Not soon shall I forget—a sheetOf golden water, cold and sweet,The young moon with her head in veilsOf silver, and the nightingales.
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A wain of hay came up the lane—O fields I shall not walk again,And trees I shall not see, so stillAgainst a sky of daffodil!
Fields where my happy heart had rest,And where my heart was heaviest,I shall remember them at peaceDrenched in moon-silver like a fleece.
The golden water sweet and cold,The moon of silver and of gold,The dew upon the gray grass-spears,I shall remember them with tears.
Katharine Tynan.
A ship, an isle, a sickle moon—With few but with how splendid starsThe mirrors of the sea are strewnBetween their silver bars!
* * * * * *
An isle beside an isle she lay,The pale ship anchored in the bay,While in the young moon's port of goldA star-ship—as the mirrors told—Put forth its great and lonely lightTo the unreflecting Ocean, Night.
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And still, a ship upon her seas,The isle and the island cypressesWent sailing on without the gale:And still there moved the moon so pale,A crescent ship without a sail!
James Elroy Flecker.
Softly along the road of evening,In a twilight dim with rose,Wrinkled with age, and drenched with dewOld Nod, the shepherd, goes.
His drowsy flock streams on before him,Their fleeces charged with gold,To where the sun's last beam leans lowOn Nod the shepherd's fold.
The hedge is quick and green with briar,From their sand the conies creep;And all the birds that fly in heavenFlock singing home to sleep.
His lambs outnumber a noon's roses,Yet, when night's shadows fall,His blind old sheep-dog, Slumber-soon,Misses not one of all.
His are the quiet steeps of dreamland,The waters of no-more-pain,His ram's bell rings 'neath an arch of stars,"Rest, rest, and rest again."
Walter de la Mare.
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Brief, on a flying night,From the shaken tower,A flock of bells take flight,And go with the hour.
Like birds from the cote to the gales,Abrupt—O hark!A fleet of bells set sails,And go to the dark.
Sudden the cold airs swing.Alone, aloud,A verse of bells takes wingAnd flies with the cloud.
Alice Meynell.
Spring goeth all in white,Crowned with milk-white may:In fleecy flocks of lightO'er heaven the white clouds stray:
White butterflies in the air;White daisies prank the ground:The cherry and hoary pearScatter their snow around.
Robert Bridges.
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To-day, all day, I rode upon the down,With hounds and horsemen, a brave company.On this side in its glory lay the sea,On that the Sussex weald, a sea of brown.The wind was light, and brightly the sun shone,And still we galloped on from gorse to gorse.And once, when checked, a thrush sang, and my horsePricked his quick ears as to a sound unknown.I knew the Spring was come. I knew it evenBetter than all by this, that through my chaseIn bush and stone and hill and sea and heavenI seemed to see and follow still your face.Your face my quarry was. For it I rode,My horse a thing of wings, myself a god.
Wilfrid Blunt.
The dove did lend me wings. I fled awayFrom the loud world which long had troubled me.Oh lightly did I flee when hoyden MayThrew her wild mantle on the hawthorn-tree.I left the dusty high-road, and my wayWas through deep meadows, shut with copses fair.A choir of thrushes poured its roundelayFrom every hedge and every thicket there.Mild, moon-faced kine looked on, where in the grassAll heaped with flowers I lay, from noon till eve.
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And hares unwitting close to me did pass,And still the birds sang, and I could not grieve.Oh what a blessed thing that evening was!Peace, music, twilight, all that could deceiveA soul to joy or lull a heart to peace.It glimmers yet across whole years like these.
Wilfrid Blunt.
Let me go forth, and shareThe overflowing SunWith one wise friend, or oneBetter than wise, being fair,Where the pewit wheels and dipsOn heights of bracken and ling,And Earth, unto her leaflet tips,Tingles with the Spring.
What is so sweet and dearAs a prosperous morn in May,The confident prime of the day,And the dauntless youth of the year,When nothing that asks for bliss,Asking aright, is denied,And half of the world a bridegroom is,And half of the world a bride?
The Song of Mingling flows,Grave, ceremonial, pure,As once, from lips that endure,The cosmic descant rose,
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When the temporal lord of life,Going his golden way,Had taken a wondrous maid to wifeThat long had said him nay.
For of old the Sun, our sire,Came wooing the mother of men,Earth, that was virginal then,Vestal fire to his fire.Silent her bosom and coy,But the strong god sued and pressed;And born of their starry nuptial joyAre all that drink of her breast.
And the triumph of him that begot,And the travail of her that bore,Behold they are evermoreAs warp and weft in our lot.We are children of splendour and flame,Of shuddering, also, and tears.Magnificent out of the dust we came,And abject from the Spheres.
