THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES / TIDES BY THE SAME AUTHOR POETRY— COPHETUA. A Plat. 1911 REBELLION. A PLAY. 1914 POEMS. 1908-1914 SWORDS AND PLOUGHSHARES. OLTON POOLS. 1916 PAWNS. Three Plays. 1917 igi.'S PROSE— WILLIAM MORRIS. igH SWINBURNE. 1913 THE LYRIC. 1915 PROSE PAPERS. 1917 Tides by John Drinkwater London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd. 3 Adam Street, Adelphi mcmxvii First published in 1917 All rights reserved J -^ TO GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON 727521 CONTENTS Dedication A Man's Daughter Venus in Arden May Garden Reciprocity The Lechers Dreams . The Hours Foundations Day Politics Birmingham — 1916 Treason My Estate With Daffodils For a Guest Room On Reading the MS. worth's Journals The Old Warrior . OF Dorothy Words PAGB 9 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 The Guest ...... FAGB . 30 The Midlands • 31 Plough ....... • 33 Inscription for a War Memorial Fountain . 34 CoTswoLD Love . 35 Riches ....... . 36 Legacy ....... • 37 Cottage Song .... . 38 The Cotswold Farmers 39 Old Crow ....... 40 Moonlit Apples ...... 42 Out of the Moon ...... 43 Elizabeth Ann ...... 44 Reverie ..... 45 To Alice Meynell . . . . . 53 Penances ..... 54 8 TIDES i S)eDication TO GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON Because the darling chivalries, That light your battle-line, belong To 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 night Out 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 ghl went northward, holiday making. And a queer man spoke At 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 know Only the little house of the dead To 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 M'oodside ? 10 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 wood Are crumbling bones, And a mumble mumble of nothing that's good. In heathen tones. And I know that frail ghosts flutter and sigh In brambles there, And never a bird or beast to cry — Beware, beware, — While threading the silent thickets go Mother and son, Where scrupulous berries never grow. And airs are none. And her deep eyes peer at eventide Out 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. II VENUS IN ARDEN Now Love, her mantle thrown. Goes naked by. Threading the woods alone, Her royal eye Happy because the primroses again Break on the winter continence of men. I saw her pass to-day In Warwickshire, With the old imperial way, The old desire, Fresh as among those other flowers they went More beautiful for Aden's discontent. Those other years she made Her festival When the blue eggs were laid And lambs were tall, By the Athenian rivers while the reeds Made love melodious for the Ganymedes. And now through Cantlow brakes, By Wilmcote hill. To Avon-side, she makes Her garlands still. And I who watch her flashing limbs am one With youth whose days three thousand years are done. 12 MAY GARDEN A SHOWER of green gems on my apple-tree This first morning of May Has fallen out of the night, to be Herald of holiday — Bright gems of green that, fallen there, Seem fixed and glowing on the air. Until a flutter of blackbird wings Shakes and makes the boughs alive, And the gems are now no frozen things, But apple-green buds to thrive On sap of my May garden, how well The green September globes will tell. Also my pear-tree has its buds. But they are silver yellow, Like autumn meadows when the floods Are silver under willow. And here shall long and shapely pears Be gathered while the autumn wears. I And there are sixty daffodils Beneath my wall. . . . And jealousy it is that kills This world when all The spring's behaviour here is spent To make the world magnificent. 13 RECIPROCITY I DO not think that skies and meadows are Moral, or that the fixture of a star Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees Have wisdom in their windless silences. Yet these are things invested in my mood With constancy, and peace, and fortitude, That in my troubled season I can cry Upon the wide composure of the sky, And envy fields, and wish that I might be As little daunted as a star or tree. 14 THE LECHERS I SAW three lechers walking by With bodies all forlorn, Who had betrayed the symmetry Of love, and made a scorn Of limbs grown to a lyric fire Through generations of desire. I heard three Statesmen buy and sell The souls that are a State, Nor might one word of truth rebel Where cunning had for mate Shallow necessity and blind ; And these were lechers of the mind. I would not have for comrades those Poor lechers of the street, Yet they were fitter housefellows Than these who soil the sweet Honour of thought, and bring the brain To dark and brutish sloth again. 15 DREAMS We have our dreams ; not happiness. Great cities are upon the hill To lighten all our dream, and still We have no cities to possess But 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 theme Is honesty, and we will set On high the banner of dreams . . . and yet Thousands will pass us in a stream. Nor care a penny what we dream. 