( ,1JV y ^ 
 
 '^^^^■AM 
 
 
 
COLLECTED POEMS OF 
 FORD MADOX HUEFFER 
 
I 
 
Collected Poems 
 
 of Ford Madox Hueffer 
 
 London 
 
 Martin Seeker 
 
 Number Five John Street Adelphi 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Preface page 9 
 
 J. HIGH GERMANY 
 
 I The Starling 33 
 i« In the Little Old Market-Place (To the Memory 
 
 of A. V.)i 36 
 
 To all the JDead x 39 
 
 Rhyming 52 
 
 Autumn Evening 54 
 
 In the Train 55 
 
 The Exile 57 
 
 , Moods on the Moselle 58 
 
 r^ Canzone a la Sonata (To E. P.^ 59 
 
 <=j Siissmund's Address to an Unknown God 
 
 (Adapted from the High German) 61 
 
 ^ TheEeather 67 
 
 II. SONGS FROM LONDON ' , o 
 
 Views 
 
 Finchley Road 73 
 
 The Three-ten 74 
 
 Four in the Morning Courage 75 
 
 Modern Love 76 
 
 Spring on the Woodland Path 78 
 
 Consider 79 
 
 Club Night 80 
 
 To Christina and Katharine at Christmas 8 1 
 
 The Dream Hunt 82 
 
 The Old Lament 83 
 
 Mauresque (To V. M.) 84 
 In the Stone Jug (Tom of Hounslow Heath 
 
 sings on the night before his execution) 85 
 
 How Strange a Thing 86 
 
 III. FROM INLAND 
 
 From Inland 89 
 
 The Portrait 9 1 
 
 
 u^ 
 
 377117 
 
Song 
 
 page 92 
 
 The Unwritten Song 
 
 93 
 
 A Suabian Legend 
 
 94 
 
 Sea Jealousy 
 
 96 
 
 Enough 
 
 97 
 
 Tandaradei (Walter Von der Vogelweide) 
 
 98 
 
 Lullaby 
 
 99 
 
 IV. THE FACE OF THE NIGHT ^*'' 
 
 A Sequence 103 
 
 On the Hills 108 
 SideraCadentia(On the death of Queen Victoria) 109 
 
 Night Piece 110 
 
 Thanks Whilst Unharnessing 1 1 1 
 
 Grey Matter 113 
 
 Old Man's Even Song 116 
 
 Children's Song 117 
 
 From the Soil (Two Monologues) 1 1 8 
 
 Wisdom 122 
 
 The Posy-ring (After Clement Marot) 1 23 
 
 The Great View 124 
 
 Wife to Husband 1 25 
 
 A Night Piece 126 
 
 To Christina at Nightfall 1 2 7 
 
 Two Frescoes 1 28 
 
 Volksweise 133 
 And Afterwards (A savage sort of song on the 
 
 road) 1 34 
 
 On a Marsh Road (Winter Nightfall) 1 35 
 
 An End Piece 136 
 
 V. POEMS FOR PICTURES ^^'^ 
 
 Love in Watchfulness (Upon the Sheepdowns) 139 
 
 After All 140 
 
 The Old Faith to the Converts 1 42 
 
 St Aethelburga (For a Picture) 143 
 6 
 
Gray (For a Picture) page 1 46 
 
 The Gipsy and the Cuckoo 1 48 
 
 The Gipsy and the Townsman 1 49 
 
 The Song of the Women (A Wealden Trio) 1 50 
 
 The Peasant's Apology 152 
 
 Auctioneer's Song 153 
 
 Aldington Knoll (The Old Smuggler Speaks) 1 54 
 
 A Pagan 156 
 
 Old Winter 157 
 The Pedlar leaves the Bar Parlour at Dymchurch 1 5 8 
 
 An Anniversary 1 5 9 
 
 Beginnings (For Rossetti's First Painting) 1 60 
 
 At the Bal Masque (Columbine to Pierrot) 162 
 
 In Tenebris 163 
 
 Song of the Hebrew Seer 164 
 
 An Imitation (To M. M.) 1 65 
 Sonnet (Suggested by the "Phoebus with 
 
 Admetus," by George Meredith) 1 66 
 
 Song Dialogue 1 67 
 
 VI. LITTLE PLAYS ('^^^ 
 
 Perseverance d' Amour : A Little Play 1 7 1 
 King Cophetua's Wooing (A Song Drama in 
 
 one Act) 193 
 
 The Mother : A Song Drama 202 
 
 The Face ofthe Night: A Pastoral 211 
 
 A Masque ofthe Times o' Day (A Fragment) 221 
 
 The Wind's Quest 227 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I DO not wish to apologize for this publication, but 
 I wish to propitiate beforehand those who may 
 object that I am putting out Collected Poems 
 rather than a Selection, and I wish to make some 
 speculations as to the differences between prose and 
 verse as they are written nowadays. I do the latter 
 here because there is no periodical in this town that 
 would print my musings— and quite rightly, because 
 few living souls would wish to read them. Let me 
 then become frankly biographic, a thing which may 
 be permitted to the verse-writing mood. 
 
 The collection here presented is made up of reprints 
 of five volumes of verse which have appeared at odd 
 times during the last fifteen years. The last poem 
 in the book was written when I was fifteen, the first, 
 a year ago, so that, roughly speaking, this volume 
 represents the work of twenty-five years. 
 
 But the writing of verse hardly appears to me to 
 be a matter of work: it is a process, as far as 
 I am concerned, too uncontrollable. From time to 
 time words in verse form have come into my head 
 and I have \vritten them down, quite powerlessly 
 and without much interest, under the stress of cer- 
 tain emotions. And, as for knowing whether one or 
 the other is good, bad or indifferent, I simply cannot 
 begin to trust myself to make a selection. And, as 
 for trusting any friend to make a selection, one can- 
 not bring oneself to do it either. They have— one's 
 friends — too many mental axes to grind. One will 
 admire certain verses about a place Isecause in that 
 place they were once happy ; one will find fault with 
 a certain other paper of verses because it does not 
 seem likely to form a piece of prentice work in a school 
 that he is desirous of founding. I should say that 
 
 9 
 
most of the verses here printed are rather deriva- 
 tive, and too much governed by the passing emo- 
 tions of the moment. But I simply cannot tell; is it 
 not the function of verse to register passing emo- 
 tions ? Besides, one cherishes vague, pathetic hopes 
 of having written masterpieces unaware, as if one's 
 hackney mare should by accident be got with a 
 winner of the Two Thousand. 
 
 With prose, that conscious and workable medium, 
 it is a perfectly different matter. One finds a subject 
 somewhere — in the course of gossip or in the Letters 
 and State Papers of some sovereign deceased, pub- 
 lished by the Record Office. Immediately the mind 
 gets to work upon the "form," blocks out patches of 
 matter, of dialogue, of description. If the subject is 
 to grow into a short short-story, one knows that 
 one will start with a short, sharp, definite sentence, 
 so as to set the pace : 
 
 "Mr Lamotte," one will write, "returned from 
 fishing. His eyes were red; the ends of his collar, 
 pressed open because he had hung down his head 
 in the depths of his reflection. . . ." 
 
 Or, if it is to be a long short-story, we shall qualify 
 the sharpness of the opening sentence and damp it 
 down as thus : 
 
 "When, on a late afternoon of July, Mr Lamotte 
 walked up from the river with his rod in his hand ..." 
 
 Or again, if the subject seems one for a novel, we 
 begin : 
 
 " Mr Lamotte had resided at the White House for 
 sixteen years. The property consisted of 627 acres, 
 of which one hundred and forty were park-land in- 
 tersected by the river Torridge, of forty acres of 
 hop-land . . ." and so on. We shall proceed to "get 
 in" Mr Lamotte and his property and his ancestry 
 and his landscape and his society. We shall think 
 about these things for a long time and with an ab- 
 10 
 
solute certainty of aim ; we shall know what we want 
 to do, and — to the measure of the light vouchsafed 
 — we shall do it. 
 
 But with verse I just do not know: I do not know 
 anything at all. As far as I am concerned, it just 
 comes. I hear in my head a vague rhythm : 
 
 i^^i^^ 
 
 and presently a line will present itself: 
 
 " Up here, where the air's very clear," 
 Or else one will come from nowhere at all : 
 "When all the little hills are hid in snow," 
 
 and the rest flows out. 
 
 And I confess myself to being as unable to judge 
 the result as I am to influence the production. 
 
 And, as I have said, I have no outside "pointers" 
 at all. Whence should I get it? From the public? 
 From the Press? From writers whom I revere? 
 From my publisher ? 
 
 As for the Press and the Public. My first book of 
 verse was received with extraordinary enthusiasm 
 by the former. The Times praised it for a column ; 
 the Daily News for a column and a half; the Academy 
 gave it a page. The Public bought fourteen copies. 
 With the publication of my second volume the pub- 
 lisher failed. The Press devoted to it less space, but 
 stated that I had not belied my earlier promise; the 
 public bought no copies at all. That may have been 
 because the publisher had disappeared. My third 
 volume received nine notices from the Press; I 
 never had any accounts from the publishers, and, 
 since they are quite honest folk, I presume that, had 
 there been any sales, they would have paid me the 
 
few shillings that would have been upon their books. 
 I paid for the publication of the fourth volume and 
 purchased one hundred copies for use as Christmas 
 cards. It received five notices in the Press. (There 
 were no advertisements.) My fifth venture I also 
 subsidized and used for a similar festive purpose. 
 ONE provincial newspaper devoted four lines to it; 
 I believe that two people purchased copies. 
 
 It will thus be manifest that, from the Press and 
 the Public I have received no sort of pointer at all, 
 except to suppress these faggots of irregular lines 
 — which are all they are to me. 
 
 Is that a test? Or is anything any test? I do not 
 know. I know that I would very willingly cut off my 
 right hand to have written the "Wahlfart nach 
 Kevelaar" of Heine, or "Im Moos," by Annette von 
 Droste. I would give almost anything to have written 
 almost any modern German lyric or some of the bal- 
 lads of my friend Levin Schiicking. These fellows 
 you know. They sit at their high windows in Ger- 
 man lodgings; they lean out; it is raining steadily. 
 Opposite them is a shop where herring salad, onions 
 and oranges are sold. A woman with a red petticoat 
 and a black and grey check shawl goes into the 
 shop and buys three onions, four oranges and half a 
 kilo of herring salad. And there is a poem ! Hang it 
 all ! There is a poem. 
 
 But this is England — this is Campden Hill, and we 
 have a literary jargon in which we must write. We 
 must write in it or every word will "swear." 
 
 Denn nach Koln am Rheine 
 Geht die Procession. 
 
 " For the procession is going to Cologne on the 
 Rhine." You could not use the word procession in 
 an English poem. It would not be literary. Yet 
 
 12 
 
when those lines are recited in Germany people 
 weep over them. I have seen fat Frankfort bankers 
 — and Jews at that— weeping when the " Wahlfart" 
 was recited in a red plush theatre with gilt cherubs 
 all over the place. 
 
 That I think is why I know nothing about and 
 take very little interest in English poetry. As to 
 my own — that here presented I can say this — 
 there is no single poem in the whole number that 
 I have not been heartily advised by one person or 
 another not to republish. Then comes the publisher 
 — a real publisher, though I imagine a mad one, who 
 offers me money — yes, real money — for the right to 
 publish a Collected Edition ! A Collected Edition 
 with nothing left out this publisher commands. 
 What then am I to do ? Suppress all or publish all ? 
 
 To suppress all would be too painful. I have 
 worked at these things; some people will be pleased 
 to read some of them ; others will be flattered. They 
 represent emotions, fears, aspirations! And, for the 
 life of me, I cannot tell which, if any, is good and 
 which is the merest trifling. 
 
 II 
 
 With regard to more speculative matters. I may 
 really say that for a quarter of a century I have 
 kept before me one unflinching aim — to register my 
 own times in terms of my own time, and still more 
 to urge those who are better poets and better prose- 
 writers than myself to have the same aim. I suppose 
 I have been pretty well ignored; I find no signs of 
 my being taken seriously. It is certain that my con- 
 viction would gain immensely as soon as another 
 soul could be found to share it. But for a man mad 
 about writing this is a solitary world, and writing 
 
 13 
 
— you cannot write about writing without using 
 foreign words — is a metier de chien. 
 
 It is something a matter of diction. In France, 
 upon the whole, a poet — and even a quite literary 
 poet — can write in a language that, roughly speak- 
 ing, any hatter can use. In Germany, the poet 
 writes exactly as he speaks. And these facts do so 
 much towards influencing the poet's mind. If we 
 cannot use the word "procession" we are apt to be 
 precluded from thinking about processions. Now 
 processions (to use no other example) are very in- 
 teresting and suggestive things, and things that 
 are very much part of the gnat-dance that modern 
 life is. Because, if a people has sufficient interest 
 in public matters to join in huge processions it has 
 reached a certain stage of folk-consciousness. If it 
 will not or cannot do these things it is in yet other 
 stages. Heine's " Procession " was, for instance, not 
 what we should call a procession at all. With us 
 there are definite types — there is the King's Pro- 
 cession at Ascot. There are processions in support 
 of Women's Suffrage and against it; those in sup- 
 port of Welsh Disestablishment or against it. But 
 the procession at Koln was a pilgrimage. 
 
 Organized state functions, popular expressions 
 of desire are one symptom; pilgrimages another. 
 But the poet who ignores them all three is to my 
 thinking lost, since in one way or another they 
 embrace the whole of humanity and are mysterious, 
 hazy and tangible. A poet of a sardonic turn of 
 mind will find sport in describing how, in a low 
 pot-house, an emissary of a skilful Government will 
 bribe thirty ruffians at five shillings a head to break 
 up and so discredit a procession in favour of votes 
 for women; yet another poet may describe how a 
 lady in an omnibus, with a certain turn for rhetoric, 
 will persuade the greater number of the other pas- 
 H 
 
sengers to promise to join the procession for the 
 saving of a church; another will become emotiona- 
 lized at the sight of the Sword of Mercy borne by 
 a peer after the Cap of Maintenance borne by yet 
 another. And believe me, to be perfectly sincere, 
 when I say that a poetry whose day cannot find 
 poets for all these things is a poetry that is lacking 
 in some of its members. 
 
 So, at least, I see it. Modern life is so extra- 
 ordinary, so hazy, so tenuous with, still, such definite 
 and concrete spots in it that I am for ever on the 
 look out for some poet who shall render it with all 
 its values. I do not think that there was ever, as the 
 saying is, such a chance for a poet; I am breathless, 
 I am agitated at the thought of having it to begin 
 upon. And yet I am aware that I can do nothing, 
 since with me the writing of verse is not a conscious 
 Art. It is the expression of an emotion, and I can 
 so often not put my emotions into any verse. 
 
 I should say, to put a personal confession on 
 record, that the very strongest emotion — at any 
 rate of this class — that I haye ever had was when 
 I first went to the Shepherd's Bush Exhibition and 
 came out on a great square of white buildings all 
 outlined with lights. There was such a lot of light 
 — and I think that what I hope for in Heaven is an 
 infinite clear radiance of pure light! There were 
 crowds and crowds of people — or no, there was, 
 spread out beneath the lights, an infinite moving 
 mass of black, with white faces turned up to the 
 light, moving slowly, quickly, not moving at all, 
 being obscured, reappearing. 
 
 I know that the immediate reflection will come 
 to almost any reader that this is nonsense or an 
 affectation. " How," he will say, " is any emotion 
 to be roused by the mere first night of a Shepherd's 
 Bush exhibition? Poetry is written about love, 
 
 15 
 
about country lanes, about the singing of birds." 
 I think it is not — not nowadays. We are too far 
 X from these things.^|VVhat we are in, that which is all 
 r around us, is the Crowd — the Crowd blindly looking 
 / for joy or for^ that most pathetic of all things, 
 \» the good time^'I think that that is why I felt so 
 profound an emotion on that occasion. It must have 
 been the feeling — not the thought — of all these 
 good, kind, nice people, this immense Crowd sud- 
 denly let loose upon a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground 
 to pick up the glittering splinters of glass that are 
 Romance, hesitant but certain of vistas of adventure, 
 if no more than the adventures of their own souls — 
 like cattle in a herd suddenly let into a very rich field 
 and hesitant before the enamel of daisies, the long 
 herbage, the rushes fringing the stream at the end. 
 I think pathos and poetry are to be found beneath 
 those lights and in those sounds — in the larking ot 
 the anaemic girls, in the shoulders of the women in 
 evening dress, in the idealism of a pickpocket 
 slanting through a shadow and imagining himself 
 a hero whose end will be wealth and permanent 
 apartments in the Savoy Hotel. For such dreamers 
 of dreams there are. 
 
 That indeed appears to me — and I am writing as 
 seriously as I can — the real stuff of the poetry ot 
 our day. Love in country lanes, the song of birds, 
 moonlight — these the poet, playing for safety, and 
 the critic trying to find something safe to praise, 
 will deem the sure cards of the poetic pack. They 
 seem the safe things to sentimentalize over, and it 
 is taken for granted that sentimentalizing is the 
 business of poetry. It is not, of course. Upon the 
 face of it the comfrey under the hedge may seem a 
 safer card to play, for the purpose of poetry, than 
 the portable zinc dustbin left at dawn for the dust- 
 man to take. 
 i6 
 
But it is not really; for the business ot poetry is 
 not sentimentalism so much as the putting of cer- 
 tain realities in certain aspects. The comfrey under 
 the hedge, judged by these standards, is just a plant 
 — but the ash-bucket at dawn is a symbol of poor 
 humanity, of its aspirations, its romance, its ageing 
 and its death. The ashes represent the sociable fires, 
 the god of the hearth, of the slumbering, dawn 
 populations; the orange peels with their bright 
 colours represent all that is left of a little party of 
 the night before, when an alliance between families 
 may have failed to be cemented, or being accom- 
 plished may have proved a disillusionment or a 
 temporary paradise. The empty tin of infant's food 
 stands for birth; the torn up scrap of a doctor's 
 prescription for death. Yes, even if you wish to 
 sentimentalize, the dustbin is a much safer card to 
 play than the comfrey plant.'' And, similarly, the 
 anaemic shop-girl at the Exhibition, with her bad 
 teeth and her cheap black frock, is safer than Isolde. 
 She is more down to the ground and much more 
 touching. 
 
 Or again, there are the symbols of the great fine 
 things that remain to us. Many of us might confess 
 to being unable to pass Buckingham Palace when 
 the Royal Standard is flying on the flagstaff with- 
 out a very recognizable emotion that is equivalent 
 to the journalist's phrase, a catching at the throat. 
 For there are symbols of aspiration everywhere. 
 The preposterous white papier mache fountain is a 
 symbol, so are the preposterous gilded gates, so are 
 the geraniums and the purplish-grey pencil of West- 
 minster Cathedral tower that overhangs the palace. 
 There are, upon the standard, three leopards pas- 
 sant which are ancient and suggestive things; there 
 is the lion rampant which is pretentious, and a harp 
 which is a silly sort of thing to have upon a flag. 
 B 17 
 
But it is a rich spot; a patch of colour that is left to 
 us. As the ugly marquess said of the handsome foot- 
 man: 
 
 " Mon dieu, comme nous les faisons — et comme ils 
 nous font!" 
 
 For papier mache and passant leopards and all, 
 these symbols are what the crowd desires and what 
 they stand for made the crowd what it is. And the 
 absurd, beloved traditions continue. The excellent 
 father of a family in jack-boots, white breeches, 
 sword, helmet strap, gauntlets, views the prepara- 
 tion of his accoutrements and the flag that he carries 
 before his regiment as something as part of his 
 sacred profession as, to a good butler, is the family 
 plate. That is an odd, mysterious human thing, the 
 stuff for poetry. 
 
 We might confess again to having had emotions 
 at the time of the beginning of the South African 
 War-^=we were, say, in the gallery at Drury Lane 
 and the audience were all on fire; we might confess 
 to having had emotions in the Tivoli Music Hall 
 when, just after a low comedian had "taken off" 
 Henry VIII, it was announced that Edward VII 
 was dying, and the whole audience stood up and 
 sang "God Save the King" — as a genuine hymn 
 that time. We may have had similar emotions at 
 seeing the little Prince of Wales standing unsteadily 
 on a blue foot-stool at the coronation, a young boy 
 in his garter robes — or at a Secret Consistory at the 
 Vatican, when the Holy Father ceremonially whis- 
 pered to one Cardinal or another. 
 
 War-like emotions, tears at the passing of a 
 sovereign, being touched at the sight of a young 
 prince or a sovereignly pontifical prisoner of the 
 Vatican — this is perhaps the merest digging out of 
 fossils from a bed of soft clay that the crowd is. 
 God knows we may "just despise" democracy or 
 i8 
 
the writing of laureate's odes, but the putting of 
 the one thing in juxtaposition with the other — that 
 seems to me to be much more the business of the 
 poet of to-day than setting down on paper what he 
 thinks about the fate of Brangane, not because any 
 particular "lesson" maybe learned, but because 
 such juxtapositions suggest emotions. 
 
 For myself, I have been unable to do it; I am too 
 old, perhaps, or was born too late— anything you 
 like. But there it is— I would rather read a picture 
 in verse of the emotions and environment of a 
 Goodge Street anarchist than recapture what songs 
 the sirens sang. That after all was what Fran9ois 
 Villon was doing for the life of his day, and I should 
 feel that our day was doing its duty by posterity 
 much more surely if it were doing something of the 
 sort. 
 
 Can it then be done? In prose of course it can. 
 But, in poetry ? Is there something about the mere 
 framing of verse, the mere sound of it in the ear, 
 that it must at once throw its practitioner or its 
 devotee into an artificial frame of mind? Verse pre- 
 sumably quickens the perceptions of its writer as do 
 hashish or ether. But must it necessarily quicken 
 them to the perception only of the sentimental, the 
 false, the hackneyed aspects of life ? Must it make 
 us, because we live in cities, babble incessantly of 
 green fields; or because we live in the twentieth 
 century must we deem nothing poetically good that 
 did not take place before the year 1 603 ? 
 
 This is not saying that one should not soak one- 
 self with the Greek traditions: study every fragment 
 of Sappho; delve ages long in the works of Bertran 
 de Born ; translate for years the minnelieder of Wal- 
 ther von der Vogelweide or that we should forget 
 the bardic chants of Patric of the vSeven Kingdoms. 
 Let us do anything in the world that will widen our 
 B2 19 
 
perceptions. We are the heirs of all the ages. But, 
 in the end, I feel fairly assured that the purpose of 
 all these pleasant travails is the right appreciation 
 of such facets of our own day as God will let us 
 perceive. 
 
 I remember seeing in a house in Hertford an 
 American cartoon representing a dog pursuing a 
 cat out of the door of a particularly hideous tene- 
 ment house, and beneath this picture was inscribed 
 the words: "This is life — one damn thing after an- 
 other." Now I think it would be better to be able to 
 put that sentiment into lyric verse than to remake 
 a ballad of the sorrows of CuchuUain or to para- 
 phrase the Book of Job. I do not mean to say that 
 Job is not picturesque ; I do not mean to say that it 
 is not a good thing to have the Book of the Seven 
 Sorrows of whom you will in the background of 
 your mind or even colouring your outlook. But it is 
 better to see life in the terms of one damn thing 
 \ after another, vulgar as is the phraseology or even 
 '^ the attitude, than to render it in terms of withering 
 gourds and other poetic paraphernalia. It is, in fact, 
 better to be vulgar than affected, at any rate if you 
 practise poetry. 
 
 Ill 
 
 One of my friends, a really serious critic, has 
 assured me that my poem called " To All the Dead " 
 was not worth publishing, because it is just Brown- 
 ing. Let me, to further this speculation, just confess 
 that I have never read Browning, and that, roughly 
 speaking, I cannot read poetry at all. I never really 
 have been able to. And then let me analyse this 
 case, because it is the plight of many decent, serious 
 people, friends of mine. 
 
 As boys we — I and my friends — read Shakespeare 
 
with avidity, Virgil to the extent of getting at least 
 two Books of the ^neid by heart, Horace with 
 pleasure and Ovid's Persephone Rapta with delight. 
 We liked very much the Bacchae of Euripides—I 
 mean that we used to sit down and take a read in 
 these things sometimes apart from the mere exi- 
 gencies of the school curriculum. A little later 
 Herrick moved us to ecstasy and some of Donne; 
 we liked passages of Fletcher, of Marlowe, of Web- 
 ster and of Kyd. At that time we really loved the 
 jNIinnesingers, and fell flat in admiration before 
 anything of Heine. The Troubadors and even the 
 Northern French Epics we could not read — French 
 poetry did not exist for us at all. If we read a 
 French poem at all, we had always to read it twice, 
 once to master the artificial rhythm, once for the 
 sense. 
 
 Between seventeen and eighteen we read Rossetti, 
 Catullus, Theocritus, Bion, Aloschus and still 
 Shakespeare, Herrick, Heine, Elizabethan and 
 Jacobean lyrics, Crashaw, Herbert and Donne. 
 Towards eighteen we tried Swinburne, Tennyson, 
 Browning and Pope. We could not read any of 
 them — we simply and physically couldn't sit down 
 with them in the hand for long enough to master 
 more than a few lines. We never read any Tennyson 
 at all except for the fragment about the Eagle; 
 never read any Swinburne at all except for the 
 poem that contains the words "I thank with faint 
 thanksgiving whatever Gods there be," and the one 
 beginning "Ask nothing more of me. Sweet"; we 
 also read a German translation of the ballad whose 
 stanzas end : " This is the end of every man's desire." 
 Of Browning we read sufficient to " get the hang 
 of" Fi/inc at the Fair, the Blot on the. Scutcheon for 
 the lyric There's a zvoman like a dewdrop and Meeting 
 at Night and Parting in the Morning and Oli to be in 
 
 21 
 
England. I have a faint idea that we may have read 
 
 The Bishop Orders his Tomb and parts oi Asolando. 
 So that, as things go, we may be said never to have 
 read any Browning at all. (I do not mean to say that 
 what I did read did not influence me, so that even 
 at this late date that influence may be found on such 
 a poem as "To all the Dead," or "The Starling." 
 I am not, I mean, trying to dodge the implication 
 that I may derive from Browning. Influences are 
 queer things, and there is no knowing when or 
 where they may take you. But, until the other day, 
 I should have said that Browning was the last 
 of the poets that I should have taken consciously 
 as a model. The other day, however — about a month 
 ago — some one insisted, sorely against my wishes, 
 on reading to me the beginning of the Flight of the 
 Duchess, as far as "And the whole is our Duke's 
 country," that most triumphant expression ot 
 feudal loyalty. And my enthusiasm knew no bounds, 
 so that, if ever the Muse should visit me again, it 
 may well be Browningese that I shall write, for 
 there is no passage in literature that I should more 
 desire to have written.) 
 
 But at any rate, the attempt to read Tennyson, 
 Swinburne and Browning and Pope — in our teens 
 — gave me and the friends I have mentioned, a 
 settled dislike for poetry that we have never since 
 quite got over. We seemed to get from them the 
 idea that all poets must of necessity write affectedly, 
 at great length, with many superfluous words — that 
 poetry, of necessity, was something boring and 
 pretentious. And I fancy that it is because the 
 greater part of humanity get that impression from 
 those poets that few modern men or women read 
 verse at all. 
 
 To such an extent did that feeling overmaster us 
 that, although we subsequently discovered for our- 
 
selves Christina Rossetti — who strikes us still as 
 far and away the greatest master of words and 
 moods that any art has produced — I am conscious 
 that we regarded her as being far more a prose 
 writer than a poet at all. Poetry being something 
 pretentious, "tol-lol" as the phrase then was, por- 
 tentous, brow-beating, affected — this still, small, 
 private voice gave the impression of not being verse 
 at all. Such a phrase describing lizards amongst 
 heath as: "like darted lightnings here and there 
 perceived yet no-where dwelt upon," or such a sen- 
 tence as : " Quoth one to-morrow shall be like to-day 
 but much more sweet" — these things gave an ex- 
 quisite pleasure, but it was a pleasure comparable 
 rather to that to be had from reading Flaubert. It 
 was comparable rather to that which came from 
 reading the last sentences of Herodias. "Et tous 
 trois ayant pris la tete de Jokanaan s'en allait vers 
 Galillee. Comme elle etait tres lourde ils la portaient 
 alternativement." I do not presume to say exactly 
 whence the pleasure comes except in so far as that 
 I believe that such exact, formal and austere phrases 
 can to certain men give a pleasure beyond any 
 other. And it was this emotion that we received 
 from Christina Rossetti. 
 
 But still, sub-consciously, I am aware that we did 
 not regard her as a poet. 
 
 And, from that day onwards I may say that we 
 have read no poetry at all — at any rate we have 
 read none unprofessionally until just the other day. 
 The poets of the nineties — Dowson, Johnson, David- 
 son and the rest — struck us as just nuisances, 
 writing in derivative language uninteresting mat- 
 ters that might have been interesting had they been 
 expressed in the much more exquisite medium of 
 prose. We got, perhaps, some pleasure from reading 
 the poems — not the novels — of George Meredith, 
 
 23 
 
and a great deal from those of Mr Hardy, whom 
 we do regard as a great, queer, gloomy and splendid 
 poet. We read also — by some odd impulse — the 
 whole of Mr Doughty's Daivn in Britain^ that atro- 
 cious and wonderful epic in twelve volumes which 
 is, I think, the longest and most queerly impressive 
 poem in modern English. We read it with avidity; 
 we could not tear ourselves away from it, and we 
 wrote six reviews of it because no professional re- 
 viewers could be found to give the time for reading 
 it. It was a queer adventure. 
 
 That then is the history of twenty years of read- 
 ing verse, and I think I may say that, for men 
 whose life-business is reading, we have read practi- 
 cally no poetry at all. And, during those twenty 
 years we should have said with assurance that 
 poetry was an artificial, a boring, an unnecessary 
 thing. 
 
 IV 
 
 But, about five years ago, we — I and that group 
 of friends — began to think of founding a periodical 
 — one is always thinking of founding periodicals! 
 We had then to think of what place verse must 
 take in the scheme of things. With our foreign 
 ideas in which academic palms and precedence 
 figure more strongly than they do in the minds of 
 most freeborn islanders, it did not take us long to 
 arrive at the conclusion that poetry must have the 
 very first place in that journal — not because it was 
 a living force, but just because it was dead and must 
 be treated with deference. Moreover, if I may make a 
 further confession, our express aim in founding the 
 periodical in question, was to print a poem by Mr 
 Hardy, a poem that other periodicals had found too 
 — let us say — outspoken for them to print. Now it 
 24 
 
would have been ridiculous to found an immense 
 paper for the express purpose of printing one par- 
 ticular poem and not to give that poem the utmost 
 pride of place. 
 
 So we printed A Sunday Mornuig Tragedy first 
 and the rest in a string after it. It seemed proper, 
 French and traditional to do so. 
 
