Ex Libris ISAAC FOOT LIBRARY " iJNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Selected Poems of John Drinkwater BY JOHN DRINKWATER POEMS— POEMS I908-I9I4 SWORDS AND PLOUGHSHARES. 1915 OLTON POOLS. 1916 TIDES. I917 LOYALTIES. I919 SEEDS OF TIME. I92I PLA YS— REBELLION. I914 PAWNS AND COPHETUA. I9II-I9I7 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. I918 MARY STUART. I92I OLIVER CROMWELL, I921 PROSE STUDIES— WILLIAM MORRIS. I912 SWINBURNE. I913 THE LYRIC. I915 PROSE PAPERS. I917 ohn zDiu/i l-'ii'u tv/- Sm.cjy'^djcUkt.r: nk.* Selected Poems of John Drinkwater London Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd. 3 Adam St., W.C. 2 1922 Contents From Poems 1908-14: A Prayer 7 Reckoning 9 Pierrot II The Miracle 13 The Crowning of Dreaming John 14 The Vagabond 19 In Lady Street 20 At Grafton 24 January Dusk 25 From Swords and Ploughshayes, 19 15 .• A Town Window 26 Last Confessional 27 Mad Tom Tatter man 29 M amble 31 From Olton Pools, 1916 .- Birthright 33 Olton Pools 34 Sunrise on Rydal Water 35 Holiness 37 Anthony Crundle 38 Immortality 39 Petition 41 From Tides, 191 7 .• May Garden 43 Reciprocity 44 The Hours 45 From Tides [continued] : The Midlands 47 Cotswold Love 50 Moonlit Apples 51 Elizabeth Ann 52 Yxovn. Loyalties, igig: Blackbird 53 Mystery 54 Mrs. Willow 56 Deer 58 Passage 59 History 60 To One I Love 62 From Seeds of Time, 1921 ; The Toll-Gate House 66 A Lesson to My Ghost 67 The Dying Philosopher to His Fiddler 70 Two Ships 71 Portia's Housekeeping 72 In the Valley 74 Who were before Me 75 Samplers 77 The Pledge 78 Nunc Dimittis 79 Persuasion 80 Index of First Lines 92 A Prayer LORD, not for light in darkness do we pray, Not that the veil be lifted from our eyes, Nor that the slow ascension of our day Be otherwise. Not for a clearer vision of the things Whereof the fashioning shall make us great, Not for remission of the peril and stings Of time and fate. Not for a fuller knowledge of the end Whereto we travel, bruised yet unafraid, Nor that the little healing that we lend Shall be repaid. Not these, O Lord. We would not break the bars Thy wisdom sets about us ; we shall climb Unfettered to the secrets of the stars In Thy good time. We do not crave the high perception swift When to refrain were well, and when fulfil. Nor yet the understanding strong to sift The good from ill. Not these, O Lord. For these Thou hast revealed, We know the golden season when to reap The heavy-fruited treasure of the field, The hour to sleep. Not these. We know the hemlock from the rose, The pure from stained, the noble from the base. The tranquil holy light of truth that glows On Pity's face. We know the paths wherein our feet should press, Across our hearts are written Thy decrees. Yet now, O Lord, be merciful to bless With more than these. Grant us the will to fashion as we feel, Grant us the strength to labour as we know, Grant us the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel. To strike the blow. Knowledge we ask not — knowledge Thou hast lent, But, Lord, the will — there lies our bitter need, Give us to build above the deep intent The deed, the deed. 8 I Reckoning HEARD my love go laughing Beyond the bolted door, I saw my love go riding Across the windy moor, And I would give my love no word Because of evil tales I heard. Let fancy men go laughing, Let light men ride away. Bruised corn is not for my mill, What's paid I will not pay, — And so I thought because of this Gossip that poisoned clasp and kiss. Four hundred men went riding, And he the best of all, A jolly man for labour, A sinewy man and tall ; I watched him go beyond the hill, And shaped my anger with my will. At night my love came riding Across the dusky moor, And other two rode with him Who knocked my bolted door, 9 And called me out and bade me see How quiet a man a man could be. And now the tales that stung me And gave my pride its rule, Are worth a beggar's broken shoe Or the sermon of a fool, And all I know and all I can Is, false or true, he was my man. ID Pierrot Pievvot alone, A nd then Pievrette, And then a story to forget. Pierrot alone. Pierrette among the apple boughs, Come down and take a Pierrot's kiss, The moon is white upon your brows, Pierrette among the apple boughs, Your lips are cold, and I would set A rose upon your lips, Pierrette, A rosy kiss, Pierrette, Pierrette. And then Pierrette. I've left my apple boughs, Pierrot, A shadow now is on my face, But still my lips are cold, and O No rose is on my lips, Pierrot, You laugh, and then you pass away Among the scented leaves of May, And on my face The shadows stay. II A nd then a story to forget. The petals fall upon the grass, And I am crying in the dark, The clouds above the white moon pass- My tears are falling on the grass ; Pierrot, Pierrot, I heard your vows And left my blossomed apple boughs, And sorrows dark Are on my brows. 12 The Miracle C OME, sweetheart, listen, for I have a thing Most wonderful to tell you — news of spring. Albeit winter still is in the air. And the earth troubled, and the branches bare, Yet down the fields to-day I saw her pass — The spring — her feet went shining through the grass. She touched the ragged hedgerows — I have seen Her finger-prints, most delicately green ; And she has whispered to the crocus leaves, And to the garrulous sparrows in the eaves. Swiftly she passed and shyly, and her fair Young face was hidden in her cloudy hair. She would not stay, her season is not yet, But she has reawakened, and has set "The sap of all the world astir, and rent Once more the shadows of our discontent. Triumphant news — a miracle I sing — The everlasting miracle of spring. 13 The Crowning of Dreaming John C^EVEN days he tmvelled ^J Down the roads of England, Out of leafy Warwick lanes Into London Town. Grey and very wrinkled Was Dreaming John of Grafton, But seven days he walked to see A king put on his crown. Down the streets of London He asked the crowded people Where would he the crowning A nd when would it begin. He said he'd got a shilling, A shining silver shilling, But when he came to Westminster They wouldnH let him in. Dveaniing John of Grafton Looked upon the people. Laughed a little laugh, and then Whistled and was gone. Out alone; the lonp roads, The tivisting roads of England, Back into the Warwick lanes Wandered Dreaming John. II As twilight touched with her ghostly fingers All the meadows and mellow hills, And the great sun swept in his robes of glory — Woven of petals of daffodils And jewelled and fringed with leaves of the roses- Down the plains of the western way, Among the rows of the scented clover Dreaming John in his dreaming lay. Since dawn had folded the stars of heaven He'd counted a score of miles and five. And now, with a vagabond heart untroubled And proud as the properest man alive, He sat him down with a limber spirit That all men covet and few may keep, 15 And he watched the summer draw round her beauty The shadow that shepherds the world to sleep. And up from the valleys