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Title: Sonnets and Verse

Author: Hilaire Belloc

Release date: November 10, 2019 [eBook #60663]

Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONNETS AND VERSE ***

SONNETS AND VERSE

BY

H. BELLOC

SONNETS AND VERSE

BY

H. BELLOC

DUCKWORTH & CO.

3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C.

First Published in 1923

All rights reserved

Made and Printed in Great Britain

by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh

To

JOHN SWINNERTON PHILLIMORE

A DEDICATION

WITH THIS BOOK OF VERSE

When you and I were little tiny boys

We took a most impertinent delight

In foolish, painted and misshapen toys

Which hidden mothers brought to us at night.

Do you that have the child’s diviner part—

The dear content a love familiar brings—

Take these imperfect toys, till in your heart

They too attain the form of perfect things.

CONTENTS

I. SONNETS

PAGE

I.

LIFT UP YOUR HEARTS IN GUMBER, LAUGH THE WEALD

3

II.

I WAS LIKE ONE THAT KEEPS THE DECK BY NIGHT

4

III.

RISE UP AND DO BEGIN THE DAY’S ADORNING

5

IV.

THE WINTER MOON HAS SUCH A QUIET CAR

6

V.

WHATEVER MOISTURE NOURISHES THE ROSE

7

VI.

YOUTH GAVE YOU TO ME, BUT I’LL NOT BELIEVE

8

VII.

MORTALITY IS BUT THE STUFF YOU WEAR

9

VIII.

NOT FOR THE LUCKLESS BUDS OUR ROOTS MAY BEAR

10

IX.

THAT WHICH IS ONE THEY SHEAR AND MAKE IT TWAIN

11

X.

SHALL ANY MAN FOR WHOSE STRONG LOVE ANOTHER

12

XI.

THEY THAT HAVE TAKEN WAGES OF THINGS DONE

13

XII.

BEAUTY THAT PARENT IS TO DEATHLESS RHYME

14

XIII.

WHAT ARE THE NAMES FOR BEAUTY? WHO SHALL PRAISE

15

XIV.

LOVE WOOING HONOUR, HONOUR’S LOVE DID WIN

16

XV.

YOUR LIFE IS LIKE A LITTLE WINTER’S DAY

17

XVI.

NOW SHALL THE CERTAIN PURPOSE OF MY SOUL

18

XVII.

BECAUSE MY FALTERING FEET MAY FAIL TO DARE

19

XVIII.

WHEN YOU TO ACHERON’S UGLY WATER COME

20

XIX.

WE WILL NOT WHISPER, WE HAVE FOUND THE PLACE

21

XX.

I WENT TO SLEEP AT DAWN IN TUSCANY

22

XXI.

ALMIGHTY GOD, WHOSE JUSTICE LIKE A SUN

23

XXII.

MOTHER OF ALL MY CITIES ONCE THERE LAY

24

XXIII.

NOVEMBER IS THAT HISTORIED EMPEROR

25

XXIV.

HOAR TIME ABOUT THE HOUSE BETAKES HIM SLOW

26

XXV.

IT FREEZES: ALL ACROSS A SOUNDLESS SKY

27

XXVI.

O MY COMPANION, O MY SISTER SLEEP

28

XXVII.

ARE YOU THE END, DESPAIR, OR THE POOR LEAST

29

XXVIII.

BUT OH! NOT LOVELY HELEN, NOR THE PRIDE

30

XXIX.

THE WORLD’S A STAGE. THE LIGHT IS IN ONE’S EYES

31

XXX.

THE WORLD’S A STAGE—AND I’M THE SUPER MAN

32

XXXI.

THE WORLD’S A STAGE. THE TRIFLING ENTRANCE FEE

33

LYRICAL, DIDACTIC AND GROTESQUE

TO DIVES

37

STANZAS WRITTEN ON BATTERSEA BRIDGE DURING A SOUTH-WESTERLY GALE

39

THE SOUTH COUNTRY

42

THE FANATIC

45

THE EARLY MORNING

48

OUR LORD AND OUR LADY

49

COURTESY

51

THE NIGHT

53

THE LEADER

54

A BIVOUAC

56

TO THE BALLIOL MEN STILL IN AFRICA

57

VERSES TO A LORD WHO, IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, SAID THAT THOSE WHO OPPOSED THE SOUTH AFRICAN ADVENTURE CONFUSED SOLDIERS WITH MONEY-GRUBBERS

59

THE REBEL

61

THE PROPHET LOST IN THE HILLS AT EVENING

63

THE END OF THE ROAD

65

AN ORACLE THAT WARNED THE WRITER WHEN ON PILGRIMAGE

67

THE DEATH AND LAST CONFESSION OF WANDERING PETER

68

DEDICATORY ODE

70

DEDICATION ON THE GIFT OF A BOOK TO A CHILD

78

DEDICATION OF A CHILD’S BOOK OF IMAGINARY TALES

79

HOMAGE

80

THE MOON’S FUNERAL

81

THE HAPPY JOURNALIST

83

LINES TO A DON

85

NEWDIGATE POEM

88

THE YELLOW MUSTARD

93

THE POLITICIAN OR THE IRISH EARLDOM

94

THE LOSER

96

SONGS

NOËL

99

THE BIRDS

101

IN A BOAT

102

SONG INVITING THE INFLUENCE OF A YOUNG LADY UPON THE OPENING YEAR

104

THE RING

105

CUCKOO!

106

THE LITTLE SERVING MAID

107

AUVERGNAT

110

DRINKING SONG, ON THE EXCELLENCE OF BURGUNDY WINE

111

DRINKING DIRGE

113

WEST SUSSEX DRINKING SONG

115

A BALLAD ON SOCIOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

117

HERETICS ALL

118

HA’NACKER MILL

119

TARANTELLA

120

THE CHAUNTY OF THE “NONA”

122

THE WINGED HORSE

125

STREPHON’S SONG (FROM “THE CRUEL SHEPHERDESS”)

127

IV. BALLADES

SHORT BALLADE AND POSTSCRIPT ON CONSOLS AND BOERS

131

BALLADE OF THE UNANSWERED QUESTION

134

BALLADE TO OUR LADY OF CZESTOCHOWA

136

BALLADE OF HELL AND OF MRS ROEBECK

138

BALLADE OF UNSUCCESSFUL MEN

140

BALLADE OF THE HERESIARCHS

142

V. EPIGRAMS

147

VI. THE BALLAD OF VAL-ÈS-DUNES

157

I

SONNETS

I

LIFT up your hearts in Gumber, laugh the Weald

And you my mother the Valley of Arun sing.

Here am I homeward from my wandering

Here am I homeward and my heart is healed.

You my companions whom the World has tired

Come out to greet me. I have found a face

More beautiful than Gardens; more desired

Than boys in exile love their native place.

Lift up your hearts in Gumber, laugh the Weald

And you most ancient Valley of Arun sing.

Here am I homeward from my wandering,

Here am I homeward and my heart is healed.

If I was thirsty, I have heard a spring.

If I was dusty, I have found a field.

II

I WAS like one that keeps the deck by night

Bearing the tiller up against his breast;

I was like one whose soul is centred quite

In holding course although so hardly prest,

And veers with veering shock now left now right,

And strains his foothold still and still makes play

Of bending beams until the sacred light

Shows him high lands and heralds up the day.

But now such busy work of battle past

I am like one whose barque at bar at last

Comes hardly heeling down the adventurous breeze;

And entering calmer seas,

I am like one that brings his merchandise

To Californian skies.

III

RISE up and do begin the day’s adorning;

The Summer dark is but the dawn of day.

The last of sunset fades into the morning;

The morning calls you from the dark away.

The holy mist, the white mist of the morning

Was wreathing upward on my lonely way.

The way was waiting for your own adorning

That should complete the broad adornéd day.

Rise up and do begin the day’s adorning;

The little eastern clouds are dapple grey:

There will be wind among the leaves to-day;

It is the very promise of the morning.

Lux Tua Via Mea: your light’s my way—

Then do rise up and make it perfect day.

IV

THE Winter Moon has such a quiet car

That all the winter nights are dumb with rest.

She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest

And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star

Because the nights are silent do not wake

But there shall tremble through the general earth,

And over you, a quickening and a birth.

The Sun is near the hill-tops for your sake.

The latest born of all the days shall creep

To kiss the tender eyelids of the year;

And you shall wake, grown young with perfect sleep,

And smile at the new world and make it dear

With living murmurs more than dreams are deep;

Silence is dead, my dawn, the morning’s here.

V

WHATEVER moisture nourishes the Rose

The Rose of the World in laughter’s garden-bed

Where Souls of men on faith secure are fed

And spirits immortal keep their pleasure-close.

Whatever moisture nourishes the Rose,

The burning Rose of the world, for me the same

To-day for me the spring without a name

Content or Grace or Laughter overflows.

This is that water from the Fount of Gold

Water of Youth and washer out of cares

Which Raymond of Saragossa sought of old

And finding in the mountain, unawares,

Returned to hear an ancient story told

To Bramimond, his love, beside the marble stairs.

VI

YOUTH gave you to me, but I’ll not believe

That Youth will, taking his quick self, take you.

Youth’s all our Truth: he cannot so deceive.

He has our graces, not our ownselves too.

He still compares with time when he’ll be spent,

By human doom enhancing what we are;

Enriches us with rare experiment,

Lends arms to leagured Age in Time’s rough war.

Look! This Youth in us is an Old Man taking

A Boy to make him wiser than his days.

So is our old Youth our young Age’s making:

So rich in time our final debt he pays.

Then with your quite young arms do you me hold

And I will still be young when all the World’s grown old.

VII

MORTALITY is but the Stuff you wear

To show the better on the imperfect sight.

Your home is surely with the changeless light

Of which you are the daughter and the heir.

For as you pass, the natural life of things

Proclaims the Resurrection: as you pass

Remembered summer shines across the grass

And somewhat in me of the immortal sings.

You were not made for memory, you are not

Youth’s accident I think but heavenly more;

Moulding to meaning slips my pen’s poor blot

And opening wide that long forbidden door

Where stands the Mother of God, your exemplar.

How beautiful, how beautiful you are!

VIII

NOT for the luckless buds our roots may bear

Now all in bloom, now seared and cankered lying

Will I entreat you, lest they should compare

Foredoomed humanity with the fall of flowers.

Hold thou with me the chaste communion rare

And touch with life this mortal case of ours:

You’re lifted up beyond the power of dying:

I die, as bounded things die everywhere.

You’re voiced companionship, I’m silence lonely;

You’re stuff, I’m void; you’re living, I’m decay.

I fall, I think, to-night and ending only;

You rise, I know, through still advancing day.

And knowing living gift were life for me

In narrow room of rhyme I fixed it certainly.

IX

THAT which is one they shear and make it twain

Who would Love’s light and dark discriminate:

His pleasure is one essence with his pain,

Even his desire twin brother to his hate.

With him the foiled attempt is half achieving;

And being mastered, to be armed a lord;

And doubting every chance is still believing;

And losing all one’s own is all reward.

I am acquainted with misfortune’s fortune,

And better than herself her dowry know:

For she that is my fortune and misfortune,

Making me hapless, makes me happier so:

In which conceit, as older men may prove,

Lies manifest the very core of Love.

X

SHALL any man for whose strong love another

Has thrown away his wealth and name in one,

Shall he turn mocker of a more than brother

To slight his need when his adventure’s done?

Or shall a breedless boy whose mother won him

In great men’s great concerns his little place

Turn when his farthing honours come upon him

To mock her yeoman air and conscious grace?

Then mock me as you do my narrow scope,

For you it was put out this light of mine:

Wrongfully wrecked my new adventured hope,

Wasted my wordy wealth, spilt my rich wine,

Made my square ship within a league of shore

Alas! To be entombed in seas and seen no more.

