(Yet much is merry in men’s moods diverse.
 I am no mystic, I, that I should preach
 With lips string-drawn as tight as miser’s purse,
 Dispense thin wisdom by my scrannel speech;
No, none, thank God, can more have loved good laughter,
 Beauty, well-being, perilous lottery,
 Or paid the reckoning that followed after
 With smaller grudge to justice than did I.)

IV

Sometimes I met with one, and would have cried,
 “Pilgrim! by the proud manner of your going
 Clearly you ask no alms when ills betide.
 Though of your journey’s end I have no knowing,
 Travel a little distance by my side.
 Lonely am I; lonely; I have not spoken
 Closely with friend this many a questing day;
 Body, my beast of burden, stumbles broken,
 Rowelled by desperate spur along the way.
 Pilgrim, if lonely spirit cross another
 And pride in me salute in you your pride,
 Shall we not either recognise a brother?”
But reticence held me, and I passed him wide.

V

And sometimes met with those who offered me
 Comfort upholstered like a harlot’s bed
 With winks for ribbons, shrugs to swansdown wed,
 And squalor under frowsy frippery.
This draggletail of passion should be mine,
 This slattern bastard born of spleen and lust,
 Convention’s shrewd Bacchante, if I must
 Yield to the senses’ feverish anodyne!
But I would turn, and, half-defeated, failing,
 (How near defeat, they never guessed or knew,)
 Load my last breath with scorn, and cry “You? You?”
 And cry, at bay before their vanguard, railing,

VI

“What! you had vision? mountains, comets, seas,
 Wild storm, wild beauty, wild embattled flames,
 You harnessed to your tongues with hackneyed ease.
 Tamers of splendour! those familiar names
Troubled you not, less kingly, more remote
 Than gain and ease, your god, your man-made grail.
 Not nature’s giants, not cosmic menace smote
 Your souls with awe, or thrust you down the scale.
No, nor the thoughts your thoughts could not embrace,
 A God’s intention, void, sublime, or strange,
 The birth or death of time, the bourn of space,
 Nor unimaginable colours’ range,
Nor the continuous eastward roll of earth,
 Half, in the energy of day aware;
 Half, where the sweeping shadow curves its girth,
 Within night’s darkened temple cowled in prayer.
No deep misgivings, no mysterious faith;
 Your very god was passed from hand to hand;
 You had no inkling of the nobler breath
 Blown on the spark you could not understand.

VII

“The little spark within the heart of man.
 How should you know the desperate clutch of fingers
 That feel the moment slipping, feel the dear
 Infrequent moment slipping as it lingers,
The flaming hour ironic in its fleetness,
 The rush of vision swift beyond belief?
 Near, as the dead to the incredulous living;
 So dead, the heart is rigid with its grief.
What would you offer me as compensation
 After your sloth had blanketed my fire?
 Your deepest peace, satiety Lethean;
 Your aim, diversion; and your spur, desire.
Tragic, or merry, be the body’s passion,
 Ordained or gay; not, not the sordid mean!
 Your soul’s a skinny waif, that was not driven
 To sin, but sought small solaces unclean.
You struck no fire from flint; you neither knew
 Fasting nor feasting; vigour, nor a kiss;
 The silk pavilioned bed of Aphrodite,
 Or woodland hardihood of Artemis.

VIII

“Ashamed of tolerance, but more ashamed
 Of hot intolerance; who hold the snare
 Less perilous when fraudulently named;
 Forgetting folly, while remembering care;
Who shun the sinner with averted eyes;
 Mistrust the impulse, danger in its breath;
 Who think truth wholly truth, lies wholly lies;
 Who never lived, but duly wept at death;
Who could not gaily stake the cherished whole
 Upon the spinning coin’s fantastic turn;
 Who count the moneyed value of your soul,
 And give, but, giving, claim the just return.

IX

“I’ll dip contempt’s broad ladle for a measure
 Lest I accept reprieve in such a guise,
 Such cheap attainment where I most despise,
 Or lull disquiet by such sham of pleasure.
Love, amongst counterfeits and marsh-light gleams
 Already arch-impostor, doubly aped
 By lust, to parody (most rarely shaped),
 The consummation of our difficult dreams!”

