London Sonnets

FENRIS the wolf, and Jörmungand the snake
In the slime and the swamp remorseless wait.
For not the years nor human hopes can break
Valhalla’s sentence thus pronounced by Fate.

“These gods that are the children of men’s dreams—
Virtue and honour, courage and the songs
Men sing about their hearthstones—stolen gleams
In the poor heart unbroken by its wrongs,

“These gods, of man’s refusal of the beast
The half pathetic, wholly fleeting sign
Who in that tenderness are gods the least
Where human weakness finds them most divine,

“These pitiful gods, fabric of mankind’s tears
A dream of what all human hearts have wanted
The vision at the end of all the years
The holy ghost that half the world has haunted,

“These gods are mortal as the heart that shaped them
And in that hour when mankind’s heart must break
These gods who only by that heart escaped them
Fall to the wolf and Jörmungand the snake.”

Fate pauses, but from Hela’s halls is heard
A voice is young when all the gods are dead.
Balder the beautiful has one more word
The word that even Fate must leave unsaid.

“True they depart the half-gods, and the snake
And Fenris come. But in the heart’s defection
I, Balder, bound in Hell for that heart’s sake
I am the life and I the resurrection.

“I, love, being loosed, will take my harp up—so—
Singing what all the world at last will learn
‘The devils come because the half-gods go
But in the end the gods, the gods return.’”

WHEELS 1919.

WHY d’you write about Frascati’s
You who from the balcony leaning
’Neath the lure that was Astarte’s
Find a negroid devil grinning.

Changed indeed and almost stupid
Yielding to analysis
Now a Piccadilly cupid
Hanging on a painted kiss.

Now a toy in two dimensions
Operated by a string
In your hand, whose interventions
Set the object capering.

You who at the higher level
Know love as he truly is
Not the fair Assyrian devil,
Not the poor idolatries,

Of the savage, not the crazes
Say of Shelley, and his set:
But you find him (as your phrase is)
Palm to palm in quiet sweat.

That’s a way, O brother brother
A new way for verse to move
There’s an older and another
Will you listen? way of love.

I from that same terrace waiting
For the music to begin
“Amoureuse” anticipating
Watched a boy who blundered in.

Slim he was, a little stooping
At the shoulders as it seemed,
Eyes on which the lids were drooping
Seeing only what he dreamed.

Where he came was noise and clatter,
But the pandemonium
Either didn’t seem to matter
Where he stood or else grew dumb.

And the waltz the band was creaking,
Like a cluster, round his head
Changed to cry “What’s music seeking
Save what he has left unsaid.”

And like flowers, bourgeois faces
Overtaken by the tune,
Pilfered unimagined graces
From an unimagined June.

And, when once again the Babel
Rose, though we had never stirred,
There between us at the table
At Frascati’s was the third.

What’s the good of all this antic
You’ll impatiently exclaim,
Still incurably romantic
Still incurably the same.

Only this—that at Frascati’s
If one does not wash one’s hands
That old magic was Astarte’s
Goes, before one understands.

THE WELL.

AT full afternoon slowly the branches
Stirred as of old and fragrant with flowers
Touched with a breath of wind look down and wonder
To where—far below—is the delicate water.

Here should be peace as was peace and splendour
Of hearts’ first stirrings, the eye to the hills
Turned, the call of the perilous margins
Life just beginning, but life well begun.
Here by the well we played (you remember)
(Then too the grasses grew at the edges
Tempting small hands but tempt now no longer)
Here by the well we dreamed after playing.

Have you forgotten (or has death no mercy)
How bright the days were and how the evening
Softer than sleep laid her mysterious
Hands on the garden soothing and changing.
Here at the well side we loved after dreaming
Since we had played by it, since we had dreamed.
Here at the well side love that was wakened
Sank like a stone, but leaving no ripple.

Here are our shapes that play dream love quarrel,
Here are our dreams (and if there were dreamers,
If we were not like our visions a dream)
All is not over—is all then over?

Here is the well and the delicate water
Far below gleaming, the starred white branches
Fragrant with flowers. Here is the noontide,
Even the grasses grow at the edges.
What then is gone? If we were the dreamers
(And not a dream) then all must be over.
I an old man cold, fruitless and lonely,
Watch by the water, which you cannot see.

But if we two are dreams of a dreamer,
All is not over, and here together
Age falls from me, and from you the mantle
Death seemed to cast, and here by the well side
Lifted again is the voice of your singing,
Golden again are the perilous margins,
Sweet are your eyes and young and immortal
Our hearts are set to the day and the hills.

JUDAS.

NOT I, oh Christ, not I betrayed thee
But He was traitor, He who made thee
Born of a village carpenter
With such immortal longings stir
As stretched beyond the world and found
In God himself the final wound.
Through me thou wast by soldiers taken
By Him, by Him on the Cross forsaken.

THE NIGHT.

BE quiet bird
Be silent all
That e’er were heard
And cease to call.

Drop perfume rose
And flowers white
Put off your shows
For see ’tis night.

Soft creatures slow
Begin to pass,
And thousands grow
From out the grass.

With deep low whirr
The air is full
And through the fir
The moon shines cool.

There is no pain
Sorrow is dead
Slow Charles’ wain
Wheels overhead.

There is no grief
All things have ease
No bough or leaf
Stirs on the trees.

OTHER SONNETS.

THREE SONNETS OF LOVE.

I.

AT NOONTIDE SEEKING.

