Poems of To-Day: an Anthology
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42. PLYMOUTH HARBOUR
Oh, what know they of harbours Who toss not on the sea! They tell of fairer havens, But none so fair there be As Plymouth town outstretching Her quiet arms to me; Her breast's broad welcome spreading From Mewstone to Penlee. Ah, with this home-thought, darling, Come crowding thoughts of thee. Oh, what know they of harbours Who toss not on the sea!Ernest Radford.43. OXFORD
I came to Oxford in the light Of a spring-coloured afternoon; Some clouds were grey and some were white, And all were blown to such a tune Of quiet rapture in the sky, I laughed to see them laughing by. I had been dreaming in the train With thoughts at random from my book; I looked, and read, and looked again, And suddenly to greet my look Oxford shone up with every tower Aspiring sweetly like a flower. Home turn the feet of men that seek, And home the hearts of children turn, And none can teach the hour to speak What every hour is free to learn; And all discover, late or soon, Their golden Oxford afternoon.Gerald Gould.44. ALMA MATER
Know you her secret none can utter? Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown? Still on the spire the pigeons flutter, Still by the gateway flits the gown; Still on the street, from corbel and gutter, Faces of stone look down. Faces of stone, and stonier faces— Some from library windows wan Forth on her gardens, her green spaces, Peer and turn to their books anon. Hence, my Muse, from the green oases Gather the tent, begone! Nay, should she by the pavement linger Under the rooms where once she played, Who from the feast would rise to fling her One poor sou for her serenade? One short laugh for the antic finger Thrumming a lute-string frayed? Once, my dear—but the world was young then— Magdalen elms and Trinity limes— Lissom the blades and the backs that swung then, Eight good men in the good old times— Careless we, and the chorus flung then Under St. Mary's chimes! Reins lay loose and the ways led random— Christ Church meadow and Iffley track, "Idleness horrid and dog-cart" (tandem), Aylesbury grind and Bicester pack— Pleasant our lines, and faith! we scanned 'em; Having that artless knack. Come, old limmer, the times grow colder; Leaves of the creeper redden and fall. Was it a hand then clapped my shoulder?— Only the wind by the chapel wall! Dead leaves drift on the lute . . . So fold her Under the faded shawl. Never we wince, though none deplore us, We who go reaping that we sowed; Cities at cockcrow wake before us— Hey, for the lilt of the London road! One look back, and a rousing chorus! Never a palinode! Still on her spire the pigeons hover; Still by her gateway haunts the gown. Ah, but her secret? You, young lover, Drumming her old ones forth from town, Know you the secret none discover? Tell it—when you go down. Yet if at length you seek her, prove her, Lean to her whispers never so nigh; Yet if at last not less her lover You in your hansom leave the High; Down from her towers a ray shall hover— Touch you, a passer-by.Arthur Quiller-Couch.45. FROM "DEDICATORY ODE"
I will not try the reach again, I will not set my sail alone, To moor a boat bereft of men At Yarnton's tiny docks of stone. But I will sit beside the fire, And put my hand before my eyes, And trace, to fill my heart's desire, The last of all our Odysseys. The quiet evening kept her tryst: Beneath an open sky we rode, And passed into a wandering mist Along the perfect Evenlode. The tender Evenlode that makes Her meadows hush to hear the sound Of waters mingling in the brakes, And binds my heart to English ground. A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stone, Forgotten in the western wolds.Hilaire Belloc.46. THE DEVOURERS
Cambridge town is a beleaguered city; For south and north, like a sea, There beat on its gates, without haste or pity, The downs and the fen country. Cambridge towers, so old, so wise, They were builded but yesterday, Watched by sleepy gray secret eyes That smiled as at children's play. Roads south of Cambridge run into the waste, Where learning and lamps are not, And the pale downs tumble, blind, chalk-faced, And the brooding churches squat. Roads north of Cambridge march through a plain Level like the traitor sea. It will swallow its ships, and turn and smile again— The insatiable fen country. Lest the downs and the fens should eat Cambridge up, And its towers be tossed and thrown, And its rich wine drunk from its broken cup, And its beauty no more known— Let us come, you and I, where the roads run blind, Out beyond the transient city, That our love, mingling with earth, may find Her imperishable heart of pity.Rose Macaulay.47. THE OLD VICARAGE, GRANTCHESTER
Café des Westens, Berlin
Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room; And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the carnation and the pink; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow . . . Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through, Beside the river make for you A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep Deeply above; and green and deep The stream mysterious glides beneath, Green as a dream and deep as death.— Oh, damn! I know it! and I know How the May fields all golden show, And when the day is young and sweet, Gild gloriously the bare feet That run to bathe . . . Du lieber Gott! Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot, And there the shadowed waters fresh Lean up to embrace the naked flesh. Temperamentvoll German Jews Drink beer around; and there the dews Are soft beneath a morn of gold. Here tulips bloom as they are told; Unkempt about those hedges blows An English unofficial rose; And there the unregulated sun Slopes down to rest when day is done, And wakes a vague unpunctual star, A slippered Hesper; and there are Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton Where das Betreten's not verboten . . . Eithe genoimên . . . would I were In Grantchester, in Grantchester!— Some, it may be, can get in touch With Nature there, or Earth, or such. And clever modern men have seen A Faun a-peeping through the green, And felt the Classics were not dead, To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head, Or hear the Goat-foot piping low . . . But these are things I do not know. I only know that you may lie Day long and watch the Cambridge sky, And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass, Hear the cool lapse of hours pass, Until the centuries blend and blur In Grantchester, in Grantchester . . . Still in the dawnlit waters cool His ghostly Lordship swims his pool, And tries the strokes, essays the tricks, Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx; Dan Chaucer hears his river still Chatter beneath a phantom mill; Tennyson notes, with studious eye, How Cambridge waters hurry by . . . And in that garden, black and white Creep whispers through the grass all night; And spectral dance, before the dawn, A hundred Vicars down the lawn; Curates, long dust, will come and go On lissom, clerical, printless toe; And oft between the boughs is seen The sly shade of a Rural Dean . . . Till, at a shiver in the skies, Vanishing with Satanic cries, The prim ecclesiastic rout Leaves but a startled sleeper-out, Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls, The falling house that never falls. God! I will pack, and take a train, And get me to England once again! For England's the one land, I know, Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; And Cambridgeshire, of all England, The shire for Men who Understand; And of that district I prefer The lovely hamlet Grantchester. For Cambridge people rarely smile, Being urban, squat, and packed with guile; And Royston men in the far South Are black and fierce and strange of mouth; At Over they fling oaths at one, And worse than oaths at Trumpington, And Ditton girls are mean and dirty, And there's none in Harston under thirty, And folks in Shelford and those parts, Have twisted lips and twisted hearts, And Barton men make cockney rhymes, And Coton's full of nameless crimes, And things are done you'd not believe At Madingley on Christmas Eve. Strong men have run for miles and miles When one from Cherry Hinton smiles; Strong men have blanched and shot their wives Rather than send them to St. Ives; Strong men have cried like babes, bydam, To hear what happened at Babraham. But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester! There's peace and holy quiet there, Great clouds along pacific skies, And men and women with straight eyes, Lithe children lovelier than a dream, A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream, And little kindly winds that creep Round twilight corners, half asleep. In Grantchester their skins are white, They bathe by day, they bathe by night; The women there do all they ought; The men observe the Rules of Thought. They love the Good; they worship Truth; They laugh uproariously in youth; (And when they get to feeling old, They up and shoot themselves, I'm told) . . . Ah God! to see the branches stir Across the moon at Grantchester! To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten, Unforgettable, unforgotten River smell, and hear the breeze Sobbing in the little trees. Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand, Still guardians of that holy land? The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream, The yet unacademic stream? Is dawn a secret shy and cold Anadyomene, silver-gold? And sunset still a golden sea From Haslingfield to Madingley? And after, ere the night is born, Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill? Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?Rupert Brooke.48. DAYS THAT HAVE BEEN
Can I forget the sweet days that have been, When poetry first began to warm my blood; When from the hills of Gwent I saw the earth Burned into two by Severn's silver flood: When I would go alone at night to see The moonlight, like a big white butterfly, Dreaming on that old castle near Caerleon, While at its side the Usk went softly by: When I would stare at lovely clouds in Heaven, Or watch them when reported by deep streams; When feeling pressed like thunder, but would not Break into that grand music of my dreams? Can I forget the sweet days that have been, The villages so green I have been in; Llantarnam, Magor, Malpas, and Llanwern, Liswery, old Caerleon, and Alteryn? Can I forget the banks of Malpas Brook, Or Ebbw's voice in such a wild delight, As on he dashed with pebbles in his throat, Gurgling towards the sea with all his might? Ah, when I see a leafy village now I sigh and ask it for Llantarnam's green; I ask each river where is Ebbw's voice— In memory of the sweet days that have been.William H. Davies.49. THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.W. B. Yeats.50. THE FLOWERS
Buy English posies!
Kent and Surrey may—
Violets of the Undercliff
Wet with Channel spray;
Cowslips from a Devon combe—
Midland furze afire—
Buy my English posies,
And I'll sell your heart's desire!
