Musing visions by that woman raised,
Watched that land she came from, towned with ruins
Send mile-long files of laden camels out
With grain to hostile cities,--
Knew too the blue entrancing plain of waters
Teemed with fresh shoals, buoyed up indifferently,
Fisher--trader--pirate bark,--
Even the straight thought whispered at his ear,
"Thy lips might join with hers as with some cousin's,
Here, now, at noon,
Hugging her bereavéd sadness close,
And still, to-night, with equal satisfaction,
Thy mother's blind contentment with her son."
While half-seduced, half-chafed, his mind was shaken
As with conflicting gusts a choppy sea,
His eyes, still greedy of their visions,
Fastened a swarthy town enisled in wheat,
And to the ebon threshold of each house,
Conjured forth the man that each was planned for:
Great creatures smiling with his father's smile,
Muscular, wealthy and self-satisfied,
Wearing loud-coloured raiment, earrings, chains,
Armlet and buckle, all of clanking gold.
His spirit drank from theirs great draughts of pride
And read their minds more clearly than his own;
All, with one counsel like a chorus, dinned
His soul that then was mine,
With truths well-proved in action.
"Love is chaos,
For order's sake
Whatever must be, should be,"
Roared those bulls of Bashan.
Then their proud chant argued,
"How should this woman know
Her little lad again,
Who either now is bones
Under the fertile field,
Or well nigh a grown man?
Say they should cross at market
Both slaves would pass on, not a start the wiser.
What is she then to him
Or he to her
After these years?
To drag a life that might have been but is not
With toil of mind and heart,
Through dreary year on year,
Neglecting for its sake the life that is,
Spells folly and ingratitude to those
Who treat their slaves well.
Thy father's household and thyself should be
More to her now than those who may be dead,
The place she lives in dearer
Than any unattainable far land
Where she is more forgotten than old dreams.
Why make the day of evil worse
By dwelling on it after it has past?
Near things alone are real,
Now is the whole of time:
Places beyond the horizon are but pictures;
Memory cheats the eye with an illusion!"
"Your thoughts are sound, bold builders,
I am my father's son.
Behold this home-shore, these our hills, this bay,
And this our slave!--
Up, work, look sharp about it!"
Bounding a foot and fast retiring from her,
I stoop for stones strewn thick about the sand,
Aim them, fling them,
And, as my idle arm resumes the knack,
Score a hit and laugh
To see her stumble hurt, behind the pine trunks.
"Unless you work, I throw again,
To it and steady at it.
Mark me, drab, we Camilli
Mean what we say."
Stone after stone still flies,
But aimed to knock chips from the pine-boles now;
For she is busy gathering sticks, increasing
Her distance as she may. The noon is sultry,
Heated and clammy, I,
Towards the live waves turning, slip my tunic,
Then run in naked.
Cooled and soothed by swimming,
Both mind and heart from their late tumult tuned
To placid acquiescent health,
I float, suspended in the limpid water,
Passive, rhythmically governed;
So tranced worlds travel the dark shoreless ether.
"Where should this stream of pictures tend?"
No, Bottomley, you will not ask;
To you I am quite free to send
The unexpected, unexplained,
You will not take me thus to task.
So they be painted well, they live;
If ill, they yet may cling to fame
Associated with your name.
In which case you, and not I, give
That we are both contented with.
* * * * *
THOMAS MOULT
DOWN HERE THE HAWTHORN
Down here the hawthorn....
And a stir of wings,
Spring-lit wings that wake
Sudden tumult in the brake,
Tumult of blossom tide, tumult of foaming mist
Where the bright bird's tumultuous feathers kissed.
White mists are blinding me,
White mist of hedgerow, white mist of wings.
Down here the hawthorn
And a stir of wings....
Softly swishing, swift with spray
All along the green laneway
Dewdimmed, sunwashed, windsweet and winter-free
They flash upon the light,
They swing across the sight,
I cannot see, I cannot see!...
Down here the flowering hawthorn flings
Sleet of petals, petalled shells
Spread the coloured air that sings
Magic and a myriad spells
Spun by my count of Springs.
Down here the hawthorn....
