Poems, 1908-1919
John Drinkwater




John Drinkwater

Poems, 1908-1919





RECIPROCITY


		I DO not think that skies and meadows are
		Moral, or that the fixture of a star
		Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
		Have wisdom in their windless silences.
		Yet these are things invested in my mood
		With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,
		That in my troubled season I can cry
		Upon the wide composure of the sky,
		And envy fields, and wish that I might be
		As little daunted as a star or tree.




THE HOURS


		Those hours are best when suddenly
		The voices of the world are still,
		And in that quiet place is heard
		The voice of one small singing bird,
		Alone within his quiet tree;

		When to one field that crowns a hill,
		With but the sky for neighbourhood,
		The crowding counties of my brain
		Give all their riches, lake and plain,
		Cornland and fell and pillared wood;
		When in a hill-top acre, bare
		For the seed’s use, I am aware
		Of all the beauty that an age
		Of earth has taught my eyes to see;

		When Pride and Generosity
		The Constant Heart and Evil Rage,
		Affection and Desire, and all
		The passions of experience
		Are no more tabled in my mind,
		Learning’s idolatry, but find
		Particularity of sense
		In daily fortitudes that fall
		From this or that companion,
		Or in an angry gossip’s word;
		When one man speaks for Every One,
		When Music lives in one small bird,
		When in a furrowed hill we see
		All beauty in epitome —
		Those hours are best; for those belong
		To the lucidity of song.




A TOWN WINDOW


		Beyond my window in the night
		Is but a drab inglorious street,
		Yet there the frost and clean starlight
		As over Warwick woods are sweet.

		Under the grey drift of the town
		The crocus works among the mould
		As eagerly as those that crown
		The Warwick spring in flame and gold.

		And when the tramway down the hill
		Across the cobbles moans and rings,
		There is about my window-sill
		The tumult of a thousand wings.




MYSTERY


		Think not that mystery has place
		In the obscure and veilèd face,
		Or when the midnight watches are
		Uncompanied of moon or star,
		Or where the fields and forests lie
		Enfolded from the loving eye
		By fogs rebellious to the sun,
		Or when the poet’s rhymes are spun
		From dreams that even in his own
		Imagining are half-unknown.

		These are not mystery, but mere
		Conditions that deny the clear
		Reality that lies behind
		The weak, unspeculative mind,
		Behind contagions of the air
		And screens of beauty everywhere,
		The brooding and tormented sky,
		The hesitation of an eye.

		Look rather when the landscapes glow
		Through crystal distances as though
		The forty shires of England spread
		Into one vision harvested,
		Or when the moonlit waters lie
		In silver cold lucidity;
		Those countenances search that bear
		Witness to very character,
		And listen to the song that weighs
		A life’s adventure in a phrase —
		These are the founts of wonder, these
		The plainer miracles to please
		The brain that reads the world aright;
		Here is the mystery of light.




THE COMMON LOT


		When youth and summer-time are gone,
		And age puts quiet garlands on,
		And in the speculative eye
		The fires of emulation die,
		But as to-day our time shall be
		Trembling upon eternity,
		While, still inconstant in debate,
		We shall on revelation wait,
		And age as youth will daily plan
		The sailing of the caravan.




PASSAGE


		When you deliberate the page
		Of Alexander’s pilgrimage,
		Or say – “It is three years, or ten,
		Since Easter slew Connolly’s men,”
		Or prudently to judgment come
		Of Antony or Absalom,
		And think how duly are designed
		Case and instruction for the mind,
		Remember then that also we,
		In a moon’s course, are history.




THE WOOD


		I walked a nut-wood’s gloom. And overhead
		A pigeon’s wing beat on the hidden boughs,
		And shrews upon shy tunnelling woke thin
		Late winter leaves with trickling sound. Across
		My narrow path I saw the carrier ants
		Burdened with little pieces of bright straw.
		These things I heard and saw, with senses fine
		For all the little traffic of the wood,
		While everywhere, above me, underfoot,
		And haunting every avenue of leaves,
		Was mystery, unresting, taciturn.


…

		And haunting the lucidities of life
		That are my daily beauty, moves a theme,
		Beating along my undiscovered mind.




HISTORY


		Sometimes, when walls and occupation seem
		A prison merely, a dark barrier
		Between me everywhere
		And life, or the larger province of the mind,
		As dreams confined,
		As the trouble of a dream,
		I seek to make again a life long gone,
		To be
		My mind’s approach and consolation,
		To give it form’s lucidity,
		Resilient form, as porcelain pieces thrown
		In buried China by a wrist unknown,
		Or mirrored brigs upon Fowey sea.

