I cannot think what they, unanswered, thought When the night came again and shadows moved As the moon through the ice-flower stared and roved, And that unyielding Shadow came again. That Shadow came again unseen and caught The children as they sat listening in vain, Their starved hearts failing ere the Shadow removed. And when the new morn stepped from the same cold East They lay unawakening in the barren light, Their song and their imaginations bright, Their pains and fears and all bewilderment ceased.... While the brief sun gave New beauty to the death-flower of the frost, And pigeons in the frore air swooped and tossed, And glad eyes were more glad, and grave less grave.

There is not pity enough in heaven or earth, There is not love enough, if children die Like famished birds—oh, less mercifully. A great wrong's done when such as these go forth Into the starless dark, broken and bruised, With mind and sweet affection all confused, And horror closing round them as they go. There is not pity enough!

And I have made, children, these verses for you, Lasting a little longer than your breath, Because I have been haunted with your death: So men are driven to things they hate to do. Jesus, forgive us all our happiness, As Thou dost blot out all our miseries.



HAPPY IS ENGLAND NOW

There is not anything more wonderful Than a great people moving towards the deep Of an unguessed and unfeared future; nor Is aught so dear of all held dear before As the new passion stirring in their veins When the destroying Dragon wakes from sleep.

Happy is England now, as never yet! And though the sorrows of the slow days fret Her faithfullest children, grief itself is proud. Ev'n the warm beauty of this spring and summer That turns to bitterness turns then to gladness Since for this England the beloved ones died.

Happy is England in the brave that die For wrongs not hers and wrongs so sternly hers; Happy in those that give, give, and endure The pain that never the new years may cure; Happy in all her dark woods, green fields, towns, Her hills and rivers and her chafing sea.

What'er was dear before is dearer now. There's not a bird singing upon his bough But sings the sweeter in our English ears: There's not a nobleness of heart, hand, brain But shines the purer; happiest is England now In those that fight, and watch with pride and tears.



* * * * *



JOHN DRINKWATER



MAY GARDEN

A shower of green gems on my apple tree This first morning of May Has fallen out of the night, to be Herald of holiday— Bright gems of green that, fallen there, Seem fixed and glowing on the air.

Until a flutter of blackbird wings Shakes and makes the boughs alive, And the gems are now no frozen things, But apple-green buds to thrive On sap of my May garden, how well The green September globes will tell.

Also my pear tree has its buds, But they are silver-yellow, Like autumn meadows when the floods Are silver under willow, And here shall long and shapely pears Be gathered while the autumn wears.

And there are sixty daffodils Beneath my wall.... And jealousy it is that kills This world when all The spring's behaviour here is spent To make the world magnificent



THE MIDLANDS

Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky Deep as the bedded violets that fill March woods with dusky passion. As I lie Abed between cool walls I watch the host Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain, And drowsily the habit of these most Beloved of English lands moves in my brain, While silence holds dominion of the dark, Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.

I see the valleys in their morning mist Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light, Happy with many a yeoman melodist: I see the little roads of twinkling white Busy with fieldward teams and market gear Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell The many-minded changes of the year, Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well; I see the sun persuade the mist away, Till town and stead are shining to the day.

I see the wagons move along the rows Of ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower, I see the lissom husbandman who knows Deep in his heart the beauty of his power, As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids on The harvest home. I hear the rickyard fill With gossip as in generations gone, While wagon follows wagon from the hill. I think how, when our seasons all are sealed, Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field.

I see the barns and comely manors planned By men who somehow moved in comely thought, Who, with a simple shippon to their hand, As men upon some godlike business wrought; I see the little cottages that keep Their beauty still where since Plantagenet Have come the shepherds happily to sleep, Finding the loaves and cups of cider set; I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old, Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold.

And now the valleys that upon the sun Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again, And the last light upon the wolds is done, And silence falls on flock and fields and men; And black upon the night I watch my hill, And the stars shine, and there an owly wing Brushes the night, and all again is still, And, from this land of worship that I sing, I turn to sleep, content that from my sires I draw the blood of England's midmost shires.



THE COTSWOLD FARMERS

Sometimes the ghosts forgotten go Along the hill-top way, And with long scythes of silver mow Meadows of moonlit hay, Until the cocks of Cotswold crow The coming of the day.