and shining rivers, And out of the shadowy wood-ways wild, And down from the secret hills, and streaming Out of the shimmering undefiled Wonder of sky that arched him over, Came a company shod m gold And girt in gowns of a thousand blossoms, Laughing and rainbow-aureoled. Wrinkled and grey and with eyes a-wonder And soul beatified, Dreaming John Watched the marvellous company gather While over the clover a glory shone ; They bore on their brows the hues of heaven, Their limbs were sweet with flowers of the fields, And their feet were bright with the gleaming treasure That prodigal earth to her children yields. i6 They stood before him, and John was laughing As they were laughing; he knew them all, Spirits of trees and pools and meadows, Mountain and windy waterfall. Spirits of clouds and skies and rivers, Leaves and shadows and rain and sun, A crowded, jostling, laughing army, And Dreaming John knew every one. Among them then was a sound of singing And chiming music, as one came down The level rows of the scented clover. Bearing aloft a flashing crown ; No word of a man's desert was spoken, Nor any word of a man's unworth, But there on the wrinkled brow it rested, And Dreaming John was king of the earth. 17 B Ill Dreaming John of Grafton Went atiiay to London, Saw the coloured banners fly, Heard the great hells ring, But though his tongue was civil And he had a silver shilling, They wouldn't let him in to see The crowning of the King. So back along the long roads. The leafy roads of England, Dreaming John went carolling, Travelling alone, And in a summer evening, Among the scented clover. He held before a shouting throng A crowning of his own. i8 The Vagabond I KNOW the pools where the grayling rise, I know the trees where the filberts fall, I know the woods where the red fox lies, The twisted elms where the brown owls call. And I've seldom a shilling to call my own, And there's never a girl I'd marry, I thank the Lord I'm a rolling stone With never a care to carry. I talk to the stars as they come and go On every night from July to June, I'm free of the speech of the winds that blow, And I know what weather will sing what tune I sow no seed and I pay no rent, And I thank no man for his bounties, But I've a treasure that's never spent, I'm lord of a dozen counties. 19 In Lady Street ALL day long the traffic goes J~\ In Lady Street by dingy rows Of sloven houses, tattered shops — Fried fish, old clothes and fortune-tellers — Tall trams on silver-shining rails, With grinding wheels and swaying tops, And lorries with their corded bales, And screeching cars. " Buy, buy ! " the sellers Of rags and bones and sickening meat Cry all day long in Lady Street. And when the sunshine has its way In Lady Street, then all the grey Dull desolation grows in state More dull and grey and desolate. And the sun is a shamefast thing, A lord not comely-housed, a god Seeing what gods must blush to see, A song where it is ill to sing, And each gold ray despiteously Lies like a gold ironic rod. 20 Yet one grey man in Lady Street Looks for the sun. He never bent Life to his will, his travelling feet Have scaled no cloudy continent, Nor has the sickle-hand been strong. He lives in Lady Street ; a bed, Four cobwebbed walls. But all day long A time is singing in his head Of youth in Gloucester lanes. He hears The wind among the barley-blades, The tapping of the woodpeckers On the smooth beeches, thistle-spades Slicing the sinewy roots ; he sees The hooded filberts in the copse Beyond the loaded orchard trees, The netted avenues of hops ; He smells the honeysuckle thrown Along the hedge. He lives alone. Alone — yet not alone, for sweet Are Gloucester lanes in Lady Street. Aye, Gloucester lanes. For down below The cobwebbed room this grey man plies A trade, a coloured trade. A show Of many-coloured merchandise 21 Is in his shop. Brown filberts there, And apples red with Gloucester air, And cauliflowers he keeps, and round Smooth marrows grown on Gloucester ground, Fat cabbages and yellow plums, And gaudy brave chrysanthemums. And times a glossy pheasant lies Among his store, not Tyrian dyes More rich than are the neck-feathers ; And times a prize of violets, Or dewy mushrooms satin-skinned, And times an unfamiliar wind Robbed of its woodland favour stirs Gay daffodils this grey man sets Among his treasure. All day long In Lady Street the traffic goes By dingy houses, desolate rows Of shops that stare like hopeless eyes. Day long the sellers cry their cries, The fortune-tellers tell no wrong Of lives that know not any right, And drift, that has not even the will To drift, toils through the day until The wage of sleep is won at night. 22 But this grey man heeds not at all The hell of Lady Street. His stall Of many-coloured merchandise He makes a shining paradise, As all day long chrysanthemums He sells, and red and yellow plums And cauliflowers. In that one spot Of Lady Street the sun is not Ashamed to shine and send a rare Shower of colour through the air ; The grey man says the sun is sweet On Gloucester lanes in Lady Street. 23 G At Grafton •OD laughed when he made Grafton That's under Bredon Hill, A jewel in a jewelled plain. The seasons work their will On golden thatch and crumbling stone, And every soft-lipped breeze Makes music for the Grafton men In comfortable trees. God's beauty over Grafton Stole into roof and wall, And hallowed every paved path And every lowly stall. And to a woven wonder Conspired with one accord The labour of the servant, The labour of the Lord. And momently to Grafton Comes in from vale and wold The sound of sheep unshepherded, The sound of sheep in fold, And, blown along the bases Of lands that set their wide Frank brows to God, comes chanting The breath of Bristol tide. 24 January Dusk AUSTERE and clad in sombre robes of grey, . With hands upfolded and with silent wings, In unimpassioned mystery the day Passes ; a lonely thrush its requiem sings. The dust of night is tangled in the boughs Of leafless lime and lilac, and the pine Grows blacker, and the star upon the brows Of sleep is set in heaven for a sign. Earth's little weary peoples fall on peace And dream of breaking buds and blossoming, Of primrose airs, of days of large increase, And all the coloured retinue of spring. 35 A Town Window BEYOND my window in the night Is but a drab inglorious street, Yet there the frost and clean starlight As over Warwick woods are sweet. Under the grey drift of the town The crocus works among the mould As eagerly as those that crown The Warwick spring in flame and gold. And when the tramway down the hill Across the cobbles moans and rings, There is about my window-sill The tumult of a thousand wings. 