Enriched by trade in Afric corn,
His wealth allows, his wife requires,
Him to be born.
Him slaves shall serve with zeal renewed
10
At lesser wage for longer whiles,
And school- and station-masters rude
Receive with smiles.
His bowels shall be sought in charge
By learned doctors; all his sons
15
And nubile daughters shall enlarge
Their horizons.
For fierce she-Britons, apt to smite
Their upward-climbing sisters down,
Shall smooth their plumes and oft invite
20
The brood to town.
For these delights will he disgorge
The State enormous benefice,
But – by the head of either George –
He pays not twice!
25
Whom neither lust for public pelf,
Nor itch to make orations, vex –
Content to honour his own self
With his own cheques –
That man is clean. At least, his house
30
Springs cleanly from untainted gold –
Not from a conscience or a spouse
Sold and resold.
Time was, you say, before men knew
Such arts, and rose by Virtue guided? …
35
The tables rock with laughter – you
Not least derided.
London Stone
11 NOVEMBER, 1923
When you come to London Town,
(Grieving – grieving!)
Bring your flowers and lay them down
At the place of grieving.
5
When you come to London Town,
(Grieving – grieving!)
Bow your head and mourn your own,
With the others grieving.
For those minutes, let it wake
10
(Grieving – grieving!)
All the empty-heart and ache
That is not cured by grieving.
For those minutes, tell no lie:
(Grieving – grieving!)
15
‘Grave, this is thy victory:
And the sting of death is grieving.’
Where’s our help, from Earth or Heaven.
(Grieving – grieving!)
To comfort us for what we’ve given,
20
And only gained the grieving?
Heaven’s too far and Earth too near,
(Grieving – grieving!)
But our neighbour’s standing here,
Grieving as we’re grieving.
25
What’s his burden every day?
(Grieving – grieving!)
Nothing man can count or weigh,
But loss and love’s own grieving.
What is the tie betwixt us two
30
(Grieving – grieving!)
That must last our whole lives through?
‘As I suffer, so do you.’
That may ease the grieving.
Doctors
Man dies too soon, beside his works half-planned.
His days are counted and reprieve is vain:
Who shall entreat with Death to stay his hand;
Or cloak the shameful nakedness of pain?
5
Send here the bold, the seekers of the way –
The passionless, the unshakeable of soul,
Who serve the inmost mysteries of man’s clay,
And ask no more than leave to make them whole.
Chartres Windows
Colour fulfils where Music has no power:
By each man’s light the unjudging glass betrays
All men’s surrender, each man’s holiest hour
And all the lit confusion of our days –
5
Purfled with iron, traced in dusk and fire,
Challenging ordered Time, who, at the last,
Shall bring it, grozed and leaded and wedged fast,
To the cold stone that curbs or crowns desire.
Yet on the pavement that all feet have trod –
10
Even as the Spirit, in her deeps and heights,
Turns only, and that voiceless, to her God –
There falls no tincture from those anguished lights.
And Heaven’s one light, behind them, striking through
Blazons what each man dreamed no other knew.
The Changelings
(R.N.V.R.)
Or ever the battered liners sank
With their passengers to the dark,
I was head of a Walworth Bank,
And you were a grocer’s clerk.
5
I was a dealer in stocks and shares,
And you in butters and teas;
And we both abandoned our own affairs
And took to the dreadful seas.
Wet and worry about our ways –
10
Panic, onset, and flight –
Had us in charge for a thousand days
And a thousand-year-long night.
We saw more than the nights could hide –
More than the waves could keep –
15
And – certain faces over the side
Which do not go from our sleep.
We were more tired than words can tell
While the pied craft fled by,
And the swinging mounds of the Western swell
20
Hoisted us heavens-high …
Now there is nothing – not even our rank –
To witness what we have been;
And I am returned to my Walworth Bank,
And you to your margarine!
Gipsy Vans
Unless you come of the gipsy stock
That steals by night and day,
Lock your heart with a double lock
And throw the key away.
5
Bury it under the blackest stone
Beneath your father’s hearth,
And keep your eyes on your lawful own
And your feet to the proper path.
Then you can stand at your door and mock
10
When the gipsy vans come through …
For it isn’t right that the Gorgio stock
Should live as the Romany do.
Unless you come of the gipsy blood
That takes and never spares,
15
Bide content with your given good
And follow your own affairs.
Plough and harrow and roll your land,
And sow what ought to be sowed;
But never let loose your heart from your hand,
20
Nor flitter it down the road!
Then you can thrive on your boughten food
As the gipsy vans come through …
For it isn’t nature the Gorgio blood
Should love as the Romany do.
25
Unless you carry the gipsy eyes
That see but seldom weep,
Keep your head from the naked skies
Or the stars’ll trouble your sleep.
