Selected Poems
Page 14
Like Samson slaying, die,
Many shall hear
30
The all-pregnant sphere,
Bow to the birth and sweat, but – speech denied –
Sit dumb or – dealt in part – fall weak and wide.
Yet instant to fore-shadowed need
The eternal balance swings;
35
That wingèd men the Fates may breed
So soon as Fate hath wings.
These shall possess
Our littleness,
And in the imperial task (as worthy) lay
40
Up our lives’ all to piece one giant Day.
The Second Voyage
We’ve sent our little Cupids all ashore –
They were frightened, they were tired, they were cold.
Our sails of silk and purple go to store,
And we’ve cut away our mast of beaten gold.
5
(Foul weather!)
Oh, ’tis hemp and singing pine for to stand against the brine,
But Love he is our master as of old!
The sea has shorn our galleries away,
The salt has soiled our gilding past remede;
10
Our paint is flaked and blistered by the spray,
Our sides are half a fathom furred in weed.
(Foul weather!)
And the Doves of Venus fled and the petrels came instead,
But Love he was our master at our need!
15
’Was Youth would keep no vigil at the bow,
’Was Pleasure at the helm too drunk to steer –
We’ve shipped three able quartermasters now.
Men call them Custom, Reverence, and Fear.
(Foul weather!)
20
They are old and scarred and plain, but we’ll run no risk again
From any Port o’ Paphos mutineer!
We seek no more the tempest for delight,
We skirt no more the indraught and the shoal –
We ask no more of any day or night
25
Than to come with least adventure to our goal.
(Foul weather!)
What we find we needs must brook, but we do not go to look
Nor tempt the Lord our God that saved us whole.
Yet, caring so, not overmuch we care
30
To brace and trim for every foolish blast –
If the squall be pleased to sweep us unaware,
He may bellow off to leeward like the last.
(Foul weather!)
We will blame it on the deep (for the watch must have their sleep),
35
And Love can come and wake us when ’tis past.
Oh, launch them down with music from the beach,
Oh, warp them out with garlands from the quays –
Most resolute – a damsel unto each –
New prows that seek the old Hesperides!
40
(Foul weather!)
Though we know their voyage is vain, yet we see our path again
In the saffroned bridesails scenting all the seas!
(Foul weather!)
The Broken Men
For things we never mention,
For Art misunderstood –
For excellent intention
That did not turn to good;
5
From ancient tales’ renewing,
From clouds we would not clear –
Beyond the Law’s pursuing
We fled, and settled here.
We took no tearful leaving,
10
We bade no long good-byes.
Men talked of crime and thieving,
Men wrote of fraud and lies.
To save our injured feelings
’Twas time and time to go –
15
Behind was dock and Dartmoor,
Ahead lay Callao!
The widow and the orphan
That pray for ten per cent,
They clapped their trailers on us
20
To spy the road we went.
They watched the foreign sailings
(They scan the shipping still),
And that’s your Christian people
Returning good for ill!
25
God bless the thoughtful islands
Where never warrants come;
God bless the just Republics
That give a man a home,
That ask no foolish questions,
30
But set him on his feet;
And save his wife and daughters
From the workhouse and the street!
On church and square and market
The noonday silence falls;
35
You’ll hear the drowsy mutter
Of the fountain in our halls.
Asleep amid the yuccas
The city takes her ease –
Till twilight brings the land-wind
40
To the clicking jalousies.
Day-long the diamond weather,
The high, unaltered blue –
The smell of goats and incense
And the mule-bells tinkling through.
45
Day-long the warder ocean
That keeps us from our kin,
And once a month our levee
When the English mail comes in.
You’ll find us up and waiting
50
To treat you at the bar;
You’ll find us less exclusive
Than the average English are.
We’ll meet you with a carriage,
Too glad to show you round,
55
But – we do not lunch on steamers,
For they are English ground.
We sail o’ nights to England
And join our smiling Boards –
Our wives go in with Viscounts
60
And our daughters dance with Lords,
But behind our princely doings,
And behind each coup we make,
We feel there’s Something Waiting,
And – we meet It when we wake.
65
Ah, God! One sniff of England –
To greet our flesh and blood –
To hear the traffic slurring
Once more through London mud!
Our towns of wasted honour –
70
Our streets of lost delight!
How stands the old ‘Lord Warden?’
Are Dover’s cliffs still white?
Sussex
God gave all men all earth to love,
But, since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Belovèd over all;
5
That, as He watched Creation’s birth
So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
And see that it is good.
So one shall Baltic pines content,
10
As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove’s droned lament
Before Levuka’s Trade.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
15
In a fair ground – in a fair ground –
Yea, Sussex by the sea!
