8 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BY JOHN DAVIDSON NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY LONDON JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD l8 9 S Copyright, 1895, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. Sntbtrstts JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. CONTENTS. PAGE NEW YEAR'S DAY 3 ST. VALENTINE'S EVE 19 GOOD FRIDAY 37 ST. GEORGE'S DAY 49 MAY DAY 75 MIDSUMMER DAY 91 ST. SWITHIN'S DAY 105 LAMMAS 121 MICHAELMAS 159 ALL HALLOW'S EVE 179 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY 189 CHRISTMAS EVE 209 20831 70 NEW YEAR'S DAY NEW YEAR'S DAY BASIL SANDY BRIAN BRIAN THIS trade that we ply with the pen, Unworthy of heroes or men, Assorts ever less with my humour : Mere tongues in the raiment of rumour, We review and report and invent : In drivel our virtue is spent. BASIL From the muted tread of the feet, And the slackening wheels, I know 3 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES The air is hung with snow, And carpeted the street. BRIAN Ambition, and passion, and power Come out of the north and the west, Every year, every day, every hour, Into Fleet Street to fashion their best : They would shape what is noble and wise ; They must live by a traffic in lies. BASIL Sweet rivers of living blood Poured into an ocean of mud. BRIAN Newspapers flap o'er the land, And darken the face of the sky ; 4 NEW YEAR'S DAY A covey of dragons, wide-vanned, Circle-wise clanging, they fly. No nightingale sings ; overhead The lark never mounts to the sun ; Beauty and truth are dead, And the end of the world begun. BASIL Far away in a valley of peace, Swaddled in emerald, The snow-happed primroses Tarry till spring has called. SANDY And here where the Fleet once tripped In its ditch to the drumlie Thames, We journalists, haughty though hipped, Are calling our calling names. 5 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BRIAN But you know, as I know, that our craft Is the meanest in act and intention ; You know that the Time-spirit laughed In his sleeve at the Dutchman's invention : Old Coster of Haarlem, I mean, Whose print was the first ever seen. BASIL I can hear in that valley of mine, Loud-voiced on a leafless spray, How the robin sings, flushed with his holly wine, Of the moonlight blossoms of May. BRIAN These dragons that hide the sun ! The serpents flying and fiery, 6 NEW YEAR'S DAY That knotted a nation in one Writhen mass : the scaly and wirey, And flame-breathing terror the saint Still slays on our coins ; the thing That wandering artists paint Where creaking sign-boards swing; Gargouille, famous in France, That the fire at Rouen slew ; The dragon Petrarca's lance In Laura's defence overthrew; The sea-beast Perseus killed ; Proserpine's triple team ; Tarasque whose blood was spilled In Rhone's empurpled stream ; For far-flying strength and ire And venom might never withstand The least of the flourishing quire In Fleet Street stalled and the Strand. 7 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BASIL Through the opening gate of the year Sunbeams and snowdrops peer. BRIAN Fed by us here and groomed In this pestilent reeking stye, These dragons I say have doomed Religion and poetry. SANDY They may doom till the moon forsakes Her dark, star-daisied lawn ; They may doom till doomsday breaks With angels to trumpet the dawn ; While love enchants the young, And the old have sorrow and care, 8 NEW YEAR'S DAY No song shall be unsung, Unprayed no prayer. BRIAN Leaving the dragons alone I say what the prophet says The tyrant on the throne Is the morning and evening press. In all the land his spies, A little folk but strong, A second plague of flies, Buzz of the right and the wrong ; Swarm in our ears and our eyes News and scandal and lies. Men stand upon the brink Of a precipice every day ; A drop of printer's ink Their poise may overweigh; 9 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES So they think what the papers think, And do as the papers say. Who reads the daily press, His soul's lost here and now; Who writes for it is less Than the beast that tugs a plough. BASIL Round happy household fires I hear sweet voices sing ; And the lamb's-wool of our sires, Spiced ale, is a draught for a king. SANDY Now, journalist, perpend. You soil your bread and butter : Shall guttersnipes pretend To satirise the gutter? 10 NEW YEAR'S DAY Are parsons ever seen To butt against the steeple? Brian, I fear you 've been With very superior people. We, the valour and brains of the age, The brilliant, adventurous souls, No longer in berserkir rage BRIAN Spare us the berserkir rage ! SANDY Not I ; the phrase outrolls As freshly to me this hour, As when on my boyish sense It struck like a trumpet-blare. You may cringe and cower To critical pretence ; FLEET STREET ECLOGUES If people will go bare They may count on bloody backs ; Cold are the hearts that care If a girl be blue-eyed or black-eyed ; Only to souls of hacks Are phrases hackneyed. When the damsel had her bower, And the lady kept her state, The splendour and the power That made adventure great, Were not more strong and splendid Than the subtle might we wield ; Though chivalry be ended, There are champions in the field. Nor are we warriors giftless ; Deep magic 's in our stroke ; Ours are the shoes of swiftness, And ours the darkling cloak ; 12 NEW YEAR'S DAY We fear no golden charmer; We dread no form of words; We wear enchanted armour ; We \vield enchanted swords. To us the hour belongs ; Our daily victory is O'er hydras, giant wrongs, And dwarf iniquities. We also may behold, Before our boys are old, When time shall have unfurled His heavy hanging mists, How the future of the world Was shaped by journalists. BASIL Sing hey for the journalist ! He is your true soldado ; 13 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Both time and chance he '11 lead a dance, And find out Eldorado. BRIAN Sing hey for Eldorado ! BASIL A catch, a catch, we '11 trowl ! BRIAN Sing hey for Eldorado ! SANDY And bring a mazer-bowl, With ale a-frothing brimmed. BRIAN We may not rest without it. 14 NEW YEAR'S DAY SANDY With dainty ribbons trimmed, And love-birds carved about it. BASIL With roasted apples scented, And spiced with cloves and mace. BRIAN Praise him who ale invented ! SANDY In heaven he has a place ! BASIL Such a camarado Heaven's hostel never missed ! BRIAN Sing hey for Eldorado ! FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY Sing ho for the journalist ! BASIL We drink them and we sing them In mighty humming ale. BRIAN May fate together bring them ! SANDY Amen! BASIL Waas hael ! BRIAN Drinc hael ! 16 ST VALENTINE'S EVE ST VALENTINE'S EVE MENZIES PERCY PERCY A-MOPING always, journalist? For shame ! Though this be Lent no journalist need mope: The blazing Candlemas was foul and wet ; We shall be happy yet : Sweethearts and crocuses together ope. MENZIES Assail, console me not in jest or trope : Give me your golden silence ; or if speech Must wake a ripple on the stagnant gloom '9 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Of this lamp-darkened room, Speak blasphemy, and let the mandrake screech. PERCY Dread words 'tis Ercles' vein and fit to teach The mandrake's self new ecstasies of woe, Have passed my lips in blame of God and man. Now surely nothing can Constrain my soul serene to riot so. MENZIES But you are old ; the tide of life is low ; No wind can raise a tempest in a cup : Easy it is for withered nerves and veins, Parched hearts and barren brains To be serene and give life's question up. 20 ST VALENTINE'S EVE PERCY Although no longer chamber-doors I dup For willing maids (that never conquered me); Though unimpassioned be my tranquil mind, And all my force declined, My quenchless soul confronts its destiny. But tell me now what ghastly misery Peeps from the shadowy cupboard of your eye? This chastened month in white and gold is dressed, Lilies and snowdrops blessed : Be shriven by me as you were now to die ; Shrove-tide is come. 21 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES MENZIES Confessions purify. My skeletons I will uncupboard straight : And if you think me pitiful and weak, I pray you do not speak, But go and leave me lonely with my fate. My daily toil has irked me much of late : Of books that never will be read I write What, save the anxious authors, no one reads, And chronicle the deeds Of Fashion, Crime, and Council, day and night. Once in a quarter when my heart is light I write a poem in a weekly sheet, To lie in clubs on tables crowned with baize, 22 ST VALENTINE'S EVE Immortal for seven days : This is the life my echoing years repeat. PERCY The very round my aged steps still beat ! MENZIES And brooding thus on my ephemeral flowers That smoulder in the wilderness, I thought, By envy sore distraught, Of amaranths that burn in lordly bowers, Of men divinely blessed with leisured hours, And all the savage in my blood was roused. I cursed the father who begot me poor, The patient womb that bore 2 3 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Me, last often, ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-housed; I cursed the barren common where I browsed And sickened on the arid mental fare The state has sown broad-cast ; I cursed the strain Whence sprang my blood and brain Frugal and dry ; I cursed myself the heir Of dreadful things that met me everywhere : Of uncouth nauseous vennels, smoky skies ; A chill and watery clime ; a thrifty race, Using all means of grace To save their souls and purses; lingering lies, Remnants of creeds and tags of party cries 24 ST VALENTINE'S EVE Scarecrows and rattles ; then I cursed this flesh, Which must be daily served with meat and drink, Which will not let me think, But holds me prisoner in the sexual mesh ; I cursed all being, and began afresh My education and my geniture, Which keep me running always from the goal, Or stranded on Time's shoal In naked speech, a sixpenny reviewer, A hungry parasite of literature. PERCY No reasoning can meet so fierce a mood. I '11 tell you of a journalist instead, These many winters dead, 25 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Who out of evil could distil the good. He found his lot untamable and rude, And sometimes ate what beggars had dis- dained Left at the donor's door. Once on a time A wanton youthful rhyme I read him with my tears and heart's blood stained, Wherein of Fate I bitterly complained. He praised my rhymes ; then said, 'The Poet's name Is overhallowed ; and the Statesman's praise Unearned ; unearned the bays That crown the Warrior; Beauty, Art, I blame For love alone deserves the meed of fame.' 26 ST VALENTINE'S EVE MENZIES I understand you not. PERCY Be still and mark. ' And so,' he said, ' though I am faint and old, High in my garret cold While on the pane Death's knuckles rattle stark, And hungry pangs keep sleep off in the dark, ' I think how brides and bridegrooms, many a pair, With human sanction, or all unavouched, Together softly couched, Wonder and throb in rapture ; how the care Of ways and means, the thought of whiten- ing hair, 27 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES ' Of trenchant wrinkles fade when night has set, And many a long-wed man and woman find The deepest peace of mind, Sweet and mysterious to each other yet. I think that I am still in Nature's debt, ' Scorned, disappointed, starving, bankrupt, old, Because I