April1915
You that are gone into the darkOf unknowing and unbeing;You that have heard the song of the lark,You that have seen the joy of the spring;You have I seen, you have I known—The word you have written, your pictured head—And they say you are laid at Lemnos among the English dead.
Soul that is gone—is gone—Whether into the dark,Or into knowledge complete and the blinding light;Soul that was swift and free,Passionate, eager, bright,Armed with a weapon for shams,And set with wings for flight;Soul that was questioning, restless, and all at odds with life,Greedy for it, yet satiate, and sick with the shows of things—And all laid down at Lemnos, the hunger, the love, the strife,And the youthful grace of body, and the body's ministerings.
Darkness, darkness, or light!You have leapt from the circle of sense,And only your dust remains and the word you said:"If I should die," ... and we name you among the dead.Yet have I a hope at heartThat somewhere away, apart,Knowledge is yours and joy of the act fulfilledTo still your fever of soul as your fever of blood is stilled;So shall you soar and runIn water and wind and air,With your old clean joy of the sun,And your gladness in all things fair,Untouched by mortality's sadness, simple, perfect, at one.
Red lilies under the sun,Red apples hanging above,And red is the wine that is spilledOn your bare white feet, O Love.
The poppies sullenly glowIn the smouldering red from the West,And black are the dregs of the wine,O Love, on your bare, white breast.
Aie! aie! when the wild swan fliesLonely and dark is the placeThat the white wings lightened, and deathWill cover your glowing face.
O thief that is night, O thieves!Cold years that devour us all;The lilies blossom and wilt,The apples ripen and fall,
The apples, the apples of Love!—Lo, where we have spilled the wine,This quenchless earth is agape,O Love, for your body and mine.
White is for purity, blue for heaven's grace,Purple is for Emperors, sitting in their place,Yellow is for happiness, rose for Love's embrace,But green—oh green, the green of England—that's for Paradise!
From seashore to seashore races the green tide;With the pricking green of hedges by the wet roadside—Or ever March triumphant comes with great, glad stride—There is green, there's green in England, and a tale of Paradise.
Then the hawthorns flush and tremble in their early wondrous green,And the willows are resplendent in a green-and-golden sheen,Like the golden tents of princes, Babylonish, Damascene,Or enchanted silent fountains of a Persian Paradise.
There are beech and birch and elm-tree—evening-still ormorning-tossed—And the splendid generous chestnuts with their flame-likeblooms embossed,There are oak and ash and elder, till the very sun is lostIn the green, delicious gloaming that's the light of Paradise.
Deeper, wider, steadier this beauty ever grows,And from field-side up to tree-top the endless colour flows,Till road and house and wayside, in the first days of the rose,Are fathoms deep in waves of green, submerged in Paradise.
Oh dim and lovely hollows of all the woods that be;Oh sunlight on the uplands, like a calm, great sea;I think indeed the souls of those from circumstance set freeLook down, look down on England, saying: "Ah, dear Paradise!"
What of this gift of Life?Passionate, swift, and rifeWith pleasure or pain in the hand of the hurrying hours?Oh little moment of space,Oh Death's averted face,How shall we grasp, shall we grasp what still is ours?
Chill, chill on either handEternities must stand,And pants between them, passionate and brief,The moment's self, to makeOr unmake, but to takeJust here, just now, before death turns the leaf.
Ah, if the leaf but turn,And if the soul discernAnother message on another page!But if death shuts the book?We may not know nor look;We are fenced in upon a narrow stage;
While, splendid and intense,Quick-strung in every senseLife burns in us, and earth lies all around—Far blue of summer seas,Young green of age-old trees—Bound by the season, by the horizon bound.
Oh colour, sound, and light,Oh wondrous day and night,Pale dawns, and evenings' splendid stretch of gold;Keen beauty like a spear,Half pleasure and half fear,Goes through us for the things we may not hold.
Hot blood, hot noons, hot youth—When Life seems all the truth,And Death a mumbled far old fairy-tale;When just the splendid daysSuffice our eager gaze,The wondrous present that will never fail.
Then one day, with a fierceClamour of heart, we pierceThe light and see the shadows all behind,And then, and not till then,By the brief graves of menThe utter loveliness of flowers we find.
So little stretch of days,And earth, with all her waysLovely enough, I think, for Paradise;And body, mind, and heart,Each separate complex part,Wondrously made, and never quite made twice.
