TO DIVES

Dives, when you and I go down to Hell,

Where scribblers end and millionaires as well,

We shall be carrying on our separate backs

Two very large but very different packs;

And as you stagger under yours, my friend,

Down the dull shore where all our journeys end,

And go before me (as your rank demands)

Towards the infinite flat underlands,

And that dear river of forgetfulness—

Charon, a man of exquisite address

(For, as your wife’s progenitors could tell,

They’re very strict on etiquette in Hell),

Will, since you are a lord, observe, “My lord,

We cannot take these weighty things aboard!”

Then down they go, my wretched Dives, down—

The fifteen sorts of boots you kept for town,

The hat to meet the Devil in; the plain

But costly ties; the cases of champagne;

The solid watch, and seal, and chain, and charm;

The working model of a Burning Farm

(To give the little Belials); all the three

Biscuits for Cerberus; the guarantee

From Lambeth that the Rich can never burn,

And even promising a safe return;

The admirable overcoat, designed

To cross Cocytus—very warmly lined:

Sweet Dives, you will leave them all behind

And enter Hell as tattered and as bare

As was your father when he took the air

Behind a barrow-load in Leicester Square.

Then turned to me, and noting one that brings

With careless step a mist of shadowy things:

Laughter and memories, and a few regrets,

Some honour, and a quantity of debts,

A doubt or two of sorts, a trust in God,

And (what will seem to you extremely odd)

His father’s granfer’s father’s father’s name,

Unspoilt, untitled, even spelt the same;

Charon, who twenty thousand times before

Has ferried Poets to the ulterior shore,

Will estimate the weight I bear, and cry—

“Comrade!” (He has himself been known to try

His hand at Latin and Italian verse,

Much in the style of Virgil—only worse)

“We let such vain imaginaries pass!”

Then tell me, Dives, which will look the ass—

You, or myself? Or Charon? Who can tell?

They order things so damnably in Hell.

STANZAS WRITTEN ON BATTERSEA
BRIDGE DURING A SOUTH-WESTERLY
GALE

The woods and downs have caught the mid-December,

The noisy woods and high sea-downs of home;

The wind has found me and I do remember

The strong scent of the foam.

Woods, darlings of my wandering feet, another

Possesses you, another treads the Down;

The South West Wind that was my elder brother

Has come to me in town.

The wind is shouting from the hills of morning,

I do remember and I will not stay.

I’ll take the Hampton road without a warning

And get me clean away.

The Channel is up, the little seas are leaping,

The tide is making over Arun Bar;

And there’s my boat, where all the rest are sleeping

And my companions are.

I’ll board her, and apparel her, and I’ll mount her,

My boat, that was the strongest friend to me—

That brought my boyhood to its first encounter

And taught me the wide sea.

Now shall I drive her, roaring hard a’ weather,

Right for the salt and leave them all behind.

We’ll quite forget the treacherous streets together

And find—or shall we find?

There is no Pilotry my soul relies on

Whereby to catch beneath my bended hand,

Faint and beloved along the extreme horizon

That unforgotten land.

We shall not round the granite piers and paven

To lie to wharves we know with canvas furled.

My little Boat, we shall not make the haven—

It is not of the world.

Somewhere of English forelands grandly guarded

It stands, but not for exiles, marked and clean;

Oh! not for us. A mist has risen and marred it:—

My youth lies in between.

So in this snare that holds me and appals me,

Where honour hardly lives nor loves remain,

The Sea compels me and my Country calls me,

But stronger things restrain.

England, to me that never have malingered,

Nor spoken falsely, nor your flattery used,

Nor even in my rightful garden lingered:—

What have you not refused?