Poems of To-Day: an Anthology
 Various




Various

Poems of To-Day: an Anthology





PREFATORY NOTE


This book has been compiled in order that boys and girls, already perhaps familiar with the great classics of the English speech, may also know something of the newer poetry of their own day. Most of the writers are living, and the rest are still vivid memories among us, while one of the youngest, almost as these words are written, has gone singing to lay down his life for his country's cause. Although no definite chronological limit has been set, and Meredith at least began to write in the middle of the nineteenth century, the intention has been to represent mainly those poetic tendencies which have become dominant as the influence of the accepted Victorian masters has grown weaker, and from which the poetry of the future, however it may develope, must in turn take its start. It may be helpful briefly to indicate the sequence of themes. Man draws his being from the heroic Past and from the Earth his Mother; and in harmony with these he must shape his life to what high purposes he may. Therefore this gathering of poems falls into three groups. {viii} First there are poems of History, of the romantic tale of the world, of our own special tradition here in England, and of the inheritance of obligation which that tradition imposes upon us. Naturally, there are some poems directly inspired by the present war, but nothing, it is hoped, which may not, in happier days, bear translation into any European tongue. Then there come poems of the Earth, of England again and the longing of the exile for home, of this and that familiar countryside, of woodland and meadow and garden, of the process of the seasons, of the "open road" and the "wind on the heath," of the city, its deprivations and its consolations. Finally there are poems of Life itself, of the moods in which it may be faced, of religion, of man's excellent virtues, of friendship and childhood, of passion, grief, and comfort. But there is no arbitrary isolation of one theme from another; they mingle and inter-penetrate throughout, to the music of Pan's flute, and of Love's viol, and the bugle-call of Endeavour, and the passing-bell of Death.

May, 1915.




1. ALL THAT'S PAST


		Very old are the woods;
		And the buds that break
		Out of the briar's boughs,
		When March winds wake,
		So old with their beauty are—
		Oh, no man knows
		Through what wild centuries
		Roves back the rose.

		Very old are the brooks;
		And the rills that rise
		Where snow sleeps cold beneath
		The azure skies
		Sing such a history
		Of come and gone,
		Their every drop is as wise
		As Solomon.

		Very old are we men;
		Our dreams are tales
		Told in dim Eden
		By Eve's nightingales;
		We wake and whisper awhile,
		But, the day gone by,
		Silence and sleep like fields
		Of amaranth lie.

    Walter de la Mare.



2. PRE-EXISTEHCE


		I laid me down upon the shore
		And dreamed a little space;
		I heard the great waves break and roar;
		The sun was on my face.

		My idle hands and fingers brown
		Played with the pebbles grey;
		The waves came up, the waves went down,
		Most thundering and gay.

		The pebbles, they were smooth and round
		And warm upon my hands,
		Like little people I had found
		Sitting among the sands.

		The grains of sands so shining-small
		Soft through my fingers ran;
		The sun shone down upon it all,
		And so my dream began:

		How all of this had been before;
		How ages far away
		I lay on some forgotten shore
		As here I lie to-day.

		The waves came shining up the sands,
		As here to-day they shine;
		And in my pre-pelasgian hands
		The sand was warm and fine.

		I have forgotten whence I came,
		Or what my home might be,
		Or by what strange and savage name
		I called that thundering sea.

		I only know the sun shone down
		As still it shines to-day,
		And in my fingers long and brown
		The little pebbles lay.

    Frances Cornford.



3. FRAGMENTS


		Troy Town is covered up with weeds,
		The rabbits and the pismires brood
		On broken gold, and shards, and beads
		Where Priam's ancient palace stood.

		The floors of many a gallant house
		Are matted with the roots of grass;
		The glow-worm and the nimble mouse
		Among her ruins flit and pass.

		And there, in orts of blackened bone,
		The widowed Trojan beauties lie,
		And Simois babbles over stone
		And waps and gurgles to the sky.

		Once there were merry days in Troy,
		Her chimneys smoked with cooking meals,
		The passing chariots did annoy
		The sunning housewives at their wheels.

		And many a lovely Trojan maid
		Set Trojan lads to lovely things;
		The game of life was nobly played,
		They played the game like Queens and Kings.

		So that, when Troy had greatly passed
		In one red roaring fiery coal,
		The courts the Grecians overcast
		Became a city in the soul.

		In some green island of the sea,
		Where now the shadowy coral grows
		In pride and pomp and empery
		The courts of old Atlantis rose.

		In many a glittering house of glass
		The Atlanteans wandered there;
		The paleness of their faces was
		Like ivory, so pale they were.

		And hushed they were, no noise of words
		In those bright cities ever rang;
		Only their thoughts, like golden birds,
		About their chambers thrilled and sang.

		They knew all wisdom, for they knew
		The souls of those Egyptian Kings
		Who learned, in ancient Babilu,
		The beauty of immortal things.

