SONGS FROM AN EVIL WOOD

I

There is no wrath in the stars, They do not rage in the sky; I look from the evil wood And find myself wondering why.

Why do they not scream out And grapple star against star, Seeking for blood in the wood As all things round me are?

They do not glare like the sky Or flash like the deeps of the wood; But they shine softly on In their sacred solitude.

To their high, happy haunts Silence from us has flown, She whom we loved of old And know it now she is gone.

When will she come again, Though for one second only? She whom we loved is gone And the whole world is lonely.

And the elder giants come Sometimes, tramping from far Through the weird and flickering light Made by an earthly star.

And the giant with his club, And the dwarf with rage in his breath, And the elder giants from far, They are all the children of Death.

They are all abroad to-night And are breaking the hills with their brood,— And the birds are all asleep Even in Plug Street Wood!

II

Somewhere lost in the haze The sun goes down in the cold, And birds in this evil wood Chirrup home as of old;

Chirrup, stir and are still, On the high twigs frozen and thin. There is no more noise of them now, And the long night sets in.

Of all the wonderful things That I have seen in the wood I marvel most at the birds And their wonderful quietude.

For a giant smites with his club All day the tops of the hill, Sometimes he rests at night, Oftener he beats them still.

And a dwarf with a grim black mane Raps with repeated rage All night in the valley below On the wooden walls of his cage.

III

I met with Death in his country, With his scythe and his hollow eye, Walking the roads of Belgium. I looked and he passed me by.

Since he passed me by in Plug Street, In the wood of the evil name, I shall not now lie with the heroes, I shall not share their fame;

I shall never be as they are, A name in the lands of the Free, Since I looked on Death in Flanders And he did not look at me.



Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas, one of the little-known but most individual of modern English poets, was born in 1878. For many years before he turned to verse, Thomas had a large following as a critic and author of travel books, biographies, pot-boilers. Hating his hack-work, yet unable to get free of it, he had so repressed his creative ability that he had grown doubtful concerning his own power. It needed something foreign to stir and animate what was native in him. So when Robert Frost, the New England poet, went abroad in 1912 for two years and became an intimate of Thomas's, the English critic began to write poetry. Loving, like Frost, the minutiae of existence, the quaint and casual turn of ordinary life, he caught the magic of the English countryside in its unpoeticized quietude. Many of his poems are full of a slow, sad contemplation of life and a reflection of its brave futility. It is not disillusion exactly; it is rather an absence of illusion. Poems (1917), dedicated to Robert Frost, is full of Thomas's fidelity to little things, things as unglorified as the unfreezing of the "rock-like mud," a child's path, a list of quaint-sounding villages, birds' nests uncovered by the autumn wind, dusty nettles—the lines glow with a deep and almost abject reverence for the soil.

Thomas was killed at Arras, at an observatory outpost, on Easter Monday, 1917.

IF I SHOULD EVER BY CHANCE

If I should ever by chance grow rich I'll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater, And let them all to my elder daughter. The rent I shall ask of her will be only Each year's first violets, white and lonely, The first primroses and orchises— She must find them before I do, that is. But if she finds a blossom on furze Without rent they shall all for ever be hers, Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, Roses, Pyrgo and Lapwater,— I shall give them all to my elder daughter.

TALL NETTLES

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough Long worn out, and the roller made of stone: Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.

This corner of the farmyard I like most: As well as any bloom upon a flower I like the dust on the nettles, never lost Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.

FIFTY FAGGOTS

There they stand, on their ends, the fifty faggots That once were underwood of hazel and ash In Jenny Pinks's Copse. Now, by the hedge Close packed, they make a thicket fancy alone Can creep through with the mouse and wren. Next Spring A blackbird or a robin will nest there, Accustomed to them, thinking they will remain Whatever is for ever to a bird. This Spring it is too late; the swift has come, 'Twas a hot day for carrying them up: Better they will never warm me, though they must Light several Winters' fires. Before they are done The war will have ended, many other things Have ended, maybe, that I can no more Foresee or more control than robin and wren.

COCK-CROW

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,— Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, Each facing each as in a coat of arms:— The milkers lace their boots up at the farms.



Seumas O'Sullivan

James Starkey was born in Dublin in 1879. Writing under the pseudonym of Seumas O'Sullivan, he contributed a great variety of prose and verse to various Irish papers. His reputation as a poet began with his appearance in New Songs, edited by George Russell ("A. E."). Later, he published The Twilight People (1905), The Earth Lover (1909), and Poems (1912).

PRAISE

Dear, they are praising your beauty, The grass and the sky: The sky in a silence of wonder, The grass in a sigh.

I too would sing for your praising, Dearest, had I Speech as the whispering grass, Or the silent sky.

These have an art for the praising Beauty so high. Sweet, you are praised in a silence, Sung in a sigh.



Ralph Hodgson

This exquisite poet was born in Northumberland about 1879. One of the most graceful of the younger word-magicians, Ralph Hodgson will retain his freshness as long as there are lovers of such rare and timeless songs as his. It is difficult to think of any anthology of English poetry compiled after 1917 that could omit "Eve," "The Song of Honor," and that memorable snatch of music, "Time, You Old Gypsy Man." One succumbs to the charm of "Eve" at the first reading; for here is the oldest of all legends told with a surprising simplicity and still more surprising freshness. This Eve is neither the conscious sinner nor the Mother of men; she is, in Hodgson's candid lines, any young, English country girl—filling her basket, regarding the world and the serpent itself with a mild and childlike wonder.

Hodgson's verses, full of the love of all natural things, a love that goes out to

"an idle rainbow No less than laboring seas,"

were originally brought out in small pamphlets, and distributed by Flying Fame.

EVE

Eve, with her basket, was Deep in the bells and grass, Wading in bells and grass Up to her knees. Picking a dish of sweet Berries and plums to eat, Down in the bells and grass Under the trees.

Mute as a mouse in a Corner the cobra lay, Curled round a bough of the Cinnamon tall.... Now to get even and Humble proud heaven and Now was the moment or Never at all.

"Eva!" Each syllable Light as a flower fell, "Eva!" he whispered the Wondering maid, Soft as a bubble sung Out of a linnet's lung, Soft and most silverly "Eva!" he said.

Picture that orchard sprite; Eve, with her body white, Supple and smooth to her Slim finger tips; Wondering, listening, Listening, wondering, Eve with a berry Half-way to her lips.

Oh, had our simple Eve Seen through the make-believe! Had she but known the Pretender he was! Out of the boughs he came, Whispering still her name, Tumbling in twenty rings Into the grass.

Here was the strangest pair In the world anywhere, Eve in the bells and grass Kneeling, and he Telling his story low.... Singing birds saw them go Down the dark path to The Blasphemous Tree.

Oh, what a clatter when Titmouse and Jenny Wren Saw him successful and Taking his leave! How the birds rated him, How they all hated him! How they all pitied Poor motherless Eve!

Picture her crying Outside in the lane, Eve, with no dish of sweet Berries and plums to eat, Haunting the gate of the Orchard in vain.... Picture the lewd delight Under the hill to-night— "Eva!" the toast goes round, "Eva!" again.

TIME, YOU OLD GIPSY MAN

Time, you old gipsy man, Will you not stay, Put up your caravan Just for one day?

All things I'll give you Will you be my guest, Bells for your jennet Of silver the best, Goldsmiths shall beat you A great golden ring, Peacocks shall bow to you, Little boys sing, Oh, and sweet girls will Festoon you with may. Time, you old gipsy, Why hasten away?

Last week in Babylon, Last night in Rome, Morning, and in the crush Under Paul's dome; Under Paul's dial You tighten your rein— Only a moment, And off once again; Off to some city Now blind in the womb, Off to another Ere that's in the tomb.

Time, you old gipsy man, Will you not stay, Put up your caravan Just for one day?

THE BIRDCATCHER

When flighting time is on, I go With clap-net and decoy, A-fowling after goldfinches And other birds of joy;

I lurk among the thickets of The Heart where they are bred, And catch the twittering beauties as They fly into my Head.

THE MYSTERY

He came and took me by the hand Up to a red rose tree, He kept His meaning to Himself But gave a rose to me.

I did not pray Him to lay bare The mystery to me, Enough the rose was Heaven to smell, And His own face to see.



Harold Monro

The publisher of the various anthologies of Georgian Poetry, Harold Monro, was born in Brussels in 1879. He describes himself as "author, publisher, editor and book-seller." Monro founded The Poetry Bookshop in London in 1912, a unique establishment having as its object a practical relation between poetry and the public, and keeping in stock nothing but poetry, the drama, and books connected with these subjects. His quarterly Poetry and Drama (discontinued during the war and revived in 1919 as The Monthly Chapbook), was in a sense the organ of the younger men; and his shop, in which he has lived for the last seven years except while he was in the army, became a genuine literary center.

