Part 1

Produced by Bryan Ness, Iris Schimandle and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

PROVOCATIONS

TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER JOHN SYER BRISTOWE, M.D., F.R.S., LL.D. THIS LITTLE BOOK OF VERSE IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

PROVOCATIONS

BY

SIBYL BRISTOWE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

G. K. CHESTERTON

LONDON, W.C. 1

ERSKINE MACDONALD, LTD.

_All Rights Reserved. Copyright by Erskine MacDonald, Ltd. in the United States of America. First published October, 1918_

INTRODUCTION

The verses in this volume cover very many and various occasions; and are therefore the very contrary of what is commonly called occasional verse. The term is used with a meaning that is very mutable; or with a meaning that has been greatly distorted and degraded. Occasion should mean opportunity; and in the case of poetry it should rather mean provocation. And the trick of writing upon what are called public occasions, instead of upon what may truly be described as private provocations, has been responsible for much verse which is not only insufficient but insincere. It has produced not only many bad poems; but what is perhaps worse, many bad poems from many good poets. The sincerity of Miss Sibyl Bristowe's poetry is perhaps most clearly proved by the number of points at which it touches life; and the spontaneity, or even suddenness, with which they are touched. It is an occasional verse which arises out of real occasions, and not out of merely fictitious or even merely formal ones. Thus while the one or two poems on the great war are probably the best, they are by no means the biggest; they are not the most arresting in the sense of being the most ambitious. They are arresting because the great war really is great, and moves an imaginative spirit to great issues; it is public but it is very far from being official. The war, indeed, is necessarily more important as a private event even than as a public event. And the few but fine lines, on a brother fallen in a fight amid wild river that sundered man from man, is a model of the manner in which such mighty events take their place among the impressions of the more sincere and spontaneous type of talent. The topic takes its pre-eminence by intensity and not by space, or even in a sense by design. Indeed it is best expressed in a metaphor used by the writer herself about the topic itself; the metaphor of the colour red in its relation to other colours. Red rivets the eye, not by quantity but by quality; and in any picture or pattern a spot or streak of it will make itself the feature or the key. Miss Sibyl Bristowe's poem conceives the Creator confronted as with a broken spectrum or a gap in coloured glass; feeling the whole range of vision to be dim and impoverished and adding, by the authority of His own mysterious art, the dreadful colour of martyrdom.

Indeed the point of the comparison might very well be conveyed by the two poems about a London garden; that on the garden in peace being comparatively long, and that about the garden in war exceedingly short; short but sharply pathetic with its notion of peering and probing for the microscope flowers that must be a part of the most utilitarian vegetables. Indeed the short poems are certainly the most successful; and there is the same brevity in the last line of the poem about the tragic passage of time; "If lips of children had not told me so." The same general impression, as in the comparison already noted, is conveyed, for instance, in the fact that the poems about South Africa are private rather than public poems; are in that sense, if the phrase be properly comprehended, rather colonial than imperial. That is, they are individual glimpses of great torrid wastes, like similar individual glimpses of quiet northern woods; visions of crude and golden cities as personal as the parallel visions of normal northern cottages. Miss Sibyl Bristowe is perhaps an amateur, in the sense in which this is generally true of one who happens to be an artist in another art; but it is unfortunate that the world has so much missed the notion of that natural ardour that should belong to the word.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

The author has to acknowledge the courtesy of the Editors of "The Poetry Review" and "The Johannesburg Star" for permission to include poems that have appeared in their pages.

CONTENTS

PAGE The Great War 13

My London Garden, 1914 14

My Garden, 1918 17

Over the Top! 18

To His Dear Memory 20

Sorrow 21

Alas! 23

A Sacrament 24

The Love-shed Tear 25

Madonna Granduca and Child 29

A Vision of a Day that is Past 30

Bitterness Casteth out Love 33

The Hour of Happiness 34

Thoughts 35

The Things Unsaid are the Things that Count! 36

The Song of the Long Ago 37

The Sinner's Dreaming 39

Woman 40

Christmas 41

February 42

Oh! 'Tis May 43

To the Wind 45

The Grey Wind 47

Poeta Nascitur 49

Queen Elizabeth 51

The Death of Queen Elizabeth 56

The Plea of the Antarctic 58

The Stranger in London 59

The Transvaal in June 62

Johannesburg 63

In the Land of the Silences 65

The Great War

Into His colour store God dipped His hand And drew it forth Full of strange hues forgotten, contraband Of War and Wrath.

Time wove the pattern of the years, that so The quick and dead Might knit their bleeding crosses in. And lo! A patch of red!

My London Garden, 1914

My Garden is a tiny square Of bordered green And gravel brown In misty town, And chimneys smoky and unclean Sweep to the sky.--_You_ would not care To visit there.

