Poems, 1914-1919
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1915-1918
ἐν Τροίη ἀπόλοντο, ϕιλης ἀπὀ πατρίδος ἀίης
IN MEMORIAM, A.H
(Auberon Herbert, Captain Lord Lucas, R.F.C.; killed November 3, 1916.)Νωμᾶται δ’έν ἀτρυγέτῳ χάειThe wind had blown away the rainThat all day long had soaked the level plain.Against the horizon’s fiery wrack,The sheds loomed black.And higher, in their tumultuous concourse met,The streaming clouds, shot-riddled banners, wetWith the flickering storm,Drifted and smouldered, warmWith flashes sentFrom the lower firmament.And they concealed —They only here and there through rifts revealedA hidden sanctuary of fire and light,A city of chrysolite.We looked and laughed and wondered, and I said:That orange sea, those oriflammes outspreadWere like the fanciful imaginingsThat the young painter flingsUpon the canvas bold,Such as the sage and the oldMake mock at, saying it could never beAnd you assented also, laughingly.I wondered what they meant,That flaming firmament,Those clouds so grey so gold, so wet so warm,So much of glory and so much of storm,The end of the world, or the endOf the war – remoter still to me and you, my friend.Alas! it meant not this, it meant not that:It meant that now the last time you and IShould look at the golden sky,And the dark fields large and flat,And smell the evening weather,And laugh and talk and wonder both together.The last, last time. We nevermore should meetIn France or London street,Or fields of home. The desolated spaceOf life shall nevermoreBe what it was before.No one shall take your place.No other faceCan fill that empty frame.There is no answer when we call your name.We cannot hear your step upon the stair.We turn to speak and find a vacant chair.Something is broken which we cannot mend.God has done more than take away a friendIn taking you; for all that we have leftIs bruised and irremediably bereft.There is none like you. Yet not that aloneDo we bemoan;But this; that you were greater than the rest,And better than the best.O liberal heart fast-rooted to the soil,O lover of ancient freedom and proud toil,Friend of the gipsies and all wandering song,The forest’s nursling and the favoured childOf woodlands wild —O brother to the birds and all things free,Captain of liberty!Deep in your heart the restless seed was sown;The vagrant spirit fretted in your feet;We wondered could you tarry long,And brook for long the cramping street,Or would you one day sail for shores unknown,And shake from you the dust of towns, and spurnThe crowded market-place – and not return?You found a sterner guide;You heard the guns. Then, to their distant fire,Your dreams were laid aside;And on that day, you cast your heart’s desireUpon a burning pyre;You gave your service to the exalted need,Until at last from bondage freed,At liberty to serve as you loved best,You chose the noblest way. God did the rest.So when the spring of the world shall shrive our stain,After the winter of war,When the poor world awakes to peace once more,After such night of ravage and of rain,You shall not come again.You shall not come to taste the old Spring weather,To gallop through the soft untrampled heather,To bathe and bake your body on the grass.We shall be there, alas!But not with you. When Spring shall wake the earth,And quicken the scarred fields to the new birth,Our grief shall grow. For what can Spring renewMore fiercely for us than the need of you?That night I dreamt they sent for me and saidThat you were missing, “missing, missing – dead”:I cried when in the morning I awoke,And all the world seemed shrouded in a cloak;But when I saw the sun,And knew another day had just begun,I brushed the dream away, and quite forgotThe nightmare’s ugly blot.So was the dream forgot. The dream came true.Before the night I knewThat you had flown away into the airForever. Then I cheated my despair.I saidThat you were safe – or wounded – but not dead.Alas! I knewWhich was the false and true.And after days of watching, days of lead,There came the certain news that you were deadYou had died fighting, fighting against odds,Such as in war the godsÆthereal dared when all the world was young;Such fighting as blind Homer never sung,Nor Hector nor Achilles never knew;High in the empty blue.High, high, above the clouds, against the setting sun,The fight was fought, and your great task was done.Of all your brave adventures this the lastThe bravest was and best;Meet ending to a long embattled past,This swift, triumphant, fatal quest,Crowned with the wreath that never perisheth,And diadem of honourable death;Swift Death aflame with offering supremeAnd mighty sacrifice,More than all mortal dream;A soaring death, and near to Heaven’s gate;Beneath the very walls of Paradise.Surely with soul elate,You heard the destined bullet as you flew,And surely