SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME AND OTHER POEMS BY LOUIS GOLDING LONDON CHRISTOPHERS 32 BERNERS STREET, W. 1 BY THE SAME AUTHOR SORROW OF WAR: POEMS FORWARD FROM BABYLON FOR JACK KILLED IN FRANCE, APRIL THE FIFTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN CONTENTS Numbers Ploughman at the Plough Creed The Starry Lady When the Great Arm of a Tree Bends Stooping The Moon-Clock Unnamed Fruit Portrait of an Artist Shepherd Singing Ragtime Skylark Noon The Singer of High State Bird, Bird, Bird Green Beads The Wind, Whence Blowing Lady of Babylon This is the Happy Husband, This is He Cold Branch in the Black Air Ghosts Gathering Lyric in Gloom I Seek a Wild Star My Lady of Peace Our Jack Peace Silver-Badged Waiter Sunset over Suburb Shrift among Hills Courage the Dreamers NUMBERS Three sheep graze on the low hill Beneath the shadow of five trees. Three sheep! Five old sycamores! (The noon is very full of sleep. The noon's a shepherd kind and still. The noon's a shepherd takes his ease Beneath the shadow of five trees, Five old sycamores.) Three sheep graze on the low hill. Down in the grass in twos and fours Cows are munching in the field. Three sheep graze on the low hill; Bless them, Lord, to give me wool. Cows are munching in the field; Bless them that their teats be full. Bless the sheep and cows to yield Wool to keep my children warm, Milk that they should grow therefrom. Three sheep graze on the low hill, Beneath five sycamores. Cows are munching in the field. All in twos and fours. On an elm-tree far aloof There are nine-and-twenty crows, Croaking to the blue sky roof Fifteen hundred ancient woes. In a cracked deserted house, Six owls cloaked with age and dream, In a cracked deserted house, Six owls wait upon a beam, Wait for the nocturnal mouse. In the stackyard at my farm There are fourteen stacks of hay. Lord, I pray Keep my golden goods from harm, Fourteen shining stacks of hay! Fourteen shining stacks of hay, Six owls, nine-and-twenty crows, Three sheep grazing on the hill Beneath five sycamores, Fat cows munching in a field, All in twos and fours, Fat cows munching in a field, Fourteen shining stacks of hay. At a table in a room Where beyond the window-frames Glows the sweet geranium, At a table in a room My three children play their games Till their father-poet come, Stop a moment, listen, wait Till a father-poet come. Lovely ones of lovely names, He shall not come late. Fourteen shining stacks of hay, Six owls, nine-and-twenty crows, Fifteen hundred ancient woes, Three sheep grazing on the hill, Beneath five sycamores, Fat cows munching in a field All in twos and fours, Fourteen shining stacks of hay, My three lovely children, one Mother laughing like the sun, Sweetheart laughing like the sun When the baby laughters run. Now the goal I sought is won, Sweetheart laughing like the sun, Now the goal I sought is won, Sweet, my song is done. PLOUGHMAN AT THE PLOUGH He behind the straight plough stands Stalwart, firm shafts in firm hands. Naught he cares for wars and naught For the fierce disease of thought. Only for the winds, the sheer Naked impulse of the year, Only for the soil which stares Clean into God's face he cares. In the stark might of his deed There is more than art or creed; In his wrist more strength is hid Than the monstrous Pyramid; Stauncher than stern Everest Be the muscles of his breast; Not the Atlantic sweeps a flood Potent as the ploughman's blood. He, his horse, his ploughshare, these Are the only verities. Dawn to dusk with God he stands, The Earth poised on his broad hands. CREED I shall insistently and proudly read Into the mud of things a mudless creed, Out of mud fashioning a palace so Clamant with beauty and superb with snow, That in this glory shall men's eyes be blurred, Stars be made slaves to this most potent Word. I in thick mud shall hear swift stars proclaim The intolerable splendour of the Name. I in a beetle's nerves shall search and find The processes of the chaos-cleaving mind, On my clock's second-fingers I shall see The tidal journeyings of Eternity. THE STARRY LADY Now with anger, Pomp and royal clangour, Now where his Lady is Starry with her crown; Now the hills waking from the day's languor, Now with many instruments in puissant harmonies, The sun goes down. Now rivers splendid Now song attended Throw ranks of music forward to the sea. Now hills like vocal moons Blow their prolonged bassoons Forth where the Monarch swoons, After long labour ended, Swoons for his Lady--ah starry she! From dim clouds wheeling Song down comes stealing Round flowers whose petals shaking Silver of song are making; Round the grand bronze of trees Whose trumpets pealing Peal through