THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 A
 
 K/j 
 
 a 
 
 °s 
 
 |geokg niiMnni
 
 THE SONG OF THE SWORD 
 AND OTHER VERSES
 
 THE SONG 
 OF THE SWORD 
 
 AND OTHER VERSES 
 
 BY 
 
 W. E. HENLEY 
 
 I 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1892
 
 THE DEVINNE PRE88 
 
 Copyright, 1892, by 
 Charles Scribner's Sons
 
 7 
 
 3&f 
 
 TO 
 
 R. T. Hamilton-Bruce 
 
 2O01669
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE SONG OF THE SWORD, ... 3 
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES — 
 
 i. Forth from the dust and din, . . 15 
 
 ii. Down through the ancient Strand, . 22 
 
 iii. Out of the poisonous East, . . 27 
 
 iv. Spring winds that blow, . . .32 
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS — 
 
 i. Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade, 39 
 ii. A desolate shore, . . . .41 
 iii. We are the Choice of the Will : God, 
 
 when He gave the word, . . 44 
 ix
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 iv. It came with the threat of a waning 
 
 moon, 48 
 
 v. Why, my heai't, do we love her so ? . 50 
 
 vi. Space and dread and the dark, . 52 
 
 vii. There 's a regret, . . . .55 
 
 viii. Fresh from his fastnesses, . . 57 
 
 ix. As like the Woman as you can, . 60 
 
 x. Midsummer midnight skies, . . 63 
 
 xi. Gulls in an aery morrice, . . .66 
 
 xii. Some starlit garden grey with dew, . 67 
 
 xiii. Under a stagnant sky, . . .69 
 
 xiv. Time and the Earth, . . . .71 
 
 xv. You played and sang a snatch of 
 
 song 
 
 74 
 
 xvi. One with the ruined sunset, . . 76 
 xvii. Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook, 77 
 
 x
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 xviii. When you wake in your crib, . . 80 
 xix. Time and Change, they range and 
 
 range, 83 
 
 xx. The shadow of Dawn, . . 85 
 xxi. When the wind storms by with a 
 
 shout, and the stern sea-caves, . 87 
 
 xxii. Trees and the menace of night, . 89 
 
 xxiii. Here they trysted, here they strayed, 92 
 
 xxiv. What should the Trees, . . .94 
 
 xxv. What have I done for you, England, 99 
 
 XI
 
 THE SONG 
 OF THE SWORD 
 
 (To Rudyard Kipling)
 
 The Sword 
 Singing — 
 The voice of the Sword from the heart 
 
 of the Sword 
 Clanging imperious 
 Forth from Time's battlements 
 His ancient and triumphing Song. 
 
 In the beginning, 
 Ere God inspired Himself 
 Into the clay thing 
 Thumbed to his image, 
 The vacant, the naked shell 
 Soon to be Man : 
 3
 
 THE SONG OF 
 
 Thoughtful He pondered it, 
 Prone there and impotent, 
 Fragile, inviting 
 Attack and discomfiture : 
 Then, with a smile — 
 As He heard in the Thunder 
 That laughed over Eden 
 The voice of the Trumpet, 
 The iron Beneficence, 
 Calling His dooms 
 To the Winds of the world — 
 Stooping, He drew 
 On the sand with His finger 
 A shape for a sign 
 Of His way to the eyes 
 That in wonder should waken, 
 For a proof of His will 
 To the breaking intelligence : 
 4
 
 THE SWORD 
 
 That was the birth of me : 
 I am the Sword. 
 
 Hard and bleak, keen and cruel, 
 Short-hilted, long-shafted, 
 I froze into steel : 
 And the blood of my elder, 
 His hand on the hafts of me, 
 Sprang like a wave 
 In the wind, as the sense 
 Of his strength grew to ecstasy, 
 Glowed like a coal 
 At the throat of the furnace, 
 As he knew me and named me, 
 The War-Thing, the Comrade, 
 Father of honour 
 And giver of kingship, 
 The fame-smith, the soug-master 
 5
 
 THE SONG OF 
 
 Bringer of women 
 On fire at his hands 
 For the pride of fulfilment, 
 Priest (saith the Lord) 
 Of his marriage with victory. 
 Ho ! then, the Trumpet, 
 Handmaid of hei'oes, 
 Calling the peers 
 To the place of espousal ! 
 Ho ! then, the splendour 
 And sheen of my ministry, 
 Clothing the earth 
 With a livery of lightnings ! 
 Ho ! then , the music 
 Of battles in onset, 
 And ruining armours, 
 And God's gift returning 
 In fury to God ! 
 6
 
 THE SWORD 
 
 Glittering and keen 
 
 As the song of the winter stars, 
 
 Ho ! then the sound 
 
 Of my voice, the implacable 
 
 Angel of Destiny ! — 
 
 I am the Sword. 
 
 Heroes, my children, 
 Follow, follow me, 
 Follow, exulting 
 In the great light that breaks 
 From the sacred companionship : 
 Thrust through the fatuous, 
 Thrust through the fungous brood 
 Spawned in my shadow 
 And gross with my gift ! 
 Thrust through, and hearken, 
 hark, to the Trumpet, 
 7
 
 THE SONG OF 
 
 The Virgin of Battles, 
 Calling, still calling you 
 Into the Presence, 
 Sons of the Judgment, 
 Pure wafts of the Will ! 
 Edged to annihilate, 
 Hilted with government, 
 Follow, follow me 
 Till the waste places 
 All the grey globe over 
 Ooze, as the honeycomb 
 Drips, with the sweetness 
 Distilled of my strength : 
 And, teeming in peace 
 Through the wrath of my coining, 
 They give back in beauty 
 The dread and the anguish 
 They had of me visitant ! 
 8
 
 THE SWORD 
 
 Follow, follow, then, 
 Heroes, niy harvesters ! 
 Where the tall grain is ripe 
 Thrust in your sickles : 
 Stripped and adust 
 In a stubble of empire, 
 Scything and binding 
 The full sheaves of sovranty : 
 Thus, thus gloriously, 
 Shall you fulfil yourselves : 
 Thus, thus mightily, 
 Show yourselves sons of mine 
 Yea, and win grace of me : 
 I am the Sword. 
 
