Poems, 1908-1919

You may not wear immortal leaves
Nor yet go laurelled in your days,
But he believes
Who loves you with most intimate praise
That none on earth has ever gone,
In whom a cleanlier spirit shone.

You may be unremembered when
Our chronicles are piled in dust:
No matter than—
None ever bore a lordlier lust
To know the savour sweet or sour
Down to the dregs of every hour.

And this your epitaph shall be—
“Within life’s house her eager words
Continually
Lightened as wings of arrowy birds:
She was life’s house-fellow, she knew
The passion of him, soul and thew.”

LOVERS TO LOVERS

Our love forsworn
Was very love upon a day,
Bitterness now, forlorn,
This tattered love once went as proud a way
As any born.

You well have kept
Your love from all corrupting things,
Your house of love is swept
And bright for use; whatso each season brings
You may accept

In pride. But we?
Our date of love is dead. Our blind
Brief moment was to be
The sum, yet was it signed as yours, and signed
Indelibly.

LOVE’S PERSONALITY

If I had never seen
Thy sweet grave face,
If I had never known
Thy pride as of a queen,
Yet would another’s grace
Have led me to her throne.

I should have loved as well
Not loving thee,
My faith had been as strong
Wrought by another spell;
Her love had grown to be
As thine for fire and song.

Yet is our love a thing
Alone, austere,
A new and sacred birth
That we alone could bring
Through flames of faith and fear
To pass upon the earth.

As one who makes a rhyme
Of his fierce thought,
With momentary art
May challenge change and time,
So is the love we wrought
Not greatest, but apart.

PIERROT

Pierrot alone,
And then Pierrette,
And then a story to forget.

Pierrot alone.
Pierrette among the apple boughs
Come down and take a Pierrot’s kiss,
The moon is white upon your brows,
Pierrette among the apple boughs,
Your lips are cold, and I would set
A rose upon your lips, Pierrette,
A rosy kiss,
Pierrette, Pierrette.

And then Pierrette.
I’ve left my apple boughs, Pierrot,
A shadow now is on my face,
But still my lips are cold, and O
No rose is on my lips, Pierrot,
You laugh, and then you pass away
Among the scented leaves of May,
And on my face
The shadows stay.

And then a story to forget.
The petals fall upon the grass,
And I am crying in the dark,
The clouds above the white moon pass—
My tears are falling on the grass;
Pierrot, Pierrot, I heard your vows
And left my blossomed apple boughs,
And sorrows dark
Are on my brows.

RECKONING

I heard my love go laughing
Beyond the bolted door,
I saw my love go riding
Across the windy moor,
And I would give my love no word
Because of evil tales I heard.

Let fancy men go laughing,
Let light men ride away,
Bruised corn is not for my mill,
What’s paid I will not pay,—
And so I thought because of this
Gossip that poisoned clasp and kiss.

Four hundred men went riding,
And he the best of all,
A jolly man for labour,
A sinewy man and tall;
I watched him go beyond the hill,
And shaped my anger with my will.

At night my love came riding
Across the dusky moor,
And other two rode with him
Who knocked my bolted door,
And called me out and bade me see
How quiet a man a man could be.

And now the tales that stung me
And gave my pride its rule,
Are worth a beggar’s broken shoe
Or the sermon of a fool,
And all I know and all I can
Is, false or true, he was my man.

DERELICT

The cloudy peril of the seas,
The menace of mid-winter days,
May break the scented boughs of ease
And lock the lips of praise,
But every sea its harbour knows,
And every winter wakes to spring,
And every broken song the rose
Shall yet resing.

But comfortable love once spent
May not re-shape its broken trust,
Or find anew the old content,
Dishonoured in the dust;
No port awaits those tattered sails,
No sun rides high above that gloom,
Unchronicled those half-told tales
Shall time entomb.

WED

I married him on Christmas morn,—
Ah woe betide, ah woe betide,
Folk said I was a comely bride,—
Ah me forlorn.

All braided was my golden hair,
And heavy then, and shining then,
My limbs were sweet to madden men,—
O cunning snare.

My beauty was a thing they say
Of large renown,—O dread renown,—
Its rumour travelled through the town,
Alas the day.

His kisses burn my mouth and brows,—
O burning kiss, O barren kiss,—
My body for his worship is,
And so he vows.

But daily many men draw near
With courtly speech and subtle speech;
I gather from the lips of each
A deadly fear.

