In desolation seeking after peace,
Learning how hard a thing it is to love.
There is a love that men find easily,
Familiar as the latch upon the door,
Dear as the curling smoke above the thatch--
But I have loved unto the uttermost
And know love in the desperate abyss,
In dereliction and in blasphemy!
And fly from God to find him, fill my eyes
With road-dust and with tears and starry hopes,
Ere I may search out Love unsearchable,
Eternal Truth and Goodness infinite,
And the ineffable Beauty that is God.
Empty of scorn and ceasing not to praise
The meanest stick and stone upon the earth,
I strive unto the stark Reality,
The Absolute grasped roundly in my hands.
Bitter and pitiless it is to love,
To feel the darkness gather round the soul,
Love’s abnegation for the sake of love,
To see my Templed symbols’ slow decay
Become of every ravenous weed the food,
Where bats beat hideous wings about the arch
And ruined roof, where ghosts of tragic kings
And sleek ecclesiastics come and go
Upon the shattered pavements of my creed.
Yet Mercy at the last shall lead me in,
The Bride immaculate and mystical
Tenderly guide my wayward feet to peace,
And show me love the likeness of a Man,
The Slave obedient unto death, the Lamb
Slain from the first foundations of the world,
The Word made flesh, the tender new-born Child
That is the end of all my heart’s desire.
Then shall my spirit, naked of its hopes,
Stripped of its love unto the very bone,
Sink simply into Love’s embrace and be
Made consummate of all its burning bliss.
_August 26th, 1917._
SONNET FOR THE FIFTH OF OCTOBER
If I had ridden horses in the lists,
Fought wars, gone pilgrimage to fabled lands,
Seen Pharaoh’s drinking cups of amethysts,
Held dead Queens’ secret jewels in my hands--
I would have laid my triumphs at your feet,
And worn with no ignoble pride my scars....
But I can only offer you, my sweet,
The songs I made on many a night of stars.
Yet have I worshipped honour, loving you;
Your graciousness and gentle courtesy,
With ringing and romantic trumpets blew
A mighty music through the heart of me,--
A joy as cleansing as the wind that fills
The open spaces on the sunny hills.
WARFARE
When I consider all thy dignity,
Thy honour which my baseness doth accuse
To my own soul, thy pride which doth refuse
Less than the suffering thou hast given me,
My hope is chilled to fear. How stealthily
Must I dispose my forces! With what ruse
And ambush snatch the bearer of good news,
Ere I can escalade austerity!
Easier it were to fling the baleful lord
And the infernal legions of the Pit,
To ride undaunted at that roaring horde:
But who shall armour me with delicate wit
Sufficient for thine overthrow? What sword
Win to the tower where thy perfections sit?
_March 10th, 1918._
TREASON
Thou hast renounced thy proud and royal state;
Deserted thy strong men-at-arms who stand
Attentive to imperious command;
And with a small key at the groaning gate--
Sweet traitress!--met thine enemy. The great
Moon threw a white enchantment o’er the land
When in my hand I caught thy yielded hand,
And laughing kissed thy laughing lips elate.
For of thy queenly folly thou hast laid
In sandalwood thy stiff, embroidered gown;
With happiness apparelled thou hast strayed
_Incognita_ through many a sunlit town,
Heedless of our uncaptained hosts arrayed
Or of the flags their battles shall bring down.
_March 17th, 1918._
THERE WAS AN HOUR
There was an hour when stars flung out
A magical wild melody,
When all the woods became alive
With elfin dance and revelry.
A holiday for happy hearts!--
The trees shone silver in the moon,
And clapped their gleaming hands to see
Night like a radiant kindled noon!
For suddenly a new world woke
At one new touch of wizardry,
When my love from her mirthful mouth
Spoke words of sweet true love to me.
_February 9th, 1918._
NOCTURNE
When evening hangs her lamp above the hill
And calls her children to her waiting hearth,
Where pain is shed away and love and wrath,
And every tired head lies white and still--
Dear heart, will you not light a lamp for me,
And gather up the meaning of the lands,
Silent and luminous within your hands,
Where peace abides and mirth and mystery?
