SONG Would I could commandeer the bees
To hum you droning symphonies.
I love the climbing thoughts that rise
To the sheer heaven of your eyes,
Wide laughter-dromes of wondering blue,
Yes, yes, I do!
But when I sing of bubbling seas,
The zephyr-clapping hands of trees
Applauding in tumultuous skies,
Or window-winged dragonflies,
Or anything that’s good and true
I sing of you—
Yes, yes, I do!
THE SHADOW I stood one night where rivers pause to meet
And mingle in the traffic-rumbling sea:
The surge and clamour of a London street,
In tides alternate, rolled, impassively.
Before my feet
Ran shouting boys, and through the pallid glare
Loomed gaunt leviathans that swayed and roared
Past glittering shops, and stations which outpoured
Load after weary load; and everywhere
Strange sounds, a snatch of laughter, shout or word,
Sleek-coated motor-cars that softly purred
Round corners sounding with the rustling beat
Of hurried swarms of feet.
And yet I seemed alone, and dumb-amazed
Before a towering building, wherein blazed
One staring patch of light, one amber square
That shone enshrouded by the dome of night
High in the naked air. And still I gazed
Until a shadow passed across the blind:
A shadow-woman pacing time away
Beside a bed, wherein a poet lay
Dying, dying. One whose mind
(A womb of beauty whereof love was lord)
Had fashioned symphonies of thought and word
Impassionately sweet. And suddenly
She paused—I saw the shadow of her hand
Stretch out and shudder back. I saw her stand
All sorrow-bound in graven dignity.
She bowed her head, her shoulders taut with pain,
Her figure burdened with the weight of tears.
Then all grew dark. And in my waking ears
The traffic surged again.
EVERYCHILD We take you through Pacific seas
To islands strange and new,
Where howling monkeys scale the trees
Alive with humming-birds and bees,
Where shiny seals and porpoises
Snort in the rolling blue.
Then quicker than a shaft of light
We shear the arctic foam,
And lounging bears of polar white
Roar loudly through the dancing night,
And drive the killer-whales to flight—
Upon the floor at home.
O hear the chant of Eastern song
Beneath Arabian stars,
Where camels slowly stalk along
And gleaming Arabs, tall and strong,
Buy gold and merchandise among
The riot of bazaars!
The glow-worms crawl excitedly
And trim their lamps o’ night;
For often, ere the moon is high,
Bat-harnessed walnut-shells flit by
To bear them to the waiting sky
And set the stars alight.
The nodding poplars understand
And birds and beasts and flowers:
And we shall wander hand in hand
With better things than Peter Panned—
O what is footlight fairyland
Beside this world of ours?
What matter if the clouds are grey
Or winter-keen and wild,
When you and I have found a way
To turn November into May;
For Everyjoy is Everyday
And Everyman a child.
CHILD OF THE FLOWING TIDE Away to the call of the racing sea—
(Child of the flowing tide)
A hundred chargers of ivory,
And two of them saddled for you and for me,
Are pawing and stamping the surf to be free
Where the wild sea-horses ride.
The deep water shall roar as we race from the shore
On the back of the flowing tide.
O hurry, the moon is away in the sky
(Child of the flowing tide)
With your heels well down, and your heart set high
You’re saddled and bridled, and so am I;
So gather your reins, for the foam will fly
Where the wild sea-horses ride.
Grip tight with your knees as you gallop the seas
On the back of the flowing tide.
On the wide lagoon I’ll meet you to-night
(Child of the flowing tide)
When the moon swings high and the stars are alight
And the roaring sea-chargers are ready to fight:
Their manes are all foam and their coats are all white
Where the wild sea-horses ride.
The deep waters shall roar as we race from the shore
On the back of the flowing tide.
EIGHT SONNETS I I Tremble at the outset, for I know
How rhythm halts and rhyme rings falsely true.
Yet courage, your disciple, bids me show
That speech may offer sacrifice to you.
Vain boast! For if success in splendour came
Poised faultlessly in lines of perfect stress,
I must fall short of it in very shame
Unworthy of my sonnet’s worthiness.
But should I fail, and feel the words I sought
Elusive, or bedecked with frail disguise
Of tattered sentiment, that risk I dare
Not hazard in the winding maze of thought,
Lest I should stir the wonder in your eyes
Or wind a little tangle in your hair.
II So let me fail: what matter if the wise
And worldly whisper, who so poor as they?
