Leaves (violent jets from life to light);
Strong polished speed is plunging, heaves
Between the showers of bright hot leaves
The window-glasses glaze our faces
And jar them to the very basis--
But they could never put a polish
Upon my manners or abolish
My most distinct disinclination
For calling on a rich relation!
In her house--(bulwark built between
The life man lives and visions seen)--
The sunlight hiccups white as chalk,
Grown drunk with emptiness of talk,
And silence hisses like a snake--
Invertebrate and rattling ache....
Then suddenly Eternity
Drowns all the houses like a sea
And down the street the Trump of Doom
Blares madly--shakes the drawing-room
Where raw-edged shadows sting forlorn
As dank dark nettles. Down the horn
Of her ear-trumpet I convey
The news that "It is Judgment Day!"
"Speak louder: I don't catch, my dear."
I roared: "_It is the Trump we hear!_"
"The _What?_" "_THE TRUMP!_" "I shall complain!
.... the boy-scouts practising again."
* * * * *
MURIEL STUART
THE FATHER
The evening found us whom the day had fled,
Once more in bitter anger, you and I,
Over some small, some foolish, trivial thing
Our anger would not decently let die,
But dragged between us, shamed and shivering
Until each other's taunts we scarcely heard,
Until we lost the sense of all we said,
And knew not who first spoke the fatal word.
It seemed that even every kiss we wrung
We killed at birth with shuddering and hate,
As if we feared a thing too passionate.
However close we clung
One hour the next hour found us separate,
Estranged, and Love most bitter on our tongue.
To-night we quarrelled over one small head,
Our fruit of last year's maying, the white bud
Blown from our stormy kisses and the dead
First rapture of our wild, estranging blood.
You clutched him: there was panther in your eyes,
We breathed like beasts in thickets, on the wall
Our shadows in huge challenge seemed to rise,
The room grew dark with anger. Yet through all
The shame and hurt and pity of it you were
Still strangely and imperishably dear,
As one who loves the wild day none the less
That breaks in bitter hands the buds of Spring,
Whose cold hand stops the breath of loveliness,
And drives the wailing ghost of beauty past,
Making the rose,--even the rose, a thing
For pain to be remembered by at last.
I said: "My son shall wear his father's sword."
You said: "Shall hands once blossoms at my breast
Be stained with blood?" I answered with a word
More bitter, and your own, the bitterest
Stung me to sullen anger, and I said:
"My son shall be no coward of his line
Because his mother choose"; you turned your head
And your eyes grew implacable in mine.
And like a trodden snake you turned to meet
The foe with sudden hissing ... then you smiled,
And broke our life in pieces at my feet,
"Your child?" you said: "_Your_ child?"
THE SHORE
The low bay melts into a ring of silver,
And slips it on the shore's reluctant finger
Though in an hour the tide will turn, will tremble,
Forsaking her because the moon persuades him.
But the black wood that leans and sighs above her
No tide can turn, no moon can slave nor summon.
Then comes the dark: on sleepy, shell-strewn beaches,
O'er long pale leagues of sand and cold, clear water
She hears the tide go out towards the moonlight.
The wood still leans ... weeping she turns to seek him,
And his black hair all night is on her bosom.
THÈLUS WOOD
I came by night to Thèlus wood,
And though in dark and desperate places
Stubborned with wire and brown with blood
Undaunted April crept and sewed
Her violets in dead men's faces,
And in a soft and snowy shroud
Drew the scarred fields with gentle stitch;
Though in the valley where the ditch
Was hoarse with nettles, blind with mud,
She stroked the golden-headed bud,
And loosed the fern, she dared not here
To touch nor tend this murdered thing;
The wind went wide of it, the year
Upon this breast stopped short of Spring:
Beauty turned back from Thèlus Wood.
From broken brows the dim eyes stared,
Blistered and maimed the wide stumps grinned
From the black mouth of Thèlus bared
In laughter at some monstrous jest.
No creature moved there, weed nor wind.
Huge arms, half-torn from savage breast,
Hung wide, and tangled limbs and faces
Lay, as if giants blind and stark
With violent, with perverse embraces
Groped for each other in the dark.
