Part 2

Knights and ladies all are dead, Heigh-ho! so am I! Now the sunset falls like lead, Never a star is in the sky. Near or far, Never a star! Knights and ladies all are dead. Heigh-ho! so am I!

We shall never be born again! Heigh-ho! why should we? Jesus, first and last of men, Christ I crucified in me. Near or far, Never a star! We shall never be born again, Heigh-ho! why should we?

I SEEK A WILD STAR

What seek you in this hoarse hard sand That, shuffles from your futile hand? Your limbs are wry. With salt despair All day the scant winds freeze your hair. What mystery in the barren sand Seek you to understand?

_All day the acute winds' finger-tips Flay my skin and cleave my lips. But though like flame about my skull Leap the gibes of the cynic gull, I shall not go from this place. I Seek through all curved vacancy Though the sea taunt me and frost scar, I seek a star, a star!_

Why seek you this, why seek you this Of all distraught futilities? The tide slides closer. The tide's teeth Shall bite your body with keen death! Of all unspaced things that are Vain, vain, most hideously far, Why seek you then a star?

_I seek a wild star, I that am Eaten by earth and, all her shame; To whom fields, towns are a close clot Of mud whence the worm dieth not; To whom all running water is Besnagged with timeless treacheries, Who in a babe's heart see designed Mine own distortion and the blind Lusts of all my kind! Hence of all vain things that are Fain, most hideously far, A star, I seek, a star!_

MY LADY OF PEACE

In the sickening away of the trumpets and the shuddering of the drums, She comes, my Lady of Peace, with her grief, her grief, she comes. With the blood on her teeth she comes, the lost wild eyeballs stare; There is foam in the blood on her lips; ashes are strewn in her hair. Like flowers are her dry fingers, pale flowers grey frost has nipped, Being empty of hands they held like desolate seas unshipped. And she dances, the strayed white woman, she dances a forlorn tread, Being sad for the men that are living and glad for the men that are dead.

OUR JACK

Our Jack is dead, our jolly and simple Jack. To him are fierce stars clay and snow is black. Black blinding silences are all his hours, He knows not birds nor laughter nor any flowers.

And when white winds come calling over the hill, To him no white winds call, he lies so still. And now, when all his singing pals come back, He'll not leave France behind, our little Jack.

PEACE

There were three men when grey dawn broke That walked in a sad wood. There were three Solemn Men who spoke No speech I understood.

The singings of the singing birds In lorn beaks were subdued. There was a grief enchained the herds That beat this bourneless wood.

One Man was Moses. Lo! he struck A grim stone with his rod. There was no living fount that shook From the far wells of God!

One Man was Christ. Around His head The jagged thorns were keen. But all the blood His body shed Made not the foul world clean.

One Man was Everyman. He went Blank-eyed to the dark mesh. One Man was Everyman that rent From his own bones his flesh.

No boon hath Moses rendered, nor Shall Christ His bleeding cease. For swift as Peace hath stifled War, Huge War hath stifled Peace.

SILVER-BADGED WAITER

Poor trussed-up lad, what piteous guise Cloaks the late splendour of your eyes, Stiffens the fleetness of your face Into a mask of sleek disgrace, And makes a smooth caricature Of your taut body's swift and sure Poise, like a proud bird waiting one Moment ere he taunt the sun; Your body that stood foolish-wise Stormed by the treasons of the skies, Star-like that hung, deliberate Above the dubieties of Fate, But with an April gesture chose Unutterable and certain woes!

And now you stand with discreet charm Dropping the napkin round your arm, Anticipate your tip while you Hear the commercial travellers chew. You shuffle with their soups and beers Who held at heel the howling fears, You whose young limbs were proud to dare Challenge the black hosts of despair!

SUNSET OVER SUBURB

(_For Neville Whymant_)

The sun setting down the suburb holds Impermanent crimsons and elusive golds. See the false banners! folds on magic folds Sway down deluded streets! Refuse and ruin now most featly kissed By lips flushed amethyst! The walls are shimmered with a vaporous dusk, A glamour glooms The sorrowful pale husk With rich twilight of witchcraft blooms. Ah! spurious wizardry that flows and fleets Where sword-gems flash and melt in a moon-mist!

The roofs so ashen-dark of old Flare down the streets like lifted brands, Flare like the burning arc of sands Where the recurrent seas have rolled Long breakers molten from astounding gold

The chimneys which all day Scowling have stood Against the devouring mills, Boding no thought of good For whoso came that way-- Lo now! from evil thought Soaring through steeps of fire their brows are caught.

Columnar topaz in this time of shrift, Their tall heads lift Among the bases of celestial hills.

Ah streets, rent roofs, ah chimneys, I am blind! I dare not find You lifted so from purgatorial dooms. I cannot breathe. Hold me! I sink where the dense colour fumes! Now opiate hands close round me, draw me down, Foam-lulled where soundless tides of sunset seethe! Hold me! I drown!

My eyes open! ah so wretched eyes! Have ye no gift to steep Your seeing in swart sleep? Cannot your harsh lids close Tighter than midnight knows, Make sleep a burial whence the last star dies? Now ebbing like the blood in a faint pulse, Relentless, with no pause, Shorn of the lying sapphires, aureate cheats, The glamorous tide withdraws. The false sky dulls From redmost roses into drooping weeds. Ah dying beauty now that dying bleeds, Your banners fail in dust! A slow rot gnaws The disillusioned roofs with teeth of rust. Now chimneys reassume Their ominous dark doom.

