Poems, 1908-1919

THE CITY

 
A shining city, one
Happy in snow and sun,
And singing in the rain
A paradisal strain…
Here is a dream to keep,
O Builders, from your sleep.
 
 
O foolish Builders, wake,
Take your trowels, take
The poet’s dream, and build
The city song has willed,
That every stone may sing
And all your roads may ring
With happy wayfaring.
 

TO THE DEFILERS

 
Go, thieves, and take your riches, creep
To corners out of honest sight;
We shall not be so poor to keep
One thought of envy or despite.
 
 
But know that in sad surety when
Your sullen will betrays this earth
To sorrows of contagion, then
Beelzebub renews his birth.
 
 
When you defile the pleasant streams
And the wild bird’s abiding-place,
You massacre a million dreams
And cast your spittle in God’s face.
 

A CHRISTMAS NIGHT

 
Christ for a dream was given from the dead
To walk one Christmas night on earth again,
Among the snow, among the Christmas bells.
He heard the hymns that are his praise: Noël,
And Christ is Born, and Babe of Bethlehem.
He saw the travelling crowds happy for home,
The gathering and the welcome, and the set
Feast and the gifts, because he once was born,
Because he once was steward of a word.
And so he thought, “The spirit has been kind;
So well the peoples might have fallen from me,
My way of life being difficult and spare.
It is beautiful that a dream in Galilee
Should prosper so. They crucified me once,
And now my name is spoken through the world,
And bells are rung for me and candles burnt.
They might have crucified my dream who used
My body ill; they might have spat on me
Always as in one hour on Golgotha.” …
And the snow fell, and the last bell was still,
And the poor Christ again was with the dead.
 

INVOCATION

 
As pools beneath stone arches take
Darkly within their deeps again
Shapes of the flowing stone, and make
Stories anew of passing men,
 
 
So let the living thoughts that keep,
Morning and evening, in their kind,
Eternal change in height and deep,
Be mirrored in my happy mind.
 
 
Beat, world, upon this heart, be loud
Your marvel chanted in my blood,
Come forth, O sun, through cloud on cloud
To shine upon my stubborn mood.
 
 
Great hills that fold above the sea,
Ecstatic airs and sparkling skies,
Sing out your words to master me,
Make me immoderately wise.
 

IMMORTALITY

I

 
When other beauty governs other lips,
And snowdrops come to strange and happy springs,
When seas renewed bear yet unbuilded ships,
And alien hearts know all familiar things,
When frosty nights bring comrades to enjoy
Sweet hours at hearths where we no longer sit,
When Liverpool is one with dusty Troy,
And London famed as Attica for wit …
How shall it be with you, and you, and you,
How with us all who have gone greatly here
In friendship, making some delight, some true
Song in the dark, some story against fear?
Shall song still walk with love, and life be brave,
And we, who were all these, be but the grave?
 

II

 
No; lovers yet shall tell the nightingale
Sometimes a song that we of old time made,
And gossips gathered at the twilight ale
Shall say, “Those two were friends,” or, “Unafraid
Of bitter thought were those because they loved
Better than most.” And sometimes shall be told
How one, who died in his young beauty, moved,
As Astrophel, those English hearts of old.
And the new seas shall take the new ships home
Telling how yet the Dymock orchards stand,
And you shall walk with Julius at Rome,
And Paul shall be my fellow in the Strand;
There in the midst of all those words shall be
Our names, our ghosts, our immortality.
 

THE CRAFTSMEN

 
Confederate hand and eye
Work to the chisel’s blade,
Setting the grain aglow
Of porch and sturdy beam —
So the strange gods may ply
Strict arms till we are made
Quick as the gods who know
What builds behind this dream.
 

SYMBOLS

 
I saw history in a poet’s song,
In a river-reach and a gallows-hill,
In a bridal bed, and a secret wrong,
In a crown of thorns: in a daffodil.
 
 
I imagined measureless time in a day,
And starry space in a waggon-road,
And the treasure of all good harvests lay
In the single seed that the sower sowed.
 
