The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems

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Title: Poems

Author: Geoffrey Dearmer

Release date: December 27, 2016 [eBook #53818]

Most recently updated: January 24, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif, Bryan Ness and

the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images

generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian

Libraries)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***

POEMS

POEMS

BY

GEOFFREY   DEARMER

NEW YORK

Robert M. McBride & Company

1918

Dedication

TO CHRISTOPHER

KILLED, SUVLA BAY, OCTOBER 6TH, 1915.

At Suvla when a sickening curse of sound

Came hurtling from the shrapnel-shaken skies,

Without a word you shuddered to the ground

And with a gesture hid your darkening eyes.

You are not blind to-day—

But were we blind before you went away?

Forgive us then, if, faltering, we fail

To speak in terms articulate of you;

Now Death’s celestial journeymen unveil

Your naked soul—the soul we hardly knew.

O beauty scarce unfurled,

Your blood shall help to purify the world.

Awakened now, no longer we believe

Knight-errantry a myth of long ago.

Let us not shame your happiness and grieve;

All close we feel you live and move, we know

Your life shall ever be

Close to our lives enshrined eternally.

CONTENTS

From “W” Beach

3

A Prayer

5

Fallen

6

The Turkish Trench Dog

7

The Sentinel

9

Mudros after the Evacuation

12

The Dead Turk

18

Missing

17

Two Trench Poems

22

Gommecourt

24

A Vision

31

Revelation

33

Tell me, Stranger

34

Spring in the Trenches

36

On the Road

38

Keats, before Action

41

The Somme

42

Somme Flower Talk

46

To the Uttermost Farthing

48

In the Mess

53

A Trench Incident

54

Reality

55

“We Poets of the Proud Old Lineage”

56

Song

59

The Shadow

60

Everychild

62

Child of the Flowing Tide

64

Eight Sonnets

66

Keats

74

Meeting Her in the Street

75

Her Homage

76

Reaction

77

April

78

May-June

79

The Strolling Singer

80

The French Mother to Her Unborn Child

87

My thanks are due to the editors of the Nineteenth Century, Cornhill Magazine, Observer, New Statesman, and Westminster Gazette, for permission to reprint certain of these poems.

I

THE DARDANELLES

FROM “W” BEACH

THE Isle of Imbros, set in turquoise blue,

Lies to the westward; on the eastern side

The purple hills of Asia fade from view,

And rolling battleships at anchor ride.

White flocks of cloud float by, the sunset glows,

And dipping gulls fleck a slow-waking sea,

Where dim steel-shadowed forms with foaming bows

Wind up the Narrows towards Gallipoli.

No colour breaks this tongue of barren land

Save where a group of huddled tents gleams white;

Before me ugly shapes like spectres stand,

And wooden crosses cleave the waning light.

Celestial gardeners speed the hurrying day

And sow the plains of night with silver grain;

So shall this transient havoc fade away

And the proud cape be beautiful again.

Laden with figs and olives, or a freight

Of purple grapes, tanned singing men shall row,

Chanting wild songs of how Eternal Fate

Withstood that fierce invasion long ago.

A PRAYER

LORD, keep him near to me:

Revive his image, let my darkening sight

Renew his life by death intensified

(His beating life so pitifully tried)

That we may face the night

And shade the agony.

We pray in barren stress

Where stricken men await the shrill alarm

And nightly watch, in silent order set,

The beckoning stars enshrine the parapet.

Lord, keep his soul from harm

And grant him happiness.

When all the world is free,

And, cleansed and purified by floods of pain

We turn, and see the light in human eyes;

When the last echo of War’s thunder dies;

Lord, let us pause again

In silent memory.

Gallipoli, October, 1915.

FALLEN

THE days shall darken and sink down to Night,

And Night shall break in the bleak dawn of Day:

The years shall dim his face, our fleeting sight

Shall see his splendid image fade away

Beyond the knowledge of our drifting thought

Which moves in circles to the source again,

Beyond dark seas with shivering stars inwrought

Beyond war-burdened men in stricken pain.

I searched in rage and passionate despair

Down winding paths of thought, and comradeless

In the full surge and tumult where he died

I turned; and saw my Brother standing there.

His face was like a dawning happiness—

I saw wounds in his hands, his feet, his side.

Gallipoli, October, 1915.

THE TURKISH TRENCH DOG

NIGHT held me as I crawled and scrambled near

The Turkish lines. Above, the mocking stars

Silvered the curving parapet, and clear

Cloud-latticed beams o’erflecked the land with bars

I, crouching, lay between

Tense-listening armies peering through the night,

Twin giants bound by tentacles unseen.

Here in dim-shadowed light

I saw him, as a sudden movement turned

His eyes towards me, glowing eyes that burned

A moment ere his snuffling muzzle found

My trail; and then as serpents mesmerise

He chained me with those unrelenting eyes,

That muscle-sliding rhythm, knit and bound

In spare-limbed symmetry, those perfect jaws

And soft-approaching pitter-patter paws.

Nearer and nearer like a wolf he crept—

That moment had my swift revolver leapt—

But terror seized me, terror born of shame

Brought flooding revelation. For he came

As one who offers comradeship deserved,

An open ally of the human race,

And sniffing at my prostrate form unnerved

He licked my face!

THE SENTINEL

An Episode at the Evacuation of Gallipoli.

HE stood enveloped in the darkening mist

High on the cape that proudly kept her tryst

Above the narrow portal. All the day

White shell-flung water-spouts had scattered spray

Round Helles, warden of the Eastern seas;

And still the boom of Asian batteries

Rumbled around the cape. The sentinel

Spied from his high cliff-towered citadel

The leaping flash of guns; but ere the roar

Sprang from its den on the dim Asian shore,

He blew a trumpet. Then, like burrowing moles,

Dim forms below dashed headlong to their holes,

The while that hurtling iron crossed the sea,

And fifteen seconds seemed eternity.

Below we lay

Crushed in a lighter; and the towering spray

That lately blurred the clear star-laden sea

Subsided in the vast tranquillity.

Now, chafing like taut-muscled charioteers

With every sense on tiptoe, we strained ears

For whispers, or the catch of indrawn breath.

Still not the word to cut adrift the rope

That moored us to a wharf of floating piers:

And thus alternately in fear and hope

Swung the grim pendulum of life and death.

Then suddenly the sound

Of that loud warning rang the cape around.

We knew a gun had flashed, we knew the roar

That instant rumbled from the Asian shore;

And we lie fettered to a raft!... The shell

Climbs its high trajectory ... Well,

What of it? Fifteen seconds less or more

One—two—three—four—five—six—seven

(Steady, man,

It’s only Asiatic Ann) ...

How slow the moments trickle—eight—nine—ten

(They’re wonderful, these men).

