THE TESTAMENT OF A PRIME MINISTER THE TESTAMENT OF A PRIME MINISTER BY JOHN DAVIDSON ". . . . To apprehend The meaning of the adamantine reign And power of Evolution in awful terms Of God and Judgement." LONDON GRANT RICHARDS 48, LEICESTER SQUARE, W.C. 1904 CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. THE TESTAMENT OF A PRIME MINISTER. l\AjQl/\/ A YEAR ago the secret thing befell That lays me in my grave. . . . No name, device, Atonement, faith can help a man to die : Upon myself alone I lean, my deeds, My thoughts, that which I know and am: Mistake me not; I go despairing down To dust and deep oblivion. . . . Once, indeed, It seemed to me no stronger brain than mine Repelled the problems of the Universe, That none so proud against obsession bade 5 247726 -6 .: ..if HE TESTAMENT OF Belief produce its passport, none despised Opinion so profoundly, served and groomed A nature so anointed to shake off The venom of remorse ; yet here I lie A broken man, who stood a year ago The foremost of his time, the heart and brain Of Britain and her Empire ; unassailed By calumny, by every faction mourned, Last victim of the old conspiracy, The plot eternal none unravels, pierced By nameless foes, impalpable, unseen, Yet omnipresent, yet omnipotent ; Undone by mystery, smitten by a thought, A PRIME MINISTER. A poisoned arrow from the infinite. Or is it that my spirit slays itself? A doubter always, I ; and doubt is death Therefore to be desired, since all things end? Death is desirable, but not by doubt : The doom of doubt is to be pressed to death By awful certainty as now I lie, Spectator, sufferer, auditor of pangs Unbearable, stretched out in deepest Hell Under the overpowering Universe. When I became the master of the world It seemed indeed an admirable ruse 8 THE TESTAMENT OF For all was ruse and compromise I thought Whereby the State, in magic leading-strings Of dialectic, moped and roamed about Its labyrinthine businesses, or hung Unheeding on the brink of anarchy. Miraculous too, it was, to hear men lie Against each other as the only means And menstruum of truth ; to watch debate Lixiviate matters till the recrement Appeared, the perfect, smooth, exhausted sludge That blinds the electorate and chokes it off. This was the legacy of patriotism ! And still I deemed it the adjusted helm A PRIME MINISTER Of government, forgetting folk forget ! That greatness but a moment dominates The wayward chance of systems as of men. Inevitable decadence of powers Political, in English battlefields Established, fostered oft with native blood, Matured in Parliaments, and dying now, Debased survivals starved amid the rank Usurping thicket of the Fourth Estate, Publicity that overthrows cabal, Affords opinions, nostrums, men and things Of every standing opportunity, And is the only true tyrannicide : io THE TESTAMENT OF This decadence of Parliament I thought An aftermath, a precious verdigris, A genial mellowing in the weathered bronze Of our palladium ; for the sorcery That charms the soul of England, party-led, Enchanted me and held in every sphere My spirit spellbound. Pratice and belief?^ Antipodes : the one in power and place ; The other to oppose, condemn, destroy: The Government the sinner and the sin ; The Opposition the evangelist To break its pride, to chasten, scourge and turn The pageant of its power, a draggled show, A PRIME MINISTER. n Into the narrow way. " The Universe " This specious Universe," I thought, " that hangs " So balanced, so complete, remains within " Untuned, corrupt, a hidden chaos masked " With mere cosmetic ; wisest thought and best, " Heroic deed, most beautiful device, " Consummate law and polity of man " Seem so to him, but are inane and void ; " For out of chaos only chaos comes. 4< The green and sapphire earth embossed with studs 12 THE TESTAMENT OF " Of crystal snow at either lonely pole ; " With orient dawn, with sunset in the west, " The sumptuous rubies of its girdle clasped ; " And wearing gallantly, day in day out, " Its azure mantle of ethereal dust, " That turns at night a sable domino "With stars embroidered. . . ." Beauty, tenderness, The love, the passion, the humanity, The soul of man has wasted on the world ! A year ago, I say, this thing befell That lays me in my grave. I rose in wrath Against the fools and rabble of the House A PRIME MINISTER. 13 That picked at him, the keystone of our bridge, The linen-pin of the wheel of government, The genius of the State : " The very soul" I had your new philosopheme in mind, Defending him, my friend, his power and plan " The very soul of culture now is trade. " Think you I love it, I, conservative, " Afraid of novelty, a child among " The doctrinaires, a stranger in the House " Though foremost there; only at home in thought ? " I love it not; but how should that concern " The automatic forces of the world ! " The Golden Age returns, or rather say, 14 THE TESTAMENT OF " That dream fulfils itself; for waking dreams " Are tokens of our Fate the debtor Time " Discharges duly in the current coin. " You had your Age of Stone, your Age of Bronze, " When baffled wonder, ignorance, terror, awe " Together knit, made up a soul in man " That fenced itself about with arts and rites, " Or found escape and refuge, hope and joy "In fearless fancy and heroic love. " Then came the Iron Age, impassioned, brief, " A century no more : it ends with us. " This was the Age the Revolution tore " Inhuman from the labouring womb of Time A PRIME MINISTER. 15 " (Inhuman or over-human ; nothing at all " Is more inherent in humanity " Than inhumanity). This was the Age, " That showed once more how one man's might may knead " The world like dough and bake it in a cake " And how the wise man like the fool essays " To eat his cake and have it. Iron age " Specific, unmistakable, of guns, " Of armour-plate, of engines, wheels, machines ; " Of iron knowledge, iron thought : the Age "Wherein at last the Iron Book of Fate " Lay open to the world. This Iron Age :6 THE TESTAMENT OF " Was Doomsday like a robber in the night " Rifling the sanctuary ; Doomsday and a new " Authentic Dispensation. First came Law ; " Thereafter, Love ; and now Intelligence, " For now at last we know, and all is now " Permitted. Not an accident, nor made " By any power demonic or divine, ' But Matter, Substance, Universe become ' Self-conscious by its own innate desire * Invincibly impelled through trials, tests 1 Of instinct and brutality Man crowns " The adventurous effort : Matter knows itself; " And Man, the organ of its knowledge, bound A PRIME MINISTER 17 " For ever on this torture-wheel the earth, "In agony confesses what he is " Not God, nor Devil, but Material stuff " That knows and thinks, imagines and despairs, " Endures and wills. After the Iron Age " We reach the Age of Gold the dream come true " Of Pagan and of Christian. Soberly " I say, this twentieth century begins " No other Age than the Millennium. "In every time and clime the cry has been " ' Escape ! escape ! ' The future beckoned still " Replete with immaterial happiness, " And stubborn man imagined things diverse i8 THE TESTAMENT OF " From those that have been, and will always be, " And never can be other than they are. " But now we know escape impossible ; " And on the tolling of that knowledge comes " The Golden Age, Millennium, Heaven-and- Hell " That have been always though men knew it not ; " For knowledge to the subject of it makes " The character of things. Oh, Matter means " That Man shall not escape ! A way there is " By death ; and every leaf resolves again " To inorganic dust and fumes unseen ; " But the tree dies not ; and the sighing woods A PRIME MINISTER. 