fli TITANS AND GODS TITANS AND GODS .y . ; 31 PSYCHE . 32 AFTER STORM . . . ... 33 5 Pagt OUT OF SPACE 34 THE QUEEN 35 EUROPE 1914-1918 37 THE METAPHYSICIAN . . . . . 3$ GODS: THE DAEMON 41 AFTER READING THE GOSPEL OF SAINT JOHN 47 THE SIN 48 THE ROCK 49 FAREWELL TO MATHEMATICS . . . 5 SCALES 52 MAN 53 MASTER CELLS . . . . . -54 THE PILOT 55 A BLADE OF GRASS 57 ANY DAISY 58 NIGHT-FLYING 59 TO D. C. B. . . . . . . . 60 THE COCKNEY'S DREAM 61 WITH NIGHT AMONG THE MOUNTAINS . 62 OVER THE DEAD 63 ODE TO THE POETS 64 ROADS 67 LIFE AND DEATH 69 THE MOON 70 DECEMBER 1918 J2 RETURN ........ 73 TITANS PRELUDE EARTH, Air, Ocean, came in desolate grace With natal gifts of elemental rune, Those three stark souls of saga, to commune, Each with his hollow breast and empty face, Beside the ancient cradle of my race, Each with a sorrow. In a broken tune Bars of that long lost epic I have hewn Out of a wandering heart on windy ways. AUGUST 1914 (Ajter reading Descartes) WERE I but buried ; in the soundless deep Of those eternal arches, that arraign The brindled fury of a universe Of thundered joy and surges of slow pain Before the changeless soul. There is no sleep, No waking, dream, nor any fitful curse In these cold courts. Beyond the brazen doors The tumult of ancestral chaos pours. Standing amid his monuments aghast, Diminished man his meagre arm upthrows, Erect, and waiting on the crash of doom. The air is black with banners. Round her tomb Mouldering to ancient dust, a soaring blast, England arisen, bared for the battle, blows. 10 FLANDERS TWO broken trees possess the plain, Two broken trees remain. Miracles in steel and stone That might astound the sun are gone. Two broken trees remain. II ARDGAY A HUNDRED pontiff hills entomb Passionlessly, my purple home. Buried in a haunted cup Where the flashing snakes writhe up In coils of crested foam. 12 SONNET THERE is no atom of corporeal things Transcends its show. Though barbed beauty sent Through every porch beget a ravishment As of some bright aetherial hand that flings Eternal tunes across Time's trembling strings, Forbear, with scalpel of vain wit, to tent The world's dumb walls, wherein no song is pent, Nor prise the throat about the voice that sings. Not hills endure. All bases are sea-sport. Scared to their height, the staggered Heavens count For each live lamp, that grimly burns to ice, A million stanched. Death blows his shunless mort Across the mystic waters as they mount To grip the narrow grave where Nature lies. THE AIR-WAY THE Road ! The Road lies deep and wide and clear. The Road whereon my spirit graven lies. The Road is as my soul ; she is a fear, A living splendour and a wanderer's prize. The Road ! The Road runs on from anywhere, And Nowhere is her passion, for her Rome Is Everywhere. So need my spirit fare, And in far faring find a hollow home. O Road, were I indeed as great and free As thou, in all thy vast unconsciousness, Then were my soul indeed a road, and she, Taking the Universe in cold caress, For that she is no more herself than thee Should by thy measure therefore greater be. This sonnet is a variation of a poem on the Sea by the great Dutch poet William Kloos. THE BATTLEFIELD WHEN, from a platform planted in the sky, I have surveyed the fever and the toil Whereby men strove to steal a little ruth Out of the night, marked how the living soil Lies ever by dead waters, like a foil Forged by fools' fury, that the final truth Of finite things on earth might fitly lie Frailly in stone awhile, before men die ; Then is my soul indeed a battlefield, Whereon the unstarred East hold tournament, Alas ! the West with all her winged lights Retreats before this darkness triple-sealed, Leaving a world of broken spears, and bent Blades in the traces of the Christian knights. THE MIDNIGHT PATROL I STAND in the cathedral of God's brain, And through the window of His aerial eye, As a disdainful hermit from too high Ramparts of virtue, mark the inconstant stain Of delible ambition wax and wane Over the soil where men and maggots pry ; While wraiths of vanished aeons surge, and sigh Forgotten valour and sagas of dead pain. Down like unanchored stars through precipice Of stark night, plunge my sudden thoughts where your Dear raven head in our wild Eden is Asleep in the arms of Lomond and Ben More. Lo ! All the ages crown themselves in this ; Each grain of sand the centre of a shore. 