Am I a coward? I can count no more;

Hold Thou my hands, O God.

The sea, upheaved in anger, rocked and swirled;

Niagara seemed pelting from the stars

In tumult that epitomised a world

Roused by the battling impotence of wars.

We heard a whispered order to escape,

And casting loose, incredulously free,

Unscathed, exulting in the amber light

We left behind the immemorial cape.

But still above the indomitable sea

From his high cliff a sentry watched the night

MUDROS AFTER THE EVACUATION

I LAUGHED to see the gulls that dipped to cling

To the torn edge of surf and blowing spray,

Where some gaunt battleship, a rolling king,

Still dreams of phantom battles in the bay.

I saw a cloud, a full-blown cotton flower

Drift vaguely like a wandering butterfly,

I laughed to think it bore no pregnant shower

Of blinding shrapnel scattered from the sky.

Life bore new hope. An army’s great release

From a closed cage walled in by fire and sea,

From the hushed pause and swooping plunge of shells,

Sped in a night. Here children in strange peace,

Seek solitude to dull the tragedy,

And needless horror of the Dardanelles.

Mudros, January, 1916.

THE DEAD TURK

DEAD, dead, and dumbly chill. He seemed to lie

Carved from the earth, in beauty without stain

And suddenly

Day turned to night, and I beheld again

A still Centurion with eyes ablaze:

And Calvary re-echoed with his cry—

His cry of stark amaze.

II

B. E. F.

MISSING

THEY told me nothing more: I bow my head

And squander life, between the quick and dead

Irresolute. Yet I again could be

Mistress of life, Queen of my destiny,

If I but knew—But now Remembrance plays

My being back through spring and summer days

We passed together; and I see him still

Swinging to meet me down the tardy hill.

That day the birds were new-inspired; a breeze

Bestirred, as it in wonderment, the trees;

The very clouds paused in their breathless race,

And shadows played upon his open face;

And I remember how his laughing eyes

Shone deep as pools in sea-blue ecstasies.

The meadow grasses rustled in the heat;

I even heard the silence of his feet

Down the slow hill—And now the dawning birth

Of beauty woke my senses to the earth

Unveiled in radiance. The sweeping skies—

Unseen unless reflected in his eyes—

Marshalled cloud companies with new delight;

Just for us two the spangled dome of night

Swung out the journeying moon.

But still I hold

Burnt in my memory in beaten gold

Days when the Spring stirred in each waking bush

A blue-flecked jay or tawny-feathered thrush,

And drowsy Winter, startled unawares

By arc-winged partridges or listening hares,

Fled guiltily. We heard the magpies call—

Those dominoes at Nature’s carnival—

And once a kingfisher, a lovely gleam

Snatched from a rainbow, darted to a stream.

The snowdrops bowed their heads for us to see

Shy peeping buds of hooded chastity;

And stalwart cowslips raised sun-glinted eyes

To those who stooped to pluck their sanctities.

Grass-nestled crocuses that scorn the wind

Speared upward proudly and besought mankind

To step with care. Near by, we searched a glade

Where violets brood in sweetness, half afraid

To wake their petals. On we roamed, and soon

The flower that shares her secret with the moon

In pale gold fellowship peeped out, among

A host of truculent daffodils that flung

Their trumpets down the wind.

Each breathless day

Broke to fulfil its promise, till the May

Had fledged her clustered blooms and swung her pride

In bowing sweetness to the country side.

Beauty was born again. But now the sound

Of heavy Autumn patters to the ground,

And loud discordant booms of thunder roll

Where that enchanted owner of my soul

Lies dead, or dying, or is living still:

At last the fibres of my struggling will

Falter exhausted, and my cowering brain

Cries out in anguish like a child in pain.

If he is dead, then I abide to prove

That brief fulfilment may be perfect love.

How should I grieve? His life inspired in me

A joy that shall outlive eternity,

Wrought out, complete, unsnared by time and age

My jewelled past my priceless heritage.

Shall misery usurp my realm of years

And leave me drowning in self-pitying tears,

A derelict in my own whirlpool swirled—

Me—whom Love crowned an empress of the world?

But sometimes ’ere the light

Glimmers dawn-pearled to splash the feet of night,

Ere red, sun-gilded riot floods the sky,

A whisper, swelling to a ringing cry,

Tells me he’s living still. No lash could sting

Like this persistent voice re-echoing

That mocks me as I stumble to my feet.

O, shall I find him wandering in the street?

But every beckoning corner drags me past

Strangers, new faces, each one like the last

Dull, cold, inscrutable. At times I caught

The look—the walk—the gesture that I sought;

And once with throbbing veins I found those eyes

That shone like pools in sea-blue ecstasies,

But looked beyond me—cold expressionless

In vacant wonder at my helplessness,

Then, haunted by that stare,

Beaten, I knew the bedrock of despair.

O, Thou who poised the world, are all my tears

Too light, too pitiful to reach Thine ears?

Locksmith of happiness, aloof, apart,

Am I too impotent to touch Thine heart?

Tell me he’s dead or dying; say he stands

Seeking for guidance the warm touch of hands,

Doomed in an instant to eternal night,

With only mind and memory for sight—

For I could cheer him.

But Lord quench this drought,

The unfathomable immensity of doubt,

Tell me he’s maimed or crippled, torn or blind,

Staring through eyes that show his wandering mind—

Tell me he’s rotting in a place abhorred,—

Not this, not this, O Lord!

TWO TRENCH POEMS

I

THE STORM NIGHT

PEAL after peal of splitting thunder rolls

(Still roar the howling guns, and star-shells rise)

We perish, drowned in anger-blasted holes,

Give ear, O Lord! Our very manhood cries,

Shell-fodder yea—but spare our human souls

From fury-shaken skies!

II

RESURRECTION

FIVE million men are dead. How can the worth

Of all the world redeem such waste as this?

And yet the spring is clamorous of birth,

And whispering in winter’s chrysalis

Glad tidings to each clod, each particle of earth.

So the year’s Easter triumphs. Shall we then

Mourn for the dead unduly, and forget

The resurrection in the hearts of men?

Even the poppy on the parapet

Shall blossom as before when Summer blows again.

GOMMECOURT

I

THE wind, which heralded the blackening night,

Swirled in grey mists the sulphur-laden smoke.

From sleep, in sparkling instancy of light,

Crouched batteries like grumbling tigers woke

And stretched their iron symmetry; they hurled

Skyward with roar and boom each pregnant shell

Rumbling on tracks unseen. Such tyrants reign

The sullen masters of a mangled world,

Grim-mothered in a womb of furnaced hell,

Wrought, forged, and hammered for the work of pain.