19 " Are powerless not to thrive. I stood one day " And watched a grove of beeches : fluted stems, " With knots and bosses where the boiling sap " Had burst the rind ; with intertwining boughs, " As if they stood impatient for the dance " And waiting on the word to break the spell " That held them root-bound. For the younger ones, " The slender saplings, with their branches draped " So gracefully about them sure, the spell " Had been dissolved already ; but they, too, " Were waiting, haply for the older trees " To lead the way, or for some idle whim. 20 THE TESTAMENT OF " And as I watched I thought : The charm will soon " Be wrought again before these wanton plants " Make up their minds to trip it down the hill, " Forsake their native grove and see the world ; " And the sharpset, remorseless axe may be " Their only disenchanter, at a time "When to be conscious of the rising sap " Would please them well enough, to be assured " Only of this that they are not yet dead. " So is it with the nations and the tribes, " The classes, masses, peoples of the earth : " The leaves, the men and women, die and rot ; " But the trees stand, Goth, Scythian, Mongol, Jew, A PRIME MINISTER. 21 " Foolish and wise, the strong men and the weak, " The sighing woods, the world-wide wilderness: " The fixed idea, Humankind, remains " Until the earth becomes an icicle, " Or falls into the bosom of the sun. " Watching the world as once I watched the trees, " I think how much more happy, more renowned, " The destiny of those whose long decay " Distresses tender hearts, if tribes and clans, " Man, woman, child, in splendid unison " They had themselves before their spirit broke " Destroyed the spell of life that held them fast : " The Red Men of the west, the strength austere, 22 THE TESTAMENT OF " The adamantine nerve that worshipped pain ; " Invented cruelties and took delight " To witness and to die in agony, " So various, so protracted, so intense " That to the tortured Indian at the stake " A thing of use-and-wont, a festival " The Crucifixion seemed a pleasant dream ; " Or that offscouring of the Eastern world, " The melancholy Celt, whom Latin, Greek " And Teuton drove through Europe to the rocks, " The utmost isles and precincts of the sea, " Who fight for fighting's sake and understand " No meaning in defeat, having no cause A PRIME MINISTER. 23 " At heart, no depth of purpose, no profound " Desire, no inspiration, no belief, " A twilight people living in a dream, " A withered dream they never had themselves, " A faded heirloom that their fathers dreamt : " How much more happy these had they destroyed " The spell of life at once, and so escaped " An unregarded martyrdom, the consciousness " Of inefficience and the world's contempt ! " But Matter, firm that Man shall not escape " While earth remains inhabitable, knits " His vehement spirit of Material stuff, " Of longing infinite that will exist. 24 THE TESTAMENT OF " Therefore it is that with the starless time " Of actual knowledge and intelligence " The Golden Age appears this darksome dawn " Of ours, a day-in-night, a night-in-day : " For whether earth already to its doom " Reels orbit-slipped, or whether decades hence, " Or next year, or to-morrow, or to-day " The weight of ice amassed at either pole " Shall change our axis till a deluge wipe " The citied world away, and glacial drift " Plough up the earth and harrow it again ; " Or whether flame consume us comet-struck ; *f " Or the earth's crust fall in ; or to the sun A PRIME MINISTER. 25 " Returning whence it sprang, our orb effete, " Enwombed in pristine fire once more, become " The brilliant seed of stars to be, we know " That men shall cease : their speech, their deeds, their arts, " The wonder of their being, passion, love, " Ambition, chanty, transcendent thought " Shall leave no memory, token, sign, or sigh "In any speck of dust, or nook of space ; , v " We know that here and now is Heaven-and-Hell ; " This is the Promised Land, the Golden Age, " This, the Millennium, and the Aftertime, " The fixed, eternal moment, sounding on. y 26 THE TESTAMENT OF " So for our purpose let the passing mood " Suffice : we enter now the Golden Age, " An early dream of Matter's. Nether-formed "In molten rocks antique, and woven athwart " Methodic minerals by the wandering veins 11 That traverse ordered masses, Gold implied " A Golden Age ; and when its hour awoke " In consciousness by simple means of truth " Perceived at last, the metal once again " In ancient Ophir shone and newer lands, " Predestined to be ours, enriched the world " With rivers, harvests, spathes and pits of gold. " Get Gold, get Gold; and be the Golden Age / A PRIME MINISTER. 27 " So signals Matter from the ends of the earth " Where'er her chosen people pitch their tents. " Religion, chivalry, crusade, romance, " Or war for war's own sake, or art for art, " Freedom for Man, and Justice for the World "Are not ; or are contained in this Get Gold ! " One nation must be richer than the rest : " Let it be ours ! it must, it will be ours " If we continue Matter's best belov'd." . . ./ Right there it was my wondering heart overthrew My argument, and flooded all my thought, An inundation of humanity 28 THE TESTAMENT OF That drowned Material truth. The soldier, starved, Corrupted, tortured into cowardice ! (All men are brave by nature, and in health, Well-fed and at their ease, as men should be, Would scorn to do another's bidding.) Souls In factories shred ! Unwilling sex profaned ! (All women are by nature chaste as fire : How otherwise could chastity be thought !) Soft bosoms strewn with ashes ; tender hearts, Dried, tanned and stretched from belted wheel to wheel ; And all the noisomeness that 's daily cleansed In women's tears ! The horror of the world A PRIME MINISTER. 29 Wherein its wealth and power are rooted fast Blossom and savoury fruit, carnation-hued And teeming with delight for every sense, Out of the offal and the excrement Distilled, the essence of humanity Expressed from putrid masses of mankind : This surged upon me, sobbing wave on wave That throttled speech : I stammered to a close, Then left the House. Borne on this tide I went By the uncouth embankment where the Thames In surface eddies coiling and uncoiled, Entangled by a myriad, myriad keels, Propellers, paddles, turbines, dredgers, oars, 30 THE TESTAMENT OF A ravelled skein, a dismal flood winds down Its greasy channel : past St. Paul's that looms Above the thunder of the multitude, Shouldering the skies ; along tumultuous streets Of warehouse, factory, bank, by dock and wharf, Until I reached a loathsome region, foul, Malodorous, dark ; in every separate pore Of noxious atmosphere a separate stench. Among the barges, plots of pasturage Like old unhealed abrasions opened up With sheep like maggots starving in the mud. The reaches of the tributary Lea, Enamelled filthily in many hues A PRIME MINISTER. 