That I may sit with you beside the fire,
And ponder on the thing no man may guess,
Your soul’s great majesty and gentleness,
Until the last sad tongue of flame expire.
_December 21st, 1916._
PRIDE
Who having known through night a great star falling
With half the host of heaven in its wake,
And o’er chaotic seas a dread voice calling,
And a new purple dawn of presage break,
Can hope to conquer thee, proud Son of Morning,
Arrayed in mighty lusts of heart and eyes,
With blood-red rubies set for thine adorning
And sorceries wherein men’s souls grow wise?
Who shall withstand the onslaught of thy chariot,
Who ride to battle with thy gorgeous kings?
Dost thou not count the silver to Iscariot,
And Tyrian scarlet and the marvellous rings?
But ivory limbs and the flung festal roses,
The maddening music and the Chian wine,
Are overpast when one glad heart discloses
A pride more strange and terrible than thine!
That looked unsatisfied upon thy splendour,
And turned, all shaken with his love, away
To one dear face that holds him true and tender
Until the trumpets of the Judgment Day.
A pride that binds him till the last fierce ember
Shall fade from pride’s tall roaring pyre in hell;
The gentleness and grace he shall remember,
The flower she gave, the love that she did tell.
BALLADE OF SHEEP BELLS
I left behind the green and gracious weald,
And climbing stiffly up the steep incline
Found high above each little cloistered field,
Above the sombre autumn woods of pine--
Where gentle skies are clear and crystalline--
The place remote from dense and foolish towns;
And there, where all the winds are sharp with brine,
_I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs_.
The sun hung out of heaven like a shield
Emblazoned o’er with heraldry divine.
I suddenly saw, as though with eyes unsealed,
A portent sent me for an awful sign,
A fairy sea whereon the cold stars shine;
And standing on the sward of withered browns,
Burnt by the noontide and cropped close and fine,
_I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs_.
A carillon of delicate music pealed
And tingled through the steeple of my spine;
My soul was filled with loveliness and healed.
I know how joy and anguish intertwine--
But this shall greatly comfort me as wine,
Good wine, comforts a man and sweetly drowns
The many sorrows of this heart of mine--
_I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs_.
_L’Envoi_
Prince, old bell-wether of an ancient line,
When you’re dead mutton I will weave you crowns
Of living laurel--if on you I dine--
_I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs!_
BALLADE OF A FEROCIOUS CATHOLIC
There is a term to every loud dispute,
A final reckoning I’m glad to say:
Some people end discussion with their boot;
Others, the prigs, will simply walk away.
But I, within a world of rank decay,
Can face its treasons with a flaming hope,
Undaunted by faith’s foemen in array--
_I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope!_
They do not ponder on the Absolute,
But wander in a fog of words astray.
They have no rigid creed one can confute,
No hearty dogmas riotous and gay,
But feebly mutter through thin lips and grey
Things foully fashioned out of sin and soap;--
But I, until my body rests in clay,
_I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope!_
I’ve often thought that I would like to shoot
The modernists on some convenient day;
Pull out eugenists by their noxious root;
The welfare-worker chattering like a jay
I’d publicly and pitilessly slay
With blunderbuss or guillotine or rope,
Burn at the stake, or boil in oil, or flay--
_I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope._
_L’Envoi_
Prince, proud prince Lucifer, your evil sway
Is over many who in darkness grope:
But as for me, I go another way--
_I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope!_
_March 2nd, 1918._
DAWN
I have beheld above the wooded hill
Thy tender loveliness, O Morning, break;
Beheld the solemn gladness thou dost spill
On eyes not yet awake.
But why recall unto the painful day
Wild passions sleeping like oblivious kings?
The broad day comes and thou dost speed away
Westward on swift wide wings!
