by John Buchan
No surcease of our toil we see;
We cannot ease our cares by flight,
For Fortune holds our loves in fee.
We are not slaves to sell our wills,
We are not kings to ride the hills,
But patient men who jog and dance
In the dull wake of circumstance;
Loving our little patch of sun,
Too weak our homely dues to shun,
Too nice of conscience, or too free,
To prate of rights — if rights there be.
The scriptures tell us that the meek
The earth shall have to work their will;
It may be they shall find who seek,
When they have topped the last long hill.
Meantime we serve among the dust
For at the best a broken crust,
A word of praise, and now and then
The joy of turning home again.
But freemen still we fall or stand,
We serve because our hearts command.
Though kings may boast and knights cavort,
We broke the spears at Agincourt.
When odds were wild and hopes were down,
We died in droves by Leipsic town.
Never a field was darkly won
But ours the dead that faced the sun.
The slave will fight because he must,
The rover for his ire and lust,
The king to pass an idle hour
Or feast his fatted heart with power;
But we, because we choose, we choose,
Nothing to gain and much to loose,
Holding it happier far to die
Than falter in our decency.
The serfs may know an hour of pride
When the high flames of tumult ride.
The rover has his days of ease
When he has sacked his palaces.
A king may live a year like God
When prostrate peoples drape the sod.
We ask for little, — leave to tend
Our modest fields: at daylight’s end
The fires of home: a wife’s caress:
The star of children’s happiness.
Vain hope. ‘Tis ours for ever and aye
To do the job the slaves have marred,
To clear the wreckage of the fray,
And please our kings by working hard.
Daily we mend their blunderings,
Swashbucklers, demagogues, and kings!
What if we rose? — If some fine mom,
Unnumbered as the autumn com,
With all the brains and all the skill
Of stubborn back and steadfast will,
We rose and, with the guns in train,
Proposed to deal the cards again,
And, tired of sitting up ‘o nights,
Gave notice to our parasites,
Announcing that in future they
Who paid the piper should call the lay?
Then crowns would tumble down like nuts,
And wastrels hide in water-butts;
Each lamp-post as an epilogue
Would hold a pendent demagogue:
Then would the world be for the wise! —
But ah! the plain folk never rise.
Thyrsis de nos jours
1913
Thyrsis, on that tempestuous mom in June
When your brief bright financial bloom seemed o’er,
You filled the welkin with your bootless pleas
And stamped and raved, and all your chamber floor
With bills unpaid and envious summonses
And worthless scrip was strewn.
Friend, I remember yet your parting cry
From the wet platform as you caught your train,
En route for easier lands beyond the main,
The game is up and with the game go I.
Too quick despairer, wherefore didst thou go?
Soon did the high financial pomps come on,
Soon did the pools and comers ripe and swell
To monster gambles in gold-dusted con —
Tango and oil with homely cottage smell
Made stocks a flagrant show.
Noses that down the alleys curve afar
Flock to the spoil, and every week-end sees
Statesmen beneath the dreaming garden trees
Begging their friends to let them in at par.
Alack for Bottomley! three rivals now!
First comes Apella, guardian of the laws;
Next Cleon from the hills, the shepherd-swain
Who pleads with raucous tongue the peoples cause;
And last Thersitas, to whose soothing strain
The nymphs of Progress bow;
They were the first Occasion’s hand to seize.
They knew the fruit the earliest tip can yield,
The golden harvest of chequered field,
And what strange crooks are Mammon’s tributaries.
An easy access to the hearers’ grace
When to the trio Hebrew shepherds sing!
Yet much I fear that envious tales are rife,
True tales that need no fancy’s heightening.
Gone is the goal of sad Apella’s life,
And Cleon veils his face.
Cleon, ah never more the world will see
Thy Dorian fury on the rich man’s scent.
Thy god-like scorn of unearned increment.
For Fate, not Prettyman, has conquered thee.
Thersites of his own will went away.
It urked thee to be here, thou couldst not rest.
To a boon western country thou hast fled,
Unextraditable, rotund, and blest,
Where doubtless now, with flowers engarlanded
In Bacchic holiday,
Thou liest reclined, a Caledonian Shah,
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee
I trow the casual Dago does not see)
Among the septic shades of Bogota.
Too long, too long is now thy absence hence.
Return, my Thyrsis, from thy alien den.
England for thee is now the only home.
And if thou dreadest aught from tongue or pen,
Let in thy ear a whisper often come
To banish all suspense. —
What fearest thou? Resume thine ancient game
New codes, new ethics rule this happier hour.