 I am the feast-maker : 
 Hark, through a noise 
 Of the screaming of eagles, 
 9
 
 THE SONG OF 
 
 Hark how the Trumpet, 
 The mistress of mistresses, 
 Calls, silver-throated 
 And stern, where the tables 
 Are spread, and the work 
 Of the Lord is in hand ! 
 Driving the darkness, 
 Even as the banners 
 And spears of the Morning ; 
 Sifting the nations, 
 The slag from the metal, 
 The waste and the weak 
 From the fit and the strong ; 
 Fighting the brute, 
 The abysmal Fecundity ; 
 Checking the gross, 
 Multitudinous blunders, 
 The groping, the purblind 
 10
 
 THE SWORD 
 
 Excesses in service, 
 Of the Womb universal, 
 The absolute Drudge ; 
 Changing the charactry 
 Carved on the World, 
 The miraculous gem 
 In the seal-ring that burns 
 On the hand of the Master — 
 Yea ! and authority 
 Flames through the dim, 
 
 Unappeasable Grisliness 
 
 Prone down the nethermost 
 
 Chasms of the Void ; 
 
 Clear singing, clean slicing ; 
 
 Sweet spoken, soft finishing ; 
 
 Making death beautiful, 
 
 Life but a coin 
 
 To be staked in the pastime 
 11
 
 THE SONG OE THE SWORD 
 
 Whose playing is more 
 Thau the transfer of being ; 
 Arch-anarch, chief builder, 
 Prince aud evangelist, 
 I am the Will of God : 
 I am the Sword. 
 
 The Sword 
 
 Singing — 
 
 The voice of the Sword from the heart 
 
 of the Sword 
 Clanging majestical, 
 As from the starry -staired 
 Courts of the primal Supremacy, 
 His high, irresistible song. 
 
 12
 
 LONDON 
 VOLUNTARIES 
 
 (To Charles Whibley) 
 
 13
 
 I 
 
 Andante con moto 
 
 Forth from the dust and din, 
 
 The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare, 
 
 The odour and sense of life and lust aflare, 
 
 The wrangle and jangle of unrests, 
 
 Let us take horse, dear heart, take horse and 
 
 win — 
 As from swart August to the green lap of May — 
 To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts 
 Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware 
 In any of her innumerable nests 
 Of that first sudden plash of dawn, 
 Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, 
 Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day, 
 
 15
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn 
 
 Forward and up, in wider and wider way 
 
 Shall float the sands and brim the shores 
 
 On this our haunch of Earth, as round she roars 
 
 And spins into the outlook of the Sun 
 
 (The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge) 
 
 With light, with living light, from marge to 
 
 marge, 
 Until the course He set and staked be run. 
 
 Through street and square, through square and 
 
 street, 
 Each with his home-grown quality of dark 
 And violated silence, loud and fleet, 
 Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp, 
 The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, hark, 
 Sweet, how the old mare's bit and chain 
 
 16 
 
 1
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 Ring back a rough refrain 
 
 Upon the marked and cheerful tramp 
 
 Of her four shoes ! Here is the Park, 
 
 And the languid midsummer wafts adust, 
 
 The tired midsummer blooins ! 
 
 the mysterious distances, the glooms 
 
 Romantic, the august 
 
 And solemn shapes! At night this City of 
 
 Trees 
 Turns to a tryst of vague and strange 
 And monstrous Majesties, 
 Let loose from some dim underworld to range 
 These terrene vistas till their twilight sets : 
 When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand 
 Beggared and common, plain to all the land 
 For stooks of leaves ! And lo ! the wizard hour 
 Whose shining, silent sorcery hath such power ! 
 Still, still the streets, between their carcanets 
 
 17
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep : 
 
 But see how gable ends and parapets 
 
 In gradual beauty and significance 
 
 Emerge ! And did you bear 
 
 That little twitter-and-cheep, 
 
 Breaking inordinately loud and clear 
 
 On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere ? 
 
 'Tis a first nest at matins ! And behold 
 
 A rakehell cat — how furtive and acold ! 
 
 A spent witch homing from some infamous 
 
 dance — 
 Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade 
 Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade ! 
 And lo ! a little wind and shy, 
 The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), 
 A sense of space and water, and thereby 
 A lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky, 
 And look, look ! a tangle of silver gleams 
 
 18
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams, 
 His dreams of a dead past that cannot die ! 
 
 What miracle is happening in the air, 
 
 Charging the very texture of the gray 
 
 With something luminous and rare ? 
 
 The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, 
 
 And, as one lights a candle, it is day. 
 
 The extinguisher that fain would strut for spire 
 
 On the formal little church is not yet green 
 
 Across the water : but the house-tops nigher, 
 
 The corner-lines, the chimneys — look how clean, 
 
 How new, how naked ! See the batch of boats 
 
 Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung 
 
 beam! 
 And those are barges that were goblin floats, 
 Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream ! 
 And in the piles the water frolics clear, 
 
 19
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 The ripples into loose rings wander and flee, 
 And we — we can behold that could but hear 
 The ancient River singing as he goes 
 New-mailed in morning to the ancient Sea. 
 The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass: 
 The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake, 
 And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and take 
 His hobnailed way to work ! 
 
 Let us too pass : 
 Through these long blindfold rows 
 Of casements staring blind to right and left, 
 Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece 
 Of life in death's own likeness — Life bereft 
 Of living looks as by the Great Release 
 (Perchance of shadow-shapes from shadow-shows), 
 Whose upshot all men know yet no man knows. 
 
 Reach upon reach of burial — so they feel, 
 
 20
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 These colonies of dreams ! And as we steal 
 
 Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze 
 
 That frolics at our heel, 
 
 Greeting the town with news of the summer seas, 
 
 We might — thus awed, thus lonely that we are — 
 
 Be wandering some depopulated star, 
 
 Some world of memories and unbroken graves, 
 
 So broods the abounding Silence near and far : 
 
 Till even your footfall craves 
 
 Forgiveness of the majesty it braves. 
 
