A 
 ofc 
 
 IS THE 
 PRECIOUS 
 LIFE-BLOOD; 
 
 OF A 
 
 MASTER. 
 
 -SPI RIT, 
 
77* KINGS TREASURIES 
 
 OF LITER.ATURE 
 
 GENERAL EDITOR 
 SIR AT QLHLLER. COUCH 
 
NEW YORK: E-P-DUTTON AND COMPAJ 
 
* - 
 
 m 
 
 MODERN 
 POETRY 
 
 EDITED BY 
 GUYN-POCOCK 
 
 
 
 DENT & SONS LTD * LONDON & TORONTO 
 
lit 
 
 SOLE AGENT FOR SCOTLAND 
 
 THE GRANT EDUCATIONAL CO. LTD. 
 
 GLASGOW 
 
 All rights reserved 
 FIRST EDITION, Mwjugo. REPRINTED, October 1920 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 SINCERE thanks are due to the following publishers, 
 authors, and holders of copyrights, for their kindness 
 in allowing the publication of the poems in this book. 
 The editor has been anxious to include what is best in 
 modern poetry, and most suitable for young people, 
 and the kindness and courtesy they have shown to 
 him in giving all facilities, forwarding letters, and so 
 forth, has been most helpful. 
 
 Special thanks are due to those authors who went 
 out of their way to make further valuable suggestions, 
 and in more than one case, to send books, and new 
 poems of their own. 
 
 Mr. Laurence Binyon and Mr. Elkin Matthews for John 
 Winter, from " London Visions." 
 
 Mr. E. H. Blakeney for verses To a Favourite Cat, from 
 " Poems on Peace and War, 1912-18." 
 
 Mr. W. S. Blunt for The Old Squire and St. Valentine's Day. 
 
 Dr. Robert Bridges and Mr. John Murray for The Win- 
 nowers. 
 
 The literary executors of the late Rupert Brooke for The 
 Soldier and part of The Fish, from the " Collected 
 Poems of Rupert Brooke," published by Messrs. 
 Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd. 
 
 Mrs. Frances Cornford and Messrs. Bowes and Bowes for 
 The Princess and the Gipsies. 
 
 Mr. Gerald Cumberland for The Winging Souls. 
 
 4^2599 
 
i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 Lord Desborough for Captain Julian Grenfell's Into Battle. 
 Mr. Walter de la Mare for Off the Ground and Epitaph. 
 Mr. John Drinkwater, Messrs. Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., 
 
 and (by special arrangement) The Houghton Mifllin 
 
 Co., Boston, for Clouds. 
 Mr. W. W. Gibson and Mr. El kin Matthews for Hit and 
 
 Messages. 
 
 Mr. Gerald Gould for Fallen Cities and Wander Thirst. 
 Mr. Thomas Hardy, the Editor of the Times, and The 
 
 Macmillan Co. of New York for Men who March A way. 
 Mrs. Henley for a passage from Arabian Nights Enter- 
 tainments, and for The Passing (Margaritae Sorori), 
 
 from " Echoes," by the late W. E. Henley. 
 Mr. Ralph Hodgson, Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Ltd., and 
 
 The Macmillan Co. of New York for The Bull and 
 
 Bells of Heaven. 
 Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 
 
 for Puck's Song, from " Puck of Pook's Hill," and The 
 
 Way through the Woods, from " Rewards and Fairies." 
 Mr. Shane Leslie and Messrs. Burns, Gates and Washbourne, 
 
 Ltd., for Fleet Street. 
 Mr. E. V. Lucas and Messrs. Methuen and Co., Ltd., for 
 
 Jack, reprinted from " The Open Road." 
 Mr. John Masefield and Mr. W. Heinemann for Sea Fever, 
 
 Laugh and be Merry, and stanzas from " Dauber." 
 Mr. Harold Munro for Dog. 
 Sir Henry Newbolt and Mr. John Murray for Messmates, 
 
 The Adventurers,^.^ Master and Man, from " Poems 
 
 New and Old." 
 Mr. Robert Nichols, Messrs. Chatto and Windus, and 
 
 The Frederick A. Stokes Co. for The Assault. 
 Mr. Alfred Noyes and Messrs. W. Blackwood and Sons for 
 
 A Song of England and The Moon is Up. 
 Mr. Herbert E. Palmer, the Editor of the English Review, 
 
 and Mr. Elkin Matthews for The Bushrangers. 
 Mr. Siegfried Sassoon and Mr. W. Heinemann for Attack, 
 
 from " Counter-attack and other Poems." 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 7 
 
 Mr. Sacheverell Sitwell and Mr. B. H. Blackwell for The 
 
 Parrot. 
 
 Mr. James Stephens for The Snare. 
 The literary executors of Walt Whitman and Messrs. 
 
 Doubleday, Page and Co. for Animals, The Lumber- 
 men's Camp, and Out of the Cradle endlessly Rocking. 
 Major Francis Brett Young and Messrs. W. Collins and 
 
 Sons, Ltd., for Bete Humaine. 
 Mr. Ernest Rhys and Messrs. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 
 
 for Saint Brendan and The Leaf Burners. 
 Miss Helen Gray Cone and Messrs. J. M. Dent and Sons 
 
 Ltd. for The Common Street. 
 Miss Nora Holland and Messrs. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 
 
 for The Sea-Wind, Ships of Old Renown, and Sea-gulls. 
 The Editor of the Westminster Gazette and Mr. Guy N. 
 
 Pocock for Years Ahead. 
 Mr. Martin Seeker for J. E. Flecker's poem here called 
 
 Thoughts of England. 
 Messrs. Burns, Gates and Washbourne, Ltd., for Francis 
 
 Thompson's The Snowftake. 
 Messrs. T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., for W. B. Yeats' Lake Isle 
 
 of Innisfree. 
 Messrs. Chatto and Windus and Messrs. Charles Scribner's 
 
 Sons, New York, for R. L. Stevenson's The Vagabond, 
 
 Christmas at Sea, and Requiem. 
 Mr. John Lane and The John Lane Company of New York 
 
 for John Davidson's In Romney Marsh and Margaret 
 
 Woods' Gaudeamus Igitur. 
 Messrs. Grant Richards, Ltd., for John Davidson's A 
 
 Runnable Stag. 
 Messrs. Small, Maynard and Co. for Bliss Carman's Joys 
 
 of the Road. 
 The poem entitled A Field in Ludwell is taken, with due 
 
 acknowledgment, from " Chosen Poems/' by W. J. 
 
 Ibbert, published by Mr. A. H. Bullen at the Shake- 
 speare Head Press, Stratford-on-Avon. 
 
PART I. ENGLAND 
 
 A SONG OF ENGLAND 
 PUCK'S SONG 
 THOUGHTS OF ENGLAND 
 THE SOLDIER 
 
 Alfred Noyes 
 Rudyard Kipling . 
 James Elroy Flecker 
 Rupert Brooke 
 
 PAGE 
 15 
 18 
 
 20 
 
 22 
 
 PART II. THE CALL OF THE SEA 
 
 SEA-FEVER 
 JOHN WINTER . 
 CHRISTMAS AT SEA 
 From " ECHOES " 
 SHIPS OF OLD RENOWN 
 SEA-GULLS 
 MESSMATES 
 
 NEARING CAPE HORN. From 
 " DAUBER " 
 
 John Masefield . . 26 
 
 Laurence Binyon . . 27 
 
 R. L. Stevenson . . 31 
 
 W. E. Henley . . 34 
 
 Nora Holland . . 34 
 
 Nora Holland . . 35 
 
 Sir Henry Newbolt . 37 
 
 John Masefield . . 38 
 
 PART III. THE CALL OF THE COUNTRY 
 
 WANDER-THIRST 
 
 THE WINNOWERS 
 
 THE VAGABOND 
 
 THE WAY THROUGH THE 
 
 WOODS 
 
 THE ADVENTURERS 
 THE LAKE ISLE OF INNIS- 
 
 FREE .... 
 IN ROMNEY MARSH . 
 THE JOYS OF THE ROAD . 
 8 
 
 Gerald Gould 
 Robert Bridges 
 R. L. Stevenson . 
 
 Rudyard Kipling . 
 Sir Henry Newbolt 
 
 W. B. Yeats 
 John Davidson 
 Bliss Carman 
 
 43 
 44 
 46 
 
 47 
 48 
 
 49 
 50 
 52 
 
CONTENTS 9 
 
 PART IV. ANIMALS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE OLD SQUIRE . . Wilfrid Scawen Blunt . 59 
 
 MASTER AND MAN . . Sir Henry Newbolt . 62 
 
 A RUNNABLE STAG . . John Davidson . . 63 
 
 % ST. VALENTINE'S DAY . Wilfrid Scawen Blunt . 67 
 
 To A FAVOURITE CAT . Edward Henry Blakeney 67 
 
 THE BULL . . . Ralph Hodgson . . 69 
 
 BETE HUMAINE . . Francis Brett Young . 76 
 
 THE BELLS OF HEAVEN . Ralph Hodgson . . 76 
 
 THE SNARE . . . James Stephens . . 77 
 
 ANIMALS .... Walt Whitman . . 78 
 
 THE FISH . . . Rupert Brooke . . 78 
 
 DOG ... . Harold Monro . . 80 
 
 PART V. THE GREAT WAR 
 
 MEN WHO MARCH AWAY . Thomas Hardy . . 87 
 
 HIT Wilfrid Wilson Gibson . 88 
 
 THE MESSAGES ... . Wilfrid Wilson Gibson . 89 
 
 THE ASSAULT . . . Robert Nichols . . go 
 
 THE BUSHRANGERS ^ . Herbert E. Palmer . 94 
 
 ATTACK .... Siegfried Sassoon . . 95 
 
 THE CRICKETERS OF FLANDERS A nonymous . 96 
 
 INTO BATTLE . . . Julian Grenfell . . 98 
 
 YEARS AHEAD . . . Guy N. Pocock . .100 
 
 CLOUDS .... John Drinkwater . . 101 
 
 THE WINGING SOULS . . Gerald Cumberland . 102 
 
 THE DEAD Fox HUNTER . Robert Graves . . 103 
 
 PART VI. FANCY 
 
 FROM " ARABIAN NIGHTS 
 
 ENTERTAINMENTS " . W. E. Henley . .109 
 
 FALLEN CITIES . . . Gerald Gould 1 1 1 
 
10 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART VI. FANCY continued 
 
 FLEET STREET . 
 OFF THE GROUND 
 THE PRINCESS AND 
 
 GIPSIES 
 
 THE MOON is UP 
 To A SNOWFL.AKE 
 THE COMMON STREET 
 
 Shane Leslie 
 Walter de la Mare 
 
 Frances Cornford . 
 Alfred Noyes 
 Francis Thompson 
 Helen Gray Cone . 
 
 PAGE 
 112 
 
 117 
 IIQ 
 120 
 121 
 
 PART VII. LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 LAUGH AND BE MERRY . John Masefield . 
 
 GAUDEAMUS IGITUR . . Margaret L. Woods 
 
 AN EPITAPH . . . Walter de la Mare 
 
 REQUIEM . . . . R. L. Stevenson . 
 THE PASSING (Margaritae 
 
 Sorori] . . . W. E. Henley . 
 
 SAINT BRENDAN . . Ernest Rhys . 
 
 THE LEAF BURNERS . . Ernest Rhys . 
 
 A FIELD IN LUDWELL . W. J. Ibbert . 
 
 126 
 127 
 
 1 30 
 1 30 
 
 1 32 
 133 
 136 
 
 PART VIII. FREE VERSE 
 
 JACK 
 
 THE LUMBERMEN'S CAMP 
 
 OUT OF THE CRADLE EN 
 
 LESSLY ROCKING . 
 THE PARROT 
 
 E. V. Lucas 
 Walt Whitman . 
 
 Walt Whitman . 
 Sacheverell Sitwell 
 
 141 
 146 
 
 146 
 
 156 
 
 PART IX. A NOTE ON FUTURIST POETRY 
 
PART 1 
 ENGLAND 
 
MODERN POETRY 
 
 PART I. ENGLAND 
 
 THE poems chosen for this section are not Patriotic 
 songs in the commonly accepted sense of the term. 
 That is to say, they do not slap us metaphorically 
 on the back, shouting to all the world that does not 
 want to listen that one Englishman is worth three 
 men of any other nation, that Britannia rules the 
 waves, that Britons never, never, never shall be 
 slaves, and so on and so forth. Your truly patriotic 
 poem does not glorify War with a ranting jingoism, 
 nor flaunt a swelled-headed Imperialism in the face 
 of exasperated foreigners. Rather, it expresses the 
 true love of England for England's sake the love 
 of English scenery, of English life and thought. 
 
 There is a wonderful sense of intimacy about the 
 poetry of the Love of England. " There is a song of 
 England which none shall ever sing/' for this true 
 patriotism lies too deep for expression in words. It 
 is all that England means to the Englishman. The 
 'song' is within us already; and though the poet 
 
14 '/ ....^v. . ENGLAND 
 
 may* strike *tlie ch'ord in 'us, he need not indeed he 
 cannot analyse it. Such a poem as the Song of 
 England may not be so sentimental as most German 
 songs of the Fatherland, nor so heroic as those sung 
 upon the theme of La Patrie, nor so yearning as the 
 songs of Italia; yet it breathes a more confident 
 and intimate love than any. 
 
 Or again, the poet may conjure by his magic art, 
 as he does in Puck's Song, an England of years long 
 gone by. Yet he does not guide us through an un- 
 familiar pageant of the centuries, but over the roads, 
 and fields, and downs of the same England which we 
 know and love to-day. 
 
 Or perhaps, as in Mr. Flecker's poem, the Eng- 
 lishman in a far land tells of what England means 
 to him. And this is not the Flag that braved a 
 thousand years the battle and the breeze, but the 
 fields shining after rain, the kingcups, and the voices 
 of the pines. 
 
 Lastly, in the sonnet called The Soldier, the poet 
 as it were identifies himself with England, and all 
 that England stands for in the world. Already one 
 of the best known, this is also one of the greatest 
 sonnets in the language; for it is probable that no 
 poem has ever been written, or ever can be written, 
 to convey a truer and more intimate love of England 
 and English ideals. Rupert Brooke, the author of 
 this poem, the youngest and most promising of all 
 modern English poets, died during the Dardanelles 
 campaign, and was buried on a Greek island. 
 
ALFRED NOYES 15 
 
 A SONG OF ENGLAND 
 
 THERE is a song of England that none shall ever sing; 
 
 So sweet it is and fleet it is 
 That none whose words are not as fleet as birds upon 
 
 the wing, 
 
 And regal as her mountains, 
 And radiant as the fountains 
 Of rainbow-coloured sea-spray that every wave can 
 
 fling 
 Against the cliffs of England, the sturdy cliffs of 
 
 England, 
 
 Could more than seem to dream of it, 
 Or catch one flying gleam of it, 
 Above the seas of England that never cease to sing. 
 
 There is a song of England that only lovers know; 
 
 So rare it is and fair it is, 
 Oh, like a fairy rose it is upon a drift of snow, 
 
 So cold and sweet and sunny, 
 
 So full of hidden honey, 
 
 So like a flight of butterflies where rose and lily blow 
 Along the lanes of England, the leafy lanes of England ; 
 
 When flowers are at their vespers 
 
 And full of little whispers, 
 The boys and girls of England shall sing it as they go. 
 
 There is a song of England that only love may sing, 
 
 So sure it is and pure it is; 
 And seaward with the seamew it spreads a whiter wing, 
 
16 ENGLAND 
 
 And with the skylark hovers 
 
 Above the tryst of lovers, 
 
 Above the kiss and whisper that led the lovely Spring 
 Through all the glades of England, the ferny glades 
 of England, 
 
 Until the way enwound her 
 
 With sprays of May, and crowned her 
 With stars of frosty blossom in a merry morris-ring. 
 
 There is a song of England that haunts her hours of 
 
 rest; 
 
 The calm of it and balm of it 
 Are breathed from every hedgerow that blushes to 
 
 the West: 
 
 From cottage doors that nightly 
 Cast their welcome out so brightly 
 On the lanes where laughing children are lifted and 
 
 caressed 
 By the tenderest hands in England, hard and blistered 
 
 hands of England; 
 And from the restful sighing 
 Of the sleepers that are lying 
 
 With the arms of God around them on the night's 
 contented breast. 
 
 There is a song of England that wanders in the wind; 
 
 So sad it is and glad it is 
 
 That men who hear it madden and their eyes are wet 
 and blind, 
 
 For the lowlands and the highlands 
 
 Of the unforgotten islands, 
 
ALFRED NOYES 17 
 
 For the Islands of the Blessed, and the rest they 
 
 cannot find 
 As they grope in dreams to England and the love 
 
 they left in England; 
 Little feet that danced to meet them, 
 And the lips that used to greet them, 
 And the watcher at the window in the home they left 
 behind. 
 
 There is a song of England that thrills 'the beating 
 
 blood 
 
 With burning cries and yearning 
 Tides of hidden aspiration hardly known or under- 
 stood; 
 
 Aspirations of the creature 
 Tow'rds the unity of Nature ; 
 Sudden chivalries revealing whence the longing is 
 
 renewed 
 In the men that live for England, live and love and 
 
 die for England : 
 By the light of their desire 
 They shall blindly blunder higher 
 To a wider, grander Kingdom and a deeper, nobler Good. 
 
