How still this quiet cornfield is to-night!By an intenser glow the evening falls,Bringing, not darkness, but a deeper light;Among the stooks a partridge covey calls.The windows glitter on the distant hill;Beyond the hedge the sheep-bells in the foldStumble on sudden music and are still;The forlorn pinewoods droop above the wold.An endless quiet valley reaches outPast the blue hills into the evening sky;Over the stubble, cawing, goes a routOf rooks from harvest, flagging as they fly.So beautiful it is, I never sawSo great a beauty on these English fields,Touched by the twilight’s coming into awe,Ripe to the soul and rich with summer’s yields.* * * *These homes, this valley spread below me here,The rooks, the tilted stacks, the beasts in pen,Have been the heartfelt things, past-speaking dearTo unknown generations of dead men,Who, century after century, held these farms,And, looking out to watch the changing sky,Heard, as we hear, the rumours and alarmsOf war at hand and danger pressing nigh,And knew, as we know, that the message meantThe breaking off of ties, the loss of friends,Death, like a miser getting in his rent,And no new stones laid where the trackway ends,The harvest not yet won, the empty bin,The friendly horses taken from the stalls,The fallow on the hill not yet brought in,The cracks unplastered in the leaking walls,Yet heard the news, and went discouraged home,And brooded by the fire with heavy mind,With such dumb loving of the Berkshire loamAs breaks the dumb hearts of the English kind,Then sadly rose and left the well-loved Downs,And so by ship to sea, and knew no moreThe fields of home, the byres, the market towns,Nor the dear outline of the English shore,But knew the misery of the soaking trench,The freezing in the rigging, the despairIn the revolting second of the wrenchWhen the blind soul is flung upon the air,And died (uncouthly, most) in foreign landsFor some idea but dimly understoodOf an English city never built by handsWhich love of England prompted and made good.* * * *If there be any life beyond the grave,It must be near the men and things we love,Some power of quick suggestion how to save,Touching the living soul as from above,An influence from the Earth from those dead heartsSo passionate once, so deep, so truly kind,That in the living child the spirit starts,Feeling companioned still, not left behind.Surely above these fields a spirit broods,A sense of many watchers muttering near,Of the lone Downland with the forlorn woodsLoved to the death, inestimably dear,A muttering from beyond the veils of DeathFrom long-dead men, to whom this quiet sceneCame among blinding tears with the last breath,The dying soldier’s vision of his queen.All the unspoken worship of those livesSpent in forgotten wars at other callsGlimmers upon these fields where evening drivesBeauty like breath, so gently darkness falls,Darkness that makes the meadows holier still.The elm-trees sadden in the hedge, a sighMoves in the beech-clump on the haunted hill,The rising planets deepen in the sky,And silence broods like spirit on the brae,A glimmering moon begins, the moonlight runsOver the grasses of the ancient wayRutted this morning by the passing guns.
How still this quiet cornfield is to-night!By an intenser glow the evening falls,Bringing, not darkness, but a deeper light;Among the stooks a partridge covey calls.The windows glitter on the distant hill;Beyond the hedge the sheep-bells in the foldStumble on sudden music and are still;The forlorn pinewoods droop above the wold.An endless quiet valley reaches outPast the blue hills into the evening sky;Over the stubble, cawing, goes a routOf rooks from harvest, flagging as they fly.So beautiful it is, I never sawSo great a beauty on these English fields,Touched by the twilight’s coming into awe,Ripe to the soul and rich with summer’s yields.* * * *These homes, this valley spread below me here,The rooks, the tilted stacks, the beasts in pen,Have been the heartfelt things, past-speaking dearTo unknown generations of dead men,Who, century after century, held these farms,And, looking out to watch the changing sky,Heard, as we hear, the rumours and alarmsOf war at hand and danger pressing nigh,And knew, as we know, that the message meantThe breaking off of ties, the loss of friends,Death, like a miser getting in his rent,And no new stones laid where the trackway ends,The harvest not yet won, the empty bin,The friendly horses taken from the stalls,The fallow on the hill not yet brought in,The cracks unplastered in the leaking walls,Yet heard the news, and went discouraged home,And brooded by the fire with heavy mind,With such dumb loving of the Berkshire loamAs breaks the dumb hearts of the English kind,Then sadly rose and left the well-loved Downs,And so by ship to sea, and knew no moreThe fields of home, the byres, the market towns,Nor the dear outline of the English shore,But knew the misery of the soaking trench,The freezing in the rigging, the despairIn the revolting second of the wrenchWhen the blind soul is flung upon the air,And died (uncouthly, most) in foreign landsFor some idea but dimly understoodOf an English city never built by handsWhich love of England prompted and made good.* * * *If there be any life beyond the grave,It must be near the men and things we love,Some power of quick suggestion how to save,Touching the living soul as from above,An influence from the Earth from those dead heartsSo passionate once, so deep, so truly kind,That in the living child the spirit starts,Feeling companioned still, not left behind.Surely above these fields a spirit broods,A sense of many watchers muttering near,Of the lone Downland with the forlorn woodsLoved to the death, inestimably dear,A muttering from beyond the veils of DeathFrom long-dead men, to whom this quiet sceneCame among blinding tears with the last breath,The dying soldier’s vision of his queen.All the unspoken worship of those livesSpent in forgotten wars at other callsGlimmers upon these fields where evening drivesBeauty like breath, so gently darkness falls,Darkness that makes the meadows holier still.The elm-trees sadden in the hedge, a sighMoves in the beech-clump on the haunted hill,The rising planets deepen in the sky,And silence broods like spirit on the brae,A glimmering moon begins, the moonlight runsOver the grasses of the ancient wayRutted this morning by the passing guns.
How still this quiet cornfield is to-night!By an intenser glow the evening falls,Bringing, not darkness, but a deeper light;Among the stooks a partridge covey calls.
The windows glitter on the distant hill;Beyond the hedge the sheep-bells in the foldStumble on sudden music and are still;The forlorn pinewoods droop above the wold.
An endless quiet valley reaches outPast the blue hills into the evening sky;Over the stubble, cawing, goes a routOf rooks from harvest, flagging as they fly.
So beautiful it is, I never sawSo great a beauty on these English fields,Touched by the twilight’s coming into awe,Ripe to the soul and rich with summer’s yields.* * * *These homes, this valley spread below me here,The rooks, the tilted stacks, the beasts in pen,Have been the heartfelt things, past-speaking dearTo unknown generations of dead men,
Who, century after century, held these farms,And, looking out to watch the changing sky,Heard, as we hear, the rumours and alarmsOf war at hand and danger pressing nigh,
And knew, as we know, that the message meantThe breaking off of ties, the loss of friends,Death, like a miser getting in his rent,And no new stones laid where the trackway ends,
The harvest not yet won, the empty bin,The friendly horses taken from the stalls,The fallow on the hill not yet brought in,The cracks unplastered in the leaking walls,
Yet heard the news, and went discouraged home,And brooded by the fire with heavy mind,With such dumb loving of the Berkshire loamAs breaks the dumb hearts of the English kind,
Then sadly rose and left the well-loved Downs,And so by ship to sea, and knew no moreThe fields of home, the byres, the market towns,Nor the dear outline of the English shore,
But knew the misery of the soaking trench,The freezing in the rigging, the despairIn the revolting second of the wrenchWhen the blind soul is flung upon the air,
And died (uncouthly, most) in foreign landsFor some idea but dimly understoodOf an English city never built by handsWhich love of England prompted and made good.* * * *If there be any life beyond the grave,It must be near the men and things we love,Some power of quick suggestion how to save,Touching the living soul as from above,
An influence from the Earth from those dead heartsSo passionate once, so deep, so truly kind,That in the living child the spirit starts,Feeling companioned still, not left behind.
Surely above these fields a spirit broods,A sense of many watchers muttering near,Of the lone Downland with the forlorn woodsLoved to the death, inestimably dear,
A muttering from beyond the veils of DeathFrom long-dead men, to whom this quiet sceneCame among blinding tears with the last breath,The dying soldier’s vision of his queen.
All the unspoken worship of those livesSpent in forgotten wars at other callsGlimmers upon these fields where evening drivesBeauty like breath, so gently darkness falls,
Darkness that makes the meadows holier still.The elm-trees sadden in the hedge, a sighMoves in the beech-clump on the haunted hill,The rising planets deepen in the sky,
And silence broods like spirit on the brae,A glimmering moon begins, the moonlight runsOver the grasses of the ancient wayRutted this morning by the passing guns.
