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Title: Ardours and Endurances; Also, A Faun's Holiday & Poems and Phantasies

Author: Robert Nichols

Release date: May 4, 2012 [eBook #39614]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARDOURS AND ENDURANCES; ALSO, A FAUN'S HOLIDAY & POEMS AND PHANTASIES ***

ARDOURS AND ENDURANCES

ARDOURS AND

ENDURANCES

ALSO A FAUN'S HOLIDAY &

POEMS AND PHANTASIES BY

ROBERT NICHOLS

Author of "Invocation: War Poems and Others"

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

CONTENTS

BOOK I

ARDOURS AND ENDURANCES

THE SUMMONS:

PAGE

I.

To——

4

II.

The Past

5

III.

The Reckoning

6

FAREWELL TO PLACE OF COMFORT

7

THE APPROACH:

I.

In the Grass: Halt by Roadside

12

II.

The Day's March

13

III.

Nearer

15

BATTLE:

I.

Noon

18

II.

Night Bombardment

19

III.

Comrades: An Episode

22

IV.

Behind the Lines: Night, France

27

V.

At the Wars

28

VI.

Out of Trenches: The Barn, Twilight

30

VII.

Battery moving up to a New Position from Rest Camp: Dawn

32

VIII.

Eve of Assault: Infantry going down to Trenches

35

IX.

The Assault

37

X.

The Last Morning

42

XI.

Fulfilment

44

THE DEAD:

I.

The Burial in Flanders

46

II.

Boy

48

III.

Plaint of Friendship by Death Broken

51

IV.

By the Wood

55

THE AFTERMATH:

I.

At the Ebb

58

II.

Alone

60

III.

Thanksgiving

61

IV.

Annihilated

62

V.

Shut of Night

63

VI.

The Full Heart

65

VII.

Sonnet: Our Dead

66

VIII.

Deliverance

67

BOOK II

A FAUN'S HOLIDAY

69

BOOK III

POEMS AND PHANTASIES

A TRIPTYCH:

First Panel: The Hill

140

II.

Second and Centre Panel: The Tower

146

III.

Third Panel: The Tree

150

FOUR SONGS FROM "THE PRINCE OF ORMUZ":

I.

The Prince of Ormuz sings to Badoura

154

II.

The Song of the Princess Beside the Fountain

155

III.

The Song of the Prince in Disguise

156

IV.

The Princess Badoura's Last Song to her Lover

157

THE GIFT OF SONG

160

FRAGMENTS FROM "ORESTES":

I.

Warning Unheeded

164

II.

Orestes to the Furies

167

BLACK SONGS:

I.

At Braydon

170

II.

Midday on the Edge of the Downs

172

III.

In Dorsetshire

173

MAN'S ANACREONTIC

176

THE BLACKBIRD

179

CHANGE

180

TRANSFIGURATION

181

PLAINT OF PIERROT ILL-USED

183

GIRL'S SONG FROM "THE TAILOR"

188

LAST SONG IN AN OPERA

190

DANAË: MYSTERY IN EIGHT POEMS

191

THE ECSTASY

199

THE WATER-LILY

201

DEEM YOU THE ROSES

202

THE PASSION

203

LAST WORDS

206

My thanks are due to the editor of the Times and of the Nation, to the editors of the Palatine Review, and to Messrs. Blackwell, Oxford, the publishers of "Oxford Poetry, 1915," and "Oxford Poetry, 1916," for permission to reprint certain of these poems.

R. M. B. N.

1917.

INTRODUCTION

1. Of the nature of the poet:

"We are (often) so impressed by the power of poetry that we think of it as something made by a wonderful and unusual person: we do not realize the fact that all the wonder and marvel is in our own brains, that the poet is ourselves. He speaks our language better than we do merely because he is more skilful with it than we are; his skill is part of our skill, his power of our power; generations of English-speaking men and women have made us sensible to these things, and our sensibility comes from the same source that the poet's power of stimulating it comes from. Given a little more sensitiveness to external stimuli, a little more power of associating ideas, a co-ordination of the functions of expression somewhat more apt, a sense of rhythm somewhat keener than the average—given these things we should be poets, too, even as he is.... He is one of us."

2. Of what English poetry consists:

"English poetry is not a rhythm of sound, but a rhythm of ideas, and the flow of attention-stresses (i.e., varying qualities of words and cadence) which determines its beauty is inseparably connected with the thought; for each of them is a judgment of identity, or a judgment of relation, or an expression of relation, and not a thing of mere empty sound.... He who would think of it as a pleasing arrangement of vocal sounds has missed all chance of ever understanding its meaning. There awaits him only the barren generalities of a foreign prosody, tedious, pedantic, fruitless. And he will flounder ceaselessly amid the scattered timbers of its iambuses, spondees, dactyls, tribrachs, never reaching the firm ground of truth."

"AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF

ENGLISH POETRY,"[1] by MARK LIDDELL.

[1] Published by Grant Richards (1902). This remarkable book, establishing English poetry as a thing governed from within by its own necessities, and not by rules of æsthetics imposed on it from without, formulates principles which, unperceived, have governed English poetry from the earliest times, which find their greatest exemplar in Shakespeare, and which, though beginning to be realized by the less pedantic of the moderns, are in its pages for the first time lucidly expounded and—such is their adequacy—can, in the end, only be regarded as indubitably proven.—R. M. B. N., 1917.

BOOK I

ARDOURS AND

ENDURANCES

TO THE MEMORY OF MY TRUSTY AND

GALLANT FRIENDS: HAROLD STUART

GOUGH (King's Royal Rifle Corps) AND

RICHARD PINSENT (the Worcester

Regiment)

"For what is life if measured by the space,

Not by the act?"

BEN JONSON.

THE SUMMONS

I.—TO——

Asleep within the deadest hour of night

And, turning with the earth, I was aware

How suddenly the eastern curve was bright,

As when the sun arises from his lair.

But not the sun arose: it was thy hair

Shaken up heaven in tossing leagues of light.

Since then I know that neither night nor day

May I escape thee, O my heavenly hell!

Awake, in dreams, thou springest to waylay

And should I dare to die, I know full well

Whose voice would mock me in the mourning bell,

Whose face would greet me in hell's fiery way.

II.—THE PAST

How to escape the bondage of the past?

I fly thee, yet my spirit finds no calms

Save when she deems her rocked within those arms

To which, from which she ne'er was caught or cast.

O sadness of a heart so spent in vain,

That drank its age's fuel in an hour:

For whom the whole world burning had not power

To quick with life the smouldered wick again!

III.—THE RECKONING

The whole world burns, and with it burns my flesh.

Arise, thou spirit spent by sterile tears;

Thine eyes were ardent once, thy looks were fresh,

Thy brow shone bright amid thy shining peers.

Fame calls thee not, thou who hast vainly strayed

So far for her; nor Passion, who in the past

Gave thee her ghost to wed and to be paid;

Nor Love, whose anguish only learned to last.

Honour it is that calls: canst thou forget

Once thou wert strong? Listen; the solemn call

Sounds but this once again. Put by regret

For summons missed, or thou hast missed them all.

Body is ready, Fortune pleased; O let

Not the poor Past cost the proud Future's fall.

FAREWELL TO PLACE

OF COMFORT

FAREWELL TO PLACE OF COMFORT

For the last time, maybe, upon the knoll

I stand. The eve is golden, languid, sad....

Day like a tragic actor plays his rôle

To 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 depart

A 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 here

When 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 release

From 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 pools 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 APPROACH

I.—IN THE GRASS: HALT BY ROADSIDE

In my tired, helpless body

I feel my sunk heart ache;

But suddenly, loudly

The far, the great guns shake.

Is it sudden terror

Burdens my heart? My hand

Flies to my head. I listen....

And do not understand.

Is death so near, then?

From this blaze of light

Do I plunge suddenly

Into Vortex? Night?

Guns again! the quiet

Shakes at the vengeful voice....

It is terrible pleasure.

I do not fear: I rejoice.

II.—THE DAY'S MARCH

The battery grides and jingles,

Mile succeeds to mile;

Shaking the noonday sunshine,

The guns lunge out awhile,

And then are still awhile.

We amble along the highway;

The reeking, powdery dust

Ascends and cakes our faces

With a striped, sweaty crust.

Under the still sky's violet

The heat thróbs on the air....

The white road's dusty radiance

Assumes a dark glare.

With a head hot and heavy,

And eyes that cannot rest,

And a black heart burning

In a stifled breast,

I sit in the saddle,

I feel the road unroll,

And keep my senses straightened

Toward to-morrow's goal.

There, over unknown meadows

Which we must reach at last,

Day and night thunders

A black and chilly blast.

Heads forget heaviness,

Hearts forget spleen,

For by that mighty winnowing

Being is blown clean.

Light in the eyes again,

Strength in the hand,

A spirit dares, dies, forgives,

And can understand!

And, best! Love comes back again

After grief and shame,

And along the wind of death

Throws a clean flame.

The battery grides and jingles,

Mile succeeds to mile;

Suddenly battering the silence

The guns burst out awhile.

I lift my head and smile.

III.—NEARER

Nearer and ever nearer....

My body, tired but tense,

Hovers 'twixt vague pleasure

And tremulous confidence.

Arms to have and to use them

And a soul to be made

Worthy if not worthy;

If afraid, unafraid.

To endure for a little,

To endure and have done:

Men I love about me,

Over me the sun!

And should at last suddenly

Fly the speeding death,

The four great quarters of heaven

Receive this little breath.

BATTLE

I.—NOON

It is midday: the deep trench glares....

A buzz and blaze of flies....

The hot wind puffs the giddy airs....

The great sun rakes the skies.

No sound in all the stagnant trench

Where forty standing men

Endure the sweat and grit and stench,

Like cattle in a pen.

Sometimes a sniper's bullet whirs

Or twangs the whining wire;

Sometimes a soldier sighs and stirs

As in hell's frying fire.

From out a high cool cloud descends

An aeroplane's far moan....

The sun strikes down, the thin cloud rends....

The black speck travels on.

And sweating, dizzied, isolate

In the hot trench beneath,

We bide the next shrewd move of fate

Be it of life or death.

II.—NIGHT BOMBARDMENT

Softly in the silence the evening rain descends....

The soft wind lifts the rain-mist, flurries it, and spends

Its grief in mournful sighs, drifting from field to field,

Soaking the draggled sprays which the low hedges wield

As they labour in the wet and the load of the wind.

The last light is dimming; night comes on behind.

I hear no sound but the wind and the rain,

And trample of horses, loud and lost again

Where the waggons in the mist rumble dimly on

Bringing more shell.

The last gleam is gone.

It is not day or night; only the mists unroll

And blind with their sorrow the sight of my soul.

I hear the wind weeping in the hollow overhead:

She goes searching for the forgotten dead

Hidden in the hedges or trodden into muck

Under the trenches, or maybe limply stuck

Somewhere in the branches of a high lonely tree—

He was a sniper once. They never found his body.

I see the mist drifting. I hear the wind and rain,

And on my clammy face the oozed breath of the slain

Seems to be blowing. Almost I have heard

In the shuddering drift the lost dead's last word:

Go home, go home, go to my house;

Knock at the door, knock hard, arouse

My wife and the children—that you must do—

What do you say?—Tell the children, too—

Knock at the door, knock hard, arouse

The living. Say: the dead won't come back to this house.

O ... but it's cold—I soak in the rain—

Shrapnel found me—I shan't come home again—

No, not home again!

The mourning voices trail

Away into rain, into darkness ... the pale

Soughing of the night drifts on in between.

The Voices were as if the dead had never been.

O melancholy heavens, O melancholy fields,

The glad, full darkness grows complete and shields

Me from your appeal.

With a terrible delight

I hear far guns low like oxen at the night.

Flames disrupt the sky.

The work is begun.

"Action!" My guns crash, flame, rock and stun

Again and again. Soon the soughing night

Is loud with their clamour and leaps with their light.

The imperative chorus rises sonorous and fell:

My heart glows lighted as by fires of hell.

Sharply I pass the terse orders down.

The guns blare and rock. The hissing rain is blown

Athwart the hurtled shell that shrilling, shrilling goes

Away into the dark, to burst a cloud of rose

Over German trenches.

A pause: I stand and see

Lifting into the night like founts incessantly

The pistol-lights' pale spores upon the glimmering air....

Under them furrowed trenches empty, pallid, bare....

And rain snowing trenchward ghostly and white.

O dead in the hedges, sleep ye well to-night!

III.—COMRADES: AN EPISODE

Before, before he was aware

The 'Verey' light had risen ... on the air

It hung glistering....

And he could not stay his hand

From moving to the barbed wire's broken strand.

A rifle cracked.

He fell.

Night waned. He was alone. A heavy shell

Whispered itself passing high, high overhead.

His wound was wet to his hand: for still it bled

On to the glimmering ground.

Then with a slow, vain smile his wound he bound,

Knowing, of course, he'd not see home again—

Home whose thought he put away.

His men

Whispered: "Where's Mister Gates?" "Out on the wire."

"I'll get him," said one....

Dawn blinked, and the fire

Of the Germans heaved up and down the line.

"Stand to!"

Too late! "I'll get him." "O the swine!

When we might get him in yet safe and whole!"

"Corporal didn't see 'un fall out on patrol,

Or he'd 'a got 'un." "Sssh!"

"No talking there."

A whisper: "'A went down at the last flare."

Meanwhile the Maxims toc-toc-tocked; their swish

Of bullets told death lurked against the wish.

No hope for him!

His corporal, as one shamed,

Vainly and helplessly his ill-luck blamed.

Then Gates slowly saw the morn

Break in a rosy peace through the lone thorn

By which he lay, and felt the dawn-wind pass

Whispering through the pallid, stalky grass

Of No-Man's Land....

And the tears came

Scaldingly sweet, more lovely than a flame.

He closed his eyes: he thought of home

And grit his teeth. He knew no help could come....

The silent sun over the earth held sway,

Occasional rifles cracked and far away

A heedless speck, a 'plane, slid on alone,

Like a fly traversing a cliff of stone.

"I must get back," said Gates aloud, and heaved

At his body. But it lay bereaved

Of any power. He could not wait till night....

And he lay still. Blood swam across his sight.

Then with a groan:

"No luck ever! Well, I must die alone."

Occasional rifles cracked. A cloud that shone,

Gold-rimmed, blackened the sun and then was gone....

The sun still smiled. The grass sang in its play.

Someone whistled: "Over the hills and far away."

Gates watched silently the swift, swift sun

Burning his life before it was begun....

Suddenly he heard Corporal Timmins' voice:

"Now then,

'Urry up with that tea."

"Hi Ginger!" "Bill!" His men!

Timmins and Jones and Wilkinson (the 'bard'),

And Hughes and Simpson. It was hard

Not to see them: Wilkinson, stubby, grim,

With his "No, sir," "Yes, sir," and the slim

Simpson: "Indeed, sir?" (while it seemed he winked

Because his smiling left eye always blinked)

And Corporal Timmins, straight and blonde and wise,

With his quiet-scanning, level, hazel eyes;

And all the others ... tunics that didn't fit....

A dozen different sorts of eyes. O it

Was hard to lie there! Yet he must. But no:

"I've got to die. I'll get to them. I'll go."

Inch by inch he fought, breathless and mute,

Dragging his carcase like a famished brute....

His head was hammering, and his eyes were dim;

A bloody sweat seemed to ooze out of him

And freeze along his spine.... Then he'd lie still

Before another effort of his will

Took him one nearer yard.

The parapet was reached.

He could not rise to it. A lookout screeched:

"Mr. Gates!"

Three figures in one breath

Leaped up. Two figures fell in toppling death;

And Gates was lifted in. "Who's hit?" said he.

"Timmins and Jones." "Why did they that for me?—

I'm gone already!" Gently they laid him prone

And silently watched.

He twitched. They heard him moan

"Why for me?" His eyes roamed round, and none replied.

"I see it was alone I should have died."

They shook their heads. Then, "Is the doctor here?"

"He's coming, sir; he's hurryin', no fear."

"No good....

Lift me." They lifted him.

He smiled and held his arms out to the dim,

And in a moment passed beyond their ken,

Hearing him whisper, "O my men, my men!"

IN HOSPITAL, LONDON,

Autumn, 1915.

IV.—BEHIND THE LINES: NIGHT, FRANCE

At the cross-roads I halt

And stand stock-still....

The linked and flickering constellations climb

Slowly the spread black heaven's immensity.

The wind wanders like a thought at fault.

Within the close-shuttered cottage nigh

I hear—while its fearful, ag'd master sleeps like the dead—

A slow clock chime

With solemn thrill

The most sombre hour of time,

And see stand in the cottage's garden chill

The two white crosses, one at each grave's head....

O France, France, France! I loved you, love you still;

But, Oh! why took you not my life instead?

V.—AT THE WARS

Now that I am ta'en away,

And may not see another day,

What is it to my eye appears?

