Poems, 1908-1919
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RECIPROCITY
I DO not think that skies and meadows areMoral, or that the fixture of a starComes of a quiet spirit, or that treesHave wisdom in their windless silences.Yet these are things invested in my moodWith constancy, and peace, and fortitude,That in my troubled season I can cryUpon the wide composure of the sky,And envy fields, and wish that I might beAs little daunted as a star or tree.THE HOURS
Those hours are best when suddenlyThe voices of the world are still,And in that quiet place is heardThe voice of one small singing bird,Alone within his quiet tree;When to one field that crowns a hill,With but the sky for neighbourhood,The crowding counties of my brainGive all their riches, lake and plain,Cornland and fell and pillared wood;When in a hill-top acre, bareFor the seed’s use, I am awareOf all the beauty that an ageOf earth has taught my eyes to see;When Pride and GenerosityThe Constant Heart and Evil Rage,Affection and Desire, and allThe passions of experienceAre no more tabled in my mind,Learning’s idolatry, but findParticularity of senseIn daily fortitudes that fallFrom this or that companion,Or in an angry gossip’s word;When one man speaks for Every One,When Music lives in one small bird,When in a furrowed hill we seeAll beauty in epitome —Those hours are best; for those belongTo the lucidity of song.A TOWN WINDOW
Beyond my window in the nightIs but a drab inglorious street,Yet there the frost and clean starlightAs over Warwick woods are sweet.Under the grey drift of the townThe crocus works among the mouldAs eagerly as those that crownThe Warwick spring in flame and gold.And when the tramway down the hillAcross the cobbles moans and rings,There is about my window-sillThe tumult of a thousand wings.MYSTERY
Think not that mystery has placeIn the obscure and veilèd face,Or when the midnight watches areUncompanied of moon or star,Or where the fields and forests lieEnfolded from the loving eyeBy fogs rebellious to the sun,Or when the poet’s rhymes are spunFrom dreams that even in his ownImagining are half-unknown.These are not mystery, but mereConditions that deny the clearReality that lies behindThe weak, unspeculative mind,Behind contagions of the airAnd screens of beauty everywhere,The brooding and tormented sky,The hesitation of an eye.Look rather when the landscapes glowThrough crystal distances as thoughThe forty shires of England spreadInto one vision harvested,Or when the moonlit waters lieIn silver cold lucidity;Those countenances search that bearWitness to very character,And listen to the song that weighsA life’s adventure in a phrase —These are the founts of wonder, theseThe plainer miracles to pleaseThe brain that reads the world aright;Here is the mystery of light.THE COMMON LOT
When youth and summer-time are gone,And age puts quiet garlands on,And in the speculative eyeThe fires of emulation die,But as to-day our time shall beTrembling upon eternity,While, still inconstant in debate,We shall on revelation wait,And age as youth will daily planThe sailing of the caravan.PASSAGE
When you deliberate the pageOf Alexander’s pilgrimage,Or say – “It is three years, or ten,Since Easter slew Connolly’s men,”Or prudently to judgment comeOf Antony or Absalom,And think how duly are designedCase and instruction for the mind,Remember then that also we,In a moon’s course, are history.THE WOOD
I walked a nut-wood’s gloom. And overheadA pigeon’s wing beat on the hidden boughs,And shrews upon shy tunnelling woke thinLate winter leaves with trickling sound. AcrossMy narrow path I saw the carrier antsBurdened with little pieces of bright straw.These things I heard and saw, with senses fineFor all the little traffic of the wood,While everywhere, above me, underfoot,And haunting every avenue of leaves,Was mystery, unresting, taciturn.…And haunting the lucidities of lifeThat are my daily beauty, moves a theme,Beating along my undiscovered mind.HISTORY
Sometimes, when walls and occupation seemA prison merely, a dark barrierBetween me everywhereAnd life, or the larger province of the mind,As dreams confined,As the trouble of a dream,I seek to make again a life long gone,To beMy mind’s approach and consolation,To give it form’s lucidity,Resilient form, as porcelain pieces thrownIn buried China by a wrist unknown,Or mirrored brigs upon Fowey sea.Then to my memory comes nothing greatOf purpose, or debate,Or perfect end,Pomp, nor love’s rapture, nor heroic hours to spend —But most, and strangely, for long and so much have I seen,Comes back an afternoonOf a JuneSunday at Elsfield, that is up on a greenHill, and there,Through a little farm parlour door,A floorOf red tiles and blue,And the airSweet with the hot June sun cascading throughThe vine-leaves under the glass, and a scarlet fumeOf geranium flower, and soft and yellow bloomOf musk, and stains of scarlet and yellow glass.Such are the things remainQuietly, and for ever, in the brain,And the things that they choose for history-making pass.THE FUGITIVE
