The Lord of Misrule, and Other Poems

ON those young brows that knew no fear

We lay the Roman athlete’s crown,

The laurel of the charioteer,

The imperial garland of renown,

While those young eyes, beyond the sun,

See Drake, see Raleigh, smile “Well done.”

Their desert seas that knew no shore

To-night with fleets like cities flare;

But, frailer even than theirs of yore,

His keel a new-found deep would dare:

They watch, with thrice-experienced eyes

What fleets shall follow through the skies.

They would not scoff, though man should set

To feebler wings a mightier task.

They know what wonders wait us yet.

Not all things in an hour they ask;

But in each noble failure see

The inevitable victory.

A thousand years have borne us far

From that dark isle the Saxon swayed,

And star whispers to trembling star

While Space and Time shrink back afraid,—

“Ten thousand thousand years remain

For man to dare our deep again.”

Thou, too, shalt hear across that deep

Our thundering fleets of thought draw nigh,

Round which the suns and systems sweep

Like cloven foam from sky to sky,

Till Death himself at last restore

His captives to our eyes once more.

 .......

Feeble the wings, dauntless the soul!

Take thou the conqueror’s laurel crown;

Take—for thy chariot grazed the goal—

The imperial garland of renown;

While those young eyes, beyond the sun,

See Drake, see Raleigh, smile “Well done.”

CRIMSON and black on the sky, a waggon of clover

Slowly goes rumbling, over the white chalk road;

And I lie in the golden grass there, wondering why

So little a thing

As the jingle and ring of the harness,

The hot creak of leather,

The peace of the plodding,

Should suddenly, stabbingly, make it

Strange that men die.

Only, perhaps, in the same blue summer weather,

Hundreds of years ago, in this field where I lie,

Cædmon, the Saxon, was caught by the self-same thing:

The serf lying, black with the sun, on his beautiful wain-load,

The jingle and clink of the harness,

The hot creak of leather,

The peace of the plodding;

And wondered, O terribly wondered,

That men must die.

I

VOICE of the summer stars that, long ago,

Sang thro’ the old oak-forests of our isle,

Enchanted voice, pure as her falling snow,

Dark as her storms, bright as her sunniest smile,

Taliessin, voice of Britain, the fierce flow

Of fourteen hundred years has whelmed not thee!

Still art thou singing, lavrock of her morn,

Singing to heaven in that first golden glow,

Singing above her mountains and her sea!

Not older yet are grown

Thy four winds in their moan

For Urien. Still thy charlock blooms in the billowing corn.

II

Thy dew is bright upon this beechen spray!

Spring wakes thy harp! I hear—I see—again,

Thy wild steeds foaming thro’ the crimson fray,

The raven on the white breast of thy slain,

The tumult of thy chariots, far away,

The weeping in the glens, the lustrous hair

Dishevelled over the stricken eagle’s fall,

And in thy Druid groves, at fall of day

One gift that Britain gave her valorous there,

One gift of lordlier pride

Than aught—save to have died—

One spray of the sacred oak, they coveted most of all.

III

I watch thy nested brambles growing green:

O strange, across that misty waste of years,

To glimpse the shadowy thrush that thou hast seen,

To touch, across the ages, touch with tears

The ferns that hide thee with their fairy screen,

Or only hear them rustling in the dawn;

And—as a dreamer waking—in thy words,

For all the golden clouds that drowse between,

To feel the veil of centuries withdrawn,

To feel thy sun re-risen

Unbuild our shadowy prison

And hear on thy fresh boughs the carol of waking birds.

IV

O, happy voice, born in that far, clear time,

Over thy single harp thy simple strain

Attuned all life for Britain to the chime

Of viking oars and the sea’s dark refrain,

And thine own beating heart, and the sublime

Measure to which the moons and stars revolve

Untroubled by the storms that, year by year,

In ever-swelling symphonies still climb

To embrace our growing world and to resolve

Discords unknown to thee,

In the infinite harmony

Which still transcends our strife and leaves us darkling here.

 .......