And the flower-foam stirred
By a Spring-lit bird.
White hawthorn mist is blinding me.
I lower my gaze, and on this old
Brown bridle road
Crusted with golden moss and mould
The hedgerow flings
Lush carpetings,
Blossom woven carpetings light lain
Under the farmer's lumbering load;
And, floating past the spent March wrack,
The footstep trail, the traveller's track.
Down here the hawthorn....
White mists are blinding me,
White mists that rime the fresh green bank
Where fernleaf-fall
And sorrel tall
Upwaving, rank on rank,
Shall flush the bed whereon the windflowers sank.
I turn these Spring-bewildered eyes of mine,
I seek above the surf of hedgerow line
Where peeping branches reach, and reaching twine
Faint cherry or plum or eglantine.
But with pretence of whisperings
The year's young mischief-wind shall take
By storm these shy striplings,
And soon or later shake
Their slender limbs, and make
Free with their clinging may--
Strip from them in a single boisterous day
Their first and last vesture of pale bloom spray.
So, as to meet such lack
In bush or brack,
The kindly hedgerows make
Sure of a Springtime for these frailer things,
Shedding on each the lavish creamthorn flake.
Down here the hawthorn....
On all the green leaf-clusters round me clings
Thickly a spray of gentle blossomings
Everywhere as with many bells
The young year with white magic swells.
The morning rings.
White mist is blinding me,
I cannot see, I cannot see!
Blind grows the coloured air that sings
The marvel of a myriad spells
Spun by my count of Springs.
Sleet of petals, petalled shells
Falling with sudden poignancy
(As the sleet stings)
Upon the lightheart-hope which only clear sight knows.
And slowly drifts,
Lingering among the snows
Nor, though the snow lifts,
Ever goes
The wistful heartache as the fresh Spring flows
With slipping sureness to the time of the rose, and the withered rose.
Down here the hawthorn....
And heaping blossom stirred
By a joy-swift bird.
White mists are blinding me,
White mist of hedgerow, white mist of wings.
The bird's flight flings
Deep carpetings
Over the wrack
Of my life's track.
Down here the hawthorn....
The air of coloured years is blurred
By the Spring, by a bird.
White mists are blinding me,
White mists on the years to be.
I cannot see, I cannot see....
INVOCATION
Hurl down, harsh hills, your bitterness
Of wind and storm.
Stem ye the drift of herded men
With your uncouthness
So, tasting of your power, they press
Back shrinking where upon their warm
Safe ways of smoothness
They feed their various lusts again.
Guard ye, wild hills, with scar and whip
Your outlawry
Lest alien-hearted pigmies tame
Your trackless boulders,
And with their unclean cunning slip
The leash of civilry
Fast round your shoulders.
O keep ye from that shame.
Or they shall surely come, black hordes
Swarming as lice
With their obscenities and greed
Across your fastness,
Even your peaks that swing white swords,
Rent, splintered ice
Into the vastness
Of skies where fanged winds feed.
Hurl down, harsh hills, your bitterness,
Guard ye with flail
Of shattering wind and thong of sleet
Your pride uplifting
To the impaled stars; be pitiless
Before this unquiet trail
Of man-herds drifting
Against your stone still feet.
* * * * *
ROBERT NICHOLS
PÆAN
ON SEEING A PORTRAIT OF BLAKE.
Something moves in his dust,
Flame sleeps beneath the crust;
O whence had he those eyes
Lit with celestial surprise?
From what world blew that gust?
Are we near to Paradise?
Gather a chaplet of five stars
And the opalescent hue
Of the aureole brightness cast--
Red, hardly red, and blue, scarce blue,--
Round th' immaculate frosty moon,
Splintering light in glacial spars,
When November's loudening blast
Sweeps heaven's floor till burnished
More crystal than at August noon,
So we fit radiance may cast
Before his feet, around his head.
How visits he an earthly place,
Wanders among a mortal race?
How were his footsteps led
That still about his face
Lingers a ghostly trace
Of a secret influence shed
By a Hand the world denies,
In a land her most son flies,
As a gift upon him thrust
For an end he knoweth not,
Yet will shine because he must,
Shine and sing because he must
Reap a wrong he soweth not
Of contempt anger and distrust
For a world which boweth not
To the Flame which binds our dust.