CAN love being love and therefore magical
When summer and the roses lie between,
Find back to spring? Or shall he know at all
The places where his golden feet have been
At noontide seeking. Shall he know again
The tune of dawn, the unconditioned sky,
The world before the coming of the rain,
That like a shadow waited and went by,
Soft like a God and like a God aflame?
Ah will he find that murmur at your lips,
Still see you standing, as the morning stands,
With fingers stretched that touched and fled and came
To mine again, warm to the tender lips
Once lilies and now roses—Oh your hands?

II.

AN ACCUSATION.

WHAT have you given, love, to those who gave
All for your sake? What gift to weigh the worth
Of those who, having all, did nothing save,
But for a kiss made jetsam of the earth?
What answer have you for the thronging ghosts—
Gentlemen of high heart, who were not brave
Because of you? What for the stricken hosts
Of those who, seeking truth, embraced the grave
Your magic sets about the brain? What way
Of answer have you for the fallen tears
Of those who heard you calling, and, once strong
As being pure, became the body’s prey?
What answer, O sweet God, to all the years
That worshipped you and crowned you, and were wrong?

III.

THE TREMBLING BRIM.

LOVE, if remorseless, needeth no defence,
(You say) for though he waste our lives it seems
A moment spent with love is recompense,
For all the might have beens of all our dreams.
Yet is there something in the might have been
Was never yet in love. O trembling brim
Of the far country, that our eyes have seen,
Have seen and turned from for the sake of him.
Are there no pleasant places, no strange deeds
Waiting the comer? Is there no great sea
Watched by immaculate angels who attend
Our sails that linger? No red star that leads
To where beyond all passion shaken free
We follow the great road that has no end?

WAR VERSE.

V. D. F.

(Ave atque Vale.)

YOU from Givenchy, since no years can harden
The beautiful dead, when holy twilight reaches
The sleeping cedar and the copper beeches,
Return to walk again in Wadham Garden.
We, growing old, grow stranger to the College,
Symbol of youth, where we were young together,
But you, beyond the reach of time and weather,
Of youth in death for ever keep the knowledge.
We hoard our youth, we hoard our youth, and fear it,
But you, who freely gave what we have hoarded,
Are with the final goal of youth rewarded
The road to travel and the traveller’s spirit.
And, therefore, when for us the stars go down,
Your star is steady over Oxford Town.

ENGLAND.

DEAR English heart, the open waterways,
The sea that is aware of liberty,
And your great ships, her servitors, the sea
Deep, as your depths, saying of pomp and blaze,
“These things are not for us,” since other days
Return, and when the flag is shaken free,
Cold captains, Drake and Nelson, watch with thee,
Whose eyes, of boastings cleared and empty praise,
Beyond the wrecked armadas find the soul
That unto battle brings our captains’ test:
“Triumph is good, but honour still is best.
Conquest of what is evil, and no goal
Of self-advancement. For the world set free
The ships of England keep the English sea.”

THE MOON IN FLANDERS.

SOLDIERS that after struggle in the night
See the cold stars assume their shining place,
Watch the sweet moon and her unaltered grace
Mocking with peace the battle-tortured sight,
Think these not careless. These were not less white
Long years ago upon the upturned face
Of other soldiers also of your race
Who on those fields fought such another fight,
These stars, this moon, in their high citadel
Of heaven are witness in the Low Country,
Whose lights are the mere lights of history
Falling on you, these on your fathers fell.
See through the reek and horror, shining through,
Cold lights indeed, but lights of Waterloo!

THE SOLDIER SPEAKS.

THIS then was love of women. O how little
Remembered, being free! Say she was tender
And had a lure of the hands. Here ruthless splendour
Outlures that lure. And, look you, love was brittle
That broke, and none could heal it, being sated.
But this is lasting, this is always stranger
Each terrible new dawn, for each new danger
May be the last of all. O, we have waited
On love like cowards, and the worshipped woman
Enslaved and shamed us. But that shame is over.
We are with death acquainted, and to riot
And call of blood and tenderness and human
Regrets, he does succeed this final lover
Whose love is freedom and whose gift is quiet.

FLOWERS AT HAMPTON COURT.

THE chestnut trees in Bushey Park are lit
This year as always since the spring knows naught
Of war and death, and still the shadows flit
Across the dappled grass and burnish it.
And still at night the moon in stately sort
Is tranquil with the avenues, and lights
The sleeping palace, as on other nights
Of springs long past; but searching for the rose
In vain, the dawn a little whisper knows:
“Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”

Two years ago when all the trees were green
The old red walls were unto to summer brought,
By joyous bands of lilies and the lean
Daffodils danced before or ran between.
Where are they gone these blooms of good report?
And where the lad and where the laughing maid
Who came to wonder and to love who stayed?
For a lost flower is a little thing
But a lost lover is the end of spring.
“Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”

Ah! spring these flowers are growing otherwhere,
In a new soil a changing radiance taught,
Born of the soul and nourished of the air,
Sweeter though scentless and unseen more fair.
Where are they gone these blooms of good report?
Is it perhaps that where the Tigris flows
There blooms an unaccustomed English rose?
And where the guns have killed the spring in France
The English lilies break a silver lance?
“Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”

If thus the flowers, where are those who here
Themselves fresh flowers with the springtime fraught,
Saw the first leaves in Bushey Park appear
The dead swept leaves the leaves of yesteryear?
Where are they gone those lads of good report?
It may be they are sleeping; it may be
Strange lands have taken them or a strange sea.
But wheresoever in the world they lie
An English voice till that world ends will cry
“Here are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?”

Printed at The Vincent Works, Oxford.

About This Book

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