O bright irresistible lord!We are fruit of Earth's womb, each one,And fruit of thy loins, O Sun,Whence first was the seed outpoured.To thee as our Father we bow,Forbidden thy Father to see,Who is older and greater than thou, as thouArt greater and older than we.
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Thou art but as a word of his speech,Thou art but as a wave of his hand;Thou art brief as a glitter of sand'Twixt tide and tide on his beach;Thou art less than a spark of his fire,Or a moment's mood of his soul:Thou art lost in the notes on the lips of his choirThat chant the chant of the Whole.
William Watson.
All winter through I bow my headBeneath the driving rain;The North wind powders me with snowAnd blows me black again;At midnight 'neath a maze of starsI flame with glittering rime,And stand, above the stubble, stiffAs mail at morning-prime.But when that child, called Spring, and allHis host of children, come,Scattering their buds and dew uponThese acres of my home,Some rapture in my rags awakes;I lift void eyes and scanThe skies for crows, those ravening foes,Of my strange master, Man.I watch him striding lank behindHis clashing team, and knowSoon will the wheat swish body highWhere once lay sterile snow;
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Soon shall I gaze across a seaOf sun-begotten grain,Which my unflinching watch hath sealedFor harvest once again.
Walter de la Mare.
Give to me the life I love,Let the lave go by me,Give the jolly heaven aboveAnd the byway nigh me.Bed in the bush with stars to see,Bread I dip in the river—There's the life for a man like me,There's the life for ever.
Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be o'er me;Give the face of earth aroundAnd the road before me.Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I seek, the heaven aboveAnd the road below me.
Or let autumn fall on meWhere afield I linger,Silencing the bird on tree,Biting the blue finger.White as meal the frosty field—Warm the fireside haven—Not to autumn will I yield,Not to winter even!
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Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be o'er me;Give the face of earth aroundAnd the road before me.Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I ask, the heaven aboveAnd the road below me.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where,Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither nor why;Through the grey light drift of the dust, in the keen coolrush of the air,Under the flying white clouds, and the broad blue lift of the sky.
And to halt at the chattering brook, in the tall green fernat the brinkWhere the harebell grows, and the gorse, and the foxglovespurple and white;Where, the shy-eyed delicate deer come down in a troop to drinkWhen the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night.
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O, to feel the beat of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,Is a tune for the blood to jig to, a joy past power of words;And the blessed green comely meadows are all a-ripple with mirthAt the noise of the lambs at play and the dear wild cryof the birds.
John Masefield.
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,Missing so much and so much?O fat white woman whom nobody loves,Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,When the grass is soft as the breast of dovesAnd shivering-sweet to the touch?O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,Missing so much and so much?
Frances Cornford.
I will make you brooches and toys for your delightOf bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.I will make a palace fit for you and meOf green days in forests and blue days at sea.
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
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And you shall wash your linen and keep your body whiteIn rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.
And this shall be for music when no one else is near,The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!That only I remember, that only you admire,Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes!By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.It's nigh my last above the daisies:My next leaf 'll be man's blank page.Yes, my old girl! and it's no use crying:Juggler, constable, king, must bow.One that outjuggles all 's been spyingLong to have me, and he has me now.
We've travelled times to this old common:Often we've hung our pots in the gorse.We've had a stirring life, old woman!You, and I, and the old grey horse,Races, and fairs, and royal occasions,Found us coming to their call:Now they'll miss us at our stations:There's a Juggler outjuggles all!
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Up goes the lark, as if all were jolly!Over the duck-pond the willow shakes.Easy to think that grieving's folly,When the hand's firm as driven stakes!Ay, when we're strong, and braced, and manful,Life's a sweet fiddle: but we're a batchBorn to become the Great Juggler's han'ful;Balls he shies up, and is safe to catch.
Here's where the lads of the village cricket:I was a lad not wide from here:Couldn't I whip off the bail from the wicket?Like an old world those days appear!Donkey, sheep, geese, and thatched ale-house—I know them!They are old friends of my halts, and seem,Somehow, as if kind thanks I owe them:Juggling don't hinder the heart's esteem.
Juggling's no sin, for we must have victual:Nature allows us to bait for the fool.Holding one's own makes us juggle no little;But, to increase it, hard juggling's the rule.You that are sneering at my profession,Haven't you juggled a vast amount?There's the Prime Minister, in one Session,Juggles more games than my sins'll count.
I've murdered insects with mock thunder:Conscience, for that, in men don't quail.I've made bread from the bump of wonder:That's my business, and there's my tale.