V

For, now, one sings of heaven and one of hell,

One soars with hope, one plunges to despair!

This, trembling, doubts if aught be ill or well;

And that cries, “Fair is foul and foul is fair;”

And this cries, “Forward, though I cannot tell

Whither, and all too surely all things die;”

And that sighs, “Rest, then, sleep and take thine ease.”

One sings his country and one rings its knell,

One hymns mankind, one dwarfs them with the sky.

O, Britain, let thy soul

Once more command the whole,

Once more command the strings of the world-wide harmony.

VI

For hark! One sings, The gods, the gods are dead!

Man triumphs! And hark—Blind Space his funeral urn.

And hark, one whispers with reverted head

To the old dead gods—Bring back our heaven, return!

And hark, one moans—The ancient order is fled,

We are children of blind chance and vacant dreams.

Heed not mine utterance—that was chance-born, too.

And hark, the answer of Science—All they said,

Your fathers, in that old time, lit by gleams

Of what their hearts could feel,

The rolling years reveal

As fragments of one law, one covenant, simply true.

VII

I find, she cries, in all this march of time

And space, no gulf, no break, nothing that mars

Its unity. I watch the primal slime

Lift Athens like a flower to greet the stars!

I flash my messages from clime to clime,

I link the increasing world from depth to height!

Not yet ye see the wonder that draws nigh,

When at some sudden contact, some sublime

Touch, as of memory, all this boundless night

Wherein ye grope entombed

Shall, by that touch illumed,

Like one electric City shine from sky to sky.

VIII

No longer then the memories that ye hold

Dark in your brain shall slumber. Ye shall see

That City whose gates are more than pearl or gold

And all its towers firm as Eternity.

The stones of the earth have cried to it from of old!

Why will ye turn from Him who reigns above

Because your highest words fall short?

Kneel—call

On Him whose Name—I AM—doth still enfold

Past, present, future, memory, hope and love.

No seed falls fruitless there.

Beyond your Father’s care—

The old covenant still holds fast—no bird, no leaf can fall.

IX

O Time, thou mask of the ever-living Soul,

Thou veil to shield us from that blinding Face,

Thou art wearing thin! We are nearer to the goal

When man no more shall need thy saving grace,

But all the folded years like one great scroll

Shall be unrolled in the omnipresent Now,

And He that saith I am unseal the tomb:

Nearer His thunders and His trumpets roll,

I catch the gleam that lit thy lifted brow,

O singer whose wild eyes

Possess these April skies,

I touch—I clasp thy hands thro’ all the clouds of doom.

X

Teach thou our living choirs amid the sound

Of their tempestuous chords once more to hear

That harmony wherewith the whole is crowned,

The singing heavens that sphere by choral sphere

Break open, height o’er height, to the utmost bound

Of passionate thought! O, as this glorious land,

This sacred country shining on the sea,

Grows mightier, let not her clear voice be drowned

In the fierce waves of faction. Let her stand

A beacon to the blind,

A signal to mankind,

A witness to the heavens’ profoundest unity.

XI

Her altars are forgotten and her creeds

Dust, and her soul foregoes the lesser Cross.

O, point her to the greater! Her heart bleeds

Still, where men simply feel some vague deep loss.

Their hands grope earthward, knowing not what she needs.

We would not call her back in this great hour!

Nay, upward, onward, to the heights untrod

Signal us, living voices, by those deeds

Of all her deathless heroes, by the Power

That still, still walks her waves,

Still chastens her, still saves,

Signal us, not to the dead, but to the living God.

XII

Signal us with that watchword of the deep,

The watchword that her boldest seamen gave

The winds of the unknown ocean-sea to keep,

When round their oaken walls the midnight wave

Heaved and subsided in gigantic sleep,

And they plunged Westward with her flag unfurled.

Hark, o’er their cloudy sails and glimmering spars,

The watch cries, as they proudly onward sweep,—

Before the world ... All’s well!... Before the world ...

From mast to calling mast

The counter-cry goes past—

Before the world was God!—it rings against the stars.

