The anguish, and the laden heart that broke
Its vase of burning tears, the voiceless cry,--
And then the horror of that blinding stroke!
To you all this--and yet to you much more.
God pressed into the chalice of your pain
A starry triumph, when the sons you bore
Were written on the roll of Ireland’s slain.
Let no man touch your glorious heritage,
Or pluck one pang of sorrow from your heart,
Or stain with any pity the bright page
Emblazoning the holy martyrs’ part.
Ride as a queen your splendid destiny,
Since death is swallowed up in victory!
THE STIRRUP CUP
Draw rein; there’s the inn where the lamps show plain--
Where we never may drink together again.
While the stars are lost in the slate-cold sky
Let us drink good ale before we die
In the wind and bitter rain!
Your sword is made ready upon your hip?
Then once again, man, in good-fellowship!
Though hunted and outlawed and fugitive
We shall drink together again if we live--
Set the tankard to your lip!
_Honour and death and_--how goes the tune?
See the clouds rift and disrobe the moon!
And a blood-red streak in the sullen skies
And--_Honour and death and adventure’s eyes_--
Now spurs--for they’ll be here soon!
THE ENSIGN
High up above the wooded ridge
Beams out a round benignant moon
Upon the village and the bridge
Through which the slumberous waters croon.
Now polished silver is the mill;
And, clad in ghostly mysteries,
The church tower glimmers on the hill
Among the sad, abiding trees;
And watched by its familiar star
Sleeps each small house, so still and white--
From all the noise and blood of war,
O God, how far removed to-night!
Unconscious of their destiny
How many drew this air for breath;
Here lived and loved ... and now they see
The terrible, swift shape of death.
The bounty of these quiet skies,
The tender beauty of these lands,
Still sheds a peace upon their eyes,
And binds their hearts and nerves their hands.
That they who only thought to know
This valley in the moonlight furled,
Have heard immortal trumpets blow,
And shake the pillars of the world!
BALLADE OF ORCHARDS
Though Jeshurun kicks and grows fatter and fatter,
And chinks in his pockets the gold of his gain,
Yet up in the gables the young sparrows chatter,
The corn-fields are rich with the promise of grain,
The hedges are yellow, and (balm to the brain!)
Their pink and white blossoms the cherry trees scatter--
_The blossoming orchards of England remain!_
Long lines of our soldiers swing by with a clatter,
To die in their thousands by river and plain,
In lands where the gathering loud torrents batter,
They heap the hills high with heroical slain--
But far in the weald how the misty moons wane!
And deep in a silence no anger can shatter
_The blossoming orchards of England remain!_
The world is a fool and as mad as a hatter--
And poets and lovers were sent her for bane--
Yet theirs are the ears which can catch the first patter,
The prophet of all God’s abundance of rain,
The smell of earth earthy and wholesome again;
And from the drenched ground where the spent bullets spatter
_The blossoming orchards of England remain!_
_L’Envoi_
Princes and potentates, ye whom men flatter,
Harken a moment to this my refrain--
Ye shall pass as a dream, and it will not much matter--
_The blossoming orchards of England remain!_
A GREAT WIND
A great wind blows through the pine trees,
A clean salt wind from sea,
A loud wind full of all healing
Blows kindly but boisterously;
Oh, a good wind blows through the pine trees
And the heart and mind of me!
A wind stirs the long grass lightly
And the dear young flowers of May,
And blows in the English meadows
The breath of a Summer’s day--
But this wind rings with honour
And is wet with the cold sea spray.
There are straits where the tall ships founder
And no live thing may draw breath,
Where men look at splendid, angry skies
And hear what the thunder saith:
Where men look their last at glory
And bravely drink of death.
There is much afoot this evening
In these pine woods by the sea,
And no branch shall endure until morning
That is rotten on the tree--
Nor any decayed thing endure in my soul
When God’s wind blows through me!