26 Last Confessional FOR all ill words that I have spoken, For all clear moods that I have broken, For all despite and hasty breath, Forgive me, Love, forgive me, Death. Death, master of the great assize, Love, falling now to memories, You two alone I need to prove. Forgive me, Death, forgive me, Love. For every tenderness undone, For pride when holiness was none But only easy charity, O Death, be pardoner to me. For stubborn thought that would not make Measure of love's thought for love's sake, But kept a sullen difference. Take, Love, this laggard penitence. For cloudy words too vainly spent To prosper but in argument. When truth stood lonely at the gate, On your compassion. Death, I wait. 27 For all the beauty that escaped This foolish brain, unsung, unshaped, For wonder that was slow to move, Forgive me, Death, forgive me, Love. For love that kept a secret cruse, For life defeated of its dues, This latest word of all my breath — Forgive me, Love, forgive me, Death. 28 Mad Tom Tatterman " /^LD man, grey man, good man scavenger, V^ Bearing is it eighty years upon your crumpled back ? What is it you gather in the frosty weather, Is there any treasure here to carry in your sack ?" " I've a million acres and a thousand head of cattle. And a foaming river where the silver salmon leap ; But I've left fat valleys to dig in sullen alleys Just because a twisted star rode by me in my sleep. " I've a brain is dancing to an old forgotten music Heard when all the world was just a crazy flight of dreams, And don't you know I scatter in the dirt along the gutter Seeds that little ladies nursed by Babylonian streams ? " Mad Tom Tatterman, that is how they call me. Oh, they know so much, so much, all so neatly dressed ; I've a tale to tell you — come and listen, will you ? — One as ragged as the twigs that make a magpie's nest. " Ragged, oh, but very wise. You and this and that man, All of you are making things that none of you would lack. And so your eyes grow dusty, and so your limbs grow rusty — But mad Tom Tatterman puts nothing in his sack. '* Nothing in my sack, sirs, but the Sea of Galilee Was walked for mad Tom Tatterman, and when I go to sleep They'll know that I have driven through the acres of broad heaven Flocks are whiter than the flocks that all your shepherds keep." 30 Mamble I NEVER went to Mamble That lies abo\e the Teme, So I wonder who's in Mamble, And whether people seem Who breed and brew along there As lazy as the name, And whether any song there Sets alehouse wits aflame. The finger-post says Mamble, And that is all I know Of the narrow road to Mamble, And should I turn and go To that place of lazy token That lies above the Teme, There might be a Mamble broken That was lissom in a dream. So leave the road to Mamble And take another road To as good a place as Mamble Be it lazy as a toad ; 31 Who travels Worcester county Takes any place that comes When April tosses bounty To the cherries and the plums. 32 Birthright LORD RAMESES of Egypt sighed Because a summer evening passed ; And little x\riadne cried That summer fancy fell at last To dust ; and young Verona died When beauty's hour was overcast. Theirs was the bitterness we know Because the clouds of hawthorn keep So short a state, and kisses go To tombs unfathomably deep, While Rameses and Romeo And little Ariadne sleep. 33 Olton Pools (to g, c. g.) OW June walks on the waters, N' And the cuckoo's last enchantment Passes from Olton pools. Now dawn comes to my window Breathing midsummer roses, And scythes are wet with dew. Is it not strange for ever That, bowered in this wonder, Man keeps a jealous heart ? . . . That June and the June waters, And birds and dawn-lit roses, Are gospels in the wind, Fading upon the deserts. Poor pilgrim revelations ? . . . Hist . . . over Olton pools ! 34 Sunrise on Rydal Water (TO E. DE S.) COME down at dawn from windless hills Into the valley of the lake, Where yet a larger quiet fills The hour, and mist and water make With rocks and reeds and island boughs One silence and one element, Where wonder goes surely as once It went By Galilean prows. Moveless the water and the mist. Moveless the secret air above, Hushed as upon some happy tryst The poised expectancy of love ; What spirit is it that adores What mighty presence yet unseen ? What consummation works apace Between These rapt enchanted shores ? Never did virgin beauty Avake Devouter to the bridal feast Than moves this hour upon the lake In adoration to the east ; 35 Mere is the bride a god may know, The primal will, the young consent, Till surely upon the appointed mood Intent The god shall leap— and, lo, Over the lake's end strikes the sun, White, flameless fire ; some purity Thrilling the mist, a splendour won Out of the world's heart Let there be Thoughts, and atonements, and desires, Proud limbs, and undeliberate tongue. Where now we move with mortal oars Among Immortal dews and fires. So the old mating goes apace. Wind with the sea, and blood with thought, Lover with lover ; and the grace Of understanding comes unsought When stars into the twilight steer, Or thrushes build among the may, Or wonder moves between the hills, And day Comes up on Rydal mere. 36 Holiness IF all the carts were painted gay, And all the streets swept clean, And all the children came to play By hollyhocks, with green Grasses to grow between ; If all the houses looked as though Some heart were in their stones ; If all the people that we know Were dressed in scarlet gowns, With feathers in their crowns, I think this gaiety would make A spiritual land. I think that holiness would take This laughter by the hand. Till both should understand. 37 Anthony Crundle Heie lies the body of ANTHONY CRUNDLE, Farmer, of this parish, ]\ ho died in 1849 at the age of S2. " He delighted in music." R.I.P. And of SUSAN, For fifty-three years his wife. Who died in i860, aged 86. ANTHONY CRUNDLE of Dorrington Wood -/~V Played on a piccolo. Lord was he, For seventy years, of sheaves that stood Under the perry and cider tree ; Anthony Cvimdle, R.I.P. And because he prospered with sickle and scythe, With cattle afield and labouring ewe, Anthony was uncommonly blithe, And played of a night to himself and Sue Anthony Crundle, eighty -iivo. The earth to till, and a tune to play, And Susan for fifty years and three, And Dorrington Wood at the end of day . . . May Providence do no worse by me ; Anthony Cviindle, R.I.P. 38 Immortality I WHEN other beauty governs other lips, And snowdrops come to strange and happy springs, When seas renewed bear yet unbuilded ships, And alien hearts know all familiar things, When frosty nights bring comrades to enjoy Sweet hours at hearths where we no longer sit. When Liverpool is one with dusty Troy, And London famed as Attica for wit . . . How shall it be with you, and you, and you. How with us all who have gone greatly here In friendship, making some delight, some true Song in the dark, some story against fear ? Shall song still walk with love, and life be brave, And we, who were all these, be but the grave ? 