 There is a song of England that only God can hear; 
 
 So gloriously victorious, 
 
 It soars above the choral stars that sing the Golden 
 Year; 
 
 Till even the cloudy shadows 
 
 That wander o'er her meadows 
 In silent purple harmonies declare His glory there, 
 
 B 
 
i8 ENGLAND 
 
 Along the hills of England, the billowy hills of England, 
 
 While heaven rolls and ranges 
 
 Through all the myriad changes 
 That mirror God in music to the mortal eye and ear. 
 
 There is a song of England that none shall ever sing : 
 
 So sweet it is and fleet it is 
 
 That none whose words are not as fleet as birds upon 
 the wing, 
 
 And regal as her mountains, 
 
 And radiant as the fountains 
 
 Of rainbow-coloured sea-spray that every wave can fling 
 Against the cliffs of England, the sturdy cliffs of England, 
 
 Could more than seem to dream of it, 
 
 Or catch one flying gleam of it, 
 Above the seas of England that never cease to sing. 
 
 ALFRED NOYES. 
 
 PUCK'S SONG 
 
 SEE you the ferny ride that steals 
 Into the oak-woods far? 
 O that was whence they hewed the keels 
 That rolled to Trafalgar. 
 
 And mark you where the ivy clings 
 To Bay ham's mouldering walls? 
 O there we cast the stout railings 
 That stand around St. Paul's. 
 
 See you the dimpled track that runs 
 All hollow through the wheat ? 
 
RUDYARD KIPLING 19 
 
 O that was where they hauled the guns 
 That smote King Philip's fleet. 
 
 Out of the Weald, the secret Weald, 
 Men sent in ancient years, 
 The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field, 
 The Arrows at Poitiers. 
 
 See you our little mill that clacks 
 
 So busy by the brook? 
 
 She has ground her corn and paid her tax 
 
 Ever since Domesday Book. 
 
 See you our stilly woods of oak? 
 And the dread ditch beside? 
 O that was where the Saxons broke 
 On the day that Harold died. 
 
 See you the windy levels spread 
 About the gates of Rye? 
 O that was where the Northmen fled, 
 When Alfred's ships came by. 
 
 See you our pastures wide and lone, 
 Where the red oxen browse? 
 O there was a City thronged and known 
 Ere London boasted a house. 
 
 And see you, after rain, the trace 
 Of mound and ditch and wall ? 
 O that was a Legion's camping-place, 
 When Caesar sailed from Gaul. 
 
 And see you marks that show and fade 
 Like shadows on the Downs? 
 
20 ENGLAND 
 
 O they are the lines the Flint Men made 
 To guard their wondrous towns. 
 
 Trackway and Camp and City lost, 
 Salt Marsh where now is corn ; 
 Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease, 
 And so was England born ! 
 
 She is not any common Earth, 
 Water or wood or air, 
 But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye. 
 Where you and I will fare. 
 
 RUDYARD KIPLING. 
 
 THOUGHTS OF ENGLAND 
 
 OH, shall I never, never be home again ! 
 
 Meadows of England shining in the rain 
 
 Spread wide your daisied lawns : your ramparts green 
 
 With briar fortify, with blossom screen 
 
 Till my far morning and O streams that slow 
 
 And pure and deep through plains and playlands go, 
 
 For me your love and all your kingcups store, 
 
 And dark militia of the southern shore, 
 
 Old fragrant friends preserve me the last lines 
 
 Of that long saga that you sang me, pines, 
 
 When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree 
 
 I listened, with my eyes upon the sea. 
 
 O traitor pines, you sang what life has found 
 The falsest of fair tales. 
 
JAMES ELROY FLECKER 21 
 
 Earth blew a far-horn prelude all around, 
 
 That native music of her forest home, 
 
 While from the sea's blue fields and syren dales 
 
 Shadows and light noon spectres of the foam 
 
 Riding the summer gales 
 
 On aery viols plucked an idle sound. 
 
 Hearing you sing, O trees, 
 
 Hearing you murmur, " There are older seas, 
 
 That beat on vaster sand, 
 
 Where the wise snailfish move their pearly towers 
 
 To carven rocks and sculptured promontories," 
 
 Hearing you whisper, " Lands 
 
 Where blaze the unimaginable flowers." 
 
 Beneath me in the valley waves the palm, 
 Beneath, beyond the valley, breaks the sea; 
 Beneath me sleep in mist and light and calm 
 Cities of Lebanon, dream-shadow-dim, 
 Where Kings of Tyre and Kings of Tyre did rule 
 In ancient days in endless dynasty, 
 And all around the snowy mountains swim 
 Like mighty swans afloat in heaven's pool. 
 
 But I will walk upon the wooded hill 
 
 Where stands a grove, O pines, of sister pines. 
 
 And when the downy twilight droops her wing 
 
 And no sea glimmers and no mountain shines 
 
 My heart shall listen still. 
 
 For pines are gossip pines the wide world through 
 
 And full of Runic tales to sigh or sing. 
 
 'Tis ever sweet through pines to see the sky 
 
22 ENGLAND 
 
 Blushing a deeper gold or darker blue. 
 Tis ever sweet to lie 
 On the dry carpet of the needles brown, 
 And though the fanciful green lizard stir 
 And windy odours light as thistledown 
 Breathe from the lavdanon and lavender, 
 Half to forget the wandering and the pain, 
 Half to remember days that have gone by, 
 And dream and dream that I am home again ! 
 JAMES ELROY FLECKER. 
 
 THE SOLDIER 
 
 IF I should die, think only this of me: 
 
 That there's some corner qf a foreign field 
 That is for ever England. There shall be 
 
 In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 
 A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 
 
 Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 
 A body of England's, breathing English air, 
 
 Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. 
 
 And think, this heart, all evil shed away, 
 A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 
 
 Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England 
 
 given; 
 
 Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; 
 And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, 
 In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 
 
 RUPERT BROOKE. 
 
PART II 
 THE CALL OF THE SEA 
 
PART II. THE CALL OF THE SEA 
 
 THE SEA AND THE COUNTRY 
 
 MODERN poetry on the subject of the Sea and the 
 Country strikes a new note, and that note is ' Escape/ 
 Not altogether new, perhaps, for whenever the poet's 
 world becomes conventionalised, like Vergil's Rome, 
 the call of the Land or the Sea becomes insistent. 
 But it is new to this extent: that never in the world's 
 history has the average man got further away from 
 natural conditions. Life passed in a world of machines 
 itself becomes mechanical. Our food, our clothes, 
 our comforts and necessities are produced for us we 
 know not how; pavements and houses cover the 
 open fields ; street-lamps take the place of the moon 
 and stars; and we read the moods of the elements 
 by tapping a barometer in the hall. 
 
 And so to nearly every Englishman there comes at 
 times the strong call of the Sea or the Country the 
 longing to escape from bricks and mortar and con- 
 ventional ideas. It is this call this vague and 
 inarticulate longing that the poets express in such 
 poems as Sea- Fever and Wander-Thirst, and from a 
 different point of view, in The Winnowers and The 
 Vagabond. 
 
 25 
 
26 v CALL OF THE SEA 
 
 The poems here quoted speak for themselves: one 
 cannot miss, for instance, the sense of loneliness and 
 space in Messmates, the April freshness of The Adven- 
 turers, or the delicate imagery and haunting suggestion 
 of The Way through the Woods. The stanzas here 
 called N earing Cape Horn are taken from a long poem 
 entitled Dauber. .These few stanzas will give some 
 idea of the amazing insight and conviction with 
 which sea-sights and sounds are depicted throughout 
 the work. There is hardly a stanza in this great 
 narrative poem that is not a brilliant sea-note the 
 reef-points pattering softly overhead 
 
 Softly, but hurrying too, as children tread, 
 A hush, a long swift hurry of little feet 
 
 the swinging masts the snow the great storm. It 
 must be read entire to be appreciated, for it is doubt- 
 ful whether there is a more magnificent sea-picture 
 in the language. 
 
 SEA-FEVER 
 
 I MUST go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea 
 
 and the sky, 
 
 And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, 
 And the wheel's kick and the wind's song, and the 
 
 white sail's shaking, 
 And a grey mist on the sea's face, and the grey dawn 
 
 breaking. 
 
LAURENCE BINYON 27 
 
 I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the 
 
 running tide 
 
 Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied ; 
 And all I ask is a windy day with tiie white clouds 
 
 flying, 
 And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the 
 
 sea-gull's crying. 
 
 I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant 
 gypsy life, 
 
 To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the 
 wind's like a whetted knife, 
 
 And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow- 
 rover, 
 
 And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long 
 trick's over. 
 
 JOHN MASEFIELD. 
 
 JOHN WINTER 
 
 WHAT ails John Winter, that so oft 
 
 Silent he sits apart ? 
 The neighbours cast their looks on him; 
 
 But deep he hides his heart. 
 
 In Deptford streets the houses small 
 
 Huddle forlorn together. 
 Whether the wind blow or be still, 
 
 'Tis soiled and sorry weather. 
 
28 CALL OF THE SEA 
 
 But over these dim roofs arise 
 
 Tall masts of ocean ships. 
 Whenever John Winter looked at them 
 
 The salt blew on his lips.. 
 
 He cannot pace the street about, 
 But they stand before his eyes! 
 
 The more he shuns them, the more proud 
 And beautiful they rise. 
 
 He turns his head, but in his ear 
 
 The steady Trade- Winds run, 
 And in his eye the endless waves 
 
 Ride on into the sun. 
 
 His little child at evening said, 
 
 " Now tell us, dad, a tale 
 Of naked men that shoot with bows, 
 
 Tell of the spouting whale! " 
 
 He told old tales, his eyes were bright, 
 
 His wife looked up to see, 
 And smiled on him : but in the midst 
 
 He ended suddenly. 
 
 He bade his boys good-night, and kissed 
 
 And held them to his breast. 
 They wondered and were still, to feel 
 
 Their lips so fondly pressed. 
 
 He sat absorbed in silent gloom. 
 His wife lifted her head 
 
LAURENCE BINYON 29 
 
 From sewing, and stole up to him, 
 " What ails you, John? " she said. 
 
 He spoke no word. A silent tear 
 
 Fell softly down her cheek. 
 She knelt beside him, and his hand 
 
 Was on her forehead meek. 
 
 But even as his tender touch 
 
 Her dumb distress consoled, 
 The mighty waves danced in his eyes 
 
 And through the silence rolled. 
 
 There fell a soft November night, 
 Restless with gusts that shook 
 
 The chimneys, and beat wildly down 
 The flames in the chimney nook. 
 
 John Winter lay beside his wife, 
 
 'Twas past the mid of night. 
 Softly he rose, and in dead hush 
 
 Stood stealthily upright. 
 
 Softly he came where slept his boys, 
 
 And kissed them in their bed ; 
 One stretched his arms out in his sleep: 
 
 At that he turned his head. 
 
 And now he bent above his wife, 
 
 She slept a peace serene, 
 Her patient soul was in the peace 
 
 Of breathing slumber seen. 
 
30 CALL OF THE SEA 
 
 At last, he kissed one aching kiss, 
 
 Then shrank again in dread, 
 And from his own home guiltily 
 
 And like a thief he fled. 
 
 But now with darkness and the wind 
 He breathes a breath more free, 
 
 And walks with calmer steps, like one 
 Who goes with destiny. 
 
 And see, before him the great masts 
 
 Tower with all their spars 
 Black on the dimness, soaring bold 
 
 Among the mazy stars. 
 
 In stormy rushings through the air 
 Wild scents the darkness filled, 
 
 And with a fierce forgetfulness 
 His drinking nostril thrilled. 
 
 He hasted with quick feet, he hugged 
 
 The wildness to his breast, 
 As one who goes the only way 
 
 To set his heart at rest. 
 
 When morning glimmered, a great ship 
 
 Dropt gliding down the shore. 
 John Winter coiled the anchor ropes * 
 
 Among his mates once more. 
 
 LAURENCE BINYON. 
 
R. L. STEVENSON 31 
 
 CHRISTMAS AT SEA 
 
 THE sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked 
 
 hand; 
 The decks were like a slide, where the seaman scarce 
 
 could stand, 
 The wind was a nor' wester, blowing squally off the 
 
 sea; 
 And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things 
 
 a-lee. 
 
 They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of 
 
 day; 
 But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill 
 
 we lay. 
 We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a 
 
 shout, 
 And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go 
 
 about. 
 
 All day we tack'd and tack'd between the South Head 
 
 and the North; 
 All day we haul'd the frozen sheets, and got no 
 
 further forth; 
 
 All day* as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread, 
 For very life and nature we tack'd from head to 
 
 head. 
 
32 CALL OF THE SEA 
 
 We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide- 
 race roared; 
 
 But every tack we made we brought the North Head 
 close aboard; 
 
 So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers 
 running high, 
 
 And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass 
 against his eye. 
 
 The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean 
 
 foam; 
 The good red fires were burning bright in every 
 
 'longshore home; 
 The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys 
 
 volley'd out ; 
 And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went 
 
 about. 
 
 The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty 
 
 jovial cheer; 
 For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days 
 
 in the year) 
 
 The day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn, 
 And the house above the coastguard's was the house 
 
 where I was born. 
 
 O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces 
 
 there, 
 My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair; 
 
R. L. STEVENSON 33 
 
 And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely 
 
 elves 
 Go dancing round the china plates that stand upon 
 
 the shelves ! 
 
 And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was 
 
 of me, 
 Of the shadow on the household and the son that 
 
 went to sea; 
 
 And O the wicked fool I seem'd, in every kind of way, 
 To be here and hauling frozen ropes on bless&d 
 
 Christmas Day. 
 
 They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall. 
 
 * All hands to loose topgallant sails ! ' I heard the 
 
 captain call. 
 
 * By the Lord, she'll never stand it/ our first mate 
 
 Jackson cried. 
 
 . . . ' It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson/ 
 he replied. 
 
 She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new 
 
 and good, 
 And the ship smelt up to windward just as though 
 
 she understood. 
 As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the 
 
 night, 
 We clear'd the weary headland, and passed below the 
 
 fight. 
 
 c 
 
34 CALL OF THE SEA 
 
 And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on 
 
 board but me, 
 As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out 
 
 to sea; 
 But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the 
 
 cold, 
 Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were 
 
 growing old. 
 
 ROBERT Louis STEVENSON. 
 
 FROM -ECHOES" 
 
 THE full sea rolls and thunders 
 
 In glory and in glee. 
 O, bury me not in the senseless earth 
 
 But in the living sea ! 
 
 Ay, bury me where it surges 
 A thousand miles from shore, 
 
 And in its brotherly unrest 
 I'll range for evermore. 
 
 W. E. HENLEY. 
 
 SHIPS OF OLD RENOWN 
 
 TRIREMES of the Roman, cruising down to Antioch, 
 Longships of the Northmen, galleons of Spain, 
 
 Tall, gleaming caravels, swinging in the tideway, 
 Never shall the sunlight gild their sails again. 
 
NORA' HOLLAND 35 
 
 Never shall those white sails, lining on the sea-line, 
 Swoop like a swallow across the blinding blue, 
 
 Caracque and caravel, lying 'neath the waters, 
 Wait till the bugles shall call the last review. 
 
 There in the darkness lie friend and foe together, 
 Drake's English pinnaces, the great Armada's host ; 
 
 Quiet they lie in the silence of the sea-depths, 
 Waiting the call that shall sound from coast to 
 coast. 
 
 Warship and merchantmen, lying in the slime there, 
 Galleys of the Algerine, and traders of Almayne, 
 
 Hoys of the Dutchman, and haughty ships of Venice, 
 Never shall the sunlight gild their sails again. 
 
 NORA HOLLAND. 
 
 SEA-GULLS 
 
 WHERE the dark green hollows lift 
 
 Into crests of snow, 
 Wheeling, flashing, floating by, 
 White against the stormy sky, 
 With exultant call and cry 
 
 Swift the sea-gulls go. 
 
 Fearless, vagabond and free 
 
 Children of the spray, 
 Spirits of old mariners 
 Drifting down the restless years 
 
36 CALL OF THE SEA 
 
 Drake's ana Hawkins' buccaneers, 
 So do seamen say. 
 
 Watching, guarding, sailing still 
 Round the shores they knew, 
 
 Where the cliffs of Devon rise 
 
 Red against the sullen skies 
 
 (Dearer far than Paradise), 
 'Mid the tossing blue. 
 
 Not for them the heavenly song; 
 
 Sweeter still they find 
 Than those angels, row on row, 
 Thunder of the bursting snow 
 Seething on the rocks below, 
 
 Singing of the wind. 
 
 Fairer than the streets of gold 
 
 Those wild fields of foam, 
 Where the horses of the sea 
 Stamp and whinny ceaselessly, 
 Warding from all enemy 
 
 Shores they once called home. 
 
 So the sea-gulls call and cry 
 
 'Neath the cliffs to-day, 
 Spirits of old mariners 
 Drifting down the restless years 
 Drake's and Hawkins' buccaneers 
 
 So do seamen say. 
 
 NORA HOLLAND. 
 
HENRY NEWBOLT 37 
 
 MESSMATES 
 
 HE gave us all a goodbye cheerily 
 
 At the first dawn of day; 
 We dropped him down the side full drearily 
 
 When the light died away. 
 
 It's a dead dark watch that he's a-keeping there, 
 And a long, long night that lags a-creeping there, 
 Where the Trades and the tides roll over him 
 
 And the great ships go by. 
 
