Chapter 2

Under your feet the towns were seven, Alive and alone on high, Your back to the broad white wall of heaven; You were one and the towns were seven, Single and one as the soaring sun And your head upheld the sky.

And I thought of a thundering flag unfurled And the roar of the burghers' bell: Beacons crackled and bolts were hurled As you came over the top of the world; And under your feet were chance and cheat And the slime of the slopes of hell.

It has not been as the great wind spoke On the great green down that day: We have seen, wherever the wide wind spoke, Slavery slaying the English folk: The robbers of land we have seen command The rulers of land obey.

We have seen the gigantic golden worms In the garden of paradise: We have seen the great and the wise make terms With the peace of snakes and the pride of worms, and them that plant make covenant With the locust and the lice.

And the wind blows and the world goes on And the world can say that we, Who stood on the cliffs where the quarries shone, Stood upon clouds that the sun shone on: And the clouds dissunder and drown in thunder The news that will never be.

Lady of all that have loved the people, Light over roads astray, Maze of steading and street and steeple, Great as a heart that has loved the people: Stand on the crown of the soaring down, Lift up your arms and pray.

Only you I have not forgotten For wreck of the world's renown, Rending and ending of things gone rotten, Only the face of you unforgotten: And your head upthrown in the skies alone As you came over the down.

THE RED SEA

Our souls shall be Leviathans In purple seas of wine When drunkenness is dead with death, And drink is all divine; Learning in those immortal vats What mortal vineyards mean; For only in heaven we shall know How happy we have been.

Like clouds that wallow in the wind Be free to drift and drink; Tower without insolence when we rise, Without surrender sink: Dreams dizzy and crazy we shall know And have no need to write Our blameless blasphemies of praise, Our nightmares of delight.

For so in such misshapen shape The vision came to me, Where such titanian dolphins dark Roll in a sunset sea: Dark with dense colours, strange and strong As terrible true love, Haloed like fish in phospher light The holy monsters move.

Measure is here and law, to learn, When honour rules it so, To lift the glass and lay it down Or break the glass and go. But when the world's New Deluge boils From the New Noah's vine, Our souls shall be Leviathans In sanguine seas of wine.

FOR A WAR MEMORIAL

_(Suggested Inscription probably not selected by the Committee.)_

The hucksters haggle in the mart The cars and carts go by; Senates and schools go droning on; For dead things cannot die.

A storm stooped on the place of tombs With bolts to blast and rive; But these be names of many men The lightning found alive.

If usurers rule and rights decay And visions view once more Great Carthage like a golden shell Gape hollow on the shore,

Still to the last of crumbling time Upon this stone be read How many men of England died To prove they were not dead.

MEMORY

If I ever go back to Baltimore, The city of Maryland, I shall miss again as I missed before A thousand things of the world in store, The story standing in every door That beckons with every hand.

I shall not know where the bonds were riven And a hundred faiths set free, Where a wandering cavalier had given Her hundredth name to the Queen of Heaven, And made oblation of feuds forgiven To Our Lady of Liberty.

I shall not travel the tracks of fame Where the war was not to the strong; When Lee the last of the heroes came With the Men of the South and a flag like flame, And called the land by its lovely name In the unforgotten song.

If ever I cross the sea and stray To the city of Maryland, I will sit on a stone and watch or pray For a stranger's child that was there one day: And the child will never come back to play, And no-one will understand.

THE ENGLISH GRAVES

Were I that wandering citizen whose city is the world, I would not weep for all that fell before the flags were furled; I would not let one murmur mar the trumpets volleying forth How God grew weary of the kings, and the cold hell in the north. But we whose hearts are homing birds have heavier thoughts of home, Though the great eagles burn with gold on Paris or on Rome, Who stand beside our dead and stare, like seers at an eclipse, At the riddle of the island tale and the twilight of the ships.

For these were simple men that loved with hands and feet and eyes, Whose souls were humbled to the hills and narrowed to the skies, The hundred little lands within one little land that lie, Where Severn seeks the sunset isles or Sussex scales the sky.

And what is theirs, though banners blow on Warsaw risen again, Or ancient laughter walks in gold through the vineyards of Lorraine, Their dead are marked on English stones, their loves on English trees, How little is the prize they win, how mean a coin for these-- How small a shrivelled laurel-leaf lies crumpled here and curled: They died to save their country and they only saved the world.

NIGHTMARE

The silver and violet leopard of the night Spotted with stars and smooth with silence sprang; And though three doors stood open, the end of light Closed like a trap; and stillness was a clang.

Under the leopard sky of lurid stars I strove with evil sleep the hot night long, Dreams dumb and swollen of triumphs without wars, Of tongueless trumpet and unanswering gong.