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Fashion and rank all praised the professor:Ay! and I've had my smile from the QueenBravo, Jerry! she meant: God bless her!Ain't this a sermon on that scene?
I've studied men from my topsy-turvyClose, and, I reckon, rather true.Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy;Most, a dash between the two.But it's a woman, old girl, that makes meThink more kindly of the race,And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes meWhen the Great Juggler I must face.
We two were married, due and legal:Honest we've lived since we've been one.Lord! I could then jump like an eagle:You danced bright as a bit o' the sun.Birds in a May-bush we were! right merry!All night we kiss'd, we juggled all day.Joy was the heart of Juggling Jerry!Now from his old girl he's juggled away.
It's past parsons to console us:No, nor no doctor fetch for me:I can die without my bolus;Two of a trade, lass, never agree!Parson and Doctor!—don't they love rarely,Fighting the devil in other men's fields!Stand up yourself and match him fairly,Then see how the rascal yields!
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I, lass, have lived no gipsy, flauntingFinery while his poor helpmate grubs:Coin I've stored, and you won't be wanting:You shan't beg from the troughs and tubs.Nobly you've stuck to me, though in his kitchenMany a Marquis would hail you Cook!Palaces you could have ruled and grown rich in,But your old Jerry you never forsook.
Hand up the chirper! ripe ale winks in it;Let's have comfort and be at peace.Once a stout draught made me light as a linnet.Cheer up! the Lord must have his lease.Maybe—for none see in that black hollow—It's just a place where we're held in pawn,And, when the Great Juggler makes as to swallow,It's just the sword-trick—I ain't quite gone!
Yonder came smells of the gorse, so nutty,Gold-like and warm: it's the prime of MayBetter than mortar, brick and putty,Is God's house on a blowing day.Lean me more up the mound; now I feel it:All the old heath-smells! Ain't it strange?There's the world laughing, as if to conceal it,But He's by us, juggling the change.
I mind it well, by the sea-beach lying,Once—it's long gone—when two gulls we beheld,Which, as the moon got up, were flyingDown a big wave that sparked and swelled.
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Crack went a gun: one fell: the secondWheeled round him, twice, and was off for new luck;There in the dark her white wing beckon'd:—Drop me a kiss—I'm the bird dead-struck!
George Meredith.
Under the wide and starry sky,Dig the grave and let me lie.Glad did I live and gladly die,And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:Here he lies where he longed to be;Home is the sailor, home from sea,And the hunter home from the hill.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
In Kensington Gardens
Along the graceless grass of townThey rake the rows of red and brown—Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hayDelicate, touched with gold and grey,Raked long ago and far away.
A narrow silence in the park,Between the lights a narrow dark.One street rolls on the north; and one,Muffled, upon the south doth run;Amid the mist the work is done.
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A futile crop!—for it the fireSmoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.So go the town's lives on the breeze,Even as the sheddings of the trees;Bosom nor barn is filled with these.
Alice Meynell.
Lonely, save for a few faint stars, the skyDreams; and lonely, below, the little streetInto its gloom retires, secluded and shy.Scarcely the dumb roar enters this soft retreat;And all is dark, save where come flooding raysFrom a tavern window: there, to the brisk measureOf an organ that down in an alley merrily plays,Two children, all alone and no one by,Holding their tattered frocks, through an airy mazeOf motion, lightly threaded with nimble feet,Dance sedately: face to face they gaze,Their eyes shining, grave with a perfect pleasure.
Laurence Binyon.
When men were all asleep the snow came flying,In large white flakes falling on the city brown,Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
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Hiding difference, making unevenness even,Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.All night it fell, and when full inches sevenIt lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightnessOf the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,They gathered up the crystal manna to freezeTheir tongues with tasting, their hands with snow-balling;Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,"O look at the trees!" they cried, "O look at the trees!"With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,Following along the white deserted way,A country company long dispersed asunder:When now already the sun, in pale displayStanding by Paul's high dome, spread forth belowHis sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go;
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But even for them awhile no cares encumberTheir minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumberAt the sight of the beauty that greets them, for thecharm they have broken.
Robert Bridges.
How solitary gleams the lamplit streetWaiting the far-off morn!How softly from the unresting city blowsThe murmur borneDown this deserted way!Dim loiterers pass home with stealthy feet.Now only, sudden at their interval,The lofty chimes awaken and let fallDeep thrills of ordered sound;Subsiding echoes gradually drownedIn a great stillness, that creeps up around,And darkly growsProfounder over allLike a strong frost, hushing a stormy day.