 21
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 ir 
 
 Scherzando 
 
 Down through the ancient Strand 
 
 The Spirit of October, mild and boon 
 
 And sauntering, takes his way 
 
 This golden end of afternoon, 
 
 As though the com stood yellow in all the land 
 
 And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon. 
 
 Lo ! the round sun, half down the western slope — 
 Seen as along a glass-less telescope — 
 Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day : 
 Gifting the long, lean, lanky street 
 And its abounding confluences of being 
 With aspects generous and bland : 
 Making a thousand harnesses to shine 
 
 22
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 As with new ore from some enchanted mine, 
 And every horse's coat so full of sheen 
 He looks new-tailored, and every 'bus feels clean, 
 And never a hansom but is worth the feeing ; 
 And every jeweller within the pale 
 Offers a real Arabian Night for sale ; 
 And even the roar 
 
 Of the strong streams of toil that pause and pour 
 Eastward and westward sounds suffused — 
 Seems as it were bemused 
 And blurred, and like the speech 
 Of lazy seas upon a lotus-eating beach — 
 With this enchanted lustrousness, 
 This mellow magic, that (as a man's caress 
 Brings back to some faded face beloved before 
 A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore 
 Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech) 
 Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless 
 
 23
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more ; 
 
 Till the sedate and mannered elegance 
 
 Of Clement's is all tinctured with romance ; 
 
 The while the fanciful, formal, finicking charm 
 
 Of Bride's, that madrigal in stone, 
 
 Glows flushed and warm 
 
 And beauteous with a beauty not its own ; 
 
 And the high majesty of Paul's 
 
 Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls — 
 
 Calls to his millions to behold and see 
 
 How goodly this his London Town can be ! 
 
 For earth and sky and air 
 Are golden everywhere, 
 And golden with a gold so suave and fine 
 The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. 
 Trafalgar Square 
 
 (The fountains volleying golden glaze) 
 
 24
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 Gleams like an angel-market. High aloft 
 Over his couchant Lions in a haze 
 Shimmering and bland and soft, 
 A dust of chrysoprase, 
 Our Sailor takes the golden gaze 
 Of the saluting sun, and flames superb 
 As once he flamed it on his ocean round. 
 The dingy dreariness of the picture-place, 
 Turned very nearly bright, 
 Takes on a certain dismal grace, 
 And shows not all a scandal to the ground. 
 The very blind man pottering on the kerb, 
 Among the posies and the ostrich feathers 
 And the rude voices touched with all the weathers 
 Of all the varying year, 
 Shares in the universal alms of light. 
 The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, 
 The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, 
 
 25
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 Tho glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and 
 
 spires — 
 'Tis El Dorado — El Dorado plain. 
 The Golden City ! And when a girl goes by, 
 Look ! as she turns her glancing head, 
 A call of gold is floated from her ear ! 
 Golden, all golden ! In a golden glory, 
 Long lapsing down a golden coasted sky, 
 The day not dies but seems 
 Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed 
 Upon a past of golden song and story 
 And memories of gold and golden dreams. 
 
 26
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 in 
 
 Largo e mesto 
 
 Out of the poisonous East, 
 
 Over a continent of blight, 
 
 Like a maleficent Influence released 
 
 From the most squalid cellarage of hell, 
 
 The Wind-Fiend, the abominable — 
 
 The hangman wind that tortures temper and 
 
 light — 
 Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, 
 Hard on the skirts of the embittered night, 
 And in a cloud unclean 
 Of excremental humours, roused to strife 
 By the operation of some ruinous change 
 Wherever his evil mandate run and range 
 Into a dire intensity of life, 
 
 27
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 A craftsman at his bench, he settles down 
 To the grim job of throttling London Town. 
 
 And, by a jealous lightlessness beset 
 
 That might have oppressed the dragons of old 
 
 time 
 Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime, 
 A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous 
 
 dreams, 
 Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, 
 The afflicted city, prone from mark to mark 
 In shameful occultation, seems 
 A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, 
 With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting 
 Rent in the stuff of a material dark 
 Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, 
 Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale : 
 Uncoiling monstrous into street on street 
 
 28
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, 
 Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, 
 Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet 
 Somewhither in the hideonsuess ahead ; 
 Working through wicked airs and deadly dews 
 That make the laden robber grin askance 
 At the good places in his black romance, 
 And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose 
 Go pinched and pined to bed 
 Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched way 
 From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey. 
 
 Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows, 
 His green garlands and windy eyots forgot, 
 The old Father-River flows, 
 His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom, 
 As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore, 
 Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides, 
 
 '29
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot 
 
 In the squalor of the universal shore : 
 
 His voices sounding through the gruesome air 
 
 As from the ferry where the Boat of Doom 
 
 With her blaspheming cargo reels and i-ides : 
 
 The while his children, the brave ships, 
 
 No more adventurous and fair, 
 
 Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound 
 
 brides, 
 But infamously enchanted, 
 Huddle together in the foul eclipse, 
 Or feel their course by inches desperately, 
 As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted, 
 From sinister reach to reach — out — out — to sea. 
 
 And Death the while — 
 
 Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile, 
 Death in his threadbare working trim — 
 
 30
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland, 
 
 And with expert, inevitable hand 
 
 Feels at your windpipe, Augers you in the lung, 
 
 Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart : 
 
 Thus signifying unto old and young, 
 
 However hard of mouth or wild of whim, 
 
 'Tis time — 'tis time by his ancient watch — to part 
 
 With books and women and talk and drink and 
 
 art: 
 And you go humbly after him 
 To a mean suburban lodging : on the way 
 To what or where 
 
 Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say : 
 And you — how should you care 
 So long as, unreclaimed of hell, 
 The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable, 
 Thus vicious and thus patient sits him down 
 To the black job of burking London Town ? 
 
 31
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 rv 
 
 Allegro maestoso 
 
 Spring winds that blow 
 
 As over leagues of myrtle -blooms and may; 
 
 Bevies of spring' clouds trooping slow, 
 
 Like matrons heavy-bosomed and aglow 
 
 With the mild and placid pride of increase ! Nay, 
 
 What makes this insolent and comely stream 
 
 Of appetence, this freshet of desire 
 
 (Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day !) 
 
 Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam 
 
 In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre ? 
 
 Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and 
 
 churn 
 The wealth of her enchanted urn 
 Till, over-billowing all between 
 
 152
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 Her cheerful niargents grey and living green, 
 It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, 
 An estuary of the joy of being 1 ? 
 "Why should the buxom leafage of the Park 
 Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing ? 
 — As if my paramour, my bride of brides, 
 Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides 
 In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark, 
 Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade, 
 In the divine conviction robed and crowned 
 The globe fulfils his immemorial round 
 But as the niarrying-place of all things made ! 
 
 There is no man, this deifying day, 
 But feels the primal blessing in his blood. 
 The sacred impulse of the May 
 Brightening like sex made sunshine through her 
 veins, 
 
 33
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 There is no woman but disdains 
 
 To vail the ensigns of her womanhood. 
 
 None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, 
 
 Bounteous in looks of her delicious best, 
 
 On her inviolable quest : 
 
 These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets 
 
 those, 
 But all desirable and frankly fair, 
 As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst, 
 And in the knowledge went imparadised. 
 For look ! a magical influence everywhere, 
 Look how the liberal and transfiguring air 
 Washes this inn of memorable meetings, 
 This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, 
 Till, through its jocund loveliness of length 
 A tidal-i'ace of lust from shore to shore, 
 A brimming reach of beauty met with strength, 
 It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, 
 
 34
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 Some vision multitudinous and agleani, 
 Of happiness as it shall be evermore ! 
 
 Praise God for giving 
 
 Through this His messenger among the days 
 
 His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living ! 
 
 For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan — 
 
 Not dead, not dead, as dreamers feigned, 
 
 But the lush genius of a million Mays 
 
 Renewing his beneficent endeavour ! — 
 
 Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed 
 
 and reigned 
 Since in the dim blue dawn of time 
 The universal ebb-and-flow began, 
 To sound his ancient music, and prevails 
 By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme 
 Here in this radiant and immortal street 
 Lavishly and omnipotently as ever 
 
 35
 
 LONDON VOLUNTARIES 
 
 In the open hills, the undissembling dales, 
 The laughing-places of the juvenile eai'th. 
 For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, 
 Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared 
 As once in Eden's prodigal bowers befell, 
 To share his shameless, elemental mirth 
 In one great act of faith, while deep and strong. 
 Incomparably nerved and cheered, 
 The enormous heart of London joys to beat 
 To the measures of his rough, majestic song : 
 The lewd, perennial, overcnastering spell 
 That keeps the rolling universe ensphered 
 And life and all for which life lives to long 
 Wanton and wondrous and for ever well. 
 
 36
 
 RHYMES 
 AND. RHYTHMS 
 
 37
 
 Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade 
 
 On desolate sea and lonely sand, 
 Out of the silence and the shade 
 
 What is the voice of strange command 
 Calling you still, as friend calls friend 
 
 With love that cannot brook delay, 
 To rise and follow the ways that wend 
 
 Over the hills and far away ? 
 
 Hark in the city, street on street 
 A roaring reach of death and life, 
 
 Of vortices that clash and fleet 
 And ruin in appointed strife, 
 39
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Hark to it calling, calling clear, 
 
 Calling until you cannot stay 
 From dearer things than your own most dear 
 
 Over the hills and far away. 
 
 Out of the sound of ebb and flow, 
 
 Out of the sight of lamp and star, 
 It calls you where the good winds blow, 
 
 And the unchanging meadows are : 
 From faded hopes and hopes agleam, 
 
 It calls you, calls you night and day 
 Beyond the dark into the dream 
 
 Over the hills and far away. 
 
 40
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 ii 
 
 A desolate shore, 
 
 The sinister seduction of the Moon, 
 
 The menace of the irreclaimable Sea. 
 
 Flaunting, tawdry and grim, 
 From cloud to cloud along her beat, 
 Leering her battered and inveterate leer, 
 She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, 
 Her horrible old man, 
 Mumbling old oaths and warming 
 His villainous old bones with villainous talk — 
 The secrets of their grisly housekeeping 
 Since they went out upon the pad 
 
 41
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 In the first twilight of self-conscious Time : 
 
 Growling, obscene and hoarse, 
 
 Tales of unnumbered Ships, 
 
 Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance 
 
 In some vile alley of the night 
 
 Waylaid and bludgeoned — 
 
 Dead. 
 
 Deep cellared in primeval ooze, 
 
 Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled, 
 
 They he where the lean water-worm 
 
 Crawls free of their secrets, and their broken 
 
 sides 
 Bulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide, 
 Thus fouled and desecrate, 
 The summons of the Trumpet, and the while 
 These Twain, their murderers, 
 Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued, 
 
 42
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Hang at the heels of their children — She aloft 
 
 As in the shining streets, 
 
 He as in ambush at some fetid stair. 
 
 The stalwart Ships, 
 
 The beautiful and bold adventurers ! 
 
 Stationed out yonder in the isle, 
 
 The tall Policeman, 
 
 Flashing his bull's-eye, as he peers 
 
 About him in the ancient vacancy, 
 
 Tells them this way is safety — this way home. 
 
 43
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 in 
 
 (To R. F. B.) 
 
 We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He 
 
 gave the word 
 That called us into line, set in our hand a sword ; 
 
 Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and 
 
 draw, 
 And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet 
 
 of the Law. 
 
 East and west and north, wherever the battle 
 
 grew, 
 As men to a feast we fared, the work of the 
 
 Will to do. 
 
 44
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy 
 
 cease — 
 (Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a 
 
 place of peace !) — 
 
 Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire, 
 Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, 
 our sire. 
 
 Road was never so rough that we left its purpose 
 
 dark; 
 Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet 
 
 more stark ; 
 
 We tracked the winds of the world to the steps 
 
 of their veiy thrones ; 
 The secret parts of the world were salted with 
 
 our bones ; 
 
 45
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Till now the name of names, England, the name 
 
 of might, 
 Flames from the austral bounds to the ends of 
 
 the northern night; 
 
 And the call of her morning dram goes in a 
 
 girdle of sound, 
 Like the voice of the sun in song, the great 
 
 globe round and round ; 
 
 And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the 
 
 mother-breeze, 
 Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas ; 
 
 And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of 
 
 her flowers, 
 And the end of the road to Hell with the sense 
 
 of her dews and showers ! 
 46 

 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us 
 
 fade and die, 
 While the living stars fulfil their round in the 
 
 living sky? 
 
