SONG >F SPEED W. E. HENLEY LONDON: DAVID NUTT THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGu LA JOLLA. CALIFORNIA >J Song of Speed A SONG OF SPEED LONDON Published by DtAflD NUTT AT THE SIGN OF THE PHCENIX LONG ACRE 1903 Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE To ALFRED HJRMSWQRTH Now there is nothing gives a man such spirit, Leavening his blood as cayenne doth a curry, As going at full speed. . . . What a delightful thing V a turn-pike road! So smooth, so level, such a means of shaving The Earth as scarce the Eagle in the broad Air can accomplish. . . . BYRON. A SONG OF SPEED In the Eye of the Lord, By the Will of the Lord, Out of the infinite Bounty dissembled, Since Time began, In the Hand of the Lord, Speed ! Speed as a chattel : Speed in your daily Account and economy ; One with your wines, And your books, and your bath- Speed ! io A SONG OF SPEED Speed as a rapture : An integral element In the new scheme of Life Which the good Lord, the Master, Wills well you should frame In the light of His laugh And His great, His ungrudging, His reasoned benevolence Speed ! Speed, and the range of God's skies, Distances, changes, surprises ; Speed, and the hug of God's winds And the play of God's airs, Beautiful, whimsical, wonderful ; Clean, fierce and clean, With a thrust in the throat And a rush at the nostrils ; Keen, with a far-away A SONG OF SPEED n Taste of inhuman Unviolable Vasts, Where the Stars of the Morning Go singing together For joy in the dazzling, Naked, unvisited Emperies of Space ! And the heart in your breast Sings, as the World Slips past like a dream Of Speed- Speed on the Knees of the Lord. Speed Speed, and a world of new havings : Red-rushing splendours Of Dawn ; the disturbing, Long-drawn, tumultuous 12 A SONG OF SPEED Passions of Sunset ; And, these twain between, The desperate, great anarchies, The matchless serenitudes, The magical, ravishing, Changing, transforming Trances of Daylight. Speed, and the lap Of the Land that you know For the first time (it seems), As you push through the maze Of her beauties and privacies, Terrors, astonishments : Heath, common, pinewood, Downland and river- scape, Cherry-orchards, water-meads, Forests and stubbles, Oak-temples, daisy-spreads, A SONG OF SPEED 13 Vistas of harebell, Hills of the ruggedest, Vales of the comeliest ; Barrows and cromlechs, Ancestral ossuaries, Whence (you may fancy) The troubled grey ghosts Of your forefathers peer, As you swoop down on them, With a wild, wondering Pride in their seed ; Placid and sylvan, Stray churchyards that, falling Into the village-streets, Keep the poor living Still in a reverent And kindly communion With their familiar i 4 A SONG OF SPEED And passioning dead ; Brooks with fat, comforting, Sociable sallows Fenced, and still, sleepy-faced Lengths of Canal, Where the one thing alive Is the horse on the tow-path, Tugging in dreams At the long barge that hangs Like a dream on his collar ; Secular avenues, Noble alignments Of Elms, since a century Hailing the Dawns And exalting the Sunsets ; Beech-woods that burn out The life in their leafage, And figure the death A SONG OF SPEED 15 Of the Year in a glory Of colour and fire ; Roads, where the stalwart Soldier of Caesar Put by his bread And his garlic, and, girding His conquering sword To his unconquered thigh, Lay down in his armour, And went to his Gods By the way that he 'd made. Then the miraculous Pageant that shows How this Earth of our loves And our dreams and our dead Presses unwitting Back to the sunless, Unsouled, disfeatured 1 6 A SONG OF SPEED Filth of the Prime : Brilliant, enchanting Visions of Summer, Somnolent, stately, Gravid and satisfied ; And Autumn, his hands Full of apples ; and Winter, The old Tyrant we love For the sake of his kinswoman, Spring with her violets, Spring with her lambs, Spring with her old, Irresistible mandate, The joyous, the reckless Compeller of Wombs, Spring ! And with these Smoke, Rain, and Mist In their subtle, fantastical A SONG OF SPEED 17 Moodiness ; Gardens And Woods in their pleasure, Their pride of increase, And their helpless and sorrowful Pomp of decay ! Last, the grey Sea, The Antient of Days, With his secret as new After thousands of years As it was to the old, The alert, aboriginal Father of Ships ; And Speed ! Speed you conjure With a crook of your finger ; Speed which your touch On a core, on a master-bit, Breeds for your use ; 1 8 A SONG OF SPEED As Man's hand on a tiller Gives brain to a boat ; As Man's hand on a pen Turns the poor, workaday Labourers of language Straight into insolent, High, living Song ; Speed Speed in the Lap of the Lord ! Trim, naked