_December 23rd, 1917._
SUNSET
I have seen death in many a varied guise,
Cruel and tender, rude and beautiful,
Looking through windows in a young child’s eyes,
Stealing as soft as shadows in a pool,
Falling a sudden arrow of dismay,
Blown on a bugle with an iron note:
The slow and gentle progress of decay,
The taking of a strong man by the throat.
I have seen flowers wither and the leaf
Of lusty Summer burn to hectic red.
But ah! that splendid death untouched by grief:
The sun with glad and golden-visaged head
Superbly standing on his deadly pyre,
And sinking in a sea of jewelled fire!
_February 10th, 1918._
PEACE
Whose lives are bound
By sleep and custom and tranquillity
Have never found
That peace which is a riven mystery
Who only share
The calm that doth this stream, these orchards bless,
Breathe but the air
Of unimpassioned pagan quietness....
Initiate,
Pain burns about your head, an aureole,
Who hold in state
The utter joy which wounds and heals the soul.
You kiss the Rod
With dumb, glad lips, and bear to worlds apart
The peace of God
Which passeth all understanding in your heart.
CARRION
The guns are silent for an hour; the sounds
Of war forget their doom; the work is done--
Strong men, uncounted corpses heaped in mounds,
Are rotting in the sun.
Foul carrion--souls till yesterday!--are these
With piteous faces in the bloodied mire;
But where are now their generous charities?
Their laughter, their desire?
In each rent breast, each crushed and shattered skull
Lived joy and sorrow, tenderness and pain,
Hope, ardours, passions brave and beautiful
Among these thousands slain!
A little time ago they heard the call
Of mating birds in thicket and in brake;
They wondering saw night’s jewelled curtain fall
And all the pale stars wake....
Bodies most marvellously fashioned, stark,
Strewn broadcast out upon the trampled sod--
These temples of the Holy Ghost--O hark!--
These images of God!
Flesh, as the Word became in Bethlehem,
Houses to hold their Sacramental Lord:
Swiftly and terribly to harvest them
Swept the relentless sword!
Happy if in your dying you can give
Some symbol of the Eternal Sacrificed,
Some pardon to the hearts of those who live--
Dying the death of Christ!
_Feast of the Epiphany,
January 6th, 1917._
THE BUILDING OF THE CITY
I, John, who once was called by Him in jest
Boanerges, the thunder’s son,
Who lay in tenderness upon His breast--
Now that my days are done,
And a great gathering glory fills my sight,
Would tell my children e’er I go
Of Him I saw with head and hair as white
As white wool--white as snow.
The face before which heaven and earth did flee,
The burnished feet, the eyes of flame,
The seven stars bright with awful mystery,
And the Ineffable Name!
Yet I who saw the four dread horsemen ride,
The vials of the wrath of God,
Beheld a greater thing: the Lamb’s pure Bride,
The golden floors she trod.
How Babylon, Babylon was overthrown,
And how Euphrates flowed with blood--
Ah, but His mercy through the wide world sown,
The tree with healing bud!
I heard, among the hosts of Paradise,
The glad new song that never tires,
A Lamb as it had been slain in sacrifice
Enthroned amid the choirs.
After the utmost woes have taken toll,
And ravens plucked the eyes of kings,
God’s own strange peace shall come upon the soul
On gentle, dove-like wings.
The Dragon cast into the voidless night,
God’s city cometh from above,
Built by the sword of Michael and his might,
But founded in God’s love.
EDEN RE-OPENED
No man regarded where God sat
Among the rapt seraphic brows,
And God’s heart heavy grew thereat,
At man’s long absence from His house.
Then from the iris-circled throne
A strange and secret word is said,
And straightway hath an angel flown,
On wings of feathered sunlight sped,
Through space to where the world shone red.
Reddest of all the stars of night
To the hoar watchers of the spheres,
But ashy cold to man’s dim sight,
And filled with sins and woes and fears
And the waste weariness of years.
(No laughter rippled in the grass,
No light upon the jewelled sea;
The sky hung sullenly as brass,
And men went groping tortuously.)
But the stern warden of the Gate
Broke his dread sword upon his knees,
And opened wide the fields where wait
The loveless unremembered trees,
The sealed and silent mysteries.
