XII.

This then at last; we may be wiser far Than love, and put his folly to our measure, Yet shall we learn, poor wizards that we are, That love chimes not nor motions at our pleasure. We bid him come, and light an eager fire, And he goes down the road without debating; We cast him from the house of our desire, And when at last we leave he will be waiting. And in the end there is no folly but this, To counsel love out of our little learning. For still he knows where rotten timber is, And where the boughs for the long winter burning; And when life needs no more of us at all, Love's word will be the last that we recall.

* * * * *

JOHN FREEMAN

I WILL ASK

I will ask primrose and violet to spend for you Their smell and hue, And the bold, trembling anemone awhile to spare Her flowers starry fair; Or the flushed wild apple and yet sweeter thorn Their sweetness to keep Longer than any fire-bosomed flower born Between midnight and midnight deep.

And I will take celandine, nettle and parsley, white In its own green light, Or milkwort and sorrel, thyme, harebell and meadow-sweet Lifting at your feet, And ivy-blossom beloved of soft bees; I will take The loveliest-- The seeding grasses that bend with the winds, and shake Though the winds are at rest.

'For me?' you will ask. 'Yes! surely they wave for you Their smell and hue, And you away all that is rare were so much less By your missed happiness.' Yet I know grass and weed, ivy and apple and thorn Their whole sweet would keep, Though in Eden no human spirit on a shining morn Had awaked from sleep.

THE EVENING SKY

Rose-bosom'd and rose-limb'd With eyes of dazzling bright Shakes Venus mid the twined boughs of the night; Rose-limb'd, soft-stepping From low bough to bough, Shaking the wide-hung starry fruitage--dimmed Its bloom of snow By that sole planetary glow.

Venus, avers the astronomer, Not thus idly dancing goes Flushing the eternal orchard with wild rose. She through ether burns Outpacing planetary earth, And ere two years triumphantly returns, And again wave-like swelling flows, And again her flashing apparition comes and goes.

This we have not seen, No heavenly courses set, No flight unpausing through a void serene: But when eve clears, Arises Venus as she first uprose Stepping the shaken boughs among, And in her bosom glows The warm light hidden in sunny snows.

She shakes the clustered stars Lightly, as she goes Amid the unseen branches of the night, Rose-limb'd, rose-bosom'd bright.

She leaps: they shake and pale; she glows-- And who but knows How the rejoiced heart aches When Venus all his starry vision shakes;

When through his mind Tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind, Rose-bosom'd, rose-limb'd, The mistress of his starry vision arises, And the boughs glittering sway And the stars pale away, And the enlarging heaven glows As Venus light-foot mid the twined branches goes.

THE CAVES

Like the tide--knocking at the hollowed cliff And running into each green cave as if In the cave's night to keep Eternal motion grave and deep--

That, even while each broken wave repeats Its answered knocking and with bruised hand beats Again, again, again, Tossed between ecstasy and pain;

Still in the folded hollow darkness swells, Sinks, swells, and every green-hung hollow fills, Till there's no room for sound Save that old anger rolled around;

So into every hollow cliff of life, Into this heart's deep cave so loud with strife, In tunnels I knew not, In lightless labyrinths of thought,

The unresting tide has run and the dark filled, Even the vibration of old strife is stilled; The wave returning bears Muted those time-breathing airs.

--How shall the million-footed tide still tread These hollows and in each cold void cave spread? How shall Love here keep Eternal motion grave and deep?

MOON-BATHERS

Falls from her heaven the Moon, and stars sink burning Into the sea where blackness rims the sea, Silently quenched. Faint light that the waves hold Is only light remaining; yet still gleam The sands where those now-sleeping young moon-bathers Came dripping out of the sea and from their arms Shook flakes of light, dancing on the foamy edge Of quiet waves. They were all things of light Tossed from the sea to dance under the Moon-- Her nuns, dancing within her dying round, Clear limbs and breasts silvered with Moon and waves And quick with windlike mood and body's joy, Withdrawn from alien vows, by wave and wind Lightly absolved and lightly all forgetting.

An hour ago they left. Remains the gleam Of their late motion on the salt sea-meadow, As loveliest hues linger when the sun's gone And float in the heavens and die in reedy pools-- So slowly, who shall say when light is gone?

IN THOSE OLD DAYS

In those old days you were called beautiful, But I have worn the beauty from your face; The flowerlike bloom has withered on your cheek With the harsh years, and the fire in your eyes Burns darker now and deeper, feeding on Beauty and the remembrance of things gone. Even your voice is altered when you speak, Or is grown mute with old anxiety For me.

Even as a fire leaps into flame and burns Leaping and laughing in its lovely flight, And then under the flame a glowing dome Deepens slowly into blood-like light:-- So did you flame and in flame take delight, So are you hollow'd now with aching fire. But I still warm me and make there my home, Still beauty and youth burn there invisibly For me.

Now my lips falling on your silver'd skull, My fingers in the valleys of your cheeks, Or my hands in your thin strong hands fast caught, Your body clutched to mine, mine bent to yours: Now love undying feeds on love beautiful, Now, now I am but thought kissing your thought ... --And can it be in your heart's music speaks A deeper rhythm hearing mine: can it be Indeed for me?

CATERPILLARS

Of caterpillars Fabre tells how day after day Around the rim of a vast earth pot they crawled, Tricked thither as they filed shuffling out one morn Head to tail when the common hunger called.

Head to tail in a heaving ring day after day, Night after slow night, the starving mommets crept, Each following each, head to tail, day after day, An unbroken ring of hunger--then it was snapt.

I thought of you, long-heaving, horned green caterpillars, As I lay awake. My thoughts crawled each after each, Crawling at night each after each on the same nerve, An unbroken ring of thoughts too sore for speech.

Over and over and over and over again The same hungry thoughts and the hopeless same regrets, Over and over the same truths, again and again In a heaving ring returning the same regrets.

CHANGE

I am that creature and creator who Loosens and reins the waters of the sea, Forming the rocky marge anon anew. I stir the cold breasts of antiquity, And in the soft stone of the pyramid Move wormlike; and I flutter all those sands Whereunder lost and soundless time is hid. I shape the hills and valleys with these hands, And darken forests on their naked sides, And call the rivers from the vexing springs, And lead the blind winds into deserts strange. And in firm human bones the ill that hides Is mine, the fear that cries, the hope that sings. I am that creature and creator, Change.

* * * * *

WILFRID GIBSON

FIRE

In each black tile a mimic fire's aglow, And in the hearthlight old mahogany, Ripe with stored sunshine that in Mexico Poured like gold wine into the living tree Summer on summer through a century, Burns like a crater in the heart of night: And all familiar things in the ingle-light Glow with a secret strange intensity.

And I remember hidden fires that burst Suddenly from the midnight while men slept, Long-smouldering rages in the darkness nursed That to an instant ravening fury leapt, And the old terror menacing evermore A crumbling world with fiery molten core.

BARBARA FELL

Stephen, wake up! There's some one at the gate. Quick, to the window ... Oh, you'll be too late! I hear the front door opening quietly. Did you forget, last night, to turn the key? A foot is on the stairs--nay, just outside The very room--the door is opening wide... Stephen, wake up, wake up! Who's there? Who's there? I only feel a cold wind in my hair... Have I been dreaming, Stephen? Husband, wake And comfort me: I think my heart will break. I never knew you sleep so sound and still.... O my heart's love, why is your hand so chill?

PHILIP AND PHOEBE WARE

Who is that woman, Philip, standing there Before the mirror doing up her hair?

You're dreaming, Phoebe, or the morning light Mixing and mingling with the dying night Makes shapes out of the darkness, and you see Some dream-remembered phantasy maybe.

Yet it grows clearer with the growing day; And in the cold dawn light her hair is grey: Her lifted arms are naught but bone: her hands White withered claws that fumble as she stands Trying to pin that wisp into its place. O Philip, I must look upon her face There in the mirror. Nay, but I will rise And peep over her shoulder ... Oh, the eyes That burn out from that face of skin and bone, Searching my very marrow, are my own.

BY THE WEIR

A scent of Esparto grass--and again I recall That hour we spent by the weir of the paper-mill Watching together the curving thunderous fall Of frothing amber, bemused by the roar until My mind was as blank as the speckless sheets that wound On the hot steel ironing-rollers perpetually turning In the humming dark rooms of the mill: all sense and discerning By the stunning and dazzling oblivion of hill-waters drowned.

And my heart was empty of memory and hope and desire Till, rousing, I looked afresh on your face as you gazed-- Behind you an old gnarled fruit-tree in one still fire Of innumerable flame in the sun of October blazed, Scarlet and gold that the first white frost would spill With eddying flicker and patter of dead leaves falling-- looked on your face, as an outcast from Eden recalling A vision of Eve as she dallied bewildered and still

By the serpent-encircled tree of knowledge that flamed With gold and scarlet of good and evil, her eyes Rapt on the river of life: then bright and untamed By the labour and sorrow and fear of a world that dies Your ignorant eyes looked up into mine; and I knew That never our hearts should be one till your young lips had tasted The core of the bitter-sweet fruit, and wise and toil-wasted You should stand at my shoulder an outcast from Eden too.

WORLDS

Through the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks, Whose interwoven fronds, a jade-green sky, Above me glimmer, infinitely high, Towards my giant hand a beetle walks In glistening emerald mail; and as I lie Watching his progress through huge grassy blades And over pebble boulders, my own world fades And shrinks to the vision of a beetle's eye.

Within that forest world of twilight green Ambushed with unknown perils, one endless day I travel down the beetle-trail between Huge glossy boles through green infinity ... Till flashes a glimpse of blue sea through the bracken asway, And my world is again a tumult of windy sea.

