Poems, 1908-1919

THE BUILDING

Whence these hods, and bricks of bright red clay,And swart men climbing ladders in the night?Stilled are the clamorous energies of day,The streets are dumb, and, prodigal of light,The lamps but shine upon a city of sleep.A step goes out into the silence; farAcross the quiet roofs the hour is tolledFrom ghostly towers; the indifferent earth may keepThat ragged flotsam shielded from the coldIn earth’s good time: not, moving among men,Shall he compel so fortunate a star.Pavements I know, forsaken now, are strange,Alien walks not beautiful, that then,In the familiar day, are part of allMy breathless pilgrimage, not beautiful, but dear;The monotony of sound has suffered change,The eddies of wanton sound are spent, and clearTo bleak monotonies of silence fall.And, while the city sleeps, in the central poiseOf quiet, lamps are flaming in the night,Blown to long tongues by winds that moan betweenThe growing walls, and throwing misty lightOn swart men bearing bricks of bright red clayIn laden hods; and ever the thin noiseOf trowels deftly fashioning the cleanLong lines that are the shaping of proud thought.Ghost-like they move between the day and day,These men whose labour strictly shall be wroughtInto the captive image of a dream.Their sinews weary not, the plummet fallsTo measured use from steadfast hands apace,And momently the moist and levelled seamKnits brick to brick and momently the wallsBestow the wonder of form on formless space.And whence all these? The hod and plummet-line,The trowels tapping, and the lamps that shineIn long, dust-heavy beams from wall to wall,The mortar and the bricks of bright red clay,Ladder and corded scaffolding, and allThe gear of common traffic – whence are they?And whence the men who use them?When he came,God upon chaos, crying in the nameOf all adventurous vision that the voidShould yield up man, and man, created, roseOut of the deep, the marvel of all things made,Then in immortal wonder was destroyedAll worth of trivial knowledge, and the closeOf man’s most urgent meditation stayedEven as his first thought – “Whence am I sprung?”What proud ecstatic mystery was pentIn that first act for man’s astonishment,From age to unconfessing age, amongHis manifold travel. And in all I seeOf common daily usage is renewedThis primal and ecstatic mysteryOf chaos bidden into many-huedWonders of form, life in the void create,And monstrous silence made articulate.Not the first word of God upon the deepNor the first pulse of life along the dayMore marvellous than these new walls that sweepStarward, these lines that discipline the clay,These lamps swung in the wind that send their lightOn swart men climbing ladders in the night.No trowel-tap but sings anew for menThe rapture of quickening water and continent,No mortared line but witnesses againChaos transfigured into lineament.

THE SOLDIER

The large report of fame I lack,And shining clasps and crimson scars,For I have held my bivouacAlone amid the untroubled stars.My battle-field has known no dawnBeclouded by a thousand spears;I’ve been no mounting tyrant’s pawnTo buy his glory with my tears.It never seemed a noble thingSome little leagues of land to gainFrom broken men, nor yet to flingAbroad the thunderbolts of pain.Yet I have felt the quickening breathAs peril heavy peril kissed —My weapon was a little faith,And fear was my antagonist.Not a brief hour of cannonade,But many days of bitter strife,Till God of His great pity laidAcross my brow the leaves of life.