And the scales fell from man’s eyes,
And his heart woke again, as when
Adam found Eve in Paradise;
And joy was made complete ... and then
God entered in and spoke with men.
THE HOLY SPRING
The radiant feet of Christ now lead
The dancing sunny hours,
The ancient Earth is young again
With growing grass and warm white rain
And hedgerows full of flowers.
The lilac and laburnum show
The glory of their bud,
And scattered on each hawthorn spray
The snow-white and the crimson may--
The may as red as blood.
The bluebells in the deep dim woods
Like fallen heavens lie,
And daffodils and daffodils
Upon a thousand little hills
Are waving to the sky.
The corn imprisoned in the mould
Has burst its wintry tomb,
And on each burdened orchard tree
Which stood an austere calvary
The apple blossom bloom.
The kiss of Christ has brought to life
The marvel of the sod.
Oh, joy has rent its chrysalis
To flash its jewelled wings, and is
A dream of beauty and of bliss--
The loveliness of God.
_May 1917._
VIATICUM
Dear God, not only do Thou come at last
When death hath filled my heart with dread affright,
But when in gathered dark I meet aghast
The mimic death that falls on me at night.
The daily dying, when alone I tread
The valley of the shadow, breast the Styx,
With shrouded soul and body stiff in bed ...
And no companion from the welcome pyx!
How should I face disarmed and unawares
The phantoms of the Pit oblivion brings--
My will surrendered, mind unapt for snares,
Eyes blinded by the evil, shuddering wings,
Did not the sunset stand encoped in gold
For priestly offices, ’mid censers swung,
And with anointed thumb and finger hold
The symbolled Godhead to my eager tongue?
Then with my body’s trance there doth descend
Peace on my eyelids, goodness that shall keep
My wandering feet, and at my side a friend
Through all the winding caverns of my sleep.
_August 12th, 1917._
PUNISHMENT
What vengeful rod
Is laid upon my bleeding shoulders?
What scourge, O God,
Makes known my shame to all beholders?
Through what vast skies
Crashes Thy wrath like shuddering thunders?
* * * * *
Before my eyes
Thou dost display the wonder of wonders!
As punishment
To one whom sin should bind in prison,
Hath Mercy sent
Word of the crucified arisen!
Guilt’s penalty
Exacted--past my reeling reason!--
Which lays on me
Love--as a whip fit for my Treason!
_March 3rd, 1918._
AFTER COMMUNION
Now art Thou in my house of feeble flesh,
O Word made flesh! My burning soul by Thine
Caught mystically in a living mesh!
Now is the royal banquet, now the wine,
The body broken by the courteous Host
Who is my humble Guest--a Guest adored--
Though once I spat upon, scourged at the post,
Hounded to Calvary and slew my Lord!
My name is Legion, but separate and alone;
Wash, wash, dear Crucified, my Pilate hand!
Rejected Stone, be Thou my corner-stone!
Like Mary at the cross’s foot I stand;
Like Magdalene upon my sins I grieve;
Like Thomas do I touch Thee and believe.
_December 16th, 1917._
THE UNIVERSAL MOTHER
Who standing thrilled in his bewilderment
Can tell thy humble ways,
The hidden paths on which thy white feet went
Through all thy lonely days?
From what deep root the Lily of the Lord
To grace and beauty grew,
Or in what fires was tempered the keen sword
That pierced thy bosom through?
But we may turn and find within our hands
Our souls’ strange bread and wine,
The gathered meanings of thy starry lands
Where mystic roses shine.
Heaven’s air might grow for us too cold and tense,
Her towers far and faint,
Did we not know thy sorrowful innocence,
Or soldier, singer, saint,
Earth’s heroes with earth’s poor not kneel and tell
Their full hearts’ burdenings
To those dear eyes before which Gabriel
Bent low with folded wings.
The soldier shall remember whose the heel
That crushed the serpent’s head,
How mighty in thy hand hath been the steel
That dyed thy bosom red.
