Sonnets and Verse

There is a wall of which the stones
Are lies and bribes and dead men’s bones.
And wrongfully this evil wall
Denies what all men made for all,
And shamelessly this wall surrounds
Our homesteads and our native grounds.

But I will gather and I will ride,
And I will summon a countryside,
And many a man shall hear my halloa
Who never had thought the horn to follow;
And many a man shall ride with me
Who never had thought on earth to see
High Justice in her armoury.

When we find them where they stand,
A mile of men on either hand,
I mean to charge from right away
And force the flanks of their array,
And press them inward from the plains,
And drive them clamouring down the lanes,
And gallop and harry and have them down,
And carry the gates and hold the town.
Then shall I rest me from my ride
With my great anger satisfied.

Only, before I eat and drink,
When I have killed them all, I think
That I will batter their carven names,
And slit the pictures in their frames,
And burn for scent their cedar door,
And melt the gold their women wore,
And hack their horses at the knees,
And hew to death their timber trees,
And plough their gardens deep and through—
And all these things I mean to do
For fear perhaps my little son
Should break his hands, as I have done.

THE PROPHET LOST IN THE HILLS AT EVENING

Strong God which made the topmost stars
To circulate and keep their course,
Remember me; whom all the bars
Of sense and dreadful fate enforce.

Above me in your heights and tall,
Impassable the summits freeze,
Below the haunted waters call
Impassable beyond the trees.

I hunger and I have no bread.
My gourd is empty of the wine.
Surely the footsteps of the dead
Are shuffling softly close to mine!

It darkens. I have lost the ford.
There is a change on all things made.
The rocks have evil faces, Lord,
And I am awfully afraid.

Remember me: the Voids of Hell
Expand enormous all around.
Strong friend of souls, Emmanuel,
Redeem me from accursed ground.

The long descent of wasted days,
To these at last have led me down;
Remember that I filled with praise
The meaningless and doubtful ways
That lead to an eternal town.

I challenged and I kept the Faith,
The bleeding path alone I trod;
It darkens. Stand about my wraith,
And harbour me—almighty God.

THE END OF THE ROAD

In these boots and with this staff
Two hundred leaguers and a half
Walked I, went I, paced I, tripped I,
Marched I, held I, skelped I, slipped I,
Pushed I, panted, swung and dashed I;
Picked I, forded, swam and splashed I,
Strolled I, climbed I, crawled and scrambled,
Dropped and dipped I, ranged and rambled;
Plodded I, hobbled I, trudged and tramped I,
And in lonely spinnies camped I,
And in haunted pinewoods slept I,
Lingered, loitered, limped and crept I,
Clambered, halted, stepped and leapt I;
Slowly sauntered, roundly strode I,
And ... (Oh! Patron saints and Angels
That protect the four Evangels!
And you Prophets vel majores
Vel incerti, vel minores,
Virgines ac confessores
Chief of whose peculiar glories
Est in Aula Regis stare
Atque orare et exorare
Et clamare et conclamare
Clamantes cum clamoribus
Pro Nobis Peccatoribus.)
Let me not conceal it.... Rode I.
(For who but critics could complain
Of “riding” in a railway train?)
Across the valley and the high-land,
With all the world on either hand
Drinking when I had a mind to,
Singing when I felt inclined to;
Nor ever turned my face to home
Till I had slaked my heart at Rome.

AN ORACLE

THAT WARNED THE WRITER WHEN ON PILGRIMAGE

Matutinus adest ubi Vesper, et accipiens te
Saepe recusatum voces intelligit hospes
Rusticus ignotas notas, ac flumina tellus
Occupat—In sancto tum, tum, stans Aede caveto
Tonsuram Hirsuti Capitis, via namque pedestrem
Ferrea praeveniens cursum, peregrine, laborem
Pro pietate tua inceptum frustratur, amore
Antiqui Ritus alto sub Numine Romae.

Translation of the above:—

When early morning seems but eve
And they that still refuse receive:
When speech unknown men understand;
And floods are crossed upon dry land.
Within the Sacred Walls beware
The Shaven Head that boasts of Hair,
For when the road attains the rail
The Pilgrim’s great attempt shall fail.

THE DEATH AND LAST CONFESSION OF WANDERING PETER

When Peter Wanderwide was young
He wandered everywhere he would:
And all that he approved was sung,
And most of what he saw was good.