For everywhere alike the common way
Has now become an earthly paradise.
And where you walk the very pavement cries
Of blue-bells, April-chimed, and fawns at play;
And London seems a sylvan holiday
Of flower-hunting bees and butterflies.
So let me fail, for where I could succeed
How mean the quest, a climber gazing down
From the low vantage of some petty hill.
But chance success would be the gambler’s thrill
Who plays with God for worlds, and wins indeed
The whole of Paradise for half-a-crown!
III I Have no room for jealous gods, and find
No ring of joy or laughter in the Creed,
Nor shall my great possession be resigned
In fear or favour of my spirit’s need.
For joy is mine, and mine the teeming years
Unfettered in a world impassionate;
Not mine a sorrowed Calvary of tears
Where love was vassal to the lords of hate.
Let others bow before a God unknown
Enshrined in words they dimly understand.
Let every man make Paradise his own—
My Goddess breathes and leads me by the hand
O hush! I dare not speak of it alone,
’Tis all too wonderful and strangely planned!
IV Day after day my growing pinions beat
Impatiently. Yet, in a place unclean
I sought the dwarfed, the petty and obscene,
And aped the clownish mummers of the street;
Till suddenly the world grew strangely sweet,
All eager at a touch, and thrilling-keen;
With half-forgotten hands I strove unseen
To mould a little planet at your feet.
You spoke and there was light, and slowly grew
My teeming world of verse, a brotherhood
Of music, thought, and wonder, born anew,
Alive, aglow, in every varied mood.
And when the waking truth is bursting through
I feel you bend to see that all is good.
V If I had seen what hourly happiness
In this my world your being could ordain,
How then should I have trysted with distress
And misery the cringing friend of pain?
If I had seen beyond the looming years
Your shadow, grief had haunted me in vain,
For what are cataracts of human tears
Beside the boundless laughter of the main?
O barren days bygone! Now every field
Wakes clamorous with dawning life conceived,
So has the magic universe revealed
Whole happiness to one who half believed—
Whole happiness, and in my heart concealed
Wide wonder at the sacrament received.
VI “Great men and happy years,” you say from these
Your knowledge came, and your diviner powers
More thrilling than the honey-womb of flowers
Or the bright star-foam of the Pleiades.
So, did you learn the droning lore of bees
From some be-medalled soldier? Did you meet
Madonna-hearted statesmen in the street,
Or bishops, babbling of the opal seas?
O poor deceiver, conscript joys belong
To you as homage. For the happy years
Bear fruit to-day, and blossom like the flowers
That breathe of summertime in after hours.
For you were loyal to a creed of Song
Nor ever stooped to misery and tears.
VII
VIII When you are old and dancing shadows play
Around the sky-blown laughter in your eyes
Shall I, unworthy of your new disguise,
Forget the sacrament and go away?
Shall I adore, like sorrowed men to-day,
The child who gurgled in first ecstasies
At oxen (Mary said) that mooed surprise
And snuffed with wondering muzzles in the hay?
O leave the past—the living world is mine
Warm, passionate, and breathing. Even so
Shall Life in after years make Earth divine
And fire shall burn as long as embers glow.
But he who babbled to the wondering kine
Is dead, long dead, two thousand years ago.
KEATS Touch me, O Lord, and let my sonnet ring
With echoes. Now his words of crowned belief
In raging hours of pain and suffering
Too high for praise, too terrible for grief,
Ring loud and clear. Last night his chariot rolled
And I beheld him urge amid the stars
Cloud-fashioned steeds of snow moon-aureoled,
Himself a charioteer equipped for wars.
Faster and faster—men of Blood and Pain
Opposed in vast battalions, but he
Rolled back their army to the dark again
And triumphed while he sang exultingly
As now he sings. Boy of the glowing brain,
Dear Keats your name is Paradise to me!
MEETING HER IN THE STREET She’s coming down the road! You know
Those laughter-woken eyes?
I beckon at the stars—But O
If she should recognise:
Nearer and nearer yet she trod
Till (mad blood-dancing joy)
Down from the planet-fields of God
She nodded, “Hullo, Boy.”
HER HOMAGE Silence outlives the argument of kings
And best is dumb applause. Behold, she moves:
No soft-winged owlets blink, no cricket sings,
Before she greets the murmuring world she loves.
Now twirling parachutes of sycamore
Hang waiting, and the rippled trout-rings die,
The murmur round a jasmine honey store
Is still—a linnet falters suddenly.