 
My garden-wind had driven and havened again
All ships that ever had gone to sea,
And I saw the glory of all dead men
In the shadow that went by the side of me.
 

SEALED

 
The doves call down the long arcades of pine,
The screaming swifts are tiring towards their eaves,
And you are very quiet, O lover of mine.
 
 
No foot is on your ploughlands now, the song
Fails and is no more heard among your leaves
That wearied not in praise the whole day long.
 
 
I have watched with you till this twilight-fall,
The proud companion of your loveliness;
Have you no word for me, no word at all?
 
 
The passion of my thought I have given you,
Striving towards your passion, nevertheless,
The clover leaves are deepening to the dew,
 
 
And I am still unsatisfied, untaught.
You lie guarded in mystery, you go
Into your night, and leave your lover naught.
 
 
Would I were Titan with immeasurable thews
To hold you trembling, lover of mine, and know
To the full the secret savour that you use
 
 
Now to my tormenting. I would drain
Your beauty to the last sharp glory of it;
You should work mightily through me, blood and brain.
 
 
Your heart in my heart’s mastery should burn,
And you before my swift and arrogant wit
Should be no longer proudly taciturn.
 
 
You should bend back astonished at my kiss,
Your wisdom should be armourer to my pride,
And you, subdued, should yet be glad of this.
 
 
The joys of great heroic lovers dead
Should seem but market-gossiping beside
The annunciation of our bridal bed.
 
 
And now, my lover earth, I am a leaf,
A wave of light, a bird’s note, a blade sprung
Towards the oblivion of the sickled sheaf;
 
 
A mere mote driven against your royal ease,
A tattered eager traveller among
The myriads beating on your sanctuaries.
 
 
I have no strength to crush you to my will,
Your beauty is invulnerably zoned,
Yet I, your undefeated lover still,
 
 
Exulting in your sap am clear of shame,
And biding with you patiently am throned
Above the flight of desolation’s aim.
 
 
You may be mute, bestow no recompense
On all the thriftless leaguers of my soul —
I am at your gates, O lover of mine, and thence
 
 
Will I not turn for any scorn you send,
Rebuked, bemused, yet is my purpose whole,
I shall be striving towards you till the end.
 

A PRAYER

 
Lord, not for light in darkness do we pray,
Not that the veil be lifted from our eyes,
Nor that the slow ascension of our day
Be otherwise.
 
 
Not for a clearer vision of the things
Whereof the fashioning shall make us great,
Not for remission of the peril and stings
Of time and fate.
 
 
Not for a fuller knowledge of the end
Whereto we travel, bruised yet unafraid,
Nor that the little healing that we lend
Shall be repaid.
 
 
Not these, O Lord. We would not break the bars
Thy wisdom sets about us; we shall climb
Unfettered to the secrets of the stars
In Thy good time.
 
 
We do not crave the high perception swift
When to refrain were well, and when fulfil,
Nor yet the understanding strong to sift
The good from ill.
 
 
Not these, O Lord. For these Thou hast revealed,
We know the golden season when to reap
The heavy-fruited treasure of the field,
The hour to sleep.
 
 
Not these. We know the hemlock from the rose,
The pure from stained, the noble from the base
The tranquil holy light of truth that glows
On Pity’s face.
 
 
We know the paths wherein our feet should press,
Across our hearts are written Thy decrees,
Yet now, O Lord, be merciful to bless
With more than these.
 
 
Grant us the will to fashion as we feel,
Grant us the strength to labour as we know,
Grant us the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel,
To strike the blow.
 
 
Knowledge we ask not – knowledge Thou hast lent,
But, Lord, the will – there lies our bitter need,
Give us to build above the deep intent
The deed, the deed.
 

THE BUILDING

 
Whence these hods, and bricks of bright red clay,
And swart men climbing ladders in the night?
 
