FOLLY SHALL I not wear my motley
And flaunt my bladder of green
Before the earls and the bishops
And the laughing king and queen;
Though hunger is in my belly
And jests my lips between?
Men listen a moment idly
To the foolishness I sing—
But my words are sharp and bitter
In savour and in sting,
And harder than mail in battle
Where the heavy maces swing.
For full of the sap of folly
Grow the branches of the Creed,
The fine adventurous folly
God gave us in our need,
When He yielded up to scornful death
The human brows that bleed.
They nailed the son of Mary
On a gibbet straight and tall;
But the eagles of the Roman
Were struck in CÆsar’s hall,
And the veil of the Holy of Holies
Was rent in the temple wall.
Wiser than sage or prophet,
Or the pedant of the school,
Than lord or abbot or priest or prince
Who over the nations rule,
Are the cap and bells and the motley
And the laughter of the fool!
February 12th, 1918. THE SHIPS THE bending sails shall whiten on the sea,
Guided by hands and eyes made glad for home,
With graven gems and cedar and ebony
From Babylon and Rome.
For here a lover cometh as to his bride,
And there a merchant to his utmost price—
Oh, hearts will leap to see the good ships ride
Safely to Paradise!
And this that cuts the waves with brazen prow
Hath heard the blizzard groaning through her spars;
Battered with honour swings she nobly now
Back from her bitter wars.
And that doth bring her silver work and spice,
Peacocks and apes from Tarshish, and from Tyre
Great cloaks of velvet stiff with gold device,
Coloured with sunset fire....
And one, serenely through the golden gate,
Shall sail and anchor by the ultimate shore,
Who, plundered of her gold by pirate Fate,
Still keeps her richer store
Unrifled when her perilous journey ends
And the strong cable holds her safe again:
Laughter and memories and the songs of friends
And the sword edge of pain.
June 1917. LAUGHTER October 14th, 1917. VOCATION THOUGH God has put me in the world to praise
Each beetle’s burnished wing, each blade of grass,
To track the manifold and marvellous ways
Whereon His bright creative footsteps pass;
To glory in the poplars’ summer green,
To guard the sunset’s glittering hoard of gold,
To gladden when the fallen leaves careen
On fairy keels upon the windy wold.
For this, for this, my eager mornings broke,
For this came sunshine and the lonely rain,
For this the stiff and sleepy woods awoke
And every hawthorn hedge along the lane.
For this God gave me all my joy of verse
That I might shout beneath exultant skies,
And meet, as one delivered from a curse,
The pardon and the pity in your eyes.
BLINDNESS OPEN the casement! From my room,
Perched high upon this dizzy spire,
My blinded eyes behold the bloom
Of gardens in their golden fire.
Oh deep, mysterious recompense—
Time static to my ardent gaze!
No longer mortal veils of sense
Conceal the blissful ray of rays!
Fantastic forests toss their heads
For my immortal youth; on grass
Brighter than jewels do the reds
Of riotous summer roses pass.
I traffic in abysmal seas,
And dive for pearls and coloured shells,
Where, over seaweeds tall as trees,
The waters boom like tenor bells;
Where bearded goblin-fish and sharks,
With fins as large as eagles’ wings,
Throw phosphorescent trails of sparks
Which glitter on drowned Spaniards’ rings.
From star to star I pilgrimage,
Undaunted in ethereal space;
And laugh because the sun in rage
Shoots harmless arrows at my face.
For even if the skies should flare
In God’s last catastrophic blaze,
My happy, blinded eyes would stare
Only upon the ray of rays.
January 20th, 1918. DRINKING SONG WHEN Horace wrote his noble verse,
His brilliant, glowing line,
He must have gone to bed the worse
For good Falernian wine.
No poet yet could praise the rose
In verse that so serenely flows
Unless he dipped his Roman nose
In good Falernian wine.
Shakespeare and Jonson too
Drank deep of barley brew—
Drank deep of barley brew, my boys,
Drank deep of barley brew!
When Alexander led his men
Against the Persian King,
He broached a hundred hogsheads, then
They drank like anything.
They drank by day, they drank by night,
And when they marshalled for the fight
Each put a score of foes to flight—
They drank like anything!
No warrior worth his salt
But quaffs the mighty malt—
But quaffs the mighty malt, my boys,
But quaffs the mighty malt!
When Patrick into Ireland went
The works of God to do,
It was his excellent intent
To teach men how to brew.
The holy saint had in his train
A man of splendid heart and brain—
A brewer was this worthy swain—
To teach men how to brew.
