The Lord of Misrule, and Other Poems

A LL on a fresh May morning, I took my love to church,

To see if Parson Primrose were safely on his perch.

He scarce had got to Thirdly, or squire begun to snore,

When, like a sun-lit sea-wave,

A green and crimson sea-wave,

A frolic of madcap May-folk came whooping through the door:—

Come up, come in with streamers!

Come in, with boughs of may!

Come up and thump the sexton,

And carry the clerk away.

Now skip like rams, ye mountains,

Ye little hills, like sheep!

Come up and wake the people

That parson puts to sleep.

They tickled their nut-brown tabors. Their garlands flew in showers,

And lasses and lads came after them, with feet like dancing flowers.

Their queen had torn her green gown, and bared a shoulder as white,

O, white as the may that crowned her,

While all the minstrels round her

Tilted back their crimson hats and sang for sheer delight:

Come up, come in with streamers!

Come in, with boughs of may!

Now by the gold upon your toe

You walked the primrose way.

Come up, with white and crimson!

O, shake your bells and sing;

Let the porch bend, the pillars bow,

Before our Lord, the Spring!

The dusty velvet hassocks were dabbled with fragrant dew.

The font grew white with hawthorn. It frothed in every pew.

Three petals clung to the sexton’s beard as he mopped and mowed at the clerk,

And “Take that sexton away,” they cried;

“Did Nebuchadnezzar eat may?” they cried.

“Nay, that was a prize from Betty,” they cried, “for kissing her in the dark.”

Come up, come in with streamers!

Come in, with boughs of may!

Who knows but old Methuselah

May hobble the green-wood way?

If Betty could kiss the sexton,

If Kitty could kiss the clerk,

Who knows how Parson Primrose

Might blossom in the dark?

The congregation spluttered. The squire grew purple and all,

And every little chorister bestrode his carven stall.

The parson flapped like a magpie, but none could hear his prayers;

For Tom Fool flourished his tabor,

Flourished his nut-brown tabor,

Bashed the head of the sexton, and stormed the pulpit stairs.

High in the old oak pulpit

This Lord of all misrule—

I think it was Will Summers

That once was Shakespeare’s fool—

Held up his hand for silence,

And all the church grew still:

“And are you snoring yet,” he said,

“Or have you slept your fill?

“Your God still walks in Eden, between the ancient trees,

Where Youth and Love go wading through pools of primroses.

And this is the sign we bring you, before the darkness fall,

That Spring is risen, is risen again,

That Life is risen, is risen again,

That Love is risen, is risen again, and Love is Lord of all.

“At Paske began our morrice

And, ere Pentecost, our May;

Because, albeit your words be true,

You know not what you say.

You chatter in church like jackdaws,

Words that would wake the dead,

Were there one breath of life in you,

One drop of blood,” he said.

“He died and He went down to hell! You know not what you mean.

Our rafters were of green fir. Also our beds were green.

But out of the mouth of a fool, a fool, before the darkness fall,

We tell you He is risen again,

The Lord of Life is risen again,

The boughs put forth their tender buds, and Love is Lord of all!”

He bowed his head. He stood so still,

They bowed their heads as well.

And softly from the organ-loft

The song began to swell.

Come up with blood-red streamers,

The reeds began the strain.

The vox humana pealed on high,

The Spring is risen again!

The vox angelica replied—The shadows flee away!

Our house-beams were of cedar. Come in, with boughs of may!

The diapason deepened it—Before the darkness fall,

We tell you He is risen again!

Our God hath burst His prison again!

Christ is risen, is risen again; and Love is Lord of all.

I DREAMED the Eternal had repealed

His cosmic code of law last night.

Our prayers had made the Unchanging yield.

Caprice was king from depth to height.

On Beachy Head a shouting throng

Had fired a beacon to proclaim

Their licence. With unmeasured song

They proved it, dancing in the flame.