16 THE SCOUT-FIGHTER HE, the perfect pilot, knows The lift of every wind that blows Along the aerial street. He, high Heaven's arch-athlete, Trembles on the perilous keys Of Death's unmortal ecstacies, Weaving out of rushing fears The stable rhythm of the spheres. SPRING SPLENDOURS pale as sorrow sleep In the silver eye of spring, O I am slain with the sheer sweet pain Of a beautiful broken wing And a voice too pure to sing. 18 THE HAWK HEAVY with the brackish wine at midnight I Pledge thee in thy polar enterprise Who art the keen edge of sobriety. Colder than crime art thou and arrow-wis2 And strong. Thou art the most perfidious beast that flies. I too have drunk delight in weakling's tears. The rapture of quick cruelty, and the prize Of sudden prey. I too have handled fears, And filled the air with iron merchandize, Like a pitiless falcon nailed upon the skies. Thou art the grinding intellect that whets The razor reason on the throat of love. Thou art the satyr of the soil that sets His image with the gods, and downward drove His body like a bullet on the homing dove. Thou art the image of the Earth, grey bird, Thou desolate island moored in the unpoled skies ; The aerial absolute, the sullen surd And tragedy of cosmic enterprise. And lo ! A hundred hawks assail our broken eyes. '9 NIGHT NOW the strong black hand of night Crushes the mountains out of sight, Out of sight and out of being, There is Nothing for my seeing. All the songs are sung away, Not a whisper left of day. Not a note of leaf or bird, There is Nothing to be heard. I am far from toe and heel, Only I can grimly feel Nothing like a flower growing ; There is Nothing for my knowing. I am far from hand and head, Standing out of air and dead, Dead, and standing out of air, There is Nothing everywhere. 20 GREY DAWN THERE is night In the heart of the rose. The lilies weep. There are tears in the wind As it blows The stars to sleep. The gods are fallen To stone ; Their songs to sighs For the stars that were gold, And are gone Out of their skies. 21 SHAKESPEARE WHEN to the market-place of dreams I went To bid a penny for the firmament, I sudden came upon a star-high man Whose mighty composition hid the sun With wings as wide as worlds ; and, when he ran In space, I thought that wind and he were one. Abrupt he checks those truceless feet and stands Deliberate with lightnings in his hands, Over the Sphinx. Created things attend, The speculations of the gods descend Upon Earth's human champion stood at bay. A moment's pause slow subtle smile and he, Murmuring " Lord ! what fools these mortals be!" Heedless and headlong goes his boisterous way. 22 SECRET TREATIES. I WE thought to find a cross like Calvary's, And queened proud England with a diadem Of thorns. Impetuous armies clamouring For war, from the far utterance of the seas We sprang, to win a new Jerusalem. Now is our shame, for we have seen you fling Full-sounding honour from your lips like phlegm And bargain up our soul in felonies. O England, it were better men should read, In dusty chronicles, of how a death Had found thee in the van of these crusades ; To tell their eager sons with bated breath, And burning eyes, about a golden deed, A vanished race, and high unmortal Shades. 