Go net the moon, go snare the sun,
Set them upon his either hand!
Beneath his heels Leviathan
Roll your thick coils! His head be spanned
By rainbows tripled! Set a gem
At the Cross-scabbard of his sword
Whiter than lambwool or lilystem!
Place on his brow the diadem
Given the warrior of the Lord,
The crown-turrets of Jerusalem!
* * * * *
EDEN PHILPOTTS
THE FALL
I'll sing a song of kings and queens
And falling leaves and flying rain,
With Time to mow, and Fate who gleans
Their good and evil, boon and bane.
I'll sing a song of leaves and rains
And flying queens and falling kings.
Yet doubt not reason still remains
Snug hidden at the core of things.
For every year an autumn brings
To round the root and fat the sheaves
And haply garner queens and kings
With falling rain and flying leaves.
The rain is salt with tears of queens
The leaves are red with blood of kings;
Unknowing what the mystery means
We puzzle at these splendid things.
For why great kings and rains should fall,
And wherefore leaves and queens should fly,
Or such rare wonders be at all,
You cannot tell; no more can I.
Yet this we know: new leaves and rain
Anon shall crown the vernal scene,
But dust of dynasts not again
Blows up into a king or queen.
GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING.
Turn down a glass afore his place;
Draw up the dog-eared chair;
For though we shall not see his face,
I think he will be here
Our wedding day to share.
Turn up the glass where she would be
And put a red rose there.
Her quick, grey eyes we cannot see,
But weren't they everywhere,
And shall not they be here?
Though them old blids are in the grave
And their good light's gone out,
We'd sooner their kind ghosties have
Than all the living rout
As will be there no doubt.
For some are dead as cannot die.
Some flown as cannot flee.
You still do fancy 'em near by.
'Tis so with him and she,
At any rate to we.
* * * * *
ARTHUR K. SABIN
FOUR LYRICS
I.
When old Anacreon sang the wine
Which made his utterance divine,
Perchance the eyes he gazed into
Were lucent as the sun-touched dew--
Brighter, perchance, than yours; and yet
Eyes like yours, smoulderingly lit
With the calm passion of the spirit.
No young Greek maid did e'er inherit....
Ah! twenty years are not enough
To mould to such celestial stuff
A soul, my dear, as yours is moulded,
Wherein all dreams of life lie folded,
And through whose doors a friend may slip
Into serene companionship.
II.
She came, as one who in the light
Of many a sunset hour had grown
Half sad, half glad, because the night
So soon about her would be thrown.
With melancholy ages old,
And laughter fragrant as the Spring,
She came, and in her low voice told
Tales of rich joy and sorrowing.
She led me to her garden, fair
With flowers I love and whispering trees,
And to her arbour sheltered there
In peace, all redolent of peace.
With rapt delight of halting speech,
And commune, such as those have felt
Whose minds move silent each by each.
Whose hopes are kindred hopes, we dwelt.
But though with love and dreams of gold
She wove rare charms about that nest,
My heart lay aching still, and cold:
I could not rest, I could not rest.
III.
The birds are quiet on the boughs,
And quiet are my slumbering trees....
O come a short while to my house
And share these evening silences.
Come! for the sunset's weary smile
Has faded; night is failing deep:
And we will rest a little while
And talk together ere we sleep.
IV.
It may be that in future years,
When life serenely yields its best
Of steadfast joy and fleeting tears,
And, blessing, you move on, thrice blest,--
Amid glad tasks of love and home,
And fond caresses every day,
A softened thought of me shall come
And fly to reach me when you pray;
Then I shall tremble where I sit
Unhelped through those gray years to be,
As, like a benediction, it
Shall flood in sweetness over me.
* * * * *
MARGARET SACKVILLE
THE RETURN
Last night, within our little town
The Dead came marching through;
In a long line, like living men,
Just as they used to do.
Only, so long a line it seemed
You'd think the Judgment Day
Had dawned, to see them slowly pass,
With faces turned one way.
