Part 4

The round breasts, the fresh skin, Cheeks crimson, hair so long and rich; Indeed, indeed, I shall not die, Please God, not I, for any such.

The golden hair, the forehead thin, The chaste mien, the gracious ease, The rounded heel, the languid tone,-- Fools alone find death from these.

Thy sharp wit, thy perfect calm, Thy thin palm like foam o' the sea; Thy white neck, thy blue eye, I shall not die for thee.

Woman, graceful as the swan, A wise man did nurture me. Little palm, white neck, bright eye, I shall not die for ye.

_Amy Levy_

Amy Levy, a singularly gifted Jewess, was born at Clapham, in 1861. A fiery young poet, she burdened her own intensity with the sorrows of her race. She wrote one novel, _Reuben Sachs_, and two volumes of poetry--the more distinctive of the two being half-pathetically and half-ironically entitled _A Minor Poet_ (1884). After several years of brooding introspection, she committed suicide in 1889 at the age of 28.

EPITAPH

(_On a commonplace person who died in bed_)

This is the end of him, here he lies: The dust in his throat, the worm in his eyes, The mould in his mouth, the turf on his breast; This is the end of him, this is best. He will never lie on his couch awake, Wide-eyed, tearless, till dim daybreak. Never again will he smile and smile When his heart is breaking all the while. He will never stretch out his hands in vain Groping and groping--never again. Never ask for bread, get a stone instead, Never pretend that the stone is bread; Nor sway and sway 'twixt the false and true, Weighing and noting the long hours through. Never ache and ache with the choked-up sighs; This is the end of him, here he lies.

IN THE MILE END ROAD

How like her! But 'tis she herself, Comes up the crowded street, How little did I think, the morn, My only love to meet!

Who else that motion and that mien? Whose else that airy tread? For one strange moment I forgot My only love was dead.

_Katharine Tynan Hinkson_

Katharine Tynan was born at Dublin in 1861, and educated at the Convent of St. Catherine at Drogheda. She married Henry Hinkson, a lawyer and author, in 1893. Her poetry is largely actuated by religious themes, and much of her verse is devotional and yet distinctive. In _New Poems_ (1911) she is at her best; graceful, meditative and with occasional notes of deep pathos.

SHEEP AND LAMBS

All in the April morning, April airs were abroad; The sheep with their little lambs Pass'd me by on the road.

The sheep with their little lambs Pass'd me by on the road; All in an April evening I thought on the Lamb of God.

The lambs were weary, and crying With a weak human cry; I thought on the Lamb of God Going meekly to die.

Up in the blue, blue mountains Dewy pastures are sweet: Rest for the little bodies, Rest for the little feet.

Rest for the Lamb of God Up on the hill-top green; Only a cross of shame Two stark crosses between.

All in the April evening, April airs were abroad; I saw the sheep with their lambs, And thought on the Lamb of God.

ALL-SOULS

The door of Heaven is on the latch To-night, and many a one is fain To go home for one's night's watch With his love again.

Oh, where the father and mother sit There's a drift of dead leaves at the door Like pitter-patter of little feet That come no more.

Their thoughts are in the night and cold, Their tears are heavier than the clay, But who is this at the threshold So young and gay?

They are come from the land o' the young, They have forgotten how to weep; Words of comfort on the tongue, And a kiss to keep.

They sit down and they stay awhile, Kisses and comfort none shall lack; At morn they steal forth with a smile And a long look back.

_Owen Seaman_

One of the most delightful of English versifiers, Owen Seaman, was born in 1861. After receiving a classical education, he became Professor of Literature and began to write for Punch in 1894. In 1906 he was made editor of that internationally famous weekly, remaining in that capacity ever since. He was knighted in 1914. As a writer of light verse and as a parodist, his agile work has delighted a generation of admirers. Some of his most adroit lines may be found in his _In Cap and Bells_ (1902) and _The Battle of the Bays_ (1892).

TO AN OLD FOGEY

(_Who Contends that Christmas is Played Out_)

O frankly bald and obviously stout! And so you find that Christmas as a fete Dispassionately viewed, is getting out Of date.

The studied festal air is overdone; The humour of it grows a little thin; You fail, in fact, to gather where the fun Comes in.

Visions of very heavy meals arise That tend to make your organism shiver; Roast beef that irks, and pies that agonise The liver;

Those pies at which you annually wince, Hearing the tale how happy months will follow Proportioned to the total mass of mince You swallow.

