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Title: Oxford poetry, 1921

Editor: Alan Porter

Robert Graves

Richard Arthur Warren Hughes

Release date: November 10, 2015 [eBook #50429]

Most recently updated: October 22, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD POETRY, 1921 ***

OXFORD POETRY

1921

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Oxford Poetry 1917–19

BASIL BLACKWELL

OXFORD POETRY

1921

EDITED BY

ALAN PORTER, RICHARD HUGHES,

ROBERT GRAVES

OXFORD BASIL BLACKWELL

MCMXXI

PRINTED AT THE

SHAKESPEARE HEAD PRESS

STRATFORD-UPON-AVON

THE EDITORS of this year’s Oxford Poetry, the work of undergraduates who have been in residence since the date of the last collection, have attempted to make the volume more representative of Poetry and less representative merely of Oxford than its predecessors. There is always at Oxford a fashion in verse as much as in dress, and, to judge from the bulk of contributions submitted, this fashion has not changed materially since last noted and recorded in print. Mr Jones-Smith, of Balliol, still writes musically of brimming chalices, vermilion lips, chrysoprase, lotuses, arabesques and darkling spires against glimmering skies; Miss Smith-Jones, of Somerville, is equally faithful to her scarlet sins, beloved hearts, little clutching hands, little pattering feet, rosaries, eternity, roundabouts, and glimmering spires against darkling skies. Exclusion of these worn properties has given the fewer writers than usual represented here, extended elbow room, and a chance of showing some individual capacity for better or worse.

Most of the pieces have already appeared serially in The London Mercury, The Spectator, The Westminster Gazette, The New Statesman, The Nation and Athenæum, The Observer, and the other leading literary reviews.

For permission to use copyright poems, our thanks are due to Messrs Christophers, publishers of Mr Golding’s ‘Shepherd Singing Ragtime,’ and to Messrs Sidgwick and Jackson, publishers of Mr Rickword’s new volume ‘Behind the Eyes.’

CONTENTS

F. N. W. BATESON (Trinity)

Trespassers

Page 1

EDMUND BLUNDEN (Queen’s)

The Watermill

2

The Scythe

4

That Time is Gone

7

The South-West Wind

8

The Canal

9

The March Bee

11

LOUIS GOLDING (Queen’s)

Ploughman at the Plough

12

Portrait of an Artist

13

Shepherd singing Ragtime

14

Ghosts Gathering

18

Silver-badged Waiter

20

ROBERT GRAVES (St John’s)

Cynics and Romantics

21

Unicorn and the White Doe

22

Sullen Moods

25

Henry and Mary

27

On the Ridge

28

A Lover since Childhood

29

ROSALEEN GRAVES (Home Student)

Night Sounds

30

‘A Stronger than he shall come upon him ...’

32

Colour

33

BERTRAM HIGGINS (B.N.C.)

White Magic

34

RICHARD HUGHES (Oriel)

Singing Furies

35

The Sermon

37

Tramp

38

Gratitude

40

Judy

42

Ruin

43

ALAN PORTER (Queen’s)

Introduction to a Narrative Poem

44

Summer Bathing

47

Country Churchyard

49

Museum

50

Lost Lands

52

FRANK PREWETT (Christ Church)

Come Girl, and embrace

53

I went out into the Fields

54

Comrade, why do you weep?

56

The Winds caress the Trees

57

EDGELL RICKWORD (Pembroke)

Complaint of a Tadpole confined in a jam-jar

58

Regret for the Depopulation of Rural Districts

60

Complaint after Psycho-Analysis

61

Desire

62

Trench Poets

63

Winter Prophecies

64

F. N. W. BATESON

TRESPASSERS

GAUNTLY outlined, white and still,

Three haystacks peer above the hill;

Three aged rakes thrust sprawlingly

Fantastic tendons to the sky.

In the void and dismal yard

Farmer’s dog keeps rasping guard,

Challenging night’s trespassers,

The solemn legions of the stars;

Growling ignominious scorn

At Cancer and at Capricorn.

The yellow stars, serene and prim,

Tolerantly stare at him.

EDMUND BLUNDEN

THE WATERMILL

I’LL rise at midnight and I’ll rove

Up the hill and down the drove

That leads to the old unnoticed mill,

And think of one I used to love:

There stooping to the hunching wall

I’ll stare into the rush of stars

Or bubbles that the waterfall

Brings forth and breaks in ceaseless wars.

The shelving hills have made a fourm

Where the mill holdings shelter warm,

And here I came with one I loved

To watch the seething millions swarm.

But long ago she grew a ghost

Though walking with me every day;

Even when her beauty burned me most

She to a spectre dimmed away—

Until though cheeks all morning-bright

And black eyes gleaming life’s delight

And singing voice dwelt in my sense,

Herself paled on my inward sight.

She grew one whom deep waters glassed.

Then in dismay I hid from her,

And lone by talking brooks at last

I found a Love still lovelier.

O lost in tortured days of France!

Yet still the moment comes like chance

Born in the stirring midnight’s sigh

Or in the wild wet sunset’s glance:

And how I know not but this stream

Still sounds like vision’s voice, and still

I watch with Love the bubbles gleam,

I walk with Love beside the mill.

The heavens are thralled with cloud, yet gray

Half-moonlight swims the fields till day,

The stubbled fields, the bleaching woods;—

Even this bleak hour is stolen away

By this shy water falling low,

And calling low the whole night through,

And calling back the long ago

And richest world I ever knew.

The hop-kiln fingers cobweb-white

With discord dim turned left and right,

And when the wind was south and small

The sea’s far whisper drowsed the night;

Scarce more than mantling ivy’s voice

That in the tumbling water trailed.

Love’s spirit called me to rejoice

When she to nothingness had paled:

For Love the daffodils shone here

In grass the greenest of the year,

Daffodils seemed the sunset lights

And silver birches budded clear:

And all from east to west there strode

Great shafted clouds in argent air,

The shining chariot-wheels of God,

And still Love’s moment sees them there.

THE SCYTHE

A THICK hot haze had choked the valley grounds

Long since, the dogday sun had gone his rounds

Like a dull coal half lit with sulky heat;

And leas were iron, ponds were clay, fierce beat

The blackening flies round moody cattle’s eyes.

Wasps on the mudbanks seemed a hornet’s size,

That on the dead roach battened. The plough’s increase

Stood under a curse.

Behold, the far release!

Old wisdom breathless at her cottage door

‘Sounds of abundance’ mused, and heard the roar

Of marshalled armies in the silent air,

And thought Elisha stood beside her there,

And clacking reckoned ere the next nightfall

She’d turn the looking-glasses to the wall.