The snakes he drove away
Were teetotallers they say—
Teetotallers they say, my boys,
Teetotallers they say!
September 30th, 1917. THREE TRIOLETS I
OF AN IMPROBABLE STORY I HEARD a story from an oak
As I was walking in the wood—
I, of the stupid human-folk,
I heard a story from an oak.
Though larches into laughter broke
I hardly think I understood.
I heard a story from an oak
As I was walking in the wood.
II
OF DEPLORABLE SENTIMENTS I WOULDN’T sell my noble thirst
For half-a-dozen bags of gold;
I’d like to drink until I burst.
I wouldn’t sell my noble thirst
For lucre filthy and accurst—
Such treasures can’t be bought and sold!
I wouldn’t sell my noble thirst
For half-a-dozen bags of gold.
III
OF LOVE AND LAUGHTER You scattered joy about my way
And filled my lips with love and laughter
In white and yellow fields of May
You scattered joy about my way.
Though Winter come with skies of grey
And grisly death come stalking after,
You scattered joy about my way
And filled my lips with love and laughter.
A NEW CANTERBURY TALE IN Italie a mony yeer ago
There lived a little childË Catharine,
With yongË, merrie hertË clere as snow.
From hir first youthful hour she did entwyne
Roses both whyt and reed—Godis columbine
She was. And for hir holy gaiety
Was by hir neighbours clept Euphrosyne.
Ech stepp she took upon hir fadirs staires,
Kneeling she did an Ave Mary say;
With ful devocioun she seid hir prayers
Ere that she wentË forth ech day to play;
Our Blessid Queen was in hir thought alway—
Our Modir Mary whose humility
Hath raisÉd hir to hevinËs magestÉ.
When only sevin was this childËs age
She vowed hirself to sweet virginity,
Forsweering eny erthly marriÁge,
That she the clenË bride of Crist schuld be,
Who on the heavy cross ful cruelly
The JewËs nailÉd, hevin to open wide—
Crist for hir husËbond, she CristËs bride.
Swich was the litle innocentes intent,
Hirself unspotted from the world to kepe,
Al hidden in hir fadirs hous she went.
Whether in waking or in purË sleep
She builded hir a closË cellË deep—
Where LordË CristË colde walk with hir,
And hold alway His sweetË convers there.
So ful she was of gentil charity,
She diddË tend upon the sick ech day;
To beggars in their grete necessity
She gave hir cloke and petticoat away;
To no poor wightË did she sayË nay—
And when reprovÉd merrily she spoke,
“God loveth Charity more than my cloke.”
An oldË widow lay al striken sore
With leprosÉ, that dreed and foul disease;
And to hir (fillÉd to the hertË core
With love of God) that she schuld bring hir ease
Did Catharine come, nor did hit hir displese
That she schuld wash the woundËs tenderly,
And bind hem up for GoddËs charity.
And though the pacient waxÉd querulous,
The blessid seintË wearied neer a whit,
For hir upbrading tong so slanderous,
Nor even when upon hir handËs lit
The leprosÉ corrupt and foul—for hit
Is nothing to the shamË GoddË bore
When nailes and speares His smoothË flesch y-tore.
But now behold a woundrous miracle!
For al that SeintË Catharine colde do,
Hir pacient died and was y-carried wel
Unto hir gravË by stout men and true.
When they upon hir corse the cloddËs threw,
Then new as eny childËs gan to shine
The shrivvelled handes of holy Catharine!
There livÉd there a youth clept Nicholas,
Who made in that citee seditioun,
Causing a gretË riot in that place,
So that the magistratËs of the toun
Hent him and cast him in a strong prisoun;
And thilkË wightË they anon did try,
And for his sin condemnÉd him to die.
And Catharine y-waxÉd piteous
To see him brought unto this sorry case,
And went to him unto the prisoun hous
To move his soul to Jhesu CristËs grace.
So yong he was and fresh and faire of face,
Hir hertË movÉd was as to a son,
And he by hir sweet, gracious wordes was won.
That for his deth he made a good accord,
And was y-shriven wel of his assoyl,
And with a humble soul received our Lord
From the prestes hands. His hertË that did boil
But little whyles ago—was freed from toil,
And fixÉd on our LordËs precious blood,
Which for our sak He spillÉd on the rood.
And when he came to executioun,
No feer had he nor eny bitter care,
But walked among the guardËs thurgh the toun
In joy so hye as if he trod on air.
