That old bird-cage thy breast, where like magpieThy heart hopped on alarm.Yet out beyond thy cloak, Don Juan,Thrust prim white-stocking'd feet—Silk-stocking'dfeet that in quadrille pranced round—Slippers high-heeled and neat;Thy silver-buckled shoes, Don Juan,No more shall tread a floor,Beside their heels upon the board lies nowA half-peeled onion's core:Munching, a crone, that knew, Don Juan,Thy best contrived plots,Hobbles about the room, whose gaunt stone wallsDrear echo as she trots;She makes her bundle up, Don Juan;She'll not forget thy rings,Thy buckles, nor silk stockings; nay, not she!They'll go with her few things.Those lids she hath pulled down, Don Juan,That lowered ne'er for shame;No spark from beauty more in thy brain pan,Shall make its tinder flame:Thou hast enjoyed all that, Don Juan,Which good resolves doth daunt,Which hypocrites doth tempt to stake vile souls,Which cowards crave and want;Thou wast an envied man, Don Juan,Long shalt be envied still;Thou hadst thy beauty as the proud pard hath,And instinct trained to skill.A DUET"Flowers nodding gaily, scent in air,"Flowers posied, flowers for the hair,"Sleepy flowers, flowers bold to stare—"Oh, pick me some!""Shells with lip, or tooth, or bleeding gum,"Tell-tale shells, and shells that whisper 'Come,'"Shells that stammer, blush, and yet are dumb—""Oh, let me hear!""Eyes so black they draw one trembling near,"Brown eyes, caverns flooded with a tear,"Cloudless eyes, blue eyes so windy clear—""Oh, look at me!""Kisses sadly blown across the sea,"Darkling kisses, kisses fair and free,"Bob-a-cherry kisses 'neath a tree—""Oh, give me one!"Thus sang a king and queen in Babylon.THE GAZELLESWhen the sheen on tall summer grass is pale,Across blue skies white clouds float onIn shoals, or disperse and singly sail,Till, the sun being set, they all are gone:Yet, as long as they may shine bright in the sun,They flock or stray through the daylight bland,While their stealthy shadows like foxes runBeneath where the grass is dry and tanned:And the waste, in hills that swell and fall,Goes heaving into yet dreamier haze;And a wonder of silence is over allWhere the eye feeds long like a lover's gaze:Then, cleaving the grass, gazelles appear(The gentler dolphins of kindlier waves)With sensitive heads alert of ear;Frail crowds that a delicate hearing saves,That rely on the nostrils' keenest power,And are governed from trance-like distancesBy hopes and fears, and, hour by hour,Sagacious of safety, snuff the breeze.They keep together, the timid hearts;And each one's fear with a panic thrillIs passed to an hundred; and if one startsIn three seconds all are over the hill.A Nimrod might watch, in his hall's wan space,After the feast, on the moonlit floor,The timorous mice that troop and race,As tranced o'er those herds the sun doth pour;Like a wearied tyrant sated with foodWho envies each tiniest thief that stealsIts hour from his abstracted mood,For it living zest and beauty reveals.He alone, save the quite dispassionate moon,Sees them; she stares at the prowling pardWho surprises their sleep and, ah! how soonIs riding the weakest or sleepiest hard!Let an agony's nightmare course begin,Four feet with five spurs a piece control,Like a horse thief reduced to save his skinOr a devil that rides a human soul!The race is as long as recorded time,Yet brief as the flash of assassin's knife;For 'tis crammed as history is with crime'Twixt the throbs at taking and losing life;Then the warm wet clutch on the nape of the neck,Through which the keen incisors drive;Then the fleet knees give, down drops the wreckOf yesterday's pet that was so alive.Yet the moon is naught concerned, ah no!She shines as on a drifting plankFar in some northern sea-stream's flowFrom which two numbed hands loosened and sank.Such thinning their number must suffer; and worseWhen hither at times the Shah's children roam,Their infant listlessness to immerseIn energy's ancient upland home:For here the shepherd in years of oldWas taught by the stars, and bred a raceThat welling forth from these highlands rolledIn tides of conquest o'er earth's face:On piebald ponies or else milk-white,Here, with green bridles in silver bound,A crescent moon on the violet nightOf their saddle cloths, or a sun rayed round,—With tiny bells on their harness ringing,And voices that laugh and are shrill by starts,Prancing, curvetting, and with them bringingSwift chetahs cooped up in light-wheeled carts,They come, and their dainty pavilions pitchIn some valley, beside a sinuous pool,Where a grove of cedars towers in whichHerons have built, where the shade is cool;Where they tether their ponies to low hung boughs,Where long through the night their red fires gleam,Where the morning's stir doth them arouseTo their bath in the lake, as from dreams to a dream.And thence in an hour their hunt rides forth,And the chetahs course the shy gazelleTo the east or west or south or north,And every eve in a distant valeA hetacomb of the slaughtered beastsIs