 And then we began to worry our poor heads 
 about poetry. We had, perforce, to read a great deal 
 of it, and much of what we read seemed to be better 
 stuff than we had expected. We came, for instance, 
 upon the poems of Mr Yeats. Now for ten or twenty 
 years we had been making light of Mr Yeats; we 
 used to sniff irritably at Iimll arise and go rmv, and 
 to be worried by The Countess Kathleen. Mr Yeats 
 appeared to be a merely "literary" poet; an annoy- 
 ing dilettante. I do not now know whether Mr Yeats 
 has changed or whether we have, but I am about 
 in a moment to try to make an amende honorable. 
 
 At any rate we came upon the work of ]\Ir Yeats, 
 of Mr De la Mare, of Mr Flint, of Mr D. H. Lavy- 
 rence, and upon suggestions of power in Mr Pound's 
 derivations from the Romance writers. And gradu- 
 ally it has forced itself upon us that there is a new 
 quality, a new power of impressionism that is open 
 to poetry, and that is not so much open to prose. It 
 it is a quality that attracted us years ago to the 
 poems of Mr Hardy and of Mr George Meredith. 
 (I know that my younger friends will start omi- 
 nously at this announcement, that they will come 
 round to my house and remonstrate seriously for 
 many weary hours. But I must make the best of 
 that.) 
 
 For the fact is that, in Mr Yeats as in Mr Hardy, 
 there are certain qualities that very singularly unite 
 them — qualities not so much of diction or of mind 
 but qualities that can only be expressed in pictorial 
 
 25 
 
terms. For when I think of Mr Hardy's work I 
 seem to see a cavernous darkness, a darkness filled 
 with wood-smoke, touched here and there with the 
 distant and brooding glow of smothered flame. 
 When I think of Mr Yeats' work I seem to see a 
 grey, thin mist over a green landscape, the mist 
 here and there being pierced by a sparkle of dew, 
 by the light shot from a gem in a green cap. (I 
 have tried to write this as carefully as I can, so as 
 to express very precisely what is in the end a debt 
 of sheer gratitude. I mean that really and truly that 
 is the sort of feeling that I have — as if I had dis- 
 covered two new countries — the country of the hardly 
 illumined and cavernous darkness, the country of 
 the thin grey mist over the green fields, and as if 
 those countries still remained for me to travel in.) 
 
 It will at first sight appear that here is a contra- 
 dicting of the words with which we set out — the 
 statement that it is the duty of the poet to reflect 
 . his own day. But there is no contradiction.'-It is 
 .\ the duty of the poet to reflect his own day as it 
 ^1 appears to him; as it has impressed itself upon 
 himf Because I and my friends have, as the saying 
 is, rolled our humps mostly in a landscape that is 
 \ picked out with the red patches of motor-bus sides, 
 it would be the merest provincialism to say that 
 the author of Innisfree should not have sat in the 
 cabins of county Galway or of Connemara, or 
 wherever it is, or that the author of the Dynasts 
 should not have wandered about a country called 
 Wessex reading works connected with Napoleon. 
 "We should not wish to limit Mr Yeats' reading to 
 the daily papers, nor indeed do we so limit our own, 
 any more than we should wish to limit the author 
 of that most beautiful impression, the Lisieyiers, to 
 the purlieus of Bedford Street where the publishers' 
 offices are. 
 26 
 
What worried and exasperated us in the poems 
 of the late Lord Tennyson, the late Lewis Morris, 
 the late William Morris, the late — well, whom you 
 like — is not their choice of subject, it is their imita- 
 tive handling of matter, of words, it is their deriva- 
 tive attitude. ... 
 
 Reading is an excellent thing; it is also experi- 
 ence, and both Mr Yeats and Mr De la Mare have 
 read a great deal. But it is an experience that one 
 should go through not in order to acquire imitative 
 faculties, but in order to find — oneself. Roughly 
 speaking, the late Victorian writers imitated Malory 
 or the Laxdaela Saga and commented upon them ; 
 roughly speaking, again, the poets of to-day record > 
 their emotions at receiving the experience of the 
 emotions of former writers. It is an attitude critical '; 
 rather than imitative, and to the measure of its 
 truth it is the truer poetical attitude. 
 
 The measure of the truth has to be found. It 
 would be an obvious hypocrisy in men whose first 
 unashamed action of the day is to open the daily 
 paper for the cricket scores and whose poetic bag 
 and baggage is as small as I have related — it would 
 be an obvious hypocrisy in us to pretend to have 
 passed the greater part of our existences in romantic 
 woods. But it would be a similar hypocrisy in Mr 
 De la Mare, Mr Yeats, or Mr Hardy to attempt to 
 render Life in the terms of the sort of Futurist 
 picture that life is to me and my likes. 
 
 To get a sort of truth, a sort of genuineness 
 into your attitude towards the life that God makes 
 you lead, to follow up your real preferences, to 
 like as some of us like the hard, bitter, ironical 
 German poets, the life of restaurants, of Crowds, of 
 flashed impressions, to love, as we may love, in our 
 own way, the Blessed Virgin, Saint Katharine or 
 the sardonic figure of Christina of Milan — and to 
 
 27 
 
render it — that is one good thing. Or again, to be 
 genuinely Irish, with all the historic background 
 of death, swords, flames, mists, sorrows, wakes, and 
 again mists — to love those things and the Irish 
 sanctities and Paganisms — that is another good 
 thing if it is truly rendered; the main thing is the 
 genuine love and the faithful rendering of the 
 received impression. 
 /^ The actual language — the vernacular employed 
 ,t — is a secondary matter. I prefer personally the 
 
 ^^ ^language of my own day, a language clear enough 
 for certain matters, employing slang where slang 
 is felicitous and vulgarity where it seems to me 
 that vulgarity is the only weapon against dullness. 
 Mr Doughty, on the other hand — and ]\Ir Doughty 
 is a great poet — uses a barbarous idiom as if he 
 were chucking pieces of shale at you from the top 
 of a rock. Mr Yeats makes literal translations from 
 the Irish; Mr Hardy does not appear to bother his 
 head much about words, he drags them in as he 
 likes. Mr De la Mare and Mr Flint are rather 
 literary; Mr Pound as often as not is so unac- 
 quainted with English idioms as to be nearly un- 
 intelligible. 
 
 (God forbid, by the by, that I should seem to 
 arrogate to myself a position as a poet side by side 
 with Mr De la Mare, or, for the matter of that, with 
 Mr Pound. But in stating my preferences I am 
 merely, quite humbly, trying to voice what I imagine 
 will be the views or the aspirations, the preferences 
 or the prejudices, ofi4;he poet of my day and cir- 
 cumstances when he shall at last appear and voice 
 the life of dust, toil, discouragement, excitement, 
 and enervation that I and many millions lead 
 to-day.) y 
 
 When that poet does come it seems to me that 
 his species will be much that of the gentlemen I 
 28 
 
have several times mentioned. His attitude towards 
 life will be theirs; his circumstances only will be 
 different. An elephant is an elephant whether he 
 pours, at an African water-hole, mud and water 
 over his free and scorched flanks, or whether, in 
 the Zoological Gardens, he carries children about 
 upon his back. 
 
 29 
 
I 
 "HIGH GERMANY" 
 
 The following poems were printed in the volume 
 called "High Germany," published by Messrs Duck- 
 worth in igi I. "The StarHng" also appeared in the 
 Fortnightly Review. 
 
THE STARLING 
 
 IT'S an odd thing how one changes . . . 
 Walking along the upper ranges 
 Of this land of plains, 
 In this month of rains, 
 
 On a drying road where the poplars march along, 
 Suddenly, 
 
 With a rush of wings flew down a company, 
 A multitude, throng upon throng. 
 Of starlings. 
 
 Successive orchestras of song, 
 Flung, like the babble of surf, 
 On to the roadside turf — 
 
 And so, for a mile, for a mile and a half — a long way, 
 Flight follows flight 
 Thro' the still grey light 
 Of the steel-grey day, 
 
 Whirling beside the road in clamorous crowds. 
 Never near, never far, in the shade of the poplars and 
 clouds. 
 
 It's an odd thing how one changes . . . 
 
 And what strikes me now as most strange is : 
 
 After the starlings had flown 
 
 Over the plain and were gone. 
 
 There was one of them stayed on alone 
 
 In the trees ; it chattered on high. 
 
 Lifting its bill to the sky. 
 
 Distending its throat. 
 
 Crooning harsh note after note, 
 
 In soliloquy, 
 
 Sitting alone. 
 
 c 33 
 
-And after a hush 
 It gurgled as gurgled a well, 
 Warbled as warbles a thrush, 
 Had a try at the sound of a bell 
 
 And mimicked a jay 
 
 But I, 
 
 Whilst the starling mimicked on high 
 
 Pulsing its throat and its wings, 
 
 I went on my way 
 
 Thinking of things, 
 
 Onwards and over the range 
 
 And that's what is strange. 
 
 I went down 'twixt tobacco and grain, 
 
 Descending the chequer board plain 
 
 Where the apples and maize are ; 
 
 Under the loopholed gate 
 
 In the village wall 
 
 Where the goats clatter over the cobbles 
 
 And the intricate, straw-littered ways are . . . 
 
 The ancient watchman hobbles 
 
 Cloaked, with his glasses of horn at the end of his 
 
 nose. 
 Wearing velvet short hose 
 And a three-cornered hat on his pate. 
 And his pike-staff and all. 
 And he carries a proclamation. 
 An invitation. 
 To great and small, 
 Man and beast 
 To a wedding feast. 
 And he carries a bell and rings . . . 
 From the steeple looks down a saint. 
 From a doorway a queenly peasant 
 Looks out, in her bride-gown of lace 
 And her sister, a quaint little darling 
 Who twitters and chirps like a starling. 
 34 
 
And this little old place, 
 
 It's so quaint, 
 
 It's so pleasant; 
 
 And the watch bell rings, and the church bell rings 
 
 And the wedding procession draws nigh, 
 
 Bullock carts, fiddlers and goods. 
 
 But I 
 
 Pass on my way to the woods 
 
 Thinking of things. 
 
 Years ago I'd have stayed by the starling, 
 
 Marking the iridescence of his throat. 
 
 Marvelling at the change of his note ; 
 
 I'd have said to the peasant child : " Darling 
 
 Here's a groschen and give me a kiss" ... I'd have 
 
 stayed 
 To sit with the bridesmaids at table, 
 And have taken my chance 
 Of a dance 
 
 With the bride in her laces 
 Or the maids with the blonde, placid faces 
 And ribbons and crants in the stable . . . 
 
 But the church bell still rings 
 
 And I'm far away out on the plain, 
 
 In the grey weather amongst the tobacco and grain, 
 
 And village and gate and wall 
 
 Are a long grey line with the church over all 
 
 And miles and miles away in the sky 
 
 The starlings go wheeling round on high 
 
 Over the distant ranges. 
 
 The violin strings 
 
 Thrill away and the day grows more grey. 
 
 And I ... I stand thinking of things. 
 
 Yes, it's strange how one changes. 
 
 C2 35 
 
IN THE LITTLE OLD MARKET- 
 PLACE 
 
 (To THE Memory of A.V.) 
 
 IT rains, it rains, 
 From gutters and drains 
 And gargoyles and gables : 
 -It drips from the tables 
 That tell us the tolls upon grains. 
 Oxen, asses, sheep, turkeys and fowls 
 Set into the rain-soaked wall 
 Ofthe old Town Hall. 
 
 The mountains being so tall 
 
 And forcing the town on the river. 
 
 The market's so small 
 
 That, with the wet cobbles, dark arches and all. 
 
 The owls 
 
 (For in dark rainy weather the owls fly out 
 
 Well before four), so the owls 
 
 In the gloom 
 
 Have too little room 
 
 And brush by the saint on the fountain 
 
 In veering about. 
 
 The poor saint on the fountain ! 
 Supported by plaques ofthe giver 
 To whom we're beholden ; 
 His name was de Sales 
 And his wife's name von Mangel. 
 (Now is he a saint or archangel ?) 
 He stands on a dragon 
 On a ball, on a column 
 Gazing up at the vines on the mountain : 
 And his falchion is golden, 
 36 
 
And his wings are all golden. 
 
 He bears golden scales 
 
 And in spite of the coils of his dragon, without hint 
 
 of alarm or invective 
 Looks up at the mists on the mountain. 
 
 (Now what saint or archangel 
 
 Stands winged on a dragon, 
 
 Bearing golden scales and a broad bladed sword all 
 
 golden ? 
 Alas, my knowledge 
 Of all the saints of the college, 
 Of all these glimmering, olden 
 Sacred and misty stories 
 Of angels and saints and old glories . . . 
 Is sadly defective.) 
 The poor saint on the fountain . . . 
 
 On top of his column 
 
 Gazes up sad and solemn. 
 
 But is it towards the top of the mountain 
 
 Where the spindrifty haze is 
 
 That he gazes? 
 
 Or is it into the casement 
 
 Where the girl sits sewing? 
 
 There's no knowing. 
 
 Hear it rain ! 
 
 And from eight leaden pipes in the ball he stands on, 
 
 That has eight leaden and copper bands on. 
 
 There gurgle and drain 
 
 Eight driblets of water down into the basin. 
 
 And he stands on his dragon 
 
 And the girl sits sewing 
 
 High, very high in her casement 
 
 And before her are many geraniums in a parket 
 
 All growing and blowing 
 
 37 
 
In box upon box 
 
 From the gables right down to the basement 
 
 With the frescoes and carvings and paint . . . 
 
 The poor saint! 
 
 It rains and it rains, 
 
 In the market there isn't an ox, 
 
 And in all the emplacement 
 
 For wagons there isn't a wagon, 
 
 Not a stall for a grape or a raisin. 
 
 Not a soul in the market 
 
 Save the saint on his dragon 
 
 With the rain dribbling down in the basin, 
 
 And the maiden that sews in the casement. 
 
 They are still and alone, 
 
 Mutterseelens alone. 
 
 And the rain dribbles down from his heels and his 
 
 crown, 
 From wet stone to wet stone. 
 It's as grey as at dawn, 
 And the owls, grey and fawn, 
 Call from the little town hall 
 With its arch in the wall. 
 Where the fire-hooks are stored. 
 
 From behind the flowers of her casement 
 
 That's all gay with the carvings and paint. 
 
 The maiden gives a great yawn, 
 
 But the poor saint — 
 
 No doubt he's as bored ! 
 
 Stands still on his column 
 
 Uplifting his sword 
 
 With never the ease of a yawn 
 
 From wet dawn to wet dawn . . . 
 
 38 
 
TO ALL THE DEAD 
 
 A CHINESE Queen on a lacquered throne 
 With a dragon as big as the side of a house, 
 All golden, and silent and sitting alone 
 In an empty house. 
 
 With the shadows above and the shadows behind. 
 And the Queen with a paper white, rice white face, 
 As still as a partridge, as still as a mouse. 
 With slanting eyes you would say were blind — 
 In a dead white face. 
 
 And what does she think, and what does she see. 
 With her face as still as a frozen pool is, 
 And her air as old as the oldest sea, 
 ^ Where the oldest ice of the frozen Pole is? 
 
 ^ VLShe should have been dead nine thousand year . . . 
 But there come in three score and sixty coolies 
 With a veil of lawn as large as a lake, 
 And the veil blows here and shimmers there 
 In the unseen winds of the shadowy house. 
 And dragons flew in the shadowy air, 
 And there were chrysanthemums everywhere, 
 And butterflies and a coral snake 
 All round the margin of the lake. 
 
 For the Prince has come to court the Queen 
 t- Still sitting on high on her lacquered throne 
 » . V'^With the golden dragon : and all the sheen 
 
 And shimmer and shine of a thousand wantons 
 In silken stuffs, with ivory lutes 
 I And slanting eyes and furred blue boots 
 .o t-That moved in the light of a thousand lanthorns . . 
 
 It all dies down, and the Queen sits there, 
 She should have been dead nine thousand year. 
 
 39 
 
II 
 
 Now it happened that in the course of to-day 
 (The Queen was last night) in the rue de la Paix 
 In a room that was old and darkish and musty, 
 For most of the rooms are quaintly cranky 
 In the rue de la Paix, 
 For when it was new the Grande Arm6e 
 Tramped all its legions down this way. 
 
 But I sat there, and a friendly Yankee 
 
 Was lecturing me on the nature of things 
 
 (It's a way Americans have !) He was cranky, 
 
 Just as much as his rooms and his chairs and his 
 
 tables. 
 But the window stood open and over the way 
 I saw that the house with the modernest facings 
 Had an old tiled roof with mansards and gables. 
 It housed a jeweller, two modistes, 
 A vendor of fans ; and the topmost sign 
 Announced in a golden double line 
 A salon of Chinese chiropodists. 
 
 And that is Paris from heel to crown 
 Plate-glass in the street and jewels and lacings 
 And cranky rooms on the upper floors 
 With rusty locks and creaking doors 
 
 But of what my American friend was saying 
 I haven't a thought — there was too much noise 
 Through the open windows — the motors braying. 
 The clatter of hoofs in a steady stream, 
 And a scream 
 
 Unceasing from twenty paper boys, 
 With twenty versions to take your choice, 
 In styles courageous or gay or rococco, 
 Of clamorous news about Morocco . . . 
 40 
 
Ill 
 
 And suddenly he said : ** Sandusky ! " 
 
 Now what was he talking of there in his musky, 
 
 Worm-eaten rooms of the rue de la Paix ? 
 
 — Of his youth of jack rabbits and peanuts and snakes 
 
 When all was silent about the Lakes. 
 
 Now what is the name of them ? Lake Ladoga ? 
 
 No, no, that's in Russia. It's Ticonderoga, 
 
 Ontario, Champlin, each with their woods, 
 
 And never a house for miles and miles 
 
 And the boys in their boats floated on by the piles 
 
 Of old wigwams where shreds of blankets dangled. 
 
 And they caught their jack rabbits, lit bonfires and 
 
 angled 
 In shallows for catfish. That's it, in Sandusky ! 
 The Bay of Sandusky. 
 
 And then I remembered with grey, clear precision, 
 And I saw — yes I saw — looking over the way 
 Two Chinese chiropodists, villainous fellows. 
 With faces of sulphur — and lemon — yellows, 
 Gaze with that gaze that's half fanatic. 
 Part atrocious and partly sweet. 
 Each from a window of his own attic 
 At a mannequin on my side of the street. 
 And each grinned and girned in his Manchester blue, 
 And smirked with his eyes and his pig-tail too. 
 And somehow they made me feel sick ; but I lost them 
 At the word " Sandusky." A landscape crossed them ; 
 A scene no more nor less than a vision, 
 All clear and grey in the rue de la Paix. 
 
 It must have been seven years ago, 
 I was out on a river whose name I've forgotten ; 
 The Hudson perhaps or the Kotohotten. 
 It doesn't much matter. Do you know the Hudson ? 
 
 41 
 
A sort of a Moselle with New York duds on, 
 There are crags and castles, a distance all grey. 
 Rocks, forests and elbows. But castles of Jay 
 And William H. Post and Mrs Poughkeepsie — 
 Imagine a Moselle that's thoroughly tipsy, 
 A nightmare of ninety American castles 
 With English servants trained up like vassals. 
 Of Hiram P. Ouese who's a fortune from pills for the 
 liver. 
 
 Anyhow, I've forgotten the name of the river. 
 
 And the steamer steamed upwards between the hills 
 And passed through the rapids they called the 
 
 Narrows 
 'Twixt the high grey banks where the firs grow 
 
 jagged, 
 And the castles ceased and the forest grew ragged, 
 And the steamer belched forth sparks and stayed 
 At a wooden village, then grunted and swayed 
 Out to midstream and round a reach 
 Where the river widened and swirled about. 
 And we slowed in the current where black snags 
 
 stuck out. 
 And suddenly we saw a beach — 
 
 A grey old beach and some old grey mounds 
 That seemed to silence the steamer's sounds; 
 So still and old and grey and ragged. 
 For there they lay, the tumuli, barrows, 
 The Indian graves 
 
 IV 
 
 And it wasn't so much the wampumed Braves, 
 Eagle feathers, jade axes and totems and arrows 
 That I thought about, for ten minutes later 
 I was up and away from the Rue de la Paix 
 42 
 
In a train for Treves. 
 
 But the word " Sandusky " still hung in my brain 
 
 As we went through greeny grey Lorraine 
 
 In a jolting train, 
 
 And then bargained for rooms with a German waiter. 
 
 Or it wasn't even in great concern 
 
 For the fate of" Sandusky Bay."— My friend 
 
 Pictured it thronged with American villas, 
 
 Dutch Porticos and Ionic pillars. 
 
 So that no boy's ooat can land on the shores, 
 
 For the high-bred owners of dry goods stores 
 
 Forbid the practice. The villa lawns, 
 
 Pitch-pine canoes with America's daughters 
 
 In a sort of a daily Henley regatta 
 
 And the bright parasols of Japanese paper 
 
 Keep up a ceaseless, endless chatter, 
 
 In the endless, ceaseless girl graduate story 
 
 Where once there were silence, jack-rabbits and 
 
 snakes, 
 And o'er all the gay clatter there floats old Glory — 
 The flag of the States, from a calico shop. 
 
 But stop ! 
 
 I am not lamenting about the Lakes. 
 
 For, as grey dawns roll on to grey dawns. 
 
 Some things must surely come to an end, 
 
 Even old silences over old waters 
 
 Even here in Treves the Porta Nigra 
 
 That isn't so much a gaunt black ruin, 
 
 As a great black whole— a Roman gate-way, 
 
 As high as a mountain, as black as a jail — 
 
 Even here, even here, America's daughters, 
 
 Long toothed old maids with a camera 
 
 (For even they must know decay. 
 
 And the passage of time, hasting, hasting away!) 
 
 And the charm of the past grows meagre and meagrer. 
 
 Though through it all the Porta Nigra 
 
 43 
 
Keeps its black, hard and grim completeness, 
 As if no fleet minutes with all their fleetness 
 Could rub down its surface. 
 But we've walled it in in a manner of speaking 
 With electric trams that go sparking and streaking 
 And filling the night with squeals and jangles 
 As iron wheels grind on iron angles 
 
 And nobody cares and nobody grieves 
 
 And all the spires and towers of Treves 
 
 Shade upwards into the sooty skies, 
 
 And you dig up here a sword or a chalice. 
 
 Some bones, some teeth and some golden bangles 
 
 And several bricks from the Caesar's Palace. 
 
 And so I come back to this funny old town 
 
 Where professors argue each other down 
 
 And every one is in seven movements 
 
 For every kind of Modern Improvements ; 
 
 And there isn't a moment of real ease, 
 
 But students come from the seven seas 
 
 And we boast a professor of Neo-Chinese — 
 
 A thing to astonish the upland heather — 
 
 And more than the universities 
 
 Of all High Germany put together 
 
 Can show the like of. 
 
 The upland heather 
 
 It stretches for miles and miles and miles 
 
 Wine-purple and brooding and ancient and blasted. 
 
 An endless trackless, heather forest, 
 
 And so, between whiles, 
 
 When my mind's all reelingwith Modern Movements 
 
 And my eyes are weary, my head at its sorest 
 
 And the best of beer has lost its zest, 
 
 I go up there to get a rest 
 
 And think of the dead 
 
For it's nothing but dead and dead and dying 
 Dead faiths, dead loves, lost friends and the flying, 
 Fleet minutes that change and ruin our shows, 
 And the dead leaves flitter and autumn goes. 
 And the dead leaves flitter down thick to the ground, 
 And pomps go down and queens go down 
 And time flows on, and flows and flows. 
 
 But don't mistake me, the leaves are wet 
 And most of their copper splendour is rotten 
 Like most of the dead — and still and forgotten, 
 And I don't feel a spark of regret 
 Not a spark 
 
 I am sitting up here on a sort of a mound 
 And the dull red sun has just done sinking 
 And it's grown by this woodside fully dark 
 
 And I'm just thinking 
 
 And the valley lands and the forests and tillage 
 Are wrapped in mist. There's the lights of a village, 
 Of one — of three — of four ! — 
 Four I can count from this high old mound . . . 
 In Tilly's time you could count eighteen . . . 
 You know of Tilly ? A general 
 Who ravaged this land. There was Prince Eugene, 
 And Marshal Saxe and Wallenstein, 
 And God knows who . . . They are dead men all 
 With tombs in cathedrals here and there. 
 Just food for tourists. It's rather funny, 
 They ravaged these cornfields and burned the ham- 
 lets, 
 They drove off the cattle and took the honey. 
 And clocks and coin and chests and camlets : 
 Reduced the numbers to four from eighteen ; 
 You can see four glimmers of light thro' the gloom. 
 But as for Marshal Wallenstein, 
 No doubt he's somewhere in some old tomb 
 
 45 
 
With a marble pillow beneath his head. 
 
 He was shot. Or he wasn't. Anyhow he's dead ! 
 
 And I'm sitting here on an old, smashed mound. 
 
 And the wood-leaves are flittering down to the 
 ground. 
 
 And I'm sitting here and just thinking and wonder- 
 ing, 
 
 Clear thoughts and pictures, dull thoughts and blun- 
 dering. 
 
 It's all one. But I wonder ... I wonder . . . 
 
 And under 
 
 The earth of the barrow there's something moving 
 Or no — not moving. Yes, shoving, shoving, 
 Through the thick, dark earth — a fox or a mole. 
 Phuil But it's dark ! I can't grasp the whole 
 Of my argument — No. I'm not dropping to sleep ! 
 (I can hear the leaves in the dark, cold wood ! 
 That's a boar by his rustling!) '' From good to good, 
 A 7idgood to better yon say we go'' 
 (There's an owl overhead.) " You say that's so ?" 
 My American friend of the rue de la Paix ? 
 " Grow better and better from day to day." 
 Well, well I had a friend that's not a friend to-day; 
 Well, well, I had a love who's resting in the clay 
 Of a suburban cemetery. ''■Friend, 
 My Yankee friend." (He's mighty heavy and tusky. 
 Judged by his rustlings, that old boar in the wood) 
 ' ' Fro7n good to good ! 
 
 Have you found a better bay than old Sandusky ? 
 Or la better friend than the one that's left me ?" 
 ' ''No A rgument? — Well I'm not arguing 
 I came out here to think " — 
 Now what's that thing 
 
 That's coursing o'er dead leaves. It's not a boar ! 
 Some sort of woman ! A Geheimrath's cook 
 Come out to meet her lover of the Ninth — 
 46 
 
An Uhlan Regiment ! You know the Uhlans, 
 Who charged at Mars La Tour; that's on their 
 colours. 
 
 But that little wretch. 
 
 Whoever heard such kissing ! Sighs now ! Groans ! 
 In the copper darkness of these wet, high forests. 
 Well, well, that's no affair of mine to-night. 
 I came out here though, yes, I'd an engagement 
 With Major Hahn to give him his revenge — 
 What was it ? At roulette ? But I'd a headache ! 
 I came out here to think about that Queen ! 
 The Chinese one — the one I saw in Paris. 
 To-night's the thirtieth. . . the thirty-first. 
 Why, yes, it's All Souls' Eve. That's why I'm morbid 
 With thoughts of All the Dead. . . That Chinese Queen 
 She never kissed her lover. But a queer, 
 A queer, queer look came out on her rice white face ! 
 I never knew such longing was in the world. 
 Though not a feature stirred in her ! No kisses ! 
 But there she wavered just behind his back 
 With her slanting eyes. No moth about a flame, 
 No seabird in the storm round a lighthouse glare 
 Was e'er so lured to the ruin and wreck of love. 
 And he knelt there with such a queer, queer face 
 A queer, queer smile, and his uplifted hands 
 He prayed as we pray to a Queen in dragon silk; 
 His hands rubbed palm on palm. And so she 
 
 swayed 
 And swayed just like a purple butterfly 
 Above the open jaws of a coral snake. 
 
 But she 
 
 Should have been dead nine thousand years and 
 
 more, 
 Says our Chinese professor. For such acting 
 Was proper to the days and time of TSiiang: 
 
 47 
 
It's hopelessly demoded, dead and gone ! 
 To-day we have — Chinese chiropodists 
 Who smile like toads at Paris mannequins 
 In the sacred name of Progress. Well, well, well ! 
 I'm not regretting it — No vain regrets ! 
 What's that. . . . 
 
 Out of the loom of the Philosopher's wood 
 
 Two figures brushing on the frozen grass. 
 
 The Uhlan and the cook. So I cried out : 
 
 *' So late at night and not yet in the barracks ! 
 
 Aren't you afraid of ghosts?" . . . "Oh ghosts! oh 
 
 ghosts," 
 I got my answer : " Friend, 
 In our old home the air's so thick with ghosts 
 You couldn't breathe if they were an objection ! " 
 And so I said : "Well, well ! " to make them pass 
 
 Just a glimmer of light there was across the grass 
 
 And on my barrow mound. Upon his head 
 
 The gleam of a helmet, and some sort of pelt 
 
 About his shoulders and the loom of a spear. 
 
 You never know these German regiments, 
 
 The oddest uniforms they have ; and as for her 
 
 Her hair was all across her shoulders and her face, 
 
 Woodland embraces bring the hairpins out . . . 
 
 " My friend," I said, " you'd better hurry home 
 
 Or else you'll lose your situation ! " They 
 
 Bickered in laughter and the man just said : 
 
 " You're sitting on it ! " 
 
 So I moved a little. 
 
 Apologetically, just as it 
 
 It was his table in a restaurant. 
 
 So he said calmly, looking down at me: 
 
 "They call these mounds the Hunnen Graber — 
 
 Graves 
 Of Huns — a modern, trifling folk ! 
 48 
 
We've slept in them well on nine thousand years 
 
 My wife and I. The dynasty TSiiang 
 
 Then reigned in China — well, you know their ways 
 
 Of courting. But your specialty just now 
 
 I understand's not human life but death. 
 
 I died with a wolf at my throat, this woman here 
 
 With a sword in her stomach. Yes she fell on it 
 
 To keep me company in that tumulus. 
 
 Millions and millions of dead there lie round here 
 
 In the manoeuvre grounds of the Seventeenth. 
 
 Oh, yes, I'm up to date, why not, why not? 
 
 When they've the Sappers here in garrison 
 
 The silly chaps come digging in these mounds 
 
 For practice; but they've not got down to us. 
 
 The Seventeenth just scutter up and down 
 
 At scaling practice and that's rather fun. 
 
 There was a sergeant took a chap by the ear 
 
 Last year and threw him bodily down the mound ; 
 
 Then the recruit up with his bayonet 
 
 And stuck him through the neck — no end of things 
 
 We find for gossip in nine thousand years ! 
 
 A Mongol people ? Yes of course we were 
 
 I knew her very well that Queen who loved. 
 
