Chapter C: H. Sorley

_Born 1895,_
_Killed in Action 1915._

GERMAN RAIN

The heat came down and sapped away my powers.
The laden heat came down and drowned my brain,
Till through the weight of overcoming hours
felt the rain.

Then suddenly I saw what more to see
I never thought: old things renewed, retrieved,
The rain that fell in England fell on me,
And I believed.

ALL THE HILLS AND VALES

All the hills and vales along
Earth is bursting into song,
And the singers are the chaps
Who are going to die perhaps.
O sing, marching men,
Till the valleys ring again.
Give your gladness to earth's keeping,
So be glad, when you are sleeping.

Cast away regret and rue,
Think what you are marching to.
Little live, great pass.
Jesus Christ and Barabbas
Were found the same day.
This died, that went his way.
So sing with joyful breath.
For why, you are going to death.
Teeming earth will surely store
All the gladness that you pour.

Earth that never doubts nor fears,
Earth that knows of death, not tears,
Earth that bore with joyful ease
Hemlock for Socrates,
Earth that blossomed and was glad
'Neath the cross that Christ had,
Shall rejoice and blossom too
When the bullet reaches you.
Wherefore, men marching
On the road to death, sing!
Pour your gladness on earth's head,
So be merry, so be dead.

From the hills and valleys earth
Shouts back the sound of mirth,
Tramp of feet and lilt of song
Ringing all the road along.
All the music of their going,
Ringing swinging glad song-throwing,
Earth will echo still, when foot
Lies numb and voice mute.
On, marching men, on
To the gates of death with song.
Sow your gladness for earth's reaping,
So you may be glad, though sleeping.
Strew your gladness on earth's bed,
So be merry, so be dead.

JAMES STEPHENS

DEIRDRE

Do not let any woman read this verse;
It is for men, and after them their sons
And their sons' sons.

The time comes when our hearts sink utterly;
When we remember Deirdre and her tale,
And that her lips are dust.

Once she did tread the earth: men took her hand;
They looked into her eyes and said their say,
And she replied to them.

More than a thousand years it is since she
Was beautiful: she trod the waving grass;
She saw the clouds.

A thousand years! The grass is still the same,
The clouds as lovely as they were that time
When Deirdre was alive.

But there has never been a woman born
Who was so beautiful, not one so beautiful
Of all the women born.

Let all men go apart and mourn together;
No man can ever love her; not a man
Can ever be her lover.

No man can bend before her: no man say--
What could one say to her? There are no words
That one could say to her!

Now she is but a story that is told
Beside the fire! No man can ever be
The friend of that poor queen.

THE GOAT PATHS

The crooked paths go every way
Upon the hill--they wind about
Through the heather in and out
Of the quiet sunniness.
And there the goats, day after day,
Stray in sunny quietness,
Cropping here and cropping there,
As they pause and turn and pass,
Now a bit of heather spray
Now a mouthful of the grass.

In the deeper sunniness,
In the place where nothing stirs,
Quietly in quietness,
In the quiet of the furze,
For a time they come and lie
Staring on the roving sky.

If you approach they run away,
They leap and stare, away they bound,
With a sudden angry sound,
To the sunny quietude;
Crouching down where nothing stirs
In the silence of the furze,
Crouching down again to brood
In the sunny solitude.

If I were as wise as they
I would stray apart and brood,
I would beat a hidden way
Through the quiet heather spray
To a sunny solitude;
And should you come I'd run away,
I would make an angry sound,
I would stare and turn and bound
To the deeper quietude,
To the place where nothing stirs
In the silence of the furze.

In that airy quietness
I would think as long as they;
Through the quiet sunniness
I would stray away to brood
By a hidden beaten way
In a sunny solitude.

I would think until I found
Something I can never find,
Something lying on the ground,
In the bottom of my mind.

THE FIFTEEN ACRES

I cling and swing
On a branch, or sing
Through the cool, clear hush of
Morning, O:
Or fling my wing
On the air, and bring
To sleepier birds a warning, O:
That the night's in flight,
And the sun's in sight,
And the dew is the grass adorning, O:
And the green leaves swing
As I sing, sing, sing,
Up by the river,
Down the dell,
To the little wee nest,
Where the big tree fell,
So early in the morning, O.