BIRTHDAY SONNET
How shall I find the words of perfect praise,
To give you back the gladness and the mirth,
With which you filled my hands, the lyric days
Your gracious bounty gave me in my dearth?
My song fails on the wing, and yet I know
The meaning of Spring’s living ecstasy,
The laughing prophecy the March winds blow
Among the buds, and through the heart of me.
I know, I know the rose and silver dress,
Wherewith God clothed that clear and virginal morn,
Which came to you in joyful gentleness,
The hour of shy delight when you were born.
I know the innocence and sweet surprise,
The waiting earth made ready for your eyes.
_March 27th, 1917_
SILENCE
Though I should deck you with my jewelled rhyme,
And spread my songs a carpet at your feet,
Where men may see unchanged through changing time
Your face a pattern in sad songs and sweet;
Though I should blow your honour through the earth
Or touch your gentleness on gentle strings,
Or sing abroad your beauty and your worth--
Dearest, yet these were all imperfect things.
Rather in lovely silence will I keep
The heart’s shut song no words of mine may mar,
No words of mine enrich. The ways of sleep
And prayer and pain, all things that lonely are,
All humble things that worship and rejoice
Shall weave a spell of silence for my voice.
AT YELVERTON
When into Yelverton I came
I found the bracken all aflame,
The tors in their unyielding line,
The air as comforting as wine,
The swinging wind, the singing sun
At Yelverton.
At Yelverton the moor is kind
And blows its healing through my mind,
The hunchback skyline lies a mist
Of purple and of amethyst,
And up and down the smooth roads run
At Yelverton.
At Yelverton a man may stand,
The whole of Devon within his hand,
The tors in their austerity,
And far away the basking sea,
A cloth of shining silver spun
At Yelverton.
At Yelverton a man may keep
Deep silence and a deeper sleep,
Yet know the brave recurring dream
Of kingly cider, queenly cream
To bless him when his days are done
At Yelverton.
THE JOY OF THE WORLD
For your joy do the long grasses rustle, the tree-tops stir
Where the wind moves eagerly through the pine and the fir;
Alert for your coming the woods and the meadows all wait;
The buttercups grow and the turtle calls to his mate.
And God for your Clothing fashioned in patience the sun,
A cloak wrought of glory and fire where dreadful dyes run,
Saffron and Crimson and sapphire and gold, as is meet;
And stars to be set on your head and stars under your feet.
For you, His most lovely of daughters, the mighty God bowed
From heaven to give you your dowry of sunset and cloud;
And splendid in light and in worship were Gabriel’s wings,
When he breathed in your bosom the hope of impossible things.
Sudden and dear was the secret he whispered to you,
Of one who should quietly fall to the earth with the dew;
As dew that at night in the valleys distils upon fleece,
With no shattering trump did He come but in terrible peace.
In your hands that are sweeter than honey, in all the wide earth
God laid the desire of the nations, their home and their mirth,
And gave to your merciful keeping man’s joy and man’s rest,
And under incredible skies a babe at your breast.
And though the stars wane and the royal deep colours should fade,
Yet still shall endure in the heart and the lips of a Maid,
The sweep of the archangel’s pinions--the humble accord--
The song--the dim stable--the night--and the birth of the Lord!
For your joy do the long grasses rustle, the tree-tops stir
Where the wind moves eagerly through the pine and the fir;
Alert for your coming the woods and the meadows all wait;
The buttercups grow and the turtle calls to his mate.
GRATITUDE
How shall I answer God and stand,
My naked life within my hand,
To plead upon the Judgment Day?
Seeing the glory in array
Of cherubim and seraphim,
What answer shall I give to Him?
I was too dull of heart and sense
To read His cryptic providence,
Its strange and intricate device
Was hidden from my foolish eyes.
My gratitude could not reach up
To the sharing of His awful cup,
To the blinding light of mystery
And the painful pomp of sanctity.
