Collected Poems: Volume Two

[For purposes of recognition at night a small squadron of Elizabethan ships, crossing the Atlantic, adopted as a watchword the sentence: Before the world—was God.]

They diced with Death. Their big sea-boots
Were greased with blood. They swept the seas
For England; and—we reap the fruits
Of their heroic deviltries!
Our creed is in the cold machine,
The inhuman devildoms of brain,
The bolt that splits the midnight main,
Loosed at a lever's touch; the lean
Torpedo; "Twenty Miles of Power";
The steel-clad Dreadnoughts' dark array!
Yet ... we that keep the conning tower
Are not so strong as they
Whose watchword we disdain.

They laughed at odds for England's sake!
We count, yet cast our strength away.
One Admiral with the soul of Drake
Would break the fleets of hell to-day!
Give us the splendid heavens of youth,
Give us the banners of deathless flame,
The ringing watchwords of their fame,
The faith, the hope, the simple truth!
Then shall the Deep indeed be swayed
Through all its boundless breadth and length,
Nor this proud England lean dismayed
On twenty miles of strength,
Or shrink from aught but shame.

Pull out by night, O leave the shore
And lighted streets of Plymouth town,
Pull out into the Deep once more!
There, in the night of their renown, The same great waters roll their gloom
Around our midget period;
And the huge decks that Raleigh trod
Over our petty darkness loom!
Along the line the cry is passed
From all their heaven-illumined spars,
Clear as a bell, from mast to mast,
It rings against the stars:
Before the world—was God.

NEW WARS FOR OLD

"Peace with its luxury is the corrupter of Nations."

Any militarist Journal.

Peace! When have we prayed for peace?
Over us burns a star
Bright, beautiful, red for strife!
Yours are only the drum and the fife
And the golden braid and the surface of life!
Ours is the white-hot war!

Peace? When have we prayed for peace?
Ours are the weapons of men!
Time changes the face of the world!
Therefore your ancient flags are furled,
And ours are the unseen legions hurled
Up to the heights again!

III

Peace? When have we prayed for peace?
Is there no wrong to right?
Wrong crying to God on high
Here where the weak and the helpless die,
And the homeless hordes of the city go by,
The ranks are rallied to-night!

Peace? When have we prayed for peace?
Are ye so dazed with words?
Earth, heaven, shall pass away
Ere for your passionless peace we pray!
Are ye deaf to the trumpets that call us to-day,
Blind to the blazing swords?

THE PRAYER FOR PEACE

"Unless public opinion can rise to the height of discussing the substitution of law for force as a great world-movement, the American arbitration proposals cannot be carried out."

Sir Edward Grey.

Dare we—though our hope deferred
Left us faithless long ago—
Dare we let our hearts be stirred,
Lift them to the light and know,
Cast away our cynic shields,
Break the sword that Mockery wields,
Know that Truth indeed prevails,
And that Justice holds the scales?
Britain, kneel!
Kneel, Imperial Commonweal!

Dare we know that this great hour,
Dawning on thy long renown,
Marks the purpose of thy power,
Crowns thee with a mightier crown,
Know that to this purpose climb
All the blood-red wars of Time?
If indeed thou hast a goal
Beaconing to thy warrior soul,
Britain, kneel!
Kneel, Imperial Commonweal!

III

Dare we know what every age
Writes with an unerring hand,
Read the midnight's moving page,
Read the stars and understand,—
Out of Chaos ye shall draw
Linked harmonies of Law,
Till around the Eternal Sun
All your peoples move in one?
Britain, kneel!
Kneel, Imperial Commonweal!

Dare we know that wearied eyes
Dimmed with dust of every day
Can, once more, desire the skies
And the glorious upward way?
Dare we, if the Truth should still
Vex with doubt our alien will,
Take it to our Maker's throne,
Let Him speak with us alone?
Britain, kneel!
Kneel, Imperial Commonweal!

