(II)
Epitaph on an Unfortunate Artist
He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits:
This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid,
So in the end he could not change the tragic habits
This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.
A HISTORY OF PEACE
(Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant)
Here rest in peace the bones of Henry Reece,
Dead through his bitter championship of Peace
Against all eagle-nosed and cynic lords
Who keep the Pax Romana with their swords.
Henry was only son of Thomas Reece,
Banker and sometime Justice of the Peace,
And of Jane Reece whom Thomas kept in dread
By Pax Romana of his board and bed.
THE ROCK BELOW
Comes a muttering from the earth
Where speedwell grows and daisies grow,
“Pluck these weeds up, root and all,
Search what hides below.”
Root and all I pluck them out;
There, close under, I have found
Stumps of thorn with ancient crooks
Grappled in the ground.
I wrench the thorn-stocks from their hold
To set a rose-bush in that place;
Love has pleasure in my roses
For a summer space.
Yet the bush cries out in grief:
“Our lowest rootlets turn on rock,
We live in terror of the drought
Withering crown and stock.”
I grow angry with my creature,
Tear it out and see it die;
Far beneath I strike the stone,
Jarring hatefully.
Impotently must I mourn
Roses never to flower again?
Are heart and back too slightly built
For a heaving strain?
Heave shall break my proud back never,
Strain shall never burst my heart:
Steely fingers hook in the crack,
Up the rock shall start.
Now from the deep and frightful pit
Shoots forth the spiring phœnix-tree
Long despaired in this bleak land,
Holds the air with boughs, with bland
Fragrance welcome to the bee,
With fruits of immortality.
AN IDYLL OF OLD AGE
Two gods once visited a hermit couple,
Philemon and his Baucis, old books tell;
They sampled elder-wine and called it nectar,
Though nectar is the tastier drink by far.
They made ambrosia of pot-herb and lentil,
They ate pease-porridge even, with a will.
Why, and so forth....
But that night in the spare bedroom
Where they lay shivering in the musty gloom,
Hermes and Zeus overheard conversation,
Behind the intervening wall, drag on
In thoughtful snatches through the night. They idly
Listened, and first they heard Philemon sigh:—
Phi. “Since two souls meet and merge at time of marriage,
Conforming to one stature and one age,
An honest token each with each exchanging
Of Only Love unbroken as a ring—
What signified my boyhood’s ideal friendship
That stared its ecstasy at eye and lip,
But dared not touch because love seemed too holy
For flesh with flesh in real embrace to lie?”
Bau. Then Baucis sighed in answer to Philemon,
“Many’s the young man that my eye rests on
(Our younger guest to-night provides the instance)
Whose body brings my heart hotter romance
Than your dear face could ever spark within me;
Often I wish my heart from yours set free.”
Phi. “In this wild medley round us of Bought Love,
Free Love and Forced Love and pretentious No-Love,
Let us walk upright, yet with care consider
Whether, in living thus, we do not err.
Why might we not approve adulterous licence
Increasing pleasurable experience?
What could the soul lose through the body’s rapture
With a body not its mate, where thought is pure?”
Bau. “Are children bonds of love? But even children
Grow up too soon as women and as men,
And in the growing find their own love private,
Meet parent-love with new suspicious hate.
Our favourites run the surest to the Devil
In spite of early cares and all good will.”
Phi. “Sweetheart, you know that you have my permission
To go your own way and to take love on
Wherever love may signal.”
She replying
Bau. Said, “I allow you, dearest, the same thing.”
Zeus was struck dumb at this unholy compact,
But Hermes knew the shadow from the fact
And took an oath that for whole chests of money
Neither would faithless to the other be,
Would not and could not, being twined together
In such close love that he for want of her
Removed one night-time from his side, would perish,
And she was magnet-drawn by his least wish.
Eternal Gods deny the sense of humour,
That well might prejudice their infallible power,
So Hermes and King Zeus not once considered,
In treating of this idyll overheard,
That love rehearses after life’s defeat
Remembered conflicts of an earlier heat,
Baucis, kind soul, was palsied, withered and bent,
Philemon, too, was ten years impotent.
THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN TELLS OF A FAMOUS MEETING
Unknown to each other in a hostile camp,
Spies of two empire nations unallied,
These heroes met, princes of East and West,
Over a ragged pack of cards, by chance.
Never believe what credulous annalists
Record you in good faith of that encounter.
I was there myself, East’s man, and witnessed all.
In the main camp of the Middle Kingdom’s army
At a soldier’s mess, shortly before Retreat,
East, a pretended trooper, stepping in 10
Glanced round the room, shortly discerning West,
Who sat dejected at a corner table.
East moved by curiosity or compassion
Pulled out his cards, offering West the cut,
And West, disguised as a travelling ballad-man,
Took and cut; they played together then
For half an hour or more; then went their ways.
Never believe such credulous annalists
As tell you, West for sign of recognition,
Greatness to greatness, wit to dexterous wit, 20
With sleight of magic most extraordinary
Alters the Duty on his Ace of Spades,
Making three-pence three-halfpence; East, it’s said,
For a fantastic sly acknowledgment,
While his grave eyes betoken no surprise,
Makes magic too; presto, the Knave of Hearts
Nims the Queen’s rose and cocks it in his cap
Furtively, so that only West remarks it.
But such was not the fact; contrariwise,
When Proteus meets with Proteus, each annuls 30
The variability of the other’s mind.
Single they stand, casting their mutable cloaks.
So for this present chance, I take my oath
That leaning across and watching the cards close
I caught no hint of prestidigitation.
Never believe approved biographers
Who’ll show a sequence of the games then played,
Explaining that the minds of these two princes
Were of such subtlety and such nimbleness
That Whipperginny on the fall of a card 40
Changed to Bézique or Cribbage or Piquet,
Euchre or Écarté, then back once more,
Each comprehending with no signal shown
The opposing fancies of the other’s mind.
It’s said, spectators of this play grew dazed,
They turned away, thinking the gamesters drunk.
But I, who sat there watching, keeping score,
Say they observed the rules of but one game
The whole bout, playing neither well nor ill
But slowly, with their thoughts in other channels, 50
Serene and passionless like wooden men.
Neither believe those elegant essayists
Who reconstruct the princes’ conversation
From grotesque fabrics of their own vain brains.
I only know that East gave West a nod,
Asking him careless questions about trade;
West gave the latest rumours from the front,
Raising of sieges, plots and pillages.
He told a camp-fire yarn to amuse the soldiers
Whereat they all laughed emptily (East laughed too). 60
He sang a few staves of the latest catch,
And pulling out his roll of rhymes, unfurled it,
Ballads and songs, measured by the yard-rule.
But do not trust the elegant essayists
Who’d have you swallow all they care to tell
Of the riddling speech in painful double entendre
That West and East juggled across the cards,
So intricate, so exquisitely resolved
In polished antithetical periods
That by comparison, as you must believe, 70
Solomon himself faced with the Queen of Sheba
And Bishop Such, preaching before the King,
Joined in one person would have seemed mere trash.
I give my testimony beyond refutal,
Nailing the lie for all who ask the facts.
Pay no heed to those vagabond dramatists
Who, to present this meeting on the stage,
Would make my Prince, stealthily drawing out
A golden quill and stabbing his arm for blood,
Scratch on a vellum slip some hasty sentence 80
And pass it under the table; which West signs
With his blood, so the treaty’s made between them
All unobserved and two far nations wedded
While enemy soldiers loll, yawning, around.
I was there myself, I say, seeing everything.
Truly, this is what passed, that East regarding
West with a steady look and knowing him well,
For an instant let the heavy soldier-mask,
His best protection, a dull cast of face,
Light up with joy, and his eyes shoot out mirth. 90
West then knew East, checked, and misdealt the cards.
Nothing at all was said, on went the game.
But East bought from West’s bag of ballads, after,
Two sombre histories, and some songs for dancing.