I saw a pale imperial pomp go by, Helmet and hornèd mitre and heavy wreath; Their high strange ensigns hung upon the sky And their great shields were like the doors of death.

Their mitres were as moving pyramids And all their crowns as marching towers were tall; Their eyes were cold under their carven lids And the same carven smile was on them all.

Over a paven plain that seemed unending They passed unfaltering till it found an end In one long shallow step; and these descending Fared forth anew as long away to wend.

I thought they travelled for a thousand years; And at the end was nothing for them all, For all that splendour of sceptres and of spears, But a new step, another easy fall.

The smile of stone seemed but a little less, The load of silver but a little more: And ever was that terraced wilderness And falling plain paved like a palace floor.

Rust red as gore crawled on their arms of might And on their faces wrinkles and not scars: Till the dream suddenly ended; noise and light Loosened the tyranny of the tropic stars.

But over them like a subterranean sun I saw the sign of all the fiends that fell; And a wild voice cried "Hasten and be done, Is there no steepness in the stairs of hell?"

He that returns, He that remains the same, Turned the round real world, His iron vice; Down the grey garden paths a bird called twice, And through three doors mysterious daylight came.

A SECOND CHILDHOOD

When all my days are ending And I have no song to sing, I think I shall not be too old To stare at everything; As I stared once at a nursery door Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God's ponderous mercy hangs On all my sins and me, Because He does not take away The terror from the tree And stones still shine along the road That are and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love, Men grow too old for wine, But I shall not grow too old to see Unearthly daylight shine, Changing my chamber's dust to snow Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt, The first surprises stay; And in my dross is dropped a gift For which I dare not pray: That a man grow used to grief and joy But not to night and day.

Men grow too old for love, my love, Men grow too old for lies; But I shall not grow too old to see Enormous night arise, A cloud that is larger than the world And a monster made of eyes.

Nor am I worthy to unloose The latchet of my shoe; Or shake the dust from off my feet Or the staff that bears me through On ground that is too good to last, Too solid to be true.

Men grow too old to woo, my love, Men grow too old to wed: But I shall not grow too old to see Hung crazily overhead Incredible rafters when I wake And find I am not dead.

A thrill of thunder in my hair: Though blackening clouds be plain, Still I am stung and startled By the first drop of the rain: Romance and pride and passion pass And these are what remain.

Strange crawling carpets of the grass, Wide windows of the sky: So in this perilous grace of God With all my sins go I: And things grow new though I grow old, Though I grow old and die.

"MEDIÆVALISM"

If men should rise and return to the noise and time of the tourney, The name and fame of the tabard, the tangle of gules and gold, Would these things stand and suffice for the bourne of a backward journey, A light on our days returning, as it was in the days of old?

Nay, there is none rides back to pick up a glove or a feather, Though the gauntlet rang with honour or the plume was more than a crown: And hushed is the holy trumpet that called the nations together And under the Horns of Hattin the hope of the world went down.

Ah, not in remembrance stored, but out of oblivion starting, Because you have sought new homes and all that you sought is so, Because you had trodden the fire and barred the door in departing, Returns in your chosen exile the glory of long ago.

Not then when you barred the door, not then when you trod the embers, But now, at your new road's end, you have seen the face of a fate, That not as a child looks back, and not as a fool remembers, All that men took too lightly and all that they love too late.

It is you that have made no rubric for saints, no raiment for lovers, Your caps that cry for a feather, your roofs that sigh for a spire: Is it a dream from the dead if your own decay discovers Alive in your rotting graveyard the worm of the world's desire?

Therefore the old trees tower, that the green trees grow and are stunted: Therefore these dead men mock you, that you the living are dead: Since ever you battered the saints and the tools of your crafts were blunted, Or shattered the glass in its glory and loaded yourselves with the lead.

When the usurer hunts the squire as the squire has hunted the peasant, As sheep that are eaten of worms where men were eaten of sheep: Now is the judgment of earth, and the weighing of past and present, Who scorn to weep over ruins, behold your ruin and weep.

Have ye not known, ye fools, that have made the present a prison, That thirst can remember water and hunger remember bread? We went not gathering ghosts; but the shriek of your shame is arisen Out of your own black Babel too loud; and it woke the dead.

POLAND

Augurs that watched archaic birds Such plumèd prodigies might read, The eagles that were double-faced, The eagle that was black indeed; And when the battle-birds went down And in their track the vultures come, We know what pardon and what peace Will keep our little masters dumb.

The men that sell what others make, As vultures eat what others slay, Will prove in matching plume with plume That naught is black and all is grey; Grey as those dingy doves that once, By money-changers palmed and priced, Amid the crash of tables flapped And huddled from the wrath of Christ.