* * * * *

ROBERT GRAVES

LOST LOVE

His eyes are quickened so with grief, He can watch a grass or leaf Every instant grow; he can Clearly through a flint wall see, Or watch the startled spirit flee From the throat of a dead man. Across two counties he can hear, And catch your words before you speak. The woodlouse or the maggot's weak Clamour rings in his sad ear; And noise so slight it would surpass Credence:--drinking sound of grass, Worm-talk, clashing jaws of moth Chumbling holes in cloth: The groan of ants who undertake Gigantic loads for honour's sake-- Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin: Whir of spiders when they spin, And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs Of idle grubs and flies. This man is quickened so with grief, He wanders god-like or like thief Inside and out, below, above, Without relief seeking lost love.

MORNING PHOENIX

In my body lives a flame, Flame that burns me all the day; When a fierce sun does the same, I am charred away.

Who could keep a smiling wit, Roasted so in heart and hide, Turning on the sun's red spit, Scorched by love inside?

Caves I long for and cold rocks, Minnow-peopled country brooks, Blundering gales of Equinox, Sunless valley-nooks,

Daily so I might restore Calcined heart and shrivelled skin, A morning phoenix with proud roar Kindled new within.

A LOVER SINCE CHILDHOOD

Tangled in thought am I, Stumble in speech do I? Do I blunder and blush for the reason why? Wander aloof do I, Lean over gates and sigh, Making friends with the bee and the butterfly?

If thus and thus I do, Dazed by the thought of you, Walking my sorrowful way in the early dew, My heart cut through and through In this despair of you, Starved for a word or a look will my hope renew:

Give then a thought for me Walking so miserably, Wanting relief in the friendship of flower or tree; Do but remember, we Once could in love agree, Swallow your pride, let us be as we used to be.

SULLEN MOODS

Love, do not count your labour lost Though I turn sullen, grim, retired Even at your side; my thought is crossed With fancies by old longings fired.

And when I answer you, some days Vaguely and wildly, do not fear That my love walks forbidden ways, Breaking the ties that hold it here.

If I speak gruffly, this mood is Mere indignation at my own Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties; I forget the gentler tone.

'You,' now that you have come to be My one beginning, prime and end, I count at last as wholly 'me,' Lover no longer nor yet friend.

Friendship is flattery, though close hid; Must I then flatter my own mind? And must (which laws of shame forbid) Blind love of you make self-love blind?

... Do not repay me my own coin, The sharp rebuke, the frown, the groan; No, stir my memory to disjoin Your emanation from my own.

Help me to see you as before When overwhelmed and dead, almost, I stumbled on that secret door Which saves the live man from the ghost.

Be once again the distant light, Promise of glory not yet known In full perfection---wasted quite When on my imperfection thrown.

THE PIER-GLASS

Lost manor where I walk continually A ghost, while yet in woman's flesh and blood; Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingers And gliding steadfast down your corridors I come by nightly custom to this room, And even on sultry afternoons I come Drawn by a thread of time-sunk memory.

Empty, unless for a huge bed of state Shrouded with rusty curtains drooped awry (A puppet theatre where malignant fancy Peoples the wings with fear). At my right hand A ravelled bell-pull hangs in readiness To summon me from attic glooms above Service of elder ghosts; here at my left A sullen pier-glass cracked from side to side Scorns to present the face as do new mirrors With a lying flush, but shows it melancholy And pale, as faces grow that look in mirrors.

Is here no life, nothing but the thin shadow And blank foreboding, never a wainscot rat Rasping a crust? Or at the window pane No fly, no bluebottle, no starveling spider? The windows frame a prospect of cold skies Half-merged with sea, as at the first creation, Abstract, confusing welter. Face about, Peer rather in the glass once more, take note Of self, the grey lips and long hair dishevelled, Sleep-staring eyes. Ah, mirror, for Christ's love Give me one token that there still abides Remote, beyond this island mystery, So be it only this side Hope, somewhere, In streams, on sun-warm mountain pasturage, True life, natural breath; not this phantasma.

A rumour, scarcely yet to be reckoned sound, But a pulse quicker or slower, then I know My plea is granted; death prevails not yet. For bees have swarmed behind in a close place Pent up between this glass and the outer wall. The combs are founded, the queen rules her court, Bee-sergeants posted at the entrance-chink Are sampling each returning honey-cargo With scrutinizing mouth and commentary, Slow approbation, quick dissatisfaction-- Disquieting rhythm, that leads me home at last From labyrinthine wandering. This new mood Of judgment orders me my present duty, To face again a problem strongly solved In life gone by, but now again proposed Out of due time for fresh deliberation. Did not my answer please the Master's ear? Yet, I'll stay obstinate. How went the question, A paltry question set on the elements Of love and the wronged lover's obligation? _Kill or forgive?_ Still does the bed ooze blood? Let it drip down till every floor-plank rot! Yet shall I answer, challenging the judgment:-- _'Kill, strike the blow again, spite what shall come.'_ 'Kill, strike, again, again,' the bees in chorus hum.

THE TROLL'S NOSEGAY

A simple nosegay! was that much to ask? (Winter still gloomed, with scarce a bud yet showing). He loved her ill, if he resigned the task. 'Somewhere,' she cried, 'there must be blossom blowing.' It seems my lady wept and the troll swore By Heaven he hated tears: he'd cure her spleen; Where she had begged one flower, he'd shower four-score, A haystack bunch to amaze a China Queen.

Cold fog-drawn Lily, pale mist-magic Rose He conjured, and in a glassy cauldron set With elvish unsubstantial Mignonette And such vague bloom as wandering dreams enclose. But she? Awed, Charmed to tears, Distracted, Yet-- Even yet, perhaps, a trifle piqued--who knows?

FOX'S DINGLE

Take now a country mood, Resolve, distil it:-- Nine Acre swaying alive, June flowers that fill it,

Spicy sweet-briar bush, The uneasy wren Fluttering from ash to birch And back again.

Milkwort on its low stem, Spread hawthorn tree, Sunlight patching the wood, A hive-bound bee....

Girls riding nim-nim-nim, Ladies, trot-trot, Gentlemen hard at gallop, Shouting, steam-hot.

Now over the rough turf Bridles go jingle, And there's a well-loved pool, By Fox's Dingle,

Where Sweetheart, my brown mare, Old Glory's daughter, May loll her leathern tongue In snow-cool water.

THE GENERAL ELLIOTT

He fell in victory's fierce pursuit, Holed through and through with shot, A sabre sweep had hacked him deep Twixt neck and shoulderknot....

The potman cannot well recall, The ostler never knew, Whether his day was Malplaquet, The Boyne or Waterloo.

But there he hangs for tavern sign, With foolish bold regard For cock and hen and loitering men And wagons down the yard.

Raised high above the hayseed world He smokes his painted pipe, And now surveys the orchard ways, The damsons clustering ripe.

He sees the churchyard slabs beyond, Where country neighbours lie, Their brief renown set lowly down; _His_ name assaults the sky.

He grips the tankard of brown ale That spills a generous foam: Oft-times he drinks, they say, and winks At drunk men lurching home.

No upstart hero may usurp That honoured swinging seat; His seasons pass with pipe and glass Until the tale's complete.

And paint shall keep his buttons bright Though all the world's forgot Whether he died for England's pride By battle, or by pot.

THE PATCHWORK BONNET

Across the room my silent love I throw, Where you sit sewing in bed by candlelight, Your young stern profile and industrious fingers Displayed against the blind in a shadow-show, To Dinda's grave delight.

The needle dips and pokes, the cheerful thread Runs after, follow-my-leader down the seam: The patchwork pieces cry for joy together, O soon to sit as a crown on Dinda's head, Fulfilment of their dream.

Snippets and odd ends folded by, forgotten, With camphor on a top shelf, hard to find, Now wake to this most happy resurrection, To Dinda playing toss with a reel of cotton And staring at the blind.

Dinda in sing-song stretching out one hand Calls for the playthings; mother does not hear: Her mind sails far away on a patchwork Ocean, And all the world must wait till she touches land; So Dinda cries in fear,

Then Mother turns, laughing like a young fairy, And Dinda smiles to see her look so kind, Calls out again for playthings, playthings, playthings; And now the shadows make an Umbrian _Mary Adoring_, on the blind.

* * * * *

RICHARD HUGHES

THE SINGING FURIES

The yellow sky grows vivid as the sun: The sea glittering, and the hills dun.

The stones quiver. Twenty pounds of lead Fold upon fold, the air laps my head.

Both eyes scorch: tongue stiff and bitter: Flies buzz, but no birds twitter: Slow bullocks stand with stinging feet, And naked fishes scarcely stir for heat.

White as smoke, As jetted steam, dead clouds awoke And quivered on the Western rim. Then the singing started: dim And sibilant as rime-stiff reeds That whistle as the wind leads. The South whispered hard and sere, The North answered, low and clear; And thunder muffled up like drums Beat, whence the East wind comes. The heavy sky that could not weep Is loosened: rain falls steep: And thirty singing furies ride To split the sky from side to side.

They sing, and lash the wet-flanked wind: Sing, from Col to Hafod Mynd, And fling their voices half a score Of miles along the mounded shore: Whip loud music from a tree, And roll their paean out to sea Where crowded breakers fling and leap, And strange things throb five fathoms deep.

The sudden tempest roared and died: The singing furies muted ride Down wet and slippery roads to hell: And, silent in their captors' train, Two fishers, storm-caught on the main: A shepherd, battered with his flocks; A pit-boy tumbled from the rocks; A dozen back-broke gulls, and hosts Of shadowy, small, pathetic ghosts, --Of mice and leverets caught by flood; Their beauty shrouded in cold mud.

MOONSTRUCK

Cold shone the moon, with noise The night went by. Trees uttered things of woe: Bent grass dared not grow:

Ah, desperate man with haggard eyes And hands that fence away the skies, On rock and briar stumbling, Is it fear of the storm's rumbling, Of the hissing cold rain, Or lightning's tragic pain Drives you so madly? See, see the patient moon; How she her course keeps Through cloudy shallows and across black deeps, Now gone, now shines soon. Where's cause for fear?

'I shudder and shudder At her bright light: I fear, I fear, That she her fixt course follows So still and white Through deeps and shallows With never a tremor: Naught shall disturb her. I fear, I fear What they may be That secretly bind her: What hand holds the reins Of those sightless forces That govern her courses. Is it Setebos Who deals in her command? Or that unseen Night-Comer With tender curst hand? --I shudder, and shudder.'