Seint Catharine she was y-waiting there
To cheer his soul against the dreedful end,
When unto God his soul at last most wend.
And there thilke holy virgin welcomed him;
“Come, Nicholas,” she said, “my sonnË deere.
The boul of glorious life is at the brim—
Come, Nicholas—your nuptials are neer;
The bridegroom calleth, be you of good cheer.”
And whyl they madË redy, on hir brest
She kept the hed of Nicholas at rest.
And when that al in ordre had been set,
She stretchÉd out his nekkË tenderly,
“This day your soulËs bridegroom shal be met.
Hark! how He calleth, sweet and winsomely.”
And Nicholas spak to hir ful of glee—
“Jhesu” and “Catharine” the wordes he seid;
Then fel the ax and severed off his hed.
And even as his bloody hed did fall,
She caught hit in her lap and handËs faire,
Nor reckÉd that the blood was over al
Hir robËs, but she kissed hit sitting there,
And smoothÉd doun the rough and ragged hair.
God wot that gretË peace was in hir herte
That Nicholas in hevin had found his part.
O holy Catharine, pray for us then,
Be to our soules a modir and a frend;
We are poor wandering and sinful men,
And al unstable through the world we wend.
Pray for us, Catharine, unto the end,
That fillÉd with thy gretË charity
In GoddËs love we schuldË live and die.
IN MEMORIAM F. H. M.
Killed in Action, April 9th, 1917 THOUGH now we see, as through the battle smoke,
The image of your young uplifted face
Surprised by death, and broken as it broke
The hearts of those who loved your eager grace,
Your noble air and magnanimity—
A summer perfect in its flowers and leaves,
Brave promises of fruitfulness to be,
Which now no hand may bind in goodly sheaves—
No hand but God’s.... Yet your remembered ways,
Your eyes alight with gentleness and mirth,
The lovely honour of your shortened days,
A new grave gladness on the furrowed earth
Shall sow for us, a new pride wide and deep—
And we shall see the corn—and reap, and reap.
TO THE IRISH DEAD YOU who have died as royally as kings,
Have seen with eyes ablaze with beauty, eyes
Nor gold nor ease nor comfort could make wise,
The glory of imperishable things.
Despite your shame and loneliness and loss—
Your broken hopes, the hopes that shall not cease,
Endure in dreams as terrible as peace;
Your naked folly nailed upon the cross
Has given us more than bread unto our dearth
And more than water to our aching drouth;
Though death has been as wormwood in your mouth
Your blood shall fructify the barren earth.
August 11th, 1917. JOHN REDMOND SHALL it be told in tragic song and story
Of two who went embittered all their days,
Two lovely Queens divided in their ways
Until their hearts grew hard, their tresses hoary?
Or shall the flying wings of oratory
Of him who bore a great hope on his face
Bring from the grave reunion to the grace
That men call Ireland and to England’s glory?
Courageous soul, not yet the work is ended:
The perfect pact you never lived to see,
The peace between the warring sisters mended
Must of your patient labours come to be,
When in a noise of trumpets loud and splendid
The Gael hears blown the name of liberty.
March 8th, 1918. BEAUTY I
(RELATIVE) HOW many are the forms that beauty shows;
To what dim shrines of sweet, forgotten art
She calls; on what wide seas her strong wind blows
The proud and perilous passion of the heart!
How many are the forms of her decay;
The blood that stains the dying of the sun,
The love and loveliness that pass away
Like roses’ petals scattered one by one.
But there shall issue through the ivory gate,
Amid a mist of dreams, one dream-come-true,
Beauty immortal, mighty of estate,
The beauty that a poet loved in you;
The goodness God has set as aureole
Upon the naked meekness of your soul.
July 22nd, 1917. BEAUTY II
(ABSOLUTE) WHO shall take Beauty in her citadel?
Her gates will splinter not to battering days;
Her slender spires can bear the onslaught well.
Shall any track her through her secret ways
To snare the pinions of the golden bird?
A feather falling through the jewelled air,
Only the echo of a lovely word—
Nowhere her being is, and everywhere.
But one may come at last through many woes
And pain and hunger to his resting place,
The watered garden of the Mystic Rose,
The contemplation of the BruisÈd Face—
The quest of all his wild, adventurous pride;
And, seeing Beauty, shall be satisfied.
July 29th, 1917. FAITH’S DIFFICULTY Not these appal
The soul tip-toeing to belief:
The ribald call,
The last black anguish of the thief;
The fellowship
Of publican and Pharisee,
The harlot’s lip
Passionate with humility;
Or the feet kissed
By her who was the Magdalen—
The sensualist
Is one among a world of men!
