THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 7
 
 di-
 
 NEIGHBOURS
 
 BY 
 
 WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 
 
 Livelihood 
 
 Hill Tracks 
 
 womenkind 
 
 Daily Bread 
 
 Collected Poems 
 
 Battle and Other Poems 
 
 Borderlands and Thoroughfares
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1920 
 
 All rifihts reserved
 
 Copyright, 1920, 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1920.
 
 
 TO 
 MICHAEL 
 
 Brief songs of these distracted days 
 I dedicate to you 
 In whose clear undistracted gaze 
 Old Eden blooms anew — 
 
 That, when beset by hopes and fears 
 Which life yet hides from you, 
 You'll think of me in after years 
 And find my singing true. 
 
 I ;21G2
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 ROBERT AND ELEANOR ASKEW 
 
 What do you listen for? 
 
 I hardly know, 
 Unless my heart is hearkening for the flow 
 Of Tarras Water, singing by the door 
 Of Kirdlestead. I've never lived before 
 So far from running water in my life. 
 The quiet frightens me. 
 
 The quiet, wife? 
 You never heard the tramp of passing feet 
 Or rumble of wheels at Kirdlestead. This street 
 Is quiet enough ; but surely Kirdlestead 
 Was quieter? 
 
 I've never lain in bed 
 Without the voice of water calling clear, 
 Save when the West wind drowned it, in my ear; 
 And now I cannot sleep : the darkness lies 
 
 [I]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Heavily as a deadweight on my eyes, 
 
 As though I lay deep-buried underground 
 
 With ears that strained to catch the faintest sound 
 
 Of wind in grass or water over stones : 
 
 The silence steals like ice into my bones 
 
 And numbs my body, freezing blood and breath 
 
 Till my heart flutters in the clutch of death. 
 
 And you can talk of death, a new-made bride, 
 Lying the first night by your husband's side? 
 
 The husband that my father pledged me to 
 With his last dying breath ! The dead and you 
 Have held me to my troth : and I'm the wife 
 Of my dead father's faithful friend for life — 
 For life that now I know can never be 
 The song that Tarras Water sang to me. 
 
 [2]
 
 CELIA AND SYLVIA WARDEN 
 
 What is that tapping? There it is again! 
 
 A spray of roses blown against the pane — 
 Thorns scratching and a softly-thudding bloom. 
 
 It's strange as we mope here in this prim room 
 Yawning for bedtime in the cold lamplight, 
 To think of roses blowing in the night, 
 And just that thin glass shutting them outside. 
 Oh, how I long to fling the windows wide ! 
 
 Roses and thorns! 
 
 Ay, thorns, too, if need be! 
 Rather than hear them tap incessantly 
 The cold glass that shuts in my heart, I'd bare 
 My bosom for the sharpest thorns to tear. 
 
 [3l
 
 JOHN AND MARGARET 
 NETHERTON 
 
 Why do you strike a match ? 
 
 I want to see 
 What time it is, wife. 
 
 It is nearly three. 
 
 How do you know that, wife, without a light? 
 
 I know. 
 
 You know? Well, sure enough, you're right. 
 
 I cannot think . . . 
 
 You don't remember, then ? 
 
 Remember, wife? 
 
 The memories of men ! 
 But, husband, as it seems you don't recall, 
 What makes you want to know the time at all ? 
 
 I couldn't say, wife: but I cannot get 
 A wink of sleep — as if my eyes were set 
 On something that they cannot see quite clear : 
 
 [4]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 My thoughts keep fumbling something very near 
 That yet eludes them always. And just now 
 I felt that, rest or no rest, anyhow, 
 I must know what o'clock it was. But you — 
 I cannot think, wife, how it was you knew 
 Almost the very moment . . . 
 
 T was nigh three 
 A year ago that he smiled up at me ; 
 And as within my arms he lay so still 
 I felt his body stiffen and grow chill 
 Against my bosom : and how should my breast 
 Forget the moment when his heart found rest? 
 
 [51
 
 OLIVER AND URSULA REED 
 
 It's useless, wife, to turn it up : the oil 
 Is done, and you'll just char the wick. 
 
 The toil 
 Lamps take to keep them going ! It's not long 
 Since last I filled it. Surely something's wrong 
 With a lamp that burns so quickly. 
 
 Ay . . . the light 
 We thought would burn a lifetime, in one night 
 Consumed its fuel in a wild flare, and we 
 Are left a charred wick, smouldering smokily, 
 To work by till, at last, a dull red spark, 
 It shall wink out and leave us in the dark. 
 
 [6]
 
 BARBARA FELL 
 
 Stephen, wake up! There's someone at the gate. 
 
 Quick, to the window. . . . Oh, you'll be too late! 
 
 I hear the front door opening quietly. 
 
 Did you forget last night to turn the key? 
 
 A foot is on the stairs — nay, just outside 
 
 The very room — the door is opening wide. . . . 
 
 Stephen, wake up! Wake up! Who's there? 
 
 Who's there ? 
 I only feel a cold wind in my hair. . . . 
 Have I been dreaming, Stephen? Husband, wake 
 And comfort me: I think my heart will break. 
 I never knew you sleep so sound and still. . . . 
 O my heart's love, why is your hand so chill ? 
 
 [7]
 
 KATHERINE WEIR 
 
 Though I have been a none-too-happy wife, 
 
 And now my children grow away from me, 
 
 Bringing to old age fresh anxiety, 
 
 I have been used ; and to be used by life, 
 
 Even ill-used and broken utterly 
 
 With every faith betrayed and trust abused, 
 
 Is a kinder lot than in security 
 
 To crumble coldly to the grave, unused. 
 
 [8]
 
 ESTHER MILBURN 
 
 Once realised, what else was left to do 
 
 But part and go our separate ways anew ? 
 
 I've not set eyes upon him since that night. 
 
 Why did we marry ? Why did that paper light 
 
 I held the match to ? Yes, it's gone black out, 
 
 Leaving the sticks unkindled, and no doubt 
 
 The fire must be relaid before 't will burn. 
 
 But when love fails there is no second turn. 
 
 If once the paper doesn't fire the wood, 
 
 Or the blazing wood, the coal, there's little good 
 
 In striking matches to eternity : 
 
 They only spurt and flicker mockingly, 
 
 Scorching the fingers, to illuminate 
 
 Charred litter in the cold bars of the grate. 
 
 [9]
 
 PHILIP AND PHOEBE WARE 
 
 Who is that woman, Philip, standing there 
 Before the mirror doing up her hair? 
 
 You're dreaming, Phoebe, or the morning light 
 Mixing and mingling with the dying night 
 Makes shapes out of the darkness, and you see 
 Some dream-remembered phantasy maybe. 
 
 Yet, it grows clearer with the growing day ; 
 And in the cold dawnlight her hair is grey : 
 Her lifted arms are naught but bone : her hands 
 Are lean as claws, as, fumbling long, she stands 
 Trying to pin that wisp into its place. 
 O Philip, I must look upon her face 
 There in the mirror. Nay, but I will rise 
 And peep over her shoulder . . . Oh, the eyes 
 That burn out from that face of skin and bone 
 Searching my very marrow are my own ! 
 
 [10]
 
 ANDREW AND ANN HEATHER- 
 
 INGTON 
 
 What are you thinking of so seriously? 
 My birthday, Ann. 
 
 Your birthday ? Mercy me, 
 I'd quite forgotten that it falls to-day ! 
 
 What matter, wife? Birthdays as one grows grey 
 Are scarce the anniversaries of joy 
 They once were. 
 
 I can't picture you, a boy. 
 Your hair's no greyer now than when we met 
 The first time, just a year ago : and yet 
 You did not think yourself too grey to wed 
 A girl just fresh from school. 
 
 And her gold head 
 Seemingly didn't think itself too young 
 To marry grizzled locks? 
 
 A golden tongue 
 Had more to do with it than silver hairs. 
 
 [ii]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 But you, you came upon me unawares 
 Before I'd realised what life might be, 
 Before I knew what it might mean to me. 
 
 Though you were old enough to be more wise. . . 
 
 Yet not too old to be dazzled by your eyes ! 
 My heart was young enough . . . 
 
 At fifty-nine ! 
 
 Ay, and still loves to see your blue eyes shine 
 Even though anger fire them. 
 
 Then it's true 
 Years count for naught. I'm older far than you. 
 Your heart's a boy's heart still : but mine's as old 
 As any woman's heart whose tale is told. 
 Though you were forty years of age, a man 
 Halfway through life before my life began, 
 I have outstripped you in a single year, 
 And have naught left to hope for or to fear. 
 
 [12]
 
 REBECCA NIXON AND MARTHA 
 
 WAUGH 
 
 If your clock's going at all, it must be slow. 
 Surely, it's stopped? 
 
 It stopped a week ago. 
 
 A week ago — and you have let it stand ? 
 
 I hadn't the heart to wind it up. No hand 
 
 But Ben's has turned the key since he, himself, 
 
 Put the clock there upon the mantelshelf 
 
 The day that we came home for the first time 
 
 To set up house together : and its chime 
 
 Had never failed to sound an hour since then, 
 
 Unless he had it down to clean ; for Ben 
 
 Was handy and could always overhaul 
 
 A clock, though it was not his trade at all, 
 
 As well as any watchmaker. His heart 
 
 Doted on wheels : he'd handle every part 
 
 So daintily that you could never guess 
 
 His job was hewing coal. I must confess 
 
 Wheels always daunted me : but Ben's brain went 
 
 By clockwork ; and his happiest hours were spent 
 
 [13]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Sorting old clocks and trying to make them go. 
 And that one's never been a second slow 
 In all these years or half-a-second fast, 
 Or failed to strike . . . until Ben breathed his last 
 On Monday morn before the stroke of three . . . 
 Though all the town's clocks hammered presently 
 As if they struck my heart . . . Ben always wound 
 That clock each Sunday ; but when the last came 
 
 round 
 He'd been in bed a week, and his poor mind 
 Was wandering — though his fingers tried to wind 
 Some ghostly clock that troubled him all night — 
 And when I stole downstairs and struck a light, 
 I missed the tick ; and with a still white face 
 Ben's clock was standing silent in its place 
 With motionless hands just on the stroke of three. 
 Its heart had stopped when Ben's stopped. As, 
 
 for me 
 I'll never wind it up again : I know 
 Even if I cared, no touch could make it go 
 But Ben's : and those still hands will always keep 
 My heart in mind . . . 
 
 Nay, Martha, you need sleep. 
 You mustn't brood like this. Try to forget. 
 Come, let me wind it up for you and set 
 The old clock going. Only think how Ben 
 Would hate to have it standing. 
 
 [14]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Wind it then. 
 Ben hated a stopped clock : and now he's gone, 
 It seems I've got to keep things going on. 
 
 [I5l
 
 WILLIAM AND AGNES PRINGLE 
 
 You've locked the doors and snecked the windows 
 tight ? 
 
 I've locked up as I've locked up every night 
 Since father crept that last time painfully 
 Upstairs and left the locking-up to me — 
 Since for the last time father went to bed 
 To rise no more. To think that he's been dead 
 Just twenty years — ay, to the very hour ! 
 The clock was striking in the Abbey tower 
 When he sat up. "Are all the windows fast?" 
 He whispered, then dropped back and breathed his 
 
 last. 
 To think I'd nigh forgotten! 
 
 Ay, to-day, 
 Your thoughts have all been turned a different way. 
 
 True, lass : and yet it's queer I should forget. 
 
 Queer, that a bridegroom's thoughts should not 
 
 be set 
 On death? 
 
 [16]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Nay, queer I didn't choose instead 
 A different day in all the year to wed. 
 
 Ay — but you've not forgotten to secure 
 
 The doors and windows : so you may feel sure 
 
 While such important things you think of still 
 
 Your mind's not getting over-flighty, Will. 
 
 But you must never let a harebrained wife 
 
 Divert you from the habits of a life. 
 