the sunset till Flower, tree and cloud and hill Fuse in the splendour of song that girdles the seas. The Sun now is set--and now Lips on her calm cool brow! Now there is heaping Of star-dust steeping With deep and drowsy scents Their bodies sleeping. Quiet now, quiet, Of golden instruments! Now still, most shadowy still Are cloud and hill; Still, in this solemn hour Lie cloud and flower; Still, most shadowy still Lie cloud and tree. Now under tranquil skies, Far, far the Monarch lies Lone with his starry Lady--ah starry she! WHEN THE GREAT ARM OF A TREE BENDS STOOPING When the great arm of a tree bends stooping Across the dark road ... Beware, beware! Beware lest fingers searching, scooping Snatch up your body by your hair, Beware! Think this no leafing clod, Insensible clay! Know you that through long ages in tense calm This tree hath held its arm, The instinct fingers nerved by most high God: Until you knowing nought Because of thick false thought, You came, frail fool, treading a secure way. When the great arm of a tree bends stooping Across the dark road ... Beware! Beware lest fingers meet within your hair, A stern arm clasp you round, Bear you from the ground; And you shall be held tight Against a bloodless breast Till human blood be pressed From finger-nails and eyes, And all the little cries Your lips gave forth of old Shall now no more arise Where you hang cold, Where you hang dry and stark Against the granite dark, Frozenly upright; And deeper, deeper you Shall thick leaves hide from view, Your dead limbs shall be sunk Down further through the trunk, And all your veins shall wrap Channels of flowing sap, Your brain and lungs and blood Shall be stiff wood, Till you at last shall be The cold heart of a tree. Beware! When the great arm of a tree bends stooping Across the dark road.... THE MOON-CLOCK (_For Alan Porter_) Tick-tock! the moon, that pale round clock Her big face peering, goes tick-tock! Metallic as a grasshopper The faint far tickings start and stir. All night tinily you can hear Tick-tock tinkling down the sheer Steep falls of space. Minute, aloof, Here is no praise, here no reproof. Remote in voids star-purged of sense, Tick-tock in stark indifference! From ice-black lands of lack and rock, The two swords shake and clank tick-tock. In the dark din of the day's vault Demand thy headlong soul shall halt One moment. Hearken, taut and tense, In the vast Silence beyond sense, The moon! From the hushed heart of her, Metallic as a grasshopper, Patient though earth may writhe and rock, Imperturbably, tock, tick-tock! Till, boastful earth, your forests wilt In grotesque Death. Till Death shall silt, Loud-blooded man, her unchecked sands From feet and warped expiring hands Through fatuous channels of the thinned Brain. Till all the clangours which have dinned Through your arched ears are only this, Tick-tock down blank eternities, Where still the sallow death's-head ticks As stars burn down like candle-wicks. UNNAMED FRUIT (_For A. E. Coppard_) What fruit grows viewless in my garden plot, So red the sun is shamed, Tipped with green starshine and with opal flamed! Days shall not rot My fruit so sacred that it is not named. Not with a carnal lip shalt thou devour A pulp so tragic-sweet. For here the juices of disaster meet When silly power Gives form to fancy that a man might eat. Leave us a single tree of precious fruit; One dream to be our own; One shape which shall not stammer into stone; One sweet song mute To sing with fleshless lips when flesh is flown PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST I have been given eyes Which are neither foolish nor wise, Seeing through joy or pain Beauty alone remain. I have been given an ear Which catches nothing clear, But only along the day A Song stealing away. My feet and hands never could Do anything evil or good: Instead of these things, A swift mouth that sings. SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME (_For E. V. Branford_) The shepherd sings: "_Way down in Dixie, Way down in Dixie, Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay..._" With shaded eyes he stands to look Across the hills where the clouds swoon, He singing, leans upon his crook, He sings, he sings no more. The wind is muffled in the tangled hair Of sheep that drift along the noon. The mild sheep stare With amber eyes about the pearl-flecked June. Two skylarks soar With singing flame Into the sun whence first they came. All else is only grasshoppers Or a brown wing the shepherd stirs, Who, like a slow tree moving, goes Where the pale tide of sheep-drift flows. See! the sun smites With molten lights The turned wing of a gull that glows Aslant the violet, the profound Dome of the mid-June