Oh, I can look
Upon another’s drama; read
As in a book
Things unrelated to my need;
Give faith’s assent
To that abysmal love outpoured—
But why was rent
Thy seamless coat for me, dear Lord?
Why didst Thou bow
Thy bleeding brows for my heart’s good?
How shall I now
Reach to the mystic hardihood
Where I can take
For personal treasure all Thy loss,
When for my sake,
My sake, Thou didst endure the cross?
For my soul’s worth
Was “It is finished!” loudly cried?
For me the birth,
The sorrows of the Crucified?
February 16th, 1918. CHRISTMAS ON CRUSADE HERE shall we bivouac beneath the stars;
Gather the remnant of our chivalry
About the crackling fires, and nurse our scars,
And speak no more as fools must, bitterly.
The roads familiar to His feet we trod;
We saw the lonely hills whereon He wept,
Prayed, agonised—dear God of very God!—
And watched the whole world while the whole world slept.
We speak no more in anger; Christian men
Our armies rolled upon you, wave and wave:
But crooked words and swords, O Saracen,
Can only hold what they have given—a grave!
We know Him, know that gibbet whence was torn
The pardon that a felon spoke on sin:
There is more life in His dead crown of thorn
Than in your sweeping horsemen, Saladin!
We speak no more in anger, we will ride
Homeless to our own homes. His bruised head
Had never resting place. Each Christmas-tide
Blossoms the thorn and we are comforted.
Yea, of the sacred cradle of our creed
We are despoiled; the kindly tavern door
Is shut against us in our utmost need—
We know the awful patience of the poor.
We speak no more in anger, for we share
His homelessness. We will forget your scorn.
The bells are ringing in the Christmas air;
God homeless in our homeless homes is born.
THE ASCETIC A WILD wind blows from out the angry sky
And all the clouds are tossed like thistle-down
Above the groaning branches of the trees;
For on this steel-cold night the earth is stirred
To shake away its rottenness; the leaves
Are shed like secret unremembered sins
In the great scourge of the great love of God....
Ere I was learned in the ways of love
I looked for it in green and pleasant lands,
In apple orchards and the poppy fields,
And peered among the silences of woods,
And meditated the shy notes of birds
But found it not.
Oh, many a goodly joy
Of grace and gentle beauty came to me
On many a clear and cleansing night of stars.
But when I sat among my happy friends
(Singing their songs and drinking of their ale,
Warming my limbs before their kindly hearth)
My loneliness would seize me like a pain,
A hunger strong and alien as death.
No comfort stays with such a man as I,
No resting place amid the dew and dusk,
Whose head is filled with perilous enterprise
The endless quest of my wild fruitless love.
But these can tell how they have heard His voice,
Have seen His face in pure untroubled sleep,
Or when the twilight gathered on the hills
Or when the moon shone out beyond the sea!
Have I not seen them? Yet I pilgrimage
In desolation seeking after peace,
Learning how hard a thing it is to love.
There is a love that men find easily,
Familiar as the latch upon the door,
Dear as the curling smoke above the thatch—
But I have loved unto the uttermost
And know love in the desperate abyss,
In dereliction and in blasphemy!
And fly from God to find him, fill my eyes
With road-dust and with tears and starry hopes,
Ere I may search out Love unsearchable,
Eternal Truth and Goodness infinite,
And the ineffable Beauty that is God.
Empty of scorn and ceasing not to praise
The meanest stick and stone upon the earth,
I strive unto the stark Reality,
The Absolute grasped roundly in my hands.
Bitter and pitiless it is to love,
To feel the darkness gather round the soul,
Love’s abnegation for the sake of love,
To see my Templed symbols’ slow decay
Become of every ravenous weed the food,
Where bats beat hideous wings about the arch
And ruined roof, where ghosts of tragic kings
And sleek ecclesiastics come and go
Upon the shattered pavements of my creed.
Yet Mercy at the last shall lead me in,
The Bride immaculate and mystical
Tenderly guide my wayward feet to peace,
And show me love the likeness of a Man,
The Slave obedient unto death, the Lamb
Slain from the first foundations of the world,
The Word made flesh, the tender new-born Child
That is the end of all my heart’s desire.
Then shall my spirit, naked of its hopes,
Stripped of its love unto the very bone,
Sink simply into Love’s embrace and be
Made consummate of all its burning bliss.