For six long days the common slayers played,

Till, fitfully, there boomed a heavier king,

Who, couched in leaves and branches deftly laid,

And hid in dappled colour of the spring,

Vaunted tornadoes. Far from that covered lair,

Like hidden snares the sinuous trenches lay

Mid fields where nodding poppies show their pride.

The tall star-pointed streamers leap and flare,

And turn the night’s immensity to day;

Or rockets whistle in their upward ride.

II

THE moment comes when thrice-embittered fire

Proclaims the prelude to the great attack.

In ruined heaps, torn saps and tangled wire

And battered parapets loom gaunt and black:

The flashes fade, the steady rattle dies,

A breathless hush brings forth a troubled day,

And men of sinew, knit to charge and stand,

Rise up. But he of words and blinded eyes

Applauds the puppets of his ghastly play,

With easy rhetoric and ready hand.

Unlike those men who waited for the word,

Clean soldiers from a country of the sea;

These were no thong-lashed band or goaded herd

Tricked by the easy speech of tyranny.

All the long week they fought encircling Fate,

While chaos clutched the throat and shuddered past

As phantoms haunt a child, and softly creep

Round cots, so Death stood sentry at the Gate

And beckoned waiting terror, till at last

He vanished at the hurrying touch of sleep.

The beauty of the Earth seemed doubly sweet

With the stored sacraments the Summer yields—

Grass-sunken kine, and softly-hissing wheat,

Blue-misted flax, and drowsy poppy fields.

But with the vanished day Remembrance came

Vivid with dreams, and sweet with magic song,

Soft haunting echoes of a distant sea

As from another world. A belt of flame

Held the swift past, and made each moment long

With the tense horror of mortality.

That easy lordling of the Universe

Who plotted days that stain the path of time,

For him was happy memory a curse,

And Man a scapegoat for a royal crime.

In lagging moments dearly sacrificed

Men sweated blood before eternity:

In cheerful agony, with jest and mirth,

They shared the bitter solitude of Christ

In a new Garden of Gethsemane,

Gethsemane walled in by crested earth.

They won the greater battle, when each soul

Lay naked to the needless wreck of Mars;

Yet, splendid in perfection, faced the goal

Beyond the sweeping army of the stars.

Necessity foretold that they must die

Mangled and helpless, crippled, maimed and blind,

And cursed with all the sacrilege of war—

To force a nation to retract a lie,

To prove the unchartered honour of Mankind,

To show how strong the silent passions are.

III

THE daylight broke and brought the awaited cheer,

And suddenly the land is live with men.

In steady waves the infantry surge near;

The fire, a sweeping curtain, lifts again.

A battle-plane with humming engines swerves,

Gleams like a whirring dragon-fly, and dips,

Plunging cloud-shadowed in a breathless fall

To climb undaunted in far-reaching curves.

And, swaying in the clouds like anchored ships,

Swing grim balloons with eyes that fathom all.

But as the broad-winged battle-planes outsoared

The shell-rocked skies, blue fields of cotton flowers,

When bombs like bolts of thunder leapt and roared,

And mighty moments faded into hours,

The curtain fire redoubled yet again:

The grey defence reversed their swift defeat

And rallied strongly; whilst the attacking waves,

Snared in a trench and severed from the main,

Were driven fighting in a forced retreat

Across the land that gaped with shell-turned graves.

IV

THE troubled day sped on in weariness

Till Night drugged Carnage in a drunken swoon.

Jet-black, with spangling stars athwart her dress

And pale in the shafted amber of the moon,

She moved triumphant as a young-eyed queen

In silent dignity: her shadowed face

Scarce veiled by gossamer clouds, that scurrying ran

Breathless in speed the high star-lanes between.

She passed unheeding ’neath the dome of space,

And scorned the petty tragedy of Man.

And one looked upward, and in wonder saw

The vast star-soldiered army of the sky.

Unheard, the needless blasphemy of War

Shrank at that primal splendour sweeping by.

The moon’s gold-shadowed craters bathed the ground—

(Pale queen, she hunted in her pathless rise

Lithe blackened raiders that bomb-laden creep)

But now the earth-walled comfort wrapped him round,

And soon in lulled forgetfulness he lies

Where soldiers clasping arms like children sleep.

Sleep held him as a mother holds her child:

Sleep the soft calm that levels hopes and fears,

Now stilled his brain and scarfed his eyelids wild,

And sped the transient misery of tears,

Until the dawn’s sure prophets cleft the night

With opal shafts, and streamers tinged with flame,

Swift merging riot of the turbaned East.

Through rustling gesture loomed the advancing light;

Through fitful eddying winds, grey vanguards came

Rising in billowy mountains silver-fleeced.

And with the dawn came action, and again

The spiteful interplay of static war:

Dogged, with grim persistence Blood and Pain

Rose venomous to greet the Morning Star.

But others watched that lonely sentinel

Chase fleeting fellow-stars before the day;

Fresh men heard tides of thunder ebb and flow.

—Stumbling in sleep, scarce heeding shot or shell,

The men who fought at Gommecourt filed away:

The poppies nodded as they passed below.

They left the barren wilderness behind,

And Gommecourt gnarled and dauntless, till they came

To fields where trees unshattered took the wind,

Which tossed the crimson poppy heads to flame.

But one stood musing at a waking thought

That spurred his blood and dimmed his searching eyes—

The primal thought that stirs the seed to birth.

Here where the battling nations clashed and fought

The common grass still breathed of Paradise

And Love with silent lips was Lord of Earth.

B. E. F. 1916.

A VISION

BEFORE the dawn wind swept the troubled sky

And stirred the stricken trenches far and wide,

I saw the Lord of Holiness pass by,

With Mary at His side.

With Mary Michael passed, for I could hear

His clashing arms, and see his spangled sword.

Loudly I cried out, “Mother!” then in fear,

“O Mother of our Lord.”

For in her eyes all human sorrow burned,

All tenderness lay naked when she smiled;

And once she stooped to kiss, and once she turned

And shuddered like a child.

He moved through all the surge and clash of war,

The King of Kings since Brotherhood began;

But in His still and shadowed face I saw

The agony of Man.

And as I gazed, the ruined fields of France

Loomed to the dawn in shades of shifting grey;

Dumbly I stood to arms, as in a trance

I watched the climbing day.

Was this a dream? Yet Mary saw the sky,

Lit by a vision from the darkness hurled;

A little dream which made a baby cry—

A dream which saved the world.

REVELATION

CAN death give you such dignity, and pride

So beautiful it puts our grief to shame?

For now we stumble as we speak your name,

Yet you were just a boy before you died.

We question blankly, pondering heavy-eyed,

Can this be he we used to praise or blame

In careless moments, ere the trial came

When all the bravest hearts in anguish cried?