But raised for ever for a sign Since God made anger glorious, Where eagles black and vultures grey Flocked back about the heroic house, Where war is holier than peace, Where hate is holier than love, Shone terrible as the Holy Ghost An eagle whiter than a dove.

THE HUNTING OF THE DRAGON

When we went hunting the Dragon In the days when we were young, We tossed the bright world over our shoulder As bugle and baldrick slung; Never was world so wild and fair As what went by on the wind, Never such fields of paradise As the fields we left behind: For this is the best of a rest for men That men should rise and ride Making a flying fairyland Of market and country-side, Wings on the cottage, wings on the wood, Wings upon pot and pan, For the hunting of the Dragon That is the life of a man.

For men grow weary of fairyland When the Dragon is a dream, And tire of the talking bird in the tree, The singing fish in the stream; And the wandering stars grow stale, grow stale, And the wonder is stiff with scorn; For this is the honour of fairyland And the following of the horn;

Beauty on beauty called us back When we could rise and ride, And a woman looked out of every window As wonderful as a bride: And the tavern-sign as a tabard blazed, And the children cheered and ran, For the love of the hate of the Dragon That is the pride of a man.

The sages called him a shadow And the light went out of the sun: And the wise men told us that all was well And all was weary and one: And then, and then, in the quiet garden, With never a weed to kill, We knew that his shining tail had shone In the white road over the hill: We knew that the clouds were flakes of flame, We knew that the sunset fire Was red with the blood of the Dragon Whose death is the world's desire.

For the horn was blown in the heart of the night That men should rise and ride, Keeping the tryst of a terrible jest Never for long untried; Drinking a dreadful blood for wine, Never in cup or can, The death of a deathless Dragon, That is the life of a man.

SONNET

High on the wall that holds Jerusalem I saw one stand under the stars like stone. And when I perish it shall not be known Whether he lived, some strolling son of Shem, Or was some great ghost wearing the diadem Of Solomon or Saladin on a throne: I only know, the features being unshown, I did not dare draw near and look on them.

Did ye not guess ... the diadem might be Plaited in stranger style by hands of hate ... But when I looked, the wall was desolate And the grey starlight powdered tower and tree: And vast and vague beyond the Golden Gate Heaved Moab of the mountains like a sea.

FANTASIA

The happy men that lose their heads They find their heads in heaven, As cherub heads with cherub wings, And cherub haloes even: Out of the infinite evening lands Along the sunset sea, Leaving the purple fields behind, The cherub wings beat down the wind Back to the groping body and blind As the bird back to the tree.

Whether the plumes be passion-red For him that truly dies By headsmen's blade or battle-axe, Or blue like butterflies, For him that lost it in a lane In April's fits and starts, His folly is forgiven then: But higher, and far beyond our ken, Is the healing of the unhappy men, The men that lost their hearts.

Is there not pardon for the brave And broad release above, Who lost their heads for liberty Or lost their hearts for love? Or is the wise man wise indeed Whom larger thoughts keep whole? Who sees life equal like a chart, Made strong to play the saner part, And keep his head and keep his heart, And only lose his soul.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

_(The Chief Constable has issued a statement declaring that carol singing in the streets by children is illegal, and morally and physically injurious. He appeals to the public to discourage the practice.--Daily Paper.)_

God rest you merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay; The Herald Angels cannot sing, The cops arrest them on the wing, And warn them of the docketing Of anything they say.

God rest you merry gentlemen, May nothing you dismay: On your reposeful cities lie Deep silence, broken only by The motor horn's melodious cry, The hooter's happy bray.

So, when the song of children ceased And Herod was obeyed, In his high hall Corinthian With purple and with peacock fan, Rested that merry gentleman; And nothing him dismayed.

TO CAPTAIN FRYATT

Trampled yet red is the last of the embers, Red the last cloud of a sun that has set; What of your sleeping though Flanders remembers, What of your waking, if England forget?

Why should you share in the hearts that we harden, In the shame of our nature, who see it and live? How more than the godly the greedy can pardon, How well and how quickly the hungry forgive.

Ah, well if the soil of the stranger had wrapped you, While the lords that you served and the friends that you knew Hawk in the marts of the tyrants that trapped you, Tout in the shops of the butchers that slew.

Why should you wake for a realm that is rotten, Stuffed with their bribes and as dead to their debts? Sleep and forget us, as we have forgotten; For Flanders remembers and England forgets.

FOR FOUR GUILDS

FOR FOUR GUILDS:

I. THE GLASS-STAINERS

To every Man his Mystery, A trade and only one: The masons make the hives of men, The domes of grey or dun, But we have wrought in rose and gold The houses of the sun.

