Selections from POEMS AND BALLADS

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amethysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing, a-sailing, With emeralds and rubies and sapphires in her hold; And a bosun in a blue coat bawling at the railing, Piping through a silver call that had a chain of gold; The summer wind was failing and the tall ship rolled. I saw a ship a-steering, a-steering, a-steering, With roses in red thread worked upon her sails; With sacks of purple amethysts, the spoils of buccaneering, Skins of musky yellow wine, and silks in bales, Her merry men were cheering, hauling on the brails. I saw a ship a-sinking, a-sinking, a-sinking, With glittering sea-water splashing on her decks, With seamen in her spirit-room singing songs and drinking, Pulling claret bottles down, and knocking off the necks, The broken glass was chinking as she sank among the wrecks.

Twilight it is, and the far woods are dim, and the rooks cry and call. Down in the valley the lamps, and the mist, and a star over all, There by the rick, where they thresh, is the drone at an end, Twilight it is, and I travel the road with my friend. I think of the friends who are dead, who were dear long ago in the past, Beautiful friends who are dead, though I know that death cannot last; Friends with the beautiful eyes that the dust has defiled, Beautiful souls who were gentle when I was a child.

O wanderer into many brains, O spark the emperor’s purple hides, You sow the dusk with fiery grains When the gold horseman rides. O beauty on the darkness hurled, Be it through me you shame the world.

I held that when a person dies His soul returns again to earth; Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise Another mother gives him birth. With sturdier limbs and brighter brain The old soul takes the roads again. Such was my own belief and trust; This hand, this hand that holds the pen, Has many a hundred times been dust And turned, as dust, to dust again; These eyes of mine have blinked and shone In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon. All that I rightly think or do, Or make, or spoil, or bless, or blast, Is curse or blessing justly due For sloth or effort in the past. My life’s a statement of the sum Of vice indulged, or overcome. I know that in my lives to be My sorry heart will ache and burn, And worship, unavailingly, The woman whom I used to spurn, And shake to see another have The love I spurned, the love she gave. And I shall know, in angry words, In gibes, and mocks, and many a tear, A carrion flock of homing-birds, The gibes and scorns I uttered here. The brave word that I failed to speak Will brand me dastard on the cheek. And as I wander on the roads I shall be helped and healed and blessed; Dear words shall cheer and be as goads To urge to heights before unguessed. My road shall be the road I made; All that I gave shall be repaid. So shall I fight, so shall I tread, In this long war beneath the stars; So shall a glory wreathe my head, So shall I faint and show the scars, Until this case, this clogging mould, Be smithied all to kingly gold.

When bony Death has chilled her gentle blood, And dimmed the brightness of her wistful eyes, And changed her glorious beauty into mud By his old skill in hateful wizardries; When an old lichened marble strives to tell How sweet a grace, how red a lip was hers; When rheumy grey-beards say, “I knew her well,” Showing the grave to curious worshippers; When all the roses that she sowed in me Have dripped their crimson petals and decayed, Leaving no greenery on any tree That her dear hands in my heart’s garden laid, Then grant, old Time, to my green mouldering skull, These songs may keep her memory beautiful.

My soul has many an old decaying room Hung with the ragged arras of the past, Where startled faces flicker in the gloom, And horrid whispers set the cheek aghast. Those dropping rooms are haunted by a death, A something like a worm gnawing a brain, That bids me heed what bitter lesson saith The blind wind beating on the widow-pane. None dwells in those old rooms: none ever can: I pass them through at night with hidden head; Lock’d rotting rooms her eyes must never scan, Floors that her blessed feet must never tread. Haunted old rooms: rooms she must never know, Where death-ticks knock and mouldering panels glow.

In the dark womb where I began My mother’s life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her. Down in the darkness of the grave She cannot see the life she gave. For all her love, she cannot tell Whether I use it ill or well, Nor knock at dusty doors to find Her beauty dusty in the mind. If the grave’s gates could be undone, She would not know her little son, I am so grown. If we should meet She would pass by me in the street, Unless my soul’s face let her see My sense of what she did for me. What have I done to keep in mind My debt to her and womankind? What woman’s happier life repays Her for those months of wretched days? For all my mouthless body leeched Ere Birth’s releasing hell was reached? What have I done, or tried, or said In thanks to that dear woman dead? Men triumph over women still, Men trample women’s rights at will, And man’s lust roves the world untamed. * * * * O grave, keep shut lest I be shamed.

No rose but fades: no glory but must pass: No hue but dims: no precious silk but frets. Her beauty must go underneath the grass, Under the long roots of the violets. O, many glowing beauties Time has hid In that dark, blotting box the villain sends. He covers over with a coffin-lid Mothers and sons, and foes and lovely friends. Maids that were redly-lipped and comely-skinned, Friends that deserved a sweeter bed than clay. All are as blossoms blowing down the wind, Things the old envious villain sweeps away. And though the mutterer laughs and church bells toll, Death brings another April to the soul.

Twilight; red in the west; Dimness; a glow on the wood. The teams plod home to rest. The wild duck come to glean. O souls not understood, What a wild cry in the pool; What things have the farm ducks seen That they cry so, huddle and cry? Only the soul that goes, Eager, eager, flying, Over the globe of the moon, Over the wood that glows; Wings linked; necks a-strain, A rush and a wild crying. * * * * A cry of the long pain In the reeds of a steel lagoon In a land that no man knows.