When I am buried, all my thoughts and actsWill be reduced to lists of dates and facts,And long before this wandering flesh is rottenThe dates which made me will be all forgotten;And none will know the gleam there used to beAbout the feast-days freshly kept by me,But men will call the golden hour of bliss“About this time,” or “shortly after this.”Men do not heed the rungs by which men climbThose glittering steps, those milestones upon Time,Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,Those moments of the soul in years of earth.They mark the height achieved, the main result,The power of freedom in the perished cult,The power of boredom in the dead man’s deeds,Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.By many waters and on many waysI have known golden instants and bright days;The day on which, beneath an arching sail,I saw the Cordilleras and gave hail;The summer day on which in heart’s delightI saw the Swansea Mumbles bursting white;The glittering day when all the waves wore flags,And the shipWanderercame with sails in rags;That curlew-calling time in Irish dusk,When life became more splendid than its husk,When the rent chapel on the brae at SlainsShone with a doorway opening beyond brains;The dawn when, with a brace-block’s creaking cry,Out of the mist a little barque slipped by,Spilling the mist with changing gleams of red,Then gone, with one raised hand and one turned head;The howling evening when the spindrift’s mistsBroke to display the Four Evangelists,Snow-capped, divinely granite, lashed by breakers,Wind-beaten bones of long since buried acres;The night alone near water when I heardAll the sea’s spirit spoken by a bird;The English dusk when I beheld once more(With eyes so changed) the ship, the citied shore,The lines of masts, the streets so cheerly trod(In happier seasons), and gave thanks to God.All had their beauty, their bright moments’ gift,Their something caught from Time, the ever-swift.All of those gleams were golden; but life’s handsHave given more constant gifts in changing lands,And when I count those gifts, I think them suchAs no man’s bounty could have bettered much:The gift of country life, near hills and woods,Where happy waters sing in solitudes;The gift of being near ships, of seeing each dayA city of ships with great ships under weigh;The great street paved with water, filled with shipping,And all the world’s flags flying and seagulls dipping.Yet when I am dust my penman may not knowThose water-trampling ships which made me glow,But think my wonder mad and fail to findTheir glory, even dimly, from my mind,And yet they made me. Not alone the ships,But men hard-palmed from tallying-on to whips,The two close friends of nearly twenty years,Sea-followers both, sea-wrestlers and sea-peers,Whose feet with mine wore many a bolthead brightTreading the decks beneath the riding light.Yet death will make that warmth of friendship cold,And who’ll know what one said and what one toldOur hearts’ communion and the broken spellsWhen the loud call blew at the strike of bells?No one, I know, yet let me be believed,A soul entirely known is life achieved.Years blank with hardship never speak a word,Live in the soul to make the being stirred;Towns can be prisons, where the spirit dullsAway from mates and ocean-wandering hulls,Away from all bright water and great hillsAnd sheep-walks, where the curlews cry their fills;Away in towns, where eyes have nought to seeBut dead museums and miles of misery,And floating life unrooted from man’s need,And miles of fish-hooks baited to catch greed,And life made wretched out of human ken,And miles of shopping women served by men.So, if the penman sums my London days,Let him but say that there were holy ways,Dull Bloomsbury streets of dull brick mansions old,With stinking doors, where women stood to scold,And drunken waits at Christmas with their horn,Droning the news, in snow, that Christ was born;And windy gas-lamps and the wet roads shining,And that old carol of the midnight whining,And that old room (above the noisy slum),Where there was wine and fire and talk with someUnder strange pictures of the wakened soul,To whom this earth was but a burnt-out coal.O Time, bring back those midnights and those friends,Those glittering moments that a spirit lends,That all may be imagined from the flash,The cloud-hid god-game through the lightning gash,Those hours of stricken sparks from which men tookLight to send out to men in song or book.Those friends who heard St. Pancras’s bells strike twoYet stayed until the barber’s cockerel crew,Talking of noble styles, the Frenchman’s best,The thought beyond great poets not expressed,The glory of mood where human frailty failed,The forts of human light not yet assailed,Till the dim room had mind, and seemed to brood,Binding our wills to mental brotherhood,Till we became a college, and each nightWas discipline and manhood and delight,Till our farewells, and winding down the stairsAt each grey dawn had meaning that Time spares,That we, so linked, should roam the whole world roundTeaching the ways our brooding minds had found,Making that room our Chapter, our one mind,Where all that this world soiled should be refined.Often at night I tread those streets again,And see the alley glimmering in the rain;Yet now I miss that sign of earlier tramps,A house with shadows of plane-boughs under lamps,The secret house where once a beggar stoodTrembling and blind to show his woe for food.And now I miss that friend who used to walkHome to my lodgings with me, deep in talk,Wearing the last of night out in still streetsTrodden by us and policemen on their beatsAnd cats, but else deserted. Now I missThat lively mind and guttural laugh of his,And that strange way he had of making gleam,Like something real, the art we used to dream.London has been my prison; but my books,Hills and great waters, labouring men and brooks,Ships and deep friendships, and remembered days,Which even now set all my mind ablaze,As that June day when, in the red bricks’ chinks,I saw the old Roman ruins white with pinks,And felt the hillside haunted even thenBy not dead memory of the Roman men.And felt the hillside thronged by souls unseen,Who knew the interest in me, and were keenThat man alive should understand man dead,So many centuries since the blood was shed.And quickened with strange hush because this comerFelt a strange soul alive behind the summer.That other day on Ercall when the stonesWere sunbleached white, like long unburied bones,While the bees droned and all the air was sweetFrom honey buried underneath my feet.Honey of purple heather and white cloverSealed in its gummy bags till summer’s over.Then other days by water, by bright sea,Clear as clean glass and my bright friend with me,The cove clean bottomed where we saw the brownRed spotted plaice go skimming six feet downAnd saw the long fronds waving, white with shells,Waving, unfolding, drooping, to the swells;That sadder day when we beheld the greatAnd terrible beauty of a Lammas spateRoaring white-mouthed in all the great cliff’s gapsHeadlong, tree-tumbling fury of collapse,While drenching clouds drove by and every senseWas water roaring or rushing or in offenceAnd mountain sheep stood huddled and blown gaps gleamedWhere torn white hair of torrents shook and streamed.That sadder day when we beheld againA spate going down in sunshine after rain,When the blue reach of water leaping brightWas one long ripple and clatter, flecked with white,And that far day, that never blotted pageWhen youth was bright like flowers about old age,Fair generations bringing thanks for lifeTo that old kindly man and trembling wifeAfter their sixty years: Time never madeA better beauty since the Earth was laid,Than that thanksgiving given to grey hairFor the great gift of life which brought them there.Days of endeavour have been good: the daysRacing in cutters for the comrade’s praise,The day they led my cutter at the turnYet could not keep the lead and dropped astern.The moment in the spurt when both boats, oarsDipped in each other’s wash and throats grew hoarseAnd teeth ground into teeth and both strokes quickenedLashing the sea, and gasps came, and hearts sickenedAnd coxwains damned us, dancing, banking stroke,To put our weights on, though our hearts were brokeAnd both boats seemed to stick and sea seemed glue,The tide a mill-race we were struggling throughAnd every quick recover gave us squintsOf them still there and oar-tossed water-glints,And cheering came, our friends, our foemen cheering,A long, wild, rallying murmur on the hearing“Port Fore!” and “Starboard Fore!” “Port Fore!” “Port Fore!”“Up with her, Starboard,” and at that each oarLightened, though arms were bursting, and eyes shutAnd the oak stretchers grunted in the strut,And the curse quickened from the cox, our bowsCrashed, and drove talking water, we made vows,Chastity vows and temperance; in our painWe numbered things we’d never eat againIf we could only win; then came the yell“Starboard,” “Port Fore,” and then a beaten bellRung as for fire to cheer us. “Now.” Oars bentSoul took the looms now body’s bolt was spent,“Give way, come on now!” “On now!” “On now!” “Starboard.”“Port Fore!” “Up with her, Port!” each cutter harbouredTen eye-shut painsick strugglers, “Heave, oh, heave!”Catcalls waked echoes like a shrieking sheave.“Heave!” and I saw a back, then two. “Port Fore.”“Starboard!” “Come on!” I saw the midship oarAnd knew we had done them. “Port Fore!” “Starboard!” “Now!”I saw bright water spurting at their bowTheir cox’ full face an instant. They were done.The watchers’ cheering almost drowned the gun.We had hardly strength to toss our oars; our cryCheering the losing cutter was a sigh.Other bright days of action have seemed great:Wild days in a pampero off the Plate;Good swimming days, at Hog Back or the CovesWhich the young gannet and the corbie loves;Surf-swimming between rollers, catching breathBetween the advancing grave and breaking death,Then shooting up into the sunbright smoothTo watch the advancing roller bare her tooth,And days of labour also, loading, hauling;Long days at winch or capstan, heaving, pawling;The days with oxen, dragging stone from blasting,And dusty days in mills, and hot days masting.Trucking on dust-dry deckings smooth like ice,And hunts in mighty wool-racks after mice;Mornings with buckwheat when the fields did blanchWith White Leghorns come from the chicken ranch.Days near the spring upon the sunburnt hill,Plying the maul or gripping tight the drill.Delights of work most real, delights that changeThe headache life of towns to rapture strangeNot known by townsmen, nor imagined; healthThat puts new glory upon mental wealthAnd makes the poor man rich. But that ends, too,Health with its thoughts of life; and that bright view,That sunny landscape from life’s peak, that glory,And all a glad man’s comments on life’s story,And thoughts of marvellous towns and living men,And what pens tell and all beyond the pen,End, and are summed in words so truly dead,They raise no image of the heart and head,The life, the man alive, the friend we knew,The mind ours argued with or listened to,None; but are dead, and all life’s keenness, all,Is dead as print before the funeral,Even deader after, when the dates are sought,And cold minds disagree with what we thought.This many-pictured world of many passionsWears out the nations as a woman fashions,And what life is is much to very few,Men being so strange, so mad, and what men doSo good to watch or share; but when men countThose hours of life that were a bursting fount,Sparkling the dusty heart with living springs,There seems a world, beyond our earthly things,Gated by golden moments, each bright timeOpening to show the city white like lime,High-towered and many-peopled. This made sure,Work that obscures those moments seems impure,Making our not-returning time of breathDull with the ritual and records of death,That frost of fact by which our wisdom givesCorrectly stated death to all that lives.Best trust the happy moments. What they gaveMakes man less fearful of the certain grave,And gives his work compassion and new eyes,The days that make us happy make us wise.