Beauty has come to make no longer stayThan the bright buds of MayIn May-time do.Beauty is with us for one hour, one hour,Life is so brief a flower;Thoughts are so few.Thoughts are so few with mastery to giveShape to these fugitiveDear brevities,That even in its hour beauty is blind,Because the shallow mindNot sees, not sees.And in the mind of man only can beAlert prosperityFor beauty brief.So, what can be but little comes to lessUpon the wildernessOf unbelief.And beauty that has but an hour to spendWith you for friend,Goes outcast by.But know, but know – for all she is outcast —It is not she at last,But you that die.CONSTANCY
The shadows that companion meFrom chronicles and poetryMore constant and substantial areThan these my men familiar,Who draw with me uncertain breathA little while this side of death;For you, my friend, may fail to keepTo-morrow’s tryst, so darkly deepThe motions mutable that giveTo flesh its brief prerogative,And in the pleasant hours we makeTogether for devotion’s sake,Always the testament I seeThat is our twin mortality.But those from the recorded pageKeep an eternal pilgrimage.They stedfastly inhabit hereWith no mortality to fear,And my communion with themAils not in the mind’s stratagemAgainst the sudden blow, the dateThat once must fall unfortunate.They fret not nor persuade, and whenThese graduates I entertain,I grieve not that I too must fallAs you, my friend, to funeral,But rather find example thereThat, when my boughs of time are bare,And nothing more the body’s chanceGoverns my careful circumstance,I shall, upon that later birth,Walk in immortal fields of earth.SOUTHAMPTON BELLS
ILong ago some builder thrustHeavenward in Southampton townHis spire and beamed his bells,Largely conceiving from the dustThat pinnacle for ringing downOrisons and Noëls.In his imagination rang,Through generations challengingHis peal on simple men,Who, as the heart within him sang,In daily townfaring should singBy year and year again.IINow often to their ringing goThe bellmen with lean Time at heel,Intent on daily cares;The bells ring high, the bells ring low,The ringers ring the builder’s pealOf tidings unawares.And all the bells’ might well be dumbFor any quickening in the streetOf customary ears;And so at last proud builders comeWith dreams and virtues to defeatAmong the clouding years.IIINow, waiting on Southampton seaFor exile, through the silver nightI hear Noël! Noël!Through generations down to meYour challenge, builder, comes aright,Bell by obedient bell.You wake an hour with me; then wideThough be the lapses of your sleepYou yet shall wake again;And thus, old builder, on the tideOf immortality you keepYour way from brain to brain.THE NEW MIRACLE
Of old men wrought strange gods for mystery,Implored miraculous tokens in the skies,And lips that most were strange in prophecyWere most accounted wise.The hearthstone’s commerce between mate and mate,Barren of wonder, prospered in content,And still the hunger of their thought was greatFor sweet astonishment.And so they built them altars of retreatWhere life’s familiar use was overthrown,And left the shining world about their feet,To travel worlds unknown.…We hunger still. But wonder has come downFrom alien skies upon the midst of us;The sparkling hedgerow and the clamorous townHave grown miraculous.And man from his far travelling returnsTo find yet stranger wisdom than he sought,Where in the habit of his threshold burnsUnfathomable thought.REVERIE
Here in the unfrequented noon,In the green hermitage of June,While overhead a rustling wingMinds me of birds that do not singUntil the cooler eve rewakesThe service of melodious brakes,And thoughts are lonely rangers, here,In shelter of the primrose year,I curiously meditateOur brief and variable state.I think how many are aliveWho better in the grave would thrive,If some so long a sleep might giveBetter instruction how to live;I think what splendours had been saidBy darlings now untimely deadHad death been wise in choice of these,And made exchange of obsequies.I think what loss to governmentIt is that good men are content —Well knowing that an evil willIs folly-stricken too, and stillItself considers only wiseFor all rebukes and surgeries —That evil men should raise their prideTo place and fortune undefied.I think how daily we beguileOur brains, that yet a little whileAnd all our congregated schemesAnd our perplexity of dreams,Shall come to whole and perfect state.I think, however long the dateOf life may be, at last the sunShall pass upon campaigns undone.I look upon the world and seeA world colonial to me,Whereof I am the architect,And principal and intellect,A world whose shape and savour springOut of my lone imagining,A world whose nature is subduedFor ever to my instant mood,And only beautiful can beBecause of beauty is in me.And then I know that every mindAmong the millions of my kindMakes earth his own particularAnd privately created