I SONNETS

Lift up your hearts in Gumber, laugh the Weald And you my mother the Valley of Arun sing. Here am I homeward from my wandering Here am I homeward and my heart is healed. You my companions whom the World has tired Come out to greet me. I have found a face More beautiful than Gardens; more desired Than boys in exile love their native place. Lift up your hearts in Gumber, laugh the Weald And you most ancient Valley of Arun sing. Here am I homeward from my wandering, Here am I homeward and my heart is healed. If I was thirsty, I have heard a spring. If I was dusty, I have found a field.

I was like one that keeps the deck by night Bearing the tiller up against his breast; I was like one whose soul is centred quite In holding course although so hardly prest, And veers with veering shock now left now right, And strains his foothold still and still makes play Of bending beams until the sacred light Shows him high lands and heralds up the day. But now such busy work of battle past I am like one whose barque at bar at last Comes hardly heeling down the adventurous breeze; And entering calmer seas, I am like one that brings his merchandise To Californian skies.

Rise up and do begin the day’s adorning; The Summer dark is but the dawn of day. The last of sunset fades into the morning; The morning calls you from the dark away. The holy mist, the white mist of the morning Was wreathing upward on my lonely way. The way was waiting for your own adorning That should complete the broad adornéd day. Rise up and do begin the day’s adorning; The little eastern clouds are dapple grey: There will be wind among the leaves to-day; It is the very promise of the morning. Lux Tua Via Mea: your light’s my way— Then do rise up and make it perfect day.

The Winter Moon has such a quiet car That all the winter nights are dumb with rest. She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star Because the nights are silent do not wake But there shall tremble through the general earth, And over you, a quickening and a birth. The Sun is near the hill-tops for your sake. The latest born of all the days shall creep To kiss the tender eyelids of the year; And you shall wake, grown young with perfect sleep, And smile at the new world and make it dear With living murmurs more than dreams are deep; Silence is dead, my dawn, the morning’s here.

Whatever moisture nourishes the Rose The Rose of the World in laughter’s garden-bed Where Souls of men on faith secure are fed And spirits immortal keep their pleasure-close. Whatever moisture nourishes the Rose, The burning Rose of the world, for me the same To-day for me the spring without a name Content or Grace or Laughter overflows. This is that water from the Fount of Gold Water of Youth and washer out of cares Which Raymond of Saragossa sought of old And finding in the mountain, unawares, Returned to hear an ancient story told To Bramimond, his love, beside the marble stairs.

Youth gave you to me, but I’ll not believe That Youth will, taking his quick self, take you. Youth’s all our Truth: he cannot so deceive. He has our graces, not our ownselves too. He still compares with time when he’ll be spent, By human doom enhancing what we are; Enriches us with rare experiment, Lends arms to leagured Age in Time’s rough war. Look! This Youth in us is an Old Man taking A Boy to make him wiser than his days. So is our old Youth our young Age’s making: So rich in time our final debt he pays. Then with your quite young arms do you me hold And I will still be young when all the World’s grown old.

Mortality is but the Stuff you wear To show the better on the imperfect sight. Your home is surely with the changeless light Of which you are the daughter and the heir. For as you pass, the natural life of things Proclaims the Resurrection: as you pass Remembered summer shines across the grass And somewhat in me of the immortal sings. You were not made for memory, you are not Youth’s accident I think but heavenly more; Moulding to meaning slips my pen’s poor blot And opening wide that long forbidden door Where stands the Mother of God, your exemplar. How beautiful, how beautiful you are!

Not for the luckless buds our roots may bear Now all in bloom, now seared and cankered lying Will I entreat you, lest they should compare Foredoomed humanity with the fall of flowers. Hold thou with me the chaste communion rare And touch with life this mortal case of ours: You’re lifted up beyond the power of dying: I die, as bounded things die everywhere. You’re voiced companionship, I’m silence lonely; You’re stuff, I’m void; you’re living, I’m decay. I fall, I think, to-night and ending only; You rise, I know, through still advancing day. And knowing living gift were life for me In narrow room of rhyme I fixed it certainly.