Of Monro's books, the two most important are Strange Meetings (1917) and Children of Love (1919). "The Nightingale Near the House," one of the loveliest of his poems, is also one of his latest and has not yet appeared in any of his volumes.

THE NIGHTINGALE NEAR THE HOUSE

Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn: It listens, listens. Taller trees beyond Listen. The moon at the unruffled pond Stares. And you sing, you sing.

That star-enchanted song falls through the air From lawn to lawn down terraces of sound, Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground; And all the night you sing.

My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee As all night long I listen, and my brain Receives your song; then loses it again In moonlight on the lawn.

Now is your voice a marble high and white, Then like a mist on fields of paradise, Now is a raging fire, then is like ice, Then breaks, and it is dawn.

EVERY THING

Since man has been articulate, Mechanical, improvidently wise, (Servant of Fate), He has not understood the little cries And foreign conversations of the small Delightful creatures that have followed him Not far behind; Has failed to hear the sympathetic call Of Crockery and Cutlery, those kind Reposeful Teraphim Of his domestic happiness; the Stool He sat on, or the Door he entered through: He has not thanked them, overbearing fool! What is he coming to?

But you should listen to the talk of these. Honest they are, and patient they have kept; Served him without his Thank you or his Please ... I often heard The gentle Bed, a sigh between each word, Murmuring, before I slept. The Candle, as I blew it, cried aloud, Then bowed, And in a smoky argument Into the darkness went.

The Kettle puffed a tentacle of breath:— "Pooh! I have boiled his water, I don't know Why; and he always says I boil too slow. He never calls me 'Sukie, dear,' and oh, I wonder why I squander my desire Sitting submissive on his kitchen fire."

Now the old Copper Basin suddenly Rattled and tumbled from the shelf, Bumping and crying: "I can fall by myself; Without a woman's hand To patronize and coax and flatter me, I understand The lean and poise of gravitable land." It gave a raucous and tumultuous shout, Twisted itself convulsively about, Rested upon the floor, and, while I stare, It stares and grins at me.

The old impetuous Gas above my head Begins irascibly to flare and fret, Wheezing into its epileptic jet, Reminding me I ought to go to bed.

The Rafters creak; an Empty-Cupboard door Swings open; now a wild Plank of the floor Breaks from its joist, and leaps behind my foot. Down from the chimney, half a pound of Soot Tumbles and lies, and shakes itself again. The Putty cracks against the window-pane.

A piece of Paper in the basket shoves Another piece, and toward the bottom moves. My independent Pencil, while I write, Breaks at the point: the ruminating Clock Stirs all its body and begins to rock, Warning the waiting presence of the Night, Strikes the dead hour, and tumbles to the plain Ticking of ordinary work again.

You do well to remind me, and I praise Your strangely individual foreign ways. You call me from myself to recognize Companionship in your unselfish eyes. I want your dear acquaintances, although I pass you arrogantly over, throw Your lovely sounds, and squander them along My busy days. I'll do you no more wrong.

Purr for me, Sukie, like a faithful cat. You, my well trampled Boots, and you, my Hat, Remain my friends: I feel, though I don't speak, Your touch grow kindlier from week to week. It well becomes our mutual happiness To go toward the same end more or less. There is not much dissimilarity, Not much to choose, I know it well, in fine, Between the purposes of you and me, And your eventual Rubbish Heap, and mine.

STRANGE MEETINGS

If suddenly a clod of earth should rise, And walk about, and breathe, and speak, and love, How one would tremble, and in what surprise Gasp: "Can you move?"

I see men walking, and I always feel: "Earth! How have you done this? What can you be?" I can't learn how to know men, or conceal How strange they are to me.



T. M. Kettle

Thomas M. Kettle was born at Artane County, Dublin, in 1880 and was educated at University College, where he won the Gold Medal for Oratory. His extraordinary faculty for grasping an intricate problem and crystallizing it in an epigram, or scoring his adversaries with one bright flash, was apparent even then. He was admitted to the bar in 1905 but soon abandoned the law to devote himself to journalism, which, because of his remarkable style, never remained journalism in his hands. In 1906 he entered politics; in 1910 he was re-elected for East Tyrone. Even his bitterest opponents conceded that Tom Kettle (as he was called by friend and enemy) was the most honorable of fighters; they acknowledged his honesty, courage and devotion to the cause of a United Ireland—and respected his penetrating wit. He once spoke of a Mr. Healy as "a brilliant calamity" and satirized a long-winded speaker by saying, "Mr. Long knows a sentence should have a beginning, but he quite forgets it should also have an end."

"An Irish torch-bearer" (so E. B. Osborn calls him), Kettle fell in action at Ginchy, leading his Fusiliers in September, 1916. The uplifted poem to his daughter was written shortly before his death.

TO MY DAUGHTER BETTY, THE GIFT OF GOD

In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown To beauty proud as was your mother's prime, In that desired, delayed, incredible time, You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own, And the dear heart that was your baby throne, To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme And reason: some will call the thing sublime, And some decry it in a knowing tone. So here, while the mad guns curse overhead, And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor, Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead, Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,— But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed, And for the secret Scripture of the poor.



Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes was born at Staffordshire, September 16, 1880. He is one of the few contemporary poets who have been fortunate enough to write a kind of poetry that is not only saleable but popular with many classes of people.

His first book, The Loom of Years (1902), was published when he was only 22 years old, and Poems (1904) intensified the promise of his first publication. Swinburne, grown old and living in retirement, was so struck with Noyes's talent that he had the young poet out to read to him. Unfortunately, Noyes has not developed his gifts as deeply as his admirers have hoped. His poetry, extremely straightforward and rhythmical, has often degenerated into cheap sentimentalities and cheaper tirades; it has frequently attempted to express programs and profundities far beyond Noyes's power.

What is most appealing about his best verse is its ease and heartiness; this singer's gift lies in the almost personal bond established between the poet and his public. People have such a good time reading his vivacious lines because Noyes had such a good time writing them. Rhyme in a thumping rhythm seems to be not merely his trade but his morning exercise. Noyes's own relish filled and quickened glees and catches like Forty Singing Seamen (1907), the lusty choruses in Tales of the Mermaid Tavern (1913), and the genuinely inspired nonsense of the earlier Forest of Wild Thyme (1905).

The least popular work of Noyes is, as a unified product, his most remarkable performance. It is an epic in twelve books of blank verse, Drake (1908), a glowing pageant of the sea and England's drama upon it. It is a spirited echo of the maritime Elizabethans; a vivid and orchestral work interspersed with splendid lyric passages and brisk songs. The companion volume, an attempted reconstruction of the literary phase of the same period, is less successful; but these Tales of the Mermaid Tavern (which introduce Shakespeare, Marlowe, Drayton, Raleigh, Ben Jonson, and other immortals) are alive and colorful, if somewhat too insistently rollicking and smoothly lilting.

His eight volumes were assembled in 1913 and published in two books of Collected Poems (Frederick A. Stokes Company).

SHERWOOD

Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake? Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake; Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn, Dreaming of a shadowy man that winds a shadowy horn.

Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves, Calling as he used to call, faint and far away, In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June: All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon; Like a flight of rose-leaves fluttering in a mist Of opal and ruby and pearl and amethyst.

Merry, merry England is waking as of old, With eyes of blither hazel and hair of brighter gold: For Robin Hood is here again beneath the bursting spray In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Love is in the greenwood building him a house Of wild rose and hawthorn and honeysuckle boughs; Love it in the greenwood: dawn is in the skies; And Marian is waiting with a glory in her eyes.

Hark! The dazzled laverock climbs the golden steep: Marian is waiting: is Robin Hood asleep? Round the fairy grass-rings frolic elf and fay, In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Oberon, Oberon, rake away the gold, Rake away the red leaves, roll away the mould, Rake away the gold leaves, roll away the red, And wake Will Scarlett from his leafy forest bed.

Friar Tuck and Little John are riding down together With quarter-staff and drinking-can and grey goose-feather; The dead are coming back again; the years are rolled away In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Softly over Sherwood the south wind blows; All the heart of England hid in every rose Hears across the greenwood the sunny whisper leap, Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Hark, the voice of England wakes him as of old And, shattering the silence with a cry of brighter gold, Bugles in the greenwood echo from the steep, Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Where the deer are gliding down the shadowy glen All across the glades of fern he calls his merry men; Doublets of the Lincoln green glancing through the May, In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day;

Calls them and they answer: from aisles of oak and ash Rings the Follow! Follow! and the boughs begin to crash; The ferns begin to flutter and the flowers begin to fly; And through the crimson dawning the robber band goes by.