		They knew all beauty—when they thought
		The air chimed like a stricken lyre,
		The elemental birds were wrought,
		The golden birds became a fire.

		And straight to busy camps and marts
		The singing flames were swiftly gone;
		The trembling leaves of human hearts
		Hid boughs for them to perch upon.

		And men in desert places, men
		Abandoned, broken, sick with fears,
		Rose singing, swung their swords agen,
		And laughed and died among the spears.

		The green and greedy seas have drowned
		That city's glittering walls and towers,
		Her sunken minarets are crowned
		With red and russet water-flowers.

		In towers and rooms and golden courts
		The shadowy coral lifts her sprays;
		The scrawl hath gorged her broken orts,
		The shark doth haunt her hidden ways,

		But, at the falling of the tide,
		The golden birds still sing and gleam,
		The Atlanteans have not died,
		Immortal things still give us dream.

		The dream that fires man's heart to make,
		To build, to do, to sing or say
		A beauty Death can never take,
		An Adam from the crumbled clay.

    John Masefield.



4. FALLEN CITIES


		I gathered with a careless hand,
		There where the waters night and day
		Are languid in the idle bay,
		A little heap of golden sand;
		And, as I saw it, in my sight
		Awoke a vision brief and bright,
		A city in a pleasant land.

		I saw no mound of earth, but fair
		Turrets and domes and citadels,
		With murmuring of many bells;
		The spires were white in the blue air,
		And men by thousands went and came,
		Rapid and restless, and like flame
		Blown by their passions here and there.

		With careless hand I swept away
		The little mound before I knew;
		The visioned city vanished too,
		And fall'n beneath my fingers lay.
		Ah God! how many hast Thou seen,
		Cities that are not and have been,
		By silent hill and idle bay!

    Gerald Gould.



5. TIME, YOU OLD GIPSY MAN


		Time, you old gipsy man,
		Will you not stay,
		Put up your caravan
		Just for one day?

		All things I'll give you,
		Will you be my guest,
		Bells for your jennet
		Of silver the best,
		Goldsmiths shall beat you
		A great golden ring,
		Peacocks shall bow to you,
		Little boys sing,
		Oh, and sweet girls will
		Festoon you with may,
		Time, you old gipsy,
		Why hasten away?

		Last week in Babylon,
		Last night in Rome,
		Morning, and in the crush
		Under Paul's dome;
		Under Paul's dial
		You tighten your rein—
		Only a moment,
		And off once again;
		Off to some city
		Now blind in the womb,
		Off to another
		Ere that's in the tomb.

		Time, you old gipsy man,
		Will you not stay,
		Put up your caravan
		Just for one day?

    Ralph Hodgson.



6. A HUGUENOT


		O, a gallant set were they,
		As they charged on us that day,
		A thousand riding like one!
		Their trumpets crying,
		And their white plumes flying,
		And their sabres flashing in the sun.

		O, a sorry lot were we,
		As we stood beside the sea,
		Each man for himself as he stood!
		We were scattered and lonely—
		A little force only
		Of the good men fighting for the good.

		But I never loved more
		On sea or on shore
		The ringing of my own true blade,
		Like lightning it quivered,
		And the hard helms shivered,
		As I sang, "None maketh me afraid!"

    Mary E. Coleridge.



7. ON THE TOILET TABLE OF QUEEN MARIE-ANTOINETTE


		This was her table, these her trim outspread
		Brushes and trays and porcelain cups for red;
		Here sate she, while her women tired and curled
		The most unhappy head in all the world.

    J. B. B. Nichols.



8. UPON ECKINGTON BRIDGE, RIVER AVON


		O pastoral heart of England! like a psalm
		Of green days telling with a quiet beat—
		O wave into the sunset flowing calm!
		O tired lark descending on the wheat!
		Lies it all peace beyond that western fold
		Where now the lingering shepherd sees his star
		Rise upon Malvern? Paints an Age of Gold
		Yon cloud with prophecies of linked ease—
		Lulling this Land, with hills drawn up like knees,
		To drowse beside her implements of war?

		Man shall outlast his battles. They have swept
		Avon from Naseby Field to Severn Ham;
		And Evesham's dedicated stones have stepp'd
		Down to the dust with Montfort's oriflamme.
		Nor the red tear nor the reflected tower
		Abides; but yet these eloquent grooves remain,
		Worn in the sandstone parapet hour by hour
		By labouring bargemen where they shifted ropes.
		E'en so shall man turn back from violent hopes
		To Adam's cheer, and toil with spade again.

		Ay, and his mother Nature, to whose lap
		Like a repentant child at length he hies,
		Not in the whirlwind or the thunder-clap
		Proclaims her more tremendous mysteries:
		But when in winter's grave, bereft of light,
		With still, small voice divinelier whispering
		—Lifting the green head of the aconite,
		Feeding with sap of hope the hazel-shoot—
		She feels God's finger active at the root,
		Turns in her sleep, and murmurs of the Spring.

