Shylock reasons with Mr. Chesterton, and other poems

Chapter 33: THE WIND.

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A collection of poems split into sections that contrast named personae with impersonal subjects. Through dramatic monologues and lyrical sketches the poet inhabits historical, biblical, and literary figures alongside meditations on nature, cities, war, love, and art. Imagery moves between classical allusion and modern urban detail, blending ironic commentary with elegiac feeling; recurring concerns include memory, mortality, artistic reputation, faith, and the emotional costs of modern life. The verse alternates succinct narrative vignettes and musical lines to explore moral and aesthetic questions with both tenderness and sharp satire.

TO-DAY the Triremes sailed for Sicily
With no wind stirring on a soundless sea;
But a great crying of birds beat up and filled
The empty caverns of the air and stilled
The thrashing of the oars. The level sun
Unto himself, it seemed, drew one by one
With strings of gold the ships that no one heard
Move on the waters, till at last one bird
(Of all the wings past knowledge and past counting)
Wheeled upwards on the air and mounting, mounting,
Rose out of human sight, but all the rest
Passed with the passing fleet into the West.

To-day the Triremes sailed—and will their sailing
Prosper or fail because a gull was wailing
For crumbs about the prows? Who but a fool
Would find a message in a screaming gull?
For if gods use such messengers as these
The less gods they (or so says Socrates).
They are not gods (he says) of fear and hate,
A swollen type of man degenerate,
Catching at flattery, at sorrow fleering
And every spiteful whisper overhearing;
But largely on their mountain they attend
Unflinchingly the one appointed end,
When what was nobly done and finely striven
Will find the archetype laid up in heaven.
Not these by gulls pronounce or suffer doom,
Nor cries among the ships (and yet the gloom
Settles about Athene’s temple. If
An injured god used his prerogative
Of anger, might not Hermes?)—that’s the gull
Stirring the superstition of a fool!
What if a week ago we, waking, found
The Hermae spoiled or fallen to the ground?
Shall Fate be altered or a doom be spoken
Because an image was in malice broken?
Or Athens, that remembers Marathon,
Rock in her empire for a splintered stone?
How dear she is—was never city else
So loved, or lovely in her strength; like bells
Pealed in the brain her beauty. This is she,
Athens, whose sweeter name is liberty.

To-day the Triremes sailed—as Zeus decrees
All shall be done; but hardly Socrates,
As Westward in the dark our captains wear,
Would frown if an Athenian spoke a prayer
Even to Hermes, (even though it seem
We fear the flight of birds and cries in him),
Thus saying simply for the love of her—
Athens—“O Hermes, called the Messenger,
God of the wings, since now the sails are set,
If aught was evil, evil now forget!
If aught was left undone, think not of this
But her remember, Hermes, what she is,
A city leaning to the sea, and shod
With freedom on her feet, as thou a god
With wings art poised for flight—O, if the gull
Were bird of thine, Hermes, be merciful.”

THE WOODCUTTERS OF HÜTTELDORF.

“The plan by which individual Viennese are allowed to obtain their own wood supplies has already been described by more than one observer. It will, however, in time to come appear so incredible, and it so completely sums up the misery of the people and the breakdown of civilization and administration, that no excuse is needed for placing it once more formally and definitely on record.

In the immediate neighbourhood of Vienna lies a forest known as the Wienerwald, the nearest point being on hills to the north, two or three miles from the centre of the city.

The two chief centres of wood collection are the suburbs of Hütteldorf and Dorhbach.

The prevalence of women and children among the collectors is the most painful feature of the proceedings.”

From “Peace in Austria,” by Sir W. Beveridge.

NOUS n’irons plus au bois: the woods are shut:
Les lauriers sont coupés: the laurels cut.
Thus love, when still his pitiful sweet cry
For youth and spring, his play-boys, sensibly
Touched at the heart. But now he does not care
What woods, what trees are standing anywhere.
For there’s no wood in the world to be found
That does not stab his feet, and the trees wound
His eyes with thorns—the eyes which did not see
In joy, but find their sight in misery.

