Epilogue
Even so was wisdom proven blind,
So courage failed, so strength was chained;
Even so the gods, whose seeing mind
Is not as ours, ordained.
Selections from
REYNARD THE FOX
On old Cold Crendon’s windy tops
Grows wintrily Blown Hilcote Copse,
Wind-bitten beech with badger barrows,
Where brocks eat wasp-grubs with their marrows,
And foxes lie on short-grassed turf,
Nose between paws, to hear the surf
Of wind in the beeches drowsily.
There was our fox bred lustily
Three years before, and there he berthed,
Under the beech-roots snugly earthed,
With a roof of flint and a floor of chalk
And ten bitten hens’ heads each on its stalk,
Some rabbits’ paws, some fur from scuts,
A badger’s corpse and a smell of guts.
And there on the night before my tale
He trotted out for a point in the vale.
* * * *
He saw, from the cover edge, the valley
Go trooping down with its droops of sally
To the brimming river’s lipping bend,
And a light in the inn at Water’s End.
He heard the owl go hunting by
And the shriek of the mouse the owl made die,
And the purr of the owl as he tore the red
Strings from between his claws and fed;
The smack of joy of the horny lips
Marbled green with the blobby strips.
He saw the farms where the dogs were barking,
Cold Crendon Court and Copsecote Larking;
The fault with the spring as bright as gleed,
Green-slash-laced with water-weed.
A glare in the sky still marked the town,
Though all folk slept and the blinds were down,
The street lamps watched the empty square,
The night-cat sang his evil there.
* * * *
The fox’s nose tipped up and round,
Since smell is a part of sight and sound.
Delicate smells were drifting by,
The sharp nose flaired them heedfully;
Partridges in the clover stubble,
Crouched in a ring for the stoat to nubble.
Rabbit bucks beginning to box;
A scratching place for the pheasant cocks,
A hare in the dead grass near the drain,
And another smell like the spring again.
* * * *
A faint rank taint like April coming,
It touched his heart till his blood went drumming,
For somewhere out by Ghost Heath Stubs
Was a roving vixen wanting cubs.
Over the valley, floating faint
On a warmth of windflaw, came the taint;
He cocked his ears, he upped his brush,
And he went upwind like an April thrush.
* * * *
By the Roman Road to Braiches Ridge,
Where the fallen willow makes a bridge,
Over the brook by White Hart’s Thorn
To the acres thin with pricking corn,
Over the sparse green hair of the wheat,
By the Clench Brook Mill at Clench Brook Leat,
Through Cowfoot Pastures to Nonely Stevens,
And away to Poltrewood St. Jevons.
Past Tott Hill Down all snaked with meuses,
Past Clench St. Michael and Naunton Crucis,
Past Howle’s Oak Farm where the raving brain
Of a dog who heard him foamed his chain;
Then off, as the farmer’s window opened,
Past Stonepits Farm to Upton Hope End,
Over short sweet grass and worn flint arrows
And the three dumb hows of Tencombe Barrows.
And away and away with a rolling scramble,
Through the sally and up the bramble,
With a nose for the smells the night wind carried,
And his red fell clean for being married;
For clicketting time and Ghost Heath Wood
Had put the violet in his blood.
* * * *
At Tencombe Rings near the Manor Linney
His foot made the great black stallion whinny,
And the stallion’s whinny aroused the stable
And the bloodhound bitches stretched their cable,
And the clink of the bloodhounds’ chain aroused
The sweet-breathed kye as they chewed and drowsed,
And the stir of the cattle changed the dream
Of the cat in the loft to tense green gleam.
The red-wattled black cock hot from Spain
Crowed from his perch for dawn again,
His breast-pufft hens, one-legged on perch,
Gurgled, beak-down, like men in church,
They crooned in the dark, lifting one red eye
In the raftered roost as the fox went by.
* * * *
By Tencombe Regis and Slaughters Court,
Through the great grass square of Roman Fort,
By Nun’s Wood Yews and the Hungry Hill,
And the Corpse Way Stones all standing still.
By Seven Springs Mead to Deerlip Brook,
And a lolloping leap to Water Hook.
Then with eyes like sparks and his blood awoken,
Over the grass to Water’s Oaken,
And over the hedge and into ride
In Ghost Heath Wood for his roving bride.
* * * *
Before the dawn he had loved and fed
And found a kennel, and gone to bed
On a shelf of grass in a thick of gorse
That would bleed a hound and blind a horse.
There he slept in the mild west weather
With his nose and brush well tuckt together,
He slept like a child, who sleeps yet hears
With the self who needs neither eyes nor ears.
* * * *
He slept while the pheasant cock untucked
His head from his wing, flew down and kukked,
While the drove of the starlings whirred and wheeled
Out of the ash-trees into field,
While with great black flags that flogged and paddled
The rooks went out to the plough and straddled,
Straddled wide on the moist red cheese
Of the furrows driven at Uppat’s Leas.
* * * *
Down in the village men awoke,
The chimneys breathed with a faint blue smoke.
The fox slept on, though tweaks and twitches,
Due to his dreams, ran down his flitches.
* * * *
The cows were milked and the yards were sluict,
And cocks and hens let out of roost,
Windows were opened, mats were beaten,
All men’s breakfasts were cooked and eaten;
But out in the gorse on the grassy shelf
The sleeping fox looked after himself.
* * * *
Deep in his dream he heard the life
Of the woodland seek for food or wife,
The hop of a stoat, a buck that thumped,
The squeal of a rat as a weasel jumped,
The blackbird’s chackering scattering crying,
The rustling bents from the rabbits flying,
Cows in a byre, and distant men,
And Condicote church-clock striking ten.
* * * *
At eleven o’clock a boy went past,
With a rough-haired terrier following fast.
The boy’s sweet whistle and dog’s quick yap
Woke the fox from out of his nap.
* * * *
He rose and stretched till the claws in his pads
Stuck hornily out like long black gads.
He listened a while, and his nose went round
To catch the smell of the distant sound.
* * * *
The windward smells came free from taint—
They were rabbit, strongly, with lime-kiln, faint,
A wild-duck, likely, at Sars Holt Pond,
And sheep on the Sars Holt Down beyond.
* * * *
The leeward smells were much less certain,
For the Ghost Heath Hill was like a curtain,
Yet vague, from the leeward, now and then,
Came muffled sounds like the sound of men.
* * * *
He moved to his right to a clearer space,
And all his soul came into his face,
Into his eyes and into his nose,
As over the hill a murmur rose.
His ears were cocked and his keen nose flaired,
He sneered with his lips till his teeth were bared,
He trotted right and lifted a pad
Trying to test what foes he had.
* * * *
On Ghost Heath turf was a steady drumming
Which sounded like horses quickly coming,
It died as the hunt went down the dip,
Then Malapert yelped at Myngs’s whip.
A bright iron horseshoe clinkt on stone,
Then a man’s voice spoke, not one alone,
Then a burst of laughter, swiftly still,
Muffled away by Ghost Heath Hill.
Then, indistinctly, the clop, clip, clep,
On Brady Ride, of a horse’s step.