 Yet, here's just one thing, Will, that puzzles me : 
 
 What is it you lock out so carefully — 
 
 That you've locked out each night these twenty years, 
 
 And your old father with his anxious fears 
 
 Locked out before you, and his father, too, 
 
 As likely as not, before him? Why should you 
 
 Secure yourself against the harmless night? 
 
 I never looked upon it in that light — 
 But it's the custom . . . 
 
 What is it that you dread 
 Will come upon you as you lie in bed, 
 If you should leave a window or a door 
 Unfastened ? 
 
 Well, I hardly know, I'm sure! 
 
 [17]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 No bolt or bar has ever locked out death : 
 
 So your old father might have spared his breath. 
 
 Or is it, rather, something you lock in 
 
 Each night, lest thieves . . . 
 
 There's naught for thieves to win; 
 Though I had left the doors and windows wide 
 These many years . . . 
 
 But then, you'd no young bride. 
 And now, I wonder if you know aright 
 Or realise what you lock in to-night ? 
 
 [18]
 
 NICHOLAS HALL 
 
 Well, who are you? And how did you come there? 
 
 I must have nodded, drowsing in my chair, 
 
 Although I could have sworn I hadn't slept 
 
 Or even winked an eyelid, but had kept 
 
 My eyes set steadily upon the glow, 
 
 Dreaming of fires burnt out so long ago — 
 
 Ay, long ago ! But you, when did you come ? 
 
 Why do you stand there, smiling, keeping mum ? 
 
 I felt no draught blow from the opening door, 
 
 And heard no footstep on the sanded floor. 
 
 W r hy don't you speak, young man ? — for you are 
 
 young — 
 That much I see — and surely you've a tongue? 
 And young men should be civil to old men. 
 What, you won't answer ? Please to leave me, then, 
 To my own hearthside : please to go away. 
 You'll be an old man, too, yourself, some day; 
 And you'll be sorry then, you will, my son, 
 To think you stood there grinning, making fun 
 Of an old man's afflictions, an old man 
 Who once was young, too, when the quick blood 
 
 ran . . . 
 But who you are, I can't make out at all. 
 
 [19]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Why do you cast no shadow on the wall 
 While the high chair you lean against throws back 
 A shadow on the whitewash sharp and black? 
 There's something half-familiar, now the flame 
 Lights up your face — something that when you 
 
 came 
 Was passing through my mind ... I can't re- 
 call . . . 
 Ah God, what's happening to Nicholas Hall 
 When he can see his young self standing there 
 Mocking his old self huddled in a chair! 
 
 [20]
 
 BLIND BELL 
 
 Like a wind-writhen ash 
 On a rime-grizzled moor, 
 Corpse-cold in the shade 
 Beside the church-door, 
 
 She stood with a grin 
 As we trod, newly-wed, 
 The slimy green path 
 By the mounds of the dead. 
 
 As her blank eyes bleared out 
 From the pocked yellow face 
 Like a moon on the wane, 
 We slackened our pace. 
 
 As her cruel blind eyes 
 Peered into each heart, 
 We faltered and trailed 
 Unlinked and apart 
 
 Till estranged and corpse-cold 
 We stood at our door, 
 Each lone as an ash 
 On a rime-grizzled moor. 
 
 [21]
 
 ELLEN CHESTER 
 
 After working all day at the tanpits, 
 With strong hands tanned horny and hard 
 And stained by the bark brown as leather 
 He would come every night from the yard. 
 
 And I from my work at the laundry, 
 With hands soused in suds clean and white 
 And soft to the touch as old linen 
 Would meet him halfway every night : 
 
 I'd meet him halfway every evening, 
 Though always I shuddered to feel 
 Those hard fingers gripping my fingers 
 And crushing my soft hands like steel. 
 
 But now I'm forgot and forsaken; 
 And eagerly waiting he stands 
 For a girl coming home from the gardens 
 With weathered and grubby red hands. 
 
 As unseen in the dark of a doorway 
 I watch him alone and apart, 
 My cold fingers fumble my bosom 
 To loosen his clutch from mv heart. 
 
 [22]
 
 RICHARD KENDAL 
 
 I could not sleep for aching cold", 
 
 And as I turned and tossed 
 
 I muttered : This sharp snap will mean 
 
 Money and labour lost : 
 
 My currant-bushes, newly-bought, 
 
 Will all be killed by frost. 
 
 The bushes I've saved up to buy, 
 
 And with back-breaking toil 
 
 Have set with roots spread carefully 
 
 In the well-watered soil 
 
 Are just an acre of innocents 
 
 For early frost to spoil. 
 
 Though every bush survived the cold 
 
 To pay me royally, 
 
 The breaking of the morrow's morn 
 
 Brought bitter news to me; 
 
 For in the night my oldest friend 
 
 Had perished, drowned at sea. 
 
 In drowning darkness, icy-chill, 
 My oldest friend was lost ; 
 
 [*3l
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Yet never once I'd thought of him 
 As fretfully I tost, 
 
 Concerned lest my new currant-trees 
 Should suffer from the frost. 
 
 [24]
 
 BETTY RIDDLE 
 
 As she sits at her stall in the Martinmas Fair 
 
 With a patched blue umbrella slung over her chair, 
 
 Old Betty Riddle sells 
 
 Green jacks and jargonels, 
 
 Fixing some ghost of old days with her stare. 
 
 " A ha'p'orth of greenjacks ! " each little boy cries, 
 
 Devouring six-pen'orth at least with his eyes : 
 
 Into his grubby hands 
 
 Pears drop as still he stands ; 
 
 But she gives him no glance as he munches his prize. 
 
 While mumbling and mowing she broods all the day, 
 
 And her mellow green pyramids dwindle away, 
 
 Folk in the roundabout 
 
 Racket and skirl and shout; 
 
 Yet never a word to it all does she say. 
 
 And even if, when her whole stock-in-trade's bought, 
 Some laughing lad's eye by that cold stare is caught, 
 Glumly away he'll slink 
 Too dull of wit to think 
 Of offering a penny to her for her thought. 
 
 [25]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 And soon they forget her, the lads without sense ; 
 Yet the thought that is burning that blue and intense 
 Past-piercing steely eye, 
 Blind to the passer-by, 
 
 Must be worth a deal more than the pears and the 
 pence. 
 
 Still staring she sits as the slow quarters chime 
 Till the raw fog has covered her bare boards with 
 
 rime — 
 Crazy old wife who sells 
 Green jacks and jargonels — 
 Having buried three husbands in all in her time. 
 
 [26]
 
 BESSIE STOKOE 
 
 He stood with the other young herds 
 
 At the Hiring to-day : 
 
 And I laughed and I chaffed and changed words 
 
 With every young hind of them all 
 
 As I stopped by the lollipop stall, 
 
 But never a word would he say. 
 
 He had straggly long straw-coloured hair 
 
 And a beard like a goat — 
 
 In his breeches a badly-stitched tear 
 
 That I longed, standing there in the crush, 
 
 To re-mend, as I hankered to brush 
 
 The ruddle and fluff from his coat. 
 
 But his bonnie blue eyes staring wide 
 Looked far beyond me, 
 As though on some distant fellside 
 His dogs were collecting the sheep, 
 And he anxiously watched them to keep 
 A young dog from running too free — 
 
 And I almost expected to hear 
 From the lips of the lad 
 
 [27]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 A shrill whistle sing in my ear 
 
 As he eyed the green hillside to check 
 
 The fussy black frolicking speck 
 
 That was chasing the grey specks like mad . 
 
 So I left them, and went on my way 
 
 With a lad with black hair; 
 
 And we swung and rode round all the day 
 
 To the racket of corncrake and gong: 
 
 But I never forgot in the throng 
 
 The eyes with the far-away stare. 
 
 The jimmy-smart groom at my side 
 
 Had twinkling black eyes; 
 
 But the grin on his mouth was too wide, 
 
 And his hands with my hands were too free 
 
 So I took care to slip him at tea 
 
 As he turned round to pay for the pies, 
 
 And I left him alone on the seat 
 With the teapot and cups 
 And the two pies he'd paid for to eat. 
 If he happens to guess at the cause, 
 It may teach him to keep his red paws 
 For the handling of horses and pups. 
 
 But alone in the rain and the dark 
 As I made for the farm 
 
 [28]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 I halted a moment to hark 
 To the sound of a shepherd's long stride : 
 And the shy lad stepped up to my side, 
 And I felt his arm link through my arm. 
 
 So it seems after all I'm to mend 
 Those breeches, and keep 
 That shaggy head clipped to the end, 
 And the shaggy chin clean, and to give 
 That coat a good brush — and to live 
 All my days in the odour of sheep. 
 
 [29]
 
 AGATHA TODD 
 
 Young lads tramping, fifes and drums 
 Down the street the hubbub comes : 
 
 And the drumsticks drub again 
 On my stretched and aching brain ; 
 
 While the screeching of the fife 
 Just goes through me like a knife. 
 
 Yet I thought the music gay 
 When Dick Lishman marched away; 
 
 And I laughed ; for what was he 
 But a lad who bothered me — 
 
 But a man of many men 
 I had little need of then? 
 
 Now I know that if the fife 
 
 Cut my heart-strings like a knife, 
 
 Rattling drumsticks, rub-a-dub, 
 On my coffin-lid would drub; 
 [3o]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 And my heart would never rest 
 In the hollow of my breast, 
 
 But w r ould always start and beat 
 To the tramping of dead feet. 
 
 [3i]
 
 RALPH LILBURN 
 
 The night we took the bees out to the heather, 
 The sealed hives stacked behind us, as together 
 We rode in the jingly jolting cart, were humming 
 Like the far-murmuring rumour of blown branches. 
 
 White in the moonflame was the flowering heather 
 
 And white the sandy trackway, as together 
 
 We travelled, and a dewy scent of honey 
 
 Hung in the warm white windless air of midnight. 
 
 A silvery trackway through moon-silvered heather 
 To the humming dark of the hives we'll ride together 
 For evermore through the murmurous dewy mid- 
 night, 
 My heart, a hive of honey-scented moonlight. 
 
 [32]
 
 OLIVER GARTH 
 
 Cold as mushrooms are her hands, 
 Cold and white, 
 As she awaits me in the night 
 Where St. Michael's steeple stands. 
 
 Cold as mushrooms are her lips 
 In the dew 
 
 Kissing mine beneath the yew 
 As within my arm she slips. 
 
 And I learn naught from her cold 
 Lightless eyes 
 
 Of her daydreams as she lies 
 Underneath the heavy mould. 
 
 Once her hands were brown as mine 
 
 When we stood 
 
 In the little rowan-wood 
 
 By the waters of the Tyne, 
 
 And her parted lips were bright 
 And as red 
 
 As the berries overhead 
 In the still October light. 
 [331
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 And I promised I'd be true 
 To her there . . . 
 And the rowan-trees are bare . 
 And we meet beneath the yew. 
 
 [34]
 
 HENRY TURNBULL 
 
 He planked down sixpence, and he took his drink, 
 
 Then slowly picked the change up from the zinc, 
 
 And in his breeches' pocket buttoned tight 
 
 Two greasy coppers which that very night 
 
 Were used by Betty Catchiside, called in 
 
 To lay him out, when she'd tied up his chin, 
 
 To keep his eyelids shut: and so he lies 
 
 With twopence change till doomsday on his eyes. 
 
 [35]
 
 SAM HOGARTH 
 
 He sits — his Bible open on his knee, 
 Nell, his old whippet, curled up at his feet — 
 Muttering at whiles and nodding drowsily 
 Over the damped slack-fire that dully burns 
 In the little grate : then shifting in his seat 
 He lifts the book with shaky hands, his head 
 Wagging with eagerness, and fumbling turns 
 From the tenth chapter of Genesis, unread, 
 To the well-thumbed flyleaf at the back, to pore 
 With spectacled weak reverent eyes once more, 
 Lest it escape his failing memory, 
 On Nell's proud scrawl-recorded pedigree. 
 