I flit and twit
In the sun for a bit
When his light so bright is shining, O:
Or sit and fit
My plumes, or knit
Straw plaits for the nest's nice lining, O
And she with glee
Shows unto me
Underneath her wings reclining, O:
And I sing that Peg
Has an egg, egg, egg,
Up by the oat-field,
Round the mill
Past the meadow
Down the hill,
So early in the morning, O.

I stoop and swoop
On the air, or loop
Through the trees, and then go soaring, O:
To group with a troop
On the gusty poop
While the wind behind is roaring, O:
I skim and swim
By a cloud's red rim
And up to the azure flooring, O:
And my wide wings drip
As I slip, slip, slip
Down through the rain-drops,
Back where Peg
Broods in the nest
On the little white egg
So early in the morning, O.

EDWARD WYNDHAM TENNANT

_Born 1895._
_Killed in Action 1916._

HOME THOUGHTS IN LAVENTIE

Green gardens in Laventie!
Soldiers only know the street
Where the mud is churned and splashed about
By battle-wending feet;
And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse of grass,
Look for it when you pass.

Beyond the Church whose pitted spire
Seems balanced on a strand
Of swaying stone and tottering brick
Two roofless ruins stand,
And here behind the wreckage where the _back_ wall should have been
We found a garden green.

The grass was never trodden on,
The little path of gravel
Was overgrown with celandine,
No other folk did travel
Along its weedy surface, but the nimble-footed mouse
Running from house to house.

So all among the vivid blades
Of soft and tender grass
We lay, nor heard the limber wheels
That pass and ever pass,
In noisy continuity until their stony rattle
Seems in itself a battle.

At length we rose up from this ease
Of tranquil happy mind,
And searched the garden's little length
A fresh pleasaunce to find;
And there, some yellow daffodils and jasmine hanging high
Did rest the tired eye.

The fairest and most fragrant
Of the many sweets we found,
Was a little bush of Daphne flower
Upon a grassy mound,
And so thick were the blossoms set and so divine the scent
That we were well content.

Hungry for Spring I bent my head,
The perfume fanned my face,
And all my soul was dancing,
In that lovely little place,
Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered towns
Away......upon the Downs.

I saw green banks of daffodil,
Slim poplars in the breeze,
Great tan-brown hares in gusty March
A-couching on the leas;
And meadows with their glittering streams, and silver scurrying dace,
Home--what a perfect place.

_Belgium, March,_ 1916.

EDWARD THOMAS

_Born 1877._
_Killed in Action 1017._

ASPENS

All day and night, save winter, every weather,
Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,
The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.

Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing
Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn
The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing--The
sounds that for these fifty years have been.

The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,
And over lightless pane and footless road,
Empty as sky, with every other sound
Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode.

A silent smithy, a silent inn, not fails
In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,
In tempest or the night of nightingales,
To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.

And it would be the same were no house near.
Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,
A spens must shake their leaves and men may hear
But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.

Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves
We cannot other than an aspen be
That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,
Or so men think who like a different tree.

THE BROOK

Seated once by a brook, watching a child
Chiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled.
Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrush
Not far off in the oak and hazel brush,
Unseen. There was a scent like honeycomb
From mugwort dull. And down upon the dome
Of the stone the cart-horse kicks against so oft
A butterfly alighted. From aloft
He took the heat of the sun, and from below,
On the hot stone he perched contented so,
As if never a cart would pass again
That way; as if I were the last of men
And he the first of insects to have earth
And sun together and to know their worth,
I was divided between him and the gleam,
The motion, and the voices, of the stream,
The waters running frizzled over gravel,
That never vanish and for ever travel.
A grey flycatcher silent on a fence
And I sat as if we had been there since
The horseman and the horse lying beneath
The fir-tree-covered barrow on the heath,
The horseman and the horse with silver shoes,
Galloped the downs last. All that I could lose
I lost. And then the child's voice raised the dead.
"No one's been here before" was what she said
And what I felt, yet never should have found
A word for, while I gathered sight and sound.

THE BRIDGE

I have come a long way to-day:
On a strange bridge alone,
Remembering friends, old friends,
I rest, without smile or moan,
As they remember me without smile or moan.

All are behind, the kind
And the unkind too, no more
To-night than a dream. The stream
Runs softly yet drowns the Past,
The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the Past.

No traveller has rest more blest
Than this moment brief between
Two lives, when the Night's first lights
And shades hide what has never been,
Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or have been.

LIGHTS OUT

I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.

Many a road and track
That, since the dawn's first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travellers
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.