When I am buried, all my thoughts and actsWill be reduced to lists of dates and facts,And long before this wandering flesh is rottenThe dates which made me will be all forgotten;And none will know the gleam there used to beAbout the feast-days freshly kept by me,But men will call the golden hour of bliss“About this time,” or “shortly after this.”Men do not heed the rungs by which men climbThose glittering steps, those milestones upon Time,Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,Those moments of the soul in years of earth.They mark the height achieved, the main result,The power of freedom in the perished cult,The power of boredom in the dead man’s deeds,Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.By many waters and on many waysI have known golden instants and bright days;The day on which, beneath an arching sail,I saw the Cordilleras and gave hail;The summer day on which in heart’s delightI saw the Swansea Mumbles bursting white;The glittering day when all the waves wore flags,And the shipWanderercame with sails in rags;That curlew-calling time in Irish dusk,When life became more splendid than its husk,When the rent chapel on the brae at SlainsShone with a doorway opening beyond brains;The dawn when, with a brace-block’s creaking cry,Out of the mist a little barque slipped by,Spilling the mist with changing gleams of red,Then gone, with one raised hand and one turned head;The howling evening when the spindrift’s mistsBroke to display the Four Evangelists,Snow-capped, divinely granite, lashed by breakers,Wind-beaten bones of long since buried acres;The night alone near water when I heardAll the sea’s spirit spoken by a bird;The English dusk when I beheld once more(With eyes so changed) the ship, the citied shore,The lines of masts, the streets so cheerly trod(In happier seasons), and gave thanks to God.All had their beauty, their bright moments’ gift,Their something caught from Time, the ever-swift.All of those gleams were golden; but life’s handsHave given more constant gifts in changing lands,And when I count those gifts, I think them suchAs no man’s bounty could have bettered much:The gift of country life, near hills and woods,Where happy waters sing in solitudes;The gift of being near ships, of seeing each dayA city of ships with great ships under weigh;The great street paved with water, filled with shipping,And all the world’s flags flying and seagulls dipping.Yet when I am dust my penman may not knowThose water-trampling ships which made me glow,But think my wonder mad and fail to findTheir glory, even dimly, from my mind,And yet they made me. Not alone the ships,But men hard-palmed from tallying-on to whips,The two close friends of nearly twenty years,Sea-followers both, sea-wrestlers and sea-peers,Whose feet with mine wore many a bolthead brightTreading the decks beneath the riding light.Yet death will make that warmth of friendship cold,And who’ll know what one said and what one toldOur hearts’ communion and the broken spellsWhen the loud call blew at the strike of bells?No one, I know, yet let me be believed,A soul entirely known is life achieved.Years blank with hardship never speak a word,Live in the soul to make the being stirred;Towns can be prisons, where the spirit dullsAway from mates and ocean-wandering hulls,Away from all bright water and great hillsAnd sheep-walks, where the curlews cry their fills;Away in towns, where eyes have nought to seeBut dead museums and miles of misery,And floating life unrooted from man’s need,And miles of fish-hooks baited to catch greed,And life made wretched out of human ken,And miles of shopping women served by men.So, if the penman sums my London days,Let him but say that there were holy ways,Dull Bloomsbury streets of dull brick mansions old,With stinking doors, where women stood to scold,And drunken waits at Christmas with their horn,Droning the news, in snow, that Christ was born;And windy gas-lamps and the wet roads shining,And that old carol of the midnight whining,And that old room (above the noisy slum),Where there was wine and fire and talk with someUnder strange pictures of the wakened soul,To whom this earth was but a burnt-out coal.O Time, bring back those midnights and those friends,Those glittering moments that a spirit lends,That all may be imagined from the flash,The cloud-hid god-game through the lightning gash,Those hours of stricken sparks from which men tookLight to send out to men in song or book.Those friends who heard St. Pancras’s bells strike twoYet stayed until the barber’s cockerel crew,Talking of noble styles, the Frenchman’s best,The thought beyond great poets not expressed,The glory of mood where human frailty failed,The forts of human light not yet assailed,Till the dim room had mind, and seemed to brood,Binding our wills to mental brotherhood,Till we became a college, and each nightWas discipline and manhood and delight,Till our farewells, and winding down the stairsAt each grey dawn had meaning that Time spares,That we, so linked, should roam the whole world roundTeaching the ways our brooding minds had found,Making that room our Chapter, our one mind,Where all that this world soiled should be refined.Often at night I tread those streets again,And see the alley glimmering in the rain;Yet now I miss that sign of earlier tramps,A house with shadows of plane-boughs under lamps,The secret house where once a beggar stoodTrembling and blind to show his woe for food.And now I miss that friend who used to walkHome to my lodgings with me, deep in talk,Wearing the last of night out in still streetsTrodden by us and policemen on their beatsAnd cats, but else deserted. Now I missThat lively mind and guttural laugh of his,And that strange way he had of making gleam,Like something real, the art we used to dream.London has been my prison; but my books,Hills and great waters, labouring men and brooks,Ships and deep friendships, and remembered days,Which even now set all my mind ablaze,As that June day when, in the red bricks’ chinks,I saw the old Roman ruins white with pinks,And felt the hillside haunted even thenBy not dead memory of the Roman men.And felt the hillside thronged by souls unseen,Who knew the interest in me, and were keenThat man alive should understand man dead,So many centuries since the blood was shed.And quickened with strange hush because this comerFelt a strange soul alive behind the summer.That other day on Ercall when the stonesWere sunbleached white, like long unburied bones,While the bees droned and all the air was sweetFrom honey buried underneath my feet.Honey of purple heather and white cloverSealed in its gummy bags till summer’s over.Then other days by water, by bright sea,Clear as clean glass and my bright friend with me,The cove clean bottomed where we saw the brownRed spotted plaice go skimming six feet downAnd saw the long fronds waving, white with shells,Waving, unfolding, drooping, to the swells;That sadder day when we beheld the greatAnd terrible beauty of a Lammas spateRoaring white-mouthed in all the great cliff’s gapsHeadlong, tree-tumbling fury of collapse,While drenching clouds drove by and every senseWas water roaring or rushing or in offenceAnd mountain sheep stood huddled and blown gaps gleamedWhere torn white hair of torrents shook and streamed.That sadder day when we beheld againA spate going down in sunshine after rain,When the blue reach of water leaping brightWas one long ripple and clatter, flecked with white,And that far day, that never blotted pageWhen youth was bright like flowers about old age,Fair generations bringing thanks for lifeTo that old kindly man and trembling wifeAfter their sixty years: Time never madeA better beauty since the Earth was laid,Than that thanksgiving given to grey hairFor the great gift of life which brought them there.Days of endeavour have been good: the daysRacing in cutters for the comrade’s praise,The day they led my cutter at the turnYet could not keep the lead and dropped astern.The moment in the spurt when both boats, oarsDipped in each other’s wash and throats grew hoarseAnd teeth ground into teeth and both strokes quickenedLashing the sea, and gasps came, and hearts sickenedAnd coxwains damned us, dancing, banking stroke,To put our weights on, though our hearts were brokeAnd both boats seemed to stick and sea seemed glue,The tide a mill-race we were struggling throughAnd every quick recover gave us squintsOf them still there and oar-tossed water-glints,And cheering came, our friends, our foemen cheering,A long, wild, rallying murmur on the hearing“Port Fore!” and “Starboard Fore!” “Port Fore!” “Port Fore!”