Tides

John Drinkwater

Tides / A Book of Poems

DEDICATION

TO GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON

Because the darling chivalries,That light your battle-line, belongTo music’s heart no less than these,I bring you my campaigns of song.

A MAN’S DAUGHTER

There is an old woman who looks each nightOut of the wood.She has one tooth, that isn’t too white.She isn’t too good.She came from the north looking for me,About my jewel.Her son, she says, is tall as can be;But, men say, cruel.My girl went northward, holiday making,And a queer man spokeAt the woodside once when night was breaking,And her heart broke.For ever since she has pined and pined,A sorry maid;Her fingers are slack as the wool they wind,Or her girdle-braid.So now shall I send her north to wed,Who here may knowOnly the little house of the deadTo ease her woe?Or keep her for fear of that old woman,As a bird quick-eyed,And her tall son who is hardly human,At the woodside?She is my babe and my daughter dear,How well, how well.Her grief to me is a fourfold fear,Tongue cannot tell.And yet I know that far in that woodAre crumbling bones,And a mumble mumble of nothing that’s good,In heathen tones.And I know that frail ghosts flutter and sighIn brambles there,And never a bird or beast to cry —Beware, beware, —While threading the silent thickets goMother and son,Where scrupulous berries never grow,And airs are none.And her deep eyes peer at eventideOut of the wood,And her tall son waits by the dark woodside,For maidenhood.And the little eyes peer, and peer, and peer;And a word is said.And some house knows, for many a year,But years of dread.

VENUS IN ARDEN

Now love, her mantle thrown,Goes naked by,Threading the woods alone,Her royal eyeHappy because the primroses againBreak on the winter continence of men.I saw her pass to-dayIn Warwickshire,With the old imperial way,The old desire,Fresh as among those other flowers they went,More beautiful for Adon’s discontent.Those other years she madeHer festivalWhen the blue eggs were laidAnd lambs were tall,By the Athenian rivers while the reedsMade love melodious for the Ganymedes.And now through Cantlow brakes,By Wilmcote hill,To Avon-side, she makesHer garlands still,And I who watch her flashing limbs am oneWith youth whose days three thousand years are done.

COTSWOLD LOVE

Blue skies are over CotswoldAnd April snows go by,The lasses turn their ribbonsFor April’s in the sky,And April is the seasonWhen Sabbath girls are dressed,From Rodboro’ to Campden,In all their silken best.An ankle is a marvelWhen first the buds are brown,And not a lass but knows itFrom Stow to Gloucester town.And not a girl goes walkingAlong the Cotswold lanesBut knows men’s eyes in AprilAre quicker than their brains.It’s little that it matters,So long as you’re alive,If you’re eighteen in April,Or rising sixty-five,When April comes to AmberleyWith skies of April blue,And Cotswold girls are bridingWith slyly tilted shoe.

THE MIDLANDS

Black in the summer night my Cotswold hillAslant my window sleeps, beneath a skyDeep as the bedded violets that fillMarch woods with dusky passion. As I lieAbed between cool walls I watch the hostOf the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain,And drowsily the habit of these mostBeloved of English lands moves in my brain,While silence holds dominion of the dark,Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.I see the valleys in their morning mistWreathed under limpid hills in moving light,Happy with many a yeoman melodist:I see the little roads of twinkling whiteBusy with fieldward teams and market gearOf rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tellThe many-minded changes of the year,Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well;I see the sun persuade the mist away,Till town and stead are shining to the day.I see the wagons move along the rowsOf ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower,I see the lissom husbandman who knowsDeep in his heart the beauty of his power,As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids onThe harvest home. I hear the rickyard fillWith gossip as in generations gone,While wagon follows wagon from the hill.I think how, when our seasons all are sealed,Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field.I see the barns and comely manors plannedBy men who somehow moved in comely thought,Who, with a simple shippon to their hand,As men upon some godlike business wrought;I see the little cottages that keepTheir beauty still where since PlantaganetHave come the shepherds happily to sleep,Finding the loaves and cups of cider set;I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old,Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold.And now the valleys that upon the sunBroke from their opal veils, are veiled again,And the last light upon the wolds is done,And silence falls on flocks and fields and men;And black upon the night I watch my hill,And the stars shine, and there an owly wingBrushes the night, and all again is still,And, from this land of worship that I sing,I turn to sleep, content that from my siresI draw the blood of England’s midmost shires.

