Part 3

Stories and jests from field and town and port, And odd neglected scraps of history From everywhere, for you were of the sort, Cool and refined, who like rough company: Carter and barmaid, hawker and bargee, Wise pensioners and boxers With whom you drank, and listened To legends of old revelry and sport And customs of the sea.

I hear you: yet more clear than all one note, One sudden hail I still remember best, That came on sunny days from one afloat And drew me to the pane in certain quest Of a long brown face, bare arms and flimsy vest, In fragments through the branches, Above the green reflections: Paused by the willows in your varnished boat You, with your oars at rest.

Did that come back to you when you were dying? I think it did: you had much leisure there, And, with the things we knew, came quietly flying Memories of things you had seen we knew not where. You watched again with meditative stare Places where you had wandered, Golden and calm in distance: Voices from all your altering past came sighing On the soft Hampshire air.

For there you sat a hundred miles away, A rug upon your knees, your hands gone frail, And daily bade your farewell to the day, A music blent of trees and clouds asail And figures in some old neglected tale: And watched the sunset gathering, And heard the birdsong fading, And went within when the last sleepy lay Passed to a farther vale.

Never complaining, and stepped up to bed More and more slow, a tall and sunburnt man Grown bony and bearded, knowing you would be dead Before the summer, glad your life began Even thus to end, after so short a span, And mused a space serenely, Then fell to easy slumber, At peace, content. For never again your head Need make another plan.

Most generous, most gentle, most discreet, Who left us ignorant to spare us pain: We went our ways with too forgetful feet And missed the chance that would not come again, Leaving, with thoughts on pleasure bent, or gain, Fidelity unattested And services unrendered: The ears are closed, the heart has ceased to beat, And now all proof is vain.

Too late for other gifts, I give you this, Who took from you so much, so carelessly, On your far brows a first and phantom kiss, On your far grave a careful elegy. For one who loved all life and poetry, Sorrow in music bleeding, And friendship's last confession. But even as I speak that inner kiss Softly accuses me,

Saying: Those brows are senseless, deaf that tomb, This is the callous, cold resort of art. "I give you this." What do I give? to whom? Words to the air, and balm to my own heart, To its old luxurious and commanded smart. An end to all this tuning, This cynical masquerading; What comfort now in that far final gloom Can any song impart?

O yet I see you dawning from some heaven, Who would not suffer self-reproach to live In one to whom your friendship once was given. I catch a vision, faint and fugitive, Of a dark face with eyes contemplative, Deep eyes that smile in silence, And parted lips that whisper, "Say nothing more, old friend, of being forgiven, There is nothing to forgive."

WARS AND RUMOURS, 1920

Blood, hatred, appetite and apathy, The sodden many and the struggling strong, Who care not now though for another wrong Another myriad innocents should die. At candid savagery or oily lie We laugh, or, turning, join the noisy throng Which buries the dead with gluttony and song. Suppose this very evening from on high Broke on the world that unexampled flame The choir-thronged sky, and Thou, descending, Lord; What agony of horror, fear, and shame, For those who knew and wearied of Thy word, I dare not even think, who am confest Idle, malignant, lustful as the rest.

TO A MUSICIAN

Musician, with the bent and brooding face, White brow and thunderous eyes: you are not playing Merely the music that dead hand did trace.

Musician, with the lifted resolute face, And scornful smile about your closed mouth straying, And hand that moves with swift or fluttering grace, It is not that man's music you are playing.

The grave and merry tunes he made you are playing, Each march and dirge and dance he made endures, But changed and mastered, and these things you're saying, These joys and sorrows are not his but yours.

You take those notes of his: you seize and fling His music as a dancer flings her veil, Toss it and twist it, mould it, make it sing, Whisper, shout savagely, lament and wail,

Rush like a hurricane, pause and faint and fail: And as I watch, my body and soul are bound Helpless, immovable, in thongs of sound.

Lonely and strange musician, standing there, Your bent ear listening to your own soul speaking, I hear vibrating on the smitten air The crying of your suffering and your seeking.

Agonised! raptured! frustrate! you are haunted, Pursued, beset, beleaguered, filled, possessed By all you are, all things you have lost and wanted, Things clear, too clear, things only to be guessed.

I do not know what earlier scenes you knew, What sweet reproachful memories you hold Of broken dreams you had before you grew So conscious and so lonely and so old.