Here love ends,
Despair, ambition ends,
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book
Or face of dearest look
That I would not turn from now
To go into the unknown
I must enter and leave alone
I know not how.

The tall forest towers;
Its cloudy foliage lowers
Ahead, shelf above shelf;
Its silence I hear and obey
That I may lose my way
And myself.

WORDS

Out of us all
That make rhymes,
Will you choose
Sometimes--
As the winds use
A crack in the wall
Or a drain,
Their joy or their pain
To whistle through--
Choose me,
You English words?

I know you:
You are light as dreams,
Tough as oak,
Precious as gold,
As poppies and corn,
Or an old cloak:
Sweet as our birds
To the ear,
As the linnet note
In the heat
Of Midsummer:
Strange as the races
Of dead and unborn:
Strange and sweet
Equally.
And familiar,
To the eye,
As the dearest faces
That a man knows,
And as lost homes are:
But though older far
Than oldest yew,--
As our hills are, old,--
Worn new
Again and again:
Young as our streams
After rain:
And as dear
As the earth which you prove
That we love.

Make me content
With some sweetness
From Wales
Whose nightingales
Have no wings,--
From Wiltshire and Kent
And Herefordshire,
And the villages there,--
From the names, and the things,
No less.
Let me sometimes dance
With you,
Or climb
Or stand perchance
In ecstasy,
Fixed and free
In a rhyme,
As poets do.

TALL NETTLES

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.

This corner of the farmyard I like most:
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.

THE PATH

Running along a bank, a parapet
That saves from the precipitous wood below
The level road, there is a path. It serves
Children for looking down the long smooth steep,
Between the legs of beech and yew, to where
A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women
Content themselves with the road, and what they see
Over the bank, and what the children tell.
The path, winding like silver, trickles on,
Bordered and ever invaded by thinnest moss
That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk
With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain.
The children wear it. They have flattened the bank
On top, and silvered it between the moss
With the current of their feet, year after year.
But the road is houseless, and leads not to school.
To see a child is rare there, and the eye
Has but the road, the wood that overhangs
And underyawns it, and the path that looks
As if it led on to some legendary
Or fancied place where men have wished to go
And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.

SWEDES

They have taken the gable from the roof of clay
On the long swede pile. They have let in the sun
To the white and gold and purple of curled fronds
Unsunned. It is a sight more tender-gorgeous
At the wood-corner where Winter moans and drips
Than when, in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings,
A boy crawls down into a Pharaoh's tomb
And, first of Christian men, beholds the mummy,
God and monkey, chariot and throne and vase,
Blue pottery, alabaster, and gold.

But dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies.
This is a dream of Winter, sweet as Spring.

W. J. TURNER

ROMANCE

When I was but thirteen or so
I went into a golden land,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Took me by the hand.

My father died, my brother too,
They passed like fleeting dreams.
I stood where Popocatapetl
In the sunlight gleams.

I dimly heard the Master's voice
And boys far-off at play,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Had stolen me away.

I walked in a great golden dream
To and fro from school--
Shining Popocatapetl
The dusty streets did rule.

I walked home with a gold dark boy
And never a word I'd say,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Had taken my speech away:

I gazed entranced upon his face
Fairer than any flower--
O shining Popocatapetl
It was thy magic hour:

The houses, people, traffic seemed
Thin fading dreams by day,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
They had stolen my soul away!

THE CAVES OF AUVERGNE

He carved the red deer and the bull
Upon the smooth cave rock,
Returned from war with belly full,
And scarred with many a knock,
He carved the red deer and the bull
Upon the smooth cave rock.

The stars flew by the cave's wide door,
The clouds wild trumpets blew,
Trees rose in wild dreams from the floor,
Flowers with dream faces grew
Up to the sky, and softly hung
Golden and white and blue.

The woman ground her heap of corn,
Her heart a guarded fire;
The wind played in his trembling soul
Like a hand upon a lyre,
The wind drew faintly on the stone
Symbols of his desire:

The red deer of the forest dark,
Whose antlers cut the sky,
That vanishes into the mirk
And like a dream flits by,
And by an arrow slain at last
Is but the wind's dark body.

The bull that stands in marshy lakes
As motionless and still
As a dark rock jutting from a plain
Without a tree or hill;
The bull that is the sign of life,
Its sombre, phallic will.