Robin! Robin! Robin! All his merry thieves Answer as the bugle-note shivers through the leaves: Calling as he used to call, faint and far away, In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

THE BARREL-ORGAN

There's a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street In the City as the sun sinks low; And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet And fulfilled it with the sunset glow; And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light; And they've given it a glory and a part to play again In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

And now it's marching onward through the realms of old romance, And trolling out a fond familiar tune, And now it's roaring cannon down to fight the King of France, And now it's prattling softly to the moon. And all around the organ there's a sea without a shore Of human joys and wonders and regrets; To remember and to recompense the music evermore For what the cold machinery forgets ...

Yes; as the music changes, Like a prismatic glass, It takes the light and ranges Through all the moods that pass; Dissects the common carnival Of passions and regrets, And gives the world a glimpse of all The colours it forgets.

And there La Traviata sighs Another sadder song; And there Il Trovatore cries A tale of deeper wrong; And bolder knights to battle go With sword and shield and lance, Than ever here on earth below Have whirled into—a dance!—

Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time; Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!) And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland; Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume, The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!) And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world's a blaze of sky The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will sing a song for London.

The nightingale is rather rare and yet they say you'll hear him there At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!) The linnet and the throstle, too, and after dark the long halloo And golden-eyed tu-whit, tu-whoo of owls that ogle London.

For Noah hardly knew a bird of any kind that isn't heard At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!) And when the rose begins to pout and all the chestnut spires are out You'll hear the rest without a doubt, all chorusing for London:—

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time; Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!) And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland; Come down to Kew in lilac-time (is isn't far from London!)

And then the troubadour begins to thrill the golden street, In the city as the sun sinks low; And in all the gaudy busses there are scores of weary feet Marking time, sweet time, with a dull mechanic beat, And a thousand hearts are plunging to a love they'll never meet, Through the meadows of the sunset, through the poppies and the wheat, In the land where the dead dreams go.

Verdi, Verdi, when you wrote Il Trovatore did you dream Of the City when the sun sinks low, Of the organ and the monkey and the many-coloured stream On the Piccadilly pavement, of the myriad eyes that seem To be litten for a moment with a wild Italian gleam As A che la morte parodies the world's eternal theme And pulses with the sunset-glow?

There's a thief, perhaps, that listens with a face of frozen stone In the City as the sun sinks low; There's a portly man of business with a balance of his own, There's a clerk and there's a butcher of a soft reposeful tone, And they're all of them returning to the heavens they have known: They are crammed and jammed in busses and—they're each of them alone In the land where the dead dreams go.

There's a labourer that listens to the voices of the dead In the City as the sun sinks low; And his hand begins to tremble and his face is rather red As he sees a loafer watching him and—there he turns his head And stares into the sunset where his April love is fled, For he hears her softly singing and his lonely soul is led Through the land where the dead dreams go ...

There's a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street In the City as the sun sinks low; Though the music's only Verdi there's a world to make it sweet Just as yonder yellow sunset where the earth and heaven meet Mellows all the sooty City! Hark, a hundred thousand feet Are marching on to glory through the poppies and the wheat In the land where the dead dreams go.

So it's Jeremiah, Jeremiah, What have you to say When you meet the garland girls Tripping on their way? All around my gala hat I wear a wreath of roses (A long and lonely year it is I've waited for the May!) If any one should ask you, The reason why I wear it is— My own love, my true love is coming home to-day.

And it's buy a bunch of violets for the lady (It's lilac-time in London; it's lilac-time in London!) Buy a bunch of violets for the lady; While the sky burns blue above:

On the other side the street you'll find it shady (It's lilac-time in London; it's lilac-time in London!) But buy a bunch of violets for the lady, And tell her she's your own true love.

There's a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street In the City as the sun sinks glittering and slow; And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet And enriched it with the harmonies that make a song complete In the deeper heavens of music where the night and morning meet, As it dies into the sunset glow;

And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light, And they've given it a glory and a part to play again In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

And there, as the music changes, The song runs round again; Once more it turns and ranges Through all its joy and pain: Dissects the common carnival Of passions and regrets; And the wheeling world remembers all The wheeling song forgets.

Once more La Traviata sighs Another sadder song: Once more Il Trovatore cries A tale of deeper wrong; Once more the knights to battle go With sword and shield and lance Till once, once more, the shattered foe Has whirled into—a dance!

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time; Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!) And you shall wander hand in hand with Love in summer's wonderland, Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

EPILOGUE

(From "The Flower of Old Japan")

Carol, every violet has Heaven for a looking-glass!

Every little valley lies Under many-clouded skies; Every little cottage stands Girt about with boundless lands. Every little glimmering pond Claims the mighty shores beyond— Shores no seamen ever hailed, Seas no ship has ever sailed.

All the shores when day is done Fade into the setting sun, So the story tries to teach More than can be told in speech.

Beauty is a fading flower, Truth is but a wizard's tower, Where a solemn death-bell tolls, And a forest round it rolls.

We have come by curious ways To the light that holds the days; We have sought in haunts of fear For that all-enfolding sphere: And lo! it was not far, but near. We have found, O foolish-fond, The shore that has no shore beyond.

Deep in every heart it lies With its untranscended skies; For what heaven should bend above Hearts that own the heaven of love?

Carol, Carol, we have come Back to heaven, back to home.



Padraic Colum

Padraic Colum was born at Longford, Ireland (in the same county as Oliver Goldsmith), December 8, 1881, and was educated at the local schools. At 20 he was a member of a group that created the Irish National Theatre, afterwards called The Abbey Theatre.

Colum began as a dramatist with Broken Soil (1904), The Land (1905), Thomas Muskerry (1910), and this early dramatic influence has colored much of his work, his best poetry being in the form of dramatic lyrics. Wild Earth, his most notable collection of verse, first appeared in 1909, and an amplified edition of it was published in America in 1916.

THE PLOUGHER

Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken; Beside him two horses—a plough!

Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn man there in the sunset, And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities!

"Brute-tamer, plough-maker, earth-breaker! Can'st hear? There are ages between us. "Is it praying you are as you stand there alone in the sunset?

"Surely our sky-born gods can be naught to you, earth child and earth master? "Surely your thoughts are of Pan, or of Wotan, or Dana?

"Yet, why give thought to the gods? Has Pan led your brutes where they stumble? "Has Dana numbed pain of the child-bed, or Wotan put hands to your plough?

"What matter your foolish reply! O, man, standing lone and bowed earthward, "Your task is a day near its close. Give thanks to the night-giving God."

* * * * *

Slowly the darkness falls, the broken lands blend with the savage; The brute-tamer stands by the brutes, a head's breadth only above them.

A head's breadth? Ay, but therein is hell's depth, and the height up to heaven, And the thrones of the gods and their halls, their chariots, purples, and splendors.

AN OLD WOMAN OF THE ROADS

O, to have a little house! To own the hearth and stool and all! The heaped up sods upon the fire, The pile of turf against the wall!

To have a clock with weights and chains And pendulum swinging up and down! A dresser filled with shining delph, Speckled and white and blue and brown!

I could be busy all the day Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor, And fixing on their shelf again My white and blue and speckled store!

I could be quiet there at night Beside the fire and by myself, Sure of a bed and loth to leave The ticking clock and the shining delph!

Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark, And roads where there's never a house nor bush, And tired I am of bog and road, And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!

And I am praying to God on high, And I am praying Him night and day, For a little house—a house of my own— Out of the wind's and the rain's way.



Joseph Campbell

(Seosamh MacCathmhaoil)

Joseph Campbell was born in Belfast in 1881, and is not only a poet but an artist; he made all the illustrations for The Rushlight (1906), a volume of his own poems. Writing under the Gaelic form of his name, he has published half a dozen books of verse, the most striking of which is The Mountainy Singer, first published in Dublin in 1909.

I AM THE MOUNTAINY SINGER

I am the mountainy singer— The voice of the peasant's dream, The cry of the wind on the wooded hill, The leap of the fish in the stream.

Quiet and love I sing— The carn on the mountain crest, The cailin in her lover's arms, The child at its mother's breast.

Beauty and peace I sing— The fire on the open hearth, The cailleach spinning at her wheel, The plough in the broken earth.

Travail and pain I sing— The bride on the childing bed, The dark man laboring at his rhymes, The eye in the lambing shed.

Sorrow and death I sing— The canker come on the corn, The fisher lost in the mountain loch, The cry at the mouth of morn.

No other life I sing, For I am sprung of the stock That broke the hilly land for bread, And built the nest in the rock!

THE OLD WOMAN

As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face.

As the spent radiance Of the winter sun, So is a woman With her travail done,

Her brood gone from her, And her thoughts as still As the waters Under a ruined mill.



James Stephens

This unique personality was born in Dublin in February, 1882. Stephens was discovered in an office and saved from clerical slavery by George Russell ("A. E."). Always a poet, Stephens's most poetic moments are in his highly-colored prose. And yet, although the finest of his novels, The Crock of Gold (1912), contains more wild phantasy and quaint imagery than all his volumes of verse, his Insurrections (1909) and The Hill of Vision (1912) reveal a rebellious spirit that is at once hotly ironic and coolly whimsical.

