Chapter V: Sackville-West

A SAXON SONG

Tools with the comely names,
Mattock and scythe and spade,
Couth and bitter as flames,
Clean, and bowed in the blade,--
A man and his tools make a man and his trade.

Breadth of the English shires,
Hummock and kame and mead,
Tang of the reeking byres,
Land of the English breed,--
A man and his land make a man and his creed.

Leisurely flocks and herds,
Cool-eyed cattle that come
Mildly to wonted words,
Swine that in orchards roam,--
A man and his beasts make a man and his home.

Children sturdy and flaxen
Shouting in brotherly strife,
Like the land they are Saxon,
Sons of a man and his wife,--
For a man and his loves make a man and his life.

MARIANA IN THE NORTH

All her youth is gone, her beautiful youth outworn, Daughter of tarn and tor, the moors that were once her home No longer know her step on the upland tracks forlorn Where she was wont to roam.

All her hounds are dead, her beautiful hounds are dead, That paced beside the hoofs of her high and nimble horse, Or streaked in lean pursuit of the tawny hare that fled Out of the yellow gorse.

All her lovers have passed, her beautiful lovers have passed, The young and eager men that fought for her arrogant hand, And the only voice which endures to mourn for her at the last Is the voice of the lonely land.

FULL MOON

She was wearing the coral taffeta trousers Someone had brought her from Ispahan, And the little gold coat with pomegranate blossoms, And the coral-hafted feather fan; But she ran down a Kentish lane in the moonlight, And skipped in the pool of the moon as she ran.

She cared not a rap for all the big planets, For Betelgeuse or Aldebaran, And all the big planets cared nothing for her, That small impertinent charlatan; But she climbed on a Kentish stile in the moonlight, And laughed at the sky through the sticks of her fan.

SAILING SHIPS

Lying on Downs above the wrinkling bay I with the kestrels shared the cleanly day, The candid day; wind-shaven, brindled turf; Tall cliffs; and long sea-line of marbled surf From Cornish Lizard to the Kentish Nore Lipping the bulwarks of the English shore, While many a lovely ship below sailed by On unknown errand, kempt and leisurely; And after each, oh, after each, my heart Fled forth, as, watching from the Downs apart, I shared with ships good joys and fortunes wide That might befall their beauty and their pride;

Shared first with them the blessed void repose Of oily days at sea, when only rose The porpoise's slow wheel to break the sheen Of satin water indolently green, When for'ard the crew, caps tilted over eyes, Lay heaped on deck; slept; mumbled; smoked; threw dice; The sleepy summer days; the summer nights (The coast pricked out with rings of harbour-lights), The motionless nights, the vaulted nights of June When high in the cordage drifts the entangled moon, And blocks go knocking, and the sheets go slapping, And lazy swells against the sides come lapping; And summer mornings off red Devon rocks, Faint inland bells at dawn and crowing cocks;

Shared swifter days, when headlands into ken Trod grandly; threatened; and were lost again, Old fangs along the battlemented coast; And followed still my ship, when winds were most Night-purified, and, lying steeply over, She fled the wind as flees a girl her lover, Quickened by that pursuit for which she fretted, Her temper by the contest proved and whetted. Wild stars swept overhead; her lofty spars Reared to a ragged heaven sown with stars As leaping out from narrow English ease She faced the roll of long Atlantic seas.

Her captain then was I, I was her crew, The mind that laid her course, the wake she drew, The waves that rose against her bows, the gales,-- Nay, I was more: I was her very sails Rounded before the wind, her eager keel, Her straining mast-heads, her responsive wheel, Her pennon stiffened like a swallow's wing; Yes, I was all her slope and speed and swing, Whether by yellow lemons and blue sea She dawdled through the isles off Thessaly, Or saw the palms like sheaves of scimitars On desert's verge below the sunset bars, Or passed the girdle of the planet where The Southern Cross looks over to the Bear, And strayed, cool Northerner beneath strange skies, Flouting the lure of tropic estuaries, Down that long coast, and saw Magellan's Clouds arise.