HOME

NIGHT. To H. G. N.

MOONLIGHT through lattice throws a chequered square;
 Night! and I wake in my low-ceilinged room
 To lovely silence deep with harmony;
 Sweet are the flutes of night-time, sweet the spell
 Lies between day and day. This wise old night,
 That, unreproachful, gives the pause to strife!
 The murmurous diapason of the dark
 Within the house made quick and intimate
 By tiny noise—a bat? a mouse? a moth
 Bruising against the ceiling? or a bird
 Nested beneath the eaves? night, grave and huge
 Outside with swell of sighing through the boughs,
 Whispering far over unscythèd meadows,
 Dying in dim cool cloisters of the woods.
I have been absent. I have found unchanged
 The oaks, the slope and order of the fields;
 I knew the wealden fragrance, and that old
 Dear stubborn enemy of mine, the clay.
 Nothing to mark the difference of year
 But young wheat springing where I left the roots,
 And last year’s pasture browned to this year’s plough;
 Last year the crop was niggard on the orchard,
 But blossom now foretells the weighted branches,
 And the great stack, that like a galleon
 Rode beneath furled tarpaulins last July,
Showed its bare brushwood as I passed to-day.
 Where the sun rises, that I know of old;
 Knowledge precedes me round the turn of the lane,
 And I could take you where the orchids grow
 Friendly with cowslips; where the bluebell pulls
 Smooth from its bulb, bleached where it grew concealed,
 Hidden from light; the tiny brook is eager,
 Quick with spring rains, bright April rains, and fills
 The pool where drowsy cattle slouch to drink.
Familiar! oh, familiar! native speech
 Comes not more readily than that dear sense
 Of bend and depth of country. This is Kent,
 Unflaunting England, where the steaming mould,
 Not plaintive, not regretful, lies content
 That leaves should spring from sacrifice of leaves.
My Saxon weald! my cool and candid weald!
 Dear God! the heart, the very heart of me
 That plays and strays, a truant in strange lands,
 Always returns and finds its inward peace,
 Its swing of truth, its measure of restraint,
 Here among meadows, orchards, lanes, and shaws.
 Take me then close, O branches, take me close;
 Whisper me all the secrets of the sap,
 You branches fragile, tentative, that stretch
 Your moonlit blossom to my open window,
 Messengers of the gentle weald, encroaching
So shyly on the shelter of the house;
 Cradle me, hammock me amongst you; let
 Night’s quietude so drench my sleepy spirit
 That morning shall not rob me of that calm.
 Your buds against my pulses; so I lie
 Wakeful as though in tree-tops, and the sap
 Creeps through my blood, up from the scented earth.
... The birds are restless underneath the eaves,
 Down in the byre the uneasy cattle stir,
 And through the fret of branches grows the dawn.

A SAXON SONG

Tools with the comely names,
 Mattock and scythe and spade,
 Couth and bitter as flames,
 Clean, and bowed in the blade,—
 A man and his tools make a man and his trade.
Breadth of the English shires,
 Hummock and kame and mead,
 Tang of the reeking byres,
 Land of the English breed,—
 A man and his land make a man and his creed.
Leisurely flocks and herds,
 Cool-eyed cattle that come
 Mildly to wonted words,
 Swine that in orchards roam,—
 A man and his beasts make a man and his home.
Children sturdy and flaxen
 Shouting in brotherly strife,
 Like the land they are Saxon,
 Sons of a man and his wife,—
 For a man and his loves make a man and his life.