 [36]
 
 JAUNTY JACK 
 
 He'd run like a cat on the ridge of the roof, 
 And then to give proof 
 
 Of his daredevil wit he would stumble and slip 
 Down the slant of the slates and over the side — 
 While agape we would fear for the end of his 
 
 slide — 
 But just as he seemed to shoot over the edge 
 His fingers would grip 
 The lip of the gutter or maybe the ledge 
 Of a top-storey window; and so he'd hang there 
 Cockadoodling and kicking his heels in the air. 
 
 And then he'd swing on to the ladder and pant 
 
 Up the slippery slant, 
 
 And take up his trowel and hawk of wet lime, 
 
 Going quietly on with the job he was at 
 
 With the same solemn face and sly rake of the hat 
 
 As though he had worked without stopping to wink 
 
 The whole of the time, 
 
 So sober and smug that a newcomer'd think 
 
 That never a notion at all he had got 
 
 That wasn't concerned with the new chimney-pot. 
 
 [37]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 And no one could guess he was wedded for life 
 
 To a slut of a wife, 
 
 And had five gaping lasses and five gaping boys 
 
 To feed and to clothe and to keep in shoeleather, 
 
 And to scrub every Saturday night all together 
 
 At the scullery tap with a splash-dash and squall 
 
 And the hell of a noise. 
 
 Then one dark Winter morning his pride had a 
 
 fall — 
 Tripped over his shadow and headlong downstairs, 
 And ended his jests and his lardy-da airs. 
 
 [38]
 
 MICHAEL DODD 
 
 When the folding-star had kindled 
 In the embers of the West, 
 And the happy day was over, 
 Quietly we sank to rest 
 
 Thinking we should sleep till daybreak ; 
 But we wakened all too soon 
 As above the ridge of Hareshaw 
 Stole the cold white witches' moon — 
 
 Stole the icy moon and held us 
 Tranced as we with numb surprise 
 Saw the cold estranging glitter 
 Of each other's alien eyes. 
 
 [39l
 
 MARTHA CAFFREY 
 
 It must have been his name that stirred 
 My mind from slumber none too deep, 
 As, waking in the night I heard 
 My sister talking in her sleep. 
 
 I could not catch what else she said 
 As I lay there with heart aflame, 
 Thinking about the newly-dead, 
 Wondering why she should breathe his name 
 
 Why she should dream of him who lay 
 Scarce colder in the grave than he, 
 Since our unlucky wedding-day, 
 Had ever shown himself to me. 
 
 [40]
 
 MARGARET DEAN 
 
 When we broke in the lamp was burning still 
 With clear and steady light 
 Although the noonday blazed on heath and hill, 
 But in her eyes was night. 
 
 Their flame that had out-braved the stress and care 
 
 Of hope and fear and doubt 
 
 In the long quiet of the last despair 
 
 Had gently flickered out. 
 
 Ui]
 
 PHOEBE ELLIS 
 
 The little bell still sounds as true and clear 
 As when she rang it, standing at the door ; 
 And still the happy children when they hear 
 Run in from play, though she will ring no more. 
 
 But whether they remember, as they storm 
 The threshold, who once rang it, none can tell, 
 Or if for them each night her ghostly form 
 From some dim threshold tinkles a ghostly bell. 
 
 [42]
 
 ELLEN CHANDLER 
 
 As drowsily she lay in bed 
 
 And watched the sunlight dance and quiver 
 
 On the slant ceiling overhead, 
 
 And hearkened to the singing river, 
 
 She wondered who last watched the light 
 
 From off the singing water glancing 
 
 On the low ceiling's curded white 
 
 In golden rings and eddies dancing, 
 
 And even as she wondered, heard 
 A voice between a sigh and shiver, 
 Though nothing in the chamber stirred : 
 " Where comes no sound of singing river 
 I lie, who lay where you lie now, 
 Daughter, and watched that golden glancing - 
 Cold darkness heavy on my brow, 
 And done, the dazzle and the dancing ! ,: 
 
 [43]
 
 JANE BATHGATE 
 
 She never even stops to think 
 What she is doing here — 
 But scrubs potatoes at the sink 
 Or fetches William's beer, 
 
 Or baths their six young bairns, and mends 
 Their clothes with weary eyes — 
 Throughout a day that hardly ends 
 Before it's time to rise : 
 
 And she'll be much too tired to heed 
 In the grave's secure retreat, 
 When there's no longer any need 
 Of making both ends meet. 
 
 [44]
 
 ANTHONY EARNSHAW 
 
 We found him sleeping in the drifted snow 
 
 Beside his buried but still breathing ewes. 
 
 'Tis rarely granted any man, to know 
 
 And find, unsought, the death that he would choose ; 
 
 Yet he who'd always laboured among sheep 
 
 Since he could walk, and who had often said 
 
 That death should find him working, stumbled dead 
 
 Succouring his flocks, and by them fell asleep. 
 
 Spare sinewy body with brown knotted hands 
 Lean weathered face and eyes that burned so clear 
 From gazing ever through the winds that blow 
 Over wide grassy spaces, one who stands 
 Beside you, quiet on your hurdle-bier, 
 Envies your hard-earned death amid the snow. 
 
 [45]
 
 CHAMBERS
 
 CHAMBERS 
 
 The labyrinthine corridors of my mind 
 Between dead, lightless, many-chambered walls 
 In endless mazes of confusion wind : 
 And only now and again the live ray falls, 
 Touching the secret spring of some hid door 
 With magic, flinging open some unknown 
 Chamber of light wherein there dwells alone 
 Beauty or terror never glimpsed before. 
 
 Could but that ray through all the chambers glow 
 
 Once and for ever till my mind should burn 
 
 One sunlike sphere of still celestial light! 
 
 But only rarely, opening out of turn, 
 
 Two neighbouring doors spring wide at once and 
 
 show 
 Beauty and terror together in the night. 
 
 [49]
 
 DRIFTWOOD 
 
 Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock flames, 
 Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues, 
 And all the innumerable ever-changing hues 
 That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names, 
 Flicker and spire in our enchanted sight : 
 And as we gaze, the unsearchable mystery, 
 The unfathomed cold salt magic of the sea, 
 Shines clear before us in the quiet night. 
 
 We know the secret that Ulysses sought. 
 That moonstruck mariners since time began 
 Snatched at a drowning hazard — strangely brought 
 To our homekeeping hearts in drifting spars 
 We chanced to kindle under the cold stars — 
 The secret of the ocean-heart of man. 
 
 [5o]
 
 THE PAISLEY SHAWL 
 
 What were his dreams who wove this coloured 
 
 shawl — 
 The grey, hard-bitten weaver, gaunt and dour, 
 Out of whose grizzled memory, even as a flower 
 Out of bleak Winter at young April's call 
 In the old tradition of flowers breaks into bloom, 
 Blossomed the ancient intricate design 
 Of softly-glowing hues and exquisite line — 
 What were his dreams, crouched at his cottage loom ? 
 
 What were her dreams, the laughing April lass 
 Who first, in the flowering of young delight, 
 With parted lips and eager tilted head 
 And shining eyes, about her shoulders white 
 Drew the soft fabric of kindling green and red, 
 Standing before the candle-lighted glass? 
 
 [5i]
 
 1916 
 
 The reek of boiling cutch : against the sky- 
 Wet dripping amber of the new-dipped sails 
 Hung on the crag-top in the sun to dry 
 Flapping against the tarry glistering rails 
 In a wind that brings a tang of burning kelp : 
 A sleek black cormorant on a scar rose-red 
 Washed by unfoaming emerald, and the yelp 
 Of gulls that wheel unwavering overhead — 
 
 Clear colours, searching odours and keen cries 
 
 Sting all my eager senses to fresh life 
 
 With tingling ears and nostrils and smarting eyes 
 
 Yet even now in sick unending strife 
 
 In a wide slimy welter oversea 
 
 Men spill each other's blood indifferently. 
 
 [52]
 
 TROOPSHIP: MID-ATLANTIC 
 (S.S.BALTIC: July 1917) 
 
 Dark waters into crystalline brilliance break 
 About the keel, as through the moonless night 
 The dark ship moves in its own moving lake 
 Of phosphorescent cold moon-coloured light; 
 And to the clear horizon all around 
 Drift pools of fiery beryl flashing bright 
 As though unquenchably burning, cold and white, 
 A million moons in the night of waters drowned. 
 
 And staring at the magic with eyes adream 
 That never till now have looked upon the sea, 
 Boys from the Middle-West lounge listlessly 
 In the unlanterned darkness, boys who go 
 Beckoned by some unchallengeable gleam 
 To unknown lands to fight an unknown foe. 
 
 [531
 
 HANDS 
 
 Tempest without : within, the mellow glow 
 Of mingling lamp and firelight over all — 
 Etchings and vvatercolours on the wall, 
 Cushions and curtains of clear indigo, 
 Rugs, damask-red and blue as Tyrian seas, 
 Deep chairs, black oaken settles, hammered brass, 
 Translucent porcelain and sea-green glass — 
 Colour and warmth and light and dreamy ease: 
 
 And I sit wondering where are now the hands 
 That wrought at anvil, easel, wheel and loom — 
 Hands, slender, swart, red, gnarled — in foreign 
 
 lands 
 Or English shops to furnish this seemly room : 
 And all the while, without, the windy rain 
 Drums like dead fingers tapping at the pane. 
 
 [54l
 
 LINDISFARNE 
 
 Jet-black the crags of False Emmanuel Head 
 Against the Winter sunset : standing stark 
 Within the shorn sun's frosty glare, night-dark, 
 A solitary monk with arms outspread 
 In worship or in frustrate tense desire 
 Of racked and tortured flesh : still young and spare, 
 With drooping head he seems to hang in air 
 Crucified on a wheel of blood-red fire. 
 
 The red sun dips : and slowly to his side 
 
 His slack arms fall; and in the clear green light 
 
 Of the frosty afterglow where coldly burns 
 
 A lonely star, a very pillar of night 
 
 He stands above the steely shivering tide, 
 
 Then slowly to the darkening East he turns. 
 
 [55]
 
 DUNSTANBOROUGH 
 
 Over the unseen September tide the mist 
 Sweeps ever inland, winding in a shroud 
 Stark walls and toppling towers that in a cloud 
 Of streaming vapour soar and twirl and twist, 
 Unbuilded and rebuilded in grey smoke, 
 Until the drifting shadowy bastions seem 
 The old phantasmal castle wherein man's dream 
 Seeks shelter from time's still-pursuing stroke. 
 
 And I remember how, above a sea 
 
 That under cold winds shivered steely-clear, 
 
 Fresh from the chisel clean-cut and white and hard, 
 
 These towers, rock-founded for eternity, 
 
 Glittered when Lancelot and Guenevere 
 
 One April morning came to Joyous Gard. 
 
 [56]
 
 LIFE 
 
 On the cliff's edge a dewy cluster of thrift 
 
 Sparkles like amethysts against the sea, 
 
 A sea of sapphire laced unceasingly 
 
 By little lines of foam and wings that drift 
 
 And wheel and dip in mazy dazzling flight 
 
 Bewilderingly before my dreaming eyes 
 
 That watch the snow and sapphire sink and rise, 
 
 Drowsed by the interweaving blue and white. 
 
 Yet in my chambered mind the while I see 
 Within an attic in a swarming high 
 And cliff-like tenement that blocks the sky, 
 One knitting and one stitching at a hem, 
 Two patient women uncomplainingly 
 Talking of all that life has done to them. 
 
 [571
 
 THE PUFFIN 
 
 He stooped down suddenly and thrust his hand 
 Into a tunnel in the shallow sand 
 Beneath a campion-clump, and brought to light 
 A brooding puffin with black wings clasped tight 
 To her white breast : but twisting round her sleek, 
 Pied, darting head, her scarlet razor-beak 
 She snapped in anger, cutting his finger clean 
 To the very bone ; and on the clump of green 
 Among the campion blossoms white as foam 
 He dropped the bird and watched her scurry home; 
 And laughed, while from the wounded finger dripped 
 Blood redder even than the beak that ripped 
 The flesh so cruelly, and, chuckling, said : 
 " Well, anyway, the blood still runs as red 
 In my old veins as when I saw it spill 
 The first time that I felt a puffin's bill 
 Long years since : and it seems as though I had 
 As little sense as when I was a lad 
 To let myself be caught so easily 
 And that brave bird make such a fool of me 
 Who thought myself as wise as Solomon. 
 Yet it is better to feel a fool's blood run 
 Still quick and lively in the veins and be 
 
 [58]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 A living fool beside the April sea 
 
 Than lie like Solomon in his unknown grave, 
 
 A pinch of dry dust that no wit could save." 
 