And some that beat up Channel homeward-bound I watched, and wondered what they might have found, What alien ports enriched their teeming hold With crates of fruit or bars of unwrought gold? And thought how London clerks with paper-clips Had filed the bills of lading of those ships, Clerks that had never seen the embattled sea, But wrote down jettison and barratry, Perils, Adventures, and the Act of God, Having no vision of such wrath flung broad; Wrote down with weary and accustomed pen The classic dangers of sea-faring men; And wrote 'Restraint of Princes,' and 'the Acts Of the King's Enemies,' as vacant facts, Blind to the ambushed seas, the encircling roar Of angry nations foaming into war.

TRIO

So well she knew them both! yet as she came Into the room, and heard their speech Of tragic meshes knotted with her name, And saw them, foes, but meeting each with each Closer than friends, souls bared through enmity, Beneath their startled gaze she thought that she Broke as the stranger on their conference, And stole abashed from thence.

BITTERNESS

Yes, they were kind exceedingly; most mild Even in indignation, taking by the hand One that obeyed them mutely, as a child Submissive to a law he does not understand.

They would not blame the sins his passion wrought. No, they were tolerant and Christian, saying, 'We Only deplore ...' saying they only sought To help him, strengthen him, to show him love; but he

Following them with unrecalcitrant tread, Quiet, towards their town of kind captivities, Having slain rebellion, ever turned his head Over his shoulder, seeking still with his poor eyes

Her motionless figure on the road. The song Rang still between them, vibrant bell to answering bell, Full of young glory as a bugle; strong; Still brave; now breaking like a sea-bird's cry 'Farewell!'

And they, they whispered kindly to him 'Come! Now we have rescued you. Let your heart heal. Forget! She was your lawless dark familiar.' Dumb, He listened, and they thought him acquiescent. Yet,

(Knowing the while that they were very kind) Remembrance clamoured in him: 'She was wild and free, Magnificent in giving; she was blind To gain or loss, and, loving, loved but me,--but me!

'Valiant she was, and comradely, and bold; High-mettled; all her thoughts a challenge, like gay ships Adventurous, with treasure in the hold. I met her with the lesson put into my lips,

'Spoke reason to her, and she bowed her head, Having no argument, and giving up the strife. She said I should be free. I think she said That, for the asking, she would give me all her life.'

And still they led him onwards, and he still Looked back towards her standing there; and they, content, Cheered him and praised him that he did their will. The gradual distance hid them, and she turned, and went.

EVENING

When little lights in little ports come out, Quivering down through water with the stars, And all the fishing fleet of slender spars Range at their moorings, veer with tide about;

When race of wind is stilled and sails are furled, And underneath our single riding-light The curve of black-ribbed deck gleams palely white, And slumbrous waters pool a slumbrous world;

--Then, and then only, have I thought how sweet Old age might sink upon a windy youth, Quiet beneath the riding-light of truth, Weathered through storms, and gracious in retreat.

* * * * *

EDWARD SHANKS

THE ROCK POOL

This is the sea. In these uneven walls A wave lies prisoned. Far and far away Outward to ocean, as the slow tide falls, Her sisters through the capes that hold the bay Dancing in lovely liberty recede. Yet lovely in captivity she lies, Filled with soft colours, where the wavering weed Moves gently and discloses to our eyes Blurred shining veins of rock and lucent shells Under the light-shot water; and here repose Small quiet fish and dimly glowing bells Of sleeping sea-anemones that close Their tender fronds and will not now awake Till on these rocks the waves returning break.

THE GLADE

We may raise our voices even in this still glade:
Though the colours and shadows and sounds so fleeting seem,
We shall not dispel them. They are not made
Frailly by earth or hands, but immortal in our dream.

We may touch the faint violets with the hands of thought,
Or lay the pale core of the wild arum bare;
And for ever in our minds the white wild cherry is caught,
Cloudy against the sky and melting into air.

This which we have seen is eternally ours,
No others shall tread in the glade which now we see;
Their hands shall not touch the frail tranquil flowers,
Nor their hearts faint in wonder at the wild white tree.