    Arthur Quiller-Couch.



9. BY THE STATUE OF KING CHARLES AT CHARING CROSS


		Sombre and rich, the skies;
		Great glooms, and starry plains.
		Gently the night wind sighs;
		Else a vast silence reigns.

		The splendid silence clings
		Around me: and around
		The saddest of all kings
		Crowned, and again discrowned.

		Comely and calm, he rides
		Hard by his own Whitehall:
		Only the night wind glides:
		No crowds, nor rebels, brawl.

		Gone, too, his Court; and yet,
		The stars his courtiers are:
		Stars in their stations set;
		And every wandering star.

		Alone he rides, alone,
		The fair and fatal king:
		Dark night is all his own,
		That strange and solemn thing.

		Which are more full of fate:
		The stars; or those sad eyes?
		Which are more still and great:
		Those brows; or the dark skies?

		Although his whole heart yearn
		In passionate tragedy:
		Never was face so stern
		With sweet austerity.

		Vanquished in life, his death
		By beauty made amends:
		The passing of his breath
		Won his defeated ends.

		Brief life and hapless? Nay:
		Through death, life grew sublime.
		Speak after sentence? Yea:
		And to the end of time.

		Armoured he rides, his head
		Bare to the stars of doom:
		He triumphs now, the dead,
		Beholding London's gloom.

		Our wearier spirit faints,
		Vexed in the world's employ:
		His soul was of the saints;
		And art to him was joy.

		King, tried in fires of woe!
		Men hunger for thy grace:
		And through the night I go,
		Loving thy mournful face.

		Yet when the city sleeps;
		When all the cries are still:
		The stars and heavenly deeps
		Work out a perfect will.

    Lionel Johnson.



10. TO THE FORGOTTEN DEAD


		To the forgotten dead,
		Come, let us drink in silence ere we part.
		To every fervent yet resolvèd heart
		That brought its tameless passion and its tears,
		Renunciation and laborious years,
		To lay the deep foundations of our race,
		To rear its stately fabric overhead
		And light its pinnacles with golden grace.

		To the unhonoured dead.
		To the forgotten dead,
		Whose dauntless hands were stretched to grasp the rein
		Of Fate and hurl into the void again
		Her thunder-hoofed horses, rushing blind
		Earthward along the courses of the wind.
		Among the stars, along the wind in vain
		Their souls were scattered and their blood was shed,
		And nothing, nothing of them doth remain.
		To the thrice-perished dead.

    Margaret L. Woods.



11. DRAKE'S DRUM


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

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

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

    Henry Newbolt.



12. THE MOON IS UP


		The moon is up: the stars are bright
		The wind is fresh and free!
		We're out to seek for gold to-night
		Across the silver sea!
		The world was growing grey and old:
		Break out the sails again!
		We're out to seek a Realm of Gold
		Beyond the Spanish Main.

		We're sick of all the cringing knees,
		The courtly smiles and lies!
		God, let Thy singing Channel breeze
		Lighten our hearts and eyes!
		Let love no more be bought and sold
		For earthly loss or gain;
		We're out to seek an Age of Gold
		Beyond the Spanish Main.

		Beyond the light of far Cathay,
		Beyond all mortal dreams,
		Beyond the reach of night and day
		Our El Dorado gleams,
		Revealing—as the skies unfold—
		A star without a stain,
		The Glory of the Gates of Gold
		Beyond the Spanish Main.

    Alfred Noyes.



13. MINORA SIDERA


		Sitting at times over a hearth that burns
		With dull domestic glow,
		My thought, leaving the book, gratefully turns
		To you who planned it so.

		Not of the great only you deigned to tell—
		The stars by which we steer—
		But lights out of the night that flashed, and fell
		To night again, are here.

		Such as were those, dogs of an elder day,
		Who sacked the golden ports,
		And those later who dared grapple their prey
		Beneath the harbour forts:

		Some with flag at the fore, sweeping the world
		To find an equal fight,
		And some who joined war to their trade, and hurled
		Ships of the line in flight.

		Whether their fame centuries long should ring
		They cared not over-much,
		But cared greatly to serve God and the king,
		And keep the Nelson touch;

		And fought to build Britain above the tide
		Of wars and windy fate;
		And passed content, leaving to us the pride
		Of lives obscurely great.

    Henry Newbolt.



14. MUSING ON A GREAT SOLDIER


		Fear? Yes . . . I heard you saying
		In an Oxford common-room
		Where the hearth-light's kindly raying
		Stript the empanelled walls of gloom,
		Silver groves of candles playing
		In the soft wine turned to bloom—
		At the word I see you now
		Blandly push the wine-boat's prow
		Round the mirror of that scored
		Yellow old mahogany board—
		I confess to one fear! this,
		To be buried alive!

