Part 7
I should like to imagine A moonlight in which there would be no machine-guns!
For, it is possible To come out of a trench or a hut or a tent or a church all in ruins: To see the black perspective of long avenues All silent. The white strips of sky At the sides, cut by the poplar trunks: The white strips of sky Above, diminishing-- The silence and blackness of the avenue Enclosed by immensities of space Spreading away Over No Man's Land....
For a minute ... For ten ... There will be no star shells But the untroubled stars, There will be no _Very_ light But the light of the quiet moon Like a swan. And silence....
Then, far away to the right thro' the moonbeams "_Wukka Wukka_" will go the machine-guns, And, far away to the left _Wukka Wukka_. And sharply, _Wuk_ ... _Wuk_ ... and then silence For a space in the clear of the moon.
II
I should like to imagine A moonlight in which the machine-guns of trouble Will be silent....
Do you remember, my dear, Long ago, on the cliffs, in the moonlight, Looking over to Flatholme We sat ... Long ago!... And the things that you told me ... Little things in the clear of the moon, The little, sad things of a life....
We shall do it again Full surely, Sitting still, looking over at Flatholme. Then, far away to the right Shall sound the Machine Guns of trouble _Wukka-wukka!_ And, far away to the left, under Flatholme, _Wukka-wuk!..._
I wonder, my dear, can you stick it? As we should say: "Stick it, the Welch!" In the dark of the moon, Going over....
"THERE SHALL BE MORE JOY ..."
The little angels of Heaven Each wear a long white dress, And in the tall arcadings Play ball and play at chess;
With never a soil on their garments, Not a sigh the whole day long, Not a bitter note in their pleasure, Not a bitter note in their song.
But they shall know keener pleasure, And they shall know joy more rare-- Keener, keener pleasure When you, my dear, come there.
* * * * *
The little angels of Heaven Each wear a long white gown, And they lean over the ramparts Waiting and looking down.
_Walter De la Mare_
The author of some of the most haunting lyrics in contemporary poetry, Walter De la Mare, was born in 1873. Although he did not begin to bring out his work in book form until he was over 30, he is, as Harold Williams has written, "the singer of a young and romantic world, a singer even for children, understanding and perceiving as a child." De la Mare paints simple scenes of miniature loveliness; he uses thin-spun fragments of fairy-like delicacy and achieves a grace that is remarkable in its universality. "In a few words, seemingly artless and unsought" (to quote Williams again), "he can express a pathos or a hope as wide as man's life."
De la Mare is an astonishing joiner of words; in _Peacock Pie_ (1913) he surprises us again and again by transforming what began as a child's nonsense-rhyme into a suddenly thrilling snatch of music. A score of times he takes things as casual as the feeding of chickens or the swallowing of physic, berry-picking, eating, hair-cutting--and turns them into magic. These poems read like lyrics of William Shakespeare rendered by Mother Goose. The trick of revealing the ordinary in whimsical colors, of catching the commonplace off its guard, is the first of De la Mare's two magics.
This poet's second gift is his sense of the supernatural, of the fantastic other-world that lies on the edges of our consciousness. _The Listeners_ (1912) is a book that, like all the best of De la Mare, is full of half-heard whispers; moonlight and mystery seem soaked in the lines, and a cool wind from Nowhere blows over them. That most magical of modern verses, "The Listeners," and the brief music of "An Epitaph" are two fine examples among many. In the first of these poems there is an uncanny splendor. What we have here is the effect, the thrill, the overtones of a ghost story rather than the narrative itself--the less than half-told adventure of some new Childe Roland heroically challenging a heedless universe. Never have silence and black night been reproduced more creepily, nor has the symbolism of man's courage facing the cryptic riddle of life been more memorably expressed.
De la Mare's chief distinction, however, lies not so much in what he says as in how he says it; he can even take outworn words like "thridding," "athwart," "amaranthine" and make them live again in a poetry that is of no time and of all time. He writes, it has been said, as much for antiquity as for posterity; he is a poet who is distinctively in the world and yet not wholly of it.
THE LISTENERS
'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest's ferny floor. And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller's head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; 'Is there anybody there?' he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller's call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:-- 'Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,' he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone.
AN EPITAPH
Here lies a most beautiful lady, Light of step and heart was she; I think she was the most beautiful lady That ever was in the West Country.
But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; However rare--rare it be; And when I crumble, who will remember This lady of the West Country?
