SELECTED POEMS

Contents

Day that I have Loved
On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotamus-Goddess
Second Best
The Hill
Sonnet ("Oh! Death will find me")
Dust
Song
Kindliness
The Voice
Menelaus and Helen
The Jolly Company
Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body
Town and Country
The Fish
Dining-room Tea
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
The Funeral of Youth
Beauty and Beauty
The Chilterns
Love
The Busy Heart
He Wonders Whether to Praise or Blame Her
Hauntings
One Day
Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedings
of the Society for Psychical Research)
Clouds
Mutability
Heaven
Tiare Tahiti
Retrospect
The Great Lover
The Treasure
1914:
I. Peace
II. Safety
III. The Dead
IV. The Dead
V. The Soldier

Day that I have Loved

Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes,

And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.

The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies.

I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands,

Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea's making

Mist-garlanded, with all grey weeds of the water crowned.

There you'll be laid, past fear of sleep or hope of waking;

And over the unmoving sea, without a sound,

Faint hands will row you outward, out beyond our sight,

Us with stretched arms and empty eyes on the far-gleaming

And marble sand....

Beyond the shifting cold twilight,

Further than laughter goes, or tears, further than dreaming,

There'll be no port, no dawn-lit islands! But the drear

Waste darkening, and, at length, flame ultimate on the deep.

Oh, the last fire—and you, unkissed, unfriended there!

Oh, the lone way's red ending, and we not there to weep!

(We found you pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers,

Lovely and secret as a child. You came with us,

Came happily, hand in hand with the young dancing hours,

High on the downs at dawn!) Void now and tenebrous,

The grey sands curve before me....

From the inland meadows,

Fragrant of June and clover, floats the dark and fills

The hollow sea's dead face with little creeping shadows,

And the white silence brims the hollow of the hills.

Close in the nest is folded every weary wing,

Hushed all the joyful voices, and we, who held you dear,

Eastward we turn and homeward, alone, remembering...

Day that I loved, day that I loved, the Night is here!

On the Death of Smet-Smet, the
Hippopotamus-Goddess

SONG OF A TRIBE OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

(The Priests within the Temple)

She was wrinkled and huge and hideous?

She was our Mother.

She was lustful and lewd?—but a God; we had none other.

In the day She was hidden and dumb, but at nightfall moaned in the shade;

We shuddered and gave Her Her will in the darkness; we were afraid.

(The People without)

She sent us pain,

And we bowed before Her;

She smiled again

And bade us adore Her.

She solaced our woe

And soothed our sighing;

And what shall we do

Now God is dying?

(The Priests within)

She was hungry and ate our children;—how should we stay Her?

She took our young men and our maidens;—ours to obey Her.

We were loathed and mocked and reviled of all nations; that was our pride.

She fed us, protected us, loved us, and killed us; now She has died.

(The People without)

She was so strong;

But Death is stronger.

She ruled us long;

But Time is longer.

She solaced our woe

And soothed our sighing;

And what shall we do

Now God is dying?

Second Best

Here in the dark, O heart;

Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night,

And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover;

Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart

From the dead best, the dear and old delight;

Throw down your dreams of immortality,

O faithful, O foolish lover!

Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one

Wisdom—the truth!—"All day the good glad sun

Showers love and labour on you, wine and song;

The greenwood laughs, the wind blows, all day long

Till night." And night ends all things.

Then shall be

No lamp relumed in heaven, no voices crying,

Or changing lights, or dreams and forms that hover!

(And, heart, for all your sighing,

That gladness and those tears are over, over....)

And has the truth brought no new hope at all,

Heart, that you're weeping yet for Paradise?

Do they still whisper, the old weary cries?

"'Mid youth and song, feasting and carnival,

Through laughter, through the roses, as of old

Comes Death, on shadowy and relentless feet,

Death, unappeasable by prayer or gold;

Death is the end, the end!"

Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet

Death as a friend!

Exile of immortality, strongly wise,

Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes

To what may lie beyond it. Sets your star,

O heart, for ever! Yet, behind the night,

Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar,

Some white tremendous daybreak. And the light,

Returning, shall give back the golden hours,

Ocean a windless level, Earth a lawn

Spacious and full of sunlit dancing-places,

And laughter, and music, and, among the flowers,

The gay child-hearts of men, and the child-faces

O heart, in the great dawn!

The Hill

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,

Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;

Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,

When we are old, are old...." "And when we die

All's over that is ours; and life burns on

Through other lovers, other lips," said I,

—"Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"

"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.

Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said;

"We shall go down with unreluctant tread

Rose-crowned into the darkness!" ... Proud we were,

And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.

—And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

Sonnet

Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire

Of watching you; and swing me suddenly

Into the shade and loneliness and mire

Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,

One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,

See a slow light across the Stygian tide,

And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,

And tremble. And I shall know that you have died,

And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,

Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,

Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam—

Most individual and bewildering ghost!—

And turn, and toss your brown delightful head,

Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.