Poor storm-wisp, wander! Wind shall not hurt thee, Rain not appal thee, Lightning not blast thee; Thou art worn so frail, Only the moonlight pale To an ash shall burn thee, To an invisible Pain.

VAGRANCY

When the slow year creeps hay-ward, and the skies Are warming in the summer's mild surprise, And the still breeze disturbs each leafy frond Like hungry fishes dimpling in a pond, It is a pleasant thing to dream at ease On sun-warmed thyme, not far from beechen trees.

A robin flashing in a rowan-tree, A wanton robin, spills his melody As if he had such store of golden tones That they were no more worth to him than stones: The sunny lizards dream upon the ledges: Linnets titter in and out the hedges, Or swoop among the freckled butterflies.

Down to a beechen hollow winds the track And tunnels past my twilit bivouac: Two spiring wisps of smoke go singly up And scarcely tremble in the leafy air.

--There are more shadows in this loamy cup Than God could count: and oh, but it is fair: The kindly green and rounded trunks, that meet Under the soil with twinings of their feet And in the sky with twinings of their arms: The yellow stools: the still ungathered charms Of berry, woodland herb, and bryony, And mid-wood's changeling child, Anemone.

* * * * *

Quiet as a grave beneath a spire I lie and watch the pointed climbing fire, I lie and watch the smoky weather-cock That climbs too high, and bends to the breeze's shock, And breaks, and dances off across the skies Gay as a flurry of blue butterflies.

But presently the evening shadows in, Heralded by the night-jar's solitary din And the quick bat's squeak among the trees; --Who sudden rises, darting across the air To weave her filmy web in the Sun's bright hair That slowly sinks dejected on his knees....

Now is he vanished: the bewildered skies Flame out a desperate and last surmise; Then yield to Night, their sudden conqueror.

From pole to pole the shadow of the world Creeps over heaven, till itself is lit By the very many stars that wake in it: Sleep, like a messenger of great import, Lays quiet and compelling hands athwart The easy idlenesses of my mind. --There is a breeze above me, and around: There is a fire before me, and behind: But Sleep doth hold me, and I hear no sound.

In the far West the clouds are mustering, Without hurry, noise, or blustering: And soon as Body's nightly Sentinel Himself doth nod, I open furtive eyes....

With darkling hook the Farmer of the Skies Goes reaping stars: they flicker, one by one, Nodding a little; tumble,--and are gone.

POETS, PAINTERS, PUDDINGS

Poets, painters, and puddings; these three Make up the World as it ought to be.

Poets make faces And sudden grimaces: They twit you, and spit you On words: then admit you To heaven or hell By the tales that they tell.

Painters are gay As young rabbits in May: They buy jolly mugs, Bowls, pictures, and jugs: The things round their necks Are lively with checks, (For they like something red As a frame for the head): Or they'll curse you with oaths, That tear holes in your clothes. (With nothing to mend them You'd best not offend them.)

Puddings should be Full of currants, for me: Boiled in a pail, Tied in the tail Of an old bleached shirt: So hot that they hurt, So huge that they last From the dim, distant past Until the crack o' doom Lift the roof off the room.

Poets, painters, and puddings; these three Crown the day as it crowned should be.

* * * * *

WILLIAM KERR

IN MEMORIAM D. O. M.

Chestnut candles are lit again For the dead that died in spring: Dead lovers walk the orchard ways, And the dead cuckoos sing.

Is it they who live and we who are dead? Hardly the springtime knows For which today the cuckoo calls, And the white blossom blows.

Listen and hear the happy wind Whisper and lightly pass: 'Your love is sweet as hawthorn is, Your hope green as the grass.

'The hawthorn's faint and quickly gone, The grass in autumn dies; Put by your life, and see the spring With everlasting eyes.'

PAST AND PRESENT

Daisies are over Nyren, and Hambledon Hardly remembers any summer gone: And never again the Kentish elms shall see Mynn, or Fuller Pilch, or Colin Blythe. --Nor shall I see them, unless perhaps a ghost Watching the elder ghosts beyond the moon. But here in common sunshine I have seen George Hirst, not yet a ghost, substantial, His off-drives mellow as brown ale, and crisp Merry late cuts, and brave Chaucerian pulls; Waddington's fury and the patience of Dipper; And twenty easy artful overs of Rhodes, So many stanzas of the Faerie Queen.

THE AUDIT

Mere living wears the most of life away: Even the lilies take thought for many things, For frost in April and for drought in May, And from no careless heart the skylark sings.

Those cheap utilities of rain and sun Describe the foolish circle of our years, Until death takes us, doing all undone, And there's an end at last to hopes and fears.

Though song be hollow and no dreams come true, Still songs and dreams are better than the truth: But there's so much to get, so much to do, Mary must drudge like Martha, dainty Ruth

Forget the morning music in the corn, And Rachel grudge when Leah's boys are born.

THE APPLE TREE

Secret and wise as nature, like the wind Melancholy or light-hearted without reason, And like the waxing or the waning moon Ever pale and lovely: you are like these Because you are free and live by your own law; While I, desiring life and half alive, Dream, hope, regret and fear and blunder on. Your beauty is your life and my content, And I will liken you to an apple-tree, Mary and Margaret playing under the branches, And everywhere soft shadows like your eyes, And scattered blossom like your little smiles.

HER NEW-YEAR POSY

When I seek the world through For images of you, Though apple-blossom is glad And the lily stately-sad, Gilliflowers kind of breath, Rosemary true till death; Though the wind can stir the grass To memories as you pass. And the soft-singing streams Are music like your dreams; Though constant stars embrace The quiet of your face, Your smile lights up sunrise, And evening's in your eyes-- Each so shadows its part, All cannot show your heart; And weighing the beauty of earth I see it so little worth, When reckoned beside you, That I hold heaven for true --But all my heaven is you.

COUNTING SHEEP

Half-awake I walked A dimly-seen sweet hawthorn lane Until sleep came; I lingered at a gate and talked A little with a lonely lamb. He told me of the great still night, Of calm starlight, And of the lady moon, who'd stoop For a kiss sometimes; Of grass as soft as sleep, of rhymes The tired flowers sang: The ageless April tales Of how, when sheep grew old, As their faith told, They went without a pang To far green fields, where fall Perpetual streams that call To deathless nightingales. And then I saw, hard by, A shepherd lad with shining eyes, And round him gathered one by one Countless sheep, snow-white; More and more they crowded With tender cries, Till all the field was full Of voices and of coming sheep. Countless they came, and I Watched, until deep As dream-fields lie I was asleep.

THE TREES AT NIGHT

Under vague silver moonlight The trees are lovely and ghostly, In the pale blue of the night There are few stars to see.

The leaves are green still, but brown-blent: They stir not, only known By a poignant delicate scent To the lonely moon blown.

The lonely lovely trees sigh For summer spent and gone: A few homing leaves drift by, Poor souls bewildered and wan.

THE DEAD

How shall the living be comforted for the dead When they are gone, and nothing's left behind But a vague music of the words they said And a fast-fading image in the mind?

Let no forgetting sully that dim grace; Our heart's infirmity is too easily won To set a new love in the old love's place And seek fresh vanity under the sun.

Time brings to us at last, as night the stars, The starry silence of eternity: For there is no discharge in our long wars, Nor balm for wounds, nor love's security.

Be patient to the end, and you shall sleep Pillowed on heartsease and forget to weep.

* * * * *

D.H. LAWRENCE

SNAKE

A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough And rested his throat upon the stone bottom, And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness, He sipped with his straight mouth, Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough, And I, like a second-comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do, And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do, And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment, And stooped and drank a little more, Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me He must be killed, For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel honoured? I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices: If you were not afraid you would kill him.

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more That he should seek my hospitality From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken, And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black, Seeming to lick his lips, And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air, And slowly turned his head, And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream, Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered further, A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher, I picked up a clumsy log And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him, But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste, Writhed like lightning, and was gone Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front, At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross, And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate: A pettiness.

* * * * *

HAROLD MONRO

THISTLEDOWN

This might have been a place for sleep, But, as from that small hollow there Hosts of bright thistledown begin Their dazzling journey through the air, An idle man can only stare.

They grip their withered edge of stalk In brief excitement for the wind; They hold a breathless final talk, And when their filmy cables part One almost hears a little cry.

Some cling together while they wait, And droop and gaze and hesitate, But others leap along the sky, Or circle round and calmly choose The gust they know they ought to use;

While some in loving pairs will glide, Or watch the others as they pass, Or rest on flowers in the grass, Or circle through the shining day Like silvery butterflies at play.

Some catch themselves to every mound, Then lingeringly and slowly move As if they knew the precious ground Were opening for their fertile love: They almost try to dig, they need So much to plant their thistle-seed.

REAL PROPERTY

'Tell me about that harvest field.' Oh! Fifty acres of living bread. The colour has painted itself in my heart; The form is patterned in my head.

So now I take it everywhere, See it whenever I look round; Hear it growing through every sound, Know exactly the sound it makes-- Remembering, as one must all day, Under the pavement the live earth aches.

Trees are at the farther end, Limes all full of the mumbling bee: So there must be a harvest field Whenever one thinks of a linden tree.

A hedge is about it, very tall, Hazy and cool, and breathing sweet. Round paradise is such a wall, And all the day, in such a way, In paradise the wild birds call.

You only need to close your eyes And go within your secret mind, And you'll be into paradise: I've learnt quite easily to find Some linden trees and drowsy bees, A tall sweet hedge with the corn behind.

I will not have that harvest mown: I'll keep the corn and leave the bread. I've bought that field; it's now my own: I've fifty acres in my head. I take it as a dream to bed. I carry it about all day....

Sometimes when I have found a friend I give a blade of corn away.

UNKNOWN COUNTRY

Here, in this other world, they come and go With easy dream-like movements to and fro. They stare through lovely eyes, yet do not seek An answering gaze, or that a man should speak. Had I a load of gold, and should I come Bribing their friendship, and to buy a home, They would stare harder and would slightly frown: I am a stranger from the distant town.