loved a lady in my youth, And was beloved in sooth. I think that all the horrors ever told Of tonsured men and women sable-stoled, ' Of long-drawn tortures wrought with subtle zest, Of war and massacre and martyrdom, Of slaves in Pagan Rome 28 ST VALENTINE'S EVE In Christian England, who begin to test The purpose of their state, to strike for rest ' And time to feel alive in : all the blight Of pain, age, madness, ravished inno- cence, Despair and impotence, The lofty anguish that affronts the light, And seems to fill the past with utter night, ' Is but Love's needful shadow : though the poles, The spangled zodiac, and the stars that beat In heaven's high Watling Street Their myriad rounds ; though every orb that rolls Lighting or lit, were filled with tortured souls, 29 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 1 If one man and one woman, heart and brain Entranced above all fear, above all doubt, Might wring their essence out, The groaning of a universe in pain Were as an undersong in Love's refrain. ' Then in a vision holy Time I see As one sweet bridal night, Earth softly spread One fragrant bridal bed, And all my unrest leaves me utterly : I sometimes feel almost that God may be.' MENZIES You touch me not. I, stretched upon the rack Of consciousness, still curse. Woman and love? I would be throned above 3 ST VALENTINE'S EVE Humanity. Yet were I God, alack ! I think that I should want my manhood back, Hating and loving limits PERCY Ah ! I know How ill you are. You shall to-morrow do What I now order you. At early dawn through London you must go Until you come where long black hedge- rows grow, With pink buds pearled, with here and there a tree, And gates and stiles; and watch good country folk ; And scent the spicy smoke 3 1 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Of withered weeds that burn where gardens be; And in a ditch perhaps a primrose see. The rooks shall stalk the plough, larks mount the skies, Blackbirds and speckled thrushes sing aloud, Hid in the warm white cloud Mantling the thorn, and far away shall rise The milky low of cows and farmyard cries. From windy heavens the climbing sun shall shine, And February greet you like a maid In russet-cloak arrayed ; And you shall take her for your mistress fine, And pluck a crocus for her valentine. 32 ST VALENTINE'S EVE MENZIES In russet-cloak arrayed with homespun smock And apple cheeks. PERCY I pray you do not mock. MENZIES I mock not, I shall see earth and be glad : London 's a darksome cell where men go mad. 33 GOOD-FRIDAY 35 GOOD-FRIDAY BASIL SANDY BRIAN MENZIES SANDY PFFF ! journalists ; the wind blows snell ! BRIAN To-day we freeze, to-morrow fry. BASIL And yesterday the black rain fell In sheets from London's smoky sky, Like water through a dirty sieve. 37 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES MENZIES March many weathers, as they say, In country nooks where proverbs live, And folk distinguish night from day. SANDY Well, we shall make a day of night : Behold with gules and or a fire Emblazoned, and a mellow light ; And things that journalists require. So let us open out our lore, And chat as snugly as the dead ; And damned be those who came before, And all our brilliant sayings said. BRIAN I love not brilliance ; give me words Of meadow-growth and garden plot, 38 GOOD-FRIDA Y Of larks and blackcaps ; gaudy birds, Gay flowers and jewels like me not. BASIL The age-end journalist it seems Can change his spots and turn his dress, For you are he whose copy teems With paradox and preciousness. BRIAN Last night I watched the evening star Outshine the moon it so excelled ; And since my thought has been afar With deep and simple things of eld. I heard in Fleet Street all the day, While traffic rolled and bells were rung, The sombre, wailing Tenebrae, The Sistine Miserere sung. 39 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES I saw great people make their Maunds ; The prelate leave his lofty seat; A kaiser break imperial bonds To serve the poor and wash their feet. I saw where countless hearts besought Pardon, for heaven's sweet peace athirst ; And through my soul the tender thought Of Mary, Virgin-mother pierced. I saw a city kneeling down, I saw the gonfanon unfurled, I saw the Pope in triple crown Stand up for God and bless the world. Templars I saw, and monks and nuns, I saw frail priests strong kings command ; I thought how great the world was once When Heaven and Hell were close at hand. 40 GOOD-FRIDA Y The gloaming came ; I ceased to ache, For in my veins the springtime welled, And soothed my fancy to forsake The deep and simple things of eld, And fly away where blackbirds sing, To wander free in dale and down. BASIL I would that I could see the spring ! SANDY Has any one been out of town ? MENZIES I have for weeks. BASIL For weeks ? By heaven What deeds heroic have you wrought FLEET STREET ECLOGUES That such a foretaste should be given Of Paradise? MENZIES I earned it not. 'T was accident : nor did I know Till now, that when they come to die Good press-men to the country go. BRIAN I think it 's true. SANDY And so do I. Heaven is to tread unpaven ground, And care no more for prose or rhyme. Dear Menzies, talk of sight and sound, And make us feel the blossom-time. 42 GOOD-FRIDA Y MENZIES Then let my fancy dive and hale Pearls from my wandering memory, Unstrung, unsorted, else I fail To see the spring and make you see. Already round the oak at eve Good people prate of gain and loss ; With folded hands some sit and grieve New mounds the green churchyard emboss. The osier-peelers ragged bands In osier-holts their business ply ; Like strokes of silver willow-wands On river banks a-bleaching lie. The patchwork sunshine nets the lea; The flitting shadows halt and pass ; 43 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Forlorn, the mossy humble-bee Lounges along the flowerless grass. With unseen smoke as pure as dew, Sweeter than love or lovers are, Wood-violets of watchet hue Their secret hearths betray afar. The vanguards of the daisies come, Summer's crusaders sanguine-stained, The only flowers that left their home When happiness in Eden reigned. They strayed abroad, old writers tell, Hardy and bold, east, west, south, north : Our guilty parents, when they fell, And flaming vengeance drove them forth, Their haggard eyes in vain to God, To all the stars of heaven turned ; 44 GOOD-FRIDA Y But when they saw where in the sod The golden-hearted daisies burned, Sweet thoughts that still within them dwelt Awoke, and tears embalmed their smart ; On Eden's daisies couched they felt They carried Eden in their heart. BASIL Oh, little flower so sweet and dear ! SANDY Oh, humanest of flowers that grow ! BRIAN Oh, little brave adventurer ! We human beings love you so ! 45 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES MENZIES We human beings love it so ! And when a maiden's dainty shoe Can cover nine, the gossips know The fulness of the Spring is due. BRIAN The gallant flower ! SANDY Its health ! Come, drink ! MENZIES Its health ! By heaven, in Highland style ! BASIL The daisy's health ! And now we '11 think Of Eden silently a while. ST GEORGE'S DAY 47 ST GEORGE'S DAY BASIL MENZIES PERCY BRIAN HERBERT SANDY HERBERT I HEAR the lark and linnet sing ; I hear the whitethroat's alto ring. MENZIES I hear the idle workman sigh ; I hear his hungry children cry. SANDY Still sad and brooding over ill : Why listen to discordant tones ? 4 49 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES HERBERT We dream, we sing, we drive the quill To keep the flesh upon our bones. Therefore what trade have we with wrongs, With ways and woes that spoil our songs ? MENZIES None, none ! Alas, there lies the sting ! We see, we feel, but cannot aid ; We hide our foolish heads and sing : We live, we die ; and all is said. HERBERT To wonder-worlds of old romance Our aching thoughts for solace run. BRIAN And some have stolen fire from France. 50 ST GEORGE'S DAY SANDY And some adore the Midnight sun. MENZIES I, too, for light the world explore, And, trembling, tread where angels trod ; Devout at every shrine adore, And follow after each new god. But by the altar everywhere I find the money-changer's stall ; And littering every temple-stair The sick and sore like maggots crawl. BASIL Your talk is vain ; your voice is hoarse. MENZIES I would they were as hoarse and vain FLEET STREET ECLOGUES As their wide-weltering spring and source Of helpless woe, of wrath insane. HERBERT Why will you hug the coast of Hell? BRIAN Why antedate the Judgment Day? MENZIES Nay, flout me not ; you know me well. BASIL Right, comrade ! Give your fancy way. MENZIES I cannot see the stars and flowers, Nor hear the lark's soprano ring, Because a ruddy darkness lowers 52 ST GEORGE'S DAY For ever, and the tempests sing. I see the strong coerce the weak, And labour overwrought rebel ; I hear the useless treadmill creek, The prisoner, cursing in his cell ; I see the loafer-burnished wall ; I hear the rotting match-girl whine ; I see the unslept switchman fall ; I hear the explosion in the mine ; I see along the heedless street The sandwichmen trudge through the mire ; I hear the tired quick-tripping feet Of sad, gay girls who ply for hire. BASIL To brood on feeble woe at length Must drive the sanest thinker mad ; Consider rather weal and strength. 53 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES MENZIES On what foundations do they stand ? I mark the sable ironclad In every sea ; in every land, An army, idling on the chain Of rusty peace that chafes and frets Its seven-leagued limbs, and bristled mane Of glittering bayonets ; The glowing blast, the fire-shot smoke Where guns are forged and armour-plate ; The mammoth hammer's pounding stroke ; The din of our dread iron date. And always divers undertones Within the roaring tempest throb The chink of gold, the labourer's groans, The infant's wail, the woman's sob. Hoarsely they beg of Fate to give 54 ST GEORGE'S DAY A little lightening of their woe, A little time to love, to live, A little time to think and know. I see where from the slums may rise Some unexpected dreadful dawn The gleam of steeled and scowling eyes, A flash of women's faces wan ! BASIL This is St. George's Day. MENZIES St. George? A wretched thief, I vow. HERBERT Nay, Menzies, you should rather say, St George for Merry England, now ! 