SORROW OF WAR

LILAC, LABURNUM

Lilac, lilac, laburnum,
How shall you bloom this Spring?
Gathering birds, gathering birds,
How shall you sing?

Gathering birds, gathering birds,
How shall you lift your singing head?
Lilac, lilac, laburnum,
Shall not your blossom be fiery red?

Lilac, laburnum, gathering birds...?

Spring 1918

STREETS OF GOLD

O there are streets of gold in Bethnal Green,
With troughs of pearl where lovely horses drink,
And tripping on the greenswards, silver-clean,
The girls are marvellouser than you can think.
Gawd blimey! Bethnal Green!
(All this from Tommy Jones,
Delirious in the trench with shattered bones).

O there is harvest now in Camden Town,
And songs and laughing and old flasks of wine!
O the grand moon of bronze! the wakeful brown
Owl in the barn! ghost-poppies and dream-kine!
Lor lumme! Camden Town!
(This with the gasp of death
From 'Erbert, chlorine-gassed and green for breath).

O what green seas sweep winds through Camberwell,
Through all her islands where the palm-trees heave!
O winding down the channels steals a bell
Calling poor weary lads to bathe at eve!
God blawst it! Camberwell!
(This from old Bob, whose side
Is pierced with wounds like Jesus crucified).

"IN THE GALLERY WHERE THE FAT MEN GO"

("GREAT PICTURES OF THE SOMME OFFENSIVE,
DAY BY DAY. THE ACTUAL FIGHTING")

See Omnibus and Underground Notices,
April 1918

They are showing how we lie
With our bodies run dry:
The attitudes we take
When impaled upon a stake.
These and other things they show
In the gallery where the fat men go.

In the gallery where the fat men go
They're exhibiting our guts
Horse-betrampled in the ruts;
And Private Tommy Spout,
With his eye gouged out;
And Jimmy spitting blood;
And Sergeant lying so
That he's drowning in the mud,
In the gallery where the fat men go.

They adjust their pince-nez
In the gentle urban way,
And they plant their feet tight
For to get a clearer sight.
They stand playing with their thumbs,
With their shaven cheeks aglow.
For the Terror never comes,
And the worms and the woe.
For they never hear the drums
Drumming Death dead-slow,
In the gallery where the fat men go.

If the gallery where the fat men go
Were in flames around their feet,
Or were sucking through the mud:
If they heard the guns beat
Like a pulse through the blood:
If the lice were in their hair,
And the scabs were on their tongue,
And the rats were smiling there,
Padding softly through the dung,
Would they fix the pince-nez
In the gentle urban way,
Would the pictures still be hung
In the gallery where the fat men go?

DEAD IN GALLIPOLI

He died in Gallipoli.
What English flower
That we cherish shall grow of him?
Never a flower
Shall grow that we know of him!
No white daisy-coverlet
Shall grow from the ground of him;
No English bird-loverlet
Pipe love-songs around of him.
Under the sycamore
His grave not appears,
Where the crocuses flicker more
Than armies with spears.
Under no tree at all
England designed
His body may be at all
Gently consigned.

He died in Gallipoli
The death on a stake.
Gallipoli poison
Is now the great part of him.
A flower like a snake
Shall writhe from the heart of him.
The desolate surf
Below him is muttering.
Over his turf
A bird like a devil
Is flapping and fluttering.
The poisonous bird
Whose scarlet eye glowers,
The poisonous flowers
With petals unclean
Are the only things heard
And the only things seen.

Is that the whole of you,
White lad from England,
Is that the soul of you,
Dead in Gallipoli?
You are dead to me, dead to me,
Barren and far,
But a Thing that was said to me,
By a bird, by a star,
—An old thing of solace,
O stupid it seemed;
And I now cannot tell at all
If the whisper that fell at all
I heard or I dreamed.
It seemed that I caught a
Faint whisper or sign,
Being drunken with water,
Or hallowed with wine.

Ah, would that I knew
What the Word was that came,
What the Thing was that gleamed
With a wind and a flame;
Ah, would that I knew,
Even as you,
O white lad from England,
White lad from England,
Dead in Gallipoli,
Would that I knew
If I heard or I dreamed!

A JOURNEY SOUTH

To the South lands, the green lands, from the
North, the harsh
Rocks, where the eagles whose granite bills
Screech from the scars of toppling hills.
To the South lands, the green lands, from the
North, the marsh
Hollows which black waste water fills,
—The South green lands!

To the South lands, the green lands, where
the flowers of fruit
Are moons entangled in cosmic trees,
Where birds are rocks in the foam of seas,
The wind's a player, the grass a lute
Whose wires are swept by the wings of bees,
—The South green lands!

To the South lands, the green lands—but
halt, O hark!
A sob of birds in a poisoned wood!
The fume of poppies crushed foul in mud!
The whine of the wings of Death through the dark!
A sunset of flame, a moon of blood!
—The South red lands!

THE NEW TRADE

In the market-places they have made
A dolorous new trade.
Now you will see in the fierce naphtha-light,
Piled hideously to sight,
Dead limbs of men bronzed in the over-seas,
Bomb-wrenched from elbows and knees;
Torn feet, that would, unwearied by harsh loads,
Have tramped steep moorland roads;
Torn hands that would have moulded exquisitely
Rare things for God to see.
And there are eyes there—blue like blue doves' wings,
Black like the Libyan kings,
Grey as before-dawn rivers, willow-stirred,
Brown as a singing-bird;
But all stare from the dark into the dark,
Reproachful, tense, and stark.
Eyes heaped on trays and in broad baskets there,
Feet, hands, and ropes of hair.
In the market-places ... and women buy ...
... Naphtha glares ... hawkers cry ...
Fat men rub hands....
O God, O just God, send
Plague, lightnings ...
Make an end!