What sound rings in my stricken ears?

Not even the voice of any friend

Or eyes beloved-world-without-end,

But scenes and sounds of the countryside

In far England across the tide:

An upland field when Spring's begun,

Mellow beneath the evening sun....

A circle of loose and lichened wall

Over which seven red pines fall....

An orchard of wizen blossoming trees

Wherein the nesting chaffinches

Begin again the self-same song

All the late April day-time long....

Paths that lead a shelving course

Between the chalk scarp and the gorse

By English downs; and, O! too well

I hear the hidden, clanking bell

Of wandering sheep.... I see the brown

Twilight of the huge empty down....

Soon blotted out! for now a lane

Glitters with warmth of May-time rain,

And on a shooting briar I see

A yellow bird who sings to me.

O yellow-hammer, once I heard

Thy yaffle when no other bird

Could to my sunk heart comfort bring;

But now I would not have thee sing,

So sharp thy note is with the pain

Of England I may not see again!

Yet sing thy song: there answereth

Deep in me a voice which saith:

"The gorse upon the twilit down,

The English loam so sunset brown,

The bowed pines and the sheep-bells' clamour,

The wet, lit lane and the yellow-hammer,

The orchard and the chaffinch song,

Only to the Brave belong.

And he shall lose their joy for aye

If their price he cannot pay,

Who shall find them dearer far

Enriched by blood after long War."

VI.—OUT OF TRENCHES: THE BARN, TWILIGHT

In the raftered barn we lie,

Sprawl, scrawl postcards, laugh and speak—

Just mere men a trifle weary,

Worn in heart, a trifle weak:

Because alway

At close of day

Thought steals to England far away....

"Alf!" "O ay."

"Gi' us a tune, mate." "Well, wot say?"

"Swipe 'The Policeman's 'Oliday'...."

"Tiddle-iddle-um-tum,

Tum-TUM."

Sprawling on my aching back,

Think I nought; but I am glad—

Dear, rare lads of pick and pack!

Aie me too! I'm sad.... I'm sad:

Some must die

(Maybe I):

O pray it take them suddenly!

"Bill!" "Wot ho!"

"Concertina: let it go—

'If you were the Only Girl.'" "Cheero!"

"If you were the Only Girl."

Damn. 'Abide with Me....' Not now!—

Well ... if you must: just your way.

It racks me till the tears nigh flow.

The tune see-saws. I turn, I pray

Behind my hand,

Shaken, unmanned,

In groans that God may understand:

Miracle!

"Let, let them all survive this hell."

Hear 'Trumpeter, what are you sounding?' swell.

(My God! I guess indeed too well:

The broken heart, eyes front, proud knell!)

Grant but mine sound with their farewell.

"It's the Last Post I'm sounding."

VII.—BATTERY MOVING UP TO A NEW POSITION

FROM REST CAMP: DAWN

Not a sign of life we rouse

In any square close-shuttered house

That flanks the road we amble down

Toward far trenches through the town.

The dark, snow-slushy, empty street....

Tingle of frost in brow and feet....

Horse-breath goes dimly up like smoke.

No sound but the smacking stroke

Of a sergeant flings each arm

Out and across to keep him warm,

And the sudden splashing crack

Of ice-pools broken by our track.

More dark houses, yet no sign

Of life.... An axle's creak and whine....

The splash of hooves, the strain of trace....

Clatter: we cross the market place.

Deep quiet again, and on we lurch

Under the shadow of a church:

Its tower ascends, fog-wreathed and grim;

Within its aisles a light burns dim....

When, marvellous! from overhead,

Like abrupt speech of one deemed dead,

Speech-moved by some Superior Will,

A bell tolls thrice and then is still.

And suddenly I know that now

The priest within, with shining brow,

Lifts high the small round of the Host.

The server's tingling bell is lost

In clash of the greater overhead.

Peace like a wave descends, is spread,

While watch the peasants' reverent eyes....

The bell's boom trembles, hangs, and dies.

O people who bow down to see

The Miracle of Calvary,

The bitter and the glorious,

Bow down, bow down and pray for us.

Once more our anguished way we take

Toward our Golgotha, to make

For all our lovers sacrifice.

Again the troubled bell tolls thrice.

And slowly, slowly, lifted up

Dazzles the overflowing cup.

O worshipping, fond multitude,

Remember us too, and our blood.

Turn hearts to us as we go by,

Salute those about to die,

Plead for them, the deep bell toll:

Their sacrifice must soon be whole.

Entreat you for such hearts as break

With the premonitory ache

Of bodies, whose feet, hands, and side,

Must soon be torn, pierced, crucified.

Sue for them and all of us

Who the world over suffer thus,

Who have scarce time for prayer indeed,

Who only march and die and bleed.

The town is left, the road leads on,

Bluely glaring in the sun,

Toward where in the sunrise gate

Death, honour, and fierce battle wait.

VIII.—EVE OF ASSAULT: INFANTRY GOING

DOWN TO TRENCHES

Downward slopes the wild red sun.

We lie around a waiting gun;

Soon we shall load and fire and load.

But, hark! a sound beats down the road.

"'Ello! wot's up?" "Let's 'ave a look!"

"Come on, Ginger, drop that book!"

"Wot an 'ell of bloody noise!"

"It's the Yorks and Lancs, meboys!"

So we crowd: hear, watch them come—

One man drubbing on a drum,

A crazy, high mouth-organ blowing,

Tin cans rattling, cat-calls, crowing....

And above their rhythmic feet

A whirl of shrilling loud and sweet,

Round mouths whistling in unison;

Shouts: "'O's goin' to out the 'Un?

"Back us up, mates!" "Gawd, we will!"

"'Eave them shells at Kaiser Bill!"

"Art from Lancashire, melad?"

"Gi' 'en a cheer, boys; make 'en glad."

"'Ip 'urrah!" "Give Fritz the chuck."

"Good ol' bloody Yorks!" "Good-luck!"

"Cheer!"

I cannot cheer or speak

Lest my voice, my heart must break.

IX.—THE ASSAULT

NOTE.—(1) "Zero" is the hour agreed upon by the Staff when the infantry are to go over the parapet and advance to the assault. (2) Guns are said to "lift" when, after pounding the front line of the enemy, they lengthen their range and set up a barrier of fire behind his front line to prevent supports moving up. Our infantry then advance.

The beating of the guns grows louder.

"Not long, boys, now."

My heart burns whiter, fearfuller, prouder.

Hurricanes grow

As guns redouble their fire.

Through the shaken periscope peeping,

I glimpse their wire:

Black earth, fountains of earth rise, leaping,

Spouting like shocks of meeting waves.

Death's fountains are playing.

Shells like shrieking birds rush over;

Crash and din rises higher.

A stream of lead raves

Over us from the left ... (we safe under cover!)

Crash! Reverberation! Crash!

Acrid smoke billowing. Flash upon flash.

Black smoke drifting. The German line

Vanishes in confusion, smoke. Cries, and cry

Of our men, "Gah, yer swine!

Ye're for it" die

In a hurricane of shell.

One cry:

"We're comin' soon! look out!"

There is opened hell

Over there; fragments fly,

Rifles and bits of men whirled at the sky:

Dust, smoke, thunder! A sudden bout

Of machine guns chattering....

And redoubled battering,

As if in fury at their daring!...

No good staring.

Time soon now ... home ... house on a sunny hill....

Gone like a flickered page:

Time soon now ... zero ... will engage....

A sudden thrill—

"Fix bayonets!"

Gods! we have our fill

Of fear, hysteria, exultation, rage,

Rage to kill.

My heart burns hot, whiter and whiter,

Contracts tighter and tighter,

Until I stifle with the will

Long forged, now used

(Though utterly strained)—

O pounding heart,

Baffled, confused,

Heart panged, head singing, dizzily pained—

To do my part.

Blindness a moment. Sick.

There the men are!

Bayonets ready: click!

Time goes quick;

A stumbled prayer ... somehow a blazing star

In a blue night ... where?

Again prayer.

The tongue trips. Start:

How's time? Soon now. Two minutes or less.

The gun's fury mounting higher....

Their utmost. I lift a silent hand. Unseen I bless

Those hearts will follow me.

And beautifully,

Now beautifully my will grips.

Soul calm and round and filmed and white!

A shout: "Men, no such order as retire"

I nod.

The whistle's 'twixt my lips....

I catch

A wan, worn smile at me.

Dear men!

The pale wrist-watch....

The quiet hand ticks on amid the din.

The guns again

Rise to a last fury, to a rage, a lust:

Kill! Pound! Kill! Pound! Pound!

Now comes the thrust!

My part ... dizziness ... will ... but trust

These men. The great guns rise;

Their fury seems to burst the earth and skies!

They lift.

Gather, heart, all thoughts that drift;

Be steel, soul,

Compress thyself

Into a round, bright whole.

I cannot speak.

Time. Time!

I hear my whistle shriek,

Between teeth set;

I fling an arm up,

Scramble up the grime

Over the parapet!

I'm up. Go on.

Something meets us.

Head down into the storm that greets us.

A wail.

Lights. Blurr.

Gone.

On, on. Leăd. Leăd. Hail.

Spatter. Whirr! Whirr!

"Toward that patch of brown;

Direction left." Bullets a stream.

Devouring thought crying in a dream.

Men, crumpled, going down....

Go on. Go.

Deafness. Numbness. The loudening tornado.

Bullets. Mud. Stumbling and skating.

My voice's strangled shout:

"Steady pace, boys!"

The still light: gladness.

"Look, sir. Look out!"

Ha! ha! Bunched figures waiting.

Revolver levelled quick!

Flick! Flick!

Red as blood.

Germans. Germans.

Good! O good!

Cool madness.

X.—THE LAST MORNING

Come now, O Death,

While I am proud,

While joy and awe are breath,

And heart beats loud!

While all around me stand

Men that I love,

The wind blares aloud, the grand

Sun wheels above.

Naked I stand to-day

Before my doom,

Welcome what comes my way,

Whatever come.

What is there more to ask

Than that I have?—

Companions, love, a task,

And a deep grave!

Come then, Eternity,

If thou my lot;

Having been thus, I cannot be

As if I had not.

Naked I wait my doom!

Earth enough shroud!

Death, in thy narrow room

Man can lie proud!

XI.—FULFILMENT

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.

Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.

Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir

More 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 death

To shatter limbs! pulp, tear, blast

Beloved soldiers who love rough life and breath

Not 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 DEAD

I.—THE BURIAL IN FLANDERS

(H. S. G., YPRES, 1916)

Through the light rain I think I see them going,

Through the light rain under the muffled skies;

Across the fields a stealthy wet wind wanders,

The mist bedews their tunics, dizzies their brains.

Shoulder-high, khaki shoulder by shoulder,

They bear my Boy upon his last journey.

Night is closing. The wind sighs, ebbs, and falters....

They totter dreaming, deem they see his face.

Even as Vikings of old their slaughtered leader

Upon their shoulders, so now bear they on

All that remains of Boy, my friend, their leader,

An officer who died for them under the dawn.

O that I were there that I might carry,

Might share that bitter load in grief, in pride!...

I see upon bronze faces love, submission,

And a dumb sorrow for that cheerful Boy.

Now they arrive. The priest repeats the service.

The drifting rain obscures.

They are dispersed.

The dying sun streams out: a moment's radiance;

The still, wet, glistening grave; the trod sward steaming.

Sudden great guns startle, echoing on the silence.

Thunder. Thunder.

HE HAS FALLEN IN BATTLE.

(O Boy! Boy!)

Lessening now. The rain

Patters anew. Far guns rumble and shudder

And night descends upon the desolate plain.

LAWFORD,

September, 1916.

II.—BOY

In a far field, away from England, lies

A Boy I friended with a care like love;

All day the wide earth aches, the cold wind cries,

The melancholy clouds drive on above.

There, separate from him by a little span,

Two eagle cousins, generous, reckless, free,

Two Grenfells, lie, and my Boy is made man,

One with these elder knights of chivalry.

Boy, who expected not this dreadful day,

Yet leaped, a soldier, at the sudden call,

Drank as your fathers, deeper though than they,

The soldier's cup of anguish, blood, and gall,

Not now as friend, but as a soldier, I

Salute you fallen; for the Soldier's name

Our greatest honour is, if worthily

These wayward hearts assume and bear the same:

The Soldier's is a name none recognize,

Saving his fellows. Deeds are all his flower.

He lives, he toils, he suffers, and he dies,

And if not all in vain this is his dower:

The Soldier is the Martyr of a nation,

Expresses but is subject to its will;

His is the Pride ennobles Resignation,

As his the rebel Spirit-to-fulfil.

Anonymous, he takes his country's name,

Becomes its blindest vassal—though its lord

By force of arms; its shame is called his shame,

As its the glory gathered by his sword.

Lonely he is: he has nor friend nor lover,

Sith in his body he is dedicate....

His comrades only share his life, or offer

Their further deeds to one more heart oblate.

Living, he's made an 'Argument Beyond'

For others' peace; but when hot wars have birth,

For all his brothers' safety becomes bond

To Fate or Whatsoever sways this Earth.

Dying, his mangled body, to inter it,

He doth bequeath him into comrade hands;

His soul he renders to some Captain Spirit

That knows, admires, pities, and understands!

All this you knew by that which doth reside

Deeper than learning; by apprehension

Of ancient, dark, and melancholy pride

You were a Soldier true, and died as one.

All day the cold wind cries, the clouds unroll;

But to the cloud and wind I cry, "Be still!"

What need of comfort has the heroic soul?

What soldier finds a soldier's grave is chill?

LAWFORD,

September, 1916.

III.—PLAINT OF FRIENDSHIP BY DEATH BROKEN

(R. P., LOOS, 1915)

God, if Thou livest, Thine eye on me bend,

And stay my grief and bring my pain to end:

Pain for my lost, the deepest, rarest friend

Man ever had, whence groweth this despair.

I had a friend: but, O! he is now dead;

I had a vision: for which he has bled:

I had happiness: but it is fled.

God help me now, for I must needs despair.

His eyes were dark and sad, yet never sad;

In them moved sombre figures sable-clad;

They were the deepest eyes man ever had,

They were my solemn joy—now my despair.

In my perpetual night they on me look,

Reading me slowly; and I cannot brook

Their silent beauty, for nor crack nor nook

Can cover me but they shall find me there.

His face was straight, his mouth was wide yet trim;

His hair was tangled black, and through its dim

Softness his perplexed hand would writhe and swim—

Hands that were small on arms strong-knit yet spare.

He stood no taller than our common span,

Swam but nor farther leaped nor faster ran;

I know him spirit now, who seemed a man.

God help me now, for I must needs despair.

His voice was low and clear, yet it could rise

And beat in indignation at the skies;

Then no man dared to meet his fire-filled eyes,

And even I, his own friend, did not dare.

With humorous wistfulness he spoke to us,

Yet there was something more mysterious,

Beyond his words or silence, glorious:

I know not what, but we could feel it there.

I mind now how we sat one winter night

While past his open window raced the bright

Snow-torrent golden in the hot firelight....

I see him smiling at the streamered air.

I watched him to the open window go,

And lean long smiling, whispering to the snow,

Play with his hands amid the fiery flow

And when he turned it flamed amid his hair.

Without arose a sudden bell's huge clang

Until a thousand bells in answer rang

And midnight Oxford hummed and reeled and sang

Under the whitening fury of the air.

His figure standing in the fiery room....

Behind him the snow seething through the gloom....

The great bells shaking, thundering out their doom....

Soft Fiery Snow and Night his being were.

Yet he could be simply glad and take his choice,

Walking spring woods, mimicking each bird voice;

When he was glad we learned how to rejoice:

If the birds sing, 'tis to my spite they dare.

All women loved him, yet his mother won

His tenderness alone, for Moon and Sun

And Rain were for him sister, brother, lovèd one,

And in their life he took an equal share.

Strength he had, too; strength of unrusted will

Buttressed his natural charity, and ill

Fared it with him who sought his good to kill:

He was its Prince and Champion anywhere.

Yet he had weakness, for he burned too fast;

And his unrecked-of body at the last

He in impatience on the bayonets cast,

Body whose spirit had outsoared them there.

I had a friend, but, O! he is now dead.

Fate would not let me follow where he led.

In him I had happiness. But he is dead.

God help me now, for I must needs despair.

God, if Thou livest, and indeed didst send

Thine only Son to be to all a Friend,

Bid His dark, pitying eyes upon me bend,

And His hand heal, or I must needs despair.

IN HOSPITAL,

Autumn, 1915.

IV.—BY THE WOOD

How still the day is, and the air how bright!

A thrush sings and is silent in the wood;

The hillside sleeps dizzy with heat and light;

A rhythmic murmur fills the quietude;

A woodpecker prolongs his leisured flight,

Rising and falling on the solitude.