 For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their 
 
 father's debt, 
 And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw 
 
 was set : 
 
 And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that 
 none shall brave, 
 
 Is but less strong than Time and the all-devour- 
 ing Grave. 
 
 47
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 IV 
 
 It came with the threat of a waning moon 
 
 And the wail of an ebbing tide, 
 But many a woman has lived for less, 
 
 And many a man has died ; 
 For life upon life took hold and passed, 
 
 Strong in a fate set free, 
 Out of the deep, into the dark, 
 
 On for the years to be. 
 
 Between the gleam of a waning moon 
 And the song of an ebbing tide, 
 
 Chance upon chance of love and death 
 Took wing for the world so wide. 
 48
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Leaf out of leaf is the way of the land, 
 Wave out of wave of the sea : 
 
 And who shall reckon what lives may live 
 In the life that we bade to be ? 
 
 49
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Why, my heart, do we love her so? 
 
 (Geraldine, Geraldine !) — 
 Why does the great sea ebb and flow I 
 
 Why does the round world spin ? 
 Geraldine, Geraldine, 
 
 Bid me my life renew, 
 What is it worth unless I win, 
 
 Love — love and you ? 
 
 Why, my heart, when we speak her name 
 
 (Geraldine, Geraldine !), 
 Throbs the word like a flinging flame ? 
 
 Why does the spring begin ? 
 50
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Geraldine, Geraldine, 
 
 Bid me indeed to be, 
 Open your heart and take us in, 
 
 Love — love and me. 
 
 51
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 VI 
 
 Space and dread and the dark — 
 Over a livid stretch of sky 
 Cloud-monsters crawling like a funeral 
 
 train 
 Of huge primeval presences 
 Stooping beneath the weight 
 Of some enormous, rudimentary grief ; 
 While in the haunting loneliness 
 The far sea waits and wanders, with a 
 
 sound 
 As of the trailing skills of Destiny 
 Passing unseen 
 52
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 To some immitigable end 
 
 With her grey henchman, Death. 
 
 What larve, what spectre is this 
 
 Thrilling the wilderness to life 
 
 As with the bodily shape of Fear ? 
 
 What but a desperate sense, 
 
 A strong foreboding of those dim, 
 
 Interminable continents, forlorn 
 
 And many-silenced in a dusk 
 
 Inviolable utterly, and dead 
 
 As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and 
 
 styes 
 Id hugger-mugger through eternity ? 
 
 Life — life — let there be life ! 
 Better a thousand times the roaring hours 
 When wave and wind, 
 53
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Like the Arch -Murderer iu flight 
 From the Avenger at his heel, 
 Storm through the desolate fastnesses 
 And wild waste places of the world ! 
 
 Life — give me- life until the end, 
 
 That at the very top of being, 
 
 The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, 
 
 Out of the reddest hell of the fight 
 
 I may be snatched and flung 
 
 Into the everlasting lull, 
 
 The immortal, incommunicable dream. 
 
 ,»4
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 VII 
 
 There 's a regret 
 So grinding', so immitigably sad, 
 Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. 
 Do you not know it yet ? 
 
 For deeds undone 
 
 Rankle, and snarl, and hunger for their due 
 Till there seems naught so despicable as you 
 In all the grin o' the sun. 
 
 Like an old shoe 
 
 The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie 
 About the beach of Time, till by-and-by 
 Death, that derides you too — 
 55
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Death, as he goes 
 
 His ragman's rouud, espies you, where you stray, 
 With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way ; 
 And then — and then, who knows 
 
 But the kind Grave 
 
 Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm, 
 In that black bridewell working out his term, 
 Hanker and grope and crave ? 
 
 ' Poor fool that might — 
 
 That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be, 
 
 Think of it, here and thus made over to me 
 
 In the implacable night ! ' 
 
 And writhing, fain 
 And like a lover, he his fill shall take 
 Where no triumphant memory lives to make 
 His obscene victory vain. 
 
 56
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 VIII 
 
 (To J. A. C.) 
 
 Fresh from his fastnesses 
 Wholesome and spacious, 
 The north wind, the mad huntsman, 
 Halloos on his white hounds 
 Over the grey, roaring 
 Reaches and ridges, 
 The forest of ocean, 
 The chace of the world. 
 Hark to the peal 
 Of the pack in full cry, 
 As he thongs them before him, 
 Swarming voluminous, 
 Weltering, wide-wallowing, 
 57
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Till in a ruining 
 Chaos of energy, 
 Hurled on their quarry, 
 They crash into foam ! 
 
 Old Indefatigable, 
 
 Time's right-hand man, the sea 
 
 Laughs as in joy 
 
 From his millions of wrinkles: 
 
 Laughs that his destiny, 
 
 Great with the greatness 
 
 Of triumphing order, 
 
 Shows as a dwarf 
 
 By the strength of his heart 
 
 And the might of his hands. 
 
 Master of masters, 
 maker of heroes, 
 58
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Thunder the brave, 
 Irresistible message : — 
 ' Life is worth living 
 Through every grain of it 
 From the foundations 
 To the last edge 
 Of the cornerstone, death.' 
 
 59
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 IX 
 
 ' As like the Woman as yon can ' — 
 
 (Thus the New Adam was beguiled) — 
 ' So shall you touch the Perfect Man ' — 
 (God in the Garden heard and smiled). 
 ' Your father perished with his day : 
 
 ' A clot of passions fierce and blind 
 ' He fought, he slew, he hacked his way : 
 ' Your muscles, Child, must be of mind. 
 
 ' The Brute that lurks and irks within, 
 
 ' How, till you have him gagged and bound, 
 ' Escape the foullest form of Sin ? ' 
 
 (God in the Garden laughed and frowned). 
 60
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 ' So vile, so rank, the bestial mood 
 ' In which the race is bid to be, 
 
 ' It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood : 
 ' Live, therefore, you, for Purity ! 
 