The shipwrights build the houses high, Whose green foundations sway Alive with fish like little flames, When the wind goes out to slay. But we abide with painted sails The cyclone of the day.

The weavers make the clothes of men And coats for everyone; They walk the streets like sunset clouds; But we have woven and spun In scarlet or in golden-green The gay coats of the sun.

You whom the usurers and the lords With insolent liveries trod, Deep in dark church behold, above Their lance-lengths by a rod, Where we have blazed the tabard Of the trumpeter of God.

FOR FOUR GUILDS:

II. THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS

In the world's whitest morning As hoary with hope, The Builder of Bridges Was priest and was pope: And the mitre of mystery And the canopy his, Who darkened the chasms And domed the abyss.

To eastward and westward Spread wings at his word The arch with the key-stone That stoops like a bird; That rides the wild air And the daylight cast under; The highway of danger, The gateway of wonder.

Of his throne were the thunders That rivet and fix Wild weddings of strangers That meet and not mix; The town and the cornland; The bride and the groom: In the breaking of bridges Is treason and doom.

But he bade us, who fashion The road that can fly, That we build not too heavy And build not too high: Seeing alway that under The dark arch's bend Shine death and white daylight Unchanged to the end.

Who walk on his mercy Walk light, as he saith, Seeing that our life Is a bridge above death; And the world and its gardens And hills, as ye heard, Are born above space On the wings of a bird.

Not high and not heavy Is building of his: When ye seal up the flood And forget the abyss, When your towers are uplifted, Your banners unfurled, In the breaking of bridges Is the end of the world.

FOR FOUR GUILDS:

III. THE STONE-MASONS

We have graven the mountain of God with hands, As our hands were graven of God, they say, Where the seraphs burn in the sun like brands And the devils carry the rains away; Making a thrift of the throats of hell, Our gargoyles gather the roaring rain, Whose yawn is more than a frozen yell And their very vomiting not in vain.

Wilder than all that a tongue can utter, Wiser than all that is told in words, The wings of stone of the soaring gutter Fly out and follow the flight of the birds; The rush and rout of the angel wars Stand out above the astounded street, Where we flung our gutters against the stars For a sign that the first and the last shall meet.

We have graven the forest of heaven with hands, Being great with a mirth too gross for pride, In the stone that battered him Stephen stands And Peter himself is petrified: Such hands as have grubbed in the glebe for bread Have bidden the blank rock blossom and thrive, Such hands as have stricken a live man dead Have struck, and stricken the dead alive.

Fold your hands before heaven in praying, Lift up your hands into heaven and cry; But look where our dizziest spires are saying What the hands of a man did up in the sky: Drenched before you have heard the thunder, White before you have felt the snow; For the giants lift up their hands to wonder How high the hands of a man could go.

FOR FOUR GUILDS:

IV. THE BELL-RINGERS

The angels are singing like birds in a tree In the organ of good St. Cecily: And the parson reads with his hand upon The graven eagle of great St. John: But never the fluted pipes shall go Like the fifes of an army all a-row, Merrily marching down the street To the marts where the busy and idle meet; And never the brazen bird shall fly Out of the window and into the sky, Till men in cities and shires and ships Look up at the living Apocalypse.

But all can hark at the dark of even The bells that bay like the hounds of heaven, Tolling and telling that over and under, In the ways of the air like a wandering thunder, The hunt is up over hills untrod: For the wind is the way of the dogs of God: From the tyrant's tower to the outlaw's den Hunting the souls of the sons of men. Ruler and robber and pedlar and peer, Who will not harken and yet will hear; Filling men's heads with the hurry and hum Making them welcome before they come.

And we poor men stand under the steeple Drawing the cords that can draw the people, And in our leash like the leaping dogs Are God's most deafening demagogues: And we are but little, like dwarfs underground, While hang up in heaven the houses of sound, Moving like mountains that faith sets free, Yawning like caverns that roar with the sea, As awfully loaded, as airily buoyed, Armoured archangels that trample the void: Wild as with dancing and weighty with dooms, Heavy as their panoply, light as their plumes.

Neither preacher nor priest are we: Each man mount to his own degree: Only remember that just such a cord Tosses in heaven the trumpet and sword; Souls on their terraces, saints on their towers, Rise up in arms at alarum like ours: Glow like great watchfires that redden the skies Titans whose wings are a glory of eyes, Crowned constellations by twelves and by sevens, Domed dominations more old than the heavens, Virtues that thunder and thrones that endure Sway like a bell to the prayers of the poor.

THE CONVERT