Part 2

Oh, core of wonder in familiar things: Magic of evening, and of early morn But just created, with the dew of birth All fresh upon it, heaven itself new-born O'er the green splendour of the quiet earth And like a just-awakened bird that sings Because of sunlight, is the spirit's mirth.

All forms of beauty but express the soul As in a looking-glass; the wind that goes Low-talking to the trees beneath the stars, Or the small sound of water, as it flows Under old bridges, where the ivy mars The sharp stone outline--these are in the whole Of the World-Symphony small, tuneful bars.

And human beings in the span of years Some part of all the world-wealth may receive, More, less, but never all; and with dismay We see slow Time his net of hours weave To catch from us dear mortal night and day, Ere we have taken in our eyes and ears Beauty that lies around, beyond, away.

We, singly, feel a sudden sharp regret Behind all beauty, but we--two in one, As white and blue are separate in a flame Yet mingled--we shall watch the hours run Seeing with surer knowledge how the same Eternal splendour for the soul is set, And the day comes again from whence day came.

THE SAINT'S BIRTHDAY

One of God's blessed pitying saints one day, Reaching out hands to touch the azure throne: "Because it is my birthday, Lord," he said, "That I was born in heaven, when I was known By an earthly name, and stoned and left for dead,

"Because it is the custom, Lord, of men To keep their birthdays gladly, and with gifts Grant me a blessing from your blesséd stores." And from the cloudy rose and amber drifts About the Throne, God answered: "It is yours."

Then sprang the glad Saint earthwards; at his feet Were little golden flames, and all his hair Was blown about his head like tongues of fire, And like a star he burned through the dark air, And came, and stood by farm and shed and byre

Before the earliest grey was in the East, Or the first smoke above the chimney-stack From earliest-rising housewife, yet the cheep And twitter of birds did gladly welcome back Him who such love for earth in heaven could keep,

And who on earth such love had had for men And bird and beast, and all that lived and grew: The sparrows in the eaves remembered him And chirrupped in the gables, while the dew Was dark still, and the day below the rim.

He stood there, in the village of his life Ere he won heaven, and the breath of cows Came as a benediction, and the smell Of rain-sweet copses, and, where cattle browse, Long grass, and running water in the dell.

And his heart opened with the love he had For the dear toil-worn dwelling-place of men; To hear the sheep crop, see the glimmering grey Lighten the waiting windows once again, And garden roses opening to the day.

Not otherwise was Eden once--he thought-- And by God's blessing it may be anew: And so put forth the power God had lent And took away all labour, and he drew Heaven to earth, till earth and heaven were blent.

Time ceased to be; and yet the sun and shade Shifted to make new beauty with the hours, And the ripe earth, unlaboured, gave her yields, No pain there was, no age, and all the flowers Unwitheringly lovely filled the fields.

And all day long the birds in ecstasy Sang without shadow of hawk or thought of death, And the saint happily went about the ways Filling each home with plenty--his very breath Was like a little thrilling note of praise.

When all was done he stepped back, childish-wise, To see and love his handiwork, and then Came a sharp pain, and pierced him through and through; He had wrought lovingly for the days of men, But the heart of men his love could not renew:

The weary heart, the ever-questioning, The loving, lacking, lonely, incomplete For ever longing to be merged in one With something other than itself; to beat To another's pulse; to be for ever done

With its sad weight of personality. Then God leaned down to his poor saint, and said: "Dear soul, would you make heaven upon the earth: Nor know indeed My purpose in all birth, Nor that My blessing is upon the dead?"

RUPERT BROOKE

_April_ 1915

You that are gone into the dark Of unknowing and unbeing; You that have heard the song of the lark, You that have seen the joy of the spring; You have I seen, you have I known --The word you have written, your pictured head-- And they say you are laid at Lemnos among the English dead.

Soul that is gone--is gone-- Whether into the dark, Or into knowledge complete and the blinding light; Soul that was swift and free, Passionate, eager, bright, Armed with a weapon for shams, And set with wings for flight; Soul that was questioning, restless, and all at odds with life, Greedy for it, yet satiate, and sick with the shows of things --And all laid down at Lemnos, the hunger, the love, the strife, And the youthful grace of body, and the body's ministerings.

