III. Last Poems and “The Burial of Sophocles”

“We who have bowed ourselves to Time”

We who have bowed ourselves to time

Now arm an uneventful rime

With panoply of flowers

Through the long summer hours. . . .

But now our fierce and warlike Muse

Doth soft companionship refuse,

And we must mount and ride

Upon a steed untried. . . .

We who have led by gradual ways

Our placid life to sterner days

And for old quiet things

Have set the strife of kings,

Who battled have with bloody hands

Through evil times in barren lands,

To whom the voice of guns

Speaks and no longer stuns,

Calm, though with death encompassèd,

That watch the hours go overhead

Knowing too well we must

With all men come to dust. . . .

Crave of our masters’ clemency

Silence a little space that we

Upon their ear may force

Tales of our trodden course.

Anglia Valida in Senectute

(On the Declaration of War)

Not like to those who find untrodden ways;

But down the weary paths we know,

Through every change of sky and change of days

Silent, processional we go.

Not unto us the soft, unlaboured breath

Of children’s hopes and children’s fears:

We are not sworn to battle to the death

With all the wrongs of all the years:

We are old, we are old, and worn and school’d with ills,

Maybe our road is almost done,

Maybe we are drawn near unto the hills

Where rest is and the setting sun:

But yet a pride is ours that will not brook

The taunts of fools too saucy grown,

He that is rash to prove it, let him look

He kindle not a fire unknown.

Since first we flung our gauntlet to the skies

And dared the high Gods’ will to bend,

A fire that still may burn deceit and lies

Burn and consume them to the end.

“Dark is the World our Fathers left us”

Dark is the world our fathers left us,

Wearily, greyly the long years flow,

Almost the gloom has of hope bereft us,

Far is the high gods’ song and low:

Sombre the crests of the mountains lonely,

Leafless, wind-ridden, moan the trees:

Down in the valleys is twilight only,

Twilight over the mourning seas:

Time was when earth was always golden,

Time was when skies were always clear:

Spirits and souls of the heroes olden,

Faint are cries from the darkness, hear!

Tear ye the veil of time asunder

Tear the veil, ’tis the gods’ command,

Hear we the sun-stricken breakers thunder

Over the shore where the heroes stand.

――――

Dark is the world our fathers left us,

Heavily, greyly the long years flow,

Almost the gloom has of hope bereft us,

Far is the high gods’ song and low.

Awakening

Gold-crested towers against the veilèd skies,

Sere branches of the winter trees beneath,

And a low song, and heavy-lidded eyes;

Is there aught else in all the world beside?

Is not time stilled and ended in this hour?

――――

Up, and away! the belted squadrons ride!

Ave atque Vale

In Oxford, evermore the same

Unto the uttermost verge of time,

Though grave-dust choke the sons of men,

And silence wait upon the rime,

At evening now the skies set forth

Last glories of the dying year:

The wind gives chase to relict leaves:

And we, we may not linger here.

A little while, and we are gone:

God knows if it be ours to see

Again the earliest hoar-frost white

On the long lawns of Trinity.

In Merton, of the many courts

And doorways good to wander through,

Gable and spire shall glitter white

Or tawny gold against the blue:

And still the winter sun shall smile

At noonday, or at sunset hour

On Magdalen, girt with ancient trees,

Beneath her bright immortal tower.

Though nevermore we tread the ways

That our returning feet have known

Past Oriel, and Christ Church gate

Unto those dearer walls, our own.

――――

Oxford is evermore the same,

Unto the uttermost verge of time,

Though grave-dust choke the sons of men,

And silence wait upon the rime.

“O, one came down from Seven Hills”

O, one came down from seven hills

And crossèd seven streams:

All in his hands were thyme and grass

And in his eyes were dreams:

He passèd by a seven fields

With early dews all grey

And entered in the stricken town

About the break of day.

“O you old men that stand and talk

About the market-place,

There is much trouble in your eyes

And anguish in your face:

O woman in a silent room

Within a silent house,

There is no pleasure in your voice

Or peace upon your brows.”

“O how should such as we rejoice

Who weep that others die,

Who quake, and curse ourselves, and watch

The vengeful hours go by?

O better far to fly the grief

That wounds, and never kills;

O better far to fly the town

And seek the seven hills——”

“I will go pray the seven gods

Who keep the seven hills

That they do grant your city peace,

And easement of her ills.”

“Nay, rather pray the seven gods

To launch the latest pain;

For there be many things to do

Ere we see peace again.”