 With the rice white face — "Ta-why's" her proper 
 
 name 
 And that adultery bred heaps of trouble ! 
 You've heard of Troy ? " Tra-hai's " the real name 
 As Ta-why's Helen. Well, you know all that ? 
 That trouble sent us here, being burnt out 
 By the King called Ko-ha ! And we wandered on 
 In just ten years of burning towns. This slave 
 My wife came from Irkutsk way to the east 
 Where the tundra is — You know the nightingales 
 Come there in spring, and so they buried us 
 Finger to finger as the ritual is. 
 Not know the ritual ? Well, a mighty chief 
 Is buried in a chamber like a room 
 
 D 49 
 
Walled round with slabs of stone. But mighty lovers 
 
 Lie on their backs at both arms' length, so far 
 
 That just each little finger touches. Well 
 
 That's how they buried us. A hundred years 
 
 It took to get accustomed to the change. 
 
 We lay just looking up — ^just as you might 
 
 Upwards through quiet water at the stars, 
 
 The roots of the grass, and other buryings, 
 
 Lying remembering and touching fingers. 
 
 Just still and quiet. Then I heard a whisper 
 
 Lasting a hundred years or so ; "Your lips," 
 
 It said, " Your lips ! your lips ! your lips ! " And then 
 
 It might have been five more score years. I felt 
 
 Her fingers crawling, crawling, up my wrist. 
 
 And always the voice, call, calling ;" Give your lips ! " 
 
 It must have taken me a thousand years 
 
 — The Dead are patient — ^just to know that she 
 
 Was calling for my lips. What an embrace ! 
 
 My God what an embrace was ours through the 
 
 Earth! 
 My friend, if you should chance to meet Old Death 
 That unprogressive tyrant, tell him this. 
 He execrates my name — but tell him this — 
 He calls me Radical ! Red Socialist, 
 That sort of thing. But you just tell him this, 
 The revolutionary leader of his realms 
 Got his ambition from his dead girl's lips. 
 Tell him in future he should spare hot lovers, 
 Though that's too late ! We're working through the 
 
 earth. 
 By the score, by the million. Half his empire's lost. 
 How can he fight us ? He has but one dart 
 For every lover of the sons of Ahva! 
 You call her Eve. This is a vulgar age". . . 
 And so beside the woodland in the sheen 
 And shimmer of the dewlight, crescent moon 
 50 
 
And dew wet leaves I heard the cry "Your lips ! 
 Your lips ! Your lips." It shook me where T sat, 
 It shook me like a trembling, fearful reed, 
 The call of the dead. A multitudinous 
 And shadowy host glimmered and gleamed, 
 Face to face, eye to eye, heads thrown back, and lips 
 Drinking, drinking from lips, drinking from bosoms 
 The coldness of the dew — and all a gleam 
 Translucent, moonstruck as of moving glasses, 
 Gleams on dead hair, gleams on the white dead 
 
 shoulders 
 Upon the backgrounds of black purple woods. . . 
 
 There came great rustlings from the copper leaves 
 
 And pushing outwards, shouldering, a boar 
 
 With seven wives — a monstrous tusky brute. 
 
 I rose and rubbed my eyes and all eight fled 
 
 Tore down the mountain through the thick of the 
 
 leaves 
 Like a mighty wave of the sea that poured itself 
 Farther and farther down the listening night. 
 All round me was the clearing, and white mist 
 Shrouded the frosty tussocks of old grass. 
 And in the moonlight a wan fingerpost 
 (I could not read the lower row of words.) 
 Proclaimed: '■'■Forbidden!''' That's High Germany. 
 Take up your glasses. " Prosit ! " to the past, 
 To all the Dead ! 
 
 D2 51 
 
T 
 
 RHYMING 
 
 HE bells go chiming 
 
 O'er Germany 
 
 I sit here rhyming . . . 
 
 If fun were funny, 
 And love lived long, 
 And always honey 
 Were sweet on the tongue, 
 Would life be better 
 Or freedom free ? 
 
 If each love-letter 
 Spelt loyalty, 
 If we didn't go timing 
 The dance with a fetter ? 
 
 If gold were true gold 
 
 For alchemists 
 
 — I sit here rhyming — 
 
 And all were new gold 
 
 In morning mists ? 
 
 Would laughter measure 
 
 The step of life 
 
 If each took pleasure 
 
 In each's wife ? 
 
 If much were undone 
 
 In what we see 
 
 And we built up London 
 
 In High Germany; 
 
 Without much pity 
 
 For crushed out grain 
 
 We'd fling the city 
 
 Across this plain — 
 
 A phantom city 
 
 52 
 
Like old Cokayne — 
 Where old dead passions, 
 Come true again 
 And old time fashions 
 Be new again, 
 Where jests once witty 
 Would start again, 
 And long lost pity 
 Take heart again. 
 
 So I sit rhyming 
 
 Of fun to be. 
 
 And the bells all go chiming 
 
 O'er High Germany. 
 
 53 
 
AUTUMN EVENING 
 
 THE cold light dies, the candles glow, 
 The wind whirls down the bare allee 
 Outside my gleaming window-panes 
 The phantom populations go, 
 Blown, amid leaves, above, below. 
 
 Yet these are solid German folk 
 Outside, beneath the thinning planes 
 And the reflections that awoke 
 At candle time upon my panes 
 Are misty, unsubstantial gleams. 
 
 Only outside, obscurity. 
 The waning light, the cold blue beams 
 And rafts of shadow trick the eye; 
 So that the frozen passers-by 
 Look ghosts — and only real seems 
 My candle lighted, lonely place. 
 The gleaming windows and your face 
 Looking in likeness from the wall 
 Where the fantastic shadows fall. . . . 
 
 Now the ghosts pass, the cold wind cries, 
 The leaves sift downwards, the world dies, 
 But in the shadows, lo ! your eyes. 
 
 54 
 
IN THE TRAIN 
 
 OUT of the window I see a dozen great stars, 
 burning bright, 
 Flying in silence, engrossed in the uttermost 
 depths of the night, 
 Star beyond star, growing clear, flying on as I pass 
 
 through the night. 
 It's many days since last I saw the stars 
 Look through the night sky's bars, 
 Like mists and veils of shimmer and shining gauze— 
 So little time we have and so much cause 
 To stay beneath the roof; so much to do ! 
 The life we lead ! . . . Well, you 
 Get to your bed at ten, and you, away 
 I like my glass of wine to end the day. 
 
 Now as the train ambles on, slowly and I watch alone 
 Stars and black woods and the stream, dim in the 
 
 light of the stars 
 Winding away to the past beneath Castor and Pollux 
 
 and Mars; 
 It seems as long since last I held your hand 
 As since I saw the stars. 
 And ah ! if we meet in this land, 
 And ah ! if we meet oversea 
 In the dark where the traffic of London races 
 Or in these castled, woodland places — 
 And then — wherever it be 
 Shall not our thoughts go away into deeps 
 Where the mind sleeps and the brain too sleeps. 
 As when we take thought and we gaze 
 Past all the bee swarms of stars 
 Spread o'er the night and its bars. 
 Past mists and veils and shimmer and shine and haze 
 Into the deep and silent places, 
 
 55 
 
The still, unfathomable spaces 
 
 Where the brain sleeps and the mind too sleeps 
 
 And all the deeps stretch out beyond the deeps 
 
 And thoug-ht dies down before infinity ? . . . 
 
 So, in an utter satisfaction 
 
 Beyond all thought and beyond all action 
 
 In a blindness more blind than the starless places 
 
 I shall stretch my face to where your face is. 
 
 And over head, over land and sea 
 
 Shall the white stars wheel in their reverie. 
 
 56 
 
m: 
 
 THE EXILE 
 
 Y father had many oxen 
 
 Yet all are gone ; 
 
 ■My father had many servants ; 
 I sit alone. 
 
 He followed the Southern women, 
 He drank of the Southern wines, 
 He fought in the Southern quarrels — 
 My star declines. 
 
 I will go to the Southern houses, I will sit 'mid the 
 
 maids at hire ; 
 I will bear their meat to the tables and carry wood 
 
 to their fire; 
 Where the cheep of the rat and mouse is all night 
 
 long will I lie. 
 Awake in the byres and the stables. When the white 
 
 moon looks from the sky, 
 And over the Southern waters, and the wind blows 
 
 warm from the South, 
 With the bitter tears in my eyelids and the heavy 
 
 sighs in my mouth, 
 I shall hear through the gaping gables how the 
 
 Southern night bird sings 
 Of hirelings once Queen's daughters and slaves the 
 
 seed of Kings. 
 
 57 
 
MOODS ON THE MOSELLE 
 
 "r^ WEET! Sweet! Sweet!" sings the bird upon 
 
 ^V the bough. 
 
 ^^ But though he may call for sweetness 
 We have other things to witness, 
 Not all cherry-pie and neatness, 
 Now. 
 
 "Mourn! Mourn! Mourn!" cry the owls among the 
 
 vines. 
 But it's neither death nor fleetness 
 That have any utter fitness, 
 Not a final joy or sorrow, 
 As we press out wines. 
 
 "Change! Slow change!" ticks the church clock 
 
 through the snow. 
 And somehow 'twixt winter's dying 
 And spring apple-blossoms flying 
 And the summer hops a-tying . . . 
 It's now haughty and now humble 
 Change ! Slow change ! And rough-and-tumble. 
 Down to-day and up to-morrow 
 That our songs sing now. 
 
 58 
 
CANZONE A LA SONATA 
 
 (ToE.P.) 
 
 WHAT do you find to boast of in our age, 
 To boast of now, my friendly sonneteer, 
 And not to blush for, later ? By what line 
 Do you entrain from Mainz to Regions saner ? 
 Count our achievements and uplift my heart ; 
 Blazon our fineness. Optimist, I toil 
 Whilst you crow cocklike. But I cannot see 
 
 What's left behind us for a heritage 
 For our young children ? What but nameless fear ? 
 What creeds have we to teach, legends to twine 
 Saner than spun our dams ? Or what's there saner 
 That we've devised to comfort those who part. 
 One for some years to walk the stone-clad soil. 
 One to his fathom-deep bed ? What coin have we 
 
 F'or ransom when He grimly lays his siege 
 
 Whose dart is sharpened for our final hurt ? 
 
 I think we do not think ; we deem more fair 
 
 Earth with unthought on death; we deem him gainer 
 
 Whose brow unshadowed shows no wrinkled trail 
 
 Of the remembrance of the countless slain ; 
 
 Who sets the world to fitful melody — 
 
 To fitful minstrelsy that's summer's liege 
 
 When all the summer's sun-kissed fountains spurt 
 
 Kisses of bubbling sound about our hair. 
 
 I think we think that singing soul the gainer _ 
 
 Who disremembers that spent youth must fail, 
 
 That after autumn comes, few leaves remain 
 
 And all the well-heads freeze, and melody 
 
 59 
 
O'er frozen waters grows too hoarse with age 
 
 To keep us from extremity of fear. 
 
 When aged poets pen another line 
 
 And agM maidens coif their locks in saner 
 
 And staider snoods; when winter of the heart 
 
 Comes on and beds beneath the frozen soil 
 
 Gape open — where's your grinning melody ? 
 
 60 
 
SUSSMUND'S^ ADDRESS TO AN 
 
 UNKNOWN GOD 
 
 (Adapted from the High German) 
 
 MY God, they say I have no bitterness ! 
 Dear Unknown God, I gasp, I fade, I pine ! 
 No bitterness ! Have firs no turpentine ? 
 Ifso, it's true. 
 
 Because I do not go wandering round Piccadilly 
 
 Like an emasculated lily 
 
 In a low-necked flannel shirt beneath the rain. 
 
 (Is that what you'd do, 
 
 Oh God Unknown, 
 
 If you came down 
 
 To Piccadilly 
 
 And worried over London town ?) 
 
 Wailing round Covent Garden's what I should do 
 
 Declaiming to the beefy market porters 
 
 Dramatic propaganda about social wrongs 
 
 Denouncing Edward Morters 
 
 Or saying that Mr William Pornett 
 
 Is eleven kinds of literary hornet. 
 
 Or that the death of Mr Arthur Mosse 
 
 Would be no sort of loss 
 
 But a distinct gain 
 
 — That sort of silly literary songs 
 
 About no oneyou know, 
 
 And no one else could ever want to know. 
 
 You owe 
 
 (You've heard a thousand thousand dat qtii citd s) 
 
 Some sort of poisonous dew 
 
 *Carl Eugen Freiherr von Sussmund, b. 1872, d. 1910. 1 
 is, of course, a quite free adaptation. 
 
 61 
 
Shed on the flowers where these high-horned mos- 
 quitoes 
 Dance in a busy crew. 
 
 But they will go on setting up their schools, 
 Making their little rules, 
 Finding selected ana, 
 Collected in Montana: 
 Connected with Commedie Divine 
 Or maidens with names like Deiridrine . . . 
 Dear Lord, you know the stuff 
 You must have heard enough. 
 
 Find me a barrel into which to creep 
 Dear Unknown God, and get dead drunk and sleep. 
 But listen, this is for your ear alone 
 (God : where are you ? Let me come close and whisper 
 What no one knows — I'm really deadly tired, 
 I cannot write a line, my hands are stiff, 
 Writing's a rotten job, my head goes round : 
 You have afflicted me with whip- cord nerves. 
 That hammering fool drives me distracted . . . God ! 
 Strike him with colic, send him screaming home. 
 Strike, Dash and Dash and Dash with eye com- 
 plaints; 
 That beast who choked his dog with a tight collar 
 (He gave his child the lead to hold) last night ; 
 It made me sick; God strike him with the pip. 
 And send down one dark night and no one near 
 And one white throat within my fingers' grip !) 
 
 Dear God, you bade me be a gentleman, 
 
 And well you know I've been it. But their rot . . . 
 
 Sometimes it makes me angry. This last season 
 
 I've listened smiling to new Celtic bards, 
 
 To Anti-Vivisectionists and Friends of Peace, 
 
 To Neo-Psychics, Platonists and Poets 
 
 Who saved the Universe by chopping logs 
 
 In your own image 
 
 62 
 
I've smiled at Whigs intoning Whiggery 
 To keep the Labour Market down ; at Tories 
 Sickening for office. I have surely been 
 Plumb centre in the Movement. O my God 
 
 Is this a man's work. God I've backed up 's 
 
 With proper letters in the Daily Press : 
 
 I've smiled at Dowagers and Nonconformists; 
 
 At wriggling dancers ; forty pianists ; 
 
 Jew politicians ; Front Rank Statesmen's 's 
 
 Yankee conductors of chaste magazines . . . 
 God, fill my purse and let me go away. 
 
 But God, dear God ! I'll never get away 
 
 I know the you are ! 
 
 That's off my chest. You'll never let me go. 
 I know I'll never drink myself dead drunk 
 Because to-morrow I shall have appointments 
 — You'll make them for me — with a Jail Reform 
 And Pure Milk Rotter — such a pleasant man ! 
 One garden city builder, seven peers 
 Concerned with army remounts, and a girl 
 Mad to take dancing lessons ! Such my morrow ! 
 
 It's not so much I ask Great God of mine 
 
 (Fill up my little purse and let me go !) 
 
 These earnest, cold-in-the-heart and practised 
 
 preachers 
 Have worked their will on me for long enough. 
 Some boring me to tears while I sat patient ; 
 Some picked my purse and bit me in the back 
 The while I smiled as you have taught me to, 
 (Fill up my little purse and let me go !) 
 It's not my job to go denouncing jobs 
 You did not build me for it. Not my job ! 
 Whilst they are on the make, snatching their bits 
 Beneath the wheels of ninety-nine reforms. 
 
 {Note. — I have been unable to follow the Freiherr at any interval 
 at all on this page without leaving several words blank. F.M.H.) 
 
 63 
 
But this is truth; 
 
 There's not one trick they've not brought off 
 
 on me, 
 I guess they think I haven't noticed it 
 For I've no bitterness . . . 
 They've lied about me to my mistresses, 
 Stolen my brandy, plagiarized my books, 
 Lived on me month by month, broken agreements, 
 Perjured themselves in courts, and sworn false 
 
 oaths 
 With all the skill of Protestant British tradesmen 
 Plundering a Papist and a foreigner 
 
 With God on their lips 
 
 But all that's private. . . 
 
 Oh, you sleeping God, 
 I hope you sit amongst the coloured tents 
 Of any other rotten age than this — 
 With great pavilions tinctured all with silks. 
 Where emerald lawns go stretching into space, 
 With mailed horses, simple drunken knights, 
 Punctilious heralds and high-breasted ladies 
 Beauteous beyond belief and not one better 
 Than you would have her be — in such a heaven 
 Where there's no feeling of the moral pulse, 
 I think I'd find some peace — with treachery 
 Of the sword and dagger kind to keep it sweet 
 — Adultery, foul murder, pleasant things, 
 A touch of incest, theft, but no Reformers. 
 
 Dear God of mine 
 
 Who've tortured me in many pleasant ways 
 
 I hope you've had some fun. And thank you, God! 
 
 No doubt you'll keep your bargain in the end, 
 
 No doubt I'll get my twopenny-halfpenny pay 
 
 At the back door of some bright hued pavilion 
 
 From a whore of Heaven 
 
 64 
 
But when it comes to " have no bitterness "... 
 (For bitter we read " earnest ") I've no stomach 
 For such impertinence; its subtlety 
 (You know it, God, but let me get it down) 
 Is too ingenious. It implies just this: 
 
 " Here is a man when times are out of joint 
 Who will not be enraged at Edward Morter, 
 Pornett or Mosse ; who will not to the woes 
 Of a grey underworld lend passionate ears 
 Nor tear his hair to tatters in the cause 
 Of garden suburbs or of guinea pigs 
 Injected with bacilli . . . Such a man 
 (So say the friends that I have listened to 
 Whole wasted, aching desolate afternoons!) 
 Is morally castrated; pass him by; 
 Give him no management in this great world, 
 No share in fruity Progress or the wrongs 
 Of market porters, tram conductors, pimps, 
 Marriage-reforming divorcees, Whig statesmen 
 Or serious Drama." 
 
 Did I, dear God, ever attempt to shine 
 As such a firiend of Progress ? God, did I 
 Ever ambitiously raise up my voice 
 To outshout these eminent preachers ? 
 Suck up importance from a pauper's wrongs 
 I never did ! 
 
 But these mosquitoes must make precious sure 
 I do not take a hand in their achievements 
 Therefore they say, I have no bitterness 
 Being a eunuch amongst these proper men, 
 Who stand foursquare 'gainst evil (that's their 
 phrase !) 
 
 E 65 
 
God, you've been hard on me; I'm plagued with 
 
 boils, 
 Little mosquito-stings, warts, poverty ! 
 Yes, very hard. But when all's catalogued 
 You've been a gentleman in all your fun. 
 No doubt you'll keep your bargain, Unknown God. 
 This surely you will never do to me — 
 Say I'm not bitter. That you'll never do. 
 'Twould be to outpass the bounds of the Divine 
 And turn Reformer. 
 
 66 
 
THE FEATHER 
 
 I WONDER dost thou sleep at night, 
 False friend and falser enemy ! 
 Iwonderif thy hours are long and dragoutwearily! 
 We've passed days and nights together 
 In our time . . . But that white feather 
 That the wind's blown past the roof ridge 
 // is gone So I from thee ! 
 
 Aye, chase it o'er the courtyard stones. 
 Past friend of mine, my enemy ! 
 Chase on beneath the chestnut boughs and out to- 
 ward the sea, 
 If the fitful wind should fail it, 
 Thou may'st catch it, and may'st trail it 
 In midden's mud and garbage . . . 
 As thou hast -my thoughts of thee. 
 
 So I wonder dost thou sleep at night ? 
 
 Once friend of mine, my enemy? 
 
 Or whether dost thou toss and turn to plan new 
 
 treachery ? 
 As the feather thou hast trodden 
 So my thoughts of thee are sodden 
 
 When I think Yes, half forgotten, 
 
 A faint taste of something rotten 
 
 Comes at times, like worm-struck wood ash 
 
 Comes at times, the thought of thee. 
 
 But I would not have thy night thoughts 
 As the slow clock beats to day ward ! 
 I'll be sleeping with my eyes shut. 
 Dreaming deep, or dreaming wayward. 
 And I hear thee turn and mutter 
 As thy dawn-ward candles gutter — 
 For thou fear'st the dark . . . Hark! "Judas!" 
 Says the dawn wind from the sea. 
 Round the house it whispers "Judas ! " 
 Friend of mine, my enemy. 
 
 E2 67 
 
II 
 SONGS FROM LONDON 
 
 The following poems appeared in the volume of 
 the above name published by Mr Elkin Mathews in 
 1910. 
 
L 
 
 VIEWS 
 I 
 
 BEING in Rome I wonder will you go 
 Up to the Hill. But I forget the name 
 Aventine ? Pincio ? No : I do not know. 
 I was there yesterday and watched. You came. 
 
 The seven Pillars of the Forum stand 
 
 High, stained and pale 'neath the Italian heavens, 
 
 Their capitals linked up form half a square; 
 
 A grove of silver poplars spears the sky. 
 
 You came. Do you remember ? Yes, you came, 
 
 But yesterday. Your dress just brushed the herbs 
 
 That nearly hide the broken marble lion 
 
 And I was watching you against the sky. 
 
 Such light ! Such air ! Such prism hues ! and Rome 
 
 So far below; I hardly knew the place. 
 
 The domed St Peter's ; mass of the Capitol ; 
 
 The arch of Trajan and St Angelo 
 
 Tiny and grey and level ; tremulous 
 
 Beneath a haze amidst a sea of plains 
 
 But I forget the name, who never looked 
 On any Rome but this of unnamed hills. 
 
 II 
 
 Tho' you're in Rome you will not go, my You, 
 Up to that Hill but I forget the name, 
 
 Aventine ? Pincio ? No, I never knew 
 
 I was there yesterday. You never came. 
 
 I have that Rome ; and you, you have a Me, 
 You have a Rome and I, I have my You ; 
 My Rome is not your Rome : my you, not you 
 
 . . . For, if man knew woman 
 71 
 
I should have plumbed your heart; if woman, man 
 
 Your me should be true I If in your day — 
 
 You who have mingled with my soul in dreams, 
 You who have given my life an aim and purpose, 
 A heart, an imaged form — if in your dreams 
 You have imagined unfamiliar cities 
 And me among them, I shall never stand 
 Beneath your pillars or your poplar groves, . . . 
 Images, simulacra, towns of dreams 
 That never march upon each other's borders 
 And bring no comfort to each other's hearts ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Nobly accompanied am I — Since you, 
 
 You — simulacrum, image, dream of dreams, 
 
 Amidst these images and simulacra 
 
 Of shadowy house fronts and these dim, thronged 
 
 streets 
 Are my companion ! 
 
 Where the pavements gleam 
 I have you alway with me : and grey dawns 
 In the far skies bring you more near — more near 
 Than City sounds can interpenetrate. 
 All vapours form a background for your face 
 In this unreal town of real things, 
 And my you stands beside me and makes glad 
 All my imagined cities and thence walks 
 Beside me towards yet unimagined hills 
 
 Being we two, full surely we shall go 
 
 Up to that Hill some synonym for Home. 
 
 Avalon ? Grave ? or Heaven ? I do not know. . . . 
 But one day or to-day, the day may come, 
 When I may be your I, your Rome my Rome. 
 72 
 
FINCHLEY ROAD 
 
 AS we come up at Baker Street 
 /\ Where tubes and trains and 'buses meet 
 i iLThere's a touch of fog and a touch of sleet ; 
 And we go on up Hampstead way 
 Towards the closing in of day . . . 
 
 You should be a queen or a duchess rather, 
 Reigning in place of a warlike father 
 In peaceful times o'er a tiny town 
 Where all the roads wind up and down 
 From your little palace — a small, old place 
 Where every soul should know your face 
 And bless your coming. That's what I mean, 
 A small grand-duchess, no distant queen. 
 Lost in a great land, sitting alone 
 In a marble palace upon a throne. 
 
 And you'd say to your shipmen : " Now take your ease, 
 To-morrow is time enough for the seas." 
 And you'd set your bondmen a milder rule 
 And let the children loose from the school. 
 No wrongs to right and no sores to fester, 
 In your small, great hall 'neath a firelit dais, 
 You'd sit, with me at your feet, your jester, 
 Stroking your shoes where the seed pearls glisten 
 And talking my fancies. And you as your way is. 
 Would sometimes heed and at times not listen, 
 But sit at your sewing and look at the brands 
 And sometimes reach me one of your hands. 
 Or bid me write you a little ode. 
 Part quaint, part sad, part serious . . . 
 
 But here we are in the Finchley Road 
 With a drizzling rain and a skidding 'bus 
 And the twilight settling down on us. 
 
 73 
 
THE THREE-TEN 
 
 WHEN in the prime and May Day time dead 
 lovers went a-walking, 
 How bright the grass in lads' eyes was, how 
 
 easy poet's talking ! 
 Here were green hills and daffodils, and copses to 
 
 contain them ; 
 Daisies for floors did front their doors agog for maids 
 
 to chain them. 
 So when the ray of rising day did pierce the eastern 
 
 heaven 
 Maids did arise to make the skies seem brighter far 
 
 by seven. 
 Now here's a street where 'bus routes meet, and 'twixt 
 
 the wheels and paving 
 Standeth a lout that doth hold out flowers not worth 
 
 the having. 
 But see, but see ! The clock marks three above theKilburn 
 
 Statiojiy 
 Those maids, thank God! are 'neath the sod and all their 
 
 generation. 
 
 What she shall wear who'll soon appear, it is not hood 
 
 nor wimple, 
 But by the powers there are no flowerssostately or so 
 
 simple. 
 And paper shops and full 'bus tops confront the sun 
 
 so brightly. 
 That, come three-ten, no lovers then had hearts that 
 
 beat so lightly 
 As ours, or loved more truly, 
 Or found green shades or flowered glades to fit their 
 
 loves more duly. 
 A7id see, and see ! ' Tts ten past three above the Kilburn 
 
 Station, 
 Those maids, thank God! are 'neath the sod aiid all their 
 
 74 
 
FOUR IN THE MORNING COURAGE 
 
 THE birds this morning wakened me so early it 
 was hardly day : 
 Ten sparrows in the lilac tree, a blackbird in the 
 
 may, 
 A starling somewhere in the mews, a songthrush on 
 
 a broken hat 
 Down in the yard the grocers use, all cried : " Beware ; 
 
 Beware! The Cat!" 
 I've never had the heart to rhyme, this year: I've 
 
 always wakened sad 
 And late, if might be, so the time would be more short 
 
 — but I was glad 
 With a mad gladness in to-day that is the longest day 
 
 in June. 
 {That blackbird's nesting in the may.) For only yester- 
 day at noon 
 In the long grass of Holland Park, I think— I think 
 
 — I heard a lark . . . 
 I heard your voice : I saw your face once more . . . 
 
 {Up07i that packing case 
 The starling waked me ere the day aping the thrush's 
 
 sober tune). 
 
 75 
 
MODERN LOVE 
 
 I 
 
 KNEE-DEEP among the buttercups, the sun 
 Gilding the scutcheons and the gilded mail, 
 Gilding the crowned helm and leopard crest, 
 Dear, see they pant and strike at your desire. 
 
 And one goes down among the emerald grass. 
 And one stands over him his dagger poised, 
 His visor raised, his blood-shot eyes a-travel 
 Over the steel that lies between his feet. 
 Crushing the buttercups . . . and so the point goes in 
 Between the gorget and the habergeon . . . 
 And blood floods out upon the buttercups. 
 Gules, or and veri beneath an azure sky. 
 
 And now the victor strides knee-deep in grass, 
 His surcoat brushing down the flower-heads 
 To where above the hedge a hennin peeps 
 Wide, white and waving like a wild swan's wings, 
 And a green dress, a mantlet all of vair 
 
 And such dear eyes Dear, you've the dearest eyes 
 
 In all the world — the most compassionate eyes. 
 
 76 
 
II 
 
 ... In your garden, here 
 
 The light streams down between the silvered leaves, 
 
 And we sit still and whisper . . . But our fight ! 
 
 The gross Black Prince among the buttercups 
 
 Could grin and girn and pant and sweive and smite 
 
 And, in ten minutes it was win or lose : 
 
 A coffin board or ale, a coarse caress 
 
 Or just an end of it for Life or Death . . . 
 
 Is that a footfall on the gravel path ? 
 
 Are your stretched nerves on edge ? And do you see ? 
 
 There, white and black, the other couple go. 
 
 And if some others knew ! Oh, buttercups, 
 
 And blood upon the grass beneath the sun . . . 
 
 Give me your garden where the street lamp shines 
 
 Between the leaves : your garden seat, your hand, 
 
 Just touching mine — and all the long, long fight 
 
 That lies before us, you of the dear eyes. 
 
 77 
 
SPRING ON THE WOODLAND PATH 
 
 So long a winter such an Arctic night ! 
 I had forgot that ever spring was bright : 
 But hark ! The blackbird's voice like a clear 
 flame! 
 
 So long a winter, such an age of chill, 
 Made me forget this silver birch clad hill. 
 But see, the newborn sunbeams put to shame 
 Our long dead winter : bracken fronds like flame, 
 Pierce the new morning's saffron-watered light. 
 
 So long, so long the winter in our hearts, 
 We had forgotten that old grief departs 
 And had forgotten that our hands could meet. 
 
 So long, so long : Remember our last May 
 When there was sunshine still and every day 
 New swallows skimmed low down along the street. 
 Ay, spring shall come, but shall we ever meet 
 With the old hearts in this forgotten way ? 
 
 78 
 
CONSIDER 
 
 NOW green comes springing o'er the heath, 
 And each small bird with lifted breath 
 Cries, "Brother, consider the joy there is in 
 living!" 
 " Consider ! consider ! " the jolly throstle saith. 
 
 The golden gorse, the wild thyme, frail 
 
 And sweet, the butter cowslip pale. 
 
 Cry "Sisters, consider the peace that comes with 
 
 giving! 
 And render, and render your sweet and scented 
 
 breath!" 
 
 Now men, come walking o'er the heath 
 To mark this pretty world beneath, 
 Bethink them: " Consider what joy might lie in living, 
 None striving, constraining none, and thinking not 
 on Death." 
 
 79 
 
CLUB NIGHT 
 
 THERE was an old man had a broken hat, 
 He had a crooked leg, an old tame cat, 
 An old lame horse that cropped along the hedge, 
 And an old song that set your teeth on edge, 
 With words like : 
 
 " Club night's come ; it's time the dance begins. 
 Up go the lamps, we've all got nimble shins. 
 One night a year man and wife may dance at ease 
 And we'll dance all the village to its knees." 
 
 This silly old man had a broken heart ; 
 He went a-peddling onions from his cart. 
 Once years ago, when Club night fell in June, 
 His new-wed wife went off with a dragoon, 
 Whilst he sang : 
 
 " Club night's come ; it's time the dance begins. 
 Up go the lamps, we've all got nimble shins. 
 One night a year man and wife may dance at ease 
 And we'll dance all the village to its knees." 
 