They quarrelled. One desired the sun,

And one desired the stars to shine.

They closed and wrestled and burned as one,

And the white chalk grew red as wine.

The furnace licked and purred and rolled,

A laughing child held up its hands

Like dreadful torches, dropping gold;

For pain was dead at their commands.

Painless and wild as clouds they burned,

Till the restricted Rose of Day

With all its glorious laws returned,

And the wind blew their ashes away.

SHADOW by shadow, stripped for fight,

The lean black cruisers search the sea.

Night-long their level shafts of light

Revolve, and find no enemy.

Only they know each leaping wave

May hide the lightning, and their grave.

And in the land they guard so well

Is there no silent watch to keep?

An age is dying, and the bell

Rings midnight on a vaster deep.

But over all its waves, once more,

The search-lights move, from shore to shore.

And captains that we thought were dead,

And dreamers that we thought were dumb,

And voices that we thought were fled,

Arise, and call us, and we come;

And “search in thine own soul,” they cry;

“For there, too, lurks thine enemy.”

Search for the foe in thine own soul,

The sloth, the intellectual pride;

The trivial jest that veils the goal

For which our fathers lived and died;

The lawless dreams, the cynic Art,

That rend thy nobler self apart.

Not far, not far into the night,

These level swords of light can pierce;

Yet for her faith does England fight,

Her faith in this our universe;

Believing Truth and Justice draw

From founts of everlasting law;

Therefore a Power above the State,

The unconquerable Power returns.

The fire, the fire that made her great

Once more upon her altar burns.

Once more, redeemed and healed and whole,

She moves to the Eternal Goal.

A THOUSAND creeds and battle-cries,

A thousand warring social schemes,

A thousand new moralities,

And twenty thousand thousand dreams!

Each on his own anarchic way,

From the old order breaking free,—

Our ruined world desires, you say,

Licence, once more, not Liberty.

But ah, beneath the struggling foam,

When storm and change are on the deep,

How quietly the tides come home,

And how the depths of sea-shine sleep;

And we who march towards a goal,

Destroying only to fulfil

The law, the law of that great soul

Which moves beneath your alien will;

We, that like foemen meet the past

Because we bring the future, know

We only fight to achieve at last

A great re-union with our foe;

Re-union in the truths that stand

When all our wars are rolled away;

Re-union of the heart and hand

And of the prayers wherewith we pray;

Re-union in the common needs,

The common strivings of mankind;

Re-union of our warring creeds

In the one God that dwells behind.

Then—in that day—we shall not meet

Wrong with new wrong, but right with right;

Our faith shall make your faith complete

When our battalions re-unite.

Forward!—what use in idle words?—

Forward, O warriors of the soul!

There will be breaking up of swords

When that new morning makes us whole.

GATHER, first, in your left hand

(This must be at fall of day)

Forty grains of wild sea-sand

Where you think a mermaid lay.

I have heard that it is best

If you gather it, warm and sweet,

Out of the dint of her left breast

Where you see her heart has beat.

Out of the dint in that sweet sand

Gather forty grains, I say;

Yet—if it fail you—understand,

There remains a better way.

Out of this you melt your glass

While the veils of night are drawn,

Whispering, till the shadows pass,

“Nixie—pixie—leprechaun!”

Then you blow your magic vial,

Shape it like a crescent moon,

Set it up and make your trial,

Singing, “Elaby, ah, come soon!”

Round the cloudy crescent go,

On the hill-top, in the dawn,

Singing softly, on tip-toe,

“Elaby Gathon! Elaby Gathon!

Nixie—pixie—leprechaun!”

Bring the blood of a white hen

Slaughtered at the break of day,

While the cock, in the fairy glen,

Thrusts his gold neck every way,

Over the brambles, peering, calling,

Under the ferns, with a sudden fear,

Far and wide—as the dews are falling—

Clamouring, calling, everywhere.