“Up with her, Starboard,” and at that each oarLightened, though arms were bursting, and eyes shutAnd the oak stretchers grunted in the strut,And the curse quickened from the cox, our bowsCrashed, and drove talking water, we made vows,Chastity vows and temperance; in our painWe numbered things we’d never eat againIf we could only win; then came the yell“Starboard,” “Port Fore,” and then a beaten bellRung as for fire to cheer us. “Now.” Oars bentSoul took the looms now body’s bolt was spent,“Give way, come on now!” “On now!” “On now!” “Starboard.”“Port Fore!” “Up with her, Port!” each cutter harbouredTen eye-shut painsick strugglers, “Heave, oh, heave!”Catcalls waked echoes like a shrieking sheave.“Heave!” and I saw a back, then two. “Port Fore.”“Starboard!” “Come on!” I saw the midship oarAnd knew we had done them. “Port Fore!” “Starboard!” “Now!”I saw bright water spurting at their bowTheir cox’ full face an instant. They were done.The watchers’ cheering almost drowned the gun.We had hardly strength to toss our oars; our cryCheering the losing cutter was a sigh.Other bright days of action have seemed great:Wild days in a pampero off the Plate;Good swimming days, at Hog Back or the CovesWhich the young gannet and the corbie loves;Surf-swimming between rollers, catching breathBetween the advancing grave and breaking death,Then shooting up into the sunbright smoothTo watch the advancing roller bare her tooth,And days of labour also, loading, hauling;Long days at winch or capstan, heaving, pawling;The days with oxen, dragging stone from blasting,And dusty days in mills, and hot days masting.Trucking on dust-dry deckings smooth like ice,And hunts in mighty wool-racks after mice;Mornings with buckwheat when the fields did blanchWith White Leghorns come from the chicken ranch.Days near the spring upon the sunburnt hill,Plying the maul or gripping tight the drill.Delights of work most real, delights that changeThe headache life of towns to rapture strangeNot known by townsmen, nor imagined; healthThat puts new glory upon mental wealthAnd makes the poor man rich. But that ends, too,Health with its thoughts of life; and that bright view,That sunny landscape from life’s peak, that glory,And all a glad man’s comments on life’s story,And thoughts of marvellous towns and living men,And what pens tell and all beyond the pen,End, and are summed in words so truly dead,They raise no image of the heart and head,The life, the man alive, the friend we knew,The mind ours argued with or listened to,None; but are dead, and all life’s keenness, all,Is dead as print before the funeral,Even deader after, when the dates are sought,And cold minds disagree with what we thought.This many-pictured world of many passionsWears out the nations as a woman fashions,And what life is is much to very few,Men being so strange, so mad, and what men doSo good to watch or share; but when men countThose hours of life that were a bursting fount,Sparkling the dusty heart with living springs,There seems a world, beyond our earthly things,Gated by golden moments, each bright timeOpening to show the city white like lime,High-towered and many-peopled. This made sure,Work that obscures those moments seems impure,Making our not-returning time of breathDull with the ritual and records of death,That frost of fact by which our wisdom givesCorrectly stated death to all that lives.Best trust the happy moments. What they gaveMakes man less fearful of the certain grave,And gives his work compassion and new eyes,The days that make us happy make us wise.
When I am buried, all my thoughts and actsWill be reduced to lists of dates and facts,And long before this wandering flesh is rottenThe dates which made me will be all forgotten;And none will know the gleam there used to beAbout the feast-days freshly kept by me,But men will call the golden hour of bliss“About this time,” or “shortly after this.”
Men do not heed the rungs by which men climbThose glittering steps, those milestones upon Time,Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,Those moments of the soul in years of earth.They mark the height achieved, the main result,The power of freedom in the perished cult,The power of boredom in the dead man’s deeds,Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.
By many waters and on many waysI have known golden instants and bright days;The day on which, beneath an arching sail,I saw the Cordilleras and gave hail;The summer day on which in heart’s delightI saw the Swansea Mumbles bursting white;The glittering day when all the waves wore flags,And the shipWanderercame with sails in rags;That curlew-calling time in Irish dusk,When life became more splendid than its husk,When the rent chapel on the brae at SlainsShone with a doorway opening beyond brains;The dawn when, with a brace-block’s creaking cry,Out of the mist a little barque slipped by,Spilling the mist with changing gleams of red,Then gone, with one raised hand and one turned head;The howling evening when the spindrift’s mistsBroke to display the Four Evangelists,Snow-capped, divinely granite, lashed by breakers,Wind-beaten bones of long since buried acres;The night alone near water when I heardAll the sea’s spirit spoken by a bird;The English dusk when I beheld once more(With eyes so changed) the ship, the citied shore,The lines of masts, the streets so cheerly trod(In happier seasons), and gave thanks to God.All had their beauty, their bright moments’ gift,Their something caught from Time, the ever-swift.
All of those gleams were golden; but life’s handsHave given more constant gifts in changing lands,And when I count those gifts, I think them suchAs no man’s bounty could have bettered much:The gift of country life, near hills and woods,Where happy waters sing in solitudes;The gift of being near ships, of seeing each dayA city of ships with great ships under weigh;The great street paved with water, filled with shipping,And all the world’s flags flying and seagulls dipping.
Yet when I am dust my penman may not knowThose water-trampling ships which made me glow,But think my wonder mad and fail to findTheir glory, even dimly, from my mind,And yet they made me. Not alone the ships,But men hard-palmed from tallying-on to whips,The two close friends of nearly twenty years,Sea-followers both, sea-wrestlers and sea-peers,Whose feet with mine wore many a bolthead brightTreading the decks beneath the riding light.Yet death will make that warmth of friendship cold,And who’ll know what one said and what one toldOur hearts’ communion and the broken spellsWhen the loud call blew at the strike of bells?No one, I know, yet let me be believed,A soul entirely known is life achieved.
Years blank with hardship never speak a word,Live in the soul to make the being stirred;Towns can be prisons, where the spirit dullsAway from mates and ocean-wandering hulls,Away from all bright water and great hillsAnd sheep-walks, where the curlews cry their fills;Away in towns, where eyes have nought to seeBut dead museums and miles of misery,And floating life unrooted from man’s need,And miles of fish-hooks baited to catch greed,And life made wretched out of human ken,And miles of shopping women served by men.So, if the penman sums my London days,Let him but say that there were holy ways,Dull Bloomsbury streets of dull brick mansions old,With stinking doors, where women stood to scold,And drunken waits at Christmas with their horn,Droning the news, in snow, that Christ was born;And windy gas-lamps and the wet roads shining,And that old carol of the midnight whining,And that old room (above the noisy slum),Where there was wine and fire and talk with someUnder strange pictures of the wakened soul,To whom this earth was but a burnt-out coal.
O Time, bring back those midnights and those friends,Those glittering moments that a spirit lends,That all may be imagined from the flash,The cloud-hid god-game through the lightning gash,Those hours of stricken sparks from which men tookLight to send out to men in song or book.
Those friends who heard St. Pancras’s bells strike twoYet stayed until the barber’s cockerel crew,Talking of noble styles, the Frenchman’s best,The thought beyond great poets not expressed,The glory of mood where human frailty failed,The forts of human light not yet assailed,Till the dim room had mind, and seemed to brood,Binding our wills to mental brotherhood,Till we became a college, and each nightWas discipline and manhood and delight,Till our farewells, and winding down the stairsAt each grey dawn had meaning that Time spares,That we, so linked, should roam the whole world roundTeaching the ways our brooding minds had found,Making that room our Chapter, our one mind,Where all that this world soiled should be refined.