55 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY That surely is a phantom cry, Hollow and vain for many years. MENZIES I hear the idle workmen sigh ; I hear the drip of women's tears. HERBERT I hear the lofty lark, The lowly nightingale. BASIL The Present is a dungeon dark Of social problems. Break the gaol ! Get out into the splendid Past Or bid the splendid Future hail. 56 ST GEORGE'S DAY MENZIES. Nor then, nor now, nor first, nor last, I know. The slave of ruthless Law, To me Time seems a dungeon vast Where Life lies rotting in the straw. BASIL I care not for your images Of Life and Law. I want to sing Of England and of Englishmen Who made our country what it is. HERBERT And I to praise the English Spring. PERCY St George for Merry England, then ! MENZIES There is no England now, I fear. 57 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BASIL No England, say you, and since when ? MENZIES Cockney and Celt and Scot are here, And Democrats and ' ans ' and ' ists ' In clubs and cliques and divers lists ; But now we have no Englishmen. BASIL You utter what you never felt, I know. By bog and mount and fen, No Saxon, Norman, Scot, or Celt I find, but only Englishmen. HERBERT In all our hedges roses bud. 58 ST GEORGE'S DAY BASIL And thought and speech are more than blood. HERBERT Away with spleen, and let us sing The praises of the English Spring ! BASIL In weeds of gold and purple hues Glad April bursts with piping news Of swifts and swallows come again, And of the tender pensive strain The bulfinch sings from bush to bush. PERCY. And oh ! the blackbird and the thrush Interpret as no master may The meaning of the night and day. 59 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY They catch the whispers of the breeze And weave them into melodies. BRIAN They utter for the hours that pass The purpose of their moments bright. BASIL They speak the passion of the grass, That grows so stoutly day and night. HERBERT St George for Merry England, then ! For we are all good Englishmen ! PERCY We stand as our forefathers stood For Liberty's and Conscience' sake. 60 ST GEORGE'S DAY HERBERT We are the sons of Robin Hood, The sons of Hereward the Wake. PERCY The sons of yeomen, English-fed, Ready to feast or drink or fight. HERBERT The sons of kings of Hal and Ned, Who kept their island right and tight. PERCY The sons of Cromwell's Ironsides, Who knew no king but God above. BASIL We are the sons of English brides, Who married Englishmen for love. 6! FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY Oh, now I see Fate's means and ends ! The Bruce and Wallace wight I ken, Who saved old Scotland from its friends, Were mighty northern Englishmen. BRIAN And Parnell, who so greatly fought Against a wanton useless yoke, With Fate inevitably wrought That Irish should be English folk. BASIL By bogland, highland, down, and fen, All Englishmen, all Englishmen ! MENZIES There is no England now, I say 62 ST GEORGE'S DAY BRIAN No England now! My grief, my grief! MENZIES We lie widespread, the dragon-prey Of any Cappadocian thief. In Arctic and Pacific seas We lounge and loaf; and either pole We reach with sprawling colonies Unwieldy limbs that lack a soul. BASIL St George for Greater England, then ! The Boreal and the Austral men ! They reverence the heroic roll Of Englishmen who sang and fought : They have a soul, a mighty soul, The soul of English speech and thought. 63 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY And when the soul of England slept BASIL St George for foolish England, then ! SANDY Lo ! Washington and Lincoln kept America for Englishmen ! BASIL Hurrah ! The English people reigns Across the wide Atlantic flood ! It could not bind itself in chains ! For Yankee blood is English blood. HERBERT And here the spring is queen In robes of white and green. 64 ST GEORGE'S DAY PERCY In chestnut sconces opening wide Tapers shall burn some fresh May morn. BRIAN And the elder brightens the highway side, And the briony binds the thorn. SANDY White is the snow of the leafless sloe, The saxifrage by the sedge, And white the lady-smocks a-row And sauce-alone in the hedge. BASIL England is in her Spring ; She only begins to be. Oh ! for an organ voice to sing The summer I can see ! s 65 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES But the Past is there ; and a mole may know, And a bat may understand. That we are the people wherever we go Kings by sea and land ! HERBERT And the spring is crowned and stoled In purple and in gold. PERCY Wherever light, wherever shade is, Gold and purple may be seen. BRIAN Gold and purple lords-and-ladies Tread a measure on the green. HERBERT In deserts where the wild wind blows Blossoms the magic haemony. 66 Sr GEORGE'S DAY PERCY Deep in the Chiltern woodland glows The purple pasque anemone. BASIL And England still grows great And never shall grow old ; Within our hands we hold The world's fate. MENZIES We hold the world's fate? The cry seems out of date. BASIL Not while a single Englishman Can work with English brains and bones ! 67 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Awaiting us since time began, The swamps of ice, the wastes of flame ! In Boreal and Austral zones Took life and meaning when we came. The Sphinx that watches by the Nile Has seen great empires pass away : The mightiest lasted but a while ; Yet ours shall not decay. Because, although red blood may flow, And ocean shake with shot, Not England's sword but England's Word Undoes the Gordian Knot. Bold tongue, stout heart, strong hand, brave brow The world's four quarters win ; And patiently with axe and plough We bring the deserts in. 68 ST GEORGE'S DAY MENZIES Whence comes this patriotic craze? Spare us at least the hackneyed brag About the famous English flag. BASIL I '11 spare no flourish of its praise. Where'er our flag floats in the wind Order and justice dawn and shine. The dusky myriads of Ind, The swarthy tribes far south the line, And all who fight with lawless law, And all with lawless men who cope Look hitherward across the brine, For we are the world's forlorn hope. MENZIES That makes my heart leap up ! Hurrah ! We are the world's forlorn hope ! 69 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES HERBERT And with the merry birds we sing The praises of the English Spring. PERCY Iris and orchis now unfold. BRIAN The drooping-leaved laburnums ope In thunder-showers of greenish gold. MENZIES And we are the world's forlorn hope ! SANDY The lilacs shake their dancing plumes Of lavender, mauve, and heliotrope. HERBERT The speedwell on the highway blooms. 70 ST GEORGE'S DAY MENZIES And we are the world's forlorn hope ! SANDY Skeletons lurk in every street. HERBERT We push and strike for air and scope. BRIAN The pulses of rebellion beat Where want and hunger sulk and mope. MENZIES But though we wander far astray, And oft in gloomy darkness grope, Fearless we face the blackest day, For we are the world's forlorn hope. FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY St George for Merry England, then ! For we are all good Englishmen ! BASIL St George for Greater England, then ! The Boreal and the Austral men ! ALL By bogland, highland, down, and fen, All Englishmen, all Englishmen ! Who with their latest breath shall sing Of England and the English Spring! 72 MAY-DAY 73 MAY-DAY BRIAN MENZIES BRIAN LATE you are late. And where have you been? MENZIES I have been in the woods and the lanes. BRIAN And what have you heard and what have you seen, And what in your fancy reigns? MENZIES I have heard the ring-dove coo, 75 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES And the cuckoo toll his bell ; I have seen the shrieking jay flash blue Athwart a wooded dell. I have heard the chattering streamlet run In haste to reach the sea ; I have watched the golden bee, Cupid and Hymen in one, Morn, noon, and afternoon, Fulfil the tingling hours With the murmuring sound of his bridal tune As he married the waiting flowers. The long, long hedgerows white with May Bordered the rustling lanes ; And a fragrant wind blew all the day. BRIAN But what in your fancy reigns? 76 MAY-DAY MENZIES There reigned, and is regnant still, A memory, long forgot, Of a lowland town, a lowland hill, And a lowland woman's lot. She shed her tears, and dreamed her dreams, And wore her sad wan smiles, Where a wide water winds and gleams Among its links and isles. Rock-perched a royal borough towers High over the highest trees, With crumbling walls and faded bowers And mouldering palaces. Near by a hill its dark crest lifts Sheer from the river's bank, 77 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES And cloudy shadow broods and shifts About its russet flank. The land is stained with purple dyes Of high-romantic scenes ; The air still quivers with the sighs Of tragic kings and queens ; The very ploughman holds his plough As proudly as a lance ; The milkmaid bears a dreamy brow, Inheriting romance. Even in my father's time a crew Of lads and lasses gay Would dip their faces in the dew Upon the first of May. 78 MA Y-DA Y This joyful mood might not withstand The age's growing care, When railways hacked and scored the land, And wires engraved the air. One woman only, all forlorn, While twenty summers flew, Still climbed the hill each May-day morn Her beauty to renew ! What love, what loss, what hope was hers No man or maid could tell, But all the loyal lowlanders Esteemed her custom well. Dressed in a hat with broken plume, A cape, and worn black frock, Before the dawn she left her room, And climbed by scar and rock. 79 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES And so to-day by lane and burn, By scented hedge and shaw, At many a pause and sudden turn Her wistful face I saw. And once as in a waking dream The whole fair lowland shone The palaced rock, the hill, the stream, The softly coming dawn : And she with sobs and murmured cries To earth's green bosom laid Her withered cheek, while from her eyes Hot dew on cold dew strayed. BRIAN What was her end ? MENZIES Oh, exquisite ! 80 MA Y-DA Y Winter and Spring she lay Bedridden in a palsy fit; But on the first of May, When the lark waked the sun, she too Arose, and in a trance Went forth to bathe her face in dew, The martyr of romance. They found her on the green hillside At home, and sleeping fast Her endless sleep, Death's pallid bride, Most beautiful at last. (Singing within.) 'Remember us poor Mayers all, ' And thus we do begin ' To lead our lives in righteousness, ' Or else we die in sin. 6 81 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES ' I have been rambling all this night, ' And almost all this day, ' And now returned back again ' I bring you a branch of May! BRIAN An antique minstrel ! Hark ! MENZIES It is Basil : I know his note. (Enter BASIL, carrying a branch of haw- thorn blossom^} MENZIES Have you been where the night-jar haunts the dark In outland ways remote? 82 MA Y-DA Y BASIL I have been with the nightingale : I have learned his song so sweet : I sang it aloud by wood and dale, And under my breath in the street If the words would only flow MENZIES Oh, sing it now ! BASIL No, no ! But it went like this, I think : ' Where the purple hyacinths grew, ' And the campions white and pink, ' The jewelled butterflies flew ' From jewelled cups to drink ; 83 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES 1 And some were violet-eyed, ' Some blue, some rosy-red, ' Gold-plumed, or damask-dyed, ' Earth-born and heaven-bred ; ' And every chalice drooped and sighed ' When the splendid revellers fled ; ' But never a flower its cup denied ' Though the wine of life was shed. ' The lark from the top of heaven raved ' Of the sunshine sweet and old ; ' And the whispering branches dipped and laved ' In the light ; and waste and wold ' Took heart and shone ; and the butter- cups paved ' The emerald meads with gold. 84 MA Y-DA Y ' Now in the forest is night ; ' The flowers have gone to sleep ; ' But the stars have opened their eyes of light ' Under the brows of heaven deep ; ' And gentle shadows cross my sight, ' And murmurs rustle and creep ; ' And the very darkness is fresh and bright ' With the tears the sweet dews weep. ' The wind steals down the lawns ' With a whisper of ecstasy, ' Of moonlight nights and rosy dawns, ' And a nest in a hawthorn tree, ' Of the little mate for whom I wait, ' Flying across the sea, ' Through storm and night as sure as fate, ' Swift-winged with love for me.' 85 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES MENZIES And so you brought home the May With the nightingale's song in your ears. BASIL And sad eyes flashed for a moment gay, Or welled with happy tears, When they saw my branch and remem- bered the day, And forgot the tedious years. And I thought as I tuned my rhyme, And waved the branch in my hand, Of the famous olden time When a Maypole stood in the Strand. BRIAN Let the Golden Days return ! 