your prophetic spirit knewThat you had well deserved that shining fate.Here is no waste,No burning Might-have-been,No bitter after-taste,None to censure, none to screen,Nothing awry, nor anything misspent;Only content, content beyond content,Which hath not any room for betterment.God, Who had made you valiant, strong and swift,And maimed you with a bullet long ago,And cleft your riotous ardour with a rift,And checked your youth’s tumultuous overflow,Gave back your youth to you,And packed in moments rare and fewAchievements manifoldAnd happiness untold,And bade you spring to Death as to a bride,In manhood’s ripeness, power and pride,And on your sandals the strong wings of youth.He let you leave a nameTo shine on the entablatures of truth,Forever:To sound forever in answering halls of fame.For you soared onwards to that world which ragsOf clouds, like tattered flags,Concealed; you reached the walls of chrysolite,The mansions white;And losing all, you gained the civic crownOf that eternal town,Wherein you passed a rightful citizenOf the bright commonwealth ablaze beyond our ken.Surely you found companions meet for youIn that high place;You met there face to faceThose you had never known, but whom you knew;Knights of the Table Round,And all the very brave, the very true,With chivalry crowned;The captains rare,Courteous and brave beyond our human air;Those who had loved and suffered overmuch,Now free from the world’s touch.And with them were the friends of yesterday,Who went before and pointed you the way;And in that place of freshness, light and rest,Where Lancelot and Tristram vigil keepOver their King’s long sleep,Surely they made a place for you,Their long-expected guest,Among the chosen few,And welcomed you, their brother and their friend,To that companionship which hath no end.And in the portals of the sacred hallYou hear the trumpet’s call,At dawn upon the silvery battlement,Re-echo through the deepAnd bid the sons of God to rise from sleep,And with a shout to hailThe sunrise on the city of the Grail:The music that proud Lucifer in HellMissed more than all the joys that he forwent.You hear the solemn bellAt vespers, when the oriflammes are furled;And then you know that somewhere in the world,That shines far-off beneath you like a gem,They think of you, and when you think of themYou know that they will wipe away their tears,And cast aside their fears;That they will have it so,And in no otherwise;That it is well with them because they know,With faithful eyes,Fixed forward and turned upwards to the skies,That it is well with you,Among the chosen few,Among the very brave, the very true.DIFFUGERE NIVES, 1917
To J. C. SThe snows have fled, the hail, the lashing rain,Before the Spring.The grass is starred with buttercups again,The blackbirds sing.Now spreads the month that feast of lovely thingsWe loved of old.Once more the swallow glides with darkling wingsAgainst the gold.Now the brown bees about the peach trees boomUpon the walls;And far away beyond the orchard’s bloomThe cuckoo calls.The season holds a festival of light,For you, for me,The shadows are abroad, there falls a blightOn each green tree.And every leaf unfolding, every flowerBrings bitter meed;Beauty of the morning and the evening hourQuickens our need.All is reborn, but never any SpringCan bring back this;Nor any fullness of midsummer bringThe voice we miss.The smiling eyes shall smile on us no more;The laughter clear,Too far away on the forbidden shore,We shall not hear.Bereft of these until the day we die,We both must dwell;Alone, alone, and haunted by the cry:“Hail and farewell!”Yet when the scythe of Death shall near us hissThrough the cold air,Then on the shuddering marge of the abyssThey will be there.They will be there to lift us from sheer spaceAnd empty night;And we shall turn and see them face to faceIn the new light.So shall we pay the unabated priceOf their release,And found on our consenting sacrificeTheir lasting peace.The hopes that fall like leaves before the wind,The baffling waste,And every earthly joy that leaves behindA mortal taste.The uncompleted end of all things dear,The clanging doorOf Death, forever loud with the last fear,Haunt them no more.Without them the awakening world is darkWith dust and mire;Yet as they went they flung to us a spark,A thread of fire.To guide us while beneath the sombre skiesFaltering we tread,Until for us like morning stars shall riseThe deathless dead.JULIAN GRENFELL
Because of you we will be glad and gay,Remembering you, we will be brave and strong;And hail the advent of each dangerous day,And meet the last adventure with a song.And, as you proudly gave your jewelled gift,We’ll give our lesser offering with a smile,Nor falter on that path where, all too swift,You led the way and leapt the golden stile.Whether new paths, new heights to climb you find,Or gallop through the unfooted asphodel,We know you know we shall not lag behind,Nor halt to waste a moment on a fear;And you will speed us onward with a cheer,And wave beyond the stars that all is well.PIERRE