Also distrust those allegorical
Painters who treating of this famous scene
Are used to splash the skies with lurching Cupids,
Goddesses with loose hair, and broad-cheeked Zephyrs;
They burnish up the soldiers’ breastplate steel
Rusted with languor of their long campaign, 100
To twinkling high-lights of unmixed white paint,
Giving them buskins and tall plumes to wear,
While hard by, in a wanton imagery,
Aquatic Triton thunders on his conch
And Satyrs gape from behind neighbouring trees.
I who was there, sweating in my shirt-sleeves,
Felt no divinity brooding in that mess,
For human splendour gave the gods rebuff.
Do not believe them, seem they never so wise,
Credibly posted with all new research, 110
Those elegant essayists, vagabond dramatists,
Authentic and approved biographers,
Solemn annalists, allegorical
Painters, each one misleading or misled.
One thing is true, that of all sights I have seen
In any quarter of this world of men,
By night, by day, in court, field, tavern, or barn,
That was the noblest, East encountering West,
Their silent understanding and restraint,
Meeting and parting like the Kings they were 120
With plain indifference to all circumstance;
Saying no good-bye, no handclasp and no tears,
But letting speech between them fade away
In casual murmurs and half compliments,
East sauntering out for fresh intelligence,
And West shuffling away, not looking back,
Though each knew well that this chance meeting stood
For turning movement of world history.
And I? I trembled, knowing these things must be.
THE SEWING BASKET
(Accompanying a wedding present from Jenny Nicholson to Winifred Roberts)
To Winifred
The day she’s wed
(Having no gold) I send instead
This sewing basket,
And lovingly
Demand that she,
If ever wanting help from me,
Will surely ask it.
Which being gravely said,
Now to go straight ahead
With a cutting of string,
An unwrapping of paper,
With a haberdasher’s flourish,
The airs of a draper,
To review
And search this basket through.
Here’s one place full
Of coloured wool,
And various yarn
With which to darn;
A sampler, too,
I’ve worked for you,
Lettered from A to Z,
The text of which
In small cross-stitch
Is Love to Winifred.
Here’s a rag-doll wherein
To thrust the casual pin.
His name is Benjamin
For his ingenuous face;
Be sure I’ve not forgotten
Black thread or crochet cotton;
While Brussels lace
Has found a place
Behind the needle-case.
(But the case for the scissors?
Empty, as you see;
Love must never be sundered
Between you and me.)
Winifred Roberts,
Think of me, do,
When the friends I am sending
Are working for you.
The song of the thimble
Is, “Oh, forget her not.”
Says the tape-measure,
“Absent but never forgot.”
Benjamin’s song
He sings all day long,
Though his voice is not strong:
He hoarsely holloas
More or less as follows:—
Button boxes
Never have locks-es,
For the keys would soon disappear.
But here’s a linen button
With a smut on,
And a big bone button
With a cut on,
A pearly and a fancy
Of small significancy,
And the badges of a Fireman and a Fusilier.
Which song he’ll alternate
With sounds like a Turkish hubble-bubble
Smoked at a furious rate,
The words are scarcely intelligible:—
(Prestissimo) Needles and ribbons and packets of pins,
Prints and chintz and odd bodikins,
They’d never mind whether
You laid ’em together
Or one from the other in pockets and tins.
For packets of pins and ribbons and needles
Or odd bodikins and chintz and prints,
Being birds of a feather.
Would huddle together
Like minnows on billows or pennies in mints.
He’ll learn to sing more prettily
When you take him out to Italy
On your honeymoon,
(Oh come back soon!)
To Florence or to Rome,
The prima donnas’ home,
To Padua or to Genoa
Where tenors all sing tra-la-la....
Good-bye, Winifred,
Bless your heart, Ben.
Come back happy
And safe agen.
AGAINST CLOCK AND COMPASSES
“Beauty dwindles into shadow,
Beauty dies, preferred by Fate,
Past the rescue of bold thought.
Sentries drowsed,” they say, “at Beauty’s gate.”
“Time duteous to his hour-glass,
Time with unerring sickle,
Garners to a land remote
Where your vows of true love are proved fickle.”