Round the crimson vial go,

On the hill-top, in the dawn,

Singing softly, on tip-toe,

“Nixie—pixie—leprechaun!”

If this fail, at break of day,

I can show you a better way.

Bring the buds of the hazel-copse,

Where two lovers kissed at noon;

Bring the crushed red wild-thyme tops

Where they murmured under the moon.

Bring the four-leaved clover also,

One of the white, and one of the red,

Bring the flakes of the may that fall so

Lightly over their bridal bed.

Drop them into the vial—so—

On the hill-top, in the dawn,

Singing softly, on tip-toe,

“Nixie—pixie—leprechaun!”

And, if once will not suffice,

Do it thrice!

If this fail, at break of day,

There remains a better way.

Bring an old and crippled child

—Ah, tread softly, on tip-toe!—

Tattered, tearless, wonder-wild,

From that under-world below,

Bring a wizened child of seven

Reeking from the City slime,

Out of hell into your heaven,

Set her knee-deep in the thyme.

Feed her—clothe her—even so!

Set her on a fairy-throne.

When her eyes begin to glow

Leave her for an hour—alone.

You shall need no spells or charms,

On that hill-top, in that dawn.

When she lifts her wasted arms,

You shall see a veil withdrawn.

There shall be no veil between them,

Though her head be old and wise!

You shall know that she has seen them

By the glory in her eyes.

Round her irons on that hill

Earth has tossed a fairy fire:

Watch, and listen, and be still,

Lest you baulk your own desire.

When she sees four azure wings

Light upon her claw-like hand;

When she lifts her head and sings,

You shall hear and understand:

You shall hear a bugle calling

Wildly over the dew-dashed down;

And a sound as of the falling

Ramparts of a conquered town.

You shall hear a sound like thunder;

And a veil shall be withdrawn,

When her eyes grow wide with wonder

On that hill-top, in that dawn.

WHEN Salomon sailed from Ophir ...

The clouds of Sussex thyme

That crown the cliffs in mid-July

Were all we needed—you and I—

But Salomon sailed from Ophir,

And broken bits of rhyme

Blew to us on the white chalk coast

From O, what elfin clime?

A peacock butterfly flaunted

Its four great crimson wings,

As over the edge of the chalk it flew

Black as a ship on the Channel blue ...

When Salomon sailed from Ophir,—

He brought, as the high sun brings,

Honey and spice to the Queen of the South,

Sussex or Saba, a song for her mouth,

Sweet as the dawn-wind over the downs

And the tall white cliffs that the wild thyme crowns

A song that the whole sky sings:—

When Salomon sailed from Ophir,

With Olliphants and gold,

The kings went up, the kings went down,

Trying to match King Salomon’s crown,

But Salomon sacked the sunset,

Wherever his black ships rolled.

He rolled it up like a crimson cloth,

And crammed it into his hold.

Chorus: Salomon sacked the sunset!

Salomon sacked the sunset!

He rolled it up like a crimson cloth,

And crammed it into his hold.

His masts were Lebanon cedars,

His sheets were singing blue,

But that was never the reason why

He stuffed his hold with the sunset sky!

The kings could cut their cedars,

And sail from Ophir, too;

But Salomon packed his heart with dreams

And all the dreams were true.

Chorus: The kings could cut their cedars,

Cut their Lebanon cedars;

But Salomon packed his heart with dreams,

And all the dreams were true.

When Salomon sailed from Ophir,

He sailed not as a king.

The kings—they weltered to and fro,

Tossed wherever the winds could blow;

But Salomon’s tawny seamen

Could lift their heads and sing,

Till all their crowded clouds of sail

Grew sweeter than the Spring.

Chorus: Their singing sheets grew sweeter,

Their crowded clouds grew sweeter,

For Salomon’s tawny seamen, sirs,

Could lift their heads and sing:

When Salomon sailed from Ophir

With crimson sails so tall,

The kings went up, the kings went down,

Trying to match King Salomon’s crown;

But Salomon brought the sunset

To hang on his Temple wall;

He rolled it up like a crimson cloth,

So his was better than all.