That which is one they shear and make it twain Who would Love’s light and dark discriminate: His pleasure is one essence with his pain, Even his desire twin brother to his hate. With him the foiled attempt is half achieving; And being mastered, to be armed a lord; And doubting every chance is still believing; And losing all one’s own is all reward. I am acquainted with misfortune’s fortune, And better than herself her dowry know: For she that is my fortune and misfortune, Making me hapless, makes me happier so: In which conceit, as older men may prove, Lies manifest the very core of Love.

Shall any man for whose strong love another Has thrown away his wealth and name in one, Shall he turn mocker of a more than brother To slight his need when his adventure’s done? Or shall a breedless boy whose mother won him In great men’s great concerns his little place Turn when his farthing honours come upon him To mock her yeoman air and conscious grace? Then mock me as you do my narrow scope, For you it was put out this light of mine: Wrongfully wrecked my new adventured hope, Wasted my wordy wealth, spilt my rich wine, Made my square ship within a league of shore Alas! To be entombed in seas and seen no more.

They that have taken wages of things done When sense abused has blocked the doors of sense, They that have lost their heritage of the sun, Their laughter and their holy innocence; They turn them now to this thing, now to t’other, For anchor hold against swift-eddying time, Some to that square of earth which was their mother, And some to noisy fame, and some to rhyme. But I to that far morning where you stood In fullness of the body, with your hands Reposing on your walls, before your lands, And all, together, making one great good: Then did I cry “For this my birth was meant. These are my use, and this my sacrament!”

Beauty that Parent is to deathless Rhyme Was Manhood’s maker: you shall bear a Son, Till Daughters linked adown admiring time Fulfil the mother, handing Beauty on. You shall by breeding make Life answer yet, In Time’s despite, Time’s jeer that men go void; Your stamp of heaven shall be more largely set Than my one joy, ten thousand times enjoyed. The glories of our state and its achievement, Which wait their passing, shall not pass away. I will extend our term beyond bereavement, And launch our date into a dateless day. For you shall make recórd, and when that’s sealed In Beauty made immortal, all is healed.

What are the names for Beauty? Who shall praise God’s pledge he can fulfil His creatures’ eyes? Or what strong words of what creative phrase Determine Beauty’s title in the skies? But I will call you Beauty Personate, Ambassadorial Beauty, and again Beauty triumphant, Beauty in the Gate, Beauty salvation of the souls of men. For Beauty was not Beauty till you came And now shall Beauty mean the sign you are; A Beacon burnt above the Dawn, a flame Like holy Lucifer the Morning Star, Who latest hangs in Heaven and is the gem On all the widowéd Night’s expectant Diadem.

Love wooing Honour, Honour’s love did win And had his pleasure all a summer’s day. Not understanding how the dooms begin, Love wooing Honour, wooed her life away. Then wandered he a full five years unrest Until, one night, this Honour that had died Came as he slept, in youth grown glorified And smiling like the Saints whom God has blest. But when he saw her on the clear night shine Serene with more than mortal light upon her, The boy that careless was of things divine, Small Love, turned penitent to worship Honour. So Love can conquer Honour: when that’s past Dead Honour risen outdoes Love at last.

Your life is like a little winter’s day Whose sad sun rises late to set too soon; You have just come—why will you go away, Making an evening of what should be noon. Your life is like a little flute complaining A long way off, beyond the willow trees: A long way off, and nothing left remaining But memory of a music on the breeze. Your life is like a pitiful leave-taking Wept in a dream before a man’s awaking, A Call with only shadows to attend: A Benediction whispered and belated Which has no fruit beyond a consecrated, A consecrated silence at the end.

Now shall the certain purpose of my soul By blind and empty things controlled be, And mine audacious course to that far goal Fall short, confessing mere mortality. Limbs shall have movement and ignore their living, Brain wit, that he his quickness may deny. My promised hope forswears in act of giving, Time eats me up and makes my words a lie. And mine unbounded dream has found a bar, And I must worst deceit of best things bear. Now dawn’s but daybreak, seas but waters are, Night darkness only, all wide heaven just air: And you to whom these fourteen lines I tell, My beauty, my desire: but not my love as well.