Then silence, then, in a burst, much clearer,
Voices and horses coming nearer,
And another noise, of a pit-pat beat
On the Ghost Hill grass, of foxhound feet.
* * * *
He sat on his haunches listening hard,
While his mind went over the compass card.
Men were coming and rest was done,
But he still had time to get fit to run;
He could outlast horse and outrace hound,
But men were devils from Lobs’s Pound.
Scent was burning, the going good,
The world one lust for a fox’s blood,
The main earths stopped and the drains put to,
And fifteen miles to the land he knew.
But of all the ills, the ill least pleasant
Was to run in the light when men were present
Men in the fields to shout and sign
For a lift of hounds to a fox’s line.
Men at the earth, at the long point’s end,
Men at each check and none his friend,
Guessing each shift that a fox contrives;
But still, needs must when the devil drives.
* * * *
He readied himself, then a soft horn blew,
Then a clear voice carolled, “Ed-hoick! Eleu!”
Then the wood-end rang with the clear voice crying
And the crackle of scrub where hounds were trying.
Then the horn blew nearer, a hound’s voice quivered,
Then another, then more, till his body shivered,
He left his kennel and trotted thence
With his ears flexed back and his nerves all tense.
He trotted down with his nose intent
For a fox’s line to cross his scent,
It was only fair (he being a stranger)
That the native fox should have the danger.
Danger was coming, so swift, so swift,
That the pace of his trot began to lift
The blue-winged Judas, a jay began
Swearing, hounds whimpered, air stank of man.
* * * *
He hurried his trotting, he now felt frighted,
It was his poor body made hounds excited.
He felt as he ringed the great wood through,
That he ought to make for the land he knew.
* * * *
Then the hounds’ excitement quivered and quickened,
Then a horn blew death till his marrow sickened,
Then the wood behind was a crash of cry
For the blood in his veins; it made him fly.
* * * *
They were on his line; it was death to stay.
He must make for home by the shortest way,
But with all this yelling and all this wrath
And all these devils, how find a path?
* * * *
He ran like a stag to the wood’s north corner,
Where the hedge was thick and the ditch a yawner,
But the scarlet glimpse of Myngs on Turk,
Watching the woodside, made him shirk.
* * * *
He ringed the wood and looked at the south.
What wind there was blew into his mouth.
But close to the woodland’s blackthorn thicket
Was Dansey, still as a stone, on picket.
At Dansey’s back were a twenty more
Watching the cover and pressing fore.
* * * *
The fox drew in and flaired with his muzzle.
Death was there if he messed the puzzle.
There were men without and hounds within,
A crying that stiffened the hair on skin,
Teeth in cover and death without,
Both deaths coming, and no way out.
* * * *
His nose ranged swiftly, his heart beat fast,
Then a crashing cry rose up in a blast,
Then horse-hooves trampled, then horses’ flitches
Burst their way through the hazel switches.
Then the horn again made the hounds like mad,
And a man, quite near, said, “Found, by Gad!”
And a man, quite near, said, “Now he’ll break.
Lark’s Leybourne Copse is the line he’ll take.”
And men moved up with their talk and stink
And the traplike noise of the horseshoe clink.
Men whose coming meant death from teeth
In a worrying wrench, with him beneath.
* * * *
The fox sneaked down by the cover side
(With his ears flexed back) as a snake would glide;
He took the ditch at the cover-end,
He hugged the ditch as his only friend.
The blackbird cock with the golden beak
Got out of his way with a jabbering shriek,
And the shriek told Tom on the raking bay
That for eighteenpence he was gone away.
* * * *
He ran in the hedge in the triple growth
Of bramble and hawthorn, glad of both,
Till a couple of fields were past, and then
Came the living death of the dread of men.
* * * *
Then, as he listened, he heard a “Hoy!”
Tom Dansey’s horn and “Awa-wa-woy!”
Then all hounds crying with all their forces,
Then a thundering down of seventy horses.
Robin Dawe’s horn and halloos of “Hey
Hark Hollar, Hoik!” and “Gone away!”
“Hark Hollar Hoik!” and a smack of the whip.
A yelp as a tail hound caught the clip.
“Hark Hollar, Hark Hollar!” then Robin made
Pip go crash through the cut and laid.
Hounds were over and on his line
With a head like bees upon Tipple Tine.
The sound of the nearness sent a flood
Of terror of death through the fox’s blood.
He upped his brush and he cocked his nose,
And he went upwind as a racer goes.
* * * *
Bold Robin Dawe was over first,
Cheering his hounds on at the burst;
The field were spurring to be in it.
“Hold hard, sirs, give them half a minute,”
Came from Sir Peter on his white.
The hounds went romping with delight
Over the grass and got together,
The tail hounds galloped hell-for-leather
After the pack at Myngs’s yell.
A cry like every kind of bell
Rang from these rompers as they raced.
* * * *
The riders, thrusting to be placed,
Jammed down their hats and shook their horses;
The hounds romped past with all their forces,
They crashed into the blackthorn fence.
The scent was heavy on their sense,
So hot, it seemed the living thing,
It made the blood within them sing;
Gusts of it made their hackles rise,
Hot gulps of it were agonies
Of joy, and thirst for blood and passion.
“Forrard!” cried Robin, “that’s the fashion.”
He raced beside his pack to cheer.
The field’s noise died upon his ear,
A faint horn, far behind, blew thin
In cover, lest some hound were in.
Then instantly the great grass rise
Shut field and cover from his eyes,
He and his racers were alone.
“A dead fox or a broken bone.”
Said Robin, peering for his prey.
* * * *
The rise, which shut the field away,
Showed him the vale’s great map spread out,
The down’s lean flank and thrusting snout,
Pale pastures, red-brown plough, dark wood,
Blue distance, still as solitude,
Glitter of water here and there,
The trees so delicately bare,
The dark green gorse and bright green holly.
“O glorious God,” he said, “how jolly!”
And there downhill two fields ahead
The lolloping red dog-fox sped
Over Poor Pastures to the brook.
He grasped these things in one swift look,
Then dived into the bullfinch heart
Through thorns that ripped his sleeves apart
And skutched new blood upon his brow.
“His point’s Lark’s Leybourne Covers now,”
Said Robin, landing with a grunt.
“Forrard, my beautifuls!”
The hunt
Followed downhill to race with him,
White Rabbit, with his swallow’s skim,
Drew within hail. “Quick burst, Sir Peter.”
“A traveller. Nothing could be neater.
Making for Godsdown Clumps, I take it?”
“Lark’s Leybourne, sir, if he can make it.
Forrard!”
Bill Ridden thundered down,
His big mouth grinned beneath his frown,
The hounds were going away from horses.
He saw the glint of watercourses,
Yell Brook and Wittold’s Dyke, ahead,
His horseshoes sliced the green turf red.
Young Cothill’s chaser rushed and past him,
Nob Manor, running next, said “Blast him!
The poet chap who thinks he rides.”
