Contents/Contents, p. 3
You little friend, your nose is ready; you sniff,Asking for that expected walk,(Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff)And almost talk.And so the moment becomes a moving force;Coats glide down from their pegs in the humble dark;The sticks grow live to the stride of their vagrant course.You scamper the stairs,Your body informed with the scent and the track and the markOf stoats and weasels, moles and badgers and hares.We are goingout. You know the pitch of the word,Probing the tone of thought as it comes through fogAnd reaches by devious means (half-smelt, half-heard)The four-legged brain of a walk-ecstatic dog.Out in the garden your head is already low.(Can you smell the rose? Ah, no.)But your limbs can drawLife from the earth through the touch of your padded paw.Now, sending a little look to us behind,Who follow slowly the track of your lovely play,You carry our bodies forward away from mindInto the light and fun of your useless day.* * * * *Thus, for your walk, we took ourselves, and wentOut by the hedge and the tree to the open ground.You ran, in delightful strata of wafted scent,Over the hill without seeing the view;Beauty is smell upon primitive smell to you:To you, as to us, it is distant and rarely found.Home ... and further joy will be surely there:Supper waiting full of the taste of bone.You throw up your nose again, and sniff, and stareFor the rapture knownOf the quick wild gorge of food and the still lie-downWhile your people talk above you in the lightOf candles, and your dreams will merge and drownInto the bed-delicious hours of night.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn:It listens, listens. Taller trees beyondListen. The moon at the unruffled pondStares. And you sing, you sing.That star-enchanted song falls through the airFrom lawn to lawn down terraces of sound,Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground;And all the night you sing.My dreams are flowers to which you are a beeAs all night long I listen, and my brainReceives your song, then loses it againIn moonlight on the lawn.Now is your voice a marble high and white,Then like a mist on fields of paradise,Now is a raging fire, then is like ice,Then breaks, and it is dawn.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
The tough hand closes gently on the load;Out of the mind, a voiceCalls 'Lift!' and the arms, remembering well their work,Lengthen and pause for help.Then a slow ripple flows from head to footWhile all the muscles call to one another:'Lift! 'and the bulging baleFloats like a butterfly in June.So moved the earliest carrier of bales,And the same watchful sunGlowed through his body feeding it with light.So will the last one move,And halt, and dip his head, and lay his loadDown, and the muscles will relax and tremble.Earth, you designed your manBeautiful both in labour and repose.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
To the heart, to the heart the white petalsQuietly fall.Memory is a little wind, and magicalThe dreaming hours.As a breath they fall, as a sigh;Green garden hours too langorous to waken,White leaves of blossomy tree wind-shaken:As a breath, a sigh,As the slow white driftOf a butterfly.Flower-wings falling, wings of branchesOne after one at wind's droop dipping;Then with the liftOf the air's soft breath, in sudden avalanchesSlipping.Quietly, quietly the June wind flingsWhite wings,White petals, past the footpath flowersAdown my dreaming hours.At the heart, at the heart the butterfly settles.As a breath, a sighFall the petals of hours, of the white-leafed flowers,Fall the petalled wings of the butterfly.To my heart, to my heart the white petalsQuietly fall.To the years, other years, old and wistfulDrifts my dream.Petal-patined the dream, white-mistfulAs the dew-sweet haunt of the dim whitebeamBecause of memory, a little wind ...It is the gossamer-float of the butterflyThis drift of dreamFrom the sweet of to-day to the sweetOf days long drifted by.It is the drift of the butterfly, it is the fleetDrift of petals which my noon has thinned,It is the ebbing out of my life, of the petals of days.To the years, other years, drifts my dream....Through the hazeOf summers long agoLove's entrancements flow,A blue-green pageant of earth,A green-blue pageant of sky,As a stream,Flooding back with lovely delta to my heart.Lo the petalled leafage is finer, under the feetThe coarse soil with a rainbow's worthOf delicate colours lies enamelled,Translucently glowing, shining.Each balmy breath of the hoursFrom eastern gleam to westward gloamIs meaning-full as the falling flowers:It is a crystal syllableFor love's defining,It is love alone can spell — —Yea, Love remains: after this drift of daysLove is here, Love is not dumb.The touch of a silken hand, comradely, untrammelledIs in the sunlight, a bright glanceOn every ripple of yonder waterways,A whisper in the danceOf green shadows;Nor shall the sunlight be shut out even from the dark.Beyond the garden heavy oaks are buoyant on the meadows,Their rugged barkNo longer rough,But chastened and refined in the glowing eyes of Love.Around us the petals fulfilTheir measure and fall, precious the petals are still.For Love they once were gathered, they are gathered for Love again,Whose glance is on the water,Whose whisper is in the green shadows.In the same comrade-hand whose touch is in the sunlight,They are lying again.Here Love is ... Love only of all things outstaysThe drift of petals, the drift of days,Petals of hours,Of white-leafed flowers,Petalled wings of the butterfly,Drifting, quietly drifting byAs a breath, a sigh....