MAY GARDEN

A shower of green gems on my apple treeThis first morning of MayHas fallen out of the night, to beHerald of holiday —Bright gems of green that, fallen there,Seem fixed and glowing on the air.Until a flutter of blackbird wingsShakes and makes the boughs alive,And the gems are now no frozen things,But apple-green buds to thriveOn sap of my May garden, how wellThe green September globes will tell.Also my pear tree has its buds,But they are silver yellow,Like autumn meadows when the floodsAre silver under willow,And here shall long and shapely pearsBe gathered while the autumn wears.And there are sixty daffodilsBeneath my wall…And jealousy it is that killsThis world when allThe spring’s behaviour here is spentTo make the world magnificent.

PLOUGH

The snows are come in early state,And love shall now go desolateIf we should keep too close a gate.Over the woods a splendour fallsOf death, and grey are the Gloucester walls,And grey the skies for burials.But secret in the falling snowI see the patient ploughman go,And watch the quiet furrows grow.

POLITICS

You say a thousand things,Persuasively,And with strange passion hotly I agree,And praise your zest,And thenA blackbird singsOn April lilac, or fieldfaring men,Ghostlike, with loaded wain,Come down the twilit laneTo rest,And what is all your argument to me?Oh yes – I know, I know,It must be so —You must deviseYour myriad policies,For we are little wise,And must be led and marshalled, lest we keepToo fast a sleepFar from the central world’s realities.Yes, we must heed —For surely you revealLife’s very heart; surely with flaming zealYou search our folly and our secret need;And surely it is wrongTo count my blackbird’s song,My cones of lilac, and my wagon team,More than a world of dream.But stillA voice calls from the hill —I must away —I cannot hear your argument to-day.

BIRMINGHAM – 1916

Once Athens worked and went to see the play,And Thomas Atkins kissed the girls of Rome,In council in Victoria Square to-dayAre grey-beard Nazarenes, with shop and homeAnd counting-house and all the friendly caresThat Joseph knew; in Bull Ring markets meetGossips as once at Babylonian fairs,And Helen walks in Corporation Street.Now Troy is Homer; and of NazarethGrave histories are of one love that was strong;Athens is beauty; Rome an immortal death;And Babylon immortal in a song…Perplexed as ours these cities were of old;And shall our name greatly as these be told?

INSCRIPTION FOR A WAR MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN

They nothing feared whose names I celebrate.Greater than death they died; and their estateIs here on Cotswold comradely to liveUpon your lips in every draught I give.

TREASON

What time I write my roundelays,I am as proud as princes gone,Who built their empires in old days,As Tamburlaine or Solomon;And wisely though companions thenSay well it is and well I sing,Assured above the praise of menI am a solitary king.But when I leave that straiter mood,That lonely hour, and put asideThe continence of solitude,I fall in treason to my pride,And if a witling’s word be spentUpon my song in jealousy,In anger and in argumentI am as derelict as he.

MY ESTATE

I have four loves, four loves are mine,My wife who makes all beauty be,Tom Squire and Master Candleshine,And then my grey dog Timothy.My wife makes bramble-berry pies,And she is bright as bramble dew,She knows the way the weather flies,And tells me every thing to do.Tom Squire he is my neighbour man,His apples fall upon my grass,And in the morning, when we can,We say good-morning as we pass.And Master Candleshine the True,Considering some fault of mine,Says – “Had it been for me to do,It had been hard for Candleshine.”When I have thought all things that be,And drop the latch and climb the stair,And want an eye for company,My grey dog Timothy is there.My loves are one and two and threeAnd four they are, good loves of mine,Tom Squire, my grey dog Timothy,My wife and Master Candleshine.

WITH DAFFODILS

I send you daffodils, my dear,For these are emperors of spring,And in my heart you keep so clearSo delicate an empery,That none but emperors could beAmbassadors endowed to bringMy messages of honesty.My mind makes faring to and fro,Deft or bewildered, dark or kind,That not the eye of God may knowWhich motion is of true estateAnd which a twisted runagateOf all the farings of my mind,And which has honesty for mate.Only my hope for you is cleanOf scandal’s use, and though, may be,Far rangers have my passions been, —Since thus the word of Eden went, —Yet of the springs of my content,My very wells of honesty,Are you the only firmament.

