Chapter XIII

O doubt not but I told him then, I told him then, That I had kept me from all men Since we joined lips and swore. Whereat he smiled, and thinned away As the wind stirred to call up day ... --'Tis past! And here alone I stray Haunting the Western Moor.

1902.

CHORUS FROM "THE DYNASTS"

(Part III).

Last as first the question rings
Of the Will's long travailings;
Why the All-mover,
Why the All-prover
Ever urges on and measures out the droning tune of Things.

Heaving dumbly
As we deem,
Moulding numbly
As in dream,
Apprehending not how fare the sentient subjects of Its scheme.

Nay;--shall not Its blindness break?
Yea, must not Its heart awake,
Promptly tending
To Its mending
In a genial germing purpose, and for loving-kindness' sake?

Should It never
Curb or cure
Aught whatever
Those endure
Whom It quickens, let them darkle to extinction swift and sure.

But a stirring thrills the air,
Like to sounds of joyance there
That the rages
Of the ages
Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from the darts that were,
Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashion all things fair!

1907.

THE BALLAD SINGER

Sing, Ballad-singer, raise a hearty tune;
Make me forget that there was ever a one
I walked with in the meek light of the moon
When the day's work was done.

Rhyme, Ballad-rhymer, start a country song;
Make me forget that she whom I loved well
Swore she would love me dearly, love me long,
Then--what I cannot tell!

Sing, Ballad-singer, from your little book;
Make me forget those heart-breaks, achings, fears;
Make me forget her name, her sweet sweet look--
Make me forget her tears.

RALPH HODGSON

THE MOOR

The world's gone forward to its latest fair And dropt an old man done with by the way, To sit alone among the bats and stare At miles and miles and miles of moorland bare Lit only with last shreds of dying day.

Not all the world, not all the world's gone by; Old man, you're like to meet one traveller still, A journeyman well kenned for courtesy To all that walk at odds with life and limb; If this be he now riding up the hill Maybe he'll stop and take you up with him....

"But thou art Death?" "Of Heavenly Seraphim None else to seek thee out and bid thee come." "I only care that thou art come from Him, Unbody me--I'm tired--and get me home."

TIME, YOU OLD GIPSY MAN

Time, you old gipsy man,
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?

All things I'll give you Will you be my guest, Bells for your jennet Of silver the best, Goldsmiths shall beat you A great golden ring, Peacocks shall bow to you, Little boys sing, Oh, and sweet girls will Festoon you with may, Time, you old gipsy, Why hasten away?

Last week in Babylon, Last night in Rome, Morning, and in the crush Under Paul's dome; Under Paul's dial You tighten your rein, Only a moment And off once again; Off to some city Now blind in the womb, Off to another Ere that's in the tomb.

Time, you old gipsy man,
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?

GHOUL CARE

Sour fiend, go home and tell the Pit: For once you met your master, A man who carried in his soul Three charms against disaster, The Devil and disaster.

Away, away, and tell the tale And start your whelps a-whining, Say "In the greenwood of his soul A lizard's eye was shining, A little eye kept shining."

Away, away, and salve your sores, And set your hags a-groaning, Say "In the greenwood of his soul A drowsy bee was droning, A dreamy bee was droning."

Prodigious Bat! Go start the walls Of Hell with horror ringing, Say "In the greenwood of his soul There was a goldfinch singing, A pretty goldfinch singing."

And then come back, come, if you please, A fiercer ghoul and ghaster, With all the glooms and smuts of Hell Behind you, I'm your master! You know I'm still your master.

W. G. HOLE

ROOSEVELT-VILLAGE STREET

Nought is there here the eye to strike-- Uncurved canals where barges ply; A hundred hamlets all alike;

Flat fields that cut an arc of sky
With men and women o'er them bent
Who needs must labour lest they die.

Would any say that lives so spent Might break, spurred on by love and pride, Their bars of animal content?

Nay, here live men unvexed, untried--
I mused. Yet pacing Roosevelt street
In idle humour I espied

A village man and woman meet, And pass with never word or sign-- So strange in neighbour-folk whose feet

Haunt the same fields in rain and shine
That, curious eyed, in either face,
In curve of lip, or graven line,

I sought for hints of pain or trace Of harsh resolve, and so grew ware That hers was as a hiding place

Where lurked the kinship of despair;
While his bore record deeply wrought
That life for him had but one care,

And that--to mesh re-iterant thought In labour, till at last his soul Should find the anodyne it sought.

Hence now with dreary face he stole
Through Roosevelt Street, nor stretched his hand
To beg from life its smallest dole.

And yet these two had loved and planned To happiest end, but for the flood That wrecks, upreared on rock or sand,

The house of hopes. Thus--cold of mood,
He, loving wholly, could but choose
To deem her heart as his subdued;

While she, as maidens oft-times use, Denied sweet proofs of love, was fain To gain them by the world-old ruse;

And failing, vexed to find that vain
Was all her pretty reticence,
She happed upon a worthless swain

On whom, reserved the gold, the pence Of liberal smiles she flung away, Till, snared by her own innocence,

She fell--Ah, God! how far that day
She fell--from hope and promise plumb,
To deeps where lips forget to pray.

