1914, and Other Poems

1914, and Other Poems

1914

I. PEACE

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,And all the little emptiness of love!Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace thereBut only agony, and that has ending;And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

II. SAFETY

Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blestHe who has found our hid security,Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,And heard our word, 'Who is so safe as we?'We have found safety with all things undying,The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.We have built a house that is not for Time's throwing.We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,Secretly armed against all death's endeavour;Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall;And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.

III. THE DEAD

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.These laid the world away; poured out the redSweet wine of youth; gave up the years to beOf work and joy, and that unhoped serene,That men call age; and those who would have been,Their sons, they gave, their immortality.Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,And paid his subjects with a royal wage;And Nobleness walks in our ways again;And we have come into our heritage.

IV. THE DEAD

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,And sunset, and the colours of the earth.These had seen movement, and heard music; knownSlumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.There are waters blown by changing winds to laughterAnd lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that danceAnd wandering loveliness. He leaves a whiteUnbroken glory, a gathered radiance,A width, a shining peace, under the night.

V. THE SOLDIER

If I should die, think only this of me:That there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England. There shall beIn 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 lessGives 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.

THE TREASURE

When colour goes home into the eyes,And lights that shine are shut againWith dancing girls and sweet birds' criesBehind the gateways of the brain;And that no-place which gave them birth, shall closeThe rainbow and the rose: —Still may Time hold some golden spaceWhere I'll unpack that scented storeOf song and flower and sky and face,And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,Musing upon them; as a mother, whoHas watched her children all the rich day throughSits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,When children sleep, ere night.

THE SOUTH SEAS

TIARE TAHITI

Mamua, when our laughter ends,And hearts and bodies, brown as white,Are dust about the doors of friends,Or scent ablowing down the night,Then, oh! then, the wise agree,Comes our immortality.Mamua, there waits a landHard for us to understand.Out of time, beyond the sun,All are one in Paradise,You and Pupure are one,And Taü, and the ungainly wise.There the Eternals are, and thereThe Good, the Lovely, and the True,And Types, whose earthly copies wereThe foolish broken things we knew;There is the Face, whose ghosts we are;The real, the never-setting Star;And the Flower, of which we loveFaint and fading shadows here;Never a tear, but only Grief;Dance, but not the limbs that move;Songs in Song shall disappear;Instead of lovers, Love shall be;For hearts, Immutability;And there, on the Ideal Reef,Thunders the Everlasting Sea!And my laughter, and my pain,Shall home to the Eternal Brain.And all lovely things, they say,Meet in Loveliness again;Miri's laugh, Teïpo's feet,And the hands of Matua,Stars and sunlight there shall meet,Coral's hues and rainbows there,And Teüra's braided hair;And with the starred tiare's white,And white birds in the dark ravine,And flamboyants ablaze at night,And jewels, and evening's after-green,And dawns of pearl and gold and red,Mamua, your lovelier head!And there'll no more be one who dreamsUnder the ferns, of crumbling stuff,Eyes of illusion, mouth that seems,All time-entangled human love.And you'll no longer swing and swayDivinely down the scented shade,Where feet to Ambulation fade,And moons are lost in endless Day.How shall we wind these wreaths of ours,Where there are neither heads nor flowers?Oh, Heaven's Heaven! – but we'll be missingThe palms, and sunlight, and the south;And there's an end, I think, of kissing,When our mouths are one with Mouth…Taü here, Mamua,Crown the hair, and come away!Hear the calling of the moon,And the whispering scents that strayAbout the idle warm lagoon.Hasten, hand in human hand,Down the dark, the flowered way,Along the whiteness of the sand,And in the water's soft caress,Wash the mind of foolishness,Mamua, until the day.Spend the glittering moonlight therePursuing down the soundless deepLimbs that gleam and shadowy hair,Or floating lazy, half-asleep.Dive and double and follow after,Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,With lips that fade, and human laughterAnd faces individual,Well this side of Paradise!..There's little comfort in the wise.Papeete, February 1914