There is a wood they named the Wienerwald.
There when the spring was new the throstle called
Spring to her ball-room, and the Viennese
Heard her light foot provoking the grave trees,
Half willingly at first, young leaves to stir,
That later passionately danced with her.
And here the cannon-fodder used to feed
The altar-fire of the older need,
And sweeter than the need of death. In spring
The Austrian boys saw love awakening
Here, and as English boys in English wood
Have given all to love, all that they could
These gave—their childhood, dawn’s relentless star
That is put out with kisses. These they gave
And buried childhood lightly in her grave
So that a man might hear her calling yet,
“Primrose farewell, good-morrow violet!”—
Might yet have heard her, but the woods are shut
To those who would return: the laurels cut.

There are many go to-day to Wienerwald,
But love does not go with them. He has failed
In the Great War, who had so little skill
In the Will to Murder, love who was the Will
To live and make live, but the War has shewn
His Will is treachery, and love’s alone
In a great wilderness. For if he cries
Aloud, they mock him in their Paradise—
The Angels of Armageddon. “This is he
Who ruled us, being blind, now let him see”
They say, “a prisoner, what we have done,
The priests of mankind’s last religion.
Let him look deep and celebrate in Hell
How we reverse the Christian miracle,
Stealing their spirits from the sullen swine
And consecrating them as yours and mine,
So that we rush together suddenly
Down a steep place, where by an empty sea
Our worshippers pile on a flaming wharf
The trees that were the woods at Hütteldorf.”

Ares, the god of battles, has prevailed.
At Hütteldorf, deep in the Wienerwald,
They go to the woods for fuel, and one sees
A child that beats upon the laurel trees
With starved small hands that hold an axe, and how
The spring returns to find a hooded crow
Waiting and waiting, as the thrush once waited
For childhood’s end. But this, it seems, was fated
That all should change, save only that these seem
Still unsubstantial as the lover’s dream,
As unsubstantial, but with blossoms set
That have no traffic with the violet
And primrose. Here the purple flowers of Dis
Burn their young foreheads and they fade with this,
Who find a different end and different haven,
Where the hooded crow is waiting with the raven.

In Wienerwald the starving Viennese
Have spoiled the woods and cut the laurel trees,
Nous n’irons plus au bois: oh love, oh love!
Will you not go the more because they prove
So shattered, the poor woods? and will you shut
Your heart, O love, because the trees are cut?
Les lauriers sont coupés, but you can heal
Even the broken laurel, and reveal
Where in the valley of death the children falter
That, though all else doth change, love does not alter,
And, though the woods were dead, there is a tree
You know of, love, planted in Calvary.

Go back to the woods; replant the laurel trees.
Still love than war hath greater victories,
And while the devils beat the warlike drum
Into their kingdom of peace the children come.

HEINE’S LAST SONG.

LIFE’S a blonde of whom I’m tired
(Being fair is just a knack
Women learn to be desired
By a Jew—who answers back).

Blonde, oh blonde, ye lost princesses
With the shadow in your eyes
As of bodiless caresses
Known ere birth in Paradise.

Little ears of alabaster,
Where like ocean in a shell
Gentle murmurs drown the vaster
Voice of rapture or of Hell.

Tender bodies—ah too tender
To be given or be lent
Unto love the money-lender
Who demands his cent per cent.

Thus you took a man and tricked him,
Life and ladies, to a will
In your favour, but the victim
Cheats you with a codicil.

All I had, you thought, was given—
Life and ladies, you were wrong:
In a poet’s secret heaven
There is always one last song.

Even he is half afraid of,
Even he but hears in part,
For the stuff that it is made of,
Ladies, is the poet’s heart.

Not for you, oh blonde princesses
Is that final tune, but I
Sing it drowning in the tresses
Of a darker Lorelei.

For her hair than yours is stranger;
Wilder lights are lost in hers
Where the heart’s immortal danger,
That you cannot know of, stirs.

Life and ladies, it is over:
Blonde asks all, gives nothing back;
You must find another lover,
For the poet chooses black.

Where death’s raven marriage blossom
Falls in clouds about her breast,
On his dark beloved’s bosom
Heinrick Heine is at rest.

IMPERSONALITIES.

THE SATYR.

“HOLLOW” he cries and “hollow, hollow.”
Mark how the creeping moon is yellow
On the cold stones, enmeshing feet
That are not soft, with blood not sweet.

Though in the night one cry his Name
The shuddering air shrinks from the aim;
And failing eddies will not stir
To let him through to Lucifer.

What answers where no echoes fly?
None where the moon looks balefully.
Unheard, far-off “O hollow, hollow”
The satyr crieth to his fellow.