But who is this, that by the brazier redEncamped in his rude hut,With many a sack about his shoulder spreadWatches with eyes unshut?The burning brazier flushes his old face,Illumining the old thoughts in his eyes.Surely the Night doth to her secreciesAdmit him, and the watching stars attune{94}
To their high patience, who so lightly seemsTo bear the weight of many thousand dreams(Dark hosts around him sleeping numberless);He surely hath unbuilt all walls of thoughtTo reach an air-wide wisdom, past accessOf us, who labour in the noisy noon,The noon that knows him not.
For lo, at last the gloom slowly retreats,And swiftly, like an army, comes the Day,All bright and loud through the awakened streetsSending a cheerful hum.And he has stolen away.Now, with the morning shining round them, comeYoung men, and strip their coatsAnd loose the shirts about their throats,And lightly up their ponderous hammers lift,Each in his turn descending swiftWith triple strokes that answer and beginDuly, and quiver in repeated change,Marrying the eager echoes that weave inA music clear and strange.But pausing soon, each lays his hammer downAnd deeply breathing baresHis chest, stalwart and brown,To the sunny airs.Laughing one to another, limber handOn limber hip, flushed in a group they stand,And now untired renew their ringing toil.The sun stands high, and ever a fresh throngComes murmuring; but that eddying turmoil
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Leaves many a loiterer, prosperous or unfed,On easy or unhappy waysAt idle gaze,Charmed in the sunshine and the rhythm enthralling,As of unwearied Fates, for ever young,That on the anvil of necessityFrom measureless desire and quivering fear,With musical sure lifting and downfallingOf arm and hammer driven perpetually,Beat out in obscure spanThe fiery destiny of man.
Laurence Binyon.
Country roads are yellow and brown.We mend the roads in London town.
Never a hansom dare come nigh,Never a cart goes rolling by.
An unwonted silence stealsIn between the turning wheels.
Quickly ends the autumn day,And the workman goes his way,
Leaving, midst the traffic rude,One small isle of solitude,
Lit, throughout the lengthy night,By the little lantern's light.
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Jewels of the dark have we,Brighter than the rustic's be.
Over the dull earth are thrownTopaz, and the ruby stone.
Mary E. Coleridge.
O summer sun, O moving trees!O cheerful human noise, O busy glittering street!What hour shall Fate in all the future find,Or what delights, ever to equal these:Only to taste the warmth, the light, the wind,Only to be alive, and feel that life is sweet?
Laurence Binyon.
Athwart the sky a lowly sighFrom west to east the sweet wind carried;The sun stood still on Primrose Hill;His light in all the city tarried:The clouds on viewless columns bloomedLike smouldering lilies unconsumed.
"Oh sweetheart, see! how shadowy,Of some occult magician's rearing,Or swung in space of heaven's graceDissolving, dimly reappearing,Afloat upon ethereal tidesSt. Paul's above the city rides!"
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A rumour broke through the thin smokeEnwreathing abbey, tower, and palace,The parks, the squares, the thoroughfares,The million-peopled lanes and alleys,An ever-muttering prisoned storm,The heart of London beating warm.
John Davidson.
The golden tint of the electric lights seems to give a complementary colour to the air in the early evening.—Essay on London.
O heavenly colour, London townHas blurred it from her skies;And, hooded in an earthly brown,Unheaven'd the city lies.No longer standard-like this hueAbove the broad road flies;Nor does the narrow street the blueWear, slender pennon-wise.
But when the gold and silver lampsColour the London dew,And, misted by the winter damps,The shops shine bright anew—Blue comes to earth, it walks the street,It dyes the wide air through;A mimic sky about their feet,The throng go crowned with blue.
Alice Meynell.
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Not within a granite pass,Dim with flowers and soft with grass—Nay, but doubly, trebly sweetIn a poplared London street,While below my windows goNoiseless barges, to and fro,Through the night's calm deep,Ah! what breaks the bonds of sleep?
No steps on the pavement fall,Soundless swings the dark canal;From a church-tower out of sightClangs the central hour of night.Hark! the Dorian nightingale!Pan's voice melted to a wail!Such another birdAttic Tereus never heard.
Hung above the gloom and stain—London's squalid cope of pain—Pure as starlight, bold as love,Honouring our scant poplar-grove,That most heavenly voice of earthThrills in passion, grief or mirth,Laves our poison'd airLife's best song-bath crystal-fair.
While the starry minstrel singsLittle matters what he brings,Be it sorrow, be it pain,Let him sing and sing again,
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Till, with dawn, poor souls rejoice,Wakening, once to hear his voice,Ere afar he flies,Bound for purer woods and skies.
Edmund Gosse.
Daylight was down, and up the coolBare heaven the moon, o'er roof and elm,Daughter of dusk most wonderful,Went mounting to her realm:And night was only half begunRound Edwardes Square in Kensington.