 [59]
 
 THE LETTER 
 
 Why was I moved to write 
 To him the very night 
 That he, unknown to me, 
 Upon his deathbed lay 
 With eyes that should not see 
 Another break of day — 
 
 Eyes that should never read 
 The long light-hearted screed 
 That rippled from my pen? 
 Why should I write to him 
 Whose sight was even then 
 With the last darkness dim? 
 
 For I had never heard 
 From him a single word 
 For years, or even thought 
 If he were ill or well: 
 And when I wrote I'd naught 
 That mattered much to tell. 
 
 Did the same memory 
 That moment moving me 
 [60]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 To take my pen and write 
 Light-hearted as a boy 
 Move him on that last night 
 To think of me with joy? 
 
 Did his lost youth return 
 
 In one clear thought and burn 
 
 His being with the glow 
 
 Of old enraptured hours 
 
 When plunging through deep snow 
 
 We faced the raking showers ? 
 
 Did death to him seem just 
 
 A wilder frolic gust 
 
 That caught his breath, and deep 
 
 In dazzling drowsy white 
 
 Of downy drifts did sleep 
 
 Steal over him that night ? 
 
 But time will never tell 
 Whether some fateful spell 
 Or only idle whim 
 Moved me to write a screed 
 Of chaffing words to him 
 That he would never read. 
 
 [61]
 
 BY THE WEIR 
 
 A scent of Esparto grass — and again I recall 
 That hour we spent by the weir of the paper-mill 
 Watching together the curving thunderous fall 
 Of frothing amber, bemused by the roar until 
 My mind was as blank as the speckless sheets that 
 
 wound 
 On the hot steel ironing-rollers perpetually turning 
 In the humming dark rooms of the mill : all sense 
 
 and discerning 
 By the stunning and dazzling oblivion of hill-waters 
 
 drowned. 
 
 And my heart was empty of memory and hope and 
 
 desire 
 Till, rousing, I looked afresh on your face as you 
 
 gazed — 
 Behind you an old gnarled fruit-tree in one still fire 
 Of innumerable flame in the sun of October blazed, 
 Scarlet and gold that the first white frost would spill 
 With eddying flicker and patter of dead leaves fall- 
 ing— 
 I looked on your face, as an exile from Eden re- 
 calling 
 
 [62]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 A vision of Eve as she dallied bewildered and still 
 By the serpent-encircled tree of knowledge that 
 
 flamed 
 With gold and scarlet of good and evil, her eyes 
 Rapt on the river of life: then bright and untamed 
 By the labour and sorrow and fear of a world that 
 
 dies 
 Your ignorant eyes looked up into mine and I knew 
 That never our hearts should be one till your young 
 
 lips had tasted 
 The core of the bitter-sweet fruit, and wise and toil- 
 wasted, 
 You should stand at my shoulder an outcast from 
 Eden, too. 
 
 [63]
 
 THE PARROTS 
 
 Somewhere, somewhen I've seen. 
 But where or when I'll never know 
 Three parrots of shrill green 
 With crests of shriller scarlet flying 
 Out of black cedars as the sun was dying 
 Against cold peaks of snow. 
 
 From what forgotten life 
 
 Of other worlds I cannot tell 
 
 Flashes that screeching strife: 
 
 Yet the shrill colour and the strident crying 
 
 Sing through my blood and set my heart replying 
 
 And jangling like a bell. 
 
 [64]
 
 THE WILLOWS 
 
 In the round hollow of the moonlit meadow 
 Over the pond the seven willows shiver, 
 And in the ghostly misty shine their branches 
 Rustle and glance and quiver — 
 
 Rustle and glance and quiver in the moonshine — 
 The seven sisters shaking sea-green tresses 
 Over the round pond's misty mirror, whispering 
 Strange secrets to the shadow in the cresses. 
 
 [65]
 
 RETURN 
 
 Rust-red the bracken in the rain 
 Against the wet grey boulder — 
 Slowly the cold mist sweeps again 
 Over the mountain shoulder 
 And the wind blows colder. 
 
 Since last I saw the wind and rain 
 Sweep down the mountain shoulder 
 Some joy that will not come again 
 Has left a heart grown older, 
 And the wind blows colder. 
 
 [66]
 
 APRIL 
 
 Over the rain-wet bells 
 Of scilla and daffodil 
 With April in their voices 
 The blackbirds pipe and trill : 
 
 And lucent yellow and blue 
 
 In clear notes bubble and throng 
 
 As daffodil and scilla 
 
 Sing in the blackbirds' song. 
 
 [67]
 
 WORLDS 
 
 Through the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks 
 Whose interwoven fronds, a jade-green sky, 
 Above me glimmer, infinitely high, 
 Towards my giant hand a beetle walks 
 In glistening emerald mail ; and as I lie 
 Watching his progress through huge grassy blades 
 And over pebble-boulders, my own world fades 
 And shrinks to the vision of a beetle's eye. 
 
 Within that forest world of twilight green 
 
 Ambushed with unknown perils, one endless day 
 
 I travel down the beetle-trail between 
 
 Huge glossy boles through green infinity . . . 
 
 Till flashes a glimpse of blue sea through the 
 
 bracken asway, 
 And my world is again a tumult of windy sea. 
 
 [68]
 
 THE RIDGE 
 
 Here on the ridge where the shrill north-easter trails 
 
 Low clouds along the snow, 
 
 And in a streaming, moonlit vapour veils 
 
 The peopled earth below, 
 
 Let me, O Life, a little while forget 
 The horror of past years — 
 Man and his agony and bloody sweat, 
 The terror and the tears, 
 
 And struggle only in the mist and snow 
 Against the hateless wind, 
 Till, scourged and shriven, I again may go 
 To dwell among my kind. 
 
 [69]
 
 RUGBY: 1917 
 
 All day the droning of the aeroplanes 
 
 Above the hot brick buildings in the blaze, 
 
 That in their skiey gliding seemed to graze 
 
 The air to fiercer fire above gilt vanes, 
 
 Sleek purple roofs, sharp-pricking spires, and towers 
 
 Of glowing mottled brick; and through my head 
 
 That droning hums and purrs, as aching red 
 
 And staring blue trail by the unending hours. 
 
 But under silvery olive-trees he sleeps 
 
 Tombed in a hill of marble on the Isle 
 
 Of Skyros that once, veiled in shimmering rain, 
 
 I saw in passing. On the rosy steeps 
 
 And silvery trees he looked a little while ; 
 
 Then turned to slumber, never to wake again. 
 
 [7o]
 
 RUGBY: 1917 
 
 II 
 
 He slumbers : but his living words sing on, 
 
 Lighting for ever the dark hearts of men, 
 
 The hearts of men on whom his presence shone 
 
 Living, who'll never see his like again 
 
 In this world, and strange hearts that caught no 
 
 gleam 
 Of the golden spirit until his radiant death 
 Blazoned it over all the earth, a breath 
 Of singing fire from sunset seas of dream. 
 
 O singing fire, O starry words that sang 
 
 A moment through his lighted blood, and live 
 
 When he who gave you loving life is dead, 
 
 For ever to that fallen golden head 
 
 And the laughing golden heart from which you 
 
 sprang 
 Starry and singing and deathless life you give. 
 
 \7*]
 
 BLOOM 
 
 Laburnum, lilac, honeysuckle, broom, 
 
 Syringa, rowan, hawthorn, guelder-rose, 
 
 Azalea, rose and elder — Summer glows 
 
 About me in sultry smother of scent and bloom 
 
 Shut in between the old walls' mossy brick: 
 
 Yet as in the green and golden gloom I dream 
 
 In the drowsy dazzle of perfume and colour astream 
 
 An upland odour stings me to the quick — 
 
 The shrewd remembered smell, sharp clean and cold, 
 
 Of peat and moss where never blossoms blow 
 
 Under the shadow of bleak whinstone scars 
 
 The summer long, or only rarely show 
 
 Over black pools the sundew's stars of gold 
 
 Or grass of Parnassus' cold white scentless stars. 
 
 [72]
 
 VICTIMS 
 
 Above me on the ridge an old grey ram 
 With ragged fleece, black muzzle and yellow eye, 
 Tangled in briars, against the lurid sky, 
 Seems even now to await the Abraham 
 Who shall release and slay him — patiently 
 On this high altar of bleak snow and ice 
 With head bowed ready for the sacrifice 
 To await the whetted blade of destiny. 
 
 He awaits unwondering, foreboding naught, 
 With blank, cold, shallow eye and easy breath, 
 Nor knows himself the destined victim caught, 
 Nor dreads the slicing sacrificial knife — 
 While Abraham, ever in the shadow of death, 
 Trembles to look upon the angel of life. 
 
 [73]
 
 ISHMAEL 
 
 He came at last to a cadaverous land 
 
 Beneath a breathless livid sky supine 
 
 And limping over the burnt stone and sand 
 
 Reached a sleek lake of glazed unrippling brine, 
 
 And standing ankle-deep in brittle salt 
 
 That crusted the flat marge with prickling white, 
 
 Lifted his eyes to the grey sunless vault, 
 
 And waited for the coming on of night. 
 
 But never night with black oblivious balm 
 Or the healing lucency of starlight stole 
 Across that arid sky of aching grey. 
 Undying, by the dead lake's stagnant calm, 
 Caged in uncrumbling bones, for ever his soul 
 Stares at the blind face of unending day. 
 
 [74]
 
 \ 
 
 THE DANCER 
 
 Sheathed in scales of silver sequins 
 
 In a blue pool of limelight dancing 
 
 She twists and twirls and smiles and beckons 
 
 With dark eyes glancing — 
 
 She beckons to me in my skiey seat 
 With smiling teeth and dark eyes glancing: 
 But I only see as I watch her dancing. 
 The shadows that seek to tangle her feet. 
 
 [75]
 
 SONG 
 
 Over the heather the trill of a falling stream 
 Sings in my ears like the silver voice of the light, 
 The light that falls from the stars in a silver stream 
 Into the pool of night — 
 
 Into the quiet pool of the night of dream 
 
 Where life that's a singing of joyful or sorrowful 
 
 breath 
 Sinks in the icy deep of the starless dream 
 Of joyless and sorrowless death. 
 
 [76]
 
 INSPIRATION 
 
 On the uttermost farflung ridge of ice and snow 
 
 That over pits of sunset fire hangs sheer 
 
 My naked spirit poises, then leaps clear 
 
 From the cold crystal into the furnace-glow 
 
 Of ruby and amber lucencies, and dives 
 
 For the brief moment of ten thousand lives 
 
 Through fathomless infinities of light, 
 
 Then cleansed by lustral flame and frost returns; 
 
 And for an instant through my body burns 
 
 The immortal fire of cold white ecstasy. 
 
 As down the darkening valley of the night 
 
 I keep the old track of mortality. 
 
 [77)
 
 BRIC-A-BRAC 
 
 Into the room the level sunrays stream, 
 Shooting from under a low rainy cloud 
 Through shivering branches of a poplar bowed 
 In the wind of sunset; and in golden dream 
 The dull day ends; and the walls of creamy white 
 Quiver with rippling gold that fills the glass 
 Of a green amphora with wine-golden light, 
 And burnishes old Benares brass. 
 
 And suddenly in the quickening glory of gold 
 Buddha, who long has brooded in the gloom 
 Overshadowed by a curved Askari knife, 
 Wrapped in his rope of reverie manifold 
 Glows young and fair, the very lord of life 
 Until his presence fills the little room. 
 