What of this gift of Life?Shall it be worn in strife?Shall it be idly spent, or idly stored?Each for himself must dareIf the answer is here—or there,Here for regret—or there for hope, O Lord?
I wish you were a beaker of Venetian glassThat I might fill you with most precious wineAnd drink it, breathless—lo! the moments passOf that subliminal communion.I take you from my lips, and crush you—so!—Into a thousand shining particles;So, at the last, my passionate greed shall knowThat you were wholly mine.
I wish you were a rare, stringed instrumentBeneath my hand, and from you I would wringSuch unimagined music, as was sentNever before, along the quivering nerves;Such strange, sharp discords, out of which I'd mouldMusic more sweet than the spring nightingale's;Then, ere the magic of the sound was old,Would I not rend each string?
Possess you? Ah, not with the world's possession,You still, strange creature; neither force nor willCould make you serve a man's mere earthly passion.I would dissolve you, in one blinding flash,Into a drop of elemental dew,And let you trickle down the barren rockInto the black abyss, if so I knewThat you henceforth were powerless to mockMy spirit with your smile.
Let us hold April backOne splendid hourTo bless the passionate earthWith golden showerOf sunlight from the blue;Oh April skies,That earth yearns up to; blue has burned to gold,Gold pales and diesIn delicate faint rose,Oh flowing time, oh flux eternal. HoldThe hour back. The April hour goes.
Then, let it be of May,When sound and sightAnd all that's beauty manifestThrough all the day,Of deep on deep with green,Of light on lightAcross the waves of blossom, when the whiteIs lovelier than the rose, except the roseIs loveliest of all;When through the day the cuckoo calls unseen,And at nightfallThe nightingale, whose music no man knowsThe magic heart of, sitting in the darkSings still the world-old way;When all of these,Flowers and birds, and sunset and pale skiesSeem gathered up in scent,And all of sound and sightDissolved, ethereal, not of ears and eyesBut only the soul-beauty of the brainFlows, in such waves of perfume, over all—Or like a song in colour, of such strainAs spirits finer than our own must hear(The beautiful made clear);Then, then, when it is May,Surely our hand must touch eternity.Day pales to night, stars pale upon the day,And May's last blossoming hour flows away.
Not of June either, though the hanging skiesMake but a little span'Twixt light and growing light;And when through that short darkness palely fliesThe silent great white moth—A spirit lost in the night,A soul, without will or way—;When the arch of treesIs duskily green, and close as a builded houseWhere love with love might stay,Guarded and still, from sight;When the hay is sweet in the fieldsAnd love is as sweet as hay;When the life-impulse of the wonderful untamed earthHas reached its fulness and height,Is broad and steady and wideAs sweeps into splendid bays the flowing tide;When God might look on the land,When God might look on the sea,And say: "For ever bePerfect, completed, achieved,As now at this moment you stand."Neither in June shall we stay the eternal flowNor grasp the present with pitiful, mortal hand,For sliding past like water the June hours go.
Love is the ultimate measure of the soul;Love is the biting acid, the sure testTo strip the naked gold, discard the restOf earthly stuffs; Love is the one thing wholeIn a world of broken parts, for Love is all.
Love is creation; Love is the low callOf deep to deep; Love is the force that shapesThe thing that it believes, and while there gapesThe black earth-pit, where the poor flesh must fall,Love builds on hope, and buds eternal life.
Love is a victory unsoiled by strife;Who is there that shall adequately nameAll that Love is, this thing as swift as flameAnd vast as heaven, yet in every lifeTamed to the narrow needs of little men?
From humble love, that makes the partridge henBrave for her chickens, to the Love that shakesThe world from Calvary, all love partakesOf immortality; one cannot penDivinity in words; Love is divine.
The very essence of God does Love enshrine;For let the heart, however sorely tried,Open itself to loving, and the wideEarth is a home; love-lacking must declineWhere black fears crowd across the starless dark.
For Love is light; the faith that will embark,Unpiloted, upon uncharted seasIs Love alone; the fiery leap to seizeThe splendid distant aim, the invisible mark,What else but Love's? Love is the thing that standsUnchanged, on changing tides and shifting sands.
THE LITTLE SUMMER OF ALL SAINTS
The year stands still, the tearing winter windsHold off their claws a moment, that the treesMay keep the glory of their blended goldA little minute; there's not so much breezeAs summer mornings hold.
Golden and still the hours; russet goldThe birch-leaves o'er the silver of the bark;Pale gold the poplars, like a lady's hair,And thunderous gold along the hollows darkThe sunlit brackens flare.
