, The mysteries of glory, joy and pain, And that hope tremulous, half-sob, half-song, Ringing through night--“How long, O Lord, how long?”

AT WOODCHESTER

Hark how a silver music falls Between these meek monastic walls, And airy flute and psaltery Awaken heavenly melody!

Yet not to unentunèd ears May come the joyance of the spheres, And only humbled hearts may see The humble heart of mystery.

Where tread in light and lilting ways Bright angels through the dance’s maze On grassy floors to meet the just In robes of woven diamond dust.

And jewelled daisies burst to greet The flutter of the Blessed’s feet: Along the cloister’s gathered gloom Lilies and mystic roses bloom.

Grown in the hush of hidden hours Thoughts fairer than the summer flowers Lift up their sweet and living heads, Crystalline whites and sanguine reds!

Who keep in lowly pageantry Silence a lovely ceremony;[B] Who set a seal upon their eyes Responsive only to the skies;

Who in a quick obedience move Along the hallowed paths of love, Win at last to that secret place Adorned with the glory of God’s face.

And as each eve the tired sun Sinks softly down, the long day done, Upon the bosom of the west-- So, even so, upon God’s breast

Each weary heart is folded deep Into His arms in quiet sleep, And sheltered safe, all warm and bright, Against the phantoms of the night.

[B] “_Quia silentium est pulchra caeremonia_”:

Ex Constitutionibus Fratrum S. Ordinis Prædicatorum.

“FOR THEY SHALL POSSESS THE EARTH”

You who were beauty’s worshipper, Her ardent lover, in this place You have seen Beauty face to face; And known the wistful eyes of her, And kissed the hands of Poverty, And praised her tattered bravery.

You shall be humble, give your days To silence and simplicity; And solitude shall come to be The goal of all your winding ways; When pride and youthful pomp of words Fly far away like startled birds.

Possessing nothing, you shall know The heart of all things in the earth, Their secret agonies and mirth, The awful innocence of snow, The sadness of November leaves, The joy of fields of girded sheaves.

A shelter from the driving rain Your high renouncement of desire; Food it shall be and wine and fire; And Peace shall enter once again As quietly as dreams in sleep The hidden trysting-place you keep.

You shall grow humble as the grass, And patient as each slow, dumb beast; And as their fellow--yea the least-- Yield stoat and hedgehog room to pass; And learn the ignorance of men Before the robin and the wren.

The things so terrible and sweet You strove to say in accents harsh, The frogs are croaking on the marsh, The crickets chirping at your feet-- Oh, they can teach you unafraid The meaning of the songs you made.

Till clothed in white humilities, Each happening that doth befall, Each thought of yours be musical, As wind is musical in the trees, When strong as sun and clean as dew Your old dead songs come back to you.

BALLADE OF THE BEST SONG IN THE WORLD

I know a sheaf of splendid songs by heart Which stir the blood or move the soul to tears, Of death or honour or of love’s sweet smart, The runes and legends of a thousand years; And some of them go plaintively and slow, And some are jolly like the earth in May-- But this is _really_ the best song I know: _I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_.

I sang it in a house-boat on the Dart To several members of the House of Peers. The Editor of the _Exchange and Mart_ (A man of taste) stood up and led the cheers. I carolled it at Christmas in the snow, I hummed it on my summer holiday-- Doh-ray-me-fah-sol-la-fah-me-ray-doh-- _I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_.

It made a gathering of Fabians start And put their fingers in their outraged ears. They did not understand my subtle art, But though they only gave me scoffs and jeers, I sang my ditty high, I sang it low, I sang it every known (and unknown) way-- _Crescendo, forte, pianissimo_-- _I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_.

_L’Envoi_

Prince, if by some amazing fluke you go To heaven, you’ll hear the shawms and citherns play, And all the trumpets of the angels blow _I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_.