		Then to my memory comes nothing great
		Of purpose, or debate,
		Or perfect end,
		Pomp, nor love’s rapture, nor heroic hours to spend —
		But most, and strangely, for long and so much have I seen,
		Comes back an afternoon
		Of a June
		Sunday at Elsfield, that is up on a green
		Hill, and there,
		Through a little farm parlour door,
		A floor
		Of red tiles and blue,
		And the air
		Sweet with the hot June sun cascading through
		The vine-leaves under the glass, and a scarlet fume
		Of geranium flower, and soft and yellow bloom
		Of musk, and stains of scarlet and yellow glass.

		Such are the things remain
		Quietly, and for ever, in the brain,
		And the things that they choose for history-making pass.




THE FUGITIVE


		Beauty has come to make no longer stay
		Than the bright buds of May
		In May-time do.

		Beauty is with us for one hour, one hour,
		Life is so brief a flower;
		Thoughts are so few.

		Thoughts are so few with mastery to give
		Shape to these fugitive
		Dear brevities,

		That even in its hour beauty is blind,
		Because the shallow mind
		Not sees, not sees.

		And in the mind of man only can be
		Alert prosperity
		For beauty brief.

		So, what can be but little comes to less
		Upon the wilderness
		Of unbelief.

		And beauty that has but an hour to spend
		With you for friend,
		Goes outcast by.

		But know, but know – for all she is outcast —
		It is not she at last,
		But you that die.




CONSTANCY


		The shadows that companion me
		From chronicles and poetry
		More constant and substantial are
		Than these my men familiar,
		Who draw with me uncertain breath
		A little while this side of death;
		For you, my friend, may fail to keep
		To-morrow’s tryst, so darkly deep
		The motions mutable that give
		To flesh its brief prerogative,
		And in the pleasant hours we make
		Together for devotion’s sake,
		Always the testament I see
		That is our twin mortality.
		But those from the recorded page
		Keep an eternal pilgrimage.
		They stedfastly inhabit here
		With no mortality to fear,
		And my communion with them
		Ails not in the mind’s stratagem
		Against the sudden blow, the date
		That once must fall unfortunate.
		They fret not nor persuade, and when
		These graduates I entertain,
		I grieve not that I too must fall
		As you, my friend, to funeral,
		But rather find example there
		That, when my boughs of time are bare,
		And nothing more the body’s chance
		Governs my careful circumstance,
		I shall, upon that later birth,
		Walk in immortal fields of earth.




SOUTHAMPTON BELLS



I

		Long ago some builder thrust
		Heavenward in Southampton town
		His spire and beamed his bells,
		Largely conceiving from the dust
		That pinnacle for ringing down
		Orisons and Noëls.

		In his imagination rang,
		Through generations challenging
		His peal on simple men,
		Who, as the heart within him sang,
		In daily townfaring should sing
		By year and year again.


II

		Now often to their ringing go
		The bellmen with lean Time at heel,
		Intent on daily cares;
		The bells ring high, the bells ring low,
		The ringers ring the builder’s peal
		Of tidings unawares.

		And all the bells’ might well be dumb
		For any quickening in the street
		Of customary ears;
		And so at last proud builders come
		With dreams and virtues to defeat
		Among the clouding years.


III

		Now, waiting on Southampton sea
		For exile, through the silver night
		I hear Noël! Noël!
		Through generations down to me
		Your challenge, builder, comes aright,
		Bell by obedient bell.

		You wake an hour with me; then wide
		Though be the lapses of your sleep
		You yet shall wake again;
		And thus, old builder, on the tide
		Of immortality you keep
		Your way from brain to brain.




THE NEW MIRACLE


		Of old men wrought strange gods for mystery,
		Implored miraculous tokens in the skies,
		And lips that most were strange in prophecy
		Were most accounted wise.

		The hearthstone’s commerce between mate and mate,
		Barren of wonder, prospered in content,
		And still the hunger of their thought was great
		For sweet astonishment.

		And so they built them altars of retreat
		Where life’s familiar use was overthrown,
		And left the shining world about their feet,
		To travel worlds unknown.


…

		We hunger still. But wonder has come down
		From alien skies upon the midst of us;
		The sparkling hedgerow and the clamorous town
		Have grown miraculous.

		And man from his far travelling returns
		To find yet stranger wisdom than he sought,
		Where in the habit of his threshold burns
		Unfathomable thought.