 He's there alone with green seas rocking him 
 
 For a thousand miles around; 
 He's there alone with dumb things mocking him, 
 
 And we're homeward bound. 
 It's a long, lone watch that he's a-keeping there, 
 And a dead cold night that lags a-creeping there, 
 While the months and the years roll over him 
 
 And the great ships go by. 
 
 I wonder if the tramps come near enough 
 
 As they thrash to and fro, 
 And the battle-ships' bells ring clear enough 
 
 To be heard down below; 
 
 If through all the lone watch that he's a-keeping there, 
 And the long, cold night that lags a-creeping there, 
 The voices of the sailor-men shall comfort him 
 
 When the great ships go by. 
 
 HENRY NEWBOLT. 
 
38 CALL OF THE SEA 
 
 NEARING CAPE HORN 
 (From Dauber) 
 
 ALL through the windless night the clipper rolled 
 
 In a great swell with oily gradual heaves 
 
 Which rolled her down until the time-bells tolled 
 
 Clang, and the weltering water moaned like beeves", 
 
 The thundering rattle of slatting shook the sheaves, 
 
 Startles of water made the swing ports gush, 
 
 The sea was moaning and sighing and saying " Hush ! " 
 
 It was all black and starless. Peering down 
 Into the water trying to pierce the gloom, 
 One saw a dim, smooth, oily glitter of brown 
 Heaving and dying away and leaving room 
 For yet another. 'Like the march of doom 
 Came those great powers of marching silences ; 
 Then fog came down, dead cold, and hid the seas. 
 
 They set the Dauber to the fog-horn. There 
 He stood upon the poop, making to sound 
 Out of the pump the sailors' nasal blare, 
 Listening lest ice should make the note resound. 
 She bayed there like a solitary hound 
 Lost in a covert, all the watch she bayed; 
 The fog, come closelier down, no answer made. 
 
JOHN MASEFIELD 39 
 
 Denser it grew, until the ship was lost; 
 
 The elemental hid her, she was merged 
 
 In mufflings of dark death like a man's ghost 
 
 New to the change of death, yet thither urged. 
 
 Then from the hidden waters something surged 
 
 Mournful, despairing, great, greater than speech, 
 
 A noise like one slow wave on a still beach. 
 
 Mournful, and then again, mournful, and still 
 
 Out of the night that mighty voice arose, 
 
 The Dauber at his fog-horn felt the thrill: 
 
 Who rode that desolate sea? What forms were those? 
 
 Mournful, from things defeated, in the throes 
 
 Of memory of some conquered hunting ground, 
 
 Out of the night of death arose the sound. 
 
 " Whales," said the mate. They stayed there all 
 
 night long, 
 
 Answering the horn, out of the night they spoke, 
 Defeated creatures who had suffered wrong 
 But were still noble underneath the stroke. 
 They filled the darkness when the Dauber woke; 
 The men came peering to the rail to hear, 
 And the sea sighed and the fog rose up sheer, 
 
 A wall of nothing at the world's last edge, 
 
 Where no life came except defeated life. 
 
 The Dauber felt shut in within a hedge 
 
 Behind which form was hidden and thought was rife, 
 
 And that a blinding flash, a thrust, a knife, 
 
40 CALL OF THE SEA 
 
 Would sweep the hedge away and make all plain, 
 Brilliant beyond all words, blinding the brain. 
 
 So the night passed, but then no morning broke, 
 Only a something shewed that night was dead, 
 A sea-bird, cackling like a devil, spoke, 
 And the fog drew away and hung like lead : 
 Like mighty cliffs it shaped, sullen and red, 
 Like glowering gods at watch it did appear, 
 And sometimes drew away and then drew near. 
 
 Like islands and like chasms and like hell, 
 But always mighty and red, gloomy and ruddy, 
 Shutting the visible sea in like a well, 
 Slow-heaving in vast ripples blank and muddy 
 Where the sun should have risen it streaked bloody; 
 The day was still-born ; all the sea-fowl scattering 
 Splashed the still water, mewing, hovering, chattering. 
 
 Then Polar snow came down little and light, 
 Till all the sky was hidden by the small, 
 Most multitudinous drift of dirty white 
 Tumbling and wavering down and covering all, 
 Covering the sea, the sky, the clipper tall, 
 Furring the ropes with white, casing the mast, 
 Coming on no known air, but blowing past. 
 
 JOHN MASEFIELD. 
 
PART III 
 THE CALL OF THE COUNTRY 
 

 PART III. THE CALL OF THE 
 COUNTRY 
 
 WANDER-THIRST 
 
 BEYOND the East the Sunrise; beyond the West the 
 
 sea; 
 And East and West the Wander-Thirst that will not 
 
 let me be; 
 
 It works in me like madness to bid me say goodbye, 
 For the seas call, and the stars call, and oh! the call 
 
 of the sky ! 
 
 I know not where the white road runs, nor what the 
 
 blue hills are, 
 ' But a man can have the sun for friend, and for his 
 
 guide a star; 
 And there's no end of voyaging when once the voice 
 
 is heard, 
 For the rivers call, and the road calls, and oh ! the 
 
 call of a bird ! 
 
 Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and 
 
 day 
 The old ships draw to home again, the young ships 
 
 sail away; 
 
 43 
 
44 THE COUNTRY 
 
 And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you 
 
 why, 
 You may put the blame on the stars and the sun, and 
 
 the white road and the sky. 
 
 GERALD GOULD. 
 
 THE WINNOWERS 
 
 BETWIXT two billows of the downs 
 
 The little hamlet lies, 
 And nothing sees but the bald crowns 
 
 Of the hills, and the blue skies. 
 
 Clustering beneath the long descent 
 And grey slopes of the wold, 
 
 The red roofs nestle, oversprent 
 With lichen yellow as gold. 
 
 We found it in the mid-day sun 
 Basking, what time of year 
 
 The thrush his singing has begun, 
 Ere the first leaves appear. 
 
 High from his load a woodman pitched 
 
 His faggots on the stack: 
 Knee-deep in straw the cattle twitched 
 
 Sweet hay from crib and rack : 
 
 And from the barn hard by was borne 
 
 A steady muffled din, 
 By which we knew that threshed com 
 
 Was winnowing, and went in. 
 
ROBERT BRIDGES 45 
 
 The sunbeams on the motey air 
 Streamed through the open door, 
 
 And on the brown arms moving bare, 
 And the grain upon the floor. 
 
 One turns the crank, one stoops to feed 
 
 The hopper, lest it lack, 
 One in the bushel scoops the seed, 
 
 One stands to hold the sack. 
 
 We watched the good grain rattle down, 
 And the awns fly in the draught; 
 
 To see us both so pensive grown 
 The honest labourers laughed: 
 
 Merry they were, because the wheat 
 Was clean and plump and good, 
 
 Pleasant to hand and eye, and meet 
 For market and for food. 
 
 It chanced we from the city were, 
 
 And had not gat us free 
 In spirit from the store and stir 
 
 Of its immensity: 
 
 But here we found ourselves again. 
 
 Where humble harvests bring 
 After much toil but little grain, 
 
 Tis merry winnowing. 
 
 ROBERT BRIDGES. 
 
46 THE COUNTRY 
 
 THE VAGABOND 
 
 GIVE to me the life I love, 
 
 Let the lave go by me, 
 Give the jolly heaven above 
 
 And the byway nigh me. 
 Bed in the bush with stars to see, 
 
 Bread I dip in the river 
 There's the life for a man like me, 
 
 There's the life for ever. 
 
 Let the blow fall soon or late, 
 
 Let what will be o'er me; 
 Give the face of earth around 
 
 And the road before me. 
 Wealth I seek not, hope nor love, 
 
 Nor a friend to know me; 
 All I seek, the heaven above 
 
 And the road below me. 
 
 Or let autumn fall on me 
 
 Where afield I linger, 
 Silencing the bird on tree, 
 
 Biting the blue finger. 
 White as meal the frosty field 
 
 Warm the fireside haven 
 Not to autumn will I yield, 
 
 Not to winter even ! 
 
RUDYARD KIPLING 47 
 
 Let the blow fall soon or late, 
 
 Let what will be o'er me; 
 Give the face of earth around, 
 
 And the road before me. 
 Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, 
 
 Nor a friend to know me; 
 All I ask, the heaven above 
 
 And the road below me. 
 
 ROBERT Louis STEVENSON. 
 
 THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS 
 
 THEY shut the road through the woods 
 
 Seventy years ago. 
 
 Weather and rain have undone it again, 
 
 And now you would never know 
 
 There was once a road through the woods 
 
 Before they planted the trees. 
 
 It is underneath the coppice and heath, 
 
 And the thin anemones. 
 
 Only the keeper sees 
 
 That, where the ring-dove broods, 
 
 And the badgers roll at ease, 
 
 There was once a way through the woods. 
 
 Yet, if you enter the woods 
 
 Of a summer evening late, 
 
 When the night air cools on the trout-ringed pools 
 
 Where the otter whistles his mate, 
 
48 THE COUNTRY 
 
 (They fear not men in the woods, 
 
 Because they see so few) 
 
 You will hear the beat of a horse's feet, 
 
 And the swish of a skirt in the dew, 
 
 Steadily cantering through 
 
 The misty solitudes, 
 
 As though they perfectly knew 
 
 The old lost road through the woods . . . 
 
 But there is no road through the woods ! 
 
 RUDYARD KIPLING. 
 
 THE ADVENTURERS 
 
 OVER the downs in sunlight clear 
 Forth we went in the spring of the year: 
 Plunder of April's gold we sought, 
 Little of April's anger thought. 
 
 Caught in a copse without defence 
 Low we crouched to the rain-squall dense: 
 Sure, if misery man can vex, 
 There it beat on our bended necks. 
 
 Yet when again we wander on 
 Suddenly all that gloom is gone: 
 Under and over through the wood, 
 Life is astir, and life is good. 
 
 Violets purple, violets white, 
 Delicate windflowers dancing light, 
 
W. B. YEATS 49 
 
 Primrose, mercury, moscatel, 
 Shimmer in diamonds round the dell. 
 
 Squirrel is climbing swift and lithe, 
 Chiff-chaff whetting his airy scythe, 
 Woodpecker whirrs his rattling rap, 
 Ringdove flies with a sudden clap. 
 
 Rook is summoning rook to build, 
 Dunnock his beak with moss has filled, 
 Robin is bowing in coat-tails brown, 
 Tomtit chattering upside down. 
 
 Well is it seen that every one 
 Laughs at the rain and loves the sun; 
 We too laughed with the wildwood crew, 
 Laughed till the sky once more was blue. 
 
 Homeward over the downs we went 
 Soaked to the heart with sweet content; 
 April's anger is swift to fall, 
 April's wonder is worth it all. 
 
 HENRY NEWBOLT. 
 
 THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE 
 
 I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
 
 And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made ; 
 
 Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for* the 
 
 honey-bee, 
 And live alone in the bee-loud glade. 
 
50 THE COUNTRY 
 
 And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes 
 
 dropping slow, 
 Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the 
 
 cricket sings ; 
 There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple 
 
 glow, 
 And evening full of the linnet's wings. 
 
 I will arise and go now, for always night and day 
 I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the 
 
 shore ; 
 While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements 
 
 gray, 
 I hear it in the deep heart's core. 
 
 WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS. 
 
 IN ROMNEY MARSH 
 
 As I went down to Dymchurch Wall, 
 I heard the South sing o'er the land; 
 
 I saw the yellow sunlight fall 
 
 On knolls where Norman churches stand. 
 
 And ringing shrilly, taut and lithe, 
 Within the wind a core of sound, 
 
 The wire from Romney town to Hythe 
 Alone its airy journey wound. 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON 51 
 
 A veil of purple vapour flowed 
 
 And trailed its fringe along the Straits ; 
 
 The upper air like sapphire glow'd; 
 And roses fill'd Heaven's central gates. 
 
 Masts in the offing wagg'd their tops; 
 
 The swinging waves peaTd on the shore; 
 The saffron beach, all diamond drops 
 
 And beads of surge, prolonged the roar. 
 
 As I came up from Dymchurch Wall, 
 I saw above the Down's low crest 
 
 The crimson brands of sunset fall, 
 Flicker and fade from out the west. 
 
 Night sank: like flakes of silver fire 
 
 The stars in one great shower came down ; 
 
 Shrill blew the wind; and shrill the wire 
 Rang out from Hythe to Romney town. 
 
 The darkly shining salt sea drops 
 
 Streamed as the waves clashed on the shore; 
 The beach, with all its organ stops 
 
 Pealing again, prolonged the roar. 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON. 
 
52 THE COUNTRY 
 
 THE JOYS OF THE ROAD 
 
 Now the joys of the road are chiefly these: 
 A crimson touch on the hard- wood trees; 
 
 A vagrant's morning wide and blue, 
 In early fall, when the wind walks, too ; 
 
 A shadowy highway, cool and brown, 
 Alluring up and enticing down. 
 
 From rippled water to dappled swamp, 
 From purple glory to scarlet pomp ; 
 
 The outward eye, the quiet will, 
 
 And the striding heart from hill to hill ; 
 
 The tempter apple over the fence ; 
 
 The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince; 
 
 The palish asters along the wood, 
 A lyric touch of the solitude ; 
 
 An open hand, an easy shoe, 
 
 And a hope to make the day go through, 
 
 Another to sleep with, and a third 
 To wake me up at the voice of a bird; 
 
 A scrap of gossip at the ferry; 
 
 A comrade neither glum nor merry, 
 
BLISS CARMAN 53 
 
 Who never defers and never demands, 
 
 But, smiling, takes the world in his hands, 
 
 Seeing it good as when God first saw 
 And gave it the weight of his will for law. 
 
 And O the joy that is never won, 
 
 But follows and follows the journeying sun, 
 
 By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream, 
 A will-o'-the-wind, a light-o'-dream, 
 
 The racy smell of the forest loam 
 
 When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go home; 
 
 The broad gold wake of the afternoon ; 
 The silent fleck of the cold new moon ; 
 
 The sound of the hollow sea's release 
 From the stormy tumult to starry peace; 
 
 With only another league to wend ; 
 
 And two brown arms at the journey's end! 
 
 These are the joys of the open road 
 For him who travels without a load. 
 
 BLISS CARMAN. 
 
PART IV 
 
 ANIMALS 
 

 PART IV. ANIMALS 
 
 ALL through the great literature of Europe, from the 
 time when Homer sang of the faithfulness of Odys- 
 seus' dog Argus, and Hesiod of the happiness of the 
 little cicada, one may find poems inspired by thoughts 
 of living creatures. English literature abounds in 
 such poems. Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Blake, 
 Scott, Coleridge to mention a few great names all 
 wrote some of their most beautiful work under the 
 inspiration of this theme. 
 
 It is the same with modern poetry: hardly a 
 living creature but has inspired some thought that 
 has been expressed in beautiful verse. Yet in reading 
 the many modern poems that have been written upon 
 this subject one meets, as it were, a change of atti- 
 tude a definite striving to break through the great 
 barrier of species, and enter in spirit into the strange 
 world of dumb animals that lies so close to us, and 
 is yet so infinitely far away. 
 
 This change of attitude may perhaps be expressed 
 in the order in which the following poems have been 
 arranged. First there is the point of view of the 
 hunter, in which the tragedy of the hunted finds no 
 
 57 
 
58 ANIMALS 
 
 place the joy of the sport-instinct excluding all 
 such thought. Next, in the wonderful poem A Run- 
 noble Stag, the outlook is modified. For- through 
 all its freshness and enthusiasm, the very music of 
 the Hunt, the amazingly subtle effect of the con- 
 stant repetition of " the stag, the stag," one feels 
 that the whole inspiration of the poem lies in the 
 dignity and splendour of the stag himself, uncon- 
 quered even in death. 
 
 Next, the poet is an observer of nature a lover of 
 animals. And this love of animals prompts strange 
 and beautiful questionings, as in the verses To a 
 Favourite Cat. 
 
 Then the thought goes deeper, and one is made 
 to realise the tragedy of animal life, that fails to 
 understand, and yet can feel. Such a poem is The 
 Bull, which with all its pathos and gorgeous imagery 
 is far more than the mere story of a bull. There is an 
 indignant appeal for understanding in such poems as 
 The Bells of Heaven of sympathy for " tamed and 
 shabby tigers " and " little hunted hares "; there is 
 a cry of pity in The Snare', and in Rupert Brooke's 
 wonderful poem The Fish, an attempt to visualise 
 for us the outlook of a living creature infinitely 
 removed from us in thought and conditions. 
 
 In a single phrase, sympathetic insight is the key- 
 note of modern poetry written upon the theme of 
 Animals. 
 
W. S. BLUNT 59 
 
 THE OLD SQUIRE 
 
 I LIKE the hunting of the hare 
 
 Better than that of the fox; 
 I like the joyous morning air, 
 
 And the crowing of the cocks. 
 
 I like the calm of the early fields, 
 
 The ducks asleep by the lake, 
 The quiet hour which Nature yields, 
 
 Before mankind is awake. 
 
 I like the pheasants and feeding things 
 
 Of the unsuspicious morn ; 
 I like the flap of the wood-pigeon's wings 
 
 As she rises from the corn. 
 
 I like the blackbird's shriek, and his rush 
 
 From the turnips as I pass by, 
 And the partridge hiding her head in a bush, 
 
 For her young ones cannot fly. 
 
 I like these things, and I like to ride 
 
 When all the world is in bed, 
 To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide, 
 
 And where the sun grows red. 
 