A moaning rose--not of the wind,
--There was no wind, but hollowly
From its dim bed of mud each tree
Gave forth a sound, till trees and mud
Seemed but a single, sighing mouth,
A wound that spoke with lips uncouth,
And cried to me from Thèlus Wood.
I heard one tree say: "This was I
Who drew great clouds across the sky
To weep against me." This one said:
"I made a gloom where love might lie
All day and dream it night, a bed
Secret and soft, the birds' song had
A twilight sound the whole day there."
One said: "Last night I shook my hair
Before the mirror of the moon."
"I saw a corpse to-day," said one
"That was but buried yester-year."
And one, the smallest, sweetest thing--
A fair child-tree made never stir,
Dead before God had tended her
In the green nurseries of Spring.
She lay, the loveliest, loneliest,
Among the old and ruined trees,
And at each small and broken wrist
The white flowers grew like bandages.
Then from the ruined churchyard where
Old vaults and graves lay turned and tossed
And earth from earth was shaken bare,
Came murmurings of a tongueless host
That to each ghastly brother said:
"Who raised us from our sleep? Is this
The resurrection of the dead?
Upon our bodies no flesh grows,
No bright blood through our temples springs,
No glory spreads, no trumpet blows,
The air is not white and blind with wings.
And yet dragged up before us lie
The woods of Thèlus at our feet,
And strange hills sentinel the sky,
And where the road went yawns a pit.
The world is finished: let us sleep.
God has forgotten: we shall keep
Here a sweet, safe Eternity.
There is no other end than this,
And this is death, and that is peace."
But even as they ceased the stones
Were loosed, the earth shook where I stood,
And from far off the crouching guns
Swung slowly round on Thèlus Wood.
THE THIEF OF BEAUTY
I.
The mind is Beauty's thief, the poet takes
The golden spendthrift's trail among the blooms
Where she stands tossing silver in the lakes,
And twisting bright swift threads on airy looms.
Her ring the poppy snatches, and the rose
With laughter plunders all her gusty plumes.
The poet gleans and gathers as she goes
Heedless of summer's end certain and soon,
Of winter rattling at the door of June.
II.
When Beauty lies hand-folded, pale and still,
Forsaken of her lovers and her lords,
And winter keeps cold watch upon the hill,
Then he lets fall his bale of coloured words.
At frosty midnight June shall rise in flame,
Move at his magic with her bells and birds,
The rose will redden as he speaks her name.
He shall release earth's frozen bosom there,
And with great words shall cuff the whining air.
* * * * *
W. R. TITTERTON
THE HIGH WALL
I will build up a wall for Freedom to dwell therein,
A high wall with towers
And steel fangs for a gate.
For Freedom that lacks a home falleth by pit and gin,
A prey to the alien powers
That lie in wait.
I will build up a house for her where the ways divide,
A house set on a hill,
With a lamp in the topmost tower,
And a trumpet calling to arms, and a flag like a flame blown wide,
And a sword to save and to kill
As her bridal dower.
I will take her to wife, she that is life and death;
Life--for a trumpet calls;
Death--for it calls me still,
And I shall know love--a star, and a fluttering breath
Till the shadow of silence falls
In the house on the hill.
I will build up a house for her where the ways divide,
Four-square on the rock,
A high house and a great;
So, when I fly, spent, back from a broken ride,
Her key shall cry in the lock,
She shall stand in the gate.
She shall stand in the gate--the prize of the world to win,
Stand steel-shod,
Crowned with a cloud of flowers.
I will build up a wall, a wall, for Freedom to dwell therein
In the name of the most high God,
A wall with towers.
THE BROKEN SWORD
Soldier, soldier, burnishing your sword,
Is there no place for a wayfaring man in the courts of your lord?
A couch, and a crust, and a song, and a flagon of wine?
Haggard, begrimed though I be, and out at heel,
A lean, grey hop-and-go-one with a crutch of steel,
Brother-at-arms with death? Behold the sign:
I have tasted great weather on high, white, green-turreted cliffs by the
sea.