31 Purple and faded crimson, pallid gold And swarthy soot in wrinkled creases gleamed With dusky iridescence, and bewitched My wounded fancy like a hellish charm. Ashamed I tracked the hideous watercourse And lit upon a swamp, a festering swamp, An ugly gusset of unholy slime Where stunted hemlock fought with tufts of sedge. It lay a little lower than the Lea, And took a ropy overflow that slunk Beneath a ruined bridge : tall chimney-stalks On one side belching smoke ; the river bank 32 THE TESTAMENT OF Upon another ; on the third, relays Of jangling trains : a piece of mother earth, Most woebegone, most horrible, for years Imprisoned, sick with filth and fetid air, Irrecognizable. Upon the bridge Some human lumber loafed, a dozen men Incompetent or drunken ; all unfit For everything except survival. One, An old man, toothless, tremulous, unclean, His face and temples crumpled out of shape By seventy years' essay to thrust and fix His angularity in useful rounds Of business, eagerly harangued the group : A PRIME MINISTER. 33 " Conceive it, grasp it, hoard it in your minds, " A new possession that illumines all : " Self-consciousness is Matter's seamy side ; " Man is the seamy side of the Universe : I " Here for a while the Universe disports " Itself, a motley clown, wearing its coat " Of many colours inside out : the truth, " Nearer than any saying ever came " Before, in that fantastic image hides." " Yes," cried another, drunk, irrelevant, Ragged, consumptive, horrible : " My tears " That scald my sunken cheeks, salter than brine 34 THE TESTAMENT OF " With long retention : why I weep at last, " Why here, I cannot tell : this sweated blood " That brands like vitriol ; sobs that shake the world ; " This outcry that might rend the veil, and ring 4 ' Through space to startle slumberous overtones " Unheard among the silent sinful spheres " Except when woe awakes them : these avouch " A Christian and the winepress of his creed. " I, last of all the Christians, trembling yet, " Upon the verge and crumbling brink of Hell, " Assaulted momently by doubts and fears " Despite the proven panoply of faith, A PRIME MINISTER. 35 " And tortured out of all similitude " To humankind, can pray this meagre prayer " ' Lord I believe ; help Thou, mine unbelief! " He knelt unnoticed by the rest, for these Were heedless of each other, stripped and flayed Of all save personality. " For me," Another cried : " I'm atheist, stark : a God " Would long ago have killed me, I being I, " A mystery of iniquity/' "And I, 1 ' 36 THE TESTAMENT OF Said one, snuffling with half a palate, lips Of shapeless sponge and rotting nose, " I say " There is a God : I know His handiwork ; " I bear His marks about me : not a God " That shifts and doubles with the moods of men ; " But He that Is, the old remorseless Jew " Who took his pound of flesh on Calvary : " Him I believe in." "Well," another cried, Asquint at me : " what do you think of us ? " Great men, I wager, mate ? " A PRIME MINISTER. 37 " Strange men, at least. " How were you sifted out and cast away ? " " By being grateful " thus the eager wretch Who thought Humanity the seamy side Of Matter : " gratitude, sheer gratitude " Destroys the courage, eats the soul out, stuffs " The pockets of the wise who feel it not. " Be grateful if you must, but never tell ; 11 Or else the world will use your gratitude " To starve you out ; and slave or mendicant 4 'Will be your doom." 38 THE TESTAMENT OF " Astonishing," I said, " To find a humorist here." / "-A humorist? Hell!" Snorted the monster that believed in God. " No humorists here : we are the men who know. "Your belletristic prattle ! What a lie " That humour is the salt of literature, " The truest truth of life ! The Book of books ? ' Come ; what 's the humour there ? What 's Dante's ? Grim ? " The humour of the Crucifixion ? True ; " The brilliant humour of the fire of Hell, A PRIME MINISTER. 39 " And, as you said, the humorousness of us." " How can you live ?" I cried. '^How dare to live?" " We are the only folk who are alive/' Their eldest spokesman said. " The seamy sicje ? " The naked nerves of Matter ! Matter loves " Its aches and pains : it knows itself thereby. " We hate to labour ; love to brood and dream. " Work cures or kills us ; but we won't be cured. " Matter has need of drunken idlers, fit " To loaf and think, to understand the world, "And be its fiercest pangs of consciousness." 40 THE TESTAMENT OF " Let all men," said the Atheist, "class or mass, " Tread on the mouths of cowards ; scorn success ; " Reject imaginative solace, dreams, " Delusions of desire ; abandon hope ; " And sick or sound, in prison or exempt, " Or chained or tortured daily, mock the doom " Of humankind, and with a lewd grimace " Deride the covert nakedness of Fate " So thinly clad, so foolish, so ashamed." My soul grew pallid ; but I spoke : " Oh fools, " Unhallowed outcasts, spirits petrified "In evil, human lumber, self-removed, A PRIME MINISTER. 41 " Self-damned, do something were it but to fight " Among yourselves and find out which is first. " Forget that men like you afflict the world : " Think of the great ones " Such a husky noise Broke out about me, spluttering like a vat O'ercloyed with heat that boils its surfeit off Bestirred upon a sudden ! " Great ones? Hell! "We are the great ones, we." "Above, beneath, " About me, or within, nothing is great : " I only, I am great : greater than thought. 42 THE TESTAMENT OF " Spirit and flesh, my casual qualities : " But I, the individual, I am more " Than soul and body : insubmissive me." " The Ego ? Ha, the Ego ! Who shall name, " Who say it, who define ! " " Why, every man "Is every instant instantly himself, " Exactly what he is ; no more, no less." " I am the only individual, I : " The Truth itself is nothing : to believe " The highest Truth would be to abdicate " The individual : all things disappear " Before the sovereign Me." A PRIME MINISTER. 43 From out those cries Of personality upon the rack A mellow voice, a voice sustained, arose With one who stood a head above the rest, Upstarting from a silent session, he, Alone of those who hung about the bridge In tune with Fate and master of the mood. ^ " I knew the greatest man that ever lived," He said, and all gave place, nodding their heads In quick approval as at something found By happy chance when diligence had failed. " I knew the greatest man that ever lived. " First, let me ask you, have you felt at all 44 THE TESTAMENT OF " The torment of the mind when life depends " On pleasing others raiment, food, abode " Extorted by the labour of the hands 11 From grudging capital, or won by toil " Of fettered brains, abuse of gift, or waste " Of patience in some idle service, theft " Direct, deceit, or mendicancy ? No ? " How can I make you truly apprehend " The eating cancer in the soul of man " Dependent for a livelihood ? On sin " The sumptuous worships, empires, orders, arts " Are 'stablished, nourished, drunken, wanton, mad A PRIME MINISTER. 45 " The inevitable, never-pardoned sin " Of procreants who fill the earth with souls " That must be slaves : it is the only sin " To thrust a human being on the world : " I say it simply. Inconceivable " This agony of indigence ! No tongue, " No sound can utter it : absorbent pain " That from the blood the iron colour draws, " Precludes the rich distillment of the seed, " Unknits the sinews, parches up the heart, " Consumes unspent the treasury of thought, " The fund and bullion, mint and coin of speech, " Palsies the silent wing of fantasy, 46 THE TESTAMENT OF " And sucks the marrow from the soul itself. " Man is the slave of everything he makes : " This gold and silver, stamped and milled for ease " Of business, has become his sole concern : " Enough is not enough : we cannot breathe " Without it : limpid water, healthy air " Are costly luxuries, the world has fallen " So helplessly within the mean control " Of money ! (How the symbol still usurps " Authority in every province, masks " The figure, drains the life of actual things ! "No vampire like ideas put to use !) " This thing cannot be said ; but he, the man A PRIME MINISTER. 