		My Lord,
		Your fancy has played amiss.

		Fear not. When in farewell
		While guns toll like a bell
		And the bell tolls like a gun
		Westminster towers call
		Folk and state to your funeral,
		And robed in honours won,
		Beneath the cloudy pall
		Of the lifted shreds of glory
		You lie in the last stall
		Of that grey dormitory—
		Fear not lest mad mischance
		Should find you lapt and shrouded
		Alive in helpless trance
		Though seeming death-beclouded:

		For long ere so you rest
		On that transcendent bier
		Shall we not have addressed
		One summons, one last test,
		To your reluctant ear?
		O believe it! we shall have uttered
		In ultimate entreaty
		A name your soul would hear
		Howsoever thickly shuttered;
		We shall have stooped and muttered
		England! in your cold ear. . . .
		Then, if your great pulse leap
		No more, nor your cheek burn,
		Enough; then shall we learn
		'Tis time for us to weep.

    Herbert Trench.



16. HE FELL AMONG THIEVES


		"Ye have robbed," said he, "ye have slaughtered and made an end,
		Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead;
		What will ye more of your guest and sometime friend?"
		"Blood for our blood," they said.

		He laughed: "If one may settle the score for five,
		I am ready; but let the reckoning stand till day:
		I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any alive."
		"You shall die at dawn," said they.

		He flung his empty revolver down the slope,
		He climb'd alone to the Eastward edge of the trees;
		All night long in a dream untroubled of hope
		He brooded, clasping his knees.

		He did not hear the monotonous roar that fills
		The ravine where the Yassin river sullenly flows;
		He did not see the starlight on the Laspur hills,
		Or the far Afghan snows.

		He saw the April noon on his books aglow,
		The wistaria trailing in at the window wide;
		He heard his father's voice from the terrace below
		Calling him down to ride.

		He saw the gray little church across the park,
		The mounds that hid the loved and honoured dead;
		The Norman arch, the chancel softly dark,
		The brasses black and red.

		He saw the School Close, sunny and green,
		The runner beside him, the stand by the parapet wall,
		The distant tape, and the crowd roaring between
		His own name over all.

		He saw the dark wainscot and timbered roof,
		The long tables, and the faces merry and keen;
		The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof,
		The Dons on the daïs serene.

		He watch'd the liner's stem ploughing the foam,
		He felt her trembling speed and the thrash of her screw;
		He heard her passengers' voices talking of home,
		He saw the flag she flew.

		And now it was dawn. He rose strong on his feet,
		And strode to his ruin'd camp below the wood;
		He drank the breath of the morning cool and sweet;
		His murderers round him stood.

		Light on the Laspur hills was broadening fast,
		The blood-red snow-peaks chilled to a dazzling white;
		He turn'd, and saw the golden circle at last,
		Cut by the eastern height.

		"O glorious Life, Who dwellest in earth and sun,
		I have lived, I praise and adore Thee."
		A sword swept.
		Over the pass the voices one by one
		Faded, and the hill slept.

    Henry Newbolt.



16. ENGLAND


		Shall we but turn from braggart pride
		Our race to cheapen and defame?
		Before the world to wail, to chide,
		And weakness as with vaunting claim?
		Ere the hour strikes, to abdicate
		The steadfast spirit that made us great,
		And rail with scolding tongues at fate?

		If England's heritage indeed
		Be lost, be traded quite away
		For fatted sloth and fevered greed;
		If, inly rotting, we decay;
		Suffer we then what doom we must,
		But silent, as befits the dust
		Of them whose chastisement was just.

		But rather, England, rally thou
		Whatever breathes of faith that still
		Within thee keeps the undying vow
		And dedicates the constant will.
		For such yet lives, if not among
		The boasters, or the loud of tongue,
		Who cry that England's knell is rung.

		The fault of heart, the small of brain,
		In thee but their own image find;
		Beyond such thoughts as these contain
		A mightier Presence is enshrined.
		Nor meaner than their birthright grown
		Shall these thy latest sons be shown,
		So thou but use them for thine own.

		By those great spirits burning high
		In our home's heaven, that shall be stars
		To shine, when all is history
		And rumour of old, idle wars;
		By all those hearts which proudly bled
		To make this rose of England red;
		The living, the triumphant dead;

		By all who suffered and stood fast
		That Freedom might the weak uphold,
		And in men's ways of wreck and waste
		Justice her awful flower unfold;
		By all who out of grief and wrong
		In passion's art of noble song
		Made Beauty to our speech belong;

		By those adventurous ones who went
		Forth overseas, and, self-exiled,
		Sought from far isle and continent
		Another England in the wild,
		For whom no drums beat, yet they fought
		Alone, in courage of a thought
		Which an unbounded future wrought;

		Yea, and yet more by those to-day
		Who toil and serve for naught of gain,
		That in thy purer glory they
		May melt their ardour and their pain;
		By these and by the faith of these,
		The faith that glorifies and frees,
		Thy lands call on thee, and thy seas.