REVERIE


		Here in the unfrequented noon,
		In the green hermitage of June,
		While overhead a rustling wing
		Minds me of birds that do not sing
		Until the cooler eve rewakes
		The service of melodious brakes,
		And thoughts are lonely rangers, here,
		In shelter of the primrose year,
		I curiously meditate
		Our brief and variable state.

		I think how many are alive
		Who better in the grave would thrive,
		If some so long a sleep might give
		Better instruction how to live;
		I think what splendours had been said
		By darlings now untimely dead
		Had death been wise in choice of these,
		And made exchange of obsequies.

		I think what loss to government
		It is that good men are content —
		Well knowing that an evil will
		Is folly-stricken too, and still
		Itself considers only wise
		For all rebukes and surgeries —
		That evil men should raise their pride
		To place and fortune undefied.
		I think how daily we beguile
		Our brains, that yet a little while
		And all our congregated schemes
		And our perplexity of dreams,
		Shall come to whole and perfect state.
		I think, however long the date
		Of life may be, at last the sun
		Shall pass upon campaigns undone.

		I look upon the world and see
		A world colonial to me,
		Whereof I am the architect,
		And principal and intellect,
		A world whose shape and savour spring
		Out of my lone imagining,
		A world whose nature is subdued
		For ever to my instant mood,
		And only beautiful can be
		Because of beauty is in me.
		And then I know that every mind
		Among the millions of my kind
		Makes earth his own particular
		And privately created star,
		That earth has thus no single state,
		Being every man articulate.
		Till thought has no horizon then
		I try to think how many men
		There are to make an earth apart
		In symbol of the urgent heart,
		For there are forty in my street,
		And seven hundred more in Greet,
		And families at Luton Hoo,
		And there are men in China, too.

		And what immensity is this
		That is but a parenthesis
		Set in a little human thought,
		Before the body comes to naught.
		There at the bottom of the copse
		I see a field of turnip tops,
		I see the cropping cattle pass
		There in another field, of grass.
		And fields and fields, with seven towns,
		A river, and a flight of downs,
		Steeples for all religious men,
		Ten thousand trees, and orchards ten,
		A mighty span that curves away
		Into blue beauty, and I lay
		All this as quartered on a sphere
		Hung huge in space, a thing of fear
		Vast as the circle of the sky
		Completed to the astonished eye;
		And then I think that all I see,
		Whereof I frame immensity
		Globed for amazement, is no more
		Than a shire’s corner, and that four
		Great shires being ten times multiplied
		Are small on the Atlantic tide
		As an emerald on a silver bowl …
		And the Atlantic to the whole
		Sweep of this tributary star
		That is our earth is but … and far
		Through dreadful space the outmeasured mind
		Seeks to conceive the unconfined.

		I think of Time. How, when his wing
		Composes all our quarrelling
		In some green corner where May leaves
		Are loud with blackbirds on all eves,
		And all the dust that was our bones
		Is underneath memorial stones,
		Then shall old jealousies, while we
		Lie side by side most quietly,
		Be but oblivion’s fools, and still
		When curious pilgrims ask – “What skill
		Had these that from oblivion saves?” —
		My song shall sing above our graves.

		I think how men of gentle mind,
		And friendly will, and honest kind,
		Deny their nature and appear
		Fellows of jealousy and fear;
		Having single faith, and natural wit
		To measure truth and cherish it,
		Yet, strangely, when they build in thought,
		Twisting the honesty that wrought
		In the straight motion of the heart,
		Into its feigning counterpart
		That is the brain’s betrayal of
		The simple purposes of love;
		And what yet sorrier decline
		Is theirs when, eager to confine
		No more within the silent brain
		Its habit, thought seeks birth again
		In speech, as honesty has done
		In thought; then even what had won
		From heart to brain fades and is lost
		In this pretended pentecost,
		This their forlorn captivity
		To speech, who have not learnt to be
		Lords of the word, nor kept among
		The sterner climates of the tongue …
		So truth is in their hearts, and then
		Falls to confusion in the brain,
		And, fading through this mid-eclipse,
		It perishes upon the lips.

		I think how year by year I still
		Find working in my dauntless will
		Sudden timidities that are
		Merely the echo of some far
		Forgotten tyrannies that came
		To youth’s bewilderment and shame;
		That yet a magisterial gown,
		Being worn by one of no renown
		And half a generation less
		In years than I, can dispossess
		Something my circumspecter mood
		Of excellence and quietude,
		And if a Bishop speaks to me
		I tremble with propriety.

