YOUR caravel was loosely moored,
 —So lightly moored, so slightly moored,—
 It ranged with every passing swell,
 Your gipsy-hearted caravel
 That only silken ropes secured.
I dreamt that you might slip away,
 —Might slide away, might glide away,—
 When I was absent, on a breeze
 Enticing you to other seas
 With whispers of a lovelier day.
The sirens underneath the stars,
 —The flaunting stars, the haunting stars,—
 Would cast adrift your mooring-rope
 (Farewell, my heart! farewell, my hope!)
 And stretch the sails upon your spars,
And you would sail before the wind,
 —Elusive wind, delusive wind,—
 All radiant on your moonlit deck,
 And not a moment would you reck
 Of me whom you had left behind.
You’d come to legendary coasts,
 To nameless coasts, to tameless coasts,
 And hear of unimagined things:
 The exploits of vainglorious kings,
 Their fabled pride, and braggart boasts;
Iris you’d meet, and Mercury,
 Sweet Mercury, fleet Mercury;
 You’d see the constellations change,
 You’d pass the magnet mountain-range
 That draws a ship to mystery;
You’d see, on black basaltic rocks,
 On jaggèd rocks, on craggèd rocks,
 The lonely Polyphemus stand,
 The scourge and terror of the land,
 Amongst his decimated flocks.
You’d turn from thence; a rainbow arc,
 A magic arc, a tragic arc,
 That spanned the sky from east to west
 Might lure you on a dreamer’s quest
 And close for ever on your barque.
Ah God! perhaps this very night,
 This hated night, this fated night,
 You heard the breeze, the sirens’ spell....
 I faint, I look; your caravel
 In harbour still lies gold and white.

SONGS OF FANCY: II

SING of enchanted palaces
 In Tripoli, in Tripoli,
 Above the sighing and the surge
 Of the moaning sea, of the slothful sea;
 Of palaces upon the verge
 Of the sleepy sea, of the sleepy sea.
Sing of enchanted palaces
 In Venice by the broad lagoons
 Of long ago, of long ago,
 Where cupolas like cuspèd moons
 In waters dim reflected glow,
 And ghosts of stately frigatoons
 In dusky waters come and go.
Sing of enchanted palaces
 In cities set by gilded seas,
 Slenderly mimicked in the waves
 The lace of spires and balconies,
 The oriels and the architraves,
 —Dreams! dreams! where lead such dreams as these?

SONGS OF FANCY: III

WAS it but a random bird,
 Harlequin on breast and wing?
 Or through aspens whispering
 Was it some rare flute you heard,
 That you followed, wandering?
Followed all that onward fled,
 Hares and squirrels, bounding roes,
 All that through the woodland goes,
 Wind that murmurs overhead,
 Leaves that scamper, stream that flows.
Straight the pathway you forsook
 Tempted by the beckoning
 Of the winded poplar’s swing,
 Tempted by the onward brook,
 In pursuit adventuring,
By the bluebell’s fleeting drift,
 By the splash of light and shade
 Down the ride in patterns laid,
 By the distant sunshine rift,
 Promise of the open glade.
There, where they had seen you go,
 Those who loved you called your name,
 Searching, seeking, to and fro.
 True, to answer them you came,
 But your eyes were not the same.

SWEET TIME

SWEET Thyme, that underfoot so meekly grows
 In humble company
 Of splendid rose,
 Is all content to be
 The acolyte, as each man knows,
 Of lavender, of rue, and rosemary.
Sweet Time, that pilfers all my precious years,
 Will no wise blandishment
 Or threat of tears
 Bring you to pause, content?
 —Hard-hearted greybeard, as he went,
 He winked at me, and clicked his wicked shears.

A CYPRESS AVENUE

LIKE hooded monks they go,
 Two by two,
 Pointed and black and slow,
 Chanting for you,
 Chanting without a tear,
 A final song,
 Chanting above your bier
 Passing along,
 Far from the living sun,
 Far from the day,
 —My lover, let us run
 Away, away!