Faster than armies out of the burnt void

The hour-glass clouds innumerably deployed;

And when the hay-folks next look up, the sky

Sags black above them; scarce is time to fly.

And most run for their cottages; but Ward

The mower for the inn beside the ford,

And slow strides he with shouldered scythe still bare,

While to the coverts leaps the great-eyed hare.

As he came in, the dust snatched up and whirled

Hung high, and like a bell-rope whipped and twirled,

The brazen light glared round, the haze resolved

Into demoniac shapes bulged and convolved.

Well might poor ewes afar make bleatings wild,

Though this old trusting mower sat and smiled,

For from the hush of many days the land

Had waked itself: and now on every hand

Shrill swift alarm-notes, cries and counter-cries,

Lowings and crowings came and throbbing sighs.

Now atom lightning brandished on the moor,

Then out of sullen drumming came the roar

Of thunder joining battle east and west:

In hedge and orchard small birds durst not rest,

Flittering like dead leaves and like wisps of straws,

And the cuckoo called again, for without pause

Oncoming voices in the vortex burred.

The storm came toppling like a wave, and blurred

In grey the trees that like black steeples towered.

The sun’s last yellow died. Then who but cowered?

Down ruddying darkness floods the hideous flash,

And pole to pole the cataract whirlwinds clash.

Alone within the tavern parlour still

Sat the gray mower, pondering his God’s will,

And flinching not to flame or bolt, that swooped

With a great hissing rain till terror drooped

In weariness: and then there came a roar

Ten-thousand-fold, he saw not, was no more—

But life bursts on him once again, and blood

Beats droning round, and light comes in a flood.

He stares, and sees the sashes battered awry,

The wainscot shivered, the crocks shattered, and by,

His twisted scythe, melted by its fierce foe,

Whose Parthian shot struck down the chimney. Slow

Old Ward lays hand to his old working-friend,

And thanking God Whose mercy did defend

His servant, yet must drop a tear or two

And think of times when that old scythe was new,

And stands in silent grief, nor hears the voices

Of many a bird that through the land rejoices,

Nor sees through the smashed panes the sea-green sky,

That ripens into blue, nor knows the storm is by.

THE TIME IS GONE

THE TIME is gone when we could throw

Our angle in the sleepy stream,

And nothing more desired to know

Than was it roach or was it bream?

Sitting there in such a mute delight,

The Kingfisher would come and on the rods alight.

Or hurrying through the dewy hay

Without a thought but to make haste

We came to where the old ring lay

And bats and balls seemed heaven at least.

With our laughing and our giant strokes

The echoes clacked among the chestnuts and the oaks.

When the spring came up we got

And out among wild Emmet Hills

Blossoms, aye and pleasures sought

And found! bloom withers, pleasure chills;

Like geographers along green brooks

We named the capes and tumbling bays and horseshoe crooks.

But one day I found a man

Leaning on the bridge’s rail;

Dared his face as all to scan,

And awestruck wondered what could ail

An elder, blest with all the gifts of years,

In such a happy place to shed such bitter tears.

THE SOUTH-WEST WIND

WE STOOD by the idle weir,

Like bells the waters played,

The rich moonlight slept everywhere

As it would never fade:

So slept our shining peace of mind

Till rose a south-west wind.

How sorrow comes who knows?

And here joy surely had been:

But joy like any wild wind blows

From mountains none has seen,

And still its cloudy veilings throws

On the bright road it goes.

The black-plumed poplars swung

So softly across the sky:

The ivy sighed, the river sung,

Woolpacks were wafting high:

The moon her golden tinges flung

On these she straight was lost among.

O south-west wind of the soul,

That brought such new delight,

And passing by in music stole

Love’s rich and trusting light,

Would that we thrilled to thy least breath

Now all is still as death.

THE CANAL

THERE so dark and still

Slept the water, never changing,

From the glad sport in the meadows

Oft I turned me.

Fear would strike me chill

On the clearest day in summer,

Yet I loved to stand and ponder

Hours together

By the tarred bridge rail—

There the lockman’s vine-clad window,

Mirrored in the tomb-like water

Stared in silence

Till, deformed and pale

In the sunken cavern shadows,

One by one imagined demons

Scowled upon me.

Barges passed me by,

With their unknown surly masters

And small cabins, whereon some rude

Hand had painted

Trees and castles high.

Cheerly stepped the towing horses,

And the women sung their children

Into slumber.

Barges, too, I saw

Drowned in mud, drowned, drowned long ages,

Their gray ribs but seen in summer,

Their names never:

In whose silted maw

Swarmed great eels, the priests of darkness,

Old as they, who came at midnight

To destroy me.

Like one blind and lame

Who by some new sense has vision

And strikes deadlier than the strongest

Went this water.

Many an angler came,

Went his ways; and I would know them,

Some would smile and give me greeting,

Some kept silence—

Most, one old dragoon

Who had never a morning hallo,

But with stony eye strode onward

Till the water,

On a silent noon,

That had watched him long, commanded:

Whom he answered, leaping headlong

To self-murder.

‘Fear and fly the spell,’

Thus my Spirit sang beside me;

Then once more I ranged the meadows,

Yet still brooded,

When the threefold knell

Sounded through the haze of harvest—

Who had found the lame blind water

Swift and seeing?

THE MARCH BEE

A WARMING wind comes to my resting-place

And in a mountain cloud the lost sun chills;

Night comes, and yet before she shows her face

The sun flings off the shadows, warm light fills

The valley and the clearings on the hills,

Bleak crow the moorcocks on the fen’s blue plashes,

But here I warm myself with these bright looks and flashes.

And like to me the merry humble bee

Puts fear aside, runs forth to meet the sun

And by the ploughlands’ shoulder comes to see

The flowers that like him best, and seems to shun

Cold countless quaking windflowers every one,

Primroses too; but makes poor grass his choice

Where small wood-strawberry blossoms nestle and rejoice.

The magpies steering round from wood to wood,

Tree-creepers flicking up to elms’ green rind,

Bold gnats that revel round my solitude

And most this pleasant bee intent to find

The new-born joy, inveigle the rich mind

Long after darkness comes cold-lipped to one

Still hearkening to the bee, still basking in the sun.

LOUIS GOLDING

PLOUGHMAN AT THE PLOUGH

HE BEHIND the straight plough stands

Stalwart, firm shafts in firm hands.

Naught he cares for wars and naught

For the fierce disease of thought.

Only for the winds, the sheer

Naked impulse of the year,

Only for the soil, which stares

Clean into God’s face, he cares.