Contents/Contents, p. 3
Brown earth, sun-soaked,Beneath his headAnd over the quiet limbs....Through time unreckonedLay this brown earth for him. Now is he come.Truly he hath a sweet bed.The perfume shedFrom invisible gardens is chaliced by kindly airsAnd carried for welcome to the stranger.Long seasons ere he came, this wildernessThey habited.They, and the mist of starsDown-spreadAbout him as a hush of vespering birds.They, and the sun, the moon:Naught now denies him the moon's coming,Nor the morning trail of gold,The luminous print of evening, redAt the sun's tread.The brown earth holds him.The stars and little winds, the friendly moonAnd sun attend in turn his rest.They linger above him, softly moving. They are gracious,And gently-wise: as though remembering how his hunger,His kinship, knew them once but blindlyIn thoughts unsaid,As a dream that fled.So is he theirs assuredly as the seasons.So is his sleep by them for ever companioned....And, perchance, by the voices of bright children playingAnd knowing not: by the echo of young laughterWhen their dancing is sped.Truly he hath a sweet bed.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
This cool quiet of treesIn the grey dusk of the north,In the green half-dusk of the west,Where fires still glow;These glimmering fantasiesOf foliage branching forthAnd drooping into rest;Ye lovers, knowThat in your wanderingsBeneath this arching brakeYe must attune your loveTo hushed words.For here is the dreaming wisdom ofThe unmovable things...And more: — walk softly, lest ye wakeA thousand sleeping birds.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
He lay, and those who watched him were amazedTo see unheralded beneath the lidsTwin tears, new-gathered at the price of pain,Start and at once run crookedly athwartCheeks channelled long by pain, never by tears.So desolate too the sigh next utteredThey had wept also, but his great lips moved,And bending down one heard, 'A sprig of lime;Bring me a sprig of lime.' Whereat she stoleWith dumb signs forth to pluck the thing he craved.So lay he till a lime-twig had been snappedFrom some still branch that swept the outer grassFar from the silver pillar of the boleWhich mounting past the house's crusted roofSplit into massy limbs, crossed boughs, a mazeOf close-compacted intercontorted staffsBowered in foliage wherethrough the sunShot sudden showers of light or crystal sparsOr wavered in a green and vitreous flood.And all the while in faint and fainter tonesScarce audible on deepened evening's hushHe framed his curious and last requestFor 'lime, a sprig of lime.' Her trembling handClosed his loose fingers on the awkward stemCovered above with gentle heart-shaped leavesAnd under dangling, pale as honey-wax,Square clusters of sweet-scented starry flowers.She laid his bent arm back upon his breast,Then watched above white knuckles clenched in prayer.He never moved. Only at last his eyesOpened, then brightened in such avid gazeShe feared the coma mastered him again ...But no; strange sobs rose chuckling in his throat,A stranger ecstasy suffused the fleshOf that just mask so sun-dried, gouged and oldWhich few — too few! — had loved, too many feared.'Father!' she cried; 'Father!'He did not hear.She knelt and kneeling drank the scent of limes,Blown round the slow blind by a vesperal gust,Till the room swam. So the lime-incense blewInto her life as once it had in his,Though how and when and with what ageless chargeOf sorrow and deep joy how could she know?Sweet lime that often at the height of noonDiffusing dizzy fragrance from your boughs,Tasselled with blossoms more innumerableThan the black bees, the uproar of whose toilFilled your green vaults, winning such metheglynAs clouds their sappy cells, distil, as onceYe used, your sunniest emanationsToward the window where a woman kneels —She who within that room in childish hoursLay through the lasting murmur of blanch'd noonBehind the sultry blind, now full now flat,Drinking anew of every odorous breath,Supremely happy in her ignoranceOf Time that hastens hourly and of DeathWho need not haste. Scatter your fumes, O lime,Loose from each hispid star of citron bloom,Tangled beneath the labyrinthine boughs,Cloud on such stinging cloud of exhalationsAs reek of youth, fierce life and summer's prime,Though hardly now shall he in that dusk roomSavour your sweetness, since the very sprig,Profuse of blossom and of essences,He smells not, who in a paltering handClasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming facePropped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime,Your curfew secrets out in fervid scentTo the attendant shadows! Tinge the airOf the midsummer night that now begins,At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to duskAnd downward caper of the giddy batHawking