Dust

When the white flame in us is gone,

And we that lost the world's delight

Stiffen in darkness, left alone

To crumble in our separate night;

When your swift hair is quiet in death,

And through the lips corruption thrust

Has stilled the labour of my breath—

When we are dust, when we are dust!—

Not dead, not undesirous yet,

Still sentient, still unsatisfied,

We'll ride the air, and shine, and flit,

Around the places where we died,

And dance as dust before the sun,

And light of foot, and unconfined,

Hurry from road to road, and run

About the errands of the wind.

And every mote, on earth or air,

Will speed and gleam, down later days,

And like a secret pilgrim fare

By eager and invisible ways,

Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,

Till, beyond thinking, out of view,

One mote of all the dust that's I

Shall meet one atom that was you.

Then in some garden hushed from wind,

Warm in a sunset's afterglow,

The lovers in the flowers will find

A sweet and strange unquiet grow

Upon the peace; and, past desiring,

So high a beauty in the air,

And such a light, and such a quiring,

And such a radiant ecstasy there,

They'll know not if it's fire, or dew,

Or out of earth, or in the height,

Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,

Or two that pass, in light, to light,

Out of the garden, higher, higher...

But in that instant they shall learn

The shattering ecstasy of our fire,

And the weak passionless hearts will burn

And faint in that amazing glow,

Until the darkness close above;

And they will know—poor fools, they'll know!—

One moment, what it is to love.

Song

"Oh! Love," they said, "is King of Kings,

And Triumph is his crown.

Earth fades in flame before his wings,

And Sun and Moon bow down."—

But that, I knew, would never do;

And Heaven is all too high.

So whenever I meet a Queen, I said,

I will not catch her eye.

"Oh! Love," they said, and "Love," they said,

"The gift of Love is this;

A crown of thorns about thy head,

And vinegar to thy kiss!"—

But Tragedy is not for me;

And I'm content to be gay.

So whenever I spied a Tragic Lady,

I went another way.

And so I never feared to see

You wander down the street,

Or come across the fields to me

On ordinary feet.

For what they'd never told me of,

And what I never knew,

It was that all the time, my love,

Love would be merely you.

Kindliness

When love has changed to kindliness—

Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press

So tight that Time's an old god's dream

Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff

Seven million years were not enough

To think on after, make it seem

Less than the breath of children playing,

A blasphemy scarce worth the saying,

A sorry jest, "When love has grown

To kindliness—to kindliness!" ...

And yet—the best that either's known

Will change, and wither, and be less,

At last, than comfort, or its own

Remembrance. And when some caress

Tendered in habit (once a flame

All heaven sang out to) wakes the shame

Unworded, in the steady eyes

We'll have,—that day, what shall we do?

Being so noble, kill the two

Who've reached their second-best? Being wise,

Break cleanly off, and get away,

Follow down other windier skies

New lures, alone? Or shall we stay,

Since this is all we've known, content

In the lean twilight of such day,

And not remember, not lament?

That time when all is over, and

Hand never flinches, brushing hand;

And blood lies quiet, for all you're near;

And it's but spoken words we hear,

Where trumpets sang; when the mere skies

Are stranger and nobler than your eyes;

And flesh is flesh, was flame before;

And infinite hungers leap no more

In the chance swaying of your dress;

And love has changed to kindliness.

The Voice

Safe in the magic of my woods

I lay, and watched the dying light.

Faint in the pale high solitudes,

And washed with rain and veiled by night,

Silver and blue and green were showing.

And the dark woods grew darker still;

And birds were hushed; and peace was growing;

And quietness crept up the hill;

And no wind was blowing ...

And I knew

That this was the hour of knowing,

And the night and the woods and you

Were one together, and I should find

Soon in the silence the hidden key

Of all that had hurt and puzzled me—

Why you were you, and the night was kind,

And the woods were part of the heart of me.

And there I waited breathlessly,

Alone; and slowly the holy three,

The three that I loved, together grew

One, in the hour of knowing,

Night, and the woods, and you——

And suddenly

There was an uproar in my woods,

The noise of a fool in mock distress,

Crashing and laughing and blindly going,

Of ignorant feet and a swishing dress,

And a Voice profaning the solitudes.

The spell was broken, the key denied me.

And at length your flat clear voice beside me

Mouthed cheerful clear flat platitudes.

You came and quacked beside me in the wood.

You said, "The view from here is very good!"

You said, "It's nice to be alone a bit!"

And, "How the days are drawing out!" you said.

You said, "The sunset's pretty, isn't it?"

*      *      *      *      *

By God! I wish—I wish that you were dead!

Menelaus and Helen

I

Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke

To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate

On that adulterous whore a ten years' hate

And a king's honour. Through red death, and smoke,

And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,

Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.

He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim

Luxurious bower, flaming like a god.

High sat white Helen, lonely and serene.

He had not remembered that she was so fair,

And that her neck curved down in such a way;

And he felt tired. He flung the sword away,

And kissed her feet, and knelt before her there,

The perfect Knight before the perfect Queen.

II

So far the poet. How should he behold

That journey home, the long connubial years?

