POETRY (4)

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Various

The Senses

Lo, as a garden-wandering bee,
 The soul seeks out her immortality
 From all the growths and blossoms manifold
 Which in this life men hold
 As things material: plying busy rounds,
 From the world's odours, sights, and sounds
 To fill her honied stores.
From the perfume acrid-sweet of dead leaves burning
 When autumn sunsets into dusk are turning:
 From the breath of damp stone floors
 And paraffin, pervading the cool porches
 And aisles of village churches:
 From the tepid, flat, mechanic exhalations
 Of desolate tube-stations:
 From woody savours stirred when children wrench
 Tufts out of deep moss-beds: from the subtle stench
 Of bad cigars and household slops, begetting
 Delighted memory
 Of sunny towns in France and Italy:
 From the stronger, tawnier stink of dust and sweat
 And camel-dung which haunts the glaring East;
 And the heavy, sweet, heart-piercing odours breathed
 From pale large lilies and narcissus wreathed
 Round some dear head deceased.
Such smells as these, and of the sights,
 The gleam on blue May nights
 Of the young moon in high ancestral boughs
 Among the scant young leaves:
 And in the wake of the moving ploughs
 The shining earth that, as the straight share cleaves,
 Turns flowingly over: and the half-seen sweep
 Of the high circles and the looming hollow
 Of the dark opera-house, where through the leap
 And lapse of the music unseen hundreds follow
 The curtain's slow ascent:
 And the rosy apple-blossom on the bent
 And knotted bough, against the blue of heaven:
 And the sudden rainbows riven
 By the salt breeze from the billows many-leaping
 In the sunny Mediterranean.
And of things heard,
 The cooling whisper of summer breezes sweeping
 The grey-green barley-fields: and the echoes stirred
 By music interwoven in some dim-lighted
 Cavernous cathedral: and the eighteen-pounders'
 Buoyant drum-beats and hisses and whoops united
 In a hurricane-barrage: and the clear laughter and shouting
 Of girls in old green gardens playing rounders:
 And the ripple of fountains spouting
 Over marble nymphs and dolphins drenched and cool
 To the sun-splashed fountain-pool,
 Where golden in the Tuscan sun
 The age-worn palace sleeps.
But deep in all the immortal Spirit leaps
 Unquenchably, the Imperishable One
 To whom through all this multiplicity
 Of scattered universes longingly
 The Soul, world-wandering mendicant, upreaches
 Imploring hands, and as an alms beseeches
 The humble coin which buys that one small treasure
 Beyond all worldly measure.
MARTIN ARMSTRONG

The Coming of Green

Here like flame and there like water leaping
 Green life breaks out again; in sunlight gleaming,
 Small bright emerald flames through grey twigs creeping,
 Little freshets of leafage shyly streaming
 Among dark tangles. And sunlight grows serener
 Daily, and wider extends the leafy awning,
 And the green undying lawn beneath grows greener—
 Greener and lovelier with lights and shadows dawning
 Alternate, many-toned, born of the trooping
 Of clouds o'er sun. Assembled Planes are bending
 Long festoons high-hung and heavily drooping
 From domes of luminous greenness. Willows are sending
 Their fountains live and many-shafted swooping
 Skyward, and lazily backward coolly showering.
Like tongues of flame, like water showering, dripping,
 Green life slides down the branch, from bushes shaking
 A verdant dew, or, out on a long curve slipping,
 At the far extreme to a shivering soft foam breaking.
A spring in the desert, a fire in the darkness leaping,
 Greenness comes transparently roofing and walling
 Garden ways with an indolent downward-sweeping,
 Or mounded high ... aspiring ... airily falling,
 Or leaning fan over fan. A green and golden
 Lucent cave enfolds us, cunningly vaulted,
 With delicate-screened high chambers to embolden
 Birds to flutter and sing or nest exalted
 In swaying sanctuaries, and the lime-tree's clustering
 Flowers to blow that the leafy ways be fragrant.
A dancing flood, a wild fire strengthening, mustering,
 Over the gardens the young green life runs vagrant.
MARTIN ARMSTRONG

The Modern Hippolytus

Not, like poor monks, with fasting and the rod
 To mortify the flesh for fear of God:
 Not, like Sir Galahad, to run to waste
 In sentimental worship of the chaste:
 Not, like the Puritan, to hug disgust
 And feast on others' sins to quench his lust:
 Not, like the saint, with dreams of future bliss,
 Lost in a fancied world, this world to miss.
 But, like Hippolytus, in pride to make
 The body servant for the body's sake;
 Spurning the CytherÆan's toils, who craves
 With servile heart the passion of her slaves,
 Freely to render homage unto Her
 Who, being free, desires no worshipper:
 To render soul for soul, without pretence,
 Not wooing sense through soul, nor soul through sense:
 To shun the twilight of the world's mistrust
 Where Lust for Love's mistaken, Love for Lust,
 And seek Diana's cold and hueless light
 That knows no difference save of dark and bright:—
 There lay the man's will: but the unborn child
 Cried in the darkness, and the old world smiled.