XI

THEY that have taken wages of things done

When sense abused has blocked the doors of sense,

They that have lost their heritage of the sun,

Their laughter and their holy innocence;

They turn them now to this thing, now to t’other,

For anchor hold against swift-eddying time,

Some to that square of earth which was their mother,

And some to noisy fame, and some to rhyme.

But I to that far morning where you stood

In fullness of the body, with your hands

Reposing on your walls, before your lands,

And all, together, making one great good:

Then did I cry “For this my birth was meant.

These are my use, and this my sacrament!”

XII

BEAUTY that Parent is to deathless Rhyme

Was Manhood’s maker: you shall bear a Son,

Till Daughters linked adown admiring time

Fulfil the mother, handing Beauty on.

You shall by breeding make Life answer yet,

In Time’s despite, Time’s jeer that men go void;

Your stamp of heaven shall be more largely set

Than my one joy, ten thousand times enjoyed.

The glories of our state and its achievement,

Which wait their passing, shall not pass away.

I will extend our term beyond bereavement,

And launch our date into a dateless day.

For you shall make recórd, and when that’s sealed

In Beauty made immortal, all is healed.

XIII

WHAT are the names for Beauty? Who shall praise

God’s pledge he can fulfil His creatures’ eyes?

Or what strong words of what creative phrase

Determine Beauty’s title in the skies?

But I will call you Beauty Personate,

Ambassadorial Beauty, and again

Beauty triumphant, Beauty in the Gate,

Beauty salvation of the souls of men.

For Beauty was not Beauty till you came

And now shall Beauty mean the sign you are;

A Beacon burnt above the Dawn, a flame

Like holy Lucifer the Morning Star,

Who latest hangs in Heaven and is the gem

On all the widowéd Night’s expectant Diadem.

XIV

LOVE wooing Honour, Honour’s love did win

And had his pleasure all a summer’s day.

Not understanding how the dooms begin,

Love wooing Honour, wooed her life away.

Then wandered he a full five years unrest

Until, one night, this Honour that had died

Came as he slept, in youth grown glorified

And smiling like the Saints whom God has blest.

But when he saw her on the clear night shine

Serene with more than mortal light upon her,

The boy that careless was of things divine,

Small Love, turned penitent to worship Honour.

So Love can conquer Honour: when that’s past

Dead Honour risen outdoes Love at last.

XV

YOUR life is like a little winter’s day

Whose sad sun rises late to set too soon;

You have just come—why will you go away,

Making an evening of what should be noon.

Your life is like a little flute complaining

A long way off, beyond the willow trees:

A long way off, and nothing left remaining

But memory of a music on the breeze.

Your life is like a pitiful leave-taking

Wept in a dream before a man’s awaking,

A Call with only shadows to attend:

A Benediction whispered and belated

Which has no fruit beyond a consecrated,

A consecrated silence at the end.

XVI

NOW shall the certain purpose of my soul

By blind and empty things controlled be,

And mine audacious course to that far goal

Fall short, confessing mere mortality.

Limbs shall have movement and ignore their living,

Brain wit, that he his quickness may deny.

My promised hope forswears in act of giving,

Time eats me up and makes my words a lie.

And mine unbounded dream has found a bar,

And I must worst deceit of best things bear.

Now dawn’s but daybreak, seas but waters are,

Night darkness only, all wide heaven just air:

And you to whom these fourteen lines I tell,

My beauty, my desire: but not my love as well.

XVII

BECAUSE my faltering feet may fail to dare

The first descendant of the steps of Hell

Give me the Word in time that triumphs there.

I too must pass into the misty hollow

Where all our living laughter stops: and hark!

The tiny stuffless voices of the dark

Have called me, called me, till I needs must follow:

Give me the Word and I’ll attempt it well.

Say it’s the little winking of an eye

Which in that issue is uncurtained quite;

A little sleep that helps a moment by

Between the thin dawn and the large daylight.

Ah! tell me more than yet was hoped of men;

Swear that’s true now, and I’ll believe it then.

XVIII

WHEN you to Acheron’s ugly water come

Where darkness is and formless mourners brood

And down the shelves of that distasteful flood

Survey the human rank in order dumb.

When the pale dead go forward, tortured more

By nothingness and longing than by fire,

Which bear their hands in suppliance with desire,

With stretched desire for the ulterior shore.

Then go before them like a royal ghost

And tread like Egypt or like Carthage crowned;

Because in your Mortality the most

Of all we may inherit has been found—

Children for memory: the Faith for pride.

Good land to leave: and young Love satisfied.

XIX

WE will not whisper, we have found the place

Of silence and the endless halls of sleep.

And that which breathes alone throughout the deep

The end and the beginning: and the face

Between the level brows of whose blind eyes

Lie plenary contentment, full surcease

Of violence, and the passionless long peace

Wherein we lose our human lullabies.

Look up and tell the immeasurable height

Between the vault of the world and your dear head;

That’s death, my little sister, and the night

Which was our Mother beckons us to bed,

Where large oblivion in her house is laid

For us tired children, now our games are played.

XX

I WENT to sleep at Dawn in Tuscany

Beneath a Rock and dreamt a morning dream.

I thought I stood by that baptismal stream

Whereon the bounds of our redemption lie.

And there, beyond, a radiance rose to take

My soul at passing, in which light your eyes

So filled me I was drunk with Paradise.

Then the day broadened, but I did not wake.

Here’s the last edge of my long parchment furled

And all was writ that you might read it so.

This sleep I swear shall last the length of day;

Not noise, not chance, shall drive this dream away:

Not time, not treachery, not good fortune—no,

Not all the weight of all the wears of the world.

XXI

ALMIGHTY God, whose justice like a sun

Shall coruscate along the floors of Heaven,

Raising what’s low, perfecting what’s undone,

Breaking the proud and making odd things even.

The poor of Jesus Christ along the street

In your rain sodden, in your snows unshod,

They have nor hearth, nor sword, nor human meat,

Nor even the bread of men: Almighty God.

The poor of Jesus Christ whom no man hears

Have waited on your vengeance much too long.

Wipe out not tears but blood: our eyes bleed tears.

Come smite our damnéd sophistries so strong

That thy rude hammer battering this rude wrong

Ring down the abyss of twice ten thousand years.

XXII

MOTHER of all my cities once there lay

About your weedy wharves an orient shower

Of spice and languorous silk and all the dower

That Ocean gave you on his bridal day.

And now the youth and age have passed away

And all the sail superb and all the power;

Your time’s a time of memory like that hour

Just after sunset, wonderful and grey.

Too tired to rise and much too sad to weep,

With strong arm nerveless on a nerveless knee,

Still to your slumbering ears the spousal deep

Murmurs his thoughts of eld eternally;

But your soul wakes not from its holy sleep

Dreaming of dead delights beside a tideless sea.

XXIII

NOVEMBER is that historied Emperor

Conquered in age but foot to foot with fate

Who from his refuge high has heard the roar

Of squadrons in pursuit, and now, too late,

Stirrups the storm and calls the winds to war,

And arms the garrison of his last heirloom,

And shakes the sky to its extremest shore

With battle against irrevocable doom.

Till, driven and hurled from his strong citadels,

He flies in hurrying cloud and spurs him on,

Empty of lingerings, empty of farewells

And final benedictions and is gone.

But in my garden all the trees have shed

Their legacies of the light and all the flowers are dead.

XXIV

HOAR Time about the House betakes him slow

Seeking an entry for his weariness.

And in that dreadful company distress

And the sad night with silent footsteps go.

On my poor fire the brands are scarce aglow

And in the woods without what memories press

Where, waning in the trees from less to less

Mysterious hangs the hornéd moon and low.

For now December, full of agéd care

Comes in upon the year and weakly grieves;

Mumbling his lost desires and his despair

And with mad trembling hand still interweaves

The dank sear flower-stalks tangled in his hair,

While round about him whirl the rotten leaves.

XXV

IT freezes: all across a soundless sky

The birds go home. The governing dark’s begun.

The steadfast dark that waits not for a sun;

The ultimate dark wherein the race shall die.

Death with his evil finger to his lip

Leers in at human windows, turning spy

To learn the country where his rule shall lie

When he assumes perpetual generalship.

The undefeated enemy, the chill

That shall benumb the voiceful earth at last,

Is master of our moment, and has bound

The viewless wind itself. There is no sound.

It freezes. Every friendly stream is fast.

It freezes, and the graven twigs are still.

XXVI

O MY companion, O my sister Sleep,

The valley is all before us, bear me on.

High through the heaven of evening, hardly gone,

Beyond the harbour lights, beyond the steep,

Beyond the land and its lost benison

To where, majestic on the darkening deep,

The night comes forward from Mount Aurion.

O my companion, O my sister Sleep.

Above the surf-line, into the night-breeze;

Eastward above the ever-whispering seas;

Through the warm airs with no more watch to keep.

My day’s run out and all its dooms are graven.

O dear forerunner of Death and promise of Haven.

O my companion, O my sister Sleep.

XXVII

ARE you the end, Despair, or the poor least

Of them that cast great shadows and are lies?

That dread the simple and destroy the wise,

Fail at the tomb and triumph at the feast?

You were not found on Olivet, dull beast,

Nor in Thebaid, when the night’s agonies

Dissolved to glory on the effulgent east

And Jesus Christ was in the morning skies.

You did not curb the indomitable crest

Of Tzerna-Gora, when the Falcon-bred

Screamed over the Adriatic, and their Lord

Went riding out, much angrier than the rest,

To summon at ban the living and the dead

And break the Mahommedan with the repeated sword.

XXVIII

BUT oh! not Lovely Helen, nor the pride

Of that most ancient Ilium matched with doom.

Men murdered Priam in his royal room

And Troy was burned with fire and Hector died.

For even Hector’s dreadful day was more

Than all his breathing courage dared defend

The armouréd light and bulwark of the war

Trailed his great story to the accustomed end.

He was the city’s buttress, Priam’s Son,

The Soldier born in bivouac praises great

And horns in double front of battle won.

Yet down he went: when unremembering fate

Felled him at last with all his armour on.

Hector: the horseman: in the Scæan Gate.

XXIX

THE world’s a stage. The light is in one’s eyes.

The Auditorium is extremely dark.

The more dishonest get the larger rise;

The more offensive make the greater mark.

The women on it prosper by their shape,

Some few by their vivacity. The men,

By tailoring in breeches and in cape.

The world’s a stage—I say it once again.

The scenery is very much the best

Of what the wretched drama has to show,

Also the prompter happens to be dumb.

We drink behind the scenes and pass a jest

On all our folly; then, before we go

Loud cries for “Author” ... but he doesn’t come.

XXX

THE world’s a stage—and I’m the Super man,

And no one seems responsible for salary.

I roar my part as loudly as I can

And all I mouth I mouth it to the gallery.

I haven’t got another rhyme in “alery”

It would have made a better job, no doubt

If I had left attempt at Rhyming out,

Like Alfred Tennyson adapting Malory.

The world’s a stage, the company of which

Has very little talent and less reading:

But many a waddling heathen painted bitch

And many a standing cad of gutter breeding.

We sweat to learn our book: for all our pains

We pass. The Chucker-out alone remains.

XXXI

THE world’s a stage. The trifling entrance fee

Is paid (by proxy) to the registrar.

The Orchestra is very loud and free

But plays no music in particular.

They do not print a programme, that I know.

The caste is large. There isn’t any plot.

The acting of the piece is far below

The very worst of modernistic rot.

The only part about it I enjoy

Is what was called in English the Foyay.

There will I stand apart awhile and toy

With thought, and set my cigarette alight;

And then—without returning to the play—

On with my coat and out into the night.

II

LYRICAL, DIDACTIC AND GROTESQUE

TO DIVES

DIVES, when you and I go down to Hell,

Where scribblers end and millionaires as well,

We shall be carrying on our separate backs

Two very large but very different packs;

And as you stagger under yours, my friend,

Down the dull shore where all our journeys end,

And go before me (as your rank demands)

Towards the infinite flat underlands,

And that dear river of forgetfulness—

Charon, a man of exquisite address

(For, as your wife’s progenitors could tell,

They’re very strict on etiquette in Hell),

Will, since you are a lord, observe, “My lord,

We cannot take these weighty things aboard!”

