Poems, 1908-1919

THE CITY

A shining city, one

Happy in snow and sun,

And singing in the rain

A paradisal strain…

Here is a dream to keep,

O Builders, from your sleep.

O foolish Builders, wake,

Take your trowels, take

The poet’s dream, and build

The city song has willed,

That every stone may sing

And all your roads may ring

With happy wayfaring.

TO THE DEFILERS

Go, thieves, and take your riches, creep

To corners out of honest sight;

We shall not be so poor to keep

One thought of envy or despite.

But know that in sad surety when

Your sullen will betrays this earth

To sorrows of contagion, then

Beelzebub renews his birth.

When you defile the pleasant streams

And the wild bird’s abiding-place,

You massacre a million dreams

And cast your spittle in God’s face.

A CHRISTMAS NIGHT

Christ for a dream was given from the dead

To 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 set

Feast 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 Galilee

Should 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 used

My body ill; they might have spat on me

Always 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 take

Darkly within their deeps again

Shapes of the flowing stone, and make

Stories 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 loud

Your marvel chanted in my blood,

Come forth, O sun, through cloud on cloud

To 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

I

When 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 enjoy

Sweet 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 here

In friendship, making some delight, some true

Song 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?

II

No; lovers yet shall tell the nightingale

Sometimes a song that we of old time made,

And gossips gathered at the twilight ale

Shall say, “Those two were friends,” or, “Unafraid

Of bitter thought were those because they loved

Better than most.” And sometimes shall be told

How one, who died in his young beauty, moved,

As Astrophel, those English hearts of old.

And the new seas shall take the new ships home

Telling 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 be

Our names, our ghosts, our immortality.

THE CRAFTSMEN

Confederate hand and eye

Work to the chisel’s blade,

Setting the grain aglow

Of porch and sturdy beam —

So the strange gods may ply

Strict arms till we are made

Quick as the gods who know

What 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 lay

In the single seed that the sower sowed.

My garden-wind had driven and havened again

All ships that ever had gone to sea,

And I saw the glory of all dead men

In 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 song

Fails and is no more heard among your leaves

That 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 go

Into your night, and leave your lover naught.

Would I were Titan with immeasurable thews

To hold you trembling, lover of mine, and know

To the full the secret savour that you use

Now to my tormenting. I would drain

Your 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 wit

Should 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 dead

Should seem but market-gossiping beside

The annunciation of our bridal bed.

And now, my lover earth, I am a leaf,

A wave of light, a bird’s note, a blade sprung

Towards the oblivion of the sickled sheaf;

A mere mote driven against your royal ease,

A tattered eager traveller among

The 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 throned

Above the flight of desolation’s aim.

You may be mute, bestow no recompense

On all the thriftless leaguers of my soul —

I am at your gates, O lover of mine, and thence

Will 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 day

Be otherwise.

Not for a clearer vision of the things

Whereof the fashioning shall make us great,

Not for remission of the peril and stings

Of time and fate.

Not for a fuller knowledge of the end

Whereto we travel, bruised yet unafraid,

Nor that the little healing that we lend

Shall be repaid.

Not these, O Lord. We would not break the bars

Thy wisdom sets about us; we shall climb

Unfettered to the secrets of the stars

In Thy good time.

We do not crave the high perception swift

When to refrain were well, and when fulfil,

Nor yet the understanding strong to sift

The good from ill.

Not these, O Lord. For these Thou hast revealed,

We know the golden season when to reap

The 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 base

The tranquil holy light of truth that glows

On 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 bless

With 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 intent

The deed, the deed.

THE BUILDING

Whence these hods, and bricks of bright red clay,

And swart men climbing ladders in the night?

Stilled are the clamorous energies of day,

The streets are dumb, and, prodigal of light,

The lamps but shine upon a city of sleep.

A step goes out into the silence; far

Across the quiet roofs the hour is tolled

From ghostly towers; the indifferent earth may keep

That ragged flotsam shielded from the cold

In earth’s good time: not, moving among men,

Shall he compel so fortunate a star.

Pavements I know, forsaken now, are strange,

Alien walks not beautiful, that then,

In the familiar day, are part of all

My breathless pilgrimage, not beautiful, but dear;

The monotony of sound has suffered change,

The eddies of wanton sound are spent, and clear

To bleak monotonies of silence fall.

And, while the city sleeps, in the central poise

Of quiet, lamps are flaming in the night,

Blown to long tongues by winds that moan between

The growing walls, and throwing misty light

On swart men bearing bricks of bright red clay

In laden hods; and ever the thin noise

Of trowels deftly fashioning the clean

Long lines that are the shaping of proud thought.

Ghost-like they move between the day and day,

These men whose labour strictly shall be wrought

Into the captive image of a dream.

