Chapter D: E. A. Wallace (somerville)

RIVER-POOLS 55 LIFE AND I 56

_ANON_

(_NON-COLL._)

BY PROXY

You will not lure me with your charms
Or win me back again
Because you held me in your arms
And I forgot my pain.

’Twas not for you my spirit yearned
That night of fierce desire;
The flame in which we met and burned
Drew from an alien fire.

I shall not win my lady’s grace,
Her eyes are still and cold;
I may not find a resting-place
Before my life grows old.

One thought alone rejoicing stirs
And shall, when all is done--
That in your arms my soul met hers
And we became as one.

_BASIL BLACKWELL_

(_MERTON_)

AT THE PAUPER ASYLUM

With naked turf-plots three by six in symmetric precision spread
You see, between its walls of red, the graveyard of the lunatics.

No cenotaph or obelisk holds memory in graven speech;
Sole epitaph accorded each a number on a painted disk.

In nameless uniformity, with few to know and none to weep,
While space allows, their freehold keep the men that God has made awry.

And these within their straitened fold, who nothing owned,
were owned of none,
Possess of all beneath the Sun what God and man could not withhold.

So close they lie, a skeleton might give his rotting friend a nudge
And say, “If you or I were judge, we should not moulder here alone.

“Lest we might harm our fellow-men, they prisoned us, and now exhaust,
To speed a cosmic holocaust, the blood and gold they grudged us then.

“The world had seen less misery with us for prince and presbyter,
Who sometimes knew the fools we were, and in our folly could not lie.

“But happier we who lived in scorn, and dying, passed from human thought
Than they whose sophistry has bought the curses of a race unborn.”

_C. BURCHARDT_

(_MAGDALEN_)

COMPLAINT

My love has left me. Let my heart forget
The happy days and moments of our past
That in the future I shall not regret
The worship of a love that could not last.

Make me remember there are things apart
From dreamy love and visionary truth
And teach me to forget how once my heart
Did love with all the tenderness of youth.

Yes, teach me to forget--and how to live
Without the joy of hope. For I have seen
How every single pleasure life can give
Must needs sow seeds of misery between.

No more of love. Since at such heavy cost
It must be bought and even then be lost.

_M. ST. CLARE BYRNE_

(_SOMERVILLE_)

“AND ONE FELL BY THE WAYSIDE ...”

Scholar, and man of letters, and daintily nurtured,
You were one with your peers,
Leaving the half-told story,
Throwing away the dear things of this life-time--
All you found was the steady, silent effort,
Only the toilsome moulding, the shaping the weapon,
None of the keen sword-glory.

Not for you the crown and the consummation,
Not the battle-death, sharp, swift, and kindly;
Only the early plodding on, half blindly,
Only seeing the end by the faith of the spirit,
Only the hardest of all, the preparation,
All the heart-breaking spadework,
Formulas, initiation;
Only the snows of December ...

Under the snow the quiet brown land lies sleeping,
Waiting the breath of Spring--
God will remember.

_J. E. A. CARVER_

(_MAGDALEN_)

EVENING

The children play, and the old folk talk
In the silent village square,
While the wagons jolt, and the belfry’s note
Comes floating through the air.

The white owl hoots from his lofty seat;
In the fields the rabbits play;
The weazel squeaks, and the red fox sneaks
From his lair at close of day.

The final signs of departing day
Burst out in its changing hues,
While the stars pearl out in the azure sky,
And silent fall the dews.

_E. P. CHASE_

(_MAGDALEN_)

ON A BIRTHDAY

Am I a man at last? I feared to think
Not long ago, that I could ever be
Older than twenty-one. Eternity
Is not more vast if one lean o’er its brink
Than are the cool sane draughts of years we drink
After the brilliance and the ecstasy
Of a decisive year. Majority
We hail; past commoner birthdays we slink.

We love all action that is glorious
It matters little whether, in our aim
We seem to fail or are victorious.
But in the lesser things and lesser hours
We must--how can we?--spend our treasured powers
For duties that can never bring us fame.

