Poems, 1908-1919

SEPTEMBER

Wind and the robin’s note to-dayHave heard of autumn and betrayThe green long reign of summer.The rust is falling in the leaves,September stands beside the sheaves,The new, the happy comer.Not sad my season of the redAnd russet orchards gaily spreadFrom Cholesbury to Cooming,Nor sad when twilit valley treesAre ships becalmed on misty seas,And beetles go abooming.Now soon shall come the morning crowdsOf starlings, soon the coloured cloudsFrom oak and ash and willow,And soon the thorn and briar shall beRich in their crimson livery,In scarlet and in yellow.Spring laughed and thrilled a million veins,And summer shone above her rainsTo fill September’s faring;September talks as kings who knowThe world’s way and superbly goIn robes of wisdom’s wearing.

OLTON POOLS (TO G. C. G.)

Now June walks on the waters,And the cuckoo’s last enchantmentPasses from Olton pools.Now dawn comes to my windowBreathing midsummer roses,And scythes are wet with dew.Is it not strange for everThat, bowered in this wonder,Man keeps a jealous heart?..That June and the June waters,And birds and dawn-lit roses,Are gospels in the wind,Fading upon the deserts,Poor pilgrim revelations?..Hist … over Olton pools!

OF GREATHAM (TO THOSE WHO LIVE THERE)

For peace, than knowledge more desirableInto your Sussex quietness I came,When summer’s green and gold and azure fellOver the world in flame.And peace upon your pasture-lands I found,Where grazing flocks drift on continually,As little clouds that travel with no soundAcross a windless sky.Out of your oaks the birds call to their matesThat brood among the pines, where hidden deepFrom curious eyes a world’s adventure waitsIn columned choirs of sleep.Under the calm ascension of the nightWe heard the mellow lapsing and returnOf night-owls purring in their groundling flightThrough lanes of darkling fern.Unbroken peace when all the stars were drawnBack to their lairs of light, and ranked alongFrom shire to shire the downs out of the dawnWere risen in golden song.…I sing of peace who have known the large unrestOf men bewildered in their travelling,And I have known the bridal earth unblestBy the brigades of spring.I have known that loss. And now the broken thoughtOf nations marketing in death I know,The very winds to threnodies are wroughtThat on your downlands blow.I sing of peace. Was it but yesterdayI came among your roses and your corn?Then momently amid this wrath I prayFor yesterday reborn.

MAMBLE

I never went to MambleThat lies above the Teme,So I wonder who’s in Mamble,And whether people seemWho breed and brew along thereAs lazy as the name,And whether any song thereSets alehouse wits aflame.The finger-post says Mamble,And that is all I knowOf the narrow road to Mamble,And should I turn and goTo that place of lazy tokenThat lies above the Teme,There might be a Mamble brokenThat was lissom in a dream.So leave the road to MambleAnd take another roadTo as good a place as MambleBe it lazy as a toad;Who travels Worcester countyTakes any place that comesWhen April tosses bountyTo the cherries and the plums.

OUT OF THE MOON

Merely the moonlightPiercing the boughs of my may-tree,Falling upon my ferns;Only the nightTouching my ferns with silver bloomOf sea-flowers here in the sleeping city —And suddenly the imagination burnsWith knowledge of many a dark significant doomOut of antiquity,Sung to hushed halls by troubadoursWho knew the ways of the heart because they had seenThe moonlight washing the garden’s deeper greenTo silver flowers,Falling with tidings out of the moon, as nowIt falls on the ferns under my may-tree bough.

MOONLIT APPLES

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and thoseApples are deep-sea apples of green. There goesA cloud on the moon in the autumn night.A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and thenThere is no sound at the top of the house of menOr mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon againDapples the apples with deep-sea light.They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams;On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streamsOut of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams,And quiet is the steep stair under.In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep.And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keepTryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deepOn moon-washed apples of wonder.

COTTAGE SONG

Morning and night I bringClear water from the spring,And through the lyric noonI hear the larks in tune,And when the shadows fallThere’s providence for all.My garden is alightWith currants red and white;And my blue curtains peepOn starry courses deep,When down her silver tidesThe moon on Cotswold rides.My path of paven greyIs thoroughfare all dayFor fellowship, till timeBids us with candles climbThe little whitewashed stairAbove my lavender.