 The beagles at my horse heels trot 
 
 In silence after me; 
 There's Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot, 
 
 Old Slut and Margery, 
 
60 ANIMALS 
 
 A score of names well used, and dear, 
 The names my childhood knew; 
 
 The horn, with which I rouse their cheer, 
 Is the horn my father blew. 
 
 I like the hunting of the hare 
 
 Better than that of the fox; 
 The new world still is all less fair 
 
 Than the old world it mocks. 
 
 I covet not a wider range 
 
 Than these dear manors give; 
 I take my pleasure without change, 
 
 And as I lived I live. 
 
 I leave my neighbours to their thought; 
 
 My choice it is, and pride, 
 On my own lands to find my sport, 
 
 In my own fields to ride. 
 
 The hare herself no better loves 
 The field where she was bred, 
 
 Than I the habit of these groves, 
 My own inherited. 
 
 I know my quarries every one, 
 The meuse where she sits low; 
 
 The road she chose to-day was run 
 A hundred years ago. 
 
S. BLUNT 61 
 
 The lags, the gills, the forest ways, 
 
 The hedgerows one and all, 
 These are the kingdoms of my chase, 
 
 And bounded by my wall; 
 
 Nor has the world a better thing, 
 Though one should search it round, 
 
 Than thus to live one's own sole king, 
 Upon one's own sole ground. 
 
 I like the hunting of the hare; 
 
 It brings me, day by day, 
 The memory of old days as fair, 
 
 With dead men past away. 
 
 To these, as homeward still I ply, 
 
 And pass the churchyard gate 
 Where all are laid as I must lie, 
 
 I stop and raise my hat. 
 
 I like the hunting of the hare; 
 
 New sports I hold in scorn. 
 I like to be as my fathers were, 
 
 In the days ere I was born. 
 
 WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. 
 
62 ANIMALS 
 
 MASTER AND MAN 
 
 Do ye ken hoo to fush for the salmon? 
 
 If yell listen I'll tell ye. 
 Dinna trust to the books and their gammon, 
 
 They're but trying to sell ye. 
 Leave professors to read their ain cackle 
 
 And fush their ain style; 
 Come awa', sir, we'll oot wi' oor tackle 
 
 And be busy the while. 
 
 'Tis a wee bit ower bright, ye were thinkin' ? 
 
 Aw, ye'll no be the loser; 
 Tis better ten baskin' and blinkin' 
 
 Than ane that's a cruiser. 
 If ye're bent, as I tak it, on slatter, 
 
 Ye should pray for the droot, 
 For the salmon's her ain when there's watter, 
 
 But she's oors when it's oot. 
 
 Ye may just put your flee- hook behind ye, 
 
 Ane hook wull be plenty; 
 If they'll no come for this, my man, mind ye, 
 
 They'll no come for twenty. 
 Ay, a rod; but the shorter the stranger 
 
 And the nearer to strike; 
 For myself I prefare it nae langer 
 
 Than a yard or the like. 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON 63 
 
 Noo, ye'll stand awa' back while I'm creepin' 
 
 WT my snoot i' the gowans; 
 There's a bonny twalve-poonder a-sleepin' 
 
 T the shade o' yon rowans. 
 Man, man! I was fearin' I'd stirred her, 
 
 But I've got her the noo! 
 Hoot ! fushin's as easy as murrder 
 
 When ye ken what to do. 
 
 Na, na, sir, I doot na ye're willin' 
 
 But I canna permit ye; 
 For I'm thinkin' that yon kind o' kiJlin' 
 
 Wad hardly befit ye. 
 And some work is deefficult hushin', 
 
 There'd be havers and chaff: 
 'Twull be best, sir, for you to be fushin' 
 
 And me wi' the gaff. 
 
 HENRY NEWBOLT. 
 
 A RUNNABLE STAG 
 
 WHEN the pods went pop on the broom, green broom, 
 
 And apples began to be golden-skinn'd, 
 We harbour 'd a stag in the Priory coomb, 
 And we feather'd his trail up-wind, up-wind, 
 We feather'd his trail up-wind 
 A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag, 
 A runnable stag, a kingly crop, 
 Brow, bay and tray and three on top, 
 A stag, a runnable stag. 
 
64 ANIMALS 
 
 Then the huntsman's horn rang yap, yap, yap, 
 
 And ' Forwards ' we heard the harbourer shout ; 
 But 'twas only a brocket that broke a gap 
 In the beechen underwood, driven out, 
 From the underwood antler'd out 
 
 By warrant and might of the stag, the stag, 
 The runnable stag, whose lordly mind 
 Was bent on sleep, though beam'd and tined 
 He stood, a runnable stag. 
 
 So we tufted the covert till afternoon 
 
 With Tinkerman's Pup and Bell-of-the-North ; 
 And hunters were sulky and hounds out of tune 
 Before we tufted the right stag forth, 
 Before we tufted him forth, 
 
 The stag of warrant, the wily stag, 
 The runnable stag with his kingly crop, 
 Brow, bay and tray and three on top, 
 The royal and runnable stag. 
 
 It was Bell-of-the-North and Tinkerman's Pup 
 
 That stuck to the scent till the copse was drawn. 
 * Tally ho ! Tally ho ! ' and the hunt was up, 
 The tufters whipp'd, and the pack laid on, 
 The resolute pack laid on, 
 
 And the stag of warrant away at last, 
 The runnable stag, the same, the same, 
 His hoofs on fire, his horns like flame, 
 A stag, a runnable stag. 
 
JOHN DAVIDSON 65 
 
 ' Let your gelding be : if you check or chide 
 
 He stumbles at once and you're out of the hunt ; 
 For three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, 
 On hunters accustom'd to bear the brunt, 
 Accustom'd to bear the brunt, 
 
 Are after the runnable stag, the stag, 
 The runnable stag with his kingly crop, 
 Brow, bay and tray and three on top, 
 The right, the runnable stag/ 
 
 By perilous paths in coomb and dell, 
 
 The heather, the rocks, and the river-bed, 
 The pace grew hot, for the scent lay well, 
 And a runnable stag goes right ahead, 
 The quarry went right ahead 
 Ahead, ahead, and fast and far; 
 His antler'd crest, his cloven hoof, 
 Brow, bay and tray and three aloof, 
 The stag, the runnable stag. 
 
 For a matter of twenty miles and more 
 
 By the densest hedge and the highest wall, 
 Through herds of bullocks he baffled the lore 
 Of harbourer, huntsman, hounds and all, 
 Of harbourer, hounds and all 
 The stag of warrant, the wily stag, 
 For twenty miles, and five and five, 
 He ran, and he never was caught alive, 
 This stag, this runnable stag. 
 
66 ANIMALS 
 
 When he turn'd at bay in the leafy gloom, 
 
 In the emerald gloom where the brook ran deep, 
 He heard in the distance the rollers boom, 
 And he saw in a vision of peaceful sleep 
 In a wonderful vision of sleep, 
 A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag, 
 A runnable stag in a jewelTd bed, 
 Under the sheltering ocean dead, 
 A stag, a runnable stag. 
 
 So a fateful hope lit up his eye, 
 
 And he open'd his nostrils wide again, 
 And he toss'd his branching antlers high 
 
 As he headed the hunt down the Charlock glen, 
 As he raced down the echoing glen 
 For five miles more, the stag, the stag, 
 For twenty miles, and five and five, 
 Not to be caught now, dead or alive, 
 The stag, the runnable stag. 
 
 Three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, 
 
 Three hundred horses as gallant and free, 
 Beheld him escape on the evening tide, 
 Far out till he sank in the Severn Sea, 
 Till he sank in the depths of the sea 
 The stag, the buoyant stag, the stag 
 That slept at last in a jewell'd bed 
 Under the sheltering ocean spread, 
 The stag, the runnable stag. 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON. 
 
E. H. BLAKENEY 67 
 
 ST. VALENTINE'S DAY 
 
 TO-DAY, all day, I rode upon the down, 
 With hounds and horsemen, a brave company, 
 On this side in its glory lay the sea, 
 On that side Sussex weald, a sea of brown. 
 The wind was light, and brightly the sun shone, 
 And still we galloped on from gorse to gorse: 
 And once, when checked, a thrush sang, and my horse 
 Pricked his quick ears as to a sound unknown. 
 I knew the Spring was come. I knew it even 
 Better than all by this, that through my chase 
 In bush and stone and hill and sea and heaven 
 I seemed to see and follow still your face. 
 Your face my quarry was. For it I rode, 
 My horse a thing of wings, myself a god. 
 
 WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT. 
 
 TO A FAVOURITE CAT 
 
 I TOOK my beautiful puss to-day 
 (Sleek and fluffy and bland was she), 
 
 And set her down on the hearth to play 
 (Beloved as only a cat may be). 
 
 My hand would tickle her velvet paws 
 (Black and velvety paws had she) 
 
68 ANIMALS 
 
 And toy with the innocent-seeming claws, 
 Sheathed as only a cat's may be. 
 
 Soft and deep was. her coat so bright 
 
 (Deep and soft, like a starless sea) ; 
 And her eyes were lit with a far, strange light 
 
 Mystic, subtle, with love for me. 
 
 So I fell to wondering (as she lay 
 
 Close to the fire as a cat may be) 
 If, centuries since, we twain were one, 
 
 Lit with hopes of the days to be. 
 
 Perhaps : who knows ? Yet if such be true 
 
 (Whisper the secret, Fluff, to me !) 
 Much would it help me comprehend 
 
 That haunting flame in the eyes of thee. 
 
 Perchance, by shores of some deep lagoon, 
 Thy face met mine as it now meets me; 
 
 By Nilus' banks, 'neath an Afric moon, 
 I told my love as I now tell thee. 
 
 It may be, Sweet, that I stroked thy hand 
 
 Softly, as now I am stroking thee, 
 When our lives were free as the desert sand 
 
 A couple of thousand years B.C. 
 
 EDWARD HENRY BLAKENEY. 
 
RALPH HODGSON 69 
 
 Xv 
 
 THE BULL 
 
 SEE an old unhappy bull, 
 Sick in soul and body both, 
 Slouching in the undergrowth 
 Of the forest beautiful, 
 Banished from the herd he led, 
 Bulls and cows a thousand head. 
 
 Cranes and gaudy parrots go 
 
 Up and down the burning sky; 
 
 Tree-top cats purr drowsily 
 
 In the dim-day green below; 
 
 And troops of monkeys, nutting, some, 
 
 All disputing, go and come; 
 
 And things abominable sit 
 Picking offal buck or swine, 
 On the mess and over it 
 Burnished flies and beetles shine, 
 And spiders big as bladders lie 
 Under hemlocks ten foot high. 
 
 And a dotted serpent curled 
 Round and round and round a tree, 
 Yellowing its greenery, 
 Keeps a watch on all the world, 
 All the world and this old bull 
 In the forest beautiful. 
 
70 ANIMALS 
 
 Bravely by his fall he came: 
 
 One he led, a bull of blood 
 
 Newly come to lustihood, 
 
 Fought and put his prince to shame, 
 
 Snuffed and pawed the prostrate head 
 
 Tameless even while it bled. 
 
 There they left him, every one, 
 Left him there without a lick, 
 Left him for the birds to pick, 
 Left him there for carrion, 
 Vilely from their bosom cast 
 Wisdom, worth and love at last. 
 
 When the lion left his lair 
 
 And roared his beauty through the hills, 
 
 And the vultures pecked their quills 
 
 And flew into the middle air, 
 
 Then this prince no more to reign 
 
 Came to life and lived again. 
 
 He snuffed the herd in far retreat, 
 He saw the blood upon the ground, 
 And snuffed the burning airs around 
 Still with beevish odours sweet, 
 While the blood ran down his head 
 And his mouth ran slaver red. 
 
 Pity him, this fallen chief, 
 
 All his splendour, all his strength, 
 
RALPH HODGSON 71 
 
 All his body's breadth and length 
 Dwindled down with shame and grief, 
 Half the bull he was before, 
 Bones and leather, nothing more. 
 
 See him standing dewlap-deep 
 In the rushes at the lake, 
 Surly, stupid, half asleep, 
 Waiting for his heart to break 
 And the birds to join the flies 
 Feasting at his bloodshot eyes; 
 
 Standing with his head hung down 
 In a stupor, dreaming things : 
 Green savannas, jungles brown, 
 Battlefields and bellowings, 
 Bulls undone and lions dead, 
 And vultures flapping overhead. 
 
 Dreaming things : of days he spent 
 With his mother gaunt and lean 
 In the valley warm and green, 
 Full of baby wonderment, 
 Blinking out of silly eyes 
 At a hundred mysteries; 
 
 Dreaming over once again 
 How he wandered with a throng 
 Of bulls and cows a thousand strong, 
 Wandered on from plain to plain, 
 
72 ANIMALS 
 
 Up the hill and down the dale, 
 Always at his mother's tail; 
 
 How he lagged behind the herd, 
 Lagged and tottered, weak of limb, 
 And she turned and ran to him 
 Blaring at the loathly bird 
 Stationed always in the skies 
 Waiting for the flesh that dies. 
 
 Dreaming maybe of a day 
 When her drained and drying paps 
 Turned him to the sweets and saps, 
 Richer fountains by the way, 
 And she left the bull she bore 
 And he looked to her no more; 
 
 And his little frame grew stout, 
 And his little legs grew strong, 
 And the way was not so long; 
 And his little horns came out, 
 And he played at butting trees, 
 And boulder-stones and tortoises, 
 
 Joined a game of knobby skulls 
 With the youngsters of his year, 
 All the other little bulls 
 Learning both to bruise and bear, 
 Learning how to stand a shock 
 Like a little bull of rock. 
 
RALPH HODGSON 73 
 
 Dreaming of a day less dim, 
 Dreaming of a time less far, 
 When the faint but certain star 
 Of destiny burned clear for him, 
 And a fierce and wild unrest 
 Broke the quiet of his breast, 
 
 And the gristles of his youth 
 Hardened in his comely pow, 
 And he came to fighting growth, 
 Beat his bull and won his cow, 
 And flew his tail and trampled off 
 Past the tallest, vain enough, 
 
 And curved about in splendour full 
 And curved again and snuffed the airs 
 As who should say Come out who dares I 
 And all beheld a bull, a Bull, 
 And knew that here was surely one 
 That backed for no bull, fearing none. 
 
 And the leader of the herd 
 Looked and saw, and beat the ground,. 
 And shook the forest with his sound, 
 Bellowed at the loathly bird 
 Stationed always in the skies, 
 Waiting for the flesh that dies. 
 
 Dreaming, this old bull forlorn 
 Surely dreaming of the hour 
 
74 ANIMALS 
 
 When he came to sultan-power, 
 And they owned him master-horn, 
 Chiefest bull of all among 
 Bulls and cows a thousand strong ; 
 
 And in all the tramping herd 
 Not a bull that barred his way, 
 Not a cow that said him nay, 
 Not a bull or cow that erred 
 In the furnace of his look 
 Dared a second, worse rebuke; 
 
 Not in all the forest wide, 
 Jungle, thicket, pasture, fen, 
 Not another dared him then, 
 Dared him and again defied ; 
 Not a sovereign buck or boar 
 Came a second time for more; 
 
 Not a serpent that survived 
 Once the terrors of his hoof 
 Risked a second time reproof, 
 Came a second time and lived, 
 Not a serpent in its skin 
 Came again for discipline ; 
 
 Not a leopard bright as flame 
 Flashing fingerhooks of steel 
 That a wooden tree might feel, 
 Met his fury once and came 
 
RALPH HODGSON 75 
 
 For a second reprimand, 
 Not a leopard in the land; 
 
 Not a lion of them all, 
 Not a lion of the hills, 
 Hero of a thousand kills, 
 Dared a second fight and fall, 
 Dared that ram terrific twice, 
 Paid a second time the price. 
 
 Pity him, this dupe of dream, 
 Leader of the herd again 
 Only in his daft old brain, 
 Once again the bull supreme 
 And bull enough to bear the part 
 Only in his tameless heart. 
 
 Pity him that he must wake; 
 Even now the swarm of flies 
 Blackening his bloodshot eyes 
 Bursts and blusters round the lake, 
 Scattered from the feast half-fed, 
 By great shadows overhead ; 
 
 And the dreamer turns away 
 From his visionary herds 
 And his splendid yesterday, 
 Turns to meet the loathly birds 
 Flocking round him from the skies 
 Waiting for the flesh that dies. 
 
 RALPH HODGSON. 
 
76 ANIMALS 
 
 BTE HUMAINE 
 
 RIDING through Ruwu swamp about sunrise 
 
 I saw the world awake; and as the ray 
 
 Touched the tall grasses where they dream till day, 
 
 Lo, the bright air alive with dragon-flies : 
 
 With brittle wings a-quiver, and great eyes 
 
 Piloting crimson bodies, slender and gay. 
 
 I aimed at one, and struck it, and it lay 
 
 Broken and piteous, with fast-fading dyes. 
 
 Then my soul sickened with a sudden pain 
 
 And horror at my own careless cruelty, 
 
 That, where all things were cruel, I had slain 
 
 A creature whose sweet life it is to fly : 
 
 Like beasts that prey with bloody claw . . . Nay, they 
 
 Must slay to live, but what excuse had I ? 
 
 FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG. 
 