piled; tongues loll from breathless throats;Round large jet eyes the horsefly feasts—Jet eyes, which now a blue film coats:Dead there they bleed, and each prince thereIs met by his sister, wife, or bride—Delicious ladies with long dark hair,And soft dark eyes, and brows arched wide,In quilted jacket, embroidered sash,And tent-like skirts of pleated lawn;While their silk-lined jewelled slippers flashRound bare feet bedded like pools at dawn:So choicefully prepared to please,Young, female, royal of race and mood,In indolent compassion theseO'er those dead beauteous creatures brood:They lean some minutes against their friend,A lad not slow to praise himself,Who tells how this one met his endOut-raced, or trapped by leopard stealth,And boasts his chetahs fleetest are;Through his advice the chance occurred,That leeward vale by which the carWas well brought round to head the herd.Seeing him bronzed by sun and wind,She feels his power and owns him lord,Then, that his courage may please her mind,With a soft coy hand half draws his sword,Just shudders to see the cold steel gleam,And drops it back in the long curved sheath;She will make his evening meal a dreamAnd surround his sleep like some rich wreathOf heavy-lidded flowers bewitchedTo speak soft words of ecstasyTo wizard king old, wise, and enrichedWith all save youth's and love's sweet glee.But, while they sleep, the orphaned herdAnd wounded stragglers, through the nightWander in pain, and wail unheardTo the moon and the stars so cruelly bright:Why are they born? ah! why begetThey in the long November gloomHeirs of their beauty, their fleetness,—yetHeirs of their panics, their pangs, their doom?That to princely spouses children are bornTo be daintily bred and taught to please,Has a fitness like the return of morn:But why perpetuate lives like these?Why, with horns that jar and with fiery eyes,Should the male stags fight for the shuddering doesThrough the drear dark nights, with frequent criesFrom tyrant lust or outlawed woes?Doth the meaningless beauty of their livesRave in the spring, when they course afarLike the shadows of birds, and the young fawn strivesTill its parents no longer the fleetest are?Like the shadows of flames which the sun's rays throwOn a kiln's blank wall, where glaziers dwell,Pale shadows as those from glasses they blow,Yet that lap at the blank wall and rebel,—Even so to my curious trance-like thoughtThose herds move over those pallid hills,With fever as of a frail life caughtIn circumstance o'er-charged with ills;More like the shadow of lives than life,Or most like the life that is never bornFrom baffled purpose and foredoomed strife,That in each man's heart must be hidden from scornYet with something of beauty very rareUnseizable, fugitive, half discerned;The trace of intentions that might have been fairIn action, left on a face that yearnedBut long has ceased to yearn, alas!So faint a trace do they leave on the slopesOf hills as sleek as their coats with grass;So faint may the trace be of noblest hopes.Yet why are they born to roam and die?Can their beauty answer thy query, O soul?Nay, nor that of hopes which were born to fly,But whose pinions the common and coarse day stole.Like that region of grassy hills outspread,A realm of our thoughts knows days and nightsAnd summers and winters, and has fedIneffectual herds of vanished delights.ROBERT NICHOLSTO ———Asleep within the deadest hour of nightAnd turning with the earth, I was awareHow suddenly the eastern curve was bright,As when the sun arises from his lair.But not the sun arose: it was thy hairShaken up heaven in tossing leagues of light.Since then I know that neither night nor dayMay I escape thee, O my heavenly hell!Awake, in dreams, thou springest to waylayAnd should I dare to die, I know full wellWhose voice would mock me in the mourning bell,Whose face would greet me in hell's fiery way.FAREWELL TO PLACE OF COMFORTFor the last time, maybe, upon the knollI stand. The eve is golden, languid, sad....Day like a tragic actor plays his roleTo the last whispered word, and falls gold-clad.I, too, take leave of all I ever had.They shall not say I went with heavy heart:Heavy I am, but soon I shall be free;I love them all, but O I now departA little sadly, strangely, fearfully,As one who goes to try a Mystery.The bell is sounding down in Dedham Vale:Be still, O bell! too often standing hereWhen all the air was tremulous, fine, and pale,Thy golden note so calm, so still, so clear,Out of my stony heart has struck a tear.And now tears are not mine. I have releaseFrom all the former and the later pain;Like the mid-sea I rock in boundless peace,Soothed by the charity of the deep sea rain....Calm rain! Calm sea! Calm found, long sought in vain.O bronzen pines, evening of gold and blue,Steep mellow slope, brimmed twilit pool below,Hushed trees, still vale dissolving in the dew,Farewell! Farewell! There is no more to do.We have been happy. Happy now I go.THE FULL HEARTAlone on the shore in the pause of the night-timeI