Darkness, darkness, or light! You have leapt from the circle of sense, And only your dust remains and the word you said: "If I should die," ... and we name you among the dead. Yet have I a hope at heart That somewhere away, apart, Knowledge is yours and joy of the act fulfilled To still your fever of soul as your fever of blood is stilled; So shall you soar and run In water and wind and air, With your old clean joy of the sun, And your gladness in all things fair, Untouched by mortality's sadness, simple, perfect, at one.

"COMFORT ME WITH APPLES, FOR I AM SICK OF LOVE"

Red lilies under the sun, Red apples hanging above, And red is the wine that is spilled On your bare white feet, O Love.

The poppies sullenly glow In the smouldering red from the West, And black are the dregs of the wine, O Love, on your bare, white breast.

Aie! aie! when the wild swan flies Lonely and dark is the place That the white wings lightened, and death Will cover your glowing face.

O thief that is night, O thieves! Cold years that devour us all; The lilies blossom and wilt, The apples ripen and fall,

The apples, the apples of Love! --Lo, where we have spilled the wine, This quenchless earth is agape, O Love, for your body and mine.

OF ENGLAND

White is for purity, blue for heaven's grace, Purple is for Emperors, sitting in their place, Yellow is for happiness, rose for Love's embrace, But green--oh green, the green of England--that's for Paradise!

From seashore to seashore races the green tide; With the pricking green of hedges by the wet roadside --Or ever March triumphant comes with great, glad stride-- There is green, there's green in England, and a tale of Paradise.

Then the hawthorns flush and tremble in their early wondrous green, And the willows are resplendent in a green-and-golden sheen, Like the golden tents of princes, Babylonish, Damascene, Or enchanted silent fountains of a Persian Paradise.

There are beech and birch and elm-tree--evening-still or morning-tossed-- And the splendid generous chestnuts with their flame-like blooms embossed, There are oak and ash and elder, till the very sun is lost In the green, delicious gloaming that's the light of Paradise.

Deeper, wider, steadier this beauty ever grows, And from field-side up to tree-top the endless colour flows, Till road and house and wayside, in the first days of the rose, Are fathoms deep in waves of green, submerged in Paradise.

Oh dim and lovely hollows of all the woods that be; Oh sunlight on the uplands, like a calm, great sea; I think indeed the souls of those from circumstance set free Look down, look down on England, saying: "Ah, dear Paradise!"

QUESTION

What of this gift of Life? Passionate, swift, and rife With pleasure or pain in the hand of the hurrying hours? Oh little moment of space, Oh Death's averted face, How shall we grasp, shall we grasp what still is ours?

Chill, chill on either hand Eternities must stand, And pants between them, passionate and brief, The moment's self, to make Or unmake, but to take Just here, just now, before death turns the leaf.

Ah, if the leaf but turn, And if the soul discern Another message on another page! But if death shuts the book? We may not know nor look; We are fenced in upon a narrow stage;

While, splendid and intense, Quick-strung in every sense Life burns in us, and earth lies all around-- Far blue of summer seas, Young green of age-old trees-- Bound by the season, by the horizon bound.

Oh colour, sound, and light, Oh wondrous day and night, Pale dawns, and evenings' splendid stretch of gold; Keen beauty like a spear, Half pleasure and half fear, Goes through us for the things we may not hold.

Hot blood, hot noons, hot youth-- When Life seems all the truth, And Death a mumbled far old fairy-tale; When just the splendid days Suffice our eager gaze, The wondrous present that will never fail.

Then one day, with a fierce Clamour of heart, we pierce The light and see the shadows all behind, And then, and not till then, By the brief graves of men The utter loveliness of flowers we find.

So little stretch of days, And earth, with all her ways Lovely enough, I think, for Paradise; And body, mind, and heart, Each separate complex part, Wondrously made, and never quite made twice.