But he, apart, with sorrow dumb, Beheld, scarce conscious of the strife, Himself in her by fate o'ercome;

And as she passed to her new life,
Righted by still more wrong, divined
Her hate for him who called her wife,

And on the hoarded knowledge pined And starved, till he, as she, was dead, And nought remained but to unwind

His coil of days. So with slow tread
He goes his way through Roosevelt Street
At night and morn, nor turns his head

When past him comes the sound of feet-- Of ghostly feet that long ago In life had made his pulses beat.

For, mark you, both are dead, and so
Small wonder is it nought should pass
Betwixt them in the street, I trow.

Yet still they move with that huge mass Of life unpurposeful that reaps The corn in season, mows the grass,

And then by right of labour sleeps
With privilege of dreams that ape
Fulfilment, whereby each may creep

From pain through doors of dear escape; Save such, unhappy, as would win Some respite for themselves, and shape

Those passionate, deep appeals that din
The Powers, ere season due, to stay
The long slow tragedies of sin.

THE HAUNTED FIELDS

I know of fields by voices haunted still
That years ago grew hushed;
Whose buttercups are brushed
By feet that long have ceased to climb the hill.

On whose green slopes the happy children play
As on a mother's lap,
Then steal through gate and gap,
And by strange hedge-rows make their wondering way.

Sometimes great seas of ripening corn they spy
Across whose rippling face
The shadowy billows race
And round the gate, forlornly whispering, die;

Or in dark rutted lanes by weeds o'ergrown,
Round-eyed they watch a thrush
That breaks the noonday hush
Dashing with zest a snail against a stone;

At others, on an impulse waxing brave,
They climb the churchyard wall
And, marvelling at it all,
See strange black people gathered round a grave.

Then, without question, hurrying up the lane,
They seek once more their own--
That world in which is known
No fear of death, nor thought of change or pain.

Where still they call and answer, still they play,
And summer is ever there;
But I--I never dare
Pass through those fields, retrace the well-known way,

Lest I might meet a lad whom once I knew,
Whose eyes accusingly
Should make demand of me:
"Where are those dreams I left in charge with you?"

CAPTIVE IN LONDON TOWN

There comes a ghostly space
'Twixt midnight and the dawn,
When from the heart of London Town
The tides of life are drawn.

What time, when Spring is due,
The captives dungeoned deep
Beneath the stones of London Town
Grow troubled in their sleep,

And wake--mint, mallow, dock,
Brambles in bondage sore,
And grasses shut in London Town
A thousand years and more.

Yet though beneath the stones
They starve, and overhead
The countless feet pace London Town
Of men who hold them dead,

Like Samson, blind and scorned,
In pain their time they bide
To seize the roots of London Town
And tumble down its pride.

Now well by proof and sign,
By men unheard, unseen,
They know that far from London Town
The woods once more are green.

But theirs is still to wait,
Deaf to the myriad hum,
Beneath the stones of London Town
A Spring that needs must come.

LAURENCE HOUSMAN

THE FELLOW-TRAVELLERS

Fellow-travellers here with me,
Loose for good each other's loads!
Here we come to the cross-roads:
Here must parting be.

Where will you five be to-night?
Where shall I? we little know:
Loosed from you, I let you go
Utterly from sight.

Far away go taste and touch,
Far go sight, and sound, and smell.
Fellow-Travellers, fare you well,--
You I loved so much.

THE SETTLERS

How green the earth, how blue the sky,
How pleasant all the days that pass,
Here where the British settlers lie
Beneath their cloaks of grass!

Here ancient peace resumes her round,
And rich from toil stand hill and plain;
Men reap and store; but they sleep sound,
The men who sowed the grain.

Hard to the plough their hands they put,
And wheresoe'er the soil had need
The furrow drave, and underfoot
They sowed themselves for seed.

Ah! not like him whose hand made yield
The brazen kine with fiery breath,
And over all the Colchian field
Strewed far the seeds of death;

Till, as day sank, awoke to war
The seedlings of the dragon's teeth,
And death ran multiplied once more
Across the hideous heath.

But rich in flocks be all these farms,
And fruitful be the fields which hide
Brave eyes that loved the light, and arms
That never clasped a bride!

O willing hearts turned quick to clay,
Glad lovers holding death in scorn,
Out of the lives ye cast away
The coming race is born.

SONG

Sleep lies in every cup
Of land or flower:
Look how the earth drains up
Her evening hour!

Each face that once so laughed,
Now fain would lift
Lips to Life's sleeping-draught,
The goodlier gift.

Oh, whence this overflow,
This flood of rest?
What vale of healing so
Unlocks her breast?

What land, to give us right
Of refuge, yields
To the sharp scythes of light
Her poppied fields?

Nay, wait! our turn to make
Amends grows due!
Another day will break,
We must give too!

EMILIA STUART LORIMER

LOVE SONGS

I

White-dreaming face of my dear, Waken; the dawn is here.

Ope, oh so misty eyes; Keep ope, and recognize!

Mouth, o'er the far sleep-sea Spread now thy smile-wings for me.