The singer weave for thee a cloak of light
Where earth’s wild colours run,
As God hath crowned thee with the stars of night
And clothed thee with the sun.
The saint who in a cloister cool and dim
His difficult road hath kept
Shall think of thee whose body cloistered Him
When in thy womb He slept.
And thou shalt call to thee the poor of earth
To share thy joy with them,
And fill them with thy magnitude and mirth
In many a Bethlehem.
_February 4th, 1917._
THE BOASTER
If the last blissful star should fade and wither,
If one by one
Orion and the Pleiades Crash and Crumble;
The lordly sun
Be turned away, a beggar, all his triumphs
Gone down in doom,
Wandering unregarded through the cosmos,
None giving him room.
Then would I shout defiant to the whirlwinds;
Boastingly cry,
“Go wreck the world, its towering hills and waters!
But I, even I,
“Whose body was flung out upon the dungheap
With weeds to rot,
Still keep my soul unshaken by the ruin
That harms me not!
“True, I have fled from many a shameful battle,
Did cringe and cower
Before my foes, but who can ever rob me
Of one great hour?”
For joy rang through me like a silver trumpet;
About my head
The tiny flowers flapped in the breeze like banners
Of royal red.
And suddenly the seven deeps of heaven
Were cloven apart,
When love stood in your eyes and shone and trembled
Within your heart.
_February 3rd, 1918._
UNWED
If I go down to death uncomforted
By love’s great conquest and its great surrender,
Bearing my soul along, unwed, unwed;
(Your darling hands’ caresses swift and tender
Lacking upon my head, upon my lips
Your lips); and in my heart love unfulfilled,
And in my eyes a blind apocalypse,
Bereft of all the glory I have willed;
I shall go proudly for your dear love’s sake,
Triumphant for brief memories, but tragic
Because of those large hopes that fail and break
Beneath Fate’s wizard-wand of cruel magic--
But ah, Fate could not touch me if I stood
Completed by your love’s beatitude!
_December 15th, 1917._
WED
I know the winds are rhythmical
In unison with your footfall.
I know that in your heart you keep
The secret of the woodland’s sleep.
You met the blossom-bearing May--
Sweet sister!--on the road half way,
And she has laid upon your hair
The coloured coronal you wear.
But ah! the white wings of the Dove
Flutter about the head I love,
And on your bosom doth repose
The beauty of the Mystic Rose,
That I must add to poetry
A dark and fearful ecstasy;
For in the house of joy you bless
Unworthiness with holiness.
ENGLAND
I
Like some good ship that founders in the sea,
Like granite towers that crumble into dust,
So pass the emblems of thine empery.
But O immortal Mother and august,
Ardours of English saint and bard and king
Blend simply with thy soul, even as their bones
Mingle with English soil. Their spirits sing
A great song lordly as is a loud wind’s tones.
Decayed by gold and ease and loathly pride,
We had forgot our greatness and become
Huckstering empire-builders, and denied
The excellent name of freedom ... till the drum
Woke glory such as met the eyes of Drake,
Or Alfred when he saw the heathen break!
II
Where shall we find thee? In the avarice
That robs our brave adventures? In the shame
Spoiling our splendours? In the sacrifice
Of tears we wrung from Ireland? Nay, thy name
Is written secretly in kindliness
Upon the patient faces of the poor,
In that good anger wherewith thou didst bless
Our hearts, when beat upon the shaking door
Strong hands of hell.... Whether before the flood
We sink, or out of agonies reborn
Learn once again the meaning of our blood,
Laughter and liberty--a sacred scorn
Is ours irrevocably since we stood
And heard the barbarians’ guns across the morn.
_December 24th and 26th, 1917._
LYRIC LOVE
When kindly years have given me grace
To read your spirit through;
To see the starlight on your face,
Upon your hair the dew;
To touch the fingers of your hands,
The shining wealth they hold;
To find in dim and dreamy lands
That tender dusks enfold
The ancient sorrows that were sealed,
The hidden wells of joy,
The secrets that were unrevealed
To one who was a boy.