He does not tell you how white Helen bears

Child on legitimate child, becomes a scold,

Haggard with virtue. Menelaus bold

Waxed garrulous, and sacked a hundred Troys

'Twixt noon and supper. And her golden voice

Got shrill as he grew deafer. And both were old.

Often he wonders why on earth he went

Troyward, or why poor Paris ever came.

Oft she weeps, gummy-eyed and impotent;

Her dry shanks twitch at Paris' mumbled name.

So Menelaus nagged; and Helen cried;

And Paris slept on by Scamander side.

The Jolly Company

The stars, a jolly company,

I envied, straying late and lonely;

And cried upon their revelry:

"O white companionship! You only

In love, in faith unbroken dwell,

Friends radiant and inseparable!"

Light-heart and glad they seemed to me

And merry comrades (even so

God out of Heaven may laugh to see

The happy crowds; and never know

That in his lone obscure distress

Each walketh in a wilderness).

But I, remembering, pitied well

And loved them, who, with lonely light,

In empty infinite spaces dwell,

Disconsolate. For, all the night,

I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,

Star to faint star, across the sky.

Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body

How can we find? how can we rest? how can

We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man?

We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate,

Who love the unloving, and the lover hate,

Forget the moment ere the moment slips,

Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips,

Who want, and know not what we want, and cry

With crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by.

Love's for completeness! No perfection grows

'Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose,

And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied

Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied.

Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape,

Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape,

Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed,

Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost

By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways

From sanity and from wholeness and from grace.

How can love triumph, how can solace be,

Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee?

Could we but fill to harmony, and dwell

Simple as our thought and as perfectible,

Rise disentangled from humanity

Strange whole and new into simplicity,

Grow to a radiant round love, and bear

Unfluctuant passion for some perfect sphere,

Love moon to moon unquestioning, and be

Like the star Lunisequa, steadfastly

Following the round clear orb of her delight,

Patiently ever, through the eternal night!

Town and Country

Here, where love's stuff is body, arm and side

Are stabbing-sweet 'gainst chair and lamp and wall.

In every touch more intimate meanings hide;

And flaming brains are the white heart of all

Here, million pulses to one centre beat:

Closed in by men's vast friendliness, alone,

Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet

On the sheer point where sense with knowing's one.

Here the green-purple clanging royal night,

And the straight lines and silent walls of town,

And roar, and glare, and dust, and myriad white

Undying passers, pinnacle and crown

Intensest heavens between close-lying faces

By the lamp's airless fierce ecstatic fire;

And we've found love in little hidden places,

Under great shades, between the mist and mire.

Stay! though the woods are quiet, and you've heard

Night creep along the hedges. Never go

Where tangled foliage shrouds the crying bird,

And the remote winds sigh, and waters flow!

Lest—as our words fall dumb on windless noons,

Or hearts grow hushed and solitary, beneath

Unheeding stars and unfamiliar moons,

Or boughs bend over, close and quiet as death,—

Unconscious and unpassionate and still,

Cloud-like we lean and stare as bright leaves stare,

And gradually along the stranger hill

Our unwalled loves thin out on vacuous air,

And suddenly there's no meaning in our kiss,

And your lit upward face grows, where we lie

Lonelier and dreadfuller than sunlight is,

And dumb and mad and eyeless like the sky.

The Fish

In a cool curving world he lies

And ripples with dark ecstasies.

The kind luxurious lapse and steal

Shapes all his universe to feel

And know and be; the clinging stream

Closes his memory, glooms his dream,

Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides

Superb on unreturning tides.

Those silent waters weave for him

A fluctuant mutable world and dim,

Where wavering masses bulge and gape

Mysterious, and shape to shape

Dies momently through whorl and hollow,

And form and line and solid follow

Solid and line and form to dream

Fantastic down the eternal stream;

An obscure world, a shifting world,

Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled,

Or serpentine, or driving arrows,

Or serene slidings, or March narrows.

There slipping wave and shore are one,

And weed and mud. No ray of sun,

But glow to glow fades down the deep

(As dream to unknown dream in sleep);

Shaken translucency illumes

The hyaline of drifting glooms;

The strange soft-handed depth subdues

Drowned colour there, but black to hues,

As death to living, decomposes—

Red darkness of the heart of roses,

Blue brilliant from dead starless skies,

And gold that lies behind the eyes,

The unknown unnameable sightless white

That is the essential flame of night,

Lustreless purple, hooded green,

The myriad hues that lie between

Darkness and darkness!...

And all's one,

Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun,

The world he rests in, world he knows,

Perpetual curving. Only—grows

An eddy in that ordered falling,

A knowledge from the gloom, a calling

Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud—

The dark fire leaps along his blood;

Dateless and deathless, blind and still,

The intricate impulse works its will;

His woven world drops back; and he,

Sans providence, sans memory,

Unconscious and directly driven,

Fades to some dank sufficient heaven.