There's Tony Turkletob who died When he could drink no more, And Uncle Heritage, the pride Of eighteen-twenty-four, And Ebenezer Barleytide, And others half a score.

They fold in phantom pens, and plough Furrows without a share, And one will milk a faery cow, And one will stare and stare, And whistle ghostly tunes that now Are not sung anywhere.

The moon goes down on Oakridge lea, The other world's astir, The Cotswold Farmers silently Go back to sepulchre, The sleeping watchdogs wake, and see No ghostly harvester.



RECIPROCITY

I do not think that skies and meadows are Moral, or that the fixture of a star Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees Have wisdom in their windless silences. Yet these are things invested in my mood With constancy, and peace, and fortitude, That in my troubled season I can cry Upon the wide composure of the sky, And envy fields, and wish that I might be As little daunted as a star or tree.



BIRTHRIGHT

Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed Because a summer evening passed; And little Ariadne cried That summer fancy fell at last To dust; and young Verona died When beauty's hour was overcast.

Theirs was the bitterness we know Because the clouds of hawthorn keep So short a state, and kisses go To tombs unfathomably deep, While Rameses and Romeo And little Ariadne sleep.



OLTON POOLS

Now June walks on the waters, And the cuckoo's last enchantment Passes from Olton pools.

Now dawn comes to my window Breathing midsummer roses, And scythes are wet with dew.

Is it not strange for ever That, bowered in this wonder, Man keeps a jealous heart?...

That June and the June waters, And birds and dawn-lit roses, Are gospels in the wind,

Fading upon the deserts, Poor pilgrim revelations?... Hist ... over Olton pools!



* * * * *



WALTER DE LA MARE



THE SCRIBE

What lovely things Thy hand hath made, The smooth-plumed bird In its emerald shade, The seed of the grass, The speck of stone Which the wayfaring ant Stirs, and hastes on!

Though I should sit By some tarn in Thy hills, Using its ink As the spirit wills To write of Earth's wonders, Its live willed things, Flit would the ages On soundless wings Ere unto Z My pen drew nigh, Leviathan told, And the honey-fly: And still would remain My wit to try— My worn reeds broken, The dark tarn dry, All words forgotten— Thou, Lord, and I.



THE REMONSTRANCE

I was at peace until you came And set a careless mind aflame; I lived in quiet; cold, content; All longing in safe banishment, Until your ghostly lips and eyes Made wisdom unwise.

Naught was in me to tempt your feet To seek a lodging. Quite forgot Lay the sweet solitude we two In childhood used to wander through; Time's cold had closed my heart about, And shut you out.

Well, and what then?... O vision grave, Take all the little all I have! Strip me of what in voiceless thought Life's kept of life, unhoped, unsought!— Reverie and dream that memory must Hide deep in dust!

This only I say: Though cold and bare The haunted house you have chosen to share, Still 'neath its walls the moonbeam goes And trembles on the untended rose; Still o'er its broken roof-tree rise The starry arches of the skies; And 'neath your lightest word shall be The thunder of an ebbing sea.



THE GHOST

'Who knocks?' 'I, who was beautiful Beyond all dreams to restore, I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither, And knock on the door.'

'Who speaks?' 'I—once was my speech Sweet as the bird's on the air, When echo lurks by the waters to heed; 'Tis I speak thee fair.'

'Dark is the hour!' 'Aye, and cold.' 'Lone is my house.' 'Ah, but mine?' 'Sight, touch, lips, eyes gleamed in vain.' 'Long dead these to thine.'

Silence. Still faint on the porch Brake the flames of the stars. In gloom groped a hope-wearied hand Over keys, bolts, and bars.

A face peered. All the grey night In chaos of vacancy shone; Nought but vast sorrow was there— The sweet cheat gone.



THE FOOL RINGS HIS BELLS

Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee; And thou, poor Innocency; And Love—a lad with broken wing; And Pity, too: The Fool shall sing to you, As Fools will sing.

Aye, music hath small sense. And a time's soon told, And Earth is old, And my poor wits are dense; Yet I have secrets,—dark, my dear, To breathe you all: Come near. And lest some hideous listener tells, I'll ring the bells.