heights. Alas! again the grasshoppers, The birds, the slumber-winging bees, Alas! again for those and these Demure things drowned; Drowned in vain raucous words men made Where no lark rose with swift and sweet Ascent and where no dim sheep strayed About the stone immensities, Where no sheep strayed and where no bees Probed any flowers nor swung a blade Of grass with pollened feet. He sings "_In Dixie, Way down in Dixie, Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay Scrambled eggs in the new-mown hay..._" The herring-gulls with peevish cries Rebuke the man who sings vain words; His sheep-dog growls a low complaint, Then turns to chasing butterflies. But when the indifferent singing-birds From midmost down to dimmest shore Innumerably confirm their songs, And grasshoppers make summer rhyme And solemn bees in the wild thyme Clash cymbals and beat gongs, The shepherd's words once more are faint, Once more the alien song is thinned Upon the long course of the wind, He sings, he sings no more. Ah now the dear monotonies Of bells that jangle on the sheep To the low limit of the hills! Till the blue cup of music spills Into the boughs of lowland trees; Till thence the lowland singings creep Into the dreamful shepherd's head, Creep drowsily through his blood; The young thrush fluting all he knows, The ring dove moaning his false woes, Almost the rabbit's tiny tread, The last unfolding bud. But now, Now a cool word spreads out along the sea. Now the day's violet is cloud-tipped with gold. Now dusk most silently Fills the hushed day with other wings than birds'. Now where on foam-crest waves the seagulls rock, To their cliff-haven go the seagulls thence. So too the shepherd gathers in his flock, Because birds journey to their dens, Tired sheep to their still fold. A dark first bat swoops low and dips About the shepherd who now sings A song of timeless evenings; For dusk is round him with wide wings, Dusk murmurs on his moving lips. _There is not mortal man who knows From whence the shepherd's song arose: It came a thousand years ago._ _Once the world's shepherds woke to lead The folded sheep that they might feed On green downs where winds blow._ _One shepherd sang a golden word. A thousand miles away one heard. One sang it swift, one sang it slow._ _Two skylarks heard, two skylarks told All shepherds this same song of gold On all downs where winds blow._ _This is the song that shepherds must Sing till the green downlands be dust And tide of sheep-drift no more flow;_ _The song two skylarks told again To all the sheep and shepherd men On green downs where winds blow._ SKYLARK NOON Now the tall sky Is pricked with stars of song as the sky at night With stars of light. I am loosened, I fly Till never a lark is near to the sun as I. Now through the steeps of air do my swift wings cut. My wings are seen and not seen Even as dawn-drenched waters that twinkle and shut, As I rise to the tops of the noon where no bird has been. Fleet My wings beat. I climb, I climb High hills of noon that soar from the plains of Time. But lo! As I go, Half flame, half snow, So far through unwinged places that even the brown Larks of the dwindling down Are as dust, and dimmer than dust are men and town-- Who are these, who are these New larks whose song is so proud That my own is cowed? From what lands, what seas Have they flown with song so kingly my weak songs fade; Such song as no bird has made Though Love called long in Spring and his heart obeyed? Such song is theirs as the winds have always sought But the winds not found; Such song as the seas at dawn have almost caught Ere the song was drowned; Such song as no birds achieve, Though nightingale may grieve, And lyric thrush may scold, And blackbird make so bold As to declare this silver and his own song gold. Who are these whose singings here Compass the noon with splendour, but my heart with fear, Lest I, unworth this height, Drop through narrowing deeps of unplumbed night? Lo! the dead poets they Who passed through flesh this way, These with no lips of clay Now sing supremest song throughout the duskless day. In the music now they make My own few notes forsake My heart that rocks in silence as a lone bird on a lake. I vail within my wings I vail my head in worship before the poet kings; Until from the far brink Of this last Song whence I shrink Ah slowly now and slowly down the tall noon I sink. So am I wrapped in quiet, still trancèd by their Word, Until I reach the airs Where a mortal skylark fares But not in his first rapture shall match his song with theirs! And now my feet are fallen, I am no more a bird, Now for my little seeing the high gold noon is blurred; For now where grey roads wind I walk the low