RETROSPECT

In your arms was still delight,Quiet as a street at night;And thoughts of you, I do remember,Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.Love, in you, went passing by,Penetrative, remote, and rare,Like a bird in the wide air,And, as the bird, it left no traceIn the heaven of your face.In your stupidity I foundThe sweet hush after a sweet sound.All about you was the lightThat dims the greying end of night;Desire was the unrisen sun,Joy the day not yet begun,With tree whispering to tree,Without wind, quietly.Wisdom slept within your hair,And Long-Suffering was there,And, in the flowing of your dress,Undiscerning Tenderness.And when you thought, it seemed to me,Infinitely, and like a sea,About the slight world you had knownYour vast unconsciousness was thrown…O haven without wave or tide!Silence, in which all songs have died!Holy book, where hearts are still!And home at length under the hill!O mother quiet, breasts of peace,Where love itself would faint and cease!O infinite deep I never knew,I would come back, come back to you,Find you, as a pool unstirred,Kneel down by you, and never a word,Lay my head, and nothing said,In your hands, ungarlanded;And a long watch you would keep;And I should sleep, and I should sleep!Mataiea, January 1914

THE GREAT LOVER

I have been so great a lover: filled my daysSo proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,Desire illimitable, and still content,And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,For the perplexed and viewless streams that bearOur hearts at random down the dark of life.Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strifeSteals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,My night shall be remembered for a starThat outshone all the suns of all men's days.Shall I not crown them with immortal praiseWhom I have loved, who have given me, dared with meHigh secrets, and in darkness knelt to seeThe inenarrable godhead of delight?Love is a flame; – we have beaconed the world's night.A city: – and we have built it, these and I.An emperor: – we have taught the world to die.So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,And the high cause of Love's magnificence,And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those namesGolden for ever, eagles, crying flames,And set them as a banner, that men may know,To dare the generations, burn, and blowOut on the wind of Time, shining and streaming…These I have loved:White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crustOf friendly bread; and many-tasting food;Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soonSmooth away trouble; and the rough male kissOf blankets; grainy wood; live hair that isShining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keenUnpassioned beauty of a great machine;The benison of hot water; furs to touch;The good smell of old clothes; and other such —The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingersAbout dead leaves and last year's ferns…Dear names,And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames;Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing;Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain,Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foamThat browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;And washen stones, gay for an hour; the coldGraveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass; —All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,Whatever passes not, in the great hour,Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have powerTo hold them with me through the gate of Death.They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trustAnd sacramented covenant to the dust.– Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,And give what's left of love again, and makeNew friends, now strangers…But the best I've known,Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blownAbout the winds of the world, and fades from brainsOf living men, and dies.Nothing remains.O dear my loves, O faithless, once againThis one last gift I give: that after menShall know, and later lovers, far-removed,Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved."Mataiea, 1914

HEAVEN

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,Each secret fishy hope or fear.Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;But is there anything Beyond?This life cannot be All, they swear,For how unpleasant, if it were!One may not doubt that, somehow, GoodShall come of Water and of Mud;And, sure, the reverent eye must seeA Purpose in Liquidity.We darkly know, by Faith we cry,The future is not Wholly Dry.Mud unto mud! – Death eddies near —Not here the appointed End, not here!But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,Is wetter water, slimier slime!And there (they trust) there swimmeth OneWho swam ere rivers were begun,Immense, of fishy form and mind,Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;And under that Almighty Fin,The littlest fish may enter in.Oh! never fly conceals a hook,Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,But more than mundane weeds are there,And mud, celestially fair;Fat caterpillars drift around,And Paradisal grubs are found;Unfading moths, immortal flies,And the worm that never dies.And in that Heaven of all their wish,There shall be no more land, say fish.

DOUBTS

When she sleeps, her soul, I know,Goes a wanderer on the air,Wings where I may never go,Leaves her lying, still and fair,Waiting, empty, laid aside,Like a dress upon a chair…This I know, and yet I knowDoubts that will not be denied.For if the soul be not in place,What has laid trouble in her face?And, sits there nothing ware and wiseBehind the curtains of her eyes,What is it, in the self's eclipse,Shadows, soft and passingly,About the corners of her lips,The smile that is essential she?And if the spirit be not there,Why is fragrance in the hair?

THERE'S WISDOM IN WOMEN

"Oh love is fair, and love is rare;" my dear one she said,"But love goes lightly over." I bowed her foolish head,And kissed her hair and laughed at her. Such a child was she;So new to love, so true to love, and she spoke so bitterly.But there's wisdom in women, of more than they have known,And thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their own,Or how should my dear one, being ignorant and young,Have cried on love so bitterly, with so true a tongue?