 THE BELLS OF HEAVEN 
 
 'TWOULD ring the bells of Heaven 
 The wildest peal for years, 
 If Parson lost his senses 
 And people came to theirs, 
 And he and they together 
 Knelt down with angry prayers 
 
JAMES STEPHENS 77 
 
 For tamed and shabby tigers 
 And dancing dogs and bears, 
 And wretched, blind pit ponies, 
 And little hunted hares. 
 
 RALPH HODGSON. 
 
 THE SNARE 
 
 I HEAR a sudden cry of pain ! 
 
 There is a rabbit in a snare: 
 Now I hear the cry again 
 
 But I cannot tell from where. 
 
 But I cannot tell from where 
 
 He is calling out for aid ; 
 Crying on the frightened air, 
 
 Making everything afraid. 
 
 Making everything afraid, 
 Wrinkling up his little face, 
 
 As he cries again for aid; 
 And I cannot find the place! 
 
 And I cannot find the place 
 Where his paw is in the snare: 
 
 Little one! Oh, little one ! 
 I am searching everywhere ! 
 
 JAMES STEPHENS. 
 
78 ANIMALS 
 
 ANIMALS 
 
 I THINK I could turn and live with animals, they are 
 
 so placid and self -contained ; 
 I stand and look at them long and long. 
 They do not sweat and whine about their condition; 
 They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their 
 
 sins ; 
 They do not make me sick discussing their duty to 
 
 God; 
 Not one is dissatisfied not one is demented with the 
 
 mania of owning things; 
 Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived 
 
 thousands of years ago; 
 Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole 
 
 earth. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 THE FISH 
 
 IN a cool curving world he lies 
 And ripples with dark ecstasies. 
 The kind luxurious lapse and steal 
 Shapes all his universe to feel 
 And know and be ; the clinging stream 
 Closes his memory, glooms his dream, 
 Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides 
 Superb on unreturning tides. 
 
RUPERT BROOKE 79 
 
 Those silent waters weave for him 
 A fluctuant mutable world and dim, 
 Where wavering masses bulge and gape 
 Mysterious, and shape to shape 
 Dies momently through whorl and hollow, 
 And form and line and solid follow 
 Solid and line and form to dream 
 Fantastic down the eternal stream; 
 An obscure world, a shifting world, 
 Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled, 
 Or serpentine, or driving arrows, 
 Or serene slidings, or March narrows. 
 There slipping wave and shore are one, 
 And weed and mud. No ray of sun, 
 But glow to glow fades down the deep 
 (As dream to unknown dream in sleep) ; 
 Shaken translucency illumes 
 The hyaline of drifting glooms; 
 The strange soft-handed depth subdues 
 Drowned colour there, but black to hues, 
 As death to living, decomposes 
 Red darkness of the heart of roses, 
 Blue brilliant from dead starless skies, 
 And gold that lies behind the eyes, 
 The unknown unnameable sightless white 
 That is the essential flame of night, 
 Lustreless purple, hooded green, 
 The myriad hues that lie between 
 Darkness and Darkness ! . . . 
 
 And all's one, 
 
So ANIMALS 
 
 Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun, 
 The world he rests in, world he knows, 
 Perpetual curving. Only grows 
 An eddy in that ordered falling, 
 A knowledge from the gloom, a calling 
 Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud 
 The dark fire leaps along his blood; 
 Dateless and deathless, blind and still, 
 The intricate impulse works its will; 
 His woven world drops back; and he, 
 Sans providence, sans memory, 
 Unconscious and directly driven 
 Fades to some dank sufficient heaven. 
 
 RUPERT BROOKE. 
 
 DOG 
 
 You little friend, your nose is ready; you sniff 
 Asking for that expected walk, 
 (Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff) 
 And almost talk. 
 
 And so the moment becomes a moving force: 
 Coats glide from their pegs in the humble dark; 
 The sticks grow live to the stride of their vagrant 
 
 course. 
 You scamper the stairs, 
 
HAROLD MONRO 81 
 
 Your body informed with the scent and the track 
 
 and the mark 
 Of stoats and weasels, moles and badgers and hares. 
 
 We are going out. You know the pitch of the word, 
 Probing the tone of thought as it comes through fog 
 And reaches by devious means (half -smelt, half-heard) 
 The four-legged brain of a walk-intensive dog. 
 
 Out in the garden your head is already low. 
 (Can you smell the rose? Ah, no.) 
 But your limbs can draw 
 
 Life from the earth through the touch of your padded 
 paw. 
 
 Now, sending a little look to us behind, 
 Who follow slowly the track of your lovely play, 
 You carry our bodies forward away from mind 
 Into the light and fun of your useless day. 
 
 Thus, for your walk, we took ourselves, and went 
 Out by the hedge and the tree and on to the green. 
 You ran, in delightful strata of wafted scent, 
 Over the hill without seeing the view; 
 Beauty is smell upon primitive smell to you: 
 To you, as to us, it is distant and rarely seen. 
 
 Home . . . and further joy will be surely there: 
 Supper waiting full of the taste of bone. 
 F 
 
82 ANIMALS 
 
 You throw up your nose again, and sniff, and stare 
 
 For the habit known 
 
 Of the quick wild gorge of food and the still lie-down, 
 
 While your people talk above you in the light 
 
 Of candles, and your dreams will merge and drown 
 
 Into the bed-delicious hours of night. 
 
 HAROLD MONRO. 
 
PART V 
 THE GREAT WAR 
 

 PART V. THE GREAT WAR 
 
 IT is necessary to say a word or two on the subject 
 of war-poetry. A great deal of poetry has been 
 written on this stupendous theme, some of it very 
 good, and all of it significant. Yet it is probable that 
 the great poet of the war has yet to arise, for a 
 cataclysm so vast and overwhelming baffles grasp, 
 and seems to lie beyond expression. 
 
 These poems have been written either by men who 
 have seen modern war and tried to seize something 
 tangible amid its awful complexity, or by those who 
 have had to stay behind and bear the strain of sus- 
 pense and anxiety. The result has been not a vast 
 epic or drama, but a great number of telling scenes, 
 significant thoughts, like flashes in the great dark 
 chaos. These war-thoughts are often expressed in 
 verse of extreme simplicity; and this is especially so 
 when the writers have themselves looked death and 
 horror straight in the eyes; for to them the thing 
 seen or the thought inspired is too poignant in itself 
 to bear any elaboration. One might compare such 
 poems with Mr. Nevinson's famous picture The 
 Machine-Gun, which depics not merely three French 
 soldiers in a trench, working a machine-gun, but 
 
 85 
 
86 THE GREAT WAR 
 
 the whole of modern war expressed as a terrible 
 engine or system for killing men. 
 
 These war-poems express innumerable points of 
 view or attitudes of mind, of which a few are here 
 given. There is the terrific power of subjective ex- 
 pression in The Assault] the terrible simplicity of 
 The Messages; the yearning sadness and bewilder- 
 ment of the poem called Clouds} the calm public- 
 school spirit of The Cricketers of Flanders \ the 
 rugged force of The Bushrangers', the poignant 
 bitterness of The Attack; the majesty of thought in 
 The Song of the Soldiers] the joy of manhood in the 
 battle poem by Captain Julian Grenfell. And these 
 are but a few taken from a great multitude of war- 
 poems, each written with a power and conviction 
 of its own, like colour-notes in an artist's sketch- 
 book. 
 
 Whether the war-poetry is destined to live, it is 
 not yet possible to say. All one can be sure of is 
 this: that when time has dimmed the memory of 
 these terrible years, the thoughts of the men who 
 fought, and of those who worked and waited at home, 
 will be found embodied in these poems by those who 
 care to read. No statues, nor pictures, nor novels 
 will put those thoughts so intimately and vividly 
 before us. 
 
THOMAS HARDY 87 
 
 MEN WHO MARCH AWAY 
 
 (SONG OF THE SOLDIERS) 
 
 WHAT of the faith and fire within us 
 
 Men who march away 
 
 Ere the barn-cocks say 
 
 Night is growing gray, 
 Leaving all that here could win us ; 
 What of the faith and fire within us 
 
 Men who march away ? 
 
 Is it a purblind prank, O think you, 
 
 Friend with the musing eye, 
 
 Who watch us stepping by 
 
 With doubt and dolorous sigh ? 
 Can much pondering so hoodwink you ! 
 Is it a purblind prank, O think you, 
 
 Friend with the musing eye ? 
 
 Nay, we well see what we are doing 
 
 Though some may not see, 
 
 Dalliers as they be; 
 
 England's need are we; 
 Her distress would leave us rueing: 
 Nay. We well see what we are doing 
 
 Though some may not see ! 
 
 In our heart of hearts believing 
 Victory crowns the just, 
 And that braggarts must 
 
88 THE GREAT WAR 
 
 Surely bite the dust, 
 Press we to the field ungrieving, 
 In our heart of hearts believing 
 
 Victory crowns the just. 
 
 Hence the faith and fire within us 
 
 Men who march away 
 
 Ere the barn-cocks say 
 
 Night is growing gray, 
 Leaving all that here could win us ; 
 Hence the faith and fire within us 
 
 Men who march away. 
 $th Sept. 1914. THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 HIT 
 
 OUT of the sparkling sea 
 I drew my tingling body clear, and lay 
 On a low ledge the livelong summer day, 
 
 Basking, and watching lazily 
 White sails in Falmouth Bay. 
 
 My body seemed to burn 
 Salt in the sun that drenched it through and 
 
 through 
 Till every particle glowed clean and new 
 
 And slowly seemed to turn 
 To lucent amber in a world of blue. . . . 
 
WILFRID W. GIBSON 89 
 
 I felt a sudden wrench 
 A trickle of warm blood 
 And found that I was sprawling in the mud 
 
 Among the dead men in the trench. 
 
 WILFRID WILSON GIBSON. 
 
 THE MESSAGES 
 
 " I CANNOT quite remember. . . . There were five 
 Dropt dead beside me in the trench and three 
 Whispered their dying messages to me. . . ." 
 
 Back from the trenches, more dead than alive, 
 Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee 
 He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly : 
 
 " 1 cannot quite remember. . . . There were five 
 Dropt dead beside me in the trench and three 
 Whispered their dying messages to me. . . . 
 
 " Their friends are waiting, wondering how they 
 
 thrive 
 
 Waiting a word in silence patiently . . . 
 But what they said, or who their friends may be 
 
 " I cannot quite remember. . . . There were five 
 Dropt dead beside me in the trench and three 
 Whispered their dying messages to me. . . ." 
 
 WILFRID WILSON GIBSON. 
 
90 THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 THE beating of the guns grows louder. 
 
 " Not long, boys, now.' 1 
 
 My heart burns whiter, fearfuller, prouder. 
 
 Hurricanes grow 
 
 As guns redouble their fire. 
 
 Through the shaken periscope peeping, 
 
 I glimpse their wire: 
 
 Black earth, fountains of earth rise, leaping, 
 
 Spouting like shocks of meeting waves, 
 
 Death's fountains are playing, 
 
 Shells like shrieking birds rush over; 
 
 Crash and din rises higher. 
 
 A stream of lead raves 
 
 Over us from the left . . . (We safe under cover!). 
 
 Crash! Reverberation! Crash! 
 
 Acrid smoke billowing. Flash upon flash. 
 
 Black smoke drifting. The German line 
 
 Vanishes in confusion, smoke. Cries, and cry 
 
 Of our men, " Gah, yer swine ! 
 
 Ye' re for it," die 
 
 In a hurricane of shell. 
 
 One cry: 
 
 " We're comiri soon ! look out ! " 
 
 There is opened hell 
 
 Over there; fragments fly, 
 
 Rifles and bits of men whirled at the skv: 
 
ROBERT NICHOLS 91 
 
 Dust, smoke, thunder! A sudden bout 
 Of machine guns chattering . . . 
 And redoubled battering, 
 As if in fury at their daring! . . . 
 
 No good staring. 
 
 Time soon now . . . home . . . house on a sunny 
 
 hill . . . 
 
 Gone like a flickered page : 
 Time soon now . . . zero . . . will engage . . . 
 
 A sudden thrill 
 
 " Fix bayonets! " 
 
 Gods ! we have our fill 
 
 Of fear, hysteria, exultation, rage, 
 
 Rage to kill. 
 
 My heart burns hot, whiter and whiter, 
 
 Contracts tighter and tighter, 
 
 Until I stifle with the will 
 
 Long forged, now used 
 
 (Though utterly strained) 
 
 O pounding heart, 
 
 Baffled, confused, 
 
 Heart panged, head singing, dizzily pained 
 
 To do my part. 
 
 Blindness a moment. Sick. 
 There the men are ! 
 
92 THE GREAT WAR 
 
 Bayonets ready: click! 
 
 Time goes quick; 
 
 A stumbled prayer . . . somehow a blazing star 
 
 In a blue night . . . where ? 
 
 Again prayer. 
 
 The tongue trips. Start: 
 
 How's time ? Soon now. Two minutes or less. 
 
 The guns' fury mounting higher . . . 
 
 Their utmost. I lift a silent hand. Unseen I 
 
 bless 
 
 Those hearts will follow me. 
 And beautifully 
 Now beautifully my will grips, 
 Soul calm and round and filmed and white! 
 A shout: " Men, no such order as retire! " 
 
 I nod. 
 
 The whistle's 'twixt my lips . . . 
 
 I catch 
 
 A wan, worn smile at me. 
 
 Dear men ! 
 
 The pale wrist-watch . . . 
 
 The quiet hand ticks on amid the din. 
 
 The guns again 
 
 Rise to a last fury, to a rage, a lust : 
 
 Kill! Pound! KiU! Pound! Pound! 
 
 Now comes the thrust! 
 
 My part . . . dizziness . . . will . . . but trust 
 
 These men. The great guns rise; 
 
 Their fury seems to burst the earth and skies ! 
 
ROBERT NICHOLS 93 
 
 They lift. 
 
 Gather, heart, all thoughts that drift; 
 
 Be steel, soul, 
 
 Compress thyself 
 
 Into a round bright whole. 
 
 I cannot speak. 
 
 Time. Time! 
 
 I hear my whistle shriek, 
 
 Between teeth set; 
 
 I fling an arm up, 
 
 Scramble up the grime 
 
 Over the parapet ! 
 
 I'm up. Go on. 
 
 Something meets us. 
 
 Head down into the storm that greets us. 
 
 A wail. 
 
 Lights. Blurr. 
 
 Gone. 
 
 On, on. Lead. Lead. Hail. 
 
 Spatter. Whirr! Whirr! 
 
 " Toward that patch of brown ; 
 
 Direction left" Bullets a stream. 
 
 Devouring thought crying in a dream. 
 
 Men, crumpled, going down . . . 
 
 Go on. Go. 
 
 Deafness. Numbness. The loudening tornado. 
 
 Bullets. Mud. Stumbling and skating. 
 
 My voice's strangled shout : 
 
 " Steady pace, boys ! " 
 
94 THE GREAT WAR 
 
 The still light : gladness. 
 
 " Look, sir. Look out ! " 
 
 Ha! ha! Bunched figures waiting. 
 
 Revolver levelled quick ! 
 
 Flick! Flick! 
 
 Red as blood. 
 
 Germans. Germans. 
 
 Good ! O good ! 
 
 Cool madness. 
 
 ROBERT NICHOLS. 
 
 THE BUSHRANGERS 
 
 As I was walking down Oxford Street 
 Ten fierce soldiers I chanced to meet, 
 They wore big slouch hats and khaki sashes, 
 And talked like the angry guns, jn flashes. 
 
 And my friend said to me, " They come from 
 
 Australia; 
 
 Villainous fellows for War's regalia. 
 John Briton keeps a tobacconist's shed 
 And twice they have held a gun at his head." 
 
 Well, I would have given all I had 
 To have gone with the bunch of them, good or bad, 
 To have heard the wickedest say, " Old fellow! " 
 And staunched his wounds where the black guns 
 bellow. 
 
SIEGFRIED SASSOON 95 
 
 I'd have thought it a merry thing to die 
 With such stalwart comrades standing by. 
 
 One of them had round eyes like coals 
 True parson's quarry when he hunts souls. 
 The brawniest made my heart turn queer; 
 The devil in hell would have shunned his leer. 
 And the tallest and thinnest bore visible traces 
 Of his banished grandsire's vanished graces. 
 
 But all the lot of that swaggering ten 
 Were terrible, fine, strong soldier men ; 
 And I fairly sobbed at the four cross ways 
 As my triumphing soul sang England's praise. 
 
 O! all the Germans in Berlin town 
 Couldn't put those ten Australians down. 
 
 HERBERT E. PALMER. 
 
 y ATTACK 
 
 Ax dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun 
 In the wild purple of the glowering sun, 
 Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that 
 
 shroud 
 
 The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, 
 Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. 
 The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed 
 With bombs and guns and shovels and battle gear, 
 
96 THE GREAT WAR 
 
 Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. 
 Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, 
 They leave their trenches, going over the top, 
 While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, 
 And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, 
 Flounders in mud. O Jesu, make it stop! 
 
 SIEGFRIED SASSOON. 
 
 THE CRICKETERS OF FLANDERS 
 
 THE first to climb the parapet 
 With ' cricket-ball ' in either hand ; 
 The first to vanish in the smoke 
 Of God-forsaken No-Man's land. 
 First at the wire and soonest through, 
 First at those red-mouthed hounds of hell 
 The Maxims, and the first to fall, 
 They do their bit, and do it well. 
 
 Full sixty yards I've seen them throw 
 With all that nicety of aim 
 They learned on British cricket-fields. 
 Ah ! bombing is a Briton's game ! 
 Shell-hole to shell-hole, trench to trench, 
 " Lobbing them over," with an eye 
 As true as though it were a game, 
 And friends were having tea close by. 
 