23 SECRET TREATIES. II IS it a god that thunders like a sea Upon the gates of Gaza ; should I play Samson and bear the brazen strengths away, Leaving this wooden citadel to be The sport of every storm successively ? Beleaguered by the embattled stars, the bay Of marching winds, the desperate array Of anarchs banded in the heart of me, I cannot hear the sacred bugles blow Nor see the white battalions of the Cross. Each head is Janus. Every proud crusade Boasts on its hell-wrought banner holy braid. While o'er the dead, uncowering harpies crow Patriot fervours and batten on our loss. 24 NIGHT AT SCHEVENINGEN THE North Sea shakes His ranks in Thunder Through The moon, Beats and breaks His flanks in Sunder To The dune. Cold Song, And pitiless On rock and century. Bold, Strong And cityless My soul is as the sea. THE RAINBOW DOWN snowy crags when thunder rives Embattled clouds, the rainbow drives His brilliant foot, upsoaring thence, Athwart the storm's magnificence, While banded chiefs of tempest glare Through dark streamers of wind-strown hair, To bind a burning arras on The base of Heaven's blue garrison. THE ROAD WHAT do you know of the Road, Tramping the dry stone way, Down in the bloodless broad Plains, by day. The Road, it is made out of hills And the stuff of the night, And the boom of waters that fills Me with daft delight. I was naked as wind. I know The meaning of bread ; A casual crust would go Like wine to my head. By God ! I would rather have died In the splendour of my cave In the hollow hill-side, Then live in your grave. ON HEARING THE FOG-HORNS OF A WARSHIP THE horns of death ! They blow, they blow From the bridge of the iron show That stands upon the sea, As a god in exile sings The agony of wanderings. We break no stone, nor rear the Earth To sign the compass of our mirth. Yonder our steel Temple lies ; In the dark, it cries. 28 TO A GENTLEMAN ' FARMER WHO HOLDS POETRY "FOOLISH- NESS AND NO PROFESSION FOR A GENTLEMAN" GENTEEL serf, since you despise Us for the foolish things we prize, Honouring an idle song Not less than your industrious prong ; Pray, clench your gentlemanly hand At God, because at His command Such idiots exist as He That splendid fool on Calvary. 29 THE WALKER AMONG WINDS TOWERS were my teachers, for I lodged my soul In naked magnitudes. I set on sea, On cataracts, on red activity Discharged in thunder from the aerial coal Of God, the sign of mortal mastery. Man the untutored warrior ! He could bind The winged waves like strangling ice. He tore Obstreperous lightning out of air. He bore His banner in the stars, and walked the wind. But when I stand upon a cloud I know A sorry circumstance. The shrivelled crust Of mountains shattered down in level dust, And man desolved like iin r emaining snow. Then fare I far away to find a doom, Forever seeking ; but I know not whom. PRAYER THOU, in the centre of indifferent dearth Saidst suddenly " I AM," and straight wast God. Into the night thou dravest thy word, a rod, Cleaving the chaos, with the windy mirth Of a delirious demon. And a sod Stole from the sea, and where thy foot had trod, Followed and fawned, and fell to woe and worth And the tremendous circumstance of Earth. The tortured fiction of thy fancy bleed To westward, like a dead sun in a fen, Through the wracked fibres of thine empery. In this foul furnace which all women feed With flesh plucked living from the bones of men, Show me a star, or curse thyself, and die. 3 1 PSYCHE WHAT demon hunter winds his wintry horn Across the untented plains, beyond the bourne Of being ; summons thee to make him mirth Starwards and thinking in a clod of earth ; To count a few poor battered coins and stir The sands for bread, and with fond fingers play With haunted clouds, and then to drift away Forever, O thou liegeless wanderer ? Surely thou art, O unremaining one, As a persistent moth about a light, Doomed for a while to range the treacherous zone Of some great Truth, and with frail sensuous might Assault the burning body of a god, And then farewell to soul in thinking clod. AFTER STORM WHAT iron hand is at thy throat, O Water, That thou who wert a king of speech art stood Like a lone wraith about a field of slaughter, That weeps and prays and knows not what he would ? The clarion eloquence, that loosed in each Gigantic gesture on the tremulous air Rebellion and fierce vials of despair, In timid quavers falters on the beach. This Titan spirit clamped within his clod Of separate Earth to-day rears like a storm To toss the winding stars and tread the skies. Till calm to-morrow bends his scorching eyes For crusts upon the mire ; his resolute form To crouch like whining curs at every rod. 33 OUT OF SPACE OUT of space And eternity, God found this place, And time for me. One cup to drink, To draw two breaths ; To be one link Between two deaths. Two lightnings mark One point my scope, From spark to spark, My verge of hope. One flash to bring me Is employed, And one to fling me Down destroyed. 