star,That earth has thus no single state,Being every man articulate.Till thought has no horizon thenI try to think how many menThere are to make an earth apartIn symbol of the urgent heart,For there are forty in my street,And seven hundred more in Greet,And families at Luton Hoo,And there are men in China, too.And what immensity is thisThat is but a parenthesisSet in a little human thought,Before the body comes to naught.There at the bottom of the copseI see a field of turnip tops,I see the cropping cattle passThere in another field, of grass.And fields and fields, with seven towns,A river, and a flight of downs,Steeples for all religious men,Ten thousand trees, and orchards ten,A mighty span that curves awayInto blue beauty, and I layAll this as quartered on a sphereHung huge in space, a thing of fearVast as the circle of the skyCompleted to the astonished eye;And then I think that all I see,Whereof I frame immensityGlobed for amazement, is no moreThan a shire’s corner, and that fourGreat shires being ten times multipliedAre small on the Atlantic tideAs an emerald on a silver bowl …And the Atlantic to the wholeSweep of this tributary starThat is our earth is but … and farThrough dreadful space the outmeasured mindSeeks to conceive the unconfined.I think of Time. How, when his wingComposes all our quarrellingIn some green corner where May leavesAre loud with blackbirds on all eves,And all the dust that was our bonesIs underneath memorial stones,Then shall old jealousies, while weLie side by side most quietly,Be but oblivion’s fools, and stillWhen curious pilgrims ask – “What skillHad these that from oblivion saves?” —My song shall sing above our graves.I think how men of gentle mind,And friendly will, and honest kind,Deny their nature and appearFellows of jealousy and fear;Having single faith, and natural witTo measure truth and cherish it,Yet, strangely, when they build in thought,Twisting the honesty that wroughtIn the straight motion of the heart,Into its feigning counterpartThat is the brain’s betrayal ofThe simple purposes of love;And what yet sorrier declineIs theirs when, eager to confineNo more within the silent brainIts habit, thought seeks birth againIn speech, as honesty has doneIn thought; then even what had wonFrom heart to brain fades and is lostIn this pretended pentecost,This their forlorn captivityTo speech, who have not learnt to beLords of the word, nor kept amongThe sterner climates of the tongue …So truth is in their hearts, and thenFalls to confusion in the brain,And, fading through this mid-eclipse,It perishes upon the lips.I think how year by year I stillFind working in my dauntless willSudden timidities that areMerely the echo of some farForgotten tyrannies that cameTo youth’s bewilderment and shame;That yet a magisterial gown,Being worn by one of no renownAnd half a generation lessIn years than I, can dispossessSomething my circumspecter moodOf excellence and quietude,And if a Bishop speaks to meI tremble with propriety.I think how strange it is that heWho goes most comradely with meIn beauty’s worship, takes delightIn shows that to my eager sightAre shadows and unmanifest,While beauty’s favour and behestTo me in motion are revealedThat is against his vision sealed;Yet is our hearts’ necessityNot twofold, but a common pleaThat chaos come to continence,Whereto the arch-intelligenceRichly in divers voices makesIts answer for our several sakes.I see the disinheritedAnd long procession of the dead,Who have in generations goneHeld fugitive dominionOf this same primrose pasturageThat is my momentary wage.I see two lovers move alongThese shadowed silences of song,With spring in blossom at their feetMore incommunicably sweetTo their hearts’ more magnificence,Than to the common courts of sense,Till joy his tardy closure tellsWith coming of the curfew bells.I see the knights of spur and swordCrossing the little woodland ford,Riding in ghostly cavalcadeOn some unchronicled crusade.I see the silent hunter goIn cloth of yeoman green, with bowStrung, and a quiver of grey wings.I see the little herd who bringsHis cattle homeward, while his sireMakes bivouac in WarwickshireThis night, the liege and loyal manOf Cavalier or Puritan.And as they pass, the nameless dead,Unsung, uncelebrate, and spedUpon an unremembered hourAs any twelvemonth fallen flower,I think how strangely yet they liveFor all their days were fugitive.I think how soon we too shall beA story with our ancestry.I think what miracle has beenThat you whose love among this greenDelightful solitude is stillThe stay and substance of my will,The dear custodian of my song,My thrifty counsellor and strong,Should take the time of all time’s tideThat was my season, to abideOn earth also; that we should beCharted across eternityTo one elect and happy dayOf yellow primroses in May.The clock is calling five o’clock,And Nonesopretty brings her flockTo fold, and Tom comes back from townWith hose and ribbons worth a crown,And duly at The Old King’s HeadThey gather now to daily bread,And I no more may meditateOur brief and variable state.PENANCES