Then down they go, my wretched Dives, down—

The fifteen sorts of boots you kept for town,

The hat to meet the Devil in; the plain

But costly ties; the cases of champagne;

The solid watch, and seal, and chain, and charm;

The working model of a Burning Farm

(To give the little Belials); all the three

Biscuits for Cerberus; the guarantee

From Lambeth that the Rich can never burn,

And even promising a safe return;

The admirable overcoat, designed

To cross Cocytus—very warmly lined:

Sweet Dives, you will leave them all behind

And enter Hell as tattered and as bare

As was your father when he took the air

Behind a barrow-load in Leicester Square.

Then turned to me, and noting one that brings

With careless step a mist of shadowy things:

Laughter and memories, and a few regrets,

Some honour, and a quantity of debts,

A doubt or two of sorts, a trust in God,

And (what will seem to you extremely odd)

His father’s granfer’s father’s father’s name,

Unspoilt, untitled, even spelt the same;

Charon, who twenty thousand times before

Has ferried Poets to the ulterior shore,

Will estimate the weight I bear, and cry—

“Comrade!” (He has himself been known to try

His hand at Latin and Italian verse,

Much in the style of Virgil—only worse)

“We let such vain imaginaries pass!”

Then tell me, Dives, which will look the ass—

You, or myself? Or Charon? Who can tell?

They order things so damnably in Hell.

STANZAS WRITTEN ON BATTERSEA BRIDGE DURING A SOUTH-WESTERLY GALE

THE woods and downs have caught the mid-December,

The noisy woods and high sea-downs of home;

The wind has found me and I do remember

The strong scent of the foam.

Woods, darlings of my wandering feet, another

Possesses you, another treads the Down;

The South West Wind that was my elder brother

Has come to me in town.

The wind is shouting from the hills of morning,

I do remember and I will not stay.

I’ll take the Hampton road without a warning

And get me clean away.

The Channel is up, the little seas are leaping,

The tide is making over Arun Bar;

And there’s my boat, where all the rest are sleeping

And my companions are.

I’ll board her, and apparel her, and I’ll mount her,

My boat, that was the strongest friend to me—

That brought my boyhood to its first encounter

And taught me the wide sea.

Now shall I drive her, roaring hard a’ weather,

Right for the salt and leave them all behind;

We’ll quite forget the treacherous streets together

And find—or shall we find?

There is no Pilotry my soul relies on

Whereby to catch beneath my bended hand,

Faint and beloved along the extreme horizon

That unforgotten land.

We shall not round the granite piers and paven

To lie to wharves we know with canvas furled.

My little Boat, we shall not make the haven—

It is not of the world.

Somewhere of English forelands grandly guarded

It stands, but not for exiles, marked and clean;

Oh! not for us. A mist has risen and marred it:—

My youth lies in between.

So in this snare that holds me and appals me,

Where honour hardly lives nor loves remain,

The Sea compels me and my County calls me,

But stronger things restrain.

. . . . . .

ENGLAND, to me that never have malingered,

Nor spoken falsely, nor your flattery used,

Nor even in my rightful garden lingered:—

What have you not refused?

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,

Their skies are fast and grey;

From their castle-walls a man may see

The mountains far away.

The men that live in West England

They see the Severn strong,

A-rolling on rough water brown

Light aspen leaves along.

They have the secret of the Rocks,

And the oldest kind of song.

But the men that live in the South Country

Are the kindest and most wise,

They get their laughter from the loud surf,

And the faith in their happy eyes

Comes surely from our Sister the Spring

When over the sea she flies;

The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,

She blesses us with surprise.

I never get between the pines

But I smell the Sussex air;

Nor I never come on a belt of sand

But my home is there.

And along the sky the line of the Downs

So noble and so bare.

A lost thing could I never find,

Nor a broken thing mend:

And I fear I shall be all alone

When I get towards the end.

Who will there be to comfort me

Or who will be my friend?

I will gather and carefully make my friends

Of the men of the Sussex Weald,

They watch the stars from silent folds,

They stiffly plough the field.

By them and the God of the South Country

My poor soul shall be healed.

If I ever become a rich man,

Or if ever I grow to be old,

I will build a house with deep thatch

To shelter me from the cold,

And there shall the Sussex songs be sung

And the story of Sussex told.

I will hold my house in the high wood

Within a walk of the sea,

And the men that were boys when I was a boy

Shall sit and drink with me.

THE FANATIC

LAST night in Compton Street, Soho,

A man whom many of you know

Gave up the ghost at half past nine.

That evening he had been to dine

At Gressington’s—an act unwise,

But not the cause of his demise.

The doctors all agree that he

Was touched with cardiac atrophy

Accelerated (more or less)

By lack of proper food, distress,

Uncleanliness, and loss of sleep.

He was a man that could not keep

His money (when he had the same)

Because of creditors who came

And took it from him; and he gave

So freely that he could not save.

But all the while a sort of whim

Persistently remained with him,

Half admirable, half absurd:

To keep his word, to keep his word....

By which he did not mean what you

And I would mean (of payments due

Or punctual rental of the Flat—

He was a deal too mad for that)

But—as he put it with a fine

Abandon, foolish or divine—

But “That great word which every man

Gave God before his life began.”

It was a sacred word, he said,

Which comforted the pathless dead

And made God smile when it was shown

Unforfeited, before the Throne.

And this (he said) he meant to hold

In spite of debt, and hate, and cold;

And this (he said) he meant to show

As passport to the Wards below.

He boasted of it and gave praise

To his own self through all his days.

He wrote a record to preserve

How steadfastly he did not swerve

From keeping it; how stiff he stood

Its guardian, and maintained it good.

He had two witnesses to swear

He kept it once in Berkeley Square.

(Where hardly anything survives)

And, through the loneliest of lives

He kept it clean, he kept it still,

Down to the last extremes of ill.

So when he died, of many friends

Who came in crowds from all the ends

Of London, that it might be known

They knew the man who died alone,

Some, who had thought his mood sublime

And sent him soup from time to time,

Said, “Well, you cannot make them fit

The world, and there’s an end of it!”

But others, wondering at him, said:

“The man that kept his word is dead!”

Then angrily, a certain third

Cried, “Gentlemen, he kept his word.

And as a man whom beasts surround

Tumultuous, on a little mound

Stands Archer, for one dreadful hour,

Because a Man is born to Power—

And still, to daunt the pack below,

Twangs the clear purpose of his bow,

Till overwhelmed he dares to fall:

So stood this bulwark of us all.

He kept his word as none but he

Could keep it, and as did not we.

And round him as he kept his word

To-day’s diseased and faithless herd,

A moment loud, a moment strong,

But foul forever, rolled along.”

THE EARLY MORNING

THE moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:

The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.

The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.

My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.

OUR LORD AND OUR LADY

THEY warned Our Lady for the Child

That was Our blessed Lord,

And She took Him into the desert wild,

Over the camel’s ford.

And a long song She sang to Him

And a short story told:

And She wrapped Him in a woollen cloak

To keep Him from the cold.

But when Our Lord was grown a man

The Rich they dragged Him down,

And they crucified Him in Golgotha,

Out and beyond the Town.

They crucified Him on Calvary,

Upon an April day;

And because He had been her little Son

She followed Him all the way.

Our Lady stood beside the Cross,

A little space apart,

And when She heard Our Lord cry out

A sword went through Her Heart.

They laid Our Lord in a marble tomb,

Dead, in a winding sheet.

But Our Lady stands above the world

With the white Moon at Her feet.

COURTESY

OF Courtesy, it is much less

Than Courage of Heart or Holiness,

Yet in my Walks it seems to me

That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.

On Monks I did in Storrington fall,

They took me straight into their Hall;

I saw Three Pictures on a wall,

And Courtesy was in them all.

The first the Annunciation;

The second the Visitation;

The third the Consolation,

Of God that was Our Lady’s Son.

The first was of Saint Gabriel;

On Wings a-flame from Heaven he fell;

And as he went upon one knee

He shone with Heavenly Courtesy.

Our Lady out of Nazareth rode—

It was Her month of heavy load;

Yet was Her face both great and kind,

For Courtesy was in Her Mind.

The third it was our Little Lord,

Whom all the Kings in arms adored;

He was so small you could not see

His large intent of Courtesy.

Our Lord, that was Our Lady’s Son,

Go bless you, People, one by one;

My Rhyme is written, my work is done.

THE NIGHT

MOST holy Night, that still dost keep

The keys of all the doors of sleep,

To me when my tired eyelids close

Give thou repose.

And let the far lament of them

That chaunt the dead day’s requiem

Make in my ears, who wakeful lie,

Soft lullaby.

Let them that guard the horned moon

By my bedside their memories croon.

So shall I have new dreams and blest

In my brief rest.

Fold your great wings about my face,

Hide dawning from my resting-place,

And cheat me with your false delight,

Most Holy Night.

THE LEADER

THE sword fell down: I heard a knell;

I thought that ease was best,

And sullen men that buy and sell

Were host: and I was guest.

All unashamed I sat with swine,

We shook the dice for war,

The night was drunk with an evil wine—

But she went on before.

She rode a steed of the sea-foam breed,

All faery was her blade,

And the armour on her tender limbs

Was of the moonshine made.

By God that sends the master-maids,

I know not whence she came,

But the sword she bore to save the soul

Went up like an altar flame

Where a broken race in a desert place

Call on the Holy Name.

We strained our eyes in the dim day-rise,

We could not see them plain;

But two dead men from Valmy fen

Rode at her bridle-rein.

I hear them all, my fathers call,

I see them how they ride,

And where had been that rout obscene

Was an army straight with pride.

A hundred thousand marching men,

Of squadrons twenty score,

And after them all the guns, the guns,

But she went on before.

Her face was like a king’s command

When all the swords are drawn.

She stretched her arms and smiled at us,

Her head was higher than the hills.

She led us to the endless plains.

We lost her in the dawn.

A BIVOUAC

I

YOU came without a human sound,

You came and brought my soul to me;

I only woke, and all around

They slumbered on the firelit ground,

Beside the guns in Burgundy.

II

I FELT the gesture of your hands,

You signed my forehead with the Cross;

The gesture of your holy hands

Was bounteous—like the misty lands

Along the Hills in Calvados.

III

BUT when I slept I saw your eyes,

Hungry as death, and very far.

I saw demand in your dim eyes

Mysterious as the moons that rise

At midnight, in the Pines of Var.

TO THE BALLIOL MEN STILL IN AFRICA

YEARS ago when I was at Balliol,

Balliol men—and I was one—

Swam together in winter rivers,

Wrestled together under the sun.

And still in the heart of us, Balliol, Balliol,

Loved already, but hardly known,

Welded us each of us into the others:

Called a levy and chose her own.

Here is a House that armours a man

With the eyes of a boy and the heart of a ranger,

And a laughing way in the teeth of the world

And a holy hunger and thirst for danger:

Balliol made me, Balliol fed me,

Whatever I had she gave me again:

And the best of Balliol loved and led me.

God be with you, Balliol men.

I have said it before, and I say it again,

There was treason done, and a false word spoken,

And England under the dregs of men,

And bribes about, and a treaty broken:

But angry, lonely, hating it still,

I wished to be there in spite of the wrong.

My heart was heavy for Cumnor Hill

And the hammer of galloping all day long.

Galloping outward into the weather,

Hands a-ready and battle in all:

Words together and wine together

And song together in Balliol Hall.

Rare and single! Noble and few!...

Oh! they have wasted you over the sea!

The only brothers ever I knew,

The men that laughed and quarrelled with me.

. . . . . .

Balliol made me, Balliol fed me,

Whatever I had she gave me again;

And the best of Balliol loved and led me,

God be with you, Balliol men.