 [78]
 
 FIRE 
 
 I 
 
 Across the Cleveland countryside the train 
 Panted and jolted through the lurid night 
 Of monstrous slag-heaps in the leaping light 
 Of belching furnaces : the driving rain 
 Lacing the glass with gold in that red glare 
 That momently revealed the cinderous land 
 Of blasted fields that stretched on either hand 
 With livid waters gleaming here and there. 
 
 By hovels of men who labour till they die 
 With iron and the fire that never sleeps 
 We plunged in pitchy night among huge heaps : 
 Then once again that red glare lit the sky, 
 And, high above the highest hill of slag, 
 I saw Prometheus hanging from his crag. 
 
 [79)
 
 FIRE 
 
 II 
 
 In each black tile a mimic fire's aglow, 
 And in the hearthlight old mahogany, 
 Ripe with stored sunshine that in Mexico 
 Poured like gold wine into the living tree 
 Summer on summer through a century, 
 Burns like a crater in the heart of night: 
 And all familiar things in the ingle-light 
 Glow with a secret strange intensity. 
 
 And I remember hidden fires that burst 
 Suddenly from the midnight while men slept, 
 Long-smouldering rages in the darkness nursed 
 That to an instant ravening fury leapt, 
 And the old terror menacing evermore 
 A crumbling world with fiery molten core. 
 
 [80]
 
 ELEGY 
 
 Stars that fall through crystal skies - 
 Winds that sink in songless death — 
 Are the light within man's eyes 
 And his body's breath. 
 
 For a little while he burns 
 Fitfully, a windy spark, 
 Ere his shrivelled soul returns 
 To the windy dark. 
 
 [81]

 
 CASUALTIES
 
 TO MICHAEL 
 
 If the promise of your coming's true, 
 And you should live through years of peace, 
 O son of mine, forget not these, 
 The sons of man, who died for you. 
 
 [85]
 
 ANGUS ARMSTRONG 
 
 I 
 
 Ghostly through the drifting mist the lingering snow- 
 wreaths glimmer, 
 
 And ghostly comes the lych-owl's hunting cry, 
 
 And ghostly with wet fleeces in the watery moon 
 ashimmer, 
 
 One by one the grey sheep slowly pass me by. 
 
 One by one through bent and heather, disappearing 
 in the hollow, 
 
 Ghostly shadows down the grassy track they steal : 
 
 And I dread to see them passing, lest a ghost be- 
 hind them follow — 
 
 A ghost from Flanders follow, dog at heel. 
 
 [86]
 
 ALAN GORDON 
 
 Roses he loved and their outlandish names — 
 
 Gloire de Dijon, Leonie Lamesch, 
 
 Chateau du Clos Vougeot — like living flames 
 
 They kindled in his memory afresh 
 
 As, lying in the mud of France, he turned 
 
 His eyes to the grey sky, light after light : 
 
 And last within his dying memory burned 
 
 Chateau du Clos Vougeot's deep crimson night. 
 
 [*7]
 
 JACK ALLEN 
 
 "I'm mighty fond of blackberry-jam," he said: 
 " It tastes of Summer. When I come again, 
 You'll give me some for tea, and soda-bread? " 
 
 Black clusters throng each bramble-spray burned red, 
 And over-ripe, are rotting in the rain : 
 But not for him is any table spread 
 Who comes not home again. 
 
 [88]
 
 MARTIN AKENSHAW 
 
 Heavy the scent of elder in the air 
 As on the night he went : the starry bloom 
 He'd brushed in passing dusted face and hair, 
 And the hot fragrance filled the little room. 
 
 Heavy the scent of elder: in the night 
 Where I lie lone abed with stifling breath 
 And eyes that dread to see the morning light, 
 The heavy fume of elder smells of death. 
 
 [89]
 
 RALPH STRAKER 
 
 Softly out of the dove-grey sky 
 
 Drift the snow-flakes fine and dry 
 
 Till braeside and bottom are all heaped high. 
 
 Remembering how he would love to go 
 Over the crisp and the creaking snow, 
 I wonder that now he can lie below 
 
 If softly out of the Flanders sky 
 
 Drift the snowflakes fine and dry 
 
 Till crater and shell-hole are all heaped high. 
 
 [9o]
 
 DONALD FRASER 
 
 He polished granite tombstones all his life 
 To earn a living for his bairns and wife 
 Till he was taken for the war, and he 
 Went his first voyage over the salt sea. 
 
 Now somewhere underneath the Flemish skies 
 Sunk in unsounded flats of mud he lies 
 In a vast moundless grave, unnamed, unknown, 
 Nor marked at head or foot by stock or stone. 
 
 [9i]
 
 PETER PROUDFOOT 
 
 He cleaned out middens for his daily bread 
 War took him overseas and on a bed 
 Of lilies-of -the- valley dropt him, dead. 
 
 [92]
 
 JOE BARNES 
 
 To a proud peacock strutting tail in air 
 He clipped the yew each thirteenth of July : 
 No feather ruffled, sleek and debonair, 
 Clean-edged it cut the yellow evening sky. 
 
 But he returns no more, who went across 
 The narrow seas one thirteenth of July: 
 And drearily all day the branches toss, 
 Ragged and dark against the rainy sky. 
 
 T93l
 
 DICK MILBURN 
 
 He stood against the trunk to light his pipe, 
 And, glancing at the green boughs overhead, 
 " We'll pinch those almonds when they're ripe," he 
 said. 
 
 But now the almond-shells are brown and ripe 
 Somewhere in No-man's-land he's lying dead; 
 And other lads are pinching them instead. 
 
 I've half-a-mind to save him one or two 
 In case his ghost comes back to claim a few 
 And do the other things he meant to do. 
 
 Ml
 
 PHILIP DAGG 
 
 It pricked like needles slashed into his face, 
 The unceasing, rustling smother of dry snow 
 That stormed the ridge on that hell-raking blast 
 
 And then he knew the end had come at last, 
 And stumbled blindly, muttering " Cheerio ! ' : 
 Into eternity and left no trace. 
 
 [95]
 
 JOHN ELSDON 
 
 Stripped mother-naked save for a gold ring, 
 Where all day long the gaping doctors sit 
 Decreeing life or death, he proudly passed 
 In his young manhood : and they found him fit. 
 
 Of all that lustiness of flesh and blood 
 The crash of death has not left anything: 
 But, tumbled somewhere in the Flanders mire, 
 Unbroken lies the golden wedding ring. 
 
 M
 
 NOEL DARK 
 
 She sleeps in bronze, the Helen of his dream, 
 Within the quiet of my little room, 
 Touched by a kindling birch-log's flickering gleam 
 To tenderer beauty in the rosy gloom. 
 
 She sleeps in bronze : and he who fashioned her, 
 Shaping the wet clay with such eager joy, 
 Slumbers as soundly where the cold winds stir 
 The withered tussocks on the plains of Troy. 
 
 [97]
 
 MARK ANDERSON 
 
 On the low table by the bed 
 Where it was set aside last night, 
 Beyond the bandaged lifeless head, 
 It glitters in the morning-light : 
 
 And as the hours of watching pass, 
 I cannot sleep, I cannot think, 
 But only gaze upon the glass 
 Of water that he could not drink. 
 
 [98]
 
 IN KHAKI
 
 THE KITTIWAKE 
 
 With blistered heels and bones that ache, 
 Marching through pitchy ways and blind, 
 The mirey track is hard to make : 
 Yet, ever hovering in my mind, 
 Above red crags a kittiwake 
 Hangs motionless against the wind — 
 
 Grey-winged, white-breasted and black-eyed, 
 Above red crags of porphyry 
 That pillar from a sapphire tide 
 A sapphire sky . . . Indifferently 
 The raw lad limping at my side 
 Blasphemes his boots the world and me . . . 
 
 Still keen, unwavering and alert 
 Within my aching empty mind 
 The bright bird hovers, and the dirt 
 Of bottomless black ways and blind, 
 And all the hundred things that hurt 
 Past healing seem to drop behind. 
 
 [ioi]
 
 MEDICAL OFFICERS' CLERK 
 
 Let me forget these sordid histories 
 These callous records of obscene disease, 
 This world of scabies and of syphilis 
 Wherein I drudge until my whole mind is 
 Besotted by the sodden atmosphere . . . 
 
 Let me remember Venus dawning clear 
 Through beryl seas of air, a crystal flame — 
 Glistening as from the cold salt wave she came 
 Over the far and ghostly hills of Wales 
 Dwindling in darkness as the twilight fails . . . 
 
 Let me recall the singing and the shine 
 Of the clear amber waters of the Tyne, 
 Pouring from peaty uplands of black moss 
 Over grey boulders, while the salmon toss 
 Wet, curving silver bodies in the air, 
 Scrambling in shoals to scale the salmon-stair 
 Over the roaring weir . . . 
 
 • Let me again 
 League after league of level stainless snow 
 Stretching unbroken under the low sky 
 
 [102]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 In that huge clanking and eternal train 
 Over the prairies of Dakota go — 
 World without end to all eternity — 
 Until desire and dream and all delight 
 Drowse to oblivion in a timeless white 
 Unundulating wilderness . . . 
 
 Or let me sail 
 Again up the blue Bosporus within hail 
 Of many-fountained gardens of the rose 
 Where bloom on bloom the Summer burns and 
 
 glows, 
 By minarets that soar like lily-blooms 
 About the shimmering white mushroom domes 
 Of marble mosques in groves of cypresses . . . 
 
 Till I remember no more histories 
 Of horror, or in drudgery and fret 
 Of endless days no longer quite forget 
 The stars and singing waters and the snow, 
 And how the roses of Arabia blow. 
 
 [i"3l
 
 THE CHART 
 
 Drawing red lines on a chart 
 With diligent ruler and pen, 
 Keeping a record of men, 
 Numbers and names in black ink — 
 Numbers and names that were men 
 
 With diligent ruler and pen 
 Drawing red lines on a chart — 
 Would you not break, O my heart, 
 If I stopped but a moment to think! 
 
 [104]
 
 THE CONSCRIPT 
 
 Indifferent, flippant, earnest, but all bored, 
 The doctors sit in the glare of electric light 
 Watching the endless stream of naked white 
 Bodies of men for whom their hasty award 
 Means life or death maybe or the living death 
 Of mangled limbs, blind eyes or a darkened brain: 
 And the chairman as his monocle falls again 
 Pronounces each doom with easy indifferent breath. 
 
 Then suddenly I shudder as I see 
 
 A young man move before them wearily, 
 
 Cadaverous as one already dead : 
 
 But still they stare untroubled as he stands 
 
 With arms outstretched and drooping thorn-crowned 
 
 head, 
 The nail-marks glowing in his feet and hands. 
 
 [105]
 
 SUSPENSE 
 
 As gaudy flies across a pewter plate 
 
 On the grey disk of the unrippling sea, 
 
 Beneath an airless sullen sky of slate, 
 
 Dazzled destroyers zig-zag restlessly: 
 
 While underneath the sleek and livid tide, 
 
 Blind monsters nosing through the soundless deep, 
 
 Lean submarines among blind fishes glide 
 
 And through primeval weedy forests sweep. 
 
 Over the hot grey surface of my mind 
 Glib motley rumours zig-zag without rest ; 
 While deep within the darkness of my breast 
 Monstrous desires, lean sinister and blind, 
 Slink through unsounded night and stir the slime 
 And ooze of oceans of forgotten time. 
 
 [106]
 
 AIR-RAID 
 
 Night shatters in mid-heaven : the bark of guns, 
 The roar of planes, the crash of bombs, and all 
 The unshackled skiey pandemonium stuns 
 The senses to indifference, when a fall 
 Of masonry nearby startles awake, 
 Tingling wide-eyed, prick-eared, with bristling hair, 
 Each sense within the body, crouched aware 
 Like some sore-hunted creature in the brake. 
 