 
Stilled are the clamorous energies of day,
The streets are dumb, and, prodigal of light,
The lamps but shine upon a city of sleep.
A step goes out into the silence; far
Across the quiet roofs the hour is tolled
From ghostly towers; the indifferent earth may keep
That ragged flotsam shielded from the cold
In earth’s good time: not, moving among men,
Shall he compel so fortunate a star.
Pavements I know, forsaken now, are strange,
Alien walks not beautiful, that then,
In the familiar day, are part of all
My breathless pilgrimage, not beautiful, but dear;
The monotony of sound has suffered change,
The eddies of wanton sound are spent, and clear
To bleak monotonies of silence fall.
 
 
And, while the city sleeps, in the central poise
Of quiet, lamps are flaming in the night,
Blown to long tongues by winds that moan between
The growing walls, and throwing misty light
On swart men bearing bricks of bright red clay
In laden hods; and ever the thin noise
Of trowels deftly fashioning the clean
Long lines that are the shaping of proud thought.
Ghost-like they move between the day and day,
These men whose labour strictly shall be wrought
Into the captive image of a dream.
Their sinews weary not, the plummet falls
To measured use from steadfast hands apace,
And momently the moist and levelled seam
Knits brick to brick and momently the walls
Bestow the wonder of form on formless space.
 
 
And whence all these? The hod and plummet-line,
The trowels tapping, and the lamps that shine
In long, dust-heavy beams from wall to wall,
The mortar and the bricks of bright red clay,
Ladder and corded scaffolding, and all
The gear of common traffic – whence are they?
And whence the men who use them?
When he came,
God upon chaos, crying in the name
Of all adventurous vision that the void
Should yield up man, and man, created, rose
Out of the deep, the marvel of all things made,
Then in immortal wonder was destroyed
All worth of trivial knowledge, and the close
Of man’s most urgent meditation stayed
Even as his first thought – “Whence am I sprung?”
What proud ecstatic mystery was pent
In that first act for man’s astonishment,
From age to unconfessing age, among
His manifold travel. And in all I see
Of common daily usage is renewed
This primal and ecstatic mystery
Of chaos bidden into many-hued
Wonders of form, life in the void create,
And monstrous silence made articulate.
 
 
Not the first word of God upon the deep
Nor the first pulse of life along the day
More marvellous than these new walls that sweep
Starward, these lines that discipline the clay,
These lamps swung in the wind that send their light
On swart men climbing ladders in the night.
No trowel-tap but sings anew for men
The rapture of quickening water and continent,
No mortared line but witnesses again
Chaos transfigured into lineament.
 

THE SOLDIER

 
The large report of fame I lack,
And shining clasps and crimson scars,
For I have held my bivouac
Alone amid the untroubled stars.
 
 
My battle-field has known no dawn
Beclouded by a thousand spears;
I’ve been no mounting tyrant’s pawn
To buy his glory with my tears.
 
 
It never seemed a noble thing
Some little leagues of land to gain
From broken men, nor yet to fling
Abroad the thunderbolts of pain.
 
 
Yet I have felt the quickening breath
As peril heavy peril kissed —
My weapon was a little faith,
And fear was my antagonist.
 
 
Not a brief hour of cannonade,
But many days of bitter strife,
Till God of His great pity laid
Across my brow the leaves of life.
 

THE FIRES OF GOD

I

 
Time gathers to my name;
Along the ways wheredown my feet have passed
I see the years with little triumph crowned,
Exulting not for perils dared, downcast
And weary-eyed and desolate for shame
Of having been unstirred of all the sound
Of the deep music of the men that move
Through the world’s days in suffering and love.
 
 
Poor barren years that brooded over-much
On your own burden, pale and stricken years —
Go down to your oblivion, we part
With no reproach or ceremonial tears.
Henceforth my hands are lifted to the touch
Of hands that labour with me, and my heart
Hereafter to the world’s heart shall be set
And its own pain forget.
Time gathers to my name —
Days dead are dark; the days to be, a flame
Of wonder and of promise, and great cries
Of travelling people reach me – I must rise.
 

II

 
Was I not man? Could I not rise alone
Above the shifting of the things that be,
Rise to the crest of all the stars and see
The ways of all the world as from a throne?
Was I not man, with proud imperial will
To cancel all the secrets of high heaven?
Should not my sole unbridled purpose fill
All hidden paths with light when once was riven
God’s veil by my indomitable will?
 