Chorus: Salomon gat the sunset,

Salomon gat the sunset;

He carried it like a crimson cloth

To hang on his Temple wall.

BLIND Moone of London

He fiddled up and down,

Thrice for an angel,

And twice for a crown.

He fiddled at the Green Man,

He fiddled at the Rose;

And where they have buried him

Not a soul knows.

All his tunes are dead and gone, dead as yesterday.

And his lanthorn flits no more

Round the Devil Tavern door,

Waiting till the gallants come, singing from the play;

Waiting in the wet and cold!

All his Whitsun tales are told.

He is dead and gone, sirs, very far away.

He would not give a silver groat

For good or evil weather.

He carried in his white cap

A long red feather.

He wore a long coat

Of the Reading-tawny kind,

And darned white hosen

With a blue patch behind.

So—one night—he shuffled past, in his buckled shoon.

We shall never see his face,

Twisted to that queer grimace,

Waiting in the wind and rain, till we called his tune;

Very whimsical and white,

Waiting on a blue Twelfth Night!

He is grown too proud at last—old blind Moone.

Yet, when May was at the door,

And Moone was wont to sing,

Many a maid and bachelor

Whirled into the ring:

Standing on a tilted wain

He played so sweet and loud

The Mayor forgot his golden chain

And jigged it with the crowd.

Old blind Moone, his fiddle scattered flowers along the street;

Into the dust of Brookfield Fair

Carried a shining primrose air,

Crooning like a poor mad maid, O, very low and sweet,

Drew us close, and held us bound,

Then—to the tune of Pedlar’s Pound,

Caught us up, and whirled us round, a thousand frolic feet.

Master Shakespeare was his host.

The tribe of Benjamin

Used to call him Merlin’s Ghost

At the Mermaid Inn.

He was only a crowder,

Fiddling at the door.

Death has made him prouder.

We shall not see him more.

Only—if you listen, please—through the master’s themes,

You shall hear a wizard strain,

Blind and bright as wind and rain

Shaken out of willow-trees, and shot with elfin gleams.

How should I your true love know?

Scraps and snatches—even so!

That is old blind Moone again, fiddling in your dreams.

Once, when Will had called for sack

And bidden him up and play,

Old blind Moone, he turned his back,

Growled, and walked away,

Sailed into a thunder-cloud,

Snapped his fiddle-string,

And hobbled from The Mermaid

Sulky as a king.

Only from the darkness now, steals the strain we knew:

No one even knows his grave!

Only here and there a stave,

Out of all his hedge-row flock, be-drips the may with dew.

And I know not what wild bird

Carried us his parting word:—

Master Shakespeare needn’t take the crowder’s fiddle, too.

Will has wealth and wealth to spare.

Give him back his own.

At his head a grass-green turf,

At his heels a stone.

See his little lanthorn-spark.

Hear his ghostly tune,

Glimmering past you, in the dark,

Old blind Moone!

All the little crazy brooks, where love and sorrow run

Crowned with sedge and singing wild,

Like a sky-lark—or a child!—

Old blind Moone, he knew their springs, and played ’em every one;

Stood there, in the darkness, blind,

And sang them into Shakespeare’s mind....

Old blind Moone of London, O now his songs are done,

The light upon his lost white face, they say it was the sun!

The light upon his poor old face, they say it was the sun!

A GREAT while ago, there was a school-boy.

He lived in a cottage by the sea.

And the very first thing he could remember

Was the rigging of the schooners by the quay.

He could watch them, when he woke, from his window,

With the tall cranes hoisting out the freight.

And he used to think of shipping as a sea-cook,

And sailing to the Golden Gate.