MEMORY

In silence and in darkness memory wakes Her million sheathed buds, and breaks That day-long winter when the light and noise And hard bleak breath of the outward-looking will Made barren her tender soil, when every voice Of her million airy birds was muffled or still.

One bud-sheath breaks: One sudden voice awakes.

What change grew in our hearts, seeing one night That moth-winged ship drifting across the bay, Her broad sail dimly white On cloudy waters and hills as vague as they? Some new thing touched our spirits with distant delight, Half-seen, half-noticed, as we loitered down, Talking in whispers, to the little town, Down from the narrow hill --Talking in whispers, for the air so still Imposed its stillness on our lips, and made A quiet equal with the equal shade That filled the slanting walk. That phantom now Slides with slack canvas and unwhispering prow Through the dark sea that this dark room has made.

Or the night of the closed eyes will turn to day, And all day's colours start out of the gray. The sun burns on the water. The tall hills Push up their shady groves into the sky, And fail and cease where the intense light spills Its parching torrent on the gaunt and dry Rock of the further mountains, whence the snow That softened their harsh edges long is gone, And nothing tempers now The hot flood falling on the barren stone.

O memory, take and keep All that my eyes, your servants, bring you home-- Those other days beneath the low white dome Of smooth-spread clouds that creep As slow and soft as sleep, When shade grows pale and the cypress stands upright, Distinct in the cool light, Rigid and solid as a dark hewn stone; And many another night, That melts in darkness on the narrow quays, And changes every colour and every tone, And soothes the waters to a softer ease, When under constellations coldly bright The homeward sailors sing their way to bed On ships that motionless in harbour float. The circling harbour-lights flash green and red; And, out beyond, a steady travelling boat, Breaking the swell with slow industrious oars, At each stroke pours Pale lighted water from the lifted blade. Now in the painted houses all around Slow-darkening windows call The empty unwatched middle of the night. The tide's few inches rise without a sound. On the black promontory's windless head, The last awake, the fireflies rise and fall And tangle up their dithering skeins of light.

O memory, take and keep
All that my eyes, your servants, bring you home!
Thick through the changing year
The unexpected, rich-charged moments come,
That you twixt wake and sleep
In the lids of the closed eyes shall make appear.

This is life's certain good,
Though in the end it be not good at all
When the dark end arises,
And the stripped, startled spirit must let fall
The amulets that could
Prevail with life's but not death's sad devices.

Then, like a child from whom an older child
Forces its gathered treasures,
Its beads and shells and strings of withered flowers,
Tokens of recent pleasures,
The soul must lose in eyes weeping and wild
Those prints of vanished hours.

WOMAN'S SONG

No more upon my bosom rest thee, Too often have my hands caressed thee, My lips thou knowest well, too well; Lean to my heart no more thine ear My spirit's living truth to hear --It has no more to tell.

In what dark night, in what strange night, Burnt to the butt the candle's light That lit our room so long? I do not know, I thought I knew How love could be both sweet and true: I also thought it strong.

Where has the flame departed? Where, Amid the empty waste of air, Is that which dwelt with us? Was it a fancy? Did we make Only a show for dead love's sake, It being so piteous?

No more against my bosom press thee, Seek no more that my hands caress thee, Leave the sad lips thou hast known so well; If to my heart thou lean thine ear, There grieving thou shalt only hear Vain murmuring of an empty shell.

THE WIND

Blow harder, wind, and drive My blood from hands and face back to the heart. Cry over ridges and down tapering coombs, Carry the flying dapple of the clouds Over the grass, over the soft-grained plough, Stroke with ungentle hand the hill's rough hair Against its usual set. Snatch at the reins in my dead hands and push me Out of my saddle, blow my labouring pony Across the track. You only drive my blood Nearer the heart from face and hands, and plant there, Slowly burning, unseen, but alive and wonderful, A numb, confused joy! This little world's in tumult. Far away The dim waves rise and wrestle with each other And fall down headlong on the beach. And here Quick gusts fly up the funnels of the valleys And meet their raging fellows on the hill-tops, And we are in the midst. This beating heart, enriched with the hands' blood, Stands in the midst and feels the warm joy burn In solitude and silence, while all about The gusts clamour like living, angry birds, And the gorse seems hardly tethered to the ground. Blow louder, wind, about My square-set house, rattle the windows, lift The trap-door to the loft above my head And let it fall, clapping. Yell in the trees, And throw a rotted elm-branch to the ground, Flog the dry trailers of my climbing rose-- Make deep, O wind, my rest!