Then, humbled, we beheld our poor disguise,

False moods and manners clothed in empty speech

Which drowned the silence—till there came a day

That smote our vision to awakened eyes:

For God bent down to bring you to our reach,

But ere we touched you, you had gone away.

TELL ME, STRANGER

TELL me, Stranger, is it true

There is magic happening,

Are all the dappled fields of Kew

Bowing to their Lord the Spring?

Are the bluebells chaste and mute

Dancing in each dale and hollow

Dew-sprinkled, with a glad salute

To omnipotent Apollo?

Tell me, do the feathered creatures

Flutter as in days of yore,

What are the “distinctive features”

Of the Swallow’s Flying Corps?

Here there is no magic, Stranger.

Save within our merry souls—

For some wanton god in anger

Punches earth with gaping holes.

Yet the stifled land is showing

Here and there a touch of grace,

And the marshalled clouds are blowing

Through the aerodromes of space.

Hate is strong, but Love is stronger,

And the world shall wake to birth

When the touch of man no longer

Stays the touch of God from Earth.

Tell me, Stranger, is it true

There is magic happening,

Are all the dappled fields of Kew

Bowing to their Lord the Spring?

B. E. F., April, 1917.

SPRING IN THE TRENCHES

THE racing clouds have borne her message down

And blown a thrilling rumour, from the far

Heart-centres of each crowded port and town,

And up the flowing arteries of War.

Life, life, green tales of corn in sprouting blades,

Of swallows crowding with sea-sprinkled wings

And ash-buds amber-gummed round close-furled green.

High blossom mantling murmurous orchard glades

In air a-tingle April-sweet and keen—

Ah, we have heard of wondrous happenings.

For now the magic carnivals begin

The lilac broods in honeyed secrecy,

And dappled lawns are changed: a Harlequin

Has brushed the tangled carpet silently.

We know how white narcissus fills the lake

With dancing shadows; how in open blue

A chestnut builds her clustered pyramids,

And down below anemones awake;

Long-hushed the violets open wide their lids

And all the dreamed-of fantasy comes true.

Glad tidings thrill the re-awakened earth

By daffodils and blue-bells heralded;

Spring with her van imperial comes forth

To herald Summer proudly canopied

Beneath the bowing leaves. Persistent Spring

Bestirs the seed enshrined in Winter’s store;

And even round the parapet a breath

Of far-flung prophecy is clamouring:

“Behold new life within the tomb of death

“Importunate and vivid as before.”

ON THE ROAD

WE halted, with the urgent Spring behind

Our straining teams, where all the land was black,

And huddled woods lay beaten, starkly blind:

Their mangled branches loomed athwart the track

Grotesque and terrible. Yet near the way,

A river, scatheless as the open sea,

Flowed like a breathing hope that cannot die

In desolation. Now, at setting day,

Moored water lilies, pale as argent sky,

Cling to the twilight fading silently.

Such is the tale of memory, ere night

Had deepened, and our weary convoy slept

Beside the way. Slow-rising points of light

Twinkled amid the spangled netting swept

Across the ebon desert; and a gleam

Pierced the cloud-woven pillows of the moon.

Now slumber freed me from the iron cage

That bound the snarling war; and, in a dream,

The panorama of a dawning age

Unrolled, a world slow-waking from a swoon.

Before my gaze a teeming city loomed

Gay with the bustling clamour of the street—

The very town an easy word had doomed

And cast in ashes at the trampling feet

Of mortal gods. Street, corner, square and place,

Seemed woken from a long and squalid trance—

I saw a nation growing like a flower;

A nation true and loyal to a race

That forged an army of clean-soldiered power

Wrought by the common chivalry of France.

Here was no arrogance of martial pride,

The fireside boast that sows the fatal seed,

For happiness had come from those who died

Stark of delusion and the deadly creed

Of false romance. I saw a world reborn—

The very battlefield was robed again

In lines of chequered land, and bordered round

With stretching roads and rills. The poppied corn

Held rubies set in gold, and far beyond

Lay a surf-ravelled sea and swarded plain.

I marvelled, till oblivion shadowed all,

Blurred in the dawning light of every day.

It was so true, I scarcely heard the call

To feed and water and to move away.

We stretched our limbs, and packed each heavy load;

Moved on, and left the weary night behind,

Through torn and withered trees that stared aghast;

Yet, through the veil that shrouded all the road

I saw new radiance in the land we passed,

And heard a sudden murmur in the wind.

B. E. F., 1917.

KEATS, BEFORE ACTION

A LITTLE moment more—O, let me hear

(The thunder rolls above, and star-shells fall)

Those melodies unheard re-echo clear

Before the shuddering moment closes all.

They come—they come—they answer to my call,

That Grecian throng of graven ecstasies,

Hyperion aglow in blazing skies,

And Cortez with the wonder in his eyes.

In battle-wreaths of smoke they rise, and fall

Beyond—beyond recall.

Now all is silent, still, and magic-keen

(Yet thunder rolls above and star-shells fall)

And slowly pacing, rides a faery queen

Wild eyed and singing to a knight in thrall.

Enough—enough—let lightning whip me bare

And leave me naked in the howling air

My body broken here, and here, and here.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all,

The very all in all.

THE SOMME

From Amiens to Abbeville

My swollen waters race,

And silver-veined by many a rill

Green hamlets thrive apace.

From Amiens to Abbeville

I labour at the listless mill,

And tempt the nodding daffodil

To blur my open face.

But south of Amiens I flow

Past dumb Peronne and Brie,

The peopled land I used to know

Now all belongs to me.

Yet phantom armies come and go,

And shadows hurry to and fro;

Again my seething battles grow

In murdered Picardy.

Behold the mother of a soil forlorn;

I suckled towns, and fed the forest land,

Behold my shattered villages and mourn

How should I understand?

Why are those huts o’erpatched like dappled kine,

What are those weary men in blue and brown,

And humming craft that search my sinuous line;

Why should my name re-echo with renown

Past every phantom town?

But still my lily-breasted waters shine,

And still I chant my shadowy ripples down.

From peace through war my waters flow,

To peace again at sea,

The peopled land I used to know

Now all belongs to me.

Though battling armies come and go,

I toil and spin, I reap and sow,

And poppy-mantled meadows blow

In murdered Picardy.

My eddies bear the clinging scent of lime

To sweeten clouds of plume-tossed meadowsweet;

My meadow grasses nestle with the thyme

And flowering rushes tower in the heat.

Low-brushing swifts and swallows splashed with white

O’er flash my laden mirrors slow and deep

That bear swift-merging canopies of sleep.

Until the growing light

Has chased marauding owls, and butterflies,

Born of blue-woven skies,

Flutter away like hare-bells spurred to flight.

But who are these? The powdered butterfly

Outshines that air leviathan that swings

In rigid curves adown the barren sky,

With cloudy satellites about her wings.