There are ghosts we walk with, lady of mine,Arm in arm, and side by side,Pallid ghosts, though the sun may shine,Ghosts that are cold in the warmth of day,And neither of us may fend them away,But step by step they go with us, stride by stride.
There are doors in your heart that are shut to me,And behind them dwellers I cannot know;And my soul has windows that open wideOn a ghostly, memoried country-side,That—lady of mine—you never will see,Where your voice will never be heard, nor your footsteps go.
So we walk together, hand in hand,While dark eyes peer at us, pale forms come,And speak in my ear—or call your nameWith a voice I hear not, for praise or blame,And you walk alone with that ghostly band,While I go by the side of you, pitying, powerless, dumb.
What shall harm the gentle heartIn its purpose undefiled?Even grief shall lose its smartIn some way becoming partOf that nature, soothed and gentled,As a sorrow to a child.
Through the blackness and the sinOf the old world's wrongs and woes,And through the greater dark within,The gentle heart shall surely win,As some bright angel, armed with mercy,Swiftly on his errand goes.
All the body may have wrought,All the energies of mindThat for its own purpose sought,Make at length a little noughtAmong the stars—the gentle heartDeath itself will leave behind.
This is the ballad for Herman, the ballad of humble things,The hedge-side thistles that flower, the small brown lark that sings,And the stumbling flight of a beetle, and the duston a butterfly's wings.The snails are out in the sunshine after the morning rain,And the wasps are whirring and buzzing round the mulberry tree again,And the ants are busy of course, working with might and main.
While the crickets leap, and rustle, and play at being blades of grass,And humble-bumble the bees go, lurching as they pass,And the flies are stupidly walking up the window-glass.
The sun is bright on the hedges, on thistle and bramble and briar,The columbine leaves are heart-shaped, and shine as bright as fire—And oh! the smell of the bracken, that's straight as Salisbury spire!
Life of the woods, life of the rivers, life of the trees,Life of the rich plain-grasses that seed to the morning breeze,And the thymy mountain-grasses June makes loud with bees.
This does not age nor alter; the low sharp song of the reedsAs the evening wind goes over, and the fishing heron feedsOn the still and shallow waters, salt with the floating weeds.
This does not change nor vanish; the mating calls of the springs,When April's green on the copses, and bright on the shining wingsOf birds going backwards and forwards, while the whole greenforest sings.
All is our sister and brother, as once St. Francis said;The little stones in the river, the bright sun overhead,And newts, and the spawn of fishes, and the unnamed mighty dead.
This is the ballad for Herman. O friend, may good befall!There is never a star so distant, there is never a creature small,But living and knowing and loving in our brain we hold them all.
April1915
Great ever, with the hope that seeks the stars;The brain clear-cold, like ice; the soul like flame;The spirit beating at the physical bars;The reason guiding all—oh, there we nameFrance!
A country that can think, and thinking, acts;A country that can act, and acting, dreams;That neither bears the tyranny of facts,Nor of its own dear hopes, nor of what seems,
But still, clear-visioned, treats with things that are;Yet—seer, prophet, priest of life-to-be—Leaps to the visionary days afar,And all the splendour she will never see.
School of the spirit, chastening, yet a spurFor all that men aspire to: as of oldAthens held up the torch, and did incurPersia, with her fierce armies manifold,
So France against the evil strikes and strivesFor liberty, and we of island race,—Humbled a little by our careless lives—Glory to stand beside her in our place,
Glory that we are one in hope and aimWith her from whom in blood and agonyThe second gift of human freedom cameThrough Terror and the red Gethsemane.
On her fair, ravaged borders stand her guns,She has thrown away the scabbards, bared the swords,And, snatching laughter out of death, her sonsChallenge high Fate to show what life affords—France!
(FromKing Monmouth)
O love that dwells in the innermost heart of manSecret and dark and still,Like a bird in the core of a green mid-summer tree—Height upon height and depth upon depth where never the eye can seeThe brown bird, hidden and still.
O Love that is wild and eager, sun-lit and freeLike a seagull that turns in the sunlight above the sea;Between the sea and the sky it flashes and turns,And the sun on its wings is white,While sharply and shrill by the headland the keen wind singsWhere the grass is salt and greyWith the beating winter spray,And the seagull sweeps and soars on magnificent wings.
Love that is like a flame,Held in the hollow hand,So dear and precious a thingAs a light in a stranger land,As a flickering candle to him who wanders by night.