From out the reeds an awe-struck otter peers
As eerie quiet speeds from bush to bush:
High Summer stands on tip-toe as She nears
The woods, and magic numbs the missel-thrush:
Above still grasses prick the listening ears
Of rabbits, and a squirrel whispers “Hush!”
REACTION Afraid, afraid, I sought the kindly night
In fear that mocking fools should scrutinise
The beauty I discovered in men’s eyes,
And mock me as a dreaming anchorite.
For long in fear I sinned against the light
And shrouded Poetry with vain disguise;
Before I sang, unconscious as the skies,
Self-chanting songs to me supreme delight.
But now, O littlest of all little minds,
High-browed, alone, aloof, you little know
How like you are to Brown, who lifts the blinds
Of his suburban villa, just to show
That he alone is up, but always finds
The neighbourhood awoke an hour ago!
APRIL How much are you achieving
O April day,
By orchard looms a-weaving
All apple-gay?
Tie on your cherry blossom, clothe your squills
Madonna-blue, and give your daffodils
Their collars of pale straw, and come away,
Your rain-awoken hills
Shall welcome May.
What is behind your weeping
O April tears?
Your lilac plumes are sweeping,
Your silken spears
Of chestnut bristle in the changing sky
Whilst herded clouds foregather, ’neath the high
Storm-loud arena’s thundering charioteers:
And beckoned silently
The swallow nears.
MAY-JUNE Now is the swaddling husk of Winter shed,
And waking Summer, robed in windy showers,
Is heralded from silvered aspen towers
And orchards in high blossom garlanded.
Now sunlight, in the plumed laburnum flowers
And purple lilac, trembles overhead;
And bees a-drone in field and flower bed
Make clamorous the trade of teeming hours.
Now the sweet-pea, all honey-laden, shows
Full-swollen sails, her mooring ropes of green
Encircle twigs. And soon the primrose queen
Lights her pale lamps of Evening ’mid the glows
Of brazen flower-suns, that burn between
The yawning honeysuckle and the rose.
THE STROLLING SINGER Sun-bathed in Summer peace the village lay
That afternoon. Along the happy street
Milk-fragrant kine, and wagons high with hay
Came lumbering. The fields were loud with bees
And drowsy with the wind-stirred meadowsweet.
From bowing trees
Fell chatter, and above the garden wall
Wide sunflowers beamed at spearing hollyhocks
That dared the wind, and scorned the clustered stocks,
And bore their laddered blooms high over all.
Here amid Summer murmur and delight
The strolling singer came. The people heard
Stray snatches of a song—a laugh—a word,
And gossiping in groups of two or three
Stood all amazed. For no one came in sight,
Only the wind was laden drowsily
With mellow sounds that slowly growing strong
At last became a song:—
“Bend down, the marsh and meadow holds
Pale yellow pimpernels,
And sun-begotten marigolds,
Thyme, orchis, asphodels,
And borage born of ocean blue,
Plumed armoured thistles, fever-few,
Sea-campion globed, and clinging dew
In giant flower-bells.
“Bend down—an ebon beetle prowls,
And there a swinging bee
Drinks honey from the laden cowls
That clothe the foxglove tree.
And giant peacock butterflies
Light meadowsweet with sudden eyes,
And through the tangled grasses rise
Lucerne and timothy.”
Louder and louder grew the voice, until
A figure specked the heaven-touching hill,
And nearer, nearer, still ...
The villagers in mingled fear and awe
Stood round on tiptoe waiting. Soon they saw
A little sylvan man with beckoning eyes
And limbs of lithe expression. Woven flowers
And grasses, splashed with rainbow-tinted showers,
And jewelled with alluring butterflies,
Enwrapped him. Russet face, clear-featured, gay
As pebble-rumpled streams, and tousled hair
Sun-dyed and naked. His limbs were bronzed and bare,
And sprang, it seemed, from the wild interplay
Of flower-woven garb. Around his waist
Twined traveller’s-joy and honeysuckle, sweet
And freshly dewed, and on his lissom feet
Were pointed shoes of silver beech rush-laced.
The village gazed in silence, till a child
Began:—“Who are you, funny man?
Your face seems to be telling truth, your eyes
Are just the colour of blue butterflies,
O tell us who you are?”