And from the dead, white eyes of them
The wind springs up anew,
It blows upon the trembling heart,
And bull and deer renew
Their flitting life in the dim past
When that dead Hunter drew.

I sit beside him in the night,
And, fingering his red stone,
I chase through endless forests dark
Seeking that thing unknown,
That which is not red deer or bull,
But which by them was shown:

By those stiff shapes in which he drew
His soul's exalted cry,
When flying down the forest dark
He slew and knew not why,
When he was filled with song, and strength
Flowed to him from the sky.

The wind blows from red deer and bull,
The clouds wild trumpets blare.
Trees rise in wild dreams from the earth,
Flowers with dream faces stare,
_O Hunter, your own shadow stands_
_Within your forest lair!_

ECSTASY

I saw a frieze on whitest marble drawn
Of boys who sought for shells along the shore,
Their white feet shedding pallor in the sea,
The shallow sea, the spring-time sea of green
That faintly creamed against the cold, smooth pebbles.

The air was thin, their limbs were delicate,
The wind had graven their small eager hands
To feel the forests and the dark nights of Asia
Behind the purple bloom of the horizon,
Where sails would float and slowly melt away.

Their naked, pure, and grave, unbroken silence
Filled the soft air as gleaming, limpid water
Fills a spring sky those days when rain is lying
In shattered bright pools on the wind-dried roads,
And their sweet bodies were wind-purified.

One held a shell unto his shell-like ear
And there was music carven in his face,
His eyes half-closed, his lips just breaking open
To catch the lulling, mazy, coralline roar
Of numberless caverns filled with singing seas.

And all of them were hearkening as to singing
Of far off voices thin and delicate,
Voices too fine for any mortal mind
To blow into the whorls of mortal ears--
And yet those sounds flowed from their grave, sweet faces.

And as I looked I heard that delicate music,
And I became as grave, as calm, as still
As those carved boys. I stood upon that shore,
I felt the cool sea dream around my feet,
My eyes were staring at the far horizon:

And the wind came and purified my limbs,
And the stars came and set within my eyes,
And snowy clouds rested upon my shoulders,
And the blue sky shimmered deep within me,
And I sang like a carven pipe of music.

KENT IN WAR

The pebbly brook is cold to-night,
Its water soft as air,
A clear, cold, crystal-bodied wind
Shadowless and bare,
Leaping and running in this world
Where dark-horned cattle stare:

Where dark-horned cattle stare, hoof-firm
On the dark pavements of the sky,
And trees are mummies swathed in sleep,
And small dark hills crowd wearily:
Soft multitudes of snow-grey clouds
Without a sound march by.

Down at the bottom of the road
I smell the woody damp
Of that cold spirit in the grass,
And leave my hill-top camp--
Its long gun pointing in the sky--And
take the Moon for lamp.

I stop beside the bright cold glint
Of that thin spirit of the grass,
So gay it is, so innocent!
I watch its sparkling footsteps pass
Lightly from smooth round stone to stone,
Hid in the dew-hung grass.

My lamp shines in the globes of dew,
And leaps into that crystal wind
Running along the shaken grass
To each dark hole that it can find--
The crystal wind, the Moon my lamp,
Have vanished in a wood that's blind.

High lies my small, my shadowy camp,
Crowded about by small dark hills;
With sudden small white flowers the sky
Above the woods' dark greenness fills;
And hosts of dark-browed, muttering trees
In trance the white Moon stills.

I move among their tall grey forms,
A thin moon-glimmering, wandering Ghost,
Who takes his lantern through the world
In search of life that he has lost,
While watching by that long lean gun
Upon his small hill post.

DEATH

When I am dead a few poor souls shall grieve
As I grieved for my brother long ago.
Scarce did my eyes grow dim,
I had forgotten him;
I was far-off hearing the spring winds blow,
And many summers burned
When, though still reeling with my eyes aflame,
I heard that faded name
Whispered one Spring amid the hurrying world
From which, years gone, he turned.

I looked up at my windows and I saw
The trees, thin spectres sucked forth by the moon.
The air was very still
Above a distant hill;
It was the hour of night's full silver moon.
"O art thou there my brother?" my soul cried;
And all the pale stars down bright rivers wept,
As my heart sadly crept
About the empty hills, bathed in that light
That lapped him when he died.

Ah! it was cold, so cold; do I not know
How dead my heart on that remembered day!
Clear in a far-away place
I see his delicate face
Just as he called me from my solitary play,
Giving into my hands a tiny tree.
We planted it in the dark, blossomless ground
Gravely, without a sound;
Then back I went and left him standing by
His birthday gift to me.