Love that is wide as the dawnTo the eyes of night-bound men;And the evil ghosts and the goblins it puts to flight,And stealthy creatures of dark that rustle and creep,And elfins and witches and all such devil's gameThat cannot live in the light,They squeak and gibber and cheep,And vanish like shadows before the splendour of day.
Love that has wide, white wings like a flying swan—Oh what a noble span,From tip to tip they are more than the height of a manAnd curved like the sails of a boat—When over the evening river the wild swan fliesThe curve of those wings is like the arch of the skiesOver the shielded earth.Love is most like a bird,For birds have least of the dust that gave them birth,They soar and poise and float,They wheel and swerve and skim,And their wings are strong to the wind, and swift to the light,And their voice is a promise of dawn while yet it is night,And their song is a pæan of hope before it is spring,And the song of the bird to his mate is lyrical love.
Love is secret and holy, a spiritual thing,Dark and silent and stillIn the heart of man, as a treasure is hid in a shrine.Love is splendid and fierce, as the summer sunDrenches the sea and the sky with its blaze and shine,Till every pebble is hot to the touch of the hand,And the air is a-shimmer with heat o'er the hazy land—Yet Love is not any of these things, Love is of oneWith the strange, half-guessed at, vast, creative planWe cannot see with our eyes nor understand—Yet is Love pitiful too, for Love is of man.
I
Friendship's an inn the roads of life afford—I'll speak to you in metaphor, my friend—And there a tired man his way may wend,And, coming in, sit down beside the board,Out of the dust and glare, and boldly sendFor drink and victuals; haply cross his knees,And in the cool dark parlour take his ease,And gossip of his journey and its end.
That's friendship; there is neither right of placeNor landlord duties, just the short hour's stayFrom the sun and weariness between those kindAnd quiet walls; and when the road's to faceStony and long again, we take our wayKeeping that respite gratefully in mind.
II
We take our pack, and jog our way againTowards the windy sunset and the night;The inn is now behind us, out of sight,Showing no welcome shine of windowpane,But dark and silent standing by the wayAs we go forward, seeing mile on mileSink out of sight—just for a little whileWe rested, in the middle of the day.
Is there an end at last, and shall we reach,By the faint glimmer of new-risen stars,Our house at last, and find the heart-reposeWhich is the ultimate desire of eachPoor traveller—ah! shall they drop the bars,And the doors open? Dear my friend, who knows?
To-day I miss you ... "Only for to-day,Some little matter of hours and nothing more."That at least the worldly-wise folk say,Who've never waited for the opening door,The greeting look, the known step on the floor;Who've never missed a loved one like a lover.
To-day I miss you. What to-morrow bringsIs the other side of all the stars, God knows!Only to have you here, now evening swingsIts quiet shadow round the globe again,And in our talk of old familiar things,And in familiar gestures, turn of brain,Looks, tone of voice, I may discern againThat union from which alone love grows.
We'd close the curtains;—while the world outside,Noisily autumn, makes a sense of peaceDeeper within,—open the bookcase wideAnd take a book out; then another book,And then another.... "Here's a favourite, look!We cannot pass him." ... Then from reading cease,Gossip and laugh, with finger in the page,And challenge thought with thought, and mind with mindEach speaking freely, that we might increaseSome knowledge to which, singly, we were blind.
So goes the evening. Side by side we stand,Dear friends and brothers, till, a sudden pause,Or kindly, almost careless touch of hands,Swings us to face each other, and we feelThose deepest stirrings of the human heartMan has no name for yet, those changeless lawsOf more than mating—that eternal partOur body is aware of, and our brain,Unchallenging with reason, must receive,That sense of intimate wonder!—Now again,The blinds are drawn; lamp, books, chairs, all retainFamiliar aspects, but, you absent, leaveThe room all empty, empty all the day.
How small the thread that holds up happiness;But one frail life between the dark and me,Your life, dear love—and here I seem to seeYou whimsically smile, that I confessThe whole round world, with its vast energy,Its summers, and its sunshine, and its aims,Its splendid hopes, the faith that unquenched, flames—All sunk into the compass of you and me.Yes, you are right, the single leaves that fallMar not the summer; do I think one leafDenudes a forest?—We are nought at all.Yet the bereaved small bird within the treeMay break its heart above its nest for grief—And perhaps this must happen, love, to me.