“Then I’ll go praise the seven gods

With hymns and chauntings seven,

Such as shall split the mountain-tops

And shrivel up blue heaven:

That there be men who mock at threats

And wag their heads at strife,

Love home above their own hearts’ blood

And honour more than life.”

Sonnet to the British Navy

Lest force aspire to brand an alien name

Upon the immortal empire of the free:

Lest fire and sword and slaughter strive to tame

This isle, was ne’er so tamed, and ne’er shall be.

Ye guard the ocean barrier, undismayed

’Midst hidden perils for a brave man’s fears,

In iron craft that many smiths have made

With peaceful labour in the old, dead years.

In a small vessel, of one Smith ill-wrought

I must soon venture on another deep,

And dare, with little hope, and little thought

Of praise and honour and untroubled sleep:

So, as each sails upon his perilous sea,

I pray High God He strengthen you, and me.

The Last Meeting

We who are young, and have caught the splendour of

life,

Hunting it down the forested ways of the world,

Do we not wear our hearts like a banner unfurled

(Crowned with a chaplet of love, shod with the sandals

of strife)?

Now not a lustre of pain, nor an ocean of tears

Nor pangs of death, nor any other thing

That the old tristful gods on our heads may bring

Can rob us of this one hour in the midst of the years.

The New Age and the Old

Like the small source of a smooth-flowing river,

Like the pale dawn of a wonderful day,

Comes the New Age, from High God, the good giver,

Comes with the shouts of the children at play:

As an old leaf whirls faster and faster

From the sere branch that once gave it fair birth,

Into the arms of the devil, its master,

Be the old age swept away from the earth!

To the Cultured

Sons of culture, God-given,

First offspring of Heaven,

Athletic and tanned,

Well-built and not nervous,

With your golf and your tweeds

And your “noble editions,”

Quiet lives and few needs

(Say a thousand a year

For your earthly career)

Who can’t understand

Discontent and seditions,

May Heaven preserve us

From being like you.

What are we, what am I?

Poor rough creatures, whose life

Is “depressing” and “grey,”

Is a heart-breaking strife

With death and with shame

And your polite laughter,

Till—the world pass away

In smoke and in flame,

And some of us die,

And some live on after

To build it anew.

Afterwards

Afterwards, when

The old Gods’ hate

On the riven earth

No more is poured:

When weapons of war

Are all outworn

What shall become

Of the race of men?

One shall go forth

In the likeness of a child:

Under sere skies

Of a grey dawning:

One shall go forth

In the likeness of a child,

And desolate places

Shall spring and blossom:

One shall go forth

In the likeness of a child:

And men shall sing

And greatly rejoice:

All men shall sing

For the love that is in them,

And he shall behold it

And sing also.

Domum redit Poeta

O much desired from far away

And long, I hold thee once again,

Thou undiminished treasury

Of small delights, yet nowise vain:

The cat curled on the cosy hearth,

The thrushes in the garden trees,

The memories of younger years,

The quiet voices, and the peace.

Memories

Shapes in the mist, it is long since I saw you,

Pale hands and faces, and quiet eyes,

Crowned with a garland the dead years wrought you

Out of remembrance that never dies:

One among you is tall and supple

Good to fight or to love beside,

Only the stain of a deadly quarrel,

Only that and the years divide:

One there is with a face as honest,

Heart as true, as the open sea,

One who never betrayed a comrade—

Death stands now betwixt him and me.

One I loved with a passionate longing

Born of worship and fierce despair,

Dreamed that Heaven were only happy

If at length I should find him there.

Shapes in the mist, ye see me lonely,

Lonely and sad in the dim firelight:

How far now to the last of all battles?

(Listen, the guns are loud to-night!)

Whatever comes, I will strike once surely,

Once because of an ancient tryst,

Once for love of your dear dead faces

Ere I come unto you, Shapes in the mist.

Intercessional

There is a place where voices

Of great guns do not come,

Where rifle, mine, and mortar

For evermore are dumb:

Where there is only silence,

And peace eternal and rest,

Set somewhere in the quiet isles

Beyond Death’s starry West.

O God, the God of battles,

To us who intercede,

Give only strength to follow

Until there’s no more need,

And grant us at that ending

Of the unkindly quest

To come unto the quiet isles

Beyond Death’s starry West.

April 1916

Now spring is come upon the hills in France,

And all the trees are delicately fair,

As heeding not the great guns’ voice, by chance

Brought down the valley on a wandering air:

Now day by day upon the uplands bare

Do gentle, toiling horses draw the plough,

And birds sing often in the orchards where

Spring wantons it with blossoms on her brow—

Aye! but there is no peace in England now.