No tender-hearted garden crowns,
No bosomed woods adorn
Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,
20
But gnarled and writhen thorn –
Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,
And, through the gaps revealed,
Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim,
Blue goodness of the Weald.
25
Clean of officious fence or hedge,
Half-wild and wholly tame,
The wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge
As when the Romans came.
What sign of those that fought and died
30
At shift of sword and sword?
The barrow and the camp abide,
The sunlight and the sward.
Here leaps ashore the full Sou’west
All heavy-winged with brine,
35
Here lies above the folded crest
The channel’s leaden line;
And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,
And here, each warning each,
The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
40
Along the hidden beach.
We have no waters to delight
Our broad and brookless vales –
Only the dewpond on the height
Unfed, that never fails –
45
Whereby no tattered herbage tells
Which way the season flies –
Only our close-bit thyme that smells
Like dawn in Paradise.
Here through the strong and shadeless days
50
The tinkling silence thrills;
Or little, lost, Down churches praise
The Lord who made the hills:
But here the Old Gods guard their round,
And, in her secret heart,
55
The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found
Dreams, as she dwells, apart.
Though all the rest were all my share,
With equal soul I’d see
Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair,
60
Yet none more fair than she.
Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed,
And I will choose instead
Such lands as lie ’twixt Rake and Rye,
Black Down and Beachy Head.
65
I will go out against the sun
Where the rolled scarp retires,
And the Long Man of Wilmington
Looks naked towards the shires;
And east till doubling Rother crawls
70
To find the fickle tide,
By dry and sea-forgotten walls,
Our ports of stranded pride.
I will go north about the shaws
And the deep ghylls that breed
75
Huge oaks and old, the which we hold
No more than ‘Sussex weed’;
Or south where windy Piddinghoe’s
Begilded dolphin veers,
And red beside wide-bankèd Ouse
80
Lie down our Sussex steers.
So to the land our hearts we give
Till the sure magic strike,
And Memory, Use, and Love make live
Us and our fields alike –
85
That deeper than our speech and thought,
Beyond our reason’s sway,
Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
Yearns to its fellow-clay.
God gives all men all earth to love,
90
But, since man’s heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Belovèd over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
95
In a fair ground – in a fair ground –
Yea, Sussex by the sea!
Dirge of Dead Sisters
(FOR THE NURSES WHO DIED IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR)
Who recalls the twilight and the rangèd tents in order
(Violet peaks uplifted through the crystal evening air)
And the clink of iron teacups and the piteous, noble laughter,
And the faces of the sisters with the dust upon their hair?
5
(Now and not hereafter, while the breath is in our nostrils,
Now and not hereafter, ere the meaner years go by –
Let us now remember many honourable women,
Such as bade us turn again when we were like to die.)
Who recalls the morning and the thunder through the foothills
10
(Tufts of fleecy shrapnel strung along the empty plains)
And the sun-scarred Red-Cross coaches creeping guarded to the culvert,
And the faces of the sisters looking gravely from the trains?
(When the days were torment and the nights were clouded terror,
When the Powers of Darkness had dominion on our soul –
15
When we fled consuming through the Seven Hells of Fever,
These put out their hands to us and healed and made us whole.)
Who recalls the midnight by the bridge’s wrecked abutment
(Autumn rain that rattled like a Maxim on the tin)
And the lightning-dazzled levels and the streaming, straining wagons,
20
And the faces of the Sisters as they bore the wounded in?
(Till the pain was merciful and stunned us into silence –
When each nerve cried out on God that made the misused clay;
When the Body triumphed and the last poor shame departed –
These abode our agonies and wiped the sweat away.)
25
Who recalls the noontide and the funerals through the market
(Blanket-hidden bodies, flagless, followed by the flies)
And the footsore firing-party, and the dust and stench and staleness,
And the faces of the Sisters and the glory in their eyes?
(Bold behind the battle, in the open camp all-hallowed,
30
Patient, wise, and mirthful in the ringed and reeking town,
These endured unresting till they rested from their labours –
Little wasted bodies, ah, so light to lower down!)
Yet their graves are scattered and their names are clean forgotten,
Earth shall not remember, but the Waiting Angel knows
35
Them that died at Uitvlugt when the plague was on the city –
Her that fell at Simon’s Town in service on our foes.
Wherefore we they ransomed, while the breath is in our nostrils,
Now and not hereafter – ere the meaner years go by –
Praise with love and worship many honourable women,
40
Those that gave their lives for us when we were like to die!
Chant-Pagan
(ENGLISH IRREGULAR, DISCHARGED)
Me that ’ave been what I’ve been –
Me that ’ave gone where I’ve gone –
Me that ’ave seen what I’ve seen –
’Ow can I ever take on
5
With awful old England again,
An’ ’ouses both sides of the street,
An’ ’edges two sides of the lane,
An’ the parson an’ gentry between,