Visions of youth whose reverence is scant, Who with the brutal _verve_ of boyhood's prime Insist on being taken to the pant- -omime.

Of infants, sitting up extremely late, Who run you on toboggans down the stair; Or make you fetch a rug and simulate A bear.

This takes your faultless trousers at the knees, The other hurts them rather more behind; And both effect a fracture in your ease Of mind.

My good dyspeptic, this will never do; Your weary withers must be sadly wrung! Yet once I well believe that even you Were young.

Time was when you devoured, like other boys, Plum-pudding sequent on a turkey-hen; With cracker-mottos hinting of the joys Of men.

Time was when 'mid the maidens you would pull The fiery raisin with profound delight; When sprigs of mistletoe seemed beautiful And right.

Old Christmas changes not! Long, long ago He won the treasure of eternal youth; _Yours_ is the dotage--if you want to know The truth.

Come, now, I'll cure your case, and ask no fee:-- Make others' happiness this once your own; All else may pass: that joy can never be Outgrown!

THOMAS OF THE LIGHT HEART

Facing the guns, he jokes as well As any Judge upon the Bench; Between the crash of shell and shell His laughter rings along the trench; He seems immensely tickled by a Projectile while he calls a "Black Maria."

He whistles down the day-long road, And, when the chilly shadows fall And heavier hangs the weary load, Is he down-hearted? Not at all. 'Tis then he takes a light and airy View of the tedious route to Tipperary.[4]

His songs are not exactly hymns; He never learned them in the choir; And yet they brace his dragging limbs Although they miss the sacred fire; Although his choice and cherished gems Do not include "The Watch upon the Thames."

He takes to fighting as a game; He does no talking, through his hat, Of holy missions; all the same He has his faith--be sure of that; He'll not disgrace his sporting breed, Nor play what isn't cricket. There's his creed.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] "_It's a long way to Tipperary_," the most popular song of the Allied armies during the World's War.

_Henry Newbolt_

Henry Newbolt was born at Bilston in 1862. His early work was frankly imitative of Tennyson; he even attempted to add to the Arthurian legends with a drama in blank verse entitled _Mordred_ (1895). It was not until he wrote his sea-ballads that he struck his own note. With the publication of _Admirals All_ (1897) his fame was widespread. The popularity of his lines was due not so much to the subject-matter of Newbolt's verse as to the breeziness of his music, the solid beat of rhythm, the vigorous swing of his stanzas.

In 1898 Newbolt published _The Island Race_, which contains about thirty more of his buoyant songs of the sea. Besides being a poet, Newbolt has written many essays and his critical volume, _A New Study of English Poetry_ (1917), is a collection of articles that are both analytical and alive.

DRAKE'S DRUM

Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand mile away, (Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?) Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay, An' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe. Yarnder lumes the island, yarnder lie the ships, Wi' sailor lads a-dancin' heel-an'-toe, An' the shore-lights flashin', an' the night-tide dashin' He sees et arl so plainly as he saw et long ago.

Drake he was a Devon man, an' ruled the Devon seas, (Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?), Rovin' tho' his death fell, he went wi' heart at ease, An' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe, "Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore, Strike et when your powder's runnin' low; If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port o' Heaven, An' drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago."

Drake he's in his hammock till the great Armadas come, (Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?), Slung atween the round shot, listenin' for the drum, An' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe. Call him on the deep sea, call him up the Sound, Call him when ye sail to meet the foe; Where the old trade's plyin' an' the old flag flyin', They shall find him, ware an' wakin', as they found him long ago.

_Arthur Symons_

Born in 1865, Arthur Symons' first few publications revealed an intellectual rather than an emotional passion. Those volumes were full of the artifice of the period, but Symons's technical skill and frequent analysis often saved the poems from complete decadence. His later books are less imitative; the influence of Verlaine and Baudelaire is not so apparent; the sophistication is less cynical, the sensuousness more restrained. His various collections of essays and stories reflect the same peculiar blend of rich intellectuality and perfumed romanticism that one finds in his most characteristic poems.

Of his many volumes in prose, _Spiritual Adventures_ (1905), while obviously influenced by Walter Pater, is by far the most original; a truly unique volume of psychological short stories. The best of his poetry up to 1902 was collected in two volumes, _Poems_, published by John Lane Co. _The Fool of the World_ appeared in 1907.