But since as a happy child I went
With love and laughter and content
Along the road of simple things,
Making no idle questionings;
Since young and careless I did keep
The cool and cloistered halls of sleep,
And took my daily drink and food,
Finding them very, very good--
God may perhaps be pleased to see
Such signs of sheer felicity.
But if I somehow should be given
An attic in His storied heaven,
I’m sure I should be far apart
From Catherine of the wounded heart,
Teresa of the flaming soul,
And Bruno’s sevenfold aureole,
And be told, of course, I’m not to mix
With the Bernards or the Dominics,
Or thrust my company upon
St. Michael or the great St. John.
Yet God may grant it me to sit
And sing (with little skill or wit)
My intimate canticles of praise
For all life’s dear and gracious days--
Though hardly a single syllable
Of what St. Raphael has to tell,
The triumphs of the cosmic wars,
The raptures and the jewelled scars
Of the high lords of martyrdom--
Hardly a word of this will come
To strike my understanding ear,
Hardly a single word, I fear!
* * * * *
But woe upon the Judgment Day
If my heart gladdened not at May;
Nor woke to hear with the waking birds
The morning’s sweet and winsome words;
Nor loved to see laburnums fling
Their pennons to the winds of Spring;
Nor watched among the expectant grass
The Summer’s painted pageant pass;
Nor thrilled with blithe beatitude
Within a kindling Autumn wood
Or when each separate twig did lie
Etched sharp upon the wintry sky.
If out of all my sunny hours
I brought no chaplet of their flowers;
If I gave no kiss to His lovely feet
When they shone as poppies in the wheat;
If no rose to me were a Mystic Rose,
No Snow were whiter than the snows;
If in my baseness I let fall
At once His cross and His carnival ...
Then must I take my ungrateful head
To where the lakes of Hell burn red.
IN DOMO JOHANNIS
Here rest the thin worn hands which fondled Him,
The trembling lips which magnified the Lord,
Who looked upon His handmaid, the young, slim
Mary at her meek tasks, and here the sword
Within the soul of her whose anguished eyes
Gazed at the stars which watch Gethsemane,
And saw the sun fail in the stricken skies.
In these dim rooms she guards the treasury
Of her white memories--the strange, sweet face
More marred than any man’s, the tender, fain
And eager words, the wistful human grace,
The mysteries of glory, joy and pain,
And that hope tremulous, half-sob, half-song,
Ringing through night--“How long, O Lord, how long?”
AT WOODCHESTER
Hark how a silver music falls
Between these meek monastic walls,
And airy flute and psaltery
Awaken heavenly melody!
Yet not to unentunèd ears
May come the joyance of the spheres,
And only humbled hearts may see
The humble heart of mystery.
Where tread in light and lilting ways
Bright angels through the dance’s maze
On grassy floors to meet the just
In robes of woven diamond dust.
And jewelled daisies burst to greet
The flutter of the Blessed’s feet:
Along the cloister’s gathered gloom
Lilies and mystic roses bloom.
Grown in the hush of hidden hours
Thoughts fairer than the summer flowers
Lift up their sweet and living heads,
Crystalline whites and sanguine reds!
Who keep in lowly pageantry
Silence a lovely ceremony;[B]
Who set a seal upon their eyes
Responsive only to the skies;
Who in a quick obedience move
Along the hallowed paths of love,
Win at last to that secret place
Adorned with the glory of God’s face.
And as each eve the tired sun
Sinks softly down, the long day done,
Upon the bosom of the west--
So, even so, upon God’s breast
Each weary heart is folded deep
Into His arms in quiet sleep,
And sheltered safe, all warm and bright,
Against the phantoms of the night.
[B] “_Quia silentium est pulchra caeremonia_”:
Ex Constitutionibus Fratrum
S. Ordinis Prædicatorum.
“FOR THEY SHALL POSSESS THE EARTH”
You who were beauty’s worshipper,
Her ardent lover, in this place
You have seen Beauty face to face;
And known the wistful eyes of her,
And kissed the hands of Poverty,
And praised her tattered bravery.