Hugh Colway’s mare made straking strides
Across the grass, the Colonel next,
Then Squire, volleying oaths, and vext,
Fighting his hunter for refusing;
Bell Ridden, like a cutter cruising,
Sailing the grass; then Cob on Warder,
Then Minton Price upon Marauder;
Ock Gurney with his eyes intense,
Burning as with a different sense,
His big mouth muttering glad “By damns!”
Then Pete, crouched down from head to hams,
Rapt like a saint, bright focussed flame;
Bennett, with devils in his wame,
Chewing black cud and spitting slanting;
Copse scattering jests and Stukely ranting;
Sal Ridden taking line from Dansey;
Long Robert forcing Necromancy;
A dozen more with bad beginnings;
Myngs riding hard to snatch an innings.
A wild last hound with high shrill yelps
Smacked forrard with some whipthong skelps.
Then last of all, at top of rise,
The crowd on foot, all gasps and eyes;
The run up hill had winded them.
* * * *
They saw the Yell Brook like a gem
Blue in the grass a short mile on;
They heard faint cries, but hounds were gone
A good eight fields and out of sight,
Except a rippled glimmer white
Going away with dying cheering,
And scarlet flappings disappearing,
And scattering horses going, going,
Going like mad, White Rabbit snowing
Far on ahead, a loose horse taking
Fence after fence with stirrups shaking,
And scarlet specks and dark specks dwindling.
* * * *
Nearer, were twigs knocked into kindling,
A much bashed fence still dropping stick,
Flung clods still quivering from the kick;
Cut hoof-marks pale in cheesy clay,
The horse-smell blowing clean away;
Birds flitting back into the cover.
One last faint cry, then all was over.
The hunt had been, and found, and gone.
* * * *
Selections from
ENSLAVED
All early in the April, when daylight comes at five,
I went into the garden most glad to be alive;
The thrushes and the blackbirds were singing in the thorn,
The April flowers were singing for joy of being born.
I smelt the dewy morning come blowing through the woods
Where all the wilding cherries do toss their snowy snoods;
I thought of the running water where sweet white violets grow.
I said: “I’ll pick them for her; because she loves them so.”
So in the dewy morning I turned to climb the hill,
Beside the running water whose tongue is never still.
Oh, delicate green and dewy were all the budding trees;
The blue dog-violets grew there, and many primroses.
Out of the wood I wandered, but paused upon the heath
To watch, beyond the tree-tops, the wrinkled sea beneath;
Its blueness and its stillness were trembling as it lay
In the old un-autumned beauty that never goes away.
And the beauty of the water brought my love into my mind,
Because all sweet love is beauty, and the loved thing turns to kind;
And I thought, “It is a beauty spread for setting of your grace,
O white violet of a woman with the April in your face.”
So I gathered the white violets where young men pick them still,
And I turned to cross the woodland to her house beneath the hill,
And I thought of her delight in the flowers that I brought her,
Bright like sunlight, sweet like singing, cool like running of the water.
* * * *
THE KHALIF’S JUDGMENT.
They took us to a palace, to a chamber
Smelling of bruisèd spice and burning amber.
There slaves were sent to fetch the newly risen
Servants and warders of the woman’s prison.
The white of death was on them when they came.
* * * *
The Khalif lightened on them with quick flame.
Harsh though she was, I sorrowed for the crone,
For she was old, a woman, and alone,
And came, in age, upon disgrace through me;
I know not what disgrace, I did not see
Those crones again, I doubt not they were whipt
For letting us escape them while they slept.
Perhaps they killed the sentry. Who can tell?
The devil ever keeps the laws in hell.
* * * *
They dragged them out to justice one by one.
However bitter was the justice done,
I doubt not they were thankful to be quit
(At cost of some few pangs) the fear of it.
Then our turn came.
The Khalif’s fury raged
Because our eyes had seen those women caged,
Because our Christian presence had defiled
The Women’s House, and somehow had beguiled
A woman-slave, his victim, out of it,
Against all Moorish law and Holy Writ.
If we had killed his son it had been less.
* * * *
He rose up in his place and rent his dress.
“Let them be ganched upon the hooks,” he cried,
“Throughout to-day, but not till they have died.
Then gather all the slaves, and flay these three
Alive, before them, that the slaves may see
What comes to dogs who try to get away.
So, ganch the three.”
* * * *
Then Gerard answered: “Stay.
Before you fling us to the hooks, hear this.
There are two laws, and men may go amiss
Either by breaking or by keeping one.
There is man’s law by which man’s work is done.
Your galleys rowed, your palace kept in state,
Your victims ganched or headed on the gate,
And accident has bent us to its yoke.
* * * *
“We break it: death; but it is better broke.
* * * *
“You know, you Khalif, by what death you reign,
What force of fraud, what cruelty of pain,
What spies and prostitutes support your power,
And help your law to run its little hour:
We, who are but ourselves, defy it all.
* * * *
“We were free people till you made us thrall.
I was a sailor whom you took at sea
While sailing home. This woman that you see
You broke upon with murder in the night,
To drag her here to die for your delight.
This young man is her lover.
When he knew
That she was taken by your pirate crew,
He followed her to save her, or at least
Be near her in her grief. Man is a beast,
And women are his pasture by your law.
This young man was in safety, and he saw
His darling taken to the slave-girls’ pen
Of weeping in the night and beasts of men.
He gave up everything, risked everything,
Came to your galley, took the iron ring,
Rowed at the bitter oar-loom as a slave,
Only for love of her, for hope to save
Her from one bruise of all the many bruises
That fall upon a woman when she loses
Those whom your gang of bloodhounds made her lose.
* * * *
“Knowing another law, we could not choose
But stamp your law beneath our feet as dust,
Its bloodshed and its rapine and its lust,
For one clean hour of struggle to be free;
She for her passionate pride of chastity,
He for his love of her, and I because
I’m not too old to glory in the cause
Of generous souls who have harsh measure meted.
* * * *
“We did the generous thing and are defeated.
Boast, then, to-night, when you have drunken deep,
Between the singing woman’s song and sleep,
That you have tortured to the death three slaves
Who spat upon your law and found their graves
Helping each other in the generous thing.
No mighty triumph for a boast, O King.”
* * * *
Then he was silent while the Khalif stared.
Never before had any being dared
To speak thus to him. All the courtiers paled.
We, who had died, expected to be haled
To torture there and then before the crowd.
It was so silent that the wind seemed loud
Clicking a loose slat in the open shutter.
I heard the distant breakers at their mutter
Upon the Mole, I saw my darling’s face
Steady and proud; a breathing filled the place,
Men drawing breath until the Khalif spoke.
* * * *
His torn dress hung upon him like a cloak.
He spoke at last. “You speak of law,” he said.
“By climates and by soils the laws are made.
Ours is a hawk-law suited to the land,
This rock of hawks or eyrie among sand;
I am a hawk, the hawk-law pleases me.
* * * *
“But I am man, and, being man, can be
Moved, sometimes, Christian, by the law which makes
Men who are suffering from man’s mistakes
Brothers sometimes.