A Sabbath-calm possessed her face,An even glow her bosom filled;High in her solitary placeThe huntress-heart was stilled:With bow and arrows all laid downShe stood and looked on London town.
Nay, how can sight of us give restTo that far-travelled heart, or drawThe musings of that tranquil breast?I thought—and gazing, sawFar up above me, high, oh, high,From south to north a heron fly!
Oh, swiftly answered! yonder flewThe wings of freedom and of hope!Little of London town he knew,The far horizon was his scope.
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High up he sails, and sees beneathThe glimmering ponds of Hampstead Heath,
Hendon, and farther out afieldLow water-meads are in his ken,And lonely pools by Harrow Weald,And solitudes unloved of men,Where he his fisher's spear dips down:Little he knows of London town.
So small, with all its miles of sin,Is London to the grey-winged bird,A cuckoo called at Lincoln's InnLast April; in Soho was heardThe missel-thrush with throat of glee,And nightingales at Battersea!
Laurence Housman.
I never see the newsboys runAmid the whirling street,With swift untiring feet,To cry the latest venture done,But I expect one day to hearThem cry the crack of doomAnd risings from the tomb,With great Archangel Michael near;And see them running from the FleetAs messengers of God,With Heaven's tidings shodAbout their brave unwearied feet.
Shane Leslie.
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But to have lain upon the grassOne perfect day, one perfect hour,Beholding all things mortal passInto the quiet of green grass;
But to have lain and loved the sun,Under the shadow of the trees,To have been found in unison,Once only, with the blessed sun;
Ah! in these flaring London nights,Where midnight withers into morn,How quiet a rebuke it writesAcross the sky of London nights!
Upon the grass at MantuaThese London nights were all forgot.They wake for me again: but ah,The meadow-grass at Mantua!
Arthur Symons.
What is this life if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughsAnd stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
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No time to see, in broad daylight,Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth canEnrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare.
William H. Davies.
Between two russet tufts of summer grass,I watch the world through hot air as through glass,And by my face sweet lights and colours pass.
Before me, dark against the fading sky,I watch three mowers mowing, as I lie:With brawny arms they sweep in harmony.
Brown English faces by the sun burnt red,Rich glowing colour on bare throat and head,My heart would leap to watch them, were I dead!
And in my strong young living as I lie,I seem to move with them in harmony,—A fourth is mowing, and that fourth am I.
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The music of the scythes that glide and leap,The young men whistling as their great arms sweep,And all the perfume and sweet sense of sleep,
The weary butterflies that droop their wings,The dreamy nightingale that hardly sings,And all the lassitude of happy things
Is mingling with the warm and pulsing bloodThat gushes through my veins a languid flood,And feeds my spirit as the sap a bud.
Behind the mowers, on the amber air,A dark-green beech-wood rises, still and fair,A white path winding up it like a stair.
And see that girl, with pitcher on her head,And clean white apron on her gown of red,—Her even-song of love is but half-said:
She waits the youngest mower. Now he goes;Her cheeks are redder than the wild blush-rose;They climb up where the deepest shadows close.
But though they pass and vanish, I am there;I watch his rough hands meet beneath her hair,Their broken speech sounds sweet to me like prayer
Ah! now the rosy children come to play,And romp and struggle with the new-mown hay;Their clear high voices sound from far away.
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They know so little why the world is sad,They dig themselves warm graves and yet are glad;Their muffled screams and laughter make me mad!
I long to go and play among them there,Unseen, like wind, to take them by the hair,And gently make their rosy cheeks more fair.
The happy children! full of frank surprise,And sudden whims and innocent ecstasies;What godhead sparkles from their liquid eyes!
No wonder round those urns of mingled claysThat Tuscan potters fashion'd in old days,And coloured like the torrid earth ablaze,
We find the little gods and loves portray'dThrough ancient forests wandering undismay'd,Or gathered, whispering, in some pleasant glade.
They knew, as I do now, what keen delightA strong man feels to watch the tender flightOf little children playing in his sight.
I do not hunger for a well-stored mind,I only wish to live my life, and findMy heart in unison with all mankind.
My life is like the single dewy starThat trembles on the horizon's primrose-bar,—A microcosm where all things living are.
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And if, among the noiseless grasses, DeathShould come behind and take away my breath,I should not rise as one who sorroweth,
For I should pass, but all the world would beFull of desire and young delight and glee,And why should men be sad through loss of me?
The light is dying; in the silver-blueThe young moon shines from her bright window through:The mowers all are gone, and I go too.
Edmund Gosse.