In all things gracious there is a thought of you:In the soft fall of April rain, the blueOf April skies in the morning, the full moonOf windless August nights, perfect and still,When the white moonlight lies across the hillOf new-cut stubble, where a little mist,Flickering, rises. In the song of birdsMy heart turns to you, emptied all of wordsBy loveliness, and in the poise and swingOf flowering grasses, and in the lingeringGrave, spacious fall of evening on the earth,When the wide, liquid spaces of the sky,Above the dewy fields and darkening lanes,And windless water lying quietly,Yield up the daylight, until none remains.
I could endure—or so it seems to me—Without your presence, a life of winter days,Stark, grey Novembers stretching endlessly,Where I, forgetting laughter and bright things,Might set my face to duty; but the stir,The loveliness, the poignancy of springs,The growth, the rise, the universal pressUp to sensation—ah, I could not bearTo live an April through, but must take wingsOut of a world too fair for loneliness.
There's duty, friend, to jog with arm in armThrough these dark streets; there's kindliness indeed,And there's the hope a little more to weedOur own small patch of life which the tares harm;There's patience for the folly of the earth;There's pity for the poor who suffer wrong;There's honour for the striving and the strong—But ah, dear friend of mine, where is the mirth?Where's the old jollity of everydayThat makes a holiday of common thingsBecause they all are shared by us aright,The trivial daily work and happeningsHaving a sort of fervour and delight,And the sun rising, even, a different way?
Beloved of my soul, the day is done;The busy noises cease, the lights are low;Gently the doors shut to behind each oneSeeking his sleep; the fading embers glowOn silent hearths; the silent ashes fall—Ah, absent spirit, do you hear me call,Me, sitting waiting by the fireside?
This is the hour of all the night and day,—This is the hour when, work put aside,And all the talking, whether grave or gay,For pleasure or for profit, hushed and dumb,We used to, in the days before you died,Seek out each other's mind for rest, and say:"Now am I home, and all is well with me;To-day is gone, to-morrow is to come;Here let us be."
Surely, for all the barriers of sense,And the stark grossness of this flesh I wear,For all the vacant distance of the skiesBetween me here alone, and you, gone hence,There must be some quick knowledge; I must hearThat dear familiar voice again, must seeSome semblance of you with my bodily eyes,Now, now, when in the solitude I yearnTowards your heart, my home; now when I turnHumbly and searchingly towards that goalThat lies beyond the purchase of the world—You again, you, dear comrade of my soul.
Life, in its unimaginable heights,When we may seize and apprehend the trueSoul essence, of one nature with the stars:Rare moments when our senses are a mistThat the truth shines through:—oh, most strange and rare,Such ecstasies as unimprisoned soulsExperience in that thin empyreanBeyond the gross world; this we two have knownWe two together. There are memoriesOf such high happiness in a fence of painAs martyrs in their fiery heart of deathHave blessed their God for; passion and holiness,When all the body (sinew, bone, and brain)Are like a harp, from which the spirit makesMarvels of harmony; some sense too rareTo be called happiness, not to be named indeedIn human speech—this we have touched and knownTogether, at some thrilling edge of time.
I fall away from it; the barriers closeAbout me; I descend from the clear heightsInto the plains and valleys of the world.The traffic of the market-place is mine,The heat and dust, the jostling and the noise,The kindly challenge and the neighbour-talk,All these may claim me, so that I forgetTo lift my eyes and see the far-off peaks,And the eternal splendour of the stars.
So be it; let the tide of men's affairsCarry me back and forward; let the rubOf greasy ha'pence passed from hand to hand,In humble traffic of a bunch of herbsNot pass me by; let me jog arm in arm,Or cheek by jowl, the shady side o' the street,With friends and neighbours, glad to know them there,Imperfect, human, kind, and tolerant.
So may the years go. Yet, when the call comes,And the world's colours fade before the eyeThat turns for spiritual vision on itself;When, from the four walls of the silent room,The noises of the world fall back and failIn that great silence which enrings the lastEcstatic moment of experience,Here on this earth—ah, then indeed I knowThat I shall find you. All that lies behind(The years of trivial experience)Shall open and fall back from off my soul,As falls the brown sheaf from the opening bud;And in that poignant moment, that mere breathOf temporal time, that aeon of the soul,I shall reach out and know you, mix with youAs flame with flame, as ray with ray of light,Be perfectly yourself, as you are me,With all else fallen, gone, dispersed awaySave the pure drop of spiritual essence—ThenLet come what may, light or oblivion.
Printed byR. & R. CLARK, LIMITED,Edinburgh.
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