As he grows sullen I grow cold,
And whose the blame? Not mine the blame;
Their passions round me as a flame
All fiercely fold.

And oh, to think that he might be
So proudly set, above them set,
If he might but awaken yet
The soul of me.

Will no man seek and seeking find
The soul of me, the soul of me?
Nay, even as they are, so is he,
And all are blind.

On Christmas morning we were wed,
Ah me the morn, the luckless morn;
Now poppies burn along the corn,
Would I were dead.

FORSAKEN

The word is said, and I no more shall know
Aught of the changing story of her days,
Nor any treasure that her lips bestow.

And I, who loving her was wont to praise
All things in love, now reft of music go
With silent step down unfrequented ways.

My soul is like a lonely market-place,
Where late were laughing folk and shining steeds
And many things of comeliness and grace;

And now between the stones are twisting weeds,
No sound there is, nor any friendly face,
Save for a bedesman telling o’er his beads.

DEFIANCE

O wide the way your beauty goes,
For all its feigned indifference,
And every folly’s path it knows,
And every humour of pretence.

But I can be as false as are
The rainbow loves which are your days,
And I will gladly go and far,
Content with your immediate praise.

Your lips, the shyer lover’s bane,
I take with disputation none,
And am your kinsman in disdain
When all is excellently done.

LOVE IN OCTOBER

The fields, the clouds, the farms and farming gear,
The drifting kine, the scarlet apple trees ...
Not of the sun but separate are these,
And individual joys, and very dear;
Yet when the sun is folded, they are here
No more, the drifting skies: the argosies
Of wagoned apples: still societies
Of elms: red cattle on the stubbled year.

So are you not love’s whole estate. I owe
In many hearts more dues than I shall pay;
Yet is your heart the spring of all love’s light,
And should your love weary of me and go
With all its thriving beams out of my day,
These many loves would founder in that night.

TO THE LOVERS THAT COME
AFTER US

Lovers, a little of this your happy time
Give to the thought of us who were as you,
That we, whose dearest passion in your prime
Is but a winter garment, may renew
Our love in yours, our flesh in your desire,
Our tenderness in your discovering kiss,
For we are half the fuel of your fire,
As ours was fed by Marc and Beatrice.
Remember us, and, when you too are dead,
Our prayer with yours shall fall upon love’s spring
That all our ghostly loves be comforted
In those yet later lover’s love-making;
So shall oblivion bring his dust to spill
On brain and limbs, and we be lovers still.

DERBYSHIRE SONG

Come loving me to Darley Dale
In spring time or sickle time,
And we will make as proud a tale
As lovers in the antique prime
Of Harry or Elizabeth.

With kirtle green and nodding flowers
To deck my hair and little waist,
I ’ll be worth a lover’s hours....
Come, fellow, thrive, there is no haste
But soon is worn away in death.

Soon shall the blood be tame, and soon
Our bodies lie in Darley Dale,
Unreckoning of jolly June,
With tongues past telling any tale;
My man, come loving me to-day.

I have a wrist is smooth and brown,
I have a shoulder smooth and white,
I have my grace in any gown
By sun or moon or candle-light....
Come Darley way, come Darley way.

LOVE’S HOUSE

I

I know not how these men or those may take
Their first glad measure of love’s character,
Or whether one should let the summer make
Love’s festival, and one the falling year.

I only know that in my prime of days
When my young branches came to blossoming,
You were the sign that loosed my lips in praise,
You were the zeal that governed all my spring.

II

In prudent counsel many gathered near,
Forewarning us of deft and secret snares
That are love’s use. We heard them as we hear
The ticking of a clock upon the stairs.

The troops of reason, careful to persuade,
Blackened love’s name, but love was more than these,
For we had wills to venture unafraid
The trouble of unnavigable seas.

III

Their word was but a barren seed that lies
Undrawn of the sun’s health and undesired,
Because the habit of their hearts was wise,
Because the wisdom of their tongues was tired.

For in the smother of contentious pride,
And in the fear of each tumultuous mood,
Our love has kept serenely fortified
And unusurped one stedfast solitude.

IV

Dark words, and hasty humours of the blood
Have come to us and made no longer stay
Than footprints of a bird upon the mud
That in an hour the tide will take away.

But not March weather over ploughlands blown,
Nor cresses green upon their gravel bed,
Are beautiful with the clean rigour grown
Of quiet thought our love has piloted.