A LONELY PLACE

The leafless trees, the untidy stack
Last rainy summer raised in haste,
Watch the sky turn from fair to black
And watch the river fill and waste;

But never a footstep comes to trouble
The sea-gulls in the new-sown corn,
Or pigeons rising from late stubble
And flashing lighter as they turn.

Or if a footstep comes, 'tis mine
Sharp on the road or soft on grass:
Silence divides along my line
And shuts behind me as I pass.

No other comes, no labourer
To cut his shaggy truss of hay,
Along the road no traveller,
Day after day, day after day.

And even I, when I come here,
Move softly on, subdued and still,
Lonely as death, though I can hear
Men shouting on the other hill.

Day after day, though no one sees,
The lonely place no different seems;
The trees, the stack, still images
Constant in who can say whose dreams?

* * * * *

J.C. SQUIRE

ELEGY

I vaguely wondered what you were about,
But never wrote when you had gone away;
Assumed you better, quenched the uneasy doubt
You might need faces, or have things to say.
Did I think of you last evening? Dead you lay.
O bitter words of conscience!
I hold the simple message,
And fierce with grief the awakened heart cries out:
'It shall not be to-day;

It is still yesterday; there is time yet!'
Sorrow would strive backward to wrench the sun,
But the sun moves. Our onward course is set,
The wake streams out, the engine pulses run
Droning, a lonelier voyage is begun.
It is all too late for turning,
You are past all mortal signal,
There will be time for nothing but regret
And the memory of things done!

The quiet voice that always counselled best,
The mind that so ironically played
Yet for mere gentleness forebore the jest.
The proud and tender heart that sat in shade
Nor once solicited another's aid,
Yet was so grateful always
For trifles lightly given,
The silences, the melancholy guessed
Sometimes, when your eyes strayed.

But always when you turned, you talked the more.
Through all our literature your way you took
With modest ease; yet would you soonest pore,
Smiling, with most affection in your look,
On the ripe ancient and the curious nook.
Sage travellers, learned printers,
Divines and buried poets,
You knew them all, but never half your lore
Was drawn from any book.

Stories and jests from field and town and port,
And odd neglected scraps of history
From everywhere, for you were of the sort,
Cool and refined, who like rough company:
Carter and barmaid, hawker and bargee,
Wise pensioners and boxers
With whom you drank, and listened
To legends of old revelry and sport
And customs of the sea.

I hear you: yet more clear than all one note,
One sudden hail I still remember best,
That came on sunny days from one afloat
And drew me to the pane in certain quest
Of a long brown face, bare arms and flimsy vest,
In fragments through the branches,
Above the green reflections:
Paused by the willows in your varnished boat
You, with your oars at rest.

Did that come back to you when you were dying?
I think it did: you had much leisure there,
And, with the things we knew, came quietly flying
Memories of things you had seen we knew not where.

You watched again with meditative stare
Places where you had wandered,
Golden and calm in distance:
Voices from all your altering past came sighing
On the soft Hampshire air.

For there you sat a hundred miles away,
A rug upon your knees, your hands gone frail,
And daily bade your farewell to the day,
A music blent of trees and clouds a-sail
And figures in some old neglected tale:
And watched the sunset gathering,
And heard the birdsong fading,
And went within when the last sleepy lay
Passed to a farther vale,

Never complaining, and stepped up to bed
More and more slow, a tall and sunburnt man
Grown bony and bearded, knowing you would be dead
Before the summer, glad your life began
Even thus to end, after so short a span,
And mused a space serenely,
Then fell to easy slumber,
At peace, content. For never again your head
Need make another plan.