August 26th, 1917. SONNET FOR THE FIFTH OF OCTOBER IF I had ridden horses in the lists,
Fought wars, gone pilgrimage to fabled lands,
Seen Pharaoh’s drinking cups of amethysts,
Held dead Queens’ secret jewels in my hands—
I would have laid my triumphs at your feet,
And worn with no ignoble pride my scars....
But I can only offer you, my sweet,
The songs I made on many a night of stars.
Yet have I worshipped honour, loving you;
Your graciousness and gentle courtesy,
With ringing and romantic trumpets blew
A mighty music through the heart of me,—
A joy as cleansing as the wind that fills
The open spaces on the sunny hills.
WARFARE WHEN I consider all thy dignity,
Thy honour which my baseness doth accuse
To my own soul, thy pride which doth refuse
Less than the suffering thou hast given me,
My hope is chilled to fear. How stealthily
Must I dispose my forces! With what ruse
And ambush snatch the bearer of good news,
Ere I can escalade austerity!
Easier it were to fling the baleful lord
And the infernal legions of the Pit,
To ride undaunted at that roaring horde:
But who shall armour me with delicate wit
Sufficient for thine overthrow? What sword
Win to the tower where thy perfections sit?
March 10th, 1918. TREASON THOU hast renounced thy proud and royal state;
Deserted thy strong men-at-arms who stand
Attentive to imperious command;
And with a small key at the groaning gate—
Sweet traitress!—met thine enemy. The great
Moon threw a white enchantment o’er the land
When in my hand I caught thy yielded hand,
And laughing kissed thy laughing lips elate.
For of thy queenly folly thou hast laid
In sandalwood thy stiff, embroidered gown;
With happiness apparelled thou hast strayed
Incognita through many a sunlit town,
Heedless of our uncaptained hosts arrayed
Or of the flags their battles shall bring down.
March 17th, 1918. THERE WAS AN HOUR THERE was an hour when stars flung out
A magical wild melody,
When all the woods became alive
With elfin dance and revelry.
A holiday for happy hearts!—
The trees shone silver in the moon,
And clapped their gleaming hands to see
Night like a radiant kindled noon!
For suddenly a new world woke
At one new touch of wizardry,
When my love from her mirthful mouth
Spoke words of sweet true love to me.
February 9th, 1918. NOCTURNE WHEN evening hangs her lamp above the hill
And calls her children to her waiting hearth,
Where pain is shed away and love and wrath,
And every tired head lies white and still—
Dear heart, will you not light a lamp for me,
And gather up the meaning of the lands,
Silent and luminous within your hands,
Where peace abides and mirth and mystery?
That I may sit with you beside the fire,
And ponder on the thing no man may guess,
Your soul’s great majesty and gentleness,
Until the last sad tongue of flame expire.
December 21st, 1916. PRIDE WHO having known through night a great star falling
With half the host of heaven in its wake,
And o’er chaotic seas a dread voice calling,
And a new purple dawn of presage break,
Can hope to conquer thee, proud Son of Morning,
Arrayed in mighty lusts of heart and eyes,
With blood-red rubies set for thine adorning
And sorceries wherein men’s souls grow wise?
Who shall withstand the onslaught of thy chariot,
Who ride to battle with thy gorgeous kings?
Dost thou not count the silver to Iscariot,
And Tyrian scarlet and the marvellous rings?
But ivory limbs and the flung festal roses,
The maddening music and the Chian wine,
Are overpast when one glad heart discloses
A pride more strange and terrible than thine!
That looked unsatisfied upon thy splendour,
And turned, all shaken with his love, away
To one dear face that holds him true and tender
Until the trumpets of the Judgment Day.
A pride that binds him till the last fierce ember
Shall fade from pride’s tall roaring pyre in hell;
The gentleness and grace he shall remember,
The flower she gave, the love that she did tell.
BALLADE OF SHEEP BELLS I LEFT behind the green and gracious weald,
And climbing stiffly up the steep incline
Found high above each little cloistered field,
Above the sombre autumn woods of pine—
Where gentle skies are clear and crystalline—
The place remote from dense and foolish towns;
And there, where all the winds are sharp with brine,
I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs.
The sun hung out of heaven like a shield
Emblazoned o’er with heraldry divine.
I suddenly saw, as though with eyes unsealed,
A portent sent me for an awful sign,
A fairy sea whereon the cold stars shine;
And standing on the sward of withered browns,
Burnt by the noontide and cropped close and fine,
I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs.