TIRED TIM
Poor tired Tim! It's sad for him. He lags the long bright morning through, Ever so tired of nothing to do; He moons and mopes the livelong day, Nothing to think about, nothing to say; Up to bed with his candle to creep, Too tired to yawn; too tired to sleep: Poor tired Tim! It's sad for him.
OLD SUSAN
When Susan's work was done, she'd sit With one fat guttering candle lit, And window opened wide to win The sweet night air to enter in; There, with a thumb to keep her place She'd read, with stern and wrinkled face. Her mild eyes gliding very slow Across the letters to and fro, While wagged the guttering candle flame In the wind that through the window came. And sometimes in the silence she Would mumble a sentence audibly, Or shake her head as if to say, 'You silly souls, to act this way!' And never a sound from night I'd hear, Unless some far-off cock crowed clear; Or her old shuffling thumb should turn Another page; and rapt and stern, Through her great glasses bent on me She'd glance into reality; And shake her round old silvery head, With--'You!--I thought you was in bed!'-- Only to tilt her book again, And rooted in Romance remain.
NOD
Softly along the road of evening, In a twilight dim with rose, Wrinkled with age, and drenched with dew Old Nod, the shepherd, goes.
His drowsy flock streams on before him, Their fleeces charged with gold, To where the sun's last beam leans low On Nod the shepherd's fold.
The hedge is quick and green with briar, From their sand the conies creep; And all the birds that fly in heaven Flock singing home to sleep.
His lambs outnumber a noon's roses, Yet, when night's shadows fall, His blind old sheep-dog, Slumber-soon, Misses not one of all.
His are the quiet steeps of dreamland, The waters of no-more-pain; His ram's bell rings 'neath an arch of stars, "Rest, rest, and rest again."
_G. K. Chesterton_
This brilliant journalist, novelist, essayist, publicist and lyricist, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, was born at Campden Hill, Kensington, in 1874, and began his literary life by reviewing books on art for various magazines. He is best known as a writer of flashing, paradoxical essays on anything and everything, like _Tremendous Trifles_ (1909), _Varied Types_ (1905), and _All Things Considered_ (1910). But he is also a stimulating critic; a keen appraiser, as in his volume _Heretics_ (1905) and his analytical studies of Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and George Bernard Shaw; a writer of strange and grotesque romances like _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ (1906), _The Man Who Was Thursday_ (1908), which Chesterton himself has subtitled "A Nightmare," and _The Flying Inn_ (1914); the author of several books of fantastic short stories, ranging from the wildly whimsical narratives in _The Club of Queer Trades_ (1905) to that amazing sequence _The Innocence of Father Brown_ (1911)--which is a series of religious detective stories!
Besides being the creator of all of these, Chesterton finds time to be a prolific if sometimes too acrobatic newspaperman, a lay preacher in disguise (witness _Orthodoxy_ [1908], _What's Wrong with the World?_ [1910], _The Ball and the Cross_ [1909]), a pamphleteer, and a poet. His first volume of verse, _The Wild Knight and Other Poems_ (1900), a collection of quaintly-flavored and affirmative verses, was followed by _The Ballad of the White Horse_ (1911), one long poem which, in spite of Chesterton's ever-present didactic sermonizing, is possibly the most stirring creation he has achieved. This poem has the swing, the vigor, the spontaneity, and, above all, the ageless simplicity of the true narrative ballad.
Scarcely less notable is the ringing "Lepanto" from his later _Poems_ (1915) which, anticipating the banging, clanging verses of Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo," is one of the finest of modern chants. It is interesting to see how the syllables beat, as though on brass; it is thrilling to feel how, in one's pulses, the armies sing, the feet tramp, the drums snarl, and all the tides of marching crusaders roll out of lines like:
"Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far, Don John of Austria is going to the war; Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold; Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums, Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes...."
Chesterton, the prose-paradoxer, is a delightful product of a skeptical age. But it is Chesterton the poet who is more likely to outlive it.
