The hollow valley gains more peaceAnd ancientness to-night:The loveliness, the fruitfulness,The power of life lived thereReturn, revive, more closely pressUpon that midnight air.But many deaths have place in menBefore they come to die;Joys must be used and spent, and thenAbandoned and passed by.Earth is not ours; no cherished spaceCan hold us from life's flow,That bears us thither and thence by waysWe knew not we should go.O, Cartmel bells ring loud, ring clear,Through midnight deep and hoar,A year new-born, and I shall hearThe Cartmel bells no more.TO IRON-FOUNDERS AND OTHERSWhen you destroy a blade of grassYou poison England at her roots:Remember no man's foot can passWhere evermore no green life shoots.You force the birds to wing too highWhere your unnatural vapours creep:Surely the living rocks shall dieWhen birds no rightful distance keep.You have brought down the firmamentAnd yet no heaven is more near;You shape huge deeds without event,And half made men believe and fear.Your worship is your furnaces,Which, like old idols, lost obscenes,Have molten bowels; your vision isMachines for making more machines.O, you are buried in the night,Preparing destinies of rust;Iron misused must turn to blightAnd dwindle to a tettered crust.The grass, forerunner of life, has gone,But plants that spring in ruins and shardsAttend until your dream is done:I have seen hemlock in your yards.The generations of the wormKnow not your loads piled on their soil;Their knotted ganglions shall wax firmTill your strong flagstones heave and toil.When the old hollowed earth is cracked,And when, to grasp more power and feasts,Its ores are emptied, wasted, lacked,The middens of your burning beastsShall be raked over till they yieldLast priceless slags for fashionings high,Ploughs to make grass in every field,Chisels men's hands to magnify.RUPERT BROOKEBorn 1887Died at Lemnos 1915SONNETOh! Death will find me, long before I tireOf watching you; and swing me suddenlyInto the shade and loneliness and mireOf the last land! There, waiting patiently,One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,See a slow light across the Stygian tide,And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,And tremble. AndIshall know that you have died.And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam—Most individual and bewildering ghost!—And turn, and toss your brown delightful headAmusedly, among the ancient Dead.THE SOLDIERIf I should die, think only this of me:That there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England. There shall beIn that rich earth a richer dust concealed;A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,A body of England's, breathing English air,Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.And think, this heart, all evil shed away,A pulse in the eternal mind, no lessGives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.THE TREASUREWhen colour goes home into the eyes,And lights that shine are shut again,With dancing girls and sweet birds' criesBehind the gateways of the brain;And that no-place which gave them birth, shall closeThe rainbow and the rose:—Still may Time hold some golden space.Where I'll unpack that scented storeOf song and flower and sky and face,And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,Musing upon them; as a mother, whoHas watched her children all the rich day through,Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,When children sleep, ere night.August,1914.THE GREAT LOVERI have been so great a lover I filled my daysSo proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,Desire illimitable, and still content,And all dear names men use, to cheat despairFor the perplexed and viewless streams that bearOur hearts at random down the dark of life.Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strifeSteals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,My night shall be remembered for a starThat outshone all the suns of all men's days.Shall I not crown them with immortal praiseWhom I have loved, who have given me, dared with meHigh secrets, and in darkness knelt to seeThe inenarrable godhead of delight?Love is a flame:—we have beaconed the world's night.A city:—and we have built it, these and I.An emperor:—we have taught the world to die.So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,And the high cause of Love's magnificence,And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those namesGolden for ever, eagles, crying flames,And set them as a banner, that men may know,To dare the generations, burn, and blowOut on the wind of Time, shining and streaming......These I have loved:White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strongOf friendly bread; and many-tasting food;Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soonSmooth away trouble; and the rough male kissOf blankets; grainy wood; live hair that isShining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keenImpassioned beauty of a great machine;The benison of hot water; furs to touch;The good smell of old clothes; and other such—The comfortable smell of friendly ringers,Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingersAbout dead leaves and last year's ferns ...Dear names,And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames;Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing;Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain,Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foamThat browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;And washen stones, gay for an hour; the coldGraveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;—All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,Whatever passes not, in the great hour,Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have powerTo hold them with me through the gate of Death.They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trustAnd sacramented covenant to the dust.—Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,And give what's left of love again; and makeNew friends, now strangers....But the best I've known,Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blownAbout the winds of the world, and fades frombrains Of living men, and dies.Nothing remains.O dear my loves, O faithless, once againThis one last gift I give: that after menShall know, and later lovers, far removed,Praise you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved.'CLOUDSDown the blue night the unending columns pressIn noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snowUp to the white moon's hidden loveliness.Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,As who would pray good for the world, but knowTheir benediction empty as they bless.They say that the Dead die not, but remainNear to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,In wise majestic melancholy train,And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,And men, coming and going on the earth.The PacificTHE OLD VICARAGE, GRANTCHESTERCafe des Western, Berlin.Just now the lilac is in bloom,All before my little room;And in my flower-beds, I think,Smile the carnation and the pink;And down the borders, well I know,The poppy and the pansy blow ...Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,Beside the river make for youA tunnel of green gloom, and sleepDeeply above; and green and deepThe stream mysterious glides beneath,Green as a dream and deep as death.—Oh, damn! I know it I and I knowHow the May fields all golden show,And when the day is young and sweet,Gild gloriously the bare feetThat run to bathe ...Du lieber Gott!Here am I, sweating, sick and hot,And there the shadowed waters freshLean up to embrace the naked flesh.TemperamentvollGerman JewsDrink beer around; andtherethe dewsAre soft beneath a morn of gold.Here tulips bloom as they are told;Unkempt about those hedges blowsAn English unofficial rose;And there the unregulated sunSlopes down to rest when day is done,And wakes a vague unpunctual star,A slippered Hesper; and there areMeads towards Haslingfield and CotonWheredas Betreten'snotverboten..ἐίθε γενοιμην... would I wereIn Grantchester, in Grantchester!—Some, it may be, can get in touchWith Nature there, or Earth, or such.And clever modern men have seenA Faun a-peeping through the green,And felt the Classics were not dead,To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,Or hear the Goat-foot piping low ...But these are things I do not know.I only know that you may lieDay long and watch the Cambridge sky,And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,Until the centuries blend and blurIn Grantchester, in Grantchester ...Still in the dawnlit waters coolHis ghostly Lordship swims his pool,And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx;Dan Chaucer hears his river stillChatter beneath a phantom mill;Tennyson notes, with studious eye,How Cambridge waters hurry by ...And in that garden, black and whiteCreep whispers through the grass all night;And spectral dance, before the dawn,A hundred Vicars down the lawn;Curates, long dust, will come and goOn lissom, clerical, printless toe;And oft between the boughs is seenThe sly shade of a Rural Dean ...Till, at a shiver in the skies,Vanishing with Satanic cries,The prim ecclesiastic routLeaves but a startled sleeper-out,Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls,The falling house that never falls.. . . . . . .God! I will pack, and take a train,And get me to England once again!For England's the one land, I know,Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;And Cambridgeshire, of all England,The shire for Men who Understand;And ofthatdistrict I preferThe lovely hamlet Grantchester.For Cambridge people rarely smile,Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;And Royston men in the far SouthAre black and fierce and strange of mouth;At Over they fling oaths at one,And worse than oaths at Trumpington,And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,And there's none in Harston under thirty,And folks in Shelford and those partsHave twisted lips and twisted hearts,And Barton men make cockney rhymes,And Co ton's full of nameless crimes,And things are done you'd not believeAt Madingley on Christmas Eve.Strong men have run for miles and milesWhen one from Cherry Hinton smiles;Strong men have blanched and shot their wivesRather than send them to St. Ives;Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,To hear what happened at Babraham.But Grantchester, ah, Grantchester!There's peace and holy quiet there,Great clouds along pacific skies,And men and women with straight eyes,Lithe children lovelier than a dream,A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,And little kindly winds that creepRound twilight corners, half asleep.In Grantchester their skins are white,In Grantchester their skins are white,They bathe by day, they bathe by night;The women there do all they ought;The men observe the Rules of Thought.They love the Good; they worship Truth;They laugh uproariously in youth;(And when they get to feeling old,They up and shoot themselves, I'm told)Ah God! to see the branches stirAcross the moon at Grantchester!To smell the thrilling-sweet and rottenUnforgettable, unforgottenRiver smell, and hear the breezeSobbing in the little trees.Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand,Still guardians of that holy land?The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,The yet unacademic stream?Is dawn a secret shy and coldAnadyomene, silver-gold?And sunset still a golden seaFrom Haslingfield to Madingley?And after, ere the night is born,Do hares come out about the corn?Oh, is the water sweet and coolGentle and brown, above the pool?And laughs the immortal river still—Under the mill, under the mill?Say, is there Beauty yet to find?And Certainty? and Quiet kind?Deep-meadows yet, for to forgetThe lies, and truths, and pain?... oh! yetStands the Church clock at ten to threeAnd is there honey still for tea?THE BUSY HEARTNow that we've clone our best and worst, and parted,I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend.(O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted)I'll think of Love in books, Love without end;Women with child, content; and old men sleeping;And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain;And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping;And the young heavens, forgetful after rain;And evening hush, broken by homing wings;And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy,That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things,Lovely and loveable, and taste them slowly,One after one, like tasting a sweet food.I have need to busy my heart with quietude.DINING-ROOM TEAWhen you were there, and you, and you,Happiness crowned the night; I too,Laughing and looking, one of all,I watched the quivering lamplight fallOn plate and flowers and pouring teaAnd cup and cloth; and they and weFlung all the dancing moments byWith jest and glitter. Lip and eyeFlashed on the glory, shone and cried,Improvident, unmemoried;And fitfully and like a flameThe light of laughter went and came.Proud in their careless transience movedThe changing faces that I loved.Till suddenly, and otherwhence,I looked upon your innocence;For lifted clear and still and strangeFrom the dark woven flow of changeUnder a vast and starless skyI saw the immortal moment lie.One instant I, an instant, knewAs God knows all. And it and youI, above Time, oh, blind! could seeIn witless immortality.I saw the marble cup; the tea,Hung on the air, an amber stream;I saw the fire's unglittering gleam,The painted flame, the frozen smoke.No more the flooding lamplight brokeOn flying eyes and lips and hair;But lay, but slept unbroken there,On stiller flesh, and body breathless,And lips and laughter stayed and deathless,And words on which no silence grew.Light was more alive than you.For suddenly, and otherwhence,I looked on your magnificence.I saw the stillness and the light,And you, august, immortal, white,Holy and strange; and every glintPosture and jest and thought and tintFreed from the mask of transiency,Triumphant in eternity,Immote, immortal.Dazed at lengthHuman eyes grew, mortal strengthWearied; and Time began to creep.Change closed about me like a sleep.Light glinted on the eyes I loved.The cup was filled. The bodies moved.The drifting petal came to ground.The laughter chimed its perfect round.The broken syllable was ended.And I, so certain and so friended,How could I cloud, or how distressThe heaven of your unconsciousness?Or shake at Time's sufficient spell,Stammering of lights unutterable?The eternal holiness of you,The timeless end, you never knew,The peace that lay, the light that shone.You never knew that I had goneA million miles away, and stayedA million years. The laughter playedUnbroken round me; and the jestFlashed on. And we that knew the bestDown wonderful hours grew happier yet.I sang at heart, and talked, and eat,And lived from laugh to laugh, I too,When you were there, and you, and you.FRANCIS BURROWSTHE PRAYER TO DEMETERMother whose hair I grasp, whose bosom I tread,Thy son adopted. Thou who dost so charm meAnd in thy lappels of affection warm me,Heap all thine other misery on my head;Madness alone of evils do I dread,Against its imminent presence guard and arm me,Suffer its broad flung shadow not to harm meBut plunge me rather with the naked dead.Yet if it must come, let it be entire;Cast then upon me unillumined night,One whole eclipse not knowing any fireTo give it record of the former light.Complete destruction of the heart's desire,A ruin of thought and audience and sight.THE GIANT'S DIRGERemember him who battled here,What was his living character?To friends an heart for ever filledWith love and with compassion brave;To foes a power never stilledIn pushing vengeance to the grave;Where is his spirit gone now, O where?What of his ten grand paces hereWhose motion was a perfect sphere?To friends a making unafraid,A sure defence, a wall of glass.To foes a hidden trap well laidTo catch them stalking through the grass;Where is he walking now, O where?What of his power who is hereEnclosed within the sepulchre?To friends an eager sword of joy,A shield to nestle underneath.To foes whose love is to destroy,A stumbling block, a hidden death;Where is his power gone now, O where?What of his eye that floated hereLike sky-born dewy gossamer?To friends the ever-sought desire,The hope achieved, the loving cup;To foes an unassaulted fire,A furnace withering them up.Where is he shining now, O where?What of the head that breathed so hereAnd the hair beloved so, is it sere;To friends a shadow shedding stars,Like blessings, from the upper deep;To foes a poisoned tree that marsMen's lives thereunder laid asleep.Where does it blossom now, O where?He lives, is living everywhere,Where human hearts are, he is there.To friends a soul of certaintyThat love though lost is more than none.To foes an inabilityTo say, "We slew him, we alone,His soul is here, we slew him here."THE UNFORGOTTENThere is a cave beneath the throne of graceWhere these have honoured and remembered place;Strong hairy men, huge-jawed, with wiry limbs,Half hid in mist, the heroes of old times.They lie among the pots and flints and beadsTheir friends once buried with them as the needsOf the after-life, to hunt with and to slay with,And flay and cook, or in repose to play with.Here he who shaped the flint and bound to axeAnd arrow first; who made the thread of flaxAnd hemp to weave; and he who to the