Most generous, most gentle, most discreet,
Who left us ignorant to spare us pain:
We went our ways with too forgetful feet
And missed the chance that would not come again,
Leaving with thoughts on pleasure bent, or gain,
Fidelity unattested
And services unrendered:
The ears are closed, the heart has ceased to beat,
And now all proof is vain.

Too late for other gifts, I give you this,
Who took from you so much, so carelessly,
On your far brows a first and phantom kiss,
On your far grave a careful elegy.
For one who loved all life and poetry,
Sorrow in music bleeding,
And friendship's last confession.
But even as I speak that inner hiss
Softly accuses me,

Saying: Those brows are senseless, deaf that tomb,
This is the callous, cold resort of art.
'I give you this.' What do I give? to whom?
Words to the air, and balm to my own heart,
To its old luxurious and commanded smart.
An end to all this tuning,
This cynical masquerading;
What comfort now in that far final gloom
Can any song impart?

O yet I see you dawning from some heaven,
Who would not suffer self-reproach to live
In one to whom your friendship once was given.
I catch a vision, faint and fugitive,
Of a dark face with eyes contemplative,
Deep eyes that smile in silence,
And parted lips that whisper,
'Say nothing more, old friend, of being forgiven,
There is nothing to forgive.'

MEDITATION IN LAMPLIGHT

What deaths men have died, not fighting but impotent. Hung on the wire, between trenches, burning and freezing, Groaning for water with armies of men so near; The fall over cliff, the clutch at the rootless grass, The beach rushing up, the whirling, the turning headfirst; Stiff writhings of strychnine, taken in error or haste, Angina pectoris, shudders of the heart; Failure and crushing by flying weight to the ground, Claws and jaws, the stink of a lion's breath; Swimming, a white belly, a crescent of teeth, Agony, and a spirting shredded limb, And crimson blood staining the green water; And, horror of horrors, the slow grind on the rack, The breaking bones, the stretching and bursting skin, Perpetual fainting and waking to see above The down-thrust mocking faces of cruel men, With the power of mercy, who gloat upon shrieks for mercy.

O pity me, God! O God, make tolerable, Make tolerable the end that awaits for me, And give me courage to die when the time comes, When the time comes as it must, however it comes, That I shrink not nor scream, gripped by the jaws of the vice; For the thought of it turns me sick, and my heart stands still, Knocks and stands still. O fearful, fearful Shadow, Kill me, let me die to escape the terror of thee!

A tap. Come in! Oh, no, I am perfectly well, Only a little tired. Take this one, it's softer. How are things going with you? Will you have some coffee? Well, of course it's trying sometimes, but never mind, It will probably be all right. Carry on, and keep cheerful. I shouldn't, if I were you, meet trouble half-way, It is always best to take everything as it comes.

LATE SNOW

The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling, Interminably passing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences, Came gullies and passed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges.

Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air; They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits, Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare.

Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled, Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding, But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland Passed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding.

O untroubled these moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows, And lovely the film of falling flakes; so wayward and slack; But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings, Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on her back.

* * * * *

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

SEASCAPE

Over that morn hung heaviness, until, Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beating A melancholy staccato on dead metal; Saw the bare-footed watch come running aft; Felt, far below, the sudden telegraph jangle Its harsh metallic challenge, thrice repeated: 'Stand to. Half-speed ahead. Slow. Stop her!' They stopped. The plunging pistons sank like a stopped heart: She held, she swayed, a hulk, a hollow carcass Of blistered iron that the grey-green, waveless, Unruffled tropic waters slapped languidly.