against the lustre of bare skies,With something of th' unfathomable blissHe, who lies dying there, knew once of oldIn the serene trance of a summer nightWhen with th' abundance of his young bride's hairLoosed on his breast he lay and dared not sleep,Listening for the scarce motion of your boughs,Which sighed with bliss as she with blissful sleep,And drinking desperately each honied waveOf perfume wafted past the ghostly blindKnew first th' implacable and bitter senseOf Time that hastes and Death who need not haste.Shed your last sweetness, limes!But now no more.She, fruit of that night's love, she heeds you not,Who bent, compassionate, to the dim floorTakes up the sprig of lime and presses itIn pain against the stumbling of her heart,Knowing, untold, he cannot need it now.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
For Anne
.
All the loud winds were in the garden wood,All shadows joyfuller than lissom houndsDoubled in chasing, all exultant cloudsThat ever flung fierce mist and eddying fireAcross heavens deeper than blue polar seasFled over the sceptre-spikes of the chestnuts,Over the speckle of the wych-elms' green.She shouted; then stood still, hushed and abashedTo hear her voice so shrill in that gay roar,And suddenly her eyelashes were dimmed,Caught in tense tears of spiritual joy;For there were daffodils which sprightly shookTen thousand ruffling heads throughout the wood,And every flower of those delighting flowersLaughed, nodding to her, till she clapped her handsCrying 'O daffies, could you only speak!'But there was more. A jay with skyblue shaftSet in blunt wing, skimmed screaming on ahead.She followed him. A murrey squirrel eyedHer warily, cocked upon tail-plumed haunch,Then, skipping the whirligig of last-year leaves,Whisked himself out of sight and reappearedLeering about the hole of a young beech;And every time she thought to corner himHe scrambled round on little scratchy handsTo peek at her about the other side.She lost him, bolting branch to branch, at last —The impudent brat! But still high overheadFlight on exuberant flight of opal scud,Or of dissolving mist, florid as flame.Scattered in ecstasy over the blue. And sheFollowed, first walking, giving her bright locksTo the cold fervour of the springtime gale,Whose rush bore the cloud shadow past the cloudOver the irised wastes of emerald turf.And still the huge wind volleyed. Save the gulls,Goldenly in the sunny blast careeringOr on blue-shadowed underwing at plunge,None shared with her who now could not but runThe splendour and tumult of th' onrushing spring.And now she ran no more: the gale gave plumes.One with the shadows whirled along the grass,One with the onward smother of veering gulls,One with the pursuit of cloud after cloud,Swept she. Pure speed coursed in immortal limbs;Nostrils drank as from wells of unknown air;Ears received the smooth silence of racing floods;Light as of glassy suns froze in her eyes;Space was given her and she ruled all space.Spring, author of twifold loveliness,Who flittest in the mirth of the wild folk,Profferest greeting in the faces of flowers,Blowest in the firmamental glory,Renewest in the heart of the sad humanAll faiths, guard thou the innocent spiritInto whose unknowing hands this noontideThou pourest treasure, yet scarce recognised,That unashamed before man's glib wisdom,Unabashed beneath the wrath of chance,She accept in simplicity of homageThe hidden holiness, the created emblemTo be in her, until death shall take her,The source and secret of eternal spring.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
Never am I so aloneAs when I walk among the crowd —Blurred masks of stern or grinning stone,Unmeaning eyes and voices loud.Gaze dares not encounter gaze, ...Humbled, I turn my head aside;When suddenly there is a face ...Pale, subdued and grievous-eyed.Ah, I know that visage meek,Those trembling lips, the eyes that shineBut turn from that which they would seekWith an air piteous, divine!There is not a line or scar,Seal of a sorrow or disgrace,But I know like sigils areBurned in my heart and on my face.Speak! O speak! Thou art the one!But thou hast passed with sad head bowed;And never am I so aloneAs when I walk among the crowd.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
O Nightingale my heartHow sad thou art!How heavy is thy wing,Desperately whirrëd that thy throat may flingSong to the tingling silences remote!Thine eye whose ruddy sparkBurned fiery of late,How dead and dark!Why so soon didst thou sing,And with such turbulence of love and hate?Learn that there is no singing yet can bringThe expected dawn more near;And thou art spent already, though the nightScarce has begun;What voice, what eyes wilt thou have for the lightWhen the light shall appear,And O what wings to bear thee t'ward the Sun?