I do not know what women's words have taught Your heart, and only dimly know by name, The many wandering cities where you have sought Splendour, and found the hollowness of fame,

Or where your sad and gentle reveries pass To family and home--who have for signs Of all your childhood, only the imagined grass Of a bright steppe, the wind running in lines,

And only some old fairy-tale of sleighing, Dark snow-deep forests, endless turning pines, Bells tinkling, and wolves howling, and hounds baying.

Vague is your past, yet as your violin sings, Its wildness held in desperate control, I know them all, that world of bygone things That have left their wounds and wonders in your soul.

Out in all weathers you have been, my friend, Climbed into dawn, stood solitary and stark Against the ashen quiet of twilight's end, Brooded beneath the night's unanswering dark;

Through battering tempests you have blindly won, And lived, and found a medicine for your scars In resolution taken from the sun And consolation from the unsleeping stars.

And here, in this crowded place an hour staying, Your dim orchestra measuring off your bars, So pale and proud, you stand your secrets flaying,

Resolving the tangle, pouring through your song All your deep ache for Beauty, calm above Your bitter silent anger and the strong Ferocity and tenderness of your love,

Loud challenges and sweet and cynic laughter, Movements of joy spontaneous and pure, Remorse, and the dull grief that glimmers after The obstinate sins you know you will not cure.

I see you subtly lying, soberly weighing Gross questions, jesting at the things you hate, In apathy, and wild despair, and praying Bowed down before the shadowy knees of Fate,

And fearfully behind the visible groping And standing by the heart's bottomless pit, and shrinking, Who have known the lure and mockery of hoping, The comic terrible uselessness of thinking.

O gay and passionate, gloomy and serene, Your quivering fingers laugh and weep and curse For all the phantoms you have ever been. Yet would you wish another universe?

Let peace come if it will: your last long note Dies on the quiet breast of space; and now They clap: I see again your square frock coat, Dark, foreign fiddler, you have stopped: you bow.

THE RUGGER MATCH

(OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE--QUEEN'S--DECEMBER)

(_To Hugh Brooks_)

I

The walls make a funnel, packed full; the distant gate Bars us from inaccessible light and peace. Far over necks and ears and hats, I see Policemen's helmets and cards hung on the ironwork: "One shilling," "No change given," "Ticket-holders only";

Oh Lord! What an awful crush! There are faces pale And strained, and faces with animal grins advancing, Stuck fast around mine. We move, we pause again For an age, then a forward wave and another stop. The pressure might squeeze one flat. Dig heels into ground For this white and terrified woman whose male insists Upon room to get back. Why didn't I come here at one? Why come here at all? What strange little creatures we are, Wedged and shoving under the contemptuous sky!

All things have stopped; the time will never go by; We shall never get in! ... Yet through the standing glass The sand imperceptible drops, the inexorable laws Of number work also here. They are passing and passing, I can hear the tick of the turnstiles, tick, tick, tick, A man, a woman, a man, shreds of the crowd, A man, a man, till the vortex sucks me in And, squeezed between strangers hurting the flat of my arms, I am jetted forth, and pay my shilling, and pass To freedom and space, and a cool for the matted brows. But we cannot rest yet. Fast from the gates we issue, Spread conelike out, a crowd of loosening tissue, All jigging on, and making as we travel "Pod, pod" of feet on earth, "chix, chix" on gravel. Heads forward, striding eagerly, we keep Round to the left in semi-circular sweep By the back of a stand, excluded, noting the row Of heads that speck the top, and, caverned below, The raw, rough, timber back of the new-made mound. Quicker! The place is swarming! Around, around Till the edge is reached, and we see a patch of green, Two masts with a crossbar, tapering, white and clean, And confluent rows of people that merge and die In a flutter of faces where the grand-stand blocks the sky. We hurry along, past ragged files of faces, Flushing and quick, peering for empty places. I see one above me, I step and prise and climb, And stand and turn and breathe and look at the time, Survey the field, and note with superior glance, The anxious bobbing fools who still advance.