Often at night I tread those streets again,And see the alley glimmering in the rain;Yet now I miss that sign of earlier tramps,A house with shadows of plane-boughs under lamps,The secret house where once a beggar stoodTrembling and blind to show his woe for food.And now I miss that friend who used to walkHome to my lodgings with me, deep in talk,Wearing the last of night out in still streetsTrodden by us and policemen on their beatsAnd cats, but else deserted. Now I missThat lively mind and guttural laugh of his,And that strange way he had of making gleam,Like something real, the art we used to dream.London has been my prison; but my books,Hills and great waters, labouring men and brooks,Ships and deep friendships, and remembered days,Which even now set all my mind ablaze,As that June day when, in the red bricks’ chinks,I saw the old Roman ruins white with pinks,And felt the hillside haunted even thenBy not dead memory of the Roman men.And felt the hillside thronged by souls unseen,Who knew the interest in me, and were keenThat man alive should understand man dead,So many centuries since the blood was shed.And quickened with strange hush because this comerFelt a strange soul alive behind the summer.That other day on Ercall when the stonesWere sunbleached white, like long unburied bones,While the bees droned and all the air was sweetFrom honey buried underneath my feet.Honey of purple heather and white cloverSealed in its gummy bags till summer’s over.Then other days by water, by bright sea,Clear as clean glass and my bright friend with me,The cove clean bottomed where we saw the brownRed spotted plaice go skimming six feet downAnd saw the long fronds waving, white with shells,Waving, unfolding, drooping, to the swells;That sadder day when we beheld the greatAnd terrible beauty of a Lammas spateRoaring white-mouthed in all the great cliff’s gapsHeadlong, tree-tumbling fury of collapse,While drenching clouds drove by and every senseWas water roaring or rushing or in offenceAnd mountain sheep stood huddled and blown gaps gleamedWhere torn white hair of torrents shook and streamed.That sadder day when we beheld againA spate going down in sunshine after rain,When the blue reach of water leaping brightWas one long ripple and clatter, flecked with white,And that far day, that never blotted pageWhen youth was bright like flowers about old age,Fair generations bringing thanks for lifeTo that old kindly man and trembling wifeAfter their sixty years: Time never madeA better beauty since the Earth was laid,Than that thanksgiving given to grey hairFor the great gift of life which brought them there.
Days of endeavour have been good: the daysRacing in cutters for the comrade’s praise,The day they led my cutter at the turnYet could not keep the lead and dropped astern.The moment in the spurt when both boats, oarsDipped in each other’s wash and throats grew hoarseAnd teeth ground into teeth and both strokes quickenedLashing the sea, and gasps came, and hearts sickenedAnd coxwains damned us, dancing, banking stroke,To put our weights on, though our hearts were brokeAnd both boats seemed to stick and sea seemed glue,The tide a mill-race we were struggling throughAnd every quick recover gave us squintsOf them still there and oar-tossed water-glints,And cheering came, our friends, our foemen cheering,A long, wild, rallying murmur on the hearing“Port Fore!” and “Starboard Fore!” “Port Fore!” “Port Fore!”“Up with her, Starboard,” and at that each oarLightened, though arms were bursting, and eyes shutAnd the oak stretchers grunted in the strut,And the curse quickened from the cox, our bowsCrashed, and drove talking water, we made vows,Chastity vows and temperance; in our painWe numbered things we’d never eat againIf we could only win; then came the yell“Starboard,” “Port Fore,” and then a beaten bellRung as for fire to cheer us. “Now.” Oars bentSoul took the looms now body’s bolt was spent,“Give way, come on now!” “On now!” “On now!” “Starboard.”“Port Fore!” “Up with her, Port!” each cutter harbouredTen eye-shut painsick strugglers, “Heave, oh, heave!”Catcalls waked echoes like a shrieking sheave.“Heave!” and I saw a back, then two. “Port Fore.”“Starboard!” “Come on!” I saw the midship oarAnd knew we had done them. “Port Fore!” “Starboard!” “Now!”I saw bright water spurting at their bowTheir cox’ full face an instant. They were done.The watchers’ cheering almost drowned the gun.We had hardly strength to toss our oars; our cryCheering the losing cutter was a sigh.
Other bright days of action have seemed great:Wild days in a pampero off the Plate;Good swimming days, at Hog Back or the CovesWhich the young gannet and the corbie loves;Surf-swimming between rollers, catching breathBetween the advancing grave and breaking death,Then shooting up into the sunbright smoothTo watch the advancing roller bare her tooth,And days of labour also, loading, hauling;Long days at winch or capstan, heaving, pawling;The days with oxen, dragging stone from blasting,And dusty days in mills, and hot days masting.Trucking on dust-dry deckings smooth like ice,And hunts in mighty wool-racks after mice;Mornings with buckwheat when the fields did blanchWith White Leghorns come from the chicken ranch.Days near the spring upon the sunburnt hill,Plying the maul or gripping tight the drill.Delights of work most real, delights that changeThe headache life of towns to rapture strangeNot known by townsmen, nor imagined; healthThat puts new glory upon mental wealthAnd makes the poor man rich. But that ends, too,Health with its thoughts of life; and that bright view,That sunny landscape from life’s peak, that glory,And all a glad man’s comments on life’s story,And thoughts of marvellous towns and living men,And what pens tell and all beyond the pen,End, and are summed in words so truly dead,They raise no image of the heart and head,The life, the man alive, the friend we knew,The mind ours argued with or listened to,None; but are dead, and all life’s keenness, all,Is dead as print before the funeral,Even deader after, when the dates are sought,And cold minds disagree with what we thought.
This many-pictured world of many passionsWears out the nations as a woman fashions,And what life is is much to very few,Men being so strange, so mad, and what men doSo good to watch or share; but when men countThose hours of life that were a bursting fount,Sparkling the dusty heart with living springs,There seems a world, beyond our earthly things,Gated by golden moments, each bright timeOpening to show the city white like lime,High-towered and many-peopled. This made sure,Work that obscures those moments seems impure,Making our not-returning time of breathDull with the ritual and records of death,That frost of fact by which our wisdom givesCorrectly stated death to all that lives.
Best trust the happy moments. What they gaveMakes man less fearful of the certain grave,And gives his work compassion and new eyes,The days that make us happy make us wise.
I cannot tell their wonder nor make knownMagic that once thrilled through me to the bone,But all men praise some beauty, tell some tale,Vent a high mood which makes the rest seem pale,Pour their heart’s blood to flourish one green leaf,Follow some Helen for her gift of grief,And fail in what they mean, whate’er they do:You should have seen, man cannot tell to youThe beauty of the ships of that my city.That beauty now is spoiled by the sea’s pity:For one may haunt the pier a score of timesHearing St. Nicholas’ bells ring out the chimes,Yet never see those proud ones swaying home,With mainyards backed and bows a cream of foam,Those bows so lovely-curving, cut so fineThose coulters of the many-bubbled brine,As once, long since, when all the docks were filledWith that sea beauty man has ceased to build.Yet though their splendour may have ceased to be,Each played her sovereign part in making me.Now I return my thanks with heart and lipsFor the great queenliness of all those ships.And first the first bright memory, still so clear,An autumn evening in a golden year,When in the last lit moments before darkTheChepica, a steel-gray lovely barque,Her trucks aloft in sun-glow red as blood,Came to an anchor near us on the flood.Then come so many ships that I could fillThree docks with their fair hulls remembered still,Each with her special memory’s special grace,Riding the sea, making the waves give placeTo delicate high beauty; man’s best strengthNoble in every line in all their length.Ailsa,Genista, ships, with long jib-booms,TheWandererwith great beauty and strange dooms,Liverpool(mightiest then) superb, sublime,TheCaliforniahuge, as slow as Time.TheCutty Sark, the perfectJ. T. North,The loveliest barque my city has sent forth.DaintyRedgauntlet, well remembered yet,The splendidArguswith her skysail set,StalwartDrumcliff, white-blocked majesticSierras,Divine bright ships, the water’s standard bearers.Melpomene,Euphrosyne, and their sweetSea-troubling sisters of the Fernie Fleet.Corunna(in whom my friend died) and the oldLong since lovedEsmeraldalong since sold.Centurionpassed in Rio,Glaucusspoken,Aladdinburnt, theBidstonwater broken,Yolain whom my friend sailed,Dawpooltrim,Fierce-bowedEgeriaplunging to the swim,Stanmorewide-sterned, sweetCupica, tallBardQueen in all harbours with her moonsail yard.Though I tell many there must still be others,McVickar Marshall’s ships and Fernie Brothers’Lochs,Counties,Shires,Drums, the countless linesWhose house-flags all were once familiar signsAt high main trucks on Mersey’s windy waysWhen sun made all the wind-white water blaze.Their names bring back old mornings when the docksShone with their house-flags and their painted blocks,Their raking masts below the Custom HouseAnd all the marvellous beauty of their bows.Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers,Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamersUmbria,Etruria, noble, still at sea,The grandest, then, that man had brought to beMajestic,City of Paris,City of Rome,Forever jealous racers, out and home.The Alfred Holt’s blue smokestacks down the stream,The fairArabianwith her bows a-cream.Booth liners, Anchor liners, Red Star liners,The marks and styles of countless ship designers.TheMagdalena,Puno,Potosi,LostCotopaxi, all well known to me.These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory,Her memory of old song or comrade’s story,Still in my mind the image of life’s need,Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed.“They built great ships and sailed them” sounds most brave,Whatever arts we have or fail to have;I touch my country’s mind, I come to gripsWith half her purpose thinking of these ships.That art untouched by softness, all that lineDrawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine;That nobleness and grandeur, all that beautyBorn of a manly life and bitter duty;That splendour of fine bows which yet could standThe shock of rollers never checked by land.That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break,Yet stayed to strength, and back-stayed into rake,The life demanded by that art, the keenEye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean,They are grander things than all the art of towns,Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns.They are my country’s line, her great art doneBy strong brains labouring on the thought unwon,They mark our passage as a race of men,Earth will not see such ships as those agen.