 
So dreamt I, little man of little vision,
Great only in unconsecrated pride;
Man’s pity grew from pity to derision,
And still I thought, “Albeit they deride,
Yet is it mine uncharted ways to dare
Unknown to these,
And they shall stumble darkly, unaware
Of solemn mysteries
Whereof the key is mine alone to bear.”
 
 
So I forgot my God, and I forgot
The holy sweet communion of men,
And moved in desolate places, where are not
Meek hands held out with patient healing when
The hours are heavy with uncharitable pain;
No company but vain
And arrogant thoughts were with me at my side.
And ever to myself I lied.
Saying “Apart from all men thus I go
To know the things that they may never know.”
 

III

 
Then a great change befell;
Long time I stood
In witless hardihood
With eyes on one sole changeless vision set —
The deep disturbèd fret
Of men who made brief tarrying in hell
On their earth travelling.
It was as though the lives of men should be
See circle-wise, whereof one little span
Through which all passed was blackened with the wing
Of perilous evil, bateless misery.
But all beyond, making the whole complete
O’er which the travelling feet
Of every man
Made way or ever he might come to death,
Was odorous with the breath
Of honey-laden flowers, and alive
With sacrificial ministrations sweet
Of man to man, and swift and holy loves,
And large heroic hopes, whereby should thrive
Man’s spirit as he moves
From dawn of life to the great dawn of death.
 
 
It was as though mine eyes were set alone
Upon that woeful passage of despair,
Until I held that life had never known
Dominion but in this most troubled place
Where many a ruined grace
And many a friendless care
Ran to and fro in sorrowful unrest.
Still in my hand I pressed
Hope’s fragile chalice, whence I drew deep draughts
That heartened me that even yet should grow
Out of this dread confusion, as of broken crafts
Driven along ungovernable seas,
Prosperous order, and that I should know
After long vigil all the mysteries
Of human wonder and of human fate.
 
 
O fool, O only great
In pride unhallowed, O most blind of heart!
Confusion but more dark confusion bred,
Grief nurtured grief, I cried aloud and said,
“Through trackless ways the soul of man is hurled,
No sign upon the forehead of the skies,
No beacon, and no chart
Are given to him, and the inscrutable world
But mocks his scars and fills his mouth with dust.”
 
 
And lies bore lies
And lust bore lust,
And the world was heavy with flowerless rods,
And pride outran
The strength of a man
Who had set himself in the place of gods.
 

IV

 
Soon was I then to gather bitter shame
Of spirit; I had been most wildly proud —
Yet in my pride had been
Some little courage, formless as a cloud,
Unpiloted save by a vagrant wind,
But still an earnest of the bonds that tame
The legionary hates, of sacred loves that lean
From the high soul of man towards his kind.
And all my grief
Had been for those I watched go to and fro
In uncompassioned woe
Along that little span my unbelief
Had fashioned in my vision as all life.
Now even this so little virtue waned,
For I became caught up into the strife
That I had pitied, and my soul was stained
At last by that most venomous despair,
Self-pity.
I no longer was aware
Of any will to heal the world’s unrest,
I suffered as it suffered, and I grew
Troubled in all my daily trafficking,
Not with the large heroic trouble known
By proud adventurous men who would atone
With their own passionate pity for the sting
And anguish of a world of peril and snares,
It was the trouble of a soul in thrall
To mean despairs,
Driven about a waste where neither fall
Of words from lips of love, nor consolation
Of grave eyes comforting, nor ministration
Of hand or heart could pierce the deadly wall
Of self – of self, – I was a living shame —
A broken purpose. I had stood apart
With pride rebellious and defiant heart,
And now my pride had perished in the flame.
I cried for succour as a little child
Might supplicate whose days are undefiled, —
For tutored pride and innocence are one.
 
 
To the gloom has won
A gleam of the sun
And into the barren desolate ways
A scent is blown
As of meadows mown
By cooling rivers in clover days.
 

V

 
I turned me from that place in humble wise,
And fingers soft were laid upon mine eyes,
And I beheld the fruitful earth, with store
Of odorous treasure, full and golden grain,
Ripe orchard bounty, slender stalks that bore
Their flowered beauty with a meek content,
The prosperous leaves that loved the sun and rain,
Shy creatures unreproved that came and went
In garrulous joy among the fostering green.
And, over all, the changes of the day
And ordered year their mutable glory laid —
Expectant winter soberly arrayed,
The prudent diligent spring whose eyes have seen
The beauty of the roses uncreate,
Imperial June, magnificent, elate
Beholding all the ripening loves that stray
Among her blossoms, and the golden time
Of the full ear and bounty of the boughs, —
And the great hills and solemn chanting seas
And prodigal meadows, answering to the chime
Of God’s good year, and bearing on their brows
The glory of processional mysteries
From dawn to dawn, the woven leaves and light
Of the high noon, the twilight secrecies,
And the inscrutable wonder of the stars
Flung out along the reaches of the night.
 
 
And the ancient might
Of the binding bars
Waned as I woke to a new desire
For the choric song
Of exultant, strong
Earth-passionate men with souls of fire.
 

VI

 
’T was given me to hear. As I beheld —
With a new wisdom, tranquil, asking not
For mystic revelation – this glory long forgot,
This re-discovered triumph of the earth
In high creative will and beauty’s pride
Establishèd beyond the assaulting years,
It came to me, a music that compelled
Surrender of all tributary fears,
Full-throated, fierce, and rhythmic with the wide
Beat of the pilgrim winds and labouring seas,
Sent up from all the harbouring ways of earth
Wherein the travelling feet of men have trod,
Mounting the firmamental silences
And challenging the golden gates of God.
 
 
We bear the burden of the years
Clean limbed, clear-hearted, open-browed,
Albeit sacramental tears
Have dimmed our eyes, we know the proud
Content of men who sweep unbowed
Before the legionary fears;
In sorrow we have grown to be
The masters of adversity.
 
 
Wise of the storied ages we,
Of perils dared and crosses borne,
Of heroes bound by no decree
Of laws defiled or faiths outworn,
Of poets who have held in scorn
All mean and tyrannous things that be;
We prophesy with lips that sped
The songs of the prophetic dead.
 
 
Wise of the brief belovèd span
Of this our glad earth-travelling,
Of beauty’s bloom and ordered plan,
Of love and loves compassioning,
Of all the dear delights that spring
From man’s communion with man;
We cherish every hour that strays
Adown the cataract of the days.
 
 
We see the clear untroubled skies,
We see the summer of the rose
And laugh, nor grieve that clouds will rise
And wax with every wind that blows,
Nor that the blossoming time will close,
For beauty seen of humble eyes
Immortal habitation has
Though beauty’s form may pale and pass.
 
 
Wise of the great unshapen age,
To which we move with measured tread
All girt with passionate truth to wage
High battle for the word unsaid,
The song unsung, the cause unled,
The freedom that no hope can gauge;
Strong-armed, sure-footed, iron-willed
We sift and weave, we break and build.
 
 
Into one hour we gather all
The years gone down, the years unwrought
Upon our ears brave measures fall
Across uncharted spaces brought,
Upon our lips the words are caught
Wherewith the dead the unborn call;
From love to love, from height to height
We press and none may curb our might.
 

VII

 
O blessed voices, O compassionate hands,
Calling and healing, O great-hearted brothers!
I come to you. Ring out across the lands
Your benediction, and I too will sing
With you, and haply kindle in another’s
Dark desolate hour the flame you stirred in me.
O bountiful earth, in adoration meet
I bow to you; O glory of years to be,
I too will labour to your fashioning.
Go down, go down, unweariable feet,
Together we will march towards the ways
Wherein the marshalled hosts of morning wait
In sleepless watch, with banners wide unfurled
Across the skies in ceremonial state,
To greet the men who lived triumphant days,
And stormed the secret beauty of the world.