Part 12

Before my window, in days of winter hoar Huddled a mournful wood; Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore, In stony sleep they stood: But you, unhappy elm, the angry west Had chosen from the rest, Flung broken on your brothers' branches bare, And left you leaning there So dead that when the breath of winter cast Wild snow upon the blast, The other living branches, downward bowed, Shook free their crystal shroud And shed upon your blackened trunk beneath Their livery of death......

On windless nights between the beechen bars I watched cold stars Throb whitely in the sky, and dreamily Wondered if any life lay locked in thee: If still the hidden sap secretly moved As water in the icy winterbourne Floweth unheard: And half I pitied you your trance forlorn: You could not hear, I thought, the voice of any bird, The shadowy cries of bats in dim twilight Or cool voices of owls crying by night ... Hunting by night under the horned moon: Yet half I envied you your wintry swoon, Till, on this morning mild, the sun, new-risen Steals from his misty prison; The frozen fallows glow, the black trees shaken In a clear flood of sunlight vibrating awaken: And lo, your ravaged hole, beyond belief Slenderly fledged anew with tender leaf As pale as those twin vanes that break at last In a tiny fan above the black beech-mast Where no blade springeth green But pallid bells of the shy helleborine. What is this ecstasy that overwhelms The dreaming earth? See, the embrownèd elms Crowding purple distances warm the depths of the wood: A new-born wind tosses their tassels brown, His white clouds dapple the down: Into a green flame bursting the hedgerows stand.

Soon, with banners flying, Spring will walk the land.... There is no day for thee, my soul, like this, No spring of lovely words. Nay, even the kiss Of mortal love that maketh man divine This light cannot outshine: Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catch The shadow of vanishing beauty, may not match This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull Such magical beauty as time may not destroy; But we, alas, are not more beautiful: We cannot flower in beauty as in joy. We sing, our mused words are sped, and then Poets are only men Who age, and toil, and sicken ... This maim'd tree May stand in leaf when I have ceased to be.

PROTHALAMION

When the evening came my love said to me: Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool; The garden of black hellebore and rosemary Where wild woodruff spills in a milky pool.

Low we passed in the twilight, for the wavering heat Of day had waned; and round that shaded plot Of secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet: Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips spake not.

Between that old garden and seas of lazy foam Gloomy and beautiful alleys of trees arise With spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome, So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but the skies

Veiled with a soft air, drench'd in the roses' musk Or the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove: No stars burned in their deeps, but through the dusk I saw my love's eyes, and they were brimmed with love.

No star their secret ravished, no wasting moon Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours: Only the soft unseeing heaven of June, The ghosts of great trees, and the sleeping flowers.

For doves that crooned in the leafy noonday now Were silent; the night-jar sought his secret covers, Nor even a mild sea-whisper moved a creaking bough-- Was ever a silence deeper made for lovers?

Was ever a moment meeter made for love? Beautiful are your close lips beneath my kiss; And all your yielding sweetness beautiful-- Oh, never in all the world was such a night as this!

INDEX

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE: Marriage Song Epilogue

MARTIN ARMSTRONG: The Buzzards

MAURICE BARING: Diffugere Nives, 1917 Julian Grenfell Pierre

HILAIRE BELLOC: The South Country The Night Song The False Heart Hannaker Mill (1913) Tarantella On a Dead Hostess

EDMUND BLUNDEN: Almswomen Gleaning

GORDON BOTTOMLEY: The Ploughman Babel: The Gate of the God The End of the World Atlantis New Year's Eve, 1913 To Iron-founders and Others

RUPERT BROOKE: Sonnet The Soldier The Treasure The Great Lover Clouds The Old Vicarage, Grantchester The Busy Heart Dining-Room Tea

FRANCIS BURROWS: The Prayer to Demeter The Giant's Dirge The Unforgotten The Well Egyptian Life

A. Y. CAMPBELL: Animula Vagula A Bird The Dromedary The Panic

G. K. CHESTERTON: Wine and Water The Rolling English Road The Secret People From the Ballad of the White Horse

PADRAIC COLUM: The Old Woman of the Roads

FRANCES CORNFORD: Autumn Evening

W. H. DAVIES: Days Too Short The Example The East in Gold The Happy Child A Great Time The White Cascade In May Thunderstorms Sweet Stay-at-Home

EDWARD L. DAVISON: The Trees In this Dark House

WALTER DE LA MARE: The Listeners Arabia Music The Scribe The Ghost Clear Eyes Fare Well All That's Past The Song of the Mad Prince

JOHN DRINKWATER: Birthright Moonlit Apples

R. C. K. ENSOR: Ode to Reality, 171

JAMES ELROY FLECKER: Riouperoux War Song of the Saracens The Old Ships Stillness Areiya The Queen's Song Brumana Hyali The Golden Journey to Samarkand--Prologue Epilogue

ROBIN FLOWER: La Vie Cérébrale The Pipes Say not that Beauty

JOHN FREEMAN: The Wakers The Body Stone Trees More Than Sweet Waking The Chair The Stars in Their Courses Shadows

ROBERT GRAVES: Star-Talk To Lucasta on going to the Wars Not Dead In the Wilderness Neglectful Edward

JULIAN GRENFELL: To a Black Greyhound Into Battle

IVOR GURNEY: To the Poet before Battle Song of Pain and Beauty

RALPH HODGSON: Eve The Bull The Song of Honour Reason has Moons

JAMES JOYCE: Strings in the Earth I Hear an Army

D. H. LAWRENCE: Service of All the Dead

FRANCIS LEDWIDGE: In France Thomas Macdonagh In September

ROSE MACAULAY: Trinity Sunday

THOMAS MACDONAGH: Inscription on a Ruin The Night Hunt

JOHN MASEFIELD: C. L. M. What Am I, Life?

HAROLD MONRO: Journey Solitude Milk for the Cat

STURGE MOORE: Sent from Egypt A Spanish Picture A Duet The Gazelles

ROBERT NICHOLS: To ---- Farewell to place of comfort The Full Heart The Tower Fulfilment The Sprig of Lime

SEUMAS O'SULLIVAN: The Twilight People

WILFRED OWEN: Strange Meeting

JOSEPH PLUNKETT: I See His Blood Upon the Rose

SIEGFRIED SASSOON: "In the Pink" The Death-Bed Counter-Attack Dreamers Everyone Sang

EDWARD SHANKS: A Night Piece The Glow-Worm The Halt A Hollow Elm The Return Clouds The Rock Pool The Swimmers The Storm

C. H. SORLEY: German Rain All the Hills and Vales

JAMES STEPHENS: Deirdre The Goat-Paths The Fifteen Acres

EDWARD WYNDHAM TENNANT: Homo Thoughts in Laventie

EDWARD THOMAS: Aspens The Brook The Bridge Lights Out Words Tall Nettles The Path Swedes

W. J. TURNER: Romance The Caves of Auvergne Ecstasy Kent in War Death Soldiers in a Small Camp A Ritual Dance

IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS: From a Flemish Graveyard A Monument

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG: Song of the Dark Ages Bête Humaine The Gift The Leaning Elm Prothalamion