But there are those who far from yon wood lie,

Buried within the trench where all were found.

A weight of mould oppresses every eye,

Within that cabin close their limbs are bound,

And there they rot amid the long profound,

Disastrous silence of grey earth and sky.

These once, too, rested where now rests but one,

Who scarce can lift his panged and heavy head,

Who drinks in grief the hot light of the sun,

Whose eyes watch dully the green branches spread,

Who feels his currents ever slowlier run,

Whose lips repeat a silent '... Dead! all dead!'

O youths to come shall drink air warm and bright,

Shall hear the bird cry in the sunny wood,

All my Young England fell to-day in fight:

That bird, that wood, was ransomed by our blood!

I pray you when the drum rolls let your mood

Be worthy of our deaths and your delight.

1916.

THE AFTERMATH

I.—AT THE EBB

Alone upon the monotonous ocean's verge

I take my stand, and view with heavy eye

The grey wave rise. I hear its sullen surge,

Its bubbling rush and sudden downward sigh....

My friends are dead ... there fades from me the light

Of her warm face I loved; upon me stare

In the dull noon or deadest hour of night

The smiling lips and chill eyes of Despair.

A light wind blows.... I hear the low wave steal

In and collapse like a despondent breath.

My life has ebbed: I neither see nor feel:

I am suspended between life and death.

Again the wave caves in. O, I am worn

Smoother than any pebble on the beach!

I would dissolve to that whence I was born,

Or alway bide beyond the long wave's reach.

O Will, thou only strengthener of man's heart

When all is gone—love and the love of friends,

When even Earth's comfort has become a part

Of that futility nor breaks nor mends:

Strengthen me now against these utmost wrongs;

Stay my wrecked spirit within thy control,

That men may find some fury in my songs

Which, like strong wine, shall fortify the soul.

BENEATH GOLD CAP,

June, 1916.

II.—ALONE

The grey wind and the grey sea

Tossing under the long grey sky....

My heart is lonelier than the wind;

My heart is emptier than the sky,

And beats more heavily

Than the cold surge beneath the gull,

Wheeling with his reiterant cry

Of loneliness.... All, all is lone:

Alone!...

And so am I.

III.—THANKSGIVING

Amazement fills my heart to-night,

Amaze and awful fears;

I am a ship that sees no light,

But blindly onward steers.

Flung toward heaven's toppling rage,

Sunk between steep and steep,

A lost and wondrous fight I wage

With the embattled deep.

I neither know nor care at length

Where drives the storm about;

Only I summon all my strength

And swear to ride it out.

Yet give I thanks; despite these wars,

My ship—though blindly blown,

Long lost to sun or moon or stars—

Still stands up alone.

I need no trust in borrowed spars;

My strength is yet my own.

IV.—ANNIHILATED

Upon the sweltering sea's enormous round,

Asmoke, adazzle, brown and brown and gold,

A hushed light falls....

Then clouds without a sound

Darken the sea within their curtain's fold.

The sombre clouds through which the sick sun climbs

Smoke slowly on. Below there is no breath.

The long black beach turns livid.

The sea chimes.

I taste the fulness of my spirit's death.

V.—SHUT OF NIGHT

The sea darkens. Waves roar and rush.

The wind rises. The last birds haste.

One star over eve's bitter flush

Spills on the spouting waste.

Loud and louder the darkened sea.

The wind shrills on a monotone.

Sky and deep, wrecked confusedly,

Travail and cry as one.

Long I look on the deepening sky,

The chill star, the forlorn sea breaking;

For what does my spirit cry?

For what is my heart so aching?

Is it home? but I have no home.

Is it tears? but I no more weep.

Is it love? love went by dumb.

Is it sleep? but I would not sleep.

Must I fare, then, in fear and fever

On a journey become thrice far—

Whose sun has gone down for ever,

Whose night brings no guiding star?

The wind roars, and an ashen beam

Waving up shrinks away in haste.

The waves crash. The star's trickling gleam

Travels the warring waste.

I look up. In the windy height

The lone orb, serene and afar,

Shakes with excess of her light....

Beauty, be thou my star!

VI.—THE FULL HEART

Alone on the shore in the pause of the night-time

I 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 light

Shall your solemn sweetness, hush, awe, and comfort,

O my companions, Wind, Waters, Stars, and Night.

NEAR GOLD CAP,

1916.

VII.—SONNET: OUR DEAD

They have not gone from us. O no! they are

The inmost essence of each thing that is

Perfect for us; they flame in every star;

The trees are emerald with their presences.

They are not gone from us; they do not roam

The flaw and turmoil of the lower deep,

But have now made the whole wide world their home,

And in its loveliness themselves they steep.

They fail not ever; theirs is the diurn

Splendour of sunny hill and forest grave;

In every rainbow's glittering drop they burn;

They dazzle in the massed clouds' architrave;

They chant on every wind, and they return

In the long roll of any deep blue wave.

VIII.—DELIVERANCE

Out of the Night! out of the Night I come:

Free at last: the whole world is my home:

I have lost self: I look not on myself again,

But if I do I see a man among men.

Out of the Night! out of the Night, O Flesh:

Soul I know not from Body within thy mesh:

Accepting all that is, I cannot divide the same:

I accept the smoke because I accept the flame.

Out of the Night! out of the Night, O Friends:

O all my dead, think ye our friendship ends?

Harold, Kenneth, Dick, many hearts that were true,

While I breathe breath, I am breathing you.

Out of the Night! out of the Night, O Power:

Many a fight to be won, many an awful hour;

Many an hour to wish death ere I go to death,

Many an hour to bless breath ere I cease from breath.

Out of the Night! out of the Night, O Soul:

Give thanks to the Night: Night and Day are the Whole.

I count mere life-breath nothing now I know Life's worth

Lies all in spending! that known, love Life and Earth.

BOOK II

A FAUN'S HOLIDAY

TO MY BROTHER

PHILIP NICHOLS

'O Fantaisie, emporte-moi sur tes ailes pour désennuyer ma tristesse!'

FLAUBERT.

Roughly planned in Spring, 1914, at Oxford. "Midday in Arcadia" composed July, 1914; "Catch for Spring" adapted from version of 1912 during the same month: both at Grayshott. Taken up again in February, 1916, continued at the Hut, Bray, and, after being frequently interrupted, finished on February 18, 1917, at Ilsington.

The author intends the "hulli" and the "lulli" of the Faun's call in 'Faun's Rally' to be pronounced as if they rhymed with such a word as "fully."

A FAUN'S HOLIDAY

I

Of the Faun's Awakening.

Hark! a sound. Is it I sleep?

Wake I? or do my senses keep

Commune yet with thoughtful night

And dream they feel, not see, the light

That, with a chord as if a lyre

Were upward swept by tongues of fire,

Spreads in all-seeing majesty

Over crag, dale, curved shore, and sea?

If this be sleep, I do not sleep.

I hear the little woodnote weep

Of a shy, darkling bird which cries

In a sweet-fluted, sharp surprise

At glimpse of me, the faun-beast, sleeping

Nigh under her. My crook'd leg, sweeping

Some dream away, perhaps, awoke her,

For dew shook from a bough doth soak her.

And all elsewhere how still it is!—

The mist beyond the precipice

Smokes gently up. The bushes hang

Over the gulph 'cross which I sprang

Last midnight,—though the unicorn,

Who with clanged hooves and lowered horn

Raging pursued, now hidden lies

Amid the cragside dewberries

And sweats his frosty flanks in sleep,

Dreaming he views again my leap

Thrice hazardous.

The silver chasm

Sighs, and many a blithe phantasm

Turns in the sunlight's quivering ray.

I couch in peace. Thoughts fond and gay

Feed on my sense of maiden hours

And earth refreshed by suns and showers

Of nightly dew and heavy quiet.—

Though last night rang with dinning riot:

Dionysos in headlong mood

Ranged through the labyrinthine wood;

Fleet maids sped, yelping, on with him,

Brandishing a torn heifer's limb,

Dissonant cymbals, or black bowl

Of wine and blood; a wolfish howl

Fled ululant with them....

Now there is

Depth, the white mist, the great sun, peace.

Of the Faun's Descent from the Mountain.

Too numb such sunshine!—Let me hence

Out of the solemn imminence

Of yon chill spire whose shadow creeps

Toward me from the stagnant deeps

Of the ravine. For now I will

Descend and take again my fill

Of fancy wild and musing joy,

Such as each dawn brings to alloy

The long affliction of a spirit

Who a complete world did inherit,

And feels it crumbling.

I will down

Whither twin bluffs of sheer stone frown

Over sunk seas of billowing pine

Terrace on terrace, line on line,

Below whose heads the broad downs slope

Away, away till senses grope

At something rather felt than seen:

The sea,—not wave-tops, but a sheen

Under the dazed and distant sky....

Curled on a cliff-top let me lie.

(For yonder, hap, a breeze is blowing,

And the sun's first gleam is showing

Under far wreckage: since our height

Inherits day while yet their light

Quakes gold under the low clouds' rift.)

Down, then! Miraculously swift

These limbs the gods have given me!...

Couched mid the gorse, anon I see,

Opposing this my bluff, the face

Of the sheer rock, and 'long it trace

A sill scarce ample for a goat,

Yet midway in the ledge-path note

A cave's mouth, which thick creepers hide

Fallen in a silvery tide

From a slant crevice overhead.

And, lo! the creeper stirs, is shed—

And all falls quiet.

Till at last

Issues a voice deep, young and vast:

II

THE CENTAUR'S MORNING SONG.

Centaur. Up! the ag'd centaurs lie yet sleeping,

While crouch I palled of this cavern lair

And watch the stretched sea-eagle sweeping

Down the grey-blue drizzling air.

The sea-nymphs, too, will now be waking,

If sickle-eyed they have not played

Across the moonlight sets me aching,

Longing and slinking, half afraid,

Down the feathery, tawny sand

On sighing tread

Deep into banks of glistering shell,

To halt in dread

Lest my hoof-scrunch break the spell

Of the syren-chants that swell

From the dim shoals toward the land.

But this morn the breeze is blowing

Freshly: I hear lightly flowing

From the bending giant beam

Bars the forehead of our door

The golden raindrops in a stream

Pattering on the steamy floor.

Faun. It is the Centaur's voice I hear!

Young and lusty, deep and clear:

And the Panisks at his voice

In their fastnesses rejoice,

Emerging from the creviced crag

Or cave beneath the mountain's jag,

Merry, shaggy, light of hoof,

To run along the narrow roof,

And upon the shelvèd height

Dance before the swimming light.

THE CENTAUR'S MORNING SONG (continued)

Centaur. And I see upon the ledge,

Astir over the hanging edge,

A russet briar cold with dew

And beyond, forlornly pent

In a grey cloud's gliding rent,

A pure pool of the brightest blue:

So near it seems I've but to cast

A flint out on the forward vast

To mark it flashing blithely through!

And now at last!

At last

The great Sun,

The Sudden One,

Stamps upon the cloudy floor;

The heavens are split, and through the floor

Heaven's golden treasures tumbling pour....

And the Sun himself, divine,

Doth descend

In such a bursting blaze of shine

That his glorious hair is shook

Over the wide world's craggiest end!

And, even I, I dare not look.

I will shout! I will ramp!

Just three bounds: then out and stamp

Where the air like water is

Eddying up over the precipice;—

Wind with an edge to it, sea-damp,

Blowing from the canyon's race

Where the dripping sea-wind heaves

Through a tunnel of the rocks

Sea-water up in thunderous sheaves

Against the precipitous water-rapids,

To whip from off th' high-hurtled shocks

Bursts of mist which soak the leaves

Of each scented bush that cleaves

To the cliffs. Till Fauns and Lapiths

Dance in the sun-bewildered brakes,

Till even flushed Silenus wakes,

And—with a short deep-throated troll

To the wind and to the wine,

Both delirious, both divine!—

Starts, as he drains the tilted bowl,

At din, to rolling uproar grown,

Of rocks dislodged and bounding down,

With splinter of pines and flint-shocked flashes,

From the ridge whereon we dance

In a loud exuberance

Of rattling hoofs whose echoes drown

The squealing joy or reedy pining

Of Pan's pipe, where Pan reclining

Plays in the clouded mountain's crown!

III

The Faun hails the Centaur.

Faun. It is the Centaur's voice I hear.

The creeper tresses toss with fear,

Then part before a pow'rful hand.

See, see, O see the Centaur stand

With ruggëd head erect and proud,

Whose rounded mouth yet chants aloud

The Joy of Mind fulfilled in Force:

Glory of Man, glory of Horse.

Hail thou, the sov'reign of the hill!

Hail thou, upon whose locks distil

Fresh dews when mid majestic night

Thou pacest, hid, along the height.

Thine are the solitudes of snow

Between bare peaks, thy hooves also

Are heard within the dusk defile

Where Titans of a sunless while

Fashioned huge sphinxes in whose eyes

The Kite now skulks or, girding, cries.

Thine, too, the sole and sinking pine

Burned by the sunset—ay, and thine

The ledges whence a sudden sift

Of snow sighs downward, thine the swift

Uproar of avalanche and all

The mountain echoes. To thee call,

When the snow melts and there are seen

Crocuses blazing mid the green

Of the dewed grass, the Sylvan folk:

The Dryads from the leafless oak

Or budded elder, that at length

Thou mayst release them by the strength

Of thy tough fingers; 'tis on thee

The nymphs cry should the runnels be

Exhausted of the midsummer sun,

Sith, stamping, thou canst make to run

The hoarded waters of the wold.

And among men thou art of old

Thought's emblem: for to thee belong

All gifts of deep, wise, epic song.

Hail, then, whom Earth and mankind hails.

And Ocean, whose high-spouting whales

And dripping serpents, that arise

Swinging their gold crests to the skies

To drink in all thy bold descant

Hail, though they cannot view thee chant,

As I who now behold in sooth

Thy lighted eyes and singing mouth.

Of the Centaur's Beauty.

O grape-hung locks! glorious face,

Capacious frame, sinewy grace

Of arm that lifts a skully lyre

Whose dithyramb whirls ever higher!

Deep breast-bone, belly, curvèd thews—

Such as the tussling oak doth use

Upon the crumbled scarp to grip—

Striking from trunk down through the hip

Into the stallion's massive shoulders

Glossy as moonlit ice-bound boulders!

Stiff, stalwart forelegs, heavy hoof

Yet fleeter far on heights aloof

Than ev'n such doubled hares as race

Blue 'thwart dim fells, or, speck in space,

Osprey, gale-swept across the tides!

Thy man's trunk glisters; on thy sides

A soft and silver shagginess,

Inviting slim hands to caress,

Hangs dewy——

Centaur.             Faun, Faun, art thou near?

Faun. Behold me stand, proud Centaur, here

Upon the bluff where 'neath me lies

The sunned pool of the precipice.

Of the Centaur's Ardour.

Centaur. Faun, in my veins the blood 'gins race,

The new sun sweats upon my face,

Dazzles my pupils, golden swims

Over my flushed and fervid limbs.

I feel in me my spirit rise

Griffon-like flogging up tall skies.

Now is the Morning of the World,

And through my heart a flood is hurled

Of onerous joyance, of desire

To clutch the sun and spill its fire

Down heaven's blue bulwarks! to snatch life

And drain its lusty full in strife

Of all my body with the bent

Wrestle of every element:

Close with the whirlwind, front the tide

And turn its moony press aside.

But in the world I cannot find

A match in strength, a foe in mind....

At dawn, at eve the waters burn;

All night the constellations turn

Round the dark pole, and none knows why....

None seeks to know save only I

And thou, O Faun. We are alone....

Yet sometimes, when the wind is gone

And all below shines sunned and still,

I feel depart from me the will

Merely to know, to know and wait:

I would do more: I would create.

Though what I know not; but I would

Spend this my mind and hardihood.

Yet find no means save physic force:—

Sing as a man, stride as a horse.

Then stride I? Swift I overcome

The fleetest. Sing I? All are dumb.

Natheless my heart demands in grief

Ardour, endurance and relief;

Asks, but receives not.

Faun.                     Shall not I

Echo thy pain, whom Fates deny

Answer to thought,—as they to thee

The lust-of-action's fill? But we

Accept too much, O Sire. 'Twere best,

Though idly, to fulfil our zest.

Of the Challenge.

Four leagues this canyon runs between

Us twain or ever there is seen

The arch of rock whose massy grace

Bridges yon gap of golden space.

Deignest thou, then, to race with me

From such tall eyries to the sea,

If even now I upward leap?

Centaur. Leap then! I catch thee e'er the steep

Subsides in woodland or in down.

IV

And of the Manner of the Running.

Away! My rapping footfalls drown

All but the sobbing of the wind

Within my ears and loud behind

The thunder of the Centaur's hooves

Where, like a hailstorm, down he moves.

Past me the spun pines rock and hiss,

Behind my feet stones pelted whizz,

Hills rise before me, backward flow,

The bare downs, bright'ning, mount below....