		I think how strange it is that he
		Who goes most comradely with me
		In beauty’s worship, takes delight
		In shows that to my eager sight
		Are shadows and unmanifest,
		While beauty’s favour and behest
		To me in motion are revealed
		That is against his vision sealed;
		Yet is our hearts’ necessity
		Not twofold, but a common plea
		That chaos come to continence,
		Whereto the arch-intelligence
		Richly in divers voices makes
		Its answer for our several sakes.

		I see the disinherited
		And long procession of the dead,
		Who have in generations gone
		Held fugitive dominion
		Of this same primrose pasturage
		That is my momentary wage.
		I see two lovers move along
		These shadowed silences of song,
		With spring in blossom at their feet
		More incommunicably sweet
		To their hearts’ more magnificence,
		Than to the common courts of sense,
		Till joy his tardy closure tells
		With coming of the curfew bells.
		I see the knights of spur and sword
		Crossing the little woodland ford,
		Riding in ghostly cavalcade
		On some unchronicled crusade.
		I see the silent hunter go
		In cloth of yeoman green, with bow
		Strung, and a quiver of grey wings.
		I see the little herd who brings
		His cattle homeward, while his sire
		Makes bivouac in Warwickshire
		This night, the liege and loyal man
		Of Cavalier or Puritan.
		And as they pass, the nameless dead,
		Unsung, uncelebrate, and sped
		Upon an unremembered hour
		As any twelvemonth fallen flower,
		I think how strangely yet they live
		For all their days were fugitive.

		I think how soon we too shall be
		A story with our ancestry.

		I think what miracle has been
		That you whose love among this green
		Delightful solitude is still
		The stay and substance of my will,
		The dear custodian of my song,
		My thrifty counsellor and strong,
		Should take the time of all time’s tide
		That was my season, to abide
		On earth also; that we should be
		Charted across eternity
		To one elect and happy day
		Of yellow primroses in May.

		The clock is calling five o’clock,
		And Nonesopretty brings her flock
		To fold, and Tom comes back from town
		With hose and ribbons worth a crown,
		And duly at The Old King’s Head
		They gather now to daily bread,
		And I no more may meditate
		Our brief and variable state.




PENANCES


		These are my happy penances. To make
		Beauty without a covenant; to take
		Measure of time only because I know
		That in death’s market-place I still shall owe
		Service to beauty that shall not be done;
		To know that beauty’s doctrine is begun
		And makes a close in sacrifice; to find
		In beauty’s courts the unappeasable mind.




LAST CONFESSIONAL


		For all ill words that I have spoken,
		For all clear moods that I have broken,
		For all despite and hasty breath,
		Forgive me, Love, forgive me, Death.

		Death, master of the great assize,
		Love, falling now to memories,
		You two alone I need to prove,
		Forgive me, Death, forgive me, Love.

		For every tenderness undone,
		For pride when holiness was none
		But only easy charity,
		O Death, be pardoner to me.

		For stubborn thought that would not make
		Measure of love’s thought for love’s sake,
		But kept a sullen difference,
		Take, Love, this laggard penitence.

		For cloudy words too vainly spent
		To prosper but in argument,
		When truth stood lonely at the gate,
		On your compassion, Death, I wait.

		For all the beauty that escaped
		This foolish brain, unsung, unshaped,
		For wonder that was slow to move,
		Forgive me, Death, forgive me, Love.

		For love that kept a secret cruse,
		For life defeated of its dues,
		This latest word of all my breath —
		Forgive me, Love, forgive me, Death.




BIRTHRIGHT


		Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed
		Because a summer evening passed;
		And little Ariadne cried
		That summer fancy fell at last
		To dust; and young Verona died
		When beauty’s hour was overcast.

		Theirs was the bitterness we know
		Because the clouds of hawthorn keep
		So short a state, and kisses go
		To tombs unfathomably deep,
		While Rameses and Romeo
		And little Ariadne sleep.




ANTAGONISTS


		Green shoots, we break the morning earth
		And flourish in the morning’s breath;
		We leave the agony of birth
		And soon are all midway to death.

		While yet the summer of her year
		Brings life her marvels, she can see
		Far off the rising dust, and hear
		The footfall of her enemy.