		If thou hast sinned, shall we forsake
		Thee, or the less account us thine?
		Thy sores, thy shames on us we take.
		Flies not for us thy famed ensign?
		Be ours to cleanse and to atone;
		No man this burden bears alone;
		England, our best shall be thine own.

		Lift up thy cause into the light!
		Put all the factious lips to shame!
		Our loves, our faiths, our hopes unite
		And strike into a single flame!
		Whatever from without betide,
		O purify the soul of pride
		In us; thy slumbers cast aside;
		And of thy sons be justified!

    Laurence Binyon.



17. THE VOLUNTEER


		"He leapt to arms unbidden,
		Unneeded, over-bold;
		His face by earth is hidden,
		His heart in earth is cold.

		"Curse on the reckless daring
		That could not wait the call,
		The proud fantastic bearing
		That would be first to fall!"

		O tears of human passion,
		Blur not the image true;
		This was not folly's fashion,
		This was the man we knew.

    Henry Newbolt.



18. MANY SISTERS TO MANY BROTHERS


		When we fought campaigns (in the long Christmas rains)
		With soldiers spread in troops on the floor,
		I shot as straight as you, my losses were as few,
		My victories as many, or more.
		And when in naval battle, amid cannon's rattle,
		Fleet met fleet in the bath,
		My cruisers were as trim, my battleships as grim,
		My submarines cut as swift a path.
		Or, when it rained too long, and the strength of the strong
		Surged up and broke a way with blows,
		I was as fit and keen, my fists hit as clean,
		Your black eye matched my bleeding nose.
		Was there a scrap or ploy in which you, the boy,
		Could better me? You could not climb higher,
		Ride straighter, run as quick (and to smoke made you sick)
		. . . But I sit here, and you're under fire.

		Oh, it's you that have the luck, out there in blood and muck:
		 You were born beneath a kindly star;
		All we dreamt, I and you, you can really go and do,
		And I can't, the way things are.
		In a trench you are sitting, while I am knitting
		A hopeless sock that never gets done.
		Well, here's luck, my dear;—and you've got it, no fear;
		But for me . . . a war is poor fun.

    Rose Macaulay.



19. THE DEFENDERS


		His wage of rest at nightfall still
		He takes, who sixty years has known
		Of ploughing over Cotsall hill
		And keeping trim the Cotsall stone.

		He meditates the dusk, and sees
		Folds of his wonted shepherdings
		And lands of stubble and tall trees
		Becoming insubstantial things.

		And does he see on Cotsall hill—
		Thrown even to the central shire—
		The funnelled shapes forbidding still
		The stranger from his cottage fire?

    John Drinkwater.



20. THE DEAD


		These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
		Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
		The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
		And sunset, and the colours of the earth.

		These had seen movement, and heard music; known
		Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
		Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
		Touched flowers and furs, and cheeks. All this is ended.

		There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
		And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
		Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
		And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
		Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
		A width, a shining peace, under the night.

    Rupert Brooke.



21. THE SOLDIER


		If I should die, think only this of me:
		That there's some corner of a foreign field
		That is for ever England. There shall be
		In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
		A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
		Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
		A body of England's, breathing English air,
		Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

		And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
		A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
		Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
		Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
		And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
		In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

    Rupert Brooke.



22. FOR THE FALLEN


		With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
		England mourns for her dead across the sea.
		Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
		Fallen in the cause of the free.

		Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
		Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
		There is music in the midst of desolation
		And a glory that shines upon our tears.

		They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
		Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
		They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
		They fell with their faces to the foe.

		They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
		Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
		At the going down of the sun and in the morning
		We will remember them.

		They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
		They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
		They have no lot in our labour of the day-time:
		They sleep beyond England's foam.

		But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
		Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
		To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
		As the stars are known to the Night;

		As the stars that shall be bright when we are duet
		Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
		As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
		To the end, to the end, they remain.

    Laurence Binyon.



23. SHADOWS AND LIGHTS


		What gods have met in battle to arouse
		This whirling shadow of invisible things,
		These hosts that writhe amid the shattered sods?
		O Father, and O Mother of the gods,
		Is there some trouble in the heavenly house?
		We who are captained by its unseen kings
		Wonder what thrones are shaken in the skies,
		What powers who held dominion o'er our will
		Let fall the sceptre, and what destinies
		The younger gods may drive us to fulfil.