“Love chill upon her forehead,
Love fading from her cheek,
Love dulled in either eye,
With voice of love,” they say, “no more to speak.”
I deny to Time his terror;
Come-and-go prevails not here;
Spring is constant, loveless winter
Looms, but elsewhere, for he comes not near.
I deny to Space the sorrow;
No leagues measure love from me;
Turning boldly from her arms,
Into her arms I shall come certainly.
Time and Space, folly’s wonder,
Three-card shufflers, magic-men!
True love is, that none shall say
It ever was, or ever flowers again.
THE AVENGERS
Who grafted quince on Western may,
Sharon’s mild rose on Northern briar?
In loathing since that Gospel day
The two saps flame, the tree’s on fire.
The briar-rose weeps for injured right,
May sprouts up red to choke the quince.
With angry throb of equal spite
Our wood leaps maddened ever since.
Then mistletoe, of gods not least,
Kindler of warfare since the Flood,
Against green things of South and East
Voices the vengeance of our blood.
Crusading ivy Southward breaks
And sucks your lordly palms upon,
Our island oak the water takes
To outrage cedared Lebanon.
Our slender ash-twigs feathered fly
Against your vines; bold buttercup
Pours down his legions; malt of rye
Inflames and burns your lentils up....
For bloom of quince yet caps the may,
The briar is held by Sharon’s rose,
Monsters of thought through earth we stray,
And how remission comes, God knows.
ON THE POET’S BIRTH
A page, a huntsman, and a priest of God,
Her lovers, met in jealous contrariety,
Equally claiming the sole parenthood
Of him the perfect crown of their variety.
Then, whom to admit, herself she could not tell;
That always was her fate, she loved too well.
“But, many-fathered little one,” she said,
“Whether of high or low, of smooth or rough,
Here is your mother whom you brought to bed.
Acknowledge only me, be this enough,
For such as worship after shall be told
A white dove sired you or a rain of gold.”
THE TECHNIQUE OF PERFECTION
Said hermit monk to hermit monk,
“Friend, in this island anchorage
Our life has tranquilly been sunk
From pious youth to pious age,
“In such clear waves of quietness,
Such peace from argument or brawl
That one prime virtue I confess
Has never touched our hearts at all.
“Forgiveness, friend! who can forgive
But after anger or dissent?
This never-pardoning life we live
May earn God’s blackest punishment.”
His friend, resolved to find a ground
For rough dispute between the two
That mutual pardons might abound,
With cunning from his wallet drew
A curious pebble of the beach
And scowled, “This treasure is my own:”
He hoped for sharp unfriendly speech
Or angry snatching at the stone.
But honeyed words his friend outpours,
“Keep it, dear heart, you surely know
Even were it mine it still were yours,
This trifle that delights you so.”
The owner, acting wrath, cries, “Brother,
What’s this? Are my deserts so small
You’d give me trifles?” But the other
Smiles, “Brother, you may take my all.”
He then enraged with one so meek,
So unresponsive to his mood,
Most soundly smites the martyr cheek
And rends the island quietude.
The martyr, who till now has feigned
In third degree of craftiness
That meekness is so deep ingrained
No taunt or slight can make it less,
Spits out the tooth in honest wrath,
“You hit too hard, old fool,” cried he.
They grapple on the rocky path
That zigzags downward to the sea.
In rising fury strained and stiff
They lunge across the narrow ground;
They topple headlong from the cliff
And murderously embraced are drowned.
. . . . . . . . . .
Here Peter sits: two spirits reach
To sound the knocker at his Gate.
They shower forgiveness each on each,
Beaming triumphant and elate.
But oh, their sweats, their secret fears
Lest clod-souled witnesses may rise
To set a tingling at their ears
And bar the approach to Paradise!
THE SIBYL
Her hand falls helpless: thought amazements fly
Far overhead, they leave no record mark—
Wild swans urged whistling across dazzled sky,
Or Gabriel hounds in chorus through the dark.
Yet when she prophesies, each spirit swan,
Each spectral hound from memory’s windy zones,
Flies back to inspire one limb-strewn skeleton
Of thousands in her valley of dry bones.