ANONYMOUS 97 
 
 Pull down some art-offending thing 
 Of carven stone, and in its stead 
 Let splendid bronze commemorate 
 Thes.e men, the living and the dead. 
 No figure of heroic size 
 Towering skyward like a god; 
 But just a lad who might have stepped 
 From any British bombing squad. 
 
 His shrapnel helmet set a-tilt, 
 
 His bombing waistcoat sagging low, 
 
 His rifle slung across his back: 
 
 Poised in the very act to throw. 
 
 And let some graven legend tell 
 
 Of those weird battles in the West 
 
 Wherein he put old skill to use 
 
 And played old games with sterner zest. 
 
 Thus should he stand, reminding those 
 In less believing days, perchance, 
 How Britain's fighting cricketers 
 Helped bomb the Germans out of France. 
 And other eyes than ours would see; 
 And other hearts than ours would thrill, 
 And others say, as we have said : 
 " A sportsman and a soldier still! " 
 
 ANONYMOUS. 
 
98 THE GREAT WAR 
 
 INTO BATTLE 
 
 THE naked earth is warm with Spring, 
 
 And with green grass and bursting trees 
 Leans to the sun's gaze glorying, 
 
 And quivers in the sunny breeze; 
 And life is Colour and Warmth and Light, 
 
 And a striving evermore for these; 
 And he is dead who will not fight, 
 
 And who dies fighting has increase. 
 
 The fighting man shall from the sun 
 Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth; 
 
 Speed with the light-foot winds to run, 
 And with the trees to newer birth; 
 
 And find, when fighting shall be done, 
 Great rest, and fullness after dearth. 
 
 All the bright company of Heaven 
 Hold him in their high comradeship, 
 
 The Dog-star, and the Sisters Seven, 
 Orion's Belt and sworded hip. 
 
 The woodland trees that stand together 
 They stand to him each one a friend; 
 
 They gently speak in the windy weather; 
 They guide to valley and ridge's end. 
 
 The kestrel hovering by day 
 
 And the little owls that call by night, 
 
JULIAN GRENFELL 99 
 
 Bid him be swift and keen as they, 
 As keen of ear, as swift of sight. 
 
 The blackbird sings to him, " Brother, brother, 
 If this be the last song you shall sing 
 
 Sing well, for you may not sing another; 
 Brother, sing/' 
 
 In dreary doubtful waiting hours, 
 
 Before the brazen frenzy starts, 
 The horses show him nobler powers; 
 
 O patient eyes; courageous hearts ! 
 
 And when the burning moment breaks, 
 And all things else are out of mind, 
 
 And only Joy of Battle takes 
 
 Him by the throat and makes him blind, 
 
 Through joy and blindness he shall know, 
 Not caring much to know, that still 
 
 Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so 
 That it be not the Destined Will. 
 
 The thundering line of battle stands, 
 And in the air Death moans and sings; 
 
 But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, 
 And Night shall fold him in soft wings. 
 
 JULIAN GRENFELL. 
 
 (Captain the Hon. Julian Grenfell, D.S.O., was wounded at 
 Ypres, 1 3th May, and died at Boulogne 26th May, 1915.) 
 
ioo THE GREAT WAR 
 
 YEARS AHEAD 
 
 YEARS ahead, years ahead, 
 
 Who shall honour our sailor-dead ? 
 
 For the wild North Sea, the bleak North Sea, 
 
 Threshes and seethes so endlessly. 
 
 Gathering foam and changing crest 
 
 Heave and hurry, and know no rest : 
 How can they mark our sailor-dead 
 In the years ahead ? 
 
 Time goes by, time goes by, 
 
 And who shall tell where our soldiers lie ? 
 The guiding trench-cut winds afar, 
 Miles upon miles where the dead men are; 
 A cross of wood, or a carven block, 
 A name-disc hung on a rifle-stock 
 
 These shall tell where our soldiers lie 
 As the time goes by. 
 
 Days to come, days to come 
 
 But who shall ask of the wandering foam, 
 
 The weaving weed, or the rocking swell, 
 
 The place of our sailor-dead to tell ? 
 
 From Jutland reefs to Scapa Flow 
 
 Tracks of the wary warships go, 
 
 But the deep sea-wastes lie green and dumb 
 All the days to come. 
 
JOHN DRINKWATER 101 
 
 Years ahead, years ahead, 
 The sea shall honour our sailor-dead ! 
 No mound of mouldering earth shall show 
 The fighting place of the men below, 
 But a swirl of seas that gather and spill; 
 And the wind's wild chanty whistling shrill 
 Shall cry " Consider my sailor-dead! " 
 In the years ahead. 
 
 GUY N. POCOCK. 
 
 CLOUDS 
 
 BECAUSE a million voices call 
 Across the earth distractedly, 
 
 Because the thrones of reason fall 
 And beautiful battalions die, 
 
 My mind is like a madrigal 
 
 Played on a lute long since put by. 
 
 In common use my mind is still 
 Eager for every lovely thing 
 
 The solitudes of tarn and hill, 
 
 Bright birds with honesty to sing, 
 
 Bluebells and primroses that spill 
 Cascades of colour on the spring. 
 
 But now my mind that gave to these 
 Gesture and shape, colour and song, 
 
102 THE GREAT WAR 
 
 Goes hesitant and ill at ease, 
 
 And the old touch is truant long, 
 
 Because the continents and seas 
 Are loud with lamentable wrong. 
 
 JOHN DRINKWATER. 
 
 THE WINGING SOULS 
 
 WHEN good men's bodies die, their souls go winging 
 
 To God : go winging and singing 
 
 Through space. And God, smiling but august, 
 
 From heav'n, of angels sends a little throng 
 
 To meet the happy souls so newly freed from dust 
 
 To greet the happy souls singing their song. 
 
 In bed I lay one night wakefully thinking 
 
 Of France: lay thinking, and shrinking 
 
 From Death. I saw smitten, and wet with Death, 
 
 A thousand men of Britain brothers, sons. 
 
 Twisted and torn were they, their latest breath 
 
 A cry crushed by the thunder of the guns. 
 
 Foulness below . . . But up above ? 
 
 O, up above was Love . . . 
 
 I saw a thousand souls 
 
 Winging to God. 
 
 He met them on Heav'n's stair 
 
 And took them in His care. 
 
ROBERT GRAVES 103 
 
 Heav'n's corridors and ways 
 Are open to them all their days. 
 And as I fell on sleep I heard their winging, 
 And as I woke this morn I heard their singing. 
 GERALD CUMBERLAND. 
 
 THE DEAD FOX HUNTER 
 
 WE found the little captain at the head; 
 
 His men lay well aligned. 
 We touched his hand stone cold and he was dead, 
 
 And they, all dead behind, 
 
 Had never reached their goal, but they died well; 
 They charged in line, and in the same line fell. 
 
 The well-known rosy colours of his face 
 
 Were almost lost in grey. 
 We saw that, dying and in hopeless case, 
 
 For others* sake that day 
 He'd smothered all rebellious groans: in death 
 His fingers were tight clenched between his teeth. 
 
 For those who live uprightly and die true 
 
 Heaven has no bars or locks, 
 And serves all taste ... Or what's for him to do 
 
 Up there but hunt the fox? 
 Angelic choirs ? No, Justice must provide 
 For one who rode straight and at hunting died. 
 
104 THE GREAT WAR 
 
 So if Heaven had no Hunt before he came, 
 
 Why it must find one now: 
 If any shirk and doubt they know the game, 
 
 There's one to teach them how: 
 And the whole host of Seraphim complete 
 Must jog in scarlet to his opening Meet. 
 
 ROBERT GRAVES. 
 
PART VI 
 FANCY 
 
PART VI. FANCY 
 OR, POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 
 
 WHEN we read poetry there are certain questions 
 that naturally enter our minds, and seem to call for 
 an answer. What is poetry, and what is it for ? Why 
 do we read it, and why did the poets write it ? 
 
 Well, these are big questions; but the answers, in 
 brief, are not hard to find. We read poetry to enjoy 
 it because it adds another delight to life, for those 
 who have ears to hear. And the poets' write it be- 
 cause they have a keener imaginative insight into 
 the real significance of things than most men; and 
 besides this they are able to use words in such 
 wonderful fashion as to conjure up for us a sense of 
 beauty or power, the existence of which we had 
 not suspected, or only vaguely, 'at the back of our 
 minds/ This, primarily, is what poetry is ' for/ 
 
 But a poem need not necessarily tell a story, like 
 Enoch Arden; nor arouse patriotic zeal, as in Scots wha 
 hae wi y Wallace bled; nor paint a scene with wonder- 
 ful words; nor call forth our pity or anger. It may 
 do all these things, and more. But there is something 
 else it can do. It can transport us into another world 
 , world outside Space and Time altogether. 
 107 
 
lo8 FANCY 
 
 This world of Fancy, and Romance, and Imagin- 
 ation lies all around us and quite close to us, but it 
 is often just out of reach until the poet supplies the 
 key. As a child one did not have to bother about 
 ' getting there ' : one turned the table upside-down 
 and it was a magic ship, sailing in fancy to ports 
 and countries, real or unreal. But the convention- 
 alities of life naturally dim one's imagination as one 
 grows older; and then if we would escape from the 
 humdrum world of facts, we must let the poets 
 who have never lost the children's secret show us 
 the way in. 
 
 The people who inhabit this world are not real 
 people; they need not think or act like real people; 
 and the scenes need not be very like anything we 
 know in experience. It is all a blend between what 
 the poet had in his own mind, and what he stimu- 
 lates in ours when we read as poetically as we can. 
 And then our experience of this world of Fancy is 
 real enough. 
 
 Take the first poem, From "Arabian Nights 
 Entertainments." Here the poet tells how as a boy 
 he was transformed and transported by the magic 
 of a book and he transports us too, by the magic 
 of his words. In the second poem, Fallen Cities, it 
 is a little heap of sand that opens the gates of the 
 past. And in such poems as Off the Ground we are 
 danced right out of the normal world, and move in 
 realms that lie beyond experience. 
 
W. E. HENLEY 109 
 
 FROM -ARABIAN NIGHTS 
 ENTERTAINMENTS " 
 
 (The poet recalls his wonder at reading the Arabian Nights 
 as a little boy.) 
 
 ONCE on a time 
 
 There was a little boy: a master-mage 
 
 By virtue of a Book 
 
 Of magic O, so magical it filled 
 
 His life with visionary pomps 
 
 Processional! And Powers 
 
 Passed with him where he passed. 
 
 
 
 I shut mine eyes . . . And lo! 
 A flickering snatch of memory that floats 
 Upon the face of a pool of darkness five 
 And thirty dead years deep. 
 
 Sailing to the Isles 
 
 Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall 
 
 A black blotch in the sunset ; and it grew 
 
 Swiftly . . . and grew. Tearing their beards 
 
 The sailors wept and prayed ; but the grave ship, 
 
 Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad, 
 
 Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's hand, 
 
 And, turning broadside on, 
 
 As the most iron would, was haled and sucked 
 
no FANCY 
 
 Nearer, and nearer yet; 
 
 And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps 
 
 Rushed at the portent, casting a shadow now 
 
 That swallowed sea and sky; and then, 
 
 Anchors and nails and bolts 
 
 Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang, 
 
 A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides 
 
 Of the Magnetic Mountain ; and she lay, 
 
 A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal 
 
 About the waters ; and her crew 
 
 Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left 
 
 To drown. All the long night I swam ; 
 
 But in the morning, 0, the smiling coast 
 
 Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike, 
 
 Skirted with shelving sands ! And a great wave 
 
 Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive. 
 
 So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes, 
 
 And, faring inland, in a desert place 
 
 I stumbled on an iron ring 
 
 The fellow of fifty built into the Quays: 
 
 When, scenting a trap-door, 
 
 I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade 
 
 Stuck into wood. And then, 
 
 The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs, 
 
 Sunk in the naked rock ! The cool, clean vault, 
 
 So neat with niche on niche it might have been 
 
 Our beer-cellar but for the rows 
 
 Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars) 
 
 Full to the wide, squat throats 
 
 With gold-dust, but a-top 
 
GERALD GOULD in 
 
 A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things 
 
 I knew for olives ! And far, O, far away 
 
 A Princess of China languished ! Far away 
 
 Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief 
 
 Of Eunuchs, and the privilege 
 
 Of going out at night 
 
 To play unkenned, majestical, secure 
 
 Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped 
 
 Like Tigris shore for shore ! Haply a Ghoul 
 
 Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon, 
 
 A thighbone in his fist, and glared 
 
 At supper with a Lady: she who took 
 
 Her rice with tweezers grain by grain. 
 
 W. E. HENLEY. 
 
 FALLEN CITIES 
 
 I GATHERED with a careless hand, 
 There where the waters night and day 
 Are languid in the idle bay, 
 
 A little heap of golden sand; 
 And as I saw it, in my sight 
 Awoke a vision brief and bright, 
 
 A city in a pleasant land. 
 
 I saw no mound of earth, but fair 
 Turrets and domes and citadels, 
 With murmuring of many bells; 
 
H2 FANCY 
 
 The spires were white in the blue air, 
 And men by thousands went and came, 
 Rapid and restless, and like flame 
 
 Blown by their passions here and there. 
 
 With careless hand I swept away 
 The little mound before I knew; 
 The visioned city vanished too, 
 
 And falTn beneath my fingers lay. 
 Ah God ! how many hast Thou seen, 
 Cities that are not and have been, 
 
 By silent hill and idle bay ! 
 
 GERALD GOULD. 
 
 FLEET STREET 
 
 I NEVER see the newsboys run 
 
 Amid the whirling street, 
 
 With swift untiring feet, 
 To cry the latest venture done, 
 But I expect one day to hear 
 
 Them cry the crack of doom 
 
 And risings from the tomb, 
 With great Archangel Michael near; 
 And see them running from the Fleet 
 
 As messengers of God, 
 
 With Heaven's tidings shod 
 About their brave unwearied feet. 
 
 SHANE LESLIE. 
 
W. DE LA MARE 113 
 
 OFF THE GROUND 
 
 THREE jolly Farmers 
 
 Once bet a pound 
 
 Each dance the others would 
 
 Off the ground. 
 
 Out of their coats 
 
 They slipped right soon, 
 
 And neat and nicesome 
 
 Put each his shoon. 
 
 One Two Three ! 
 
 And away they go, 
 
 Not too fast 
 
 And not too slow; 
 
 Out from the elm-tree's 
 
 Noonday shadow, 
 
 Into the sun 
 
 And across the meadow. 
 
 Past the schoolroom, 
 
 With knees well bent, 
 
 Fingers a-flicking, 
 
 They dancing went. 
 
 Upsides and over, 
 
 And round and round, 
 
 They crossed click-clacking 
 
 The Parish bound; 
 
 By Tupman's meadow 
 
 They did their mile, 
 
H4 FANCY 
 
 Tee-to-tum 
 
 On a three-barred stile. 
 
 Then straight through Whipham 
 
 Downhill to Week, 
 
 Footing it lightsome 
 
 But not too quick, 
 
 Up fields to Watchet 
 
 And on through Wye, 
 
 Till seven fine churches 
 
 They'd seen skip by 
 
 Seven fine churches, 
 
 And five old mills, 
 
 Farms in the valley, 
 
 And sheep on the hills; 
 
 Old Man's Acre 
 
 And Dead Man's Pool 
 
 All left behind 
 
 As they danced through Wool. 
 
 And Wool gone by 
 
 Like tops that seem 
 
 To spin in sleep 
 
 They danced in dream: 
 
 Withy Wellover 
 
 Wassop Wo 
 
 Like an old clock 
 
 Their heels did go. 
 
 A league and a league 
 
 And a league they went, 
 
 And not one weary 
 
 And not one spent. 
 
W. DE LA MARE 115 
 
 And lo ! and behold ! 
 
 Past Willow-cum-Leigh 
 
 Stretched with its waters 
 
 The great green sea. 
 
 Says Farmer Bates : 
 
 " I puffs and I blows, 
 
 What's under the water 
 
 Why no man knows! " 
 
 Says Farmer Giles : 
 
 " My mind comes weak, 
 
 And a good man drownded 
 
 Is far to seek." 
 
 But Farmer Turvey, 
 
 On twirling toes, 
 
 Ups with his gaiters, 
 
 And in he goes : 
 
 Down where the mermaids 
 
 Pluck and play 
 
 On their twangling harps 
 
 In a sea-green day; 
 
 Down where the mermaids, 
 
 Finned and fair, 
 
 Sleek with their combs 
 
 Their yellow hair. . . . 
 
 Bates and Giles 
 
 On the shingle sat, 
 
 Gazing at Turvey's 
 
 Floating hat. 
 
 But never a ripple 
 
 Nor bubble told 
 
FANCY 
 
 Where he was supping 
 
 Off plates of gold. 
 
 Never an echo 
 
 Rilled through the sea 
 
 Of the feasting and dancing 
 
 And minstrelsy. 
 
 They called called called: 
 
 Came no reply : 
 
 Nought but the ripples' 
 
 Sandy sigh. 
 