THE WOMAN WHO SHRIEKED AGAINST PEACE

Abundant woman panting there,
Whose breast is flecked with spots of grease
That splutter from your laboured hair,
O dew-lapped woman, you who reek
Of stout and steak and fish and chips,
Why does the short indignant shriek
Come toppling from your fleshy lips;
Because, poor smitten fool, I dare
To breathe the outcast name of Peace?

And shall your flesh grow less to view,
And shall your chubby arms grow thin,
And shall you miss your stout and stew,
The bracelets which you wear so well,
If blinded boys no more shall creep
Along the scorching roads to Hell,
If thick red blood no more shall steep
Green fields in France, nor corpses smell;
If Peace send down her blasting blight,
O shall it spoil your sleep at night,
And shall you lose your treble chin?

THE WOMEN AT THE CORNERS STAND

The women at the corners stand. They say,
"Where are the men you stole from us away?
Where are they now, the laughing lovers whom
You heaped in sombre ranks against the gloom?"
They murmur ceaselessly and without haste,
"Our arms are empty and our wombs are waste."
"Where are the men that marched into the dusk?"
They say with voices withered like a husk.
"Night is like cinders: day is lean and stern.
Our hearts are parched with thirsting; yea, we burn.
Where are the men you took? Bid them return."

The women at the corners stand. But no
Reply is heard. They wait till night. They go
Back to their homes. Once more they come next day,
"Where are the men you stole from us away?"
They draw their shawls around their heads. They wait.
They say, "But we are weary. It is late."
They murmur ceaselessly and without haste,
"Our arms are empty and our wombs are waste."
No word is said to them. But only they,
The women at the corners, stand. They say,
"Send back our lovers whom you stole away."

JOINING-UP

No, not for you the glamour of emprise,
Poor driven lad with terror in your eyes.

No dream of wounds and medals and renown
Called you like Love from your drab Northern town.

No haunting fife, dizzily shrill and sweet,
Came lilting drunkenly down your dingy street.

You will not change, with a swift catch of pride,
In the cold hut among the leers and oaths,
Out of your suit of frayed civilian clothes,
Into the blaze of khaki they provide.

Like a trapped animal you crouch and choke
In the packed carriage where the veterans smoke
And tell such pitiless tales of Over There,
They stop your heart dead short and freeze your hair.

Your body's like a flower on a snapt stalk,
Your head hangs from your neck as blank as chalk.

What horrors haunt you, head upon your breast!
... O but you'll die as bravely as the rest!

DURING THE BATTLE

O the terror of the Battle at this ending of the days!
O the thunder of the wings through the gloom!
O the thousand thousand companies that strew the sombre ways
To achieve this final doom!

Where the flames disrupt the night and the hell-fumes flee,
'Mid the darkness and the splitting of the skies,
Only your young white wistful face I see,
My brother, only your eyes!

March 1918

JACK

The heavy smells of Spring
Are flooding through my skin.
My body drinks them in.
Like rich red veils they cling
About my prostrate head.
I swoon into a bed,
The heavy smells of Spring.

I now almost forget
The pain, the pain, the pain;
Now being lulled by rain,
And smells and warm wings wet.
I swoon into a bed,
Almost forget you're dead,
Almost, almost forget.

Now, now my memories drowse
Amid the whine of bells,
The fumes of rich red smells,
The stupor round my brows.
My nerves and veins are lead.
I swoon into a bed,
Where all my sorrows drowse.

Then suddenly you return,
O marrow of my bone,
Blood flowing through my own!
My pulses yearn and burn.
I battle round my head,
Cry strickenly from my bed.
Suddenly you return!

O God of War and Dearth,
O shattering Blast that blew,
Blood-eyed, blood-fingered, you
Damned God of War and Dearth!
He whom you wrenched from me
To monstrous things and vain,
Burned, broken, buried, he,
He is this smell of earth,
This dead moist smell of rain!

GERMAN BOY

German boy with cold blue eyes,
In the cold and blue moonrise,
I who live and still shall know
Flowers that smell and winds that blow,
I who live to walk again,
Fired the shot that broke your brain.

By your hair all stiff with blood,
By your lips befouled with mud,
By your dreams that shall no more
Leave the nest and sing and soar,
By the children never born
From your body smashed and torn,
—When I too shall stand at last
In the deadland vast,
Shall you heap upon my soul
Agonies of coal?
Shall you bind my throat with cords,
Stab me through with swords?
Or shall you be gentler far
Than a bird or than a star?
Shall you know that I was bound
In the noose that choked you round?
Shall you say, "The way was hid.
Lord, he knew not what he did"?
Shall your eyes that day be mild,
Like the Sacrifice, the Child?
... German boy with cold blue eyes,
In the cold and blue moonrise.

SKYLARK AND DAWN

(To Maurice Samuel)

Stretched and silent they lie to the furious gold of the dawn,
And the earth like a leper's face is pitted and scarred.
Firm in the grip of the wire relentless and hard,
They lie with their dead young faces pallid and drawn.

Somewhere stupidly, thickly, a big gun booms!
A rifle cracks like the spit of a snake in the trees!
And ever the great sun rises, rolling the glooms
Of the sulphurous night to the fields and the cliffs and the seas.

The groan of a dying man crawls out from his teeth!
He groans no more: his lips become leaden and cold!
And ever the sun flashes forth like a sword from its sheath,
And dazzles the dawn with terrors of scarlet and gold.

The guns snarl out like a dog reluctant and grim.
The triggers of rifles loosen in blue numb hands.
Faintly the wings of a silence frightened and dim
Hover down closer over the blasted lands.

Gods of the great wars,
Gods that stand
Somewhere afar off,
Cruel and grand,
Silence, Silence,
In No Man's Land!

Gods of the great wars,
Cruel and high,
Listen afar off!
Grant us to die
With the song of Silence
In the morning sky!

Gods of the great wars,
Gas-wave and gun,
Are ye not happy
With the red work done?
Drown ye the planets,
Shatter the sun!

Not a twitching of bloodless lip or of glazing eye!
For the Silence is deeper than Noon and older than Time,
The Silence inert and intense of the far first sky
When never a wind breathed over the primal slime.

The Sun is stayed in his march, and even Death
With the flush of triumph mantling his cheeks of gloom,
He too stands still for an instant and holds his breath.
A million of years passes by in a moment of doom.

Suddenly!
Terrible! Wild!
A skylark shatters the spell,
With a music more fiery than hell,
More frail than the laugh of a child!

His little brown wings soar high to assault the sun.
His little round throat sends a challenge audacious and far
To the pale-faced legions of Silence that waver and run,
To the uprisen dawn and every invisible star.

Ah God! the song cuts deeper than tempered steel!
The eyes overflow with the surge of a salt harsh tear,
Again to listen to Music, again to feel
The uttermost glory of living when Death is so near!

Scream of a shell! ...
Dull dead thud in a trench,
Curses and flame and stench! ...

Instantly all the white dawn,
Fragrant and frail and cool,
Breaks like a vase in the hands of a fool.
For the thick sick lips of Death have spoken,
The fine gold chain of the bird-song is broken.
The lank dank hand of Death has withdrawn
The curtain of bird-song and magic dawn
From the sullen red windows of Hell.

Rattle of rifle and shriek of gun,
Gas-cloud sickly and heavy and dun,
Death has taken his armies in hand,
And the bodies lie countless in No Man's Land.

Out of the shock of the storm
Where the foul winds meet and cry,
Something drops down at my feet,
A little brown body and sweet,
A little dead body and warm.

The tiny dead throat shall sing no more,
Nor the quick eyes flash nor the swift wings soar;
But the shells shall hurtle, the grim guns roar,
O skylark out of the sky!

My singing is ended, the pall descended on land and sea.
I sang my song to the tune of my own heart-beat
Between the sound of the wars, and there sang with me
My little brother the skylark, dead at my feet.

France, 1917

JACK OF APRIL

April!—this is when
All the flowers beloved of men,
This is when they laugh all day,
Birds and they.
Then are they not opened quite
To the singing year's delight.
This is when the April showers
Make a running road of noise;
Woods are stormed by boyish flowers,
Flowery boys.
Would you then not weep with me,
Wring your hands,
Sing a dirge of saddest grief,
If your eyes should chance to see
Blight upon the April leaf;
O, but more,
Would you not weep long and sore,
If an April flower that stands
Waiting for the kiss of May,
Suddenly, swift, were snapt away,
Down, deep down, were crushed in clay?
Then would you not almost say,
"Curst be April!
Never sunlight bring in May!
Curst be June!
Death hath seized the budding year.
Never flush of copper stir
On the unrisen harvest moon!
May stark winter come straightway
—Now my little flower of April,
Now is cold and clay!"

April!—this was when
Jack went laughing to the wars.
Now he knew
What a boy in Spring must do.
There are flowers to learn, he said,
In the countries where I go.
There are birds to talk to and
Skies and winds to understand.
Never a moment knew he pause.
Jack went swinging to the ships
With a laughter on his lips,
Jack went singing to the wars.
Jack among the boys and men
Went to France in April when
Flowers and boys laughed all the day,
Birds and they.
... Till the Doom came down that day,
Even though the time was Spring,
Even April,
Even though he had not sung
Half the songs a lad should sing,
When the nesting-time is young,
April, Spring.

And he shuddered for a moment,
Blood and flame convulsed the day,
And he crumpled on the way,
And the scarlet tide went sweeping,
Heaping, heaping
Clay upon his trodden clay,
April, Spring!
April!—can you wonder then
That my bitten lips have said,
"Curst be men,
Now that Jack in lyric April,
Jack is dead.
Curst be all the race of men!
May the last child die away
From the poisoned air of day!
Never May-time come, nor summer;
Never autumn
Crown the dim uncertain ending
To the fevers of the race
With a drowsy peace descending
On their spirits racked and rending,
On the evil human face.
May the last supernal winter
Freeze the earth straightway,
Now my little Jack of April,
Now is cold and clay!"

STATESMEN DEBONAIR

O ye statesmen debonair,
With the partings in your hair;
Statesmen, ye who do your bit
In the arm-chairs where you sit;
You with top-hats on your head
Even when you lie in bed;
O superbly happy, ye
Traders in Humanity;
Every time you smile, sweet friends,
A moan goes up, a plague descends.
Every time you show your teeth,
A hundred swords desert the sheath.
Every time you pare your nails,
The manhood of a city fails.
Every time you dip your pen,
You slaughter ten platoons of men.
For every glass of port you hold,
Blood is spilt ten thousandfold....
O ye statesmen debonair,
With the partings in your hair;
O ye statesmen pink and white,
Sleep like little lambs to-night.

OVER IN FLANDERS ...

They were writing for the Poetry bookshops,
Poetry no doubt well worth reading.
Over in Flanders, in the wet weather,
Love lay bleeding!

If you carefully record your emotions,
Lyric or Sonnet that haunts your head,
Will you revive for me over in Flanders
Love stone dead?

WILD WEATHER

Wild weather, O my heart, and strong winds beating
The great trees straining in their despair.
The crumpled leaves that fall and flee
Whistle like ghosts across the air.
And how should I, lone mortal fleeting,
Not be uprooted by winds that, meeting,
Wrench at my limbs to cast them in the sea!

Wild weather, O my heart, for all my lovers,
The lads I loved in the time entombed,
Crumpled and stark against trench and tree,
Whistle like leaves through the woods engloomed.
There all year long my poor ghost hovers,
Never to see what the darkness covers,
The faces I loved of old that so loved me.

BROKEN BODIES

Not for the broken bodies,
When the War is over and done,
For the miserable eyes that never
Again shall see the sun;
Not for the broken bodies
Crawling over the land,
The patchwork limbs, the shoddies,
Not for the broken bodies,
Dear Lord, we crave your hand.

Not for the broken bodies,
We pray your dearest aid,
When the ghost of War for ever
Is levelled at last and laid;
Not for the broken bodies
That wrought their sorrowful parts
Our chiefest need of God is,
Not for the broken bodies,
Dear Lord—the broken hearts!

A THOUGHT

To-night a thought leapt in my head like flame.
Suppose one night I walked into my room
And found that someone filling all the gloom
Was waiting on my bed until I came;

And I walked in and switched the light on straight,
And found the figure sitting on my bed,
Limp with contrition and with sunken head,
Was God bowed down under His burden's weight;

And He looked up with sorrow and surmise
To see how deep the tale the Wars have written
Lay on my mortal features, battle-smitten,
And in the shadows of my deathless eyes;

—This was the thought and flame that pierced me through:
If God sat waiting there, anxious and grey,
Then should I have the charity to say,
"God, we forgive you; you know not what you do"?

THE VINTNER

The War-God now is happy.
His sunken eyeballs shine.
The War-God is a Vintner
Who makes the rarest wine.

His vineyard is not bounded
Between the West and East.
A thousand mothers hourly
Grow pregnant for his feast.

The grapes the Vintner presses
Below his granite feet
Are bodies, bodies, bodies,
Alive and brown and sweet.

O how the red juice splashes
Around his pounding limbs!
It stains the deepest rivers,
The furthest sunset rims.

O how the Gods his comrades,
When he, the Vintner, calls,
Drain deep the lurid beakers
In their carousal halls!

All night they hold red riot,
"For this is wine indeed!
Then bravo! merry Vintner,
We wish thy work good speed!"

And still the Vintner presses
The grapes with feet of stone,
Until the deep green ocean-cup
Shall hold red wine alone.

FOR NOW COMES SUMMER

For now comes Summer with a thousand birds.
And I must add up figures all the day.
And I must drive a tram the whole day long.
And I must make a living out of words.
For now comes Summer with a thousand birds;
And in green fields the little lambs will play,
Brown birds will lift so loud a storm of song,
For now comes Summer with a thousand birds.

For now comes Summer with a thousand birds.
And I must make munitions right away.
And I must check the biscuits at the base.
And I must plan to slaughter men in herds,
For now comes Summer with a thousand birds.
My brother's lying quiet on his face.
And I must sit and wait and die to-day,
For now comes Summer with a thousand birds.

HARFLEUR

THE ADVENT OF MARS

(To Thomas Moult)

Then suddenly ...
A thunder was heard like the cracking of suns,
A blackness blacker than blood there came
To choke the world with a fume and a flame.
A palsy fell on the guns.
A numbness froze the hands
Of the gunners in all the lands.
Half-way over the parapet
The limbs of the climbing infantry set
Like limbs of basalt-stone.
The bayonets fell from the fingers numb,
The throats of the officers dried dead-dumb,
For the Terror had come, the Terror had come,
The Terror out of the stark Unknown!
The Shadow was fallen upon the wars
That had raged three centuries long
To shatter the Lie and Wrong,
From the ice-fanged polar jaws,
With never a lull nor pause,
And over the Temperate Zone,
With never a moment's rest,
And over the Burning Line,
With never a halting sign,
And over the East and West,
And down to the ultimate mouth
Of the white Antarctic South.
From the torpid Esquimo-man
Who slew his Esquimo-mate
And poured his fat in a plate,
And lit up a wick therein,
And studied the secret plan
For the poisonous new harpoon.
Wherewith he was going to win
The Esquimo-battle soon.
From the Esquimo-man to the sinister black
Cannibal-boy in his skeleton-shack,
Whose ardent patriot labours
Were extracting the eyes of his foes,
The bones of their fingers and toes,
To teach them never to violate
The inter-cannibal laws of State,
And the boundary-stone of his weaker neighbours.

But now ...
Great God,
What is the menace,
Now,
The shadow, the thunder,
Now,
Ice on my heart,
Flame on my brow,
The skies dispart,
Lightnings rift through the obscene glooms,
The thews of the darkness are rent in sunder,
And a voice, a voice, a voice,
A great voice booms!

"Children of Earth,
Listen a moment before ye die.
We have waited long, we have waited long,
(Children of Mars, lift up your song,
For the children of Mars shall be lords of the sky!)
Long have we patiently waited
In a huge red planetous hall.
But never a wind of ruth or grace
Blew through the marshes of your earth-face.
And deeper into the hole
Of your cavernous earthen soul,
Deeper than God and Love and all,
Boulders of evil fall.
Long have we patiently waited
In a huge red planetous hall,
But never a grace not violated,
Never a devil ye did not call!
You have torn, you have torn,
The flowers by their roots, consumed the seed,
Wherever a flower was, planted a weed.
In the pitch of your scorn
Defiled the morn,
Bitten deep death in the mould and the corn.
You have eaten the wings
Of the lily-like frail
Butterfly caught in your treacherous veil.
You have festered the springs
With the corpses ye slew
And given your children to drink of the brew.
Never a grace not violated,
Left God never a roof nor wall;
Never a passion ye have not sated,
Never a devil ye did not call.
And a Word came forth from the Sun to Mars,
'Gird ye now for the final wars!
For over the planet of Earth,
Wooden and waste and wide,
Great red wounds in his side,
A shadow, a bloodless dearth
Ashen-pale in the caves of his eyes,
Throwing the ghost of a Cross on the skies,
The body of Christ lies crucified!'
We have come with a gladness terrible to behold.
We have come to reclaim the Godhead that was sold.
The levins we shall loosen ye have not ever known,
And the breath of our singing shall fall on you like stone.

Our weapons shall be flame and the blades be keen,
And they shall not rest again till the skies be clean.
Our weapons shall be tides, the tide of the sea,
The surgings of the tide
Shall not again subside,
Until the Sun's sky-ways again shall be free!"

So the voice spake,
Thunderous and proud,
So the voice spake,
Then died in a cloud.
And then again the Darkness, the Darkness gathered round,
And the hushed world waited, but heard not a sound.
So hushed was the world, the slaying and the weeping,
So hushed was the world, the world seemed sleeping,
But lo! in the West,
Lo! in the West!
Leaping, leaping,
A tongue of fire ...

PROPHET AND FOOL

From twigs of visionary boughs
I gather berries red and rare.
I twine around my pallid brows
An insubstantial dryad's hair.

Such song I hear in mission-halls,
As Jason heard in violet seas,
While bodiless birds sing madrigals
In tumult round my head and knees;

The draper-shops that light their jets
To blink along the lanes of mire,
Weave splendours round the muddy sets
And tip my feet with points of fire.

For I pursue the Golden Fleece
Down slum-ways magical and cool;
And there I hear the flutes of peace,
Being a prophet and a fool.

WHATEVER PATH I WALK UPON

(To George Fasnacht)

Whatever path I walk upon
That path itself is Avalon.
Whatever woman talks to me,
Venus' foamy self is she.
The floors of factories are made
Of jasper, porphyry and jade.
All that I drink, all food I eat,
Is my Lord's blood and body sweet.

But if a moth should singe his wings,
The world is black with dismal things.
And if a strangled sparrow fall,
There is not any God at all.
And if a baby moan for food,
My eyes blaze red with rage for blood.

LONDON MAGDALENE

How she is careful to make manifest
The budded beauty of her breast;
To hint beneath her unconcealing blouse
The curved seductions there that house.
Would that some Christ your mournful care had seen,
Unmaidened maiden, London Magdalene.

God gave you roses warm from Paradise,
And they are bleaker now than ice.
God gave you fountains flowing honey-sweet,
And they are spilt upon the street.
All your seductions are the Dead Sea Fruit,
O rifled nest, blown flower, O string-snapt lute.

In those breast-seas no baby-boat will swim
Through channels warm and dim;
You'll not awake to a twittering in the leaves
When baby bird-throat heaves.
Poor London Magdalene, before you sleep,
Ah weep with me, if not too late to weep.

SECRET GIRL

(To Bessie McKellen)

Thy nudity, like a white flame,
I shall inviolably guard:
O Secret Girl, mine eyes have yet
Not in the place of mortals met.
O Secret Girl whom, splendour-starred,
Some lordly noon my soul shall claim.

More than the Brahman Heart of Ind,
I shall be spears about thy breasts:
When thou no more, O Secret Goal,
Art secret from mine eyes and soul,
O Mother of my waiting nests,
O dew and dark, O day and wind.

Thou shalt be sheer beyond the wars,
And sacred from the waste of words:
O Secret Girl, O Dove, O Pard,
I shall inviolably guard.
For we shall crowd the trees with birds,
The sky with swarms of shouting stars!

LANKY TIM

A narrow world is Lanky Tim's,
The funnel and the griding lift.
Never the blank walls drop or shift
To show the far fields thro' a rift
Where he might go and stretch his limbs.

Hour after hour the storeys rise.
"First floor? Yes, round the corner just,
For Madame Smirkey's Wig and Bust.
Second? That way for Lawyer Thrust.
Fifth?"—The quack doctor, spiders, dust ...
These are his depths and these his skies.

And did Life take you unawares
While you were dreaming still your dreams,
And eyes were wild and shy with gleams,
And heart was thick with aching themes?
—But someone's pushed the bell downstairs.

And did you fly thro' boyland dells
To catch the songs of youthful kings,
And fly before the flight of Springs?
—But there's no room in here for wings,
Where Life is only these three things—
A lift, a grid, a screech of bells.

Poor Lanky Tim, the days that drift
Thro' your drab dismal prison, they
Have drifted all those dreams away,
Till your heart's just a pumping clay.
And now I often wonder, say,
If you'll be nearer God some day
Than the fifth storey up the lift.

MRS. BRIGGS

Her ample breasts like moons are seen
Beneath her thin alpaca blouse.
Mrs. Briggs of Sausage Green,
She is an old Egyptian queen,
And she has Cheops Briggs for spouse.

And when she shouts down Turnip Street,
"Lawks! of all the dirty sights!
'Enry, quit that puddle quick!"
She has the regal voice that beat
The eardrums of the Israelites,
And turned the tribal bosoms sick.

But when 'Enry drooped and ailed,
And 'Enry from her side was torn
In a hearse down Dingy Lane,
O she wept the lad in vain,
As that other queen bewailed
The slaying of the eldest born.

ATHENS NOW

Behold Athens! What is Athens now?
Cinders and weeds where the eyeballs were, filth for
the marble brow.
Ilissus, Ilissus of the plain?
—Sardine-tins and a dead cat in a drain!
Dead, dead, dead are the Caryatids
Because of the horror that smote their petal-thin lids.
And the Parthenon now is a jawful of yellow teeth
In the snarling skull of an animal humped in death.
For Athens is only a squalor of traders that hope
To retire on the profits from soap.
And the trousers of half of the children of Pallas are
dirty with grease,
And the other half ardently brush them and keep them
in crease.
Then pray, O London, my city, when you are dead,
That none know the place where you reared your mad proud head;
That there be not a mound nor a stone nor even a tree,
But only the ignorant river or the desert sea!

DOWN TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD

Down Tottenham Court Road they ululate,
The droning choruses of Fate.
They walk the length of every wind,
The women who sin, the women who have sinned.
This evening's crime, all immemorial crimes,
Here gather from all lands and times.
Here with Orestes through the mart
Walks the grey lad who stabbed his mother's heart.
Gaunt Clytæmnestra stumbles round the feet
Of Sarah from a Soho street,
Who slew her sallow man to-night
With thin-lipped poison in the street lamp-light.
Pale Helen braids her legendary hair,
Lurking outside a gallery-stair,
While softly through the music calls
Aspasia to her lover in the stalls.
Here broken Orpheus searches, drunken-wild,
Eurydice, the fallen child,
Who, leagues down in the underworld,
Flaunts her white bosom, rouged lips, and gilt hair curled.
Behind the plate-glass windows drum the looms
Of Destinies spinning antique dooms.
The droning choruses of Fate,
Down Tottenham Court Road they ululate.

IN A STATION

A station drizzling like a hymn
Sung out of tune by neurasthenes,
In a tin church where darkness leans
Down through the windows blear and grim!
A miserable oil-lamp winks
Like a drab slut, and stares and stinks.
The train snorts out a large disgust,
And snorts again and spits out dust.

Then suddenly a lightning wakes!
The fumes, the squalors dissipate.
Then suddenly a young voice breaks
Into the darkness like a knife;
—Full of choked hopes and whipt regrets,
Hungry for love, half-dumb with hate,
Intense with death and sick for life,
—Into the darkness like a knife!
"Buy Choc-o-late and Cig-ar-ettes!
Buy Cig-ar-ettes and Choc-o-late!"

LIZA

Liza sits on a three-legged stool all day
beneath the railway-stairs.
(Liza is a shadowy woman selling shadowy wares.)
The boots that Liza wears to-day were worn
a score of years ago
By Dick the tramp who threw them away as
far as ever he could throw.
The petticoats that Liza wears around her
limbs of sticks and skin
Were thrown aside with tall disdain into a
back-street rubbish bin.
But O the bonnet that Liza wears, it is the
summit of her pride;
A big limp feather hangs over her nose and
two more hang on either side.
There's no more stately woman than Liza,
be she the sought of a score of kings.
(Liza is a shadowy woman, selling shadowy things.)
All day long she sits upright, waiting upon
her three-legged stool,
Until the hosts of little children come tumbling
homeward out of school.
Then Liza shows her wooden tray whenever
the children meet her eye.
"Come along, babies, only a kiss for any
little dainty you may buy.
Purple figs from a Grecian garden, pomegranate
blossoms blazing red.
Jangle bells of langling silver to wrangle
around of a wee girl's head."
Liza's fingers twitch and tighten, her deep-down
eyes they are flecked and starred.
But her voice is like a moan in a rifted chimney
and you can only hear it if you listen very hard.
Never the little children hear, they toddle
homeward day by day.
—Who would look at a bogey-woman whispering
over an empty tray?
Ironically floats the bobbing feather over
Liza's hungry eye.
"Isn't there just one wee little baby to come
to my face and kiss and buy?"
... All day long and all year round she
waits, but no one pays her price.
(Liza is a shadowy woman selling shadowy merchandise.)

WOMEN OF THE NIGHT

Come, I will take you, O ye empty-eyed,
Into my heart as sheep into a fold
Upon the waste hill-steep.
For ye are weary, O unsatisfied,
Whose breasts were filled for love and sell for gold;
Come, I will give you sleep.

All night your bodies move like furtive ghosts,
All the black futile night, your hands and feet
Heavy as sunken lead;
Sad, numberless, immortal, bloodless hosts,
Who haunt the hollows of the ashen street,
O ye my living-dead!

Only a scent of Death, sweet and corrupt,
Breathes from the false flower-gardens of your hair,
O and in your eyes,
No, not the light of the mad wine you supped,
Not tears nor laughter, O but swaying there,
Unweepable miseries!

Come, I will take you to a still green place,
Where birds that hover above the laden nests,
Birds shall make song.
There shall ye wash with dew the painted face,
Press two wild flowers against the barren breasts,
There hold a vigil long.

A vigil long until the evening go,
Then sleep, long sleep; till with a shout, O then,
Our Lord the Sun shall rise.
With hearts invincible and bodies like snow,
Back ye shall turn into the place of men,
Love peerless in your eyes!

August 1918

I STANDING IN THE STREET

I standing in the street, I standing,
Gaze on the unwashed windows, dingy walls,
When lo! a clarion ...
Lo! thro' the slum a spring-time trumpet calls.
Lo! on the roofs a rose-leaf magic falls.
Thro' all the windows dance and jewels shine.
Thro' all the rooms go lissome girls with scent.
The window-frames are tendrilled with the vine.
(Ah, God! I weep in my content.)

I standing in the street, I standing,
Gaze on my vision splendid and most dear,
When lo! a chimney ...
Lo! on my dreams the soot drifts dry and sere.
Lo! all my flowers wilt in a reek of beer.
On the drab flags squat children dusty-eyed,
Cursed at by blousy women with dank hair.
Just down the street there sprawls a suicide.
(Ah, God! I laugh in my despair.)

SLUM EVENING

A dove-grey evening, dusk empearled
By lamps along the fading slums.
Out of the sky a silence comes,
A honey on the wormwood world.

The flirting adolescents stand
And hush their tingling turbid vows.
For softly on their foolish brows
The evening lays a sober hand.

Even the butcher, he who shares
The corner-shop with "Boots and Shoes,"
Although he has no time to lose,
Delays to light the naphtha flares.

A bleary woman down the road
With a large twin on either arm,
Her wits are stolen by the charm,
She quite forgets her puling load.

I know not in what twilight stream
She bathes her dropsy-swollen feet,
But they were fair as dawn and fleet,
In the dead girlhood of her dream.

FIRES OF CHANGE

Think you that Athens and Jerusalem
Rot in the places where they builded them?
This is the Temple, this the Parthenon
The priests of old days laid their hands upon?
No more a stream sends the same waters twice
Along its channels to sea-sacrifice.
Not God Himself shall bid Time stand to lock
The midmost atom in the mightiest rock.
Still the most secret atom shall be hurled
Into the riotous wind-ways of the world.
Still, the most ancient town, up wrenched, shall float
Freer than flame and light as a bird's note.
Still shall the crumbling globe itself be spun
Into fresh ethers conquered by the sun.

So, even so, my soul shall wear no more
The countless shapes my soul endued of yore.
Yea, the stout granite of my soul shall range
Molten across the blasting fires of change.
Not this am I you saw an hour ago.
Me fluid as thought your science shall not know.
Hourly my conquering spirit digs and delves
A grave to hold a hundred slaughtered selves.
Hourly through cowering moons and stellar dins,
I stride across buried virtues and slain sins.

POETRY

A star that was mute
Was heard to sing.
A flower took wing,
A bird took root.

The Right is a Wrong,
The Wrong is a Right.
I fought with the Night,
I sang you a song.

I slaughtered Time,
For the path I trod
To the feet of God
Was the road of a rhyme.

A flower took wing,
A bird took root.
A star that was mute
Was heard to sing.

THE PRISONER

If you have not a bird inside you,
You have no reason to sing.
But if a pent bird chide you,
A beak and a bleeding wing,
Then you have reason to sing.

If merely you are clever
With thoughts and rhymes and words,
Then always your poems sever
The veins of our singing-birds,
With blades of glinting words.

Yet if a Song, without ending,
Inside you choke for breath,
And a beak, devouring, rending,
Tear through your lungs for breath,
Sing—or you bleed to death.

NERVES

You are like an ebony sea with derelict ships,
Cold as my lover is cold;
Until Beauty rises like the moon and whips
You into shivering gold.

You are like a tree-top at the bleak last hour
When birds to the tombs belong;
Until Beauty blows like the dawn, and you flower
Into buds of innumerable song.

You are like a virginal and a most pale
Girl in a secret mead;
Until Beauty, like the indomitable Male,
Enflames you with innermost seed.

You are like a corpse with worms in the holes of the head,
Between a board and a board;
Until Beauty shouts like the Trump that convulses the dead,
And you enter the House of the Lord.

A POET

He has a voice so exquisite
You can hardly hear it at all:
Tragedy's there and there is wit,
Both faint as a leaf's fall.

His feet pass hardly like human feet,
Five-toed and leathern-shod,
But more with the sound of bended wheat,
Swayed by the skirts of God.

His eyes are a wistful and grey sea,
Till a song stir his blood.
Then are they flowers that suddenly
Open from the pent bud.

But when at the shutting of the day,
He sings faint songs for me,
Then is it very hard to say
If the wind sings or he.

FOR MY FRIEND

(F. V. B.)

Go forth and conquer with the wind for a sword,
O scorching might;
Go forth and blaze through the jungles of night,
Lead in the tameless stars with a cord;
Go forth, Lover of Right!

Make moons thy pebbles and suns thy coins,
And thy language light.
Fill highest space with thy depth and height;
Gather the nebulæ round thy loins;
Go forth and fight!

Go forth and conquer—return, return,
When the hawthorn's white.
Encompass the void; then turn and learn
The veins of the grass and the bee's delight;
Return, Lover of Right!

"I SHALL BE SPLENDIDLY AND TENSELY YOUNG"

I shall be splendidly and tensely young,
While yet my limbs are mine.
Each of them shall be strung
As a bowstring by an archer
With fingers strict and fine.

I shall be splendidly and tensely young,
My heart being whole, my brain
Keen as a hawk's flight flung
Against my victim seen securely
From my austere Inane.

But when my limbs no more are mine,
My feet to walk, my hands to hold,
I shall be most supremely young.
Then shall my flawless songs be sung,
My brow be sealed with a proud sign:
When I am deaf and blind and fleshless,
I shall be most supremely young,
When I am old.

"I"

I shall slough my self as a snake its skin,
My white spots of virtue, my black spots of sin.
I shall abandon my sex, my brain,
My scheming for pleasure, escaping from pain.
I shall dig roots deep down and be
A weed or a reed, a flower, a tree.
I shall lose body and miry feet,
Float with the clouds and sway with the wheat.
I am a fool and foolisher than
Anything else that is not a man.
For of all the things that I see or feel,
The I-that-is-I is far the least real.
And only when I shall learn at the last
That a stream-bed pebble is far more vast
In the scale of Mind and its secret schemes
Than all my passion and blunders and dreams;
Then only that I that shall not be I
Shall play due part beneath sun and sky,
Ranked below sparrow, just above sod,
I shall take my place in the Self of God.