TAIL-PIECE

A boy goes by the window while I write, Whistling--the little demon!--in delight. I shake my fist and scowl at him, and curse Over the carcase of my murdered verse. And yet--which is it that the world most needs, His happy laughter or my threadbare screeds? There is more poetry in being young Than in the finest song that Shakespeare sung-- And if that’s true of godlike Shakespeare--well, Whistle the Marseillaise, and ring the bell, And chase the cat, and lose your tennis-ball, And tear your trousers on the garden wall, Scalp a Red Indian, sail the Spanish seas-- Do any mortal thing you damn well please.

AVE

When all the world was black Your courage did not fail; No laughter did you lack Or fellowship or ale.

And you have made defeat A nobler pageantry, Your bitterness more sweet Than is their victory.

For by your stricken lips A gallant song is sung; Joy suffers no eclipse, Is lyrical and young,

Is rooted in the sod, Is ambient in the air, Since Hope lifts up to God The escalade of prayer.

The tyrants and the kings In purple splendour ride, But all ironic things Go marching at your side To nerve your hands with power, To salt your souls with scorn, Till that awaited hour When Freedom shall be born.

A REPLY

_To one who said that to conceive of God as a person was to reduce Him to our own level._

Oh, we can pierce With the swift lightnings far and fierce; We can behold Him in the sunset’s lucid gold.

Yet not by these Do we read His dark mysteries, Or tear apart The thick veil upon Heaven’s heart....

Kneel with the kings Before His dreadful Emptyings, And see Him laid In the slender arms of a Maid.

The village street Knew God’s familiar, weary feet-- The carpenter’s Son Who made the great hills one by one.

No glory slips From His sublime apocalypse-- His homespun dress, Hunger, thirst and the wilderness.

To a slave’s death He gave his broken body’s breath; An outcast hung The swart and venomous thieves among.

And still yields He Godhead to our humanity, Leaving for sign Himself in the meek bread and wine.

JOB

Can flesh and blood contrive defence ’Gainst swords that pierce the spirit through, Or meet, not knowing why or whence, The blind bolt crashing from the blue?

“Oh, men have held times out of mind Their stern and stoic courage bright-- But if no cry comes on the wind, How shall I face the ambushed night?

“How shall I turn to bay, and stand To grapple, if I cannot see My fierce assailant at my hand, The high look of mine enemy?

“If He will answer me, with rod And plague and thunder let Him come-- But how can man dispute with God Who writes no book, whose voice is dumb?

“Who rings me round with prison bars Through which I peer with sleepless eyes, And see the enigmatic stars-- These only--in the iron skies.”

* * * * *

“_These only?_ These together sang At the glad birthday of the earth When all the courts of Heaven rang With shouting and angelic mirth!

“The night enfolds you with a cloak Of silence and of chill affright? But when man’s wells of laughter broke, Who gave man singing in the night?

“The Rod shall burst to flowers and fruit Richer than grew on Aaron’s rod, And Mercy clothe you head to foot, Beloved and smitten of your God!”

THE SOIL OF SOLACE

I may not stand with other men, or ride In those grey fields where fall the screaming shells, Or mix my blood with blood of those who died To find a heaven in their sevenfold hells. Honour and death a strident bugle blows, Setting an end to death and blasphemy-- Oh, had I any choice in it, God knows Where in this epic day I too would be! Yet may I keep some English heart alive With a poet’s pleasure in all English things-- Good-fellowship and kindliness still thrive In English soil; the dusk is full of wings; And by the river long reeds grow; and still A little house sits brooding on the hill!

TO THE DEAD

Now lays the king his crown and sceptre down, Her gown of taffeta the lovely bride, The knight his sword, his cap and bells the clown, The poet all his verse’s pomp and pride-- The eloquent, the beautiful, the brave Descend reluctant to the straight, cold grave.

No more shall shine for them the glorious rose, Or sunsets stain with red and awful gold, Night shall no more for them her stars disclose, Or day the grandeur of the Downs unfold, Or those eyes dull in death watch solemnly The regal splendour of the Sussex sea.

For them the ringing surges are in vain; They wake not at the cry of waking bird; The sun, the holy hill, the fruitful rain, The winds have called them and they have not stirred; The woods are widowed of your eager tread, O dear and desolate and dungeoned dead!