39 II No ; lovers yet shall tell the nightingale Sometimes a song that we of old time made, And gossips gathered at the twilight ale Shall say, "Those two were friends," or, " Unafraid Of bitter thought were those because they loved Better than most." And sometimes shall be told How one, who died in his young beauty, moved, As Astrophel, those English hearts of old. And the new seas shall take the new ships home Telling how yet the Dymock orchards stand. And you shall walk with Julius at Rome, And Paul shall be my fellow in the Strand ; There in the midst of all those words shall be Our names, our ghosts, our immortality. 40 Petition O LORD, I pray : that for each happiness My housemate brings I may give baclv no less Than all my fertile will ; That I may take from friends but as the stream Creates again the hawthorn bloom adream Above the river sill ; That I may see the spurge upon the wall And hear the nesting birds give call to call, Keeping my wonder new ; That I may have a body fit to mate With the green fields, and stars, and streams in spate, And clean as clover-dew ; That I may have the courage to confute All fools with silence when they will dispute, All fools who will deride ; That 1 may know all strict and sinewy art As that in man which is the counterpart, Lord, of Thy fiercest pride ; 41 That somehow this beloved earth may wear A later grace for all the love I bear, For some song that I sing ; That, when I die, this word may stand for me He had a heart to praise, an eye to see, And beauty was his king. 42 May Garden A SHOWER of green gems on my apple-tree This first morning of May Has fallen out of the night, to be Herald of holiday — Bright gems of green that, fallen there. Seem fixed and glowing on the air. Until a flutter of blackbird wings Shakes and makes the boughs alive. And the gems are now no frozen things, Uut apple-green buds to thrive On sap of my IVIay garden, how well The green September globes will tell. Also my pear-tree has its buds, But they are silver yellow. Like autumn meadows when the floods Are silver under willow, And here shall long and shapely pears Be gathered while the autumn wears. And there are sixty daffodils Beneath my wall. . . . And jealousy it is that kills This world when all The spring's behaviour here is spent To make the world magnificent. 43 Reciprocity I DO not think that skies and meadows are Moral, or that the fixture of a star Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees Have v/isdom in their windless silences. Yet these are things invested in my mood With constancy, and peace, and fortitude. That in my troubled season I can cry Upon the wide composure of the sky, And envy fields, and wish that I might be As little daunted as a star or tree. 44 The Hours THOSE hours are best when suddenly The voices of the world are still, And in that quiet place is heard The voice of one small singing bird, Alone within his quiet tree ; When to one field that crowns a hill, With but the sky for neighbourhood, The crowding counties of my brain Give all their riches, lake and plain, Cornland and fell and pillared wood ; When in a hill-top acre, bare For the seed's use, I am aware Of all the beauty that an age Of earth has taught my eyes to see ; When Pride and Generosity, The Constant Heart and Evil Rage, Affection and Desire, and all The passions of experience Are no more tabled in my mind, 45 Learning's idolatry, but find Particularity of sense In daily fortitudes that fall From this or that companion, Or in an angry gossip's word : When one man speaks for Every One, When Music lives in one small bird, When in a furrowed hill we see All beauty in epitome — Those hours are best ; for those belong To the lucidity of song. 46 The Midlands BLACK in the summer night my Cotswold hill Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky Deep as the bedded violets that fill March woods with dusky passion. As I lie Abed between cool walls I watch the host Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain, And drowsily the habit of these most Beloved of English lands moves in my brain, While silence holds dominion of the dark, Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark. 1 see the valleys in their morning mist Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light, Happy with many a yeoman melodist : I see the little roads of twinkling white Busy with fieldward teams and market gear Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell The many-minded changes of the year, Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well ; I see the sun persuade the mist away. Till town and stead are shining to the day. I see the wagons move along the rows Of ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower, 47 I see the lissom husbandman who knows Deep in his heart the beauty of his power, As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids on The harvest home. I hear the rickyard fill With gossip as in generations gone, While wagon follows wagon from the hill. I think how, when our seasons all are sealed. Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field. I see the barns and comely manors planned By men who somehow moved in comely thought. Who, with a simple shippon to their hand, As men upon some godlike business wrought ; I see the little cottages that keep Their beauty still where since Plantagenet Have come the shepherds happily to sleep, Finding the loaves and cups of cider set ; I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old. Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold. And now the valleys that upon the sun Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again. And the last light upon the wolds is done. And silence falls on flocks and fields and men ; 48 And black upon the night I watch my hill, And the stars shine, and there an owly wing Brushes the night, and all again is still, And, from this land of worship that I sing, I turn to sleep, content that from my sires I draw the blood of England's midmost shires. 49 B Cotsvvold Love LUE skies are over Cotswold And April snows go by, The lasses turn their ribbons For April's in the sky, And April is the season When Sabbath girls are dressed, From Rodboro' to Campden, In all their silken best. An ankle is a marvel When first the buds are brown, And not a lass but knows it From Stow to Gloucester town. And not a girl goes walking Along the Cotswold lanes But knows men's eyes in April Are quicker than their brains. It's little that it matters, So long as you're alive. If you're eighteen in April, Or rising sixty-five. When April comes to Amberley With skies of April blue, And Cotswold girls are briding With slyly tilted shoe. 50 Moonlit Apples AT the top of the house the apples are laid in . rows, And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those Apples are deep- sea apples of green. There goes A cloud on the moon in the autumn night. A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then There is no sound at the top of the house of men Or mice ; and the cloud is blown, and the moon agam Dapples the apples with deep-sea light. They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams ; On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams. And quiet is the steep stair under. In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep. And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep On moon-washed apples of wonder. 