I have tramped the tough heather, the purple, the brown,
By pools of peat water; from the night to the day,
Till the moon has dropped down: the ghost of a minim, low down,
In a high-piping treble of grey.
In shy, dim recesses, mid tresses, green tresses.
Slow dipping, caressing, I've heard
A whisper, a chuckle of laughter, a scamper; and high,
High up in the air the cry, the call of a bird.
And when the night came with a flicker of wings
I have heard the earth breathing quiet and slow
Like a pulse in the tiny, wild tumult of things.
I have sung to the sun, and the moon and the stars,
In valleys uncharted of tumbled sea meadows
I have shouted aloud 'neath a sky whipped to smoke in the fret of my
spars
And I fought as I fared; and my couch was a camp; and my songs were my
scars.
Soldier! Soldier! Cosetting your sword!
Have you no place for a harper-at-arms in the courts of your lord--
Prim fountains, clipped trees, and trim gardens, and music, and rest?
Nay, keep your sugared delights and your margents embroidered! My life
is the best.
In my ears is the sound of a bugle blown, and my pulses like
kettle-drums beat
For the hungry blind onset, the rally, the stubborn defeat.
I, too, could have polished, and polished, and jeered at the wayfaring
man who passed by.
But I follow the fighting Apollo.
And I stand unashamed; and I raise up my shard of a sword; and I cry the
old cry.
Please God they shall find but a hilt in my hand when I die!
NIGHT-SHAPES
Dark hurrying shapes beset my path that night--
Pushing and buffeting; and in my brain
Dark hurrying shapes beset my soul. In vain
I struggled; as a fevered dreamer might;
Or some spent, breathless swimmer, in despite
Of desperate stroke, thrust headlong to the main.
The waking nightmare, monstrous and inane,
Whirled, rushed, and huddled in its random flight.
Like a spent swimmer, battling with a swoon,
Silent I fought, yet seemed to cry aloud.
When, at the challenge of a marching tune,
Heard in a sudden stillness of the crowd,
I looked aloft, and saw the great round moon
Steadfast behind her ragged rout of cloud.
THE SILENT PEOPLE
The Silent People of No Man's Land
Calm they lie,
With a stare and vacant smile
At the vacant sky.
Over them swept the battle,
And stirred them not.
Armies passed over, beyond them.
They are forgot.
Calmly the earth deals with them,
Melts them away.
Nothing is left of them now but bones,
Bones and clay.
Bones of the Valley of Judgment,
Bones stripped clean.
We fought, day in, day out, and the others,
With this between.
Dawn comes white and finds them
Stark and cold.
Twilight creeps over and covers them,
Fold on fold.
Night cannot hide them from us.
In the dark, again,
We see the Silent People
Who once were men.
The Silent People of No Man's Land,
They rise, they rise,
With the glory of utter loss
In their stary eyes.
Beckoning, beckoning, calling,
Pointing the way.
But the dawn comes white, and finds them
Bones and clay.
Winds of the world blow o'er them
Your serenade!
Touch like a lute the broken earth
Where our dead are laid!
Broken bones of the martyrs,
Reliques of pain,
Anoint them, anoint them with sunlight,
Robe them in rain.
The Silent People of No Man's Land
Calm they lie,
Bones, broken and bleached,
Under the sky.
Over them sweeps the tempest,
And stirs them not.
We pass over, beyond them,
They are forgot.
* * * * *
E. H. VISIAK
LAMPS AND LANTERNS
When I had sight, great glamour was
In myriad lamps of coloured glass:
Old lamps for new I never sold;
For old were new, and new were old.
And Chinese lanterns, paper globes,
Were Dragon Gods in tissue robes
That stood on air with squat, round shoon,
Beneath the thin, receded Moon.
STRANDED
_Dusk gathers. On the seaward hedge
The wild hops, hanging bright,
Gleam as a foam-spray flung on sedge
From a sea of golden light_.
A ship lies heavy on the sands
Above the warped, wan tide,
Whose waves thrust ineffectual hands
Beneath its murmuring side.
They cannot lift the monstrous hulk,
Nor break the ghostly spell;
The ship lies dreaming, all her bulk
Racked on a shoal of hell.