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
W. B. Yeats.
{106}
O happy soul, forget thy self!This that has haunted all the past,That conjured disappointments fast,That never could let well alone;That, climbing to achievement's throne,Slipped on the last step; this that woveDissatisfaction's clinging net,And ran through life like squandered pelf:—This that till now has been thy selfForget, O happy soul, forget.
If ever thou didst aught commence,—Set'st forth in springtide woods to rove,—Or, when the sun in July throve,Didst plunge into calm bay of oceanWith fine felicity in motion,—Or, having climbed some high hill's brow,Thy toil behind thee like the night,Stoodst in the chill dawn's air intense;—Commence thus now, thus recommence:
Take to the future as to light.Not as a bather on the shoreStrips of his clothes, glad soul, strip thou:He throws them off, but folds them now;Although he for the billows yearns,To weight them down with stones he turns;To mark the spot he scans the shore;Of his return he thinks before.Do thou forget
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All that, until this joy franchised thee,Tainted thee, stained thee, or disguised thee;For gladness, henceforth without let,Be thou a body, naked, fair;And be thy kingdom all the airWhich the noon fills with light;And be thine actions every one,Like to a dawn or set of sun,Robed in an ample glory's peace;Since thou hast tasted this great gleeWhose virtue prophesies in theeThat wrong is wholly doomed, is doomed and bound to cease.
T. Sturge Moore.
Youth now flees on feathered footFaint and fainter sounds the flute,Rarer songs of gods; and stillSomewhere on the sunny hill,Or along the winding stream,Through the willows, flits a dream;Flits but shows a smiling face,Flees but with so quaint a grace,None can choose to stay at home,All must follow, all must roam.
This is unborn beauty: sheNow in air floats high and free,Takes the sun and breaks the blue;—Late with stooping pinion flew
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Raking hedgerow trees, and wetHer wing in silver streams, and setShining foot on temple roof:Now again she flies aloof,Coasting mountain clouds and kiss'tBy the evening's amethyst.
In wet wood and miry lane,Still we pant and pound in vain;Still with leaden foot we chaseWaning pinion, fainting face;Still with gray hair we stumble on,Till, behold, the vision gone!Where hath fleeting beauty led?To the doorway of the dead.Life is over, life was gay:We have come the primrose way.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Come, no more of grief and dying!Sing the time too swiftly flying.Just an hourYouth's in flower,Give me roses to rememberIn the shadow of December.
Fie on steeds with leaden paces!Winds shall bear us on our races,Speed, O speed,Wind, my steed,Beat the lightning for your master,Yet my Fancy shall fly faster.
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Give me music, give me rapture,Youth that's fled can none recapture;Not with thoughtWisdom's bought.Out on pride and scorn and sadness!Give me laughter, give me gladness.
Sweetest Earth, I love and love thee,Seas about thee, skies above thee,Sun and storms,Hues and formsOf the clouds with floating shadowsOn thy mountains and thy meadows.
Earth, there's none that can enslave thee,Not thy lords it is that have thee;Not for goldArt thou sold,But thy lovers at their pleasureTake thy beauty and thy treasure.
While sweet fancies meet me singing,While the April blood is springingIn my breast,While a jestAnd my youth thou yet must leave me,Fortune, 'tis not thou canst grieve me.
When at length the grasses coverMe, the world's unwearied lover,If regretHaunt me yet,
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It shall be for joys untasted,Nature lent and folly wasted.
Youth and jests and summer weather,Goods that kings and clowns togetherWaste or useAs they choose,These, the best, we miss pursuingSullen shades that mock our wooing.
Feigning Age will not delay it—When the reckoning comes we'll pay it,Own our mirthHas been worthAll the forfeit light or heavyWintry Time and Fortune levy.
Feigning grief will not escape it,What though ne'er so well you ape it—Age and careAll must share,All alike must pay hereafter,Some for sighs and some for laughter.
Know, ye sons of Melancholy,To be young and wise is folly.'Tis the weakFear to wreakOn this clay of life their fancies,Shaping battles, shaping dances.
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While ye scorn our names unspoken,Roses dead and garlands broken,O ye wise,We arise,Out of failures, dreams, disasters,We arise to be your masters.
Margaret L. Woods.
O dreamy, gloomy, friendly Trees,I came along your narrow trackTo bring my gifts unto your kneesAnd gifts did you give back;For when I brought this heart that burns—These thoughts that bitterly repine—And laid them here among the fernsAnd the hum of boughs divine,Ye, vastest breathers of the air,Shook down with slow and mighty poiseYour coolness on the human care,Your wonder on its toys,Your greenness on the heart's despair,Your darkness on its noise.
Herbert Trench.