VERSES TO A LORD WHO, IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, SAID THAT THOSE WHO OPPOSED THE SOUTH AFRICAN ADVENTURE CONFUSED SOLDIERS WITH MONEY-GRUBBERS

YOU thought because we held, my lord,

An ancient cause and strong,

That therefore we maligned the sword:

My lord, you did us wrong.

We also know the sacred height

Up on Tugela side,

Where those three hundred fought with Beit

And fair young Wernher died.

The daybreak on the failing force,

The final sabres drawn:

Tall Goltman, silent on his horse,

Superb against the dawn.

The little mound where Eckstein stood

And gallant Albu fell,

And Oppenheim, half blind with blood

Went fording through the rising flood—

My Lord, we know them well.

The little empty homes forlorn,

The ruined synagogues that mourn,

In Frankfort and Berlin;

We knew them when the peace was torn—

We of a nobler lineage born—

And now by all the gods of scorn

We mean to rub them in.

THE REBEL

THERE is a wall of which the stones

Are lies and bribes and dead men’s bones.

And wrongfully this evil wall

Denies what all men made for all,

And shamelessly this wall surrounds

Our homesteads and our native grounds.

But I will gather and I will ride,

And I will summon a countryside,

And many a man shall hear my halloa

Who never had thought the horn to follow;

And many a man shall ride with me

Who never had thought on earth to see

High Justice in her armoury.

When we find them where they stand,

A mile of men on either hand,

I mean to charge from right away

And force the flanks of their array,

And press them inward from the plains,

And drive them clamouring down the lanes,

And gallop and harry and have them down,

And carry the gates and hold the town.

Then shall I rest me from my ride

With my great anger satisfied.

Only, before I eat and drink,

When I have killed them all, I think

That I will batter their carven names,

And slit the pictures in their frames,

And burn for scent their cedar door,

And melt the gold their women wore,

And hack their horses at the knees,

And hew to death their timber trees,

And plough their gardens deep and through—

And all these things I mean to do

For fear perhaps my little son

Should break his hands, as I have done.

THE PROPHET LOST IN THE HILLS AT EVENING

STRONG God which made the topmost stars

To circulate and keep their course,

Remember me; whom all the bars

Of sense and dreadful fate enforce.

Above me in your heights and tall,

Impassable the summits freeze,

Below the haunted waters call

Impassable beyond the trees.

I hunger and I have no bread.

My gourd is empty of the wine.

Surely the footsteps of the dead

Are shuffling softly close to mine!

It darkens. I have lost the ford.

There is a change on all things made.

The rocks have evil faces, Lord,

And I am awfully afraid.

Remember me: the Voids of Hell

Expand enormous all around.

Strong friend of souls, Emmanuel,

Redeem me from accursed ground.

The long descent of wasted days,

To these at last have led me down;

Remember that I filled with praise

The meaningless and doubtful ways

That lead to an eternal town.

I challenged and I kept the Faith,

The bleeding path alone I trod;

It darkens. Stand about my wraith,

And harbour me—almighty God.

THE END OF THE ROAD

IN THESE BOOTS AND WITH THIS STAFF

Two hundred leaguers and a half

Walked I, went I, paced I, tripped I,

Marched I, held I, skelped I, slipped I,

Pushed I, panted, swung and dashed I;

Picked I, forded, swam and splashed I,

Strolled I, climbed I, crawled and scrambled,

Dropped and dipped I, ranged and rambled;

Plodded I, hobbled I, trudged and tramped I,

And in lonely spinnies camped I,

And in haunted pinewoods slept I,

Lingered, loitered, limped and crept I,

Clambered, halted, stepped and leapt I;

Slowly sauntered, roundly strode I,

And ... (Oh! Patron saints and Angels

That protect the four Evangels!

And you Prophets vel majores

Vel incerti, vel minores,

Virgines ac confessores

Chief of whose peculiar glories

Est in Aula Regis stare

Atque orare et exorare

Et clamare et conclamare

Clamantes cum clamoribus

Pro Nobis Peccatoribus.)

Let me not conceal it.... Rode I.

(For who but critics could complain

Of “riding” in a railway train?)

Across the valley and the high-land,

With all the world on either hand

Drinking when I had a mind to,

Singing when I felt inclined to;

Nor ever turned my face to home

Till I had slaked my heart at Rome.

AN ORACLE

THAT WARNED THE WRITER WHEN ON PILGRIMAGE

MATUTINUS adest ubi Vesper, et accipiens te

Saepe recusatum voces intelligit hospes

Rusticus ignotas notas, ac flumina tellus

Occupat—In sancto tum, tum, stans Aede caveto

Tonsuram Hirsuti Capitis, via namque pedestrem

Ferrea praeveniens cursum, peregrine, laborem

Pro pietate tua inceptum frustratur, amore

Antiqui Ritus alto sub Numine Romae.

Translation of the above:—

WHEN early morning seems but eve

And they that still refuse receive:

When speech unknown men understand;

And floods are crossed upon dry land.

Within the Sacred Walls beware

The Shaven Head that boasts of Hair,

For when the road attains the rail

The Pilgrim’s great attempt shall fail.

THE DEATH AND LAST CONFESSION OF WANDERING PETER

WHEN Peter Wanderwide was young

He wandered everywhere he would:

And all that he approved was sung,

And most of what he saw was good.

When Peter Wanderwide was thrown

By Death himself beyond Auxerre,

He chanted in heroic tone

To priests and people gathered there:

“If all that I have loved and seen

Be with me on the Judgment Day,

I shall be saved the crowd between

From Satan and his foul array.

“Almighty God will surely cry,

‘St Michael! Who is this that stands

With Ireland in his dubious eye,

And Perigord between his hands,

“ ‘And on his arm the stirrup-thongs,

And in his gait the narrow seas,

And in his mouth Burgundian songs,

But in his heart the Pyrenees?’

“St Michael then will answer right

(And not without angelic shame),

‘I seem to know his face by sight:

I cannot recollect his name ...?’

“St Peter will befriend me then,

Because my name is Peter too:

‘I know him for the best of men

That ever wallopped barley brew.

“ ‘And though I did not know him well

And though his soul were clogged with sin,

I hold the keys of Heaven and Hell.

Be welcome, noble Peterkin.’

“Then shall I spread my native wings

And tread secure the heavenly floor,

And tell the Blessed doubtful things

Of Val d’Aran and Perigord.”

———

This was the last and solemn jest

Of weary Peter Wanderwide.

He spoke it with a failing zest,

And having spoken it, he died.

DEDICATORY ODE

I MEAN to write with all my strength

(It lately has been sadly waning),

A ballad of enormous length—

Some parts of which will need explaining.[A]

Because (unlike the bulk of men

Who write for fame or public ends),

I turn a lax and fluent pen

To talking of my private friends.[B]

For no one, in our long decline,

So dusty, spiteful and divided,

Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,

Or loved them half as much as I did.

———

The Freshman ambles down the High,

In love with everything he sees,

He notes the racing autumn sky.

He sniffs a lively autumn breeze.

“Can this be Oxford? This the place?”

(He cries) “of which my father said

The tutoring was a damned disgrace,

The creed a mummery, stuffed and dead?

“Can it be here that Uncle Paul

Was driven by excessive gloom,

To drink and debt, and, last of all,

To smoking opium in his room?

“Is it from here the people come,

Who talk so loud, and roll their eyes,

And stammer? How extremely rum!

How curious! What a great surprise.

“Some influence of a nobler day

Than theirs (I mean than Uncle Paul’s),

Has roused the sleep of their decay,

And flecked with life their crumbling walls.

“O! dear undaunted boys of old,

Would that your names were carven here,

For all the world in stamps of gold,

That I might read them and revere.

“Who wrought and handed down for me

This Oxford of the larger air,

Laughing, and full of faith, and free,

With youth resplendent everywhere?”

Then learn: thou ill-instructed, blind,

Young, callow, and untutored man,

Their private names were....[C]

Their club was called REPUBLICAN.

. . . . . .

Where on their banks of light they lie,

The happy hills of Heaven between,

The Gods that rule the morning sky

Are not more young, nor more serene

Than were the intrepid Four that stand,

The first who dared to live their dream.

And on this uncongenial land

To found the Abbey of Theleme.

We kept the Rabelaisian plan:[D]

We dignified the dainty cloisters

With Natural Law, the Rights of Man,

Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters.

The library was most inviting:

The books upon the crowded shelves

Were mainly of our private writing:

We kept a school and taught ourselves.

We taught the art of writing things

On men we still should like to throttle:

And where to get the Blood of Kings

At only half a crown a bottle.

. . . . . .

Eheu Fugaces! Postume!

(An old quotation out of mode);

My coat of dreams is stolen away

My youth is passing down the road.

. . . . . .

The wealth of youth, we spent it well

And decently, as very few can.

And is it lost? I cannot tell:

And what is more, I doubt if you can.

The question’s very much too wide,

And much too deep, and much too hollow,

And learned men on either side

Use arguments I cannot follow.

They say that in the unchanging place,

Where all we loved is always dear,

We meet our morning face to face

And find at last our twentieth year....

They say (and I am glad they say)

It is so; and it may be so:

It may be just the other way,

I cannot tell. But this I know:

From quiet homes and first beginning,

Out to the undiscovered ends,

There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,

But laughter and the love of friends.

. . . . . .

But something dwindles, oh! my peers,

And something cheats the heart and passes,

And Tom that meant to shake the years

Has come to merely rattling glasses.

And He, the Father of the Flock,

Is keeping Burmesans in order,

An exile on a lonely rock

That overlooks the Chinese border.

And One (Myself I mean—no less),

Ah!—will Posterity believe it—

Not only don’t deserve success,

But hasn’t managed to achieve it.

Not even this peculiar town

Has ever fixed a friendship firmer,

But—one is married, one’s gone down,

And one’s a Don, and one’s in Burmah.

. . . . . .

And oh! the days, the days, the days,

When all the four were off together:

The infinite deep of summer haze,

The roaring boast of autumn weather!

. . . . . .

I will not try the reach again,

I will not set my sail alone,

To moor a boat bereft of men

At Yarnton’s tiny docks of stone.

But I will sit beside the fire,

And put my hand before my eyes,

And trace, to fill my heart’s desire,

The last of all our Odysseys.

The quiet evening kept her tryst:

Beneath an open sky we rode,

And passed into a wandering mist

Along the perfect Evenlode.

The tender Evenlode that makes

Her meadows hush to hear the sound

Of waters mingling in the brakes,

And binds my heart to English ground.

A lovely river, all alone,

She lingers in the hills and holds

A hundred little towns of stone,

Forgotten in the western wolds.

. . . . . .

I dare to think (though meaner powers

Possess our thrones, and lesser wits

Are drinking worser wine than ours,

In what’s no longer Austerlitz)

That surely a tremendous ghost,

The brazen-lunged, the bumper-filler,

Still sings to an immortal toast,

The Misadventures of the Miller.

The unending seas are hardly bar

To men with such a prepossession:

We were? Why then, by God, we are—

Order! I call the Club to session!

You do retain the song we set,

And how it rises, trips and scans?

You keep the sacred memory yet,

Republicans? Republicans?

You know the way the words were hurled,

To break the worst of fortune’s rub?

I give the toast across the world,

And drink it, “Gentlemen: the Club.”

DEDICATION ON THE GIFT OF A BOOK TO A CHILD

CHILD! do not throw this book about!

Refrain from the unholy pleasure

Of cutting all the pictures out!

Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

Child, have you never heard it said

That you are heir to all the ages?

Why, then, your hands were never made

To tear these beautiful thick pages!

Your little hands were made to take

The better things and leave the worse ones:

They also may be used to shake

The Massive Paws of Elder Persons.

And when your prayers complete the day,

Darling, your little tiny hands

Were also made, I think, to pray

For men that lose their fairylands.

DEDICATION OF A CHILD’S BOOK OF IMAGINARY TALES

WHEREIN WRONG-DOERS SUFFER

AND is it true? It is not true!