86 MA Y-DA Y MENZIES And let the May-queen reign ! BASIL When smokeless fires burn, And London is born again ! MIDSUMMER DAY MIDSUMMER DAY BASIL SANDY HERBERT SANDY I CANNOT write, I cannot think ; 'T is half delight and half distress : My memory stumbles on the brink Of some unfathomed happiness Of some old happiness divine. What haunting scent, what haunting note, What word, or what melodious line, Sends my heart throbbing to my throat? FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BASIL What? thrilled with happiness to-day, The longest day in all the year, Which we must spend in making hay By thrashing straw in Fleet Street here ! What scent? what sound? The odour stale Of watered streets ; the bruit loud Of hoof and wheel on road and rail, The rush and trample of the crowd ! HERBERT Humming the song of many a lark, Out of the sea, across the shires, The west wind blows about the park, And faintly stirs the Fleet Street wires. Perhaps it sows the happy seed That blossoms in your memory; 92 MIDSUMMER DAY Certain of many a western mead, And hill and stream it speaks to me. With rosy showers of apple-bloom The orchard sward is mantled deep ; Shaded in some sequestered coomb The red deer in the Quantocks sleep. BASIL Go on : of rustic visions tell Till I forget the wilderness Of sooty brick, the dusty smell, The jangle of the printing-press. HERBERT I hear the woodman's measured stroke ; I see the amber streamlet glide Above, the green gold of the oak Fledges the gorge on either side. 93 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES A thatched roof shines athwart the gloom Of the high moorland's darksome ground ; Far off the surging rollers boom, And fill the shadowy wood with sound. BASIL You have pronounced the magic sign ! The city with its thousand years, Like some embodied mood of mine, Uncouth, prodigious, disappears. I stand upon a lowly bridge, Moss-grown beside the old Essex home ; Over the distant purple ridge The clouds arise in sultry foam ; In many a cluster, wreath, and chain A silvery vapour hangs on high, 94 MIDSUMMER DAY And snowy scarfs of silken grain Bedeck the blue slopes of the sky ; The wandering water sighs and calls, And breaks into a chant that rings Beneath the vaulted bridge, then falls And under heaven softly sings ; A light wind lingers here and there, And whispers in an unknown tongue The passionate secrets of the air, That never may by men be sung : Low, low, it whispers ; stays, and goes ; It comes again ; again takes flight ; And like a subtle presence grows And almost gathers into sight 95 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY The wind that stirs the Fleet Street wires, And roams and quests about the Park, That wanders all across the shires, Humming the song of many a lark The wind it is the wind, whose breath, Perfumed with roses, wakes in me From shrouded slumbers deep as death A yet unfaded memory. BASIL About Midsummer, every hour Ten thousand rosebuds opening blush ; The land is all one rosy bower, And rosy odours haunt and flush 96 MIDSUMMER DAY The winds of heaven up and down : On the top-gallant of the air The lark, the pressman in the town Breathe only rosy incense rare. SANDY And I, enchanted by the rose, Remember when I first began To know what in its bosom glows Exhaling scent ambrosian. A child, at home in streets and quays, The city tumult in my brain, I only knew of tarnished trees, And skies corroding vapours stain. One summer Time upon my head Had showered the curls of years eleven 7 97 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Me, for a month, good fortune led Where trees are green and hills kiss heaven. By glen and mountain, moor and lawn, Burn-side and sheep-path, day and night, I wandered, a belated faun, All sense, all wonder, all delight. And once at eve I climbed a hill, Burning to see the sun appear, And watched the jewelled darkness fill With lamps and clustered tapers clear. At last the strongest stars were spent ; A glimmering shadow overcame The swarthy-purple firmament, And throbbed and kindled into flame ; 98 MIDSUMMER DAY The pallid day, the trembling day Put on her saffron wedding-dress, And watched her bridegroom far away Soar through the starry wilderness. I clasped my hands and closed my eyes, And tears relieved my ecstasy : I dared not watch the sun arise ; Nor knew what magic daunted me : And yet the roses seemed to tell More than the morn, had I but known The meaning of the fragrant smell That bound me with a subtle zone. But in the gloaming when we played At hide-and-seek, and I with her Behind a rose-bush hid, afraid To meet her gaze, to breathe, or stir, 99 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES The dungeon of my sense was riven, The beauty of the world laid bare, A great wind caught me up to heaven Upon a cloud of golden hair; And mouth touched mouth ; and love was born; And when our wondering vision blent, We found the meaning of the morn, The meaning of the rose's scent Ah me ! ah me ! since then ! since then ! HERBERT Nay, nay ; let self-reproaches be ! Now that this thought is throned again, Be zealous for its sovereignty. 100 MIDSUMMER DAY BASIL And brave, great Nature must be thanked ; And we must worship on our knees, And hold for ever sacro-sanct Such dewy memories as these. IOI ST SWITHIN'S DAY 103 ST SWITHIN'S DAY BASIL SANDY BRIAN MENZIES BASIL WE four since Easter-time we have not met. BRIAN And now the Dog Days bake us in our rooms Like heretics in Dis's lidded tombs. SANDY Oh, for a little wind, a little wet ! BRIAN A little wet, but not from heaven, I pray ! Have you forgotten 't is St Swithin's Day? FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BASIL Cast books aside, strew paper, drop the pen ! Bring ice, bring lemons, bring St Julien ! SANDY Bring garlands ! BRIAN With the laurel, lest it fade, Let Bacchus twist vine-leaf and cabbage blade ! BASIL I would I lay beside a brook at morn, And watched the shepherd's-clock declare the hours ; And heard the husky whisper of the corn, Legions of bees in leagues of summer flowers. 106 .S-7* S WITHIN' S DAY BRIAN Who has been out of London? BASIL Once, in June Upstream I went to hear the summer tune The birds sing at Long Ditton in a vale Sacred to him who wrote his own heart's tale. Of singing birds that hollow is the haunt : Never was such a place for singing in ! The valley overflows with song and chaunt, And brimming echoes spill the pleasant din. High in the oak-trees where the fresh leaves sprout, The blackbirds with their oboe voices make The sweetest broken music all about The beauty of the day for beauty's sake, 107 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES The wanton shadow and the languid cloud, The grass-green velvet where the daisies crowd ; And all about the air that softly comes Thridding the hedgerows with its noiseless feet, The purling waves with muffled elfin drums, That step along their pebble-paven street ; And all about the mates whose love they won, And all about the sunlight and the sun. The thrushes into song more bravely launch Than thrushes do in any other dell ; Warblers and willow-wrens on every branch, Each hidden by a leaf, their rapture tell ; Green-finches in the elms sweet nothings say, Busy with love from dawn to dusk are they. 1 08 ST SWITHIN'S DA Y A passionate nightingale adown the lane Shakes with the force and volume of his song A hawthorn's heaving foliage ; such a strain, Self-caged like him to make his singing strong, Some poet may have made in days of yore, Untold, unwritten, lost for evermore. SANDY Your holiday was of a rarer mood, A dedication loftier than mine ; But yet I swear my holiday was good : I went to Glasgow just for auld lang syne. In Sauchiehall Street in the afternoon I saw a lady walking all in black, But on her head a hat shaped like the moon, Crescent and white and clouded with a veil. I could not see if she were fair or pale 109 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Because her beauty hid her like a mist : But well I knew her bosom from her back ; And all her delicacy well I wist : And every boy and man that saw her pass Adored the beauty of that Scottish lass. I said within : ' Three things are worthiest knowing, And when I know them nothing else I know. I know unboundedly, what needs no showing, That women are most beautiful ; and then I know I love them ; and I know again Herein alone true Science lies, for, lo ! Old Rome 's a ruin ; Caesar is a name ; The Church? alas ! a lifeboat, warped and sunk; God, a disputed title : but the fame Of those who sang of love, fresher than spring, no ST SWITHIN'S DA Y Blossoms for ever with the tree of life, Whose boughs are generations ; and its trunk Love ; and its flowers, lovers. BRIAN Love we sing, Towards Love we strive ; no other song or strife We know, or heed. You, Menzies, what say you ? Dark, in your corner with a volume too ! MENZIES Now that I hang above the loathsome hell Of smouldering spite and foul disparage- ment, Even as a Christian, singed and basted well By Christians, hung in dreadful discontent in FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Chained to a beam, and dangling in the fire ; And like an ocean-searching sailor-wight Whose lonely eyes and clinging fingers tire ; And like a desperate, pallid acolyte Of giddy Fortune, who with straining clutch Swings in her wheel's wind from its lower rim, Doubting of all things, disbelieving much, I come to him who sang the heavenly hymn. BRIAN To Colin Clout ! But whence this desperate thought? MENZIES Two months ago I published BRIAN (Out! Alack!) ST SWITHIN'S DA Y MENZIES A book that held the essence of my life ; Wrong praise and wrong abuse was all I got. BASIL We all have suffered from the critic's knife. SANDY And helpless lain on many a weekly rack. MENZIES But I am weak. BASIL No, Menzies ; you are strong. Already you have cast aside the wrong, And solace found in Spenser's noble song. When I was in like case it took a year Before my wounds were whole, my vision clear. 8 113 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES MENZIES What brought you to yourself? BASIL I prayed. MENZIES Indeed ! BRIAN To whom? BASIL I know not ; 't is the mood I need Submissive aspiration. MENZIES Pray with us : Here from the city's centre make appeal. 