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Various
Poems of To-Day: an Anthology
113. MONTSERRAT
Peace waits among the hills;
I have drunk peace,
Here, where the blue air fills
The great cup of the hills,
And fills with peace.
Between the earth and sky,
I have seen the earth
Like a dark cloud go by,
And fade out of the sky;
There was no more earth.
Here, where the Holy Graal
Brought secret light
Once, from beyond the veil,
I, seeing no Holy Graal,
See divine light.
Light fills the hills with God,
Wind with his breath,
And here, in his abode,
Light, wind, and air praise God,
And this poor breath.
Arthur Symons.
114. PRAYERS
God who created me
Nimble and light of limb,
In three elements free,
To run, to ride, to swim:
Not when the sense is dim,
But now from the heart of joy,
I would remember Him:
Take the thanks of a boy.
Jesu, King and Lord,
Whose are my foes to fight,
Gird me with Thy sword,
Swift and sharp and bright.
Thee would I serve if I might;
And conquer if I can,
From day-dawn till night,
Take the strength of a man.
Spirit of Love and Truth,
Breathing in grosser clay,
The light and flame of youth,
Delight of men in the fray,
Wisdom in strength's decay;
From pain, strife, wrong to be free,
This best gift I pray,
Take my spirit to Thee.
Henry Charles Beeching.
115. THE SHEPHERDESS
She walks—the lady of my delight—
A shepherdess of sheep.
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;
She guards them from the steep;
She feeds them on the fragrant height,
And folds them in for sleep.
She roams maternal hills and bright,
Dark valleys safe and deep.
Into that tender breast at night
The chastest stars may peep.
She walks—the lady of my delight—
A shepherdess of sheep.
She holds her little thoughts in sight,
Though gay they run and leap.
She is so circumspect and right;
She has her soul to keep.
She walks—the lady of my delight—
A shepherdess of sheep.
Alice Meynell.
116. GIBBERISH
Many a flower have I seen blossom,
Many a bird for me will sing.
Never heard I so sweet a singer,
Never saw I so fair a thing.
She is a bird, a bird that blossoms,
She is a flower, a flower that sings;
And I a flower when I behold her,
And when I hear her, I have wings.
Mary E. Coleridge.
117. MARTHA
"Once . . . once upon a time . . ."
Over and over again,
Martha would tell us her stories,
In the hazel glen.
Hers were those clear grey eyes
You watch, and the story seems
Told by their beautifulness
Tranquil as dreams.
She'd sit with her two slim hands
Clasped round her bended knees;
While we on our elbows lolled,
And stared at ease.
Her voice and her narrow chin,
Her grave small lovely head,
Seemed half the meaning
Of the words she said.
"Once . . . once upon a time . . ."
Like a dream you dream in the night,
Fairies and gnomes stole out
In the leaf-green light.
And her beauty far away
Would fade, as her voice ran on,
Till hazel and summer sun
And all were gone:—
All fordone and forgot;
And like clouds in the height of the sky,
Our hearts stood still in the hush
Of an age gone by.
Walter de la Mare.
118. A FRIEND
All, that he came to give,
He gave, and went again:
I have seen one man live,
I have seen one man reign,
With all the graces in his train.
As one of us, he wrought
Things of the common hour:
Whence was the charmed soul brought,
That gave each act such power;
The natural beauty of a flower?
Magnificence and grace,
Excellent courtesy:
A brightness on the face,
Airs of high memory:
Whence came all these, to such as he?
Like young Shakespearian kings,
He won the adoring throng:
And, as Apollo sings,
He triumphed with a song:
Triumphed, and sang, and passed along.
With a light word, he took
The hearts of men in thrall:
And, with a golden look,
Welcomed them, at his call
Giving their love, their strength, their all.
No man less proud than he,
Nor cared for homage less:
Only, he could not be
Far off from happiness:
Nature was bound to his success.
Weary, the cares, the jars,
The lets, of every day,
But the heavens filled with stars,
Chanced he upon the way:
And where he stayed, all joy would stay.
Now, when sad night draws down,
When the austere stars burn:
Roaming the vast live town,
My thoughts and memories yearn
Toward him, who never will return.
Yet have I seen him live,
And owned my friend, a king:
All that he came to give
He gave: and I, who sing
His praise, bring all I have to bring.
Lionel Johnson.
119. TWILIGHT
Twilight it is, and the far woods are dim, and the rooks
cry and call.