And if it was it wouldn’t do

For people such as me and you,

Who very nearly all day long

Are doing something rather wrong.

HOMAGE

I

THERE is a light around your head

Which only Saints of God may wear,

And all the flowers on which you tread

In pleasaunce more than ours have fed,

And supped the essential air

Whose summer is a-pulse with music everywhere.

II

FOR you are younger than the mornings are

That in the mountains break;

When upland shepherds see their only star

Pale on the dawn, and make

In his surcease the hours,

The early hours of all their happy circuit take.

THE MOON’S FUNERAL

I

THE Moon is dead. I saw her die.

She in a drifting cloud was drest,

She lay along the uncertain west,

A dream to see.

And very low she spake to me:

“I go where none may understand,

I fade into the nameless land,

And there must lie perpetually.”

And therefore I,

And therefore loudly, loudly I

And high

And very piteously make cry:

“The Moon is dead. I saw her die.”

II

AND will she never rise again?

The Holy Moon? Oh, never more!

Perhaps along the inhuman shore

Where pale ghosts are

Beyond the low lethean fen

She and some wide infernal star....

To us who loved her never more,

The Moon will never rise again.

Oh! never more in nightly sky

Her eye so high shall peep and pry

To see the great world rolling by.

For why?

The Moon is dead. I saw her die.

THE HAPPY JOURNALIST

I LOVE to walk about at night

By nasty lanes and corners foul,

All shielded from the unfriendly light

And independent as the owl.

By dirty grates I love to lurk;

I often stoop to take a squint

At printers working at their work.

I muse upon the rot they print.

The beggars please me, and the mud:

The editors beneath their lamps

As—Mr Howl demanding blood,

And Lord Retender stealing stamps,

And Mr Bing instructing liars,

His elder son composing trash;

Beaufort (whose real name is Meyers)

Refusing anything but cash.

I like to think of Mr Meyers,

I like to think of Mr Bing.

I like to think about the liars:

It pleases me, that sort of thing.

Policemen speak to me, but I,

Remembering my civic rights,

Neglect them and do not reply.

I love to walk about at nights!

At twenty-five to four I bunch

Across a cab I can’t afford.

I ring for breakfast after lunch.

I am as happy as a lord!

LINES TO A DON

REMOTE and ineffectual Don

That dared attack my Chesterton,

With that poor weapon, half-impelled,

Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,

Unworthy for a tilt with men—

Your quavering and corroded pen;

Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,

Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;

Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,

Don nervous, Don of crudities;

Don clerical, Don ordinary,

Don self-absorbed and solitary;

Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;

Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;

Don middle-class, Don sycophantic,

Don dull, Don brutish, Don pedantic;

Don hypocritical, Don bad,

Don furtive, Don three-quarters mad;

Don (since a man must make an end),

Don that shall never be my friend.

. . . . . .

Don different from those regal Dons!

With hearts of gold and lungs of bronze,

Who shout and bang and roar and bawl

The Absolute across the hall,

Or sail in amply bellowing gown

Enormous through the Sacred Town,

Bearing from College to their homes

Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;

Dons admirable! Dons of Might!

Uprising on my inward sight

Compact of ancient tales, and port

And sleep—and learning of a sort.

Dons English, worthy of the land;

Dons rooted; Dons that understand.

Good Dons perpetual that remain

A landmark, walling in the plain—

The horizon of my memories—

Like large and comfortable trees.

. . . . . .

Don very much apart from these,

Thou scapegoat Don, thou Don devoted,

Don to thine own damnation quoted,

Perplexed to find thy trivial name

Reared in my verse to lasting shame.

Don dreadful, rasping Don and wearing,

Repulsive Don—Don past all bearing.

Don of the cold and doubtful breath,

Don despicable, Don of death;

Don nasty, skimpy, silent, level;

Don evil; Don that serves the devil.

Don ugly—that makes fifty lines.

There is a Canon which confines

A Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse

If written in Iambic Verse

To fifty lines. I never cut;

I far prefer to end it—but

Believe me I shall soon return.

My fires are banked, but still they burn

To write some more about the Don

That dared attack my Chesterton.

NEWDIGATE POEM

A PRIZE POEM SUBMITTED BY MR LAMBKIN, THEN SCHOLAR AND LATER FELLOW OF BURFORD COLLEGE, TO THE EXAMINERS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD ON THE PRESCRIBED POETIC THEME SET BY THEM IN 1893, “THE BENEFITS OF THE ELECTRIC LIGHT”

Hail, Happy Muse, and touch the tuneful string!

The benefits conferred by Science[E] I sing.

Under the kind Examiners’ direction[F]

I only write about them in connection

With benefits which the Electric Light

Confers on us; especially at night.

These are my theme, of these my song shall rise.

My lofty head shall swell to strike the skies.[G]

And tears of hopeless love bedew the maiden’s eyes.

Descend, O Muse, from thy divine abode,

To Osney, on the Seven Bridges Road;

For under Osney’s solitary shade

The bulk of the Electric Light is made.

Here are the works;—from hence the current flows

Which (so the Company’s prospectus goes)

Can furnish to Subscribers hour by hour

No less than sixteen thousand candle power,[H]

All at a thousand volts. (It is essential

To keep the current at this high potential

In spite of the considerable expense.)

The Energy developed represents,

Expressed in foot-tons, the united forces

Of fifteen elephants and forty horses.

But shall my scientific detail thus

Clip the dear wings of Buoyant Pegasus?

Shall pure statistics jar upon the ear

That pants for Lyric accents loud and clear?

Shall I describe the complex Dynamo

Or write about its Commutator? No!

To happier fields I lead my wanton pen,

The proper study of mankind is men.

Awake, my Muse! Portray the pleasing sight

That meets us where they make Electric Light.

Behold the Electrician where he stands:

Soot, oil, and verdigris are on his hands;

Large spots of grease defile his dirty clothes,

The while his conversation drips with oaths.

Shall such a being perish in its youth?

Alas! it is indeed the fatal truth.

In that dull brain, beneath that hair unkempt,

Familiarity has bred contempt.

We warn him of the gesture all too late:

Oh, Heartless Jove! Oh, Adamantine Fate!

A random touch—a hand’s imprudent slip—

The Terminals—a flash—a sound like “Zip!”

A smell of burning fills the started Air—

The Electrician is no longer there!

But let us turn with true Artistic scorn

From facts funereal and from views forlorn

Of Erebus and Blackest midnight born.[I]

Arouse thee, Muse! and chaunt in accents rich

The interesting processes by which

The Electricity is passed along:

These are my theme: to these I bend my song.

It runs encased in wood or porous brick

Through copper wires two millimetres thick,

And insulated on their dangerous mission

By indiarubber, silk, or composition.

Here you may put with critical felicity

The following question: “What is Electricity?”

“Molecular Activity,” say some,

Others when asked say nothing, and are dumb.

Whatever be its nature, this is clear:

The rapid current checked in its career,

Baulked in its race and halted in its course[J]

Transforms to heat and light its latent force:

It needs no pedant in the lecturer’s chair

To prove that light and heat are present there.

The pear-shaped vacuum globe, I understand,

Is far too hot to fondle with the hand.

While, as is patent to the meanest sight,

The carbon filament is very bright.

As for the lights they hang about the town,

Some praise them highly, others run them down.

This system (technically called the Arc),

Makes some passages too light, others too dark.

But in the house the soft and constant rays

Have always met with universal praise.

For instance: if you want to read in bed

No candle burns beside your curtain’s head,

Far from some distant corner of the room

The incandescent lamp dispels the gloom,

And with the largest print need hardly try

The powers of any young and vigorous eye.

Aroint thee, Muse! Inspired the poet sings!

I cannot help observing future things!

Life is a vale, its paths are dark and rough

Only because we do not know enough:

When Science has discovered something more

We shall be happier than we were before.

Hail, Britain, Mistress of the Azure Main,

Ten thousand Fleets sweep over thee in vain!

Hail, Mighty Mother of the Brave and Free,

That beat Napoleon, and gave birth to me!

Thou that canst wrap in thine emblazoned robe

One quarter of the habitable globe.

Thy mountains, wafted by a favouring breeze,

Like mighty rocks withstand the stormy seas.

Thou art a Christian Commonwealth; and yet

Be thou not all unthankful—nor forget

As thou exultest in Imperial Might

The Benefits of the Electric Light.

THE YELLOW MUSTARD

OH! ye that prink it to and fro,

In pointed flounce and furbelow,

What have ye known, what can ye know

That have not seen the mustard grow?

The yellow mustard is no less

Than God’s good gift to loneliness;

And he was sent in gorgeous press

To jangle keys at my distress.

I heard the throstle call again,

Come hither, Pain! come hither, Pain!

Till all my shameless feet were fain

To wander through the summer rain.

And far apart from human place,

And flaming like a vast disgrace,

There struck me blinding in the face

The livery of the mustard race.

. . . . . .

To see the yellow mustard grow

Beyond the town, above, below;

Beyond the purple houses, oh!

To see the yellow mustard grow!

THE POLITICIAN OR THE IRISH EARLDOM

A STRONG and striking Personality,

Worth several hundred thousand pounds—

Of strict political Morality—

Was walking in his park-like Grounds;

When, just as these began to pall on him

(I mean the Trees, and Things like that),

A Person who had come to call on him

Approached him, taking off his Hat.

He said, with singular veracity:

“I serve our Sea-girt Mother-Land

In no conspicuous capacity.

I am but an Attorney; and

I do a little elementary

Negotiation, now and then,

As Agent for a Parliamentary

Division of the Town of N....

“Merely as one of the Electorate—

A member of the Commonweal—

Before completing my Directorate,

I want to know the way you feel

On matters more or less debatable;

As—whether our Imperial Pride

Can treat as taxable or rateable

The Gardens of....” His host replied:

“The Ravages of Inebriety

(Alas! increasing day by day!)

Are undermining all Society.

I do not hesitate to say

My country squanders her abilities,

Observe how Montenegro treats

Her Educational Facilities....

... As to the African defeats,

“I bitterly deplored their frequency;

On Canada we are agreed,

The Laws protecting Public Decency

Are very, very lax indeed!

The Views of most of the Nobility

Are very much the same as mine,

On Thingumbob’s eligibility....

I trust that you remain to dine?”

His Lordship pressed with importunity,

As rarely he had pressed before.

. . . . . .

It gave them both an opportunity

To know each other’s value more.

THE LOSER

HE lost his money first of all

—And losing that is half the story—

And later on he tried a fall

With Fate, in things less transitory.

He lost his heart—and found it dead—

(His one and only true discovery),

And after that he lost his head,

And lost his chances of recovery.

He lost his honour bit by bit

Until the thing was out of question.

He worried so at losing it,

He lost his sleep and his digestion.

He lost his temper—and for good—

The remnants of his reputation,

His taste in wine, his choice of food,

And then, in rapid culmination,

His certitudes, his sense of truth,

His memory, his self-control,

The love that graced his early youth,

And lastly his immortal soul.

III

SONGS

NOËL

I

ON a winter’s night long time ago

(The bells ring loud and the bells ring low),

When high howled wind, and down fell snow

(Carillon, Carilla).

Saint Joseph he and Nostre Dame,

Riding on an ass, full weary came

From Nazareth into Bethlehem.

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

II

AND Bethlehem inn they stood before

(The bells ring less and the bells ring more),

The landlord bade them begone from his door

(Carillon, Carilla).

“Poor folk” (says he), “must lie where they may,

For the Duke of Jewry comes this way,

With all his train on a Christmas Day.”

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

III

POOR folk that may my carol hear

(The bells ring single and the bells ring clear),

See! God’s one child had hardest cheer!

(Carillon, Carilla).

Men grown hard on a Christmas morn;

The dumb beast by and a babe forlorn.

It was very, very cold when our Lord was born.

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

IV

NOW these were Jews as Jews must be

(The bells ring merry and the bells ring free).

But Christian men in a band are we

(Carillon, Carilla).