When Peter Wanderwide was thrown
By Death himself beyond Auxerre,
He chanted in heroic tone
To priests and people gathered there:

“If all that I have loved and seen
Be with me on the Judgment Day,
I shall be saved the crowd between
From Satan and his foul array.

“Almighty God will surely cry,
‘St Michael! Who is this that stands
With Ireland in his dubious eye,
And Perigord between his hands,

“‘And on his arm the stirrup-thongs,
And in his gait the narrow seas,
And in his mouth Burgundian songs,
But in his heart the Pyrenees?’

“St Michael then will answer right
(And not without angelic shame),
‘I seem to know his face by sight:
I cannot recollect his name ...?’

“St Peter will befriend me then,
Because my name is Peter too:
‘I know him for the best of men
That ever wallopped barley brew.

“‘And though I did not know him well
And though his soul were clogged with sin,
I hold the keys of Heaven and Hell.
Be welcome, noble Peterkin.’

“Then shall I spread my native wings
And tread secure the heavenly floor,
And tell the Blessed doubtful things
Of Val d’Aran and Perigord.”
———
This was the last and solemn jest
Of weary Peter Wanderwide.
He spoke it with a failing zest,
And having spoken it, he died.

DEDICATORY ODE

I mean to write with all my strength
(It lately has been sadly waning),
A ballad of enormous length—
Some parts of which will need explaining.[A]

Because (unlike the bulk of men
Who write for fame or public ends),
I turn a lax and fluent pen
To talking of my private friends.[B]

For no one, in our long decline,
So dusty, spiteful and divided,
Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
Or loved them half as much as I did.
———
The Freshman ambles down the High,
In love with everything he sees,
He notes the racing autumn sky.
He sniffs a lively autumn breeze.

“Can this be Oxford? This the place?”
(He cries) “of which my father said
The tutoring was a damned disgrace,
The creed a mummery, stuffed and dead?

“Can it be here that Uncle Paul
Was driven by excessive gloom,
To drink and debt, and, last of all,
To smoking opium in his room?

“Is it from here the people come,
Who talk so loud, and roll their eyes,
And stammer? How extremely rum!
How curious! What a great surprise.

“Some influence of a nobler day
Than theirs (I mean than Uncle Paul’s),
Has roused the sleep of their decay,
And flecked with life their crumbling walls.

“O! dear undaunted boys of old,
Would that your names were carven here,
For all the world in stamps of gold,
That I might read them and revere.

“Who wrought and handed down for me
This Oxford of the larger air,
Laughing, and full of faith, and free,
With youth resplendent everywhere?”

Then learn: thou ill-instructed, blind,
Young, callow, and untutored man,
Their private names were....[C]
Their club was called REPUBLICAN.
. . . . . .
Where on their banks of light they lie,
The happy hills of Heaven between,
The Gods that rule the morning sky
Are not more young, nor more serene

Than were the intrepid Four that stand,
The first who dared to live their dream.
And on this uncongenial land
To found the Abbey of Theleme.

We kept the Rabelaisian plan:[D]
We dignified the dainty cloisters
With Natural Law, the Rights of Man,
Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters.

The library was most inviting:
The books upon the crowded shelves
Were mainly of our private writing:
We kept a school and taught ourselves.

We taught the art of writing things
On men we still should like to throttle:
And where to get the Blood of Kings
At only half a crown a bottle.
. . . . . .
Eheu Fugaces! Postume!
(An old quotation out of mode);
My coat of dreams is stolen away
My youth is passing down the road.
. . . . . .
The wealth of youth, we spent it well
And decently, as very few can.
And is it lost? I cannot tell:
And what is more, I doubt if you can.

The question’s very much too wide,
And much too deep, and much too hollow,
And learned men on either side
Use arguments I cannot follow.

They say that in the unchanging place,
Where all we loved is always dear,
We meet our morning face to face
And find at last our twentieth year....

They say (and I am glad they say)
It is so; and it may be so:
It may be just the other way,
I cannot tell. But this I know:

From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
. . . . . .
But something dwindles, oh! my peers,
And something cheats the heart and passes,
And Tom that meant to shake the years
Has come to merely rattling glasses.

