SONNETS AND VERSE

BY

H. BELLOC

SONNETS AND VERSE

BY

H. BELLOC

DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C.

First Published in 1923

All rights reserved

Made and Printed in Great Britain
by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh

To

JOHN SWINNERTON PHILLIMORE

A DEDICATION

WITH THIS BOOK OF VERSE

When you and I were little tiny boys
We took a most impertinent delight
In foolish, painted and misshapen toys
Which hidden mothers brought to us at night.

Do you that have the child’s diviner part—
The dear content a love familiar brings—
Take these imperfect toys, till in your heart
They too attain the form of perfect things.

I. SONNETS
		PAGE
I.	Lift up your Hearts in Gumber, laugh the Weald	3
II.	I was like one that keeps the Deck by Night	4
III.	Rise up and do begin the Day’s Adorning	5
IV.	The Winter Moon has such a quiet Car	6
V.	Whatever Moisture nourishes the Rose	7
VI.	Youth gave you to me, but I’ll not believe	8
VII.	Mortality is but the Stuff you wear	9
VIII.	Not for the Luckless Buds our Roots may bear	10
IX.	That which is one they Shear and make it Twain	11
X.	Shall any Man for whose strong love another	12
XI.	They that have taken Wages of things done	13
XII.	Beauty that Parent is to deathless Rhyme	14
XIII.	What are the Names for Beauty? Who shall praise	15
XIV.	Love wooing Honour, Honour’s Love did win	16
XV.	Your Life is like a little Winter’s Day	17
XVI.	Now shall the certain Purpose of my Soul	18
XVII.	Because my faltering Feet may fail to dare	19
XVIII.	When you to Acheron’s ugly Water come	20
XIX.	We will not Whisper, we have found the Place	21
XX.	I went to Sleep at Dawn in Tuscany	22
XXI.	Almighty God, whose Justice like a Sun	23
XXII.	Mother of all my Cities once there lay	24
XXIII.	November is that Historied Emperor	25
XXIV.	Hoar Time about the House betakes him Slow	26
XXV.	It Freezes: all across a soundless Sky	27
XXVI.	O my Companion, O my Sister Sleep	28
XXVII.	Are you the End, Despair, or the poor least	29
XXVIII.	But Oh! not Lovely Helen, nor the Pride	30
XXIX.	The World’s a Stage. The Light is in One’s Eyes	31
XXX.	The World’s a Stage—and I’m the Super Man	32
XXXI.	The World’s a Stage. The trifling Entrance Fee	33
LYRICAL, DIDACTIC AND GROTESQUE
To Dives		37
Stanzas Written on Battersea Bridge during a South-Westerly Gale		39
The South Country		42
The Fanatic		45
The Early Morning		48
Our Lord and Our Lady		49
Courtesy		51
The Night		53
The Leader		54
A Bivouac		56
To the Balliol Men still in Africa		57
Verses to a Lord who, in the House of Lords, said that those who Opposed the South African Adventure confused Soldiers with Money-Grubbers		59
The Rebel		61
The Prophet Lost in the Hills at Evening		63
The End of the Road		65
An Oracle that Warned the Writer when on Pilgrimage		67
The Death and Last Confession of Wandering Peter		68
Dedicatory Ode		70
Dedication on the Gift of a Book to a Child		78
Dedication of a Child’s Book of Imaginary Tales		79
Homage		80
The Moon’s Funeral		81
The Happy Journalist		83
Lines to a Don		85
Newdigate Poem		88
The Yellow Mustard		93
The Politician or the Irish Earldom		94
The Loser		96
SONGS
Noël		99
The Birds		101
In a Boat		102
Song inviting the Influence of a Young Lady upon the Opening Year		104
The Ring		105
Cuckoo!		106
The Little Serving Maid		107
Auvergnat		110
Drinking Song, on the Excellence of Burgundy Wine		111
Drinking Dirge		113
West Sussex Drinking Song		115
A Ballad on Sociological Economics		117
Heretics All		118
Ha’nacker Mill		119
Tarantella		120
The Chaunty of the “Nona”		122
The Winged Horse		125
Strephon’s Song (from “The Cruel Shepherdess”)		127
IV. BALLADES
Short Ballade and Postscript on Consols and Boers		131
Ballade of the Unanswered Question		134
Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa		136
Ballade of Hell and of Mrs Roebeck		138
Ballade of Unsuccessful Men		140
Ballade of the Heresiarchs		142
V. EPIGRAMS		147
VI. THE BALLAD OF VAL-ÈS-DUNES		157

I

SONNETS

I

Lift up your hearts in Gumber, laugh the Weald
And you my mother the Valley of Arun sing.
Here am I homeward from my wandering
Here am I homeward and my heart is healed.
You my companions whom the World has tired
Come out to greet me. I have found a face
More beautiful than Gardens; more desired
Than boys in exile love their native place.