FOR A GUEST ROOM

All words are said,And may it fallThat, crowning these,You here shall findA friendly bed,A sheltering wall,Your body’s ease,A quiet mind.May you forgetIn happy sleepThe world that stillYou hold as friend,And may it yetBe ours to keepYour friendly willTo the world’s end.For he is blestWho, fixed to shunAll evil, whenThe worst is known,Counts, east and west,When life is done,His debts to menIn love alone.

ON READING THE MS. OF DOROTHY WORDSWORTH’S JOURNALS

To-day I read the poet’s sister’s book,She who so comforted those Grasmere daysWhen song was at the flood, and thence I tookA larger note of fortitude and praise.And in her ancient fastness beauty stirred,And happy faith was in my heart again,Because the virtue of a simple wordWas durable above the lives of men.For reading there that quiet record madeOf skies and hills, domestic hours, and freeTraffic of friends, and song, and duty paid,I touched the wings of immortality.

THE OLD WARRIOR

Sorrow has come to me,Making the world to beOf sunken cheek;Faded my fields, and ofNames that were most to love,I dare not speak.Would that my soul were blind,Since duty brings to mindAll that is done,Saying, ‘How gladly youWalked with your chosen fewUnder my sun.’I am an alien now;Tell me, good stranger, howBest may be borneHis grief who comes at nightTo his own window-lightFriendless, forlorn.No. I will pass. AgainOf my delight in menNothing shall tell.Now is my travel whereMy lost companions fare;Onward. Farewell.

THE GUEST

Sometimes I feel that death is very near,And, with half-lifted hand,Looks in my eyes, and tells me not to fear,But walk his friendly land,Comrade with him, and wiseAs peace is wise.Then, greatly though my heart with pity movesFor dear imperilled loves,I somehow knowThat death is friendly so,A comfortable spirit; one who takesLong thought for all our sakes.I wonder; will he come that friendly way,That guest, or roughly in the appointed day?And will, when the last drops of life are spilt,My soul be torn from me,Or, like a ship truly and trimly built,Slip quietly to sea?