Doest thou seek proof? Asquith is still in power,
The ‘Daily News’ still swears by Cleon’s fame.
To Sir Reginald Talbot
1915
I tell of old Virginian ways;
And who more fit my tale to scan
Than you, who knew in far-off days
The eager horse of Sheridan;
Who saw the sullen meads of fate,
The tattered scrub, the blood-drenched sod,
Where Lee, the greatest of the great,
Bent to the storm of God?
I tell lost tales of savage wars;
And you have known the desert sands
The camp beneath the silver stars,
The rush at dawn of Arab bands,
The fruitless toil, the hopeless dream,
The fainting feet, the faltering breath,
While Gordon by the ancient stream
Waited at ease on death.
And now, aloof from camp and field,
You spend your sunny autumn hours
Where the green folds of Chiltern shield
The nooks of Thames amid the flowers:
You who have borne that name of pride,
In honour clean from fear or stain,
Which Talbot won by Henry’s side
In vanished Aquitaine.
Ordeal by Marriage
1915
AN ECLOGUE
Persons
Sir Lionel Curtis, Knight Bachelor.
Sir Philip Kerr, Knight Bachelor.
Sir Palmedes Zimmern, Knight Bach
elor.
The Hon. Sir Robert Brand, Knight Bachelor, CMG.
Major Sir George Craik, Knight Bachelor.
Sir Lionel Hichens, Knight Bachelor.
Ensign Sir Edward Grigg, Knight Bachelor (Grenadier Guards).
Sir Lionel Curtis. Silence, fair sirs. The Table Round is set.
Not since our goodly company first met
To weave the silken chain that some day soon
Will bind all lands beneath the wandering moon
Which hear my Gospel in a Bundestaat,
Or else a Staatenbund -I care not what —
But bind at any rate - not since that day
Has such a fate-fraught problem come our way,
As clouds my soul, makes Philip’s visage fall,
And Mossie’s aspect purely criminal.
First, as our wont is, let us briefly quaff
The vintage of the copious mimeograph.
Herr Roger Casement writes from Potsdam: —
“Though
We move by different channels, yet we go
Nobly and sanely to the self-same end,
The doom of England. Hoch to you, mein vriend!”
I do not like his tone, but in his soul
There lurks no doubt an image of the Whole.
Sir Harry Britain wires from Medicine Hat: —
“I’ve often wondered what you all were at.
But your last number’s got me fairly hit.
You and Max Aitken are, I reckon, It.”
A Mrs Wilkins writes from Wyvenhoe: —
“My dear dead husband loved your paper so.
‘Twas while I read it to him yesterday
That his pure spirit gently passed away.
I hope you all will come and see me here;
I have some land and thousands six a year.” —
There are five letters, too, from Colney Hatch
Of which the meaning’s rather hard to catch.
But all the writers in our praise unite,
And hail us as the Purple Infinite. —
But hence these pleasing flatteries! We must draw
Our mental girdle tight and square our jaw.
The time has come to face a wakening rude
And leave behind our knightly bachelorhood,
Shape to a nobler end our laggard lives,
Seek each a wife - or rather several wives.
I hymn Polygamy - yet not as they,
The swinish crowd who nose the common way.
Divine Philosophy shall be my guide
To lead me to the embraces of my bride,
Or rather brides. - The universe I see
A whirling diverse multiplicity,
Yet through the Various yearning to the Same.
A mighty thinker - I forget his name:
He lived at Moosejaw - put the matter thus:
Anima sola est in omnibus. —
I love his racy mots. But mark the point.
We seek the nexus in a world disjoint,
The One our goal. - But not a barren thing,
Not unrelated, sole, uncomforting.
Ah, no! the One in Many is our aim,
Wherein is joined the Different and the Same,
That Unity in Multiplicity
Which holds the young-eyed cherubim in fee.
So for the One the Multiple we need,
As skill equestrian seeks a mettle steed
And no dull farmer’s nag. This thought profound
Must guide our conduct in the common round
Of toils and pleasures, and not least in those
Strange ties called love and marriage. Man outgrows
The petty limits of his father’s light
And walks unfettered on the starry height.
In wedlock man and wife as one must serve,
So says the Prayer Book. Unity, observe.
But at the best a shaveling unity
Starved of its darling multiplicity.
For us I claim a nobler course to run,
Where, free and radiant i’ the face o’ the sun,
One man and twenty wives shall be as one.
He who would greatly gain must greatly strive
And face with dauntless front full many a wife.
We claim the true fulfilling of the Law,
The loftier ether which the seers foresaw.