And, in that pause, a sinister whisper ran: Burial at Sea! a Portuguese official ... Poor fever-broken devil from Mozambique: Came on half tight: the doctor calls it heat-stroke. Why do they travel steerage? It's the exchange: So many million 'reis' to the pound! What did he look like? No one ever saw him: Took to his bunk, and drank and drank and died. They're ready! Silence! We clustered to the rail, Curious and half-ashamed. The well-deck spread A comfortable gulf of segregation Between ourselves and death. 'Burial at sea' ... The master holds a black book at arm's length; His droning voice comes for'ard: 'This our brother ... We therefore commit his body to the deep To be turned into corruption' ... The bo's'n whispers Hoarsely behind his hand: 'Now, all together!' The hatch-cover is tilted; a mummy of sailcloth Well ballasted with iron shoots clear of the poop; Falls, like a diving gannet. The green sea closes Its burnished skin; the snaky swell smoothes over ... While he, the man of the steerage, goes down, down, Feet foremost, sliding swiftly down the dim water, Swift to escape Those plunging shapes with pale, empurpled bellies That swirl and veer about him. He goes down Unerringly, as though he knew the way Through green, through gloom, to absolute watery darkness, Where no weed sways nor curious fin quivers: To the sad, sunless deeps where, endlessly, A downward drift of death spreads its wan mantle In the wave-moulded valleys that shall enfold him Till the sea give up its dead.

There shall he lie dispersed amid great riches: Such gold, such arrogance, so many bold hearts! All the sunken armadas pressed to powder By weight of incredible seas! That mingled wrack No livening sun shall visit till the crust Of earth be riven, or this rolling planet Reel on its axis; till the moon-chained tides, Unloosed, deliver up that white Atlantis Whose naked peaks shall bleach above the slaked Thirst of Sahara, fringed by weedy tangles Of Atlas's drown'd cedars, frowning eastward To where the sands of India lie cold, And heap'd Himalaya's a rib of coral Slowly uplifted, grain on grain....

We dream Too long! Another jangle of alarum Stabs at the engines: 'Slow. Half-speed. Full-speed!' The great bearings rumble; the screw churns, frothing Opaque water to downward-swelling plumes Milky as wood-smoke. A shoal of flying-fish Spurts out like animate spray. The warm breeze wakens; And we pass on, forgetting, Toward the solemn horizon of bronzed cumulus That bounds our brooding sea, gathering gloom That, when night falls, will dissipate in flaws Of watery lightning, washing the hot sky, Cleansing all hearts of heat and restlessness, Until, with day, another blue be born.

SCIROCCO

Out of that high pavilion Where the sick, wind-harassed sun In the whiteness of the day Ghostly shone and stole away-- Parched with the utter thirst Of unnumbered Libyan sands, Thou, cloud-gathering spirit, burst Out of arid Africa To the tideless sea, and smote On our pale, moon-cooled lands The hot breath of a lion's throat.

And that furnace-heated breath Blew into my placid dreams The heart of fire from whence it came: Haunt of beauty and of death Where the forest breaks in flame Of flaunting blossom, where the flood Of life pulses hot and stark, Where a wing'd death breeds in mud And tumult of tree-shadowed streams-- Black waters, desolately hurled Through the uttermost, lost, dark, Secret places of the world.

There, O swift and terrible Being, wast thou born; and thence, Like a demon loosed from hell, Stripped with rending wings the dense Echoing forests, till their bowed Plumes of trees like tattered cloud Were toss'd and torn, and cried aloud As the wood were rack'd with pain: Thence thou freed'st thy wings, and soon From the moaning, stricken plain In whorled eagle-soarings rose To melt the sun-defeating snows Of the Mountains of the Moon, To dull their glaciers with fierce breath, To slip the avalanches' rein, To set the laughing torrents free On the tented desert beneath, Where men of thirst must wither and die While the vultures stare in the sun's eye; Where slowly sifting sands are strown On broken cities, whose bleaching bones Whiten in moonlight stone on stone.

Over their pitiful dust thy blast Passed in columns of whirling sand, Leapt the desert and swept the strand Of the cool and quiet sea, Gathering mighty shapes, and proud Phantoms of monstrous, wave-born cloud, And northward drove this panoply Till the sky seemed charging on the land....