A carillon of delicate music pealed
And tingled through the steeple of my spine;
My soul was filled with loveliness and healed.
I know how joy and anguish intertwine—
But this shall greatly comfort me as wine,
Good wine, comforts a man and sweetly drowns
The many sorrows of this heart of mine—
I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs.
L’Envoi Prince, old bell-wether of an ancient line,
When you’re dead mutton I will weave you crowns
Of living laurel—if on you I dine—
I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs!
BALLADE OF A FEROCIOUS CATHOLIC March 2nd, 1918. DAWN I HAVE beheld above the wooded hill
Thy tender loveliness, O Morning, break;
Beheld the solemn gladness thou dost spill
On eyes not yet awake.
But why recall unto the painful day
Wild passions sleeping like oblivious kings?
The broad day comes and thou dost speed away
Westward on swift wide wings!
December 23rd, 1917. SUNSET I HAVE seen death in many a varied guise,
Cruel and tender, rude and beautiful,
Looking through windows in a young child’s eyes,
Stealing as soft as shadows in a pool,
Falling a sudden arrow of dismay,
Blown on a bugle with an iron note:
The slow and gentle progress of decay,
The taking of a strong man by the throat.
I have seen flowers wither and the leaf
Of lusty Summer burn to hectic red.
But ah! that splendid death untouched by grief:
The sun with glad and golden-visaged head
Superbly standing on his deadly pyre,
And sinking in a sea of jewelled fire!
February 10th, 1918. PEACE Whose lives are bound
By sleep and custom and tranquillity
Have never found
That peace which is a riven mystery
Who only share
The calm that doth this stream, these orchards bless,
Breathe but the air
Of unimpassioned pagan quietness....
Initiate,
Pain burns about your head, an aureole,
Who hold in state
The utter joy which wounds and heals the soul.
You kiss the Rod
With dumb, glad lips, and bear to worlds apart
The peace of God
Which passeth all understanding in your heart.
CARRION THE guns are silent for an hour; the sounds
Of war forget their doom; the work is done—
Strong men, uncounted corpses heaped in mounds,
Are rotting in the sun.
Foul carrion—souls till yesterday!—are these
With piteous faces in the bloodied mire;
But where are now their generous charities?
Their laughter, their desire?
In each rent breast, each crushed and shattered skull
Lived joy and sorrow, tenderness and pain,
Hope, ardours, passions brave and beautiful
Among these thousands slain!
A little time ago they heard the call
Of mating birds in thicket and in brake;
They wondering saw night’s jewelled curtain fall
And all the pale stars wake....
Bodies most marvellously fashioned, stark,
Strewn broadcast out upon the trampled sod—
These temples of the Holy Ghost—O hark!—
These images of God!
Flesh, as the Word became in Bethlehem,
Houses to hold their Sacramental Lord:
Swiftly and terribly to harvest them
Swept the relentless sword!
Happy if in your dying you can give
Some symbol of the Eternal Sacrificed,
Some pardon to the hearts of those who live—
Dying the death of Christ!
Feast of the Epiphany,
January 6th, 1917. THE BUILDING OF THE CITY I, JOHN, who once was called by Him in jest
Boanerges, the thunder’s son,
Who lay in tenderness upon His breast—
Now that my days are done,
And a great gathering glory fills my sight,
Would tell my children e’er I go
Of Him I saw with head and hair as white
As white wool—white as snow.
The face before which heaven and earth did flee,
The burnished feet, the eyes of flame,
The seven stars bright with awful mystery,
And the Ineffable Name!
Yet I who saw the four dread horsemen ride,
The vials of the wrath of God,
Beheld a greater thing: the Lamb’s pure Bride,
The golden floors she trod.
How Babylon, Babylon was overthrown,
And how Euphrates flowed with blood—
Ah, but His mercy through the wide world sown,
The tree with healing bud!
I heard, among the hosts of Paradise,
The glad new song that never tires,
A Lamb as it had been slain in sacrifice
Enthroned amid the choirs.
After the utmost woes have taken toll,
And ravens plucked the eyes of kings,
God’s own strange peace shall come upon the soul
On gentle, dove-like wings.
The Dragon cast into the voidless night,
God’s city cometh from above,
Built by the sword of Michael and his might,
But founded in God’s love.
EDEN RE-OPENED NO man regarded where God sat
Among the rapt seraphic brows,
And God’s heart heavy grew thereat,
At man’s long absence from His house.
Then from the iris-circled throne
A strange and secret word is said,
And straightway hath an angel flown,
On wings of feathered sunlight sped,
Through space to where the world shone red.
