Poems of To-Day: an Anthology

21. THE SOLDIER

  If I should die, think only this of me:    That there's some corner of 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.

22. FOR THE FALLEN

  With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,  England mourns for her dead across the sea.  Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,  Fallen in the cause of the free.  Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal  Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.  There is music in the midst of desolation  And a glory that shines upon our tears.  They went with songs to the battle, they were young,  Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.  They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,  They fell with their faces to the foe.  They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:  Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.  At the going down of the sun and in the morning  We will remember them.  They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;  They sit no more at familiar tables of home;  They have no lot in our labour of the day-time:  They sleep beyond England's foam.  But where our desires are and our hopes profound,  Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,  To the innermost heart of their own land they are known  As the stars are known to the Night;  As the stars that shall be bright when we are duet  Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,  As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,  To the end, to the end, they remain.Laurence Binyon.

23. SHADOWS AND LIGHTS

  What gods have met in battle to arouse  This whirling shadow of invisible things,  These hosts that writhe amid the shattered sods?  O Father, and O Mother of the gods,  Is there some trouble in the heavenly house?  We who are captained by its unseen kings  Wonder what thrones are shaken in the skies,  What powers who held dominion o'er our will  Let fall the sceptre, and what destinies  The younger gods may drive us to fulfil.  Have they not swayed us, earth's invisible lords,  With whispers and with breathings from the dark?  The very border stones of nations mark  Where silence swallowed some wild prophet's words  That rang but for an instant and were still,  Yet were so burthened with eternity,  They maddened all who heard to work their will,  To raise the lofty temple on the hill,  And many a glittering thicket of keen swords  Flashed out to make one law for land and sea,  That earth might move with heaven in company.  The cities that to myriad beauty grew  Were altars raised unto old gods who died,  And they were sacrificed in ruins to  The younger gods who took their place of pride;  They have no brotherhood, the deified,  No high companionship of throne by throne,  But will their beauty still to be alone.  What is a nation but a multitude  United by some god-begotten mood,  Some hope of liberty or dream of power  That have not with each other brotherhood  But warred in spirit from their natal hour,  Their hatred god-begotten as their love  Reverberations of eternal strife?  For all that fury breathed in human life,  Are ye not guilty, answer, ye above?  Ah, no, the circle of the heavenly ones,  That ring of burning, grave, inflexible powers,  Array in harmony amid the deep  The shining legionaries of the suns,  That through their day from dawn to twilight keep  The peace of heaven, and have no feuds like ours.  The morning Stars their labours of the dawn  Close at the advent of the Solar Kings,  And these with joy their sceptres yield, withdrawn  When the still Evening Stars begin their reign,  And twilight time is thrilled with homing wings  To the All-Father being turned again.  No, not on high begin divergent ways,  The galaxies of interlinked lights  Rejoicing on each other's beauty gaze,  'Tis we who do make errant all the rays  That stream upon us from the astral heights.  Love in our thickened air too redly burns;  And unto vanity our beauty turns;  Wisdom, that gently whispers us to part  From evil, swells to hatred in the heart.  Dark is the shadow of invisible things  On us who look not up, whose vision fails.  The glorious shining of the heavenly kings  To mould us in their image naught avails,  They weave a robe of many-coloured fire  To garb the spirits thronging in the deep,  And in the upper air its splendours keep  Pure and unsullied, but below it trails  Darkling and glimmering in our earthly mire.  With eyes bent ever earthwards we are swayed  But by the shadows of eternal light,  And shadow against shadow is arrayed  So that one dark may dominate the night.  Though kindred are the lights that cast the shade,  We look not up, nor see how, side by side,  The high originals of all our pride  In crowned and sceptred brotherhood are throned,  Compassionate of our blindness and our hate  That own the godship but the love disowned.  Ah, let us for a little while abate  The outward roving eye, and seek within  Where spirit unto spirit is allied;  There, in our inmost being, we may win  The joyful vision of the heavenly wise  To see the beauty in each other's eyes.A. E.

24. BRUMANA

  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 which 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.  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 sands,  Where the wise snailfish move their pearly towers  To carven rocks and sculptured promont'ries,"  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  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 pain,  Half to remember days that have gone by,  And dream and dream that I am home again!James Elroy Flecker.

25. A LYKE-WAKE CAROL

  Grow old and die, rich Day,    Over some English field—  Chartered to come away    What time to Death you yield!  Pass, frost-white ghost, and then  Come forth to banish'd men!  I see the stubble's sheen,    The mist and ruddled leaves,  Here where the new Spring's green    For her first rain-drops grieves.  Here beechen leaves drift red  Last week in England dead.  For English eyes' delight    Those Autumn ghosts go free—  Ghost of the field hoar-white,    Ghost of the crimson tree.  Grudge them not, England dear,  To us thy banished here!Arthur Shearly Cripps.

26. A REFRAIN

  Tell the tune his feet beat  On the ground all day—  Black-burnt ground and green grass  Seamed with rocks of grey—  "England," "England," "England,"  That one word they say.  Now they tread the beech-mast,  Now the ploughland's clay,  Now the faery ball-floor of her fields in May.  Now her red June sorrel, now her new-turned hay,  Now they keep the great road, now by sheep-path stray,  Still it's "England," "England,"  "England" all the way!Arthur Shearly Cripps.

27. WHERE A ROMAN VILLA STOOD, ABOVE FREIBURG

  On alien ground, breathing an alien air,  A Roman stood, far from his ancient home,  And gazing, murmured, "Ah, the hills are fair,  But not the hills of Rome!"  Descendant of a race to Romans-kin,  Where the old son of Empire stood, I stand.  The self-same rocks fold the same valley in,  Untouched of human hand.  Over another shines the self-same star,  Another heart with nameless longing fills,  Crying aloud, "How beautiful they are,  But not our English hills!"Mary E. Coleridge.

28. HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS

  He walked in glory on the hills;    We dalesmen envied from afar  The heights and rose-lit pinnacles    Which placed him nigh the evening star.  Upon the peaks they found him dead;    And now we wonder if he sighed  For our low grass beneath his head,    For our rude huts, before he died.William Canton.

29. IN THE HIGHLANDS

  In the highlands, in the country places,  Where the old plain men have rosy faces,    And the young fair maidens      Quiet eyes;  Where essential silence cheers and blesses,  And for ever in the hill-recesses    Her more lovely music      Broods and dies.  O to mount again where erst I haunted;  Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,    And the low green meadows      Bright with sward;  And when even dies, the million-tinted,  And the night has come, and planets glinted,    Lo, the valley hollow      Lamp-bestarred!  O to dream, O to awake and wander  There, and with delight to take and render,    Through the trance of silence,      Quiet breath;  Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,  Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;    Only winds and rivers,      Life and death.Robert Louis Stevenson.

30. IN CITY STREETS

  Yonder in the heather there's a bed for sleeping,    Drink for one athirst, ripe blackberries to eat;  Yonder in the sun the merry hares go leaping,    And the pool is clear for travel-wearied feet.  Sorely throb my feet, a-tramping London highways,    (Ah! the springy moss upon a northern moor!)  Through the endless streets, the gloomy squares and byways,    Homeless in the City, poor among the poor!  London streets are gold—ah, give me leaves a-glinting    'Midst grey dykes and hedges in the autumn sun!  London water's wine, poured out for all unstinting—    God! For the little brooks that tumble as they run!  Oh, my heart is fain to hear the soft wind blowing,    Soughing through the fir-tops up on northern fells!  Oh, my eye's an ache to see the brown burns flowing    Through the peaty soil and tinkling heather-bells.Ada Smith.

31. MARGARET'S SONG

  Too soothe and mild your lowland airs    For one whose hope is gone:  I'm thinking of a little tarn,    Brown, very lone.  Would now the tall swift mists could lay    Their wet grasp on my hair,  And the great natures of the hills    Round me friendly were.  In vain!—For taking hills your plains    Have spoilt my soul, I think,  But would my feet were going down    Towards the brown tarn's brink.Lascelles Abercrombie.

32. TO S. R. CROCKETT

  Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,    Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,  Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,    My heart remembers how!  Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,    Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,  Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races,    And winds, austere and pure:  Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,    Hills of home! and to hear again the call;  Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,    And hear no more at all.Robert Louis Stevenson.

33. CHILLINGHAM

I  Through the sunny garden    The humming bees are still;  The fir climbs the heather,    The heather climbs the hill.  The low clouds have riven    A little rift through.  The hill climbs to heaven,    Far away and blue.II  O the high valley, the little low hill,    And the cornfield over the sea,  The wind that rages and then lies still,    And the clouds that rest and flee!  O the gray island in the rainbow haze,    And the long thin spits of land,  The roughening pastures and the stony ways,    And the golden flash of the sand!  O the red heather on the moss-wrought rock,    And the fir-tree stiff and straight,  The shaggy old sheep-dog barking at the flock,    And the rotten old five-barred gate!  O the brown bracken, the blackberry bough,    The scent of the gorse in the air!  I shall love them ever as I love them now,    I shall weary in Heaven to be there!III  Strike, Life, a happy hour, and let me live    But in that grace!  I shall have gathered all the world can give,    Unending Time and Space!  Bring light and air—the thin and shining air    Of the North land,  The light that falls on tower and garden there,    Close to the gold sea-sand.  Bring flowers, the latest colours of the earth,    Ere nun-like frost  Lay her hard hand upon this rainbow mirth,    With twinkling emerald crossed.  The white star of the traveller's joy, the deep    Empurpled rays that hide the smoky stone,  The dahlia rooted in Egyptian sleep,    The last frail rose alone.  Let music whisper from a casement set    By them of old,  Where the light smell of lavender may yet    Rise from the soft loose mould.  Then shall I know, with eyes and ears awake,    Not in bright gleams,  The joy my Heavenly Father joys to make    For men who grieve, in dreams!Mary E. Coleridge.

34. SUSSEX

  God gave all men all earth to love,    But since our hearts are small,  Ordained for each one spot should prove    Beloved over all;  That as He watched Creation's birth    So we, in godlike mood,  May of our love create our earth    And see that it is good.  So one shall Baltic pines content,    As one some Surrey glade,  Or one the palm-grove's droned lament    Before Levuka's trade.  Each to his choice, and I rejoice    The lot has fallen to me  In a fair ground—in a fair ground—    Yea, Sussex by the sea!  No tender-hearted garden crowns,    No bosomed woods adorn  Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,    But gnarled and writhen thorn—  Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,    And through the gaps revealed  Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim    Blue goodness of the Weald.  Clean of officious fence or hedge,    Half-wild and wholly tame,  The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge    As when the Romans came.  What sign of those that fought and died    At shift of sword and sword?  The barrow and the camp abide,    The sunlight and the sward.  Here leaps ashore the full Sou'west    All heavy-winged with brine,  Here lies above the folded crest    The Channel's leaden line;  And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,    And here, each warning each,  The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring    Along the hidden beach.  We have no waters to delight    Our broad and brookless vales—  Only the dewpond on the height    Unfed, that never fails,  Whereby no tattered herbage tells    Which way the season flies—  Only our close-bit thyme that smells    Like dawn in Paradise.  Here through the strong unhampered days    The tinkling silence thrills;  Or little, lost. Down churches praise    The Lord who made the hills;  But here the Old Gods guard their round,    And, in her secret heart,  The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found    Dreams, as she dwells, apart.  Though all the rest were all my share,    With equal soul I'd see  Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair,    Yet none more fair than she.  Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed,    And I will choose instead  Such lands as lie 'twixt Rake and Rye,    Black Down and Beachy Head.  I will go out against the sun    Where the rolled scarp retires,  And the Long Man of Wilmington    Looks naked toward the shires;  And east till doubling Rother crawls    To find the fickle tide,  By dry and sea-forgotten walls,    Our ports of stranded pride.  I will go north about the shaws    And the deep ghylls that breed  Huge oaks and old, the which we hold    No more than "Sussex weed";  Or south where windy Piddinghoe's    Begilded dolphin veers,  And black beside wide-banked Ouse    Lie down our Sussex steers.  So to the land our hearts we give    Till the sure magic strike,  And Memory, Use, and Love make live    Us and our fields alike—  That deeper than our speech and thought,    Beyond our reason's sway,  Clay of the pit whence we were wrought    Yearns to its fellow-clay.  God gives all men all earth to love,    But since man's heart is small  Ordains for each one spot shall prove    Beloved over all.  Each to his choice, and I rejoice    The lot has fallen to me  In a fair ground—in a fair ground—    Yea, Sussex by the sea!Rudyard Kipling.

35. THE SOUTH COUNTRY

  When I am living in the Midlands,    That are sodden and unkind,  I light my lamp in the evening:    My work is left behind;  And the great hills of the South Country    Come back into my mind.  The great hills of the South Country    They stand along the sea,  And it's there, walking in the high woods,    That I could wish to be,  And the men that were boys when I was a boy    Walking along with me.  The men that live in North England    I saw them for a day:  Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,    Their skies are fast and grey;  From their castle-walls a man may see    The mountains far away.  The men that live in West England    They see the Severn strong,  A-rolling on rough water brown    Light aspen leaves along.  They have the secret of the Rocks,    And the oldest kind of song.  But the men that live in the South Country    Are the kindest and most wise,  They get their laughter from the loud surf,    And the faith in their happy eyes  Comes surely from our Sister the Spring    When over the sea she flies;  The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,    She blesses us with surprise.  I never get between the pines    But I smell the Sussex air;  Nor I never come on a belt of sand    But my home is there.  And along the sky the line of the Downs    So noble and so bare.  A lost thing could I never find,    Nor a broken thing mend:  And I fear I shall be all alone    When I get towards the end.  Who will there be to comfort me    Or who will be my friend?  I will gather and carefully make my friends    Of the men of the Sussex Weald,  They watch the stars from silent folds,    They stiffly plough the field.  By them and the God of the South Country    My poor soul shall be healed.  If I ever become a rich man,    Or if ever I grow to be old,  I will build a house with deep thatch    To shelter me from the cold,  And there shall the Sussex songs be sung    And the story of Sussex told.  I will hold my house in the high wood,    Within a walk of the sea,  And the men that were boys when I was a boy    Shall sit and drink with me.Hilaire Belloc.

36. CHANCLEBURY RING

  Say what you will, there is not in the world  A nobler sight than from this upper down.  No rugged landscape here, no beauty hurled  From its Creator's hand as with a frown;  But a green plain on which green hills look down  Trim as a garden plot. No other hue  Can hence be seen, save here and there the brown  Of a square fallow, and the horizon's blue.  Dear checker-work of woods, the Sussex weald.  If a name thrills me yet of things of earth,  That name is thine! How often I have fled  To thy deep hedgerows and embraced each field,  Each lag, each pasture,—fields which gave me birth  And saw my youth, and which must hold me dead.Wilfrid Blunt.

37. 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.  A veil of purple vapour flowed    And trailed its fringe along the Straits;  The upper air like sapphire glowed;    And roses filled Heaven's central gates.  Masts in the offing wagged their tops;    The swinging waves pealed 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.

38. A CINQUE PORT

  Below the down the stranded town    What may betide forlornly waits,  With memories of smoky skies,    When Gallic navies crossed the straits;  When waves with fire and blood grew bright,  And cannon thundered through the night.  With swinging stride the rhythmic tide    Bore to the harbour barque and sloop;  Across the bar the ship of war,    In castled stern and lanterned poop,  Came up with conquests on her lee,  The stately mistress of the sea.  Where argosies have wooed the breeze,    The simple sheep are feeding now;  And near and far across the bar    The ploughman whistles at the plough;  Where once the long waves washed the shore,  Larks from their lowly lodgings soar.  Below the down the stranded town    Hears far away the rollers beat;  About the wall the seabirds call;    The salt wind murmurs through the street;  Forlorn the sea's forsaken bride  Awaits the end that shall betide.John Davidson.

39. ESSEX

  I go through the fields of blue water    On the South road of the sea.  High to North the East-Country    Holds her green fields to me—  For she that I gave over,    Gives not over me.  Last night I lay at Good Easter    Under a hedge I knew,  Last night beyond High Easter    I trod the May-floors blue—  Tilt from the sea the sun came    Bidding me wake and rue.  Roding (that names eight churches)—    Banks with the paigles dight—  Chelmer whose mill and willows    Keep one red tower in sight—  Under the Southern Cross run    Beside the ship to-night.  Ah! I may not seek back now,    Neither be turned nor stayed.  Yet should I live, I'd seek her,    Once that my vows are paid!  And should I die I'd haunt her—    I being what God made!  England has greater counties—    Their peace to hers is small.  Low hills, rich fields, calm rivers,    In Essex seek them all,—  Essex, where I that found them    Found to lose them all!Arthur Shearly Cripps.

40. A TOWN WINDOW

  Beyond my window in the night    Is but a drab inglorious street,  Yet there the frost and clean starlight    As over Warwick woods are sweet.  Under the grey drift of the town    The crocus works among the mould  As eagerly as those that crown    The Warwick spring in flame and gold.  And when the tramway down the hill    Across the cobbles moans and rings,  There is about my window-sill    The tumult of a thousand wings.John Drinkwater.

41. MAMBLE

  I never went to Mamble    That lies above the Teme,  So I wonder who's in Mamble,    And whether people seem  Who breed and brew along there    As lazy as the name,  And whether any song there    Sets alehouse wits aflame.  The finger-post says Mamble,    And that is all I know  Of the narrow road to Mamble,    And should I turn and go  To that place of lazy token,    That lies above the Teme,  There might be a Mamble broken    That was lissom in a dream.  So leave the road to Mamble    And take another road  To as good a place as Mamble    Be it lazy as a toad;  Who travels Worcester county    Takes any place that comes  When April tosses bounty    To the cherries and the plums.John Drinkwater.