Buy my English posies! You that scorn the may, Won't you greet a friend from home Half the world away? Green against the draggled drift, Faint and frail and first— Buy my Northern blood-root And I'll know where you were nursed; Robin down the logging-road whistles, "Come to me!" Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free; All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain. Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again! Buy my English posies! Here's to match your need— Buy a tuft of royal heath, Buy a bunch of weed White as sand of Muysenberg Spun before the gale— Buy my heath and lilies And I'll tell you whence you hail! Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lie— Throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky— Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wain— Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again. Buy my English posies! You that will not turn— Buy my hot-wood clematis Buy a frond o' fern Gather'd where the Erskine leaps Down the road to Lorne— Buy my Christmas creeper And I'll say where you were born! West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin— They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn— Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main— Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again. Buy my English posies! Here's your choice unsold! Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom, Buy the kowhai's gold Flung for gift on Taupo's face, Sign that spring is come— Buy my clinging myrtle And I'll give you back your home! Broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pine— Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the ratas twine— Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain— Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again. Buy my English posies! Ye that have your own Buy them for a brother's sake Overseas, alone. Weed ye trample underfoot Floods his heart abrim— Bird ye never heeded, O, she calls his dead to him. Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas; Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these! Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land— Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand.Rudyard Kipling.51. THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
A naked house, a naked moor,
A shivering pool before the door,
A garden bare of flowers and fruit
And poplars at the garden foot.
Such is the place that I live in,
Bleak without and bare within.
Yet shall your ragged moor receive The incomparable pomp of eve, And the cold glories of the dawn Behind your shivering trees be drawn; And when the wind from place to place Doth the unmoored cloud-galleons chase, Your garden gloom and gleam again, With leaping sun, with glancing rain. Here shall the wizard moon ascend The heavens, in the crimson end Of day's declining splendour; here The army of the stars appear. The neighbour hollows dry or wet, Spring shall with tender flowers beset; And oft the morning muser see Larks rising from the broomy lea, And every fairy wheel and thread Of cobweb dew-bediamonded. When daisies go, shall winter time Silver the simple grass with rime; Autumnal frosts enchant the pool And make the cart-ruts beautiful; And when snow-bright the moor expands, How shall your children clap their hands! To make this earth our hermitage, A cheerful and a changeful page, God's bright and intricate device Of days and seasons doth suffice.Robert Louis Stevenson.52. THE OLD LOVE
Out of my door I step into The country, all her scent and dew, Nor travel there by a hard road, Dusty and far from my abode. The country washes to my door Green miles on miles in soft uproar, The thunder of the woods, and then The backwash of green surf again. Beyond the feverfew and stocks, The guelder-rose and hollyhocks; Outside my trellised porch a tree Of lilac frames a sky for me. A stretch of primrose and pale green To hold the tender Hesper in; Hesper that by the moon makes pale Her silver keel and silver sail. The country silence wraps me quite, Silence and song and pure delight; The country beckons all the day Smiling, and but a step away. This is that country seen across How many a league of love and loss, Prayed for and longed for, and as far As fountains in the desert are. This is that country at my door, Whose fragrant airs run on before, And call me when the first birds stir In the green wood to walk with her.Katharine Tynan.53. EARLY MORN
When I did wake this morn from sleep, It seemed I heard birds in a dream; Then I arose to take the air— The lovely air that made birds scream; Just as a green hill launched the ship Of gold, to take its first clear dip. And it began its journey then, As I came forth to take the air; The timid Stars had vanished quite, The Moon was dying with a stare; Horses, and kine, and sheep were seen, As still as pictures, in fields green. It seemed as though I had surprised And trespassed in a golden world That should have passed while men still slept! The joyful birds, the ship of gold, The horses, kine, and sheep did seem As they would vanish for a dream.William H. Davies.54. THE HILL PINES WERE SIGHING
The hill pines were sighing, O'ercast and chill was the day: A mist in the valley lying Blotted the pleasant May. But deep in the glen's bosom Summer slept in the fire Of the odorous gorse-blossom And the hot scent of the brier. A ribald cuckoo clamoured, And out of the copse the stroke Of the iron axe that hammered The iron heart of the oak. Anon a sound appalling, As a hundred years of pride Crashed, in the silence falling; And the shadowy pine-trees sighed.Robert Bridges.55. THE CHOICE