Lift up your hearts in Gumber, laugh the Weald
And you most ancient Valley of Arun sing.
Here am I homeward from my wandering,
Here am I homeward and my heart is healed.
If I was thirsty, I have heard a spring.
If I was dusty, I have found a field.

II

I was like one that keeps the deck by night
Bearing the tiller up against his breast;
I was like one whose soul is centred quite
In holding course although so hardly prest,
And veers with veering shock now left now right,
And strains his foothold still and still makes play
Of bending beams until the sacred light
Shows him high lands and heralds up the day.

But now such busy work of battle past
I am like one whose barque at bar at last
Comes hardly heeling down the adventurous breeze;
And entering calmer seas,
I am like one that brings his merchandise
To Californian skies.

III

Rise up and do begin the day’s adorning;
The Summer dark is but the dawn of day.
The last of sunset fades into the morning;
The morning calls you from the dark away.
The holy mist, the white mist of the morning
Was wreathing upward on my lonely way.
The way was waiting for your own adorning
That should complete the broad adornéd day.

Rise up and do begin the day’s adorning;
The little eastern clouds are dapple grey:
There will be wind among the leaves to-day;
It is the very promise of the morning.
Lux Tua Via Mea: your light’s my way—
Then do rise up and make it perfect day.

IV

The Winter Moon has such a quiet car
That all the winter nights are dumb with rest.
She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest
And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star
Because the nights are silent do not wake
But there shall tremble through the general earth,
And over you, a quickening and a birth.
The Sun is near the hill-tops for your sake.

The latest born of all the days shall creep
To kiss the tender eyelids of the year;
And you shall wake, grown young with perfect sleep,
And smile at the new world and make it dear
With living murmurs more than dreams are deep;
Silence is dead, my dawn, the morning’s here.

V

Whatever moisture nourishes the Rose
The Rose of the World in laughter’s garden-bed
Where Souls of men on faith secure are fed
And spirits immortal keep their pleasure-close.
Whatever moisture nourishes the Rose,
The burning Rose of the world, for me the same
To-day for me the spring without a name
Content or Grace or Laughter overflows.

This is that water from the Fount of Gold
Water of Youth and washer out of cares
Which Raymond of Saragossa sought of old
And finding in the mountain, unawares,
Returned to hear an ancient story told
To Bramimond, his love, beside the marble stairs.

VI

Youth gave you to me, but I’ll not believe
That Youth will, taking his quick self, take you.
Youth’s all our Truth: he cannot so deceive.
He has our graces, not our ownselves too.
He still compares with time when he’ll be spent,
By human doom enhancing what we are;
Enriches us with rare experiment,
Lends arms to leagured Age in Time’s rough war.

Look! This Youth in us is an Old Man taking
A Boy to make him wiser than his days.
So is our old Youth our young Age’s making:
So rich in time our final debt he pays.
Then with your quite young arms do you me hold
And I will still be young when all the World’s grown old.

VII

Mortality is but the Stuff you wear
To show the better on the imperfect sight.
Your home is surely with the changeless light
Of which you are the daughter and the heir.
For as you pass, the natural life of things
Proclaims the Resurrection: as you pass
Remembered summer shines across the grass
And somewhat in me of the immortal sings.

You were not made for memory, you are not
Youth’s accident I think but heavenly more;
Moulding to meaning slips my pen’s poor blot
And opening wide that long forbidden door
Where stands the Mother of God, your exemplar.
How beautiful, how beautiful you are!

VIII

Not for the luckless buds our roots may bear
Now all in bloom, now seared and cankered lying
Will I entreat you, lest they should compare
Foredoomed humanity with the fall of flowers.
Hold thou with me the chaste communion rare
And touch with life this mortal case of ours:
You’re lifted up beyond the power of dying:
I die, as bounded things die everywhere.

You’re voiced companionship, I’m silence lonely;
You’re stuff, I’m void; you’re living, I’m decay.
I fall, I think, to-night and ending only;
You rise, I know, through still advancing day.
And knowing living gift were life for me
In narrow room of rhyme I fixed it certainly.

IX

That which is one they shear and make it twain
Who would Love’s light and dark discriminate:
His pleasure is one essence with his pain,
Even his desire twin brother to his hate.
With him the foiled attempt is half achieving;
And being mastered, to be armed a lord;
And doubting every chance is still believing;
And losing all one’s own is all reward.

I am acquainted with misfortune’s fortune,
And better than herself her dowry know:
For she that is my fortune and misfortune,
Making me hapless, makes me happier so:
In which conceit, as older men may prove,
Lies manifest the very core of Love.

X

Shall any man for whose strong love another
Has thrown away his wealth and name in one,
Shall he turn mocker of a more than brother
To slight his need when his adventure’s done?
Or shall a breedless boy whose mother won him
In great men’s great concerns his little place
Turn when his farthing honours come upon him
To mock her yeoman air and conscious grace?