Dare we cast our pride away?
Dare we tread where Lincoln trod?
All the Future, by this day,
Waits to judge us and our God!
Set the struggling peoples free!
Crown with Law their Liberty!
Proud with an immortal pride,
Kneel we at our Sister's side!
Britain, kneel!
Kneel, Imperial Commonweal!

THE SWORD OF ENGLAND

(Written during a European war crisis)

Not as one muttering in a spell-bound sleep
Shall England speak the word;
Not idly bid the embattled lightnings leap,
Nor lightly draw the sword!

Let statesmen grope by night in a blind dream,
The cold clear morning star
Should like a trophy in her helmet gleam
When England sweeps to war!

Not like a derelict, drunk with surf and spray,
And drifting down to doom;
But like the Sun-god calling up the day
Should England rend that gloom.

Not as in trance, at some hypnotic call,
Nor with a doubtful cry;
But a clear faith, like a banner above us all,
Rolling from sky to sky.

She sheds no blood to that vain god of strife
Whom striplings call "renown";
She knows that only they who reverence life
Can nobly lay it down;

And these will ride from child and home and love,
Through death and hell that day;
But O, her faith, her flag, must burn above,
Her soul must lead the way!

THE DAWN OF PEACE

Yes—"on our brows we feel the breath
Of dawn," though in the night we wait!
An arrow is in the heart of Death,
A God is at the doors of Fate! The spirit that moved upon the Deep
Is moving through the minds of men:
The nations feel it in their sleep,
A change has touched their dreams again.

Voices, confused, and faint, arise,
Troubling their hearts from East and West.
A doubtful light is in their skies,
A gleam that will not let them rest:
The dawn, the dawn is on the wing,
The stir of change on every side,
Unsignalled as the approach of Spring,
Invincible as the hawthorn-tide.

Have ye not heard it, far and nigh,
The voice of France across the dark,
And all the Atlantic with one cry
Beating the shores of Europe?—hark!
Then—if ye will—uplift your word
Of cynic wisdom! Once again
Tell us He came to bring a sword,
Tell us He lived and died in vain.

Say that we dream! Our dreams have woven
Truths that out-face the burning sun:
The lightnings, that we dreamed, have cloven
Time, space, and linked all lands in one!
Dreams! But their swift celestial fingers
Have knit the world with threads of steel,
Till no remotest island lingers
Beyond the world's one Commonweal.

Tell us that custom, sloth, and fear
Are strong, then name them "common-sense"!
Tell us that greed rules everywhere,
Then dub the lie "experience":
Year after year, age after age,
Has handed down, thro' fool and child,
For earth's divinest heritage
The dreams whereon old wisdom smiled.

Dreams are they? But ye cannot stay them,
Or thrust the dawn back for one hour!
Truth, Love, and Justice, if ye slay them,
Return with more than earthly power:
Strive, if ye will, to seal the fountains
That send the Spring thro' leaf and spray:
Drive back the sun from the Eastern mountains,
Then—bid this mightier movement stay.

It is the Dawn of Peace! The nations
From East to West have heard a cry,—
"Through all earth's blood-red generations
By hate and slaughter climbed thus high,
Here—on this height—still to aspire,
One only path remains untrod,
One path of love and peace climbs higher!
Make straight that highway for our God."

THE BRINGERS OF GOOD NEWS

Like fallen stars the watch-fires gleamed
Along our menaced age that night!
Our bivouacked century tossed and dreamed
Of battle with the approaching light.

Rumors of change, a sea-like roar,
Shook the firm earth with doubt and dread:
The clouds, in rushing legions bore
Their tattered eagles overhead.

I saw the muffled sentries rest
On the dark hills of Time. I saw
Around them march from East to West
The stars of the unresting law.

I knew that in their mighty course
They brought the dawn, they brought the day;
And that the unconquerable force
Of the new years was on the way.