You shall be humble, give your days
To silence and simplicity;
And solitude shall come to be
The goal of all your winding ways;
When pride and youthful pomp of words
Fly far away like startled birds.
Possessing nothing, you shall know
The heart of all things in the earth,
Their secret agonies and mirth,
The awful innocence of snow,
The sadness of November leaves,
The joy of fields of girded sheaves.
A shelter from the driving rain
Your high renouncement of desire;
Food it shall be and wine and fire;
And Peace shall enter once again
As quietly as dreams in sleep
The hidden trysting-place you keep.
You shall grow humble as the grass,
And patient as each slow, dumb beast;
And as their fellow--yea the least--
Yield stoat and hedgehog room to pass;
And learn the ignorance of men
Before the robin and the wren.
The things so terrible and sweet
You strove to say in accents harsh,
The frogs are croaking on the marsh,
The crickets chirping at your feet--
Oh, they can teach you unafraid
The meaning of the songs you made.
Till clothed in white humilities,
Each happening that doth befall,
Each thought of yours be musical,
As wind is musical in the trees,
When strong as sun and clean as dew
Your old dead songs come back to you.
BALLADE OF THE BEST SONG IN THE WORLD
I know a sheaf of splendid songs by heart
Which stir the blood or move the soul to tears,
Of death or honour or of love’s sweet smart,
The runes and legends of a thousand years;
And some of them go plaintively and slow,
And some are jolly like the earth in May--
But this is _really_ the best song I know:
_I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_.
I sang it in a house-boat on the Dart
To several members of the House of Peers.
The Editor of the _Exchange and Mart_
(A man of taste) stood up and led the cheers.
I carolled it at Christmas in the snow,
I hummed it on my summer holiday--
Doh-ray-me-fah-sol-la-fah-me-ray-doh--
_I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_.
It made a gathering of Fabians start
And put their fingers in their outraged ears.
They did not understand my subtle art,
But though they only gave me scoffs and jeers,
I sang my ditty high, I sang it low,
I sang it every known (and unknown) way--
_Crescendo, forte, pianissimo_--
_I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_.
_L’Envoi_
Prince, if by some amazing fluke you go
To heaven, you’ll hear the shawms and citherns play,
And all the trumpets of the angels blow
_I-tiddly-iddly-i-ti-iddly-ay_.
TAIL-PIECE
A boy goes by the window while I write,
Whistling--the little demon!--in delight.
I shake my fist and scowl at him, and curse
Over the carcase of my murdered verse.
And yet--which is it that the world most needs,
His happy laughter or my threadbare screeds?
There is more poetry in being young
Than in the finest song that Shakespeare sung--
And if that’s true of godlike Shakespeare--well,
Whistle the Marseillaise, and ring the bell,
And chase the cat, and lose your tennis-ball,
And tear your trousers on the garden wall,
Scalp a Red Indian, sail the Spanish seas--
Do any mortal thing you damn well please.
AVE
When all the world was black
Your courage did not fail;
No laughter did you lack
Or fellowship or ale.
And you have made defeat
A nobler pageantry,
Your bitterness more sweet
Than is their victory.
For by your stricken lips
A gallant song is sung;
Joy suffers no eclipse,
Is lyrical and young,
Is rooted in the sod,
Is ambient in the air,
Since Hope lifts up to God
The escalade of prayer.
The tyrants and the kings
In purple splendour ride,
But all ironic things
Go marching at your side
To nerve your hands with power,
To salt your souls with scorn,
Till that awaited hour
When Freedom shall be born.
A REPLY
_To one who said that to conceive of God as a person was to
reduce Him to our own level._
Oh, we can pierce
With the swift lightnings far and fierce;
We can behold
Him in the sunset’s lucid gold.
Yet not by these
Do we read His dark mysteries,
Or tear apart
The thick veil upon Heaven’s heart....
Kneel with the kings
Before His dreadful Emptyings,
And see Him laid
In the slender arms of a Maid.