Reddest of all the stars of night
To the hoar watchers of the spheres,
But ashy cold to man’s dim sight,
And filled with sins and woes and fears
And the waste weariness of years.
(No laughter rippled in the grass,
No light upon the jewelled sea;
The sky hung sullenly as brass,
And men went groping tortuously.)
But the stern warden of the Gate
Broke his dread sword upon his knees,
And opened wide the fields where wait
The loveless unremembered trees,
The sealed and silent mysteries.
And the scales fell from man’s eyes,
And his heart woke again, as when
Adam found Eve in Paradise;
And joy was made complete ... and then
God entered in and spoke with men.
THE HOLY SPRING THE radiant feet of Christ now lead
The dancing sunny hours,
The ancient Earth is young again
With growing grass and warm white rain
And hedgerows full of flowers.
The lilac and laburnum show
The glory of their bud,
And scattered on each hawthorn spray
The snow-white and the crimson may—
The may as red as blood.
The bluebells in the deep dim woods
Like fallen heavens lie,
And daffodils and daffodils
Upon a thousand little hills
Are waving to the sky.
The corn imprisoned in the mould
Has burst its wintry tomb,
And on each burdened orchard tree
Which stood an austere calvary
The apple blossom bloom.
The kiss of Christ has brought to life
The marvel of the sod.
Oh, joy has rent its chrysalis
To flash its jewelled wings, and is
A dream of beauty and of bliss—
The loveliness of God.
May 1917. VIATICUM DEAR God, not only do Thou come at last
When death hath filled my heart with dread affright,
But when in gathered dark I meet aghast
The mimic death that falls on me at night.
The daily dying, when alone I tread
The valley of the shadow, breast the Styx,
With shrouded soul and body stiff in bed ...
And no companion from the welcome pyx!
How should I face disarmed and unawares
The phantoms of the Pit oblivion brings—
My will surrendered, mind unapt for snares,
Eyes blinded by the evil, shuddering wings,
Did not the sunset stand encoped in gold
For priestly offices, ’mid censers swung,
And with anointed thumb and finger hold
The symbolled Godhead to my eager tongue?
Then with my body’s trance there doth descend
Peace on my eyelids, goodness that shall keep
My wandering feet, and at my side a friend
Through all the winding caverns of my sleep.
August 12th, 1917. PUNISHMENT What vengeful rod
Is laid upon my bleeding shoulders?
What scourge, O God,
Makes known my shame to all beholders?
Through what vast skies
Crashes Thy wrath like shuddering thunders?
. . . . .
Before my eyes
Thou dost display the wonder of wonders!
As punishment
To one whom sin should bind in prison,
Hath Mercy sent
Word of the crucified arisen!
Guilt’s penalty
Exacted—past my reeling reason!—
Which lays on me
Love—as a whip fit for my Treason!
March 3rd, 1918. AFTER COMMUNION NOW art Thou in my house of feeble flesh,
O Word made flesh! My burning soul by Thine
Caught mystically in a living mesh!
Now is the royal banquet, now the wine,
The body broken by the courteous Host
Who is my humble Guest—a Guest adored—
Though once I spat upon, scourged at the post,
Hounded to Calvary and slew my Lord!
My name is Legion, but separate and alone;
Wash, wash, dear Crucified, my Pilate hand!
Rejected Stone, be Thou my corner-stone!
Like Mary at the cross’s foot I stand;
Like Magdalene upon my sins I grieve;
Like Thomas do I touch Thee and believe.
December 16th, 1917. THE UNIVERSAL MOTHER WHO standing thrilled in his bewilderment
Can tell thy humble ways,
The hidden paths on which thy white feet went
Through all thy lonely days?
From what deep root the Lily of the Lord
To grace and beauty grew,
Or in what fires was tempered the keen sword
That pierced thy bosom through?
But we may turn and find within our hands
Our souls’ strange bread and wine,
The gathered meanings of thy starry lands
Where mystic roses shine.
Heaven’s air might grow for us too cold and tense,
Her towers far and faint,
Did we not know thy sorrowful innocence,
Or soldier, singer, saint,
Earth’s heroes with earth’s poor not kneel and tell
Their full hearts’ burdenings
To those dear eyes before which Gabriel
Bent low with folded wings.
The soldier shall remember whose the heel
That crushed the serpent’s head,
How mighty in thy hand hath been the steel
That dyed thy bosom red.