51 Elizabeth Ann T HIS is the tale of Elizabeth Ann, Who went away with her fancy man. Ann was a girl who hadn't a gown As fine as the ladies who walk the town. All day long from seven to six Ann was polishing candlesticks, For Bishops and crapulous Millionaires To buy for their altars or bed-chambers. And youth in a year and a year will pass, But there's never an end of polishing brass. All day long from seven to six — Seventy thousand candlesticks. So frail and lewd Elizabeth Ann Went away with her fancy man. You Bishops and crapulous Millionaires, Give her your charity, give her your prayers. 52 H Blackbird E comes on chosen evenings, My blackbird bountiful, and sings Over the gardens of the town Just at the hour the sun goes down. His flight across the chimneys thick, By some divine arithmetic. Comes to his customary stack, And couches there his plumage black, And there he lifts his yellow bill, Kindled against the sunset, till These suburbs are like Dymock woods Where music has her solitudes, And while he mocks the winter's wrong Rapt on his pinnacle of song, Figured above our garden plots Those are celestial chimney-pots. 53 Mystery THINK not that mystery has place In the obscure and veiled face, Or when the midnight watches are Uncompanied of moon or star, Or where the fields and forests lie Enfolded from the loving eye By fogs rebellious to the sun, Or when the poet's rhymes are spun From dreams that even in his own Imagining are half-unknown. These are not mystery, but mere Conditions that deny the clear Reality that lies behind The weak, unspeculative mind, Beyond contagions of the air And screens of beauty everywhere, The brooding and tormented sky, The hesitation of an eye. Look rather when the landscapes glow Through crystal distances as though The forty shires of England spread Into one vision harvested, 54 Or when the nioonUt waters lie In silver cold lucidity ; Those countenances search that bear Witness to very character, And listen to the song that weighs A life's adventure in a phrase — These are the founts of wonder, these The plainer miracles to please The brain that reads the world aright ; Mere is the mystery of light. 55 Mrs. Willow MRS. THOMAS WILLOW seems very glum. Her life, perhaps, is very lonely and hum-drum. Digging up potatoes, cleaning out the weeds, Doing the little for a lone woman's needs. Who was her husband ? How long ago ? W^hat does she wonder ? What does she know ? Why does she listen over the wall. Morning and noon-time and twilight and all, As though unforgotten were some footfall ? " Good morning, Mrs. Willow." " Good morning, sir," Is all the conversation I can get from her. And her path-stones are white as lilies of the wood. And she washes this and that till she must be very good. She sends no letters, and no one calls, And she doesn't go whispering beyond her walls ; Nothing in her garden is secret, I think — That's all sun-bright with foxglove and pink, And she doesn't hover round old cupboards and shelves 56 As old people do who have buried themselves ; She has no late lamps, and she digs all day And polishes and plants in a common way, But glum she is, and she listens now and then P"or a footfall, a footfall, a footfall again, And whether it's hope, or whether it's dread, Or a poor old fancy in her head, I shall never be told ; it will never be said. 37 Deer SHY in their herding dwell the fallow deer. They are spirits of wild sense. Nobody near Comes upon their pastures. There a life they live, Of sufficient beauty, phantom, fugitive, Treading as in jungles free leopards do, Printless as evelight, instant as dew. The great kine are patient, and home-coming sheep Know our bidding. The fallow deer keep Delicate and far their counsels wild, Never to be folded reconciled To the spoiling hand as the poor flocks are ; Lightfoot, and swift, and unfamiliar. These you may not hinder, unconfined Beautiful flocks of the mind. 58 w Passage 'HEN you deliberate the page Of Alexander's pilgrimage, Or say — " It is three years, or ten, Since Easter slew Connolly's men," Or prudently to judgment come Of Antony or Absalom, And think how duly are designed Case and instruction for the mind, Remember then that also we, In a moon's course, are history. 59 History SOMETIMES, when walls and occupation seem A prison merely, a dark barrier Between me everywhere And life, or the larger province of the mind, As dreams confined. As the trouble of a dream, I seek to make again a life long gone, To be My mind's approach and consolation, To give it form's lucidity, Resilient form, as porcelain pieces thrown In buried China by a wrist unknown, Or mirrored brigs upon Fowey sea. Then to my memory comes nothing great Of purpose, or debate, Or perfect end, Pomp, nor love's rapture, nor heroic hours to spend — But most, and strangely, for long and so much have I seen, Comes back an afternoon Of a June Sunday at Elsfield, that is up on a green 60 Hill, and there, Through a little farm parlour door, A floor Of red tiles and blue, And the air Sweet with the hot June sun cascading through The vine-leaves under the glass, and a scarlet fume Of geranium flower, and soft and yellow bloom Of musk, and stains of scarlet and yellow glass. Such are the things remain Quietly, and for ever, in the brain, And the things that they choose for history-making pass. 6i To One I Love \S I walked along the passage, in the night, J~\ beyond the stairs, In the dark, I was afraid. Suddenly, As will happen you know, my dear, it will often happen. I knew the walls at my side. Knew the drawings hanging there, the order of their placing, And the door where my bed lay beyond, And the window on the landing — There was even a little ray of moonlight through it- All was known, familiar, my comfortable home ; And yet I was afraid, Suddenly, In the dark, like a child, of nothing. Of vastness, of eternity, of the queer pains of thought, Such as used to trouble me when I heard, When I was little, the people talk On Sundays of " As it was in the Beginning Is Now, and Ever Shall Be. . . ." 