On. On. Down. Down. But, ah, no more!

My breath comes keener than the frore

Indraught of age-long mountain frost;

My head turns dizzy, feet are lost.

Yet scamper feet! A rock—a mound:

Rap! Rap! I soar it at a bound.

On. On. Down. Down. A sudden brook,

And now—in mid-air—lo! there look

Laughingly up at me the eyes

Of Hyads, and their fading cries

Ring in my ears. Can they have seen

The Centaur hurtle by between

Them and the clouds? The downs up-fly.

Now earth's bowl rocks and reels the sky

And through my chilly flaming tears

The molten sun swoops, bursts, and veers....

The Faun falls.

Still rap my hoofs, though but the sound

Tells me they yet rocket the ground.

The uproar loudens more behind.

My crook'd legs cross, my eyes go blind.

I claw the sky: for, O! I can

Scarce lurch. I feel the sudden fan

Of the great Centaur's galey breath

Upon my nape, and like chill death

His hand descends. But, ah! he laughs

Even as Bacchus when he quaffs

In jest or taunt a double bowl.

I, choking, reel, and, tripping, roll

Wildly aside. See! as I fall

A rampant shape majestical

Storms vehement by, and, storming, swings

Hand across rushing lyre, which rings

To strains, like rolling breakers tossed

High o'er an adamantine coast,

In praise of elemental Mirth,

Strength, Beauty and the Golden Earth!

V

Of Downs beloved by Pan.

Beyond the rocks, below the trees,

The great downs lie; nought but the breeze

Is heard upon them. All day long

The shadows of the great clouds throng

Across their sides: a noiseless rout.

Sometimes a peewit, blown about

By airy surge, cries a lone cry

Ere hurtled down the clarid sky;

Sometimes is heard a shepherd's voice

Shouting, and after it the noise

Of many-pattering crowded sheep

Herded within the gay dog's keep,

Who also, barking, shouts. Save these

Nought breaks the breezy silences

Of the green sun-swept, cloud-swept spaces....

Such downs Pan loves, and ofttime places

His lonely altars on them.

I

One of such now behold. A high

Mound bears it, and its nakedness

Of festal fruit and fragrant dress

Hints 'tis new-built.

Up, then, and sound

A rally to the sacred ground:

FAUN'S RALLY.

Faun. Come ye, merry shepherds all,

Hulli-lulli-li-lo!

Listen to my piping call:

Hulli-li-lo!

Hasten to Pan's festival;

Leave your sheep.

Cannot Pan a shrewd watch keep

O'er his own?

Safe are they as pent in stall;

Safe are they, for Pan has thrown

Fear about them like a wall.

Wherefore, shepherds, hither run.

I have set my pipes to lip;

Now they cry despondingly

As mid shaken locks I dip.

Now shrill—as hark!—I lift them high

To swirl the tune about the sky!

Up and down and round the sky

Till want I further force to blow....

Wherefore, shepherds, hither run,

Dance behind me as I skip;

Strike the tóssed támbours in únison,

Dance, dance and make to dance the sun

To your Hulli-li-lo!

Shepherds. Faun, I come. I hear. We hear—

Faun. This my Hulli-li-lo:

Now afar and now anear.

Shepherds. Never sped the midnight deer

Half so fast

'Fore Diana's star-ringed spear

As now haste we to appear

At thy Hulli-li-lo!

Faun. Joy, O shepherds, at the sound:

Hulli-lulli-li-lo!

Pan's new altar I have found:

Hulli-li-lo!

Cowslips prank its holy mound,

With ivy have I wreathed it round—

But not yet

Is the altar's dress complete

Till with flowers its horns are bound.

Shepherds. Faun, we hear, and from the brook

Flags are pulled; and now we hook

Honeysuckle high, low

Down to us with shepherd's crook;

Breathing floss,

Clematis twines, rushy stook,

Apple blossom, down is shook

At thy Hulli-li-lo!

Faun. Wreathe the pedestal anew;

Hulli-lulli-li-lo!

Scatter violets scattering dew;

Hulli-li-lo!

Honey that the brown bees brew

Pour, and rosy blossoms strew;

Spill such wine

As in dim-bloomed clusters grew

On your father's father's vine.

Dance you now.

I my pipe cease—thus—to blow:

Dance you on.

Dance about the sacred mound,

Dance when every sound is gone....

Now the timbrels softly, sprightly

Beat, and foot it gaily, lightly;

Tiptoe o'er the secret ground,

Dance the round.

Next, to the sole, trilling flute

And your own subduèd laughter

Flutter all in throngs and mazes,

Chase in streams of ardent faces,

With bright eyes and oped mouth mute.

Now alone,

One by one,

Dance and dream, and dreaming float

Till the multitude drifts after,

And I wake a quicker note:

Clap your hands aloft and cry;

Surge in line tumultuously;

Cry, and with a whirl of voices

Fright the pigeons whickering by!

Praise the God of field and fold!

Shout until the hills have told,

By their sudden echoes flying,

Flying, crying, falling, dying,

That upon his name we call,

Who beside the river lying

Hears us keep his festival.

VI

The Faun enters the Valley.

Wearied of solitary hills,

On which the wannish sunlight spills,

And which the glooms of high clouds cross,

Clouds wandering ever at a loss

About th' immeasurable sky,

I will descend. And by-and-by

Glimpse beneath the shouldered down

A hamlet reeking golden-brown;

Creep through a willow copse to view

Under an orchard avenue,

A lithe girl in a sun-splashed smock

Calling her perchëd pigeon flock,

And as they coo and flutter over

Laughing and carolling of her lover.

Girl. 'Little pigeon, grave and fleet'—

All the golden grain you'd eat,

Greedy! let the little bird

Pick some. Sweet, your cooing's heard;

You shall have this. There! Be bolder:

Light you now upon my shoulder....

Cooroo? Cooroo in my ear?

Darling, yes, I hear, I hear:

From this hand, then, you shall pluck it.

Foolish love! your wings have struck it,

Spilt the grain the grass among.

—Flutter! Flutter!—where's my song?

'Little pigeon, grave and fleet'—

Too late now your wings you beat

By my face: look in the ground;

There, they say, all gold is found.

THE PIGEON SONG.

Little pigeon, grave and fleet,

Eye-of-fire, sweet Snowy-wings,

Think you that you can discover

On what great green down my lover

Lies by his sunny sheep and sings?

If you can, O go and greet

Him from me; say: She is waiting....

Not for him, O no! but, sweet,

Say June's nigh and doves, remating,

Fill the dancing noontide heat

With melodious debating.

Say the swift swoops from the beam;

Soon the cuckoo must cease calling;

Kingcups flare beside the stream,

That not glides now but runs brawling;

That wet roses are asteam

In the sun and will be falling.

Say the chestnut sheds his bloom;

Honey from straw hivings oozes;

There's a nightjar in the coombe;

Venus nightly burns, and chooses

Most to blaze above my room;

That the laggard 'tis that loses.

Say the nights are warm and free,

And the great stars swarm above him;

But soon starless night must be.

Yet if all these do not move him,

Tell, O tell—but not too plainly!—

That I long for him and love him.

Little pigeon, grave and fleet,

Fly you swiftly, tell him this;

And I'll give you grain so golden

Midas' self has ne'er beholden

Aught so gold, and—yes!—a kiss.

Smiling at her eager voice,

I will grant the girl her choice,

Whispering to the pigeon: "Lo!

Yon's the way for you to go:

Over the willows, past the copse,

To where a sylph-like lime-tree tops

A lonely knoll; then on and on

Toward where yesternight there shone

A silver comet, scarce descried,

Against the fainting eventide."

VII

Of the Faun's Whimseys.

Away then! crashing through the wood,

Prancing in a whimsey mood,

To yowl as a she-wolf does at dark

Until th' infuriate watch-dogs bark;

Or bid hushed tales of ghosts go round,

Of warnings heard, but nothing found,

By whistling at the village boor;

Or poke my rogue face round a door

And scare a huffy wife to fits,

Who swears, "'Tis Pan himself!" or, "It's

That grizzled sailor-man who slew

His mate 'twixt Bogs and Dead Man's Yew!"

Next through the dairy steal to slake

My thirst with cream, with honeycake

Cram my sweet maw; slip in the churn

A farm cat, that the tub may turn

And fright maid Molly. I will seek

Strawberries and stain chin, mouth and cheek

With nuzzling in their scarlet bowl;

Then in the goodman's bed I'll roll

Because he loves me not; I'll sing

Until the crowded rafters ring

The while about my ears I hang

Bobbed cherries.... Lastly I will clang

Among the clattering pots and pans,

Shout, cry "Oh help!" snatch up a man's

Cloak, and slip out.

The Pursuit.

Whoop! Whoop! They run:

The hare once spied, the hunt's begun!—

Goodman and goodman's wife, pert Polly,

Clown Colin, Wiggen and maid Molly,

Pant, crying, "Thief!" The while behind

Shrunk Dorcas hops, and fills the wind

With apish merriment, shrill malice,

And cries of—"Well run, Poll! Run, Alice!

Run, child! The master's cloak and all!

How sad the goodman's ta'en a fall!

Mistress down, too—he! he! what pity!

Run, Alice child, my bird, my pretty;

Show 'em how nimble thou canst be,—

Ay, but the girl runs prettily.

Run, Hobbinol, thou gawky man!

Thou mayest kiss if catch thou can!

Odd's me! and what's it all about?

A thief? That mischief Faun!"

A shout

Startles the pigeons from the croft:

"We've circled him!" "He's in the loft."

But as they, silent, crowd unto 't

I jump. For am not I a goat?

From out the hayloft's height I leap

O'er their craned heads into the deep

Grass of the orchard. Thence I run

Across lush meadows. One by one

They fall behind....

A scarecrow I

Now seek, and 'bout it carefully

Enwrap the newly pilfered cloak....

Scarecrows are such poor crazy folk....

VIII

The Faun hides.

So to a thorny thicket dense

With rosy-coloured may-bloom, whence

I can hear a torrent rumble,

And, peering forth, behold it tumble

Cumbrously into a pool whose white

Tumult sears the giddied sight.

There, half dozed, silent, smile to hear

A babble of voices drawing near,

Spy many a boy and laughing lass

Racing hands-linked across the grass.

A CATCH FOR SPRING.

Boys and Girls. Now has the blue-eyed Spring

Sped dancing through the plain.

Girls weave a daisy chain;

Boys race beside the sedge;

Dust fills the blinding lane;

May lies upon the hedge:

All creatures love the spring!

The clouds laugh on, and would

Dance with us if they could;

The larks ascend and shrill;

A woodpecker fills the wood;

Jays laugh crossing the hill:

All creatures love the spring!

The lithe cloud-shadows chase

Over the whole earth's face,

And where winds ruffling veer

O'er wooded streams' dark ways

Mad fish upscudding steer:

All creatures love the spring!

Into the dairy cool

Run, girls, to drink thick cream!

Race, boys, to where the stream

Winds through a rumbling pool,

And your bright bodies fling

Into the foaming cool!

For we'll enjoy our spring!

IX

Of the Faun's Journey to the Sea.

Seaward my forest way I'll take,

And at a pool's lit quietude slake

My thirst, and feel a dull flame creep

Like the first flux of tidal sleep

Through all my limbs. Yet, when I sink

Sleepward, start wide-eyed up to drink

The sunned wood's wet deliciousness,

Touch flowers, and feel the sun's caress

About my locks, and wander on,

Or pause to smile up at the sun,

Guarding my eyes with glowing hand,

Or, leaned against a beech-trunk, stand

Watching between the branches' rift,

As they gently wave and lift

To the bland breeze softly blowing,

The noiseless clouds serenely going

Slowly to the hid, low sea

I can hear breathing slumberously.

Till from the woodland I emerge,

Greeted by a louder surge,

And from the bushy cliff-top spy

How the hollow bay doth lie

One quiver and murmur under the sun,

And how the lightsome wind-puffs run

Chasing each other crookedly,

Over the idly heaving sea.

Of the Sea-Horses.

Next I will turn my eyes, perhaps,

To where the languid waters lapse

Glittering over a sunburned rock

Round which the shrieking white gulls flock....

Thus browsing in my solitude,

I may remember I've a feud

With the Sea-Horses, once who drave

Me from the sea-light of their cave.

Enough! and, crashing down, I come

To find them drowsing in their home....

So creep I with a crooked stick

To where a blinding pool is quick

With green electric water-snakes.

Sprawling across a rock which bakes

I stir the molten till they boil

And up my hawthorn kick and coil;

Then scamper, rocketing, to the cave,

Hurl the stick in. Hark! how they rave,

And plunge up clattering, kicking, neighing,

Till Triton on his horn 'gins braying,

And each hasteneth to belabour

With hooves or tear with teeth his neighbour,

And from the cavern's blueness rush

Into the simmering beach's hush,

To stand, with heaving flanks, agaze

At the hot stones and still sea's blaze:

Then stampede, scattering high and wide

A hail of stones and glittering tide.

X

Of the Faun in his Meditation.

I will walk the sunny wood,

Deep and tranquil as my mood,

And watch how the honeyed sunlight is

Hung in the great boughs of the trees,

And the pattern the branchwork weaves

Under the panoply of leaves,

And how high up two butterflies

Pass, vaulting, out into the skies.

Or, entering a silent glade,

Draw a sharp breath and stand dismayed

At beauty which doth straight present

Such a spasm of ravishment

Sight is confused, and doth confess

Her wreck in voiceless tenderness:

Seeing the flower-decked cherry-trees—

Unruffled ever by any breeze,

Unburned by bright dawn's fiery chill—

Standing celestially still....

Or lay me down 'neath chestnut boughs,

And drowse and dream and dream and drowse,

Drunk with the greenness overhead,

Until a blossom of sharp red,

Shook from her high and scalding place,

Splash with chill scent my upturned face.

XI

Of the Philosopher.

But, lo! amid the woodland green

What mantles of strange blue are seen?

What sage is he who slowly leads

Disciples on and little heeds

The holiness of sylvan haunt,

Where even the silver bird dare chant

But seldom? where the sunlight lies

Here scalding gold, and yonder dies

Into a humid, still, green gloom?

Hath not he in the forum room

To vent himself, that now with rude

Rabble he scareth Solitude

From her ultimate hiding-place?

Now steps he forward a slow pace,

And 'gins his discourse. Hear him prate,

O woods, to silence consecrate;

Hear him, O flowers, whose golden eyes

Speak more than all Man's orat'ries!—

And his Oration.

Philosopher. Meanwhile, though nations in distress

Cower at a comet's loveliness

Shaken across the midnight sky;

Though the wind roars, and Victory,

A virgin fierce, on vans of gold

Stoops through the cloud's white smother rolled

Over the armies' shock and flow

Across the broad green hills below,

Yet hovers and will not circle down

To cast t'ward one the leafy crown;

Though men drive galleys' golden beaks

To isles beyond the sunset peaks,

And cities on the sea behold

Whose walls are glass, whose gates are gold,

Whose turrets, risen in an hour,

Dazzle between the sun and shower,

Whose sole inhabitants are kings

Six cubits high with gryphon's wings

And beard and mien more glorious

Than Midas or Assaracus;

Though priests in many a hill-top fane

Lift anguished hands—and lift in vain—

Toward the sun's shaft dancing through

The bright roof's square of wind-swept blue;

Though 'cross the stars nightly arise

The silver fumes of sacrifice;

Though a new Helen bring new scars,

Pyres piled upon wrecked golden cars,

Stacked spears, rolled smoke, and spirits sped

Like a streaked flame toward the dead:

Though all these be, yet grows not old

Delight of sunned and windy wold,

Of soaking downs aglare, asteam,

Of still tarns where the yellow gleam

Of a far sunrise slowly breaks,

Or sunset strews with golden flakes

The deeps which soon the stars will throng.

For earth yet keeps her undersong

Of comfort and of ultimate peace,

That whoso seeks shall never cease

To hear at dawn or noon or night.

Joys hath she, too, joys thin and bright,

Too thin, too bright, for those to hear

Who listen with an eager ear,

Or course about and seek to spy,

Within an hour, eternity.

First must the spirit cast aside

This world's and next his own poor pride

And learn the universe to scan

More as a flower less as a man.

Then shall he hear the lonely dead

Sing and the stars sing overhead,

And every spray upon the heath

And larks above and ants beneath;

The stream shall take him in her arms;

Blue skies shall rest him in their calms;

The wind shall be a lovely friend,

And every leaf and bough shall bend

Over him with a lover's grace.

The hills shall bare a perfect face

Full of a high solemnity;

The heavenly clouds shall weep, and be

Content as overhead they swim

To be high brothers unto him.

No more shall he feel pitched and hurled

Uncomprehended into this world

For every place shall be his place,

And he shall recognize its face.