Stephens's outstanding characteristic is his delightful blend of incongruities—he combines in his verse the grotesque, the buoyant and the profound. No fresher or more brightly vigorous imagination has come out of Ireland since J. M. Synge.

THE SHELL

And then I pressed the shell Close to my ear And listened well, And straightway like a bell Came low and clear The slow, sad murmur of the distant seas, Whipped by an icy breeze Upon a shore Wind-swept and desolate. It was a sunless strand that never bore The footprint of a man, Nor felt the weight Since time began Of any human quality or stir Save what the dreary winds and waves incur. And in the hush of waters was the sound Of pebbles rolling round, For ever rolling with a hollow sound. And bubbling sea-weeds as the waters go Swish to and fro Their long, cold tentacles of slimy grey. There was no day, Nor ever came a night Setting the stars alight To wonder at the moon: Was twilight only and the frightened croon, Smitten to whimpers, of the dreary wind And waves that journeyed blind— And then I loosed my ear ... O, it was sweet To hear a cart go jolting down the street.

WHAT TOMAS AN BUILE SAID IN A PUB

I saw God. Do you doubt it? Do you dare to doubt it? I saw the Almighty Man. His hand Was resting on a mountain, and He looked upon the World and all about it: I saw him plainer than you see me now, You mustn't doubt it.

He was not satisfied; His look was all dissatisfied. His beard swung on a wind far out of sight Behind the world's curve, and there was light Most fearful from His forehead, and He sighed, "That star went always wrong, and from the start I was dissatisfied."

He lifted up His hand— I say He heaved a dreadful hand Over the spinning Earth. Then I said, "Stay, You must not strike it, God; I'm in the way; And I will never move from where I stand." He said, "Dear child, I feared that you were dead," And stayed His hand.

TO THE FOUR COURTS, PLEASE

The driver rubbed at his nettly chin With a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black, And his wobbly, violet lips sucked in, And puffed out again and hung down slack: One fang shone through his lop-sided smile, In his little pouched eye flickered years of guile.

And the horse, poor beast, it was ribbed and forked, And its ears hung down, and its eyes were old, And its knees were knuckly, and as we talked It swung the stiff neck that could scarcely hold Its big, skinny head up—then I stepped in, And the driver climbed to his seat with a grin.

God help the horse and the driver too, And the people and beasts who have never a friend, For the driver easily might have been you, And the horse be me by a different end. And nobody knows how their days will cease, And the poor, when they're old, have little of peace.



John Drinkwater

Primarily a poetic dramatist, John Drinkwater, born in 1882, is best known as the author of Abraham Lincoln—A Play (1919) founded on Lord Charnwood's masterly and analytical biography. He has published several volumes of poems, most of them meditative and elegiac in mood.

The best of his verses have been collected in Poems, 1908-19, and the two here reprinted are used by permission, and by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

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.

A TOWN WINDOW

Beyond my window in the night Is but a drab inglorious street, Yet there the frost and clean starlight As over Warwick woods are sweet.

Under the grey drift of the town The crocus works among the mould As eagerly as those that crown The Warwick spring in flame and gold.

And when the tramway down the hill Across the cobbles moans and rings, There is about my window-sill The tumult of a thousand wings.



James Joyce

James Joyce was born at Dublin, February 2, 1882, and educated in Ireland. He is best known as a highly sensitive and strikingly original writer of prose, his most celebrated works being Dubliners (1914) and the novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). His one volume of verse, Chamber Music, was published in this country in 1918.

I HEAR AN ARMY

I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees: Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand, Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name: I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter. They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame, Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair: They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore. My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair? My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?



J. C. Squire

Jack Collings Squire was born April 2, 1884, at Plymouth, of Devonian ancestry. He was educated at Blundell's and Cambridge University, and became known first as a remarkably adroit parodist. His Imaginary Speeches (1912) and Tricks of the Trade (1917) are amusing parodies and, what is more, excellent criticism. He edited The New Statesman for a while and founded The London Mercury (a monthly of which he is editor) in November, 1919. Under the pseudonym "Solomon Eagle" he wrote a page of literary criticism every week for six years, many of these papers being collected in his volume, Books in General (1919).

His original poetry is intellectual but simple, sometimes metaphysical and always interesting technically in its fluent and variable rhythms. A collection of his best verse up to 1919 was published under the title, Poems: First Series.

A HOUSE

Now very quietly, and rather mournfully, In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires, And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.

And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied, From that faint exquisite celestial strand, And turn and see again the only dwelling-place In this wide wilderness of darkening land.

The house, that house, O now what change has come to it. Its crude red-brick facade, its roof of slate; What imperceptible swift hand has given it A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?

No hand has altered it, that parallelogram, So inharmonious, so ill-arranged; That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was; No, it is not that any line has changed.

Only that loneliness is now accentuate And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave, This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again, And all man's energies seem very brave.

And this mean edifice, which some dull architect Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind, Takes on the quality of that magnificent Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind.

Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be, Yet imperturbable that house will rest, Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny, Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast.

Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac May howl their menaces, and hail descend: Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly, Not even scornfully, and wait the end.

And all a universe of nameless messengers From unknown distances may whisper fear, And it will imitate immortal permanence, And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear.

It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too, When there is none to watch, no alien eyes To watch its ugliness assume a majesty From this great solitude of evening skies.

So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around, While life remains to it prepared to outface Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries May hide and wait for it in time and space.



Lascelles Abercrombie

Lascelles Abercrombie was born in 1884. Like Masefield, he gained his reputation rapidly; totally unknown until 1909, upon the publication of Interludes and Poems, he was recognized as one of the greatest metaphysical poets of his period. Emblems of Love (1912), the ripest collection of his blank verse dialogues, justified the enthusiasm of his admirers.

Many of Abercrombie's poems, the best of which are too long to quote, are founded on scriptural themes, but his blank verse is not biblical either in mood or manner. It is the undercurrent rather than the surface of his verse which moves with a strong religious conviction. Abercrombie's images are daring and brilliant; his lines, sometimes too closely packed, glow with a dazzling intensity that is warmly spiritual and fervently human.

FROM "VASHTI"

What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty? Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all The world, but an awning scaffolded amid The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty? The East and West kneel down to thee, the North And South; and all for thee their shoulders bear The load of fourfold space. As yellow morn Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea, Thy feet are on the griefs and joys of men That sheen to be thy causey. Out of tears Indeed, and blitheness, murder and lust and love, Whatever has been passionate in clay, Thy flesh was tempered. Behold in thy body The yearnings of all men measured and told, Insatiate endless agonies of desire Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape! What beauty is there, but thou makest it? How is earth good to look on, woods and fields, The season's garden, and the courageous hills, All this green raft of earth moored in the seas? The manner of the sun to ride the air, The stars God has imagined for the night? What's this behind them, that we cannot near, Secret still on the point of being blabbed, The ghost in the world that flies from being named? Where do they get their beauty from, all these? They do but glaze a lantern lit for man, And woman's beauty is the flame therein.

SONG

(From "Judith")

Balkis was in her marble town, And shadow over the world came down. Whiteness of walls, towers and piers, That all day dazzled eyes to tears, Turned from being white-golden flame, And like the deep-sea blue became. Balkis into her garden went; Her spirit was in discontent Like a torch in restless air. Joylessly she wandered there, And saw her city's azure white Lying under the great night, Beautiful as the memory Of a worshipping world would be In the mind of a god, in the hour When he must kill his outward power; And, coming to a pool where trees Grew in double greeneries, Saw herself, as she went by The water, walking beautifully, And saw the stars shine in the glance Of her eyes, and her own fair countenance Passing, pale and wonderful, Across the night that filled the pool. And cruel was the grief that played With the queen's spirit; and she said: "What do I here, reigning alone? For to be unloved is to be alone. There is no man in all my land Dare my longing understand; The whole folk like a peasant bows Lest its look should meet my brows And be harmed by this beauty of mine. I burn their brains as I were sign Of God's beautiful anger sent To master them with punishment Of beauty that must pour distress On hearts grown dark with ugliness. But it is I am the punisht one. Is there no man, is there none, In whom my beauty will but move The lust of a delighted love; In whom some spirit of God so thrives That we may wed our lonely lives. Is there no man, is there none?"— She said, "I will go to Solomon."



James Elroy Flecker

Another remarkable poet whose early death was a blow to English literature, James Elroy Flecker, was born in London, November 5, 1884. Possibly due to his low vitality, Flecker found little to interest him but a classical reaction against realism in verse, a delight in verbal craftsmanship, and a passion for technical perfection—especially the deliberate technique of the French Parnassians whom he worshipped. Flecker was opposed to any art that was emotional or that "taught" anything. "The poet's business," he declared, "is not to save the soul of man, but to make it worth saving."