The Grass creeps up all in between the stones And raises undisturbed its luscious green And laughs for youth in shrill and ringing tones. I love it that it grows up so serene, Dauntless and bright And laughing me to scorn, So vivid and so slight, Glad for the night-shed dew and smoke-bred morn.

My little patch of bordered green and brown Sleeps in the bosom of a grim old town, I wish that you could see Its beauty here with me; I'd tell you many things you never knew, For few, so few Know the romance of such a London strip, With ferny screen That slants shy gleams of sunlight in between And weeds which flourish just inside the dip, Holding their tenure with a firm deep grip Where prouder things all die. Small wonder I Tend my tall weed as tho' it were a gem, Note every leaf, and watch the stalwart stem Wax strong and high-- My weed plot lives in reckless luxury.

But, in the Spring, before black grime Has done its worst, And cruel Time And dust accursed Have marred the innocence of each young leaf, Or soiled the blossoms, like a wanton thief-- Masses of tulips, pink and white, Rise from the earth in prim delight, And iris, king of pomp and state, In vesture fine And purple and pale gold Its buds unfold-- A mighty potentate, And marshals nobly, proudly into line, Whilst lilacs sway in wind and rushing breeze, Bowing and nodding to some poplar trees.

But stay!-- _You_ would not care To visit there Midst such surroundings grey. My Garden's but an oasis of hope Set in the frown And dismal grandeur of a grim old town, A semblance merely of the lawns _you_ see; A hint, an echo of the things that be! But he or she would be a misanthrope Who would not share my garden hope with me.

My Garden, 1918

Such was my garden once, a Springtide hope of flowers, All rosy pink or violet or blue Or yellow gold, with sunflecks on the dew. Now in their place a Summer garden towers Of green-leaved artichokes and turnip tops, Of peas and parsnips, sundry useful crops. --But even vegetables must have _little_ flowers.

Over the Top!

_Ten_ more minutes! Say yer prayers, Read yer Bibles,--pass the rum! _Ten_ more minutes! Strike me dumb, 'Ow they creeps on unawares Those blooming minutes. _Nine_. It's queer, I'm sorter stunned. It ain't with fear!

_Eight._ It's like as if a frog Waddled round in your inside Cold as ice-blocks, straddled wide, Tired o' waiting.--Where's the grog? _Seven._ I'll play you pitch and toss. _Six._ I wins, and tails your loss.

'Nother minute sprinted by 'Fore I knowed it; only _four_ (Break 'em into seconds) more 'Twixt us and Eternity! Every word I've ever said Seems a-shouting in my head!

_Three_. Larst night a little star Fairly shook up in the sky, Frightened by the lullaby Rattled by the dogs of war. Funny thing--that star all white Saw old Blighty too, larst night!

_Two._ I ain't ashamed o' prayers, They're only wishes sent ter God, Bits o' plants from bloody sod Trailing up His golden stairs. _Ninety seconds._ Well, who cares!-- _One._ . . . . . . . . . . . . No pipe, no blare, no drum-- Over the Top!--to Kingdom Come

To His Dear Memory

(April 14th, 1917)

Beneath the humid skies Where green birds wing, and heavy burgeoned trees Sway in the fevered breeze, My Brother lies.

And rivers passionate[A] Tore through the mountain passes, swept the plains, O'erbrimmed with tears, o'erbrimmed with summer rains, All wild, all desolate. Whilst the deep Mother-breast Of drowsy-lidded Nature, drunk with dreams, Below Pangani, by Rufigi streams, Took him to rest.

Beneath the sunlit skies, Where bright birds wing, and rich luxuriant trees Sway in the fevered breeze, My Brother lies.

The bending grasses woo His hurried grave; a cross of oak to show The drifting winds, a Soldier sleeps below. --Our Saviour's cross, I know, Was wooden, too.

[A] The river Rufigi rose so high the night he died, none of his own Battalion could cross it to attend his last honours.

Sorrow

Send Sorrow away, For Sorrow is dressed in grey, And her eyes are dim With a weary rim. Send Sorrow away.

Send Sorrow away. Maid of the sombre sway, Breathing woe In a murmur low, And her lips are pale And her body frail. Send Sorrow away.

Send Sorrow away, Foe of the dancing day. Oh! her cheeks fall in, And her hands are thin, But her grip is fast On the changeless past; And they sere and clutch The soul they touch. Send Sorrow away.

Send Sorrow away, For she haunts me night and day. And Sorrow is dressed in grey, Yes, Sorrow is dressed in grey. And she looks so old, So drawn, so cold-- Send Sorrow away.

Alas!

So softly Time trod with me, that I lost His footsteps pacing mine. I stayed the while To wrest the luscious fruits from love and life; He strode on pauselessly, with thin cold smile.