FROM A DIARY, JANUARY 1918

JOY have I had of life this vigorous day
 Since sunrise when I took the wealden way,
 And my fair country as I rapid strode
 Lay round the turn of the familiar road
 In mists diaphanous as seas in foam.
And all the orchards cried me welcome home.
I drove the spade that turned the heavy loam,
 Bending the winter to the needs of spring,
 The soft air winnowing
 The thistledown that blew along the hedge.
 A little moorhen rippled in the sedge;
 A distant sheep-dog barked; the day was still,
 For summer’s ghost in winter lay upon the hill.
 I worked in peace; an aeroplane above
 Crooned through the heaven coloured like a dove.
Within the house I lit a fire
 And coaxed the friendly kettle on to boil.
 My boots were heavy with the wealden soil,
 My hunger eager from the glow of toil.
 Fresh bread had I; brown eggs; a little meat;
 Clear water, and an apple sweet.
 Freedom I drank for my delirious wine,
 And Shelley gave me company divine.
 What more could heart desire?
And when the orange of the sunset burned,
 I laid aside my tools and townward turned,
 Seeing across the uplands of the Weald
 The ploughteams straining on the half-brown field.
 I sang aloud; my limbs were rich with health,
 As brooding winter rich with summer’s wealth.

BEECHWOODS AT KNOLE

HOW do I love you, beech trees, in the autumn,
 Your stone-grey columns a cathedral nave
 Processional above the earth’s brown glory!
I was a child, and loved the knurly tangle
 Of roots that coiled above a scarp like serpents,
 Where I might hide my treasure with the squirrels.
I was a child, and splashed my way in laughter
 Through drifts of leaves, where underfoot the beechnuts
 Split with crisp crackle to my great rejoicing.
Red are the wooded slopes below Shock Tavern,
 Red is the bracken on the sandy Furze-field,
 Red are the herds of deer by Bo-Pit Meadows,
The tawny deer that nightly through the beechwoods
 Roar out their challenge, carrying their antlers
 Proudly beneath the antlered moonlit branches.
I was a child, and heard the red deer’s challenge
 Prowling and baying underneath my window,
 Never a cry so haughty or so mournful.

LEOPARDS AT KNOLE

LEOPARDS on the gable-ends,
 Leopards on the painted stair,
 Stiff the blazoned shield they bear,
 Or and gules, a bend of vair,
 Leopards on the gable-ends,
 Leopards everywhere.
Guard and vigil in the night
 While the ancient house is sleeping
 They three hundred years are keeping,
 Nightly from their stations leaping,
 Shadows black in moonlight bright,
 Roof to gable creeping.
Rigid when the day returns,
 Up aloft in sun or rain
 Leopards at their posts again
 Watch the shifting pageant’s train;
 And their jewelled colour burns
 In the window-pane.
Often on the painted stair,
 As I passed abstractedly,
 Velvet footsteps, two and three,
 Padded gravely after me.
 —There was nothing, nothing there,
 Nothing there to see.

APRIL

WHEN evening sun had beat the rain
 And skies were washed so primrose-clean,
 We swung the orchard gate again
 To let the cattle down the lane;
To let with ripened udders pass
 The heavy milch-cows one by one,
 And underfoot the blossom was
 Like scattered snow upon the grass.
The steep wet road was like a shield
 After the rain; and, slouching on,
 We idly grumbled at the yield
 Of apple-orchards in the Weald.

ARCADY IN ENGLAND

I met some children in a wood,
 A happy and tumultuous rout
 That came with many a wanton shout
 And darted hither and about
 (As in a stream the fickle trout),
 To ease their pagan lustihood.
And in their midst they led along
 A goat with wreaths about his neck
 That they had taken pains to deck
 To join the bacchanalian throng.
And one of them was garlanded
 With strands of wild convolvulus
 About his ringlets riotous,
 And carried rowan-berries red.
And one, the eldest of the band,
 Whose life was seven summers glad,
 Was all in flowered muslin clad,
 And naked dancing feet she had
 To lead the sylvan saraband.
 With hazel skin and coral bead
 A gipsy dryad of the mead
 She seemed; she led the gay stampede
 With fruited branches in her hand.
For all were bearing autumn fruit;
 Some, apples on the loaded bough,
 And pears that on the orchard’s brow
 With damask-plums are hanging now;
 And much they had of woodland loot,
 Of berries black and berries blue,
 Of fircones, and of medlars too;
 And one, who bore no plunder, blew
 On reeds like an Arcadian flute.
They passed, and still I stood knee-deep
 In thymy grass to watch their train.
 They wound along the wooded lane
 And crossed a streamlet with a leap,
 And as I saw them once again
 They passed a shepherd and his sheep.
And you might think, I made this song
 For joy of song as I strode along
 One day between the Kentish shaws,
 Slashing at scarlet hips and haws.
 But thinking so, you nothing know
 Of children taken unawares,
 Of tinkers’ tents among the gorse,
 The poor lean goat, the hobbled horse,
 And painted vans for country fairs.

