The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems, 1908-1919

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Title: Poems, 1908-1919

Author: John Drinkwater

Release date: March 27, 2016 [eBook #51575]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by MWS, Bryan Ness, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, 1908-1919 ***

POEMS
1908-1919

[Image not available: John Drinkwater portrait From a drawing by William Rothenstein 1917 Emery Walker ph. sc.]

P O E M S
1908-1919

By
JOHN DRINKWATER

colophon not visible

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY JOHN DRINKWATER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO
MY WIFE

CONTENTS

Reciprocity	1
The Hours	2
A Town Window	4
Mystery	5
The Common Lot	7
Passage	8
The Wood	9
History	10
The Fugitive	12
Constancy	13
Southampton Bells	15
The New Miracle	17
Reverie	18
Penances	26
Last Confessional	27
Birthright	29
Antagonists	30
Holiness	31
The City	32
To the Defilers	33
A Christmas Night	34
Invocation	35
Immortality	36
The Craftsmen	38
Symbols	39
Sealed	40
A Prayer	43
The Building	45
The Soldier	48
The Fires of God	49
Challenge	60
Travel Talk	61
The Vagabond	66
Old Woman in May	67
The Feckenham Men	68
The Traveller	70
In Lady Street	71
Anthony Crundle	75
Mad Tom Tatterman	76
For Corin To-Day	78
The Carver in Stone	79
Elizabeth Ann	91
The Cotswold Farmers	92
A Man’s Daughter	93
The Life of John Heritage	95
Thomas Yarnton of Tarlton	98
Mrs. Willow	99
Roundels of the Year	101
Liegewoman	105
Lovers to Lovers	106
Love’s Personality	107
Pierrot	108
Reckoning	110
Derelict	112
Wed	113
Forsaken	115
Defiance	116
Love in October	117
To the Lovers that come after us	118
Derbyshire Song	119
Love’s House	120
Cotswold Love	124
With Daffodils	125
Foundations	126
Dear and Incomparable	127
A Sabbath Day	128
A Dedication	134
Rupert Brooke	136
On Reading Francis Ledwidge’s Last Songs	137
In the Woods	138
Late Summer	139
January Dusk	140
At Grafton	141
Dominion	142
The Miracle	144
Millers Dale	145
Written at Ludlow Castle	146
Wordsworth at Grasmere	147
Sunrise on Rydal Water	148
September	150
Olton Pools	151
Of Greatham	152
Mamble	154
Out of the Moon	155
Moonlit Apples	156
Cottage Song	157
The Midlands	158
Old Crow	160
Venus in Arden	162
On a Lake	163
Harvest Moon	164
At an Earthworks	165
Instruction	166
Habitation	167
Written in Winterborne Came Church	169
Buds	171
Blackbird	172
May Garden	173
At an Inn	174
Perspective	176
Crocuses	177
Riddles R.F.C.	179
The Ships of Grief	180
Nocturne	181
The Patriot	182
Epilogue for a Masque	184
The Guest	185
Treason	186
Politics	187
For a Guest Room	189
Day	190
Dreams	191
Responsibility	192
Provocations	193
Trial	194
Charge to the Players	195
Character	196
Reality	197
Epilogue	198
Moonrise	200
Deer	201
To one I love	202
To Alice Meynell	205
Petition	206
Harvesting	208

POEMS
1908-1919

RECIPROCITY

I do not think that skies and meadows are
Moral, or that the fixture of a star
Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
Have wisdom in their windless silences.
Yet these are things invested in my mood
With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,
That in my troubled season I can cry
Upon the wide composure of the sky,
And envy fields, and wish that I might be
As little daunted as a star or tree.

THE HOURS

Those hours are best when suddenly
The voices of the world are still,
And in that quiet place is heard
The voice of one small singing bird,
Alone within his quiet tree;

When to one field that crowns a hill,
With but the sky for neighbourhood,
The crowding counties of my brain
Give all their riches, lake and plain,
Cornland and fell and pillared wood;
When in a hill-top acre, bare
For the seed’s use, I am aware
Of all the beauty that an age
Of earth has taught my eyes to see;

When Pride and Generosity
The Constant Heart and Evil Rage,
Affection and Desire, and all
The passions of experience
Are no more tabled in my mind,
Learning’s idolatry, but find
Particularity of sense
In daily fortitudes that fall
From this or that companion,
Or in an angry gossip’s word;
When one man speaks for Every One,
When Music lives in one small bird,
When in a furrowed hill we see
All beauty in epitome—
Those hours are best; for those belong
To the lucidity of song.

A TOWN WINDOW

Beyond my window in the night
Is but a drab inglorious street,
Yet there the frost and clean starlight
As over Warwick woods are sweet.

Under the grey drift of the town
The crocus works among the mould
As eagerly as those that crown
The Warwick spring in flame and gold.

And when the tramway down the hill
Across the cobbles moans and rings,
There is about my window-sill
The tumult of a thousand wings.

MYSTERY

Think not that mystery has place
In the obscure and veilèd face,
Or when the midnight watches are
Uncompanied of moon or star,
Or where the fields and forests lie
Enfolded from the loving eye
By fogs rebellious to the sun,
Or when the poet’s rhymes are spun
From dreams that even in his own
Imagining are half-unknown.

These are not mystery, but mere
Conditions that deny the clear
Reality that lies behind
The weak, unspeculative mind,
Behind contagions of the air
And screens of beauty everywhere,
The brooding and tormented sky,
The hesitation of an eye.

Look rather when the landscapes glow
Through crystal distances as though
The forty shires of England spread
Into one vision harvested,
Or when the moonlit waters lie
In silver cold lucidity;
Those countenances search that bear
Witness to very character,
And listen to the song that weighs
A life’s adventure in a phrase—
These are the founts of wonder, these
The plainer miracles to please
The brain that reads the world aright;
Here is the mystery of light.

THE COMMON LOT