6?. I am thirty-six years old, And folk are friendly to me, And there are no ghosts that should liave reason to haunt me, And I have tempted no magical happenings By forsaking the clear noons of thought For the wizardries that the credulous take To be golden roads to revelation. I knew all was simplicity there, Without conspiracy, without antagonism, And yet I was afraid, Suddenly, A child, in the dark, forlorn. . . . And then, as suddenly, I was aware of a profound, a miraculous under- standing, Knowledge that comes to a man But once or twice, as a bird's note In the still depth of the night Striking upon the silence . . . I stood at the door, and there Was mellow candle-light. And companionship, and comfort, And I knew That it was even so, 63 That it must be even so With death. I knew That no harm could have touched me out of my fear, Because I had no grudge against anything, Because I had desired In the darkness, when fear came, Love only, and pity, and fellowship. And it would have been a thing monstrous, Something defying nature And all the simple universal fitness For any force there to have come evilly Upon me, who had no evil in my heart, But only trust, and tenderness For every presence about me in the air, For the very shadow about me, Being a little child for no one's envy. And I knew that God Must understand that we go To death as little children, Desiring love so simply, and love's defence. And that he would be a barren God, without humour, To cheat so little, so wistful, a desire, 64 That he created In us, in our childishness . , . And I may never again be sure of this, But there, for a moment, In the candle-Hght, Standing at the door, I knew. 65 The Toll-Gate House THE toll-gate's gone, but still stands lone, In the dip of the hill, the house of stone, And over the roof in the branching pine The great owl sits in the white moonshine. An old man lives, and lonely, there, His windows yet on the cross-roads stare. And on Michaelmas night in all the years A galloping far and faint he hears . . . His casement open wide he flings With "Who goes there?" and a lantern swings . But never more in the dim moonbeam Than a cloak and a plume and the silver gleam Of passing spurs in the night can he see, For the toll-gate's gone and the road is free. 66 A Lesson to My Ghost SHALL it be said that the wind's gone over The hill this night, and no ghost there ? Not the shape of an old-time lover Pacing the old road, the high road there ? By the peacock tree, the tree that spreads its branches Like a proud peacock's tail (so my lady says). Under a cloudy sky, while the moon launches Scattered beams of light along the dark silences? I will be a ghost there, though I yet am breathing, A living presence still in tight cottage walls, Sitting by the fire whose smoke goes wreathing Over fields and farmyards and farmyard stalls. As a player going to rehearse his faring, I will send my ghost there before my bones are dust. Bid it learn betimes the sock it shall be wearing When it bids the clay good-bye as all ghosts must. Hush, then ; upstairs sleep my lady and her mother ; The cat curls the night away, and will not stir ; Beams of lamp and beech-log cross one another, No wind walks in the garden there. Go, my ghost, it calls you, the high road, the winding, 67 Written by the moonlight on the sleeping hill ; I will watch the ashes, you go finding The way you shall walk for generations still. The window-latch is firm, the curtain does not tremble. The wet grass bends not under your tread, Brushing you shake not the rain from the bramble, They hear no gate who lie abed. Nodding" I stare at the hearth, but I see you, My half-wit travels with you the road ; There shall be your kingdom when death shall free you, When body's wit is neither leash nor goad. Past the peacock branches proudly gliding. Your own ghost now, I know, I know, You look to the moon on the hill-top riding, The mares in the meadow sleep as you go. Your eyes that are dark yet great for divining Brood on the valleys of wood and plough, And you stand where the silver flower is shining Of cherry against the black holly bough. Rehearse, O rehearse, as you pass by the hedge- rows. Remembrance of all that was my bright will, That so my grave of whispers and echoes 68 May rest for the ghost that is yet on the hill. The primroses burn and the cowslips cover The starry meadows as heaven is clad ; Learn them all, O ghost, as a lover, So shall your coming again be glad. The inn-sign hangs in the windless watches, You pass the shadowy piles of stone Under the walls where the hawthorn catches Shapes from the m.oon that are not its own. Wander, wander down by the cresses, Over the crest of the hill, between The brown lych-gate and the cider-presses. Past the well and across the green. Heed me, my ghost, my heir. To-morrow Or soon, my body to ash must fall. Heed me, ghost, and I shall not sorrow — Learn this beauty, O learn it all. Night goes on, the beech-log's ended. Half-wit's drowsy, and doctrine done, — Ghost, come home from the road ; befriended My moon shall be when I leave the sun. 69 The Dying Philosopher to His Fiddler COME, fiddler, play one tune before I die. Philosophy is barren, and I lie Untouched now by the plagues of all the schools, And only silly fiddlers are not fools. Bring then your bow, and on the strings let be, In this last hour, merely the melody Of waves and leaves and footfalls hazardous, Where crafty logic shall not keep with us. The patient fields of knowledge did I sow ; I have done with knowledge — for I nothing know, Wisdom and folly set their faces hence, And in their eyes a twin-intelligence. Only your notes may quick again the keen Tree-shadows cut upon the paddock's green. The pools where mirrored branches are at rest, The heron lifting to her windy nest. And these are things that know not argument ; Come, fiddler, play ; philosophy is spent. Out of my thought the chiding doctors slip, And you are now the only scholarship. 70 T Two Ships ^HE morning shone with April on A little silver ship at sea, With happy sails, and bearing bales To Panama from Tripoli, And fortunately bound She went without a sound. Into the night, orlornly bright There came a little ship of gold, Without a name, she passed in flame, With cargoes never to be told. Out of a port unknown, Swinging to death alone. 71 Portia's Housekeeping WE are thrifty of joy in this our modern house; We probe the springs of joy with uneasy rods And shadow the worm in every thrilling bud. Virtue we know will walk in seedy rags Of knavery when the better humour fails ; And we know the good man's shadow of desire. It was not so with Portia. She was simple, Plain for clear yes or no and good or bad. Bassanio at Belmont in the evening, Walking the terrace with Antonio, Was a good man with his friend, and that was all, Save that his lips were young and masterful. She had no fine philosophy of sin ; You lied, and that was bad. You gave your word. And, when time came, redeemed it. A treasure kept At another's cost was ashes in your hand. She liked her roses red, her lilies white, And counted punctual hours in guests a virtue. Sometimes she thought of a Jew and a young doctor Standing before the majesty of Venice, And smiled, without approval, then again To sow the asters or feed guinea-fowl. 72 Gratiano, finding ever new Nerissas Among her maids, she told not to be tedious, And Gratiano said she was growing dull. She liked the verse Lorenzo took to writing And made some tunes herself upon the lute To fit a little moonlight sequence. When Launcelot Gobbo stole a goose at Christmas, She did not say he was an honest fellow, But rated him and almost sent him off; He didn't brag about it to his fellows. She had two children, and said two were enough, And loved them. She believed there was a God With an impatient ear for casuistry. Bassanio had no regrets, but some Agreed with Gratiano. I do not know. In Belmont was a lady richly left ? 