 80 
 
TO CHRISTINA AND KATHARINE 
 AT CHRISTMAS 
 
 NOW Christmas is a porter' s-r est whereon to set h is 
 load; 
 And Christmas zvas a blessed bed for One who 
 loved her God. 
 A nd Christmas is a chiming bell to ships upon the sea 
 That decks the shrouds and lights the ports and tolls 
 for Alemory — 
 But Christmas is a 7nccting-place 
 Foryoua7idvie. 
 
 God send your hearts may never grow so old 
 
 As to forget that this day Mary's lips 
 
 First touched Her young Child's brow: and may your 
 
 eyes 
 Not ever grow too cold to recognize 
 How to poor men and women these days bear 
 A gift of rest. Pray that the gentle air 
 
 Give relaxation to a myriad ships 
 
 And, oh my little ones, may no December 
 
 See Christmas come and me no longer dear 
 
 To your dear hearts and voices. This remember : 
 
 Horw Christmas is the pardon day when Justice drops its 
 load; 
 A nd is the lily -blossomed field where Jesus walks with 
 God. 
 Now Saints set foot upon the waves to still the yeasty sea. 
 And other Sairits to hurdled sheep give covtfort 
 patiently. 
 Now all good men beside their hearths call upon 
 Memory: 
 Now^ now cofnes in the meeting-time 
 For you and me! 
 
 F 8i 
 
THE DREAM HUNT 
 
 M 
 
 Y Lady rides a-hunting 
 Upon a dapple grey : 
 Six trumpeters they ride behind, 
 Six prickers clear the way. 
 
 And when she climbs the hillsides 
 The Hunt cries : " Ho ! la ! Lo ! " 
 
 And when she trails along the dales 
 The merry horns do blow. 
 
 And so in summer weather, 
 
 Before the heat of day, 
 My darling takes all eyes and breaks 
 
 My heart and makes away. 
 
 82 
 
THE OLD LAMENT 
 
 WHAT maketh lads so cruel be ? 
 A mid the spume and wrack. 
 They pass the door and put to sea^ 
 And never more come hack. 
 
 The grey, salt wind winds down the wave, 
 
 The galleon flouts the bay. 
 And cobles and coggers are raising their sails: 
 
 God keep 'ee down on the quay ! 
 With a hoist at thy tackles, a haul at thy blocks, 
 
 And a hail to a hastening crew. 
 He'll take 'ee Who gave 'ee thy goldilocks 
 
 Ere I pardon thine eyes o' blue. 
 
 Not once to ha' lookM within my hood ! 
 
 Nor guessed I quailed on the strand 
 Wi' thee in the boats ! Thro' my pent-up door 
 
 I ha' kissed to 'ee my hand. 
 They'll rive thy keel wi' their cannon shocks. 
 
 And sink 'ee and all thy crew ; 
 And they'll leave to the raven and cliff-homed fox 
 
 Thy kindly eyes o' blue. 
 
 Why need 'ee pass my open door 
 
 Each breaking o' the day ? 
 What made 'ee take that selfsame path 
 
 And never another way ? 
 I'll find 'ee stretched on the grinding rocks 
 
 With a Frenchman's shot shot through. 
 And the mermaid's weed from thy goldilocks 
 
 Across thine eyes o' blue. 
 
 What made 'ee lady so cruel he ? 
 
 A mid the spume and wrack y 
 To pass the door and put to sea 
 
 A nd never once look hack ! 
 
 F2 83 
 
MAURESQUE 
 
 (ToV.M.) 
 
 TO horse ! To horse ! the veil of night sinks softly 
 down. 
 The hills are violet, the desert brown, 
 And thou asleep upon the silken pillows 
 Within the small white town. 
 
 We ride ! We ride ! and o'er the sand in billows 
 The crescent moon looks softly down. 
 
 84 
 
IN THE STONE JUG 
 
 (Tom of Hounslow Heath sings on the night before his execution) 
 
 OLD days are gone : 
 Lo ! I go to find better ; 
 Bright suns once shone. 
 Shall they never shine again ? 
 Here's a queer inn for to-night, but the next one 
 I will contrive shall be freed from what's vext one 
 In this, and to-morrow, for all that's perplext one, 
 I shall arise with a head free of pain. 
 
 Here's luck, old friends, 
 
 Though to-night's proved the finish 
 
 And this tap now ends. 
 
 Shall we never brew again ? 
 Aye, by my faith and the faith I have in you, 
 You who have kist and have laughed at the sin. You 
 Witch that I gambled and squandered to win, you 
 Too shall come in with me out of the rain. 
 
 85 
 
HOW STRANGE A THING 
 
 How strange a thing to think upon : 
 Whilst we sit here with pipes and wine 
 This world of ours goes roving on 
 Where stars and planets shine. 
 A fid romid and round and round and round 
 This brave old ball, still out and in — 
 Whilst we sit still on solid ground — 
 Doth spin and spin and spin. 
 
 And, whilst we're glad with pipes and wine, 
 
 We travel leagues and leagues of space : 
 
 Our arbour's trellised with the vine. 
 
 Our host's a jocund face. 
 
 Yet on and 071 and on 
 
 This brave old ball spifis in and out: 
 
 Why, here's a thiiigto think upon 
 
 A nd make a song about. 
 
 Ho, landlord, bring new wine along 
 
 And fill us each another cup. 
 
 We're minded to give out a song. 
 
 My journey, mates; stand up. 
 
 For round and round and round and round 
 
 This noble ball doth spin and spin, 
 
 A nd 'twixt thefirmamefit and ground 
 
 Doth bear us and our sift. 
 
 86 
 
Ill 
 FROM INLAND 
 
 The following poems appeared in the volume of 
 the above name published by Mr Alston Rivers in 
 1907. 
 
FROM INLAND 
 
 I DREAMED that you and I were young 
 Once more, and by our old grey sea 
 Raced in the wind; but matins, sung 
 High on these vineyards, wakened me : 
 I lay half-roused and seemed to hold 
 Once more, beside our old grey sea, 
 Your hand. I saw the primrose gold 
 Your hair had then, and seemed to see 
 Your eyes, so childlike and so wise, 
 Look down on me. 
 
 By the last fire we ever lit 
 
 You knelt, and bending down your head, 
 
 — If you could compass it, you said, 
 
 Not ever would you live again 
 
 Your vanished life ; never again 
 
 Pass through those shadowy vales of pain. 
 
 "And now I'm old and here I sit ! " 
 
 You said, and held your hands apart 
 
 To those old flames we've left behind 
 
 As far — as far as some dead wind 
 
 No doubt I fetched from near my heart 
 Brave platitudes — for you were there ; 
 The firelight lit your brooding face. 
 Shadowed your golden, glowing hair : 
 I could be brave for the short space 
 I had you by my chair. . . . 
 As thus : " Since with the ebb of Youth 
 Rises the flood of passionless 
 And calm enjoyment, rises Truth 
 And fades the painful earnestness 
 Of all young thought, We two," I said, 
 " Have still the best to come." But you 
 Bowed down your brooding, silent head, 
 
 89 
 
Patient and sad and still. . . . 
 
 This view, 
 Steep vineyards rising parched and brown, 
 This weary stream, this cobbled town, 
 White convents on each hill-top — Dear ! 
 What would I give to climb our down. 
 Where the wind hisses in each stalk 
 And, from the high brown crest to see, 
 Beyond the ancient, sea-grey town. 
 The sky-line of our foam-flecked sea; 
 And, looking out to sea, to hear. 
 Ah ! Dear, once more your pleasant talk ; 
 And to go home as twilight falls 
 Along the old sea-walls ! 
 The best to come ! The best ! The best ! 
 One says the wildest things at times. 
 Merely for comfort. But — The hestt 
 Ah ! well, at night, when the moon climbs 
 High o'er these misty inland capes. 
 And hears the river lisping rhymes. 
 And sees the roe-deer nibbling grapes 
 Beneath the evanescent gleams 
 Of shaken dewdrops, shall come dreams, 
 Gliding amid the mists beneath : 
 A dream, maybe, of you and me. 
 Young once again by our old sea. 
 But, ah ! we two must travel wide 
 And far and far ere we shall find 
 That recollected, ancient tide 
 By which we walked, or that old wind 
 That fled so bravely to its death. 
 
 90 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 SHE sits upon a tombstone in the shade; 
 One flake of sunlight, falling thro' the veils 
 Of quivering poplars, lights upon her hair, 
 Shot golden, and across her candid brow. 
 Thus in the pleasant gloom she holds the eye, 
 Being life amid piled up remembrances 
 Of the tranquil dead. 
 
 One hand, dropped lightly down, 
 Rests on the words of a forgotten name : 
 Therefore the past makes glad to stay her up. 
 Closed in, walled off: here's an oblivious place, 
 Deep, planted in with trees, unvisited : 
 A still backwater in the tide of life. 
 Life flows all round : sounds from surrounding streets, 
 Laughter of unseen children, roll of wheels, 
 Cries of all vendors. — So she sits and waits. 
 And she rejoices us who pass her by, 
 And she rejoices those who here lie still. 
 And she makes glad the little wandering airs, 
 And doth make glad the shaken beams of light 
 That fall upon her forehead : all the world 
 Moves round her, sitting on forgotten tombs 
 And lighting in to-morrow. She is Life : 
 That makes us keep on moving, taking roads. 
 Hauling great burdens up the unending hills. 
 Pondering senseless problems, setting sail 
 For undiscovered anchorages. Here 
 She waits, she waits, sequestered among tombs, 
 The sunlight on her hair. She waits, she waits : 
 The secret music, the resolving note 
 That sets in tune all this discordant world 
 And solves the riddles of the Universe. 
 
 9» 
 
SONG 
 
 OH ! purer than the day new-born, 
 More candid than the pearled morn, 
 Come soon and set the day in tune 
 All through the sun-bathed afternoon ; 
 Come soon ! 
 
 Oh ! sweeter than the roses be, 
 Subtler than balm or rosemary, 
 Come now, and 'neath this orchard bough 
 Hark to the tranquil sea-wind's sough: 
 Come now! 
 
 More rhythmic when you step than tunes 
 Wafted o'er waves in summer moons, 
 Bide here, and in my longing ear 
 Murmur the words I crave to hear ; 
 Bide here ! 
 
 Here, in the shadowy sacred place, 
 Close up your eyes, hide, hide your face. 
 And, in the windless silence, rest. 
 Now the cool night falls; dear and blest. 
 Now sleep, a dim and dreamless sleep. 
 Whilst I watch over you and keep 
 Your soul from fears. Now sleep ! 
 
 Oh 1 purer than the morning lights 
 A nd more beloved than dead of nighty 
 Come soon to set the world in tune 
 From midnight till the dial marks noon : 
 From dawn till the world's end. Come soon ! 
 Come soon ! 
 
 92 
 
THE UNWRITTEN SONG 
 
 Now Where's a song for our small dear, 
 With her quaint voice and her quick ear, 
 To sing — for gnats and bats to hear — 
 At twilight in her bed ? 
 A song of tiny elfin things 
 With shiny, silky, silvery wings. 
 Footing it in fairy rings. 
 And kissing overhead. 
 
 A song of starry glow-worms' lights 
 In the long grass of shadowy nights, 
 And flitting showers of firefly flights. 
 
 Where summer woods hang deep ; 
 Of hovering, noiseless owls that find 
 Their way at dark ; and of a kind 
 And drowsy, drowsy ocean wind 
 
 That puts the sea to sleep. 
 
 But where' s the song for our small deary 
 With her quaint voice and her quick ear^ 
 To sing—for dreamland things to hear — 
 A nd hiish herself to sleep ? 
 
 93 
 
ASUABIAN LEGEND 
 
 GOD made all things, 
 And, seeing they were good. 
 He set a limit to the springs. 
 And circumscribed the flood, 
 Stayed the aspiring mountain ranges, 
 And said : " Henceforth shall be no changes "; 
 On all the beasts he set that ban, 
 And drew his line 'twixt woman and 'twixt man. 
 
 God, leaning down 
 Over the world beneath. 
 Surveyed his changeless work : 
 
 No creature drew its breath, 
 No cloud approached with rain unto the hills, 
 No waves white on the ocean, and no breeze ; 
 Still lay the cattle in the meads ; the rills 
 Hung in the tufts of moss ; the trees 
 Seemed carven out of metal ; manhood stood 
 Drooping his silent head by womanhood. 
 Nor voice of beasts nor any song of bird 
 Nor sound of wind were from the woodlands heard. 
 
 God, leaning down 
 Over the world beneath, 
 Knitted his brows to a frown 
 And fashioned Death : 
 
 The clouds faded around the mountain heads, 
 The rills and streams sank in their stony beds. 
 The ocean shivered and lay still and dead. 
 And man fled and the beasts fled 
 Into the crevices of mountains round; 
 The grass withered on the sod; 
 Beetles and lizards faded into the ground : 
 And God [frowned. 
 
 Looked on his last-made creature, Death, and 
 94 
 
He paced in thought awhile 
 
 His darkened and resounding courts above : 
 
 They brightened at his smile : 
 
 He had imagined Love 
 
 {Oh ! help us ere wc die : we die too soon ; 
 
 We, who are born at dawn, have hut one noon. 
 
 And fade e'er nightfall) 
 
 Then the Lord made Love. 
 And, looking down to Earth, he saw 
 The green flame out across each shaw, 
 The worms came creeping o'er the lawns, 
 Sweet showers in the pleasant dawns, 
 The lapwings crying in the fens, 
 The young lambs leaping from their pens, 
 The waves run tracing lines of white 
 On the cerulean ocean. But at night 
 Man slept with woman in his arms. 
 
 Then thunder shook 
 At the awful rrown of God. His way he took 
 Over the trembling hills to their embowered nook. 
 
 But standing there above those sleeping things 
 God was aware of one whose insubstantial wings 
 A-quiver formed a penthouse o'er the place : 
 Therefore God stayed his hand, and sighed 
 To see how lip matched lip, side mated side, 
 And the remembered joy on each sealed face : 
 Therefore God stayed his hand and smiled, 
 Shook his tremendous head and went his way ; 
 Love being his best begotten child. 
 And having over Death and Sin God's sway. 
 
 {Oh ! help us ere we die : zue die too soon ; 
 We, who are born at dawn, have but one noon. 
 And fade e'er nightfall. Oh ! Eternal One, 
 Help us to know short joy whose course is run 
 S0S0071: so soon.) 
 
 95 
 
SEA JEALOUSY 
 
 CAST not your looks upon the wan grey sea, 
 Waste not your voice upon the wind; 
 Let not your footsteps sink upon the sand, 
 Hold no sea-treasure in your hand. 
 And let no sea-shell in your ear 
 Nor any sea-thought in your mind 
 Murmur a mystery. 
 
 Turn your soft eyes upon mine eyes that long; 
 
 Let your sweet lips on mine be sealed ; 
 
 Fold soft sweet hands between your sweet soft 
 
 breasts, 
 And, as a weary sea-mew rests 
 Upon the sea 
 Utterly — utterly yield 
 Your being up to me, 
 
 And all around, grey seascape and the sound 
 Of droned sea song. 
 
 96 
 
 
ENOUGH 
 
 "Enough for you," said he, "that ye from afar have viewed 
 this goodly thing that all that many may never espy."— //o7«' They 
 Quested, etc. 
 
 LONG we'd sought for Avalon, 
 Avalon tWe i*est place ; 
 ■>Long, long we'd laboured 
 The oars — yea, for years. 
 
 Late, late one eventide 
 Saw we o'er still waters 
 Turrets rise and roof-frets 
 Golden in a glory, 
 Heard for a heart-beat 
 Women choirs and harpings 
 Waft down the wave-ways. 
 
 Saw we long-sought Avalon 
 Sink thro' still waters: 
 Long, long we'd laboured 
 The oars — yea, and yearned. 
 
 97 
 
TANDARADEI 
 
 (WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE) 
 
 UNDER the lindens on the heather, 
 There was our double resting-place, 
 Side by side and close together 
 Garnered blossoms, crushed, and grass 
 Nigh a shaw in such a vale : 
 Tandaradei, 
 Sweetly sang the nightingale. 
 
 I came a- walking through the grasses ; 
 
 Lo ! my dear was come before. 
 
 Ah ! what befell then — listen, listen, lasses — 
 
 Makes me glad for evermore. 
 
 Kisses ? — thousands in good sooth : 
 
 Tandaradei, 
 
 See how red they've left my mouth. 
 
 There had he made ready — featly, fairly — 
 
 All of flow'ring herbs a yielding bed, 
 
 And that place in secret still smiles rarely. 
 
 If by chance your foot that path should tread, 
 
 You might see the roses pressed, 
 
 Tandaradei, 
 
 Where e'enow my head did rest. 
 
 How he lay beside me, did a soul discover 
 
 (Now may God forfend such shame from me): 
 
 Not a soul shall know it save my lover; 
 
 Not a soul could see save I and he, 
 
 And a certain small brown bird : 
 
 Tandaradei, 
 
 Trust him not to breathe a word. 
 
 98 
 
LULLABY 
 
 WE'VE wandered all about the upland fallows, 
 We've watched the rabbits at their play ; 
 But now, good-night, good-bye to soaring 
 swallows, 
 Now good-night, good-bye, dear day. 
 
 Poppy heads are closing fast, pigeons circle home at 
 
 last; 
 Sleep, Liebchen, sleep, the bats are calling. 
 Pansies never miss the light, but sweet babes must 
 
 sleep at night; 
 Sleep, Liebchen, sleep, the dew is falling. 
 
 Even the wind among the quiet willows 
 Rests, and the sea is silent too. 
 See soft white linen, cool, such cool white pillows, 
 Wait in the darkling room for you. 
 
 All the little lambs are still now the moon peeps down 
 
 the hill; 
 Sleep, Liebchen, sleep, the owls are hooting. 
 Ships have hung their lanthorns out, little mice dare 
 
 creep about ; 
 Sleep, Liebchen, sleep, the stars are shooting. 
 
 G2 99 
 
IV 
 THE FACE OF THE NIGHT 
 
 The following poems appeared in the volume 
 called as above and published by Mr Macqueen in 
 1904. 
 
1 
 
 A SEQUENCE 
 I 
 
 You make me think of lavender, 
 And that is why I love you so : 
 Your sloping shoulders, heavy hair. 
 And long swan's neck like snow. 
 Befit those gracious girls of long ago, 
 Who in closed gardens took the quiet air ; 
 Who lived the ordered life gently to pass 
 From earth as from rose petals perfumes go, 
 Or shadows from that dial in the grass ; 
 Whose fingers from the painted spinet keys 
 Drew small heart-clutching melodies. 
 
 II 
 
 DO not ask so much, 
 — O, bright-hued ; oh, tender-eyed — 
 As you should sometimes shimmer at my side, 
 Oh, Fair. 
 
 I do not crave a touch, 
 Nor, at your comings hither, 
 Sound of soft laughter, savour of your hair, 
 Sight of your face ; oh fair, oh full of grace, 
 I ask not, I. 
 
 But that you do not die, 
 Nor fade, oh bright, nor wither. 
 That somewhere in the world your sweet, dim face 
 Be unattainable, unpaled by fears, 
 Unvisited by years. 
 Stained by no tears. 
 
 103 
 
Ill 
 
 COME in the delicate stillness of dawn, 
 Your eyelids heavy with sleep ; 
 When the faint moon slips to its line — dim- 
 drawn, 
 Grey and a shadow, the sea. And deep, very deep, 
 The tremulous stillness ere day in the dawn. 
 
 Come, scarce stirring the dew on the lawn. 
 
 Your face still shadowed by dreams; 
 When the world's all shadow, and rabbit and fawn — 
 Those timorous creatures of shadows and gleams ; 
 And twilight and dewlight, still people the lawn. 
 
 Come, more real than life is real. 
 
 Your form half seen in the dawn ; 
 A warmth half felt, like the rays that steal 
 Hardly revealed from the East; oh warmth of my 
 
 breast, 
 O life of my heart, oh intimate solace of me . . . 
 So, when the landward breeze winds up from the 
 
 quickening sea, 
 And the leaves quiver of a sudden and life is here and 
 the day, 
 You shall fade away and pass 
 As — when we breathed upon your mirror's glass — 
 Our faces died away. 
 
 104 
 
IV 
 
 IF we could have remembrance now 
 And see, as in the winter's snow 
 We shall, what's golden in these hours, 
 The flitting, swift, intangible desires of sea and 
 strand ! 
 
 Who sees what's golden where we stand ? 
 The sky's too bright, the sapphire sea too green ; 
 I, I am fevered, you cold-sweet, serene, 
 And . . . and . . . 
 
 Yet looking back in days of snow 
 Unto this olden day that's now, 
 We'll see all golden in these hours 
 This memory of ours. 
 
 105 
 
IT was the Autumn season of the year 
 When ev'ry little bird doth ask his mate : 
 " I wonder if the Spring will find us here, 
 It groweth late." 
 
 I saw two Lovers walking through the grass, 
 
 And the sad He unto his weeping Dear 
 
 Did say. "Alas! 
 
 When Spring comes round I shall no more be here, 
 
 For I must sail across the weary sea 
 
 And leave the waves a-churn 'twixt you and me. 
 
 " Oh, blessed Autumn ! blest late Autumn-tide ! 
 
 For ever with thy mists us Lovers hide. 
 
 Ignore Time's laws 
 
 And leave thy scarlet haws 
 
 For ever on the dewy-dripping shaws 
 
 Of this hillside. 
 
 Until the last, despite of Time and Tide, 
 
 Give leave that we may wander in thy mist, 
 
 With the last, dread 
 
 Word left for aye unsaid 
 
 And the last kiss unkisst." 
 
 It was the Autumn season of the year. 
 When ev'ry little bird doth ask his mate : 
 • * / wonder if the Spring will find us here^ 
 It groweth late.'' 
 
 [o6 
 
VI 
 
 WHEN all the little hills are hid in snow, 
 And all the small brown birds by frost are 
 slain, 
 And sad and slow the silly sheep do go 
 All seeking shelter to and fro; 
 
 Come once again 
 To these familiar, silent, misty lands ; 
 Unlatch the lockless door 
 And cross the drifted floor ; 
 Ignite the waiting, ever-willing brands. 
 And warm thy frozen hands 
 By the old flame once more. 
 Ah, heart's desire, once more by the old fire stretch 
 out thy hands. 
 
 107 
 
ON THE HILLS 
 
 KEEP your brooding sorrows for dewy- 
 misty hollows. 
 Here's blue sky and lark song, drink the 
 air. The joy that follows 
 Drafts of wine o' west wind, o' north wind, o' 
 
 summer breeze, 
 Never grape's hath equalled from the wine hills 
 by the summer seas. 
 Whilst the breezes live, joy shall contrive, 
 Still to tear asunder, and to scatter near and far 
 Those nets small and thin 
 That spider sorrows spin 
 In the brooding hollows where no breezes are. 
 
 108 
 
SIDERA CADENTIA 
 
 (ON THE DEATH OF QUEEN VICTORIA) 
 
 WHEN one of the old, little stars doth fall 
 from its place, 
 The eye, 
 Glimpsing aloft must sadden to see that its space 
 
 In the sky 
 Is darker, lacking a spot of its ancient, shimmering 
 
 grace, 
 And sadder, a little, for loss of the glimmer on high. 
 
 Very remote, a glitter, a mote far away, is your star, 
 But its glint being gone from the place where it shone 
 The night's somewhat grimmer and something is 
 
 gone 
 Out of the comforting quiet of things as they are. 
 
 A shock, 
 A change in the beat of the clock ; 
 And the ultimate change that we fear feels a little 
 less far. 
 
 109 
 
NIGHT PIECE 
 
 AH, of those better tides of dark and melancholy — 
 /\ When one's abroad, in a field — the night very 
 ■» ^ deep, very holy ; 
 The turf very sodden a-foot, walking heavy — the 
 
 small ring of light, 
 O' the lanthorn one carries, a-swinging to left and to 
 
 right, 
 Revealing a flicker of hedgerow, a flicker of rushes 
 
 — and Night 
 Ev'ry where; ev'ry where sleep and a hushing to 
 
 sleep — 
 I know that I never shall utter the uttermost secrets 
 
 aright, 
 They lie so deep. 
 
 no 
 
THANKS WHILST UNHARNESSING 
 I 
 
 [He gets dozim from the cart.) 
 
 WEST'RING the last silver light doth gleam, 
 Whilst in the welling shimmer of the lamp 
 From the tired horse the blanketing of steam 
 Flickers and whirls aloft into the damp 
 Sharp winter darkness. In the deadened air 
 The long, still night doth settle everywhere. 
 And hark! there comes the rapt, sweet, crooning 
 
 snatches 
 Of song from where the little robin watches 
 Close in the thorn, beyond the ring of light. 
 
 II 
 
 {He speaks towards the hushes.) 
 
 Softest of all the birds that sing at night, 
 For the most mellowest sound, 
 That the long year brings round. 
 
 Sweet robin. I give thanks and love you best 
 Of birds that nest. 
 
 {He follows the horse in^ humming :) 
 
 Sing ! it is well, though the rest of life be bitter. 
 Sing! {I swill the oats in the tro2igh and loose the girth) 
 Warble I It is well. [There's a rustle in the litter: 
 That's the old grey rat) It is well upon the earth. 
 
 lU 
 
Ill 
 
 Clotht-up and snug and warm, a-munching oats 
 Old Tom doth make a comfortable sound, 
 A rhythmic symphony for your sweet notes. 
 
 [He speaks from the stable door.) 
 
 Small brother, flit in here, since all around 
 The frost hath gripped the ground ; 
 And oh ! I would not like to have you die. 
 We's help each other. 
 Little Brother Beady-eye. 
 
 [The Robin flits in.) 
 
 T\iQxe.—Singl Warm and mellow the lanthorn lights 
 the stable. 
 Little brother^ sing! In-a-doors beside the hearth. 
 Slippers are a-toast, and the tea's upon the table. 
 Robin when you sing it is well iipon the earth. 
 [He closes the stable door and enters the cottage.) 
 
 112 
 
GREY MATTER 
 
 THEY leave us nothing. 
 He. Still, a little's left. 
 
 She. A crabbed, ancient, dried biologist, 
 Somewhere very far from the sea, closed up from the 
 
 sky, 
 Shut in from the leaves, destroys our hopes and us. 
 
 He. Why, no, our hopes and . . . 
 
 She. In his " Erster Heft." 
 
 Page something, I forget the line, he says 
 That, hidden as deep in the brain as he himself from 
 
 hope, 
 There's this grey matter. 
 
 He. Why, 'tis there, dear heart. 
 
 She. That, if that hidden matter cools, decays, 
 Dies — what you will — our souls die out as well ; 
 Since, hidden in the millionth of a cell. 
 Is all we have to give us consciousness. 
 
 He. Suppose it true. 
 
 She. Ah, never ; better die, 
 
 Better have never lived than face this mist, 
 Better have never toiled to such distress. 
 
 He. It matters little. 
 
 She. Little !— Where shall I, 
 
 The woman, where shall you take part, 
 My poet ? Where has either of us scope 
 In this dead-dawning century that lacks all faith, 
 All hope, all aim, and all the mystery 
 That comforteth. Since he victorious 
 With his cold vapours chill out you and me, 
 The woman and the poet ? 
 
 He. Never, dear. 
 
 For you and I remain, 
 The woman and the poet. And soft rain 
 Still falls and still the crocus flames, 
 
 H 113 
 
The blackbird calls. 
 
 She. But halt the sweet is gone. 
 
 The voices of our children at their games 
 Lack half their ring. 
 
 He. Why, never, dear. Out there, 
 
 The sea's a cord of silver, still to south 
 Beyond the marsh. 
 
 She. Ah, but beyond it all. 
 
 And all beneath and all above, half of the glory's done. 
 And I and you 
 
 He. Why, no. The ancient sun 
 
 Shines as it ever shone, and still your mouth 
 Is sweet as of old it was. 
 
 She. But what remains ? 
 
 He. All the old pains. 
 And all the old sweet pleasures and the mystery 
 Of time, slow travel and unfathomed deep. 
 
 She. And then this cold extinction ? . . . 
 
 He. Dreamless sleep. 
 
 She. And nothing matters ? 
 
 He. All the old, old things. 
 
 Whether to Church or College rings 
 The clamorous bell of creeds, 
 We, in the lush, far meads. 
 Poet and woman, past the city walls, 
 Hear turn by turn the burden of their calls, 
 Believe what we believe, feel what we feel, 
 Like what we list of what they cry within 
 
 Cathedral or laborat'ry, 
 Since, by the revolution of the wheel. 
 The one swings under, let us wait content. 
 
 She. Yet it is hard. 
 
 He. Ah no. A sure intent, 
 
 For me and you. 
 The right, true, joyful word, the sweet, true phrase, 
 The calling of our children from the woods these gar- 
 den days 
 114 
 
Remain. — These drops of rain have laid the dust 
 And in our soft brown seed-beds formed the crust 
 We needed for our sowings. Bring your seed, 
 And you shall prick it in, I close the row. 
 Be sure the little grains your hands have pressed 
 Tenderly, lovingly, home, shall flourish best. 
 
 She. Aye you are still my poet. 
 
 He, Even so 
 
 Betwixt the rain and shine. Half true's still true 
 More truly than the thing that's proved and dead. 
 The sun lends flame to every crocus head 
 Once more, and we once more must sow and weed 
 Since in the earth the newly stirring seed 
 Begins the ancient mystery anew. 
 
 H2 115 
 
OLD MAN'S EVENSONG 
 
 ''T^IS but a teeny mite 
 I Hard, road side edge, 
 1. or missus' candle light 
 Shines through thet broken hedge. 
 
 Reach me my coat, lads, 
 
 Give me a lift into it, 
 Rowin' they tater-clads 
 
 Tasks me to do it 
 Terribly; 
 Time was when I weer mad 
 
 Diggin' by star's light. 
 Now I am mortial glad 
 
 T' reach my dure-ajar's light, 
 'N' eat my tea. 
 
 Reach me my tools, boys, 
 
 Ah mun quit this talk 'n' lurry; 
 Theer's my ol' missus' voice 
 
 Calls : " or meastur, hurry, 
 Y'r tea-time's come." 
 Smells from the chimney side 
 
 Sniff down this plaguy mist, 
 Wanst I'd wander far an' wide. 
 
 Now I'm terr'ble stiff an' whist 
 'N' stay at home. 
 
 'Tis but a yeard or two 
 
 Hard road, thank God. 
 Then off the hard an' goo 
 
 Home on the sod. 
 
 i6 
 
CHILDREN'S SONG 
 
 SOMETIMES wind and sometimes rain, 
 Then the sun comes back again ; 
 Sometimes rain and sometimes snow, 
 Goodness, how we'd like to know 
 Why the weather alters so. 
 