I hear the sullen timbers creak,
With echoings deep and numb;
No other sound: nor groan nor shriek;
For agony is dumb!
But at the seams, in every crack,
A beaded sweat appears:
The soul that's stretched on such a rack
Can shed no other tears!
* * * * *
ALEC WAUGH
RUBBLE
We may fill the daytime with friendship
And laughter and song;
But however the laughter may trip
And the words break in song
On a loved one's lip;
And however gaily the road may bend
Into the sky,
It must come to this in the end,
That we stand
And watch the last friend
Turn with a half-felt sigh
And a wave of the hand;
And silence is over the day,
Shadows fall,
And our happiness crumbles away
Like a wall
That nobody cares for,
That falls stone by stone
Till its grandeur is rubble once more,
And we are alone.
* * * * *
CHARLES WILLIAMS
CHRISTMAS
Word through the world went
On Christmas morn,--
'Tidings! behold, a
Townsman is born!'
Then in their council
Smiled the high lords:
'Sword for world-conquest
'Mid a world's swords.
Need shall our armies
Have of each birth,
In that last battle
Wins us the earth.'
Still were the priesthood,
Singing the Mass:
'Lo, is our creed come
Truly to pass?
Blesséd and broken
Crumbs that we give,
Say! say, O chalice,
Can a creed live?
Then to lord Shakespeare,
Brooding alone,
While in a vision
Lear was shown,
While his just loathing
Hung over men,
Lo, from the darkness
Came Imogen.
Then said a free maid,
Heart against mine,--
Take me, lord governor,
Who am all thine!
Thou that hast blessed me
With a new light,
Ah, is thy handmaid
Fair in thy sight?'
Then said our Lady,--
'Clean is the hut,
Filled are the platters,
And the door shut.
Sit, O son Jesus!
Sit thou, sweet friend!
Poor folk have supper
And their woes end.'
'Now,' said our Father,
'All things are won:
Welcome, O Saviour!
Welcome, O Son!
More than creation
Lives now again,
God hath borne Godhead
Nowise in vain.'
Word went through Sarras
On Easter morn,--
'Tidings! behold a
Townsman is born!'
BRISEIS
The footfalls of the parting Myrmidons
And counter-cries of leaguer and of town
Are hushed behind her as the silks drop down;
Alone she stands, and wonderingly cons
Heads circleted with gold or helmed with bronze;
Higher her eyes from crown to loftier crown
Creep, till they fall, nigh-blasted, at the frown
Of Argos, throned in his pavilions
And mid his captains wrathfully aware
How the plague smites the host, how by the sea
Beyond the ships, with vengeful prayer and oath,
Rages the young Achilles, of whose wrath
Innocent, ignorant, a captive, she
Sees but the dropped staff on the voided chair.
* * * * *
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(This list includes poetical works only).
BINYON, LAURENCE.
Persephone (1890)
Lyric Poems (1894)
Poems (1895)
Porphyrion and other poems (1898)
The Supper (1897)
Odes (1901)
Death of Adam and other poems (1904)
Penthesilea (1905)
Dream come true (1905)
Paris and Oenone (1906)
Attila, a tragedy (1907)
England and other poems (1909)
Auguries (1913)
The Winnowing-fan (1914)
Bombastes in the Shades, a play (1915)
The Anvil and other poems (1916)
The Cause: poems of the war (1917)
For the Fallen and other poems (1917)
The New World (1918)
The Four Years: Collected War Poems (1919)
CHESTERTON, G.K.
Ballad of the White Horse (1911)
The Wild Knight and other poems (1914)
Poems (1915)
Wine, Water and Song (1915)
CHURCH, RICHARD.
Flood of Life and other poems (1917)
Hurricane (1919)
DAVIES, W.H.
New Poems (1907)
Nature Poems and others (1908)
Farewell to Poesy and other poems (1910)
Songs of Joy and Others (1911)
Foliage (1913)
Bird of Paradise and other poems (1914)
Child Lovers and other poems (1916)
Collected Poems (1916)
Forty Poems (1918)
DRINKWATER, JOHN.