The singer weave for thee a cloak of light
Where earth’s wild colours run,
As God hath crowned thee with the stars of night
And clothed thee with the sun.
The saint who in a cloister cool and dim
His difficult road hath kept
Shall think of thee whose body cloistered Him
When in thy womb He slept.
And thou shalt call to thee the poor of earth
To share thy joy with them,
And fill them with thy magnitude and mirth
In many a Bethlehem.
February 4th, 1917. THE BOASTER IF the last blissful star should fade and wither,
If one by one
Orion and the Pleiades Crash and Crumble;
The lordly sun
Be turned away, a beggar, all his triumphs
Gone down in doom,
Wandering unregarded through the cosmos,
None giving him room.
Then would I shout defiant to the whirlwinds;
Boastingly cry,
“Go wreck the world, its towering hills and waters!
But I, even I,
“Whose body was flung out upon the dungheap
With weeds to rot,
Still keep my soul unshaken by the ruin
That harms me not!
“True, I have fled from many a shameful battle,
Did cringe and cower
Before my foes, but who can ever rob me
Of one great hour?”
For joy rang through me like a silver trumpet;
About my head
The tiny flowers flapped in the breeze like banners
Of royal red.
And suddenly the seven deeps of heaven
Were cloven apart,
When love stood in your eyes and shone and trembled
Within your heart.
February 3rd, 1918. UNWED IF I go down to death uncomforted
By love’s great conquest and its great surrender,
Bearing my soul along, unwed, unwed;
(Your darling hands’ caresses swift and tender
Lacking upon my head, upon my lips
Your lips); and in my heart love unfulfilled,
And in my eyes a blind apocalypse,
Bereft of all the glory I have willed;
I shall go proudly for your dear love’s sake,
Triumphant for brief memories, but tragic
Because of those large hopes that fail and break
Beneath Fate’s wizard-wand of cruel magic—
But ah, Fate could not touch me if I stood
Completed by your love’s beatitude!
December 15th, 1917. WED I KNOW the winds are rhythmical
In unison with your footfall.
I know that in your heart you keep
The secret of the woodland’s sleep.
You met the blossom-bearing May—
Sweet sister!—on the road half way,
And she has laid upon your hair
The coloured coronal you wear.
But ah! the white wings of the Dove
Flutter about the head I love,
And on your bosom doth repose
The beauty of the Mystic Rose,
That I must add to poetry
A dark and fearful ecstasy;
For in the house of joy you bless
Unworthiness with holiness.
ENGLAND I LIKE some good ship that founders in the sea,
Like granite towers that crumble into dust,
So pass the emblems of thine empery.
But O immortal Mother and august,
Ardours of English saint and bard and king
Blend simply with thy soul, even as their bones
Mingle with English soil. Their spirits sing
A great song lordly as is a loud wind’s tones.
Decayed by gold and ease and loathly pride,
We had forgot our greatness and become
Huckstering empire-builders, and denied
The excellent name of freedom ... till the drum
Woke glory such as met the eyes of Drake,
Or Alfred when he saw the heathen break!
II Where shall we find thee? In the avarice
That robs our brave adventures? In the shame
Spoiling our splendours? In the sacrifice
Of tears we wrung from Ireland? Nay, thy name
Is written secretly in kindliness
Upon the patient faces of the poor,
In that good anger wherewith thou didst bless
Our hearts, when beat upon the shaking door
Strong hands of hell.... Whether before the flood
We sink, or out of agonies reborn
Learn once again the meaning of our blood,
Laughter and liberty—a sacred scorn
Is ours irrevocably since we stood
And heard the barbarians’ guns across the morn.
December 24th and 26th, 1917. LYRIC LOVE WHEN kindly years have given me grace
To read your spirit through;
To see the starlight on your face,
Upon your hair the dew;
To touch the fingers of your hands,
The shining wealth they hold;
To find in dim and dreamy lands
That tender dusks enfold
The ancient sorrows that were sealed,
The hidden wells of joy,
The secrets that were unrevealed
To one who was a boy.
Then to my patient ponderings
Will fruits of solace fall,
When I have learned through many Springs,
Mighty and mystical,
To hear through sounds of brooks and birds
Love in the leafy grove,
As in my lyric heart your words
Bestir a lyric love.
Then I shall brood, grown good and wise,
The truth of fairy tales,
And greet romance with gay surprise
In woods of nightingales.
And find, with hoary head and sage,
In songs which I have sung
The meanings of the end of age—
The rapture of the young!
February 11th, 1918.
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