Chapter IV

Now these were Jews as Jews must be
(_The bells ring wild and the bells ring free!_),
But Christian men in a band are we
(Carillon, Carilla).
Empty we go and ill bedight,
Singing Noël on a winter’s night;
Give us to sup by the warm firelight.
And the small child Jesus smile on you.

THE EARLY MORNING.

The Moon on the one hand, the Dawn on the other;
The Moon is my sister, the Dawn is my brother.
The Moon on my left, and the Dawn on my right;
My Brother, good morning; my Sister, good night.

AUVERGNAT.

There was a man was half a clown
(It’s so, my father tells of it),
He saw the church in Clermont Town,
And laughed to hear the bells of it.

He laughed to hear the bells that ring
In Clermont Church and round of it;
He heard the verger’s daughter sing,
And loved her for the sound of it.

The verger’s daughter said him nay
(She had the right of choice in it);
He left the town at break of day
(He hadn’t had a voice in it).

The road went up, the road went down,
And there the matter ended it;
He broke his heart in Clermont Town,
At Pontgibaud they mended it.

THE WORLD’S END.

The clouds are high and the skies are wide
(_It’s a weary way to the world’s end_).
I hear the wind upon a hillside
(_Over the hills, away_).

Over the hills and over the sea
(_It’s a weary way to the world’s end_).
The woman alone is a-calling me
(_Over the hills, away_).

Beyond the rim of the rising moon
(_It’s a weary way to the world’s end_).
He’s back too late who starts too soon
(_Over the hills, away_).

He’s wise, and he laughs who loves to roam
(_It’s a weary way to the world’s end_);
He’s wise and he cries the when he comes home
(_Over the hills, away_).

Woman alone, and all alone
(_It’s a weary way to the world’s end_).
I’ll just be sitting at home, my own,
The world’s a weary way.

FILLE-LA-HAINE.

Death went into the steeple to ring,
And he pulled the rope and he tolled a knell.
Fille-la-Haine, how well you sing!
Why are they ringing the Passing Bell?
_Death went into the steeple to ring;
Fille-la-Haine, how well you sing!_

Death went down the stream in a boat,
Down the river of Seine went he;
Fille-la-Haine had a pain in her throat,
Fille-la-Haine was nothing to me.
_Death went down the stream in a boat;
Fille-la-Haine had a pain in her throat._

Death went up the hill in a cart
(I have forgotten her lips and her laughter).
Fille-la-Haine was my sweetheart
(And all the village was following after).
_Death went up the hill in a cart;
Fille-la-Haine was my sweetheart._

THE MOON’S FUNERAL.

The Moon is dead. I saw her die.
She in a drifting cloud was drest,
She lay along the uncertain west,
A dream to see.
And very low she spake to me:
“I go where none may understand,
I fade into the nameless land,
And there must lie perpetually.”
And therefore I,
And therefore loudly, loudly I
And high
And very piteously make cry:
“The Moon is dead. I saw her die.”
And will she never rise again?
The Holy Moon? Oh, never more!
Perhaps along the inhuman shore
Where pale ghosts are
Beyond the far lethean fen
She and some wide infernal star--
To us who loved her never more,
The Moon will never rise again.
Oh! never more in nightly sky
Her eye so high shall peep and pry
To see the great world rolling by.
For why?
The Moon is dead. I saw her die.

THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE.

Distinguish carefully between these two,
This thing is yours, that other thing is mine.
You have a shirt, a brimless hat, a shoe
And half a coat. I am the Lord benign
Of fifty hundred acres of fat land
To which I have a right. You understand?

I have a right because I have, because,
Because I have--because I have a right.
Now be quite calm and good, obey the laws,
Remember your low station, do not fight
Against the goad, because, you know, it pricks
Whenever the uncleanly demos kicks.

I do not envy you your hat, your shoe.
Why should you envy me my small estate?
It’s fearfully illogical in you
To fight with economic force and fate.
Moreover, I have got the upper hand,
And mean to keep it. Do you understand?

EPIGRAMS.

ON PERKINS--AN ACTOR.