114 ST SWITHIN'S DA Y BRIAN Where hawkers cry, where roar the cab and 'bus. BASIL So be it. On your knees, then: Sandy, kneel, Sweet powers of righteousness protect us now! Your adversary, Fate, has driven us down From that green-crowned, sun-fronting mountain-brow, Where peace and aspiration (ebb and flow Of thought that strives to whelm the infinite ; And, as the sun for ever fails to drown More than a little hollow of the night, Pierces a rush-light's ray's length into it) "5 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Swung our ecstatic spirits to and fro Between the Heaven and Hades of delight, Down to that Bedlam of the universe, That sepulchre of souls for ever yawning, That jug of asps God's enemy, Time's hearse, The world, that blister raised by every dawning. Help, ere it drive us mad, this devil's din ! The clash of iron, and the clink of gold ; The quack's, the beggar's whining manifold ; The harlot's whisper, tempting men to sin ; The voice of priests who damn each other's missions ; The babel-tongues of foolish politicians, Who shout around a swaying Government ; The groans of beasts of burden, mostly men, Who toil to please a thankless upper ten ; 116 ST S WITHIN' S DA Y The knowledge-monger's cry, 'A brand-new fact ! ' The dog's hushed howl from whom the fact was rent; The still-voice ' Culture ; ' and the slogan 'Act!' Save us from madness ; keep us night and day, Sweet powers of righteousness to whom we pray. 117 LAMMAS 119 LAMMAS HERBERT PERCY SANDY NINIAN PERCY A HEALTH, in cider, golden, racy, rough The harvest and the harvesters ! SANDY I drink In amber spirit that enshrines the heart Of an old Lothian summer. PERCY Summers old And Gules of August ! to their memory I drink, and to the memory of those 121 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Who wielded shining sickles. Forth they went, The gaunt and ragged heralds of the morn : Before them spread the sighing leagues of grain ; Behind, the tardy sun arose and struck All day on men and women obstinate Against the stubborn ranks, the golden horde : Silent and set, as their long-sworded sires Who fought the crashing rollers on the strand And stared athwart the ocean wistfully Into the moaning storm, the reapers reaped : And they grew lean; and the sun burnt them black : A sea of living gold poured round their feet And rose in crested shocks ; still and anon 122 LAMMAS The whetstone shrieked against the curving blade. I drink the swarthy harvesters of old ! HERBERT To them all honour ! But I also drink The merry singing wheels that lighten toil. SANDY And drive men into cities where they rot ! Nor do they lighten toil NlNIAN A truce to this ! Let us see things and say them. Why debate ? SANDY Debate? The sergeant-major of the tongue ! Rather we should invite his discipline. 123 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES PERCY Well said, indeed ! It is this same Debate That overmasters armies; that distils From rancorous commotion amity; It is the proof, sifter and alkahest Of all opinion, and the ordeal keen Of knowledge, reason and intelligence ; The arbiter of right ; the only source, Camp, castle and estate of liberty. The sword did never yet perpetuate The work it reared too sharp a trowel, still With bloody mortar building on the sand. The word alone endures ; but prophecy Being now invalid, we exalt Debate. SANDY The blare of personal and party aims In parliaments and journals seems indeed 124 LAMMAS No substitute for Sinai ; but it serves : And from the vehement logomachy Of interest and cabal, something humane At happy intervals proceeds. NlNIAN How now ! ' Something humane at happy intervals ! ' A meagre output for your demiurge ! PERCY Debate, like every energy divine, Careless of centuries, elaborates Events effectual for eternity. The cavillers, impatient of delay, Like little boys that violate the earth To see if seedlings sprout, resent the mode, When they descry the immaterial Advancement in a decade ; but we know, 125 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES We, ponderers devout of secular years, How this most tedious Cyclops, this De- bate, Laborious long in darkness and distress, Hammered and forged the adamantine chains That shackle tyranny, and now begins To smelt the ore from which shall yet be wrought A kingly crown for every child of man. NlNIAN I see no hope in wrangling. Nations pass From panic into panic ; all men seem Fools or fanatics. PERCY Well? . . . Proceed; discuss. 126 LAMMAS NlNIAN Not I ; for now you put me on my guard. Sometimes when I forget myself I talk As though I were persuaded of the truth Of some received or unreceived belief; But always afterwards I am ashamed Of such lewd lapses into bigotry. PERCY Intolerantly tolerant, I say ! SANDY This is debauchery : defend yourself! NlNIAN I cannot ; I have tried it many a time, And always failed, because the thing I say Seems not more just than that which I deny; 127 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Nor would I if I could, because to me It now appears inept to take a side. I know that silence would become me best, And I endeavour to be quiet. SANDY Oh! NlNIAN Indeed I do. . . . Now I shall say no more. HERBERT Why do you take offence so readily? NlNIAN I am not well : I am haunted. Lo, I stand On Arthur's Seat. The chill and brindled fog That plumed the Bass and belted Berwick Law, 128 LAMMAS * That hung with ghostly tapestry the stones Of bleak Tantallon, from the windy Forth, Noiseless and dim, speeds by the pier of Leith, And by Leith Walk, its dreary channel old, To flood the famous city, Edinburgh. Then, like the spectre of an inland sea By wanton sorcerers troubled and de- stroyed, It foams with whitening surges through the vale, The fair green hollow over Salisbury Crags ; And rises clasping every gentle slope, Uneven scar, and fairy-girdled knoll, Till with the hungry passion of the dead It hugs the high earth, frantic to supply Its own lean misty ribs, and live again Terrestrial, with the mountain for a soul, 9 129 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES I stand and watch. The fog begins to ebb ; And sunset weaves of all the waning wreaths A veil of lace, investing goldenly The rock-piled castle plinth and monolith Of ruby deep and dark in soaring groups ; The Monument aflame with chrysolite ; St Giles's garland-crown studded with gems. A bell rings faintly: curled and braided smoke O'erhangs the humming Canongate, and flings Dusky festoons that wither as they fall About the wasted towers of Holyrood. In front the burnished disc of day descends The ample crimson west ; behind, the night In silent legions troops into the air. Masses of vision overwhelm me thus: I am haunted by the heavens and the earth 130 LAMMAS Darkness and light; and when I am addressed I answer from the point, or petulantly, Or say the opposite of what I would, And am most awkward, helpless, and forlorn. Wherefore I shun the company of men, Not fearing them, but fearful of myself; Surely to strive to please and still to fail Is to be wretched in the last degree. SANDY Then do not strive to please: contemn contempt, And trust yourself. NlNIAN But I mistrust myself: A word, a glance, a cloud, a beam of light, A perfume from its orbit shakes my soul. FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY This weakness comes because you look without. NlNIAN I look without: you look within: what then? You are possessed ; I, obsessed : that is all. I am besieged by things that I have seen : Followed and watched by rivers ; snared and held In labyrinthine woods and tangled meads ; Hemmed in by mountains ; waylaid by the sun; Environed and beset by moon and stars ; Whispered by winds and summoned by the sea. HERBERT What do you note now? 132 LAMMAS NlNIAN By a Kentish road, Across the down where poles in ricks repose, Delivered from the burden of the bines, And golden apples on their twisted boughs Illumine ancient orchards, I descend, Watching and wondering to the Medway's bank. The alder and the hazel dip their leaves ; The grass-green willow shakes ; the spiny thorn, Embossed and lustrous with its load of haws, Shines in the water like a burning bush ; And broad and deep, muttering outlandish things, The heavy river rolls its umber flood. FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Convolvuluses overhang the brink, Pallid or watchet-hued, and still as bells That in a trance imagine tuneful chimes Of virtue to enchant a moonlit mere. On river lawns with emerald velvet spread The ewes sedately browse the three-piled nap. A distant clang of shouts and laughter rings Across the valley from the gleaming tents Of sunburnt hoppers at their evening meal ; And fainter voices from the roadside inn Echo about the air, and dwell and die. Crowned by the yellow oasthouse from whose cowl Banners and scarfs of fleecy smoke hang out, And busked with serried, tawny-clustered vines, LAMMAS Far-reaching slopes lean up along the sky. The drowsy wind touches a fitful stop ; The Medway mutters dreaming as it rolls ; In bronzing brakes and thickets deeply choired Autumnal tokens birds at leisure pipe ; While the sun, shut within a donjon high Of massive cloud, through secret loopholes flings His moted beams that quiver visibly Broadcast; or seem ethereal lances, stacked By the celestial watchmen who patrol The world at night, and on their silent rounds Move to the ghostly music of the spheres. HERBERT And whence comes this obsession? FLEET STREET ECLOGUES NlNIAN Hark ! Behold ! The floor is flooded with the tide. I lounge Upon a shingle bolster. Dimly seen Beyond the weathergleam a pennon'd mast, A drift of smoke, hover and disappear ; And in the midst dark sails of mackerel boats Over a reach of water, brown as tan, Dance, deftly tripping the uneven waves. Nearer, a yellow width unwinds ; between, A point of emerald glows, and suddenly Shoots out and burns its way towards the west A spark in tinder, then a stripe of fire, And last a sheet of phosphorescent green Fuming with white waves. Listen ! at my feet 136 LAMMAS The uplifted shuddering rollers headlong fall, And jangle on the beach as the surf breaks In silver chains and shekels; while the wind Out of the southwest sings across the deep. Straightway a new sky makes another sea. Occultly gifted, light upon the waves Juggles with hidden beams behind a cloud Bright but impenetrable. Near the shore A vein of saffron shines ; beyond, a band Of olive hue blends with a sapphire zone; Further away, wine-coloured water heaves Against a high sea-wall of swarthy fog. Is it the sea that gleams in merging breadths Of colour dark and wet? Or do the powers, That decorate the quarters of the world, In some vast crucible dissolve and fuse Virginal mines of ruby, malachite, FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Jacinth and chrysoprase to pave the floor Of ocean rough with wrecks and skeletons? Nature is now about some mystery ! But while I watch, ere I can mark the change, The passionate sun flames through the shrivelled cloud, And all the crisp and curling water wakes, Blue as the naked sky that bathes in it. HERBERT How does it happen you are so beset? NlNIAN I shall attempt to tell you honestly. It was engraven deeply on my mind In daily lessons from my infancy Until I left my father's house, that not Ability and knowledge,beauty and strength, 138 LAMMAS But goodness only can avail. I watched, And thought I understood that beauty, strength And knowledge ought to reign, they being indeed The trinity of goodness ; but I claimed That this should be revealed to me, that I Should be directly warned by God Himself In the old fashion. Strange it seems ; and yet It was not very strange. Each morn and eve, Year after year, I heard the prophets read, Heard strong believing prayer : the atmos- phere Was not allied more nearly to my breath Than to my mind the thought of God no dream Of deity ; a living, active God. FLEET STREET ECLOGUES On hill-tops, by the sea, in storm, in calm I cried to Him to speak to me ; with tears Solicited a sign. Sleepless and pale I wandered like a ghost, and day and night Waited upon a message from on high. Sunset and sunrise came ; the seasons past ; The years went slowly by ; but still to me The universe was dumb. Books helped me not, Except for pleasure or to gain command ' Of words : I would have God's own voice or none. At last I ceased to hope and found content In roaming through the land. The magic sun Drew pictures on my sight. Wondering I watched ; Nor could the secular fairy ever change 140 LAMMAS My wonder into curiosity. All my emotion and imagining Were of the finest tissue that is woven From sense and thought. No well-thumbed page appeared In the hard book of memory when I woke : Amazed I trembled newly into life : I seemed to be created every morn. A golden trumpet pealed along the sky : The sun arose ; the whole earth rushed upon me. Sometimes the tree that stroked my window- pane Was more than I could grasp ; sometimes my thought Absorbed the universe, which fell away And dwindled from my ken, as if my mind Had been the roomy continent of space. 