They walked no longer foe and foe
But brother bound to brother;
Poor men, common men they walked
Friendly to one another.
Just as in life they might have done
Who stabbed and slew instead....
So quietly and evenly they walked
These million gentle dead.
TO----
I.
1
Was it for you the aching past alone
Lived, that on you might fall the shadow of it?
For you, for you kings climbed a ravished throne,
And all these menacing, quenched fires were lit.
Wars that have left no more than a grey trace,
Where are they? Scattered foam, blown dust--ah, me!
How have they found their way into your face?
The new day is not yours, you only see
A battle raging in a desert place,
And blood-stained warriors seeking Sanctuary.
2
I cannot love you in the street; I met
You in the street once and turned my head away,
But I will meet you where the red sunset
With forlorn fire flashes the leaping spray.
We are too old, too old for all this noise,
No wine of such new vintage shall control
Us who have known, what passionate joys
Once in some far, dark City of the Soul.
We are kings still and have, as kings, the choice
To spurn the proffered half and claim the whole.
3
Let us find out a new way; for it is plain
That all these old, worn, trodden roads suffice
Only those who will return again
Seeking shelter in their homes from Paradise.
Oh! let us find some solitary, green
Forgotten garden, where the sunrays fall
All blind and blurred and indistinct between
Cypresses lofty as earth's boundary wall;
Beneath whose shade shall glimmer forth half seen
Your face through the soft darkness when I call.
II.
1
If one, with visionary pen, should write
The love which might be ours, how would he call
These strange, perplexing fires veiled servants light
Down the dark vistas of our empty hall?
That love which might be ours, how would he name
That love? No bitter leaving of the brine,
No white or fading blossom twined like flame
Round any brow, Christian or Erycine,
Not all those loves blown to a windy fame
Shall find their counterpart in yours and mine.
2
Not Tristram, not Isolde, wild shades which dip
Their pinions like blown gulls in a waste sea,
Nor those mute lovers, who still, lip on lip,
Float on for ever, though they have ceased to be,
Not any of those who loved once;--far apart
We wander; the years have made us weak, we fail
To rush together with a single heart,
And we shall meet at last, only as pale
Autumnal mists no sun's shaft cleaves apart
When all the winds are still and no ships sail.
III.
1
Yet we shall meet--it may be we shall meet
And count our days up-gathered, one by one,
Like poppies plucked among the burnished wheat,
Beneath the red gaze of the August sun;
And all our scattered dreams shall flutter home
At last. Oh! silent, age-long wandering
What since your setting forth have ye become?
What gift from those far waters do ye bring?--
_A splash of rain, salt taste of frozen foam,
Green sea-weed trailing from a broken wing_.
2
Or we shall find each other--on the brink
Of sleep some day, when the cool evening airs
Blow bubbles round the pool where wood-birds drink;
Or in the common Inn of wayfarers:
Both weary, both beside the wide fireplace
Drowsing, till at some sudden spark up-blown
Shall each awake to find there face to face
You and I very tired and alone;
And lo! your welcome from my eyes shall gaze
And in your eyes there shall I find my own.
3
I will pursue thee down these solitudes
Therefore, and thou shalt yet escape me not.
I will set traps for thee of subtle moods
And wound thee with the arrows of my thought.
In thickest forest ways though thou lie hid,
Or in some autumn vale of Brocelinde,
Or in whatever place of magic forbid,
I will pierce through the woven branches like a wind,
And drag thee from thy hiding-place amid
The secret laughter of the fairy-kind.
4
Oh, triumph still delaying! I must pass
Lonely a long time yet, for I know well
No fugitive fair dream that ever was
Left anywhere traces where her footprints fell.
I, lonely hunter in the woods of sleep.
The hunt is up--away! I ride, I ride
On a white steed, where black-boughed fir-trees keep
Watch and the kindly world is shut outside.
I am afraid, the haunted woods are deep!
I am afraid--afraid! Where dost thou hide?
* * * * *
W. KEAN SEYMOUR
FRUITAGE
For her the proud stars bend, she sees,
As never yet, dim sorceries
Breaking in silver magic wide
On the blue midnight's swirling tide,
With arrowy mist and spearing flame
That out of central beauty came.