73 In the Valley LET none devout forgive my sin Who have not sinned as I ; The soul immaculate within Has not to measure by My sorrowing husbandry. The dark, the error, of my days Shall be consoled by none That have not in forbidden ways Wandered as I have done With faces from the sun. Princes of virtue, keep your skill Of pardon for your peers ; Frail with the frail I travel still Along uncertain years — Forbear your holy tears. One hour in black Gethsemane I walked with him alone. He sees, he knows, he touches me— How shall it then be known To you, O hearts of stone ? 74 Who were before Me LONG time in some forgotten churchyard earth of Warwickshire, My fathers in their generations lie beyond desire, And nothing breaks the rest, I know, of John Drinkwater now, Who left in sixteen-seventy his roan team at plough. And James, son of John, is there, a mighty plough- man too, Skilled he was at thatching and the barleycorn brew, And he had a heart-load of sorrow in his day, But ten score of years ago he put it away. Then Thomas came, and played a fiddle cut of mellow wood, And broke his heart, they say, for love that never came to good . . . A hundred winter peals and more have rung above his bed — O, poor eternal grief, so long, so lightly, comforted. 75 And in the gentle yesterday these were but glimmering tombs, Or tales to tell on fireside eves of legendary dooms ; I being life while they were none, what had their dust to bring But cold intelligence of death upon my tides oi Spring ? Now grief is in my shadow, and it seems well enough To be there with my fathers, where neither fear nor love Can touch me more, nor spite of men, nor my own teasing blame, While the slow mosses weave an end of my forgotten name. 76 I Samplers N praise of love, upon my mind Samplers I'll make to be, As lovers long ago designed Emblems of courtesy, Threading in warm and frosty wools Their wisdom's calendars and rules. He errs to think those hands were set All spinster-like and cold, Who spelt a scarlet alphabet, And birds of blue and gold. And made immortal garden-plots Of daisies and forget-me-nots. The bodkins wove an even pace, Yet these are lyrics too, Breathing of spectral lawn and lace, Old ardours to renew, For in the corners love would keep His fold among the little sheep. So I will samplers make as well. Nor shall the colours lack In shining characters to tell Your lovely Zodiac, And all your kisses there and words Shall spring again as flowers and birds. 77 The Pledge WHEN love is bright and whole again, I'll sing like the bee's weather, I'll set my colours up again Like the cock-pheasant's feather, I'll find a note to make me one With lyric birds that sing the sun. I'll fill my songs with palmer's buds And sprigs of thorn for Whitsunday, And they shall dance as willow rods And shine with garlands of the may, I'll be a theme that takes the spring From bushes where the blackbirds sing. I'll walk among my sheep again And turn my steps to numbers, When love is bright and whole again And fear has gone to slumbers, With wings again and flowers and stars To be my coloured calendars. 78 I Nunc Dimittis HAVE seen the plover's wing, And the grey willow bough, The sandy bubbling spring, The hawk over the plough. And now, instructed so, I am content to go. Songs of the lake and wood Of water and wind I have heard, And I have understood According to Thy word. What then is now to learn ? Seaward, O soul, return. Though I shall walk again Nor spring nor winter field, Yet surely in my brain Are spring and winter sealed. Earth you have shown me all, I am ready for the call. 79 Persuasion Then I asked : " Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so ? " He replied : " All Poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains ; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything." Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell. AT any moment love unheralded l\. Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread Are withered in untimely burial. So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by. And as a beggar walks unfriended ways, With but remembered beauty to defy The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days. Or in that later travelling he comes Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells Himself, again, again, forgotten tombs Are all now that love was, and blindly spells His royal state of old a glory cursed, Saying •' I have forgot," and that's the worst. 80 II If we should part upon that one embrace, And set far courses ever, each from each. With all our treasure but a fading face And little ghostly syllables of speech. Should beauty's moment never be renewed, And moons on moons look out for us in vain. And each but whisper from a solitude To hear but echoes of a lonely pain, — Still in a world that fortune cannot change Should walk those two that once were you and I, Those two that once when moon and stars were strange Poets above us in an April sky, Heard a voice falling on the midnight sea, Mute, and for ever, but for you and me. 8i Ill This nature, this great flood of life, this cheat That uses us as baubles for her coat, Takes love, that should be nothing but the beat Of blood for its own beauty, by the throat, Saying, you are my servant and shall do My purposes, or utter bitterness Shall be your wage, and nothing come to you But stammering tongues that never can confess. Undaunted then in answer here I cry, " You wanton, that control the hand of him Who masquerades as wisdom in a sky Where holy, holy, sing the cherubim, I will not pay one penny to your name Though all my body crumble into shame." 82 IV Woman, I once had whimpered at your hand, Saying that all the wisdom that I sought Lay in your brain, that you were as the sand Should cleanse the muddy mirrors of my thought ; I should have read in you the character Of oracles that quick a thousand lays, Looked in your eyes, and seen accounted there Solomons legioned for bewildered praise. Now have I learnt love as love is. I take Your hand, and with no inquisition learn All that your eyes can tell, and that's to make A little reckoning and brief, then turn Away, and in my heart I hear a call, " I love, I love, I love " ; and that is all. 83 When all the hungry pain of love I bear, And in poor lightless thought but burn and burn, And wit goes hunting wisdom everywhere, Yet can no word of revelation learn, When endlessly the scales of yea and nay In dreadful motion fall and rise and fall, When all my heart in sorrow I could pay Until at last were left no tear at all, Then if with tame or subtle argument Companions come and draw me to a place Where words are but the tappings of content, And life spreads all her garments with a grace, I curse that ease, and hunger in my heart Back to my pain and lonely to depart. 