KENWORTH RUSHBY

Nature's Fruitfulness

This summer on our yard-wall there does swing
 A groundsel-bush from one seed last year sown.
 A burnet moth, sun-wakened in the Spring,
 Flew out and laid its hundred eggs thereon.
An hundred seeds each blossom on it gives,
 An hundred caterpillars eat its leaves.
Its plumed seeds scattered by the wind now fall
 Into our yard on water and on stone.
 Here too the caterpillars over blown
 Gyrate and starve, for few can climb the wall.
Next year again there will be one of both:
 One bush of groundsel and one burnet moth.

FRANCIS BURROWS

Almswomen

At Quincey's moat the squandering village ends,
 And there in the almshouse dwell the dearest friends
 Of all the village, two old dames that cling
 As close as any trueloves in the spring.
 Long, long ago they passed three-score-and-ten,
 And in this doll's house lived together then;
 All things they have in common being so poor,
 And their one fear, Death's shadow at the door.
 Each sundown makes them mournful, each sunrise
 Brings back the brightness in their failing eyes.
How happy go the rich fair-weather days
 When on the roadside folk stare in amaze
 At such a honeycomb of fruit and flowers
 As mellows round their threshold; what long hours
 They gloat upon their steepling hollyhocks,
 Bee's balsams, feathery southernwood and stocks,
 Fiery dragons'-mouths, great mallow leaves
 For salves, and lemon plants in bushy sheaves,
 Shagged Esau's Hands with five green finger-tips!
 Such old sweet names are ever on their lips.
 As pleased as little children where these grow
 In cobbled pattens and worn gowns they go,
 Proud of their wisdom when on gooseberry shoots
 They stuck egg-shells to fright from coming fruits
 The brisk-billed rascals; waiting still to see
 Their neighbour owls saunter from tree to tree
 Or in the hushing half-light mouse the lane
 Long-winged and lordly.
 But when those hours wane
 Indoors they ponder, scared by the harsh storm
 Whose pelting saracens on the window swarm,
 And listen for the mail to clatter past
 And church clock's deep bay withering on the blast;
 They feed the fire that flings a freakish light
 On pictured kings and queens grotesquely bright,
 Platters and pitchers, faded calendars
 And graceful hour-glass trim with lavenders.
Many a time they kiss and cry, and pray
 Both may be summoned in the selfsame day,
 And wiseman linnet tinkling in his cage
 End too with them the friendship of old age,
 And all together leave their treasured room
 Some bell-like evening when the May's in bloom.
EDMUND BLUNDEN

1920.

Intimacy

Since I have seen you do those intimate things
 That other men but dream of; lull asleep
 The sinister dark forest of your hair
 And tie those bows that stir on your calm breast
 Faintly as leaves that shudder in their sleep:
 Since I have seen your stocking swallow up,
 A swift black wind, the pale flame of your foot
 And deemed your slender limbs so meshed in silk
 Sweet mermaid sisters drowned in their dark hair:
 I have not troubled overmuch with food
 And wine has seemed like water from a well;
 Pavements are built of fire, grass of thin flames;
 All other girls grow dull as painted flowers,
 Or flutter harmlessly like coloured flies
 Whose wings are tangled in the net of leaves
 Spread by frail trees that grow behind the eyes.
EDGELL RICKWORD

The Soldier Addresses His Body

I shall be mad if you get smashed about,
 We've had good times together, you and I;
 Although you groused a bit when luck was out
 And women passionless, and we went dry.
Yet there are many things we have not done;
 Countries not seen, where people do strange things,
 Eat fish alive, and mimic in the sun
 The solemn gestures of their stone-grey kings.
I've heard of forests that are dim at noon,
 Where snakes and creepers wrestle all day long;
 Where vivid beasts grow pale with the full moon,
 Gibber and cry, and wail a mad old song;
Because at the full moon the hippogriff
 With ivory-pointed snout and agate feet,
 With his green eye will glare them cold and stiff
 For the coward wyvern to come down and eat.
Vodka and kvas, and bitter mountain wines
 We have not drunk, nor snatched at bursting grapes
 To pelt slim girls among Sicilian vines
 Who'd flicker through the leaves, elusive shapes.
Yes, there are many things we have not done,
 But it's a sweat to knock them into rhyme.
 Let's have a drink, and give the cards a run
 And leave dull verse to the dull peaceful time.
EDGELL RICKWORD