47 " I call the greatest showed the Universe " The acme of despair. A navvy, all " The brute; bone, blood and brawn ; brows like an ape's, " Hawk's head, sad eyes deep-sunk, mouth leonine : " The incarnation of the will to live, "An instinct absolute. At twenty years " With pick and shovel none could touch his skill, " None face him hand to hand, none eat and drink " With appetite so ravenous, so staunch, "Such malt-proof brains; more glibly lewd in speech " Than creatures of debauch all gone to sex, 48 THE TESTAMENT OF " But virginal in fancy and in deed. " One evening in his twentieth year he sat " Beneath a hawthorn in a bottom-glade " That fringed the northern suburb where he lived. " Upon its tranquil shadow every tree " In golden light stood up, an emerald dome ; " A vagrant wind that idled through the world, " Fingering the lucent foliage wantonly, " About the quaint suburban valley trailed " The scalloped oak-leaves, bronzed and fallen long, " That caught its rustling mantle as it passed. " Trees with their wrinkled hides, their many- ringed A PRIME MINISTER. 49 " Compacted boles, their heavy creaking boughs, " Their myriad leaves, the green turf thick and sweet, " Cream of the earth uprisen through fathomed depths " Of soil and sap : remembrances of these " Our natal house and only rafters once, " Our carpet, board and bed, a heritage " Occult in brain and blood, unguessed by him, " My man of men, begat a passionate sense " Of everlastingness ; as old, as young, " As perdurable as the earth itself, " He couched him in the wood and heard and felt. D 50 THE TESTAMENT OF " Anon the travelling music of the street " That distance can etherealize arose " Among the workmen's houses overhead. " Old vogue or new, melodious tune or harsh, " High-hammered in the village, softly stole " Adown the neighbouring valley, deep, remote, " Antique, eternal as the world-old mood " Of him that listened dreaming. Every tree " Upon its shadow stood ; athwart the boughs * The wind, uncertain, sighed ; the mellow tune " Like jewelled mist descended ; moted shafts " Of dusky light escaped the journeying clouds " That hid the ample sun and left his beams A PRIME MINISTER. 51 " A deeper hue of topaz, chrysosperm " To milt the earth with harvest ; thick as thoughts " A thunder of hoofs went by four grazing hacks " By some unwonted shadow on the laund " Perturbed : a skirt, a glancing step, a shriek, " A ravished woman ; and my man of men, " At one with nature in the ancient way, " Began his tragic course. A decade spent "In prison turned him out, insane, corrupt, " The sheath decayed, the weapon dim and hacked, " The broken bits, the refuse of himself; " But with a purpose smouldering in the dust, " The ashes, embers, brands that had been once 52 THE TESTAMENT OF " A proper furnace and a glowing fire, " With perilous temper in the worn-out blade, " With wallflower on the ruins, a branch of stars " To light the outcast in the sunless pit, " And music beating in the broken heart. u H e sought the ravished woman, and made her his ; " For now the world to him was sex alone, " And she, the other moiety of the world : " None other ; she, the woman of his deed, " His fate, the only woman he had known. " They lived beside the valley, sacro-sanct " To him by reason of his sudden crime ; " For crime can hallow precincts, titles, tides, A PRIME MINISTER. 53 " As certainly as Calvary remains " The holiest spot on earth. Sometimes he wrought " With pick and shovel like a thing wound-up ; " Sometimes in lethargy his days were sunk ; " Sometimes his passion for the woman welled " Like founts of living colour, founts of fire " That steep the cloudy west in paradise. " Three years went by, a child with every year ; " Then Fate abruptly gripped him by the throat, " And asked him of the deeds done in the flesh. " To feed and clothe the woman his fiercest toil " Required him still to starve himself. Four mouths 54 THE TESTAMENT OF " Beside his own ! The hunger of his heart, " The fury of his appetite, the blood "That would ferment and flower; the toil, the pain, " The hopeless time to come for him and his! " When the third child was twelve months old, and she, " The lusty mother comelier every day, " An orchard-tree with blossom and with fruit " Sweet-scented and mature, this man of men, " Unwitting how the world shall cease to be, " And we and all our purpose, passion, power, " Dissolve like snow in fire and leave no stain, A PRIME MINISTER. 55 " Instinctively achieved the greatest deed " Recorded hitherto ; and answered Fate " With utter arrogance. (The thing is known : " You read the trial ? No ; it made no noise. " That such a thing should happen in the world, " And pass from knowledge like a shallow jest !) " Midnight beat out upon suburban bells " A drowsy madrigal from tower to tower ; " The potent summer moonbeams thronged the room; " And when their youngest child, asleep at last, " Released the woman virginal again " For every birth restores virginity, 56 THE TESTAMENT OF " And a chaste year had filled the flower of hers " My hero left his couch upon the floor, " Approached the bed where with her brood she lay, " And kneeling whispered in her ear. She blushed " How deep a crimson mantling in the light " With silvery bloom like clusters of the vine ! " She turned and kissed him, smiled and dove-like rose " As willing as a bride. ' Outside/ he said, " And pointed to the moon. Wondering she went " Clad in her nightdress. Splendid in the strength A PRIME MINISTER. 57 " Of madness . . . (What men do when Time and Fate, " The rack and torture of the world have driven " Them mad, reveals their inmost attribute ; " For madness is the flowering of the heart, " The red rose of the soul) ... So in the strength " Of madness, splendid as a god when gods " Haunted the world for love of womankind, "He caught her up and bore her to the wood. " Remembrance of their savage bridal-hour, " The decade's wasted womb, the later times " Of hunger, rapture, toil and fruitful love, " And the last year of longing unrelieved, 58 THE TESTAMENT OF " The fire and martyrdom of abstinence " Became a golden legend when he changed " The silent alley for the whispering glade, " The native power and beauty of the night. " Oh then the spicy odour of the earth, 11 The green scent of the boughs with dew re- freshed, " The miracle of fantasy attained, " Of valiant passion and the wine of life " Gathered and crushed and emptied to the lees " Beneath a hawthorn on a grassy couch, " All dappled with the blossoms of the moon " That drifted earthward through the darkling tree ! A PRIME MINISTER. 