In that far land perchance it quietly grows
Drinking the rain, making a pleasant shade;
Birds in its branches fly
Out of the fathomless sky
Where worlds of circling light arise and fade,
Blindly it quivers in the bright flood of day,
Or drowned in multitudinous shouts of rain
Glooms o'er the dark-veiled plain--Buried
below, the ghost that's in his bones
Dreams in the sodden clay.

And, while he faded, drunk with beauty's eyes
I kissed bright girls and laughed deep in dumb trees,
That stared fixt in the air
Like madmen in despair
Gaped up from earth with the escaping breeze.
I saw earth's exaltation slowly creep
Out of their myriad sky-embracing veins.
I laughed along the lanes,
Meeting Death riding in from the hollow seas
Through black-wreathed woods asleep.

I laughed, I swaggered on the cold, hard ground
Through the grey air trembled a falling wave--
"Thou'rt pale, O Death!" I cried,
Mocking him in my pride;
And passing I dreamed not of that lonely grave,
But of leaf-maidens whose pale, moon-like hands
Above the tree-foam waved in the icy air,
Sweeping with shining hair
Through the green-tinted sky, one moment fled
Out of immortal lands.

One windless Autumn night the Moon came out
In a white sea of cloud, a field of snow;
In darkness shaped of trees,
I sank upon my knees
And watched her shining, from the small wood below--
Faintly Death flickered in an owl's far cry--
We floated soundless in the great gulf of space,
Her light upon my face--Immortal,
shining in that dark wood I knelt
And knew I could not die.

And knew I could not die--O Death did'st thou
Heed my vain glory, standing pale by thy dead?
There is a spirit who grieves
Amid earth's dying leaves;
Was't thou that wept beside my brother's bed?
For I did never mourn nor heed at all
Him passing on his temporal elm-wood bier;
I never shed a tear.
The drooping sky spread grey-winged through my soul,
While stones and earth did fall.

That sound rings down the years--I hear it yet--
All earthly life's a winding funeral--
And though I never wept,
But into the dark coach stept,
Dreaming by night to answer the blood's sweet call,
She who stood there, high breasted, with small wise lips,
And gave me wine to drink and bread to eat,
Has not more steadfast feet,
But fades from my arms as fade from mariners' eyes
The sea's most beauteous ships.

The trees and hills of earth were once as close
As my own brother, they are becoming dreams
And shadows in my eyes;
More dimly lies
Guaya deep in my soul, the coastline gleams
Faintly along the darkening crystalline seas.
Glimmering and lovely still, 'twill one day go;
The surging dark will flow
Over my hopes and joys, and blot out all
Earth's hills and skies and trees.

I shall look up one night and see the Moon
For the last time shining above the hills,
And thou, silent, wilt ride
Over the dark hillside.
'Twill be, perchance, the time of daffodils--
_"How come those bright immortals in the woods?_
_Their joy being young, did'st thou not drag them all_
_Into dark graves ere Fall?"_
Shall life thus haunt me, wondering, as I go
To thy deep solitudes?

There is a figure with a down-turned torch
Carved on a pillar in an olden time,
A calm and lovely boy
Who comes not to destroy
But to lead age back to its golden prime.
Thus did an antique sculptor draw thee, Death,
With smooth and beauteous brow and faint sweet smile,
Nor haggard, gaunt and vile,
And thou perhaps art Him to whom men may
Unvexed, give up their breath.

But in my soul thou sittest like a dream
Among earth's mountains, by her dim-coloured seas;
A wild unearthly Shape
In thy dark-glimmering cape,
Piping a tune of wavering melodies,
Thou sittest, ay, thou sittest at the feast
Of my brief life among earth's bright-wreathed flowers,
Stemming the dancing hours
With sombre gleams until abrupt, thou risest
And all, at once, is ceased.

SOLDIERS IN A SMALL CAMP

There is a camp upon a rounded hill
Where men do sleep more closely to the stars,
And tree-like shapes stand at its entrances,
Beside the small, dark, shadow-soldiery.

Deep in the gloom of days of isolation,
Withdrawn, high up from the low, murmuring town,
Those shadows sit, drooping around their fires,
Or move as winds dark-waving in a wood.