In the stark might of his deed

There is more than art or creed;

In his wrist more strength is hid

Than the monstrous Pyramid;

Stauncher than stern Everest

Be the muscles of his breast;

Not the Atlantic sweeps a flood

Potent as the ploughman’s blood.

He, his horse, his ploughshare, these

Are the only verities.

Dawn to dusk with God he stands,

The Earth poised on his broad hands.

PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST

I HAVE been given eyes

Which are neither foolish nor wise,

Seeing through joy or pain

Beauty alone remain.

I have been given an ear

Which catches nothing clear,

But only along the day

A song stealing away.

My feet and hands never could

Do anything evil or good:

Instead of these things,

A swift mouth that sings.

SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME

(For F. V. Branford)

THE SHEPHERD sings:

’Way down in Dixie,

Way down in Dixie,

Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay....’

With shaded eyes he stands to look

Across the hills where the clouds swoon,

He singing, leans upon his crook,

He sings, he sings no more.

The wind is muffled in the tangled hair

Of sheep that drift along the noon.

The mild sheep stare

With amber eyes about the pearl-flecked June.

Two skylarks soar

With singing flame

Into the sun whence first they came.

All else is only grasshoppers

Or a brown wing the shepherd stirs,

Who, like a slow tree moving, goes

Where the pale tide of sheep-drift flows.

See! the sun smites

With molten lights

The turned wing of a gull that glows

Aslant the violet, the profound

Dome of the mid-June heights.

Alas! again the grasshoppers,

The birds, the slumber-winging bees,

Alas! again for those and these

Demure things drowned;

Drowned in vain raucous words men made

Where no lark rose with swift and sweet

Ascent and where no dim sheep strayed

About the stone immensities,

Where no sheep strayed and where no bees

Probed any flowers nor swung a blade

Of grass with pollened feet.

He sings:

‘In Dixie,

Way down in Dixie,

Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay

Scrambled eggs in the new-mown hay....’

The herring-gulls with peevish cries

Rebuke the man who sings vain words;

His sheep-dog growls a low complaint,

Then turns to chasing butterflies.

But when the indifferent singing-birds

From midmost down to dimmest shore

Innumerably confirm their songs,

And grasshoppers make summer rhyme

And solemn bees in the wild thyme

Clash cymbals and beat gongs,

The shepherd’s words once more are faint,

Once more the alien song is thinned

Upon the long course of the wind,

He sings, he sings no more.

Ah now the dear monotonies

Of bells that jangle on the sheep

To the low limit of the hills!

Till the blue cup of music spills

Into the boughs of lowland trees;

Till thence the lowland singings creep

Into the dreamful shepherd’s head,

Creep drowsily through his blood;

The young thrush fluting all he knows,

The ring dove moaning his false woes,

Almost the rabbit’s tiny tread,

The last unfolding bud.

But now,

Now a cool word spreads out along the sea.

Now the day’s violet is cloud-tipped with gold.

Now dusk most silently

Fills the hushed day with other wings than birds’.

Now where on foam-crest waves the seagulls rock,

To their cliff-haven go the seagulls thence.

So too the shepherd gathers in his flock,

Because birds journey to their dens,

Tired sheep to their still fold.

A dark first bat swoops low and dips

About the shepherd who now sings

A song of timeless evenings;

For dusk is round him with wide wings,

Dusk murmurs on his moving lips.

There is not mortal man who knows

From whence the shepherd’s song arose:

It came a thousand years ago.

Once the world’s shepherds woke to lead

The folded sheep that they might feed

On green downs where winds blow.

One shepherd sang a golden word.

A thousand miles away one heard.

One sang it swift, one sang it slow.

Two skylarks heard, two skylarks told

All shepherds this same song of gold

On all downs where winds blow.

This is the song that shepherds must

Sing till the green downlands be dust

And tide of sheep-drift no more flow;

The song two skylarks told again

To all the sheep and shepherd men

On green downs where winds blow.

GHOSTS GATHERING

YOU HEAR no bones click, see no shaken shroud.

Though no tombs grin, you feel ghosts gathering. Crowd

On pitiful crowd of small dead singing men

Tread the sure earth they feebly hymned; again

With fleshless hand seize unswayed grass. They seize

Insensitive flowers which bend not. Through gross trees

They sift. Nothing withstands them. Nothing knows

Them nor the songs they sang, their busy woes.

‘Hence from these ingrate things! To the towns!’ they weep,

(If ghosts have tears). You think a wrinkled heap

Of leaves heaved, or a wing stirred, less than this.

Some chance on the midnight cities. Others miss

The few faint lights, thin voices. Wretched these

Doomed to beat long the windy vacancies!

Some mourn through forlorn towns. They prowl and seek

—What seek they? Who knows them? If branches creak

And leaves flap and slow women ply their trade,

Those all are living things, but these are dead,

All that they were, dead totally. What fool still

Knows their extinguished songs? They had their fill

Of average joys and sorrows. They learned how

Love wilts, Death does not wilt. What more left now?

But one ghost yet of all these ghosts may find

Himself not utterly faded.

Through his blind

Some old man’s lamp-rays probe the darkness. Sick

Of his gaunt quest, the ghost halts. The clock’s tick

Troubles the silence. Tiredly the ghost scans

The opened book on the table. A flame fans,

A weak wan fire floods through his subtle veins.

No, no, not wholly forgotten! Loves and pains

Not suffered wholly for nothing!

(The old man bends

Over the book, makes notes for pious ends,

—Some curious futile work twelve men at most

Will read and yawn over.) The dizzy ghost,

Like some more ignorant moth circles the light...

Not suffered wholly for nothing!... ‘A sweet night!’

The old man mumbles.... A warmth is in the air,

He smiles, not knowing why. He moves his chair

Closer against the table. And sitting bowed

Lovingly turns the leaves and chants aloud.

SILVER-BADGED WAITER

POOR trussed-up lad, what piteous guise

Cloaks the late splendour of your eyes,

Stiffens the fleetness of your face

Into a mask of sleek disgrace,

And makes a smooth caricature

Of your taut body’s swift and sure

Poise, like a proud bird waiting one

Moment ere he taunt the sun;

Your body that stood foolish-wise

Stormed by the treasons of the skies,

Star-like that hung, deliberate

Above the dubieties of Fate,

But with an April gesture chose

Unutterable and certain woes!

And now you stand with discreet charm

Dropping the napkin round your arm,

Anticipate your tip while you

Hear the commercial travellers chew.

You shuffle with their soups and beers

Who held at heel the howling fears,

You whose young limbs were proud to dare

Challenge the black hosts of despair!