		Have they not swayed us, earth's invisible lords,
		With whispers and with breathings from the dark?
		The very border stones of nations mark
		Where silence swallowed some wild prophet's words
		That rang but for an instant and were still,
		Yet were so burthened with eternity,
		They maddened all who heard to work their will,
		To raise the lofty temple on the hill,
		And many a glittering thicket of keen swords
		Flashed out to make one law for land and sea,
		That earth might move with heaven in company.
		The cities that to myriad beauty grew
		Were altars raised unto old gods who died,
		And they were sacrificed in ruins to
		The younger gods who took their place of pride;
		They have no brotherhood, the deified,
		No high companionship of throne by throne,
		But will their beauty still to be alone.

		What is a nation but a multitude
		United by some god-begotten mood,
		Some hope of liberty or dream of power
		That have not with each other brotherhood
		But warred in spirit from their natal hour,
		Their hatred god-begotten as their love
		Reverberations of eternal strife?
		For all that fury breathed in human life,
		Are ye not guilty, answer, ye above?

		Ah, no, the circle of the heavenly ones,
		That ring of burning, grave, inflexible powers,
		Array in harmony amid the deep
		The shining legionaries of the suns,
		That through their day from dawn to twilight keep
		The peace of heaven, and have no feuds like ours.
		The morning Stars their labours of the dawn
		Close at the advent of the Solar Kings,
		And these with joy their sceptres yield, withdrawn
		When the still Evening Stars begin their reign,
		And twilight time is thrilled with homing wings
		To the All-Father being turned again.

		No, not on high begin divergent ways,
		The galaxies of interlinked lights
		Rejoicing on each other's beauty gaze,
		'Tis we who do make errant all the rays
		That stream upon us from the astral heights.
		Love in our thickened air too redly burns;
		And unto vanity our beauty turns;
		Wisdom, that gently whispers us to part
		From evil, swells to hatred in the heart.
		Dark is the shadow of invisible things
		On us who look not up, whose vision fails.
		The glorious shining of the heavenly kings
		To mould us in their image naught avails,
		They weave a robe of many-coloured fire
		To garb the spirits thronging in the deep,
		And in the upper air its splendours keep
		Pure and unsullied, but below it trails
		Darkling and glimmering in our earthly mire.

		With eyes bent ever earthwards we are swayed
		But by the shadows of eternal light,
		And shadow against shadow is arrayed
		So that one dark may dominate the night.
		Though kindred are the lights that cast the shade,
		We look not up, nor see how, side by side,
		The high originals of all our pride
		In crowned and sceptred brotherhood are throned,
		Compassionate of our blindness and our hate
		That own the godship but the love disowned.
		Ah, let us for a little while abate
		The outward roving eye, and seek within
		Where spirit unto spirit is allied;
		There, in our inmost being, we may win
		The joyful vision of the heavenly wise
		To see the beauty in each other's eyes.

    A. E.



24. BRUMANA


		Oh shall I never never be home again!
		Meadows of England shining in the rain
		Spread wide your daisied lawns: your ramparts green
		With briar fortify, with blossom screen
		Till my far morning—and O streams that slow
		And pure and deep through plains and playlands go,
		For me your love and all your kingcups store,
		And—dark militia of the southern shore,
		Old fragrant friends—preserve me the last lines
		Of that long saga which you sang me, pines,
		When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree
		I listened, with my eyes upon the sea.

		O traitor pines, you sang what life has found
		The falsest of fair tales.
		Earth blew a far-horn prelude all around,
		That native music of her forest home,
		While from the sea's blue fields and syren dales
		Shadows and light noon spectres of the foam
		Riding the summer gales
		On aery viols plucked an idle sound.

		Hearing you sing, O trees,
		Hearing you murmur, "There are older seas,
		That beat on vaster sands,
		Where the wise snailfish move their pearly towers
		To carven rocks and sculptured promont'ries,"
		Hearing you whisper, "Lands
		Where blaze the unimaginable flowers."

		Beneath me in the valley waves the palm,
		Beneath, beyond the valley, breaks the sea;
		Beneath me sleep in mist and light and calm
		Cities of Lebanon, dream-shadow-dim,
		Where Kings of Tyre and Kings of Tyre did rule
		In ancient days in endless dynasty,
		And all around the snowy mountains swim
		Like mighty swans, afloat in heaven's pool.

		But I will walk upon the wooded hill
		Where stands a grove, O pines, of sister pines,
		And when the downy twilight droops her wing
		And no sea glimmers and no mountain shines
		My heart shall listen still.
		For pines are gossip pines the wide world through
		And full of runic tales to sigh or sing.
		'Tis ever sweet through pines to see the sky
		Blushing a deeper gold or darker blue.
		'Tis ever sweet to lie
		On the dry carpet of the needles brown,
		And though the fanciful green lizard stir
		And windy odours light as thistledown
		Breathe from the lavdanon and lavender,
		Half to forget the wandering and pain,
		Half to remember days that have gone by,
		And dream and dream that I am home again!