And He, the Father of the Flock,
Is keeping Burmesans in order,
An exile on a lonely rock
That overlooks the Chinese border.

And One (Myself I mean—no less),
Ah!—will Posterity believe it—
Not only don’t deserve success,
But hasn’t managed to achieve it.

Not even this peculiar town
Has ever fixed a friendship firmer,
But—one is married, one’s gone down,
And one’s a Don, and one’s in Burmah.
. . . . . .
And oh! the days, the days, the days,
When all the four were off together:
The infinite deep of summer haze,
The roaring boast of autumn weather!
. . . . . .
I will not try the reach again,
I will not set my sail alone,
To moor a boat bereft of men
At Yarnton’s tiny docks of stone.

But I will sit beside the fire,
And put my hand before my eyes,
And trace, to fill my heart’s desire,
The last of all our Odysseys.

The quiet evening kept her tryst:
Beneath an open sky we rode,
And passed into a wandering mist
Along the perfect Evenlode.

The tender Evenlode that makes
Her meadows hush to hear the sound
Of waters mingling in the brakes,
And binds my heart to English ground.

A lovely river, all alone,
She lingers in the hills and holds
A hundred little towns of stone,
Forgotten in the western wolds.
. . . . . .
I dare to think (though meaner powers
Possess our thrones, and lesser wits
Are drinking worser wine than ours,
In what’s no longer Austerlitz)

That surely a tremendous ghost,
The brazen-lunged, the bumper-filler,
Still sings to an immortal toast,
The Misadventures of the Miller.

The unending seas are hardly bar
To men with such a prepossession:
We were? Why then, by God, we are—
Order! I call the Club to session!

You do retain the song we set,
And how it rises, trips and scans?
You keep the sacred memory yet,
Republicans? Republicans?

You know the way the words were hurled,
To break the worst of fortune’s rub?
I give the toast across the world,
And drink it, “Gentlemen: the Club.”

DEDICATION ON THE GIFT OF A BOOK TO A CHILD

Child! do not throw this book about!
Refrain from the unholy pleasure
Of cutting all the pictures out!
Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

Child, have you never heard it said
That you are heir to all the ages?
Why, then, your hands were never made
To tear these beautiful thick pages!

Your little hands were made to take
The better things and leave the worse ones:
They also may be used to shake
The Massive Paws of Elder Persons.

And when your prayers complete the day,
Darling, your little tiny hands
Were also made, I think, to pray
For men that lose their fairylands.

DEDICATION OF A CHILD’S BOOK OF IMAGINARY TALES

WHEREIN WRONG-DOERS SUFFER

And is it true? It is not true!
And if it was it wouldn’t do
For people such as me and you,
Who very nearly all day long
Are doing something rather wrong.

HOMAGE

I

There is a light around your head
Which only Saints of God may wear,
And all the flowers on which you tread
In pleasaunce more than ours have fed,
And supped the essential air
Whose summer is a-pulse with music everywhere.

II

For you are younger than the mornings are
That in the mountains break;
When upland shepherds see their only star
Pale on the dawn, and make
In his surcease the hours,
The early hours of all their happy circuit take.

THE MOON’S FUNERAL

I

The Moon is dead. I saw her die.
She in a drifting cloud was drest,
She lay along the uncertain west,
A dream to see.
And very low she spake to me:
“I go where none may understand,
I fade into the nameless land,
And there must lie perpetually.”
And therefore I,
And therefore loudly, loudly I
And high
And very piteously make cry:
“The Moon is dead. I saw her die.”

II

And will she never rise again?
The Holy Moon? Oh, never more!
Perhaps along the inhuman shore
Where pale ghosts are
Beyond the low lethean fen
She and some wide infernal star....
To us who loved her never more,
The Moon will never rise again.
Oh! never more in nightly sky
Her eye so high shall peep and pry
To see the great world rolling by.
For why?
The Moon is dead. I saw her die.

THE HAPPY JOURNALIST

I love to walk about at night
By nasty lanes and corners foul,
All shielded from the unfriendly light
And independent as the owl.

By dirty grates I love to lurk;
I often stoop to take a squint
At printers working at their work.
I muse upon the rot they print.

The beggars please me, and the mud:
The editors beneath their lamps
As—Mr Howl demanding blood,
And Lord Retender stealing stamps,

And Mr Bing instructing liars,
His elder son composing trash;
Beaufort (whose real name is Meyers)
Refusing anything but cash.

