Chapter VIII

When you are old and dancing shadows play
Around the sky-blown laughter in your eyes
Shall I, unworthy of your new disguise,
Forget the sacrament and go away?
Shall I adore, like sorrowed men to-day,
The child who gurgled in first ecstasies
At oxen (Mary said) that mooed surprise
And snuffed with wondering muzzles in the hay?

O leave the past--the living world is mine
Warm, passionate, and breathing. Even so
Shall Life in after years make Earth divine
And fire shall burn as long as embers glow.
But he who babbled to the wondering kine
Is dead, long dead, two thousand years ago.

KEATS

Touch me, O Lord, and let my sonnet ring
With echoes. Now his words of crowned belief
In raging hours of pain and suffering
Too high for praise, too terrible for grief,
Ring loud and clear. Last night his chariot rolled
And I beheld him urge amid the stars
Cloud-fashioned steeds of snow moon-aureoled,
Himself a charioteer equipped for wars.

Faster and faster--men of Blood and Pain
Opposed in vast battalions, but he
Rolled back their army to the dark again
And triumphed while he sang exultingly
As now he sings. Boy of the glowing brain,
Dear Keats your name is Paradise to me!

MEETING HER IN THE STREET

She’s coming down the road! You know
Those laughter-woken eyes?
I beckon at the stars--But O
If she should recognise:

Nearer and nearer yet she trod
Till (mad blood-dancing joy)
Down from the planet-fields of God
She nodded, “Hullo, Boy.”

HER HOMAGE

Silence outlives the argument of kings
And best is dumb applause. Behold, she moves:
No soft-winged owlets blink, no cricket sings,
Before she greets the murmuring world she loves.
Now twirling parachutes of sycamore
Hang waiting, and the rippled trout-rings die,
The murmur round a jasmine honey store
Is still--a linnet falters suddenly.

From out the reeds an awe-struck otter peers
As eerie quiet speeds from bush to bush:
High Summer stands on tip-toe as She nears
The woods, and magic numbs the missel-thrush:
Above still grasses prick the listening ears
Of rabbits, and a squirrel whispers “Hush!”

REACTION

Afraid, afraid, I sought the kindly night
In fear that mocking fools should scrutinise
The beauty I discovered in men’s eyes,
And mock me as a dreaming anchorite.
For long in fear I sinned against the light
And shrouded Poetry with vain disguise;
Before I sang, unconscious as the skies,
Self-chanting songs to me supreme delight.

But now, O littlest of all little minds,
High-browed, alone, aloof, you little know
How like you are to Brown, who lifts the blinds
Of his suburban villa, just to show
That he alone is up, but always finds
The neighbourhood awoke an hour ago!

APRIL

How much are you achieving
O April day,
By orchard looms a-weaving
All apple-gay?
Tie on your cherry blossom, clothe your squills
Madonna-blue, and give your daffodils
Their collars of pale straw, and come away,
Your rain-awoken hills
Shall welcome May.

What is behind your weeping
O April tears?
Your lilac plumes are sweeping,
Your silken spears
Of chestnut bristle in the changing sky
Whilst herded clouds foregather, ’neath the high
Storm-loud arena’s thundering charioteers:
And beckoned silently
The swallow nears.

MAY-JUNE

Now is the swaddling husk of Winter shed,
And waking Summer, robed in windy showers,
Is heralded from silvered aspen towers
And orchards in high blossom garlanded.
Now sunlight, in the plumed laburnum flowers
And purple lilac, trembles overhead;
And bees a-drone in field and flower bed
Make clamorous the trade of teeming hours.

Now the sweet-pea, all honey-laden, shows
Full-swollen sails, her mooring ropes of green
Encircle twigs. And soon the primrose queen
Lights her pale lamps of Evening ’mid the glows
Of brazen flower-suns, that burn between
The yawning honeysuckle and the rose.

THE STROLLING SINGER

Sun-bathed in Summer peace the village lay
That afternoon. Along the happy street
Milk-fragrant kine, and wagons high with hay
Came lumbering. The fields were loud with bees
And drowsy with the wind-stirred meadowsweet.
From bowing trees
Fell chatter, and above the garden wall
Wide sunflowers beamed at spearing hollyhocks
That dared the wind, and scorned the clustered stocks,
And bore their laddered blooms high over all.

Here amid Summer murmur and delight
The strolling singer came. The people heard
Stray snatches of a song--a laugh--a word,
And gossiping in groups of two or three
Stood all amazed. For no one came in sight,
Only the wind was laden drowsily
With mellow sounds that slowly growing strong
At last became a song:--

“Bend down, the marsh and meadow holds
Pale yellow pimpernels,
And sun-begotten marigolds,
Thyme, orchis, asphodels,
And borage born of ocean blue,
Plumed armoured thistles, fever-few,
Sea-campion globed, and clinging dew
In giant flower-bells.

“Bend down--an ebon beetle prowls,
And there a swinging bee
Drinks honey from the laden cowls
That clothe the foxglove tree.
And giant peacock butterflies
Light meadowsweet with sudden eyes,
And through the tangled grasses rise
Lucerne and timothy.”