Contents/Contents, p. 3
Put by the sun my joyful soul,We are for darkness that is whole;Put by the wine, now for long yearsWe must be thirsty with salt tears;Put by the rose, bind thou insteadThe fiercest thorns about thy head;Put by the courteous tire, we needBut the poor pilgrim's blackest weed;Put by — a'beit with tears — thy lute,Sing but to God or else be mute.Take leave of friends save such as dareThy love with Loneliness to share.It is full tide. Put by regret.Turn, turn away. Forget. Forget.Put by the sun my lightless soul,We are for darkness that is whole.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
Between the erect and solemn treesI will go down upon my knees;I shall not find this daySo meet a place to pray.Haply the beauty of this placeMay work in me an answering grace,The stillness of the airBe echoed in my prayer.The worshipping trees arise and run,With never a swerve, towards the sun;So may my soul's desireTurn to its central fire.With single aim they seek the light,And scarce a twig in all their heightBreaks out until the headIn glory is outspread.How strong each pillared trunk; the barkThat covers them, how smooth; and hark,The sweet and gentle voiceWith which the leaves rejoice!May a like strength and sweetness fillDesire, and thought, and steadfast will,When I remember theseFair sacramental trees!
Contents/Contents, p. 3
When I'm asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm, —They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.While the dim charging breakers of the stormBellow and drone and rumble overhead,Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.'Why are you here with all your watches ended?From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the Line.'In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;And while the dawn begins with slashing rainI think of the Battalion in the mud.'When are you going out to them again?Are they not still your brothers through our blood?'
Contents/Contents, p. 3
I am banished from the patient men who fight.They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sightThey went arrayed in honour. But they died, —Not one by one: and mutinous I criedTo those who sent them out into the night.The darkness tells how vainly I have strivenTo free them from the pit where they must dwellIn outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and rivenBy grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
Now light the candles; one; two; there's a moth;What silly beggars they are to blunder inAnd scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame —No, no, not that, — it's bad to think of war,When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you;And it's been proved that soldiers don't go madUnless they lose control of ugly thoughtsThat drive them out to jabber among the trees.Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,And you're as right as rain....Why won't it rain?...I wish there'd be a thunderstorm to-night,With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,And make the roses hang their dripping heads.Books; what a jolly company they are,Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,And every kind of colour. Which will you read?Come on; Odoread something; they're so wise.I tell you all the wisdom of the worldIs waiting for you on those shelves; and yetYou sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,And listen to the silence: on the ceilingThere's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;And in the breathless air outside the houseThe garden waits for something that delays.There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees, —Not people killed in battle, — they're in France, —But horrible shapes in shrouds — old men who diedSlow, natural deaths, — old men with ugly souls,Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.* * * * *You're quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;You'd never think there was a bloody war on!...O yes, you would ... why, you can hear the guns.Hark! Thud, thud, thud, — quite soft ... they never cease —Those whispering guns — O Christ, I want to go outAnd screech at them to stop — I'm going crazy;I'm going stark, staring mad because of the guns.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
Does it matter? — losing your legs?...For people will always be kind,And you need not show that you mindWhen the others come in after huntingTo gobble their muffins and eggs.Does it matter? — losing your sight?...There's such splendid work for the blind;And people will always be kind,As you sit on the terrace rememberingAnd turning your face to the light.Do they matter? — those dreams from the pit?...You can drink and forget and be glad,And people won't say that you're mad;For they'll know that you've fought for your country,And no one will worry a bit.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
(
Egyptian Base Camp
).