O little isle amid unquiet seas,

Though grisly messengers knock on many doors,

Though there be many storms among your trees

And all your banners rent with ancient wars;

Yet such a grace and majesty are yours

There be still some, whose glad heart suffereth

All hate can bring from her misgotten stores,

Telling themselves, so England’s self draw breath,

That’s all the happiness on this side death.

“Over the Hills and Hollows Green”

Over the hills and hollows green

The springtide air goes valiantly,

Where many sainted singing larks

And blessed primaveras be:

But bitterly the springtide air

Over the desert towns doth blow,

About whose torn and shattered streets

No more shall children’s footsteps go.

Sonnet

To-night the world is but a prison house,

And kindly ways, and all the springing grass

Are dungeon stones to him that may not pass

Among them, save with anguish on his brows:

And any wretched husbandman that ploughs

The upland acres in his habit spare

Is king, to those in palaces of glass

Who sit with grief and weariness for spouse.

O God, who madest first the world that we

Might happy live, and praise its pleasantness

In such wise as the angels never could,

Wherefore are hearts, fashioned so wondrously,

All spoiled and changed by human bitterness

Into the likenesses of stone and wood?

“O Long the Fiends of War shall dance”

O long the fiends of war shall dance

Upon the stricken fields of France:

And long and long their grisly cry

Shall echo up and smite the sky:

O long and long the tears of God

Shall fall upon a barren sod,

Save when, of His great clemency,

He gives men’s hearts in custody

Of grim old kindly Death, who knows

The mould is better than the rose.

For R. Q. G.

July 1916

O God, whose great inscrutable purposes

(Seen only of the one all-seeing eye)

Are as unchangeable as the azure sky,

And as fulfilled of infinite mysteries:

Are like a fast-locked castle without keys

Whereof the gates are very strong and high,

Impenetrable, and we poor fools die

Nor even know what thing beyond them is:

O God, by whom men’s lives are multiplied,

Are scattered broadcast in the world like grain,

And after long time reaped again and stored,

O Thou who only canst be glorified

By man’s own passion and the supreme pain,

Accept this sacrifice of blood outpoured.

“Sun and Shadow and Winds of Spring”

Sun and shadow and winds of spring,

Love and laughter and hope and fame,

Cloud and storm-light over the hills,

Tears and passion and sordid shame:

All, all are but as quenchèd fire

And vanish’d smoke to him that lies

Amid the silence of the trees

Under the silence of the skies.

“Let us tell Quiet Stories of Kind Eyes”

Let us tell quiet stories of kind eyes

And placid brows where peace and learning sate:

Of misty gardens under evening skies

Where four would walk of old, with steps sedate.

Let’s have no word of all the sweat and blood,

Of all the noise and strife and dust and smoke

(We who have seen Death surging like a flood,

Wave upon wave, that leaped and raced and broke).

Or let’s sit silently, we three together,

Around a wide hearth-fire that’s glowing red,

Giving no thought to all the stormy weather

That flies above the roof-tree overhead.

And he, the fourth, that lies all silently

In some far-distant and untended grave,

Under the shadow of a shattered tree,

Shall leave the company of the hapless brave,

And draw nigh unto us for memory’s sake,

Because a look, a word, a deed, a friend,

Are bound with cords that never a man may break,

Unto his heart for ever, until the end.

“Save that Poetic Fire”

Save that poetic fire

Burns in the hidden heart,

Save that the full-voiced choir

Sings in a place apart,

Man that’s of woman born,

With all his imaginings,

Were less than the dew of morn,

Less than the least of things.

The Burial of Sophocles

The First Verses

Gather great store of roses, crimson-red

From ancient gardens under summer skies:

New opened buds, and some that soon must shed

Their leaves to earth, that all expectant lies;

Some from the paths of poets’ wandering,

Some from the places where young lovers meet,

Some from the seats of dreamers pondering,

And all most richly red, and honey-sweet.

For in the splendour of the afternoon,

When sunshine lingers on the glittering town

And glorifies the temples wondrous-hewn

All set about it like a deathless crown,

We will go mingle with the solemn throng,

With neither eyes that weep, nor hearts that bleed,

That to his grave with slow, majestic song

Bears down the latest of the godlike seed.

Many a singer lies on distant isle

Beneath the canopy of changing sky:

Around them waves innumerable smile,

And o’er their head the restless seabirds cry:

But we will lay him far from sound of seas,

Far from the jutting crags’ unhopeful gloom,

Where there blows never wind save summer breeze,

And where the growing rose may clasp his tomb.