They're all at war! Yes, yes, their bodies go 'Neath burning sun and icy star To chaunted songs of woe, Dragging cold cannon through a mire Of rain and blood and spouting fire, The new moon glinting hard on eyes Wide with insanities!

Hush!... I use words I hardly know the meaning of; And the mute birds Are glancing at Love From out their shade of leaf and flower, Trembling at treacheries Which even in noonday cower.

Heed, heed not what I said Of frenzied hosts of men, More fools than I, On envy, hatred fed, Who kill, and die— Spake I not plainly, then? Yet Pity whispered, 'Why?'

Thou silly thing, off to thy daisies go. Mine was not news for child to know, And Death—no ears hath. He hath supped where creep Eyeless worms in hush of sleep; Yet, when he smiles, the hand he draws Athwart his grinning jaws— Faintly the thin bones rattle and ... there, there, Hearken how my bells in the air Drive away care!...

Nay, but a dream I had Of a world all mad. Not simple happy mad like me, Who am mad like an empty scene Of water and willow tree, Where the wind hath been; But that foul Satan-mad, Who rots in his own head, And counts the dead, Not honest one—and two— But for the ghosts they were, Brave, faithful, true, When, head in air, In Earth's clear green and blue Heaven they did share With Beauty who bade them there....

There, now!—Death goes— Mayhap I have wearied him. Aye, and the light doth dim, And asleep's the rose, And tired Innocence In dreams is hence.... Come, Love, my lad, Nodding that drowsy head, 'Tis time thy prayers were said.



* * * * *



WILLIAM H. DAVIES



THE WHITE CASCADE

What happy mortal sees that mountain now, The white cascade that's shining on its brow;

The white cascade that's both a bird and star, That has a ten-mile voice and shines as far?

Though I may never leave this land again, Yet every spring my mind must cross the main

To hear and see that water-bird and star That on the mountain sings, and shines so far.



EASTER

What exultations in my mind, From the love-bite of this Easter wind! My head thrown back, my face doth shine Like yonder Sun's, but warmer mine. A butterfly—from who knows where— Comes with a stagger through the air, And, lying down, doth ope and close His wings, as babies work their toes: Perhaps he thinks of pressing tight Into his wings a little light! And many a bird hops in between The leaves he dreams of, long and green, And sings for nipple-buds that show Where the full-breasted leaves must grow.



RAPTURES

Sing for the sun your lyric, lark, Of twice ten thousand notes; Sing for the moon, you nightingales, Whose light shall kiss your throats; Sing, sparrows, for the soft warm rain, To wet your feathers through; And when a rainbow's in the sky, Sing you, cuckoo—Cuckoo!

Sing for your five blue eggs, fond thrush, By many a leaf concealed; You starlings, wrens, and blackbirds, sing In every wood and field: While I, who fail to give my love Long raptures twice as fine, Will for her beauty breathe this one— A sigh, that's more divine.



COWSLIPS AND LARKS

I hear it said yon land is poor, In spite of those rich cowslips there— And all the singing larks it shoots To heaven from the cowslips' roots. But I, with eyes that beauty find, And music ever in my mind, Feed my thoughts well upon that grass Which starves the horse, the ox, and ass. So here I stand, two miles to come To Shapwick and my ten-days-home, Taking my summer's joy, although The distant clouds are dark and low, And comes a storm that, fierce and strong, Has brought the Mendip hills along: Those hills that when the light is there Are many a sunny mile from here.



* * * * *



GORDON BOTTOMLEY



ATLANTIS

What poets sang in Atlantis? Who can tell The epics of Atlantis or their names? The sea hath its own murmurs, and sounds not The secrets of its silences beneath, And knows not any cadences enfolded When the last bubbles of Atlantis broke Among the quieting of its heaving floor.

O, years and tides and leagues and all their billows Can alter not man's knowledge of men's hearts— While trees and rocks and clouds include our being We know the epics of Atlantis still: A hero gave himself to lesser men, Who first misunderstood and murdered him, And then misunderstood and worshipped him; A woman was lovely and men fought for her, Towns burnt for her, and men put men in bondage, But she put lengthier bondage on them all; A wanderer toiled among all the isles That fleck this turning star of shifting sea, Or lonely purgatories of the mind, In longing for his home or his lost love.