_WILFRED CHILDE_

(_MAGDALEN_)

SEA FAIRY

All day long the waves wander and the winds cry,
And there are blue stones sparkling by the shores;
But with evening there cometh a silence over the void sky
And the sea is hushed along her coral corridors.

Then the mer-girls fall asleep, their singing is over,
Their golden limbs lie stretched along the sands;
And wearily nods the Sun like a giant lover,
In a blood-red bath of dreams, with lilies in his hands.

On white wings screaming come the elvish gulls
But lo! where a glint of turquoise divides the cliffs,
Where the Halcyon Birds whom the rest of the world thinks fools
Are crossing the Ocean becalmed on their amorous skiffs.

AGE GOTHIQUE DORÉ

TO G. C.

King Richard in his garden walks royal,
His mantle green being wrought with scarlet flowers,
His hand holding a coloured book of hours.
His coat all gold, gilden his feet withal.

King Richard walks in his garden by Thames-side,
Hearing the bells of high Westminster ring,
And the sound of the chaunt of the monks echoing,
Singing each in his stall to God Crucified.

Golden the sun descends beyond Thames-water,
Golden flash out London steeples and spires,
Their vanes burn and turn in the day’s last fires.

About the King the flowers of the garden fade,
And in star-light he walks on, yet lonelier,
His heart being filled with the peace of the Mother Maid.

ROSA INNOCENS

O young fresh rose, O tender rose,
O rose so young, so newly born,
Whose petals fair do now unclose
To the radiant kisses of the air,
And the shell-soft lips of the morn,
To the heavens holy and bare!
Lovely, young, fresh rose,
Frail-framed and lapped in dew,
O born like a virgin anew
After a time of bale and scorn,
Storm-wind shattering the boughs
Of the tall trees turn by turn:
But thou art still abiding
Amid the slender veins of thy house,
Like an immaculate lady,
Very beautiful and causing the eyes of the beholders
To weep strange tears of joy!

_GERALD H. CROW_

(_HERTFORD_)

TRENCH VISION

A great bee pottered round the room
And gossipped like a child to itself,
Investigating bloom by bloom
The lilac on the window-shelf.

Outside among the garden beds
The wind went like a laughing boy,
And caught the poppies by the heads,
And chased the honey-bees for joy.

The slanting patch of sunlight crept
Along the floor, across the wall,
And I was there and laughed and wept,
And laughed again to see it all.

MADHOUSE GARDEN

Aloof he heareth yet the vulgar urge
And throng his realm, and groweth glad of bars.
It is a gentle kingly thaumaturge
Hath made a net of little silver stars,
And snared contentment, that great golden carp,
The moon contentment, that shall never die,
And charmeth him upon a tender harp,
And hath him in a net of lazuli.
Thus I shall hear you crying presently,
And shall look forth with questioning dream-dimmed eyes
Upon your turmoil and perplexity,
Out of whatever hell or paradise
The maker of nets is come to, bye and bye;
And shall not understand or sympathize.

_G. D. DESMOND_

(_SOMERVILLE_)

HOME-COMING

I come back to my garment of hills
Now my soul is laid bare.
For I gave him my lips and my limbs
And my hands, and long hair--
I gave him all things that were mine,
This my garment of clay.
So have need of my garment of hills,
To hide me away--

O high hills, O loved hills, O hills
That are healing and strength,
I have grown to your measure at last,
I can wear you at length.

I have loved, so my soul is upgrown,
Adult in its nakedness
And I, as the naked, cry.

* * * * *

And the wild, kind hills are my dress.