world mutely among my human kind. THE SINGER OF HIGH STATE On hills too harsh for firs to climb, Where eagle dare not hatch her brood, On the sheer peak of Solitude, With anvils of black granite crude He beats austerities of rhyme. Such godlike stuff his spirit drinks He made grand odes of tempest there. The steel-winged eagle, if he dare To cleave these tracts of frozen air, Hearing such music, swoops and sinks. Stark tumults, which no tense night awes, Of godly love and titan hate Down crags of song reverberate. Held by the Singer of High State, Battalions of the midnight pause. On hills uplift from Space and Time, On the sheer peak of Solitude, With stars to give his furnace food, On anvils of black granite crude He beats austerities of rhyme. BIRD, BIRD, BIRD "_Oiseau!_" said the French boy, "_oiseau!_" --but the word Was absurd! "_Vogel!_" said the German boy, but that Fell flat. "_Bird!_" said the English boy--the fresh word rolled Pure gold. Bird, bird, bird, bird! When the quiet branches heard Bird, bird! Lovesome and immortal word! They tossed their plumes of green in delight through the clean Glory of the morning for the wind blew keen; For the clouds that had stayed like a will-not-answer maid Went shining, the white girls, in their marriage things arrayed; Till the leaves in the dark dells Were a chorus of swung bells At the bidding of a word, Were the din of many bells The tall towers fling On the lyric day that tells Of the beauty and the splendour and the crowning of a King. Bird! Said the boy, With the voice like a flute. His feathered brothers heard In their warm nests mute, Bird! Said the boy With the morning in his cheeks. Bird, bird, bird, bird! Joy! His feathered brothers answered from the silver of their beaks. There was lifting of bright heads and a gleam of little eyes, And a twitter of surprise, And a flutter of alarm. Bird! Said the boy, Bird, bird, bird, bird! There fell a shining moment of wide wet calm. Calm! Then suddenly a music from a hundred thousand throats Crashed like the bows of the ocean-cleaving boats. A phalanx of swift song made assault against the day, The winds made way. Birds rose stark in an ecstasy of fire To the heart of Song's desire. The last skies shook with the throbbing of their flight Through the blue far height. There were only birds and song where the globe sped along To the limits of the far Blue height. There was neither sun nor star, There was neither day nor night, There was one thing heard In the limits of the far Blue height. Bird, bird, bird, bird! Bird! Said the boy, Said the boy in the morning of the world. GREEN BEADS Whence have you drawn, O shining beads, The tints which blind my sight? "Down in the woods a wild cat bleeds, He moans along the night. He gave his green green eyes to deck The whiteness of your lady's neck. "He moans into the dark, he dies. He has not eyes nor blood. Your lady's beads may shine, he lies Stretched cold within the wood. --But she shall never lose again The wild cat moaning in her brain." THE WIND, WHENCE BLOWING From what land where the winds meet Art thou come, O Wind, O ruthless feet, O cloak of the most High of Lords, O shattering thrust of untamed swords? From what land where the winds tell Of ancient Powers sin-swept to Hell, Of meagre men by Christ's craft Borne to the Throne where Satan laughed? From what land where a Hill stands, The stars uplift upon his hands; A Hill stands, and round his knees There is concourse of all seas? "I from the sheer crags of the skies, To thy hair and hollow eyes!" LADY OF BABYLON Pink face of deftly prepared flesh, Soft limbs whose language you employ In scheduled hours of bartered joy Against the limbs of a pale boy Who flounders in your mesh. What ashes hide beyond your eye, What dry winds fanged with thin disdain Below the convex of your brain Howl through the bleached bones in the plain Where your sucked lovers lie? God save you, exquisite-obscene, For her poor sake who one time bore Your sword-edged baby limbs that tore Red lumps of flesh from her heart's core, Christ save you, Magdalene! THIS IS THE HAPPY HUSBAND, THIS IS HE Like a sleek slab of pork his pate Bends moonwise over the heaped plate. And from his twin-topped whiskers stoop Icicular, two beads of soup. His belly whimpers in the dun Processes of digestion, While his fat fingers play like nice- Behaved and clean-licked sewer mice. His speckled orbs lurk deep and squat, Two sick thick toads in a pool's rot. Before him on the platter lies A girl's heart salt with miseries. His lip sweats thirst. A withdrawn cork Plops ... he lifts his knife and fork... Down the pink champaign of his chops Glucose appreciation drops... COLD BRANCH IN THE BLACK AIR Who taps? You are not the wind tapping? _No! Not the wind!