Night Rapture

For Florence Lamont

How beautiful it is to wake at night
 When over all there reigns the ultimate spell
 Of complete silence, darkness absolute,
 To feel the world, tilted on axle-tree,
 In slow gyration, with no sensible sound,
 Unless to ears of unimagined beings,
 Resident incorporeal or stretched
 In vigilance of ecstasy among
 Ethereal paths and the celestial maze,
 The rumour of our onward course now brings
 A steady rustle as of some strange ship,
 Darkling with soundless sail all set and amply filled
 By volume of an ever-constant air,
 At fullest night, through seas for ever calm,
 Swept lovely and unknown for ever on!
How beautiful it is to wake at night,
 Embalmed in darkness, watchful, sweet, and still
 As is the brain's mood flattered by the swim
 Of currents circumvolent in the void,
 To lie quite still and to become aware
 Of the dim light cast by nocturnal skies
 On a dim earth beyond the window-ledge,
 So, isolate from the friendly company
 Of the huge universe which turns without,
 To brood apart in calm and joy awhile
 Until the spirit sinks and scarcely knows
 Whether self is or if self only is
 For ever....
How beautiful to wake at night
 Within the room grown strange and still and sweet
 And live a century while in the dark
 The dripping wheel of silence slowly turns,
 To watch the window open on the night,
 A dewy silent deep where nothing stirs,
 And, lying thus, to feel dilate within
 The press, the conflict and the heavy pulse
 Of incommunicable sad ecstasy
 Growing until the body seems outstretched
 In perfect crucifixion on the arms
 Of a cross pointing from last void to void
 While the heart dies to a mere midway spark!
All happiness thou holdest, happy night,

For such as lie awake and feel dissolved
 The peaceful spice of darkness and the cool
 Breath hither blown from th' ethereal flowers
 That mist thy fields! O happy, happy wounds,
 Conditioned by existence in humanity,
 That have such powers to heal them!—slow sweet sighs
 Torn from the bosom, silent wails, the birth
 Of such long-treasured tears as pain his eyes
 Who, waking, hears the divine solicitudes
 Of midnight with ineffable purport charged.
How beautiful it is to wake at night,
 Another night, in darkness yet more still
 Save when the myriad leaves on full-fledged boughs,
 Filled rather by the perfumes' wandering flood
 Than by dispansion of the still sweet air,
 Shall from the furthest utter silences
 In glimmering secrecy have gathered up
 An host of whisperings and scattered sighs
 To loose at last a sound as of the plunge
 And lapsing seeth of some Pacific wave
 Which, risen from the star-thronged outer troughs,
 Rolls in to wreath with languorous foam away
 The flutter of the golden moths that haunt
 The star's one glimmer daggered on wet sands!
So beautiful it is to wake at night
 Imagination, loudening with the surf
 Of the midsummer wind among the boughs,
 Gathers my spirit from the haunts remote
 Of faintest silence and the shades of sleep
 To bear me on the summit of her wave
 Beyond known shores, beyond the mortal edge,
 Of thought terrestrial, to hold me poised
 Above the frontiers of infinity,
 To which in the full reflux of the wave
 Come soon I must, bubble of solving foam,
 Borne to those other shores—now never mine
 Save for an hovering instant, short as this
 Which now sustains me, ere I be drawn back,
 To learn again and wholly learn I trust
 How beautiful it is to wake at night.
ROBERT NICHOLS

The Black Mountains, 1919

Elsie Inglis

Who is it lies here
 Betwixt the wind and the water,
 Whom all Scotland mourns
 As a mother for her daughter?
"I was Elsie Inglis
 When I trod the ground;
 Now I am lying here
 In a long sleep and sound."
What did you do, Elsie Inglis,
 To prove your heart's worth?
 "I laboured all my life long
 To serve women on earth."
And what was it you did
 Earned you this requiem?
 "When men went out to fight,
 I went out with them."
What could a woman do
 In such unholy revel?
 "Men fought with each other,
 And I fought with evil."
When men fought with men
 What foe could you hold?
 "The foe they left behind them.
 Fever, Famine, and Cold."
Which was the bitterest
 Of all you saw fight?
 "My foe slew blindly,
 But men in broad light.
"My foe slew blindly,
 The children with the mother:
 My foe slew men,
 But men slew each other."
MAURICE HEWLETT

Sorrowing for Childhood Departed

Who is there among us who has found the key
 Of the treasure that is locked in the hearts of men?
 Only the poet lonely in his chamber
 Or the man remembering his childhood again.
Hearing gay voices, my heart is hollow,
 An empty room with bright colours on the walls;
 The speech of my brother is no more than a traffic
 That remote and coldly on my dull brain falls.
I am deaf to the song in the speech of my fellows,
 I have outwitted my childhood's desires;
 And where have I travelled that to the far horizon
 Dead in the landscape are earth's bright fires?
Didst thou ever murder, Macbeth, thy sorrow,
 Didst thou ever murder thy soul's young joy,
 Thou hadst never flinched from the life of another,
 Thou hadst but with laughter stol'n from him a toy!
Would that a Spirit had stolen from me
 The glittering baubles of my cunning mind,
 And left me the sweet forest of my wondering childhood,
 Its transparent water in tall trees enshrined.
Then was I happy. Love was my companion;
 I was in communion with star and stream;
 With bird and with flower I was linked in rapture,
 We stared at each other—the valley's dream.
Out of the mountains we were carven,
 Birds and flowers, stream, rock and child—
 O but I belong there! I am torn from my body,
 In that far-away forest it lies exiled!
There falls the water transparently shining,
 Hangs there a flower that blooms in my eyes.
 Long have I been ready! let me go thither,
 And unloosen my limbs to those dream-coloured skies.
O that it were possible! but that land has vanished;
 The magic of that valley has crumbled away;
 Bright crowds are there only, the mind's cold idola;
 And my footprints on the dead ground startle the day.
W. J. TURNER

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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