AGE

I think that I am old. Silent I am with sorrow
At the beauteous sky that holds the new morrow.
I think that I am old. The lark sings words to me,
Who erst sung but Music. And in the ancient sea,
I can see old colours that I have seen elsewhere....
Purple orchids hurt me: and everything that’s fair--
Buttercups and distance and smoke, and people’s bodies.
O, I cannot get away from the places where my God is.
Laughter is a thing to strain and angle for,
My heart is quick and shrinking and pains me at its core.
I am older, older, than the Earth--O, I am old.
If I should be older, colder, than the stars, far off and cold?...
Once I danced and sang and capered on the grass
At the cool close of day, when shadows creep and pass.
When shadows link, and lengthen, and slowly become--nought.
Light flies, and shadow dies without its sustenance.
And stars shine out most silently, like jewels quietly wrought.
Not even then I ceased, nor paused upon my dance.
Now, I am struck and smitten with beauty’s poignancy.
Now, I am hurt with wonder, closed in from ecstasy.
No ecstasy is mine. I cannot get away.
Every way I turn--myself. By night, by day,
My face, my soul, my body, the people that I know--
Ah, no more free fashioning of worlds that gleam and go.

* * * * *

I have grown to be my own world, my world with heart and pain
And he that has found himself can be never lost again.
And he that is quite awake cannot dream his dreams again.

_E. C. DICKINSON_

(_NON.-COLL._)

A TAVERN LILT

TO W. W.

I do not know more wonderful respite
Than to sit within the Inns of swinkèd lords
With a mate upon the left hand and the right
And tankards of good ale upon the boards.

My lads, the World for us when we’re in yoke--
To Hell and through to Heaven twice a day;
While Lancashire’s a splendid land for folk
Who’d woo a lass or taste a knuckled fray.

And when we’re free, with Freedom’s cap fast on,
How shall we bend new lives to jollity?
What songs our Will and Tom would you have won
Making the home-thatch rich for you and me?

Our Will, you’re young--the lathe you scorn to turn--
And sorrow life is not all Wigan Fair;
While I’d seek luck beside a gipsy’s burn
With a brace of whippets for a rabbits snare.

And you, Tom, you--what would you draw for prize?
A quickened pulse for the lass within your arms--
With her to walk i’ the lanes at the moon’s rise,
By the downland’s edge and over the sleeping farms.

My mates, you’re English and o’ the very best--
With no mean thought i’ the length or breadth o’ you:
Not Galahads, but yet to stand confessed
With finest hearts as ever heroes knew.

Because o’ simple, wide, and proudest worth
As English soil may give to English rule.
My head is bared before your richened birth,
My hand grips yours in cider-time and Yule!

And so again--more wonderful respite
I know not in the Inns of swinkèd lords,
With you upon my left hand and my right
And plenty of good ale upon the boards!

A health, a health, my lads, for very joy!
With such as you beside for love and life
We can with ease Dame Sorrowful destroy;
E’en toast the maid who will not be my wife!

_T. W. EARP_

(_EXETER_)

OUR LADY OF LIGHT

On those eternal peaks of thought,
Where her bright crystal towers shine,
The many precious treasures brought
Seem its clear walls to incarnadine.

For all the varied colours heaped
There mingle in one general flush,
As through that lovely place there leaped
The rose-leaf burnish of a blush.

The golden arrowheads of wit,
The laughters of refinèd sense,
Diamond of sorrows infinite,
Calm, open looks of innocence,

And rubies, lovers’ burning hearts--
With these she decks her diadem,
Transmuting, by her learnèd arts,
Each to its own peculiar gem.

The jostling, crowded jewels show
In sparkling piles where colours dance,
And with angelic rosy glow
The ramparts of her palace glance.

And there she busied is, alone,
To make of beauty beauties fresh,
Or, seated queenly on her throne,
Weaves fate into a glittering mesh.

For every soul she gazes through
And sees its deepest-hid desires,
As though we were but drops of dew,
Transparent, lit by alien fires.

This one she chooses; it is clear
And burns with an intenser flame;
But that, for a long age’s year,
Leaves to the darkness whence it came.

While time itself grows weary, she
Still solitary sits to weave,
Until that last eternity
When all are taken, none to leave.

Then in her magic tissue hapt,
The new-clothed, fragrant earth shall run
In visionary radiance wrapped,
A dazzling sister to the sun,
And so Our Lady’s work be done.