ROBERT GRAVES

CYNICS AND ROMANTICS

IN CLUB and messroom let them sit

At skirmish of ingenious wit;

Deriding Love, yet not with hearts

Accorded to those healthier parts

Of grim self-mockery, but with mean

And burrowing search for things unclean,

Pretended deafness, twisted sense,

Sharp innuendoes rising thence,

And affectation of prude-shame

That shrinks from using the short name.

We are not envious of their sour

Disintegrations of Love’s power,

Their swift analysis of the stabs

Devised by virgins and by drabs

(Powder or lace or scent) to excite

A none-too-jaded appetite.

They never guess of Love as we

Have found the amazing Art to be,

Pursuit of dazzling flame, or flight

From web-hung blackness of night,

With laughter only to express

Care overborne by carelessness;

They never bridge from small to great,

From nod or glance to ideal Fate,

From clouded forehead or slow sigh

To doubt and agony looming by,

From shining gaze and hair flung free

To infinity and to eternity—

They sneer and poke a treacherous joke

With scorn for our rusticity.

UNICORN AND THE WHITE DOE

‘ALONE

Through forests evergreen,

By legend known,

By no eye seen,

Unmated

Unbaited

Untrembling between

The shifting shadows

The sudden echoes,

Deathless I go

Unheard, unseen,’

Says the White Doe.

Unicorn with bursting heart

Breath of love has drawn

On his desolate crags apart

At rumour of dawn,

Has volleyed forth his pride

Twenty thousand years mute,

Tossed his horn from side to side

Lunged with his foot.

‘Like a storm of sand I run

Breaking the desert’s boundaries,

I go in hiding from the sun

In thick shade of trees

Straight was the track I took

Across the plains, but here with briar

And mire the tangled alleys crook

Baulking my desire.

Ho, there! what glinted white?

(A bough still shakes)

What was it darted from my sight

Through the forest brakes?

Where are you fled from me?

I pursue, you fade;

I run, you hide from me

In the dark glade.

Towering straight the trees grow,

The grass grows thick.

Where you are, I do not know,

You fly so quick.’

‘Seek me not here

Lodged among mortal deer,’

Says the White Doe,

‘Keeping one place

Held by the ties of space,’

Says the White Doe.

‘I

Equally

In air

Above your bare

Hill crest, your basalt lair,

Mirage reflected drink

At the clear pool’s brink

With tigers at play

In the glare of day

Blithely I stray,

Under shadow of myrtle

With Phoenix and his Turtle

For all time true,

With Gryphons at grass

Under the Upas,

Sipping warm dew

That falls hourly new,

I, unattainable

Complete, incomprehensible

No mate for you.

In sun’s beam

Or star-gleam,

No mate for you

No mate for you,’

Says the White Doe.

SULLEN MOODS

LOVE, do not count your labour lost

Though I turn sullen, grim, retired

Even at your side; my thought is crossed

With fancies by old longings fired.

And when I answer you, some days

Vaguely and wildly, do not fear

That my love goes forbidden ways

Hating the laws that bind it here.

If I speak gruffly, this mood is

Mere indignation at my own

Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties;

I forget the gentler tone.

‘You,’ now that you have come to be

My one beginning, prime and end,

I count at last as wholly ‘me,’

Lover no longer nor yet friend.

Friendship is flattery, though close hid;

Must I then flatter my own mind?

And must (which laws of shame forbid)

Blind love of you make self-love blind?

Do not repay me my own coin,

The sharp rebuke, the frown, the groan;

But stir my memory to disjoin

Your emanation from my own.

Help me to see you as before

When overwhelmed and dead, almost,

I stumbled on that secret door

Which saves the live man from the ghost.

Be once again the distant light,

Promise of glory, not yet known

In full perfection—wasted quite

When on my imperfection thrown.

HENRY AND MARY

HENRY was a worthy king,

Mary was his queen,

He gave to her a snowdrop

Upon a stalk of green.

Then all for his kindness

And all for his care

She gave him a new-laid egg

In the garden there.

Love, can you sing?

I cannot sing.

Or story-tell?

Not one I know.

Then let us play at queen and king,

As down the garden walks we go.

ON THE RIDGE

BELOW the ridge a raven flew,

And we heard the lost curlew

Mourning out of sight below

Mountain tops were touched with snow;

Even the long dividing plain

Showed no wealth of sheep or grain,

But fields of boulders lay like corn

And raven’s croak was shepherd’s horn

To slow cloud shadow strayed across

A pasture of thin heath and moss.

The North Wind rose; I saw him press

With lusty force against your dress,

Moulding your body’s inward grace,

And streaming off from your set face,

So now no longer flesh and blood

But poised in marble thought you stood;

O wingless Victory, loved of men,

Who could withstand your triumph then?

A LOVER SINCE CHILDHOOD

TANGLED in thought am I,

Stumble in speech do I?

Do I blunder and blush for the reason why?

Wander aloof do I,

Lean over gates and sigh,

Making friends with the bee and the butterfly?

If thus and thus I do

Dazed by the thought of you,

Walking my sorrowful way in the early dew,

My heart pierced through and through

By this despair of you,

Starved for a word or a look will my hope renew.

Give then a thought for me

Walking so miserably,

Wanting relief in the friendship or flower or tree,

Do but remember, we

Once could in love agree

Swallow your pride, let us be as we used to be.

ROSALEEN GRAVES

NIGHT-SOUNDS

FAINTLY through my window come

Sounds of things unheard by day,

Things that nightly speak and play,

But by day again go dumb.

Uncouth owls, with shuddering cry,

Flap great wings in horrid grief

Flap and swoop on journeys brief,

Hooting long and miserably.

Lurching in unsteady flight

Comes a lean bat, singing shrill,

Stumbles on my window sill,

And staggers off into the night.

Wild duck, waking on the marsh,

Din against my sleepy senses;

Like the wind on creaking fences

Comes their croaking, faint and harsh.

There’s a little bush I hear

Muttering, frightened, half-asleep;

Now a leafy voice, more deep,

Rustles vague comfort, soothes its fear.

Water flows not as by day.

A new tone through its voice has crept.

Streams that in daylight laughed and leapt

And had humorous things to say,

Speak so gravely now, and mutter

Of things secret, scarcely guessed,

Winds’ and Waters’ veiled unrest,

Griefs too big for man to utter.

Of the days before man came

The days when man shall be no more,

And Earth again be ruled by Four,

Air and Water, Earth and Flame.

Now a sudden silence falls;

Until like rocking, silver boats

Come the curlew’s ripply notes

How far the curious music calls!

And sweet twitters whisper clearly

From the tree tops dimly seen

Piping from the shadowy green

That the dawn is here, or nearly.