TESTAMENT

WHEN I am dead, let not my limbs be given
 To rot amongst the dead I never knew,
 But cast my ashes wide under wide heaven,
 Or to my garden let me still be true,
And, like the ashes I was wont to save
 Preciously from the hearth beneath my fire,
 Lighten the soil with mine. Not, not the grave!
 I loved the soil I fought, and this is my desire.

SONNET

THIS little space which scented box encloses
 Is blue with lupins and is sweet with thyme.
 My garden all is overblown with roses,
 My spirit all is overblown with rhyme,
 And like a drunken honeybee I waver
 From house to garden and again to house,
 And, undetermined which delight to favour,
 On verse and rose alternately carouse.
Adam, were you, in your primeval plenty,
 A poet and a gardener in one?
 Did you with easy songs the blossoms sheave,
 In Eden where the blooms by ten and twenty
 Sprang up beneath the magic of the sun,
 To deck the brows of your capricious Eve?

FULL MOON

SHE was wearing the coral taffeta trousers
 Someone had brought her from Ispahan,
 And the little gold coat with pomegranate blossoms,
 And the coral-hafted feather fan;
 But she ran down a Kentish lane in the moonlight,
 And skipped in the pool of the moon as she ran.
She cared not a rap for all the big planets,
 For Betelgeuse or Aldebaran,
 And all the big planets cared nothing for her,
 That small impertinent charlatan;
 But she climbed on a Kentish stile in the moonlight,
 And laughed at the sky through the sticks of her fan.

AD ASTRA

AD ASTRA

I

CONQUEROR! what have you seen in the heavens?
 Star-dust is in your hair.
 Say, have you woken the sleeping thunder
 And taken it unaware?
 Come on the storm as a wild beast crouching,
 And mocked at it in its lair?
Ridden the wind as a riotous charger,
 Your hand in his mane entwined,
 As a new unbroken Pegasus,
 That a master had divined?
 A boast for a man to bring down from heaven,
 “I have bridled the wild East wind!”
Gazed in the mirror of unshed dew-ponds,
 Bathed in the rivers of rain?
 Caught at the meteor’s sparks in passing,
 And flung them to earth for grain?
 Dropped in the wake of the scattered handfuls
 To the morning earth again?
How have you raced with the car of Apollo,
 A trial of strength indeed,
 He in his golden chariot standing
 And lashing his golden steed,
 You with your glimmering wings of silver
 And unconquerable speed?
What of the sirens that dwell in the heavens
 In a palace of cloud and air?
 As a lover of nymphs inviolate,
 Of sirens with rainbow hair,
 Have you dwelt like a new Odysseus
 With the sirens of the air?
Speak! have you guarded Diana’s uprising
 From a couch of mist and sheen?
 Speak! have you watched Diana’s disrobing
 After her reign as queen?
 Speak! for your eyes are eloquent
 With the mysteries they have seen.
And your feet, which have trod in unlaboured fields,
 Are with wingèd sandals shod,
 And the hawthorn stick at the touch of your hand
 Has turned to a wingèd rod,
 And your eyes and lips are burnished gold
 With the kiss of the bright sun-god.

II

Son of the morning, son of the daybreak,
 Son of the stars and sky,
 Son of the clean untrodden places,
 Son of the air am I.
I am the sailor of the heavens,
 And the Viking of the gale,
 The cloud-built galleon is my vessel,
 And the bellying cloud my sail.
I am the reaper of the heavens,
 With the sickle moon in my hand.
 I am the minstrel of the heavens,
 With the birds that rise from land.
I am the hunter of the heavens,
 With the night-hounds for my pack,
 Lord of unbroken solitudes
 That I am the first to track.
Son of the tempest, son of the moonlight,
 Son of the silver sky,
 Son of the clean untrodden places,
 Son of the air am I.