Because my faltering feet may fail to dare The first descendant of the steps of Hell Give me the Word in time that triumphs there. I too must pass into the misty hollow Where all our living laughter stops: and hark! The tiny stuffless voices of the dark Have called me, called me, till I needs must follow: Give me the Word and I’ll attempt it well. Say it’s the little winking of an eye Which in that issue is uncurtained quite; A little sleep that helps a moment by Between the thin dawn and the large daylight. Ah! tell me more than yet was hoped of men; Swear that’s true now, and I’ll believe it then.

When you to Acheron’s ugly water come Where darkness is and formless mourners brood And down the shelves of that distasteful flood Survey the human rank in order dumb. When the pale dead go forward, tortured more By nothingness and longing than by fire, Which bear their hands in suppliance with desire, With stretched desire for the ulterior shore. Then go before them like a royal ghost And tread like Egypt or like Carthage crowned; Because in your Mortality the most Of all we may inherit has been found— Children for memory: the Faith for pride. Good land to leave: and young Love satisfied.

We will not whisper, we have found the place Of silence and the endless halls of sleep. And that which breathes alone throughout the deep The end and the beginning: and the face Between the level brows of whose blind eyes Lie plenary contentment, full surcease Of violence, and the passionless long peace Wherein we lose our human lullabies. Look up and tell the immeasurable height Between the vault of the world and your dear head; That’s death, my little sister, and the night Which was our Mother beckons us to bed, Where large oblivion in her house is laid For us tired children, now our games are played.

I went to sleep at Dawn in Tuscany Beneath a Rock and dreamt a morning dream. I thought I stood by that baptismal stream Whereon the bounds of our redemption lie. And there, beyond, a radiance rose to take My soul at passing, in which light your eyes So filled me I was drunk with Paradise. Then the day broadened, but I did not wake. Here’s the last edge of my long parchment furled And all was writ that you might read it so. This sleep I swear shall last the length of day; Not noise, not chance, shall drive this dream away: Not time, not treachery, not good fortune—no, Not all the weight of all the wears of the world.

Almighty God, whose justice like a sun Shall coruscate along the floors of Heaven, Raising what’s low, perfecting what’s undone, Breaking the proud and making odd things even. The poor of Jesus Christ along the street In your rain sodden, in your snows unshod, They have nor hearth, nor sword, nor human meat, Nor even the bread of men: Almighty God. The poor of Jesus Christ whom no man hears Have waited on your vengeance much too long. Wipe out not tears but blood: our eyes bleed tears. Come smite our damnéd sophistries so strong That thy rude hammer battering this rude wrong Ring down the abyss of twice ten thousand years.

Mother of all my cities once there lay About your weedy wharves an orient shower Of spice and languorous silk and all the dower That Ocean gave you on his bridal day. And now the youth and age have passed away And all the sail superb and all the power; Your time’s a time of memory like that hour Just after sunset, wonderful and grey. Too tired to rise and much too sad to weep, With strong arm nerveless on a nerveless knee, Still to your slumbering ears the spousal deep Murmurs his thoughts of eld eternally; But your soul wakes not from its holy sleep Dreaming of dead delights beside a tideless sea.

November is that historied Emperor Conquered in age but foot to foot with fate Who from his refuge high has heard the roar Of squadrons in pursuit, and now, too late, Stirrups the storm and calls the winds to war, And arms the garrison of his last heirloom, And shakes the sky to its extremest shore With battle against irrevocable doom. Till, driven and hurled from his strong citadels, He flies in hurrying cloud and spurs him on, Empty of lingerings, empty of farewells And final benedictions and is gone. But in my garden all the trees have shed Their legacies of the light and all the flowers are dead.