Then mock me as you do my narrow scope,
For you it was put out this light of mine:
Wrongfully wrecked my new adventured hope,
Wasted my wordy wealth, spilt my rich wine,
Made my square ship within a league of shore
Alas! To be entombed in seas and seen no more.

XI

They that have taken wages of things done
When sense abused has blocked the doors of sense,
They that have lost their heritage of the sun,
Their laughter and their holy innocence;
They turn them now to this thing, now to t’other,
For anchor hold against swift-eddying time,
Some to that square of earth which was their mother,
And some to noisy fame, and some to rhyme.

But I to that far morning where you stood
In fullness of the body, with your hands
Reposing on your walls, before your lands,
And all, together, making one great good:
Then did I cry “For this my birth was meant.
These are my use, and this my sacrament!”

XII

Beauty that Parent is to deathless Rhyme
Was Manhood’s maker: you shall bear a Son,
Till Daughters linked adown admiring time
Fulfil the mother, handing Beauty on.
You shall by breeding make Life answer yet,
In Time’s despite, Time’s jeer that men go void;
Your stamp of heaven shall be more largely set
Than my one joy, ten thousand times enjoyed.

The glories of our state and its achievement,
Which wait their passing, shall not pass away.
I will extend our term beyond bereavement,
And launch our date into a dateless day.
For you shall make recórd, and when that’s sealed
In Beauty made immortal, all is healed.

XIII

What are the names for Beauty? Who shall praise
God’s pledge he can fulfil His creatures’ eyes?
Or what strong words of what creative phrase
Determine Beauty’s title in the skies?
But I will call you Beauty Personate,
Ambassadorial Beauty, and again
Beauty triumphant, Beauty in the Gate,
Beauty salvation of the souls of men.

For Beauty was not Beauty till you came
And now shall Beauty mean the sign you are;
A Beacon burnt above the Dawn, a flame
Like holy Lucifer the Morning Star,
Who latest hangs in Heaven and is the gem
On all the widowéd Night’s expectant Diadem.

XIV

Love wooing Honour, Honour’s love did win
And had his pleasure all a summer’s day.
Not understanding how the dooms begin,
Love wooing Honour, wooed her life away.
Then wandered he a full five years unrest
Until, one night, this Honour that had died
Came as he slept, in youth grown glorified
And smiling like the Saints whom God has blest.

But when he saw her on the clear night shine
Serene with more than mortal light upon her,
The boy that careless was of things divine,
Small Love, turned penitent to worship Honour.
So Love can conquer Honour: when that’s past
Dead Honour risen outdoes Love at last.

XV

Your life is like a little winter’s day
Whose sad sun rises late to set too soon;
You have just come—why will you go away,
Making an evening of what should be noon.
Your life is like a little flute complaining
A long way off, beyond the willow trees:
A long way off, and nothing left remaining
But memory of a music on the breeze.

Your life is like a pitiful leave-taking
Wept in a dream before a man’s awaking,
A Call with only shadows to attend:
A Benediction whispered and belated
Which has no fruit beyond a consecrated,
A consecrated silence at the end.

XVI

Now shall the certain purpose of my soul
By blind and empty things controlled be,
And mine audacious course to that far goal
Fall short, confessing mere mortality.
Limbs shall have movement and ignore their living,
Brain wit, that he his quickness may deny.
My promised hope forswears in act of giving,
Time eats me up and makes my words a lie.

And mine unbounded dream has found a bar,
And I must worst deceit of best things bear.
Now dawn’s but daybreak, seas but waters are,
Night darkness only, all wide heaven just air:
And you to whom these fourteen lines I tell,
My beauty, my desire: but not my love as well.

XVII

Because my faltering feet may fail to dare
The first descendant of the steps of Hell
Give me the Word in time that triumphs there.
I too must pass into the misty hollow
Where all our living laughter stops: and hark!
The tiny stuffless voices of the dark
Have called me, called me, till I needs must follow:
Give me the Word and I’ll attempt it well.

Say it’s the little winking of an eye
Which in that issue is uncurtained quite;
A little sleep that helps a moment by
Between the thin dawn and the large daylight.
Ah! tell me more than yet was hoped of men;
Swear that’s true now, and I’ll believe it then.

XVIII

When you to Acheron’s ugly water come
Where darkness is and formless mourners brood
And down the shelves of that distasteful flood
Survey the human rank in order dumb.
When the pale dead go forward, tortured more
By nothingness and longing than by fire,
Which bear their hands in suppliance with desire,
With stretched desire for the ulterior shore.

Then go before them like a royal ghost
And tread like Egypt or like Carthage crowned;
Because in your Mortality the most
Of all we may inherit has been found—
Children for memory: the Faith for pride.
Good land to leave: and young Love satisfied.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sonnets and Verse

SONNETS AND VERSE

CONTENTS

I

SONNETS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sonnets and Verse

SONNETS AND VERSE

CONTENTS

I SONNETS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

I

SONNETS