Chapter D: H. Lawrence

SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD

Between the avenues of cypresses,
All in their scarlet cloaks, and surplices
Of linen, go the chaunting choristers,
The priests in gold and black, the villagers.

And all along the path to the cemetery
The round, dark heads of men crowd silently,
And black-scarved faces of women-folk, wistfully
Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery.

And at the foot of a grave a father stands
With sunken head, and forgotten, folded hands;
And at the foot of a grave a woman kneels
With pale shut face, and neither hears nor feels

The coming of the chaunting choristers
Between the avenues of cypresses,
The silence of the many villagers,
The candle-flames beside the surplices.

FRANCIS LEDWIDGE

_Killed in Action, 1917,_

IN FRANCE

The silence of maternal hills
Is round me in my evening dreams;
And round me music-making rills
And mingling waves of pastoral streams.

Whatever way I turn I find
The path is old unto me still.
The hills of home are in my mind,
And there I wander as I will.

_February 3rd, 1917.

THOMAS MACDONAGH

He shall not hear the bittern cry
In the wild sky, where he is lain,
Nor voices of the sweeter birds
Above the wailing of the rain.

Nor shall he know when loud March blows
Thro' slanting snows her fanfare shrill,
Blowing to flame the golden cup
Of many an upset daffodil.

But when the Dark Cow leaves the moor,
And pastures poor with greedy weeds,
Perhaps he'll hear her low at morn
Lifting her horn in pleasant meads.

IN SEPTEMBER

Still are the meadowlands, and still
Ripens the upland com,
And over the brown gradual hill
The moon has dipped a horn.

The voices of the dear unknown
With silent hearts now call,
My rose of youth is overblown
And trembles to the fall.

My song forsakes me like the birds
That leave the rain and grey,
I hear the music of the words
My lute can never say.

ROSE MACAULAY

TRINITY SUNDAY

As I walked in Petty Cury on Trinity Day,
While the cuckoos in the fields did shout,
Right through the city stole the breath of the may,
And the scarlet doctors all about

Lifted up their heads to snuff at the breeze,
And forgot they were bound for great St. Mary's
To listen to a sermon from the Master of Caius,
And "How balmy," they said, "the air is!"

And balmy it was; and the sweet bells rocking
Shook it till it rent in two
And fell, a torn veil; and like maniacs mocking
The wild things from without passed through.

Wild wet things that swam in King's Parade
The days it was a marshy fen,
Through the rent veil they did sprawl and wade
Blind bog-beasts and Ugrian men.

And the city was not. (For cities are wrought
Of the stuff of the world's live brain.
Cities are thin veils, woven of thought,
And thought, breaking, rends them in twain.)

And the fens were not. (For fens are dreams
Dreamt by a race long dead;
And the earth is naught, and the sun but seems:
And so those who know have said.)

So veil beyond veil inimitably lifted:
And I saw the world's naked face,
Before, reeling and baffled and blind, I drifted
Back within the bounds of space.

***

I have forgot the unforgettable.
All of honey and milk the air is.
God send I do forget.... The merry winds swell
In the scarlet gowns bound for St. Mary's.

THOMAS MACDONAGH

_Born 1878._

_Executed after Easter Week Rising, 1916._

INSCRIPTION ON A RUIN

I stood beside the postern here,
High up above the trampling sea,
In shadow, shrinking from the spear
Of light, not daring hence to flee.

The moon beyond the western cliff
Had passed, and let the shadow fall,
Across the water to the skiff
That came on to the castle wall.

I heard below murmur of words
Not loud, the splash upon the strand,
And the long cry of darkling birds.
The ivory horn fell from my hand.

THE NIGHT HUNT

In the morning, in the dark,
When the stars begin to blunt,
By the wall of Barn a Park
Dogs I heard and saw them hunt;
All the parish dogs were there,
All the dogs for miles around,
Teeming up behind a hare,
In the dark, without a sound.

How I heard I scarce can tell--
'Twas a patter in the grass--
And I did not see them well
Come across the dark and pass;
Yet I saw them and I knew
Spearman's dog and Spellman's dog
And, beside my own dog too,
Leamy's from the Island Bog.

In the morning when the sun
Burnished all the green to gorse,
I went out to take a run
Round the bog upon my horse;
And my dog that had been sleeping
In the heat beside the door
Left his yawning and went leaping
On a hundred yards before.

Through the village street we passed--
Not a dog there raised a snout--
Through the street and out at last
On the white bog road and out
Over Barna Park full pace,
Over to the silver stream,
Horse and dog in happy race,
Rider between thought and dream.

By the stream, at Leamy's house,
Lay a dog--my pace I curbed--
But our coming did not rouse
Him from drowsing undisturbed;
And my dog, as unaware
Of the other, dropped beside
And went running by me there
With my horse's slackened stride.

Yet by something, by a twitch
Of the sleeper's eye, a look
From the runner, something which
Little chords of feeling shook,
I was conscious that a thought
Shuddered through the silent deep
Of a secret--I had caught
Something I had known in sleep.

JOHN MASEFIELD