There as those life-restored battalions shout,
Succession flags and Time goes maimed in flight:
From each live gullet twenty swans glide out
With hell-packs loathlier yet to amaze the night.
Gabriel hounds, a spectral pack hunting the souls of the damned through the air at night: the origin of this belief some find in the strange noise made by the passage of flocks of wild geese or swans.
A CRUSADER
Death, kindly eager to pretend
Himself my servant in the land of spears,
Humble allegiance at the end
Broke where the homeward track your castle nears,
Let his white steed before my red steed press
And rapt you from me into quietness.
A NEW PORTRAIT OF JUDITH OF BETHULIA
She trod the grasses grey with dew,
She hugged the unlikely head;
Avenging where the warrior Jew
Incontinent had fled.
The bearded lips writhed ever more
At this increase of shame—
Killed by a girl, pretending whore,
Gone scatheless as she came!
His doom yet loathlier that he knew
Hers was no nation-pride,
No high religion snatched and slew
Where he lay stupefied.
Nebuchadnezzar’s duke enticed
To pay a megrim’s fee?
Assyrian valour sacrificed
For a boudoir dignity?
“Only for this, that some tall knave
Had scorned her welcoming bed,
For this, the assault, the stroke, the grave,”
Groaned Holofernes’ head.
A REVERSAL
The old man in his fast car
Leaves Achilles lagging,
The old man with his long gun
Outshoots Ulysses’ bow,
Nestor in his botched old age
Rivals Ajax bragging,
To Nestor’s honeyed courtship
Could Helen say “No”?
Yet, ancient, since you borrow
From youth the strength and speed,
Seducing as an equal
His playmates in the night,
He, robbed, assumes your sceptre,
He overgoes your rede,
And with his brown and lively hairs
Out-prophesies your white.
THE MARTYRED DECADENTS: A SYMPATHETIC SATIRE
We strain our strings thus tight,
Our voices pitch thus high,
A song to indite
That nevermore shall die.
The Poet being divine
Admits no social sin,
Spurring with wine
And lust the Muse within.
Finding no use at all
In arms or civic deeds,
Perched on a wall
Fulfilling fancy’s needs.
Let parents, children, wife,
Be ghosts beside his art,
Be this his life
To hug the snake to his heart.
Sad souls, the more we stress
The advantage of our crown,
So much the less
Our welcome by the Town,
By the gross and rootling hog
Who grunts nor lifts his head,
By jealous dog
Or old ass thistle-fed.
By so much less their praise,
By so much more our glory.
Grim pride outweighs
The anguish of our story.
We strain our strings thus tight,
Our voices pitch thus high,
To enforce our right
Over futurity.
EPIGRAMS
ON CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Here ranted Isaac’s elder son,
The proud shag-breasted godless one,
From whom observant Smooth-Cheek stole
Birthright, blessing, hunter’s soul.
A VILLAGE CONFLICT
The cottage damson laden as could be
Scowls at the Manor House magnolia tree
That year by year within its thoughtless powers
Yields flowers and leaves and flowers and leaves and flowers,
While the Magnolia shudders as in fear,
“Figurez-vous! two sackfuls every year!”
DEDICATORY
Dolon, analyst of souls,
To the Graces hangs up here
His shrimp-net rotting into holes
And oozy from the infernal mere;
He wreathes his gift around with cress,
Lush harvest of the public cess.
TO MY COLLATERAL ANCESTOR, REV. R. GRAVES, THE FRIEND OF THE POET SHENSTONE AND AUTHOR OF THE SPIRITUAL QUIXOTE: ON RECEIPT OF A PRESS-CUTTING INTENDED FOR HIM.
O friend of Shenstone, do you frown
In realms remote from me
When Messrs Durrant send you down
By inadvertency
Clippings identifying you
With some dim man in the moon,
A Spiritual Quixote, true,
But friend of S. Sassoon?
“A VEHICLE, TO WIT, A BICYCLE.”