IN THE WOOD OF FINVARA

I have grown tired of sorrow and human tears; Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.

I have grown tired of rapture and love's desire; Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire.

I would wash the dust of the world in a soft green flood; Here between sea and sea, in the fairy wood, I have found a delicate, wave-green solitude.

Here, in the fairy wood, between sea and sea, I have heard the song of a fairy bird in a tree, And the peace that is not in the world has flown to me.

MODERN BEAUTY

I am the torch, she saith, and what to me If the moth die of me? I am the flame Of Beauty, and I burn that all may see Beauty, and I have neither joy nor shame, But live with that clear light of perfect fire Which is to men the death of their desire.

I am Yseult and Helen, I have seen Troy burn, and the most loving knight lie dead. The world has been my mirror, time has been My breath upon the glass; and men have said, Age after age, in rapture and despair, Love's poor few words, before my image there.

I live, and am immortal; in my eyes The sorrow of the world, and on my lips The joy of life, mingle to make me wise; Yet now the day is darkened with eclipse: Who is there still lives for beauty? Still am I The torch, but where's the moth that still dares die?

_William Butler Yeats_

Born at Sandymount, Dublin, in 1865, the son of John B. Yeats, the Irish artist, the greater part of William Butler Yeats' childhood was spent in Sligo. Here he became imbued with the power and richness of native folk-lore; he drank in the racy quality through the quaint fairy stories and old wives' tales of the Irish peasantry. (Later he published a collection of these same stories.)

It was in the activities of a "Young Ireland" society that Yeats became identified with the new spirit; he dreamed of a national poetry that would be written in English and yet would be definitely Irish. In a few years he became one of the leaders in the Celtic revival. He worked incessantly for the cause, both as propagandist and playwright; and, though his mysticism at times seemed the product of a cult rather than a Celt, his symbolic dramas were acknowledged to be full of a haunting, other-world spirituality. (See Preface.) _The Hour Glass_ (1904), his second volume of "Plays for an Irish Theatre," includes his best one-act dramas with the exception of his unforgettable _The Land of Heart's Desire_ (1894). _The Wind Among the Reeds_ (1899) contains several of his most beautiful and characteristic poems.

Others who followed Yeats have intensified the Irish drama; they have established a closer contact between the peasant and poet. No one, however, has had so great a part in the shaping of modern drama in Ireland as Yeats. His _Deirdre_ (1907), a beautiful retelling of the great Gaelic legend, is far more dramatic than the earlier plays; it is particularly interesting to read with Synge's more idiomatic play on the same theme, _Deirdre of the Sorrows_.

The poems of Yeats which are quoted here reveal him in his most lyric and musical vein.

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow. And then I must scrub, and bake, and sweep, Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; But the young lie long and dream in their bed Of the matching of ribbons, the blue and the red, And their day goes over in idleness, And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress. While I must work, because I am old And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

THE CAP AND BELLS

A Queen was beloved by a jester, And once when the owls grew still He made his soul go upward And stand on her window sill.

In a long and straight blue garment, It talked before morn was white, And it had grown wise by thinking Of a footfall hushed and light.

But the young queen would not listen; She rose in her pale nightgown, She drew in the brightening casement And pushed the brass bolt down.

He bade his heart go to her, When the bats cried out no more, In a red and quivering garment It sang to her through the door.

The tongue of it sweet with dreaming Of a flutter of flower-like hair, But she took up her fan from the table And waved it off on the air.

'I've cap and bells,' he pondered, 'I will send them to her and die.' And as soon as the morn had whitened He left them where she went by.

She laid them upon her bosom, Under a cloud of her hair, And her red lips sang them a love song. The stars grew out of the air.

She opened her door and her window, And the heart and the soul came through, To her right hand came the red one, To her left hand came the blue.

They set up a noise like crickets, A chattering wise and sweet, And her hair was a folded flower, And the quiet of love her feet.

AN OLD SONG RESUNG

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

_Rudyard Kipling_

Born at Bombay, India, December 30, 1865, Rudyard Kipling, the author of a dozen contemporary classics, was educated in England. He returned, however, to India and took a position on the staff of "The Lahore Civil and Military Gazette," writing for the Indian press until about 1890, when he went to England, where he has lived ever since, with the exception of a short sojourn in America.