What of this gift of Life? Shall it be worn in strife? Shall it be idly spent, or idly stored? Each for himself must dare If the answer is here--or there, Here for regret--or there for hope, O Lord?

LEONARDO TO MONNA LISA

I wish you were a beaker of Venetian glass That I might fill you with most precious wine And drink it, breathless--lo! the moments pass Of that subliminal communion. I take you from my lips, and crush you--so!-- Into a thousand shining particles; So, at the last, my passionate greed shall know That you were wholly mine.

I wish you were a rare, stringed instrument Beneath my hand, and from you I would wring Such unimagined music, as was sent Never before, along the quivering nerves; Such strange, sharp discords, out of which I'd mould Music more sweet than the spring nightingale's; Then, ere the magic of the sound was old, Would I not rend each string?

Possess you? Ah, not with the world's possession, You still, strange creature; neither force nor will Could make you serve a man's mere earthly passion. I would dissolve you, in one blinding flash, Into a drop of elemental dew, And let you trickle down the barren rock Into the black abyss, if so I knew That you henceforth were powerless to mock My spirit with your smile.

THE ETERNAL FLUX

Let us hold April back One splendid hour To bless the passionate earth With golden shower Of sunlight from the blue; Oh April skies, That earth yearns up to; blue has burned to gold, Gold pales and dies In delicate faint rose, Oh flowing time, oh flux eternal. Hold The hour back. The April hour goes.

Then, let it be of May, When sound and sight And all that's beauty manifest Through all the day, Of deep on deep with green, Of light on light Across the waves of blossom, when the white Is lovelier than the rose, except the rose Is loveliest of all; When through the day the cuckoo calls unseen, And at nightfall The nightingale, whose music no man knows The magic heart of, sitting in the dark Sings still the world-old way; When all of these, Flowers and birds, and sunset and pale skies Seem gathered up in scent, And all of sound and sight Dissolved, ethereal, not of ears and eyes But only the soul-beauty of the brain Flows, in such waves of perfume, over all --Or like a song in colour, of such strain As spirits finer than our own must hear (The beautiful made clear); Then, then, when it is May, Surely our hand must touch eternity. Day pales to night, stars pale upon the day, And May's last blossoming hour flows away.

Not of June either, though the hanging skies Make but a little span 'Twixt light and growing light; And when through that short darkness palely flies The silent great white moth --A spirit lost in the night, A soul, without will or way--; When the arch of trees Is duskily green, and close as a builded house Where love with love might stay, Guarded and still, from sight; When the hay is sweet in the fields And love is as sweet as hay; When the life-impulse of the wonderful untamed earth Has reached its fulness and height, Is broad and steady and wide As sweeps into splendid bays the flowing tide; When God might look on the land, When God might look on the sea, And say: "For ever be Perfect, completed, achieved, As now at this moment you stand." Neither in June shall we stay the eternal flow Nor grasp the present with pitiful, mortal hand, For sliding past like water the June hours go.

"LOVE IS THE ULTIMATE MEASURE OF THE SOUL"

Love is the ultimate measure of the soul; Love is the biting acid, the sure test To strip the naked gold, discard the rest Of earthly stuffs; Love is the one thing whole In a world of broken parts, for Love is all.

Love is creation; Love is the low call Of deep to deep; Love is the force that shapes The thing that it believes, and while there gapes The black earth-pit, where the poor flesh must fall, Love builds on hope, and buds eternal life.

Love is a victory unsoiled by strife; Who is there that shall adequately name All that Love is, this thing as swift as flame And vast as heaven, yet in every life Tamed to the narrow needs of little men?

From humble love, that makes the partridge hen Brave for her chickens, to the Love that shakes The world from Calvary, all love partakes Of immortality; one cannot pen Divinity in words; Love is divine.

The very essence of God does Love enshrine; For let the heart, however sorely tried, Open itself to loving, and the wide Earth is a home; love-lacking must decline Where black fears crowd across the starless dark.