‘A STRONGER THAN HE SHALL COME UPON HIM...’

AND then he was seized by one who was stronger than he,

Seized and tamed and bound and forced to obey;

From the swinging choice of evil or good he was free;

Good was no longer; evil had vanished away

He left to another the gain or loss of the day.

Was he driven or drawn? What matter? He was content.

He yielded him, body and soul, to the whirl of War

As one yields to the high sea-wind, and is buffered, bent

To his will, when, shouting, he stamps in over the shore

Triumphant, driving all things like dust before.

Can aught but a rock stand firm, or question his might

Who tosses the leaves and clouds from a hand so strong?

The trees and grasses bow in awe of his might,

And men in the mountains, hearing his giant-song,

Yield, and are hurried—whirled—hounded along.

Thus he yielded to War, who was stronger than he—

No time to think—no time to ponder and weigh—

He was swept like a straw on the wind—and yet he knew himself free

Was it freedom or bondage, this? In truth, it were hard to say;

But, slave or king, he bowed his head to obey.

COLOUR

FLOWERS, thick as stars, lay

Splashed about the roadway—

Flowers nodding up and down,

Gold, lilac, fern-brown,

Colour in which to drown.

The Channel was a dark blue streak,

With pools rosy like the cheek

Of a girl too shy to speak,

And coloured clouds went tossing past,

Warm and windy,

Vivid and quaint,

Faint and eager and vast.

Colour, thick as dust, lay

Spattered about the highway—

Colour so bright that one would think

White, blue, cherry-pink

Were made to clutch and drink,

Colour that made one stop and say,

‘Earth, are you Heaven to-day?’

Colour that made one pray.

Lumps of colour, liquid and cool,

Cool and near,

Clear and gay

Tumbled about my way.

BERTRAM HIGGINS (B.N.C.)

WHITE MAGIC

YOU came, but still, with heart full-given to gladness,

I paused, as one stands stricken ere he falls;

Not yet my fumblings swept their bounds, clogged sense its

Weakling walls.

Quaint spaceless musings held me—idiot Mind was

Gaped and gilled like a fish to suck through slow

Tentative pores swift sweetness of strange waters’

Ebb and flow.

Yet how could I praise in darkness?—Life, like a sodded

Seed, moved in drought-sleep and cleft its clay

Freshly it seemed, though each sap-season spired its

Stalks into day:

Till now (ah, deft magician!) your wand hovers

Over all Spirit—over those lost grey fields

Where one frail flower, with burning stem, glad, gradual

Petals yields;

And whose past pitiful bitter blooms live only

In the flushed mockery of remembering lovers.

RICHARD HUGHES

THE SINGING FURIES

THE YELLOW sky grows vivid as the sun,

The sea glittering, and the hills dun.

The stones quiver. Twenty pounds of lead

Fold upon fold, the air laps my head.

Both eyes scorch: tongue stiff and bitter.

Flies buzz, but no birds twitter:

Slow bullocks stand with stinging feet,

And naked fishes scarcely stir, for heat.

White as smoke,

As jetted steam, dead clouds awoke

And quivered on the Western rim.

And then the singing started, dim

And sibilant as rime-stiff reeds

That whistle as the wind leads.

The North answered, low and clear;

The South whispered hard and sere,

And thunder muffled up like drums

Beat, whence the East-wind comes.

The heavy sky that could not weep

Is loosened: rain falls steep,

And thirty singing furies ride

To split the sky from side to side.

They sing, and lash the wet-flanked wind:

Sing, from Col to Hafod Mynd

And fling their voices half a score

Of miles along the mounded shore:

Whip loud music from a tree,

And roll their paean out to sea

Where crowded breakers fling and leap,

And strange things throb five fathoms deep.

The sudden tempest roared and died:

The singing furies muted ride

Down wet and slippery roads to hell;

And, silent in their captors’ train

Two fishers, storm-caught on the main;

A shepherd, battered with his flocks;

A pit-boy tumbled from the rocks,

A dozen back-broke gulls, and hosts

Of shadowy, small, pathetic ghosts,

Of mice and leverets caught by flood,

Their beauty shrouded in cold mud.

THE SERMON

(Wales 1920).

LIKE grippt stick

Still I sit:

Eyes fixed on far small eyes,

Full of it:

On the old, broad face,

The hung chin;

Heavy arms, surplice

Worn through and worn thin.

Probe I the hid mind

Under the gross flesh:

Clutch at poetic words,

Follow their mesh

Scarce heaving breath.

Clutch, marvel, wonder,

Till the words end.

Stilled is the muttered thunder:

The hard, few people wake,

Gather their books and go—

Whether their hearts could break

How can I know?

TRAMP

WHEN a brass sun staggers above the sky,

When feet cleave to boots, and the tongue’s dry,

And sharp dust goads the rolling eye,

Come thoughts of wine, and dancing thoughts of girls:

They shiver their white arms, and the head whirls,

And noon light is hid in their dark curls:

Noon feet stumble, and head swims.

Out shines the sun, and the thought dims,

And death, for blood, runs in the weak limbs.

To fall on flints in the shade of tall nettles

Gives easy sleep as a bed of rose petals,

And dust drifting from the highway

As light a coverlet as down may.

The myriad feet of many-sized flies

May not open those tired eyes.

The first wind of night

Twitches the coverlet away quite:

The first wind and large first rain

Flickers the dry pulse to life again:

Flickers the lids burning on the eyes

With sudden flashes of the slipping skies.

Hunger, oldest visionary,

Hides a devil in a tree,

Hints a glory in the clouds,

Fills the crooked air with crowds

Of ivory sightless demons singing—

Eyes start: straightens back:

Limbs stagger and crack:

But Brain flies, Brain soars

Up, where the Sky roars

Upon the back of cherubim:

Brain rockets up to Him.

Body gives another twist

To the slack waist-band;

In agony clenches fist

Till the nails bite the hand.

Body floats light as air,

With rain in its sparse hair:

Brain returns, and would tell

The things he has seen well:

Body will not stir his lips:

Brain and Body come to grips.

Deadly each hates the other

As treacherous blood-brother:

No sight, no sound shows

How the struggle goes.

They sink at last faint in the wet gutter;

So many words to sing that the tongue cannot utter.

GRATITUDE

ETERNAL gratitude—a long, thin word:

When meant, oftenest left unheard:

When light on the tongue, light in the purse too:

Of curious metallurgy: when coined true

It glitters not, is neither large nor small:

More worth than rubies—less, times, than a ball.

Not gift, nor willed: yet through its wide range

Buys what it buys exact, and leaves no change.