The innumerate splendours of the skies
Are thronging in her shining eyes;
Her body is a fount of light
In the plumed garden of the night;
Her lily breasts have known the bliss
Of the cool air's unfaltering kiss.
She is made one with loveliness,
Enfranchised from the world's distress,
Given utterly to joy, a bride
With a bride's hunger satisfied.
Now, though she heavily walk, and know
The sharp premonitory throe
And the life leaping in the gloom
Of her most blessed and chosen womb,
It is as though foot never was
So light upon the glimmering grass.
She is shot through with the stars' light,
Helped by their calm, unwavering might.
In tall, lone-swaying gravity
Stoops to her there the eternal tree
Whose myriad fruitage ripens on
Beneath the light of moon and sun.
IN THE WOOD
Lone shadows move,
The night air stirs;
This hour of dying
Dreams was hers.
In this dusk place
Her throat gleamed white
In glimmering beauty
Of starlight.
Nightingales sang
Exultant bliss;
The snared stars saw us
Sway, and kiss.
Now the bats whirr,
The barn owls hoot,
Her loveliness
Is dust, is mute.
Peace comes not here,
No dream-bird trills:
They haunt her lodging
In the hills.
SIESTA
Bring me some oranges on blue china,
With a jade-and-silver spoon,
And drowse on your silken mats beside me
In the burning noon.
Bring me red wine in cups of crystal,
With melons on chrysoprase,
And place them softly with jewelled fingers
Before my gaze.
Hasten, my dove of scented whisperings,
My lily, my Xacán!
Bring bubbling pipes for the cool shadows,
And my peacock fan.
And bid Isárrib, my chief musician,
Weave quiet songs within,
That my soul in the circles of a great glamour
May float and spin.
And O, you gaudy and whistling parrots
In your high, flowered maze,
Still your harsh, petulant quarrelling
With the mocking jays.
TO ONE WHO EATS LARKS
Ah, my brave Vitellius!
Ah, your tastes are marvellous!
When you eat your singing birds
Do you leave the bones--and words,
The proud music in the throat?...
Not a note, not a note?
Doubtless they were not so pleasant
As the brains of a young pheasant,
Or flamingoes' tongues, whose duty
Never was to utter beauty.
But they sang, but they fluted
And your rasping lies confuted,
And your ugliness laid bare
With a lyric in the air.
So you bought them on a string,
Dangling balls that used to sing,
And you gave them to the cook
With a fat and happy look.
But you ask me why this fuss!
Ah, my brave Vitellius,
I am never sure your stringers
May not string you other singers,
May not tire of lark and wren
And attempt to sell you men.
Please forgive me, but I've made
Certain songs ... and I'm afraid!
IF BEAUTY CAME TO YOU
If Beauty came to you,
Ah, would you know her grace,
And could you in your shadowed prison view
Unscathed her face?
Stepping as noiselessly
As moving moth-wings, so
Might she come suddenly to you or me
And we not know.
Amid these clangs and cries,
Alas, how should we hear
The shy, dim-woven music of her sighs
As she draws near.
Threading through monstrous, black,
Uncharitable hours,
Where the soul shapes its own abhorrèd rack
Of wasted powers?
* * * * *
HORACE SHIPP
PRISON
I.
The dreadful days go up and up, to fall
Through twilight to the sleepless dusk again,
Like tortured flies upon a window pane.
Wingless or broken-winged,
They crawl and crawl ...
Meaningless, striving--nowhere after all,
Till one is tired of heeding.
Tired.
A stain of drab unloveliness the days remain
Unmoving now, save that across the wall,
A patch of sun behind a shadow of bars,
Creeps in a stupor.
Greys,
Grins bloodily,
Falters and dies.
Outside a day may slip
From noon-glow to a miracle of stars
With hours that flush and flood eternity;
Whilst here
The stagnant waters drip ... and drip.
II.
They tell me I have sinned; that long ago
(Weeks--or a cycle of eternity)
This thing of dead desire lived lustily,
Was stirred with passion, and sinned.
