"THEREFORE IS THE NAME OF IT CALLED BABEL"
And still we stood and stared far down
Into that ember-glowing town,
Which every shaft and shock of fate
Had shorn unto its base. Too late
Came carelessly Serenity.
Now torn and broken houses gaze
On to the rat-infested maze
That once sent up rose-silver haze
To mingle through eternity.
The outlines once so strongly wrought,
Of city walls, are now a thought
Or jest unto the dead who fought...
Foundation for futurity.
The shimmering sands where once there played
Children with painted pail and spade
Are dreary desolate—afraid
To meet night's dark humanity,
Whose silver cool remakes the dead,
And lays no blame on any head
For all the havoc, fire, and lead,
That fell upon us suddenly,
When all we came to know as good
Gave way to Evil's fiery flood,
And monstrous myths of iron and blood
Seem to obscure God's clarity.
Deep sunk in sin, this tragic star
Sinks deeper still, and wages war
Against itself; strewn all the seas
With victims of a world disease
—And we are left to drink the lees
Of Babel's direful prophecy.
January, 1916.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY HARLEQUINADE
Fate, malign dotard, weary from his days,
Too old for memory, yet craving pleasure,
Now finds the night too long and bitter cold
—Reminding him of death—the sun too hot.
The beauty of the universe he hates,
Yet stands regarding earthly carnivals:
The clatter and the clang of car and train,
The hurrying throng of homeward-going men,
The cries of children, colour of the streets,
Their whistling and their shouting and their joy,
The lights, the trees, the fanes and towers of churches,
Thanksgiving for the sun, the moon, the earth,
The labour, love, and laughter of our lives.
He thinks they mock his age with ribaldry.
From far within his æon-battered brain
Well up those wanton wistful images
That first beguiled the folk of Bergamo.
Now like himself, degraded and distress'd,
They sink to ignominy; but the clown
Remains, reminder of their former state,
And still earns hurricanes of hoarse applause.
This dotard now decides to end the earth
(Wrecked by its own and his futility).
Recalls the formula of world-broad mirth
—A senseless hitting of those unaware,
Unnecessary breaking of their chattels.
The pantomime of life is near its close:
The stage is strewn with ends and bits of things,
With mortals maim'd or crucified, and left
To gape at endless horror through eternity.
The face of Fate is wet with other paint
Than that incarnadines the human clown:
Yet still he waves a bladder, red as gold,
And still he gaily hits about with it,
And still the dread revealing limelight plays
Till the whole sicken'd scene becomes afire.
Antic himself falls on the funeral pyre
Of twisted, tortured, mortifying men.
March, 1916.
To HELEN
THIS GENERATION
Their youth was fevered—passionate, quick to drain
The last few pleasures from the cup of life
Before they turn'd to suck the dregs of pain
And end their young-old lives in mortal strife.
They paid the debts of many a hundred year
Of foolishness and riches in alloy.
They went to death; nor did they shed a tear
For all they sacrificed of love and joy.
Their tears ran dry when they were in the womb,
For, entering life—they found it was their tomb.
1917.
To FRANCIS MEYNELL
SHEEP-SONG
From within our pens,
Stout built,
We watch the sorrows of the world.
Imperturbably
We see the blood
Drip and ooze on to the walls.
Without a sigh
We watch our lambs
Stuffed and fattened for the slaughter....
In our liquid eyes lie hidden
The mystery of empty spaces
All the secrets of the vacuum.
Yet we can be moved;
When the head-sheep bleats,
We bleat with him;
When he stampedes
—Heavy with foot-rot—
We gallop after him
Until
In our frenzy
We trip him up
—And a new sheep leads us.
We are the greatest sheep in the world;
There are no sheep like us.
We come of an imperial bleat;
Our voices,
Trembling with music,
Call to our lambs oversea.
With us they crash across continents.
We will not heed the herdsmen,
For they warned us,
"Do not stampede";
Yet we were forced to do so.
Never will we trust a herdsman again.
Then the black lamb asked,
Saying, "Why did we start this glorious Gadarene descent?"
And the herd bleated angrily,
"We went in with clean feet,
And we will come out with empty heads.
We gain nothing by it,
Therefore
It is a noble thing to do.
We are stampeding to end stampedes.
We are fighting for lambs
Who are never likely to be born.
When once a sheep gets its blood up
The goats will remember...."
But the herdsman swooped down
Shouting,
"Get back to your pens there."
September, 1918.
THE POET'S LAMENT.
Before the dawning of the death-day
My mind was a confusion of beauty.
Thoughts fell from it in riot
Of colour,
In wreaths and garlands of flowers and fruit...
Then the red dawn came
—And no thought came to me
Except anger
And bitter reproach.
God filled my mouth
With the burning pebbles of hatred,
And choked my soul
With a whirl-wind of fury.
He made my tongue
A flaming sword
To cut and wither
The white soft edges
Of their anæmic souls.
I ridiculed them,
I despised them,
I loathed them
... But they had stolen my soul away.
Yes, they had stolen my soul from me.
My heart jumps up into my mouth
In fury;
They have stolen my soul away.
But we will wait,
And later words will come
—Words that in their burning flight
Shall scorch and flay,
Or flare like fireworks
Above their heads.
In those days my soul shall be restored to me
And they shall remember,
They shall remember!
JUDAS AND THE PROFITEER
Judas descended to this lower Hell
To meet his only friend—the profiteer—
Who, looking fat and rubicund and well,
Regarded him, and then said with a sneer,
"Iscariot, they did you! Fool! to sell
For silver pence the body of God's Son,
Whereas for maiming men with sword and shell
I gain at least a golden million."
But Judas answered: "You deserve your gold;
It's not His body but His soul you've sold!"
To H. W. MASSINGHAM