BALDER’S SONG.

IT may be raining now, that first warm rain
That melts the heart of earth beneath the snows,
Our Northland snows (she feels the swimmer’s pain
Who catches breath, half-drowned, when the blood flows
Shuddering back into the frozen vein).
And did ye think I should not come again
At the long last in spring-time with the rain?

Or may be there is singing in the air
At building-time where the tall windy trees,
By sap and young leaves hurt, can hardly bear
The spring’s reiterated urgencies
That at the woods with actual fingers tear.
And did ye, when these songs are everywhere,
Of Balder, who first taught them song, despair?

Or it may be where once my altar stood
And where my worshipped name in prayer ascended,
Blue, like a trumpet, in the solitude
Harebells, that ring before the winter’s ended,
Have with the wind my litanies renewed.
Did ye forget (alas! that any could)
That I, the god of flowers, found these good?

And may be where the dog-rose remedies
With her wild flush the hedge, and spring begins,
Born of all these there trembles the first kiss
That from Valhalla brings the Paladins
And ladies, who for all the immortal bliss
Of heaven, have no joy as sharp as this.
Did ye not know in your own memories
That where are love and spring there Balder is?

It may be raining now, that first warm rain
That melts the heart of earth beneath the snows,
Our Northland snows (she feels the swimmer’s pain
Who catches breath, half-drowned, when the blood flows
Shuddering back into the frozen vein).
And did ye think I should not come again
At the long last in spring-time with the rain?

MARY THE MOTHER.

(Cradle Song.)

SO great a lady, so dear is she,
Princess in heaven, but mother to me!
When little Jesus lay in her arm
It was enough for him that he was warm.

When the small head at her bosom did nod
Did she remember that He was the God?
Or when she sang to Him low in His ear,
Did she say “Master” or did she sob “Dear”?

Was it the star on the manger that shone
Crowned her an empress, or was it her Son?
So great a lady to lie in a stall—
But only a mother (she thought) after all.

So great a lady, so dear is she,
Princess in heaven! but who does not see
How against Godhead, in spite of the Cross,
She holds to her bosom her Jesus that was?

APPLES.

WHEN there is no more sea and no more sailing
Will God go vintaging the wine-dark seas,
Reaping gold apples of the storm and trailing
To harvest home the lost Hesperides?

Will God, the gates that guard the river breaking,
Annul the blinding gesture of the sword,
And find the Tree, all other dreams forsaking,
Whose apples are the knowledge of the Lord?

Forsaking dreams—forgiveness and salvation,
Sins that were needless needlessly forgiven,
Hell where he knew vicarious damnation
And ghosts of rapture in a ghost of heaven?

No longer from self-knowledge then exempted
Shall God the apple tasting Eve repeat
Thus altered, saying, “By the devil tempted
Through all these years I could and did not eat.”

Thus at the last shall Man and Maker pardon
Eve’s ancient wrong, seeing that, though He cursed,
Knowledge, alone of those who used the Garden
God was afraid of apples from the first.

Thereafter as it was in the beginning,
Before the spirit moved upon the deep,
There shall be no more sea and no more sinning
And God will share with his beloved sleep.

THE SKIES.

THOUGH the world tumble tier by tier,
Down, down the broken galleries,
By day the sun would shine as clear
By night the moon would ride her seas.

Though man and all was meant by men
Upon the empty air were spent,
Irrevocably Charles’s Wain
Would swing across the firmament.

So large they are and cool the skies;
God’s frozen breath in dreams, or worse:
Beautiful unsupported lies
That simulate a universe.

THREE EPITAPHS.

I. FLECKER.

YOU have made the golden journey. Samarkand
Is all about you, Flecker, and where you lie
How youth and her beauty perish in the sand
They are singing in the caravanserai.

II. EDITH CAVELL.

WHO died for love, we use to nourish hate:
Who was all tenderness, our hearts to harden;
And who of mercy had the high estate
By us escheated of her right of pardon.

III. THE LITTLE SLEEPER.

THIS little sleeper, who was overtaken
By death, as one child overtakes another,
Dreams by his side all night and will not waken
Till the dawn comes in heaven with his mother.

TO HIM WHOM THE CAP FITS.

“What sword is left?” sighs England. Answer her
(For you must answer) “This—Excalibur.”

I.