These are my happy penances. To makeBeauty without a covenant; to takeMeasure of time only because I knowThat in death’s market-place I still shall oweService to beauty that shall not be done;To know that beauty’s doctrine is begunAnd makes a close in sacrifice; to findIn beauty’s courts the unappeasable mind.LAST CONFESSIONAL
For all ill words that I have spoken,For all clear moods that I have broken,For all despite and hasty breath,Forgive me, Love, forgive me, Death.Death, master of the great assize,Love, falling now to memories,You two alone I need to prove,Forgive me, Death, forgive me, Love.For every tenderness undone,For pride when holiness was noneBut only easy charity,O Death, be pardoner to me.For stubborn thought that would not makeMeasure of love’s thought for love’s sake,But kept a sullen difference,Take, Love, this laggard penitence.For cloudy words too vainly spentTo prosper but in argument,When truth stood lonely at the gate,On your compassion, Death, I wait.For all the beauty that escapedThis foolish brain, unsung, unshaped,For wonder that was slow to move,Forgive me, Death, forgive me, Love.For love that kept a secret cruse,For life defeated of its dues,This latest word of all my breath —Forgive me, Love, forgive me, Death.BIRTHRIGHT
Lord Rameses of Egypt sighedBecause a summer evening passed;And little Ariadne criedThat summer fancy fell at lastTo dust; and young Verona diedWhen beauty’s hour was overcast.Theirs was the bitterness we knowBecause the clouds of hawthorn keepSo short a state, and kisses goTo tombs unfathomably deep,While Rameses and RomeoAnd little Ariadne sleep.ANTAGONISTS
Green shoots, we break the morning earthAnd flourish in the morning’s breath;We leave the agony of birthAnd soon are all midway to death.While yet the summer of her yearBrings life her marvels, she can seeFar off the rising dust, and hearThe footfall of her enemy.HOLINESS
If all the carts were painted gay,And all the streets swept clean,And all the children came to playBy hollyhocks, with greenGrasses to grow between,If all the houses looked as thoughSome heart were in their stones,If all the people that we knowWere dressed in scarlet gowns,With feathers in their crowns,I think this gaiety would makeA spiritual land.I think that holiness would takeThis laughter by the hand,Till both should understand.THE CITY
A shining city, oneHappy in snow and sun,And singing in the rainA paradisal strain…Here is a dream to keep,O Builders, from your sleep.O foolish Builders, wake,Take your trowels, takeThe poet’s dream, and buildThe city song has willed,That every stone may singAnd all your roads may ringWith happy wayfaring.TO THE DEFILERS
Go, thieves, and take your riches, creepTo corners out of honest sight;We shall not be so poor to keepOne thought of envy or despite.But know that in sad surety whenYour sullen will betrays this earthTo sorrows of contagion, thenBeelzebub renews his birth.When you defile the pleasant streamsAnd the wild bird’s abiding-place,You massacre a million dreamsAnd cast your spittle in God’s face.A CHRISTMAS NIGHT
Christ for a dream was given from the deadTo walk one Christmas night on earth again,Among the snow, among the Christmas bells.He heard the hymns that are his praise: Noël,And Christ is Born, and Babe of Bethlehem.He saw the travelling crowds happy for home,The gathering and the welcome, and the setFeast and the gifts, because he once was born,Because he once was steward of a word.And so he thought, “The spirit has been kind;So well the peoples might have fallen from me,My way of life being difficult and spare.It is beautiful that a dream in GalileeShould prosper so. They crucified me once,And now my name is spoken through the world,And bells are rung for me and candles burnt.They might have crucified my dream who usedMy body ill; they might have spat on meAlways as in one hour on Golgotha.” …And the snow fell, and the last bell was still,And the poor Christ again was with the dead.INVOCATION
As pools beneath stone arches takeDarkly within their deeps againShapes of the flowing stone, and makeStories anew of passing men,So let the living thoughts that keep,Morning and evening, in their kind,Eternal change in height and deep,Be mirrored in my happy mind.Beat, world, upon this heart, be loudYour marvel chanted in my blood,Come forth, O sun, through cloud on cloudTo shine upon my stubborn mood.Great hills that fold above the sea,Ecstatic airs and sparkling skies,Sing out your words to master me,Make me immoderately wise.IMMORTALITY
