A CHANT OF LOVE FOR ENGLAND

AND OTHER POEMS

BY
HELEN GRAY CONE

LONDON AND TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
1915

In Memoriam

P. M. and A. C. D.

KILLED IN ACTION, 1915

Let Pride with Grief go hand in hand:

They join the hallowed hosts who died

In battle for their lovely land;

With light about their brows they ride.

Young hearts and hot, gray heads and wise,

Good knights of all the years foregone,

Faith in their England in their eyes,

Still ride they on, still ride they on!

By altars old their banners fade

Beneath dear spires; their names are set

In minster aisle, in yew-tree shade;

Their memories fight for England yet.

Let Pride with Grief go hand in hand,

Sad Love with Patience, side by side;

In battle for their lovely land

Not vainly England’s sons have died!

And well may pride this hour befit;

For not since England’s days began

More fiery-clear the word was writ:

Who dies for England, dies for Man!

CONTENTS

A CHANT OF LOVE FOR ENGLAND

A song of hate is a song of Hell;

Some there be that sing it well.

Let them sing it loud and long,

We lift our hearts in a loftier song:

We lift our hearts to Heaven above,

Singing the glory of her we love,—

England!

Glory of thought and glory of deed,

Glory of Hampden and Runnymede;

Glory of ships that sought far goals,

Glory of swords and glory of souls!

Glory of songs mounting as birds,

Glory immortal of magical words;

Glory of Milton, glory of Nelson,

Tragical glory of Gordon and Scott;

Glory of Shelley, glory of Sidney,

Glory transcendent that perishes not,—

Hers is the story, hers be the glory,

England!

Shatter her beauteous breast ye may;

The Spirit of England none can slay!

Dash the bomb on the dome of Paul’s,—

Deem ye the fame of the Admiral falls?

Pry the stone from the chancel floor,—

Dream ye that Shakespeare shall live no more?

Where is the giant shot that kills

Wordsworth walking the old green hills?

Trample the red rose on the ground,—

Keats is Beauty while earth spins round!

Bind her, grind her, burn her with fire,

Cast her ashes into the sea,—

She shall escape, she shall aspire,

She shall arise to make men free:

She shall arise in a sacred scorn,

Lighting the lives that are yet unborn;

Spirit supernal, Splendour eternal,

England!

SOLDIERS OF THE LIGHT

“Why of War, O thou that lovest rather

Peace of roses in a rain-sweet garden,

Peace of moonlit silver-heaving waters,

All the lovely looks of little children?

What strange mandate

Bids thee sing of War, who lovest these things?

“How of War, O faint-heart, thou that grievest

Over every gentle creature wounded,

All soft eyes of pain and puzzled sorrow,

All the lithe limbs marred, the wild wings broken?

What black magic

Makes thee brood on War, who dreadest these things?

“Is it but the haunting of the bugles,

Floating memories of the war-time bugles

Blowing over those far fields of childhood,

Pleasant in the foolish ear of childhood,

When the sword-hilt

Seemed but made to shine and hold a jewel?”

Then the inward Voice that gave the mandate,—

Bade me sing of battle,—bade me answer:

Well I know the symbol of the sword-hilt,

Know the Cross of sacrifice and service;

See the heart’s-blood

Burning where the child beheld the jewel.

I have hated with the perfect hatred

All the work of Hell in all the ages;

Hated all the hate and all the horror;

Yet the Vision of the Face of faces,

God-in-Manhood,

Shines through Hell, and I have seen the Vision.

In all battles, under many banners,

Soldiers of the Light have fought, have fallen,

Souls elect and armoured all with honour,

Following an unconquerable Captain;

Fighting, falling,

For the hope, the dream, the splendid secret!

In this rubric, lo, the Past is lettered:

Strike the red words out, we strike the glory.

Leave the sacred colour on the pages,

Pages of the Past that teach the Future.

On that scripture

Yet shall young souls take the oath of service.

God end War! but when brute War is ended,

Yet there shall be many a noble soldier,

Many a noble battle worth the winning,

Many a hopeless battle worth the losing.

Life is battle,

Life is battle, even to the sunset.

Soldiers of the Light shall strive forever,

In the wards of pain, the ways of labour,

In the stony deserts of the city,

In the hives where greed has housed the helpless;

Patient, valiant,

Fighting with the powers of death and darkness.

Make us mingle in that heavenly warfare;

Call us through the throats of all brave bugles

Blown on fields foregone by lips forgotten;

Nerve us with the courage of lost comrades,

Gird us, lead us,

Thou, O Prince of Peace and God of Battles!

THE STORY OF THE “ORIENT”

’Twas a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in its glory,

English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door,

Florid-faced, the man-o’-war’s-man told his white-head boy the story,

Noble story of Aboukir told a hundred times before.

“Here, the Theseus—here, the Vanguard;” as he spoke each name sonorous,—

Minotaur, Defence, Majestic, stanch old comrades of the brine,

That against the ships of Brueys made their broadsides roar in chorus,—

Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the battle-line.

Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might a man left-handed,

Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar.

While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes expanded,

Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar.

For he served aboard the Vanguard, saw the Admiral blind and bleeding

Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed.

Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on unheeding,

Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered, flashed, and screamed.

Till a cry swelled loud and louder,—towered on fire the Orient stately,

Brueys’ flag-ship, she that carried guns a hundred and a score;

Then came groping up the hatchway he they counted dead but lately,

Came the little one-armed Admiral to guide the fight once more.