Hoar Time about the House betakes him slow Seeking an entry for his weariness. And in that dreadful company distress And the sad night with silent footsteps go. On my poor fire the brands are scarce aglow And in the woods without what memories press Where, waning in the trees from less to less Mysterious hangs the hornéd moon and low. For now December, full of agéd care Comes in upon the year and weakly grieves; Mumbling his lost desires and his despair And with mad trembling hand still interweaves The dank sear flower-stalks tangled in his hair, While round about him whirl the rotten leaves.

It freezes: all across a soundless sky The birds go home. The governing dark’s begun. The steadfast dark that waits not for a sun; The ultimate dark wherein the race shall die. Death with his evil finger to his lip Leers in at human windows, turning spy To learn the country where his rule shall lie When he assumes perpetual generalship. The undefeated enemy, the chill That shall benumb the voiceful earth at last, Is master of our moment, and has bound The viewless wind itself. There is no sound. It freezes. Every friendly stream is fast. It freezes, and the graven twigs are still.

O my companion, O my sister Sleep, The valley is all before us, bear me on. High through the heaven of evening, hardly gone, Beyond the harbour lights, beyond the steep, Beyond the land and its lost benison To where, majestic on the darkening deep, The night comes forward from Mount Aurion. O my companion, O my sister Sleep. Above the surf-line, into the night-breeze; Eastward above the ever-whispering seas; Through the warm airs with no more watch to keep. My day’s run out and all its dooms are graven. O dear forerunner of Death and promise of Haven. O my companion, O my sister Sleep.

Are you the end, Despair, or the poor least Of them that cast great shadows and are lies? That dread the simple and destroy the wise, Fail at the tomb and triumph at the feast? You were not found on Olivet, dull beast, Nor in Thebaid, when the night’s agonies Dissolved to glory on the effulgent east And Jesus Christ was in the morning skies. You did not curb the indomitable crest Of Tzerna-Gora, when the Falcon-bred Screamed over the Adriatic, and their Lord Went riding out, much angrier than the rest, To summon at ban the living and the dead And break the Mahommedan with the repeated sword.

But oh! not Lovely Helen, nor the pride Of that most ancient Ilium matched with doom. Men murdered Priam in his royal room And Troy was burned with fire and Hector died. For even Hector’s dreadful day was more Than all his breathing courage dared defend The armouréd light and bulwark of the war Trailed his great story to the accustomed end. He was the city’s buttress, Priam’s Son, The Soldier born in bivouac praises great And horns in double front of battle won. Yet down he went: when unremembering fate Felled him at last with all his armour on. Hector: the horseman: in the Scæan Gate.

The world’s a stage. The light is in one’s eyes. The Auditorium is extremely dark. The more dishonest get the larger rise; The more offensive make the greater mark. The women on it prosper by their shape, Some few by their vivacity. The men, By tailoring in breeches and in cape. The world’s a stage—I say it once again. The scenery is very much the best Of what the wretched drama has to show, Also the prompter happens to be dumb. We drink behind the scenes and pass a jest On all our folly; then, before we go Loud cries for “Author” ... but he doesn’t come.

The world’s a stage—and I’m the Super man, And no one seems responsible for salary. I roar my part as loudly as I can And all I mouth I mouth it to the gallery. I haven’t got another rhyme in “alery” It would have made a better job, no doubt If I had left attempt at Rhyming out, Like Alfred Tennyson adapting Malory. The world’s a stage, the company of which Has very little talent and less reading: But many a waddling heathen painted bitch And many a standing cad of gutter breeding. We sweat to learn our book: for all our pains We pass. The Chucker-out alone remains.

The world’s a stage. The trifling entrance fee Is paid (by proxy) to the registrar. The Orchestra is very loud and free But plays no music in particular. They do not print a programme, that I know. The caste is large. There isn’t any plot. The acting of the piece is far below The very worst of modernistic rot. The only part about it I enjoy Is what was called in English the Foyay. There will I stand apart awhile and toy With thought, and set my cigarette alight; And then—without returning to the play— On with my coat and out into the night.