16 THE HOURS Those hours are best when suddenly The voices of the world are still, And in that quiet place is heard The voice of one small singing bird, Alone within his quiet tree ; When to one field that crowns a hill, With but the sky for neighbourhood. The crowdmg counties of my brain Give all their riches, lake and plain, Cornland and fell and pillared wood ; When in a hill-top acre, bare For the seed's use, I am aware Of all the beauty that an age Of earth has taught my eyes to see ; When Pride and Generosity The Constant Heart and Evil Rage, Affection and Desire, and all The passions of experience Are no more tabled in my mind, Learning's idolatry, but find Particularity of sense In daily fortitudes that fall From this or that companion, Or in an angry gossip's word ; When one man speaks for Every One, When Music lives in one small bird, B 17 When in a furrowed hill we see All beauty in epitome — Those hours are best ; for those belong To the lucidity of song. i8 FOUNDATIONS Those lovers old had rare conceits To make persuasion beautiful. Or rail upon the pretty fool Who would not share those wanton sweets That, guarded, soon are bitterness. But we, my love, can look on these Old tournaments of wit, and say What novices of love were they. Who loved by seasons and degrees. And in the rate of more and less. We will not make of love a stale For deft and nimble argument. Nor shall denial and consent Be processes whereof shall fail One surety that we possess. 19 DAY Dawn is up at my window, and in the may-tree The finches gossip, and tits, and beautiful sparrows With 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 salutation Day, clear day ; let us be friendly fellows. Come. ... I hear the Liars about the city. 20 POLITICS You say a thousand things, Persuasively, And with strange passion hotly I agree, And praise your zest. And then A blackbird sings On April lilac, or fieldfaring men, Ghostlike, with loaded wain. Come down the twilit lane To rest, And what is all your argument to me ? Oh yes — I know, I know, It must be so — You must devise Your myriad policies, For we are little wise, And must be led and marshalled, lest we keep Too fast a sleep Far from the central world's realities. Yes, we must heed — For surely you reveal Life's very heart ; surely with flaming zeal You search our folly and our secret need ; And surely it is wrong To count my blackbird's song, My cones of lilac, and my wagon team. More than a world of dream. 21 But still A voice calls from the hill — I must away — I cannot hear your argument to-day. 22 BIRMINGHAM— I9i6 Once Athens worked and went to see the play, And Thomas Atkins kissed the girls of Rome, In council in Victoria Square to-day Are grey-beard Nazarenes, with shop and home And counting-house and all the friendly cares That Joseph knew ; in Bull Ring markets meet Gossips as once at Babylonian fairs, And Helen walks in Corporation Street. Now Troy is Homer ; and of Nazareth Grave 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 ? 23 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 then Say well it is and well I sing. Assured above the praise of men I am a solitary king. But when I leave that straiter mood, That lonely hour, and put aside The continence of solitude, I fall in treason to my pride, And if a witling's word be spent Upon my song in jealousy, In anger and in argument I am as derelict as he. 24 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 three And four they are, good loves of mine ; Tom Squire, my grey dog Timothy, My wife and Master Candleshine. 25 WITH DAFFODILS I SEND you daffodils, my dear, For these are emperors of spring, And in my heart you keep so clear So delicate an empery. That none but emperors could be Ambassadors endowed to bring My messages of honesty. My mind makes faring to and fro, Deft or bewildered, dark or kind, That not the eye of God may know Which motion is of true estate And which a twisted runagate Of all the farings of my mind. And which has honesty for mate. Only my love for you is clean Of 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. 26 FOR A GUEST ROOM All words are said, And may it fall That, crowning these, You here shall find A friendly bed, A sheltering wall. Your body's ease, A quiet mind. May you forget In happy sleep The world that still You hold as friend, And may it yet Be ours to keep Your friendly will To the world's end. For he is blest Who, fixed to shun All evil, when The worst is known, Counts, east and west. When life is done, His debts to men In love alone. 27 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 days When song was at the flood, and thence I took A 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 word Was durable above the lives of men. For reading there that quiet record made Of skies and hills, domestic hours, and free Traffic of friends, and song, and duty paid, I touched the wings of immortality. 28 THE OLD WARRIOR Sorrow has come to me, Making the world to be Of sunken cheek ; Faded my fields, and of Names that were most to love, I dare not speak. Would that my soul were blind. Since beauty brings to mind All that is done, Saying, " How gladly you Walked with your chosen few Under my sun," I am an alien now ; Tell me, good stranger, how Best may be borne His grief who comes at night To his own window-light Friendless, forlorn. No. I will pass. Again Of my delight in men Nothing shall tell. Now is my travel where My lost companions fare ; Onward. Farewell. 