For Love is light; the faith that will embark, Unpiloted, upon uncharted seas Is Love alone; the fiery leap to seize The splendid distant aim, the invisible mark, What else but Love's? Love is the thing that stands Unchanged, on changing tides and shifting sands.

NOVEMBER 8

THE LITTLE SUMMER OF ALL SAINTS

The year stands still, the tearing winter winds Hold off their claws a moment, that the trees May keep the glory of their blended gold A little minute; there's not so much breeze As summer mornings hold.

Golden and still the hours; russet gold The birch-leaves o'er the silver of the bark; Pale gold the poplars, like a lady's hair, And thunderous gold along the hollows dark The sunlit brackens flare.

THE LOVERS

There are ghosts we walk with, lady of mine, Arm in arm, and side by side, Pallid ghosts, though the sun may shine, Ghosts that are cold in the warmth of day, And neither of us may fend them away, But step by step they go with us, stride by stride.

There are doors in your heart that are shut to me, And behind them dwellers I cannot know; And my soul has windows that open wide On a ghostly, memoried country-side, That--lady of mine--you never will see, Where your voice will never be heard, nor your footsteps go.

So we walk together, hand in hand, While dark eyes peer at us, pale forms come, And speak in my ear--or call your name With a voice I hear not, for praise or blame, And you walk alone with that ghostly band, While I go by the side of you, pitying, powerless, dumb.

THE GENTLE HEART

What shall harm the gentle heart In its purpose undefiled? Even grief shall lose its smart In some way becoming part Of that nature, soothed and gentled, As a sorrow to a child.

Through the blackness and the sin Of the old world's wrongs and woes, And through the greater dark within, The gentle heart shall surely win, As some bright angel, armed with mercy, Swiftly on his errand goes.

All the body may have wrought, All the energies of mind That for its own purpose sought, Make at length a little nought Among the stars--the gentle heart Death itself will leave behind.

A BALLAD FOR HERMAN

This is the ballad for Herman, the ballad of humble things, The hedge-side thistles that flower, the small brown lark that sings, And the stumbling flight of a beetle, and the dust on a butterfly's wings. The snails are out in the sunshine after the morning rain, And the wasps are whirring and buzzing round the mulberry tree again, And the ants are busy of course, working with might and main.

While the crickets leap, and rustle, and play at being blades of grass, And humble-bumble the bees go, lurching as they pass, And the flies are stupidly walking up the window-glass.

The sun is bright on the hedges, on thistle and bramble and briar, The columbine leaves are heart-shaped, and shine as bright as fire --And oh! the smell of the bracken, that's straight as Salisbury spire!

Life of the woods, life of the rivers, life of the trees, Life of the rich plain-grasses that seed to the morning breeze, And the thymy mountain-grasses June makes loud with bees.

This does not age nor alter; the low sharp song of the reeds As the evening wind goes over, and the fishing heron feeds On the still and shallow waters, salt with the floating weeds.

This does not change nor vanish; the mating calls of the springs, When April's green on the copses, and bright on the shining wings Of birds going backwards and forwards, while the whole green forest sings.

All is our sister and brother, as once St. Francis said; The little stones in the river, the bright sun overhead, And newts, and the spawn of fishes, and the unnamed mighty dead.

This is the ballad for Herman. O friend, may good befall! There is never a star so distant, there is never a creature small, But living and knowing and loving in our brain we hold them all.

FRANCE

_April_ 1915

Great ever, with the hope that seeks the stars; The brain clear-cold, like ice; the soul like flame; The spirit beating at the physical bars; The reason guiding all--oh, there we name France!

A country that can think, and thinking, acts; A country that can act, and acting, dreams; That neither bears the tyranny of facts, Nor of its own dear hopes, nor of what seems,

But still, clear-visioned, treats with things that are; Yet--seer, prophet, priest of life-to-be-- Leaps to the visionary days afar, And all the splendour she will never see.

