CONTENTS
| BOOK I | ||
| ARDOURS AND ENDURANCES | ||
| The Summons: | PAGE | |
| I. | To—— | [4] |
| II. | The Past | [5] |
| III. | The Reckoning | [6] |
| Farewell To Place of Comfort | [7] | |
| The Approach: | ||
| I. | In the Grass: Halt by Roadside | [12] |
| II. | The Day's March | [13] |
| III. | Nearer | [15] |
| Battle: | ||
| I. | Noon | [18] |
| II. | Night Bombardment | [19] |
| III. | Comrades: An Episode | [22] |
| IV. | Behind the Lines: Night, France | [27] |
| V. | At the Wars | [28] |
| VI. | Out of Trenches: The Barn, Twilight | [30] |
| VII. | Battery moving up to a New Position from Rest Camp: Dawn | [32] |
| VIII. | Eve of Assault: Infantry going down to Trenches | [35] |
| IX. | The Assault | [37] |
| X. | The Last Morning | [42] |
| XI. | Fulfilment | [44] |
| The Dead: | ||
| I. | The Burial in Flanders | [46] |
| II. | Boy | [48] |
| III. | Plaint of Friendship by Death Broken | [51] |
| IV. | By the Wood | [55] |
| The Aftermath: | ||
| I. | At the Ebb | [58] |
| II. | Alone | [60] |
| III. | Thanksgiving | [61] |
| IV. | Annihilated | [62] |
| V. | Shut of Night | [63] |
| VI. | The Full Heart | [65] |
| VII. | Sonnet: Our Dead | [66] |
| VIII. | Deliverance | [67] |
| BOOK II | ||
| A FAUN'S HOLIDAY | [69] | |
| BOOK III | ||
| POEMS AND PHANTASIES | ||
| A Triptych: | ||
| First Panel: The Hill | [140] | |
| II. | Second and Centre Panel: The Tower | [146] |
| III. | Third Panel: The Tree | [150] |
| Four Songs From "The Prince of Ormuz": | ||
| I. | The Prince of Ormuz sings to Badoura | [154] |
| II. | The Song of the Princess Beside the Fountain | [155] |
| III. | The Song of the Prince in Disguise | [156] |
| IV. | The Princess Badoura's Last Song to her Lover | [157] |
| The Gift of Song | [160] | |
| Fragments from "Orestes": | ||
| I. | Warning Unheeded | [164] |
| II. | Orestes to the Furies | [167] |
| Black Songs: | ||
| I. | At Braydon | [170] |
| II. | Midday on the Edge of the Downs | [172] |
| III. | In Dorsetshire | [173] |
| Man's Anacreontic | [176] | |
| The Blackbird | [179] | |
| Change | [180] | |
| Transfiguration | [181] | |
| Plaint of Pierrot Ill-Used | [183] | |
| Girl's Song from "The Tailor" | [188] | |
| Last Song in an Opera | [190] | |
| Danaë: Mystery in Eight Poems | [191] | |
| The Ecstasy | [199] | |
| The Water-Lily | [201] | |
| Deem You the Roses | [202] | |
| The Passion | [203] | |
| Last Words | [206] | |
My thanks are due to the editor of the Times and of the Nation, to the editors of the Palatine Review, and to Messrs. Blackwell, Oxford, the publishers of "Oxford Poetry, 1915," and "Oxford Poetry, 1916," for permission to reprint certain of these poems.
R. M. B. N.
1917.
INTRODUCTION
1. Of the nature of the poet:
"We are (often) so impressed by the power of poetry that we think of it as something made by a wonderful and unusual person: we do not realize the fact that all the wonder and marvel is in our own brains, that the poet is ourselves. He speaks our language better than we do merely because he is more skilful with it than we are; his skill is part of our skill, his power of our power; generations of English-speaking men and women have made us sensible to these things, and our sensibility comes from the same source that the poet's power of stimulating it comes from. Given a little more sensitiveness to external stimuli, a little more power of associating ideas, a co-ordination of the functions of expression somewhat more apt, a sense of rhythm somewhat keener than the average—given these things we should be poets, too, even as he is.... He is one of us."
2. Of what English poetry consists:
"English poetry is not a rhythm of sound, but a rhythm of ideas, and the flow of attention-stresses (i.e., varying qualities of words and cadence) which determines its beauty is inseparably connected with the thought; for each of them is a judgment of identity, or a judgment of relation, or an expression of relation, and not a thing of mere empty sound.... He who would think of it as a pleasing arrangement of vocal sounds has missed all chance of ever understanding its meaning. There awaits him only the barren generalities of a foreign prosody, tedious, pedantic, fruitless. And he will flounder ceaselessly amid the scattered timbers of its iambuses, spondees, dactyls, tribrachs, never reaching the firm ground of truth."
"An Introduction To the Scientific Study Of
English Poetry,"[1] by Mark Liddell.
[1] Published by Grant Richards (1902). This remarkable book, establishing English poetry as a thing governed from within by its own necessities, and not by rules of æsthetics imposed on it from without, formulates principles which, unperceived, have governed English poetry from the earliest times, which find their greatest exemplar in Shakespeare, and which, though beginning to be realized by the less pedantic of the moderns, are in its pages for the first time lucidly expounded and—such is their adequacy—can, in the end, only be regarded as indubitably proven.—R. M. B. N., 1917.
BOOK I
ARDOURS AND
ENDURANCES
To THE Memory of my Trusty and
Gallant Friends: HAROLD STUART
GOUGH (King's Royal Rifle Corps) and
RICHARD PINSENT (the Worcester
Regiment)
"For what is life if measured by the space,
Not by the act?"
Ben Jonson.
THE SUMMONS
I.—TO——
Asleep within the deadest hour of night
And, turning with the earth, I was aware
How suddenly the eastern curve was bright,
As when the sun arises from his lair.
But not the sun arose: it was thy hair
Shaken up heaven in tossing leagues of light.
Since then I know that neither night nor day
May I escape thee, O my heavenly hell!
Awake, in dreams, thou springest to waylay
And should I dare to die, I know full well
Whose voice would mock me in the mourning bell,
Whose face would greet me in hell's fiery way.
II.—THE PAST
How to escape the bondage of the past?
I fly thee, yet my spirit finds no calms
Save when she deems her rocked within those arms
To which, from which she ne'er was caught or cast.
O sadness of a heart so spent in vain,
That drank its age's fuel in an hour:
For whom the whole world burning had not power
To quick with life the smouldered wick again!
III.—THE RECKONING
The whole world burns, and with it burns my flesh.
Arise, thou spirit spent by sterile tears;
Thine eyes were ardent once, thy looks were fresh,
Thy brow shone bright amid thy shining peers.
Fame calls thee not, thou who hast vainly strayed
So far for her; nor Passion, who in the past
Gave thee her ghost to wed and to be paid;
Nor Love, whose anguish only learned to last.
Honour it is that calls: canst thou forget
Once thou wert strong? Listen; the solemn call
Sounds but this once again. Put by regret
For summons missed, or thou hast missed them all.
Body is ready, Fortune pleased; O let
Not the poor Past cost the proud Future's fall.