 When the weather's really good 
 We go nutting in the wood ; 
 When it rains we stay at home, 
 And then sometimes other some 
 Of the neighbours' children come. 
 
 Sometimes we have jam and meat. 
 All the things we like to eat ; 
 Sometimes we make do with bread 
 And potatoes boiled instead. 
 Once when we were put to bed 
 We had nowt and mother cried. 
 But that was after father died. 
 
 So, sometimes wind and sometimes rain, 
 Then the sun comes back again ; 
 Sometimes rain and sometimes snow, 
 Goodness, how we'd like to know 
 If things will always alter so. 
 
 117 
 
FROM THE SOIL 
 
 (TWO MONOLOGUES) 
 
 I 
 
 The Field Labourer speaks. 
 
 AH am a mighty simple man and only 
 Good wi' my baggin' hook and sichlike and 'tis 
 . lonely 
 Wheer Ah do hedge on Farmer Finn his farm. 
 
 Often Ah gits to thinking 
 When it grows dark and the ol' sun's done sinking, 
 And Ah hev had my sheere 
 
 Of fear 
 And wanted to feel sure that God were near 
 
 And goodly warm — 
 As near as th'eldritch shave I were at wark about . . . 
 
 Plenty o' time for thinking 
 We hes between the getting up and sinking 
 Of that ol' sun — about the God we tark about . . . 
 
 In the beginning God made Heaven and 
 The ' Arth, 'n Sea we sometimes hear a-calling 
 When wind she bloweth from the rainy land 
 An' says ther'll soon be wet an' rain a-falling. 
 
 Ah'U give you, parson, God he made the sea, 
 An' made this 'Arth, ner yit Ah wo-an't scrimmage 
 But what He made the sky ; what passes vie 
 Is that what follows : " Then the Lord made we 
 In his own image." 
 
 For, let alone the difference in us creatures. 
 Some short o' words like me, and others preachers 
 With stores of them, like you; some fair, some midd- 
 lin', 
 ii8 
 
Some black-avis'd like you and good at fiddlin', 
 Some crabb'd, some mad, some mighty gay and 
 
 pleasant, 
 No two that's more alike than jackdaw is to pheasant, 
 We're poorish stuff at best. 
 
 We doesn't last no time before we die, 
 Nor leave more truck behind than they poor thrushes. 
 You find, stiff feathers, laid aside the bushes 
 After a hard ol' frost in Janu-ry. 
 or crow he lives much longer, 
 or mare's a de-al stronger 
 'N the hare's faster . . . 
 If so be God's like we and we like He 
 
 The man's as good's his Master. 
 
 You are a civil, decent-spoken man. Muss Parson. 
 'N' /don't think ye'll say this kind o' tark is worse'n 
 
 arson — 
 That's burning stacks, I think — snrely it isn' meant 
 
 so, 
 
 I tell you, Parson, no; 
 'N' us poor folk we doesn't want to blame 
 You parsons fer the things that's said and sung 
 Up there in church. My apple tree is crook'd because 
 
 'twere bent so 
 When it were young. 
 
 'N' them as had you preacher-folk to tame, 
 Taught you the tales that you are bound to tell 
 
 Us folk below 
 About three Gods that's one an' Heav'n an' Hell, 
 An' things us folk ain't meant \.o understand. 
 I tell you, sir, we men that's on the land 
 Needs summut we can chew when trouble's brewing, 
 When our ol' 'ooman's bad an' rent is due 
 
 'N' wenofarden, 
 'N' when it's late to sow 'n' still too wet to dig the 
 
 garden, 
 
 119 
 
Something as we can chew like that ol' cow be chew- 
 ing. 
 
 Something told plain and something we gits holt on, 
 — You need a simple sort o' feed to raise a colt on — 
 We needs it, parson, life's a bitter scrimmage, 
 Livin' and stuggin' in the mud and things we do 
 
 Enow confound us ; 
 We hain't no need for fear 
 Of God, to make the living hardly worth 
 
 You tell us, sir, that " God He made this Earth 
 
 In His own image," 
 An' make the Lord seem near. 
 So's we could think that when we come to die 
 
 We'll lie 
 In this same goodly ' Arth, an' things goo on around 
 us 
 
 Much as they used to goo. 
 
 II 
 
 The Small Farmer soliloquizes. 
 I wonder why we toiled upon the earth 
 From sunrise until sunset, dug and delved, 
 Crook-backed, cramp -fingered, making little marks 
 On the unmoving bosoms of the hills. 
 And nothing came of it. And other men 
 In the same places dug and delved and ended 
 As we have done ; and other men just there 
 Shall do the self-same things until the end. 
 I wonder why we did it. . . . Underneath 
 The grass that fed my sheep, I often thought 
 Something lay hidden, some sinister thing 
 Lay looking up at us as if it looked 
 Upwards thro' quiet waters ; that it saw 
 Us fatile toilers scratching little lines 
 And doing nothing. And maybe it smiled 
 Because it knew that we must come to this 
 
 120 
 
I lay and heard the rain upon the roof 
 All night when rain spelt ruin, lay and heard 
 The east wind shake the windows when that wind 
 Meant parched up land, dried herbage, blighted 
 
 wheat, 
 And ruin, always ruin creeping near 
 In the long droughts and bitter frosts and floods. 
 And when at dawning I went out-a-doors 
 I used to see the top of the tall shaft 
 O' the workhouse here, peep just above the downs, 
 It was as if the thing were spying, waiting, 
 Watching my movements, saying, "You will come. 
 Will come at last to me." And I am here . . . 
 And down below that Thing lay there and smiled ; 
 Or no, it did not smile ; it was as if 
 One might have caught it smiling, but one saw 
 The earth immovable, the unmoved sheep 
 And senseless hedges run like little strings 
 All over hill and dale 
 
 121 
 
WISDOM 
 
 THE young girl questions: "Whether were it 
 better 
 To lie for ever, a warm slug-a-bed 
 Or to rise up and bide by Fate and Chance, 
 The rawness of the morning, 
 The gibing and the scorning 
 Of the stern Teacher of my ignorance ? " 
 " I know not," Wisdom said. 
 
 The young girl questions : " Friend, shall I die calmer, 
 If I've lain for ever, sheets above the head. 
 Warm in a dream, or rise to take the worst 
 Of peril in the highways 
 Of straying in the by-ways. 
 Of hunger for the truth, of drought and thirst ? " 
 " We do not know," he said, 
 " Nor may till we be dead." 
 
 122 
 
THE POSY-RING 
 
 (AFTER CLEMENT MAROT) 
 
 THIS on thy posy-ring I've writ: 
 " True Love and Faith " 
 For, failing Love, Faith droops her head, 
 And lacking faith, why love is dead 
 
 And's but a wraith. 
 But Death is stingless where they've lit 
 And stayed, whose names hereon I've writ. 
 
 123 
 
u 
 
 THE GREAT VIEW 
 
 P here, where the air's very clear 
 
 And the hills slope away nigh down to the bay, 
 
 It is very like Heaven . . . 
 
 For the sea's wine-purple and lies half asleep 
 In the sickle of the shore and, serene in the west, 
 Lion-like purple and brooding in the even, 
 Low hills lure the sun to rest. 
 
 Very like Heaven For the vast marsh dozes, 
 
 And waving plough-lands and willowy closes 
 
 Creep and creep up the soft south steep ; 
 
 In the pallid North the grey and ghostly downs do 
 
 fold away. 
 And, spinning spider-threadlets down the sea, the 
 
 sea-lights dance 
 And shake out a wavering radiance. 
 
 Very like Heaven For a shimmering of pink. 
 
 East, far east, past the sea-lights' distant blink, 
 Like a cloud shell-pink, like the ear of a girl, 
 Like Venice-glass mirroring mother-o'-pearl, 
 Like the small pink nails of my lovely lady's fingers. 
 Where the skies drink the sea and the last light lies 
 
 and lingers, 
 There is France. 
 
 124 
 
WIFE TO HUSBAND 
 
 IF I went past you down this hill 
 And you had never seen my face before, 
 Would all your being feel the sudden thrill 
 You said it felt, once more ? 
 
 If I went past you through this shaw, 
 
 Would be all a-quiver at the brush 
 
 Of my trailed garments; would the sudden hush 
 
 You said the black -birds' voices had in awe 
 
 Of my first coming, fall upon the place 
 
 Once more, if you had never seen my face 
 
 Nor ever heard my passing by before, 
 
 And nought had passed of all that was of yore ? 
 
 lis 
 
A NIGHT PIECE 
 
 AS I lay awake by my good wife's side, 
 /\ And heard the clock tick through a night in June, 
 
 1 1.1 thought of a song with a haunting tune ; 
 
 But the songs that betide, 
 
 And the tunes that we hear in the ear when the June 
 moon rides in the sky, 
 
 Fade and die away with the coming of the day. 
 
 And my haloed angels with golden wings, 
 
 And the small sweet bells that rang in tune, 
 
 And the strings that quivered above the quills, 
 
 And all my mellow imaginings 
 
 Faded and died away at the coming of the day 
 
 With the gradual growth and spread of grey 
 
 Above the hills. 
 
 126 
 
TO CHRISTINA AT NIGHTFALL 
 
 LITTLE thing, ah, little mouse. 
 Creeping through the twilit house, 
 ^To watch within the shadow of my chair 
 With large blue eyes; the firelight on your hair 
 Doth glimmer gold and faint. 
 And on your woollen gown 
 That folds a-down 
 From steadfast little face to square-set feet. 
 Ah, sweet ! ah, little one ! so like a carven saint. 
 With your unflinching eyes, unflinching face, 
 Like a small angel, carved in a high place, 
 Watching unmoved across a gabled town ; 
 When I am weak and old, 
 And lose my grip, and crave my small reward 
 Of tolerance and tenderness and ruth. 
 The children of your dawning day shall hold 
 The reins we drop and wield the judge's sword 
 And your swift feet shall tread upon my heels, 
 And I be Ancient Error, you New Truth, 
 And I be crushed by your advancing wheels . . . 
 Good-night ! The fire is burning low, 
 
 Put out the lamp ; 
 Lay down the weary little head 
 Upon the small white bed. 
 Up from the sea the night winds blow 
 Across the hill across the marsh; 
 Chill and harsh, harsh and damp, 
 The night winds blow. 
 But, while the slow hours go, 
 I, who must fall before you, late shall wait and keep 
 Watch and ward, 
 Vigil and guard. 
 Where you sleep. 
 Ah, sweet! do you the like where I lie dead. 
 
 127 
 
TWO FRESCOES 
 
 It occurred to me that a series of frescoes might arise dealing 
 with the fortunes of Roderick the Goth. Having neither wall nor 
 brushes I have tried to put two of them upon paper. 
 
 I 
 
 THE tow't;r 
 
 DOWN there where Europe's arms 
 Stretch out to Africa, 
 Throughout the storms, throughout the calms 
 Of centuries it took the alms 
 Of sun and rain ; the loud alarms 
 Of war left it unmoved; and grey 
 And brooding there it watched the strip of foam 
 And fret of ruffled waters, was the home 
 Of the blue rock-dove and the birds o' the main. 
 
 Coming from Africa 
 
 The swallows rested on it flying north 
 
 In spring-time; rested there again, 
 
 When the days shorten, speeding on the way 
 
 Homewards to Africa. 
 
 Back and forth 
 
 The tiny ships below sped ; east and west 
 
 It was called blest 
 
 By mariners it guided. Mystery 
 
 Hung round it like a veil. The ancient Ones, 
 
 They said, had seen it rise 
 
 Upwards to the old suns, 
 
 Upwards to the old skies, 
 
 When Hercules 
 
 Did bid it guard those seas. 
 
 It was a thing of the Past ; 
 Stood there untroubled ; like a virgin, dreamed ; 
 And not a man of all that land but deemed 
 The tower sacred. 
 128 
 
It was a symbol of an ancient faith, 
 
 Some half-forgotten righteousness, some Truth, 
 
 Some virtue in the land whose tillers said : 
 
 *' Whilst that stands unenforced, it is well." 
 
 Be sure the thing is even so to-day, 
 
 Our tower doth somewhere unenforced rise 
 
 Upwards to our old skies. 
 
 And if we suffer sacrilegious hands 
 
 To force its innocence, our knell shall ring 
 
 As it rang out for them on that old day 
 
 Knolling from Africa. 
 
 You say it was the King who did this thing, 
 
 Who sinned against this righteousness. But say: 
 
 If we stand by and with averted eyes. 
 
 Or, shrugging shoulders, let our rulers sin 
 
 Against the very virtue of the race, 
 
 Who is it then but us must bear the pains 
 
 Of Nemesis ? Ah, yes, it was the King 
 
 II 
 
 GOTHS 
 
 " Let the stars flame by as the flaming earth falls 
 
 down. 
 Ruined fall the earth as the clanging heavens fall. 
 Clasp me, love of mine ; be the jewels in my crown 
 But the firelit tears of Gods, of the Ancient Ones of 
 
 all." 
 
 The swart King paced his palace wall 
 And down below the maids at ball 
 Sang in choir at evenfall 
 As they played : 
 
 I 129 
 
" Make our couch of Greece and the footstool for our 
 throne 
 Of Rome, throw scented Spain for the incense of 
 our fire, 
 Bring me all the East for the jewels in my zone, 
 Cast them all together for our leaping wedding 
 pyre." 
 
 And he looked down 
 
 Into their cloistral shade 
 
 And saw, without the tongues of shadow thrown 
 
 By wall and tree of that sequestered place 
 
 One girl who had the sunlight on her face, 
 
 Who swayed and clapped her hands and sang alone. 
 
 " My father can but die," she sang, 
 
 " My mother can but weep, 
 
 This weary town fall blazing down 
 
 And be a smouldering heap 
 
 Beneath the flame 
 
 Where I was wont to keep 
 
 My weary vigil till my lover came." 
 
 Chanting in her pauses all the girls within the 
 
 close 
 Sang to her singing, and their hidden chorus rose 
 Like a wave, fell like falling asleep. 
 And for the King, her voice like fiery wine 
 Set all his pulses throbbing and her face 
 Did dazzle more than did the blood-red sun. 
 
 " He who would win me, let him woo like this. 
 Flames on his face and the blood upon his hands, 
 Ravish me away when the blackening embers hiss 
 As the red flesh weeps to the brands." 
 130 
 
That King was one who reignM there alone 
 Upon those very confines of the world, 
 Where conquering races ebb to sloth and sink 
 As still great rivers sink into the sands. 
 And — for his fathers had been rav'ning wolves 
 Who coursed through ruin, pestilence and death 
 When all the world flamed red from end to end — 
 That ancient song of his destroying race 
 The girl sang stirred the fibres of his frame 
 Till all the earth was red before his face. 
 It had been so the women sang of old 
 To his forgotten sires, and still they sang 
 Within the shadow of his palace wall, 
 The cloister of his grimmest liege of all. 
 And as she sang the ferment worked in her 
 And shook her virgin's voice to jarring notes. 
 Stirring in her the ancient cry of throats 
 Torn with the passions of the ancient days. 
 
 "Pour me blood o' gods; bring me broken oaths for 
 
 toys 
 Countless of the cost, of their ruin, of thine own ; 
 Drunk with wine and passion, drink thy moment's 
 
 fill of joys. 
 Godlike, beastlike, manlike, drink and cast thy cup 
 a-down; 
 Lose thy life; give thy crown. 
 Lose thy soul, give thine all, 
 As we sink to death and ruin with the smoke o' worlds 
 for pall." 
 
 And so she raised her eyes and saw the King 
 Stand frowning down, his face inspired with flame 
 Fro' the west'ring sun. And then the Angelus 
 Chimed out across the silent land of Spain. 
 Beyond the strip of foam the imaums called, 
 And Africa and Europe fell to prayer. 
 
 12 131 
 
But those two gazing in each other's eyes 
 Looked back into the hollows of the years. 
 And as he stood above his brooding land 
 It was as if she saw her sires again. 
 Flames shone upon his face and on his hands 
 Incarnadined ; whenas the sun sank down 
 He raised his eyes and seemed to see that Spain 
 Was all on fire with blood upon the roofs. 
 And down to vSouth the inviolate, pallid tower 
 Rose silent, pointing to the crescent moon 
 And that great peering planet called Soheil, 
 That heralds, as Mahomet's doctors say, 
 His domination and his children's sway, 
 Rose over Africa. 
 
 132 
 
VOLKSWEISE 
 
 A POOR girl sat by a tower of the sea 
 All a-wringing of her hands; "Will he never 
 show," says she, 
 "Just as a token, just a glimmer of his ship's lant . . . 
 horn?" 
 
 " Oh, all ye little grains of sand 
 Twist into a rope shall draw his keel 
 Hither. Oh, ye little gulls and terns, 
 Join wings and bear me from this strand 
 To where I'll feel 
 
 His arms, and find where on the foam his ship is 
 borne." 
 
 A poor girl sat, etc. 
 " Oh, all ye little stars o' the night 
 Come down and cluster in my hair ; 
 Oh, bright night-flashes o' the waves 
 Shine round me till I'm all one flame of light. 
 So, far at sea. 
 He'll deem a beacon beckons him to me " 
 
 A poor girl sat nigh a tower of the sea 
 
 All a-wringing of her hands; " Will he never show,'' 
 
 said she, 
 ** Just a token, fust a glinimcr of his ship's lant . . . 
 
 horn?" 
 
 133 
 
AND AFTERWARDS 
 
 (A SAVAGE SORT OF SONG ON THE ROAD) 
 
 " /^"X NCE / zvas a gallant and bold I 
 I \ ^ nd you so te^ider and true, 
 
 V J But ril never again he the old I 
 
 Nor you the old you. 
 
 I shall go lounging along on the edge 
 
 Of the grass You'll loiter along by the hedge. 
 
 I shall go dogged through dust and the dirt 
 
 Like an ass in my moods. 
 
 You with a new sweetheart at your skirt 
 
 Ev'ry few roods 
 
 " Once I was a gallant^'' etc. 
 
 We'll maybe jog along together 
 
 A long way ; 
 
 Maybe put up with the weather together, 
 
 Better or worse 
 
 As it chances day by day, 
 
 Or maybe part with a kick and a curse 
 
 I and you, 
 
 After a turning or two 
 
 '^But ril never agatUy" etc. 
 
 >34 
 
ON A MARSH ROAD 
 
 (WINTER NIGHTFALL) 
 
 A BLUFF of cliff, purple against the south, 
 And nigh one shoulder-top an orange pane. 
 ^This wet, clean road; clear twilight held in the 
 pools, 
 And ragged thorns, ghost reeds and dim, dead wil- 
 lows. 
 
 Past all the windings of these grey, forgotten valleys. 
 To west, past clouds that close on one dim rift — 
 The golden plains; the infinite, glimpsing distances. 
 The eternal silences; dim lands of peace. 
 
 Infinite plains to know no wanderer's foot; infinite 
 
 distances where alone is rest; 
 All-virgin downs where none shall pasture sheep; 
 
 inviolable peaks that none shall climb, 
 From whose summit nor you nor I shall gaze on 
 
 ocean's infinite beyond, 
 Nor none look back upon this world folding to-night, 
 
 to rain and to sleep. 
 
 35 
 
AN END PIECE 
 
 CLOSE the book and say good-bye to every- 
 thing; 
 Pass up from the shore and pass by byre and 
 stall, 
 — For the smacks shall sail home on the tail of the 
 
 tides, 
 And the kine shall stand deep in the sweet water 
 
 sides, 
 And they still shall go burying, still wedding brides, 
 But I must be gone in the morning. 
 
 One more look, and so farewell, sweet summering. 
 One moment more and then no more at all. 
 For the skipper shall summon his hands to the sea, 
 And the shepherd still shepherd his sheep on the lea, 
 But it's over and done with the man that was me, 
 As over the hill comes the morning. 
 
 136 
 
V 
 
 "POEMS FOR PICTURES" 
 
 Note. — The following poems were printed in the 
 volume of the same title published by Mr IMacqueen 
 in 1897. 
 
i 
 
LOVE IN WATCHFULNESS 
 
 UPON THE SHEEPDOWNS 
 
 SAIL, oh sail away, 
 Oh sail, ye clouds, above my face. 
 Here where I lie; 
 Trail, oh trail away 
 Ye ling'ring minutes and give place 
 To hours that fly. 
 
 But when I hear an echo mutter, 
 
 Soft up the slope of golden gorse. 
 
 Oh, when I see a distant horse. 
 
 When I shall see, afar, a kerchief flutter 
 
 Among the shrouds 
 
 And driving veils of mist, you'll sail away you 
 
 hours and clouds, 
 You'll sail away. 
 
 >39 
 
AFTER ALL 
 
 YES, what's the use of striving on ? 
 And what's to show when all is done ? 
 The bells will toll as now they toil, 
 Here's an old lilt will summarize the whole : 
 
 " This fell about in summertide, 
 About the midmost of the year, 
 Our master did to covert ride 
 
 To drive the fallow deer. ■ 
 
 Chanced we upon the Douglas men ere ever one m 
 
 of us was ware. * 
 
 '* Then sped a shaft from covert side 
 And pierced in behind his ear ; 
 This fell about in summertide 
 At midmost of the year." 
 
 So down he fell and rested there ,■ 
 
 Among the sedge hard by the brook, j 
 
 About the midmost of the year ^ 
 
 His last and lasting rest he took. * 
 
 I 
 And so, " This fell in winter late. 
 Or ever Candlemas drew near, 
 His bride had found another mate 
 Before the ending of the year. 
 
 " His goshawks decked another's wrists. 
 
 His hounds another's voice did fear. 
 
 His men another's errands ride 
 
 His steed another burden bear. 
 
 Him they forgot by Christmastide. 
 
 Ere Candlemas drew near." 
 
 140 
 
Our hounds shall know another leash, 
 Our men another master know, 
 And we reck little of it all, so we but find good 
 rest below. 
 
 So what's the use of striving on ? 
 
 And what's to show when all is done ? 
 
 The ring- of bells will chime and chime, 
 
 And all the rest's just waste — just waste of time. 
 
 141 
 
THE OLD FAITH TO THE CONVERTS 
 
 " W 7" THEN the world is growing older, 
 
 \ \ / And the road leads down and down and 
 
 VV down, 
 And the wind is in the bare tree-tops 
 And the meadows sodden with much rain, 
 Seek me here in the old places. 
 And here, where I dwell, you shall find me," 
 Says the old Faith we are leaving. 
 
 "When the muscles stiffen. 
 Eyes glaze, ears lose their keenness. 
 When the mind loses its familiar nimbleness. 
 And the tongue no longer voices it, speeds before 
 
 it, follows it. 
 Seek me here in the old places, [find me," 
 
 And here, where I have always dwelt, you shall 
 Says the old Faith we are leaving. 
 
 " I shall not watch your going down the road, 
 Not even to the turning at the hill. 
 Not for me to hear you greet the strange women, 
 Not for me to see them greet you. 
 They shall be many and many the houses you shall 
 
 enter, but never shall house be like to mine," 
 Says the old Faith we are leaving. 
 
 " You shall hear strange new songs, 
 But never song like the one I sing by your pillow; 
 You shall breathe strange new scents, [the linen. 
 But never scent like that of the herbs I strew 'mid 
 Go ! I give you time to make holiday. 
 Travel, travel, fare into far countries. 
 But you shall come back again to the old places. 
 And here, where I have always dwelt, you shall 
 
 find me," 
 Says the old Faith we are leaving. 
 
 But we — we shall never return. 
 142 
 
STAETHELBURGA 
 
 FOR A PICTURE 
 
 St Aetlielburga, daughter of Athelbeit, King of Kent, wedded 
 Aedwin, King of Northumbria. Him and thereafter his whole folk 
 she won for the worship of Christianity. But in the end he was 
 slain by Penda, a heathen, who took the land. Then did St 
 Aethelburga return into Kent and found the convent and church 
 at Lyminge, where she died. 
 
 To purge our minds of haste, pass from an age outworn 
 
 And travel to the depths of tranquil times long past; 
 
 Sinking as sinks a stone through waters of a tarn. 
 
 Be fitting things and meet : 
 
 And, look you, on our walls hang treasures from such depths. 
 
 OUEEN, saint, evangelist; sweet, patient, fain 
 to wait 
 With crucifix in hand, broad brow and haloed 
 
 crown 
 Half-hidden by the coif, she enters through that gate. 
 She enters through that door, where tapestry drawn 
 
 back 
 Left seen, a moment since, an apple lawn; but moors 
 Spread far away beyond. That span of shorn green 
 
 turf, 
 Won from the heather's grasp, will whisper of regret 
 For far-off swarded downs — 
 
 For far-off Kentish downs, soft sky and glint of sea, 
 Sweet chime of convent bells and flower scents of 
 
 home. 
 
 Here, in a Northern land, where skies are grey and 
 
 hearts 
 Are slow to gather warmth: where Truth is slow to 
 
 spread. 
 And gibes spring swift to lips; home thoughts are 
 
 bitter sweet. 
 Saint in a pagan court, Queen of a wav'ring King, 
 She murmurs inly, " Wait," clasps tight the crucifix. 
 Enters the narrow door and passes up the hall. 
 
 H3 
 
In those old homespun days, the voices of a court, 
 The whispers that are passed behind the dais-seats 
 By fearers of a frown, came to the war-lord's ear 
 In some shrewd jester's jape: [her. 
 
 And some such licensed fool now voiced the folic for 
 These lovers of their mead, strong beef and rolling 
 
 song. 
 Liked little her soft ways, her Friday fasts and chants 
 That rose and fell unmarked, unrhythmic and un- 
 
 rhymed — 
 Her sweet and silent ways and distant-gazing eyes. 
 
 *• Mead and strong meats on earth and arrow flights 
 
 on earth. 
 What boots the rest ? " they said, 
 Questions their jester her : 
 
 " Oh, Queen, of fasting fain, 
 King's wife that scourge your flesh. 
 King's daughter sadly clad, 
 Sad shall be your estate, after sad faring here, 
 If you be laid i' the grave and find no future state." 
 To him the Queen : " True, son, but what shall be your 
 
 fate. 
 If future state there be ? " and crossed the rush-strewn 
 
 floor, 
 Thanking the Lord that found shrewd answers for 
 
 shrewd jests. 
 So fared she for awhile. In time her King was won, 
 Knelt in the font and sloughed, beneath Paulinus' 
 
 hands 
 His scales of pagan sin. But when his time was come 
 111 fared he 'fore his foes that sent his soul to God. 
 
 So turned the sad Queen back and sought her 
 
 brother's land, 
 Just over those high downs, in a grey hollowed vale, 
 She built her nunnery and rested there awhile. 
 144 
 
(Maybe her feet once trod thi s yielding sheep-cropped 
 
 sward — 
 'Tis like her eyes once filled at sight of just that glint 
 Of distant sun-kissed sea, out where the hill drops 
 
 down.) 
 
 So fared she for awhile, and when her time was come, 
 Down there in Lyminge Church, she laid her weary 
 limbs. 
 
 And yet we see her stand : sad Queen, sweet, silent 
 
 saint, 
 With crucifix clasped close, low brow and distant 
 
 gaze 
 She enters through that gate. 
 
 145 
 
GRAY 
 
 FOR A PICTURE 
 
 THE firelight gilds the patterns on the walls, 
 The yellow flames fly upwards from the brands, 
 On fold and farm the sad grey twilight falls, 
 And shrouds the downs and hides the hollow lands. 
 
 And pensive is the hour and bids the brain 
 Weave morals from the peeping things of dusk, 
 Dwelling a moment on the darkling pane, 
 The tapping roses and the pot of musk. 
 
 That picture there — the one the firelight shows : 
 The poet by a grave, beneath the may. 
 With ready notebook and unruffled brows 
 And elegiac pose — you guess it's Gray. 
 
 Below, beneath his rounded, withied grave, 
 A ploughman sleeps, the tablet at his head 
 Tells the short tale of life that such men have — 
 The scarcely cold and half- forgotten dead 
 
 Who " five and fifty years the furrows trod," 
 Such were the time and toil of William Mead 
 Who passed : " And now, he's resting 'neath this sod," 
 "And there's an end," you say. 'Twere so indeed. 
 
 But William was a ploughman of the best, 
 
 Who ploughed his furrow straight from hedge to 
 
 shaws 
 From sun in east to sun low down in west, 
 With following of rooks and gulls and daws. 
 
 He taught some score the honest trick of plough — 
 Crop-headed yokels, youths of clay and loam — 
 Who learnt his ways and gathered from him how 
 To drive good team and draw straight furrow home. 
 146 
 
Thus when his work was done and done his days 
 He left a school of workers — to this day 
 We recognize their touch — and owe due praise 
 For bread and thought to such as he and Gray. 
 
 Who ploughed such furrows each in his own field, 
 Who sowed such seed and gathered in such grain, 
 That we still batten on their well-sown yield, 
 And wonder who shall do the like again. 
 
 H7 
 
THE GIPSY AND THE CUCKOO 
 
 " Brother, what's that bird tolling yonder?" 
 " Why, Jasper, that's a cuckoo." 
 
 " He's a rog^uish chaffing sort of bird, isn't he, brother?" 
 " He is, Jasper." 
 
 " But you rather like him, brother? . . . well, brother, and what's 
 a gipsy ? " — The Rot>iany Rye. 
 
 TELL me, brother, what's a cuckoo, but a roguish 
 chaffing bird ? 
 Not a nest's his own, no bough-rest's his own, 
 and he's never man's good word, 
 But his call is musical and rings pleasant on the ear. 
 And the spring would scarce be spring 
 If the cuckoo did not sing 
 In the leafy months o' the year. 
 
 Tell me,brother, what's agipsy, but a roguish chaffing 
 
 chap? 
 Not a cot's his own, not a man would groan 
 For a gipsy's worst mishap, 
 But his tent looks quaint when bent 
 On the sidesward of a lane, 
 And you'd deem the rain more dreary 
 And the long white road more weary 
 If we never came again. 
 
 Would your May days seem more fair 
 Were we chals deep read in books, 
 Were we cuckoos cawing rooks. 
 All the world cathedral closes, 
 Where the very sunlight dozes 
 
 Were the sounds all organ pealing, psalm and song 
 and prayer? 
 
 148 
 
THE GIPSY AND THE TOWNSMAN 
 
 The Townsman 
 
 PLEASANT enough in the seed time, 
 Pleasant enough in the hay time, 
 Pleasant enough in the grain time, 
 When oaks don golden gowns, 
 But the need time. 
 The grey time, 
 How bear ye them, 
 How fare ye then 
 When the rain clouds whip over the gorse on the 
 
 downs, 
 How bear ye, them, how fare ye then ? 
 
 Gipsy 
 We lie round the fire and we hark to the wind 
 As it wails in the gorse and it whips on the down. 
 And the wet-wood smoke drives us winking blind, 
 But there's smoke and wind and woe in the town 
 Harder to bear 
 
 There than here in the saddest month of the weariest 
 year. 
 