59 " For this unmannered love discounted Fate " Upon the very ground his crime had blessed, " The altar of the coming sacrifice, " And final triumph of the will to live ! " Her bounteous bosom hush ! her eager arms, " Her burning, proud, insatiable sex, " Her murmurs, molten kisses, deepdrawn sighs; " Then swift the knife across her milk-white throat, " And the red fountain gurgling in the grass ! " Felicity for her ; but anguish fierce " On him laid sudden hold and wrung him hard. " Anon an awful voice broke out in wrath, " A voice he knew not, from his entrails torn, 6o THE TESTAMENT OF " The inarticulate cry of consciousness " Caught in the wide toils of the Universe, " Of instant mystery suddenly aware, " Yet fronting with a deed of loudest note " The mute, Material Infinitude. " Forthwith he menaced heaven ; stabbed at the moon ; " Shook from his homeless eyes the flood of tears ; " Girded his loins and perfected the work. " The youngest first : upon the woman's breast "He laid it softly down ; on either hand " The other two : all dead crimson and white, " A posy for the gods, sweet bloodworts culled A PRIME MINISTER. 61 " At midnight in a London suburb. Deep " His lonely sleep and dreamless in the house " His hands had ravaged. When the morning came " He gave himself to justice unperturbed." As this recital ended breathlessly, In every countenance, debauched, diseased, Unmanned, a tender look and terrible From the unsounded depths of being surged, Overflowed the eyes and played about the mouth ; And I, uncovering, bent before these things That had been men and now were agony 62 THE TESTAMENT OF A random harp of tensest torture stretched Upon a ruined bridge beside the Lea. Stunned by this actual knowledge of the soul At home here in eternal torment ; purged Of feeling, judgement, memory, thought I trod The beaten towing-path, my palsied brain A magic mirror of the things I saw : A well-bred gelding fallen on evil days Tugged at a flashing rope that dipped and dripped ; A hamlet sweltered by the riverside Wharfs, barges, mounds of bricks, carts, gravel, dross. A PRIME MINISTER. 63 The whole riparian coil of things involved In pungencies of steaming tar, manure, Stale water, bitter smoke, and plaintive once With unshorn sheep that scrabbled o'er a bridge Bleating to crop the pasture of the marsh. Like savage wood-nymphs with their hair on end The pollard-willows mocked the pleasure-boat, Or athlete skimming in his shell of splints ; But spectral poplars in the distance kept The secrets of the wind upgathered close ; And on the verge, where sky and suburb met, With shadow teeming and with emerald light 6 4 THE TESTAMENT OF The forest beckoned on the voyager. Thither I hastened, in my waking dream Oblivious of the way : the firmament, In quaint mosaic ceiled, of porcelain, Azure and gray, milky and olive-hued, Umber and flame, close canopied the earth ; An exaltation of suburban larks Against the lowering vault shattered their songs ; A ground-bee twanged across the chequered plain ; And then the forest took me. Evening fell. I marked the lattice-work on swarthy boles Of lustred chestnuts as I walked about, And saw the trees keep up a torch-lit dance, A PRIME MINISTER. 65 In noiseless chains and figures flitting past. The cuckoos beat their golden gongs throughout The echoing forest ; finches, sparrows, wrens, Blackbirds and nightingales in every bough Descanted music fresh as garlands woven In Arcady ; in hollows where the mist Began to hang its ghostly tapestry out, Mistrustful creatures stole from tree to tree The fallow deer come from their inner haunts To snatch a supper of the crusts and crumbs Left by the Londoner. Bird after bird Forbore its song as darkness crept abroad, Till the last lark dropped breathless from the sky: E 66 THE TESTAMENT OF Only the passionate nightingales poured out Their uninterpretable carol wreaths Of jewels, dewdrops, gold, chaplets of stars That stained the ashen dusk with diverse fire. A sudden, silver dissonance, a bell, A vesper bell, destroyed my stagnant mood. Then those unhappy things that had been men And now in dreams of madness, murder, lust A dread salvation found, usurped my thought. Into my mind nothing so terrible Had plunged before ; nothing of utter woe, Until I met these outcasts by the Lea, A PRIME MINISTER. 67 Had ever cleft the three-piled artifice That swathed my life. The eager vesper bell Invited willing feet. Led by the sound I reached the forest church and entered, glad As some lost soul from deep perdition snatched To serve once more its pleasant flesh and blood, And every hallowed function of the sense. (That rooted, barbed antithesis ! That lie !) Twilight against the chancel-casement frowned, And heaped upon the broidered altar-cloth A ghostly diaper of coloured gloom ; High in the organ loft a point of gold Persisted in a wavering flame that beamed 68 THE TESTAMENT OF Harmonic hues of dull uncertain dye ; And as the lamplight bathed the fingered keys, The open diapason moaned and sang, Like wind and sea within an ocean cave At nightfall when the new moon overrides The ebbing brands of sunset. " Peace ! " I prayed ; " Peace for a little ; give my spirit peace ! " Swift came the shattering thought, " To whom this prayer? " The surreptitious God Semitic lore " In Aryan fable foisted cuckoo-wise ; " The God hebdomadal the church exploits ; " The God the harlot swears by common God A PRIME MINISTER. 69 " Of hucksters, gossips, liars, hypocrites, " Evangelists, dysangelists, infidels ? " The God upon whose shoulders conquerors hang " The burden of their slaughter Him whose will " The God-intoxicated Tamerlane " Obeyed in Anatolia, crushing down " A fourfold thousand in a single tomb : " Alive he buried them in one huge pit, " And heard with rapture holy as the joy "He deemed high Heaven partook a stifled roar, " A murmur and a multitudinous sigh " Break from the heaving bosom of the earth. 70 THE TESTAMENT OF " What God ? What God ? God of the rack, the stake ? " The big battalions and the heavy purse ? " Why pray at all ? What 's prayer ? The meanest mode, " The fond delirium power exhausted grants " A grudged occasion when our uttermost " Endeavour fails and thought is spent ! Pray ? Think " Instead what God is, sanely think ; and what " The sanguine source of our immortal hope ; " Think how some common, drudging neighbour- wight A PRIME MINISTER. 71 "(Not Hercules nor a titan of the war " Venerean ; no, but any honest Jack) " Could happily beget for fifty years " A hundred wholesome children annually ; " How every rosy Jill incloisters germs " Of many thousand brats ; think this, and laugh " Aloud, delighted with the naive, the rich " Conceit of immortality and vast " Exuberance of the race that swells and throbs "In every man and woman, strings the nerves, " Ignites the brain and thunders in the heart " With God and life eternal. Youth and love i " Demand a Heaven of beauty and delight, 72 THE TESTAMENT OF " A Hell of wrath and fear ; and valour claims " Immortal meed of victory ! Overthrow 41 The cross of Christ. . . ." (Who spoke? I cannot tell; Belial, or Antichrist, or northern blood In us that drives us still a-viking far And wide) . . . "We English need no Hebrew God, " Whose filthy world in blood of rams and goats " Uncleansed, exacted finally the bland " Abstersion of a sacrifice divine. "Since the reverberant fire of fantasy " The furnace and the mould of blood and brain A PRIME MINISTER. 