Out with base dualism! The One our goal,
Deep, deep in numbers plunge the steadfast soul,
And in the Many find the perfect Whole...
So speaks Philosophy. No less strong the case,
For us who seek a true Imperial race,
Which Empire pleads. It is our joy to draw
All creeds and colours to our gentle law,
Kindle their minds, their earnest hearts enthuse,
And set them talking like the very deuce.
But in this godlike task we are not blind
To the old ties and sanctions of mankind.
What stronger chain to lead the world to light
Than numerous wives attached to each Round Table knight?
Conceive the Uplift! To each household’s share
A choice selection from the Imperial fair, —
The bold Australian maid from Broken Hill
Whose voice is searching and complexion nil:
The coy New Zealander, the ample Boer,
Of Indian maidens an assorted score:
A shy Tasmanian, one or two Fijis,
And several sirens from the Southern Seas:
And last, to prove that looks are not our thought,
A Hausa lady and a Hottentot.
Ah, think how strange our moots, how nobly strange,
Where every speech on earth shall freely range!
Ties will we find which Time shall not destroy, —
Make curtain lectures an Imperial joy.
Sir Philip Kerr. Well hath the Prophet spoken. Be it mine
To proffer water for his ardent wine,
Such water clear and cool, as erst was seen
In Castaly’s streams and Fountain Hippocrene.
But not towards Greece adoring eyes I roll,
For Boston is the Mecca of my soul.
In this, our hour of need, for help I go
To Mrs Eddy, first of those who know.
The truth concealed from seers’ and sages’ sight
Is by a Western matron brought to light.
Good is God’s world. There is no sting of pain
In the sweet rose’s thorn, no deadly bane
In the dark nightshade, nor a poisoned gland
In the lithe snake that leaps to kiss your hand.
Only the mind of man, corrupt and small,
Nerveless, inept, of fears a carnival,
Perverts and clouds the functionings of sense,
Which but for it were joyous innocence.
But cleanse the mind and discipline the brain,
Give to the heart its confidence again,
And that wise apothegm ye well may know:
“There is no ill but thinking makes it so.”
To the pure soul a toothache is a sham,
A stomach-ache not worth a single damn,
Fever, congestion - comforts sent to bless,
A broken limb a call to mirthfulness.
Holding this sanguine creed I must proclaim
Its value on the housetops; sound its fame
From Cliveden to Kamchatka, till the crowd
Of brutish men are at the portent bowed,
And the wide world shall recognise in me
A living proof of its efficiency.
Therefore sweet Pain I woo, and to my heart
I, lover-like, must press the sharpest dart.
And when most men would howl and slap their leg,
I merely smile and cogitate the Egg...
Now tell me where in all our mortal round
Such pain, discomfort, misery are found
As i
n the wedded state? To bow and blench
Before the whimsies of a vapid wench:
To see her face at breakfast, dinner, tea,
And day and night support her ribaldry:
To watch her grow more tiresome day by day
And yet be quite forbid to run away:
To have her tactless humours sprung upon
One’s cherished hours of meditation: —
Comely or ugly, well- or under-bred,
It must be simply horrid to be wed.
And yet to my philosophy this pain,
This ceaseless pain is nothing, but a vain
Vapour which vanishes whene’er the mind
Like a strong sun its mastery can find.
Wherefore I welcome wedlock as a stage
Whereon to prove the truth of Eddy’s page.
But not one wife. A myriad is my plea.
Heat the fire seven times that the world may see
How in the torment I my soul will bear
As firm and placid as in Cambridge Square.
Prophet, I will follow thee. Thou ope’st the door,
Set down my name at least for twenty-four.
Perchance my arguments may seem too high
To those unversed in Boston’s mystery.
Let that Knight speak in whose proud veins there runs
The blood of Zeruiah and Shimei’s sons,
Who married copiously ere time began.
I call the Paynim knight, Sir Zimmerman.
The turtle’s voice is in the tree,
The skies are clear, the rains are gone.
O come, my fair ones, come with me,
With me, my loves, to Lebanon,
Where ‘neath the scented tamarisk boughs
The cool deep grasses sleep in shade,
And slim young lovers whisper vows,
Secret and sweet and unafraid.
I am weary to tears of my days among alien races,
I am sick unto death of this prattle of service and slums,
I detest the toilers (so-called) with their dirty faces,
And elderly Liberals gnashing their toothless gums.
I simply abominate Blue-books and social communions,
Smug politicians and earnest young donkeys that try to improve.
Unions I seek, but another sort than Trade Unions,
Henceforth my life I devote to the questing of love.
In the years that are glorious and golden,