The advent of the war began to make Flecker's verse more personal and romantic. The tuberculosis that finally killed him at Davos Platz, Switzerland, January 3, 1915, forced him from an Olympian disinterest to a deep concern with life and death. He passionately denied that he was weary of living "as the pallid poets are," and he was attempting higher flights of song when his singing ceased altogether.

His two colorful volumes are The Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) and The Old Ships (1915).

THE OLD SHIPS

I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep Beyond the village which men still call Tyre, With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep For Famagusta and the hidden sun That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire; And all those ships were certainly so old— Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun, Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges, The pirate Genoese Hell-raked them till they rolled Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold. But now through friendly seas they softly run, Painted the mid-sea blue or shore-sea green, Still patterned with the vine and grapes in gold.

But I have seen, Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn And image tumbled on a rose-swept bay, A drowsy ship of some yet older day; And, wonder's breath indrawn, Thought I—who knows—who knows—but in that same (Fished up beyond Aeaea, patched up new —Stern painted brighter blue—) That talkative, bald-headed seaman came (Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar) From Troy's doom-crimson shore, And with great lies about his wooden horse Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course.

It was so old a ship—who knows, who knows? —And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain To see the mast burst open with a rose, And the whole deck put on its leaves again.



D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence, born in 1885, is one of the most psychologically intense of the modern poets. This intensity, ranging from a febrile morbidity to an exalted and almost frenzied mysticism, is seen even in his prose works—particularly in his short stories, The Prussian Officer (1917), his analytical Sons and Lovers (1913), and the rhapsodic novel, The Rainbow (1915).

As a poet he is often caught in the net of his own emotions; his passion thickens his utterance and distorts his rhythms, which sometimes seem purposely harsh and bitter-flavored. But within his range he is as powerful as he is poignant. His most notable volumes of poetry are Amores (1916), Look! We Have Come Through! (1918), and New Poems (1920).

PEOPLE

The great gold apples of light Hang from the street's long bough Dripping their light On the faces that drift below, On the faces that drift and blow Down the night-time, out of sight In the wind's sad sough.

The ripeness of these apples of night Distilling over me Makes sickening the white Ghost-flux of faces that hie Them endlessly, endlessly by Without meaning or reason why They ever should be.

PIANO

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.



John Freeman

John Freeman, born in 1885, has published several volumes of pleasantly descriptive verse. The two most distinctive are Stone Trees (1916) and Memories of Childhood (1919).

STONE TREES

Last night a sword-light in the sky Flashed a swift terror on the dark. In that sharp light the fields did lie Naked and stone-like; each tree stood Like a tranced woman, bound and stark. Far off the wood With darkness ridged the riven dark.

And cows astonished stared with fear, And sheep crept to the knees of cows, And conies to their burrows slid, And rooks were still in rigid boughs, And all things else were still or hid. From all the wood Came but the owl's hoot, ghostly, clear.

In that cold trance the earth was held It seemed an age, or time was nought. Sure never from that stone-like field Sprang golden corn, nor from those chill Grey granite trees was music wrought. In all the wood Even the tall poplar hung stone still.

It seemed an age, or time was none ... Slowly the earth heaved out of sleep And shivered, and the trees of stone Bent and sighed in the gusty wind, And rain swept as birds flocking sweep. Far off the wood Rolled the slow thunders on the wind.

From all the wood came no brave bird, No song broke through the close-fall'n night, Nor any sound from cowering herd: Only a dog's long lonely howl When from the window poured pale light. And from the wood The hoot came ghostly of the owl.



Shane Leslie

Shane Leslie, the only surviving son of Sir John Leslie, was born at Swan Park, Monaghan, Ireland, in 1886 and was educated at Eton and the University of Paris. He worked for a time among the Irish poor and was deeply interested in the Celtic revival. During the greater part of a year he lectured in the United States, marrying an American, Marjorie Ide.

Leslie has been editor of The Dublin Review since 1916. He is the author of several volumes on Irish political matters as well as The End of a Chapter and Verses in Peace and War.

FLEET STREET

I never see the newsboys run Amid the whirling street, With swift untiring feet, To cry the latest venture done, But I expect one day to hear Them cry the crack of doom And risings from the tomb, With great Archangel Michael near; And see them running from the Fleet As messengers of God, With Heaven's tidings shod About their brave unwearied feet.

THE PATER OF THE CANNON

Father of the thunder, Flinger of the flame, Searing stars asunder, Hallowed be Thy Name!

By the sweet-sung quiring Sister bullets hum, By our fiercest firing, May Thy Kingdom come!

By Thy strong apostle Of the Maxim gun, By his pentecostal Flame, Thy Will be done!

Give us, Lord, good feeding To Thy battles sped— Flesh, white grained and bleeding, Give for daily bread!



Frances Cornford

The daughter of Francis Darwin, third son of Charles Darwin, Mrs. Frances Macdonald Cornford, whose husband is a Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, was born in 1886. She has published three volumes of unaffected lyrical verse, the most recent of which, Spring Morning, was brought out by The Poetry Bookshop in 1915.

PREEXISTENCE

I laid me down upon the shore And dreamed a little space; I heard the great waves break and roar; The sun was on my face.

My idle hands and fingers brown Played with the pebbles grey; The waves came up, the waves went down, Most thundering and gay.

The pebbles, they were smooth and round And warm upon my hands, Like little people I had found Sitting among the sands.

The grains of sand so shining-small Soft through my fingers ran; The sun shone down upon it all, And so my dream began:

How all of this had been before, How ages far away I lay on some forgotten shore As here I lie to-day.

The waves came shining up the sands, As here to-day they shine; And in my pre-pelasgian hands The sand was warm and fine.

I have forgotten whence I came, Or what my home might be, Or by what strange and savage name I called that thundering sea.

I only know the sun shone down As still it shines to-day, And in my fingers long and brown The little pebbles lay.



Anna Wickham

Anna Wickham, one of the most individual of the younger women-poets, has published two distinctive volumes, The Contemplative Quarry (1915) and The Man with a Hammer (1916).

THE SINGER

If I had peace to sit and sing, Then I could make a lovely thing; But I am stung with goads and whips, So I build songs like iron ships.

Let it be something for my song, If it is sometimes swift and strong.

REALITY

Only a starveling singer seeks The stuff of songs among the Greeks. Juno is old, Jove's loves are cold; Tales over-told. By a new risen Attic stream A mortal singer dreamed a dream. Fixed he not Fancy's habitation, Nor set in bonds Imagination. There are new waters, and a new Humanity. For all old myths give us the dream to be. We are outwearied with Persephone; Rather than her, we'll sing Reality.

SONG

I was so chill, and overworn, and sad, To be a lady was the only joy I had. I walked the street as silent as a mouse, Buying fine clothes, and fittings for the house.

But since I saw my love I wear a simple dress, And happily I move Forgetting weariness.



Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, the poet whom Masefield hailed as "one of England's most brilliant rising stars," was born September 8, 1886. He was educated at Marlborough and Clare College, Cambridge, and was a captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He fought three times in France, once in Palestine, winning the Military Cross for bringing in wounded on the battlefield.

His poetry divides itself sharply in two moods—the lyric and the ironic. His early lilting poems were without significance or individuality. But with The Old Huntsman (1917) Sassoon found his own idiom, and became one of the leading younger poets upon the appearance of this striking volume. The first poem, a long monologue evidently inspired by Masefield, gave little evidence of what was to come. Immediately following it, however, came a series of war poems, undisguised in their tragedy and bitterness. Every line of these quivering stanzas bore the mark of a sensitive and outraged nature; there was scarcely a phrase that did not protest against the "glorification" and false glamour of war.

Counter-Attack appeared in 1918. In this volume Sassoon turned entirely from an ordered loveliness to the gigantic brutality of war. At heart a lyric idealist, the bloody years intensified and twisted his tenderness till what was stubborn and satiric in him forced its way to the top. In Counter-Attack Sassoon found his angry outlet. Most of these poems are choked with passion; many of them are torn out, roots and all, from the very core of an intense conviction; they rush on, not so much because of the poet's art but almost in spite of it. A suave utterance, a neatly-joined structure would be out of place and even inexcusable in poems like "The Rear-Guard," "To Any Dead Officer," "Does It Matter?"—verses that are composed of love, fever and indignation.

Can Sassoon see nothing glorious or uplifting in war? His friend, Robert Nichols, another poet and soldier, speaks for him in a preface. "Let no one ever," Nichols quotes Sassoon as saying, "from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell, and those who institute it are criminals. Were there even anything to say for it, it should not be said; for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages...." Nichols adds his approval to these sentences, saying, "For myself, this is the truth. War does not ennoble, it degrades."