Sick grey, sick brown and grey once more are penned Within the network of the haggard streets. The suburb stretches drably to life's end!

Like sheep in a mange-ridden flock Once more the aimless houses sprawl Along the dishevelled streets, Where grocers shew their flyblown stock, Where butchers shew their pulpy meats, Where down a tin-heaped backyard wall Thin cats and women call. As night comes close the suburb flares To petty sins and cheap carouse Along its foolish thoroughfares. The smirking adolescents stand About the corners in coarse groups. Somewhere a blind knocks like a hand, A lodger rings a stuttering bell, A stray tree mutely droops thin boughs. A window opening throws a smell From kitchens where smeared saucepans boil Their quarts of scurfy soups. An unlatched door swings wide and wails. A patch of wilted grass exhales Scents not of dust nor dustless soil.

For lo! this twofold sorrow was set down On the doomed suburb till the last of days, Which hath been placed in intermediate ways Between two bournes from which her heart is sealed: The intimate keep of the far midmost town, The green quick raptures of far outmost field.

She knows not the heart throbbing nor the tense Roads shimmering where the hundred thousand feet Make thunders where they meet. Nor tumult storming in loud sense on sense: Eyes where the profligate hues Mingle in whirlpools of untamed delight, Where scarlet or shrill green pursues Purples and yellows and star-blues, And find or lose Their bodies in white day or profound night; Smells of strange spices from uncharted lands, Of blood on unwiped hands, Of woman's hair, of ripe flamboyant flowers, Of buildings leaping to the displaced skies, Of all the body's and soul's mad merchandise Sold through the crowded unremitting hours; Sounds of innumerable singings since the dawn Came dancing and, her gown withdrawn, Her white breasts blinded night's most impotent eyes; Cracked murmurs of pale harlots in their beds, Who have paid more than gold for nothing bought; The mumbling of old women with drooped heads Who are defeated though they sternly fought; Music and terror and the shock of wings!-- Not these she knows--colours and sounds and smells, The conjoint heavens and the massed hells, No, not these things!

Not these she knows,--nor these, nor these: The snowdrops under the dark yews, The challenge on the young lips borne Of brave blackthorn Against the jagged teeth and the harsh beard Of winter seared. Nor primroses washed with sweet dews, Nor daffodils where bees are stuck Who probe too deeply for their sweet, Nor celandine whence they refuse To move until they suck Their heads drunk and a stupor to their feet. Ah the dog-violets on low hills And woodland sorrel in deep woods And blackbirds with fine yellow bills And thrushes of a thousand moods And nesting-time when these make rhyme Amid the youngling leaves that climb On sycamores and chestnut trees! Not these she knows, not these! She hath not seen the kingfisher By willowed waters dart blue fires. She hath not seen the skylark stir When a sheep's foot came near his nest, And rise to lead the morning choirs From flushed East to pale West. Nor all the blossoms of all fruit, Apple and pear and rosy peach, Nor, palisaded from man's reach Behind a guard of frowning fir, Wild cherry tipped with dawn. Nor heard grass-belfries chink and chime When poplars sway like a slim faun, Nor known the tardy oak-tree suit His body to the crescent time.

Not these things and not these she knows Behind her rampart of pale woes, For she with twofold grief is sealed From midmost town and outmost field. Ah sunset! thou who lying came To flood her streets with traitor flame, Come thou no more With gilded lies! Her heart is numbed, her eyes are sore, Her heart is troubled with sick shame. Open no more One fitful instant the wild door Which brought one breeze of Paradise. In this dun midway where she lies Each day a twofold death she dies. Thou false and lovely, come no more With warm wings touched of Paradise!

SHRIFT AMONG HILLS

The gaunt stones upright on nude fells Alone shall be his gods: naught else Hold his urgent blood and sense Subdued in proud stern reverence. Only to these who make their house Among clean winds he bends his brows. On their austere lips he shall place The spent passions of his face. The cupped midnight like a great bowl Shall lave him. He shall go forth whole.

COURAGE THE DREAMERS

(_For Anthony Bertram_)

We swing our swords against the bare Bleak brows of granite. Yea, we dare. We of clay limbs, armed with frail rhyme, To taunt the passive globes that stare From the eye-sockets of stern Time.

Though our long anguish may not dint His towering flanks, yet from this flint Our swords strike such fierce sparks of light, The moon is blanched, the fool stars stint Their weak flames at the crest of night.

Yea though we bleed from crown to heel, Yea though the points of our split steel Make futile glories and then die Against Time's blear immensity, Yet for black woe there shall be weal!

Stauncher than Time our dream is built. Despair not, human dreamers, for We shall prevail after much war. Yea, the poor stump of our sword's hilt At length shall be Time's conqueror!

A number of these poems are reprinted from _Voices_, _Coterie_, the _Nation_, the _English Review_, the _Englishwoman_, _To-day_, _Colour_, the _Apple_, the _New Witness_, the _Sphere_, the _Saturday Westminster_, and other journals; and from "A Queen's College Miscellany," "The Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany," and Messrs. Palmer and Hayward's "Miscellany of Poetry."

THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD. LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.