HE WONDERS WHETHER TO PRAISEOR TO BLAME HER

I have peace to weigh your worth, now all is over,But if to praise or blame you, cannot say.For, who decries the loved, decries the lover;Yet what man lauds the thing he's thrown away?Be you, in truth, this dull, slight, cloudy naught,The more fool I, so great a fool to adore;But if you're that high goddess once I thought,The more your godhead is, I lose the more.Dear fool, pity the fool who thought you clever!Dear wisdom, do not mock the fool that missed you!Most fair, – the blind has lost your face for ever!Most foul, – how could I see you while I kissed you?So … the poor love of fools and blind I've proved you,For, foul or lovely, 'twas a fool that loved you.

A MEMORY (From a sonnet-sequence)

Somewhile before the dawn I rose, and steptSoftly along the dim way to your room,And found you sleeping in the quiet gloom,And holiness about you as you slept.I knelt there; till your waking fingers creptAbout my head, and held it. I had restUnhoped this side of Heaven, beneath your breast.I knelt a long time, still; nor even wept.It was great wrong you did me; and for gainOf that poor moment's kindliness, and ease,And sleepy mother-comfort!Child, you knowHow easily love leaps out to dreams like these,Who has seen them true. And love that's wakened soTakes all too long to lay asleep again.Waikiki, October 1913

ONE DAY

Today I have been happy. All the dayI held the memory of you, and woveIts laughter with the dancing light o' the spray,And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love,And sent you following the white waves of sea,And crowned your head with fancies, nothing worth,Stray buds from that old dust of misery,Being glad with a new foolish quiet mirth.So lightly I played with those dark memories,Just as a child, beneath the summer skies,Plays hour by hour with a strange shining stone,For which (he knows not) towns were fire of old,And love has been betrayed, and murder done,And great kings turned to a little bitter mould.The Pacific, October 1913

WAIKIKI

Warm perfumes like a breath from vine and treeDrift down the darkness. Plangent, hidden from eyes,Somewhere an eukaleli thrills and criesAnd stabs with pain the night's brown savagery.And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me,Gleam like a woman's hair, stretch out, and rise;And new stars burn into the ancient skies,Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,And still remember, a tale I have heard, or knownAn empty tale, of idleness and pain,Of two that loved – or did not love – and oneWhose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly,A long while since, and by some other sea.Waikiki, 1913

HAUNTINGS

In the grey tumult of these after yearsOft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part;And less-than-echoes of remembered tearsHush all the loud confusion of the heart;And a shade, through the toss'd ranks of mirth and cryingHungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood, —Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying,Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams,Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams,Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men,Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible,And light on waving grass, he knows not when,And feet that ran, but where, he cannot tell.The Pacific, 1914

SONNET (Suggested by some of the Proceedingsof the Society for Psychical Research)

Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun,We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor treadThose dusty high-roads of the aimless deadPlaintive for Earth; but rather turn and runDown some close-covered by-way of the air,Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, findSome whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and thereSpend in pure converse our eternal day;Think each in each, immediately wise;Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and sayWhat this tumultuous body now denies;And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.

CLOUDS

Down the blue night the unending columns pressIn noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snowUp to the white moon's hidden loveliness.Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,As who would pray good for the world, but knowTheir benediction empty as they bless.They say that the Dead die not, but remainNear to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,In wise majestic melancholy train,And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,And men, coming and going on the earth.The Pacific, October 1913

MUTABILITY

They say there's a high windless world and strange,Out of the wash of days and temporal tide,Where Faith and Good, Wisdom and Truth abide,Æterna corpora, subject to no change.There the sure suns of these pale shadows move;There stand the immortal ensigns of our war;Our melting flesh fixed Beauty there, a star,And perishing hearts, imperishable Love…Dear, we know only that we sigh, kiss, smile;Each kiss lasts but the kissing; and grief goes over;Love has no habitation but the heart.Poor straws! on the dark flood we catch awhile,Cling, and are borne into the night apart.The laugh dies with the lips, 'Love' with the lover.South Kensington – Makaweli, 1913

OTHER POEMS

THE BUSY HEART

Now that we've done our best and worst, and parted,I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend.(O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted)I'll think of Love in books, Love without end;Women with child, content; and old men sleeping;And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain;And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping;And the young heavens, forgetful after rain;And evening hush, broken by homing wings;And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy,That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things,Lovely and durable, and taste them slowly,One after one, like tasting a sweet food.I have need to busy my heart with quietude.

LOVE

Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate,Where that comes in that shall not go again;Love sells the proud heart's citadel to Fate.They have known shame, who love unloved. Even then,When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking,And agony's forgot, and hushed the cryingOf credulous hearts, in heaven – such are but takingTheir own poor dreams within their arms, and lyingEach in his lonely night, each with a ghost.Some share that night. But they know, love grows colder,Grows false and dull, that was sweet lies at most.Astonishment is no more in hand or shoulder,But darkens, and dies out from kiss to kiss.All this is love; and all love is but this.