I like to think of Mr Meyers,
I like to think of Mr Bing.
I like to think about the liars:
It pleases me, that sort of thing.

Policemen speak to me, but I,
Remembering my civic rights,
Neglect them and do not reply.
I love to walk about at nights!

At twenty-five to four I bunch
Across a cab I can’t afford.
I ring for breakfast after lunch.
I am as happy as a lord!

LINES TO A DON

Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men—
Your quavering and corroded pen;
Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
Don middle-class, Don sycophantic,
Don dull, Don brutish, Don pedantic;
Don hypocritical, Don bad,
Don furtive, Don three-quarters mad;
Don (since a man must make an end),
Don that shall never be my friend.
. . . . . .
Don different from those regal Dons!
With hearts of gold and lungs of bronze,
Who shout and bang and roar and bawl
The Absolute across the hall,
Or sail in amply bellowing gown
Enormous through the Sacred Town,
Bearing from College to their homes
Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;
Dons admirable! Dons of Might!
Uprising on my inward sight
Compact of ancient tales, and port
And sleep—and learning of a sort.
Dons English, worthy of the land;
Dons rooted; Dons that understand.
Good Dons perpetual that remain
A landmark, walling in the plain—
The horizon of my memories—
Like large and comfortable trees.
. . . . . .
Don very much apart from these,
Thou scapegoat Don, thou Don devoted,
Don to thine own damnation quoted,
Perplexed to find thy trivial name
Reared in my verse to lasting shame.
Don dreadful, rasping Don and wearing,
Repulsive Don—Don past all bearing.
Don of the cold and doubtful breath,
Don despicable, Don of death;
Don nasty, skimpy, silent, level;
Don evil; Don that serves the devil.
Don ugly—that makes fifty lines.
There is a Canon which confines
A Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse
If written in Iambic Verse
To fifty lines. I never cut;
I far prefer to end it—but
Believe me I shall soon return.
My fires are banked, but still they burn
To write some more about the Don
That dared attack my Chesterton.

NEWDIGATE POEM

A PRIZE POEM SUBMITTED BY MR LAMBKIN, THEN SCHOLAR AND LATER FELLOW OF BURFORD COLLEGE, TO THE EXAMINERS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD ON THE PRESCRIBED POETIC THEME SET BY THEM IN 1893, “THE BENEFITS OF THE ELECTRIC LIGHT”