Oh, with what patience I have tried to win The favour of the hostess of the Inn! Have I not offered toast on frothing toast Looking toward the melancholy host; Praised the old wall-eyed mare to please the groom; Laughed to the laughing maid and fetched her broom; Stood in the background not to interfere When the cool ancients frolicked at their beer; Talked only in my turn, and made no claim For recognition or by voice or name, Content to listen, and to watch the blue Or grey of eyes, or what good hands can do?

Sun-freckled lads, who at the dusk of day Stroll through the village with a scent of hay Clinging about you from the windy hill, Why do you keep your secret from me still? You loiter at the corner of the street; I in the distance silently entreat. I know too well I'm city-soiled, but then So are today ten million other men. My heart is true: I've neither will nor charms To lure away your maidens from your arms. Trust me a little. Must I always stand Lonely, a stranger from an unknown land?

There is a riddle here. Though I'm more wise Than you, I cannot read your simple eyes. I find the meaning of their gentle look More difficult than any learned book. I pass: perhaps a moment you may chaff My walk, and so dismiss me with a laugh. I come: you all, most grave and most polite, Stand silent first, then wish me calm Good-Night. When I go back to town some one will say: 'I think that stranger must have gone away.' And 'Surely!' some one else will then reply. Meanwhile, within the dark of London, I Shall, with my forehead resting on my hand, Not cease remembering your distant land; Endeavouring to reconstruct aright How some treed hill has looked in evening light; Or be imagining the blue of skies Now as in heaven, now as in your eyes; Or in my mind confusing looks or words Of yours with dawnlight, or the song of birds: Not able to resist, not even keep Myself from hovering near you in my sleep: You still as callous to my thought and me As flowers to the purpose of the bee.

* * * * *

ROBERT NICHOLS

NIGHT RHAPSODY

How beautiful it is to wake at night, When over all there reigns the ultimate spell Of complete silence, darkness absolute, To feel the world, tilted on axle-tree, In slow gyration, with no sensible sound, Unless to ears of unimagined beings, Resident incorporeal or stretched In vigilance of ecstasy among Ethereal paths and the celestial maze. The rumour of our onward course now brings A steady rustle, as of some strange ship Darkling with soundless sail all set and amply filled By volume of an ever-constant air, At fullest night, through seas for ever calm, Swept lovely and unknown for ever on.

How beautiful it is to wake at night, Embalmed in darkness watchful, sweet, and still, As is the brain's mood flattered by the swim Of currents circumvolvent in the void, To lie quite still and to become aware Of the dim light cast by nocturnal skies On a dim earth beyond the window-ledge, So, isolate from the friendly company Of the huge universe which turns without, To brood apart in calm and joy awhile Until the spirit sinks and scarcely knows Whether self is, or if self only is, For ever....

How beautiful to wake at night, Within the room grown strange, and still, and sweet, And live a century while in the dark The dripping wheel of silence slowly turns; To watch the window open on the night, A dewy silent deep where nothing stirs, And, lying thus, to feel dilate within The press, the conflict, and the heavy pulse Of incommunicable sad ecstasy, Growing until the body seems outstretched In perfect crucifixion on the arms Of a cross pointing from last void to void, While the heart dies to a mere midway spark.

All happiness thou holdest, happy night, For such as lie awake and feel dissolved The peaceful spice of darkness and the cool Breath hither blown from the ethereal flowers That mist thy fields! O happy, happy wounds, Conditioned by existence in humanity, That have such powers to heal them! slow sweet sighs Torn from the bosom, silent wails, the birth Of such long-treasured tears as pain his eyes, Who, waking, hears the divine solicitudes Of midnight with ineffable purport charged.

How beautiful it is to wake at night, Another night, in darkness yet more still, Save when the myriad leaves on full-fledged boughs, Filled rather by the perfume's wandering flood Than by dispansion of the still sweet air, Shall from the furthest utter silences In glimmering secrecy have gathered up An host of whisperings and scattered sighs, To loose at last a sound as of the plunge And lapsing seethe of some Pacific wave, Which, risen from the star-thronged outer troughs, Rolls in to wreathe with circling foam away The flutter of the golden moths that haunt The star's one glimmer daggered on wet sands.

So beautiful it is to wake at night! Imagination, loudening with the surf Of the midsummer wind among the boughs, Gathers my spirit from the haunts remote Of faintest silence and the shades of sleep, To bear me on the summit of her wave Beyond known shores, beyond the mortal edge Of thought terrestrial, to hold me poised Above the frontiers of infinity, To which in the full reflux of the wave Come soon I must, bubble of solving foam, Borne to those other shores--now never mine Save for a hovering instant, short as this Which now sustains me ere I be drawn back-- To learn again, and wholly learn, I trust, How beautiful it is to wake at night.

NOVEMBER

As I walk the misty hill All is languid, fogged, and still; Not a note of any bird Nor any motion's hint is heard, Save from soaking thickets round Trickle or water's rushing sound, And from ghostly trees the drip Of runnel dews or whispering slip Of leaves, which in a body launch Listlessly from the stagnant branch To strew the marl, already strown, With litter sodden as its own,

A rheum, like blight, hangs on the briars, And from the clammy ground suspires A sweet frail sick autumnal scent Of stale frost furring weeds long spent; And wafted on, like one who sleeps, A feeble vapour hangs or creeps, Exhaling on the fungus mould A breath of age, fatigue, and cold.

Oozed from the bracken's desolate track, By dark rains havocked and drenched black. A fog about the coppice drifts, Or slowly thickens up and lifts Into the moist, despondent air.

Mist, grief, and stillness everywhere....

And in me, too, there is no sound Save welling as of tears profound, Where in me cloud, grief, stillness reign, And an intolerable pain Begins. Rolled on as in a flood there come Memories of childhood, boyhood, home, And that which, sudden, pangs me most, Thought of the first-belov'd, long lost, Too easy lost! My cold lips frame Tremulously the familiar name, Unheard of her upon my breath: 'Elizabeth. Elizabeth.'

No voice answers on the hill, All is shrouded, sad, and still ... Stillness, fogged brakes, and fog on high. Only in me the waters cry Who mourn the hours now slipped for ever, Hours of boding, joy, and fever, When we loved, by chance beguiled, I a boy and you a child-- Child! but with an angel's air, Astonished, eager, unaware, Or elfin's, wandering with a grace Foreign to any fireside race, And with a gaiety unknown In the light feet and hair backblown, And with a sadness yet more strange, In meagre cheeks which knew to change Or faint or fired more swift than sight, And forlorn hands and lips pressed white, And fragile voice, and head downcast, Hiding tears, lifted at the last To speed with one pale smile the wise Glance of the grey immortal eyes.

How strange it was that we should dare Compound a miracle so rare As, 'twixt this pace and Time's next pace, Each to discern th' elected's face! Yet stranger that the high sweet fire, In hearts nigh foreign to desire, Could burn, sigh, weep, and burn again As oh, it never has since then! Most strange of all that we so young Dared learn but would not speak love's tongue, Love pledged but in the reveries Of our sad and dreaming eyes....

Now upon such journey bound me, Grief, disquiet, and stillness round me, As bids me where I cannot tell, Turn I and sigh, unseen, farewell. Breathe the name as soft as mist, Lips, which nor kissed her nor were kissed! And again--a sigh, a death-- 'Elizabeth. Elizabeth.'

No voice answers; but the mist Glows for a moment amethyst Ere the hid sun dissolves away, And dimness, growing dimmer grey, Hides all ... till nothing can I see But the blind walls enclosing me, And no sound and no motion hear But the vague water throbbing near, Sole voice upon the darkening hill Where all is blank and dead and still.

* * * * *

J. D. C. FELLOW

AFTER LONDON

London Bridge is broken down; Green is the grass on Ludgate Hill; I know a farmer in Camden Town Killed a brock by Pentonville.

I have heard my grandam tell How some thousand years ago Houses stretched from Camberwell Right to Highbury and Bow.

Down by Shadwell's golden meads Tall ships' masts would stand as thick As the pretty tufted reeds That the Wapping children pick.

All the kings from end to end Of all the world paid tribute then, And meekly on their knees would bend To the King of the Englishmen.

Thinks I while I dig my plot, What if your grandam's tales be true? Thinks I, be they true or not, What's the odds to a fool like you?

Thinks I, while I smoke my pipe Here beside the tumbling Fleet, Apples drop when they are ripe, And when they drop are they most sweet.

ON A FRIEND WHO DIED SUDDENLY UPON THE SEASHORE

Quiet he lived, and quietly died; Nor, like the unwilling tide, Did once complain or strive To stay one brief hour more alive. But as a summer wave Serenely for a while Will lift a crest to the sun, Then sink again, so he Back to the bright heavens gave An answering smile; Then quietly, having run His course, bowed down his head, And sank unmurmuringly, Sank back into the sea, The silent, the unfathomable sea Of all the happy dead.

TENEBRAE

They say that I shall find him if I go Along the dusty highways, or the green Tracks of the downland shepherds, or between The swaying corn, or where cool waters flow; And others say, that speak as if they know, That daily in the cities, in the mean Dark streets, amid the crowd he may be seen, With thieves and harlots wandering to and fro.

But I am blind. How shall a blind man dare Venture along the roaring crowded street, Or branching roads where I may never hit The way he has gone? But someday if I sit Quietly at this corner listening, there May come this way the slow sound of his feet.

WHEN ALL IS SAID

When all is said And all is done Beneath the Sun, And Man lies dead;

When all the earth Is a cold grave, And no more brave Bright things have birth;

When cooling sun And stone-cold world, Together hurled, Flame up as one--

O Sons of Men, When all is flame, What of your fame And splendour then?

When all is fire And flaming air, What of your rare And high desire

To turn the clod To a thing divine, The earth a shrine, And Man the God?

