Chapter I: AM dumb, I am dumb!

And here’s a Norman orchard and here’s Spring
Goading the sullen words that will not come.
Romance, beating his distant magical drum,
Calls to a soldier bearing alien arms,
“Throw off your yoke and hear my darlings sing,
Blackbirds” (by red-roofed farms)
“More drunk than any poet with May’s delight,
Green alive to the eye, and pink and white.”

Joy’s there, but not for me;
And song, but shall I sing
That live as in a dream of some bad night,
Whose memories are of such ecstasy
And height of passionate joy, that pain alone
Is born of beauty in cloud and flower and tree;
Yes, and the great Cathedral’s towering stone.

To me these are but shadows
Of orchards and old meadows
Trodden before the dawn,
Trodden after the dusk....
All loveliness of France is as a husk,
The inner living spirit of beauty gone,
To that familiar beauty now withdrawn
From exiles hungering ever for the sight
Of her day-face;
England’s;
Or in some orchard space
Breathless to drink peace from her calm night.

How shall I sing, since she sings not to me
Songs any more?
High rule she holds for ever on the sea
That’s hers, but dreams too might guard the shore
Of France, that’s French and set apart for ever.
A Spirit of Love our link of song does sever.
Had it been hate
(The weakest of all sworn enemies of Love)
We should have broken through or passed above
Its foolish barriers;
Here we must bow as to established Fate,
And reverently; for, comrades and high peers,
Sisters in blood,
Our mothers brook no rival in their state
Of motherhood.

But not for ever shall our travail last,
And not for ever we
Be held by iron Duty over sea.
The image of evil shall be overcast,
And all his willing slaves and priests of evil
Scattered like dust, shall lie upon the plain;
That image, ground to dust utterly level
With unregarded weeds and all as vain.
The oppressed shall lift their hearts up once again,
And we return....
Not to scarred lands and homes laid in the dust,
Not with hard hearts to sights that sear and burn,
But with assured longing and certain trust,
To England’s royal grace and dignity,
To England’s changing skies, rich greenery,
High strength controlled, queenly serenity,
Inviolate kept by her confederate sea
And hearts resolved to every sacrifice.
We shall come home,
We shall come home again,
Living and dead, one huge victorious host--
The dead that would not leave their comrades till
The last steep were topped of the difficult hill,
The last farthing paid of the Great Cost,
The last thrill suffered of the Great Pain.
Living and dead, we shall come home at last
To her sweet breast,
England’s; by one touch be paid in full
For all things grey and long and terrible
Of that dread night which seemed eternity.

O Mother, shall thy kisses not restore
Body and life-sick soul? Yes, and set free
Songs and great floods of lovelier melody
Than thou didst give
When we those days of half-awake did live.
And joy must surely flower again more fair
To us, who dwelt in shadows and foul air.
We’ll breathe and drink in song.

Spring shall blot out all traces of old care;
Her clouds of green and waves of gold among
We shall grow free of heart, and great, and young--
Be made anew in that Great Resurrection,
Perfect as is the violet’s perfection.
Perfect as she
Who sanctifies our memory with sorrow,
Hugs, as a mother hugs, the thoughts that harrow,
Watching for dawn, hungering for the morrow
Lone oversea....

I am dumb now, dumb,
But in that time what music shall not come?
Mother of Beauty, Mistress of the Sea.

JUNE--TO--COME

WHEN the sun’s fire and gold
Sets the bee humming,
I will not write to tell
Him that I’m coming,

But ride out unawares
On that old road,
Of Minsterworth, of Peace,
Of Framilode,

And walk, not looked for, in
That cool, dark passage.
Never a single word;
Myself my message.

And then; well ... O we’ll drift
And stand and gaze,
And wonder how we could
In those Bad Days

Live without Minsterworth;
Or western air
Fanning the hot cheek,
Stirring the hair;
In land where hate of men
God’s love did cover;
This land.... And here’s my dream
Irrevocably over.

“HARK, HARK, THE LARK”

HARK, hark, the lark to heaven’s gate uprisen,
Pours out his joy ...
I think of you, shut in some distant prison,
O Boy, poor Boy;

Your heart grown sick with hope deferred and shadows
Of prison ways;
Not daring to snatch a thought of Severn meadows,
Or old blue-days.