THE FIRES OF GOD

ITime gathers to my name;Along the ways wheredown my feet have passedI see the years with little triumph crowned,Exulting not for perils dared, downcastAnd weary-eyed and desolate for shameOf having been unstirred of all the soundOf the deep music of the men that moveThrough the world’s days in suffering and love.Poor barren years that brooded over-muchOn your own burden, pale and stricken years —Go down to your oblivion, we partWith no reproach or ceremonial tears.Henceforth my hands are lifted to the touchOf hands that labour with me, and my heartHereafter to the world’s heart shall be setAnd its own pain forget.Time gathers to my name —Days dead are dark; the days to be, a flameOf wonder and of promise, and great criesOf travelling people reach me – I must rise.IIWas I not man? Could I not rise aloneAbove the shifting of the things that be,Rise to the crest of all the stars and seeThe ways of all the world as from a throne?Was I not man, with proud imperial willTo cancel all the secrets of high heaven?Should not my sole unbridled purpose fillAll hidden paths with light when once was rivenGod’s veil by my indomitable will?So dreamt I, little man of little vision,Great only in unconsecrated pride;Man’s pity grew from pity to derision,And still I thought, “Albeit they deride,Yet is it mine uncharted ways to dareUnknown to these,And they shall stumble darkly, unawareOf solemn mysteriesWhereof the key is mine alone to bear.”So I forgot my God, and I forgotThe holy sweet communion of men,And moved in desolate places, where are notMeek hands held out with patient healing whenThe hours are heavy with uncharitable pain;No company but vainAnd arrogant thoughts were with me at my side.And ever to myself I lied.Saying “Apart from all men thus I goTo know the things that they may never know.”IIIThen a great change befell;Long time I stoodIn witless hardihoodWith eyes on one sole changeless vision set —The deep disturbèd fretOf men who made brief tarrying in hellOn their earth travelling.It was as though the lives of men should beSee circle-wise, whereof one little spanThrough which all passed was blackened with the wingOf perilous evil, bateless misery.But all beyond, making the whole completeO’er which the travelling feetOf every manMade way or ever he might come to death,Was odorous with the breathOf honey-laden flowers, and aliveWith sacrificial ministrations sweetOf man to man, and swift and holy loves,And large heroic hopes, whereby should thriveMan’s spirit as he movesFrom dawn of life to the great dawn of death.It was as though mine eyes were set aloneUpon that woeful passage of despair,Until I held that life had never knownDominion but in this most troubled placeWhere many a ruined graceAnd many a friendless careRan to and fro in sorrowful unrest.Still in my hand I pressedHope’s fragile chalice, whence I drew deep draughtsThat heartened me that even yet should growOut of this dread confusion, as of broken craftsDriven along ungovernable seas,Prosperous order, and that I should knowAfter long vigil all the mysteriesOf human wonder and of human fate.O fool, O only greatIn pride unhallowed, O most blind of heart!Confusion but more dark confusion bred,Grief nurtured grief, I cried aloud and said,“Through trackless ways the soul of man is hurled,No sign upon the forehead of the skies,No beacon, and no chartAre given to him, and the inscrutable worldBut mocks his scars and fills his mouth with dust.”And lies bore liesAnd lust bore lust,And the world was heavy with flowerless rods,And pride outranThe strength of a manWho had set himself in the place of gods.IVSoon was I then to gather bitter shameOf spirit; I had been most wildly proud —Yet in my pride had beenSome little courage, formless as a cloud,Unpiloted save by a vagrant wind,But still an earnest of the bonds that tameThe legionary hates, of sacred loves that leanFrom the high soul of man towards his kind.And all my griefHad been for those I watched go to and froIn uncompassioned woeAlong that little span my unbeliefHad fashioned in my vision as all life.Now even this so little virtue waned,For I became caught up into the strifeThat I had pitied, and my soul was stainedAt last by that most venomous despair,Self-pity.I no longer was awareOf any will to heal the world’s unrest,I suffered as it suffered, and I grewTroubled in all my daily trafficking,Not with the large heroic trouble knownBy proud adventurous men who would atoneWith their own passionate pity for the stingAnd anguish of a world of peril and snares,It was the trouble of a soul in thrallTo mean despairs,Driven about a waste where neither fallOf words from lips of love, nor consolationOf grave eyes comforting, nor ministrationOf hand or heart could pierce the deadly wallOf self – of self, – I was a living shame —A broken purpose. I had stood apartWith pride rebellious and defiant heart,And now my pride had perished in the flame.I cried for succour as a little childMight supplicate whose days are undefiled, —For tutored pride and innocence are one.To the gloom has wonA gleam of the sunAnd into the barren desolate waysA scent is blownAs of meadows mownBy cooling rivers in clover days.VI turned me from that place in humble wise,And fingers soft were laid upon mine eyes,And I beheld the fruitful earth, with storeOf odorous treasure, full and golden grain,Ripe orchard bounty, slender stalks that boreTheir flowered beauty with a meek content,The prosperous leaves that loved the sun and rain,Shy creatures unreproved that came and wentIn garrulous joy among the fostering green.And, over all, the changes of the dayAnd ordered year their mutable glory laid —Expectant winter soberly arrayed,The prudent diligent spring whose eyes have seenThe beauty of the roses uncreate,Imperial June, magnificent, elateBeholding all the ripening loves that strayAmong her blossoms, and the golden timeOf the full ear and bounty of the boughs, —And the great hills and solemn chanting seasAnd prodigal meadows, answering to the chimeOf God’s good year, and bearing on their browsThe glory of processional mysteriesFrom dawn to dawn, the woven leaves and lightOf the high noon, the twilight secrecies,And the inscrutable wonder of the starsFlung out along the reaches of the night.

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