    James Elroy Flecker.



25. A LYKE-WAKE CAROL


		Grow old and die, rich Day,
		Over some English field—
		Chartered to come away
		What time to Death you yield!
		Pass, frost-white ghost, and then
		Come forth to banish'd men!

		I see the stubble's sheen,
		The mist and ruddled leaves,
		Here where the new Spring's green
		For her first rain-drops grieves.
		Here beechen leaves drift red
		Last week in England dead.

		For English eyes' delight
		Those Autumn ghosts go free—
		Ghost of the field hoar-white,
		Ghost of the crimson tree.
		Grudge them not, England dear,
		To us thy banished here!

    Arthur Shearly Cripps.



26. A REFRAIN


		Tell the tune his feet beat
		On the ground all day—
		Black-burnt ground and green grass
		Seamed with rocks of grey—
		"England," "England," "England,"
		That one word they say.
		Now they tread the beech-mast,
		Now the ploughland's clay,
		Now the faery ball-floor of her fields in May.
		Now her red June sorrel, now her new-turned hay,
		Now they keep the great road, now by sheep-path stray,
		Still it's "England," "England,"
		"England" all the way!

    Arthur Shearly Cripps.



27. WHERE A ROMAN VILLA STOOD, ABOVE FREIBURG


		On alien ground, breathing an alien air,
		A Roman stood, far from his ancient home,
		And gazing, murmured, "Ah, the hills are fair,
		But not the hills of Rome!"

		Descendant of a race to Romans-kin,
		Where the old son of Empire stood, I stand.
		The self-same rocks fold the same valley in,
		Untouched of human hand.

		Over another shines the self-same star,
		Another heart with nameless longing fills,
		Crying aloud, "How beautiful they are,
		But not our English hills!"

    Mary E. Coleridge.



28. HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS


		He walked in glory on the hills;
		We dalesmen envied from afar
		The heights and rose-lit pinnacles
		Which placed him nigh the evening star.

		Upon the peaks they found him dead;
		And now we wonder if he sighed
		For our low grass beneath his head,
		For our rude huts, before he died.

    William Canton.



29. IN THE HIGHLANDS


		In the highlands, in the country places,
		Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
		And the young fair maidens
		Quiet eyes;
		Where essential silence cheers and blesses,
		And for ever in the hill-recesses
		Her more lovely music
		Broods and dies.

		O to mount again where erst I haunted;
		Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,
		And the low green meadows
		Bright with sward;
		And when even dies, the million-tinted,
		And the night has come, and planets glinted,
		Lo, the valley hollow
		Lamp-bestarred!

		O to dream, O to awake and wander
		There, and with delight to take and render,
		Through the trance of silence,
		Quiet breath;
		Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,
		Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
		Only winds and rivers,
		Life and death.

    Robert Louis Stevenson.



30. IN CITY STREETS


		Yonder in the heather there's a bed for sleeping,
		Drink for one athirst, ripe blackberries to eat;
		Yonder in the sun the merry hares go leaping,
		And the pool is clear for travel-wearied feet.

		Sorely throb my feet, a-tramping London highways,
		(Ah! the springy moss upon a northern moor!)
		Through the endless streets, the gloomy squares and byways,
		Homeless in the City, poor among the poor!

		London streets are gold—ah, give me leaves a-glinting
		'Midst grey dykes and hedges in the autumn sun!
		London water's wine, poured out for all unstinting—
		God! For the little brooks that tumble as they run!

		Oh, my heart is fain to hear the soft wind blowing,
		Soughing through the fir-tops up on northern fells!
		Oh, my eye's an ache to see the brown burns flowing
		Through the peaty soil and tinkling heather-bells.

    Ada Smith.



31. MARGARET'S SONG


		Too soothe and mild your lowland airs
		For one whose hope is gone:
		I'm thinking of a little tarn,
		Brown, very lone.

		Would now the tall swift mists could lay
		Their wet grasp on my hair,
		And the great natures of the hills
		Round me friendly were.

		In vain!—For taking hills your plains
		Have spoilt my soul, I think,
		But would my feet were going down
		Towards the brown tarn's brink.

    Lascelles Abercrombie.



32. TO S. R. CROCKETT


		Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
		Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
		Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
		My heart remembers how!

		Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
		Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
		Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races,
		And winds, austere and pure:

		Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
		Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
		Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
		And hear no more at all.

    Robert Louis Stevenson.



33. CHILLINGHAM



I

		Through the sunny garden
		The humming bees are still;
		The fir climbs the heather,
		The heather climbs the hill.

		The low clouds have riven
		A little rift through.
		The hill climbs to heaven,
		Far away and blue.


II

		O the high valley, the little low hill,
		And the cornfield over the sea,
		The wind that rages and then lies still,
		And the clouds that rest and flee!