At dawn he shall upon his path;

No sword shall touch him, nor the wrath

Of the ranked crowd of clamorous men.

At even he shall home again,

And lay him down to sleep at ease,

One with the Night and the Night's peace.

Ev'n Sorrow, to be escaped of none,

But a more deep communion

Shall be to him, and Death at last

No more dreaded than the Past,

Whose shadow in the brain of earth

Informs him now and gave him birth.

The Faun's Anger.

Up, O Faun, up! is he a man

So dares affront the great god Pan?

Creep I now close....

(Has he not heard

Ever the lamb cry as the bird

Descends upon its helpless head

To pluck its eyes out? Blank with dread

Did he ne'er press in stumbling haste

Over the wide moor's tossing waste?

Or, stripped to plunge, did never eye

The sunned pool smiling treacherously,

Despair and terror in his heart?

Hate on him!)

See: he draws apart

That with himself he may commune

The while to a low murmuring tune

Wrung from a golden-stringëd lyre

The young men chant. Hist! Draws he nigher?

Now crouch I mid a thicket where

The spicy hedge-rose warms the air

With giddy scent, and for an hour

Woos with her open-bosomed flower

The full gaze of her lord the sun,

And through whose thorns the sunbeams run

Spangling the cavern of the brake

With chequered shade such as the snake

Loves to repose in, that the heat

Upon his sullen coils may beat,

Breeding within his ancient heart

Such malice that his tongue must dart

Flickering in silence out and in,

The while adown his withered skin,

From horns above his murderous eyes,

The cold surge shudders, ebbs, and dies.

And of the Trick the Faun played, thereby symbolizing the Rule of Pan in Nature.

And now yon comes, with solemn head

Sunk upon breast, with laurel spread

About his thought-bewrinkled brows.

All hail, philosopher! I rouse

Thee by a low and single hiss.

He is frozen still. A sudden bliss

Seizes me, and a branch I shake

As gently as an unseen snake

Swinging toward him.

But he stands,

Clasps and unclasps his gradual hands

In silence save for one long sigh

Of terror.

And I draw more nigh.

Beneath his glazèd eyes I sway

Three leaves upon one stilly spray:

He blenches.

Ha! it was well done,

That final hiss.

I am alone:

For with a harsh cry he has fled

Hideously stumbling, and is led

Speechless away.

The lyre, forgot,

Lies in the grass....

XII

Of the Spring, Frequent Haunt of the Lonely Naiads.

I know a spot

Where, to the sound of water sighing,

The Naiads, when the sun is lying

Heavy on mead and fronded tree,

When birds are silent and the bee

Swoons in the dewed heart of the rose,

Sing hushedly.

I will repose

Upon its banks and to the spring

An answer make with hands that cling

Over this lost lyre's murmurous chords

And with their voiced quiet mingle words

Such as my shrouded soul affords

When the warm blood within my veins

Throbs heavily, and the noon sun reigns,

Who would heaven and earth unite

In one blaze of arduous light,

Till dark woods, fields, bronzed sky, and deep,

In one maniac dull dream sleep.

XIII

THE NAIADS' MUSIC.

The Naiads. Come, ye sorrowful, and steep

Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:

For our kisses lightlier run

Than the traceries of the sun

By the lolling water cast

Up grey precipices vast,

Lifting smooth and warm and steep

Out of the palely shimmering deep.

Come, ye sorrowful, and take

Kisses that are but half awake:

For here are eyes O softer far

Than the blossom of the star

Upon the mothy twilit waters,

And here are mouths whose gentle laughters

Are but the echoes of the deep

Laughing and murmuring in its sleep.

Come, ye sorrowful, and see

The raindrops flaming goldenly

On the stream's eddies overhead

And dragonflies with drops of red

In the crisp surface of each wing

Threading slant rains that flash and sing,

Or under the water-lily's cup,

From darkling depths, roll slowly up

The bronze flanks of an ancient bream

Into the hot sun's shattered beam,

Or over a sunk tree's bubbled bole

The perch stream in a golden shoal:

Come, ye sorrowful; our deep

Holds dreams lovelier than sleep.

But if ye sons of Sorrow come

Only wishing to be numb:

Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies,

Our breasts are soft as silken roses,

And our hands are tenderer

Than the breaths that scarce can stir

The sunlit eglantine that is

Murmurous with hidden bees.

Come, ye sorrowful, and steep

Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.

Come, ye sorrowful, for here

No voices sound but fond and clear

Of mouths as lorn as is the rose

That under water doth disclose,

Amid her crimson petals torn,

A heart as golden as the morn;

And here are tresses languorous

As the weeds wander over us,

And brows as holy and as bland

As the honey-coloured sand

Lying sun-entranced below

The lazy water's limpid flow:

Come, ye sorrowful, and steep

Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.

The Faun prepares to reply.

Sweet water-voices! now must I

Unto your sorrowings reply.

But hark! or ever there can sound

On the lull air the first profound

Few murmurs of my lyre's grave strings,

A voice uprises. Who now sings

The noon's and his own tristfulness?

A slim youth—in a shepherd's dress,

Yet without sheep—who careless lies

Upon the hill. His shepherd guise

Tokens, perhaps, a poet's heart

Which joys in wandering apart

From the dinned ways where chariots roll,

From the shrill sophist with his shoal

Of gapers, from the angry mart,

From the full eyes and empty heart

Of babbling women, from the neat

Aridity of paven street,

A heart that wandering, musing, sings

The joy, depth, pain of simple things:

MIDDAY IN ARCADIA.

The Youth. The earth is still; only the white sun climbs

Through the green silence of the branching limes,

Whose linked flowers hanging from the still tree-top

Distil their soundless syrup drop by drop,

While 'twixt the starry bracket of their lips

The black bee drowsing floats and drowsing sips.

The flimsy leaves hang on the bright blue air

Calm-suspended. Deep peace is everywhere

Filled with the murmurous rumour of high noon.

Earth seems with open eyes to sink and swoon.

In the sky peace: where nothing moves

Save the sun that smiles and loves.

A quivering peace is on the grass.

Through the noon gloam butterflies pass,

White and hot blue, only to where

They can float flat and dream on the soft air....

The trees are asleep, beautiful, slumbrous trees!

Stirred only by the passion of the breeze,

That, like a warm wave welling over rocks,

Loosens and lifts the mass of drowsing locks.

Earth, too, under the profound grass

Sleeps and sleeps, and softly heaves her slumbrous mass.

The earth sleeps. Sleeps the newly-buried clay

Or doth divinity trouble it to live alway?

No voice uplifts from under the rapt crust.

The dust cries to the unregarding dust.

Over the hill the stopped notes of twin reeds

Speak like drops from an old wound that bleeds:

A yokel's pipe an ancient pastoral sings

Above the innumerable murmur of hid wings.

I hear the cadence, sorrowful and sweet,

The oldest burthen of the earth repeat:

All love, all passion, all strife, all delight

Are but the dreams that haunt earth's visioned night.

In her eternal consciousness the stir

Of Alexander is no more to her

Than you or I: being all part of dreams,

The shadowiest shadow of a thing that seems,

The images the lone pipe-player sees,

Sitting and playing to the lone, noon breeze.

One note, one life!

They sleep: soon we as these!

XIV

Of the Satyrs' Feast.

Now plunge I into deepest woods,

Where everlastingly there broods

Such quiet and glamour as must be

Beneath the threshing upper sea.

Here burns no sun, but tawny light

Pervades the vistas still and bright

Of mazy boles and fallen leaves....

I press yet on. At length there cleaves

The twilit hush a pillared gleam.

The leafed floor rises. 'Tis a beam

Of sunlight fallen in a dell

Beyond the mound. There will I dwell,

Soothed by sunned quietude. For there

A carved rock spouts and moists the air

With gross-mouthed pour and rising spray....

But hark! what festive cries are they

Which greet me as I top the mound?

Below, dispersed and sunk around

The green and golden of the glen,

Lie satyrs; in a leafy den,

Silenus, crowned with vines and roses,

Drowses and starts, blinks, drinks, and dozes.

Banqueting dishes strew the grass,

Goblets of gold and peacock glass,

Flagons, urns, many a brimming bowl,

And horns from which the flushed fruits roll.

High o'er the feast a fronded ash

Hangs full of sunlight, and the splash

Of the spring's leap or gurgeing flow

Into the rippled pool below,

Where lilies rock, shakes up a bright

Eddy of golden tremulous light

Over the leaves. The Oread,

In a hooded lynx pelt clad,

Smiles where she lolls ... the while twin fauns

With stamping hooves and butting horns

Join combat for a dripping cup

She bears.

But now a shout goes up

At sight of me:

The Invitation.

Satyr.             "We feast, we feast;

For, lo! the flaming sun hath ceased

To climb the curve of arid sky,

And his meridian holds on high,

Narrowing with his scorching beams

The chestnut's shade, exhausting streams,

Stilling the woodland singer's note,

Piercing the eyes, shrinking the throat,

Saddening the heart of man and beast.

Yet grieve not we but sprawl and feast.

Leap down, O Faun, then, from thy rocks,

Leap down to us. Bedew thy locks

With such cool spicy nards as dwell

Within this ribbed and rosy shell;

Around thy scalded temples twine

Sprays of this fountain-wetted vine,

And from this golden jorum sip

Nectarous liquor—ay, and lip

Smooth nectarines, thy sunk teeth clench

In melon dripping sherds, and quench

Thy salty thirst anew in flow

Of sparkled or dark wines that glow

With sober warmth and merriment,

Until our gladdened voices blent

Awake the vigour of our feet,

And up we start the grass to beat

With fervent foot, drink, dance again,

And, ever at the loud refrain

Clashing our cups, dance on and on,

Till the noontide lull is gone."

So join I them, and drink and sup,

And fill again the great bowl up;

And, drenched thus down, spin lusty tales

Of topping bouts 'twixt men and whales;

Of the East's Emperor who hath

A pool of wine to be his bath;

Of Hercules his thirst, and how

He did all Ethiopia plough,

And plant with vines, his thirst to sate.

We will discuss the Ideal State,

Whose sky is covered by a vine,

Whose hills are cheese, whose rivers wine,

Whose trees bear loaves brown, crisp and sweet,

Whose citizens do nought but eat,

But eat and drink, drink, eat, and snore,

And eat again, and wish no more

Than so to drink, snore, eat; who find

In this true liberty of mind

And true equality, in this

Fraternity, law, earthly bliss.

So swill again and yet again,

Till a fire flushes all the brain

And, trolling lustily and long,

Each hearty throat bursts into song.

A DITHYRAMB TO DIONYSOS.

Faun and Satyrs. Avaunt, mild-eyed Melancholy!

Welcome, Mirth and mænad Folly!

See about the lifted bowl,

Wrinkled on its bossy scroll,

Ribald nymphs and satyrs jolly

Tussle with a prancing goat;

While Silenus, kneeling, drolly

Proffers a dry bowl unto 't——

Ay, and round the mazer's brim

Boisterous Mermen shouting swim,

And each burly arm lifts up,

Wine that o'erbrims its conchëd cup;

Wherefore pour a triple potion:

If such can be dry in ocean,

'Tis as Titans we must sup!

Avaunt, brow and visage pious:

None but Bacchus boys come nigh us!

Raise the bowl and shout his name:

Io, Bacchus! for a flame

Chafes in our blood, O Bromios!

Fire no water e'er could quench,

And its heat must scorify us

If with wine we do not drench.

Wherefore overbrim the cup:

This to Jove now drink I up,

Who upon thy first of days

Snátched thee and cówed thy natal blaze,

Even as 'tis now the merry

Strength of this thy vintaged berry,

That the scorching danger stays.

To the vine now! let its golden

Leaves about our brows be folden.

To the swarthy hand that trims it!

To the grape! the sun that dims it!

To the pipe that doth embolden

Purpled stamping feet to riot

O'er the vatted winepress olden!

To the cavern's depth, chill, quiet!

Last to wine's own ruddy sprite,

Wakes in rheumy eyes a light—

Ay, and ripens youth to man;

Wine which more works than wisdom can;

Wine that welcomes hardy morrows;

Wine that turns to song our sorrows;

Wine the only magian!

Deep now! every bowl enhances

The world's beauty; see there dances

In the sky the leaping sun!

'Nay, can thine eye catch but one?'

'Six now spin.' 'A seventh advances,

Flares and vomits, swerves and blazes,

Now bursts and countlessly it prances,

Pulsing to my frantic paces!'

'I flame,—gyrate!' 'I shoot out heat!'

'My tricked speech trips, and trip my feet!'

'The earth runs round and heav'n is wheeling!'

'I sway; I reel.' 'Earth's wrecked and reeling!'

'Dance on.' 'Earth's gone.' 'All's white and clear!'

'Ah! Ah! Behind the blaze I hear

The Oread's laughter pealing!'

Avaunt, grief! Descend, O holy

Fierce Bacchic rapture, divine folly!

XV

Of the Faun's Further Wanderings.

Forth from the forest wend I slowly,

While in my ears yet rings the holy

Dithyramb. The noon is past,

But the sun rages. There is cast

A dumbness yet o'er earth and sky.

Down to the river then will I,

Slowly about its depths to swim,

While the stream fondles every limb

And soothes its ache. Deep I will dip,

And, blowing, raise my locks, that drip

Till the slim Hyads troop to see,

And revel, too, and play with me,

Hanging my ears with humid weed

Or mounting me as water steed.

Then, musing I will on, and so

Stray to where a silver slow

River circles through the meads,

Wherein the mooching great ox feeds,

And turns a slow eye round the sky,

Wondering if he can ever die.

And there, mayhap, 'twill come to pass

I'll hear a sweet voice in the grass,

And yet shall mark no singer nigh,

Till, gently peering, I espy

A solemn, elfish child who sits

Unseen mid towering grass, and knits

An endless, endless daisy chain,

Crooning the while some soft refrain

Her mother sings her when she closes

Her twilit eyes.

Little Girl.       Three red, red, roses—

One each for father and mother, and one,

The reddest of all, for her baby son.

None for wee Amoret? Oh, none! for she

Some day, when she grows up, a red rose will be!

Of the Faun's Converse with a Small She-Child.

Then, crossed-legged mid the meadow-sweet,

I will sink down, laugh low, and greet

Her blue, inquiring, childish eyes

With mine, sharp, merry, brown, and wise,

And tell her tales—of Jack who slew

Ten giants; or Mirabel who flew

On a white owl to find the Prince

And give to him the Golden Quince

Would change him from a roaring bull

To a youth blithe and beautiful;

Or tales of the Goblin and the Sloth,

Who watched the moon and swore an oath

To find out what she was: how these

Explored her mines and found her—cheese.

Thus will I sit and both amuse

Until I rise and beg excuse:

Off 'to El Raschid in Assyria'

Or 'the Grand-Duchess of Illyria,'

Or 'to ask the maiden moon

Why one only of her shoon

She left us last night in the sky,

And not her silver self, and why

She always climbs the self-same track?

Lets no one ever see her back?'

XVI

But neither to the moon go I

Or to the river gliding by,

But to the woods, therein to move

Among the quiet glades I love,

Desiring nought but aye to see

The beech, ash, oak, and chestnut tree....

Till I a nymph meet who persuades

Me to the broadest of the glades,

Around whose smooth and sunken space

The far woods lie. For in this place,

Deserted but for a mid-grove

Of maiden trees, bower of the dove,

Pan plays, and should the sylvans chance,

Nymphs, fauns, and sylvans, join in dance.

XVII

Of the Immortal Dance.

On either hand the slender trees

Bow to the caressing breeze,

And shake their shocks of silver light

Against skies marbled greenish-white,

Save where, within a rent of blue,

The tilted slip of moon glints through,

Glittering upon us as we dance

With a soft extravagance

Of limbs as blonde as autumn boughs,

And gold locks floating from moony brows.

While anguished Pan the pipes doth blow

Fond and tremulous and low,

And anon the timbrel shakes.

—It is his sudden heart that breaks

For springs before the world grew old,

Rich vales, and hill-tops fiery cold!—

He watches the scarce moving skies,

The trees, the glittering revelries,

The moon, the dancers lemon-clad:

The world fantastical and sad.

The high-flung timbrels pulse and knock;

We follow in a dancing flock,

Touching each other's finger-tips,

While from between our parted lips

The solemn melodies repeat

The rhythm of our shaken feet.

Then faster! and the round we trace,

Hair flowing from elated face,

Eyes lit, breast bare, with lifted knees,

And hands that toss as toss the trees....

And slow again ... with cumulate motion,

As the long draw and plunge of ocean

Bursting in a cloud of spray

Up a white, deserted bay

Of the sun-circled green Bermooths,

Whose blistering sands the cool foam soothes....

Next the bewildering pipes may sing

Some simple melody of spring,

Whose cadences remember yet

Sadly lost springs that we forget.