73 " Refashions heaven and earth the world about, " In consort with the genius of the clime, " The time, the folk ; and since imperial doom, " Alive at last in thought and deed, awakes " A pride of origin, and bids us tell " What power is this that wins and holds the world, \ " Shall we not now observantly dethrone " The valetudinary God of woe, " The foreign God that died a shameful death, \ " Whose gospel tolls denial and contempt " Of all that flesh and blood delights in, all " The great, the beautiful, the strong, the wise ; " Exalt instead the nerve, the brain, the blood, 74 THE TESTAMENT OF " The power of us, victorious Englishmen, " Who glad at heart invade the quartered globe, " Possessing continents, usurping seas ; " And if imagination, salt and sweet, "That must be served with treasures and with rites, " Still hankers after ancient images, " May not the enamoured genius of the race " Impregnate once again her jewelled womb "With Odin, Freya, Hulda, Baldur, Thor ? " Hush ! hark ! aloft a clanging cavalcade, " The silver bridles, snow-white stallions, helms " Enchanted, bosoms clad in virgin proof A PRIME MINISTER. 75 " Brunhilda, and the choosers of the slain ! " The cloud above the battle opens : home " From blood-drenched desert, mountain, valley, veldt, " With lightning-thong and thunder-hoof we ride " Across the rainbow to the palaces " Of Asgard, and the grove of golden fir " Where high Valhalla stands, heroic haven " Of all our ancestors ! Or shall not we " We English that can melt the world up forge " A brand-new God, an actual God at last, " No Evil God to die upon a tree, " A hale, triumphant God who knows no sin, 76 THE TESTAMENT OF " Sorrow nor anguish, nor the fear of death ? " We have that God already have we not ? " The rich man's God, of comfort and of ease, " A God of health and strength, a gracious God, " Whose law is freedom, and who saves his own * By no election of the spirit : no, " By natural selection and the strife " For power this honest English God proceeds " His wonders to perform.". . . But there the laugh, *** Albeit genial, froze about my heart, Because the music now began to wail A tenebrous voluntary, limning clear Before me as the art of music can A PRIME MINISTER. 77 That piled the towers of Troy in storm-hatched light The cross of Christ on Calvary as it stood : A rustic spar athwart a rustic beam, The sawdust powdering still the scabrous bark, And the aroma of the fresh-cut tree Shrouding the scent of blood. The peasant-God In every vibrant sinew, every nerve Convulsed, endured the ardent tide of pain That whelmed and interfused him momently, Surge upon surge with every sobbing breath. I saw his soul look out from pallid eaves, And those dim windows of the Universe, 7 8 THE TESTAMENT OF His faded eyes, that yet benignant shone ; I wept, I knelt, I kissed the wounded feet ; I knew the death of God, the end of Sin. Forthwith a rustle and a roar of drums, A thunder of trumpets, and the lofty shriek Of strings, voluptuous and intense as fire, Broke from the forest, and the church became The thoroughfare of twenty centuries. Barbaric conquerors, armies dyed in blood, Disciplinants austere, ecstatic nuns, Crusaders, monarchs, templars, tragic popes, Heresies, tortures, trances, martyrdoms, A PRIME MINISTER. 79 Enslavement, havoc, ruin, and the fugue Of hellish warfare, endless as the winds That rave for ever round the storm-tost world, The twenty centuries of Christendom, The gorgeous masque, the revelry and rout, The long-protracted funeral rites of God, The pageant and the obsequies of Sin Rolled through the aisle before me. " Who would hoard " I cried aloud as that wild orgy passed " A purse or two of time when Fate provides " So great a celebration as the death " Of God Himself, the utter end of Sin ? 8o THE TESTAMENT OF " How could mankind in lesser lapse of years " Than those tremendous centuries conceive " The esoteric meaning of the Cross " That God gave up the ghost on Calvary, " And bore away the Sin of all the world ? " How could mankind perceive until to-day " That God and Sin existed not at all ; " That with the death of Christ there also died " The two insane ideas, God and Sin ? "The ghostly sphere of these illusions bursts " Asunder only now when age on age " Of war, blood-drunkenness, the clash of creeds, " Inhuman kingdoms, popedoms, whoredoms, Hell A PRIME MINISTER. 81 " Have drained the dregs of all iniquity ; " So that at last the passionate heart of man, " The proud imagination, and the dream " That hovers homeless as the myths decay, " Exempt from fabulous wonder, rooted deep " In Substance one and multiform, and breathed " In all the mystery of the things that are, " Create indomitable will to truth, " An open mind at home in space and time, " A stainless memory splendidly endowed " With actual knowledge, a Material soul ^ " At one with the Material Universe/' 82 THE TESTAMENT OF The glory of a sane humanity Had hardly dawned and lightened when the trump Of doom exhaled a long-enduring sigh, A sigh, no louder, heard and felt throughout The quaking earth ; and in the zenith reared, The great white throne and Him that sat thereon Illumined space insufferably bright. Against His glance the star-strewn firmament, As evanescent as a wreath of mist At sunrise, perished utterly. The dead Before the throne awaited judgement. Books Were opened and another book which is The book of life ; and all the dead were judged A PRIME MINISTER. 83 Out of the matters written in the books According to their actions. On the right, When the eternal sentence was pronounced, I saw the great ones of the earth appear Magnificently confident of heaven The kings, the conquerors, the wise, the bold. The rich, the proud, and all the lusty lives That took their power and pleasure in the world " Enter, ye blessed, enter ! " from the throne The high decree. " Inherit now the realm " Prepared for you from the beginning, ye "That used the world I made superb in strength, " Unparagoned in beauty ye that loved 84 THE TESTAMENT OF " The haughty morning and the radiant night, " That stored the brilliant hours with generous strife, "With sweet repose, with passion, and with joy, " Glorying and revelling in the gifts I gave. " Created of the self-same stuff as I, " And all My suns and systems, Matter, strained " From the great staple of the Universe " Throughout millenniums of elaborate choice, " Conscious, self-conscious, free to know, to think, " To do, all ye that had my world in charge, "And set yourselves to fill it with delight, " With noble wars, with beauty and with wealth, A PRIME MINISTER. 85 " With hope for man, with hope for life, with life, " And ever and always life, partake with Me " To all eternity the joys of heaven." Upon the left shuddering I saw it so The Son of Man and His elect appeared, Apostles, martyrs, votarists, virgins, saints. The poor in spirit, the mourners and the meek, And they that hungered after righteousness, The merciful and all the pure in heart, Peacemakers and the salt of the earth I saw , Upon the left in sore amazement stand. " Depart from Me, ye cursed " from the throne 86 THE TESTAMENT OF The dread decree " into eternal fire ; " Deniers, slanderers, fools that turned to scorn 11 The perfect world I made superb in strength, " Unparagoned in beauty ; ye that stained " The haughty morning and the radiant night, " Seasons and tides with liturgies and forms, " With cries and intercessions, prayers and tears, " Ashamed to use the glory I had given ; " Ye rancorous poisoners of life that found " Temptation only where I offered joy, " My splendid world a charnel-house, and Me " A God of infelicity and woe, " A God of everything unfit to live, A PRIME MINISTER. 