Poems, 1908-1919

RESPONSIBILITY

You ploughmen at the gate,All that you are for meIs of my mind create,And in my brain to beA figure newly wonFrom the world’s confusion.And if you are of grace,That’s honesty for me,And if of evil face,Recorded then shall beDishonour that I sawNot beauty, but the flaw.

PROVOCATIONS

I am no merry monger whenI see the slatterns of the town:I hate to think of docile menWhose angers all are driven down;For sluts make joy a thing obscene,And in contempt is nothing clean.I like to see the ladies walkWith heels to set their chins atilt:I like to hear the clergy talkOf other clergy’s people’s guilt;For happy is the amorous eye,And indignation clears the sky.

TRIAL

Beauty of old and beauty yet to be,Stripped of occasion, have security;This hour it is searches the judgment through,When masks of beauty walk with beauty too.

CHARGE TO THE PLAYERS

THE TROJAN WOMEN, BIRMINGHAM REPERTORYTHEATRE, APRIL 1918Shades, that our town-fellows have comeTo hear rewake for ChristendomThis cleansing of a Pagan wrongIn flowing tides of tragic song, —You shadows that the living callTo walk again the Trojan wall, —You lips and countenance renewedOf an immortal fortitude, —Know that, among the silent rowsOf these our daily town-fellows,Watching the shades with these who bringBut mortal ears to this you sing,There somewhere sits the Greek who madeThis gift of song, himself a shade.

CHARACTER

If one should tell you that in such a springThe hawthorn boughs into the blackbird’s nestPoured poison, or that once at harvestingThe ears were stony, from so manifestSlander of proven faith in tree and cornYou would turn unheeding, knowing him forsworn.Yet now, when one whose life has never knownCorruption, as you know: whose days have beenAs daily tidings in your heart of loneAnd gentle courage, suffers the word uncleanOf envious tongues, doubting you dare not cry —“I have been this man’s familiar, and you lie.”

REALITY

It is strange how we travel the wide world over,And see great churches and foreign streets,And armies afoot and kings of wonder,And deeds a-doing to fill the sheetsThat grave historians will penTo ferment the brains of simple men.And all the time the heart remembersThe quiet habit of one far place,The drawings and books, the turn of a passage,The glance of a dear familiar face,And there is the true cosmopolis,While the thronging world a phantom is.

EPILOGUE

Come tell us, you that travel farWith brave or shabby merchandise,Have you saluted any starThat goes uncourtiered in the skies?Do you remember leaf or wingOr brook the willows leant along,Or any small familiar thingThat passed you as you went along?Or does the trade that is your lustDrive you as yoke-beasts driven apace,Making the world a road of dustFrom market-place to market-place?Your traffic in the grain, the wine,In purple and in cloth of gold,In treasure of the field and mine,In fables of the poets told, —But have you laughed the wine-cups dryAnd on the loaves of plenty fed,And walked, with all your banners high,In gold and purple garmented?And do you know the songs you sellAnd cry them out along the way?And is the profit that you tellAfter your travel day by daySinew and sap of life, or husk —Dead coffer-ware or kindled brain?And do you gather in the duskTo make your heroes live again?If the grey dust is over all,And stars and leaves and wings forgot,And your blood holds no festival —Go out from us; we need you not.But if you are immoderate men,Zealots of joy, the salt and stingAnd savour of life upon you – thenWe call you to our counselling.And we will hew the holy boughsTo make us level rows of oars,And we will set our shining prowsFor strange and unadventured shores.Where the great tideways swiftliest runWe will be stronger than the strongAnd sack the cities of the sunAnd spend our booty in a song.

MOONRISE

Where are you going, you pretty riders? —To the moon’s rising, the rising of death’s moon,Where the waters move not, and birds are still and songless,Soon, very soon.Where are you faring to, you proud Hectors?Through battle, out of battle, under the grass,Dust behind your hoof-beats rises, and into dust,Clouded, you pass.I’m a pretty rider, I’m a proud Hector,I as you a little am pretty and proud;I with you am riding, riding to the moonrise,So sing we loud —“Out beyond the dust lies mystery of moonrise,We go to chiller learning than is bred in the sun,Hectors, and riders, and a simple singer,Riding as one.”