SONG AT MORNING

PRAISE for the day’s magnificent uprising!
Praise for the cool
Air and the blue new-old ever-surprising
Face of the sky, and mirrored blue of the pool.
Only the fool, bat-witted, owl-eyed fool
Can hold a deaf ear while life begins
The actual opening of a myriad stories....
Blindness, ingratitude, the foolishest sins!
Now if this day blot out my chief desires,
And leave me maimed and blind and full of hot
Surges of insurrection, evil fires,
Memories of joys that seem better forgot;
Quiet me then.
Thy Will is binding on the nearest flower
As on the farthest star; and what shall put me
Out of Thy power, or from Thy guidance far,
Though I in hell of my self-will would shut me?
But if Thy Will be joy for me to-day,
Give me clear eyes, a heart open to feel
Thy influence, Thy kindness: O unseal
The shut, the hidden places in me, reveal
Those things most precious secretly hidden away
From all save children and the simply wise.
Give me clear eyes!
And strength to know, whatever may befall,
The eternal presence of great mysteries,
Glorifying Thee for all.

TREES

(“You cannot think how ghastly these battle-fields look under a
grey sky. Torn trees are the most terrible things I have ever seen.
Absolute blight and curse is on the face of everything.”)

THE dead land oppressed me;
I turned my thoughts away,
And went where hill and meadow
Are shadowless and gay.

Where Coopers stands by Cranham,
Where the hill-gashes white
Show golden in the sunshine,
Our sunshine--God’s delight.

Beauty my feet stayed at last
Where green was most cool,
Trees worthy of all worship
I worshipped ... then, O fool,

Let my thoughts slide unwitting
To other, dreadful trees, ...
And found me standing, staring
Sick of heart--at these!

REQUIEM

POUR out your light, O stars, and do not hold
Your loveliest shining from earth’s outworn shell--
Pure and cold your radiance, pure and cold
My dead friend’s face as well.

REQUIEM

NOR grief nor tears should wrong the silent dead
Save England’s, for her children fallen so far
From her eager care; though by God’s justice led
And fallen in such a war.

REQUIEM

POUR out your bounty, moon of radiant shining
On all this shattered flesh, these quiet forms;
For these were slain, so strangely still reclining,
In the noblest cause was ever waged with arms.

SONNETS 1917

[_TO_ THE MEMORY OF RUPERT BROOKE]

1. FOR ENGLAND

THOUGH heaven be packed with joy-bewildering
Pleasures of soul and heart and mind, yet who
Would willingly let slip, freely let go
Earth’s mortal loveliness; go wandering
Where never the late bird is heard to sing,
Nor full-sailed cloud-galleons wander slow;
No pathways in the woods; no afterglow,
When the air’s fire and magic with sense of spring?

So the dark horror clouds us, and the dread
Of the unknown.... But if it must be, then
What better passing than to go out like men
For England, giving all in one white glow?
Whose bodies shall lie in earth as on a bed,
And as the Will directs our spirits may go

2. PAIN

PAIN, pain continual; pain unending;
Hard even to the roughest, but to those
Hungry for beauty.... Not the wisest knows,
Nor most pitiful-hearted, what the wending
Of one hour’s way meant. Grey monotony lending
Weight to the grey skies, grey mud where goes
An army of grey bedrenched scarecrows in rows
Careless at last of cruellest Fate-sending.
Seeing the pitiful eyes of men foredone,
Or horses shot, too tired merely to stir,
Dying in shell-holes both, slain by the mud.
Men broken, shrieking even to hear a gun.--
Till pain grinds down, or lethargy numbs her,
The amazed heart cries angrily out on God.

3. SERVITUDE

IF it were not for England, who would bear
This heavy servitude one moment more?
To keep a brothel, sweep and wash the floor
Of filthiest hovels were noble to compare
With this brass-cleaning life. Now here, now there
Harried in foolishness, scanned curiously o’er
By fools made brazen by conceit, and store
Of antique witticisms thin and bare.

Only the love of comrades sweetens all,
Whose laughing spirit will not be outdone.
As night-watching men wait for the sun
To hearten them, so wait I on such boys
As neither brass nor Hell-fire may appal,
Nor guns, nor sergeant-major’s bluster and noise.