I heard the feet of that great throng!
I saw them shine, like hope, afar!
Their shout, their shout was like a song,
And O, 'twas not a song of war!

Yet, as the whole world with their tramp
Quivered, a signal-lightning spoke,
A bugle warned our darkling camp,
And, like a thunder-cloud, it woke.

Our searchlights raked the world's wide ends.
O'er the dark hills a grey light crept.
Down, through the light, that host of friends
We took for foemen, triumphing swept.

The old century could not hear their cry,
How should it hear the song they sang?
We bring good news! It pierced the sky!
We bring good news! The welkin rang.

One shout of triumph and of faith;
And then—our shattering cannon roared!
But, over the reeking ranks of death,
The song rose like a single sword.

We bring good news! Red flared the guns!
We bring good news! The sabres flashed!
And the dark age with its own sons
In blind and furious battle clashed.

A swift, a terrible bugle pealed.
The sulphurous clouds were rolled away.
Embraced, embraced, on that red field,
The wounded and the dying lay.

We bring good news! Blood choked the word,
—We knew you not; so dark the night!—
O father, was I worth your sword?
O son, O herald of the light!

We bring good news!—The darkness fills
Mine eyes!—Nay, the night ebbs away!
And, over the everlasting hills,
The great new dawn led on the day.

THE LONELY SHRINE

(A few months after the Milton Ter-centenary.)

The crowd has passed away,
Faded the feast, and most forget!
Master, we come with lowly hearts to pay
Our deeper debt.

High they upheld the wine,
And royally, royally drank to thee!
Loud were their plaudits. Now the lonely shrine
Accepts our knee.

III

All dark and silent now!
Master, thy few are faithful still,
And nightly hear thy brooks that warbling flow
By Siloa's hill.

AT NOON

(AFTER THE FRENCH OF VERLAINE)

The sky is blue above the roof,
So calm, so blue;
One rustling bough above the roof
Rocks, the noon through.

The bell-tower in the sky, aloof,
Tenderly rings!
A bird upon the bough, aloof,
Sorrows and sings.

My God, my God, and life is here
So simple and still!
Far off, the murmuring town I hear
At the wind's will....

What hast thou done, thou, weeping there?
O quick, the truth!
What hast thou done, thou, weeping there,
With thy lost youth?

TO A FRIEND OF BOYHOOD LOST AT SEA

O warm blue sky and dazzling sea,
Where have you hid my friend from me?
The white-chalk coast, the leagues of surf
Laugh to the May-light, now as then,
And violets in the short sweet turf
Make fragmentary heavens again,
And sea-born wings of rustling snow
Pass and re-pass as long ago.

Old friend, do you remember yet
The days when secretly we met
In that old harbor years a-back,
Where I admired your billowing walk,
Or in that perilous fishing smack
What tarry oaths perfumed your talk,
The sails we set, the ropes we spliced,
The raw potato that we sliced,

For mackerel-bait—and how it shines
Far down, at end of the taut lines!—
And the great catch we made that day,

Loading our boat with rainbows, quick
And quivering, while you smoked your clay
And I took home your "Deadwood Dick"
In yellow and red, when day was done
And you took home my Stevenson?

Not leagues, as when you sailed the deep,
But only some frail bars of sleep
Sever us now! Methinks you still
Recall, as I, in dreams, the quay,
The little port below the hill:
And all the changes of the sea,
Like some great music, can but roll
Our lives still nearer to the goal.

OUR LADY OF THE TWILIGHT

Our Lady of the Twilight
From out the sunset-lands
Comes gently stealing o'er the world
And stretches out her hands,
Over the blotched and broken wall,
The blind and fœtid lane,
She stretches out her hands and all
Is beautiful again.

No factory chimneys can defile
The beauty of her dress:
She stoops down with her heavenly smile
To heal and love and bless:
All tortured things, all evil powers,
All shapes of dark distress
Are turned to fragrance and to flowers
Beneath her kind caress.