Louder and louder grew the voice, until
A figure specked the heaven-touching hill,
And nearer, nearer, still ...
The villagers in mingled fear and awe
Stood round on tiptoe waiting. Soon they saw
A little sylvan man with beckoning eyes
And limbs of lithe expression. Woven flowers
And grasses, splashed with rainbow-tinted showers,
And jewelled with alluring butterflies,
Enwrapped him. Russet face, clear-featured, gay
As pebble-rumpled streams, and tousled hair
Sun-dyed and naked. His limbs were bronzed and bare,
And sprang, it seemed, from the wild interplay
Of flower-woven garb. Around his waist
Twined traveller’s-joy and honeysuckle, sweet
And freshly dewed, and on his lissom feet
Were pointed shoes of silver beech rush-laced.

The village gazed in silence, till a child
Began:--“Who are you, funny man?
Your face seems to be telling truth, your eyes
Are just the colour of blue butterflies,
O tell us who you are?”
The stranger smiled,
And turned his face that bore the wistful, far,
Strange wonder-look of one whose dreams come true,
Who delves in darkened quarries of his brain
Unhoped-for gold, and changes old to new
As Spring rejuvenates the earth again.
Of one who plays Narcissus in Life’s pool
And sees an image strangely beautiful ...
Then suddenly they heard him cry:--

“Come buy,
I own the laughing earth.
And all my chanted words are deeds;
I follow where my fancy leads,
And sell my songs for mirth.
What will you buy?

“Speak hurriedly, and choose your song,
The poplar’s shadow creeps along,
Search hurriedly the Earth and Sky,
What will you buy?”

Meanwhile a crowd had gathered, in a ring;
The butcher, grocer, postman, parson, clerk,
And all the village, open-mouthed and stark,
Stood mutely marvelling;
And children clamoured round him with large eyes
And pelted him for songs, like countless hail,
With pleadings, shouts and cries:--

Sing us a song of Paradise,
Of railway engines, fawns,
Of stolen queens in guarded towers,
Of sprites and leprechauns”--
O HUSH! All were dumb--
“Boy in blue smock, sucking your thumb,
With hair like a tangled chrysanthemum,
What would you like me to sing, Ocean-eyed?”

Loud the boy’s answer rang,
“_I_ want a song of flowers!”
And this is the song he sang:

“Sisters of mercy are Cyclamen,
Snowdrops and Arums too,
But Primulus, Violets, Stocks, Mignonette,
Crocus aflame, and the Never Forget,
Are chaster than chastity too.
Now sulphur Laburnum and Lilac, adieu,
Good-bye April children to you!
For who
Will climb up the flowers of my Hollyhock towers
With butterfly steeple-jacks blue?

But, climber, beware!
Of Love-in-a-mist in a tangle of hair,
Of thistly Teazles, and winged Sweet-Peas
With tentacle tendrils that strangle with ease,
Of butterfly Orchis a-clamour for bees.
For Dragon may Snap you, and Sundew may trap you,
Before you have started, before you have parted
The grass at the foot of my Hollyhock trees.
But think of the view
Of the whole garden side!
We’ll charter a dragon-fly homeward, and ride
Down to our Rosemary, Marjoram, Rue,
Lavender, London Pride.”

All watched him, held, bewitched, and with him clung
To the green tops of slowly swaying towers,
Where bees had scattered pollen-dust, that hung
Above the teeming nectaries of flowers,
And all again were young.
But now the poplars cast their phantom bars
In latticed shadows; now a scarf unfurled,
Like parrot-tulip petals hued and torn,
Across the West was flung.
And now, before the twilight bares the stars,
Ere jewelled night is born,
All silently the Singer left the world.
Beyond the hill he passed,
But singing all the while; first loud and strong.
Then fainter, till at last
Came only jumbled echoes of a song:--

“Bend down--the marsh and meadow holds
Pale yellow Pimpernels,
And sun-begotten Marigolds
Thyme, Orchis, Asphodels” ...
(Fainter and fainter it grew
Gentle as ebbing tide)
“Butterfly steeple-jacks blue” ...
(Fainter it grew
And died)
Echoing “Rosemary, Marjoram, Rue,
Lavender, London Pride”

THE FRENCH MOTHER TO HER UNBORN CHILD

Beat quietly, hid heart.
Build, little limbs, and brain divinely wrought,
Grow, grow in peace. Around, the pangs of war
Are powerless to cripple thee or mar
Thy sure perfection. But, if Death besought
For thee, our tethered souls could never part:
Beat quietly, hid heart.
Form, primal thought,
Close-furled and sheltered as the budding Spring
Unknown, unknowing, yet divinely planned.
But stay awhile, for sounds of battle ring.
Stir, little hand
Unrealized--I count the dragging hours
And yearn to see it clutch at yonder flowers;
To see thy lucent feet and dimpled frame
And gaze at heav’n-snatched eyes and know thy name,
But stay awhile.
For thou art best alone away from Man:
Wait longer, tears unshed and lurking smile
Of joy enshrined where every joy began.
Time hurries as the moments thump along
(Hark, little ears, my heart is beating strong)
Life is aglow, alive, a perfect song.
Around the land is ugly, but apart
I fashion thee in thought. Now hush, for sleep
Is here. Close, eyes unopened, voice unheard,
Be still. Grow on in beauty till day creep ...
Hark to my whispered word--
Beat quietly, hid heart.