them to begin you can notice how pale and white the corn is in the
summer twilight: no wonder with all this whooping-cough about. And the
motor-cycles: notice how all these races have at least a hundred
entries: there is never a single cycle going. And why are there no birds
coming back to roost? Where is the lark? I haven’t heard him all to-day.
He must have got whooping-cough as well, or be staying at home through
fear of the cow. I think it will rain to-morrow, but there have been no
swallows circling low, stroking their breasts on the full ears of corn.
Anyhow, it is night now, but the circus does not close till twelve.
Look! there is the first of them! The fireworks are beginning. Red
flares shooting up high into the night, or skimming low over the ground,
like the swallows that are not: and rockets bursting into stars. See how
they illumine that patch of ground a mile in front. See it, it is deadly
pale in their searching light: ghastly, I think, and featureless except
for two big lines of eyebrows ashy white, parallel along it, raised a
little from its surface. Eyebrows. Where are the eyes? Hush, there are
no eyes. What those shooting flares illumine is a mole. A long thin
mole. Burrowing by day, and shoving a timorous enquiring snout above the
ground by night. Look, did you see it? No, you cannot see it from here.
But were you a good deal nearer, you would see behind that snout a long
and endless row of sharp shining teeth. The rockets catch the light from
these teeth and the teeth glitter: they are silently removed from the
poison-spitting gums of the mole. For the mole’s gums spit fire and,
they say, send something more concrete than fire darting into the
night. Even when its teeth are off. But you cannot see all this from
here: you can only see the rockets and then for a moment the pale ground
beneath. But it is quite dark now.
And now for the fun of the fair! You will hear soon the riding-master
crack his whip--why, there it is. Listen, a thousand whips are cracking,
whipping the horses round the ring. At last! The fun of the circus is
begun. For the motor-cycle team race has started off again: and the
whips are cracking all: and the waresman starts again, beating his loud
tin tray to attract the customers: and the cows in the cattle-show start
coughing, coughing: and the firework display is at its best: and the
circus specials come one after another bearing the merry makers back to
town, all to the inevitable crash, the inevitable accident. It can’t
last long: these accidents are so frequent, they’ll all get soon killed
off, I hope. Yes, it is diminishing. The train service is cancelled (and
time too): the cows have stopped coughing: and the cycle race is done.
Only the kids who have bought new whips at the fair continue to crack
them: and unused rockets that lie about the ground are still sent up
occasionally. But now the children are being driven off to bed: only an
occasional whip-crack now (perhaps the child is now the sufferer): and
the tired showmen going over the ground pick up the rocket-sticks and
dead flares. At least I suppose this is what must be happening: for
occasionally they still find one that has not gone off and send it up
out of mere perversity. Else what silence!
It must be midnight now. Yes, it is midnight. But before you go to bed,
bend down, put your ear against the ground. What do you hear? “I hear an
endless tapping and a tramping to and fro: both are muffled: but they
come from everywhere. Tap, tap, tap: pick, pick, pick: tra-mp, tra-mp,
tra-mp.” So you see the circus-goers are not all gone to sleep. There is
noise coming from the womb of earth, noise of men who tap and mine and
dig and pass to and fro on their watch. What you have seen is the foam
and froth of war: but underground is labour and throbbing and long
watch. Which will one day bear their fruit. They will set the circus on
fire. Then what pandemonium! Let us hope it will not be to-morrow!
_15 July 1915_
EARLIER POEMS
XXXII
A CALL TO ACTION
I
A thousand years have passed away,
Cast back your glances on the scene,
Compare this England of to-day
With England as she once has been.
Fast beat the pulse of living then:
The hum of movement, throb of war,
The rushing mighty sound of men
Reverberated loud and far.
They girt their loins up and they trod
The path of danger, rough and high;
For Action, Action was their god,
“Be up and doing” was their cry.
A thousand years have passed away;
The sands of life are running low;
The world is sleeping out her day;
The day is dying--be it so.
A thousand years have passed amain;
The sands of life are running thin;
Thought is our leader--Thought is vain;
Speech is our goddess--Speech is sin.
II
It needs no thought to understand,
No speech to tell, nor sight to see
That there has come upon our land
The curse of Inactivity.