And I have seen

Dark horsemen ride with spears of tapered steel;

And bellowing guns beneath the far balloons.

And once a ponderous slug bedecked in green

Crept, in the waning moon’s

Still-darkening gloom, and at her giant heel

White-gleaming, ran a train of hooded cars....

I triumph, triumph, search my sinuous line

Amid the snarling impotence of wars.

Turn where you will. Look, there a signboard shows

The lair of guns; already round the sign

White trumpeting convolvuli entwine

Their clinging arms, across the placard blows

A quiet-breathing rose.

And still my lily-breasted waters shine

And loud my chanting grows:

From peace through war my waters flow

To peace again at sea,

The peopled land I used to know

Now all belongs to me.

Though battling armies come and go

I toil and spin, I reap and sow,

And poppy-mantled meadows blow

In murdered Picardy.

SOMME FLOWER TALK

SAID the Cornflower to the Pimpernel,

“O sudden scarlet eyes,

You never bloomed till ploughing shell

Laid bare earth’s sanctities!”

Then upward cried the Pimpernel:

“Blue head in deeper blue,

’Tis strange this former waste of Hell

Is Paradise anew.

“But who is Lord of Paradise

And Commandant; and who

Commands sky-faring butterflies

All camouflaged in blue?

“Are dandelion parachutes

His messages, and do

Those armoured beetles clamber roots

With news from Army Q?

“Above each water-lily ship

The feathered red caps pipe.

Because the pear has earned a pip,

The tiger-moth a stripe.

“The gorse artillery has eyes

We never knew before.

And lady bees can organise

The Honey Service Corps.

“Field-marshals rule the war behind

The guns, but Summer shields

Here in the clash of human kind

Her marshal of the fields.”

TO THE UTTERMOST FARTHING.

“He too! He too!” The veteran paused, the sound

Of a light paper fluttering to the ground

Rustled the twilight peace. “He—too—is—dead—”

His wife, scarce faltering from the words she read,

Stared at the glowing sun, the while her eyes

Shone mistily in nameless agonies.

Five sons, and four were dead!

The clock ticked desolation to their ears

And silence gripped the moments as they passed

Too terrible, too passionless for tears.

At last,

Stronger than he, she curbed herself and smiled

And held him weeping like a weary child

Before the first immensity of pain.

Yet once again

She conjured scenes beyond the darkened cloud

That blurred the soul’s horizon, as aloud

She spoke his name, and whispered little things

More pregnant than the utterance of kings.

That night she moved,

Spurred by devotion for the man she loved,

Without a pause for sorrow, or a breath

To murmur at the closing walls of death;

Love-steeled and queenly every step she trod;

She climbed unfaltering, serenely browed,

Until she touched the very feet of God

Undaunted and unbowed.

And there in mystic awe

Slow-turning wheels of evolution spun

The poised and pulsing universe. She saw

All life and death synonymous, and birth

The dawn of human wonderment begun

(Birth of all birth) in other realms afar.

Below, ice pivoted revolved the earth,

A traveller’s joy it seemed, a mile-stone star,

Half-glowing, bathed in sun....

At dawn they met and found each other’s eyes,

Asked the same questions, sought the same replies:

Their last and youngest fought where harsh commands

Still goaded forward lashed and driven bands,

Where Vaux and Thiaumont twin sentinels

Loomed stalwartly. And still a howl of shells

Shattered the Verdun battlements in vain;

Still domineered that keen death-tutored brain

Behind an army deaf to angry scorn,

The boast forgotten and the mask outworn.

At length she spoke: “Go quickly now,” she said,

“Quick, the next hurrying hour may see him dead.

Find the Great Overlord and tell him all

Quick, for our boy may pass beyond recall

Meanwhile. He shall know happiness to come,

He, the last scion of our stricken home,

Shall blossom like a flower in early Spring

I say it, I who bore him. Time shall bring

The old primeval happiness to birth

If there be any justice upon earth.”

She ceased; it seemed her voice re-echoed still

As strung with hope he hurried on until

He reached the palace and besought for grace

To see his royal master face to face.

That night in sudden joy he urged away

Across Lorraine, for in his wallet lay

An order blazoned with the royal seals.

Hour after hour the car’s revolving wheels

Rushed dizzily towards the high command

That held his son in fee. Around, the land

Awoke in changeless Spring. Four steady hours

They travelled, till the bloom of passing flowers

Brought tidings of the dawn. Then to his ears

Rumbled a distant thunder, sudden fears

Urged onward faster. Now the country showed

First signs of war-flung tentacles, the road

Lay pitted here and there, a wounded tree

No longer framed its lordly symmetry.

And soon the land whereon all life was stilled

Became as Man had willed.

At last his journey ended. Long delayed

He sought his goal, now pressing on, now stayed,

Until outside the place of high command

The royal warrant burning in his hand

He knocked—was bidden enter—tense and mute

He faced the marshal with a grave salute

And showed the royal word.

The crowded room was silent, no man stirred—

A pause as long as death, then, dragged and slow,

A voice—“Your son was killed an hour ago.”

A clock importunately unconcerned

Repeated tick—tick—tick. His eyes discerned

A pen vague-sprawling, madly spiderwise.

Not a man glanced—Yet all the room had eyes:

Not a man spoke—Yet clamorous voices cried:

Stumbling, he walked outside.

IN THE MESS

I SAT alone although the mess

Was full, when—quick as tears

A song of naked happiness

Came singing in my ears.

I summoned strength to kill a cry

And mad desire to weep;

Then, glancing round me guiltily,

Found everyone asleep!

A TRENCH INCIDENT

WE waited, as the thundering curtain swept

Our sector, and torn shards of iron fell;

Dust from the parapet in showers leapt

Swirled up by bursting shell.

We waited, like a storm-bespattered ship

That flutters sail to free her grounded keel;

The tingling moments tightened every grip

On rifles lanced with steel.

We knew the man who led us. All could hear

His ringing voice re-echo loud and strong,

Born of that higher bravery when fear.

Is battled into song.

Then sudden fury lulled and far behind

Like angered beasts our batteries replied—

And suddenly he stumbled, dazed and blind.

He lay, but ere he died

He struggled for a while, then dimly smiled,

Wrapped in the comradeship of happy things,

Before he entered like a wondering child

The heritage of kings.

REALITY

BELOW my room the noise and measured beat

Of marching men re-echoed loud and clear;

Now bobbing cavalry swung down the street;

Now mules and rumbling batteries drew near.

But all is dim—The rolling wagon-stream

To Amiens between the aspen trees,

The stables, billets, men and horses, seem

Dead mummers of forgotten fantasies.