87 " Hating My gifts of intellect, of pride, " Of strength and freedom. Of the self-same stuff " As I and all My suns and galaxies, "The purest Matter, sifted forth and strained " From the great staple of the Universe " Throughout millenniums of elaborate choice, " Conscious, self-conscious, free to know, to think " To do, having My world in charge, ye set " Yourselves to drain it of delight, of love, " Of beauty, passion, power, supplied the void " With lust, 'revenge, distress, corruption, hate, " And made My will to life a will to death. " Ye hypocrites, that with a holy lie 88 THE TESTAMENT OF " Tarnished the cleanliness immaculate " Of human generation, soiling life " On to the end from his pellucid fount " And origin divine, beholding earth " A leprous crust of Sin, depart from Me " Into eternal fire prepared for them " That make my will to live a will to die." All this I saw and heard, and of the sight And utterance unimagined die Despairing. In my heart of hearts I knew, As men must know whose will is set to truth, The death of Christ to be the tragic end A PRIME MINISTER. 89 Of God Himself that purged the world of Sin / A great expedient indeed, and big With all transvaluation ; but to think The desolating thought, to apprehend The meaning of the adamantine reign And power of Evolution in awful terms Of God and Judgement, overwhelmed my soul ; And now that death at random tortures me, And delves and fathoms like a busy mole Tissue and marrow, now that maggots fret My brain and worms entangle fantasy, While casual darkness visits me by day, The shadow of the unknown, and dreams distress 90 THE TESTAMENT OF Me nightly (all my household overhears The outcry of my waking) ; now, indeed Corroding consciousness of manhood gnaws And macerates the fibre of my mind With pangs of Hell and impotent remorse, So horrible and sick that sense of sin, In that archaic jargon dying hard, Were Heaven to such unutterable woe. It is my bones that speak, my skeleton, The inmost core of me, the soul of soul ; The skeleton 's the soul ; it must be so. Once when I held the Wardenship in Hythe A PRIME MINISTER. 91 I handled souls ; a cryptful there of bones Unsepulchred is worth a visit. Skull By skull I searched the infinite abyss Of empty sockets, till a valiant brow Engraved and cleft with sword and battle-axe Divulged its secret. Deep I dug my sight, Forehead to forehead, eye to eyeless gap As in a necromantic camera, Through Time and times to that tempestuous strand And moonlit battle in the roaring surf. Between two storms the beaten Saxons fell, All day pursued by ominous Vortimer 92 THE TESTAMENT OF And snared upon the threshold of the sea By hostile wind and tide, their old allies Become implacable antagonists. Thrust forth for flight warkeel on warkeel smote Amid the ravelled water ; twisted prows Leapt up against the billows, spun aloft And burst in ragged splinters on the beach. Their helpless crews together madly hurled In writhing shoals, a wasted myriad, died. The remnant toed the tide mark, death behind And death in front. Extorting stride on stride The victors pressed them backward to the deep, Where dead and dying swashed against the limbs A PRIME MINISTER. 93 Of coupled combatants and dragged them down, Unstable shingle tripped and coiling surge Dislodged the surest foot. From the torn sky The placid bosom of the barren moon, Chill mirror of the morning, fitful light On cloven helmets flung and cleaving brands, On lips that snarled and eyes instinct with fate. Yet all unheard warcry and weapon rang, For high above the din of battle pealed The instant thunder of the brandished waves And shattering trumps and cymbals of the blast, While blood-shot foam in ruby-tinctured scrolls Unfurled and withered on the darkling shore. 94 THE TESTAMENT OF The combat vanished and a pageant thronged The chamber of the skull, presenting time Revoked through aeons to the earliest sun From nebulous stuff condensed which brimmed of yore That spacious womb the jewelled Zodiac clasps Ah, still the biassed Heaven! I mean the loins Of ancient night with constellations girt. At once in molten rings as daughter-cells Are cleft and cleft again to don the shape Of perfect organs, from the spinning mass And staple of the Universe unsealed Like Saturn's girdles, satellites in germ, A PRIME MINISTER. 95 Earth and the neighbouring worlds, our known- unknown Adopted pagans (Vulcan, Mercury ; The silver Venus, monogram of night And morning's crest ; perfervid Mars that tempts A mundane hail ; majestic Jupiter ; The belted Saturn, prodigal in moons ; Predicted Uranus and Neptune found Without a lens deep in the brain of man Upon the utmost verge of solar space) Conglobing as they strained the million-miled Elastic tether gravitation gives, And shedding asteroids like fiery sweat, 96 THE TESTAMENT OF No way perplexed by vagrant comets, ghosts Perhaps of suns extinct that haunt in vain The wide, dynamic ether hoping still To reign resphered, these orbs of ours so cast Adrift in the infinite, eternally Assumed the measured pace and lonely path Celestial. Earth, delivered of its moon And chilled without and tempered to endure Barbaric sculpture of the glacier, shaped, Imbued, adorned by deluges, among the first Of planets felt the intolerable letch And prurience of Matter, the mystery, The viscid passion some call protoplasm A PRIME MINISTER. 97 And some call God ; a mystery known to me For what it is, the whence and why unknown The Universe throughout ; then half perceived Within the dinted skull, as Time revoked The pageant of Becoming from the storm And moonlit battle in the crimsoned surf To the primaeval nebula corrupt With life, that died and rotted into us, I Our regal sun and pensionary orbs ; And now that like a hive my body hums With pangs and muffled business of decay, A mystery deeply seen, retrieved and gripped In dogged apprehension, or as folk 98 THE TESTAMENT OF That perish hunger-clung their chapped lips bathe In native blood and in their proper flesh Their muzzles lock : for this is I, the thing I know and am : 'tis not my mind I speak : To speak one's mind ? the itching vanity Of cancers, pustules, outcasts, parasites ! It is my bones that speak, my skeleton : I speak the substance of the Universe. Yet, lost in sleep, my memory wakes and haunts Phantasmal regions ignorance of old In ecstasy invented bastioned cliffs, Indissoluble adamant on fire, By violet seas of burning sulphur washed A PRIME MINISTER. 