THAT is the sword of England. Arthur drew
The blade at that last battle when he failed,
(Shadow among the shadows, who prevailed
Victorious in disaster). Harold knew
Its point in his heart at Hastings, and it flew
Out of the scabbard when King Richard sailed
And did not reach Jerusalem. It wailed
In the false hand that on the scaffold slew
Charles, and proud Balliol saw the light on it
Shining for Ridley through the flame; was seen
When Mary, Queen of Scotland, was a queen
On earth no longer, and when William Pitt
“England! O how I leave thee,” failing cried,
The sword, the sword, was with him when he died.

II.

THE line at Mons were privy to the blade,
When God and England seemed together lost,
And riding by the far Pacific coast
Admiral Cradock took its accolade.
These are its victories—to be afraid,
To hear thin bugles sounding “The Last Post,”
Until the blood creeps noiseless as a ghost
And cold, and all we cherished is betrayed.
That is the sword’s way. Those who lose shall have;
And only those who in defeat have known
The bitterness of death, and stood alone
In darkness, shall have worship in the grave.
Swordsman, go into battle, and record
How one more English knight has found his sword!

FRANCE.

TO-DAY you’ll find by field and ditch
The small invasion of the vetch:
And where they sleep rest-harrow will
Follow upon the daffodil.

These in their soft disordered ranks
Withstand and overcome the Tanks;
And the small unconsidered grass
Cries to the gunner “On ne passe.”

The corn outlasts the bayonet,
Whose blades no blood nor rust can fret,
Or only the immortal rust
Of poppies failing in their thrust.

The line these hold no force can break,
Nor their platoons advancing shake,
Whose wide offensive wave on wave
Doth make a garden of a grave.

These with the singing lark conspire
To veil with loveliness the wire,
While he ascending cleans the stain
In heaven of the aeroplane.

These in the fields and open sky
Reverse the errors of Versailles,
Who with a natural increase
From year to year establish peace.

For all the living these will cloak
The things they spoiled, the hearts they broke;
And where these heal the earth will be
For all the dead indemnity.

ALCHEMY.

WHEN Kew found spring, and we found Kew,
Gold was the London that we knew—
The gold of gold whose metal is
As yellow as the primroses.

London’s Lord Mayor, Dick Whittington,
In heaven heard the carillon
“Turn again;” London after all
Is paved with gold by Chiswick Mall.

But afterwards the town was sold
To a mad alchemist for gold,
Who used his art to change, instead
Of lead to gold, the gold to lead.

If where the streets to Hampstead twist
You meet a doting alchemist
Seeking lost gold, refuse him pity;
He changed us when he changed the city!

ORPHEUS.

WHAT Orpheus whistled for Eurydice
(While all the shades were silent, achingly
Holding out hands, and hands stretched evermore
In a vain longing for the further shore).

The blue smoke floats
Lazily in the dawn above the white
Flat roof you knew, and somewhere out of sight
A child is singing the old Linus song,
Sweeter because the baby voice goes wrong
—The little goatherd calling to her goats.

There’s a small hill
On which the olive trees you used to call
Athene’s little sisters, now grown tall,
Watch all day long the coming of the child,
And you’ll remember how the brook, else wild,
About these pastures suddenly grows still.

There’s such a peace,
Save where a wandering beast shakes on its bell,
You’d almost think the trees had learned a spell
From their wise sister (or from you) to bless
A baby frightened of the loneliness,
Tending her herd and waiting by the trees.

Ah! certainly
There are two things are stronger than the fates—
A lover’s song in Hell, a child that waits.
The shadows lengthen. Ere the night descend
On earth, O sweetheart, Mother, friend
Win out of Hell! Return Eurydice!

THE WIND.

WHAT is there left? The wind makes answer
“I saw the green leaves grow brown and fall;
I danced with the shadows, I the dancer
Among bare branches. For I,” he saith,
“Hear the thin music whistle and call,
Music, horn-music, the music of death.”

“There stands at the edge of the wood the player
Dark in the darkness, but I have seen,
Ere my feet were lifted, the branches stir.
Darker than dark, than light more fair,
Before I have come he slips between;
But I, the dancer,” wind saith, “do not care.”

“The leaves have fallen and who shall discover
What there is left in the blackened tree?
And who will know when the years are over,
Among bare branches if I,” wind saith,
“Dance where the shadows and music be,
Music, horn-music, the music of death?”