141 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES My way of life led me to London town, And difficulties which I overcame, Equipped with patience and necessity. Then suddenly before my thoughts might leap Resurgent from the living tomb of care And dip their wings in dawn, about me clung The slimy folds of sin : its nether coils Are hidden in the sepulchre of time, The glutted past ; the pallid future strains In travail with its fiery eyes and fangs : I peer from out the slippery middle wreaths And see blurred visions of the world, or watch The flashing scenes that haunt my memory. When needfully I viewed my latter days Considering for the first time in my life 142 LAMMAS The naked facts of my affairs and me I found that underneath indifference To every aim saving a livelihood And leisure to enjoy nature and art, My source of strength, though never to myself Confessed before, had been the lurking thought That poison, or a bullet, or the waves Could stop the unendurable ecstasy Of pain or pleasure, at whichever pole Of passion I determined to forsake The orb of life, on my acceptance thrust In ignorance and disregard of me, My temperament and fitness for the gift ; But now that refuge of despair is shut, For other lives have twined themselves with mine. FLEET STREET ECLOGUES And yet . . . How shall I seize you with due dread Of the offensive tide that stifles me, The worm obscene in whose close coils I writhe? . . , Now I conceive it clearly ; you shall mark Fate's way with me ! A tedious decade hence My son shall come and pitifully cry, ' Father, why am I weak, outclassed, out- cast? ' I cannot do the things that others do ; ' I take no place in work or play ; my brains ' Are unelastic : something in my head ' Snaps when I fain would study ; visions rise ' Unsummoned ; phantom tongues mum- ble strange news ; 144 LAMMAS ' And when I would contend in games, my bones ' Grow pithless, and my sinews shrink ; my heart ! ' Who wore it out with sensual drudgery 'Before it came to me? what warped its valves ? ' It has been used : my heart is secondhand ! ' Why had I not the force to be born great, ' Fit for a splendid stage, a noble part, ' A crisis in the world ? Why must I think 'Such things at seventeen? Why think at all 'When love should lap me in a constant dream ? ' I have no faith instinctive in myself; ' No reservoir profound of energy ; '45 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES ' No fathomless resource ; no central fire ; ' No passionate aroma in my blood ' Filling the world with fragrance where I come; ' No rapt imagination to transmute ' All pallor into glory. Life you gave : ' Where is my birthright, sir, beauty and strength ? ' What can I say to him ? HERBERT PERCY SANDY The truth ! NlNIAN This then : ' My son, your ancestors supplanted you : 4 You are my child ; hence are your teeth on edge. ' Our blood is stale ; the tree from which we spring 146 LAMMAS ' Fades at the top. Two of our family ' Have died insane in my time : one I saw ' Go mad. The sounds and sights that visit you ' Attend me too, foretellers of our doom. ' The ultimate iniquity is mine ; ' But from a root in distant ages sunk ' The loathsome filaments entangle you. 4 And I impeach the smooth conniving world, ' The bland accomplice that has made and makes ' A merit of defect, a cult of woe, ' Sowing exhausted land with seed that 's foul, ' To harvest tares of madness, impotence, ' Uncomeliness in wasteful granaries 4 1 mean asylums, prisons, hospitals. 147 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES ' If only nineteen hundred years ago ' A gospel of the pride of life had rung ' Our doleful era in ; if the device ' In nature's choice of beauty and of strength ' Had then been shown to man, how had the world ' Approved the excellent expedient, ' With voluntary euthanasia ' Weeded humanity at once, and made ' A race of heroes in a golden age ! . . . 'This helps not. All the blame is mine, my son, ' Who never should have been ' ... It palsies me; I cannot comfort him; he stands and stares Defeated ere he was begot. Behold 148 LAMMAS The ancient snake that pinions me ! Like one Chained to a column in a turbid stream, About my ears a sluggish billow flaps, And chokes and daubs me with its ropy wash. SANDY Escape ! I know the manner ! Live at speed ; And call your least caprice the law of God; Disdain the shows of things, and every love Whose stamen is not hate; self-centred stand ; Accept no second thought ; in every throb Your heart gives, every murmur of your mind, 149 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Listen devoutly to the trump of doom. You are your birthright ; let it serve you well: Be your own star, for strength is from within, And one against the world will always win ! NlNIAN I cannot act. The subtle coils grow tense, And crush my limbs, my heart, my throat, my head. I am the sufferer, the endurer, I. Yet God, who gives no presage hitherto, Haply intends hereafter to be heard. I am not thinking solely of myself, But of the groaning cataract of life, The ruddy stream that leaps importunate Out of the night, and in a moment vaults LAMMAS The immediate treacherous precipice of time, Splashing the stars, downward into the night. Meanwhile for me no lulling opiate, No dream, no mystic solvent : I must watch Hopeless, unhelped, till I go mad or die. HERBERT But you have hope and help. NlNIAN I ? Show me them ! HERBERT You went forth seeking God and found the world, The sounds and sights that haunt, and help and please. FLEET STREET ECLOGUES The canopy and state of day and night : The pageant of the year; the changing moods, The loyal constancy and testament Of Nature her asides, her hints, and smiles, Her clear ideas of repose and toil, Her covenant and noble ministry Of light and darkness, and of life and death, Are the true salve for your distempered mind. Blame not yourself too much; admit no fear Of madness with the sunrise in your blood ; And hold your own intelligence in awe As the most high : there is no other God No God at all ; yet God is in the womb 152 LAMMAS A living God, no mystic deity. With idols in its infancy the world Deceived itself as maidens do with dolls, And as it grew pretended and believed That what it should bring forth already reigned. Now is its hour come, but it only knows The sick dismay and anguish, ignorant Of birth-pangs and an offspring more divine Than man has yet imagined. I have woes, As you and all men have in their degree ; So let us think we are the tortured nerves Of Being in travail with a higher type. I know that I shall crumble back to dust, And cease for evermore from sense and thought, But this contents me well in my distress : I, being human, touch the highest reach '53 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Attained by matter, and within me feel The motion of a loftier than I: Out of the beast came man; from man comes God. Deepest delight is in the certainty That to the all pervading element Wherein the universe disports a while, Ethereal oblivion, my deeds And I eternally belong. NlNIAN Yes. . . . See, They throng the room ! no spectres, but themselves : Sibilant depths of darkness ; avenues Of latticed light; ambrosial, pine-strewn glades ; Ravines and waterfalls ; the grass-green turf, Where primroses by secret alchemy 154 LAMMAS Distil from buried treasure golden leaves, And where forget-me-nots above the tombs Of snow-drops hang their candelabra, trimmed With azure light turquoise by magic roots Drawn from the bowels of the earth and changed To living flame ; roses, laburnum, lilac ; Sunrise and sunset like a glowing vice Blood-stained that grips the world ; the restless moon Swung low to light us ; clouds ; the limpid sky; The bourdon of the great ground-bee, athwart A lonely hill-side, vibrant on the air, And subtler than the scent of violets ; Sonorous winds, storm, thunder, and the sea. MICHAELMAS MICHAELMAS BASIL HERBERT BRIAN SANDY MENZIES HERBERT THE farmer roasts his stubble goose. MENZIES The pard and tiger moths are loose. SANDY The broom-pods crackle in the sun ; And since the flowers are nearly done, From thymy slopes and heather hills, The wearied bee his pocket fills. FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BRIAN The wearied bee ! HERBERT On ancient walls The moss turns greener. SANDY Hark ! St Paul's Booms midnight. BRIAN Basil is asleep. SANDY Boom, iron tongue ! boom, slow and deep ! MENZIES The berries on the hawthorn tree Are red as blood. 1 60 MICHAELMAS BRIAN The wearied bee ! HERBERT In Devon cider-presses flow, And lads and lasses nutting go. BASIL Twelve notes the bell-voiced midnight pealed ; The moon stood still ; the wan stars reeled. BRIAN Lord ! Basil, are you off your head ? BASIL The opening knell had awakened me ; The twelve rang out a lullaby. BRIAN What passion's this? whose mare is dead? ii 161 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY Fie, Brian ! Let him say his say, Begin again and fire away. BASIL I started from uneasy slumber, And heard night's stately tongue o'er- number Twelve measured beats. While rang the last I slept again ; but ere it passed In still-attenuating sound I wakened from that sudden swound. A dream begotten by the bell Was born within its lingering knell. The deep reverberation clung About my spirit ; anguish wrung My flesh ; the mortal veil was rent ; And from the world's imprisonment, 162 MICHAELMAS And out of penitential Time I soared into a ransomed clime. The air was balmier than the west That bends the barley's nodding crest, When happy folk the greenwood seek, And summer roasts the apple's cheek. A darkness of another dye Than earthly night o'erspread the sky If any heaven were heaved on high : The only light that guided me My soul's enkindled radiancy. The splendour that my spirit threw Revealed new green, new golden dew, Wherein I saw new flowers encamp : They glimmered in my silvery lamp Like gems in an illumined grot : I glided on; my light waned not; Fresh wonders peered forth as I passed ; 163 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Without me brooded darkness vast. Among the branches of the trees That trembled to the fingering breeze, And far more softly sang and sighed Than soft yolian harps, I spied Looks brighter than the liquid gold That streams before the peal has rolled. Notes sweeter than the nightingale's, More piercing than