XIII

Signal us o’er the little heavens of gold

With that heroic signal Nelson knew

When, thro’ the thunder and flame that round him rolled,

He pointed to the dream that still held true.

Cry o’er the warring nations, cry as of old

A little child shall lead them! they shall be

One people under the shadow of God’s wing!

There shall be no more weeping! Let it be told

That Britain set one foot upon the sea,

One foot on the earth. Her eyes

Burned thro’ the conquered skies,

And, as the angel of God, she bade the whole world sing.

XIV

A dream? Nay, have ye heard or have ye known

That the everlasting God who made the ends

Of all creation wearieth? His worlds groan

Together in travail still. Still He descends

From heaven. The increasing worlds are still His throne

And His creative Calvary and His tomb

Through which He sinks, dies, triumphs with each and all,

And ascends, multitudinous and at one

With all the hosts of His evolving doom,

His vast redeeming strife,

His everlasting life,

His love, beyond which not one bird, one leaf can fall.

XV

And hark, His whispers thro’ creation flow,

Lovest thou me? His nations answer “yea!”

And—Feed My lambs, His voice as long ago

Steals from that highest heaven, how far away!

And yet again saith—Lovest thou Me? and “O,

Thou knowest we love Thee,” passionately we cry:

But, heeding not our tumult, out of the deep

The great grave whisper, pitiful and low,

Breathes—Feed My sheep; and yet once more the sky

Thrills with that deep strange plea,

Lovest thou, lovest thou Me?

And our lips answer “yea”; but our God—Feed My sheep.

XVI

O sink not yet beneath the exceeding weight

Of splendour, thou still single-hearted voice

Of Britain. Droop not earthward now to freight

Thy soul with fragments of the song, rejoice

In no faint flights of music that create

Low heavens o’er-arched by skies without a star,

Nor sink in the easier gulfs of shallower pain!

Sing thou in the whole majesty of thy fate,

Teach us thro’ joy, thro’ grief, thro’ peace, thro’ war,

With single heart and soul

Still, still to seek the goal,

And thro’ our perishing heavens, point us to Heaven again.

XVII

Voice of the summer stars that long ago

Sang thro’ the old oak-forests of our isle,

An ocean-music that thou ne’er couldst know

Storms Heaven—O, keep us steadfast all the while;

Not idly swayed by tides that ebb and flow,

But strong to embrace the whole vast symphony

Wherein no note (no bird, no leaf) can fall

Beyond His care, to enfold it all as though

Thy single harp were ours, its unity

In battle like one sword,

And O, its one reward

One spray of the sacred oak, still coveted most of all.

I

WHEN poppies fired the nut-brown wheat,

My love went by with sun-stained feet:

I followed her laughter, followed her, followed her, all a summer’s morn!

But O, from an elfin palace of air,

A wild bird sang a song so rare,

I stayed to listen and—lost my Fair,

And walked the world forlorn.

II

When chalk shone white between the sheaves,

My love went by as one that grieves;

I followed her weeping, followed her, followed her, all an autumn noon!

The sunset flamed so fierce a red

From North to South—I turned my head

To wonder—and my Fair was fled

Beyond the dawning moon.

III

When bare black boughs were choked with snow,

My love went by, as long ago;

I followed her dreaming, followed her, followed her, all a winter’s night!

But O, along that snow-white track

With thorny shadows printed black,

I saw three kings come riding back,

And—lost my life’s delight.

IV

They are so many, and she but One;

And I and she, like moon and sun

So separate ever! Ah yet, I follow her, follow her, faint and far;

For what if all this diverse bliss

Should run together in one kiss!

Swift, Spring, with the sweet clue I miss

Between these several instances,—

The kings, that inn, that star.

V

Between the hawk’s and the wood-dove’s wing,

My love, my love flashed by like Spring!

The year had finished its golden ring!

Earth, the Gipsy, and Heaven, the King,

Were married like notes in the song I sing,

And O, I followed her, followed her, followed her over the hills of Time,

Never to lose her now I know,

For whom the sun was clasped in snow,

The heights linked to the depths below,

The rose’s flush to the planet’s glow,

Death the friend to life the foe,

The Winter’s joy to the Spring’s woe,

And the world made one in a rhyme.