I cannot tell their wonder nor make knownMagic that once thrilled through me to the bone,But all men praise some beauty, tell some tale,Vent a high mood which makes the rest seem pale,Pour their heart’s blood to flourish one green leaf,Follow some Helen for her gift of grief,And fail in what they mean, whate’er they do:You should have seen, man cannot tell to youThe beauty of the ships of that my city.That beauty now is spoiled by the sea’s pity:For one may haunt the pier a score of timesHearing St. Nicholas’ bells ring out the chimes,Yet never see those proud ones swaying home,With mainyards backed and bows a cream of foam,Those bows so lovely-curving, cut so fineThose coulters of the many-bubbled brine,As once, long since, when all the docks were filledWith that sea beauty man has ceased to build.Yet though their splendour may have ceased to be,Each played her sovereign part in making me.Now I return my thanks with heart and lipsFor the great queenliness of all those ships.And first the first bright memory, still so clear,An autumn evening in a golden year,When in the last lit moments before darkTheChepica, a steel-gray lovely barque,Her trucks aloft in sun-glow red as blood,Came to an anchor near us on the flood.Then come so many ships that I could fillThree docks with their fair hulls remembered still,Each with her special memory’s special grace,Riding the sea, making the waves give placeTo delicate high beauty; man’s best strengthNoble in every line in all their length.Ailsa,Genista, ships, with long jib-booms,TheWandererwith great beauty and strange dooms,Liverpool(mightiest then) superb, sublime,TheCaliforniahuge, as slow as Time.TheCutty Sark, the perfectJ. T. North,The loveliest barque my city has sent forth.DaintyRedgauntlet, well remembered yet,The splendidArguswith her skysail set,StalwartDrumcliff, white-blocked majesticSierras,Divine bright ships, the water’s standard bearers.Melpomene,Euphrosyne, and their sweetSea-troubling sisters of the Fernie Fleet.Corunna(in whom my friend died) and the oldLong since lovedEsmeraldalong since sold.Centurionpassed in Rio,Glaucusspoken,Aladdinburnt, theBidstonwater broken,Yolain whom my friend sailed,Dawpooltrim,Fierce-bowedEgeriaplunging to the swim,Stanmorewide-sterned, sweetCupica, tallBardQueen in all harbours with her moonsail yard.Though I tell many there must still be others,McVickar Marshall’s ships and Fernie Brothers’Lochs,Counties,Shires,Drums, the countless linesWhose house-flags all were once familiar signsAt high main trucks on Mersey’s windy waysWhen sun made all the wind-white water blaze.Their names bring back old mornings when the docksShone with their house-flags and their painted blocks,Their raking masts below the Custom HouseAnd all the marvellous beauty of their bows.Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers,Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamersUmbria,Etruria, noble, still at sea,The grandest, then, that man had brought to beMajestic,City of Paris,City of Rome,Forever jealous racers, out and home.The Alfred Holt’s blue smokestacks down the stream,The fairArabianwith her bows a-cream.Booth liners, Anchor liners, Red Star liners,The marks and styles of countless ship designers.TheMagdalena,Puno,Potosi,LostCotopaxi, all well known to me.These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory,Her memory of old song or comrade’s story,Still in my mind the image of life’s need,Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed.“They built great ships and sailed them” sounds most brave,Whatever arts we have or fail to have;I touch my country’s mind, I come to gripsWith half her purpose thinking of these ships.That art untouched by softness, all that lineDrawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine;That nobleness and grandeur, all that beautyBorn of a manly life and bitter duty;That splendour of fine bows which yet could standThe shock of rollers never checked by land.That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break,Yet stayed to strength, and back-stayed into rake,The life demanded by that art, the keenEye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean,They are grander things than all the art of towns,Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns.They are my country’s line, her great art doneBy strong brains labouring on the thought unwon,They mark our passage as a race of men,Earth will not see such ships as those agen.
I cannot tell their wonder nor make knownMagic that once thrilled through me to the bone,But all men praise some beauty, tell some tale,Vent a high mood which makes the rest seem pale,Pour their heart’s blood to flourish one green leaf,Follow some Helen for her gift of grief,And fail in what they mean, whate’er they do:You should have seen, man cannot tell to youThe beauty of the ships of that my city.
That beauty now is spoiled by the sea’s pity:For one may haunt the pier a score of timesHearing St. Nicholas’ bells ring out the chimes,Yet never see those proud ones swaying home,With mainyards backed and bows a cream of foam,Those bows so lovely-curving, cut so fineThose coulters of the many-bubbled brine,As once, long since, when all the docks were filledWith that sea beauty man has ceased to build.
Yet though their splendour may have ceased to be,Each played her sovereign part in making me.Now I return my thanks with heart and lipsFor the great queenliness of all those ships.And first the first bright memory, still so clear,An autumn evening in a golden year,When in the last lit moments before darkTheChepica, a steel-gray lovely barque,Her trucks aloft in sun-glow red as blood,Came to an anchor near us on the flood.Then come so many ships that I could fillThree docks with their fair hulls remembered still,Each with her special memory’s special grace,Riding the sea, making the waves give placeTo delicate high beauty; man’s best strengthNoble in every line in all their length.Ailsa,Genista, ships, with long jib-booms,TheWandererwith great beauty and strange dooms,Liverpool(mightiest then) superb, sublime,TheCaliforniahuge, as slow as Time.TheCutty Sark, the perfectJ. T. North,The loveliest barque my city has sent forth.DaintyRedgauntlet, well remembered yet,The splendidArguswith her skysail set,StalwartDrumcliff, white-blocked majesticSierras,Divine bright ships, the water’s standard bearers.Melpomene,Euphrosyne, and their sweetSea-troubling sisters of the Fernie Fleet.Corunna(in whom my friend died) and the oldLong since lovedEsmeraldalong since sold.Centurionpassed in Rio,Glaucusspoken,Aladdinburnt, theBidstonwater broken,Yolain whom my friend sailed,Dawpooltrim,Fierce-bowedEgeriaplunging to the swim,Stanmorewide-sterned, sweetCupica, tallBardQueen in all harbours with her moonsail yard.
Though I tell many there must still be others,McVickar Marshall’s ships and Fernie Brothers’Lochs,Counties,Shires,Drums, the countless linesWhose house-flags all were once familiar signsAt high main trucks on Mersey’s windy waysWhen sun made all the wind-white water blaze.Their names bring back old mornings when the docksShone with their house-flags and their painted blocks,Their raking masts below the Custom HouseAnd all the marvellous beauty of their bows.
Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers,Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamersUmbria,Etruria, noble, still at sea,The grandest, then, that man had brought to beMajestic,City of Paris,City of Rome,Forever jealous racers, out and home.The Alfred Holt’s blue smokestacks down the stream,The fairArabianwith her bows a-cream.Booth liners, Anchor liners, Red Star liners,The marks and styles of countless ship designers.TheMagdalena,Puno,Potosi,LostCotopaxi, all well known to me.
