Part 3

O, Cartmel bells ring loud, ring clear, Through midnight deep and hoar, A year new-born, and I shall hear The Cartmel bells no more.

TO IRON-FOUNDERS AND OTHERS

When you destroy a blade of grass You poison England at her roots: Remember no man's foot can pass Where evermore no green life shoots.

You force the birds to wing too high Where your unnatural vapours creep: Surely the living rocks shall die When birds no rightful distance keep.

You have brought down the firmament And yet no heaven is more near; You shape huge deeds without event, And half made men believe and fear.

Your worship is your furnaces, Which, like old idols, lost obscenes, Have molten bowels; your vision is Machines for making more machines.

O, you are buried in the night, Preparing destinies of rust; Iron misused must turn to blight And dwindle to a tettered crust.

The grass, forerunner of life, has gone, But plants that spring in ruins and shards Attend until your dream is done: I have seen hemlock in your yards.

The generations of the worm Know not your loads piled on their soil; Their knotted ganglions shall wax firm Till your strong flagstones heave and toil.

When the old hollowed earth is cracked, And when, to grasp more power and feasts, Its ores are emptied, wasted, lacked, The middens of your burning beasts

Shall be raked over till they yield Last priceless slags for fashionings high, Ploughs to make grass in every field, Chisels men's hands to magnify.

RUPERT BROOKE

_Born 1887_ _Died at Lemnos 1915_

SONNET

Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire Of watching you; and swing me suddenly Into the shade and loneliness and mire Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,

One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing, See a slow light across the Stygian tide, And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing, And tremble. And _I_ shall know that you have died.

And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream, Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host, Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam-- Most individual and bewildering ghost!--

And turn, and toss your brown delightful head Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.

THE SOLDIER

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

THE TREASURE

When colour goes home into the eyes, And lights that shine are shut again, With dancing girls and sweet birds' cries Behind the gateways of the brain; And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close The rainbow and the rose:--

Still may Time hold some golden space. Where I'll unpack that scented store Of song and flower and sky and face, And count, and touch, and turn them o'er, Musing upon them; as a mother, who Has watched her children all the rich day through, Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light, When children sleep, ere night.

_August,_ 1914.

THE GREAT LOVER

I have been so great a lover I filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see The inenarrable godhead of delight? Love is a flame:--we have beaconed the world's night. A city:--and we have built it, these and I. An emperor:--we have taught the world to die. So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, And the high cause of Love's magnificence, And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming......

These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Impassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such-- The comfortable smell of friendly ringers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns ... Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;-- All these have been my loves. And these shall pass, Whatever passes not, in the great hour, Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power To hold them with me through the gate of Death. They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust And sacramented covenant to the dust. --Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again; and make New friends, now strangers.... But the best I've known, Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown About the winds of the world, and fades from brains Of living men, and dies. Nothing remains.

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far removed, Praise you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved.'

CLOUDS

Down the blue night the unending columns press In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow, Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness. Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless, And turn with profound gesture vague and slow, As who would pray good for the world, but know Their benediction empty as they bless.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these, In wise majestic melancholy train, And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas, And men, coming and going on the earth.

_The Pacific_

THE OLD VICARAGE, GRANTCHESTER

_Cafe des Western, Berlin._

Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room; And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the carnation and the pink; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow ... Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through, Beside the river make for you A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep Deeply above; and green and deep The stream mysterious glides beneath, Green as a dream and deep as death.-- Oh, damn! I know it I and I know How the May fields all golden show, And when the day is young and sweet, Gild gloriously the bare feet That run to bathe ... _Du lieber Gott!_

Here am I, sweating, sick and hot, And there the shadowed waters fresh Lean up to embrace the naked flesh. _Temperamentvoll_ German Jews Drink beer around; and _there_ the dews Are soft beneath a morn of gold. Here tulips bloom as they are told; Unkempt about those hedges blows An English unofficial rose; And there the unregulated sun Slopes down to rest when day is done, And wakes a vague unpunctual star, A slippered Hesper; and there are Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton Where _das Betreten's_ not _verboten_..

_ἐίθε γενοιμην_ ... would I were In Grantchester, in Grantchester!-- Some, it may be, can get in touch With Nature there, or Earth, or such. And clever modern men have seen A Faun a-peeping through the green, And felt the Classics were not dead, To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head, Or hear the Goat-foot piping low ... But these are things I do not know. I only know that you may lie Day long and watch the Cambridge sky, And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass, Hear the cool lapse of hours pass, Until the centuries blend and blur In Grantchester, in Grantchester ... Still in the dawnlit waters cool His ghostly Lordship swims his pool, And tries the strokes, essays the tricks, Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx; Dan Chaucer hears his river still Chatter beneath a phantom mill; Tennyson notes, with studious eye, How Cambridge waters hurry by ... And in that garden, black and white Creep whispers through the grass all night; And spectral dance, before the dawn, A hundred Vicars down the lawn; Curates, long dust, will come and go On lissom, clerical, printless toe; And oft between the boughs is seen The sly shade of a Rural Dean ... Till, at a shiver in the skies, Vanishing with Satanic cries, The prim ecclesiastic rout Leaves but a startled sleeper-out, Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls, The falling house that never falls. . . . . . . .