34 THE QUEEN BE still brave Nature's eloquence, Thy gallant chants are charmless now. I have drawn experience From the same well as thou. Dear air-strown vaunts, the sea's kind words, The deliberate gesture of grave trees Cannot bemuse with golden chords One wise as these. Fain would my suffering mother fold Translucent veils before her face, That, elemental pains controlled, She might win me a little grace. O I have rent the show of green Heroic fiction, found the rods Of a nameless wraith. The Queen Of all the gods. All the gods of Heaven stand, The kings of earth in ancient line, On a sleeping infant's hand, Even on mine. 35 Black, beyond the gods of Heaven, Above the monarchs of the earth, Broods the All-God, who has given Empire to Dearth. Now the wine is tinged with gall, The shining fruits of Eden rot, I rise to meet the great Queen's call To be, and be forgot. Come Thou, cradled in whorling water, Ice-bound hair and mouth of stone, Come Thou, and walk like a sea-king's daughter The streets of inland Babylon. Rived in the rush of her own fierce fountains Died my heart to my heart's desire ; Nailed to the shoulder of windless mountains, Prey of eagle and sport of fire. Queen of Silence, through starless spaces, Where angels tremble, and tall gods kneel, Come Thou dreadless, in wintry graces, Brow of iron and breasts of steel. EUROPE 1914-1918 " The events of recent years may induce certain of our thinkers to modify their enthusiasm for the importation of Occidental Culture" Indian Paper. CHAOTIC crime, that on the red cloud crest Of antique passion ramped like maniac sand, Blindly tempested, purposeless, unplanned, Ruffianed the cowering culture of the West ; That Eastern wit can point its ghastly jest, " Europe, who rose with reason in her hand To bid the moveless march of darkness stand, Is gone up in the smoke of her own zest." An iron rhythm through vast seasons rolled Before light dawned ; so day to dark came vowed That fall should mate with rise for evermore. Based on which timeless Golgotha, behold, Cleaving the convex of tumultuous cloud, The star-zoned spire of Man's steep spirit soar. 37 THE METAPHYSICIAN FIRMER hands than these have caught God, in the cages of a thought. Chaster eyes than these have been About the body of the Queen. Though I be unworth the skies' Favours, yet I may surprise Subterranean towers and test This dagger in a dragon's breast. GODS THE DAEMON PIT-A-PAT, Pit-a-pat, All the dark years I never heard that Pit-a-pat, Pit-a-pat. When I stood In the black wood Apart, Where the swarm Of devils storm With a worm In my heart. Pit-a-pat. I never heard that. Pit-a-pat, Pit-a-pat, Twenty-three winters, All icicle splinters. Twenty-three springs, All green ghast stings. Twenty-three autumns Twirled like teetotums, Twenty-three summers, Mouthing like mummers, 4' Hustled and hurled, World within world. Pit-a-pat, Pit-a-pat. All the dark years I never heard that. Pit-a-pat, Pit-a-pat. At dead midnight, Like the spirit of fright When I stood on the brink Of Hell I think I should have gone mad If not for the glad, Soft silence of that Pit-a-pat, Pit-a-pat. The protean churl, Like a passionate girl, Came to the tip Of my heart with a lip So slight, that it seemed As though I had dreamed Then away fled he Into mystery. Pit-a-pat. Two dark years I never heard that. 42 Pit-a-pat, Pit-a-pat. Yester year I again heard that, Louder and longer, Prouder and stronger He came, with the beat Of storms in his feet ; Came with the flash Of lightning, the crash Of planets under Shattering thunder. I felt the dart Of his tongue to my heart, The flaming bands Of his iron hands Tearing the ghost Of my will from his post. He slaked me my drouth In the wine of his mouth, Flooding a red Foam through my head, So that I stood, Like a man made of blood