 ' Take for your mate no buxom croup, 
 
 ' No girl all grace aud natural will : 
 ' To make her happy were to stoop 
 
 ' From light to dark, from Good to 111. 
 ' Choose one of whom your grosser make '- 
 
 (God in the Garden laughed outright) — 
 ' The true refining touch may take 
 
 ' Till both attain Life's highest height. 
 
 ' There, equal, purged of soul and sense, 
 ' Beneficent, high-thinking, just, 
 
 ' Beyond the appeal of Violence, 
 ' Incapable of common Lust, 
 61
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 ' In mental Marriage still prevail ' — 
 
 (God in the Garden hid Ins face) - 
 ' Till you achieve that Female-Male 
 
 ' In Which shall culminate the race.' 
 
 62
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Midsummer midnight skies, 
 
 Midsummer midnight influences and airs, 
 
 The shining sensitive silver of the sea 
 
 Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn: 
 
 And all so solemnly still I seem to hear 
 
 The breathing of Life and Death, 
 
 The secular Accomplices, 
 
 Renewing the visible miracle of the world. 
 
 The wistful stars 
 
 Shine like good memories. The young morning 
 
 wind 
 Blows full of unforgotten hours 
 
 63
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 As over a region of roses. Life and Death 
 Sound on — sound on. . . . And the night magical, 
 Troubled yet comforting, thrills 
 As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart 
 Of the wood's dark wonderment 
 Swung wide his valves and filled the dim sea- 
 banks 
 With exquisite visitants : 
 "Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires 
 With living looks intolerable, regrets 
 Whose voice comes as the voice of an only child 
 Heard from the grave : shapes of a Might-Have- 
 
 Been — 
 Beautiful, miserable, distraught — 
 The Law no man may baffle denied and slew. 
 
 The spell-bound ships stand as at gaze 
 To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . . 
 
 64
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, there 
 
 where it fades, 
 What grace, what glamour, what wild will, 
 Transfigure the shadows "? Whose, 
 Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours ? 
 
 Ghosts — ghosts — the sapphiriue air 
 Teems with them even to the gleaming ends 
 Of the wild day-spring ! Ghosts, 
 Everywhere — everywhere — till I and you 
 At last — dear love, at last ! — 
 Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death, 
 Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will. 
 
 65
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XI 
 
 Gulls in an aery niorrice 
 Gleam and vanish and gleam 
 
 The full sea, sleepily basking, 
 Dreams under skies of drearn. 
 
 Gulls in an aery morrice 
 Circle and swoop and close 
 
 Fuller and ever fuller 
 
 The rose of the morning blows. 
 
 Gulls in an aery morrice 
 
 Frolicking float and fade 
 the way of a bird in the sunshine ! 
 
 The way of a man with a maid ! 
 66
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XII 
 
 Some starlit garden grey with dew, 
 Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, 
 What matters where, so I and you 
 Are worthy our desire ? 
 
 Behind, a past that scolds and jeers 
 For ungirt loin and lamp unlit ; 
 In front the unmanageable years, 
 The trap upon the pit ; 
 
 Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, 
 The scandal of unnatural strife, 
 The slur upon immortal needs, 
 The treason done to life : 
 67
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Arise ! no more a living lie 
 And with me quicken and control 
 A memory that shall magnify 
 The universal Soul. 
 
 68
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 xin 
 
 (To James McNeill Whistler) 
 
 Under a stagnant sky, 
 Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, 
 The River, jaded and forlorn, 
 Welters and wanders wearily — wretchedly — on ; 
 Yet in and out among the ribs 
 Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles 
 Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls, 
 Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, 
 Lingers to babble, to a broken tune 
 (Once, the unvoiced music of my heart !) 
 So melancholy a soliloquy 
 It sounds as it might tell 
 The secret of the unending grief -in-grain, 
 
 G9
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 The terror of Time and Change and Death, 
 That wastes this floating transitory world. 
 
 What of the incantation 
 
 That forced the huddled shapes on yonder shore 
 To take and wear the night 
 Like a material majesty ? 
 That touched the shafts of wavering fire 
 About this miserable welter and wash — 
 (River, River of Journeys, River of Dreams !— ) 
 Into long, shining signals from the panes 
 Of an enchanted pleasure-house 
 Where life and life might live life lost in life 
 For ever and evermore ? 
 Death ! Change ! Time ! 
 Without you, the insufferable eyes 
 Of these poor Might-Have-Beens, 
 These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays ! 
 
 70
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XIV 
 
 Time and the Earth — 
 
 The old Father and Mother— 
 
 Their teeming accomplished, 
 
 Their purpose fulfilled, 
 
 Close with a smile 
 
 For a moment of kindness 
 
 Ere for the winter 
 
 They settle to sleep. 
 
 Fading yet gracious, 
 Slow pacing, soon homing, 
 A patriarch that strolls 
 Through the tents of his children, 
 The Sun, as he journeys 
 His round on the lower 
 71
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Ascents of the blue, 
 
 Washes tbe roofs 
 
 And the hillsides with clarity ; 
 
 Charms the dark pools 
 
 Till they break into pictures ; 
 
 Scatters magnificent 
 
 Alms to the beggar trees ; 
 
 Touches the mist-folk 
 
 That crowd to his escort 
 
 Into trauslucencies 
 
 Radiant and ravishing 
 
 As with the visible 
 
 Spirit of Summer, 
 
 Gloriously vaporised, 
 
 Visioned in gold. 
 
 Love, though the fallen leaf 
 Mark, and the fleeting light 
 
 72
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 And the loud, loitering 
 
 Footfall of darkness 
 
 Sign, to the heart 
 
 Of the passage of destiny, 
 
 Here is the ghost 
 
 Of a summer that lived for us, 
 
 Here is a promise 
 
 Of summers to be. 
 
 73
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 xv 
 
 You played and sang a snatch of song, 
 
 A song that ail-too well we knew ; 
 But whither had flown the ancient wrong ; 
 
 And was it really I and you ? 
 since the end of life 's to live 
 
 And pay in pence the common debt, 
 What should it cost us to forgive 
 
 Whose daily task is to forget ? 
 
 You babbled in the well-known voice — 
 Not new, not new, the words you said. 
 