I saw you starting for another war,The emblem of adventure and of youth,So that men trembled, saying: “He forsoothHas gone, has gone, and shall return no more.”And then out there, they told me you were dead,Taken and killed; how was it that I knew,Whatever else was true, that was not true?And then I saw you pale upon your bed,Scarcely two years ago, when you were sentBack from the margin of the dim abyss;For Death had sealed you with a warning kiss,And let you go to meet a nobler fate:To serve in fellowship, O fortunate:To die in battle with your regiment.ICARUS
Here fell the daring Icarus in his prime,He who was brave enough to scale the skies;And here bereft of plumes his body lies,Leaving the valiant envious of that climb.O rare performance of a soul sublime,That with small loss such great advantage buys!Happy mishap! fraught with so rich a prize,That bids the vanquished triumph over time.So new a path his youth did not dismay,His wings but not his noble heart said nay;He had the glorious sun for funeral fire;He died upon a high adventure bent;The sea his grave, his goal the firmament.Great is the tomb, but greater the desire.EPITAPH
Here murdered by the frenzied, not the free,Lies the latest monarch of a star-crossed line;Anointed Emperor by right divine,From Arctic icefields to the Aral sea,From Warsaw to the walls of Tartary.His country’s travail claimed a high design;Too stubborn to respond, he shrank supineBefore the large demand of destiny.Bereft of crown, and throne, and hearth and name,Grief lent him majesty, and sufferingGave him a more than regal diadem.His people kissed the desecrated hemOf robes not now of splendour but of shame,And knelt before their undiminished King.AUGUST, 1918
(In a French Village.)I hear the tinkling of the cattle bell,In the broad stillness of the afternoon;High in the cloudless haze the harvest moonIs pallid as the phantom of a shell.A girl is drawing water from a well,I hear the clatter of her wooden shoon;Two mothers to their sleeping babies croon,And the hot village feels the drowsy spell.Sleep, child, the Angel of Death his wings has spread;His engines scour the land, the sea, the sky;And all the weapons of Hell’s armouryAre ready for the blood that is their bread;And many a thousand men to-night must die,So many that they will not count the Dead.POEMS WRITTEN
BEFORE THE WAR
VITA NUOVA
I watched you in the distance tall and pale,Like a swift swallow in a pearly sky;Your eyelids drooped like petals wearily,Your face was like a lily of the vale.You had the softness of all Summer days,The silver radiance of the twilight hour,The mystery of bluebell-haunted ways,The passion of the white syringa’s flower.I watched you, and I knew that I had foundThe long-delaying, long-expected Spring;I knew my heart had found a tune to sing;That strength to soar was in my spirit’s wing;That life was full of a triumphant sound,That death could only be a little thing.Ω Κάλα, ὧ χαρίεσσαI saw you by the Summer candlelight: —You put to shame the sparkle of the gems,The lights, the flashing of the diadems,The moon and all the stars of Summer night.I saw you in the radiant morning hour: —You put to shame the white rose and the red;Your chiselled lips, your little lovely head,Were fairer than the petals of a flower.And on the shaven surface of the lawn,You moved like music, and you smiled like dawn, —The leaves, the flowers, the dragon-flies, the dew,Beside you seemed the stuff of coarser clay;And all the glory of the Summer dayA background for the wonder that was you.ITALY
The almond trees of Tuscany in flower,Narcissus and the tulip growing wild;White oxen; and like a lily undefiled,Beyond the misty plain, the marble tower;The roses and the corn upon the hill,The Judas-tree against the solid blue;The fire-flies, and the downy owl’s too-whoo,Thy Aziola, Shelley, plaintive still.The lisp of Baiæ’s phosphorescent foam;And Venice like a bubble made of dew,A shell transfigured with the rainbow’s hue;The Appian Way beneath a sullen sky,(The shepherd’s pipe is like a seagull’s cry)And in a silver rift, eternal Rome.SEVILLE
The orange blossoms in the Alcazar,Where roses and syringas are in flower;The blinding glory of the morning hour;The eyes that gleam behind a twisted bar;The women on the balconies, – a smile;The barrel-organs, and the blazing heat;The awning hanging high across the street;A dark mantilla in a sombre aisle.A fountain tinkling in a shady court;The gold arena of the bull-ring’s feast;The coloured crowd acclaiming perilous sport;The sudden silence when they hold their breath,While the torero gently plays with death,And flicks the horns of the tremendous beast.GREECE