O idleness, too fond of me,Begone, I know and hate thee!Nothing canst thou of pleasure seeIn one that so doth rate thee;
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For empty are both mind and heartWhile thou with me dost linger;More profit would to thee impartA babe that sucks its finger.
I know thou hast a better wayTo spend these hours thou squand'rest;Some lad toils in the trough to-dayWho groans because thou wand'rest;
A bleating sheep he dowses nowOr wrestles with ram's terror;Ah, 'mid the washing's hubbub, howHis sighs reproach thine error!
He knows and loves thee, Idleness;For when his sheep are browsing,His open eyes enchant and blessA mind divinely drowsing;
No slave to sleep, he wills and seesFrom hill-lawns the brown tillage;Green winding lanes and clumps of trees,Far town or nearer village,
The sea itself; the fishing feetWhere more, thine idle lovers,Heark'ning to sea-mews find thee sweetLike him who hears the plovers.
Begone; those haul their ropes at sea,These plunge sheep in yon river:Free, free from toil thy friends, and meFrom Idleness deliver!
T. Sturge Moore.
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To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside.Passing for ever, he fares; and on either hand,Deep in the gardens golden pavilions hide,Nestle in orchard bloom, and far on the level landCall him with lighted lamp in the eventide.
Thick as the stars at night when the moon is down,Pleasures assail him. He to his nobler fateFares; and but waves a hand as he passes on,Cries but a wayside word to her at the garden gate,Sings but a boyish stave and his face is gone.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
I know you: solitary griefs,Desolate passions, aching hours!I know you: tremulous beliefs,Agonised hopes, and ashen flowers!
The winds are sometimes sad to me;The starry spaces, full of fear:Mine is the sorrow on the sea,And mine the sigh of places drear.
Some players upon plaintive stringsPublish their wistfulness abroad:I have not spoken of these things,Save to one man, and unto God.
Lionel Johnson.
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God, if this were enough,That I see things bare to the buffAnd up to the buttocks in mire;That I ask nor hope nor hire,Nut in the husk,Nor dawn beyond the dusk,Nor life beyond death:God, if this were faith?
Having felt thy wind in my faceSpit sorrow and disgrace,Having seen thine evil doomIn Golgotha and Khartoum,And the brutes, the work of thine hands,Fill with injustice landsAnd stain with blood the sea:If still in my veins the gleeOf the black night and the sunAnd the lost battle, run:If, an adept,The iniquitous lists I still acceptWith joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,And still to battle and perish for a dream of goodGod, if that were enough?
If to feel, in the ink of the slough,And the sink of the mire,Veins of glory and fireRun through and transpierce and transpire,And a secret purpose of glory in every part,
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And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;To thrill with the joy of girded men,To go on for ever and fail and go on again,And be mauled to the earth and arise,And contend for the shade of a word and a thing notseen with the eyes:With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at nightThat somehow the right is the rightAnd the smooth shall bloom from the rough:Lord, if that were enough?
Robert Louis Stevenson.
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night—Ten to make and the match to win—A bumping pitch and a blinding light,An hour to play and the last man in.And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
The sand of the desert is sodden red,—Red with the wreck of a square that broke;—The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.The river of death has brimmed his banks,And England's far, and Honour a name,But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks;"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
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This is the word that year by year,While in her place the School is set,Every one of her sons must hear,And none that hears it dare forget.This they all with a joyful mindBear through life like a torch in flame,And falling fling to the host behind—"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
Henry Newbolt.
Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song,Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span.Laugh, and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.
Laugh and be merry: remember, in olden time,God made Heaven and Earth for joy He took in a rhyme,Made them, and filled them full with the strong red wineof His mirth,The splendid joy of the stars: the joy of the earth.
So we must laugh and drink from the deep blue cup of the sky,Join the jubilant song of the great stars sweeping by,Laugh, and battle, and work, and drink of the wine outpouredIn the dear green earth, the sign of the joy of the Lord.
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Laugh and be merry together, like brothers akin,Guesting awhile in the rooms of a beautiful inn,Glad till the dancing stops, and the lilt of the music ends.Laugh till the game is played; and be you merry, my friends.
John Masefield.
It was early last September nigh to Framlin'am-on-Sea,An' 'twas Fair-day come to-morrow, an' the time was after tea,An' I met a painted caravan adown a dusty lane,A Pharaoh with his waggons comin' jolt an' creak an' strain;A cheery cove an' sunburnt, bold o' eye and wrinkled up,An' beside him on the splashboard sat a brindled tarrier pup,An' a lurcher wise as Solomon an' lean as fiddle-stringsWas joggin' in the dust along 'is roundabouts and swings.