REVERIE

Here in the unfrequented noon,In the green hermitage of June,While overhead a rustling wingMinds me of birds that do not singUntil the cooler eve rewakesThe service of melodious brakes,And thoughts are lonely rangers, here,In shelter of the primrose year,I curiously meditateOur brief and variable state.I think how many are aliveWho better in the grave would thrive,If some so long a sleep might giveBetter instruction how to live;I think what splendours had been saidBy darlings now untimely deadHad death been wise in choice of these,And made exchange of obsequies.I think what loss to governmentIt is that good men are content,Well knowing that an evil willIs folly-stricken too, and stillItself considers only wiseFor all rebukes and surgeries,That evil men should raise their prideTo place and fortune undefied.I think how daily we beguileOur brains, that yet a little whileAnd all our congregated schemesAnd our perplexity of dreams,Shall come to whole and perfect state.I think, however long the dateOf life may be, at last the sunShall pass upon campaigns undone.I look upon the world and seeA world colonial to me,Whereof I am the architect,And principal and intellect,A world whose shape and savour springOut of my lone imagining,A world whose nature is subduedFor ever to my instant mood,And only beautiful can beBecause of beauty is in me.And then I know that every mindAmong the millions of my kindMakes earth his own particularAnd privately created star,That earth has thus no single state,Being every man articulate.Till thought has no horizon thenI try to think how many menThere are to make an earth apartIn symbol of the urgent heart,For there are forty in my street,And seven hundred more in Greet,And families at Luton Hoo,And there are men in China, too.And what immensity is thisThat is but a parenthesisSet in a little human thought,Before the body comes to naught.There at the bottom of the copseI see a field of turnip tops,I see the cropping cattle passThere in another field, of grass,And fields and fields, with seven towns,A river, and a flight of downs,Steeples for all religious men,Ten thousand trees, and orchards ten,A mighty span that curves awayInto blue beauty, and I layAll this as quartered on a sphereHung huge in space, a thing of fearVast as the circle of the skyCompleted to the astonished eye;And then I think that all I see,Whereof I frame immensityGlobed for amazement, is no moreThan a shire’s corner, and that fourGreat shires being ten times multipliedAre small on the Atlantic tideAs an emerald on a silver bowl …And the Atlantic to the wholeSweep of this tributary starThat is our earth is but … and farThrough dreadful space the outmeasured mindSeeks to conceive the unconfined.I think of Time. How, when his wingComposes all our quarrellingIn some green corner where May leavesAre loud with blackbirds on all eves,And all the dust that was our bonesIs underneath memorial stones,Then shall old jealousies, while weLie side by side most quietly,Be but oblivion’s fools, and stillWhen curious pilgrims ask – ‘What skillHad these that from oblivion saves?’ —My song shall sing above our graves.I think how men of gentle mind,And friendly will, and honest kind,Deny their nature and appearFellows of jealousy and fear;Having single faith, and natural witTo measure truth and cherish it,Yet, strangely, when they build in thought,Twisting the honesty that wroughtIn the straight motion of the heart,Into its feigning counterpartThat is the brain’s betrayal ofThe simple purposes of love;And what yet sorrier declineIs theirs when, eager to confineNo more within the silent brainIts habit, thought seeks birth againIn speech, as honesty has doneIn thought; then even what had wonFrom heart to brain fades and is lostIn this pretended pentecost,This their forlorn captivityTo speech, who have not learnt to beLords of the word, nor kept amongThe sterner climates of the tongue …So truth is in their hearts, and thenFalls to confusion in the brain,And, fading through this mid-eclipse,It perishes upon the lips.I think how year by year I stillFind working in my dauntless willSudden timidities that areMerely the echo of some farForgotten tyrannies that cameTo youth’s bewilderment and shame;That yet a magisterial gown,Being worn by one of no renownAnd half a generation lessIn years than I, can dispossessSomething my circumspecter moodOf excellence and quietude,And if a Bishop speaks to meI tremble with propriety.I think how strange it is that heWho goes most comradely with meIn beauty’s worship, takes delightIn shows that to my eager sightAre shadows and unmanifest,While beauty’s favour and behestTo me in motion are revealedThat is against his vision sealed;Yet is our hearts’ necessityNot twofold, but a common pleaThat chaos come to continence,Whereto the arch-intelligenceRichly in divers voices makesIts answer for our several sakes.I see the disinheritedAnd long procession of the dead,Who have in generations goneHeld fugitive dominionOf this same primrose pasturageThat is my momentary wage.I see two lovers move alongThese shadowed silences of song,With spring in blossom at their feetMore incommunicably sweetTo their hearts’ more magnificence,Than to the common courts of sense,Till joy his tardy closure tellsWith coming of the curfew bells.I see the knights of spur and swordCrossing the little woodland ford,Riding in ghostly cavalcadeOn some unchronicled crusade.I see the silent hunter goIn cloth of yeoman green, with bowStrung, and a quiver of grey wings.I see the little herd who bringsHis cattle homeward, while his sireMakes bivouac in WarwickshireThis night, the liege and loyal manOf Cavalier or Puritan.And as they pass, the nameless dead,Unsung, uncelebrate, and spedUpon an unremembered hourAs any twelvemonth fallen flower,I think how strangely yet they liveFor all their days were fugitive.I think how soon we too shall beA story with our ancestry.I think what miracle has beenThat you whose love among this greenDelightful solitude is stillThe stay and substance of my will,The dear custodian of my song,My thrifty counsellor and strong,Should take the time of all time’s tideThat was my season, to abideOn earth also; that we should beCharted across eternityTo one elect and happy dayOf yellow primroses in May.The clock is calling five o’clock,And Nonesopretty brings her flockTo fold, and Tom comes back from townWith hose and ribbons worth a crown,And duly at The Old King’s HeadThey gather now to daily bread,And I no more may meditateOur brief and variable state.

PENANCES

These are my happy penances. To makeBeauty without a Covenant; to takeMeasure of time only because I knowThat in death’s market-place I still shall oweService to beauty that shall not be done;To know that beauty’s doctrine is begunAnd makes a close in sacrifice; to findIn beauty’s courts the unappeasable mind.