_ You straining and moaning there, Are you a cold branch in the black air Which the storm has skinned? _No! Not a cold branch! Not the wind!_ Who are you? Who are you? _But you loved me once,_ You drank me like wine. The dead wood simmers in my skull. I am rotten. And your blood is red still and you have forgotten, And my blood was yours once and yours mine! Are you there still? O fainter, O further.... nothing! Nothing taps! Surely you straining and moaning there, You were only a cold branch in the black air? ... Or a door perhaps? GHOSTS GATHERING (_For B. C._) You hear no bones click, see no shaken shroud. Though no tombs grin, you feel ghosts gathering. Crowd On pitiful crowd of small dead singing men Tread the sure earth they feebly hymned; again With fleshless hand seize unswayed grass. They seize Insensitive flowers which bend not. Through gross trees They sift. Nothing withstands them. Nothing knows Them nor the songs they sang, their busy woes. "Hence from these ingrate things! To the towns!" they weep, (If ghosts have tears). You think a wrinkled heap Of leaves heaved, or a wing stirred, less than this. Some chance on the midnight cities. Others miss The few faint lights, thin voices. Wretched these Doomed to beat long the windy vacancies! Some mourn through forlorn towns. They prowl and seek --What seek they? Who knows them? If branches creak And leaves flap and slow women ply their trade, Those all are living things, but these are dead, All that they were, dead totally. What fool still Knows their extinguished songs? They had their fill Of average joys and sorrows. They learned how Love wilts, Death does not wilt. What more left now? But one ghost yet of all these ghosts may find Himself not utterly faded. Through his blind Some old man's lamp-rays probe the darkness. Sick Of his gaunt quest, the ghost halts. The clock's tick Troubles the silence. Tiredly the ghost scans The opened book on the table. A flame fans, A weak wan fire floods through his subtle veins. No, no, not wholly forgotten! Loves and pains Not suffered wholly for nothing! (The old man bends Over the book, makes notes for pious ends, --Some curious futile work twelve men at most Will read and yawn over.) The dizzy ghost, Like some more ignorant moth circles the light... Not suffered wholly for nothing! ... "A sweet night!" The old man mumbles.... A warmth is in the air, He smiles, not knowing why. He moves his chair Closer against the table. And sitting bowed Lovingly turns the leaves and chants aloud. LYRIC IN GLOOM Knights and ladies all are dead, Heigh-ho! so am I! Now the sunset falls like lead, Never a star is in the sky. Near or far, Never a star! Knights and ladies all are dead. Heigh-ho! so am I! We shall never be born again! Heigh-ho! why should we? Jesus, first and last of men, Christ I crucified in me. Near or far, Never a star! We shall never be born again, Heigh-ho! why should we? I SEEK A WILD STAR What seek you in this hoarse hard sand That, shuffles from your futile hand? Your limbs are wry. With salt despair All day the scant winds freeze your hair. What mystery in the barren sand Seek you to understand? _All day the acute winds' finger-tips Flay my skin and cleave my lips. But though like flame about my skull Leap the gibes of the cynic gull, I shall not go from this place. I Seek through all curved vacancy Though the sea taunt me and frost scar, I seek a star, a star!_ Why seek you this, why seek you this Of all distraught futilities? The tide slides closer. The tide's teeth Shall bite your body with keen death! Of all unspaced things that are Vain, vain, most hideously far, Why seek you then a star? _I seek a wild star, I that am Eaten by earth and, all her shame; To whom fields, towns are a close clot Of mud whence the worm dieth not; To whom all running water is Besnagged with timeless treacheries, Who in a babe's heart see designed Mine own distortion and the blind Lusts of all my kind! Hence of all vain things that are Fain, most hideously far, A star, I seek, a star!