Empty we go, and ill be-dight,

Singing Noël on a Winter’s night.

Give us to sup by the warm firelight,

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

THE BIRDS

WHEN Jesus Christ was four years old,

The angels brought Him toys of gold,

Which no man ever had bought or sold.

And yet with these He would not play.

He made Him small fowl out of clay,

And blessed them till they flew away:

Tu creasti Domine.

Jesus Christ, Thou child so wise,

Bless mine hands and fill mine eyes,

And bring my soul to Paradise.

IN A BOAT

LADY! Lady!

Upon Heaven-height,

Above the harsh morning

In the mere light.

Above the spindrift

And above the snow,

Where no seas tumble,

And no winds blow.

The twisting tides,

And the perilous sands

Upon all sides

Are in your holy hands.

The wind harries

And the cold kills;

But I see your chapel

Over far hills.

My body is frozen,

My soul is afraid:

Stretch out your hands to me,

Mother and maid.

Mother of Christ,

And Mother of me,

Save me alive

From the howl of the sea.

If you will Mother me

Till I grow old,

I will hang in your chapel

A ship of pure gold.

SONG

INVITING THE INFLUENCE OF A YOUNG LADY UPON THE OPENING YEAR

I

YOU wear the morning like your dress

And are with mastery crowned;

Whenas you walk your loveliness

Goes shining all around.

Upon your secret, smiling way

Such new contents were found,

The Dancing Loves made holiday

On that delightful ground.

II

THEN summon April forth, and send

Commandment through the flowers;

About our woods your grace extend

A queen of careless hours.

For oh, not Vera veiled in rain,

Nor Dian’s sacred Ring,

With all her royal nymphs in train

Could so lead on the Spring.

THE RING

WHEN I was flying before the King

In the wood of Valognes in my hiding,

Although I had not anything

I sent a woman a golden ring.

A Ring of the Moors beyond Leon

With emerald and with diamond stone,

And a writing no man ever had known,

And an opal standing all alone.

The shape of the ring the heart to bind:

The emerald turns from cold to kind:

The writing makes her sure to find:—

But the evil opal changed her mind.

Now when the King was dead, was he,

I came back hurriedly over the sea

From the long rocks in Normandy

To Bosham that is by Selsey.

And we clipt each other knee to knee.

But what I had was lost to me.

CUCKOO!

IN woods so long time bare.

Cuckoo!

Up and in the wood, I know not where

Two notes fall.

Yet I do not envy him at all

His phantasy.

Cuckoo!

I too,

Somewhere,

I have sung as merrily as he

Who can dare,

Small and careless lover, so to laugh at care,

And who

Can call

Cuckoo!

In woods of winter weary,

In scented woods, of winter weary, call

Cuckoo!

In woods so long time bare.

THE LITTLE SERVING MAID

I

THERE was a Queen of England,

And a good Queen too.

She had a house in Powis Land

With the Severn running through;

And Men-folk and Women-folk

Apprenticed to a trade;

But the prettiest of all

Was a Little Serving Maid.

II

“Oh Madam, Queen of England!

Oh will you let me go!

For there’s a Lad in London

And he would have it so.

And I would have it too, Madam,

And with him would I bide;

And he will be the Groom, Madam,

And I shall be the Bride!”

III

“Oh fie to you and shame to you,

You Little Serving Maid!

And are you not astonied?

And are you not afraid?

For never was it known

Since Yngelonde began

That a Little Serving Maid

Should go a-meeting of a man!

IV

THEN the Little Serving Maid

She went and laid her down,

With her cross and her bede,

In her new courting gown.

And she called in Mother Mary’s name

And heavily she sighed:

“I think that I have come to shame!”

And after that she died.

V

THE good Queen of England

Her women came and ran:

“The Little Serving Maid is dead

From loving of a man!”

Said the good Queen of England

“That is ill news to hear!

Take her out and shroud her,

And lay her on a bier.”

VI

THEY laid her on a bier,

In the court-yard all;

Some came from Foresting,

And some came from Hall.

And Great Lords carried her,

And proud Priests prayed.

And that was the end

Of the Little Serving Maid.

AUVERGNAT

THERE was a man was half a clown

(It’s so my father tells of it).

He saw the church in Clermont town

And laughed to hear the bells of it.

He laughed to hear the bells that ring

In Clermont Church and round of it;

He heard the verger’s daughter sing,

And loved her for the sound of it.

The verger’s daughter said him nay;

She had the right of choice in it.

He left the town at break of day:

He hadn’t had a voice in it.

The road went up, the road went down,

And there the matter ended it.

He broke his heart in Clermont town,

At Pontgibaud they mended it.

DRINKING SONG

ON THE EXCELLENCE OF BURGUNDY WINE

MY jolly fat host with your face all a-grin,

Come, open the door to us, let us come in.

A score of stout fellows who think it no sin

If they toast till they’re hoarse, and they drink till they spin,

Hoofed it amain,

Rain or no rain,

To crack your old jokes, and your bottles to drain.

Such a warmth in the belly that nectar begets

As soon as his guts with its humour he wets,

The miser his gold, and the student his debts,

And the beggar his rags and his hunger forgets.

For there’s never a wine

Like this tipple of thine

From the great hill of Nuits to the River of Rhine.

Outside you may hear the great gusts as they go

By Foy, by Duerne, and the hills of Lerraulx,

But the rain he may rain, and the wind he may blow,

If the Devil’s above there’s good liquor below.

So it abound,

Pass it around,

Burgundy’s Burgundy all the year round.

DRINKING DIRGE

A THOUSAND years ago I used to dine

In houses where they gave me such regale

Of dear companionship and comrades fine

That out I went alone beyond the pale;

And riding, laughed and dared the skies malign

To show me all the undiscovered tale—

But my philosophy’s no more divine,

I put my pleasure in a pint of ale.

And you, my friends, oh! pleasant friends of mine,

Who leave me now alone, without avail,

On Californian hills you gave me wine,

You gave me cider-drink in Longuevaille;

If after many years you come to pine

For comradeship that is an ancient tale—

You’ll find me drinking beer in Dead Man’s Chine.

I put my pleasure in a pint of ale.

In many a briny boat I’ve tried the brine,

From many a hidden harbour I’ve set sail,

Steering towards the sunset where there shine

The distant amethystine islands pale.

There are no ports beyond the far sea-line,

Nor any halloa to meet the mariner’s hail;

I stand at home and slip the anchor-line.

I put my pleasure in a pint of ale.

ENVOI

PRINCE! Is it true when you go out to dine

You bring your bottle in a freezing pail?

Why then you cannot be a friend of mine.

I put my pleasure in a pint of ale.

WEST SUSSEX DRINKING SONG

THEY sell good Beer at Haslemere

And under Guildford Hill.

At Little Cowfold as I’ve been told

A beggar may drink his fill:

There is a good brew in Amberley too,

And by the bridge also;

But the swipes they take in at Washington Inn

Is the very best Beer I know.

Chorus.

With my here it goes, there it goes,

All the fun’s before us:

The Tipple’s Aboard and the night is young,

The door’s ajar and the Barrel is sprung,

I am singing the best song ever was sung

And it has a rousing chorus.

If I were what I never can be,

The master or the squire:

If you gave me the hundred from here to the sea,

Which is more than I desire:

Then all my crops should be barley and hops,

And did my harvest fail

I’d sell every rood of mine acres I would

For a belly-full of good Ale.

Chorus.

WITH my here it goes, there it goes,

All the fun’s before us:

The Tipple’s aboard and the night is young,

The door’s ajar and the Barrel is sprung,

I am singing the best song ever was sung

And it has a rousing Chorus.

A BALLAD ON SOCIOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

A WHILE ago it came to pass

(Merry we carol it all the day),

There sat a man on the top of an ass

(Heart be happy and carol be gay

In spite of the price of hay).

And over the down they hoofed it so

(Happy go lucky has best of fare),

The man up above and the brute below

(And singing we all forget to care

A man may laugh if he dare).

Over the stubble and round the crop

(Life is short and the world is round),

The donkey beneath and the man on the top

(Oh! let good ale be found, be found,

Merry good ale and sound).

It happened again as it happened before

(Tobacco’s a boon but ale is bliss),

The moke in the ditch and the man on the floor

(And that is the moral to this, to this

Remarkable artifice).

HERETICS ALL

HERETICS all, whoever you be,

In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea,

You never shall have good words from me.

Caritas non conturbat me.

But Catholic men that live upon wine

Are deep in the water, and frank, and fine;

Wherever I travel I find it so,

Benedicamus Domino.

On childing women that are forlorn,

And men that sweat in nothing but scorn:

That is on all that ever were born,

Miserere Domine.

To my poor self on my deathbed,

And all my dear companions dead,

Because of the love that I bore them,

Dona Eis Requiem.

HA’NACKER MILL

SALLY is gone that was so kindly

Sally is gone from Ha’nacker Hill.

And the Briar grows ever since then so blindly

And ever since then the clapper is still,

And the sweeps have fallen from Ha’nacker Mill

Ha’nacker Hill is in Desolation:

Ruin a-top and a field unploughed.

And Spirits that call on a fallen nation

Spirits that loved her calling aloud:

Spirits abroad in a windy cloud.

Spirits that call and no one answers;

Ha’nacker’s down and England’s done.

Wind and Thistle for pipe and dancers

And never a ploughman under the Sun.

Never a ploughman. Never a one.

TARANTELLA

DO you remember an Inn,

Miranda?

Do you remember an Inn?

And the tedding and the spreading

Of the straw for a bedding,

And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,

And the wine that tasted of the tar?

And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers

(Under the vine of the dark verandah)?

Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,

Do you remember an Inn?

And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers

Who hadn’t got a penny,

And who weren’t paying any,

And the hammer at the doors and the Din?

And the Hip! Hop! Hap!

Of the clap

Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl

Of the girl gone chancing,

Glancing,

Dancing,

Backing and advancing,

Snapping of the clapper to the spin

Out and in——

And the Ting, Tong, Tang of the Guitar!

Do you remember an Inn,

Miranda?

Do you remember an Inn?

Never more;

Miranda,

Never more.

Only the high peaks hoar:

And Aragon a torrent at the door.

No sound

In the walls of the Halls where falls

The tread

Of the feet of the dead to the ground

No sound:

But the boom

Of the far Waterfall like Doom.

THE CHAUNTY OF THE “NONA”

I

COME list all ye Cullies and Doxies so dear,

You shall hearken to the tale of the Bold Marineer

That took ship out of Holyhead and drove her so hard

Past Bardsey, Pwlheli, Port Madoc, and Fishguard—

Past Bardsey, Pwlheli, Port Madoc, and Fishguard.

II

THEN he dropped out of Fishguard on a calm Summer’s day,

By St David’s and Strumbles and across St Bride’s Bay;

Circumnavigating Skomer, that Island, around,

With the heart of a Lion he threaded Jack Sound—

With the heart of a Lion he threaded Jack Sound.

III

BUT from out the Main Ocean there rolled a great cloud,

So he clawed into Milford Haven by the Fog Blast so loud,

Until he dropped anchor in a deep-wooded bay,

Where all night with Old Sleep and Quiet Sadness he lay—

Where all night with Old Sleep and Quiet Sadness he lay.

IV

NEXT morning was a Doldrum, and he whistled for a breeze,

Which came from the N.N.W.’ard all across the high seas;

And in passing St Govan’s lightship he gave them good night,

But before it was morning he raised Lundy Light—

Before it was morning he had raised Lundy Light.

V

THEN he tossed for twelve hours in that horrible place

Which is known to the Mariner as the Great White Horse Race,

Till with a slant about three bells, or maybe near four,

He saw white water breaking upon Loud Appledore—

He saw white water breaking upon Loud Appledore.

VI

THE Pirates of Appledore, the Wines of Instow;

But her nose is for Bideford with the tide at the flow.

Rattle anchor, batten hatches, and leave your falls curled.

The Long Bridge of Bideford is the end of the World—

The Long Bridge of Bideford is the end of the World.