* * * * *

FRANK PREWETT

TO MY MOTHER IN CANADA, FROM SICK-BED IN ITALY

Dear mother, from the sure sun and warm seas Of Italy, I, sick, remember now What sometimes is forgot in times of ease, Our love, the always felt but unspoken vow. So send I beckoning hands from here to there, And kiss your black once, now white thin-grown hair And your stooped small shoulder and pinched brow.

Here, mother, there is sunshine every day; It warms the bones and breathes upon the heart; But you I see out-plod a little way, Bitten with cold; your cheeks and fingers smart. Would you were here, we might in temples lie, And look from azure into azure sky, And paradise achieve, slipping death's part.

But now 'tis time for sleep: I think no speech There needs to pass between us what we mean, For we soul-venturing mingle each with each. So, mother, pass across the world unseen And share in me some wished-for dream in you; For so brings destiny her pledges true, The mother withered, in the son grown green.

VOICES OF WOMEN

Met ye my love? Ye might in France have met him; He has a wooing smile, Who sees cannot forget him! Met ye my Love? --We shared full many a mile.

Saw ye my Love? In lands far-off he has been, With his yellow-tinted hair-- In Egypt such ye have seen; Ye knew my love? --I was his brother there.

Heard ye my love? My love ye must have heard, For his voice when he will Tinkles like cry of a bird; Heard ye my love? --We sang on a Grecian hill.

Behold your love, And how shall I forget him, His smile, his hair, his song? Alas, no maid shall get him For all her love, Where he sleeps a million strong.

THE SOMME VALLEY, JUNE, 1917

Comrade, why do you weep? Is it sorrow for a friend Who fell, rifle in hand, His last stand at an end?

The thunder-lipped grey guns Lament him, fierce and slow, Where he found his dreamless bed, Head to head with a foe.

The sweet lark beats on high For the peace of those who sleep In the quiet embrace of earth: Comrade, why do you weep?

BURIAL STONES

The blue sky arches wide From hill to hill; The little grasses stand Upright and still.

Only these stones to tell The deadly strife, The all-important schemes, The greed for life.

For they are gone, who fought; But still the skies Stretch blue, aloof, unchanged, From rise to rise.

SNOW-BUNTINGS

They come fluttering helpless to the ground Like wreaths of wind-caught snow, Uttering a plaintive, chirping sound, And rise and fall, and know not where they go.

So small they are, with feathers ruffled blown, Adrift between earth desolate and leaden sky; Nor have they ever known Any but frozen earth, and scudding clouds on high.

What hand doth guide these hapless creatures small To sweet seeds that the withered grasses hold?-- The little children of men go hungry all, And stiffen and cry with numbing cold.

In a sudden gust the flock are whirled away Uttering a frightened, chirping cry, And are lost like a wraith of departing day, Adrift between earth desolate and leaden sky.

THE KELSO ROAD

Morning and evening are mine, And the bright noon-day; But night to no man doth belong When the sad ghosts play.

From Kelso town I took the road By the full-flood Tweed; The black clouds swept across the moon With devouring greed.

Seek ye no peace who tread the night; I felt above my head Blowing the cloud's edge, faces wry In pale fury spread.

Twelve surly elves were digging graves Beside black Eden brook; Eleven dug and stared at me, But one read in a book.

In Birgham trees and hedges rocked, The moon was drowned in black; At Hirsel woods I shrieked to find A fiend astride my back.

His legs he closed about my breast, His hands upon my head, Till Coldstream lights beamed in the trees And he wailed and fled.

Morning and evening are mine, And the bright noon-heat, But at night the sad thin ghosts For their revels meet.

BALDON LANE

As I went down the Baldon lane, Alone I went, as oft I went, Weighing if it were loss or gain To give a maidenhead. I met, just as the day was spent, A fancy man, a gentleman, Who smiled on me, and then began, 'Come sit with me, my maid.'

With him had I no mind to sit In Baldon lane for loss or gain, Said I to him with feeble wit, And close beside him crept; The branches might have heard my pain, The sudden cry, the maiden cry,-- My fancy man departed sly, And woman-like, I wept.

I kept the roads until my bed, A nine months' time, a weary time, And then to Baldon woods I fled In Spring-time weather mild; The kindly trees, they fear no crime, So back I came, to Baldon came, Received their welcome without blame, And moaned and dropped my child.

The poor brat gasped an hour or so, A goodly child, a thoughtful child; Perceiving nought for us but woe It stretched and sudden died; But I, when Spring breaks fresh and mild, To Baldon lane return again, For there's my home, and women vain Must hold their homes in pride.

COME GIRL, AND EMBRACE

Come girl, and embrace And ask no more I wed thee; Know then you are sweet of face, Soft-limbed and fashioned lovingly;-- Must you go marketing your charms In cunning woman-like, And filled with old wives' tales' alarms?

I tell you, girl, come embrace; What reck we of churchling and priest With hands on paunch, and chubby face? Behold, we are life's pitiful least, And we perish at the first smell Of death, whither heaves earth To spurn us cringing into hell.

Come girl, and embrace; Nay, cry not, poor wretch, nor plead, But haste, for life strikes a swift pace, And I burn with envious greed: Know you not, fool, we are the mock Of gods, time, clothes, and priests? But come, there is no time for talk.

* * * * *

PETER QUENNELL

PROCNE (A FRAGMENT)

So she became a bird, and bird-like danced On a long sloe-bough, treading the silver blossom With a bird's lovely feet; And shaken blossoms fell into the hands Of Sunlight. And he held them for a moment And let them drop. And in the autumn Procne came again And leapt upon the crooked sloe-bough singing, And the dark berries winked like earth-dimmed beads, As the branch swung beneath her dancing feet.

A MAN TO A SUNFLOWER

See, I have bent thee by thy saffron hair --O most strange masker-- Towards my face, thy face so full of eyes --O almost legendary monster-- Thee of the saffron, circling hair I bend, Bend by my fingers knotted in thy hair --Hair like broad flames. So, shall I swear by beech-husk, spindleberry, To break thee, saffron hair and peering eye, --To have the mastery?

PERCEPTION

While I have vision, while the glowing-bodied, Drunken with light, untroubled clouds, with all this cold sphered sky, Are flushed above trees where the dew falls secretly, Where no man goes, where beasts move silently, As gently as light feathered winds that fall Chill among hollows filled with sighing grass; While I have vision, while my mind is borne A finger's length above reality, Like that small plaining bird that drifts and drops Among these soft lapped hollows; Robed gods, whose passing fills calm nights with sudden wind, Whose spears still bar our twilight, bend and fill Wind-shaken, troubled spaces with some peace, With clear untroubled beauty; That I may rise not chill and shrilling through perpetual day, Remote, amazed, larklike, but may hold The hours as firm, warm fruit, This finger's length above reality.

PURSUIT

As wind-drowned scents that bring to other hills Disquieting memories of silences, Broad silences beyond the memory; As feathered swaying seeds, as wings of birds Dappling the sky with honey-coloured gold; Faint murmurs, clear, keen-winged of swift ideas Break my small silences; And I must hunt and come to tire of hunting Strange laughing thoughts that roister through my mind, Hopelessly swift to flit; and so I hunt And come to tire of hunting.

* * * * *

V. SACKVILLE-WEST

A SAXON SONG

Tools with the comely names, Mattock and scythe and spade, Couth and bitter as flames, Clean, and bowed in the blade,-- A man and his tools make a man and his trade.

Breadth of the English shires, Hummock and kame and mead, Tang of the reeking byres, Land of the English breed,-- A man and his land make a man and his creed.

Leisurely flocks and herds, Cool-eyed cattle that come Mildly to wonted words, Swine that in orchards roam,-- A man and his beasts make a man and his home.

Children sturdy and flaxen Shouting in brotherly strife, Like the land they are Saxon, Sons of a man and his wife,-- For a man and his loves make a man and his life.

MARIANA IN THE NORTH

All her youth is gone, her beautiful youth outworn, Daughter of tarn and tor, the moors that were once her home No longer know her step on the upland tracks forlorn Where she was wont to roam.

All her hounds are dead, her beautiful hounds are dead, That paced beside the hoofs of her high and nimble horse, Or streaked in lean pursuit of the tawny hare that fled Out of the yellow gorse.

All her lovers have passed, her beautiful lovers have passed, The young and eager men that fought for her arrogant hand, And the only voice which endures to mourn for her at the last Is the voice of the lonely land.

FULL MOON

She was wearing the coral taffeta trousers Someone had brought her from Ispahan, And the little gold coat with pomegranate blossoms, And the coral-hafted feather fan; But she ran down a Kentish lane in the moonlight, And skipped in the pool of the moon as she ran.

She cared not a rap for all the big planets, For Betelgeuse or Aldebaran, And all the big planets cared nothing for her, That small impertinent charlatan; But she climbed on a Kentish stile in the moonlight, And laughed at the sky through the sticks of her fan.

SAILING SHIPS

Lying on Downs above the wrinkling bay I with the kestrels shared the cleanly day, The candid day; wind-shaven, brindled turf; Tall cliffs; and long sea-line of marbled surf From Cornish Lizard to the Kentish Nore Lipping the bulwarks of the English shore, While many a lovely ship below sailed by On unknown errand, kempt and leisurely; And after each, oh, after each, my heart Fled forth, as, watching from the Downs apart, I shared with ships good joys and fortunes wide That might befall their beauty and their pride;

Shared first with them the blessed void repose Of oily days at sea, when only rose The porpoise's slow wheel to break the sheen Of satin water indolently green, When for'ard the crew, caps tilted over eyes, Lay heaped on deck; slept; mumbled; smoked; threw dice; The sleepy summer days; the summer nights (The coast pricked out with rings of harbour-lights), The motionless nights, the vaulted nights of June When high in the cordage drifts the entangled moon, And blocks go knocking, and the sheets go slapping, And lazy swells against the sides come lapping; And summer mornings off red Devon rocks, Faint inland bells at dawn and crowing cocks;

Shared swifter days, when headlands into ken Trod grandly; threatened; and were lost again, Old fangs along the battlemented coast; And followed still my ship, when winds were most Night-purified, and, lying steeply over, She fled the wind as flees a girl her lover, Quickened by that pursuit for which she fretted, Her temper by the contest proved and whetted. Wild stars swept overhead; her lofty spars Reared to a ragged heaven sown with stars As leaping out from narrow English ease She faced the roll of long Atlantic seas.