The stranger smiled,
And turned his face that bore the wistful, far,
Strange wonder-look of one whose dreams come true,
Who delves in darkened quarries of his brain
Unhoped-for gold, and changes old to new
As Spring rejuvenates the earth again.
Of one who plays Narcissus in Life’s pool
And sees an image strangely beautiful ...
Then suddenly they heard him cry:—
“Come buy,
I own the laughing earth.
And all my chanted words are deeds;
I follow where my fancy leads,
And sell my songs for mirth.
What will you buy?
“Speak hurriedly, and choose your song,
The poplar’s shadow creeps along,
Search hurriedly the Earth and Sky,
What will you buy?”
Meanwhile a crowd had gathered, in a ring;
The butcher, grocer, postman, parson, clerk,
And all the village, open-mouthed and stark,
Stood mutely marvelling;
And children clamoured round him with large eyes
And pelted him for songs, like countless hail,
With pleadings, shouts and cries:—
Sing us a song of Paradise,
Of railway engines, fawns,
Of stolen queens in guarded towers,
Of sprites and leprechauns”—
O HUSH! All were dumb—
“Boy in blue smock, sucking your thumb,
With hair like a tangled chrysanthemum,
What would you like me to sing, Ocean-eyed?”
Loud the boy’s answer rang,
“I want a song of flowers!”
And this is the song he sang:
“Sisters of mercy are Cyclamen,
Snowdrops and Arums too,
But Primulus, Violets, Stocks, Mignonette,
Crocus aflame, and the Never Forget,
Are chaster than chastity too.
Now sulphur Laburnum and Lilac, adieu,
Good-bye April children to you!
For who
Will climb up the flowers of my Hollyhock towers
With butterfly steeple-jacks blue?
But, climber, beware!
Of Love-in-a-mist in a tangle of hair,
Of thistly Teazles, and winged Sweet-Peas
With tentacle tendrils that strangle with ease,
Of butterfly Orchis a-clamour for bees.
For Dragon may Snap you, and Sundew may trap you,
Before you have started, before you have parted
The grass at the foot of my Hollyhock trees.
But think of the view
Of the whole garden side!
We’ll charter a dragon-fly homeward, and ride
Down to our Rosemary, Marjoram, Rue,
Lavender, London Pride.”
All watched him, held, bewitched, and with him clung
To the green tops of slowly swaying towers,
Where bees had scattered pollen-dust, that hung
Above the teeming nectaries of flowers,
And all again were young.
But now the poplars cast their phantom bars
In latticed shadows; now a scarf unfurled,
Like parrot-tulip petals hued and torn,
Across the West was flung.
And now, before the twilight bares the stars,
Ere jewelled night is born,
All silently the Singer left the world.
Beyond the hill he passed,
But singing all the while; first loud and strong.
Then fainter, till at last
Came only jumbled echoes of a song:—
“Bend down—the marsh and meadow holds
Pale yellow Pimpernels,
And sun-begotten Marigolds
Thyme, Orchis, Asphodels” ...
(Fainter and fainter it grew
Gentle as ebbing tide)
“Butterfly steeple-jacks blue” ...
(Fainter it grew
And died)
Echoing “Rosemary, Marjoram, Rue,
Lavender, London Pride”
THE FRENCH MOTHER TO HER UNBORN CHILD Beat quietly, hid heart.
Build, little limbs, and brain divinely wrought,
Grow, grow in peace. Around, the pangs of war
Are powerless to cripple thee or mar
Thy sure perfection. But, if Death besought
For thee, our tethered souls could never part:
Beat quietly, hid heart.
Form, primal thought,
Close-furled and sheltered as the budding Spring
Unknown, unknowing, yet divinely planned.
But stay awhile, for sounds of battle ring.
Stir, little hand
Unrealized—I count the dragging hours
And yearn to see it clutch at yonder flowers;
To see thy lucent feet and dimpled frame
And gaze at heav’n-snatched eyes and know thy name,
But stay awhile.
For thou art best alone away from Man:
Wait longer, tears unshed and lurking smile
Of joy enshrined where every joy began.
Time hurries as the moments thump along
(Hark, little ears, my heart is beating strong)
Life is aglow, alive, a perfect song.
Around the land is ugly, but apart
I fashion thee in thought. Now hush, for sleep
Is here. Close, eyes unopened, voice unheard,
Be still. Grow on in beauty till day creep ...
Hark to my whispered word—
Beat quietly, hid heart.
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