4. HOME-SICKNESS

WHEN we go wandering the wide air’s blue spaces,
Bare, unhappy, exiled souls of men;
How will our thoughts over and over again
Return to Earth’s familiar lovely places,
Where light with shadow ever interlaces--
No blanks of blue, nor ways beyond man’s ken--
Where birds are, and flowers, as violet, and wren,
Blackbird, bluebell, hedge-sparrow, tiny daisies.

O tiny things, but very stuff of soul
To us ... so frail.... Remember what we are;
Set us not on some strange outlandish star,
But one caring for Love. Give us a Home.
There we may wait while the long ages roll
Content, unfrightened by vast Time-to-come.

5. ENGLAND THE MOTHER

WE have done our utmost, England, terrible
And dear taskmistress, darling Mother and stern.
The unnoticed nations praise us, but we turn
Firstly, only to thee--“Have we done well?
Say, are you pleased?”--and watch your eyes that tell
To us all secrets, eyes sea-deep that burn
With love so long denied; with tears discern
The scars and haggard look of all that hell.

Thy love, thy love shall cherish, make us whole,
Whereto the power of Death’s destruction is weak.
Death impotent, by boys bemocked at, who
Will leave unblotted in the soldier-soul
Gold of the daffodil, the sunset streak,
The innocence and joy of England’s blue.

THE END

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

* * * * *

_From Sidgwick & Jackson’s List of Poetry_

=ASQUITH, HERBERT. The Volunteer and other Poems.= _Second Edition,
with new Poems added._ =2s.= net.

=BROOKE, RUPERT. Poems.= (_First issued 1911._) _Nineteenth
Impression._ =2s. 6d.= net.

---- =1914 and other Poems.= With a Portrait. _Twenty-first
Impression._ =2s. 6d.= net.

---- =Selected Poems.= With a new Portrait. _Second Impression._
Cloth, =3s. 6d.= net; lambskin, =5s.= net.

=DRINKWATER, JOHN. Swords and Ploughshares.= _Second Impression._ =2s.
6d.= net.

---- =Olton Pools.= _Second Impression._ =2s. 6d.= net.

---- =Pawns; Three Poetic Plays. 2s. 6d.= net.

---- =Poems, 1908-1914. 5s.= net.

=ENSOR, R. C. K. Odes and other Poems. 2s.= net.

=GARSTIN, CROSBIE. Vagabond Verses.= Cloth, =2s. 6d.= net.

=GRAVES, C. L. War’s Surprises, and other Verses.= Cloth, =3s. 6d.=
net.

[_Second Impression._

=HARVEY, F. W. A Gloucestershire Lad.= _Fourth Impression._ Cloth,
=2s.= net; paper =1s. 6d.= net.

---- =Gloucestershire Friends.= Poems from a German Prison Camp. =2s.
6d.= net.

=JENKINS, ELINOR. Poems. 2s. 6d.= net.

=MACAULAY, ROSE. The Two Blind Countries.= Cloth, =2s. 6d.= net.

=NIVEN, FREDERICK. Maple-leaf Songs.= Wrappers. =1s.= net.

=OWEN, EVERARD. Three Hills and other Poems.= _Second Impression._
Wrappers, =6d.= net.

=SHAKESPEARE, W. G. Ypres and other Poems.= Boards, =2s.= net.

=SHANKS, EDWARD. Poems. 2s. 6d.= net.

“=SOME VERSE.=” =By F. S.= _Third Impression._ Boards, =2s.= net.

=SONGS OF THE “BLUE DRAGON.”= Cloth, =1s. 6d.= net; wrappers, =1s.= net.

=TURNER, W. J. The Hunter and other Poems.= Cloth, =2s. 6d.= net.

=TYNAN, KATHARINE. Flower of Youth.= _Second Impression._ =3s. 6d.=
net.

---- =The Holy War. 3s. 6d.= net.

---- =Late Songs. 3s. 6d.= net.

=YORKSHIRE DIALECT POEMS (1673-1915).= _Compiled with an Introduction
by Prof. F. W. Moorman. Second Edition._ Cloth, =2s.= net; paper, =1s.=
net.

An anthology of the best poems in “broad Yorkshire.”

_Complete List of Poetry and other Catalogues on application._

SIDGWICK & JACKSON, Ltd., 3 Adam Street, Adelphi, London, W.C.2