God! I will pack, and take a train, And get me to England once again! For England's the one land, I know, Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; And Cambridgeshire, of all England, The shire for Men who Understand; And of _that_ district I prefer The lovely hamlet Grantchester. For Cambridge people rarely smile, Being urban, squat, and packed with guile; And Royston men in the far South Are black and fierce and strange of mouth; At Over they fling oaths at one, And worse than oaths at Trumpington, And Ditton girls are mean and dirty, And there's none in Harston under thirty, And folks in Shelford and those parts Have twisted lips and twisted hearts, And Barton men make cockney rhymes, And Co ton's full of nameless crimes, And things are done you'd not believe At Madingley on Christmas Eve. Strong men have run for miles and miles When one from Cherry Hinton smiles; Strong men have blanched and shot their wives Rather than send them to St. Ives; Strong men have cried like babes, bydam, To hear what happened at Babraham. But Grantchester, ah, Grantchester! There's peace and holy quiet there, Great clouds along pacific skies, And men and women with straight eyes, Lithe children lovelier than a dream, A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream, And little kindly winds that creep Round twilight corners, half asleep. In Grantchester their skins are white, In Grantchester their skins are white, They bathe by day, they bathe by night; The women there do all they ought; The men observe the Rules of Thought. They love the Good; they worship Truth; They laugh uproariously in youth; (And when they get to feeling old, They up and shoot themselves, I'm told)

Ah God! to see the branches stir Across the moon at Grantchester! To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten Unforgettable, unforgotten River smell, and hear the breeze Sobbing in the little trees. Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand, Still guardians of that holy land? The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream, The yet unacademic stream? Is dawn a secret shy and cold Anadyomene, silver-gold? And sunset still a golden sea From Haslingfield to Madingley? And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river still-- Under the mill, under the mill? Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep-meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain?... oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three And is there honey still for tea?

THE BUSY HEART

Now that we've clone our best and worst, and parted, I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend. (O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted) I'll think of Love in books, Love without end; Women with child, content; and old men sleeping; And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain; And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping; And the young heavens, forgetful after rain; And evening hush, broken by homing wings; And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy, That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things, Lovely and loveable, and taste them slowly, One after one, like tasting a sweet food. I have need to busy my heart with quietude.

DINING-ROOM TEA

When you were there, and you, and you, Happiness crowned the night; I too, Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall On plate and flowers and pouring tea And cup and cloth; and they and we Flung all the dancing moments by With jest and glitter. Lip and eye Flashed on the glory, shone and cried, Improvident, unmemoried; And fitfully and like a flame The light of laughter went and came. Proud in their careless transience moved The changing faces that I loved.

Till suddenly, and otherwhence, I looked upon your innocence; For lifted clear and still and strange From the dark woven flow of change Under a vast and starless sky I saw the immortal moment lie. One instant I, an instant, knew As God knows all. And it and you I, above Time, oh, blind! could see In witless immortality. I saw the marble cup; the tea, Hung on the air, an amber stream; I saw the fire's unglittering gleam, The painted flame, the frozen smoke. No more the flooding lamplight broke On flying eyes and lips and hair; But lay, but slept unbroken there, On stiller flesh, and body breathless, And lips and laughter stayed and deathless, And words on which no silence grew. Light was more alive than you.

For suddenly, and otherwhence, I looked on your magnificence. I saw the stillness and the light, And you, august, immortal, white, Holy and strange; and every glint Posture and jest and thought and tint Freed from the mask of transiency, Triumphant in eternity, Immote, immortal.

Dazed at length Human eyes grew, mortal strength Wearied; and Time began to creep. Change closed about me like a sleep. Light glinted on the eyes I loved. The cup was filled. The bodies moved. The drifting petal came to ground. The laughter chimed its perfect round. The broken syllable was ended. And I, so certain and so friended, How could I cloud, or how distress The heaven of your unconsciousness? Or shake at Time's sufficient spell, Stammering of lights unutterable? The eternal holiness of you, The timeless end, you never knew, The peace that lay, the light that shone. You never knew that I had gone A million miles away, and stayed A million years. The laughter played Unbroken round me; and the jest Flashed on. And we that knew the best Down wonderful hours grew happier yet. I sang at heart, and talked, and eat, And lived from laugh to laugh, I too, When you were there, and you, and you.

FRANCIS BURROWS

THE PRAYER TO DEMETER

Mother whose hair I grasp, whose bosom I tread, Thy son adopted. Thou who dost so charm me And in thy lappels of affection warm me, Heap all thine other misery on my head;

Madness alone of evils do I dread, Against its imminent presence guard and arm me, Suffer its broad flung shadow not to harm me But plunge me rather with the naked dead.