Speed ! Speed, and a victory Snatched in the teeth Of the Masters of Darkness. For the antient, invincible Spirit of Man, Stern-set, adventurous, Dreaming things, doing things ; A SONG OF SPEED 19 Strong with a strength Won from tremendous And desperate vicissitudes, Out of unnumbered, Unstoried experiences ; Fighting the one fight, The last and the best fight, Hard, and by inchmeal Winning it steadily, Corner by corner, Here a snatch, there a bit, Over the black, irresistible Legions of Death, The impassive, unfaltering Captains and Companies Of the primordial Powers of the Princedoms And Thrones of the Grave ; 20 A SONG OF SPEED Strongly and sternly Asserts and approves itself, Mightily turns To its task of attesting Its right to a figment, A shadow of Deity, Full in the Face of the Lord. For the Heart of Man Tears at Man's destiny Ever ; and ever Makes what it may Of his wretched occasions, His infinitesimal Portion in Time, His merely incomputable Shred of Eternity, His ninety-ninth part, A SONG OF SPEED 21 If you count by God's clock, Of a second on Earth In the lust and the pride Of God's garment, the Flesh. So Woman and War, And the Child (the unspeakable Promise and proof Of a right immortality), Learning and Drink, And Money and Song, Ships, Folios, and Horses, The craft of the Healer, The worship of God And things done to the instant Delight of the Devil, And all, all that tends To his hard-to-come, swift-to-go Glory, are tested, 22 A SONG OF SPEED Gutted, exhausted, Chucked down the draught ; And the quest, the pursuit, The attack and the conquest, Of the Unknown goes on Goes on in the Joy of the Lord. For, beaten in Time From the start to the finish, So utterly beaten Appeal is impossible, The Spirit of Man, Enquiring, aspiring; Passionately scaling Ice-bitten altitudes, Neighboured of none Save the austere, Unapproachable Stars ; A SONG OF SPEED 23 Scapes from its destiny, Holds on its course Of attent and discovery, So as to leave, When the Lord takes it back to Him, The lot of the World Something the prouder, Something the loftier, Something the braver, For that it hath done : Something the good man, The wise man, the strong man, Poet or Soldier, Maker of Empires Or Broker of Diamonds, Preacher or Surgeon, Or the Inventor : 24 A SONG OF SPEED Artist in elements, Expert in substances, Strengths, frangibilities, Points of combustion, Points of resistance : These, and an hundred, A thousand besides Of the right, the authentic Talon and pinion, Snapping up in a flash After years of endeavour One of God's messages, Do to Man's solacing, Pride, and magnificence, Under the Feet of the Lord. Hence the Mercedes ! Look at her. Shapeless ? A SONG OF SPEED 25 Unhandsome ? Unpaintable ? Yes ; but the strength Of some seventy-five horses : Seventy-five puissant, Superb fellow-creatures : Is summed and contained In her pipes and her cylinders. Mind after mind, On fire with discovery, Filled full with the fruits Of an hundred fat years, And mad with the dreams And desires of To-Day Have toiled themselves dull To achieve her components. She can stop in a foot's length ; She steers as it were With a hair you might pluck 26 A SONG OF SPEED From your Mistress's nape ; She crawls, if you please So to lightly her virtue, At your Mistress's pace When she goes for a stroll, Which is partly on Earth And partly, She dreaming Of You, in broad Heaven. Yet ask but a sign, But a proof of her quality, Handle her valves, Her essentials, her secrets, And she runs down the birds (You can catch them like flies As, poor wretches, they race from you !) ; Ay, and becomes, As the Spirit and Mind A SONG OF SPEED 27 Of God's nearest approach To Himself hath so willed it, The Angel of Speed Speed in the Laugh of the Lord. There be good things, Good things innumerable, Held like an alms In the clutch of the Master ; And at times, when He feels That His creatures are doing Their best to assert Their part in His dream, He loosens His fist And a miracle slips from it Into the hands Of His adepts and servants. Thus, in late years, 28 A SONG OF SPEED Smiling as Smiling as KELVIN, And RODIN and TOLSTOI, And LISTER and STRAUSS (That with his microbes, This with his fiddles !), Tugged at His fingers And worked out His meanings, Thus hath He slackened His grasp, and this Thing, This marvellous Mercedes, This triumphing contrivance, Comes to make other Man's life than she found it : The Earth for her tyres As the Sea for his keels ; Alike in the old lands, Enseamed with the wheel-ways A SONG OF SPEED 29 Of thousands of dusty And dim generations, And in the new countries, Whose Winds blow unbreathed, And their