Poems of To-Day: an Anthology - Various 3 стр.

  His wage of rest at nightfall still
    He takes, who sixty years has known
  Of ploughing over Cotsall hill
    And keeping trim the Cotsall stone.

  He meditates the dusk, and sees
    Folds of his wonted shepherdings
  And lands of stubble and tall trees
    Becoming insubstantial things.

  And does he see on Cotsall hill
    Thrown even to the central shire
  The funnelled shapes forbidding still
    The stranger from his cottage fire?

  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; known
    Slumber 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 laughter
  And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
    Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
  And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
    Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
  A width, a shining peace, under the night.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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 morningand O streams that slow
  And pure and deep through plains and playlands go,
  For me your love and all your kingcups store,
  Anddark militia of the southern shore,
  Old fragrant friendspreserve 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!

  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!

  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!

  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!"

  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.

  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.

  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 goldah, 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.