V

I sit before the hearths of many men,
When speech goes gladly, eager to withhold
No word at all, yet when I pass again
The last of words is captive and untold.

We talk together in love’s house, and there
No thought but seeks what counsel you may give,
And every secret trouble from its lair
Comes to your hand, no longer fugitive.

VI

I woo the world, with burning will to be
Delighted in all fortune it may find,
And still the strident dogs of jealousy
Go mocking down the tunnels of my mind.

Only for you my contemplation goes
Clean as a god’s, undarkened of pretence,
Most happy when your garner overflows,
Achieving in your prosperous diligence.

VII

When from the dusty corners of my brain
Comes limping some ungainly word or deed,
I know not if my dearest friend’s disdain
Be durable or brief, spent husk or seed.

But your rebuke and that poor fault of mine
Go straitly outcast, and we close the door,
And I, no promise asking and no sign,
Stand blameless in love’s presence as before.

VIII

A beggar in the ditch, I stand and call
My questions out upon the queer parade
Of folk that hurry by, and one and all
Go down the road with never answer made.

I do not question love. I am a lord
High at love’s table, and the vigilant king,
Unquestioned, from the hubbub at the board
Leans down to me and tells me everything.

COTSWOLD LOVE

Blue skies are over Cotswold
And April snows go by,
The lasses turn their ribbons
For April’s in the sky,
And April is the season
When Sabbath girls are dressed,
From Rodboro’ to Campden,
In all their silken best.

An ankle is a marvel
When first the buds are brown,
And not a lass but knows it
From Stow to Gloucester town.
And not a girl goes walking
Along the Cotswold lanes
But knows men’s eyes in April
Are quicker than their brains.

It’s little that it matters,
So long as you’re alive,
If you’re eighteen in April,
Or rising sixty-five,
When April comes to Amberley
With skies of April blue,
And Cotswold girls are briding
With slyly tilted shoe.

WITH DAFFODILS

I send you daffodils, my dear,
For these are emperors of spring,
And in my heart you keep so clear
So delicate an empery,
That none but emperors could be
Ambassadors endowed to bring
My messages of honesty.

My mind makes faring to and fro,
Deft or bewildered, dark or kind,
That not the eye of God may know
Which motion is of true estate
And which a twisted runagate
Of all the farings of my mind,
And which has honesty for mate.

Only my love for you is clean
Of scandal’s use, and though, may be,
Far rangers have my passions been,—
Since thus the word of Eden went,—
Yet of the springs of my content,
My very wells of honesty
Are you the only firmament.

FOUNDATIONS

Those lovers old had rare conceits
To make persuasion beautiful,
Or rail upon the pretty fool
Who would not share those wanton sweets
That, guarded, soon are bitterness.

But we, my love, can look on these
Old tournaments of wit, and say
What novices of love were they,
Who loved by seasons and degrees,
And in the rate of more and less.

We will not make of love a stale
For deft and nimble argument,
Nor shall denial and consent
Be processes whereof shall fail
One surety that we possess.

DEAR AND INCOMPARABLE

Dear and incomparable
Is that love to me
Flowing out of the woodlands,
Out of the sea;
Out of the firmament breathing
Between pasture and sky,
For no reward is cherished here
To reckon by.

It is not of my earning,
Nor forfeit I can
This love that flows upon
The poverty of man,
Though faithless and unkind
I sleep and forget
This love that asks no wage of me
Waits my waking yet.

Of such is the love, dear,
That you fold me in,
It knows no governance
Of virtue or sin;
From nothing of my achieving
Shall it enrichment take,
And the glooms of my unworthiness
It will not forsake.

A SABBATH DAY
IN FIVE WATCHES

I. MORNING
(TO M. C.)

You were three men and women two,
And well I loved you, all of you,
And well we kept the Sabbath day.
The bells called out of Malvern town,
But never bell could call us down
As we went up the hill away.

Was it a thousand years ago
Or yesterday that men were so
Zealous of creed and argument?
Here wind is brother to the rain,
And the hills laugh upon the plain,
And the old brain-gotten feuds are spent.

Bring lusty laughter, lusty jest,
Bring each the song he names the best,
Bring eager thought and speech that’s keen,
Tell each his tale and tell it out,
The only shame be prudent doubt,
Bring bodies where the lust is clean.