_ MY LADY OF PEACE In the sickening away of the trumpets and the shuddering of the drums, She comes, my Lady of Peace, with her grief, her grief, she comes. With the blood on her teeth she comes, the lost wild eyeballs stare; There is foam in the blood on her lips; ashes are strewn in her hair. Like flowers are her dry fingers, pale flowers grey frost has nipped, Being empty of hands they held like desolate seas unshipped. And she dances, the strayed white woman, she dances a forlorn tread, Being sad for the men that are living and glad for the men that are dead. OUR JACK Our Jack is dead, our jolly and simple Jack. To him are fierce stars clay and snow is black. Black blinding silences are all his hours, He knows not birds nor laughter nor any flowers. And when white winds come calling over the hill, To him no white winds call, he lies so still. And now, when all his singing pals come back, He'll not leave France behind, our little Jack. PEACE There were three men when grey dawn broke That walked in a sad wood. There were three Solemn Men who spoke No speech I understood. The singings of the singing birds In lorn beaks were subdued. There was a grief enchained the herds That beat this bourneless wood. One Man was Moses. Lo! he struck A grim stone with his rod. There was no living fount that shook From the far wells of God! One Man was Christ. Around His head The jagged thorns were keen. But all the blood His body shed Made not the foul world clean. One Man was Everyman. He went Blank-eyed to the dark mesh. One Man was Everyman that rent From his own bones his flesh. No boon hath Moses rendered, nor Shall Christ His bleeding cease. For swift as Peace hath stifled War, Huge War hath stifled Peace. SILVER-BADGED WAITER Poor trussed-up lad, what piteous guise Cloaks the late splendour of your eyes, Stiffens the fleetness of your face Into a mask of sleek disgrace, And makes a smooth caricature Of your taut body's swift and sure Poise, like a proud bird waiting one Moment ere he taunt the sun; Your body that stood foolish-wise Stormed by the treasons of the skies, Star-like that hung, deliberate Above the dubieties of Fate, But with an April gesture chose Unutterable and certain woes! And now you stand with discreet charm Dropping the napkin round your arm, Anticipate your tip while you Hear the commercial travellers chew. You shuffle with their soups and beers Who held at heel the howling fears, You whose young limbs were proud to dare Challenge the black hosts of despair! SUNSET OVER SUBURB (_For Neville Whymant_) The sun setting down the suburb holds Impermanent crimsons and elusive golds. See the false banners! folds on magic folds Sway down deluded streets! Refuse and ruin now most featly kissed By lips flushed amethyst! The walls are shimmered with a vaporous dusk, A glamour glooms The sorrowful pale husk With rich twilight of witchcraft blooms. Ah! spurious wizardry that flows and fleets Where sword-gems flash and melt in a moon-mist! The roofs so ashen-dark of old Flare down the streets like lifted brands, Flare like the burning arc of sands Where the recurrent seas have rolled Long breakers molten from astounding gold The chimneys which all day Scowling have stood Against the devouring mills, Boding no thought of good For whoso came that way-- Lo now! from evil thought Soaring through steeps of fire their brows are caught. Columnar topaz in this time of shrift, Their tall heads lift Among the bases of celestial hills. Ah streets, rent roofs, ah chimneys, I am blind! I dare not find You lifted so from purgatorial dooms. I cannot breathe. Hold me! I sink where the dense colour fumes! Now opiate hands close round me, draw me down, Foam-lulled where soundless tides of sunset seethe! Hold me! I drown! My eyes open! ah so wretched eyes! Have ye no gift to steep Your seeing in swart sleep? Cannot your harsh lids close Tighter than midnight knows, Make sleep a burial whence the last star dies? Now ebbing like the blood in a faint pulse, Relentless, with no pause, Shorn of the lying sapphires, aureate cheats, The glamorous tide withdraws. The false sky dulls From redmost roses into drooping weeds. Ah dying beauty now that dying bleeds, Your banners fail in dust! A slow rot gnaws The disillusioned roofs with teeth of rust. Now chimneys reassume Their ominous dark doom. Sick grey, sick brown and grey once more are penned Within the network of the haggard streets. The suburb stretches drably to life's end! Like sheep in a mange-ridden flock Once more the aimless houses sprawl Along the dishevelled streets, Where grocers shew their flyblown stock, Where butchers shew their pulpy meats, Where down a tin-heaped backyard wall Thin cats and women call. As night comes close the suburb flares To petty sins and cheap carouse Along its foolish thoroughfares. The smirking adolescents stand About the corners in coarse groups. Somewhere a blind knocks like a hand, A lodger rings a stuttering bell, A stray tree mutely droops thin boughs. A window opening throws a smell From kitchens where smeared saucepans boil Their quarts of scurfy soups. An unlatched door swings wide and wails. A patch of wilted grass exhales Scents not of dust nor dustless soil. For lo! this twofold sorrow was set down On the doomed suburb till the last of days, Which hath been placed in intermediate ways