The village street
Knew God’s familiar, weary feet--
The carpenter’s Son
Who made the great hills one by one.
No glory slips
From His sublime apocalypse--
His homespun dress,
Hunger, thirst and the wilderness.
To a slave’s death
He gave his broken body’s breath;
An outcast hung
The swart and venomous thieves among.
And still yields He
Godhead to our humanity,
Leaving for sign
Himself in the meek bread and wine.
JOB
Can flesh and blood contrive defence
’Gainst swords that pierce the spirit through,
Or meet, not knowing why or whence,
The blind bolt crashing from the blue?
“Oh, men have held times out of mind
Their stern and stoic courage bright--
But if no cry comes on the wind,
How shall I face the ambushed night?
“How shall I turn to bay, and stand
To grapple, if I cannot see
My fierce assailant at my hand,
The high look of mine enemy?
“If He will answer me, with rod
And plague and thunder let Him come--
But how can man dispute with God
Who writes no book, whose voice is dumb?
“Who rings me round with prison bars
Through which I peer with sleepless eyes,
And see the enigmatic stars--
These only--in the iron skies.”
* * * * *
“_These only?_ These together sang
At the glad birthday of the earth
When all the courts of Heaven rang
With shouting and angelic mirth!
“The night enfolds you with a cloak
Of silence and of chill affright?
But when man’s wells of laughter broke,
Who gave man singing in the night?
“The Rod shall burst to flowers and fruit
Richer than grew on Aaron’s rod,
And Mercy clothe you head to foot,
Beloved and smitten of your God!”
THE SOIL OF SOLACE
I may not stand with other men, or ride
In those grey fields where fall the screaming shells,
Or mix my blood with blood of those who died
To find a heaven in their sevenfold hells.
Honour and death a strident bugle blows,
Setting an end to death and blasphemy--
Oh, had I any choice in it, God knows
Where in this epic day I too would be!
Yet may I keep some English heart alive
With a poet’s pleasure in all English things--
Good-fellowship and kindliness still thrive
In English soil; the dusk is full of wings;
And by the river long reeds grow; and still
A little house sits brooding on the hill!
TO THE DEAD
Now lays the king his crown and sceptre down,
Her gown of taffeta the lovely bride,
The knight his sword, his cap and bells the clown,
The poet all his verse’s pomp and pride--
The eloquent, the beautiful, the brave
Descend reluctant to the straight, cold grave.
No more shall shine for them the glorious rose,
Or sunsets stain with red and awful gold,
Night shall no more for them her stars disclose,
Or day the grandeur of the Downs unfold,
Or those eyes dull in death watch solemnly
The regal splendour of the Sussex sea.
For them the ringing surges are in vain;
They wake not at the cry of waking bird;
The sun, the holy hill, the fruitful rain,
The winds have called them and they have not stirred;
The woods are widowed of your eager tread,
O dear and desolate and dungeoned dead!
Yet you shall rest awhile in English earth,
And ripen many a pleasant English field
Through the green Summer to the Autumn’s mirth
And flower unconsciously upon the weald--
Until that last angelic word be said,
And the shut graves deliver up their dead!
SPRING, 1916
The grey and wrinkled earth again is young
And lays aside her tattered winter weeds
For April-coloured gauze, and gives her tongue
To jocund songs instead of pedants’ screeds.
Scatter the thin, white ashes of the hearth,
And throw the brilliant diamond casement wide--
Oh, wonder of the lonely garden garth!
Oh, golden glory of the steep hillside
Where flames the living loveliness of God!...
But far, far off, beyond the bloom and bud
A fiercer blossom burgeons from the sod
Bright with the hues of honour and of blood;
And men have plucked the sanguine flower of pain
Where violets might be growing in the rain!
THE RETURN
Beyond these hills where sinks the sun in amber,
Imperial in purple, gold and blood,
I keep the garden walks where roses clamber,
Set in still rows with shrub and flower and bud.