II. FULL DAY
(TO K. D.)

We moved along the gravelled way
Between the laurels and the yews,
Some touch of old enchantment lay
About us, some remembered news
Of men who rode among the trees
With burning dreams of Camelot,
Whose names are beauty’s litanies,
As Galahad and Launcelot.

We looked along the vaulted gloom
Of boughs unstripped of winter’s bane,
As for some pride of scarf and plume
And painted shield and broidered rein,
And through the cloven laurel walls
We searched the darkling pines and pale
Beech-boles and woodbine coronals,
As for the passing of the Grail.

But Launcelot no travel keeps,
For brother Launcelot is dead,
And brother Galahad he sleeps
This long while in his quiet bed,
And we are all the knights that pass
Among the yews and laurels now.
They are but fruit among the grass,
And we but fruit upon the bough.

No coloured blazon meets us here
Of all that courtly company;
Elaine is not, nor Guenevere,
The dream is but of dreams that die.

But yet the purple violet lies
Beside the golden daffodil,
And women strong of limb and wise
And fierce of blood are with us still.

And never through the woodland goes
The Grail of that forgotten quest,
But still about the woodland flows
The sap of God made manifest
In boughs that labour to their time,
And birds that gossip secret things,
And eager lips that seek to rhyme
The latest of a thousand springs.

III. DUSK
(TO E. S. V.)

We come from the laurels and daffodils
Down to the homestead under the fell,
We’ve gathered our hunger upon the hills,
And that is well.

Howbeit to-morrow gives or takes,
And leads to barren or flowering ways,
We’ve a linen cloth and wheaten cakes,
For which be praise.

Here in the valley at lambing-time
The shepherd folk of their watching tell
While the shadows up to the beacon climb,
And that is well.
Let be what may when we make an end
Of the laughter and labour of all our days
We’ve men to friend and women to friend,
For whom be praise.

IV. EVENSONG
(TO B. M.)

Come, let us tell it over,
Each to each by the fireside,
How that earth has been a swift adventure for us,
And the watches of the day as a gay song and a right song,
And now the traveller wind has found a bed,
And the sheep crowd under the thorn.

Good was the day and our travelling,
And now there is evensong to sing.

Night, and along the valleys
Watch the eyes of the homesteads.
The dark hills are very still and still are the stars.
Patiently under the ploughlands the wheat moves and the barley.
The secret hour of love is upon the sky,
And our thought in praise is aflame.

Sing evensong as well we may
For our travel upon this Sabbath day.

Earth, we have known you truly,
Heard your mutable music,
Have been your lovers and felt the savour of you,
And you have quickened in us the blood’s fire and the heart’s fire.
We have wooed and striven with you and made you ours
By the strength sprung out of your loins.

Lift the latch on its twisted thong,
And an end be made of our evensong.

V. NIGHT
(TO H. S. S.)

The barriers of sleep are crossed
And I alone am yet awake,
Keeping another Pentecost
For that new visitation’s sake
Of life descending on the hills
In blackthorn bloom and daffodils.

At peace upon my pillow lain
I celebrate the spirit come
In spring’s immutable youth again
Across the lands of Christendom;
I hear in all the choral host
The coming of the Holy Ghost.

The sacrament of bough and blade,
Of populous folds and building birds
I take, till now an end is made
Of praise and ceremonial words,
And I too turn myself to keep
The quiet festival of sleep.

March 1913.

A DEDICATION
(TO E. G.)

I

Sometimes youth comes to age and asks a blessing,
Or counsel, or a tale of old estate,
Yet youth will still be curiously guessing
The old man’s thought when death is at his gate;
For all their courteous words they are not one,
This youth and age, but civil strangers still,
Age with the best of all his seasons done,
Youth with his face towards the upland hill.
Age looks for rest while youth runs far and wide,
Age talks with death, which is youth’s very fear,
Age knows so many comrades who have died,
Youth burns that one companion is so dear.
So, with good will, and in one house, may dwell
These two, and talk, and all be yet to tell.

II

But there are men who, in the time of age,
Sometimes remember all that age forgets:
The early hope, the hardly compassed wage,
The change of corn, and snow, and violets;
They are glad of praise; they know this morning brings
As true a song as any yesterday;
Their labour still is set to many things,
They cry their questions out along the way.
They give as who may gladly take again
Some gift at need; they move with gallant ease
Among all eager companies of men;
And never signed of age are such as these.
They speak with youth, and never speak amiss;
Of such are you; and what is youth but this?