Only my dreams are still aglow, a throng

Of scenes that crowded through a waiting mind

A myriad scenes: For I have swept along

To foam ashriek with gulls, and rowed behind

Brown oarsmen swinging to an ocean song

Where stately galleons bowed before the wind.

“WE POETS OF THE PROUD OLD LINEAGE”

APART we labour, and alone we climb

The barren heights; for we the singing throng

Whose lives were hallowed by impassioned song

Must die or prove unworthy of our rhyme.

Man after man—we know the price of wars

Who watched the mask of Night whilst others slept,

And spread our laughter far and wide, but kept

Our tears and terror privy to the stars.

0 magic gift omnipotent, to sing

And conjure Heaven from surrounding Hell.

Our lips and eyes are touched (for we have seen

Celestial weavers at the loom of Spring).

But O the iron bitterness and keen

Of voices ever clamouring farewell!

III

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

SONG

WOULD I could commandeer the bees

To hum you droning symphonies.

I love the climbing thoughts that rise

To the sheer heaven of your eyes,

Wide laughter-dromes of wondering blue,

Yes, yes, I do!

But when I sing of bubbling seas,

The zephyr-clapping hands of trees

Applauding in tumultuous skies,

Or window-winged dragonflies,

Or anything that’s good and true

I sing of you—

Yes, yes, I do!

THE SHADOW

I STOOD one night where rivers pause to meet

And mingle in the traffic-rumbling sea:

The surge and clamour of a London street,

In tides alternate, rolled, impassively.

Before my feet

Ran shouting boys, and through the pallid glare

Loomed gaunt leviathans that swayed and roared

Past glittering shops, and stations which outpoured

Load after weary load; and everywhere

Strange sounds, a snatch of laughter, shout or word,

Sleek-coated motor-cars that softly purred

Round corners sounding with the rustling beat

Of hurried swarms of feet.

And yet I seemed alone, and dumb-amazed

Before a towering building, wherein blazed

One staring patch of light, one amber square

That shone enshrouded by the dome of night

High in the naked air. And still I gazed

Until a shadow passed across the blind:

A shadow-woman pacing time away

Beside a bed, wherein a poet lay

Dying, dying. One whose mind

(A womb of beauty whereof love was lord)

Had fashioned symphonies of thought and word

Impassionately sweet. And suddenly

She paused—I saw the shadow of her hand

Stretch out and shudder back. I saw her stand

All sorrow-bound in graven dignity.

She bowed her head, her shoulders taut with pain,

Her figure burdened with the weight of tears.

Then all grew dark. And in my waking ears

The traffic surged again.

EVERYCHILD

WE take you through Pacific seas

To islands strange and new,

Where howling monkeys scale the trees

Alive with humming-birds and bees,

Where shiny seals and porpoises

Snort in the rolling blue.

Then quicker than a shaft of light

We shear the arctic foam,

And lounging bears of polar white

Roar loudly through the dancing night,

And drive the killer-whales to flight—

Upon the floor at home.

O hear the chant of Eastern song

Beneath Arabian stars,

Where camels slowly stalk along

And gleaming Arabs, tall and strong,

Buy gold and merchandise among

The riot of bazaars!

The glow-worms crawl excitedly

And trim their lamps o’ night;

For often, ere the moon is high,

Bat-harnessed walnut-shells flit by

To bear them to the waiting sky

And set the stars alight.

The nodding poplars understand

And birds and beasts and flowers:

And we shall wander hand in hand

With better things than Peter Panned—

O what is footlight fairyland

Beside this world of ours?

What matter if the clouds are grey

Or winter-keen and wild,

When you and I have found a way

To turn November into May;

For Everyjoy is Everyday

And Everyman a child.

CHILD OF THE FLOWING TIDE

AWAY to the call of the racing sea—

(Child of the flowing tide)

A hundred chargers of ivory,

And two of them saddled for you and for me,

Are pawing and stamping the surf to be free

Where the wild sea-horses ride.

The deep water shall roar as we race from the shore

On the back of the flowing tide.

O hurry, the moon is away in the sky

(Child of the flowing tide)

With your heels well down, and your heart set high

You’re saddled and bridled, and so am I;

So gather your reins, for the foam will fly

Where the wild sea-horses ride.

Grip tight with your knees as you gallop the seas

On the back of the flowing tide.

On the wide lagoon I’ll meet you to-night

(Child of the flowing tide)

When the moon swings high and the stars are alight

And the roaring sea-chargers are ready to fight:

Their manes are all foam and their coats are all white

Where the wild sea-horses ride.

The deep waters shall roar as we race from the shore

On the back of the flowing tide.

EIGHT SONNETS

I

I TREMBLE at the outset, for I know

How rhythm halts and rhyme rings falsely true.

Yet courage, your disciple, bids me show

That speech may offer sacrifice to you.

Vain boast! For if success in splendour came

Poised faultlessly in lines of perfect stress,

I must fall short of it in very shame

Unworthy of my sonnet’s worthiness.

But should I fail, and feel the words I sought

Elusive, or bedecked with frail disguise

Of tattered sentiment, that risk I dare

Not hazard in the winding maze of thought,

Lest I should stir the wonder in your eyes

Or wind a little tangle in your hair.

II

SO let me fail: what matter if the wise

And worldly whisper, who so poor as they?

For everywhere alike the common way

Has now become an earthly paradise.

And where you walk the very pavement cries

Of blue-bells, April-chimed, and fawns at play;

And London seems a sylvan holiday

Of flower-hunting bees and butterflies.

So let me fail, for where I could succeed

How mean the quest, a climber gazing down

From the low vantage of some petty hill.

But chance success would be the gambler’s thrill

Who plays with God for worlds, and wins indeed

The whole of Paradise for half-a-crown!

III

I HAVE no room for jealous gods, and find

No ring of joy or laughter in the Creed,

Nor shall my great possession be resigned

In fear or favour of my spirit’s need.

For joy is mine, and mine the teeming years

Unfettered in a world impassionate;

Not mine a sorrowed Calvary of tears

Where love was vassal to the lords of hate.

Let others bow before a God unknown

Enshrined in words they dimly understand.

Let every man make Paradise his own—

My Goddess breathes and leads me by the hand

O hush! I dare not speak of it alone,

’Tis all too wonderful and strangely planned!

IV

DAY after day my growing pinions beat

Impatiently. Yet, in a place unclean

I sought the dwarfed, the petty and obscene,

And aped the clownish mummers of the street;

Till suddenly the world grew strangely sweet,

All eager at a touch, and thrilling-keen;

With half-forgotten hands I strove unseen

To mould a little planet at your feet.

You spoke and there was light, and slowly grew

My teeming world of verse, a brotherhood

Of music, thought, and wonder, born anew,

Alive, aglow, in every varied mood.