Even while he was still in India he achieved a popular as well as a literary success with his dramatic and skilful tales, sketches and ballads of Anglo-Indian life.

_Soldiers Three_ (1888) was the first of six collections of short stories brought out in "Wheeler's Railway Library." They were followed by the far more sensitive and searching _Plain Tales from the Hills_, _Under the Deodars_ and _The Phantom 'Rikshaw_, which contains two of the best and most convincing ghost-stories in recent literature.

These tales, however, display only one side of Kipling's extraordinary talents. As a writer of children's stories, he has few living equals. _Wee Willie Winkie_, which contains that stirring and heroic fragment "Drums of the Fore and Aft," is only a trifle less notable than his more obviously juvenile collections. _Just-So Stories_ and the two _Jungle Books_ (prose interspersed with lively rhymes) are classics for young people of all ages. _Kim_, the novel of a super-Mowgli grown up, is a more mature masterpiece.

Considered solely as a poet (see Preface) he is one of the most vigorous and unique figures of his time. The spirit of romance surges under his realities. His brisk lines conjure up the tang of a countryside in autumn, the tingle of salt spray, the rude sentiment of ruder natures, the snapping of a banner, the lurch and rumble of the sea. His poetry is woven of the stuff of myths; but it never loses its hold on actualities. Kipling himself in his poem "The Benefactors" (from _The Years Between_ [1919]) writes:

Ah! What avails the classic bent And what the cultured word, Against the undoctored incident That actually occurred?

Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His varied poems have finally been collected in a remarkable one-volume _Inclusive Edition_ (1885-1918), an indispensable part of any student's library. This gifted and prolific creator, whose work was affected by the war, has frequently lapsed into bombast and a journalistic imperialism. At his best he is unforgettable, standing mountain-high above his host of imitators. His home is at Burwash, Sussex.

GUNGA DIN

You may talk o' gin an' beer When you're quartered safe out 'ere, An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it; But if it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it Now in Injia's sunny clime, Where I used to spend my time A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen, Of all them black-faced crew The finest man I knew Was our regimental _bhisti_,[5] Gunga Din.

It was "Din! Din! Din! You limping lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din! Hi! _slippy hitherao!_ Water, get it! _Panee lao!_[6] You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din!"

The uniform 'e wore Was nothin' much before, An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind, For a twisty piece o' rag An' a goatskin water-bag Was all the field-equipment 'e could find. When the sweatin' troop-train lay In a sidin' through the day, Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl, We shouted "_Harry By!_"[7] Till our throats were bricky-dry, Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.

It was "Din! Din! Din! You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been? You put some _juldees_[8] in it, Or I'll _marrow_[9] you this minute, If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"

'E would dot an' carry one Till the longest day was done, An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear. If we charged or broke or cut, You could bet your bloomin' nut, 'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear. With 'is _mussick_[10] on 'is back, 'E would skip with our attack, An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire." An' for all 'is dirty 'ide, 'E was white, clear white, inside When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!

It was "Din! Din! Din!" With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green. When the cartridges ran out, You could 'ear the front-files shout: "Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"

I sha'n't forgit the night When I dropped be'ind the fight With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been. I was chokin' mad with thirst, An' the man that spied me first Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din. 'E lifted up my 'ead, An' 'e plugged me where I bled, An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water--green; It was crawlin' an' it stunk, But of all the drinks I've drunk, I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.

It was "Din! Din! Din! 'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen; 'E's chawin' up the ground an' 'e's kickin' all around: For Gawd's sake, git the water, Gunga Din!"

'E carried me away To where a _dooli_ lay, An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean. 'E put me safe inside, An' just before 'e died: "I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din. So I'll meet 'im later on In the place where 'e is gone-- Where it's always double drill and no canteen; 'E'll be squattin' on the coals Givin' drink to pore damned souls, An' I'll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din!

Din! Din! Din! You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you, By the livin' Gawd that made you, You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

THE RETURN[11]

Peace is declared, and I return To 'Ackneystadt, but not the same; Things 'ave transpired which made me learn The size and meanin' of the game. I did no more than others did, I don't know where the change began; I started as a average kid, I finished as a thinkin' man.

_If England was what England seems An not the England of our dreams, But only putty, brass, an' paint, 'Ow quick we'd drop 'er!_ But she ain't!