To which as dances April rain

On a still pool where leans no stain,

Save of the cloud's pure splendour spread

Gloriously overhead,

Our fast-flickering feet shall twinkle,

And our golden anklets tinkle,

While fair arms in aery sleeves

Shiver as the poplar's leaves.

And all the while shall Pan sit by

And play, and pause, perhaps, to sigh,

Viewing the scarce-moving skies,

The hushed and glittering revelries,

The infant moon, the slender trees

Silvering to the shivery breeze,

The fair, lorn dancers lemon-clad:

The world fantastical and sad.

XVIII

Thus may we dance the light away

Of yet one more unmemoried day.

But, the dance ended, I will go

Beyond the reach of pipes that blow

A sadness thrilling through my veins....

The Faun's Sadness.

For now within my spirit reigns

Shadow: before whose brooding face,

Silent, there trail on gliding pace

A multitude of restless Fears,

Obscure Griefs and obscurer Tears,

Bewildered Sighs, waned Phantasies,

And all disastrous Presences,

Mutely prophetic of a Woe

I know not yet, but I shall know.

Such power Pan's grief hath to oppress,

And Memory!—since now I guess

Only too well that there must come

Twilight, Calamity, and Doom.

For once I saw beneath an oak

A bard so aged it seemed he woke

That moment from a sleep of years

And in his voice were sleep and tears....

Till, wide-eyed, he, raging, spake,

Rocking as when woodlands shake

Under the first urge of the wind,

Whose roaring murk lightens behind.

The Prophecy.

Prophetic Bard. "Be warned! I feel the world grow old,

And off Olympus fades the gold

Of the simple passionate sun;

And the Gods wither one by one:

Proud-eyed Apollo's bow is broken,

And throned Zeus nods nor may be woken

But by the song of spirits seven

Quiring in the midnight heaven

Of a new world no more forlorn,

Sith unto it a Babe is born,

That in a propped, thatched stable lies,

While with darkling, reverend eyes

Dusky Emperors, coifed in gold,

Kneel mid the rushy mire, and hold

Caskets of rubies, urns of myrrh,

Whose fumes enwrap the thurifer

And coil toward the high dim rafters

Where, with lutes and warbling laughters,

Clustered cherubs of rainbow feather,

Fanning the fragrant air together,

Flit in jubilant holy glee,

And make heavenly minstrelsy

To the Child their Sun, whose glow

Bathes them His cloudlets from below....

Long shall this chimed accord be heard,

Yet all earth hushed at His first word:

Then shall be seen Apollo's car

Blaze headlong like a banished star;

And the Queen of heavenly Loves

Dragged downward by her dying doves;

Vulcan, spun on a wheel, shall track

The circle of the zodiac;

Silver Artemis be lost,

To the polar blizzards tossed;

Heaven shall curdle as with blood;

The sun be swallowed in the flood;

The universe be silent save

For the low drone of winds that lave

The shadowed great world's ashen sides

As through the rustling void she glides.

Then shall there be a whisper heard

Of the Grave's Secret and its Word,

Where in black silence none shall cry

Save those who, dead-affrighted, spy

How from the murmurous graveyards creep

The figures of eternal sleep.

Last: when 'tis light men shall behold,

Beyond the crags, a flower of gold

Blossoming in a golden haze,

And, while they guess Zeus' halls now blaze

Shall in the blossom's heart descry

The saints of a new hierarchy!"

He ceased ... and in the morning sky

Zeus' anger threatened murmurously.

I sped away. The lightning's sword

Stabbed on the forest. But the word

Abides with me. I feel its power

Most darkly in the twilit hour,

When Night's eternal shadow, cast

Over earth hushed and pale and vast,

Darkly foretells the soundless Night

In which this orb, so green, so bright,

Now spins, and which shall compass her

When on her rondure nought shall stir

But snow-whorls which the wind shall roll

From the Equator to the Pole....

Of the Final Nature of Pan.

For everlastingly there is

Something Beyond, Behind: I wis

All Gods are haunted, and there clings,

As hound behind fled sheep, the things

Beyond the Universe's ken:

Gods haunt the Half-Gods, Half-Gods men,

And Man the brute. Gods, born of Night,

Feel a blacker appetite

Gape to devour them; Half-Gods dread

But jealous Gods; and mere men tread

Warily lest a Half-God rise

And loose on them from empty skies

Amazement, thunder, stark affright,

Famine and sudden War's thick night,

In which loud Furies hunt the Pities

Through smoke above wrecked, flaming cities.

For Pan, the Unknown God, rules all.

He shall outlive the funeral,

Change, and decay, of many Gods,

Until he, too, lets fall his rods

Of viewless power upon that minute

When Universe cowers at Infinite!

XIX

So far my mind runs, yet I see

How little faun-philosophy

Repays my heart would learn, not teach....

Better laugh long, lie, suck a peach

Couched under tiger-lily flowers

Which daze the low hot sun with showers

Of fragrance, while the dusty bee

Drones, fumbles, falls luxuriantly

Within their throats; couched, turn a song

Of flowers all the flowers among:

THE FAUN'S AFTERNOON SONG.

There is a vale beyond blue Ida's mount,

And thither often would I, piping, stray

To listen to the music of a fount

That spelt her tears out in a Dorian lay.

"Long, long ago," she wept, "Narcissus came

Wandering down the sunny-shafted glade;

Full weary was he of the lamp's gold flame

Wavering beneath the dusky colonnade.

"For at the fall of night forth from the dim

Gardens stole Echo; kneeling by his bed,

With small sweet love-words she importuned him

Who watched the lamp flame idle overhead.

"Dry was her hot flushed cheek and dark the fire

In her great eyes; her lips roamed warm and light

Over his arm; her murmurs of desire

Mixed with the many murmurs of the night.

"In vain! He came to rest and sing with me

And loll his fingers in the liquid cool,

And drop slow tears, slow tears luxuriously

Into the shadowy motion of the pool.

"With tongue scarce audible I wooed the lad,

Whispering how beneath the drumming fall

Slumbers a rapt, deep lake, so blue, so sad,

That no fish swim it, nor about it call

"Delighting birds from green-bowered shore to shore,

Nor doth the nightingale, when June begins

And the moon mounts a pattin of bright or,

Hymn her long sorrows and her lord's black sins.

"And the boy answered, answered me, and mourned

The loveliness of Echo. 'Yet,' sighed he,

'My soul is fled, and long, thou knowest, bourned

In what far dell none knoweth, love, but thee

"'Who farest thither! Sweeter to my ears

Are thy quiet voices and the gentle breast

Of rambling water sweeter than my dear's.'

Then murmured I, 'Lean lower, love, and rest.'

"There was no sound through all the sleeping wood,

Save one sharp cry from Echo, open-lipped,

Who, as she followed, from afar did spy

How to my arms my lover downward slipped.

"Softly I rocked him down into the pool,

Shutting his ears to the loud torrents' din,

And kissed and bore him through the portals cool,

And laid him sleeping the blue halls within.

"So I returned; but never to me came

Another as beautiful, nor shall come.

Lonely I flow, and, flowing, lisp his name,

Till the sky waste and all the earth be dumb."

So sang the spring, and, answering my look,

Through the dark wood from the spring's fountain-head

Flock upon flock of eyed narcissi shook,

And the brook wept in sorrow for the dead.

Ah, Death again! nothing can fend

Us from the Sibyl of the End,

Whose delight 'tis to find new forms,

Now in dull sighs, anon in storms,

Singing, and ever of the same:

The trusting heart betrayed; the flame

Whirled in a night on cities proud;

Lightnings from skies undimmed by cloud;

The wide grave yawned before swift feet;

The small success that brings defeat;

The smiling lips and deadly eyes

Of Destiny walking in disguise.

XX

Of the Evening River.

But now the sun sinks I will go

Whither two full streams meet and flow,

Murmuring as in wedded sleep

Through evening meadows dim and deep.

There will I watch the slow trout rise

At the myriad simmering flies,

And listen to the water flowing

With such faint sounds there is no knowing

Whether its spirit laughs or weeps

Among the dreams wherein it sleeps.

Sunken amid the twilight grass,

I will watch the water pass,

Weaving ever dimmer tales

And dimmer as the evening pales....

Till from the calm the silent lark

Drops to the meadows hushed and dark,

While in the stagnant silver west,

Above the tranquil poplars' crest,

There glimmers through the murky bar

The slowly climbing Hesperal Star.

Thus brooding by the hazy stream,

I shall hear the water dream

Tinkily on, and I shall see,

As my eyes close quietly.

Into a soft and long repose,

The lone star like a silver rose

Fade with me on the drifting stream

Into the quiet night of dream.

Of Night's Rhapsodist.

Yet sleep I not; for lo! there wakes

From the dim water-meadow brakes

A quiring: voice as if a star,

Fallen to earth from midnight far

Beyond the haze of highest cloud,

Bewailed her errëd path aloud.

It is the nightingale who sings,

Fanning soft air with whirrëd wings,

Probing the dark with jewelled eyes.

How oft, how sad, how loud she cries!

And all the echoes answer her;

The night airs through the close wood stir

The stars that through the eddies climb

Glitter; the silver waters chime;

The lily bows her dewy head....

I, too, a sudden tear have shed.

For, ah! what voice is this can make

The vagrant heart within me ache?

That stirs an ancient tenderness,

A new need to console, love, bless

All things that 'neath this warm night sky

Rejoice and suffer, age and die?

Hunger is in my heart like bliss,—

I stretch my arms out and I kiss,

Gathered in sad and sweet embrace,

The whole world's dark and simple face.

XXI

Of the Second Singer.

I wander forth. About my feet

The sward is fresh and doubly sweet

The loved air on my salvëd brow.

Be still. Be still. For hearken: now

A second voice behind the grove

Uprises tremulous with love.

How hushed, how moody is the strain!

Pleading—O, surely, not in vain!

Sombrely rises every note,

Lingers, and in dark dells remote

Echoes until another come.

Philomel herself falls dumb.

Philomel herself falls dumb,

Mindful of her shadowy home;

Of a slowly falling surge

Sounding its unending dirge

On an alien ocean's verge;

Of a rain-smitten tower that stood

Fronting the calm, pale rolling flood;

Of a slim sister's beauty glows,

Fatefuller than a midnight rose;

Of the birth, growth, and scheming dire,

Of an accursëd King's desire;

Of night-long vigil, tongueless wrack,

And the last exultation black

O'er loathly offering, feasting sour,

A fell cry in the lonely tower,

Raging pursuit, flight's vain endeavour,

And Vengeance stilling all for ever.—

Save the voice that nightly cries

To the slowly wheeling skies

Of unrest resolved in calm,

Time's tears fallen like a balm,

Sorrows that dead hearts have wrung,

By the sad Enthusiast sung,

Sweeter than Euphrosyne's tongue.

O tremulous voice! who is 't that shakes

The night with fervour?

Through the brakes

Softly I thread ... emerge, and now

Across the rising meadow's brow

I glimpse, beside the farther wood,

Under the shadow of its hood,

A glimmering shape that does not move.

It is the shepherd and his love:

Close, close they stand, swooning and dim;

Her shadowed face looks up at him,

Her sighing breath his forehead warms;

He sings, she leans within his arms.

THE SHEPHERD'S NIGHT SONG.

The Shepherd. Now arched dark boughs hang dim and still;

The deep dew glistens up the hill;

Silence trembles. All is still.

Now the sweet siren of the woods,

Philomel, passionately broods,

Or, darkling, hymns love's wildest moods.

Danaë, fainting in her tower,

Feels a sudden sun swim lower,

Gasps beneath the starry shower.

Venus in the pomegranate grove

Flutters like a fluttering dove

Under young Adonis' love.

Leda longs until alight

In the reeds those wings of white

She hears beat the upper night.

Golden now the glowing moon,

Diana over Endymion

Downward bends as in a swoon.

Wherefore, since the gods agree,

Youth is sweet and Night is free,

And Love pleasure, should not we?

The Faun is struck with Sorrow.

Song whose desire her kisses bless!

Song that wreaks wounds no lips redress,

O wounding song! Such loneliness

Falls, like a stun blow from behind,

That my hands grope, my eyes go blind.

I gasp....

Away, Away, O heart!

Lone, wretched Faun, depart, depart;

Hide thyself, wretched, utterly,

Climb to the clouds where none may see

And mock thy causeless misery!

What joy is mine? what is 't I have:

Immortal life? would 'twere a grave.

Thus, thus to suffer world-without-end,

No love, no hope, no goal, no friend!

And the proud, morning Centaur, how

Fares he? what lot doth Fate allow?—

More wretched yet! to live and be

Perfection's lone epitome.

He takes Comfort in the Uncommon Gift of God.

To feel in him a fecund power,

And lack on which to spend that dower!...

I mind me now that once I heard

Wise, gentle Pan pronounce this word:

"Whoever like a God would shine

Must share the loneliness divine."

Ah! to be Gods, then, is to be

One fierce eternal agony.

Yet, being Gods, such feel no pain;

Their strength is equal to their bane.

While I, poor half-god and half-beast,

I would be man, the last and least

Of men!

O reasoning vain:

Were I but man and one in pain,

I could not by my utmost wipe

One tear away. But now this pipe

Hangs from my neck, god Pan's elect

Gift to his children to perfect

In awe, joy, grief, and loneliness.

Sound, pipe, and with thy note express

All this my heart! to thee I give

All the long days that I must live.

I wander on, I fade in mist,

O peopled World, and dost thou list?

Pipe on, difficult pipes of mine;

There is something in me divine,

And it must out. For this was I

Born, and I know I cannot die

Until, perfected pipe, thou send

My utmost: God, which is

THE END.

BOOK III

POEMS AND

PHANTASIES

To

MR. AND MRS. MOISEIWITSCH

A TRIPTYCH

I.—FIRST PANEL: THE HILL

On a day in Maytime mild

Mary sat on a hill-top with her child.

(Overhead in the calm sky's arching

The curled white clouds went slowly marching....

But underneath the blue abyss

All was stiller than water is

Leagues under the surface of the sea.)

And all about her thick and free

Blossomed the dear familiar flowers.

There, while her boy played through the hours,

And the high sun shook gold upon her,

Mary plaited a garland in his honour

Who should be the King of Kings;

And when 'tis done this song she sings,

As Jesus, tired and happy, rests

Curled in the hollow of her breasts:

"In the shadow of my dress,

Out of the sun

And his fierce caress,

Sleep, my son.

"Soft the air about the hill,

Scented, sunny, clear, and still;

Below in the woods the daffodil

Nods, and the shy anemone

Creeps up from the thicket to look on thee,

And ten thousand daisies meet

In an ocean of stars about thy feet.

"Daisies have I strung for thee,

Darling boy,

Wee white blossoms that shall be

Dappled, ah! so rosily

With thy blood,

When they nail thee to the wood

Cleft from out the crooked tree.

Can it be,

Daisies innocent and good,

That ye star black Calvary?

"Buttercups I make thy crown,

Darling boy.

(Lullaby, O lullaby!)

Son of sorrow, son of joy,

Pain and Paradise thou art,

Thou that sighest nestling down

In my breast, over my heart

That is a lake

Where the hidden tear-drops ache

To be free,

Till mounting upward for thy sake

Out they break,

Down they plash on me and thee.

"And Heaven in her charity

Drops seven tears on me and thee.

"This thy little childhood's crown,

Flower on flower,

Wear thou in thy lullaby

Till thou facest the soldiers' frown

In thine iron hour,

Till the thorn they crown thee by

They press down:

Ah, the sharp points in my heart!

Ah, the sword, the sudden smart

Flaying me as 'twere a flame!

Crowned indeed, my son, thou art

With red flowers of pain and shame!

"Birds and butterflies and trees,

And the long hush of the breeze

Shimmering over the silken grass,

What wouldst thou have more than these?...

In the stall the ox and ass

Gazed on thee with tender eyes;

All things love thee; yet there lies

Some hid thing in thee breeds fear—

Brims not falls thy mother's tear.

Wherefore, baby, must thou go?

Rose, to be torn in sunder so?

Little bonny limbs, little bonny face,

My lamb, my torment, my disgrace!

"O baby, are thine eyelids closed

Faster than my eyes supposed?

With foxes must thy bed be maken,

A beggar with beggars must thou go,

To be at last forsworn, forsaken?

And bear alone thy cross also

Anigh to the foot of a bare hill?

To hang gibbeted and abhorred,

For passers-by to wish thee ill?

And to thrust against thy will

Through thy mother's bosom the sharpest sword?

"O baby, breathing so quietly,

Have thou mercy upon me!

That in thy madness

On thy lonely journey farest,

That understandest not nor carest

For me and my sadness!

Woe indeed! thou dost not know

Man cometh into this world in sorrow

To spend in grief to-night, to-morrow

In sorrow the third day to go!

"O sleep, dear baby, and, heart, sleep;

Turn to thy slumber, golden, deep,

Of present possible happiness.