HOLINESS


		If all the carts were painted gay,
		And all the streets swept clean,
		And all the children came to play
		By hollyhocks, with green
		Grasses to grow between,

		If all the houses looked as though
		Some heart were in their stones,
		If all the people that we know
		Were dressed in scarlet gowns,
		With feathers in their crowns,

		I think this gaiety would make
		A spiritual land.
		I think that holiness would take
		This laughter by the hand,
		Till both should understand.




THE CITY


		A shining city, one
		Happy in snow and sun,
		And singing in the rain
		A paradisal strain…
		Here is a dream to keep,
		O Builders, from your sleep.

		O foolish Builders, wake,
		Take your trowels, take
		The poet’s dream, and build
		The city song has willed,
		That every stone may sing
		And all your roads may ring
		With happy wayfaring.




TO THE DEFILERS


		Go, thieves, and take your riches, creep
		To corners out of honest sight;
		We shall not be so poor to keep
		One thought of envy or despite.

		But know that in sad surety when
		Your sullen will betrays this earth
		To sorrows of contagion, then
		Beelzebub renews his birth.

		When you defile the pleasant streams
		And the wild bird’s abiding-place,
		You massacre a million dreams
		And cast your spittle in God’s face.




A CHRISTMAS NIGHT


		Christ for a dream was given from the dead
		To walk one Christmas night on earth again,
		Among the snow, among the Christmas bells.
		He heard the hymns that are his praise: Noël,
		And Christ is Born, and Babe of Bethlehem.
		He saw the travelling crowds happy for home,
		The gathering and the welcome, and the set
		Feast and the gifts, because he once was born,
		Because he once was steward of a word.
		And so he thought, “The spirit has been kind;
		So well the peoples might have fallen from me,
		My way of life being difficult and spare.
		It is beautiful that a dream in Galilee
		Should prosper so. They crucified me once,
		And now my name is spoken through the world,
		And bells are rung for me and candles burnt.
		They might have crucified my dream who used
		My body ill; they might have spat on me
		Always as in one hour on Golgotha.” …
		And the snow fell, and the last bell was still,
		And the poor Christ again was with the dead.




INVOCATION


		As pools beneath stone arches take
		Darkly within their deeps again
		Shapes of the flowing stone, and make
		Stories anew of passing men,

		So let the living thoughts that keep,
		Morning and evening, in their kind,
		Eternal change in height and deep,
		Be mirrored in my happy mind.

		Beat, world, upon this heart, be loud
		Your marvel chanted in my blood,
		Come forth, O sun, through cloud on cloud
		To shine upon my stubborn mood.

		Great hills that fold above the sea,
		Ecstatic airs and sparkling skies,
		Sing out your words to master me,
		Make me immoderately wise.




IMMORTALITY



I

		When other beauty governs other lips,
		And snowdrops come to strange and happy springs,
		When seas renewed bear yet unbuilded ships,
		And alien hearts know all familiar things,
		When frosty nights bring comrades to enjoy
		Sweet hours at hearths where we no longer sit,
		When Liverpool is one with dusty Troy,
		And London famed as Attica for wit …
		How shall it be with you, and you, and you,
		How with us all who have gone greatly here
		In friendship, making some delight, some true
		Song in the dark, some story against fear?
		Shall song still walk with love, and life be brave,
		And we, who were all these, be but the grave?


II

		No; lovers yet shall tell the nightingale
		Sometimes a song that we of old time made,
		And gossips gathered at the twilight ale
		Shall say, “Those two were friends,” or, “Unafraid
		Of bitter thought were those because they loved
		Better than most.” And sometimes shall be told
		How one, who died in his young beauty, moved,
		As Astrophel, those English hearts of old.
		And the new seas shall take the new ships home
		Telling how yet the Dymock orchards stand,
		And you shall walk with Julius at Rome,
		And Paul shall be my fellow in the Strand;
		There in the midst of all those words shall be
		Our names, our ghosts, our immortality.




THE CRAFTSMEN


		Confederate hand and eye
		Work to the chisel’s blade,
		Setting the grain aglow
		Of porch and sturdy beam —
		So the strange gods may ply
		Strict arms till we are made
		Quick as the gods who know
		What builds behind this dream.




SYMBOLS


		I saw history in a poet’s song,
		In a river-reach and a gallows-hill,
		In a bridal bed, and a secret wrong,
		In a crown of thorns: in a daffodil.

		I imagined measureless time in a day,
		And starry space in a waggon-road,
		And the treasure of all good harvests lay
		In the single seed that the sower sowed.

		My garden-wind had driven and havened again
		All ships that ever had gone to sea,
		And I saw the glory of all dead men
		In the shadow that went by the side of me.