Down in the valley the lamps, and the mist, and a star over all,
There by the rick, where they thresh, is the drone at an end,
Twilight it is, and I travel the road with my friend.
I think of the friends who are dead, who were dear
long ago in the past,
Beautiful friends who are dead, though I know that
death cannot last;
Friends with the beautiful eyes that the dust has defiled,
Beautiful souls who were gentle when I was a child.
John Masefield.
120. ON THE DEATH OF ARNOLD TOYNBEE
Good-bye; no tears nor cries
Are fitting here, and long lament were vain.
Only the last low words be softly said,
And the last greeting given above the dead;
For soul more pure and beautiful our eyes
Never shall see again.
Alas! what help is it,
What consolation in this heavy chance,
That to the blameless life so soon laid low
This was the end appointed long ago,
This the allotted space, the measure fit
Of endless ordinance?
Thus were the ancient days
Made like our own monotonous with grief;
From unassuaged lips even thus hath flown
Perpetually the immemorial moan
Of those that weeping went on desolate ways,
Nor found in tears relief.
For faces yet grow pale,
Tears rise at fortune, and true hearts take fire
In all who hear, with quickening pulse's stroke,
That cry that from the infinite people broke,
When third among them Helen led the wail
At Hector's funeral pyre.
And by the Latin beach
At rise of dawn such piteous tears were shed,
When Troy and Arcady in long array
Followed the princely body on its way,
And Lord Aeneas spoke the last sad speech
Above young Pallas dead.
Even in this English clime
The same sweet cry no circling seas can drown,
In melancholy cadence rose to swell
Some dirge of Lycidas or Astrophel
When lovely souls and pure before their time
Into the dusk went down.
These Earth, the bounteous nurse,
Hath long ago lapped in deep peace divine.
Lips that made musical their old-world woe
Themselves have gone to silence long ago,
And left a weaker voice and wearier verse,
O royal soul, for thine.
Beyond our life how far
Soars his new life through radiant orb and zone,
While we in impotency of the night
Walk dumbly, and the path is hard, and light
Fails, and for sun and moon the single star
Honour is left alone.
The star that knows no set,
But circles ever with a fixed desire,
Watching Orion's armour all of gold;
Watching and wearying not, till pale and cold
Dawn breaks, and the first shafts of morning fret
The east with lines of fire.
But on the broad low plain
When night is clear and windy, with hard frost,
Such as had once the morning in their eyes,
Watching and wearying, gaze upon the skies,
And cannot see that star for their great pain
Because the sun is lost.
Alas, how all our love
Is scant at best to fill so ample room!
Image and influence fall too fast away
And fading memory cries at dusk of day
Deem'st thou the dust recks aught at all thereof,
The ghost within the tomb?
For even o'er lives like his
The slumberous river washes soft and slow;
The lapping water rises wearily,
Numbing the nerve and will to sleep; and we
Before the goal and crown of mysteries
Fall back, and dare not know.
Only at times we know,
In gyres convolved and luminous orbits whirled
The soul beyond her knowing seems to sweep
Out of the deep, fire-winged, into the deep;
As two, who loved each other here below
Better than all the world,
Yet ever held apart,
And never knew their own hearts' deepest things,
After long lapse of periods, wandering far
Beyond the pathways of the furthest star,
Into communicable space might dart
With tremor of thunderous wings;
Across the void might call
Each unto each past worlds that raced and ran,
And flash through galaxies, and clasp and kiss
In some slant chasm and infinite abyss
Far in the faint sidereal interval
Between the Lyre and Swan.
J. W. Mackail.
121. ESTRANGEMENT
So, without overt breach, we fall apart,
Tacitly sunder—neither you nor I
Conscious of one intelligible Why,
And both, from severance, winning equal smart.
So, with resigned and acquiescent heart,
Whene'er your name on some chance lip may lie,
I seem to see an alien shade pass by,
A spirit wherein I have no lot or part.
Thus may a captive, in some fortress grim,
From casual speech betwixt his warders, learn
That June on her triumphant progress goes
Through arched and bannered woodlands; while for him
She is a legend emptied of concern,
And idle is the rumour of the rose.
William Watson.
122. FATHERHOOD
A kiss, a word of thanks, away
They're gone, and you forsaken learn
The blessedness of giving; they
(So Nature bids) forget, nor turn
To where you sit, and watch, and yearn.
And you (so Nature bids) would go
Through fire and water for their sake;
Rise early, late take rest, to sow
Their wealth, and lie all night awake
If but their little finger ache.