II

Ah! They are coming still. It is filling up. It is full. They come. There is almost an hour to go, Yet all find room, the dribbles of black disappear In the solid piles around that empty green, We are packed and ready now. They might as well start, But two-forty-five was their time, and it's only ten past, And it's got to be lived through. I haven't a newspaper, I wish I could steal that little parson's book. I count three minutes slowly: they seem like an hour; And then I change feet and loosen the brim of my hat, And curse the crawling of time. Oh body, body! Why did I order you here, to stand and feel tired, To ache and ache when the time will never pass, In this buzzing crowd, before all those laden housetops, Around this turf, under the lid of the sky? I fumble my watch again: it is two-twenty: Twenty-five minutes to wait. One, two, three, four, Five, six, seven, eight: what is the good of counting? It won't be here any quicker, aching hips, Bored brain, unquiet heart, you are doomed to wait. Why did I make you come? We have been before, Struggling with time, fatigued and dull and alone In all this tumultuous, chattering, happy crowd That never knew pain and never questions its acts... Never questions? Do not deceive yourself. Look at the faces around you, active and gay, They are lined, there are brains behind them, breasts beneath them, They have only escaped for an hour, and even now Many, like you, have not escaped; and away Across the field those faces ascending in tiers, Each face is a story, a tragedy and a doubt; And the teams where they wait, in the sacred place to the right, Are bewildered souls, who have heard of and brooded on death, And thought about God. But this is a football match; And anyhow I don't feel equal to thinking, And I'm certain the teams don't; they've something better to do. It is half-past two, and, thank Heaven, a minute over. We are all here now. The laggards have all booked seats And stroll in lordly leisure along the front. What a man! Six foot, silk hat, brown face, moustache! What a fat complacent parson, snuggling down In the chair there, among all his cackling ladies! I have seen that youth before. My neighbour now On my left shouts out to a college friend below us, "Tommy! Hallo! Do you think we are going to beat 'em?" My watch. Twenty-to-three. That lot went quickly; Five minutes more is nothing; I'm lively now And fit for a five-mile run. One, two, three, four... It isn't worth bothering now, it's all but here, Here, here; a rustle, a murmur, a ready silence, A billowing cheer--why, here they come, running and passing, The challenging team! By God, what magnificent fellows! They have dropped the ball, they pause, they sweep onward again, And so to the end. Here are the rest of them, Swingingly up the field and back as they came, With the cheers swelling and swelling. They disappear, And out, like wind upon water, come their rivals, With cheers swelling and swelling, to run and turn And vanish; and now they are all come out together, Two teams walking, touch-judges and referee. And they all line up, dotted about like chessmen, And the multitude holds its breath, and awaits the start.

III

Whistle! A kick! A rush, a scramble, a scrum, The forwards are busy already, the halves hover round, The three-quarters stand in backwards diverging lines, Eagerly bent, atoe, with elbows back, And hands that would grasp at a ball, trembling to start, While the solid backs vigilant stray about And the crowd gives out a steady resolute roar, Like the roar of a sea; a scrum, a whistle, a scrum; A burst, a whistle, a scrum, a kick into touch; All in the middle of the field. He is tossing it in, They have got it and downed it, and whurry, oh, here they come, Streaming like a waterfall, oh, he has knocked it on, Right at our feet, and the scrum is formed again, And everything seems to stop while they pack and go crooked. The scrum-half beats them straight with a rough smack While he holds the ball, debonair.... How it all comes back, As the steam goes up of their breath and their sweating trunks! The head low down, the eyes that swim to the ground, The mesh of ownerless knees, the patch of dark earth, The ball that comes in, and wedges and jerks, and is caught, And sticks, the dense intoxicant smell of sweat, The grip on the moisture of jerseys, the sickening urge That seems powerless to help; the desperate final shove That somehow is timed with a general effort, the sweep Onward, while enemies reel, and the whole scrum turns And we torrent away with the ball. Oh, I know it all.... I know it.... Where are they? ... Far on the opposite line, Aimlessly kicking while the forwards stand gaping about, Deprived of their work. Convergence. They are coming again, They are scrumming again below, red hair, black cap, And a horde of dark colourless heads and straining backs; A voice rasps up through the howl of the crowd around (Triumphant now in possession over all the rest Of crowds who have lost the moving treasure to us)-- "Push, you devils!" They push, and push, and push; The opponents yield, the fortress wall goes down, The ram goes through, an irresistible rush Crosses the last white line, and tumbles down, And the ball is there. A try! A try! A try! The shout from the host we are assaults the sky.