THE WINGED HORSE

I

IT’s ten years ago to-day you turned me out o’ doors

To cut my feet on flinty lands and stumble down the shores,

And I thought about the all-in-all, oh more than I can tell!

But I caught a horse to ride upon and I rode him very well,

He had flame behind the eyes of him and wings upon his side.

And I ride, and I ride!

II

I RODE him out of Wantage and I rode him up the hill,

And there I saw the Beacon in the morning standing still,

Inkpen and Hackpen and southward and away

High through the middle airs in the strengthening of the day,

And there I saw the channel-glint and England in her pride.

And I ride, and I ride!

III

AND once a-top of Lambourne down toward the hill of Clere

I saw the Host of Heaven in rank and Michael with his spear,

And Turpin out of Gascony and Charlemagne the Lord,

And Roland of the marches with his hand upon his sword

For the time he should have need of it, and forty more beside.

And I ride, and I ride!

IV

FOR you that took the all-in-all the things you left were three.

A loud voice for singing and keen eyes to see,

And a spouting well of joy within that never yet was dried!

And I ride.

STREPHON’S SONG

(FROM “THE CRUEL SHEPHERDESS”)

WHEN I was not much older

Than Cupid, but bolder,

I asked of his Mother in passing her bower

What it was in their blindness

Men asked of her kindness

And she said it was nought but a delicate flower:

Such a delicate, delicate, delicate flower!

This morning you kissed me,

By noon you dismissed me

As though such great things were the jest of one hour,

And you left me still wondering

If I were not too blundering

To deal with that delicate, delicate flower:

’Tis such a delicate, delicate, delicate flower!

For if that’s the complexion

Of Ladies’ affection

I must needs be a fool to remain in their power;

But there’s that in me burning

Which brings me returning

To beg for the delicate, delicate flower;

To implore for that delicate, delicate flower!

IV

BALLADES

SHORT BALLADE AND POSTSCRIPT ON CONSOLS AND BOERS

I

GIGANTIC daughter of the West

(The phrase is Tennysonian), who

From this unconquerable breast

The vigorous milk of Freedom drew

—We gave it freely—shall the crest

Of Empire in your keeping true,

Shall England—I forget the rest,

But Consols are at 82.

II

NOW why should anyone invest,

As even City people do

(His Lordship did among the rest),

When stocks—but what is that to you?

And then, who ever could have guessed

About the guns—and horses too!—

Besides, they knew their business best,

And Consols are at 82.

III

IT serves no purpose to protest,

It isn’t manners to halloo

About the way the thing was messed—

Or vaguely call a man a Jew.

A gentleman who cannot jest

Remarked that we should muddle through

(The continent was much impressed),

And Consols are at 82.

Envoi.

AND, Botha lay at Pilgrim’s Rest

And Myberg in the Great Karroo

(A desert to the south and west),

And Consols are at 82.

Postscript.

PERMIT me—if you do not mind—

To add it would be screaming fun

If, after printing this, I find

Them after all at 81.

Or 70 or 63,

Or 55 or 44,

Or 39 and going free,

Or 28—or even more.

No matter—take no more advice

From doubtful and intriguing men.

Refuse the stuff at any price,

And slowly watch them fall to 10.

Meanwhile I feel a certain zest

In writing once again the new

Refrain that all is for the best,

And Consols are at 82.

Last Envoi.

PRINCE, you and I were barely thirty-three,

And now I muse and wonder if it’s true,

That you were you and I myself was me,

And 3 per cents were really 82!

BALLADE OF THE UNANSWERED QUESTION

I

WHAT dwelling hath Sir Harland Pott

That died of drinking in Bungay?

Nathaniel Goacher who was shot

Towards the end of Malplaquet?

The only thing that we can say,

(The only thing that has been said)

About these gentlemen is, “Nay!

But where are the unanswering dead”

II

LORD Bumplepuppy, too, that got

The knock from Messrs Dawkins’ dray?

And Jonas, whom the Cachalot

Begulphed in Esdraelon Bay?

The Calvinistic John McKay,

Who argued till his nostrils bled,

And dropped in apoplexy? Nay!

But where are the unanswering dead?

III

AND Heliodorus too, that hot

Defender of the Roman sway;

And He, the author of the “Tot

Mercedes dant Victoriæ,”

And all the armoured squadrons gay

That ever glory nourishèd

In all the world’s high charges? Nay!

But where are the unanswering dead?

Envoi

PRINCE, have you ever learnt to pray

Upon your knees beside your bed?

You miserable waxwork? Nay!

But where are the unanswering dead?

BALLADE TO OUR LADY OF CZESTOCHOWA

I

LADY and Queen and Mystery manifold

And very Regent of the untroubled sky,

Whom in a dream St Hilda did behold

And heard a woodland music passing by:

You shall receive me when the clouds are high

With evening and the sheep attain the fold.

This is the faith that I have held and hold,

And this is that in which I mean to die.

II

STEEP are the seas and savaging and cold

In broken waters terrible to try;

And vast against the winter night the wold,

And harbourless for any sail to lie.

But you shall lead me to the lights, and I

Shall hymn you in a harbour story told.

This is the faith that I have held and hold,

And this is that in which I mean to die.

III

HELP of the half-defeated, House of gold,

Shrine of the Sword, and Tower of Ivory;

Splendour apart, supreme and aureoled,

The Battler’s vision and the World’s reply.

You shall restore me, O my last Ally,

To vengeance and the glories of the bold.

This is the faith that I have held and hold,

And this is that in which I mean to die.

Envoi

PRINCE of the degradations, bought and sold,

These verses, written in your crumbling sty,

Proclaim the faith that I have held and hold

And publish that in which I mean to die.

BALLADE OF HELL AND OF MRS ROEBECK

I

I’M going out to dine at Gray’s

With Bertie Morden, Charles and Kit,

And Manderly who never pays,

And Jane who wins in spite of it,

And Algernon who won’t admit

The truth about his curious hair

And teeth that very nearly fit:—

And Mrs Roebeck will be there.

II

AND then to-morrow someone says

That someone else has made a hit

In one of Mister Twister’s plays.

And off we go to yawn at it;

And when it’s petered out we quit

For number 20, Taunton Square,

And smoke, and drink, and dance a bit:—

And Mrs Roebeck will be there.

III

AND so through each declining phase

Of emptied effort, jaded wit,

And day by day of London days

Obscurely, more obscurely, lit;

Until the uncertain shadows flit

Announcing to the shuddering air

A Darkening, and the end of it:—

And Mrs Roebeck will be there.

Envoi

PRINCE, on their iron thrones they sit,

Impassible to our despair,

The dreadful Guardians of the Pit:—

And Mrs Roebeck will be there.

BALLADE OF UNSUCCESSFUL MEN

I

THE cause of all the poor in ’93:

The cause of all the world at Waterloo:

The shouts of what was terrible and free

Behind the guns of Vengeance and her crew:

The Maid that rode so straightly and so true

And broke the line to pieces in her pride—

They had to chuck it up; it wouldn’t do;

The Devil didn’t like them, and they died.

II

CÆSAR and Alexander shall agree

That right athwart the world their bugles blew:

And all the lads that marched in Lombardy

Behind the young Napoleon charging through:

All that were easy swordsmen, all that slew

The Monsters, and that served our God and tried

The temper of this world—they lost the clue.

The Devil didn’t like them, and they died.

III

YOU, the strong sons of anger and the sea,

What darkness on the wings of battle flew?

Then the great dead made answer: “Also we

With Nelson found oblivion: Nelson, who

When cheering out of port in spirit grew

To be one purpose with the wind and tide—

Our nameless hulks are sunk and rotted through:

The Devil didn’t like us and we died.”

Envoi

PRINCE, may I venture (since it’s only you)

To speak discreetly of The Crucified?

He was extremely unsuccessful too:

The Devil didn’t like Him, and He died.

BALLADE OF THE HERESIARCHS

I

JOHN Calvin whose peculiar fad

It was to call God murderous,

Which further led that feverish cad

To burn alive the Servetus.

The horrible Bohemian Huss,

The tedious Wycliffe, where are they?

But where is old Nestorius?

The wind has blown them all away.

II

THE Kohen out of Novdograd

Who argued from the Roman Jus

“Privata fasta nihil ad

Rem nisi sint de sacribus.”

And Hume, who made a dreadful fuss

About the Resurrection Day

And said it was ridiculous—

The wind has blown them all away.

III

OF Smith the gallant Mormon lad

That took of wives an over-plus:

Johanna Southcott who was mad

And nasty Nietzsche, who was worse.

Of Tolstoy, the Eccentric Russ,

Our strong Posterity shall say:

“Lord Jesus! What are these to us?

The wind has blown them all away!”

Envoi

PRINCE, should you meet upon a bus

A man who makes a great display

Of Dr Haeckel, argue thus:—

The wind has blown them all away.

V

EPIGRAMS

I

On His Books

WHEN I am dead, I hope it may be said:

“His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”

II

On Noman, a Guest

DEAR Mr Noman, does it ever strike you,

The more we see of you, the less we like you?

III

A Trinity

OF three in One and One in three

My narrow mind would doubting be

Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met

And all at once were Juliet

IV

On Torture, a Public Singer

TORTURE will give a dozen pence or more

To keep a drab from bawling at his door.

The public taste is quite a different thing—

Torture is positively paid to sing.

V

On Paunch, a Parasite

PAUNCH talks against good liquor to excess,

And then about his raving Patroness;

And then he talks about himself. And then

We turn the conversation on to men.

VI

On Hygiene

OF old when folk lay sick and sorely tried

The doctors gave them physic, and they died.

But here’s a happier age: for now we know

Both how to make men sick and keep them so.

VII

On Lady Poltagrue, a Public Peril

THE Devil, having nothing else to do,

Went off to tempt My Lady Poltagrue.

My Lady, tempted by a private whim,

To his extreme annoyance, tempted him.

VIII

The Mirror

THE mirror held your fair, my Fair,

A fickle moment’s space.

You looked into mine eyes, and there

For ever fixed your face.

Keep rather to your looking-glass

Than my more faithful eyes:

It told the truth—Alas! my lass,

My constant memory lies.

IX

The Elm

THIS is the place where Dorothea smiled.

I did not know the reason, nor did she.

But there she stood, and turned, and smiled at me:

A sudden glory had bewitched the child.

The corn at harvest, and a single tree.

This is the place where Dorothea smiled.

X

The Telephone

TO-night in million-voicèd London I

Was lonely as the million-pointed sky

Until your single voice. Ah! So the Sun

Peoples all heaven, although he be but one.

XI

The Statue

WHEN we are dead, some Hunting-boy will pass

And find a stone half-hidden in tall grass

And grey with age: but having seen that stone

(Which was your image), ride more slowly on.

XII

Epitaph on the Favourite Dog of a Politician

HERE lies a Dog: may every Dog that dies

Lie in security—as this Dog lies.

XIII

Epitaph on the Politician Himself

HERE richly, with ridiculous display,

The Politician’s corpse was laid away.

While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged

I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

XIV

Another on the Same

THIS, the last ornament among the peers,

Bribed, bullied, swindled and blackmailed for years:

But Death’s what even Politicians fail

To bribe or swindle, bully or blackmail.

XV

On Mundane Acquaintances

GOOD morning, Algernon: Good morning, Percy.

Good morning, Mrs Roebeck. Christ have mercy!

XVI

On a Rose for Her Bosom

GO, lovely rose, and tell the lovelier fair

That he which loved her most was never there.

XVII

On the Little God

OF all the gods that gave me all their glories

To-day there deigns to walk with me but one.

I lead him by the hand and tell him stories.

It is the Queen of Cyprus’ little son.

XVIII

On a Prophet

OF old ’twas Samuel sought the Lord: to-day

The Lord runs after Samuel—so they say.

XIX

On a Dead Hostess

OF this bad world the loveliest and the best

Has smiled and said “Good Night,” and gone to rest.