IWhen other beauty governs other lips,And snowdrops come to strange and happy springs,When seas renewed bear yet unbuilded ships,And alien hearts know all familiar things,When frosty nights bring comrades to enjoySweet hours at hearths where we no longer sit,When Liverpool is one with dusty Troy,And London famed as Attica for wit …How shall it be with you, and you, and you,How with us all who have gone greatly hereIn friendship, making some delight, some trueSong in the dark, some story against fear?Shall song still walk with love, and life be brave,And we, who were all these, be but the grave?IINo; lovers yet shall tell the nightingaleSometimes a song that we of old time made,And gossips gathered at the twilight aleShall say, “Those two were friends,” or, “UnafraidOf bitter thought were those because they lovedBetter than most.” And sometimes shall be toldHow one, who died in his young beauty, moved,As Astrophel, those English hearts of old.And the new seas shall take the new ships homeTelling how yet the Dymock orchards stand,And you shall walk with Julius at Rome,And Paul shall be my fellow in the Strand;There in the midst of all those words shall beOur names, our ghosts, our immortality.THE CRAFTSMEN
Confederate hand and eyeWork to the chisel’s blade,Setting the grain aglowOf porch and sturdy beam —So the strange gods may plyStrict arms till we are madeQuick as the gods who knowWhat builds behind this dream.SYMBOLS
I saw history in a poet’s song,In a river-reach and a gallows-hill,In a bridal bed, and a secret wrong,In a crown of thorns: in a daffodil.I imagined measureless time in a day,And starry space in a waggon-road,And the treasure of all good harvests layIn the single seed that the sower sowed.My garden-wind had driven and havened againAll ships that ever had gone to sea,And I saw the glory of all dead menIn the shadow that went by the side of me.SEALED
The doves call down the long arcades of pine,The screaming swifts are tiring towards their eaves,And you are very quiet, O lover of mine.No foot is on your ploughlands now, the songFails and is no more heard among your leavesThat wearied not in praise the whole day long.I have watched with you till this twilight-fall,The proud companion of your loveliness;Have you no word for me, no word at all?The passion of my thought I have given you,Striving towards your passion, nevertheless,The clover leaves are deepening to the dew,And I am still unsatisfied, untaught.You lie guarded in mystery, you goInto your night, and leave your lover naught.Would I were Titan with immeasurable thewsTo hold you trembling, lover of mine, and knowTo the full the secret savour that you useNow to my tormenting. I would drainYour beauty to the last sharp glory of it;You should work mightily through me, blood and brain.Your heart in my heart’s mastery should burn,And you before my swift and arrogant witShould be no longer proudly taciturn.You should bend back astonished at my kiss,Your wisdom should be armourer to my pride,And you, subdued, should yet be glad of this.The joys of great heroic lovers deadShould seem but market-gossiping besideThe annunciation of our bridal bed.And now, my lover earth, I am a leaf,A wave of light, a bird’s note, a blade sprungTowards the oblivion of the sickled sheaf;A mere mote driven against your royal ease,A tattered eager traveller amongThe myriads beating on your sanctuaries.I have no strength to crush you to my will,Your beauty is invulnerably zoned,Yet I, your undefeated lover still,Exulting in your sap am clear of shame,And biding with you patiently am thronedAbove the flight of desolation’s aim.You may be mute, bestow no recompenseOn all the thriftless leaguers of my soul —I am at your gates, O lover of mine, and thenceWill I not turn for any scorn you send,Rebuked, bemused, yet is my purpose whole,I shall be striving towards you till the end.A PRAYER
Lord, not for light in darkness do we pray,Not that the veil be lifted from our eyes,Nor that the slow ascension of our dayBe otherwise.Not for a clearer vision of the thingsWhereof the fashioning shall make us great,Not for remission of the peril and stingsOf time and fate.Not for a fuller knowledge of the endWhereto we travel, bruised yet unafraid,Nor that the little healing that we lendShall be repaid.Not these, O Lord. We would not break the barsThy wisdom sets about us; we shall climbUnfettered to the secrets of the starsIn Thy good time.We do not crave the high perception swiftWhen to refrain were well, and when fulfil,Nor yet the understanding strong to siftThe good from ill.Not these, O Lord. For these Thou hast revealed,We know the golden season when to reapThe heavy-fruited treasure of the field,The hour to sleep.Not these. We know the hemlock from the rose,The pure from stained, the noble from the baseThe tranquil holy light of truth that glowsOn Pity’s face.We know the paths wherein our feet should press,Across our hearts are written Thy decrees,Yet now, O Lord, be merciful to blessWith more than these.Grant us the will to fashion as we feel,Grant us the strength to labour as we know,Grant us the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel,To strike the blow.Knowledge we ask not – knowledge Thou hast lent,But, Lord, the will – there lies our bitter need,Give us to build above the deep intentThe deed, the deed.