O world of lips, O world of laughter,

Where hope is fleet and thought flies after,

Of lights in the clear night, of cries

That drift along the wave and rise

Thin to the glittering stars above,

You know the hands, the eyes of love!

The strife of limbs, the sightless clinging,

The infinite distance, and the singing

Blown by the wind, a flame of sound,

The gleam, the flowers, and vast around

The horizon, and the heights above—

You know the sigh, the song of love!

But there the night is close, and there

Darkness is cold and strange and bare;

And the secret deeps are whisperless;

And rhythm is all deliciousness;

And joy is in the throbbing tide,

Whose intricate fingers beat and glide

In felt bewildering harmonies

Of trembling touch; and music is

The exquisite knocking of the blood.

Space is no more, under the mud;

His bliss is older than the sun.

Silent and straight the waters run.

The lights, the cries, the willows dim,

And the dark tide are one with him.

Dining-room Tea

When you were there, and you, and you,

Happiness crowned the night; I too,

Laughing and looking, one of all,

I watched the quivering lamplight fall

On plate and flowers and pouring tea

And cup and cloth; and they and we

Flung all the dancing moments by

With jest and glitter. Lip and eye

Flashed on the glory, shone and cried,

Improvident, unmemoried;

And fitfully and like a flame

The light of laughter went and came.

Proud in their careless transience moved

The changing faces that I loved.

Till suddenly, and otherwhence,

I looked upon your innocence.

For lifted clear and still and strange

From the dark woven flow of change

Under a vast and starless sky

I saw the immortal moment lie.

One instant I, an instant, knew

As God knows all. And it and you

I, above Time, oh, blind! could see

In witless immortality.

I saw the marble cup; the tea,

Hung on the air, an amber stream;

I saw the fire's unglittering gleam,

The painted flame, the frozen smoke.

No more the flooding lamplight broke

On flying eyes and lips and hair;

But lay, but slept unbroken there,

On stiller flesh, and body breathless,

And lips and laughter stayed and deathless,

And words on which no silence grew.

Light was more alive than you.

For suddenly, and otherwhence,

I looked on your magnificence.

I saw the stillness and the light,

And you, august, immortal, white,

Holy and strange; and every glint

Posture and jest and thought and tint

Freed from the mask of transiency,

Triumphant in eternity,

Immote, immortal.

Dazed at length

Human eyes grew, mortal strength

Wearied; and Time began to creep.

Change closed about me like a sleep.

Light glinted on the eyes I loved.

The cup was filled. The bodies moved.

The drifting petal came to ground.

The laughter chimed its perfect round.

The broken syllable was ended.

And I, so certain and so friended,

How could I cloud, or how distress,

The heaven of your unconsciousness?

Or shake at Time's sufficient spell,

Stammering of lights unutterable?

The eternal holiness of you,

The timeless end, you never knew,

The peace that lay, the light that shone.

You never knew that I had gone

A million miles away, and stayed

A million years. The laughter played

Unbroken round me; and the jest

Flashed on. And we that knew the best

Down wonderful hours grew happier yet.

I sang at heart, and talked, and eat,

And lived from laugh to laugh, I too,

When you were there, and you, and you.

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

Café des Westens
Berlin, May 1912

Just now the lilac is in bloom,

All before my little room;

And in my flower-beds, I think,

Smile the carnation and the pink;

And down the borders, well I know,

The poppy and the pansy blow...

Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,

Beside the river make for you

A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep

Deeply above; and green and deep

The stream mysterious glides beneath,

Green as a dream and deep as death.

—Oh, damn! I know it! And I know

How the May fields all golden show,

And when the day is young and sweet,

Gild gloriously the bare feet

That run to bathe....

Du lieber Gott!

Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,

And there the shadowed waters fresh

Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.

Temperamentvott German Jews

Drink beer around;—and there the dews

Are soft beneath a morn of gold.

Here tulips bloom as they are told;

Unkempt about those hedges blows

An English unofficial rose;

And there the unregulated sun

Slopes down to rest when day is done,

And wakes a vague unpunctual star,

A slippered Hesper; and there are

Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton

Where das Betreten's not verboten....

[Greek: eíthe genoimen] ... would I were

In Grantchester, in Grantchester!—

Some, it may be, can get in touch

With Nature there, or Earth, or such.

And clever modern men have seen

A Faun a-peeping through the green,

And felt the Classics were not dead,

To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,

Or hear the Goat-foot piping low;

But these are things I do not know.

I only know that you may lie

Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,

And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,

Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,

Until the centuries blend and blur

In Grantchester, in Grantchester....

Still in the dawnlit waters cool

His ghostly Lordship swims his pool,

And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,

Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx,

Dan Chaucer hears his river still

Chatter beneath a phantom mill.

Tennyson notes, with studious eye,

How Cambridge waters hurry by....

And in that garden, black and white,

Creep whispers through the grass all night;

And spectral dance, before the dawn,

A hundred Vicars down the lawn;

Curates, long dust, will come and go

On lissom, clerical, printless toe;

And oft between the boughs is seen

The sly shade of a Rural Dean....