FAREWELL! The soft mists of the sunset-sky

Slowly enfold his fading birch-canoe!

Farewell! His dark, his desolate forests cry,

Moved to their vast, their sorrowful depths anew.

Fading! Nay, lifted thro’ a heaven of light,

His proud sails brightening thro’ that crimson flame,

Leaving us lonely on the shores of night,

Home to Ponemah take his deathless fame.

Generous as a child, so wholly free

From all base pride that fools forgot his crown,

He adored Beauty, in pure ecstasy,

And waived the mere rewards of his renown.

The spark that falls from heaven not oft on earth

To human hearts this vital splendour gives;

His was the simple, true, immortal birth.

Scholars compose; but—this man’s music lives!

Greater than England or than Earth discerned,

He never paltered with his art for gain:

When many a vaunted crown to dust is turned,

This uncrowned king shall take his throne and reign.

Nations unborn shall hear his forests moan;

Ages unscanned shall hear his winds lament,

Hear the strange grief that deepened through his own

The vast cry of a buried continent.

Through him, his race a moment lifted up

Forests of hands to Beauty as in prayer;

Touched through his lips the sacramental Cup,

And then sank back—benumbed in our bleak air.

Through him, through him, a lost world hailed the light!

The tragedy of that triumph none can tell,—

So great, so brief, so quickly snatched from sight;

And yet—O hail, great comrade, not farewell!

SLEEP, crowned with fame; fearless of change or time.

Sleep, like remembered music in the soul,

Silent, immortal; while our discords climb

To that great chord which shall resolve the whole.

Silent with Mozart on that solemn shore;

Secure where neither waves nor hearts can break;

Sleep—till the Master of the World, once more,

Touch the remembered strings, and bid thee wake....

Touch the remembered strings, and bid thee wake.

THE moon that sways the rhythmic seas,

The wheeling earth, the marching sky,—

I ask not whence the order came

That moves them all as one.

These are your chariots. Nor shall these

Appal me with immensity;

I know they carry one heart of flame

More precious than the sun.

IF in the noon they doubted, in the night

They never swerved. Death had no power to appal.

There was one Way, one Truth, one Life, one Light,

One Love that shone triumphant over all.

If in the noon they doubted, at the last

There was no Way to part, no Way but One

That rolled the waves of Nature back and cast

In ancient days a shadow across the sun.

If in the noon they doubted, their last breath

Saluted once again the eternal goal,

Chanted a love-song in the face of Death

And rent the veil of darkness from the soul.

If in the noon they doubted, in the night

They waved the shadowy world of strife aside,

Flooded high heaven with an immortal light,

And taught the deep how its Creator died.

IT tears at the heart in the night, that moan of the wind,

That desolate moan.

It is worse than the cry of a child. I can hardly bear

To hear it, alone.

It is worse than the sobbing of love, when love is estranged:

For this is a cry

Out of the desolate ages. It never has changed.

It never can die.

A cry over numberless graves, dark, helpless and blind,

From the measureless past,

To the measureless future, a sobbing before the first laughter,

And after the last!

 .......

From the height of creation, in passion eternal, the Word

Rushes forth, the loud cry,

Forsaken! Forsaken! It cuts through the night like a sword!

Shall it win no reply?

Not of earth is that height of all sorrow, past time, out of space,

Therefore here, here and now,

Universal, a Calvary, crowned with Thy passionate face,

Thy thorn-wounded brow.

Ah, could I shrink if Thy heart for each heart upon earth

Must break like a sea?

Could I hear, could I bear it at all, if I were not a part

Of this labour in Thee?

Shall I accuse Thee, then? God, I account it my own

All the grief I can bear,

On Thy Cross of Creation, to balance earth’s bliss and atone,

Atone for life there.

If this be the One Way for ever, which not Thine all-might

Could change, if it would,

Till the truth be untrue, till the dark be the same as the light,

And till evil be good,

Shall I who took part in Thine April, shrink now from my part

In Thine anguish to be?