Watch your moon through your window-pane
30
And take what weather she brews;
But don’t run out in the midnight rain
Nor home in the morning dews.
Then you can huddle and shut your eyes
As the gipsy vans come through…
35
For it isn’t fitting the Gorgio ryes
Should walk as the Romany do.
Unless you come of the gipsy race
That counts all time the same,
Be you careful of Time and Place
40
And Judgment and Good Name:
Lose your life for to live your life
The way that yo
u ought to do;
And when you are finished, your God and your wife
And the Gipsies’ll laugh at you!
45
Then you can rot in your burying-place
As the gipsy vans come through…
For it isn’t reason the Gorgio race
Should die as the Romany do.
A Legend of Truth
Once on a time, the ancient legends tell,
Truth, rising from the bottom of her well,
Looked on the world, but, hearing how it lied,
Returned to her seclusion horrified.
5
There she abode, so conscious of her worth,
Not even Pilate’s Question called her forth,
Nor Galileo, kneeling to deny
The Laws that hold our Planet ’neath the sky.
Meantime, her kindlier sister, whom men call
10
Fiction, did all her work and more than all,
With so much zeal, devotion, tact, and care,
That no one noticed Truth was otherwhere.
Then came a War when, bombed and gassed and mined,
Truth rose once more, perforce, to meet mankind,
15
And through the dust and glare and wreck of things,
Beheld a phantom on unbalanced wings,
Reeling and groping, dazed, dishevelled, dumb,
But semaphoring direr deeds to come.
Truth hailed and bade her stand; the quavering shade
20
Clung to her knees and babbled, ‘Sister, aid!
I am – I was – thy Deputy, and men
Besought me for my useful tongue or pen
To gloss their gentle deeds, and I complied,
And they, and thy demands, were satisfied.
25
But this –’ she pointed o’er the blistered plain,
Where men as Gods and Devils wrought amain –
‘This is beyond me! Take thy work again.’
Tablets and pen transferred, she fled afar,
And Truth assumed the record of the War …
30
She saw, she heard, she read, she tried to tell
Facts beyond precedent and parallel –
Unfit to hint or breathe, much less to write,
But happening every minute, day and night.
She called for proof. It came. The dossiers grew.
35
She marked them, first, ‘Return. This can’t be true.’
Then, underneath the cold official word:
‘This is not really half of what occurred.’
She faced herself at last, the story runs,
And telegraphed her sister: ‘Come at once.
40
Facts out of hand. Unable overtake
Without your aid. Come back for Truth’s own sake!
Co-equal rank and powers if you agree.
They need us both, but you far more than me!’
We and They
Father, Mother, and Me,
Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.
5
And They live over the sea,
While We live over the way,
But would you believe it? – They look upon We
As only a sort of They!
We eat pork and beef
10
With cow-horn-handled knives.
They who gobble Their rice off a leaf
Are horrified out of Their lives;
While They who live up a tree,
And feast on grubs and clay,
15
(Isn’t it scandalous?) look upon We
As a simply disgusting They!
We shoot birds with a gun.
They stick lions with spears.
Their full-dress is un-.
20
We dress up to Our ears.
They like Their friends for tea.
We like Our friends to stay;
And, after all that, They look upon We
As an utterly ignorant They!
25
We eat kitcheny food.
We have doors that latch.
They drink milk or blood,
Under an open thatch.
We have Doctors to fee.
30
They have Wizards to pay.
And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We
As a quite impossible They!
All good people agree,
And all good people say,
35
All nice people, like Us, are We,
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
40
As only a sort of They!
Untimely
Nothing in life has been made by man for man’s using
But it was shown long since to man in ages
Lost as the name of the maker of it,
Who received oppression and shame for his wages –
5
Hate, avoidance, and scorn in his daily dealings –
Until he perished, wholly confounded.
More to be pitied than he are the wise
Souls which foresaw the evil of loosing
Knowledge or Art before time, and aborted
10
Noble devices and deep-wrought healings,
Lest offence should arise.
Heaven delivers to Earth the Hour that cannot be thwarted,
Neither advanced, at the price of a world nor a soul, and its Prophet
Comes through the blood of the vanguards who dreamed – too soon – it had sounded.
A Rector’s Memory
(ST ANDREWS, 1923)
The Gods that are wiser than Learning
But kinder than Life have made sure
No mortal may boast in the morning
That even will find him secure.
5
With naught for fresh faith or new trial,
With little unsoiled or unsold,
Can the shadow go back on the dial,
Or a new world be given for the old?
But he knows not what time shall awaken,
10
As he knows not what tide shall lay bare,
The heart of a man to be taken –
Taken and changed unaware.
He shall see as he tenders his vows
The far, guarded City arise –
15
The power of the North ’twixt her brows –
The steel of the North in her eyes;
The sheer hosts of Heaven above –
Selected Poems Page 22