_E. F. A. GEACH_

(_HOME STUDENT_)

ROMANCE

“_J’étais comme un autre Jason allant à la conquête de la
toison d’or_.” (MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN).

Round the next corner and in the next street
Adventure lies in wait for you.
Oh, who can tell what you may meet
Round the next corner and in the next street!
Could life be anything but sweet
When all is hazardous and new
Round the next corner and in the next street?
Adventure lies in wait for you.

RETROSPECT

Now I have fallen out of love
A year or two, I hold review
Of all the things I used to do,
Turning with fingers rational
The closed leaves of my passional.
And I am quite amazed, by Jove!
Wholly incredulous I smile--
So hard it is to reconcile
With this, my mere immediate me
The other self I used to be
You with the you that once was you--
Now I have fallen out of love
A year or two.

_E. F. A. GEACH_ (_HOME STUDENT_)

_D. E. A. WALLACE_ (_SOMERVILLE_)

BALLADE OF LADIES WHO DIED FOR LOVE

Ladies, why did ye all in vain
Seek death to end your misery?
Why did ye not forget your pain
In new loves and new ecstasy?
Ophelia racked with phantasy,
And Sigismunda, sick with rue--
Ladies, why did ye choose to die
When all the world was made for you?

Wild Phœdra by thy passion slain,
Œnone, nymph of Thessaly,
Dido and lily-white Elaine,
O Queen who died for Antony,
Sappho and all thy poesy,
Juliet to thy dead love true--
Ladies, why did ye choose to die
When all the world was made for you?

Fair Margaret distraught and fain
Beside thy phantom love to lie,
And Isabella who didst wane
Over thy pot of porphyry,
Aude and Isolde, tell me why,
Your lovers direly stricken thro’,
You chose by those same swords to die,
When all the world was made for you?

ENVOY:

Love’s happiness had passed you by,
But there were other things to do.
Ladies, why did ye choose to die,
When all the world was made for you?

_K. GIBBERD_

(_ST. HILDA’S HALL_)

WHEN I AM OLD

I often think that when I’m old and grey,
Mechanically living through each day,
That when like all the rest I’ve found my groove
With little room for heart or mind to move,
But just enough to eat and work and dress;
And keep a failing temper more or less--
In tired sleep I’ll sometimes creep away
Back down the years to some old Oxford way.

And on this daisied lawn again I’ll lie,
And listen while the river folk go by;
And through the trees I’ll sometimes see the flash
Of punters’ poles and hear the rhythmic splash
Of oars; and over there again I’ll see
The petalled path beneath the cherry-tree,
And love the hawthorn scent, the cuckoo’s cry,
And Magdalen chiming while the spring runs by.

And you’ll be there, dear phantom friend, and you,
And you familiar faces that I knew
So well; and toward the ending of the day
We’ll sit and talk--the old accustomed way,
Till in the mutual calm we’ll see unfurled
The immeasurable vastness of the world
And I shall dream of all that I will do
With Life--and so will you, and you and you.

_RUSSELL GREEN_

(_QUEEN’S_)

FAITH

When a foam of snow is hurled
Under the bare black trees,
And rain is on the seas,
And winter on the world,
Yet, when I think of her,
I know where summer is.

When friends to-day forget
Ardours of yesterday,
And to-morrow turn away
As if we never met,
Yet, when I think of her,
I know where constancy is.

HILLS

As I go inland
Lo! my heart drooping
As a bird’s in the grove when the shadow falls swooping
Of the hawk’s wing down from a cloudless sky.

For the hills creep together,
Murmuring, conspiring;
Solitude, poverty, sorrow desiring
For men that are born to dream and to die.

A prison land-locked,
A grave for the living,
And the ancient warders unsleeping, unforgiving,
Cordon after cordon, massing behind me.
I am in peril. I have left the sea.

_REGINALD HARRIS_

(_C. C. C._)

SONG

“_My heart was blithe at morning._”

My heart was blithe at morning,
For he was by my side,
And through the woods together
We wandered far and wide.