Their sinews weary not, the plummet falls

To measured use from steadfast hands apace,

And momently the moist and levelled seam

Knits brick to brick and momently the walls

Bestow the wonder of form on formless space.

And whence all these? The hod and plummet-line,

The trowels tapping, and the lamps that shine

In long, dust-heavy beams from wall to wall,

The mortar and the bricks of bright red clay,

Ladder and corded scaffolding, and all

The gear of common traffic – whence are they?

And whence the men who use them?

When he came,

God upon chaos, crying in the name

Of all adventurous vision that the void

Should yield up man, and man, created, rose

Out of the deep, the marvel of all things made,

Then in immortal wonder was destroyed

All worth of trivial knowledge, and the close

Of man’s most urgent meditation stayed

Even as his first thought – “Whence am I sprung?”

What proud ecstatic mystery was pent

In that first act for man’s astonishment,

From age to unconfessing age, among

His manifold travel. And in all I see

Of common daily usage is renewed

This primal and ecstatic mystery

Of chaos bidden into many-hued

Wonders of form, life in the void create,

And monstrous silence made articulate.

Not the first word of God upon the deep

Nor the first pulse of life along the day

More marvellous than these new walls that sweep

Starward, these lines that discipline the clay,

These lamps swung in the wind that send their light

On swart men climbing ladders in the night.

No trowel-tap but sings anew for men

The rapture of quickening water and continent,

No mortared line but witnesses again

Chaos transfigured into lineament.

THE SOLDIER

The large report of fame I lack,

And shining clasps and crimson scars,

For I have held my bivouac

Alone amid the untroubled stars.

My battle-field has known no dawn

Beclouded by a thousand spears;

I’ve been no mounting tyrant’s pawn

To buy his glory with my tears.

It never seemed a noble thing

Some little leagues of land to gain

From broken men, nor yet to fling

Abroad the thunderbolts of pain.

Yet I have felt the quickening breath

As peril heavy peril kissed —

My weapon was a little faith,

And fear was my antagonist.

Not a brief hour of cannonade,

But many days of bitter strife,

Till God of His great pity laid

Across my brow the leaves of life.

THE FIRES OF GOD

I

Time gathers to my name;

Along the ways wheredown my feet have passed

I see the years with little triumph crowned,

Exulting not for perils dared, downcast

And weary-eyed and desolate for shame

Of having been unstirred of all the sound

Of the deep music of the men that move

Through the world’s days in suffering and love.

Poor barren years that brooded over-much

On your own burden, pale and stricken years —

Go down to your oblivion, we part

With no reproach or ceremonial tears.

Henceforth my hands are lifted to the touch

Of hands that labour with me, and my heart

Hereafter to the world’s heart shall be set

And its own pain forget.

Time gathers to my name —

Days dead are dark; the days to be, a flame

Of wonder and of promise, and great cries

Of travelling people reach me – I must rise.

II

Was I not man? Could I not rise alone

Above the shifting of the things that be,

Rise to the crest of all the stars and see

The ways of all the world as from a throne?

Was I not man, with proud imperial will

To cancel all the secrets of high heaven?

Should not my sole unbridled purpose fill

All hidden paths with light when once was riven

God’s veil by my indomitable will?

So dreamt I, little man of little vision,

Great only in unconsecrated pride;

Man’s pity grew from pity to derision,

And still I thought, “Albeit they deride,

Yet is it mine uncharted ways to dare

Unknown to these,

And they shall stumble darkly, unaware

Of solemn mysteries

Whereof the key is mine alone to bear.”

So I forgot my God, and I forgot

The holy sweet communion of men,

And moved in desolate places, where are not

Meek hands held out with patient healing when

The hours are heavy with uncharitable pain;

No company but vain

And arrogant thoughts were with me at my side.

And ever to myself I lied.

Saying “Apart from all men thus I go

To know the things that they may never know.”

III

Then a great change befell;

Long time I stood

In witless hardihood

With eyes on one sole changeless vision set —

The deep disturbèd fret

Of men who made brief tarrying in hell

On their earth travelling.

It was as though the lives of men should be

See circle-wise, whereof one little span

Through which all passed was blackened with the wing

Of perilous evil, bateless misery.

But all beyond, making the whole complete

O’er which the travelling feet

Of every man

Made way or ever he might come to death,

Was odorous with the breath

Of honey-laden flowers, and alive

With sacrificial ministrations sweet

Of man to man, and swift and holy loves,

And large heroic hopes, whereby should thrive

Man’s spirit as he moves

From dawn of life to the great dawn of death.

It was as though mine eyes were set alone

Upon that woeful passage of despair,

Until I held that life had never known

Dominion but in this most troubled place

Where many a ruined grace

And many a friendless care

Ran to and fro in sorrowful unrest.