SEALED


		The doves call down the long arcades of pine,
		The screaming swifts are tiring towards their eaves,
		And you are very quiet, O lover of mine.

		No foot is on your ploughlands now, the song
		Fails and is no more heard among your leaves
		That wearied not in praise the whole day long.

		I have watched with you till this twilight-fall,
		The proud companion of your loveliness;
		Have you no word for me, no word at all?

		The passion of my thought I have given you,
		Striving towards your passion, nevertheless,
		The clover leaves are deepening to the dew,

		And I am still unsatisfied, untaught.
		You lie guarded in mystery, you go
		Into your night, and leave your lover naught.

		Would I were Titan with immeasurable thews
		To hold you trembling, lover of mine, and know
		To the full the secret savour that you use

		Now to my tormenting. I would drain
		Your beauty to the last sharp glory of it;
		You should work mightily through me, blood and brain.

		Your heart in my heart’s mastery should burn,
		And you before my swift and arrogant wit
		Should be no longer proudly taciturn.

		You should bend back astonished at my kiss,
		Your wisdom should be armourer to my pride,
		And you, subdued, should yet be glad of this.

		The joys of great heroic lovers dead
		Should seem but market-gossiping beside
		The annunciation of our bridal bed.

		And now, my lover earth, I am a leaf,
		A wave of light, a bird’s note, a blade sprung
		Towards the oblivion of the sickled sheaf;

		A mere mote driven against your royal ease,
		A tattered eager traveller among
		The myriads beating on your sanctuaries.

		I have no strength to crush you to my will,
		Your beauty is invulnerably zoned,
		Yet I, your undefeated lover still,

		Exulting in your sap am clear of shame,
		And biding with you patiently am throned
		Above the flight of desolation’s aim.

		You may be mute, bestow no recompense
		On all the thriftless leaguers of my soul —
		I am at your gates, O lover of mine, and thence

		Will I not turn for any scorn you send,
		Rebuked, bemused, yet is my purpose whole,
		I shall be striving towards you till the end.




A PRAYER


		Lord, not for light in darkness do we pray,
		Not that the veil be lifted from our eyes,
		Nor that the slow ascension of our day
		Be otherwise.

		Not for a clearer vision of the things
		Whereof the fashioning shall make us great,
		Not for remission of the peril and stings
		Of time and fate.

		Not for a fuller knowledge of the end
		Whereto we travel, bruised yet unafraid,
		Nor that the little healing that we lend
		Shall be repaid.

		Not these, O Lord. We would not break the bars
		Thy wisdom sets about us; we shall climb
		Unfettered to the secrets of the stars
		In Thy good time.

		We do not crave the high perception swift
		When to refrain were well, and when fulfil,
		Nor yet the understanding strong to sift
		The good from ill.

		Not these, O Lord. For these Thou hast revealed,
		We know the golden season when to reap
		The heavy-fruited treasure of the field,
		The hour to sleep.

		Not these. We know the hemlock from the rose,
		The pure from stained, the noble from the base
		The tranquil holy light of truth that glows
		On Pity’s face.

		We know the paths wherein our feet should press,
		Across our hearts are written Thy decrees,
		Yet now, O Lord, be merciful to bless
		With more than these.

		Grant us the will to fashion as we feel,
		Grant us the strength to labour as we know,
		Grant us the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel,
		To strike the blow.

		Knowledge we ask not – knowledge Thou hast lent,
		But, Lord, the will – there lies our bitter need,
		Give us to build above the deep intent
		The deed, the deed.




THE BUILDING


		Whence these hods, and bricks of bright red clay,
		And swart men climbing ladders in the night?

		Stilled are the clamorous energies of day,
		The streets are dumb, and, prodigal of light,
		The lamps but shine upon a city of sleep.
		A step goes out into the silence; far
		Across the quiet roofs the hour is tolled
		From ghostly towers; the indifferent earth may keep
		That ragged flotsam shielded from the cold
		In earth’s good time: not, moving among men,
		Shall he compel so fortunate a star.
		Pavements I know, forsaken now, are strange,
		Alien walks not beautiful, that then,
		In the familiar day, are part of all
		My breathless pilgrimage, not beautiful, but dear;
		The monotony of sound has suffered change,
		The eddies of wanton sound are spent, and clear
		To bleak monotonies of silence fall.

