,, vspace:: 2
Now once again, upon the pole-star's bearing,
We plough these furrowed fields where no blade springeth;
Again the busy trade in the halyards singeth
Sun-whitened spindrift from the blown wave shearing;
The uncomplaining sea suffers our faring;
In a brazen glitter our little wake is lost,
And the starry south rolls over until no ghost
Remaineth of us and all our pitiful daring;
For the sea beareth no trace of man's endeavour,
His might enarmoured, his prosperous argosies,
Soundless, within her unsounded caves, forever
She broodeth, knowing neither war nor peace,
And our grey cruisers holds in mind no more
Than the cedarn fleets that Sheba's treasure bore.
SONG
What is the worth of war
In a world that turneth, turneth
About a tired star
Whose flaming centre burneth
No longer than the space
Of the spent atom's race:
Where conquered lands, soon, soon
Lie waste as the pale moon?
What is the worth of art
In a world that fast forgetteth
Those who have wrung its heart
With beauty that love begetteth,
Whose faint flames vanish quite
In that star-powdered night
Where even the mighty ones
Shine only as far suns?
And what is beauty worth,
Sweet beauty, that persuadeth
Of her immortal birth,
Then, as a flower, fadeth:
Or love, whose tender years
End with the mourner's tears,
Die, when the mourner's breath
Is quiet, at last, in death?
Beauty and love are one,
Even when fierce war clashes:
Even when our fiery sun
Hath burnt itself to ashes,
And the dead planets race
Unlighted through blind space,
Beauty will still shine there:
Wherefore, I worship her.
THE HAWTHORN SPRAY
I saw a thrush light on a hawthorn spray,
One moment only, spilling creamy blossom,
While the bough bent beneath her speckled bosom,
Bent, and recovered, and she fluttered away.
The branch was still; but, in my heart, a pain
Than the thorn'd spray more cruel, stabbed me, only
Remembering days in a far land and lonely
When I had never hoped for summer again.
THE PAVEMENT
In bitter London's heart of stone,
Under the lamplight's shielded glare.
I saw a soldier's body thrown
Unto the drabs that traffic there
Pacing the pavements with slow feet:
Those old pavements whose blown dust
Throttles the hot air of the street,
And the darkness smells of lust.
The chaste moon, with equal glance,
Looked down on the mad world, astare
At those who conquered in sad France
And those who perished in Leicester Square.
And in her light his lips were pale:
Lips that love had moulded well:
Out of the jaws of Passchendaele
They had sent him to this nether hell.
I had no stone of scorn to fling,
For I know not how the wrong began--
But I had seen a hateful thing
Masked in the dignity of man:
And hate and sorrow and hopeless anger
Swept my heart, as the winds that sweep
Angrily through the leafless hanger
When winter rises from the deep....
* * * * *
I would that war were what men dream:
A crackling fire, a cleansing flame,
That it might leap the space between
And lap up London and its shame.
To LYDIA LOPOKOVA
HER GARLAND