School of the spirit, chastening, yet a spur For all that men aspire to: as of old Athens held up the torch, and did incur Persia, with her fierce armies manifold,

So France against the evil strikes and strives For liberty, and we of island race, --Humbled a little by our careless lives-- Glory to stand beside her in our place,

Glory that we are one in hope and aim With her from whom in blood and agony The second gift of human freedom came Through Terror and the red Gethsemane.

On her fair, ravaged borders stand her guns, She has thrown away the scabbards, bared the swords, And, snatching laughter out of death, her sons Challenge high Fate to show what life affords-- France!

ILGAR'S SONG

(From _King Monmouth_)

O love that dwells in the innermost heart of man Secret and dark and still, Like a bird in the core of a green mid-summer tree-- Height upon height and depth upon depth where never the eye can see The brown bird, hidden and still.

O Love that is wild and eager, sun-lit and free Like a seagull that turns in the sunlight above the sea; Between the sea and the sky it flashes and turns, And the sun on its wings is white, While sharply and shrill by the headland the keen wind sings Where the grass is salt and grey With the beating winter spray, And the seagull sweeps and soars on magnificent wings.

Love that is like a flame, Held in the hollow hand, So dear and precious a thing As a light in a stranger land, As a flickering candle to him who wanders by night.

Love that is wide as the dawn To the eyes of night-bound men; And the evil ghosts and the goblins it puts to flight, And stealthy creatures of dark that rustle and creep, And elfins and witches and all such devil's game That cannot live in the light, They squeak and gibber and cheep, And vanish like shadows before the splendour of day.

Love that has wide, white wings like a flying swan --Oh what a noble span, From tip to tip they are more than the height of a man And curved like the sails of a boat-- When over the evening river the wild swan flies The curve of those wings is like the arch of the skies Over the shielded earth. Love is most like a bird, For birds have least of the dust that gave them birth, They soar and poise and float, They wheel and swerve and skim, And their wings are strong to the wind, and swift to the light, And their voice is a promise of dawn while yet it is night, And their song is a pæan of hope before it is spring, And the song of the bird to his mate is lyrical love.

Love is secret and holy, a spiritual thing, Dark and silent and still In the heart of man, as a treasure is hid in a shrine. Love is splendid and fierce, as the summer sun Drenches the sea and the sky with its blaze and shine, Till every pebble is hot to the touch of the hand, And the air is a-shimmer with heat o'er the hazy land-- Yet Love is not any of these things, Love is of one With the strange, half-guessed at, vast, creative plan We cannot see with our eyes nor understand-- Yet is Love pitiful too, for Love is of man.

THE INN

I

Friendship's an inn the roads of life afford --I'll speak to you in metaphor, my friend-- And there a tired man his way may wend, And, coming in, sit down beside the board, Out of the dust and glare, and boldly send For drink and victuals; haply cross his knees, And in the cool dark parlour take his ease, And gossip of his journey and its end.

That's friendship; there is neither right of place Nor landlord duties, just the short hour's stay From the sun and weariness between those kind And quiet walls; and when the road's to face Stony and long again, we take our way Keeping that respite gratefully in mind.

THE INN

II

We take our pack, and jog our way again Towards the windy sunset and the night; The inn is now behind us, out of sight, Showing no welcome shine of windowpane, But dark and silent standing by the way As we go forward, seeing mile on mile Sink out of sight--just for a little while We rested, in the middle of the day.

Is there an end at last, and shall we reach, By the faint glimmer of new-risen stars, Our house at last, and find the heart-repose Which is the ultimate desire of each Poor traveller--ah! shall they drop the bars, And the doors open? Dear my friend, who knows?

"TO-DAY I MISS YOU"

To-day I miss you ... "Only for to-day, Some little matter of hours and nothing more." That at least the worldly-wise folk say, Who've never waited for the opening door, The greeting look, the known step on the floor; Who've never missed a loved one like a lover.

To-day I miss you. What to-morrow brings Is the other side of all the stars, God knows! Only to have you here, now evening swings Its quiet shadow round the globe again, And in our talk of old familiar things, And in familiar gestures, turn of brain, Looks, tone of voice, I may discern again That union from which alone love grows.