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 PlantagenetHave 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.

OLD CROW

The bird in the cornIs a marvellous crow.He was laid and was bornIn the season of snow;And he chants his old catchesLike a ghost under hatches.He comes from the shadesOf his wood very early,And works in the bladesOf the wheat and the barley,And he’s happy, althoughHe’s a grumbleton crow.The larks have devicesFor sunny delight,And the sheep in their fleecesAre woolly and white;But these things are the scornOf the bird in the corn.And morning goes by,And still he is there,Till a rose in the skyCalls him back to his lairIn the boughs where the gloomIs a part of his plume.But the boy in the laneWith his gun, by and by,To the heart of the grainWill narrowly spy,And the twilight will come,And no crow will fly home.

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 wentMore 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.

ON A LAKE

Sweet in the rushesThe reed-singers makeA music that hushesThe life of the lake;The leaves are dumb,And the tides are still,And no calls comeFrom the flocks on the hill.Forgotten nowAre nightingales,And on his boughThe linnet fails, —Midway the mereMy mirrored boatShall rest and hearA slenderer note.Though, heart, you measureBut one proud rhyme,You build a treasureConfounding time —Sweet in the rushesThe reed-singers makeA music that hushesThe life of the lake.

HARVEST MOON

“Hush!” was my whisperAt the stair-topWhen the waggoners were down belowHome from the barley-crop.Through the high windowLooked the harvest moon,While the waggoners sangA harvest tune, —“Hush!” was my whisper whenMarjory steptDown from her attic-room,A true-love-adept.“Fill a can, fill a can,”Waggoners of heart were they,“Harvest-home, harvest-home,Barleycorn is home to-day.” …“Marjory, hush now —Harvest – you hear?” —Red was the moon’s roseOn the full year,The cobwebs shook, so wellDid the waggoners sing —“Hush!” – there was beauty atThat harvesting.

AT AN EARTHWORKS

Ringed high with turf the arena lies,The neighbouring world unseen, unheard,Here are but unhorizoned skies,And on the skies a passing bird,The conies and a wandering sheep,The castings of the chambered mole, —These, and the haunted years that keepLost agonies of blood and soul.They say that in the midnight moonThe ghostly legions gather yet,And hear a ghostly timbrel-tune,And see a ghostly combat met.These are but yeoman’s tales. And hereNo marvel on the midnight falls,But starlight marvellously clear,Being girdled in these shadowy walls.Yet now strange glooms of ancestryCreep on me through this morning light,Some spectral self is seeking me …I will not parley with the night.

INSTRUCTION

I have a place in a little garden,That laurel-leaf and fernKeep a cool place though fires of summerAll the green grasses burn.Little cool winds creep there aboutWhen winds all else are dead,And tired limbs there find gentle keeping,And humours of sloth are shed.So do your songs come always to me,Poets of age and age,Clear and cool as rivers of windThreading my hermitage,Stilling my mind from tribulationOf life half-seen, half-heard,With images made in the brain’s quietness,And the leaping of a word.

HABITATION

High up in the sky there, now, you know,In this May twilight, our cottage is asleep,Tenantless, and no creature there to goNear it but Mrs. Fry’s fat cows, and sheepDove-coloured, as is Cotswold. No one hearsUnder that cherry-tree the night-jars yet,The windows are uncurtained; on the stairsSilence is but by tip-toe silence met.All doors are fast there. It is a dwelling put byFrom use for a little, or long, up there in the sky.Empty; a walled-in silence, in this twilight of May —A home for lovers, and friendly withdrawing, and sleep,With none to love there, nor laugh, nor climb from the dayTo the candles and linen… Yet in the silence creep,This minute, I know, little ghosts, little virtuous lives,Breathing upon that still, insensible place,Touching the latches, sorting the napkins and knives,And such for the comfort of being, and bowls for the grace,That roses will brim; they are creeping from that room to this,One room, and two, till the four are visited … they,Little ghosts, little lives, are our thoughts in this twilight of May,Signs that even the curious man would miss,Of travelling lovers to Cotswold, signs of an hour,Very soon, when up from the valley in June will rideLovers by Lynch to Oakridge up in the wideBow of the hill, to a garden of lavender flower…The doors are locked; no foot falls; the hearths are dumb —But we are there – we are waiting ourselves who come.