“‘Lower the boats!’ was Nelson’s order,”—But the listening boy beside him,

Who had followed all his motions with an eager wide blue eye,

Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him,

Here, with childhood’s crude consistence, broke the tale to question “Why?”

For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,

Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes.

All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal with causes.

Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower the boats?

Quick the man put by the question. “But the Orient, none could save her;

We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as day-light by the flare;

And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest ’em! some were braver;

Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where.”

At the shock, he said, the Vanguard shook through all her timbers oaken;

It was like the shock of Doomsday,—not a tar but shuddered hard.

All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was broken

By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard.

So, her cannon still defying, and her colours flaming, flying,

In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead,

Soared the Orient into darkness with her living and her dying:

“Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls,” the seaman said.

Long the boy with knit brows wondered o’er that friending of the foeman;

Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause

Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,

In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like straws.

While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy;

Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the churchyard sod;

And helped on by tender hands, with sturdy feet all bare and rosy,

Climbed his babe to mother’s breast, as climbs the slow world up to God.

POVERTY ROW

Brave old neighbours in Poverty Row,

Why should we grudge to dwell with you?

Pinch of poverty well ye know—

Doubtful dinner and clouted shoe.

Grinned the wolf at your doors, and yet

You sang your songs and you said your say.

Lashed to labour by devil Debt,

All were manful, and some were gay.

What, old Chaucer! a royal jest

Once you made in your laughing verse:

“No more goldfinch-song in the nest—

Autumn nest of the empty purse!”

Master Spenser, your looks are spare;

Princes’ favours, how fleet they be!

Thinking that yours was the selfsame fare,

Crust or crumb shall be sweet to me.

Worshipful Shakespeare of Stratford town,

Prosperous-portly in doublet red,

What of the days when you first came down

To London city to earn your bread?

What of the lodging where Juliet’s face

Startled your dream with its southern glow,

Flooding with splendour the sordid place?

That was a garret in Poverty Row!

Many a worthy has here, I ween,

Made brief sojourn or long abode:

Johnson, dining behind the screen;

Goldsmith, vagrant along the road;

Keats, ah, pitiful! poor and ill,

Harassed and hurt, in his short spring day;

Best Sir Walter, with flagging quill

Digging the mountain of debt away.

Needy comrade, whose evil star,

Pallid-frowning, decrees you wrong,

Greatly neighboured, in truth, we are;

Hold your heart up and sing your song!

Lift your eyes to the book-shelf where,

Glorious-gilded, a shining show,

Every man in his mansion fair,

Dwell the princes of Poverty Row!

THE TRUMPETER

Two ships, alone in sky and sea,

Hang clinched, with crash and roar;

There is but one—whiche’er it be—

Will ever come to shore.

And will it be the grim black bulk,

That towers so evil now?

Or will it be The Grace of God,

With the angel at her prow?

The man that breathes the battle’s breath

May live at last to know;

But the trumpeter lies sick to death

In the stifling dark below.

He hears the fight above him rave;

He fears his mates must yield;

He lies as in a narrow grave

Beneath a battle-field.

His fate will fall before the ship’s,

Whate’er the ship betide;

He lifts the trumpet to his lips

As though he kissed a bride.

“Now blow thy best, blow thy last,

My trumpet, for the Right!”—

He has sent his soul in one strong blast,

To hearten them that fight.

GREENCASTLE JENNY
A BALLAD OF ’SIXTY-THREE

Oh, Greencastle streets were a stream of steel

With the slanted muskets the soldiers bore,

And the scared earth muttered and shook to feel

The tramp and the rumble of Longstreet’s Corps;

The bands were blaring “The Bonny Blue Flag,”

And the banners borne were a motley many;

And watching the gray column wind and drag

Was a slip of a girl—we’ll call her Jenny.

A slip of a girl—what needs her name?—

With her cheeks aflame and her lips aquiver,

As she leaned and looked with a loyal shame

At the steady flow of the steely river:

Till a storm grew black in the hasel eyes

Time had not tamed, nor a lover sighed for;

And she ran and she girded her, apron-wise,

With the flag she loved and her brothers died for.

Out of the doorway they saw her start,

(Pickett’s Virginians were marching through,)

The hot little foolish hero-heart

Armoured with stars and the sacred blue.

Clutching the folds of red and white

Stood she and bearded those ranks of theirs,

Shouting shrilly with all her might,

“Come and take it, the man that dares!”

Pickett’s Virginians were passing through;

Supple as steel and brown as leather,

Rusty and dusty of hat and shoe,

Wonted to hunger and war and weather;

Peerless, fearless, an army’s flower!

Sterner soldiers the world saw never,

Marching lightly, that summer hour,

To death and failure and fame forever.

Rose from the rippling ranks a cheer;

Pickett saluted, with bold eyes beaming,

Sweeping his cap like a cavalier,

With his lion locks in the warm wind streaming.

Fierce little Jenny! her courage fell,

As the firm lines flickered with friendly laughter,

And Greencastle streets gave back the yell

That Gettysburg slopes gave back soon after.

So they cheered for the flag they fought

With the generous glow of the stubborn fighter,

Loving the brave as the brave man ought,

And never a finger was raised to fright her:

So they marched, though they knew it not,

Through the fresh green June to the shock infernal,

To the hell of the shell and the plunging shot,

And the charge that has won them a name eternal.

And she felt at last, as she hid her face,

There had lain at the root of her childish daring

A trust in the men of her own brave race,

And a secret faith in the foe’s forbearing.

And she sobbed, till the roll of the rumbling gun

And the swinging tramp of the marching men

Were a memory only, and day was done,