NOTE
Reading edition
My thanks are due to the Editors of the Outlook and the Speaker for the kind permission they have given me to reprint a considerable number of the following poems. They have been selected and arranged rather with a view to unity of spirit than to unity of time or value; many of them being juvenile.
CONTENTS
BY THE BABE UNBORN
THE WORLD'S LOVER
THE SKELETON
A CHORD OF COLOUR
THE HAPPY MAN
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
A NOVELTY
ULTIMATE
THE DONKEY
THE BEATIFIC VISION
THE HOPE OF THE STREETS
ECCLESIASTES
THE SONG OF THE CHILDREN
THE FISH
GOLD LEAVES
THOU SHALT NOT KILL
A CERTAIN EVENING
A MAN AND HIS IMAGE
THE MARINER
THE TRIUMPH OF MAN
CYCLOPEAN
JOSEPH
MODERN ELFLAND
ETERNITIES
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
ALONE
KING'S CROSS STATION
THE HUMAN TREE
TO THEM THAT MOURN
THE OUTLAW
BEHIND
THE END OF FEAR
THE HOLY OF HOLIES
THE MIRROR OF MADMEN
E.C.B.
THE DESECRATERS
AN ALLIANCE
THE ANCIENT OF DAYS
THE LAST MASQUERADE
THE EARTH'S SHAME
VANITY
THE LAMP POST
THE PESSIMIST
A FAIRY TALE
A PORTRAIT
FEMINA CONTRA MUNDUM
TO A CERTAIN NATION
THE PRAISE OF DUST
THE BALLAD OF THE BATTLE OF GIBEON
THE BALLAD OF GOD-MAKERS
AT NIGHT
THE WOOD-CUTTER
ART COLOURS
THE TWO WOMEN
THE WILD KNIGHT
THE WILD KNIGHT
GOOD NEWS
Another tattered rhymster in the ring, With but the old plea to the sneering schools, That on him too, some secret night in spring Came the old frenzy of a hundred fools To make some thing: the old want dark and deep, The thirst of men, the hunger of the stars, Since first it tinged even the Eternal's sleep, With monstrous dreams of trees and towns and mars. When all He made for the first time He saw, Scattering stars as misers shake their pelf. Then in the last strange wrath broke His own law, And made a graven image of Himself.
BY THE BABE UNBORN
If trees were tall and grasses short, As in some crazy tale, If here and there a sea were blue Beyond the breaking pale, If a fixed fire hung in the air To warm me one day through, If deep green hair grew on great hills, I know what I should do. In dark I lie: dreaming that there Are great eyes cold or kind, And twisted streets and silent doors, And living men behind. Let storm-clouds come: better an hour, And leave to weep and fight, Than all the ages I have ruled The empires of the night. I think that if they gave me leave Within that world to stand, I would be good through all the day I spent in fairyland. They should not hear a word from me Of selfishness or scorn, If only I could find the door, If only I were born.