 Yet side by side we lie in the little room 
 
 Just touching hands, with eyes and ears that strain 
 
 Keenly, yet dream-bewildered through tense gloom, 
 
 Listening, in helpless stupor of insane 
 
 Drugged nightmare panic fantastically wild, 
 
 To the quiet breathing of our sleeping child. 
 
 [107]
 
 RAGTIME 
 
 A minx in khaki struts the limelit boards : 
 With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes 
 And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries 
 To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords 
 Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash and clatter, 
 And over the brassy blare and drumming din 
 She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin 
 Spirtle of sniggering lascivious patter. 
 
 Then out into the jostling Strand I turn, 
 
 And down a dark lane to the quiet river, 
 
 One stream of silver under the full moon, 
 
 And think of how cold searchlights flare and burn 
 
 Over dank trenches where men crouch and shiver, 
 
 Humming, to keep their hearts up, that same tune. 
 
 [108]
 
 LEAVE 
 
 Crouched on the crowded deck, we watch the sun 
 
 In naked gold leap out of the cold sea 
 
 Of shivering silver; and stretching drowsily 
 
 Crampt arms and legs, relieved that night is done 
 
 And the slinking, deep-sea peril passed, we turn 
 
 Westward to see the chilly, sparkling light 
 
 Quicken the Wicklow Hills, till jewel-bright 
 
 In their Spring freshness of dewy green they burn. 
 
 And silent on the deck beside me stands 
 A comrade, lean and brown, with restless hands 
 And eyes that stare unkindling on the life 
 And rapture of green hills and glistening morn : 
 He comes from Flanders home to his dead wife, 
 And I, from England, to my son newborn. 
 
 [109]
 
 BACCHANAL 
 
 (November 1918) 
 
 Into the twilight of Trafalgar Square 
 
 They pour from every quarter, banging drums 
 
 And tootling penny trumpets : to a blare 
 
 Of tin mouth-organs, while a sailor strums 
 
 A solitary banjo, lads and girls 
 
 Locked in embraces, in a wild dishevel 
 
 Of flags and streaming hair, with curdling skirls 
 
 Surge in a frenzied reeling panic revel. 
 
 Lads who so long have stared death in the face, 
 Girls who so long have tended death's machines, 
 Released from the numb terror shriek and prance: 
 And watching them, I see the outrageous dance, 
 The frantic torches and the tambourines 
 Tumultuous on the midnight hills of Thrace. 
 
 [no]
 
 CAMOUFLAGE 
 
 Out of the puddle of his mind there poured 
 A sickly trickle of obscenities 
 Till some chance word of mine waked into life 
 Within his heart half-frozen memories: 
 
 And then with shining eyes he talked of home, 
 His wife and their one bairn, a little lass, 
 And all her darling ways : but suddenly 
 I saw the radiance from his blue eyes pass 
 
 As, slouching up to us, another chum 
 Cursed the lance-jack with casual blasphemies : 
 And once again from that slack mouth poured out 
 A sickly trickle of obscenities. 
 
 [in]
 
 THE OLEOGRAPH 
 
 After the bomb, there stood one parlour-wall, 
 
 Papered with roses, still defying fate. 
 
 And smiling in its gold frame over all 
 
 A portrait of King Edward, hanging straight, 
 
 The glass unbroken and the gilt unsmashed, 
 
 Still blandly beaming, if a trifle bored, 
 
 As it had blandly beamed when darkness crashed 
 
 On him who hung it by its crimson cord. 
 
 [112]
 
 BAGGAGE 
 
 Three girls who still have something of the grace 
 Of fleeting girlishness in form and face, 
 Tricked out in all their fripperies, await 
 The first three comers through the barrack-gate. 
 
 They await the first three comers, any three, 
 Smart, sullen, loutish, swaggering or brave — 
 Soldiers, who'll soon forget them for the grave — 
 Lovers, whom they'll forget as easily 
 As they've forgotten last year's finery. 
 
 ["31
 
 LONG TOM 
 
 He talked of Delhi brothels half the night, 
 Quaking with fever; and then dragging tight 
 The frowsy blankets to his chattering chin 
 Cursed for an hour because they were so thin, 
 And nothing would keep out that gnawing cold — 
 Scarce forty years of age, and yet so old, 
 Haggard and worn, with burning eyes set deep — 
 Until at last he cursed himself asleep. 
 
 Before I'd shut my eyes reveille came; 
 
 And as I dressed by the one candle-flame, 
 
 The mellow golden light fell on his face 
 
 Still sleeping, touching it to tender grace, 
 
 Rounding the features life had scarred so deep, 
 
 Till youth came back to him in quiet sleep : 
 
 And then what women saw in him I knew, 
 
 And why they'd love him all his brief life through. 
 
 [114]
 
 SENTRY GO 
 
 True lad who shared the guard with me 
 That night of whirling snow, 
 What other nights have brought to you 
 I may not know. 
 
 Although I never heard your name 
 And hardly saw your face ; 
 You poured out all your heart to me 
 As we kept pace. 
 
 I don't know if you're living still, 
 Or fallen in the fight : 
 But in my heart your heart is safe 
 Till the last night. 
 
 ["Si
 
 REVEILLE 
 
 Still bathed in its moonlight slumber, the little white 
 
 house by the cedar 
 Stands silent against the red dawn ; 
 And nothing I know of who sleeps there, to the 
 
 travail of day yet unwakened, 
 Behind the blue curtains undrawn : 
 
 But I dream as we march down the roadway, ringing 
 loud and rime-white in the moonlight, 
 
 Of a little dark house on a hill 
 
 Wherein when the battle is over, to the rapture of 
 day yet unwakened, 
 
 We shall slumber as soundless and still. 
 
 [116]
 
 TRAVELS
 
 AULLA 
 
 Bronzed hills of oak that sweep 
 
 Up to Carrara's peaks of snow 
 
 Against a blue November sky, 
 
 Burnished with evening sunshine, glow 
 
 And bask in drowsy sleep — 
 
 When piercingly a cry 
 
 Rings from the little town below, 
 
 And startled echoes leap 
 
 From steep to steep. 
 
 What soul in agony 
 
 Cried out at sunset long ago 
 
 I'll never know : 
 
 But in my memory perpetually 
 
 Bronze hills and silver peaks and steely sky 
 
 Reverberate with that despairing cry. 
 
 [ii9l
 
 THE CAKEWALK 
 
 In smoky lamplight of a Smyrna cafe 
 He sees them, seven solemn negroes dancing 
 With faces rapt and out-thrust bellies prancing 
 In a slow solemn ceremonial cakewalk. 
 Dancing and prancing to the sombre tom-tom 
 Thumped by a crookbacked grizzled negro squat- 
 ting: 
 And as he watches ... in the steamy twilight 
 Of swampy forest in rank greenness rotting 
 That sombre tom-tom at his heartstrings strumming 
 Sets all his sinews twitching and a singing 
 Of cold fire through his blood — and he is dancing 
 Among his fellows in the dank green twilight 
 With naked oiled bronze-gleaming bodies swinging 
 In a rapt holy everlasting cakewalk 
 For evermore in slow procession prancing. 
 
 [I20|
 
 THE S SAL Y 
 
 Sun-steeped translucent marble, and beyond, 
 Pale marble hills of amethyst and rose 
 Above the shadowy olive-grove that shows 
 A sea-green shimmer like a tide-left pond 
 Of brackish waters under the pale blue sky 
 Of the unclouded noon of Thessaly : 
 And over that pallid sky and pallid sea 
 Obliviously the sultry hours drift by — 
 Drift by in sun-steeped and translucent dream, 
 Till suddenly a seagull's strident scream 
 Stabs through my sense, and once again I ride 
 In a little coble the dark tossing tide 
 Of glancing, shivering Northern seas, a boy 
 Chanting to that dark sky the tale of Troy. 
 
 [121]
 
 SMYRNA 
 
 Over the mountain's shadowed snow 
 
 A rosy flake, the moon 
 
 Drifts in the beryl glow 
 
 Of early night: 
 
 And over the still sea 
 
 Of malachite 
 
 Sings from the marble quay, 
 
 Where blue-black Nubians crouch in shivering cold, 
 
 A shrill and reedy tune 
 
 My heart first heard 
 
 In Uganda forests piped by some dead bird 
 
 In unremembered days of old. 
 
 [122]
 
 CHALLENGE 
 
 Why does the seamew scream 
 When I would lie at rest, 
 Floating in dreamless dream 
 On the dark sea's breast, 
 Floating forgetfully 
 On the unremembering sea 
 Of eternity? 
 
 Sick of the senseless fret 
 
 Of blind and bitter strife, 
 
 Fain would my heart forget 
 
 The challenge of life: 
 
 But foamheads ruffle and gleam, 
 
 And tumult shatters my dream 
 
 At the seamew's scream. 
 
 [123I
 
 ON BROADWAY 
 
 Daffodils dancing by moonlight in English meadows, 
 Moon-pale daffodils under the April moon — 
 Here in the throng and clangour and hustle of 
 
 Broadway, 
 Broadway brawling and loud in the glare of the 
 
 noon, 
 Comes to me now as a half-remembered tune 
 The silence and wonder of daffodils dancing by 
 
 moonlight, 
 Dreamily dancing in dew-sprinkled moonshiny 
 
 meadows, 
 Ghostly daffodils under a ghostly moon. 
 
 [124]
 
 IN FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 A negro in a dandy livery 
 Of blue and silver, dangling from one hand 
 A rose-emblazoned bandbox jauntily — 
 With conscious smile of gold and ivory 
 He ambles down the sidewalk . . . 
 
 And I see 
 Him naked, in a steamy forest-land 
 Of dense green swamp, beneath a dripping tree, 
 Crouched for the spring, and grinning greedily. 
 
 [125]
 
 ON STATEN ISLAND, 1917 
 
 Out of the bosky glen into the still Summer night 
 Fluttering, twinkling, sparkling, light upon fairy 
 
 light 
 The fireflies glance and dance in an endless flickering 
 
 flight. 
 
 And over the still grey Hudson, stabbing the silvery 
 
 haze 
 The flaring festal lights of Coney Island blaze 
 Where men and women dance in a razzling-dazzling 
 
 daze . . . 
 
 And sitting in silence under the dark unrustling trees 
 We think of the lads who crouch in trenches over- 
 seas 
 With eyes that stare all night on other lights than 
 these. 
 
 [126]
 
 THE LOST RING 
 
 Thridding the little tangled wood that crested 
 
 With silver-birch the silvery wave-like dune, 
 
 A slashing twig from off my finger wrested 
 
 The golden ring just as the wintry moon 
 
 Plunged in black cloud, and from my clutching hand 
 
 It tumbled noiseless in the shadowy sand. 
 
 All night in vain with fearful eager fingers 
 I raked among the sand and rustling leaves : 
 Dawn came, noon passed : and now the last light 
 
 lingers 
 Along the lake, and still my cold heart grieves 
 Love's token lost, as through my naked hand 
 Life seems to trickle coldly as dead sand. 
 
 [127]
 
 IN INDIANA 
 
 Snow on the hills and stars in a crystal sky . . . 
 Around me the golden leagues of the prairie lie 
 Under the blaze of July : 
 
 And my heart turns home to the hills in their win- 
 try white 
 As I saw them last on that December night 
 Lustrous in cold starlight — 
 
 To the hills of my heart that are far over land and 
 
 sea 
 And the snug little house on the Beacon where I 
 
 would be, v 
 
 That is all-in-all to me. 
 
 So under the glare of July 
 
 While around me the aching leagues of the prairie 
 
 lie, 
 I long for the snow on the hills and the stars in a 
 
 crystal sky. 
 
 [128]
 
 BY LAKE MICHIGAN 
 
 As out of intricate wintry woods to-night 
 Through white dunes suddenly on the starlit lake 
 I came, and saw the windy waters break, 
 Frothing along the sand, beneath the light 
 Of far steel furnaces whose ruddy flare 
 Was mingled with the glitter of stars, once more 
 Among the ghostly dunes of that strange shore 
 I knew the desolation of despair. 
 