FROM “A MASQUE OF YOUTH” A MOCK-HEROIC POEM

FROM “A MASQUE OF YOUTH”

[The scene is laid in a circular space of grass in a garden, enclosed by a stone balustrade broken at intervals by statues of sylvan deities. A background of cypresses. An assembly of dim figures.

Right, the Muse of Tragedy upon a raised throne. Centre, a great convoluted shell, in which a naked youth lies sleeping.]

Melpomene. (She is crowned with vine-leaves, shod with the cothurnus, and carries in her hand a tragic mask.)

She addresses
the assembly.

O population beautiful and strange
 Haunting the curtained boundaries of youth,
 Children among immortals, swift of range,
 Light-footed, gay of glance, evasive, shy,
 Truth robed in fantasy, truth in untruth
 That all men apprehend and most pass by,
 —You that come crowding and inquisitive
 With covert laugh, quick hands, and eyes that live,
 Wingèd and whispering and fugitive,
 Wide generosities and proud beliefs,
 Flamboyant hopes and lovely rainbow griefs,
 Rare reverence, lusty audacity,
 Faith with bound eyes, arrogant certainty,
 Slim fancy with her finger to her lips,
 Bright-haired adventure, mother of all ships,
 Pale wanton nymphs, quarry of men and gods,

She addresses
the assembly.

AND dappled centaurs from the dappled woods,—
 Draw near.—Here lies, that all may see him well,
 A naked Youth within a conchèd shell,
 Asleep, in nudity most beautiful.
 His arm is flung beneath his lovely head,
 He sleeps as sound as in his mortal bed;
 Yet him the dolphins hither bore
 And all the waters founted with their spouting,
 The river-horses galloped by the shore,
 And little wine-drunk sons of love ran shouting,
 But he lies victim to the poppy-bell.

She tells the
occasion of the
masque.

NOW set I forth in briefest argument
 The causes of our present tournament,
 Saying how tender Grief and laughing Joy
 Strove for possession of the mortal boy,
 —As once upon the traveller of old
 The sun shone warmly and the wind blew cold,—
 And ages long endured their pleasant strife
 Renewed with each young adolescent life,
 And neither triumphed, for in early years
 Youth freely gave to Grief his secret tears
 (Grief for grief’s sake, which youth to Youth endears),
 And sorrows of his melancholy heart,
 And Joy, her garlands drooping, stood apart;
 Till Love drew near to play his part.

She tells of
Youth in
Love.

AH! then forgotten were the mournful days.
 Youth crowned his head with flowers and with bays;
 He flung the leopard-skin about his loins,
 And bracelets jangled at his wrists like coins,
 Nor was the triumph of his singing mute
 When at his lips the windy flute
 Mingled its treble with the chords of praise
 And melody hung scented round his ways.
 Proud in his beauty and his sinews’ girth
 He strode in strength and conquest on the earth,
 Or measured down the terraced olive-groves
 Intrepid footsteps with the centaur’s hooves.
 The pleasant valleys echoed with his mirth,
 And in the morning resonant and still
 His voice was heard like music on the hill.
So ever ran the course of youth the same,
 And Joy and Grief strove on; Grief could not claim
 That Love had played unfairly in the game
 Since often some poor weeping love-lorn child
 Returned to her with sorrow wild,
 And cast his broken flute upon the ground
 And all his ornaments with tears defiled.
Now Joy this pretty mortal boy has found
 And brought him hither, that by our consent
 The rivals try their strength, and one be crowned.
 Conditional thereon, that Love be bound
 To take no action in the tournament.

*      *      *      *      *

They press
forward round
the shell.

1st Spirit.

HOW richly stirs his craving blood to-night
 For songs of freedom all among the stars!
 Thoughts like a flock of birds in summer light
 Circle beyond the reach of lifted arms,
 And deeds beyond the scope of life’s alarms
 Float into sight,
 And pass, yet undefined, through heaven’s bars.

2nd Spirit.

IT is the hour of twilight, still, profound,
 When dreams and visions in their legions fly
 On fancy’s horses mounted, robed and crowned
 With streaming flames, an aureole of fire,
 And pass, the eagle shapes of man’s desire,
 Towards the sunset bound,
 In wingèd ride across the evening sky.