the lowly rail's, And wealthier than the gorgeous chime The mocking-bird at coupling time Re-rings again and o'er and o'er In changes richer than before, With ruffling throat and spiral motion The vortex of a whirling ocean, Whose floods are seething music waves Outwelling from his heart's glad caves Surged and re-surged about my sense, 164 MICHAELMAS That revelled in their vehemence. A blackness then waylaid my soul, Intense, unfrayed, a perfect whole : My beams could not irradiate This ebon front, this cloudy gate. Far up I saw a shimmer dim, Like that above a night-cloud's rim, Left trailing by the long-sunk sun, When half the summer-time is done : It coped the high-reared dense black blind : I wondered what might be behind ; But when I pressed no step might be, And yet between the wall and me The strange sward flower-strewn I could see. Soon sang a voice ; and, strange to tell, It was my own voice singing well A new song that I cannot mind ; FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Vanished at once the dense black blind ; Far, wide, a rainbow heaven of light Clouded a while my silly sight. I saw a sky of purple gloom, That glowed as from a Tyrian loom, And blushing hills perfumed with heath, And flower-decked valleys hung beneath, Where water purled a signal noise, Melodious, like an angel's voice. And there were forests great and old, The carpet of whose fertile mould Was woven of ferns and lustrous flowers ; And caves were there and pleasant bowers : And rocks, immortally undressed, That shone through many a loose green vest And in the sky, and on the hills, And through the woods, and by the rills, 1 66 MICHAELMAS A host of lights of every hue And every shape lit up the view. Some shone with blood-streaked glow of green Like jasper ; the carnation sheen Of sardonyx beamed bright and pale ; And like a maiden's finger-nail The hue of chalcedony gleamed ; And some pale blue like jacinth seemed ; And there were flames like chrysolites, And rubies gems that love delights Beside the well-loved lips to shame ; And there was many an emerald flame ; And topazes and sapphires came, And smouldering amethystine hues, Like purple grapes where lights infuse A glow of garden violets, Or women's eyes love's sweet dew wets. 167 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES The flaming shapes for ever changed As fixed they hung or widely ranged. Like meteors some wide heaven spanned ; Like wisps some shot about the land ; And others moved their scrolls and curls, Like waving skirts where lovely girls Evolve from mazy minstrelsy A moving silk-draped melody, Dancing at the bridal-feast Of some grand monarch of the east. Transcending in magnificence, In beauty, and in eloquence Of movement, and in variance Of shapely forms, and in the dance The loftiest height with poise of state Maintaining easily, elate Above the others sailing far, Now beaming like an opal star, 1 68 MICHAELMAS Now like the rainbow's shifting bridge Wheeling from mountain ridge to ridge, And now expanding like the dawn, Now like the northern lights, there shone A glorious flame ; and one bright form, As grand in motion as a storm, Exceeded symmetry. I knew What these two were ; but memory grew A jumbled chaos when I hoped To seize their names. While yet I groped Within the darkened lumber-room Of memory, a sound did loom Upon my hearing, which till then Had been a hollow empty den, Its sense being stolen into my sight To give it power to grasp the light. Eftsoons the looming sound, evolved Whence I perceived not then, resolved 169 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Its misty volume into dew, That rose and fell and rose anew, And showering gently seemed to bear Odours from Cytherea's hair, Or from the thousand flowers that please The vigilant Hesperides Within their bower on Atlas' top, Whose shoulders huge the heavens prop, So dulcet was the harmony. . It rained into my memory, And, freshening that fallow mead, Awakened many a sleeping seed That sprang and blossomed into flower, A bell for every happy hour. But yet my wakening intuition That longed to execute its mission, To call those two supremest flames, Bloomed not in flower of their names. 170 MICHAELMAS Oh me ! that airy melody ! Its memory distresses me, Like old men's thoughts of love's first kiss, Like damned imaginings of bliss. No thrilling movement with me stays ; The shadow of one subtle phrase Cools not the burning of desire ; Tears cannot quench that ardent fire ; So sweet and low the voices sung, So deep and high the singing swung, Or, like the bird of heaven, hung In joyous swoon, on brooding wing Intensely, stilly, hovering. Then far away across the vale A sapphire sea with ripples pale I saw : the golden, further shore A group of wan lights wandered o'er Hueless and shadowy : and I thought 171 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES That those the airy music wrought. Sudden a great globe brimmed my sight, And all my senses took their flight To it to make it capable ; I was one eye and it was full, But can a brazier hold the sun, Or any cup the ocean? MENZIES None. BASIL This splendour, now in mist diffused, Hung like a cloud of diamond-dust; Contracted to a point anon, It still so luminously shone Its dense light could be seen alone. I was one eye, one questioning gaze : At once the scintillating haze 172 MICHAELMAS In answer to my inquisition Appeared as two ; and each division A shadowy human outline carried, Less bright divided than when married. Then straight the black gulf hung between My aching sight and heaven's scene. BRIAN But this is nonsense triple-piled. HERBERT Is nonsense then to be reviled? MENZIES Not so ; for fancy where it lists Breathes like the wind : he who resists His wanton moods for ever, ends In being moodless. 173 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BASIL Good, my friends, Forgive, forget. The dream was long, Too long. Let some one sing a song. MENZIES Your bass is rusty, Herbert ; come. HERBERT I '11 sing a song of Harvest-home. SONG The frost will bite us soon ; His tooth is on the leaves : Beneath the golden moon We bear the golden sheaves : We care not for the winter's spite, We keep our Harvest-home to-night. 174 MICHAELMAS Hurrah for the English yeoman ! Fill full ; fill the cup ! Hurrah ! he yields to no man ! Drink deep ; drink it up ! The pleasure of a king Is tasteless to the mirth Of peasants when they bring The harvest of the earth. With pipe and tabor hither roam All ye who love our Harvest-home. Hurrah for the English yeoman ! Fill full; fill the cup! Hurrah ! he yields to no man ! Drink deep ; drink it up ! The thresher with his flail, The shepherd with his crook, FLEET STREET ECLOGUES The milkmaid with her pail, The reaper with his hook To-night the dullest-blooded clods Are kings and queens, are demigods. Hurrah for the English yeoman ! Fill full ; fill the cup ! Hurrah ! he yields to no man ! Drink deep ; drink it up ! 176 ALL HALLOW'S EVE 12 177 ALL HALLOW'S EVE BASIL MENZIES BRIAN PERCY BRIAN TEARFULLY sinks the pallid sun. MENZIES Bring in the lamps : Autumn is done. PERCY Nay, twilight silvers the flashing drops ; And a whiter fall is behind. BRIAN And the wild east mouths the chimney-tops, The Pandean pipes of the wind. 179 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES MENZIES The dripping ivy drapes the walls ; The drenched red creepers flare ; And the draggled chestnut plumage falls In every park and square. PERCY Nay, golden garlands strew the way For the old triumph of decay. BASIL And I know, in a living land of spells In an excellent land of rest, Where a crimson fount of sunset wells Out of the darkling west That the poplar, the willow, the scented lime, Full-leaved in the shining air 180 ALL HALLOW'S EVE Tarry as if the enchanter time Had fixed them deathless there. In arbours and noble palaces A gallant people live With every manner of happiness The amplest life can give. PERCY Where? where? In Elfland? MENZIES No ; oh no ! In Elfland is no rest, But rumour and stir and endless woe Of the unfulfilled behest The doleful yoke of the Elfin folk Since first the sun went west. 181 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES The cates they eat and the wine they drink, Savourless nothings are ; The hopes they cherish, the thoughts they think Are neither near nor far ; And well they know they cannot go Even to a desert star : One planet is all their poor estate, Though a million systems roll ; They are dogged and worried, early and late, As the demons nag a soul, By the moon and the sun, for they never can shun Time's tyrannous control. The haughty delicate style they keep Only the blind can see ; 182 ALL HALLOW'S EVE On holynights in the forest deep, When they make high revelry Under the moon, the dancing tune Is the wind in a cypress tree. They burn the elfin midnight oil Over their tedious lore ; They spin the sand ; and still they toil Though their inmost hearts are sore - The doleful yoke of the restless folk For ever and evermore. But could you capture the elfin queen Who once was Caesar's prize, Daunt and gyve her with glances keen Of unimpassioned eyes, And hear unstirred her magic word, And scorn her tears and sighs, 183 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Lean would she seem at once, and old ; Her rosy mouth decayed ; Her heavy tresses of living gold, All withered in the braid ; In your very sight the dew and the light Of her eyes would parch and fade ; And she, the immortal phantom dame, Would vanish from your ken ; For the fate of the elves is nearly the same As the terrible fate of men : To love ; to rue ; to be and pursue A flickering wisp of the fen. We must play the game with a careless smile, Though there 's nothing in the hand ; We must toil as if it were worth our while Spinning our ropes of sand ; 184 ALL HALLOWS EVE And laugh and cry, and live and die At the waft of an unseen wand. But the elves, besides the endless woe Of the unfulfilled behest, Have only a phanton life, and so They neither can die nor rest Have no real being at all, and know That therefore they never can rest The doleful yoke of the deathless folk Since first the sun went west PERCY Then where is the wonderful land of spells, Where a crimson fount of sunset wells, And the poplar, the willow, the scented lime Tarry, full-leaved, till the winter-time, Where endless happiness life can give, And only heroic people live? 185 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BASIL We know, we know, we spinners of sand ! In the heart of the world is that gracious land; And it never can fade while the sap returns, While the sun gives light, and the red blood burns. 186 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY 187 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY BASEL SANDY MENZIES BASIL A NOBLE fog ! Though I Were comfortably dead, Shrouded and buried deep In my last bed, Tucked in for my long sleep, Where generations lie, I scarce were more at ease Than now I feel beneath This heavy-laden silent atmosphere. 