WRITTEN IN WINTERBORNE CAME CHURCH (William Barnes, 1801-1886)

To Mrs. Thomas HardyI do not use to listen wellAt sermon time,I ’ld rather hear the plainest rhymeThan tales the parsons tell;The homespun of experienceThey will not wear,But walk a transcendental airIn dusty rags of sense.But humbly in your little churchAlone I watch;Old rector, lift again the latch,Here is a heart to search.Come, with a simple word and wiseQuicken my brain,And while upon the painted paneThe painted butterfliesBeat in the early April beams,You shall instructMy spirit in the knowledge pluckedFrom your still Dorset dreams.Your word shall strive with no obscureDebated text,Your vision being unperplexed,Your loving purpose pure.I know you’ll speak of April flowers,Or lambs in pen,Or happy-hearted maids and menWeaving their April hours.Or rising to your thought will come,For lessoning,Those lovers of an older spring,That now in tombs are dumb.And brooding in your theme shall be,Half said, half heard,The presage of a poet’s wordTo mock mortality.…The years are on your grave the while,And yet, almost,I think to see your surpliced ghostStand hesitant in the aisle,Find me sole congregation there,Assess my mood,Know mine a kindred solitude,And climb the pulpit-stair.

BUDS

The raining hour is done,And, threaded on the bough,The May-buds in the sunAre shining emeralds now.As transitory theseAs things of April will,Yet, trembling in the trees,Is briefer beauty still.For, flowering from the skyUpon an April day,Are silver buds that lieAmid the buds of May.The April emeralds now,While thrushes fill the lane,Are linked along the boughWith silver buds of rain.And, straightly though to earthThe buds of silver slip,The green buds keep the mirthOf that companionship.

BLACKBIRD

He comes on chosen evenings,My blackbird bountiful, and singsOver the gardens of the townJust at the hour the sun goes down.His flight across the chimneys thick,By some divine arithmetic,Comes to his customary stack,And couches there his plumage black,And there he lifts his yellow bill,Kindled against the sunset, tillThese suburbs are like Dymock woodsWhere music has her solitudes,And while he mocks the winter’s wrongRapt on his pinnacle of song,Figured above our garden plotsThose are celestial chimney-pots.

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.

AT AN INN

We are talkative proud, and assured, and self-sufficient,The quick of the earth this day;This inn is ours, and its courtyard, and English history,And the Post Office up the way.The stars in their changes, and heavenly speculation,The habits of birds and flowers,And character bred of poverty and riches,All these are ours.The world is ours, and these its themes and its substance,And of these we are free men and wise;Among them all we move in possession and judgment,For a day, till it dies.But in eighteen-hundred-and-fifty, who were the tenants,Sure and deliberate as we?They knew us not in the time of their ascension,Their self-sufficiency.And in nineteen-hundred-and-fifty this inn shall flourish,And history still be told,And the heat of blood shall thrive, and speculation,When we are cold.

PERSPECTIVE

In the Wheatsheaf parlour I sat to seeThe story of Chippington street go by,The squire, and dames of little degree,And drovers with cattle and flocks to cry.And these were all as my creatures there,Twinkling to and fro in the sun,And placidly I had joy, had care,Of all their labours and dealings done.Into the parlour strode me thenTwo fellows fiercely set at odds,To whom the difference of menGave the sufficiency of God.They saw me, and they stept beyondTo a chamber within earshot still,And each on each of broken bond,And honour, and inflexible will,Railed. And loud the little inn grew,But nothing I cared their quarrel to learn,Though the issue tossing between the twoThey deemed the bait of the world’s concern.Only I thought how most are menFantastic when they most are proud,And out of my laughter I looked againOn the flowing figures of Chippington crowd.