When skies are blue and days are bright A kitchen-garden's my delight, Set round with rows of decent box And blowsy girls of hollyhocks. Before the lark his Lauds hath done And ere the corncrake's southward gone; Before the thrush good-night hath said And the young Summer's put to bed. The currant-bushes' spicy smell, Homely and honest, likes me well, The while on strawberries I feast, And raspberries the sun hath kissed. Beans all a-blowing by a row. Of hives that great with honey go, With mignonette and heaths to yield The plundering bee his honey-field. Sweet herbs in plenty, blue borage And the delicious mint and sage, Rosemary, marjoram, and rue, And thyme to scent the winter through. Here are small apples growing round, And apricots all golden-gowned, And plums that presently will flush And show their bush a Burning Bush. Cherries in nets against the wall, Where Master Thrush his madrigal Sings, and makes oath a churl is he Who grudges cherries for a fee. Lavender, sweet-briar, orris. Here Shall Beauty make her pomander, Her sweet-balls for to lay in clothes That wrap her as the leaves the rose. Take roses red and lilies white, A kitchen garden's my delight; Its gillyflowers and phlox and cloves, And its tall cote of irised doves.Katharine Tynan.56. THERE IS A HILL
There is a hill beside the silver Thames, Shady with birch and beech and odorous pine And brilliant underfoot with thousand gems Steeply the thickets to his floods decline. Straight trees in every place Their thick tops interlace, And pendent branches trail their foliage fine Upon his watery face. Swift from the sweltering pasturage he flows: His stream, alert to seek the pleasant shade, Pictures his gentle purpose, as he goes Straight to the caverned pool his toil has made. His winter floods lay bare The stout roots in the air: His summer streams are cool, when they have played Among their fibrous hair. A rushy island guards the sacred bower, And hides it from the meadow, where in peace The lazy cows wrench many a scented flower, Robbing the golden market of the bees: And laden barges float By banks of myosote; And scented flag and golden flower-de-lys Delay the loitering boat. And on this side the island, where the pool Eddies away, are tangled mass on mass The water-weeds, that net the fishes cool, And scarce allow a narrow stream to pass; Where spreading crowfoot mars The drowning nenuphars, Waving the tassels of her silken grass Below her silver stars. But in the purple pool there nothing grows, Not the white water-lily spoked with gold; Though best she loves the hollows, and well knows On quiet streams her broad shields to unfold: Yet should her roots but try Within these deeps to lie, Not her long-reaching stalk could ever hold Her waxen head so high. Sometimes an angler comes, and drops his hook Within its hidden depths, and 'gainst a tree Leaning his rod, reads in some pleasant book, Forgetting soon his pride of fishery; And dreams, or falls asleep, While curious fishes peep About his nibbled bait, or scornfully Dart off and rise and leap. And sometimes a slow figure 'neath the trees, In ancient-fashioned smock, with tottering care Upon a staff propping his weary knees. May by the pathway of the forest fare: As from a buried day Across the mind will stray Some perishing mute shadow,—and unaware He passeth on his way. Else, he that wishes solitude is safe, Whether he bathe at morning in the stream: Or lead his love there when the hot hours chafe The meadows, busy with a blurring steam; Or watch, as fades the light, The gibbous moon grow bright, Until her magic rays dance in a dream, And glorify the night. Where is this bower beside the silver Thames? O pool and flowery thickets, hear my vow! O trees of freshest foliage and straight stems, No sharer of my secret I allow: Lest ere I come the while Strange feet your shades defile; Or lest the burly oarsman turn his prow Within your guardian isle.Robert Bridges.57. BAB-LOCK-HYTHE
In the time of wild roses As up Thames we travelled Where 'mid water-weeds ravelled The lily uncloses, To his old shores the river A new song was singing, And young shoots were springing On old roots for ever. Dog-daisies were dancing, And flags flamed in cluster, On the dark stream a lustre Now blurred and now glancing. A tall reed down-weighing The sedge-warbler fluttered; One sweet note he uttered, Then left it soft-swaying. By the bank's sandy hollow My dipt oars went beating, And past our bows fleeting Blue-backed shone the swallow. High woods, heron-haunted, Rose, changed, as we rounded Old hills greenly mounded, To meadows enchanted. A dream ever moulded Afresh for our wonder, Still opening asunder For the stream many-folded; Till sunset was rimming The West with pale flushes; Behind the black rushes The last light was dimming; And the lonely stream, hiding Shy birds, grew more lonely, And with us was only The noise of our gliding. In cloud of gray weather The evening o'erdarkened, In the stillness we hearkened; Our hearts sang together.Laurence Binyon.58. ROWER'S CHANT
Row till the land dip 'neath The sea from view. Row till a land peep up, A home for you. Row till the mast sing songs Welcome and sweet. Row till the waves, out-stripped, Give up dead beat. Row till the sea-nymphs rise To ask you why Rowing you tarry not To hear them sigh. Row till the stars grow bright Like certain eyes. Row till the noon be high As hopes you prize. Row till you harbour in All longing's port. Row till you find all things For which you sought.T. Sturge Moore.59. FAREWELL
Not soon shall I forget—a sheet Of golden water, cold and sweet, The young moon with her head in veils Of silver, and the nightingales. A wain of hay came up the lane— O fields I shall not walk again, And trees I shall not see, so still Against a sky of daffodil! Fields where my happy heart had rest, And where my heart was heaviest, I shall remember them at peace Drenched in moon-silver like a fleece. The golden water sweet and cold, The moon of silver and of gold, The dew upon the gray grass-spears, I shall remember them with tears.Katharine Tynan.60. A SHIP, AN ISLE, A SICKLE MOON