189 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES MENZIES A kraken of the skies ! Its teeth Are closing in my throat ; A lithe arm rummages Each aching lung. SANDY We dote On your disaster, Menzies. Here, Like people of Pompeii, Or like Saharan denizens, Sitting for centuries O'erwhelmed with sand or lava, we Are quite at home in fogs like these. BASIL And feel as if our tongues and pens Had wagged and scrawled since Arthur's time; 190 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY And we had seen the best and worst Of England's youth and England's prime ; As if this day might be the first Day of Elizabeth Or any day : the dead, like God, Breathing eternal breath, Can be in any period. MENZIES Alas, I cannot but remember That this is London in November ! BASIL Be out of London; off! Command your soul ; away Where woods their wardrobes doff To give the wind free play. Brocaded oak-trees wait, 191 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Reluctant to undress ; But the woods accept from Fate Their lusty nakedness, And with a many-armed caress Welcome their stormy mate. SANDY Or where on rivers blacken Close fleets of hurrying leaves. BASIL Or where with tawny bracken A lonely moorland heaves. SANDY Where ribbed and spiny hedges Hold fast the empty ear. 192 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY BASIL Or where like summer's pledges The ruddy hips appear. SANDY Where coal-black brambles shimmer. BASIL Where in the naked copse, Gems in a charnel, glimmer The nightshade's coral drops. SANDY Or where in twilight shaws The dusky-glowing thorn Hides in its hoard of haws The crimson of the morn. 13 J 93 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BASIL Where earth beholds the skies, Or heaven looks on the sea, Or where great mountains rise, Command your soul to be. MENZIES I may not ; all my brains Are baked and dried ; my veins Shrunk and unflushed. BASIL Drink wine. MENZIES It steads not ; moods like mine Must run their courses out ; Nothing can put to rout My gloom when I have swilled 194 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY Life's sadness to the lees ; Nepenthe may not ease, Or nectar, heaven-distilled. SANDY Basil, tell us, pray, Why you called the day After the maiden queen? BASIL Three centuries away The child of Anne Boleyn Came to the English throne Upon this very day. MENZIES Ah ! what a splendid age ! Then England's hope was high ; FLEET STREET ECLOGUES The world was half unknown ; And heaven and hell were nigh. On such a glorious stage I could have played a part With other souls devout: But the world is now a mart, And all the earth found out. Hesperia is no more ! From Himalayan vales Our fathers sought its shore, And lit on isles and dales Of Greece and Arcady ; But soon they set their sails Sadly across the sea, And came to .^Etna's base ; Yet by Sicilian ways No dragon-guarded tree With golden apples grew. 196 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY Undauntedly they passed The Tyrrhene waters blue, And reached the Iberian strand Hesperia at last ! Not there the promised land. Westward that vision old Fled o'er the Atlantic main To sink for ever, slain By Californian gold. BASIL This is the promised land ; God saw that it was good : You fail to understand That the world is but a mood, And time ours to command. This is the hour of doom, Or this creation's morn 197 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES Or Calvary's day of gloom : We die not ; were not born. MENZIES Ah, you anachronists ! You poets ! It is you, With mellow purple mists, That shade the dreary view Of life, a naked precipice Overhanging death's deep sea. SANDY Anachronists ! I rest on this, Whoe'er may count it schism : Mere by-blows are the world and we, And time within eternity A sheer anachronism. 198 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY BASIL A bull ! a thundering bull ! MENZIES But not a blundering one; For Chance directs the sun, And Faith is Fortune's fool. The world was scarcely made Ere Chance began its trade And changed to frozen poles And spaces tropic-bound What Fate created good ; And soulless or with souls Beasts grew each other's food : With floods all flesh was drowned ; And foul diseases came ; Earth issued forth in flame, 199 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES And swallowed cities up ; Peoples and languages, Kingdoms and hierarchies, With wars and tortures rose : Nay, our most bitter cup For ever overflows With rich and poor alone : Chance has always spurned Our struggles to atone. Lo, in the simplest thing The good is overturned, Fate set aside with scorn ! The air is clear and sweet ; But the fog is in the street : In June the squares were green, What dreary places now ! Ere we may greet the spring, Must winter come again ; 200 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY And man may not be born Without a woman's pain. BASIL But God has no machine For punching perfect worlds from cakes of chaos. SANDY How! BASIL He works but as He can ; God is an artist, not an artisan. Darkly imagining, With ice and fire and storm, With floods and earthquake-shocks He gave our sphere its form. The meaning of His work Grew as He wrought. 201 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES In creases of the mud, in cooling rocks He saw ideas lurk Mountains and streams. Of life the passionate thought Haunted His dreams. At last He tried to do The thing He dreamt. With plasm in throbbing notes, With moss and ferns and giant beasts un- kempt He laboured long, until at length He seemed To breathe out being. Flowers and forests grew Like magic at His word : mountain and plain, Jungle and sea and waste, With miracles of strength and beauty teemed : 202 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY In every drop and every grain, Each speck and stain, Was some new being placed, Minute or viewless. Then was He aghast, And all His passion to create grew tame ; For life battened on life. He thought To shatter all ; but in a space He loved His work again and sought To crown it with a sovereign grace ; And soon the great idea came : ' If I could give my work a mind ; ' If I could make it comprehend ' How wondrously it is designed ; ' Enable it with head and heart ' To mould itself to some accomplished end, 4 That were indeed transcendent art' Trembling with ecstasy He then made man, To be the world's atonement and its prince. 203 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES And in the world God has done nothing since : He keeps not tinkering at a finished plan ; He is an artist, not an artisan. MENZIES I Ve heard it sung, I Ve heard it said, I Ve read it oft in many books, That truth 's as long as it is broad. I like your dilettante God : When man His work has perfected, Straight God will blot it out again, Or change it to a sterile moon, Upon whose past shall speculate Star-gazers from some brand-new land-and- sea. And why should mortal man complain Although no memory shall be 204 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY Of all the millions of his race, Who broke brave hearts still fronting Fate ; Although no rumour of Helen's looks, Although no Caesar's name of note, No mellow word that Shakespeare wrote, No echo of Wagner's spheral tune, Shall sound in any nook of space? God is an artist, and all art Is useless, other artists say. SANDY If God is art and art is God, I fear I don't believe in God. BASIL That matters not, since this is true Hear me before you go away, And turn this over in your heart That God Himself believes in you. 205 CHRISTMAS EVE 207 CHRISTMAS EVE BASIL SANDY BRIAN MENZIES SANDY IN holly hedges starving birds Silently mourn the setting year. BASIL Upright like silver-plated swords The flags stand in the frozen mere. BRIAN The mistletoe we still adore Upon the twisted hawthorn grows. 14 209 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES MENZIES In antique gardens hellebore Puts forth its blushing Christmas rose. SANDY Shrivelled and purple, cheek by jowl, The hips and haws hang drearily. BASIL Rolled in a ball the sulky owl Creeps far into his hollow tree. BRIAN In abbeys and cathedrals dim The birth of Christ is acted o'er ; The kings of Cologne worship Him, Balthazar, Jasper, Melchior. 210 CHRISTMAS EVE MENZIES And while our midnight talk is made Of this and that and now and then, The old earth-stopper with his spade And lantern seeks the fox's den. SANDY Oh, for a northern blast to blow These depths of air that cream and curdle ! BASIL Now are the halcyon days, you know ; Old Time has leapt another hurdle ; And pauses as he only may Who knows he never can be caught. BRIAN The winter solstice, shortest day And longest night, was past, I thought. 211 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES BASIL Oh yes ! but fore-and-aft a week Silent the winds must ever be, Because the happy halcyons seek Their nests upon the sea. BRIAN The Christmas-time ! the lovely things That last of it ! Sweet thoughts and deeds ! SANDY How strong and green old legend clings Like ivy round the ruined creeds ! MENZIES A fearless, ruthless, wanton band, Deep in our hearts we guard from scathe, Of last year's log, a smouldering brand To light at Yule the fire of faith. 212 CHRISTMAS EVE BRIAN The shepherds in the field at night Beheld an angel glory-clad, And shrank away with sore affright. ' Be not afraid,' the angel bade. ' I bring good news to king and clown, ' To you here crouching on the sward ; ' For there is born in David's town ' A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. ' Behold the babe is swathed, and laid ' Within a manger.' Straight there stood Beside the angel all arrayed A heavenly multitude. ' Glory to God,' they sang ; ' and peace, ' Good pleasure among men.' 213 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY The wondrous message of release, That forged another chain ! BRIAN Nay, nay ; God help us to be good ! BASIL Hush ! hark ! Without ; the waits, the waits ! With brass and strings, and mellow wood. MENZIES A simple tune can ope heaven's gates ! SANDY Slowly they play, poor careful souls, With wistful thoughts of Christmas cheer, Unwitting how their music rolls Away the burden of the year. 214 CHRISTMAS EVE BASIL And with the charm, the homely rune, To early moods our minds incline, As when our pulses beat in tune With all the stars that shine. MENZIES Oh, cease ! oh, cease ! BASIL Ay, cease ; and bring The wassail-bowl, the cup of grace. SANDY Pour wine, and heat it till it sing. With cloves and cardamoms and mace. BASIL And frothed and sweetened round it goes, The while we drink the whole world's health. FLEET STREET ECLOGUES SANDY The whole world's health! But chiefly those Who grasp the whole world's power and wealth. BRIAN I drink the poor in spirit; theirs Is heaven's kingdom. SANDY Theirs, below, A bursting granary of tares, Derision, contumely, woe. BRIAN To those who patiently have borne Sorrow ! SANDY May joy come soon instead ! 216 CHRISTMAS EVE I drink the health of those that mourn And never can be comforted. BRIAN I drink the meek. SANDY I drink their foes, The ruthless heirs of all the earth The knaves, the pushing men, and those Who claim prerogatives of birth. BRIAN I drink the merciful, for they Shall mercy gain. SANDY From usurers? BRIAN The pure in heart, and those who pray And work for peace when faction stirs, 217 FLEET STREET ECLOGUES I drink ; and all whom men condemn For righteousness, who never shrink From persecution. SANDY Yes, to them ! To every sinner too, I drink ! BASIL Hush ! hark ! the waits, far up the street ! MENZIES A new, unearthly charm unfolds Of magic music wild and sweet, Anomes and clarigolds ! THE END 218 UC SOUTHOTjreaONAL UBRWY FAQUTY A 000 050 984 4