Still in my hand I pressed

Hope’s fragile chalice, whence I drew deep draughts

That heartened me that even yet should grow

Out of this dread confusion, as of broken crafts

Driven along ungovernable seas,

Prosperous order, and that I should know

After long vigil all the mysteries

Of human wonder and of human fate.

O fool, O only great

In pride unhallowed, O most blind of heart!

Confusion but more dark confusion bred,

Grief nurtured grief, I cried aloud and said,

“Through trackless ways the soul of man is hurled,

No sign upon the forehead of the skies,

No beacon, and no chart

Are given to him, and the inscrutable world

But mocks his scars and fills his mouth with dust.”

And lies bore lies

And lust bore lust,

And the world was heavy with flowerless rods,

And pride outran

The strength of a man

Who had set himself in the place of gods.

IV

Soon was I then to gather bitter shame

Of spirit; I had been most wildly proud —

Yet in my pride had been

Some little courage, formless as a cloud,

Unpiloted save by a vagrant wind,

But still an earnest of the bonds that tame

The legionary hates, of sacred loves that lean

From the high soul of man towards his kind.

And all my grief

Had been for those I watched go to and fro

In uncompassioned woe

Along that little span my unbelief

Had fashioned in my vision as all life.

Now even this so little virtue waned,

For I became caught up into the strife

That I had pitied, and my soul was stained

At last by that most venomous despair,

Self-pity.

I no longer was aware

Of any will to heal the world’s unrest,

I suffered as it suffered, and I grew

Troubled in all my daily trafficking,

Not with the large heroic trouble known

By proud adventurous men who would atone

With their own passionate pity for the sting

And anguish of a world of peril and snares,

It was the trouble of a soul in thrall

To mean despairs,

Driven about a waste where neither fall

Of words from lips of love, nor consolation

Of grave eyes comforting, nor ministration

Of hand or heart could pierce the deadly wall

Of self – of self, – I was a living shame —

A broken purpose. I had stood apart

With pride rebellious and defiant heart,

And now my pride had perished in the flame.

I cried for succour as a little child

Might supplicate whose days are undefiled, —

For tutored pride and innocence are one.

To the gloom has won

A gleam of the sun

And into the barren desolate ways

A scent is blown

As of meadows mown

By cooling rivers in clover days.

V

I turned me from that place in humble wise,

And fingers soft were laid upon mine eyes,

And I beheld the fruitful earth, with store

Of odorous treasure, full and golden grain,

Ripe orchard bounty, slender stalks that bore

Their flowered beauty with a meek content,

The prosperous leaves that loved the sun and rain,

Shy creatures unreproved that came and went

In garrulous joy among the fostering green.

And, over all, the changes of the day

And ordered year their mutable glory laid —

Expectant winter soberly arrayed,

The prudent diligent spring whose eyes have seen

The beauty of the roses uncreate,

Imperial June, magnificent, elate

Beholding all the ripening loves that stray

Among her blossoms, and the golden time

Of the full ear and bounty of the boughs, —

And the great hills and solemn chanting seas

And prodigal meadows, answering to the chime

Of God’s good year, and bearing on their brows

The glory of processional mysteries

From dawn to dawn, the woven leaves and light

Of the high noon, the twilight secrecies,

And the inscrutable wonder of the stars

Flung out along the reaches of the night.

And the ancient might

Of the binding bars

Waned as I woke to a new desire

For the choric song

Of exultant, strong

Earth-passionate men with souls of fire.

VI

’T was given me to hear. As I beheld —

With a new wisdom, tranquil, asking not

For mystic revelation – this glory long forgot,

This re-discovered triumph of the earth

In high creative will and beauty’s pride

Establishèd beyond the assaulting years,

It came to me, a music that compelled

Surrender of all tributary fears,

Full-throated, fierce, and rhythmic with the wide

Beat of the pilgrim winds and labouring seas,

Sent up from all the harbouring ways of earth

Wherein the travelling feet of men have trod,

Mounting the firmamental silences

And challenging the golden gates of God.

We bear the burden of the years

Clean limbed, clear-hearted, open-browed,

Albeit sacramental tears

Have dimmed our eyes, we know the proud

Content of men who sweep unbowed

Before the legionary fears;

In sorrow we have grown to be

The masters of adversity.

Wise of the storied ages we,

Of perils dared and crosses borne,

Of heroes bound by no decree

Of laws defiled or faiths outworn,

Of poets who have held in scorn

All mean and tyrannous things that be;

We prophesy with lips that sped

The songs of the prophetic dead.

Wise of the brief belovèd span

Of this our glad earth-travelling,

Of beauty’s bloom and ordered plan,

Of love and loves co