Between two bournes from which her heart is sealed: The intimate keep of the far midmost town, The green quick raptures of far outmost field. She knows not the heart throbbing nor the tense Roads shimmering where the hundred thousand feet Make thunders where they meet. Nor tumult storming in loud sense on sense: Eyes where the profligate hues Mingle in whirlpools of untamed delight, Where scarlet or shrill green pursues Purples and yellows and star-blues, And find or lose Their bodies in white day or profound night; Smells of strange spices from uncharted lands, Of blood on unwiped hands, Of woman's hair, of ripe flamboyant flowers, Of buildings leaping to the displaced skies, Of all the body's and soul's mad merchandise Sold through the crowded unremitting hours; Sounds of innumerable singings since the dawn Came dancing and, her gown withdrawn, Her white breasts blinded night's most impotent eyes; Cracked murmurs of pale harlots in their beds, Who have paid more than gold for nothing bought; The mumbling of old women with drooped heads Who are defeated though they sternly fought; Music and terror and the shock of wings!-- Not these she knows--colours and sounds and smells, The conjoint heavens and the massed hells, No, not these things! Not these she knows,--nor these, nor these: The snowdrops under the dark yews, The challenge on the young lips borne Of brave blackthorn Against the jagged teeth and the harsh beard Of winter seared. Nor primroses washed with sweet dews, Nor daffodils where bees are stuck Who probe too deeply for their sweet, Nor celandine whence they refuse To move until they suck Their heads drunk and a stupor to their feet. Ah the dog-violets on low hills And woodland sorrel in deep woods And blackbirds with fine yellow bills And thrushes of a thousand moods And nesting-time when these make rhyme Amid the youngling leaves that climb On sycamores and chestnut trees! Not these she knows, not these! She hath not seen the kingfisher By willowed waters dart blue fires. She hath not seen the skylark stir When a sheep's foot came near his nest, And rise to lead the morning choirs From flushed East to pale West. Nor all the blossoms of all fruit, Apple and pear and rosy peach, Nor, palisaded from man's reach Behind a guard of frowning fir, Wild cherry tipped with dawn. Nor heard grass-belfries chink and chime When poplars sway like a slim faun, Nor known the tardy oak-tree suit His body to the crescent time. Not these things and not these she knows Behind her rampart of pale woes, For she with twofold grief is sealed From midmost town and outmost field. Ah sunset! thou who lying came To flood her streets with traitor flame, Come thou no more With gilded lies! Her heart is numbed, her eyes are sore, Her heart is troubled with sick shame. Open no more One fitful instant the wild door Which brought one breeze of Paradise. In this dun midway where she lies Each day a twofold death she dies. Thou false and lovely, come no more With warm wings touched of Paradise! SHRIFT AMONG HILLS The gaunt stones upright on nude fells Alone shall be his gods: naught else Hold his urgent blood and sense Subdued in proud stern reverence. Only to these who make their house Among clean winds he bends his brows. On their austere lips he shall place The spent passions of his face. The cupped midnight like a great bowl Shall lave him. He shall go forth whole. COURAGE THE DREAMERS (_For Anthony Bertram_) We swing our swords against the bare Bleak brows of granite. Yea, we dare. We of clay limbs, armed with frail rhyme, To taunt the passive globes that stare From the eye-sockets of stern Time. Though our long anguish may not dint His towering flanks, yet from this flint Our swords strike such fierce sparks of light, The moon is blanched, the fool stars stint Their weak flames at the crest of night. Yea though we bleed from crown to heel, Yea though the points of our split steel Make futile glories and then die Against Time's blear immensity, Yet for black woe there shall be weal! Stauncher than Time our dream is built. Despair not, human dreamers, for We shall prevail after much war. Yea, the poor stump of our sword's hilt At length shall be Time's conqueror! A number of these poems are reprinted from _Voices_, _Coterie_, the _Nation_, the _English Review_, the _Englishwoman_, _To-day_, _Colour_, the _Apple_, the _New Witness_, the _Sphere_, the _Saturday Westminster_, and other journals; and from "A Queen's College Miscellany," "The Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany," and Messrs. Palmer and Hayward's "Miscellany of Poetry." THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD. LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.