It may be so;
As seas or hills may be.
I only know God's world has shrunken,
And that misery,
Shrinking my heart, has closed her walls on me,
Till in the dead, still soul the senses grow
Carious as the ulcer of thought eats deep.
Heavy, the slow lusts pace the barren mind
From end to end.
Barred door and window,
Wall inexorable.
And the horrors creep on padded feet like warders.
Then the blind, pitiful night
When hot tears scald and fall.
III.
Grey day-break and the silence of the cell:
The dull, numb pain of waking,
Stillness ...
Fear clutching oblivion;
And then to hear
The brazen, blasphemous tolling of the bell,
A crash of doors,
Loud-clanging tins,
The swell of brutal voices nearer and more near,
Bursts at the last about you.
Clangour.
Queer delight of movement.
Then ... the door shuts.
Hell darkens about you with the turning key,
The silence burns and sears you like a flame;
It battens as the worm that never dies;
Crawls back from distant noises; palpably
Lurks through the rhythm of the feet of shame,
Watching and watching out of hooded eyes.
THE SIXTH DAY
"And God said 'Let us make man in our image and let him have
dominion'...."
God made you in His image, yet I saw
You stoop and seize a blind mole from the snare.
Blind.
Blind with terror ... Blind
Your teeth gleamed bare behind the taut, white lips.
The trapper's law knows neither hate nor love.
You watched it paw,
Frantic with lust of life, the yielding air
And were amused.
God's Image!
Did you care, pitying one moment, see the swift hands claw
For life and darkness, know and hate your trap?
I saw your knuckles gleam, your hand swing free;
A cry;
The blind face crashed against the wall.
Then death and stillness and----
You grinned.
Mayhap,
Snaring the blind mole of humanity,
God made you in His image after all.
* * * * *
EDITH SITWELL
EVENTAIL
Lovely Semiramis
Closes her slanting eyes:
Dead is she long ago,
From her fan sliding slow
Parrot-bright fire's feathers
Gilded as June weathers,
Plumes like the greenest grass
Twinkle down; as they pass
Through the green glooms in Hell,
Fruits with a tuneful smell--
Grapes like an emerald rain
Where the full moon has lain,
Greengages bright as grass,
Melons as cold as glass
Piled on each gilded booth
Feel their cheeks growing smooth;
Apes in plumed head-dresses
Whence the bright heat hisses,
Nubian faces sly,
Pursing mouth, slanting eye,
Feel the Arabian
Winds floating from that fan:
See how each gilded face
Paler grows, nods apace:
"Oh, the fan's blowing
Cold winds.... It is snowing!"
THE LADY WITH THE SEWING-MACHINE
Across the fields as green as spinach,
Cropped as close as Time to Greenwich,
Stands a high house; if at all,
Spring comes like a Paisley shawl--
Patternings meticulous
And youthfully ridiculous.
In each room the yellow sun
Shakes like a canary, run
On run, roulade, and watery trill--
Yellow, meaningless, and shrill.
Face as white as any clock's,
Cased in parsley-dark curled locks--
All day long you sit and sew,
Stitch life down for fear it grow,
Stitch life down for fear we guess
At the hidden ugliness.
Dusty voice that throbs with heat,
Hoping with your steel-thin beat
To put stitches in my mind,
Make it tidy, make it kind,
You shall not: I'll keep it free
Though you turn earth, sky and sea
To a patchwork quilt to keep
Your mind snug and warm in sleep!
PORTRAIT OF A BARMAID
Metallic waves of people jar
Through crackling green toward the bar
Where on the tables chattering-white
The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.
Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles,
Shroud wooden faces in their wiles--
Sometimes they splash like water (you
Yourself reflected in their hue).
The conversation loud and bright
Seems spinal bars of shunting light
In firework-spurting greenery.
O complicate machinery
For building Babel, iron crane
Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane
In noise and murder like the sea
Without its mutability!
Outside the bar where jangling heat
Seems out of tune and off the beat--
A concertina's glycerine
Exudes, and mirrors in the green
Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints
Of tentative and half-soiled tints.
SOLO FOR EAR-TRUMPET