In a drunken daze, Singing his praise. Pit-a-pat, Pit-a-pat. Yester-night I again heard that. 43 Clear and sure. I flung the door. In trod The god. He held a glass Where all time was. He took the sands In his hands, And let them pour Upon the floor. He bid me tell Them as they fell. I counted once, I counted twice ; He said, " O dunce, Count thou them thrice." In a trice I counted thrice As the sand Slipped through his hand ; I counted seven separate times The sands in seven separate rhymes, 44 But how often I might count I always made a strange amount, For the sands would always run Out of numbers into None Then he caught a million miles, And set them on the floor in piles And he caught a million others And set them down beside their brothers He took so many million more That all space lay on the floor He bid me tell the miles, but I, Howsoever I might try, Found, as I had found before, Always Nothing on the floor. Then he took a million men, A million others, and again Million upon million hurled, Till all the nations of the world Were in my little chamber, even All the denizens of hjaven Thus he laboured to rehearse The pageant of the Universe, 45 And ever at each total beauty He bid me do my ghastly duty. But howsoever I might count, I always made that strange amount, Till I heard the Daemon cry, " The whole is here, and it is I." Then I looked long, long at him, Till I grew faint and very dim. And I saw to my surprise My spirit standing in his eyes. And I saw a symbol sit, Awful, on the head of it. I saw a dread, unspoken truth (Dare I say it, in my youth, When I have yet some days perchance To mingle with earth's circumstance ?). I saw I saw O God ! I saw (Speak it low with holy awe, Speak it difficult and dark, Lest the sons of Adam hark), That I, two thousand years, had worn On Calvary, the Crown of Thorn. AFTER READING THE GOSPEL OF SAINT JOHN IN the right hand Of God I stand, Though wind and the seas Are my enemies. Storm may cover My soul, but the Lover Of men shall set me free. The surge has broken My spirit and spoken The word of sin through me ; But shore shall lie When the tide is high In the centre of the sea ; And I will make To port, and take Greatly, Town and Tomb. Or trim my sail To the driving gale, And ride with God to deep sea-doom. D 47 THE SIN I SAID to modest Sin, " Why lurk shamed within Thy secret cell, " Like a cloistered woman Hallowed of no man, With book and bell ? " Throw thy god-grafted arm Over me like a charm, Stand forth, thou fighter. " Stand high and apart On the tower of my heart, With mace and mitre." THE ROCK NAILED to the universe triumphantly, A Rock. Not Wind with all his bludgeoning, Nor Water stretched upon his iron wing, Come scathless from that naked panoply. He stands up in the stomach of the storm, Tearing the wind ashriek in twisted lengths ; In multitudinous chaos he is form, He is a god and stronger than sea-strengths. Art Thou indeed in Thy vast isolation The Rock Supreme when monuments are sand, Where, through the tumult of the trembling ages, A hunted and forbidden soul may stand, When on the driven wind the water rages, Or art Thou but the crown of all frustration ? 49 FAREWELL TO MATHEMATICS I LABOURED on the anvil of my brain, And beat a metal out of pageantry. Figure and form I carry in my train, To load the scaffolds of Eternity. Where the Masters are, Building star on star, Where in masonic ritual The great Dead Mathematical Wait and wait and wait for me, To the deliberate presence of the Sun, (Bright cynosure of every darkling sign Wherein all numbers consummate in One), Poised on the bolt of an un-finite line, As one whose spirit's state Is unafraid but desperate, Though far unfathomed fears, Through time to timeless years I soar, through shade to shine. They say that on a night there came to Euler, As eagle-eyed he stared upon a star, Thralled in the spell of mighty space, a toiler Like to himself and me, for things that are 50 Buried from the sight alone Of men whose eyes are made of stone, And led him out in ecstasy Over the dim boundary, By the pale gleam of a scimitar. Then, Euler, mindful