		And, while the city sleeps, in the central poise
		Of quiet, lamps are flaming in the night,
		Blown to long tongues by winds that moan between
		The growing walls, and throwing misty light
		On swart men bearing bricks of bright red clay
		In laden hods; and ever the thin noise
		Of trowels deftly fashioning the clean
		Long lines that are the shaping of proud thought.
		Ghost-like they move between the day and day,
		These men whose labour strictly shall be wrought
		Into the captive image of a dream.
		Their sinews weary not, the plummet falls
		To measured use from steadfast hands apace,
		And momently the moist and levelled seam
		Knits brick to brick and momently the walls
		Bestow the wonder of form on formless space.

		And whence all these? The hod and plummet-line,
		The trowels tapping, and the lamps that shine
		In long, dust-heavy beams from wall to wall,
		The mortar and the bricks of bright red clay,
		Ladder and corded scaffolding, and all
		The gear of common traffic – whence are they?
		And whence the men who use them?
		When he came,
		God upon chaos, crying in the name
		Of all adventurous vision that the void
		Should yield up man, and man, created, rose
		Out of the deep, the marvel of all things made,
		Then in immortal wonder was destroyed
		All worth of trivial knowledge, and the close
		Of man’s most urgent meditation stayed
		Even as his first thought – “Whence am I sprung?”
		What proud ecstatic mystery was pent
		In that first act for man’s astonishment,
		From age to unconfessing age, among
		His manifold travel. And in all I see
		Of common daily usage is renewed
		This primal and ecstatic mystery
		Of chaos bidden into many-hued
		Wonders of form, life in the void create,
		And monstrous silence made articulate.

		Not the first word of God upon the deep
		Nor the first pulse of life along the day
		More marvellous than these new walls that sweep
		Starward, these lines that discipline the clay,
		These lamps swung in the wind that send their light
		On swart men climbing ladders in the night.
		No trowel-tap but sings anew for men
		The rapture of quickening water and continent,
		No mortared line but witnesses again
		Chaos transfigured into lineament.




THE SOLDIER


		The large report of fame I lack,
		And shining clasps and crimson scars,
		For I have held my bivouac
		Alone amid the untroubled stars.

		My battle-field has known no dawn
		Beclouded by a thousand spears;
		I’ve been no mounting tyrant’s pawn
		To buy his glory with my tears.

		It never seemed a noble thing
		Some little leagues of land to gain
		From broken men, nor yet to fling
		Abroad the thunderbolts of pain.

		Yet I have felt the quickening breath
		As peril heavy peril kissed —
		My weapon was a little faith,
		And fear was my antagonist.

		Not a brief hour of cannonade,
		But many days of bitter strife,
		Till God of His great pity laid
		Across my brow the leaves of life.




THE FIRES OF GOD



I

		Time gathers to my name;
		Along the ways wheredown my feet have passed
		I see the years with little triumph crowned,
		Exulting not for perils dared, downcast
		And weary-eyed and desolate for shame
		Of having been unstirred of all the sound
		Of the deep music of the men that move
		Through the world’s days in suffering and love.

		Poor barren years that brooded over-much
		On your own burden, pale and stricken years —
		Go down to your oblivion, we part
		With no reproach or ceremonial tears.
		Henceforth my hands are lifted to the touch
		Of hands that labour with me, and my heart
		Hereafter to the world’s heart shall be set
		And its own pain forget.
		Time gathers to my name —
		Days dead are dark; the days to be, a flame
		Of wonder and of promise, and great cries
		Of travelling people reach me – I must rise.


II

		Was I not man? Could I not rise alone
		Above the shifting of the things that be,
		Rise to the crest of all the stars and see
		The ways of all the world as from a throne?
		Was I not man, with proud imperial will
		To cancel all the secrets of high heaven?
		Should not my sole unbridled purpose fill
		All hidden paths with light when once was riven
		God’s veil by my indomitable will?

		So dreamt I, little man of little vision,
		Great only in unconsecrated pride;
		Man’s pity grew from pity to derision,
		And still I thought, “Albeit they deride,
		Yet is it mine uncharted ways to dare
		Unknown to these,
		And they shall stumble darkly, unaware
		Of solemn mysteries
		Whereof the key is mine alone to bear.”

		So I forgot my God, and I forgot
		The holy sweet communion of men,
		And moved in desolate places, where are not
		Meek hands held out with patient healing when
		The hours are heavy with uncharitable pain;
		No company but vain
		And arrogant thoughts were with me at my side.
		And ever to myself I lied.
		Saying “Apart from all men thus I go
		To know the things that they may never know.”