 You touched me off that famous poise, 
 That old effect, of neck and head. 
 
 74
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Dear, was it really you and I ? 
 
 In truth the riddle 's ill to read, 
 So many are the deaths we die 
 
 Before we can be dead indeed. 
 
 75
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XVI 
 
 One with the ruined sunset, 
 The strange forsaken sands, 
 
 What is it waits and wanders 
 And signs with despei'ate hands ? 
 
 What is it calls in the twilight — 
 Calls as its chance were vain *? 
 
 The cry of a gull sent seaward 
 Or the voice of an ancient pain ? 
 
 The red ghost of the sunset, 
 It walks them as its own, 
 
 These dreary and desolate reaches 
 But that it walked alone ! 
 76
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XVII 
 
 CARMEN PATIBULARE 
 
 (To H. S.) 
 
 Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook 
 
 And the rope of the Black Election, 
 'Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule 
 
 Can never achieve perfection : 
 And ' It 's for the time of the New Sublime 
 
 And the better than humau way 
 When the Wolf (poor beast) shall come to his 
 own 
 
 And the Rat shah have his day ! ' 
 
 For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam 
 And the power of provocation, 
 
 77
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful 
 fruit 
 
 Till your thought is mere stupration : 
 And ' It 's how should we rise to be pure and wise, 
 
 And how can we choose but fall, 
 So long as the Hangman makes us dread 
 
 And the Noose floats free for all ¥ ' 
 
 So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Coign 
 
 And the trick there 's no recalling, 
 They will haggle and hew till they hack you 
 through 
 
 And at last they lay you sprawling : 
 When ' Hey ! for the hour of the race in flower 
 
 And the long good-bye to sin ! ' 
 And ' Ho ! for the fires of Hell gone out 
 
 For the want of keeping in ! ' 
 
 78
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Bough 
 
 And the ghastly Dreams that tend you, 
 Your growth began with the life of Man 
 
 And only his death can end you : 
 They may tug in line at your hempen twine, 
 
 They may flourish with axe and saw, 
 But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs 
 
 In the living rock of Law. 
 
 And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork, 
 
 When the spent sun reels and blunders 
 Down a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit 
 
 As it seethes in spate and thunders, 
 Stern on the glare of the tortured air 
 
 Your lines august shall gloom, 
 And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed 
 
 In the ruining roar of Doom. 
 
 79
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XVIII 
 
 (To M. E. H.) 
 
 When you wake in your crib, 
 You, an inch of experience — 
 Vaulted about 
 
 With the wonder of darkness ; 
 Wailing and striving 
 To reach from your feebleness 
 Something you feel 
 Will be good to and cherish you, 
 Something you know 
 And can rest upon blindly : 
 then a hand 
 
 (Your mothei*'s, your mother's !) 
 By the fall of its fingers 
 80
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 All knowledge, all power to you, 
 Out of the dreary, 
 Discouraging strangenesses 
 Conies to and masters you, 
 Takes you, and lovingly 
 Woos you and soothes you 
 Back, as you cling to it, 
 Back to some comforting 
 Corner of Sleep. 
 
 So you wake in your bed, 
 Having lived, having loved : 
 But the shadows are there, 
 And the world and its kingdoms 
 Incredibly faded ; 
 And you grope in the Terror 
 Above you and under 
 For the light, for the warmth, 
 81
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 The assurance of life ; 
 But the blasts are ice-born, 
 And your heart is nigh burst 
 With the weight of the gloom 
 And the stress of your strangled 
 And desperate endeavour : 
 Sudden a hand — 
 Mother, Mother! — 
 God at His best to you, 
 Out of the roaring, 
 Impossible silences, 
 Falls on and urges you, 
 Mightily, tenderly, 
 Forth, as you clutch at it, 
 Forth to the infinite 
 Peace of the Grave. 
 
 82
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XIX 
 
 Time and Change, they range and range 
 
 From sunshine round to thunder ! — 
 They glance and go as the great winds blow, 
 
 And the best of our dreams drive under : 
 For Time and Change estrange, estrange — 
 
 And, now they have looked and seen us. 
 we that were dear we are ail-too near 
 
 With the thick of the world between us. 
 
 Death and Time, they chime and chime 
 
 Like bells at sunset falling ! — 
 They end the song, they right the wrong, 
 
 They set the old echoes calling : 
 83
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 For Death and Time bring on the prime 
 Of God's own chosen weather, 
 And we lie in the peace of the Great Release 
 As once in the grass together. 
 
 84
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 xx 
 
 The shadow of Dawn ; 
 
 Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams 
 
 Of Life and Death and Sleep ; 
 
 Heard over gleaming flats the old unchanging 
 
 sound 
 Of the old unchanging Sea. 
 
 My soul and yours — 
 
 hand hi hand let us fare forth, two ghosts, 
 Into the ghostliness, 
 The infinite and abounding solitudes, 
 Beyond — beyond ! — beyond . . . 
 
 85
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Here in the porch 
 
 Upon the multitudinous silences 
 
 Of the kingdoms of the grave, 
 
 We twain are you and I — two ghosts Omnipotence 
 
 Can touch no more — no more ! 
 
 86
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XXI 
 
 When the wind storms by with a shout and the 
 
 stern sea-caves 
 Exult in the tramp and the roar of onsetting 
 
 waves, 
 Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the 
 
 top of life 
 Is the passion that burns the blood in the act of 
 
 strife — 
 Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet 
 
 graves. 
 
 But to drowse with the fen behind aud the fog 
 
 before, 
 When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles 
 
 the shore, 
 
 87
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no 
 
 wrong, 
 Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your 
 
 sire's old song — 
 you envy the blessed dead that can hve no 
 
 more ! 
 
 88
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XXII 
 
 Trees and the menace of night ; 
 
 Then the long, lonely, leaden mere 
 
 Backed by a desolate fell 
 
 As by a spectral battlement ; and then, 
 
 Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, 
 
 A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky 
 
 So beggared, so incredibly bereft 
 
 Of starlight and the song of racing worlds 
 
 It might have bellied down upon the Void 
 
 Where as in terror Light was beginning to be. 
 