stand and I hear the long wind blow light;I view the constellations quietly, quietly burning;I hear the wave fall in the hush of the night.Long after I am dead, ended this bitter journey,Many another whose heart holds no lightShall your solemn sweetness, hush, awe, and comfort,O my companions, Wind, Waters, Stars, and Night.Near Gold Cap,1916.THE TOWERIt was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofsThe moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs.The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet,Over dome and column, up empty, endless street;In the closed, scented gardens the rose loosed from the stemHer white showery petals; none regarded them;The starry thicket breathed odours to the sentinel palm;Silence possessed the city like a soul possessed by calm.Not a spark in the warren under the giant night,Save where in a turret's lantern beamed a grave, still light:There in the topmost chamber a gold-eyed lamp was lit—Marvellous lamp in darkness, informing, redeeming it!For, set in that tiny chamber, Jesus, the blessed and doomed,Spoke to the lone apostles as light to men entombed;And spreading His hands in blessing, as one soon to be dead,He put soft enchantment into spare wine and bread.The hearts of the disciples were broken and full of tears,Because their Lord, the spearless, was hedged about with spears;And in His face the sickness of departure had spread a gloomAt leaving His young friends friendless.They could not forget the tomb.He smiled subduedly, telling, in tones soft as voice of the dove,The endlessness of sorrow, the eternal solace of love;And lifting the earthly tokens, wine and sorrowful bread,He bade them sup and remember One who lived and was dead.And they could not restrain their weeping.But one rose up to depart,Having weakness and hate of weakness raging within his heart,And bowed to the robed assembly whose eyes gleamed wet in the light.Judas arose and departed; night went out to the night.Then Jesus lifted His voice like a fountain in an ocean of tears,And comforted His disciples and calmed and allayed their fears.But Judas wound down the turret, creeping from floor to floor,And would fly; but one leaning, weeping, barred him beside the door.And he knew her by her ruddy garment and two yet-watching men:Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen.And he was frighted at her. She sighed: 'I dreamed Him dead.We sell the body for silver ...'Then Judas cried out and fledForth into the night!... The moon had begun to set;A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret,Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayedTo stern Jehovah lest his deed make him afraid.But in the tiny lantern, hanging as if on air,The disciples sat unspeaking. Amaze and peace were there.ForHisvoice, more lovely than song of all earthly birds,In accents humble and happy spoke slow, consoling words.Thus Jesus discoursed, and was silent, sitting upright, and soonPast the casement behind Him slanted the sinking moon;And, rising for Olivet, all stared, between love and dread,Seeing the torrid moon a ruddy halo behind His head.FULFILMENTWas there love once? I have forgotten her.Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stirMore grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,As whose children we are brethren: one.And any moment may descend hot deathTo shatter limbs! pulp, tear, blastBeloved soldiers who love rough life and breathNot less for dying faithful to the last.O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony,Oped mouth gushing, fallen head,Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony!O sudden spasm, release of the dead!Was there love once? I have forgotten her.Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.O loved, living, dying, heroic soldier,All, all, my joy, my grief, my love, are thine!THE SPRIG OF LIMEHe lay, and those who watched him were amazedTo see unheralded beneath the lidsTwin tears, new gathered at the price of pain,Start and at once run crookedly athwartCheeks channelled long by pain, never by tears.So desolate too the sigh next utteredThey had wept also, but his great lips moved,And bending down one heard, 'A sprig of lime;Bring me a sprig of lime.' Whereat she stoleWith dumb signs forth to pluck the thing he craved.So lay he till a lime-twig had been snappedFrom some still branch that swept the outer grassFar from the silver pillar of the holeWhich mounting past the house's crusted roofSplit into massy limbs, crossed boughs, a mazeOf close-compacted intercontorted staffsBowered in foliage wherethrough the sunShot sudden showers of light or crystal sparsOr wavered in a green and vitreous flood.And all the while in faint and fainter tonesScarce audible on deepened evening's hushHe framed his curious and last request,For 'lime, a sprig of lime.' Her trembling handClosed his loose fingers on the awkward stemCovered above with gentle heart-shaped leavesAnd under dangling, pale as honey-wax,Square clusters of sweet-scented starry flowers.She laid his bent arm back upon his breast,Then watched above white knuckles clenched in prayer.He never moved. Only at last his eyesOpened, then brightened in such avid gazeShe feared the coma mastered him again ...But no; strange sobs rose chuckling in his throat,A stranger ecstasy suffused the fleshOf that just mask so sun-dried, gouged and oldWhich few—too few!