MIRAGE

THERE travelled north from Kurdistan along the lone Siberian trails
 A merchant with his caravan and Eastern barter in his bales.
 He rode ahead, he rode apart, the city of Irkutsk his goal,
 Upon his lean Circassian foal, and after came the lumbering cart
 With creaking wheel, deliberate spoke, and water-bullocks in the yoke;
 And after these in single string the boorish camels following,
 Slouching with high unwieldy packs like howdahs piled upon their backs;
 With slaver hanging from their lips and hatred worming in their brain
 They slouched beneath their drivers’ whips across the white and mournful plain.
The merchant riding on alone saw not the white incessant snow,
 He only saw the metal’s glow, the colour of the precious stone;
 He lingered on the merchandise that he had brought from Kurdistan,
 And turned, and swept his caravan with doting and voluptuous eyes,
For there were choice Bokhara rugs, and daggers with Damascus blade
 And hafts of turquoise-studded jade, and phials rich with scented drugs,
 Koràns inscribed on ass’s skin, and bales of silk from Temesvàr,
 And silver ear-rings beaten thin, and bargains from the cool bazaar.
He felt the gold already pouched, he crooned to it with horrid love,
 As still the camels onward slouched with hatred of the men that drove.
For thirty days the caravan trailed on behind the merchant’s foal,
 Through Persia and through Turkestan, the city of Irkutsk their goal;
 They passed the fruitful hill-girt lands where dwelt the fair-skinned Grecian race,
 And came into the wilder place, and sighted vagrant Cossack bands
 That wandered with their flocks and herds, and trafficked with the train of Kurds;
 They stirred the ghost of Tamerlane, who swept that way with Tartar hordes,
 The ghosts of dead barbarian lords, the Asiatic hurricane;
 They crossed the mighty road that runs from Moscow through to China’s wall,
And trod the path of nomad Huns and knew Siberia’s white pall
 When fields of Persian asphodel were visions of a distant day
 And boundless snow around them lay, and noiseless snow for ever fell,
 Where soon the fleeting day was done, and on the hard horizon low
 They saw the scarlet ball of sun divided by the ridge of snow
 Sink down in skies incarnadine; and still with their disjointed gait
 And nursing their malignant hate, the camels kept unbroken line.
When yet a hundred miles or more stretched out between them and their goal
 The merchant riding on before drew rein on his Circassian foal
 And called a halt with lifted hand as he had done unfailingly
 Each night since the monotony began with that unvaried land.
 The dusk was suddenly alive as shouting voices passed the word,
 And all the drowsy train was stirred with movement like a shaken hive.
 The master merchant stiff from cramp was calling for his saddle flask,
As each to his accustomed task ran swiftly in the growing camp.
 A tent like an inverted bell, all scarlet with the dyes of Tyre,
 Was lifted rapidly and well, and like a torch the kindled fire
 Destroyed the night with leaping tongue, and in a circle round the glow
 Men shovelled back the melting snow, and skins and Khelim rugs were flung—
 And unforgotten were the needs of water-bullocks standing by
 Whose brows are stained with orange dye, whose horns are looped with turquoise beads.
 The pariah dogs that slink and prowl secured their meat with furtive growl,
 And one by one the camels bent complaining to their warty knees
 And grumbled at the men that went to loose their girths and give them ease.
The merchant brooded silently on avaricious visions bright
 And listened to the revelry his men were making in the night.
 For one, a young and favourite Kurd, a mongrel child of the bazaar,
 Whose voice was like a singing bird, was striking on a harsh guitar—
I know a Room where tulips tall
 And almond-blossom pale
 Are coloured on the frescoed wall.
I know a River where the ships
 Drift by with ghostly sail
 And dead men chant with merry lips.