DEER

Shy in their herding dwell the fallow deer.They are spirits of wild sense. Nobody nearComes upon their pastures. There a life they live,Of sufficient beauty, phantom, fugitive,Treading as in jungles free leopards do,Printless as evelight, instant as dew.The great kine are patient, and home-coming sheepKnow our bidding. The fallow deer keepDelicate and far their counsels wild,Never to be folded reconciledTo the spoiling hand as the poor flocks are:Lightfoot, and swift, and unfamiliar,These you may not hinder, unconfinedBeautiful flocks of the mind.

TO ONE I LOVE

As I walked along the passage, in the night, beyond the stairs,In the dark,I was afraid,Suddenly,As will happen you know, my dear, it will often happen.I knew the walls at my side,Knew the drawings hanging there, the order of their placing,And the door where my bed lay beyond,And the window on the landing —There was even a little ray of moonlight through it —All was known, familiar, my comfortable home;And yet I was afraid,Suddenly,In the dark, like a child, of nothing,Of vastness, of eternity, of the queer pains of thought,Such as used to trouble me when I heard,When I was little, the people talkOn Sundays of “As it was in the Beginning,Is Now, and Ever Shall Be…”I am thirty-six years old,And folk are friendly to me,And there are no ghosts that should have reason to haunt me,And I have tempted no magical happeningsBy forsaking the clear noons of thoughtFor the wizardries that the credulous takeTo be golden roads to revelation.I knew all was simplicity there,Without conspiracy, without antagonism,And yet I was afraid,Suddenly,A child, in the dark, forlorn…And then, as suddenly,I was aware of a profound, a miraculous understanding,Knowledge that comes to a manBut once or twice, as a bird’s noteIn the still depth of the nightStriking upon the silence …I stood at the door, and thereWas mellow candle-light,And companionship, and comfort,And I knewThat it was even so,That it must be even soWith death.I knewThat no harm could have touched me out of my fear,Because I had no grudge against anything,Because I had desiredIn the darkness, when fear came,Love only, and pity, and fellowship,And it would have been a thing monstrous,Something defying natureAnd all the simple universal fitnessFor any force there to have come evillyUpon me, who had no evil in my heart,But only trust, and tendernessFor every presence about me in the air,For the very shadow about me,Being a little child for no one’s envy.And I knew that GodMust understand that we goTo death as little children,Desiring love so simply, and love’s defence,And that he would be a barren God, without humour,To cheat so little, so wistful, a desire,That he createdIn us, in our childishness …And I may never again be sure of this,But there, for a moment,In the candle-light,Standing at the door,I knew.

TO ALICE MEYNELL

I too have known my mutinies,Played with improvident desires,Gone indolently vain as theseWhose lips from undistinguished choirsMock at the music of our sires.I too have erred in thought. In hoursWhen needy life forbade me bringTo song the brain’s unravished powers,Then had it been a temperate thingLoosely to pluck an easy string.Yet thought has been, poor profligate,Sin’s period. Through dear and longObedience I learn to hateUnhappy lethargies that wrongThe larger loyalties of song.And you upon your slender reed,Most exquisitely tuned, have madeFor every singing heart a creed.And I have heard; and I have playedMy lonely music unafraid,Knowing that still a friendly few,Turning aside from turbulence,Cherish the difficult phrase, the dueBridals of disembodied senseWith the new word’s magnificence.

PETITION

O Lord, I pray: that for each happinessMy housemate brings I may give back no lessThan all my fertile will;That I may take from friends but as the streamCreates again the hawthorn bloom adreamAbove the river sill;That I may see the spurge upon the wallAnd hear the nesting birds give call to call,Keeping my wonder new;That I may have a body fit to mateWith the green fields, and stars, and streams in spate,And clean as clover-dew;That I may have the courage to confuteAll fools with silence when they will dispute,All fools who will deride;That I may know all strict and sinewy artAs that in man which is the counterpart,Lord, of Thy fiercest pride;That somehow this beloved earth may wearA later grace for all the love I bear,For some song that I sing;That, when I die, this word may stand for me —He had a heart to praise, an eye to see,And beauty was his king.

HARVESTING

Pale sheaves of oats, pocked by untimely rain,Under October skies,Teased and forlorn,Ungathered lie where still the tardy wainComes not to sealThe seasons of the corn,From prime to June, with running barns of grain.Now time with me is at the middle year,The register of youthIs now to sing …My thoughts are ripe, my moods are in full ear;That they should failOf harvesting,Uncarried on cold fields, is all my fear.

Lieutenant Stewart G. Ridley, Royal Flying Corps, sacrificed his life in the Egyptian desert in an attempt to save a comrade. He was twenty years of age.

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