29 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 wise As peace is wise. Then, greatly though my heart with pity moves For dear imperilled loves, I somehow know That death is friendly so, A comfortable spirit ; one who takes Long 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 ? 30 THE MIDLANDS Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky Deep as the bedded violets that fill March woods with dusky passion. As I lie Abed between cool walls I watch the host Ol the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain, And drowsily the habit of these most Beloved 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 mist Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light, Happy with many a yeoman melodist : I see the little roads of twinkling white Busy with fieldward teams and market gear Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell The 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 rows Of ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower, I see the lissom husbandman who knows Deep in his heart the beauty of his power, As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids on The harvest home. I hear the rickyard fill 31 With 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 planned By 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 keep Their beauty still where since Plantagenet Have 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 sun Broke 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 wing Brushes the night, and all again is still, And, from this land of worship that I sing, I turn to sleep, content that from my sires I draw the blood of England's midmost shires. 32 PLOUGH The snows are come in early state. And love shall now go desolate If we should keep too close a gate. Over the woods a splendour falls Of death, and grey are the Gloucester walls. And grey the skies for burials. But secret in the falling snow I see the patient ploughman go, And watch the quiet furrows grow. 33 1 INSCRIPTION FOR A WAR MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN They nothing feared whose names I celebrate. Greater than death they died ; and their estate Is here on Cotswold comradely to live Upon your lips in every draught I give 34 COTSWOLD LOVE Blue skies are over Cotswold And April snows go by, The lasses turn their ribbons For April's in the sky, And April is the season When Sabbath girls are dressed. From Rodboro' to Campden, In all their silken best. An ankle is a marvel When first the buds are brown. And not a lass but knows it From Stow to Gloucester town. And not a girl goes walking Along the Cotswold lanes But knows men's eyes in April Are 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 Amberley With skies of April blue. And Cotswold girls are briding With slyly tilted shoe. 35 RICHES The riches of the world have been Magnificently told ; The caravans of Sheba's queen, The chests of Tyrian gold, And Alexander's dusky spears. And Solomon his mines, Jerusalems of laurelled seers, And gospels of divines. But these are ghosts and foreign things When meadow grass is mown On Cotswold, where my summer sings Her cottage of grey stone. And no theologies have made So quick a Paradise As this my Cotswold corner laid Under the Cotswold skies. 36 LEGACY When twice a hundred years have gone Across my Cotswold eaves. And still the woods of Sapperton Make summer of green leaves, Come then and sing what song you will. You lovers of new time. But sometimes on my Cotswold hill Renew my Cotswold rhyme. Make me a temple on this ground Not built of mortal stone, But sprung from unforgotten sound Of song my blood has known, So shall my tale not be of dust Chilled in a common urn, While proudly through your younger lust My testament shall burn. 37 COTTAGE SONG Morning and night I bring Clear water from the spring, And through the lyric noon I hear the larks in tune, And when the shadows fall There's providence for all. My garden is alight With currants red and white And my blue curtains peep On starry courses deep. When down her silver tides The moon on Cotswold rides. My path of paven grey Is thoroughfare all day For fellowship, till time Bids us with candles climb The little whitewashed stair Above my lavender. 38 THE COTSWOLD FARMERS Sometimes the ghosts forgotten go Along the hill-top way, And with long scythes of silver mow Meadows of moonlit hay, Until the cocks of Cotswold crow The coming of the day. There's Tony Turkletob who died When he could drink no more, And Uncle Heritage, the pride Of eighteen-twenty-four. And Ebenezer Barleytide, And others half a score. They fold in phantom pens, and plough Furrows without a share. And one will milk a faery cow, And one will stare and stare. And whistle ghostly tunes that now Are not sung anywhere. The moon goes down on Oakridge lea, The other world's astir. The Cotswold farmers silently Go back to sepulchre. The sleeping watchdogs wake, and see No ghostly harvester. 39 OLD CROW The bird in the corn Is a marvellous crow. He was laid and was born In the season of snow ; And he chants his old catches Like a ghost under hatches. He comes from the shades Of his wood very early. And works in the blades Of the wheat and the barley. And he's happy, although He's a grumbleton crow. The larks have devices For sunny delight, And the sheep in their fleeces Are woolly and white ; But these things are the scorn Of the bird in the corn. And morning goes by, And still he is there. Till a rose in the sky Calls him back to his lair In the boughs where the gloom Is a part of his plume. 