Perkins’ Duchesses have marked a great
Improvement in his coster scene of late.
He gives the oath, the drunken lurch, the roar,
As even Perkins never did before.
And yet, the model is not far to seek--
Perkins was visiting at home last week.

ON SLOP--A POET.

Where Mr. Slop particularly shines
Is in his six sonorous single lines.
Perhaps where he is less successful is
In all the other verses. These are his.

ON TORTURE--A SINGER.

Torture has such an ear, I understand
He pays large sums to stop a German Band.
The public taste is quite a different thing,
Torture is positively paid to sing.

ON SUBTLE--A REVIEWER.

Subtle--your keen analysis and nice,
Like everything about you, has its price.
When you express your owner’s private spite
A Pound rewards the virulence you write.
A Pound should therefore buy your praise; well, then,
Why should the Author have to pay you ten?

ON PAUNCH--A PARASITE.

Paunch talks about his Lady to excess,
And then about his curious Patroness,
And then he talks about himself, and then
We turn the conversation on to men.

ON PUGLEY--A DON.

Pugley denies the soul? Why, so do I
The soul, of Pugley, heartily deny.

SONNETS OF THE TWELVE MONTHS.

JANUARY.

It freezes. All across a soundless sky
The birds go home. The horrible dark’s begun:
The frozen dark that hopes not for a sun;
The ultimate dark wherein our race shall die.

Death, with his evil finger to his lip,
Leers in at human windows, turning spy
To learn the country where his rule shall lie
When he achieves perpetual generalship.

The undefeated enemy--the chill--
Which shall benumb the voiceful earth at last,
Is master of our moment, and has bound
The viewless wind itself. There is no sound.
It freezes. Every friendly stream is fast.
It freezes; and the graven twigs are still.

FEBRUARY.

The winter moon has such a quiet car
That all the winter nights are dumb with rest;
She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest,
And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star.
Because her star is silent do not wake:
But there shall tremble on the general earth,
And over you, a quickening and a birth,
The sun is near the hill-tops for your sake.

The latest born of all the days shall creep,
To kiss the tender eyelids of the year,
And you shall wake, grown young with perfect sleep,
And smile at the new world, and make it dear
With living murmurs more than dreams are deep.
Silence is dead, my Dawn; the morning’s here.

MARCH.

The north-east wind has come from Norroway,
Roaring he came above the white waves’ tips!
The foam of the loud sea was on his lips,
And all his hair was salt with falling spray.
Over the keen light of northern day
He cast his snow cloud’s terrible eclipse;
Beyond our banks he suddenly struck the ships,
And left them labouring on his landward way.

The certain course that to his strength belongs
Drives him with gathering purpose and control
Until across Vendean flats he sees
Ocean, the eldest of his enemies.
Then wheels he for him, glorying in his goal,
And gives him challenge, bellowing battle-songs.

APRIL.

The stranger warmth of the young sun obeying,
Look! little heads of green begin to grow,
And hidden flowers have dared their tops to show
Where late such droughty dusts were rudely playing.
It’s not the month, but all the world’s a-maying!
Come then with me, I’ll take you, for I know
Where the first hedgethorns and white windflowers blow:
We two alone, that goes without the saying.

The month has treacherous clouds and moves in fears.
This April shames the month itself with smiles:
In whose new eyes I know no heaven of tears,
But still serene desire and between whiles,
So great a look that even April’s grace
Makes only marvel at her only face.

MAY.

This is the laughing-eyed amongst them all:
My lady’s month. A season of young things.
She rules the light with harmony, and brings
The year’s first green upon the beeches tall.
How often, where long creepers wind and fall
Through the deep woods in noonday wanderings,
I’ve heard the month, when she to echo sings,
I’ve heard the month make merry madrigal.

How often, bosomed in the breathing strong
Of mosses and young flowerets, have I lain
And watched the clouds, and caught the sheltered song--
Which it were more than life to hear again--
Of those small birds that pipe it all day long
Not far from Marly by the memoried Seine.

JUNE.