And when the waking truth is bursting through

I feel you bend to see that all is good.

V

IF I had seen what hourly happiness

In this my world your being could ordain,

How then should I have trysted with distress

And misery the cringing friend of pain?

If I had seen beyond the looming years

Your shadow, grief had haunted me in vain,

For what are cataracts of human tears

Beside the boundless laughter of the main?

O barren days bygone! Now every field

Wakes clamorous with dawning life conceived,

So has the magic universe revealed

Whole happiness to one who half believed—

Whole happiness, and in my heart concealed

Wide wonder at the sacrament received.

VI

“Great men and happy years,” you say from these

Your knowledge came, and your diviner powers

More thrilling than the honey-womb of flowers

Or the bright star-foam of the Pleiades.

So, did you learn the droning lore of bees

From some be-medalled soldier? Did you meet

Madonna-hearted statesmen in the street,

Or bishops, babbling of the opal seas?

O poor deceiver, conscript joys belong

To you as homage. For the happy years

Bear fruit to-day, and blossom like the flowers

That breathe of summertime in after hours.

For you were loyal to a creed of Song

Nor ever stooped to misery and tears.

VII

WOULD I could throw my stuttering self away

And shrine the soul wherein all wonders beat,

Would I were you, for one brief holiday

The whole shy universe before my feet.

O happiness, to know joy’s secret mine,

To hold adoring ministers in fee,

Narcissus-like to bless the Serpentine

And with the stars outdance Terpsichore.

For once a poet sang of happiness,

But now, like running flame, glad voices say—

“Joy is the sheer antithesis of wrong.”

Enough,—and I, no longer comradeless,

Behold exultant on the world’s highway

Your being, and the proof of Pippa’s song.

VIII

WHEN you are old and dancing shadows play

Around the sky-blown laughter in your eyes

Shall I, unworthy of your new disguise,

Forget the sacrament and go away?

Shall I adore, like sorrowed men to-day,

The child who gurgled in first ecstasies

At oxen (Mary said) that mooed surprise

And snuffed with wondering muzzles in the hay?

O leave the past—the living world is mine

Warm, passionate, and breathing. Even so

Shall Life in after years make Earth divine

And fire shall burn as long as embers glow.

But he who babbled to the wondering kine

Is dead, long dead, two thousand years ago.

KEATS

TOUCH me, O Lord, and let my sonnet ring

With echoes. Now his words of crowned belief

In raging hours of pain and suffering

Too high for praise, too terrible for grief,

Ring loud and clear. Last night his chariot rolled

And I beheld him urge amid the stars

Cloud-fashioned steeds of snow moon-aureoled,

Himself a charioteer equipped for wars.

Faster and faster—men of Blood and Pain

Opposed in vast battalions, but he

Rolled back their army to the dark again

And triumphed while he sang exultingly

As now he sings. Boy of the glowing brain,

Dear Keats your name is Paradise to me!

MEETING HER IN THE STREET

SHE’s coming down the road! You know

Those laughter-woken eyes?

I beckon at the stars—But O

If she should recognise:

Nearer and nearer yet she trod

Till (mad blood-dancing joy)

Down from the planet-fields of God

She nodded, “Hullo, Boy.”

HER HOMAGE

SILENCE outlives the argument of kings

And best is dumb applause. Behold, she moves:

No soft-winged owlets blink, no cricket sings,

Before she greets the murmuring world she loves.

Now twirling parachutes of sycamore

Hang waiting, and the rippled trout-rings die,

The murmur round a jasmine honey store

Is still—a linnet falters suddenly.

From out the reeds an awe-struck otter peers

As eerie quiet speeds from bush to bush:

High Summer stands on tip-toe as She nears

The woods, and magic numbs the missel-thrush:

Above still grasses prick the listening ears

Of rabbits, and a squirrel whispers “Hush!”

REACTION

AFRAID, afraid, I sought the kindly night

In fear that mocking fools should scrutinise

The beauty I discovered in men’s eyes,

And mock me as a dreaming anchorite.

For long in fear I sinned against the light

And shrouded Poetry with vain disguise;

Before I sang, unconscious as the skies,

Self-chanting songs to me supreme delight.

But now, O littlest of all little minds,

High-browed, alone, aloof, you little know

How like you are to Brown, who lifts the blinds

Of his suburban villa, just to show

That he alone is up, but always finds

The neighbourhood awoke an hour ago!

APRIL

HOW much are you achieving

O April day,

By orchard looms a-weaving

All apple-gay?

Tie on your cherry blossom, clothe your squills

Madonna-blue, and give your daffodils

Their collars of pale straw, and come away,

Your rain-awoken hills

Shall welcome May.

What is behind your weeping

O April tears?

Your lilac plumes are sweeping,

Your silken spears

Of chestnut bristle in the changing sky

Whilst herded clouds foregather, ’neath the high

Storm-loud arena’s thundering charioteers:

And beckoned silently

The swallow nears.

MAY-JUNE

NOW is the swaddling husk of Winter shed,

And waking Summer, robed in windy showers,

Is heralded from silvered aspen towers

And orchards in high blossom garlanded.

Now sunlight, in the plumed laburnum flowers

And purple lilac, trembles overhead;

And bees a-drone in field and flower bed

Make clamorous the trade of teeming hours.

Now the sweet-pea, all honey-laden, shows

Full-swollen sails, her mooring ropes of green

Encircle twigs. And soon the primrose queen

Lights her pale lamps of Evening ’mid the glows

Of brazen flower-suns, that burn between

The yawning honeysuckle and the rose.

THE STROLLING SINGER

SUN-bathed in Summer peace the village lay

That afternoon. Along the happy street

Milk-fragrant kine, and wagons high with hay

Came lumbering. The fields were loud with bees

And drowsy with the wind-stirred meadowsweet.

From bowing trees

Fell chatter, and above the garden wall

Wide sunflowers beamed at spearing hollyhocks

That dared the wind, and scorned the clustered stocks,

And bore their laddered blooms high over all.

Here amid Summer murmur and delight

The strolling singer came. The people heard

Stray snatches of a song—a laugh—a word,

And gossiping in groups of two or three

Stood all amazed. For no one came in sight,

Only the wind was laden drowsily

With mellow sounds that slowly growing strong

At last became a song:—

“Bend down, the marsh and meadow holds

Pale yellow pimpernels,

And sun-begotten marigolds,

Thyme, orchis, asphodels,

And borage born of ocean blue,

Plumed armoured thistles, fever-few,

Sea-campion globed, and clinging dew

In giant flower-bells.

“Bend down—an ebon beetle prowls,

And there a swinging bee

Drinks honey from the laden cowls

That clothe the foxglove tree.