These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory,Her memory of old song or comrade’s story,Still in my mind the image of life’s need,Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed.“They built great ships and sailed them” sounds most brave,Whatever arts we have or fail to have;I touch my country’s mind, I come to gripsWith half her purpose thinking of these ships.
That art untouched by softness, all that lineDrawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine;That nobleness and grandeur, all that beautyBorn of a manly life and bitter duty;That splendour of fine bows which yet could standThe shock of rollers never checked by land.That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break,Yet stayed to strength, and back-stayed into rake,The life demanded by that art, the keenEye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean,They are grander things than all the art of towns,Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns.They are my country’s line, her great art doneBy strong brains labouring on the thought unwon,They mark our passage as a race of men,Earth will not see such ships as those agen.
That blessed sunlight, that once showed to meMy way to heaven more plain, more certainly,And with her bright beams banished utterlyAll trace of mortal sorrow far from me,Has gone from me, has left her prison sad,And I am blind and alone and gone astray,Like a lost pilgrim on a desert wayWanting the blessed guide that once he had.Thus with a spirit bowed and mind a blurI trace the holy steps where she has goneBy valleys and by meadows and by mountains,And everywhere I catch a glimpse of her,She takes me by the hand and leads me on,And my eyes follow her, my eyes made fountains.
That blessed sunlight, that once showed to meMy way to heaven more plain, more certainly,And with her bright beams banished utterlyAll trace of mortal sorrow far from me,Has gone from me, has left her prison sad,And I am blind and alone and gone astray,Like a lost pilgrim on a desert wayWanting the blessed guide that once he had.Thus with a spirit bowed and mind a blurI trace the holy steps where she has goneBy valleys and by meadows and by mountains,And everywhere I catch a glimpse of her,She takes me by the hand and leads me on,And my eyes follow her, my eyes made fountains.
That blessed sunlight, that once showed to meMy way to heaven more plain, more certainly,And with her bright beams banished utterlyAll trace of mortal sorrow far from me,Has gone from me, has left her prison sad,And I am blind and alone and gone astray,Like a lost pilgrim on a desert wayWanting the blessed guide that once he had.
Thus with a spirit bowed and mind a blurI trace the holy steps where she has goneBy valleys and by meadows and by mountains,And everywhere I catch a glimpse of her,She takes me by the hand and leads me on,And my eyes follow her, my eyes made fountains.
They closed her eyes,They were still open;They hid her faceWith a white linen,And some sobbing,Others in silence,From the sad bedroomAll came away.The nightlight in a dishBurned on the floor;It threw on the wallThe bed’s shadow,And in that shadowOne saw some timesDrawn in sharp lineThe body’s shape.The dawn appeared.At its first whiteness,With its thousand noises,The town awoke.Before that contrastOf light and darkness,Of life and strangeness,I thought a moment.My God, how lonelyThe dead are!On the shoulders of menTo church they bore her,And in a chapelThey left her bier.There they surroundedHer pale bodyWith yellow candlesAnd black stuffs.At the last strokeOf the ringing for the soulsAn old crone finishedHer last prayers.She crossed the narrow nave,The doors moaned,And the holy placeRemained deserted.From a clock one heardThe measured ticking,And from a candleThe guttering.All things thereWere so dark and mournful,So cold and rigid,That I thought a moment—My God, how lonelyThe dead are!From the high belfryThe tongue of ironClanged, giving outA last farewell.Crape on their clothes,Her friends and kindredPassed by in lineIn homage to her.In the last vault,Dark and narrow,The pickaxe openedA niche at one end;They laid her away there.Soon they bricked the place up,And with a gestureBade grief farewell.Pickaxe on shoulder,The gravedigger,Singing between his teeth,Passed out of sight.The night came downIt was all silent.Alone in darkness,I thought a moment—My God, how lonelyThe dead are!In the dark nightsOf bitter winter,When the wind makesThe rafters creak,When the violent rainLashes the windows,Lonely I rememberThat poor girl.There falls the rainWith its noise eternalThere the north windFights with the rain.Stretched in the hollowOf the damp bricks,Perhaps her bonesFreeze with the cold.Does the dust return to dust?Does the soul fly to heaven?Or is all vile matter,Rottenness, filthiness?I know not, butThere is something—something—Something which gives meLoathing, terror,To leave the deadSo alone, so wretched.
They closed her eyes,They were still open;They hid her faceWith a white linen,And some sobbing,Others in silence,From the sad bedroomAll came away.The nightlight in a dishBurned on the floor;It threw on the wallThe bed’s shadow,And in that shadowOne saw some timesDrawn in sharp lineThe body’s shape.The dawn appeared.At its first whiteness,With its thousand noises,The town awoke.Before that contrastOf light and darkness,Of life and strangeness,I thought a moment.My God, how lonelyThe dead are!On the shoulders of menTo church they bore her,And in a chapelThey left her bier.There they surroundedHer pale bodyWith yellow candlesAnd black stuffs.At the last strokeOf the ringing for the soulsAn old crone finishedHer last prayers.She crossed the narrow nave,The doors moaned,And the holy placeRemained deserted.From a clock one heardThe measured ticking,And from a candleThe guttering.All things thereWere so dark and mournful,So cold and rigid,That I thought a moment—My God, how lonelyThe dead are!From the high belfryThe tongue of ironClanged, giving outA last farewell.Crape on their clothes,Her friends and kindredPassed by in lineIn homage to her.In the last vault,Dark and narrow,The pickaxe openedA niche at one end;They laid her away there.Soon they bricked the place up,And with a gestureBade grief farewell.Pickaxe on shoulder,The gravedigger,Singing between his teeth,Passed out of sight.The night came downIt was all silent.Alone in darkness,I thought a moment—My God, how lonelyThe dead are!In the dark nightsOf bitter winter,When the wind makesThe rafters creak,When the violent rainLashes the windows,Lonely I rememberThat poor girl.There falls the rainWith its noise eternalThere the north windFights with the rain.Stretched in the hollowOf the damp bricks,Perhaps her bonesFreeze with the cold.Does the dust return to dust?Does the soul fly to heaven?Or is all vile matter,Rottenness, filthiness?I know not, butThere is something—something—Something which gives meLoathing, terror,To leave the deadSo alone, so wretched.
They closed her eyes,They were still open;They hid her faceWith a white linen,And some sobbing,Others in silence,From the sad bedroomAll came away.
The nightlight in a dishBurned on the floor;It threw on the wallThe bed’s shadow,And in that shadowOne saw some timesDrawn in sharp lineThe body’s shape.
The dawn appeared.At its first whiteness,With its thousand noises,The town awoke.Before that contrastOf light and darkness,Of life and strangeness,I thought a moment.My God, how lonelyThe dead are!
On the shoulders of menTo church they bore her,And in a chapelThey left her bier.There they surroundedHer pale bodyWith yellow candlesAnd black stuffs.
At the last strokeOf the ringing for the soulsAn old crone finishedHer last prayers.She crossed the narrow nave,The doors moaned,And the holy placeRemained deserted.
From a clock one heardThe measured ticking,And from a candleThe guttering.All things thereWere so dark and mournful,So cold and rigid,That I thought a moment—My God, how lonelyThe dead are!
From the high belfryThe tongue of ironClanged, giving outA last farewell.Crape on their clothes,Her friends and kindredPassed by in lineIn homage to her.
In the last vault,Dark and narrow,The pickaxe openedA niche at one end;They laid her away there.Soon they bricked the place up,And with a gestureBade grief farewell.
Pickaxe on shoulder,The gravedigger,Singing between his teeth,Passed out of sight.The night came downIt was all silent.Alone in darkness,I thought a moment—My God, how lonelyThe dead are!
In the dark nightsOf bitter winter,When the wind makesThe rafters creak,When the violent rainLashes the windows,Lonely I rememberThat poor girl.
There falls the rainWith its noise eternalThere the north windFights with the rain.Stretched in the hollowOf the damp bricks,Perhaps her bonesFreeze with the cold.
Does the dust return to dust?Does the soul fly to heaven?Or is all vile matter,Rottenness, filthiness?I know not, butThere is something—something—Something which gives meLoathing, terror,To leave the deadSo alone, so wretched.