After the clash of all the swords that sunder,
After the headstrong pride of youth that fails,
After the shattered heavens and the thunder
Remain the summer woods and nightingales!
So when the fever has died down that urges
My lips to utterance of whirling words,
Which, blown among the winds and stormy surges,
Skim the wild sea-waves like the wild sea-birds.
So when has ceased the tumult and the riot,
A man may rest his soul a little space,
And seek your solitary eyes in quiet,
And all the gracious calmness of your face.
FULFILMENT
(_An Inscription for a Book of Poems_)
You who will hold these gathered songs,
Made, darling, long before we met,
Must keep the prophecy which belongs
To those dear eyes, so strangely set
With peace and laughter, where fulfils
The rapture of my alien hills.
Unknown, unknown you softly trod
Among my fruitful silences,
The last and splendid gift of God.
The quest of all my Odysseys,
The meaning of those quiet lands
Where I found comfort at your hands.
And when the yellowing woods awake,
And small birds’ twittered loves are told,
When streams run silver, and there break
The crocuses to tender gold,
When quick light winds shall stir my hair,
Some part of you will wander there.
PROPHECY
My eyes look out across the dim grey wold,
The grey sky and the grey druidic trees,
Knowing they keep inviolate the gold
Memories of summer and the prophecies
That lie imprisoned in the buried seeds
Of all the lyric gaiety of Spring....
The sun shall ride again his flaming steeds;
The dragon-fly dance past on diamond wing;
The earth distil to music; and the rose
Flaunt her impassioned loveliness and be
A symbol of the singing hour that blows
The tall ship and my gladness home to me--
When I shall cry: Awake, my heart, awake,
And deck yourself in beauty for her sake!
THE SINGER TO HIS LADY
If any song I sing for you should be
But made to please a poet’s vanity,
A richly jewelled and an empty cup
In which no hallowed wine is offered up,
A thing of chosen rhyme and cunning phrase,
Fashioned that it may bring its maker praise;
If love in me grow only soft and sweet,
Remembering not with what worn and weary feet
It journeyed to your fields of golden grain,
The quiet orchards folded in the rain,
The twilight gardens and the morning birds;
If love remembers not and brings you words,
Words as your thanks; if in an idle hour
It breaks its sword and plays the troubadour--
Then may high God, the Universal Lord,
Break me, as I false knight have broken my sword,
If I who have touched your hands should bring eclipse
To love’s nobility with lying lips,
Having seen more terrible than gleaming spears
Your gentleness, your sorrow and your tears!
CERTAINTIES
Across the fields of unforgotten days
I see the gorgeous pearl-white morning burst
Through her fine gauze of dreamy summer haze
Beyond the rolling flats of Staplehurst,
To bless the hours with songs of nesting birds,
And the wild hedge rose and the apple tree,
And laughter and the ring of friendly words,
And the noon’s pageant moving languidly.
I walk again with boys now grown to men,
And see far off with reminiscent eyes,
How in the tangled woods of Horsmonden
The mighty sun, a blood-red dragon, dies....
Some things there are as rooted as the grass
In a man’s mind--and these shall never pass.
FEAR
Tread softly; we are on enchanted ground:
One touch and every hidden thing lies bare,
The deep sea sundered, suddenly unbound
The awful thunders instinct in the air!
Oh, these we know; but what if we should break
A secret spell as easily as glass,
And stumble on their sleeping wrath and wake
The armies and the million blades of grass?
And find more dread than whirlwinds round our head,
The sweep of sparrows’ fierce, avenging wings,
The anger of wild roses burning red,
The terrible hate of earth’s most helpless things?
CHARITY
Who think of Charity as milky-eyed
Know not of God’s great handmaid’s terrible name,
Who comes in garments by the rainbow dyed,
And crowned and winged and charioted with flame.
For Truth and Justice ride abroad with her,
And Honour’s trumpets peal before her face:
The high archangels stand and minister
When she doth sit within her holy place.