 Though I by day and night unceasingly 
 Hunger for you and for the hills of home: 
 Yet that heart-breaking beauty of starry foam 
 And rosy fire to livelier agony 
 Shivered my courage — till in dreams you came 
 And filled my heart with stars and rosy flame. 
 
 [129]
 
 WINDOWS 
 
 The hills of Wales burned only dimmer gold 
 
 Beneath gold skies as over the green shires 
 
 I looked from my high window on the fires 
 
 Of sunset kindling; but they could not hold 
 
 My vagrant thought that in an instant leapt 
 
 To a window overseas that from a height 
 
 Looks down an alley where a girl one night 
 
 Was done to death while, knowing naught, I slept. 
 
 And brooding in my chair I wonder why 
 
 The golden uplands and the glistering sky 
 
 Should bring that horror of the dark to mind, 
 
 And in my consciousness I seek to trace 
 
 The ray that glimmers through dark ways and blind 
 
 Between the sunset and a dead girl's face. 
 
 [130]
 
 WINDOWS 
 
 II 
 
 If I could live within the ray of light 
 That runs through all things everlastingly — 
 Not only glimpse in moments of clear sight 
 The glancing of the golden shuttles that ply 
 "Twixt things diverse in seeming, stars and mud, 
 Innocence and the deed in darkness done, 
 The victim and the spiller of the blood — 
 The light that weaves the universe in one, 
 Then might my heart have ease and rest content 
 On the golden upland under the clear sky : 
 But ever must my restless days be spent 
 Following the fugitive gleam until I die — 
 Light-shotten darkness, glory struck from strife, 
 Terror to beauty kindling, death, to life. 
 
 [131]
 
 TRAVELS 
 
 Atlantic and Pacific I have sailed, 
 
 And sojourned in old cities of Cathay, 
 
 Icy Himalayas and stark Alps I've scaled, 
 
 And up great golden rivers thrust my way 
 
 Through crass, green, acrid, ominous dripping night 
 
 Of Senegambia : over the still snows 
 
 Of polar lands flushed with unfading rose 
 
 Of the rayless sun's cold clipped unkindling light, 
 
 Through the great Canyon's twilight mystery, 
 
 And over Arizona's sand and stone 
 
 I travel the round world unceasingly, 
 
 Unresting, uncompanioned and apart : 
 
 Yet never may I pierce the dark unknown 
 
 And undiscovered country of my own heart. 
 
 [132]
 
 HOME
 
 WINGS 
 
 As a blue-necked mallard alighting in a pool 
 Among marsh-marigolds and splashing wet 
 Green leaves and yellow blooms, like jewels set 
 In bright black mud, with clear drops crystal-cool, 
 Bringing keen savours of the sea and stir 
 Of windy spaces where wild sunsets flame 
 To that dark inland dyke, the thought of her 
 Into my brooding stagnant being came. 
 
 And all my senses quickened into life, 
 Tingling and glittering, and the salt and fire 
 Sang through my singing blood in eager strife 
 Until through crystal airs we seemed to be 
 Soaring together, one fleet-winged desire 
 Of windy sunsets and the wandering sea. 
 
 [135]
 
 DREAM-COME-TRUE 
 
 Dearest, while it would sometimes seem 
 As if I really had the art 
 Of putting into words the dream 
 That fills another's heart — 
 
 And though in its own dream-come-true 
 My heart sings ever like a bird's 
 The wonder of my life with you 
 I cannot put in words. 
 
 [136]
 
 ONE-DAY-OLD 
 
 Baby asleep on my arm 
 Would that my heart could enfold you, 
 Cherish you, shelter you, hold you 
 Ever from harm. 
 
 Born in a season of strife 
 
 When warring with fire and with thunder 
 
 Men wantonly shatter asunder 
 
 All that was life — 
 
 Into a world full of death 
 You come with a gift for the living 
 Of quiet grey eyes and a giving 
 Of innocent breath. 
 
 Baby asleep on my arm 
 Would that my heart could enfold you, 
 Cherish you, shelter you, hold you 
 Ever from harm. 
 
 [137]
 
 TO AUDREY 
 
 A crocus brimmed with morning light 
 Burning clean and amber-clear, 
 Single on the wet black mould — 
 
 So to me you come, who hold 
 Heaven in your heart, my dear, 
 Every morning out of night. 
 
 [138]
 
 MICHAEL 
 
 Why should he wake up chuckling ? Only hark ! 
 Chuckle on chuckle, lying in the dark 
 Alone in his little cot. What may there be 
 That we, for all our wisdom, cannot see 
 Gazing grave-eyed, in the old heart of night 
 To fill his baby heart with such delight ? 
 
 [139]
 
 SUNSETS 
 
 When the world fell to pieces, and we stood 
 Stripped to disaster, in the surge and reel 
 Of crashing nations, still too numbed to feel, 
 Too stunned to think, we knew one thing held good 
 Above the strife, and though all else should fail 
 That made life lovely underneath the sun, 
 Love, that from the beginning made us one, 
 Against annihilation should prevail. 
 
 And when on the shivering edge of the unknown 
 Un fathomed darkness each must stand alone 
 With eyes that look their last upon the light 
 Regretful and bewildered, we'll not shrink 
 But, still undoubting, over the last brink 
 Step down unfalteringly into the night. 
 
 [140]
 
 THE STAIR 
 
 Dear, when you climbed the icy Matterhorn, 
 Or braved the crouching green-eyed jungle-night 
 With heart exultant in the sheer white light 
 Of the snow peak, or cowering forlorn 
 In the old Indian darkness terror-torn — 
 Had you no inkling on that crystal height 
 Or in that shuddering gloom, how on a flight 
 Of London stairs we'd meet one Winter's morn? 
 
 And when we met, dear, did you realise 
 That as I waited, watching you descend, 
 Glad in the sunshine of your eyes and hair, 
 And you the first time looked into my eyes 
 Your wanderings were done, and on that stair 
 I, too, O love, had reached the journey's end. 
 
 [I4i]
 
 THE EMPTY COTTAGE 
 
 Over the meadows of June 
 
 The plovers are crying 
 
 All night under the moon 
 
 That silvers with ghostly light 
 
 The thatch of the little old cottage, so lonely to-night. 
 
 Lonely and empty it stands 
 
 By the sign-post that stretches white hands 
 
 Pointing to far-away lands 
 
 Where alone and apart we are lying. 
 
 Lonely and empty of all delight 
 
 It stands in the blind white night : 
 
 And under the thatch there is no one to hark to the 
 
 crying, 
 To the restless voices of plovers, flying and crying 
 Over the meadows of June, 
 All night under the moon 
 Crying . . . 
 
 [142]
 
 THE CLIFFS 
 
 In the warm dusk of the moonless Summer night, 
 As on the shingle by the still, dark sea 
 We rest, the chalk-cliffs beetle eerily 
 Over us glimmering a ghostly white ; 
 And silence steals upon us as we lie 
 Watching a far-off intermittent light 
 Momently flashing cold and dazzling bright 
 Between the dark tide and the moonless sky. 
 
 We watch the flashing light that seems to flare 
 An instant only between centuries 
 Of ominous grey midnight, and we stare 
 With eager peering eyes into the gloom, 
 While over our little lives in shadow loom 
 Primeval cold still ghostly presences. 
 
 [143]
 
 HOUSES 
 
 The house we built with hands 
 To shelter love's delight 
 From the pitchy night, 
 Dark and empty stands. 
 
 But from our house of dreams 
 Everlasting light 
 Through the pitchy night 
 Pours in golden streams. 
 
 [144]
 
 WORCESTER BEACON 
 
 When every spur of whin's a spike of ice, 
 Each grassy tussock bristling blades of steel. 
 Each withered bracken-frond a rare device 
 Of sparkling crystal crackling under heel 
 With brittle tinkling, then it is the time, 
 O love, to leave the chilly hearth and climb 
 The sun-lit Beacon, where the live airs blow 
 Along the clean wave-edge of drifted snow. 
 
 Love, let us go 
 
 And scale the ridge : I long to see you there 
 
 Breathing the eager air 
 
 With cheeks aglow, 
 
 The sunlight on your hair : 
 
 O love, I long to share 
 
 With you a moment the white ecstasy 
 
 And crystal silence of eternity. 
 
 [1451
 
 WORDS 
 
 Could I without weak words that fret and grieve 
 Fashion of singing airs and living light 
 The invisible fabric that the swallows weave 
 At sunset in their interlacing flight, 
 A sheer imperishable ecstasy 
 To clothe your spirit in viewless singing fire, 
 Then should I labour to my heart's desire, 
 Nor fear to dim your spirit's lucency. 
 
 But I have only words, words born in stress 
 And travail, for your spirit's loveliness. 
 Yet may not my dark syllables in their flight 
 Through other minds weave out of song and light 
 The fabric of my dream, that all men see 
 Your spirit's beauty through eternity. 
 
 [146]
 
 THE SADDLE 
 
 The Saddle, — where that August noon we basked 
 Above the gorse in the quivering golden glow, — 
 Was a smother of white mist and driving snow 
 That stinging, blinding and bewildering, tasked 
 My utmost powers as in the wan twilight 
 I crossed the ridge this afternoon alone, 
 Plunging thigh-deep through drifts of whirling 
 
 white 
 In a wind that seemed to strip me to the bone. 
 
 Yet as I struggled through the drifts I knew 
 No sharp regret for golden days gone by ; 
 For in my heart was the blaze and scent and bloom 
 Of unforgotten summers, as I thought of you 
 And the happy babes even then awaiting me 
 In the golden hearthlight of our little room. 
 
 [147]
 
 SONG 
 
 I long to shape in stone 
 What life has meant to me 
 That my delight be known 
 To all eternity. 
 
 Though in love's praise I give 
 To time frail words alone, 
 Yet may not song outlive 
 All perishable stone. 
 
 [148]
 
 QUIET 
 
 Only the footprints of the partridge run 
 Over the billowy drifts on the mountain-side; 
 And now on level wings the brown birds glide, 
 Following the snowy curves, and in the sun 
 Bright birds of gold above the stainless white 
 They move, and as the pale blue shadows move, 
 With them my heart glides on in golden flight 
 Over the hills of quiet to my love. 
 
 Storm-shaken, racked with terror through the long 
 Tempestuous night, in the quiet blue of morn 
 Love drinks the crystal airs, and peace newborn 
 Within his troubled heart, on wings aglow 
 Soars into rapture, as from the quiet snow 
 The golden birds; and out of silence, song. 
 
 [i49]
 
 SALVAGE 
 
 Five of these poems have been rescued from a dis- 
 carded book, issued in 1905 : the sixth, " The Salt- 
 Marshes, " though written in 191 2, is now printed 
 for the first time.
 
 THE LAMBING 
 
 Softly she slept in the night — her newborn bairn at 
 
 her breast, 
 A wee warm crinkled hand to the dimpling bosom 
 
 pressed — 
 As I rose from her side to go, though sore was my 
 
 heart to stay, 
 To the ease of the labouring ewes that else might die 
 
 before day. 
 
 Banking the peats on the hearth, I reached from the 
 
 rafter-hook 
 My lanthorn, and kindled the wick ; and taking my 
 
 plaid and crook, 
 I lifted the latch and turned once more to see if she 
 
 slept, 
 And looked on the slumber of peace: then into the 
 
 night I stepped 
 
 Into the swirling dark of the driving, blinding sleet, 
 And a world that seemed to sway and slip from un- 
 der my feet 
 As if rocked in the wind that swept the roaring star- 
 less night 
 
 [153]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Yet fumed and fashed in vain at my lanthorn's 
 shielded light. 
 
 Clean-drenched in the first wild gust, I battled across 
 
 the garth 
 And passed through the clashing gate — the warm 
 
 peat-glow of the hearth 
 And the quiet of love in my breast, the craven voices 
 
 to quell 
 As I set my teeth to the wind, and turned to the open 
 
 fell. 
 
 Over the tussocky bent I strove till I reached the 
 fold — 
 
 My brow like ice and my hands so numbed they 
 scarcely could hold 
 
 My crook or unloosen the pen : but I heard a lamb's 
 weak cries 
 
 As the gleam of my lanthorn lit the night of its new- 
 born eyes. 
 