99 And pierced by echoing caves of agony ; Or islands of the evening plumed with fronds, Wine-coloured tides that in their slumbrous depths Mirror the purple twilight, golden shores Where rhythmic billows pulse like stricken lyres, And happy spirits in a waking dream Enjoy for ever disembodied bliss. Yet, yet I know that everywhere is Matter. Dreams of the dreams of Matter, Heaven and Hell In massed imaginings arose and flowered From world-old memories glimmering darkly still Through brain and bone of phosphorus knit, occult In carbon, calcium, metals, vapours, earths ioo THE TESTAMENT OF That build the body conscious and the soul Self-conscious. Could these elements elect, These changeful properties of Matter, one In all diversity, that chance or doom Delivered up to be mankind, forget Their burning passion in the nebula Though love itself came after ? Never doubt That visions of Elysium and the abyss Of fire denote enduring thoughts antique As time of that supernal ecstasy, When Matter incandescent filled and rent . The shuddering womb of universal space Material memories once the scourge of men, A PRIME MINISTER. ' 101 But now resolved and known for what they are. Yet they torment me ? Yes, and terribly : Because the conscious Matter which I am, Beginning to surrender consciousness, Recoils from dissolution and divorce. To be dispersed in elemental sport \ Of heedless energy the uncontrolled Imagination of the Universe, That flashes out an instant nebula By chance encounter in the spacious dark Of ancient suns extinct and vagrant, turns To teeming wonder every water-drop, 102 THE TESTAMENT OF Afflicts the human race with hope, attunes The nightingale, and launches in the deep The monstrous rorqual : to be left once more A scattered wreck of groping elements Without remembrance, judgement, wisdom, choice, Perturbs the divers stuff that men are of ; Wherefore when sleep in mimicry of death Dissolves self-consciousness, the hideous dreams That wake me shrieking. . . . / Let them come again When sleep rehearses death, or death itself Fakes up the cue : no dreams of mine are they, A PRIME MINISTER. 103 But Matter's dreams of old experience wrought In imperceptive atoms : while I wake I apprehend and master time and space, For this self-consciousness is masterdom. CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. TESTAMENTS. BY JOHN DAVIDSON. No. I. THE TESTAMENT OF A VIVISECTOR. "The question is simply, has Mr. Davidson written a strong poem? The answer is, yes . . . The ' Vivisector' . . . inessentials is a figure so majestic that in the words of Poe ' Hell rising from a thousand thrones (Should) do (him) reverence.'" Academy. " Here you have Mr. Davidson at his best, strong, unforced, and himself, reaching distinguished utterance through sheer authenticity of emotion and imaginative realization. He sees, he feels what he says, and vents it with trained faculty of speech: the result im- presses by its vital adequacy." Daily Chronicle. No. II. THE TESTAMENT OF A MAN FORBID. " Poetry anyhow : words that spring together with cohesion, alive and instinct with beauty. . . . The poem is in our judgement the best thing he has done." Pilot. " The second of Mr. John Davidson's essays in a very unconven- tional manner takes the form of a strenuous effort to penetrate below i the surface to break with a tradition that is no more than a vast mass of parasitic growth about the essential spirit." Manchester Guardian. " Magnificent blank verse, strong, rhythmical and imaginative. The poem has all Mr. Davidson's sinew and undeniable poetic in- dividuality. The close is on a note of sheer beauty." Academy and Literature. " The second of Mr. Davidson's projected series of ' Testaments ' is vastly better than its predecessor . . . and it contains towards the end a magnificent passage full of rapturous delight in natural beauty." Athenaeum. " It must be conceded that Mr. John Davidson is able with tre- mendous force to deliver himself of what he wishes to say, and that this ability is on the increase." Literary World. No. III. Price is. THE TESTAMENT OF AN EMPIRE BUILDER. " Passage on passage of sustained power, passion, or beauty. . . . A masterful poem." Academy and Literature. " Nervously written, and contains passages of great beauty . . . of the force and grim sincerity of the utterance there can be no doubt." Athenaeum. "A magnificent piece of imaginative writing." Mr. William Archer in the Morning Leader. " He states fact in terms of poetry, and the statement sears one's consciousness. He is the first poet to digest the new wonders of science which have subtly changed the old cosmogony, and made the very foundations of existence crumble away . . . the poem teems with prodigal beauty of phrase and image." Mr. James Douglas in the Star. "Certainly he puts the case in a manner to scare the polite Imperialist. This Empire-Builder cannot agree that evolution has entered on a mild stage of benevolence, and this rejection of com- ii fortable euphemisms is serious and arresting. ... It is impossible to refuse admiration for work of such beauty and distinction." Manchester Gitardian. "'All these I saw at home in Heaven.' Where then was Hell? The dreamer at last discovered it, and a more terrible conception never entered even the tragic brain of Dante." Glasgow Herald. "The third of a series of powerful poems in blank verse from the pen of Mr. John Davidson, and it yields to none of them in fresh- ness and vigour of imagination, or in the strength and flowing colour of its imagery." Scotsman. " Impressed we are, as everybody is bound to be. Mr. Davidson does write poetry. His thoughts flash like lightning: his heated emotions melt strange and familiar words into cohesion instinct with beauty, alive, full of imagination and originality." Birming- ham Post. Price $s. net. A QUEEN'S ROMANCE. " Mr. John Davidson is as incapable of writing a weak line of verse as was the author of * Hernani.' The book ('A Queen's Romance') is rousing reading and reaches heights too seldom attained upon the contemporary stage. Not to see it acted would be a justifiable matter of regret ; but on the other hand, to read it should rejoice any lover of poetry." Scotsman. " Vigorously written and with a glowing imaginative diction that makes the whole vivid and intensely alive in the book, whatever its fate may have been on the stage." Daily Mail. Price 55-. net. THE KNIGHT OF THE MAYPOLE. A COMEDY. " This drama has the rare merit of being good to read, and it looks as if it might be put on the stage with success. . . . There is plenty of humour in the play, and really powerful verse of the serious sort." Spectator. iii " Stands out by its good workmanship and artistic finish. The poetic speeches of the hero have a youth and a virility about them." Pall Mall Gazette. " Has abundant vigour and individuality with no lack of dramatic vitality." Westminster Gazette. Price 5$. net. SELF'S THE MAN. A TRAGI-COMEDY. " Admirably adapted for the stage." Glasgow Herald. "The best of reading." Mr. A. B. Walkley in the Morning Leader. " The central figure, the elected King of Lombardy, is a solid piece of character-drawing." Literature. " The heroine, Osmunda, is one of those true and noble women whom Mr. Davidson has the gift of creating." Daily Chronicle. A ROSARY. " Here are lofty views of the function of Literature ; a fine new eclogue and one or two lyrics, serious or fanciful, but alike beautiful. Here are wit and wisdom in plenty, and direct, individual forcible expression, hard and clear-cut." The Times. " The reader as he goes through these gems of Mr. Davidson's irony, wit, pathos, and poetry, can only admire, appreciate, or vehemently disagree. It is a book to be bought and to be studied; a book which is, as Blake was according to Fuseli, ' good to steal from.' Mr. Davidson is one of the most interesting personalities in modern letters." Pall Mall Gazette. "A really admirable volume from the distinguished pen of Mr. John Davidson, one of the most original literary artists we have."- Vanity Fair. " The ' Rosary ' is most entertaining and stimulating reading."- Morning Post. IV ,0. s 5e. 247726 U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES BRARY