Our Lady of the Twilight,
She melts our prison-bars!
She makes the sea forget the shore,
She fills the sky with stars, And stooping over wharf and mill,
Chimney and shed and dome,
Turns them to fairy palaces,
Then calls her children home.

She stoops to bless the stunted tree,
And from the furrowed plain,
And from the wrinkled brow she smooths
The lines of care and pain:
Hers are the gentle hands and eyes
And hers the peaceful breath
That ope, in sunset-softened skies,
The quiet gates of death.

Our Lady of the Twilight,
She hath such gentle hands,
So lovely are the gifts she brings
From out the sunset-lands,
So bountiful, so merciful
So sweet of soul is she;
And over all the world she draws
Her cloak of charity.

THE HILL-FLOWERS

"I will lift up mine eyes to the hills"

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
Ere I waken in the city—Life, thy dawn makes all things new!
And up a fir-clad glen, far from all the haunts of men,
Up a glen among the mountains, oh my feet are wings again!

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
O mountains of my boyhood, I come again to you,
By the little path I know, with the sea far below,
And above, the great cloud-galleons with their sails of rose and snow;

As of old, when all was young, and the earth a song unsung
And the heather through the crimson dawn its Eden incense flung From the mountain-heights of joy, for a careless-hearted boy,
And the lavrocks rose like fountain sprays of bliss that ne'er could cloy,

From their little beds of bloom, from the golden gorse and broom,
With a song to God the Giver, o'er that waste of wild perfume;
Blowing from height to height, in a glory of great light,
While the cottage-clustered valleys held the lilac last of night,

So, when dawn is in the skies, in a dream, a dream, I rise,
And I follow my lost boyhood to the heights of Paradise.
Life, thy dawn makes all things new! Hills of Youth, I come to you,
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
Floats a brother's face to meet me! Is it you? Is it you?
For the night I leave behind keeps these dazzled eyes still blind!
But oh, the little hill-flowers, their scent is wise and kind;

And I shall not lose the way from the darkness to the day,
While dust can cling as their scent clings to memory for aye;
And the least link in the chain can recall the whole again,
And heaven at last resume its far-flung harvests, grain by grain.

To the hill-flowers clings my dust, and tho' eyeless Death may thrust
All else into the darkness, in their heaven I put my trust;
And a dawn shall bid me climb to the little spread of thyme
Where first I heard the ripple of the fountain-heads of rhyme.

And a fir-wood that I know, from dawn to sunset-glow,
Shall whisper to a lonely sea, that swings far, far below.
Death, thy dawn makes all things new. Hills of Youth, I come to you,
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.

THE CAROL OF THE FIR-TREE

Quoth the Fir-tree, "Orange and vine"
Sing 'Nowell, Nowell, Nowell'!
"Have their honour: I have mine!"
In Excelsis Gloria!
"I am kin to the great king's house,"
Ring 'Nowell, Nowell, Nowell'!
"And Lebanon whispers in my boughs."
In Excelsis Gloria!

Apple and cherry, pear and plum,
Winds of Autumn, sigh 'Nowell'!
All the trees like mages come
Bending low with 'Gloria'!
Holding out on every hand
Summer pilgrims to Nowell!
Gorgeous gifts from Elfin-land.
And the May saith 'Gloria'!

Out of the darkness—who shall say
Gold and myrrh for this Nowell!
How they win their wizard way?
Out of the East with 'Gloria'!
Men that eat of the sun and dew
Angels laugh and sing, 'Nowell.'
Call it "fruit," and say it "grew"!
Into the West with 'Gloria'!

"Leaves that fall," whispered the Fir
Through the forest sing 'Nowell'!
"I am winter's minister."
In Excelsis Gloria!
Summer friends may come and go,
Up the mountain sing 'Nowell.'
Love abides thro' storm and snow.
Down the valley, 'Gloria'!