Till, at a shiver in the skies,

Vanishing with Satanic cries,

The prim ecclesiastic rout

Leaves but a startled sleeper-out,

Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls,

The falling house that never falls.

God! I will pack, and take a train,

And get me to England once again!

For England's the one land, I know,

Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;

And Cambridgeshire, of all England,

The shire for Men who Understand;

And of that district I prefer

The lovely hamlet Grantchester.

For Cambridge people rarely smile,

Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;

And Royston men in the far South

Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;

At Over they fling oaths at one,

And worse than oaths at Trumpington,

And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,

And there's none in Harston under thirty,

And folks in Shelford and those parts

Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,

And Barton men make Cockney rhymes,

And Coton's full of nameless crimes,

And things are done you'd not believe

At Madingley, on Christmas Eve.

Strong men have run for miles and miles,

When one from Cherry Hinton smiles;

Strong men have blanched, and shot their wives

Rather than send them to St. Ives;

Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,

To hear what happened at Babraham.

But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!

There's peace and holy quiet there,

Great clouds along pacific skies,

And men and women with straight eyes,

Lithe children lovelier than a dream,

A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,

And little kindly winds that creep

Round twilight corners, half asleep.

In Grantchester their skins are white;

They bathe by day, they bathe by night;

The women there do all they ought;

The men observe the Rules of Thought.

They love the Good; they worship Truth;

They laugh uproariously in youth;

(And when they get to feeling old,

They up and shoot themselves, I'm told)....

Ah God! to see the branches stir

Across the moon at Grantchester!

To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten

Unforgettable, unforgotten

River-smell, and hear the breeze

Sobbing in the little trees.

Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand,

Still guardians of that holy land?

The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,

The yet unacademic stream?

Is dawn a secret shy and cold

Anadyomene, silver-gold?

And sunset still a golden sea

From Haslingfield to Madingley?

And after, ere the night is born,

Do hares come out about the corn?

Oh, is the water sweet and cool,

Gentle and brown, above the pool?

And laughs the immortal river still

Under the mill, under the mill?

Say, is there Beauty yet to find?

And Certainty? and Quiet kind?

Deep meadows yet, for to forget

The lies, and truths, and pain? ... oh! yet

Stands the Church clock at ten to three?

And is there honey still for tea?

The Funeral of Youth: Threnody

The day that Youth had died,

There came to his grave-side,

In decent mourning, from the county's ends,

Those scattered friends

Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,

And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,

In feast and wine and many-crown'd carouse,

The days and nights and dawnings of the time

When Youth kept open house,

Nor left untasted

Aught of his high emprise and ventures dear,

No quest of his unshar'd—

All these, with loitering feet and sad head bar'd,

Followed their old friend's bier.

Folly went first,

With muffled bells and coxcomb still revers'd;

And after trod the bearers, hat in hand—

Laughter, most hoarse, and Captain Pride with tanned

And martial face all grim, and fussy Joy,

Who had to catch a train, and Lust, poor, snivelling boy;

These bore the dear departed.

Behind them, broken-hearted,

Came Grief, so noisy a widow, that all said,

"Had he but wed

Her elder sister Sorrow, in her stead."

And by her, trying to soothe her all the time,

The fatherless children, Colour, Tune, and Rhyme

(The sweet lad Rhyme), ran all-uncomprehending.

Then, at the way's sad ending,

Round the raw grave they stay'd. Old Wisdom read,

In mumbling tone, the Service for the Dead.

There stood Romance,

The furrowing tears had mark'd her rougèd cheek;

Poor old Conceit, his wonder unassuag'd;

Dead Innocency's daughter, Ignorance;

And shabby, ill-dress'd Generosity;

And Argument, too full of woe to speak;

Passion, grown portly, something middle-aged;

And Friendship—not a minute older, she;

Impatience, ever taking out his watch;

Faith, who was deaf, and had to lean to catch

Old Wisdom's endless drone.

Beauty was there,

Pale in her black; dry-eyed; she stood alone.

Poor maz'd Imagination; Fancy wild;

Ardour, the sunlight on his greying hair;

Contentment, who had known Youth as a child

And never seen him since. And Spring came too,

Dancing over the tombs, and brought him flowers—

She did not stay for long.

And Truth, and Grace, and all the merry crew,

The laughing Winds and Rivers, and lithe Hours;

And Hope, the dewy-eyed; and sorrowing Song;—

Yes, with much woe and mourning general,

At dead Youth's funeral,

Even these were met once more together, all,

Who erst the fair and living Youth did know;

All, except only Love. Love had died long ago.

Beauty and Beauty

When Beauty and Beauty meet

All naked, fair to fair,

The earth is crying-sweet,

And scattering-bright the air,

Eddying, dizzying, closing round,

With soft and drunken laughter;

Veiling all that may befall

After—after—

Where Beauty and Beauty met,

Earth's still a-tremble there,

And winds are scented yet,

And memory-soft the air,

Bosoming, folding glints of light,

And shreds of shadowy laughter;

Not the tears that fill the years

After—after—

The Chilterns

Your hands, my dear, adorable,

Your lips of tenderness

—Oh, I've loved you faithfully and well,

Three years, or a bit less.