And thither in the splendid nights of spring,

When stars in legions over heaven are flung,

Shall come the ancient gods, all wondering

Why he sings not that had so richly sung:

There Heracles with peaceful foot shall press

The springing herbage, and Hephæstus strong,

Hera and Aphrodite’s loveliness,

And the great giver of the choric song.

And thither, after weary pilgrimage,

From unknown lands beyond the hoary wave,

Shall travellers through every coming age

Approach to pluck a blossom from his grave:

Some in the flush of youth, or in the prime,

Whose life is still as heapèd gold to spend,

And some who have drunk deep of grief and time,

And who yet linger half-afraid the end.

The Interlude

It was upon a night of spring,

Even the time when first do sing

The new-returnèd nightingales;

Whenas all hills and woods and dales

Are resonant with melody

Of songs that die not, but shall be

Unto the latest hour of time

Beyond the life of word or rime—

Whenas all brooks more softly flow

Remembering lovers long ago

That stood upon their banks and vowed,

And love was with them like a cloud:

There came one out of Athens town

In a spun robe, with sandals brown,

Just when the white ship of the moon

Had first set sail, and many a rune

Was written in the argent stars;

His feet were set towards the hills

Because he knew that there the rills

Ran down like jewels, and fairy cars

Galloped, maybe, among the dells,

And airy sprites wove fitful spells

Of gossamer and cold moonshine

Which do most mistily entwine:

And ever the hills called, and a voice

Cried: “Soon, maybe, comes thy choice

Twixt mortal immortality

Such as shall never be again,

’Twixt the most passionate-pleasant pain

And all the quiet, barren joys

That old men prate about to boys.”

――――

He wandered many nights and days—

Whose morns were always crystal clear,

As lay the world in still amaze

Enchanted of the springing year,

And all the nights with wakeful eyes

Watched for another dawn to rise—

Till at the last the mountain tops

Received him, which like giant props

Stand, lest the all-encircling sky

Fall down, and men be crushed and die.

And so he reached a curvèd hill

Whereon the hornèd moon did seem

Her richest radiance to spill

In an inestimable stream,

Like jewels rare of countless price,

Or wizard magic turned to ice.

――――

And as he reached the topmost crest of it,

Lo! the Olympian majesties did sit

In a most high and passionless conclave:

They ate ambrosia with their deathless lips,

And ever and anon the golden wave

Flowed of the drink divine, which only strips

This mortal frame of its mortality.

And there, and there was Aphrodite, she

That is more lovely than the golden dawn

And from a ripple of the sea was born:

And there was Hera, the imperious queen,

And Dian’s chastity, that hunts unseen

What time with spring the woodland boughs are green:

And there was Pan with mirth and pleasantness,

And Eros’ self that never knew distress

Save for the love of the fair Cretan maid;

There Hermes with the wings of speed arrayed,

And awful Zeus, the king of gods and men,

And ever at his feet Apollo sang

A measure of changing harmonies that rang

From that high mountain over all the world,

And all the sails of fighting ships were furled,

And men drew breath, and there was peace again.

But him that saw, the sight like flame

Or depths of waters overcame:

He swooned, nor heard how ceased the choir

Of strings upon Apollo’s lyre,

Nor saw he how the sweet god stood

And smiled on him in kindly mood,

And stooped, and kissed him as he lay;

Then lightly rose and turned away

To join the bright immortal throng

And make for them another song.

The Last Verses

O ageless nonpareil of stars

That shinest through a mist of cloud,

O light beyond the prison bars

Remote, unwavering, and proud;

Fortunate star and happy light,

Ye benison the gloom of night.

All hail, unfailing eye and hand,

All hail, all hail, unsilenced voice,

That makest dead men understand,

The very dead in graves rejoice:

Whose utterance, writ in ancient books,

Shall always live, for him that looks.

Many as leaves from autumn trees

The years shall flutter from on high,

And with their multiple decease

The souls of men shall fall and die,

Yet, while the empires turn to dust,

You shall live on, because you must.

O seven times happy he that dies

After the splendid harvest-tide,

When strong barns shield from winter skies

The grain that’s rightly stored inside:

There death shall scatter no more tears

Than o’er the falling of the years:

Aye, happy seven times is he

Who enters not the silent doors

Before his time, but tenderly

Death beckons unto him, because

There’s rest within for weary feet

Now all the journey is complete.

“So we lay down the Pen”

So we lay down the pen,

So we forbear the building of the rime,

And bid our hearts be steel for times and a time

Till ends the strife, and then,

When the New Age is verily begun,

God grant that we may do the things undone.

――――

Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.