CROCUSES TO E. H. C

Desires,Little determined desires,Gripped by the mould,Moving so hardly amongThe earth, of whose heart they were bred,That is old; it is old,Not gracious to little desires such as these,But apter for work on the bases of trees,Whose branches are hungOverhead,Very mightily, there overhead.Through the summer they stirred,They strove to the bulbs after May,Until harvest and song of the birdWent together away;And ever till coming of snowsThey worked in the mould, for undaunted were thoseSwift little determined desires, in the earthWithout sign, any day,Ever shaping to marvels of birth,Far away.And we wentWithout heedOn our way,Never knowing what virtue was spent,Day by day,By those little desires that were gallant to breedSuch beauty as fortitude may.Not once in our mindWas that corner of earth under trees,Very mighty and tall,As we travelled the roads and the seas,And gathered the wage of our kind,And were laggard or trim to the callOf the duties that lengthen the hoursInto seasons that flourish and fall.And blind,In the womb of the flowers,Unresting they wrought,In the bulbs, in the depth of the year,Buried far from our thought;Till one day, when the thrushes were clearIn their note it was spring – and they know —Unheeding we came into sightOf that corner forgotten, and lo,They had won through the meshes of mould,And treasuries lay in the light,Of ivory, purple, and gold.

RIDDLES, R.F.C. 1 (1916)

He was a boy of April beauty; oneWho had not tried the world; who, while the sunFlamed yet upon the eastern sky, was done.Time would have brought him in her patient ways —So his young beauty spoke – to prosperous days,To fulness of authority and praise.He would not wait so long. A boy, he spentHis boy’s dear life for England. Be content:No honour of age had been more excellent.

THE SHIPS OF GRIEF

On seas where every pilot failsA thousand thousand ships to-dayRide with a moaning in their sails,Through winds grey and waters grey.They are the ships of grief. They goAs fleets are derelict and driven,Estranged from every port they know,Scarce asking fortitude of heaven.No, do not hail them. Let them rideLonely as they would lonely be …There is an hour will prove the tide,There is a sun will strike the sea.

NOCTURNE

O royal night, under your stars that keepTheir golden troops in charted motion set,The living legions are renewed in sleepFor bloodier battle yet.O royal death, under your boundless skyWhere unrecorded constellations throng,Dispassionate those other legions lie,Invulnerably strong.

THE PATRIOT

Scarce is my life more dear to me,Brief tutor of oblivion,Than fields below the rookeryThat comfortably looks uponThe little street of Piddington.I never think of Avon’s meadows,Ryton woods or Rydal mere,Or moon-tide moulding Cotswold shadows,But I know that half the fearOf death’s indifference is here.I love my land. No heart can knowThe patriot’s mystery, untilIt aches as mine for woods ablowIn Gloucestershire with daffodil,Or Bicester brakes that violets fill.No man can tell what passion surgesFor the house of his nativityIn the patriot’s blood, until he purgesHis grosser mood of jealousy,And comes to meditate with meOf gifts of earth that stamp his brainAs mine the pools of Ludlow mill,The hazels fencing Trilly’s Lane,And Forty Acres under Brill,The ferry under Elsfield hill.These are what England is to me,Not empire, nor the name of herRanging from pole to tropic sea.These are the soil in which I bearAll that I have of character.That men my fellows near and farMay live in like communion,Is all I pray; all pastures areThe best beloved beneath the sun;I have my own; I envy none.

EPILOGUE FOR A MASQUE

A little time they lived again, and lo!Back to the quiet night the shadows go,And the great folds of silence once againAre over fools and kings and fighting-men.A little while they went with stumbling feet,With spears of hate, and love all flowery sweet,With wondering hearts and bright adventurous wills,And now their dust is on a thousand hills.We dream of them, as men unborn shall dreamOf us, who strive a little with the streamBefore we too go out beyond the day,And are as much a memory as they.And Death, so coming, shall not seem a thingOf any fear, nor terrible his wing.We too shall be a tale on earth, and timeShall shape our pilgrimage into a rhyme.

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?

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.

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.

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.

DAY

Dawn is up at my window, and in the May-treeThe finches gossip, and tits, and beautiful sparrowsWith feathers bright and brown as September hazels.The sunlight is here, filtered through rosy curtains,Docile and disembodied, a ghost of sunlight,A gentle light to greet the dreamer returning.Part the curtains. I give you salutationDay, clear day; let us be friendly fellows.Come… I hear the Liars about the city.

DREAMS

We have our dreams; not happiness.Great cities are upon the hillTo lighten all our dream, and stillWe have no cities to possessBut cities built of bitterness.We see gay fellows top to toe,And girls in rainbow beauty bright —’Tis but of silly dreams I write,For up and down the streets we know,The scavengers and harlots go.Give me a dozen men whose themeIs honesty, and we will setOn high the banner of dreams … and yetThousands will pass us in a stream,Nor care a penny what we dream.