The Spring had scattered poppies on the land,The Spring was saying her secret to the breeze;In the translucent shallows of green seas,A fisherman, a trident in his hand,Was casting shining fishes to the sand,And wading in the water to his knees;And still I hear the crickets and the bees,The hidden hoofs, the ringing saraband.I see the temples above the breaking foam,The pillars pink as dawn in the silver dust;The Parthenon at sunset large and dim,Smouldering against the purple mountain’s crust;And far away on the ocean’s blazing rim,The phantom ship that brought Ulysses home.RUSSIA
What can the secret link between us be?Why does your song’s unresting ebb and flowSpeak to me in a language that I know?Why does the burden of your mysteryCome like the message of a friend to me?Why do I love your vasts of corn or snow,The tears and laughter of your sleepless woe,The murmur of your brown immensity?I cannot say, I only know that whenI hear your soldiers singing in the street,I know it is with you that I would dwell;And when I see your peasants reaping wheat,Your children playing on the road, your menAt prayer before a shrine, I wish them well.A JUNE NIGHT IN RUSSIA
A concert. Hark to the prelude’s opening bar!Played by the sheep bells tinkling on the hill;Dogs bark and frogs are croaking near the mill,The watchman’s rattle beats the time afar.Like water bubbling in a magic jar,The nightingale begins a liquid trill,Another answers; and the world’s so still,You’d think that you could hear that falling star.I scarcely see for light the stars that swimAloof in skies not dark but only dim.The women’s voices echo far away.And on the road two lovers sing a song:They sing the joy of love that lasts a day:The sorrow of love that lasts a whole life long.HARVEST IN RUSSIA
The breeze has come at last. The day was long;And in the lustrous air the dark bats fly;And Hark! It is the reapers passing by,I hear the burden of their peaceful song.A voice intones; and swift the answering throngTake up the theme and build the harmony;The music swells and soars into the skyAnd dies away intense, and clear and strong.Now through the trees the stately shapes I seeOf women with the attributes of toil,Calm in their sacerdotal majesty;And backward, through the drifting mist of years,I see the festal rites that blessed the soil,As old as the first drop of mortal tears.DOSTOYEVSKY
You healed the sore, you made the fearful brave,They bless you for your lasting legacy;The balm, the tears, the fragrant charityYou sought and treasured in your living grave.The gifts you humbly took you greatly gave,For solace of the soul in agony,When through the bars the brutal passions pry,And mock the bonds of the celestial slave.You wandered in the uttermost abyss;And there, amidst the ashes and the dust,You spoke no word of anger or of pride;You found the prints of steps divine to kiss;You looked right upwards to the stars, you cried:“Hosanna to the Lord, for He is just.”BEETHOVEN
More mighty than the hosts of mortal kings,I hear the legions gathering to their goal;The tramping millions drifting from one pole,The march, the counter-march, the flank that swings.I hear the beating of tremendous wings,The shock of battle and the drums that roll;And far away the solemn belfries toll,And in the field the careless shepherd sings.There is an end unto the longest day.The echoes of the fighting die away.The evening breathes a benediction mild.The sunset fades. There is no need to weep,For night has come, and with the night is sleep,And now the fiercest foes are reconciled.MOZART
The sunshine, and the grace of falling rain,The fluttering daffodil, the lilt of bees,The blossom on the boughs of almond trees,The waving of the wheat upon the plain —And all that knows not effort, strife or strain,And all that bears the signature of ease,The plunge of ships that dance before the breezeThe flight across the twilight of the crane:And all that joyous is, and young, and free,That tastes of morning and the laughing surf;The dawn, the dew, the newly turned-up turf,The sudden smile, the unexpressive prayer,The artless art, the untaught dignity, —You speak them in the passage of an air.WAGNER
O strange awakening to a world of gloom,And baffled moonbeams and delirious stars,Of souls that moan behind forbidden bars,And waving forests swept by wings of doom;Of heroes falling in unhappy fight,And winged messengers from eyries dim;And mountains ringed with flame, and shapes that swimIn the deep river’s green translucent night.O restless soul, for ever seeking bliss,Thirsty for ever and unsatisfied,Whether the woodland starts to the echoing horn,Or dying Tristram moans by shores forlorn,Or Siegfried rides through fire to wake his bride,And shakes the whirling planets with a kiss.SHELLEY