of thy lesser need, Be thou my pilot in this treacherous hour ; That I be less unworth thy greater meed, O my strong brother, in the halls of power. For here and hence I sail Alone, beyond the veil ; Where square and circle coincide And the parallels collide, And perfect pyramids flower. SCALES COPERNICUS. " HAVE lavish aeons prodigal of toil Waged then for tbee their million generous laws, Thou faint cognition, bolted up in soil Like whine in sea-shell or a tenuous gauze That half is not ? for tbee rose red Turmoil Raving along the Silence, to embroil The libidinous Beast of Chaos, till his jaws Wrenched by tempestuous Form, reveal the Cause ? " PTOLEMY. " There is no standard in the strongest star, Nor meritorious land, nor constant sea, To mark a mile or demonstrate a worth. Only in this high human spirit are, (The clean articulation of the earth) Scales, and a semblance of stability." MAN HE walks the world with mountains in his breast, And holds the hiltless wind in vassalage. Transtellar spaces are his fields of quest, Eternity his spirit's ambassage. The uneared acre of the firmaments Under his hungry harrow, yields increase. While, from the threshold of dim continents They beckon him, who bear the stars in lease. And yet is he a thane of foreigners, On sapphire throned, but in an unkinged house, Arrased with honours, broidered in gold sheen A palace in a town of sepulchres. Voices he hears, but knows not what they mean, His own to him the most mysterious. 53 MASTER CELLS MAN is not stone, nor is Man's monument Built in the hungry stomach of the sea. Though Time have a tomb, and Space a destiny, Though rock with wind be burst and burnt and blent, Bright rolling organs of the firmament Hang dulled and speechless in black Heaven's cone When down the night the dark dead sun is thrown ; Yet, in the virtue of a magnitude Or of a cask of steel, in fire secure, Or of a microbe, scathless in a storm, Minute and massive, garmented and nude, From Time concealed, insensible to form, Ageless and spaceless the Master Cells endure. 54 THE PILOT HE is liege of wind and the thunder, And desperate resolute things. On the market-skies His spirit buys A drink of death on desolate wings. His hands Hold Fate. He stands Like Hate Between the winds and under The flashing brim Of the waters, slim U boats wilt at the sign of him. He rides the wild cloud-horses On tracks of polar gold. His heart is hound Of the hunting-ground Where the ghostly stags are foaled. Through hives Of stars, He drives His cars 55 Along moon-metalled courses. His feet are shod With lightning-rod, To walk the living hand of God. A BLADE OF GRASS HORSES I saw, and on the horses gods, Cumbering desolation as they massed In battle on the plains around this vast Toil of the Titan Masons, in whose hods Swirled the red energy of lightning-rods As they this cloud-compelling trophy cast ; Till conquered chaos withered in the blast Of Heaven's loud bugles blown at diremost odds. Here is the heart of hazard where the fate Of cosmic things hangs dubious to Time's end. Nor shall the traces of the sword endure, Nor all man's wit the matter arbitrate. The awful powers are armed and naught's secure ! Within this blade the hostile stars contend. 57 ANY DAISY I ADDRESS Her Mightiness In fear. Nor have forgot That she is not More near, Nor more far Than any star To me ; Then am I Afraid, and cry For Thee. Lord ! " Be kind, For I am blind With shame. " Lord, is this A flower or is She flame ? " 58 NIGHT-FLYING ALOFT on footless levels of the night A pilot thunders through the desolate stars, Sees in the misty deep a fainting light Of far-off cities cast in coal-dark bars Of shore and soundless sea ; and he is lone, Snatched from the universe like one forbid, Or like a ghost caught from the clay and thrown Out on the void, nor God cared what he did. Till from these unlinked whisperers that pain The buried earth he swings his boat away, Even as a lonely thinker who hath run The gamut of great lore, and found the Inane, Then stumbles at midnight upon a sun And all the honour of a mighty day. 59 TO D. C. B. " OTHERS had parents, you had only me An ugly, cross, auld buddie," so you sighed When many years ago my mother died In far-off foreign London. And then we Fled to the hills like deer in jeopardy. Mine infant hands you laid on power, and plied My heart with flame, and bade me fearless ride Away from you to meet the advancing sea. Robed in red dreams with Ninus have I gone To win Semiramis at Babylon, Travelled in Faerie, bright with elfin dames Who had instructed Phidias in despair. Evil and good with all they hold most rare Are to your central splendour but dim frames. 