Early in 1920 Sassoon visited America. At the same time he brought out his Picture Show (1920), a vigorous answer to those who feared that Sassoon had "written himself out" or had begun to burn away in his own fire. Had Rupert Brooke lived, he might have written many of these lacerated but somehow exalted lines. Sassoon's three volumes are the most vital and unsparing records of the war we have had. They synthesize in poetry what Barbusse's Under Fire spreads out in panoramic prose.

TO VICTORY

Return to greet me, colours that were my joy, Not in the woeful crimson of men slain, But shining as a garden; come with the streaming Banners of dawn and sundown after rain.

I want to fill my gaze with blue and silver, Radiance through living roses, spires of green, Rising in young-limbed copse and lovely wood, Where the hueless wind passes and cries unseen.

I am not sad; only I long for lustre,— Tired of the greys and browns and leafless ash. I would have hours that move like a glitter of dancers, Far from the angry guns that boom and flash.

Return, musical, gay with blossom and fleetness, Days when my sight shall be clear and my heart rejoice; Come from the sea with breadth of approaching brightness, When the blithe wind laughs on the hills with uplifted voice.

DREAMERS

Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats, And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain, Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats, And mocked by hopeless longing to regain Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats, And going to the office in the train.

THE REAR-GUARD

Groping along the tunnel, step by step, He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.

Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know, A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; And he, exploring fifty feet below The rosy gloom of battle overhead.

Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug, And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug. "I'm looking for headquarters." No reply. "God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep.) "Get up and guide me through this stinking place." Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, And flashed his beam across the livid face Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore Agony dying hard ten days before; And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound. Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. At last, with sweat of horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him step by step.

THRUSHES

Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim, Whose voices make the emptiness of light A windy palace. Quavering from the brim Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night, They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering; Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing; Who hears the cry of God in everything, And storms the gate of nothingness for proof.

AFTERMATH

Have you forgotten yet?... For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days, Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways: And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare. But the past is just the same,—and War's a bloody game.... Have you forgotten yet?... Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,— The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets? Do you remember the rats; and the stench Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,— And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain? Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,— And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men? Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads, those ashen-grey Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?... Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you'll never forget.



Rupert Brooke

Possibly the most famous of the Georgians, Rupert Brooke, was born at Rugby in August, 1887, his father being assistant master at the school. As a youth, Brooke was keenly interested in all forms of athletics; playing cricket, football, tennis, and swimming as well as most professionals. He was six feet tall, his finely molded head topped with a crown of loose hair of lively brown; "a golden young Apollo," said Edward Thomas. Another friend of his wrote, "to look at, he was part of the youth of the world. He was one of the handsomest Englishmen of his time." His beauty overstressed somewhat his naturally romantic disposition; his early poems are a blend of delight in the splendor of actuality and disillusion in a loveliness that dies. The shadow of John Donne lies over his pages.

This occasional cynicism was purged, when after several years of travel (he had been to Germany, Italy and Honolulu) the war came, turning Brooke away from

"A world grown old and cold and weary ... And half men, and their dirty songs and dreary, And all the little emptiness of love."

Brooke enlisted with a relief that was like a rebirth; he sought a new energy in the struggle "where the worst friend and enemy is but Death." After seeing service in Belgium, 1914, he spent the following winter in a training-camp in Dorsetshire and sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in February, 1915, to take part in the unfortunate Dardenelles Campaign.

Brooke never reached his destination. He died of blood-poison at Skyros, April 23, 1915. His early death was one of England's great literary losses; Lascelles Abercrombie, W. W. Gibson (with both of whom he had been associated on the quarterly, New Numbers), Walter De la Mare, the Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill, and a host of others united to pay tribute to the most brilliant and passionate of the younger poets.

Brooke's sonnet-sequence, 1914 (from which "The Soldier" is taken), which, with prophetic irony, appeared a few weeks before his death, contains the accents of immortality. And "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" (unfortunately too long to reprint in this volume), is fully as characteristic of the lighter and more playful side of Brooke's temperament. Both these phases are combined in "The Great Lover," of which Abercrombie has written, "It is life he loves, and not in any abstract sense, but all the infinite little familiar details of life, remembered and catalogued with delightful zest."

THE GREAT LOVER[19]

I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see The inenarrable godhead of delight? Love is a flame;—we have beaconed the world's night. A city:—and we have built it, these and I. An emperor:—we have taught the world to die. So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, And the high cause of Love's magnificence, And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on; the wind of Time, shining and streaming.... These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such— The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns.... Dear names, And thousand others throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing: Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;— All these have been my loves. And these shall pass. Whatever passes not, in the great hour, Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power To hold them with me through the gate of Death. They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust And sacramented covenant to the dust. —Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers.... But the best I've known, Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown About the winds of the world, and fades from brains Of living men, and dies. Nothing remains.

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved."

DUST[20]

When the white flame in us is gone, And we that lost the world's delight Stiffen in darkness, left alone To crumble in our separate night;

When your swift hair is quiet in death, And through the lips corruption thrust Has stilled the labour of my breath— When we are dust, when we are dust!—

Not dead, not undesirous yet, Still sentient, still unsatisfied, We'll ride the air, and shine and flit, Around the places where we died,

And dance as dust before the sun, And light of foot, and unconfined, Hurry from road to road, and run About the errands of the wind.

And every mote, on earth or air, Will speed and gleam, down later days, And like a secret pilgrim fare By eager and invisible ways,

Nor ever rest, nor ever lie, Till, beyond thinking, out of view, One mote of all the dust that's I Shall meet one atom that was you.

Then in some garden hushed from wind, Warm in a sunset's afterglow, The lovers in the flowers will find A sweet and strange unquiet grow

Upon the peace; and, past desiring, So high a beauty in the air, And such a light, and such a quiring, And such a radiant ecstasy there,

They'll know not if it's fire, or dew, Or out of earth, or in the height, Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue, Or two that pass, in light, to light,

Out of the garden higher, higher ... But in that instant they shall learn The shattering fury of our fire, And the weak passionless hearts will burn

And faint in that amazing glow, Until the darkness close above; And they will know—poor fools, they'll know!— One moment, what it is to love.

THE SOLDIER[21]

If I should die, think only this of me; That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] From The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company and reprinted by permission.

[20] From The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company and reprinted by permission.

[21] From The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company and reprinted by permission.



Winifred M. Letts

Winifred M. Letts was born in Ireland in 1887, and her early work concerned itself almost entirely with the humor and pathos found in her immediate surroundings. Her Songs from Leinster (1913) is her most characteristic collection; a volume full of the poetry of simple people and humble souls. Although she has called herself "a back-door sort of bard," she is particularly effective in the old ballad measure and in her quaint portrayal of Irish peasants rather than of Gaelic kings and pagan heroes. She has also written three novels, five books for children, a later volume of Poems of the War and, during the conflict, served as a nurse at various base hospitals.

GRANDEUR

Poor Mary Byrne is dead, An' all the world may see Where she lies upon her bed Just as fine as quality.

She lies there still and white, With candles either hand That'll guard her through the night: Sure she never was so grand.

She holds her rosary, Her hands clasped on her breast. Just as dacint as can be In the habit she's been dressed.

In life her hands were red With every sort of toil, But they're white now she is dead, An' they've sorra mark of soil.

The neighbours come and go, They kneel to say a prayer, I wish herself could know Of the way she's lyin' there.

It was work from morn till night, And hard she earned her bread: But I'm thinking she's a right To be aisy now she's dead.

When other girls were gay, At wedding or at fair, She'd be toiling all the day, Not a minyit could she spare.

An' no one missed her face, Or sought her in a crowd, But to-day they throng the place Just to see her in her shroud.

The creature in her life Drew trouble with each breath; She was just "poor Jim Byrne's wife"— But she's lovely in her death.

I wish the dead could see The splendour of a wake, For it's proud herself would be Of the keening that they make.

Och! little Mary Byrne, You welcome every guest, Is it now you take your turn To be merry with the rest?

I'm thinking you'd be glad, Though the angels make your bed, Could you see the care we've had To respect you—now you're dead.

THE SPIRES OF OXFORD

I saw the spires of Oxford As I was passing by, The grey spires of Oxford Against the pearl-grey sky. My heart was with the Oxford men Who went abroad to die.

The years go fast in Oxford, The golden years and gay, The hoary Colleges look down On careless boys at play. But when the bugles sounded war They put their games away.

They left the peaceful river, The cricket-field, the quad, The shaven lawns of Oxford, To seek a bloody sod— They gave their merry youth away For country and for God.

God rest you, happy gentlemen, Who laid your good lives down, Who took the khaki and the gun Instead of cap and gown. God bring you to a fairer place Than even Oxford town.