 Toiling and trembling I watched each young life 
 
 struggle for breath, 
 Fighting till dawn for my flock with the oldest of 
 
 herdsmen, death : 
 And glad was my heart when at last the stackyard 
 
 again I crossed, 
 And thought of the labour well over with never a 
 
 yeanling lost. 
 
 [154]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 But as I came to the door of my home, drawing 
 
 wearily nigh, 
 I heard with a boding heart a feeble whickering cry 
 Like a motherless yeanling's bleat : and I stood in the 
 
 dawn's chill light 
 Afraid of I knew not what, sore spent with the toil 
 
 of the night. 
 
 Then setting a quaking hand to the latch I opened 
 
 the door, 
 And shaking the cold from my heart I stumbled 
 
 across the floor 
 To the bed where she lay so quiet, calm-bosomed, in 
 
 dreamless rest 
 And the wailing baby clutched in vain at the lifeless 
 
 breast. 
 
 I looked on the still white face, then sank with a cry 
 
 by the bed 
 And knew that the hand of death had stricken my 
 
 whole joy dead — 
 My flock, my world and my heart with my love at a 
 
 single blow : 
 And I cried " I, too, must die! " and it seemed that 
 
 life ebbed low, 
 
 [i55l
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 And the shadow of death drew nigh: when I felt the 
 
 touch on my cheek 
 Of a little warm hand out-thrust, and I heard that 
 
 wail so weak : 
 And knowing that not for me yet was there ease 
 
 from love or strife, 
 I caught the bairn to my breast and looked in the 
 
 eyes of life. 
 
 [156]
 
 THE FIRE 
 
 Brushwood and broom I bring to feed my fire, 
 Brief-flaming bracken, brittle-flaring ling, 
 Quick-crackling gorse and cones that smouldering 
 
 sing 
 With sappy hiss as blue flames jet and spire. 
 Beech-mast and leaves through long years bedded 
 
 deep, 
 Pine-needles stacked about rock-rooted firs 
 In woodland hollows where no echo stirs — 
 I bring to feed the fire that shall not sleep. 
 Fiercely it leaps, exultant in the night 
 In fresh-fed fury roaring to the stars, 
 While gaunt black shadows dance among the scars 
 Whose craggy spurs are tipped with golden light. 
 By night and day the perishing bright flame 
 Wind-flourished flares and fails, yet never dies, 
 But lives that I therein may watch your eyes — 
 Those fire-bright eyes my love could never tame 
 Which from the white heat of the burning core 
 Look out upon me as I gaze and gaze. 
 I bring fresh boughs to feed the hungry blaze 
 That fire may burn your heart for evermore 
 Wherever in far southern lands you roam, 
 
 [157]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 By what marshlight of wandering passion led : 
 
 For tumbled, cold and empty lies my bed, 
 
 Deserted bare and windswept is my home. 
 
 Without foreboding from the fold I turned 
 
 To come to you; but over the heather-thatch 
 
 No smoke of welcome curled : I raised the latch 
 
 No fire of welcome on the hearthstone burned. 
 
 I called your name : I climbed the ladder-stair 
 
 Up to the roof-tree chamber, raftered low : 
 
 The sunset filled it with a golden glow 
 
 Of mocking light, but you I found not there. 
 
 Long, long I called your name in bield and byre 
 
 And fold and shieling, over hill and dale. 
 
 Your heart heard not. With hands that never fail 
 
 I feed and feed the never-failing fire. 
 
 Wide-eyed, not ever slumbering, night or day, 
 
 I watch the flame that feeds upon my life, 
 
 That trampling shower or thunder's crashing strife 
 
 Shall never quench till all be burned away — 
 
 Till when, at last, consumed and spent I fall 
 
 In cold grey ash of passion's fiery gold, 
 
 Wherever you be, your heart shall shudder cold, 
 
 Your feet shall turn to answer to my call. 
 
 [158]
 
 THE HAYMAKERS 
 
 Last night as in my bed awake 
 I fretted for the day 
 I heard the land rail's constant crake 
 Among the unmown hay : 
 
 And in my head the thought that burned 
 And parched my lips and throat 
 Was like a wheel of fire that turned 
 On that hot aching note. 
 
 But with the crowing of the cock 
 The hours of waiting passed, 
 And slowly a shrill-chiming clock 
 Struck out the night at last. 
 
 I rose ; and soon my hot eyes roved 
 Over meadows dewy-deep 
 That in the wind of morning moved 
 As if they turned from sleep: 
 
 And where the crimson-rambler wreathed 
 The casement of my room 
 
 [159]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 On my hot brow the cool air breathed 
 As on each fading bloom. 
 
 I watched the martin wheel and poise 
 
 Above his nested mate : 
 
 When clear through morning's murmurous noise 
 
 I heard a clicking gate 
 
 As down the dipping meadow-road 
 
 He bore with easy pace 
 
 His shouldered scythe, and brightly glowed 
 
 The dawn-light on his face. 
 
 All morn with singing chorus blithe 
 Unwearied through cool hours 
 Was heard the swishing of the scythe 
 Among the grass and flowers. 
 
 All morn behind the swaying row 
 Of shoulders brown and bare 
 I followed, glad at heart to know 
 He moved before me there. 
 
 And as I laboured with the rake 
 Among the stricken grass, 
 Light-footed in the mowers' wake 
 The happy hours did pass. 
 
 [160]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Too quick they went, and all too soon 
 The hour of resting came 
 When over the withering field the noon 
 Hung in a still blue flame, 
 
 For as in shadow green and cool 
 He sank down wearily 
 Beside an alder-shaded pool 
 He never turned to me ; 
 
 And though afar beneath the briar 
 I watched him where he lay, 
 He knew not that my eyes afire 
 Burned brighter than the day : 
 
 And yet so loudly in my breast 
 Beat my tormented heart 
 As if to rouse him from his rest 
 I thought to see him start 
 
 As one awaked from midnight sleep 
 By knocking in the dark. 
 But in his eyes unclouded deep 
 There gleamed no kindling spark. 
 
 To-night no rails unresting crake 
 'Mid fallen grass and flowers: 
 
 [161] 
 
 /
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Naught stirs, and yet I lie awake 
 And count the crawling hours : 
 
 And as I watch the glimmering light 
 I await dawn tremblingly, 
 Lest in the quiet of the night 
 His heart has turned to me — 
 
 Lest I should find the day has come, 
 As yet the day shall rise 
 When he shall stand before me dumb, 
 The fire within his eyes. 
 
 [162]
 
 ROMAN'S LEAP 
 
 They found you nigh the foot of Roman's Leap 
 Deep-buried in the bracken's rustling gold — 
 Your arm beneath you bent, your brown face cold, 
 Vet all unheeding round you browsed your sheep. 
 
 They found you nigh the foot of Roman's Leap : 
 They laid you on a hurdle, bracken-strewn : 
 They bore you home beneath the waning moon 
 With laboured breathing up the craggy steep. 
 
 They found you nigh the foot of Roman's Leap : 
 Their whispering shadows darkened in the door: 
 Their griding hobnails crossed the sanded floor, 
 And in with them the whole night seemed to sweep. 
 
 They found you nigh the foot of Roman's Leap : 
 They laid you out upon the fourpost bed, 
 Two candles at your feet, two at your head, 
 Salt on your breast your soul from harm to keep. 
 
 They found you nigh the foot of Roman's Leap : 
 Deep buried in the bracken's rustling gold : 
 Dumb sorrow in my heart is frozen cold : 
 Unloose your clutch, O death, that I may weep ' 
 
 [163]
 
 THE ARROW 
 
 By peat-black waters flecked with foam 
 She lay beneath the flaming West. 
 I plucked the arrow from her breast, 
 And staunched the wound, and bore her home. 
 
 Before the hearth's red glowing peat 
 I laid her on a bracken-bed, 
 And loosed the dank hair round her head, 
 And chafed her snow-cold hands and feet 
 
 Until the living colour crept 
 Through her slim body : and her eyes 
 Looked into mine in still surprise 
 Once only ere she softly slept. 
 
 Yet, though she wakened not nor stirred, 
 I gazed in those still eyes all night 
 
 [164]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Within the peat-glow till the light 
 
 Of daybreak roused some restless bird : 
 
 When in the dawning's drowsy grey 
 With watching spent I fell asleep, 
 And slumbered till the bleat of sheep 
 Awakened me, and it was day. 
 
 Cold on my brow I felt the wind 
 That gently flapped the unlatched door, 
 And stirred the bracken on the floor 
 Whereon I looked and thought to find 
 
 Beauty yet slumbering in the gold 
 Of withered fern : but no dark head 
 Now nestled in the bracken-bed 
 That rustled in the dawn-wind cold : 
 
 And she was gone I knew not where : 
 I only knew that I must go 
 To seek her ever high and low 
 By hills and valleys of despair. 
 
 So, flinging wide the flapping door, 
 I turned my back upon my home. 
 By peat-black waters flecked with foam, 
 From dawn till dark, for evermore 
 
 [165]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 By moss and fell I keep my quest 
 Grown old and frail with failing breath, 
 Though now I know that only death 
 May pluck the arrow from my breast. 
 
 [166]
 
 THE SALTMARSHES 
 
 Over the fog-smothered marshes we splashed on our 
 way to the quay 
 
 Under a blind yellow moon bemused in a mizzle of 
 rain, 
 
 When low through the yelping of gulls and the muf- 
 fled wash-wash of the sea 
 
 Suddenly shuddered a voice — the voice of a crea- 
 ture in pain. 
 
 Cold at my heart, I stopped dead on the causeway, 
 and listening hard, 
 
 I muttered, and half to myself, " It's surely a hu- 
 man moaning! " 
 
 But still stumping steadily on, Pete grumbled, " It's 
 naught but the groaning — 
 
 The groaning and fash of a young cow calving in 
 Angerton's Yard." 
 
 Yet again, as we steered to the pots through the 
 breathless and mist-moithered night. 
 
 Coldly over my heart that shuddering, smothering 
 cry, 
 
 Low through the salty fret and the dazzle of driz- 
 zly light 
 
 [167]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 Echoing sobbed and moaned, then sank to a shiver- 
 ing sigh : 
 
 And tinder my breath as I stooped again to the oars, 
 rowing hard, 
 
 I muttered once more to myself: "It's surely a 
 human moaning! " 
 
 And only the oars in the rowlocks creaked in an- 
 swer: "It's naught but the groaning — 
 
 The groaning and fash of a young cow calving in 
 Angerton's Yard." 
 
 Dead they found her next day, the mothering girl, in 
 
 the dyke, 
 Strayed from the track in the fog and foundered, 
 
 sucked down in the gloam, 
 For lightness of heart and for laughter none ever 
 
 has known her like : 
 Heavy and quiet she lay, grave-eyed, as they carried 
 
 her home. 
 And the trudge of the bearers' feet, to my icy-cold 
 
 heart, beating hard, 
 As it still muttered over and over : " It's surely a 
 
 human moaning! " 
 Mocked with a splashing thud-thud, as in answer: 
 
 " It's naught but the groaning — 
 The groaning and fash of a young cow calving in 
 
 Angerton's Yard." 
 
 [168]
 
 NEIGHBOURS 
 
 And ever across the saltmarshes, making our way to 
 
 the quay 
 By moonlight or starlight or murk, in fog or fair 
 
 weather or rain, 
 Low through the yelping of gulls and the whisper or 
 
 crash of the sea, 
 Suddenly shudders a voice — the voice of a creature 
 
 in pain : 
 And vainly I cover my ears with my hands as my 
 
 heart listens hard, 
 Muttering and mumbling too late : " It's surely a 
 
 human moaning! " 
 Bitterly mocking itself in answer: "It's naught 
 
 but the groaning — 
 The groaning and fash of a young cow calving in 
 
 Angerton's Yard." 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEEIOA 
 
 [I6 9 ]
 
 M
 
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