It wasn't a success.

Thank God, that's done! and I'll take the road,

Quit of my youth and you,

The Roman road to Wendover

By Tring and Lilley Hoo,

As a free man may do.

For youth goes over, the joys that fly,

The tears that follow fast;

And the dirtiest things we do must lie

Forgotten at the last;

Even Love goes past.

What's left behind I shall not find,

The splendour and the pain;

The splash of sun, the shouting wind,

And the brave sting of rain,

I may not meet again.

But the years, that take the best away,

Give something in the end;

And a better friend than love have they,

For none to mar or mend,

That have themselves to friend.

I shall desire and I shall find

The best of my desires;

The autumn road, the mellow wind

That soothes the darkening shires.

And laughter, and inn-fires.

White mist about the black hedgerows,

The slumbering Midland plain,

The silence where the clover grows,

And the dead leaves in the lane,

Certainly, these remain.

And I shall find some girl perhaps,

And a better one than you,

With eyes as wise, but kindlier,

And lips as soft, but true.

And I daresay she will do.

Love

Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate,

Where that comes in that shall not go again;

Love sells the proud heart's citadel to Fate.

They have known shame, who love unloved. Even then

When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking,

And agony's forgot, and hushed the crying

Of credulous hearts, in heaven—such are but taking

Their own poor dreams within their arms, and lying

Each in his lonely night, each with a ghost.

Some share that night. But they know, love grows colder,

Grows false and dull, that was sweet lies at most.

Astonishment is no more in hand or shoulder,

But darkens, and dies out from kiss to kiss.

All this is love; and all love is but this.

The Busy Heart

Now that we've done our best and worst, and parted,

I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend.

(O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted)

I'll think of Love in books, Love without end;

Women with child, content; and old men sleeping;

And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain;

And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping;

And the young heavens, forgetful after rain;

And evening hush, broken by homing wings;

And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy,

That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things,

Lovely and durable, and taste them slowly,

One after one, like tasting a sweet food.

I have need to busy my heart with quietude.

He Wonders Whether to Praise
or to Blame Her

I have peace to weigh your worth, now all is over,

But if to praise or blame you, cannot say.

For, who decries the loved, decries the lover;

Yet what man lauds the thing he's thrown away?

Be you, in truth, this dull, slight, cloudy naught,

The more fool I, so great a fool to adore;

But if you're that high goddess once I thought,

The more your godhead is, I lose the more.

Dear fool, pity the fool who thought you clever!

Dear wisdom, do not mock the fool that missed you!

Most fair,—the blind has lost your face for ever!

Most foul,—how could I see you while I kissed you?

So ... the poor love of fools and blind I've proved you,

For, foul or lovely, 'twas a fool that loved you.

Hauntings

In the grey tumult of these after years

Oft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part;

And less-than-echoes of remembered tears

Hush all the loud confusion of the heart;

And a shade, through the toss'd ranks of mirth and crying,

Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood,—

Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying,

Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.

So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams,

Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams,

Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men,

Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible,

And light on waving grass, he knows not when,

And feet that ran, but where, he cannot tell.

THE PACIFIC, 1914

One Day

Today I have been happy. All the day

I held the memory of you, and wove

Its laughter with the dancing light o' the spray,

And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love,

And sent you following the white waves of sea,

And crowned your head with fancies, nothing worth,

Stray buds from that old dust of misery,

Being glad with a new foolish quiet mirth.

So lightly I played with those dark memories,

Just as a child, beneath the summer skies,

Plays hour by hour with a strange shining stone,

For which (he knows not) towns were fire of old,

And love has been betrayed, and murder done,

And great kings turned to a little bitter mould.

THE PACIFIC, October 1913

Sonnet

(Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the

Society for Psychical Research)

Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun,

We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread

Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead

Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run

Down some close-covered by-way of the air,

Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,

Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find

Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there

Spend in pure converse our eternal day;

Think each in each, immediately wise;

Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say

What this tumultuous body now denies;

And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;

And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.

Clouds

Down the blue night the unending columns press

In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,

Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow

Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.

Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,

And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,

As who would pray good for the world, but know

Their benediction empty as they bless.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain

Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.

I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,

In wise majestic melancholy train,

And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,

And men, coming and going on the earth.

THE PACIFIC, October 1913

Mutability

They say there's a high windless world and strange,

Out of the wash of days and temporal tide,

Where Faith and Good, Wisdom and Truth abide,

Æterna corpora, subject to no change.

There the sure suns of these pale shadows move;

There stand the immortal ensigns of our war;

Our melting flesh fixed Beauty there, a star,

And perishing hearts, imperishable Love....

Dear, we know only that we sigh, kiss, smile;

Each kiss lasts but the kissing; and grief goes over;

Love has no habitation but the heart.

Poor straws! on the dark flood we catch awhile,

Cling, and are borne into the night apart.