Her captain then was I, I was her crew, The mind that laid her course, the wake she drew, The waves that rose against her bows, the gales,-- Nay, I was more: I was her very sails Rounded before the wind, her eager keel, Her straining mast-heads, her responsive wheel, Her pennon stiffened like a swallow's wing; Yes, I was all her slope and speed and swing, Whether by yellow lemons and blue sea She dawdled through the isles off Thessaly, Or saw the palms like sheaves of scimitars On desert's verge below the sunset bars, Or passed the girdle of the planet where The Southern Cross looks over to the Bear, And strayed, cool Northerner beneath strange skies, Flouting the lure of tropic estuaries, Down that long coast, and saw Magellan's Clouds arise.

And some that beat up Channel homeward-bound I watched, and wondered what they might have found, What alien ports enriched their teeming hold With crates of fruit or bars of unwrought gold? And thought how London clerks with paper-clips Had filed the bills of lading of those ships, Clerks that had never seen the embattled sea, But wrote down jettison and barratry, Perils, Adventures, and the Act of God, Having no vision of such wrath flung broad; Wrote down with weary and accustomed pen The classic dangers of sea-faring men; And wrote 'Restraint of Princes,' and 'the Acts Of the King's Enemies,' as vacant facts, Blind to the ambushed seas, the encircling roar Of angry nations foaming into war.

TRIO

So well she knew them both! yet as she came Into the room, and heard their speech Of tragic meshes knotted with her name, And saw them, foes, but meeting each with each Closer than friends, souls bared through enmity, Beneath their startled gaze she thought that she Broke as the stranger on their conference, And stole abashed from thence.

BITTERNESS

Yes, they were kind exceedingly; most mild Even in indignation, taking by the hand One that obeyed them mutely, as a child Submissive to a law he does not understand.

They would not blame the sins his passion wrought. No, they were tolerant and Christian, saying, 'We Only deplore ...' saying they only sought To help him, strengthen him, to show him love; but he

Following them with unrecalcitrant tread, Quiet, towards their town of kind captivities, Having slain rebellion, ever turned his head Over his shoulder, seeking still with his poor eyes

Her motionless figure on the road. The song Rang still between them, vibrant bell to answering bell, Full of young glory as a bugle; strong; Still brave; now breaking like a sea-bird's cry 'Farewell!'

And they, they whispered kindly to him 'Come! Now we have rescued you. Let your heart heal. Forget! She was your lawless dark familiar.' Dumb, He listened, and they thought him acquiescent. Yet,

(Knowing the while that they were very kind) Remembrance clamoured in him: 'She was wild and free, Magnificent in giving; she was blind To gain or loss, and, loving, loved but me,--but me!

'Valiant she was, and comradely, and bold; High-mettled; all her thoughts a challenge, like gay ships Adventurous, with treasure in the hold. I met her with the lesson put into my lips,

'Spoke reason to her, and she bowed her head, Having no argument, and giving up the strife. She said I should be free. I think she said That, for the asking, she would give me all her life.'

And still they led him onwards, and he still Looked back towards her standing there; and they, content, Cheered him and praised him that he did their will. The gradual distance hid them, and she turned, and went.

EVENING

When little lights in little ports come out, Quivering down through water with the stars, And all the fishing fleet of slender spars Range at their moorings, veer with tide about;

When race of wind is stilled and sails are furled, And underneath our single riding-light The curve of black-ribbed deck gleams palely white, And slumbrous waters pool a slumbrous world;

--Then, and then only, have I thought how sweet Old age might sink upon a windy youth, Quiet beneath the riding-light of truth, Weathered through storms, and gracious in retreat.

* * * * *

EDWARD SHANKS

THE ROCK POOL

This is the sea. In these uneven walls A wave lies prisoned. Far and far away Outward to ocean, as the slow tide falls, Her sisters through the capes that hold the bay Dancing in lovely liberty recede. Yet lovely in captivity she lies, Filled with soft colours, where the wavering weed Moves gently and discloses to our eyes Blurred shining veins of rock and lucent shells Under the light-shot water; and here repose Small quiet fish and dimly glowing bells Of sleeping sea-anemones that close Their tender fronds and will not now awake Till on these rocks the waves returning break.

THE GLADE

We may raise our voices even in this still glade: Though the colours and shadows and sounds so fleeting seem, We shall not dispel them. They are not made Frailly by earth or hands, but immortal in our dream.

We may touch the faint violets with the hands of thought, Or lay the pale core of the wild arum bare; And for ever in our minds the white wild cherry is caught, Cloudy against the sky and melting into air.

This which we have seen is eternally ours, No others shall tread in the glade which now we see; Their hands shall not touch the frail tranquil flowers, Nor their hearts faint in wonder at the wild white tree.

MEMORY

In silence and in darkness memory wakes Her million sheathed buds, and breaks That day-long winter when the light and noise And hard bleak breath of the outward-looking will Made barren her tender soil, when every voice Of her million airy birds was muffled or still.

One bud-sheath breaks: One sudden voice awakes.

What change grew in our hearts, seeing one night That moth-winged ship drifting across the bay, Her broad sail dimly white On cloudy waters and hills as vague as they? Some new thing touched our spirits with distant delight, Half-seen, half-noticed, as we loitered down, Talking in whispers, to the little town, Down from the narrow hill --Talking in whispers, for the air so still Imposed its stillness on our lips, and made A quiet equal with the equal shade That filled the slanting walk. That phantom now Slides with slack canvas and unwhispering prow Through the dark sea that this dark room has made.

Or the night of the closed eyes will turn to day, And all day's colours start out of the gray. The sun burns on the water. The tall hills Push up their shady groves into the sky, And fail and cease where the intense light spills Its parching torrent on the gaunt and dry Rock of the further mountains, whence the snow That softened their harsh edges long is gone, And nothing tempers now The hot flood falling on the barren stone.

O memory, take and keep All that my eyes, your servants, bring you home-- Those other days beneath the low white dome Of smooth-spread clouds that creep As slow and soft as sleep, When shade grows pale and the cypress stands upright, Distinct in the cool light, Rigid and solid as a dark hewn stone; And many another night, That melts in darkness on the narrow quays, And changes every colour and every tone, And soothes the waters to a softer ease, When under constellations coldly bright The homeward sailors sing their way to bed On ships that motionless in harbour float. The circling harbour-lights flash green and red; And, out beyond, a steady travelling boat, Breaking the swell with slow industrious oars, At each stroke pours Pale lighted water from the lifted blade. Now in the painted houses all around Slow-darkening windows call The empty unwatched middle of the night. The tide's few inches rise without a sound. On the black promontory's windless head, The last awake, the fireflies rise and fall And tangle up their dithering skeins of light.

O memory, take and keep All that my eyes, your servants, bring you home! Thick through the changing year The unexpected, rich-charged moments come, That you twixt wake and sleep In the lids of the closed eyes shall make appear.

This is life's certain good, Though in the end it be not good at all When the dark end arises, And the stripped, startled spirit must let fall The amulets that could Prevail with life's but not death's sad devices.

Then, like a child from whom an older child Forces its gathered treasures, Its beads and shells and strings of withered flowers, Tokens of recent pleasures, The soul must lose in eyes weeping and wild Those prints of vanished hours.

WOMAN'S SONG

No more upon my bosom rest thee, Too often have my hands caressed thee, My lips thou knowest well, too well; Lean to my heart no more thine ear My spirit's living truth to hear --It has no more to tell.

In what dark night, in what strange night, Burnt to the butt the candle's light That lit our room so long? I do not know, I thought I knew How love could be both sweet and true: I also thought it strong.

Where has the flame departed? Where, Amid the empty waste of air, Is that which dwelt with us? Was it a fancy? Did we make Only a show for dead love's sake, It being so piteous?

No more against my bosom press thee, Seek no more that my hands caress thee, Leave the sad lips thou hast known so well; If to my heart thou lean thine ear, There grieving thou shalt only hear Vain murmuring of an empty shell.

THE WIND

Blow harder, wind, and drive My blood from hands and face back to the heart. Cry over ridges and down tapering coombs, Carry the flying dapple of the clouds Over the grass, over the soft-grained plough, Stroke with ungentle hand the hill's rough hair Against its usual set. Snatch at the reins in my dead hands and push me Out of my saddle, blow my labouring pony Across the track. You only drive my blood Nearer the heart from face and hands, and plant there, Slowly burning, unseen, but alive and wonderful, A numb, confused joy! This little world's in tumult. Far away The dim waves rise and wrestle with each other And fall down headlong on the beach. And here Quick gusts fly up the funnels of the valleys And meet their raging fellows on the hill-tops, And we are in the midst. This beating heart, enriched with the hands' blood, Stands in the midst and feels the warm joy burn In solitude and silence, while all about The gusts clamour like living, angry birds, And the gorse seems hardly tethered to the ground. Blow louder, wind, about My square-set house, rattle the windows, lift The trap-door to the loft above my head And let it fall, clapping. Yell in the trees, And throw a rotted elm-branch to the ground, Flog the dry trailers of my climbing rose-- Make deep, O wind, my rest!

A LONELY PLACE

The leafless trees, the untidy stack Last rainy summer raised in haste, Watch the sky turn from fair to black And watch the river fill and waste;

But never a footstep comes to trouble The sea-gulls in the new-sown corn, Or pigeons rising from late stubble And flashing lighter as they turn.

Or if a footstep comes, 'tis mine Sharp on the road or soft on grass: Silence divides along my line And shuts behind me as I pass.

No other comes, no labourer To cut his shaggy truss of hay, Along the road no traveller, Day after day, day after day.

And even I, when I come here, Move softly on, subdued and still, Lonely as death, though I can hear Men shouting on the other hill.