 :49 
 
THE SONG OF THE WOMEN 
 
 A WEALDEN TRIO 
 
 I si Voice 
 
 WHEN ye've got a child 'ats whist for want of 
 food, 
 And a grate as grey's y'r 'air for want of 
 wood, 
 And y'r man and you ain't nowise not much good; 
 
 Together 
 Oh— 
 
 It's hard work a-Christmassing, 
 Carolling, 
 Singin' songs about the " Babe what's born." 
 
 2nd Voice 
 When ye've 'eered the bailiffs 'and upon the latch, 
 And ye've feeled the rain a-trickling through the 
 
 thatch, 
 An' y'r man can't git no stones to break ner yit no 
 
 sheep to watch — 
 
 Together 
 Oh— 
 
 We've got to come a-Christmassing, 
 Carolling, 
 Singin' of the " Shepherds on that morn." 
 
 ird Voice, more cheerfully 
 'E was a man's poor as us, very near, 
 An' 'E 'ad 'is trials and danger. 
 An' I think 'E'U think of us when 'E sees us singin' 
 
 'ere; 
 For 'is mother was poor, like us, poor dear, 
 An' she bore Him in a manger. 
 150 
 
Together 
 Oh— 
 
 It's warm in the heavens, but it's cold upon the earth; 
 An' we ain't no food at table nor no fire upon the 
 
 hearth ; 
 And it's bitter hard a-Christmassing, 
 Carolling, 
 
 Singin' songs about our Saviour's birth ; 
 Singin' songs about the Babe what's born ; 
 Singin' of the shepherds on that morn. 
 
 15 
 
THE PEASANT'S APOLOGY 
 
 DOWN near the earth 
 On the steaming furrows 
 Things are harsh and black enough 
 Dearth there is and lack enough, 
 And immemorial sorrows 
 Stultify sweet mirth 
 Till she borrows 
 Bitterness and blackness from the earth. 
 
 152 
 
AUCTIONEER'S SONG 
 
 c 
 
 OME up from the field, 
 Come up from the fold, 
 ' For the farmer has broken, 
 His things must be sold. 
 
 Drive the flock from the fold, 
 And the stock from the field. 
 And the team from the furrow, 
 And see what they yield. 
 
 Coom up ! 
 
 Come up from the marsh, 
 Come down from the hops, 
 Come down thro' the ventways. 
 Come cater the copse. 
 
 Come down from the hops. 
 Come up from the marsh, 
 Tho' selling be bitter 
 And creditors harsh, 
 
 Coom up ! 
 
 Bring all you can find. 
 Take the clock from the wall. 
 The crocks from the dairy, 
 The arm-chair and all. 
 
 Tear the prints from the wall. 
 Bring all you can find. 
 Now turn up your collars, 
 To keep out the wind. 
 
 Bid up ! 
 
 So come up from the field, come up from the fold. 
 For the poor old farmer his things must be sold ; 
 Come up from the fold, come up from the field. 
 Now stand all together, let's see what they yield. 
 
 Bid up! 
 
 153 
 
ALDINGTON KNOLL 
 
 THE OLD SMUGGLER SPEAKS 
 
 AL'INGTON Knoll it stands up high, 
 /\ Guidin' the sailors sailin' by, 
 -* i-Stands up high fer all to see 
 Cater the marsh and crost the sea. 
 
 Al'ington Knoll's a mound a top, 
 With a dick all round and it's bound to stop, 
 For them as made it in them old days 
 Sees to it well that theer it stays, 
 
 For that ol' Knoll is watched so well 
 By drownded men let outen Hell ; 
 They watches well and keeps it whole 
 For a sailor's mark — the goodly Knoll. 
 
 Farmer Finn as farms the ground 
 Tried to level that goodly mound, 
 But not a chap from Lydd to Lym' 
 Thought that job were meant for him. 
 
 Finn 'e fetched a chap fro' th' Sheeres, 
 One o' yer spunky devil-may-keeres, 
 Giv him a shovel and pick and spade, 
 Promised him double what we was paid. 
 
 He digged till ten, and he muddled on 
 
 Till he'd digged up a sword and askillington — 
 
 A grit old sword as long as me, 
 
 An' grit ol' bones as you could see. 
 
 He digged and digged the livelong day. 
 Till the sun went down in Fairlight Bay ; 
 He digged and digged, and behind his back 
 The lamps shone out and the marsh went black, 
 154 
 
And the sky in the west went black from red, 
 An' the wood went black — an' the man was dead. 
 But wheer he'd digged the chark shone white 
 Out to sea like Calais light. 
 
 Al'ington Knoll it stands up high, 
 Guidin' the sailors sailin' by, 
 Stands up high for all to see 
 Cater the marsh and crost the sea. 
 
 155 
 
A PAGAN 
 
 BRIGHT white clouds and April skies 
 May make your heart feel bonny, 
 But summer's sun and flower's growth 
 Will fill my hives with honey, 
 And mead is sweet to a pugging tooth 
 When it's dark at four and snow clouds rise. 
 
 Owl light's sweet if the moon be bright, 
 
 And trysting's no bad folly, 
 
 But give me mead and a warm hearthstone, 
 
 And a cosy pipe and Dolly 
 
 — And Dolly to devil a mutton bone 
 
 When it's dark at four of a winter's night. 
 
 156 
 
OLD WINTER 
 
 OLD Winter's hobbling down the road, 
 Dame Autumn's cloak looks frosty grey 
 With a furry edge. 
 We deemed it berry red in the ray 
 The sun vouchsafed the dying day 
 E'en now through the gap in the hedge. 
 
 Chorus 
 Spring's gone, Summer's past, 
 Autumn will never, never catch them. 
 But Winter hobbles along so fast 
 You'd almost think he'd match them. 
 
 Old Winter carries a heavy load. 
 Sticks and stakes to your heart's desire. 
 But as for me, 
 
 I'll not tramp in the Autumn mire, 
 But sit and blink at the merry fire 
 And hark to the kettle's minstrelsy. 
 
 Chorus 
 Spring's gone, Summer's past, 
 Autumn was mellow, mellow yellow, 
 But for all old Winter's hollow blast 
 He's not such a bad old fellow. 
 
 157 
 
THE PEDLAR LEAVES THE BAR 
 PARLOUR AT DYMCHURCH 
 
 GOOD NIGHT, we'd best be jogging on, 
 The moon's been up a while, 
 We've got to get to Bonnington, 
 Nigh seven mile. 
 
 But the marsh ain'd so lone if you've heered a good 
 
 song, 
 And you hum it aloud as you cater along. 
 Nor the stiles half so high, nor the pack so like lead. 
 If you've heered a good tale an' it runs in your head. 
 
 So, come, we'd best be jogging on, 
 The moon will give us light, 
 We've got to get to Bonnington, 
 To sleep to-night. 
 
 158 
 
AN ANNIVERSARY 
 
 Two decades and a minute, 
 And half a moon in the sky, 
 Like a broken willow pattern plate 
 And a jangling bell to din it. 
 Dingle — dong — twelve strokes — 
 Two decades and a minute. 
 
 i$9 
 
BEGINNINGS 
 
 FOR ROSSETTI'S FIRST PAINTING 
 
 WHETHER the beginnings of things notable 
 Have in them anything worth noting. 
 Whether an acorn's worth the thinking of 
 Or eagle's egg suggests the sweep of wings in the 
 
 clear blue, 
 Is just an idle question. 
 
 There's this : 
 
 If you should hold the acorn 'twixt your fingers, 
 
 You'll conjure up an oak maybe, 
 
 A great gnarled trunk, criss-crossed and twisting 
 branches 
 
 And quivering of leaves. 
 
 Or if the egg lies in the hollow of your hand. 
 
 And the possessor says, " It is an eagle's." 
 
 You'll deem you're looking up into high heaven, 
 
 And see, far, far above you. 
 
 Leisurely circling, now amongst the clouds, now 
 against the sun, 
 
 A careless span of pinions ; 
 
 You'll see, maybe, in short, such oaks and eagle- 
 flights 
 
 As never were, save in an idler's dream. 
 
 But then again : 
 
 An acorn's just an acorn, food for swine, and never 
 
 (The chances are so great, so very great against itj, 
 
 Never will become a tempest-breasting oak. 
 
 And then this eagle's egg, 
 It's blown and empty of its contents, 
 And just reposes on its cotton wool 
 In a collector's box. 
 i6o 
 
So with these sketches : 
 
 Maybe you'll let them trick you into dreaming 
 A hundred masterpieces: 
 Halls full of never-to-be-equalled brushwork: 
 Or let the music of a witching name beguile you 
 To the remembrance of a master's sonnets. 
 Or you may say, with just a tilting of the nose to- 
 wards heaven : 
 
 "The thing's amiss — it's worthless, 
 
 We've seen a daub as good 
 
 Hang flapping unobserved in such a High Street, 
 
 Decked with the faded, weather-beaten effigy 
 
 Of so-and-so of noble memory — 
 
 The thing's amiss, it's worthless." 
 
 And yet — it's just a question. 
 
 i6i 
 
AT THE BAL MASQUE 
 Columbine to Pierrot 
 
 [She hums her words.) 
 A H — Ah — Ah — if you ask for a love like that, 
 /\ Qu'est c'-Qu'est c'-Qu'est c'que tu fais dans 
 1 \. cette galore ? 
 Hark — Hark — Hark — Hear the twittering, rustling 
 
 feet: 
 Alors, qu'est ce-e, qu'est ce-e qu'on peut faire. 
 
 She speaks. 
 Tender and trusting and true 
 That they may be otherwhere : 
 Here one is just what one is — 
 And — as for pledges to you — 
 There — drink the scent of my hair : 
 There— snatch your moment of bliss. 
 
 She sings again. 
 Tender — Tender — Tender, trusting and true 
 That, That, That they may be, they may be other- 
 where : 
 Si tu veux autre chose, je n'ai rien de plus, 
 Qu'est c'-Qu'est c'-Qu'est c' que tu fais dans cette 
 galore ? 
 
 l62 
 
IN TENEBRIS 
 
 ALL within is warm, 
 /\ Here without it's very cold, 
 1 liNow the year is grown so old 
 And the dead leaves swarm. 
 
 In your heart is light, 
 Here without it 's very dark, 
 When shall I hear the lark? 
 When see aright ? 
 
 Oh, for a moment's space ! 
 Draw the clinging curtains wide 
 Whilst I wait and yearn outside 
 Let the light fall on my face. 
 
 L2 163 
 
SONG OF THE HEBREW SEER 
 
 OH would that the darkness would cover the 
 face of the land, 
 Oh would that a cloud would shroud the face 
 of high heaven, 
 Would blot out the stars, and hush, hush, hush the 
 
 winds of the west, 
 That the sons of men might sink into utter rest, 
 Forgetting the God in whose name their fathers had 
 
 striven 
 Might strive no longer and slumber as slumbers the 
 desert sand. 
 
 That then, oh, my God, should Thy lightnings flash 
 
 forth, 
 That Thy voice, oh, Jehovah, should burst on mine 
 
 ear 
 In the thunder that rolls from the east and the north 
 And thy laugh on the rushing of winds that bear 
 The myriad, myriad sounds of the sea. 
 
 I 
 
 164 
 
AN IMITATION 
 
 (to m. m.) 
 
 COME, my Sylvia, let us rove 
 To that secret silent grove, 
 Where the painted birds agree 
 To tune their throats for you and me. 
 
 We will foot it in the shade 
 Of ev'ry dappled, dancing glade, 
 Till Ob'ron and his fairy train 
 Shall shout for joy and swear amain : 
 Such form as thine was never seen 
 Sporting o'er the velvet green. 
 
 i6s 
 
SONNET J 
 
 (Suggested by the "Phcebus with Admetus" 9 
 
 BY George Meredith) 
 
 A FTER Apollo left Admetus' gate, 
 /\ Did his late fellows feel a numb despair, 
 1 LDid they cry " Comrade, comrade" everywhere 
 Thro' the abandoned byres, and curse the fate 
 That let them for awhile know him for mate 
 To mourn his going ? Did his vacant chair 
 Before the fire, when winter drove them there 
 Make the sad silence more disconsolate ? 
 
 Did yearning ears all vainly, vainly strain 
 
 To half recall the voice that now was mute ? 
 
 Did yearning eyes strive all in vain, in vain, 
 
 To half recall the glory of his face, 
 
 To half recall the God that for a space 
 
 Had quickened their dead world ? and, ah, his lute . . . 
 
 i66 
 
SONG DIALOGUE 
 
 "¥Sitso,mydear?" 
 
 I "Even so!" 
 
 1 " Too much woe to bear ? ' 
 " Too much woe ! " 
 " Wait a Httle while, 
 We must bear the whole, 
 Do not weep, but smile, 
 We are near the goal." 
 
 " Is it dark — the night ? " 
 "Very dark!" 
 " Not a spark of light ? " 
 "Not a spark!" 
 "Yet a little way 
 We must journey on ; 
 Night will turn to day 
 And the goal be won." 
 
 " Will the dawn come soon ? 
 "In an hour; 
 See ! the sinking moon 
 Loses power. 
 Saffron grey the west 
 Wakes before the sun. 
 Very soon we '11 rest 
 Now that day 's begun." 
 
 167 
 
VI 
 
 LITTLE PLAYS 
 
 The following pieces in dramatic form were pub- 
 lished, viz., "Perseverance d' Amour" and "The 
 Face of the Night," in the volume bearing the 
 latter name; the " Mother " appeared also in the 
 Fortnightly Review. "King Cophetua" and the 
 " Masque " were published in " Poems for Pictures." 
 I have grouped them here together for the conveni- 
 ence of the reader who does not like poems in dia- 
 logue. 
 
PERSEVERANCE D'AMOUR 
 
 A LITTLE PLAY 
 
 Time. — Thirteenth Century. 
 
 Place. — In and near the City of Paris. 
 
 Persons — 
 
 Anseau dit le Tourangeau, Jeweller to the 
 King. 
 
 Tiennette, Daughter of a bondman of the 
 Abbey of Saint Germain. 
 
 The Abbot of St Germain, Hugon de Sen- 
 necterre. 
 
 The King of France. 
 
 The Queen of France. 
 
 The King's Chamberlain. 
 
 A Fat Burgess of Paris. 
 
 A Thin One. 
 
 A Stranger. 
 
 Monks of the Abbey ; a Crowd, etc., etc., 
 
 SCENE I 
 
 Anseau dit le Tourangeau and Tiennette, 
 meeting on a road in the Clerk's Meadow. The road 
 has a grassy border, vines in the background and the 
 roofs of the Abbey of Saint Germain. It is a Sunday 
 at sunset, the A ngelus ringing. 
 
 Anseau, a man of middle age, large, squarely built, 
 richly dressed, black bearded, with a gold chain round 
 his neck. Hanging from it the badge of the '■'■Sub- 
 jects of the Ki7ig.'' Fie is a free man, and a burgess 
 of the City of Paris. 
 
 Tiennette, a young girl, fair; dressed in sack-cloth 
 with a rope girdle. She is leading a cow which 
 brmvses in the ditch. They stand while the Angelus 
 rings; then she passes Anseau without looking up; 
 Anseau turns and looks after her. 
 
 171 
 
Ans. A pretty pass, 
 
 That I, a ten years' master jeweller, 
 A burgess and a man of forty years 
 Spent soberly in service of my craft 
 Have not the courage for a mere " God-den " 
 To such a petticoat 
 
 [//<? calls: "Ho-la" and beckons to Tiennette. SJu 
 comes hack slowly, leading the cow after her. 
 
 Ans. Ah, sweetheart, is your state so poor a one 
 That, on a Sabbath, in despite of law 
 You come abroad to work. Have you no fear ? 
 
 Tien. My lord, I have no fear ; I am below 
 The notice of the laws and the Lord Abbot 
 Doth give us licence thus to graze our cow 
 After the hour of vespers. 
 
 A ns. Well, my dear, 
 
 You set the welfare of your soulless beast 
 Above the welfare of your little soul ? 
 
 Tien. Our little souls, my lord ? Our soulless beast 
 Is more than half our lives and more than all 
 The little souls that we have never seen. 
 
 Ans. Why, then, you're passing poor. And yet you 
 have 
 Your jewels and the gold you carry with you. 
 Your eyes and hair; I would I had such gold. 
 Where are your lovers ? You are near a city 
 Where what you have . . . 
 
 Tien. Nenny, my lord. I have . . . 
 
 [She holds out her left arm and shoivs him, on it, a 
 silver band such as is worn by grazing cattle, but 
 without the bell. Anseau raises his hands in 
 horror. 
 
 Ans. A chattel of the Abbey's . . . 
 
 Tien. Ah, my lord, 
 
 I'm daughter to the Abbey's serf Etienne. 
 172 
 
 
 / 
 
Who marries me becomes — it makes no boot 
 Though he be even burgess or more great — 
 Becomes a bonded serf with me and falls 
 Body and goods to the Abbey. If he love 
 Withouten wedlock, then the children fall 
 
 Again to the Abbey Were I ten times less 
 
 Ill-favoured than I am, the most in love 
 Would flee me like the plague. 
 
 A ns. And do you say 
 
 That not a one, for love of your blue eyes 
 And of your mouth and of your little hands, 
 Did ever try to buy your liberty, 
 As I bought mine o' the King ? 
 
 Tie7i. It costs too dear. 
 
 It costs too dear, my lord. All those I please 
 At meeting go away as they did come. 
 It costs too dear. 
 
 A ns. And have you never thought 
 Of seeking other lands on a good horse 
 Behind a rider 
 
 Tt'en. Oh, one thinks . . . one thinks . . . 
 But, sir, the Abbey's arms are very long. 
 They'd hang me if they caught me, and the man, 
 If he were noble, he must lose his lands ; 
 If simple, life and all. I am not worth 
 Such stakes. Besides, I live in fear of God 
 Who set me where I am. 
 
 \_S/ic begins to drag the cow further along the road. 
 Anseau stands silent. At last he says absent- 
 mindedly : 
 A ns. But then — your age ? 
 
 Tie7i. I do not know, my lord, but the Lord Abbot, 
 
 They say, doth keep account 
 
 Ans. And what's your name? 
 
 Tien. I have no name, my lord, my father was 
 Baptiz'd Etienne, and so my mother was 
 
 173 
 
"The woman called Etienne," and as for me 
 They call me Tiennette, but I've no name. 
 
 Ans. {in the same tone). Your cow, now, is a noble 
 beast. 
 
 Tien. My lord, 
 Her milk's the best of all the country side. 
 If you do thirst . . . 
 
 Ans. Why, no, I have no thirst 
 
 That that could satisfy. Now listen you 
 
 I am that Anseau called le Tourangeau, 
 
 My fame is what it is, my work no worse. 
 
 After my light I've lived and done my best. 
 
 And I am wealthy past the middle wealth. 
 
 I never followed women ; ev'ry night 
 
 Your gallants passed my windows they have seen 
 
 My steadfast lamp behind the iron grilles. 
 
 Have seen me bent above the shining gold 
 
 Or black against my forge. I once was poor, 
 
 Now I am wealthy past the middle wealth. 
 
 I am a man like other men, not worse 
 
 And little better, not I think unkind 
 
 Nor too much given to mirth. And so I've lived 
 
 Since I could wield a chisel of mine own. 
 
 But now — I cannot tell you when or how. 
 
 What set me thinking, how the thought increased — 
 
 I could not sleep at night, nor brace to work. 
 
 It may have been a month ; I do not know. 
 
 Till, of a sudden, as small bubbles run 
 
 To merge into one whole, the thought was there ; 
 
 I must be married. I must have some soul 
 
 To share my joys with and to share my griefs. 
 
 And bear me little children. . . . Ever since 
 
 That thought has been all me. I was to-day 
 
 Before the altar of Saint Eloy's church 
 
 (The seven small gold saints and the large cross 
 
 Set with carbuncles are my proper work). 
 
 And prayed that he would set within my path 
 
A woman fitted for my prime of life. 
 You see me : this is I. The air's so hot 
 Within the narrow streets I came out here 
 Where I have never walked this seven years. 
 The little birds were singing down the sun 
 The bell rang out and in the sacred minutes 
 I saw you stand against me ; was it not 
 An answer from the Saint ? 
 
 Tien. Alas, if but 
 
 The price were not so great. 
 Ans. I've little skill 
 
 In women, but there is a certain sound 
 Comes from true metal ; I've a skill in that, 
 And when I look at you and when you speak 
 I seem to hear that sound. 
 
 Tien. If but the price 
 
 Were not so great. I am not worth the tenth. 
 
 You do not know I've little skill in men. 
 
 You frighten me a little; what know I ? 
 
 If there is any truth for such as I 
 
 You seem to have that truth. If any goodness 
 
 Is in the world for me, it seems in you. 
 
 You should be strong and gentle, I am weak. 
 
 I do not know; I say I do not know. 
 
 Alas, alas . . . 
 
 {She begins to weep softly. Anseau crosses himself^ 
 joins his hands afid says : 
 
 Ans. I make a vow to my Lord Saint Eloy, under 
 whose invocation are all master jewellers, to invent 
 two shrines of gilded silver of the finest work it shall 
 be granted to me to achieve. I make a vow to fill them, 
 the one with a likeness of the Holy Virgin, to the end 
 that if I achieve the liberty of my wife, she be glori- 
 fied; the other for my patron Saint Eloy if only I 
 have success in this my emprise. And I swear by my 
 eternal salvation to persevere with courage in this 
 
 175 
 
affair, to spend in it all that I possess and to quit of 
 it only with my life. So God help me, Anseau dit le 
 Tourangeau. 
 
 [TiENNETTE has sunk upan her knees; Anseau 
 betids and raises her. The cow has moved slowly up 
 the side of the ditch and is browsing on the vines. 
 Tien. Alas, alas . . . 
 
 You do not know. You must take back your vow. 
 I could love you all my life. Alas, alas . . . 
 
 Ans. The vow is said; there is no taking back. 
 Tie7i. You do not know, alas, 3'ou do not know. . . . 
 
 {She runs to the cow as the scene closes. 
 
 END OF SCENE I 
 
 176 
 
SCENE II 
 [Paris. A place in frojit of the Church of St Luke. A 
 great crowd of burgesses, their wives, children, ped- 
 lars, friars and pages is round the house ^/Maitre 
 Anseau. 
 A Stranger; a Fat Burgess; his Wife; a Thin 
 
 Burgess; his Mother. 
 The Stranger, a man in parti-coloured hose, with 
 one long sleeve torn and hanging by a thread, a 
 peaked red beard, two peacock's feathers held by a 
 brooch to a hat that has a long flap in front. He 
 struggles out of the cro'wd and salutes the Fat Bur- 
 gess, who has his zvife ttpon his arm. 
 The Stranger. Sir, I beseech you, sir, I am but very 
 newly come to this town. Sir, I beseech you, tell me 
 how I may come to the house of one {lie reads from a 
 paper) Maitre Anseau, dit le Tourangeau. 
 
 The Fat Burgess. That, sir, is the house, of stone, 
 beside the Church. But if you would come to it you 
 must even fly like the birds of heaven. 
 
 The Cro7vd. Maitre Anseau . . . Maitre Anseau. 
 The Stranger. Sir, I am newly come to this town. 
 The Lord Percy is to wed, sir, and having a mind to 
 — the Lord Percy of Northumberland — present his 
 transcendent bride with a jewelled stomacher, and 
 hearing of the surpassing skill of this Maitre An- 
 seau, sent me, sir, his gentleman, sir. . . . 
 
 The Crowd. Maitre Anseau, Maitre An . . . seau ! 
 Cracked be all shaven skulls . . . we will tear down 
 the Abbey . . . we will . . . 
 
 The Stranger. And so, sir, if your master be so well 
 be-customed, it beseems me, sir, to think that my 
 worshipful Lord will scarce be suited, nor his tran- 
 scendent bride be stomachered, this many days. 
 
 'The Cro7vd. Hurrah, hurrah ! Be of good cheer. For 
 the glory of Paris be skulls cracked! 
 
 M 177 
 
The Strafiger. I have been torn as if by wild beasts. 
 Behold me . . . 
 
 The Fat Burgess. Sir, it would seem that you know 
 not the lamentable story. It is in this way, sir . . . 
 
 \_Hts voice is lost in the noise of the crowd. He can be 
 seen gesticulating. The Thin Burgess interrupts 
 
 him. They discuss i?i dumb show; the wives join the 
 
 discussion. Then a lull. 
 
 The Fat Burgess. And so, sir, the King's Cham- 
 berlain, owing to our Master great sums for a poun- 
 cet-box set in onion stones . . . 
 
 The Thin Burgess. Neighbour, you mislead. I have 
 it from Maitre Anseau himself. The pouncet-box 
 was paid for. It was out of the great love the Cham- 
 berlain bore our master. . . . 
 
 The FatBurgess.We\\,he it as you will, neighbour. 
 For love or debt the King's Chamberlain hies him 
 with Maitre Anseau to the Abbot. And the crafty 
 Abbot . . . 
 
 The Crowd. Pestilence carry off Abbot Hugon . , . 
 May the plague take him off ere he take one of our 
 free burgesses for a serf. 
 
 The Fat Burgess. This crafty Abbot will not abate 
 one jot; but sitteth as mum as a fox in a drain. The 
 Master offereth great fortunes for this wench. But 
 the Abbot will have him for a serf if he marry her, 
 thinking to gain for the Abbey the incomparable 
 skill of... 
 
 The Thin Burgess. Neighbour, you mistake. It is 
 a matter of principle. 
 
 [To the Stranger). Sir, the thing is thus. This 
 Abbot would enslave all us free burgesses and he 
 makes with our Master a beginning. He hath other 
 wenches for all us burgesses 
 
 The Wife of the Thin Burgess. Oh, the guile, the 
 
 guile 
 
 178 
 
The Fat Burgess. Principle or no principle, the 
 matter stands thus. Maitre Anseau going again to 
 the Clerk's Meadow finds there no Tiennette. For, 
 sir, our 'prentices having planned to carry her off in 
 their despite, these wicked priests did have her 
 clapped up close. Since which time our Master 
 hath been suffered to see her only through a little 
 grille 
 
 The Thin Burgess. See the craft of it. This is to 
 whet his appetite. 
 
 The Fat Burgess's Wife. Oh, sir, they say it be piti- 
 ful to see them there. They do buss the bars of each 
 side and the tears do run, do run like juice from a 
 roasting capon. A did use to be a lusty man, and now 
 A's grown so pale, so pale 
 
 The Fat Biirgcss. He eats not . . . 
 
 The Thin Burgess. Sleeps not. 
 
 The Fat Burgess. Does no work . . . 
 
 The Thin Burgess. Sighs and groans. 
 
 The Fat Btcrgess. Raves and swears . . . 
 
 The Thin Burgess. And the crux of the matter is: 
 to-day he shall make his final choice, whether to 
 have the Tiennette and a serf's life, or leave her 
 and take to . . . 
 
 A Loud Voice. The King has gone to the Abbey. . . . 
 
 The Cro7vd. Maitre Anseau. Mai . . .tre An . . . seau 
 
 The Thin Burgess. The King, sir, doth owe our 
 Master great sums and shall intercede for him 
 
 The Fat Burgess. I do wager ten yards of white 
 velvet to a bodkin he do leave her to go her way and 
 he his. 
 
 The Wife of the Thin Burgess. I do wager four- 
 score and two of my fatting capons he do have her. . . . 
 
 The Voice again. The King has gone to the Ab- 
 bey 
 
 The Crowd. Maitre Anseau . . . Maitre Anseau 
 
 The Fat Burgess. Be it a wager . . . 
 
 M2 179 
 
The Wife of the Thin Burgess. Be it a wager and 
 shake hands upon it 
 
 \A great uproar behind ; the croivd sivays back'wards and 
 forivardsy then opens. Maitre Anseau is seeji to he 
 
 mounting a white jennet from the steps of his house. 
 
 The Crmvd. To the Abbey, to the Abbey . . . [They 
 run off.) 
 
 The Stranger. I shall be killed ; I shall be killed 
 
 My hat is gone. 
 
 END OF SCENE II 
 
 1 80 
 
SCENE III 
 
 [^The Great Hall in the Abbey of Saint Germain. To 
 L. very large doors, opened and shorving through 
 their arches an apple close, red apples lying in heaps 
 on the turf be low whitcfied tree trunks. Facing the 
 doors the Abbot's chair. S^vallo'vs fly in and out 
 among the gilded beams of the tall roof. 
 
 77z^ Abbot Hugon, Monks, Cross-bearer. Behind — 
 The Crowd, Soldiers of the Abbey, King's Sol- 
 diers ; Afterzvards — Bondsmen of the Abbey. - 
 
 The Abbot Hugon, a very old man. His shaven face, 
 very brown, small and. dried, hangs forward on his 
 breast, a richly-fcwelled 7nitre pressing it dow?i. He 
 is seated in his chair facing the open doors. The 
 Monks are round his chair which stands high on 
 stone steps. 
 
 The Crowd is being pressed in place at the back of the 
 Hall by the Soldiers of the Abbey, who set their 
 halbcrii staves across the faces. The King's Soldiers 
 look on laughing. A great uproar. A flourish of 
 trumpets sounds wi that it; the Abbot is assisted to 
 his feet and gives the benediction towards the doors. 
 
 Enter the Kjng of France. He rides a black stallion 
 in.to the hall; the Queen in a zvhite litter borne by 
 tzvo white mules. The curtains of the litter and the 
 clothes of the mules are sewn with golden fleur-de-lis, 
 the mules are shod with gold. A train of lords and 
 ladies follow them. The King's Chamberlain 
 comes to stand by the head of the Kings horse. 
 The Crowd. The King- . . . the King. Do you see the 
 
 King ? . . . Now the Queen. Ah . . . h . . . h . . . 
 
 \^The King salutes the Abbot 7vho blesses him again. 
 Their lips can be seen to move, but what they say is 
 
 lost iyi the exclamations of the Crowd The KiNG 
 
 bends to speak to his Chamberlain, who exit. The 
 Queen puts her head out of the litter. 
 
 i8i 
 
The Crowd. The Queen . . . Do you see the Queen ? 
 . . . Ah . . . h . . . h . . . 
 
 [The Chamberlain returns with Anseau dit le 
 TouRANGEAU, ivho knccls 111 the space between the 
 King and the Abbot. 
 
 The Crowd [a great cry). Ha, Maitre Anseau, 
 Maitre Anseau. A free man. No serf. . . no serf. . . . 
 
 [// grows silent. The voice of the King is heard as if 
 continuing a speech. 
 
 The King. Be of good courage, man. 
 
 My lord the Abbot will have need of us 
 Upon a day. 
 
 The Crowd. Huzza . . . hear the King . . . the King. . . . 
 