Madman
They cut my face, there’s blood upon my brow.So, let it run, I am an old man now,An old, blind beggar picking filth for bread.Once I wore silk, drank wine,Spent gold on women, feasted, all was mine;But this uneasy current in my headBurst, one full moon, and cleansed me, then I sawTruth like a perfect crystal, life its flaw,I told the world, but I was mad, they said.I had a valley farm above a brook,My sheep bells there were sweet,And in the summer heatMy mill wheels turned, yet all these things they took;Ah, and I gave them, all things I forsookBut that green blade of wheat,My own soul’s courage, that they did not take.I will go on, although my old heart ache.Not long, not long.Soon I shall pass behindThis changing veil to that which does not change,My tired feet will rangeIn some green valley of eternal mindWhere Truth is daily like the water’s song.The wild-duck, stringing through the sky,Are south away.Their green necks glitter as they fly,The lake is gray,So still, so lone, the fowler never heeds.The wind goes rustle, rustle, through the reeds.* * * *There they find peace to have their own wild souls.In that still lake,Only the moonrise or the wind controlsThe way they take,Through the gray reeds, the cocking moorhen’s lair,Rippling the pool, or over leagues of air.* * * *Not thus, not thus are the wild souls of men.No peace for thoseWho step beyond the blindness of the penTo where the skies unclose.For them the spitting mob, the cross, the crown of thorns,The bull gone mad, the saviour on his horns.* * * *Beauty and Peace have madeNo peace, no still retreat,No solace, none.Only the unafraidBefore life’s roaring streetTouch Beauty’s feet,Know Truth, do as God bade,Become God’s son. [Pause.]Darkness come down, cover a brave man’s pain.Let the bright soul go back to God again.Cover that tortured flesh, it only servesTo hold that thing which other power nerves.Darkness, come down, let it be midnight here,In the dark night the untroubled soul sings clear.
They cut my face, there’s blood upon my brow.So, let it run, I am an old man now,An old, blind beggar picking filth for bread.Once I wore silk, drank wine,Spent gold on women, feasted, all was mine;But this uneasy current in my headBurst, one full moon, and cleansed me, then I sawTruth like a perfect crystal, life its flaw,I told the world, but I was mad, they said.I had a valley farm above a brook,My sheep bells there were sweet,And in the summer heatMy mill wheels turned, yet all these things they took;Ah, and I gave them, all things I forsookBut that green blade of wheat,My own soul’s courage, that they did not take.I will go on, although my old heart ache.Not long, not long.Soon I shall pass behindThis changing veil to that which does not change,My tired feet will rangeIn some green valley of eternal mindWhere Truth is daily like the water’s song.The wild-duck, stringing through the sky,Are south away.Their green necks glitter as they fly,The lake is gray,So still, so lone, the fowler never heeds.The wind goes rustle, rustle, through the reeds.* * * *There they find peace to have their own wild souls.In that still lake,Only the moonrise or the wind controlsThe way they take,Through the gray reeds, the cocking moorhen’s lair,Rippling the pool, or over leagues of air.* * * *Not thus, not thus are the wild souls of men.No peace for thoseWho step beyond the blindness of the penTo where the skies unclose.For them the spitting mob, the cross, the crown of thorns,The bull gone mad, the saviour on his horns.* * * *Beauty and Peace have madeNo peace, no still retreat,No solace, none.Only the unafraidBefore life’s roaring streetTouch Beauty’s feet,Know Truth, do as God bade,Become God’s son. [Pause.]Darkness come down, cover a brave man’s pain.Let the bright soul go back to God again.Cover that tortured flesh, it only servesTo hold that thing which other power nerves.Darkness, come down, let it be midnight here,In the dark night the untroubled soul sings clear.
They cut my face, there’s blood upon my brow.So, let it run, I am an old man now,An old, blind beggar picking filth for bread.Once I wore silk, drank wine,Spent gold on women, feasted, all was mine;But this uneasy current in my headBurst, one full moon, and cleansed me, then I sawTruth like a perfect crystal, life its flaw,I told the world, but I was mad, they said.
I had a valley farm above a brook,My sheep bells there were sweet,And in the summer heatMy mill wheels turned, yet all these things they took;Ah, and I gave them, all things I forsookBut that green blade of wheat,My own soul’s courage, that they did not take.I will go on, although my old heart ache.Not long, not long.Soon I shall pass behindThis changing veil to that which does not change,My tired feet will rangeIn some green valley of eternal mindWhere Truth is daily like the water’s song.
The wild-duck, stringing through the sky,Are south away.Their green necks glitter as they fly,The lake is gray,So still, so lone, the fowler never heeds.The wind goes rustle, rustle, through the reeds.* * * *There they find peace to have their own wild souls.In that still lake,Only the moonrise or the wind controlsThe way they take,Through the gray reeds, the cocking moorhen’s lair,Rippling the pool, or over leagues of air.* * * *Not thus, not thus are the wild souls of men.No peace for thoseWho step beyond the blindness of the penTo where the skies unclose.For them the spitting mob, the cross, the crown of thorns,The bull gone mad, the saviour on his horns.* * * *Beauty and Peace have madeNo peace, no still retreat,No solace, none.Only the unafraidBefore life’s roaring streetTouch Beauty’s feet,Know Truth, do as God bade,Become God’s son. [Pause.]
Darkness come down, cover a brave man’s pain.Let the bright soul go back to God again.Cover that tortured flesh, it only servesTo hold that thing which other power nerves.Darkness, come down, let it be midnight here,In the dark night the untroubled soul sings clear.
[It darkens.]
I have been scourged, blinded and crucified,My blood burns on the stones of every streetIn every town; wherever people meetI have been hounded down, in anguish died.
I have been scourged, blinded and crucified,My blood burns on the stones of every streetIn every town; wherever people meetI have been hounded down, in anguish died.
I have been scourged, blinded and crucified,My blood burns on the stones of every streetIn every town; wherever people meetI have been hounded down, in anguish died.
[It darkens.]
The creaking door of flesh rolls slowly back.Nerve by red nerve the links of living crack,Loosing the soul to tread another track.Beyond the pain, beyond the broken clay,A glimmering country liesWhere life is being wise,All of the beauty seen by truthful eyesAre lilies there, growing beside the way.Those golden ones will loose the torted hands,Smooth the scarred brow, gather the breaking soul,Whose earthly moments drop like falling sandsTo leave the spirit whole.Only a penny, a penny,Lilies brighter than any,Lilies whiter than snow.Beautiful lilies growWherever the truth so sweetHas trodden with bloody feet,Has stood with a bloody brow.Friend, it is over now,The passion, the sweat, the pains,Only the truth remains.* * * *I cannot see what others see;Wisdom alone is kind to me,Wisdom that comes from Agony.* * * *Wisdom that lives in the pure skies,The untouched star, the spirit’s eyes;O Beauty, touch me, make me wise.
The creaking door of flesh rolls slowly back.Nerve by red nerve the links of living crack,Loosing the soul to tread another track.Beyond the pain, beyond the broken clay,A glimmering country liesWhere life is being wise,All of the beauty seen by truthful eyesAre lilies there, growing beside the way.Those golden ones will loose the torted hands,Smooth the scarred brow, gather the breaking soul,Whose earthly moments drop like falling sandsTo leave the spirit whole.Only a penny, a penny,Lilies brighter than any,Lilies whiter than snow.Beautiful lilies growWherever the truth so sweetHas trodden with bloody feet,Has stood with a bloody brow.Friend, it is over now,The passion, the sweat, the pains,Only the truth remains.* * * *I cannot see what others see;Wisdom alone is kind to me,Wisdom that comes from Agony.* * * *Wisdom that lives in the pure skies,The untouched star, the spirit’s eyes;O Beauty, touch me, make me wise.
The creaking door of flesh rolls slowly back.Nerve by red nerve the links of living crack,Loosing the soul to tread another track.
Beyond the pain, beyond the broken clay,A glimmering country liesWhere life is being wise,All of the beauty seen by truthful eyesAre lilies there, growing beside the way.Those golden ones will loose the torted hands,Smooth the scarred brow, gather the breaking soul,Whose earthly moments drop like falling sandsTo leave the spirit whole.
Only a penny, a penny,Lilies brighter than any,Lilies whiter than snow.Beautiful lilies growWherever the truth so sweetHas trodden with bloody feet,Has stood with a bloody brow.Friend, it is over now,The passion, the sweat, the pains,Only the truth remains.* * * *I cannot see what others see;Wisdom alone is kind to me,Wisdom that comes from Agony.* * * *Wisdom that lives in the pure skies,The untouched star, the spirit’s eyes;O Beauty, touch me, make me wise.