My heart was gay at noon-tide
Together on the lea
We lay, and heard the murm’ring
Of many a busy bee.

My heart was sad at even,
For in the cold stars’ wake,
I laid him in the dark, dark grave
And, oh, my heart would break!

FRAGMENT FROM THE “LAMENT FOR BION,” OF MOSCHUS

Raise high, Sicilian Muses,
Raise high the mournful cry,
The mallows in the woodlands
Whene’er they fade and die,
And the dill, and the green parsley,
When they grow wan and sere,
Live on again, though dead a while,
And flower another year.

But we, the great, the noble men,
The mighty, and the wise,
Whene’er our term of life is past,
And our frail body dies,
Lie down for ever, evermore
Beneath earth’s hollow deep,
And undisturbed for ever
Lie low in death’s long sleep.

_MERCY HARVEY_

(_ST. HILDA’S HALL_)

SONG

Oh! who hath seen Twilight the solemn-eyed?
When the earth with a weary sigh
Turns unto her, as a widowed bride,
With the light all gone from the sky.
She walketh in solitariness,
Where still, shadowy waters gleam,
But her grey eyes are none the less
As if full of a troubled dream.

_H. C. HARWOOD_

(_BALLIOL_)

INCOMPATIBILITY

There shall be no more sorrow and no more pain.
Go you to your anger and I to my books again.
You loved me, but never have liked me, the issue was plain,
Woman, if you be woman, you live too late,
Never the man was suckled to be your mate,
Wed with a god and break him in battle with fate.
You are truth, and the world is illusion; faith, it is doubt.
It wraps its disaster in darkness, and you shine out;
And the liquor that drugs to endurance is not for your drought.
Pass on to the waste and the fell! I stay, and forget
Your breasts and your hair and your laughter like suns that are set.
Despise me, forgive me, but leave me. I love you yet.

DEDICATION, OF AN UNWRITTEN MASTERPIECE, TO A WOMAN AS YET UNKNOWN

If I have laboured seven years,
It was not for your heart.
Mine was the better part
And hope is bright amid the vapourous fears.
You are too close to me to need
The idle compliment
That it was my intent
To build your name above the ages’ greed.
We are comrade adventurers;
Here is my challenge hurled
Against the conspired world;
You will have little time for flatterers,
An equal combatant ... Or so,
While in the dark I groped
Vainly perhaps, I hoped,
And, when at length we meet and love, shall know.

_LUISA HEWITT_

(_HOME STUDENT_)

You lit your cigarette from mine,
And each increased the other’s glow
Till the blue clouds began to blow
And two red stars began to shine.

Who knows, if then our lips had met,
A greater fire we might have fanned
Whose fragrant smoke had filled the land,
But left us ashes and regret.

AVE ATQUE VALE

Zeus! whom Prometheus first defied and failed to quell,
Once, only once I call on you that cannot hear;
Titans and monstrous Forms inspiring these with fear;
Heroes enthroned in Heaven, of whom their children tell;
Pan of the forest, fauns and dryads of the dell;
Chryselephantine gods to Art and Athens dear,
Protectors of the deme, the spindle and the spear,--
Once, only once I give you greeting and--farewell.

Proud-vested charioteers of punctual sun and moon,
Racing and wrestling in your diverse course divine,
Ye stars of peace and war, ye rivers of the sea,
Greeting! from one who will forget your name right soon;
Farewell! the while I pass, and nevermore repine
The Perfect God in Man alone constraining me.

_R. M. HEWITT_

(_KEBLE_)

ITER PERSICUM

When I rode out of Ispahan
A thousand years ago,
My horse’s hoofs were shod with gold,
My turban rolled with gems untold,
And the people louted low.

My poet rode along with me
And sang of old Irán,
Of Rustem and of Rudabeh,
And whiled away the summer day
As only poets can.

But now I march the Persian road
With the devil of a pack;
The jackals howl as we go by,
And the fellows sigh and curse and cry,
And my clothes are like a sack.