Poetry is founded on the hearts of men: Though in Nirvana or the Heavenly courts The principle of beauty shall persist, Its body of poetry, as the body of man, Is but a terrene form, a terrene use, That swifter being will not loiter with; And, when mankind is dead and the world cold, Poetry's immortality will pass.



NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1913

O, Cartmel bells ring soft to-night, And Cartmel bells ring clear, But I lie far away to-night, Listening with my dear;

Listening in a frosty land Where all the bells are still And the small-windowed bell-towers stand Dark under heath and hill.

I thought that, with each dying year, As long as life should last The bells of Cartmel I should hear Ring out an aged past:

The plunging, mingling sounds increase Darkness's depth and height, The hollow valley gains more peace And ancientness to-night:

The loveliness, the fruitfulness, The power of life lived there Return, revive, more closely press Upon that midnight air.

But many deaths have place in men Before they come to die; Joys must be used and spent, and then Abandoned and passed by.

Earth is not ours; no cherished space Can hold us from life's flow, That bears us thither and thence by ways We knew not we should go.

O, Cartmel bells ring loud, ring clear, Through midnight deep and hoar, A year new-born, and I shall hear The Cartmel bells no more.



IN MEMORIAM, A. M. W.

SEPTEMBER 1910

(For a Solemn Music)

Out of a silence The voice of music speaks.

When words have no more power, When tears can tell no more, The heart of all regret Is uttered by a falling wave Of melody.

No more, no more The voice that gathered us Shall hush us with deep joy; But in this hush, Out of its silence, In the awaking of music, It shall return.

For music can renew Its gladness and communion, Until we also sink, Where sinks the voice of music, Into a silence.



* * * * *



MAURICE BARING



IN MEMORIAM, A. H.

(Auberon Herbert, Captain Lord Lucas, R. F. C. killed November 3, 1916)

[Greek: Nomatai d'en atrugetou chaei]

The wind had blown away the rain That all day long had soaked the level plain. Against the horizon's fiery wrack, The sheds loomed black. And higher, in their tumultuous concourse met, The streaming clouds, shot-riddled banners, wet With the flickering storm, Drifted and smouldered, warm With flashes sent From the lower firmament. And they concealed— They only here and there through rifts revealed A hidden sanctuary of fire and light, A city of chrysolite.

We looked and laughed and wondered, and I said: That orange sea, those oriflammes outspread Were like the fanciful imaginings That the young painter flings Upon the canvas bold, Such as the sage and the old Make mock at, saying it could never be; And you assented also, laughingly. I wondered what they meant, That flaming firmament, Those clouds so grey so gold, so wet so warm, So much of glory and so much of storm, The end of the world, or the end Of the war—remoter still to me and you, my friend.

Alas! it meant not this, it meant not that: It meant that now the last time you and I Should look at the golden sky, And the dark fields large and flat, And smell the evening weather, And laugh and talk and wonder both together.

The last, last time. We nevermore should meet In France or London street, Or fields of home. The desolated space Of life shall nevermore Be what it was before. No one shall take your place. No other face Can fill that empty frame. There is no answer when we call your name. We cannot hear your step upon the stair. We turn to speak and find a vacant chair. Something is broken which we cannot mend. God has done more than take away a friend In taking you; for all that we have left Is bruised and irremediably bereft. There is none like you. Yet not that alone Do we bemoan; But this; that you were greater than the rest, And better than the best.

O liberal heart fast-rooted to the soil, O lover of ancient freedom and proud toil, Friend of the gipsies and all wandering song, The forest's nursling and the favoured child Of woodlands wild— O brother to the birds and all things free, Captain of liberty!

Deep in your heart the restless seed was sown; The vagrant spirit fretted in your feet; We wondered could you tarry long, And brook for long the cramping street, Or would you one day sail for shores unknown, And shake from you the dust of towns, and spurn The crowded market-place—and not return? You found a sterner guide; You heard the guns. Then, to their distant fire, Your dreams were laid aside; And on that day, you cast your heart's desire Upon a burning pyre; You gave your service to the exalted need, Until at last from bondage freed, At liberty to serve as you loved best, You chose the noblest way. God did the rest.