I know the Garden by the sea
 Where birds with painted wings
 Mottle the dark magnolia Tree.
I know the never-failing Source,
 I know the Bush that sings,
 The Vale of Gems, the flying Horse.
I know the Dog that was a Prince,
 The talking Nightingale,
 The Hill of glass, the magic Quince.
I know the lovely Lake of Van;
 Yet, knowing all these things,
 I wander with a Caravan,
 I wander with a Caravan!
The cold moon rose remotely higher, insensibly the voices hushed,
 And men with wine and laughter flushed were sleeping all around the fire,
Till one alone sat on erect, his ready gun across his knees,
 The sentry of the night elect, guardian of sleeping destinies.
 The water-bullocks lay as dead; the dogs drew near with noiseless tread,
 And huddled in a loose-limbed heap beside the fire, and through their sleep
 They twitched at some remembered hunt; the merchant in his sheepskin rolled
 Within the tent saw dreams of gold; the camels with uneasy grunt
 And quake of their distorted backs slept on with loathing by their packs.
At dawn the weary sentry rose to throw some brushwood on the flames,
 Called on his comrades by their names, and turned to greet the endless snows,
 But then from his astonished lips a cry of unbelieving rang
 And all the men towards him sprang, the camel drivers with their whips,
 The bullock driver with his yoke, and gazed in loud bewilderment
 Till slowly in his fur-lined cloak the merchant issued from his tent.
 Then he too started at the sight and clamoured with his clamorous men,
 And swore he could not see aright, and rubbed his eyes and stared again;
The camels came with lurching tread and stood in loose fantastic ring
 With necks outstretched and swaying head and mouths all slackly slobbering,
 And drew from some unclean recess within their body’s secret lair
 A bladder smeared with filthiness that bubbled on the morning air.
For there upon the shining plain a city radiantly lay,
 All coloured in the rising day, amid the snow a jewelled stain,
 And in her walls a spacious gate gave entrance to a varied stream
 Of folk that went incorporate like figures in a silent dream,
 And high above the roofs arose, more coloured for the hueless snows,
 The domes of churches, bronze and green, like peacocks in their painted sheen.
The merchant, with a trembling hand extended far, extended wide
 Against illusion’s fairyland, at length articulately cried:
 “Irkutsk! but twice a hundred miles remained of weary pilgrimage
 Before we hoped with happy smiles to reach our final anchorage.
But look again. That rosy tower that rises like a tulip straight
 Within the walls beside the gate, a balanced plume, a springing flower,
 And pointed with a lance-like spire of bronze, was fifty years ago
 —A boy, I saw it standing so,—demolished and destroyed by fire.”
And one, a venerable Kurd, took up again the fallen word:
 “I travelled both as boy and man between Irkutsk and Kurdistan,
 But never since my beard was grown saw I that inn beside the way
 Wherewith the Council made away, full fifty counted years aflown.”
They gazed upon the marvel long, the spectre city wonderful,
 Until the youth who made the song cried out, “We grow too fanciful.
 Irkutsk with roofs of coloured tiles lies distant twice a hundred miles,
 And this, a city of the shades, a rainbow of the echoing air,
 As fair as false, and false as fair, already into nothing fades.”
And like a bubble, like the mist that in the valley faintly swirls,
 Like orient sheen on sulky pearls, like hills remotely amethyst,
 Like colours on Phœnician glass, like plumage on the ‘fisher’s wing,
 Like music on the breath of spring, they saw the vision lift and pass,
 Till only white unbroken snow stretched out before the caravan,
 And the bewildered heart of man truth from delusion could not know.
 But all the long laborious train moved slowly on its course again
 Across the snow unbroken, white, and nursing each his private creed,
 The merchant his illusive greed, the camels their illusive spite.