The storied prince with wondrous hair
Which stole men's hearts and wrought his bale,
Rebelling, since he had no heir,
Built him a pillar in the vale,
—Absalom's—lest his name should fail.
It fails not, though the pillar lies
In dust, because the outraged one,
His father, with strong agonies
Cried it until the day was done—
"O Absalom, my son, my son!"
So Nature bade; or might it be
God, who in Jewry once (they say)
Cried with a great cry, "Come to me,
Children," who still held on their way,
Though He spread out His hands all day?
Henry Charles Beeching.
123. DAISY
Where the thistle lifts a purple crown
Six foot out of the turf,
And the harebell shakes on the windy hill—
O the breath of the distant surf!—
The hills look over on the South,
And southward dreams the sea;
And with the sea-breeze hand in hand
Came innocence and she.
Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry
Red for the gatherer springs,
Two children did we stray and talk
Wise, idle, childish things.
She listened with big-lipped surprise,
Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine;
Her skin was like a grape, whose veins
Run snow instead of wine.
She knew not those sweet words she spake,
Nor knew her own sweet way;
But there's never a bird, so sweet a song
Thronged in whose throat that day.
Oh, there were flowers in Storrington
On the turf and on the spray;
But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills
Was the Daisy-flower that day!
Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face;
She gave me tokens three:—
A look, a word of her winsome mouth,
And a wild raspberry.
A berry red, a guileless look,
A still word,—strings of sand!
And yet they made my wild, wild heart
Fly down to her little hand.
For standing artless as the air,
And candid as the skies,
She took the berries with her hand,
And the love with her sweet eyes.
The fairest things have fleetest end,
Their scent survives their close;
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose.
She looked a little wistfully,
Then went her sunshine way:—
The sea's eye had a mist on it,
And the leaves fell from the day.
She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.
She left me marvelling why my soul
Was sad that she was glad;
At all the sadness in the sweet,
The sweetness in the sad.
Still, still I seemed to see her, still
Look up with soft replies,
And take the berries with her hand,
And the love with her lovely eyes.
Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in other's pain,
And perish in our own.
Francis Thompson.
124. A CRADLE SONG
O, men from the fields!
Come gently within.
Tread softly, softly,
O! men coming in.
Mavourneen is going
From me and from you,
Where Mary will fold him
With mantle of blue!
From reek of the smoke
And cold of the floor,
And the peering of things
Across the half-door.
O, men from the fields!
Soft, softly come thro'.
Mary puts round him
Her mantle of blue.
Padraic Colum.
125. ON A DEAD CHILD
Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee,
With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!
Though cold and stark and bare,
The bloom and the charm of life doth awhile remain on thee.
Thy mother's treasure wert thou;—alas! no longer
To visit her heart with wondrous joy; to be
Thy father's pride;—ah, he
Must gather his faith together, and his strength make stronger.
To me, as I move thee now in the last duty,
Dost thou with a turn or gesture anon respond;
Startling my fancy fond
With a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty.
Thy hand clasps, as 'twas wont, my finger, and holds it:
But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff;
Yet feels to my hand as if
'Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it.
So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing,—
Go, lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed!—
Propping thy wise, sad head,
Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.
So quiet! doth the change content thee?—Death,
whither hath he taken thee?
To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?
The vision of which I miss,
Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee
and awaken thee?
Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail us
To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,
Unwilling, alone we embark,
And the things we have seen and have known and
have heard of, fail us.
Robert Bridges.
126. I NEVER SHALL LOVE THE SNOW AGAIN
I never shall love the snow again
Since Maurice died:
With corniced drift it blocked the lane,
And sheeted in a desolate plain
The country side.
The trees with silvery rime bedight
Their branches bare.
By day no sun appeared; by night
The hidden moon shed thievish light
In the misty air.
We fed the birds that flew around
In flocks to be fed:
No shelter in holly or brake they found,
The speckled thrush on the frozen ground
Lay frozen and dead.
We skated on stream and pond; we cut
The crinching snow
To Doric temple or Arctic hut;
We laughed and sang at nightfall, shut
By the fireside glow.
Yet grudged we our keen delights before
Maurice should come.
We said, "In-door or out-of-door
We shall love life for a month or more,
When he is home."
They brought him home; 'twas two days late
For Christmas Day:
Wrapped in white, in solemn state,
A flower in his hand, all still and straight
Our Maurice lay.