Yet you shall rest awhile in English earth, And ripen many a pleasant English field Through the green Summer to the Autumn’s mirth And flower unconsciously upon the weald-- Until that last angelic word be said, And the shut graves deliver up their dead!

SPRING, 1916

The grey and wrinkled earth again is young And lays aside her tattered winter weeds For April-coloured gauze, and gives her tongue To jocund songs instead of pedants’ screeds. Scatter the thin, white ashes of the hearth, And throw the brilliant diamond casement wide-- Oh, wonder of the lonely garden garth! Oh, golden glory of the steep hillside Where flames the living loveliness of God!... But far, far off, beyond the bloom and bud A fiercer blossom burgeons from the sod Bright with the hues of honour and of blood; And men have plucked the sanguine flower of pain Where violets might be growing in the rain!

THE RETURN

Beyond these hills where sinks the sun in amber, Imperial in purple, gold and blood, I keep the garden walks where roses clamber, Set in still rows with shrub and flower and bud.

After the clash of all the swords that sunder, After the headstrong pride of youth that fails, After the shattered heavens and the thunder Remain the summer woods and nightingales!

So when the fever has died down that urges My lips to utterance of whirling words, Which, blown among the winds and stormy surges, Skim the wild sea-waves like the wild sea-birds.

So when has ceased the tumult and the riot, A man may rest his soul a little space, And seek your solitary eyes in quiet, And all the gracious calmness of your face.

FULFILMENT

(_An Inscription for a Book of Poems_)

You who will hold these gathered songs, Made, darling, long before we met, Must keep the prophecy which belongs To those dear eyes, so strangely set With peace and laughter, where fulfils The rapture of my alien hills.

Unknown, unknown you softly trod Among my fruitful silences, The last and splendid gift of God. The quest of all my Odysseys, The meaning of those quiet lands Where I found comfort at your hands.

And when the yellowing woods awake, And small birds’ twittered loves are told, When streams run silver, and there break The crocuses to tender gold, When quick light winds shall stir my hair, Some part of you will wander there.

PROPHECY

My eyes look out across the dim grey wold, The grey sky and the grey druidic trees, Knowing they keep inviolate the gold Memories of summer and the prophecies That lie imprisoned in the buried seeds Of all the lyric gaiety of Spring.... The sun shall ride again his flaming steeds; The dragon-fly dance past on diamond wing; The earth distil to music; and the rose Flaunt her impassioned loveliness and be A symbol of the singing hour that blows The tall ship and my gladness home to me-- When I shall cry: Awake, my heart, awake, And deck yourself in beauty for her sake!

THE SINGER TO HIS LADY

If any song I sing for you should be But made to please a poet’s vanity, A richly jewelled and an empty cup In which no hallowed wine is offered up, A thing of chosen rhyme and cunning phrase, Fashioned that it may bring its maker praise; If love in me grow only soft and sweet, Remembering not with what worn and weary feet It journeyed to your fields of golden grain, The quiet orchards folded in the rain, The twilight gardens and the morning birds; If love remembers not and brings you words, Words as your thanks; if in an idle hour It breaks its sword and plays the troubadour-- Then may high God, the Universal Lord, Break me, as I false knight have broken my sword, If I who have touched your hands should bring eclipse To love’s nobility with lying lips, Having seen more terrible than gleaming spears Your gentleness, your sorrow and your tears!

CERTAINTIES

Across the fields of unforgotten days I see the gorgeous pearl-white morning burst Through her fine gauze of dreamy summer haze Beyond the rolling flats of Staplehurst, To bless the hours with songs of nesting birds, And the wild hedge rose and the apple tree, And laughter and the ring of friendly words, And the noon’s pageant moving languidly. I walk again with boys now grown to men, And see far off with reminiscent eyes, How in the tangled woods of Horsmonden The mighty sun, a blood-red dragon, dies.... Some things there are as rooted as the grass In a man’s mind--and these shall never pass.

FEAR

Tread softly; we are on enchanted ground: One touch and every hidden thing lies bare, The deep sea sundered, suddenly unbound The awful thunders instinct in the air!

Oh, these we know; but what if we should break A secret spell as easily as glass, And stumble on their sleeping wrath and wake The armies and the million blades of grass?