Day after day, though no one sees, The lonely place no different seems; The trees, the stack, still images Constant in who can say whose dreams?

* * * * *

J.C. SQUIRE

ELEGY

I vaguely wondered what you were about, But never wrote when you had gone away; Assumed you better, quenched the uneasy doubt You might need faces, or have things to say. Did I think of you last evening? Dead you lay. O bitter words of conscience! I hold the simple message, And fierce with grief the awakened heart cries out: 'It shall not be to-day;

It is still yesterday; there is time yet!' Sorrow would strive backward to wrench the sun, But the sun moves. Our onward course is set, The wake streams out, the engine pulses run Droning, a lonelier voyage is begun. It is all too late for turning, You are past all mortal signal, There will be time for nothing but regret And the memory of things done!

The quiet voice that always counselled best, The mind that so ironically played Yet for mere gentleness forebore the jest. The proud and tender heart that sat in shade Nor once solicited another's aid, Yet was so grateful always For trifles lightly given, The silences, the melancholy guessed Sometimes, when your eyes strayed.

But always when you turned, you talked the more. Through all our literature your way you took With modest ease; yet would you soonest pore, Smiling, with most affection in your look, On the ripe ancient and the curious nook. Sage travellers, learned printers, Divines and buried poets, You knew them all, but never half your lore Was drawn from any book.

Stories and jests from field and town and port, And odd neglected scraps of history From everywhere, for you were of the sort, Cool and refined, who like rough company: Carter and barmaid, hawker and bargee, Wise pensioners and boxers With whom you drank, and listened To legends of old revelry and sport And customs of the sea.

I hear you: yet more clear than all one note, One sudden hail I still remember best, That came on sunny days from one afloat And drew me to the pane in certain quest Of a long brown face, bare arms and flimsy vest, In fragments through the branches, Above the green reflections: Paused by the willows in your varnished boat You, with your oars at rest.

Did that come back to you when you were dying? I think it did: you had much leisure there, And, with the things we knew, came quietly flying Memories of things you had seen we knew not where.

You watched again with meditative stare Places where you had wandered, Golden and calm in distance: Voices from all your altering past came sighing On the soft Hampshire air.

For there you sat a hundred miles away, A rug upon your knees, your hands gone frail, And daily bade your farewell to the day, A music blent of trees and clouds a-sail And figures in some old neglected tale: And watched the sunset gathering, And heard the birdsong fading, And went within when the last sleepy lay Passed to a farther vale,

Never complaining, and stepped up to bed More and more slow, a tall and sunburnt man Grown bony and bearded, knowing you would be dead Before the summer, glad your life began Even thus to end, after so short a span, And mused a space serenely, Then fell to easy slumber, At peace, content. For never again your head Need make another plan.

Most generous, most gentle, most discreet, Who left us ignorant to spare us pain: We went our ways with too forgetful feet And missed the chance that would not come again, Leaving with thoughts on pleasure bent, or gain, Fidelity unattested And services unrendered: The ears are closed, the heart has ceased to beat, And now all proof is vain.

Too late for other gifts, I give you this, Who took from you so much, so carelessly, On your far brows a first and phantom kiss, On your far grave a careful elegy. For one who loved all life and poetry, Sorrow in music bleeding, And friendship's last confession. But even as I speak that inner hiss Softly accuses me,

Saying: Those brows are senseless, deaf that tomb, This is the callous, cold resort of art. 'I give you this.' What do I give? to whom? Words to the air, and balm to my own heart, To its old luxurious and commanded smart. An end to all this tuning, This cynical masquerading; What comfort now in that far final gloom Can any song impart?

O yet I see you dawning from some heaven, Who would not suffer self-reproach to live In one to whom your friendship once was given. I catch a vision, faint and fugitive, Of a dark face with eyes contemplative, Deep eyes that smile in silence, And parted lips that whisper, 'Say nothing more, old friend, of being forgiven, There is nothing to forgive.'

MEDITATION IN LAMPLIGHT

What deaths men have died, not fighting but impotent. Hung on the wire, between trenches, burning and freezing, Groaning for water with armies of men so near; The fall over cliff, the clutch at the rootless grass, The beach rushing up, the whirling, the turning headfirst; Stiff writhings of strychnine, taken in error or haste, Angina pectoris, shudders of the heart; Failure and crushing by flying weight to the ground, Claws and jaws, the stink of a lion's breath; Swimming, a white belly, a crescent of teeth, Agony, and a spirting shredded limb, And crimson blood staining the green water; And, horror of horrors, the slow grind on the rack, The breaking bones, the stretching and bursting skin, Perpetual fainting and waking to see above The down-thrust mocking faces of cruel men, With the power of mercy, who gloat upon shrieks for mercy.

O pity me, God! O God, make tolerable, Make tolerable the end that awaits for me, And give me courage to die when the time comes, When the time comes as it must, however it comes, That I shrink not nor scream, gripped by the jaws of the vice; For the thought of it turns me sick, and my heart stands still, Knocks and stands still. O fearful, fearful Shadow, Kill me, let me die to escape the terror of thee!

A tap. Come in! Oh, no, I am perfectly well, Only a little tired. Take this one, it's softer. How are things going with you? Will you have some coffee? Well, of course it's trying sometimes, but never mind, It will probably be all right. Carry on, and keep cheerful. I shouldn't, if I were you, meet trouble half-way, It is always best to take everything as it comes.

LATE SNOW

The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling, Interminably passing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences, Came gullies and passed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges.

Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air; They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits, Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare.

Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled, Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding, But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland Passed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding.

O untroubled these moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows, And lovely the film of falling flakes; so wayward and slack; But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings, Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on her back.

* * * * *

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

SEASCAPE

Over that morn hung heaviness, until, Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beating A melancholy staccato on dead metal; Saw the bare-footed watch come running aft; Felt, far below, the sudden telegraph jangle Its harsh metallic challenge, thrice repeated: 'Stand to. Half-speed ahead. Slow. Stop her!' They stopped. The plunging pistons sank like a stopped heart: She held, she swayed, a hulk, a hollow carcass Of blistered iron that the grey-green, waveless, Unruffled tropic waters slapped languidly.

And, in that pause, a sinister whisper ran: Burial at Sea! a Portuguese official ... Poor fever-broken devil from Mozambique: Came on half tight: the doctor calls it heat-stroke. Why do they travel steerage? It's the exchange: So many million 'reis' to the pound! What did he look like? No one ever saw him: Took to his bunk, and drank and drank and died. They're ready! Silence! We clustered to the rail, Curious and half-ashamed. The well-deck spread A comfortable gulf of segregation Between ourselves and death. 'Burial at sea' ... The master holds a black book at arm's length; His droning voice comes for'ard: 'This our brother ... We therefore commit his body to the deep To be turned into corruption' ... The bo's'n whispers Hoarsely behind his hand: 'Now, all together!' The hatch-cover is tilted; a mummy of sailcloth Well ballasted with iron shoots clear of the poop; Falls, like a diving gannet. The green sea closes Its burnished skin; the snaky swell smoothes over ... While he, the man of the steerage, goes down, down, Feet foremost, sliding swiftly down the dim water, Swift to escape Those plunging shapes with pale, empurpled bellies That swirl and veer about him. He goes down Unerringly, as though he knew the way Through green, through gloom, to absolute watery darkness, Where no weed sways nor curious fin quivers: To the sad, sunless deeps where, endlessly, A downward drift of death spreads its wan mantle In the wave-moulded valleys that shall enfold him Till the sea give up its dead.

There shall he lie dispersed amid great riches: Such gold, such arrogance, so many bold hearts! All the sunken armadas pressed to powder By weight of incredible seas! That mingled wrack No livening sun shall visit till the crust Of earth be riven, or this rolling planet Reel on its axis; till the moon-chained tides, Unloosed, deliver up that white Atlantis Whose naked peaks shall bleach above the slaked Thirst of Sahara, fringed by weedy tangles Of Atlas's drown'd cedars, frowning eastward To where the sands of India lie cold, And heap'd Himalaya's a rib of coral Slowly uplifted, grain on grain....

We dream Too long! Another jangle of alarum Stabs at the engines: 'Slow. Half-speed. Full-speed!' The great bearings rumble; the screw churns, frothing Opaque water to downward-swelling plumes Milky as wood-smoke. A shoal of flying-fish Spurts out like animate spray. The warm breeze wakens; And we pass on, forgetting, Toward the solemn horizon of bronzed cumulus That bounds our brooding sea, gathering gloom That, when night falls, will dissipate in flaws Of watery lightning, washing the hot sky, Cleansing all hearts of heat and restlessness, Until, with day, another blue be born.

SCIROCCO

Out of that high pavilion Where the sick, wind-harassed sun In the whiteness of the day Ghostly shone and stole away-- Parched with the utter thirst Of unnumbered Libyan sands, Thou, cloud-gathering spirit, burst Out of arid Africa To the tideless sea, and smote On our pale, moon-cooled lands The hot breath of a lion's throat.

And that furnace-heated breath Blew into my placid dreams The heart of fire from whence it came: Haunt of beauty and of death Where the forest breaks in flame Of flaunting blossom, where the flood Of life pulses hot and stark, Where a wing'd death breeds in mud And tumult of tree-shadowed streams-- Black waters, desolately hurled Through the uttermost, lost, dark, Secret places of the world.

There, O swift and terrible Being, wast thou born; and thence, Like a demon loosed from hell, Stripped with rending wings the dense Echoing forests, till their bowed Plumes of trees like tattered cloud Were toss'd and torn, and cried aloud As the wood were rack'd with pain: Thence thou freed'st thy wings, and soon From the moaning, stricken plain In whorled eagle-soarings rose To melt the sun-defeating snows Of the Mountains of the Moon, To dull their glaciers with fierce breath, To slip the avalanches' rein, To set the laughing torrents free On the tented desert beneath, Where men of thirst must wither and die While the vultures stare in the sun's eye; Where slowly sifting sands are strown On broken cities, whose bleaching bones Whiten in moonlight stone on stone.