Yet if it must come, let it be entire; Cast then upon me unillumined night, One whole eclipse not knowing any fire To give it record of the former light. Complete destruction of the heart's desire, A ruin of thought and audience and sight.

THE GIANT'S DIRGE

Remember him who battled here, What was his living character? To friends an heart for ever filled With love and with compassion brave; To foes a power never stilled In pushing vengeance to the grave; Where is his spirit gone now, O where?

What of his ten grand paces here Whose motion was a perfect sphere? To friends a making unafraid, A sure defence, a wall of glass. To foes a hidden trap well laid To catch them stalking through the grass; Where is he walking now, O where?

What of his power who is here Enclosed within the sepulchre? To friends an eager sword of joy, A shield to nestle underneath. To foes whose love is to destroy, A stumbling block, a hidden death; Where is his power gone now, O where?

What of his eye that floated here Like sky-born dewy gossamer? To friends the ever-sought desire, The hope achieved, the loving cup; To foes an unassaulted fire, A furnace withering them up. Where is he shining now, O where?

What of the head that breathed so here And the hair beloved so, is it sere; To friends a shadow shedding stars, Like blessings, from the upper deep; To foes a poisoned tree that mars Men's lives thereunder laid asleep. Where does it blossom now, O where?

He lives, is living everywhere, Where human hearts are, he is there. To friends a soul of certainty That love though lost is more than none. To foes an inability To say, "We slew him, we alone, His soul is here, we slew him here."

THE UNFORGOTTEN

There is a cave beneath the throne of grace Where these have honoured and remembered place; Strong hairy men, huge-jawed, with wiry limbs, Half hid in mist, the heroes of old times. They lie among the pots and flints and beads Their friends once buried with them as the needs Of the after-life, to hunt with and to slay with, And flay and cook, or in repose to play with. Here he who shaped the flint and bound to axe And arrow first; who made the thread of flax And hemp to weave; and he who to the plough Harnessed and tamed the bull and milked the cow; Who taught to bake and grind and till the seed Of corn sufficient for the future's need; And he who said: "These are my children, these; My blood between them and their enemies; For when I age and cannot win my meat, They shall become new head and hands and feet"; And he who said: "Let none of our tribe die Slain by ourselves with violence. For why, Our foes are plentiful, our friends are few, Our living scarce. All may have work to do, As hunting, warring, digging for the strong, Or potting, cooking, weaving for the young, The old, the weak, yet for adornment skilled"-- Too early born and by his brethren killed. Here he who dreamed a strange dream in the night, And from his rushes springing swat with fright, But thought and said with opened eyes, "'Tis beauty," And terror left him. Those who spoke of duty, Mercy and truth, and taught the undying soul, And many more. And many a grunt and growl They give in friendly dreams; when haunches quiver And nostrils widen, and hands do twitch and shiver. And often one awakes, and blinks, half speaks, And yawns and licks and blows upon his cheeks:

Pure spirits laugh, and with a kindly eye The father views their rough-haired majesty.

THE WELL

See this plashing fount enshrined, Some ancient people roofed and lined; Some memory here of a forlorn rime, A thought, a breath of a thought sublime A sobbing under the wings of time.

See the ancient people's grave: No Andromache, no slave Water here for a master draws, No slaves longer laugh and pause. All's strange language and new laws.

O words, be good to impart assurance Of hope, of memory, of endurance, O flourish grass upon our tomb, Grant us, sunk in a little room, Both a sepulchre and home.

EGYPTIAN

The pyramid is built, is built, And stone by stone the sphinx; Upon the ground the wine is spilt, And deep the builder drinks. _Deeply the wise man in the desert thinks.

Hark to the lanterned gondolas! The stream is incense-calmed; We smoke, we draw the gods with praise, They walk amongst us charmed. Cries _"Never are the desert-sands disarmed."_

Our building toil is done, is done, All strifes and quarrels cease; And slaves and masters are at one, And enemies at peace. Cries: _"Yet the sands are stirred and wars increase."_

Riches and joy and thankfulness By our rich river are; To see our noble work and bless Shall travellers come afar. Cries: _"Yes, a jew, but many more for war."_

LIFE

When I consider this, that bare Water and earth and common air Combine together to compose A being who breathes and stands and goes With eyes to see the sun, with brain To contemplate his origin, I marvel not at death and pain But rather how he should have been.

A. Y. CAMPBELL

ANIMULA VAGULA

Night stirs but wakens not, her breathings climb To one slow sigh; the strokes of many twelves From unseen spires mechanically chime, Mingling like echoes, to frustrate themselves; My soul, remember Time.

The tones like smoke into the stillness curl, The slippered hours their placid business ply, And in thy hand there lies occasion's pearl; But thou art playing with it absently And dreaming, like a girl.

A BIRD

His haunts are by the brackish ways Where rivers and sea-currents meet; He is familiar with the sprays, Over the stones his flight is fleet.

Low, low he flutters, like a rat That scampers up a river-bank; Swift, lizard-like, he scours the flat Where pools are wersh and weeds are dank,