Poems (1903)
Death of Leander and other poems (1906)
Lyrical and other poems (1908)
Cophetua, a play (1911)
Poems of Men and Hours (1911)
Poems of Love and Earth (1912)
Cromwell and other poems (1913)
Rebellion (1914)
Swords and Ploughshares (1915)
Olton Pools and other poems (1916)
Pawns (1917)
Poems (1908-14) (1917)
Tides (1917)
Abraham Lincoln (1918)
Loyalties (1919)
GIBSON, WILFRED WILSON.
Golden Helm (1903)
On the Threshold and Other Plays (1907)
Stonefolds (1907)
Web of Life (1908)
Akra the Slave (1910)
Daily Bread (1910)
Womenkind (1912)
Fires (1912)
Thorough-fares (1914)
Borderlands (1914)
Battle (1915)
Friends (1916)
Livelihood (1917)
GOLDING, LOUIS.
Sorrow of War (1919)
GOULD, GERALD.
Lyrics (1906)
Poems (1911)
My Lady's Book (1913)
Monogamy (1918)
HOUSMAN, LAURENCE.
Mendicant Rhymes (1906)
Selected Poems (1908)
The Winners (1915)
Heart of Peace (1918)
LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD.
My Ladies' Sonnets (1887)
R. L. S., An Elegy (1895)
Omar Repentant (1908)
Orestes (1910)
The Lonely Dancer and other poems (1914)
The Silk Hat Soldier and other poems (1915)
MACAULAY, ROSE.
The Two Blind Countries (1914)
Three Days (1919)
MASON, EUGENE.
Flamma Vestalis and other poems (1890)
The Field Floridus and other poems (1899)
Vitrail and other Poems (1916)
MAYNARD, THEODORE.
Laughs and Whifts of Song (1915)
Drums of Defeat (1917)
Folly and other poems (1918)
MOORE, T. STURGE.
The Vinedresser and other poems (1899)
Aphrodite against Artemis (1901)
Absalom (1903)
The Centaur's Booty (1903)
Danäe (1903)
Rout of the Amazons (1903)
Pan's Prophecy (1904)
Theseus, Medea and Lyrics (1904)
To Leda and other odes (1904)
The Gazelles and other poems (1904)
A Sicilian Idyll and Judith (1911)
Mariamne (1911)
Collected Poems (1916)
NICHOLS, ROBERT.
Ardours and Endurances (1917)
Invocation (1919)
PHILLPOTTS, EDEN.
Up-Along and Down-Along (1905)
Wild Fruit (1911)
Demeter's Daughter (1911)
The Iscariot (1912)
Delight and other poems (1916)
Plain Song (1917)
SABIN, ARTHUR K.
Typhon and other poems (1902)
Death of Icarus (1906)
The Wayfarers (1907)
Dante and Beatrice (1908)
Medea and Circe and other poems (1911)
New Poems (1914)
War Harvest (1914)
Five Poems (1914)
Christmas (1914)
SACKVILLE, LADY MARGARET.
Poems (1901)
A Hymn to Dionysus and other poems (1905)
Hildris the Queen, a play (1908)
Lyrics (1912)
Songs of Aphrodite and other poems (1913)
Pageant of War (1916)
SEYMOUR, WILLIAM KEAN.
Street of Dreams (1914)
To Verhaeren and other poems (1917)
Twenty-four Poems (1918)
Swords and Flutes (1919)
SITWELL, EDITH.
The Mother and other poems (1915)
Clowns' Houses (1918)
(With Osbert Sitwell)
Twentieth Century Harlequinade and other poems.
STUART, MURIEL.
Christ at Carnival and other poems (1916)
The Cockpit of Idols (1918)
TITTERTON, W. R.
River Music and other poems (1900)
Guns and Guitars (1918)
VISIAK, E.H.
Buccaneer Ballads (1910)
Flints and Flashes (1911)
The Phantom Ship (1912)
Battle Fiends and other poems (1916)
Brief Poems (1919)
WAUGH, ALEC.
Resentment (1918)
WILLIAMS, CHARLES.
The Silver Stair (1912)
Poems of Conformity (1917)
Divorce (In preparation)