So when the spring of the world shall shrive our stain, After the winter of war, When the poor world awakes to peace once more, After such night of ravage and of rain, You shall not come again. You shall not come to taste the old spring weather, To gallop through the soft untrampled heather, To bathe and bake your body on the grass. We shall be there, alas! But not with you. When Spring shall wake the earth, And quicken the scarred fields to the new birth, Our grief shall grow. For what can Spring renew More fiercely for us than the need of you?

That night I dreamt they sent for me and said That you were missing, 'missing, missing—dead': I cried when in the morning I awoke, And all the world seemed shrouded in a cloak; But when I saw the sun, And knew another day had just begun, I brushed the dream away, and quite forgot The nightmare's ugly blot. So was the dream forgot. The dream came true. Before the night I knew That you had flown away into the air For ever. Then I cheated my despair. I said That you were safe—or wounded—but not dead. Alas! I knew Which was the false and true.

And after days of watching, days of lead, There came the certain news that you were dead. You had died fighting, fighting against odds, Such as in war the gods AEthereal dared when all the world was young; Such fighting as blind Homer never sung, Nor Hector nor Achilles never knew, High in the empty blue. High, high, above the clouds, against the setting sun, The fight was fought, and your great task was done.

Of all your brave adventures this the last The bravest was and best; Meet ending to a long embattled past, This swift, triumphant, fatal quest, Crowned with the wreath that never perisheth, And diadem of honourable death; Swift Death aflame with offering supreme And mighty sacrifice, More than all mortal dream; A soaring death, and near to Heaven's gate; Beneath the very walls of Paradise. Surely with soul elate, You heard the destined bullet as you flew, And surely your prophetic spirit knew That you had well deserved that shining fate.

Here is no waste, No burning Might-have-been, No bitter after-taste, None to censure, none to screen, Nothing awry, nor anything misspent; Only content, content beyond content, Which hath not any room for betterment.

God, Who had made you valiant, strong and swift, And maimed you with a bullet long ago, And cleft your riotous ardour with a rift, And checked your youth's tumultuous overflow, Gave back your youth to you, And packed in moments rare and few Achievements manifold And happiness untold, And bade you spring to Death as to a bride, In manhood's ripeness, power and pride, And on your sandals the strong wings of youth. He let you leave a name To shine on the entablatures of truth, For ever: To sound for ever in answering halls of fame.

For you soared onwards to that world which rags Of clouds, like tattered flags, Concealed; you reached the walls of chrysolite, The mansions white; And losing all, you gained the civic crown Of that eternal town, Wherein you passed a rightful citizen Of the bright commonwealth ablaze beyond our ken.

Surely you found companions meet for you In that high place; You met there face to face Those you had never known, but whom you knew: Knights of the Table Round, And all the very brave, the very true, With chivalry crowned; The captains rare, Courteous and brave beyond our human air; Those who had loved and suffered overmuch, Now free from the world's touch. And with them were the friends of yesterday, Who went before and pointed you the way; And in that place of freshness, light and rest, Where Lancelot and Tristram vigil keep Over their King's long sleep, Surely they made a place for you. Their long-expected guest, Among the chosen few, And welcomed you, their brother and their friend, To that companionship which hath no end.

And in the portals of the sacred hall You hear the trumpet's call, At dawn upon the silvery battlement, Re-echo through the deep And bid the sons of God to rise from sleep, And with a shout to hail The sunrise on the city of the Grail: The music that proud Lucifer in Hell Missed more than all the joys that he forwent. You hear the solemn bell At vespers, when the oriflammes are furled; And then you know that somewhere in the world, That shines far-off beneath you like a gem, They think of you, and when you think of them You know that they will wipe away their tears, And cast aside their fears; That they will have it so, And in no otherwise; That it is well with them because they know, With faithful eyes, Fixed forward and turned upwards to the skies, That it is well with you, Among the chosen few, Among the very brave, the very true.



* * * * *



HERBERT ASQUITH



THE VOLUNTEER

Here lies the clerk who half his life had spent Toiling at ledgers in a city grey, Thinking that so his days would drift away With no lance broken in life's tournament: Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes The gleaming eagles of the legions came, And horsemen, charging under phantom skies, Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.

And now those waiting dreams are satisfied; From twilight to the halls of dawn he went; His lance is broken; but he lies content With that high hour, in which he lived and died. And falling thus, he wants no recompense, Who found his battle in the last resort; Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence, Who goes to join the men of Agincourt.

THE END