For he used to buy the yellow penny dreadfuls,

And read them where he fished for conger eels,

And listened to the lapping of the water,

The green and oily water round the keels.

There were trawlers with their shark-mouthed flat-fish,

And red nets hanging out to dry,

And the skate the skipper kept because he liked ’em,

And landsmen never knew the fish to fry.

There were brigantines with timber out of Norroway,

Oozing with the syrups of the pine.

There were rusty dusty schooners out of Sunderland,

And ships of the Blue Cross line.

And to tumble down a hatch into the cabin

Was better than the best of broken rules;

For the smell of ’em was like a Christmas dinner,

And the feel of ’em was like a box of tools.

And, before he went to sleep in the evening,

The very last thing that he could see

Was the sailor-men a-dancing in the moonlight

By the capstan that stood upon the quay.

He is perched upon a high stool in London.

The Golden Gate is very far away.

They caught him, and they caged him, like a squirrel.

He is totting up accounts, and going grey.

He will never, never, never sail to ’Frisco.

But the very last thing that he will see

Will be sailor-men a-dancing in the sunrise

By the capstan that stands upon the quay....

To the tune of an old concertina,

By the capstan that stands upon the quay.

JUST as the moon was rising, I met a ghostly pedlar

Singing for company beneath his ghostly load,—

Once, there were velvet lads with vizards on their faces,

Riding up to rob me on the great North Road.

Now, my pack is heavy, and my pocket full of guineas

Chimes like a wedding-peal, but little I enjoy

Roads that never echo to the chirrup of their canter,—

The gay Golden Farmer and the Hereford Boy.

Rogues were they all, but their raid was from Elf-land!

Shod with elfin silver were the steeds they bestrode.

Merlin buckled on the spurs that wheeled thro’ the wet fern

Bright as Jack-o’-Lanthorns off the great North Road.

Tales were told in country inns when Turpin rode to Rippleside!

Puck tuned the fiddle-strings, and country maids grew coy,

Tavern doors grew magical when Colonel Jack might tap at them,

The gay Golden Farmer and the Hereford Boy.

What are you seeking then? I asked this honest pedlar.

—O, Mulled Sack or Natty Hawes might ease me of my load!—

Where are they flown then?—Flown where I follow;

They are all gone for ever up the great North Road.

Rogues were they all; but the white dust assoils ’em!

Paradise without a spice of deviltry would cloy.

Heavy is my pack till I meet with Jerry Abershaw,

The gay Golden Farmer and the Hereford Boy.

THE lights of a hundred cities are fed by its midnight power.

Their wheels are moved by its thunder. But they, too, have their hour.

The tale of the Indian lovers, a cry from the years that are flown,

While the river of stars is rolling,

Rolling away to the darkness,

Abides with the power in the midnight, where love may find its own.

She watched from the Huron tents, till the first star shook in the air.

The sweet pine scented her fawn-skins, and breathed from her braided hair.

Her crown was of milk-white blood-root, because of the tryst she would keep,

Beyond the river of beauty

That drifted away in the darkness

Drawing the sunset thro’ lilies, with eyes like stars, to the deep.

He watched, like a tall young wood-god, from the red pine that she named;

But not for the peril behind him, where the eyes of the Mohawks flamed.

Eagle-plumed he stood. But his heart was hunting afar,

Where the river of longing whispered ...

And one swift shaft from the darkness

Felled him, her name in his death-cry, his eyes on the sunset star.

 .......

She stole from the river and listened. The moon on her wet skin shone.

As a silver birch in a pine-wood, her beauty flashed and was gone.

There was no wave in the forest. The dark arms closed her round.

But the river of life went flowing,

Flowing away to the darkness,

For her breast grew red with his heart’s blood, in a night where the stars are drowned.

Teach me, O my lover, as you taught me of love in a day,

Teach me of death, and for ever, and set my feet on the way,

To the land of the happy shadows, the land where you are flown.