Let drop the daisies one by one

Over his body and his dress;

Afflicted eyes, see but thy son

Who sleeps secure from hurt, from harm,

Clasped to my breast, closed in my arm,

Who murmurs as the flowers by the faint wind shaken,

And, putting forth sweet, sleepy hands,

Feels for the kisses he demands....

Slowly, belov'd, dost thou awaken,

And sure, in heaven there is no sign:

It is not true that thou shalt be taken,

Who for ever, for ever art mine, art mine!"

Into the west the calm white sun

Floated and sank. The day was done.

Mary returned, and as she went,

Above her, in the firmament,

The stars, that are the flowers of God,

Mirrored the flowery earth she trod.

Thus bore she on her destined child,

And while she wept, behold! he smiled,

And stretched his arms seeking a kiss....

Softly she kissed him, and a bliss,

Deeper than all her human tears,

Flooded her and put out her fears.

OXFORD,

Early Spring, 1914.

II.—SECOND AND CENTRE PANEL: THE TOWER

It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs

The 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 stem

Her 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 hedgëd about with spears;

And in his face the sickness of departure had spread a gloom,

At 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 fled

Forth 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 prayed

To 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.

For his voice, 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 soon

Past 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.

GRAYSHOTT,

July, 1914.

III.—THIRD PANEL: THE TREE

The crookëd tree creaked as its loaded bough dipped

And suddenly jerked up. The rope had slipped,

And hideously Judas fell, and all the grass

Was soused and reddened where he was,

And the tree creaked its mirth....

Mid the hot sky

Appeared immediate dots tiny and high,

Till downward wound in batlike herds

Black, monstrous, gawky birds,

And, narrowing their rustling rings,

Alit, talons foremost. And with flat wings

Flapped in the branches, and glared, and croaked and croaked,

While no compassionate human came and cloaked

The thing that stared up at the giddy day

With pale blue eyeballs and wry-lipped display

Of yellow teeth closed on the blue, bit tongue.

Overhead the light in silence hung,

And fiercely showed the sweaty, knotted hands

Clutching the rope about the swollen glands....

And the birds croaked and croaked, evilly eyeing

The thing so lying,

Which no commiserate pity came and cloaked,

But which soaked

The earth, so that the flies

Dizzily swung over its winkless eyes,

And in a crawling, shiny, busy brood

Blackened the sticky blood,

And tickled the tongue-choked mouth that sought to cry

Bitterly and beseechingly

Against the judgment of th' unflinching sky.

The poor dead, lonely thing had not a shroud

From that still, frightful glare until a cloud

Of darkness, flowing like a dye

Over the edges of the sky,

Browned and put out the silent sun:

A benison

Of three hours' space.

And it had power

To put a shadow into that thing's face,

And th' invisible birds fell silent by its grace.

Thus Judas lay in shadow and all was still....

Then faint light, like water, began again to fill

The sky, and a whisper—came it from the grass,

Whispering dry and sparse,

Or from the air beyond the neighbouring hill?—

Ebbed, as a spirit on a sigh

Passing beyond alarm:

"It is finished!"

And there was calm

Under the empty tree and in the brightening sky.

GRAYSHOTT,

July, 1914.

FOUR SONGS FROM

"THE PRINCE OF

ORMUZ"

I.—THE PRINCE OF ORMUZ SINGS TO

BADOURA

When she kisses me with her lips, I become

A Roc, that giant, that fabulous bird

And over the desert, vast, yellow, and dumb,

I wheel, and my jubilant screaming is heard,

A voice, an echo, high up and glad,

Over the domes and green pools of Bagdad.

But when she kisses me with her eyes,

My heart melts in me; she is my sun;

She strokes my snow; I am loosed, I arise:

A brook of water I run, I run,

Crystal water, sunny and sweet,

Laughing and weeping to fawn at her feet.

LAWFORD,

Easter, 1914.

II.—THE SONG OF THE PRINCESS BESIDE THE

FOUNTAIN

My rose, or ever the three tears were shed

I wished lie in its bosom, has fallen apart;

Off their knapped golden hair all my pure pearls have sped

Before their mid-ruby could burn on my heart.

To-day is as yesterday; as to-day so to-morrow;

But fallen my rose, pearls, tears,

Fallen in sorrow.

Or ever I woke it was sunset to-day;

As fast flows the fountain, as fast flows away,

As fast fall away

My rose and my tears, my pearls and my sorrow.

IN HOSPITAL,

January, 1916.

III.—THE SONG OF THE PRINCE IN DISGUISE

The look in thine eyes can change me utterly;

Thine eyes challenge: my heart is lighted,

I am thy taper, I burn straight-pointed—

Ay, even so doing I waste away.

Bathe me in thy calm eyes' soft glances;

I am thy slave, I bow, I worship;

Bid me to steal, and I will steal gladly:

Ah! bid me not, thou robbest my manhood.

Let thine eyes smile: change comes upon me,

I put forth blossoms, flowers of my passion,

Roses crimson, alas! whose petals,

Once white, now blush with blood of my heart.

Gaze not on me: I burn, I perish;

Gaze not on me: I am thy servant;

Gaze not on me: I sink a-bleeding;

Yet gaze! I cannot otherwise live.

LAWFORD,

Easter, 1914.

IV.—THE PRINCESS BADOURA'S LAST SONG TO

HER LOVER

I have poured my wine into a gold cup,

I have plucked my roses, unfastened the stone

From my bosom. Thou mayest drink my red wine up,

Or spill where my jewel and roses are thrown.

The golden-globed night deepens quickly over

Me, afraid under its curtains. The spheres

Stare. O gather me swiftly, my lover;

Make me forget and forgive me these tears.

LAWFORD,

Easter, 1914.

THE GIFT OF SONG

THE GIFT OF SONG

Beyond a hill and a river,

Within a tower of stone,

A Princess by a casement

Dreamed, sitting still, alone.

Her golden hair hung heavy

Over her kirtle green;

Her eyes were blue and lonely,

Her tender mouth had been

A joy for splendid kisses,

It was so red, so red;

But it was parted in singing,

And, beginning her song, she said:

"Three songs in my spirit:

Elusive, tremulous, light.

If you can feel their tremor,

This gift is spended aright."

Without in the silent garden

The sunflowers dozed in the sun,

Bees blackened their tawny faces,

Their heads drooped one by one.

Amid a stilly fig-tree,

Hidden from sun and sight,

A nightingale sang over

The songs that rejoice the night.

And browsing upon sweet grasses

In the fair solitude,

Half in sun, half in shadow,

A lordly bay stag stood.

Upon earth all was silent

Save when the hid bird sung;

In the dark blue afternoon heavens

A silent half-moon hung.

As she commenced singing,

The nightingale stopped. In the dead

Silence the leaves flicked softly;

The great stag turned his head.

Thus sung she alone, and only

The stag, the fig-tree, the bird

And pensive moon in the darkling heavens

Her lovely singing heard.

And as she finished singing,

She bowed her golden head

Low, O low, on her shaking bosom,

And, ending her song, she said:

"Three songs in my spirit:

Elusive, tremulous, light.

You have felt their tremor;

This gift is spended aright."

The nightingale lifted her voice up,

The moon fled out of the skies,

The fig-tree split, and two tears rolled

Out of the great stag's eyes.

Now, when she had done singing,

She closed her eyes, and her breath

Went out as she lay down backward

And folded her hands in death.

LYME REGIS,

July 6, 1916.

FRAGMENTS FROM A

DRAMA ON THE SUBJECT

OF ORESTES

I.—WARNING UNHEEDED

Kassandra.

I cried in the halls where the feast will be set;

The hurrying servants whom I met

Brushed me aside, asked why I tarried.

On their black woolly heads gold platters they carried,

Piled high with rich fruits; betwixt jewelled hands,

Goblets of crystal, white blossoming wands,

Urns breathing incense: all these to be set

Where Truth's feast and the feasters too soon shall be met.

The guest shall turn as he laughs and sups,

Reaching his hand for the golden wine;

His face shall change as he sees next to him

A mouth that mocks, eyes that look through him,

A head sink her glistening brow 'twixt the cups,

Locks blackening his stoup with a liquor of brine.

In the scrolls of the platter of gold there has bled

The juice of fruit battered and hairy and red;

The goblets of crystal are fissured and cracked

Like ice the bronze tyre of the chariot has wracked,

And the blossoms curl withered because of the heat

Of urns overset by the slip of red feet

When the reveller fell forward unable to save

His eyes from the torch, his groin from the glaive.

Chorus.

For Truth rejected returns as Pain.

Kassandra.

Under the trestles the guests lie slain;

The curtains upon the gold cords pull

Heavily, sagging like nets that are full,

For curved in the trough and propped in the fold

The red, red catch lies tossed and rolled;

The halls and corridors reek with the flood;

The pillars are trickled with cyphers of blood;

Rent garlands lie trampled over the floors;

Rusty footprints lead out through the high bronze doors

To the starlit night and the whispering plain:

Chorus.

For Truth rejected returns as Pain.

Kassandra.

I weep for the ruin of a high, proud house;

Moths fret the still curtains; down the throne runs a mouse;

The sun fades on the floors heaped high with dead leaves;

The moon runs on the rills that run from the eaves;

Brown clogs the peristyle; the air has a tang;

Weeds rot on the terrace; the hanging gates clang;

The wind is a weariness; man lives in vain

Chorus.

Where Truth rejected returns as Pain.

1914-1916.

II.—ORESTES TO THE FURIES

Ye are no madman's dreams, then!...

Out sword! Backward tread

O curs that circle the bright blade ye dread.

Back to where dead-eyed Hate, your shameful priest,

Prepares your bowl of blood, your fleshy feast:

Where in the thronged and long-hushed marketplace

Ten thousand faces gaze on one pale face;

Where the lost victim feels the lonely ban

Of death terrific loosed by man on man;

Where black blood froths, where drives the whirring wheel;

Where hands, ears, lips fall lopped of instant steel;

Where the intent and dazzling pincher plies

Till to the silent tortures Anguish cries

At once for death! and when sharp death is given,

Others, corded and swooned, antic and sick, are driven

Under the axe, whose sheeny flash and fall

Bids the block ring as pile beneath the maul,

Till Man's protest dies to a whisper, dumb

Beneath the maddened rolling of Death's drum!

1915.

BLACK SONG

I.—AT BRAYDON

Day wanes slowly;

On the hill no sound

Save the wind uttering

Chords low ... few ... profound.

How the west smokes and quivers!

It sears, it blinds my sight;

I am burned out wholly,

Hide me from the light.

Within dear arms yoke me,

Gather me. I am sped

Into your little bosom

Press, hide my childish head.

How long I have struggled

I know not; but the past

Seems twice livelong,

Beaten at the last!

My soul leaps and shudders

In pain none understands;

With your clear voice calm it,

Soothe it with your hands.

I can say only

—So lost am I, so distressed—

"I love you: I am tired."

You must guess the rest.

I love you: I am tired.

I give you my soul,

It hurts me. Hate has lamed it.

Take it; make it whole.

Late Summer, 1916.

II.—MIDDAY ON THE EDGE OF THE DOWNS

Stillness falls and a glare.

The woods in darkness lie.

The fields are stretched and stare

Under the empty sky.

Vacant the ways of the air,

Along which no birds fly.

Only the high sun's flare

Spills on the empty sky.

I lift my aching eyes

From the dry wilderness:

Across me a peewit flies

With gestures meaningless....

Mine are his piping cries

At this world's emptiness!

1913.

III.—IN DORSETSHIRE

Cold and bare the sunlight

Drifted across the hill,

Round which the sea wind's current

Unfathomable and chill,

From dawn to silver sunset

Poured now faint, now shrill.

"How to comfort you,

Share any part?

Even to understand you

Too deep an art!

Yet I'd comfort you,

Tear out my heart."

"Do not look on me,

Dry eyes for my sake;

Do not smooth my forehead

Your hands make me ache;

O, and turn away your kisses

Or heart must break."

Cold and bare the sunlight

Drifted across the hill,

Only the sea-wind's current,

Unfathomable and chill,

Heard such speech gather,

Bewail itself ... fall still.

Toward the hill then zigzagged

One wind-harried plover—

Rocked for a moment....

Cried to love and lover

The top of loneliness

Ere he heeled over.

MAN'S ANACREONTIC

AND OTHER POEMS

MAN'S ANACREONTIC

Kiss! Kiss me and kiss again,

Make kissing almost pain;

Close your fingers close on mine,

And our grappling looks entwine;

Kiss again, and when that's done

Blind me with each facing sun

Of your clear and golden eyes,

Till my spirit in me dies,

And endures a long eclipse

Till rekindled at your lips.

From this minute I pursue

The intense Idea that's you—

Your you's Being. I would draw

You from Obscurity's dusk maw

Into my hands—whate'er you are,

Moth or spirit, gnome or star.

Yet I would not filch a part,

Misty soul or flaming heart,

Which left but, as doth the snake,

A pale tissue. I will take

And shut all your sweetness up

In the gold walls of a cup,

Sandalled feet to sweeping hair,

Soul, brain, body, all you are—

Curled as a mermaid coiled in brine,

Now drunk one gush of giddy wine!

Nay, as a strange lump of snow

In my two hands you shall go,

And I'll bare my browny breast,

Press you there, where now you rest!

Ay, and bless the frozen smart

As you melt into my heart!

Come, I'll twine you round my brows:

A defiant diadem,

Poets of your light shall sing.

Satraps by you swear stout vows

Eyeing my twice-marvellous gem—

You: the emerald in my ring.

Thus I'll keep you night and day,

Since no stone can run away—

And might dare a pleasure splendid:

Toss my ring into the air,

Watch it spinning, heart suspended,

Lest it slip me unaware,

Fall clean through my finger bars,

Shatter in ten thousand stars!

Yet you shall not be my ring;

You shall not be any thing,

Crown or stone set cunningly,

Time can separate from me.

No! I'll find an alchemist,

With a beard of cobwebs grey

And fired eyes like moonstones kissed

By the last gold beam of day,

And older and gentler than a fish,

And wiser than an elephant;

And when I've told him what we wish,

Bribe or force him work our want.

We two shall opposëd stand,

Each touch other's finger-tip;

At a slow pass of his hand

And a soft word from his lip,

We will incline smilingly,

And as drops together run,

Shaking off the he and she,

Close and be forever one.

GRAYSHOTT,

Summer, 1914.

THE BLACKBIRD

I stand in a sunny garden;

A blackbird sings overhead:

"I'm alive ... I've a love ... the sun's shining

And where's the man would be dead?"

"Blackbird, make an ending of fluting

That song down your orange beak:

I'm alive ... I've a love ... the sun's shining,

And—I am the man you seek."

STAMFORD,

May, 1913.

CHANGE

Behold, the tides are awake!

Under the high moon's light,

Broad bands of silver, they glitter and quake,

Moving out into the night.

Off from the shore they slide,

Out, out into the blue:

And I am turned to a shimmering tide

Flooding on outward to you!

HENGISTBURY HEAD,

Spring, 1915.

TRANSFIGURATION

Two feet apart, straight-limbed on the heathered hill

We lie, under the wavering haze

Of the sun, even as two logs that lie still

In the heart of a blaze.

Side by side we lie through the long

Late noon together;

On us the light wind stoops his strong,

Hot, sweet scents of heather.

No word breaks the air that smothers,

Lest we miss

The dull heart-beat of the earth below each other's,

And the soft kiss

Of breathless heather upon heather, while the sun

Beats on us encouraging the swiftening blood,

Till up the limbs and through the ears it run,

A thin, red singing flood.

Love hath put in me might,

That was so weak;

I am strong with light,

My senses seek

Something indefinable, afar;

They go wandering, and return....

With the light drunk off a star

They calmly burn,

Even as the immense sun burns on us

Till evening turns watery those beams of his;

And, rising from that joyance onerous,

I stoop a kiss

Lighter than the balls of fluff

The wind sways across the heath,

Though each invisible, hot puff

Scarce rocks a spray beneath.

I sit, and it is so still,

Now wind and sun have gone home,

I can almost hear distil

The dew in the gloam.

And from the clear and cool

Of the twilit air,

That is still as a pool

Iced over and bare,

I catch at length

The thought I have been searching for:

Did I absorb the sun's or just your strength,

Or Something More?

Summer, 1914.

PLAINT OF PIERROT ILL-USED

I am Pierrot, and was born

On some February morn

When through glistering rain shone down

The full moon on Paris town.

(Ah the moonshine in my head!)

For, upon the fatal minute

When the moon's heart changes in it

And the tides their flow reverse,

I, for better or for worse,

Born was. (Better been born dead

Than with moonwork in my head!)

Clown stood foster, but another

Got me of Clown's wife my mother,

And as suited my poor station,

Thieving was made my profession:

Doorsteps often were my bed

(Frosty moonshine in my head).