I had not heard this tale
Of you, the lover, following to jail
The woman whom you loved. You bowed your neck
Into the iron fettered to the deck,
And followed her to prison, all for love?
* * * *
“Allah, who gives men courage from above,
Has surely blessed you, boy.
* * * *
“And you, his queen;
Without your love his courage had not been.
Your beauty and your truth prevailed on him.
Allah has blessed you, too.
* * * *
“And you, the grim
Killer of men at midnight, you who speak
To Kings as peers with colour in your cheek,
Allah made you a man who helps his friends.
* * * *
“God made you all. I will not thwart his ends.
You shall be free.
Hear all. These folks are free.
You, Emir, fit a xebec for the sea
To let them sail at noon.
Go where you will.
And lest my rovers should molest you still,
Here is my seal that they shall let you pass.”
* * * *
Throughout the room a sudden murmur was,
A gasp of indrawn breath and shifting feet.
So life was given back, the thing so sweet,
The undrunk cup that we were longing for.
* * * *
My darling spoke: “O Khalif, one gift more.
After this bounty that our hearts shall praise
At all our praying-times by nights and days,
I ask yet more, O raiser from the dead.
There in your woman’s prison as we fled
A hopeless woman blessed us. It is said
That blessings from the broken truly bless.
Khalif, we would not leave in hopelessness
One whose great heart could bless us even then,
Even as we left her in the prison pen.
She wished us fortune from a broken heart:
Let her come with us, Khalif, when we start.”
“Go, you,” the Khalif said, “and choose her forth.”
* * * *
At noon the wind was blowing to the north;
A swift felucca with a scarlet sail
Was ready for us, deep with many a bale
Of gold and spice and silk, the great King’s gifts.
The banners of the King were on her lifts.
The King and all his court rode down to see
Us four glad souls put seawards from Saffee.
* * * *
In the last glowing of the sunset’s gold
We looked our last upon that pirate hold;
The palace gilding shone awhile like fire,
We were at sea with all our heart’s desire,
Beauty and friendship and the dream fulfilled:
The golden answer to the deeply willed,
The purely longed-for, hardly tried-for thing.
Into the dark our sea-boat dipped her wing;
Polaris climbed out of the dark and shone,
Then came the moon, and now Saffee was gone,
With all hell’s darkness hidden by the sea.
* * * *
Oh, beautiful is love, and to be free
Is beautiful, and beautiful are friends.
Love, freedom, comrades, surely make amends
For all these thorns through which we walk to death!
God let us breathe your beauty with our breath.
* * * *
All early in the Maytime, when daylight comes at four,
We blessed the hawthorn blossom that welcomed us ashore.
Oh, beautiful in this living that passes like the foam,
It is to go with sorrow, yet come with beauty home!
* * * *
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
About the crowing of the cock,
When the shepherds feel the cold,
A horse’s hoofs went clip-a-clock
Along the hangman’s wold.
The horse-hoofs trotted on the stone,
The hoof-sparks glittered by,
And then a hunting horn was blown
And hounds broke into cry.
There was a strangeness in the horn,
A wildness in the cry,
A power of devilry forlorn
Exulting bloodily.
A power of night that ran a prey
Along the hangman’s hill.
The shepherds heard the spent buck bray
And the horn blow for the kill.
They heard the worrying of the hounds
About the dead beast’s bones;
Then came the horn, and then the sounds
Of horse-hoofs treading stones.
“What hounds are these that hunt the night?”
The shepherds asked in fear.
“Look, there are calkins clinking bright;
They must be coming here.”
The calkins clinkered to a spark,
The hunter called the pack;
The sheep-dogs’ fells all bristled stark
And all their lips went back.
“Lord God!” the shepherds said, “they come;
And see what hounds he has:
All dripping bluish fire, and dumb,
And nosing to the grass,
“And trotting scatheless through the gorse,
And bristling in the fell.
Lord, it is Death upon the horse,
And they’re the hounds of hell!”
They shook to watch them as they sped,
All black against the sky;
A horseman with a hooded head
And great hounds padding by.
When daylight drove away the dark
And larks went up and thrilled,
The shepherds climbed the wold to mark
What beast the hounds had killed.
They came to where the hounds had fed,
And in that trampled place
They found a pedlar lying dead,
With horror in his face.
* * * *
There was a farmer on the wold
Where all the brooks begin,
He had a thousand sheep from fold
Out grazing on the whin.
The next night, as he lay in bed,
He heard a canterer come
Trampling the wold-top with a tread
That sounded like a drum.
He thought it was a post that rode,
So turned him to his sleep;
But the canterer in his dream abode
Like horse-hoofs running sheep.
And in his dreams a horn was blown
And feathering hounds replied,
And all his wethers stood like stone
In rank on the hillside.
Then, while he struggled still with dreams,
He saw his wethers run
Before a pack cheered on with screams,
The thousand sheep as one.
So, leaping from his bed in fear,
He flung the window back,
And he heard a death-horn blowing clear
And the crying of a pack,
And the thundering of a thousand sheep,
All mad and running wild
To the stone-pit seven fathoms deep,
Whence all the town is tiled.
After them came the hounds of hell,
With hell’s own fury filled;
Into the pit the wethers fell,
And all but three were killed.
The hunter blew his horn a note
And laughed against the moon;
The farmer’s breath caught in his throat,
He fell into a swoon.
* * * *
The next night when the watch was set
A heavy rain came down,
The leaden gutters dripped with wet
Into the shuttered town.
So close the shutters were, the chink
Of lamplight scarcely showed;
The men at fireside heard no clink
Of horse-hoofs on the road.
They heard the creaking hinge complain,
And the mouse that gnawed the floor,
And the limping footsteps of the rain
On the stone outside the door.
And on the wold the rain came down
Till trickles streakt the grass:
A traveller riding to the town
Drew rein to let it pass.
The wind sighed in the fir-tree tops,
The trickles sobb’d in the grass,
The branches ran with showers of drops:
No other noise there was.
Till up the wold the traveller heard
A horn blow faint and thin;
He thought it was the curlew bird
Lamenting to the whin;
And when the far horn blew again,
He thought an owl hallooed,
Or a rabbit gave a shriek of pain
As the stoat leapt in the wood.
But when the horn blew next, it blew
A trump that split the air,
And hounds gave cry to an Halloo!
The hunt of hell was there.
“Black” (said the traveller), “black and swift,
Those running devils came;
Scoring to cry with hackles stifft,
And grin-jowls dropping flame.”
They settled to the sightless scent,
And up the hill a cry
Told where the frightened quarry went,
Well knowing it would die.
Then presently a cry rang out,
And a mort blew for the kill;
A shepherd with his throat torn out
Lay dead upon the hill.
* * * *
When this was known, the shepherds drove
Their flocks into the town;
No man, for money or for love,
Would watch them on the down.
But night by night the terror ran,
The townsmen heard them still;
Nightly the hell-hounds hunted man
And the hunter whooped the kill.
The men who lived upon the moor
Would waken to the scratch
Of hounds’ claws digging at the door
Or scraping at the latch.