60 THE COCKNEY'S DREAM HE heard a voice storm up the falls of song. A vision flamed across his soul's dark blind. He saw huge serpents hurrying along, And a great lion raving in the wind. On shattered, red, tremendous feet the grim Ghast ghost of London gaped and gripped at him. 61 WITH NIGHT AMONG THE MOUNTAINS TIME, in the van of fallen centuries, In fallow spaces swings his unfleshed scythe. Lo ! Deathliest night burns through eternities, Where ragged waters rave and shrewd winds writhe Over the blunted hungry edge ; but those Unmortal trophies where strong dreamers trod Vast shadows loitering on moon-taken snows Out-tower tall Time and scale abreast of God. 62 OVER THE DEAD WHO in the splendour of a simple thought, Whether for England or her enemies, Went in the night, and in the morning died ; Each bleeding piece of human earth that lies Stark to the carrion wind, and groaning cries For burial each Jesu crucified Hath surely won the thing He dearly bought ; For wrong is right when wrong is greatly wrought. Yet is the Nazarene no thane of Thor, To play on partial fields the puppet king, Bearing the battle down with bloody hand. Serene he stands, above the gods of war, A naked man where shells go thundering The great unchallenged Lord of No-Man's Land. ODE TO THE POETS THIS is the world you made Out of the songs you sang ; And the songs unsung, Like swords, are flung Down, where dead men hang. Be gluttons of this ripe red star, Of her rich mouth be your mouths amorous. Her breath be on your blood As sunrise on a bud. Be pirates, and make war On boats that bear the golden bar ; Be misers, mild and mean, In the reaper's prints, to glean Glittering straw, servile and sedulous ; But be kinglike cold and taut Beneath a facile skin ; Be as Gods in your deep thought, A bended bow within. Let pagans plant their spirit in the forms And figure of the earth ; poor temporal faith That dares not look into the eye of death, Because its God is vulnerable to worms And ill in face of cannon-shot. They may not sing upon the battlefield Whose All is sensitive to rust and rot ; Their rosy strings of eld, Forgetful of the songs they held, But horrid lies and tuneless discords yield. Who hath had commerce in grave peaceful hours, With sacred, awful, elemental powers ; Who, undismayed, while yet the kind dawn shone, Looked to the scroll of flesh and read thereon How in each man there walks his skeleton ; He, in the crashing circumstance of doom, Under the splitten skies, When the iron devil flies Through white vestures flaming from the loom Of Nature weaving, even in the tomb, Beauty for the hour she dies. He, in his steadfast thought shall rise Above the treason of his eyes, To follow sight beyond his seeing, To borrow breath above his being ; Till shattered flesh and twisted bone Are mingled into air and gone ; Till he stand up in the starkness Of his spirit, and the darkness Of Death and Light are one. 66 ROADS THOUGH to Master Priests be given, By grace, in single holy levin, Carnal privilege of Heaven ; Yet all Earth is flood with foam , Of loveliness, to lead us home. There are many roads, but Rome Is everywhere. Old Skullcap, who Half-crazed his wits a-nosing through Philosophies, at eighty-two Stumbled in, with stool and staff, Plotting Thy Eternal Graph On his poor brittle cenotaph. Young Science, linked with worship, came, Gowned at last in comely shame, To find in every flower a flame. Who a painted cheek had kissed, Were he rake or atheist, Had kissed Thee, though he never