Yet while Pierrot was a thief—

Miracle beyond belief,

Chance fantastic as divine!—

I fell in with Columbine:

Dark eyes, lips of mournful red

(Dark-bright moonshine in my head).

At the corner of the street

She and I by night would meet;

Met, but never told our love,

While th' ironic moon above

In her reverie smiled, and shed

Tranquil radiance round each head.

Till my father by a breath

Stifled at the hands of Death,

"—Since no other children were—

Assigned me as only heir."

(Silver sequins heaped and spread:

Billowing silver in my head.)

So, in search of fitting knowledge,

Poor Pierrot was sent to college,

Where Pantaloon and Pantaloon

In answerless riddles o' the moon

Crammed more moonshine in his head.

Home, then, Pierrot by-and-by

Hurried spent, resolved to sigh

Headache, heartache, and the rest,

Out on Columbine's white breast,

White as the moon's cloudy bed

(Hush the moonshine in my head).

But, while gone, had entered in

Spangled, smiling Harlequin;

Laughter cynic and unholy:

"Pah! Pierrot's poor melancholy!"

Turned but not a word I said

(Moons like swords within my head!)

Forth: but money burns so bright!

Let it burn, then, left and right:

"Where, O where, is Punchinello?

Scaramouch too, that gay fellow?

A brisk life it is we'll lead:

Drown the moonshine in my head!"

Midnight: Venus by an urn,

Roses and rose lanterns burn,

Wine, fount's purl, and mandoline....

Pulcinella waits within,

Faithless she—but in her bed:

No more moonlight in my head!

Ah!...

yet dawns a dreary morrow:

'Spend at ease, and owe in sorrow,'

With light purse to her begone,

If but as a hanger-on!

(Dread and moonlight in my head.)

Home then: catch upon the way—

'Harlequin fled yesterday.

Bankruptcy of his employ.'

Surging of relief and joy:

Welcome then? past words unsaid?

Surge of moonlight through my head.

So on, beating, to her street:

What sight Pierrot's eyes doth greet?

One coach at her door arrives,

From the back another drives....

Strange! (mere moonlight in the head).

Pull the bell: is she within?

'I must see Miss Columbine.'

Maid with finger laid by nose,

Better not inquire too close—

Such puts bullets through the head!

Now I wander back and forth;

Pierrot goes east, south, west, north;

Shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders,

Till the more acute beholders,

Watching him, have hazarded,—

'Touch of something in the head?'

I am Pierrot, and was born

On some far forgotten morn

When the cold moon on the pane

Struck and, signless, 'gan to wane,

When the tides their flow reversed;

And I bear, uncured, accursed,

Aching until I am dead,

Moonlight, moonlight in my head!

DEVONSHIRE,

November, 1916.

GIRL'S SONG FROM "THE TAILOR"[2]

O silver bird, fly down, fly down,

Bring thy fair gifts to him and me:

A purse contains a minted crown,

A golden ring for me.

Ah! lovely bird, fly down, fly down.

But upon the highest bough

See amid the leaves he swings,

Pipes three notes of laughter low,

Flirts, and folds his flashy wings.

Ah! lovely bird, fly down, fly down.

What is't, bird, thy soul demands?

Come, I'll rock thee in my breast;

I will stroke thee with my hands;

Where none rested thou shalt rest....

Ah! lovely bird, fly down, fly down.

Jewels wouldst thou, then, O bird?

See, among the sunny grass

A tear has fallen unseen, unheard,

Brighter than ever diamond was.

Hark! Hark! His joy my voice doth drown:

See, see, he leaps, floats, dives him down!

1916.

[2] "The Tailor," opera-buffa in three acts, being Op. 10 of Bernard van Dieren.

LAST SONG IN AN OPERA

From the apple bough many petals fly tossed of the wind,

Yet goldenly heavy it hangs on blue autumn eves

(All things come unto him whose heart believes).

The dove, though the tempest-swept sun her bright eyes blind,

Beats onward fast.

Till with clapped, sailing wings down at the last

To the loved cote she come.

Ah, the long way of Love, but Love comes home!

The silver river wanders and circles time out of mind,

Yet turns at length where the sea tosses her smoking sheaves

(All things come unto him whose heart believes).

So golden-feathered Love beats his high course, though blind,

Until that hour

When, downward stooping through the flaming shower,

Into the heart he come.

Ah, the long way of Love, but Love comes home!

1916.

DANAË

MYSTERY IN EIGHT POEMS

DANAË: MYSTERY IN EIGHT POEMS

I

"What with clangour, clangour of iron din,

Do they beat till daylight ring?

What heat, that I see the night air spin,

And sparks dance over the scaffolding?

"The birds have flown because of their strife

Hammering difficult metal;

Their reek has taken my roses' life,

Dripping white petal on petal.

"What glows gold taller than earthly tree

In that maze of mast on mast

Of the scaffolding? What can it be

They build so secret and fast?"

II

"What art mooning at, fool?

Some wanton boy and his limbs?

Such dreams should be put to school:

I'll chasten these fleshly whims!"

He has shot the bolts on her room

In the brazen tower.

"Remain there, ninny: your doom

Till the sand sifts your last hour!"

With eyes grieving on space,

Has she sight among all these blind?

Because of her dreaming face....

How harshly the great keys grind!

They have gone. She clenches her hands,

She struggles and makes soft moan....

Then smiles, for she understands:

The soul is never alone.

III

"Last night as I was sitting,

My faint heart ceased to beat,

Listening in the silence

To the tread of nearing feet.

"Through the tower dumb in midnight

They passed from floor to floor,

Till at length they halted

Hard without my door.

"I knew 'twas Thou who stood'st there,

With but a door's divide!

With a wild and longing motion

I strode and flung it wide.

"Out into velvet darkness

My whirring eyeballs stare.

I whisper. Nothing answers.

And there is no one there."

IV

CANTICLE

"O Day so bright,

Bring thou my Love to me,

In blinding, deep delight

And ecstasy.

"O Night so wide,

So black, keep close till He,

The light within my side

Seen, comes to me.

"O wandering Wind,

Sing in His ears the sum

Of longing, mad His mind,

Compel He come.

"Earth I adore,

From whom to whom I go,

Bring Him to me before

I return so.

"Sun, nought doth let

In journey or depart;

Make Him, arisen, set

Within my heart.

"O high white Moon,

Alone and glittering,

As you pull ocean soon,

My Belovëd bring.

"O swelling Sea,

Cavernous in your sweep,

Make Him ingulph, drown me

Far in His deep.

"O Day, O Night,

O Moon, O Sun, O Sea,

O Wind, bring my Delight!

Bring Him to me!"

V

In the second watch of the night

The amazed guards saw with affright

Gold stars fall in a shower:

Coins of gold in a sweeping flight,

They silently broke on the tower.

And the tower's top turned a rose

Of enwreathed, ruddy light,

And, like men smit of their foes,

The guards fell at the sight....

And the Rose possessed the tower alone

All the blue, windless night.

VI

"Soft torrential wind

Falls through the vast, still deep

Like thick dreams pouring behind

The opened gates of sleep:

Ah, not so swift, Lord, not so bright,

Lest I be blown—a feather;

Not so white, not so white,

Lest I be withered altogether.

"Earth shifts under my feet,

Glory breaks over my head;

Speechlessly my wings I beat,

And fall mute in breathless dread:

Ah, not so swift, Lord, not so bright,

Lest I be blown—a feather;

Not so white, not so white,

Lest I be wilted altogether."

VII

"Mine is a heavenly Lover,

In Him I am wholly blest;

My heart it is His coffer

Wherein His gold doth rest.

"Dead in the metal tower

I lie till night doth come,

When in a golden shower

He bursts the midnight dome.

"And, caught beyond releasing,

I yield me to His claim,

And by my creature ceasing

All that He is I am."

VIII

The silver sun looks down

On the silent tower;

The guards awaken, nor own

To the unguarded hour.

They eye each other's face,

But to speak none durst;

As though the night were ungraced,

Silent they are dispersed.

The cruel King climbs, doth draw

Near, then by he creeps,

Marking in rage and awe

The smile in which she sleeps.

STAMFORD,

Autumn, 1912, and Autumn, 1913.

THE ECSTASY

I lay upon a headland hill:

The sun spilt out his gold;

The wind blew with a fluttering thrill;

The skies were blue and cold.

All day above the little cove

I heard the long wind flow;

The clouds foamed in the blue above,

The blue sea foamed below.

All day the bare sun fiercely burned;

All day in the profound

And quivering grass my body turned,

One with Earth's turning round.

Till, fledged amid her fluid rings,

My soul began to rouse,

And slowly beat her silver wings

Within her darkened house.

Then with vans lifted up for flight,

With stretched and fiery crest,

Upward she leaped toward the light

And drew from out my breast.

How long I lay while she was fled,

And on the cliff below

My body lay stiff, dark, and dead,

I knew not nor may know.

But long it seemed. Sped beyond sight

My soul enjoyed release;

Beyond the clouds, within the light,

She entered into peace.

To-day, amid a world of men,

How often must I cry:

"Happy I never was but then

Nor shall be till I die!"

NEAR GOLD CAP,

Late Summer, 1916.

THE WATER-LILY

The Lily floated white and red,

Pouring its scent up to the sun;

The rapt sun floating overhead

Watched no such other one.

None marked it as it spread abroad

And beautifully learned to cease:

But Beauty is its own reward,

Being a form of Peace.

1913.

DEEM YOU THE ROSES....

Deem you the roses taste no pleasure

Unfolding hour by hour

Toward, through starlit peace and sunny leisure,

Their sharpest moment, when they dower

This great green world, this rustling place,

Active in music, light, and grace,

With their hid hearts, their golden treasure,

Odours so deep they overpower?

See how, hazed in the sunny weather,

The silken roses swim,

Nodding heads frail as a high cloud's feather,

Expressing Joy in Beauty's Hymn.

And, hark! from many a hidden face

Echoes I hear through silver space:

The Morning Stars that sing together,

And the delighting Seraphim!

LAWFORD,

Early Summer, 1916.

THE PASSION

Those whose Love, unborn to sight,

Never did itself disclose

Save in water's cry; a rose;

Meteor furrowing the night;

Mote of any turning ray;

Pipe of bird mid sunset's flush;

Rain stilled, leaves flame-wet, and hush

Of a rainbow's fire and spray;

Any straight road leads afar

'Cross a hill-brow—What's beyond?

Seven hung notes of music fond;

Seven dark poplars, one white star;

Cloud lifting a tower aloft;

Light and play and shadowy grace

Of the soul behind a face

Flitting by on motion soft;

Lonely figure on a height;

Those whose love but shines a hint

Fainter than the far sea's glint

To the inland gazer's sight—

These alone, and but in part,

Guess of what my songs are spun,

And Who holds communion

Subtly with my troubled heart.

But the substance of my grief

Scarcely can their thought surmise,

Who but glimpse through these my eyes

Joy as fathomless as brief.

Others in this strange world flung,

Orphans, too, of Destiny,

Have the virtue, but not I,

Keeps heart crystal, single tongue;

And know not, whose hearts are whole,

How—when sickened and unclean,

Unfit or to see, be seen—

Close thorns pack and prick the soul.

Yet though here soul suffereth,

Complicate by vision's light,

Never would I cede this right

Of a sharpened life and death.

For I keep in confidence

In my breast a subtle faith

'Scapes alway by narrow scathe

And I draw my succour thence.

One Day, or maybe one Night—

Living? dying?—I shall see

The Rose open gloriously

On its heart of living light.

Know what any bird may mean,

Meteor in my heart shall rest,

Spelled on my brain blaze th' unguessed

Words of the rainbow's dazzling sheen.

O the hour for which I wait!

Lovers of the Secret Love

Watch with me, and we will prove

Constancy can be elate.

For the sigil we have now

Is but echo, shadow, less

Than a nothing's nothingness,

To what that hour will allow:

Lost and found! The Shining Ones!

Music, passion, scent, delight,

Light and depth and space and height:

Heaven and its seven suns!

DORSET SQUARE,

October, 1916.

LAST WORDS

O let it be

Just such an eve as this when I must die!

To see the green bough soaking, still against a sky

Washed clean after the rain.

To watch the rapturous rainbow flame and fly

Into the gloom where drops fall goldenly,

And in my heart to feel the end of pain.

The end of pain: the late, the long expected!—

To see the skies clear in a sudden minute,

The grey disparting on the blue within it,

And on the low far sea the clouds collected.

In that deep quiet die to all has been,

To be renewed, to bud, to flower again:

My second spring!—whose hope was nigh rejected

Before I go hence and am no more seen.

To hear the blackbird ring out, gay and bold,

The low renewal of the ringdove's moan

From among high, sheltered boughs, and ceaseless fall

Pitter, pitter, patter,

A dribble of gold

From leaves nodding each on the other one,

The hush, calm piping and the slow, sweet mood!

To drink the ripe warm scent of soaking matter,

Wet grass, wet leaves, wet wood,

Wet mould,

The saddest and the grandest scent of all.

So when my dying eyes have loved the trees

Till with huge tears turned blind,

When the vague ears for the last time have hearkened

To the cool stir of the long evening breeze,

The blackbird's tireless call,

Having drunk deep of earth-scent strong and kind,

Come then, O Death, and let my day be darkened.

I shall have had my all.

LAWFORD,

April, 1916.

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Table of Contents

ARDOURS AND ENDURANCES

ALSO A FAUN'S HOLIDAY & POEMS AND PHANTASIES BY

ROBERT NICHOLS

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BOOK I

ARDOURS AND ENDURANCES

To THE Memory of my Trusty and Gallant Friends: HAROLD STUART GOUGH (King's Royal Rifle Corps) and RICHARD PINSENT (the Worcester Regiment)

THE SUMMONS

I.—TO——

II.—THE PAST

III.—THE RECKONING

FAREWELL TO PLACE OF COMFORT

FAREWELL TO PLACE OF COMFORT

THE APPROACH

I.—IN THE GRASS: HALT BY ROADSIDE

II.—THE DAY'S MARCH

III.—NEARER

BATTLE

I.—NOON

II.—NIGHT BOMBARDMENT

III.—COMRADES: AN EPISODE

IV.—BEHIND THE LINES: NIGHT, FRANCE

V.—AT THE WARS

VI.—OUT OF TRENCHES: THE BARN, TWILIGHT

VII.—BATTERY MOVING UP TO A NEW POSITION FROM REST CAMP: DAWN

VIII.—EVE OF ASSAULT: INFANTRY GOING DOWN TO TRENCHES

IX.—THE ASSAULT

X.—THE LAST MORNING

XI.—FULFILMENT

THE DEAD

I.—THE BURIAL IN FLANDERS

(H. S. G., Ypres, 1916)

II.—BOY

III.—PLAINT OF FRIENDSHIP BY DEATH BROKEN

(R. P., Loos, 1915)

IV.—BY THE WOOD

THE AFTERMATH

I.—AT THE EBB

II.—ALONE

III.—THANKSGIVING

IV.—ANNIHILATED

V.—SHUT OF NIGHT

VI.—THE FULL HEART

VII.—SONNET: OUR DEAD

VIII.—DELIVERANCE

BOOK II

A FAUN'S HOLIDAY

To my Brother PHILIP NICHOLS

A FAUN'S HOLIDAY

The End.

BOOK III

POEMS AND PHANTASIES

To MR. and MRS. MOISEIWITSCH

A TRIPTYCH

I.—FIRST PANEL: THE HILL

II.—SECOND AND CENTRE PANEL: THE TOWER

III.—THIRD PANEL: THE TREE

FOUR SONGS FROM "THE PRINCE OF ORMUZ"

I.—THE PRINCE OF ORMUZ SINGS TO BADOURA

II.—THE SONG OF THE PRINCESS BESIDE THE FOUNTAIN

III.—THE SONG OF THE PRINCE IN DISGUISE

IV.—THE PRINCESS BADOURA'S LAST SONG TO HER LOVER

THE GIFT OF SONG

THE GIFT OF SONG

FRAGMENTS FROM A DRAMA ON THE SUBJECT OF ORESTES

I.—WARNING UNHEEDED

II.—ORESTES TO THE FURIES

BLACK SONG

I.—AT BRAYDON

II.—MIDDAY ON THE EDGE OF THE DOWNS

III.—IN DORSETSHIRE

MAN'S ANACREONTIC AND OTHER POEMS

MAN'S ANACREONTIC

THE BLACKBIRD

CHANGE

TRANSFIGURATION

PLAINT OF PIERROT ILL-USED

GIRL'S SONG FROM "THE TAILOR"[2]

LAST SONG IN AN OPERA

DANAË

MYSTERY IN EIGHT POEMS

DANAË: MYSTERY IN EIGHT POEMS

THE ECSTASY

THE WATER-LILY

DEEM YOU THE ROSES....

THE PASSION

LAST WORDS

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE