VERSES
AND
SONNETS

Verses
and Sonnets

BY
HILAIRE BELLOC

LONDON
WARD AND DOWNEY
Limited
12 YORK BUILDINGS ADELPHI W.C.
1896
[All rights reserved]

F. M. EVANS AND CO., LIMITED, PRINTERS,
CRYSTAL PALACE, S.E.

To
John Swinnerton Phillimore

CONTENTS

VERSES.

THE NIGHT.

Most holy Night, that still dost keep

The keys of all the doors of sleep,

To me when my tired eyelids close

Give thou repose.

And let the far lament of them

That chaunt the dead day’s requiem

Make in my ears, who wakeful lie,

Soft lullaby.

Bid them that guard the sacred moon

By my bedside their memories croon;

So shall I have strange dreams and blest

In my brief rest.

Fold thy great wings about my face,

Hide day-dawn from my resting-place,

And cheat me with thy false delight,

Most holy Night.

HOMAGE.

I.

There is a light around your head

Which only Saints of God may wear,

And all the flowers on which you tread

In pleasaunce more than ours have fed,

And supped the essential air

Whose summer is a-pulse with music everywhere.

II.

For you are younger than the mornings are

That in the mountains break;

When upland shepherds see their only star

Pale on the dawn, and make

In his surcease the hours,

The early hours of all their happy circuit take.

CUCKOO!

In woods so long time bare.

Cuckoo!

(Up in Mortain woods, I know not where)

Two notes fall.

Yet I do not envy him at all

His phantasy.

Cuckoo!

I too,

Somewhere,

I have sang as merrily as he

Who can dare,

Small and careless lover, so to laugh at care,

And who

Can call

Cuckoo!

In woods of winter weary,

In scented woods, of winter weary, call

Cuckoo!

In woods so long time bare.

SONNETS.

THE HARBOUR.

I was like one who grips the deck by night,

Bearing the tiller up against his breast;

I was like one who makes with all his might

For keeping course although so hardly prest;

Who veers with veering shock, now east, now west,

And strains his foothold still, and still makes play,

Of bending beams until the sacred light

Shows him high lands and heralds up the day.

But now such busy work of battle past,

I am like one whose barque at bar at last

Comes hardly heeling down the adventurous breeze,

And entering calmer seas,

I am like one that brings his merchandise

To Californian skies.

HER YOUTH.

Youth gave you to me, but I’ll not believe

That youth will, taking his quick self, take you.

Youth’s all our truth; he cannot so deceive;

He has our graces—not our own selves too.

He still compares with time when he’ll be spent,

By human fate enhancing what we are;

Enriches us with dear experiment,

Lends arms to leaguered age in Time’s rough war.

Look, this youth in us is an old man taking

A boy to make him wiser than his days.

So is our old youth our young ages making,

So rich in time his final debt he pays.

So with your quite young arms do you me hold,

And I will still be young when all the world’s grown old.

LOVE AND HONOUR.

Love wooing Honour, Honour’s love did win,

And had his pleasure all a summer’s day.

Not understanding how the dooms begin,

Love wooing Honour, wooed her life away.

Then wandered he for full five years’ unrest,

Until, one night, this Honour that had died

Came as he woke, in youth grown glorified,

And smiling like the saints whom God has blest.

But when he saw her in the dear night shine

Serene, with more than mortal light upon her,

The boy that careless was of things divine,

Small Love, turned penitent to worship Honour.

So Love can conquer Honour; when that’s past,

Dead Honour risen outdoes Love at last.

HER MUSIC.

Oh! do not play me music any more,

Lest in us mortal, some not mortal spell

Should stir strange hopes, and leave a tale to tell

Of two belovéd whom holy music bore,

Through whispering night and doubt’s uncertain seas,

To drift at length along a dawnless shore,

The last sad goal of human harmonies.

Look! do not play me music any more.

You are my music and my mistress both,

Why, then, let music play the master here?

Make silent melody, Melodie. I am loath

To find that music, large in my soul’s ear,

Should stop my fancy, hold my heart in prize,

And make me dreamer more than dreams are wise.

HER FAITH.

Because my faltering feet will fail to dare

The downward of the endless steps of Hell,

Give me the word in time that triumphs there.

I too must go into the dreadful hollow,

Where all our human laughter stops—and hark!