I KNOW NOT WHENCE MY POEMS COME

I know not why nor whence you come,
My poems. Only this I know.
You fall like petals failing down
Upon the dustbins of a town.
You fall like flakes of doubtful snow.
Like fairy flutes your musics flow.
You thunder like a madman's drum.

You falter on my worthless lips.
You give me grapes to press for wine.
Unasked, you bring me balm and spice,
You lead me into fields of kine,
With tinted dreams and anodyne.
You freeze my flesh with flames of ice.
You scorch my shrieking soul with whips.

LYRRIA

Lyrria is an old country.
Lost travellers tremble and call.
A very white, wan, weird country
Where never came traveller at all.

I am an old, old poet.
Lost poems tremble and call.
A very white, wan, weird poet
Who never wrote poems at all.

FARINGDON FROM SALONICA

There's a far road off to Faringdon,
Under the downs it goes;
Into the fine wood, the beech, the pine wood
The dim road shadows and glows.

My cycle hums to Faringdon,
Hums like a joyful bee,
Through dropping shy light of green tree twilight,
Music of wind and tree.

Springtime, bluebells, Faringdon,
And a cycle through all three;
Great shadow reaches of English beeches,
Downs far down to the sea.

There's a far road down to Faringdon.
There no more I ride.
The boys hear mostly a rider ghostly,
The girls they run and hide.

But that's my ghost in Faringdon,
All year cycling it goes.
Into the fine wood, the beech, the pine wood,
The dim ghost shadows and glows.

Salonica, 1916

CALL OF THE PLOVER

(To Harry Owen)

The crying of the lonely plover
From the morning cloud!
Do the wings and clouds still hover
Where my heart sang loud?

O the valley and the stream there.
Where we shouted, being young!
Are there boys still dream a dream there,
Are the boys' songs sung?

O the winds that once blew round us,
O the sun! the rain!
Shall the ancient spells that bound us,
Bind us ever again?

O a great Word then was spoken,
Then was a boy's will clean and strong!
Is the boy's will broken
That went straight along?

O our ageing ears are ringing
With many sad things!
Shall we come again with singing
Where the plover sings?

CLOUD END

THE GALLANT ROAD

(For my School—without permission)

Grant us, O Lord, to do the thing
Clean men and boys have always done;
These works to do, these songs to sing,
The gallant road to run.

Grant us, O Lord, that we go straight
Along the path where shines the sun;
These things to love, these things to hate,
The gallant road to run.

Grant us, O Lord, to win the fight
That all the cleanly hearts have won,
Having sure feet, even at night
The gallant road to run.

Grant us, O Lord, when Death enfold,
That we take Death as half in fun;
Like men and boys that knew of old
The gallant road to run.

1915

THE QUEST

"I have sought you," I said; "I have
found you," I said, "in the pitch of your
intimate midnight lair."
He drew back with a sob like the swish of a
stick thro' the smarting air.

"I have moved like Death on deliberate
feet thro' a thousand towns and a hundred lands.
Thinking you found, I have squeezed men's
throats with pulsing, twitching, inquisitive hands.

"But the fire that waned in their blood-starred
eyes was not the flame of the fire I sought,
And I went my way with the sword in my
heart and the sword in my hand of passion
and thought.

"My blood spurted over the boulders of far
intolerant mountains of iron and ice,
But never in crevice or cave or chasm I found
the flesh of my sacrifice.

"I burned with the wrath of a wind from hell
thro' molten deserts panting and pent;
But ever my foeman fled me afar, the sinister
goal of my intent.

"I have sought you," I said, "I have found
you," I said; "we shall die together, for
I am you."
The foam and fever oozed out of my forehead,
with a dew like blood, with a blood like dew.

He wailed like a child that recoils from a
shadow that moves with menace over his bed;
But I pierced my heart with the sword in my
hand, and his body at last lay stretched
and dead.

HAVING FINISHED "JUDE THE OBSCURE"

Such purposeless and iron wings
Obscure our mortal music quite?
Such gloom to monstrous gloom outflings
The stenches of a churchyard night?

Sorrow of War: Poems

SORROW OF WAR

SORROW OF WAR

LILAC, LABURNUM

STREETS OF GOLD

"IN THE GALLERY WHERE THE FAT MEN GO"

DEAD IN GALLIPOLI

A JOURNEY SOUTH

THE NEW TRADE

THE WOMAN WHO SHRIEKED AGAINST PEACE

THE WOMEN AT THE CORNERS STAND

JOINING-UP

DURING THE BATTLE

JACK

GERMAN BOY

SKYLARK AND DAWN

JACK OF APRIL

STATESMEN DEBONAIR

OVER IN FLANDERS ...

WILD WEATHER

BROKEN BODIES

A THOUGHT

THE VINTNER

FOR NOW COMES SUMMER

THE ADVENT OF MARS

PROPHET AND FOOL

WHATEVER PATH I WALK UPON

LONDON MAGDALENE

SECRET GIRL

LANKY TIM

MRS. BRIGGS

ATHENS NOW

DOWN TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD

IN A STATION

LIZA

WOMEN OF THE NIGHT

I STANDING IN THE STREET

SLUM EVENING

FIRES OF CHANGE

POETRY

THE PRISONER

NERVES

A POET

FOR MY FRIEND

"I SHALL BE SPLENDIDLY AND TENSELY YOUNG"

"I"

I KNOW NOT WHENCE MY POEMS COME

LYRRIA

FARINGDON FROM SALONICA

CALL OF THE PLOVER

THE GALLANT ROAD

THE QUEST

HAVING FINISHED "JUDE THE OBSCURE"