Old Gurney had it, won on a hot day

With ale, from glib-voiced Gypsy by the way.

He held it lightly: for ’twas a rum start

To find a hedgeling who had still a heart:

So put it down for twist of a beggar’s tongue...

He had not felt the heat: how the dust stung

A face June-roasted: he saw not the look

Aslant the gift-mug; how the hand shook...

Yet the words rang his head, and he grew merry

And whistled from the Boar to Wrye-brook ferry,

And chaffed with Ferryman when the hawser creakt

Or slipping bilge showed where the planks leakt:

Lent hand himself, till doubly hard the barge

Butted its nose in mud of the farther marge.

When Gurney leapt to shore, he found—dismay!

He had no tuppence—(Tuppence was to pay

To sulky Ferryman)—‘Naught have I,’ says he,

‘Naught, but the gratitude of Tammas Lee

Given one hour.’—Sulky Charon grinned:

‘Done,’ said he. ‘Done: I take—all of it, mind.’

‘Done,’ cries Jan Gurney. Down the road he went,

But by the ford left all his merriment.

This is the tale of midday chaffering:

How Charon took, and Gurney lost the thing:

How Ferryman gave it for his youngest daughter

To a tall lad who saved her out of water—

(Being old and mean, had none of his own to give,

So passed on Tammas’; glad to see her live):

And how young Farmer paid his quarter’s rent

With that one coin, when all else was spent,

And how Squire kept it for some goldless debt...

For aught I know, it wanders current yet.

Yet Tammas was no angel in disguise:

He stole Squire’s chickens—often: he told lies,

Robbed Charon’s garden, burnt young Farmer’s ricks

And played the village many lowsy tricks.

No children sniffled, and no dog cried

When full of oaths and smells, he died.

JUDY

SAND hot to haunches:

Sun beating eyes down,

Yet they peer under lashes

At the hill’s crown:

See how the hill slants

Up the sky halfway:

Over the top tall clouds

Poke gold and grey.

Down: see a green field

Tipped on its short edge,

Its upper rim straggled round

By a black hedge.

Grass bright as new brass:

Uneven dark gorse

Stuck to its own shadow

Like Judy that black horse.

Birds clatter numberless,

And the breeze tells

That beanflower somewhere

Has ousted the bluebells.

Birds clatter numberless:

In the muffled wood

Big feet move slowly:

Mean no good.

THE RUIN

GONE are the coloured princes, gone echo, gone laughter:

Drips the blank roof: and the moss creeps after.

Dead is the crumbled chimney: all mellowed to rotting

The wall-tints, and the floor-tints, from the spotting

Of the rain, from the wind and slow appetite

Of patient mould: and of the worms that bite

At beauty all their innumerable lives.

But the sudden nip of knives,

The lady aching for her stiffening lord,

The passionate-fearful bride,

And beaded Pallor clamped to the torment-board,

—Leave they no ghosts, no memories by the stairs?

No sheeted glimmer treading floorless ways?

No haunting melody of lovers’ airs,

Nor stealthy chill upon the noon of days?

No: for the dead and senseless walls have long forgotten

What passionate hearts beneath the turf lie rotten.

Only from roofs and chimneys pleasantly sliding

Tumbles the rain in the early hours,

Patters its thousand feet on the flowers,

Cools its small grey feet in the grasses.

ALAN PORTER

INTRODUCTION TO A NARRATIVE POEM

THE VAPOUR, twining and twitching, seems to throw

Black, precipitous boulders to and fro

Light as a bandied scoff; and, look, the cliff—

Whose root claws at the midworld fire with stiff

Unmolten, adamantine fingers—fails,

Lurches. Above, cold and eternal gales

Run worrying, shredding, eternal sunlight; snatch

At the heather; puff at the flocks of cotton; scratch

White scars along the bents. If strangers climb

To this plateau that buffets back slow time,

They stand awhile impotent, grey with fear,

And feel solidity’s foundation stir.

But even here a cottage free from harms

Lies havened, hugged and sheltered by the arms

Of a narrow, green recess. A few stunt oaks,

Elders, and barren apples beard the rocks;

But, sleeker than a pool, the lawn beneath

Burns white and blue, bewildering the heath.

On a low wood-bench, rifted by years of rain,

Warped at one end, split far along the grain,

A meagre man with a waste, weary smile

Reads to a boy and girl, or plays awhile

Some quiet, grown-up game. He suddenly bows

Head between hands: no more his children rouse

Flicker or flame, by question or caress,

To break the dead, monotonous, featureless

Winter of grief. At last he rises, and,

With empty scrutiny, feet that understand

No path but falter at random, stumbles out

Where tigrish winds whirry and havoc and shout.

His back-blown hair, wet, smarting eyes, recall

The conscious pang of life; and he must fall

Faint on the ground, or whet his courage keen,

Clench all his being, prise a path between

The loud, inimical flaws. With even might

He batters on, to earth’s and air’s despite,

In storm and tumult winning peace and light.

Yet, in these roads of quiet, muniment

From fury of nature, home from discontent

Surely of earth’s mean, trafficking miseries,

In this domain of flower and fragrance, this

Green plat of smooth, immotionable ground,

Why does the panther sorrow skulk around

And leap like fear from unsuspected fourm?

Weigh this doubt rather—if the embittered swarm

Of multitudinous grief thins ever or stays

From most unmerited sally; for in what ways

A man may tread, and fate how seeming fair,

His intimate heart is troubled, and despair

Lays present ambush. Many feel the sting

Of casual time like bramble-thorns, that bring

A not-enduring spasm: in other blood,

More sensitive, urging a froward, perilous flood,

It racks like tropic ivy, whose embrace

Turns travellers maniac; nor shall lapse of days,

Nor drug, nor simple, medicine back the mind;

They go forgetting all their manhood, find

No recollection save the venom of death

That whistles about their brain and sears their breath.

Thus almost had it been with him, thus grief

Came turbulent, and left him no relief.

SUMMER BATHING

THE RUCKLING pool, torn grey by Pendry Weir,

Became Cocytus to my boy time fear.

Two haw-trees, pulping fat their close, green fruits

Turned cuttlefish below, wagging no roots

But narrow tentacles. Old Jacob Fry

Tells how he drained this pool one hot July

When drought had sucked the white stream thick and slow:

Fish, four-foot deep, shone thirty feet below.

Leaning to drop a stone, the farmboy whews

Bewildered that his confident ear should lose

All thud for grounding. Now he fears to stay,

And walks by whistling on another day.