 The King. For in the end, we are the King of 
 France. 
 If what men say be true we are more poor 
 Than you are. Therefore courage, man, look up. 
 Set a high price and with a smiling face 
 Cast down that price. Lord Abbot name it him, 
 He's stores of gold, they say. Now, Master, rise. 
 Stand up, man, and unpouch. Lord Abbot, name 
 The lowest ransom. 
 
 The Abbot. Sire, the price is fixt. 
 
 The Crowd. Strangle that Abbot. Cast him down 
 to us. 
 
 The Abbot. The price is fixt. There is one only price. 
 I am the servant of the Abbey's fame. 
 Glory, renown and ancient heritages. 
 Our statutes fix the price, I can no more. 
 We live in troublous times ; the breakers roar 
 Against the ship o' the Church ; the times are evil; 
 And I a feeble, poor old man who stand 
 By the grace of God at the helm. What would you 
 
 have? 
 To bate one jot of our enforced rights 
 182 
 
Were to cast down into that raging sea 
 One of the sails we trust to for our voyage 
 And final harbouring. The price is fixt. 
 
 The Crowd. Let us unfix it. Cast him down to us. 
 
 The King. You hear him, Master ? 
 
 Ans. Oh, I hear him, sire. 
 
 The King {to his Chamberlain). You should be 
 famous to defeat the laws, 
 To find out quibbles; cheat the statutes' due. 
 What say you ? 
 
 The Chamberlain. Sire, I can but what I can. 
 The Abbot is too strong ; 'tis manifest 
 That he who's certain of the whole would be 
 111 skilled at bargaining to take a part. 
 The Abbot's case is that. And for the rest : 
 I've argued with our Master ; I have said : 
 " Good Master, think, the world is very large, 
 And full t'o'erflowing of dames passing fair." 
 I've told him that the tenth part of his goods 
 Would purchase him the name of nobleman, 
 Another tenth a lady to his bed, 
 The noblest and the fairest in the land. 
 What would you have ? The man is made of iron 
 And will not bend ; the Abbot will not break, 
 And I have wasted breath. 
 
 The King. Good madam Queen, 
 
 Entreat my lord the Abbot for these lovers. 
 
 The Queen. My lord, I've done a many things for 
 you, 
 Have broidered copes, have made my ladies sew. 
 Your altar cloths with pearls. Beseech you now 
 Have pity on these lovers. 
 
 The A bbot. Oh, fair Queen, 
 
 In that I am a man I pity them. 
 In that I am God's servant I must shut 
 My eyes, my ears, my heart. Since there have been 
 An abbey in this place, and monks and bondsmen — 
 
 •83 
 
As who should say : Through all the mists of 
 
 time. 
 It hath not been decreed that there should fall 
 A burgess of the city to the Abbey. 
 If now this precedent should be despised 
 There would not . . . 
 
 The Queen. Oh, a truce to precedent. 
 
 What is this wench ? A girl who leads a cow; 
 In' sackcloth. Doth the honour of the Abbey 
 Depend on girls in sackcloth ? 
 
 The Abbot. Oh, fair Queen, 
 
 The precedent ... "' 
 
 The Queen. Depends on girls in sackcloth ! 
 Good, my lord Abbot, I had thought you wise, 
 Old learned Churchmen had had better wits. 
 What you ? a man of three-and-ninety years 
 Who by the very nature of your vows 
 Are closured out from love ... to say a wench 
 That leads a cow is necessary to 
 The honour of your Abbey 
 
 The Abbot. Lady Queen, 
 I am an old man ; doting I do say : 
 This wench that leads a cow is necessary 
 To the honour of our Abbey 
 
 The King. Gentle wife. 
 
 You have the Abbot on the hip, but sweet, 
 A-meanwhiles our good Master kneels on thorns. 
 Lord Abbot, make an end; produce this wench. 
 This Helen that doth rive our world in twain. 
 And let our Master make his utter choice. 
 
 \At a sign from Abbot Hugon, four-and-twenty 
 acolytes issue out from behind the chair. They strew 
 white rose petals upon the steps U7itil it is like a hill 
 of snozv. Enter TiE^^ETTE. 
 
 The Crowd. Ah . . . h . . . h . . . 
 184 
 
[1 >^IETTE IS dressed like a maiden-queen in white, 
 
 "i^ot a white coif sewn 7vith gold, zvith a girdle of 
 
 Silver filigree, with white gloves embroidered with 
 
 pearls. The ABBOT HuGON beckons to her to mount 
 
 the steps to hifn. She does so. 
 
 The King [to Maitre Anseau). Nay, man, hadst 
 well be wealthier than we 
 To set a price on her that led your cow. 
 
 [TotheAbboti] If you will do us favour in this thing. 
 We shall requite you. We are France and Paris 
 
 The Crozvd. Paris and France ! . . . 
 
 The King. And France and Paris have been 
 touched home 
 By fortunes of these lovers Hear us roar ! . . . 
 
 The Cro7vd. Paris and France ! 
 
 The Abbot. Ah, sire, what would you do ? 
 You touch yourself by melling in this thing. 
 If we should blench to this unquiet mob 
 They would gain strength from broken precedent 
 Which is a dyke against this hungry sea 
 Wherein a breach being made, the sea sweeps in 
 And overwhelms us . . . overwhelms all France, 
 The Abbey and the Court 
 
 TheCrozud. Paris and France. 
 
 The King [to them). Nenny, ye lend the Abbot 
 similes 
 That are not pleasant savoured. Master speak 
 
 [Maitre Anseau has risen to his feet and advances 
 towards the Abbot holding out his arms. 
 
 The Quec7i [to her ladies). She's fair; why, yes, 
 I think she's fair to see. 
 She halts a little. But she's fair, she's fair. 
 
 Ans. Oh, Father Abbot, oh, you man of God, 
 If you have any pity in your heart, 
 If you have any hope of rest to come, 
 
 185 
 
1/ 
 
 Bethink you, oh, bethink you. It grows late, 
 
 You stand upon the very verge of the shade 
 
 Death casts upon us. I do know the law 
 
 And I have made a vow. But, man of God, 
 
 The thing is in your hands. For me remains 
 
 No choice. The verdict lies with you. For me . . . 
 
 I have been poor, and I have been a bondsman, 
 
 And I am patient, oh ! and I can bear. 
 
 But oh, you man of God, take heed, take heed. 
 
 If you have ever seen a little child, 
 
 And if your frozen eyes have thawed to see 
 
 The sunlight on the little children's faces, 
 
 Bethink you of the curse you cast upon 
 
 The children that that maid shall bear to me. 
 
 I have no choice, I have made the vow to God 
 
 And I fulfil it. But the little children . . . 
 
 Have you the heart to let them live that life, 
 
 Un-named, unknown, to live and die as beasts 
 
 That perish ; all those tender little things 
 
 That God doth mean should burgeon in the light 
 
 And with their little laughter sing his praise. 
 
 Tlie Abbot. I am a very ancient man, and stand 
 Within the shadow, and I stand and say : 
 The price is fixt. 
 
 Ans, Accursed rat o' the Church, 
 
 The price is fixt ... is fixt. Oh, horrible. 
 Insensate thirst for gold. Then, oh, thou man. 
 Thou spider gorging on the brink of hell. 
 Suck up my gold, my life. But oh, I keep 
 The better part of me, you cannot touch 
 The subtle engine God hath pleased to fix 
 Within my brain, you cannot use the skill 
 That made me what I am. And that I swear 
 Not torture, not the rack, not death itself 
 Shall set in motion. All your Abbey's rents 
 For twice a hundred years could never pay 
 What it shall lose thereby. 1 am more stronqf 
 i86 ^ 
 
Than iron's hard, and the more long-sufFering 
 Than grief is great. For you I might have been 
 A fashioner of things divine ; for you 
 I shall be but a pack-horse. 
 
 [TiENNETTE, who had covered her face with her arms^ 
 
 stretches out her arms to Anseau. 
 
 Tten, Oh, my love, 
 
 My lord, my more than life, thou noble man. 
 Forsake me, oh, forsake me, I did say 
 " You did not know," and, oh you did not know. 
 When you did make your vow. Forsake me, then, 
 And go your ways 
 
 A ns. I cannot go my way ; 
 
 I have no way but only this with you. 
 
 Tien. There is a way that God hath shown to me — 
 These last few weeks they have been schooling me 
 Within their cloisters — and there is a way, 
 By which, if you do love me more than all, 
 You shall enjoy me and go free in the end. 
 For this the law is — they have told me so — 
 If I should die before a child is born, 
 You should go free though losing house and store, 
 The occasion of your serfdom being dead. 
 And oh, my lord and life, 
 You shall. But for my sin of laying hands 
 Upon myself, full surely the Lord God 
 Shall pardon me, full surely the Lord God 
 Shall pardon who doth know and weigh all hearts. 
 
 \^The Abbot lays his hand upon her arm. 
 The Crowd. You shall not hurt her ; we will have 
 you down. 
 Old Spider . . . Rat o' the Church. 
 
 The King. Ah, make an end, 
 
 Lord Abbot, for our dames have eyes all wet. 
 The Abbot. The price is fixt. 
 
 187 
 
Ans. And I must pay the price. 
 
 The Crowd. You shall not;„no, you shall not. We 
 are the free burgesses of Paris. 
 
 l^FJie Abbot Hugon beckons Maitre Anseau io come 
 up to him. He slowly ascends the steps. The thurifers 
 draw round and a cloud of incense goes tip. The 
 Monks chaftt a?id the KiNG removes his beaver. The 
 Queen and her ladies cross themselves. 
 
 A great uproar in the hall; the Soldiers of the Abbey 
 are throzvn doivji and the Crowd breaks through ; the 
 King's Soldiers force it back. The sound of bells 
 co/ues in frojn without. Enter the Bondsmen of the 
 Abbey bearing a canopy. The Abbot is seen blessing 
 Anseau and Tiennette. Afterwards they go do7vn 
 the steps together. A j\Ionk becko7is the?n to stand 
 beneath the canopy, which has gold staves with little 
 silver bells. During this wedding there has been a 
 constant clamour. Now it falls silent. 
 The Abbot. Anseau, thou serf and bondsman of our 
 Abbey, 
 
 Acknowledge that thy goods and life are ours. 
 A ns. I do acknowledge it. 
 The Abbot {to the Bondsmen). Bare ye his arm. 
 
 Up to the elbow. Armourer, set thou on 
 
 This bondsman's wrist the shackle of his state. 
 
 [ The Armourer rivets a silver collar upon the arm of 
 Anseau. Whilst he is doing it the Abbot descends 
 the steps and comes to them. 
 The Abbot. My hands are very feeble, I am old. 
 {To Tiennette.) Give me some help, thou wife of 
 the new bondsman. 
 
 [77?^ Abbot Hugon undoes the collar from the arm 
 of Anseau. 
 i88 
 
The Crmvd. Ah . . . h . . . h . . . What is this ? What is 
 
 this? 
 The Abbot {to Maftrc Anscnri). Thou art a master 
 
 jeweller. Hast skill 
 To break the collar from thy new wife's arm 
 And not to hurt her ? 
 
 [Anseau stands as if amazed. The ABBOT frees 
 
 TiENNETTE. 
 
 To, thou burgess's wife, 
 How is it, to be free ? 
 
 The Crmvd. What ? . . . what . . . What is this ? . . . Are 
 they free ? 
 
 \As the curtain falls Anseau «w^Tiennette stand 
 as if amazed. The monks raise their hands in horror. 
 
 END OF scene III 
 
 189 
 
THE AFTER SCENE 
 
 [The Chamber of the Abbot. A bare, small, white- 
 washed room. On the floor, in a broad ray of stmlight 
 that falls from the barred 7vindows, stand tzvo great 
 gilt shrijies. The door of the one is closed; through 
 the half-opened doors of the other one sees a7i image 
 of the Virgin in the likeness of Tiennette having 
 a little child upon her arm and a cow kneeling at her 
 feet. 
 
 77/c Abbot; Two Religious. 
 The Abbot lies with his eyes closed upon a narrcnv 
 pallet, a black rosary falling from his clasped hands. 
 The Two Religious stand motionless , their heads 
 covered by their cowls, at his feet. 
 A long silence in which is heard the cooiiig of ablue 
 pigeon on the windoiv-sill. The Abbot opens his eyes. 
 
 The Abbot. So ye are there ; I sent for you. The end 
 Is very near me now. 
 \He makes a weak gesture with one hand as if pointing 
 
 to the shrines. 
 
 You see those things ? 
 What say you, brothers, did I dote ? I know, 
 I say I know, have known this many months 
 What you have whispered in the refectory. 
 "The Abbot dotes," you said, "The Abbot dotes" . . . 
 You said I doted ; that my heart was touched 
 By whimperings of lovers. One of you 
 Shall step into my shoes a short day hence. 
 Oh, let your dotage work as well as mine 
 For honour of the Abbey; do but once 
 One-half of what I did in this one thing! 
 You said I doted, that my heart was touched. 
 Nenny, I have a heart, but I am old 
 And very cunning. I have seen more things 
 Than most. And I do know my world, I say. 
 190 
 
You would have kept him, you. My heart was 
 
 touched, 
 In happy hour, I say, my heart was touched, 
 Mine that has nursed the Abbey's honour here 
 As mothers nurse their babes. You would have held 
 The letter of the law and raised a storm. 
 
 That had cast down our house The burgesses 
 
 Do love us now; this twelvemonth they have brought 
 
 More offerings than in a lustre past. 
 
 You would have kept the law and raised a storm 
 
 That must have shorn us of one-half the rights 
 
 We have upon the city. I did know 
 
 That, in the acclamations of my mercy 
 
 The collar I have set upon their necks 
 
 Would gall no withers, yet the precedent 
 
 Be riveted. And there is more than this 
 
 I gained whose heart was touched by lovers' tears. 
 
 It brought us these two shrines. I tell you, men, 
 
 I prophesy who lie at the point of death, 
 
 That when all precedents are swept away, 
 
 And you and I and all of us become 
 
 A little dust that would not fill a cup, 
 
 These shrines shall be the glory of the Abbey, 
 
 Its chiefest profit and most high renown. 
 
 For men shall marvel at the handiwork. 
 
 And women tell the story at their work. 
 
 And crossed lovers come from all the lands 
 
 To make their offerings and shed salt tears 
 
 Unto the saints that let their hearts be moved 
 
 By these two lovers of the time before. 
 
 I prophesy, 
 Upon the point of death, I know my world, 
 I have been in it for a mort of years. . . . 
 And one of you shall step into my shoes. 
 You stand there thinking it; I know my world. 
 [He closes Ins eyes, then opens them and looks at the 
 image of the Virgin. 
 
 191 
 
Oh, blessed child upon thy mother's arm, 
 
 Remember when our Brotherhood is tried 
 
 [To the Reltgtotis.) Go, get ye to your whisperings 
 
 again 
 And say I doted 
 
 Brothers, go with God. 
 Send me a little wine and let me sleep. 
 
 [He closes his eyes again. Exeunt the Religious. The 
 blue figco^i flies from the window-sill. Its -mngs 
 clatter in the stillness. 
 
 192 
 
KING COPHETUA'S WOOING 
 
 A SONG DRA^IA IN ONE ACT 
 
 Dramatis PersoncB 
 
 COPHETUA, King. 
 Christeste, a Beggar Maid. 
 
 {Scene discovers Cophetua, dressed as a beggar ^ seated 
 beneath a thorn on a hillside. In the distance^ a road 
 running daivn to the sea; at its verge a small chapel. 
 A n early morning in May.) 
 
 Cophetua. 
 
 COULD I but keep my beggar's staff, 
 And change my cares for my beggar's laugh, 
 And keep my gown with its sleeve and a half, 
 And just lay down my orb and crown, 
 I think my heart would weigh more light, 
 And I should sleep more sound at night. 
 But the day's come round, and sweet Christine 
 Must doff her robe of faded green 
 And know herself for a burdened Queen. 
 
 {To him enters the Beggar Maid.) 
 
 Beggar Maid. 
 
 Here am I in my bridal attire ; 
 
 I sat all night by the fire 
 
 And stitched in the sheltered byre. 
 
 And the sun is so bright 
 
 And my heart is so light 
 
 It hasn't a care, and it's all your own. 
 
 It's yours, just yours, and yours alone. 
 
 N 193 
 
COPHETUA. 
 
 Last night I dreamt a weary thing, 
 That you were you and I the King, 
 With a heart so sad I could not sing, 
 And I came pricking along the way 
 And you sat here beneath the may. 
 
 Christine. 
 
 Lay off your dreams, the church bell rings, 
 And were you ten times king of kings, 
 And ten times Kaiser, you could be 
 No more a king than you're king of me. 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 If I were King and made you Queen ? 
 
 Christine. 
 
 And were I that, would the green-wood sheen 
 Be a whit less glad or the gay green sward 
 Less dear were you King and Over-lord ? 
 Would you love me less ? I trow not so. 
 
 I saw the King a while ago 
 Go pricking by with his haughty crew 
 While I sat here in the morning dew 
 Before I ever thought of you. 
 
 He cast me this rose noble. See ! 
 
 And I thought, " This shall be my wedding fee 
 
 To the man I love and the man I wed." 
 
 (I've thought when I looked at the good King's head 
 That the noble bears, that he favours you 
 In the nose and the mouth and the forehead too.) 
 194 
 
COPHETUA. 
 
 But if I made you Queen . . . 
 
 Christine. 
 
 What yet 
 I' the track o' dreams, see ! I will set 
 My hawthorn crown upon your brow; 
 The dew hangs on it even now. 
 And where is there a fairer gem 
 Set in a fair queen's diadem 
 Than this one lustrous drop ? 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 Christine, 
 What if I made you such a Queen ? 
 There is a cloud doth dimn my mind 
 But if . . . . 
 
 Christine. 
 
 Oh, love . . . 
 
 The bell sounds down the wind, 
 The priest will soon pass dow^n the hill, 
 And we're to wed, and you are dreaming still. 
 
 CoPHETUA {speaking after a long pause). 
 
 I love your face, I love your hands, your eyes 
 Are pools of rest for mine. I love your feet, 
 Your little shoes, the patches in your gown . . . 
 
 Christine. 
 I know your tongue now . . . 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 If I make you Queen . . . 
 
 N2 195 
 
Christine. 
 
 I would all " ifs " were sunk beneath the sea — 
 There is a proverb ties them to us beggars — 
 And make, why make, not made ? 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 It was a thought, 
 A passing cloud — the shadow of a dream. 
 
 Christine. 
 Ah, love, no more of dreams, they frighten me. 
 The sun is up, look at the streak of sea 
 Between the hills. And love— no more of dreams, 
 The larks thrill all above the dovv^ns with songs 
 To shatter dreams. And there's a song about it : 
 
 " If you and I were King and Queen," 
 
 I'll sing it if you'll join me in the lilt ; 
 
 I'd rather sing than dream the time away. 
 
 If you and I were King and Queen 
 
 {a silence) 
 Now join me if you love me, dream if not. 
 
 {she sings again) 
 
 She. If you and I were King and Queen — 
 
 He. Sweet Christine — 
 
 She. Would you come courting me ? 
 
 He. You should see. 
 
 She. Would a crown spoil my face, 
 Or a throne mar my grace ? 
 Would you keep me the same high place in your 
 
 heart ? 
 196 
 
Must we still part to meet, should we still meet to 
 
 part, 
 If we were King and Queen ? 
 
 Together. Ah then ! ah then ! 
 How should we fare with our cates rich and rare, 
 We beggars, we lovers of roadsides, we rovers 
 Of woodlands and townlands and dalelands and 
 
 downlands ? 
 We lovers . . . 
 
 (COPHETUA is silent and the song ceases.) 
 
 Christine. 
 I think you do not love me any more, 
 Now you forget my songs. 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 I cannot think of songs, nor hear the lark. 
 Nor feel the glad spring weather. In my ears 
 Is nothing but the tramping of the hoofs, 
 And in my eyes the flash of swords and silks 
 Of a proud cavalcade that comes anow 
 To bear us hence. 
 
 Christine. 
 Oh, God, your mind is sprung. 
 Your thoughts, gone wand'ring into other fields. 
 Have left poor me in mine. 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 Not so, not so; 
 My mind's come back from long sweet sojournings 
 In a free land of hill and down and sea, 
 To a sad world of walled towns and courts 
 And carks and cares. 
 
 Christine. 
 No, no, the sun's there yet. 
 
 197 
 
COPHETUA. 
 
 He shines no more on me — no more on me, 
 I am a King again — a King — and you 
 Must either leave the life you love, to lead 
 With me the life I loathe, or let me live 
 Alone, unaided, all alone and sad, 
 The life that leads a King. 
 
 Christine. 
 
 There is a weary horror in your eyes, 
 
 And I must needs believe you. I'm a beggar. 
 
 So were my sire before me and his sires. 
 
 For generations and for ages past 
 
 We've lived free lives and breathed the good free air 
 
 You came among us in a free man's guise 
 
 And wooed me — wooed me — and I gave my heart 
 
 To you a freeman. 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 Oh — a weary King . . . 
 
 For a short breathing space I doffed my crown, 
 
 Laid down my cares and walked without a load. 
 
 The task remains myself did set myself 
 
 Duly to reign, to shape a people's ends. 
 
 As I deem just. Here have I neither end 
 
 Of travel, nor an aim for life to hit, 
 
 Or miss i' the shooting. 
 
 Christine. 
 Could we not live free? 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 Not free, not free, my task would call me back. 
 It calls me now. It calls me, calls me now. 
 198 
 
Christine. 
 Is this all true, no summer morning's dream ? 
 Oh, here is then that parting of the ways 
 I dreamt of yesternight. 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 There lie the roads. 
 Here travel I. 
 
 Christine. 
 
 And I must choose, must choose 
 Between my love and life, the old free life. 
 
 Then choose I this, in good or evil weather. 
 Up hill or down, on moorland and in fen, 
 On white sea sand or 'mid the purple heather, 
 To travel on with you, and where or when 
 The mists o'erwhelm us, meet them, and together 
 Uphold with you the burden and the pain. 
 
 Oh, all the love I bore you and still bear you 
 Make light our feet, and temper time and tide, 
 And each day's setting out shall find me near you. 
 And each day's close shall find me at your side. 
 {A long pause. At last) 
 
 Christine. 
 And it was you rode by upon the horse ? 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 And you it was sat there upon a stone — 
 
 But hark, ah hark, there wind the distant horns. 
 
 They come, they come, the old free life is passing. 
 
 Christine. 
 Oh, hide me from their eyes, such cruel eyes 
 They had that rode with you that day of days. 
 
 199 
 
COPHETUA. 
 
 Those are the eyes must look upon us now 
 For ever and for ever till the end. 
 
 Christine. 
 The horns, the horns, the old free life is passing. 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 Oh, yonder, there's the glimpse of sun on steel, 
 And there's my oriflamme. And there. 
 Beyond the chapel, is another band 
 Comes trooping from the ships. 
 
 Christine. 
 They come, they come. 
 The old free life is passing. 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 It is past, 
 
 The bell has ceased to toll. 
 
 Christine. 
 
 Oh, let us wait, 
 
 I could not bear their eyes. Oh, clasp me round. 
 
 And let me die to-day. 
 
 COPHETUA. 
 
 You must be bold, 
 
 And there, before the altar, shame them all. 
 
 Christine. 
 Ah, there, before the altar, I'll be proud, 
 And show them all a brow serene and clear 
 For love of you. But now I'm what I am, 
 And needs must tremble for the time to come. 
 
 200 
 
 i 
 
COPHETUA. 
 The horns have played their last and we must go. 
 
 Christine. 
 You know the old lament they sing at sea 
 When the last rope's cast off. My dear dead father 
 Would have us sing it just before he died. 
 We'll never sing again, for brooding hearts 
 Cry, " Silent, voices, hush," and now we sail, 
 And sing to drown our thoughts and singing, die. 
 So now set sail, set sail. Loose the last rope 
 That binds us to the past. 
 
 [As they go, she sings *' The Far aoell of those that go 
 away in ships.") 
 
 (Christine ^/w^^) 
 Fare thee well, land o' home 
 (Oh, the sea, the sea's a foam) 
 Fare thee well, land o' home, 
 
 Blue and low. 
 Fare thee well, house o' home, where the mellow 
 
 wall-fruits grow. 
 Old fields, fields o' home, where the yellow paigles 
 
 glow. 
 Fare thee well, land o' home, 
 Blue and low. 
 
 Fare thee well, pleasant land 
 (Ah the foam beats on the strand) 
 Fare thee well, my forbear's land 
 
 Blue and low. 
 Fare thee well, mother mine, with the pure pale brow, 
 Fare ye well, quiet graves, fare ye well who rest below. 
 Fare thee well, land o' home, 
 Over miles and miles of foam, 
 Fare thee well, land o' home, 
 
 Blue and low. 
 
 201 
 
"THE MOTHER" 
 
 A SONG DRAMA 
 
 Characters 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 The Mother. 
 
 The Little Blades of Grass. 
 The Little Grains of Sand and of Dust. 
 
 Scene. — Just outside a great city. Battalions of 
 staring, dun-coloured, brick houses, newly finished, 
 •with vacant windoivs, bluish slate roofs and yellow 
 chimney pots, march on the fields which are blackened 
 and shrouded with fog. Innumerable li?ies of railway 
 disappear a^nong them, gleaming in parallel curves. 
 Fog signals sound and three trains pass on different 
 levels; the lights in their windows an orange blur. A 
 continuous hooting of railway engines. The Spirit 
 of the Age, leaning on the brick parapet of the 
 upper embankme7it, speaks towards The Mother, who 
 ts unseen in the fog above the fields. 
 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 
 IT'S I have conquered you. 
 It is over and done with your green and over and 
 done with your blue. 
 Conquered you. Where is your sky ? 
 Where is the green that your gown had of late ? 
 The Mother. 
 Wait. 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 I have trampled you down, you must die. 
 It is only begun 
 Yet it's over and done 
 With the green of your grass and the blue of your sky. 
 Even your great constellations 
 Blaze vainly, are hid by the dun 
 Of the smoke of my fires 
 
 202 
 
The Mother. 
 I wait ; I have patience. 
 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 The smoke of my iires, 
 The dun of the lives and desires 
 Of the minions and milHons who live 
 
 And who strive. 
 Only to trample you down, blot you out, foul your 
 face and forget. 
 
 The Mother. 
 Ah, and yet. 
 \The fog to the north lifts a little and discloses clouds 
 of smoke like a pall above a forest of chimney stacks ; 
 a square Board School playground inhere childreii 
 are running through puddles on the wet asphalt. 
 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 And behold, they are toiling and moiling 
 And soiling 
 Your winds and your rains ; yea, and hark to the 
 noise 
 
 Of the girls and the boys 
 Of untold generations. 
 
 The Mother. 
 I wait. I have patience. 
 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 They play in the waters 
 I grant them, the daughters 
 Of fog-dripped smut-showers. 
 Would they thank you for flowers 
 Or know how to play by your Ocean's blown billows ? 
 Who never met you, 
 Whose sires forget you. 
 These nations and nations 
 Who never saw sea nor the riverside willows. 
 
 203 
 
The Mother. 
 I wait ; I have patience. 
 
 The Sfirit of the Age. 
 
 Old Silence, wait; old Sleeper, use your patience. 
 You are dead and forgotten 
 As a corpse that was rotten 
 A twelvemonth and more; 
 As dead as the Empires of yore, 
 As dead and forgotten. 
 
 The Little Blades of Grass [whtsperitig). 
 Listen, listen. 
 
 The Little Grains of Sand [whispering). 
 Ah, we hear ; you'll see us glisten 
 When the Wind shall set us whirling. 
 
 The spirit of the Age. 
 I am here and I shall stay 
 To the utter, utter day; 
 Tell me, you who've lived for ever. 
 Saw you ever such a fever, 
 Such a madness of gold-getting, 
 vSuch forgetting 
 
 Of the Thing that you called Truth — 
 Such contempt, such lack of ruth, 
 For your leisure and your dalliance, 
 As since Time and I joined alliance ? 
 I shall rule and falter never, 
 You are dead and gone for ever. 
 
 [He pauses. The Mother says nothing.) 
 The Little Blades of Grass ^(whispering). 
 Are you there, O all ye others ? 
 204 
 
The Little Grains of Sand. 
 We are here, O little brothers. 
 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 
 Old Silence, speak! 
 
 I had not thought to find you half so weak 
 
 In argument. Acknowledge I am he 
 
 That ever more shall be. 
 
 Be just ; confess that I have won 
 
 And that your race is run. 
 
 {She still keeps silence. He goes on, excitedly. 
 D'you think that I am frightened by your fools 
 Who with their rules 
 And rusty saws from musty stools 
 In dusty schools, 
 
 Squeak. " In the very nature of the case, 
 Unless the sequence of the immobile earth 
 Shall change, the sun and tides stand still and all 
 The vast phenomena of peoples, kings. 
 And mighty Empires be for you reversed. 
 That day must come when your world-sway de- 
 clines"? 
 
 The Little Blades of Grass. 
 
 Hearken, hearken : 
 Brothers, are ye there ? 
 
 The Little Grains of Sand. 
 Brothers, when that wind blows we shall darken 
 All the air. 
 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 I heard another fool with : " Time shall come 
 When the tired human brain, 
 That now already reels, 
 
 205 
 
Shall utterly refuse to face again 
 
 The turmoil and the hum 
 
 Of all these wheels and wheels and wheels and wheels 
 
 and wheels, 
 This clattering of feet 
 And hurrying no-whither ; deem it sweet 
 To lie among the grasses, 
 Where no more shadow is than of the cloud that 
 
 passes 
 Beneath the sun." Another squeaked of strife; 
 Of cataclysms, plagues; and slackening grip on life, 
 And pictured for us street on street on street 
 Re-echoing to the feet 
 Of one sole, panic-stricken passenger; 
 Pictured my houses roofless to the air. 
 The windows glassless, doors with ruined locks, 
 The owlet and the fox 
 Sole harbourers there ; 
 
 The only sounds hawks' screaming, plover's shriek 
 Above the misted swamps ; the rivers burst 
 Their banks and sweep, athirst, 
 
 My rotting city Horrid ! . . . Mother, speak; 
 
 Speak, mother, speak, who are so old and wise. 
 
 The Little Blades of Grass [tt tiering). 
 Ho, ho! ho, ho! 
 The braggart groweth tremulous. 
 
 The Little Grains of Sand and of Dust. 
 Hallo! hallo— o—o! 
 He is afraid of us. 
 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 D'you think that I am frighted by these lies ? 
 Old Dotard, I . . . 
 I rule ; am come to stay 
 For ever and a day. 
 Behold, 
 
 Where all my million lieges toil for grime and gold. 
 206 
 
[The fog lifts suddenly. Against a shaft of pale, golden 
 sky, one sees the immense City like a -watery-edged 
 silhouette. A great central dome, the outlines wet and 
 gilded by the rays of light; warehouses like black iron 
 cliffs, square along a river; black barges, with pale 
 lights at the bo7vs, creeping down the glassy yelloio 
 water; forests of chimney stacks and of masts of 
 shipping. 
 