Francis Brett Young

Francis Brett Young, who is a novelist as well as a poet, and who has been called, by The Manchester Guardian, "one of the promising evangelists of contemporary poetry," has written much that is both graceful and grave. There is music and a message in his lines that seem to have as their motto: "Trust in the true and fiery spirit of Man." Best known as a writer of prose, his most prominent works are Marching on Tanga and The Crescent Moon.

Brett Young's Five Degrees South (1917) and his Poems 1916-18 (1919) contain the best of his verse.

LOCHANILAUN

This is the image of my last content: My soul shall be a little lonely lake, So hidden that no shadow of man may break The folding of its mountain battlement; Only the beautiful and innocent Whiteness of sea-born cloud drooping to shake Cool rain upon the reed-beds, or the wake Of churned cloud in a howling wind's descent. For there shall be no terror in the night When stars that I have loved are born in me, And cloudy darkness I will hold most fair; But this shall be the end of my delight:— That you, my lovely one, may stoop and see Your image in the mirrored beauty there.



F. S. Flint

Known chiefly as an authority on modern French poetry, F. S. Flint has published several volumes of original imagist poems, besides having translated works of Verhaeren and Jean de Bosschere.

LONDON

London, my beautiful, it is not the sunset nor the pale green sky shimmering through the curtain of the silver birch, nor the quietness; it is not the hopping of birds upon the lawn, nor the darkness stealing over all things that moves me.

But as the moon creeps slowly over the tree-tops among the stars, I think of her and the glow her passing sheds on men.

London, my beautiful, I will climb into the branches to the moonlit tree-tops, that my blood may be cooled by the wind.



Edith Sitwell

Edith Sitwell was born at Scarborough, in Yorkshire, and is the sister of the poets, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. In 1914 she came to London and has devoted herself to literature ever since, having edited the various anthologies of Wheels since 1916. Her first book, The Mother and Other Poems (1915), contains some of her best work, although Clowns' Houses (1918) reveals a more piquant idiom and a sharper turn of mind.

THE WEB OF EROS

Within your magic web of hair, lies furled The fire and splendour of the ancient world; The dire gold of the comet's wind-blown hair; The songs that turned to gold the evening air When all the stars of heaven sang for joy. The flames that burnt the cloud-high city Troy. The maenad fire of spring on the cold earth; The myrrh-lit flame that gave both death and birth To the soul Phoenix; and the star-bright shower That came to Danae in her brazen tower.... Within your magic web of hair lies furled The fire and splendour of the ancient world.

INTERLUDE

Amid this hot green glowing gloom A word falls with a raindrop's boom....

Like baskets of ripe fruit in air The bird-songs seem, suspended where

Those goldfinches—the ripe warm lights Peck slyly at them—take quick flights.

My feet are feathered like a bird Among the shadows scarcely heard;

I bring you branches green with dew And fruits that you may crown anew

Your whirring waspish-gilded hair Amid this cornucopia—

Until your warm lips bear the stains And bird-blood leap within your veins.



F. W. Harvey

Harvey was a lance-corporal in the English army and was in the German prison camp at Guetersloh when he wrote The Bugler, one of the isolated great poems written during the war. Much of his other verse is haphazard and journalistic, although Gloucestershire Friends contains several lines that glow with the colors of poetry.

THE BUGLER

God dreamed a man; Then, having firmly shut Life like a precious metal in his fist Withdrew, His labour done. Thus did begin Our various divinity and sin. For some to ploughshares did the metal twist, And others—dreaming empires—straightway cut Crowns for their aching foreheads. Others beat Long nails and heavy hammers for the feet Of their forgotten Lord. (Who dares to boast That he is guiltless?) Others coined it: most Did with it—simply nothing. (Here again Who cries his innocence?) Yet doth remain Metal unmarred, to each man more or less, Whereof to fashion perfect loveliness.

For me, I do but bear within my hand (For sake of Him our Lord, now long forsaken) A simple bugle such as may awaken With one high morning note a drowsing man: That wheresoe'er within my motherland That sound may come, 'twill echo far and wide Like pipes of battle calling up a clan, Trumpeting men through beauty to God's side.



T. P. Cameron Wilson

"Tony" P. Cameron Wilson was born in South Devon in 1889 and was educated at Exeter and Oxford. He wrote one novel besides several articles under the pseudonym Tipuca, a euphonic combination of the first three initials of his name.

When the war broke out he was a teacher in a school at Hindhead, Surrey; and, after many months of gruelling conflict, he was given a captaincy. He was killed in action by a machine-gun bullet March 23, 1918, at the age of 29.

SPORTSMEN IN PARADISE

They left the fury of the fight, And they were very tired. The gates of Heaven were open quite, Unguarded and unwired. There was no sound of any gun, The land was still and green; Wide hills lay silent in the sun, Blue valleys slept between.

They saw far-off a little wood Stand up against the sky. Knee-deep in grass a great tree stood; Some lazy cows went by ... There were some rooks sailed overhead, And once a church-bell pealed. "God! but it's England," someone said, "And there's a cricket-field!"



W. J. Turner

W. J. Turner was born in 1889 and, although little known until his appearance in Georgian Poetry 1916-17, has written no few delicate and fanciful poems. The Hunter (1916) and The Dark Wind (1918) both contain many verses as moving and musical as his splendid lines on "Death," a poem which is unfortunately too long to quote.

ROMANCE

When I was but thirteen or so I went into a golden land, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi Took me by the hand.

My father died, my brother too, They passed like fleeting dreams, I stood where Popocatapetl In the sunlight gleams.

I dimly heard the master's voice And boys far-off at play,— Chimborazo, Cotopaxi Had stolen me away.

I walked in a great golden dream To and fro from school— Shining Popocatapetl The dusty streets did rule.

I walked home with a gold dark boy And never a word I'd say, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi Had taken my speech away.

I gazed entranced upon his face Fairer than any flower— O shining Popocatapetl It was thy magic hour:

The houses, people, traffic seemed Thin fading dreams by day; Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, They had stolen my soul away!



Patrick MacGill

Patrick MacGill was born in Donegal in 1890. He was the son of poverty-stricken peasants and, between the ages of 12 and 19, he worked as farm-servant, drainer, potato-digger, and navvy, becoming one of the thousands of stray "tramp-laborers" who cross each summer from Ireland to Scotland to help gather in the crops. Out of his bitter experiences and the evils of modern industrial life, he wrote several vivid novels (The Rat Pit is an unforgettable document) and the tragedy-crammed Songs of the Dead End. He joined the editorial staff of The Daily Express in 1911; was in the British army during the war; was wounded at Loos in 1915; and wrote his Soldier Songs during the conflict.

BY-THE-WAY

These be the little verses, rough and uncultured, which I've written in hut and model, deep in the dirty ditch, On the upturned hod by the palace made for the idle rich.

Out on the happy highway, or lines where the engines go, Which fact you may hardly credit, still for your doubts 'tis so, For I am the person who wrote them, and surely to God, I know!

Wrote them beside the hot-plate, or under the chilling skies, Some of them true as death is, some of them merely lies, Some of them very foolish, some of them otherwise.

Little sorrows and hopings, little and rugged rhymes, Some of them maybe distasteful to the moral men of our times, Some of them marked against me in the Book of the Many Crimes.

These, the Songs of a Navvy, bearing the taint of the brute, Unasked, uncouth, unworthy out to the world I put, Stamped with the brand of labor, the heel of a navvy's boot.

DEATH AND THE FAIRIES

Before I joined the Army I lived in Donegal, Where every night the Fairies Would hold their carnival.

But now I'm out in Flanders, Where men like wheat-ears fall, And it's Death and not the Fairies Who is holding carnival.



Francis Ledwidge

Francis Ledwidge was born in Slane, County Meath, Ireland, in 1891. His brief life was fitful and romantic. He was, at various times, a miner, a grocer's clerk, a farmer, a scavenger, an experimenter in hypnotism, and, at the end, a soldier. He served as a lance-corporal on the Flanders front and was killed in July, 1917, at the age of 26 years.

Ledwidge's poetry is rich in nature imagery; his lines are full of color, in the manner of Keats, and unaffectedly melodious.

AN EVENING IN ENGLAND

From its blue vase the rose of evening drops; Upon the streams its petals float away. The hills all blue with distance hide their tops In the dim silence falling on the grey. A little wind said "Hush!" and shook a spray Heavy with May's white crop of opening bloom; A silent bat went dipping in the gloom.

Night tells her rosary of stars full soon, They drop from out her dark hand to her knees. Upon a silhouette of woods, the moon Leans on one horn as if beseeching ease From all her changes which have stirred the seas. Across the ears of Toil, Rest throws her veil. I and a marsh bird only make a wail.

EVENING CLOUDS

A little flock of clouds go down to rest In some blue corner off the moon's highway, With shepherd-winds that shook them in the West To borrowed shapes of earth, in bright array, Perhaps to weave a rainbow's gay festoons Around the lonesome isle which Brooke has made A little England full of lovely noons, Or dot it with his country's mountain shade.