III

		Then a great change befell;
		Long time I stood
		In witless hardihood
		With eyes on one sole changeless vision set —
		The deep disturbèd fret
		Of men who made brief tarrying in hell
		On their earth travelling.
		It was as though the lives of men should be
		See circle-wise, whereof one little span
		Through which all passed was blackened with the wing
		Of perilous evil, bateless misery.
		But all beyond, making the whole complete
		O’er which the travelling feet
		Of every man
		Made way or ever he might come to death,
		Was odorous with the breath
		Of honey-laden flowers, and alive
		With sacrificial ministrations sweet
		Of man to man, and swift and holy loves,
		And large heroic hopes, whereby should thrive
		Man’s spirit as he moves
		From dawn of life to the great dawn of death.

		It was as though mine eyes were set alone
		Upon that woeful passage of despair,
		Until I held that life had never known
		Dominion but in this most troubled place
		Where many a ruined grace
		And many a friendless care
		Ran to and fro in sorrowful unrest.
		Still in my hand I pressed
		Hope’s fragile chalice, whence I drew deep draughts
		That heartened me that even yet should grow
		Out of this dread confusion, as of broken crafts
		Driven along ungovernable seas,
		Prosperous order, and that I should know
		After long vigil all the mysteries
		Of human wonder and of human fate.

		O fool, O only great
		In pride unhallowed, O most blind of heart!
		Confusion but more dark confusion bred,
		Grief nurtured grief, I cried aloud and said,
		“Through trackless ways the soul of man is hurled,
		No sign upon the forehead of the skies,
		No beacon, and no chart
		Are given to him, and the inscrutable world
		But mocks his scars and fills his mouth with dust.”

		And lies bore lies
		And lust bore lust,
		And the world was heavy with flowerless rods,
		And pride outran
		The strength of a man
		Who had set himself in the place of gods.


IV

		Soon was I then to gather bitter shame
		Of spirit; I had been most wildly proud —
		Yet in my pride had been
		Some little courage, formless as a cloud,
		Unpiloted save by a vagrant wind,
		But still an earnest of the bonds that tame
		The legionary hates, of sacred loves that lean
		From the high soul of man towards his kind.
		And all my grief
		Had been for those I watched go to and fro
		In uncompassioned woe
		Along that little span my unbelief
		Had fashioned in my vision as all life.
		Now even this so little virtue waned,
		For I became caught up into the strife
		That I had pitied, and my soul was stained
		At last by that most venomous despair,
		Self-pity.
		I no longer was aware
		Of any will to heal the world’s unrest,
		I suffered as it suffered, and I grew
		Troubled in all my daily trafficking,
		Not with the large heroic trouble known
		By proud adventurous men who would atone
		With their own passionate pity for the sting
		And anguish of a world of peril and snares,
		It was the trouble of a soul in thrall
		To mean despairs,
		Driven about a waste where neither fall
		Of words from lips of love, nor consolation
		Of grave eyes comforting, nor ministration
		Of hand or heart could pierce the deadly wall
		Of self – of self, – I was a living shame —
		A broken purpose. I had stood apart
		With pride rebellious and defiant heart,
		And now my pride had perished in the flame.
		I cried for succour as a little child
		Might supplicate whose days are undefiled, —
		For tutored pride and innocence are one.

		To the gloom has won
		A gleam of the sun
		And into the barren desolate ways
		A scent is blown
		As of meadows mown
		By cooling rivers in clover days.


V

		I turned me from that place in humble wise,
		And fingers soft were laid upon mine eyes,
		And I beheld the fruitful earth, with store
		Of odorous treasure, full and golden grain,
		Ripe orchard bounty, slender stalks that bore
		Their flowered beauty with a meek content,
		The prosperous leaves that loved the sun and rain,
		Shy creatures unreproved that came and went
		In garrulous joy among the fostering green.
		And, over all, the changes of the day
		And ordered year their mutable glory laid —
		Expectant winter soberly arrayed,
		The prudent diligent spring whose eyes have seen
		The beauty of the roses uncreate,
		Imperial June, magnificent, elate
		Beholding all the ripening loves that stray
		Among her blossoms, and the golden time
		Of the full ear and bounty of the boughs, —
		And the great hills and solemn chanting seas
		And prodigal meadows, answering to the chime
		Of God’s good year, and bearing on their brows
		The glory of processional mysteries
		From dawn to dawn, the woven leaves and light
		Of the high noon, the twilight secrecies,
		And the inscrutable wonder of the stars
		Flung out along the reaches of the night.




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