(Dedicated, without permission, to my friend P. C. Flowers)
“My front-lamp, constable? Why, man, the moon!
My rear-lamp? Shining there ten yards behind me,
Warm parlour lamplight of The Dish and Spoon!”
But for all my fancy talk, they would have fined me,
Had I not set a rather sly half-crown
Winking under the rays of my front lamp:
Goodwill towards men disturbed the official frown,
My rear-light beckoned through the evening’s damp.
MOTTO TO A BOOK OF EMBLEMS
Though you read these, but understand not, curse not!
Or though you read and understand, yet praise not!
What poet weaves a better knot or worse knot
Untangling which, your own lives you unbrace not?
THE BOWL AND RIM
The bearded rabbi, the meek friar,
Linked by their ankles in one cell,
Through joint distress of dungeon mire
Learned each to love his neighbour well.
When four years passed and five and six,
When seven years brought them no release,
The Jew embraced the crucifix,
The friar assumed phylacteries.
Then every Sunday, keeping score,
And every Sabbath in this hymn
They reconciled an age-long war
Between the platter’s bowl and rim.
Together.
Man-like he lived, but God-like died,
All hatred from His thought removed,
Imperfect until crucified,
In crucifixion well-beloved.
The Friar.
If they did wrong, He too did wrong,
(For Love admits no contraries)
In blind religion rooted strong
Both Jesus and the Pharisees.
“Love all men as thyself,” said He.
Said they, “Be just with man or dog,”
“But only loathe a Pharisee,”
“But crucify this demagogue.”
He died forgiving on the Tree
To make amends for earlier spite,
They raised him up their God to be,
And black with black accomplished white.
The Rabbi.
When He again descends on man
As chief of Scribes and Pharisees,
With loathing for the Publican,
The maimed and halt His enemies,
And when a not less formal fate
Than Pilate’s justice and the Rood,
His righteous angers expiate
To make men think Him wholly good,
Then He again will have done wrong,
If God be Love for every man,
For lewd and lettered, weak and strong,
For Pharisee or Publican,
Together.
But like a God He will have died,
All hatred from His thought removed,
Imperfect until crucified,
In crucifixion well-beloved.
A FORCED MUSIC
Of Love he sang, full-hearted one.
But when the song was done
The King demanded more,
Ay, and commanded more.
The boy found nothing for encore,
Words, melodies, none:
Ashamed the song’s glad rise and plaintive fall
Had so charmed King and Queen and all.
He sang the same verse once again,
But urging less Love’s pain,
With altered time and key
He showed variety,
Seemed to refresh the harmony
Of his only strain,
So still the glad rise and the plaintive fall
Could charm the King, the Queen, and all.
He of his song then wearying ceased,
But was not yet released;
The Queen’s request was More,
And her behest was More.
He played of random notes some score,
He found his rhymes at least—
Then suddenly let his twangling harp down fall
And fled in tears from King and Queen and all.
THE TURN OF A PAGE
He suddenly, the page read as it turned,
Died.
The indignant eye discerned
No sense. “Good page, turn back,” it cried
(Happily evermore was cheated).
After these things he suddenly died,
The truthful page repeated.
“Turn back yon earlier pages, nine or ten,
To Him she loved and He alone of men.
Now change the sentence, page!” But still it read
He suddenly died: they scarce had time to kiss.
“Read on, ungentle reader,” the book said,
“Resign your hopes to this.”
The eye could not resign, restless in grief,
But darting forward to a later leaf
Found Him she loved and He alone of men.
Oh, who this He was, being a second He
Confused the plan; the book spoke sternly then,
“Read page by page and see!”
THE MANIFESTATION IN THE TEMPLE
On the High Feast Day in that reverent space
Between the Sacrifice and the word of Grace,
I, come to town with a merry-making throng
To pay my tithes and join in the season’s song,
Closing my eyes, there prayed—and was hurried far
Beyond what ages I know not, or what star,
To a land of thought remote from the breastplate glint
And the white bull’s blood that flows from the knife of flint,
Then, in this movement, being not I but part
In the fellowship of the universal heart, 10
I sucked a strength from the primal fount of strength,
I thought and worked omnipotence. At length
Hit in my high flight by some sorry thought
Back to the sweat of the soil-bound I was caught
And asked in pique what enemy had worked this,
What folly or anger thrust against my bliss?