Over their pitiful dust thy blast Passed in columns of whirling sand, Leapt the desert and swept the strand Of the cool and quiet sea, Gathering mighty shapes, and proud Phantoms of monstrous, wave-born cloud, And northward drove this panoply Till the sky seemed charging on the land....

Yet, in that plumed helm, the most Of thy hot power was cooled or lost, So that it came to me at length, Faint and tepid and shorn of strength, To shiver an olive-grove that heaves A myriad moonlight-coloured leaves, And in the stone-pine's dome set free A murmur of the middle sea: A puff of warm air in the night So spent by its impetuous flight It scarce invades my pillar'd closes,-- To waft their fragrance from the sweet Buds of my lemon-coloured roses Or strew blown petals at my feet: To kiss my cheek with a warm sigh And in the tired darkness die.

THE QUAILS

(In the south of Italy the peasants put out the eyes of a captured quail so that its cries may attract the flocks of spring migrants into their nets.)

All through the night I have heard the stuttering call of a blind quail, A caged decoy, under a cairn of stones, Crying for light as the quails cry for love.

Other wanderers, Northward from Africa winging on numb pinions, dazed With beating winds and the sobbing of the sea, Hear, in a breath of sweet land-herbage, the call Of the blind one, their sister.... Hearing, their fluttered hearts Take courage, and they wheel in their dark flight, Knowing that their toil is over, dreaming to see The white stubbles of Abruzzi smitten with dawn, And spilt grain lying in the furrows, the squandered gold That is the delight of quails in their spring mating.

Land-scents grow keener, Penetrating the dank and bitter odour of brine That whitens their feathers; Far below, the voice of their sister calls them To plenty, and sweet water, and fulfilment. Over the pallid margin of dim seas breaking, Over the thickening in the darkness that is land, They fly. Their flight is ended. Wings beat no more. Downward they drift, one by one, like dark petals, Slowly, listlessly falling Into the mouth of horror: The nets....

Where men come trampling and crying with bright lanterns, Plucking their weak, entangled claws from the meshes of net, Clutching the soft brown bodies mottled with olive, Crushing the warm, fluttering flesh, in hands stained with blood, Till their quivering hearts are stilled, and the bright eyes, That are like a polished agate, glaze in death.

But the blind one, in her wicker cage, without ceasing Haunts this night of spring with her stuttering call, Knowing nothing of the terror that walks in darkness, Knowing only that some cruelty has stolen the light That is life, and that she must cry until she dies.

I, in the darkness, Heard, and my heart grew sick. But I know that to-morrow A smiling peasant will come with a basket of quails Wrapped in vine-leaves, prodding them with blood-stained fingers, Saying, 'Signore, you must cook them thus, and thus, With a sprig of basil inside them.' And I shall thank him, Carrying the piteous carcases into the kitchen Without a pang, without shame.

'Why should I be ashamed? Why should I rail Against the cruelty of men? Why should I pity, Seeing that there is no cruelty which men can imagine To match the subtle dooms that are wrought against them By blind spores of pestilence: seeing that each of us, Lured by dim hopes, flutters in the toils of death On a cold star that is spinning blindly through space Into the nets of time?'

So cried I, bitterly thrusting pity aside, Closing my lids to sleep. But sleep came not, And pity, with sad eyes, Crept to my side, and told me That the life of all creatures is brave and pityful Whether they be men, with dark thoughts to vex them, Or birds, wheeling in the swift joys of flight, Or brittle ephemerids, spinning to death in the haze Of gold that quivers on dim evening waters; Nor would she be denied. The harshness died Within me, and my heart Was caught and fluttered like the palpitant heart Of a brown quail, flying To the call of her blind sister, And death, in the spring night.

SONG AT SANTA CRUZ

Were there lovers in the lanes of Atlantis: Meeting lips and twining fingers In the mild Atlantis springtime? How should I know If there were lovers in the lanes of Atlantis When the dark sea drowned her mountains Many ages ago?

Were there poets in the paths of Atlantis: Eager poets, seeking beauty To adorn the women they worshipped? How can I say If there were poets in the paths of Atlantis? For the waters that drowned her mountains Washed their beauty away.

Were there women in the ways of Atlantis: Foolish women, who loved, as I do, Dreaming that mortal love was deathless? Ask me not now If there were women in the ways of Atlantis: There was no woman in all her mountains Wonderful as thou!

* * * * *

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Some of these lists are incomplete. They include poetical works only.)

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

Interludes and Poems. John Lane. 1908 Mary and the Bramble. ('Out of print'.) 1910 The Sale of St. Thomas. [1] " " 1911 Emblems of Love. John Lane. 1912 Deborah (play). " " 1913 Four Short Plays. Martin Seeker. 1922

MARTIN ARMSTRONG

Exodus and Other Poems. Lynwood and Co. 1912 Thirty New Poems. Chapman and Hall. 1918 The Buzzards. Martin Seeker. 1921

EDMUND BLUNDEN

The Waggoner. Sidgwick and Jackson. 1920 The Shepherd. R. Cobden-Sanderson. 1922

WILLIAM H. DAVIES

The Soul's Destroyer. Jonathan Cape. 1906 New Poems. " " 1907 Nature Poems. " " 1908 Farewell to Poesy. " " 1910 Songs of Joy. " " 1911 Foliage. " " 1913 The Bird of Paradise. Methuen. 1914 Child Lovers. Jonathan Cape. 1916 Collected Poems. " " 1916 Raptures. [2] Beaumont Press. 1918 Forty New Poems. Jonathan Cape. 1918 The Song of Life. " " 1920 The Hour of Magic. " " 1922

WALTER DE LA MARE

Poems. Murray. 1906 The Listeners. Constable. 1912 A Child's Day. " 1912 Peacock Pie. " 1913 Songs of Childhood. (New Edition.) Longmans. 1916 The Sunken Garden. [3] Beaumont Press. 1917 Motley. Constable. 1917 Poems, 1901-1918. " 1920 Flora. Heinemann. 1919 The Veil. Constable. 1921

JOHN DRINKWATER

Poems of Men and Hours. (Out of print.) 1911 Cophetua (play). " " 1911 Poems of Love and Earth. " " 1912 Cromwell, and Other Poems. David Nutt. 1913 Rebellion (play). (Out of-print.) 1914 Swords and Ploughshares. Sidgwick and Jackson. 1915 Olton Pools. " " 1916 Poems, 1908-1914. " " 1917 Tides. Beaumont Press. 1917 Tides (with additions). Sidgwick and Jackson. 1917 Loyalties. Beaumont Press. 1918 Loyalties (with additions). Sidgwick and Jackson. 1918 Abraham Lincoln (Prose Play with Chorus). Sidgwick and Jackson. 1918 Seeds of Time. " " 1921 Selected Poems. " " 1922 Pawns and Cophetua (Four Poetic Plays).(New Edition.) Sidgwick and Jackson. 1922 Preludes, 1921-1922 (in preparation)

JOHN FREEMAN

Twenty Poems. Gay and Hancock. 1909 Fifty Poems. (New Edition.) Selwyn and Blount. 1916 Stone Trees. " " 1916 Presage of Victory. " " 1916 Memories of Childhood. Morland Press. 1918 Memories, and Other Poems. Selwyn and Blount. 1919 Poems New and Old. " " 1920 Music. " " 1921 Two Poems. " " 1921

WILFRID GIBSON

Stonefolds. Elkin Mathews. 1907 Akra the Slave. " " 1910 Daily Bread. " " 1910 Fires. " " 1913 Borderlands. " " 1914 Thoroughfares. " " 1914 Battle. " " 1915 Friends. " " 1916 Livelihood. Macmillan. 1917 Collected Poems. New York: Macmillan Co. 1917 Whin. Macmillan. 1918 Home. Beaumont Press. 1919 Neighbours. Macmillan. 1920 Krindlesyke (play). " 1922

ROBERT GRAVES

Over the Brazier. Poetry Bookshop. 1916 Fairies and Fusiliers. Heinemann. 1917 Country Sentiment. Martin Seeker. 1919 The Pier-glass. " " 1921 On English Poetry (Critical work containing new poems) Heinemann. 1922 Whipperginny (in preparation)

RICHARD HUGHES

Gipsy-Night. Golden Cockerel Press. 1922

D. H. LAWRENCE

Love Poems. Duckworth. 1913 Amores. " 1916 Look! We have Come Through! (Out of print.) 1917 New Poems. Martin Seeker. 1918

HAROLD MONRO

Judas. Sampson Low. 1908 Before Dawn. (Out of print.) 1911 Children of Love. Poetry Bookshop. 1914 Strange Meetings. " " 1917 Real Property. {London " " {New York: Macmillan Co. 1922

ROBERT NICHOLS.

Invocation. Elkin Mathews. 1915 Ardours and Endurances. Chatto and Windus. 1917 The Budded Branch. Beaumont Press. 1918 Aurelia. Chatto and Windus. 1920

FRANK PREWETT

Poems. Hogarth Press. 1921

PETER QUENNELL

Masques and Poems (in preparation). Golden Cockerel Press

V. SACKVILLE-WEST

Orchard and Vineyard. John Lane. 1921

EDWARD SHANKS

Songs. (Out of print.) 1915 Poems. Sidgwick and Jackson. 1916 The Queen of China. Martin Seeker. 1919 The Island of Youth. Collins. 1921

J.C. SQUIRE

Steps to Parnassus. Allen and Unwin. 1913 The Three Hills. " " 1913 The Survival of the Fittest. " " 1916 Tricks of the Trade. Hodder and Stoughton. 1917 Poems: First Series. " " 1918 The Birds, and Other Poems. Hodder and Stoughton. 1919 Poems: Second Series. " " 1922

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

Five Degrees South. Martin Seeker. 1917 Poems, 1916-1918. Collins. 1919

[Footnote 1: Reprinted in 'Georgian Poetry, 1911-1912'.]

[Footnote 2: Reprinted, with additions, in 'Forty New Poems'.]

[Footnote 3: Reprinted, with additions, in 'Motley'.]