wist. 67 But, to be a poet's prize, Thou hast thrown through tiers of skies From Earth, Thy topless masonries, That we might steo from stair to stair, Of beauty piled on beauty, where The spirals end in Thy sheet lair. 68 LIFE AND DEATH LO ! Life and Death, the Lover and the Maid, Of birth is She Most rare, and He Wistfully afraid. I and Thou the Science and the Truth, As Life meets Death Breath on Breath, Age into ageless youth. THE MOON GHAST mass of ice, thou tomb Once a live womb Teeming to birth ; Even as Earth. Thou, even as Earth, from the primal mass Swirled into space, Folded thy shrunken face, Buckled thy molten base, Till seas boil and roar Where crags smoke and soar Out of thy blazing core. Thence to thy Cambrian night, Silurian trilobite, Darting belemnite, Gigantic dinosaur, Swooping thy desolate shore Where the sheer course is Of the tapir-toed horses, Upward to shape Man out of ape, Out of a beast Poet and priest. 70 Now thou art led On a viewless thread Round Earth new-born, with thy cargo of dead, That a bird should sing In the heart of spring, Of winter waiting to shatter her wing. Thou floating tomb, Thou withered womb, Thou pale Cassandra of Troyland doom, I who rest At the burning breast Of beauty fling thee a golden jest. Go slay with slight, Stolen might, Lark and linnet, but spare the kite Or ever he harry thee out of night. 7 1 DECEMBER 1918 THROUGH this pontiff hill I hear Christ comforting, with ghostly cheer The last hour of the dying year. Poor-broken-hearted year ! who fain From her tomb would turn again For pardon, that she brought us pain. Night has strown my heart until I see the silence of this hill Is God's sad spirit standing still. Standing still, because He fain Would let the poor year turn again For pardon, that she brought us pain. RETURN THE hearts of the mountains were void, The sea spake foreign tongues, From the speed of the wind I gat me no breath, And the temples of Time were as sepulchres. I walked about the world in the midnight, I stood under water and over stars, I cast Life from me, I handled Death, I strode naked into lightning, I had so great a thirst for God. The heart of the mountain overfloweth, The sea speaketh clear words, The Ark is brought to the Tabernacle. Lightnings that withered in the sky Are become great beacons roaring in a wind. I see Death, lying in the arms of Life, And, in the womb of Death, I see Joy. I had said " The Spirit of Earth is white," But lo ! He is red with joy, He devoureth the meat of many nations, He absorbeth a vintage of scarlet. Though my head be with the stars All the flowers of Earth are singing in mine ears. 73 Though my foot be planted on the sea-bed Yet is it shod with the thunder. Sorrow for Earth Transient is passed away, Pain of martyr'd splendour is no more. They have left a fair child in my lap, A lusty infant shouting to the dawn. The Ogre of midnight hath perished, He shivered in the glare of the mountain, He screamed upon the swords of the sea, His bowels rushed out upon the lances of the wind. I shall not descend from the hill, Never go down to the valley. For I see on a snow-crowned peak The Glory of the Lord, Erect as Orion Belted to his blade. But the roots of the mountains mingle with mist And raving skeletons run thereon. I shall not go hence. For here is my Priest, Who hath broken me in the waters of Disdain. Here is my Jester, 74 Who hath mended me on the wheels of Mirth. Here is my champion, Who hath confounded mine ancient Enemy. Ardgay the slayer of giants. 75 printed in Great JSritai* ty Tur*tuU ff Spear** EAutlnu&i SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME: AND OTHER POEMS BY LOUIS GOLDING Author of " Forward from Babylon." TIMES : " Mr Golding shows again that he has vision." ENGLISH REVIEW : " Establishes him as decidedly the most venturesome and many-sided of our younger men." YORKSHIRE OBSERVER : "He displays the qualities of a true poet." MANCHESTER CITY NEWS: " Possesses the indubitable stamp of his individuality." 3/6 net LONDON: CHRISTOPHERS University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. mir>