UNFORTUNATE

Heart, you are restless as a paper scrapThat's tossed down dusty pavements by the wind;Saying, "She is most wise, patient and kind.Between the small hands folded in her lapSurely a shamed head may bow down at length,And find forgiveness where the shadows stirAbout her lips, and wisdom in her strength,Peace in her peace. Come to her, come to her!"…She will not care. She'll smile to see me come,So that I think all Heaven in flower to fold me.She'll give me all I ask, kiss me and hold me,And open wide upon that holy airThe gates of peace, and take my tiredness home,Kinder than God. But, heart, she will not care.

THE CHILTERNS

Your hands, my dear, adorable,Your lips of tenderness– Oh, I've loved you faithfully and well,Three years, or a bit less.It wasn't a success.Thank God, that's done! and I'll take the road,Quit of my youth and you,The Roman road to WendoverBy Tring and Lilley Hoo,As a free man may do.For youth goes over, the joys that fly,The tears that follow fast;And the dirtiest things we do must lieForgotten at the last;Even Love goes past.What's left behind I shall not find,The splendour and the pain;The splash of sun, the shouting wind,And the brave sting of rain,I may not meet again.But the years, that take the best away,Give something in the end;And a better friend than love have they,For none to mar or mend,That have themselves to friend.I shall desire and I shall findThe best of my desires;The autumn road, the mellow windThat soothes the darkening shires.And laughter, and inn-fires.White mist about the black hedgerows,The slumbering Midland plain,The silence where the clover grows,And the dead leaves in the lane,Certainly, these remain.And I shall find some girl perhaps,And a better one than you,With eyes as wise, but kindlier,And lips as soft, but true.And I daresay she will do.

HOME

I came back late and tired last nightInto my little room,To the long chair and the firelightAnd comfortable gloom.But as I entered softly inI saw a woman there,The line of neck and cheek and chin,The darkness of her hair,The form of one I did not knowSitting in my chair.I stood a moment fierce and still,Watching her neck and hair.I made a step to her; and sawThat there was no one there.It was some trick of the firelightThat made me see her there.It was a chance of shade and lightAnd the cushion in the chair.Oh, all you happy over the earth,That night, how could I sleep?I lay and watched the lonely gloom;And watched the moonlight creepFrom wall to basin, round the room.All night I could not sleep.

THE NIGHT JOURNEY

Hands and lit faces eddy to a line;The dazed last minutes click; the clamour dies.Beyond the great-swung arc o' the roof, divine,Night, smoky-scarv'd, with thousand coloured eyesGlares the imperious mystery of the way.Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed trainThrob, stretch, thrill motion, slide, pull out and sway,Strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again…As a man, caught by some great hour, will rise,Slow-limbed, to meet the light or find his love;And, breathing long, with staring sightless eyes,Hands out, head back, agape and silent, moveSure as a flood, smooth as a vast wind blowing;And, gathering power and purpose as he goes,Unstumbling, unreluctant, strong, unknowing,Borne by a will not his, that lifts, that grows,Sweep out to darkness, triumphing in his goal,Out of the fire, out of the little room…– There is an end appointed, O my soul!Crimson and green the signals burn; the gloomIs hung with steam's far-blowing livid streamers.Lost into God, as lights in light, we fly,Grown one with will, end-drunken huddled dreamers.The white lights roar. The sounds of the world die.And lips and laughter are forgotten things.Speed sharpens; grows. Into the night, and on,The strength and splendour of our purpose swings.The lamps fade; and the stars. We are alone.

SONG

All suddenly the wind comes soft,And Spring is here again;And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green,And my heart with buds of pain.My heart all Winter lay so numb,The earth so dead and frore,That I never thought the Spring would come,Or my heart wake any more.But Winter's broken and earth has woken,And the small birds cry again;And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds,And my heart puts forth its pain.

BEAUTY AND BEAUTY

When Beauty and Beauty meetAll naked, fair to fair,The earth is crying-sweet,And scattering-bright the air,Eddying, dizzying, closing round,With soft and drunken laughter;Veiling all that may befallAfter – after —Where Beauty and Beauty met,Earth's still a-tremble there,And winds are scented yet,And memory-soft the air,Bosoming, folding glints of light,And shreds of shadowy laughter;Not the tears that fill the yearsAfter – after —