—had loved, too many feared.'Father,' she cried; 'Father!'He did not hear.She knelt and kneeling drank the scent of limes,Blown round the slow blind by a vesperal gust,Till the room swam. So the lime incense blewInto her life as once it had in his,Though how and when and with what ageless chargeOf sorrow and deep joy how could she know?Sweet lime that often at the height of noonDiffusing dizzy fragrance from your boughs,Tasselled with blossoms mere innumerableThan the black bees, the uproar of whose toilFilled your green vaults, winning such metheglynAs clouds their sappy cells, distil, as onceYe used, your sunniest emanationsToward the window where a woman kneels—Shewho within that room in childish hoursLay through the lasting murmur of blanch'd noonBehind the sultry blind, now full now flat,Drinking anew of every odorous breath,Supremely happy in her ignoranceOf Time that hastens hourly and of DeathWho need not haste. Scatter your fumes, O lime,Loose from each hispid star of citron bloom,Tangled beneath the labyrinthine boughs,Cloud on such stinging cloud of exhalationsAs reek of youth, fierce life and summer's prime,Though hardly now shall he in that dusk roomSavour your sweetness, since the very sprig,Profuse of blossom and of essences,He smells not, who in a paltering handClasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming facePropped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime,Your curfew secrets out in fervid scentTo the attendant shadows! Tinge the airOf the midsummer night that now begins,At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to duskAnd downward caper of the giddy batHawking against the lustre of bare skies,With something of th' unfathomable blissHe, who lies dying there, knew once of oldIn the serene trance of a summer nightWhen with th' abundance of his young bride's hairLoosed on his breast he lay and dared not sleep,Listening for the scarce motion of your boughs,Which sighed with bliss as she with blissful sleep,And drinking desperately each honied waveOf perfume wafted past the ghostly blindKnew first th' implacable and bitter senseOf Time that hastes and Death who need not haste.Shed your last sweetness, limes!But now no more.She, fruit of that night's love, she heeds you not,Who bent, compassionate, to the dim floorTakes up the sprig of lime and presses itIn pain against the stumbling of her heart,Knowing, untold, he cannot need it now.SEUMAS O'SULLIVANTHE TWILIGHT PEOPLEIt is a whisper among the hazel bushes;It is a long low whispering voice that fillsWith a sad music the bending and swaying rushes;It is a heart beat deep in the quiet hills.Twilight people, why will you still be crying,Crying and calling to me out of the trees?For under the quiet grass the wise are lying,And all the strong ones are gone over the seas.And I am old, and in my heart at your callingOnly the old dead dreams a-fluttering go;As the wind, the forest wind, in its fallingSets the withered leaves fluttering to and fro.WILFRED OWENBorn 1893,Killed in Action, 1918.STRANGE MEETINGIt seemed that out of the battle I escapedDown some profound dull tunnel, long since scoopedThrough granites which Titanic wars had groined.Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and staredWith piteous recognition in fixed eyes,Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall.With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan."Strange, friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn.""None," said the other, "save the undone years."The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,Was my life also; I went hunting wildAfter the wildest beauty in the world,Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,But mocks the steady running of the hour,And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.For by my glee might many men have laughed,And of my weeping something has been left,Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,The pity of war, the pity war distilled.Now men will go content with what we spoiled,Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.Courage was mine, and I had mystery,Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;To miss the march of this retreating worldInto vain citadels that are not walled.Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheelsI would go up and wash them from sweet wells,Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.I would have poured my spirit without stintBut not through wounds; not on the cess of war.Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.I am the enemy you killed, my friend.I knew you in this death: for so you frownedYesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.Let us sleep now......JOSEPH PLUNKETTBorn 1887.Executed after the Easter Week Rising, 1916.I SEE HIS BLOOD UPON THE ROSEI see His blood upon the roseAnd in the stars the glory of His eyes,His body gleams amid eternal snows,His tears fall from the skies.I see His face in every flower;The thunder and the singing of the birdsAre but His voice—and carven by His powerRocks are His written words.All pathways by His feet are worn,His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,His cross is every tree.SIEGFRIED SASSOON'IN THE PINK'So Davies wrote: 'This leaves me in the pink.Then scrawled his name: 'Your loving sweet-heart, Willie'With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drinkOf rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the darkHe groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,When he'd go out as cheerful as a larkIn his best suit to wander arm-in-armWith brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her earThe simple silly things she liked to hear.And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudgeUp to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,And everything but wretchedness forgotten.To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die.And still the war goes on;hedon't know why.THE DEATH-BEDHe drowsed and was aware of silence heapedRound him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;Aqueous-like floating rays of amber light,Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,—Silence and safety; and his mortal shoreLipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.Some one was holding water to his mouth,He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and droppedThrough crimson gloom to darkness; and forgotThe opiate throb and ache that was his wound.Water—calm, sliding green above the weir;Water—a sky-lit alley for his boat,Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowersAnd shaken hues of summer: drifting down,He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.Night. He was blind; he could not see the starsGlinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.Rain; he could hear it rustling through the darkFragrance and passionless music woven as one;Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showersThat soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweepsBehind the thunder, but a trickling peaceGently and slowly washing life away.. . . . . . . .He stirred, shifting his body; then the painLeaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and toreHis groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.But some one was beside him; soon he layShuddering because that evil thing had passed.And Death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared.Light many lamps and gather round his bed.Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.He's young; he hated war; how should he dieWhen cruel old campaigners win safe through?But Death replied: 'I choose him.' So he went,And there was silence in the summer night;Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.COUNTER-ATTACKWe'd gained our first objective hours beforeWhile dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legsHigh-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.And then the rain began,—the jolly old rain!A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,Staring across the morning blear with fog;He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;And then, of course, they started with five-ninesTraversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst,Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,Sick for escape,—loathing the strangled horrorAnd butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.An officer came blundering down the trench:"Stand-to and man the fire-step!" On he went ...Gasping and bawling, "Fire-step... Counter-attack!"Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the rightDown the old sap: machine-guns on the left;And stumbling figures looming out in front."O Christ, they're coming at us!" Bullets spat,And he remembered his rifle ... rapid fire ...And started blazing wildly ... Then a bangCrumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him outTo grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he chokedAnd fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans ...Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.DREAMERSSoldiers are citizens of death's grey land,Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.In the great hour of destiny they stand,Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.Soldiers are sworn to action; they must winSome flaming, fatal climax with their lives.Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns beginThey think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,And mocked by hopeless longing to regainBank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,And going to the office in the train.EVERYONE SANGEveryone suddenly burst out singing;And I was filled with such delightAs prisoned birds must find in freedom,Winging wildly across the whiteOrchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight.Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;And beauty came like the setting sun:My heart was shaken with tears; and horrorDrifted away ... O, but EveryoneWas a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.EDWARD SHANKSA NIGHT-PIECECome out and walk. The last few drops of lightDrain silently out of the cloudy blue;The trees are full of the dark-stooping night,The fields are wet with dew.All's quiet in the wood but, far away,Down the hillside and out across the plain,Moves, with long trail of white that marks its way,The softly panting train.Come through the clearing. Hardly now we seeThe flowers, save dark or light against the grass,Or glimmering silver on a scented treeThat trembles as we pass.Hark now! So far, so far ... that distant song ...Move not the rustling grasses with your feet.The dusk is full of sounds, that all alongThe muttering boughs repeat.So far, so faint, we lift our heads in doubt.Wind, or the blood that beats within our ears,Has feigned a dubious and delusive note,Such as a dreamer hears.Again ... again! The faint sounds rise and fail.So far the enchanted tree, the song so low ...A drowsy thrush? A waking nightingale?Silence. We do not know.THE GLOW-WORMThe pale road winds faintly upward into the dark skies,And beside it on the rough grass that the wind invisibly stirs,Sheltered by sharp-speared gorse and the berried junipers,Shining steadily with a green light, the glow-worm lies.We regard it; and this hill and all the other hillsThat fall in folds to the river, very smooth and steep,And the hangers and brakes that the darkness thickly fillsFade like phantoms round the light and night is deep, so deep,—That all the world is emptiness about the still flameAnd we are small shadows standing lost in the huge night.We gather up the glow-worm, stooping with dazzled sight,And carry it to the little enclosed garden whence we came,And place it on the short grass. Then the shadowy flowers fade,The walls waver and melt and the houses dis-appearAnd the solid town trembles into insubstantial shadeRound the light of the burning glow-worm, steady and clear.THE HALT"Mark time in front! Rear fours cover! Company—halt!Order arms! Stand at—ease! Stand easy."A sudden hush:And then the talk began with a mighty rush—"You weren't ever in step—The sergeant.—It wasn't my fault—Well, the Lord be praised at least for a ten minutes' halt."We sat on a gate and watched them easing and shifting;Out of the distance a faint, keen breath came drifting,From the sea behind the hills, and the hedges were salt.Where do you halt now? Under what hedge do you lie?Where the tall poplars are fringing the white French roads?And smoke I have not seen discolours the foreign sky?Is the company resting there as we rested togetherStamping its feet and readjusting its loadsAnd looking with wary eyes at the drooping weather?A HOLLOW ELMWhat hast thou not withstood;Tempest-despising tree,Whose bleak and riven woodGapes now so hollowly,What rains have beaten thee through many years,What snows from off thy branches dripped like tears?Calmly thou standest nowUpon thy sunny mound;The first spring breezes flowPast with sweet dizzy sound;Yet on thy pollard top the branches fewStand stiffly out, disdain to murmur too.The children at thy footOpen new-lighted eyes,Where, on gnarled bark and root,The soft, warm sunshine lies—Dost thou, upon thine ancient sides, resentThe touch of youth, quick and impermanent?These, at the beck of spring,Live in the moment still;Thy boughs unquivering,Remembering winter's chill,And many other winters past and gone,Are mocked, not cheated, by the transient sun.Hast thou so much withstood,Tempest-despising tree,That now thy hollow woodStiffens disdainfullyAgainst the soft spring airs and soft spring rain,Knowing too well that winter comes again?THE RETURNINow into hearts long empty of the sunThe morning comes again with golden lightAnd all the shades of the half-dusk are doneAnd all the crevices are suddenly bright.So gradually had love lain down to sleep,We knew it not; but when we saw his headPillowed and sunken in a trance so deepWe whispered shuddering that he was dead.Then you like Psyche took the light and leantOver the monster lying in his place,Daring, despairing, trembling as you bent ...But love raised up his new-awakening faceAnd into our hearts long empty of the sunWe felt the sky-distilled bright liquor run.IIWhen love comes back that went in mist and cloudHe comes triumphant in his pomp and power;Voices that muttered long are glad and loudTo mark the sweetness of the sudden hour.How could we live so long in that half-light?That opiate shadow, where the deadened nervesSo soon forget how hills and winds are bright,That drugged and sleepy dusk, that only servesWith