And presently no man would go
Without doors after dark,
Lest hell’s black hunting horn should blow,
And hell’s black bloodhounds mark.
They shivered round the fire at home,
While out upon the bent
The hounds with black jowls dropping foam
Went nosing to the scent.
Men let the hay crop run to seed
And the corn crop sprout in ear,
And the root crop choke itself in weed,
That hell-hound hunting year.
Empty to heaven lay the wold,
Village and church grew green;
The courtyard flagstones spread with mould,
And weeds sprang up between.
And sometimes when the cock had crowed,
And the hillside stood out grey,
Men saw them slinking up the road
All sullen from their prey.
A hooded horseman on a black,
With nine black hounds at heel,
After the hell-hunt going back
All bloody from their meal.
And in men’s minds a fear began
That hell had over-hurled
The guardians of the soul of man,
And come to rule the world.
With bitterness of heart by day,
And terror in the night,
And the blindness of a barren way
And withering of delight.
* * * *
St. Withiel lived upon the moor,
Where the peat-men live in holes;
He worked among the peat-men poor,
Who only have their souls.
He brought them nothing but his love
And the will to do them good,
But power filled him from above,
His very touch was food.
Men told St. Withiel of the hounds,
And how they killed their prey.
He thought them far beyond his bounds,
So many miles away.
Then one whose son the hounds had killed
Told him the tale at length;
St. Withiel pondered why God willed
That hell should have such strength.
Then one, a passing traveller, told
How, since the hounds had come,
The church was empty on the wold,
And all the priests were dumb.
St. Withiel rose at this, and said:
“This priest will not be dumb;
My spirit will not be afraid
Though all hell’s devils come.”
He took his stick and out he went,
The long way to the wold,
Where the sheep-bells clink upon the bent
And every wind is cold.
He passed the rivers running red
And the mountains standing bare;
At last the wold-land lay ahead,
Un-yellowed by the share.
All in the brown October time
He clambered to the weald;
The plum lay purpled into slime,
The harvest lay in field.
Trampled by many-footed rain
The sunburnt corn lay dead;
The myriad finches in the grain
Rose bothering at his tread.
The myriad finches took a sheer
And settled back to food:
A man was not a thing to fear
In such a solitude.
The hurrying of their wings died out,
A silence took the hill;
There was no dog, no bell, no shout,
The windmill’s sails were still.
The gate swung creaking on its hasp,
The pear splashed from the tree,
In the rotting apple’s heart the wasp
Was drunken drowsily.
The grass upon the cart-wheel ruts
Had made the trackways dim;
The rabbits ate and hopped their scuts,
They had no fear of him.
The sunset reddened in the west;
The distant depth of blue
Stretched out and dimmed; to twiggy nest
The rooks in clamour drew.
The oakwood in his mail of brass
Bowed his great crest and stood;
The pine-tree saw St. Withiel pass,
His great bole blushed like blood.
Then tree and wood alike were dim,
Yet still St. Withiel strode;
The only noise to comfort him
Were his footsteps on the road.
The crimson in the west was smoked,
The west wind heaped the wrack,
Each tree seemed like a murderer cloaked
To stab him in the back.
Darkness and desolation came
To dog his footsteps there;
The dead leaves rustling called his name,
The death-moth brushed his hair.
The murmurings of the wind fell still;
He stood and stared around:
He was alone upon the hill,
On devil-haunted ground.
What was the whitish thing which stood
In front, with one arm raised,
Like death a-grinning in a hood?
The saint stood still and gazed.
“What are you?” said St. Withiel. “Speak!”
Not any answer came
But the night-wind making darkness bleak,
And the leaves that called his name.
A glow shone on the whitish thing,
It neither stirred nor spoke:
In spite of faith, a shuddering
Made the good saint to choke.
He struck the whiteness with his staff—
It was a withered tree;
An owl flew from it with a laugh,
The darkness shook with glee.
The darkness came all round him close
And cackled in his ear;
The midnight, full of life none knows,
Was very full of fear.
The darkness cackled in his heart
That things of hell were there,
That the startled rabbit played a part
And the stoat’s leap did prepare—
Prepare the stage of night for blood,
And the mind of night for death,
For a spirit trembling in the mud
In an agony for breath.
A terror came upon the saint,
It stripped his spirit bare;
He was sick body standing faint,
Cold sweat and stiffened hair.
He took his terror by the throat
And stamped it underfoot;
Then, far away, the death-horn’s note
Quailed like a screech-owl’s hoot.
Still far away that devil’s horn
Its quavering death-note blew,
But the saint could hear the crackling thorn
That the hounds trod as they drew.
“Lord, it is true,” St. Withiel moaned,
“And the hunt is drawing near!
Devils that Paradise disowned,
They know that I am here.
“And there, O God, a hound gives tongue,
And great hounds quarter dim”—
The saint’s hands to his body clung,
He knew they came for him.
Then close at hand the horn was loud,
Like Peter’s cock of old
For joy that Peter’s soul was cowed,
And Jesus’ body sold.
Then terribly the hounds in cry
Gave answer to the horn;
The saint in terror turned to fly
Before his flesh was torn.
After his body came the hounds,
After the hounds the horse;
Their running crackled with the sounds
Of fire that runs in gorse.
The saint’s breath failed, but still they came:
The hunter cheered them on,
Even as a wind that blows a flame
In the vigil of St. John.
And as St. Withiel’s terror grew,
The crying of the pack
Bayed nearer, as though terror drew
Those grip teeth to his back.
No hope was in his soul, no stay,
Nothing but screaming will
To save his terror-stricken clay
Before the hounds could kill.
The laid corn tripped, the bramble caught,
He stumbled on the stones;
The thorn that scratched him, to his thought,
Was hell’s teeth at his bones.
His legs seemed bound as in a dream,
The wet earth held his feet,
He screamed aloud as rabbits scream
Before the stoat’s teeth meet.
A black thing struck him on the brow,
A blackness loomed and waved;
It was a tree—he caught a bough
And scrambled up it, saved.
Saved for the moment, as he thought,
He pressed against the bark:
The hell-hounds missed the thing they sought,
They quartered in the dark.
They panted underneath the tree,
They quartered to the call;
The hunter cried: “Yoi doit, go see!”
His death-horn blew a fall.
Now up, now down, the hell-hounds went
With soft feet padding wide;
They tried, but could not hit the scent,
However hard they tried.
Then presently the horn was blown,
The hounds were called away;
The hoof-beats glittered on the stone
And trotted on the brae.
* * * *
The saint gat strength, but with it came
A horror of his fear,
Anguish at having failed, and shame,
And sense of judgment near:
Anguish at having left his charge
And having failed his trust,
At having flung his sword and targe
To save his body’s dust.
He clambered down the saving tree.
“I am unclean!” he cried.
“Christ died upon a tree for me,
I used a tree to hide.
“The hell-hounds bayed about the cross,
And tore his clothes apart;
But Christ was gold, and I am dross,
And mud is in my heart.”
He stood in anguish in the field;
A little wind blew by,
The dead leaves dropped, the great stars wheeled
Their squadrons in the sky.