		O the gray island in the rainbow haze,
		And the long thin spits of land,
		The roughening pastures and the stony ways,
		And the golden flash of the sand!

		O the red heather on the moss-wrought rock,
		And the fir-tree stiff and straight,
		The shaggy old sheep-dog barking at the flock,
		And the rotten old five-barred gate!

		O the brown bracken, the blackberry bough,
		The scent of the gorse in the air!
		I shall love them ever as I love them now,
		I shall weary in Heaven to be there!


III

		Strike, Life, a happy hour, and let me live
		But in that grace!
		I shall have gathered all the world can give,
		Unending Time and Space!

		Bring light and air—the thin and shining air
		Of the North land,
		The light that falls on tower and garden there,
		Close to the gold sea-sand.

		Bring flowers, the latest colours of the earth,
		Ere nun-like frost
		Lay her hard hand upon this rainbow mirth,
		With twinkling emerald crossed.

		The white star of the traveller's joy, the deep
		Empurpled rays that hide the smoky stone,
		The dahlia rooted in Egyptian sleep,
		The last frail rose alone.

		Let music whisper from a casement set
		By them of old,
		Where the light smell of lavender may yet
		Rise from the soft loose mould.

		Then shall I know, with eyes and ears awake,
		Not in bright gleams,
		The joy my Heavenly Father joys to make
		For men who grieve, in dreams!

    Mary E. Coleridge.



34. SUSSEX


		God gave all men all earth to love,
		But since our hearts are small,
		Ordained for each one spot should prove
		Beloved over all;
		That as He watched Creation's birth
		So we, in godlike mood,
		May of our love create our earth
		And see that it is good.

		So one shall Baltic pines content,
		As one some Surrey glade,
		Or one the palm-grove's droned lament
		Before Levuka's trade.
		Each to his choice, and I rejoice
		The lot has fallen to me
		In a fair ground—in a fair ground—
		Yea, Sussex by the sea!

		No tender-hearted garden crowns,
		No bosomed woods adorn
		Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,
		But gnarled and writhen thorn—
		Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,
		And through the gaps revealed
		Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim
		Blue goodness of the Weald.

		Clean of officious fence or hedge,
		Half-wild and wholly tame,
		The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge
		As when the Romans came.
		What sign of those that fought and died
		At shift of sword and sword?
		The barrow and the camp abide,
		The sunlight and the sward.

		Here leaps ashore the full Sou'west
		All heavy-winged with brine,
		Here lies above the folded crest
		The Channel's leaden line;
		And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,
		And here, each warning each,
		The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
		Along the hidden beach.

		We have no waters to delight
		Our broad and brookless vales—
		Only the dewpond on the height
		Unfed, that never fails,
		Whereby no tattered herbage tells
		Which way the season flies—
		Only our close-bit thyme that smells
		Like dawn in Paradise.

		Here through the strong unhampered days
		The tinkling silence thrills;
		Or little, lost. Down churches praise
		The Lord who made the hills;
		But here the Old Gods guard their round,
		And, in her secret heart,
		The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found
		Dreams, as she dwells, apart.

		Though all the rest were all my share,
		With equal soul I'd see
		Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair,
		Yet none more fair than she.
		Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed,
		And I will choose instead
		Such lands as lie 'twixt Rake and Rye,
		Black Down and Beachy Head.

		I will go out against the sun
		Where the rolled scarp retires,
		And the Long Man of Wilmington
		Looks naked toward the shires;
		And east till doubling Rother crawls
		To find the fickle tide,
		By dry and sea-forgotten walls,
		Our ports of stranded pride.

		I will go north about the shaws
		And the deep ghylls that breed
		Huge oaks and old, the which we hold
		No more than "Sussex weed";
		Or south where windy Piddinghoe's
		Begilded dolphin veers,
		And black beside wide-banked Ouse
		Lie down our Sussex steers.

		So to the land our hearts we give
		Till the sure magic strike,
		And Memory, Use, and Love make live
		Us and our fields alike—
		That deeper than our speech and thought,
		Beyond our reason's sway,
		Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
		Yearns to its fellow-clay.

		God gives all men all earth to love,
		But since man's heart is small
		Ordains for each one spot shall prove
		Beloved over all.
		Each to his choice, and I rejoice
		The lot has fallen to me
		In a fair ground—in a fair ground—
		Yea, Sussex by the sea!

    Rudyard Kipling.



35. THE SOUTH COUNTRY


		When I am living in the Midlands,
		That are sodden and unkind,
		I light my lamp in the evening:
		My work is left behind;
		And the great hills of the South Country
		Come back into my mind.

		The great hills of the South Country
		They stand along the sea,
		And it's there, walking in the high woods,
		That I could wish to be,
		And the men that were boys when I was a boy
		Walking along with me.

		The men that live in North England
		I saw them for a day:
		Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,




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