false shades to conceal the emptinessOf hearts whence love has stolen unawares,Where creeping doubts and dumb, dull sorrows pressAnd weariness with blind eyes gapes and stares.This was our state, but now a happy songRings through our inner sunlight all day long.IIIWhen that I lay in a mute agony,I nothing saw nor heard nor felt nor thought,The inner self, the quintessential me,In that blind hour beyond all sense was broughtHard against pain. I had no body, no mind,Nought but the point that suffers joy or loss,No eyes in sudden blackness to be blind,No brain for swift regrets to run across.But when you touched me, when your hot tears fell,The point that had been nothing else but painChanged into rapture by a miracle,In which all raptures known before were vain.Thus loss which bared the utmost shivering nerveFor joy's precursor in the heart did serve.CLOUDSOver this hill the high clouds float all dayAnd trail their long, soft shadows on the grass,And now above the meadows make delayAnd now with regular, swift motion pass.Now comes a threatening drift from the south-west,In smoky colours drest,That spills far out upon the chequered plainIts burden of dark rain;Then hard behind a stately galleonSails onward with its piled and carven towersStiff sculptured like a heap of marble flowers,Rigid, unaltering, a miracleOf moulded surfaces, whereon the lightShines steadily, intolerably bright;Now on a livelier wind a wandering bellOf delicate vapour comes, invisibly hung,Like feathers from the seeding thistle flung,And saunters wantonly far out of sight.O God, who fill'st with shifting imageryThe blue page of the sky,Thus writ'st thou also, with as vague a pen,In the immenser hearts of dreaming men.THE ROCK POOLThis is the Sea. In these uneven wallsA wave lies prisoned. Far and far away,Outward to ocean, as the slow tide falls,Her sisters, through the capes that hold the bay,Dancing in lovely liberty recede.But lovely in captivity she lies,Filled with soft colours, where the waving weedMoves gently, and discloses to our eyesBlurred shining veins of rock and lucent shellsUnder the light-shot water, and here reposeSmall quiet fish, and dimly-glowing bellsOf sleeping sea-anemones that closeTheir tender fronds and will not now awakeTill on these rocks the waves returning break.THE SWIMMERSThe cove's a shining plate of blue and green,With darker belts betweenThe trough and crest of the slow-rising swell,And the great rocks throw purple shadows down,Where transient sun-sparks wink and burst and drownAnd glimmering pebbles lie too deep to tell,Hidden or shining as the shadow wavers.And everywhere the restless sun-steeped airTrembles and quavers,As though it wereMore saturate with light than it could bear.Now come the swimmers from slow-dripping caves,Where the shy fern creeps under the veined roof,And wading out meet with glad breast the waves.One holds aloof,Climbing alone the reef with shrinking feet,That scarce endure the jagged stones' dull beatTill on the edge he poisesAnd flies to cleave the water, vanishingIn wreaths of white, with echoing liquid noises,And swims beneath, a vague, distorted thing.Now all the other swimmers leave behindThe crystal shallow and the foam-wet shoreAnd sliding into deeper water findA living coolness in the lifting flood,And through their bodies leaps the sparkling blood,So that they feel the faint earth's drought no more.There now they float, heads raised above the green,White bodies cloudily seen,Farther and farther from the brazen rock,On which the hot air shakes, on which the tideFruitlessly throws with gentle, soundless shockThe cool and lagging wave. Out, out they go,And now upon a mirrored cloud they rideOr turning over, with soft strokes and slow,Slide on like shadows in a tranquil sky.Behind them, on the tall, parched cliff, the dryAnd dusty grasses growIn shallow ledges of the arid stone,Starving for coolness and the touch of rain.But, though to earth they must return again,Here come the soft sea-airs to meet them, blownOver the surface of the outer deep,Scarce moving, staying, falling, straying, gone,Light and delightful as the touch of sleep...One wakes and splashes round,And, as by magic, all the others wakeFrom that sea-dream, and now with rippling soundTheir rapid arms the enchanted silence break.And now again the crystal shallows takeThe gleaming bedies whose cool hour is done;They pause upon the beach, they pause and sighThen vanish in the caverns one by one.Soon the wet foot-marks on the stones are dry:The cove sleeps on beneath the unwavering sun.THE STORMWe wake to hear the storm come down,Sudden on roof and pane;The thunder's loud and the hasty windHurries the beating rain.The rain slackens, the wind blows gently,The gust grows gentle and stills,And the thunder, like a breaking stick,Stumbles about the hills.The drops still hang on leaf and thorn,The downs stand up more green;The sun comes out again in powerAnd the sky is washed and clean.C. H. SORLEYBorn 1895,Killed in Action 1915.