We do not see the vital point
That ’tis the eighth, most deadly, sin
To wail, “The world is out of joint”--
And not attempt to put it in.
We see the swollen stream of crime
Flow hourly past us, thick and wide;
We gaze with interest for a time,
And pass by on the other side.
We see the tide of human sin
Rush roaring past our very door,
And scarcely one man plunges in
To drag the drowning to the shore.
We, dull and dreamy, stand and blink,
Forgetting glory, strength and pride,
Half--listless watchers on the brink,
Half--ruined victims of the tide.
III
We question, answer, make defence,
We sneer, we scoff, we criticize,
We wail and moan our decadence,
Enquire, investigate, surmise;
We preach and prattle, peer and pry
And fit together two and two:
We ponder, argue, shout, swear, lie--
We will not, for we cannot, DO.
Pale puny soldiers of the pen,
Absorbed in this your inky strife,
Act as of old, when men were men
England herself and life yet life.
_October 1912_
XXXIII
RAIN
When the rain is coming down,
And all Court is still and bare,
And the leaves fall wrinkled, brown,
Through the kindly winter air,
And in tattered flannels I
‘Sweat’ beneath a tearful sky,
And the sky is dim and grey,
And the rain is coming down,
And I wander far away
From the little red-capped town:
There is something in the rain
That would bid me to remain:
There is something in the wind
That would whisper, “Leave behind
All this land of time and rules,
Land of bells and early schools.
Latin, Greek and College food
Do you precious little good.
Leave them: if you would be free
Follow, follow, after me!”
When I reach ‘Four Miler’s’ height,
And I look abroad again
On the skies of dirty white
And the drifting veil of rain,
And the bunch of scattered hedge
Dimly swaying on the edge,
And the endless stretch of downs
Clad in green and silver gowns;
There is something in their dress
Of bleak barren ugliness,
That would whisper, “You have read
Of a land of light and glory:
But believe not what is said.
’Tis a kingdom bleak and hoary,
Where the winds and tempests call
And the rain sweeps over all.
Heed not what the preachers say
Of a good land far away.
Here’s a better land and kind
And it is not far to find.”
Therefore, when we rise and sing
Of a distant land, so fine,
Where the bells for ever ring,
And the suns for ever shine:
Singing loud and singing grand,
Of a happy far-off land,
O! I smile to hear the song,
For I know that they are wrong,
That the happy land and gay
Is not very far away,
And that I can get there soon
Any rainy afternoon.
And when summer comes again,
And the downs are dimpling green,
And the air is free from rain,
And the clouds no longer seen:
Then I know that they have gone
To find a new camp further on,
Where there is no shining sun
To throw light on what is done,
Where the summer can’t intrude
On the fort where winter stood:
--Only blown and drenching grasses,
Only rain that never passes,
Moving mists and sweeping wind,
And I follow them behind!
_October 1912_
XXXIV
A TALE OF TWO CAREERS
I SUCCESS
He does not dress as other men,
His ‘kish’ is loud and gay,
His ‘side’ is as the ‘side’ of ten
Because his ‘barnes’ are grey.
His head has swollen to a size
Beyond the proper size for heads,
He metaphorically buys
The ground on which he treads.
Before his face of haughty grace
The ordinary mortal cowers:
A ‘forty-cap’ has put the chap
Into another world from ours.
The funny little world that lies
’Twixt High Street and the Mound
Is just a swarm of buzzing flies
That aimlessly go round:
If one is stronger in the limb
Or better able to work hard,
It’s quite amusing to watch him
Ascending heavenward.
But if one cannot work or play
(Who loves the better part too well),
It’s really sad to see the lad
Retained compulsorily in hell.
II FAILURE
We are the wasters, who have no
Hope in this world here, neither fame,
Because we cannot collar low
Nor write a strange dead tongue the same
As strange dead men did long ago.
We are the weary, who begin
The race with joy, but early fail,
Because we do not care to win
A race that goes not to the frail
And humble: only the proud come in.
We are the shadow-forms, who pass
Unheeded hence from work and play.
We are to-day, but like the grass
That to-day is, we pass away;
And no one stops to say ‘Alas!’