* * * *
“Lord, I will try again,” he said,
“Though all hell’s devils tear.
This time I will not be afraid,
And what is sent I’ll dare.”
He set his face against the slope
Until he topped the brae;
Courage had healed his fear, and hope
Had put his shame away.
And then, far-off, a quest-note ran,
A feathering hound replied:
The hounds still drew the night for man
Along that countryside.
Then one by one the hell-hounds spoke,
And still the horn made cheer;
Then the full devil-chorus woke
To fill the saint with fear.
He knew that they were after him
To hunt him till he fell;
He turned and fled into the dim,
And after him came hell.
Over the stony wold he went,
Through thorns and over quags;
The bloodhounds cried upon the scent,
They ran like rutting stags.
And when the saint looked round, he saw
Red eyes intently strained,
The bright teeth in the grinning jaw,
And running shapes that gained.
Uphill, downhill, with failing breath,
He ran to save his skin,
Like one who knocked the door of death,
Yet dared not enter in.
Then water gurgled in the night,
Dark water lay in front,
The saint saw bubbles running bright;
The huntsman cheered his hunt.
The saint leaped far into the stream
And struggled to the shore.
The hunt died like an evil dream,
A strange land lay before.
He waded to a glittering land,
With brighter light than ours;
The water ran on silver sand
By yellow water-flowers.
The fishes nosed the stream to rings
As petals floated by,
The apples were like orbs of kings
Against a glow of sky.
On cool and steady stalks of green
The outland flowers grew.
The ghost-flower, silver like a queen,
The queen-flower streakt with blue.
The king-flower, crimson on his stalk,
With frettings in his crown;
The peace-flower, purple, from the chalk,
The flower that loves the down.
Lilies like thoughts, roses like words,
In the sweet brain of June;
The bees there, like the stock-dove birds,
Breathed all the air with croon.
Purple and golden hung the plums;
Like slaves bowed down with gems
The peach-trees were; sweet-scented gums
Oozed clammy from their stems.
And birds of every land were there,
Like flowers that sang and flew;
All beauty that makes singing fair
That sunny garden knew.
For all together sang with throats
So tuned, that the intense
Colour and odour pearled the notes
And passed into the sense.
And as the saint drew near, he heard
The birds talk, each to each,
The fire-bird to the glory-bird.
He understood their speech.
One said: “The saint was terrified
Because the hunters came.”
Another said: “The bloodhounds cried,
And all their eyes were flame.”
Another said: “No shame to him,
For mortal men are blind:
They cannot see beyond the grim
Into the peace behind.”
Another sang: “They cannot know,
Unless we give the clue,
The power that waits in them below
The things they are and do.”
Another sang: “They never guess
That deep within them stand
Courage and peace and loveliness,
Wisdom and skill of hand.”
Another sang: “Sing, brothers! come,
Make beauty in the air!
The saint is shamed with martyrdom
Beyond his strength to bear.
“Sing, brothers! every bird that flies!”
They stretcht their throats to sing,
With the sweetness known in Paradise
When the bells of heaven ring.
“Open the doors, good saint!” they cried,
Pass deeper to your soul;
There is a spirit in your side
That hell cannot control.
“Open the doors to let him in,
That beauty with the sword;
The hounds are silly shapes of sin,
They shrivel at a word.
“Come, saint!” and as they sang, the air
Shone with the shapes of flame,
Bird after bright bird glittered there,
Crying aloud they came.
A rush of brightness and delight,
White as the snow in drift,
The fire-bird and the glory-bright,
Most beautiful, most swift.
Sweeping aloft to show the way,
And singing as they flew,
Many and glittering as the spray
When windy seas are blue.
So cheerily they rushed, so strong
Their sweep was through the flowers,
The saint was swept into their song
And gloried in their powers.
He sang, and leaped into the stream,
And struggled to the shore;
The garden faded like a dream,
A darkness lay before.
Darkness with glimmery light forlorn
And quavering hounds in quest,
A huntsman blowing on a horn,
And lost things not at rest.
He saw the huntsman’s hood show black
Against the greying east;
He heard him hollo to the pack
And horn them to the feast.
He heard the bloodhounds come to cry
And settle to the scent;
The black horse made the hoof-casts fly,
The sparks flashed up the bent.
The saint stood still until they came
Baying to ring him round:
A horse whose flecking foam was flame,
And hound on yelling hound.
And jaws that dripped with bitter fire
Snarled at the saint to tear.
Pilled hell-hounds, balder than the geier,
Leaped round him everywhere.
St. Withiel let the hell-hounds rave.
He cried: “Now, in this place,
Climb down, you huntsman of the grave,
And let me see your face.
“Climb down, you huntsman out of hell,
And show me what you are.
The judge has stricken on the bell,
Now answer at the bar.”
The baying of the hounds fell still,
Their jaws’ salt fire died.
The wind of morning struck in chill
Along that countryside.
The blackness of the horse was shrunk,
His sides seemed ribbed and old.
The rider, hooded like a monk,
Was trembling with the cold.
The rider bowed as though with pain;
Then clambered down and stood,
The thin thing that the frightened brain
Had fed with living blood.
“Show me. What are you?” said the saint.
A hollow murmur spoke.
“This, Lord,” it said; a hand moved faint
And drew aside the cloak.
A Woman Death that palsy shook
Stood sick and dwindling there;
Her fingers were a bony crook,
And blood was on her hair.
“Stretch out your hands and sign the Cross,”
Was all St. Withiel said.
The bloodhounds moaned upon the moss,
The Woman Death obeyed.
Whimpering with pain, she made the sign.
“Go, devil-hag,” said he,
“Beyond all help of bread and wine,
Beyond all land and sea,
“Into the ice, into the snow,
Where Death himself is stark!
Out, with your hounds about you, go,
And perish in the dark!”
They dwindled as the mist that fades
At coming of the sun;
Like rags of stuff that fire abrades
They withered and were done.
The cock, that scares the ghost from earth,
Crowed as they dwindled down;
The red sun, happy in his girth,
Strode up above the town.
Sweetly above the sunny wold
The bells of churches rang;
The sheep-bells clinked within the fold,
And the larks went up and sang;
Sang for the setting free of men
From devils that destroyed;
The lark, the robin, and the wren,
They joyed and over-joyed.
The chats that harbour in the whin,
Their little sweet throats swelled,
The blackbird and the thrush joined in,
The missel-thrush excelled.
Till round the saint the singing made
A beauty in the air,
An ecstasy that cannot fade
But is for ever there.
ANIMULA
This is the place, this house beside the sea;
This was the setting where they played their parts.
Two men, who knew them all, have talked to me:
Beauty she had, and all had passionate hearts.
I write this in the window where she sat.
Two fields, all green with summer, lie below;
Then the grey sea, at thought, cloud-coloured, flat,
Wind-dappled from the glen, the tide at flow.
Her portrait and her husband’s hang together
One on each side the fire; it is close;
The tree-tops toss, it is a change of weather.
They were most lovely and unhappy, those,
That married pair and he who loved too well;
This was the door by which they entered hell.