Here, when the black bees blundered in the heat

Half-drunk, rifling the fine-flurred meadowsweet,

I stripped and bathed. At first, numb for delight,

I lost all thought but this—Come, you must fight

Free from the swirl. But when blank eyes grew clear

Like a pit-pattering mouse came fluttered fear.

Now here and there slide snakish eels, now voles

Bolt hizzing over the brook to round, black holes.

These groping roots perhaps will grip my flesh

Till I grow tired of screaming: so the mesh

Will move, my bones will crackle, I sink down;

So to an end.

Or in some cave of brown

Sluttering scum and broad, plump bladder-weeds

Old fiends may sprawling meditate false deeds;

One, ware of prey, slip out lean fingers, pluck

Unusual meat through water’s rush and ruck.

Yet, braving all, to prove wild fancy vain,

I held my breath and sank. The brook, astrain

And fierce to be free, spun snarling overhead;

Dull roars droned round, cold currents buffeted.

Proud of this daring shewn—but doubtful, too,

Of tempting fortune far—I battled through

To the root-held scroll of turf on the sagging bank,

And carefully muscled up. The sheep-field drank

The wide-spent, white-spilt sun, the wrapping air

Swung flame-like past, and, while I ran, the bare

Close-nibbled grass pushed hot against my feet.

The yeanlings rose and rushed with timid bleat

Full-tilt at the mothering ewe; fed sleek with clover,

Three cows, in mild amazement bending over

The gap-set palings, rubbed their necks or chewed.

But in mid-course I staggered, having trod

Firm on a flat and spiny thistle; stayed

Nursing my foot, half grinning, half dismayed:

Then lay full length, as light-heel time were not;

Pale fears, fantastic perils, all forgot.

COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

THIS grave, moss-grown, marks him who once went free;

Now pent—no, portionless; from sharp life lost;

Mere mouldered bone-work. His unheeded name

Who, curious, pausing, may decipher? See;

Thin gulled by running rain, by chipping frost

Frustrated, muffled under a yellow, same,

Fat scurf of lichen, the dim characters

Withstand conjecture, aimless and awry.

Yet here lies one who, living, peopled earth

With indestructible fancy. Now he hears

No nature’s music, who for hours would lie

To hear the blue-caps click their quick, small mirth.

MUSEUM

THE day was death. A chalk road, pale in dust,

Accused with leprous finger the long moors.

The drab, damp air so blanketed the town

No doddered oak swung leathern leaf. The chimneys

Pushed oddling pillars at the loose-hung sky.

May, pansy, lilac, dense as the night steam

Of lowland swamps, fettered the sodden air,

And, through the haze, along the ragstone houses,

Blood-lichens dulled to a rotten-apple brown.

Behind close doors pale women drooped and dragged

In customary toils. They dusted shelves

Or changed from chair to chair dull, cotton cushions:

Soon, vacantly, they bore them back and wiped

With languid arms the black, unspotted shelves.

Such mind’s own symbols of despair they went

That never movement shook a face to grief—

At first they looked no more than cheerless women,

But dug deep in the plaster of their flesh

Those eyes were year-dead, underpouched with blue.

A word would sear the silence of a week.

Of a sudden, turning a byeway corner, a cripple,

Bloodless with age, lumbered along the road.

The motes of dust whirled at his iron-shod crutches

And quickly settled. A dog whined. The old

Cripple looked round and saw no man, but gave

A cruel, crackling chuckle, swung a yard,

And stopped to look about and laugh again.

‘That,’ said a girl in a flat voice, ‘is God.’

She turned and slid the table-cover straight.

Her mother could not answer, but she thought

‘It must be Beggar Joe, gone lately mad.’

He lumbered along the road and turned a corner.

His tapping faded and the day was death.

LOST LANDS

WHEN from this alien multitude of man

These, kind or kindred, speak in approbation

Of what I strove to write, for all my pleasure

I feel my gross dismerit and fall shamed.

Set no regard on me: not I can pierce

Clogged air and homely falsehood in prophetic

Dream or sudden awakening. Sinewed phrases,

There are my petty troublings of weak sight.

Shame took me once, and shame has tracked me since:

My friend spoke of a man who lives bewildered,

Even in London striding over mountains,

Through populous roads companioning the dead.

Stars move around him and the dew falls grey;

Thin firs pry through the mist. Old fables quicken—

Undine laughs by the waters, vague, uneasy:

Maiden Mary sings to the sleepy Child.

Then I remembered boyhood, in whose hours

Thistles were knights, old men were murderous, daytime

Intractable as dream. I knew that either

Hid with coarse walls imaginable worlds.

Now I am dulled, habitual now with known

Earth. Never shall other-country pathways

Bring me, familiar, through amazing valleys

Fire-white with blossom, dark with ancient boughs.

FRANK PREWETT

COME girl, and embrace,

And ask no more I wed thee;

Know then you are sweet of face,

Soft-limbed and fashioned lovingly;—

Must you go marketing your charms

In cunning woman-like,

And filled with old wives’ tales’ alarms?

I tell you, girl, come embrace;

What reck we of churchling and priest

With hands on paunch and chubby face;

Behold, we are life’s pitiful least,

And we perish at the first smell

Of death, whither heaves earth

To spurn us cringing into hell.

Come girl, and embrace;

Nay, cry not, poor wretch, nor plead,

But haste, for life strikes a swift pace

And I burn with envious greed:

Know you not, fool, we are the mock,

Of gods, time, clothes, and priests?

But come, there is no time for talk.

I WENT out into the fields

In my anguish of mind,

And sought comfort of the trees

For they looked to be kind.

‘Alas!’ cried they, ‘who have peace?—

We are prey that is caught,

The sun warms us, the blast chills,

And we understand not.’

On rolled the world with fools’ noise,

But I strode in tears’ wrack;

Would God, fools, I too were fool,

Or had light that I lack.

I held the fields all day,

I, a madman, too;

My spirit called aloud

To sift the false from true.

The troubled sun turned black,

Earth heaved to and fro,

Whene’er I spurned the flowers

Lifting heads to grow.

Trees reached their hands to stay,

Whistled birds to me,

‘Spurn one, thou spurnest all,

Brother, let things be.

For not their heads alone

Bleed, but the stars fade

And all things grieve, for we

One fabric are made.’

The heavens and earth do meet

And all things are true,

So trample ye no flowers

Lest skies lose their blue.

COMRADE, why do you weep?

Is it sorrow for a friend

Who fell, rifle in hand,

His proud stand at an end?

The harsh thunder-lipped guns

Roll his dirge deep and slow,

Where he makes his dreamless bed,

Head to head with a foe.

The sweet lark beats on high,

For the joy of those who sleep

In quiet embrace of earth.

Comrade, why do you weep?