 Hist ! In the trees fulfilled of night 
 (Night and the wretchedness of the sky) 
 89
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Is it the hurry of the rain ? 
 Or the noise of a drive of the Dead 
 Streaming before the irresistible Will 
 Through the strange dusk of this, the 
 
 Debateable Land 
 Between their place and ours? 
 
 Like the forgetfulness 
 Of the work-a-day world made visible, 
 A mist falls from the melancholy sky : 
 A messenger from some lost and loving 
 
 soul, 
 Hopeless, far wandered, dazed 
 Here in the provinces of life, 
 A great white moth fades miserably past. 
 
 Thro' the trees in the strange dead night, 
 Under the vast dead sky, 
 90
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead 
 Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom 
 
 fell, 
 The unimagined vastitudes beyond. 
 
 91
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XXIII 
 
 (To P. A. G.) 
 
 Here they trysted, here they strayed, 
 
 In the leafage dewy and boon, 
 Many a man and many a maid, 
 
 And the morn was merry June : 
 ' Death is fleet, Life is sweet,' 
 
 Sang the blackbird in the may ; 
 And the hour with flying feet 
 
 While they dreamed was yesterday. 
 
 Many a maid and many a man 
 Found the leafage close and boon ; 
 
 Many a destiny began — 
 
 O the morn was merry June. 
 92
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Dead and gone, dead and gone, 
 (Hark the blackbird in the may ! ), 
 
 Life and Death went hurrying on, 
 Cheek on cheek — and where were they ? 
 
 Dust in dust engendering dust 
 
 In the leafage fresh and boon, 
 Man and maid fulfil then' trust — 
 
 Still the morn turns merry June. 
 Mother Life, Father Death 
 
 (0 the blackbird in the may !), 
 Each the other's breath for breath. 
 
 Fleet the times of the world away. 
 
 93
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XXIV 
 
 (To A. C.) 
 
 What should the Trees, 
 Midsummer-manifold, each one, 
 Voluminous, a labyrinth of life — 
 What should such things of bulk and multitude 
 Yield of their huge, unutterable selves, 
 To the random importunity of Day, 
 The blabbing journalist 1 ? 
 Alert to snatch and publish hour by hour 
 Their greenest hints, their leafiest privacies, 
 How can he other than endure 
 The ruminant irony that foists him off 
 
 94
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 With broad-blown falsehoods, or the obviousness 
 
 Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade, 
 
 And disappearances of homing birds, 
 
 And frolicsome freaks 
 
 Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs ? 
 
 Now, at the word 
 Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, 
 Night of the many secrets, whose effect — 
 Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread — 
 Themselves alone may fully apprehend, 
 They tremble and are changed : 
 In each, the uncouth individual soul 
 Looms forth and glooms 
 Essential, and, their bodily presences 
 Touched with inordinate significance, 
 Wearing the darkness like the livery 
 
 95
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, 
 
 They brood — they menace — they appal : 
 
 Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they 
 
 wring 
 Wild hands of warning in the face 
 Of some inevitable advance of doom : 
 Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing, 
 As in some monstrous market-place, 
 They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime, 
 In that old speech their forefathers 
 Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard 
 The troubled voice of Eve 
 Naming the wondering folk of Paradise. 
 
 Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell 
 The tale of their dim life and all 
 Its compost of experience : how the Sun 
 
 96
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Spreads them their daily feast, 
 
 Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine ; 
 
 Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude 
 
 And those mild messages the Stars 
 
 Descend in silver silences and dews ; 
 
 Or what the buxom West, 
 
 Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat, 
 
 Said, and their leafage laughed ; 
 
 And how the wet- winged Angel of the Rain 
 
 Came whispering . . . whispering ; and the gifts 
 
 of the Year — 
 The sting of the stirring sap 
 Under the wizai'dry of the young-eyed Spring, 
 Their summer amplitudes of pomp 
 And rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill, 
 Embittered housewifery 
 Of the lean Winter : all such things, 
 And with them all the goodness of the Master 
 
 97
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 Whose right hand blesses with increase and 
 
 life, 
 Whose left hand honours with decay and death. 
 
 So, under the constraint of Night, 
 
 These gross and simple creatures, 
 
 Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years, 
 
 A servant of the Will. 
 
 And God, the Craftsman, as he walks 
 
 The floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheer 
 
 In thus accomplishiug 
 
 The aims of His miraculous artistry. 
 
 98
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 XXV 
 
 What have I done for you, 
 
 England, my England ? 
 What is there I would not do, 
 
 England my own ? 
 With your glorious eyes austere, 
 As the Lord were walking near, 
 Whispering terrible things and dear 
 
 As the song on your bugles blown, 
 Eu gland — 
 
 Round the world on your bugles blown ! 
 
 Where shall the watchful Sun, 
 
 England, my England, 
 Match the master- work you 've done, 
 
 England my own ? 
 99
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 When shall he rejoice agen 
 Such a breed of mighty men 
 As come forward, one to ten, 
 
 To the Song on your bugles blown, 
 England — 
 
 Down the years on your bugles blown ? 
 
 Ever the faith endures, 
 
 England, my England : — 
 ' Take and break us : we are yours, 
 
 ' England, my own ! 
 ' Life is good, and joy runs high 
 ' Between English earth and sky : 
 1 Death is death ; but we shall die 
 
 ' To the Song on your bugles blown, 
 ' England — 
 
 ' To the stars on your bugles blown ! ' 
 100
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 They call you proud and hard, 
 
 England, my England : 
 You with worlds to watch and ward, 
 
 England, my own ! 
 You whose mailed hand keeps the keys 
 Of such teeming destinies 
 You could know nor dread nor ease 
 
 Were the Song on your bugles blown, 
 England, 
 
 Round the Pit on your bugles blown ! 
 
 Mother of Ships whose might, 
 
 England, my England, 
 Is the fierce old Sea's delight, 
 
 England, my own, 
 Chosen daughter of the Lord, 
 Spouse-in- Chief of the ancient Sword, 
 101
 
 RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 
 
 There 's the menace of the Word 
 
 In the Song on your bugles blown, 
 
 England — 
 Out of heaven on your bugles blown ! 
 
 102
 
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