This is a drawing of her as a child,
This is she wed; the faces are the same,
Only the beauty of the babe is wild,
The woman’s beauty has been broken tame.
Witty, bright, gentle, earnest, with great eyes,
Dark hair in heaps, pure colour, lips that smile;
Beauty that is more wisdom than the wise
Lived in this woman for a little while.
Dressed in that beauty that our mothers wore
(So touching now), she looks out of the frame
With stag-like eyes, that wept till they were sore
Many’s the time, till she was broken tame.
Witty, bright, gentle, earnest, even so,
Destiny calls and spirits come and go.
This is her husband in his youth; and this
Is he in manhood; this is he in age.
There is a devil in those eyes of his,
A glittering devil, restless in his cage.
A grand man, with a beauty and a pride,
A manner and a power and a fire,
With beaks of vultures eating at his side,
The great brain mad with unfulfilled desire.
“With grand ideas,” they say; tall, wicked, proud,
Cold, cruel, bitter, clever, dainty, skilled;
Splendid to see, a head above the crowd;
Splendid with every strength, yet unfulfilled.
Cutting himself (and all those near) with hate
From that sharp mind which should have shaped a state.
And many years ago I saw the third
Bowed in old age and mad with misery;
Mad with the bright eyes of the eagle-bird,
Burning his heart at fires of memory.
He stood behind a chair, and bent and muttered;
Grand still, grey, sunburnt, bright with mad eyes brown,
Burning, though dying, like a torch that guttered,
That once had lit Queen Helen through the town.
I only saw him once: I saw him go
Leaning uphill his body to the rain,
Too good a man for life to punish so,
Theirs were the pride and passion, his the pain.
His old coat flapped; the little children turned
To see him pass, that passionate age that burned.
“I knew them well, all three,” the old man said;
“He was an unused force, and she a child.
She caught him with her beauty, being a maid.
The thought that she had trapped him drove him wild.
He would not work with others, could not rest,
And nothing here could use him or engage him;
Yet here he stayed, with devils in his breast,
To blast the woman who had dared to cage him.
Then, when the scholar came, it made the three:
She turned to him, and he, he turned to her.
They both were saints: elopement could not be;
So here they stayed, and passion plied the spur.
Then the men fought, and later she was found
In that green pool beyond the headland, drowned.
“They carried her drowned body up the grass
Here to the house; they laid it on the bed
(This very bed, where I have slept, it was).
The scholar begged to see her, being dead.
The husband walked downstairs, to see him there
Begging to see her as one asks an alms.
He spat at him and cut his cheek-bone bare.
‘There’s pay,’ he said, ‘my poet, for your psalms.’
And then they fought together at the door,
Biting each other, like two dogs, while she
Lay dead, poor woman, dripping on the floor
Out of her hair the death-drops of the sea.
Later, they fought whenever they might meet,
In church, or in the fields, or in the street.”
Up on the hill another aged man
Remembered them. He said: “They were afraid;
They feared to end the passions they began.
They held the cards, and yet they never played.
He should have broken from her at all cost;
She should have loved her lover and gone free.
They all held winning cards, and yet they lost;
So two were wrecked and one drowned in the sea.
Some harshness or some law, or else some fear
Stifled their souls; God help us! when we know
Certainly, certain things, the way is clear.
And yet they paid, and one respects them so.
Perhaps they were too fine. I know not, I.
Men must have mercy, being ripe to die.”
So this old house of mourning was the stage
(This house and those green fields) for all that woe.
There are her books, her writing on the page;
In those choked beds she made the flowers grow.
Most desolate it is, the rain is pouring,
The trees all toss and drip and scatter evil,
The floods are out, the waterfall is roaring,
The bar is mad with many a leaping devil.
And in this house the wind goes whining wild,
The door blows open, till I think to see
That delicate sweet woman, like a child,
Standing with great dark stag’s eyes watching me;
Watching as though her sorrow might make plain
(Had I but wit) the meaning of such pain.
I wonder if she sang in this old room.
Ah, never! No; they tell me that she stood
For hours together staring into gloom
Out of the prison bars of flesh and blood.
So, when the ninth wave drowned her, haply she
Wakened, with merging senses, till she blent
Into the joy and colour of the sea,
One with the purpose of the element.
And there, perhaps, she cannot feel the woe
Passed in this rotting house, but runs like light
Over the billows where the clippers go,
One with the blue sea’s pureness of delight;
Laughing, perhaps, at that old woe of hers
Chained in the cage with fellow-prisoners.
He died in that lone cottage near the sea.
In the grey morning when the tide was turning,
The wards of life slipt back and set him free
From cares of meat and dress, from joys and yearning.
Then like an old man gathering strength, he strayed
Over the beach, and strength came into him,
Beauty that never threatened nor betrayed
Made bright the eyes that sorrow had made dim;
So that upon that stretch of barren sand
He knew his dreams; he saw her beauty run
With Sorrowful Beauty, laughing, hand in hand;
He heard the trumpets blow in Avalon.
He saw the golden statue stretching down
The wreath, for him, of roses, in a crown.
They say that as her husband lay a-dying
He clamoured for a chain to beat the hound.
They say that all the garden rang with crying
That came out of the air, out of the ground,
Out of the waste that was his soul, may be,
Out of the running wolf-hound of his soul,
That had been kennelled in and now broke free
Out to the moors where stags go, past control.
All through his life his will had kennelled him;
Now he was free, and with a hackling fell
He snarled out of the body to the dim,
To run the spirits with the hounds of hell;
To run forever at the quarry gone,
The uncaught thing a little further on.
So, one by one, Time took them to his keeping,
Those broken lanterns that had held his fire;
Dust went to dust, and flesh had time for sleeping,
And soul the stag escaped the hound desire.
And now, perhaps, the memory of their hate
Has passed from them, and they are friends again,
Laughing at all the trouble of this state
Where men and women work each other pain.
And in the wind that runs along the glen
Beating at cottage doors, they may go by,
Exulting now, and helping sorrowing men
To do some little good before they die.
For from these ploughed-up souls the spirit brings
Harvest at last, and sweet from bitter things.
FORGET
Forget all these, the barren fool in power,
The madman in command, the jealous O,
The bitter world biting its bitter hour,
The cruel now, the happy long ago.
Forget all these, for, though they truly hurt,
Even to the soul, they are not lasting things:
Men are no gods; we tread the city dirt,
But in our souls we can be queens and kings.
And I, O Beauty, O divine white wonder,
On whom my dull eyes, blind to all else, peer,
Have you for peace, that not the whole war’s thunder,
Nor the world’s wreck, can threat or take from here.
So you remain, though all man’s passionate seas
Roar their blind tides, I can forget all these.
ON GROWING OLD
Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying;
My dog and I are old, too old for roving.
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,
Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your cornland, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nor share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.
Only stay quiet while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.
Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower,
Spring-time of man all April in a face.
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts or loiters or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain where the summers parch.
Give me but these, and, though the darkness close,
Even the night will blossom as the rose.