If Thy goal be the One goal of all, shall not even man’s heart

Endure this, with Thee;

Die with Thee, balancing life, or help Thee to pay

For our hope with our pain?...

O, the voice of the wind in the night! Is it day, then, broad day,

On the blind earth again?

WHITE-armed Astrid,—ah, but she was beautiful!—

Nightly wandered weeping thro’ the ferns in the moon,

Slowly, weaving her strange garland in the forest,

Crowned with white violets,

Gowned in green.

Holy was that glen where she glided,

Making her wild garland as Merlin had bidden her,

Breaking off the milk-white horns of the honey-suckle,

Sweetly dripped the dew upon her small white

Feet.

White-throated Astrid,—ah, but she was beautiful!—

Nightly sought the answer to that riddle in the moon.

She must weave her garland, ere she save her soul.

Three long years she has wandered there in vain.

Always, always, the blossom that would finish it

Falls to her feet, and the garland breaks and vanishes,

Breaks like a dream in the dawn when the dreamer

Wakes.

White-bosomed Astrid,—ah, but she was beautiful!—

Nightly tastes the sorrow of the world in the moon.

Will it be this little white miracle, she wonders.

How shall she know it, the star that will save her?

Still, ah still, in the moonlight she crouches

Bowing her head, for the garland has crumbled!

All the wild petals for the thousand and second time

Fall.

White-footed Astrid,—ah, but she is beautiful!—

Nightly seeks the secret of the world in the moon.

She will find the secret. She will find the golden

Key to the riddle, on the night when she has numbered them,

Marshalled all her wild flowers, ordered them as music,

Star by star, note by note, changing them and ranging them,

Suddenly, as at a kiss, all will flash together,

Flooding like the dawn thro’ the arches of the woodland,

Fern and thyme and violet, maiden-hair and primrose

Turn to the Rose of the World, and He shall fold her,

Kiss her on the mouth, saying, all the world is one now,

This is the secret of the music that the soul hears,—

This.

THEY tell this proud tale of the Queen—Cleopatra,

Subtlest of women that the world has ever seen,

How that, on the night when she parted with her lover

Anthony, tearless, dry-throated, and sick-hearted,

A strange thing befell them in the darkness where they stood.

Bitter as blood was that darkness.

And they stood in a deep window, looking to the west.

Her white breast was brighter than the moon upon the sea,

And it moved in her agony (because it was the end!)

Like a deep sea, where many had been drowned.

Proud ships that were crowned with an Emperor’s eagles

Were sunken there forgotten, with their emeralds and gold.

They had drunken of that glory, and their tale was told, utterly,

Told.

There, as they parted, heart from heart, mouth from mouth,

They stared upon each other. They listened.

For the South-wind

Brought them a rumour from afar; and she said,

Lifting her head, too beautiful for anguish,

Too proud for pity,—

It is the gods that leave the City! O, Anthony,

Anthony, the gods have forsaken us;

Because it is the end! They leave us to our doom.

Hear it! And unshaken in the darkness,

Dull as dropping earth upon a tomb in the distance,

They heard, as when across a wood a low wind comes,

A muttering of drums, drawing nearer,

Then louder and clearer, as when a trumpet sings

To battle, it came rushing on the wings of the wind,

A sound of sacked cities, a sound of lamentation,

A cry of desolation, as when a conquered nation

Is weeping in the darkness, because its tale is told;

And then—a sound of chariots that rolled thro’ that sorrow

Trampled like a storm of wild stallions, tossing nearer,

Trampled louder, clearer, triumphantly as music,

Till lo! in that great darkness, along that vacant street,

A red light beat like a furnace on the walls,

Then—like the blast when the North-wind calls to battle,

Blaring thro’ the blood-red tumult and the flame,

Shaking the proud City as they came, an hundred elephants,

Cream-white and bronze, and splashed with bitter crimson,

Trumpeting for battle as they trod, an hundred elephants,

Bronze and cream-white, and trapped with gold and purple,

Towered like tuskéd castles, every thunder-laden footfall

Dreadful as the shattering of a City. Yet they trod,

Rocking like an earthquake, to a great triumphant music,

And, swinging like the stars, black planets, white moons,

Thro’ the stream of the torches, they brought the red chariot,

The chariot of the battle-god—Mars.