"On my boughs, on mine on mine,"
Father and mother, sing 'Nowell'!
"All the fruits of the earth shall twine."
Bending low with 'Gloria.' "Sword of wood and doll of wax"
Little children, sing 'Nowell.'
"Swing on the stem was cleft with the axe!"
Craftsmen all, a 'Gloria.'

"Hear! I have looked on the other side."
Out of the East, O sing 'Nowell'!
"Because to live this night I died!"
Into the West with 'Gloria.'
"Hear! In this lighted room I have found"
Ye that seek, O sing 'Nowell'!
"The spell that worketh underground."
Ye that doubt, a 'Gloria.'

"I have found it, even I,"
Ye that are lowly, sing 'Nowell'!
"The secret of this alchemy!"
Ye that are poor, a 'Gloria.'
"Look, your tinsel turneth to gold."
Sing 'Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!'
"Your dust to a hand for love to hold!"
In Excelsis Gloria.

"Lay the axe at my young stem now!"
Woodman, woodman, sing 'Nowell.'
"Set a star on every bough!"
In Excelsis Gloria!
"Hall and cot shall see me stand,"
Rich and poor man, sing 'Nowell'!
"Giver of gifts from Elfin-land."
Oberon, answer 'Gloria.'

"Hung by the hilt on your Christmas-tree"
Little children, sing 'Nowell'!
"Your wooden sword is a cross for me."
Emperors, a 'Gloria.'
"I have found that fabulous stone"
Ocean-worthies, cry 'Nowell.'
"Which turneth all things into one,"
Wise men all, a 'Gloria.'

"It is not ruby nor anything"
Jeweller, jeweller, sing 'Nowell'!
"Fit for the crown of an earthly King:"
In Excelsis Gloria!
"It is not here! It is not there!"
Traveller, rest and cry 'Nowell'!
"It is one thing and everywhere!"
Heaven and Earth sing 'Gloria.'

"It is the earth, the moon, the sun,"
Mote in the sunbeam, sing 'Nowell'!
"And all the stars that march as one."
In Excelsis Gloria!
"Here, by the touch of it, I can see"
Sing, O Life, a sweet Nowell!
"The world's King die on a Christmas-tree."
Answer, Death, with 'Gloria.'

"Here, not set in a realm apart,"
East and West are one 'Nowell'!
"Holy Land is in your Heart!"
North and South one 'Gloria'!
"Death is a birth, birth is a death,"
Love is all, O sing 'Nowell'!
"And London one with Nazareth."
And all the World a 'Gloria.'

"And angels over your heart's roof sing"
Birds of God, O pour 'Nowell'!
"That a poor man's son is the Son of a King!"
Out of your heart this 'Gloria'!
"Round the world you'll not away"
In your own soul, they sing 'Nowell'!
"From Holy Land this Christmas Day!"
In your own soul, this 'Gloria.'

LAVENDER

Lavender, lavender
That makes your linen sweet;
The hawker brings his basket
Down the sooty street:
The dirty doors and pavements
Are simmering in the heat:
He brings a dream to London,
And drags his weary feet.

Lavender, lavender,
From where the bee hums,
To the loud roar of London,
With purple dreams he comes,
From raggèd lanes of wild-flowers
To raggèd London slums,
With a basket full of lavender
And purple dreams he comes.

Is it nought to you that hear him?
With the old strange cry
The weary hawker passes,
And some will come and buy,
And some will let him pass away
And only heave a sigh,
But most will neither heed nor hear
When dreams go by.

Lavender, lavender!
His songs were fair and sweet,
He brought us harvests out of heaven,
Full sheaves of radiant wheat;
He brought us keys to Paradise,
And hawked them thro' the street;
He brought his dreams to London,
And dragged his weary feet.

Lavender, lavender!
He is gone. The sunset glows;
But through the brain of London
The mystic fragrance flows.
Each foggy cell remembers,
Each raggèd alley knows,
The land he left behind him,
The land to which he goes.