Lights are first-hand From our Father, the Sun. Thus the Mercedes Comes, O, she comes, This astonishing device, This amazing Mercedes, With Speed- Speed in the Fear of the Lord. So in the Eye of the Lord, Under the Feet of the Lord, Out of the measureless Goodness and grace In the Hand of the Lord. 30 A SONG OF SPEED Speed! Speed on the Knees, Speed In the Laugh, Speed by the Gift, Speed in the 'Trust of the Lord Speed! A LIST OF MR. HEN LETS WORKS WORKS BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY PUBLISHED BY DAVID NUTT MR. WILLIAM ARCHER, in commending A Song of Speed * this imperishable utterance,' as he calls it writes thus of Mr. Henley's poetry : ' Not often in a lifetime does one come upon literature so unmistakably original and masterly. Until I opened his little Book of Verses, I had thought of Mr. Henley merely as a weaver of ingenious ballads : but ever since, I have smiled at the critics who wag their solemn heads from time to time over the imminent extinction of the great race of English poets.' And again : 'All life, in truth, is to Mr. Henley a great romance, beautiful, terribly alluring, into which it is his very religion to fling himself with a passionate gusto. . . . How many eyes dimmed with the films of custom and pre-occupation have his London Voluntaries unsealed ? ' A BOOK OF VERSES IN HOSPITAL: RHYMES AND RHYTHMS. LIFE AND DEATH (ECHOES). BRIC-A-BRAC: BALLADS, RONDELS, SONNETS, QUATORZAINS AND RONDEAUS. Fifth Edition. i6mo. Cloth. With Etched Title-page Vignette of the Old Infirmary, Edinburgh by W. HOLE, R.S.A. Price 2s. 6d. ?iet. MR. HENLEY'S WORKS LONDON VOLUNTARIES AND OTHER VERSES Being a Second Edition, with additions of the volume entitled ' The Song of the Sword.' i6mo. Cloth, zs. 6d. net. %* ' Mr. Henley is a poet of the new era, the era in which the scientific conceptions popularly classed as Darwinian are so profoundly modifying men's ideas, not merely on religion, but on morals and society as well. His Song of the Sword could not have been written in any age except the age which has produced Darwin, and Wallace, and Spencer.' The Echo. The above-named Collections (A Book of Verses and London Voluntaries) are reprinted, with Omissions, Additions, and Changes of Text, in POEMS COLLECTED EDITION Comprising the Matter of his Previous Volumes, A Book of Verses and London Voluntaries, with Omissions, Additions, and Changes. Small demy 8vo. Printed at the Constable Press on Special Paper. With Photogravure of the Author's Bust by Rodin. Fifth Issue. Cloth, top gilt, 65-. 2 MR. HENLEY'S WORKS HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER A LYRIC SEQUENCE; AND OTHER POEMS Small demy 8vo. Printed at the Constable Press on Special Paper. Second Edition. 1901. Cloth, top gilt, 6^. FOR ENGLAND'S SAKE VERSES AND SONGS IN TIME OF WAR Demy 8vo. In purple and gold wrapper, is. net. is. id. post free. VIEWS AND REVIEWS ESSAYS IN APPRECIATION VOL. I. LITERATURE i6mo. xu + 235 pages. Printed by CONSTABLE. Cloth, top gilt. Price 55. net. CONTENTS : Dickens Thackeray Disraeli Dumas Meredith Byron Hugo Heine Arnold Rabelais Shakespeare Herrick Borrow Balzac Tennyson Boswell Congreve Richardson Tolstoi Fielding etc. etc. VOL. II. ART i6mo. xvi + 174 pages. Printed by CONSTABLE. Cloth, top gilt. Price 5-r. net. CONTENTS : A Note on Romanticism Profies Romantiques (Delacroix, Diaz, Troyon, Daubigny, Millet, Monticelli, etc.) Five Dutchmen (Bosboom, Israels, Jac. Maris, Mauve, Matthys Maris) Some Landscape Painters (Nasmyth, Turner, Constable, C. Lawson, Thomson of Duddingston, etc. etc.) Four Portrait Painters (Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, Raeburn) Two Moderns (Charles Keene, Auguste Rodin) A Critic of Art : R. A. M. Stevenson. 3 MR. HEN LETS WORKS 1 The finest collection of Patriotic Poetry in (he language.' LYRA HEROICA AN ANTHOLOGY SELECTED FROM THE BEST ENGLISH VERSE OF THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, EIGHTEENTH, AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES The speciality of this Collection is that all the poems chosen are commemorative of heroic action or illustrative of heroic sentiment. Published in two forms : (a) Library Edition of Lyra Heroica, printed on laid paper, and forming a handsome volume, crown 8vo, of xviii + 362 pp., bound in stamped gilt cloth, edges uncut, 35. 6d. (3rd edition), (b) School Edition, with Notes by L. COPE-CORNFORD and W. W. GREG, i2mo, cloth, 3^. (6th issue). A few Large Paper Copies of the first edition, printed on the best Dutch handmade paper, and bound in Japanese boards, may still be had, price 28$. net. The book will not be re-issued in this form.