They are gathering round ...Out of the twilight; over the grey-blue sand,Shoals of low-jargoning men drift inward to the sound —The jangle and throb of a piano ... tum-ti-tum ...Drawn by a lamp, they comeOut of the glimmering lines of their tents, over the shuffling sand.O sing us the songs, the songs of our own land,You warbling ladies in white.Dimness conceals the hunger in our faces,This wall of faces risen out of the night,These eyes that keep their memories of the placesSo long beyond their sight.Jaded and gay, the ladies sing; and the chap in brownTilts his grey hat; jaunty and lean and pale,He rattles the keys ... Some actor-bloke from town ...God send you home; and thenA long, long trail;I hear you calling me; andDixieland....Sing slowly ... now the chorus ... one by oneWe hear them, drink them; till the concert's done.Silent, I watch the shadowy mass of soldiers stand.Silent, they drift away, over the glimmering sand.
KANTARA,
April, 1918
.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
In fifty years, when peace outshinesRemembrance of the battle lines,Adventurous lads will sigh and castProud looks upon the plundered past.On summer morn or winter's night,Their hearts will kindle for the fight,Reading a snatch of soldier-song,Savage and jaunty, fierce and strong;And through the angry marching rhymesOf blind regret and haggard mirth,They'll envy us the dazzling timesWhen sacrifice absolved our earth.Some ancient man with silver locksWill lift his weary face to say:'War was a fiend who stopped our clocksAlthough we met him grim and gay.'And then he'll speak of Haig's last drive,Marvelling that any came aliveOut of the shambles that men builtAnd smashed, to cleanse the world of guilt.But the boys, with grin and sidelong glance,Will think, 'Poor grandad's day is done.'And dream of those who fought in FranceAnd lived in time to share the fun.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
I watch you, gazing at me from the wall,And wonder how you'd match your dreams with mine,If, mastering time's illusion, I could callYou back to share this quiet candle-shine.For you were young, three hundred years ago;And by your looks I guess that you were wise ...Come, whisper soft, and Death will never knowYou've slipped away from those calm, painted eyes.Strange is your voice ... Poor ninny, dead so long,And all your pride forgotten like your name.'One April morn I heard a blackbird's song.And joy was in my heart like leaves aflame.'And so you died before your songs took wing;While Andrew Marvell followed in your wake.'Love thrilled me into music. I could singBut for a moment, — but for beauty's sake.'Who passes? There's a star-lit breeze that stirsThe glimmer of white lilies in the gloom.Who speaks? Death has his silent messengers.And there was more than silence in this roomWhile you were gazing at me from the wallAnd wondering how you'd match your dreams with mine,If, mastering time's illusion, you could callMe back to share your vanished candle-shine.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,Whose voices make the emptiness of lightA windy palace. Quavering from the brimOf dawn, and bold with song at edge of night,They clutch their leafy pinnacles and singScornful of man, and from his toils aloofWhose heart's a haunted woodland whispering;Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing;Who hears the cry of God in everything,And storms the gate of nothingness for proof.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;And I was filled with such delightAs prisoned birds must find in freedom,Winging wildly across the whiteOrchards and dark-green fields; on — on — and out of sight.Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;And beauty came like the setting sun:My heart was shaken with tears; and horrorDrifted away ... O, but EveryoneWas a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
Contents/Contents, p. 4
Come out and walk. The last few drops of lightDrain silently out of the cloudy blue;The trees are full of the dark-stooping night,The fields are wet with dew.All's quiet in the wood but, far away,Down the hillside and out across the plain,Moves, with long trail of white that marks its way,The softly panting train.Come through the clearing. Hardly now we seeThe flowers, save dark or light against the grass,Or glimmering silver on a scented treeThat trembles as we pass.Hark now! So far, so far ... that distant song ...Move not the rustling grasses with your feet.The dusk is full of sounds, that all alongThe muttering boughs repeat.So far, so faint, we lift our heads in doubt.Wind, or the blood that beats within our ears,Has feigned a dubious and delusive note,Such as a dreamer hears.Again ... again! The faint sounds rise and fail.So far the enchanted tree, the song so low...A drowsy thrush? A waking nightingale?Silence. We do not know.