LEPANTO[14]
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard; It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships. They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy, They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea, And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss, And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross. The cold queen of England is looking in the glass; The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass; From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun, And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard, Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred, Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall, The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall, The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung, That once went singing southward when all the world was young. In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade. Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far, Don John of Austria is going to the war, Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold, Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums, Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes. Don John laughing in the brave beard curled, Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world, Holding his head up for a flag of all the free. Love-light of Spain--hurrah! Death-light of Africa! Don John of Austria Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star, (_Don John of Austria is going to the war._) He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees, His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas. He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease, And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees; And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing. Giants and the Genii, Multiplex of wing and eye, Whose strong obedience broke the sky When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn, From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn; They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be, On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl, Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl; They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,-- They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound. And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide, And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide, And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest, For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west. We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun, Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done. But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know The voice that shook our palaces--four hundred years ago: It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate; It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate! It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth, Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth." For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar, (_Don John of Austria is going to the war._) Sudden and still--hurrah! Bolt from Iberia! Don John of Austria Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michael's on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north (_Don John of Austria is girt and going forth._) Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift. He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone; The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone; The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes, And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise, And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room, And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom, And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,-- But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea. Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips, Trumpet that sayeth _ha_! _Domino gloria!_ Don John of Austria Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck (_Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck._) The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin, And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in. He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon, He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon, And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day, And death is in the phial and the end of noble work, But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk. Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed-- Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid. Gun upon gun, ha! ha! Gun upon gun, hurrah! Don John of Austria Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke, (_Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke._) The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year, The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear. He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery; They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark, They veil the plumed lions on the galleys of St. Mark; And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs, And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs, Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines. They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young. They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon. And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell, And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign-- (_But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!_) Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop, Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop, Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds, Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds, Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty. _Vivat Hispania!_ _Domino Gloria!_ Don John of Austria Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath (_Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath._) And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain, And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade.... (_But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade._)
A PRAYER IN DARKNESS
This much, O heaven--if I should brood or rave, Pity me not; but let the world be fed, Yea, in my madness if I strike me dead, Heed you the grass that grows upon my grave.
If I dare snarl between this sun and sod, Whimper and clamour, give me grace to own, In sun and rain and fruit in season shown, The shining silence of the scorn of God.
Thank God the stars are set beyond my power, If I must travail in a night of wrath, Thank God my tears will never vex a moth, Nor any curse of mine cut down a flower.
Men say the sun was darkened: yet I had Thought it beat brightly, even on--Calvary: And He that hung upon the Torturing Tree Heard all the crickets singing, and was glad.
THE DONKEY
"The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still.
"Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet."
FOOTNOTES:
[14] From _Poems_ by G. K. Chesterton. Copyright by the John Lane Co. and reprinted by permission of the publishers.
_Wilfrid Wilson Gibson_
Born at Hexam in 1878, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson has published almost a dozen books of verse--the first four or five (see Preface) being imitative in manner and sentimentally romantic in tone. With _The Stonefolds_ (1907) and _Daily Bread_ (1910), Gibson executed a complete right-about-face and, with dramatic brevity, wrote a series of poems mirroring the dreams, pursuits and fears of common humanity. _Fires_ (1912) marks an advance in technique and power. And though in _Livelihood_ (1917) Gibson seems to be theatricalizing and merely exploiting his working-people, his later lyrics recapture the veracity of such memorable poems as "The Old Man," "The Blind Rower," and "The Machine." _Hill-Tracks_ (1918) attempts to capture the beauty of village-names and the glamour of the English countryside.
PRELUDE
As one, at midnight, wakened by the call Of golden-plovers in their seaward flight, Who lies and listens, as the clear notes fall Through tingling silence of the frosty night-- Who lies and listens, till the last note fails, And then, in fancy, faring with the flock Far over slumbering hills and dreaming dales, Soon hears the surges break on reef and rock; And, hearkening, till all sense of self is drowned Within the mightier music of the deep, No more remembers the sweet piping sound That startled him from dull, undreaming sleep; So I, first waking from oblivion, heard, With heart that kindled to the call of song, The voice of young life, fluting like a bird, And echoed that light lilting; till, ere long, Lured onward by that happy, singing-flight, I caught the stormy summons of the sea, And dared the restless deeps that, day and night, Surge with the life-song of humanity.
THE STONE[15]
"And will you cut a stone for him, To set above his head? And will you cut a stone for him-- A stone for him?" she said.
Three days before, a splintered rock Had struck her lover dead-- Had struck him in the quarry dead, Where, careless of the warning call, He loitered, while the shot was fired-- A lively stripling, brave and tall, And sure of all his heart desired ... A flash, a shock, A rumbling fall ... And, broken 'neath the broken rock, A lifeless heap, with face of clay; And still as any stone he lay, With eyes that saw the end of all.
I went to break the news to her; And I could hear my own heart beat With dread of what my lips might say But, some poor fool had sped before; And flinging wide her father's door, Had blurted out the news to her, Had struck her lover dead for her, Had struck the girl's heart dead in her, Had struck life, lifeless, at a word, And dropped it at her feet: Then hurried on his witless way, Scarce knowing she had heard.
And when I came, she stood, alone A woman, turned to stone: And, though no word at all she said, I knew that all was known.