 Then glum and silent 
 
 They sat instead 
 
 Vacantly brooding 
 
 On home and bed, 
 
 Till both together 
 
 Stood up and said: 
 
 " Us knows not, dreams not 
 
 Where you be, 
 
 Turvey, unless 
 
 In the deep blue sea; 
 
 But axcusing silver 
 
 And it comes most willing 
 
 Here's us two paying 
 
 Our forty shilling; 
 
 For it's sartin sure, Turvey, 
 
 Safe and sound 
 
 You danced us square, Turvey, 
 
 Off the ground! " 
 
 WALTER DE LA MARE. 
 
FRANCES CORNFORD 117 
 
 THE PRINCESS AND THE GIPSIES 
 
 As I looked out one May morning 
 
 I saw the tree-tops green; 
 I said " My crown I will lay down 
 
 And live no more a queen." 
 
 Then I tripped down my golden steps 
 
 All in my silken gown, 
 And when I stood in the open wood 
 
 I met some gipsies brown. 
 
 " O gentle, gentle gipsies, 
 
 That roam the wide world through, 
 Because I hate my crown and state 
 O let me come with you. 
 
 " My councillors are old and grey, 
 
 And sit in narrow chairs ; 
 But you can hear the birds sing clear, 
 And your hearts are light as theirs/' 
 
 " If you would come along with us 
 Then you must count the cost ; 
 For though in spring the sweet birds sing, 
 In winter comes the frost. 
 
 " Your ladies serve you all the day 
 With courtesy and care; 
 
n8 FANCY 
 
 Your fine-shod feet they tread so neat ; 
 But gipsies' feet go bare. 
 
 " You wash in water running warm 
 
 Through basins all of gold; 
 The streams where we roam have silvery foam, 
 But the streams, the streams are cold. 
 
 " And barley-bread is bitter to taste, 
 While sugary cakes they please 
 Which will you choose, O which will you choose, 
 Which will you choose of these ? 
 
 " For if you choose the mountain streams 
 
 And barley-bread to eat, 
 Your heart will be free as the birds in the tree, 
 But the stones will cut your feet. 
 
 " The mud will spoil your silken gown, 
 
 And stain your insteps high; 
 The dogs in the farm will wish you harm 
 And bark as you go by. 
 
 " And though your heart grow deep and gay, 
 
 And your heart grow wise and rich, 
 The cold will make your bones to ache 
 And you will die in a ditch." 
 
 " O gentle, gentle gipsies, 
 
 That roam the wide world through, 
 Although I praise your wandering ways 
 I dare not come with you." 
 
ALFRED NOYES 119 
 
 I hung about their fingers brown 
 
 My ruby rings and chain, 
 And with my head as heavy as lead 
 
 I turned me back again. 
 
 As I went up the palace steps, 
 
 I heard the gipsies laugh; 
 The birds of Spring so sweet did sing; 
 
 My heart it broke in half. 
 
 FRANCES CORNFORD. 
 
 THE MOON IS UP 
 
 THE moon is up: the stars are bright: 
 
 The wind is fresh and free ! 
 We're out to seek for gold to-night 
 
 Across the silver sea ! 
 The world was growing grey and old: 
 
 Break out the sails again ! 
 We're out to seek a Realm of Gold 
 
 Beyond the Spanish Main. 
 
 We're sick of all the cringeing knees, 
 
 The courtly smiles and lies ! 
 God, let thy singing Channel breeze 
 
 Lighten our hearts and eyes ! 
 Let love no more be bought and sold 
 
 For earthly loss or gain ; 
 We're out to seek an Age of Gold 
 
 Beyond the Spanish Main. 
 
120 FANCY 
 
 Beyond the light of far Cathay, 
 
 Beyond all mortal dreams, 
 Beyond the reach of night and day 
 
 Our El Dorado gleams, 
 Revealing as the skies unfold 
 
 A star without a stain, 
 The Glory of the Gates of Gold 
 
 Beyond the Spanish Main. 
 
 ALFRED NOYES. 
 
 TO A SNOWFLAKE 
 
 WHAT heart would have thought you?- 
 
 Past our devisal 
 
 (O filigree petal!) 
 
 Fashioned so purely, 
 
 Fragilely, surely, 
 
 From what Paradisal 
 
 Imagineless metal, 
 
 Too costly for cost ? 
 
 Who hammered you, wrought you, 
 
 From argentine vapour? 
 
 " God was my shaper 
 
 Passing surmisal, 
 
 He hammered, He wrought me, 
 
 From curled silver vapour, 
 
 To lust of His mind: 
 
 Thou couldst not have thought me! 
 
 So purely, so palely, 
 
HELEN GRAY CONE 
 
 Tinily, surely, 
 Mightily, frailly, 
 Insculped and embossed, 
 With His hammer of wind, 
 And His graver of frost." 
 
 FRANCIS THOMPSON. 
 
 THE COMMON STREET 
 
 THE common street climbed up against the sky, 
 Gray meeting gray; and wearily to and fro 
 I saw the patient, common people go, 
 Each with his sordid burden trudging by. 
 And the rain dropped; there was not any sigh 
 Or stir of a live wind ; dull, dull, and slow 
 All motion; as a tale told long ago 
 The faded world; and creeping night drew nigh. 
 
 Then burst the sunset, flooding far and fleet, 
 
 Leavening the whole of life with magic leaven. 
 
 Suddenly down the long, wet glistening hill 
 
 Pure splendour poured and lo ! the common street, 
 
 A golden highway into golden heaven, 
 
 With the dark shapes of men ascending still. 
 
 HELEN GRAY CONE. 
 
PART VII 
 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
PART VIL LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 IT is difficult to say whether there is a distinctive 
 attitude expressed in modern poetry treating of this 
 greatest of subjects. Yet in reading the many such 
 poems dating from Browning's latest period to the 
 present day, one cannot help remarking that the 
 note struck is usually, though not invariably, one of 
 brave and healthy optimism. 
 
 " Vanity, saith the preacher, all is vanity," is no 
 longer the dominant theme. Rather it is that life is 
 worth the living, and death, too, is worth the dying. 
 The cult of Fitzgerald's beautiful ' translation ' of 
 the Rubdiydt of Omar Khayyam has passed, or is 
 passing. " Let us eat, drink, and be merry " by all 
 means, but not " for to-morrow we die/' but because 
 to-morrow we live or at least with incorrigible 
 optimism we persist in hoping so. 
 
 Thus the first two poems here quoted are ex- 
 hortations to live bravely and to the full; while 
 Stevenson's little Requiem denotes the happy Passing. 
 An Epitaph strikes a more wistful note, and is quoted 
 for its extreme beauty and simplicity; and the verses 
 under the dedication Margaritae Sorori rise to a height 
 of sublimity that has rarely been surpassed the 
 second verse being in itself perhaps the greatest 
 poem that Henley ever wrote. 
 
 Of the structure of this last poem we shall have 
 something further to say in the next section. 
 '25 
 
126 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 LAUGH AND BE MERRY 
 
 LAUGH and be merry, remember, better the world 
 
 with a song, 
 Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a 
 
 wrong. 
 Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a 
 
 span. 
 Laugh, and be proud to belong to the old proud 
 
 pageant of man. 
 
 Laugh and be merry: remember, in olden time, 
 God made Heaven and Earth for the joy He took in 
 
 a rhyme, 
 Made them and filled them full with the strong red 
 
 wine of His mirth, 
 The splendid joy of the stars: the joy of the earth. 
 
 So we must laugh and drink from the deep blue cup 
 
 of the sky, 
 Join the jubilant song of the great stars sweeping 
 
 by, 
 
 Laugh, and battle, and work, and drink of the wine 
 
 outpoured 
 In the dear green earth, the sign of the joy of the 
 
 Lord. 
 
MARGARET L. WOODS 127 
 
 Laugh and be merry together, like brothers akin, 
 Guesting awhile in the rooms of a beautiful inn, 
 Glad till the dancing stops, and the lilt of the music 
 
 ends. 
 Laugh till the game is played; and be you merry, my 
 
 friends. 
 
 JOHN MASEFIELD. 
 
 GAUDEAMUS IGITUR 
 
 COME no more of grief and dying 1 
 Sing the time too swiftly flying. 
 
 Just an hour 
 
 Youth's in flower, 
 Give me roses to remember 
 In the shadow of December. 
 
 Fie on steeds with leaden paces ! 
 Winds shall bear us on our races, 
 
 Speed, O speed, 
 
 Wind, my steed, 
 
 Beat the lightning for your master, 
 Yet my fancy shall fly faster. 
 
 Give me music, give me rapture, 
 Youth that's fled can none recapture ; 
 
 Not with thought 
 
 Wisdom's bought. 
 
128 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 Out on pride and scorn and sadness ! 
 Give me laughter, give me gladness. 
 
 Sweetest Earth, I love and love thee, 
 Seas about thee, skies above thee 
 
 Sun and storms, 
 
 Hues and forms 
 
 Of the clouds with floating shadows 
 On thy mountains and thy meadows. 
 
 Earth, there's none that can enslave thee, 
 Not thy lords it is that have thee; 
 
 Not for gold 
 
 Art thou sold, 
 
 But thy lovers at their pleasure 
 Take thy beauty and thy treasure. 
 
 While sweet fancies meet me singing, 
 While the April blood is springing 
 
 In my breast, 
 
 While a jest 
 
 And my youth thou yet must leave me, 
 Fortune, 'tis not thou canst grieve me. 
 
 When at length the grasses cover 
 Me, the world's unwearied lover, 
 
 If regret 
 
 Haunt me yet, 
 It shall be for joys untasted, 
 Nature lent and folly wasted. 
 
MARGARET L. WOODS 129 
 
 Youth and jests and summer weather, 
 Goods that kings and clowns together 
 
 Waste or use 
 
 As they choose, 
 
 These, the best, we miss pursuing 
 Sullen shades that mock our wooing. 
 
 Feigning Age will not delay it 
 When the reckoning comes we'll pay it, 
 
 Our own mirth 
 
 Has been worth 
 All the forfeit light or heavy 
 Wintry Time and Fortune levy. 
 
 Feigning grief will not escape it, 
 What though ne'er so well you ape it 
 
 Age and care 
 
 All must share, 
 All alike must pay hereafter, 
 Some for sighs and some for laughter. 
 
 Know, ye sons of Melancholy, 
 To be young and wise is folly. 
 
 Tis the weak 
 
 Fear to wreak 
 
 On this clay of life their fancies, 
 Shaping battles, shaping dances. 
 
 While ye scorn our names unspoken, 
 Roses dead and garlands broken, 
 i 
 
130 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 ye wise, 
 
 We arise, 
 
 Out of failures, dreams, disasters, 
 We arise to be your masters. 
 
 MARGARET L. WOODS. 
 
 AN EPITAPH 
 
 HERE lies a most beautiful lady, 
 
 Light of step and heart was she; 
 
 I think she was the most beautiful lady 
 
 That ever was in the West Country. 
 
 But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; 
 
 However rare rare it be; 
 
 And when I crumble, who will remember 
 
 This lady of the West Country? 
 
 WALTER DE LA MARE. 
 
 REQUIEM 
 
 UNDER the wide and starry sky 
 Dig the grave and let me lie: 
 Glad did I live and gladly die, 
 And I laid me down with a will. 
 
 This be the verse you grave for me : 
 Here he lies where he long'd to be ; 
 Home is the sailor, home from the sea, 
 And the hunter home from the hill. 
 
 ROBERT Louis STEVENSON, 
 
W. E. HENLEY 131 
 
 THE PASSING 
 (Margaritae Sorori) 
 
 A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies; 
 
 And from the west, 
 
 Where the sun, his day's work ended, 
 
 Lingers as in content, 
 
 There falls on the old, gray city 
 
 An influence luminous and serene, 
 
 A shining peace. 
 
 The smoke ascends 
 
 In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires 
 
 Shine, and are changed. In the valley 
 
 Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, 
 
 Closing his benediction, 
 
 Sinks, and the darkening air 
 
 Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night 
 
 Night with her train of stars 
 
 And her great gift of sleep. 
 
 So be my passing! 
 
 My task accomplished and the long day done, 
 
 My wages taken, and in my heart 
 
 Some late lark singing, 
 
 Let me be gathered to the quiet west, 
 
 The sundown splendid and serene, 
 
 Death. 
 
 W. E. HENLEY. 
 
132 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 SAINT BRENDAN 
 
 ST. BRENDAN, he sailed the salt sea to the Island of 
 
 Birds; 
 And when he sailed back to this coast, he spake holy 
 
 words, 
 And they built a brown cell on the hill, where he 
 
 tarried a day. 
 How long hath the thought of him lived, since he 
 
 went the saints* way ? 
 " Hundreds of years" said the Bell. " Hundreds of 
 
 years." 
 
 The church still stands on the hill; the brown cell is 
 gone, 
 
 Like the leaf from the desolate tree, like the sun from 
 the stone. 
 
 How long shall the worshippers take the grey path 
 to the door, 
 
 And the quick step past their own dead, on the grave- 
 covered floor? 
 
 " Hundreds of years" said the Bell. " Hundreds of 
 years." 
 
 The travail comes back to the earth, like the wave 
 
 to the sand, 
 And the wars return in long waves that break on the 
 
 land; 
 
ERNEST RHYS 133 
 
 How long shall the sorrow be borne, in the eye of the 
 
 sun? 
 How long shall man labour and pray till his doomsday 
 
 be done? 
 " Hundreds of years" said the Bell. " Hundreds of 
 
 years" 
 
 ERNEST RHYS. 
 
 THE LEAF BURNERS 
 
 UNDER two oak trees 
 
 on top of the fell, 
 With an old hawthorn hedge 
 
 to hold off the wind, 
 I saw the leaf burners 
 
 brushing the leaves 
 With their long brooms 
 
 into the blaze. 
 Above them the sky 
 
 scurried along 
 Pale as a plate, 
 
 and peered thro* the oaks, 
 While the hurrying wind 
 
 harried the hedge. 
 But fast as they swept 
 
 feeding the leaves 
 Into the flame 
 
 that flickered and fumed.. 
 
134 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 The wind, the tree-shaker, 
 
 shaking the boughs, 
 Whirled others down 
 
 withered and wan 
 Summer's small folk, 
 
 faded and fain 
 To give up their life; 
 
 earth unto earth, 
 Ashes to ashes, 
 
 life unto death. 
 
 Far on the fell 
 
 where the road ran, 
 I heard the men march, 
 
 in the mouth of the wind: 
 And the leaf burners heard 
 
 and leaned down their heads, 
 Brow upon broom, 
 
 and let the leaves lie, 
 And counted their kin 
 
 that crossed over sea, 
 And left wife and wean 
 
 to fight in the war. 
 
 Forth over fell 
 
 I fared on my way; 
 Yet often looked back, 
 
 when the wind blew, 
 To see the flames coil 
 
 like a curl of bright hair 
 
ERNEST RHYS 135 
 
 Round the face of a child 
 
 a flower of fire, 
 Beneath the long boughs 
 
 where lush and alive, 
 The leaves flourished long, 
 
 loving the sun. 
 
 Much I thought then 
 
 of men that went forth, 
 Or dropt like the leaves, 
 
 to die and to live; 
 While the leaf burners 
 
 with their long brooms 
 Drew them together 
 
 on the day of their death. 
 I wondered at that, 
 
 walking the fell 
 Feeling the wind 
 
 that wafted the leaves 
 And set their souls 
 
 free of the smoke, 
 Free of the dead, 
 
 speeding the flame 
 To spire on the air 
 
 a spark that should spring 
 In me, man of men; 
 
 last of the leaves. 
 
 ERNEST RHYS. 
 
136 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 A FIELD IN LUDWELL 
 
 I'M Barter's now: last year for Gatehouse I 
 Nurtured a pretty crop of vetch and rye. 
 When Barter's dead, some new-named man will say, 
 " All this is mine," and go the deathward way. 
 Rye, vetch and man, all to the seasons yield 
 While I lie low, the same old smiling field. 
 
 W. J. IBBERT. 
 
PART VIII 
 FREE VERSE 
 
PART VIIL FREE VERSE 
 
 WE sometimes meet with a form of poetry of which 
 several examples have already been quoted in this 
 book that seems to kick over the traces altogether 
 with regard to metre and rhyme, and do just what 
 it likes. On reading this kind of poetry for the first 
 time ' Vers Libre ' it is called one may gather the 
 impression that it is without form; but certainly not 
 void. The thought is great, its expression is beautiful, 
 anditiscertainly notprose. The question is, is itpoetry ? 
 
 If one examines the many beautiful poems con- 
 tained in the Bible, one is aware that the effect does 
 not depend on metre, nor on rhyme, but upon the 
 fact that every thought is told again in different 
 language, or in another metaphor a mode of ex- 
 pression that is called Parallelism. Again, old Eng- 
 lish poetry depends for its effect on Alliteration 
 certain words in each line beginning with the same 
 letter as in the poem called The Leaf Burners. 
 Japanese poetry called Hokku consists of little 
 poems expressing a single thought, and containing a 
 small definite number of monosyllables. Rhyme, on 
 which the effect of so much English poetry depends, 
 is a comparatively late importation from France. 
 
 Thus it can be seen clearly that the poets of differ- 
 ent nations and different periods have chosen to 
 express themselves in various ways; and it is only 
 because we are so used to exact form, and metre 
 139 
 
140 FREE VERSE 
 
 and rhyme, that we are predisposed to think that 
 verse that discards them is not poetry at all. 
 