The tiny stuffless voices of the dark

Have called me, called me till I needs must follow.

Give me the word, and I’ll attempt it well.

Say it’s the little winking of an eye,

Which in that issue is uncurtained quite.

A little sleep that helps a moment by

Between the thin dawn and the large daylight.

Oh! tell me more than yet was hoped of men,

Swear that’s true now, and I’ll believe it then.

HER GIFT IN A GARDEN.

Not for the luckless buds our roots may bear,

Now quite in bloom, now seared and cankered lying,

Will I entreat you, lest they should compare

My sad mortality with the fall of flowers;

But hold with me your chaste communion rare,

And touch with life this mortal case of ours.

For you were born beyond the power of dying:

I die as bounded things die everywhere.

You’re full companionship, I’m silence lonely;

You’re stuff, I’m void; you’re living, I’m decay.

I fall, I think, to twilight ending only,

You lift, I know, to never-ending day.

And knowing living gift was life for me,

In narrow room of rhyme, I fixed it certainly.

THE CHECK.

Shall any man for whose dear love another

Has thrown away his wealth and name in one,

Shall he turn scoffer of a more than brother,

To mock his needs when his desires are done?

Or shall a low-born boy whose mother won him

In great men great concerns his little place,

Turn, when his farthing honours come upon him,

To note her yeoman air and conscious grace?

Then mock me as you do my narrow scope,

For you it was put out this light of mine,

Traitrously wrecked my new adventured hope,

Wasted my wordy wealth, spilt my rich wine,

Made my square ship within a league of shore,

Alas! to be entombed in seas and seen no more.

THE POOR OF LONDON.

Almighty God, whose Justice, like a sun

Shall coruscate along the floors of heaven:

Raising what’s low, perfecting what’s undone,

Breaking the proud, and making odd things even.

The Poor of Jesus Christ along the street

In your rain sodden, in your snows unshod,

They have nor hearth, nor roof, nor daily meat,

Nor even the bread of men; Almighty God.

The Poor of Jesus Christ whom no man hears

Have called upon your vengeance much too long.

Wipe out not tears but blood: our eyes bleed tears:

Come, smite our damnéd sophistries so strong,

That thy rude hammer battering this rude wrong

Ring down the abyss of twice ten thousand years.

GROTESQUES.

NOËL.

I.

On a winter’s night long time ago

(The bells ring loud and the bells ring low),

When high howled wind, and down fell snow

(Carillon, Carilla).

Saint Joseph he and Nostre Dame,

Riding on an ass, full weary came

From Nazareth into Bethlehem.

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

II.

And Bethlehem inn they stood before

(The bells ring less and the bells ring more),

The landlord bade them begone from his door

(Carillon, Carilla).

“Poor folk” (says he) “must lie where they may,

For the Duke of Jewry comes this way,

With all his train on a Christmas Day.”

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

III.

Poor folk that may my carol hear

(The bells ring single and the bells ring clear),

See! God’s one Child had hardest cheer!

(Carillon, Carilla).

Men grown hard on a Christmas morn;

The dumb beast by and a babe forlorn.

It was very, very cold when our Lord was born.

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

IV.

Now these were Jews as Jews must be

(The bells ring wild and the bells ring free!),

But Christian men in a band are we

(Carillon, Carilla).

Empty we go and ill bedight,

Singing Noël on a winter’s night;

Give us to sup by the warm firelight.

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

THE EARLY MORNING.

The Moon on the one hand, the Dawn on the other;

The Moon is my sister, the Dawn is my brother.

The Moon on my left, and the Dawn on my right;

My Brother, good morning; my Sister, good night.

AUVERGNAT.

There was a man was half a clown

(It’s so, my father tells of it),

He saw the church in Clermont Town,

And laughed to hear the bells of it.

He laughed to hear the bells that ring

In Clermont Church and round of it;

He heard the verger’s daughter sing,

And loved her for the sound of it.

The verger’s daughter said him nay

(She had the right of choice in it);

He left the town at break of day

(He hadn’t had a voice in it).

The road went up, the road went down,

And there the matter ended it;

He broke his heart in Clermont Town,

At Pontgibaud they mended it.

THE WORLD’S END.

The clouds are high and the skies are wide

(It’s a weary way to the world’s end).

I hear the wind upon a hillside

(Over the hills, away).

Over the hills and over the sea