Singer of cloud and star and rushing stream,Let me bring but one garland to thy shrine,For when a boy I drank of the dews divineThat in thy rainbow-coloured chalice gleam.I scaled the silver ladder of thy dream,And dizzy with the wonder of that wine,I heard the song, and saw the eyes that shineUnveiled, within the sanctuary supreme.Then, like Actæon I became the prey,The hunted quarry of remorseless hounds;Hark! in the distance I can hear them bay!But in my heart the vision and the voiceEndure; and though they slay me, I rejoice —I saw that light, I heard those starry sounds.PHÈDRE
Her gesture is the soaring of a hymn,Her voice has robbed the spoil of Hybla’s bees;And like the frozen music of a frieze,Calm, as she moves majestic, every limb.Clear as a crystal beaker’s sounding rim,Her heart gives voice to sobbing melodies,And her frame trembles, swept by passion’s breeze,And sultry clouds her blazing eyes bedim.A faery caught in her own fatal snare,A wounded eagle struggling to be free,Whose Kingdom was the snow and the sun’s flameMore queenly than all empresses is she,Discrowned albeit, defeated and in despair;The stricken lily puts the rose to shame.THE WOUNDED
The wounded lie and groan upon the plain;And one there is whom it is vain to lift;So give him water. It is the last gift,And very soon he shall not thirst again.All white and gold the Chief with a troop of horseTrots by. The soldier opens smiling eyes;And at the latest gasp of life he cries:“Long live!” with all his feeble flickering force.Before he said his say he died content.And we, the wounded on life’s battlefield,Enrolled and sent to war to fight and die,When conquered by our mortal wound, we cry“Long live!” obedient to our sacrament,When God with all His universe rides by.Manchuria, 1904SONNETS: 1913-1914
I
I saw you smiling over broken flowers,Yourself a flower unbroken and more rareThan petals that make sweet the moonlit air,And load with scent the Summer’s golden hours.Your perfect head, the ripple of your hair,Like the soft sun that shines through April showers,Leans from a fairyland of twinkling towers,And beckons me to an enchanted stair.Your eyes, your eyes, divide me from my sleep;The echo of your laughter makes me weep,You fill the measureless world, you frailest thing!And in the silence of my deepest dream,Your beauty wanders like a whispering stream,And brushes past me like an angel’s wing.II
To-night the thoughts of you drift round my bedLike thistledown; I weave them into rhymes;And as I fall to sleep I hear their chimesBuilding sweet music high above my head,And prayers and poems all in praise of you;And, happy in my fading dream, I say:“There will be something ready with the dayTo send to her, to speak for me, to sue.”But when the morning comes, the nimble wordsHave fled into the air like frightened birds,That answer my soft whistle with a scream;And only the recalcitrant thoughts remain;The baffled blind desire to find againThe accents that were docile in my dream.III
I think God made your soul for better thingsThan idly laughing with the noisy crew.I think He meant the spirit that is youTo soar above the world with silver wings;To hear the music of celestial strings;To keep the flame within you always trueUnto your own high pole; and pure as dewThe fountain that within you sometimes sings.I think you are an exile in the noiseOf busy markets; alien to the toysThat dazzle others, firing them with greed;And, like a seagull, lost upon the land,You long for the large breakers and the sand,The strong salt air, the surf, the drifting weed.IV
The world was waiting for the thunder’s birth,To-day, and cloud was piled on sullen cloud:Then strong, and straight, and clean, and cool, and loudThe rain came down, and drenched the stifling earth.The heavy clouds have lifted and rolled by;The riotous wet leaves with music ring,And now the nightingale begins to sing,And tender as a rose-leaf is the sky.I wonder if some day this stifling careThat weighs upon my heart will fall in showers?I wonder if the hot and heavy hoursWill roll away and leave such limpid air,And if my soul will riot in the rain,And sing as gladly as that bird again?V
I picked this cornflower in the rustling rye,These briar roses from a luscious hedge,This purple iris in the woodland sedge.It was the quaver of the dragon-fly,Dropped like a piece of azure from the sky,That led me to that pool amongst the trees —And there I lay and listened to the bees,And murmured sadly to myself: “Good-bye.”Good-bye! these perished petals that I sendWill tell you that this truly is the end;Good-bye to you and to the golden hours.These briar roses grew beside the stream —No, no! I shall not send you faded flowers —I need them for the grave of my lost dream.Sosnofka, June 1914