Yet, in that plumed helm, the most Of thy hot power was cooled or lost, So that it came to me at length, Faint and tepid and shorn of strength, To shiver an olive-grove that heaves A myriad moonlight-coloured leaves, And in the stone-pine's dome set free A murmur of the middle sea: A puff of warm air in the night So spent by its impetuous flight It scarce invades my pillar'd closes,-- To waft their fragrance from the sweet Buds of my lemon-coloured roses Or strew blown petals at my feet: To kiss my cheek with a warm sigh And in the tired darkness die.

THE QUAILS

(In the south of Italy the peasants put out the eyes of a captured quail so that its cries may attract the flocks of spring migrants into their nets.)

All through the night I have heard the stuttering call of a blind quail, A caged decoy, under a cairn of stones, Crying for light as the quails cry for love.

Other wanderers, Northward from Africa winging on numb pinions, dazed With beating winds and the sobbing of the sea, Hear, in a breath of sweet land-herbage, the call Of the blind one, their sister.... Hearing, their fluttered hearts Take courage, and they wheel in their dark flight, Knowing that their toil is over, dreaming to see The white stubbles of Abruzzi smitten with dawn, And spilt grain lying in the furrows, the squandered gold That is the delight of quails in their spring mating.

Land-scents grow keener, Penetrating the dank and bitter odour of brine That whitens their feathers; Far below, the voice of their sister calls them To plenty, and sweet water, and fulfilment. Over the pallid margin of dim seas breaking, Over the thickening in the darkness that is land, They fly. Their flight is ended. Wings beat no more. Downward they drift, one by one, like dark petals, Slowly, listlessly falling Into the mouth of horror: The nets....

Where men come trampling and crying with bright lanterns, Plucking their weak, entangled claws from the meshes of net, Clutching the soft brown bodies mottled with olive, Crushing the warm, fluttering flesh, in hands stained with blood, Till their quivering hearts are stilled, and the bright eyes, That are like a polished agate, glaze in death.

But the blind one, in her wicker cage, without ceasing Haunts this night of spring with her stuttering call, Knowing nothing of the terror that walks in darkness, Knowing only that some cruelty has stolen the light That is life, and that she must cry until she dies.

I, in the darkness, Heard, and my heart grew sick. But I know that to-morrow A smiling peasant will come with a basket of quails Wrapped in vine-leaves, prodding them with blood-stained fingers, Saying, 'Signore, you must cook them thus, and thus, With a sprig of basil inside them.' And I shall thank him, Carrying the piteous carcases into the kitchen Without a pang, without shame.

'Why should I be ashamed? Why should I rail Against the cruelty of men? Why should I pity, Seeing that there is no cruelty which men can imagine To match the subtle dooms that are wrought against them By blind spores of pestilence: seeing that each of us, Lured by dim hopes, flutters in the toils of death On a cold star that is spinning blindly through space Into the nets of time?'

So cried I, bitterly thrusting pity aside, Closing my lids to sleep. But sleep came not, And pity, with sad eyes, Crept to my side, and told me That the life of all creatures is brave and pityful Whether they be men, with dark thoughts to vex them, Or birds, wheeling in the swift joys of flight, Or brittle ephemerids, spinning to death in the haze Of gold that quivers on dim evening waters; Nor would she be denied. The harshness died Within me, and my heart Was caught and fluttered like the palpitant heart Of a brown quail, flying To the call of her blind sister, And death, in the spring night.

SONG AT SANTA CRUZ

Were there lovers in the lanes of Atlantis: Meeting lips and twining fingers In the mild Atlantis springtime? How should I know If there were lovers in the lanes of Atlantis When the dark sea drowned her mountains Many ages ago?

Were there poets in the paths of Atlantis: Eager poets, seeking beauty To adorn the women they worshipped? How can I say If there were poets in the paths of Atlantis? For the waters that drowned her mountains Washed their beauty away.

Were there women in the ways of Atlantis: Foolish women, who loved, as I do, Dreaming that mortal love was deathless? Ask me not now If there were women in the ways of Atlantis: There was no woman in all her mountains Wonderful as thou!