40 But the boy in the lane With his gun, by and by, To the heart of the grain Will narrowly spy. And the twilight will come. And no crow will fly home. 41 MOONLIT APPLES At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows, And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes A cloud on the moon in the autumn night. A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then There is no sound at the top of the house of men Or mice ; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again Dapples the apples with deep-sea light. They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams ; On the sagging floor ; they gather the silver streams Out 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 keep Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep On moon-washed apples of wonder. 42 OUT OF THE MOON Merely the moonlight Piercing the boughs of my may-tree, Falling upon my ferns ; Only the night Touching my ferns with silver bloom Of sea-flowers here in the sleeping city — • And suddenly the imagination burns With knowledge of many a dark significant doom Out of antiquity. Sung to hushed halls by troubadours Who knew the ways of the heart because they had seen The moonlight washing the garden's deeper green To silver flowers. Falling with tidings out of the moon, as now It falls on the ferns under my may-tree bough. 43 ELIZABETH ANN This is the tale of Elizabeth Ann, Who went away with her fancy man. Ann was a girl who hadn't a gown As fine as the ladies who walk the town. All day long from seven to six Ann was polishing candlesticks, For Bishops and crapulous Millionaires To buy for their altars or bed-chambers. And youth in a year and a year will pass. But there's never an end of polishing brass. All day long from seven to six — Seventy thousand candlesticks. So frail and lewd Elizabeth Ann Went away with her fancy man. You Bishops and crapulous Millionaires, Give her your charity, give her your prayers. 44 REVERIE Here in the unfrequented noon. In the green hermitage of June, While overhead a rustling wing Minds me of birds that do not sing Until the cooler eve rewakes The service of melodious brakes, And thoughts are lonely rangers, here. In shelter of the primrose year, I curiously meditate Our brief and variable state. I think how many are alive Who better in the grave would thrive. If some so long a sleep might give Better instruction how to live ; I think what splendours had been said By darlings now untimely dead Had death been wise in choice of these. And made exchange of obsequies. I think what loss to government It is that good men are content, Well knowing that an evil will Is folly-stricken too, and still Itself considers only wise For all rebukes and surgeries. That evil men should raise their pride To place and fortune undefied. 45 I think how daily we beguile Our brains, that yet a little while And all our congregated schemes And our perplexity of dreams, Shall come to whole and perfect state. I think, however long the date Of life may be, at last the sun Shall pass upon campaigns undone. I look upon the world and see A world colonial to me. Whereof I am the architect. And principal and intellect, A world whose shape and savour spring Out of my lone imagining, A world whose nature is subdued For ever to my instant mood. And only beautiful can be Because of beauty is in me. And then I know that every mind Among the millions of my kind Makes earth his own particular And privately created star. That earth has thus no single state. Being every man articulate. Till thought has no horizon then I try to think how many men There are to make an earth apart In symbol of the urgent heart, For there are forty in my street. And seven hundred more in Greet, 46 And families at Luton Hoo, And there are men in China, too. And what immensity is this That is but a parenthesis Set in a little human thought, Before the body comes to naught. There at the bottom of the copse I see a field of turnip tops, I see the cropping cattle pass There 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 away Into blue beauty, and I lay All this as quartered on a sphere Hung huge in space, a thing of fear Vast as the circle of the sky Completed to the astonished eye ; And then I think that all I see, Whereof I frame immensity Globed for amazement, is no more Than a shire's corner, and that four Great shires being ten times multiplied Are small on the Atlantic tide As an emerald on a silver bowl . . . And the Atlantic to the whole Sweep of this tributary star That is our earth is but . . . and far 47 Through dreadful space the outmeasured mind Seeks to conceive the unconfined. I think of Time. How, when his wing Composes all our quarrelling In some green corner where May leaves Are loud with blackbirds on all eves, And all the dust that was our bones Is underneath memorial stones. Then shall old jealousies, while we Lie side by side most quietly. Be but oblivion's fools, and still When curious pilgrims ask — " What skill Had 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 