"Goo'-day," said 'e; "Goo'-day," said I; "an' 'ow d'youfind things go,An' what's the chance o' millions when you runs a travellin' show?"
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"I find," said 'e, "things very much as 'ow I've always found,For mostly they goes up and down or else goes round and round."Said 'e, "The job's the very spit o' what it always were,It's bread and bacon mostly when the dog don't catch a 'are;But lookin' at it broad, an' while it ain't no merchant king's,What's lost upon the roundabouts we pulls up on the swings!"
"Goo' luck," said 'e; "Goo' luck," said I; "you've put itpast a doubt;An' keep that lurcher on the road, the gamekeepers is out;"'E thumped upon the footboard an' 'e lumbered on againTo meet a gold-dust sunset down the owl-light in the lane;An' the moon she climbed the 'azels, while a nightjar seemed to spinThat Pharaoh's wisdom o'er again, 'is sooth of lose-and-win;For "up an' down an' round," said 'e, "goes all appointed things,An' losses on the roundabouts means profits on the swings!"
Patrick R. Chalmers.
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He rises and begins to round,He drops the silver chain of sound,Of many links without a break,In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,All intervolved and spreading wide,Like water-dimples down a tideWhere ripple ripple overcurlsAnd eddy into eddy whirls;A press of hurried notes that runSo fleet they scarce are more than one,Yet changeingly the trills repeatAnd linger ringing while they fleet,Sweet to the quick o' the ear, and dearTo her beyond the handmaid ear,Who sits beside our inner springs,Too often dry for this he brings,Which seems the very jet of earthAt sight of sun, her music's mirth,As up he wings the spiral stair,A song of light, and pierces airWith fountain ardour, fountain play,To reach the shining tops of day,And drink in everything discernedAn ecstasy to music turned,Impelled by what his happy billDisperses; drinking, showering still,Unthinking save that he may giveHis voice the outlet, there to liveRenewed in endless notes of glee,So thirsty of his voice is he,
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For all to hear and all to knowThat he is joy, awake, aglow,The tumult of the heart to hearThrough pureness filtered crystal-clear,And know the pleasure sprinkled brightBy simple singing of delight,Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained,Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustainedWithout a break, without a fall,Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,Perennial, quavering up the chordLike myriad dews of sunny swardThat trembling into fulness shine,And sparkle dropping argentine;Such wooing as the ear receivesFrom zephyr caught in choric leavesOf aspens when their chattering netIs flushed to white with shivers wet;And such the water-spirit's chimeOn mountain heights in morning's prime,Too freshly sweet to seem excess,Too animate to need a stress;But wider over many headsThe starry voice ascending spreads,Awakening, as it waxes thin,The best in us to him akin;And every face, to watch him raised,Puts on the light of children praised,So rich our human pleasure ripesWhen sweetness on sincereness pipes,Though nought be promised from the seas,
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But only a soft-ruffling breezeSweep glittering on a still content,Serenity in ravishment.
For singing till his heaven fills,'Tis love of earth that he instils,And ever winging up and up,Our valley is his golden cup,And he the wine which overflowsTo lift us with him as he goes:The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine,He is, the hills, the human line,The meadows green, the fallows brown,The dreams of labour in the town;He sings the sap, the quickened veins;The wedding song of sun and rainsHe is, the dance of children, thanksOf sowers, shout of primrose-banks,And eye of violets while they breathe;All these the circling song will wreathe,And you shall hear the herb and tree,The better heart of men shall see,Shall feel celestially, as longAs you crave nothing save the song.
Was never voice of ours could sayOur inmost in the sweetest way,Like yonder voice aloft, and linkAll hearers in the song they drink.Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,Our passion is too full in flood,
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We want the key of his wild noteOf truthful in a tuneful throat,The song seraphically freeOf taint of personality,So pure that it salutes the sunsThe voice of one for millions,In whom the millions rejoiceFor giving their one spirit voice.
Yet men have we, whom we revere,Now names, and men still housing here,Whose lives, by many a battle-dintDefaced, and grinding wheels on flint,Yield substance, though they sing not, sweetFor song our highest heaven to greet:Whom heavenly singing gives us new,Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,From firmest base to farthest leap,Because their love of Earth is deep,And they are warriors in accordWith life to serve, and pass reward,So touching purest and so heardIn the brain's reflex of yon bird:Wherefore their soul in me or mine,Through self-forgetfulness divine,In them, that song aloft maintainsTo fill the sky and thrill the plainsWith showerings drawn from human stores,As he to silence nearer soars,Extends the world at wings and dome,More spacious making more our home,
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Till lost on aerial ringsIn light, and then the fancy sings.
George Meredith.