Then I grew aware of the savour of sandal-wood
With noise of a distant fluting, and one who stood
Nudging my elbow breathed “Oh, miracle! See!”
The folk gape wonder, urge tumultuously, 20
They fling them down on their faces every one,
Some joyfully weep, others for anguish moan.
Lo, the tall gilt image of God at the altar niche
Wavers and stirs, we see his raiment twitch.
Now he stands and signs benediction with his rod.
The courtyard quakes, the fountains gush with blood.
The whistling scurry and throb of spirit wings
Distresses man and child. Now a bird-voice sings,
And a loud throat bellows, that every creature hears,
A sign to himself he must lay aside his fears. 30
It babbles an antique tongue, and threatening, pleads
Prompt sacrifice and a care for priestly needs,
Wholeness of heart, the putting away of wrath,
A generous measure for wine, for oil, for cloth,
A holding fast to the law that the Stones ordain,
And the rites of the Temple watch that ye maintain
Lest fire and ashes down from the mountain rain!
With expectance of goodly harvest and rain in Spring
To such as perform the will of the Jealous King.
To his priestly servants hearken!
The syllables die. 40
Now up from the congregation issues a sigh
As of stopped breath slow released. But here stands one
Who has kept his feet though the others fell like stone,
Who prays with outstretched palms, standing alone,
To a God who is speechless, not to be known by touch,
By sight, sound, scent. And I cry, “Not overmuch
Do I love this juggling blasphemy, O High Priest.
Or do you deny your part here? Then, at least,
An honest citizen of this honest town
May preach these nightmare apparitions down, 50
These blundering, perfumed noises come to tell
No more than a priest-instructed folk knows well.
Out, meddlesome Imps, whatever Powers you be,
Break not true prayer between my God and me.”
TO ANY SAINT
You turn the unsmitten other cheek,
In silence welcoming God’s grace,
Disdaining, though they scourge, to speak,
Smiling forgiveness face to face.
You plunge your arms in tyrant flame,
From ravening beasts you do not fly,
Calling aloud on one sweet Name,
Hosannah-singing till you die.
So angered by your undefeat,
Revenge through Christ they meditate,
Disciples at the bishop’s feet
They learn this newer sort of hate,
This unresisting meek assault
On furious foe or stubborn friend,
This virtue purged of every fault
By furtherance of the martyr’s end,
This baffling stroke of naked pride,
When satires fail and curses fail
To pierce the justice’s tough hide,
To abash the cynics of the jail.
Oh, not less violent, not less keen
And barbèd more than murder’s blade!
“The brook,” you sigh, “that washes clean,
The flower of love that will not fade!”
A DEWDROP
The dewdrop carries in its eye
Snowdon and Hebog, sea and sky,
Twelve lakes at least, woods, rivers, moors,
And half a county’s out-of-doors:
Trembling beneath a wind-flower’s shield
In this remote and rocky field.
But why should man in God’s Name stress
The dewdrop’s inconspicuousness
When to lakes, woods, the estuary,
Hebog and Snowdon, sky and sea,
This dewdrop falling from its leaf
Can spread amazement near to grief,
As it were a world distinct in mould
Lost with its beauty ages old?
A VALENTINE
The hunter to the husbandman
Pays tribute since our love began,
And to love-loyalty dedicates
The phantom kills he meditates.
Let me embrace, embracing you,
Beauty of other shape and hue,
Odd glinting graces of which none
Shone more than candle to your sun,
Your well-kissed hand was beckoning me
In unfamiliar imagery—
Smile your forgiveness; each bright ghost
Dives in love’s glory and is lost,
Yielding your comprehensive pride
A homage, even to suicide.
Made and Printed in Great Britain. Richard Clay & Sons, Ltd.
Printers, Bungay, Suffolk.