3rd Spirit.

HE stirs disquieted, he stirs again.
 The stamping hoofs of that proud galaxy
 In passing struck from space the spangled rain
 And flung the ardent fragments down to him
 That scorched his mortal soul through vision dim.
 O shackled soul in pain
 Tortured by glimpses of divinity!

2nd Spirit.

WHAT shall we sing in praise of youth? the free,
 The clarion years, the redolent years of youth?
Youth that loved gold and scarlet pageantry
 And caught the fringe upon the robe of truth?

1st Spirit.

GAY youth, that goes, with some familiar friend,
 On quest of hopes heroic, quest of shores
 Untravelled, with the heart of conquerors,
 Eager and brave, and talking without end
 Of high, magnificent, and cleanly things
 Rich as the sunset, swift as cormorants’ wings
 That sweep the waters,—youth, whose destiny
 Sails like a ship upon a virgin sea.

2nd Spirit.

WHOSE heart is as a glowing forge at night
 Wherein the blacksmith, gleaming with his sweat
 Like some gigantic negro in the light
 Of angry fires that touch his limbs of jet,
 Strikes at the clanging anvil of his thought.

3rd Spirit.

SING to him, sing! till he be so distraught,
 So drunken and enraptured,
 That all his heart be captured.

Folly (to Adventure).

GIPSY, what have you in your pack
 Bound with old thongs across your back?
 Poplin, dimity, huckaback,
 Who draws the prize?
Tumble your treasures out on the grass:
 A wine-dark ruby, a shine of brass,
 Aladdin’s lamp, and a magic glass,
 And a last surprise.
Dip in your hands, you wayward crew,
 The peddler caters for all of you;
 You press, like a crowd of girls, anew,
 With your eager eyes;
 Dip in your hands, there are treasures free,
 Curious pearls, and chalcedony,
 And the cap of invisibility,
 But the thing you will none of you ever see
 Is the last surprise.

Imagination.

I am the swift omnipotent magician;
 All bounty’s in my gift, all songs unsung,
 All slumbering chords, all undiscovered crafts
 Baffling their premature interpreters;
 No law’s beyond my searching; I’ll condemn
 No vice, despise no sorrow, scorn no joy,
 Deride no virtue, throw no stone at Pilate,
 But sweep my mantle round humanity
 And round the pomp of nature; naught I’ll find
 Too mean, too great, too little, or too spacious;
 Mine be the secrets both of hearts and stars,
 (Small, measureless hearts; great, measurable stars;)
 And love’s old barbarous reiteration
I’ll tolerate, and the great self-less peace
 Like the deep sea’s perpetual repose.
I’ll not be parsimonious of my wealth.
 I’ll fill your heaven with many coloured moons
 And hang such variable tides upon them
 As strew the astonished fish along the shores.
 I’ll bring the planets nearer: I’ll attract
 Saturn within his hoop of shining rings;
 I’ll summon a great conclave of the comets
 Which hitherto were strangers to each other,
 And man, at nightfall standing on the crest
 Of a familiar hill, shall marvelling stare
 Into an unfamiliar firmament.
 I’ll show you Jupiter’s rebel satellite
 That on the outer fringe of measured space
 Backwards revolves, striving against the law
 That chains her anger to an irksome orbit.
I’ll dry the seas and bring the unknown lands
 To light, that on unchristened continents
 Man stray dry-foot from Africa to Asia.
 Oh, what new rivers then, what deep, deep lakes,
 What caverns and what cliffs, what strange ravines,
 What deserts, what denuded leagues of plain,
 Should offer to his swarming multitude!
 Peaks shall be islands, islands shall be peaks,
 When I reverse the ordering and make
 A mountainous Pacific continent,
 A Himalayan archipelago.
And all the daily and the lovely things,
 —The fawn’s late bed of bracken, newly warmed,
 The nets of fishermen through water sinking,
 Drawn up all hoar with flake of silver scales
 And round clear drops that tremble from the mesh,—
 These little things, these nimble shy delights,
 With the quick magic of significance
 I’ll not despise to startle into being.

SONGS OF FANCY

SONGS OF FANCY: I