84 VI Not anything you do can make you mine, For enterprise with equal charity In duty as in love elect will shine, The constant slave of mutability. Nor can your words for all their honey breath Outsing the speech of many an older rhyme, And though my ear deliver them from death One day or two, it is so little time. Nor does your beauty in its excellence Excel a thousand in the daily sun, — Yet must I put a period to pretence, And with my logic's catalogue have done, For act and word and beauty are but keys To unlock the heart, and you, dear love, are these. 85 VII Never the heart of spring had trembled so As on that day when first in Paradise We went afoot as novices to know For the first time what blue was in the skies, What fresher green than any in the grass, And how the sap goes beating to the sun, And tell how on the clocks of beauty pass Minute by minute till the last is done. But not the new birds singing in the brake, And not the buds of our discovery. The deeper blue, the wilder green, the ache For beauty that we shadow as we see, Made heaven, but we, as love's occasion brings, Took these, and made them Paradisal things. 86 VIII The lilacs offer beauty to the sun, Throbbing with wonder as eternally For sad and happy lovers they have done With the first bloom of summer in the sky, Yet they are newly spread in honour now, Because, for every beam of beauty given Out of that clustering heart, back to the bough My love goes beating, from a greater heaven. So be my love for good or sorry luck Bound, it has virtue on this April eve That shall be there for ever when they pluck Lilacs for love. And though I come to grieve Long at a frosty tomb, there still shall be My happy lyric in the lilac tree. 87 IX When they make silly question of my love, And speak to me of danger and disdain, And look by fond old argument to move My wisdom to docility again, When to my prouder heart they set the pride Of custom and the gossip of the street, And show me figures of myself beside A self diminished at their judgment seat. Then do I sit as in a drowsy pew To hear a priest expounding th' heavenly will. Defiling wonder that he never knew With stolen words of measured good and ill, For to the love that knows their counselling, Out of my love contempt alone I bring. 88 Not love of you is most that I can bring, Since what I am to love you is the test, And should I love you more than any thing You would but be of idle love possessed, A mere love wandering in appetite. Counting your glories and yet bringing none, Finding in you occasions of delight, A thief of payment for no service done. But when of labouring life I make a song And bring it you, as that were my reward, To let what most is me to you belong. Then do I come of high possessions lord. And loving life more than my love of you I give you love more excellently true. 89 XI What better tale could any lover tell When age or death his reckoning shall write Than thus, " Love taught me only to rebel Against these things, — the thieving of delight Without return ; the gospellers of fear Who, loving, yet deny the truth they bear. Sad-suited lusts with lecherous hands to smear The cloth of gold they would but dare not wear. And love gave me great knowledge of the trees. And singing birds, and earth with all her flowers, Wisdom I knew and righteousness in these, I lived in their atonement all my hours ; Love taught me how to beauty's eye alone The secret of the lying heart is known." 90 XII This then at last ; we may be wiser far Than love, and put his folly to our measure, Yet shall we learn, poor wizards that we are, That love chimes not nor motions at our pleasure. We bid him come, and light an eager fire, And he goes down the road without debating, We cast him from the house of our desire. And when at last we leave he will be waiting. And in the end there is no folly but this, To counsel love out of our little learning, For still he knows where rotten timber is. And where the boughs for the long winter burning, And when life needs no more of us at all, Love's word will be the last that we recall. THE END INDEX OF FIRST LINES A shower of green gems on my apple-tree 43 All day long the traffic goes 20 Anthony Crundle of Dorrington Wood 38 As I walked along the passage, in the night, beyond the stairs 62 At any moment love unheralded 80 At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows 51 Austere and clad in sombre robes of grey 25 Beyond my window in the night 26 Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill 47 Blue skies are over Cotswold 50 Come down at dawn from windless hills 35 Come, fiddler, play one tune before I die 70 Come, sweetheart, listen, for I have a thing 13 For all ill words that I have spoken 27 God laughed when he made Grafton 24 He comes on chosen evenings 53 I do not think that skies and meadows are 44 I have seen the plover's wing 79 92 I heard my love go laughing 9 1 know the pools where the grayling rise 19 I never went to Mamble 31 If all the carts were painted gay 37 If we should part upon that one embrace 81 In praise of love, upon my mind 77 Let none devout forgive my sin 74 Long time in some forgotten churchyard earth of \\'arwickshire 75 Lord, not for light in darkness do we pray 7 Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed 33 Mrs. Thomas Willow seems very glum 56 Never the heart of spring had trembled so 86 No ; lovers yet shall tell the nightingale 40 Not anything you do can make you mine 85 Not love of you is most that I can bring 8g Now June walks on the waters 34 O Lord, I pray : that for each happiness 41 Old man, grey man, good man scavenger 29 Pierrot alone 11 Seven days he travelled 14 Shall it be said that the wind's gone over 67 Shy in their herding dwell the fallow deer 58 Sometimes, when walls and occupation seem 60 The lilacs offer beauty to the sun 87 The morning shone with April on 71 93 The toll-gate's gone, but still stands lone 66 Think not that mystery has place 54 This is the tale of Elizabeth Ann 52 This nature, this great flood of life, this cheat 82 This then at last ; we may be wiser far 91 Those hours are best when suddenly 45 We are thrifty of joy in this our modern house 72 What better tale could any lover tell 90 When all the hungry pain of love I bear 84 When love is bright and whole again 78 When other beauty governs other lips 39 When they make silly question of my love 88 When you deliberate the page 59 Woman, I once had whimpered at your hand 83 PRINTED IN GRKAT liRlTAIN P.V BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHKK MARCH, 1922 POEMS BT JOHN DRINKWATER Swords and Ploughshares Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. Fifth Impression. {:\th Thousand) Olton Pools Crown 8vo. 3s. Gd. net. Fourth Impression. {^th Thousand) Poems 1908— 1914 Crown 8vo. Gs. net. Fifth Impression. {jth Thousand) *,* A selection made by Mr. Drinkwater from his volumes published before Siuords a7i