The laugh dies with the lips, "Love" with the lover.

SOUTH KENSINGTON—MAKAWELI, 1913

Heaven

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,

Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)

Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,

Each secret fishy hope or fear.

Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;

But is there anything Beyond?

This life cannot be All, they swear,

For how unpleasant, if it were!

One may not doubt that, somehow, good

Shall come of Water and of Mud;

And, sure, the reverent eye must see

A Purpose in Liquidity.

We darkly know, by Faith we cry,

The future is not Wholly Dry.

Mud unto Mud!—Death eddies near—

Not here the appointed End, not here!

But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,

Is wetter water, slimier slime!

And there (they trust) there swimmeth One

Who swam ere rivers were begun,

Immense, of fishy form and mind,

Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;

And under that Almighty Fin,

The littlest fish may enter in.

Oh! never fly conceals a hook,

Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,

But more than mundane weeds are there,

And mud, celestially fair;

Fat caterpillars drift around,

And Paradisal grubs are found;

Unfading moths, immortal flies,

And the worm that never dies.

And in that Heaven of all their wish,

There shall be no more land, say fish.

Tiare Tahiti

Mamua, when our laughter ends,

And hearts and bodies, brown as white,

Are dust about the doors of friends,

Or scent a-blowing down the night,

Then, oh! then, the wise agree,

Comes our immortality.

Mamua, there waits a land

Hard for us to understand.

Out of time, beyond the sun,

All are one in Paradise,

You and Pupure are one,

And Taü, and the ungainly wise.

There the Eternals are, and there

The Good, the Lovely, and the True,

And Types, whose earthly copies were

The foolish broken things we knew;

There is the Face, whose ghosts we are;

The real, the never-setting Star;

And the Flower, of which we love

Faint and fading shadows here;

Never a tear, but only Grief;

Dance, but not the limbs that move;

Songs in Song shall disappear;

Instead of lovers, Love shall be;

For hearts, Immutability;

And there, on the Ideal Reef,

Thunders the Everlasting Sea!

And my laughter, and my pain,

Shall home to the Eternal Brain.

And all lovely things, they say,

Meet in Loveliness again;

Miri's laugh, Teïpo's feet,

And the hands of Matua,

Stars and sunlight there shall meet,

Coral's hues and rainbows there,

And Teüra's braided hair;

And with the starred tiare's white,

And white birds in the dark ravine,

And flamboyants ablaze at night,

And jewels, and evening's after-green,

And dawns of pearl and gold and red,

Mamua, your lovelier head!

And there'll no more be one who dreams

Under the ferns, of crumbling stuff,

Eyes of illusion, mouth that seems,

All time-entangled human love.

And you'll no longer swing and sway

Divinely down the scented shade,

Where feet to Ambulation fade,

And moons are lost in endless Day.

How shall we wind these wreaths of ours,

Where there are neither heads nor flowers?

Oh, Heaven's Heaven!—but we'll be missing

The palms, and sunlight, and the south;

And there's an end, I think, of kissing,

When our mouths are one with Mouth....

Taü here, Mamua,

Crown the hair, and come away!

Hear the calling of the moon,

And the whispering scents that stray

About the idle warm lagoon.

Hasten, hand in human hand,

Down the dark, the flowered way,

Along the whiteness of the sand,

And in the water's soft caress

Wash the mind of foolishness,

Mamua, until the day.

Spend the glittering moonlight there

Pursuing down the soundless deep

Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair,

Or floating lazy, half-asleep.

Dive and double and follow after,

Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,

With lips that fade, and human laughter,

And faces individual,

Well this side of Paradise! ....

There's little comfort in the wise.

PAPEETE, February 1914

Retrospect

In your arms was still delight,

Quiet as a street at night;

And thoughts of you, I do remember,

Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,

Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.

Love, in you, went passing by,

Penetrative, remote, and rare,

Like a bird in the wide air,

And, as the bird, it left no trace

In the heaven of your face.

In your stupidity I found

The sweet hush after a sweet sound.

All about you was the light

That dims the greying end of night;

Desire was the unrisen sun,

Joy the day not yet begun,

With tree whispering to tree,

Without wind, quietly.

Wisdom slept within your hair,

And Long-Suffering was there,

And, in the flowing of your dress,

Undiscerning Tenderness.

And when you thought, it seemed to me,

Infinitely, and like a sea,

About the slight world you had known

Your vast unconsciousness was thrown.

O haven without wave or tide!

Silence, in which all songs have died!

Holy book, where hearts are still!

And home at length under the hill!

O mother quiet, breasts of peace,

Where love itself would faint and cease!

O infinite deep I never knew,

I would come back, come back to you,

Find you, as a pool unstirred,

Kneel down by you, and never a word,

Lay my head, and nothing said,

In your hands, ungarlanded;

And a long watch you would keep;

And I should sleep, and I should sleep!

MATAIEA, January 1914

The Great Lover

I have been so great a lover: filled my days

So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,

The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,

Desire illimitable, and still content,

And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,

For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear

Our hearts at random down the dark of life.

Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife

Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,

My night shall be remembered for a star

That outshone all the suns of all men's days.

Shall I not crown them with immortal praise

Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me

High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see

The inenarrable godhead of delight?

Love is a flame:—we have beaconed the world's night.

A city:—and we have built it, these and I.

An emperor:—we have taught the world to die.

So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,

And the high cause of Love's magnificence,

And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names

Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,

And set them as a banner, that men may know,

To dare the generations, burn, and blow

Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming..

These I have loved:

White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,

Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;

Wet roofs, beneath the lamplight; the strong crust

Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;

Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;

And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;

And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,

Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;

Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon

Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss

Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is

Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen

Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;

The benison of hot water; furs to touch;

The good smell of old clothes; and other such,

The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,

Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers

About dead leaves and last year's ferns....

Dear names,

And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames;

Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;

Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing;

Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain,

Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;

Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam

That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;

And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold

Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;

Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;

And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;

And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;

All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,

Whatever passes not, in the great hour,

Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power

To hold them with me through the gate of Death.

They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,

Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust

And sacramented covenant to the dust.

——Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,

And give what's left of love again, and make

New friends, now strangers....

But the best I've known,

Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown

About the winds of the world, and fades from brains

Of living men, and dies.

Nothing remains.

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again

This one last gift I give: that after men

Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed,

Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved."

MATAIEA, 1914

The Treasure

When colour goes home into the eyes,

And lights that shine are shut again

With dancing girls and sweet birds' cries

Behind the gateways of the brain;

And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close

The rainbow and the rose:—

Still may Time hold some golden space

Where I'll unpack that scented store

Of song and flower and sky and face,

And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,

Musing upon them; as a mother, who

Has watched her children all the rich day through,

Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,

When children sleep, ere night.

1914

I. Peace

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,

And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,

With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,

Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,

Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,

And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,

And all the little emptiness of love!

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,

Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,

Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;

Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there

But only agony, and that has ending;

And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

II. Safety

Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest

He who has found our hid security,

Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,

And heard our word, 'Who is so safe as we?'

We have found safety with all things undying,

The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,

The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,

And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.

We have built a house that is not for Time's throwing.

We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.

War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,

Secretly armed against all death's endeavour;

Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall;

And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.

III. The Dead

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,

But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

These laid the world away; poured out the red

Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be

Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,

That men call age; and those who would have been,

Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,

Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.

Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,

And paid his subjects with a royal wage;

And Nobleness walks in our ways again;

And we have come into our heritage.

IV. The Dead

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares.

Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.

The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,

And sunset, and the colours of the earth.

These had seen movement, and heard music; known

Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;

Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;

Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter

And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,

Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance

And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white

Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,

A width, a shining peace, under the night.

V. The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
BILLING AND SONS, LIMITED
GUILDFORD AND ESHER

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Poems

by Rupert Brooke

(Originally published in 1911)

Twenty-eighth Impression
3s. 6d. net

"The volume of 'Poems' published in 1911, which contains work written as early as 1905, when he was eighteen, shows an art curiously personal, skilful, deliberate. It shows, too, an intellectual deftness altogether unexpected in so young a poet, and it shows finally, not always but often, an indifference to the normal material upon which poets good and bad are apt to work from the outset, and in the shaping of which ultimately comes all poetry that is memorable. Nearly every page is interesting on account of its art and intellectual deftness, qualities that we should not expect to be marked....

"... Even in the poems where most we feel the lack of emotional truth there is a beauty of word that made the book full of the most exciting promise. Already, too there was in certain poems assurance against the danger that this intellectual constraint might degenerate into virtuosity."—From "RUPERT BROOKE," by John Drinkwater, in the Contemporary Review, December 1915.

*** The poems on pp. 7-38 of Selected Poems are taken from the above volume.

*      *      *      *      *

1914 and other Poems

by Rupert Brooke

With a Photogravure Portrait by
SHERRIL SCHELL

Twenty-eighth Impression
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"To those of us who see in poetry the perfect flowering of life, the story of Rupert Brooke will always mean chiefly the score or so of poems in which he reached to the full maturity of his genius and gave imperishable expression to the very heart of his personality.... Not even the fact that the man who wrote the sonnets, than which after long generations nothing shall make the year 1914 more memorable, served and died for England at war, can add one beat to their pulse. The poetry that shines and falls across them in one perfect and complete wave is, as poetry must always be, independent of all factual experience, and comes wholly from the deeper experience of the imagination."—From "RUPERT BROOKE" by John Drinkwater, in the Contemporary Review. December 1915.

*** The poems on pp. 39-75 of Selected Poems are taken from the above volume.

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UNIFORM EDITION

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Some Press Opinions of the "Memoir"

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*** The Memoir may also be obtained separately, uniform with 'Poems' and '1914,' with a Portrait from a photograph by SHERRIL SCHELL, price 6s. net.

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Letters from America:
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John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama

by Rupert Brooke

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*** This is the 'dissertation,' written in 1911-12, by which Rupert Brooke gained his Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, in 1913.

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