SONNETS AND VERSE

BY
H. BELLOC

DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C.

First Published in 1923
All rights reserved
Made and Printed in Great Britain
by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh

To
JOHN SWINNERTON PHILLIMORE
A DEDICATION
WITH THIS BOOK OF VERSE

When you and I were little tiny boys
We took a most impertinent delight
In foolish, painted and misshapen toys
Which hidden mothers brought to us at night.

Do you that have the child’s diviner part—
The dear content a love familiar brings—
Take these imperfect toys, till in your heart
They too attain the form of perfect things.

CONTENTS

I. SONNETS
PAGE
I.Lift up your Hearts in Gumber, laugh the Weald[3]
II.I was like one that keeps the Deck by Night[4]
III.Rise up and do begin the Day’s Adorning[5]
IV.The Winter Moon has such a quiet Car[6]
V.Whatever Moisture nourishes the Rose[7]
VI.Youth gave you to me, but I’ll not believe[8]
VII.Mortality is but the Stuff you wear[9]
VIII.Not for the Luckless Buds our Roots may bear[10]
IX.That which is one they Shear and make it Twain[11]
X.Shall any Man for whose strong love another[12]
XI.They that have taken Wages of things done[13]
XII.Beauty that Parent is to deathless Rhyme[14]
XIII.What are the Names for Beauty? Who shall praise[15]
XIV.Love wooing Honour, Honour’s Love did win[16]
XV.Your Life is like a little Winter’s Day[17]
XVI.Now shall the certain Purpose of my Soul[18]
XVII.Because my faltering Feet may fail to dare[19]
XVIII.When you to Acheron’s ugly Water come[20]
XIX.We will not Whisper, we have found the Place[21]
XX.I went to Sleep at Dawn in Tuscany[22]
XXI.Almighty God, whose Justice like a Sun[23]
XXII.Mother of all my Cities once there lay[24]
XXIII.November is that Historied Emperor[25]
XXIV.Hoar Time about the House betakes him Slow[26]
XXV.It Freezes: all across a soundless Sky[27]
XXVI.O my Companion, O my Sister Sleep[28]
XXVII.Are you the End, Despair, or the poor least[29]
XXVIII.But Oh! not Lovely Helen, nor the Pride[30]
XXIX.The World’s a Stage. The Light is in One’s Eyes[31]
XXX.The World’s a Stage—and I’m the Super Man[32]
XXXI.The World’s a Stage. The trifling Entrance Fee[33]
LYRICAL, DIDACTIC AND GROTESQUE
To Dives[37]
Stanzas Written on Battersea Bridge during a South-Westerly Gale[39]
The South Country[42]
The Fanatic[45]
The Early Morning[48]
Our Lord and Our Lady[49]
Courtesy[51]
The Night[53]
The Leader[54]
A Bivouac[56]
To the Balliol Men still in Africa[57]
Verses to a Lord who, in the House of Lords, said that those who Opposed the South African Adventure confused Soldiers with Money-Grubbers[59]
The Rebel[61]
The Prophet Lost in the Hills at Evening[63]
The End of the Road[65]
An Oracle that Warned the Writer when on Pilgrimage[67]
The Death and Last Confession of Wandering Peter[68]
Dedicatory Ode[70]
Dedication on the Gift of a Book to a Child[78]
Dedication of a Child’s Book of Imaginary Tales[79]
Homage[80]
The Moon’s Funeral[81]
The Happy Journalist[83]
Lines to a Don[85]
Newdigate Poem[88]
The Yellow Mustard[93]
The Politician or the Irish Earldom[94]
The Loser[96]
SONGS
Noël[99]
The Birds[101]
In a Boat[102]
Song inviting the Influence of a Young Lady upon the Opening Year[104]
The Ring[105]
Cuckoo![106]
The Little Serving Maid[107]
Auvergnat[110]
Drinking Song, on the Excellence of Burgundy Wine[111]
Drinking Dirge[113]
West Sussex Drinking Song[115]
A Ballad on Sociological Economics[117]
Heretics All[118]
Ha’nacker Mill[119]
Tarantella[120]
The Chaunty of the “Nona”[122]
The Winged Horse[125]
Strephon’s Song (from “The Cruel Shepherdess”)[127]
IV. BALLADES
Short Ballade and Postscript on Consols and Boers[131]
Ballade of the Unanswered Question[134]
Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa[136]
Ballade of Hell and of Mrs Roebeck[138]
Ballade of Unsuccessful Men[140]
Ballade of the Heresiarchs[142]
V. EPIGRAMS[147]
VI. THE BALLAD OF VAL-ÈS-DUNES[157]

I
SONNETS