THE winds caress the trees,

Woman to man is led,

And I too have my love,

Though she comes not to bed.

Beyond the heat of flesh,

Which has its place and day,

We hold our keen delights

In spirit, earth away.

Mount me on high, O soul,

Expand me my desires,

So shall I clasp in love

Even the heavenly fires!

EDGELL RICKWORD

COMPLAINT OF A TADPOLE CONFINED IN A JAM-JAR

WHAT reveries of far-off days

These withered plaques of duck-weed raise!

The creeping wretches, the crowded pond,

A death in life, no Culture, no Beyond.

Light and No-light in dull routine;

Thought and No-thought two shades of green.

The fair ideals all creatures need

Smothered beneath the inferior weed.

For highest aspirations stop

With breathing, at the water’s top.

O Fairy Metamorphosis

For Being to become What Is.

Here ceaseless radiance fills my sphere,

The Lamp my Moon, all night, bright, near.

And clustering on the crystal wall

Great strawberries iconistical.

No strife to propagate the kind

But leisure to improve the mind;

Till curious sensations range

About the tail and hint at change.

The weed with flowers stars the sky

And monstrous forms go dimly by.

Tail fades! The vestiges of gills

Swell with rare æther from the hills.

Now Time reared up in rocky crests

Where flaming fowl involve their nests,

Across the rippled Stream of Space

Throws shadows that obscure this place;

But in the valleys pipers play:

‘Over the hills and far away.’

REGRET FOR THE DEPOPULATION OF RURAL DISTRICTS

I HAVE seen villages grow suddenly

From dust and stand upright in the air

With comfortable homes grouped round a spire;

And in the fields strong women bending

Down to coarse toil to nourish unborn women.

But in the gardens, languid with flowers’ fragrance

Girls linger on close lawns for unknown happenings,

Tearing a petal in long shining fingers.

So waiting whilst pear blossom apple blossom

And white plum blossom are fallen down to earth,

And the white moon fallen. Then a heap of dust

That once was named, loved and familiar

Lies unsubstantial in the eternal sunlight.

Whence faint thoughts

Stirring far down in twilight consciousness

Move dark-boughed yew-trees over graves and stars.

COMPLAINT AFTER PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

NOW my days are all undone,

Spirit sunken, girls forgone,

I will weave in other mesh

Than fading bone and flesh.

Into cold deserted mind

Drag the relics of the blind;

And raise from wives none other sees

Substantial families.

Hunt through woods of maidenhair

Tangled in the shining air

The forms of ecstasies achieved,

Not then believed.

O Unicorns and jewelled Birds

And trampling dappled moonlight herds,

In icy glades now slain

With arrows bright as pain.

Leap, Moon, from the berg’s pale womb!

Frail Bride, out of Earth’s tomb!

The stars are ashen cold

Beneath their gold.

DESIRE

AS the white sails of ships across the ocean,

The last sounds fade when the sun has declined.

I am alone. There is no motion

Rippling the clear waters in the mind.

Only now the madrepores’ frail tentacles

Sway languidly before they fall asleep;

And waiting in their dark pinnacles

The virgin medusae watch and weep.

Moving darkly among the forests of weed

Ancient memories drag their crinkled shells

To glades where crimson tree-trunks bleed

Thickly, and hushed are the faint sea-bells.

Out of that silent depth loveless arising

Undine sheds on the water her shining hair,

Softly calleth her soul, devising

A fragrance of music in the air.

TRENCH POETS

I KNEW a man, he was my chum,

But he grew blacker every day,

And would not brush the flies away,

Nor blanch however fierce the hum

Of passing shells. I used to read,

To rouse him, random things from Donne,

Like ‘Get with child a mandrake-root,’

But you can tell he was far gone,

For he lay gaping, mackerel-eyed,

And stiff and senseless as a post,

Even when that old poet cried,

‘I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost.’

I tried the Elegies one day;

But he, because he heard me say,

‘What needst thou have more covering than a man?’

Grinned nastily, and so I knew

The worms had got his brains at last.

There was one thing that I might do

To starve the worms; I racked my head

For healthy things and quoted Maud.

His grin got worse, and I could see

He laughed at passion’s purity.

He stank so badly, though we were great chums

I had to leave him; then rats ate his thumbs.

WINTER PROPHECIES

CITIES with tall and graceful spires I know

Mirrored in pools and rivers silver bright,

That wither if the softest wind should blow

And by a stone are blotted out of sight.

Frailer they are than curvèd leaves of snow

Fluttering down from the dark trees of night

Slowly, and then unutterably slow,

And ceasing as most quietly comes the light.

Water is carved like fern and stone takes on

The flush of life when flesh lies quiet as stone;

Whilst sinister and clownish, bright and wan,

With solemn affectations the old Moon

Spins dooms and weirds and meltings of the bone

And universal silence to be soon.

Transcriber’s Notes

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Page 2: “fourm” was printed that way.

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Table of Contents

OXFORD POETRY 1921

Foreword

CONTENTS

F. N. W. BATESON

TRESPASSERS

EDMUND BLUNDEN

THE WATERMILL

THE SCYTHE

THE TIME IS GONE

THE SOUTH-WEST WIND

THE CANAL

THE MARCH BEE

LOUIS GOLDING

PLOUGHMAN AT THE PLOUGH

PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST

SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME (For F. V. Branford)

GHOSTS GATHERING

SILVER-BADGED WAITER

ROBERT GRAVES

CYNICS AND ROMANTICS

UNICORN AND THE WHITE DOE

SULLEN MOODS

HENRY AND MARY

ON THE RIDGE

A LOVER SINCE CHILDHOOD

ROSALEEN GRAVES

NIGHT-SOUNDS

‘A STRONGER THAN HE SHALL COME UPON HIM...’

COLOUR

BERTRAM HIGGINS (B.N.C.)

WHITE MAGIC

RICHARD HUGHES

THE SINGING FURIES

THE SERMON (Wales 1920).

TRAMP

GRATITUDE

JUDY

THE RUIN

ALAN PORTER

INTRODUCTION TO A NARRATIVE POEM

SUMMER BATHING

COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

MUSEUM

LOST LANDS

FRANK PREWETT

Come Girl, and embrace

I went out into the Fields

Comrade, why do you weep?

The Winds caress the Trees

EDGELL RICKWORD

COMPLAINT OF A TADPOLE CONFINED IN A JAM-JAR

REGRET FOR THE DEPOPULATION OF RURAL DISTRICTS

COMPLAINT AFTER PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

DESIRE

TRENCH POETS

WINTER PROPHECIES

Transcriber’s Notes

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