Though we have little, all we have
We give our School. And no return
We can expect for what we gave;
No joys; only a summons stern,
“Depart, for others entrance crave!”
As soon as she can clearly prove
That from us is no hope of gain,
Because we only bring her love
And cannot bring her strength or brain.
She tells us, “Go: it is enough.”
She turns us out at seventeen,
We may not know her any more,
And all our life with her has been
A life of seeing others score,
While we sink lower and are mean.
We have seen others reap success
Full-measure. None has come to us.
Our life has been one failure. Yes,
But does not God prefer it thus?
God does not also praise success.
And for each failure that we meet,
And for each place we drop behind,
Each toil that holds our aching feet,
Each star we seek and never find,
God, knowing, gives us comfort meet.
The School we care for has not cared
To cherish nor keep our names to be
Memorials. God hath prepared
Some better thing for us, for we
His hopes have known, His failures shared.
_November 1912_
XXXV
PEACE
There is silence in the evening when the long days cease,
And a million men are praying for an ultimate release
From strife and sweat and sorrow--they are praying for peace.
But God is marching on.
Peace for a people that is striving to be free!
Peace for the children of the wild wet sea!
Peace for the seekers of the promised land--do we
Want peace when God has none?
We pray for rest and beauty that we know we cannot earn,
And ever are we asking for a honey-sweet return;
But God will make it bitter, make it bitter, till we learn
That with tears the race is run.
And did not Jesus perish to bring to men, not peace,
But a sword, a sword for battle and a sword that should not cease?
Two thousand years have passed us. Do we still want peace
Where the sword of Christ has shone?
Yes, Christ perished to present us with a sword,
That strife should be our portion and more strife our reward,
For toil and tribulation and the glory of the Lord
And the sword of Christ are one.
If you want to know the beauty of the thing called rest,
Go, get it from the poets, who will tell you it is best
(And their words are sweet as honey) to lie flat upon your chest
And sleep till life is gone.
I know that there is beauty where the low streams run,
And the weeping of the willows and the big sunk sun,
But I know my work is doing and it never shall be done,
Though I march for ages on.
Wild is the tumult of the long grey street,
O, is it never silent from the tramping of their feet?
Here, Jesus, is Thy triumph, and here the world’s defeat
For from here all peace has gone.
There’s a stranger thing than beauty in the ceaseless city’s breast,
In the throbbing of its fever--and the wind is in the west,
And the rain is driving forward where there is no rest,
For the Lord is marching on.
_December 1912_
XXXVI
THE RIVER
He watched the river running black
Beneath the blacker sky;
It did not pause upon its track
Of silent instancy.
It did not hasten, nor was slack,
But still went gliding by.
It was so black. There was no wind
Its patience to defy.
It was not that the man had sinned,
Or that he wished to die.
Only the wide and silent tide
Went slowly sweeping by.
The mass of blackness moving down
Filled full of dreams the eye;
The lights of all the lighted town
Upon its breast did lie.
The tall black trees were upside down
In the river’s phantasy.
He had an envy for its black
Inscrutability;
He felt impatiently the lack
Of that great law whereby
The river never travels back
But still goes gliding by;
But still goes gliding by, nor clings
To passing things that die,
Nor shows the secrets that it brings
From its strange source on high.
And he felt “We are two living things
And the weaker one is I.”
He saw the town, that living stack
Piled up against the sky.
He saw the river running black
On, on and on: O, why
Could he not move along his track
With such consistency?
He had a yearning for the strength
That comes of unity:
The union of one soul at length
With its twin-soul to lie;
To be a part of one great strength
That moves and cannot die.
* * * * *
He watched the river running black
Beneath the blacker sky.
He pulled his coat about his back,
He did not strive nor cry.
He put his foot upon the track
That still went gliding by
The thing that never travels back
Received him silently.
And there was left no shred, no wrack
To show the reason why:
Only the river running black
Beneath the blacker sky.
_February 1913_
XXXVII
THE SEEKERS
The gates are open on the road
That leads to beauty and to God.
Perhaps the gates are not so fair,
Nor quite so bright as once they were,
When God Himself on earth did stand
And gave to Abraham His hand
And led him to a better land.
For lo! the unclean walk therein,
And those that have been soiled with sin.
The publican and harlot pass
Along: they do not stain its grass.
In it the needy has his share,
In it the foolish do not err.
Yes, spurned and fool and sinner stray
Along the highway and the way.
And what if all its ways are trod
By those whom sin brings near to God?
This journey soon will make them clean:
Their faith is greater than their sin.
For still they travel slowly by
Beneath the promise of the sky,
Scorned and rejected utterly;
Unhonoured; things of little worth
Upon the highroads of this earth;
Afflicted, destitute and weak:
Nor find the beauty that they seek,
The God they set their trust upon:
--Yet still they march rejoicing on.
_March 1913_
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS IN PROSE
I
RICHARD JEFFERIES (p. 27)
I am sweatily struggling to the end of _Faust II_, where Goethe’s just
showing off his knowledge. I am also reading a very interesting book on
Goethe and Schiller; very adoring it is, but it lets out quite
unconsciously the terrible dryness of their entirely intellectual
friendship and (Goethe’s at least) entirely intellectual life. If Goethe
really died saying “more light,” it was very silly of him: what _he_
wanted was more warmth. G. and S. apparently made friends, on their own
confession, merely because their ideas and artistic ideals were the
same, which fact ought to be the very first to make them bore one
another.
All this is leading to the following conclusion. The Germans can act
Shakespeare, have good beer and poetry, but their prose is cobwebby
stuff. Hence I want to read some good prose again. Also it is summer.
And for a year or two I had always laid up “The Pageant of Summer” as a
treat for a hot July. In spite of all former vows of celibacy in the
way of English, now’s the time. So, unless the cost of book-postage here
is ruinous, could you send me a small volume of Essays by Richard
Jefferies called _The Life of the Fields_, the first essay in the series
being the Pageant of Summer? No particular hurry, but I should be
amazingly grateful if you’ll send it (it’s quite a little book),
especially as I presume the pageant of summer takes place in that part
of the country where I should be now had----had a stronger will than
you. In the midst of my setting up and smashing of deities--Masefield,
Hardy, Goethe--I always fall back on Richard Jefferies wandering about
in the background. I have at least the tie of locality with him. (_July
1914._)
* * * * *
I’ve given up German prose altogether. It’s like a stale cake compounded
of foreign elements. So I have laid in a huge store of Richard Jefferies
for the rest of July, and read him none the less voraciously because we
are countrymen. (I know it’s wrong of me, but I count myself as
Wiltshire....) When I die (in sixty years) I am going to leave all my
presumably enormous fortune to Marlborough on condition that a thorough
knowledge of Richard Jefferies is ensured by the teaching there. I think
it is only right considering we are bred upon the self-same hill. It
would also encourage Naturalists and discourage cricketers....
But, in any case. I’m not reading so much German as I did ought to. I
dabble in their modern poetry, which is mostly of the morbidly religious
kind. The language is massively beautiful, the thought is rich and
sleek, the air that of the inside of a church. Magnificent artists they
are, with no inspiration, who take religion up as a very responsive
subject for art, and mould it in their hands like sticky putty. There
are magnificent parts in it, but you can imagine what a relief it was to
get back to Jefferies and Liddington Castle. (_July 1914._)
II
IBSEN (pp. 50-52)
Ibsen’s last, _John Gabriel Borkman_, is a wonderfully fine play, far
better than any others by Ibsen that I have read or seen, but I can
imagine it would lose a good deal in an English translation. The acting
of the two middle-aged sisters who are the protagonists was marvellous.
The men were a good deal more difficult to hear, but also very striking.