Hail, Happy Muse, and touch the tuneful string!
The benefits conferred by Science [E] I sing.
Under the kind Examiners’ direction [F]
I only write about them in connection
With benefits which the Electric Light
Confers on us; especially at night.
These are my theme, of these my song shall rise.
My lofty head shall swell to strike the skies.[G]
And tears of hopeless love bedew the maiden’s eyes.
Descend, O Muse, from thy divine abode,
To Osney, on the Seven Bridges Road;
For under Osney’s solitary shade
The bulk of the Electric Light is made.
Here are the works;—from hence the current flows
Which (so the Company’s prospectus goes)
Can furnish to Subscribers hour by hour
No less than sixteen thousand candle power,[H]
All at a thousand volts. (It is essential
To keep the current at this high potential
In spite of the considerable expense.)
The Energy developed represents,
Expressed in foot-tons, the united forces
Of fifteen elephants and forty horses.
But shall my scientific detail thus
Clip the dear wings of Buoyant Pegasus?
Shall pure statistics jar upon the ear
That pants for Lyric accents loud and clear?
Shall I describe the complex Dynamo
Or write about its Commutator? No!
To happier fields I lead my wanton pen,
The proper study of mankind is men.
Awake, my Muse! Portray the pleasing sight
That meets us where they make Electric Light.
Behold the Electrician where he stands:
Soot, oil, and verdigris are on his hands;
Large spots of grease defile his dirty clothes,
The while his conversation drips with oaths.
Shall such a being perish in its youth?
Alas! it is indeed the fatal truth.
In that dull brain, beneath that hair unkempt,
Familiarity has bred contempt.
We warn him of the gesture all too late:
Oh, Heartless Jove! Oh, Adamantine Fate!
A random touch—a hand’s imprudent slip—
The Terminals—a flash—a sound like “Zip!”
A smell of burning fills the started Air—
The Electrician is no longer there!
But let us turn with true Artistic scorn
From facts funereal and from views forlorn
Of Erebus and Blackest midnight born.[I]
Arouse thee, Muse! and chaunt in accents rich
The interesting processes by which
The Electricity is passed along:
These are my theme: to these I bend my song.
It runs encased in wood or porous brick
Through copper wires two millimetres thick,
And insulated on their dangerous mission
By indiarubber, silk, or composition.
Here you may put with critical felicity
The following question: “What is Electricity?”
“Molecular Activity,” say some,
Others when asked say nothing, and are dumb.
Whatever be its nature, this is clear:
The rapid current checked in its career,
Baulked in its race and halted in its course [J]
Transforms to heat and light its latent force:
It needs no pedant in the lecturer’s chair
To prove that light and heat are present there.
The pear-shaped vacuum globe, I understand,
Is far too hot to fondle with the hand.
While, as is patent to the meanest sight,
The carbon filament is very bright.
As for the lights they hang about the town,
Some praise them highly, others run them down.
This system (technically called the Arc),
Makes some passages too light, others too dark.
But in the house the soft and constant rays
Have always met with universal praise.
For instance: if you want to read in bed
No candle burns beside your curtain’s head,
Far from some distant corner of the room
The incandescent lamp dispels the gloom,
And with the largest print need hardly try
The powers of any young and vigorous eye.
Aroint thee, Muse! Inspired the poet sings!
I cannot help observing future things!
Life is a vale, its paths are dark and rough
Only because we do not know enough:
When Science has discovered something more
We shall be happier than we were before.
Hail, Britain, Mistress of the Azure Main,
Ten thousand Fleets sweep over thee in vain!
Hail, Mighty Mother of the Brave and Free,
That beat Napoleon, and gave birth to me!
Thou that canst wrap in thine emblazoned robe
One quarter of the habitable globe.
Thy mountains, wafted by a favouring breeze,
Like mighty rocks withstand the stormy seas.
Thou art a Christian Commonwealth; and yet
Be thou not all unthankful—nor forget
As thou exultest in Imperial Might
The Benefits of the Electric Light.

THE YELLOW MUSTARD

Oh! ye that prink it to and fro,
In pointed flounce and furbelow,
What have ye known, what can ye know
That have not seen the mustard grow?

The yellow mustard is no less
Than God’s good gift to loneliness;
And he was sent in gorgeous press
To jangle keys at my distress.

I heard the throstle call again,
Come hither, Pain! come hither, Pain!
Till all my shameless feet were fain
To wander through the summer rain.

And far apart from human place,
And flaming like a vast disgrace,
There struck me blinding in the face
The livery of the mustard race.
. . . . . .
To see the yellow mustard grow
Beyond the town, above, below;
Beyond the purple houses, oh!
To see the yellow mustard grow!

THE POLITICIAN OR THE IRISH EARLDOM

A strong and striking Personality,
Worth several hundred thousand pounds—
Of strict political Morality—
Was walking in his park-like Grounds;
When, just as these began to pall on him
(I mean the Trees, and Things like that),
A Person who had come to call on him
Approached him, taking off his Hat.

He said, with singular veracity:
“I serve our Sea-girt Mother-Land
In no conspicuous capacity.
I am but an Attorney; and
I do a little elementary
Negotiation, now and then,
As Agent for a Parliamentary
Division of the Town of N....

“Merely as one of the Electorate—
A member of the Commonweal—
Before completing my Directorate,
I want to know the way you feel
On matters more or less debatable;
As—whether our Imperial Pride
Can treat as taxable or rateable
The Gardens of....” His host replied:

“The Ravages of Inebriety
(Alas! increasing day by day!)
Are undermining all Society.
I do not hesitate to say
My country squanders her abilities,
Observe how Montenegro treats
Her Educational Facilities....
... As to the African defeats,

“I bitterly deplored their frequency;
On Canada we are agreed,
The Laws protecting Public Decency
Are very, very lax indeed!
The Views of most of the Nobility
Are very much the same as mine,
On Thingumbob’s eligibility....
I trust that you remain to dine?”

His Lordship pressed with importunity,
As rarely he had pressed before.
. . . . . .
It gave them both an opportunity
To know each other’s value more.

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