So surely Time trod with me; marred my bloom, Stole all my roses, spread his cobwebs grey, Wrung all my tresses in his silvering hand; So stealthily he lured my youth away I only learned that I was old--to-day.

I could have borne it bravely, this I know, Had not the lips of children told me so.

A Sacrament

Tears!--And I brought them to the Lord, and said: "What are these crystal globes by nations shed?

What is the crimson flood that stains the land? Where is Thy peace, and where Thy guiding hand?

Why are those thousands daily sacrificed? Where is Thy might, and where the love of Christ?"

And from the heavens methought I heard a voice-- "Oh son of earth, I bid thee still rejoice!

Those crystal tears by men and nations shed Water My harvest, sanctify My dead.

That crimson flood which stains the hapless earth Is but the prelude to a nobler birth.

Those thousands, who for home have gladly died, Sleep in the hope of Jesus crucified.

Flesh, Blood, and Water, Little Child of Mine, Veil in their depths a Mystery divine."

I bowed my head, and prayed for faith to see The inner visions of Calamity!

The Love-shed Tear

Knocked a man at the shining Gate, Hard and bad and proud and old! Deep in years--for his call was late. The Gate was shut, and he had to wait, And he leaned awhile on his bag of gold.

Roll'd the Heavenly portals back, Guarded close by a flaming sword! The old man opened out his sack, Saint Peter searched the sordid pack, "Is this thy passport to the Lord?"

Saint Peter sighed, ill-gotten greed Was all therein to offer God, He vainly sought one kindly deed, One gentle word to those in need, One little step in mercy trod.

"And is this all?" Saint Peter said, "This fruitless hoard of worthless sin, This earthly gold, which weighs like lead? Oh, wretched man! thy soul is _dead_! Thou mayst--thou canst not enter in!

"Could I have found one single sign Of life within thy sordid soul, One kindling spark of Life Divine, The flames of hell had not been thine. Hence"--and he seal'd the Judgment scroll.

Down to the fires whose lurid light Lick'd and blazoned the depths of hell, Mocking red in the pitchy night, Down, ever down, from out God's sight, Down to the damned the Miser fell.

There in the haunts of deepest sin Satan watched with his sombre eye. The trembling Miser peered within, He thought to find his kith and kin Whose guilt condemned them too--to die.

He wandered round from place to place, Then beat his breast with wondering moan, For lo! of all the human race The Miser stood in hell--Alone! For all had found some saving grace That set them free to seek God's face And could their vilest sins atone.

He cowered low in abject fear, No single virtue could he plead, Satan's own--by self decreed! When sudden! 'neath a dastard deed, The devil cried, "What lieth here?" It was a single love-shed tear Shed in an hour of direst need.

Once he had wept in grief and pain, Once--when his child lay coldly dead, Once he had prayed. No prayer is vain. This prayer had lived to save again And bring remission on his head.

Only a tear! The Heavenly Choir Praised the Lord for the thing call'd love; But Satan shrieked in frenzied ire, "This foolish tear will quench my fire, This man must go above--above!"

Back again where the flaming sword Closely guarded the jewelled door. "I seek," he humbly sobbed, "our Lord. I brought Thee gold--a worthless hoard-- Thou wouldst not let me in before.

"But now I come to Thee with this-- A little thing, 'tis very small-- I pray Thee take it not amiss, My gold is in the dark abyss, This little tear, oh Lord, is all!"

"Oh wondrous drop," Saint Peter cried, "That shows the sap of life within A _living_ Soul, with chance to win A place with God, immune from sin! Methought the fount of Life had dried" (He flung the Gates of Heaven wide), "Go, _living_ Soul, and enter in!"

There in the lowest halls of grace, Through deep remorse and pains austere He washed his soul from sin's dark trace, Then in his heart-felt awe and fear He lowly sought his Saviour's face, Saved to life through a love-shed tear!

Madonna Granduca and Child

Little Christ, little Christ, Sheltered there on Mary's breast, All Thy child-like purity Lightens life's obscurity, So I thank Thee For that ray of light confessed.

Sweet Thy mother, Baby Christ, Sweet in woman's modesty; But to such an one as me I would choose to kneel to Thee, To Thy young simplicity, To Thy full divinity, Little Christ.

Give me tears to keep me clean, Give me joyfulness serene, Steep me for futurity In Thy white-souled purity. For Thine innocence sufficed, Little Christ, little Christ, Vagrants like myself to bless, So I thank Thee For Thy perfect holiness, Little Christ.

A Vision of a Day that is Past

The sky hung smooth o'er the line of hill That shadowed the valley that seemed so still, And the blackbird whistled his love notes shrill.

The church lay dreaming of God, and when The bodies should rise from her graveyard pen Where the high grass covered her poor dead men.

The water meadows shone rich with gold, Gold that the buttercups had sold To the nibbling sheep of the red ring-fold.