And find more dread than whirlwinds round our head, The sweep of sparrows’ fierce, avenging wings, The anger of wild roses burning red, The terrible hate of earth’s most helpless things?

CHARITY

Who think of Charity as milky-eyed Know not of God’s great handmaid’s terrible name, Who comes in garments by the rainbow dyed, And crowned and winged and charioted with flame.

For Truth and Justice ride abroad with her, And Honour’s trumpets peal before her face: The high archangels stand and minister When she doth sit within her holy place.

None knoweth in the depth nor in the height What meaneth Charity, God’s secret word, But kiss her feet, and veil their burning sight Before her naked heart, her naked sword.

SIGHT AND INSIGHT

This hour God’s darkest mysteries Are plainer than the screeds of men, Tangled and false philosophies Fashioned by lying tongue and pen.

Plain as those bastions of cloud, Kind as the wide and kindly skies, And in the wild winds shouting loud The truths concealed from pedants’ eyes.

Pages which he may read who runs, Where no unlettered man may fail, Candid as are his noonday suns Familiar as his cheese and ale.

Him, Whom our eyes may see, our ears Hear, Whom our groping hands may touch-- Him we shall find ere many years, And finding fear not overmuch.

Who gave me simple things to keep,-- Laughter and love and memories, A farm, and meadows full of sheep, And quiet gardens full of bees, And those five gateways of the soul, Through which all good may come to me, Saints glorious of aureole, The flying thunders of the sea,

And feasts, and gracious hands of friends, And flowers good to stroke and smell; Oh, in the secret woods He sends The birds their trembling joys to tell!

He, too, is every day afresh Hid and revealed in bread and wine,-- The awful Word of God made flesh, Mortal commingling with divine!

Shadows and evil dreams o’erthrown With Dagon and the gods of scorn, Since Peace was in the silence blown On that dear night when God was born.

CHRISTMAS CAROL

Lay quietly Thy kingly head O mighty weakness from on high; God rest Thee in Thy manger-bed-- _Sing Lullo-lullo-lullaby_-- O Splendour hid from every eye!-- _La-lullo-lullo-lullaby!_

“Ye mild and humble cattle, yield Room for my little son to lie; Your God and mine is here revealed-- _Sing Lullo-lullo-lullaby_-- Naked beneath a naked sky-- _La-lullo-lullo-lullaby!_

“Deal kindly with Him, moon and sun; No bird to Him a song deny; Ye winds and showers every one _Sing Lullo-lullo-lullaby_-- For men shall cast Him out to die ... _La-lullo-lullo-lullaby!_”

A GARDEN ENCLOSED

There is a plot where all the winds are still, A hidden garden where no voice is heard, Only a splashing fountain and the shrill Sweet clamour of a bird.

The poplars guard like tall, grave sentinels Its peace inviolate; and in the tower With careful ritual ring out the bells The end of each dead hour.

Laburnums, hollyhocks and roses run By secret paths--but who shall burst the bars? Oh, who shall see--except the curious sun And all the peering stars?...

And Thou and Thou, my Love, for whom I keep My heart a watered garden, all Thine own, Where flowers my guardian angel tends in sleep, Bright summer blooms, are grown!

Come, my Belovèd, come--behold, the skies Are fragrant with the evening scents and dew: My soul hath sickened for Thy lips and eyes, And laden is with rue!

Oh, Thou shalt fly with soft wings like a dove’s And hold me fast beyond all fate and fear, And we ’mid flowers shall tell our flowering loves Where no one else can hear!

THE LOVER

An hour ago I saw Thee ride in gold Along the burning highways of the skies; And now--Thou comest with soft and suppliant eyes, And fearing lest Thy love seem overbold.

In this dear garden set with flower and tree, My soul, a maiden whom a great king woos, Stands thrilled and silent--Lord, what can she choose, Dumbfounded by Thy strange humility?

Since Thou wilt have it so, my Lord, I bare In love and shamefastness my soul--Thy soul-- So lay Thy tender hand, an aureole, Upon my beating heart, my chrismed hair.