Ah, little wanderers, when you reach that isle[22] Tell him, with dripping dew, they have not failed, What he loved most; for late I roamed a while Thro' English fields and down her rivers sailed; And they remember him with beauty caught From old desires of Oriental Spring Heard in his heart with singing overwrought; And still on Purley Common gooseboys sing.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] The island of Skyros where Rupert Brooke was buried. (See page 194.)



Irene Rutherford McLeod

Irene Rutherford McLeod, born August 21, 1891, has written three volumes of direct and often distinguished verse, the best of which may be found in Songs to Save a Soul (1915) and Before Dawn (1918). The latter volume is dedicated to A. de Selincourt, to whom she was married in 1919.

"IS LOVE, THEN, SO SIMPLE"

Is love, then, so simple my dear? The opening of a door, And seeing all things clear? I did not know before.

I had thought it unrest and desire Soaring only to fall, Annihilation and fire: It is not so at all.

I feel no desperate will, But I think I understand Many things, as I sit quite still, With Eternity in my hand.

LONE DOG

I'm a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog, and lone; I'm a rough dog, a tough dog, hunting on my own; I'm a bad dog, a mad dog, teasing silly sheep; I love to sit and bay the moon, to keep fat souls from sleep.

I'll never be a lap dog, licking dirty feet, A sleek dog, a meek dog, cringing for my meat, Not for me the fireside, the well-filled plate, But shut door, and sharp stone, and cuff and kick, and hate.

Not for me the other dogs, running by my side, Some have run a short while, but none of them would bide. O mine is still the lone trail, the hard trail, the best, Wide wind, and wild stars, and hunger of the quest!



Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington was born in England in 1892, and educated at Dover College and London University. His first poems were published in England in 1909; Images Old and New appeared in 1915. Aldington and "H. D." (Hilda Doolittle, his American wife) are conceded to be two of the foremost imagist poets; their sensitive, firm and clean-cut lines put to shame their scores of imitators. Aldington's War and Love (1918), from which "Prelude" is taken, is somewhat more regular in pattern; the poems in this latter volume are less consciously artistic but warmer and more humanly searching.

PRELUDE

How could I love you more? I would give up Even that beauty I have loved too well That I might love you better.

Alas, how poor the gifts that lovers give— I can but give you of my flesh and strength, I can but give you these few passing days And passionate words that, since our speech began, All lovers whisper in all ladies' ears.

I try to think of some one lovely gift No lover yet in all the world has found; I think: If the cold sombre gods Were hot with love as I am Could they not endow you with a star And fix bright youth for ever in your limbs? Could they not give you all things that I lack?

You should have loved a god; I am but dust. Yet no god loves as loves this poor frail dust.

IMAGES

I

Like a gondola of green scented fruits Drifting along the dank canals of Venice, You, O exquisite one, Have entered into my desolate city.

II

The blue smoke leaps Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing. So my love leaps forth toward you, Vanishes and is renewed.

III

A rose-yellow moon in a pale sky When the sunset is faint vermilion In the mist among the tree-boughs Art thou to me, my beloved.

IV

A young beech tree on the edge of the forest Stands still in the evening, Yet shudders through all its leaves in the light air And seems to fear the stars— So are you still and so tremble.

V

The red deer are high on the mountain, They are beyond the last pine trees. And my desires have run with them.

VI

The flower which the wind has shaken Is soon filled again with rain; So does my heart fill slowly with tears, O Foam-Driver, Wind-of-the-Vineyards, Until you return.

AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

I turn the page and read: "I dream of silent verses where the rhyme Glides noiseless as an oar." The heavy musty air, the black desks, The bent heads and the rustling noises In the great dome Vanish ... And The sun hangs in the cobalt-blue sky, The boat drifts over the lake shallows, The fishes skim like umber shades through the undulating weeds, The oleanders drop their rosy petals on the lawns, And the swallows dive and swirl and whistle About the cleft battlements of Can Grande's castle....



Edward Shanks

Edward Shanks was born in London in 1892 and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He has reviewed verse and belles lettres for several years for various English publications, and is at present assistant editor of The London Mercury. His The Queen of China and Other Poems appeared late in 1919.

COMPLAINT

When in the mines of dark and silent thought Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there, With heavy labour to the surface brought That lie and mock me in the brighter air, Poor ores from starved lodes of poverty, Unfit for working or to be refined, That in the darkness cheat the miner's eye, I turn away from that base cave, the mind. Yet had I but the power to crush the stone There are strange metals hid in flakes therein, Each flake a spark sole-hidden and alone, That only cunning, toilsome chemists win. All this I know, and yet my chemistry Fails and the pregnant treasures useless lie.



Osbert Sitwell

Born in London, December 6th, 1892, Osbert Sitwell (son of Sir George Sitwell and brother of Edith Sitwell) was educated at Eton and became an officer in the Grenadier Guards, with whom he served in France for various periods from 1914 to 1917.

His first contributions appeared in Wheels (an annual anthology of a few of the younger radical writers, edited by his sister) and disclosed an ironic and strongly individual touch. That impression is strengthened by a reading of Argonaut and Juggernaut (1920), where Sitwell's cleverness and satire are fused. His most remarkable though his least brilliant poems are his irregular and fiery protests against smugness and hypocrisy. But even Sitwell's more conventional poetry has a freshness of movement and definiteness of outline.

THE BLIND PEDLAR

I stand alone through each long day Upon these pavers; cannot see The wares spread out upon this tray —For God has taken sight from me!

Many a time I've cursed the night When I was born. My peering eyes Have sought for but one ray of light To pierce the darkness. When the skies

Rain down their first sweet April showers On budding branches; when the morn Is sweet with breath of spring and flowers, I've cursed the night when I was born.

But now I thank God, and am glad For what I cannot see this day —The young men cripples, old, and sad, With faces burnt and torn away;

Or those who, growing rich and old, Have battened on the slaughter, Whose faces, gorged with blood and gold, Are creased in purple laughter!

PROGRESS

The city's heat is like a leaden pall— Its lowered lamps glow in the midnight air Like mammoth orange-moths that flit and flare Through the dark tapestry of night. The tall Black houses crush the creeping beggars down, Who walk beneath and think of breezes cool, Of silver bodies bathing in a pool; Or trees that whisper in some far, small town Whose quiet nursed them, when they thought that gold Was merely metal, not a grave of mould In which men bury all that's fine and fair. When they could chase the jewelled butterfly Through the green bracken-scented lanes or sigh For all the future held so rich and rare; When, though they knew it not, their baby cries Were lovely as the jewelled butterflies.



Robert Nichols

Robert Nichols was born on the Isle of Wight in 1893. His first volume, Invocations (1915), was published while he was at the front, Nichols having joined the army while he was still an undergraduate at Trinity College, Oxford. After serving one year as second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery, he was incapacitated by shell shock, visiting America in 1918-19 as a lecturer. His Ardours and Endurances (1917) is the most representative work of this poet, although his new volume, The Flower of Flame (1920), shows a steady advance in power.

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.



Charles Hamilton Sorley

Charles Hamilton Sorley, who promised greater things than any of the younger poets, was born at Old Aberdeen in May, 1895. He studied at Marlborough College and University College, Oxford. He was finishing his studies abroad and was on a walking-tour along the banks of the Moselle when the war came. Sorley returned home to receive an immediate commission in the 7th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment. In August, 1915, at the age of 20, he was made a captain. On October 13, 1915, he was killed in action near Hulluch.

Sorley left but one book, Marlborough and Other Poems. The verse contained in it is sometimes rough but never rude. Although he admired Masefield, loveliness rather than liveliness was his aim. Restraint, tolerance, and a dignity unusual for a boy of 20, distinguish his poetry.

TWO SONNETS

I

Saints have adored the lofty soul of you. Poets have whitened at your high renown. We stand among the many millions who Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down.

You, so familiar, once were strange: we tried To live as of your presence unaware. But now in every road on every side We see your straight and steadfast signpost there.

I think it like that signpost in my land Hoary and tall, which pointed me to go Upward, into the hills, on the right hand, Where the mists swim and the winds shriek and blow, A homeless land and friendless, but a land I did not know and that I wished to know.

II

Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat: Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean, A merciful putting away of what has been.

And this we know: Death is not Life effete, Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen So marvellous things know well the end not yet.

Victor and vanquished are a-one in death: Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say, "Come, what was your record when you drew breath?" But a big blot has hid each yesterday So poor, so manifestly incomplete. And your bright Promise, withered long and sped, Is touched; stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.

TO GERMANY

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed, And no man claimed the conquest of your land. But gropers both, through fields of thought confined, We stumble and we do not understand. You only saw your future bigly planned, And we the tapering paths of our own mind, And in each other's dearest ways we stand, And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.