—And the river of death went weeping,

Weeping away to the darkness.—

Is the hunting good, my lover, so good that you hunt alone?

She rose to her feet like a shadow. She sent a cry thro’ the night,

Sa-sa-kuon, the death-whoop, that tells of triumph in fight.

It broke from the bell of her mouth like the cry of a wounded bird,

But the river of agony swelled it

And swept it along to the darkness,

And the Mohawks, couched in the darkness, leapt to their feet as they heard.

Close as the ring of the clouds that menace the moon with death,

At once they circled her round. Her bright breast panted for breath.

With only her own wild glory keeping the wolves at bay,

While the river of parting whispered,

Whispered away to the darkness,

She looked in their eyes for a moment, and strove for a word to say.

Teach me, O my lover!—She set her foot on the dead.

She laughed on the painted faces with their rings of yellow and red,—

I thank you, wolves of the Mohawk, for a woman’s hands might fail.—

—And the river of vengeance chuckled,

Chuckled away to the darkness,—

But ye have killed where I hunted. I have come to the end of my trail.

I thank you, braves of the Mohawk, who laid this thief at my feet.

He tore my heart out living, and tossed it his dogs to eat.

Ye have taught him of death in a moment, as he taught me of love in a day.

—And the river of passion deepened,

Deepened and rushed to the darkness.—

And yet may a woman requite you, and set your feet on the way.

For the woman that spits in my face, and the shaven heads that gibe,

This night shall a woman show you the tents of the Huron tribe.

They are lodged in a deep valley. With all things good it abounds.

Where the red-eyed, green-mooned river

Glides like a snake to the darkness,

I will show you a valley, Mohawks, like the Happy Hunting Grounds.

Follow! They chuckled, and followed like wolves to the glittering stream.

Shadows obeying a shadow, they launched their canoes in a dream.

Alone, in the first, with the blood on her breast, and her milk-white crown,

She stood. She smiled at them, Follow,

Then urged her canoe to the darkness,

And, silently flashing their paddles, the Mohawks followed her down.

 .......

And now—-as they slid thro’ the pine-woods with their peaks of midnight blue,

She heard, in the broadening distance, the deep sound that she knew,

A mutter of steady thunder that grew as they glanced along;

But ever she glanced before them

And glanced away to the darkness,

And or ever they heard it rightly, she raised her voice in a song:—

The wind from the Isles of the Blesséd, it blows across the foam.

It sings in the flowing maples of the land that was my home.

Where the moose is a morning’s hunt, and the buffalo feeds from the hand.—

And the river of mockery broadened,

Broadened and rolled to the darkness—

And the green maize lifts its feathers, and laughs the snow from the land.

The river broadened and quickened. There was nought but river and sky.

The shores were lost in the darkness. She laughed and lifted a cry:

Follow me! Sa-sa-kuon! Swifter and swifter they swirled—

And the flood of their doom went flying,

Flying away to the darkness,

Follow me, follow me, Mohawks, ye are shooting the edge of the world.

They struggled like snakes to return. Like straws they were whirled on her track.

For the whole flood swooped to that edge where the unplumbed night dropt black,

The whole flood dropt to a thunder in an unplumbed hell beneath,

And over the gulf of the thunder

A mountain of spray from the darkness

Rose and stood in the heavens, like a shrouded image of death.

She rushed like a star before them. The moon on her glorying shone.

Teach me, O my lover,—her cry flashed out and was gone.

A moment they battled behind her. They lashed with their paddles and lunged;

Then the Mohawks, turning their faces

Like a blood-stained cloud to the darkness,

Over the edge of Niagara swept together and plunged.

And the lights of a hundred cities are fed by the ancient power;

But a cry returns with the midnight; for they, too, have their hour.

Teach me, O my lover, as you taught me of love in a day,

—While the river of stars is rolling,

Rolling away to the darkness,—

Teach me of death, and for ever, and set my feet on the way!