XX

On a Great Election

THE accursèd power which stands on Privilege

(And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge)

Broke—and Democracy resumed her reign:

(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).

XXI

On a Mistaken Mariner

HE whistled thrice to pass the Morning Star,

Thinking that near which was so very far.

So I, whenas I meet my Dearest Dear,

Still think that far which is so very near.

XXII

On a Sleeping Friend

LADY, when your lovely head

Droops to sink among the Dead,

And the quiet places keep

You that so divinely sleep;

Then the dead shall blessèd be

With a new solemnity,

For such Beauty, so descending,

Pledges them that Death is ending.

Sleep your fill—but when you wake

Dawn shall over Lethe break.

XXIII

Fatigued

I’M tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme.

But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

XXIV

On Benicia, who Wished Him Well

BENICIA wished me well; I wished her well.

And what I wished her more I may not tell.

XXV

The False Heart

I SAID to Heart, “How goes it?” Heart replied:

“Right as a Ribstone Pippin!” But it lied.

XXVI

Partly from the Greek

SHE would be as the stars in your sight

That turn in the endless hollow;

That tremble, and always follow

The quiet wheels of the Night.

VI

THE BALLAD OF VAL-ÈS-DUNES

THE VICTORY OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR IN HIS YOUTH OVER THE REBELS AT VAL-ÈS-DUNES IN THE YEAR 1047

[This piece of verse is grossly unhistorical. Val-ès-Dunes is not on the sea but inland. No Norman blazoned a shield or a church window in the middle eleventh century, still less would he frame one in silver, and I doubt gilt spurs. It was not the young Bastard of Falaise, but the men of the King in Paris that really won the battle. There was nothing Scandinavian left in Normandy, and whatever there had been five generations before was slight. The Colentin had no more Scandinavian blood than the rest. There is no such place as Longuevaile. There is a Hauteville, but it has no bay and had nothing to do with the Harcourts, and the Harcourts were not of Bloodroyal—and so forth.]

I

THE men that lived in Longuevaile

Came out to fight by bands.

They jangled all in welded mail,

Their shields were rimmed of silver pale

And blazoned like a church-vitrail:

Their swords were in their hands.

But the harsh raven of the Old Gods

Was on the rank sea-sands.

There rose a wind on heath and den:

The sky went racing grey.

The Bastard and his wall of men

Were a charger’s course away.

II

THE Old Gods of the Northern Hall

Are in their narrow room.

Their thrones are flanked of spearmen tall,

The three that have them in their thrall,

Sit silently before them all,

They weave upon their loom;

And round about them as they weave

The Scalds sing doom.

III

THE Bastard out of Normandy

Was angry for his wrong.

His eyes were virginal to see,

For nothing in his heart had he

But a hunger for his great degree;

And his back was broad and strong

As are the oxen of the field,

That pull the ploughs along.

IV

HE saw that column of cavalry wheel,

Split outward, and deploy.

He heard, he heard the Oliphant peal.

He crooked an angry knee to feel

The scabbard against his gilded heel.

He had great joy:

And he stood upright in the stirrup steel.

Because he was a boy.

. . . . . .

We faced their ordering, all the force,

And there was little sound;

But Haribert-Le-Marshall’s horse

Pawed heavily the ground.

V

AS the broad ships out of Barbary

Come driving from the large,

With yards a-bend and courses free,

And tumbling down their decks a-lee,

The hurrahing of the exultant sea,

So drave they to the charge.

But the harsh raven of the Old Gods

Was on the rank sea-marge.

VI

THE Old Gods of the Northern Hall

Are crownéd for the tomb.

Their biers are flanked of torches tall,

And through the flames that leap and fall

There comes a droning and a call

To the night’s womb,

As the tide beneath a castle wall

Goes drumming through the gloom.

VII

THEY tonsured me but Easter year,

I swore to Christ and Rome.

My name is not mine older name....

But ah! to see them as they came,

With thundering and with points aflame,

I smelt foam.

And my heart was like a wandering man’s,

Who piles his boat on Moorna sands

And serves a slave in alien lands,

And then beneath a harper’s hands

Hears suddenly of home.

. . . . . .

For their cavalry came in a curling leaf,

They shouted as they drave,

And the Bastard’s line was like a reef

But theirs was like a wave.

VIII

AS the broad ships out of Barbary

Strike rock.

And the stem shatters, and the sail flaps;

Streaming seaward; and the taut shroud snaps,

And the block

Clatters to the deck of the wreck.

So did the men of Longuevaile

Take the shock.

IX

OUR long line quivered but it did not break,

It countered and was strong.

The first bolt went through the wind with a wail,

And another and a-many with a thudding on the mail;

Pattered all the arrows in an April hail;

Whistled the ball and thong:

And I, the priest, with that began

The singing of my song.

X

PRESS inward, inward, Normandy;

Press inward, Cleres and Vaux;

Press inward, Mons and Valery;

Press inward, Yvetot.

Stand hard the men of the Beechen Ford

(Oh! William of Falaise, my lord!)

Battle is a net and a struggle in a cord.

Battle is a wrestler’s throw.

The middle holding as the wings made good,

The far wings closing as the centre stood.

Battle is a mist and battle is a wood,

And battle is won so.

XI

THE fishermen fish in the River of Seine,

They haul the long nets in.

They haul them in and they haul again,

(The fishermen fish in the River of Seine)

They haul them in and they haul again,

A million glittering fin:

With the hauling in of our straining ends

That Victory did begin.

XII

THE tall son of the Seven Winds

Galloped hot-foot from the Hither Hithe.

So strongly went he down the press,

Almost he did that day redress

With his holping and his hardiness,

For his sword was like a scythe

In Arques when the grass is high,

And all the swaithes in order lie,

And there’s the bailiff standing by—

A gathering of the tithe.

XIII

AND now, go forward, Normandy,

Go forward all in one.

The press was caught and trampled and it broke

From the sword and its swinger and the axe’s stroke,

Pouring through the gap in a whirl of smoke

As a blinded herd will run.

And so fled many and a very few

With mounts all spent would staggering pursue,

But the race fell scattered as the evening grew:

The battle was over and done.

. . . . . .

Like birds against the reddening day

They dwindled one by one,

And I heard a trumpet far away

At the setting of the sun.

. . . . . .

XIV

THE stars were in the Eternal Sky,

It was calm in Massared;

Richard, Abbot of Leclair, and I

And a Picard Priest that held on high

A Torch above his head;

We stumbled through the darkening land

Assoiling with anointed hand

The dying and the dead.

XV

HOW many in the tufted grass,

How many dead there lay.

For there was found the Fortenbras

And young Garain of Hault, alas!

And the Wardens of the Breton pass

Who were lords of his array,

And Hugh that trusted in his glass

But came not home the day.

XVI

I SAW the miller of Martindall,

I saw that archer die.

The blunt quarrel caught him at the low white wall,

And he tossed up his arrow to the Lord God of all,

But long before the first could fall

His soul was in the sky.

XVII

THE last of all the lords that sprang

From Harcourt of the Crown,

He parried with the shield and the silver rang,

But the axe fell heavy on the helm with a clang

And the girths parted and the saddle swang,

And he went down:

He never more sang winter songs

In his high town.

XVIII

IN his high town that Faëry is,

And stands on Harcourt bay,

The fisher surging through the night

Takes bearing by that castle height,

And moors him harboured in the bight,

And watches for the day.

But with the broadening of the light,

It vanishes away.

XIX

IN his high town that Faëry is,

And stands on Harcourt Lea.

To summon him up his arrier-ban,

His writ beyond the mountains ran;

My father was his serving man,

Although the farm was free.

Before the angry wars began

He was a friend to me.

XX

THE night before the boy was born

There came a Priest who said

That he had seen red Aldeborn,

The star of hate in Taurus’ horn,

Which glared above a field of corn,

And covered him with dread.

I wish to God I had not held

The cloth in which he bled.

. . . . . .

XXI

THE Horse from Cleres and Valery,

The foot from Yvetot,

And all the men of the Harbour Towns

That live by fall and flow.

And all the men of the Beechen Ford

—Oh! William of Falaise, my lord!—

And all the sails in Michael’s ward,

And all the shields of Caux,

Shall follow you out across the world,

With sword and lance and bow,

To Beachy and to Pevensey Bar,

To Chester through the snow,

With sack and pack and camping tent,

A-grumbling as they go:

My lord is William of Falaise.

Haro!

FOOTNOTES:

[A]

BUT do not think I shall explain

To any great extent. Believe me,

I partly write to give you pain,

And if you do not like me, leave me.

[B]

AND least of all can you complain,

Reviewers, whose unholy trade is,

To puff with all your might and main

Biographers of single ladies.

[C] Never mind.

[D]

THE plan forgot (I know not how,

Perhaps the Refectory filled it),

To put a chapel in; and now

We’re mortgaging the rest to build it.

[E] To be pronounced as a monosyllable in the Imperial fashion.

[F] Mr Punt, Mr Howl, and Mr Grewcock (now, alas, deceased).

[G] A neat rendering of “Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.”

[H] To the Examiners: These facts (of which I guarantee the accuracy) were given me by a Director.

[I] A reminiscence of Milton: “Fas est et ab hoste docere.”

[J] Lambkin told me he regretted this line, which was for the sake of Rhyme. He would willingly have replaced it, but to his last day could construct no substitute.

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Table of Contents

SONNETS AND VERSE

CONTENTS

I SONNETS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

XXVIII

XXIX

XXX

XXXI

II LYRICAL, DIDACTIC AND GROTESQUE

TO DIVES

STANZAS WRITTEN ON BATTERSEA BRIDGE DURING A SOUTH-WESTERLY GALE

THE SOUTH COUNTRY

THE FANATIC

THE EARLY MORNING

OUR LORD AND OUR LADY

COURTESY

THE NIGHT

THE LEADER

A BIVOUAC

I

II

III

TO THE BALLIOL MEN STILL IN AFRICA

THE REBEL

THE PROPHET LOST IN THE HILLS AT EVENING

THE END OF THE ROAD

AN ORACLE THAT WARNED THE WRITER WHEN ON PILGRIMAGE

THE DEATH AND LAST CONFESSION OF WANDERING PETER

DEDICATORY ODE

DEDICATION ON THE GIFT OF A BOOK TO A CHILD

DEDICATION OF A CHILD’S BOOK OF IMAGINARY TALES WHEREIN WRONG-DOERS SUFFER

HOMAGE

I

II

THE MOON’S FUNERAL

I

II

THE HAPPY JOURNALIST

LINES TO A DON

NEWDIGATE POEM

THE YELLOW MUSTARD

THE POLITICIAN OR THE IRISH EARLDOM

THE LOSER

III SONGS

NOËL

I

II

III

IV

THE BIRDS

IN A BOAT

SONG

I

II

THE RING

CUCKOO!

THE LITTLE SERVING MAID

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

AUVERGNAT

DRINKING SONG ON THE EXCELLENCE OF BURGUNDY WINE

DRINKING DIRGE

ENVOI

WEST SUSSEX DRINKING SONG

Chorus.

Chorus.

A BALLAD ON SOCIOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

HERETICS ALL

HA’NACKER MILL

TARANTELLA

THE CHAUNTY OF THE “NONA”

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

THE WINGED HORSE

I

II

III

IV

STREPHON’S SONG

IV BALLADES

SHORT BALLADE AND POSTSCRIPT ON CONSOLS AND BOERS

I

II

III

Envoi.

BALLADE OF THE UNANSWERED QUESTION

I

II

III

Envoi

BALLADE TO OUR LADY OF CZESTOCHOWA

I

II

III

Envoi

BALLADE OF HELL AND OF MRS ROEBECK

I

II

III

Envoi

BALLADE OF UNSUCCESSFUL MEN

I

II

III

Envoi

BALLADE OF THE HERESIARCHS

I

II

III

Envoi

V EPIGRAMS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

VI THE BALLAD OF VAL-ÈS-DUNES

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

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