And the palaces of Ispahan
Are full of owls and bats,
And the truest poet that ever I knew,
Whose roses grew in the Syrian dew,
Lies dead at Davos Platz.

GAUDIUM IN COELO

I dreamed that I was dead, and after
My soul had passed its mortal bars
I caught an echo of rolling laughter
Across the intervening stars.

And all my fear was changed to wonder,
I knew the rapture of the blest;
To hear the immortal sons of thunder
Applaud each day the immortal jest.

_E. E. ST. L. HILL_

(_KEBLE_)

PARTING

The sky illumed by evening’s magic light
Reflected in the lake seems opal blue.
The autumn sun glows with a radiance bright
That gives to everything an orange hue.
The evening of the year draws on to night.

No sound of arms within this hallowed place
Comes to disturb us with the thought of strife.
Unhindered I may gaze upon your face,
My jewel of priceless worth--my Love--my Life--
Forgetting I must leave you for a space.

The woods around us, clothed in sombre gold,
Robed for the great Death Pageant of the year,
Grow dark. I strain you to my breast and hold
You there, whispering in your ear
Stories of love you know ere they are told.

Now I must go. But, when the blue-bells make
The woods a carpet azure as the sky,
Once more my darling in my arms I’ll take,
Once more we’ll be together--you and I--
And dream our dreams again and never wake.

_ALDOUS HUXLEY_

(_BALLIOL_)

TWO SONGS

I

Thick-flowered is the trellis
That hides our joys
From prying eyes of malice
And all annoys,
And we lie rosily bowered.

Through the long afternoons
And evenings endlessly
Drawn out, when summer swoons
In perfume windlessly,
Sounds our light laughter,

With whispered words between
And silent kisses.
None but the flowers have seen
Our white caresses--
Flowers and the bright-eyed birds.

II

Men of a certain age
Grow sad remembering
Their youth’s libertinage,
Drinking and chambering.

She, whom devotedly
Once they solicited,
Proves all too bloatedly
Gross when revisited

Twenty years after,
Sordid years,
Oh, bitter laughter
And bitter tears!

SONG OF POPLARS

Shepherd, to yon tall poplars tune your flute:
Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill,
The slow blue rumour of the hill;
Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold,
And the great sky be mute.

Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold
Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind,
In airy leafage of the mind,
Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales
That fade not nor grow old.

“Poplars and fountains and you cypress spires
Springing in dark and rusty flame,
Seek you aught that hath a name?
Or say, say: Are you all an upward agony
Of undefined desires?

“Say, are you happy in the golden march
Of sunlight all across the day?
Or do you watch the uncertain way
That leads the withering moon on cloudy stairs
Over the heaven’s wide arch?

“Is it towards sorrow or towards joy you lift
The sharpness of your trembling spears?
Or do you seek, through the grey tears
That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blur,
A deeper, calmer rift?”

So; I have tuned my music to the trees,
And there were voices, dim below
Their shrillness, voices swelling slow
In the blue murmur of hills, and a golden cry
And then vast silences.

_C. R. JURY_

(_MAGDALEN_)

A SONNET TO A FRIEND

Young bright-plumed eagle, prince of pure heaven’s fire,
Inhabitant of glory clothed in light,
Exalt me to this new triumphant pyre
That burns the shades and monsters of our night,
Vouchsafe thy spirit; touch me with the power
So to desire, and so maintain my voice
As thou, who in thy fair ascending hour
Hawk’st in the top of morning at thy joys;
O mortal splendour in immortal beams,
Or deathless ghost, who buildest out of dust
An edifice of temporal flame which seems
Beyond the movement of our change and rust,
Though it must die; O sheer delight above me,
Fountain of undescended love, I love thee.

AN EPITAPH

You who shall come, exalt these childless dead
As your great fathers, from whose fire you are bred;
The dead beget you now, for now they give
Their hope of sons, that you, their sons, may live.

_MARGARET LEIGH_

(_SOMERVILLE_)

TWO EPITAPHS