Staring at cattle on a neighbouring hill
They are oblivious as is stone or grass--The
clouds passed voiceless over, and the sun
Rose, and lit trees, and vanished utterly.

Then in the awful beauty of the world,
When stars are singing in dark ecstasy,
Those ox-like soldiers sit collected round
A thin, metallic echo of human song:

And click their feet and clap their hands in time,
And wag their heads, and make the white ghost owl
Flit from its branch--but still those tree-like shapes
Stand like archangels dark-winged in the sky.

And presently the soldiers cease to stir;
The thin voice sinks and all at once is dead;
They lie down on their planks and hear the wind,
And feel the darkness fumbling at their souls.

They lie in rows as stiff as tombs or trees,
Their eyeballs imageless, like marble still;
And secretly they feel that roof and walls
Are gone and that they stare into the sky.

It is so black, so black, so black, so black,
Those black-winged shapes have stretched across the world,
Have swallowed up the stars, and if the sun
Rises again, it will be black, black, black.

A RITUAL DANCE

I--THE DANCE

In the black glitter of night the grey vapour forest
Lies a dark Ghost in the water, motionless, dark,
Like a corpse by the bank fallen, and hopelessly rotting
Where the thin silver soul of the stars silently dances.

The flowers are closed, the birds are carved on the trees,
When out of the forest glide hundreds of spear-holding shadows,
In smooth dark ivory bodies their eyeballs gleaming
Forming a gesturing circle beneath the Moon.
The bright-eyed shadows, the tribe in ritual gathered,
Are dancing and howling, the embryo soul of a nation:
In loud drum-beating monotonous the tightly stretched skins
Of oxen that stared at the stars are singing wild paeans:

Wild paeans for food that magically grew in the clearings
When he that was slain was buried and is resurrected,
And a green mist arose from the mud and shone in the Moon,
A great delirium of faces, a new generation.

The thin wafer Moon it is there, it is there in the sky,
The hand-linked circle raise faces of mad exaltation--
Dance, O you Hunters, leap madly upon the flung shields,
Shoot arrows into the sky, thin moon-seeking needles:

Now you shall have a harvest, a belly-full rapture,
There shall be many fat women, full grown, and smoother than honey,
Their limbs like ivory rounded, and firm as a berry,
Their lips full of food and their eyes full of hunger for men!

The heat of the earth arises, a faint love mist
Wan with over-desiring, and in the marshes
Blindly the mud stirs, clouding the dark shining water,
And troubling the still soft swarms of fallen stars.

There is bright sweat upon the bodies of cattle,
Great vials of life motionless in the moonlight,
Breathing faint mists over the warm, damp ground;
And the cry of a dancer rings through the shadowy forest.

The tiger is seeking his mate and his glassy eyes
Are purple and shot with starlight in the grass shining,
The fiery grass tortured out of the mud and writhing
Under the sun, now shivering and pale in the Moon.

The shadows are dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing:
The grey vapour amis of the forest lie dreaming around them;
The cold, shining moonlight falls from their bodies and faces,
But caught in their eyes lies prisoned and faintly gleaming:

And they return to their dwellings within the grey forest,
Into their dark huts, burying the moonlight with them,
Burying the trees and the stars and the flowing river,
And the glittering spears, and their dark, evocative gestures.

II--SLEEP

Hollow the world in the moonlit hour when the birds are shadows small,
Lost in the swarm of giant leaves and myriad branches tall;
When vast thick boughs hang across the sky like solid limbs of night,
Dug from still quarries of grey-black air by the pale transparent light,
And the purple and golden blooms of the sun, each crimson and
spotted flower,
Are folded up or have faded away, as the still intangible power
Floats out of the sky, falls shimmering down, a silver-shadowy bloom,
On the spear-pointed forest a fragile crown, in the soul a soft,
bright gloom;
Hollow the world when the shadow of man lies prone and still on its floor,
And the moonlight shut from his empty heart weeps softly against his door,
And his terror and joy but a little dream in the corner of his house,
And his voice dead in the darkness 'mid the twittering of a mouse.

III.

Hollow the world! hollow the world!
And its dancers shadow-grey;
And the Moon a silver-shadowy bloom
Fading and fading away;
And the forest's grey vapour, and all the trees
Shadows against the sky;
And the soul of man and his ecstasies
A night-forgotten cry.
Hollow the world! hollow the world!

IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS

FROM A FLEMISH GRAVEYARD

JANUARY 1915

A year hence may the grass that waves
O'er English men in Flemish graves,
Coating this clay with green of peace
And softness of a year's increase,
Be kind and lithe as English grass
To bend and nod as the winds pass;
It was for grass on English hills
These bore too soon the last of ills.

And may the wind be brisk and clean,
And singing cheerfully between
The bents a pleasant-burdened song
To cheer these English dead along;
For English songs and English winds
Are they that bred these English minds.

And may the circumstantial trees
Dip, for these dead ones, in the breeze,
And make for them their silver play
Of spangled boughs each shiny day.
Thus may these look above, and see
And hear the wind in grass and tree,
And watch a lark in heaven stand,
And think themselves in their own land.

A MONUMENT

(AFTER AN ANCIENT FASHION)

Traveller, turn a mournful eye
Where my lady's ashes lie;
If thou hast a sweet thine own
Pity me, that am alone;--
Yet, if thou no lover be,
Nor hast been, I'll pity thee.

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

SONG OF THE DARK AGES

We digged our trenches on the down
Beside old barrows, and the wet
White chalk we shovelled from below;
It lay like drifts of thawing snow
On parados and parapet;

Until a pick neither struck flint
Nor split the yielding chalky soil,
But only calcined human bone:
Poor relic of that Age of Stone
Whose ossuary was our spoil.

Home we marched singing in the rain,
And all the while, beneath our song,
I mused how many springs should wane
And still our trenches scar the plain:
The monument of an old wrong.

But then, I thought, the fair green sod
Will wholly cover that white stain,
And soften, as it clothes the face
Of those old barrows, every trace
Of violence to the patient plain.

And careless people, passing by
Will speak of both in casual tone:
Saying: "You see the toil they made
The age of iron, pick and spade,
Here jostles with the Age of Stone."

Yet either from that happier race
Will merit but a passing glance;
And they will leave us both alone:
Poor savages who wrought in stone--Poor
Poor savages who fought in France.

BÊTE HUMAINE

Riding through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise,
I saw the world awake; and as the ray
Touched the tall grasses where they sleeping lay,
Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies:
With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyes
Piloting crimson bodies, slender and gay.
I aimed at one, and struck it, and it lay
Broken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes ...
Then my soul sickened with a sudden pain
And horror, at my own careless cruelty,
That in an idle moment I had slain
A creature whose sweet life it is to fly:
Like beasts that prey with tooth and claw ...
Nay, they
Must slay to live, but what excuse had I?

THE GIFT

Marching on Tanga, marching the parch'd plain
Of wavering spear-grass past Pangani river,
England came to me--me who had always ta'en
But never given before--England, the giver,
In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiver
On still evenings of summer, after rain,
By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver
When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain.
Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain
And, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awake
Shivering all night through till cold daybreak:
In that I count these sufferings my gain
And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fain
Suffer as many more for her sweet sake.

THE LEANING ELM

Before my window, in days of winter hoar
Huddled a mournful wood;
Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore,
In stony sleep they stood:
But you, unhappy elm, the angry west
Had chosen from the rest,
Flung broken on your brothers' branches bare,
And left you leaning there
So dead that when the breath of winter cast
Wild snow upon the blast,
The other living branches, downward bowed,
Shook free their crystal shroud
And shed upon your blackened trunk beneath
Their livery of death......

On windless nights between the beechen bars
I watched cold stars
Throb whitely in the sky, and dreamily
Wondered if any life lay locked in thee:
If still the hidden sap secretly moved
As water in the icy winterbourne
Floweth unheard:
And half I pitied you your trance forlorn:
You could not hear, I thought, the voice of any bird,
The shadowy cries of bats in dim twilight
Or cool voices of owls crying by night ...
Hunting by night under the horned moon:
Yet half I envied you your wintry swoon,
Till, on this morning mild, the sun, new-risen
Steals from his misty prison;
The frozen fallows glow, the black trees shaken
In a clear flood of sunlight vibrating awaken:
And lo, your ravaged hole, beyond belief
Slenderly fledged anew with tender leaf
As pale as those twin vanes that break at last
In a tiny fan above the black beech-mast
Where no blade springeth green
But pallid bells of the shy helleborine.
What is this ecstasy that overwhelms
The dreaming earth? See, the embrownèd elms
Crowding purple distances warm the depths of the wood:
A new-born wind tosses their tassels brown,
His white clouds dapple the down:
Into a green flame bursting the hedgerows stand.