While the tall spears of Sparta tossed clashing in his train,

And a host of ghostly warriors cried aloud

All hail! to those twain, and went rushing to the darkness

Like a pageantry of cloud, for their tale was told—utterly—

Told.

And following, in the fury of the vine, rushing down

Like a many-visaged torrent, with ivy-rod and thyrse,

And many a wild and foaming crown of roses,

Crowded the Bacchanals, the brown-limbed shepherds,

The red-tongued leopards, and the glory of the god!

Iacchus! Iacchus! without dance, without song,

They cried and swept along to the darkness.

Only for a breath when the tumult of their torches

Crimsoned the deep window where that dark warrior stood

With the blood upon his mail, and the Queen—Cleopatra,

Frozen to white marble—the Mænads raised their timbrels,

Tossed their white arms, with a clash—All hail!

Like wild swimmers, pale, in a sea of blood and wine,

All hail! All hail! Then they swept into the darkness

And the darkness buried them. Their tale was told—utterly—

Told.

And following them, O softer than the moon upon the sea,

Aphrodite, implacably, shone.

Like a furnace of white roses, Aphrodite and her train

Lifted their white arms to those twain in the silence

Once, and were gone into the darkness;

Once, and away into the darkness they were swept

Like a pageantry of cloud, without praise, without pity.

Then the dark City slept. And the Queen—Cleopatra—

Subtlest of women that this earth has ever seen,

Turning to her lover in the darkness where he stood,

With the blood upon his mail,

Bowing her head upon that iron in the darkness,

Wept.

FALERNIAN, first! What other wine

Should brim the cup or tint the line

That would recall my days

Among your creeks and bays;

Where, founded on a rock, your house

Between the pines’ unfading boughs

Watches through sun and rain

That lonelier coast of Maine;

And the Atlantic’s mounded blue

Breaks on your crags the summer through,

A long pine’s length below,

In rainbow-tossing snow.

While on your railed verandah there

As on a deck you sail through air,

And sea and cloud and sky

Go softly streaming by.

Like delicate oils at set of sun

Smoothing the waves the colours run—

Around the enchanted hull,

Anchored and beautiful,—

Restoring to that sun-dried star

You brought from coral isles afar—

With shells that mock the moon—

The tints of their lagoon;

Till, from within, your lamps declare

Your harbours by the colours there,

An Indian god, a fan

Painted in Old Japan.

But, best of all, I think at night,

The moon that makes a road of light

Across the whispering sea,

A road—for memory.

When the blue dusk has filled the pane,

And the great pine-logs burn again,

And books are good to read.

—For his were books indeed.—

Their silken shadows, rustling, dim,

May sing no more of Spain for him;

No shadows of old France

Renew their courtly dance.

He walks no more where shadows are

But left their ivory gates ajar,

That shadows might prolong

The dance, the tale, the song.

His was no narrow test or rule.

He chose the best of every school,—

Stendhal and Keats and Donne,

Balzac and Stevenson;

Wordsworth and Flaubert filled their place.

Dumas met Hawthorne face to face.

There were both new and old

In his good realm of gold.

The title-pages bore his name;

And, nightly, by the dancing flame,

Following him, I found

That all was haunted ground;

Until a friendlier shadow fell

Upon the leaves he loved so well,

And I no longer read,

But talked with him instead.

CRIMSON was the twilight, under that crab-tree,

Where—old tales tell us—all a midsummer’s night,

A mad young poacher, drunk with mead of elfin-land,

Lodged with the fern-owl, and looked at the stars.

There, from the dusk where the dream of Piers Plowman

Darkens on the sunset, to this dusk of our own,

I read, in a history, the record of our world.