CHINOISERIE

(Villanelle). For B. M.

LOTUS flowers clustering
 Round your feet in storeys laid,
 Splendid daughter of a King.
In a graven vase of Ming
 Peaches, apricots of jade,
 Lotus flowers clustering,
All their scentless riches bring,
 All around your throne displayed,
 Costly daughter of a King.
What young prince astonishing
 Rides along the inky glade,
 Lotus flowers clustering
Round his camel travelling?
 See the leopards unafraid,
 Slender daughter of a King!
Coromandel picturing,
 Strangely, marvellously made.
 Lotus flowers clustering,
Nightingales that cannot sing,
 What celestial escapade
 Are they nightly witnessing,
 Through lotus flowers clustering,
 O subtle daughter of a King?

COLOUR

IN the last orgy of Creation’s hour,
 —That fabled day, when all to sudden birth
 Sprang,—as the toy of his redundant mirth
 God tossed in bounty Colour to the earth.
 He held the exquisite and pallid flower,
 Spoke new strange words, and in his hands there blushed
 The great white rose to crimson slowly flushed.

SAILING

SAILING SHIPS

LYING on Downs above the wrinkling bay
 I with the kestrels shared the cleanly day,
 The candid day; wind-shaven, brindled turf;
 Tall cliffs; and long sea-line of marbled surf
 From Cornish Lizard to the Kentish Nore
 Lipping the bulwarks of the English shore,
 While many a lovely ship below sailed by
 On unknown errand, kempt and leisurely;
 And after each, oh, after each, my heart
 Fled forth, as, watching from the Downs apart,
 I shared with ships good joys and fortunes wide
 That might befall their beauty and their pride;
Shared first with them the blessèd void repose
 Of oily days at sea, when only rose
 The porpoise’s slow wheel to break the sheen
 Of satin water indolently green,
 When for’ard the crew, caps tilted over eyes,
 Lay heaped on deck; slept; murmured; smoked; threw dice;
 The sleepy summer days; the summer nights
 (The coast pricked out with rings of harbour-lights),
 The motionless nights, the vaulted nights of June
 When high in the cordage drifts the entangled moon,
 And blocks go knocking, and the sheets go slapping,
 And lazy swells against the sides come lapping;
 And summer mornings off red Devon rocks,
 Faint inland bells at dawn and crowing cocks.
Shared swifter days, when headlands into ken
 Trod grandly; threatened; and were lost again,
 Old fangs along the battlemented coast;
 And followed still my ship, when winds were most
 Night-purified, and, lying steeply over,
 She fled the wind as flees a girl her lover,
 Quickened by that pursuit for which she fretted,
 Her temper by the contest proved and whetted;
 Wild stars swept overhead; her lofty spars
 Reared to a ragged heaven sown with stars
 As leaping out from narrow English ease
 She faced the roll of long Atlantic seas;
Her captain then was I, I was her crew,
 The mind that laid her course, the wake she drew,
 The waves that rose against her bows, the gales,—
 Nay, I was more: I was her very sails
 Rounded before the wind, her eager keel,
 Her straining mast-heads, her responsive wheel,
 Her pennon stiffened like a swallow’s wing;
 Yes, I was all her slope and speed and swing,
 Whether by yellow lemons and blue sea
 She dawdled through the isles off Thessaly,
 Or saw the palms like sheaves of scimitars
 On desert’s verge below the sunset bars,
 Or passed the girdle of the planet where
 The Southern Cross looks over to the Bear,
 And strayed, cool Northerner beneath strange skies,
Flouting the lure of tropic estuaries,
 Down that long coast, and saw Magellan’s Clouds arise.
And some that beat up Channel homeward-bound
 I watched, and wondered what they might have found,
 What alien ports enriched their teeming hold
 With crates of fruit or bars of unwrought gold?
 And thought how London clerks with paper-clips
 Had filed the bills of lading of those ships,
 Clerks that had never seen the embattled sea,
 But wrote down jettison and barratry,
 Perils, Adventures, and the Act of God,
 Having no vision of such wrath flung broad;
 Wrote down with weary and accustomed pen
 The classic dangers of sea-faring men;
 And wrote “Restraint of Princes,” and “the acts
 Of the King’s Enemies,” as vacant facts,
 Blind to the ambushed seas, the encircling roar
 Of angry nations foaming into war.

PHANTOM

I saw a ship sailing,
 No other ship in sight.
 Steadily she was sailing
 Although the wind fell light.
 Although the wind was failing
 Still she kept sailing.
No hand there that steered her,
 No wind that strained her sheet.
 And as I gazed I feared her:
 Why should she be so fleet
 Since no crew’s chanty cheered her,
 And no wind neared her?
Her strange sure motion
 Carried her swiftly past;
 Over the rim of ocean
 I watched her dip her mast.
 Still no wind blew in motion
 Across the ocean.

GENOESE MERCHANTS

THEY garnered wealth from far barbarian shores,
 From Caffa, Tyre, and Trebizond,
 And Tartar provinces beyond;
 Furs, spices, oranges, and slaves.
 High galleys waited, runged with tiers of oars,
 And rippled their reflection in the waves.
Bearded and serge-clad merchants, tightly-lipped,
 They stood in groups along the foreign quays
 Watching the cargo shipped
 By coloured sons of Asia; these
 Groaned loaded up the planks, and rolled
 Their burdens down the hold;
 And back the planks unburdened nimbly tripped,
 Their pumpkin-fluted turbans and their scarves
 Ballooning as they swarmed upon the wharves.
And some old shaven brightly-plumaged priest,
 Drowsing outside his mosque when shadows fall
 Like lengthened lances pointing to the East,
 From fourfold minaret,
 And through the iron grating in the wall
 The sun-flushed Himalaya guards Thibet,
 —He, fat and somnolent,
 Yawning amongst the pigeons’ sleek content,
 Opened one crafty, long, Mongolian eye,
 And saw the slim Italian passing by
With soft-foot tread
 Into the mosque, but never raised his head,
 And slipped his cedar beads, and never stirred
 Though the quick patter of the coins he heard
 Fall in a handful mixed of maize and rice
 Flung to the pigeons, coins that were his price.
While far, in Europe, lay the Flemish fairs,
 The marts of Ypres, the Jews of busy Thames
 Greedy to clutch the unfamiliar gems,
 And rummage in the bales of rich exotic wares.

EVENING

WHEN little lights in little ports come out,
 Quivering down through water with the stars,
 And all the fishing fleet of slender spars
 Range at their moorings, veer with tide about;
When race of wind is stilled and sails are furled,
 And underneath our single riding-light
 The curve of black-ribbed deck gleams palely white,
 And slumbrous waters pool a slumbrous world,
—Then, and then only, have I thought how sweet
 Old age might sink upon a windy youth,
 Quiet beneath the riding-light of truth,
 Weathered through storms, and gracious in retreat.

“Sumurun,”
Cornwall, 1920.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

POEMS OF WEST
AND EAST

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