Soon, with banners flying, Spring will walk the land....
There is no day for thee, my soul, like this,
No spring of lovely words. Nay, even the kiss
Of mortal love that maketh man divine
This light cannot outshine:
Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catch
The shadow of vanishing beauty, may not match
This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull
Such magical beauty as time may not destroy;
But we, alas, are not more beautiful:
We cannot flower in beauty as in joy.
We sing, our mused words are sped, and then
Poets are only men
Who age, and toil, and sicken ... This maim'd tree
May stand in leaf when I have ceased to be.

PROTHALAMION

When the evening came my love said to me:
Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool;
The garden of black hellebore and rosemary
Where wild woodruff spills in a milky pool.

Low we passed in the twilight, for the wavering heat
Of day had waned; and round that shaded plot
Of secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet:
Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips spake not.

Between that old garden and seas of lazy foam
Gloomy and beautiful alleys of trees arise
With spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome,
So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but the skies

Veiled with a soft air, drench'd in the roses' musk
Or the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove:
No stars burned in their deeps, but through the dusk
I saw my love's eyes, and they were brimmed with love.

No star their secret ravished, no wasting moon
Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours:
Only the soft unseeing heaven of June,
The ghosts of great trees, and the sleeping flowers.

For doves that crooned in the leafy noonday now
Were silent; the night-jar sought his secret covers,
Nor even a mild sea-whisper moved a creaking bough--
Was ever a silence deeper made for lovers?

Was ever a moment meeter made for love?
Beautiful are your close lips beneath my kiss;
And all your yielding sweetness beautiful--
Oh, never in all the world was such a night as this!

INDEX

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE:
Marriage Song
Epilogue

MARTIN ARMSTRONG:
The Buzzards

MAURICE BARING:
Diffugere Nives, 1917
Julian Grenfell
Pierre

HILAIRE BELLOC:
The South Country
The Night
Song
The False Heart
Hannaker Mill (1913)
Tarantella
On a Dead Hostess

EDMUND BLUNDEN:
Almswomen
Gleaning

GORDON BOTTOMLEY:
The Ploughman
Babel: The Gate of the God
The End of the World
Atlantis
New Year's Eve, 1913
To Iron-founders and Others

RUPERT BROOKE:
Sonnet
The Soldier
The Treasure
The Great Lover
Clouds
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
The Busy Heart
Dining-Room Tea

FRANCIS BURROWS:
The Prayer to Demeter
The Giant's Dirge
The Unforgotten
The Well
Egyptian
Life

A. Y. CAMPBELL:
Animula Vagula
A Bird
The Dromedary
The Panic

G. K. CHESTERTON:
Wine and Water
The Rolling English Road
The Secret People
From the Ballad of the White Horse

PADRAIC COLUM:
The Old Woman of the Roads

FRANCES CORNFORD:
Autumn Evening

W. H. DAVIES:
Days Too Short
The Example
The East in Gold
The Happy Child
A Great Time
The White Cascade
In May
Thunderstorms
Sweet Stay-at-Home

EDWARD L. DAVISON:
The Trees
In this Dark House

WALTER DE LA MARE:
The Listeners
Arabia
Music
The Scribe
The Ghost
Clear Eyes
Fare Well
All That's Past
The Song of the Mad Prince

JOHN DRINKWATER:
Birthright
Moonlit Apples

R. C. K. ENSOR:
Ode to Reality, 171

JAMES ELROY FLECKER:
Riouperoux
War Song of the Saracens
The Old Ships
Stillness
Areiya
The Queen's Song
Brumana
Hyali
The Golden Journey to Samarkand--Prologue
Epilogue

ROBIN FLOWER:
La Vie Cérébrale
The Pipes
Say not that Beauty

JOHN FREEMAN:
The Wakers
The Body
Stone Trees
More Than Sweet
Waking
The Chair
The Stars in Their Courses
Shadows

ROBERT GRAVES:
Star-Talk
To Lucasta on going to the Wars
Not Dead
In the Wilderness
Neglectful Edward

JULIAN GRENFELL:
To a Black Greyhound
Into Battle

IVOR GURNEY:
To the Poet before Battle
Song of Pain and Beauty

RALPH HODGSON:
Eve
The Bull
The Song of Honour
Reason has Moons

JAMES JOYCE:
Strings in the Earth
I Hear an Army