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Some of these lists are incomplete. They include poetical works only.)

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

Interludes and Poems. John Lane. 1908
Mary and the Bramble. ('Out of print'.) 1910
The Sale of St. Thomas. [1] " " 1911
Emblems of Love. John Lane. 1912
Deborah (play). " " 1913
Four Short Plays. Martin Seeker. 1922

MARTIN ARMSTRONG

Exodus and Other Poems. Lynwood and Co. 1912
Thirty New Poems. Chapman and Hall. 1918
The Buzzards. Martin Seeker. 1921

EDMUND BLUNDEN

The Waggoner. Sidgwick and Jackson. 1920
The Shepherd. R. Cobden-Sanderson. 1922

WILLIAM H. DAVIES

The Soul's Destroyer. Jonathan Cape. 1906
New Poems. " " 1907
Nature Poems. " " 1908
Farewell to Poesy. " " 1910
Songs of Joy. " " 1911
Foliage. " " 1913
The Bird of Paradise. Methuen. 1914
Child Lovers. Jonathan Cape. 1916
Collected Poems. " " 1916
Raptures. [2] Beaumont Press. 1918
Forty New Poems. Jonathan Cape. 1918
The Song of Life. " " 1920
The Hour of Magic. " " 1922

WALTER DE LA MARE

Poems. Murray. 1906
The Listeners. Constable. 1912
A Child's Day. " 1912
Peacock Pie. " 1913
Songs of Childhood. (New Edition.) Longmans. 1916
The Sunken Garden. [3] Beaumont Press. 1917
Motley. Constable. 1917
Poems, 1901-1918. " 1920
Flora. Heinemann. 1919
The Veil. Constable. 1921

JOHN DRINKWATER

Poems of Men and Hours. (Out of print.) 1911
Cophetua (play). " " 1911
Poems of Love and Earth. " " 1912
Cromwell, and Other Poems. David Nutt. 1913
Rebellion (play). (Out of-print.) 1914
Swords and Ploughshares. Sidgwick and Jackson. 1915
Olton Pools. " " 1916
Poems, 1908-1914. " " 1917
Tides. Beaumont Press. 1917
Tides (with additions). Sidgwick and Jackson. 1917
Loyalties. Beaumont Press. 1918
Loyalties (with additions). Sidgwick and Jackson. 1918
Abraham Lincoln (Prose Play with Chorus). Sidgwick and Jackson. 1918
Seeds of Time. " " 1921
Selected Poems. " " 1922
Pawns and Cophetua
(Four Poetic Plays).(New Edition.) Sidgwick and Jackson. 1922
Preludes, 1921-1922 (in preparation)

JOHN FREEMAN

Twenty Poems. Gay and Hancock. 1909
Fifty Poems. (New Edition.) Selwyn and Blount. 1916
Stone Trees. " " 1916
Presage of Victory. " " 1916
Memories of Childhood. Morland Press. 1918
Memories, and Other Poems. Selwyn and Blount. 1919
Poems New and Old. " " 1920
Music. " " 1921
Two Poems. " " 1921

WILFRID GIBSON

Stonefolds. Elkin Mathews. 1907
Akra the Slave. " " 1910
Daily Bread. " " 1910
Fires. " " 1913
Borderlands. " " 1914
Thoroughfares. " " 1914
Battle. " " 1915
Friends. " " 1916
Livelihood. Macmillan. 1917
Collected Poems. New York: Macmillan Co. 1917
Whin. Macmillan. 1918
Home. Beaumont Press. 1919
Neighbours. Macmillan. 1920
Krindlesyke (play). " 1922

ROBERT GRAVES

Over the Brazier. Poetry Bookshop. 1916
Fairies and Fusiliers. Heinemann. 1917
Country Sentiment. Martin Seeker. 1919
The Pier-glass. " " 1921
On English Poetry
(Critical work containing new poems) Heinemann. 1922
Whipperginny (in preparation)

RICHARD HUGHES

Gipsy-Night. Golden Cockerel Press. 1922