Next to the fineness of the play (which has far more poetry in it than
any others of his I’ve read, though of course there’s a bank in the
background, as there always seems to be in Ibsen)--the apathy of the
very crowded house struck me most. There was very little clapping at the
end at the acts: at the end of the play none, which was just as well
because one of them was dead and would have had to jump up again. So
altogether I am very much struck by my first German theatre, though the
fineness of the play may have much to do with it. It was just a little
spoilt by the last Act being in a pine forest on a hill with sugar that
was meant to look like snow. This rather took away from the effect of
the scene, which in the German is one of the finest things I have ever
heard, possessing throughout a wonderful rhythm which may or may not
exist in the original. What a beautiful language it can be! (_13
February 1914._)
* * * * *
I have been reading many criticisms of _John Gabriel Borkman_, and it
strikes me more and more that it is the most remarkable play I have ever
read. It is head and shoulders above the others of Ibsen’s I know: a
much broader affair. John Gabriel Borkman is a tremendous character. His
great desire, which led him to overstep the law for one moment, and of
course he was caught and got eight years, was “Menschenglück zu
schaffen.” One moment Ibsen lets you see one side of his character (the
side he himself saw) and you see the Perfect Altruist: the next moment
the other side is turned, and you see the Complete Egoist. The play all
takes place in the last three hours of J. G. B.’s life, and in these
three hours his real love, whom he had rejected for business reasons
and married her twin-sister, shows him for the first time the Egoist
that masqueraded all its life as Altruist. The technique is perfect and
it bristles with minor problems. It is absolutely fair, for if J. G. B.
had sacrificed his ideals and married the right twin, he would not have
been deserted after his disgrace. And the way that during the three
hours the whole past history of the man comes out is marvellous. The
brief dialogue between the sisters which closes the piece is fine, and
suddenly throws a new light on the problem of how the tragedy could have
been evaded, when you thought all that could be said had been said. (_20
February 1914._)
* * * * *
I feel that this visit to Schwerin will spoil me for the theatre for the
rest of my life. I have never ceased to see _John Gabriel Borkman_
mentally since my second visit to it (when the acting was even liner
than before and struck me as a perfect presentation of a perfect play).
My only regret was that the whole family wasn’t there as well. I should
so like to talk it over with you, and the way that at the very end of
his last play Ibsen sums up the object against which all his battle was
directed: “Es war viel mehr die Kälte die ihn tötete.” “Die Kälte, sagst
du, die Kälte! die hat ihn schon längst getötet.”... “Ja, die
Herzenskälte.” (_10 April 1914._)
* * * * *
[The play] at the Königliches Schauspielhaus [Berlin] was Ibsen’s _Peer
Gynt_ with Grieg’s incidental music--the Northern Faust, as it is
called: though the mixture of allegory and reality is not carried off so
successfully as in the Southern Faust. Peer Gynt has the advantage of
being a far more human and amiable creature, and not a cold fish like
Faust. I suppose that difference is also to be found in the characters
of the respective authors. I always wanted to know why Faust had no
relations to make demands on him. Peer Gynt is a charmingly light piece,
with an irresistible mixture of fantastical poetry and a very racy
humour. The scene where Peer returns to his blind and dying mother and,
like a practical fellow, instead of sentimentalizing, sits himself on
the end of her bed, persuades her it is a chariot and rides her up to
heaven, describing the scenes on the way, the surliness of St Peter at
the gate, the appearance of God the Father, who “put Peter quite in the
shade” and decided to let mother Aasa in, was delightful. The acting was
of course perfect. (_5 June 1914._)
III
THE ODYSSEY (p. 73)
The _Odyssey_ is a great joy when once you can read it in big chunks and
not a hundred lines at a time, being [forced] to note all the silly
grammatical strangenesses. I could not read it in better surroundings
for the whole tone of the book is so thoroughly German and domestic. A
friend of sorts of the ----s died lately; and when the Frau attempted
to break the news to Karl at table, he immediately said “Don’t tell me
anything sad while I’m eating.” That very afternoon I came across
someone in the _Odyssey_ who made, under the same circumstances,
precisely the same remark[1]. In the _Odyssey_ and in Schwerin alike
they are perfectly unaffected about their devotion to good food. In both
too I find the double patriotism which suffers not a bit from its
duplicity--in the _Odyssey_ to their little Ithaca as well as to Achaea
as a whole; here equally to the Kaiser and the pug-nosed Grand Duke. In
both is the habit of longwinded anecdotage in the same rambling
irrelevant way, and the quite unquenchable hospitality. And the Helen of
the _Odyssey_ bustling about a footstool for Telemachus or showing off
her new presents (she had just returned from a jaunt to Egypt)--a
washing-tub, and a work-basket that ran on wheels (think!)--is the
perfect German Hausfrau. (_27 March 1914._)
* * * * *