And two days ere the year outgave
We laid him low.
The best of us truly were not brave,
When we laid Maurice down in his grave
Under the snow.
Robert Bridges.
127. TO MY GODCHILD
Francis M. W. M.
This labouring, vast, Tellurian galleon,
Riding at anchor off the orient sun,
Had broken its cable, and stood out to space
Down some frore Arctic of the aërial ways:
And now, back warping from the inclement main,
Its vaporous shroudage drenched with icy rain,
It swung into its azure roads again;
When, floated on the prosperous sun-gale, you
Lit, a white halcyon auspice, 'mid our frozen crew.
To the Sun, stranger, surely you belong,
Giver of golden days and golden song;
Nor is it by an all-unhappy plan
You bear the name of me, his constant Magian.
Yet ah! from any other that it came,
Lest fated to my fate you be, as to my name.
When at the first those tidings did they bring,
My heart turned troubled at the ominous thing:
Though well may such a title him endower,
For whom a poet's prayer implores a poet's power.
The Assisian, who kept plighted faith to three,
To Song, to Sanctitude, and Poverty,
(In two alone of whom most singers prove
A fatal faithfulness of during love!)
He the sweet Sales, of whom we scarcely ken
How God he could love more, he so loved men;
The crown and crowned of Laura and Italy;
And Fletcher's fellow—from these, and not from me,
Take you your name, and take your legacy!
Or, if a right successive you declare
When worms, for ivies, intertwine my hair,
Take but this Poesy that now followeth
My clayey best with sullen servile breath,
Made then your happy freedman by testating death.
My song I do but hold for you in trust,
I ask you but to blossom from my dust.
When you have compassed all weak I began,
Diviner poet, and ah! diviner man;
The man at feud with the perduring child
In you before Song's altar nobly reconciled;
From the wise heavens I half shall smile to see
How little a world, which owned you, needed me.
If, while you keep the vigils of the night,
For your wild tears make darkness all too bright,
Some lone orb through your lonely window peeps,
As it played lover over your sweet sleeps;
Think it a golden crevice in the sky,
Which I have pierced but to behold you by!
And when, immortal mortal, droops your head,
And you, the child of deathless song, are dead;
Then, as you search with unaccustomed glance
The ranks of Paradise for my countenance,
Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod
Among the bearded counsellors of God;
For if in Eden as on earth are we,
I sure shall keep a younger company:
Pass where beneath their ranged gonfalons
The starry cohorts shake their shielded suns,
The dreadful mass of their enridged spears;
Pass where majestical the eternal peers,
The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet—
A silvern segregation, globed complete
In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet;
Pass by where wait, young poet-wayfarer,
Your cousined clusters, emulous to share
With you the roseal lightnings burning 'mid their hair;
Pass the crystalline sea, the Lampads seven:—
Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.
Francis Thompson.
128. WHEN JUNE IS COME
When June is come, then all the day
I'll sit with my love in the scented hay
And watch the sunshot palaces high,
That the white clouds build in the breezy sky.
She singeth, and I do make her a song,
And read sweet poems the whole day long:
Unseen as we lie in our hay-built home.
Oh, life is delight when June is come.
Robert Bridges.
129. IN MISTY BLUE
In misty blue the lark is heard
Above the silent homes of men;
The bright-eyed thrush, the little wren,
The yellow-billed sweet-voiced blackbird
Mid sallow blossoms blond as curd
Or silver oak boughs, carolling
With happy throat from tree to tree,
Sing into light this morn of spring
That sang my dear love home to me.
Be starry, buds of clustered white,
Around the dark waves of her hair!
The young fresh glory you prepare
Is like my ever-fresh delight
When she comes shining on my sight
With meeting eyes, with such a cheek
As colours fair like flushing tips
Of shoots, and music ere she speak
Lies in the wonder of her lips.
Airs of the morning, breathe about
Keen faint scents of the wild wood side
From thickets where primroses hide
Mid the brown leaves of winter's rout.
Chestnut and willow, beacon out
For joy of her, from far and nigh,
Your English green on English hills:
Above her head, song-quivering sky,
And at her feet, the daffodils.
Because she breathed, the world was more,
And breath a finer soul to use,
And life held lovelier hopes to choose;
But O, to-day my heart brims o'er,
Earth glows as from a kindled core,
Like shadows of diviner things
Are hill and cloud and flower and tree—
A splendour that is hers and spring's,–
The day my love came home to me.
Laurence Binyon.