And even the river murmured rest As the sun sank low in the tender west, And the earth flowers slept on their mother's breast.

Over the valley that seemed so still, Where the blackbird whistled his love-notes shrill I gazed, and all against my will I saw a vision beneath the hill.

Centuries passed like a mist away And I stood in the glare of a burning day Whilst the church-bells clamoured a call to pray.

War and its brother raced hand in hand, That brother called Death; and they seared the land With their fiery breath and the murder brand.

And copses and dales were bleeding red, Naught was sacred, the living or dead, The old, old man, or the girl just wed.

Men stormed the homestead, blazed the corn, Pillaged and sacked from night till morn, And spitted the babe that was newly born.

Savage and brutal, like hell-hounds freed, They swarmed the hill, debauched with greed-- Some slunk behind, their lust to feed.

At last, when the streams ran human blood, Soaking the fields in a scarlet flood, A woman prayed with her child for food.

All on their way those soldiers passed With a foetid jest at her hapless fast, And some men cut her down at last.

They cut her down! Oh, woe is me, And they left her to rot in her misery, Naked and scorned for the world to see.

They left her bare in the cold night air, Save only the comb in her coal-black hair, And they strangled the baby, helpless there.

They did not trouble to wind them round In a sheet of earth in the dewy ground, They looted them both for the spoil they found.

But the wind was kind. It wailed aloud And churned the dust, till it rose a cloud like a pearly mist, to form a shroud.

And the leaves swooned down to the wind's sweet call And covered the mother and babe and all, Till they lay at peace in a soft green pall.

The church still ponders, and wonders when Those bodies will rise from her graveyard pen, But she knows they are blessed, those poor dead men,

For they sleep within her Christian fold Under her consecrated mould, Where a verse was read, and a prayer was told.

But under the hill, in the leaves somewhere, Lie a mother and child all stark and bare, Save only a comb in the coal-black hair-- Yet God will remember they lie out there.

Whilst digging up a hitherto uncultivated bit of garden near the Mendips, a gardener came across the mutilated skeletons of a woman and baby. A comb still decorated the woman's coal-black hair. At the inquest afterwards held upon the skeletons, it was suggested that the woman and her baby were probably refugees from the battle of Sedgemoor.

Bitterness Casteth Out Love

Over the hill where the white road sweeps, And the dead fern holds the snow, Love flew by, and the black night sky Shadowed the vales below.

Down in the creek, where the ice-pools gleam And the trees stand gaunt and bare, I crouched me down, and the sullen frown Of earth entombed me there.

"Ah," mocked the ice-pool, hard and clear, "Man with the frozen soul; Love sailed by, on a cloud-bound sky, With the tears that sorrow stole."

"Gone," said the fern, "from your frost-bound touch; Gone from your winter's heart. Love flew by, like the tattered sigh Bitterness tore apart."

And the aching trees bowed branch and twig And a shrivelled leaf made cry, "If you are cold, and your heart be old, For certain, Love must die."

Over the hill, where the white road sweeps, And the dead fern holds the snow, Sweet Love fled; and a spirit dead Spectres the slopes below.

The Hour of Happiness

The world is fair! The circling swell Of fresh tumultuous sea Holds life within its rhythmic rise And bursts of harmony; And storm-clouds chasing down the sky Empty their hearts as they sweep by.

The world is gay!--Such lilt and song, Such mellowness of tune, Such drifting airs from wave and shore, From rock and sand and dune. I did not know that clouds of spray Splashed as they fell, a roundelay.

A magic day! A magic hand Has raised a magic mood. Oh! years ago God made the world And saw that it was good. And from His ecstasy divine I borrowed this sweet hour of mine.

Thoughts

So fair, so delicate the thoughts, He marvelled they could be his own; He did not dream that they were birds From heaven flown.

Birds with a message in their throats, Limpid and golden from the sky. Most wonderful his song. 'Twas strange He knew not why.

They fluttered their white wings awhile Then soared again to paradise, Leaving a trail of limpid notes For sacrifice.

The Things Unsaid are the Things that Count!

You told me you had done with love, You showed me why; You said it often, just to prove Inconstancy! I never heard-- I only marked--the _unsaid_ word.

You told me you had thoughts beyond My own poor love, A wider sphere, ambitions fond! 'Fore God above In rosy bliss I only felt th' ungiven kiss!

I knew one day that unsaid word would dress In shining letters, spelling happiness! I knew that love would one day be mine own, A tender suppliant for forgiveness won. I had no fear, Tho' cold and clear You gave your answer,--sweet, my dear, I never heard--your spoken word!

The Song of the Long Ago

Wraith of the out-lived years, Wandering too and fro, Floating to earth on the hallowed tones Of a song of long ago.

Shadows of those asleep Steal through the simple lay, Lifting the silvery veil aside Of a long lost yesterday.