And giant peacock butterflies

Light meadowsweet with sudden eyes,

And through the tangled grasses rise

Lucerne and timothy.”

Louder and louder grew the voice, until

A figure specked the heaven-touching hill,

And nearer, nearer, still ...

The villagers in mingled fear and awe

Stood round on tiptoe waiting. Soon they saw

A little sylvan man with beckoning eyes

And limbs of lithe expression. Woven flowers

And grasses, splashed with rainbow-tinted showers,

And jewelled with alluring butterflies,

Enwrapped him. Russet face, clear-featured, gay

As pebble-rumpled streams, and tousled hair

Sun-dyed and naked. His limbs were bronzed and bare,

And sprang, it seemed, from the wild interplay

Of flower-woven garb. Around his waist

Twined traveller’s-joy and honeysuckle, sweet

And freshly dewed, and on his lissom feet

Were pointed shoes of silver beech rush-laced.

The village gazed in silence, till a child

Began:—“Who are you, funny man?

Your face seems to be telling truth, your eyes

Are just the colour of blue butterflies,

O tell us who you are?”

The stranger smiled,

And turned his face that bore the wistful, far,

Strange wonder-look of one whose dreams come true,

Who delves in darkened quarries of his brain

Unhoped-for gold, and changes old to new

As Spring rejuvenates the earth again.

Of one who plays Narcissus in Life’s pool

And sees an image strangely beautiful ...

Then suddenly they heard him cry:—

“Come buy,

I own the laughing earth.

And all my chanted words are deeds;

I follow where my fancy leads,

And sell my songs for mirth.

What will you buy?

“Speak hurriedly, and choose your song,

The poplar’s shadow creeps along,

Search hurriedly the Earth and Sky,

What will you buy?”

Meanwhile a crowd had gathered, in a ring;

The butcher, grocer, postman, parson, clerk,

And all the village, open-mouthed and stark,

Stood mutely marvelling;

And children clamoured round him with large eyes

And pelted him for songs, like countless hail,

With pleadings, shouts and cries:—

Sing us a song of Paradise,

Of railway engines, fawns,

Of stolen queens in guarded towers,

Of sprites and leprechauns”—

O HUSH! All were dumb—

“Boy in blue smock, sucking your thumb,

With hair like a tangled chrysanthemum,

What would you like me to sing, Ocean-eyed?”

Loud the boy’s answer rang,

“I want a song of flowers!”

And this is the song he sang:

“Sisters of mercy are Cyclamen,

Snowdrops and Arums too,

But Primulus, Violets, Stocks, Mignonette,

Crocus aflame, and the Never Forget,

Are chaster than chastity too.

Now sulphur Laburnum and Lilac, adieu,

Good-bye April children to you!

For who

Will climb up the flowers of my Hollyhock towers

With butterfly steeple-jacks blue?

But, climber, beware!

Of Love-in-a-mist in a tangle of hair,

Of thistly Teazles, and winged Sweet-Peas

With tentacle tendrils that strangle with ease,

Of butterfly Orchis a-clamour for bees.

For Dragon may Snap you, and Sundew may trap you,

Before you have started, before you have parted

The grass at the foot of my Hollyhock trees.

But think of the view

Of the whole garden side!

We’ll charter a dragon-fly homeward, and ride

Down to our Rosemary, Marjoram, Rue,

Lavender, London Pride.”

All watched him, held, bewitched, and with him clung

To the green tops of slowly swaying towers,

Where bees had scattered pollen-dust, that hung

Above the teeming nectaries of flowers,

And all again were young.

But now the poplars cast their phantom bars

In latticed shadows; now a scarf unfurled,

Like parrot-tulip petals hued and torn,

Across the West was flung.

And now, before the twilight bares the stars,

Ere jewelled night is born,

All silently the Singer left the world.

Beyond the hill he passed,

But singing all the while; first loud and strong.

Then fainter, till at last

Came only jumbled echoes of a song:—

“Bend down—the marsh and meadow holds

Pale yellow Pimpernels,

And sun-begotten Marigolds

Thyme, Orchis, Asphodels” ...

(Fainter and fainter it grew

Gentle as ebbing tide)

“Butterfly steeple-jacks blue” ...

(Fainter it grew

And died)

Echoing “Rosemary, Marjoram, Rue,

Lavender, London Pride”

THE FRENCH MOTHER TO HER UNBORN CHILD

BEAT quietly, hid heart.

Build, little limbs, and brain divinely wrought,

Grow, grow in peace. Around, the pangs of war

Are powerless to cripple thee or mar

Thy sure perfection. But, if Death besought

For thee, our tethered souls could never part:

Beat quietly, hid heart.

Form, primal thought,

Close-furled and sheltered as the budding Spring

Unknown, unknowing, yet divinely planned.

But stay awhile, for sounds of battle ring.

Stir, little hand

Unrealized—I count the dragging hours

And yearn to see it clutch at yonder flowers;

To see thy lucent feet and dimpled frame

And gaze at heav’n-snatched eyes and know thy name,

But stay awhile.

For thou art best alone away from Man:

Wait longer, tears unshed and lurking smile

Of joy enshrined where every joy began.

Time hurries as the moments thump along

(Hark, little ears, my heart is beating strong)

Life is aglow, alive, a perfect song.

Around the land is ugly, but apart

I fashion thee in thought. Now hush, for sleep

Is here. Close, eyes unopened, voice unheard,

Be still. Grow on in beauty till day creep ...

Hark to my whispered word—

Beat quietly, hid heart.

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back

Table of Contents

POEMS

Dedication To CHRISTOPHER Killed, Suvla Bay, October 6th, 1915.

CONTENTS

I THE DARDANELLES

FROM “W” BEACH

A PRAYER

FALLEN

THE TURKISH TRENCH DOG

THE SENTINEL An Episode at the Evacuation of Gallipoli.

MUDROS AFTER THE EVACUATION

THE DEAD TURK

II B. E. F.

MISSING

TWO TRENCH POEMS

I THE STORM NIGHT

II RESURRECTION

GOMMECOURT

I

II

III

IV

A VISION

REVELATION

TELL ME, STRANGER

SPRING IN THE TRENCHES

ON THE ROAD

KEATS, BEFORE ACTION

THE SOMME

SOMME FLOWER TALK

TO THE UTTERMOST FARTHING.

IN THE MESS

A TRENCH INCIDENT

REALITY

“WE POETS OF THE PROUD OLD LINEAGE”

III MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

SONG

THE SHADOW

EVERYCHILD

CHILD OF THE FLOWING TIDE

EIGHT SONNETS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

KEATS

MEETING HER IN THE STREET

HER HOMAGE

REACTION

APRIL

MAY-JUNE

THE STROLLING SINGER

THE FRENCH MOTHER TO HER UNBORN CHILD

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE