Poems of To-Day: an Anthology

61. NOD

  Softly along the road of evening,    In a twilight dim with rose,  Wrinkled with age, and drenched with dew    Old Nod, the shepherd, goes.  His drowsy flock streams on before him,    Their fleeces charged with gold,  To where the sun's last beam leans low    On Nod the shepherd's fold.  The hedge is quick and green with briar,    From their sand the conies creep;  And all the birds that fly in heaven    Flock singing home to sleep.  His lambs outnumber a noon's roses,    Yet, when night's shadows fall,  His blind old sheep-dog, Slumber-soon,    Misses not one of all.  His are the quiet steeps of dreamland,    The waters of no-more-pain,  His ram's bell rings 'neath an arch of stars,    "Rest, rest, and rest again."Walter de la Mare.

62. CHIMES

  Brief, on a flying night,    From the shaken tower,  A flock of bells take flight,    And go with the hour.  Like birds from the cote to the gales,    Abrupt—O hark!  A fleet of bells set sails,    And go to the dark.  Sudden the cold airs swing.    Alone, aloud,  A verse of bells takes wing    And flies with the cloud.Alice Meynell.

63. SPRING GOETH ALL IN WHITE

  Spring goeth all in white,  Crowned with milk-white may:  In fleecy flocks of light  O'er heaven the white clouds stray:  White butterflies in the air;  White daisies prank the ground:  The cherry and hoary pear  Scatter their snow around.Robert Bridges.

64. 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 the 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 Blunt.

65. A DAY IN SUSSEX

  The dove did lend me wings. I fled away  From the loud world which long had troubled me.  Oh lightly did I flee when hoyden May  Threw her wild mantle on the hawthorn-tree.  I left the dusty high-road, and my way  Was through deep meadows, shut with copses fair.  A choir of thrushes poured its roundelay  From every hedge and every thicket there.  Mild, moon-faced kine looked on, where in the grass  All heaped with flowers I lay, from noon till eve.  And hares unwitting close to me did pass,  And still the birds sang, and I could not grieve.  Oh what a blessed thing that evening was!  Peace, music, twilight, all that could deceive  A soul to joy or lull a heart to peace.  It glimmers yet across whole years like these.Wilfrid Blunt.

66. ODE IN MAY

  Let me go forth, and share    The overflowing Sun    With one wise friend, or one  Better than wise, being fair,  Where the pewit wheels and dips    On heights of bracken and ling,  And Earth, unto her leaflet tips,    Tingles with the Spring.  What is so sweet and dear    As a prosperous morn in May,    The confident prime of the day,  And the dauntless youth of the year,  When nothing that asks for bliss,    Asking aright, is denied,  And half of the world a bridegroom is,    And half of the world a bride?  The Song of Mingling flows,    Grave, ceremonial, pure,    As once, from lips that endure,  The cosmic descant rose,  When the temporal lord of life,    Going his golden way,  Had taken a wondrous maid to wife    That long had said him nay.  For of old the Sun, our sire,    Came wooing the mother of men,    Earth, that was virginal then,  Vestal fire to his fire.  Silent her bosom and coy,    But the strong god sued and pressed;  And born of their starry nuptial joy    Are all that drink of her breast.  And the triumph of him that begot,    And the travail of her that bore,    Behold they are evermore  As warp and weft in our lot.  We are children of splendour and flame,    Of shuddering, also, and tears.  Magnificent out of the dust we came,    And abject from the Spheres.  O bright irresistible lord!    We are fruit of Earth's womb, each one,    And fruit of thy loins, O Sun,  Whence first was the seed outpoured.  To thee as our Father we bow,    Forbidden thy Father to see,  Who is older and greater than thou, as thou    Art greater and older than we.  Thou art but as a word of his speech,    Thou art but as a wave of his hand;    Thou art brief as a glitter of sand  'Twixt tide and tide on his beach;  Thou art less than a spark of his fire,    Or a moment's mood of his soul:  Thou art lost in the notes on the lips of his choir    That chant the chant of the Whole.William Watson.

67. THE SCARECROW

  All winter through I bow my head    Beneath the driving rain;  The North wind powders me with snow    And blows me black again;  At midnight 'neath a maze of stars    I flame with glittering rime,  And stand, above the stubble, stiff    As mail at morning-prime.  But when that child, called Spring, and all    His host of children, come,  Scattering their buds and dew upon    These acres of my home,  Some rapture in my rags awakes;    I lift void eyes and scan  The skies for crows, those ravening foes,    Of my strange master, Man.  I watch him striding lank behind    His clashing team, and know  Soon will the wheat swish body high    Where once lay sterile snow;  Soon shall I gaze across a sea    Of sun-begotten grain,  Which my unflinching watch hath sealed    For harvest once again.Walter de la Mare.

68. 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!  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.

69. TEWKESBURY ROAD

  It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where,    Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither nor why;  Through the grey light drift of the dust, in the keen cool        rush of the air,    Under the flying white clouds, and the broad blue lift of the sky.  And to halt at the chattering brook, in the tall green fern        at the brink    Where the harebell grows, and the gorse, and the foxgloves        purple and white;  Where, the shy-eyed delicate deer come down in a troop to drink    When the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night.  O, to feel the beat of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,    Is a tune for the blood to jig to, a joy past power of words;  And the blessed green comely meadows are all a-ripple with mirth    At the noise of the lambs at play and the dear wild cry        of the birds.John Masefield.

70. TO A LADY SEEN FROM THE TRAIN

  O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,  Missing so much and so much?  O fat white woman whom nobody loves,  Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,  When the grass is soft as the breast of doves    And shivering-sweet to the touch?  O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,    Missing so much and so much?Frances Cornford.

71. I WILL MAKE YOU BROOCHES

  I will make you brooches and toys for your delight  Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.  I will make a palace fit for you and me  Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.  I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,  Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,  And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white  In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.  And this shall be for music when no one else is near,  The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!  That only I remember, that only you admire,  Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.Robert Louis Stevenson.

72. JUGGLING JERRY

  Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes!    By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.  It's nigh my last above the daisies:    My next leaf 'll be man's blank page.  Yes, my old girl! and it's no use crying:    Juggler, constable, king, must bow.  One that outjuggles all 's been spying    Long to have me, and he has me now.  We've travelled times to this old common:    Often we've hung our pots in the gorse.  We've had a stirring life, old woman!    You, and I, and the old grey horse,  Races, and fairs, and royal occasions,    Found us coming to their call:  Now they'll miss us at our stations:    There's a Juggler outjuggles all!  Up goes the lark, as if all were jolly!    Over the duck-pond the willow shakes.  Easy to think that grieving's folly,    When the hand's firm as driven stakes!  Ay, when we're strong, and braced, and manful,    Life's a sweet fiddle: but we're a batch  Born to become the Great Juggler's han'ful;    Balls he shies up, and is safe to catch.  Here's where the lads of the village cricket:    I was a lad not wide from here:  Couldn't I whip off the bail from the wicket?    Like an old world those days appear!  Donkey, sheep, geese, and thatched ale-house—I know them!    They are old friends of my halts, and seem,  Somehow, as if kind thanks I owe them:    Juggling don't hinder the heart's esteem.  Juggling's no sin, for we must have victual:    Nature allows us to bait for the fool.  Holding one's own makes us juggle no little;    But, to increase it, hard juggling's the rule.  You that are sneering at my profession,    Haven't you juggled a vast amount?  There's the Prime Minister, in one Session,    Juggles more games than my sins'll count.  I've murdered insects with mock thunder:    Conscience, for that, in men don't quail.  I've made bread from the bump of wonder:    That's my business, and there's my tale.  Fashion and rank all praised the professor:    Ay! and I've had my smile from the Queen  Bravo, Jerry! she meant: God bless her!    Ain't this a sermon on that scene?  I've studied men from my topsy-turvy    Close, and, I reckon, rather true.  Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy;    Most, a dash between the two.  But it's a woman, old girl, that makes me    Think more kindly of the race,  And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me    When the Great Juggler I must face.  We two were married, due and legal:    Honest we've lived since we've been one.  Lord! I could then jump like an eagle:    You danced bright as a bit o' the sun.  Birds in a May-bush we were! right merry!    All night we kiss'd, we juggled all day.  Joy was the heart of Juggling Jerry!    Now from his old girl he's juggled away.  It's past parsons to console us:    No, nor no doctor fetch for me:  I can die without my bolus;    Two of a trade, lass, never agree!  Parson and Doctor!—don't they love rarely,    Fighting the devil in other men's fields!  Stand up yourself and match him fairly,    Then see how the rascal yields!  I, lass, have lived no gipsy, flaunting    Finery while his poor helpmate grubs:  Coin I've stored, and you won't be wanting:    You shan't beg from the troughs and tubs.  Nobly you've stuck to me, though in his kitchen    Many a Marquis would hail you Cook!  Palaces you could have ruled and grown rich in,    But your old Jerry you never forsook.  Hand up the chirper! ripe ale winks in it;    Let's have comfort and be at peace.  Once a stout draught made me light as a linnet.    Cheer up! the Lord must have his lease.  Maybe—for none see in that black hollow—    It's just a place where we're held in pawn,  And, when the Great Juggler makes as to swallow,    It's just the sword-trick—I ain't quite gone!  Yonder came smells of the gorse, so nutty,    Gold-like and warm: it's the prime of May  Better than mortar, brick and putty,    Is God's house on a blowing day.  Lean me more up the mound; now I feel it:    All the old heath-smells! Ain't it strange?  There's the world laughing, as if to conceal it,    But He's by us, juggling the change.  I mind it well, by the sea-beach lying,    Once—it's long gone—when two gulls we beheld,  Which, as the moon got up, were flying    Down a big wave that sparked and swelled.  Crack went a gun: one fell: the second    Wheeled round him, twice, and was off for new luck;  There in the dark her white wing beckon'd:—    Drop me a kiss—I'm the bird dead-struck!George Meredith.

73. 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 longed to be;  Home is the sailor, home from sea,    And the hunter home from the hill.Robert Louis Stevenson.

74. A DEAD HARVEST

In Kensington Gardens

  Along the graceless grass of town  They rake the rows of red and brown—  Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay  Delicate, touched with gold and grey,  Raked long ago and far away.  A narrow silence in the park,  Between the lights a narrow dark.  One street rolls on the north; and one,  Muffled, upon the south doth run;  Amid the mist the work is done.  A futile crop!—for it the fire  Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.  So go the town's lives on the breeze,  Even as the sheddings of the trees;  Bosom nor barn is filled with these.Alice Meynell.

75. THE LITTLE DANCERS

  Lonely, save for a few faint stars, the sky  Dreams; and lonely, below, the little street  Into its gloom retires, secluded and shy.  Scarcely the dumb roar enters this soft retreat;  And all is dark, save where come flooding rays  From a tavern window: there, to the brisk measure  Of an organ that down in an alley merrily plays,  Two children, all alone and no one by,  Holding their tattered frocks, through an airy maze  Of motion, lightly threaded with nimble feet,  Dance sedately: face to face they gaze,  Their eyes shining, grave with a perfect pleasure.Laurence Binyon.

76. LONDON SNOW

  When men were all asleep the snow came flying,  In large white flakes falling on the city brown,  Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,    Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;  Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;    Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:    Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;  Hiding difference, making unevenness even,  Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.    All night it fell, and when full inches seven  It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,  The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;    And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness  Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:  The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;    The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;  No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,  And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.    Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,  They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze  Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snow-balling;    Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;  Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,  "O look at the trees!" they cried, "O look at the trees!"    With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,  Following along the white deserted way,  A country company long dispersed asunder:    When now already the sun, in pale display  Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below  His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.    For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;  And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,  Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go;    But even for them awhile no cares encumber  Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,  The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber  At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the        charm they have broken.Robert Bridges.

77. THE ROAD MENDERS

  How solitary gleams the lamplit street  Waiting the far-off morn!  How softly from the unresting city blows  The murmur borne  Down this deserted way!  Dim loiterers pass home with stealthy feet.  Now only, sudden at their interval,  The lofty chimes awaken and let fall  Deep thrills of ordered sound;  Subsiding echoes gradually drowned  In a great stillness, that creeps up around,  And darkly grows  Profounder over all  Like a strong frost, hushing a stormy day.  But who is this, that by the brazier red  Encamped in his rude hut,  With many a sack about his shoulder spread  Watches with eyes unshut?  The burning brazier flushes his old face,  Illumining the old thoughts in his eyes.  Surely the Night doth to her secrecies  Admit him, and the watching stars attune  To their high patience, who so lightly seems  To bear the weight of many thousand dreams  (Dark hosts around him sleeping numberless);  He surely hath unbuilt all walls of thought  To reach an air-wide wisdom, past access  Of us, who labour in the noisy noon,  The noon that knows him not.  For lo, at last the gloom slowly retreats,  And swiftly, like an army, comes the Day,  All bright and loud through the awakened streets  Sending a cheerful hum.  And he has stolen away.  Now, with the morning shining round them, come  Young men, and strip their coats  And loose the shirts about their throats,  And lightly up their ponderous hammers lift,  Each in his turn descending swift  With triple strokes that answer and begin  Duly, and quiver in repeated change,  Marrying the eager echoes that weave in  A music clear and strange.  But pausing soon, each lays his hammer down  And deeply breathing bares  His chest, stalwart and brown,  To the sunny airs.  Laughing one to another, limber hand  On limber hip, flushed in a group they stand,  And now untired renew their ringing toil.  The sun stands high, and ever a fresh throng  Comes murmuring; but that eddying turmoil  Leaves many a loiterer, prosperous or unfed,  On easy or unhappy ways  At idle gaze,  Charmed in the sunshine and the rhythm enthralling,  As of unwearied Fates, for ever young,  That on the anvil of necessity  From measureless desire and quivering fear,  With musical sure lifting and downfalling  Of arm and hammer driven perpetually,  Beat out in obscure span  The fiery destiny of man.Laurence Binyon.

78. STREET LANTERNS

  Country roads are yellow and brown.  We mend the roads in London town.  Never a hansom dare come nigh,  Never a cart goes rolling by.  An unwonted silence steals  In between the turning wheels.  Quickly ends the autumn day,  And the workman goes his way,  Leaving, midst the traffic rude,  One small isle of solitude,  Lit, throughout the lengthy night,  By the little lantern's light.  Jewels of the dark have we,  Brighter than the rustic's be.  Over the dull earth are thrown  Topaz, and the ruby stone.Mary E. Coleridge.

79. O SUMMER SUM

  O summer sun, O moving trees!  O cheerful human noise, O busy glittering street!  What hour shall Fate in all the future find,  Or what delights, ever to equal these:  Only to taste the warmth, the light, the wind,  Only to be alive, and feel that life is sweet?Laurence Binyon.

80. LONDON

  Athwart the sky a lowly sigh    From west to east the sweet wind carried;  The sun stood still on Primrose Hill;    His light in all the city tarried:  The clouds on viewless columns bloomed  Like smouldering lilies unconsumed.  "Oh sweetheart, see! how shadowy,    Of some occult magician's rearing,  Or swung in space of heaven's grace    Dissolving, dimly reappearing,  Afloat upon ethereal tides  St. Paul's above the city rides!"  A rumour broke through the thin smoke    Enwreathing abbey, tower, and palace,  The parks, the squares, the thoroughfares,    The million-peopled lanes and alleys,  An ever-muttering prisoned storm,  The heart of London beating warm.John Davidson.

81. NOVEMBER BLUE

The golden tint of the electric lights seems to give a complementary colour to the air in the early evening.—Essay on London.

  O heavenly colour, London town    Has blurred it from her skies;  And, hooded in an earthly brown,    Unheaven'd the city lies.  No longer standard-like this hue    Above the broad road flies;  Nor does the narrow street the blue    Wear, slender pennon-wise.  But when the gold and silver lamps    Colour the London dew,  And, misted by the winter damps,    The shops shine bright anew—  Blue comes to earth, it walks the street,    It dyes the wide air through;  A mimic sky about their feet,    The throng go crowned with blue.Alice Meynell.

82. PHILOMEL IN LONDON

  Not within a granite pass,  Dim with flowers and soft with grass—  Nay, but doubly, trebly sweet  In a poplared London street,  While below my windows go  Noiseless barges, to and fro,    Through the night's calm deep,  Ah! what breaks the bonds of sleep?  No steps on the pavement fall,  Soundless swings the dark canal;  From a church-tower out of sight  Clangs the central hour of night.  Hark! the Dorian nightingale!  Pan's voice melted to a wail!    Such another bird  Attic Tereus never heard.  Hung above the gloom and stain—  London's squalid cope of pain—  Pure as starlight, bold as love,  Honouring our scant poplar-grove,  That most heavenly voice of earth  Thrills in passion, grief or mirth,    Laves our poison'd air  Life's best song-bath crystal-fair.  While the starry minstrel sings  Little matters what he brings,  Be it sorrow, be it pain,  Let him sing and sing again,  Till, with dawn, poor souls rejoice,  Wakening, once to hear his voice,    Ere afar he flies,  Bound for purer woods and skies.Edmund Gosse.

83. ANNUS MIRABILIS (1902)

  Daylight was down, and up the cool    Bare heaven the moon, o'er roof and elm,  Daughter of dusk most wonderful,    Went mounting to her realm:  And night was only half begun  Round Edwardes Square in Kensington.  A Sabbath-calm possessed her face,    An even glow her bosom filled;  High in her solitary place    The huntress-heart was stilled:  With bow and arrows all laid down  She stood and looked on London town.  Nay, how can sight of us give rest    To that far-travelled heart, or draw  The musings of that tranquil breast?    I thought—and gazing, saw  Far up above me, high, oh, high,  From south to north a heron fly!  Oh, swiftly answered! yonder flew    The wings of freedom and of hope!  Little of London town he knew,    The far horizon was his scope.  High up he sails, and sees beneath  The glimmering ponds of Hampstead Heath,  Hendon, and farther out afield    Low water-meads are in his ken,  And lonely pools by Harrow Weald,    And solitudes unloved of men,  Where he his fisher's spear dips down:  Little he knows of London town.  So small, with all its miles of sin,    Is London to the grey-winged bird,  A cuckoo called at Lincoln's Inn    Last April; in Soho was heard  The missel-thrush with throat of glee,  And nightingales at Battersea!Laurence Housman.

84. 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.

86. IN THE MEADOWS AT MANTUA

  But to have lain upon the grass  One perfect day, one perfect hour,  Beholding all things mortal pass  Into the quiet of green grass;  But to have lain and loved the sun,  Under the shadow of the trees,  To have been found in unison,  Once only, with the blessed sun;  Ah! in these flaring London nights,  Where midnight withers into morn,  How quiet a rebuke it writes  Across the sky of London nights!  Upon the grass at Mantua  These London nights were all forgot.  They wake for me again: but ah,  The meadow-grass at Mantua!Arthur Symons.