Selections from RIGHT ROYAL
As a whirl of notes running in a fugue that men play,
And the thundering follows as the pipe flits away,
And the laughter comes after and the hautboys begin,
So they ran at the hurdle and scattered the whin.
As they leaped to the race-course the sun burst from cloud,
And like tumult in dream came the roar of the crowd.
For to right and to left, now, were crowded men yelling,
And a great cry boomed backward like muffled bells knelling,
And a surge of men running seemed to follow the race,
The horses all trembled and quickened their pace.
As the porpoise, grown weary of his rush through the dim
Of the unlitten silence where the swiftnesses swim,
Learns at sudden the tumult of a clipper bound home
And exults with this playmate and leaps in her foam,
Or as nightingales coming into England in May,
Coming songless at sunset, being worn with the way,
Settle spent in the twilight, drooping head under wing,
Yet are glad when the dark comes, while at moonrise they sing;
Or as fire on a hillside, by happy boys kindled,
That has burnt black a heath-tuft, scorcht a bramble, and dwindled,
Blown by wind yet arises in a wave of flogged flame,
So the souls of those horses to the testing time came.
Now they closed on their leaders, and the running increased,
They rushed down the arc curving round to the east;
All the air rang with roaring, all the peopled loud stands
Roared aloud from tense faces, shook with hats and waved hands.
So they cleared the green gorse-bush by bursting it through,
There was no time for thinking, there was scarce time to do.
Charles gritted his spirit as he charged through the gorse:
“You must just grin and suffer: sit still on your horse.”
There in front was a hurdle and the Distance Post white,
And the long, green, broad Straight washed with wind and blown bright;
Now the roaring had screaming, bringing names to their ears:
“Come, Soyland!” “Sir Lopez!” Then cat-calls; then cheers.
“Sir Lopez! Sir Lopez!” then the jigging brass laughter
From the yellow toss’t swing-boats swooping rafter to rafter.
Then the blare of all organs, then the roar of all throats,
And they shot past the side shows, the horses and boats.
Now the Wants of the Watchers whirled into the race
Like flames in their fury, like men in the face,
Mad-red from the Wanting that made them alive,
They fought with those horses or helped them to strive.
Like leaves blown on Hudson when maples turn gold,
They whirled in their colour, they clutched to catch hold,
They sang to the riders, they smote at their hearts
Like flakes of live fire, like castings of darts.
As a snow in Wisconsin when the darkness comes down,
Running white on the prairie, making all the air brown,
Blinding men with the hurry of its millions of feet,
So the Wants pelted on them, so they blinded and beat.
And like spirits calm shining upon horses of flame,
Came the Friends of those riders to shield them from shame,
White as fire white-burning, rushing each by his friend,
Singing songs of the glory of the world without end;
And as men in Wisconsin driving cars in the snow
Butt against its impulsion and face to the blow,
Tossing snow from their bonnets as a ship tosses foam,
So the Friends tossed the Wantings as they brought their friends home.
Now they charged the last hurdle that led to the Straight,
Charles longing to ride, though his spirit said “Wait.”
He came to his horses as they came to the leap,
Eight hard-driven horses, eight men breathing deep.
On the left, as he leaped it, a flashing of brown
Kicking white on the grass, showed that Thankful was down;
Then a glance, right and left, showed that, barring all flukes,
It was Soyland’s, Sir Lopez’, or Peterkinooks’.
He passed the Red Ember, he came to the flank
Of Peterkinooks, whom he reached and then sank.
There were only two others, going level alone,
First the spotted cream jacket, then the blue, white and roan.
Up the street of green race-course they strained for the prize,
While the stands blurred with waving and the air shook with cries:
“Now, Sir Lopez!” “Come, Soyland!” “Now, Sir Lopez! Now, now!”
Then Charles judged his second, but he could not tell how.
But a glory of sureness leaped from horse into man,
And the man said, “Now, beauty,” and the horse said, “I can.”
And the long weary Royal made an effort the more,
Though his heart thumped like drum-beats as he went to the fore.
Neck and neck went Sir Lopez and Soyland together,
Soyland first, a short head, with his neck all in lather;
Both were ridden their hardest, both were doing their best,
Right Royal reached Soyland and came to his chest.
There Soyland’s man saw him with the heel of his eye,
A horse with an effort that could beat him or tie;
Then he glanced at Sir Lopez, and he bit through his lip,
And he drove in his spurs and he took up his whip.
There he lashed the game Soyland who had given his all,
And he gave three strides more, and then failed at the call,
And he dropped behind Royal like a leaf in a tide:
Then Sir Lopez and Royal ran on side by side.
There they looked at each other, and they rode, and were grim;
Charles thought, “That’s Sir Lopez. I shall never beat him.”
All the yells for Sir Lopez seemed to darken the air,
They were rushing past Emmy and the White Post was there.
He drew to Sir Lopez; but Sir Lopez drew clear;
Right Royal clung to him and crept to his ear.
Then the man on Sir Lopez judged the moment had come
For the last ounce of effort that would bring his horse home.
So he picked up his whip for three swift slashing blows,
And Sir Lopez drew clear, but Right Royal stuck close,
Then he gained, past his withers, past his neck to his head.
With Sir Lopez’ man lashing, Charles still, seeing red.
So they rushed for one second, then Sir Lopez shot out:
Charles thought, “There, he’s done me, without any doubt.
Oh, come now, Right Royal!”
And Sir Lopez changed feet
And his ears went back level; Sir Lopez was beat.
Right Royal went past him, half an inch, half a head,
Half a neck, he was leading, for an instant he led;
Then a hooped black and coral flew up like a shot,
With a lightning-like effort from little Gavotte.
The little bright mare, made of nerves and steel springs,
Shot level beside him, shot ahead as with wings.
Charles felt his horse quicken, felt the desperate beat
Of the blood in his body from his knees to his feet.
Three terrible strides brought him up to the mare,
Then they rushed to wild shouting through a whirl of blow air;
Then Gavotte died to nothing; Soyland came once again
Till his muzzle just reached to the knot on his rein.
Then a whirl of urged horses thundered up, whipped and blown,
Soyland, Peterkinooks, and Red Ember the roan.
For an instant they challenged, then they drooped and were done;
Then the White Post shot backwards, Right Royal had won.
Won a half length from Soyland, Red Ember close third;
Fourth, Peterkinooks; fifth, Gavotte harshly spurred;
Sixth, Sir Lopez, whose rider said, “Just at the Straight
He swerved at the hurdle and twisted a plate.”
Then the numbers went up; then John Harding appeared
To lead in the Winner while the bookmakers cheered.
Then the riders weighed-in, and the meeting was over,
And bright Emmy Crowthorne could go with her lover.
Charles married his lady, but he rode no more races;
He lives on the Downland on the blown grassy places,
Where he and Right Royal can canter for hours
On the flock-bitten turf full of tiny blue flowers.
There the Roman pitcht camp, there the Saxon kept sheep,
There he lives out this Living that no man can keep,
That is manful but a moment before it must pass,
Like the stars sweeping westward, like the wind on the grass.