Deep silence. Line up by the goal-posts. A man lying down, Poising the pointed ball, slanted away, And another who stands, and hesitates, and runs And lunges out with his foot, and the ball soars up, While the opposite forwards rush below it in vain, And curves to the posts, and passes them just outside. The touch-judge's flag hangs still. It was only a try! Three points to us. The roar is continuous now, The game swings to and fro like a pendulum Struck by a violent hand. But the impetus wanes, The forwards are getting tired, and all the outsides Run weakly, pass loosely; there are one or two penalty kicks, And a feeble attempt from a mark. The ball goes out Over the heads of the crowd, comes wearily back; And, lingering about in mid-field, the tedious game Seems for a while a thing interminable. And nothing happens, till all of a sudden a shrill Blast from the whistle flies out and arrests the game. Half-time ... Unlocking ... The players are all erect, Easy and friendly, standing about in groups, Figures in sculpture, better for mud-stained clothes; Couples from either side chatting and laughing, And chewing lemons, and throwing the rinds away.

IV

The pause is over. They part from each other, sift out; The backs trot out to their stations, the forwards spread; The captains beckon with hands, and the ball goes off To volleys and answering volleys of harsher cheers; For the top of the hill is past, we course to the close. We've a three-point lead. Can we keep it? It isn't enough. We have always heard their three-quarters were better than ours, If they once get the ball. They have got it, he runs, he passes, The centre dodges, is tackled, passes in time To the other centre who goes like a bird to the left And flings it out to the wing. The goal is open; He has only to run as he can. No, the back is across, He has missed him; he has him; they topple, head over heels, And the ball bumps along into touch. They are stuck on our line; Scrum after scrum, with those dangerous threes standing waiting, Threat after threat forced back; a save, a return; And the same thing over again, till the ball goes out Almost unnoticed, and before we can see what is done, That centre has kicked, he has thought of the four points, The ball soars, slackens, keeps upright with effort, Then floats between posts and falls, ignored, to the ground, Its grandeur gone, while the touch-judge flaps his flag, And the multitude becomes an enormous din Which dies as the game resumes, and then rises again, As battle of cry of triumph and counter-cry, Defiant, like great waves surging against each other. They work to the other corner, they stay there long; They push and wheel, there are runs that come to nothing, Till the noise wanes, and a curious silence comes. They lead by a point, their crowd is sobered now, Anxious still lest a sudden chance should come, Or a sudden resource of power in mysterious foes Which may dash them again from their new precarious peak, Whilst we in our hearts are aware of the chilling touch Of loss, of a fatal thing irrevocable, Feel the time fly to the dreaded last wail of the whistle, And see our team as desperate waves that dash Against a wall of rock, to be scattered in spray. Yet fervour comes back, for the players have no thought for the past Except as a goad to new effort, not they will be chilled: Fiercer and faster they fight, a grimness comes Into shoving and running and tackling and handing off. We are heeling the ball now cleanly, time after time Our half picks it up and instantly jabs it away, And the beautiful swift diagonal quarter-line Tips it across for the wing to go like a stag Till he's cornered and falls and the gate swings shut again. Thirty fighting devils, ten thousand throats, Thundering joy at each pass and tackle and punt, Yet the consciousness grows that the time approaches the end, The threat of conclusion grows like a spreading tree And casts its shadow on all the anxious people, And is fully known when they stop as a man's knocked out And limps from the field with his arms round two comrades' necks. The gradual time seems to have suddenly leapt.... And all this while the unheeded winter sky Has faded, and the air gone bluer and mistier. The players, when they drift away to a corner Distant from us, seem to have left our world. We see the struggling forms, tangling and tumbling, We hear the noise from the featureless mass around them, But the dusk divides. Finality seems to have come. Nothing can happen now. The attention drifts. There's a pause; I become a separate thing again, Almost forget the game, forget my neighbours, And the noise fades in my ears to a dim rumour. I watch the lines and colours of field and buildings, So simple and soft and few in the vapoury air, I am held by the brightening orange lights of the matches Perpetually pricking the haze across the ground, And the scene is tinged with a quiet melancholy, The harmonious sadness of twilight on willowed waters, Still avenues or harbours seen from the sea. Yet a louder shout recalls me, I wake again, Find there are two minutes left, and it's nearly over, See a few weaklings already walking out, Caring more to avoid a crush with the crowd Than to give the last stroke to a ritual of courtesy And a work of intangible art. But we're all getting ready, Hope gone, and fear, except in the battling teams. Regret ... a quick movement of hazy forms, Oh quiet, oh look, there is something happening, Sudden one phantom form on the other wing Emerges from nothingness, is singled out, Curving in a long sweep like a flying gull, Through the thick fog, swifter as borne by wind, Swerves at the place where the corner-flag must be, And runs, by Heaven he's over! and runs, and runs, And our hearts leap, and our sticks go up in the air And our hats whirl, and we lose ourselves in a yell For a try behind the posts. We have beaten them!

V