Rise up, and do begin the day’s adorning;
The Summer dark is but the dawn of day.
The last of sunset grows into the morning,
The morning calls you from the dark away.
The holy mist, the white mist of the morning,
Was wreathing upward on my lonely way.
My way was waiting for your own adorning,
That should complete the broad adornéd day.

Rise up, and do begin the day’s adorning;
The little eastern clouds are dapple-gray,
There will be wind among the leaves to-day;
It is the very promise of the morning.
_Lux tua via mea._ Your light’s my way:
Oh, do rise up and make it perfect day.

JULY.

The Kings come riding back from the Crusade,
The purple Kings and all their mounted men;
They fill the street with clamorous cavalcade;
The Kings have broken down the Saracen.
Singing a great song of the eastern wars,
In crimson ships across the sea they came,
With crimson sails and diamonded dark oars,
That made the Mediterranean flash with flame.

And reading how, in that far month, the ranks
Formed on the edge of the desert, armoured all,
I wish to God that I had been with them
When the first Norman leapt upon the wall,
And Godfrey led the foremost of the Franks,
And young Lord Raymond stormed Jerusalem.

AUGUST.

The soldier month, the bulwark of the year,
That never more shall hear such victories told;
He stands apparent with his heaven-high spear,
And helmeted of grand Etruscan gold.
Our harvest is the bounty he has won,
The loot his fiery temper takes by strength.
Oh! Paladin of the Imperial sun!
Oh! crown of all the seasons come at length!

This is sheer manhood; this is Charlemagne,
When he with his wide host came conquering home
From vengeance under Roncesvalles ta’en.
Or when his bramble beard flaked red with foam
Of bivouac wine-cups on the Lombard plain,
What time he swept to grasp the world at Rome.

SEPTEMBER.

I, from a window where the Meuse is wide,
Looked eastward out to the September night;
The men that in the hopeless battle died
Rose, and deployed, and stationed for the fight;
A brumal army, vague and ordered large
For mile on mile by some pale general;
I saw them lean by companies to the charge,
But no man living heard the bugle-call.

And fading still, and pointing to their scars,
They fled in lessening cloud, where gray and high
Dawn lay along the heaven in misty bars;
But watching from that eastern casement, I
Saw the Republic splendid in the sky,
And round her terrible head the morning stars.

OCTOBER.

Look, how those steep woods on the mountain’s face
Burn, burn against the sunset; now the cold
Invades our very noon: the year’s grown old,
Mornings are dark, and evenings come apace.
The vines below have lost their purple grace,
And in Forrèze the white wrack backward rolled,
Hangs to the hills tempestuous, fold on fold,
And moaning gusts make desolate all the place.

Mine host the month, at thy good hostelry,
Tired limbs I’ll stretch and steaming beast I’ll tether;
Pile on great logs with Gascon hand and free,
And pour the Gascon stuff that laughs at weather;
Swell your tough lungs, north wind, no whit care we,
Singing old songs and drinking wine together.

NOVEMBER.

November is some historied Emperor,
Conquered in age, but foot to foot with fate,
Who from his refuge high has caught the roar
Of squadrons in pursuit, and now, too late,
Stirrups the storm and calls the winds to war,
And arms the garrison of his last heir-loom,
And shakes the sky to its extremest shore
With battle against irrevocable doom.

Till, driven and hurled from his strong citadels,
He flies in hurrying cloud; and spurs him on
Empty of lingerings, empty of farewells
And final benedictions, and is gone.
But in my garden all the trees have shed
Their legacies of the light, and all the flowers are dead.

DECEMBER.

Hoar Time about the house betakes him slow,
Seeking an entry for his weariness;
And in that dreadful company, Distress
And the sad Night with silent footsteps go.
On my poor hearth the brands are scarce aglow,
And in the woods without pale wanderers press;
Where, waning in the pines from less to less,
Mysterious hangs the hornéd moon, and low.

For now December, full of aged care,
Comes in upon the year and weakly grieves,
Mumbling his lost desires and his despair;
And with mad, trembling hand still interweaves
The dank sear flower-stalks tangled in his hair,
While round about him whirl the rotten leaves.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.