 Yet this poetry new to some of us, though not 
 really new does depend on a certain mode of ex- 
 pression, and this mode is called Cadence. The 
 ' base ' or ' unit ' of this free verse is not a line 
 consisting of a definite number of ' feet/ or ' beats/ 
 but a whole ' strophe/ It is like running round a 
 track in a given time. You may rush ahead, and 
 then loiter; you may pause, and then hurry on ; you 
 may take many steps or few; but you must finish 
 the round in the time appointed. This is what 
 the poet does: he changes his pace to express the 
 change and sequence of thought in his mind. 
 
 And after all, if a poet is not to express himself in 
 his own way, who is to lay down the law, and make 
 rules, saying " Thus far and no farther "? Take for 
 example the great American poet Walt Whitman. 
 The task he set himself was to write the poetry of 
 Democracy; to invent, as it were, a mode and a 
 * language ' by which the great free nation of 
 America could adequately express itself. He refused 
 to be bound by the rules and conventions of Euro- 
 pean verse. His sympathy and breadth of view were 
 so universal that they could not be confined within 
 the old limits. His adverse critics say that he was a 
 genius who was too indolent to fashion and practise 
 forms; but it is fairer to allow that at least he was 
 a great musician who built up vast symphonies of 
 thought. It would be fairer, too, for those who can- 
 
E. V. LUCAS 141 
 
 not feel the greatness and beauty of Walt Whitman's 
 Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, nor of W. E. 
 Henley's A late lark twitters from the quiet skies, to 
 admit that it may be a want in themselves rather 
 than in the poets. 
 
 Very modern poets of this school have gone a step 
 farther. They refuse to be bound by any of the old 
 formalities; and their poetry is itself a revolt. Ex- 
 pression self -expression is their aim; and though 
 the effect is often somewhat violent in such a phrase, 
 for instance, as " the sun's hot eyelashes/' or " the 
 breakfast-table offers itself in flat surrender," it is 
 never dull or uninteresting, and often very brilliant. 
 
 The poem called Jack has been placed first in this 
 section, because subject and cadence are easy to 
 follow, and one cannot but be fascinated by its light- 
 ness of touch so easy to spoil. Alter the cadence in, 
 say, verse 9, and the effect is gone. 
 
 JACK 
 
 i 
 
 EVERY village has its Jack, but no village ever had 
 quite so fine a Jack as ours: 
 
 So picturesque, 
 
 Versatile, 
 
 Irresponsible, 
 
 Powerful, 
 
 Hedonistic, 
 
 And lovable a Jack as ours. 
 
142 FREE VERSE 
 
 2 
 
 How Jack lived none knew, for he rarely did any work. 
 True, he set night-lines for eels, and invariably 
 
 caught one, 
 Often two, 
 Sometimes three; 
 While very occasionally he had a day's harvesting or 
 
 hay-making. 
 
 And yet he always found enough money for tobacco, 
 With a little over for beer, though he was no soaker. 
 
 3 
 
 . Jack had a wife. 
 A soulless, savage woman she was, who disapproved 
 
 volubly of his idle ways. 
 
 But the only result was to make him stay out longer, 
 (Like Rip Van Winkle). 
 
 4 
 Jack had a big black beard, and a red shirt, which 
 
 was made for another. 
 And no waistcoat. 
 His boots were somebody else's; 
 He wore the Doctor's coat, 
 And the Vicar's trousers. 
 Personally, I gave him a hat, but it was too small. 
 
 5 
 
 Everybody liked Jack. 
 The Vicar liked him, although he never went to church. 
 
E. V. LUCAS 143 
 
 Indeed, he was a cheerful Pagan, with no temptation 
 
 to break more than the Eighth Commandment, 
 
 and no ambition as a sinner. 
 The Curate liked him, although he had no simpering 
 
 daughters. 
 
 The Doctor liked him, although he was never ill. 
 I liked him too chiefly because of his perpetual 
 
 good temper, and his intimacy with Nature, and 
 
 his capacity for colouring cutties. 
 The girls liked him, because he brought them the 
 
 first wild roses and the sweetest honeysuckle; 
 Also, because he could flatter so outrageously. 
 
 6 
 
 But the boys loved him. 
 They followed him in little bands: 
 Jack was their hero. 
 And no wonder, for he could hit a running rabbit 
 
 with a stone. 
 And cut them long, straight fishing-poles and 
 
 equilateral catty forks ; 
 And he always knew of a fresh nest. 
 Besides, he could make a thousand things with his 
 
 old pocket-knife. 
 
 7 
 
 How good he was at cricket too ! 
 On the long summer evenings he would saunter to 
 
 the green and watch the lads at play, 
 And by and by someone would offer him a few knocks. 
 
144 FREE VERSE 
 
 Then the Doctor'scoat would be carefully detached, and 
 Jack would spit on his hands, and brandish the bat, 
 
 And away the ball would go, north and south and 
 east and west, 
 
 And sometimes bang into the zenith. 
 
 For Jack had little science : 
 
 Upon each ball he made the same terrific and mag- 
 nificent onslaught, 
 
 Whether half volley, or full pitch, or long hop, or leg 
 break, or off break, or shooter, or yorker. 
 
 And when the stumps fell he would cheerfully set 
 them up again, while his white teeth flashed in 
 the recesses of his beard. 
 
 The only persons who were not conspicuously fond 
 
 of Jack were his wife, and the schoolmaster, and 
 
 the head-keeper. 
 The schoolmaster had an idea that if Jack were 
 
 hanged there would be no more truants; 
 His wife would attend the funeral without an 
 
 extraordinary show of grief; 
 And the head-keeper would mutter, " There's one 
 
 poacher less." 
 
 9 
 Jack was quite as much a part of the village as the 
 
 church spire; 
 And if any of us lazied along by the river in the dusk 
 
 of the evening 
 
E. V. LUCAS 145 
 
 Waving aside nebulae of gnats, 
 
 Turning head quickly at the splash of a jumping fish, 
 
 Peering where the water chuckled over a vanishing 
 
 water-rat 
 And saw not Jack's familiar form bending over his 
 
 lines, 
 
 And smelt not his vile shag, 
 We should feel a loneliness, a vague impression that 
 
 something was wrong. 
 
 10 
 
 For ten years Jack was always the same, 
 
 Never growing older, 
 
 Or richer, 
 
 Or tidier, 
 
 Never knowing that we had a certain pride in 
 
 possessing him. 
 Then there came a tempter with tales of easily 
 
 acquired wealth, and Jack went away in his 
 
 company. 
 
 ii 
 
146 FREE VERSE 
 
 The Vicar, I believe, would like to offer public prayer 
 for the return of the wanderer. 
 
 And the Doctor, I know, is a little unhinged, and 
 curing people out of pure absence of mind. 
 
 For my part, I have hope; and the trousers I dis- 
 carded last week will not be given away just yet. 
 
 E. V. LUCAS. 
 
 THE LUMBERMEN'S CAMP 
 (SONG OF THE BROAD-AXE) 
 
 LUMBERMEN in their winter camp, day-break in the 
 
 woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the 
 
 occasional snapping, 
 The glad clear sound of one's voice, the merry song, the 
 
 natural life of the woods, the strong day's work, 
 The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the 
 
 talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the bear-skin. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY 
 ROCKING 
 
 i 
 
 OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking, 
 
 Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle, 
 
 Out of the Ninth-month midnight, 
 
 Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where 
 
 the child, leaving his bed, wander'd alone, 
 
 bare-headed, barefoot, 
 
WALT WHITMAN 147 
 
 Down from the shower'd halo, 
 
 Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and 
 
 twisting as if they were alive, 
 Out from the patches of briers and blackberries, 
 From the memories of the bird that chanted to me, 
 From your memories, sad brother from the fitful 
 
 risings and fallings I heard, 
 From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and 
 
 swollen as if with tears, 
 From those beginning notes of sickness and love, 
 
 there in the transparent mist, 
 From the thousand responses of my heart, never to 
 
 cease, 
 
 From the myriad thence-aroused words, 
 From the word stronger and more delicious than any, 
 From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting, 
 As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing, 
 Borne hither ere all eludes me, hurriedly, 
 A man yet by these tears a little boy again, 
 Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves, 
 I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and 
 
 hereafter, 
 Taking all hints to use them but swiftly leaping 
 
 beyond them, 
 A reminiscence sing. 
 
 2 
 
 Once, Paumanok, 
 
 When the snows had melted when the lilac-scent was 
 in the air, and the Fifth-month grass was growing, 
 
148 FREE VERSE 
 
 Up this sea-shore, in some briers, 
 
 Two guests from Alabama two together, 
 
 And their nest, and four light-green eggs, spotted 
 
 with brown, 
 
 And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand, 
 And every day the she-bird, crouch'd on her nest, 
 
 silent, with bright eyes, 
 And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, 
 
 never disturbing them, 
 Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. 
 
 3 
 
 Shine I shine ! shine ! 
 
 Pour down your warmth, great Sun ! 
 
 While we bask we two together. 
 
 Two together ! 
 
 Winds blow South, or winds blow North, 
 Day come white, or night come black, 
 Home, or rivers and mountains from home, 
 Singing all time, minding no time, 
 While we two keep together. 
 
 4 
 
 Till of a sudden, 
 
 May -be kill'd, unknown to her mate, 
 One forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on the nest, 
 Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next, 
 Nor ever appear'd again. 
 
WALT WHITMAN 149 
 
 And thenceforward, all summer, in the sound of the 
 
 sea, 
 And at night, under the full of the moon, in calmer 
 
 weather, 
 
 Over the hoarse surging of the sea, 
 Or flitting from brier to brier by day, 
 I saw, I heard at intervals, the remaining one, the 
 
 he-bird, 
 The solitary guest from Alabama. 
 
 5 
 
 Blow ! blow ! blow ! 
 
 Blow up, sea-winds, along PaumanoKs shore ! 
 
 I wait and I wait, till you blow my mate to me. 
 
 6 
 
 Yes, when the stars glistened, 
 
 All night long, on the prong of a moss-scallop'd stake, 
 
 Down, almost amid the slapping waves, 
 
 Sat the lone singer, wonderful, causing tears. 
 
 He calTd on his mate; 
 
 He pour'd forth the meanings which I, of all men, 
 know. 
 
 Yes, my brother, I know; 
 
 The rest might not but I have treasured every note; 
 
 For once, and more than once, dimly, down to the 
 
 beach gliding, 
 Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with 
 
 the shadows, 
 
i5o FREE VERSE 
 
 Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the 
 
 sounds and sights after their sorts, 
 The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing, 
 I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, 
 Listened long and long. 
 
 Listen'd, to keep, to sing now translating the notes, 
 Following you, my brother. 
 
 i 
 
 7 
 
 Soothe ! soothe ! soothe ! 
 Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, 
 And again another behind, embracing and lapping, 
 
 every one close. 
 But my love soothes not me, not me. 
 
 Low hangs the moon it rose late ; 
 it is lagging I think it is heavy with love, with 
 love. 
 
 madly the sea pushes, pushes upon the land, 
 With love with love. 
 
 night ! do I not see my love fluttering out there among 
 
 the breakers ? 
 What is that little black thing I see there in the white ? 
 
 Loud ! loud ! loud ! 
 
 Loud I call to you, my love I 
 
 High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves ; 
 
 Surely you must know who is here, is here ; 
 
 You must know who I am, my love. 
 
WALT WHITMAN 151 
 
 Low-hanging moon I 
 
 What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow ? 
 
 it is the shape, the shape of my mate ! 
 
 moon, do not keep her from me any longer* 
 
 Land ! land ! land ! 
 
 Whichever way I turn, I think you could give me my 
 
 mate back again, if you only would ; 
 For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look. 
 
 rising stars ! 
 
 Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with 
 some of you. 
 
 throat ! trembling throat ! 
 
 Sound clearer through the atmosphere ! 
 
 Pierce the woods, the earth ; 
 
 Somewhere listening to catch you, must be the one I want. 
 
 Shake out, carols ! 
 
 Solitary here the night's carols ! 
 
 Carols of lonesome love ! Death's carols I 
 
 Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon I 
 
 0, under that moon, where she droops almost down into 
 
 the sea ! 
 reckless, despairing carols. 
 
 But soft ! sink low ; 
 Soft I let me just murmur ; 
 
 And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea ; 
 For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding 
 to me. 
 
152 FREE VERSE 
 
 So faint I must be still, be still to listen ; 
 But not altogether still, for then she might not come 
 immediately to me. 
 
 Hither, my lo t ve ! 
 
 Here I am ! Here ! 
 
 With this just- sustained note I announce myself to you; 
 
 This gentle call is for you, my love, for you. 
 
 Do not be decoy' d elsewhere ! 
 That is the whistle of the wind it is not my voice ; 
 That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray ; 
 Those are the shadows of leaves. 
 
 darkness ! in vain ! 
 
 I am very sick and sorrowful. 
 
 brown halo in the sky, near the moon, drooping upon 
 
 the sea ! 
 troubled reflection in the sea I 
 
 throat I throbbing heart ! 
 
 all and I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night. 
 
 Yet I murmur, murmur on ! 
 
 murmurs you yourselves make me continue to sing t 
 I know not why. 
 
 past I life ! songs of joy ! 
 In the air in the woods over fields ; 
 Loved ! loved ! loved ! loved ! loved ! 
 But my love no more, no more with me ! 
 We two together no more. 
 
WALT WHITMAN 153 
 
 8 
 
 The aria sinking; 
 
 All else continuing the stars shining, 
 
 The winds blowing the notes of the bird continuous 
 echoing, 
 
 With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly 
 moaning, 
 
 On the sands of Paumanok's shore, grey and rustling; 
 
 The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, droop- 
 ing, the face of the sea almost touching; 
 
 The boy ecstatic with his bare feet the waves, with 
 his hair the atmosphere dallying, 
 
 The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at 
 last tumultuously bursting, 
 
 The aria's meaning, the ears, the Soul, swiftly de- 
 positing, 
 
 The strange tears down the cheeks coursing, 
 
 The colloquy there the trio each uttering, 
 
 The undertone the savage old mother, incessantly 
 1 crying, 
 
 To the boy's Soul's, questions sullenly timing some 
 drown'd secret hissing, 
 
 To the outsetting bard of love. 
 
 9 
 
 Demon or bird ! (said the boy's soul,) 
 Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it 
 
 mostly to me ? 
 
 For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, 
 Now I have heard you, 
 Now in a moment I know what I am for I awake, 
 
154 FREE VERSE 
 
 And already a thousand singers & thousand songs, 
 clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours, 
 
 A thousand warbling echoes have started to life 
 within me, 
 
 Never to die. 
 
 O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself projecting 
 
 me; 
 O solitary me, listening never more shall I cease 
 
 perpetuating you; 
 
 Nevermore shall I escape, never more the reverberations, 
 Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent 
 
 from me, 
 Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was 
 
 before what there, in the night, 
 By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon, 
 The messenger there aroused the fire, the sweet hell 
 
 within, 
 The unknown want, the destiny of me. 
 
 O give me the clue ! (it lurks in the night here some- 
 where;) 
 
 O if I am to have so much, let me have more ! 
 
 O a word! O what is my destination? (I fear it is 
 henceforth chaos ;) 
 
 O how joys, dreads, convolutions, human shapes, and 
 all shapes, spring as from graves around me ! 
 
 O phantoms! you cover all the land and all the sea! 
 
 O I cannot see in the dimness whether you smile or 
 frown upon me; 
 
 O vapour, a look, a word ! O well-beloved ! 
 
 O you dear women's and men's phantoms ! 
 
WALT WHITMAN 155 
 
 A word then, (for I will conquer it,) 
 
 The word final, superior to all, 
 
 Subtle, sent up what is it? I listen; 
 
 Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, 
 
 you sea-waves ? 
 Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands ? 
 
 10 
 
 Whereto answering, the sea, 
 Delaying not, hurrying not, 
 Whisper'd me through the night, and very plainly 
 
 before daybreak, 
 
 Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word DEATH; 
 And again Death ever Death, Death, Death, 
 Hissing melodious, neither like the bird, nor like my 
 
 aroused child's heart, 
 
 But edging near, as privately for me, rustling at my feet, 
 Creeping thence steadily up to my ears, and laving 
 
 me softly all over, 
 Death, Death, Death, Death, Death. 
 
 Which I do not forget, 
 
 But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother, 
 
 That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's 
 
 grey beach, 
 
 With the thousand responsive songs, at random, 
 My own songs, awaked from that hour; 
 And with them the key, the word up from the waves, 
 The word of the sweetest song, and all songs, 
 That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my 
 
 feet, 
 The sea whisper'd me. WALT WHITMAN. 
 
156 FREE VERSE 
 
 THE PARROT 
 
 ("Psittachus eois imitatrix ales ab Indis." Ovid.} 
 
 THE parrot's voice snaps out 
 No good to contradict 
 What he says he'll say again: 
 Dry facts, like biscuits, 
 
 His voice and vivid colours 
 
 Of his breast and wings 
 
 Are immemoriably old; 
 
 Old dqwagers dressed in crimped satin 
 
 Boxed in their rooms 
 
 Like specimens beneath a glass 
 
 Inviolate and never changing, 
 
 Their memory of emotions dead ; 
 
 The ardour of their summers 
 
 Sprayed like camphor 
 
 On their silken parasols 
 
 Intissued in a cupboard. 
 
 Reflective, but with never a thought 
 The parrot sways upon his ivory perch 
 Then gravely turns a somersault 
 Through rings nailed in the roof 
 Much as the sun performs his antics 
 As he climbs the aerial bridge 
 We only see 
 Through crystal prisms in a falling rain. 
 
 SACHEVERELL SITWELL. 
 
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