ploughHarnessed and tamed the bull and milked the cow;Who taught to bake and grind and till the seedOf corn sufficient for the future's need;And he who said: "These are my children, these;My blood between them and their enemies;For when I age and cannot win my meat,They shall become new head and hands and feet";And he who said: "Let none of our tribe dieSlain by ourselves with violence. For why,Our foes are plentiful, our friends are few,Our living scarce. All may have work to do,As hunting, warring, digging for the strong,Or potting, cooking, weaving for the young,The old, the weak, yet for adornment skilled"—Too early born and by his brethren killed.Here he who dreamed a strange dream in the night,And from his rushes springing swat with fright,But thought and said with opened eyes, "'Tis beauty,"And terror left him. Those who spoke of duty,Mercy and truth, and taught the undying soul,And many more. And many a grunt and growlThey give in friendly dreams; when haunches quiverAnd nostrils widen, and hands do twitch and shiver.And often one awakes, and blinks, half speaks,And yawns and licks and blows upon his cheeks:Pure spirits laugh, and with a kindly eyeThe father views their rough-haired majesty.THE WELLSee this plashing fount enshrined,Some ancient people roofed and lined;Some memory here of a forlorn rime,A thought, a breath of a thought sublimeA sobbing under the wings of time.See the ancient people's grave:No Andromache, no slaveWater here for a master draws,No slaves longer laugh and pause.All's strange language and new laws.O words, be good to impart assuranceOf hope, of memory, of endurance,O flourish grass upon our tomb,Grant us, sunk in a little room,Both a sepulchre and home.EGYPTIANThe pyramid is built, is built,And stone by stone the sphinx;Upon the ground the wine is spilt,And deep the builder drinks.Deeply the wise man in the desert thinks.Hark to the lanterned gondolas!The stream is incense-calmed;We smoke, we draw the gods with praise,They walk amongst us charmed.Cries"Never are the desert-sands disarmed."Our building toil is done, is done,All strifes and quarrels cease;And slaves and masters are at one,And enemies at peace.Cries:"Yet the sands are stirred and wars increase."Riches and joy and thankfulnessBy our rich river are;To see our noble work and blessShall travellers come afar.Cries:"Yes, a jew, but many more for war."LIFEWhen I consider this, that bareWater and earth and common airCombine together to composeA being who breathes and stands and goesWith eyes to see the sun, with brainTo contemplate his origin,I marvel not at death and painBut rather how he should have been.A. Y. CAMPBELLANIMULA VAGULANight stirs but wakens not, her breathings climbTo one slow sigh; the strokes of many twelvesFrom unseen spires mechanically chime,Mingling like echoes, to frustrate themselves;My soul, remember Time.The tones like smoke into the stillness curl,The slippered hours their placid business ply,And in thy hand there lies occasion's pearl;But thou art playing with it absentlyAnd dreaming, like a girl.A BIRDHis haunts are by the brackish waysWhere rivers and sea-currents meet;He is familiar with the sprays,Over the stones his flight is fleet.Low, low he flutters, like a ratThat scampers up a river-bank;Swift, lizard-like, he scours the flatWhere pools are wersh and weeds are dank,The fresh green smell of inland groves,The pureness of the upper air,Are poorer than his pungent covesThat hold strange spices everywhere.Strong is the salt of open sea;Far out, the virgin brine is keen:No home is there for such as he,Out of the beach he is not seen.By shallows and capricious foamsAre the queer corners he frequents,And in an idle humour roamsThe borderland of elements.THE DROMEDARYIn dreams I see the Dromedary still,As once in a gay park, l saw him stand iA thousand eyes in vulgar wonder scannedHis humps and hairy neck, and gazed their fillAt his lank shanks and mocked with laughter shrill.He never moved: and if his Eastern landFlashed on his eye with stretches of hot sand,It wrung no mute appeal from his proud will.He blinked upon the rabble lazily;And still some trace of majesty forlornAnd a coarse grace remained: his head was high,Though his gaunt flanks with a great mange were worn:There was not any yearning in his eye,But on his lips and nostril infinite scorn.THE PANICPale in her evening silks she satThat but a week had been my bride;Then, while the stars we wondered at,Without a word she left my side;Devious and silent as a bat,I watched her round the garden glide.Soon o'er the moonlit lawn she streamed,Then floated idly down the glade;Now like a forest nymph she seemed,Now like a light within a shade:She turned, and for a moment gleamed,And suddenly I saw her fade.I had been held in tranced stareTill she had vanished from my sight;Then did I start in wild despair,And followed fast in mad affright;What if herself a spirit wereAnd had so soon rejoined the night?G. K. CHESTERTONWINE AND WATEROld Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale,He ate his egg with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a pail,And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and the fish he took was Whale,But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail,And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,"I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."The cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the brinkAs if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink,The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink,And Noah he cocked his eye and said, "It looks like rain, I think,The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine,But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we trod,Till a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod,And you can't get