The hawk-moth, the currant-moth, the red-striped tiger-moth

Shimmered all around me, so white shone those pages;

And, in among the blue boughs, the bats flew low.

I slumbered, the history slipped from my hand.

Then I saw a dead man, dreadful in the moon-dawn,

The ghost of the master, bowed upon that book.

He muttered as he searched it,—what vast convulsion

Mocks my sexton’s curse now, shakes our English clay?

Whereupon I told him, and asked him in turn

Whether he espied any light in those pages

Which painted an epoch later than his own.

I am a shadow, he said, and I see none....

I am a shadow, he said, and I see none.

Then, O then he murmured to himself (while the moon hung

Crimson as a lanthorn of Cathay in that crab-tree),

Laughing at his work and the world, as I thought,

Yet with some bitterness, yet with some beauty,

Mocking his own music, these wraiths of his rhymes:

I

God, when I turn the leaves of that dark book

Wherein our wisest teach us to recall

Those glorious flags which in old tempests shook

And those proud thrones which held my youth in thrall;

When I see clear what seemed to childish eyes

The gorgeous colouring of each pictured age;

And for their dominant tints now recognise

Those prints of innocent blood on every page;

O, then I know this world is fast asleep,

Bound in Time’s womb, till some far morning break;

And, though light grows upon the dreadful deep,

We are dungeoned in thick night. We are not awake.

The world’s unborn, for all our hopes and schemes;

And all its myriads only move in dreams.

II

Read what our wisest chroniclers record:—

A king betrayed both foes and friends to death,

Delivered his own country to the sword,

And lied, and lied, and lied to his last breath.

He died, the martyred anarch of his time.

What balm is this that consecrates his dust?

The self-same history shudders at the “crime”

Which shed a blood so fragrant, so “august.”

Yes. Let our sons by thousands, millions, die;

And when the crowned assassin of to-day

Stands in the Judgment Hall of Liberty

What shall your desolate nations rise and say?

Honour the dog. He’s vanquished! He’s a king!

So—for our dead—he’s too “august” a thing.

III

It was a crimson twilight, under that crab-tree.

Moths beat about me, and bats flew low.

I read, in a history, the record of our world.

If there be light, said the Master,

I am a shadow, and I see none ...

I am a shadow, and I see none.

WODEN made the red cliffs, the red walls of England.

Round the South of Devonshire, they burn against the blue.

Green is the water there; and, clear as liquid sunlight,

Blue-green as mackerel, the bays that Raleigh knew.

Thor made the black cliffs, the battlements of England,

Climbing to Tintagel where the white gulls wheel.

Cold are the caverns there, and sullen as a cannon-mouth,

Booming back the grey swell that gleams like steel.

Balder made the white cliffs, the white shield of England

(Crowned with thyme and violet where Sussex wheatears fly),

White as the White Ensign are the bouldered heights of Dover,

Beautiful the scutcheon that they bare against the sky.

So the world shall sing of them—the white cliffs of England,

White, the glory of her sails, the banner of her pride.

One and all,—their seamen met and broke the dread Armada.

Only white may show the world the shield for which they died.

COME away into the sun and see

All the heavens that used to be,

Daily, hourly, brought to birth

Out of the deep remembering earth.

This is England, this is the land

That holds my heart in her sweet hand.

This is she whose turf, I pray,

Will hide me, on her breast, one day.

Cast you down on the close-cropped turf,

See how the white cliff spreads the surf,

On green-eyed seas that glitter and trail

Into the south like a peacock’s tail.

Then, come away over the hills of thyme,

Where folds like elfin belfries chime

Till Eve, in a cloud of her dusky hair,

Makes it Elf-land everywhere.

You shall pity the king on his throne.

You shall know what never was known.

All the glory of all the skies

Utterly yours in your true love’s eyes;

All the bloom to the world’s end

And all the heavens that over it bend,

Compacted in one garden white,

The garden of your love’s delight.

This is England, this is the land

That holds my soul in her sweet hand.

This is she whose turf, I pray,

Will hide me on her heart one day.