appear Fellows of jealousy and fear ; Having single faith, and natural wit To measure truth and cherish it. Yet, strangely, when they build in thought. Twisting the honesty that wrought In the straight motion of the heart, Into its feigning counterpart That is the brain's betrayal of The simple purposes of love ; And what yet sorrier decline Is theirs when, eager to confine No more within the silent brain 48 Its habit, thought seeks birth again In speech, as honesty has done In thought ; then even what had won From heart to brain fades and is lost In this pretended pentecost. This their forlorn captivity To speech, who have not learnt to be Lords of the word, nor kept among The sterner climates of the tongue . . . So truth is in their hearts, and then Falls to confusion in the brain. And, fading through this mid-eclipse, It perishes upon the lips. I think how year by year I still Find working in my dauntless will Sudden timidities that are Merely the echo of some far Forgotten tyrannies that came To youth's bewilderment and shame ; That yet a magisterial gown. Being worn by one of no renown And half a generation less In years than I, can dispossess Something my circumspecter mood Of excellence and quietude, And if a Bishop speaks to me I tremble with propriety. I think how strange it is that he Who goes most comradely with me D 49 In beauty's worship, takes delight In shows that to my eager sight Are shadows and unmanifest, While beauty's favour and behest To me in motion are revealed That is against his vision sealed ; Yet is our hearts' necessity Not twofold, but a common plea That chaos come to continence, Whereto the arch-intelligence Richly in divers voices makes Its answer for our several sakes. I see the disinherited And long procession of the dead. Who have in generations gone Held fugitive dominion Of this same primrose pasturage That is my momentary wage. I see two lovers move along These shadowed silences of song, With spring in blossom at their feet More incommunicably sweet To their hearts' more magnificence, Than to the common courts of sense. Till joy his tardy closure tells With coming of the curfew bells. I see the knights of spur and sword Crossing the little woodland ford, Riding in ghostly cavalcade On some unchronicled crusade. 50 I see the silent hunter go In cloth of yeoman green, with bow Strung, and a quiver of grey wings. I see the little herd who brings His cattle homeward, while his sire Makes bivouac in Warwickshire This night, the liege and loyal man Of Cavalier or Puritan. And as they pass, the nameless dead, Unsung, uncelebrate, and sped Upon an unremembered hour As any twelvemonth fallen flower, I think how strangely yet they live For all their days were fugitive. I think how soon we too shall be A story with our ancestry. I think what miracle has been That you whose love among this green Delightful solitude is still The 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 tide That was my season, to abide On earth also ; that we should be Charted across eternity To one elect and happy day Of yellow primroses in May. 51 The clock is calling five o'clock, And Nonesopretty brings her flock To fold, and Tom comes back from town With hose and ribbons worth a crown. And duly at The Old King's Head They gather now to daily bread, And I no more may meditate Our brief and variable state. 5^ TO ALICE MEYNELL I TOO have known my mutinies. Played with improvident desires, Gone indolently vain as these Whose lips from undistinguished choirs Mock at the music of our sires. I too have erred in thought. In hours When needy life forbade me bring To song the brain's unravished powers, Then had it been a temperate thing Loosely to pluck an easy string. Yet thought has been, poor profligate. Sin's period. Through dear and long Obedience I learn to hate Unhappy lethargies that wrong The larger loyalties of song And you upon your slender reed. Most exquisitely tuned, have made For every singing heart a creed. And I have heard ; and I have played My lonely music unafraid. Knowing that still a friendly few, Turning aside from turbulence, Cherish the difficult phrase, the due Bridals of disembodied sense With the new word's magnificence. 53 PENANCES These are my happy penances. To make Beauty without a covenant ; to take Measure of time only because I know That in death's market-place I still shall owe Service to beauty that shall not be done ; To know that beauty's doctrine is begun And makes a close in sacrifice ; to find In beauty's courts the unappeasable mind. 34 Nineteen of these poems have been published by Mr. C. W. Beaumont in an edition limited to two hundred and seventy copies. My thanks are due to the Editors of The A nnual of New Poetry, The Birmingham Gazette and Express, Country Life, Everyman, The New Witness, The Satur- day Review, The Sphere and To-Day, in which publica- tions some of the poems have appeared. PRINTED BY BAZELL, WATSON AJTO VHTEY, LD,, LONDON AND AYI£SBUBT. Tides by John Drink- water Sidg- wick and Jack- son, Ltd. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. JAN 2 -1W1 m Form L9-100m-9,'52(A3105)444 THE LIBRARY ^ OF CALIFOi Juuo AI-JGELES PR Drinlovater - 6007 Tides. D83t . 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