Then to my patient ponderings
Will fruits of solace fall,
When I have learned through many Springs,
Mighty and mystical,
To hear through sounds of brooks and birds
Love in the leafy grove,
As in my lyric heart your words
Bestir a lyric love.
Then I shall brood, grown good and wise,
The truth of fairy tales,
And greet romance with gay surprise
In woods of nightingales.
And find, with hoary head and sage,
In songs which I have sung
The meanings of the end of age--
The rapture of the young!
_February 11th, 1918._
DRUMS OF DEFEAT
THE FOOL
A shout of laughter and of scorn,
A million jeering lips and eyes--
And in the sight of all men born
The wildest of earth’s madmen dies!
Whose trust was put in empty words
To-day is numbered with the dead;
To-morrow crows and evil birds
Shall pluck those strange eyes from his head!
The fellows of this country clown
Are scattered (fool beyond belief!),
All blown away like thistledown,
Except a harlot and a thief.
And shall he shatter fates with _these_?
(He that would neither strive nor cry)
Or thunder through the Seven Seas?
Or shake the stars down from the sky?
Have mercy and humility
Become unconquerable swords,
That Caiaphas must tremblingly
Kneel with the world’s imperial lords
Before this crazy carpenter--
This body writhing on a rod--
And worship in that bloody hair
The dreadful foolishness of God?
A shout of laughter and of scorn,
A million jeering lips and eyes--
And in the sight of all men born
The wildest of earth’s madmen dies!
DON QUIXOTE
The air is valiant with drums
And honourable the skies,
When he rides singing as he comes
With solemn, dreamy eyes--
Of swinging of the splendid swords,
And crashing of the nether lords,
When Hell makes onslaught with its hordes
In desperate emprise.
He rides along the roads of Spain
The champion of the world,
For whom great soldans live again
With Moorish beards curled--
But all their spears shall not avail
With one who weareth magic mail,
This hero of an epic tale
And his brave gauntlet hurled!
Clangour of horses and of arms
Across the quiet fields,
Herald and trumpeter, alarms
Of bowmen and of shields;
When doubt that twists and is afraid
Is shattered in the last crusade,
Where flaunts the plume and falls the blade
The cavalier wields.
Although in that eternal cause
No liegemen gather now,
Or flowered dames to grant applause,
Yet on his naked brow
The victor’s laurels interwreath;
But he no dower can bequeath
But sword snapped short and empty sheath
And errantry and vow!
Against his foolish innocence
No man alive can stand,
Nor any giant drive him hence
With sling or club or brand--
For where his angry bugle blows
There fall unconquerable foes;
Of mighty men of war none knows
To stay his witless hand.
All legendary wars grow tame
And every tale gives place
Before the knight’s unsullied name
And his romantic face:
Yea, he shall break the stoutest bars
And bear his courage and his scars
Beyond the whirling moons and stars
And all the suns of space!
IRELAND
Beside your bitter waters rise
The Mystic Rose, the Holy Tree,
Immortal courage in your eyes,
And pain and liberty.
The stricken arms, the cloven shields,
The trampled plumes, the shattered drum,
The swords of your lost battlefields
To hopeless battles come.
And though your scattered remnants know
Their shameful rout, their fallen kings,
Yet shall the strong, victorious foe
Not understand these things:
The broken ranks that never break,
The merry road your rabble trod,
The awful laughter they shall take
Before the throne of God.
IN MEMORIAM
PATRICK HENRY PEARSE
_Executed May 3rd, 1916_
R.I.P.
In this grey morning wrapped in mist and rain
You stood erect beneath the sullen sky,
A heart which held its peace and noble pain,
A brave and gentle eye!
The last of all your silver songs are sung;
Your fledgling dreams on broken wings are dashed--
For suddenly a tragic sword was swung
And ten true rifles crashed.
By one who walks aloof in English ways
Be this high word of praise and sorrow said:
He lived with honour all his lovely days,
And is immortal, dead!
MATER DESOLATA
TO MARGARET PEARSE