wine at a P.S.A., or chapel, or Eisteddfod,But the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God,And water is on the Bishop's board and the Higher Thinker's shrine,But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.THE ROLLING ENGLISH ROADBefore the Roman came to Rye or out of Severn strode,The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread,The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;But I did bash their bagginets because they came arrayedTo straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,When you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers runBehind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.God pardon us, nor harden us: we did not see so clearThe night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.THE DONKEYWhen fishes flew and forests walkedAnd figs grew upon thorn,Some moment when the moon was bloodThen surely I was born;With monstrous head and sickening cryAnd ears like errant wings,The devil's walking parodyOn all four-footed things.The tattered outlaw of the earth,Of ancient crooked will;Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,I keep my secret still.Fools! For I also had my hour;One far fierce hour and sweet:There was a shout about my ears,And palms before my feet.THE SECRET PEOPLESmile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.The fine French kings came over in a nutter of flags and dames.We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way,And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day.They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,Till there was no bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find.The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak,The King's Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.And the face of the King's Servants grew greater than the King:He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey's fruits,And the men of the new religion, with their Bibles in their boots,We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.A war that we understood not came over the world and wokeAmericans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people's reign:And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and never scorned us again.Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing notThe strange fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought,And the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke;And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.Our path of glory ended; we never heard guns again.But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in painHe leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouseiWe only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our restGod's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.FROM THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSEFar northward and far westwardThe distant tribes drew nigh,Plains beyond plains, fell beyond fell,That a man at sunset sees so well,And the tiny coloured towns that dwellIn the comers of the sky.But dark and thick as thronged the host,With drum and torch and blade,The still-eyed King sat pondering,As one that watches a live thing,The scoured chalk; and he said,"Though I give this land to Our Lady,That helped me in Athelney,Though lordlier trees and lustier sodAnd happier hills hath no flesh trodThan the garden of the Mother of GodBetween Thames side and the sea,"I know that weeds shall grow in itFaster than men can burn;And though they scatter now and go,In some far century, sad and slow,I have a vision, and I knowThe heathen shall return."They shall not come with warships,They shall not waste with brands,But books be all their eating,And ink be on their hands."Not with the humour of huntersOr savage skill in war,But ordering all things with dead words,Strings shall they make of beasts and birdsAnd wheels of wind and star."They shall come mild as monkish clerks,With many a scroll and pen;And backward shall ye turn and gaze,Desiring one of Alfred's days,When pagans still were men."The dear sun dwarfed of dreadful suns,Like fiercer flowers on stalk,Earth lost and little like a peaIn high heaven's towering forestry,—These be the small weeds ye shall seeCrawl, covering the chalk."But though they bridge St. Mary's sea,Or steal St. Michael's wing—Thoughthey rear marvels over us,Greater than great VergiliusWrought for the Roman king;"By this sign you shall know them,The breaking of the sword,And Man no more a free knight,That loves or hates his lord."Yea, this shall be the sign of them,The sign of the dying fire;And Man made like a half-wit,That knows not of his sire."What though they come with scroll and pen,And grave as a shaven clerk,By this sign you shall know them,That they ruin and make dark;"By all men bond to Nothing,Being slaves without a lord,By one blind idiot world obeyed,Too blind to be abhorred;"By terror and the cruel talesOf curse in bone and kin,By weird and weakness winning,Accursed from the beginning,By detail of the sinning,And denial of the sin;"By thought a crawling ruin,By life a leaping mire,By a broken heart in the breast of the world,And the end of the world's desire;"By God and man dishonoured,By death and life made vain,Know ye the old barbarian,The barbarian come again again—"When is great talk of trend and tide,And wisdom and destiny,Hail that undying heathenThat is sadder than the sea."In what wise men shall smite him,Or the Cross stand up again,Or charity, or chivalry,My vision saith not; and I seeNo more; but now ride doubtfullyTo the battle of the plain."And the grass-edge of the great downWas clean cut as a lawn,While the levies thronged from near and far,From the warm woods of the western star,And the King went out to his last warOn a tall grey horse at dawn.And news of his far-off fighting