 Answer, old witch ; old silent envier of my joy, 
 
 I challenge you, old Hecate, 
 
 The Mother [very softly). 
 
 Where is Troy? 
 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 What's Troy compared to me ? 
 
 The Mother. 
 Where Carthage, Nineve, 
 
 Where Greece, where Egypt, where are all that host 
 Whose very names are lost ? 
 
 The Little Blades of Grass {zuhispering). 
 When we crave them, 
 Then we have them. 
 
 The L ittle Grains of Sand and of Dust. 
 When the winds blow we o'er-ride them, 
 And we hide them 
 Silently. 
 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 What were they all — all of them measured by me? 
 For never among the Nations 
 And never between the Oceans, 
 Were known such emanations 
 Of tense, strung-nerved emotions, 
 Such strivings. 
 Never such hivings 
 Of humans... 
 
 207 
 
The Mother. 
 Son, those cities of the plain and of the shore! 
 My winds blew and their fleets were shattered, 
 
 My waves raged their harbours a-choke; 
 A very little their strivings mattered, 
 
 Little their tenseness ; their hivings broke 
 For evermore. 
 
 Little one, I who am young, furnished them graves 
 and I sung 
 
 Dirges above them. You have your millions, 
 
 Men of all nations, I have my billions and billions 
 and billions, 
 
 Of those who are stronger than men ; whose persis- 
 tence. 
 
 Whose creeping on sods, and flight down the winds 
 evades the last watch, overpowers the hopeless 
 resistance. 
 
 The Little Blades of Grass. 
 
 Hearken, hearken : 
 
 Brothers, are ye there? 
 
 The L ittlc Grains of Sand and of Dust. 
 Brothers, when that wind blows we shall darken 
 All the air. 
 
 The Mother. 
 
 Son : when I turn in my slumber, j 
 
 Your cities withouten number ^ 
 
 Shall fall There shall remain upon the ground | 
 
 Rubble and rubbish ; a rising and settling of dust all I 
 
 round, I 
 
 Here and there a mound | 
 
 208 \ 
 
And the grass will come a-creeping, 
 And the sands come sifting, sweeping, 
 Down the winds and up the current. 
 Dry and dead and curst, abhorrent. 
 Grass for the cities of the plains and of the hills ; sand 
 and bitter dust for the cities of the shore. 
 
 Little one, I who am old, hid all those strivings of 
 
 yore, 
 Little one, I old and grey, 
 Bid you play, 
 
 Wrestle and worry and play in the folds of my dress. 
 Till you tire, and the fire of your passions fails in 
 
 your earth-weariness. 
 Little one, I who am kind, give you time till you tire 
 
 of your play. 
 Time till you weary and say : 
 " Hold ; enough of our making-believe. 
 Ah, children, leave striving and leave 
 The little small things that we deemed 
 Above price; all the playthings that seemed 
 Worth a world of contriving and strife." 
 When the glimmer of gold loses life 
 And its weight groweth deader and deader. 
 And no one shall crave to be leader, 
 O'ermasterer, lord of the knife. 
 
 Little one, I who am wise, bid you go back to your 
 
 play, 
 Play the swift game thro' the day. 
 When even comes you shall kneel down and pray. 
 And, well-content, at last lay down your head 
 Upon my ultimate bed 
 And lose the tenseness of your futile quest 
 In me who offer rest. 
 
 209 
 
[The fog sweeps down: the city disappears. The Spirit 
 of the Age says in a low voice) 
 
 Poor wand'ring proser, 
 Poor worn-out, mutt'ring dozer, 
 With your old saws 
 Of sempiternal laws. 
 The day's to me not you . . . 
 Strike down the old ; cry onwards to the new. 
 \A train rumbles slowly pasty goi7ig cautiously through 
 the yellow fog. 
 
 The Little Blades of Grass [whispering). 
 Hearken, hearken : 
 Brothers, are ye there ? 
 
 The Little Grains of Sand and of Dust [7vhispering 
 back). 
 Brothers, when that wind blows we shall darken 
 All the air. 
 
 Curtain. 
 
 2X0 
 
THE FACE OF THE NIGHT 
 A PASTORAL 
 
 The men of Gnossos have a legend that a man lying all night in 
 the marshes near that town may see a face looking down upon hmi 
 out of the sky. Such a man shall ever after be consumed with a 
 longing to see again that face. In pursuit of it he shall abandon 
 his home, his flocks and his duty to the State. And such men are 
 accounted blasphemers because they infect others with this fever 
 and are harmful to the republic. 
 
 \_A wz'de, stony plain, the bed of a river, but dry and 
 brown because it is the heart of summer. Tozvards sim- 
 set. In the distance against the sky there rise the columns 
 of a deserted teinple and of poplar trees with, at their 
 bases, a tangle of rosebushes and of underwood among 
 fallen stones. To the right, far off, is a rocky bluff, 
 purple agaifist the evening: at its foot, very clear and 
 small, are large fallen rocks round a green pool and 
 spreading and shadowy trees. Small fires glimmer here. 
 To the left the plain opens out tozvards the horizon, 
 wide, suave and level; at the verge is a shimmer of the 
 broad curve of the river. 
 
 In the foregro2ind a young man lies upon two fleeces. 
 A fillet has fallen from his hair, his limbs are a golden 
 brown, he has a leopard skin about his loins. His hands 
 are clasped behind his head, he looks up into the western 
 sky, his eye searchi^ig for the first planet to shine. Over 
 the plain from the sunset and from the sheepfolds in 
 the shadow of the bluff, young girls and shepherds come 
 towards him in knots. Some play upon pipes, others cry 
 out from band to band, a horn sounds faintly withla 
 guttural into7iation. A do^s bark ivinds sharply from 
 a distance, and there is a continual drone of gnats in 
 the still air. 
 
 The Young Man {listlessly). 
 
 I HAVE seen the Night with her hair gemm'd with 
 stars, 
 With her smile the Milky Way, and her locks the 
 darker bars 
 
 Of the heavens 
 
 02 211 
 
The Shepherds and the Young Girls. 
 Oh , come away, 
 For Lalage is thine. 
 
 I have seen her. 
 
 He. 
 With her pale face of stars 
 
 They. 
 Rise! The shine 
 Of the owl-light's on the pools, 
 And the hinds bring skins of wine, 
 And the hot day cools 
 To its close. 
 
 [The drone of the pipes afid the quivering of strings 
 still sound as others come across the plain. They 
 come closer^ and, sfandi^ig round, obscure the sky 
 from him. 
 
 He {rising on one clboiv). 
 Ah ! still your pipes, still the cyther 
 string that jars, 
 For I have seen the Night with her face of stars. 
 
 The Men. 
 Rise up and quit these places, for in shadows Lalage 
 Awaits thee. 
 
 The Girls. 
 Quit your fleeces, for in the shadows we 
 In the light of nuptial torches where the poplars bar 
 
 the sky. 
 Thro' the rocks around the pool, thro' the hyacinths 
 shall . . . 
 
 212 
 
He. 
 
 I, 
 
 I have seen, have seen. . . . 
 
 An Old Man {hastening upon them). 
 Why never, 
 Quit these places full of fever. 
 
 He. 
 I saw a face look downwards 
 Thro' the stars. 
 
 Old Man. 
 
 No, never, never. 
 
 He. 
 I did see . . . 
 
 Old Man [seeking to drown his voice). 
 Mists from the river. 
 
 A Young Girl's Voice {she sitigs as she comes along). 
 When he comes from seawards. 
 When he comes from townwards, 
 My love sings to me words 
 That my heart likes well. 
 
 The Men {to him). 
 We will bear thee on our shoulders 
 Through the covert-sides and boulders 
 With thy fleeces for a litter. 
 
 The Girls. 
 Unto where the watch-fires glitter 
 On our shoulders we will bear thee 
 To where Lalage shall rear thee 
 'Twixt her breasts. 
 
 213 
 
He. 
 
 A face looked downwards, 
 And I thirst, I thirst, am thirsting. 
 
 The Old Man {m a threafenmg whisper). 
 Close thy lips on this for ever. 
 This is blasphemy. 'Twould sever 
 Tife and love and earth from gladness. 
 Close thy lips. I know this madness. 
 I am ancient. 
 
 He. 
 I am thirsting. 
 
 A Young Man. 
 Thy Lalage's eyes are pools of rest, 
 Thy Lalage's lips are sweet warm grapes 
 I would it were mine to taste and taste. 
 
 A Young Girl. 
 And thy Lalage's heart is bursting. 
 
 The Young Man. 
 I would it were mine to sink and sink 
 Between her breasts like hills of wine. 
 I would it were mine 
 To taste her lips , 
 
 And to clasp her hips and to clasp her waist. 
 And to drink her breath and to be the first 
 To... 
 
 He. 
 Thirst. I thirst. 
 
 Two Girls i^ith horns slung front their shoulders). 
 
 Here is milk. Here wine. 
 214 
 
He. 
 
 Begone and send me that wind to drink 
 That cools its flood on the glacier's brink, 
 Send me that wind. 
 
 The Old Man {persuasively). 
 
 Thy Lalage is grown kind : 
 
 Sighs fill the air near her, and from her eyes, 
 
 Where low she lies upon the filmy fleeces, 
 
 Bright tears down fall into the milk-white creases, 
 
 And warm, dark valleys of her snowy kirtle. 
 
 And loosely tied her girdle 
 
 A Hind [running in on them). 
 Thy white ewe hath burst her hurdle. 
 Thy grey bitch hath tree'd a leopard, 
 Shepherd, shepherd. 
 Thy black heifer's milk doth curdle. 
 
 He {;with a weary and passionate gesture of disgust). 
 I am sick of sheep and shepherds. 
 
 The Men. 
 
 Thou hast led us in the wars ! 
 
 The GmLS. 
 And the fairest of us maidens opens out to you her 
 
 arms. 
 Round her feet the grasses whisper, round her head 
 
 the firefly swarms 
 Form a beacon, you shall harbour in her soft, warm 
 arms. 
 
 He. 
 I did see a face with for hair the darker bars 
 
 Of the heavens 
 
 215 
 
The Girls [seeking to drown his voice). 
 
 We'll go dancing where the torchlights meet 
 With the lances of the starlight and the grove is 
 
 shadowiest, 
 Showing here a foam-white shoulder, white-waved 
 
 arm and red lit breast, 
 As the harebells brush our ankles till our loves caress 
 
 our feet. 
 Burnt-out torches, rustling silence, and the night 
 
 wind's faint and fleet. 
 
 He {turning up07i his elbow toioards the meji). 
 
 I shall lead you with your lances when you face the 
 
 menof Hather? 
 I must voice you in the counsels of the aged king, my 
 
 father? 
 I shall lead the ships to seawards, I must guard the 
 
 flocks from town wards ? 
 
 {To the girls ^ 
 
 I must bed your fairest maidens that the rest may 
 dance in cadence ? 
 
 So that wine may flow in plenty, so your loves and 
 you content ye. 
 
 Whilst with chitons loose on shoulders in the twi- 
 light of the boulders. 
 
 And in secret dells 
 
 Ye wantons ! I have seen a face look downwards, 
 
 Pure and passionless and distant where with stars 
 the pure sky teemeth. 
 
 The Old Man. 
 
 He blasphemeth, he blasphemeth. 
 216 
 
He. 
 
 I am sick of vine-wreathed barrels, 
 Sick of lances, arrows', quarrels. 
 Sick of tracking in the dew, 
 Of their limbs, and breasts, and you. . . . 
 I have seen that face of faces, 
 
 I have thought the utter thought. , . ^ ^ 
 
 \He rises to his feet. 
 
 I go to seek in desert places. 
 
 [ Whilst he speaks the men heave up stones to throw at 
 him. The girls shake their hands and cry out. He 
 silences them.shaking his fist. The Old Man runs 
 about hehiiid whispering to one and another. 
 
 [To the Girls:) 
 All your sun-tanned arms are nought, 
 All their lances and your dances. 
 
 Nought and nought And I must wander 
 
 Past the mountains of Iskander, 
 
 Past the salt-glazed lakes of Meine, 
 
 Past Pahan mist-veiled and rainy, 
 
 Whither ? Whither ? Ah, my Fortune ? 
 
 Seeking her, I must importune 
 
 All the icy ghosts of souls 
 
 That died of frost, and all the ghouls 
 
 That feed in battle-clouds, 
 
 The fiery spirits in the shrouds 
 
 Above volcanoes and the spirits of the dawn 
 
 That sing in choirs. And where the caverns yawn 
 
 Which let out sleep, and death, and shame, and 
 
 leprosy 
 Upon this earth, you may find trace of me 
 But here no more. 
 
 The Old Man. 
 
 Blasphemy! Blasphemy! 
 He doth contemn this godlike life of ours. 
 
 217 
 
The Girls. 
 Blasphemy! Blasphemy! 
 He doth condemn our warm, sweet midnight hours. 
 
 He {moving away from the plain). 
 I must go seek her on the icy rocks, 
 Frost in my blood or flame about my head. 
 Calling and calling where the echo mocks, 
 Crying in the midnights where the ocean moans 
 
 White in the darkness 
 
 \A. man casts a great stone that strikes him on the 
 shoulder. He falls on to one knee. 
 
 Fool, though I be dead 
 All here is nothing, but in her fair places 
 My shade shall find her wisdom. 
 
 The Girls. 
 
 Stones! Cast stones! 
 \A shower of stones strikes him down. He cries from 
 the ground. 
 All here is nothing. Whilst each mountain traces 
 Shadows half-circling from every worthless dawn, 
 My shade shall trace her to her twilit portal, 
 Then, on a hill-top, on a shadowy lawn, 
 Plain in the dew her footsteps ! 
 
 The Old Man {striking a lance through his side). 
 
 Dead! 
 He [gasping). 
 
 Immortal 
 Goddess ! Wisdom ! Face o' Night! Beyond the twi- 
 light bars [^He dies. 
 
 The Old Man [striking the spear through him again). 
 Cast stones ! 
 218 
 
The Girls {to the men). 
 
 Cast stones ! 
 
 {They gather stones in their skirts and drop them in 
 great number on to the body, until it has the re- 
 semblance of a cairn. Whilst they hurry about the 
 Old Man spealis to any that will listen to him. 
 
 For that this was a Prince raise him a tomb, 
 Casting your stones on it. In sun nor gloom 
 
 Come never here again Here shall be moans 
 
 And whisperings of blasphemy to hear were doom. . . . 
 Cast there, stones there, above his lips that lied. 
 
 So be his name forgotten Never a word 
 
 From henceforth of his dying. This true lance 
 
 That slew him shall be burnt Never a word, 
 
 Never a word of him again But dance, 
 
 Choose a new mate for Lalage's soft side 
 This night. Yes there, above his lips that lied. 
 
 {They begin to disperse. 
 
 A Young Girl. 
 I would he had kissed me ere he died. 
 
 The Old Man (shaking his head misgivingly, to 
 aiiother old man). 
 
 You heard? 
 
 {They all go away over the plain in groups of two 
 and three; the poplars and the ruined temple have 
 disappeared into the last light: the white garments 
 have blue and purple shadows and tne eveniiig star 
 shakes out brilliant rays in the dusky sky. 
 
 219 
 
The Voice of a Young Girl [singing m the 
 
 distance]. 
 
 When he comes from seawards, 
 When he comes from townwards, 
 My love sings to me words 
 That my heart likes well. 
 
 \Thc night wind sweeps doimi; the watch-fires at the 
 foot of the hills spring up as if they had been re- 
 pl€7iished and waver along the wind. It readies the 
 cairn of stones and runs with a sifting sound 
 among the dry grasses around. It contijiues through 
 the night. 
 
A MASQUE OF THE TIMES O' DAY 
 
 (A FRAGMENT) 
 
 The Persons of the Masque : 
 
 The Dawn that shall wear a saffron go7V7i, and in her 
 hair daffodils. 
 
 High Noon that shall wear a golden dress and necklets 
 of amber. 
 
 Eventide that shall be habited in grey and have glow- 
 worms on her brow. 
 
 Night that shall be dressed in black 7vith a coronal of 
 stars and the crescent moon. 
 
 The Scene shall be a hilltops high in air, with the 
 blue sky painted fair o?i the backcloths. There shall be 
 a great gilt framework Sphere of the U^iiverse, set with 
 jewels for the stars, and with the Signs of the Zodiac. 
 It shall revolve slozvly, and within shall sit the Dawn, 
 High Noon and others. In its centre there shall be a 
 great Globe of the Earth with the lands and the seas 
 fairly ?fiarked. Round about it shall go one score attd 
 four men bearing the four-and-twerity torches of the 
 Hours. Without, shall stand a Man and a Woman. 
 
 A Chorus habited like a reverend old man shall enter 
 and shall tell how that the Times of Day, being weary 
 of long contentio7is for the Dominion of the earth, have 
 set this Man and this Woman to choose which of these 
 four shall have sole Empire. 
 
 The Music shall sound, and when it shall have ceased, 
 the Dawn shall step forth from the Sphere as it re- 
 volves and shall say : 
 
 I AM the Dawn, beloved by those that watch, 
 jy^^w High Noon: 
 I am the Noon, beloved by those that toil. 
 
 221 
 
7%^;z Eventide: 
 I am the Eve, beloved by those that tire. 
 
 7%m The Night: 
 I am the Night beloved by them that love. 
 
 Then shall those four dance together imtil the Dawn 
 stands forth from among them and sings : 
 
 I am the Dawn, beloved by those that watch, 
 
 I come a-creeping, I come a-stealing 
 
 Over eastern mountains, over dewy lawns, 
 
 Pale, golden, slender, pale and very tender, 
 
 Unto you who've watched the night through hoping 
 
 for the dawn's 
 Rise to usher Hope back. 
 
 A dance again, and then High ^OO^ shall sing : 
 I am High Noon, beloved by those that toil. 
 I bring your resting times, ring your midday feasting 
 
 chimes, 
 Pan's hourthat brings you pantingto the hedgerows, 
 Dalliance in the river rushes, 
 In the shadows and deep hushes, 
 Over bee-filled beds of potherbs, over bird-filled, 
 
 quivering woodlands. 
 Blessed rest in summer days, surcease 'neath the 
 
 Summer haze. 
 
 A dance again^ and in her turn the Eventide shall 
 sing: 
 
 I am the Eve, beloved by those that tire. 
 
 All along the sunken lanes 
 And across the parching plains 
 I set dewy winds a-blowing. 
 Bring the cattle byrewards, lowing ; 
 
Bring the bats out, lure the owls out, lure the twilight 
 
 beasts and fowls out; 
 Bid a broadening path of moonbeams hunt the 
 
 homing smacks from seaward, 
 Flitting past the harbour lanthorns, trailing in a 
 
 flight to leeward; 
 Set the harbour tumult rounding up the misty wind- 
 ings of the mountains ; 
 Set my tiny horns a-sounding by the rillets, by the 
 
 woodland fountains . . . 
 Tiny, tiny gnat-horns sounding in an intermitting 
 
 cadence, 
 Cry, " Stroll homewards men and maidens, 
 Done is done and over's over, 
 Leave the wheatfields, quit the clover, 
 Masters, hired ones, all you tired ones. 
 Troop along the dog-rose lanes, troop across the 
 
 misty plains. 
 Done is done ... is done, and over's over." 
 
 The '^IGUT shall step for^vard and shall catch at the arm 
 of the Eve. Then shall Night say : 
 
 {To the Eve) Enough, enough, 
 
 You steal too many of my silent hours . . . 
 
 ( To the Man and the Woman) I am the Night beloved 
 
 by them that love 
 As you do love. 
 
 I am that Night 
 That was in the beginning, I am she 
 That shall be the end . . . You come from me 
 And hasten back to me, and all the rest 
 Is shadow. 
 
 223 
 
What's the Dawn ? 
 The shadow of a dream . . . And what High Noon ? 
 A vague unrest, a shadow on your slumbers . . . 
 And ling'ring Eve has shadows in her hair, 
 The shadows of a shadow. . . . She's a thief 
 That steals my attributes, and is beloved 
 Because she is my shadow. 
 
 I am Truth, 
 A darkness, a soft darkness. And in that 
 Is all that's worth the seeing. In my arms 
 Is all that's worth the having. I'm august 
 But tender . . . tender . . . Oh, you mortal things, 
 That pass from Night to Night, from womb to womb 
 I am the best. 
 
 She sings. 
 Over my grasses go, for a little while 
 I'll bid my flowers breathe their faint night scents. 
 For a little while 
 
 Go close together, straining lip to lip. 
 Go close together, straining heart to heart, 
 For a little while ... for all the time you have. 
 
 She speaks again. 
 The soft warm darkness shall hang overhead, 
 The great white planets wheel from the horizon, 
 You shall not know the nakedness of shame, 
 Nor know at all of sorrow on the earth, 
 The while I hang above you with the face 
 Of a wan mother, white with light of stars. 
 
 She sings again. 
 Over my grasses go for a little while, 
 Hearing no sound, seeing no sight of earth, 
 For a little while 
 
 Cling close together, straining lip to lip, 
 Cling close together, straining breast to breast, 
 For a little while ... for all the time you have . . . 
 224 
 
[She speaks very low, as if to herself) 
 And at the last 
 A wind shall sigh among my whispering grasses, 
 The planets fail behind a brooding cloud, 
 Your eyelids shall fall down upon your eyes 
 And it shall be the end . . . 
 
 She sings as if triumphantly. 
 Under my grasses lie for the rest of time, 
 Hearing no sound, thinking no thought of earth, 
 For the rest of time. 
 Lie close together, silent, ear to ear. 
 Lie close together, slumb'ring hand in hand, 
 For the rest of time, for all the time you have. 
 
 Then shall men unseen in the roof of the hall hoist 
 out of sight the gilt Sphere of the Zodiac^ and there 
 shall he disclosed a great globe of the Earth which had 
 been hid zvithin the other. Then shall the four Times 
 of Day Dance a solemn meas7ire rozmd the globe to the 
 sound of music. There shall be simdry devices. As that, 
 there shall come a VVo^nan called the A utumn habited 
 in russet and garlatided with streamers of berries of 
 the hawthorn. And this Atitumn would have the Times 
 of Day observe a nice distance, equal one from the other, 
 and a flight of the birds called starlings shall be set free. 
 Then shall a reverend man dressed in furs, and bearing 
 a heavy burden of thorns cut faggot wise, enter. He shall 
 be the Winter, and shall dispute with the A utumn as 
 to the manner of the dance. He shall 7vish the Dawn and 
 the Eve to stand nearer High Noon. And he shall 
 prevail, and a flight of great 7vood doves shall cross the 
 hall. A nd in like manner shall come the Spring and 
 the Summer each with their due attributes. These last 
 four shall join hands and dance round about the limes 
 of Day. Then shall come men to the number of the cycles 
 p 225 
 
that have passed smce the year of our Lord's birth, and 
 shall dance a solemn measure round them all. And a 
 salvo of musquetoons shall he shot off without^ beneath 
 the windows of the hall. And when the dance is ended 
 
 The End Piece shall be sung — 
 What if we say: 
 " These too shall pass away." 
 Whether we say it 
 Now, or delay it 
 How we may, 
 These too shall pass away. 
 
 226 
 
THE WIND'S QUEST 
 
 " /^"^^ H, where shall I find rest? " 
 I I Sighed the Wind from the west; 
 V_^" I've sought in vain o'er dale and down, 
 
 Through tangled woodland, tarn and town, 
 
 But found no rest." 
 
 " Rest thou ne'er shalt find . . ." 
 
 Answered Love to the Wind ; 
 
 " For thou and I, and the great grey sea 
 
 May never rest till Eternity 
 
 Its end shall find." 
 
 JVo/e.— These lines, the first I ever wrote, were printed in the 
 Anarchist journal, The Torch, in 1891. 
 
 227 
 
LETCIIWORTH : AT THE ARDEN PRESS 
 
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PART II £^", 
 
 INDEX OF TITLES ^2'"""'-' 
 
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 Armstrong, Thomas, C.B. A Memoir. Reminis- Aiel-phi 
 
 cences of Du Maurier and Whistler. Edited by 
 
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 Art of Ballet, The. By Mark Perugini. 
 Art of Silhouette, The. By Desmond Coke. 
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 D'EoN DE Beaumont. Translated by Alfred Rieu. 
 Dramatic Portraits. By P. P. Howe. 
 Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann. 6 vols. 
 
 II 
 
Martin 
 Seeker's 
 Catalogue of 
 Books 
 
 Published at 
 Number 
 Five John 
 Street 
 Adel-phi 
 
 Dramatic Works of St. John Hankin. Introduction 
 by John Drinkwater. 3 vols. 
 
 Egyptian Esthetics. By Rene Francis. 
 
 Epic, The. By Lascelles Ahercromhie. 
 
 Essay, The. By Orlo Williams. 
 
 Feminine Influence on the Poets. By Edward 
 Thomas. 
 
 Fountains in the Sand. By Norman Douglas. 
 
 GissiNG : A Critical Study. By Frank Szvinnerton. 
 
 Grahame of Claverhouse. By Michael Barrington. 
 
 Hardy : A Critical Study. By Lascelles Aher- 
 cromhie. 
 
 Hieroglyphics. By Arthur Machen. 
 
 History. By R. H. Gretton. 
 
 History of the Harlequinade, The. By Maurice 
 Sand. 
 
 Ibsen : A Critical Study. By R. Ellis Roberts. 
 
 Irish Exiles at St. Germains, The. By D. C. 
 Boulger. 
 
 James : A Critical Study. By F. M. Hueffer. 
 
 Kensington Rhymes. By Compton Mackenzie. 
 
 Leaders of the People. By Joseph Clayton. 
 
 Letters from Greece. By John Mavrogordato. 
 
 LiNLEYs OF Bath, The. By Clementina Black. 
 
 Lyric, The. By John Drinkwater. 
 
 Maeterlinck : A Critical Study. By Una Taylor. 
 
 Magic. By G. K. Chesterton. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft.-^ '5y G. R. Stirling Taylor. 
 
 Meredith : A Critical Study. By Orlo Williams. 
 
 Morris : A Critical Study. By John Drinkwater. 
 
 New Leaves. By Filson Toung. 
 
 Nooks and Corners of Old England. By Allan Fea. 
 
 Old Calabria. By Norman Douglas. 
 
 12 
 
Old English Houses. By Allan Fea. Manin 
 
 „ ^, . , ;, Seekers 
 
 Parody. By Christopher btone. Catalogue of 
 
 Pater : A Critical Study. By Edward Thomas. Books 
 
 Peacock : A Critical Study. By A. Martin Freeman. Published at 
 Peer Gynt. Translated by R. Ellis Roberts. FiZjohn 
 
 People and Questions. By G. S. Street. ^^^gg^ 
 
 Perfumes of Araby. By Harold Jacob. Adelphi 
 
 Personality in Literature. By R. A. Scott-James. 
 Poems. By Compton Mackenzie. 
 Punctuation. By Filson Toung. 
 Real Captain Cleveland, The. By Allan Fea. 
 Regilding the Crescent. By F. G. Aflalo. 
 Repertory Theatre, The. By P. P. Howe. 
 Robert Kett and the Norfolk Rising. By Joseph 
 
 Clayton. 
 RossETTi : A Critical Study. By John Drinkzvater. 
 Satire. By Gilbert Cannan. 
 Shaw: A Critical Study. By P. P. Howe. 
 Short Story, The. By Barry Pain. 
 Social History of Smoking, The. By G. L. Apperson. 
 Some Eccentrics and a Woman. By Lewis Melville. 
 Speculative Dialogues. By Lascelles Abercrombie. 
 Stevenson : A Critical Study. By Frank Swinnerton. 
 Stupor Mundi. By Lionel Allshorn. 
 Swinburne : A Critical Study. By Edward Thomas. 
 Synge : A Critical Study. By P. P. Howe. 
 Tenth Muse, The. By Edward Thomas. 
 Those United States. By Arnold Bennett. 
 Thompson. By St. John Hankin and G. Calderon. 
 Vie de Boheme. By Orlo Williams. 
 Whitman : A Critical Study. By Basil de Selin- 
 
 court. 
 
 13 
 
Martin 
 Secker^s 
 Catalogue of 
 Books 
 
 Published at 
 Number 
 Five John 
 Street 
 Adel-phi 
 
 Fictmi 
 
 Above Your Heads. By Frederick Niven. 
 
 Bankrupt, The. By Horace Horsjiell. 
 
 Burnt House, The. By Christopher Stone. 
 
 Carnival. By Compton Mackenzie. 
 
 Common Chord, The. By Phyllis Bottome. 
 
 Dead Men's Bells. By Frederick Niven. 
 
 Debit Account, The. By Oliver Onions. 
 
 Deep Sea. By F. Brett Toung. 
 
 Duchess of Wrexe, The. By Hugh Walpole. 
 
 Fool's Tragedy, The. By A. Scott Craven. 
 
 Fortitude. By Hugh Walpole. 
 
 GoLiGHTLYs, The. By Laurence North. 
 
 Hands Up ! By Frederick Niven. 
 
 House of Sands, The. By L. M. Watt. 
 
 Impatient Griselda. By Laurence North. 
 
 Imperfect Branch, The. By Richard Lluellyn. 
 
 In Accordance with the Evidence. By Oliver 
 Onions. 
 
 Lot Barrow. By Viola Meynell. 
 
 Marriage of Quixote, The. By Donald Armstrong. 
 
 Modern Lovers. By Viola Meynell. 
 
Old Mole. By Gilbert Cannan. Martin 
 
 Seeker's 
 One Kind and Another. By Barry Pain. Catalogue oj 
 
 Books 
 Outward Appearance, The. By Stanley V . Makower. Published at 
 
 Number 
 Passionate Elopement, The. By Compton Mackenzie. Five John 
 
 Street 
 Porcelain Lady, The. By Frederick Niven. Adel-phi 
 
 Questing Beast, The. By Ivy Low. 
 
 Record of a Silent Life, The. By Anna Preston. 
 
 Round the Corner. By Gilbert Cannan. 
 
 Sinister Street. L By Compton Mackenzie. 
 
 Sinister Street. IL By Compton Mackenzie. 
 
 Story of Louie, The. By Oliver Onions. 
 
 Telling the Truth. By William Hewlett. 
 
 Uncle's Advice. By William Hewlett. 
 
 Undergrowth. By F. i^ E. Brett Toung. 
 
 Underman, The. By Joseph Clayton. 
 
 White Webs. By Theo Douglas. 
 
 Widdershins. By Oliver Onions. 
 
 Wilderness of Monkeys, A. By Frederick Niven. 
 
MARTIN SECKER'S 
 
 COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF 
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY HIM AT 
 
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